Episode #709 - An Entrepreneur At Twelve Years Old with Aleric Heck of AdOutreach

Welcome to this edition of the million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on ready. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

I'm looking forward to this afternoon talking with I believe from Austin, Texas. Is that right?

Yes, Austin, Texas.

Yeah. Alric Heck. Welcome Alaric.

Thanks so much for having me on Larry. I'm excited.

And Al Rick, you're in the world of business. You're still a youngster and you remind me about when I got started. I was always the youngest guy in the room.

Yeah.

Now if you have sustainability, you build your business with sustainability and longevity and you work it to where you can offload the annoying parts and maintain the fun parts. You wind up working a long time and then you become the oldest guy in the room. So I'm giving you a peek into your future. Alric.

I love it. Well, I'm looking forward to it. I plan to being this, this game all the time. So I'm excited.

Yeah, I'm pulling for you to have sustainability and longevity. You know, so what Alrik, the thing is when we get people on my obligation, I want you to do a little tutorial here with me. I've got part of a tutorial. I got the name alright down how to pronounce that correctly. But the best way to, you know, you got a tremendous list of achievements at a young age, 26. And you know, when people, we have youngsters, you know, you're like a youngster. But when we have younger guys on or ladies on, the important thing is to say, you know, why should I listen to this person, you know, what could they possibly know? I'm 45, 50, 35, you know, and so I don't need some kid. But the deal is they you've been doing what you've been working on since like 12 years old and you've got accomplishments stacking right up there. A lot of people work 20 years and don't have any accomplishments. And so you've traveled the road and you've made some great decisions. Obviously not only figuring out things technologically and product wise and all, but you made a lot of good decisions about navigating life and it's going to be fun to hear from you. But what's the best way to let people know? Because what I want to do is let people know why they need to pay attention to you because you've got accomplishments, you know, you've done things and behind that is the knowledge you know, the great thing I'll just between me and you, I'll tell you, I coach million dollar earners. So between me and you, I would say the great thing for you is not any of this stuff that you've done up to this point, but the knowledge you've got, like getting it and doing it, because you can use that information again and again and again the rest of your life. Very exciting. And you'll use that information to take the pain out of the future, you know what I'm saying? To make things more efficient, to make things go. Smith still will not be always efficient and everything, but you can minimize so much in the future of what you didn't know how to avoid and a bypass in the past. And so I'm happy for you, man. And let's just talk about how you've got to where you are, what you've accomplished, and then let's dig into some of those lessons.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I'm definitely excited to dive in. And I completely agree with that too is all of the learning lessons, everything that you build along the way, that's just helping you become better every day, that 1% better every day. And that's what I always try to do. And so I started out on YouTube 14 years ago, back in 2009, I was 12 years old. I had the first iteration, ipod touch and I had old kind of Sony, you know, camera, camcorder. And I started recording videos on mobile apps and teaching people how to use their iPhone or their ipod touch and what the best apps were. And I was always filming videos. Even before that, I kind of taught myself Adobe Premiere back when it was loaded all in the discs and everything. And you know, from an early age and I was filming videos with friends, but this is my first real business that I was diving into and I essentially was creating videos, just teaching people how to use their iPhone and the best apps to download. And the first few years I didn't make really any money from the channel. It was more just posting content. I wanted to get in on YouTube. I was starting to watch YouTube, I was fascinated by it and I wanted to create that content. So over time, more and more people started to watch those videos and soon enough I had thousands of subscribers and tens of thousands. And I remember when I was in high school, I hit over a hundred thousand subscribers and I was actually earning some pretty good income from my YouTube channel at that point. You know, I was creating videos, teaching people how to use their iPhone, teaching people the Best apps that they should download. I got accepted to the YouTube Partner Program after applying a few times, and now I was earning revenue and making money from my channel, and I actually used that to pay for college. As I went to college and I was building up the YouTube channel, I was continuing to grow it, scaling up to half a million subscribers. So lots of people watching the videos. We were earning revenue from YouTube also, we were selling sponsorships. And when I say we, it was myself and a few college students that I know recruited to work with me and essentially automate different pieces of my business. My first experience of really delegating and having people on my team, people to write scripts and reply to emails and do business development, and people to edit my videos and publish the videos. And so when I started to dive into that, when I was in college, I actually got. Was able to essentially buy back some of my time. So I had the YouTube channel. It was continuing to grow. It was, you know, at that point, earning in the low six figures a year at that point with that YouTube channel. But it was a pretty size, you know, pretty good income for, you know, at the time. I was always in. In college and everything. And what I was able to do was I had one particular social media networking app, and they had paid us to do a promotion. And we had done hundreds of these promotions at this time, different mobile apps paying us, you know, $500,000, whatever it happened to be. We would publish a video or feature them in a video as a sponsorship kind of influencer style.

And.

And we do this video for this app, and they get a bunch of downloads. They love it. But they ask a question, how can we get this video in front of more people? They were wondering if I could just publish the video again. And you and I both know it doesn't work like that. You can't just publish the video twice and expect to double the results to the same channel. But what I said is, well, what if we run a YouTube ad? And this was about eight years ago now, and I created an ad, spent $500, and in one week we get 11,000 users for their app. So they're blown away. It's the best promotion that they had done, you know, putting into any type of advertiser anything. And what essentially came from that is they call me up and there was another app that there's a marketing company kind of representing them, another app that they wanted me to promote. So I go and do that.

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And next thing I know, this company's calling me, trying to get me to drop out of college, fly out to Silicon Valley, join their team, giving me the whole big potential offer. And even though it's tempting, I'm sure similar to yourself, the listeners here, you got to make those decisions to really build it myself. I knew I wanted to be the king of my own castle instead of the knight and someone else's, even if my castle started off smaller and I could build it over time. And so that's where I started to dive into YouTube ads. I did YouTube ads for mobile apps for a couple of years there, working to generate millions of downloads, a variety of different apps, kind of tapping my network. And I eventually discovered funnels and online marketing and people who are selling more than just mobile apps. And I started doing YouTube ads for those and then training people on YouTube ads and fast forward, that's where we've been able to really grow the business. So you alluded to some of the awards. You know, we scaled the company to eight figures, landed number 60 on the Inc 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in America. We earned that last year.

How high was that? The Inc. 5000? Yeah, 5000 companies, you know, that are in the Inc listing there. And you were number, what? Fastest growing?

Yeah, number 60. Wow. Yes.

How'd that make you feel? How did that.

It feels incredible. And I think that's also when my parents were kind of real. Wow. This is, you know, they knew that I was, you know, building all this stuff up. But I remember INC is something I wanted to get in for a long time. I'd looked up to and admired a lot of these fast growing companies and it felt really good to get that award. And it's based off a 6052% growth in three years. So, you know, it's been a rocket ship. You can see that. I got the rocket ship behind me here in my office and that's what it's all about. But I think that the reason the rocket ship is a really great kind of analogy for it is it is fast, it's hyper growth, it's going at a massive trajectory, but it's also carefully calculated. Right. There's rocket scientists working on it behind the scenes, similar to what we do with ads. And so that's one of the reasons I really like it, that fast growth, but also still controlling that growth and making course corrections along the way as challenges inevitably come up.

Yeah. So to kind of re dig into some of this stuff, the way you draw an audience and it turns. It can turn into big income. What kind of big incomes have you generated for your company and for some of your clients just to put some reality or some figures out there. One thing I can tell people is that I read in your bio that in high school one of your teachers found out you were had a business going on YouTube and found out you were making 60,000 a year. And at the time that was more than they were making. So I'm sure highly offended.

Yeah, I remember that distinctly. So that was the YouTube channel that was building that up. And that was around the time I hit a hundred thousand subscribers in my sophomore year of high school. And I was actually starting to earn some significant income. It was around that $60,000 a year. And I remember I was talking with somebody and I wasn't even trying to. I was just talking about. I was like, hey, like here's what I'm doing on YouTube. And I was talking with a friend and the teacher overheard it. And I remember him coming over and saying, that's not possible, you're making that up. And I said, oh no, no, that's what it is. I pull up the account and I show him and I remember his face kind of turning white and saying, that's more than I make. And it was definitely. That was the first real experience that I had of realizing, wow, I actually have something that can really make a sizable income.

And did he treat you any different after that?

Well, I think I did become a. So in a positive. Only in a positive way. And that I don't know if it was just that or is over time. Again, this a long time ago, but he was one of my favorite teachers there in high school and was pretty great.

Well, what kind of family do you have to where at 12 years old you're getting the idea of doing all this stuff? What kind of ideas were you being fed along the way from your parents and your environment?

Yeah, that's a really great Question. I have amazing parents and the interesting thing is they're not actually entrepreneurs, but they really do. They really did encourage me to be creative and go and do different things. And instead of just consuming and watching TV or playing video games and for a long time actually, you know, I wasn't really allowed to play video games when I was a kid. And instead of doing those types of things, I was encouraged to go outside and be out and be creative and do interesting things like film videos. I got, I remember a, a camera. There's a picture of me. I have this, this video I made. I worked with somebody, kind of does these little mini documentaries and did a little video about kind of my journey. And there's a picture of me. It's like I'm six or seven, holding a video camera. It's almost the size of my head. It's kind of funny. But anyways, I remember filming videos and when I was nine years old I got the Adobe Creative Suite and I was just teaching myself how to edit on video. And so I think that with my parents that was something where they really encouraged me. I had a kind of went from, you know, kind of started off kind of lower middle class to upper middle class kind of throughout like growing up. So it was kind of in that middle class, like upbringing. So it was a good kind of point where we weren't lacking for anything. So we had all the stuff we needed, but we also didn't have a silver spoon. Wasn't all handed to my brother and I either. And so that I think was a really good incubation for me to want to strive to do more but also have the ability to be creative and to have our family computer that I remember with Adobe. My dad's a software engineer, so not an entrepreneur, but software engineer. And he had a friend that worked at Adobe and I remember he like, we got a discount and when he heard that this was going to be me, like going and creating videos and, and that was like a Christmas gift one year. And, and so essentially my parents really just encouraged me to build things up. But I remember even when I had a lemonade stand, they taught me the importance of a profit. I had a lemonade stand. Like classic entrepreneur story, the 7, 8, 9, 10. Yeah. And I remember being confused the first time they said, okay, well this is the money that's going for the supplies, right? And I'm like, what do you mean?

You know?

And they taught me the difference between revenue and profit, which I think is something that was, I'm very appreciative even though as a kid I was used and. But then I found out what it was and I didn't really like it. It definitely served me very well in the future to know the difference between, you know, revenue isn't what you take home. It's. It's the profit. Right. And so you have to exclude those expenses. So that was kind of the upbringing, really just encouraged to be creative. And that was one of the things. When I got the ipod touch, my parents didn't know that that had games on it. And that was actually kind of like, that's a funny side of it. As I was playing some games, they said, well, how are you going to be creative? And I said, well, you know what? I'm going to show people what I recommend, the apps that I recommend or the games that I recommend. And I created videos, and that was a part of the journey as well.

Well, you know, parents are always looking for ideas and insights that have been successful with other parents and other kids growing up. You know, there's millions of ideas, and sometimes just one idea is all apparent. You know, what, you do one right thing with your kids, and that's just. They take hold of it and run with it. And so the idea of encouraging you to be creative, not just consume, think, like, what else could be done with this? What can I do with it? And that's like learning a musical instrument. You know, get that. Learn how to write some song, write your own stuff, and maybe make your own instrument or something. You know, Exactly. At the elemental stage, teaching the difference between, you know, how businesses work, the revenue and profits and little things like that. It doesn't have to be complicated, but you're giving the kids. You're giving the kids an advantage. And so you took those things and ran with it. And how would you teach? I mean, you know, over the years, you've talked about, teach, teach, teach a lot of other people. How do you teach? How do you do the teaching?

Oh, that's a really good question. And that's actually something that I actually gained this skill in the Boy Scouts. That was something that was valuable to me growing up, was being an Eagle Scout and doing things like that. And I learned this method that I really apply to my business and I recommend for other people. It's called the Edge method. It's explain, demonstrate, guide, and enable Edge. And I think that that's the best way to actually teach and educate people on things where essentially you first explain how something's done. And this is. This is, by the way, how we teach inside of our, you know, YouTube ads program where we're teaching new clients because we work with a lot of businesses where we'll train them in how to do YouTube ads. So for instance, you know, one of our clients, Tuft and Needle, they're big like mattress company, we train their internal media buying team on how to do YouTube ads. This is several years ago now and they've since know really use that. But we were able to do is go and train their internal team on how YouTube ads work. And we use the same method. So it starts with explain. That's where you're telling somebody, okay, here's how, here's what you need to do. Here's the high level concept of how YouTube ads work. We'll actually dive a little bit into that here as well. And I'm happy to share some insights on that. But then demonstrate that's where you're showing how it works. And so in this case we, we're going in and showing them on a screen, hey, here's what buttons to click, here's what to do, here's how it actually works. While they're there and watching, either they're watching a video or they might be, you know, attending a live training, whatever it happens to be, but they're seeing how it works and we've explained the concept, demonstrating it. The next step is to guide someone and that's where they're doing it. But you're actually over their shoulder making sure that they're doing the right things along the way. And, and that's actually why we have ad strategists and ad coaches on our team that will go in and help our clients set up their campaigns. But instead of them pushing all the buttons, they'll help them know, okay, here's what buttons to press, here's how to set it up, here's how to set up your targeting your YouTube video itself. And so they'll be going and doing it while they are being guided by one of our strategists. And then the final step is Enable where they can go out and actually just execute and do this on their own and you can help them as needed. So explain, demonstrate, guide. Enable is a really, really good framework for that.

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