$100M Sales & Marketing Advice In 71 Mins (Full Masterclass)
Matt Ryder and Nick Fisher discuss sales and marketing strategies for business growth, covering marketing conviction, advertising tactics, brand building, and sales training. They share practical advice from their experience in digital marketing and business scaling.
In this video, I talk with a guy called Nick Fisher. This is a really cool podcast if you're a business owner, a sales rep or a marketer. I have met a lot of people in my time in the business world and I have met very few that I would consider myself equivalent to me in how they approach things, look at things, break things down and analyze how business, sales, marketing and everything that works. Nick runs a business called New Reach Education and he owns brands like by Pace Moreby, Russell Brunson and a bunch of other things. Astro Flipping, all these big brands. They do over $100 million a year. We talk for well over an hour about all things sales, market, a business and about some of the nuances that you can only get when you spend an awful lot of money on ads and you've sold hundreds of millions of dollars in product and services. So if you like that kind of content and you want to hear some very, very high level insight from someone who I deeply respect and it's also on YouTube and I'll drop his stuff down below, but make sure you stay all the way through. And there's also a document that we're going to put together or we went over and you can comment down below to say I want the doc and then we'll give it to you. All right, guys, enjoy the video because it's a really good one. Hey guys. What'? Matt, coffees for closers here with Nick Fisher. But Nick's a really smart guy, you know, he's a, you know, personification of weaponized autism and. Right. And we're going to talk some stuff today. So how's it going, buddy?
Dude, it's going well. Yeah. I specifically remember both of us nerding out over needing to figure out the exact speed delete and how everyone else just measures it improperly and that was the only ones who knew how to measure it properly. It's a completely normal conversation.
Exactly. They don't get it, man. It's like, you know, it's like the meme of that, like, dude, like kind of doing these ones that chick. It's like you don't, you know, you don't get it. Yeah, yeah. So give us a run through, man. You were like with Sam Ovens for a long time, right. And you were sort of there as he kind of ascended, you know, and now he's better than all of us as a portfolio company and you know.
Yeah, I mean, Sam is just, he's a genius. But yeah, 10, it's 10 years ago now. I just Posted an old clip from me and him 10 years ago. Yeah, teaching business because Godsey, Iman Godsey who was a teenager when he joined our Mastermind, just bought consulting.com so made me feel old mainly. But that is where roughly I got my start. I was director of marketing at a company called Clever Investor who sold real estate info before that. And then me and Sam started consulting.com, launched that did really well. Still has a legacy to this day which I'm very proud of. And then from there I left and started New Reach of which the first few brands were Astro Flipping and then with Pace, which is our biggest brand in Pace is absolutely savage and crushing things right now. Years later and then credit stacking and subsequently now fast forward. We have at least 30 different companies that I have at least some piece of ownership in. Our brand is. Our model is similar to Hormozi. It's a holding company model where we take a piece of equity and partner with an expert.
Guys sort of do the doing more though, don't you? Like it's more like this consulting and more like hey, like why don't you stop doing the things that you hate and suck at and then we'll do all those things because we love them and are good at them.
Correct. I would fancy us a startup studio I suppose where we're doing all the grunt work. We're just asking the expert to be the expert. And then we have some SaaS brands that you talked about as well like Dial OS, which is not a dialer IO competitor. You've done such a job, Matt, of selling everyone dialer IO of which we're about to switch over to as well. People are like why would I need both? Both seem like they're dialer. I'm like dang, I should just rename our software which is just like analytics Intell. So we have a few of those SaaS plays as well in the portfolio but it's primarily people who are selling their expertise and we are particularly good at what I would consider now like a mid ticket price point. We sell things for anywhere between 3 to $12,000 with a high ticket sales floor.
Okay, that's amazing. So what got you into like consulting.com like what was the journey from there? Like were you in university, decided that, you know, that wasn't for you? Like what's the sort of origin story?
Yeah, a little bit before that I was an accountant by trade because I told me that no one hires marketing majors which I think that is actually still true. They have a Hard go. But I always wanted to be in marketing. That was my passion. I had an internship that turned into a job at Apple in marketing. And that's when I started to kind of acquire some of the skills slash brainwashing, slash like cult like community stuff that Apple preaches that I had my first hand in. And then from there I sort of was self taught ads. I was learning from people online and I had a bunch of crappy clients that sold like MLM stuff. Nice. It was making like $100 a month times, you know, five or six clients. So yeah, it was, it was going really well. And then I was just in this online mastermind with this guy named Cody Sperber. He comes along, he's looking for a director of marketing. I apply, thinking I'm qualified. I'm like 23 years old at the time. He was like, good try kid. That's, that's not gonna work. We got 30 people more qualified. So I did what most anyone would do is I just showed up at his company and told him I'll be in Phoenix tomorrow. Booked a flight, showed up and I was like, I would like to interview. And he was like, okay, that's, that's fine. Somehow he said yes. And then I hustled my way in. So that started. He pushed me to be great those first two years of being director of marketing. There I met my now business partner next door here, Josiah Grimes. Who, how I met Pace and Jamil and I didn't work with them as business partners right away, but they were in that ecosystem down here in Phoenix that I moved to. So from there, how I got to consulting.com though is me and Sam Ovens were just originally JV partners and the first version of consulting accelerator. At the time this was like 2015, 2016. He was really blowing up. It's just Sam Ovens samovens.com and he messaged me the day he bought consulting.com and he was like, this is my vision for it. And pitched me on the vision. Would you want to come out here and start it with me? And it was a big decision, but I said, I was like, yes, let's do it. So I moved out there from Phoenix to New York. We started consulting.com, then moved the company to LA eventually. The early days. I was there for the early days of school. I was there when we bought school.com too. And we were kind of parlaying all of the consulting profits into to school to fund it, which was super interesting. And I watched him hire the first round of developers there and the talent and people were so confused as why Sam, like this 27, 28 year old millionaire kid could self bootstrap school.
Yeah.
They're like, we raise any money? He's like, nope, no, I know how to smell.
There's a difference. Yeah, yeah.
His, his typical charm was maybe lost on them at that time, but he did it like I wouldn't bet against that guy for anything. So eventually, yeah, just consulting.com and being a guru became less of a focus for him. Me, myself, I was really interested in all these niche experts that were coming up.
Yep.
I, I went off on my own after those two years. Started the Gaxon and New Reach and then. Yeah, now the rest is history.
Yeah. I met Josiah at a Brunson event.
That's right.
And like we, I didn't, I didn't know like who he was but we started geeking out about sales stuff because like I presented and he watched my presentation, I think. And then I was going over like what I was doing running that company, running seventh and then we started going over like all the metrics and what we were doing and what was working and what wasn't working. It was good by that. But I sort of haven't, I haven't spoken to him since. But yeah, no, he's like, knows his shit. I can, I can see why you guys get along.
Yeah, exactly. He's, he was, he's a unique breed because he had the ability. He was the first star of astrophoting. He was like our original star student. Clever investor too. I used to, like I said we would. He would speak on stage as just like an example of our methodology going right. Eventually he partnered with Cody. Eventually he went off and started doing deals and when I published him for astrofopping, him and Jamil were doing 50 and Hunter, who's the third partner were doing like 50 to 80 house flips in Arizona per month. So clearly the market leader. And they were the biggest real estate flipper at the time.
Yeah, massive.
Maybe the US like as far as volume maybe not as far as like obviously transaction volume. There's way bigger people. But as far as deal volume goes, they were number one.
Yeah, I trained a few. I remember once we had a whole bunch of the astro flipping guys inside of seven levels. Like Oscar and Tyshawn. Yeah, yeah.
That was like that the first wave of sales team. I actually didn't know that and I think I told you when we first met I had actually surveyed all of our sales reps and asked Them of any sales training, what one was the most impactful for you or do you credit for your success? Any PQ was the clear winner or favorite.
Yeah, it's a phenomenal methodology. Yeah, exactly. I was doing a ton of the training was when, like I was really involved and so was Jeremy. Like, so you. It was sort of like in that time where like, you know, the founders of the company were super heavily involved in like delivery. And so those guys kind of came along and I remember I was speaking to Oscar and Paishon. I sold Oscar. I have the sales call. I broke that dude down. I made him cry. I wouldn't cry. So it's a good one. So yeah, it was good. But so, you know, something interesting because, you know, I think the high ticket space is great, but I think a lot of people call themselves marketers and they're sort of not, you know, I think that they're media buyers or they're, you know, like, essentially like product line engineers in some way, you know. But like, marketing is such a broad term. Like, what do you consider, like, to be marketing? Like, like, like where would you consider, like your expertise? Is it around, like the brand building is around like the vision of like the acquisition process or.
That's a really, really great question, Matt. No one has ever asked me, like, I. If I'll try to be simple and then we'll verge, we'll get really complicated or as dense as we need to. So when I marketing, I break it up into two subcomponents is getting attention and retaining attention. And if you want to get fancy, then directing attention to the next step in whatever process you want to go, those are like the three subcomponents, let's say. But as far as like, what I think the overarching principles that make someone great at marketing or like make them a marketer. I always believe it starts with conviction. It's the first lesson I learned at Apple is we started an exercise where we divide the whiteboard into half here. And they go, all right, this is day one of the training. We have learned nothing about Apple. They go, hey, guys, for the next three hours until lunch, we're going to list an exhaustive list of everything that you have ever heard negative about Apple. Anything you heard people say they hate about Apple, anything. It's pretty much exactly what you would not expect to happen is just, okay, we're going to start with negative leading questions or negativity. And you just go. And you're like, cool. Can't play games on a PC like Processor isn't as good this, that and the other. And you just list it out. And they're like, okay. Huh? Is that it? Okay, let's just keep going. And then you just go until they can't anymore and then they stop and they go, okay, great. After lunch we're going to go through this one by one and I'm going to explain to you why each one of these things isn't true. And we're like, whoa, this is crazy. So they do that for the next day. So they teach you how to write. Objection. Handle. Right from the get go, you're just.
Yourself essentially handling yourself. Yeah, right.
Let's get this out of the way. And that's a lesson that I have taken with me everywhere and I still do with the team too. If I get any sense of inkling that the team has lost conviction. And sometimes people lose conviction of themselves, like sure as like and we call it imposter syndrome. But really it's just loss of conviction because normally if you have that conviction, you can deal with the haters or anything else. So it's a great exercise and it gets the team to rally behind, like, wow, there's nothing that there's no one anyone can say that I can't reframe or handle in any sort of way. So I start there is marketing out a conviction. If nothing else just feels natural. You don't have to think about breaking into like getting attention, retaining attention direct to a cta. It becomes way less heady and way more just natural. And you've probably seen it too. Like reps who hit the phones day one and they have nothing but conviction. They have no adherence to the script. In fact, it's like they do okay, exactly. Because they end up in this frame. They're just like. It's sort of like an APQ thing where they're just like, wait, I'm just confused as to is to like why you're just not doing this. You're just like, you're making excuses. I did this. Like clearly it works. I don't get what I'm missing here. And they basically just call them out for just being a dummy or sort of accusing them of lying and they do it out of conviction. So that to me, marketing lesson number one, that everyone moves past getting attention and teaching people to like viral hook formulas and how to hook and what you do in the first two seconds, that's all tactical changes. And it's becoming more of a commodity in today's market where especially tiktokers, they're really getting good and the copycat rate is increasing. So I'm trying to lean into things that are just always, always going to be true. Conviction will never get out of style.
Yeah. You know, it's funny, I get a lot of, like, young sales coaches that will reach out to me and like, daddy, how. How do you build a sales coaching? And I'm like, I tell them the same thing. I go, like, you have no chance if you're gonna try and, like, hop trends.
Yeah.
I go, like, you just have to figure out what your value prop is and then just never change. Like, if that's your value prop, that's your value prop. Like, my brand has grown consistently over years because, like, I talk in a.
Very particular way and sell style and your. And your YouTube style, it's. It's brilliant. It's different. Brilliant. And you.
Yeah, thank you. It also is very not conducive with virality, you know, which is. I think it's a very good thing because a brand like mine, that's expensive. Like, everything I do is somewhat expensive. Like, if you want consulting, it's expensive. If you want, you know, the dialer is expensive. My sales agency was expensive. You know what I mean? Then it's like, I don't need to speak to everybody. I just want to speak to the right people. And so I've always been super guarded with, you know, like, I think, oh, you should do this. It's like, no, I do things the way I do them because it speaks to the people in which I need to speak to. Like, I want to speak to you. I want to speak to Josiah. I want to speak to. You know what I mean? I want to speak to the people. And they go, oh, like, I can see that that guy knows what he's talking about, and that's all I care about. And hopefully over time, that that grows. But if it doesn't, I couldn't give a. Like, I don't want to be well known under any circumstances. You know what I mean? Yeah, no. You know, but, you know, I think, like, you know, I was able to build an agency to two and a half million dollars a month with zero dollars in advertising, you know, and it's like, that's built through like a, you know, a content, like a very unique marketing plan that's designed to drive pure authority in a very particular niche subset of. Because that niche subset will pay me 500 grand a month. You know, like, I had. I had businesses paying me that. So I only need, like, a few of Them, you know, and I think in today, like what I, what I've seen anyway over the years of being in high tech, because I'm 41, you know, I've been in this space for a while is like the, the cottaging of industry. You know, like used to be you'd hire a marketer and you'd get you full stack media buy, funnel, build, copyright, this. And then it was like, you know, then it was like, okay, well now we have media buyers, funnel builders, copywriters. We have copywriters for email and we have copywriters for this and we have copywriters for this and we have copywriters for this. You know, and then we've got funnel builders. But like, and then the funnel builder won't take responsibility for like conversion because it was a sales copy.
Yep.
You know, and it's sort of like this, this, this cottage. But like how have you, you're someone who's been in the marketing space way deeper, way longer than what I have. Like how, how have you guys as a large entity spending lots of money. Right. Being able to maintain I guess one, profitability, but two, like not having a maddening increase in like headcount to atone or account for these like incredibly niche subsets of marketing that have popped up over the last say three to five years.
Yeah, no, that's, that's a really good question too. Cottage in is the right word and just increased specialization as the industry matures. Because digital, when it was new, you had to wear a lot of hats just because. And you could be a lot sloppier too, but you could also. And the benefit is you could be a lot faster. So now these specializations exist which create silos in the actual kind of workflows at scale. But at the end of the day that really just affects, I feel like a mature sort of company like ours because you can, you can do everything or all these digital channels exist, but the same way that traditional channels used to have that same sort of cottage in their specialization. So it's just really that the digital marketing space has matured, but those like that sort of habit or pattern existed way before us. There were people who voice actors for radio that you had to hire and then you had the media buyer who placed the ad on the radio. Then you had the actual, you know, what would you call it? I don't even know the term for it, but the broker that you would go through in order to buy those things. So there was always, I've actually never.
Thought of it in that way it's sort of like, I guess because I wasn't exposed to it, but it makes sense that like as it matures it silos itself. Do you think that leads to more effectiveness or more efficiency or do you feel like it sort of is a bit of a wash and it's just going to happen regardless?
I feel like it happens because you're trying to squeeze these efficiency gains. Because the cost of advertising is probably the catalyst to all that happening is though, because the cost goes up. You have people who want to micro specialize and try to find these efficiency gains when a generalist can't find them across the whole board or it becomes too hard. So I'm guessing that's why it happens. It does happen here too. We have moved from people like myself who were kind of director of marketing generalists who had their hands in a bunch of different pots to specialized director of mediavine to director of Creative Production. It's just kind of like I said, it's the maturity of the digital marketing sphere, the algorithmic marketing maturing. So it is what it is. But you'll find like, you'll find the same sort of generalist attitude among emerging channels still. Yeah, like TikTok, there's not that degree of specialization. It's very rare where someone's like, I'm specifically just a TikTok media buyer or just I do graphic design for.
You're broke.
Right. You can still find it. And then as the channel matures, people try to get these efficiency gains. But how we personally stayed ahead of it is one of our key, like core values is non stop at our company. And it's the attitude of incrementality or getting not just 1% better every day, but I just aim for 20% better year over year. Because if you can get 20% better or more efficient in advertising year over year, you actually hedge against the CPM rise. CPM is just a fancy word for the cost it takes to show a thousand people an ad. So if a CPM is $20, that means I gave $20 to Facebook and they showed my ad to a thousand people. And if that gets 20% more expensive year over year, you're looking at, let's call it $24 the next year to show the same a thousand people that ad. So you know that you have to get that much better every year and then you can chunk that up into every single week. And we look at it week over week. We're like, what ads are working? Okay, can we get them to work More so it's a refiner's mentality that I think built this company that still exists to this day, where it's not just throwing stuff at the wall. In the beginning, that's the only thing you can do because you have nothing to refine. But as soon as you throw something against the wall and it works, we're recycling that, bringing it back and be like, can we make a better hook? Can we create a better image? When you are in that position early on and you have this huge margin, if you constantly act like you have to refine while you still have this margin, the margin maintains. Even though our margins have dropped since the heyday of, let's call it 2020-2022, when we were operating, I mean, that.
Was, that was a wild time.
You know, those days, people are like, those days aren't coming back. And I'm like, well, they aren't. But the same spirit that created those margins can still still exist. So even though, like, I remember Cole running in those days, he had like 80 profit margin on his info business, we had like 60.
So now we were charging 25 as a sales agency. 30, you know, I mean, like, it's madness. Like, I would never agree to pay that.
I know, yeah. So there's, there's been a maturation and a saturation potentially of this industry. But yeah, I still love it. I still think that there is a need for curated knowledge even more so than there was.
And then it doesn't seem to be shrinking to me. It seems to be there is a consolidation of like, I think, you know, the bottom, you know, is going away. I feel like, you know, there's some of those, you know, there was a lot of nefarious actors and like I was a part of a lot of offers. Like at Sales sniper, I had 165 different offers come through that we said yes to. Right. And then I had, you know, a lot more that we said no to. And you know, some were fantastic and some were like, we found out later we're not fantastic. Right. And there were some crazy high volume ones, you know, dudes spending hundred thousand plus a day on advertising, you know, where we had 45 reps doing stuff. And there was like, we had one called yield farming, which was the most expensive farming.
I went through that.
Yeah. So, yeah, like I was the one that engineered the whole sales environment for that. Right. I went from 0 to 3 million a month in six months. It was madness. I've never seen anything like it. Right. But I mean, when your VSL says Mr. Money Printer, you know. Right, exactly. You know, so it's crazy but you know there is, that was a really, really weird time where there was this like converging of need want markets, you know. And it was just, you know everyone would had that Covid stimulus money and you know people. It was just weird. It was, you know, it was lots and lots and lots of people who decided to contract went away. Right. And the people who decided to double down and go well shit, this is the time to run. Like people were in the industry as fundamentally shifted and shaped and the key players were totally rotated out.
Totally. Yeah. Like there are certain ones that have staying power that last through those industries. Like you saw Tony Robbins make a pivot to digital just because of the environment changed. Yeah, like it definitely brings in a new guard. I personally love like the, the worst thing for the info product industry and why people are like oh it's, it's, it's too saturated or it's flatlining or anything else is usually just like a stable and good economy where everyone's job is safe and there's no sort of environmental triggers that make people either scared or want people make want people to change. So I'm always like I'm all for, I just want to see the like the, either the economy booming or everyone in fear and the economy tanking. Both of those conditions like rapid variance and the economic changes makes for a ton of info opportunities. The worst is when people get like feel safer, let's call it complacent in their day to day role and they don't want to make a change. If they don't want to make a change, they're usually not open to hearing.
It's sort of like the, you know, it's like futures trading with people's futures.
It is. That's a great, great comparison. Yeah.
Yeah. It's like you know, you, you, you, you ride the highs and you ride the lows but when it's just sort of, you know, everything's in the middle, it's like well you know, I guess we gotta, you know advertising gets more expensive and people are just a little bit harder to nudge in a direction. You know, if you, if you were to look at like different, you know because I can relate it back to sales. Like you know if you look at like sales as an, as an industry I would say like you know there are certain sales that are looked upon as you know, harder or like, you know, if you walk into a room like real estate agents for example like, you know, salespeople, you know, this is a kitchen. Yep. All right. Well done. You know. Right. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Like, if you were to kind of like rate like not the whole thing, but like, what do you think is I guess, the most difficult or technically demanding marketing, I guess, you know, specialty. And what would be the one that's like the, I won't say that's the like, like the stupidest. What's the one that like somebody can get someone as a good bang for buck? Right. There's one that's going to be like, you need to get a very, very uniquely talented individual. And one is like, oh yeah. Like you can pretty much get most people to do that and you'll be fine. Copyrighted because I feel like media buying.
Used to be media buying. It did, but now it's becoming more commoditized. So anything, anything that's algorithmic in its nature is getting a little bit more commoditized and easier. But despite like, people might think that copywriting has become a commodity. But if anything else, like all these AI models generally write stuff to the lowest common denominator. So it's like they're good enough, but so it replaces a lot of bad and senior copywriters. But still like the aces are still worth such a huge multiple because just offer creation and the words that you choose still matter. So, so, so much that I still think that that's where you get the best leverage in the future. Maybe there's some sort of AI enabled data scientist copywriter hybrid where you get the best leverage. But I do think we're coming to this era where instead of you have like quote unquote, you have this idea of like 100x developers who are 100x better than your average developer because of the code leverage. You could apply that same sort of thing to AI enabled copywriters who are producing at such a level of output, but it's at a level of output that is consistently normally a 10x that they're getting 100x overall efficiency or effectiveness gain and what they're able to produce. So I do think we're headed for that. What I think is, I don't know if this was your question, but to me, I don't think it was. But to me, like the marketing Olympics, not the degree of difficulty is the political elections, like I always see, they're not maybe the most up to date tactically. But oftentimes when you get at least into the US presidential elections, like I think 2016 and Cambridge Analytica informing Trump of those decisions, and then usually see some really innovative stuff come out of those camps. Every sort of election cycle that you can sort of take. So whether or not they have the most talented marketers, they definitely have the deepest pockets and they have to deploy it in a tight way that even Trump on this election cycle, the way he was able to use certain influencers.
And clippers, podcasts and stuff like that.
And they geared it in such a strategic way right before the election, was very methodical and really interesting. So you can learn a lot from that because the stakes are just so high. They have to be really precise. Some of the best email swipes I've ever gotten, just some of the placements that they consider, I think are really interesting. So that. And then the thing that I think is just like the biggest waste of money right now or commodity, anyone probably that's hiring. Ooh.
What do you think about, like, do you feel like that like the, the, the. The funnel page itself these days makes a huge difference?
No.
Or are you seeing pretty consistent, like, if it's beautiful or if it's like just a fucking white thing with a video and an opt in, like, it works the same.
Yeah, it pretty much works the same, especially in the biz op space. Like, there's something to be said if you're a graphic design course selling all crappy click funnels, like, but in general, like, that has never really mattered. And even though people's design sensibilities have increased or just like things have gotten better, it still doesn't really matter much. I've never seen. So wasting time redesigning a funnel just has always been a bad kind of spend on money. Just.
Just make sure you opt in is above the fold.
Yeah.
So many people who spend ten grand a day and you have to scroll down to opt in. I'm like, are you. What are you doing?
They're just hurting their conversion rate.
Do that. Like, probably double your leads.
Like, yeah, opt in above the fold. Make sure it loads fast. Make sure the headline is consistent, congruent with the ad or the message that brought in there. All those things will get you a way better lift than designing that page and making it look good.
I literally did a video the other day on YouTube and it was like, like metrics, right? And those are the three things I said for funnels. I said above the fold, fast load time, and that there's a consistent messaging between the two. If you do that, I go, you're probably not going to be horrific.
We did not talk about that beforehand. That just comes from experience. And like, I've, I've tested everything you could on a landing page at this point.
Yeah, like when you spend a lot of your own money, you know, like at 7 level, I think we spent, you know, we spent a lot of money on ad for advertising. And it was like, you know, you start to see stuff. Also, I used to own gyms and I did my own media, Mine. This is way back in the day, right? Like when you could edit ads that were live, right, and have them, like not go back into review. So I used to like submit ads, like, come to the gym for fun and fitness, and it would get approved and I would edit it to like guaranteed 10, 10 kilo weight loss.
I remember those days. Photoshopping his own before and after ads.
Yeah, exactly. It was like me and then like a ripped black guy before and after, you know, it's just like. Yeah, it was, it was, it was a wild time. But like, you know, it was funny, like what, what I used to do. And I, and I had agencies and I hired them and they could never figure it out, but I used to split male and female. And then this is kind of some of the advertising stuff that we did early on in seventh level as well, which is like, because I was very in control of some of the media buying stuff, right? Because, like, I was very like involved in it. And I was like, hey, this one I used to do at the gyms. I don't know if it'll work, but we can try it. And so I would go, men, women. And then when I was doing like running like conversion ads for men, I would be running awareness ads for women. And then I would flip it, right? And so we would just run it back like that. So I was like, they were only ever getting advertised to one, like once every other month, but they were getting value the month leading up, right? And so it was a geographical location because it was obviously physical location. So I would run like, I had like blog articles and videos that I would run, like just like sponsored videos, which are so cheap. And then it was like all about getting bigger arms or like, hey, these are things that you're doing in the gym that are wrong, that are stopping you from being able to grow your arms. You know what I mean? For girls, it was like, you know, hamstrings, butt. And it was just, you know, all information stuff with like free downloads. And like, I found that that was able to keep in a, in a location where there was 57 gyms in the same suburb. I was able to keep extremely low cost per leads. Right? And then what we. And then what we did early on in the days is no one there would even know we did that anymore because it was. That whole team was gone. But I rotated around the country, right? We put the country into different, like, slithers, right? Also because, like, the west and the east have slightly, you know, red states and blue states, like, have quite different wants, you know what I mean? So, like, I had like a five key factors thing that I would look at. And then I looked at like, housing prices, interest rate, consumer competence index as well, and like, a few other factors. And then like, election result, like, like, you know, so like after an election, like after Trump won, double down on the red states and ignore the blue states for, like, at least six weeks. They're all angry and upset, you know, whereas all the red states do on these ones. Like, and happy people buy and sad people don't. Right. Just as a general rule.
Never thought about it that simply. So, like, they'll even want to get into shape because Trump won and they're just happy.
They're just like, fucking America, you know? They're just happy, you know. And so we ran that pretty hard. And I was like, hey, like, I think that, you know, whoever wins, we're gonna have two different campaigns, like, and then we're going to launch the campaign states, like, like, like space specific. But then from there what we would do is we would have a, like a rotating cycle of ads. So we would have a, like, awareness and then conversion, awareness, conversion, awareness, conversion, awareness, conversion, awareness, conversion, like that running around. So that, like, sometimes it would take three to four months to get back to, like, the same ad, the same people again. But they always got, like, they always got awareness advertising, like, leading up to it. And I found, like, that was like, very, very effective at keeping, like, saturation levels low, frequency levels low, obviously, right? And then. And then being able to like, just keep lead awareness really high. So as they came in, like, you just didn't need as many leads because they were constantly getting, you know, like, we were like, building up, I think, like, marketing equity within those areas, you know, And I really like doing things like that. Like, I'm a big fan of lead with value. And then, you know, and then the other thing that we. That I was really tight on was the. I needed to know the amount of people that saw value from us every month compared to the amount of people that we were trying to get to do a conversion Right. And it was like the two. The two circles.
Yeah.
You know, and never shall the two circles touch.
That's interesting.
So it's like how many like Instagram impressions are we getting from like, like organic content or like, you know, like from it can be paid, but value content. How many YouTube, Facebook, yada, yada, yada. And then as long as that number is bigger than the number of pure conversion ad, then like the advertising costs would stay low. But as soon as like that started to blow out, like the roas just went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like that. It was like you could just see it happening and it was really, it was really interesting. So that's why like, I'm such a fan of organic and value LED content. I love lead magnets because I think lead magnets get you to provide value. But you have a really clear value prop to call somebody on.
Yeah.
You know, like you have a. The opener is real specific to that lead magnet. And so it's like, hey, it looks like you downloaded our guide to how can I help?
Yep.
Like it's such a great.
Your permission to reach out.
Yeah, I think like, you know, I think like the thing that I see, especially with a lot of those companies, like that sort of 3 to 500k a month, you know, info space type guys that they have something but like, they're either like, they're missing that like component of, you know, if I want to grow big, I, I have to provide serious value to the marketplace. Otherwise like, I will make less money at triple the revenue than what I do now.
Yes.
You know what, what are the, what are the things that you look for in a brand that are like, ah, that's, that's the one. Like that thing can go. Is it tam, Is it the person itself? Like you know, anyone, you can sell anything, anyone, as long as the person's like good looking enough type thing or.
Yeah, right. Well, attraction does come a part of it. Like if you break it down into like Darwinian, like when we say you have to get attention, you have to retain attention. Attraction is definitely one of the, like one of the key factors. So someone just looking good does help.
That's why I did too.
Well, I, I've always joked about this. There's this, people use it for dating, but there's these looks maxing apps on your phone now that will just scan your face and analyze it for symmetry and beauty. Score and a bunch of other things if you wanted to. I'm not saying you should do this, but if you Want to get better ctr? You just photoshop the face, run it through looks maxer until it's more attractive. And that will just get a better ctr. You'll have a better chance of getting attention if you just look more attractive right off the bat. Yeah, yeah. The unfortunate truth, no one actually teaches that in marketing. They're like, yeah, the way to get a better CTR is you got a, like some sort of viral hook right in the beginning. Or you could just make yourself look better. That that works no matter what you do.
Have you seen boobs?
Exactly. So yeah, yeah.
You know, I always describe advertising like this is how I describe it, right? Like I describe online advertising as the same as billboards and you are driving down the highway and that's you scrolling and you need something that makes you go like that, like, what is it? Yeah, you know, and if it's like, it has to do that and then actually in order for you to keep reading it, it has to actually speak to you in some way, has to be relevant, you know what I mean? And then you've got to place that billboard in the right place. If you place like, you know, a really expensive service in the ghetto, it's probably a poor place to place it, right. If you, if you say to the off ramp that's going into, you know, one of Scottsdale's most expensive suburbs, like, probably the right place to put it. So, like, it's a really good medium because it gives people like a visual representation of like, this is how you know, you need to think of it. And those, those headlines and you know, like people just throw shit out that works. They just don't realize it works.
They don't realize it works. Yeah. Like I always tell people, if you're running ads or just doing organic content at all, you have, let's call it two CTR metrics. You have your CTR all which basically measures your scroll stop. CTR all means I clicked on the image, I clicked on the body copy. Like I clicked and stopped somewhere. I interacted with this ad. But it doesn't mean you click through the landing page. Then you have CTR link click. So really you want to measure the ratio of those two things because if you have like a 15% CTRL and then only 1% click through the landing page, that means you did an incredible job of stopping people. But then they felt clickbaited, right, because the falloff was too high. But if you have something like a 7% CTR all means it wasn't as hooky or it didn't get you to scroll stop, but you got a 2% CTR link click that you had a payoff. Right. You like, you actually made it work, whatever your hook was. So. And then when we're trying to find better performing ads, we're trying to combine the two. We're like, cool, what's our stuff that maxes out on a Ctrl that like, stop the scroll and then can we just actually thread the needle so it's not clickbaity? So it doesn't seem clickbaity. If I was like, you know, this car cures diabetes, people would be like, whoa, okay, I'm in. And then I wonder what he's gonna say next. Well, that's what we thought. Like, the first 10 people that bought this car, magically, their diabetes disappeared. But it was because we had run a promotion with NAD and like they was the first thing they injected after they got the car. So it turns out we can't claim our cars, you know. Yeah, but now I'm into an NAD ad or whatever and I have no idea. NAD cures diabetes. Probably doesn't.
Nick Fisher from New Reach claims that. But.
Right. So we try to think about, okay, can we get them there? Can we make it seem like it's not clickbait? Because people feel misled and they don't like that. The same thing as you pointed out from Congruency from to Lander, same sort of thing. It's like, oh, I feel misled. That was not what I thought I was clicking into. So you just try to optimize these micro KPIs all the way through the funnel and eventually you have something that's performing, you know, two to three times better than what you were performing. Even though all the micro components in itself just were incremental gains.
Yeah. What do you think is the best form of advertising for like a newer business to run? Is it like meta or like what.
Like, is that like meta or YouTube just because they're. They're dominant right now? Like, I could recommend that for pretty much any sort of business that exists and it would be channel one or channel two. But if you want the specific channel that's right for you. I always think in terms of a lot of people are brand forward. I'm very much market. I always think about market first. And there's this great site called sparkturo.com where if I were to go to show you an example for Matt, am I allowed to screen share? I've gone this far without screen sharing.
You can Screen share. Yeah.
Which is really, really hard for me. That's usually how, how I show people anything. So if we were going to visit the keyword lives in the US let's just go to one of our sites. Sub2.com I'm at the sign in Cool. So there's right here. This is how you actually determine it is like use of social network by visitors to your website. So if you have visitors at all, if you're starting a new business, you have nothing. You're going to want to do a keyword search for the thing that you actually sell. But right now I can see our dominant channel is YouTube and even though we're slightly below the US average, I know that starting on meta or like Facebook or YouTube is the move for us and it's going to be the move for a lot of us. And this is usually how I consider channel expansion.
So if I'm so audience rank most at least used. So is that like the percentage of the traffic that you get on your website? So if you got like a, like a code or pics on your website that tracks this.
No, it's not percentage. It's. It's what they have is an actual database of people that follow or visit sub2.com third party data. There might be a first party tool that does this, but it's probably, if you think about it, it wouldn't be in that tool's best interest if it was YouTube or Facebook to say hey actually Facebook's a better channel for you to be on. So I actually like third party tools for this sort of research. What it's actually saying is in no particular order, people that visit sub2.com are most likely to use YouTube over any other channel in the ecosystem. They're 3% less likely to visit YouTube than the US average. However, it's still your dominant channel.
Okay.
And this makes sense because YouTube is huge for anyone who has and how to kind of like offer. All right. When people want to learn long form content just as well on YouTube and it's the biggest social media platform besides TikTok for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. So this makes a ton of sense to me just naturally. And when I think of the channels that are that bring in the most revenue for us it is these three for sure. LinkedIn I'm not sure, might be our fourth.
You guys advertising on LinkedIn or is it more like community based stuff?
It's organic on LinkedIn. We have tried LinkedIn. Things that work as far as paid organic works obviously on any of these channels, songs, you have a coherent strategy. So I would say you want to be there. Reddit, we think about typically second touch or defensive or having students UGC share content as opposed to just organically splattering. Yeah, it's a tough one, right?
Yeah. So it's designed to be the people's platform, right?
Yeah, exactly. So Reddit's a bit different in nature, but the other ones went to distribution of organic content and then these first three were heavily on, on advertising. TikTok, we have at least one of our offers profitable on TikTok, but still sort of emergent threads. And the half cycle, like the half life is really, really short with that. So if they do work, it's just kind of like the content there, it's, it's viral for a blip. Then you're constantly on having to create more. So you just have very little context to. You don't have time. We're known for like long form copy. Long form on YouTube, long form, even ads on Facebook. I don't, I mean, I think short.
Form can widen, but deepening your audience is only going to come from long form can actually decide whether or not like a good buyer. You know, it's like, it's like when people, you know, I remember I was, I was helping this, this guy once and, you know, a lot of the sales were coming from the website and he was like, oh, so we're going to, we're going to, we'll double down and we'll send everyone to the website. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not, we're definitely not doing that. He's like, no. And I was like, no, dude, they just end up there.
Yeah.
That'S just the best, the best leads are just doing a bit of research, but a bit of, they're using the googling machine on the Interweb. They're seeing an ad, they're getting content, they're going to the website. I go, if we start pushing people to the website, mate, like that's going to do absolutely nothing.
Yep.
Like, that's, that doesn't do. That's not how that works.
We'll draw that conclusion. They're like, SEO is working because our website is, you know, our number one sales indicator on like Last Touch conversion. And I'm like, are you running ads? They're like, yes. I'm like, there is way better likelihood. I'm like, look at, look at when you started running ads and see if your website traffic spike because most likely they're seeing the ad not clicking, Googling, you finding the website clicking, then buying. Right. Described.
Yeah. And like do you, are you, are you a first touch or lost touch attribution person? Do you just kind of track it all and then try and see the inferences?
Yeah, we track it. Neither, I'm, I was going to say famous, not famous at all. For Scientific Third, actually my preferred method for high ticket info just because the scientific 30 is basically last touch with a 30 day exclusive. So what it means is that, or rather first 30, I guess is like whatever touch happens first, you have a 30 day exclusive if that lead buys where that channel gets credit. So in Hiros there is that option. You can go first, you can go last, scientific 30 or linear fractional, which means every touch in the journey gets a little bit of credit. So what I would recommend is one of those last two if you're running high ticket info. Typically like most people though, if you just have your choice between first and last, how would choose between those two is your sales cycle. So think about how long someone goes from lead to sale. If someone goes from lead to sale in less than two days on average, you should use first. If someone takes, let's say 15 days on average to go through, you should probably use last. Just because you're gonna have multiple touches in there and, or actually, you know, 15 days is probably a bad example. If they go 45 days on average. Right. That would give good semblance to maybe that last touch actually matters a lot more to get, get them over the line because it just takes so long that that one is pretty important and should be dominant. But really like I said, neither of those is perfect. I don't like either. I prefer scientific 30 where one has an exclusive for that 30 days or as long as your sales cycle is.
It makes sense especially also depending on the like the price point. Right. You know, if you're, you know, if you're a $25,000 product, you know, expecting people to sort of see you for the first time and then buy something within a week is probably pretty stupid. You know, which is where like I have a real problem with like financing because like I think it, I think financing ruins businesses. To be honest, I, I, I haven't seen it go really well for anybody. I had a rule where no more than 12% of revenue could be as a direct result of financing. And we heavily penalize reps for using financing.
I kind of like that too. Where they cap out or you just tell them you can just kind of make it simple. 1 out of 10, like sales you can use financing for. So you use your card wisely, otherwise it doesn't regenerate.
Because I think like it creates a false economy within the sales team because like they start selling it. And like I always teach reps, never ever say, and we have payment plans or financing available. You just say the price and then go, how do you want to proceed? Because then you can start the process right of dropping. But if you say financing available, they go, oh, what are the financing options? Now you're having an inane conversation.
This is ridiculous.
We don't establish that you, we don't know if you need it or want to. It's not a yes, no, it's not an objection. It's a what are your options? Yeah, and then they're going to go, okay, then it's very difficult to reroute that conversation. And so, and also like people start to rely on financing. It's how they pitch and how they do it. Financing is a, financing is a variable metric that has to do with credit score, has to do with like debt to equity ratio, has to do with income and age. Right? And so like these are, you know, if you have like we had it so that we would. I was in this before Finn market kind of went down. I was in direct, I was in really, really close communication with them. And so I was like always in front of when the changes were going to happen. But basically I would have eight demographic excluders from being able to be offered financing because like as soon as they brought in debt to equity ratio, any male over 30 years of age or between 30 and 40, I excluded from like it was like you are not allowed to get financed. So their, their, their funnel was different. So they got, they actually we defaulted for a while to sending them to like the lower ticket because I, we, we split test out like if you hit this, then you go to this sales calendar. This sales calendar, this sales calendar. Because I didn't want people pitching all manner of thing. I wanted guys getting better at pitching like either higher and they can only go like one down, you know. So these guys can pitch this one on this one, this one is this one on this one, this one is just this one, you know. And so like that was a way to sort of like segment out. But we knew that there was certain demographics that they could never get approved. So it's like, well let's just put them in the mid ticket or lower, they're never getting approved for it. And so let's not make that an option for them.
What are those demographics, Matt? You want to state those publicly? The ones that are broken for always?
No, it actually, it was actually mainly debt to equity ratio. Oh, okay. So it was like, basically like the assumption that I made, which is pretty broad, was that if you're a man 30 to 40, right. That's your highest debt leverage state.
Because you just bought a house, most likely.
Is that why you just bought a house and you have young kids?
Yeah, right, that makes sense.
So, like, we just went like, well, that's a. You know, we. We get a lot of people 20 to 30 and a lot of people 40 to 50. So it's like, hey, we're going to take that demographic and we're. We're gonna like, only pitch them mid ticket and lower, you know what I mean? And then we can try and upsell them into the higher ones, but, like, we'll just make it that. And that was during certain times and we would rotate that. I was in touch with finmarket. Like, there was a time where, like, everybody got approved for financing. And I was like, this is weird. And so I called them and I was like, hey, what's going on? They're like, what do you mean? I was like, everyone got approved. Like, I know, it's great. I was like, no, what's happening?
They're like, shouldn't you be happy, sir?
I was like, what's going on? And I go like, what is going on? Don't, don't, don't with me. And she goes, oh, well, you know, I go, did you lose a paper buyer or something? And that was when SVB went down, which is a huge paper buyer, right? Because the way the loans work is that they. They take the loan, take the first payment, and they sell the loan, right? That's how all the loan aggregators work. And they lost their main paper buyer. So there was American Credit Union and svb, right? So it's like Silicon Valley Bank. They were the two that Finn market used. And like, when SVB went down, like, for that week, everyone got approved, right? And I was like, that's weird. And what they were doing is trying to entice another paper buyer with the volume.
Yeah, that's so backwards. I mean, obviously that there's a reason.
Why they went down, right? I was like, this is weird. So I literally, at that point, I cut financing off. As soon as they did that, I was like, no, that's weird. So I cut it off completely. And because I don't like the idea of it, I'm also not a huge fan. And I never allowed anyone gets approved. I just never allowed that because I don't like it. It's fine. But I'm not a big fan.
The road to the sales skills, like, I've seen it firsthand. Two polling calls, same thing as you, is all of a sudden you're supposed to be trained to pitch full price, go sign, then walk them down. Two payments, three payments, form payments, all the way to whatever your max is that goes away. It says like, it's like financing is a magical word track that you can just insert into the script in anywhere. Hey, before I stop you right there.
Yeah.
Now we have financing. So, like, when we get there, no matter what your situation is, you. You can do this. And it's just that bad.
And like, you know, with the. Everyone gets approved. Like, would you sign that loan?
No, it means the rates poor. Like a. Certain terms have to be unfavorable, so.
Exactly. And like, I get it. And my argument was, like, they just can't afford it. Like, it's fine.
Yeah.
There's plenty of people who can.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, like, that's, that's okay. If these people. Like, I'm not. I just don't. Like, it's just not. No. To me, like, no matter what I'm saying, no matter how good it is, the value proposition is not worth potential bankruptcy, you know, because it's essentially like loan sharking. You know, I mean, it's like 30% interest rates, you know, and like the business gets stung for like half of it usually. Right. If it's. Everyone gets approved. So you're kind of suffering there. And then these people are entering into loan agreements that they don't understand because they didn't understand them. They wouldn't say yes. Right. And it's like, let's just not sell these people. It's fine. We can just sell these people. You know, that's my, that's my. That's my view anyway.
To me, like, we've done financing over the years. The one thing that I never thought about too is it actually erodes your ability to buy media and optimize over time. Because if you're approving more media, buyers don't actually know that or typically separate out a customer who is bought through financing versus a customer who didn't. So those can be. And the good news is, if you're watching that, those can be two separate custom audiences. Because what happens if you finance too many buyers? All of a sudden you're starting to optimize on a lookalike off of your buyers, which are. Call it 50% financed. All of a sudden you're just finding more and more people that want finance. So whether a bubble burst or, you know, you're not allowed to use a certain funding source anymore, now all of a sudden, your media buyer can't get out of this jam of like, figuring out why they're attracting all these like, quote unquote bad leads or the lead quality of suffering when. When they've been silently fed bad, you know, data on their customers over the years.
And that's. And again, if you don't. I've never thought about doing that. So if you don't think about doing that, like, that's a. You know, over the course of two to three to four years, you will completely change your audience to where you are predominantly, you know, because it's a, it's a success bias. Right. Which is the hardest bias to see through because everyone's team killing it, you know, like, like negative biases. Like, like failure is a great teacher. Winning is obviously is usually not. Because they're like, yeah, of course I won. Right?
Yeah, I'm the man. Typically.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny, I remember, like, there's a sales team I was running like ages ago and they had like a 45 close rate. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Like, what? And they're like, yeah, it's amazing. And I was like, no, that's not good. And there I was like, what? Let me have a look. And it was like they were optimizing for close rate, which is a super dangerous metric to. It's really bad. And you know, they're. The managers are patting themselves in the back, right? And the like reps are like, yay. Like that. Meanwhile, the marketing guys are tearing their hair out, right?
You're selling a sales training course. You can promote how good of a close rate you have. I feel like.
Yeah, exactly. And like, yeah, so it's just like, you know, and it's. People don't realize, you know, first of all, if you're at 45 average, someone's closing at 70. Yeah, right. Like, you know, because, you know, the, the top rep is always going to outperform everybody by significant amounts. Which means that. That's absurd. Like, it means your product's too cheap or it's way too hard to get into sales call.
Yeah, the DQ process is way too crazy.
Yeah, Yeah. I started mandating minimum posture rates after that.
What. What are they like? Are there any Benchmarks or industry average.
It was, it was 65% minimum. It was variable based on, based on volume on the front. Right. It was like if like essentially we needed to have an 80%, 80% capacity on sales team at all times. Right. But that's sit rate, not booking. Right. So like slot utilized. You know what I mean? I do. And so. Yeah. And so it was like, okay, that was that metric. And then it was like minimum 65% pass through rate from like first cold to second cold. And then like having that benchmarked it, it took away the closer's ability to have back end, back door conversations with the setters going like, don't feed me that. And then we took away like a rank structure. There was no rank structure. There's no rank difference between setter and closer. They were different roles at the same rank level. Right.
Was it you that was telling me that you commission your setters and enclosures the same rate or now you split those apart?
I know, I don't, I don't commission them. You mean like they get the same comps?
Yeah, same comp.
No, that wasn't me.
I was interested in how that worked.
I mean like we, we had, we had three types of. I like having multiple types of rep. Like having a, like a, like an, like an end to end rep. So all they do is get leads and they, they do everything themselves. They just get like, like numbers.
Okay.
And they just do it. Right. I think that's a really good way. They can get paid more and they're fully self sufficient. Yeah, right. You get paid like 15 because phone numbers are cheap. That's how I would do it if I was rep. Don't give me bound. I don't want it. I want to work my own pipelines and do my own thing. Right. And then we had like inbound only reps and then they were tiered out based on like ROI was the key metric, you know, which was like how much ad spend do I put into you versus how much revenue do I get out? And then I used like a waterfall method. So it wasn't. The lead routing was incredibly aggressive. So like if, if, if rep A is the top guy, he is full before anyone else is full. And then if somebody has a confirmed call and he has a non confirmed call, they get swapped.
Oh, I love that. I've never done that before.
Yeah, so it's like it's the Steph Curry method. If Steph Curry's on the court, you give him the ball.
All the Steph Curry. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. So, like, and if you want to, if you want to get more shots, then be as good as Steph Curry.
Yeah. I saw a clip recently where Steve Kerr, the coach, was saying, he was like, that's not a bad shot. He's like, but you had the greatest shooter of all time next to you, wide open, so you should have passed the ball. Yeah.
And I think, like, you know, the more that people look at sales in particular as a, as a sports team endeavor, and it's like you're, you're, you're there to create a winning environment, not for any one individual, but for the team.
Yeah.
And you have to structure that in a way that allows the team to win. And the individual is not important. Right. Like, it's. The team wins, you know, because you don't want an all star team. You want a championship team. And they're very different.
Correct.
You know, and, and so, like, you need your guys. That's why, like, you know, just because the guy is not a top performer doesn't mean that you don't keep them, because the distribution curve on sales. And if you had old top performers, that would be a really fun month. And then everyone quits.
You know, Like, I, I'm curious why, what happens? Quote, unquote.
Have you ever seen a basketball team with like, when, like two proper old, like, you know, not an old star than the guy who was an all star, but like, you know, the, like, you know, they, it just doesn't work, right. Like, look at, you know, you know, like, it works every now and then, but like, so say if you take like the 2016 warriors, right, where it was like Steph and KD, KD is not a leader though, you know, so Katie just wants to hoop and Steph is the leader of that team. Right. So there's a dynamic there. And Steph is a uniquely chill human for a person that's good at what he is. But if you put Michael Jordan, right, and LeBron James in the same team, that is a fucking disaster. Right. Like, you know, every now and then they sort it out and they have a great game. But like, you have. Someone has to know their role. Right. It's like good podcast is like host and a co host. The co host job is to be the audience for the host.
Yes.
Right. Ask the questions, you know, I mean, and so with sales teams, like, you know, it's, it's, it's a. For me, as when I was a top rep, I had zero interest in, in, in, like, I don't give A about anyone on this team, right? Like, I'm the top guy and I used to come in and go, I want to make you all quit. Right? I see them all as competition to me. Got it.
So you're not interested in training them.
Or bringing them up? Like, no, I got, I used to get asked that. Like, I was, I was outperforming. I was the top guy on a team once. I was making like 9, 10 sales a week. 30k sales, right? I was making, I was doing more than the rest of the team combined by like two or three times. And they were like, oh, can you train the team? And I was like, no, of course not. And they're like, what do you mean? I was like, well, I'm. Come on, I'm a comms only closer. And they go, yeah. And I go, I made $2,000 a sale. Yeah. I go, pay me $2,000 an hour and I'll train your team.
They're like, what? What are you talking about?
Like, why, why would I. They wanted me to fly it for a client event. I was like, yeah, what are you paying me? I'm a commission only killer that doesn't put more.
More leads on my calendar, sir.
Yeah, like, what are we doing here? Like, that's. I. Well, so I'm not allowed to sell during that time? Well, no, you gotta do stuff. I was like, why aren't you paying me? Because I make, I make 30 grand a week, mate. Like, what do you. What?
Yeah, so you're asking me to make a less this week and train other people that I don't want to train.
Yeah, so that you can be deleveraged against me so I can't negotiate higher comms to you. That's not happening, champ.
I get it now. It just wasn't obvious first. So that's the first thing I say when I talk about dials too. I'm like, hey, like, okay. Like here you can see because it measures in granular detail. Pick a break. Combo rates. Combo to offer triage rates. I'm like, cool. This person has a 90% combo rate. Should have this top performer just train the rest of the. The floor. I guess that only works if they have some sort of base or health incentives or. Come on. As a full time.
Why would I train my competition? Because I want. I want leverage. Yeah, right. Like I want to go, hey, Nick, you have to pay me more money. Or what? Or I go, I go somewhere else. Because the thing is, with a rep, if you're exceptional, you're the unicorn. Because you can make any environment work. Like, I don't even need leads, bro.
Yeah.
If you give me access to any one of the CRMs on any one of your offers, I'll clean up to these ones. I'll make. I'll make eight sales a week just doing that. You know, I used to do, I used to set it up. So after I used to know, I used to, I ranked all the reps, right, from best to worst. And I had a follow up system of all their leads, right? Because I knew that guy could not overcome a money objection to save his fucking life. So if it was marked as a money objection, I was like, I got that guy easy, right? So I would just go in and I was like, I knew the rule. I was like, what's the rule? Once, once that person is no longer like, like how many days post, right? Can we call? And it's like 14 days, let's say, Boom. Hey, what's going on? I was on every single person. You know what I mean? Because like, I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to make money.
I love that too. That happened at New Reach a few years ago. I forget who it was. I wasn't even mad because there was no rule in place. He just figured out he could SMS, broadcast everyone's leads and broadcasted 2000 leads at one time that weren't his, and just asked to hop on a call with them. Well, we never thought about just particularly saying he's like, I didn't change the lead ownership, they still owned the lead. And I was like, wow, I just own the comms.
They want to talk to me. What, do you want me to say no to your clients? Right? Yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's. And again, it's different. Like, and when I'm a manager, like, it's different. And if I'm, you know, build the team camaraderie, it's all different. You make yourself available and you want to do things and you want the whole team to win. But it's like, you know, usually, yeah, performance, yeah. And, but, but if you're about to go into free agency, right, you know what I mean? And Steph Curry's next to you. Or you can drain an open 3. I'm draining an open 3 because I'm about to go into free agency. So I'm looking at my value, you know, and it's like you have to understand how reps think and how really good reps think, which is why, like, if you identify an Exceptional rep. You need to, like, figure out, first of all, we can't optimize any metrics off this person because they're unique. They're uniquely gifted, right? I'm a uniquely gifted sales rep. There are people that are as good as me, but, like, I'm very effective. And I remember having a conversation with a business owner, like, oh. I was like, do not optimize off me. I was like, if you do, you'll go broke. Because the moment I leave, because I'm not here forever, right? I was like, you know, like, then you're gonna go broke. And I like you. I want you to do really well. I'm gonna sell living crap out of this thing, but in eight months, I'll get bored and I'll go somewhere else. I was like, that's the way it works.
How do you solve the boredom issue for top sales reps?
I never did. I sold two reps. I always sold two offers at once. Always.
So you just. You just let them spread their wings.
It's like, bro, if they're special, they're special, you know? Like, it's rare to find someone who can just make happen and make sales and get referrals and just have a crazy ROI like, you know, it's like, I remember we had this issue once, and they wanted our top rep. They wanted to suspend him for not doing admin and being asked over and over again. And I was like, yeah, cool. So this guy makes us 400 grand a month, and you want to suspend him for two weeks, costing me $200,000? Because you can't get into your admin. I go, how about I just fire you, right? And get somebody can do their admin. Get someone who can get into or just do it for them. I go, or we hire a VA for, like, 1500 bucks a month to do it for them. What do you reckon? Either we lose 200 grand, you get fired, or I hire a VA. Which one do you think we should do?
It's like, that's great.
Make the choice, buddy. You know, because it's a stupid thing. Like, the dude's not gonna do it and whatever.
Yeah. Like, why?
Why are we fighting this? Why don't we just, like, what. What are we doing? You know, like, people who are really good at sales and terrible at admin.
Yeah.
It is what it is. Let's just lean into it, you know, and just, like, let him do his thing. Who gives a right?
Yeah.
Let's not create ego monsters, right? But, like, you know, it's like, Am I gonna, like, you know, like, what do I want to. I want people to do that. I want exceptional sales reps. And there's a cost to that. Like, you know, when you get an All Star on your team, James Harden comes on your team, you know, or LeBron James is on your team. You don't run that team. LeBron James runs that team.
Right.
Like, it is what it is, you know, So I think it's just an interesting thing. It's the same with, like, when I was in sf, it was like the shooter versus admin. You know what I mean? It was like the shooter gets what the shooter needs. I don't give a if it's 2am or like, if it's a weird request. Like, if they walk in and go, I need this. You go like, you give it to them.
Yeah. That reminds me, we're making a lot of basketball references here. The Last Dance documentary. When Dennis Rodman just got to go to 48 hours in Las Vegas, just randomly in the season.
He needed it.
He needed it.
19 rebounds a night, he let go to Vegas.
Same thing. Yeah, exactly.
Reality. No, there's. There's a difficult in understanding that because, you know, a lot of managers in particular are not that unique high performer, but a unique high performer. Like, they're geared in particular ways, like, I don't want to be married to a gold medalist. That'd be horrible. Right? They got to do gold medalist things. Getting up at 2:00am and, you know, training 18 hours a day, like that sounds terrible.
Yeah.
You know, so like, I couldn't imagine being married to me, right? I love arguing. I love it. It's a dopamine hit, right?
Yeah, no doubt. Yeah.
But, yeah, man, we've been going for a while, but I really appreciate the chat. I got. I gotta go to some meetings and I'm sure you have to go as well, but this is fun, dude.
It's been fun. Weaponize autism. Drop autism in the chat. If you guys like this.
All right? Not like non verbal, but like, you know, the fun type.
The fun type.
Exactly. Exactly. All right, dude. Well, thanks so much, man. Yeah, it was great to chat. We should do this again.
Do. We should appreciate you.
Yeah. All right, brother. Have a good one. Right? Like, no, I got. I used to get asked that. Like, I was. I was outperforming. I was the top guy on a team once. I was making like 9, 10 sales a week. 30k sales, right. I was making. I was doing more than the rest of the team combined by like two or Three times. And they were like, oh, can you train the team? And I was like, no, of course not. And they're like, what do you mean? I was like, well, I'm. Come on, I'm a comms only closer. And they go, yeah. And I go, I made $2,000 a sale. Yeah. I go, pay me $2,000 an hour and I'll train your team.
They're like, what? What are you talking about?
Like, why, why would I. They wanted me to fly it for a client event. I was like, yeah, what are you paying me? I'm a commission only killer that doesn't put more.
More leads on my calendar, sir.
Yeah, like, what are we doing here? Like, that's. I. So I'm not allowed to sell during that time? Well, no, you got to do stuff. I was like, why wouldn't you pay me? Because I make. I make 30 grand a week, man. Like, what do you.
Yeah. So you're asking me to make a less this week and train other people that I don't want to train.
Yeah, so that you can be deleveraged against me so I can't negotiate higher comms to you. That's not happening, champ.
I get it now. It just wasn't obvious first. So that's. That's the first thing I say when I talk about. Dial last too. I'm like, hey, like, okay. Like here you can see because it measures in granular detail. Pick a break. Combo rates, combo to offer triage rates. I'm like, cool. This person has a 90% combo rate. Should have this top performer just train the rest of the floor. I guess that only works if they have some sort of base or health incentives or come on as a full time.
Why would I train my competition? Because I want. I want leverage.
Yeah, right.
Like, I want to go, hey, Nick, you have to pay me more money. Or what? Or I go. I go somewhere else. Because the thing is, with a rep, if you're exceptional, you're the unicorn. Because you can make any environment work. Like, I don't even need leads, bro.
Yeah.
If you give me access to any one of the CRMs on any one of your offers, I'll clean up to these ones I'll make. I'll make eight sales a week just doing that. And you know, you know, I used to do. I. I used to set it up so after I used to know, I used. I ranked all the reps, right? From best to worst. And I had a follow up system of all their leads, right? Because I knew that guy could not Overcome a money objection to save his life. So if it was marked as a money objection, I was like, I got that guy easy, right? So I would just go in. And I was like, I knew the rule. I was like, what's the rule? Once. Once that person is no longer like. Like, how many days post. Right. Can we call it? There's like 14 days, let's say. Boom. Hey, what's going on? I was on every single person. You know what I mean? Because, like, I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to make money.
I love that, too. That happened at New Reach a few years ago. I forget who it was. I wasn't even mad because there was no rule in place. He just figured out he could SMS, broadcast everyone's leads, and broadcasted 2000 leads at one time that weren't his, and just asked to hop on a call with them. Well, we never thought about just particularly saying he's like, I didn't change the lead ownership. They still owned the lead. And I was like, wow, I just own the comms.
They want to talk to me. What do you want me to do? Say no to your clients.
Right?
Yeah, it's. It's, you know, it's. And again, it's different. Like, and when I'm a manager, like, it's different. And if I'm, you know, build the team camaraderie, it's all different. You make yourself available and you want to do things and you want the whole team to win. But it's like, you know, are usually on performance. Yeah. And.
But.
But if you're about to go into free agency. Right. You know what I mean? And Steph Curry's next to you. Or you can drain an open 3. I'm draining an open 3 because I'm going to free agency. So I'm looking at my value, you know, and it's like, you have to understand how reps think and how really good reps think, which is why, like, if you identify an exceptional rep, you need to, like, figure out, first of all, we can't optimize any metrics off this person because they're unique. They're uniquely gifted. Right. I'm a uniquely gifted sales rep. There are people that are as good as me, but, like, I'm very effective. And I remember having a conversation with a business owner, like, oh. I was like, do not optimize off me. I was like, if you do, you'll go broke. Because the moment I leave, because I'm not here forever. Right? I was like, you Know, like, then you're gonna go broke. And I like you. I want you to do really well. I'm gonna sell living crap out of this thing, but in eight months, I'll get bored and I'll go somewhere else. I was like, that's the way it works.
How do you solve the boredom issue for top sales reps?
I never did. I sold two reps. I always sold two offers at once. Always.
So you just. You just let them spread their wings. It's like.
It's like, bro, if they're special, they're special, you know? Like, it's rare to find someone who can just make shit happen and make sales and get referrals and just have a crazy ROI like, you know, it's like, I remember we had this issue once, and they wanted our top rep. They wanted to suspend him for not doing admin and being asked over and over again. And I was like, yeah, cool. So this guy makes us 400 grand a month, and you want to suspend him for two weeks, costing me $200,000? Because you can't get into your admin. I go, how about I just fire you, right? And get somebody can do their admin. Get someone who can get into or just do it for them. I go, or we hire a VA for, like, 1500 bucks a month to do it for them. What do you reckon? We lose 200 grand, you get fired, or I hire a VA. Which one do you think we should do?
It's like, that's great.
Make the choice, buddy. You know, because it's a stupid thing. Like, the dude's not gonna do it and whatever.
Yeah, like, why.
Why are we fighting this? Why don't we just, like, what are we doing? You know? Like, people who are really good at sales are terrible at admin.
Yeah.
It is what it is. Let's just lean into it, you know, and just, like, let him do his thing. Who gives a right? Yeah, let's not create ego monsters, right? But, like, you know, it's like, am I gonna, like, you know, like, what do I want to. I want people to do that. I want exceptional sales reps. And there's a cost to that. Like, you know, when you get an all star on your team, James Harden comes on your team, you know, or LeBron James is on your team. You don't run that team. LeBron James.
Right.
Like, you know, so I think it's just an interesting thing. It's the same with, like, when I was in sf, it was like the shooter versus admin, you know, what I mean, it was like the shooter gets what the shooter needs.
I know.
Don't.
