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
From Leads To Legacy ft. Christopher Groves
LFG Show x Christopher Groves | From CPA Chaos to a Sellable, Scalable Machine
What if you could turn those wild CPA roller-coaster wins into a durable, enterprise-value beast someone would actually buy?
In this episode, we sit down with Christopher Groves and the powerhouse team behind Leads Icon and Betterwase to break down the exact blueprint they used to evolve from quick-hit affiliate profits to a real, compliant, retention-rich agency built for long-term scale.
We get into everything:
🔥 Founder superpowers — creatives, analytics, and dealmaking locked in together… going from empty cubicles to a Miami call center and an Arizona creative hub.
🔥 Picking the right verticals — why they bet on ACA/Medicare and Auto over Debt… and how CMS’s TPV rule flipped the table overnight.
🔥 Adapting to shocks — commission resets, tighter QA, new training, pessimistic forecasting, and knowing your churn, payback windows (9–12 months!), and investor KPIs like your life depends on it.
🔥 The creative factory — 80+ new assets a week, UGC outperforming expensive productions, and AI tools (VO3, Sora) powering fast hooks and scalable storylines without losing authenticity.
🔥 Data monetization — turning your daily inbound lead flow into compounding revenue through compliant email/SMS cross-sells, segmentation, and smart retention plays.
🔥 Channel mix that prints — Meta is the workhorse, TikTok is second, Snap and YouTube add resiliency, and the Spanish-speaking market is a quiet goldmine when your creative is truly native.
🔥 Leadership you can feel — hiring real operators, paying for talent, building culture that moves people, staying hands-on, and keeping a personal OS of nutrition, sleep, and training to make clear decisions in a fast-moving industry.
If you’re tired of the affiliate hamster wheel and ready to build something that lasts, this episode hands you the playbook.
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Drop a comment: What’s your next big pivot?
Share with a builder who’s scaling.
🐻🍯 NoMoneyNoHoney | LetsFreakinGo | LFG Show
Newsbreak is the fastest growing local news app in the United States with over 50 million monthly and 16 million daily users checking in throughout the day. When you sign up, the Newsbreak team reaches out with White Love Service to get you on boarded and making money right away. Up to$5,000 in matching ad credits, quick account approvals, and dedicated account management to help you find early success. To learn more and sign up, check out the link in the description below. Don't waste time. Sign up now and let's fucking go. Alright, guys, listen, we're I'm fucking pumped the fuck up. I was here actually, we're in a different spot. I'm with Leeds Icon better ways. These guys doing big motherfucking things representing big time. I'm in their call center right now. We did an interview with Manny Perez, uh, when was it, a year and a half ago that shit was? And that's when they were setting up their call center. They had a bunch of empty cubicles. Now we're in their office, they're overlooking the Miami River over here, and we got Chris Groves who came all the way from Arizona here. Guys, congratulations, man. I really to the bottom of my heart, man.
SPEAKER_03:No, we're excited. I mean, we're glad that uh you decided to stop by, you know, and see exactly what we're doing because I think we're pumped. We're all excited about this project. And you know, we just moved offices because we're actually expanding. Yeah. So we had another office, we've been in here for about seven months, and then we opened up another office in Arizona, which is completely focused on creative. Yeah. And so we have producers over there, some editors in-house, and then we also have some uh some of our team outsourced between Argentina and Colombia and whatnot. So we've been expanding.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and this is great because I just came from Geek Out. I saw Manny there uh what was it, a week or two? I don't even know when it was. And they're what they always put on great events, right? And there was um uh a speaker there who he just talked about going beyond just being a lead generator, and what Adam Young talks about, breaking the affiliate curse so you have a real business, right, that has good, uh it good uh what do they call enterprise value, something you can sell, right? And that's producing residual income and whatnot. And and what you guys, I feel like that's what you're doing. You have both sides. You got the lead gen side with Lee's icon, and then you have better ways right on the agency side. So I think this is amazing. I think this is very inspirational because I want to go into the whole thing, you know, how you guys got here, what's going on, and to see how you had an empty cubicles to this. I mean, that makes me fucking excited. I love seeing stuff like that. So I'm glad we could share that with the audience. So you want to hear kind of our story? Yeah, let's hear the story of the whole thing, man, because um, I think it's inspirational, right? I mean, we all get into Legion to make money, right? And we know the kind of money. And I know, you know, from guys like Peter Day, and then they look at you, and Peter Day is and this brother Tyler are fucking legends. They look at you as one of their fucking inspirations. They went to one of your like coaching classes or like masterminds or something, right? So yeah, I mean, I think you just guys guys have a great team. So I want the audience to hear all about this.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, no, for sure. It is, it's about having the right partners, you know. I think when you go in business, you want to make sure that you align with the right people. So I think where a lot of credit goes is just the alignment that we have between myself, Manny, and Olivos. Like we're very aligned in everything that we do. And we're also very different too. We're able to basically um accomplish more because we have different outlets, you know, like I'm really good at creatives, I can focus on that. Of course, I can do other things. You know, Nolivos is very good at analytics, media buying. And then Manny is really good at, you know, making connections. Like that is a superpower, you know. I think that is what makes him unique and the way he's able to negotiate with the buyers, um, you know, put all this together. Uh, so all of us coming together, you know, you we have that synergy, and that's kind of how we got here. But going back, I mean, we met just at a conference back in 2019, just a normal affiliate affiliate summit east in New York. And we were sitting at a table, and you know, I was basically a solo affiliate at the time, and you know, just doing big numbers on my own, and we were talking about landing pages because I like to give tips and share value, you know, as long as I'm not like giving away too much secret sauce, but you can always give tips that might help someone, like, hey, you know, try split testing. Have you tried changing out the colors, red buttons, blue buttons, just little tips that I know you probably implemented and it probably you know made a difference in his business? Because if you can get 10 more people, 10 10 more people to convert on your funnel, that's you know, that's going to multiply, especially when you're generating tons and tons of traffic. We uh connected really well, they had their own thing going. And then, you know, I went from basically working solo for a while up into, you know, working with another business partner that didn't work out. And then we crossed paths again and we decided, hey, let's let's try this. You know, like you're really good at creative, I'm really good at creative. We have a lot of experience. I've been in the industry since 2015. And so we started working together and everything just kind of clicked. We kind of filled each other's gaps.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And before you know it, they're talking about wanting to open up an agency because we had gone to another conference where we kind of learned, you know, hey, we need to build a real business. We have the skill set, we know how to drive leads, we know how to drive calls, we're already doing it big volume. You know, we're doing great on the affiliate side. Um, I mean, like this year, right now, we're pretty close to hitting 50 million in revenue. Oh, right. Just to give it, yeah, it's a huge milestone to uh breaking records. But all of this is because of the journey we've taken to get here. And I think a lot of it is the team we've built. I mean, I can't just sit here and take credit myself because all of us have built a like a really amazing team. We have like over 30 agents here, uh, just on the Betterway sides and then Leeds Icon. We have over 60 people right now between Argentina, Columbia, um, and you know, editors, creative producers, and then we're building out in Arizona. So we have a lot of stability. And I think a lot of the stability comes from hiring really, really good people. So it's crazy just to think that we started, you know, a lot of us just started solo. Like even Manny started with a Shopify store. I started just, you know, doing like CPA by myself, just grinding, grinding on the computer all day. And then you realize that you can delegate and teach people to do what you do within your company and then actually build something on the back end, which is what we're doing here at Betterways right now.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so there was a lot to unpack, and that was great. This is an amazing story, right? And so what what was the the impetus to start the agency, right? What was it? What do you you heard someone speak about it? I mean, it sounds like you guys went to a conference or something like this. Yeah, I think that everyone has that dream, right? I mean, because I the the lead gen side to me is almost like that that quick money, right? That that like addicting dopamine rush, right? But then at some point you gotta have it goes up and down, and you mean you oh no campaigns are like forever, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you have your ups and downs, and that's what it was. It was the stability, but like we were just hearing about honestly people running, building crazy books, like books of business with you know tons and tons of customers on their books. And it's like wow. And then you really hear like what the exit value is, the Ibita in those books. Like when people exit, you're hearing people like exiting in the space for 100 million, 200 million, 300 million, just crazy numbers, right? Like, and it really just opens your eyes that when you build something real, like you can't really do that on the affiliate side and you're just generating leads, you know, there's some value there, but the value is not the same when you actually build your own book of customers. And I think when we heard that, we realized like, you know, we've been doing it our wrong the whole time. We've been spinning the wheel, but going nowhere.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So now we basically said, look, let's build a foundation, which is better ways here. And let's actually take our skill sets, which is, you know, from the Legion, the traffic generation, and let's apply it over to something real. It can't be that hard, right? If you look at it, a lot of companies uh are backwards. They have the agency, but they don't know how to market. We have the marketing experience, which I think is the most valuable thing you can have in any business. I think when you master marketing, think about this. If you can generate customers, you're never gonna go out of business, right? Like it's always what actually causes a company to go out of business is the lack of sales or the lack of customers. So if you already have that side of it, this side is actually a cakewalk. Well, I'm not gonna say exactly a cakewalk because there's been challenges, you know, going through and, you know, you're learning, you know, you know, learning different things, the struggles, the compliance. I think that's probably the hardest part of this side of the business is compliance. Yeah. You know, you have to get that dialed in because you could really, you know, you could get shut down, you know, when you're dealing with the type of uh, you know, when you're dealing with the government, CMS, things like that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well, you're getting a lot to unpack there. When when I first met Manny's, you're talking about him being a good connector and everything. I I had spoken uh of all things about debt, the the debt uh vertical. I spoke at Affiliate World, when was it, fucking 2023 in Barcelona? And after I spoke, he had he came up, he waited for me to get off stage. He came up to me, like, yo, I've been following you online, da-da-da. I love this energy. And then we connected, became really good friends, like our wives hang out together. It's a beautiful thing, right? And um, back then you guys were put up massive fucking numbers in debt, man. I mean, I mean, I remember uh one day I think showed me the ring bubble. It was like it was like fucking like a hundred thousand dollars, something something crazy. I didn't know anyone. You guys are killing Spanish debt, English debt.
SPEAKER_03:You guys are the debt guys and I think we were generating like 15,000 calls between, but we're also running ACA too. I think that was cumulative, you know, yeah, between everything.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it was I didn't know anyone doing it at that kind of. And I knew I knew guys are doing maybe uh half those numbers, but you guys were the guys at that, which was crazy. And I know I think at one point you guys were looking to like, I guess, get a bigger piece of the pie on the debt side, kind of like what you're doing now, but on the debt side. So it was am I right about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You but what why did so why did you focus on because on the better way side is what is the focus made? Is it ACA right now? Is that the focus? And why did you not do stick with debt? What made you decide to go on the insurance side?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. So good, good question. Um, we're doing a little bit of ACA, Medicare, so mostly insurance, and then we're probably gonna do a little bit of auto on the agency side here. Um the reason why we didn't go into debt is because we were mostly hearing, you know, when you go to these conferences, you kind of hear what other books people are building. Yeah. And ACA seemed a little bit more lucrative in the way that it was set up and structured. Um, you know, the way the debt is, there's a lot of complications on the back end with debt. Like there has to be certain, you know, debt amount, debt load amounts, uh, and you know, so it's a little bit harder to dial in, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So I think to answer your question, ACA is just easier to dial in because a lot of people were already doing it. So it's kind of already like proven.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And instead of going into something new, I mean, we were doing great as an affiliate, right? Don't get me wrong. But on the back end, we were hearing that ACA was a really good back end. And that's why we decided to go that avenue because it'd be, I think it would have been really difficult if we would have chosen like another vertical that would have had a more difficult back end, and maybe we would have not done as well or had more hurdles to go through. So path of least resistance.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and uh also though, I think when you guys first started, or maybe it was like really quick, like soon after you guys started, maybe three or four months, four months, or five months, or six months, where there was regulation, right? On the ACA, there was like there was new rules that came into place. And I what I find interesting is that a lot of people were getting out of ACA. They're like, oh, this is too hard, it's getting too complex, blah, blah, blah but you you guys dove right head, right, head the fuck.
SPEAKER_03:Well, we we got in right before that. Uh-huh. We got in right before that. So we're already like, well, we're here. What exactly was that again? What happened? Um, so there was a whole thing with the way that you needed to have third party, basically third-party verification to CMS. They wanted an actual CMS agent to verify the customer, so it was an extra step. And so you could go from generating, you know, like pretty much two to three times as many cells per day to that was just cut in half, you know, overnight, which affects your CPA. It affects how happy the agents are. Because imagine the agent cannot close as as more because they're having to get on a call with CMS and go through that whole process. Adds like an extra seven to 15 minutes per you know, per person that you're kind of close.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So how did you guys deal with that? I mean, like, I you know what I feel like in when you're a real real strong manny zuccharelli spoke a geek out and he was like, listen, man, this shitting from the faint of heart. You're gonna there was days where he was praying to God, yeah, you know, when he was gonna, he thought he was gonna go out of business, living like, you know, week to week, man, and one client better fucking pay on time, right? And now he's like he's built his machine, right? But like I feel like it's it you you the unexpected comes out of nowhere, man. How do you guys do you guys feel like oh fuck, we fucked up?
SPEAKER_03:I mean, what what went through your minds or I mean when that happened, we were like, I mean, we understand why they did it. There was a lot of shady stuff going on in the LCA space, the way that people were enrolling customers and you know, like they were doing a lot of shady stuff that you're not supposed to do, and that's why they had to, you know, go with the compliance. So we kind of saw it as a good thing, like, okay, maybe the compliance will be a good thing. It's gonna take away some of the bad actors in the business, which I think it it did to a point. But um, you know, we we had to navigate through it and it's something we had to adapt to. And you know, we had to make adjustments with some of the commissions on the agents, you know, you have to adjust. You know, in any type of industry, you have to be. And I think that's actually what makes you strong in business is when you go through these pivot pivoting points that makes you, you know, it makes you stronger, right? Because if everything is easy, then everybody would be doing it, right?
SPEAKER_02:100%.
SPEAKER_03:So when there's challenges, it's you have two types of entrepreneurs. You have entrepreneurs that would just like close shop, those are the ones that go out of business, or you have entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs that are going to figure out how do they solve the problem, right? And so that's always been our mindset. Just like even to this day, we have a problem. Me and Manny get on the phone, or all three of us get on the phone and we figure out how to solve it. Like one of our problems was hiring agents. So we figured out how to solve that too. You know, we actually uh put an ad on Facebook, just uh, you know, calling out people with specific licenses that we needed and that allowed us to recruit. So, you know, that's a problem. A lot of people would be like, Well, what do I do? Do I go on LinkedIn? We tried pretty much every job posting side, but what actually worked the best was just running a Facebook ad, calling out the type of person we needed, and we were able to fill our hiring. So I think a business, when you have a problem, you have to just be willing to, you know, get together and and find a solution, even though it can be scary sometimes. Uh that's that's what's going to push you to the next level.
SPEAKER_02:So let me ask you this, right? I'm seeing this happen in solar right now. Solar's gone through the fucking ringer, man. It's been nuts. But what I'm seeing now is that so many people exited the space, right? That the ones that have survived are actually like I talked to, right? Yeah, they're actually they're thriving, man. I mean, they're and you know, especially the smaller, more nimble. I feel like the the ones that are really top heavy with a lot of operating costs, like cost of goods and yeah, operating op ex, those are the ones that really got fucked. But the ones that were nibble that had maybe five, 10, 15 people, they're the ones that are doubling, tripling right now because I they're they're able the especially some lead generator, like you're able to acquire these leads now for 50% off what it was before because so many people exited.
SPEAKER_03:Less competition, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Did you see that happen with during this whole thing too?
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah, like when people went out, dude, the cost went down. Yeah. So what happened is it kind of balanced out. You had a lot of people scared, not entered the space. And then the adjustment doesn't happen right away, right? It takes some times, but it takes some times after you know any big change happens for the cost to adjust. But we noticed it was cheaper cost per click, cheaper leads. So it kind of balanced out. We were able to kind of get the CPA close door was. Uh, not exactly, it was honestly lower before the whole compliance thing, but still still worked.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So I mean, I think that's the same thing with solar or in any business. It's kind of like when the market dips, a lot of people are like scared to buy, but that's actually the best time to buy, right? You want to buy the dips. Yeah, you don't want to like as you're like, everything's going well. And that's gonna happen with ACAs, everything was going well. And I think everybody was piling on to ACA, and that's why there was a bunch of people doing some shady stuff and the way they were enrolling their customers because they just saw it as easy money as a cash grab, and some people were treating the business that way versus like a real business. And you know, ACA was here at top, and everybody, you know, there was all the hype around it, and then you know, a change happens, and then ACA goes from here to here, and then you know, a lot of people in the dip hits, they bell, or you know, that's really the best time to get, and you know, that's where the most opportunity is created because kind of once you hit a dip, the only way is back up.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, it's like stocks, man, is very similar.
SPEAKER_03:Business, I think, is the same thing, you know. Even I think every industry has cycles, like even refinance, like think about this rates hit a high, they can only go so high before they have to come back down, right? And then what's gonna happen when rates go back down? Everybody's gonna want to refinance. Yeah, so I think every every business has cycles, just like the stock market.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and so what do you think help you weather? Because it was a bit of a storm right now. I think I think you guys had a competitive advantage in that you guys have been doing this for a long time, right? You guys have the you know how to market real phenomenal media buyers, right? You the I think you're like it's almost like a three-headed monster, right? Between the th in a good way, right? Three monster, and you guys have your own strengths. I mean, what do you think? If you could you if you can point out one, pinpoint one or two specific things that allowed you guys to survive that period of time and now thrive, what what would you say what?
SPEAKER_03:Um I would say definitely have to give credit to you know our director of operations here, Santee, like he's really good. And then I think obviously creative too, right? Like going to the marketing side, the creative, you know, like that's kind of been our secret sauce. And I think that ties into everything we market. What makes uh a successful going into anything is just like the creative, you know. Yeah, that's everything. But on the back end, definitely like Santique and you know, his processes and place that we have here. Um, you know, making being able to adapt and make changes, you know, kind of on the fly, especially with you know, and getting that out, you know, communicated to all the agents in a timely manner. So you're all on the same page. Yeah. That's more of like the back end side.
SPEAKER_02:That's cool. I was gonna say something too. I when you guys first started the call center, I was a little nervous for you guys. Like when I came to that, yeah, when I interviewed Manny, because call centers are a fucking it's hard. It's hard, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:But I'm not gonna say this is easy by any means. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You're dealing with a lot of personalities, you you know, you're dealing with you, and and that's why there's all everyone wants a the ideal thing for everyone's they want like an AI. And you know, that'll work to a certain extent. But I think there's nothing like when you have a real good call center, you build a good culture, and then I think you guys have done a great job with the culture. I mean, I I know how I know how you guys are. You guys are generous, you guys treat people well, it's just it's who you are, right? And I think that's why you guys have had success. Go in fucking Argentina, Colombia, Miami, Arizona, like wherever you guys go. I think because that maybe that that's like a core tenant of that. I mean, what what's your feedback?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, I think absolutely. I think like I'm very hands-on. So, like obviously I'm out here this week and I'm like helping where I can provide the most impact. Like, we have a content, um, we have a we have a girl we just hired that's doing the content and creative kind of organically for our organic strategy with better ways. So I've been able to sit down and just like help her go through, you know, like some tips and strategies just from all my experience. And then, you know, the office in Arizona, I'm literally there every day in the grind. Yeah, you know, like I don't put myself above anybody. I'm there, you know, doing the work too and just like helping try, hey, how can you make this better? You know, do this, try this. I'll go out, help them still shoot content, guide them. And like, um, I just want them to keep getting better. You know, I think a lot of it is being hands-on. You know, some people can just be like, you know, sit back and be like, oh, you know, I got, you know, I hire employees, let them do the work, let them figure it out. Now I'm more like, there's two type of there's two types of leaders. You know, I don't know if you've ever seen that like graphic. There's the one that will like, you know, be sitting on the the chair and they're kind of whipping them, like they're the slaves, and then there's leader that is pulling them along with them. And I think that's the type of leadership we have to sum up kind of what your question was, is that we're like there in the trenches pulling along, solving the problems with them and you know, coming through, you know, the obstacles. And I think that's what makes a great leader.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I was gonna say, I think uh uh another attribute or the reason for the success was was hiring, right? And you and you guys, I I remember, and this made me feel better. Uh I care about you, I know Manny. I want the best for you guys, man. It's just fucking makes me excited to hear this shit. So when you guys started the call center, I remember he tell me he told me, yeah, we we got somebody to run this thing, because that's really the key, is having a good call center manager or a director, whatever you want to call that person that knows the key to operation, knows how to manage business. It's it's a key element. I've spoken a lot about this. And you could have fucking good sales scripts, you could have a good product, good this and that, good marketing, good leads. But if you don't have that person there, it it changes, it's gonna go to shit. That's the biggest piece of the puzzle. And I think what I heard then, like, okay, that that it's your work. Then there was no no, I think that's a key your your hiring and the ability to do it. I think that that culture, them seeing that makes them want to work for you.
SPEAKER_03:I agree. I think when you hire, like, you know, you still want the office to run if if you can't be there that day for whatever reason. So you need good leadership. And in every office, that's what we've kind of positioned is you want good leadership, someone that can, someone who's responsible, someone who's gonna put in the work, someone who basically treats it like it's their own business, right? That's the right person. I think we have that for sure. Definitely in the better ways office. Uh, I think in the other offices, we are are working on that, you know, it's just building the foundation. But that is so important in a company, you know. That way, if you're not there, like it'll still run and things can still be, you know, you still want a quality of standard, right? Whatever side you're doing, whether it's creative, whether it's here at the call center, you want to make sure that people are doing what they're supposed to do. But I agree. I think that's super, super important.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think also if if you don't mind talking about this, is I think the the way you structure the deals where you you you guys aren't cheap. You know, you're not, I think a lot of people are looking at cut costs and pay the least they can pay, which I mean, I get there's some merit to that. But like I remember when you did Mane, tell me a bit about the deal. Like you structured a rich deal where it made sense. Like the person was incentivized to drive sales, right? And I think that that really um was an ingredient because I talked to a lot of people, and it seems like 90%, right? They're all about get let me get the cheapest whatever that comes out to it, right? But you were the opposite. Let let's pay, maybe overpay on the front end, but it's gonna come back to us, you know. Oh, yeah, like on the like on the calls or the leads. Like this. You hired the the director and and it seems like you guys weren't afraid. You felt you saw value, like you're fucking gonna go for this.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yeah, especially when you're putting in like your key people, right? You want to make sure that you compensate them well and give them a structure that's going to allow them to grow. You know, you don't want to just look for the the cheapest route because that's not always gonna give you the best results.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Especially on your you know, your leadership front. That's the most important thing. And then you also want the agents to be happy too, right? So you need to make sure that they have a commission structure that also makes sense for the business. And we've had to adjust our commission structure many times because of all the AC changes.
SPEAKER_02:How do you deal with that? Because I that's but that one in my my experience, that's like the hardest conversation I have. Like, I don't like to fuck with people's money, man.
SPEAKER_03:You know, like it that is you know, I mean, I guess it's the same. Yeah, how do you it's all about approach? Typically, you know, it's it's either done like you know, face to face or over like a Zoom call. Kind of Santi more handles that, but it's you know, it's it's very like polite, but there's the reason behind it. Hey, we're not just doing it because this is what it feels like it's because, hey, this actually happened in the industry. Like this is an industry thing, and it's either, you know, in order to survive, we have to make this change. And of course, you know, with the initial reaction, they're not happy. Yeah, but then they understand, like, hey, you know, it's like this is a reason. Like, there's actually validity to behind what we're saying. We're not just pulling it out of our, you know, our ass at that point, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, those are those are the toughest conversations I I I I have, man. But like it if it's funny because looking back, they always work out like 90% of the time it works out. Yeah, it's rarer when it doesn't. As long as you you're genuine about it and they see there's a real fucking valid reason, and it's and then when things go the other way, you make up for it if like it works out. But that that's been my you know, there's a lot of ups and downs of business. Yeah, it should happen.
SPEAKER_03:It's kind of like if a buyer told you, hey, we're gonna have to lower your payout by by five dollars, but you can keep running because honestly, it's not working. Yeah, but you know, maybe your margins are good enough, you're gonna keep running and you're not gonna stop running it. Yeah, and if they're being honest about it, they're not just trying to give you, you know, a bad deal, then you know, it makes sense because they could legitimately be losing money. And we don't want to put our pos ourself in a position to where, you know, it's it's hurting the business and you know, we have to close shop. Like we want to make adjustments. And I think that's one thing that people need to understand when they're building an agency or if they decide to go that route, you're gonna have to make adjustments, you know, in in real time. And you need to really have your numbers on point. And I think that that's another thing, you know, you want to make sure that you do have people looking over your finances or, you know, get a really good CFO. Um we have a couple of people, you know, looking over that, you know, looking at our budget, our books. And that's kind of how we know you got to have your projections in place. I don't do much on the numbers side personally, but I know that is super, super important.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because what what on this side of the business, right? There is uh there's a tail, right? Is what it is. You have to catch you, you're gonna put a lot of money, yeah. I don't know, six months, nine. Like there's a break certain breakeven point, right? Yeah. Well what is it? I know I I knew this at one point, but what what's the break-even point or where you can um right now we actually ran some projections.
SPEAKER_03:Our break-even point, we're still about probably nine to twelve months out. Okay. It's somewhere roughly in that. And we we obviously um set up our numbers in in, you know, to make them worse than they actually are, because you don't want to you know what I mean? You don't want to oh, like, what's the word? Overprom, underdeliver, overpromise. Overpromise, underdeliverable. Exactly, right. So you don't want to set your expectations too high. Like you want to actually, when you're doing, you know, when you're doing projections, you want to add some buffer in there on all your numbers, right? In the in the in the in the in the in the negative way, right? Like you want to make it like this is worst case uh possible scenario. So that way when you run it, you know, you kind of have an idea. And then if you do better, then you're just gonna get out of debt sooner, you know?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that I'm glad that you talk about that because I mean we've looked into business like that, my partner and I, and we we actually looked into doing a debt floor. And the issue with the debt floor, the clawback rate was so fucking high. Yeah. Right. And and we don't think they were being honest with it. I think the guys told us it was 30%, and we we were like, we think it's more like 40 to 50 percent. So like we can't run, we can't fucking run a bit, and then we we're glad we didn't do that deal because two years later, they those guys went out of business, right? So we feel like that's one of the reasons that they weren't telling the real numbers. You're trying to get people to sell underneath them. But the point is that when it comes to doing these kinds of business, you need to have a cash cushion. And and I I think like as you speak, the fact that you have the leads icon side, right? That's that's selling leads and all these different verticals. We'll touch about that soon. That that that probably correct me if I'm wrong, but that's probably where you could, you know, you have your your life paid for your bills, right? Your your whatever, your car, oh yeah, food. And then you're able to let this, you don't need to get paid from this immediately.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we're still carrying debt on this project, you know. Um, I guess that probably another nine to 12 months. And that's just people have to understand, you know, you're gonna carry debt when you build out a book. It's not just like boom, you're profitable day one where lead gen, you can be. But of course, the upside is on the back end, you know, the long-term play.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it's not for the faint of heart, but then if you're willing to weather that storm of year can survive that, get through those nine, 12 months and everything's gravy, right? Then you're like, you gotta book a business that's I mean, beautiful.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, look at like Uber. I don't even know if they're profitable. Yeah, I those reading, are they even profitable?
SPEAKER_02:I don't even know. I know their stocks been fucking doing pretty well, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Are the tier profitable? I mean that that that stocks to the damn roof.
SPEAKER_03:It's crazy. There's a lot of companies that are not profitable, but you know, they're it's just it's just blows your mind. You really it makes you really understand like how business works, you know, at that type of scale.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, and not to go off subject, but uh as as I wanted to be ready for this as ready as possible for our interview, man. And uh I was going through your Instagram, and I think back in 2020, I didn't realize Tesla's stock was 1500 back then, bro. Yeah, you know, so maybe we had some splits. Yeah, yeah, that's what it was, the splits. But you you wrote something about I guess back then people were saying Tesla was overvalued. So you wrote something like, Listen, I don't think Tesla's overvalued because of this. But you if you have a Tesla, you know the very people that own this car are very loyal to it. Dah da. Bro, I think since you wrote that, that stock's got up like five to six X at least, maybe 10x.
SPEAKER_03:I actually have a lot of Tesla stock. Nice. Um, I don't know. I have to check my portfolio, but I bought a bunch back then and I just held on to it.
SPEAKER_02:But it's kind of it's very similar, right? Is that you gotta if you if you believe in something and you keep reinvesting into it, and then we both you you were with me at ColumbiaCon. You guys, you guys did a great job at ColumbiaCon, you and Manny with your yeah with your presentation. That was man, people were getting up off the chairs, yeah. They were fucking looking at it, they're taking pictures on the bro. I did I hate that I think someone, I think someone fucking copied one of those things from there, man. I don't know. Did you know about that shit? I'm pretty sure they did, yeah. Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_03:Everyone pulled out their phones. It's like, I'm gonna go.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we went, we gotta do a little bit. But we we had some sauce at fucking ColumbiaCon, bro. It was just great. But anyway, Anker spoke, right? His presentation was fucking nuts about the dude. That was insane. But he talked about something similar, man. And I tell you, every every stock that he analyzed, all of them have doubled or tripled since then, right? Is what it comes down to. But wow, what what he believes in is that is the fundamentals, right? Investing in funding limits, strong companies. That's what you're talking about, Tesla. When you're talking about having a book of business that spits out cash, right? It spits out cash, it's creating jobs, and you grow, you reinvest it. And and that's what we're talking about here. And that's I'm kind of like at that point right now. I've tried all these different businesses that we're trying to like build some long-term shit with. And it's tough. It's not easy, man. Most of them fail. But the fact that you guys are doing it, all right. That's why I wanted to interview you because we were here what a year ago, a year and a half ago. Now we're back, and you guys, and I want to do, I want to come back a year from now and show what the hell is going on, man. So like hats off to you guys, because this shit's not easy, man.
SPEAKER_03:No, it's not. And like I said, we've just been expanding, and you know, we now we have it's crazy to think that we have three offices and they all kind of cater different areas of what we do in our industry, you know, the creative, the content. This is more of like, think of this as like, I think of this as like our back end office, right? This is our back end. Uh the creative is kind of like our front end because it feeds, you know, it feeds lead gen, it feeds our lead gen and uh leads icon side. And then we have our retention center in in Columbia, which I guess would also be more back end as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So let me ask you this because you gave me a thought. Uh the your office is in Arizona. When did you open that? Uh we opened that in August. Okay. And you live and you're in Arizona. I live. Yeah, I live in the house. How far is your office from your home? About 15 minutes. Yeah. So let me ask you, um, because I I've been thinking about this, man. I'm itching to start a call center in Miami, right? I live here. Uh the last couple call centers I had was South Carolina, Columbia, that you travel, it's not the same, man. But when you're how how good does it feel? And I think the reason I'm trying to say that, I feel like as a cheat code, when you're an entrepreneur and you're a business person, like you it gets the juices flowing, right? You go to the office, you get shit going. Like how how since you I'm not gonna talk about the financial aspect, we'll talk about both like financially. How has that affected the business and spiritually? How has that been for you in terms of yeah?
SPEAKER_03:I would say having the office when you create like a bond with the people that you work with. It becomes more of like a family, right? Yeah. Uh, and then the second thing is like you're able to pro solve problems in real time. You know, when you're kind of working remote, you don't really know, like, okay, is the person active? Are they online right now? I mean, if there's a problem, you can talk about it like instantly. And then the third thing is like the training, you know, like I'm able to literally be there with them, train them, walk them through the problems, solve it with them. And that's what I mean by being in the trenches.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um, doing remote, that's a little bit harder, right? Like if I'm on a Discord or a Zoom, yeah, I mean, you can get a lot done that way, you know, do a screen share, but there's just something about being in person, right? Like, why do you why are we doing this podcast in person versus like through a Zoom? Yeah, it's way different, right? The way that we would probably communicate and talk to each other would be a lot different from through a Zoom versus in person.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you miss like with Zoom, you there might be some cues that you like, maybe there's something you show. I I'm looking in the eye right now, and you show certain like emphasis on. I'm gonna elaborate on that. I'm like, I'm gonna keep pressing deeper, right? And then you're right, you don't catch that on the zoom. And and that's been personally for for our companies at Connection Holdings. I think one of our issues is that, especially after solar peak, has been this fucking remote, this culture. Don't get me wrong, we have a good team, but I'm missing the whole fucking that that face to face. So I've been I've been itching, man, to get that going again. It's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03:Project you know, it's fucking go. Yeah, the productivity in the office is much higher. Like we'll say that when you get people in one office kind of thinking alike and you know, get everyone aligned to. That's where it just kind of skyrockets.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So all right. So we talked a lot about the the agency. Is there anything we did we missed that we we want to touch upon on the agency side before we go to the Legion side?
SPEAKER_03:Not that I can think of. I think we covered pretty much the you know the challenges, you know, the cash flow, being patient, and the compliance is a big thing that people really have to understand and be aware of. Um, so I think those are the biggest ones.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and you know what? Let's before we jump into the allegiance, let's talk about that too. Like, when do you know you're ready? Because I think that's one of uh the things that that stops people. It could be fear, and I'm sure maybe you guys have some fear. Are we fucking ready for this? Like, when do you know it you can do that? Is it is it a certain like I I'm gonna you have kids, right? Yeah, like I I tell you what, uh every time I had a kid, I got three kids, I was always like, all right, fuck it, let's go. Like when money was when the money was good, when I knew the money was good, I'm like, because I didn't feel like I don't want to bring a kid to the world if my I don't the fucking money's not right yet.
SPEAKER_03:That's what I was gonna say. When the money is good is when you can take more risks, right? Like if you're already doing well in the Legion, you have some cash aside, then you know, build an agency. Scale is slow. You don't know what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02:When what's the definition of money is good? Like, is that is it like again, everyone's got different depending on where you live. Miami's got a different standard, uh, you know, like 100,000. My million in Miami is different than a million in Arizona or California. Is there is there a number? Is there a certain like um I don't know what uh I don't know, dude? I don't know, I almost see debt to income. I feel like there's gonna be a certain KPI. Like, what is that for KPI, right?
SPEAKER_03:I think well, you either got to have an investor, right? Who has who can provide the cash flow to you? I mean, we do have an investor for this project, or you're gonna need realistically like, you know, three to five million dollars.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Just, you know, ready to go um to really answer your question. So it's either one of the two, right? Because you need to have the cash flow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:It doesn't mean you're gonna like inject the three to five million right away, but you have to have that set aside because you just don't know like what's gonna happen. It also depends on how fast you hire, because there's different ways to scale an agency, you know. We kind of wanted to scale at a different pace, which is why we we have an investor. We want to be able to, you know, scale this a little bit more aggressively.
SPEAKER_02:So, okay, so that that was great. I'm glad you mentioned it. The three to five million. So, what's the runway on that? Like, how long does that get that that get you? And I guess it depends how many agents, like I'm sure you'd be a lot of forecasting, you know.
SPEAKER_03:That's a that's a tricky question because it really depends on your overhead costs, like who you've hired, what are you paying your agents in your, you know, your leadership team, things like that. Um, but you know, like you can do a lot with three to three to five million. You know, you could probably have, you know, 30 to 40 agents. And you know, remember, you are gonna be getting, you know, that money coming back. It just takes a long time. Yeah. So I think that could give you the runway you would need for, you know, probably. I mean, that's tough because it just depends on how many agents you have, but that could give you the runway for a year. And then you just reinvest, you know, reinvest from there. You just have to, you know, that's where you need the performa, right? I think this is what uh Ed is really good at, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's where you need the performa. So that's where you can really dial it in. Like, okay, this is what I have. I think that's probably a better answer to your question to make this, you know, more um fair for the viewers watching, is you need to do actual like performa on that, how many agents you're gonna hire and put in your actual cost because it's just so variable, man. Like if you're gonna have 10 agents versus 30, there's gonna be a big difference in cost. Or if your building is, you know, 1,500 square feet versus 5,000 square feet or the location, you know. Um that's where it gets tricky. But you do want to definitely have some cash set aside. But you could probably, even if you probably had like one to two million, you could probably start an agency too. You would just have to scale slower, right? That's where you once again you'd have to do performance. Figure, okay, I can start with this many agents, and you know, you can still get there. Maybe you start with five agents, and then once you uh once you get that working, you can start investing and growing slowly. It's just gonna, the more you have, obviously, the faster you can grow, right? Like the more cash you have, the faster you're gonna be able to grow.
SPEAKER_02:So let me uh I got two questions for you. Uh I guess how did you find the in the investor? Because I mean that that's something it's funny. I was just at a meeting too, and I'm I was talking about the call setter idea. And then this guy's like, listen, Dave, you want someone to invest in you, I'll do it, right? And it's just great to get to the point. I've I've had conversations like that. Again, I have these ideas and and people are willing, you build credibility. And I don't know that that's what helped you guys out too.
SPEAKER_03:But like, how did how did that happen? That's definitely credit where Manny goes. I mean, that's really Manny's side. You know, he made like a really good connection. We met with him at our office a few times. I can't say exactly who it is, but yeah uh, you know, we had a really good connection and they could they saw our potential. And of course, you know, uh things just clicked really well. And they're like, hey, you know, we'll we'll invest in your project. And then from there, you know, you kind of get things in writing and then they start funding the project. And then you have to still meet, you know, certain KPIs and CPAs and things like that, and then they'll they'll fund your project.
SPEAKER_02:And and how do you do you guys like your monthly meetings where you're going over financials, see you're on track, or how is the whole thing?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, um, I mean, they have access to everything, like our financials and our and our book, everything kind of actually goes through them because they're an FMO. Um, so you know what I mean, they can see kind of everything. So it's all fully transparent. So they know the performance, you know. So the risk is as long as you're performing, you think about it, the risk is is relatively low.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know, there's just that debt that has to be carried. That's probably the biggest risk is how long you're carrying that debt and you know how fast you're growing.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah, so have you ever had uh I don't know if you've had maybe a a month or a period of time where you the you were off your projections, right? Was there every was there has there been a such a situation where maybe the investors get nervous, like, hey, what's going on here?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think retention, and that's something that's really hard to control because you know you build out your retention model and you're like, okay, the retention is gonna be a drop off, uh, you know, we're gonna lose five percent of our book per month, and it ends up being 10%. Well, that just you know made things different. Now, here's the cool part I can now say, since we actually have real data, because you know, going into ACA, there's a lot of like different, you know, numbers that people are saying, oh, retention could be this or this, or you know, there's a lot of different numbers. So we kind of took like the average of what we heard, but now that we've actually done it, we know what it actually is, and we can put in those numbers plus a little higher to be safe, you know what I mean? But it could still be different for you because once again, I could sit here and tell you, hey, this is gonna be the retention. But if you have a better retention team, yeah, or you're really good at doing the callbacks and whatnot, your numbers could be completely different. Or if you don't have that in place, it's gonna be a lot worse, which is why I think we heard so many numbers and we thought our retention was dialed in. We've gotten a lot better, I would say, in the last, you know, uh six months, we've kind of dialed it in. But now we have more accurate performers in a sense, right? Because we can put in the real data. And we still, like I say, we still skew the data so it's it's more you know negative, just so we have that buffer room, right? So if retention is, for example, we're losing, you know, let's just say the five percent example, we're losing five percent a month. We may actually put in seven or eight, yeah, just to have that buffer room, right? So that way if you do better, you're happy. And if you do, you know, it's very unlikely you're gonna do worse if you're you know skewing the numbers that way.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and and again, the retention, that's what I was talking about with the debt why and I didn't get into that debt business because we did the performers, we're doing the numbers, and at 30%, it would work, but it wasn't it, it would, it was very the juice wasn't really worth the squeeze. I'm like, if these fucking guys are not being transparent, right? And if it's really fucking even 33%, this thing changes. So we were thinking, we think it is more like 40 or 50. And we started talking to people.
SPEAKER_03:And then when you run those numbers, you're just scary as shit.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. So I mean it sounded good, and there's a lot of, you know, they do a whole dog and pony show. And dude, I'm a fucking salespeople are the easy people to sell, right? And bro, I I hear fucking energy in the call. I went to this call center, I see the energy, I'm like, oh, this is fucking great. These guys have a good call center, but just because you have a good call center doesn't mean you know, there's other shit. So they the bottom line is that you gotta run those performers, you gotta know those numbers. And I'm glad you talked about the retention aspect because that's the whole that's that wild card that could fucking sink you.
SPEAKER_03:That's another thing that people need to be aware of. Going to agency is retention, and just don't guess or you know, just because someone says, hey, it could be this, you really honestly aren't gonna know until you actually in the trenches. That's the scary part about it, I think. You can have estimates, like I said, you can be like, I think it's this, you can go really high if you want to, but at the end of the day, you're really not gonna know what your retention is until you actually run it. And luckily we have that data now, right? So I I couldn't tell you, hey Dave, if you did the same thing, I can be like, yeah, man, your retention should be like this, you know, because it's gonna be so variable depending on what you, you know, if you have a retention team set up, how you know how you're doing your callbacks and everything in between, right? Yeah, there's a lot of factors.
SPEAKER_02:No, it's huge. No, I think this is great, then this has been you, you you run deep in here, man. I really appreciate it. And uh, you know, I was also gonna say, um, I when I again when I met Manny, you guys were doing a lot in sp in Spanish, right? I'm sure you you're doing that in the insurance side as well. I mean, you're bilingual agents, I'm assuming you are. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:We're still doing Spanish, of course. We have about half and half right now on our agents. So we're about 30 agents, half are about Spanish and half are English.
SPEAKER_02:That's amazing. Yeah, I remember when I met, I thought about doing this myself, man, but uh it's uh it's like a sp a Spanish auto, man. I feel like that's gotta be fucking hot. Yeah, someone's got the right team for that. And then here in Miami, too, not just auto, but Medica. There's I was talking to Manny Bow the other day, like you drive around and you got these buses, like these two grandmothers. I don't know if they call Las Ahuelas or Las Carinas, some shit like that, but they these these two like olderly, they built this fucking mega like company, man, like probably worth billions of dollars. You know, just in Spanish, it's freaking crazy.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's no, it's a huge market and it's untapped. You know, there's not as many people competing for the Spanish audience.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And it's out there, you know. I think a lot of people they don't compete because they're maybe they're not bilingual or they're like, well, I think that's probably what it is, right? Like, yeah, if I was by myself, I'd probably just be doing English creatives. But do you do stuff? And do you are you part on the Spanish side with the creatives too? I mean, what they do is they take sometimes they will often take the English creatives and just translate them to Spanish, or we'll have a producer that does do Spanish and they can actually go and recreate the content. Yeah. Uh, I mean, Manny's done a lot of Spanish content. Probably our best content from Spanish has been content that Manny has done.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, no, he's dialed the fuck it. I've seen the ads, they're great. And that's just I there's another guy in this area who's done uh he used to be big in solar, and his solar ads were fucking great, man. And it won't, it wasn't any, we talked about this at ColumbiaCon, right? And I mean, it wasn't anything fancy. He took like the camera out and it was just amazing. Uh what the fuck? Look at that. But uh all good. We keep rolling. But no, but it was just crazy. Like the the it was like UGC shit, man. It would just fucking work, man, and like like a chart, man. Just in the neighborhood. Oh, this guy just went sold or like in a car, like just just like stuff that doesn't like really fucking make sense, but like it works. Yeah, logically it doesn't make sense, but it just works.
SPEAKER_03:Sometimes the simple ads work, and we see that even to this day. Like sometimes we'll do these really crazy things, and it will work to a point, but then you do something that's simple, like that takes you less than a few minutes, and that one performs better. I think it's just how authentic and how relatable it is. Like sometimes when you overproduce something, people are like, Oh, this has to be an ad, this has to be staged. Yeah, but when we see underproduced authentic content, that that's what really is performs. People just want to relate, you know, at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, at ColumbiaCon, we talked about you guys showed your debt ads, uh, the one in front of the bank, right? And yeah, the heist, the money heist sort of thing that you guys uh got in trouble for. But that's what it was. It was fucking like it felt real as shit, man. It was like the and I think you didn't even tell the girl was like visibly shaken because she thought there was like a real robbery going on. Like it was like it was amazing, man.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's the thing. We captured the authenticity through that. And you know, that's a that's a good ad. The ad did perform, but the funny thing is we've had ads that we spent way less time on perform even better than that, right? Like we've had ads where it's just been like the one take on the phone, and you know, it's crazy, you know, like you can so I'm saying you just don't know like how well an ad is gonna perform until you test. And you know, on our creative process, we're just we're probably whipping out like 300 creatives a week right now. So uh unique pieces of content is a little bit less, probably about 80 unique pieces. And then uh it gets spun off into variations, you know, that content. Like so they take that unique content and then they spin it. We're doing a little bit more with AI now because I don't know if you've been seeing the developments of AI with Sora 2 and you know, VO3 3.1 uh just came out and there's all these updates. It's almost hard to keep up with all the updates, but it's so good now that you can create, you know, really authentic looking footage for your hooks, build the storyline, build testimonials. So we're mixing a lot of AI, but we still do a lot of UGC. I would say now, you know, we used to be pretty much 100% UGC. Then with VO coming out and Sora, we kind of went more now. We're more like 50-50. We kind of just slowly move the needle and we're blending it now.
SPEAKER_02:And how is that it's it's still working? Like the profitability is the same, gone higher. Like how's been how's that affecting overall numbers?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, the numbers probably about the same in terms of profitability. I think it's allowed us to test more and scale more because it's a lot easier to generate an AI video than having to go out, line up actors, and you know, generate all you know, all that stuff when you can just do it with a promo. Yeah, and you know, you see people really just crushing it. Are you guys doing a lot of AI too?
SPEAKER_02:We have a media bar is doing pretty decent with him, but there's it's above my head, man. That's not my my thing, but yeah, the the the VO. I know he's big in VO, all those updates. Yeah, he does that for home improvement, man. But we gotta do more of it, man. I feel I feel like we're behind. We just added an email marketer to our team. The guy, I was selling chance yesterday. The guy's blowing my fucking mind away with this stuff that he's doing, man. So I think that's gonna be awesome. And not only just from the creative side, but also with uh the analytics, the way he's able to like pump out these reports. Ankru came to my office in Aventura like fucking three, four months ago. He humbled me, man. And you know, you know what I've been finding? I don't know this happened to you, but recently the last three or four months, I've haven't I'm having people fucking humble me, man. And they're they're challenging me. And I appreciate that. Ancre is like, Dave, man, you're too old school. You're you guys are doing this, like, and like that that lit a fire under my ass, bro. I was like, yo, we gotta send this motherfucker to this AI think we gotta do this, do that. And it helped. It really helped. And now we got we just like attracted this this this guy in our team that's a fucking vet, man. And he knows AI so well. Like, I feel like this guy's gonna take our shit to the next level, especially when we're about to do shit with mortgage, the stuff, and the home improvements become so competitive, it's so saturated that you really have to have a fucking edge. And for a while we were doing the same shit everyone else was doing, that's why we weren't going. But now I feel like with these components and also like Anchor lighting a fire under mask, Adam Young's on my ass with a lot of shit. Like, I feel this is good, you need it, man.
SPEAKER_03:No, with automation, she can't get left behind. Like, you know, we we were really to be honest, we were against AI video for a while, and I'll tell you the reason why, because it sucked. Like it didn't look, yeah, exactly. It didn't look good. And uh I was like, why would we want to do something that looks clearly fake? And then what really was a turning point for me is seeing, you know, VO3 and now Sora. And I'm like, wow, this actually looks real. People think it's real because you see people posting videos on on social media, like there was one that went really viral of like some rabbits jumping on a trampoline that was super viral, and everybody thought it was real, but it was actually AI because it was like 12 rabbits jumping on a trampoline. It looked real because it was like security camera video, and if you saw it, you'd think it's authentic. But you know, a lot of the AI videos, what is the giveaway is that they push the envelope so far, like you'll see like a dog walking up to a door, and you're like, Okay, this is real, and then a moment out of nowhere, an eagle comes and picks it up, and yeah, does some wild shit with it, you know?
SPEAKER_02:No, yeah, it's been it's been I I forgot some stuff to my wife on Instagram, like, and it's some of the shit I'm not wasn't even sure, like some alligator attack.
SPEAKER_03:I'm like, Yeah, those are most likely AI.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, for sure. But like, but some did they they they gotten way, way better.
SPEAKER_03:They get they get you at first, and then yeah, it depends on where they take it. I mean, if you're if you really want to trick people, just keep it like something that could just be as if it was done as in real life, right? Yeah, will this really happen in real life? If an alligator is gonna come up to the door and like eat your child, that's probably fake. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, because that'd be all over the muse. Yeah, it's crazy shit.
SPEAKER_02:But what what what are good resources for for you in terms of uh well without without spilling like the the sauce, man? Like what's helped you kind of stay ahead of the curve? Like I mentioned with me, man. I I was our company, you know, it's almost embarrassing how how far behind the curve you were with it with AI, man. Of course, trying to catch up on what are like some tips for the audience? Like where where would you start? I mean, let's say you're like a novice or or you're someone that's like your novice, you're in the mirror, and you're more advanced. Like, what are those like through where would you go?
SPEAKER_03:Like how to stay on the AI track.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like how to stay on, like where to start, or when your viewer advanced, like where how to stay ahead of the curve, like that kind of shit, man.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think a lot of it too, like when we hear about new AI tools, is that typically um, you know, there are there are influencers on TikTok that share new AI tools. Um, so I'm kind of subscribed to some of those. I can't think of any specific names, but and and when you watch that type of content, you know, you get targeted with more. So I'm getting targeted with like content and new tools. It's like, oh, this tool and there, you know, because because let's be honest, I have no time to go sit there and go on Google and and or chat GBT and you know look for, hey, what are these top AI tools? I let the content kind of come to me. So there'll be like an influencer that does a little demo on it. And if the demo is interesting, then I'll go and actually try it. Like the influencer in TikTok will be like, oh, you know, this new tool will let you do this, this, and this. And I'm like, first I ask myself, is this something that we could use that would make something better? And if the answer is yes, then I'll either pass it to our editing team and I'll let them try it, or I'll take some time and try it myself. And Manny does the same thing. Yeah, we are just on TikTok looking at you know new AI tools. So I think that's a good, great way to get information is let people who are already in the space, like there's literally creators out there that are just out there trying every tool and giving their like real feedback. You know, they're not endorsed, they're just like, hey, this tool, this is what it does, here's what you can do with it. And then you can be like, look at that yourself, Dave, and be like, well, is this something I would use on my, you know, my company, or do I pass on this? Yeah. So that I think that's a great way to get information for real.
SPEAKER_02:How much time a week do you think you allocate on that to to research?
SPEAKER_03:Well, because I get targeted I guess get targeted when I'm scrolling TikTok. So I mean, it could just be in my free time that I get targeted. But you could, if you wanted to actually go locate time, you probably wouldn't need to locate more than like a couple times a week, like two times a week, um, 30 minutes. Yeah so about an hour a week. Oh wow, not even that much time here for a good thing. Because there's so much stuff coming out every day. Like if you went just in on Monday, Friday, you know, follow all those, uh just type in AI tools or you know, new AI software in the search box and TikTok's gonna start feeding you. And then when you start watching those videos, you know, because they kind of watch your watch time, right? So the moment you're watching, you know, five videos like that, then you go back to your normal feed and you're gonna start getting targeted with more. Or you can follow, follow their pages, and then it's just getting kind of fed to you. And then if you see something you like, go try it. Or if you don't have time, you need some, I think you need someone on your team that is willing to go and like try these things, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you need that that that that specialist, right? Is what it comes out to. And I that's why I feel excited.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and since we have a team of like editors, media buyers, depending on the category. So if like it's if it's something for media buyers, then we'll forward that video to the media buyers. Yeah. If it's for editors, because we have different channels, right? Then we'll forward that over to the editors or the creative team. Whoever, whoever it applies to, we'll give it to them. And then in some cases, if the tool's really impressive, like Sora 2, I didn't pass on that. I like jumped on that right away. Same with VO3, like those two tools really caught my attention because I started watching it on it, and it's so, and you know when a tool is really good, every influencer is talking about it, right? And then you're like, okay, I have to try this. And then you have the smaller tools that come into play, which I can't think of any off the top of my head, but people talk about them and you're like, okay, like they had one for I think they had one for Premiere Pro that automatically like, you know, uh cuts the video, sinks it to the audio, does some cool stuff. Okay, that's cool. I'll come back to this one later, but you know, it's not gonna be as much of a game changer because it's gonna save a little time for the editors making their cuts. And there was something similar in CapCut, but I was like, you know, I'll come back to this one later because I think what's gonna be more impactful is you know Sora 2 and VO3 because everybody's talking about it, and then you're actually seeing the end result because what people do is they're posting their VO3 generated videos and their Sora videos, and you see it and you're like, wow, this is really cool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's great, man. The pace, the so freaking fast, how quick the stuff is happening, man. It's it's it's uh you know, I went I'm I'm old, man. I went to school during the dot-com bubble. I didn't think we'd be here. Yes, you're right. So I know it's crazy how how but the back then things were evolving so fast. But this the evolution of this is just a whole nother fucking level. It's crazy. Super competitive, yeah, super. And then you look at the stock market, right? I mean, all-time highs, and you have like two Americas right now, right? Yeah, NVIDIA is going crazy, right? Nvidia, the Mag 7, right? And these are these are the ones that's what's really carrying the market high. But the rest of the like you got Chipotle going down, you get all these other stocks, like the you're even saying like Costco starting to have issues, but the these the this has been such a driving force, right? So it is a future, and then as internet marketers, people that make a living off of this, this is it's good for us. It's like it's still there's a long runway, is what it comes down to.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think that if you're not getting into AI now, especially with how good it is, and it's only gonna get better. Like, I would say video is already the way, depending on how you generate it, you can already make a video that looks authentic. Like that's already done. So it's like, what's the next, what's the next step? Do we generate longer videos? Are we gonna, you know, I think I think we're gonna get to a point to where, you know, you're gonna be on Meta, uh, you're launching ads on Meta or TikTok, and it's gonna automatically like generate winning creatives for you. I think it could get that crazy. Yeah, like that is not that is not, you know, that's something that's actually possible. How far do you think we are from that? I think we get there in one to two years. Wow. I mean, based on how fast we're moving, yeah, one to two years. I mean, imagine that where you just like say, I need a creative for this, and it's just gonna generate a bunch and split tests for you. Yeah, like it's gonna spend your money split testing, and then it's gonna find a winning creative for you, and then you're gonna be able to scale that.
SPEAKER_02:That's crazy.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I think Meta or the platforms are gonna get there way faster than us. We could create that ourselves because they have way more data. They already have the data on their, they're they're you know, they're they're people uh people like you. Yeah, they got so much fucking data.
SPEAKER_02:It's just crazy.
SPEAKER_03:They can optimize a lot faster than us. I mean, you could you could probably have someone go and try to create that, but let's be honest, you don't have the data to make it good, you know?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, they're it's all data at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_03:I do see that coming where you literally go to Meta, you put in your U URL, and you're like, hey, I need an ad for this, and it's gonna match everything and it's gonna actually generate stuff that works. Yeah, and that's where it's gonna get scary. Yeah, because that's gonna like eliminate the barrier to people making ads. But I think that it even may get to the point to where it just generates 50 creatives for you, and it's like, okay, I'll split test all these for you. And when we find the winner, then that's it. And you don't have to do anything.
SPEAKER_02:Ringba is the leading inbound call tracking and analytics platform for marketers, brands, and paper call teams. It gives you real-time reporting, intelligent call routing, and fully customizable call flows backed by global telecom access in more than 60 countries. With enterprise-grade reliability, a powerful API, and no contracts or set of fees, Ringba has become a go-to platform for performance marketers worldwide. To learn more and to sign up, check out the link in the description below. Get golden and let's fucking go. And that's a competitive advantage, that data, man. And you want to talk about that? I know we're talking offline with Mandy about the data size. That's something you've got we want to jump into.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we are doing a little bit with data because we are generating so many leads. Um, you know, we are we are generating our own data. So one thing we're doing now is we're doing, we're getting into SMS and the email side. We're actually building out a data team to monetize that because we realize that, you know, as we're generating leads, a lot of people are like, you know, on the affiliate side, they're just making that front-end money. But when you're generating a lead, what do you have when you generate a lead? Well, you have an email, you have a phone number, depending on what you know fields you're generating. And I think a lot of people are just missing out on actually monetizing that. And so we realize that we need to get on that because we've been that we haven't been monetizing data for a while up until recently. And that's another thing that could really, you know, compound or snowball. Because if you're generating, let's just say 5,000 records a day or whatever it is, that's going to compound over time. I mean, 5,000 records a day, 10,000, you know, tomorrow, 15,000 the next day. Before you know it, you have a million people on your list. Um, I was in that scenario a while back uh in 20, I think 2016 with A Weber, back when you know, Philly Marketing, everything was lax. I actually built up a list to about a million uh subscribers through Rent Own, just collect the emails. And this is back before the you know, the inbox uh it was only like the primary. That was hot for a while. That was very hot, yeah. Even the the Day brothers uh ran that too. That's kind of where we got started. And we would just hammer those A Weber lists, and I would send like three offers a day, and it was the Wild West because you could just mail like crazy. And that lasted for a while. I want to say like a little over a year, but then A Weber started cracking down, and they're like, Oh, you can't mail so much. So I had to go from mailing like three times a day to once, and then they didn't like that I was doing like affiliate marketing, so they eventually just terminated my account. But I had a million people on my list, and that list would generate me, man. Like honestly, just by sending emails, not even what I was making on the front end. I was generating anywhere from like$10,000 to$30,000 a day just off email. Like it was variable because you know, some days were good, some days were bad. But there's sometimes when I was sending three times a day, I was generating close to like 30 grand.
SPEAKER_01:That's great.
SPEAKER_03:Because I was sending out just like credit score offers and free trials. And you know, the credit score offers, um, I think they're still around. You know, people put in their credit card, but it doesn't it costs them like a dollar and then it bills them, you know,$30 in seven days, and you can make a lot off those. Yeah, especially back then. I don't know if people fall for that as easily now, but back then that thing just opted in. Because I would put something like, uh, you know, if you want to qualify for rent own, you have to check your credit first. And then people would actually want to go check their credit. It was just it was just driving, it was all about the angle. So I'd get a ton of those, and I remember like that offer could do$10,000 a day. That's just one link, but I would put like three links in the email, three different offers, and some people would fill out more than one because I'd be like, step one, do this, like to qualify for your rent-owned package or something like that. You know, step one, do this, step two, do this, step three, do this. So it'd like credit check, something else, something else. And then some people would go through and do all three offers, and dude, you're making so much money off of one person.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's crazy, man. I I you talk about the credit card, but probably right around that time, may 20, I don't know, 20, probably 2016. I signed up for Lexington Law. That's actually, we did some Lexington Law stuff on the back end, yeah. Yeah, bro. So what happened was I don't know what happened. This happens to me like every three years. I'll be like, I have like a fucking medical bill for like$10. Something I forget about them, boom, fucks up my credit, right? So something like that happened to me. I got Lexington Law, and man, I think I was paying for that shit for six years. I never forgot like my credit went up. I'm back like at where I need to be, like in the city. You're like nine bucks a month or something. Yeah, and then I didn't even live in there anymore. Like I had a house in like South Carolina, and then fucking like I noticed like you know, way later, yo, why am I paying? I'm paying like fucking, I don't know what it was,$30,$40,$50 a month for this thing, man. And uh, it's just crazy. What the lifetime value on me was so good, and that happens. I mean, it's I'm probably I probably was like an anomaly, but I'm the one helping the overall campaign. But people they they forget about it. It's crazy, man.
SPEAKER_03:A lot of people I get on those recurring stuff and they forget about it. You know, you'd be surprised.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:But it's yeah, that's why you got to build that goes back to building the real business, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Well, yeah, you build the and then you know I read we did a I didn't this I didn't own this company, but I built the big call center in South Carolina. We're uh we had a campaign, a home warranty campaign. Man, it's just crazy how people stay on these things for like you know, six, seven. It's a legit product, it's a little legit product, man. I mean, not to say, but it was like a set and forget it. Once someone signs up, and back then what was good about that product is that it was going on their electric bill. So it's not you didn't need to collect credit card, like you know, and it'll be like, I don't know what it was,$10 a month,$20, something where it's not you're not gonna like feel the impact. But man, it's crazy that the the book of business on that kind of shit, man. Oh yeah. And I always thought, you know, this is before I started my lead gen company, but in I think after I started lead gen company, all these people that home warranty, they'd probably be great for auto warranty, right?
SPEAKER_03:Like, how do you remind cross-sell them, right? That's where that's where data comes in because you can cross-sell the data, right? Like you can have as long as you have the opt-in, um, or you can, you know, like if they they have auto insurance, but maybe they're a homeowner, you can get them solar or something that a homeowner would need, right? And that's where the money is. And uh, that's what we're exploring with now. I mean, that's a whole nother, whole nother ball game, you know?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I love it, man. Yeah, and and that's great because at the end of the day, you know, you get that lead, right? And there's it's almost like I remember someone had the analogy about butcher. Like the butcher doesn't let anything go to waste. They cut this piece, this piece, this piece, right? And then even the fucking bone goes to the solar to the dogs, right? To the pet.
SPEAKER_03:That's the mindset we need to be in when we're yeah, we're generating leads, I think.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and what I love about what you guys have done, going back to the affiliate curse, you have a successful lead gen company, leads icon, that's putting up really big numbers, right? And all these different verticals. We'll touch about that in a minute. But then that's fueling because that's paying for your lifestyle, and it's fueling your ability to build something longer term. So not that it's not just short term, you got the short term, and you got the long term. That's the way to grow wealth, that's the way to start a yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You get the best of both worlds, and then now we're mixing in data. So I think it's just a matter of time. Once, once we're out of debt with this project and and that's gonna the data's going, I mean, we're gonna be like in a really, really good position, I think.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I love that you're talking about the debt side of it. Some people won't want to talk about it. They want to talk about all, you know, we'll make it all this money, but uh, this is the bad, the the real, the bad, the good, the bad, the ugly. We talked my my partner had his last name was Pain. We thought about doing a podcast called Pain Points and talking about, you know, I joke around, hey, you're making money, whatever. We use because that's that's what sells, right? But bro, like one day he was like, nah, we should talk about how much fucking money we lost. Let's talk about some real shit. Yeah, and it's true though, because I mean you have these fucking days, like, what the fuck, man? And and then, and then there's there's like you're talking about, you know, to start your agent, you need to get invested, you need to have debt. You like there's shit you gotta do. That's the stuff you gotta go through. And once you get through that, though, man, that's the other side, man.
SPEAKER_03:It's typically it's people that are like selling the courses that are only talking about the good things, right? Like when you have like a you know, because they want to they only want to show the good side of things. But the truth is there's a lot of struggles, you know, there's a lot of challenges. I should say not struggles, there's a lot of challenges that you're gonna encounter, you know, when you're actually building any business, I think. Yeah, it's just not always like easy, even though sometimes people on the outside looking in, they just see the success. They see like, wow, you know, you have this, you did this. It's like, well, yeah, but do you realize what I had to do to get here, you know?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, 100%. Man, now this is great. I'm I appreciate you going deep into that side. Now with Leeds Icon, right? What what verticals? I know you guys were well known, and when I met you guys massive in the debt side, right? Yeah. I don't know if you guys are still doing that, but what are you guys working on? What's clicking for you?
SPEAKER_03:So not so much debt. We're doing a lot of um, we're in the fight, so we're doing a lot of a lot of insurance, so ACA, auto, Medicare, also sending, you know, we also send that internally, but then we also send externally as well. Um, so we're kind of diversified. And so, you know, we have found a lot of success to be honest, in in leads, lead generation specifically. Um, but yeah, we're kind of diversified in verticals. Those are probably like our main three right now. How about do you say final expense on that? Uh we're doing a little bit of final expense. Yeah, we're dabbling back into that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:But definitely more doing like um insurance and auto side.
SPEAKER_02:What's working best for you at all those verticals? Probably auto right now, for sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I hear auto is um, I know it was hot as shit for a while, right? And I feel like there's some people starting to have issues with it. They feel like it's it's cooling off, or uh the buyers are just they they they they're getting paused and they they they can't really scroll by. I've heard some people put up ridiculous numbers, man, uh on auto. And it sounds like it's it sounds like it's a very kind of like volatile, but and but when it's we hit that hot streak, you can make like stupid money. Like you can make like like like in a in a week what you could make in like in a year in another vertical. Is that right? Or yeah.
SPEAKER_03:No, that is true. That is true. Yeah, we had some really um it's a little challenging right now, but we had some really big like runs uh you know earlier in the year. Uh huh. But you know, it has its ups and downs, exactly like what you're saying. I think right now it's hot because we're in Q4 at Medicare, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Everyone's running Medicare and there's a lot of opportunity there. But yeah, auto is one of those things where I think we've really dialed in the whole creative process, right? I think it comes down to that and just also everything we've done internally with our team, the way we built out our media buyers, our editors, our creative process. And I think that's been probably the biggest part of our success. But yeah, no, there's a lot you can do, man, there in auto. It's insane.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it is. Uh let's talk about Medicare, open enrollment, right? We're in the middle of it right now. I'm hearing, I'm hearing some mixed things uh from people, right? I'm hearing some a lot of a lot of good media by guys that put up fucking dumb numbers in multiple six figures a day. Uh they've done that historically, but they're they're saying that this year and RPCs are down. Uh, are you guys seeing the same? What's been we are, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:We're seeing the same. We had a big challenge when we first started, you know, there was some stuff that we ran that was just not profitable. The media, you know, there's some stuff that was not set up right, uh, some old landing pages that got launched. So we had to do a little bit of cleanup, which actually delayed us. But we finally, you know, we finally got that fixed. And yeah, the numbers are not as good as what we've seen in previous years. Um, but we're doing enough to kind of feed. I mean, the reason why we're doing Medicare is mostly enough to feed our call center here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And then, you know, obviously extra. We're not like looking to, you know, it's not like our main vertical that we're actively scaling. So um maybe we're not seeing the pain points as bad as everyone else. But yeah, there's definitely a big difference from when we ran it last year with RPCs and you know, we've been a lot doing a lot of split testing, even like throwing up different creatives. Um, I don't know, maybe it could be because there's a lot of competition, yeah, you know, in Medicare. It's a very competitive uh niche. I think even Adam Young sometimes says, like, yeah, stay out of Medicare, right? Or all you guys want to do Medicare, right? He said something about yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I was like we were at fucking contact IO, man, and uh I was doing a panel uh about Medicare, and then Adam Young does the keynote speech, and he was like, listen, guys, you're gonna pay. There's more to life than Medicare. Yeah, he's like he's like he's pretty much he shit all over Medicare, man. He's like, fuck Medicare, da da da da. I'm like, great, I'm about to speak about Medicare, man. But uh he knows best. I mean, he's yeah, he sees it all. He's got the bird's eye view, but but but it but it's but the there's people that though like the Manny Zuckerel, he's like they've been doing it so long that they have and there's so many components to like you want to have the direct buyers, you gotta have this relationship. I mean, he's freaking talking to Congress, you know. Yeah, like this is like it's a different level, is what it comes down to.
SPEAKER_03:And there's always opportunity, right? Like if you've been in a certain vertical or or niche for a long time, you become an expert exactly at that. Like I think there's a niche where we've been we became an expert at. I think you know, auto is definitely our, you know, we're expert because even where we started, or you know, Manny started. Um, this was before I joined, they were crushing auto.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And I mean, that's just speaks volumes, you know, the car dropping down. I think that when you really understand the vertical, it becomes like the back of your hand, right? Like when you're really involved, I'm sure solar, like you were really big in trouble. Yeah, I do. You probably knew that like the back of your hand. You probably still do, right? And so you could get back into it, and you know, and everything levels out and you could just crush it.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm glad you mentioned that because I I did remember when I met Mandy because he was crushing auto, but he he transitioned the debt because that auto had went through its cold streak.
SPEAKER_03:Three, yeah, there was, and that was a market thing, that was all economics. And so when that happens, just like solar, that's like so out of your control, and that sucks when that happens. Yeah, that's why you need to have backup plan and you need to have like other offers you could run because you don't know what economics could affect. And refi, you know, went through the same thing. Um, hopefully it comes back one of these days. But I mean, I crushed ReFi when the rates dropped, but also I can't just say, Yes, I had good creatives, obviously, but also the economics allowed me to crush it, you know, doing like, well, I was doing between 100, 150k every single day. And that lasted pretty much why the rates were low.
SPEAKER_02:What period of time that was that?
SPEAKER_03:That would have been back in when did the rates hit like, I don't know, they hit like low threes or low twos. That was probably back in 2020. Was it before COVID or after that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think I think it was right after, honestly. I think it was like 2021, 2022.
SPEAKER_03:That sounds about right. Yeah, I don't remember the exact year. It would have been before, yeah, it was before I started working with these guys. But yeah, refi was huge for me and it the rates dropped, and it was just more of like just educating people on like what a rate drop is. But people are going crazy. I mean, there was a refi, literally like a refi frenzy.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, there's a year.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you were serving ads to people and uh talking about refi, and they were just signing up, signing up, and yeah, the volume was insane.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's what I love about this this industry, as much like in wing there's always uh upflow, right? There's always a wave, right? If you can catch that, but then I think your your template is is great. And and there's been another people that have done it successfully where you and that's what they talked about at Geek Out. I was uh I forgot the guy's name, Mark Keller, I think was his name. Union Square Media, and then uh he also has um auto auto insurance. Man, you know, you you they they ride these waves or they become really good at one vertical and ride other waves, and then they use that money to fuel the ulcer money, right? Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:That's the beauty when that's basically what we're doing. You know, we're out we're using uh you know this this big wave we have, you know, still doing really well. Um, and you know, we can use that to fund other things, you know, look for other projects, other verticals, fund this project if we needed to, you know what I mean? I think that's the big mindset that you have to be in is like, you know, don't just chase the fast money. You need to also you know be willing to pivot and diversify because nothing good lasts forever, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, 100%.
SPEAKER_03:You just never know. Something could change tomorrow that makes this vertical just like, you know, yeah, dead.
SPEAKER_02:Over overnight, you know, it happens all the time. And I think that going back to what we were saying about when do you know the timing is right. And we talk about having when you have kids, you know, I think as a man that that financial stability is like a massive thing, right? Is what it comes out to. And then when if you have uh if you have if you if you you live and die off of every fucking campaign, you shouldn't jump into running an agency or having some some business that's gonna require a lot of capital because you're not just gonna you're not gonna think right.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend it that unless you have like an investor to back you up or someone with deep pockets. If you're trying to fund it on yourself, you know, you should be very financially stable. Either you're bringing in, you know, good cash flow every month or you have a nest egg aside that you're willing to invest. That might be a good time to really consider because you know, whatever money you think you need, just just think you need probably double that just to be safe, right? Like if you think, oh, I could only start it with this, yeah, probably actually gonna need more than that because you don't really know until you run into all the challenges that you're gonna run into, which there will be. It'd be impossible, I think, to start something like this and not run into any challenges.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I love it, man. So I we always say on LFG shows, success leaves clues, right? What what what's your daily routine like in Arizona?
SPEAKER_03:Oh gosh. So I mean, I wake up every morning at pretty much 6 a.m. Um, I like to wake up early. Even on weekends, I now wake up at 6 a.m. I think it's just become a habit. Uh, and then I'll either, you know, drop, depending on the timing, I'll either drop the kids off at school or my wife will, and then I'll head to the office now because we have an office and I'll pretty much work there up until like three to four. Um, so I'm there, you know, most of the day. And then now after that, you know, I'm I'm going to the gym. That's one thing that I've been putting priority on because I think that's uh huge, right? Like you get you can't just be like wealthy and not be healthy. You gotta have both. So I I really took that seriously, I think, in the past like five or six months. I mean, you probably seen me last time, and I'm still working on it. Like, I'm still still gonna do more. But like now, I make that it's it's now uh it's a habit, it's a daily habit for me. I'm doing that seven days a week, um, tracking everything, you know, calories, macros, all that good stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Congratulations, by the way, on that man. It's true. I when I was uh I think I last saw you, I don't know where.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I've been over six months ago because I haven't traveled since I I know we saw each other in Columbia, which is January, and I feel like we saw each other after that too. But congratulations, man. I mean you you can obviously you see the results, man. And that and that's that's not easy, honestly. It's like especially in in in our in our we there's so much hustle and bustle in our in our life, right? And that yeah, especially when you travel a lot, there's a lot of bullshit food options at the airport for this bad food, man.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and we sit a lot too. So for me, I was on the computer most of the day editing videos before. I mean, even before we had our team, I would just sit there and just edit and edit. And I would like forget, I'd have my food like come to me as I'm sitting on the computer. And you're like not even getting up, and then you know, the day is done, and you're like, shoot, I didn't exercise. And you know, it's like, did I have time? Should I have done that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And now it's like, I have I think I have a better schedule. Now I think with the office it's helped too, because I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go into work at this time, I'm done at this time, and then I know right after I can head to the gym, you know, do an hour workout, whatever it may be, and then go home from there. And tracking, obviously, food is more important because you can, you know, you can definitely lose weight without exercise. Yeah. Uh so and you can really un do, you cannot work a bad diet, right? So, like if you even if you work out and you go and have a donut or whatever, you're gonna like undo everything you did. So yeah, diet is the most important thing. So I started tracking, you know, my calories, macros, and you know, creating just a deficit. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what you eat as long as you're in a deficit. Of course, high protein is gonna make a difference because it's gonna keep you full longer. Um, and then just going and you know, getting in the exercise.
SPEAKER_02:Bro, you're talking about language. I love this shit, man. I I love this, I I have high energy, right? And I think my diet is one of the reasons for the high energy. Yeah. It helps, right? It really helps a big time. I eat food that I I can digest quickly, right? Drink a lot of green tea recently and caught fucking here. I am drinking a lot more coffee than I thought I'd be drinking. Yeah, coffee, but but straight, but straight black coffee. I'm not drinking fucking sugary lattes, none of that shit. Just straight up black coffee, man. But the point is that I I when when you really feel healthy and you feel good, like I think it I was going to that, it impacts the business in a positive way. It impacts everyone around you, right? You feel the same way?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's also a reflection of you. You know, you got to put the work into yourself too, I think at a point in time. And I I realized that too. Um, and you know, maybe I made some sacrifices early on, like, you know, doing spending so much time on the computer so the company could be successful. And I think a lot of us go through that because we're just at desk jobs, but there's gonna be a point in time where you'll be like, no, I need to balance. And that was, I think, part of the balance that I was missing in my life is like I need to implement this and put this into my schedule. And then no excuses, right? Because once you put it into your schedule, there should be no excuses.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I was gonna ask you, what so what was the aha moment that turning point for you? Did you feel like someone was nagging at you? Or do you like look at a picture? Like, I don't like how I look at it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but it was more like pictures and stuff and videos. I was like, Yeah, no, and you know, you look at it and it's just like, you know, your confidence is like, oh, that's just like I I gotta change this, you know. Like, what am I doing? Yeah, you know what I mean? I'm making all this money, but like, what am I doing? You know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And there's a point where you have to like, you know, you can't just imagine, like, what do they say? Like, there's uh you can have all the money in the world, and and uh if someone's on their deathbed dying because of their health, like they would trade that in a heartbeat, right? They tell you all the money, you know, and we're still young. I mean, even you are still young. I mean, and we have a lot that we want to do in life, and we want to, you know, we want to spend the time with our kids. And I think it's just all those things adding up, and it's just like, you know, I think it was like a really good move. So now I'm just gonna make sure that I stay consistent, you know, and I think I'm I'm very disciplined. That's the thing, you know. That's why I was able to lose basically what was it, 40 pounds in about five months. Just the discipline. And I mean, I was tracking everything, like labels first, because the label is more accurate than just the picture of the feud. Yeah. So I would do labels first when possible, and then it would either be a picture of feud or I'd literally go look up how many calories are on this specific item, track everything, sauces, oils. You have to be. Wow. You can't, you know, you can't skip anything.
SPEAKER_02:But bro, we gotta do a fucking uh we gotta do like a legit offer. Like not I don't want to badmouth fucking black hat neutral shit, but like like a real because I do believe we're at um we're in this awakening, and I think probably the younger generation is more aware of this shit, man, where they won't drink sodas, they know how bad it is for you. There's a lot of, I mean, even like the warders, man, that they're so aware of that. And I feel like I've been aware of this for a long time, man. But and I feel like the the people the people that get ahead of is uh uh Nick Chacofort has has breeze and it's uh non-alcoholic like beverage. I think it has some THC in it, right? But the point is like I feel like there's this there's a waiting going on, and that I feel like at some point you'll do something like that. I feel like I will too, man. It's like it's a passion of mine.
SPEAKER_03:No, it's it's definitely become more in a passion. The more that you get into it and you realize, like, and what's helped with tracking too. Like, I really encourage you to even try it if you're not tracking, is like you'll start to know, like, oh, this has about this many calories. Like, you can now, even though I'll still track it because I want to be as accurate as possible, you'll know like you you're more aware when you're overeating now. Yeah, because I'm like, oh shit, that has a lot of calories and I've already eaten this, this, and this today. Like, if I eat this, I'm gonna go over my daily limit. You know what I mean? So how how what do you do how are you doing exactly to track it? Um, so I'm using an app called the Cal AI. Okay. And you can either take a picture of the photo, Cal AI. Cal AI. Yeah, there's a bunch outside. C-A L dot AI. C-A-L-A-I. Okay, nice. Yeah. Okay. There's a bunch out there. They all, you know, they're all do similar things, but you basically can take a picture of your food or the label. Label is always priority. So if you're doing something that has a label, that's gonna be the most accurate. The food is probably gonna be like 80% accurately accurate, you know, depending on what it is. Like it's pretty accurate if it's a whole banana, whole apple. But if it's like chicken and it has something on it, like it's not gonna be close it off. It'll be close. It's good to be close, right? And then if you want to overestimate, sometimes I'll sometimes I'll go in and add like 10% over. Because once again, I'd rather overestimate so that I'm under eating and I'm in a deficit. Because at the end of the day, all you need to lose weight is a deficit, right? If your body burns, you have a BMR, right? You know what a BMR is? Body mass, your your basal metabolic metabolic, I don't know. I can't even say the word, you're basically it's how much you burn um just by sitting, right? And so once you know what that is, and and you know, for most people, it's around like 2,000 or 2,100 calories, and that's not counting like oops, that's not counting like exercise or just daily movement. So if you're like at a desk job, your BMR is gonna be lower. You're not gonna burn as much, right? Because you're sitting all day. But if you kind of are walking around or standing, your BMR, you're gonna burn a little bit more throughout the day. And then if you exercise, you know, even more on top of that. So you basically have to eat in a deficit. You want to create like a 500-calorie deficit, which would be 3,500 calories a week, which one pound is equal to 3,500 calories.
SPEAKER_02:Damn, man, this guy just fucking broke it down, man.
SPEAKER_03:I love it. So every every if you want to lose a pound, you need to have a deficit of 3,500 calories per week. If you want to lose two pounds, 7,000 calories a week, because one pound of fat is roughly 3,500 calories.
SPEAKER_02:Dude, we got we gotta get them all with Dr. D. Doc Dr. D. We did a podcast with Dr. D. It was like my I don't know what a six or seventh podcast we did. He's my my guy for peptides, man. And man, the guy you would love, you gotta listen to that podcast. We'll do another one with the.
SPEAKER_03:I know I've been I've been watching a lot of stuff on yeah, you know, health and fitness and tracking, and it's just it's like inspiring. Like, so when I first actually when I first got the app, what I did, I I wanted to see how much I was eating before. So I didn't change my diet. So for one week, I just wanted to see like where I'm at.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And so I didn't just go all in. I was just curious. And I was like, you know, I was like overeating some days like 500, 600 calories. And I didn't think I was. I was like, holy shit, you know?
SPEAKER_02:Like yeah, you won't, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:There's certain foods that are and it was sometimes it was like stupid stuff like uh like uh what olive talk about the olive oil. The oil, yeah, olive oil, oil, or you know, depending on what you're cooking in. But for me, it was like boneless wings because I love boneless wings and I would eat those and the breading has so much calories on it, and then you know, that's like eight hundred, that could be 800 calories in like one sitting, and I would be eating that before going to bed. It's just crazy. And then you you track it, and now I'm like going after more whole foods like grilled chicken. Like, I don't even really eat fried anymore. Chick-fil-A, I eat the grilled chicken because you can eat more and it fills you up. Like you can go and get like a 30-count chick-fil-a, think about this a 30-count grilled Chick-fil-A nugget. See if I know this. You should actually Google this right now. Top of my head, I want to say it's like 595 calories. Right. It should be under 600 calories, a 30 count. You can look it up though. It's somewhere around that. Um, I'm curious to see what actually.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, this is what he says.
SPEAKER_03:That'd be crazy.
SPEAKER_02:I love it, man. I I love that you're so that's what it took is. Yeah, like as fucking performance markers and people that you this is these are these are like KPIs, the same shit. Yeah, you know the KPR, you know a person. You gotta know your own shit. Only 470?
unknown:480.
SPEAKER_03:That's lower than I thought.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but they could also you put like a sauce on it. Oh, yeah, I'm I'm thinking with sauce because I can't eat it completely.
SPEAKER_03:Seven grams of protein. You guys think about this, and think 30 pieces of grilled nuggets, and then you even add some sauce, less than 600 calories. That thing's gonna keep you full for a long time. Wow.
SPEAKER_02:That's crazy. Yeah, that's true.
unknown:Two grams of carbon.
SPEAKER_03:Now, if you do the exactly, if you do the the fried chicken they have, I think it's like double that.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, for sure, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So see the big difference.
SPEAKER_02:Dude, I love it, man. I was gonna tell you about this. This is fucking great. No, this is good, this will be the main center of the video. No, no, but it's it's a big thing. It's one of the it's one of the passions. So we're gonna, guys, we got LFG community. We got a telegram group coming on deck pretty soon. Get you in that fucking thing. End of the week, early next week. Adam Young's on my ass, every day cursing me out. D, where's the fucking telegram group? It's coming, guys. But bro, one of the things in the telegram group, and I'm thinking maybe we'll have different silos, right? We have performance marketing, we might have a nutrition machine. Yeah, and because it's it's so important. And I think that, like you said, know a lot of people that financially successful, but man, their their health is terrible. And then they want to, you know, they want to leave with us at an early age or you know, not to get in this aspect, but even like with drugs and shit like that, like overdosing, like the fuck, man. Like, what's it all worth at the end of the day, like for that to take your life? You can control these things, they're controllable.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, they are. Yeah, no, it is. And it's just like people like even the people don't want to like work out going back to nutrition, like it's literally comes down to what you eat. Yeah, like you can literally lose weight just by nutrition alone. Like I said, it's probably 90% diet and then 10% exercise.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Because how many think about this? How many calories can you actually burn if you're an hour at the gym, right? If you're doing pure cardio, you might be able to burn five or six hundred calories.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's a lot less than you would think. You figure like you'd fuck you, you you drench yourself, you think oh, I lost 800, 1000 calories. And what's credit half of that?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, how hard is it to just create that deficit of food? Way easier.
SPEAKER_02:100%. Yeah, it's more controllable, man. That's what it comes down to.
SPEAKER_03:One candy bar. But you know, you need to do both because I think uh, you know, it's good, you know, cardio is good for your heart, and then you know, strength training is good. You want to build muscle. Yeah, you know, and then the more muscle mass you have, the more you burn at rest, too, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So I I love you talked about this because we we talked about, you know, the Legion side, fueling the the agency side, right? We talked about monetizing the data, right, to squeeze more like the butcher scenario, right? Yeah. And now we're talking about the health aspect, but but it's all core, it's all connected. Yeah, you're optimized, you're right. And then when you're when you're feeling good, well, I'm gonna I'll probably I'm gonna maybe too much information kind of shit, but we had a lot of uh, man, the last month in Miami, everyone, the mothers was coming here. And bro, I was going, I was Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights taking people out. And bro, I can tell you what, man, I was going out too much. I was getting home late, over drinking. I threw myself off, and I can tell my production wasn't the same. Yeah, like I like to I like to trade stocks. I was on a run, my run went to shit. The fucking it it really and literally are what you eat, and correct, you know, what you take. And the lack of sleep too. The lack of sleep to me was the big thing. The worst thing is I had I had a whoop, which I fucking lost. But like those days I'm on one percent on the whoop, you know, the other days I'm on 98. Guess what? I'm making money trading, my campaigns, everything's fucking working, man. Yeah, I'm not as I'm not I'm I'm not as moody, but bro, it's it's all connected at the end of the day. So when you're mentally there and you feel good, the confidence is there, and you take care of your sleep, and you're not doing all this fucking crazy shit.
SPEAKER_03:You're gonna make how you feel, it's how you you look. I think it's gonna give you a boost of confidence. You know, I think naturally other people, the way they perceive you and they see you, especially especially with in your space. I mean, you do you do most of the networking, so I think that's important for you. You know, you want that energy, you want that, you know, look. I think it's the trust, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, 100%.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's all connected. It all ties together, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's it's all it's all connected in the day, man. And you know, at the end of the day, optimization is key. Uh Dr. D thinks people, you really optimize, you can get to like 130. Wow. That's how long you can live, right? And he he's convinced he's gonna pass 100. I I want to, I really think I can make it past 100. I mean, we'll see. Uh right. And it's but especially with all these advances. We talk about AI, and in the way you can measure yourself and see like what foods. I mean, for a while, I was I had a uh my my uh my doctor wanted me to put uh on the pet bath, they wanted me to put a glucose monitor because my blood sugars were low. I I always I it's a lot of like if I ate beans, it would spike my glucose. I had no clue that beans would do that, but some some people have sensitivity to certain foods, right? But I I had no clue. If it wasn't for that glucose thing, and I was eating a lot of fucking beans, man, like three, four days a week. And uh so I still I don't have the portion sizes I cut down dramatically. But you didn't you didn't have these sort of measurements or ways to measure this stuff 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago. So imagine what it's gonna be like a year from now, two years from there. Like we we really have a chance to bust through a hundred, like uh like fucking 60 could be what uh what you had a hundred could be like sixty is right now, right? So these advanced technology we gotta take advantage, like we know how to track different things on online, you know, on meta and this and that. You can do that with your body and really push the needle, man. Push it out.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, you can. Yeah, it's insane. No, it's exciting. I'm I'm excited about all this stuff, you know. Just getting into the whole nutrition and health thing, it's been cool. I've been getting targeted with a lot of videos on that now. I love it.
SPEAKER_02:So, all right, with the one the one question I didn't ask when uh that we we we went out we'd all hear uh platforms, right? What are there any other platforms? I mean meta.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so we're on Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and we're also getting into like uh Snapchat as well. We're trying to be everywhere.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Uh and I think especially after Geek Out, I know they talked about different platforms, right? From what I heard from Manny, but we've always been on Meta, we've always been on TikTok. YouTube, we've had we've been on YouTube, but we've just had like a lot of uh ups and downs account bands. So we're I think we find another provider that's been really good for us. And then now we're getting on Snapchat. Okay, obviously, the more platforms you're on, the better. You know, you can reach more people, different CPMs, um, more stability. But the biggest platform for us by far is definitely Meta, Meta number one, and then TikTok is second.
SPEAKER_02:Got it. I hear a Snapchat making uh put like a comment. I know back in when I first got into the industry, back in 2016, Snapchat was huge for debt. It was I knew guys are putting a big number. I don't know if I I would like to say I could be wrong, like maybe 2017 to 2020. Yeah, right. Then um, it sounds like not as much, but I feel like recently it's been making a comeback.
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah. Yeah, no, it has now now there's more people running on Snapchat. I don't know what type of volume they're doing because we just barely got started into it. But you know, there could be probably not as much volume as Meta, let's be real, it's not as big of a platform, but I mean you could probably squeeze, who knows, an extra whatever you're doing on Meta, maybe you do 20% of that on Snapchat, you know, squeeze an extra 20% on your on your bottom line. Yeah, 100%.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of the Day brothers, they were the man, we when solar was popping for us, man. Uh I don't know if there was a 2021, 2022, uh, but there was a they're the only ones that are able to crack solar on TikTok. We tried that, we tried that internally. Bro, it was fucking great, man. We had a nice run. Uh then it didn't last forever, but um that that that's when I knew these guys were the real deal. Yeah. Because they were the ones, and the numbers they were able to do were it was like, I was like, man, this is great, you know. So, and and that people were like shocked because that's when back to when TikTok, everyone associated TikTok with just young, you know, teenagers, like these are homeowners, but they were able to make it work, right? So that that was so.
SPEAKER_03:Hey, you're surprised, you know. You run a Medicare on TikTok, you know, it's like yeah, everyone's kind of everywhere now online.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_03:Uh how about newsbreak? Have you guys done anything in Newsbreak? We we did try, but we didn't have success. But I don't think, I mean, we didn't really try, we only put up like one or two campaigns. I want to call that trying. So I can't say how good the platform is. We haven't put enough like time or effort into it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so we were with Ryan over there. He said that for 45 plus is a big demo there and a lot of female audience. And at Geek Out, there was someone who said that they're they're actually newsbreaker, one of their better uh platforms for Medicare, right? So I think they've been on it for a while though, too. They've been technically.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think I think when you get into a platform, you kind of master the platform. That's more of what the media buyers do. Like they get on a platform, they they master how they launch the ads, and you know what I mean. I think it comes down to spending time. Yeah, they're just so used to. I think our media buyers are so good at made it because that's where they started and that's where they've scaled the most.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's what they know.
SPEAKER_03:So they know, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, they know it, man. How about all these different changes? These algorithms I know and Andromeda a few weeks ago put shit in in uh and I should have done that. When I did that news breakout, I should have said, Andromeda, fuck it up, your money barometer. I thought about that later, man. But how did that all affect you?
SPEAKER_03:And yeah, I mean, there's a there's a lot of changes. I mean, at the end of the day, um, it really comes down, I still think it comes down to creative, right? There could be a million algorithm changes, but at the end of the day, if you have good creatives, it's gonna come through. It's gonna come through the surface no matter what, you know? Yeah. I hear about all these algorithm changes ever since I've started in 2015, and I've just I've ignored a lot of them because it's like if you have a good creative, it doesn't matter. Like the platforms, all they really care about is the user experience. Yeah, so if you have a good creative that's engaging, that gets people's attention, um, you're gonna be able to scale. You know what I mean? That's all it is. That's all it's always been.
SPEAKER_02:Spoken like a true OG right there. And you're right. I mean, you know what it is? It's like fucking people like to blame things, right?
SPEAKER_03:People love to blame things when it's like you gotta sometimes look and see, well, you know, they like when something's going good and then it's going bad, they're like, oh, it's probably because there's an algorithm change, or oh, you know, maybe we're how maybe Facebook's having some updates or something like that. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:But no, usually it's just like it's it's never that. I mean, there could be legitimate outages. I mean, there was an AWS outage that did actually affect things, like that was legitimate, but um for the most part, like, yeah, it's just gonna come down to your creative man.
SPEAKER_02:There's no excuses. I love it. It's like politics, right? I mean, people will be, oh, this person won the fucking country's going to shit, or or this and that. Bro, at the end of the day, fucking figure it out. Get get creative, get creative, figure it out. Yeah, get creative, make creative. That can be a new slogan for us.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, for real. Get creative. I might make a shirt like that now. Get creative, make creatives. Yeah, it's it's true.
SPEAKER_02:Get creative.
SPEAKER_03:I love that's creatives.
SPEAKER_02:I I think, and you're right about that, man, because that's what it comes out to. But I did, I did, I hear when people complaining. We started complaining too, like, oh man, and and I honestly, I probably shouldn't have stated, but you you can use it with the fucking with your with your buyers, right? Yeah, I this algorithm changed, that happened, blah blah blah blah blah, right? To buy yourself some time.
SPEAKER_03:On the sometimes we do it the buyers, you know. That's well, cut this part out. Cut this part out, but on the back end, we'll be like, oh, you know, yeah, yeah, it's you know, the quality was bad today. Oh, yes, you're probably the creatives, but yeah, cut this out. Yeah, it's we'll blame it on the platforms.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, maybe the platform will have it. Those guys, but uh no, that that that's awesome, bro. And yeah, I don't want to say, you know, I I feel like I mean, I think the the the people in the industry that really have been doing this for all, they know who you are. Like you're very, real well respected, but you're kind of like under the radar, man. Like you're you're going to some shows here and there, right? So like when when people see you, I think they and like when I when I was with you, I was in Chicago at one of the lead gen world and on the leads con. And that's when the the the I had good success with the Day Brothers. So Peter Desol is he was he lit up, man. He was like, man, he he thanked you for helping him in his career and everything. And I'm like, wow, and then that that made me listen, I I I thought highly of you for Manny, but I mean you're like, wow, man, the fact that you know these guys, I made some good money with them, and and they're looked at really high well respected, and they're looking at you up on that level. I mean, it says a lot, right? So I think um I'm glad that you you know spent some time with us here and shared with the audience.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'm looking forward to the next conference. What's the next one, anyways?
SPEAKER_02:Is it um what do they have? They have they have affiliate world in Bangkok. I can't make up a chance. We'll be there. You have uh in in San Diego. I don't do too many international. I mostly like to stay. Yeah, the the they have in uh January uh Lee Gen World.
SPEAKER_03:And then they have affiliate summit west, too.
SPEAKER_02:Affiliate Summit West is after that. Then you got Lee's con in March. We'll probably be doing and then uh affiliate takeover will be in Miami in May. I mean, sorry, March, I think March 19th. We're gonna figure out a Columbia con. It's gonna happen again, probably Q1, end of Q1, early Q2.
SPEAKER_03:I might go to that again.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Claude, that's good.
SPEAKER_03:That's a good one.
SPEAKER_02:This one's gonna be our best one yet. The last one we had for 45 people flew out, man. They we underpriced that one too. This one would be a little bit more uh more expensive, a lot of value, man. You guys, you guys rolled out the fucking curtain. You guys showed your creatives. You had people taking it. It was crazy, man. That alone was worth it, man. Yeah, yeah, no. I want to go again.
SPEAKER_03:I'll go to that one.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Anchor was uh investments that got on 50% to 200.
SPEAKER_03:That was probably one of my favorite. Honestly, that was like no joke, that was one of my favorite events. I like because it was smaller, more tight-knit, and then just the people in the room, the calibre of the people in the room. Kind of like I said when he interviewed me last time, like, yeah, that's that's where you want to be. Sometimes these bigger events, you're just kind of like mixed in with everybody. You get lost. You gotta filter, you gotta filter, right? Yeah, it's like going through a funnel.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and just so you know what we did for Columbia Con, we didn't not everyone could go there, man. We we had a, if you recall, there was uh we had to filter them out. They had to they had there, there was a questionnaire where we vetted them, right? Yeah, and there was we only wanted like high-level media bars. It wasn't it wasn't high level. We had also people that were like good people that were growing, and we felt that they could get value out of them. But I've heard a lot of good things about it, and we're gonna do it again. We'll keep it tight. I think we won't exceed 50 people. Uh, maybe keep it 30 to 50, somewhere around that range, but yeah, that'll be a good one. But that I can't emphasize the mass mise enough, man. They you get together with these, like you said, uh alone time, and you're you're you're you're in them in a house or a mansion, right? And for like three days with someone that's you know done. We had someone$900,000 as spent in one day. Remember that one? Yeah, oh yeah, uh Robbie or something. Yeah, true. That was that was crazy. Yeah. And to see like guys there that were like everyone perked up when he said that.
SPEAKER_03:Everyone perked up. You the room went for people like those enough to like I was locking around when he the moment he said his numbers, everyone was like bro.
SPEAKER_02:And he wouldn't, the guy, yeah, like he let me. I took a picture with him, but he didn't want me to post it online. I mean, that's the kind of people you'll find. These aren't these guys aren't at the at the leads cons at those. They're they they've already made their money and they they know moments like that.
SPEAKER_03:They know what they're doing, and they just they they're under the radar, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. So that's the value of that. So, but yeah, we we appreciate the shout out, man. Anything we didn't cover that you want to touch upon?
SPEAKER_03:No, I mean, this has been this has been awesome. We got what an hour and 33 minutes of coming. Man, we went fucking deep, man.
SPEAKER_02:I didn't expect the time right now. I thought we'd do 45 minutes, maybe to our whole life story in an hour. Jesus, uh that was great.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I grew up on a farm, dude.
SPEAKER_02:No, I didn't. All right, good. So Chris Groves leads icon, better ways, fucking nutritional expert now, tracking big shit. I wouldn't say expert, but yeah, no, I'm on my way. You're on you're on your way. We'll put we'll put his we'll put his uh how you can contact him over there. Let's fucking go. Good shit, my man. I appreciate it. Your network is your net worth. We got a fucking crazy network of people. I'm not telling you your average motherfuckers, I'm talking about people doing$300,000,$400,000,$500,000 a day in admin. People that make billions of dollars in sales, people that exit their companies for about a billion dollars to hit a hundred episodes. Guess what? We're about to take the shit to the next level. So you want to target subscribed right now.