Billy Gene Is Marketing - How The Wolf Of Paid Advertising Built A Business For Entrepreneurs

Do you fear losing it all?

No, that's the one that I just played footsie with you.

That's all right. Let me take my shoes off. So feel better?

Yeah, no, you know, that's one thing that has. That's. That was a great question, dude. I don't think about losing because worst comes to worst, I think the win will just look different. I'm.

So when will just look different?

The win will just look different. In other words, it's like, okay, hey, maybe this model of what I thought it was going to be is cool, but because this is really the skill set to make money as, you know, it's like, all right, I'll just put a different album. I'll make it look different. Like, I don't know. I've just never been more confident in my skill set. I really fucking feel great at what I do. So that's what gives me the strength of not fearing that.

Yeah. Got it. So you're very. You're ad driven. You teach creating ads. You're kind of known for your epic ads. So you don't fear change in ad platforms.

I'm actually excited because it's cool.

We bet on it. We bet on the fact that everyone's doing Facebook now. Then it's going to be YouTube and then it's going to be Jubilee, and then it's going to be VR. And when they do change, they're going to keep buying our shit because we're going to keep saying, hey, it all changed. You're freaking out, but this is how it's done. Yeah. And it's my greatest passion, too. I love fucking. Well, sometimes I get in functional. I'm like, I don't want to make another app. But then sometimes I'm like, all right, team, let's go all in. And I love that shit.

Okay, cool. My next question is, you seem to have scaled a lot in the last three years. Your team's a lot bigger and you're a lot more well known what has been the primary drivers or primary decisions behind ads.

But I will go deeper for everyone, and I'm sure you'll agree with this, but simplification, oh, tell me more. Tell me more about being simple passion, like simplification. Like.

Every single time I've made a step to add on to the business or do this and this and this in that and word, surely enough. We've always stunted growth when we just say simplification, this is what we do. It's the one thing. And repeat it. I don't Even say scale. I say repeat. That's ingrained in my thing is repeatability. What. What can we keep doing again and again and get better? Because one thing I found is when growing a team, when there's all these new changes, it's really hard to level up your team, which means it's really hard to level up the profitability and the efficiency. So I have been obsessed with simplification. Like right now I dude, years ago I sent out an email And I fired 150 clients because I felt like we were too spread out. I gave them a 30 day notice and said, well we're going to do this. We're going all in an education. We're going to be a rival there. And again every time it's just speed and simplification because of repeatability and that's when the team can get great at something and that's when you see the most growth.

So can you, can you explain to me how in that context you simplified it sounds. I know you had an agency, I'm assuming that doesn't exist anymore based on what you're just telling me and you.

Went use it differently.

Okay, got it. So what did simplification look like to you?

Yeah, so it got busy when it was like agency hundreds and hundreds of clients and then it was like speaking event and then it was like fucking courses and hosting a course. And then it was like well let's do a private event. And then it was like well let's do this and let's.

You were doing lots of different things.

Exactly.

And you just decided to be choosier about what you're doing.

Our focus just got all over the place and the team would get frustrated. They got overworked and changed. So now it's just what do we sell? The genius advantage. We help people create ads. You can pay monthly or pay annually. The end. Yeah, that's one upsell if you want more hands on support with our team. School of genius And I've also. This has been a big change. I've also made peace this year around my birthday May 1st, I made peace with the idea that this is not going to be the only thing that defines me. I think before because for the last decade this has been my thing the Billiegens marketing and da da da. And I've always just associated this. But now I'm like no, this company is going to be a cash asset that spits out cash for myself and the team helps a bunch of people, builds the brand like crazy because we're spinning ads. So it allows me to do that, let me leverage that brand and let me go into mobile mode now. So from 30 to 40, I'm looking to do some cool shit, you know, dive into the real estate game, maybe go a little bit harder with stock market, you know, start some other companies and shit. I'm really looking too, so. And the hard part is, is I've had to let the team do a lot of things. A lot of the, you know, something unique about this company is that I've done everyone's job from various video editing to fucking sales to the back office, the numbers. Even though I was horrible at some of these things, but I've done them all. And I bottleneck the company because it's always relying on Billy. And so, you know, I can't relate at all. You know what I mean? But, but the challenge is, you know, letting go. I'm like, okay, I'm let the team do this. And knowing that it's going to be bad, not, not good. It's going to be bad at times, there's gonna be some great times, but it's going to be bad. And finding peace with, yeah, this is an investment. This is a monetary investment. I'm spending money to let them grow and to me get smarter about processing systems and that's beautiful. And yeah, it's the biggest investment ever. Because right now if I, I'll give you tangible.

It's. I'm sorry, it's so weird to hear you saying this because this has been my exact transformation over the last two years.

Well, we're in the same path. There you go.

It's actually really kind of trippy how you're describing it.

You know, I think it goes to that Scaling up book by Vern Harnish is. You realize it's not the entrepreneur. It's happens, you know what I mean? Like, it's, it's the next step. It's like, you know, first you crawl, then you walk, then you know, that's it. And like the sales team though, is a great example. Losing money is, you know, at times they can be amazing. These, they can do great. But you know, I know. So like, I think they'll do like 350 this year or this month in like whatever they're selling. Right. But I know if I took all of those calls, we would have done 750. Real talk. They'll tell you the same thing too. Think about how much money that I'm letting go. And it's not much money. It's just happiness because I don't want to take that many sales calls right now at this point in my career, but I have to do that to allow them to get better, then listen to the recorder, call and workshop, you know, it with them. But that's also what makes me feel more comfortable about the L. Because if I need to come in and we're in a cash tight spot, I know I can kind of step in and substitute myself and get us out of it. That makes sense. So, yeah.

So you've built out a almost intimidating studio. This place is amazing. So that's not cheap.

No, we spent a million bucks on the shit in the back office.

Yeah. And you've got an incredible team. That is very attractive. Right. So.

So tell me, what has been the financial driver behind all this growth?

Ads. I hate to say it like, yeah.

But ads to what?

I'll be specific. Ads to fucking video sales letters. Straight up. It's. It's our. It's our everything. It's like, you know, and if we didn't fucking invented y', all like an infomercial was like, they told you the secret. They're like, hey, we're just gonna get on video and record a presentation and you're gonna watch it and some will buy. And do they. Do you make more than you spend? And that is our whole model. Like, it's. I wish it was more, you know, complex and it. No, it's fucking getting great ad advertising. And when we have an ad that works, spending a shitload of money on it, we. Right. We try and be around. I think the market was a $500,000 a month budget on our brand. And when we hit that, and we're also making our margins, it also puts us out in front of the entrepreneur community like no other.

Right.

I don't even know another entrepreneur outside of your, like Gary. Vs that are probably seen more times than us because we just spend more money on it. Yeah, that's. That's kind of our whole playbook.

You're sending them to Facebook ads or.

To ads training, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and pretty much the VSL is like this. Hey, you're here right now because you saw an ad. My background is agency is how I learned all this shit. Working with these companies. My students work with all these companies. This is what we do. If you want us to teach you how to advertise to grow your business and stop fucking depending on referrals, click here. That's every message, period. When I'm on stage, podcast, it all goes back to me. I'm adjusting up differently. That's the core, though.