$5M/yr Entrepreneur Explains Offers, Marketing, Sales, and Scaling (B2B & Agency)

Mr. Daniel Fazio, I have the pleasure of sitting in your apartment and interviewing you in Tampa, Florida. Super excited about this podcast, this kind of interview, and just journeying through your life and through your business and other businesses, I guess just like opening up. I would love to hear like the elevator pitch of your business journey to where you are now.

Yeah. So I graduated Florida State in 2018 with a degree in finance. And the very last week of college, I mean, the very last week I was in there, I saw this video that said how to make $10,000 per month with Amazon FBA. And I was like, oh, wow, I want to make $10,000 per month. So I watched the guy's videos and I was always like, really hard worker in school. I always got really good grades. So I just treated it as if it was another class, like, oh, I'm going to have a test at the end of this. Except it's like the actual execution of the thing I've been told to do.

Life.

Yeah. So I watched every single video he had within like a 24 hour span. And I don't know, maybe it was like 10 hours of videos or something like that. And I started doing the product research. Like four days later, I'm at the bank wiring $6,000 over to China to buy. To buy. I worked in college, so I saved a bunch of money. I was like, yeah, I'm just going to risk it all. I don't care. Like, we're going to see what happen happens. It comes in like three weeks later, shipped it in through air, it goes into the Amazon warehouse and I sold the out of those products. But it was, it wasn't because I was smart. It was because I caught something at a very, very specific time. It turned out it was a seasonal product, specifically on Father's Day. And it was May, and it was about to be Father's Day. And I got there just before Father's Day and that thing cooked. It was stainless steel beer bottle insulators. And I made it was like seven or $8,000 profit. And from the moment it went live, within like 10 days, all of it was sold out. And then what happened was I was like, yo, this, this is crazy. I need more inventory. I need way, way, way more. So I bought like double the amount and Father's Day was over. At this point, I ended up like, I didn't lose money on it, but I definitely did not make a lot and took a really long time to return capital on it. I ended up buying a bunch of other products, but that kind of set my journey off into. I'd always, like, sold stuff in. It was entrepreneurial as a kid, but it set my journey off into the scale to which you could have something. Because I look at that, I'm like, oh, like $7,000 profit in 10 days. I'm like, if I can just consistently get something like this, I don't have to work a job, which I just absolutely hated doing. I worked at Publix as a cashier and a bagger. I hated customer service. I worked at Apple. I did customer support for Apple. I hated customer service. I hated. I was really good at it, though. I was always. I'm really good at customer service. I just did not enjoy being in one single spot, doing the same thing for eight consecutive hours and feeling like I had to ask to go to the bathroom or something like that and be, like, watched over. I just didn't like that. So even now, to this day, I don't, like, watch over my employees. You know what I mean? Like, I kind of just give them the freedom to do it. I'm just. What I kind of tell them, though, is, get your stuff done and, like, actually perform. So this was. This was always really annoying to me. When I worked at Apple, there was an average call time, and it was about 19 minutes. So the average time you would be on the phone with a customer to issue resolution was about 19 minutes. I just knew how to solve the problems, so mine was about 13 minutes. And you also have an issue resolution rate, and it should be around, like, 90. Mine was 95%. So I was solving more issues than the average person and doing it faster.

But you were getting paid the same?

Yeah, one, I was getting paid the same. And two, I had a performance review and the. And you could get a range, like a raise and a range somewhere and these. My manager told me, she goes, you need to spend more time on the phone with the customers. It feels like you're rushing them. And I was like, are you kidding me? I'm doing that output of two people at a higher quality and have above average feedback scores. Because you'd get, like, a survey. Like, how was your experience? Yeah, completely positive. Like, did they solve the issue? Yeah, he was great. And it was just this arbitrary thing they made up. And it was like, how do you not understand? Like, by every conceivable metric, I am way more efficient than any other person. And one, you're punishing me for it. And two, in my own mind, I know I'm not getting paid for the more Efficient output.

Yeah.

So you look at these numbers and it's like, well, if I just owned the entity myself, if I'm better than everyone else, I want to be compensated in direct proportion to precisely how much better I am.

Yeah.

And it was just always annoying me and there was always situations like, even like Publix, if people loved me up at Publix, I just hated that concept of not having control over the outcome based on my inputs. But I want, I wanted something that, that, that compensated me directly for my inputs. Right. So I did the Amazon FBA stuff.

And real quick, on the Amazon FBA stuff, do you feel like, you know, because I think this is like a common thing for probably a lot of people just in like 20, where they got into business and everything was kind of just easier.

Right.

You initially, you started out, you caught this first trend. Do you think that set an expectation, I'm not going to say unrealistic, but set an expectation in your head that was different than you would have preferred looking back on it or are you glad that it happened like that? Because I know like, you know, a lot of people, 20, 21, especially like traders, right. The market was just going up, so a lot of people were able to make a lot of money. And then a lot of those people lost a lot of that money because it set like an unrealistic expectation of what trading actually was.

Yeah. So this is, this is what's going to happen. Most people are going to be introduced to the world of business through some kind of business opportunity. Right. So it just so happened that my introduction to the world of like online marketing and business was through Amazon fba, some guy selling a business opportunity course. So I mean a lot of people can talk about like, oh, they're selling a course like it's a scam. It's like, oh, not really because I, I, I couldn't go like, if I went back to that Amazon FBA guy and was like, yeah, you like did make me some money. One, because I actually did the thing. But two, it was more so the introduction into the arena that introduced me to more and more and more and more and more ideas. And what I can say in regards to that was I had that experience with Amazon fba. It required a lot of capital. It was hot, it was, it was high, highly capital intensive. It required a lot of money to purchase inventory. So if you wanted to make more money, you needed a lot of capital. So I said to myself, I want something that's more capital, efficient. Remember I had a, I had A finance degree. I literally was, like, thinking of this myself. I didn't need something that's more capital efficient. I need to produce income without needing a large amount of capital. And this is when I started getting Tai Lopez ads for. For social media marketing agency. So I bought that course, and it was really good. It was a phenomenal course. A lot of people talk shit about him, and it's like all the people that talk shit about the Tai Lopez social media marketing course, like, one, didn't buy it. Two, bought it and didn't do anything. I bought it and just did the thing immediately. Like, the. The time between me consuming the information and the implementation of the information was near zero. I watched 100% through the content and followed it precisely. Very direct. This is where people fuck up with a lot of stuff. They buy something or whatever.

What.

They just don't do the thing. Right. So I buy that. I started off with, like, Facebook ads as a service to, like, local businesses. I ended up. I worked with, like, a med spa. I worked with a club. I worked with a guy at a club, and he was my client for, like, dude. He was my client for, like, three years, like, a really, really long time. All I was doing was just every single weekend, he had some drink promo, and then I would make ads for the drink promo and then, like, get people's phone numbers and emails and then, like, text them reminders to come get the drink promo. It was super simple. But in hindsight, what you realize is he was what I would consider, like, a dream client. And they pop up about one out of every 10 to 15. And what I mean by that, it was basically impossible for me to quantify the return to him, but he was okay with that, Just him, specifically, because he was the kind of dude who was just like, whatever. He owned a ton of businesses, and dude was just wealthy. And he liked me too, because he saw I was a young kid and he. He probably looked at me as if I was him. And he just kind of wanted to, like, support me. And that's probably a reason why he stayed with me. And that. That does not happen a lot.

Yeah.

So because it couldn't directly quantify a return, I'd get other clients and. And they just turn because it was impossible for me. Like, I just didn't conceptually understand this at first. Where if somebody's paying you money, like a B2B service. So for anyone who doesn't know what that means, like, B2B means, I'm selling you a service where I'm Going to advertise for your business, you need to get a return in order to rationalize the reason why you're paying me to execute the service. So I wasn't able to do that for other people. And he was essentially, like, financing just because he, like, didn't give a shit. Like, that was it. And then I started just. Just. I'm still, like, in the arena. I'm. I'm. I'm reading Russell Brunson stuff. I'm. I'm buying other people's courses. I bought so many courses, dude. But the difference between me and other people is they buy courses and just never go the course. I would buy a course and just immediately go through it, like, instantaneously.

Yeah. So, like, not go to bed until you, like, watch through all of it.

Yeah. Like, there's no, like, why did I buy this if I'm not gonna, like, do it? Right. So I bought one. It was. It was about using automation Follow Unfollow to grow Instagram accounts. This is back when this worked. There was a period of time, like, it obviously doesn't work now, but there was a period of time where if you executed Follow Unfollow on Instagram, you got a shit ton of followers. And it worked. It worked, like, really, really well. So I started selling that as a service. I saw some other guys doing it. Like, I'm. I was reading Russell Brunson stuff, so. Oh, funnel hacking. Just copy what's already working. So I'm like, all right, I'll copy what's right. And that doesn't mean copy people precisely. It means, like, copy, like, the idea behind it. I'm not selling to, like, rip off people's landing pages or, like, their precise offer. Like, don't do that.

Yeah.

But the concept was that they were helping people get Instagram followers. So I thought I'd be smart and I'd say. I'd say, let me.

Let me.

Let me change the outcome for people. I'm not gonna get you followers on Instagram. I'm gonna get you more money on Instagram. I'm gonna help you make more sales on Instagram. So I go through this whole long sequence of people. If there's a business account on Instagram, a very large percent of them will have this button on their profile that says email. And if you click the email button, it gives you their email. Right. So I was like, I didn't have, like, a business page, per se. It was like my personal page. So I was like, I don't want to reach out Directly through Instagram like that, because there's no symmetry. However, I have a landing page and if I email them and like send them the link to the landing page, then they can get the context as to like, actually, yes, this is business. So that's what I was doing. I figured I'd do email instead. So I would go through profiles. I picked a random niche, just random niche. I picked fitness coaches because there were so many of them, it was really easy to find them. Picked it started going through the profiles, manually clicking the email button, copying it, pasting it in a Google sheet, and then just doing this for like two hours a day. Like every single day, Every single day. I did this for weeks, weeks over and over and over and over again. And then I would just make tests of like, what's the best thing to say? And I was doing this for months. This is originally how I got good at cold email because there was just so much exposure. And a lot of times what happens with people if they're sending cold emails is they'll spin it up in an automation tool. This is one like, hell. Automation tools didn't even exist yet. There was like a couple and that was it. And I wasn't even aware of them. But a lot of people, when they do cold email, they'll spin up and spin it up on an automation tool. But what that, what that does, if you do that, it kind of removes the sentience from it. Like you don't feel it when you send the email. Yeah. I went through months of my life where I was like, handwriting, Like, I would copy it, put it in the Gmail tab and like click send. Where. Now what was happening when you were doing this is my conception of it was I'm speaking to one individual human for every single time I do this. Now what people do is they get these automation tools, they put a thousand emails in there, they're thinking that they're speaking to a thousand people at once. I.

And that's how they frame their conversation.

That's how they frame the conversation. So what? So my context as it evolved with cold email over time, always from, always was from the fundamental standpoint, or I am emailing one individual human and if I'm going to automate this, I have to write the email to one individual human and kind of backtrack it to be able to automatically send to a thousand people. What other people do is they just automatically go, I'm speaking to a thousand people. This is why I got so good at it really fast. So what happened with this is, I was promoting that, the, the Instagram offer, saying, I'll make you more money. And it kind of just like wasn't hitting. And I was like, dude, what is wrong with this? Like, I know these guys over here, they're running this business, they have like a ton of clients. They're getting like, hella clients. And why is this not working? And I'm like, well, let me change, like, what I'm selling. And this is, I'm starting to go into like, the offer, like, what's the value proposition? Like, I'm saying, make more money, but when you really actually pay attention and I'm looking at the people I'm sending to, I'm like, half of these people don't even sell products. So I just said, I just started framing it as, hey, I can get you more followers as the value proposition instead, bro, Immediately it started cooking. Immediately.

I feel like that's like a lot of like fitness coaches as well, like with that niche specifically. Right? It's not like the make money online type of niche. So when you know you're a fitness coach and it's like, oh, more followers or more money? Like, you know, fitness coaches, I feel like it's more of like a status thing.

So, yeah, I mean, if they had a product, it would have made more sense to tell them, like, hey, I'll help you sell more of your product. But just like 90% of them didn't have a product. So now this goes into, like, me understanding relevance of different people want different things. So if I segmented it, whereas, like, these people don't have a product, these people do have a product and offered a different value proposition to each of these people, it would have been more efficient for all of them. You see what I mean? So I started offering them more followers. And at this point, I'm 20 years old and.