Ali Abdaal Asked Me How to Get to $1M/mo

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00:00 Scaling to $1M/Month
03:48 Finding the Real Constraint
12:54 Measuring Client Success
21:43 Client Success Systems
30:18 Coaching Capacity & Workloads
39:58 Building a World-Class CS Team
52:47 Client Success KPIs
01:03:34 Coaching, Curriculum & Platforms
01:15:28 Helping Beginners Get Results
01:23:54 One-Call vs Two-Call Close
01:29:41 Building the Right Org Chart
01:32:55 Scaling Your Sales Team
01:43:08 Daily Sales Meetings
01:50:02 Building a Sales Playbook
02:00:47 Hiring More Closers
02:08:16 When to Hire Sales Managers
02:15:37 Scaling Without Breaking Systems

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So part of our thirty-six million dollar year business is we have a three times event a year boardroom mastermind, strictly people who are above a hundred grand a month, all the way to five million a month and more. And so today I have Ollie Abdahl, and we're gonna help him go from 300 grand a month to a million a month in his business. So Ollie's got some questions, and I'm gonna answer them. So you kick it, kick it off.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Amazing. Okay, so the first question is we are currently 300k a month. We hired a sales team like a month ago. We started running ads like a month ago. We've been doing entirely organic um for the last for the last nine months. How do I figure out what the constraint of the business is? In the sense of right now, client success could of course always be better. I'm like, you know, the curriculum is improving and I'm doing new this and that. Currently, we've got like 30 30 students to a coach, but from speaking to you and the people here, a lot of people are doing 60 per coach. Yeah. But is that is client success the constraint? Or is actually could we just get more people in the front end?

SPEAKER_01 1:02

It doesn't sound like the constraint. I mean, the easiest way to think about it, and especially in our business, which is like courses coaching, professional services, etc., it's a demand can constrained business. So most of the business is predict- I mean, you have to have a good product, you have to get your clients' results, right? And if you and you could have a constraint in terms of capacity issue on fulfillment, but you don't have that, or you would have told that to me. That'd be pretty obvious. So your constraint is either volume, most likely, in terms of marketing coming in, or it's gonna be that you have enough volume, but the volume's not profitable enough because you're not converting enough of that volume with your sales team, or it's not efficient enough with the setters, or the ads aren't good enough, right? So it's either a volume or efficiency thing, right? I mean, that's how I would look at it. It's gonna be either one of those. So it's definitely doesn't sound like it's client success to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Um so you you mentioned the thing around getting the clients' results. So, like my my my my mission for this is to build build the world's best online business school, because I think it would be cool to help like beginners start their first online business. Our goal is to help them get to their very first sale within three months, and then ideally to get to 10k revenue within the next like, well, we're within like six to twelve months. Right now, about 30% of people are getting to that first sale milestone within three months, and a lot of them are like not doing the work or mindset issues or you know, all of this sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

And so what I'm thinking is like, do we have a results issue with that? Because I mean, I d ideally I want that number to be 100%. It's never gonna be a hundred percent, uh, because it's you know outside of our control.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

How do you know? How do you know when client results are good enough to where you feel like you're good at scaling the product? Exactly. Well, there's a couple of things. I mean, I think what one thing that's valuable for everybody to hear is especially like you do need to put some volume through the system to actually see where the breaks are in client success. And actually, as you scale, it'll become more obvious where the breaks are in what essentially needs patched, right? Because what happens is is at a low scale, there's not a lot of volume. And so, like, if you think about signal versus noise, the signal doesn't separate as well from the noise because essentially the occurrences are gonna be more spread out, right? But as you scale and you have more people going through the system, you'll know right away, right? Based on your kind of stance towards things, I I think you should focus on like just getting more clients and and and I don't think you're gonna be the type of person.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

What do you mean based on my stance? Can you can you elaborate?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

I think you over-index on there. There's you know, people usually lean one way or another. Like some marketing really broy type people, they lean way more towards marketing and sales, marketing and sales. I'm just gonna make the product good enough so I don't go to jail, right? I don't think you're like that type of person, right? I'm not saying that's how they are, but they lean that way, right? I think you're more uh I gotta make the client results good. They gotta be good, they gotta be good, they gotta be good. And at some point, it becomes a procrastination of scaling, right? I mean, it's like it's like the classic fear of success thing, to where a lot of the reason people don't scale past where they're at is they're actually afraid of what that version of their business is gonna look like. Whether it's, oh, I'm gonna have people post about me online and they're gonna say negative things, or if it's you know, if they have an association between growth and pain because they can't rely on other people, they're like, oh my God, well, I'm working 60 hours in their mind, they might think, you know, going to 400 grand a month from 200 grand a month might be working, you know, 80 hours or 90 hours, and they're like, Oh, I can't do anything more. So they they they self-limit, they self-cap, right? So I can tell by your stance towards things that it's probably more you just need to grow it. And I think as you grow it, the the fulfillment problems will actually become more obvious because like a lot of times we don't know what systems to build until we scale to stress or even break the systems, but then when those break, it becomes very clear and very obvious what actually needs to become in place. It's very hard to mentally masturbate it ahead of time, unless this is like a you know, if you're a serial entrepreneur and you're starting another business and it's very similar to something you started before, I mean that's a little bit different. But I think the way I would to give you some tactical advice though, what I would do is for an offer like yours, where a lot of it is predicated on them, like they gotta do stuff, right? You should segment the client results metrics to where, hey, out of the people who did all these activities, what is the success rate then? Oh, right? So you should segment it like that because you can control that. Now, frankly, you can't control what we can do to reduce friction to get them to do more of the activities, but that would be like a separate KPI, you know, and and that would help you diagnose a different problem, right? So you would think about okay, out of the people who have like a bunch of mindset issues to where they can't even make a post or whatever it is, how do we decrease friction? And also part of decreasing friction is decreasing limiting beliefs that keep them from taking action. Yeah. But if you track that into a KPI, like who even takes all the actions? Well, then you know, okay, why aren't they taking the actions? You could do research on that, and then you can add in uh implementation or interventions, is what I meant to say that'll actually make that better and reduce that. Does that make sense? And then out of the people who, okay, let's say there's four key things they need to do to get their first client, okay. Out of the people who did those four key things, how many people got their first client? And then okay, the people who didn't, why didn't they do it? Right. And then the other thing to remember too is you also want to segment like you don't want to think about client success in a program like this as binary. First client, zero client. Because, you know, if you think about it, to go from zero clients to one client, you have to overcome mindset stuff. You have to maybe learn a little bit of marketing, you have to like, okay, learn a little bit of sales to sell a client. And then you gotta also be confident in your fulfillment enough to take on the client. So somebody, if you think about zero to one, somebody in your program might not get to one, but they might have gotten to three fourths of building all these skills. And they see themselves making progress and they're actually happy. Yep. But you know, you're like, oh my god, they didn't get their first client, they hate my guts, right? So it's just one thing to think about too in terms of how you measure success as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Okay, this is good stuff. Um, yeah, okay. So what I'm taking away from this is client success is not should not be binary and should not just be one non-segmented metric. Because I'm thinking 30% across the whole thing. Yeah, you have to you have to start. But there's a load of people that like have not actually done the stuff.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

You gotta think about it like a pipeline, right? Like there's like ad, and then after that, it's like how many people got to the opt-in page, okay, how many people opted in, how many people, you know, think about it like moving people across. I mean, literally physically, you can build or have essentially a pipeline of people moving across um almost like a keyboard like a CRM, you know, based on where they're at. Did they make who made their first post? Okay. And I think when you get clear, I think part of your issue is you're not you're thinking about the metric and you're not clear on where the breakdowns are. And then so you're not even sure what the interventions are. But I would say this you know, there's this concept of working in parallel. So, like uh, if you ever use clogged code, like sometimes clogged code will launch parallel agents, right? So if you think about that, you could do two things at once. Like, you can make all these interventions with client success and probably increase the volume and start to scale your business.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

So it's not in pure theory of constraints, like oh next.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Well, no, I you know, uh, because the thing is, is uh like think about it this way. If you're gonna make an intervention, it is theory of constraints, but let me explain. If you're gonna make an intervention in client success, it could you could make the intervention and then it could take three months to really see how that's impacting. Does that make sense? And so what are you gonna do in those three months? Right. And and I think so, you know, you we can work on multiple things at once, yeah, right? Like Elon Musk has several different companies. And I mean, I got the whole parallel uh things working in parallel, that comes from the book of Elon by Eric Jorgensen. That's where I got that, and then I thought about clock code. I was like, oh yeah, clock code, you know, they work in parallel. So you can do two things at once. Um, but yes, you know, you do want to really focus on the constraint and know what that is because that should be, you know, really the priority. But you might fix the constraint and then it's like, okay, we gotta wait 90 days until we know what's happening with this constraint. If you ever wanted to get my one-on-one help in terms of scaling your business, then listen up really fast. So we're taking on a few clients where I can personally one-on-one audit their business across marketing sales, operations, fulfillment, finance to be able to tell you what your constraint actually is, and ultimately what are the one to three things you need to do next to be able to scale, working entirely one-on-one with me. So if that's interesting, there's a link in the description that'll say call one-on-one that you can go book. But essentially, not only will you get my personal advice, but we'll also be opening up our entire playbooks of my $36 million year company across marketing sales, operation fulfillment, finance. So you can basically model the best practices of what we've done right into your business, and it'll include the opportunity to meet in person up at an event with me. So if that's interesting, click the link in the description and mount back to the video.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Okay, let's take on client success a little bit because I also have questions about sales team acting like the whole shebang. On the client success front, currently we have, I think, a reasonable amount of operational complexity in that some of the stuff is on circle, some of the stuff is on Slack. Uh, we're offering one-on-one Slack support, but we're also we've also got like accountability squads with a group and like a coach and stuff, and there's like a lot of moving parts. One view is simple scales, complex fails, make it as simple as possible. Another view that I've heard is the business that can survive operational complexity wins. Yeah. Anyway, both are true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Right? So operational complexity, it is like complexity is the enemy of scale. So it does reduce your scalability. At the same time, operational complexity, if chosen correctly, is a mode against all the competition. Right. So a great story about this is like when I was scaling our recruiting business, I, you know, was big, you know, I was like an original Sam Evans student. So, you know, I'm big on simple, simple, simple, simple, simple.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

And I had the sales recruiting offer, and I was like, man, this thing will never scale because, you know, like it's too complex. It's done for you, it's gonna require too many people, yada, yada, yada. Yeah. And I was like, we got to do like a coaching thing. And then that's why I launched the B2C RCA offer at that time, is because I was like, that's how I'm gonna scale. But then the B2B kept scaling. And I got to 500 grand a month, and I was like, oh, this is probably it, but you know, we'll grow it a little bit more, and maybe it'll cap out of 700. Then we got to a million a month, and I was like, oh, this is probably capped, it's probably all it's gonna do. Then we got to 1.5, and then we got to 2 million a month with the B2B offer. And at that point, I was like, you know, I think that I could just scale it to however big I want to scale it. But what I also realized is that, you know, I bitched and moaned about the recruiting the entire time. Like, I fucking hate this recruiting, it's so complex, you know, it, you know, it's done for you, so certain clients get more pissed. But then I also realized, like, okay, this is also why I have like no competition. Because like, look at all I had to go through to build all this stuff. Who's gonna build all this stuff, right? Anyways, what I would say to you in regarding to all your things is I don't know why you wouldn't be on school instead of circle, because the engagement's better in school. I found that the accountability groups for beginners, now if you're doing it right, I mean I'm not saying it couldn't be bad. Sometimes it can become a little bit of bitching and moaning sessions. Yeah. And then the other thing is too, is then it kind of also like you know, it's one of those things where it's sort of like takes away, like, you know, it's giving them it's confusing, right? It's giving them an confusing uh where do I go for support, right? What we want to reinforce is you go to the account manager. So I'm very good with like have a simple system. I do like the one-on-one support because it it dramatically more than anything else you do will increase results.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

What are your thoughts on one-on-one calls versus one-on-one asynchronous on Slack or Voxo versus a bit of both? Yeah, we do.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Well, I mean, I recommend, even when I did B2C, I recommend one-on-one calls plus one-on-one Slack. You know? So that's what I did. Why? Well, I mean, the one-on-one slacks to be able to get immediate support for questions, uh, to review documents, because not everything has to be a call. Yeah, true, right? Like if we're overviewing an offer, it could be just like, okay, we got to revise this offer, we could just do it over Slack, I could send you a loom, whatever. Right? The one-on-one calls is a good like what a call does is effectively it adds a deadline to where, you know, they have to get those certain milestones done by these certain calls. If your account manager is walking them through the implementation pathway the way they should be, right? And so, and also the calls is where you can address a lot of the mindset issues, you can challenge the way of thinking, all that stuff. And what you want to be able to shift your account managers and client success towards is they need to be not customer service, they need to be leaders, right? And the difference is a leader challenges the person's thinking and really pulls them up the mountain, right? And is always shining a light on what the what is around the next corner, right? What is gonna be the next thing. And so that's very, very important as well. Because you'll notice your best people, if you track clients as I was correctly, your best account managers tracked on those metrics are also gonna be the ones who have the most amount of like as a trait disagreeableness in the sense that like they can have confrontation with a client and gain that client's respect and be able to tell the client, like, no, you're wrong here, no, like this is your fault, you know, stuff like that, right? But client success tends to be like a touchy-feely thing, which you know, I'm not saying like all that's bad, it's just that they need to have that level of leadership as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Um, okay. In the context of one-on-one calls, would you recommend to doing it as a weekly thing, bi-weekly thing, or as a once you hit milestone X, you get rewarded with one-on-one call? Why? How how do you guys think about it?

SPEAKER_01 14:49

So the default I would think about is front loaded on average bi-weekly, but front loaded. So usually onboarding is week one. Week two, like week two, we do another call. Then week three, we skip, week four, we do another call, weeks then week six, and then after that it might be we skip three weeks. And then we might skip another three weeks, then we might go four weeks. Yeah. Right. So it's kind of front loaded to get momentum, and then it's check-ins, and then you got the slack, right? That's how I would think about it.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

And do you have a number of what is a good number of students to have for a given code? 60.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah, 60 to 80. I mean, it depends. And done for you, it can go as low as 20. As you get more done with you, do it yourself, it can go as high as 80 to 100. If you're gonna do a B2C coaching program with real one-on-one coaching, it ends up being about 60 to 80. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Because right now we're at 30 to 40 and the uh coaches are overwhelmed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah, they they they they're like, oh my god, I'm so busy. Well, what happens is it you know the law that is uh what is it's like Parkinson's law where it expands to fill the time. Yes, it's like whatever, um, whatever expands, fill the time. You said it, you said it better than I than I could have said it. So essentially, you know, if you have 20 hours to do a project, it's just gonna take 20 hours. If you have five hours, it's gonna take five hours, et cetera. It's the same law with client success to where I mean you could give them three clients. Yeah, you know, next thing you know, they're gonna be running those clients' businesses, right? Because essentially they got three clients, they're gonna work 30 hours a week in those clients' business. So they got three, you know, they're like part-time employees for three people. Yeah. So the key is, and this is something that I I thought I remember telling you this, but maybe I didn't tell you. You gotta really catch this from the very beginning. Design your comp so it's around 60 to 80. Set the expectations of what it looks like. Hey, here's what your calendar is gonna look like at a full roster of 60 to 80. You're gonna have this many calls a day, the cadence is gonna look like this, etc. It needs to be very structured.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Because otherwise, yes, the work will expand to just to fill all the time. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 16:55

So you're showing them what the calendar will look like.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Well, well, and the other thing is too, is you gotta think like if if you have, let's say it's an eight-week program for simplicity, and between that eight weeks, you have six calls, right? And then so you know that essentially they're gonna have um if they can do a 60 client load on an eight-week program, that's 30 clients a month new, they can take on minus their renewals if they renew people and they stay on. Yeah, right. So then that way you could think of okay, that's how many new people are coming on, that's what that's what the full roster is gonna be. Okay, 60. Based on those deliverables, you can like Tetris essentially the calendar to see like what is their calendar gonna look like fulfilling six calls times 60 people. Yeah, does that make sense? So 120 calls over an eight-week period. How is that gonna fit in their calendar? And then do they have time on top of that to block Slack, team meeting, and whatever else? Yeah, so you can just reverse engineer it based on calendar. Does that make sense? It's the same type of thinking that um, you know, if you're running group sessions at a gym or one-on-one, like if you're trying to fill your gym's calendar for all your trainers, yeah, it's like the same type of thinking, you know, if you're trying to fill the seats in a med spa, same type of thinking. Does it make sense? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

I often think of like at the level of like the weekly time block calendar for myself, but I've never thought to actually think about it in the context of the country.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

So you have to reverse engineer that, and then what you do on the interviews is you show them what the sample calendar is gonna look like and you say, Can you do this? And some people will be like, Oh my god, that's a lot of calls. Yeah, it is. You're you're a client success director, you're gonna be talking to clients. Yeah, right? And other people will be like, Oh yeah, that's great. I love calls, you know. So Um Okay, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Coaches are our coaches are often like um saying that Slack support takes up too much time, and we think that it's because they're context switching between how do we how should we do that?

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Well, they have to block it. So this goes back to the calendar. Yeah. So like if you if you tell them in terms of best practices that, hey, the best thing for you to do is do two hours of Slack in the morning and two hours of Slack at night. Or or an hour, hour, hour. Yeah. Right. That way, because what what happens is the reason Slack will drag on in terms of client support is you get caught, like, okay, you clear the whole batch, right? You have 30 unreds. Yeah, you clear them all, five people immediately respond. Then you clear those, and then four of them respond again. You clear those, the same four respond again. You clear the, and then then you get down to one where you're talking to one person for like 40 minutes. Yeah. So what you have to do is you have to, if you have to batch and tackle. I would do like two or three rounds, stop, then you should be on calls. Then you revisit in a couple hours, two or three rounds, stop on calls. And in between calls, you can do it too.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Um, do you guys recommend using any sort of Slack ticketing system or just raw dog uh channel?

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Rawdog. Um, but there is a way we have created like we hired a developer who's really good with AI, and basically what he did is, and he's doing this across every department in our company, is he created essentially a software that sits on top of all of our other software that acts as like a control board for the manager. Okay. So we can essentially see like what Slack channel sentiments are yellow flag, red flag, green flag based on a variety of things. We can see is there anybody on Monday through Fridays who has response time that's not in KPI? Yeah, it's kind of still being built right now, but that's gonna be what it is essentially.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

I've been trying to vibe something like that.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

So it's like, you know, because because the the typical and the really good client's system is the red, yellow, green system, where every client has a status and also you know, you know where they're at in the milestones and all that stuff. And then what you're really trying to do is you're trying to move them along the milestones and move them back from red to yellow to yellow to green. Yeah, right. But the visibility can be the hard part of that, and I think AI makes it a lot easier.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Okay. Um at the moment we have milestones that are like, you know, niche identified, 100 people messaged, first sale 10k. Uh those are quite there's there's quite a lot of gap between, for example, messaging people and getting a first sale. For example, uh messaging a first person, then messaging 10 people, having a first discovery call, turning that having a first proposal call, presenting your first proposal, actually getting the first sale. What is a good number of milestones and sub milestones to be taken? Probably less than five. Probably five or less.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Yeah. I mean, worst case, seven or less. If you can get it on the four, that's perfect. Because you know, four is the max we can hold and work on it.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Because we have about four right now, but I'm four's perfect. I'm concerned that there's like a Grand Canyon between some of these milestones.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Well, you know, I mean, it's okay to have like a great course, for instance, it really goes over like it hits the like if you have a four-week course, like there's the four major milestones, but then there's the milestones within the milestones. Yeah, right. And so that would be fine to have kind of almost like breakdowns, but then that way you're always repeating these four things. And those four things and those four pillars, four is a good number because it's like the max you can hold in working memory, anyways. So I like the number four if you can do it. Five is you know, is it gonna be the end of the world if you do five? Probably not.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

And so you're tracking client progress in terms. Of the milestones. And then red, yellow, green, is that client sentiment? Or like what goes in?

SPEAKER_01 22:04

No, you could do it in my case, in your case, that would be more the sentiment in like the essentially like their rate of progress. Like, are they progressing? What's the sentiment? And then the milestone is where they're actually at. So think about it this way: the milestone is almost like closing rate. It's quantitative data. Yep. The red, yellow, green is a representation of qualitative data. Right? Of like where how is the person doing? You know? Because, like, for instance, you could have two people on milestone two. Yeah. Right? One person's fucking pissed. And then the other person's like, this is the greatest thing I've ever done. I'm so excited. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Right. Um so we have sometimes we have people on milestone one, but they're like, oh my god, this is the best thing ever. They're attending all the sessions, but they're not like doing the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what we've been thinking is if they haven't done the thing for more than X number of time, should we automatically make them a yellow or red? Or is the my is the red yet agreement basically how happy are they?

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Well, I mean, I think that's up to you. I think you could do it both ways. What needs to happen is, is somebody needs to be like, don't come on another group call until you've done this thing. Yeah. When I joined my first ever program that was group coaching, it was to build my agency. And I got on and I attended a group call and I was like, Yeah, this is great. And then I got on another group call and she was like, Have you launched your funnel yet? And I was like, No. And she was like, Don't get on another group call until you launch your funnel in front of everybody. And I was like, Oh shit. I was like, okay, I'm gonna launch this fucking funnel. I launched it that day. And if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't even gotten results. Because I just was in my head, I was like, I was just dabbling, you know. Like I wasn't, which is which is crazy to think now, but it's like I just was I don't know, afraid of taking this step, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Yeah, because at the moment we have a lot of people who are rocking up to the group calls because it's vibe and fun and not doing the thing. So actually, I I've I've never actually thought to, in a nice way, call them out on it. Um I think you should. Okay. Sick. Uh what does a good director of client success do? We hired one like two days ago.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Well, you probably should have asked that question before you hired.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

But um We spoke to Elizabeth about it and stuff. So yeah, okay, great. So for the sake of the pod and also because I'm I'm curious about your.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

So what is a what is a I mean, first of all, they need to know the job and they need to do the role. So, like our client success directors, all of them that we've well, Yogore is the only one we've ever had for SDA, but for RCA, we had, you know, a couple, they all were CSMs and they did the role. They knew how the role worked, all of that stuff. So that's very important. I would never, especially in this business, it'd be very rare to just put in a manager and be like, yeah, you know, you're managing the team now. Like they have to actually manage the clients, know the clients, know the system, kind of experience firsthand what it's like to go through all of the, you know, things like especially if you're trying to coach a CSM on how to manage their calendar, pretty hard to do if you've never been a CSM, right? There could be exceptions. Like, I mean, if you found somebody who was literally the client success director of a really reputable competitor who was doing the same exact thing you were doing, I mean that could make it.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Yeah, that's kind of our situation.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

That that could maybe work. I would still have them ramp as a client success manager for the first 30 to 60 days, right? Just so they can learn the role. And then they can, you know, as if they're as good as they say they are, then you can move them up. Now, once they moved up, what are the responsibilities? Well, they run a daily team meeting. On that day, daily team meeting. Daily. Yes, daily team meeting. Why daily? Uh well, like we were talking about earlier, in terms of actually improving team results, the higher the frequency of the feedback, the better, right? The more immediate the feedback, the better, right? And also it sets a good rhythm for the team, especially if it's in the morning, to where it just kicks everything off on a good note, and it's daily training and projections and accountability for the team. It makes a huge difference. I mean, if anything, I back in the day when we only did sales teams, um, the number one thing I would try to get clients to do if they had underperforming sales, I mean, no matter what their sales team's performance was, the number one thing is just run a daily team meeting that was 60 minutes. Yeah. The number one thing, if I could get them to do that, a lot of times it would fix a lot of their performance issues. But you know, they were running once a week. I I feel like it's more of a standard now. But back when I started, it was actually rare people did a daily meeting. Weirdly. To me, it's weird. So you run a daily meeting.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Okay, sorry. Uh daily meeting, multiple time zones. How do you juggle?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Well, you gotta find a time zone zone that works for everybody. And then you can't hire people that can't make the meeting. So um, you know, and some people will stay up and they'll change their calendar or whatever, and then you gotta assess, does that make sense? Or are they gonna be able to really do this job long term? They say they are, but you know, I would only h if somebody's like, okay, I'm gonna have to work nights to work here, oh, but it's fine, I would make sure they've worked nights before. Because, you know, you might get somebody who's good, but they're four weeks in, and then they're like, Yeah, this isn't for me. You know, like I can't work nights. And it's like, well, you know, you shouldn't have taken the role. But they didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

So you don't want them to test that out for you. And so the daily meeting has everyone, or at at some point do you split it into two pods of different No, I mean it ha it's gonna have all the clients assess directors.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I mean, you might split into pods at a certain point, but you're I think you're pretty far from that. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Like we got seven coaches and one.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

That's enough. Okay, yeah, that's enough. And I mean your coaches need more people too, so you need to increase capacity. But yeah, you have the daily meeting, you would do wins in the beginning, then we do projections, which is based on it for you. It's gonna be if they do renewals, they're gonna be projecting renewals or referrals, but then also you're gonna be walking through how many clients they have in every stage.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Uh in terms of milestones.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yes. Oh, nice. Yeah, so that would be the next thing, and then you would do some sort of training, whether that's a call review, whether that's common situations or questions that are brought up, something along those lines. That's how I would run it.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Yeah, so we hired our sales team like a month ago, and for a long time I was resistant to it because I heard you talk about daily sales meetings, and I was like, who's got time for that? But the sales meeting is really fun. Yeah, I mean, you have to hang out with the boys.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

And if you and if you run the meeting correctly, it is fun. Like when I you know, when I started my company, I had a lot of people in the very beginning, and maybe people still say this, but I remember them saying, like, oh, I used to hate meetings, but I like the meetings in this company. Although they're like they're fun, you know? And so I enjoy I still hop up meetings because it makes me feel better. You know? I feel like I know what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Um, uh sticking on client success um for now. W I mean renewals is a metric, NPS is a metric, there's all sorts of metrics in terms of clients reaching particular milestones. Yeah. Uh we could come up with a list of 15 different metrics. Do you have a sense of what other ones that matter?

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Well, renewals, referrals, or testimonials. Um those are good. Yep. But if I had to come up with just a couple for you, it would be probably renewals because only happy people pay more. Yeah. And then one or two major client success milestones would probably work. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

So like the first sale milestone, for example. But I would keep it below three.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

I wouldn't have more than three.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Okay. Um, and then these three are being reported on the daily meeting or in the weekly leadership meetings.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Like, what's the Well, here's the other thing I was gonna say. So in the beginning phases, you might already be past this, but in the beginning phases, what I used to do is we'd hop on the client success meeting and I would just pull up the client list and I just go down every single person. Where's this person at? What are they doing? Where's this person at? What are they doing? And similar to projections, like if you don't know where the client's at and where they are, what they should be doing, uh you get yelled at, right? So I would go down every single person and just check. And that was kind of like my inner control freak because I was giving away one-on-one fulfillment for the first time. And then what I did is eventually you're like, okay, well, if I do that, I'm literally gonna only get through, you know, 20% of the roster on this meeting. Yeah. So then what you can do is you can either do that on one-on-ones, or what we did is we had everybody send a Loom video report of where all their clients are at and why. Yeah, and they would have to do detailed notes and asana at the end of each week. We might still do this. And um Yeah, we started doing this as well. Yeah, that's that's very effective.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Um, okay, so in terms of where the client is at, you know, there's red, yellow, green, there's the milestone. Um, the bit we struggle with is the what should they do next sort of thing, and like why aren't they doing the thing? And sometimes it's like mindset, which I don't like as an explanation explanation because I feel like anything can be called a mindset issue. And it's like why is the client not progressing? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Yeah. You should just have the account manager give them a call. You can do this on the meeting, and then just be like, hey, Ali wants to know why you're not progressing. It'll work. Yeah. It'll work. Especially like, hey, he specifically asked about you in this meeting and he wants to know why you're still here. Yeah. Is there anything we need to do to help? Or are you like caught up in your own mindset or what's going on? Yeah. Yeah. And so in the You need to put more pressure on people. Like it should be like a little bit of a pressure. This is what they want, even though they might not say it, but you know, I call it the drag them out the mountain mentality. Yeah. It's like, it's like, look, you bought. So now my reputation's on the line to make you freaking succeed. So even if you don't want to succeed, I'm gonna make you fucking succeed. Right? It's like that mentality, and that's how I think about it too, because I'm like, I um I'm not gonna wait for you to just go through and see what you do and don't do. They're like, no, I'm gonna fucking like I'm gonna push you up there and make you stay, right? Because it's like I, you know, I feel like it's my reputation on the line if they don't succeed, no matter what. Right? I don't like that.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Yeah. So what uh okay, so if if you're looking at your like client success, CRM, or whatever, you've got Radiella Green, you've got the milestones, what sort of stuff would your CSMs be writing in the next action or whatever thing?

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Well, it's where are they now, what's going on, and then what would be the next step? That's always what we did. And then obviously now, you know, you would have all the fathom kind of summaries in there. And I'm sure you could do a bunch of cool stuff with AI with it in terms of like summarizing kind of the client journey and all those things. I wonder if that answers your question.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Um it does to an extent, but it's like in in terms of the next step. Like in our case, is the next step they're sending 10 DMs this week, or is it they're gonna try and book the first sales call or depends on what they're actually to get over the mindset issue, or like yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Yeah, it's the next step of what the account manager is gonna do with the client. That's how I would do it.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

What they're gonna do with the client.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Yeah. So if they if they need to send 10 DMs, it's like, okay, make sure they're doing it. Or if they're not doing it, it's like get on with them and be able to see, okay, do I need to sit with you and send 10 DMs together?

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Okay, you know, like that's good. So it's like yeah, the account manager What are they doing next? Ah, rather than what the client is supposed to be because what are they doing next for this client? Oh, fine. Okay. That is very different to what we're currently doing, and that would be super helpful. Yeah. Because often in that list is like client has a mindset issue. It's like, okay, but what are we doing about it?

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Yeah, what are you doing? Yeah. Right. And I recommend too. It may help to have a professional mindset coach. You pay per session.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Do you have this? Uh one of our coaches, two of our coaches are professional mindset coaches and former therapists. Okay. Clients absolutely love them. They're so ones. They're really great when you get good ones.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Yeah. And, you know, you could pay them extra per session. I wouldn't do it to where every client gets a session. It's just kind of like it's something that you can use in your back pocket when the account manager is like, look, this is a little bit above my pay grade. Yeah. Like, I can't, like, this person's got some emotional issues. Yeah. You know. But people will the nice thing about having that is people will say the investment was worth it for for that a lot of times. Because especially like the issue with like mindset and therapy is it only works to the extent in which something can be addressed real time. So it's very hard to go in cold and be like, yeah, I need to work on my mindset. But if like somebody can't send DMs and then and it's obviously like an emotional block, and then they go see a coach that's good, it's they can have a huge impact, right? Sick. Hey, if the way you sell your product or service is through phone sales, you need to stop using booking systems like OneSub County, iClose, and other booking systems that aren't designed specifically for a phone sales approach or a phone sales team. So we at SalesKick just launch a new calendar and booking system that'll decrease your cost per book call because it's conversion rate optimized specifically for call funnels, whereas most other calendar systems are meant for corporate all-purpose booking and it'll increase your show rate. So we've had clients see 30 to 100% increases in their show rate because our calendar system is specifically designed for call funnels and other funnels that are high volume sales call booking funnels. And the software does so much more. It's really the only product designed specifically for sales teams with inbound booking systems. So if you're interested, go to saleskick.com, check it out. Now back to the video.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

What are your thoughts on Okay, so currently I'm spending ages on the curriculum and like the zero-to-first sale roadmap. And we did a V1 of it for the first few batches of clients, got data from it, realized, okay, people are struggling with X and Y. Okay, therefore we need to update the curriculum with this sort of stuff. Uh I've noticed within STA, you only do some of the trainings. You have experts doing the rest of the trainings. Um what are your thoughts on me doing curriculum stuff versus bringing in an expert to do some of it versus yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Well, I mean, it it just really depends. Like, I generally try to do everything that I can do, unless it's like a tutorial, like here's how to set up GHL. Yeah. I'm not, you know, I don't need to do that. But I try to do generally everything. Now, if it's something to where I feel like, man, you know, it's like I could do it, but I'd be like kind of plagiarizing this other person. I just ask the other person, hey, like, can you just do this? Yeah, you know, because like I think your stuff's the best anyways. I don't have a unique take on it. So that's how I think about it. But I mean, in mine, I mean, I would say 90% of the stuff is me. You know, so um, does it answer your question? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Okay, that's good to know.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

I I don't think about it too, too hard. I mean, the more I will say, the more it can just be you, the better, because you'll have an idea of the product better than anybody else, and you'll know where everything fits in. And you can tie it back to like like you could be doing a training on you know YouTube ads or whatever, and you're like, you get to this one point, but then you're like, and we should have covered this back here, so make sure you did this. You know, nobody else is gonna get that. And it you've probably been through programs too where it's like a poo-poo platter of like a million different people, yeah, and it's like not cohesive, like you're not learning a cohesive system. Yep, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:32

I like it. Um couple more questions on client success. Uh, any thoughts on uh I I'm currently feeling the siren's call of building our own custom student platform with a developer and stuff and not using circle in because we can integrate our own AI tools and all of this sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Yeah, I I think that's just more uh client success, masturbation, procrastination. I don't think you really need to and the thing is is that I don't even think you have enough clients to know what to build. You'll have a lot better idea of what to build when you have enough of your clients. I would really recommend school because the engagement's way better. And that that that is more valuable to the student than circle because you can brand it the way you want to. I'm very biased as the first investor, but I'm I'm pitching.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Nice. Okay, the reason I don't like school is because it looks a bit janky and it has slightly make money online scammy bro vibes.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Well they tried to change they tried to they're they tried to change that. That's why they stopped the school games.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay, fine.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Yeah. I would say, I mean, it's very like a lot of the people on there, they're making pottery. There's a whole new like school is actually allowed for an entirely different type of information marketer, creator, course seller, whatever, to exist. Like you couldn't, you know, sell a course on pottery high ticket with a sales call with ads, because you gotta basically do high ticket to make ads work now. So I think it's opened up the market in a lot of ways. I don't feel like it has that brand anymore. I mean, I personally don't. And I mean, in terms of design, it's very simple, but it's intuitive, which makes it easier for client engagement. But we can move on. I mean, I'm okay. I don't have to convince you of myself.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

Um okay, when it comes to helping a total beginner get to their very first high-ticket client for let's say coaching consulting or a service, at the moment, the way that 95% of our students are getting it is through warm outreach. It's messaging everyone they know and saying, Hey, do you happen to know anyone who needs uh whatever whatever?

SPEAKER_02 38:31

Great.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Um are there any magic bullets for that I'm missing in terms of helping sometimes people are like they've literally run out of warm outreach and no one they they know knows anyone who's in their ICP or even vaguely related to their ICP, which then I think is a niche issue and that we should broaden out a little bit, etc. But then there's content. I know you guys have the stuff around the short form funnel. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend doing that for your clients or for beginners. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Um, well, I mean, I also think I mean you're you're more the YouTube guy, but a lot of people can I mean, you can post a video and get 200 views, and I mean, you can get book calls off of that, right? Like, so I think YouTube is a really good way. Instagram for some other people can be a good way. The other thing to think about is when they're designing, like you said, the niche and the offer, you also like you'll have people who they're like, oh, I just want to make money. And then like, I think I have this idea and I'm gonna do this thing where I'm helping painters, and you're like, okay, why are you doing that? And they're like, Well, I chat GPT'd it, and it said painters is a good market, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you find out that they're like a you know, retired financial advisor, and they went through all this burnout, and then they had to do all this stuff to be able to like help them overcome their burnout and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then after they did that, they made way more money, and it's like their whole network's financial advisors. And you're like, dude, uh, why don't you just do that? And they're like, Oh, I didn't, I didn't think it'd be good, you know, because the novel idea to them seems better than the obvious one because of dopamine. So oftentimes, one of the most effective things you can do for offer creation is just have them tell your story, tell their story, but you have to do it on Zoom. Because if you have them write it out, they'll like they'll what'll happen is they'll skip over the part that's really good. Because like they'll they'll be telling their story and then they'll they'll say something, and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, what was that? And that's usually the thing. But they skip over it a lot of times because they don't they don't see the value in it. But a lot of times, like your real value to them is you seeing the value where they don't see it. It happens all the time, like and it happens in different contexts. So, like when I look at people's VSLs when they write VSLs, I I like it when the client writes a VSL, even though if it's like one out of ten, it's like terrible. Because I'll be reading it and I'll be like, okay, this is bad. And then I'll get like all the way at the end of the page on page you know three, and I'll be like, I'll read one line and I'll be like, oh my god, this is the whole thing. Yeah, the whole thing is this one line. It's like I found the big idea. Yeah. You know? So, but I could only get that by extracting it out of their brain. But if you if you really listen to their stories, a lot of times you'll find stuff in there. So kind of like a niche discovery zoom interview with a coach rather than I think the coaches, when they get good, they'll kind of know like, is this offer legit? Is this not? Who's this person's network? And they'll find stuff that fits because they're gonna see a couple steps ahead. Yeah. And they're gonna be like, all right, like this is a crazy offer. Like, I don't know how you're gonna find anybody for this. But you could do this, and I know you have people in your network who would do this.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Nice. Uh, thoughts on one call close versus two call close for a total beginner?

SPEAKER_01 41:33

Uh it's almost all one call close, but that doesn't mean that certain calls won't go to follow-up. So the default shouldn't be a two-call close process. Okay. It should be a one-call close, but then there's times where it should go to a follow-up. You know, if they gotta run it by their wife, they gotta, you know, it's a real one run it by their wife, like it's a huge investment, they have a shared account, like, okay, obviously that's gotta work. Uh, you know.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Wait, sorry, I meant for the clients, not for us.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

If you got some real noobs, um, it's fine to have them start with like a 15-minute warm-up triage thing and then go to uh the real call. So that's that's a good way to like I find that helps beginners get decent close rates, you know, opposed to like the cold one-call close. Yeah. Yeah, so in that context, I'm fine with it. It's better to graduate to a one-call close. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Yeah, initially we were teaching the one-call close, and we found that the that was the point where everyone was absolutely crumbling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we changed it to like, you know what, you don't even need an offer, you just need to listen to them in the in the discovery call, then go away, put together a proposal, and then the second call is where you're presenting a custom personalized proposal, and that has skyrocketed it.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Yeah, it it's really easy. Because it slows it down for the beginners. It does, yeah. You know, and then they can get on the call and they don't have to like do it on the fly, and then they can graduate to one call close after they've had 10 sales or 20 sales or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Nice. Okay. I think that is all the questions I had around client success. Anything you would say from It's pretty comprehensive.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

I think you nailed it. I think we I think we nailed CS.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

Yeah, nice. Okay, how it can it be. Um, okay. Somewhat adjacent to CS is how how do you think about org design in terms of I mean, obviously there's sales marketing or marketing and sales, but then there's CS operations product. How do you how do you separate CS operations product?

SPEAKER_01 43:25

Product is really just client success, and it's really just you making videos. Yeah, for the most part. And then and then in terms of strategizing about the client success fulfillment system and how the that's kind of like the CSD and you, you know. So I would combine those things. The way I break it down, there's what marketing, sales, operations, finance fulfillment, right? Marketing, sales, operations, finance, fulfillment. I have recruiting too. That's why it threw me off. So it's pretty basic. I mean, we covered fulfillment. Sales, you have a sales director, you have a sales team. Marketing, um, you know, in the beginning, it's like DIY with a media buyer or a tech guy or something. But eventually you could have like a CMO and a whole marketing team and all these things. And then finance and operations. I mean, operations is really like your army of VAs and the person who leads them, at least in this business model. Finance, you know, you might need like a controller with a couple admin level people under them, and then eventually that graduates to like a CFO with a bunch of admin people under them.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

And then on the operations, or on like the VA front, um one thing that our coaches are currently spending time doing is like billing and a bit of admin, and this client wants to pause their thing because they're going on holiday for a month and stuff. Do you think the coach should deal with that or should that be a thing that's they would submit a form in Slack.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

So we have a change of payment form, we have a cancellation form, we have a going on pause form, we have all that stuff. Okay. And the account manager submits that, and then the operations person does it. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

So the account manager has to chat with the person. Well, they submit a form.

SPEAKER_01 45:03

Because the form auto-populates an Asana task and then they'll check it out.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Okay, nice. That's easy enough. So your coaches are not actually doing the going into stripe billing, blah blah blah blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

You want to eliminate anything that's not a client facing coaching activity for them because that's what you're paying them for. Yeah. That'll help you increase capacity too.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Okay, nice. Okay, so shifting our attention to sales team then. So we were salesless for a long time. Uh for a long time, meaning like seven months. And we're selling through the Takimore offer doc method. Nice. Which worked really nicely for the first like hundred or hundred and fifty or so people. Yeah. Oh my god, we don't need a sales team. And then we graduated to For the people who are wondering, what is that? Uh how does it work? You um we we we had a VSL into an application, and then if they met vaguely qualified criteria in the application, we just sent them a link to a Google Doc that had like the offer and the price at the end of it with a Stripe checkout link. Yeah. So it's basically a sales page. Just a Google Doc looks a bit more like a website.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

So they would watch a YouTube video, then they go watch another video.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

Yeah, there was like a loom of me walking through the Google Doc explaining exactly how the program works and blah blah blah and the guarantee and this, that, and the other.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

So YouTube video, YouTube video to like an unlisted VSL YouTube video, or YouTube video to like a VSL on a page.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

It wasn't even a YouTube video, it was more like we emailed our email list and send sent them to a page that had had a loom embedded at the top of it and a Google Doc linked underneath with a Stripe checkout link attached to the Google Doc. Yeah. And so that was great for the first 150 or so people who bought directly via this link. Nice. And then we were like, we started to feel some sales resistance. Yeah. Where people are like applying, and even paying a deposit to apply, but then just not converting. Right. And so then Angus would like try and DM close them, and then there's all sorts of resistance. And so then we're like, okay, we probably need a sales team for this. Yeah. And so then you guys kindly helped us find two closers. Um currently we have two closers. Um and we have just brought in one of our friends, Aman, who's also part of a figure boardroom, um, as like a fractional sales director. Yeah, okay. Kind of work with them and help them train them up and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

But the question that we were struggling with is so we've got the two closers, but some of them are not following the process. Uh the i the i it's consistent admin, inconsistent logging of calls, inconsistent filling out stuff on closed.com. Um and none of us had the capacity to review the calls and stuff like that. So we're like, do we need a sales manager or sales director? Yeah, how do you think about it?

SPEAKER_01 47:25

Well, the the number one thing people need is a sales admin person who can just also probably be part of your existing operations team. Yeah. And so I'll give you an example, like with admin, very easy. You tell them they need to do it. Okay. Then publicly on the meeting the next morning, anybody who didn't do admin the day before, it's like the admin person's there, and it's like, hey, John didn't do his admin. Then you, as the people person on the meeting, is like, hey, you know, we already talked about why you need to do your admin and that you need to do it every day. Why did you not do it? Oh, I forgot. Are you gonna forget again? No. You promise. Okay, great. And then the next day, if it happens again, you know, the but the admin's gonna catch it every single day. What's probably happening is you don't really have anybody looking and holding him accountable every single day. And so it kind of goes like three or four days, and then you're like, John hasn't done his admin in three or four days. Now you're fucked because John doesn't remember his numbers.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

So now John's numbers are all wrong. So you have if you just do it as a day, if there's a you see how that's a daily reinforcement cycle? Yeah, almost anything you ever want people to do, if you find a way to build a daily reinforcement cycle, which usually filters into your meetings, they'll do it. So that's really like an admin. You probably already have that person on your team, they just gotta be on the meeting and they gotta just look at everybody's admin the morning of and be like, Did everybody do it? And then they on the meeting, tell them, hey, you didn't do it. And then the manager's like, dude, you didn't do it. And I mean, at a certain point, if you have somebody who's like, won't do it, you know, it's like you've asked them three times in three days, and it's like, look, dude, the next time you're gonna get a penalty to where we're gonna have to implement a system where if you miss like three times in a row, um, it's five percent off your paycheck or whatever. I don't know. You don't get any closes of that day. So I never had to do that, but you could. Okay, I'm not I'm not a big fan of like punishment as a consequence to it sounds like actually that's the the daily reinforcement of the when you do it like that, it's never an issue. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:29

Okay. Yeah, I think we're being a bit too gentle-handed with it and letting it slide for way too long.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

Yeah, so there's that. I mean, uh, you don't really need a sales director right now. Um, if you're like, you know what, I don't really want to manage the sales team and I found this guy and he can do it. I mean, you know, it's not the end of the world. You could do it, especially with organic, you're not gonna need like a crazy assassin-level sales team, like if you were running ads. So you could definitely get away with that. We're just gonna go with that. Um, in terms of, I mean, you should be doing a call review every single day. Um, in terms of them following the process or in the daily meeting.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:04

So like look looking at a random call or they're Wins projections, that's twenty first twenty minutes, the last 40 minutes is call review. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:11

So you're just opening up grain or fathom and actually watching through.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

So what you want to do is you want to look at their end-of-day reports. That's where they list everybody they've spoken with. Yeah. What happened? Like who were they? What happened? What was the next step? About three to four sentences. Then in the end-of-day report, what you want the train the manager to do is look especially for deals that should have closed but didn't close. Yeah. Or deals that, oh, it was a great call, sounded really good, oh, it's amazing. And it went to follow-up. Yeah. Because even really good closers might only have a 60% follow-up conversion. I mean, that'd be really good, right? And so those calls that were really good. I mean, we know it's baseline 60%, if that. So those are the best deals that I call the fringe deals, to where you want to review those on the meeting the next day to give coaching, because that's where their blind spots are, because they thought it was a great call. Yeah. But they didn't see the angle to be able to close. And so those are the ones where you can grab the most deals by correcting their behavior. The other thing you can do is, since they have a follow-up coming up, you can strategize on how to handle that follow-up. So it gets you kind of deals in both ways. Does that make sense? Okay. So 20 minutes wins a little bit. So that's a big thing. 40 minutes call working. And the other thing is too, is if they're not following the process, there needs to be a very clear like calls they can watch in training of what the process is. Because sales refs learn through modeling. Yep. So they need like 10 calls that are perfect to the T, badass calls. They can just watch, you know, you or whoever do a call perfect to the T. And then that way they have a clear idea of what the process is. Because a lot of times, if they're not following the process, I mean, that's like I talked about on the event. I just let them go. But we have a very strong, if you go through my training, you should know what the process is. I mean, the training itself is like 50 hours. So it's like you should know what it is. But the other reason, I mean, some people just don't have a clear process to begin with. I don't think we have a clear process to begin with. So, like, you need to make it very simple. It's where you're like, hey dude, what's really easy, watch this call, just script everything I do out by hand on a Google Doc. Right? Watch this call, just copy this. If you show up on the call and you just say and say and basically do all the same shit I'm doing, you're good. Right? Because like when you have the training right and you hire the right person and they go through the training the right way, the impression you should get watching the first call is like, dang, that guy sounds like me. That's what you should get. If you don't get that, you know, hopefully you're close. Okay. Otherwise, you maybe just let him go. So But you need stronger training and you need what I call a baseline, right? There's not enough baseline.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Like a the sort of the model of what good looks like for this. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

And just remember, sales reps when or when sales reps learn, I mean everybody learns, but sales especially through observational reinforcement. So what that means is is that if you ever read the inner game of tennis, it talks a lot about this. They will learn far like if you have a video that overviews a script, I'm not that's good. I'm not saying you shouldn't have that, but it won't really like like it's good to have, it just is not gonna be super effective for them to show the behavior that you want them to show. If you have 20 perfect calls of you doing the process perfectly, that's way more impactful because they learn way better by observing, mimicking, and copying and then innovating later with their own personality than they do through like watching an instructional video. Yeah. Does that make sense? Like you'll you'll find this, it's like your best closers who know what they're doing if you hire them. They'll like just devour and script up by hand your calls, right? And then you'll be like, damn. Like they'll use a phrase that you're like, fuck, that phrase is not even in the training, but like they heard I I remember saying that phrase on a call and they use that phrase on a call. Like that's what you're going for.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

So in my case, the last time I did a sales call was back in like like nine months ago when I was selling the very first cohort where the offer was very different and I didn't really have my own script. And I've never really done sales calls before. Sounds fun. Sounds like a fun thing to start doing. Yeah. Um you have two options.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

I'm probably not the model that the Well, you have two options. Your fractional guy, either they need to do it, or you need to do it. The good news is, is you know, it max, it probably take you a week to come up with a couple of calls that can act as that baseline. Yeah. Right? It's it's it usually is not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 54:37

No, I just take calls myself for like a week and try and figure out.

SPEAKER_01 54:39

Yeah, yeah, that or this other person. Yeah. You know, I mean, somebody needs to do it.

SPEAKER_00 54:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

And the thing is, is I mean, it sucks because you're like, oh, you know, I gotta be a sales guy for a week. But the way to think about it is no, like, my big constraint is ramping new salespeople, getting them to do all these things you talked about. Yeah, and I'm gonna spend this week. And the way you gotta think about it is after I'm done with this week, the reward is that I'm gonna have these perfect calls they could model. Yep. And my entire sales ramping will extend from there after this week. Yeah. If you were if you think about your reinforcement and your reward is that, it'll seem a lot more productive than like, oh, why the fuck am I taking these calls? Fuck, Colt fucking told me to do this. You know, you'll be like, oh fuck it, why am I in this fucking program? I need to go back to Takis thing and just do the dock, you know. I mean, that's but you gotta think about it like you're not taking calls, you're building the SOPs of this whole department for the next 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 55:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:35

And you gotta do it once. It's a week, okay. You're gonna you're gonna survive.

SPEAKER_00 55:38

Okay, especially just like it up and do it. Even if it was two weeks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:41

And then the thing is too, like, if you do this, it's the same with running your sales team. You're gonna be like, I kind of like taking calls. Yeah. Now you do it for two months, three months, you're gonna be like, all right, you know, I I don't really want to do this anymore.

SPEAKER_02 55:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:53

But like when I take calls, I mean, I'm probably built a little bit different. I mean, I'm a sales guy. If I take a call, I it's I like start foaming in the mouth, dude. Like I'm closed, and then I will be so pumped. I'll go outside, and I mean, I'm running running like a almost a $40 million company, and I'm gonna like go outside of my room and be like, babe, I just closed a fucking call. You know, like I'm I still get super excited, like I did way back in the day when I I mean I get probably more excited than when I was a full-time, you know, I was a full-time salescriptor, but like, yeah, close a call. That's what I that's what I should be doing. Now I get on a call, I'm like, yeah, fucking close this call, like let's go. Yeah, I'm like getting into a three-point stance, like fucking, you know, show about to shoulder somebody, you know, throw my body weight around. Um so it's actually really fun. And then I the last time I did this, it's two years ago. But I closed this call, I got so pumped, I canceled everything for the rest of the day, and I just started taking other people's calls. I was like, give me another one. Yeah. I took, I remember um, because I we were having a sales manager transition, and I just felt like the team needed a little jolt. And so I was like, I'm gonna take a day of calls, and I took I literally maybe I took like two days, but across that two days it took five calls. I think I closed all five, and it was so fun.

SPEAKER_00 57:11

Yeah. Okay, but if I'm not like that, then yeah, what would you suggest? It's the same, it's the same advice.

SPEAKER_01 57:16

Yeah, I mean you might not start foaming from the mouth, but I think I I do think you will enjoy it. I think you will like it more than you think. I think you'd be like, it's kind of fun. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:26

I kind of felt that in the first month of doing sales calls. Like I would wake up in the morning, I see them on my calendar, and I'd think, fuck. But then I would get into the calls and then time would fly. I'd be like, okay, this is not bad.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

You just make sure you get a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 57:37

The thing that really annoyed me was the whole, oh, I'm totally gonna pay, and then I'm having to follow up via iMessage afterwards to get them to pay.

SPEAKER_01 57:42

Yeah, you say you're gonna no, you're gonna pay now.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:44

Well, let's do it now.

SPEAKER_00 57:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

Don't be that guy. Just joke around. Yeah. Like, do we know I know the game. Just do it now. Yeah. You know, draw the line in the sand and step across it. You said you wanted all these things. Let's get all these things right. Let's take the first step right now. I'm here with you. Let's do it. Okay. You just gotta be have fun. If you have fun with it, you can apply a lot more pressure.

unknown 58:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:05

That's why I think Greg Carnone is so good. I think he like people are like, I don't understand his. I think he's like so fun that he could apply like all these like higher what people perceive to be higher pressure things. Because that's what people criticize about him. But I think he's so good because he's like hilarious. You know, he's like he he makes buying fun. Yeah. You know, so if you like buying, make buying fun. I like buying. So I try to make a fun.

SPEAKER_00 58:28

Okay. Okay, so what I'm hearing is we need a baseline process. That baseline process either needs probably me, but maybe our fractional guy, to run some calls and find like, okay, these are the canonical three to five really good examples of the thing. Do we also need a script or a call map? Yeah, yeah, you should have it too.

SPEAKER_01 58:46

You should have that too, and then like a training that goes over how it works. Yes. But also have the recordings. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There's other things you need too, but you know, just as broad strokes, that's good.

SPEAKER_00 58:59

And then presumably the script changes over time as you develop new.

SPEAKER_01 59:02

Yeah, and then you just make a new video. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 59:04

That's not too bad.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

If you're a business owner who has appointment setters or an outbound sales team, you're gonna want to hear what I have to say for a second. So a multiple eight-figure business owner texted me the other day, and when he started using $.io for the first time, his pickup rates went from 9% to 20%. So imagine doubling your pickup rates and ultimately the throughput of what your outbound salespeople and centers are gonna get, how does that impact your business? The answer is a lot. So if you want to check out $.io for a phone sales outbound system, just click the link in the description or just go to dollar.io. Now back to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Okay, so we have a lot of leads coming in and the closest calendars are booked out like seven days out. Uh initially we were like three days, and we're like four days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my I have a fear around hiring another closer where I'm like, okay, now this is this feels like it's making the hamster wheel just go faster and faster. Where now it's like, now we need even more leads in order to sustain the closest calendars, and this gets heavier and heavier, and like, oh, client success isn't still where I wanted to be. And I'm getting pieced to PTSD from a few years ago where we had to like let go of like a bunch of the team, and I'm like, uh what's can you therapise me and help me figure this out?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:11

Yeah, I mean the first thing is, I mean, how are you generating the calls? Um is it email?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:19

Ish. Partly ads plus organic? Ads and casual organic.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:25

Well, okay, look, I mean here's the deal. If you unless it's a YouTube mid-roll where you're on your YouTube video or like so if it's an email list, I mean you just segment the list and you send to half the list on Monday and half the list on Friday or whatever, right? So if it's email, you segment it down, if it's ads, you just turn it down. And then you can just have closers booked out for two days. The only the only way that what you're saying will come up is if you are doing like a YouTube mid-roll to like book a call, and then like it's like everybody who sees it's gonna book a call, and then it's a fuck ton of people booking calls. Which the that's a little bit of a different issue. But then you could just space out your space out your YouTube mid-rolls more.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:09

Yeah. So we shouldn't really have like we we what I'm hearing is we should be able to turn the tap down on our lead so that we don't have closes calendars booked out seven days out. Yeah, yeah. I mean you should just yeah, I go for two days.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:20

I mean, you could get away with three, but you're gonna have better experience in two days for sure. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:25

Why do we have so many leads?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:28

Why do we? Because you're only spending adds well, I think it's just a new offer.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

Yeah, just turn down the spend or segment the list, right? So like if you have a huge list.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:36

Like we're not even emailing them very much about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:39

Well then just spend less. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

Yeah. We're spending so little already. We're spending like. Oh, we are okay. We're hiring a third closer. Fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

Okay. Well, then have your third closer. Okay. You'll be okay. You'll survive.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:50

At what point do we think how how many closers then warrant a sales manager or whatever the um should we six? About six, okay. So we've got headroom.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:59

I mean, I wouldn't, if you really found the right candidate, I wouldn't be like mad if you did it at four to five. Yeah. But usually six is a good number for founders to stop doing it themselves. Yeah. Um, but if you find like, man, this is the perfect dude at like four or five, yes, I'd hire him. I mean, hell, if you didn't find the perfect guy at three, yeah. If it's if it's truly the perfect person and you have the money to do it, then you could hire him. But a lot of people like it it works better when you have a little bit of a bigger team. You might find somebody internally that you promote or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:32

What's the deal around promoting a good closer to your manager versus bringing in an external manager?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:36

Well, both can work. Uh if you bring in an external one, I still, even if it's in secret, right? Because some of them get weird about it. I don't care if it's in secret, whatever, have them take some calls because they have to know your process, your leads. They'll say they, oh, I don't need to do it. Okay, yeah, why don't you need to do it? Because I'm so good. Okay, if you're so good, just do it. Yeah. You know, do not deviate on that. I'm fucking telling you.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:57

Believe me, so many managers, they're not good, but they think they're good. And you have them take calls, and you'll be like, How the fuck did you think you were a manager? Yeah. Right? So for the love of God, just have them take some calls. And if they're as good as they say they are and they close fucking, you know, if you give them 20 leads and they close eight in the first week, okay, you're the manager now, right? Like if you're as good as you say you are, then you'll be manager after week two. But they have to learn the product, you, your brand, yeah, the leads. You know, maybe there's ex there could be exceptions where you could get away with it, but even the people you could get away with it with, whatever, they could take calls for a week or two weeks. If they're as good as they say they are, they should be able to do it. Promoting internally, I really like that if you have the right person. And the bonus of that is obviously they're gonna know all those things, you're gonna know they they perform. But what they have to have is like executive presence. And essentially, like, you'll be able to know this. It's it's hard to define this into like observable behavior, but you'll know it, you know, if you can imagine them running a meeting, like you should be able to kind of get an idea of like can this person run a meeting, command attention, command authority, can they hold other people accountable? Do they have they they have to have an even higher degree of disagreeableness than even a good rep because they have to be able to hold people accountable publicly, right? And at the same time, you know, they can't have like lone wolf disagreeableness. They have to have like very good team energy as well. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. It makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

Okay. So the the kind of unlock I'm having so far is at the moment I'm spending 100% of my of my time on the client success side in terms of just make trying to improve the curriculum and trying to increase these numbers of people getting their first sale, etc. But I've spent basically zero time. Like I've I I don't think I've reviewed a single sales team call, which is probably a bad idea. And you can do both at once, too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:54

Okay. You can.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:55

Especially because really your constraint is not a hundred percent identifiable to client success. And I think a lot of these things, it's not like like, dude, like if I have a client whose constraints actually client success, they're like, yeah, dude, my refund rate's 15%. Our trust pilot is like going down. You know, I have 10 bad reviews on Reddit. It's like, okay, yeah, dude, you need to like fucking stop. You know, like you need to chill. Okay. Um, you're you're not that. So you can improve the product as you're growing the company, and I think it'll start to help, you know. Especially because like I try to there's there's people who again, you know, when I'm working with clients, I always can tell what their like natural tendency and stance is. Yeah, yours is much more client success focused. So I can already tell without knowing much more that you need to focus a little bit more over here. Yeah. Right? Whereas there's other people who are the like we've mentioned, like the go, go, go, go, go, go, go, they got a scale to a million a month ASAP. And it's like, all right, dude, like maybe you should try to get some referrals. You know, like maybe you need to like you don't have to get there tomorrow, like slow it down. Faster up is a lot of times faster down. So you'll see a lot of people in this industry, they'll get to a million a month or two million. I mean, sometimes like even more than that, like four or five million a month. But they don't stick around. It's very rare. But there's very few people. But this is why I respect uh Dean Graciosi so much, is that he's been doing this for like fucking 30 years or something. Like at least 25. I don't know the exact number, it's a lot. And just consistent crushing it, which is super rare, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:29

So Um Is there a sweet spot in terms of how fast to scale? Like move fast and break things versus go slow to go fast? Kind of vibes.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:41

Yeah, I mean there is definitely a sweet spot. Um how would I define what it is? I mean, I think you can scale, I think you should you definitely need to scale faster. But for generally how I'd recommend it to most people is you can scale as hard and as fast as long as your client results remain relatively intact. The reason I say relatively is like you're gonna have a chargeback and a you know your client's success manager who's new is gonna fuck up a client. Like that's gonna happen. Like we scaled super fast. I mean, we scaled from 100 grand a month to 2.5 million a month.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:20

And what's what 12 months? Oh, sure. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:24

And you know, I don't think we like crazy dropped any balls, but obviously we had new recruiters, we had new client success. So like was there people who should have gotten results who didn't? Yeah, for sure. You know, and if we would have gone slower, we could have mitigated that a little bit more. But it wasn't like devastatingly bad or anything. So yeah, I don't have a formula for how fast should you scale. For you, I know it's faster than you're scaling. Yeah. Okay. But I think for for most people, it's like as long as the client success remains relatively sturdy and the clients are getting results, and those metrics aren't like if you're tracking those metrics and they're staying within KPI, then I think you could scale. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:04

How do you define the KPI for these metrics?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:06

Do you just make it up or um what for the client success ones or what?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:10

Well, I mean, you know, KPIs are essentially proxy metrics. Proxy metrics are used to essentially assess um what's because the quality of your business is the quality of what's happening on the front lines. That's defined as all the client-facing aspects of your business. Right. So a proxy metric is a metric that is used, which is like a KPI, to try to best describe what's actually happening. Okay. Yep. Right. And so I just think about it from that standpoint. And then yeah, like I just make stuff up, you know, like I just think about like I don't, I'm not a I was never a big rule follower. You know, I I like knowing the meta of any industry or system, or like when I learned YouTube this year, like I first learned all like the principles and everything, but then I had to find my own way to do it. I kind of had to like break some rules to get it to work. And so, yeah, I mean, I just kind of like what is gonna be the most useful proxy metric to set up and and make for this. But then the thing about proxy metrics is that uh you know, what happens is is over optimization of proxy metrics ends up reducing company quality. So the famous story about this is Jeff Bezos' podcast with Lex Friedman. I don't know if you ever watched that. Yes, yeah, where he talks about like how their proxy metric for answer or customer success answer time or whatever was like five minutes. But then he had all this like gut feeling and this feedback that it's like not five minutes. So he just picks up the phone, or no, it was like 30 seconds. It was supposed to be like 30 seconds. He picks up the phone and then waits 15 minutes. And he's like, okay, like this proxy metric isn't working. Because a lot of times what happened is people will over-optimize proxy metrics, sometimes change how it's actually being tracked, or all sorts of stuff that is in good intention, but it's nefarious, and then it essentially backfires. Yeah, like companies in order to reduce MQL cost, which is basically qualified marketing application cost, companies will sometimes change the way they define an MQL in order to lower the cost. They didn't really change anything, they just lowered the quality of the business. Does it make sense? It's a common example. Okay, you know. I'll give you another one. This is why I never optimize my closures on close rate. Oh, okay. Because what you could do as a closer, and I know this because I did this as a closer. Not in my peak when I was really good, but like in the beginning days, I would do this when I was a little bit more beginner. Is if I could manipulate my close rate by let's say the prospect is kind of like not a good quality prospect, and and the first two minutes of their call, they're like, I don't even know if I should have this call, you'd end the call and mark it a no-show. A ton of closers will do that, right? The other thing is too, is if you if you um calculate their close rate on offer to close, they'll withhold offers on people they don't think are gonna close because it makes their close rate look higher. Yeah. Right? So that's a good way, you know, it's another example of like you gotta be careful with your proxy metrics.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:12

Yeah. So what do you look at if if not close rate? I guess you look at close rate, but like what are you okay?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:18

The thing is, is that we do look at it, but it's not the only thing we look at, it's not the main thing we talk about. And it's not the main thing we reinforce. So I make sure that they have enough slots open a day and they're taking enough live calls. If they're doing that, then what I look at is essentially what's their production in the form of cash and units. That's the main stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:41

Do you do you care about like contracted revenue versus cash collected, or are you tracking all the numbers and like for closers?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:47

We look at upfront cash collected and we look at units. But units is really a representation of cash uh of contract.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:54

Yeah, makes sense. Um at what point should we start thinking about setters?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:01

Well, here's the thing is that it would help you. I mean, it would technically make your marketing more efficient now. So like you could do it now. The thing is, is that it doesn't really address a can like marketing efficiency in ROI probably is not a constraint right now. Yep. Uh especially like the main thing it seems like is you gotta get your sales team performance up.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:24

Right? And then that would make your marketing even more efficient and your row as more efficient. So I would focus on that and then I'd probably revisit setters for you around three, four, five closers. Now, other people, it's a little bit different. Like if you're pure cold traffic, you don't have a brand, you don't have an audience, sometimes like like for our B2C offer, if we didn't have a setter, the the funnel wouldn't even work. So for a lot of people who are doing cold traffic, you need to have extra volume from the setter to be able to make the metrics work in the first place. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. So for a lot of people, it's like you hire a setter usually right with your first or second closer.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:59

For you, I mean, you could probably wait till four closers and then you, you know, okay, you got the closing team down, you feel really confident with the main sales team. Now let's start this new team. Yeah. Right? But for now, I don't think it's worth the extra department, essentially, that it'd be adding.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:15

So we currently have a 16% qualification rate on our type form. Uh we use your leads one, two, three, four score thing. So a three and a four is sixteen percent. Uh the other eighty-four percent is a one or a two.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:27

Um, and currently ones and twos just sit in the CRM doing absolutely nothing. Should we be getting a setter to triage call the twos? Or I mean we've just seen a massive like the the the primary lead score is just when we ask the income question. Right. And so uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:43

So it's up to you. Because again, if your return on ad spen is good, then if it's you know, it's five to seven X plus, you can just let them sit, frankly. Like it's not the biggest deal in the world. Now, yeah, eventually could you get one setter just to handle all the two great applications and set the ones that are qualified so that you get those set too? Yeah, you could do it. It's just not fixing a c if you did it right now, it's fine, but it isn't fixing a constraint right now. Yeah. So it's really up to you. Like, you know, if it was me, I'm I'm good at this stuff. So I would just do it now. But like to me, hiring a setter and doing the setter processes and training a setter, like I've done that a million times. I could do it in my sleep, not a big deal. Yeah. Right? For you, it's like, I mean, it is starting another department. So if it's not addressing a constraint, even though you are accepting, yeah, that's a little mini bonfire, maybe you just wait until you have four closers. Yep. Right?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:42

If we were to have foreclosures, um now that's like quite a lot of booked calls we need every week and every month to keep them fed uh and happy. But if we then have a fire in client success and we need to turn down the volume in terms of like new people that were accepting to fix up systems or this, that and the other, what happens to the foreclos? A couple of these closers are going hungry.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:04

As a worst case, uh first of all, I I've almost never seen it to where you're gonna have a bonfire in client success so bad to where you need to turn down the volume. Worst case, if you did have that, just give all your closures a week of vacation. Oh, okay. That'll reduce your volume by 25%. Okay, fair so say guys, summer vacation, go get fucked up. Yeah. You know, whatever. So um, but but man, like any client success issue we've ever had, we just fixed it while maintaining the same volume. So I I just doubt that's gonna happen. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:38

Yeah, one mistake we made with our first uh our first attempt at the high ticket offer a few years ago was we spent five months turned with sales turned off because we were like, we need to fix fulfillment. Yeah. And then the whole thing became unprofitable and we had to find out.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:50

Well, and the thing is too, is that you can't even really fix fulfillment without the flow in the system. You gotta keep the flow in the system to fix it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:59

Okay. So I shouldn't be afraid of hiring a third closer and a fourth closer, because currently I'm like Yeah, you're free to scale, dude. You need to scale. Okay. Right now we are currently um ads or organic straight to a page that has a video and an application. So direct, all the ads are directly talking about the thing. Yeah. Um, the direct funnel, I guess. At what point should we think about like webinars and stuff that are more indirect?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:22

Probably not for a while. I mean, I'd say probably you're gonna be fine to a million a month plus. Oh, but you're not even sending emails. Yeah. You could probably be going harder on organic. Yeah. You're not spending much on ads, and you're doing 300 grand a month. So it's probably gonna be a while. And then it really is like it's not like another ad channel, but it kind of feels that way. It's like you're adding another funnel to just have a little bit more variation in the marketing and increase the flow. Yeah. It ain't gonna happen for a while. You got a long runway. Okay. So I would just cross that bridge much later.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:55

Alright, so key constraint that's really coming up is just this sales process. Yeah. Our close rate's currently about 20%, show-up rate's about 75%. Um I think we can get both numbers up.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:07

Yeah, probably 35%.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:08

Especially because a lot of people probably booking, probably follow your content and know who you are.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:12

It's so it's kind of organic. It should probably be like 35. Okay, nice. I mean, I'm good to know that can be high. Like, my closers on average don't close some close, you know, in the 30s. But they don't close 35 across the team. But my guys are all really cold traffic and B2B, so not everybody qualifies.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:30

So, but it's real, real cold traffic. But when I have organic traffic, like you can get organic close rates as high as 40 to 60. Is super high. Okay. That's like pure organic. You're kind of like organic or adjacent, right? Sure. So that's like 35, you know. But even if they're all above 30, it's a good start.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:48

Okay. Nice. Um, what are your thoughts on revealing the price before before the call versus at the end of the call?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:54

I would do it at the end. Right. Yeah, it's just general best practice. Not that before the call can't. Before the call reduces, I mean, here's here's the way to think about it. Before the call reduces volume, increases quality.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:05

After at the end of the call, increases volume. But it reduces quality. Hopefully I said it the right. Yeah. It's the inverse of the increases increases. Increases volume, reduces quality. Yes. You guys get what I'm trying to say. Yes. So uh yeah, it's like a lever you can pull, right? It's a lever of friction.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:21

Yeah.

unknown 1:18:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:22

It's really up to you. I the only thing that I would say is if eventually you're gonna have to move to a system where it is price at the end of the call because you're gonna need to maximize volume, you might as well do it now. Because the thing is, is if the closers are always used to them knowing the price before, you're kind of building a team of order takers. And so what'll happen is eventually when you need to switch it, it'll totally change the type of prospects coming on, and then the wall tank. Yeah. So it's in my opinion, it's like you might as well do it now. The exception would be like if you have so many millions of followers where you're like, dude, like even with telling them the price up front, we could staff 30 closers. You know? Okay, well, in that case, maybe you just do it. But that's probably pretty rare. Yeah, like you'd have to be working with a pretty like dog-on famous person.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:15

What are your thoughts on guarantees broadly?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:17

I mean, yeah, they're good. The the way to do it is conditional, and the way to think about it is you just make the guarantee those things that you know if they do, they're gonna succeed. Yeah, so you just align the interest that way. A guarantee is really used in marketing to make your ads stand out and try to book more calls. It's is it effective in the sales process? Yeah, but not really. Like it doesn't matter that much on the actual sales process. Okay, the way I like to use it in the sales process is if you have somebody right at the line, there's a conditional guarantee they can pull out to nudge them across the edge. To where it's like, hey, if I'm willing to do this for you, to where I set this guarantee in place, yeah, would you move forward right now? That's the most effective way to use it in sales, is like an objection handle when they're kind of right on the edge and it's like they're scared.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:07

But if you're talking about the guarantee in your ads and stuff anyway, well, yeah, then you're kind of stuck. Okay, fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:12

You're kind of stuck. The interesting thing about the guarantee is that you could state it in your ads and state the qualifications of how they need to qualify. Like, you need to be at I know it wouldn't be for you, but like you could say, hey, you need to be at 10k a month to qualify for this guarantee. You'll get tons of people. Even if you state it plainly, you'll just get everything. And then you so you can literally s point to the ad and be like, hey, you don't qualify for the guarantee. We can still help you. Yeah. But you know, just by the way, the guarantee said this. Okay. You know.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:39

Our current guarantee, l I would love your feedback on this. So our current guarantee is um we guarantee that you'll make your first you'll make your first 10k within six months. Yeah. Um or we'll work with you for free for up to another six months until you do. And if at the end of the 12 months you still haven't made your 10k, then we will refund you the difference between what you made and what you paid, kind of thing. Provided you do the weekly whatever, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:05

Well look, there's really no value, in my opinion, of the guarantee unless you need it for your marketing. So if you're using it in your marketing as like the main hook, then okay, that's value and your guarantee, whatever, it's fine as long as you're happy with it, whatever. Yep. And it works with your client success. If if you're like, man, I can run ads without the guarantee, dude, just run ads without the guarantee. Interesting. There's it's really just a marketing thing. It's okay, that's good to know. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:33

Okay, because I think our ads don't mention it right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:35

Yeah, so maybe you just, but we can always if your ads don't if it's not the primary hook in your ads, it's not why people are booking. I guarantee it. So if you're saying it at minute three in your VSL, most people don't even know it exists.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:49

It would simplify our life a lot if we didn't have it on the back end. Because especially because now we have pretty some people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:54

Like for me, I probably couldn't make my ads work nearly as well without it, but my my hook of all the ads is the guarantee. Yeah. So, you know, okay. Our whole business has it, you know, it just is what it is. But yeah, I mean, if I could not have it, I would prefer not to have it.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:11

And so in that context, if we didn't have it in the ads or in the VSL or whatever, but then there's a back pocket conditional guarantee that the closers can use as an objection handling, which is only offered to a certain number of clients.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:23

One issue that we've had on that front is that like because we've changed up the offer just a little bit across cohorts and people are talking to each other. Someone from the March cohort is like speaking to someone in the May cohort being like, wait, they were you know, how come they got the guarantee and now we're uh Yeah, but you're testing stuff, you're changing it, hey, the price is gonna go up over time, like the offer is going to change.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:40

Yeah. And also, like, you know, that's why I don't like the accountability groups as much. I just like them working with a coach. Yeah. I mean the community is nice, but that's more of like the school what whatever your community thing is in school or circle or whatever, and the group calls, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:57

Okay. Something Angus just said is that he feels that our guarantee is more for my own personal conviction in the offer rather than really for marketing to our prospects.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:04

I think that's kind of silly. I mean, dude, I think your conviction in the offer should be independent of having a guarantee or not. I mean I don't really know what to say to that. I I I just feel like I mean your offer should be in the fulfill I already know your offer, you should have conviction in it. It's probably very, very good. It's probably better than most of other people who are doing similar stuff than you. And I think you just need to believe in it a little bit more. Okay, fine. Yeah, I think you need to believe in it a little bit more. And I don't think you need a guarantee to believe in what you're doing. You know, like you don't need that to do this. I do appreciate this. Is why I'm saying your stance is very procrastinating by obsessing about client success. That's like very much your stance, and that's like what you do to occupy yourself to avoid the real thing that you need to do to scale your business.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:01

Which is the sales team and the stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:02

Yeah, which is which is you know, increasing volume, increasing conversion, except you know, what whatever the main metrics are there. Yeah. Okay. I mean, everybody has that to an extent. It it's different for different people, but yeah, your thing is is you're avoiding the thing you really need to do by focusing on client success and telling yourself a story that it's not ready yet and it's not good enough yet, and blah blah blah blah. So it's it's gonna get better as you scale. Like you'll scale and you'll continue to work on it. You should I mean, keep working on it, yeah. And also do this other thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:35

Okay, objection, Your Honor. Is there not I've heard from various people that when it comes to info coaching y type businesses, there is a sort of sweet spot range of profit. People often say it somewhere in between the two, three million a year mark, which we are now at, where like beyond which it starts to like your margins start to go down, overhead starts to increase, it starts to feel heavier, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:59

Is this all just like Yeah, I mean, I think I think people I always have a saying, people can only tell you what's true in their own experience. So the the most likely person to tell you that is somebody who's never really scaled to a million a month and done it profitably. Yeah. Yeah, right. Like, yeah, you know, this is just how the world is. Yeah. That's a story they told themselves of what makes it okay for them that they got to 400 grand a month, and then they're like, oh no, like 200 was better, you know. Yeah, whatever. Okay. So um, look, the most the businesses who do the most profit that I know are pretty fucking big. Yeah. You know, like in this industry, the people who have done the most profit are the biggest. Now, that doesn't mean like there's limits to that. I mean, I do know some companies doing 50 to 70 million, and like they don't do as much profit as me. And I'm like, how the fuck do you you know run your business? So what I want to do is I want to have healthy profit margins, but I also want to grow bigger. Yeah, I can do both of those at once. You know, it's not an either or. Now, what happens is is like I don't know if it's a 200 or 300 or 400, but like, you know, let's say from 250, you could be really profitable, but then at 400, to kind of get there, you have to add some infrastructure, like a little bit more ops, a little bit more finance, whatever. But then what's gonna happen is the profit from 400 to 700 will go back up. But then at 700, you really got to invest in like an executive team. And then so like the margin will go down a little bit, but then that's more infrastructure, it'll go up, right? So there is truth to yes, you need to add more quote unquote overhead as you scale, but also eventually it'll go back up. Like right now, I have the infrastructure to probably do five million a month. So every incremental next client that I add from this point on is more profitable. Does it make sense? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:48

So okay, another while we're on this therapy session, um, another thing I worry about is what if it all goes away? What if somehow the lead generation tap gets turned off overnight or something? And now we have all this overhead, and then the business sort of crumbles.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:06

Yeah, well, this this is an example of catastrophying. So, you know, the if I ever find myself catastrophying, you know, oh my god, we're having a bad sales week, and then I start thinking, what if it all falls down and all this stuff? What you want to do is first you have to be aware of that, and then you have to challenge and question that thought with any evidence. So I'll start to think, well, how many other times has this happened and everything's been fine? A lot of times. Uh, even when things did go bad, was I always able to fix it or come back on my feet or figure it out or whatever? Yes. Right? Is it me just catastrophic and it's probably gonna be fine? Yes. Right? So that's how I catch it in the moment. And I mean at the end of the day, even if it whatever, you know, you got de platformed on YouTube and shut down on Facebook at the same day, you're gonna figure it out. Like you'll find a way back on your feet, you'll be okay. Okay. But these are just things that are like kind of like what Elliot was talking about, our mindset speaker. These are things that you need to work on personally as they come up and that'll really help you with the growth of your business. Because these are the things that really hold people back.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:15

Is like fear of complexity, fear of success, associating scale with pain, um, catastrophing, you know, and that pattern will just show up later. I mean, a pattern's showing up right now in this form, but like, you know, it'll show I went through this phase when I I went from 100 grand a month, like I said, to two and a half million a month in 12 months. So I went from not a lot of money to making a ton of money really, really quickly. And all of a sudden I was like, I'm not even kidding. I started looking for nuclear bunkers on on like listings for bunkers in like getaway houses and stuff like this. And it's just like the catastrophic pattern that I had that was previously applied uh not having enough money or having been back at my parents or whatever it was, just got applied to this other thing. That's actually when I started working with Elliott, and he was like, I think you're gonna be alright. He's like, I don't think you're gonna need a nuclear bunker. Yeah. But I was looking at them. There's some nice ones. Oh, yeah. For a couple million, you can get one that goes deep, you know, like a silo. Have you seen Silo? No. Uh Apple TV. Yeah. I was looking at some silos.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:20

Love it. Um okay, changing gears. Uh what is a good LTV to cack to be roughly aiming for, or is that the wrong question to be asking?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:29

No, I mean it's a good question. Um, it depends on the offer and the scalability. Hermosy has a really good framework for it, and I forget what it is. It has to do with like essentially the more scalable your offer is, the lower your LTV to CAC can be. Long story short, in this industry, I would say that you want it above five to one minimum. But really, like if you can get it to seven to one to ten to one, that's really good. In the beginning, you want to really maximize it as much as you can because as you scale, it's gonna go down because acquisition costs will go up. Yeah, right. So in the beginning, if you can get it to 20 to 1, sick, right? But how is 20 to 1 even possible if your salesperson commission is like no no no okay? So I I'm talking about just ad spin. Oh, I see. Yeah, so I mean you could do like I think fully loaded LTB to CAC or whatever it's called. So you could factor it in that way. I I I I only think about it just with ad spend, but as long as you measure it consistently, yeah. I you know, I don't think it matters how you do it. But if you think about like 20 to 1, that would mean for every $5 of ad you uh you put in, you get $100. So that would only mean that essentially on your PL, five percent of your total cash collected revenue would be ad spend. Got it. Right? So if you collected 100 grand, you spent five. Which is doable if you think about okay, let's say because twenty to one sounds like a lot, but if you think about okay, I spent five grand and then front end brought in fifty, but back end brought in another fifty, that's see that's pretty possible. Like if we really profit maximized right now instead of like trying to scale, we would be at like 10 to 1. But that's because we have a big back end, I mean 50% of our revenue is backend, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:19

And are you so uh a front end cash collected, uh if people are on payment plans and stuff, are you counting overall revenue or is it just purely on that first transaction what you're optimizing for?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:30

Um if that makes sense. Well, we we KPI the reps on upfront cash collected and on units. Yeah. Um obviously, you know, revenue and payment plans and all that stuff's good. I don't know what the question was though.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:43

Um okay, the the question is when we're looking at the profitability of our ads and looking at our like ROS and like uh our ROS, should we do it on the basis of the cash collected on that first transaction or on contracted revenue or on theoretical lifetime value?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:00

Yeah, so if you're looking at front end just specifically, I like to say, you know, five to seven X on contracted, if not more, hopefully. Contracted, okay. Yeah, hopefully more. Because five to seven X is even you know, at scale, that's even good. Like, but that's you're you're getting to tighter levels at that point. That's like the minimum. So ideally on contracted, if you can get to like 10 to 15, that's great. Yep. On upfront, it can be anywhere from like two to five. Okay. You know, so I know those are kind of broad ranges, but Okay, no, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:29

That's good. Good bench.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:30

It depends on where you're at. Like what I want to do is I want to get it as high as possible in the very beginning, because I know eventually it's gonna go down. Yeah. You know, ads are gonna go up. The more salespeople you have, the lower baseline closing rate your team's gonna have, generally.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:42

So and then to what extent do you try and model the cost of organic as well, or not really?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:47

Uh I mean you could because you could take your media team divided by generated appointments, or your media team divided by organic closes, and you could see what the CAC is for that. I mean, it depends on how big your media team is. I think if you have big spend relative to the revenue coming in for organic, it's worth it. Like for me, our media team budget is not significant enough to where I feel like that's a metric worth tracking. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:11

Yeah, in our case, we'd be doing the media team anyway, so like I'm kind of like, should we model it or not? Yeah, I mean I mean you can.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:17

You could look at it if you want. Yeah. It's up to you. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:20

Nice. Okay, this is a random question about email lists. So we currently have four different email lists. It's kind of annoying. We have Life Notes, which is my personal newsletter. It's got like 350,000 people on it. We have like a Productive Notes, which is like a weekly productivity one that we used to that we still send. We have a Creator Notes, because we used to well still do sell a YouTube course. And then we have a Freedom Notes one, which is now for this new business product thing. And I feel like this is like three email lists too many. Yeah. Uh the Creator Notes has 150,000 on it, Productive Notes has 150,000 uh on it. Freedom Notes has like 50,000,000, but that's by far our highest conversion into the thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:01

Um, some people are in some combinations of these different email lists, but I don't think anyone really knows what email list they're on. They just get an email from Ali Abdal some amount of times per week, depending on their preferences and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:14

Any thoughts on Well, I mean, ideally, what you probably want one list in an ideal perfect world, right? So, I mean, the thing that I would think about is what was the expectation of people getting on this list? And then based on the content they've been receiving, what is the future expectation of like what they're gonna get on the list, what you're gonna email them, and so on and so forth, right? And then if if you find that the expectation of each person on the list is if it out of any of those four, right? If they're very similar, like in terms of the con type of content they receive, what it is, blah blah blah blah, if you find those are relatively similar, I would just you could probably merge those lists without even telling them. Now, if the type of list is like let's say one is uh your personal life updates, and this other one is like only productivity. Yeah or like let's say one is money making, and the other one's like strictly productivity. Yeah. Well, in that case, that's a little bit different. And what you could do is you could still, let's say you want everybody on the money one, you could say, hey, I'm gonna be putting more time and attention on this other list. Let us here's what I'm gonna cover in this. It's still gonna be valuable, it's about this and that. Yeah, let me know if you also want to get those emails because I'm gonna be sending out more emails there and less emails here. I'll still be here, I'll still send some emails, whatever. But I'm gonna like, and then they click and it auto-subscribes to the other list, right? And then it's your choice if you want to keep sending emails to the other list or not. Yeah, frankly. But I mean, do you want to go deeper on that? Is like, what's the expectation and essentially, you know, like what do people expect on each list? Like, what's the content cadence for those lists?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:54

For the most part, each one is a weekly newsletter type thing, just for like life notes is often just whatever's going on in my life. But it it's often related to either productivity or creator or business or all of the above. Yeah. Creator notes is like how to be a creator, productive notes is like productivity tips, which are often overlap. There's like a large amount of overlap between these four verticals. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:12

Uh and some if it's really similar and you feel like people would just like the same type of content, yeah, you could probably just merge it all into one list and just let everybody know hey, I've been doing four lists. This has made the content worse. So I'm gonna show up even a more powerful way. And this new list I'm calling X, Y, and Z. And I mean, like, probably what people are gonna like is if you just talk like the Life Notes thing. That's probably like the talk about your life, talk about content, talk about business. Yep. Most talking about productivity, most people will probably be down just to be on one list. But that's probably something to where you don't need to have them like click and resubscribe and all this shit. You can probably just merge everything and then focus on really nailing email as a channel by focusing on just one list, you know? It's probably not a problem. There's two types of lists there's what's called a churn and burn list, and then there's a relationship list. So you have four relationship lists. Yeah, I have a churn and burn list, and then I'm starting a relationship list, right? Because I'm gonna get opt-ins from the content and all that stuff. Those, see, like those, you don't want to mix and match. Because the churn and burn is I'm gonna send like 10 offers in five days. Yeah, yeah. Like, because I know it's it's kind of funny, it's like there's no point in nurture the churn and burn list is when you are generating a list from ads. Yep. So now granted, if your ads are retargeting, you could maybe put those on the relationship list. I mean, you know, not the end of the world. But but the churn and burn is like people who opt in from ads, you know, they don't want to be on your list. Yeah, you know, so you're really just hitting them hard in the first 14 days to try to get them the book for what they originally opted in for. After that, they're almost dead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:49

You know, so that's uh good uh what I'm thinking based on that is actually two rather than four. One is like life notes, which is the personal relationship list. And then because our lifestyle business academy is on its own domain, lifestylebusiness.com, and it's like like we can just have the lifestyle business newsletter if you're interested in building a business, and then do a little bit of a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:11

I think you could do both, or or you could cross-pollinate and send certain things to both lists, that'd be fine. Um, but I mean, I almost I bet you could just do it all in one, yeah, is my thing. And you could CTA to the Lifestyle Business Academy, anyways.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:26

Easy.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:26

Okay. Nice. Love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:29

Thank you. Okay, so the point of this was for me to just try and talk to you and um for to help us scale from 300k a month to a million a month. Yeah. Overall, you've we've been chatting for a couple of hours now, and we've spoken on Zoom on and off over the last year, and we've been working with you guys. What do you see see for us to purpose on?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:49

Is don't procrastinate with perfectionism and client success as a way to keep you from doing what you should be doing. That's by far the number one thing because that's a pattern that's going to reoccur beyond just the tactics. And then in terms of the tactics, we talked about the client success KPIs, client success structure, milestones, all stuff like that. And then I think the main thing is is you know, focusing on your sales team and doing all the things that we talked about there, turning down your ad spend a little bit until you're ready to hire. Or no, I guess you're hiring a third person. So keeping the ad spend where it's at, and you should be good, dude. Easy. Million a month, upcoming.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:23

And then we can and then in the next episode we can go million a month to three million.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:26

There we go. Perfect. Brilliant. Thanks. If you enjoyed this podcast, you're also probably gonna like this podcast I also did recently that you can check out by clicking the screen right here.