Mastering Supply, Demand, & Storytelling: Navigating Entrepreneurship with Jamaul Ford (Episode 25)

What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Focused Free Fit. It's your favorite coach, Coach Frank, and we've got a special guest today, Mr. Jamaul Ford. How you doing, buddy?

I'm glad to be here, Frank. Thanks so much for having me, man.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I am excited, especially after getting clarification before we got on this, finding out exactly what, you know, what your specialty is. But I I think this is, I think this is a question and a topic that a lot of people— it's so popular now, and I think your timing is just right. Um, but I'm excited to see kind of how you got here and, um, what led you to this and, and what you do now. So what we do here is we usually start with tell us a little bit about how you grew up, tell us about family life, early life. Um, it's interesting to me to try and see, you know, how that how that relates to where you are today. So tell us a little bit about where you grew up and about early family life.

Cool. So yes, um, my name is Jamaul Ford, like Frank said. I grew up in a small town called Berwick, Louisiana. And in Berwick, we are very much so maybe a 5,000-person population city. And so it's very much so like rural area. But I am a second-generation entrepreneur, and so I grew up— oh, hold on, Frank.

I think you, uh, froze there for a little while. We didn't hear anything from the— from—

yeah, give me one second.

All right.

Yeah, hold on one moment. Let me see if I can fix this. Hold on, give me two seconds. Is it still freezing? Let's see. Frank, are you still— can you hear me now?

I can.

Okay, let me— you want to just start from that question?

Yeah, let's just— let's just start from that question. I'll actually There should be a button, a mark clip button on Riverside. Yeah.

You see it, you can just mark it down and then it'll let you know where to clip it at.

Gotcha. So yeah, we should probably also preface that you just had a hurricane yesterday. Yeah. Pretty much where you live.

Yeah, I definitely did.

So let everybody know that. Yeah. If we have any difficulties, but yeah. So tell us about Jamaul Ford.

Yeah. So I'm a second generation entrepreneur. I grew up in a very rural town called Berwick, Louisiana. Population of maybe about 5,000 people max. And so very rural, very, um, everyone knows everybody. But from that particular standpoint, understanding people, understanding the psychology of people, and understanding how to help people has always been something that's been really big in my life. And, you know, my mom being an entrepreneur and her owning multiple businesses really helped me understand that a business is really about helping people and understanding the needs of people. and then being able to fulfill those needs and letting people know, hey, you have the answers to their problems. So that's really what got me started in entrepreneurship, just my early beginnings of watching my mother in entrepreneurship. I also grew up— my dad is a pastor, but I grew up in a church community. And so being very church-driven, we were very much so helping the community, um, picking up people to go to church. And so understanding just fulfillment, understanding how to help others and putting that together with entrepreneurship is really what shaped me to be where I am today.

Gotcha. So it sounds like helping your parents, they were both kind of entrepreneurs. And so that, that's where you got that, that itch.

Yeah. And to be honest with you, it's funny because even whenever we were running the clinic and we were doing these other things, as I went on my entrepreneurial journey, a lot of the Goldman Sachs, a lot of the other programs that most people would go to, I kind of grew up in that. Like, it was like a second nature to me. So it was like, oh, I already know this stuff. I know I knew this when I was 11, you know what I mean?

Like, that's really interesting.

So, you know, helping others and being able now doing consulting and helping others and helping them understand how to get to scale their actual business has really been tremendous for me to see the success that they're having and been tremendous for them to actually have success in something they never thought they would actually have success doing.

Yeah, that's really, that's really interesting. You said something I thought was really key too. You said, you know, your mom gave you great advice, I think, when telling him, telling you, you know, it's about solving problems, right? If you can solve someone's problem, there's, there's a good chance there's a business there.

Frank, I'll say this, and this is the key for me, and I think this is the foundation of everything that I see when it comes to entrepreneurship. Supply and demand is huge, right? And I think that just the way we say supply and demand is wrong. It should always be stated demand-supply because I think that so many people try to create supply first and not fully understand if there's even a demand of what— for what they're doing. And it's the number one thing that kind of gets people in a pigeonhole of trying to like figure out what's next, right? Um, for me Being an entrepreneur is finding problems. So if you see problems, if you see what people are actually having issues with, then you actually go out and see if more and more and more people are having the same issue. Now you see that you have an opportunity there. It doesn't have to be a lot of people. It has to be a scalable thing compared to how many people have this issue, how much you can charge for having the answer to that solution. My favorite example of that is this. If I do personal training, right, I can charge someone $500 a month personal training. And personal training is a done-with-you model. Just having a gym membership is a DIY model. Like, hey, you, you go to the gym, you do it yourself. A done-for-you model is plastic surgery, right? And so, okay, me being an entrepreneur, If I'm a personal trainer, if I'm a personal trainer, I probably going to need, uh, 200 people in order to make $10,000 a month because the time delay that is associated with— hold on, Frank, I'm sorry, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, because of the time delay that's associated with them getting their results. Whereas if I'm a plastic surgeon, all I need is one person to make $10,000, right? Because I'm going to get them the solution in less than, you know, 2, 3 hours. And so that is also super important to understand how long it actually takes you for people to actually get their solution in what you're actually doing. And so supply and demand is super important, and gratification of finding solution in a timely manner is also important as well.

I like how you said that. That's interesting. So I Okay. You said a couple things there. I want to, I want to dive, I don't want to dive in yet, but I think we, I want to, but those are all such good points. So let's wait a second before we go there because those are all, I want to have a lot of questions on that. Okay. Where was the first time you got, so what did you do as you grew up? Did you go to school? Did you just start jumping in the business?

What, what, what was your first? Yeah, I went to, I got my bachelor's degree in kinesiology and human performance, and then I got my master's degree in sports science and wellness, and I wound up getting a job in, uh, corporate wellness. But I also grew up playing music because I was in church and I played music a lot. And I started working my first job in corporate wellness. It was my first, like, uh, grown-up job, I guess you would call it. I mean, my master's degree. And I'm working, and I'm working at the hospital, and I think I was making maybe $36,000 a year at the hospital in corporate wellness. But as a musician, I was working like 5 hours a week and I was probably pulling in like $38,000, $39,000 as a musician. And kind of, I was playing when I wanted to play and did what I wanted to do. And it would always frustrate me, like something in the back of my mind would be an itch. It's like, I'm spending all this time, you know, doing this one job and I'm making less than what I'm spending 5 hours doing, you know, once a week. And so I'll never forget this. My boss in corporate wellness, he had— he was transitioning to another hospital. They had kind of pretty much gave him a blank check, was like, hey, we're gonna pay you whatever we need to pay you to get you to come and work for us, right? And we were really close, and I remember going to his office like the week before he left, and I was like, man, I'm really having trouble. I don't really know what I should be doing. I'm really frustrated because I'm doing this so many hours and I'm only making this. And while I'm playing music and I'm making this amount. And he told me something I'll never forget. He said, Jamaul Ford, people are never going to pay you what you're worth. They're only going to pay you what is on the sheet that they gave you for the job, right? And so you can find yourself doing so many more things on a job that's bringing value to the job, but that's not what they're paying you for. They're actually paying you for that job description. And so you find yourself fulfilling so many more things than what's on that job description. and then you feel like, hey, I'm being undervalued. Well, you are being undervalued, but you bringing more to the table than what they're actually asking you to bring to the table. And he told me this, he said, Jamaul Ford, you're the only person that can create your own value. And it clicked for me so much because the truth was I had grown up in that environment, and I think it was really quick for me to catch on, to understand that, you know, we grow up really pushing education, and then once you have your education saying, hey, you need to use your education to make a living and those particular things. And I was actually forfeiting the education I had actually had my whole life of entrepreneurship. I was so, you know, focused on using the actual education I gained in the school system, and I was not using the 4 major pillars that I learned in my life. And those 4 major pillars are— and I think everyone should teach their kids this because this is like super important— It will be finance, it will be leadership, it will be sales, and it will be marketing. Those are the 4 biggest things you— any— whether you're an entrepreneur or not, I believe those are the 4 major things you should learn, probably, or start to learn before you're 18 to 20 years old. Because if you understand how money works, profit loss, understanding just how finances work, understanding wealth is, um, not wealth is time, how long you can go without actually, you know, needing to go to work. And then also understanding leadership. You can flip burgers, but it doesn't mean you can teach other people how to flip burgers, right? So being a leader is important.

Yeah.

Sales, understanding how to communicate with people, understanding people's desires, understanding what they're striving for in a one-to-one setting and convincing them that you have the answer. Then taking that and putting that out in mass, which is marketing, right? So if you learn those things really early as a kid, it becomes second nature to you when you get older.

Gotcha. Okay. So let's, let's transition a little bit into— it seems like what's one of your specialties, which is the funnels and marketing and that kind of thing. So let's talk about that for a little bit. So I have an idea.

Okay.

You talked about earlier, how do you find— there's a supply and demand. We don't want to create a business for something there's no demand for.

Yeah.

So how do I first figure out, let's say I figure out I have this business, I want to do it online. I want to market, I want to have a course. How do I first figure out if there's a demand? How many people is a good sample size? And how do we decide on cost?

Yeah. If this is your first business, you want to look at what's close to you. You want to look at what you're having issues with. You want to look at like things that's taking you time, things that's taking you more steps than you want to actually deal with, or, you know, just different problems that you may be having. Then most of the time you're around other people who are interested in the same things that you are, so you just start to ask them, hey, are you having this issue too? And you just start to kind of do research. And really, for me, I'm really big on waiting lists. I'm really big on Um, surveys and just getting information. Information is one of the biggest resources you have as an entrepreneur. I always tell people Facebook is an information business. Amazon is an information business. These companies are taking information, they're understanding what you like, what you don't like, and they're utilizing it to either sell you products or allow other people to sell you products. And so understanding at the foundational level, information is super important. That's the key. Once you have that, then you can create what we like to call an avatar, or understand who's your ideal customer, and then you can start to actually develop the process of saying, taking pre-orders. Like, if you decide what you want to do, um, the next thing I would say about that is, which I believe is very important, is understanding what you're selling, right? So let's say you have an idea And you're thinking, okay, this is it. Um, I've done the survey. I've done, you know, I know people are interested in this product. What am I selling? There's only 5 things you can sell in life. Period. 5. Access, convenience, security, validation, and opportunity. Those are the only 5 things you can sell. Access. Hey, um, Apple Music sells access, right? Convenience. Uber Eats. Uber. Airbnb. These companies sell convenience, security. The government sells you security. Hey, these people, you're in danger, we can keep you safe. Home security systems. I always laugh, I always tell people, most people who have home security systems don't even need them because they live in safe neighborhoods, but they want that extra bit of security and they're willing to pay for that extra bit of security, right? Um, what happened was Ring took security and made it scalable, made it— gave people more people access to security, right? So they sell security and access and convenience. Validation. Louis Vuitton, Gucci, these particular companies sell validation. The government sells validation from a sense of, hey, proud to be an American. You, you American, that's validation, right? Um, and then opportunity. Hey, I can help you do this. If you do this. And then once you understand which one of those 5 buckets your product or service falls into, then you understand how to market. So if I'm selling grass cutting, I'm selling access and convenience, right? If I'm in— if I'm selling grass cutting in a high-quality neighborhood like a, you know, a well-known subdivision, I'm selling validation because, hey, you got your grass cut by me, now it's secure. Now You know, so you want to check off as many of those buckets as you can whenever you're creating a product or creating a service. So that's how I always look at it.

Excuse me. I love that. I love those. I love those 5. I agree with it. Let's say I have an idea for a business and I have to create this waitlist, basically people who would be interested in my product or whatever I'm trying to do. What do you do, create an ad or just throw it out there and you tell everybody what your idea is and you hope they sign up? Or do you— what's the deal with that?

Let's do it, Frank. How about this? Give me a product, give me a product or service, and then we're going to walk it through the steps. Anything doesn't matter.

All right.

Doesn't matter.

Let's just take, for example, you know, selling— let's just do selling shoelaces. I got a shoelace. I come up with a new shoelace.

Yeah.

And I want to see who's interested in the shoelace, you know, the special kind of shoelace.

Cool. So I'm looking at shoelaces, and if I'm looking at the shoelaces, I'm ideally looking at where the gap is in shoelaces. Ironically, this is funny because my niece, who I'm at her birthday was yesterday, she's here with me, um, and she is— she doesn't like tying her shoes, right? And she, she— it's a struggle. She's left-handed. I'm left-handed, and left-handed people typically have issues tying shoes. Because we learn from right-handed people. And so it's, it's kind of tough.

Interesting. Yeah, my wife's left-handed.

Yeah. So with that being said, um, ideally I want to know how many other people are having issues with their shoelaces, having issues with tying their shoes, having, um, issues just with the length of shoelaces. Like, I'm having issues with this. Like, so I'm just going to ask people, hey, are you like— how do you like your shoelaces? Do you wish they were sturdier? Do you wish they were easier to tie? Do you wish that they didn't get tangled up so much? And I'm asking these questions. Once I'm asking these questions, I'm getting feedback from people. Now I'm understanding who's having these issues, who's not having these issues, and I'm starting to understand an idea of who my target audience is with these particular shoelaces. Is it men? Is it women? Is it kids? Like, what's the age range of what I'm doing? So I'm going to use my niece as an example. Let's say I asked, uh, I went to Walmart and for 3 days, and I know that mostly women walk into Walmart and shop, right? Or, you know, maybe I was at Whole Foods and I asked 300 women, do they have issues with their shoelaces? What's great about that is they're going to say, no, but my husband does. No, but my daughter does. No, but my son does, right? And so they're going to give me more information even more so for help me understand. So I'm taking down information. I either have a digital survey, I'm asking, and I'm writing it down. Let's say for instance they said, hey, out of the 300 women that I asked, 100 of them said that their kids in between the ages of 8 to 12 have issues with shoelaces and tying them and them getting tangled up. Okay, cool. So I understand that that's an age range that's having, you know, issues. So from there, I'm going to take it, I'm going to say, okay, I want to create a shoelace that is easier to tie, that doesn't get damaged as people walk on them. So I'm going to create this ideal shoelace. Now I have my shoelace. I understand that my shoelace is easier to tie. It comes with instructions or some kind of unique value proposition that other people's shoelaces doesn't have, right? So now I gotta frame it in one of those 5 buckets. My shoelace gives you security, understanding that when you tie it, it's not going to come loose. So I'm selling security right now. If I'm selling it at a low price point, I'm going to sell access and convenience, right? If I'm selling my shoelaces at a high price point— if I'm selling my shoelaces at a high price point, I'm selling validation, because to have these shoelaces mean that you're on a certain tier. So let's just say I'm selling access and convenience because that's very easy to sell. So I'm selling these shoelaces at $10 a pair or something like that. So I know that I'm selling security, that when you tie them, you don't have to worry about them coming loose. I'm selling you access and convenience because you can order them on Amazon. I might put them on Amazon and you get them in 2 days. Now I understand what my marketing is. I understand my target demographic. Is not just kids, but it's women who have kids who have this issue, right? So now I frame that. So that's kind of where we are. I think that's what we've talked about. And that puts us back to where we are so we can go on with your questions. Yeah.

Yeah. No, that's great. I love that. Thank you for doing that. That really is good because I think that people— there's points in this process with online courses or online marketing, people just get stuck and they get overwhelmed and they just stop. It's so much info. They don't even know where to start. So, okay. So we get to this point and, and I only know this cause I've done small amounts of research. So it'd be interesting to get an expert opinion like yours. Now you, you have this thing, the Funnel Factory, right? Okay. So is next is when you go to market a product like this, is it better to go to like a, something like a Kajabi or a school where they have online communities, or is this something that's better to do on your own? And you have to create those funnels.

So those are two different models, and I'll explain both models and then I'll give you the answer. So a school like Kajabi is what we consider a monthly revenue model. So you can ultimately get people to pay a monthly subscription for that. Um, generally, if you are selling one-off products, then it'll probably be more like marketing on social media. Or something like that, and just having a funnel such as a website, a Shopify website, or if I'm trying to sell a lot of convenience, I'm going to put them on Amazon because I know everybody— if someone finds my product and they really like it, if I run an ad on Facebook and someone sees my product, before they click the like button or buy button, they're going to go check Amazon first before they even try to buy it from me. So I know I need to have it on Amazon because people are comfortable with Amazon, they feel a certain level of security with Amazon, and my product is like $10, so it's better for me to utilize their platform for that. So, so one-off products, that's what I would do. MMR, if I'm selling a monthly subscription, I would use School of Kajabi.

What about like you got these people that do like, uh, like if you're doing like one-on-one coaching or it's not an actual physical product you're buying, it's a process that you're buying so you can watch and like learn the process so that you could like people that do like multifamily real estate and they're like, hey, learn our process, come here and do this, you know, whatever.

Yeah. So I'm gonna try to keep these frameworks. I'm gonna talk about that framework too, right? So yeah, that framework is what I talked about earlier with the product suite. And I always like to have 3 products. Generally what happens is, I'm gonna tell you why. Generally what happens is if you have a coaching model or a teaching model, you sometimes ultimately find yourself giving people discounts. On product or services because you're trying to make revenue, you're trying to make money. And for me, I always say it's because you only have one product. And so how I look at products is DIY, done with you, and done for you, right? So a DIY is a course. Hey, look, watch this course. Once you watch this course, you're gonna know everything you need to know. A done with you model is like weekly You can, and you can build it all off of the same thing. So done with you model may be, we're gonna take this course and we're gonna add in weekly sessions or 2 to 3 sessions a week, right? With the person, they watch the course session for that week and then we're gonna meet them and review with them. We're gonna give them timelines, deadlines to have certain things done cuz we are walking with them, we're holding their hand, right? A done-for-you model is like, hey, we're going to do your first deal, we're going to do your actual first, and we're going to do it with— like, we're going to take 80% of the work, you're going to take 20% of the work, and you're going to watch how we do it. And we can continue doing this for you, or eventually you can take over yourself. But you give us your money, we're going to do it for you. And either, you know, you either pay us a flat rate are you, are you pay us a percentage of the total cost? And that goes back to what I said about the gym model. Having a gym membership is done DIY. Having a personal trainer is done with you. Having plastic surgery is done for you, right? So it all bases off of that. So yeah, with that particular coaching model, that's how I would do it.

Interesting. And it seems like there's so much competition. So in that case, when you do the done for you, done with you, the suites, the suite, Would that be with a program or on your own? On— you would do it on Facebook or something?

Yeah, it depends. I mean, are we doing real estate? We want to do a real estate model. Yeah, try—

just use real estate as an example.

Yeah. So with the real estate model, ultimately the DIY— this is the interesting thing about the DIY. The DIY is not necessarily the sale. Sometimes you give away the DIY. And the reason why you give away the DIY is because you're trying to show people that you have knowledge in that space. That's why it's so hard to sell courses because we're no longer in the information era. The information era was 2005 to maybe 2015. If you remember prior to 2005, you had to buy Encyclopedia Britannica. You had to buy information, right?

Yeah.

Once Google came, information became prevalent and then they started selling not the information, but access to people who were looking for the information in the form of ads. That's when it started to flip over. But now it's such a saturated market that if you're doing courses and the people that you're selling these courses to are not making over $200,000 a year, you're going to have trouble. Because anyone who's making under $200,000 a year probably has the time to actually look up the information. It's probably not willing to pay what you're asking for to just get the information. If I'm making enough money I'm just going to, okay, give me the information because I don't, I don't feel like looking for it. So it's more of a time thing, right?

So interesting.

That's, that's kind of how I see it. So the DIY kind of creating what I like to call a masterclass, a master workbook, a master ebook. People always trying to sell ebooks. You can't sell an ebook. People can barely sell books today, but that book is your manifesto that lets people know who you are, what you do. You take that book and you chop it up into smaller pieces and you make social media content based off of that book. That way you always have content to come off of. Now, people have to consume that book, and I, I'm going to talk about this, and I— but all of this is important. There's something called Dunbar's numbers. Dunbar's numbers says that you have 150 people in your inner circle at one time. When someone new comes into that circle, someone leaves out of the circle. So an example would be, let's say someone said, oh, Taylor Swift's dog passed away. There are going to be people online crying about Taylor Swift's dog. They've never met Taylor Swift. They don't know the dog. They've never seen a dog. But Taylor Swift is in their 150. How did Taylor Swift get in their 150? There are 3 key numbers to get in someone's 150. You have to consume 7 hours of their content. You have to have 11 interactions about that particular person or topic, and it has to be in 4 different locations. Those are the numbers. Does that— did that person consume 7 hours of Taylor Swift's content? Absolutely. Did that person interact 11 times about Taylor Swift, either with friends or family or something like that? Absolutely. Did this person consume Taylor Swift's content in 4 different locations. Absolutely. She checked all those boxes for that person, and now she's in the 150. When you have that masterpiece of content and you chop it up into smaller pieces, now you're taking little quotes, little maxims, and putting them on Twitter. You're seeing how people interact with those maxims. Oh, people really like that. Let me make a YouTube video about that. Let me cut that YouTube video into smaller shorts about that. Let me, you know, each in understanding the personality of each platform. Instagram is different than TikTok. LinkedIn is different than Instagram. Facebook is different than Insta. Like, you know, all of them are different. You understand the personality and you create the content. You formulate the content from your masterpiece of content to fit the personality of that social media space. And now you're creating those 7 hours. Of content. Ultimately, if you're selling a coaching program, I would assume it's a high-ticket program, right? It's probably minimum $1,000. YouTube is your best friend because if someone's going to spend over $1,000 on anything, they're going to go to YouTube and look up more information about that person or that product. And always remember, people buy people. People don't buy products. They have to like you. Once people like you and they decide that, hey, I already like this person, then they're gonna agree to ultimately buy your products, right? Or your services. So that's generally how you wanna see it.

I love it. So how big do you see, because this seems like your space, right? Social and online courses and funnels. How big is the market? How big is it going to get? I feel like it's humongous. I feel like it's untapped still, even though it's humongous. I have no— yeah, I'm not sure if that's true. Is that true, or what were your— what are your thoughts on it?

There's 8 billion people in the world.

Yeah, well, I mean, but I mean, like, untapped— I feel like it's untapped. It's big, but it's not.

Yeah, I mean, from a standpoint of, yes, it is untapped, but I would say what— and I'm agreeing with you from the standpoint of, once you understand your niche And once you understand who you're servicing, you only need— imagine, that's my thing. Yeah, like there's this article called A Thousand True Fans. I don't know if you've ever read it. It's one of the greatest articles of all time. A Thousand True Fans. If you have 1,000 people that give you $100 a month, that's $1.2 million.

That's like, it's a numbers game.

It's a numbers game. So it's about being seen. That's why content is so important. That's why it's so important to put your message out there. That's why when a new social media platform comes out, you see your favorite influencers attacking it. Like, because in the beginning, a platform rewards you for participating. The more you participate, the more they reward you with people seeing your content. As the platform matures, it starts to become more savvy in regards to who it rewards and what it actually rewards, right? So under— that's why personality— you think of a platform like a child. Like a child is born, they don't have— they don't understand. They, they're just like, hey, who's giving me attention? I want attention. Crying, oh, give me attention. Oh, I'mma, I'mma give you attention. Oh, baby stops crying. As the baby gets older, starts to develop, more personality, understands likes and dislikes, understands what other people like, and now it won't take just any type of attention. It needs unique type of attention to get awareness. So understanding and looking at each platform from that particular standpoint is super important. It is sometimes tough to grow on every platform, and you do want to post on every platform, but I would say from a price point standpoint, understanding what platform is best for you. So I'll just break it down for you. If I'm selling something under $50, I'm gonna use TikTok because TikTok is an under $50 platform unless you're going live. If you're going live, then you can sell something over $50. If you're on Instagram, I would say it's about $110 to $120. If you're selling something in that price point, anything over $120, you might as well just start putting stuff on LinkedIn or YouTube. Like after that particular price point, LinkedIn, YouTube. If you're selling something within the $200 price point, Twitter is great because Twitter— the people who are on Twitter are more savvy with words. They read more, they're more consuming for mindset and understanding, and they want to know that you're knowledgeable. Twitter is a place where you can show that you're knowledgeable, and people pay for knowledge. People also, in this very short period of time, we know the difference between AI and human. And so if you're just spitting out AI content, people read it and say, oh, that's AI. Or people read and say, that's someone that really said that, you know. And that's also an important thing to understand too, that AI is a tool. It doesn't— it's not supposed to give you the answer, right? You use it as a tool. But ultimately, understanding the personality of each platform and respecting it and making your content based off that platform is the key to being seen.

Let me, let me talk about something because I know there's people that will hear this and they will think this. It's true. I've been through it. Finding someone. So let's say you're launching one, any one of the companies we've talked about that we've just thrown out there. You're doing it. You want to launch it on platform. How often, how many pieces of content do you need to put out a day and could you do it with just a couple of platforms? And what would it cost if you didn't do it? Let's say you needed somebody, you wanted someone to help you do it. There's, there's companies out there. Do you think that's necessary or do you think people should focus on doing it themselves?

Yeah. So actually, so I'm glad you brought this up. So the Funnel Factory, let me tell you about the Funnel Factory. And so you can understand. So the Funnel Factory, ultimately I give people funnels. And I make sure that they have all the tools to start their business. But really, ultimately, what I sell is the ability to make content and the ability to either help you and walk you through making the content or me making the content for you. So we're using this lovely platform here, Riverside. I love Riverside. It's a huge, you know, and what I typically do is I meet with my clients on Riverside and I make the content for them and we go through it. And then I have a team. That also the first time depends on what platform we're making content for. Generally, I will cut up the content or have the creative direction for the content. And then from there, once me and my team go through it, then my team then takes over with editing and giving direction for the content. And there's a— and so that's kind of how I see making content. That's what I do with the Funnel Factory. Now, your question was, How many pieces you have to make a day depends on what you're selling, right?

Gotcha.

So it depends. So if, if you're selling something that is a lot of money, you don't want to make a lot of short pieces of content. If I'm selling something that's over $1,000, I need to make longer forms of content. I need to make content that's over 10 minutes and cut that up into smaller pieces because people that are going to pay over $1,000 are going to go— want to know a lot, right? So, Frank, this is the magic. Watch this. And this is— I heard this the other day and I was like, this is so true. If I'm selling— let's say we're selling a course. If I'm selling a course and this course is $1,000, $2,000, I'm selling a program that's over $1,000 or $2,000, you're going to need, um, You're going to need to video that, that course regardless. Like, you want to have a master—

for sure—

piece of content regardless. Even if they're meeting with you in person, you want to have a manifesto. You want to have a masterpiece of content. After that massive piece of— that massive piece of content, when you chop it up into smaller pieces, you have to think of those smaller pieces as commercials for the masterpiece of content. So imagine a movie's coming out. Imagine Rocky's coming out, right? Rocky is the masterpiece of content. My commercials have to convince people to come and watch Rocky, right? So I can't just cut up anything. I have to cut up things that's going to entice people to come watch the big movie, right? Once they watch the big movie, either it costs a little bit or it costs a lot, they're going to want to buy stuff associated with the movie. I'll buy a Rocky shirt, I'll buy a Rocky hat, I'll buy— because I— and it all stemmed from that commercial that I seen, that first commercial that made me watch the movie. I said, I like the movie, now I want to be associated with the brand of that movie. I'm going to buy other paraphernalia. And when that movie drops, other things— I don't even need the commercial no more. I want to see part 2, I want to see part— so you have to see your course or your program like a movie that's coming out at the cinema. Gotta be grand, gotta give people something that they don't— because people, information is so prevalent, you have to be able to present it in an entertaining way. People have to be intrigued when they're listening. People— and so you're giving them intrigue from the small commercials or the shorts that you're making, and you have to continue that throughout the course of the movie. So I think when you're making a course Don't just make a course. Think about the course as if you're making a movie. Like, I'm making a cinematic movie. I have to make sure that I'm not just spitting out information. I gotta make the people want to be something, right? And I think if you approach it that way, it, it's going to change the game for you. There's so many different movies out there. There's so many different genres of movie out there. And I'm not saying it has to be a movie, but I think you understand what I'm saying, Frank.

I do.

We like so many different things, and I think that it becomes stale because we try to do what everyone else is doing, because we believe that we're trying to attract the same people that everyone else is. And that's why it seems like a saturated market. It seems saturated because everyone's doing the same thing. Everybody's presenting it the same way, and you probably shouldn't present it the same way as everyone else. Are there movies that flop? Yes, but at the same time, you— 9 times out of 10, those movies that flop probably tried something new. It didn't work out, but the next time they're going to continue growing, right? So that's how I would generally look at a course, and I would want to put it on YouTube, a manifesto, a DIY of that particular—

Yeah, good stuff. I, you know, I heard something the other day that I thought was interesting. I'd like to get your take. I read something that said that in, and I think it was the guy, I forget his name, start is the head of LinkedIn or the start, he started LinkedIn, I forget his name. Anyway, he was also involved in Airbnb. So he, but he basically said that in 5 years, I believe it's not exact, but it was pretty close to this. In 5 years, 60% of people, business people will be freelancers. And it will be the people that are most successful will be the ones that can do what they do. They'll be do multiple jobs. And they will, it will be the people that can use AI with what they do. So you won't, you know, it'll be people have to understand how to use it with what they do and they'll do multiple things. They'll be, everybody will be a freelancer.

Yeah. I will say this. I'm a, I'm a big component of that. I think that how things typically work in life. There's— it's usually top-heavy at first, and then it starts to spread across to other people. Two big examples I'll give you is TVs. Back in the day, there was maybe one or two companies that made TVs, and it was very, very top-heavy industry. Over time, it started to stretch out across multiple industries. What, what happened from there? The cost of TVs dropped, right? So now the money— but it meant that the money was more spread across multiple places. Music industry was very, very top-heavy, right? Like, only a few, uh, music companies generally did it. And then now you had Instagram, you have TikTok, you have these people who are independent, and now music is spread across, um, people creating their own. And now you get paid a little bit less, but is more spread across. I think from that particular mindset, it's the same where you had a lot of people who were entrepreneurs, it was very top-heavy, but now because we have more access, more convenience to doing it, it's going to be spread across. Just like in 2015, you can sell information for a lot. Today you can't sell information for a lot, you know, um, so it becomes spread across. So you have to sell people a service, you have to sell them the ability to get something. You can't just people don't buy— like I said, I just don't think people really buy information anymore because they have to have the intent, the, uh, attention span to even consume the information. And they just want the answer because social media says give me the answer in 30 seconds or less.

That's right.

You know, so you got to understand, like, no one's gonna— I, I don't mean this— no one's gonna read your ebook.

No one's reading that.

Yeah, no one's reading that. Like They're going to read your ebook if you intrigue them enough. Generally, you have to intrigue them maybe 10 times for them to say, I'm going to read this ebook. Like, they're not— like, the first 3 times you put something on there, like, oh, that's cool, that's cool, that's cool. They're not going to spend an hour with your ebook. Like, you have to, like, really intrigue them. They're not going to spend an hour with your course unless you've intrigued them in some capacity. So that's the thing, and that is why I'm so big on supply and demand, because going back to that, if you understand that there's a demand, you put out little small things, you get feedback, you get feedback, you get interaction. Now you know if you create something big, of course, or something massive, that people are actually going to be interested in it, right? So It's two different mentalities. Either you create— either one is not wrong or right. I think that when you make that first course and you don't have understanding of what people want, you gotta understand you're not gonna sell it. But it's okay because you're using it as a masterpiece of content to make smaller pieces of content. Or you make smaller pieces of content, get feedback from people, and then create something based off of that feedback. Either one works. I would go with the latter because you can create— you can spend so much time creating a masterpiece of content that no one wants, and you're trying to create these smaller things off of that, and you're not getting any feedback. But it was because you didn't know— no one told you they wanted that, you know what I mean? So, um, but I say all that to say, I agree. I believe it's going to be spread across. Money is not going to be as top-heavy. AI, and I'll say this, AI is a tool. It is not the end. Like, AI, I think about AI like I'm fixing my vehicle and I need, uh, a crescent wrench. AI is the crescent wrench. AI is not doing the manual labor of, you know, utilization of the—

totally agree.

You have to see AI as the crescent wrench. Like, I'm going to get facts from AI and I'm going to add my personal touch to it, and I'm going to tell my story. That's why storytelling is so great. That's why storytelling will always be the master form of creating and marketing and sales, because stories are real. My— I'll tell you this, Frank, and this is a secret of mine, but I'm— because I'm on your podcast, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put it out there. One thing that I, I love is— and that people love is Reddit. Reddit is huge. Like, you— Reddit is so undervalued when it comes to entrepreneurship because people are asking questions on Reddit, people are responding to questions on Reddit. Purely just going on Reddit, like, let's say, go back to— let's go back to the real estate thing, right? If I go on Reddit and just start answering questions that people have about real estate and showing my knowledge base on Reddit, people are going to Oh, this person, that was a great answer, that was a great answer. You're going to build up, you know, like a lot of steam already. But then you can take that same answer you gave on Reddit and make social media content about that particular answer you gave. That's why— I don't know if you're familiar with, um, this, uh, thing called Am I the Asshole. It's a, it's a Reddit thread, one of the greatest Reddit threads. Oh my God, it's people telling stories about their life. And you'll see these, like, it's just random stories, and they're asking people, hey, am I wrong for doing this? And there's so much social media content out there. Like, podcasts use it a lot. They'll just be reading these stories, and it's really stories from Reddit that people— and it's intriguing stories about life, and people just sit there and listen to the stories, and they're paying attention. Pay attention is one of the greatest phrases of all time. When people pay you attention, then they're going to eventually be willing to pay you money. So if you're able to get people to pay you a lot of attention, then they're going to eventually pay you a lot of money. Stories keep people's attention. The more stories you tell, the more they know about your trials and what you've overcome, the more they're going to be willing to work with you. Even if you're not great at something, Frank, them knowing you just starting and you're on a journey, the hero's journey, they want to follow that journey. Rocky is the hero's journey. He wasn't at the top when the movie first started. He was at the bottom. People watched the whole movie for him to go at the top. If I'm a person and I'm trying to lose 120 pounds, should I post to people when I lose the 120 pounds? And only get them to pay me 30 seconds of attention? Or should I tell them at the very beginning, I'm trying to lose 120 pounds, and let them watch my journey the whole time? Because if they say— because at first they may be, hey, this person can't do this, I don't believe this. And then over time, as they watch your journey, oh, he's doing it, he's doing it, he's doing it. Now whenever you tell them what products you use to lose the 120 pounds and they watch your transformation, they're going to buy those products. If I just waited till I lost 120 pounds and told them about the products, it doesn't have the same impact. It doesn't. They— so the journey, the storytelling is really big in sales.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. That is awesome. I can't believe it. We're already 48 minutes in. I'm sorry. No, this is great stuff. This is exactly what I wanted to do today. Um, but I, I have a feeling you're gonna have to come back on because there's gonna be so much more to talk about.

Oh yeah.

Where, where can people find you? Um, where would you like 'em to find you? What's the best place if they wanna reach out to you?

So if you wanna reach out to me, um, you can follow me on Instagram, um, Jamaul The Maven, um, Twitter or X, Jamaul The Maven. Also you can follow me, um, I have my, uh, school community, The Funnel Factory. We're growing. I think we recently got about 300 new, uh, community members the last month. And so we're steadily growing, um, in those places. You can also go to brandmaven.io and go and, uh, request, um, an actual consultation. Uh, 15-minute consultations are free, just understanding. Uh, if you have a business and you want a brand audit, I do a brand audit and see what you have to do in order to scale your business. But Yeah, feel free to reach out to me on any of those pipelines.

Love it. Lots of nuggets today, and I hope that everybody takes— I know they're going to take something away, but there was multiple things we talked about that were huge today. I'll put everything in our show notes so that everybody can find you really easy. And I appreciate it, man. Thanks for coming on today and talking.

Thanks so much for having me, man. I'm glad to be here. Thanks.

Absolutely. And if anybody needs anything, reach out. Until next time. Thanks, everybody. Talk to you later.