The LFG Show
Talking with movers and shakers who grew up with nothing and worked their asses off to achieve success. Let's 🤬 Go!!!!
The LFG Show
How James Van Elswyk Consistently Finds The Next Big Trends 💥
🎙 The LFG Show 🎙
🔥 What if you could transform a small lead buyer into seven-figure monthly revenues? 🔥 Join us as David Stodolak and his special guest James Van Elswyk recount their exhilarating journey in the solar industry from 2016 to 2020. 🚀 From small beginnings to tremendous financial success through strategic marketing and leadership, they highlight the critical importance of diversifying buyers and how unyielding relationships and relentless effort can pave the way to extraordinary achievements. 💼💡 This episode also shines a light on their passion for addressing complex societal issues, revealing a commitment that goes beyond profit. 🌍❤
🌟 We navigate through the evolving landscapes of various markets, including debt settlement, lead generation, and solar energy. Hear firsthand how David and James analyze the cyclical nature of these industries, drawing valuable parallels and offering predictions about future opportunities, such as a potential resurgence in loan modifications. 📈🔍 The discussion extends to the evolution of high-level networking events like Geek Out, emphasizing the vital role of community and the learning opportunities that come from both triumphs and setbacks. 🌐🤝
🌍 Finally, experience the personal and professional growth that international experiences and strategic partnerships bring. James shares inspiring stories of determination, underscoring the impact of proximity in seizing opportunities and the necessity of skillset expansion and team development. 🌟🛠 Reflecting on mental wellness, they discuss the balance of obsessiveness and mindfulness in maintaining entrepreneurial performance. 🧠✨ This rich conversation wraps up with the power of authenticity and collaboration in achieving success and the excitement for upcoming opportunities to connect and grow together at future high level events like Geek Out in LA. 🎉🌟
Tune in for an episode packed with insights, inspiration, and invaluable lessons from the frontline of the lead generation industry and beyond! 🎧🚀
🔔 A big shoutout to our sponsor, Ringba, for making this episode possible!
I'm addicted to the game. I don't know if I want to work till I die essentially right, but I like solving problems. Like that's what I really get off on. And if I had a billion dollars, I don't know if I would necessarily work to get to two billion. Once I'm done, I don't need to make any more money, but my brain's still good, I'm still active. I want to find my other friends that also like to figure shit out and fix a problem in society.
Speaker 1:Take our skills, our leadership skills, our marketing skills, our finance skills and just pick something that nobody can fix Fucking homelessness, hunger, something and get these people together and be like yo, let's just crack this shit, like we crack campaigns, like we crack businesses, like let's just do something for the love of it. There's so many people in our industry myself, everyone else we love the beginning of the business. When you figure shit out, you crack it, you undo it, you hustle and then, once it's running smooth, you're kind of like it's boring. It's like the cat with the string. If the string is bouncing around and they can't catch it, they love it. You can put it on the ground. If it's not bouncing around, they don't want that shit anymore.
Speaker 2:It's what we fucking. My mind's already blown over here. Shout out to our sponsors, because without them this shit wouldn't be possible. Shout out to Ringba. Shout out to Adam Young, the Paper Call Revolution. There's big, big money in paper call. Whether you're someone who's a novice looking to get into it, whether you're someone who's already doing it, putting up big numbers, let's fucking do this. Guys. Get the fucking book on Amazon. We're going to drop a link here. Take your shit to the next level. Let's fucking go.
Speaker 3:Guys, it's Boris. I'm on the LFG show. Don't forget, we have contactio coming up, the biggest and best show for call centers. If you're going to be in Denver, you need to use promo code LFG.
Speaker 2:Let's fucking go, baby. Save 200 bucks, put that promo code in, get there and make a lot of money. See, boris and I, let's fucking make this happen, we'll be there. Boom, we're back. We're in New York City, in Tribeca. This is the hottest market in New York City. I'm fucking pumped to be back. I was in Miami in the floods. I'm with a very special guest. I'm with my man, james found elsewick my man.
Speaker 2:We got a lot of history together. You know I owe a lot to him. I learned so much from working with him. He does a lot of things. He's the owner of Symphony agency, also geek out, which is one the probably best education community in In there in our industry and e-comm and in Legion. So I'm fucking excited to have you in the show I'm in.
Speaker 1:Thank you, brother. I appreciate it, dude. You've done so much for me, man. We had a good run, dude, huge run, dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're referring to a run we had I think it was 2016 to 2020 in solar, and one thing we're going to talk about here, which is going to be very big, is, in our industry, everyone's always looking for where's the money flowing to right and where the money's flowing, what's the hot offer, what's like an under the radar offering, getting that early, and that's essentially what solar was. You guys were doing solar for a couple years. You and daniel were doing solar. What 2014, 2015?
Speaker 1:and we hooked up in 2016, exactly in 2014. It was still good yeah it was real good. Back then it was very cheap to make leads. The buyers didn't understand what the value of the leads were, so you could charge a a lot. It was really the right time to be in that one.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So going back, what happened was you guys. You had some big clients, right.
Speaker 1:I think it was like solar city or someone right, yeah, we started out with some big foundation kind of what we call garbage can buyers, big enough to take everything, and then we really built out with you a more diversified amount of buyers so that we could have, like you know, the little guys. They pay more, but it allowed us to get like a higher overall average per lead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to go break that down, because what happened was I had just started my company, solar Direct Marketing, and it was like really interesting circumstances and I'm a firm believer that the harder you work and the better you are to people, the luckier you get Right. So that was one of those circumstances. One of my best friends just got a job at a solar company and he didn't know what was going on. He was like I can't get leads, what do I do? I'm like, bro, I have leads for you and I was just giving them. I don't know. I was doing like a few thousand a week, nothing crazy, making some money. Carbon credits yeah, we're trying to buy data. You're still in my phone as David Carbon guy.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's so great, I've never changed it. Yeah, that's so fucking great.
Speaker 2:So we didn't, we didn't get any. We almost got something going but didn't. But then we reconnected through Daniel Javor and then I'm like bro, I know you. And then, man, we went from a few thousand a week to 10. Then we were doing like seven figures a month on solar. It's just beautiful how that happened, yeah it was great.
Speaker 1:Like the buyer that we started with with you. They had like 15 sales guys Like it was nothing. If you remember, back then there was nothing. I don't think they were even on a dialer yet.
Speaker 2:No, they weren't.
Speaker 1:And now they got like over a thousand employees and it was just. It was awesome for them, it was awesome for us. Everybody made a lot of money. That was really glory days early.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's really true win-wins, right, you guys had a need, you had the supply, but the buyer was out of the market I think they went out of business the SolarCity or groups, whatever and then I brought one, then I brought another one, then another one, then another one, and then we just grew together and and then they grew. That's the beauty of this business when it works for everybody. It was a true win-win at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and it works a lot easier for you on the front end the lead generation side when the people on the back end are making money because they have more budget, they can pay a higher CPL. The leads were quality. Yeah, without being aggressive, the leads were quality, so the leads were great for them them it really was.
Speaker 2:When you're early, it usually is win-win-win yeah, and that's what I want to talk about. Um, put a lot of focus on I'm being early and you've been in this industry for I don't know about 20 years, about 15, 20 years getting there close.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah and we're talking offline about.
Speaker 2:You know, right now there's a lot of shit going on with aca, a lot of insurances, and that was hot for a while. We're always looking for what's hot and how to make money and and there's a lot of nervousness going on what's going on there. But back when you started, you were in debt. He was in debt back in 2008. Those are the golden days. Right, it was 2008.
Speaker 1:I was in debt settlement. So everyone now is like oh, debt, this is amazing vertical. I've seen it blow up three times. I was there in the beginning when it was like 13 to 15 dollars to make a lead, 23, 24k average debt load. Like it was sweet, you know, because it was the beginning. It was actually pre-regulation, then I went through regulation that killed it, then it popped up again and now it's here for the third time really really blowing up.
Speaker 1:at least you know yeah and and now it like not to be negative. But it kind of sucks now because the lead buyers they know exactly what their cost per lead needs to be, how their metrics back out where, because there's not as much meat on the bone and obviously the cost to make leads Facebook and everything's got expensive when you get there early. They were willing to pay a lot for a lead because there were still tons of money for everybody, you know, and it just gets harder as costs go up, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's very true. I remember there's a book and you I know you're a big reader man. You're just one thing I love about you and I think the one reason you've been so successful is that you're always learning and you, you, you've lived all over the world and I feel like when you go there you get immersed in the culture and you take a little piece of that with you. Probably you ever read liar's poker, yeah, yeah, great book and he talks about I used to sell mortgage-backed securities and back in that I sold them like 2003 that he talks about back in the 1980s, like no one knew the value of these things and like everyone was making money people buying, the people selling. It was one of those markets where it was a wide spread. So that's essentially and I used to be a bond broker right and we're. There were spreads. So what I do now? Essentially the same shit. What we do when we sell these we're finding a spread you make for this price you sell them.
Speaker 2:How do you make it work for everybody?
Speaker 1:right, exactly, and in the start of a marketplace there's always a bigger spread because there's still inefficiencies in the costing model, the revenue model, and as time goes on and shit gets more sophisticated, there becomes a balance and there's just less money for everybody to chop up. I mean, it's just the way that it happens when markets mature, you know, and obviously there's risk versus reward. Because you started early in a marketplace, yeah, maybe there's greater margin, but it's not as stable, maybe it's not going to work, there's not as many buyers, but there's more potential profit. There's just bigger gross margins.
Speaker 2:When you start out in something like that, yeah, solar is a great example, because you know you had solar city, which you think that tesla thing would be good for them, but like it fucked up everything right then and you lose them and like what. But then after that all these other companies got spawned and that's what created that opportunity to really the first company is kind of scrooge usually yeah, I think the ones that are like the third or fourth, that can work off the mistakes of the trailblazers, that actually make a bunch.
Speaker 2:But like you look at solar right, like we were getting 110 a lead in new jersey all day and the buyers loved it and the cost per lead was cheap, like there was just margin, there was no efficiency in the pricing and supply and demand, it just worked for everyone yeah you know, just that was really great profitable time and you look like a hero when you do it right too, because, at the end of the day, these companies grow, you grow with them, and like you're their, you're their edge is what it comes down to, and they almost don't want anyone to know that. Who the fuck you're getting it from?
Speaker 1:it's so funny when you get to a good market in the beginning you're like a fucking magician. Yeah, you know. And then fast forward five years. They hate affiliates, they think everyone's a scumbag, but in the beginning they love you taking you to dinner, holy cow, you're blowing up our business. That's when it's nice.
Speaker 2:That's when you're a real partner. And I remember feeling great because one of my best friends he was building out the call center. I made him look like a hero. I'm looking good, I'm making money, you're making money, everybody was winning and that's really the best part. Fortunately it doesn't always last that way, cause you know, like you said, it gets more saturated, price of leads, go up, whatever. But before we go into that, I want to talk about the next thing you got. You were doing loan mods after debt, right, which is like it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 1:We were talking, we firmly believe this market will come back at some point, I think loan mods will come back Cause if you take a look like the rotation right, you had a lot of credit card debt and then people started pulling back on lending. You had a lot of mortgages and obviously there's a lot of shady stuff going on with mortgages, but loan mod was a premium lead generation vertical right Because people were really motivated to deal with their problems. I'm not smart with financial stuff, but if you take a look at like the current environment, it wouldn't be surprising if we run into a big housing price, housing crisis, that people can't afford to live where they are and that'll turn into a big legion opportunity yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:Debt, oh wait, loan mods solar student loan oh, student loans, I forgot damn, that's a beauty. He's been, he's done so many things right and that's that's what makes experience is the best teacher, right? I just? I don't know how I get so lucky dude, but I just keep switching.
Speaker 1:I just, I just try to get there Like I'm an opportunist right. So I just try to get there before everyone else. I was in student loan. We were one of the first call centers to do it big for sure and I failed right. Eventually the student loan business went out of business. I went out of business, hit really rock bottom with student loan, but I was early, but maybe a little bit too early, to understand it. But student loan but I was early, but maybe a little bit too early to understand it.
Speaker 2:But that was another juicy one for a while. Yeah, absolutely. And then I know we had the run with solar right. You started. And one thing about us we have so much history. I mean you know when I, we, he's, we're talking about geek out next, I mean you geek out, have you done 10, 12? Oh, way more than that by now, probably like 25. I wish I went to the one in kiev.
Speaker 1:I heard that one was sick I've been to a lot of them. This was crazy. Yeah, kiev was like nothing else. Just uh, dude the experience and because of the costs being so much less when we invested into it, like we threw a party, we spent 50 g's on a party, rented a nightclub, performers, magicians, d DJs everything that would have been like 600 G's here. So because of the cost differential, we could do crazy stuff. Everybody had chauffeured cars, we had special reception at border control, everyone shot AK-47s and tanks.
Speaker 2:You had tanks, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was really a wild event. It was really a wild event, but hopefully we get another one that's an experience like that.
Speaker 2:That'll be all. Were you in Dubai? I wasn't in Dubai. No, I've been. I don't think I've been to any international ones. Dubai was also dope.
Speaker 1:We like had, like these Bedouins, build a camp in the middle of the desert and had a party. That was also a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the reason I mentioned that is that I think that you saw a need in the marketplace for education. There really wasn't. I mean, when I first started, there weren't really. There were some Facebook groups and something, which are good, don't get me wrong, but the community that you've built has been incredible and I was just at the one in New York, I don't know three weeks or a month ago. That was amazing. That that that we're just talking offline about the people that were there were real heavy hitters. People flew in from all over the world, all over the country. Um, it's very pertinent. You had the ceo or ex-ceo under armor. Speak, yeah, guys, but 50 billion, 100 billion dollar company I mean, that's fucking rare that was really powerful.
Speaker 1:I gotta give credit to stan on that one. Stan from retriever was like dude, I gotta bring in some hitters from this. And he brought in, uh, that gentleman from under, armor kip, and then also bo nichols, the wrestler, to kind of like, yeah, round it out, like everyone in the room was high level, like from a media buying point of view. So sometimes you got to give a little something extra because you can't really even teach them about media.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're so good something else again an edge. You look outside the box right from what they're doing, which I think that's exactly what you guys do, I mean that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that really is it's not only just the education. Is that the network that's there I mean everyone that's there is a heavy hitter? You know it's they. They pay the money to get there, they travel. They're not going to do that. If it's not, you know, if they don't have, they're not making some shit happen and they're looking for an edge. At the end of the day, and I think that you've been successful at finding edges right.
Speaker 1:And and and's why I kind of created it was just that I wasn't getting the level of education that matched the level of my intensity and obsessive nature. Uh, and I didn't have like the quality education for really high level stuff. I went to a mastermind with the tan brothers. Definitely shout out to the tan brothers.
Speaker 1:I love big and econ right they were like destroying the drop shipping game and, uh, they did a mastermind in thailand. That just opened my eyes to a power of education when done the right way. Um, and I was like, dude, I want this for my stuff. So I figured, okay, I'll just throw events, it'll be fun, it'll be cool, people just hanging out on the couch learning, and then I could get the speakers that I wanted and I figured it would kind of like cover the cost, and it didn't really cover the costs for a long time it was a lot of losses and then eventually it just turned a corner and people like kind of resonated with the vibe of like good people just trying to geek out on what we're all obsessed with, and it really has turned into like a very gratifying experience.
Speaker 2:And I'll tell you what me when I was in New York, I think I told my you know my wife Alejandra. I said, man, I was like really I felt when I go to the Geek House and I see what's happening, I feel like I get happy, man, because I was at the very. I hope you organized the very first one we did in Vegas?
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course, the very first one, dude.
Speaker 2:It was like 10 people in there. It's terrible. We got a castle. I don't know what we were doing Because we thought we had like a mall mansion Dude this was terrible, but it wasn't. We got like it wasn't fucking catfish or some shit, dude this is one of the worst throne events.
Speaker 1:That's like imaginable. Like we rented what was supposed to be a mansion it was totally catfish. But it was too late. The pool had all this dirt in it, nobody could even go in there. The sound guy brought his dog. Had never done any type of live streaming before, brought his dog. His dog kept barking. It was so bad that one of the attendees like pulled me aside and was like hey man, I live down the street, you want to just do it at my house like that. And people had paid a lot of money to go.
Speaker 1:But the content was literally the best content it was phenomenal content ever had I mean we just over delivered, like it was like 12 hours a day of people explaining, like the deepest shit, because I was so nervous that people would get value. But dude, as far as, like the the event experience garbage yeah, but the content was.
Speaker 2:But I remember I was on the couch and I was like these guys are gonna kick my ass because I sold half them people tickets, and I'm like I'm telling them there's a mansion. I'm like, fuck hi, I apologize, listen, we didn't know about you. I think you did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you did too and people, but they didn't give a fuck because the content was there, because at the end, that's really where it comes out to what kind of knowledge I'm going to get. Yeah, you want to have a good time and we took people out at nighttime it was cool. But to see the evolution where it went from that to the next place, I remember the one in bever I spoke at what was like a $30 million mansion. That shit was insane man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we learned a lot about throwing a good event, having content but also providing like a nice experience where you can network. Well, we really learned a lot, but, dude, some of the people at that first event have come to other ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Six years later, seven years later, they still came.
Speaker 2:That's a testament of a great product, man, and that's why, like seeing when I went to Beverly Hills, going to New York, I'm like man, it's great to see the evolution and it comes down to relationships at the end of the day, because whether you're selling leads or you're throwing an event or whatever it is, you got to do the right thing. And we said that I think we took people out that night. We did the right thing by them. They remembered I was worried. I was like man, these guys might kick my ass, but they didn't give a fuck. And what bowled my mind was that I didn't expect you guys to do this. People were going deep, man. They were going into their ad accounts, showing you their spend, and that's when I realized, wow, you guys have something special here, man, because who else would fucking do it, even in New York? I mean the stuff that they were dropping, like Carter was dropping like he's.
Speaker 1:He doesn't have to say that, no, he's giving his edges away. You know, and that's I gotta say, dude carter blessed us carter and coy blessed us so hardcore like I mean everybody that spoke, but them especially really showed what they have going on. We never have professional speakers, we never have fluff. It's always like real people and I always wonder why are people sharing stuff like this?
Speaker 1:and I think it's because they take pride in their craft but they don't even have a chance to show people how amazing what they do is and they're just proud of what they do and share it with people. And if you're really gangster at what you do, you're not going to really try to hide it. I'm sure there's some like hacks that loopholes that could close soon. You don't want to share on the whole.
Speaker 2:Uh, that it was really amazing some of the sharing that took place at that one yeah, mind-boggling and I agree, I think that they they graduate past that scarcity mindset because everyone in the I had that in the beginning. I don't want to tell people shit first couple years and I'm like I don't give a fuck. I'm at this point where if they try to take my shit, good luck, you don't got the relationships I have right, so I don't give a fuck. But yeah, it's really amazing the, the content and what what goes on there and I just love it that, what you're able to do. So anyone watching this, you're gonna do another event in la yeah, we'll do another event.
Speaker 1:I believe we're gonna do it in um the beginning of november. In la um we have an insane 45 million dollar mansion can fit like 300 people for a party. We're doing some really crazy stuff at night and everything else it'll. I think I always say this, but I think it'll be one of our uh, one of our best yeah, I'm sure I can't emphasize enough.
Speaker 2:And then, not only that, you, let me give you a story of geek out though too. Uh, before I forget, I remember when I spoke at the beverly hills one you had man that was, I mean, everyone has heavy hitters that I. I spoke at that one, and when I speak at events, I like I will, I like this, I want to give my all right. I don't look at notes, I just come out with fucking heat, and I think I was speaking towards the end, like five, six o'clock.
Speaker 2:The first speaker was taylor taylor hendrickson bro, this guy billion dollars, and you, you were part of that right. You, you worked with him on that it was a ppp loan campaign. Yeah, he comes out, fucking, crushes it. I'm like geez. And then anthony sandrea comes out, who just sold his company for like 50, 70 million, something, crazy baron. And brandon boussey comes out with some shit and phil and phil from retriever amir like how the fuck do we follow these guys up?
Speaker 1:I know dude, that was tough dude, I felt for everybody, because they brought fire, but, dude, you crushed it no, thank you, there was so much learning from you and everyone was so into it. That was. That event was a great example of like when the event works. People will sit in the seat and check shit out the entire time 100 they went from start to finish.
Speaker 2:Everybody sat and and drained in the content yeah, I remember being nervous because I'm like you know, I've spoken to a lot of events, man. I've spoken at the World, I've spoken at so many and you'll see a lot of those events. There's some quality there, but you have a lot of newbies, right. So no matter what you say, maybe they don't know what's going on, but that one was heavy fucking hitters. You can't fake the funk in that event. It's like playing basketball at Rucker Park here and it's bullshit detection. I'm like man, I don't, you know, I'm not like a. I wrote return an ad spend. When it comes to technology, I'm not the guy, I'm the sales guy, business guy. But I brought my aspect, which was different than what other people were coming, but I got and I got. I got business off of that man.
Speaker 1:That's why we had you, brother because, like, look, there's a lot of ancillary skill sets. Obviously there's a focus on, like, media buying. Right, but like, guaranteed, no matter how good are, there's someone sitting in the audience that's better at you than a certain area. But as good as these people are at media buying, usually they're really not good in some other areas. And you're biz dev king. And I think the evolution of an affiliate, the first real step to stop being a one man affiliate is learning how to biz dev Like. I think it's one of the most valuable things you can do to take that next step because, essentially, the network is biz deving for you. When you take the step and you learn what you're so good at, it's very powerful. It's very powerful, which is why we wanted to have you speak.
Speaker 2:Obviously, yeah, and I appreciate that and that's the beauty of of your events, because you have the real people, are really in the weeds and know about how to get people. You know to do the ad copy, how to get the best pricing algorithm on Facebook right and the stuff like Carter's talking about. Then you got a guy like from Under Armour has built $50 billion. Another good one when I was in Austin you had the guy, or maybe it was San Diego, you had the guy from Uber. He was one of the early investors in Uber.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, blew my mind away, he was great. When you hear that, it makes you think bigger because you know there's a lot of money made in our business. No, no doubt about it. Right, there's a lot of risk involved too, but you might be crushing it, you might make more money you ever thought you could make and you think, oh, I'm living like a king.
Speaker 2:But then when you hear another guy who you know made billions like a guy from under, I'm like bro, I'm not thinking big enough. I need to level the fuck up. And that's one of the things I've gotten from your events is that I see these people. I'm like, bro, I'm thinking too small and I don't consider myself a small thinker, but like even being here, like I walked in here, I'm seeing all the art and what. I'm like bro, I need better. I need to fucking level up my, my home environment. But you need that. That's what helps you grow as a person, and that's one thing I like about being around you. It's not just the events, but also the events is that you got to be around people like that, and I think people that you attract, people, uh, at those events, and people that listen to you and on your team that are looking to be next level, and that's the only way you can grow as a person.
Speaker 1:When it comes to thinking big, it's like an interesting thing and I don't remember who I was talking with this while ago but like you can only think big as the horizon. You've seen Like there's a cap on how big your thinking can be If you don't even know this other world exists. Like's a poker, uh, poker game right here in this apartment, right, and you got dudes that have a billion dollars. You got dudes that have like three, four hundred million dollars, like, and it just kind of changes you because you're like okay, like 100 mil, that's not that big to them, that's like, and you start to realize it just gets bigger and bigger, not like in from an envy point of view, but from a hey, there's stuff that's way more possible, because when you hang out with these dudes, especially just sitting around playing hold'em, they're just normal dudes too, like they're no smarter than us.
Speaker 1:They're no better than us. They work their ass off. They made some right decisions. They had some right place, right time, but it's a potential for anybody to have like. America truly is the land of opportunity. You can become a billionaire in the same generation. It's not multi-generational, it's a. It's a phenomenal thing and that's part of the reason I moved to New York was to get into those circles and have that kind of a mind expansion, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, A hundred percent, and I want to talk about that too. You, you've lived. When I first met you well, I don't know where you were in 2012, but I think you were in Florida when I first met you. I mean, the second time we reconnected and we started doing solar you were in Israel, you were in Tel Aviv right. And I know you were in France, you were in Amsterdam.
Speaker 3:LA.
Speaker 2:Now you're here, but I think that's great and I've moved around my bit too in my sharing. I feel like every, and you lived in Medellin for a while too Forget about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So I feel like you take a little piece of that for you. But what do you think was the? You know, I like to talk about LFG moments Like what was maybe it was on one of those trips or maybe somewhere you live Like what was a moment that made you think I gotta go know? You came from the cost in our world, right, and then you started making money with leads like, but what would you say, was that lfg moment from you for you?
Speaker 1:look, I think that there's a certain aspect to living a lot of places where it creates a discomfort and like if we walk around the same neighborhood every single day, our brain gets strapped into a pattern and it's able to just be on autopilot right, because it just knows how go, whereas if you're driving to somewhere for the first time, you got to use GPS, you got to pay attention.
Speaker 1:So I think like constantly moving and dropping in new places has forced me to have kind of creativity. When I got to Israel, it was one of the most different places that I'd ever lived in, both the language, the culture and the people, and just everybody there was so smart and so hungry and so tech-focused that it definitely pushed me to be like dude, do something cooler. You know, like just it's out there, just do something cooler. And I think that was a big thing for me and that's right. When solar hit, it's right when I linked up with my partner and I I think just even there was so much that happened there, but linking with my partner, who's very good at making money and and organizing- money, did you meet him in tel aviv?
Speaker 2:that's where you met we met in.
Speaker 1:Uh, we actually met in london. We worked together online on skype for like a year. We'd never. We didn't even have our cameras on. We went to a conference it was affiliate world before it was affiliate world. It was called STM meetup London maybe like 150, 250 people and he and I linked up. We finally got to hang out face to face and we were just like a match, like it sounds like like when you meet a chick, but we just like met each other and just all night just smoked cigarettes and did some other things and just talk for hours and hours.
Speaker 1:And then we just kind of kept in touch and we're like, let's do a lead gen business together. He's like all right, if we're going to do it, we got to do it in Israel. And when I got there like media buying there like people know what that is as a profession. Like you go to a bar and you say, oh, I'm a campaign manager, I run ads. They know somebody that does that or they do it. So it was just kind of like a wow, these people are hungry and they're doing big things and they understand what to do digitally. And that was like a big turning point for me to be like all right, I'm going to dig in. I saw that there was a capacity. I saw buildings right that are built on digital advertising and I was like all right, this is what's up, this is what I need to focus on. So that was my big LFG moment.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, I love that story and I know one story. If you can tell the audience about the story of when you wanted to get in with someone at Facebook, right, yeah, exactly. So you sat outside the cafe for days or something, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So basically, there's a huge Facebook office in Israel, completely outsized to the population. There's a huge Facebook office in Israel, completely outsized to the population. Our office was a few blocks away and we needed a rep. Like the game has changed in many ways and there wasn't access to get accounts and rep support. Like you had to get a rep, you had to hustle, it was like so hard and I just parked out. There was a cafe right in front of the building that all the Facebook office was in and I just parked out there until I sparked up a conversation and explained what I did and the scale of what I did and got us a relationship at Facebook. But it was like strictly just guerrilla style, just waiting there, just drinking coffees every day until I sat down with somebody that could get me in the door, yeah, and that's like, that's like the old school technique doing and that's part of proximity.
Speaker 2:How do you have to be people, say again, lucky, people get lucky. But you, you moved to Israel, right, you guys have the presence of mind, let's go here. You know, facebook was there, so you had the, the proximity, if you were living in New York or somewhere. It would have taken way longer to do it.
Speaker 1:Maybe have to know where to go, where the action's at the serendipity thing and I can get like it's people talk about it and kind of like a hippie.
Speaker 1:Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't work, but if you just look at it from a mathematical rational point of view, right, if I'm looking for any type of opportunity, I want to just talk to someone that's left-handed, with blue eyes. My odds of that happening when I'm hanging out in a group of 10 people is so small, but the odds of it happening when I'm hanging out with a million people, it's super high. Like you, literally just increase the chances of finding what you're looking for when you're around more people and you can target that serendipity by going to locations that the people that you want to find hang out at. And it's just, I'm old school, as you, in the sense that I like face to face, I like seeing someone feeling their vibe, finding it out, and there's just times when you talk to someone and you just know it's it and it happens sometimes on zoom, but usually it's. I'm in person, I talk with someone, we connect, I get it, I understand who they are, how they roll and then bam, that's who I want to work with.
Speaker 2:I think it's that energy transfer.
Speaker 1:You can't feel that on Zoom.
Speaker 2:You get like 10% of that. Whereas you're here, we're vibing off each other's energy, right.
Speaker 1:In person. Humans apparently exchange like 160 signals. Outside of eyes there's also smells. We can tell if the other person is sick, all of this stuff subconsciously, and I think Zoom is like Maybe we understand those things on a conscious level, but on a subconscious level we definitely understand it. That's how you can tell how someone's vibe is good.
Speaker 2:so much better by being in person and I think that that's one way that you got your edge with media buying and building a team right. You could sense them with doing that, because, I mean, I think that what you bring to the table as opposed to a lot of other people in the industry some people are good at one thing, but you're good at a lot of things you got the sales business aspect of it right. You know how to run run campaigns uh, you have so many. You know how to spot trends which we're going to go back to and talk about, but you and that's all from that, the decades of doing this and so forth. So I think that's what makes you like the ultimate you know person and if there was like a hall of fame in there, you'd be first ballot in my opinion.
Speaker 1:I'm not just saying I appreciate that, I appreciate that. I believe that I really appreciate that, I really appreciate that there's like an avatar of the ideal.
Speaker 2:You know person in the industry, that that's, that's who you are. So I think that, like again, it goes back to people listening. You know, consume James's content, go to the geek outs, because there's so much fucking knowledge, not just for you but the people that you cultivate when you go there. I mean you're, you're, you're vetting people out, and then I think, the people going back to the geek out I think that was it. 30 million is the average revenue that they do yeah, Our e-commerce are really established numbers.
Speaker 1:When we were doing more focus on e-commerce, it was average was $38 million. A brand Age data.
Speaker 3:There's only a few months left of this. A lot of different ways to monetize data. Data is a very broad term. There's a lot more money in it. You already spent the money. Let's just say it costs you $10 for a Medicare lead. You make a million dollars in sales. You really only made a hundred thousand bucks and you might not get paid by your advertiser. What if I can get an extra 50 cents dollar, $2, $3 per lead in perpetuity? What does that do to my marketing campaign? What does that do for the stress of the profits of my company? A percentage or two at those kinds of numbers are huge as moving the needle. So numbers are huge as moving the needle. So for us, what I love about age data, the hard part's already been done. Now it's just the revenue left for your company. What would the extra 10, 20, $30,000 a week do for your business? Absolutely All of our big partners are making hundreds of thousands, if not millions, a year with us. They're never going to have this gold rush again.
Speaker 1:Wow, when it goes back to the skillset thing, I would want to share something. So I've had a lot of jobs like jobs that you don't know about, Anybody knows about. I was a chef. I owned a restaurant like all this.
Speaker 2:I didn't know you. I know a lot about you. I didn't know you own restaurants. So much crazy shit Wow.
Speaker 1:And I had. You know, when you learn how to be a chef, you can go to school there's a couple of good schools but usually you learn being the understudy of a chef, right, and you have a mentor that teaches you and you look over the shoulder and you learn similar to media buying in a lot of ways. And I had a chef and I was asking him like okay, how do you be great, whatever? And he said, like you work at every restaurant until you learn the menu and then you switch restaurants, right, and it really put that idea in my head of like, okay, I'm going to learn biz dev and then I'm going to go learn something else and I'm going to learn something else. So, just in the restaurant comparison, you can learn how to cook French food, italian food, chinese food. Now you're a chef that's completely well-rounded, and I felt that was the same with all of kind of my business pursuits to have a good skillset.
Speaker 1:And then someone else brings up LeBron James or whoever the case may be. They come into the NBA, they obviously have a great skill set, but they don't say like, hey, I'm great at scoring, but I'm, I'm cool, I'm not going to learn how to be a better rebounder. I'm not going to learn how to throw more assists, like. I think that if you really want to increase in your ability as a business person, the more skills that you can get, even if you're not going to use them day to day. It's nice to understand a skill set so you can manage the people who are going to utilize those things, so you know you're not getting bullshitted, you know the quality of their work. So I think, like learning to be well-rounded and curious about the other parts of the business is very eye-opening, very beneficial.
Speaker 2:And I I, I worked with your team a lot and you, you, you would hire based on those you know, skill sets and and I think your retention is pretty phenomenal you still have people on your team that I do. Back in 2016, I got josh on my team. Josh, I haven't talked to him forever.
Speaker 1:Josh is still on my team from 2010 2011 you know, I was just looking at the other day.
Speaker 1:I would say like average for my real team team average is probably seven years you know just good, yeah, and what's cool is like all of them are open to learning other shit also, right, like they also want to learn an increased skill set, and I really encourage it because I like to see them get more well-rounded and I think that that really pays off with your people. When they see you actually give a shit and you want them to learn, you want them to be challenged, they'll stick with you and sometimes you uncover areas where you're like dude, you're great at this. Like I had no idea my assistant I had an executive assistant who was a killer since day one, right, but as time went on I realized she's so much better at so much stuff. And now she she controls all of my money stuff, she manages accountants, she manages attorneys, she keeps all of the QuickBooks people in line, and she just started out as my assistant and now she's a controller CFO Is that Jennifer? Yeah, wow, crazy.
Speaker 1:She controls it. She controls everything all my money, all my wires. She can send hundreds of thousands of dollars a day in wires and you don't have to worry.
Speaker 2:She doesn't make mistakes, right? I don't worry about it at all.
Speaker 1:Not even a little bit. Like she manages accounting teams, like we have accounting for each company. She works with the tax attorneys, with the accountants, she runs the whole thing. But she started out as my assistant.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. I have someone on my team Amanda on my team that I can travel the world. She'll get it done and she gets it done right.
Speaker 3:So it's so nice.
Speaker 2:And she didn't start off that way. She started off on the phones 10 years ago. She didn't even want to work on the phone, so I had to convince her to take the job and then she just kept growing and growing. She eventually ran this call center. I left, I started my business, but I came back, started a call center. She was running my call center and then I making mistakes like you're a tough person to have an ea bro, I know I'm all over the place bro, high energy going moving, it's fast paced yeah, so anyway, um, but she understood me like she's.
Speaker 2:She's her and my wife. They're only two people. I can say something, but to other people they think I meant this, but they know what I really meant. So I said you know what this might sound crazy, but I think you could be my ea, but you're really my chief of staff of what it comes down to. That's what she is. So now she's running everything and she's still evolving as we go along. I have her running a big campaign for me right now, because I know she's not going to fuck this campaign up, but that's what she's starting to become like. Jennifer is to you for me.
Speaker 1:Exactly, it's a right hand yeah it's a right hand.
Speaker 2:And then we have an EA who reports to her that's doing the scheduling. You grow, you grow. I mean I couldn't be doing these podcasts without having that support system, man.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:That's huge for people to realize, because I think that a lot of people get stuck in the solopreneur thing or one, two, three people and then maybe there's a fear to grow and, yeah, things will get fucked up. But eventually, if you're going to get to that next level or have that time freedom, you're going to got to understand too.
Speaker 1:Like everybody says, oh, hire, delegate, whatever. You also need to understand that people aren't going to do it as well as you in the beginning, but some things are going to do better than you and you have to give them time to get great right. It's just you need to give them that opportunity. Pick the right person and, if you know they're the right person, they have the right skillset, they care, they try hard, they're smart, everything else give them time to grow into what you want them to do and then eventually you just don't have to deal with it anymore. It's not going to be instant and it's extra annoying in the beginning because you lose time, because you got to train them, teach them whatever, but eventually you can just hand that shit off.
Speaker 1:Our chief revenue officer, who actually I used to work with in solar it's interesting thing she was, uh, the COO of our largest solar buyer, um, back in 2015, 16, whatever and I loved her and I was like dude, I'm going to hire her someday. I told my partner look, one day with opportunity, I'm going to hire her. With our last business, I hired her and it was different than she was doing a lot of the same but different, because all the media buying and stuff like that and I've worked with her over the last like nine months basically to to dump my head into her head and now I don't need to do anything Like in the beginning it was a lot I every day I'm teaching her. I had her on every call, every zoom, just listening, listening, listening, but listing, but now it's just like she just runs the whole show, like even, um, not just execution but being able to think correctly and make the right decisions on my behalf. You know she can just do the entire thing.
Speaker 2:She can just run it way better than I run businesses that's incredible and that and that was what 2015 and fast forward 70 you didn't. I think the key thing, anyone that's good in that note not just business, but people, a people, person I do the same thing. With anyone that's good in that note not just business, but people, a person I do the same thing.
Speaker 1:I'll think about people and I'll store them in my head and you keep in touch with them because you know there's some opportunity and then boom when things align then it happens, I see somebody with a talent or a skill or some type of character trait I like and they just sit in my head and then all of a sudden something comes up. I'm like bam, that's the person for this. You know, it's really. It's been a blessing to be able to remember like that.
Speaker 2:And I think that comes down to the obsessive. You've got to be obsessive. You're going to be successful at anything, you know you've got to be obsessed with it. And how to get that edge. And I think that you always think about how do I get that edge? What's the next thing? And these ideas in the back of your brain and they, they might sit there for a while, but you don't forget about them, Right? And then eventually, boom, when their time things align.
Speaker 1:You're ready to go I was talking to my therapist. I started doing therapy like maybe five, six months ago. It's amazing, like to learn to have someone else look at your brain and the way that you do things and give their opinion on it. It opens you up to like new self-awareness of blind spots you didn't even see, et cetera. It's like such an amazing exercise because I love the brain and how it works and to have like an expert talk to me about my brain and my systems is super interesting. But anyway, when I was explaining to her my relationship with business because it's outside of my wife, it is my biggest relationship.
Speaker 1:This fucking thing is a video game that I plug into in the morning and sometimes I unplug, but on the whole in my head it's running all day thinking about my business, thinking about my business, this, that opportunities costs. It's just like a obsessed video game that I'm plugged into all day and then sometimes I unplug, but it's just running in the background. Man, and I think like entrepreneurs, true entrepreneurs, like get that you just don't turn it off. Man, it's 24, seven and and our brain operating system it's just sucking in all this data, it's storing it in different places and if you're like always on, it just keeps popping up for you, dude, it's just uh, and especially because what we do is digital right, like refreshing stats and being sighted numbers.
Speaker 1:It really is a big ass video game, you know, and I, just I, I love it. Man, I've been an entrepreneur, I've worked for myself since I was 16 years old, right, and it's like now it's 31 years later and I'm still obsessed, still obsessed with this game that's amazing, that, yeah, you put it that way because I feel the same way and I know you're definitely the same brother, yeah I think any, anyone that's.
Speaker 2:It's hard for me I I'll go to the beach and like just sitting there, like but. But I get annoyed sometimes. But then I get ideas and sometimes it's good to disconnect and the ideas come like what am I doing? Yeah, you get those ideas, you go away and everything jump in the water, but and you never know which of the which which of those ideas. Most of them are bullshit, right? Maybe there's a thousand, but they're that one. It just takes that damn one, right, exactly.
Speaker 1:And it's like the. I do a lot to try to quiet my mind, to get those good ideas out. Especially when I was in la, it was like every weekend I would do a bunch of meditation, I I would do an hour float tank, I would do an hour in a sauna, I would get an hour and a half massage to like force an empty brain. And especially when I first started meditating, so many ideas would pop out because my brain was having a chance to let them all spit out and I would want to stop and just write that shit down. But I realized the good ideas they just keep coming. They pop up again and again and again. So at first I just wanted to catch them and I was like fuck, I don't want to forget this one. But then over time I realized, dude, the real good ones are the ones that just repeat. And they repeat and I'm polishing in my brain.
Speaker 1:It's like I think about it like Jay-Z. Right, jay-z never wrote down a rhyme, right, he just doesn't do that. He just doesn't do that. But he doesn't think about the rhyme the first time when he gets in the booth. He's working it out in his head the entire time, polishing, polishing. And then one day he gets in the booth and he drops fire and I feel like that's how I try to think about my business ideas I'm polishing, I'm polishing, I'll talk to you about it, I'll test it out, I'll see what you think. And it's more polishing, more data, and then eventually it drops out and it's maybe something I've been working on subconsciously for a few years, but it finally hits. You know, I got a bunch of ideas that I've been rolling around for years. I got names for businesses that are in my head that I've had for like five, six years. I'm just waiting to drop these things out.
Speaker 2:You know that's incredible and I love the fact I I don't know how many podcasts I've done, probably 17, 18 so far, not that many, right, but in short interviews no one has talked, especially as a man talked about therapy and talk about meditation and flow tanks. But I'm a believer in all that stuff and the fact that you want to get a vulnerable but that gives you the edge man, at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Dude, we are our business, right, Like as I was just saying, right, you're an entrepreneur, your business is you. Your business is in your head. Your head is governed by your soul and your brain. So optimizing yourself is going to optimize every part of your business that you touch. It's the one thing that's shared in every one of your businesses, or every decision that's made.
Speaker 1:There's nothing more important than how our brain works, and there's a lot of things that happen in our life, in our childhood good things, bad things, et cetera that create the operating system that helps us make decisions. So sometimes, if you can fix that operating system and improve it by calming it down or speeding it up or figuring out decisions that you're making incorrectly, based on the past like I have stuff from and I'm not even saying like bad things necessarily, but my childhood right, Like things that shaped me as a human back when it was very influential. Like the younger you are, I think those experiences are even more influential and I built up systems that I've used to make decisions for all these years. But now that I'm older and I look at it and I say, fuck, why do I always make this decision? It's not even a good decision, but I always do it. It's because of some system I created. So it's like now unwinding some of those things and learning to think better helps me make better decisions. If I make better decisions, I make more money. It's just like I.
Speaker 1:I it's like a Olympic athlete not lifting weights, Like how can you not work on your brain? And I got a coach a few years ago, an executive coach, and he was a sports psychologist and he worked with pitchers. He worked on professional baseball teams but he worked with pitchers to help them stay in their flow. And then he worked with Olympic athletes to help them be where they need to be and stay in their flow. And like, dude, I'm a businessman, I'm a fucking financial athlete, I need someone. I need someone to optimize the hell out of myself. And that was really a turning point. Um, I think in a lot of performance.
Speaker 2:But I started making more money when I started really focusing on the brain and and the mind and I'm so excited that you talked about that because I had a this, I'm telling the health aspect. I have a biohacking doctor in Miami. That man, I feel like he's giving me a big edge by being with my health, right, and then but it's all connected to the mental cause you feel really good health and your health. You're going to have that confidence right To close a deal or whatever. And then you know I know you've always been a big yeah, thinking fast, thinking slow. Yeah, I think it's kind of the same concept, right, and the fact that you're talking about the mental aspect of it, because I haven't touched upon it. I'm surprised I haven't until you said it, but it's something I believe in.
Speaker 2:I, I go to therapy, I, I, I go to. I haven't been a flotation tank in a while, but when I did that, it was the best. Just floating there, these fucking ideas will come up and then, and then I would just silence that, fall asleep sometimes because my body needed it, but there's times I hear my heartbeat and then you realize how fucking precious life is. Like dude, this shit starts, stops beating. I'm dead. Like you have these crazy thoughts, but sometimes you need to have those thoughts. Like you, you have that alone time for yourself and especially, uh, we're kind of wired very similarly, but I'm always go, go, go go.
Speaker 2:But I find that when I was in those flotation things or in therapy or meditate, meditating I will get the best ideas. Of course I come out like holy shit, everything else is fucking noise, because there's so much shiny object syndrome in there. Right, all fucking day long you go to affiliate summit like you come out there want to do 20 things, but probably you should only be focused on one or two things. Right, but that's the importance and I don't think that gets talked about enough.
Speaker 2:Um, in our industry, people don't talk about working on their, on their mental aspect. They talk about health. I feel like there's a good amount of that, but there's not more about, um, the mental aspect, and that's so important. That's really again. I think we keep talking about how do you get an edge and that's why you've had edges your whole life, because you're doing shit other people aren't doing. I guarantee you and not to talk shit about anyone, but, like in our audience, probably five percent of ten percent people maybe less are doing this, but the five to ten% are, I guarantee you they're making more money or they have better quality of life, and that's where we should all want to aspire to get to at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. And again, it's the thing that is going to affect my business and my life. 24 seven is how my brain works. If you take a look at optimizing a campaign, right, if you optimize the website, okay, that's only going to be for the people that visit the website. But if you optimize the website, okay, that's only going to be for the people that visit the website. But if you optimize the traffic, it's the impressions. That's a hundred percent of the people see your fucking ads. So if you fix that, it's going to have a bigger effect than the thing that less people see. And the one thing cause I own a bunch of companies. If I want to fix every company at one time, I can fix myself, you know. And even with like decisions, decisions, man, like I don't make big decisions. I don't even do a lot of calls anymore after four o'clock because my brain's fucked. If I'm fresh in the morning, especially after an nad treatment monday, monday morning, my brain is so I love mondays too, man.
Speaker 2:I get excited sunday thinking about my week.
Speaker 1:Man, monday's the best fucking day but the coach told me something smart and he said listen, people like yourself that are high achievers, you need to learn discipline. Most people need to learn discipline. I need to go to the gym. I need to do that, I need to push myself. You need to learn discipline to control yourself, to not go too hard. He says LeBron doesn't play basketball 24 hours a day and then show up for a big game. You got to learn to turn it off so you can serve that energy and power when you need to show up. And that's when it really became a process for me like actually like a job, to not work on the weekends. And then it was like, all right, I'm not going to work. How can I relax my mind as much as possible? So Monday morning is like I just came back from vacation and I'm ready to pop.
Speaker 2:You know dude, amazing shit. I mean, this is fucking next level shit that people need to hear. So I appreciate you talking about this because, again, I I'm shocked hearing you say that. I'm like, why the fuck haven't I talked anyone's? No one's talked about this. I guess maybe you have to be vulnerable. I'm sure other people got therapy. But that's what I like about you. You you're not afraid to bring out the good, the bad or ugly. Even with the geek.
Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, that place sucked I wasn't gonna say that, but like you're, you're willing to say that, but that's part of the evolution, like that's what got you to where you're at with everything now you know.
Speaker 1:So that that's I really try to be the same person in my head as I am outside of my head, because it's like fucking real man, like you got to be authentic because it's easier. It's very tiring to try to maintain the act 24 hours a day. Yeah, you got to be real, so you have energy for your business and everything else, and people appreciate that. And dude, like, let's be honest, like we fuck up and fail all the time I do, everyone does. That's just what we do. We do embarrassing shit, we make mistakes, we say the wrong things. That's equal to the success. If, if you don't have bad, you don't have good, there would just be everything is the same. But it's not real. Dude, geek Out sucked in the beginning.
Speaker 1:I lost money on it for years and years. Well, now it's cool. I can say it's cool and not feel like an asshole, because I can also say it sucked. But I wouldn't know if it's good if I didn't know what it was like, what it sucked, you know, and that's just. Uh, it's just an important thing, and it feels nice to talk about your failures. It feels good to just get that off your chest. Yeah, I fucked that up, you know like it just feels nice. So then also, though at the same time, when you win, you got to celebrate it the same you know cause.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you're too hard on yourself. You're saying you suck all the time. You gotta all. It's harder for me to talk about when I do good than it is talk about when I do bad.
Speaker 2:It's like a little embarrassing, you would think. You would think the opposite.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm the same way you want to be like oh, I don't want to come across as arrogant or you know, but you got to give yourself credit too when you nail it. If you're going to talk shit, you got to say nice things too, you know.
Speaker 2:So it's definitely like a balance so I guess now's a good time to make you feel uncomfortable by talking about, out of all these campaigns I know there's stuff we still haven't talked about, but like which one do you feel the most proudest about? And you've ran a lot of campaigns, man listen, man geek out.
Speaker 1:I'm proud of dude, because it's not some just digital business. It's something that, like a lot of people, have felt value. It's's a brand. People know it. It's my baby. Then my wife and I started a skincare brand and that's my new baby. I'm proud of it. It's called restreligioncom. Go and buy our moisturizer, our serum. It's amazing. We spent so much time three years developing the product, designing the packaging. You know like I run campaigns that I can do. Like tens of thousands of people a day buy something from me when I started selling this skincare. I look everyone up, dude. I look them up. I look up their instagram. I look up, I zillow the fucking value of their houses because it's like they're buying my thing that I created. So that's something that I'm I'm very, very proud of.
Speaker 2:Man the geek out, I'm proud of and, uh, I'm really proud of uh, rest religion, our skincare brand and I do, I, as I hear you talk, it's, it's, it's those habits, right, you obsess in this to grow the brand and do the right thing and then, but by looking up there, you're not. You're not being like, you're not being like what do you call? I don't know what the right word is. You're not being like a psychotic by doing that, but you, it's because you want to understand what's the makeup of your demo, right?
Speaker 3:and how you're going to card. Target them better who's buying and what's?
Speaker 2:going on. So that's, there's a, there's a, there's a logic behind all that.
Speaker 1:Right, there's a method like I noticed, like yo, nurses keep buying my product. Yeah well, why are nurses buying the product? Like it was very like insightful to to see something like that. You know, it's just like a lot of times as marketers, it's just faceless, right. We don't see them, we don't know what their interaction is, why they buy. But when you actually see the person buying your, it's the same as geek out man. I go to the geek out, I talk to people and it's like yo, those people interact with my jam.
Speaker 1:Like I made something that people like you know it's it's very valuable yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 2:I come out of there always feeling like refreshed and you see people you haven't seen in years sometimes and it's just great. It's a great community.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, congratulations on that man, I'm like every time I come out, you were literally there day one brother you helped build it, dude, and it wasn't a good day one, but you were there, brother, yeah, but that's why I feel like it's awesome, man.
Speaker 2:it's awesome when you see a client, like the one we had, that you know they're still in business and sold her and after all these people going out of business, they're still one of the last ones standing. You know, and we contribute to that, and the impact we make. Think about when we're selling leads or selling products. We're impacting people's lives and we're creating jobs. This company went from fucking. When we started working with them, they probably had 20, 30 employees, had 20, 30 employees. It went to 2,000 at one point.
Speaker 1:I think there's still around there and listen, and it was a lot because of us. Yes, it was like I'll give us a pat on the back, bro.
Speaker 2:We fueled that company in the beginning dude, and really that helped fuel the whole freaking solar industry man. And then this company came out and then people would leave, start their own thing. But that's what we're doing as marketers. It's not just we were selling a product and making money. We're making an impact on people's lives, creating jobs, selling good products. It's really something I think that we know we talked about, about therapy before and that kind of shit. I don't think we talk about that enough. How is it impacting the greater good, the greater community?
Speaker 1:this is listen. This is very important and I want to say this as well I've been around this industry for a while now and everybody's done different stuff, ran aggressively, done different things. And like for me as a marketer, when I see a cost per acquisition and I'm just looking at numbers and I run something more aggressively and I get a cheaper CPA, if I don't take the time to really look at who this is affecting, it just makes a lot of sense. The internet gives us power to have a big effect on people Like you can't uh, I can't speak to as many people without this microphone and without everything. You and I can't get this message out to as many people.
Speaker 1:Right, when we market, we do need to be careful and smart, because it does affect people. It affects a lot of people and like, look, everybody does what they want to do. All of us have done what we want to do and I've done a lot of crazy things with my marketing et cetera. But at this point it's nice when I can help a lot of people. I feel a lot of benefit at this and also personally, at this point I wouldn't want to advertise something that could potentially hurt people. Like shit has changed. You know, and I think it it's important everybody do what they want to do, but eventually think about it and if you're cool with it, you're cool with it.
Speaker 2:But I think it's important to try to do the right thing, you know, by people when you advertise, and I think, when you're looking back at your history and the things that you've done even loan mods back in the day, that was helping people stay in their homes with how many people do you impact there? Uh, we talk about solar people leaving, saving money on energy, right, student Student loans, all that stuff. And then the next thing that we haven't gotten to yet is the PPP product you had, which is wildly successful, right, and then you went to ERC. I mean, these are products that help people stay in business and now telehealth man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, telehealth and other things. So I don't know where you want to go with that. But the point I was in is with what I hit like three things PPP, erc, telehealther. But I tell you one thing when, when the shit went down with covid, uh man, I thought I was gonna be out of business. I was that three week period of time in march of I think was it, 2020. No one bought leads for me for like it was a week. I just had a newborn baby. I remember talking to you. I was fucking nervous, man. I got a ppp loan. It wasn't a huge amount, but that gave me a fucking life raft to keep going. And then, literally, I didn't even have to. I applied for the fucking thing and I got a proof of evidence. Literally like the next day, one of my big clients was like listen, we have 50 vendors. We're only keeping five. You're one of them. That was like what I needed. That was a breath of fresh air.
Speaker 2:But that's another impact you made with all the people. I mean you guys did and I want to talk about that. You did ridiculous amount of volume with that. But it's also on the back. And how did that? That helped the economy. Man, at the end of the day, small businesses are the backbone of the fucking economy. Yes, and that product was very and I know some guys that shady shit they. They got caught it sounds like for you know putting for taking a fucked up loans or whatever. But that's the one thing that you really have promoted products that have helped the overall good yes, it's, and it's been really a benefit.
Speaker 1:Like I remember, like in the low mod days, right, people just send us christmas cards, send us thank you notes, like we help people, like I've always been proud of that, and almost all of these businesses like let's be realistic, they all get messed up by shady people. It's just what happens. It's the reality of things. But I've always felt like I could be proud about the way I service people and, dude, it was great knowing that we kept people in houses. Like, literally around Christmas time people's house was going to get foreclosed on and we kept them in there, or PPP this was for. We did PPP. What we did was for self-employed individuals, right, smaller kind of people. They like really needed it. They were really getting screwed. Erc dude, they were really getting screwed ERC dude, people got screwed. It's just.
Speaker 1:There were a lot of opportunities where our government really does look out for people that other countries don't. I don't think people understand that Most countries cannot just be like yo, we're going to give STEMI checks, we're going to help businesses and having the opportunity to help people access that is nice. It is powerful man. It really is powerful, powerful. It's one of the big reasons I'm so into the telehealth thing now is like literally helping people get effective results. Like I've advertised for so long different supplements, health products, whatever and now it's like I'm actually helping people get better results and increase their health and it's been super motivating, super motivating.
Speaker 2:I think it's one of the most uh, gratifying things I've been involved with for sure 100, and that's one of the reasons why I want to have you on the show, not only because our history I know that you I only really put people on the show that we know are real, that we got proven results, and and so forth but because you, you think different. I think it's obvious everyone listening that you know the stuff you're talking about from from the mental health and and this being a video game like no one talks like that. So that's it's great to hear you say that. So, and that also goes part to one of the biggest in parts of what I want to touch upon. Next is you got into debt 20 away, right, you did loan mods 2012, solar back in 2014. Um, what else you did?
Speaker 1:student loan, student loans back in the day loan consolidation erc covid tests covid tests too.
Speaker 1:Wow, fuck, I forgot, you did that, yeah yeah, I, I and I have another business now I'm not going to talk about that. No one else is doing. Yeah, um, that is just again. It really is a big concept for me and I've actually been thinking about teaching this. To be honest, and if if anybody watching it is interested, just so I can get feedback, I'm thinking about doing a one or two day in my house just teaching people how to identify opportunities that currently don't exist or their early stages, how to find them, how to check them out, how to decide when to cut because it's not going to work, how to build the opportunity, because the opportunities that I love are the ones that are so unbuilt. I have to help them build them right, like this product. I did recently um call centers but they'd never had digital leads ever and I literally had to work for like five or six months teaching them how to deal with inbound leads and calls and everything else, and it's paid out big time. So I'm thinking about actually kind of bringing that out, cause I think that's the biggest skill that I've had and I see affiliates chase offers right and I it's gotten better.
Speaker 1:Where it's like they're not just getting screwed over by networks, a lot of people are going direct but dude. The opportunity to harness your marketing power and build your own thing that either doesn't exist or it's just starting to exist is big and a big one. I keep mentioning it. Right, but it's telehealth. I feel like there's an opportunity right now with telehealth that someone who understands marketing, who understands e-commerce, could pretty easily, because of the way the business is built, blow up a business, build something sick, build a brand. It's not even that human intensive and I think it would be beneficial to people that want to go to the next step, to take even a bigger step. I mean, obviously you start out as an affiliate, you send to a network, then you go direct, then maybe you create your own offer, you create the form to collect the data. Telehealth gives the opportunity where you don't need the call center piece. It's like lead gen but you're plugging into different places, and I think the ability to find things early has been one of my best skills, one of my biggest money-making skills, but it has come with a lot of duds also skills, but it has come with a lot of duds also.
Speaker 1:You know like I'll find one and I probably I usually invest 10 to 30 G's on finding a failure right, and that's traffic set up sometime, maybe sometimes 50, but I'll find an opportunity. I'll like I'll research the shit out of it. I've built kind of like a calculator to figure out if it fits the mold Like what am I looking for? Does it do this Like is it broad, can I run it on display or Facebook, or is it strictly search? And then how do you find the right partner, operator? And I'll find these opportunities with this calculator. Then I'll try them and then I spend a little bit. I'm like, should I keep going? And then I have to evaluate the opportunity or the partner, the operator for the opportunity. And I think it's like there's a lot of 30 to 50K fails incubating these, but then when you find the right one, it opens up crazy money and then you just dive into that and I would like to help people with that, essentially because I enjoy it so much. It's like a new video game.
Speaker 2:I'm a big believer in collapse and timeframes. Time is money. Right, we can't get back to second. We just lost right now. So the point is that when you can invest in, in, in whether it's a coach or time and something like what you do with the geek or this product that you're talking about, I mean that'll help you collapse those time frames and spend less time on bullshit. Does there's so many duds? I've had duds where I kept going and going and going and you know, first I said I'm all, I'm gonna do 10, I'm right there, I'm right there and then, before you know, you're like way deeper, you're like 50 grand and shit, and then you're like, oh, I gotta figure it out.
Speaker 2:It's almost like in stock trading you keep adding to a fucking loser until, like, I'm tapped out, you know exactly and it fucks up your psyche too. It does you get pissed off on yourself thing. You start to say that I fuck up.
Speaker 1:There's a very good saying that, um, just because you've been making a bad decision for a long time doesn't mean you should keep doing it, and there's nothing worse than you dig in. Daniel and I did this recently uh, the beginning of or the end of last year especially him. It was more of his project, but we were both vested right. We tried so hard to make this offer work and it was fucking sick. It was such a winner and we put our heart into it, put time into it, put money into it, and one day we realized it wasn't gonna work like it's. Just it wasn't gonna work. We knew it and it was like it's like a relationship.
Speaker 1:There was such a part of me that wanted to just keep going and I like I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. But then there's like the wiser part of entrepreneurship and and I think it's one of the biggest skill sets as an entrepreneur is knowing when to just turn shit off, lick your wounds, you lost, you're not going to get that fucking money back. Turn it off and live to fight another day. And then don't let your personal self-worth and self-esteem and confidence be affected by that. Like, just because this business didn't work, this offer didn't work, it doesn't mean you're dumb or you're bad at what you do. It was just a dud offer, it was a dud idea, but you had to try it, man, you know it's just. That's a big learning lesson is just having the discipline to kill, having the optimism to try what other people are scared to try, but have like the strength and wisdom and discipline to pause it when you know it's not going to come out the other side.
Speaker 2:Cutting your losses, man, it's like trading is like gambling is the same shit. At the end of the day, when you're testing campaigns, you're gambling. Not that you're gambling. It's like it's an educated gamble, right?
Speaker 1:It's a risk reward probabilities all that.
Speaker 2:So how many, what percentage of these new ideas or these hunches you think work out If you do for every 10, how many, or I don't know if 10's enough. It's gotten a lot better.
Speaker 1:It's actually gotten a lot better because my system for finding them is much more refined and I have more discipline, I can identify the opportunities better, and then I'll get into stage one, and I'm really good at clipping it at stage one now, where I tried in the beginning and it's just not there. And also I think I've gotten to the point where, um, I don't invest a hundred percent into it, I go a little slower and I go 20, so I cut my losses faster. I would say right now, probably 70 of the things I try fail.
Speaker 2:I thought you were gonna say he's succeeded. Still, come on, if it's 30, that's still. If you go to you 30, you're in the hall of fame in baseball, dude I think.
Speaker 1:I think that, uh, probably 70 fail and I also um. Another kind of skill set I've learned last few years is identifying what's going to be a single or double and what could be a home run. So I'll find singles and doubles. But my partner always talks about opportunity costs, right? So if I spend two hours a day, let's say, working on a single, what if I was spending two hours a day working on a home run? So sometimes I'll find singles and doubles and I'll give them to somebody else and do like some rev share or give someone else another idea, and sometimes I'll just kill it and wait for the triple or the home run. You know, but it's I think.
Speaker 1:Before I failed. 95% of my ideas failed Also because I didn't know how to execute. You know, now I got a better team, I know how to run like financial analysis. That's another thing. My partner and I run sick fucking financial analysis.
Speaker 1:Before we start, like we, we probably spend two to three G's on spreadsheets to simulate the business before we even start work. It's for me it's not a business idea. Till I've done some type of forecasting and financial modeling, it's not even like a real thing. Once I do that then I'm like all right, this could be something, but at least gives me like a very clear path, probability that'll fail. Scrubs, refunds, all the negative shit.
Speaker 1:Cash timing how much cash flow do you need? How much are we burning at? So we build a good two to three K, right, uh, investment on financial models. And then we look at it and say like, all right, do we want to do this? How much time is it going to be? How hard is it to do it? How big is the opportunity? How long will it take till there's regulations and it's all fucked up? We look at like all of this shit and then, if it checks all those boxes, then we start to work on it. You know, that's why the hit rate is higher is because so many get killed before they become something we work on, because the financials, like a lot of things look good, but then when you run it out you're like, ah, it's not that good. So the hit rate is higher because we're just killing a lot before we start to work on them it reminds you like a general preparing for war.
Speaker 2:You think of all the possibilities, right, and you prepare for each one. And exactly, there'll be always be a possibility something you don't even think about that comes up right. So that's, that's essentially what you guys are doing.
Speaker 1:We do the financial modeling, we take a look at the opportunity. Then we secret shop competitors, see the weaknesses that they have. Then we get some insights from other people in the industry to help us see the things that we didn't see, because we don't know that industry. And then we kind of bounce the ideas off of smart people and see what they think about the idea. And then they kind of shit on it or think it's a good idea. And then we start. Then we decide like okay, what is the least amount of effort, time, money we can put into it to just see what's happening? Right, like we started a software project and it's like okay. I said all right, like let me start to talk to some potential clients and let me get a little bit more data before we go deeper down, deeper down the hole. So we're just kind of limiting the downside, kind of hedging bets, before we just go like all in. Because once we go all in especially my partner we fucking go.
Speaker 2:No, I know you do, we scale, I've seen it. Yeah, I saw with solar. You did a case sort of at the PPP. I saw with ERC. Yeah, we go, we fucking go, I love it, and I think that also there's two. I think most people and I've been guilty of this. We have something similar in my companies now. We do R&D, we do a pro forma Sounds like something similar to what you guys do, but I'm known for just throwing shit against the wall. I was like, and something's going to stick, but that comes at a cost. Yeah, you will find something that sticks, but what is your time worth, man? And well, this aggravation and whatever. So, yes, that right there, a huge nugget. We talked, you talked so many nuggets here, so many gems. That was a big jump, because I think that's what we're trained to do, that we're, and sales people and business people philly is media bars. We're, we're. We're optimists by nature. We're gonna, we, we believe in ourselves.
Speaker 1:We think shit's gonna work out, but most of the time it doesn't, man, so dude there's a saying that is you and me to a t, and I mention it all the time chaos creates revenue, order creates profit, yeah I love chaos.
Speaker 2:People, brother, I love, I love we make revenue. Dude, I'm in new york, it's moving like a fuck.
Speaker 1:I get alive, bro, and dude. The people that create profit for us, the people that organize the money. They need people like us and we need people like them. Yeah, but dude, we're revenue guys. We're sales guys. We're gonna pump sales. I'm gonna drive revenue. It's what I do. I drive revenue. It may not be profitable, but I'll sell the shit out of something.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'm just losing money, but you got to have some counterbalance and a partner or someone else. A cfo that's like yeah, that's cool, we're making a lot of sales, but guess what, the more you sell, the more. Wefo that's like yeah, that's cool, we're making a lot of sales, but guess what, the more you sell, the more we lose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that took me a while to understand that concept. There'd be times where I wasn't looking at the shit Like I'd see this top line well, this is great, but then it's like this tiny profit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly what am I wasting my time on this shit?
Speaker 1:for man.
Speaker 2:Exactly than this shit exactly did so when when did you make that transition? Because I, I, for I don't know what. For me, it took me a while to make that transition, but when did it click in your head that I gotta stop throwing shit against the wall? What was it? A partnership with daniel?
Speaker 1:partnership with daniel. Okay, he just has a much more intelligent, rational, disciplined, sophisticated way at looking at money. He just looks at it differently. He looks at cost. He definitely is still opportunistic, he still wants to go for it, but in a very more cautious fashion. I'll go a little deeper. But he just looks at money from a completely different point of view. He looks a lot about how to keep it. I look a lot at how to make it and the balance is nice, we find. We always say like we don't just find the middle, we find the best middle. We sit on this couch and we just bang each other down with ideas. I pitch him, he pitches me. We have differing opinions until we find, like the best middle, the balance of the two of us. But whichever one of us entered into the kind of discussion conflict with the better idea, it'll kind of end up a little bit closer to that side, but it'll be tempered a little bit with the other person.
Speaker 2:And that's such an important aspect of business. Right I was, I had my business. Also, I own a hundred percent, owned it. Right I emerged in, uh, when was it? Early 2022. And at first it was kind of tough, what the fuck, you know, it's like, it's like a new relationship, but then you, you figure it out, it comes together and then you, you complement each other and that's definitely. You guys are perfect in that aspect, I think, dude, and also, like you speak about therapy and stuff like this.
Speaker 1:Our communication as partners is, I, I have to say it's like on another level, honestly, like we don't just say my idea good, your idea bad, and we like get flustered, we talk about it and we talk about our feelings, right, and we talk about our feelings Right, and we talk about like I think that I'm reacting to your idea, like, like, let's say, I react very like defensively. I'll say, dude, I think I'm reacting defensively to your idea because I think that you feel this way. And he'll be like look, I'm careful there because I don't want to disappoint you, right, so we get to the. We actually talk about the emotional elements behind our relationship and our communication of ideas. So we make sure that our ideas are not being controlled by our emotions. It's rational. But, dude, as humans I do shit defensively. Oh, why are you challenging my idea? Then I dig in and then he doesn't want to let me down, so he doesn't want to make too big of a goal because he wants to make sure to deliver and that he locks in.
Speaker 1:But if you really take time to explore the emotional element behind your decision-making, you can strip all that shit away and just use data and rational decision-making and I think that's like a big, big thing that you need in a partnership.
Speaker 1:You got to talk openly. Like all these younger generations, it's all fucking passive, aggressive, you don't have hard conversations, you don't express yourself, you get frustrated and it just it doesn't make for a nice working relationship and you don't ever get to the core of it. John from Thrasio he had an amazing thing that he talked about where it's like with his younger generation of employees, he forces conflict so that the truth can come out when you really voice your opinion, because very often that shit that someone doesn't want to say because they're so emotional about it but they're mad, it's a great idea but they're holding it inside because they don't express themselves properly. And I think attaching that human and emotional element to like your relationship, so you can remove that emotional element to make better decisions, is really under undervalued in a partnership, bro, that was deep man, super, super deep, and that was kind of honestly.
Speaker 1:I also thought it was deep for a second.
Speaker 2:It was a little bit crazy, no, but people need to hear this shit Cause it's true. It happens. We, we, we hold shit in and then we ghost people and it's like that's the craziest thing with this generation so much ghosting going on. No one wants to talk about that.
Speaker 1:you gotta get this you have a hard conversation, it feels good, you feel like it's a win. When you tell someone, hey, you're letting me down, this isn't working right, this needs to be the price, you're making too much, I'm not making enough. And you communicate like that dude, you and me, yeah, and you worked with daniel he's direct in a nice way, but we always, always had an honest conversation. Hey, we're not making enough, we're making too much. Let's do it the right way. Also, learning to make deals that everybody's going to win for the longterm, right. And if someone's not winning, you talk about it and say, hey, shit's changed, like we need to fix this. Having those hard conversations will make your business last longer. It'll make your partnerships deeper. Just running away and avoiding the shit, it's just, it burns down your biz, dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it burns down your biz and we know every campaign has a shelf life. It's not going to last forever, right?
Speaker 2:But if you have that good communication attorney, you'll help it last longer It'll have a longer shelf life, and it sucks, it's like going from one relationship to the next relationship is exhausting at the end of the day. So you to have longevity, you want to maximize so much, and the beautiful thing when you do that for your client. I have a situation right now where the old client of mine and solar, now he's in some home improvement thing and, bro, we're killing it right now because I treated the guy right.
Speaker 2:I did whatever we had the open communication and when he was out of it like he was out of work for a little bit, like dave and like bro, this isn't going to work and this is why I say it's not going to work. I would shoot him straight and we would. He would debate me. Why are you saying this? This is why I'm saying but we would have, and I didn't take offense to it Like I would. I think his delivery was was pretty good too, but like the way we communicate was good, and I think that's why, when he went to the new spot, he only could add, like one more vendor, that you're the guy and bro, I'm like future. But we had some tough conversations and I helped them in the beginning and and that's what you need, it really that. That's why the old school does. We have ai, all this other shit, but that old school communication is never going to go away because we're emotional humans, emotional beings and also it's like not being greedy.
Speaker 1:Yeah look, I work a lot with apple bomb and matt smith.
Speaker 2:Right, they're like my both legends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love them right and they're my go-to all the time. And when I'm trying to crack something, I'm trying to crack an offer. I don't know what the right payout should be. It's brand new.
Speaker 2:Nobody knows what the cost per seat is. Nobody knows what the cost per seat is. That sucks, doesn't that always suck, man?
Speaker 1:Nobody knows what the CPA should be and like yo, what's the payout or what's the? I'm like, dude, do me a favor, spend five, 10 G's. I'll either give you all the revenue, we'll figure it out. I don't know what it's worth yet and maybe it's not worth anything, but yo, throw that, spend out there and then, transparently, I'll be like all right, dude, here's the margin, here's how much we can split. And we talk about it. There's never even a discussion.
Speaker 1:It's always because they are big people, thinkers that see the opportunity. They know how the game works, they know that I'm fair, they know they're fair, they know that we'll have hard conversations, easy conversations. But do you know how many opportunities have come for the both of us because of that where it's like, hey, we'll figure it out, because sometimes you kill opportunities if you try to take too much margin, you don't give enough to the other guy. The whole thing just won't work. You know what I mean? It's just a pleasure to work with people. You can be like dude, let's just give it a go. We'll figure out how to split the money when we see if there's any money to split, cause sometimes you don't even know if there's anything there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, none of this hiding shit. I'm not fucking dumb. You know right when you said that, I thought about a couple situations like that where new vertical? I have no clue no guys will spend money, we take a loss, we split the loss, we make money. Boom, now we know we're onto something. And then the best people are like yeah, fuck it, let's go. There's no. When you get into this pissing content, oh, but what's it like that's when shit goes, that that shows your sign. You shouldn't even fucking do this, you're not aligned.
Speaker 1:it's just like when you're you're interviewing right and you don't even know if you want to hire them and they're like well, how do I pay? What are my benefits? What?
Speaker 2:are these? I'm not going to hire you. Yeah, telltale sign is not going to work.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to hire you, and it's the same with partners. When it's all of a sudden, oh I'm worried about this, I'm worried about that, you know what? I'll give you an exact fucking payout. But if you want to get in early, let's be flexible, let's work together, let's see how it goes. You know, it's just a better way to do biz.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's amazing. I can't emphasize how much I've learned. I learned work where you're beginning now to this day, and it's great that we have this. It's gone beyond just business, it's a friendship. Big friendship, and that's the beauty of this business that when you go from making. Well, you said something really cool earlier. We talked about friendship, but it's about when you're making money.
Speaker 1:We made money. We had fun at the same time. There's nothing better than making money for somebody Like, honestly, dude, if I make money with you one time, right, it's great. We make money together two times, we're special dude. We got something going Like it just feels nice to make money with your boys to split up the bag.
Speaker 2:It's the best feeling.
Speaker 1:After the bank robbery, one for you one for me, you know, it's just like ah, it's a great feeling dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and it's also being in line with people with the same values that are hustlers and that always looking for the next thing. And you know, I read somewhere about. What I find amazing is I know you know a lot of successful people, so do I. Why are they still working? It's not the thrill is what they're going after, and I think that in our business there's so many thrills with digital marketing, but how do you keep that discipline? So you're not always chasing bullshit, but I think, when it comes to their discipline, they're successful because of that discipline and, like Daniel, he's able to strike when it's hard, and you guys hit it hard, but I think that that's.
Speaker 1:It's just awesome to be in this. I love our industry, man. I think it's a. For people like us, it's the best industry.
Speaker 2:It's incredible yeah, because nothing moves faster. Nothing moves faster. And then when it hits, it hits. There's a lot of ups and downs, but, bro, when you're with the right people and I know that, you know we had those couple good runs and there's gonna be another run it when you see guys like warren buffett fucking 90, something, still chasing shit, that's exciting to me, man. I feel like I feel like we're gonna be the same way, man.
Speaker 1:Of course, dude I'm addicted to the game yeah but I have an idea and I share it sometimes. I'll share it with you. But, um, like I don't know if I want to work till I till I die essentially right, but I like solving problems, like that's what I really get off on. And if I had a billion dollars, I don't know if I would necessarily work to get to 2 billion, but what I really want to do is is once I'm done, I don't need to make any more money, but my brain's still good, I'm still active.
Speaker 1:I want to find my other friends that also like to figure shit out and fix a problem in society, like, cause, we don't need the money, right, take our skills, our leadership skills, our marketing skills, our finance skills and just pick something that nobody can fix fucking homelessness, hunger, something and get these people together and be like yo, let's just crack this shit, like we crack campaigns, like we crack businesses, like let's just do something for the love of it. Because, dude, I think a lot of my friends that have already cashed out, they missed the game, they they don't need any more money, but they're bored because they're not cracking something, they're not figuring it out, like there's so many people in our industry myself, everyone else. We love the beginning of the business, when you figure shit out, you crack it, you undo it, you hustle and then, once it's running smooth, you're kind of like it's boring.
Speaker 1:It's that problem solving like it's boring. It's that problem solving. Yeah, exactly, it's not engaging anymore. It's like the cat with the string. If the string is bouncing around or they can't catch it, they love it, but it's you could put it on the ground. If it's not bouncing around, they don't want that shit anymore. It's what we can't get and that's what that's. What I really like about business is trying to figure that shit out you know, yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:Man, this is fucking my mind's already blown over here oh, dude, dude, I'm very complimented yeah it is, and the audience man listen to every fucking minute. This is one of those where you shouldn't skip shit. Listen to every single minute of it and I'm really interested in what you're talking about, about what you want to work on in terms of helping the community spot trends. People aren't interested, so how can they? I know you want some feedback. How can we get that feedback out there? Is there a link we can share?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like hit up Dave in the comments, dude, if a bunch of people are interested. Again, I don't know if I'm going to do it or not, but I think, if people think it's valuable, I want to just do something in my house, casual 10, 20 people here. I don't think it'll be super cheap maybe five, 10 K for the day. It's gotta be like worth some time and then just uh go through and teach people how to find them, identify them, incubate them, nurture them, decide, like what the decision-making process is and what is the process to be able to go and build something. And I definitely will focus a lot on telehealth because I think that is the. That is the opportunity right now. But yeah, if people are interested in something like that, just hit up Dave. I'm not really on social media but yeah, just hit up Dave in the comments. Dave will tell me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you want, I'll put your Skype on there.
Speaker 1:I know you're pretty active on Skype. We'll put your Skype there too. We'll reach out to you Totally.
Speaker 2:And dude, I'm excited about it, and dude. One thing I want to say too, is that, uh, the, the players aren't. They don't flinch at 5 to 10k, they won't flinch at 25k for something but if you're someone new that's trying to break into the game.
Speaker 2:Proximity is power. James is all of his events, even that first event that we say was a flop. The 10 people that were there were fucking heavy hitters. There were people putting up you know high eight figures on e-com with like women's products. I mean, I remember that one guy I forgot his name.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, you remember that guy. It's funny right there were people.
Speaker 2:They were doing shit I never even heard about. I didn't know. You could make money and that's the shit that gets you out of your box. So just that alone, man, I'd be there for sure. So if I'm in the country, I'll fucking be there.
Speaker 1:I'll make arrangements to be yeah, I think I'll do it dope. Like I think I'll do education during the day, and then I have a pretty sick network of homies here in the city like really crazy guys and just do like a dinner at night, dude, something very casual, very chill. Yeah, but something that I'd like really enjoy, like like just breaking it down for people almost like old school, but in a better location, small, you know, just like people's. They can really dig in, ask questions. I can follow up with them, help them, cause I want to see some people find and build their own new shit. It's just fun, like it's just way more challenging, dude. I see some of these guys that have just cracked campaigns. They're sitting on a bunch of money and it's like, dude, just take a break and figure out something dope, figure out something brand new, because also it's where the real cash is at.
Speaker 2:And that's the scary part to be in, because there was a point a couple years ago, bro, I fucking started doing really well and then you get bored and you start throwing money at dumb ideas and then, before you know, like where the fuck did my cash go? It's like out of boredom.
Speaker 1:It's an addiction, yeah you just need hustle, I need hustle, I need hustle. Yeah, dude, you have so many people, especially recently with aca and medicare right, they made millions of dollars and it's very difficult to be like, all right, I'm not gonna work for the next six months, I'm just gonna look for opportunities. You know it's. It's hard and daniel and I have to do it. Whenever we have a run that ends when it was like PPP was done or ERC was done, all of a sudden you got to sit on your cash and just look, man, and be okay, not being crazy, crazy, crazy in the game, and just spend the time to find the sick opportunity. Because that's when you really find it Like.
Speaker 1:I always tell people like, dude, you're not going to find your next offer at affiliate world or even at geek out or whatever. Your next offer is gonna be a conference for doctors. Yeah, your next offer is gonna be at some random shit. Start going to conferences in other niches and just talking to people, seeing what's going on, researching and and find your wave. Man, like, really, spend your time finding that big wave, paddle out on a bunch of them some are too little until you find like that fucking monster and then just go yeah, man, beautiful stuff.
Speaker 2:So a couple last things. James has a philosophy at his events no douchebags allowed you don't give a fuck how much money you're making, don't care. And I can tell you one thing I've never seen. I did. I think you said one time there was one or two, and you guys kicked them out Like here's your money back.
Speaker 1:People not invited back. We've had sponsors. We've turned down like yo, we're not going to work with you, like we just don't care, dude, like no douchebags, no egos and sharing is caring has been the things that we've really stuck with the entire time a lot of times.
Speaker 2:Sometimes people are intimidated by going to these places. I can see for the first time maybe I was too America's. I was like man, these motherfuckers, this guy's putting doing 30, 50 million a year, well, who am I? Right? But like bro, there was everyone's so welcoming and I left there feeling like, wow, this was great. You know, back when I first started, like I had that, that mentality, but it felt, wait to hear more and then when that's out there, we'll you know, we'll let everyone know, because I'm a big believer in, uh, like you did with me, the more you you give, the more I'll come back to you. And and I guys, I wouldn't be where I'm at today. It was for james man, I don't know I was.
Speaker 2:I started my company as a side hustle. I sold the direct marketing and just grew and grew and grew and grew. Now I got all these other verticals. But that was like those were key moments. That was like an LFG moment for me, man, where we got together. I saw a campaign scale. You know. I saw we went this, we did this, we like we did all our shit, but like it worked. And then we did other stuff together. And then, bro, it's just a beautiful thing. So from the bottom of my heart, man, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Oh brother, thank you. We made money together More than once. Dude. Yeah, absolutely, that's something special.
Speaker 2:It's a special connection, man and we're going to do more of that. So, guys, this episode, listen every fucking single minute. Hit up, james. We'll let you know when the event's going to be Geek Out. When is the Geek Out?
Speaker 1:Geek Out's going to be LA, la, yes huge event.
Speaker 2:I can't emphasize that. Enough. Hit up, james. Let's fucking go let's fucking go love it, man.
Speaker 1:That was a banger bro thank you, bro, really engaging man shit, thank you, thank you.