The LFG Show
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The LFG Show
Finding Growth In Transparency And Data ft. Cooper Schwartz
🚀 Big moves, big mindset, BIG energy! This convo is all about transparency, teamwork, and turning data into domination 💥 Cooper Schwartz from Money Group breaks down the REAL growth game — no fluff, just straight strategy that scales 📈
We’re talkin’ portfolio thinking, review-driven performance, and how sharing live conversion data with brands and Google unlocks those bigger budgets 💰 It’s about partnership over competition, collaboration over isolation, and growth that hits on every channel — search, native, TV, and newsletters 🌎
Home services are surging, finance and insurance are heating up, and telemedicine? Still one of the most underpriced wins in the game 🔑
AI is the engine. Transparency is the fuel. Partnerships are the path. LFG 🐻🍯
Huge shoutout to our sponsor RINGBA 🐐 and the legends at OFFERVAULT 💪 for always keeping the industry moving forward and the data flowing 📞🔥
Setting The Stage In Denver
Cooper’s Role And Money Group Origins
Transparency As A Growth Engine
Portfolio Strategy Across 80+ Verticals
Finance, Insurance, And Home Services Upswing
Telemedicine Momentum And Trust
Compliance, Education, And Brand Safety
Reading Macro Clues And Market Timing
Partnerships, Channels, And Scaling Playbook
Big Brands, Full-Funnel Activation
Telehealth As An Underpriced Opportunity
AI, Google Signals, And Automation
Proximity, Community, And Puerto Rico Network
Branded Call Campaigns For Publishers
How To Work With Money Group
Boom, we're here. We're in Denver, Mile High City, man. A lot of energy now. We got the buffet out here. We're not messing around. Listen, we got a really special guest. He spoke in a lot of these big shows, some shows you ever heard of. He thought over close to a billion dollars in ad spend with the money group. We got Cooper Schwartz. What's your title, man? Because this is a lot. I don't want to mess it up, man.
SPEAKER_00:I appreciate that. Oh, good to have you on the show. Likewise. Thanks for having me. Uh, head of industry, new business and growth. Uh, I'm one of the founding partners in Money Group. Uh, been here with the company for 11 years. And uh, you know, just uh like you, trying to get out there, keep meeting uh people doing more business. This industry still has, you know, little uh little bits of gold all around it. And now uh we're we're at contact IO and we're looking at the calls generation just like we've been doing in a lot of other channels. So this is something a little bit new here for us, but in general, we're we're quite big in the industry.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so what you talked about gold, right? And got you've done again close to a billion dollars with Google, one of the Google's top advertisers. You you're you're in their headquarters, you really have a good partnership with them. So yeah, what do you attribute that success to at the end of the day? And how can the audience benefit from all that?
SPEAKER_00:I appreciate that question. Uh honestly, I mean, we our founder, uh Greg Powell, he was at Google for 10 years uh before uh leaving it and and deciding to kind of bring what he'd learned to uh the affiliate and and lead gen world. Essentially, it came down to transparency. Uh, we we started going out and we realized that a lot of consumers who were doing research online using review websites were um, you know, who were in market and undecided, were really uh interested in what the review websites had to say. And we went out and could prove to a number of brands that ultimately there's an efficiency, that uh consumers were much more likely to go to these review sites than to the brands that were recommending themselves on Google. And we started to share that data uh with the brands transparently, our AdWords data, even, to give them a real understanding. And that set us free. We were then at that point able to start scaling. You know, when we started, uh, we started doing, you know, half million dollars in revenue our first year, uh, and now we're a couple hundred million in ARR. We we really have uh matured over the 11 years and and added a lot of depth, I think, to our industry by just preaching transparency, data transparency, and then leaning into automation uh with Google, with your partners, making sure that all of the data, the conversion events and signals that we're getting are the right ones so that we can get the right kind of traffic. And that is why we have been so successful. Um, and then also just trying to make people who inherently we perceive as our enemies in this industry are friends. There is enough pie for everybody, work with each other uh in our business, and we can talk about it. We we partner with pretty much everyone who you might have previously thought would be a direct competitor of ours. Uh, and I think that strategy more than ever today is what's going to make everybody uh successful in this industry.
SPEAKER_02:I love that. So you mentioned gold before, right? Where's the gold right now? Where are your people that are driving traffic? Where are they making the most money? Like maybe two or three categories. Can you share that with us?
SPEAKER_00:Uh I I like to say that our business, we're in about 150 different categories, uh, 80 of which were actively in market buying uh traffic and zoning traffic for. What really is has been essential to our business is having a portfolio strategy. Just like the stock market, you know, seasonally, macroeconomic events, uh you know, uh hurricanes and disasters, whatever it is, you need to have industries that offset each other. Uh, and so, you know, when uh when the current administration came in and you saw certain industries, you know, potentially get crushed or go out of style, uh, we were leaning into other categories, financial categories that might benefit uh as a result of the current administration. I still think that um, you know, if you want uh some advice, uh investing and the way that people are thinking about protecting their money, anything around that right now in uncertain times is a good place to be looking. Uh, you know, money management and or saving money, our economy is in a state where we're trying to, you know, figure out what's gonna happen next. Everything looks okay, but this is it going to get rocky ahead of us. Uh so I still think where everyone is is focused on finance uh services, insurance, where you could save money and compare for better insurance rates is great. Uh, if you want maybe a lower hanging fruit, uh the you know, the home services, uh, home services categories, we've seen a resurgence. We're we're seeing all kinds of uh consumers reinvest in in what they know in their homes uh instead of taking big investments outside of their home as well. And so we we really like that uh sector. And then uh telemedicine. Telemedicine, a few years ago, we were in that space. Uh we were not seeing the kind of adoption that we're seeing today. Uh, people are now trusting, uh, going online and being able to get prescriptions on different types of you know medications and things like that. And so we're seeing that as a major growth sector as well.
SPEAKER_02:So you said a lot of good stuff there, right? And you talk about wealth preservation, saving, and then yeah, at the end of the day you gotta pay attention to the macroeconomy and what's going on there because that's gonna drive consumer behavior. And then, yeah, new administration, so one vertical gets crushed, you know, another one comes in favor, right? And listen, they're talking about rates probably going down. So I'm hearing mortgage is gonna probably make a comeback. I'm hearing uh I was with uh a buddy of mine, he manages$2 billion in mortgage-backed securities. They're trading a lot of second mortgages. I don't even know what the hell a second mortgage was. I don't know if you know what that is, but like it's like it's a way where you can keep your low interest rate and take a second mortgage home, pay off your credit card debt, like all this stuff. So you gotta be aware of all these things so you can catch the that next big wave is what it comes down to, right? 100%.
SPEAKER_00:And and and also do no harm, you know, where and and when all possible. You have to, you know, in our particular case, uh, we we bought Money Magazine uh a few years back and when they when they shuttered their brand from Meredith, and uh we we you know we retained money.com and we wanted to keep that narrative of you know how to protect yourself and your money and plan for the future alive. And so there is a lot of stuff out there that could potentially uh be treacherous or even predatory. And so when you when you think about how to interact with the consumer today, it's a lot of education, you know, like people are uh starting to use Chat GPT for all of their information. And it's making a lot of us kind of, you know, maybe a little lazier about what we're doing. So I think consumers are looking for ways for you to feel, you know, uh that the information you're giving them is real, that it's uh based on anything that you've done before that makes you an expert. And that for us has been successful, not just kind of throwing out whatever's a fad and and whatever seems to be working. A lot of the brands are scared right now that the traffic that, you know, you're delivering because there's there's so much more compliance than there ever was, not necessarily as much as there was before this current administration, but in general, uh, that you know what you're doing might hurt them uh or might being the fairies. And so we are working very closely with the brands and the advertisers to understand what the compliance implications are for a mortgage company. Uh they they saw one of the uh the most extreme uh compliance uh overviews uh and rewrites uh in the entire industry. And so everybody's treading a little softer now in that industry, but those products are still very relevant to what consumers need today uh and aren't necessarily, you know, knowing what they have access to.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and you said something related to back to wealth preservation. I'm sure I mean, is it like we cover like I'm sure like gold, precious metals, alternative investment, newsletters, and that is that stuff you saw, or maybe you're seeing kind of hot right now too? Or absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, you know, like think about it. You're you're watching uh crypto uh rise and fall and economy, you know, people telling you that uh, you know, that eminently we might be seeing a recession, you have to start looking at diversifying. And so we are seeing that people are thinking about investing in in precious metals and and all kinds of industries. Again, you know, where you see some of those places, it's about is, you know, do I understand the implications of marketing this category? Uh, do I know who the real who the player, the right players are? I think as a as a company that does reviews and comparisons on a lot of different companies, it's kind of our responsibility to make sure that you do it, you educate everybody and then you tell them, here's, you know, here's what the directory or what the best ones look like. Um, but ultimately it's up to you to decide.
SPEAKER_02:Cool. So what's been what's the ideal partnership for you? I mean, what's gonna know you don't have to give specific, but give like that idea. Like it's you you met someone at the show, right? And they they were able to blow up like how how much do they blow up revenue-wise? How did the brand what was a win-win situation behind that? It'd be great to hear some success stories here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's good. Uh, you know, I think at the end of the day, we we like I said, transparency has kind of set us free. Those who are willing to show, you know, are not afraid to show where their sources are of traffic, be honest about the channels, uh honest about the strategies that they're using and and work with us to make sure that we are basically delivering um what the advertisers are are looking for, even be able to filter and to add uh to layers of filtering of what we're we're looking for. The best relationships are ones that, on least on the the advertiser side, are looking for uh you know, a trustworthy third party who has a lot, a high degree of transparency to go out and rep their brand across a multiple of channels. You know, uh a strategy that's in paid search, uh in here, in publisher, uh native and even just like TV and radio, we've kind of built that into our entire strategy. Uh these days, you know, it's kind of like you need the shotgun approach to make sure that your campaigns are going to be effective at least across the board. So for me, um a good relationship is one where the brands want to access all of the different, you know, channels that we operate in. And on the publisher side, uh, knowing that this is somebody who could deliver quality or can segment traffic or can give us kind of a at least a transparent overview of what to expect, because we'll go back and take that to the advertiser and bake on that relationship and then expand. We can we can scale up from a couple thousand dollars a month to you know high six figures in a matter of months with the right strategic partner. And it's not a flash in the pan. Uh I I we work in 80 categories. So insurance, financial services, home services, softwares, uh, telehealth, all of those there's opportunities in. Uh usually it's like a high consideration category because if you're a review website uh and and you know you're you're rating the colored t-shirts or styles, it's kind of arbitrary what somebody's looking for. So for us, we really like to go in-depth. Really hard, difficult, expensive decisions seem to work better for us to be able to cater in tech.
SPEAKER_02:And you're talking about we're talking about big brands here too, right? You're talking about, I mean, you you know what the average size of the brand is in terms of revenue. It's gotta be something higher, right?
SPEAKER_00:We're working with we're working with the largest brands, you know, in the country, uh, you know, your your Home Depots uh uh and such. We have uh national coverage, and it ultimately is about us trying to find, you know, kind of a way to provide the maximum amount of value because a lot of what we're doing is trying to target different in-market consumers in the funnel. We might be doing paid search for, you know, that that mid uh funnel kind of consumer. We might be doing TV and brand at the same time with that same partner to catch the the top of funnel. And then ultimately we like that a newsletter for home improvement, you know, for bottom of the funnel. And so uh the big brands are, you know, all every major insurance carrier that you know operates uh today. We're we're big in car insurance, auto, and and uh and home and and life and all of those. But for us, it isn't just about whether it's the biggest brand. It's if they have the reach and they can understand the value proposition that we're bringing to the table.
SPEAKER_02:Make sure it's a good fit, it makes a lot of sense. Have to. Yeah. I want to touch upon because this is to me is big. And you mentioned telehealth, telemedicine, right? And I'm surprised. I go, I go to these shows. I don't think you might be the only one that's gonna talk about that here, right? And maybe a second person, but it reminds me when I went to my first affiliate where I've talked about this on a show in 2017 in uh Bangkok, and you had a cluster of people talking about Bitcoin, crypto, like there was a buzz there. And I bet you if you had gone there a year or two prior, it would have been a smaller buzz. But and one guy that I interviewed said at that 2017, there was a private group that got together in some restaurant or whatever, like 10, 15 guys, and they had all these odd coins. These guys made like tens of millions, not hundreds of millions of dollars, right? So, what I'm saying is that these niches that they percure, like they bubble up. But I feel that that's what telemedicine and telehealth is right now. And I don't think enough people are talking about it. And because of that, I think that's where the big opportunity is, right? So let's touch upon that a little bit more because I feel like the audience needs to know more about that. Because everyone knows Adam Young was just here, right? He gave a speech about if you're gonna get a paper call, those sort of Medicare. The government's regulating is too fucking hard, right? He's like, you know, I go into something like porta potties or water restoration, something that's not so congested, right? Not so uh saturated. So I feel the same. You agree with what I'm saying with telehealth telemedicine?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, yeah, 100%. I mean, first of all, you know, you're your your audience wants, you know, nuggets, something that they can use. Absolutely. Or one of, I mean, you you nailed it. Like one of the things that has been successful for me in this industry is going to the conferences that don't look like an immediate fit for the stuff that you're working on. Because if you're a big fish in a small pond or you're the only fish of your type, you're gonna get noticed. And so a lot of our success and a lot of my personal success has been about kind of going to uh conferences where you might be introducing something that is not, you know, the main uh exciting vertical that everyone's focused on. And to your point, you know, I come in here and I'm trying to bridge the gap between the fact that yes, you know, called generation can be uh brought in a native way to publishers who are using content in order to increase intent. And at the end of the day, we're all just trying to align and get that higher quality, you know, with whatever offer. And in this particular place, there is a lot of technology that uh could support more integrations with really high quality mask idiot publishers. And that's what I'm here to talk about. I think things like telehealth are a great example where you have people who are representative of a part of the population that still use phones to call or and get interest that we're not, you know, kind of segmenting or bringing to the the brands like you know, him's and and hers, those types of companies today that uh are would love to figure it out. And so, yeah, we do I want, do I want to spread that word and get these guys thinking about creating not just the, you know, not just using the call centers and the and the tracking technology uh and these kind of like big nets, but getting more hyper focused, working with brands to build out something that's specific for their Appall, you know, center centric campaign. Um, and then and then think about the way that we can embed that in content that's relevant, contextual for the brands that we're buying for.
SPEAKER_02:I love it. And I was just say something else. You maybe you mentioned, I don't know if you work with hims or hers, but um man, but we gotta uh in our industry really look at the macro, look at stocks. Him's stock got crushed, I don't know, two years ago. I don't know. It went from like, I don't remember the number, maybe 40 to like five. And it recently, it went from like five to like sixty, seventy, eighty. So like there was a big short squeeze and whatever. But the bottom line is that you pay attention to these things, right? And you see it go for five to ten days of buzz. Guess what? They haven't they're making more money, the stocks going up, there's there's clues, successfully is clues, they're advertising more. And then you you jump on that. You get with a group like you guys, how do I promote this or or something similar to that, a competitive offer, whatever, whatever the hell makes sense, because that successfully is clues. So when you see these things happening, you gotta jump on that, right? And in the reverse, too. You know, I was a solo, like a lot of these stocks are going the heck down. That was my clue. Hey, something's going on. Maybe I should get the hell out and diversify, you know. But the point is you got to pay attention to things, you know, and I'm sure you guys look at that all day long.
SPEAKER_00:I I think that's why like the portfolio approach, it's it's hard, you know, from a resource perspective to, you know, work across so many different verticals. But if you can just have, you know, even if you can just keep something humming at a very low level, win that macro event or whatever happens, being able to pivot into that opportunity and ride it up in the same way that, you know, whatever you depend on, your entire business and vertical depends on goes away is is crucial to weathering some of these storms. And you don't have to do a lot of business, but you keep it on a on a burner and you keep that thing going so that when the timing is right, you jump in. Like I do see and I worry about some of these businesses that are just set up to service one or two categories because you, you know, you live and die by whatever's happening.
SPEAKER_02:Feast of famine.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And and so, and but I do think that like I'm seeing it more and more, and even here that you know, people are ex uh they're expanding across home and insurance and for and financial services. And I think that that is ultimately a very good idea if you're going to actually weather some of what's coming in the unknown.
SPEAKER_02:Good. So we talked about uh telehealth, right? This is a merge that he's bubbling up. We talked offline about AI. Yeah. Another area as well. How are you guys utilizing AI? She's real curious, you deal with all these big brands. So I think you're probably doing it utilized from a different perspective, and you can really help the audience understand, maybe apply it to their their categories, their at me at Me look.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you mentioned that uh we work closely with Google, and and we are one of those companies that uh because our founder uh was 10 years at Google before he he left and started this company, um, believes that Google does want to do good and that we should be giving Google uh our data to help uh them help us deliver the right kind of consumer, the right product. And so we, you know, we started taking it very seriously when Google said, hey, you know, automation is the future. You know, you need to collect as much data as you can and get as much transparency around what indicators uh and signals are important to your advertisers and feed those back up to us so that we can actually, you know, deliver the right kinds of leads and consumers sales, what have you. And since we've done that, we've seen that our business has grown uh materially. Uh it's it's made us allowable to scale beyond what we were capable of doing, I think, if we hadn't leaned into that. So one major recommendation is don't be afraid to ask for that data, that conversion data from your partners. That is going to be essential when you are giving them, you know, to deliver the right type of traffic. And ultimately, if you, you know, if you're doing that and you have that kind of transparent relationship, uh, there's a high degree of trust, you know, and fidelity that you build over time that can make that relationship super strong. So ultimately, uh we've we've done that. We're one of the only companies, as far as I know, that co-hosts a summit every year with Google at their headquarters, the Money Summit uh to invite only, C level, you know, and what do we talk about? It's a lot of AI. It's about this idea of investing in automation and not being afraid to give the right, you know, metrics and signals to those who are buying your media and using it with Google. So don't be shy about that. Uh AI is the future. And if you are going to, you know, you're going to integrate into with partners, make sure that that's happens in the very beginning. Don't, you know, get far down uh trying to make it work without it and then try to add it after the fact. It can take a lot, it can break campaigns. Uh, and so it should be initially one of the first things you look at uh as you set up a partnership.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I no, I love it, man. There's a lot of good insight there. These proximity is key, is what it comes down to, right? You're in there with uh a monastery, you know, in terms of the the media buying, the media spend, and these success leads closure. When you're in those rooms, it helps a lot. 100%. Yeah, it does. And with that being said, talking about proximity, you're in Puerto Rico now, right? Yeah. How how has be living in Puerto Rico benefited you? I'm sure it's been a lot of obviously we know there's there's tax benefits more, but like I to me, when I was there, we did it, we talked about Puerto Rico con. Just that I feel like the the the people there, like it's such a great networking hub, right? And there's you're talking like these bright minds and like eclectic minds. That's what I saw out. I wonder if you've seen the same thing. And you've been there. How many years have you been there?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we've been there about eight years, and absolutely 100% agree with you. You get people down there who are outside the box thinkers, who are successful, who want to network, who want to help the island, who want to bring up overall, you know, the economy down there, a lot of digital uh marketing and a lot of investing, and a lot of people are just thinking about ways that they can grow their business more uh quickly down there. You know, there's a lot of talent. The the people who are down there are hungry, they really want to work. Uh, there's a lot of people in the mainland who also want to come down and change their lifestyle in Puerto Rico. You can you can go from that uh rat race to something that resembles, you know, a more laid-back island life. So I think it's uh it's a great place, but a great place for me personally, my family, my kids are you know born in Puerto Rico, they speak Spanish worldly. My wife is a dermatologist there and service it serving the community. I think there's a lot to love. And if you're you haven't gone down there, go check it out. You know, you don't need a passport if you didn't know that, you know, and and then also you'll see that there's people who are trying to do things down there. It's just there's a lot of business. I think it's going to continue to be a growth center in terms of their economy where you might see it waning in other places.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I love it. Listen, there was a lot we touched upon. There's a lot a lot, a lot of nudges. Is there anything else? I feel like you bring a different perspective, a lot of the guests we have. Anything else we need to touch upon that you want to put out there?
SPEAKER_00:No, I appreciate you having me on here. I think, you know, the the main thing that I would just say, especially at a at a conference like this, it's called lead generation, is that there is there's a lot of green space between call uh call lead gen and and publishers, mass media publishers. You know, they are they are not quite yet um ready to fully embrace or even understand some of the things that uh and technologies and capabilities that the the call lead gen space has to offer. And so now we are, you know, I'm you're talking about where where we should be looking next. Like think about working with the brands, not just to do generic, but to do branded call campaigns more often because that's what the publishers are looking for. We're looking for some company to review, not just uh, you know, an aggregator or a generic campaign. We want to be able to connect the consumer with the brand. And so if that's a benefit to the brands that you're working or buying media for out there, you know, talk about that. Think about ways that you could actually bring their offer to a branded experience uh as a value add on top of the things that you're doing in these generic type campaigns.
SPEAKER_02:No, that was great advice. And I'm glad I asked you that question. I feel like there was just so much to unpack there. So I love it. Last question I have for you with this group for the audience. Someone wants to be part of the program and to work with you. Is there a portal or link? And we'll put it on there as well. Like what's the what's that onboarding process like?
SPEAKER_00:So go go to moneygroup.pr. You can learn all about our company. Uh, if you go to money.com, you can you can onboard with us. Uh our uh our basically agency side uh and publisher relationship side, it's called ads by money. So any three of those ways, you will you will get in touch with us, we'll get you squared away and uh and onboard you and or see if this is a good fit.
SPEAKER_02:Great domain, by the way. I wonder how much that someone wanted to buy money.com. Talk about seven figures easily, maybe eight figures. Who the hell knows? Google it. Yeah, we'll Google it. All right, man. Cooper Schwartz, great interview. Great to have you on the show. We'll see more. I have a feeling we'll see more of them. We might see my Miami Con. We might see my Puerto Rico con. We might even see my Columbia con. We might see if you come to the show, I'd like to have you speak over there. You got me, I'm there. Let's fucking go, guys. Good stuff, man.
SPEAKER_01:Get ready to level your shit up with the LLG show. We travel the globe to bring you heavy hitters from all walks of life. We've been talking some serious business from the best digital marketers, government contracting experts, to top athletic and celebrity doctors. We've got it all covered. We're talking to guys of cash in for billions with a beat. And the best thing is we're just getting started. So hold on tight. We're about to crank it up a notch. Get ready for next level networking and maximize within the LFG community. Scare money, don't make no money. Or honey. Hit the subscribe button, drop a like, leave a comment, and let's fucking go.