Leila & I Answering Questions about Partnerships, Growth, & Operations - Q&A | Ep 754

A partner has to have time you don't have, money you don't have, skills you don't have, right? One of those three things. And you trade a piece of your company for one of these three things with the hope that the trade of that then gets you to your goal faster or increases the likelihood that you hit your goal. And so if you think that you're going to hit your goal no matter what, then the only thing that you're making that trade for is time or speed, is how quickly can I get there to my goal. And time has very real value. If you can get to your 10-year goal in 4 years, that might be an amazing trade. I would use that as my framework for appraising a partner. That being said, if no one is approaching you or you have no one in mind, then keep crushing. All right, so the topic of this is business partnerships and everything related to that.

My name's Randy and I own a law firm in Miami. We focus on estate planning, trying to niche in on special needs estate planning. So I'm delving into paid marketing, specifically webinars for the first time that I've ever done any kind of marketing. And I wanna know that when shit goes wrong, how do I know what to fix first? In that. I don't even know what to expect coming out of it. Let's say there's like no people that show up. It's like, how do I like analyze that process?

It depends on how much time you have, but a consideration for doing this is actually doing these with very small groups. And so you can coordinate between like 1 to 5 people and then they all know what time it's gonna happen. And that way you don't have to worry about the tech and automations and all that stuff, and your shorts will be basically 100%. And so then you can lead them through the call and it's like a little bit more casual, a little bit more personalized. And that's a lower risk way to kind of get reps in and then know what the questions what the questions that they're going to ask are. And so then when you make your more formalized presentation, you know it's gonna convert 'cause you just did it with smaller groups and you're just increasing N. And so that would be like my crawl, walk, run. So crawl would be like, do it with 1 person or 2 people, 1-on-1, do 3 or 4 iterations of that. The walk version of that would be, go to my email list and then bring everyone together after I've kind of tested the messaging. And then the run version is like, I'm running ads to the webinar and the reminder sequences I tested on the walk. Are now with colder traffic who don't know who I am, who don't trust me. At each of those levels, everything just needs to be more dialed.

Thanks for the partnership answer.

Let's go right here.

We make a great team, and so does the other CEO, like friends, brothers, partners. As the company grows— we're small companies— as a COO, do I want to look for another COO, or do I want to grow and keep leveling up my skill? When we grow as a company, are we going to look for somebody that's got really good COO skills, or can I continue to grow and be the best CEO for a company at different stages?

What do you want to do?

Be a great CEO and keep growing with the company.

This is the way I look at it, which is like being a great COO. It's not like I brought in a specifically a COO to learn from. Like when I was COO in Gym Launch, I just brought in other people from the outside and the inside that I could learn little bits and pieces from. Because if you really think about like what a great COO does is like they're usually a great operator of things and people, right? And so I think that you can learn that from a CFO. You can learn that from a CXO. Like, you can learn that from a CMO. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to like bring in a COO to learn from. Like, you can learn a lot of those skills from other people that have been there, done that, or looking for outside mentorship or advisement. Okay, you guys co-founders, or you just— are you COO?

I'm CEO of the company. I'm not a co-founder.

Okay, so like, if you weren't CEO and you brought another, what would you do? Do you fire yourself?

I mean, CEO or, you know, but I really— yeah, I don't know.

I'm just—

I'm being honest.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I'm being honest because I'm like, maybe, you know, I'm a good friend too. So like, I don't want to hold him back either.

You know, that's a good frame to have. You don't want to be the reason the business isn't growing quickly.

Right.

And so as long as you are aware of what your deficits are and that you are able to increase your rate of progress in terms of like acquiring the skills to overcome those deficits, you know, as much as possible, I think we're both pretty self-aware. But if at any point I think either one of us even just like whispers a hint that the other one may have something they need to look at, we immediately change our behavior. And so I think like how fast you change your behavior shows if you're worthy of being that person when the company is bigger.

Thanks.

One of the videos you created on YouTube, which was phenomenal, was the consulting coaching business, and then there's the, I guess, a scaling business that can really take off.

Yeah, really hit home.

It seemed like you're like going inside my brain and taking it like making a video for it.

So doing your thing or teaching the thing?

My question or challenge is I started one company which was a real estate company, syndication, multifamily. It got to a certain level. I got interested in doing coaching, consulting, and so I started a separate company with a separate team and I'm running both. They're both successful, but obviously I'm juggling back and forth. Yeah, my passion is in the coaching, consulting, but I really like the fun part of scaling the other company. Returns are obviously different at this level. One's like really on track to create like a, you know, a 9-figure net worth, but the other one is very fun and enjoyable. And there's some symbiosis, so like some physicians on that side invest and vice versa.

Anesthesiologists, all sorts of stuff, yeah. My dad used to say, just because you're passionate doesn't mean you need to make money from it. He's, otherwise I'd be a bartender at a ski slope. And so I think that one of the big misnomers of the whole follow your passion thing is that we assume that everything that we quote enjoy, we need to monetize. And I think sometimes it's like trying to make your primary home also a great investment. You end up with a mediocre home with a mediocre investment rather than the house you really want or a really good investment that you would never live in. And I kind of see that the same way with the issue that you're dealing with. Because if you want to coach and you want to give back, you can just give stuff away for free and know that you make all the money on your fun side. And I can promise you as somebody who has done that, you will help way more people. This is a super common dilemma. It's like, hey, I've got a $4 million plumbing business, and you know what, I really love helping other plumbers. And it's because what you get to talk about is the stuff that you're really thinking about, which is like kind of helping other business owners with these business things rather than dealing with Sandra who showed up sick in the actual business, right? So it's like kind of gives you this respite. But at least in my opinion, all the enterprise value, all the worth is going to be in the thing that compounds. And so you could just do it for free. And what would be interesting is like for that plumbing thing or for you, you'll be amazed at how much bigger you'll be just doing it for free. And you'll probably attract 10 times the deal flow to the other side. You're like, it's cool because I get some people here. It's like, give it away for free, then see what happens. That's just my two cents. Obviously you can do whatever you want.

Thank you.

Yeah, this is about business partnering for sure. When do I even start looking? One woman team. I don't even— is there like a revenue threshold?

You don't need a partner.

Why do you want to do— why do you— I don't know, actually. That is actually part of the question.

Like, do I even need one?

No, girl.

Okay. Okay.

No, I think a lot of times, like, and even for us, you know, people come to us all the time and they're like, we could partner on this thing and I can open up this division of acquisition.com. Like there's people pitching us all the time on partnerships. The question is, are you going to get there with or without them? Like, are you going to get there anyways without bringing in a partner?

I want to think I can, but that's the thing. I don't even know if I'm— I'm not thinking about it correctly, like—

So let me give you a framework. So a partner has to have time you don't have, money you don't have, skills you don't have.

Right.

Right? One of those three things. And you trade a piece of your company for one of these three things with the hope that the trade of that then gets you to your goal faster or increases the likelihood that you hit your goal. Right. And so if you think that you're going to hit your goal no matter what, then the only thing that you're making that trade for is time or speed, is how quickly can I get there to my goal. And time has very real value. If you can get to your 10-year goal in 4 years, that might be an amazing trade. I would use that as my framework for appraising a partner. That being said, if no one is approaching you or you have no one in mind, then keep crushing.

OK. I think that's another problem too, is like I'm extremely introverted. And like I don't—

I don't think it's a problem. It's also a label that's irrelevant.

Oh, well, OK.

I don't say that as a slight. I say that it's like, how much does this serve me? And then we have this like, it just means that sometimes in these situations, I prefer to not be around other people. And so does everyone feel that way. No, but it's like, there's so many times people are like, oh, I don't want to do this because, and they insert label. It's like, define what does that mean? How do you know that? And why does it matter? Thank you so much. Yes, sir.

Appreciate you both. It's exciting to see what you built and what you'll continue to build and create. In acquisition, you know, when you're doing acquisitions and you're merging two companies in this partnership, that company has some culture intentionally created or not, and you have a very intentionally created culture. How do you think about merging your culture into their culture or keeping them separate? Like, what's your What's your view and position on that when you guys do acquisitions?

Don't merge. We don't merge. That's not our model. Mergers is different than acquisitions, right? And so like if we bring a company into the Acquisition.com portfolio, that's a standalone company. So we actually just don't do— and in general, any of the companies that we have that are adding on other companies to them, like a platform company, they also— we just kind of let them keep doing their thing. And maybe it means that then we create a handoff where we hand off the customer to different sales to facilitate another sale or an upsell or an ascension or whatever it might be. And maybe we consolidate financials. You know, like, I think there's value in consolidating some of the shared services. So like Gym Launch, we consolidated HR, IT, finance all into one shared service that then fed each entity. And then that was the shared services team that was all operated by one leader or CFO, and then it fed these companies, but they were all very, like, we served the same customer. But again, this is not the same because we didn't buy one company, buy one company, buy one company. We started, started, started. And the same people start, it's like Alex and I started Gym Launch, then we started Prestige, then we started Allen. In terms of looking at like the success of merging companies, it's actually like a lot harder than people think because merging the culture, it's like you have so many personalities that clash. You kind of have to decide what's the dominant force because it's not actually like people merge. This is like something that we've talked about with a lot of people in private equity. It's like one dominates the other. And so the question is, who's the dominating force? Who's the one that you want to dominate the other one? And the other one just kind of gets swallowed by the more powerful force or like dominant culture. So we don't do them.

And just to clarify, like it's a little more with, with your values, you know, you have your 3 core values and how do those not merge like the, you know, merging companies, but just culturally aligning culture and values with the new acquisition. Is that something you're just screening for before you're even creating an acquisition?

Okay.

When you say culture, what do you mean by that?

I'm referring more to values, the way that you do things, the way that you operate.

And the reason that I asked that was because I think if you can define it really clearly for your team, then you'll have a higher likelihood of influencing their behavior. And so we see culture as the rules that govern behavior.

That's what it is. Yeah.

It's the rules that govern reinforcement and punishment in an organization. And so the values that you have are intended to be chunked up terms of those many skills. So remember I talked about earlier, charisma, kindness, whatever. They're really chunked up. They're big, big amorphous terms that then represent, with the largest, broadest brushstroke, all of these many behaviors underneath of it. But every company might have their 3 values or 5 values or whatever it is. And then somebody comes in, and then they very quickly see, oh, these are the rules that govern behavior. So if I come in here 2 minutes late to a meeting, no one cares. And so that is a rule that governs my behavior. There's no punishment for attending work late or coming to work late. But if I curse, then in this culture, that is a rule that is enforced, that people don't like it or it's frowned upon. And so it's getting really clear on what are the rules that we have, spoken and unspoken, in the organization that govern what is rewarded and what is punished. And so if you want to change the culture, I think the first step is understand what are the differences or discrepancies between what they do. And a lot of that takes keen observation of behavior. What we have found with teammates too is if you're very clear, it usually gets done pretty quickly. Where you give feedback to someone and you're like, Nancy, or John, can you just stop being a dick? The problem is that John is a dick naturally. And we use that one term as a bundled term for many smaller behaviors underneath. And he doesn't know how to stop being a dick because he doesn't know which behavior it is that causes other people to call him a dick. And so if you're like, hey, when you cut people off when they're speaking, they describe you as a dick. If you counteract what someone gives as an idea and they immediately say why it's dumb, people will consider you a dick. And so if you stop doing those two things, it'll decrease the likelihood people will call you a dick in the future. And he's like, oh, wow. Thanks. And then when he stops doing those things, people stop calling him Dick. And so all of a sudden, it's like, oh, it wasn't that. It was just these 2 or 3 behaviors that he did that then pissed people off. It's just taking that one micro example and expanding it towards an organization. And that's fundamentally how culture is both created and destroyed. Actually, culture always occurs. It's just the accumulation of those rules.

And is that something that you guys are looking for somewhat of an alignment on before you're partnering with someone to ensure that there's going to be alignment on these values and working towards that? Or how important is that to you? In your acquisitions?

Basically, we come in as a growth partner. We're not coming in like taking over the business and kicking the founder out. And so that's probably the thing we screen for the most heavily. You know, like we have looked at so many businesses that are— I mean, we just passed on one earlier today. It's super sexy business, really high EBITDA. But I was just like, dude, I just don't— I don't, I don't think the expectations are aligned, nor do I think the values are perfectly aligned. I think they're probably missing one. And so again, it's kind of like we were talking about, like outlasting, like what partnership is going to be able to outlast. And I think for us, it's either finding people who already have those values or finding people who are open to assimilating ours. And I think that's worked really well for us is also finding people who have founders who are first time in a very successful business and they really want to learn and they've watched our content, they've assumed all of it and they're like, I want to partner with you and I'm not looking for anybody else to be my growth partner. Like I'm not looking to work with PE, like none of that. I just want to work with you because I respect the kind of people you guys are and I would like that. And so you find with someone with that desire, they watch everything we do. You know, they see how we run the meetings with them. They see how we communicate with them. And I talked to our team about this for like these workshops, like we demonstrate rather than teach. If we come up here and talk on stage, but then like you guys hear like somebody on my team talking shit behind my back, it doesn't matter what I say on stage. Same goes with the portfolio companies. It's like they are watching us more than they are listening to what we tell them. And so I think for those relationships, it's like heavily screening on the forefront. And those relationships, the most successful ones, we worked with for a long time because it's such an important thing we don't wanna get wrong. And so if we have to build a relationship where we get to know them over a year and uncover the fact that those values are absolutely aligned, then we're like, that was worth the year investment because otherwise, like, it's not like it's a reversible thing to buy 65% of somebody's company, you know? And so I'd say like the same process that like Frank went through for hiring, we have the same process in terms of the values. For looking at portfolio CEOs. Like, we actually use a lot of the same questions. We do more interviewing, more questions, more in-depth, and we have more people on our team do it, but it's fundamentally the same thing as it is interviewing, you know, somebody for a role, and it's a lot of that plus, I will say this one thing, which is no matter how aligned we are with the founders, their culture, even if they have the same values, looks a little different.

Yeah.

You know, because the founders are all a little different. You know, we have some founders, I would say they embody the same, Values is us, but they're like a little bit less professional and a little more scrap, right? And so it looks different in their organization. It's kind of like Gym Launch, when we had Gym Launch, like here we have competitive greatness is one of our values. In Gym Launch, we had grow or die. They kind of mean the same thing, you know what I mean? And, but it sounds very different. It attracts a different type of person. They might not have our values on their website as theirs, but they have very similar ones just said in their own way. Great.

Hey guys, thanks so much. So I have a golf fitness and rehab business. We do everything online.

Cool.

I started brick and mortar just to build authority. We've got the largest database in the world, 15,000 on the physical metrics, change data and all that. So at this point we can get— we guarantee results in 10 weeks. Within 2 weeks they passed their 4 main mobility centers. Within 10 weeks they gained 10 yards, which any golfers here know it's a big deal. After a year they gained 20. My question is around the offer. There's a lot of guarantees of speed in the golf world. Most of them are BS. How would you recommend differentiating?

What is the problem? Is it that people aren't buying? Is that people aren't clicking? Like, what's the, what's the problem that you're trying to solve?

So they're buying.

I mean, we have a—

we close 50+%. Like, it's more on the front end. So it's how do we get more traffic into the funnel?

How do we know the guarantee is a problem?

I don't know if it's the guarantee. I know it's the offer. How do we make the offer more—

Are you running ads?

Yes.

Okay, then it might not be any of that stuff. You might just need better creative. Okay. Most people are limited 'cause their creative's not good enough more than their offer. And if you have all the amount of proof that you have, like I'd wanna put as much of that as I possibly could inside of the ads themselves. I think I was talking earlier about like amazing offer, shitloads of proof. I'd still take tons and tons of proof over really compelling offer. I doubt that the nature of your guarantee is the main constraint in the business. It's probably the quality of the creative. And if I had to zero in on it, how much are you spending a month on ads?

$35K?

And how many pieces of creative a month are you making?

Probably we film 30 ads a month.

Okay, I mean, it's not terrible. And if you do that weekly, that'd probably be a better start. And then also, when you look at, when you're making the ads, if you, how long you've been running ads?

I guess 6 months.

Okay, well, so you have some library that you've made, so you've got probably 150 ads that you've run since day 1. Look at the top 1%, 5% of your ads, and look at the first 5 seconds, and then only use those first 5 seconds for your next batch of ads. and I can almost guarantee that your next batch of ads will outperform all of your other ones.

So every time we film ads, we film it not like through the entire ad, but we film all the hooks, all the, what we call the meat, which is the offer, and then all the CTAs. And so what you can do is you can mix and match them if you're wearing the same outfit. That's what we do. And that's what Alex was showing me is like, you can get so much more out of them because if you make an ad, you find the ad with the one winning hook and then you're like, shit, we should have different meat and different CTA for that ad and different creative. But then you're like, well, shit, I'm gonna have to like clip it, it's gonna be all weird. But if you film them all, so it's like I film 20 hooks, and then I film the meat, which is pretty much the same for most ads, it's your offer, and then you film like 15 different ways of doing a call to action, then you can mix and match them. So basically, when you do have a winning hook, when you find one, you can then match it to the other ads that you have.

So when you do that, I mean, this'll give you 60, 80 different ads from one kind of recording session, but the real magic happens once you have your winners, you're gonna have your, you know, 5-ish winners that you use on the vast majority of these. This is like how I get people started. But your second and your third and your fourth and your fifth, everything after your first, like, I'm just trying shit out, is all gonna be 80% of my ads are past winning hooks, and then 20% are gonna be, let me see if I can beat the control. I would say that the big thing that has changed over my career as an advertiser is I used to spend all this time on trying to figure out new ads and new angles and new hooks, And now I spend 80% of my time just doing the exact same thing over and over and over again. Once we find a winner, we just keep hammering it to absolute death. And so it's like, can I do this same winner— winning hook in a different shirt? Can I do it as a different background? Can I use a prop for it? Can I take the same video that was a winner and then just put a black and white filter on it and run it again? Can I change the captions and the headlines and the header and the footer stuff of the ad? Like, all of those things are just permutations that I can use on my winners, and that will often give you 10x the original ad in terms of performance.

That's great, because we're doing it, but we're only doing like 5 hooks and like 3, so.

Yeah, just once you have the 1 or 2 hooks that work on your best performers, make that the hook for everything, and then take 20% for just the random other ideas that you have, which usually I'll take those from— I watch ads, it's like what I like doing. And specifically, I watch hooks, that's what I pay attention to. And so for you guys, I have premium on nothing. 'cause I wanna know what the hooks for the ads are that people are running. And it's just as powerful or more powerful to listen to hooks in other industries. And so even though you are in golf, you can still have a hook that you grab from the hotel space. It still could work great.

And you would do that weekly, those 20, 3 to 5?

Yeah.

Okay.

Filmed ads last week, we'll film ads this week, same ads in a different setting. So like for you, it'd be like you could do some that you try direct to camera. You could do some where you're walking on the street. You could do some in the facility, like showing it behind you. You can try the same ad in all those different settings. I think the more close, like you can like show rather than like talk about like show, don't tell, like show yourself. Like if I have an ad, I'm right here and like you can see people in the background. I'm talking about a workshop that's like right there. It's like they'll believe you because they see the customers, you know what I mean?

Awesome. Thank you.

Can I have a couple of your thoughts on sort of building a team of family and friends? Risky, I know, but this is like my goal of building a huge, basically family company.

You have to treat it when you're in the work setting as objectively as you would anybody else, you know? And I think that that's one thing that we've done really well within our partnership is like, it's not like we got into the partnership because we were dating. It was like, this makes a lot of sense. And it made more and more sense as we, as we carried on. And then the thing that we always talked about and we always said to each other is like, this has to make sense even if the relationship didn't. And that goes the same for any family that I would say you hire in or you use to build the team. Because where I made the mistake was that I hired in a family member, immediate family, and with that person I was much more lenient on what behavior I allowed them to exhibit in the workplace. And so because of that, they probably stayed a year longer than they should have, right? Right. And so then when I did let that person go, it was even worse because they've been there longer. And I was like, I haven't really— I should have done this a while ago, right? And that's a shitty conversation.

Yeah.

Versus like, my dad now works in the company and it was like, okay, this is what it's going to be and this is what needs to happen. And then even when You know, for example, my dad's like, he says, he's like, you know, I messaged Alex, but I was like, Dad, that's not how we contact Alex. How we contact Alex is you put a ticket into Davina in Asana and you don't text me about it. You don't text him. That's not worth his time.

Yeah.

Do you know yourself well enough to know that you can uphold the same standards with family that you do with the rest of the company? Because if not, it also discredits you. Because if I employ people in my family and I treat them differently than other people on my team, I lose respect with my team for doing that.

I'd also say that this works for friends too, or people that the other people in the company know that have an inside track with you, giving like a warning conversation. So Jacob, who was here— so I met him when he was 15. He was my neighbor, and he's been under my wing this whole time. And when he came over to Acquisition.com and has done an exceptional job at sales, I said, you're gonna have two things against you. I said, one is everyone's gonna assume that you got here because you know me.

Yeah.

I was like, so number one, right off the bat, you're gonna have to be that much better to prove it. Number two, you look like you're 7 years old. And so both of those things are to count against you. And I was like, and if you do not— I was like, it's not about earning my respect, about earning everyone else's respect.

Yeah, it's the Little Prince syndrome. Yeah, when I was a kid working for my parents too, right?

And so you have to, you have to be that much more undeniable. And so it's giving that talk up front, which means that, that means that I will not actually hold the same standard for you as I will for everyone else. It will be higher. And I think if you set that up front for that, and also especially if it's your your partner, understanding how decisions are made, which is like, okay, if you have a different dynamic in terms of power in the household than it is in the business, you're gonna have to reconcile those differences.

100%.

That's actually, I think, a very important one, which is like the way that you manage the relationship outside of work does not need to be the same way you manage it inside of work in terms of how you make decisions. And I think that that's actually where a lot of the married in business goes wrong is that they use the same decision-making techniques outside of the workplace, inside of the workplace, and it doesn't work because there's certain areas where it makes sense for me to make decisions. There's certain areas where it makes sense for Alex to make decisions, and then there's big decisions that we need to make together.

Yeah.

And we need to define what those things are. I would say this, which is like, there can be many times where we disagree, but we don't need to argue about it.

Right. And that's kind of what I'm most excited about and most terrified of, is the fact that I know that he has the absolute best interest of the company at heart, right? Because it is the family business. And so I can absolutely trust him to make those, those decisions for the right reasons and whatnot.

It'll just be the how that you disagree on. We're aligned in terms of our goals, but there's plenty of times where I'm like, I think we should do this thing. And Layla's like, I don't think we should do this thing. And then you're like, well, we both know that we want the best outcome. It's just the path is different. Yeah. And so intention will definitely get you, you know, some, some way the distance, but you still will have disagreements.

All right. So Alex and Layla approve. I'm hiring my husband.

I will say one thing which I just think is important for anybody with business partnerships and even with like high-level employees, which is like You have to get good at managing tension because the best partnerships, the best hires, you have tension with because they have a perspective you don't have, or you have one that you don't have. And most people, they want to constantly fizzle out the tension. They're like, no, I want us to be, I want us to be completely aligned. But it's like, we can be aligned towards the big thing and not all the small things. And that's actually where the biggest returns come from are the fact that we have to creatively work through these tensions to come up with a creative solution. That's better for everybody. It was something I was talking to two people on my team about like two weeks ago. I said, they were like, well, I keep right here, we're not agreeing. I was like, that's why you guys are each in each of these roles. If you agreed, one of you would be irrelevant.

Don't need both of you.

Yeah, exactly. And so within the partnership, I would say that there's so many areas that we have tensions within the business and we do not take that personally, nor do we take it home.

Thanks guys.

Appreciate it. You're welcome.

If you're looking at potentially bringing on a partner and then you hypothetically learned in a scaling workshop yesterday that you have zero enterprise value, or how do you value that equity that you potentially give to a, to a partner?

What's this person coming in to do? How long have you had the business?

So I've been in business for about 4 years. It's a residential remodeling company. And I need help managing production of projects. I frankly don't have a ton of experience in construction. I don't have the money to bring on somebody to operate that side of the business right now. So That's why I was considering potentially partnering with somebody. No, that's, that's an easy, that's an easy answer. Just don't do it.

No. Okay. I'll just say like rule of thumb and like maybe you have a different perspective on this, but I would just say like, I've just heard that a lot, which is like, you know what, I don't know if I can pay them, so let me give them a big chunk of the business. It's like you create a lot of dysfunction in the long term for short term trying to solve for the cash. So the other thing I'll say is this, which is like, okay, so when the next problem comes around, you don't have cash. What are you going to do? Give them another half?

Right.

That's somebody you hire for rather than you partner with, in my opinion, if you use that equation, at least given the circumstance you just described.

So wrong, wrong constraint that I'm—

Fix the business, get the cash flow, bring the person in and just pay them.

Okay.

Thank you.

I own an insurance brokerage. And so a lot of the salespeople that I work with, we really view this as like a partnership. Like you can go hang your hat anywhere. And so I need to start pumping out content on my very, very boring insurance brokerage.

Sure.

You guys have a pretty successful kind of like media machine now, but back when you first started, what did you talk about and how do I make insurance sexy?

We own an insurance brokerage and it's content-driven. I would say the big key is a lot like that nutritional insurance girl that I've talked about, the registered dietitian. The videos that this company makes are the most boring videos on earth. They're just like Excel sheet overviews of how different policies work. The founder is an amazing human being and he's great and he loves doing it. Despite them not being the most, you know, interesting things, you know, the company gets 150 to 300 qualified, unbelievably qualified massive life insurance policies a month that get filtered down through the team. And so I would encourage you to not try to become an influencer, and I would encourage you to be perceived as an expert. And so in terms of making things that are interesting, make things that are interesting for someone who's looking for insurance. Thanks. Yeah, just being real. And then it's just like, it's pumping out the things that will give you variety, because you're like, I'm gonna run out of things to talk about. The things that will give you variety are case studies and examples. You know, this is a policy that we drew up for a 44-year-old woman who is in this condition, and this is what her goals were. And it's like, if you think about avatar times whatever their situation is and plus their goals, it's like you have an unlimited variety of examples that you'll give. And what'll happen is a customer will be like, I'm like that one, I'm like that one, can you make sure that that— and the thing is, no one wants to set it up wrong. And so they'll just like, I just— can you just do that thing for me? And that's how those leads come in. They're just like ready to buy.

I just look at what I was doing that week. What's top of mind for me? Like, what's— what am I thinking about in the shower time? Because I also have recognized, like, with that boring stuff, like if I'm like, man, I'm like really thinking about these one-on-ones and then I'm like, I want to teach my team this. Like, this is how we need to change one-on-ones. And I'm like, oh fuck, I should make that into content because you know what, they might actually like that. And then when I'm fired up about it, I'm like, guys, this is how you hire people. It's like that also kind of helps with the boring part if you're excited about it because it's something that's top of mind for you.

Do you want to make content to attract agents or do you want to make content to attract customers?

Ultimately both. I think to start attracting agents would be the priority.

Okay, well then, then I would be talking less about the policies themselves and more about the work of being an agent and the things that you do. Basically, it's like you want to teach them how to make money as an insurance agent. Think of yourself as an insurance coach. Right. And all you want to be the number one insurance sales coach in the marketplace. And if you establish that as your position, you getting agents will not be a problem.

Okay.

That would be the angle. Like, I would just be like, I want to be the guy who gives away more stuff than anyone else in the space. These guys are charging $10,000, $25,000 to teach you how to do insurance stuff. I will make it better and I will make it free. And if anybody on my team knows this, like my favorite business model in the world is look at everyone else is doing make it better, make it free, and find a different way to make money off of it. It's like my favorite business in the world. Thank you.

Business partnership.

She has spoken.

It's actually a mutual friend of ours brought this question to us, and he got a lot of different advice. It was on a new partnership opportunity, and he posed it to our group that one of the partners— it was a three-way partnership— one of the partners he knew, trusted very much. The other guy was a great business operator from everything he could see. But he was hesitant because the guy had a bad relationship with his wife on the personal side. So he got a lot of different intake on that or on how he should approach that. But I was curious, do you make a delineation there between how good they are as an operator versus just a human being?

Oh my God. Yes, that's a problem. It's on and off the field. So, I mean, people's character. So unimpeachable character is about being that way on and off the field. And that is specifically written into the values that we have. Because if I find out that you're cheating on your wife and you're an amazing coworker, I just feel like I just haven't found out how that applies to me yet. But it will.

I wish I could tell you guys, of all of the companies have come to us and been like, invest in me. And I'm like, this guy just seems like a snake, or these— this couple seems like something's off. And then it's like 6 months later, pyramid scheme. 8 months later, indicted for fraud.

Layla has a freaky human compass. It's wild. Since we met, like, we're dating, not even married, she is yet to be wrong. And I've had like 3 that I can think off the top of my head that were illegal businesses that I was like, I was like, this guy seems great. And she was like, just like, I can't put my finger on it, but I just think this guy. So like, No, 4. All of them but 1 are in prison.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Like legal. Like, I'm not like, oh, yeah, that's cute. Like, oh, it's the FTC, you know, like, no, like in jail, like stole money from people.

Imagine what that would do to our reputation if everyone here was like, Acquisition.com partnered with this company and then got indicted for fraud. So it's just like, I look at it as risk. It's like, this person is a risk. They have outpoints. I don't want anybody with outpoints close to me personally, professionally. I don't want to hire them. I don't want to ever have to wonder, you know what I mean? And that actually takes up a lot of space, which is like thinking about that risk. Is that going to happen? Is it not going to happen? And also, like, we've been doing this long enough. You just watch it play out. You go to business meetups and you meet people and this and people are like, they'll have something like personally really weird and like then you just see it play out, you know, and you're like, wow, it happens more often than not. The thing just hasn't happened yet. It just has not manifested in the business, but it will.

Yeah, I would not do the partnership.

No.

Yeah. I mean, and this is coming from a guy who I got into business with, a guy that ended up taking the money. The thing is, is he had been indicted for fraud and he told me because he was an honest guy. And so, and I was like, listen, we've all made mistakes. I've been there. He came clean about it, you know, whatever. And she was like, you know, there's like all these people who haven't been indicted for fraud and like, why don't we just like You know, pick one of them if you really need to have a partner. And so it sounds kind of heartless, but there are some things that are very tough to come back from. And at this point, especially in our career, like we have so many opportunities, like we can just not do the deal with the one that's like, eh, we just don't do it. Thank you.

Sick.

Cool. Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you guys so much.