Jesse Pujji mentors Andrew on hiring help, building leverage in business, and breaking scarcity mindsets. He outlines a four-level operating framework (tactical, process, resourcing, strategic) and covers sales tactics like pricing tiers, pipeline building, and using headhunters like Riviera Partners to scale without burning out.
Chapters
You basically have told yourself a very limiting belief that it's not possible. Good execution tends to be the best leverage you can possibly create. If you are just a commodity, then you have— you'll never have any real leverage. McKinsey and Company is a $10 billion revenue, $2 billion EBITDA business that doesn't do anything. They literally just sell advice. If there's one thing you can learn from me, it's like I almost never say that.
We don't really have an intro for this thing. All we do is I launch into the thing that's top of mind and then we go. We need like a, like a welcome greeting signaling thing, a name for our audience. I like when I call MixerGen like the audience freedom fighters because they're fighting for their freedom, their audience. We don't have a thing for—
for an opening. You're the podcast guru, dude. Do it. I'm, you know what, I'm kind of— bootstrap founders. It's founders who want to grow themselves as much as they want to grow their companies, who want to live the dream of, you know, building a business ambitiously, but also living a life that they want to live that's full and whole and spiritual. And it's funny, actually, you just asked me topics, but I just thought of one as we were getting ready, which is like you looking for an au pair or you having your—
yes.
Your issues with— is that the topic you wanted to bring up?
That was gonna be the first thing I was gonna kick off because you know what, I know we want to talk about sales, but I've got to tell you, you suggested that I get an au pair before, as soon as we had a baby, maybe even before we had a baby. I thought we handled the first 2 without that, what do we need it for? And I'm really kicking myself for not at least making calls to these au pair agencies. It's It's pretty inexpensive to do it, and they could do the stuff that's become a pain in the ass for us as parents, like driving the kids to and from school. And I really, I wanna say I've gotta be more aware of these issues that I'm having, get support, and then I've got some questions for you about how to do this right. But the au pair is like a real life hack, it seems. I haven't hired one, I'm just talking agencies.
I mean, look, I think take a couple steps back, right? I think there's 2 ways to think about this. Like, one, one that I love is there's this thing in conscious parenting, conscious, you know, leadership parenting stuff of anytime you're doing something from victimhood, meaning you have to do it, you end up building resentments and you end up like basically feeling upset because you— it doesn't— and even, I mean, there's stories of parents who resent their children, like, and it's not an uncommon thing and it feels like such a taboo thing to talk about, but it happens all the time. Yeah.
You know, it's building resentment in my wife. It's like, why did she want us to have a third kid? Because now I'm going to have to drive everybody.
Yeah. Do you happen to be blaming her instead of the baby? Because you don't want to blame the baby because the baby's little. But the reality is it's you. And when you, when you do things from victimhood because you don't have a choice, it generally builds resentment. And so they say, like, I tend to think of the flip of that is like, how do you have the most indulgent childcare possible Not because you might need it all the time, but because every time you parent, you want it to feel like a choice. And but guess what happens when you do that? Your kids, by the way, see that you respect yourself and your time. They also get the best energy out of you, right? Like sometimes when Dee and I will get into it, she's like, well, you don't know, you know, you just show up when you want to. And I'm like, well, yeah, but that's not a— that's not an accident. That's an actual thing I do on purpose. And the kids see the best version of me all the time. And then of course they do. And I, you know, it's not like I hold her back from that. And And so one thing that's related to that that I think I see in you and in Dee, and I don't know your wife that well, but like is just a lot of guilt that I have to do everything. And, you know, we have, we have our former au pair who lives with us and she's a student and she picks up 25, 30 hours flexibly a week. And then, you know, Dee is home with the kids, so she doesn't have a full-time normal quote unquote job. She obviously has a very tough job. And I was like, By the way, we added a baby. I was like, but we didn't, you know, and the joke I said to her, and I think I said it to you, was we added more clients, but we didn't change our resourcing. And she was feeling pretty burnt out. I was like, why don't you get— why don't you get a part-time nanny? And she goes, what do you mean? I already have somebody here. And I go, you know, she's like, can I spend $450 a week, Jesse, and pay this woman $15? I'm like, yeah. Like, if it means you're going to be happier, it means your kids are going to get a better version of you. Absolutely. And, and it's just, it's changed everything. And, and so even here, I think we've had that happen, but I think guilt is a big driver of, of not wanting to fully have your best. It's like an upper limit problem.
But Jesse, what about this? We have our own little, little family unit here. That's just us, our own do your own thing type of environment. Now I'm bringing somebody else in all the time and it kind of ruins that dynamic. It ruins that intimacy of a family. And also, sometimes the little things that come up in a drive are not going to come up if I schedule a date night with the kids.
Yeah, I mean, look, I think the first thing I would reflect back, one, is what a scarcity mindset. You mean you can't welcome another human? You mean you can't welcome another human being into this beautiful family you have and you think love is— no. Like in our case, we've now got a person who's going to be a lifelong part of our family. And she's she's important to me, the kids, and she'll be a lifelong relationship for our kids. And so the little fam, it's like oh I can't have I can't add another person that's going to dilute my family. What if the opposite's true? What if it makes your family even more? You know, like when I see when Serena comes home from a vacation or trip, she wants to run to Larissa and tell her everything that happened. And it's one of the she wouldn't talk to me or D like that. She's like oh I gotta tell you this and this and this and all these details. And it's It's allowing her, you know, more to be more of a person. So that's just a funny thing is like it feels like it's going to ruin it when what if it could just do the exact opposite? So that's the first thing I would just have you think about. And the second thing is, you know, it's— it is a chance to try boundaries in relationships with the people. Like, what times are you— you know, is the house available or not available? Like, my joke when we got the au pair was I can't walk around my boxers anymore. And and I was like, oh, I just can't walk. I need to put clothes on to walk around. Yeah.
And that's a that takes away a big freedom. I don't I don't walk around in underwear. I don't I'm not that comfortable with my with my nudity or even with my underwearity. But um but yeah, it would take away some. Doesn't that suck that you've lost that?
Yeah. I mean, I started wearing basketball shorts and and a t-shirt around the house, and and you know, D had more coverage. I could travel guilt free. The kids had an energetic 20-something-year-old to play with whenever they wanted to. So, I mean, look, there's no right answer, right? Every family has their own nuances. But I think a lot of the things people— let me put it this way. I think a lot of the benefits significantly outweigh the costs. And people tend to do this. I was talking to my sister-in-law this weekend, and we were talking about some personal growth stuff. She's like, man, you've been through a lot, Jesse. Like, you've done a lot of stuff and it feels like a lot of work. And I'm like, you know, a lot of people look at having kids who don't have kids. If you've never had a kid, you don't have a kid, you go, that's a lot of work. Why are you doing that all the time? And as you know and I know, they haven't felt the other side of the equation, which is the, oh my God, it's the most love and the most fun and the most invigorating thing you've ever experienced. So the work doesn't feel necessarily that bad when you've got all these benefits that are attached to it. But if you just see someone else doing it, you tend to only look at the cost side, not the benefit side. So the benefit side of the freedom of a new personality in the house, different energy. I mean, it's— yeah, it's— Dee and I have had 2 date nights a week literally for the last 7 years.
That I would love. I think that would change our whole dynamic. And so from what I'm seeing, the cost of it is what, $25,000 a year including the agency cost? You went through an agency?
I think that's the first year. I think the second year is less because I think you pay the agency $5,000 to $7,000.
And then if you're staying with the same person, right? Yeah.
Or, yeah.
All right. Do you have a, a life hack for how— I've got this whole spreadsheet. I had ChatGPT put together this incredible database for me that's now in Notion. I have it in front of me. I've been calling and talking to each one. Do you have a life hack for how to get through lists like this and find the perfect agency to work with?
Just talk to Dee and use the one she used.
Okay.
Oh, use the agency she used. Oh. Yeah, mutual interest, dude. Just just get friend of a friend. Like that's the best quality screen.
And I think I will do that. I know that we've said that our wives should talk about it, but I think I'm the one leading this because I think Olivia is a little intimidated by this. The whole idea feels a little bit too too foreign, and maybe a little hoity-toity if I'm if I'm open. But hoity-toity in what way? I'll talk to her.
You mean uppity? Like like you're rich and you need. Someone to live with you.
Yeah. Like, who are we to think that we now need a whole other person to raise our kids?
You know, I would encourage you and her— I mean, you'll meet some— like, these are young women, they want to learn English. This is an exchange program for them. It's a chance for them to experience America. It's your kids' chance to learn. Like, my kids all speak a little Portuguese. Um, it's— I think it's really easy to get caught up in your own stuff here, your own Versus just being like, this is a really cool life experience for everybody.
I like the way you think. Like, I like when I come up with something like having somebody else in the house, it's gonna take away from this. And you come back at me and you say, well, yeah, but think about all the things that you're gonna get. You're gonna get a new presence in the house. The kids are gonna be excited about being with them. You're gonna have their, um, you're gonna have your date nights once, twice a week.
I mean, we, we could not imagine our life without Larissa. So much so that we, like, you know, paid for her to go to college here. Like, we— she's been out of the program for 6 years. We just said, we'll pay for your college, live with us.
Wow.
And you don't even have to do your full-time thing, do less hours. But like, you know, she's, she's like a confidante and a friend to Dee. The kids obviously love her. For me, she's like a younger sister. Like, I explain baseball to her. So I'm like the old guy being like, this is how baseball works. And like, she, she humors me, right? It's been a— I don't think we could imagine our life without her.
Do you have another one of these things? Clearly, I wasn't ready for this for some reason a year and a half before our baby was born. I should have at least entertained it. What's the other thing that's like a life or work hack that I'm not ready to— that there's inner resistance maybe, but I need to know now and maybe get past the resistance?
I mean, I still think you under-leverage Dave. Dramatically, partly because you're—
I do too. The coach. Yes, I agree. Because I'm not reaching out to him in between sessions. I'm not being open with him by text about stuff, and I'm just limiting myself to the 1 hour every 2 weeks. How would you say I should be using my coach?
I mean, I think, you know, every time you— I mean, many ways the way you may use me, but maybe things you don't want to talk to me about, I think Interpersonal dynamics. I think when you're on the call with him, being fully present and being really vulnerable, like as vulnerable— like there's no one you're more vulnerable with. Like hacks and tactics, because he's got a million of them. I mean, he works across all these high-powered CEOs. Like he sees way more than we see. Like, I, you know, you know me, I'm like, every 10 minutes I'm texting, I'm asking him a question, I'm looking for something like books. Like every time I'd have a subject, he would like help me find a book to read about or get on top of it.
Yeah, I guess that feels to me like I'm, I'm interrupting his day.
And I know what you're gonna come back to me and you're getting him involved in the team, like him knowing the team, him be joining a team meeting and just really—
You can have a coach get on a team meeting?
Of course.
To do what? So if he comes in, what's the thing that I would include him to do?
I mean, get him, get him to give the team, like, give you real feedback. Like, get on the— he does the thing called the hot seat where He creates a safe enough environment where everyone can give you a bunch of candid feedback, and all of a sudden your people say things to you they never would otherwise say to you, but they'll say it in that format when he's saying.
And he would lead that for us. Yeah. All right. I think you're right, and I have to admit that I have inner hesitation and resistance to it, and I keep thinking.
Well, that's obvious because that's because you're you know you do it twice a month, and right. I mean, it's funny, right? It's like it's it's a it's ten times the au pair because you've seen how much of an impact it's had on my life, and I'm not trying to I'm not trying to. Critique, criticize you, but you're just kind of like, oh yeah, I see this guy Jesse. I see how much like this person Dave has impacted his life and I'm going to just kind of still keep a block up to that guy.
I know I'm recognizing that in myself. It's really hard to catch these things in myself. I don't know how I can. The only thing I can is in retrospect I go, damn, why didn't I do that? Why didn't I think of that?
Well, the way to do it is really— it's funny because this is kind of like a circular reference. Like the reason I started getting like Dave just helped me develop a lot of self-awareness. And it went from self-awareness after the fact, after a month later to realizing something. Then it was self-awareness a week later, then it was self-awareness a day later, then it was self-awareness, oh, in this moment, I'm having this experience, I'm feeling this, and I'm aware of that.
Yeah, the worst is like self-awareness from like 10 years ago or 5 years ago. That's just, it's completely useless and it's a distraction. All right, I like that. I like that I put you on the spot and you come up with an answer. I think a lot of us would say, I need a couple of minutes to come up with something, Andrew, that you should be doing. that you're not aware of.
Do you do strength training? That could be another good one. Kind of random. You know what?
Interesting. I've been thinking about that. So dude, I have a week to myself here. Do you know how great this week feels? As I dropped the kids and Olivia off at the airport, they're going to San Francisco to spend time with family. I chatted with ChatGPT. I just said, I'm just gonna talk to you about all the things I wanna get done this week. Let's make a list. I get this perfect list that I've been going through during the week, and I'm not making myself go crazy trying to hit it all because then I, I end up going from, chaotic, too much to do because of the kids, to chaotic, too much to do because of some random checklist. But I'm running every day. You saw me this morning when we were texting, I was running. I'm doing pushups. That's the new addition. I don't know how to get myself to love doing any more. I hate pushups even, but at least it's now being done.
I've found this is another major life hack is like, I think working with a trainer, you know, I found that it, It just gets me like the ability to go to the gym without having to have a plan. I know I have an appointment, so I have to be there. There's another person waiting on me, and, you know, and then I just shut my brain off. I literally throw headphones on, I shut my brain off, and he just goes, go do this now. Go do this. Go do that. I don't know what the next workout is. I haven't even— I don't have anything written down.
You're listening to headphones and he's just pointing and telling you what to do. You don't even engage in conversation.
No, no. Him and I have a good understanding of like, I'm not there to talk. I'm like, I'm listening to spiritual music or something, and he's just— he just tells me what to do, how many reps of what. And he's not trying to talk either. And I don't want to, you know, and him and I are tight, but we're just like, we're here to— we're here to work. And like, my brain is off, my body does the work, and it's like I feel amazing 3 hours later, like high. Like my body is like vibrating and I feel this like just huge. And then, dude, like, I get that. All my pain is gone.
What time of the day do you go for— do you go work out?
I do. I lift 3 times a week. So Monday mornings I do legs, Saturday afternoons I do upper body, and then Friday afternoon—
Like before work?
Yeah.
Wow.
It's the first thing I do in the week. So it starts my week off already extremely productive. Like I've squatted 250 pounds.
Yeah, I used to get that from running. Now running doesn't, doesn't get to that.
Well, but yeah, the other thing they've talked a lot about, Andrew, is running kind of beats your body up over time and strength training does the opposite. Like strength training really keeps your body young and, and they've like, so.
All right, one more personal thing before we go into something else. Do you think I should dye my hair? I feel like lately people have been looking at my hair, seeing the gray and going, I don't know, it's changing things.
You smiling? You got thoughts? I dye my beard every now and again. Right now it's looking kind of salt and peppery, but I dye it every now and again. I dyed it for my 40th birthday. I don't want it to go fully white because then you really can't go back. But I don't know.
Do you?
Do you want to? Do you feel— well, whatever is going to make you feel your best.
I don't know. So maybe what it means is just go try it. But it feels like a dramatic change now.
Try it. I didn't try it.
Imagine I come over to you and I suddenly have this weird— but you'd be open with me, wouldn't you?
I think I don't think I care. I would certainly— I almost probably wouldn't notice. And I certainly wouldn't care. I feel the same way. I dye my beard and I go to the office. I'm like, what looks different about me? Everyone's like, no, I have no idea.
I need somebody who can, not Olivia, someone who, you know, who would have good taste and would notice and give me feedback is Casey from Ox Insights. She always has the best fricking taste. I should do it before I come to St. Louis and ask her and you.
What, one other thing I wanna point out, Andrew, that just cuz you, you talked about how amazing your week is without your family. Like I would challenge you to, to trying to have this amazing week with your family. Yeah. And I think based on knowing you, you basically have told yourself a very limiting belief that it's not possible, that when my family's in town, I also can't have a 10 out of 10 life.
Lately I feel that I didn't feel it before the third baby. Lately I feel like I'm hustling to handle these kids. I'm hustling to handle this kid. I'm hustling to give Olivia what she needs.
Yes, I definitely feel like this is kind of like what people say, lead with vision. Like once you can believe that it is possible to have an amazing life with all the kids, Doesn't mean you don't have to go do things like get an au pair, get on different schedules, shift things around. But a lot of people just don't do it because they they literally just they already said oh it's not possible. Like I just this is just the way life is and therefore I'm going to live with it. And if there's one thing you can learn from me, it's like I almost never say that. Like I'm just always like wait this can be better than that. Like how do we how do we step this up a notch? Right?
I do like that. I like that thought. I like I like when you're like this, Jesse. We need a name for this type of Jesse. Like, we've got the Spreadsheet Jesse that a lot of people love. We've got the CLG, Conscious Leadership Group Jesse, which I don't think that's the most clever name. We need a name for this type of Jesse. Like, the Tony Robbins Jesse is my favorite Jesse, I think, because that's when I feel like—
Well, that's because you like to be pushed.
I didn't know that was possible.
That's why. Because you like to be pushed.
With creative intelligence. It's one of the things that I miss about San Francisco. Maybe you do too. Everybody would have these expansive views of the world and what could be done. And suddenly there was this thing that they might call a life hack, or they just might call normal living, that you go, damn it, I didn't even think that was possible. Of course I should be doing that. All right, we got, we got a couple of business agendas here. It's not all about like Jesse coaching Andrew through life. Um, let's talk about operating at multiple levels before we go into sales questions. What is this thing? When you say operate at multiple levels, you mean somebody who can say, We're running this company. It needs to be doing this in the next 20 years or maybe in the next 2 years. And at the same time, I'm going to go and I'm going to fix a spreadsheet to give the data that I need to the team.
Yeah, I mean, I wrote an email about this. I don't actually fully remember what the framework was I gave, but, you know, there's like tactical get shit done. We need to edit an email. We need to like get this thing done. There's like managing a process to writing the email. There's like the next level is like, should we even have an email? And what should be the set of things we work on? There's like resourcing versus capital. Then there's like strategy at the top, which is like, where— what is the market? You know, what's going on with the market and how do we need to solve against it? And I think it's really easy, especially in companies that are ongoing concerns, to sort of forget that hierarchy or not to be able to think across all of them. And I think sometimes you need to be able to think across all of them at the same time. Other times you need to get very adept at jumping between them. It's very much like a zone of genius for me where I'm able to jump across in between them and then you can understand how they interact with each other. And so, you know, to give you an example, like Growth Assistant, it— and by the way, the easiest way to do this is like if you look at what Bezos and others do, just always start with your customer and work backwards from the customer, right? So if you look at Growth Assistant, you're like, all right, they have almost 600 global talent members working for 200 companies doing marketing, work, right? Design, reporting, whatever. And then, you know, like you can see very clearly that AI is becoming a bigger thing, right? And so you go, well, hold on, we got to start figuring out how AI is going to play in with this global talent because customers are going to want that. And then you got to go, well, what do we— what should we— what should we keep doing at a high level? What should we stop doing? What should we start doing? Okay, then it goes down one. Like, should we be doing work differently? Should we be recruiting differently? And then even like, how do you write a different job post or the emails or the marketing you're pushing out for the business are different? And the ability to actually navigate all of that can be pretty challenging for people. And getting— creating space and being able to think across all of those things. And, you know, you'll notice like for Bootstrap Giants, you guys did a great job of building up this class for June. And I'm like, okay, let's start pushing people to next month. And you guys are still all hopped up and excited about this month. And I'm like, well, I can— my brain immediately goes, well, $5,000, $10,000 this month now is not going to do anything for us. But starting to have it in July will actually start to do something for us. And so this ability to always operate—
don't you, Jesse, always operate at that high level? It's not like you're ever thinking, how do I get down to the level of editing a tweet? You're thinking, where should the company be?
I don't know. I write an email every week still, right? And I've pulled up content and given direct feedback on— they're all interconnected, by the way, because if you, if you have bad tweets, then like it's not going to support the next level of results, which is not going to support the strategy or resourcing, which is not going to support the end goal.
You're just saying you keep going back and forth between the top level of what should we be changing in the business and where do we need to go down to the where, why is there a grammatical mistake in this or why are we having such—
Yeah, actually, let me give you another specific example. We're playing around with like AI plus growth assistant type person equaling a solution that can be compelling. And so we had a Chint, he wrote a post and the goal was to assess how much demand would be in the market for it. It was almost like an experiment and the post flopped. It didn't do very well. Now you could, you could, if you, if you're not careful, you could go, well, I guess that's not a good story. I guess the customers don't want it. And then I looked at the post and I was like, man, this hook is not very good. And you know, you, you kind of, you didn't, you sort of buried the lead. And, and then it's always like, well, this was again, the, you know, someone business school lingo would be, this is like an execution problem, not a strategy problem. Okay, let's try it again. Then we tried again and it crushed it yesterday. We got like 20 good leads from top D2C brands based on this slightly. So, You got all these things are playing with each other at all given times and they have to be managed like the best entrepreneurs are jumping across in between them consistently. By the way, I don't mean that I'm jumping down and rewriting the tweets necessarily, which is—
So how do you know where the limit is versus, you know, coming in and saying this is not working well versus getting so deeply involved that you're now leading content?
I think, you know, something in my mind will be to get really specific about maybe how do we run a sales call, how do we, how do we write a content piece, and then I will like, my, my brain will go, so how did it go?
Hmm.
And I like, I think of myself as I'm constantly pulling. I, I think of myself as, do you remember the Riddler from the Batman movie? Like when Jim Carrey was the Riddler?
Yeah.
And he had this machine that was pulling in everyone's brain power from everywhere. Like, I think of myself like that all the time where you're, you're saying things to me and I'm getting data points. I see what the customers are doing. I see what other competitors are doing. I see what day-to-day stuff we're getting done. And my brain is constantly trying to pull it all in and synthesize it. so I can figure out how do we approach this next and what, what's actually happening, what's reality, what's not reality around the business. Right. And, you know, it's funny, like last week you were feeling worried about the sales numbers for Bootstrap Giants and like, I've seen you do this multiple times and I wasn't feeling worried about it because I was like, well, I've seen you do this and I've seen how people react. And so it didn't— it just didn't— it didn't hit me the way it was hitting you and the team because I've seen the data, I've seen it play off. And anyway, there's just constantly you're trying to triage information in your brain to synthesize where, where it comes from.
It did hit me. I was— but I said, you know what, fuck it. Like, I remember we had a conversation once. I remember where I was standing outside and you go, Andrew, we have good families, we have good lives. You have this great property. You always know to hit me like in my heart, which I love the land. Like, who cares? So we're going to have fun here. It doesn't matter how it goes. And I go, you know what? Freaking ain't right. It doesn't matter if this whole thing doesn't work out. I'm just gonna go and shovel bird poop all day or whatever, or find another project of building a path to go running on the property.
And the irony is when you bring that energy to the table, you usually crush it and outperform 'cause you go back to having fun and you get back to, you just get, you're not interested in the outcome anymore. You're interested more in the process.
It's true. You really have to, on a sales call, you have to in sales in general, just say, Who cares? I don't need you. And I'm willing to have the confidence to say you shouldn't sign up for this, or else you've overcrowded the person and that neediness doesn't work. Which actually, Jesse, brings me to a list of questions from one of our members about sales specifically. He's watching you and he's saying, hey, you know what, Jesse, how are you creating this dynamic of you need me more than I need you? How do you create that in a sales conversation?
I mean, the best way to create it by far is for it to actually be true. So let's start there, right?
The gimmick— the way—
how do you make it never work? Well, the gimmick— but I want to start there because everybody loves the gimmicks. Everyone loves the, ooh, just give me the sentence, Jesse, that I need to say and I can do that. But the best thing, like I learned that from Red Ventures, is just like if you actually have leverage, if you can actually walk away from a client and go, I don't need your business, I have a lot of business because I have a big pipeline, because I have a lot of people who demand what I want. I just don't need this. That's the absolute best place to be. And that comes from back to execution, like writing good content, getting lots of leads, get, you know, making sure they're the right people. Like good execution tends to be the best leverage you can possibly create. And then if you're, if you're in the services business especially, you have a fixed amount of resources. You have 20 people now that those over 6 months you may have 30, but today you have 20 and they can only do a certain amount of work. And if you just say only a certain amount can get done, then immediately there's a constraint that's been a true constraint, not a fake constraint that's been created. And leverage, you know, I love the negotiation phrase of leverage, which is it's who has more to lose from walking away from the deal. And if you've got all the clients you need and you've got 3 other people out the door, you're like, yeah, it's okay if you walk away. I'm not going to lose all that much. And the other person goes, man, my My business is on fire, I need your help. Like, they're going to lose more from walking away from you. And typically what happens—
Someone's running a marketing agency, they might be— they might lose something by not having you, but they could replace it by having somebody else. And so if you're sitting down, you're running a marketing agency, and someone's talking to you about, about whether they should be working with you, we all know that they could go to more places than you can. You can't just go in.
Well, yeah, there tends to be in the services business a feeling of commoditization. Right?
Yeah.
But let's also acknowledge that McKinsey and Company is a $10 billion revenue, $2 billion EBITDA business that doesn't do anything. They literally just sell advice. Like, how on earth are they accomplishing that? I think every services business owner should ask themselves that question before they just go, oh, everyone's like me, I can do everything. And what I'll tell you at Ampush, what we did and what we learned from Red Ventures, it was again, first you have to be great at what you do. And I think too many services business owners are lazy. They they they do one thing. They're okay, fine. We'll do this for whoever we want. They're not the best. They don't. And you I've said this to you about writing emails, about social content. Like I'm okay sucking in the beginning of anything, but then I want to be. I want to like the the bar. I told a chin for example at growth season. I want you to be able to write a book about this in six months because you're so good at. And that was the bar we held at Ampush for everything we did was we want to be the best in the world at this. And I think that's a big part of how Goldman Sachs becomes Goldman Sachs. McKinsey becomes McKinsey. Like they. The mindset is such that so that would be the first place I started. You got to be really good at what you do because if you are just a commodity, then you have you'll never have any real leverage. The second thing is you got to build pipeline, and so you got to have a lot of deals. You got to have a lot of conversations so that any given time you could walk away from one of them and it's not going to hurt your business. And that again, those relate to each other because the better you are at your work, then you get more pipeline, whatever.
And how do you communicate that? So you're sitting down to well, so yeah.
So so once those two things are true. Then you can honestly, and this is the like the hacks that everybody wants. You start a call and you say, "Hey, my name is Jesse. I'm co-founder and CEO of Ampush. I started this business with my college friends. We've been the first in industry. We worked with Uber. We worked with Dollar Shave Club. You know, the way our business works is we only work with two new partners every quarter, and we only do two because we want to. We want. We're going to put a full-time team on you. We're going to understand your business as well as you do." We're going to become the best strategic partner you've ever had. And they go, oh, oh, I just need someone to run my Facebook ads. Oh, that's not what we do here. Here's 3 agencies. Let me refer you to them and you can go talk to them. And if you see any of the best businesses, there's a business in, in the Bay Area that I'm a huge fan of called Riviera Partners. Have you heard their name?
No.
So they are the number one headhunter for specifically for VPs of engineering in Silicon Valley. And I myself made the mistake of, I can do this. I'm not going to pay these guys all this money. I'm just going to go do it myself. I whiffed. Took me forever. I whiffed. Eventually someone's like, dude, just call Riviera. And within Riviera, I like within 10 weeks they had shown me 50 ridiculous people. 5 were interested in working with me. And in the beginning their fees, they were like, were $125,000 and, you know, a quarter basis point in your company. We don't negotiate. And I'm like, yes, you do. No, we don't. We got a line out the door. And that business, from what I understand, does $10 or $20 million in EBITDA. They've— the founders have made hundreds of millions of dollars because they have equity in Meta, they had equity in Facebook, equity in Zynga. So they picked one really narrow thing. They got extremely good at it. And then they, they were the best and they didn't negotiate. They had a lot of leverage. And so again, I think a lot of founders out there just aren't willing to truly be the best at their craft. But then, yeah, they say stuff like, We can only run 10 of these searches a quarter. So if you don't wanna be in our search, sorry, like we have constrained resources and, and services businesses can genuinely acknowledge that they have constrained resources and they can only invest so many, you know, in so many things at a time. All right.
What about this? How do you kind of flirt with different budget amounts? So I, I know who sent this and he's saying, I know I can charge $70,000. I know I can charge $20,000. How do I let them know that I can get down to the $20,000, closer to the $20,000 if that's what they are, without losing my credibility when I start off saying it's $70,000?
Yeah, I mean, look, I think, I think that again, a lot of services business owners play games with themselves and they create problems, you know, and I guess I'm Tony Robbins Jesse today. Like, just be honest about it. Right? Like, hey, I, I, I'm in this business. I look— I want to see your results. I want you to pay me for results. I want to make sure that my fee is, is good money spent because I'm going to get you an ROI on it. Uh, my business— I used to say this at Ampush— my business is very simple. I sell people. I want to make a margin on the people with my fees. So if I have to put more people in on something, then I have to charge you more. And if I can put less people on something, I charge you less. And so it's really just connecting scope very specifically to And it doesn't even have to be that specific. It can just be like, yeah, you know, we can do a lesser version of this, but it's going to be less investment, less resources, so on and so forth. Right. And you kind of force them to make the tradeoff. Like, I'm happy to do this for less money, but I'm going to just invest less in it. Like, I'm not going to invest, you know, more and get paid less. That doesn't make any sense. Right. I run a business. You run a business, too. Right. And I run a business. Like, I have to make more than I spend.
But going from $70,000 to $20,000, is that possible without losing your credibility?
Yeah. I mean, doesn't, doesn't Toyota sell a, you know, $150,000 Lexus and a $30,000 Toyota, like Prius or whatever? Like, you just give me different offerings for the different dollar amounts I get. It's— you lose your credibility if you're trying to charge people the same thing for the same thing or different things for the same Same end product.
So be clear that the results are gonna be different and the number of resources going into it are gonna be different. And if they wanna go lower, then they're getting—
Yeah. And again, services businesses are paid for their expertise, for their talent. There's a bunch of stuff that you come along, like why they exist, because some guy who builds a beverage that's infused with special mushrooms or whatever, that guy doesn't know how to run a Facebook campaign, but an agency does. And so they're bringing in expertise and then there's resourcing. And expertise is sort of the thing that creates the margin. But the resourcing is the resourcing. Like, it's not a— right. That's not a thing that anybody can— the rules of gravity are the same in that situation.
Okay. This one is actually very similar to a conversation you and I've had. He's saying he noticed that you intentionally didn't mention a price on a slide, and he wanted to know why didn't you do it? And this kind of comes back to me. I believe that you don't talk about price until you talk about desire, and if there's a desire there, then you can move on to price.
I don't, I don't know when I, I mean, it, it really depends on the, on the business and the product, I think.
So say you're saying sometimes you need to be upfront, like Growth Assistant, the price is right there in the offer from the beginning. This is what it costs to hire someone, but at Ampush, a service-based company where there are a lot of—
yeah, it was, it was— well, we didn't even know the price because we said we need to look at your business and your accounts and understand it. But we would share that we look to make— like, another funny thing we did in the concept of leverage was, you know, McKinsey, I think, makes something crazy like $1 million a head per year. And again, that's like their resources or their people, and they make a certain revenue per head. I think Ampush, our target was $300,000 or $400,000 per head per year, basically in revenue. So if we were paying someone on average $150,000, you know, we were trying to clear $300,000 or $400,000, which is every service business at the end of the day is basically revenue per head and cost per head. And that's their margins, right?
Yeah.
And I used to just share that honestly. I'd say today we make about, you know, $35,000 a head and people can do the math and it's not— and I go, so I need to look at your business. I'll come back to you with a performance-based deal, but I have to believe myself I'm going to make that. That's why I'm willing to invest my people into this. Otherwise I wouldn't do it.
And show them what your, what your numbers are.
Yeah, but again, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. You don't follow step A and step B, then it's just hollow. And hollowness is the worst thing you can do for yourself when you're selling or negotiating.
And step A is say, this is what I charge.
Do great work. No, step A is do great work to be the best, be the Riviera of your business.
Okay.
In your industry. And step B is to create leverage through pipeline.
All right, how do you know when to nudge someone and when to let the tension build?
In terms of following up or what?
Yeah, you've talked to someone, they haven't responded. Do you respond? Do you message them?
Yeah, it kind of depends on your business, right? Like if it's, if it's Growth Assistant, I would tell them to follow up quickly and move the thing forward because someone needs a resource and you gotta get it done. At Ampush, we, you know, and at different times at Aux, when we're, when we're slow at Aux, I say move up, let's move quickly, let's be creative. And when we're when we're over overweighted with work, I'm like let's let's chill and let's sit on this and you know let's not be overly too eager here. At Ampush, we got into the habit of just purposely waiting 48 hours. We learned that from Red Ventures. I just purposely waiting 48 hours to see how fast they responded because it was a great signal to us whether or not they were really in pain and they really needed what we were doing. And then we could always respond, right? So. But oftentimes within 48 hours, we were in a good spot when they were like, oh my God, that call was amazing. I want to get you in front of my CEO, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're like, what people do is the best signal versus what they say. And so if you can get a better sense for what they're doing, how are they engaging? And you know that you're selling all the time. Like you can tell when someone is engaging in such a way that they're going to buy versus when they're just messing around.
Yeah, that is such a good feeling when you're not, when you're not Practically begging for it. And you can see they want to buy. They just want— they want to make sure it's the right fit as opposed to just seeing what you have to offer. Okay. Final question is just a curiosity about the sales process at Ampush. You sold service where you helped companies buy ads. You basically bought their, their ads. What's the sales process? Number of calls, I mean.
It totally depends, right? I mean, I Growth Assistant, I challenge myself to get it done in one call and we've been able to do it. Now it usually takes 2. I mean, aux can be again when they've got a deal in their hand and they need they need analysis. They can be done in one call. We've closed deals with aux at one call, but it's been them coming going. I got a huge problem. I heard you guys are the ones to solve it. I'd say the average is more like five calls, maybe more. You're bringing a lot of people around the table. It's a big investment. The owners agree. The management team agrees. Oh no, they see it differently. Okay, well, this guy thinks this and that guy thinks that. Okay, we got to change this. Like So there's just a lot of, you know, herding cats in those kinds of processes. And it depends on how big the company is, what the problem is you're solving, how plug and play your solution is. So if I could make up like a fake framework, but it's like, you know, complexity of business that you're serving and size of stakeholders. And then the other one would be like complexity of your offering, right? So even if you're selling growth assistant to a big company, there's like 1 or 2 people to make a decision. You could probably do it pretty quick. Like if you're selling it to a small company, they literally will do it the same day. Right now, on the flip of that, if you're selling a Fortune 50 company a complex, you know, consultative tech solution, like that's probably gonna take a year to close that deal. Right. But I do one funny thing I will share. I don't think I've ever said this to you, Andrew, but this is the thing I always have invoked. Like Boeing. Boeing sells like billion dollars worth of aircraft to many, many customers on a regular basis. And they're able to like sell multi, you know, they're $50 billion deals, $30 billion deals, and they like take place over decades. And I always used to tell people, I'm like, one of the reasons we figured out how to crack Facebook was I was like, guys, if Boeing can figure out how to like deliver, project and deliver the amount of jets they're making on a regular basis, like we can figure out how to optimize Facebook so it's consistent and delivers results. And that mentality really flipped things because everyone's like, yeah, that's right. Like, There must be some way to make this consistent. And it led us to building a bunch of tools and systems to make it very consistent. And that was sort of the calling card of Ampush was we could consistently deliver results because Facebook has this reputation of being highly volatile.
Oh yeah. And it's true. It really is. All right. I happened to look at our numbers. We just got another customer, Jesse, another big one. So I am both exhausted from all the sales conversations that I've had, which have been phenomenal. It really, it's my happy place hanging out and talking with people. And at the same time, we're gonna end it here on a high note for me. I wish I could share all these numbers with everybody, but I'm gonna say share your numbers with, not your numbers, just tell me what you're all up to. Let me know that you've watched or listened to this. I really love it when people text us, email us, andrew@bootstrappedgiants.com. Thanks. Bye everyone.
All right.
