Billy Gene Shaw — Using Video And Advertising To Be Everywhere

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float. Shark with your boy.

My boy, Matt Wolf. Joe Fear. Hey, hello there. This is Joe Fear.

This is Matthew Wolf.

Hey, Matthew Wolf. Goes by Matt, sometimes Mateo. All right, today, this is going to be a fun episode for you. I'm sure you've heard of the man. If you haven't, you're soon to be followed by him everywhere. Not creepily, I promise. Billy's better than that. So we got Billie Jean on the show. Another San Die. San Diego. So local, literally within probably about five streets of where we all grew up. Did not know that until we were hanging out at Mastermind not too long ago. So super, super, super cool. Another share. Share some San Diego stories there. But better than that, even. This dude is, like, totally mastered just being a total.

He's an educator, but he's doing this in a whole different way that you will want to watch every single one of his videos because is the way that he hooks you in with very specific formulas. He describes them all on the podcast, but you watch one of his videos and you're just going to be like, damn, this guy's got it going on. Yeah.

And. Oh, and he mapped out his entire strategy of how he managed to go from, you know, not really being seen online to, holy crap, this dude is everywhere. He literally mapped out the strategies, the platforms, what needs to go into your videos to make that happen. You know, targeting.

We.

We cover the gamut of how to do that. We even talked about, what if you're uncomfortable on video? How do you get over that kind of stuff? We really, really just covered it all with Billy. And Billy was just so generous. Didn't hold back and just unloaded all of his systems and processes and how he's grown his company to the size that it is. We even talked about putting billboards on the side of the road. You know, we covered a lot of ground, and it was awesome.

Yeah. So, I mean, you're gonna love this video if you want to think a little differently, if you want to stand out from the package, say, if you're in some industry that's kind of tough to be seen or you just feel like you want to step up your game when it comes to your content to videos, or if you even want to start videos, listen to this thing. Billy's got it going on. It's very similar. He does a lot of stuff that we're already doing, but just because of this episode, like, we're going to do way more now. Thank you, Billy. And so Definitely the traffic game is on point. Branding is so important. So think a little differently than just direct response. If you pair that sucker up with some, some branding in there, tie that together and be consistent, you will be on fire. So that's what this is going to be. Go check out evergreenprofits.com to learn a lot more. We obviously dive deep on a lot of this stuff there, so get some cool stuff there. But let's go to Billy now.

Let's dive in. All right.

Hey, Billy, how you doing, man?

Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. Matt and Joe, what's up?

Doing great, man. Dude, I don't know if you. Let's see, it was back in. I think it was the speakeasy mastermind. That's when you and I. Is Joe tucking. Obviously I think you were there for like the, the speed dating or something or other, but we, we're hitting it off. We were talking about, you know, we're both. We're all from San Diego, but East county specifically, which was County. Yeah, man.

We're in Mount Helix right now. We're at my house. I'm in Mount Helix.

Oh, no shit. Huh?

I went to Valhalla High School, you.

Know, like Valhalla, man, that was literally. It's still around the corner from my parents house. Oh, really? Super close. And I grew up like Rancho San Diego, like Hillsdale. I did like a play there. We, you know, the whole, the whole gambit. Played baseball there out in the league like my whole life. Like. Yeah, man, like that's. Those are my stomping grounds. For real?

That's cool, man. That's. Yeah. I live right around the street from the Valhalla, so probably see your parents around. That's rad. No, I love it. And obviously Padre fan or see those videos, you know, you and the suite.

Yeah. You know what's funny is like, you know, obviously watched the Padres our entire lives and never really been a fan. But the games are fun to go to, dude.

Yes. Yeah.

Same way, like they're hard to just sit around and watch on tv, but they're super entertaining to just hang out and have some beers at.

Oh, hell yeah.

That's the model.

That's the model.

I mean, they're not that fun to watch because they're usually not that good. But.

Well, you know, we have to. As San Diego fans, we gotta justify why we're watching our sports team. So, you know, I love them.

So the ones that we have left.

Right? So yeah, man. But yeah, we're at Speakeasy and That mastermind, it was a really cool time.

That was fun.

Yeah, man, it was cool to connect with you there. But I mean, I think everybody else out there who knows your name just sees you freaking everywhere. And obviously it's very deliberate, but freaking amazing.

This month we've been spending almost 30k a day in ads.

Dude, fucking A.

That's insane.

Yeah, we'll definitely dig into that, but let's start where we start with everybody and kind of get your backstory. Anybody who doesn't know who you are or how you got to where you are, let's go there a little bit and find out a little bit about you.

Yeah, I would hate to use all our podcast type of my story because it gets boring as shit. So I'll give like the really like high level perfect one. Raised in San Diego, University of San Diego. Didn't finish my last class. Went to Cabo instead with my ex girlfriend. Never graduated. Started a mobile oil change company. We come to you. That went out of business. We got a job at 24 Hour Fitness, checking in people. Car got towed. Needed a lot of money. Had to upgrade my job to a job at a call center selling online degrees. The ironic part was I did not get my degree, but I did find out that I found the CEO of the company. Made $25 million in a fucking year. So I said, okay, well I need to get into this Internet stuff. That's where the passion was kind of sparked. I ended up licensing a program to help people quit smoking and quit drinking. And I sold it in an online classroom format. It was called Rethink and Relive. And through trying to sell those courses is how I learned about like Facebook and all that stuff. And then I separated from that company. We kind of parted ways, moved back in with my parents house. They finally forgive me. And then I started my agency and I started my Facebook ads agency. Not because I wanted to start a damn agency, but because I knew how to use Facebook and I needed money. So I started hitting up companies to see if I can run ads for them and see if they pay me. And sure enough, some said yes. That ended up turning into like a thousand clients. And then that ended up turning to people saying, well, how are you getting these results? How are you getting these results? That turned into like teaching, coaching, consultant. And that turned into, well, shit, I didn't graduate. College didn't really prepare me at all. And now we're kind of at like full on war with college and we just enrolled our 5000th member into our Membership site. And the whole thing is about teaching entrepreneur skills they will not learn in school. The end. Congrats.

And that was an amazing summary. Everyone, take note. Know that about yourself. Now. I know the. Because I've seen you tell that story about the university or college you're working for. And I know a bunch of people that actually worked in that same office building.

So I knew if you're from San Diego, everybody has at least one or two people that worked at Ashford.

Yep, yep. And everybody says, yeah, there was some good money made, obviously, the higher ups making a lot of it. But it was like, it was horrible. You know, it's just like. But I'm sure you took a lot of stuff from there. Maybe sales, you know, sales team.

Oh, man. Incredible. I like, I would not change the experience. Right. Granted, my position is on it at this point, but I would not change the fact. I went through that. It taught me so much. So I'm happy that I did.

Yeah. And I like that you said the agency, because we had agency for years and we always kind of saw it. And for the same exact reason you said. But it's amazing because if you have an agency, you're almost getting paid to learn. You're just constantly experimenting.

Exactly.

With other people's money. Yeah, exactly.

I tell people that all the time. I said, we'll never. No matter how large our courses and trainings get, we will never, ever stop doing agency work, because that's where we learn the most. And we'll always be practitioners of what we do.

And that's the only way to learn. I mean, it's the best way to learn, to start applying that stuff.

Yes, sir.

So no solid story. So agencies. So that's where you at right now. So you have the agency side, you have the membership. What is that?

We changed the model with the agency, though. So, like, when I was, like, really doing it at scale, it was all about working with franchises. Right. So we did Local Legion for like, almost every health and wellness fitness franchise that you can name of that you see outside. That was like our bread and butter. That was our sweet spot. Now the model has shifted to equity deals and partnerships. Because what I realized is, through doing all of that, I'm sitting here getting paid out monthly, which at the time, it was great. It was more money than I've ever made. But then I realized, wait a second, we just brought this gym. 600 members that are paying 170 bucks a month forever. And I'm getting paid how much? Yeah, I'm like, this is fucking stupid. And so the skill set just kind of like, you know, I started to become aware, like, holy cow. Like, there's not a lot of people in the world who can really do this like that.

Yeah.

And as a result, I was like, well, if anybody comes now, it's 30k up front and I'm taking at least 25% of your business. So we're not having a conversation.

Fucking A. There you go, man. I mean, we've been burnt. You know, with our agency, you know, you do the best work possible. There's everything's increasing and say a new marketing manager comes in on their team. Yeah, I'm gonna bring in my own marketing crew. Online marketing crew. You're out. Or like you said, yeah, you're making them a shit ton of money. Oh, I'm still capped at whatever retainer.

Exactly, man. So that's when it all changed for me. I just said, no, I'm just not going to do it like this. But the beautiful part is once you have the skillset, you can monetize it any way you want to. So I always tell people, I'm like, dude, just learn how to get customers using online ads and you'll be able to make as much money as you want. Simple.

Yeah. I mean, we had a very similar experience with agency work where we were doing agency work and then some of the products that we were promoting as an agency, we found out how to affiliate programs. So they were actually paying us on retainer. We were five grand a month to work with us. We were a content marketing agency and we were growing, growing, growing their business. And we realized they have an affiliate program where they're going to pay 50% commissions if we make sales on their products. So what we did instead was we left the agency business, turned around, promoted the exact same products we were promoting before. As an agency, how much more money did you make? Oh, it went from 5k a month on one specific product. In General went from 5k a month to 30k a month.

Watch this. That's the wisdom that comes with being in business though, right? Is you understood that there was a better way to do it and to make more money for doing the same exact thing you were doing. And that's how I tell people. Like, if you're navigating this business world without a coach, you may think you're doing good, but in actuality, you may be missing the entire enchilada.

Yeah, 100%. And it's that lateral thinking. It's just getting out of that box. A bit, but you got to get your feet wet somehow. So I love that. The agency is like the best battle, you know, it's like, that's your best school right there.

There you go.

Get in there and do it. So see your outward appearance, man. You're on every platform I can even think of. Yeah, I don't know. Twitter. Are you on Twitter? Probably.

That's the. We actually don't fuck with Twitter that much.

It's funny because we actually had a call with Vince Reed, and Vince Reed was really, really talking about the power of Twitter and how he pushed me.

He pushed me towards it too. I need, I need to get on it. He tells me, hey, Bill, you. You been on Twitter yet, though? I'm like, no, I haven't, but I'll do it, I swear.

I love it.

Well, but it seems like you've kind of got a system down where once somebody enters your ecosystem, once they discover you, once they can't get rid of you, you're everywhere. I go to YouTube, I see you, I go to Facebook, I see you. I flip through my Instagram stories, I see you. You're just everywhere now.

You know, it was like, I'm learning about the advantages of brand. And before, when I look, when I came into this agency thing, it was very simple. If I didn't make the client money, they wouldn't pay me. So, like, I. I never had the luxury of not being able to not be good because I wouldn't make any money. And to do that, direct response is where the customers ended up seeing that return. And that's what they were willing to pay a high price for. So my whole foundation training learning was about direct response acquisition. So I got good at the hardship first. And then what I've realized over the last, like four years of probably advertising pretty heavily to build our brand, all of a sudden, it's finally paying off monetarily. Like, we'll get people that just go to our website and buy stuff. Now that sounds kind of small and insignificant, but that shit never happened before. Like, that was, you know, and so I'm starting to see it. And then like, you know, the speaking gigs are coming and then like the cool podcast and all these things and all the opportunities that I always went like, damn, I should probably do those things. Now they're happening. But it took millions and millions and millions of dollars to build the brand. It took so many. You know what I mean? So, like, I'm really understanding the value of, like building something kind of long term and going all in on brand.

Yeah, no, I love that because I mean, if you're just a direct response marketer, if all your focus is, is just let's drive some traffic to this landing page and try to sell them. Well, you know, 97, 98% of the people that land on the site are like, I don't know this fucking guy and they're gonna, they're gonna click away. Now when you have someone like, you know, your, your credibility, your brand, or like a tai where you just, you see him everywhere, they land on the page and they go, oh, I've seen this guy around. This guy's doing good shit because I've been seeing him everywhere. So what he's doing must be working. And it just, you know, it's like an invisible conversion booster almost.

Hell yeah. And it's extreme. Like we're doing another two to three thousand bucks a day on our website because when we run ads, we're getting like people that just come there and they buy. And here's the messed up part is I was ignoring that dude for like, I don't know, years. And then finally one of my team members, he goes, bro, like at my previous job, he's like, we made so much money from our website. Can you just allow me to just put up like a, whatever, basic WordPress site and like one that you approve? Alright, whatever, do it. And the next thing you know, 2 to 3k every day, I'm like, wow, how much money was I sitting on from being so, you know, resistant to change, lazy, whatever the hell you want to call it. And I just miss out on all that money for being fucking stupid.

You live and learn, man. But yeah, I mean, I mean that's, we've taken the branding approach. I mean, we've, we had what, Roland Frazier on the podcast recently, Dennis Yu, all talking about, you know, all their different Facebook strategies, daily videos, whatever you want to do. But if you pump a little bit of traffic behind there, have some zero, you know, laser, laser like targeting, maybe go a little wider. It's amazing how, how often we'll go to, you know, meetups, masterminds. Really? Dude, I see your shit everywhere.

Yeah, everywhere.

I'm like, it doesn't take a lot of money.

Well, it's always, it doesn't.

That's what people don't understand. It doesn't take a lot of money. And here's the thing, if you're making more money than you spend, you actually get paid to build your brand.

Oh, totally.

For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think a Lot of people just get scared away by the fact that if I run an ad and all it's doing is growing my brand, making me seen more, I don't see a direct ROI on that. And I think that's where people kind of get hung up. I mean, what, what sort of advice would you give to people who get hung up on, you know, I'm spending money on pumping this video everywhere, but I can't see an ROI on my Facebook ads platform. So does it make sense to keep running it?

Well, I asked them the simple question, like, how long do you plan on being in business? You know, if this is like something you just got into to like make a quick buck, well, maybe you don't give a fuck and you're probably going to go out of business anyway. But if you want to last, like that's what it takes. But then I also, I'll kind of dive into that and I'll flip it. So what I've learned is that you can make money the first time someone sees you. And this is an unpopular topic that is not spoken about a lot right now because everyone's living in the layers of, well, you show them once and then you have to retarget them and then you do this, and then you do this and then you can ask them for a sale. But how many times have we all been at a fair, a motherfucker pulls out some knives, does this crazy demonstration with tomatoes at a Slap Chop or whatever the hell it is, and they're like, oh my God, I think I want to be a chef. And you buy a pair of $1,000 knives and you're like, what the fuck just happened? I came to the fair to play games and I just walked out with a thousand dollar pair of steak knives.

Totally been there.

And that's what I want to remind everybody online is it's just become more challenging to make sales. You can still do it, but the difference is entertainment is required now so people will see our ads and shit online. Like, oh my gosh, why does he do all this work? It just seems like so much work. It's like, no, dude, that's the magic sauce. That's why we can run an ad from the very first time, get people to buy and be ROI positive in two hours and outspend everybody because of it. So guys, if you know how to sell and you can entertain people, you can ask for the fucking sale right away. Now most people won't buy, but enough people will buy to make your ads profitable quick.

I love it or they'll share it or they'll tell everybody else this crazy ass video that.

Well, I mean, that's another thing about the videos that you do. The, you know, the. Obviously you've got multiple styles of videos. You got the sort of bigger budget videos and then you got the ones where you're, you know, you got your iPhone or I guess for you, not an iPhone, but you got your phone inside of your office and walking around and showing behind the scenes stuff. But the big budget videos that I see all the time, you always look below them and they're shared 400 times. They're sharing ads 400 times. You know, like what kind of ads get shared around like that?

Dude, it's crazy. And like I, that's something that like we always sleep on. Like when we're sitting there planning our promotions and stuff, we always forget like, holy shit, people will share the hell out of this. And most of our best performing ads are the simple ones that you're talking about, which is like one camera in the office, me like teaching or something like that. But the ones that are always remembered are the production ones where we go all out. Those are the ones that make say, oh, you're that guy. Like even on my way to the office today, it's like, oh. And some guy starts beating his chest from like our wolf of paid advertising ad that we did, you know, so like that's where like you resonate and you're remembered with your audience, you know?

Yeah. So we watched the most recent episode with Ezra Firestone.

Oh yeah, he's a badass. Shout out to Ezra. Shout out to me. Shout out Dennis Shoe. Shout out to Roland, everybody. You guys have had shout out to all of them.

Hell yeah, they're listening, damn it. But you had a three part thing. You said it kind of quick and I think he dug in a little bit. But it was a whole entertain, educate, execute. Yeah, and in that order. Let's dive into that because it seems like that's just the backbone of everything you do.

So just to clarify before you dive in, are we correct in thinking that you actually put entertainment above the actual education when it comes to these like branding ads?

Yes. And it's, it sounds weird. It's like that most people say, well, that's fuck, that's bullshit. No, no, listen, it's. If you, if no one's listening to you, it doesn't matter what the fuck you say. Let me repeat that. If, if they can't hear you, then you can say the smart. You can you can literally spit out the cure to cancer. Who cares? Don't want to hear you. So the first step is entertainment, AKA get attention. And getting attention is a weird thing because people have to realize that getting attention is about meeting the customers where they're at, not where you're at. So, for example, at this point in my life, I realize that money does not make you happy. Right. Success is different than fulfillment. But if I go out with an advertisement that says, hey, you want to be successful, but you should focus on fulfillment and doing good for others, it's like, all right, you're corny, da, da, da. But if I create an advertisement and it's me driving around in a Ferrari with my daughter, people are gonna be like, this guy's kind of a douche. But I'm interested because I've always wanted a Ferrari my entire life. How the fuck did he get it? Even the people that don't like you, they're like, ah, this is full of shit. But let me watch this to see how he did it. And then the good people like, ah, there he is again. That's cool. I'm inspired. Right? So, like, a lot of people are uncomfortable with this notion of kind of doing douchey things to get attention. I don't know if they're douchey to me. They're required to help people.

Yeah.

Like, I don't show people, like, my cars or my office or, you know, all the cool shit, the trips and all that stuff, because I give a fuck. I'm there. I have it. I don't need to show it. I do it because they care, regardless if they admit it or not. And they respond. My best organic post of all time was a picture of my fucking Ferrari. That includes the birth of my child. People swear they don't care about all the materialistic shit that. But let me be very clear. That is fucking wrong.

Yeah.

So once I have their attention, then I get their name, email, and phone number. Now, I can say, by the way, the fact that you clicked on an ad because I had a Ferrari in it, well, you're a douchebag. And that's okay, because I'm going to show you and educate you on how not to be that way and what you should really be caring about. But I got to earn the attention first. And then you educate. And once you educate, it's all about taking action. That's the execution part.

Love it. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like, everybody, or a lot of people, including us, we've been guilty of It a lot is you go straight to the education phase and it's like, yeah, you might be putting some great ass value out there. Maybe the best traffic secret, whatever it could be. And like you said, if you don't have that attention, that prior entertainment phase, what's that gonna do? And I think it's helping you with putting your daughter in the back seat there in her car seat in a Ferrari.

That's the, that's the counteract, the doucheness. You know, you're like, oh, you're such a douche. And you're like, well, that is kind of cute. Daddy and daughter.

Exactly, man. He's a douche.

But at least he's a family man.

Yeah, that's it. That's it.

I love it. So what's the, what's the thought pattern behind these higher production videos you put out there? So, you know, like, I'm sure there's a lot of thinking behind it. You said with the. I think you watched a movie for. I think it was the Last Showman.

The Greatest Showman.

Yeah. Greatest Showman. Yeah.

It's about two things. Zags and trends. And what I mean by that is the reason why we go all out on our video. Because since I can remember, and I think you guys in particular will be able to relate to this, but like, I feel like the whole entire digital marketing slash Internet marketing space has like, it's very incestual and it like it copies each other, right? So everybody in the industry was just doing videos with like text and reading along. That was like the whole beginning of the video sales letter. And then after that it became like these whiteboard drawings that you could like hire out and like, and everyone just follows. And I just go like, does anybody see this? But this is boring as fuck. Am I the only one not seeing this? And so I started doing these crazy video productions. And they're great, effective. I bought many times from those, by the way. So everyone listening, do not think that those don't work. But for me, I was like, man, if everyone in the freaking marketplace is all doing these type of videos, if I want people to remember me, I can't do that. So I literally do these productions because I want to be seen in a different light than that. The reason why we don't talk about like our online courses and we talk about the fact that we're competing with college is because when people associate with us, I don't want them to be like, well, whose digital marketing course to buy? I want them to go, well, shit. Do I send my kid to, you know, this business program, this MBA program, or do I just put them in the fucking gene pool? That's the conversation I want to have with our brand. So it's about zagging and then trends. A lot of the time you see us do a video, I'll do it based on what people want to see. So yes, when I did an advertisement that was a parody of the Greatest Showman, it's because it was an entrepreneurial movie that won a bunch of awards. I saw it in theaters and I knew it was going to win a bunch of awards. So I knew it would have a be a great weapon to have. When I did the Wolf of paid advertising advertising we did, which is a parody of the Wolf of Walt Street. It's because it's one of the greatest business movies of all time and we don't have a ton of movies out there representing us. And I knew my audience would relate to that. So I follow the trends and you guys can use Google trends and they'll tell you things that people are chatting about and that allows to, I guess, the virality of it for it to get shared, commented and engaged on.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I like what you said. The zag at first is you're almost bringing in this higher level thinking, you know, behind everything you're doing. So you have a mission. It's against college. You have that mission for, you know, I don't know, it's like, you know, screwed up ads, you know, like you got some fucked up ads. I'm here to fix it. But I'm sure there's a higher mission to everything you're doing there.

Exactly in the end. And also too just building a team and culture and shit, like giving everyone that purpose and just reminding them like, hey guys, like, even though we're in this office behind computers, don't forget every single day we're changing lives. Read our inboxes, look at our comments, you know, talk with the students, like listen to every single day. It's almost like you get desensitized a little bit because you're in the habit of doing something. But like never take that for granted, you know, and so just consistent reminding ourselves of like, you know, the why.

Yeah, yeah.

Now this question might seem kind of random and out there. You don't strike me as someone who has, you know, got any sort of self confidence issues. But you know, what would you say to somebody who wants to kind of put themselves out there more, make more videos, do the high production value but maybe they're just, like, uncomfortable on camera. Do you ever. Do you ever. Do you have any advice towards those types of people?

Yeah, man, that's a fantastic question. Well, first things first is I believe, and this is just my belief, but I believe we're in a time right now where. And this has actually been since the beginning of time, as people buy from people they trust, right? But just like, there was a time when websites first came out and there was a whole bunch of entrepreneurs in the world was like, you don't really need a website. Who uses a website? And then websites became standard, and everybody who didn't have a website got left behind.

Oh, yeah.

And they went out of business. And then this thing called Facebook came up, and they're like, I'm not getting on that social media stuff. That's weird. Dah, dah, dah. And then businesses blew up, brands blew up, and then finally everybody came. The market comes. The market comes. I think we're in that right now with video more than ever, because if all of us are deciding to go to a restaurant, to an event, to whatever, and you go to a website and they have a really good video that tells the story of why you should should go, I mean, it's gonna win almost every fucking time for sure, you know? And so I think it's just a matter of time before, like, people just go out of business. So one thing I would tell people is like, look, either get the fuck over it or go out of business. I genuinely believe that. But then also, too, in regards to, like, getting the confidence to do it is I believe confidence can only really be earned from results. And it starts usually when you meet someone and there's not a ton of confidence. It's because they just haven't been celebrated enough for their wins in their life. And not to go too much into psychology, but the same person who's lacking with confidence, the first questions I would ask them, I say, what were you like in high school? And I bet you you will see a direct correlation with whether they were part of a sports team, you know, whether they were part of asb, or whether they did, like, the prom king and king's court or queen's court, whatever it may be. If you look at activities and then once you understand their activities, you ask them another layer and you say, cool, well, what was your role like on the team? Okay, well, were you on a football team? But did you never play? Did you only get one play? What would that do to your confidence where you spent the majority of your puberty going through behind somebody else, never getting a chance to shoot, and people only commended you for supporting somebody else. All that shit carries. So I think I got lucky. And I'm really bad at most things, but I was always decent at some things that allowed me to receive some compliments, some accolades that built my confidence. But confidence is transferable into different parts. So I kind of built my confidence there. But when I got into videos, I did that because of a lack of confidence. Let me explain. When I was out there selling to business owners and agencies, I actually got really, really intimidated because I was freaking, you know, 23, didn't graduate college from the UC San Diego. I dropped out. I'm fucking, I curse like a sailor, I'm loud, I'm black, and I'm selling to these 45 year old white people with degrees with successful businesses. And I need to tell them to let to trust me with their business, which is how they provide for their family. And so I got so psyched out and so scared about it, I was like, well, if I come to these people, I need this. I need to have more proof than anybody else because nothing sells like proof, regardless of what color you are. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna just film myself and show the results of what I'm doing for other clients so that they have to hire me. Cause I'll be undeniable. So I did these videos showcasing basically the results I had for previous clients. And as a result of making those videos, I got confident because people started to pay me. And then at this point in my career, when people see me, it's like, dude, I mean, I've had way more Ls than I've had wins. But I've had so many wins, it's hard to shake my confidence now because now we've just done it too many times. But that was built, it didn't start that way.

And it sounds like part of that is going deep too. It's not going wide. And being a jack of all trades, you got really fucking good with ads is what it sounds like.

It was my thing, man. It's still the thing that when I sit in a room with these really, really successful, badass entrepreneurs who have way more cash than me, have accomplished way more than me, I still there with my chest high because guess what? Every single company that they have needs more customers. And I can do that better than them right now. So I have my thing. And that's why I'm obsessed with learning. And I'm a student And I pay so much for coaching so that I always have this edge wherever I go to where it's, I know something that you don't. That's even why I went to YouTube when everybody was on Facebook, because I felt like, oh, shit, people are starting to come into my space. Then I went YouTube. It's like, okay, cool, I have a jump again and watch this. When more people start coming to YouTube, I'll go to something else and I'll always be talking about that next thing.

So you got two things that you just said I want to bring up first. One being, where do you go to learn? So who do you follow? What kind of resources do you tap to always be on the leading edge?

Good question. So peer mentors and then also paid mentors. I'll call them. And the trick for me is not looking at mentorship of, oh, I just need a business coach. You have specific problems that you're facing at specific times, and you need to find a coach that's going to solve that problem at that time. So, for example, Cameron Herold, COO of 1-800-GET-JUNK was there when the company went from 2 million to 100 million. Great, that sounds like somebody who's steps ahead of us because we're going to come up on 10 mil this year. I want to go to 100. That's a good. That's a person to hire. He's been through the process, so I'll pay him, you know, six or seven grand a month to talk for, you know, 90 minutes every. Every other week, you know what I mean? Because the mistakes get so great. But he can help me in that. For personal development and, like, spiritual shit. I got this guy, Jim Bunch, who's a badass entrepreneur, has been through a lot of shit that saved me a lot of mistakes there for direct response. Like Frank Kern. I hired him for a while, you know, because it was like, I need someone who really knows this shit. I learned a lot of stuff from him. So getting a mentor for the specific problem was probably is still today key to our thing, YouTube. When I needed YouTube, I fucking paid someone 10 grand and I flew them out here the next day to teach me YouTube.

Damn. That's. All right. So we're gonna touch on YouTube in one sec. But it's funny that you brought up Frank. I just saw one of his most recent ads. He's going around, he's talking about branding now with direct response. And, you know, he's always been a direct response guy. So it sounds like you're Kind of wearing off on him a bit little.

Yeah, I mean, he's, he's, he's, you see Frank, he's coming up on his social game and he's doing it. It's like. That's what I'm saying. It's like the industry is changing so much. Like, even the OGs, who have the list and the positioning, everything, they have to play ball too. That's why this video, the social stuff, like, no one's immune. Everyone's got to get going.

Hell yeah. I love it. So YouTube ads, this is, this is something that I know that we selfishly just want to learn. Like a mofo. Always be honest about that. Where's a good place to start here? Because I'm sure there's a lot we.

Can go down, I would say is because I think a lot of people here too are at least familiar with Facebook. Listening today, I will tell you this about YouTube. It's the same shit. That's the first place to start is almost every feature that you can do on Facebook, almost. Not all you can also do on YouTube. And then you realize that Cheryl, who's over with team Facebook, was with team Google before. And most of the shit that Facebook does was because of Google. They're actually the OGs. So, like, it's funny because everyone's like, oh, like YouTube, they trying to get into Facebook? No, dude, they started that game.

So a lot of things are the same. For example, you know, you can use lookalike audiences, but instead of lookalike audiences, they call them similar to audiences. So like, that's the type of shit when I say it's like the same, it's the same. The other thing is, it's the dashboard is just separate. Like you have to get used to kind of like just the language of it. But honestly, if you both jump in there and just spend a week in there, you're like literally feel comfortable and you feel like you're riding a bike. Now, strategy wise, there's three major ways that I like to do targeting on YouTube and number one is your typical interest based, right? So we advertise to entrepreneurs all day and, you know, so we just literally advertise to the people who already have big followings on YouTube. You know, we do the Grant Cardone's, we advertise a shitload on Gary Vee stuff. We advertise, you know, Tai Lopez's stuff. So, you know, when I go and I do like interviews or anything with them, a lot of their audience will know us because we've been inceptioning that shit for a while.

Yes.

And so that's the biggest thing. So interest. I would really like the influencers, whoever already has your following, go get it from them.

For targeting, do you just target anybody who watches any video on their channel or do you target specific videos on their channel?

You can put in the keyword Grey Vaynerchuk and it will go from there also too. We do target certain channels. So for example, there's a lot of. On YouTube, there's a lot of channels that just have entrepreneur content. Right. Like motivational shit, whatever. People are looking to be inspired. Those are fantastic groups to target. So I have to give you guys an idea of how hard we go on YouTube. I have two people whose full time job is just to like manage our YouTube ads. Nothing like not for our clients. For Billie Gina's Marketing Inc. Full time, all of the time salary, high salary paid employees. That's it. And so keyword wise we got like thousands and thousands and thousands from just testing, seeing what works and seeing what doesn't. Also to like any. Anyone who has like software channels like whatever your customer is searching for is what you need to be bidding on, you know, whatever, how to get more customers. Okay. You should be bidding on that and showing your videos. So some of the search terms will bid on also and then also to their partner websites. There's a lot of websites that allow video advertising like your Forbes and all that and don't sleep on those. People don't understand the back end stuff. So you can pay right now like 1 to 10 cents per view to have your video shown on Forbes.

Hey now, so how do we get in there? Is that actually from YouTube or is that.

It's from YouTube. It's from YouTube. Right. So you're creating your ad and it's basically just a placement, you know, essentially to summarize it without going all techie and shit. But yeah, that's it. So you just, you literally just. That's the fun thing about all this is like once like you're in there you realize like, man, that's how these guys are doing this. It's kind of one of those like that's all it is. Obviously there's a strategy to it and all that, but you know, for sure.

And without that strategy, I mean we went deep on this with Vince Reed and you know, yeah, you could be all tactical all day long, but without that strategy that ties all that stuff together. That's the magic sauce, all that.

Exactly. And so. And then one thing I won't go into just because it's like a lot is like bidding strategy. That's like the advance. Like, you know, there, there are really cool ways to bid. One thing everyone should be aware of is on YouTube, they don't charge you unless someone watches 30 seconds of your video. A lot of people are not aware of that. So you can go and advertise. And when people aren't clicking your stuff, talk about branding, since that's been a big discussion today and I'm getting branded for free all day long on a lot of the stuff, you know, so it's huge. And also too, the biggest thing about YouTube that I want everyone to recognize is when someone sees your stuff on Facebook, it's also surrounded by two posts on top and underneath that post a lot of the time. And then there's the right column and then there's a, a messenger box at the bottom. Right. They're very distracted when they're on YouTube. People are literally searching for something and waiting to watch something. And you get those five seconds of uninterrupted messaging. So from a brand perspective, what YouTube has done for me personally, now that we've been on YouTube for like almost two years, like, going pretty hard on that. 18 months. I'm telling you guys, every single time I walk outside, I'm recognized. And most of the Time it's from YouTube, not Facebook.

I believe 100%.

Yeah. So it's, it's just powerful. So you guys want, like, anyone listening? You want to build a brand, go all in on YouTube because, like, especially like a real estate agent, right? Like, dude, if you're a real estate agent, stop spending money on to have your face on a bench so you can feel good. Put all that money on YouTube in a zip code and Facebook and Instagram, you will be the most famous person in that zip code. You won't even be able to walk outside and get coffee without everyone saying, you're that real estate guy, aren't you?

I love that. Now, what type of content do you put in those videos to grab attention within that first 5 to 30 seconds?

All problem solving. So I do a simple exercise where I take out a blank piece of paper and I draw a giant capitalized T, the letter T on a piece of paper. And on the left hand side, I write problem. On the right side, I write solution. And I'll write the top, like 10 or 20 problems that my ideal customers face. And I literally will put down the solution. And then boom, I'm done. That's my video Content. So as far as, like, well, what do I say? What do I talk about? We'll solve a different problem a day, make them three to five minutes. Boom, you're fucking golden. But here's the catch at the end of all those. Always ask for the sell. So you start off the video at that first five seconds of asking that question. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Like, do you need more customers? Right? Like, do you need more customers? And you're tired of overpaying for like, trade shows, which take a bunch of time, and everybody's tire kickers. Da, da, da. Well, why aren't you using ads like this? So I pose a question, something like that, right? And then also too, I always include props, music and environment and all of them. So, you know, maybe it's an oversized calculator, maybe it's a giant box, maybe it's anything abnormal that people wouldn't typically see. Is. Is the whole, the whole gambit. Next is music. Audiojungle.net you can search for music via motion. You can use it legally for 8 bucks, find a song. Third is environment. Choose somewhere that people don't typically see. So when you pose a question to solve the greatest problem that they're facing, include all three of those elements, regardless if you're a camera person or not. You can all do this. And then you spend the core of the video demonstrating how to solve that problem results in advance. Frank Kern talks about it all the time. And then you end it with, click this button and I will give you more like, hey, if that was helpful, cool. But you're really going to love this. Click here and being obnoxious with the call to action. Because on YouTube there's a timer and once it goes away, they cannot click back on Facebook. It kind of sits there. YouTube, you got to get them to click. So you got to go all in on the clip, maybe even do it. And then for 30 seconds, just talk about people clicking the button. That's what we do all the time. And then once they click out, capture their information, get that name, email, and phone number. Text message is a big part of our game right now, but that's the case, man. And then just fucking sell them something. Help them so much where they just can't imagine not buying from you.

Talk about that text really quick because that's. I think a lot of people are just scared if, oh, I don't want phone number. Because, you know, they're not gonna. Conversion rates just gonna go down the table.

Well, we got like 200,000 of them, so People will give it in the entrepreneurial space. And, dude, it was just. It's simple. We use the same message to who and where should we send this and text it to?

You know, you give them a reason. You give them a fucking reason and. Okay, well, that makes sense. And then it's appreciated. Yeah, actually, I'd prefer them text it to me.

Yeah, well, it's for a lot of people. They're just like, bam, I don't want to go check an email. I just want it right there on my phone. Exactly what, what tool are you using for that one?

We'll use. I think we're using Twilio on some of it. And we use, we use easy texting sometimes it's expensive and kind of okay, whatever, but it allows you to blast people if you just want to upload some numbers. Easy to easy. The letters, texting, that's easy. But Twilio is another one. I think we use one more too. I gotta ask the team.

Yeah. How about messenger bots? All that fun stuff? Are you guys big on live chat and all that stuff on the page?

Once I get there, we've, we've tested some things, we've done some things with it we're not crazy about.

Can work. It's good. I got some friends absolutely killing it with it, but just haven't really played with it a ton. You know, I have a hard time where it's like we want them to subscribe, but we also want their name, email and phone number. So, you know what I mean? It's almost like you have to choose up to some extent, and then even when you have them both on the same page using some external text, it raises your cost per lead and it distracts them from going to the next steps of the funnel. So there's challenges with it.

I'm a fan of right now. Building up our database hard, man. We're getting like, you know, freaking anywhere from a thousand to four thousand leads a day and just depending on the spin. And it's like, you know, those people, like, right now, when we, like, need to sell an event or anything, it just feels like a weight off my shoulders knowing that we can just send a couple emails, a couple texts, you know, on my live calls on Tuesdays, and boom, it's done.

Keeping your lane right there.

I love it. Now, I noticed, I don't know if you're still doing this or not, but a few months back, you were running, you know, actual physical billboards. You know, we're in San Diego, so we were Seeing them, you know, I'm assuming that was kind of a marketing experiment. How did that go for you? You know, what was the, what was the sort of thinking behind it and how did that pan out for you?

The thinking behind it was positioning association. And what you just said, experiment. I said, well, you know, we're paying for traffic on Facebook.

What if we just pay someone else and just bring to the same exact funnel. Our funnels are great. So that's what we did. We had an automated webinar funnel for one of the first billboards. And the entire thing was just like, need more customers, click, go here. And people just register for the webinar. And the thing, it worked. I mean, they bought, it worked. But the challenge is the billboard industry hasn't caught up to the pricing shift yet. So it's hard to make it monetarily work. We lost a little bit of money on it, but I think one month we might have even broke even maybe a little under on that billboard. But that was with automated webinar funnel, high ticket sell at the end.

It was interesting. For me, the bigger thing with the billboards was positioning. The only people you see on a billboard are fucking like Coors Light, McDonald's, the absolute biggest companies in the world. So if the biggest companies in the world are doing it, and then there's Billie Jean as marketing, well, shit, these guys must be big too, you know, so the positioning, but then also to the reason why I was willing to make the investment, because for most people the billboard is a one time, three week promotion. Me, I'm like, bitch, please, I'm turning that shit into a YouTube ad about my billboard that lasts forever and forever. Give me the position. So now if you look at our videos, you'll see our billboards like subtly in the background all of the time. You know what I mean? I love that.

I mean another sort of like, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I remember when you got your first billboard, I think you posted a picture of it on Facebook. And then a shit ton of people started sharing the post about you putting up the billboards. And then an entire debate ensued in the comments about whether or not it was a good idea. And just that social post, it was beautiful. Was like a viral post, dude.

It was, it was it honestly, like because of that, all of our billboards have been ROI positive. But if I'm just going billboard to mechanism, they're whatever. But when I go billboard to share people to tell them I got a billboard, it's like, whoa, this was great.

I could see that working there. You still running them or is that kind of experiment over for now?

One more time.

Are you still running those billboards?

We're not right now. I think the max. We did like four at a time one time. That may have been when you guys saw them. I mean, that's 36 grand. Three and a half weeks. So for us right now. No, I would definitely do a billboard again for something, but I would leverage it the same way we just talked about, you know, like, it's. Don't go into a billboard with like, oh, I need my business to build off this. Just, you know, it's a piece of the equation.

Makes sense. Makes sense. So I want to go back really quick and to your team, your office, all that stuff. I think you're downtown, right? San Diego.

Yep.

Yeah. So what was that shift? So building a team, you know, a lot of people. Yeah, they'll hire a VA to start, or maybe a project manager, support person. How did that look like for you? Because now you have. How many people do you have there? 20 something.

I think there's like 25 of us or something like that, and I think we'll be at 30 by the end of the year.

Yeah, I mean, I think for a lot of people that's a big hurdle to get over is to like start hiring and hire that many people too.

Yeah, there's two things that happen with that. One, I was solo and I was making, like, cool money, and I walked into my boys office and like, they were like, shooting basketball, drinking beer, and there was a couple of people there and I was like, I was low key, like, jealous, and I just. But I, you know, you know, somebody get jealous, you say some stupid hater shit all of us do, including myself. And I hit him up. I was like, man, you got all this office, this is cool and all, but like, dude, what's your overhead? Like you have so much expenses. Like, this is. This is. What the hell are you, like, you know, trying to almost make him feel bad for doing it? He goes, let me ask you a question. Would you rather build a dream by yourself or would you rather build it with your friends? I said, well, fuck you very much. I get it.

And from that moment on, I made the decision. But the reason why most entrepreneurs, and just most entrepreneurs listening to this podcast right now won't go and hire employees is because a lack of predictability with sales. Because once you get employees, that's an expense that's always there. But sales aren't always there. And the reason why I do it is because most people don't have a predictable way to get customers, AKA a funnel, AKA advertising. That works. And so remember when I got going, that's how I came up, as in direct response. And so for me, I had this funnel that made me ten grand in a day. I went from broke at my mom's house to the next 10 grand because so many people scheduled an appointment. I sold them on the phone. Once I had that funnel for a while, and I realized I can press a button and get. Get clients just like that. My fears of getting an office and doing all of those things diminished. They didn't go away. They were just smaller. I still had that like, oh, my God, what am I doing? And then it's like, anything else, right? You do something long enough and then go. Like right now, if I'm like, shit, I better have 500k in the bank to make sure everything goes. At one point, I literally would have had a heart attack and die. Now I'm like, yeah, you know, business player, gotta do it.

It's part of.

There's practice, right? Like, just you do it and you get used to it.

Who is your first hire?

I'm an account manager to help me fulfill on the clients that I was selling. So a lot of times people get stuck because they go sell, sell, sell, and then, then they sells. They try and fulfill, and when they fulfill themselves, they stop selling and they keep running back and forth. Some people do that their entire careers, 30, 40 years. So I hired someone to fulfill, and I had to train them on how to do the Facebook ads that I could focus on selling. And then once I had enough people to fulfill, then it was like, okay, I need someone to sell, so I can't do it. And then, you know, operations comes in and everything else.

That's. I think that's super smart. And people should probably resonate with that because we've been in agencies, partnered with them. That's how we kind of got our agency off the ground, was leverage. Other successful agencies locally, just for other aspects, just bolt on. But some of the ones that went down that we were partners with, or even other ones, ones we've seen, they're really fucking good salespeople. But the delivery just might be a little shaky.

And it's like, dude, it's your reputation. You have to give that value. You gotta keep selling. Like you said as well. Yeah, man, I don't know. It's just. It's interesting. I'm happy you said that the fulfillment. Because that's something that kind of gets lacking when you're out there just hustling, you know, Right?

Yeah, man. It's a real thing.

So what's. Because I know you want to scale up to 100 mil or you are scaling 100 mil, what's the next step for you as a company?

There I said as a reference further. And actually caught myself, you know, turning 30 a few months ago and fucking, you know, kind of looking at life and going through some transitions. I was like, you know what? Like, my, my life isn't to build a business. My business is to feel my life and, and making this, making this transition.

I think for me it's. If I made the amount of money I make right now for the rest of my life, I'd be cool. Well, I wanted to exit, but I'd be cool if I did. And if I want to get the company to a place where it's so healthy, where all of my team is making great money, they're super proud. So the financial stress is out of it. And then I just want to use that money to grow our impact and just help people and do cool shit, do crazy ass marketing experiments and just fucking have fun. Like if we stayed at 25mil a year and got there. If we fucking stayed. No, I don't want to say we are right now, but if we stayed like 25mil a year and like did it and we were super fucking happy and everyone was earning what they wanted to and we got to do all these fun marketing experiments, you know, connect with the largest entrepreneurs, musicians and athletes in the world and teach the world about business. Dude, I'm happy. That's a happy life. I can show up to my trainings on Tuesdays and spend the weeks messing with my team and family. Like, that's cool. You know, I think too many times we just fucking forget to set a destination. And as an entrepreneur, you guys know how it is. We just fucking go and we forget, like, what? Hold on a second. Why the fuck am I doing this in the first place?

All the time? You gotta be deliberate. Yeah, it's funny you say that, man, because we say our best. Our favorite part of the business is literally this right here is the podcast. It's connected with new guys. It's at a totally deeper level than you normally ever would, even if you're, you know. Because we do work out of our office, for the most part, home offices. We collaborate and meet up all the time. We have an office here as well. But yeah, the fact this is the funnest time is networking, masterminds, podcasts, and then educating too. Training, dude.

It's. It's fun, right? It's fucking fun.

Love it.

I appreciate you guys. This has been fucking dope.

Yeah, it's a breath of fresh air, man. So what do you got, man?

I was going to ask a wrap up question unless you had something else.

Go for it, man.

Cool. Yeah. So these are just kind of the last few questions that we always ask everybody. Do you have any books that you find yourself going back to recommending to people?

Scaling Up, Vern Harnished. Like, anyone building a business with like employees and you're really looking to grow. To me, it's the bible. It makes you realize that your business is not unique at all. It's just another fucking business and you're at a different stage that a million people have gone through and you just need to learn how to operate at the next level.

Mm.

That's the step by step Scaling up by Vern Harnish.

Nailed it. Is that perfect for. Would you recommend that to every business owner? Like, even if they're, I don't know, is there like a revenue?

When you're starting up and you know, you're just trying to like figure out business, this is not the book for you. This is for the people who are like, you're already doing some revenue, at least a half a mil, maybe a million a year, and you're like trying to put together a team and organization a movement. It's the bible.

Yeah, that's exactly. That's. That's what I've always heard about it. So I just wanted to make sure. Put that out there to listeners. What's the best place to get a hold of you, man? I know you're everywhere. So give them the best place they can retire and get retargeted.

Best place you can get retargeted is billiegenismarketing.com there's some free trainings on there too for you guys. Best place to have fun with us. You will end up getting sold on something. It's just our Instagram. I've been going live on there personally. A lot of, like, a lot of people see our stuff. But you see our ads, right? So they're like, you know, scripted. But I've been like, personally just jumping on there, you know, talking a lot of shit, having a lot of fun, adding some value. So follow us on Instagram, just billiegeneismarketing. G E N E Billie Jeans Marketing. Yeah, there you Go.

Are you still at those Padre games all the time?

The way we did our suite is like, last year, we did 10 games, and we realized during the season we're like. Like three or four of them. We didn't even really want to go to, but we paid for it. It was like this. So this year, we did five games at the suite, and it was. It's perfect. It's like, you know, smart. You go once a month, you bring the team. You bring some team members, some. Some students and some clients, and it's fucking great.

I love it, man. No, I think, yes. It's. Everything you're doing is just fun. So if people just loosen up a little bit, shake it off, entertain, be fun, and then actually live it, too. Don't just show it out there in the. In the world. Right? Do. All right, cool. Billy. Well, thank you, man. I appreciate your time so much.

I appreciate you guys and everybody continue listening to this damn podcast. These people bringing some serious value. Don't be stupid. Listen and then implement some love.

It's the key.

Can't wait to get that transcribed and posted everywhere.

It will happen.

All right.

All right, man.

Good talk later, guys. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to. Now, right now, before we sign off, I have a few things I would love for you to do. So, the very first thing is to go find our guest on Facebook and tell them that you loved their episode with us. That's going to help them just feel good about themselves, but also it's going to spread the word a little bit more for us. Go find them on Facebook. Everybody's on Facebook. And go say that you love their episode and maybe one cool thing that you learn there. The second thing is to go to itunes and subscribe to our podcast. Just look up Hustle and Flowchart and hit the subscribe button. And the very last thing, the third thing, is to leave us a review on itunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and help us spread the word more. That's how more people are going to get this awesome knowledge, this. This cool podcast, guest training, and a whole bunch of other cool, free training that we give out at evergreenprofits. Com. So that's about it. Go find them on Facebook, go subscribe on itunes, and leave us a review. You would be amazing if you did that, but you're always amazing. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

You're awesome.