Strange Secrets To Growing An 8-Figure Business (And Beyond)

Can I ask you, do you make money when that book reaches Vancouver from.

Melbourne, what do you think?

I don't think so.

My name is Sabri Subi. I'm the founder of Australia's fastest growing digital agency. And for me, you know, my, my big impact and value driven thing to the world is that I believe that business is a huge vehicle to drive change in the world. And my mission is to empower as many people to make that change as possible.

Lovely. Sabri, how old are you?

I am 36.

Amazing. Tell me Sabri, when you're building businesses and the way you scaled your business, we love your ads, we love your book and so how did you think that sitting in Melbourne you'll become somebody known all over the world? Was it a plan, did you have a strategy or did it just happen?

Yeah, I don't really think like that. I just think about, you know, how do I help as many people as possible solve the number one problem that all businesses face, which is how do I get more customers? And you know, naturally I, my impact is driven by the amount of people that I'm able to reach profitably. So for me it's like how do I first become a master at solving this problem and even be somebody that is worth listening to? And that, that starts with solving that problem for my own business, then helping my clients do it and then branching out from there and going okay, cool, well like there's you know, 2 million small businesses in Australia. You know, there's a hundred million in like the, the top five English speaking geos. If you want to make a lot of impact, you're just going to naturally have to move outside of the geography that you're located in.

Lovely. So Sabri, I saw your ad when I didn't buy your book. The first time I clicked it, you're now a old man with white beard and you reminded me that time has passed. How do you come up with all this crazy stuff? It works. It's brilliant.

Yeah. Like I just think about where people are, right? And the reason that they're not taking the desired step that I want them to, wherever that is in the funnel, right? So you look at like what the journey is to take a complete stranger and then turn them into a paying client and you look at all the steps that are in between that and what needs to take place and then as you mark them out you start to think, well, why is that person not taking the desired action? What objections have I not addressed? Right? What is it that I need to do to that person to prove that taking the next step is the best logical thing for them to do in order for them to reach the outcome that they want to. And then applying creativity to that thing and this thinking about how can I creatively attack this thing. You know, I understand that we're in an attention economy. You've got, you know, TikTok and Facebook and Snapchat and Instagram and Reels and the news and, you know, the Kardashians and Dan Bilzerian and the UFC and the cricket and all of this stuff that's going on that is all vying for my person's attention. The prospect that I'm trying to reach. I'm not competing with the other dude that's selling a book or a marketing agency. I'm competing with everybody that's competing for attention. And I don't think about it through that advertising mental model. I'm going to lose because I'm just trying to do what business people do and I'm not trying to do what is going to grab somebody by the eyeballs and make them pay attention. And that's the thing that you really need to be, that's the place that you need to be operating from.

So when it comes to understanding your customer avatar, do you like meditate on that person? Do you have large posters in your office saying this guy is this guy. You have a name for them. You have an empty boardroom chair which always talks about saying, this is my customer avatar. Because you know exactly who you're talking to. How do you, how do you get crystal clear about your customer avatar?

I stalk them. So like I, you know, having an avatar isn't a set. And forget strategy. And the way that I know that people don't know what they're talking about is when I say, who is your target market? And they tell me that, you know, it's women age between 25 and 35. So I understand. Well, a woman at 25 is completely different to a woman at 35. So you don't know what you're talking about because your target market isn't a group of people. It's one person, one specific person that you're writing to. It's 36 year old Sally, you know, who lives in this particular suburb, who has a dog. And the dog's name is this. And it has three children. And this is what time she wakes up. This is when she goes to bed. This is what her day looks like. This is where she gets her information from. This is what time she accesses that information. Because even if you do that with Sally, right, Sally is a completely different person on a Monday at 10:00am than she is on a Friday night at 9:00'. Clock. So if you're, if you're not speaking specifically to her and you're picking a group of people, then you're never ever going to put out offers and copy that resonates with people and strikes them like a lightning bolt. And being like this person understands exactly what it is that I'm going through.

I love that. So that, does that mean it is. So when you're running Facebook ad campaigns to sell a product and since 25 and 35 is a huge age difference, which I agree, and huge difference in priorities and everything, would that mean that if you're selling a product you might have 15, 20 ads targeting different people at the same time?

It's more so about like you can go down that road. I'm not like big on, you know, micro filtering it out based on that targeting. I'm big on going broader and having enough sales ability to be able to speak to a broad market in a specific way. And it's a very difficult thing to do. But the way that I think about it is when you say, okay, your target market is one specific person, people automatically assume that anybody that falls outside of that target market isn't going to buy. Which is false. Right. So just because you know, my target market is a 36 year old man, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to get a 24, 24 year old woman to buy. Right. It just means that I am writing specifically to that 36 year old man. Right. But the same problems are going to occur in that market, right. That that person's going to be experiencing whether or not they're, they're 36 or they're 24. But it just makes it even more sharp like a sushi knife to those people that are within my target market that are exactly the person that I want to speak to, but it's fundamentally depending on the product that you're selling, there's going to be universal problems that plague that market. Right. It's weight loss, it's going to be like, hey, I keep dieting. I worked out, I tried F45, I tried intermittent fasting, Paleo keto, you know, I tried this and then that dairy free vegan. I went all these different options and no matter what I do my weight yo yos and I can't ever get to the outcome that it is that I want. Right. So they're the universal things that plague that market. But there's going to be like a bullseye of that market that is going to be like a subset of the subset, which are the people that have the most urgent problem that they're looking to solve. And then that's who it is that you want to speak to. And you still want to have all that other stuff in there. And everyone else that's in that market are still going to resonate because you're talking about those fundamental truths that plague that market. But the person that fits within that bullseye, they're going to be like, it feels like this person's been reading my Gmail, like, how the hell do they know all of this stuff?

Got it. So, Sabri, when it comes to the three aspects, getting known, getting leads, getting sales, when it comes to getting known with your format and you talk a lot about stuff over here, when people, when people are, can I sell to a cold? Can I? Do I first need to nurture an audience? I mean, ideally, and then convert them and then remarket to them, or is there another format?

Yeah. Like, it depends on the size of the commitment of the sale that you're going through, Right. And it depends on the ask that you're asking. If you're selling high ticket, right. There's a lot of investment, time, energy. If it's a high information sale, that is, that person's going to be wanting to do a lot of research about it. There are steps and like, just like in the dating analogy, right. If you're going to take somebody out on a date, you're like, you know, you do you want to go and make marriage proposals to people? When you go out to bars and nightclubs, do people do that in Vegas and get married? They do, but it's probably not the best type of relationship. Right. But there, in order for you to get that marriage proposals, there's certain steps that you need to go through to get that person where they are right now. And the biggest sin that I see people committing is, is ignoring all of those things and going straight for the sale straight out of the gate, when that's just not how people buy. So there's got to be seduction, there's got to be romance in there. You got to think about where is this prospect, right. And how much information would the average person in this market need to receive in order to make a decision. If we're talking about going to a hot yoga session, you're not going to be spending six weeks researching that. If you can go and do it for 10 bucks or your first class is free. So nurturing that whole lead and making them multiple offers and trying to get them on webinars and vsl, that doesn't make sense. The unit economics isn't going to stack up. It's a low information sale. So that person is not going to invest a huge amount of time in researching that because the stakes of them making a bad decision are very low. I just won't go to the hot yoga class again. Right. So in that instance, you'll want to kind of be targeting the hyperactive buyers in that market. And it's an easy ask to come into a hot yoga session with us for free. And we know that you'll love it. You don't need to go through. There's not a huge series of steps, right. It's like if you're at a party and your friends introduce you to some other people and you really have a great conversation with them and it's like, hey, like, you know, I really enjoyed this. Would you like to grab a coffee sometime? Like it's an easy ask. It's different to do you want to come back home and have sex with me or do you want to get married or do you want to do this huge thing? Right. So it all depends on where you're at and how, how big the ask is.

Got it, Got it. So Sabri, let's, let's talk to coaches, trainers, consultants, the training industry. A lot of people have video sales letters, a video sales that maybe sometimes an 8 to 10 minute video leading to a call and then everything happens on the call. Another format is where people have automated webinars. Another format is where people have live webinars. And within live webinar there are 90 minute webinars, full day workshops, weekend workshops. So if we specifically speak into coaches and trainers, people who have made to high ticket training products which they deliver offline and online, both say between 10 to $20,000. And then we laid out these are the marketing funnels. What would you say about each of them for these coaches?

I'd say they all serve their purpose, depending on where you are. So the exercise that I go through with people is what do you have more of right now? Do you have more time or do you have more money? And depending on the answer to that question would be, you know, the prescription that I'm going to write for that person. If they don't have much money, then they need to basically use human capital, right. As an investment that they make to get them the outcome. So, I. E. If you go with like, you know, an automated webinar funnel that's going to give you the highest cost per lead that you can get for booking in a phone call with somebody. Because there's so many different steps and barriers that someone needs to jump through in order to get to the place where you make them an offer, I. E. I need to go on the opt in page, I need to register, then I need to select the time that works for me, then I need to show up to that thing, then I need to stay through that whole webinar to the point that you make an offer. Then after you make the offer, then I need to go through, go on your booking page, select a time that works for me and then only if I find something that works for me, then I book in, then there's all the chaotic stuff that's going on in my life. The dog is barking, the baby is crying, my wife is calling me, I have to go to friends for his birthday party and then I have to show up to your call and then I have to have a great call to the point where I actually buy on the phone call. But that doesn't happen more often than not. I need to think about it. You need to call me back, then the follow up begins, then you have to call me. Duck and dive, be in the trenches using all the different weapons that you've got to get me back on the line, hope that I don't ghost you, then hope that I've got the money and hope that I buy. Right, the unit economics for that there are so many moving parts that the cost to acquire a customer goes up in proportion to the amount of steps that you're requiring me to take. Right? So if you're going to go for that model straight out the gate and you've got more time than you do money, you are going to lose. Right? And that doesn't even take in all the nuance of having a really good webinar and making sure that it's engagement or. I'm not even going into that. I'm just going in, assuming that you got a smoking hot webinar and you've got all these open loops and you're pulling me in, keeping my attention and doing all this stuff, bribing me to stay to the end. And then so if you go down that road and, you know, you just listen to what the gurus say, you know, then you're going to go broke very quickly. So the way that I think about it is then well, what is like the cheapest and easiest way to get a lead that you can get on the telephone? And it's a lot of the stuff that I go through in my book that is the most efficient, cheapest, easiest way for you to start, right? So I've got a thing called trans dental funnel evolution. And it's like, you know, really the continuum between time and money and looking at where you sit with everything and how much time that you need to invest or how much capital do you need to invest to get to the outcome? And what are those kind of steps along the way where you graduate? Like, at what point do you move from like a high value content offer and having a VSL to then migrating to a place where you're letting your calendar do all the automation or then you move to a longer VSL or a webinar or just in time webinar. There's all these different steps that come in and there's a lot of nuance to it. And it's, you know, to the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And most of these people that are prescribing stuff, they've all just got hammers in their hands, right? And they're like webinars are the way, they're the only way to get clients. Or VSLs are the only way where I have the experience of, you know, working with thousands of clients in hundreds of niches and generating over $1.33 billion and running thousands of scientific split tests, spending $50 million plus on ads where I don't talk from a place of theory, I talk from a place of. I have been in the trenches, getting my teeth kicked in for multiple years and figuring out exactly what is the most effective way to get clients online.

Awesome. Love that. Just love that. Sabri, tell us. There is a marketing strategy on how you get into people's minds with your brilliant work. So you offer a book and you have amazing ads following them. Can I ask you, do you make money when that book reaches Vancouver from.

Melbourne, what do you think?

I don't think so.

Look, it depends on how hard you want to push these things, right? Can you make money on the front end? Yes, you can. If you're smart, you don't.

Ah, lovely. Okay, so, so does that mean that an entrepreneur always needs to think long term? And what would you say to entrepreneurs who are starting off in time or money when I don't have so much money? So they can't get into people's minds and, you know, and hearts and tell Them prove to them that they're amazing by doing a strategy where they initially might be losing money, Correct?

Yeah. So the more wide and long your time horizon is, the more success that you will find. And you have to earn the right to have long time horizons, right? So for instance, like, if you're looking at you're getting started, it's day one. You don't have the ability to have a long time horizon and lose money on the front end. Like, you've got to make money. There's bills to pay, there's food to put on the table, there's a family to feed, right? You got to be making money straight out the gate. So in the beginning it's like, how do I make money profitably and put food on the table? And then you, you work to a point where you've got enough cash reserves that it allows you the freedom to expand the time horizons that you think, right? In the beginning it's like, I need to get paid, right? I need to put money on, I need to provide for my family. Then it's like, okay, I've got enough cash in the bank. Let me hire a team member and let my short term profits be lower than what they were before I hired a team member and then let me hire an office, like, let me rent an office, let me do a fit out, let me hire another team member, let me invest in product, right? Let me build a business that serves a lot more people and makes me a lot less money in a short time horizon, but creates much more value on a longer time horizon. And your ability to expand your time horizons that you think in is kind of be like directly proportionate to the kind of success that you see long term. Because if you look at the most successful people in the world, these people have very long time horizons. They're planning in decades, not in months.

Lovely. Sabri, do you agree with Gary V. When he says put out as much content as you can?

Like, you know, I don't, I don't follow GaryVee. And to be honest with you, like, I think that it's different horses for different courses. I see a lot of people putting out a lot of content that are broke, right? Because Gary Vee told them to put out lots of content, right? So if, like, for me, I think about distribution, right, a lot. And there are so many people that are making videos for their five followers and their wife and their friends are liking these videos. What real impact are you have just by doing that? So, like, distribution is key. And at the end of the day I operate from first principles. And if you look at the first principles for business, it's all about getting attention and solving problems. So is the best way to get attention to put out lots of content? Well, history shows no it's not. Because there's so many people that follow all of these people's advice that aren't seeing success and they're putting out lots of content and there is no distribution. So if the first principles are get attention and solve problems, what is the best way to do that? You have to look at where you're at right now. Is it better, for instance, is it better to put videos out or to, to write content or to post stuff on Instagram? Or is it better if you've got no money to sit down and have a look at the hundred most search keywords in your market and do SEO and write content specifically for those people to get the eyeballs and then make those people an offer and then solve their problems and make money? Or is it to run ads on Facebook and get their attention to make them an offer to solve their problems, to make money? Right. And for me, that's the thing that I look at and it all comes down to do you have more time or do you have more money?

Got it. Love that. And for everybody listening, it almost seems that this is so scripted that you exactly know what I'm going to ask. But I'm sure you get asked this a lot. But I love the way that you finish everything so that I don't have to bother about editing very much because everything finishes with, you know, with an analysis of the question that started and then there's a pause. So thank you. My editor is going to thank you for all of this. Sabri. Okay, so coming to digital marketing agencies, a lot of people are, you know, like this. It's been there for a while. 2009, when I started my own Internet marketing company, it was not cool. Today it is cool at the back end. There are a lot of moving parts. It's such a service. Human capital, all of that. What is, what do you like about running an agency? And what do you say to people who are wanting to start a digital marketing agency?

You have to have big kahones, that's for sure. Because like, you know, it's, it's. There's guys that have proliferated the industry and have said, like, look, this is like they've, they've really set their businesses up where it's a business opportunity and the business opportunities to start a digital marketing agency when in reality, starting a digital marketing agency is a, is a very difficult business to start because there are a lot of moving parts and there's first of all, can you get clients? And it's like, can you hire people that get your clients results? And there's, there's lots of nuance to doing it. So the reason that I like running it is because, you know, if I have a look at how can I drive change and how can I control as many factors of all the different variables that's going to come into play for somebody to be successful in going online. And there's, you know, it's great to think that I could just tell people what to do and that they will go out there and do it. But as you probably know, that's a lot of people don't do that even when you give them the right advice. So when you run an agency, it allows you to control a lot of those variables and being like you're building out the things, you're doing the things. And for me, I really like to take somebody that is struggling, that is stressed out of their mind and they don't know where the next client is going to come from, or maybe they are getting clients and they're just stressed out of their mind between the ups and downs of Facebook or Google Ads or anything that's going on and taking them from a place of scarcity and me coming in, moving my team, coming in, moving a few dials in their business and taking them from a place where they're not making any money when they're making lots of money, and seeing the impact that that has on them, on their family, on their team, and then all the people within their community that look up to them as what is possible through business and then getting them to a place where there's so much abundance that then they can give back and that they can start to do good. So that's the reason that I like to run an agency and to see that transformation firsthand, I would say to people that want to start a digital marketing agency is to make sure that you really know the subject cold before you start to like, the whole thing of like, digital marketing agency is really easy to get started because there's so many people that have this problem and you don't really need to know how to solve the problem. You just sell people like that's, that's a nightmare to go down that model. You're going to experience a lot of pain because if you haven't been able to solve the problem for yourself, what makes you think that you're in a position to solve it for other people? And that's what a lot of people are doing online. They're taking these concepts and these theories and then they're going out and selling it without ever doing it for themselves.

So, Sabri, two questions on this part. People who are starting agencies, do you think first they should get a job, work for an agency, understand the nuances and understand maybe from what I've learned from working for an agency, I'll pick up one aspect of it and open my own agency. So work for someone and have super specialization. Do you think that's that recommended?

Yeah, like that's going to give them more time on the tools, right? That's going to put them to be in a position to be able to help people. Right? Like otherwise, how are you going to do it? It's just going to be all theories, right. If you don't have clients, if you haven't done it before, then you're going to be learning on your client's dollars and that's just not fair.

And then when it comes to charging, you know, a lot of people are like, people don't pay. People don't pay because they don't find expertise on the other side. People don't pay because they feel a digital marketer needs to understand way more than just how to run ad, but also understand the pain points of that particular business and then they will pay. What do you say about that?

People pay what they value. So like, you know, a transaction takes place where value exceeds price. So if you're, if you're having a problem in getting people to pay, it's because the value that you're providing isn't greater than the price that you're asking. So a lot of people, they take the easy route and they just pull their pants down on price, right? That's what nine out of 10 people do to they get to a point where the value does exceed price. And the quickest way to do that is just by naturally lowering your ask, right? Lowering what you're asking for and the prices that you command rather than going the right way of building up the value and the perceived value of what you do. So it's far greater than the price that you're asking. Because if you go the other way and you go down to the cheapest price, you know, the barriers to entry to start a digital marketing agency is a laptop and an Internet connection. So there's always going to be some guy out there in his garage in his bedroom that is going to be willing to do it cheaper than you because they have no overhead. So that race to the bottom, no one's gonna, no one's gonna win that. Right. And you want to be thinking about value and increasing the value and more so than you're just thinking about like, oh, they said it's too expensive. Yeah, they said it's too expensive in comparison to what got it.

My last question, Sabri, is a lot of people talk about the concept of a micro niche. Don't be a generalist, be a super. Don't be a specialist. Be a super specialist. That's where more people will come to you. You're solving a big problem for a small group of people. What does Sabri Subi have to say about the micro niche?

I do understand the value in, in going niche. It just doesn't excite me. Right. Because I like to go big. This isn't a dress rehearsal. This is my life. I'm either I do this business for another two years, three years, I can't then go back and ever buy that time back. Right. And I can't be like, I'll just do this for a year and then I'll do something else that is bigger. Right. So it just depends like where you want to go. And I've got this exercise called like, you know, the dream lifestyle and the dream Day. And thinking about, like, what does that lifestyle that you're trying to optimize look like and how many clients and how much money that you would need to make in order to get there? And then thinking about, okay, this is how many clients that I need to get in order to make that possible. Do I think that that is going to be possible within this niche that I've that I operate in? Right. And if, if so, then excellent, a niche will work well for you. But if you're going to need to get more clients that you think is going to be possible within that niche, that's when then you should go broad. For me, the thing that's driving me is not the conversion rates from a funnel. Right. Naturally, the more specific that you go, the more off the chart all your numbers and your metrics look like. But for me, the goal is impact. So I don't want to just impact accountants or dentists or gym owners. Like, why would I do that when my message can serve everybody? So you have to be infinitely better to not niche down. Like, it takes a whole different level of mastery to be able to make a sales message apply to multiple markets in a way where the unit economics still stack up. So in the beginning it would serve a lot of people to go niche because you don't have to be as skilled. But again, I can't answer that question for everybody. It ultimately comes down to what is the purpose of why you're doing this and what is it that you're trying to optimize for and then putting that within the framework of the decision that you're making.

So Sabri Subhi, thank you very much. My dad always says the most expensive thing you can ask from people is not their money but their time. Thank you for giving us your time.

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