From College Dropout to $500M Funnels: Nikhil Sai’s Rise with Funneling Media — Remote First Podcast

All right, my good friend and soon to be yours, Nick Tsai, in the house today. Nick, how you doing, buddy?

Great, thanks for having me, Azhar.

Hey man, it was great connecting with you at the GHL Summit in October, and you were up on stage and such a great story, right? We are all inspired, and you've been helping me out, consulting with me privately and giving me all the tips, and I love first of all, that you're a young man and you've built such an amazing agency called Funneling Media. And we're going to go into stuff like you guys are working with some of the best, like Inc. 500, Inc. 5,000 businesses out there and delivering like $500 million plus in value and revenues delivered to these guys with your funnels and stuff. Your own agency is doing amazing. You got a high ticket price and then you have your own SaaS that you're offering. So I want to talk to you about all of that stuff, but tell me a little bit about who Nikhil Sai is. What's the background story? How did you land into marketing?

Sure. I was a dropout kid from a tier 3 city in a tier 3 country like India. And college wasn't like the best thing I was going through. And I kind of realized I'm studying mechanical engineering and pretty much like it's irrelevant in 2025. So when the COVID hit, I had an opportunity to jump into digital marketing a little bit. Get my hands dirty with affiliate marketing and stuff and do some Instagram promotions and stuff. All I had was time. And I was in a point in my life where like, I'm already at the bottom. Like I cannot go worse than that. So I just took all the risk I can and started making some money online, promoting some affiliate products on Instagram that took off. And I had a Moroccan mentor who was teaching me marketing. And I was like, hey, I'm doing all this Instagram hustle bustle. I'm handling 60 accounts every day, but I'm stuck at this income level. Then he was like, you should use funnels. You're using traditional websites and, you know, the long-form thing of it. I was using WordPress and it used to be a nightmare. Then he introduced me to, yeah, he used to be, he introduced me to the Russell Brunson's 10X conference video. I saw that. I was like, wow, I love that. Maybe I should build a funnel. And I did. And the best part was my affiliate conversions went from 1% on my click to conversion to 17, 18%. So that was a huge income jump. Now I realized how much powerful a funnel can do, meaning an effective marketing and sales infrastructure that can convert attention into a client. And so I shared the journey in the ClickFunnels community back in the day when COVID hit, and that was exactly the sweet spot. Many people were going online because of COVID and they had to be online. There is no other way around it overall. It was not a choice. It was— there was no other option overall. So there was huge demand in funnel requirement and some people just flooded into my DM saying, hey, can you build the same thing for me? And I was like, I kind of liked building funnels. Let me see what I'll do. And then I got a little bit smarter, started hiring people, built a whole agency around it. I invested in the right mentors overall, over $300,000 at this point in here, which allowed me to generate multiple millions in my own company and help my clients generate over $500 million. Like you said, won all the awards, spoken on all the stages, interviewed 150 million billionaires on my show. Long story short, that's what I've done in a nutshell.

Wow, man, that's a fascinating story. And talk about speed, right? Me, myself, school of hard knocks, a lot of similar stories, but I've been at it, man, like for 15, 20 years before you see the break. But I guess kudos to you. And then also kudos to the time that we live in right now with the tools and things that we have access to. If you spend the right money, Like you mentioned coaches, I'm a big fan of coaches. My breakthroughs all have come through learnings and through coaching and such a big fan of that. But with the AI and all of that stuff, the things that would've taken us, like a guy like me took me 15 years to do a build out a 7-figure business. A person coming in with the right mindset like you can really do it like in a year's time if you play your cards right.

Yeah, I think again it's all input-output. The world is very binary. If you do things, you get the output. It's pretty much somebody starts today and do what's required in the next 3 months, I wouldn't be surprised if they're making $50,000, $100,000 a month. It's really— again, Charlie Munger said this very interestingly, which is the best thing you could do to someone is giving them access of information which they never had, so the perspective on the world changes. And that's what mentors does to me in my life. And it completely changes how you see the world. And now you see new possibilities and that creates creativity, which will allow you to create cash flow for your business that support your lifestyle.

So now, so from India, you're right now in Cleveland, Ohio. You're traveling in the States. You got awards you're collecting all over the place. What a fantastic story, man. Let me start with my 3 more questions segment and ask you this first question. So out of everything you just told me, What's the one single most important thing which you can say is the secret to your rapid success? If you have to just pick one thing, it's literally doing it anyways.

You always feel the fear, you always feel the self-doubt, you always feel the unconditional aspects of can I do this or what people think about me or am I this, am I that, am I built for this, maybe I should do the traditional things or whatever, that little mind talk. It always happens. The chatterbox goes. You got to just do it anyways, regardless of the situations you're living in, the emotions you feel, the abilities you have, because all of them can be learned. These are skills that could be acquired, but attitude and the way you take action, that's on you. It's literally just moving towards the goal. I think direction is more important than speed. I've seen very many people come in, they try to do something very fast, and that's one of the things I want everybody who's listening to be conscious about. Speed is great, but in the wrong direction could go terribly wrong. For example, when I started my funnel agency, there were probably 10,000+ people who started their funnel agencies and very small portion of them are actually still active, are actually still making money and who actually made some money in the first place. So it is really, entrepreneurship is not for everybody. You hear all the good stories I have to say, but at the same time, there's a million stories every day I break down. I have crazy amount of workload on my desk and I have to handle teams, time management, campaigns, a lot of stress to work and travel. In the last 6 months, I've been to 10+ countries, still need to keep up with my business. So it's a lot, but that's what I'm up for. I'm up for testing my tangent and see how far I can go. I like that.

So in short, don't be afraid of executing, but when you start, make sure you slow down to go fast. And because it's going to get crazy really fast, right? So we can see that. Love it, man. Here's another question for you. What's the best funnel that you've built? And can you share some of the results that you got from that funnel?

Sure. We've tried every type of funnel. And this is one of the things people come into the agency space. They want to build a successful agency. Then they're like, oh, I'm the everything guy. Anything in digital marketing, I'll do it for you. And you pay me XYZ. And I've started like that as well. There's nothing wrong with it. You keep doing stuff. Something fails, something works out for you and you figure out what's your market. So I went all in, I'll do any digital marketing, to saying I'll do funnel marketing, then I'll do application funnels because we have tried every other funnels and application funnels made more sense because the dollar value is higher, which the client makes. So it's easier for me to charge high ticket. And then we went to different niches saying, hey, we want to work with high ticket coaches or high ticket agencies or syndicators in the real estate space. Then we went deeper saying, hey, people who at least have $100 million under A, we only want to build funnels for you. That way I know exactly my audience and the problem I'm trying to solve for them. And the best part is I've productized my service, meaning if I sell an e-commerce company, then I sell a course creator on a SLO funnel, then I'm selling a call booking funnel, I have to build 3 different funnels, 3 different brands, 3 different client management. Like it's just a whole shebang I'm getting into. But if I sell one snapshot which I can customize in 30 to 40 hours, which my team can do, I can sell to as many syndication firms because they all have the same requirement, if you see what I'm trying to say. So productization is the key. Now coming back to your question, we love application funnels. At the highest level, conversations happen before transactions. So you need to be able to connect the right people. And that's what we do with our application funnels. We use a good amount of AI in it. That has conversation aspects of it and personalized video aspects of it. And we use community effect and podcast effect and we plug the whole thing together. That way the client is positioning very well about himself in the market, attracting great quality connections, and he will be able to get a return on investment overall with the connections he's building through the podcast and the community and the appointments that are coming from the funnel. That's the best funnel I have seen so far. Everything else works. I'm not saying do this. I'm saying this gives you the highest sophisticated connections. So if you want to charge somebody $10,000, you can't just chat with them and send them a Stripe link unless you are like all in and you've been in the space for 50 years and everybody trusts you, which is not applicable for many people. So that's how we have done it.

Love it, man. Go for application funnels, guys. What's your— here's my last question for you. What's your number one advice for someone who's launching an agency in 2025?

It's a tricky question. I hate to say this, but most of you will be broke. So better build it the right way. AI is coming. Most creative work that you used to charge for is no longer valuable enough. Most creative work is done by AI. Campaign management, media buying is not even a thing because Facebook handles like their AI is better than you. Like the only thing you need to do is creative and that could also be done with AI a lot. So instead of thinking about what can I sell to somebody to make money, think inverse. What are the inefficiencies a business has that I can go and solve for? Can I help them make more money? Can I help them save more money? One or the other. If you think in that aspect, you will find problems to solve instead of services to sell, which is a thin line. But if you define that well enough, if you're solving a problem, you get paid. If you are trying to sell a service, you are ignored. And that's why many agencies try outbound content creation, email marketing, referrals, networking event, all this jazz, and nobody buys from them because of the same reason. They're trying to sell a service. Do the other way around. Solve a problem, make them money or save them money. So much more easier for you to get into a conversation and show them how you save or make them money. Then they would ask you on how they can be a part of your community or work with you or buy your services.

And how important is the role the niche plays in that agency, how successful you will be this year?

I think niche is an interesting term and we can define it however we want. That's a tricky part. I won't say pick a niche and do like this and this. I would want you to experience and experiment, especially if you're getting started and if you're a beginner. But if you already have success and you have clients and you've patterned, what I want to do is sit down. And think about what is the 20% of the clients who bring you 80% of the money. Think about them and go into that direction. So you can start like a generalist saying, hey, I'll do everything. And then after you do work with 10, 20, 50 clients, you will see who make you the most amount of money, who are the easiest to handle, and who stay the longest, and who gives you referral. And you could go there and go that direction. That becomes your niche. Many people come and say, oh, this guy is doing plumbing, then maybe I should do plumbing. Then next week you come and say, I don't know, home services. I want to do home services. If you keep changing your niche like that, it doesn't work. Every niche has money as long as the businesses are— and don't sell to broke people. That's the fastest way to go broke. Rich and affluent audience who are willing to pay the price to solve their problems. So I like to go after the top 1%. And again, if you're trying to sell to them, they can sense bullshit from miles. So you need to be ready to show enough proof and case studies and have a strong system that can get their attention too. So Again, you need to have good solution in the end. Otherwise you can't sell. In 2025, it's going to get harder. My friends, get ready.

So solve a problem, not sell a service, and then go after a niche, but also look at your best, your 80% of the clients who are paying the bills for you right now, where you have most experience, pick those pockets. And, and then what was the last one you just said, Nick?

I'm saying so many things, so I don't even have a thought.

We lost the train of thought there, but we'll come back to that. I think the AI would be able to solve it for us. But let's move on to the rapid fire round here. And I want to ask you, I know you're a global guy. It's probably a question I'm— answer I'm expecting, but I want to hear from you. In-office versus remote teams.

Interesting. That's a super generic question. I would always start with the fundamental saying, what are we trying to build? And depending on that, we need to think and move. If you're trying to build like the next Facebook or like the next Airbnb and you're trying to be super innovative and you know, you are physically in a location where you can hire great talent and the talent is in that place like SF or New York or places like these, then it does make sense as long as you have VC money, that's probably the, the typical traditional company, like startup way, but the other way around where you're bootstrapping and every dollar counts and you count them in cents, then it's better to go remote. I've done the whole huge office, 80 people capacity, big payrolls, offline team things. And trust me, if you are a digital business, you don't need to take all that load. I like having a light and a laptop and a mic and traveling wherever I can and having that freedom. And I don't care if it's remote or offline or whatever that is. I just care about this is the task, it is my budget, this is the timeline, and this is the quality of my expectation. If you can match that. So that's how I look at it. That's why we have a lot of contractors, a lot of employees. I don't care if they're doing moonlighting and stuff like that. I just care about this is the amount of tasks I'm giving you this week. Can you get them done on time with the quality within my budget? That's the question.

Results-focused global teams. Love it. I want to get back to this one. I felt that we left a little unclarity here. Tell me just in 30 seconds, a niche versus a generalized agency.

Sure. So there's two types of answers we need to do, right? Number one, we look at, I do generalist, all services to all niches. And that's the trickiest agency you can ever run because now you're just having so many moving parts. Then the other way, I build one service, one component, which is very valuable to one type of business, which is what I like. Then you can charge ultra high ticket. I would pick the second option because if you solve one problem and you create one solution for that one niche where they make a lot of money, the good thing is you can charge a lot of money for it. The problem with doing all the services for the same client, let's say if I sold somebody funnels, right? And if I'm trying to upsell them on YouTube marketing and podcasting services and short-form content and any other things, regardless of which service is going wrong and which they don't like, they will cancel the whole thing. They will abandon like, oh, this whole project is not working out. And I don't like that factor. I want to be like, this is my iPhone, judge me if the iPhone is working well or not. I don't want to be your bookstand and your fridge, refrigerator. I don't want to be all that. I will give you this one piece which I'm pretty good at. Tell me if something is wrong and we are here to fix. So I like Niche, which is what type of businesses you work with, but also niche-specific service, meaning what is the one vertical that you can solve a problem which can again make them money, save them money. If you can't answer that question, then you won't be able to sell, especially in 2025. Clients have passed that situation where they used to pay $10,000 for SEO. It's not 20 times right now. Yeah. Now every dollar counts, especially in a market like this. So you need to be able to predictably show them ROI and come back with data and show numbers and speak with numbers.

Especially with what you said, that sell to people who have money. Like when you're selling to these people, they're definitely past that, hey, I need SEO, I need a website and all of that stuff. They need a solution.

And there's billions and billions of websites. People realize that website don't make the money, a good business and offer does. So that's what I like to do right now. Go and show the businesses. Where they're lacking from a strategy standpoint, because again, technicality, it's productized at the moment. Like you could take any website, build any funnel, build any automation in like a couple of hours. It's not the moat like it used to be because everybody got that stuff. Now what's the moat is how you can differentiate your offering, how you— what strategies are you implementing, how frictionless you're making for your customers to discover you, book an appointment with you and buy from you. What are the touchpoints they need to go through before they make a buying decision? And can you create a synthetic journey for them and increase the velocity of sales? I'll give you an example. If you get a lead and they buy typically in 90 days, that's your sales cycle. Let's say you convert them into a sale using an effective system into 45-day sales pipeline. You just doubled your business. In 90 days you would have 2 sales instead of 1. So these little levers that you could pull in each business can instantly increase the bottom line. And that's what you should be able to do. You got to be a problem solver. You cannot be a service salesperson. It doesn't work that Wolf of Wall Street lied to you. It doesn't work in 2025.

Love it. Love it. So niche all the way as much as you can for your service, for the people you're solving the problem for, and, and then see the magic happen. Here's my last 3 more ideas question for you. Your favorite CRM, Nick.

Oh, now you're putting me in trouble. Like, such thing as like a best CRM tool in my opinion. Again, it would depend on clients' requirements. Most of my clients, we put them on our own white-labeled version CRM system, which we use obviously HighLevel for it. And we love HighLevel for that reason because it allows us to make recurring revenue while keeping everything in one place from a complexity standpoint. But some clients, like the big ones, they do have crazy requirements, like insane amount of requirements, and they're too much into a technology already. Salesforce, it could be HubSpot, it could be some other softwares it could be. And what we like to do is we like to wrap around our SaaS solution on top of what they're using. So all their lead generation happens and only qualified leads goes into the actual CRM they're using. They're not paying for big amount of contacts in the HubSpot or Salesforce or whatever that is.

Yeah, because those can get really expensive.

Yep, you're right. And that's exactly why we have, we show them the fact that, hey, now you could add 100,000 leads and maybe the right 700 people who are making decisions can be back into your HubSpot. They were like, I like it. Is this like $10K a year? I'm like, no, it's $5K. I'm like, yeah, you bet.

I love it, man. Thanks so much, Nick, for coming on the show. Reach out to Nick at funnelingmedia.com. We'll put up the LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram for Nick as well. Nick, thanks a lot. Until next time, man. And good luck with the Funnel Hacking Live where you're going to be expecting some rewards. I'll watch that online and root for you.

Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Thanks, buddy. We'll see you soon.