The Long Term AI Playbook for Businesses (Full Guide)

I see a lot of your content focus on the lessons you teach around your experience in business, which is so valuable because you've nearly been at it 2 decades. But you always specify hiring, which is really important and something that I've been good at and bad at and I'm learning at. But how do you do that more at scale with bringing in more people into your ecosystem to support the business, your content, and everything?

If you need to hire at scale, the way to think about it is how do you hire programmatically? So let's say you need to hire 100 people or 1,000 people. A lot of these big agencies, what they do is— and even tech companies, they hire in cohorts, right? So you hire in cohorts and you put them in a class, right? You're teaching them and maybe every week there's some type of curriculum that they're going through, right?

Mm-hmm.

It's almost like you're going through university. I remember doing that when I was like 18 years old. I was like tech support and then they put us into these cohorts. That's the way to do it if it's like super scale and you're getting a lot of leads. 'Cause the problem with, let's say we get like 1,000 leads tomorrow or whatever, we actually can't fulfill on those because If we try to fulfill on those, the quality of the work goes down a lot, which affects our current clients, which affects our team as well because they stress out about it. So you got to balance it out. For us right now, we get a lot of leads. And there's a publicly traded company that's about to say, hey, we're down to give you 1,000 of our qualified leads per month. It's a lot. But we're like, we want to take it in— we want them to drip feed it to us instead of trying to take them on all at once. So to answer your question directly, You know, if you're looking to hire crazy scale, it's programmatically. But ideally what I tell my team right now is we want to be slow and methodical about it and we want to have an unreasonably high talent bar. Because the thing I tell them every week is, look, in the next decade or so, we are going to— we can only afford to hire the top 5% of people because the top 5% of people will understand how to handle 10,000 agents or 100,000 AI agents.

Mm.

Yeah. And I hate using the word AI, by the way, because I think it's so played out with marketers. We like to like pollute things. It's been so polluted.

In what way?

Because it's everything is AI. Everything has an AI label on it, right? Um, you look at all the talks, all the webinars, I'm gonna show you how to do this, this AI thing, this AI thing. And at the end of the day, it's just like generative AI. Maybe they're using some prompts on ChatGPT or some Midjourney stuff. It's nothing too sophisticated, right?

No.

So maybe in the beginning that was novel, but you gotta keep innovating. And so now I think it's cooler to remove the AI from it and just talk about use cases that are, that are awesome.

Well, I think it's like counter-trend. With every trend, there's an equal and opposite force. So in the beginning, AI was like, oh, it's new and novel. And you have the scaremongering, which is like, oh, it's going to take all agencies away, all regular jobs away. But then now when there's a label on AI, you almost look down on it in some degree.

Yeah, it's a negative signal now.

AI sales, any AI content. And you can basically look at it, anything on LinkedIn. You interviewed Greg, Greg Isenberg. I'll never forget, he had a post recently which said that He saw a LinkedIn post that was so badly written that he was so happy to see it because it wasn't written with AI. And he actually liked the post as a result because it's what we need, right?

It's authentic.

It's imperfect, right? And therefore it's not perfect, but it's on the right path.

Yep. Yeah, I think, uh, look, who knows where all this stuff is going to go in the next 5, 10 years. You know, we talk about artificial general intelligence and everything. I, I'm very optimistic about it, um, but I think we're kind of putting the cart before the horse right now.

Yeah, well, especially for what we do, and this is why your content's been so interesting. Like, how many episodes you recorded? Well over 1,000.

For which one?

That's what I mean, right? So you have—

So Marketing School is over 3,000, um, but keep in mind those are only like 5 to 10 minute episodes. And then for Leveling Up, I think it's probably— it's got to be close to 1,000 or so.

So that just shows obviously like who you are, it shows your values, it almost says exactly everything about you already. and about what you're interested in. Whereas if people are just using AI for their content, it's almost like a flash in the pan. They're not going to stick with it. And when did you start that podcast?

So it was the first one, Leveling Up, that was in 2013. Yeah, dude, so it's been 11 years.

Okay, so maybe 2012. Your content has changed a lot recently. Yeah, I think on YouTube.

Yep.

So when our first podcast was out, I think you were probably at like 40K. Now you're at like well over 150.

Now it's like 160 or something like that. Yeah.

What made you— what forced you to kind of level up and change?

Well, I'm always trying to adapt. I would just say in the very beginning it was called Growth Everywhere, the podcast. So I'll just say step one was I was just interviewing entrepreneurs that— those interview podcasts had a marketing spin to it, and that was unique at the time. That I started that podcast before Tim Ferriss even started it. And, um, at the time I remember I would post to YouTube and some of these would get like thousands of views. Like, I know this is when YouTube was super easy and they just needed a lot more content. And I didn't stay consistent with it, right? But I would just say then the evolution was, okay, I started interviewing, you know, I started making more videos around marketing in general.

Yeah.

They were more direct to camera. And then, you know, after COVID, I moved back into interviews like this, for example. And I would interview people around like dating or finance or whatever. And those would get a lot of views at the end of the day. But then I realized as I was doing those, I'm like, you know what? One, I'm not too interested in these conversations. Two, this isn't exactly helping my business. And 3, I just like talking about business and marketing at the end of the day, maybe some personal growth stuff, you know, with health because it relates to business.

100%.

And so I'm like, you know what, I'm going to go back. And recently I've switched back into talking about what I want to talk about. And if I'm going to interview someone, it better be someone like, you know, in a couple of weeks I'm going to have Anthony Pompliano, right? You know, he's, he's, you know, Bitcoin space. He's got a couple of businesses. Seth Godin, right? Like, I'm interested in those conversations. You know, funny enough, like I did a dating one recently, right? And we just released it today, but we're no longer going in that direction. That guy's got a lot of views. That video will get a lot of views. The last one he did got like 300K long-form views. But I'm like, who cares at the end of the day if it isn't related to, you know, directly related to who I'm trying to target long term and the quality of the audience?

So a big area that I focus on with like all our clients and whatnot is are we getting the wrong views? Yeah. So we've had some podcasts that are like, I'd say payroll, like as dry as— as dry as you can imagine. It would be more worrying to see 100,000 views on a payroll video than 1,000 executives that are based in the UK with an average salary of $200K plus. So there's that positive and negative reaction, whereas for my show, as you mentioned earlier, it's like, what do we talk about? We're more focused on sales, marketing, online business building. But it's much more natural to me. And when I go outside of that— You break your own rules by understanding what the rules are initially. and then leaning into what you want. So like, that's a good way for you to be able to do 10 years.

Yeah, of experimentation. And you know, I heard a phrase recently called the shiny knowledge syndrome. So it's not just shiny object syndrome. So entrepreneurs get, you know, the entrepreneurial ADD. We do too many things, we try all these different things. And especially in the online space, you hear these people that have 10 different businesses, right? I've learned, you know, now that I'm in my 30s, like late 30s, right? It's just like, the more people brag about the number of businesses they have, it's actually a negative signal. It's a red flag. that they don't actually have a big business on any of those, right? And so shiny knowledge syndrome is you're consuming too many podcasts, you're consuming too many books, and you're taking any bit of knowledge and you're implementing without a filter, right? And so it's actually worse than shiny object syndrome, 'cause shiny object syndrome, you actually have to start, you have to stand a new business up.

Yeah.

It takes a lot of time. Shiny knowledge syndrome can go on forever. And that actually ends up hurting your business if you have no direction, you have no goals.

That's like the guys that go into every single program and they go program to program to program, mastermind to mastermind.

Yes.

And they're getting all the best information, but everything works. It's just about which do you want to disseminate and move towards.

You got to go deep.

I remember seeing an old Sam Ovens video, which is like, if you have— what did he say? He's famous for just extreme focus to the point where it almost sounds irrational. But he mentioned basically, if you have 2 businesses, it's an indicator that you're broke. Now, that's obviously not the reality. Yeah, but it's a good point though, right?

It's a good point. Yeah.

He did it with consultant.com. He's doing it now with school.

Yeah.

What have you observed from like, um, even yourself with this? Because if I look at your ecosystem, you have multiple different podcasts.

Yeah.

Single Grain. You have the new networking events, which is crazy. And then you have the book. Now, I, I would look at that thinking that's all part of the ecosystem. But what do you think within there pulls you away from the goal, or does it all—

Totally. Yeah. So I remember maybe like 4 or 5 years ago, it was, you know, we had a software going on, we had the book launch coming out, we had education product as well. And then we acquired 2 agencies at the same time. And then we had like, you know, probably a couple other things going on, right? I would say the book's unrelated. The book was just a passion project of mine. And that was launched like 3, 4 years ago.

Really?

Yeah.

Why wouldn't that set into—

Because it's such a— that book is like a personal growth book. It's really designed for my 15-year-old self because I played a lot of video games, right? And that was my way of— that's how I look at life. It's like a video game to me. That's for anybody that plays a lot of games that has no confidence, right? Like the teenager version of me. That doesn't really relate to marketing much at all. Maybe there's a chapter on it. But I would say the main thing I focus on right now is Single Grain. By far, it's the most focused I've ever been, probably in the last— last couple years. Um, and then, you know, the podcast that I do, um, Marketing School, definitely relates to it. And we get a bunch of clips from it too. It helps with views at the end of the day. And, um, the other one, now that Leveling Up is focused back on business and marketing, it— that I would say is part of the ecosystem. And then the agency group that we have, um, that Neil and I have, my podcast co-host, we— our intention there is to build a vibrant community, but also to see who we can partner up with or who to potentially acquire. So it does help single grain as well.

Yeah, man. So I'm in an agency group like that as well. It's basically taking like 6 to 7 figure agencies to 8 figures. And the guy that owns it, like absolutely one place either to partner with or to acquire in that regard. And that's— what even type of integration is that? Is that vertical integration? No?

Yeah. I mean, it can be both.

Yeah.

Yeah. What's the group called?

Agency 8X. Okay.

Agency 8X.

Genflow's— you know Genflow?

No.

They basically partner with— it used to be influencers, so like your big fitness creators, content creators, but now like Ali Abdaal and stuff.

Oh, he's in there?

No, they've partnered with those companies.

Okay, yeah.

And they build the products on the backend. So they do the socials and they also do the product on the backend. They're working with Lara Acosta at the moment in particular. They're moving more into LinkedIn and they're going to be working on building the info product stuff on the backend.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. But their approach is— they've done big day with Iman Gadzhi and whatnot. So they probably get paid on the retainer and then get paid on the performance on the other side.

Yeah.

Which I think we've taken a leaf out of their book too in the podcast space specifically. But I want to just focus specifically on the content. So if I look at your YouTube, your thumbnails have gone crazy recently, like the quality, the way you're running the episodes. Do you think that that approach to basically follow like the best trends and the thumbnails and the design and the copy is at odds to the quality of the content? And like this, like we just sat down here like getting to know each other and chilling. Do you think it's kind of at odds to it?

Yeah, so I would say no, because it— the way we looked at it before was incorrect. And we actually have a guy that's helping us right now, Josh. Um, and so he works with a YouTuber named George Gammon. He talks about macroeconomics. And then Ken McElroy Um, he's— he owns like $3 billion in real estate. And, um, these guys are super busy, right? But, you know, when he comes in, like, for example, when we're doing a podcast, like he was just mentioning earlier this week, he's like, dude, like, if you're gonna do a podcast, like, make sure that the first question you ask, that is the hook. It better be a banger.

Mm-hmm.

Otherwise, the episode's gonna suck 'cause your 30-second retention's just gonna drop off.

Mm-hmm.

That's really important. Um, so I'm like, the idea is more important than anything. I think that's something we can all get behind. Um, oftentimes, you know, in the past, I used to just kind of jump into things and start recording whatever's on my mind. But the packaging is what matters at the end of the day. Everyone talks about the packaging, which is the thumbnail, the headline, also like the first 30-second like retention. I do think it's important. I think if I had to hone it down to anything, it would just to simplify it for everyone, it'd probably just be the idea.

Yeah.

Because when we have a really good idea, for example, let's just say, you know, we did an episode with your rich BFF Vivian Tu, right? The hook with that one is like, you know, her secret plan to wealth plan to generate $25 million, right? Um, and she's always got like— she's got a— she's a little sassy, right? She's got an attitude, right? And so like, she's got— she's like clips all day, right? And then, you know, Orion Taraband. So that one got 500K views, and then Orion Taraband, 300K views. And then the, the, the hook was, um, you know, it was like, um, modern relationships are doomed, right? That's the headline. And then the thumbnail was like Ken and Barbie like, like fighting each other.

Mm.

And, um, you know, I think it's just like, um, something about like the— I think that— oh, this This is super controversial. It's like, are women ruining relationships, right? You just have people fighting each other in the comments. But those are 2 examples of good ideas. Would I do those videos again? Probably not, because I'm more focused on business and marketing. But it just goes to show you, like, the packaging, the packaging, the packaging.

And you mentioned about the topics being controversial. It's funny, the relationship space, because I have a lot of relationship podcasts too that have, like, boomed for whatever reason. And I think it's probably because people sit in their own camps, right? It's kind of like in the business world you have like organic versus ads, agencies versus solo businesses. These things have just boomed out of— and no one knows why they have those beliefs, which is when we get into the relationship space, the fitness space, the food space.

Yeah.

Super controversial, right? But for you then, with your content specifically, because you still want it to be, you know, helping single grain and showing that it's real, it's not like clickbait. And I think running that conversation flow from good intro into the actual episode is really, really strong.

Yeah.

How come those episodes sometimes have boomed to 400,000, 500,000 views as a result?

Yeah, I think, well, one, the idea TAM matters a lot. So idea total addressable market.

Nice.

So if you have finance or dating, it's obviously going to be a lot bigger versus us talking about marketing, for example. That TAM is way smaller. So I like Matt Diggity's stuff on SEO on YouTube. He's getting probably 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 views per video, which is great for SEO. Those are really high-quality views. And so, so one, you have a very large idea TAM going back to finance and dating. And then to your point, you have people fighting in the comments all the time. So we have a vid, we had a Vivian short that we just kind of relaunched recently, like a short form. And that one got 6.6 million views because you have the men and women fighting each other and it's almost like religion and politics. Everybody thinks they're right and you cannot win at that, right? And you just let them fight in the comments. It's fantastic. So yeah, but like also you're just not getting the right people at the end of the day. Exactly right.

Like are they turning into leads? And we'll talk about deplatforming in a while too, if you don't mind. I want to ask you something controversial to me, which is—

Can I just back up a second? And like, there is— there are short forms where like Neil and I were recording Marketing School where they just rip, right? One got like 3 million views. And it was one where I was talking about how you can go to Florence and there's a Loro Piana outlet there and it's really expensive clothes and you can get it for 70% off. And we're talking these are like typically thousands and thousands of dollars. And that one did well because I was educating, but I was telling a story at the same time. And from that one, I got a couple of texts. One, one was a CMO of like a multi-billion dollar crypto company, and he's like, dude, I really like that, right? And even yesterday I was at a, at a dinner, and then my friend's wife was there. She's like, dude, I saw your Florence thing on Loro Piana, right? Um, and so those to me are like, those are higher quality views, you know what I mean? Because it's me telling the story and they're getting value from me, and then you have people texting me. So there are ways around it where you, um, I think you can hit like an affluent audience, and that one was a perfect that one.

But people buy the story, not the product, right?

Yes, yes.

That storytelling component is, uh, it's everything, right? Because we could talk about the same shit, the same funnel, the same ads, the same SEO, but the way that you frame it, it's going to be so important. I want to ask you about ads.

Yep.

Specifically around podcast ads. Do you have much experience with that?

What do you mean?

So my, like, evolution of understanding podcast ads specifically has been on audio initially. They People did shoutouts and whatnot. Then it evolved into you could advertise your podcast on Buzzsprout, Anchor, and so on.

Yeah.

Which was weird because— well, actually it wasn't weird. What I found out about that was people were getting a download by sending a push notification. So it would say Kickoff Sessions on your phone, you would swipe it away, and it would say download.

Yeah.

It's kind of artificial. And then it moved now into YouTube ads. So now you can promote a YouTube video and get 50, 100, 400,000 views for like $400.

Yeah.

And then bring in a bunch of, um, subscribers. But if you look at the YouTube analytics, the retention rate is like 2 seconds on the video.

Have you—

how do you think about that? Like, have you considered that in your ecosystem?

I'll just say what we've done with podcast ads on— in terms of selling ads and then how we've how we run ads for ourselves.

Ads versus sponsorships now though.

Yeah, I can, I can speak to just our experiences there. And then so there'll probably be some gaps in what you're looking for. Um, so I would just say for us selling sponsorships in the past, so we had a, um, a hosting company that's actually nearby here called DreamHost, and they were paying us about $60 grand a month or so. And, um, that was like a 3, 4 year deal. And, um, we— it was just a 30-second ad. We never had to refresh it. They never asked us for analytics. They never asked us for help. Like it was the best, deal ever, right? Um, I think that's harder to replicate because they really were fans of Neil and myself.

Yep.

And, um, so you are able to sometimes get those sweetheart deals. Um, I will say right now we are talking to a, um, like a martech company where, um, you know, we're close to getting a deal done where it would be like potentially $100 grand a month or so. Um, but that is also on brand affinity as well. So I would just say like, you know, that the know, like, and trust factor that matters quite a bit. Um, who knows if the deal will get done, deal gets done or not, but, um, they reached out to us, so we'll see if that happens.

Yeah.

Those are few and far between because we tried to get it done with other people. We tried to go with like iHeartRadio, um, and they were great. I mean, but at the end of the day, we just had a lot of like random, like, you know, therapy ads and things like that just didn't quite make sense to our audience. So that's like us selling sponsorships. I would say us having sponsorships on our podcast in terms of like our own products, um, so this is kind of maybe going around your question a little bit, but still hopefully helpful.

No, of course.

But we, um, we, we're promoting like our agency owners association in the, in the pod, and that's grown that community to like a 5-figure, uh, MRR right now, right? Monthly recurring revenue. And we're not even like fully— like, I think we'll end up selling it for a lot higher, like, uh, probably like an annual program. But the fact that it's already doing 5 figures right now is, is kind of amazing, right? And it's just like Hey, you know, blah, blah, blah, here's this community. Go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more about it, to grow your agency. That's actually worked pretty well for us because the people that come through that page, that page, we run it on school, that page converts at about 2.5%, 3% or so.

What?

Yeah.

Well, it's an authority frame.

Yeah.

Right? You and Neil specifically, you've done the work, you've built the agencies.

Yeah.

It's this 9-figure agency owner giving people advice to go 0 to 1 or whatnot, right? What I was kind of focused on was more about actually ads, as in you run the ad button to promote your own videos.

Yep.

And, you know, I've seen those kind of pop up and kind of go randomly, whereas in contrast, we've run sponsorships— we do sponsorships, we do the deals on the back end.

Yep.

With our agency. So your AG1, your Eight Sleep, all these kind of companies. Um, and it's the— what the numbers are absolutely wild. Like, they're literally wild.

We've done this with, um, there's a handful of companies we've done this actually. So we, we did a, we did a podcast sponsorship swap with My First Million.

Cool.

So with My First Million, HubSpot Network, we also did this with Marketing Against the Grain. So we do do these collaborations. And where we got this from was Jordan Harbinger. I think that's still his name, right? Art of Charm is still his podcast. No, actually, no, it's The Jordan Harbinger Show. Yeah. So he likes— he— I think he spends 7 figures a year running ads on other podcasts and he'll sponsor them, right? I was like, oh, interesting. Maybe we don't necessarily want to spend, but like with My First Million, it's a well, you know, known podcasts. And so what we do there is we use a— we were using Chartable, and Chartable allows us to kind of share podcast data with each other so we can see how many people are converting over, which is, you know, how many people are actually clicking through, um, to, to see like when they run an ad, how many people click through, and vice versa. They're doing the same thing. So we do that. We don't necessarily, uh, pay for podcast ads, and, uh, we'll do swaps too. And, um, you know, that's, that's worked out pretty well for us. And, um, And then from that, that actually leads to collaborations. Like we're doing one with HubSpot's Marketing Against the Grain podcast on Friday. And, um, you know, in addition to doing the swaps like that, we do these, um, podcast collaborations where we kind of get to, you know, take advantage of each person's audiences. So that's the experience share I can give you there. But in terms of the other stuff you're talking about, probably not as much.

No, it's interesting because again, it's the early stages to that, but you're so much further on the sponsorship side. I didn't realize that was charitable. That's really interesting because we don't— there's another platform called Magellan. I've heard of it. They basically do analytics for this stuff as well.

Magellan. Magellan.

That's it. They're a good platform for that as well. And you can see basically where the money's flowing.

And basically who's running the ads.

Who's running the ads, exactly.

All right, quick note. This is about my company. It's called Single Grain. And Single Grain is an ad agency where we're focused on driving innovation. And so I want to talk about a couple of new strategies. And if you need help with marketing, great. If not, here are a couple of new strategies that you should try out. One is programmatic CRO. So we are doing programmatic conversion rate optimization on our site. We're building products that will automatically optimize your site to increase conversion rates. We're also auto-optimizing, auto-updating from an SEO standpoint. And we're constantly thinking about what else we can do in terms of enriching the visitors that are hitting your website, and also tailoring custom messages for them using AI. And so there's a handful of things that we're doing from a marketing standpoint. And our mission is just to drive So if you want to learn more, just go to singlegrain.com, grain like rice. So singlegrain.com to learn more and we'll see you inside.

Tell me about the rule of 3 years.

Yeah. So the rule of 3 years is if you want to build anything amazing, whether it's a business or an audience, it will take you always 3 years. The first year is going to be hell, right? Second year, you're still slogging it through. And then through the third year, you're really going to start to see some traction. So let's say you want to build a 7-figure business. Not going to happen. Usually doesn't happen the first year unless you strike lightning in a bottle, because there's a lot of patterns that you have to pick up. Business is just about pattern recognition at the end of the day. And even with the Growth Everywhere podcast, when I first started it, only 9 downloads a day after the first year. Second year, only 30 downloads a day. And then the third year, that's when it started to get moving. That's when we started getting maybe 1,000 or 1,500 downloads a day.

Mm-hmm.

is gonna keep you going is one, are you learning? And then 2, if you're creating content, you know, are people leaving comments every now and then? These are unsolicited responses, right? It's like, oh my God, how come this isn't getting more views? This is criminal that this isn't getting more views, right? That's when you know you're moving in the right direction and you have to stay consistent. 'Cause most people just end up giving up too early 'cause they're vain. And what I mean by that is they're so self-conscious about the views, they're so self-conscious about what other people think about them that they're not focused on their own learnings.

Yeah. That's why podcasts are so difficult to grow, and that's why Instagram is so easy to stay with, because it's just the likes, right? People just flash their abs, flash their ass, they're going to get likes. And it's sure— well, it's obviously extreme validation in the short term, but no one's willing to build. And that's why it's funny, because the businesses that you've had, reasons why I admire your work is because you've just played the game at a high level for a very long time.

Thank you.

You know, and if you compare that to your 22-year-old on Twitter who has an 8-figure agency.

Yeah.

You can just see the levels of, of game, right?

Yeah. And you can see when they're talking in their videos direct to camera, there are elements that are missing that they're conveniently leaving out because they have to foster this image, right?

Why?

Because they have to foster that image to sell masterminds, courses, and things like that, right? Did you ask why?

Yeah. Why?

Yeah. So why, why did they have to fake it?

Yeah, almost like at a— there's obviously the technical level that their business isn't growing, but almost at a subconscious level too.

Yeah. So one thing is they have to fake it because this is interesting. I'm not going to name any names, right? But it's like, oh, like I sold my, my 8-figure agency and now I'm selling courses. Wait, how does that make any sense? Sure, you make amazing videos and you're getting millions and millions of views. Again, I'm not going to name some— some people are— some of these people are getting like hundreds of millions or 200 million views a month or so. But when you start to talk about business, there isn't a lot of substance. And when you're looking at the videos, it's super well-produced. But what are you showing? Oh, you're showing your Lamborghini. Oh, you're showing that you're traveling to Dubai. You're showing all these things. Where's the actual substance? Where's the actual— like, when you hear someone like my friend Ken McElroy, who lives in Scottsdale, he's like, yeah, I'm $1.2 billion in debt right now. Well, why? And well, the banks don't want you to know this. This is what you got to know. This is what you need to know about infinite banking. Like, they're going deep, right? When it feels very surface level, it probably is. And when they're showing you other things to compensate, it's because, again, they don't have that depth. And then the other thing is they want to sell you something else. And I actually don't hate on courses. I think courses are great. I think masterminds are great.

Mm-hmm.

It's just that the majority of people that, that sell that stuff, they're looking to make a buck. And this is why when you go to a lot of masterminds, I'm sure you've been to a lot of masterminds. There are ones where all they care about is just making money. And those are just not for me, right? Because the ones, the people that are long-term, the people that are long-term are very humble. And they typically will just make money, a lot of money long term because they're not focused on the next thing. They're focused on building for 30 years.

It's infinite game, right?

Yep.

It's part of infinite game is it's not about the short-term cash. It's not about the quick win, but playing the bigger ecosystem play. It's interesting because I've heard you mention about it's not just always about the financial side, the money side. And that's why I think these offers to get you to $10K a month and stuff, they just don't have They're not of substance, whereas you've built an actual business. I've been building a business for a long time. You do what you say— you do what you do and you say what you do. For us as well, we've been trying to show it at such a high level. And that's why the ultimate social proof, I think, is yourself in the beginning. And then, yeah, you can throw in other case studies and testimonials, but you have to do it for yourself. If you're selling a fitness package, you have to be shredded. If you're selling Ken McElroy's service, you have to know about finance.

Yeah.

debt financing and investment banking and all these different things that you can't just skip that part. But why is that? So the online space right now, you're in a nice area of the online space, which is much more like— it's much more of a mature market, I think. Yourself, Neil, Tim Stoddart, Charles Miller, you guys are much more further on the journey. But for younger guys in their mid-20s, it's a shit show.

Yeah. Yeah, I think for the younger people— and maybe this is me speaking to my 20-year-old self— You know, as long as you stick with it, not— it's not a 1-year thing, it's definitely not a 5-year thing, it's not a 10-year thing, but it's 20, 30 years, you'll be fine. And I had, I had dinner with a client, um, a Single Grain client the other day, and, you know, he does $100 million a year in, in revenue, and it's bootstrapped, and he owns 100% of the equity, I believe. Um, and the guy's in his 60s, and he's like, dude, man, like, it's not like I'm really smart or anything. I just worked on one business because I can only focus on one thing, and it's been 30 years. And then Similarly enough, there is a billionaire heiress, and she told one of my friends that, hey, you know, I got some advice for you. You know, my family, everyone around me, my grandfather, my father, my brothers, they built multi-billion dollar companies. And the way they've done it is they've just done it for 30+ years, and they focused on one thing. And the problem in your 20s is, again, well, it's good that you're experimenting, but once you find something, stick with it. A lot of people, it's like, oh yeah, you know, I'm not even talking about that, the one guy I was just mentioning, oh, I shut down my 8-figure agency. So there are multiple people where they stopped at 8 figures. It's like, well, why did you stop at 8 figures? It's 'cause the boss that was facing you, you weren't ready to beat that boss, right? And you gave up and decided to start on something else.

Mm.

That's what happens to most 20-year-olds. I think we lose faith, or at least talking to myself at 20, it's like, I didn't have the confidence to go to the next level, but had I just stuck with it, it would've been fine.

Do you think there's merit to having just one business but multiple offers inside the business?

Totally. Yeah. So when I say one business, it's everything you do inside of the business is tied to that one thing. So for example, Single Grain, right? It's where we help people drive more customers. We want to be the most innovative marketing company that drives customers, right? So anything that can serve that for our clients, I think that the challenge I had in the past was, Oh, I have a senior living website. That's definitely not tied to Single Grain, right?

Senior living.

Yeah, a senior living affiliate website, right? Or I had like a quiz SaaS, right? That has nothing to do with Single Grain. And then I had like the book, which is passion project of mine, but like that took a lot of time and effort. So it's like, those are distractions from the main thing. But now all my distractions, if you can channel it into one thing, like my 2 podcasts, the distractions are channeled towards Single Grain. My distraction with Agency Owners Association, that is channeled towards Single Grain as well.

Because that was a problem that I had. So I was doing the Sam Ovens approach, which is like bang your head off the table until you get to 8 figures a year.

Yeah.

Which worked. Like, I'll be completely transparent, the agency, the done-for-you podcast side, yeah, it's probably at around $50,000 to $60,000 a month, but it's very team-focused, operationally heavy.

Yeah.

So then, and that was done for you, but it's high ticket. Well, high ticket is all relative, but it's like $5K a month.

Yeah.

So then we left 99% of the market out because most people can't afford that. So that's when we developed the incubator, which is more of a coaching program. So then in my head, I spent 6 months being like, is it good? Is it bad? Is it good? Is it bad? And I was like, fuck it, let's just do it. And funny enough, what's happened is when I run an offer for the done-for-you service, I get more people in the incubator and vice versa. People are like, I don't want to do it myself or do it with you. I want it done for you. So it's something that I realized But again, you connect the dots backwards.

Yeah. It makes sense. What's interesting is, so my podcast co-host Neil, he had a lot of coaching offers. We talked to all the people in the space back in the day. And so we had all the numbers. He decided to go all in on it. And the problem with the coaching he found is that the revenue capped out. Usually it caps out around $10 or $20 million, which is great, right? But now he's got multi-nine-figure agency. And the goal is to— it's like, OK, how does it go to $1 billion in revenue a year? Right? And so like, but that, that's completely different, right? It's, um, so, you know, it just depends on what you want at the end of the day. Um, but, you know, it is what it is.

True. There's pros and cons to everything, right? At the end of the day, like, you, you cut your teeth in agencies, you know exactly what's happening there. You have the other things around the corner. It's almost like, again, you don't hold ego to it. You know, taking the extreme example of politics, you're not in this vote, this boat, what it's that or this. You have that less of, um, emotional reaction to it. So 16, 17 years in business, as you've made these adjustments and you have some, like, a lot of lessons from here, what's kept you less focused on the money and more focused on maybe, like, the impact?

Yeah.

Is that kind of fair to say?

Yeah. No, this is interesting because, um, so going back to Neil, we, we have— I had him take this personality test called PrinciplesYOU, Y-O-U. It's the best personality test I've ever taken. It's just super accurate, right? Like, we have all new employees or people interviewing to join Single Grain, we have them take a look at it, or take it. Um, and there's a section in there where it says intrinsically motivated. So I'm 99% out of 100. So I really don't care about money. Um, and it's funny because when I look at Neil's test, he's 1% intrinsically motivated, which means he's completely driven by money, right? Um, and we laughed about it because he's like, yeah, what I— so I've known him for like 13 years. He's like, yeah, I've never at any time felt you're driven by money. Um, I'm just driven by the learnings at the end of the day, right? So, um—

Hmm.

I think maybe that's a way of answering your question around, um, you know, how, how I think about things. It's just about learning and teaching. But the trouble for me is one thing you have to watch if you're, if you're like that is the shiny knowledge syndrome, because you can get really trapped on all these podcasts, books, and things like that.

Yeah, it makes sense. Makes sense. But you do, I guess, have the drivers towards the business though. You know, when you're basically— you still have a good idea of like the numbers within your business. Yeah, it's just the fact that you're not spending it on a Rolex. Yeah, that's kind of the difference here.

Yeah, I— to me, it's, it's again going back to it's all a game, right? So if I can get it to, you know, hundreds of millions or a billion in revenue or so, that's just like, oh, I leveled up to be able to do that. And that's just a scorekeeper over there. And so I just think it's, it's fun to be able to— it's like, well, why do you want to do that? Like, it's not like I'm being greedy. It's just like, because other humans can do it. And if other humans can do it, then I can do it too. So why not?

Exactly. Tell me about that personality test. So what else is actually composed of it? Seems quite interesting.

Yeah, I've also used it in dating in the past as well. And so I'm like, oh my God, check out this personality test. It's so amazing. And they're like, oh my God, I wanna take it too, right? I'm like, oh, please take it. And then they take it.

Yes.

But it's about 15 to 20 minutes. It's like any other personality test. You're answering questions like, you know, how often are you on time or whatever? Like, you know, very on time. I don't know, right? But, you know, it says a lot of things that are accurate about me. So for example, it'll tell me, Um, it'll tell me how detail-oriented I am, right? So details aren't my thing. So it's like 6% out of 100.

Really?

6%, right? But it shows that I'm actually very dependable. I'm like 82%, 87% dependable. And it's funny, it'll show me that, right? And then it'll show me like how practical I am. So I tend to make a lot of decisions very quickly, but I'm also not deliberate, right? So that means I'll move very quickly, um, and usually the decisions will be good, but because I don't think through a lot of things, Right? I'll still make mistakes, right?

Mm-hmm.

So like, I'll, I'll know, like, for example, if, if you take the test, I, we have someone on our team that's amazing, but he's very low on practical, like less than 10%. And so it, when he's, when he starts to say things sometimes, it's like, it's clear to me that he hasn't thought through the second and third order consequences. And so it's, he's like, yeah, you know, we should just hire all these people. Well, okay, well, if A, can we afford these people right now? And like, what are these people gonna do? But what about all these other priorities that we need to hire for, right? And so with him, because I saw that in the very beginning, I know that's like a weakness to work through. And just like people know that when they're working with me, they need to give me more of the TLDR and just get to the point, right? And so it's really important to understand your strengths and weaknesses there. And we have someone on our team, she's very— she's like a peacekeeper. That's her archetype. She's very low on tough, right? But that's hurt her because she withholds feedback, which then withholds progress for the company. Right. So there's a lot of dynamics there that you just learn to play with strengths and weaknesses.

Well, looking at your example there, if you're someone who's less into detail but you're more persistent, that's gonna be good as a CEO.

Yeah.

Right. But that's not gonna be good as an employee.

Yeah.

Because an employee needs to get the spreadsheets correct and everything in order.

Yeah. And by the way, you want to hire people that are detailed around you to cover for your weaknesses. Like, for example, Neil on the test, um, he's very detail-oriented. He's very tough, right? Um, his empathy is like zero, and like, you know, mine's pretty low too. Um, but like, you know, we all have our quirks. Yeah.

And dude, that's something I'm actually gonna do that with my team as well, because, um, obviously agencies is all about client services, right? And me, who's moving at like trying to move at 100 miles an hour, I was managing client relationships myself.

Yeah.

And it was fine when we had 6 clients.

Yeah.

But when we had 20, 30 clients and customers, It's obviously way more difficult, right? And I noticed because I was less empathetic, I was less able to relate to them not doing something or us being behind and whatnot. So we hired my friend who's also a relationship manager as a result, and he's the opposite to me. He was a teacher.

Great. He's very patient.

Exactly. He was a— not high school, less than high school, primary school teacher in the UK. So the guy walks through problems with people and so on and so forth. That was something I realized about myself, and I was like, oh, okay, I'm still going to try to become more empathetic. Yeah, but I'm not— this is going to be more like a lifelong thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Than like a 20-minute change. Yeah, does that make sense? Yeah. So that's why I've kind of hired, and that's why I hire. I'd like to get your thoughts on this, actually. So, you know, you've seen a big uprising in solo business, solo entrepreneurship. You have, you know, people like Justin, Justin Welsh, Brett Williams. All these guys have kind of led the way for solopreneurship.

Yeah.

Would you prefer to have a team or to do what you're doing at a smaller scale, I guess, without a team?

Yeah, I think it's going to be a biased answer no matter what. I would prefer to have a team because there's so much more leverage in having— and by the way, I don't poo-poo on solopreneurship at all. I think it's amazing that they can do— have a business. I think Justin says, you know, $2 or $3 million a year and a lot of it's profit. That's amazing. That's a good life for him. But for me, the way— again, it's a game, right? How do I swing for the fences and how do I play at a larger and larger level? I think it just depends on what you want.

Yeah.

I do— the thing I've learned in the last couple of years is if I were to focus it on one phrase, at least for me, is focused involvement. So that means focusing on the main business and being involved. I drink a lot of the Kool-Aid in the past where it's like, oh yeah, you should just hire a CEO and then let them do their thing. And so you read about that. That kind of sounds like solopreneurship, right? Like you go off and do your own thing. And I did that. Things, things went like straight downhill, right? So, but going back to your question, um, I would prefer to have a team because I like the idea of building a high-performance sports team. I like the idea of coaching, coaching high performers. Like, I really love learning and teaching. Um, so someone that's really high level, I, I get a lot when I see the, the light bulb moments and I see when they're, when they're producing, right? They're coming up with ideas. I get a lot of energy from that. Um, so it's just, it's just what I enjoy at the end of the day.

Same. I'm exact same as you. Exact same. What like leadership lesson do you have around leading a team? What would you—

Yeah, so I think of, you know, people look at culture, it's like, oh, this, this like nebulous thing. I think culture is a 60-day moving average. And what I mean by that is, um, it's not a culture we've had over the last year because it changes very quickly. If you're maintaining a good 60-day moving average, which is like your last 60 days or so, right, your culture has been amazing. That's all you can really focus on. Because you can acquire 2 other companies, your culture is completely different in the next 30 days or so, right? But if you're very intentional about it, then the bar stays very high. And then if you stay involved, you're kind of playing— at least in American football, you have a free safety who's kind of sitting in the back and making sure that— they're kind of the last line of defense, right?

Mm-hmm.

So that's where I'm staying involved. And I'm jumping in on things where I can. And I'm really sprinkling my magic where I can. I'm not trying to micromanage necessarily. But, you know, when I show up, it kind of resets the bar each time. And I'm realizing that when that's not there, when the founders aren't involved, things just tend to drop a lot because nobody else is incentivized as much as you are as the founder, 'cause you have the lion's share of the equity. And so let's use, going back to Neil again, 'cause we talk all the time. In his company, he has no direct reports 'cause he's terrible with people. And he'll say this himself. We've said this on the podcast, right? No direct reports. But he's heavily involved. Like, he's calling his CFO like multiple times a day. He's calling his executives multiple times. He's pushing the pace, right? So going back again, focused involvement. And that's the main thing I've learned about leadership, because if you're not there, you're not present, then there's going to be no vision. There's going to be no direction. All that stuff about mission, vision, values, it has to come from the founders.

Yeah, they set the pace.

Yeah.

And everything else follows from there. And also, you need to— I think anyway, you need to keep reiterating that pace.

Oh my God, you're the chief reminder officer.

Yeah, because otherwise, people are going to be like, I don't know why we're doing this, why we're starting this new initiative. You have people who are almost sulking in the business, whereas you need to be constantly showing up and setting the bar for it. But I think there's also— have you ever read Leaders Eat Last? Such an amazing book. I love basically the biggest point he specifies is giving a circle of safety to everyone. So everyone can act their best. Hormozi always says that if you have a problem and you hire someone and you tell them to do something the way you did it and then they fuck it up, you can't be mad at that person. So you almost have to allow them to go off and do their own thing. We actually hired a new designer recently and design is— I don't know about you, but I think design is really hard to get right, to get a good designer.

Yeah.

And it took me, I would say it took a year to get a new good designer. And then when we got him, obviously had rough guidelines, but I was like, dude, all right, you know, I'm allowing you to be the designer you want to be. Obviously stay within these guidelines, whatever. And the guy crushes it. Yeah, crushes it because he feels comfortable, he has confidence. Myself and our head of operations will kind of review things and make sure things aren't like crazy. But, um, I think it's a nice position to be in. And now for the most part, he says that he's never been happier.

Yeah, I would just say, you know, On one end, people talk about hiring people that have been there, done that. It certainly works in the agency world. I would say maybe that's 80% of the time you're hiring people that have been there, done that. If you're starting out, you might not be able to afford these people, but as you're scaling, you're going to need these people. Because Steve Jobs likes to say, like, we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do, not so we can tell them what to do. But then you have the other 20%, which is maybe where you're hiring high potential, you know, young people.

Yeah.

And you're letting them kind of, you know, you're guiding them, but then eventually they'll figure out things from— because they're younger, they're way hungrier too, right? Versus the people that have been there, done that. They're more established in their careers. They have families and everything. So you want to have a good mix. You want to have a good, healthy tension at the end of the day. And then, again, you're just up there, chief reminder officer. Maybe you're jumping around sprinkling the magic a little bit. But again, focused involvement. I think that's probably the biggest leadership lesson for me. Because going back to shiny knowledge syndrome, back in my 20s, I read a book called Let My People Go Surfing. And that was from the Patagonia founder. And I've told this story a couple times, but it's just like, you know, the concept behind the book, it's like, oh, Patagonia, you know, you have these really cool vests. They have really high quality products, right? And they've done really well. They've steadily grown over the years. And he would let his people go surfing during lunch. I was like, that sounds really cool. I immediately took it without even thinking about it. Okay. So I didn't filter this knowledge. Okay. And I just stopped showing up to the office. And then what happened afterwards? Everything started crumbling, right? This is the first time everything started to crumble. People would come to the office watching Family Guy or in pajamas. People wouldn't even show up to the office. People would just be eating chips and not working, right? And then, you know, I remember someone a couple years later, he's like, dude, I just want to tell you, everyone hated you. And I was just like, wow. It's because I was the absentee founder.

Mm-hmm.

I thought that's what people wanted. And I could, like, that is like the most wrong. And I guess I'll just add on really quick. I thought that because I'm like a self-motivated person that I love learning, that everyone else like, I'm like, dude, I didn't do that well in school. I'm like, if I can figure it out, anybody can figure it out, right? I'm like, this is simple. People are amazing, right? But if they don't own the business, if they're not incentivized, they will never care as much as you will.

That's what diversity should be in hiring, right? Is that you have someone who is— they complete that circle of all the emotions we need, all the skills that we need, and you're reinforcing the value. You mentioned buying and selling agencies. What's like the average deal size you have when you're buying?

So right now we look for smaller agencies, probably doing anywhere from $500K to $1.5 million in profit a year. Yeah. Yeah. And so these can be like probably top line $3, $4, $5 million or so. And we want things that are additive to us. So, you know, for example, we don't do email marketing. We don't do— we don't do— we don't do like influencer marketing, for example. We want them to be additive. Or maybe there's like a global footprint where we can cross-sell and upsell into their logos. And so there needs to be multiple synergies. And ideally, we want to be able to keep the management team on because agencies are so people-driven. So there's a lot of dynamics in our checklist. But that's generally what we're looking for.

Crazy.

So these would be smaller deals, to be clear.

Yeah, small, but still not that small. Because with a company that's doing $3 or $4 million a year, they probably have 20 employees, 30 employees.

Perhaps, yeah. It depends on what— if it's all in Asia, you might have 80 employees or something. Yeah, of course. But if it's the US, you might have 15 or 20. Yeah.

Have you ever had any issues doing integration?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, we definitely did. And this goes back to involvement again, because when we did integrations, I wasn't as involved as I should have been. But there's this knot in my stomach where I'm like, I should— this doesn't feel right right now. Always act on your gut. That's one thing I'll say. What happened was we did 2 agency acquisitions at basically the same time. And then we hired a GM and this person actually Um, ended up stealing from us. She stole, um, clients, she stole like employees. And, um, you know, you know, she said her, her brother was sick, which was true, and we put her on paid leave. We said, we love you, we got you, go take care of that. Um, and then what happened afterwards was she actually told a lot of people that, oh my God, the company's going down, you should, you know, join me or whatever. So she ended up taking a couple people to this other agency, and then she tried to do the same thing to them. She had actually done the same thing to the previous agency before. So all that to say is like, had I been involved, had I been focused, had I been acting on my— the gut, by the way, the gut is your wisdom, right? That's your experience. Trust, like it's more right often than not. I would say it's right like 90+% of the time.

Mm.

But I would say, you know, those are kind of the lessons. Like had I been involved, I think with those acquisitions, they would've worked out better. But the answer to your question with integrations is you gotta be all over it. And ideally you're doing, We got rushed by our broker. And by the way, I'm taking responsibility for all this. I'm not even going to blame the broker or the GM that we hired. I would just say that you want to do probably 4 or 5, 6 months of due diligence just to make sure it's a perfect fit. You're talking to their customers, you're talking to their key employees before it, because that will set you up for a good integration.

Well, what advice would you have for someone selling an agency?

Yeah. So in what context?

So someone's building an agency, they're probably at, let's say, $500K profit a year.

Yeah.

And they're looking to sell.

Yeah.

How do you build a company to sell it? What are you looking for when you're looking to buy on the flip side?

Okay, I guess I'll start on the sales side. So let's say you start an agency, you get it to $500 grand in profit. Ideally, it's a service that's trending upwards. That's like influencers, community management. You know, everyone wants to do YouTube now, right? So you got to look at, is there a good total addressable market for it?

Mm-hmm.

And then ideally, you know, you are running on some type of operating system. So a lot of entrepreneurs know of Traction EOS.

Yeah.

So Entrepreneur's Operating System. There's also Scaling Up. Those are great because it's, it's you're having systems and processes within your business and that makes it sellable. You want to build a business to be sellable, not necessarily because you want to sell it, but because they know that they can operate it without you. At the end of the day, 'cause it's just, if it's just a shitstorm and it's all ran by the founder, well, guess what? They're gonna be keeping you on for the next couple years or so. But if you can prove that this thing can run without you, then you are going to, it's gonna be an easier earnout for you. Maybe you can leave earlier. But I would say like, you know, yes, build it to sell mostly 'cause of the processes and the systems. But ideally you're not trying to sell the thing. Ideally you're building for the long term for your growth.

Yeah.

And then eventually someone might come to you. Because when you least expect it— like one of my friends that lives nearby, he tried to sell his company in 2020. Nobody wanted to buy it. And then all of a sudden, like recently, he got an offer, like a really amazing offer. You just don't know what's going to happen. And if it seems amazing, then you just take it.

So was it you that mentioned that you should be cash flowing every year from your business as if it's a sale?

Yeah. So you should have an exit every single year. So my friend Syed and I were talking about this. He has like a bunch of WordPress companies. And he has, he's like, why do I need to sell my company? I have an exit every single year.

Mm-hmm.

And so like, let's, let's say your agency's doing like, you know, $1 million, $2 million, $3 million a year in profit. That's a good chunk of money. And you can get, get up to $5 million, $10 million a year in profit. That's an exit every single year. Some people don't even see that in their lifetimes, right? A lot of people don't. And then, okay, if you get it to $5 million in profit, then that agency, the, the multiple can go up to 10, 15x or so. So let's say it goes up to $50 million or so. Right. Or you get it to 10x, maybe it goes up to— you can sell it for $100 or $150 million or so, right? Well, it gets crazy.

How, how do those multiples work? Because like the common knowledge in agency space is one, the multiples are low, and then 2, just to scale. Yeah, it's really tough. So like, how do you, how do you think about that? Because you're someone who's actually done it, right?

Yeah. So usually with agencies, if you're doing like $500K in profit, you might be able to sell for like 1 or 2x on profit. Right? Or if you get it to $1 million or so, maybe you can sell it for 2, 3, 4x, right?

Yeah.

Which is what you usually hear. But you start to get to scale it. Let's say you get it to like $3 million in profit. You can start to sell it for a higher multiple, 7x or so, because you're actually building a system around it, right? You get to $5 million, you can actually build a platform around it, meaning that you can acquire that business and then buy other agencies and roll it in for multiple arbitrage, which I'm happy to explain in a second. But you get to $5 million, the reason why people are willing to pay more is because there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of infrastructure built in. There's a lot of talent. There's a strong management team. There's a lot less risk for these private equity shops that are partnered with agencies that are trying to do a deal. When you're $500K, there's a lot more risk. There's key man risk. Even at $1 million, it's still a key man risk. And then to your second question, why don't most people do it? It's because they run into problems around— It's a lot of people issues and I just can't deal with it anymore. Oh my God, the headaches, right? They tap out and—

Sell courses.

Yeah, yeah. They start selling courses. They start selling, but I don't poo-poo on this, but they start selling courses. Maybe they pivot into like agency coaching or whatever, which is fine. But it also means that there was a mountain for them to conquer, but they didn't want to summit that mountain, which is fine.

What do you think about when people say that they closed their agency because it was too difficult to sell?

I think it's total bullshit. Total bullshit. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's total bullshit. bullshit. I closed my— no, it's because you weren't competent enough to grow it.

Well, you're also not making money though, because like, I know, uh, are you familiar with Jordan Platten?

No.

Really big SMA agency guy in the UK.

Yeah.

And, uh, he's an education business around SMA as well.

Yep.

But he still kept the agency, and agency is doing like $115K a month now. It's a huge leadership team and everything, and he's focused on other business. But he was telling me about other guys in the space uh, who are doing different stuff now. Yeah, but the guys who are really crushing it still have the agency in the portfolio. And again, they've worked out getting a CEO and stuff involved. And they're like— he said to me, completely brutally honest, he was like, if you were making $100K a month, why the fuck would you ever close that business if it actually worked?

Exactly.

But most people's businesses never work, and they learn the basics of just client acquisition, delivery, fulfillment, and make a course off it.

Yeah, well, the thing is, they, they will acquire clients, right? And then they'll churn them out. Their churn's just too high, so you can't really scale it. Because if you're churning like 5% of your revenue per month, you need to replace 50% of it at the end of the year, right? It's actually more than 50%.

Mm-hmm.

And so that's a big problem. People, especially in the internet marketing, the digital space, people don't think about client retention. They don't think about service. They don't think about churn, right? That's a big problem. Because if you can, you keep the churn low and you have, you know, net revenue expansion, you can have, in SaaS we call this net dollar retention. That can actually be your expansion revenue, your upsells, cross-sells. actually outpace everything, right? And you're just growing like a weed because you have multiple services that are complementary. People don't want to churn because you have to— you have so many things built in, right? Even though another agency might be better at like one thing, you can do multiple things pretty well. And so—

Does that affect the sale though?

Um, a lot of times. So people might come to us, for example, we do a lot of SEO work and not a lot of agencies do SEO, right? And so they'll come to us for SEO and that's kind of the gateway drug. And once we start looking at their stuff, we're like, well, let's take a look at your ad account too. What's going on over here, right? And we start to uncover more and more stuff. And then they're like, okay, yeah, you guys sound like you're smart. Okay, go ahead and do this. And so you basically, in large agencies, you do a lot of landing and expanding. So you might work with Coca-Cola Brazil for like $3,000 a month, right? It might not seem like a lot of money, but what happens is you start to do good work, the account starts to grow more and more in Brazil, and they're like, hey, let's give you a shot for like pitching in, you know, all of LATAM, right? And it gets bigger. It's like, OK, let's give you a shot in North America. Boom, right? So that's how these accounts become $3,000 a month to multi-7 or 8 figures a year.

Damn, man. Yeah, because I've noticed that ourselves, that we're trying to get people in the door. And then we build offers on the back end. And that's where we're making the asymmetrical returns, right? Because a lot of them are— some companies are doing $4 million a year. We'd come in, add a $1 million a year offer, and so on and so forth. I didn't think of it from that perspective, though, like geo-expansion.

Yeah, but by the way, I wanted to back up a second. You talked about, okay, you have an agency doing $100K a month, $200K a month, like why would you shut it down? Absolutely, like stupid, right? So, okay, people that are, you know, creating content are like, I shut down my agency and decided to do this. Okay, that's BS. And then the second piece is, um, the people that are hiring CEOs, right? I guarantee you most of those companies that have hired CEOs aren't growing as fast as they used to with the founder involved, right? Again, going back to focus involvement. There are a lot of people on Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it, that talk about building a holding company and hiring a CEO and getting out of their way. It does not work like that, right? Like, I've tried that, by the way, multiple times, multiple, multiple times. Again, who has the most incentive? You, the owner. And if you can create good incentives for the CEO, still, you might give them 5%, 10% in equity, maybe 15%, 20%. They're still not going to care as much as you will. You still need to be You need to trust but verify. I'm not saying you need to micromanage, but you need to trust but verify.

Because who's done that really well in the space? So Alex Lieberman has been trying to do that for quite some time.

For?

For that portfolio holding company. Greg Eisenberg has been doing it. Hunter Hammond.

I would argue that— OK, let's use Neil again as an example with his agency, right? So— and actually, a handful of people. I was at a dinner yesterday. One guy sold his agency for about $160 million. And so I know a handful of agency owners that are, that are doing, you know, around that range and they're just focused on that. They're not focused on a holding company or whatever. They might be buying agencies and rolling them in and integrating them and that's about it. But that's the platform, right? I would say the people that you mentioned, I think they do pretty well, which is fine, right? But they don't do as well as these people that are very focused, right? And when I say well, they're all doing well personally. I'm just saying like in terms of like scale for the business, right?

Mm-hmm.

So it just depends on what you want. I think it's like, okay, um, if you wanna build something maybe $5, $10, $15, $20 million a year, amazing for yourself, right? Um, but if you wanna swing for the fences, you tend to see like Tenuity, for example, that's an agency. Um, there's, um, you know, there's Wpromote. They sold for a good chunk of change, right? Well, multi-nine figures. Um, and then Power Digital, um, kind of, same, same type of outcome. So, you know, those guys were just laser focused on one thing. Hmm.

With the portfolio company, it seems like you're just learning new business models continuously and just going in different directions though, right?

Yeah.

So going back to the Sam Ovens approach, so just the laser focus versus going out. It just seems like very difficult to do any type of scale with that.

Yeah. I think to me, that's, um, that, that is— and I've had this problem before. I had to get punched in the face a couple of times to learn it. I'm not immune to this, right?

Yeah.

And I easily find myself gravitating back into like, I wanna do all these things, right? I'm intellectually promiscuous, right? So like the shiny object syndrome, shiny knowledge syndrome, shiny knowledge syndrome leads to shiny object syndrome. And I think, you know, I have friends on Twitter that make fun of the holding company model. It's like, like one guy, his name's Matt Paulson. He just runs an email newsletter and they do like $40 million a year. He's like, yep. You know, I'm gonna go teach, uh, kids next couple, next couple weeks in South Dakota. I'm gonna tell them why it doesn't make sense to run a holding company. All he does is make fun of holding companies, right?

Yeah.

So, hmm, again, they're viable, but all these people that you mentioned, like, I'm friends with Greg, I'm friends with, with Alex Lieberman, right? I think they're, they're amazing people. Um, I think including for people myself, have we just focused earlier, it would have been better. And I keep— I hated this before when people told me in my 20s, like, I read these books, I'd hear from people, yeah, you know, you need to focus, focus. Yeah. Bill Gates focused. Yeah. Warren Buffett focused. And I'm just like, but, but, but, but like, I'm different. No, you're not different.

No. History repeats itself, right?

Yeah. All right. Agency owners, if you want to grow faster, my partner Neil Patel and I, we are hosting live agency owner workshops in Beverly Hills. And you're going to learn how to get more clients. You're going to learn how to take yourself out of the day-to-day. You're going to learn how to recruit the right people. And you're going to be hanging out with people, like-minded people such as yourself. So if you want to learn more, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. Again, it's marketingschool.io/agency, and we'll see you on the other side.

Tell me about the Yahoo and Facebook story.

Yeah. So with Facebook, so Yahoo wanted to acquire Facebook for $1 billion at the time, and they were heavily unprofitable. They weren't making a lot of money. And Peter Thiel, who wrote the book Zero to One, he was one of the main board members, main investors for Facebook. And so They had to— from this offer, they had to have a board meeting, right? So Mark Zuckerberg, you know, Peter Thiel, you know, he's in the meeting room and he's talking to the other investors and they're like, yeah, we should probably think about taking this deal, right? And so Mark Zuckerberg walks in and then Peter Thiel is like, we should take the deal, right? And then Mark's like, you know, I think it's going to be a quick call, probably 10 minutes or so. We're not going to take the deal. And Peter's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, dude, you're going to get $250 million from this and you're like in your early 20s right now. And like, that's a good outcome. And then we're going to get a good outcome too. You should really think about this. And Mark's like, well, no, because one, I wouldn't know what to do with $250 million. Two, if I were to sell, I'd probably want to go build another social network. And I kind of like the one that I have already. So why would I, why would I sell? Right.

Mm-hmm.

And that proved out to be a very prescient decision. And I think 99.9% of people would've sold, but he stuck to his values and people respect him for that. And now it's a multi, I think they're over a trillion, multi-trillion dollar company, or close to it. Yeah.

What's the lesson there?

The lesson there is, one, you got to stick to your values. And 2, if you love what you're doing already, then you're not— you wouldn't let outside influences control you. You have your board trying to control you there. You have money, you know, people's money like Yahoo trying to influence you. But when you're so set on what you stand for and what you're trying to do long term, you can block all the outside influences out, right? And that matters a lot. Like we talked about this on the podcast recently in marketing school. It's like, dude, you take on VC, you take on investors, um, you give your— maybe your employees have equity. That's all fine, by the way. And there's nothing wrong with that. Just understand that you have other stakeholders and they will influence you. And, um, there's this book I'm reading right now where they talk about pendulums, right? Like if you drink alcohol, you're part of that, you know, community and they'll influence you too, right? Um, if you go do yoga or whatever, that's a community. Maybe that's a good community, right? But There's outside influences everywhere trying to control you. And the more you can kind of, you know, stick true to your values, then you'll probably make better decisions for the long term.

Especially as you evolve, I guess, as you get older, right? Because your interests have probably evolved, but they're your interests though, versus the typical co-founder relationship that when they get in their 30s, they get married and then like the wife wants them to sell the business.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then it all crumbles down, right?

The spouse is a major influence as well.

Like everything though, right? That's what's so interesting is the fact that people don't People aren't playing an infinite game. They're not looking at a long enough time horizon so that when these things play out, it's a shit show.

Yeah.

And that's why sometimes you've got to make the better decision to not get involved with those people.

Yep.

Whether it's a friend, a partner, or whatever, looking at over a long enough time horizon, when things go south, that'll happen. Question for you on that, personally. So you were the gamer dude when you were a kid and you had maybe a social circle. How has that evolved yourself personally? Your interests have changed over your 20s and 30s.

Do you—

have you found yourself to be like, you know, you've a new set of friend group and yeah, you acting kind of— I don't know, like I'm trying to say, was there any kind of negative side to as you've grown the business in terms of who's come into your circle, who's taken stuff from you, and lost friends?

You know what I will say, so I guess 2 things that you mentioned a lot, the lost friends thing, that, that's an interesting one. Um, so I would just say the one thing, and I've thought about this recently with gaming, ever since I was like, um maybe even 8 or 9 years old, the main thing that stuck out to me is like, if you want to do big things, you need to join a team. And not just any team, you need to join an amazing team.

Mm-hmm.

So in every game, I was always like— World of Warcraft, I always made sure I was part of the uber guild, the best guild, right? The best team. Because you got to kill the best dragons, right? And when you had to compete with like, you know, the Horde, right? Um, you would do hardcore things. Like, you know, your guild leader would call you at 3 AM and wake everybody up, like 40, 50 people, just to make sure that the other team couldn't kill a dragon and we'd stomp on them until 6:00 AM until they gave up and then we'd kill the dragon, right? That's like hardcore, right? But you have to do that in business too. You got to be hardcore. You got to go like the extra mile. And in EverQuest too, right? Like, you know, it's— I was part of the best guild and like that's how I got like the best loot and everything, right? And so even in business, you got to be a part of the best team. So, you know, put the best team together or like you got to be a part of the best community, right? For me, I'm like, okay, I gotta research like who's the best coach I can work with, right?

Yeah.

So to me, everything's a people game at the end of the day. And I think I realized that at an early age. So that's always kind of stuck with me. The thing I'll say about friendship, and my mom tells me this too, I've had some friends from elementary school. I have one that lives nearby, actually like a block away from here. And I was messaging him for lunch, but like we still keep in touch. The reason for that is 'cause he's an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur. We came from like nothing. And you know, we had good family lives. you know, upper middle class, I'd say for both of us. Um, and so there's no judgment there because he knows what it feels like to almost miss payroll, to almost have to bankrupt your company, to have to go through all the struggle of being an entrepreneur. So there's no judgment from his side. And then you have your other friends, um, who will never judge you, right? Like they might not be entrepreneurs, but they love you for who you are and they'll always stay in touch with you. Like I have a, you know, best friend, he, he FaceTimes me every day. We FaceTime each other every day.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Um, and like there's no judgment and we just talk about whatever. But, you know, if you end up starting something and like for me, I've always came from like, I was kind of like, you know, hung out with cool people and everything, right? But I was always kind of lower tier. You start to rise up the ranks and you start to notice that, oh, you know what? They don't like to hang out with you anymore because your habits are changing. You're becoming a different person and you start to hold up a mirror to them. It's like, oh, like you could have done this stuff too because If Eric can do it, like that guy had nothing going for him before. If Eric can figure it out, like, but why can't I do it? Right?

Mm-hmm.

And so it's no knock. I think it's no knock on anybody in particular. I just think it's human nature. And my mom tells me this too. She's like, yep, she saw this. Like I had a, I have a rich uncle. She's like, I saw this with your rich uncle. Everyone, like a lot of people started to get jealous and started to dislike him. But you just have to be okay with that because this, like the cycle we see in the world right now, there's a lot, Charlie Munger says that it's not greed that drives human beings, it's actually envy. And you just have to be very careful. So it's actually better to be rich and anonymous than rich and famous.

But if you think of your scenario, like, you're a nice dude. Like, you're like super chill and like just a nice guy. It's not like you're online shitting on 9-to-5 people and so on. So if you were that person, you could see how people like would literally hate you.

Oh, totally.

As a result. And that reflection, like, people of course, uh, aggravated. They put in the knife and they turn the knife deliberately. But for someone like you who's just like a nice chill guy who likes video games, has built these huge businesses, yeah, to see someone like have envy and jealousy and I don't know anything more negative, it's just kind of unfortunate.

Yeah, it is unfortunate, but I just think it's human nature because I certainly felt like when I was younger I was definitely jealous and like, how do these people have these things and I don't, right? I think it's just human nature. Um, so like I, I'm very understanding about it and then This is also interesting too. I was, I was at a dinner, um, 2 YouTubers there. One guy's name is George Gammon, um, and then Mark Moss. And they have, you know, they get millions of views per month, right? And they're like, Eric, like, you should say more polarizing things, like what you actually think, right, about things. And I'm like, no, that doesn't make sense. But like, oh my God, you would get so many more views. I'm like, it doesn't make sense because if I actually talk about some, some things that are polarizing, um, it's not even like clients might churn or whatever. It's more so it polarizes my employee base. And it sows division in that, and that makes it very difficult to run a company. That, that's why it's not worth it to talk about polarizing things for me.

And but you also don't need to be. So I'm quite similar to you in that regard. Like, the typical advice to that is create an avatar of who you want, split the audience, throw stones at everyone who's not in there. Religion is right.

Yeah.

Yeah, anyone who's not in the religion is outside the religion. And That's what some of the best YouTubers have done. It's what Tate did, and they built up a huge following, cult, effectively. If you read 48 Laws of Power, it's literally about how to make a cult. My argument is, if my camp was so good, why don't we just promote my camp and just talk about how great our camp is, and then that's it?

Yep.

And then we'll pull in the right people and we'll leave people outside it outside it, but we're not shitting on people outside it. It's just a small frame change, but that's how you build much more of an elegant brand.

Yeah.

And I think like your customer is a reflection of you. So I could probably look at your customer base, the executives that are there, and they probably emulate your values, which are not like, again, people throwing stones, right?

By the way, to your point, I just— to give some examples for people, I guess, you look at it like a Gary Vee, for example. Like, he doesn't have nearly as many views as he used to, but he's still relevant. And he's just a very nice, kind person. And he's also like kind of rough around the edges, like New York Jets, right? You know, you know. Um, and he'll cuss and people don't like that, right? That might polarize people a little bit. It doesn't polarize me. But, um, he does have people that are— they, they love him for him. You mentioned Hormozi, same deal, right? Like, he's just— he's a genuinely good person. Um, and so you can build a brand that way. But you, you also, like, I think for both of them, they do have a point of view, um, where, like, you know, they'll put their foot down. But it's nothing like, oh, you know, talking about, like, um, you know, being Republican or Democrat or anything like that.

Yeah, and that's exactly it. So your views can just be your view. It doesn't need to be aggressive. It doesn't need to be violent. And like, I actually speak about this with all of our clients, is that we need to believe what we believe in. Um, Shan Hannah from GenFlow says to me, you have to be about it. So let's say I'm the podcast guy. I truly believe in podcasting is a great way to connect to people. It's this anti— like, we don't socialize anymore. It's bringing it back to natural. I genuinely believe that that's true.

Yeah.

So I talk about that. And it's just a strong value and a strong point of mine. It doesn't have to be negative on the other side, right? But again, it's almost like a reflection. Um, so I want to ask about— so you said you were kind of insecure when you're younger, you know, you were more introverted and so on and so forth. And then people like Hormozi is more— he mentions about how he's insecure as well, but where he was growing up. Do you think that's like a good— it's good when you channel in the right way?

I love it. I mean, it's, um, so I, I appreciate the— so when you have insecurity combined with ambition, it's a great combo. Yeah, right. Um, and so, you know, I think Hormozi definitely had that. Um, you know, and he can speak to it, but he's mentioned it, right? It's like, you know, for him— um, well, we won't even talk about him, I guess I'll just talk about me. I think for me growing up, um, the ambition piece came from the gaming. Um, and the ambition also came from like, you know, you see your parents fight about money sometimes, like you don't want to fight about that anymore. And then also you see like um, insecurity. Like, you hear from like your friends, oh, like you're not quite at their level. You hear that from your parents and all that. Like, it is a chip on your shoulder. And, um, I do believe we're all programmed from our childhoods. And so I'm glad I still have that chip, right? I don't think it ever quite goes away. Um, and so it, it keeps me motivated. Yeah, I enjoy it.

Well, you kind of have an element of humility too, right?

Yeah.

That I think it's an interesting, uh, I thought about this quite a lot, how I find it quite strange when I see someone make more and more money and become more ego-driven. Yeah, whereas for me, the more money that I've earned, I've become less ego-driven because I realize I don't know anything.

Well, yeah, I mean, money is an amplifier of who you actually are at the end of the day. So like, um, I thought like if I would make more money, I would want like a Lamborghini or like, you know, all these possessions. And like, I actually don't care about those things, right? Like, I don't wear a really nice watch or anything like that. I might have an Oura Ring, like, and I, I don't even like wearing stuff.

So an Apple Watch.

Yeah.

So dude, I, um, I got Um, what even is it? You know Jeep, the brand? Rubicon. I wanted to buy it, right? It was so stupid and so expensive. And, um, my wife, my mother-in-law said to me, she was like, just rent it for a month. And if you rent it and you still love it after you rent it, then you can buy it, whatever. And I was like, okay, cool, got it. 7 days later, I was like, I fucking hate it.

You're over it. Yeah, right.

Yeah, I would come out of my, my house every day, I'd walk past it to my motorbike, which is just a shitty old motorbike. And every single day, the car was matte black. It would just get dustier and dustier. I walked past the thing and I was like, oh my God, get rid of it. I rang the guy to take it back and he was like, dude, I'm not taking it back. He was like, you have to live out the 30 days at least.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was like, oh my— I genuinely could not look at the thing anymore. I drove it around 4 more times after that. I handed back the keys and I was like, fuck this. Because it got to the point where I was like, I don't even want to bring it out in case I tip it and I mark it. And I handed it back and I was like, sometimes you need to experience it. And I'm susceptible to everything, right? I'm not talking from a high perspective. And I guess because I thought to myself, oh, it's more practical. It's not like a watch, right? Watches hold their value, whatever. But it's not like a watch. I thought I could use it. And I was like, I fucking hate this.

You know what's interesting? I mean, you look at people's Instagrams and the people that have purpose aren't posting about material possessions. And if you like material possessions, like, that's fine. But I just generally like the pattern that I've seen is if you have a sense of purpose, like you're not posting about that stuff, that stuff falls way below. You're not posting that you're flying on a first class flight. You know, you got this Lamborghini or whatever, or you like you're popping bottles, that stuff in your 20s. But like you realize later in your life that, you know, what is it? Family's number one, right? And then you can talk about like maybe there's business teachings or religious teachings or whatever it is exactly. But purpose to me is just serving other people. And, um, you know, when you're posting material things, you're really talking about serving yourself.

It's also the optics, how we want our audience or our customers to perceive us.

Yeah.

Sam Ovens is a good example of that. You know, Skyrise back in the day. Yeah, blue suit. And now he's just chilling with long hair.

It was never him. And he's admitted it, that like, that wasn't me. But he was trying to sell this certain perception to people and he was playing into human psychology.

Yeah. So that more emotive side, that kind of connecting with your audience or connecting with your people. So, you know, you mentioned Gary Vee and he has the videos about his mom and shit, but then you have people like Chris, Chris Lowe, who I'm chatting with tomorrow, and he does a really nice balance here because he takes about— he thinks about it through the lens of internal. Yeah, it's the internal state.

Yeah, you should talk to him about Gary Vee tomorrow.

I will. I watched your clip. Yeah, yeah, I listened to your podcast for both of you together.

Yeah, yeah.

But that's interesting, right? Because he's, he's done the work internally, and then as a result, that becomes who he's about. Yeah, people love him. People go to his masterminds and his workshops and so on and so forth. Because the energy that you— this may seem woo-woo, but it's not though. It's like the energy that you emit is the energy you receive.

He's a perfect example of someone that understands what he wants to build. He understands his values. He doesn't want to necessarily build a big agency. He's like, okay, I just want to focus on educating. So he did the these like workshops, right? He came to my mastermind where Sam Ovens was there, and we, we had a speaker's dinner, and, um, I actually sat him next to Sam. And Sam had this section over there, he's just telling everyone like, you got to start a mastermind, right? You got to start a mastermind. And that's how Chris eventually, he started his mastermind. Um, but it works out well for him because he loves learning, he loves teaching, and he doesn't— he's a type of guy like he used to do back when Clubhouse was a thing. Um, he would be in these rooms and he'd host these rooms with thousands of people, right? And, um, you know, he'd bring people up and then As soon as he found someone being insufferable, he's like, I can't stand you anymore. He was like, mute you or whatever, right? I'm paraphrasing here, but he's just really direct. And, um, you know, building a huge team or whatever, that's just not what he wants anymore. He maybe he doesn't want people problems, but he is— you can see he's living within his values and it really comes out.

Yeah, he's called me out on my shit sometimes on a podcast before. Can't remember what it was around. It could have been around sales or Actually, this was it. I asked him, how does someone build authority and influence if they don't have experience? Are they living through an optic lens? And I forget what I actually said about my opinion on it, but he was like, that's not true. And I was like, oh, okay. That's good, right? It's good to be open and honest because then you respect the person as a result. And you have much more of a— it's just real. And people just fucking aren't real.

Yeah, the word— Gary Vee's authentic, Christo's authentic, right? There's a lot of these people. You can, you can feel it.

Yeah, exactly. And they're also not afraid to be wrong in that regard. How do you run your mastermind events?

How do you do that? So I have a mastermind called Leveling Up. This year we didn't do it because I'm focused on— I'm running the YPO Global Marketing Summit, and that's a whole ordeal in itself. And so, um, but that mastermind, which I've done for a couple years, um, the way that's structured, it's like, you know, the last one we had in Beverly Hills was maybe I want to say 110 people or so. So it's like a decent, decent size. But, um, everyone's doing— average is probably 8 figures in revenue. And you have business owners from, from different areas, not just agency people. But you have, you have agency people, you have product people, you have e-commerce people, um, SaaS people as well. And, um, you know, for me, it's my way of gathering people together. So I pick the location, I pick the speakers, you know, I vet every single person that comes through. I get to decide when it ends. I get to decide what the agenda is. I'm an extroverted introvert, right? So I'll set it all up. It's like my experience. And from that, that's like a 2-day thing. And after that, I'm good, right?

Mm-hmm.

And I get my share of learnings. I get my share of networking. And that's not an event that we try to necessarily make money on, but everyone's like, oh my God, that's like the best event I've been to. Best event I've been to, right? And I'm appreciative of that. But I don't want to make it into a business. I can make it into a business, but then I have to— that's another thing I have to worry about. So that's generally how I structure these types of events. And we'll probably do something similar for the agency group. And there's already a lot of them like that, but I'll just follow my format. So yeah.

So 100 entrepreneurs at 8 figures, it's pretty wild.

Yeah. Yeah. Some, some at 9 figures, right? Some, you know, multibillion-dollar companies. So yeah.

So you've basically found a way to disqualify people underneath that you don't want to have in a sphere, but then also bring in the right audience. How do you sell that? Like, what do you price it at?

Yeah, so that one price is at $25,000. Um, and typically, yeah, it's one event for the year. It used to be more, um, but I just want to make it simple. And, um, you know, we'd have— we'd get people on phone calls. So we used to run podcast ads towards it, um, and we, we'd send emails to people. And yeah, it'd be a phone call. And then if they're down to come, great. If not, then whatever.

Yeah, $25K. That seems so reasonable because of who you're actually going to have in the audience, right? Who you're going to be able to bring people in.

Yeah.

Do you think that there's opportunity for you to move into the coaching space?

I would say for us, no. Because for me, I'm focused on operating the agency. And so the same thing with Neil. He's focused on operating. He's focused on doing driving traffic doing deals. I'm kind of the same way, but I am more operational within the business. And yeah, that's because the thing is, if I'm focused on coaching, that's going to take up a lot of my time.

Yeah.

That being said, though, with the agency group that we have, Neil and I will appear every couple of weeks or so and we will actually do a group coaching session and then we'll publish that to Marketing School because those kind of serve as ads as well. People are like, oh my God, that sounds really good.

I want to join.

It's a VSL. Yeah, it's a long VSL, right? And we do one once a month and that actually gets a podcast recording session out of the way as well.

Well, it's, it's just so easy to do, basically, to build that ecosystem, because you're basically sharing wisdom. That's it, you know. So yeah, it's easy to do because you spend 20 years learning the thing. But at the end of the day though, it's just a weekly call on Wednesday.

Yeah.

A Slack chat.

Yeah.

And that's it. If you compare that to an agency, how difficult an agency is to run, right?

Yeah.

So it's all about, it's all about the insight.

Yep, yep.

And I love Chris's approach to that where he does— I know you're familiar with this, but he does like a hot seat.

No.

Oh, this is really interesting. We did this in our coaching program today because of— I think I'm going to tell Chris tomorrow as well. His approach is instead of just— so you have the content that you're kind of indoctrinating and getting people to go through in a linear way so that they're in your wavelength. But Chris's approach is that on his weekly calls, he does like a hot seat. So he'd pick your business or your design business, for instance, and you'd come in and say, I'm having this problem on client acquisition and delivery, my pricing's off. And he'll go through and whiteboard it. And then as a result, 40, 50, 100 people are in the call or whatever. And then they're also— guess what? They have the same problems. So they're learning through that model. And we started just doing that today, just a bit of a change this morning at 6 AM. And people loved it because everyone's problems are the same, right?

As long as they're around the same level. The problem with, with like a group like ours is like you have to segment out the 6-figure people and the 7-figure people and the 8-figure people because they have different problems. Um, but yeah, the, the hot seat model, like in, in EO or YPO, we call this a forum where there's a presentation. Um, so for example, today I'm doing like a meeting. It's like a 7-hour meeting. Um, but, but like, you know, you might come with like one of your core issues and then we'll all just, you know, we'll hear about it and then we'll experience share, right? That kind of is a hot seat situation. Um, so yeah, hot seats work really well as long as people are at the same level, because if you have someone with an 8-figure problem and then the group's all 6-figure people, it's not going to land.

Yeah, 100%. And that's when I think it's interesting to hear that there's 8-figure people in that, because I would assume that they want one-to-one care because they're at that stage, right? They're less, how do I get leads, and more like, my close rate is only at 19% and it should be at 40% or something, right? Does that make sense?

Yep.

It's almost like solving the problem in different ways depending on where someone is in their journey. Tell me more about your setup. So I've seen that you've mentioned before about, you know, how taking time off work and letting ideas come in? Like, how do you balance doing versus thinking?

Yeah, so right now, um, you know, for example, I went to Italy this summer. That was like a 12-day thing, and I just totally just— I was like mostly disconnected. I would check Slack every now and then, but that gave me a lot of space. And it wasn't like I was trying to think through things every day. Like, I'll just— because there's that space, there's not that pressure, um, you know, the mind clears up quite a bit. You're not in a day-to-day, you're not in the trenches kind of like, you know, fighting through things, right? I think that's really valuable because when you come back, you're super refreshed. Um, and you'll often come back with like a lot of ideas, which might scare your team sometimes too. Um, but, you know, I'm like, okay, well, that worked out well. I should do more of that. And this is interesting because the founder of LMNT, the salt, Yeah. um, they— he's been doing this for 2, 3 years, I think. And it's, uh, it's basically a 3-week sprint and then 1 week off per month. And so it's 3-1, 3-1, 3-1. And he just, he just does that, right? And That's not necessarily saying he's going on a vacation, but he might take like 3, 4 days off and he starts to like look at how the sprints went in the last, you know, 3 weeks or so, and then prepare for the next 3-week sprints.

Mm-hmm.

And, um, that seems like it's working well for him. And for me, I'm like, okay, how can I do that once a quarter or so? And I think Sam Ovens actually does this too. Once a quarter or so, he has like a 1-week break. Um, I think it's, you know, sometimes you, you, you know, Naval Ravikant likes to say that you, you, I think you sleep like a lion, right? And you hunt like one. Um, so lines sleep quite a bit, right? But when they're on, they're on.

So yeah. Did you ever find yourself getting a bit more anxious from being away from work? Because like things build and they compound, right? So problems—

When the team sucks, yes. When the team's good, like if you want to see how good your team is, go on a vacation. You go on a vacation, you see which fires pop up, you see if they're texting you, calling you, or whatever. Um, but you know, this past one There were no issues. There were no issues. And the team's gotten a lot better. And here, talking about focused involvement again, the number one thing, in my opinion, to get involved with is hiring, right? Maybe you're not screening everyone, but maybe you're early in the process. You're meeting the first 100 people or so, because that first 100 people, they set the tone for the company.

Mm-hmm.

And if you decide to delegate— like, I've done this in the past, where I would sit at the very end, and I would feel bad because they've met so many people already. We were hiring just to fill seats. And what ended up happening was not a cultural fit and they would pollute the culture.

Yeah.

Not saying they were bad people, but they just weren't fits, right? And so, you know, they're not a fit. They're realizing they're not a fit, but then they start to cause problems too, 'cause they're disgruntled, right? Then they also don't wanna leave either because this is their security, right? And also they're not that good either. So it's hard for them to find another job. And then also, you know, the A players are watching them. It's like, oh, we're tolerating these C players. Also, they have to do the work for the C players. It's a compounding effect. And that's why, again, I go back to that 60-day moving average. It's got to be kept extremely high, unreasonably high. And people on the team are not going to hate you for it. They're going to be annoyed at you. But in the long run, they're going to appreciate the fact that you kept the bar unreasonably high.

How do you do that, though, specifically? Is that more through calls? Is that more through leading with examples?

Yeah. So a couple of things. I mean, let's say I'm showing up to the second or third interview. I'm trying to figure out— You know, like, what have they done that's exemplary, right? And so, you know, tell me something that made you stand out as a teenager, right? Like, for example, for me, I sold like, you know, in-game armor and helmets for $3,000 in 8th grade, right? Like, that's something that's remarkable. How did you do that? I played poker, you know, like 14, 15 hours a day in college, right? Like, okay, tell me more about that. Like, it's got to be like they got a little something that's off, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

But then also tell me like your most impressive win as it relates to this role, right? And then you start to really peel the onion. It's like, Okay, so you said you built this thing over here. Oh, it turns out they're part of a team. Okay, tell me about that team. Oh, you're actually like, you know, a mid-level person on that team. Oh, so you actually didn't really build that thing, right? Um, it starts to unravel very quickly. And then you're just trying to see, you know, for us it's like, is this person improvement obsessed? Is this person reliable? Are they open-minded? And we— that those are our core values.

Mm-hmm.

And if you're not feeling it, usually you can feel it within the first 5 to 10 minutes or so, like this person's got it. Um, you probably shouldn't make the move. And like, You know, is this person smarter than you? Would you work for this person? Um, would you admire this person? Like, these things all matter. And again, nobody's gonna care as much as you, the founder. Hmm.

You're, you're, um, you've interviewed Ayman Al-Abdullah. He has a very interesting, um, approach towards hiring about would you, one, be jealous or envious if they went to a competitor? And the second is, could you get on a 12-hour flight with them?

Yeah, I like the first one, the 12-hour flight thing. You know, I don't know, you just like— I've sat on long flights with people on my team. It's all right. But I think the first one's good. Like, it's, um, it's almost similar to like, you know, uh, how indifferent would you feel if this person left, right? Like, that's the question that we ask. And so it's, it's a good— it's a good heuristic. The problem with the question too is during the interview process, that particular one is you don't really know the person that well.

Exactly.

Yeah, some people don't interview well. Yeah, and so like, we, we like to run people through like a paid challenge, or like we put them through like a written assessment, but that's easier to game now with ChatGPT. But you can also tell when people are ChatGPTing it. Um, but you know, you want to set like a bunch of booby traps to find out who your Indiana Jones is.

Hmm, good point. Yeah, I've run tests, like we do like a weekly paid test in the beginning. Um, and if someone has a question mark over doing it or not, it's like, dude, if you're not willing to do the test—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That sets up—

if they're not responding to you quickly, if they're not willing to do the test, right, they they start to like, you know, the delay on things, it's just, it's not worth it because they're not that excited. Yeah, right. And the question I like to ask them when they come in is like, so like, how did you prepare for this conversation, right? Oh yeah, I don't know. Like, so, so like, you know, what do you know about like the content that we put out? Oh yeah, you know, I only looked, you know, at your website or whatever. It's like, you clearly did no research.

And you also don't give a shit, right? You want the money versus anything else, just getting paid. Yep. Um, I want to ask you about lead generation. So you have a framework around the 60% gap?

Yep.

The gap of 60%. What made you come to that realization? How did you figure that out?

Yeah, so we call this the missing 60%. So, you know, this is actually during a mastermind earlier this year. We did it in Scottsdale. And I think the more extreme example here is that you have 5% of people that are in market ready to buy your product or service. 95% of people are not, right? How we broke it down was like, okay, maybe 20% of people are ready to buy, 20% will never buy, but it's the missing 60% or the 95% of people that you should be focusing on. You should be nurturing these people over time, whether it's through content, whether it's through your email list, whether it's through retargeting to, you know, using thought leadership ads on LinkedIn, at least for us, or doing webinars. You're constantly trying to stay top of mind. That's really what it is about, at least for us, because a lot of people, when they reach out, sometimes it's just like, They might have seen me or met met up with me at a conference recently, right? It's like, hey, by the way, we actually need this, right? I was talking to someone on the phone yesterday about the the conference that I'm running, and he's like, oh, by the way, like you guys do SEO, right? Da da da da. Oh, like you know we had this guy over here. He had founded a multi-billion dollar company. Just raised a bunch of money for this other company. I don't know anybody else. Like so you just happen to be in the right place at the right time, and that comes through a lot of nurturing through through content marketing.

What do you think about the argument that um, nurturing doesn't work.

Yeah, I think, I think nurturing, nurturing does. Because like in this case right now, like we've never met until today. This is a form of nurturing, and this is a deeper form of nurturing because we spent like, you know, 2 hours together or something like that, right? Um, and so I would just say that, you know, nurturing goes a long way. You have to nurture. Forget about business for a second. Everything's about relationships. If you don't put the time and effort into it, then the relationship eventually is going to decay and it's going to become nothing. So you have to continue to nurture it. It's like, you know, you and your wife, for example, you have to continue to nurture it. Yeah, like both of you do.

Everything will atrophy until you work on it. Yeah, man, because like, that's, uh, I think what you do with your agency, I guess you could go in and speak with a client or prospect and say, we'll help you generate X amount of revenue or products or customers.

Yeah.

Whereas for me, I've always called it the intangibles from podcasting. that you have the tangible, which is product and services, and the intangibles are all the second, third, fourth order of consequences. But most people who don't play an infinite game are not willing to even entertain the idea of that. And I think to get into that mindset, you need to obviously be at a certain stage. You don't need the cash today and so on and so forth. But I think if more people think like that, then that's how— that's how we're here today.

Yeah.

You know, it's a perfect example, right? Like, I'm a lot further behind you and your journey, but I've done 250 episodes. You've done like 2,500.

Yeah.

I've done 10% of this.

Yeah, but it's just a time thing.

Exactly. But again, as a result, like, we've had our own successes in our own right. But isn't that very interesting though? Like, people could look at you and think it's the business, where it's not just the business, it's all the other things, right, that have played into it, right? Last question for you is, how have— how's your business impacted, like, your relationships? So do you have a wife?

No.

So you're single?

Girlfriend.

Girlfriend. So how has that kind of affected your— or impacted positively or negatively? Like, how do you balance the two?

I mean, she lets me do my thing. Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing. I talked to my, you know, the $100 million CEO dinner the other day. He's been married for 30 years. And so I asked him, what is the secret to your marriage? And he's like, for us, it's just— it comes down to space. She lets me do my thing. I let her do her thing. And then when we come together, it's amazing. We'll travel together and things like that. But, you know, we're separate human beings. I think, you know, one of the biggest things is, for me at least, is they need to let me be me. Because if I need to change, then I'm no longer me, you know, at the end of the day, right? And then I can't deliver in the relationship too. I can't, I can't bring my real self.

So— And also, what attracted your girlfriend to you is what you want to maintain.

Yeah, right.

Versus you changing to be a different individual.

Yeah, right. Then it's inauthentic and people can smell it.

Yeah, and then there's a codependency.

Yeah.

Being created.

And you become a people pleaser and then they hate that.

Are you familiar with James Kemp?

No.

So James Kemp's running like a solo, solo kind of business effectively. Really cool guy, very, very interesting. You should definitely connect with him. He's recently divorced, he has 2 kids, and he said the biggest thing with his like relationships now is that everything doesn't have a codependency. So it's like, I was okay before I met this client, I was okay before I met my new girlfriend, therefore I will be okay Yeah. If we don't work together. Whereas in the agency space, there's a huge codependency, right? People shoot their, their problems off each other. And I always like to say that, like, if there's an emergency, you call 911, you don't call me.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

And I want to say a big thank you. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, no, this is a great conversation, man.

For you, it's, it's so natural, right? And I can just see, like, everything. And I really do appreciate the time and energy, man.

Yeah, likewise. I appreciate the research you put in.

Ah, it's part of it, right?

Nooooo!