The Advice That's Killing Your Business (Focus vs. Everything)

One of the most common pieces of business advice being talked about by all the talking heads on YouTube and all the business gurus right now is that we need to focus, we need to lock in, put the blinders on, focus on our one product, one market, ignore all distractions, and just completely lock in. What do you think about that? And do you think that's the right business advice for entrepreneurs, especially that are before 7 figures?

I think you absolutely have to focus, but in order to do it, you have to take shots on goal first. Actually, Matt, there's some tension between both of those things, but in order to get to the point where you can focus on the one niche, one target audience, one product, you're going to spend some time, or at least most entrepreneurs and people I follow, most people that I know, they have spent some time actually taking a bunch of different shots and quite frankly, failing a lot. I've always said every successful person, you know, is a failure, or they were a failure at some point before they became successful. I think that there's an argument for both, but before you can get to your focus, you have to actually find that fit for your business.

Welcome to Payrollin', the show where you will learn how to operate and grow your payroll business from the most dynamic minds in the business. If your company offers payroll services, this is the podcast for you. And now here's your host, Matt Vadie. Let's go. Yeah, I think anybody who's been listening to Payroll In for any amount of time knows I talk a ton about focus and niching down. And a lot of our guests who are the most successful payroll bureaus and businesses in the country, they have found a niche or they found a, a specific vertical that really served them well. But the thing that we don't talk about is how many different niches they had to try to attempt to get into before they found the one that clicked, right? And so I think what we can do here is let's talk about, I'm gonna talk about my entrepreneurial journey, how many different shots on goal I've taken before things started to click. You can do the same and share some of the things that you're working on now. And then let's make the case for when to focus, when to niche down, and when it's important to take shots on goal. So first, why don't you share a little bit with us about your story, man? What was your first entrepreneurial endeavor? I know you're in a lot of different things. Like, tell me about— I, I've never even asked you this question personally off air, so I'm excited to hear about it.

Yeah, I think you're gonna learn some things and be like, what? But you know, when I was in like middle school, that was when the internet was really proliferating, right? Like, not just going to the library to get on the internet. Like, we were actually one of the, you know, families at our school where, you know, we didn't have as much as others, but we certainly were going to get Chris a computer, you know, because I wanted it really bad. So I got the computer.

Rich kid.

Yeah, in that regard, I was. And so I got the computer. And man, like, just the internet just opened up like so many possibilities for me. Now, I wasn't thinking about making money back then, right, on the internet. But just kind of learning it was just opened so many like horizons for me. And so it was kind of funny, because a lot of my background is in sports media. Back in the day, I was a huge pro wrestling fan. So one of the very first things that I did online was I was literally like, quote unquote, working, not really working because it was completely unpaid, but I was just like, hey, I want to like report on like wrestling things that are happening, right? So I started doing that and I was probably way too young to be doing it. I was probably 15 years old or something like that. Then eventually I got into sports writing on the side while I was working for an attorney here in Columbia. That was my original path. I'm going to go be a lawyer. That was kind of what I wanted to do. Got into sports writing, got an opportunity to do that full-time, and from there it was this path of discovery of like, oh, I could have this side hustle, you know, writing and knowing about the internet. And then it got into, as I did my job, my full-time job, you're learning more about— and I think a lot of people have the same journey— you're in your full-time job, you're investigating how do you make money online, what are some side hustles I can do. And that really kicked up to where you just continue to learn more and more and more, right? And in that has come a lot of failures, you know, lots and lots of failures and trying to just figure out what am I good at doing? If I'm not good at it, do I need to become good at doing it? And frankly, just trying to help people along the way. And really, I was thinking back earlier about this, Matt, like almost everything that I do now was just born out of a conversation to just try to help people, right? And so I've gone from, you know, barely being able to post something on the internet that was a story I've written about sports, that was my first thing, to now being able to build a website or build an app or, you know, write cold email or do marketing. And it's been a long process, right? And all that with a lot of failures along the way, a lot of abandoned projects, you know, along the way. But all of them, I've tried not to waste those failures because you're learning something along the way.

Yeah. So first of all, who is the favorite wrestler? Like, who is your go-to man?

I mean, you know, early, early days, you know, got to be a Hulk Hogan guy. WWE was WWF, now WWE. Stone Cold, The Rock, the Attitude Era. Like, that was, that was my, uh, that was my sweet spot.

Now I am so jealous of people that grew up with like I'm going to make money on the internet. Like they figured that out early on. Doesn't sound like you were quite there, but like, man, like those guys that like, to me that was like, dang, like to have that wherewithal so early to just be like, hey, there's a gold mine here on the internet. Like instead of just playing with it, like I was doing, they were actually figuring out like, how am I going to make money here? And I do have my early internet money cash making that I'll talk about in a minute. But dude, so the first media of me that there ever was anywhere in our local paper, I was, I think I came in second place in the soapbox derby, but I had this soapbox car with a Hulk Hogan doll nailed onto the front of it. And that was like on the front page of the paper. It was just Hulkster right there on the front of my soapbox car. And that's, I don't know why that's such a core memory for me. Amazing. But well, yeah. So tell me about like, what are the projects today? So obviously everybody knows you're with Underdog Digital. You're one of our key partners over there in terms of, you know, tell people what you do there. I can't even quite summarize what you do. Last episode we did, your vibe coding stuff. You're helping people with cold email. You're doing a whole bunch of things there. And then obviously you're on Gamecock Central. Like, talk to me about the full Chris Clark experience.

Yeah. So Gamecock Central was my first, like, big boy full-time job in something online, right? I was technically full-time being a legal assistant for a law firm. So I got that opportunity in 2009 kind of by happy accident, right? I was working part-time. They needed a full-timer. Guess they were desperate, they gave me the job. I've been able to keep it for a while. So that's cool. And then eventually got into publishing a South Carolina high school website on the same network on Rivals. And that, Matt, was actually kind of one of the first like side hustles, right? Oh, I can publish this and kind of do it on the side and learning how to manage the time and run all that. And then really, I mean, COVID kind of accelerated this, you know, you're cooped up in the house, You're seeing things online, you're looking, you know, I've got more time on my hands now. What can I do, you know, to try to grow? How, how can I maybe one day gain more independence or how can I, you know, make some more money online? How can I just learn? Right? I just like learning how to do things online and if they make money, cool. And so, you know, from there got into just helping out some clients here and there with things, whether it was paid, unpaid, just kind of one-off type of stuff, but Now I have GamecockCentral.com. Underdog came along later, which y'all gave me the opportunity to come on board and, and do some things and expand my role there, whether it's working with clients, like you said, cold email, helping them market, helping them, you know, find leads and, and close those leads. Also have a couple clients that I work with adjacent to the college space, you know, college sports and NIL space that I just kind of consult with them on, on things because I've learned different things throughout my media space. And then also I help a friend, a great friend and colleague of mine who owns a commercial cleaning company. I help them with marketing and technology needs and things like that. So I've got a few different balls in the air and some random things come up every now and then.

But Chris, there aren't enough hours in the day. And Chris keeps himself in shape. He's a great father, a great husband, a great Christian. So for those of you out there looking for excuses, you're not going to find them here. So that's awesome, man. We're going to come back to some of those things here in just a minute. I want to share— I'm going to share my path. I want to talk a little bit about a dude named Peter Levels. You ever heard of Peter Levels?

I have, dude.

He's the man, and we're going to talk about him. So I've got a similar-ish story. My first— now this is where our age gap is going to come in a little bit— and this is my first entrepreneurial venture, man. I had to be— let's see, where was I living? I was under 10 years old. There was this path down next to our house where we lived right on the river, and we, we had this path where the fishermen would bring their boats down and launch them behind our house. And there was this little dock back there. And so every day I'd see these guys coming mowing. And I see my grandfather has this fork thing with a wooden handle and a cord that comes out of it that you just plug into the side of the house. You get the grass wet, you stick this thing in the outlet, you stick it in the ground after the ground is wet, and it just electrocutes worms out of the ground. Like, I don't know what— how long these things were legal for and when they stopped making them, but it was literally just the only thing stopping me from getting electrocuted as, you know, an 8-year-old was the wooden handle. And so I just grabbed this wooden handle, stick this thing that's just electrocuting worms out of the ground in, and I'd start yanking worms out. They'd be coming right up to the surface. I'd throw them in this peat moss that I had in a cooler in our basement, and then I put them in cups, and I had a big sign that I put on the side of the road that said, "Worms, 25 cents," spray-painted in orange spray paint. I'll never forget it. It's burned in my memory, but it goes back deep, man. So I heard somebody talking about a podcast the other day, like, you either have the gene or you don't. I don't know if I necessarily agree with this entrepreneurial gene thing or not, but I know that it's been there for me for a long time. And then you fast forward into high school and college and I start buying and reselling things, you know, some more legal than others. But the, you know, in college, one of my big hustles was I would buy Yankees season tickets and sell all of them on eBay. And that would fund my weekends down to go to Yankee Stadium. So whatever I'd make in proceeds, you know, some tickets I wouldn't be able to get rid of at all. Some tickets would make a great profit because they were a good game. And then ultimately I would always have enough to fund 3 to 4 nice weekends down at Yankee Stadium. And I'd always catch the Red Sox and, and Mets series down there. So that was fantastic. And then after college, Vady Landscaping and Lawn Services. And boy, let me tell you something, Chris, I know nothing about landscaping. Like literally I had a book, Scott's Lawn and Turf book. It was, it was, wasn't even very thick. And this, I remember my first customer asking me questions about her grass and I don't know any type of grass from the other, other than this book. I grew up in upstate New York, dude. We didn't do any landscaping. I mean, there was snow on the ground three quarters of the year. And, but I'm trying to learn, I'm trying to get everything as I'm doing it in real time. And I mean, I mean, I was terrible at it. Awful. I was just willing to do it cheap and that was about it. And so that dies off. Then I start carolinasfitness.com, which is basically just personal training. Started doing boot camps through a local rec center. So this is, you know, something maybe making a couple hundred bucks a month. That's fine. And then the first big swing was Executive Resource Group, ERG Payroll, which became Guru down the road. Been my most successful venture over the years. And then I'm a partner in multiple other businesses today. Underdog Digital. I'm a partner in Outsource Scale. Own some commercial real estate. Done partnership in a batting cage facility here as well. So I've got the case for both. We've got moments of focus in here. We've got moments of shots on goal. I've shut down some things along the way. I've shut down things I've talked about on this podcast. There was a point in time where I'm on this podcast pushing Founders Circle, which is our mastermind group, and I'm starting to feel the early product market fit only to have it fade very quickly and go like, you know, maybe this isn't the business or the line of business I want to be in. I've got to kill it. I've got to tell good friends like, hey, this is done. I'm done. I'm done taking any money for this. We can keep but it's over. There are other companies that do it and we just aren't there for it. So lots of shots on goal, but I do think when, when you're inside of one, you can tell when it's time to focus. We talked about this earlier with Underdog. What are some of the signals that we've seen at Underdog? Like, hey, we're on to something here. It's time to get locked in, man.

I think, and this is something I always talk about to people who ask about the agency or even clients who we're talking to because the agency's grown a lot recently, and I think people absolutely love the model of Underdog, right? And this is something I saw very early, frankly, when I first learned about Underdog Digital and the model was explained to me, you know, my first thought was like, I've never heard of an agency doing that, right? Like I've never heard of an agency having, you know, a set rate for a set number of tasks. That can handle all these different things within that structure. My agency experience, not working for one, but kind of being on the other side or adjacent to it, was always, okay, I need a website done. All right, give us a few days. Let us get you a quote. Here's the quote. It's really expensive. How long is it going to take? Give me another couple days and we'll let you know how long it'll take, you know, and everything's kind of à la carte. I think it's very attractive to potential clients to have a model that's completely different. Even, even nowadays, Matt, I go on, I'll see like job postings or people I know saying, hey, can anybody help out with this? And a lot of them put in no agencies. Well, why is that? They've had a lot of crappy experiences with agencies and a lot of people, even if the agency delivers good work, they're, you know, they don't want to wait forever on deliverables or even to find out if you can do it or not. They don't want à la carte services. They don't want poor communication, which is another one that I've seen a lot. Like we, I think, do a really good job at Underdog talking with clients. And we also have the other important part of this. We have some results to back it up, you know, like we've done this, right? And so I'd actually like you to say, I mean, Underdog was kind of born from just some lead gen that you guys were doing at Guru, right?

Yeah. So going back to like the value prop is so simple too. When you can give the one sentence, like It's unlimited marketing for $29.95 a month. Like, oh, you know, they always say like, you know, that, that statement should invoke some questions from the person you're telling it to and it should pique curiosity. And it's like, when you hear that, you go, oh, interesting. Like, tell me more about that. But yeah, dude. So it started like what you're describing, the agency experience was so painful for me when we first started. When you don't have any money and you hire an agency, it is so hard because you are pressing so hard on the results. And, you know, and to your point, it was the first few agencies we worked with for $1,500 a month, you get SEO, another $500 a month, maybe you get some social posts, another $500 a month, maybe you get this. And then it was just like always pulling teeth to get the work done. They never quite could figure out our voice. They know, you know, the industry payroll and HR, like compliance concerns and the stuff they were posting. So it was always a pain in the butt. And so I hired Karen, who is amazing, who we all know and love, and she's been on the pod many times and can talk about our relationship evolving over the years too, just in that she left and came back, which is directly related to some of the the growth we've experienced in the last couple of years. But we started out just because our customers saw our marketing and were like, hey, who does your marketing? And going back to the shots on goal thing, dude, it was like, we have this agency. I'm naming it right now as I'm talking to you. It's called Grow by ERG. We were, we were ERG at the time and it was like, yes, this is a business line now that we have a product. And it was a product that lived inside of ERG for a couple of years and it kind of grew a little bit. It grew enough to to like float our marketing costs. And that was all I wanted from it at the time was like, hey, I can have 3 or 4 marketing people that are working on my stuff paid for by the customers. That seemed like a huge win at the time. And, you know, over the last few years, kind of shorten and tighten it up. Like it spun off, it's its own entity. It, you know, it was flat for '23 and '24. '25, it doubled in size versus '24. '26, it'll double in size again. And, you know, I expect it to continue to do the same for the next few years. Again, because that simple model, but more importantly, like you said, like, we just, we nailed delivery is the big thing. And that, like, I always joke, like, it's not— you're not going to get Fortune 500 level branding from Underdog, but we ship, man. Like, we ship. Like, you're gonna get content, you're gonna get graphics, you're gonna get whatever it is you, you're asking for. You're gonna get it. It's gonna be quality, and you're gonna get it fast. Like, you're not gonna wait for 3 months for something you didn't even like in the first place and then have to go through 50 revisions.

Yeah. Well, and I think to go back to the whole shots on goal concept, right? Like, uh, you laid out some things that you've been involved with a lot. Your shots on were like really scattered, right? You've got landscape, you've got payroll. Like most of mine, I did not have a pseudo worm farm. I didn't have a landscaping company. Like all my, most of my stuff. I got worms.

I got worms.

Yeah. Most of my stuff was like really everything. I did have a kind of a landscaping company in high school, like a buddy and I.

Everybody's got to, bro.

Yeah. Mowed people's lawns for cash. But once I got like adult age, right after college, Everything I've done's been on a laptop, right?

Or a computer.

Like that's, that's most of my stuff. And so even in that though, you find out some things that like you don't want to do or you're not as good at. Right. And like, like just, I've mentioned Justin Welsh on the last episode I was on. I'm gonna bring him up again. Like he had a community and I think it was a Slack community for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. And it was going great, right? But he shut it down, not because it wasn't successful, but was because— I mean, Justin talks about this all the time— he doesn't want a life where he's sitting around listening to Slack notifications all the time. So he shut it down. So that was a signal to him of like, wait a minute, I'm sitting here talking constantly about, you know, having coffee for 2 hours in the morning, writing a little while, going on a walk, whatever. I don't want to be listening to this. So he listened to that signal in a different way, right? Like, it could have been it just flopped, and then at some point you shut it down. No, for him it was just, I don't like doing that, so I'm gonna shut it down. So, you know, for me, I've done all sorts of things. Like, I think I'm in an interesting position because some of the stuff I do is like individual. I don't own a business, right? Like, I have an LLC that, you know, relates to some of the things I do. I work with the Underdog Team, I work for Gamecock Central, I also work for myself. And so in all of those, I just try to listen to what are the problems that people have. And it has taken me a lot of shots on goal to get there, right? Like in the past, I had this dream, I'm gonna spin up, you know, affiliate marketing was huge, like during COVID I'm gonna spin up a website, get a .com. I'm gonna sell SaaS affiliate products or Amazon products or whatever. And, and it's just gonna run in the background. I'll just write. I had a deodorant blog. Worst idea ever. What? Deodorant blog? It was a deodorant blog. It was going to be if people Google what is the best deodorant for a dude, then my blog is going to pop up. And it's going to be Amazon affiliate links. So every time you buy your $6 Speed Stick, I'm getting 12 cents, baby. And we're just, we're going to scale that so much that that's going to be, you know, I'm gonna go to the Bahamas after that. Now, Listening to that, you're like, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. And it was. But you know what? I learned a lot of things from that. I learned a lot about websites or blogging or DNS or how does affiliate marketing work. And it's all things that I've been able to keep kind of in the toolbox. I don't use all of them, but it was all part of this learning experience. And even some other clients I work with, they, you know, it started with helping them out with some things for free. And then they said, we actually need this. Can you help us do that? We'll pay you. And then I start doing it. You know, some of the stuff I learned to do, I knew how to do. Some of it, stuff I learned along the way how to do it. And they always tend to evolve. So even Underdog has evolved, you know, since I came on. So, you know, the, the point is like eventually there's some level of focus into what you're doing, but even all the different buckets that I have are all like very different things in some ways. There's some carryover. They're all on a computer. They're all writing words or talking to people, whatever it may be. But I've had a lot of different, like, failures and learning experiences to get there.

I talk to founders in the payroll, HR, and accounting industry every single day, and they all tell me they need more of one thing. It's not more money, it's not more AI tools, it's more time. How do I get more time? Well, I hired a virtual assistant through OutsourceScale.com that helps me manage my manage my calendar, handles administrative tasks for me, helps support my marketing efforts, and much, much more. The cool thing about Outsource Scale is that they actually train the virtual assistants on the latest and greatest AI tools to make sure that they can't only do that administrative work for you that you need to get off your plate, but they're doing it in the most efficient and effective ways possible. I've been so happy with my assistant from Outsource Scale that I've actually added multiple other teammates to our other companies through them. Their pricing starts at only $7.99 a month, and they make it super easy easy to get a new teammate onboarded and part of your team very quickly. Check them out today at outsourcesscale.com. Yeah, this— we, we alluded to Peter Levels earlier. I'm a huge fan of this guy. He's a good Twitter follow— X follower if you're an X guy. Make sure you follow Chris. Chris is a prolific writer on Twitter. Even if you're not a Gamecocks fan, he's just— he's very like— there's a certain language of the internet that belongs on, on X and you are just like fluent in that language, dude. Like I'm not there. Like I, I read it, I love it, I understand it, but I, I don't, I don't really have a reason to write in it. It's also like, it's just not my platform of choice in terms of content creation, which probably should be. But so Peter Levels, dude, dude is like, he's one of these OG digital nomads. So I'm going to live and work anywhere in the world from my laptop. So like online businesses, like Chris is talking about, like, you know, the dream, right? A lot of us have is, hey, I'm going to go work from, you know, Spain next month. I'm going to go to Hawaii and then I'm going to go to Germany and I'm just going to anywhere in the world I can do my work because it can be done from a laptop. And so this guy has been one of the OGs in this. And one of the reasons why is because one of the first things he did was he, he said, hey, I'm going to create 12 startups in 12 months. And he shipped 8 of them and most of them went nowhere. But one of them was this thing called the Nomad List. It was basically a simple Google spreadsheet that he made public and it was a list of the cities that were very friendly for digital nomads. And this is a growing group of folks that back, you know, over the last 15 years, I'd say this has been a big trend that's been growing quite, quite quickly. And now a decade later, this thing does $5.3 million in revenue a year with 2 people. So like, I mean, this is, you know, again, the power of sort of the online business versus the scalability of the landscape business. You know, it's, it's all very modern and trendy now to say like, you know, all the money's in HVAC and landscaping and these service businesses because look, like we showed on the last program or last program, program. What am I, 100 years old? The, the last episode that, you know, you can build an app, you know, Chris and I built a lead scraping app on air in, in 20 minutes. It's going to change the dynamic of the online business. But I still believe that, you know, that's— we're in that top 5% of people in terms of that type of work. There's still going to be the other 90% that are going to need the products that you're going to ship. So I don't, I don't think the ship has quite sailed there yet, uh, from what I've seen. But this guy's got a, you know, a portfolio of businesses, multiple multi-million dollar businesses, very few employees, all virtual assistant type employees across the world, works from coffee shops and just prides himself on like, hey, living the dope life publicly and sharing like, hey, this is a great— yeah, I just saw a tweet from them the other day, like, why does Germany suck so bad for nomads? Like, and it was just a whole big rant about Germany. But so, you know, it ties in nicely, I think, to some of the things you're talking about of like, you know, the 7 or 8 projects that led up to that. Like, he probably caught wind of like, oh, I'm not the only one doing this. There are others who are interested in this. And like as I'm trying to build other products for them, I quickly realized their real pain point is actually they just don't know where the friendly place is to build. So I'm, you know, helping out with some picks and shovels kind of thing instead of actually building the product.

Yeah. I'm just thinking back to some other like abandoned projects that I've had and trying to think like, why did I abandon that? Right? Well, the deodorant example I gave you, you're like, why did you even start that, Chris? That's a horrible idea. You're right. You know, like—

Well, but you had a thesis, right? I mean, what was the thesis? Like, was it just that there was a lot of traffic but not an aggregator site. Like, I mean, obviously you went into this and you did some research and said, hey, ton of web traffic around men's deodorant, this is a hot topic now, you know, what can I do to make affiliate revenue off of this that there's high search volume around? So it's not like you went into it and said, geez, I just am passionate about men's deodorant.

Big deodorant guy. No, I do wear it.

I didn't know that about you. You're right. You said I was going to learn things about you. Big deodorant guy is now on the list.

So, I mean, and you're right, like, that was one of the things, you know, again, very, very early in learning about how the internet— or not the internet, but like SEO works, right? And so affiliate marketing absolutely exploded during COVID It made multi-millionaires out of a lot of people. Obviously search has changed a lot to go more towards big brands and, you know, not, not as much towards bloggers, but that's a story for another day. But yeah, it was, hey, find high volume, low competition keywords. Now, I, I don't remember the moment where the, uh, broken light bulb went off that said, hey man, you should go for deodorant, right? Like, as opposed to something else. But, uh, that's what I went with, right? But like, thinking about some of the other projects, you know, I, I think when you're taking shots on goal, there has to be a recognition of when do you pull back on something because it's not working for whatever reason. Product market fit, margins. Like, if you're working for yourself, like I was at the time, like the margins aren't gonna be, I, I'm not hiring employees, but am I spending a bunch of money on software tools that I don't need or, or whatever it may be. Be? Or do you run out of time because something else came up? That's happened to me before. Or frankly, do you abandon a project too early? There are some things that I've done in the past where I'm like, man, you know what, if I would have stuck with that, like, I wonder what would have happened with it. So we probably all have some of those stories. If you're an online, you know, entrepreneur, if you make your money online, work behind a computer, side hustle, whatever, like I have examples of all of those. Generally, they just weren't the right fit, or maybe the idea wasn't right. And, you know, to go back to your example you were giving with Peter, like, I don't know the exact breakdown out of those 12 businesses of like, were 8, maybe you do, like, were 8 of them the wrong product market fit? Did one of them start working? And so he pulled back from the other one. But the important thing is, I'm sure all 8 of those that didn't work, he learned something from from them, right? And so it was actually a net positive that he ended up doing them. Now you gotta have one that works at least, but to get, to get to the one that works, I think you have to have some that fail at the end of the day.

Well, and he actually shares that story again, another reason to go follow him. He, he tells like, hey, look, you know, all you're seeing are the successes, but he builds in public with everything. That's the thing I like about this guy is it just kind of, you know, that success leaves clues thing. I love it when somebody like this who's building a sort of niche life. And so now, like, if you're going to make the case for focus, you could actually argue that he is pretty focused, right? Like he's only focused on things really, he's taking a lot of shots on goal, but they're all around these specific challenges related to a nomad lifestyle, which is a very, very niche group of people. Like I'm not going to consume any of his products, but you talked about, you hit on a term in there and just going to take it back to Underdog. Like how did we recognize Underdog was like onto something? Well, that term product market fit, I'd never really experienced it before. And the way that I knew we were experiencing it was the response rates we were getting to cold outreach. So in the payroll and PEO space, my brothers and sisters in Christ listening, my goodness, like it is hard to find customers, man. We always joke that people are at the IPPA conference right now. I'm sorry, I'm not there. I miss y'all. But like every year you can have a session on gaining access and getting new customers because every year it's a challenge. It barely evolves. The techniques are almost always similar and just, it's almost always a brute force, like, you know, or centers of influence. Like, how are we getting more referrals? But at the end of the day, man, there's no product pull for what we do because there are so many providers. There's 16,000 payroll providers. So there's, there's not going to be a pull when you're, you have that much market concentration. Whereas when we hit somebody with an email that says, hey, like we're getting leads, we offer unlimited marketing services, blah, blah, blah. We're getting a super high response rate for cold, not super high in general, but for cold. And then we're getting a really high close rate. Yep. And adding customers that actually had to close the door on customers recently and say, hey, turn off all the marketing for a minute. Like we're full, let's get everybody on board, then we'll turn it back on. That's when you know you got a problem, right? A good problem to have.

A good problem.

But let's tie that over to Focus because a lot of people have heard me talk about Focus on here. You know, I've said the story 25 times. If I had it all to do over, I would've stuck with dentalpayroll.com from the start, I'd probably still be doing dentalpayroll.com. You'd never run out of dentists. They all need payroll. They all have 3 to 10 people in their single office. And it's just a nice little niche audience that will— there will be demand there. Now for me, yeah, there is no product-market fit. It was hard for me to get in front of them, which is why I abandoned it. It's not like I didn't try it. You know, if they were all just beating at my door. Now they're referral heavy. So had I stayed on that path, I certainly could still be making traction and still believe that it would have been a sizable business. But that is like in the payroll industry specifically, and I realize our audience is getting a lot more broad than the payroll industry now, but you've got to niche down, man. Like being an HCM provider to all the industries is just not a path for success. There's too much competition, there's too much noise. And we talk about that. If I'm going to reach out to you, I've got to find a way to cut through that noise and speak directly to you in a way that's meaningful. And that's got to be more than just having an industries page on my website.

Yeah. And I'll go back to something, you know, early in the underdog Underdog days after I came on, at least, you and I were looking over a client or potential client website and you said, I don't know what these people do. And you go, that's bad, right? Now, if you land on a payroll company's website, like you, you're gonna, this is a payroll company, right? But I, I see it so much at Underdog. One of, you know, of course strategy is something that we try to help with. We don't, to some degree, if people come to us and say, I want this thing build, make me a graphic, make a social calendar, whatever it may be. Yes, we're going to do that, but like, we want to help drive results. And so strategy is a big part of what we do. So I'm thinking of one client we work with right now in particular who has kind of two very separate branches of their business, but focus is something that they've been working on a lot in each of those businesses. Kind of two businesses under the same company, do two very, very different things. And they, in conjunction with us, realized like we are way too broad here. You know, we do, you know, let's say for example, it's software development. Okay, well, my goodness, how— that is a lot, right? And so if you're thinking about a cold email campaign, think about the difference between a cold email campaign that says, hey buddy, we do software development. Would you like some? You know, basically. Versus, hey, we're, um, an official partner of this huge CRM that millions of people use. Here's what we've done in the past. Here's what we can do for you. Do you need staffing to do this, right? There's a— and I'm being very broad with those examples, but which one resonates more, right? Or when I go to their website, can I tell what they do, you know, for—

I like that you hit them with a buddy in the cold email. Do you want to hit them with a chief in the, like, PS, chief, if you sign up Yeah, yeah.

You and I talk about this a lot. Like, what is the worst one of those that you can be called? I think chief is rough.

Chief is up there. Bud is definitely like aggressive. Like if you hit me with a bud, it's like, are we squaring up right now? This is interesting.

This is happening. But the other arm of the business, you know, was again, a very different type of business. They had one like really great integration with a really big company to where they just weren't leveraging that relationship in the right way through their outreach. And so they were kind of focused on all these other things and eventually let's focus on this one integration because under that, nested under that, you've got a huge audience who already knows this person, this company you're integrated with, go for that. And man, we, we went to that on cold outreach and it's kind of cheating. Like it's cold outreach from who you're talking to, but you're able to mention that integration and they go, okay, cool. And we have seen phenomenal results with that. So that's absolutely the case for once you find your business to focus on, like find a niche in that business, address that one, attack that one first. And then if you want to go branch out and have some fun with some other things, from those same customers, other things they need or might want, then go for it.

Oh, and it's like we talked about before, ELF customers, right? Easy, lucrative, fun. I mean, I just Googled while I'm over here, like, why can't you offer that product or service to State Farm agents? There are 19,000 State Farm agencies in the United States. Like, people think these niches are so small when they niche down and so limiting. But the power of focus, man. I mean, and then when we talk about the valuation side of it, there's two levers on valuation. There's the value that my customers will pay. So right now I'll give you a good example. We're looking for a new CPA and we're looking for one that has experience with PEOs. There's only 500 PEOs in America. So there can't be that many CPAs that have experience with them, right? So now I've got, I know right out the jump that I'm going to pay a premium for this CPA. They're going to be more per hour than my current CPA, but I'm paying for that industry expertise. So I don't have to explain the basics, right? So there's the value to me as a customer is we've hit, you know, it's like the difference between hiring somebody with no experience or hiring somebody with some experience. You're paying the premium for the person with experience and you know that when you post the job. And so same thing happens with your vendors and partners is am I going to pay the premium for the experience? And, you know, more often than not, people are opting in. And so now you've got that compounding value that you're able to charge, which is gonna help you to get higher margins and help to grow a better, more sustainable, faster growing business with higher EBITDA, which gives you a higher multiple valuation at time of exit. So there's a huge, huge argument. And this is the reason why so many people are saying to focus. But I think like we alluded to early on, there's this path where they diverge, where you finally realize like, oh, hey, we've been taking a ton of shots on goals. We've taken on 500 different customers in 50 different industries. And then, ooh, we just realized there's a honey hole over here. And it's time to explore this, or it's time to, you know, we've made pushes into different industries over the years. DentalOne is a good example. Like I bring up that example, people a little bit tongue-in-cheek all the time because again, like I tried, I did not try. We made a pretty substantial push for 6 to 12 months to see how deep we could get in dentists and we got 30, 40 of them and we kind of stalled out after a while. And then it was like, you know, we realized they don't answer cold calls and the referral channels only go so far. And the American Dental Association is, you know, kind of limits what 30 or 40 of the states can do in terms of who they can partner with and through their statewide ADA. And so we like, we went down paths. But you've got to make the push, you've got to take the shot on goal to know whether or not you should focus on the thing.

Yeah. And I think, you know, within— I don't know if people know this— within Underdog Digital, we have kind of another— what would you call that— branch offshoot of that, Underdog Sports.

Well, why business unit? I, I gotta— you gotta make it sound professional, call it a business unit, Chris.

Business unit. Yes, we have another business unit off of Underdog Digital, Underdog Sports. And why did we create that? Well, when you and me and Karen were all talking, like, realized we've got, like, everybody has a sports background here, right? Like, in some form or fashion. Like, you were a better athlete than me in high school, but I know a lot about sports because that has what I've been a sports fan my entire life. And my full-time job has been to cover sports. So I know how parents think, how a lot of the brands think. Like, I know a lot of people in the space. Karen obviously has a lot of background background, you know, in golf with marketing. And so like everybody has a sports background, but we also know marketing and sales and all those different things. And you know what, what we have found, and I think that's another area where Underdog is going to continue growing in the next couple years, is specific sports-branded clients. Think about it, unless you're like the New York Knicks, you know, they're going to hire whoever, some huge, huge agency, PR agency, they've got in-house people to do marketing, whatever. But if you're just a smaller to medium-sized, like, sports brand, a tech company, whatever it may be, apparel company, product company, you know, you can go to an agency and interview 10 of them and probably— not trying to be rude— like, most of them not going to know a lot about sports, haven't really worked in sports.

You calling them a bunch of nerds? Is that what you said? Are you saying Underdog's competitors— are you on record right now saying every Underdog Sports competitor are a bunch Nerds.

Let's, let's get crazy. Yes, that is, that is exactly what I heard.

I just wanted to quantify that. You heard it here first, folks.

So, you know, so when you talk to us, yes, we are an agency, right? We have sales marketing background, but we also know the sports language. And so that's something that our clients have really, really liked. And again, some of those client relationships have just come from conversations like, here's my product, what do you think? Okay, I think this. Have you ever thought about this? And oh, could you do that for us? Right? Like, it just kind of grows organically. So that's been a really good fit in that kind of small area, that business unit, you know, that I think will continue to grow.

Yeah, I agree. I'm going to wrap up. I'm going to tell, you know, it's interesting. I told this anecdote. My poor daughter on the way to school has to get all the business advice she doesn't want. She's never asked for any of this. She has heard all of it. But Chris, oh man, she was practicing a talk the other day at the house that she's got to give for a class. And I told her, I was like, you know, anytime I'm giving a talk, I'll usually, if it's online and it's a webinar, something, I put it right up here on top of my monitor. I'll tape up there, I'll write slow, like, because we almost always rush, right? Especially like you want to get through the content, you forget things, you just start talking fast when you get nervous. And I'll be dipped if she didn't have in her lap this morning on the way to school her printed out, uh, talk that she's got to give with the word slow written across the top. Look at that, she heard something, man. She's 14 and she heard me.

Proud dad moment.

Yeah, I mean, look, 14 has been a struggle, brother. You're not far. The— you get two of them though. Yeah. So there's a book, Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland, and they talk about this story of a ceramics teacher who divided his class into two groups. So there was a quantity group that would be graded solely on the amount of work they produced over the course of the semester. 50 pots equals an A, 40 pots equals a B, etc. And then there was a quality group that only needed to produce one single perfect pot to get an A. So they had all semester to make one pot perfect versus the other group just had to make a bunch of pots, right? At the end of the semester, they get their grades or whatever, but the best work out of both groups came almost entirely from the quantity group because they were busy cranking out the pots, learning from their mistakes, and just improving and iterating throughout instead of theorizing and massaging and trying to make one thing the best thing they could make it. They were taking those shots on goal over and over again. And so they got the quality from the quantity, the repetition, the iteration, the reps, the shots on goal, we're building the skills and ultimately leading to the breakthroughs they needed to get focused and understand at the end, like, hey, now here's what perfection can look like. Now let's double down and work towards that. So I think, you know, if nothing else, I joked, I was like, Chris, can you see my shirt? I'm wearing my hustle shirt here today. You know, hustle's become a negative word in today's society. I think you can hustle all over your life. Like Chris and I talked about earlier, like you can hustle at being a great dad. You can hustle at being a great coach. You can hustle at being a great teammate at work. You can hustle out of work when the day is over so that you can go do those things. You can hustle to church. You can hustle to your Bible in the morning. It's not a bad word, y'all. But appreciate it, Chris. Any parting wisdom for the people?

I do have something, hopefully real quick, that, that you just— you just triggered something in my mind. You know, I, I think you were talking earlier about is there like a gene for entrepreneurs, right? I kind of think so. I don't think everybody's meant to be an entrepreneur, and And I think that there's something in people like— I won't put myself in the same category as you. I haven't started, you know, a zillion.

Yes, you are, bro. That's why we're thick as thieves.

Right? That's right. But what we do think, like, if you'd go talk to entrepreneurs, a lot of us think alike. Like, you will be like, that guy's kind of like me, right? Not everybody, but there's some common themes. And I think there's also an intuition, right? There's an intuition to start something. There's sometimes an intuition to get out of something if it's not networking, everybody talks about data. Like, yeah, data is why you may start something or stay in it or get out of it. But there's also just like that innate, like intuition. And I was listening to a podcast earlier, had nothing to do with sales and marketing, but is a security expert. And he, you know, they gave the example of dodgeball players, professional dodgeball players. They showed them a frozen photo in the game and they gave two separate groups separate amounts of time to say, okay, if you were playing in the game, what shot would you take? You know, and one group had to say it instantly. The other group got to think about it for longer and exclusively the group that made the quick decision, the intuition decision made the better play in the game. If you would have actually gamed it out. And so the point of that is like, there's an intuition to this thing, you know, where starting something, stopping it, knowing when to get out. About like the example you gave from Peter Levels, like I'm sure he had some data behind why he started those businesses, but also just like intuition of like, I should try this. And he went for it and he found success.

Man, there's so much in there that we could keep rolling on. It's like people are also just, you know, like they're worried about what other people think or being embarrassed. Like you fail, like you said, I failed with a business line that I was promoting on this podcast. You think that it feels awesome to know that, to like, I pushed to my peers, like, you should join Founder Circle and then ended up shutting it down after 6 or 8 months or whatever it was. Like, you know, I really just don't care because it wasn't a great line of business for me and it wasn't really serving anything. And so it was time to move on. It didn't have the PMF that I'd hoped for. But yeah, tons of different directions we could take that. Appreciate you joining me as always, brother. And thank you all for tuning in. If you made it this far, you know what to do. If you've ever made it this far in an episode, you've got to hit subscribe. You've got to make sure you follow along. We take all this time to create this content for you, and the least you can do is make sure you follow around so the next time you get notified when we do. Appreciate you. Have a blessed day.