Formulating Killer Front-End Offers | Agency Algorithm | Nick Fisher

If you feel really good and you did your audit right, and you're like, this brand is going to be something. Would you guys entertain something where it's no money down right now, but I take a piece of the business, they might be like, yeah, man. I will vest you over time in a very common structure for kind of growth agencies is, you know, you can invest in over time or revenue tiers.

All right, we are back with another one for you guys. You got your boy, Nick Shackor, Joshua Johnson. And the one, the man, the myth, the legend, Nick Fisher. Nick Fisher. How the hell are you, buddy?

Dude, I'm doing great, honestly. I'm just always better when. When you get on the line, you lift the energy of the whole room. For real. Same with Josh. Josh, you're the guy.

I appreciate it, bro.

Reason why I'm actually cracking myself up. There's been a meme that's been circulating socials about, like, the depth in which your beanie is and the higher you are, it starts to get this. It's like you're. You're a robber. Like, you, like, stole from somebody and then it raises a little bit above the head. You're like, oh, now you're a barista. And then it's like, right to this point, like, you're a creative director.

Yeah. Honestly, I think for you, you go somewhere between the barista and the creative director. You know you want it. You don't want to be falling off your head, but I think right above the ears.

I had a joke with Shanice yesterday because she gets so mad because I like to wear, like, I like. She goes, you look like a condom. And I was like, I love wearing it like this because it pisses her off. And so the other day, I would just walk around the house like this, and I was like, I'm five years old. I'm six years old.

Yeah, that's the Jesse Pingman drug dealer. You know, Fit.

Yeah. Oh, it looks like the Home Alone villains.

Guys miss me. Normally I do have a beanie on now. I got the Carhartt whip hat today, but loves that. Yeah. Whip Line. Whip Line has one host store. It's great.

A lot of us know who you are. Like, I. I would say a lot of us do, but there's going to be some people that don't. And I know, and Josh has asked him about this one because Josh is, you know, he's big in the consulting side. He's been working through this for quite a while. So I'm going to have to take you back to where you kind of began some of your chops and, and I came into contact with you, I came into learning about you and I got to witness firsthand what you've been able to do and build on the consulting side. But was there something before that? And can you give a proper introduction to yourself? I mean, yeah, let's.

I don't want to go too far back. I'll start with when we first met, which was I had stumbled and hustled my way in as a director of marketing As a young 20 something at Clever Investor, which sells real estate investing info products. And when I was leaving to go start consulting.com with a guy named Sam Ovens, move out to New York, I really was trying to find someone who I trusted to take over the account. That was back way back when Shaq was still buying media as I think a junior senior media buyer. And I hit up Tim Burd. He's like, yo, we can take care of you guys. And it's sad to say the first month that Shaq and Tim came on, they actually took my CPA for that offer down like 20 or 40 bucks. Went from like 280 to 240. I was like, oh shoot, these guys are good. So, right, right then and there, Shaq won my trust. So if you guys are still wondering, even though he's, he's a big deal now, if he could actually buy, he could.

The kid, look, the kid has some skills, dude. The kid. I, I'd like to say, I like to say like, I, I'm starting to get like, I got like one literal gray hair right here, bro. If someone needed me to grab the sticks and they're like, yo, jump in. I'll be like, don't stress. I got this. I really think I still got it.

Yeah, dude, that's, that's how I feel. I don't know if, if you get the chance to do that anymore because some of the times I'm like, I really want to grab the controls from someone. I'm like, but do I still have it? Like, am I going to screw this up? Like, compliance has changed a lot. Like, people are like the ads, right? Like, they wouldn't even get, you know, they wouldn't get approved.

Now this is the crazy thing about it. It's like when we first came into each other because we came into each other two times because you, you also came into working with my partner Jake, our CEO, on, on the IG growth side, which is Jake was working with clever investor on that side selling programs too. So it's like, yeah, you knew me on one way, you knew Jake on the other way. And then after this, then you went to. To consulting.com, which if anybody in any of this industry knows about any sort of like real crazy numbers, which then brought me to know our mutual friend Jordan Bernard. So, like, we've had this life together that was very alongside and in collaboration. And then we'll obviously accelerate into where we. What we've just done a go. But I want you to tell me at the time of you going from like, kind of like head of marketing, I would say head of growth, Head of marketing at Clever, was it the same similar title or was it a little bit different?

Yeah, it was a similar title. So. But no, like someone like Alex Mosey, we're doing the same sort of thing. We're building. We're taking a minority ownership in brands in order to scale them and give them the growth infrastructure and then stand them up, go on to the next one. So I, dude, I started as the next because we needed the cash flow. And I was like, we have to take agency clients now because I just tried to start five brands. Each one cost about $30,000 in seed money and I was just blowing through my savings. So it happened by accident.

It happened by necessity. It happened because like, yo, we need this, right? It's interesting now because when we obviously we have. We have a lot of your core. Core agency teammates still on here. And Kyle. Kyle is one of our. Our head of. And it's kind of interesting because we almost traded heads up, Heads of performance. Yeah, it's kind of just hit me right now.

Yep. Yeah. Cause John came and consulted for us and he brought like a completely new perspective, like from D2C, E commerce background. And hopefully like Kyle. Kyle has a mix. Like, he has such a breadth of experience in his career, whether it's D2C info, everything else, and dude, nothing. Actually when we went through the acquisition, like the thing that I am the most proud of and told the team I'd be most proud of is like, hey, if you guys trust me, trust that you're going to be in a better situation with Shaq, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this. We had other offers that were like, quote unquote, better deals, like on the. On the forest. But I wanted to go specifically with you because it meant a lot to me, my reputation in this space. And then b, like, can I actually see the team growing there? Um, so we talked to a few people. They're like had no vision for what they were going to do if. If they acquired us. Like, holy crap. I was like every. I'm going to have to go up in front of the company, tell everyone this is a great thing and then they're going to probably be out of jobs. So the fact that like 90% or over 90% of our staff that when we went through the acquisition like a year ago, still there and they're still thriving, like means a ton.

It's been a very interesting. And I think that's a good area to kind of dig in on is when. When we first found the partnership and there's. There's like different ways to structure this and we've done a couple now more like the Aqua hire side on the asset acquisition side. And when we started to think of. Because we. We had a couple conversations with bigger strategics in the space and technically we'd be. We'd be a small strategic because we wanted to keep the lights on and we wanted to have the, the quality of the employees and the quality of the contracts. And then obviously you had like, okay, well we have this other project going on.

It's cool.

We can kind of walk right into it because you. You're entrepreneur, you have multiple things running. And when I think about who we have in the. And in the current seats we have it was so synergistic and it's like almost exactly what we would hope to happen. And this is the. At the time that was our second. Sorry, third time doing it because we did a little with John and I was like, wow, why did this work so well? And it's because the way that you was very similar the way that myself and Jake. And Jake led and so when you get Kyle come in and. And I'll use him as an example because he's the easiest one but him and Canon and obviously the least a couple other ones that kind of play their great roles as we build out into a bigger, bigger thing. You can tell that they have this ability to problem solve which I think you knew you had and the processes even me being with you as you built and help us launch the geek up. You're very methodical in how your brain works and I was so interesting. I like when you bring more and more tools to different people and different projects and different agencies. Is that. Is that one of your secret weapons of your ability to kind of just always be on and find new shit?

Yeah, dude. That's one of my like, that's one of my superpowers. And Honestly, how I probably wanted agency because it wasn't the EQ client service side. Like some of the stuff that you're really well rounded, like very well rounded. I think you can go end to end. You can buy, you could am like if you were actually back in a function yourself, you can lead. But for me, like I have a hard time sitting there. I've talked with Coil about this too. It's like sometimes the bedside manner that you're going to give a client isn't exactly what they want to hear. And I want to, I just want to come in, you know, make recommendations. Like, you know, I'm not necessarily caring about winning the client's trust over. At least I wasn't in the early days and I had to learn to kind of play a different game of like, hey, here's how I add value and prove my worth. Because a lot of times I wasn't just going to sit there and do the typical kind of agency thing which needs to be done. I learned like setting expectations screwed us over in the beginning. Me and Tommy both kind of learned lessons on that. It's just like anchoring client to goal, making sure every week you reiterate some of the like soft skills that you just don't know until you're in client services. I was missing those entirely at first, so I had to just kind of rely on finesse.

This makes so much sense why John and you get along to so well. Because John, it's, John is a absolute hammer dude. It's funny, I'm. John and I, we had a, we had a, a drive one time when he flew out here. I was like, let's spend some time together. And he goes, he said this to me very specifically and I think it's something he, when he hears this, he laugh. He goes, the more people spend time with me, the more they don't like me. And I was like, yeah.

Conversations. He's, he's even a little bit worse than me because he likes to debate everything, right? Likes the ENTP thing comes out. And I was like, oh. I was like, you might thrive like more so on the side that we're on because like it's genuine partnerships and you know, they're not just going to cut you or be like, we're not renewing the contract. They're kind of like stuck with you. Obviously not a great thing to do. No matter what, you still have to get there, build that relationship. But 100%, there's, there's a certain type of person and I think for Some media buyers who are now in a. In a position where they have their own agency, like, they just want to be buying media. There was a lot of days where I was like, I just want to be on the dials. Like, I. Like, this is a huge headache. Like HR side, client side, client calls after 8pm you know, where there's, you know, this, that and the other. It's just like all that stuff really.

When you were kind of like getting the agency to that point where you were able to kind of get out of some of that. Those fulfillment tasks, some of those more client relationship side of things. Like, what were some of the. The key things that you were able to delegate to teammates? What were some of the first things that you delegated? Because obviously, you know, you're. You're obviously pulling a lot of levers. Um, what were some of those first things that you started taking off your plate?

So going back, the very first thing that we delegated, and this might look different for everyone at their agency. Like, I was, we were winning a lot of clients over through my warm connections and my relationship. So, like the AM stuff, I still would show up on the weekly calls. That's normally the first thing I would try to delegate is get off the weeklies. But for me, I did it. I did it a little bit different. So the first thing I delegated was the analysis. So a lot of times, like, we would have junior media buyers. They'd come in and they would understudy what either me, Tommy or a senior was doing, and I would have them provide recommendations on the account like they were touching it. And then every day I would look at a sheet and just be like, okay, yes, execute those changes. Execute those changes. So the actual buying for us as a performance media agency, I delegated first and then eventually the AM account management side.

For me, this is one of the hardest things to delegate. And you kind of touched upon it earlier. There's like this weird EQ soft skill that it's a, like it's a sport. I think this is a sport. Like if you, you have that core skill of being able to buy media, which it's a. It's almost like table stakes. Like, you have to have this in this space, but as soon as you start to feel comfortable with being able to get client to feel as though it's their idea that what you have to initiate and then get them all the way through and then, by the way, pay you to do such, man, it's. It's tough. And that's, I think A lot of the earlier agencies, or at least earlier, I wouldn't say agency. Earlier teammates on agencies who don't understand or don't know that they need to build this P's and Q's and got to give to get a little. This, this, this back and forth game is the most important piece because it's always relationship performance. Like if I were to make this very layman's terms, if the relationship and performance are the two main things that you measure and if the relationship drops, performance better be in a great position. They're not going to drop you. If performance drops, that relationship better be in a great position so you can explain your performance and what's going to have to happen if you lose both. You better be the cheapest person out there because they're gone. Dude.

Yeah, dude. Like, you have to, you have to be like in that point you're in a safe situation, right? And then in that case, you're almost like you get one more chance if you're good at saves. Like performance not there, the relationship not there. Now it's like Shaq, like you're coming to the client, like apologizing, say things will be different this time. Right?

Yeah.

There's not much you can do other than just beg for another chance.

Literally this. So when, when you were@consulting.com and you were thinking through building offers or getting people to kind of buy into because it was, it was not a cheap thing. Like there's a, there's a, a big thing to be sold there and for agencies are trying to get people in the door other than like personal, brand and, and inbound. Did you guys have a different way of processing or running offers? Because obviously you had incredible media buyer in Menard at the time. How are you thinking about formulating front end offers?

Yeah, no, like I had a world class media team. Now like when I look back, like, yeah, Menard, like Tommy who's sitting next to me, like all like aces on that team as far as media buying team and the data analyst team. Like Sam had enough money. We were sitting on so much cash we could afford to go after like the best type of talent. So some of my favorite days ever working were just like in that New York office in that, in that vibe. There was just so much brain power and hustle and you're surrounded by New York, which like New York is, is just, you know, if you're, if you're going, if you're going to work somewhere at some point in your career and you just want to be around people that are just hustling, truly hustling. Always recommend New York. So that like how we formulated those front end offers was usually Sam as the visionary would have like a framework that he thought would apply to a bunch of different niches because it's hard to find a consulting framework that works for marketing agencies and people that would like stuff that is crazy. Like people we had clients that had yacht consulting safety plans that they would make like for their clients. So teaching a standard client acquisition system and then client like fulfillment system was tricky. So Sam, Sam's a visionary there. He came with something that was like a standard system that worked for so many people. And if you guys, some people don't view this as kind of a flex or a good stat, but in, in info businesses when you're selling courses or mentorship, it's very common for you to only have 1 to 5% of the people you sell to be successful or like have a return on that education. Like in consulting we had a measured, like measured success rate of about 30% and it probably was even closer to 50. We just couldn't.

Wow.

Like I, I would call it. Yeah, it just tried to figure out what results have you had since we went through this. So have something that's like 30, like that works for 30 to 50% of people that would pay us $2,000, which was pretty incredible. And yeah, that product to this date still has a great reputation.

This is great. Josh, even, even on the consulting side of things where you have. Because even when we look at how we build out more offers or the downsell for the overall agency because you, you starting, you have to start to see like how can you maximize deal flow especially the larger you get. And we're at a stage now where we have our core offers, different services, but that up and down depending on the market you're trying to go after is something that we're really trying to solve. And building that one to one consulting play is so important, especially if you need that initial deal flow or if you're trying to get more people reps on different types of products. Josh, do you think about this any differently?

You know, I think from, I mean not really. You know, it's, it's one of those things where Sam Ovens has always been, been like the, the, the North Star.

Right.

Like we've always looked up to him in a very high capacity. So all you can really do is try to, try to get as close as you can to someone like, like Sam Ovens. But you know, as far as like, when we're building out specific offers, you know, that we specifically talked to Neon in the last, last podcast is like, we're trying to solve a problem at a deep level. We're not trying to, you know, blast our offer to as many people as possible. We're trying to find one niche and solve a problem on a very deep level versus going to a very broad audience and trying to solve a problem on more of a broad level.

Right.

Because for us, like, we want to have a high success rate, even if we don't necessarily have as many clients or not touching, not touching on many people. And that's, that's where Sam really hit the nail on the head, is like, he had a broad audience, but he also had something that was successful across exactly so many different people.

He.

He did. And that's what kept it there. Because in info, you can kind of scam or like guru for a year and a half before people kind of figure out that you're, you're full of it. Like, that happens to a lot of people and you just have this, like, little window where you can run it up and get out and then your reputation's done. He was able to maintain it because normally I'm used to going on like, podcasts like this and people are like, oh, Sam Ovens, is that just like some guru? And I'm like, people that know, know the quality was there, um, which was one of the first times I'd seen that in our space.

So I've been in, I've been in business for two years, so I made it past the Nick Fisher year mark.

Like, if I was just starting my agency, do I would be asking both of you guys to like, to mentor me? And I'm curious, like, these days, do you guys informally mentor, like, who do you, who do you look for? If it's a young agency owner, like, either quality wise, personality wise, or like revenue, like, what do they need to be happy for you? You're like, I can help you. And I'm really good at this stage.

For us, we definitely vet by revenue only because revenue is not really a. It really probably isn't the right metric, to be honest. Now, now that we think about it, because for us, revenue is normally a sign that they have something sticky in their service. Right? Like if you get to, if you get to 40k per month, that's usually not by accident. Like, you've got some. You got a little something there, right? Whether that's some sales chops, you've got some fulfillment chops you got some client success chops, something along those lines. That's kind of what we look for. And for us, like, we're not about making practitioners, not teaching you marketing, not teaching copywriting. I'm teaching you how to be great agency owners, great business owners, and teaching those principles. So someone has to come in and actually be a practitioner and great at what they do, or they have to have a team that is great at what they do in order for us to be able to help them. So for us, we can't take on beginners. We can't take on people that are, like, just. Just learning. Yeah. So that's the way that we kind of vet a lot of our clients in and out is simply by. Are they great practitioners? And maybe they struggle selling their product. Maybe they struggle with lead generation. Maybe they struggle with some of the client communication aspects, and then we vet by those things.

Dude, that makes a ton of sense. And I actually know a few agency owners who might be a good fit. I'll have to, like, send your guys way, too, because looking back, you know, if I would have known, like Shaq that we would have ended up doing the deal we had, it would have made sense to start reaching out to mentors of bigger agencies that I maybe wanted to be acquired by. And then that mentorship can lead to an acquisition path too. Like, I wasn't even thinking that way at first, which makes so much sense because you get a chance to work with each other before you actually do some business together. And, yeah, like I said, like, the fact that you guys were. I appreciate you calling it like a merger or a strategic partnership, but you guys were like, five, eight times our revenue. Like, when we. When we started having those talks, you guys were clearly like the big brother. And I was like, man, they're doing so much right that we weren't. We had no biz dev engine at all. Like, we, you know, we were just working off my referrals.

You talked about, like, the first part. I'll go answer that in a second. I don't do it purposefully until this year. I put on four. I put on three people last year, and I was like, look, I didn't. I chose to invest my time and energy and relationship building to them. I didn't. It's not, you can't pay for it. You can't do it. It's just, if the relationship and the. And the. The vibes honestly made sense, we did it. And so this year, I actually have five people through three women, two men that are in different, different agency stages. One's a SaaS product and I'm like, I think I care for that person and I believe that they're doing it for the right reasons. And I don't even care about the revenue. I don't care about like they have to have something real. Like, it's definitely not like mental masturbation. You're not playing around. This isn't a game. So like, but it's very strict. I'm like, look, I'm not charging for this. We're going to talk twice a month. It's a 30 minute call. You have three topics you have to submit on the forum. You have one main thing that we're trying to solve by end of this call and that is it. That's the only way forward that I'm doing it. But there's areas that I myself wouldn't be able to talk about. And this is, this is also the reason why I exited my position as the CEO and moved into the CRO partnership side. Because when Jake stands up and he's like, hey, I want to grow this, I want to move this, I want to do this. I was like, oh, what does that mean? Well, he, what that means is he wants to take a $9 million agency and go to 15, 25, $50 million, which is, is a ball game that I'm just not equipped. And at this time in my life, I don't necessarily want to do, I want to be a part, I want to contribute, I want to drive rev, because that's where I know I can, I can be that, that, that contributor, that producer because I love that role. But it's been very interesting thinking about how do we do this again, you spoke perfectly to that. So we have two or three mentors. Jake's got his own mentors over there in New York that when I start talking, they start giving me the nuggets. And two great nuggets that I got was how many services can they be in utilization of you and how long can that contract live for? Because when you get acquired, it's all, it's usually the assets or not just the assets, it's the time and money that they spend with you on a consistent basis year over year. So that's what we pretty much optimize towards as well as what is revenue per head and revenue that, that can change on many, many variables. So I don't really have like a good benchmark for it. But they always tell us like, how do you get your revenue per head about 200,000, $300,000 on average. I was like, all right, let's drive.

My background like before I quit accounting. Like don't ask me any accounting questions too. I knew that like for client services in general, you need to be operating like what's healthy is three actually like your fixed like people overhead. So like you know, people opex, you should really be charging, you know, billing out their rate three times higher than I guess what you. You have internally. So we always strove for that. But yeah, you're right. You go through these growth like bulk and cut phases where you're like, we're really going to thin things out, you know, and invest in the team because we need to in order to hit this next stage of growth or vice versa. Sometimes you're biz devving too hard and you biz dev past like your internal talent. Then you got to catch up on that side.

No. And this is the base. Even Josh had to give me some feedback for the younger stage. Like you have to over hire versus inbound because at the end of this day, the larger you get on the agency side, you're. You're a glorified HR team. Selling time. Right. And so. Or human capital. Human time. When you and I came together, you guys had two parts of a geck. So you had two parts of the business. Can you talk a little bit about choosing the different revenue streams? Because even now when I, even when I talk with menard Mayards like hey, I'm going to build an affiliate arm that's driving rev to the straight bottom line and, and have the normal agency clients. You guys almost have like an info and you have the agency with normal ecom. What was. Why did that happen?

They're becoming more popular now. Like three, four years ago. When I started, there wasn't even a name necessarily for what we were doing. I was calling it like an accelerator. An incubator like tech would now like growth studios or startup studios or venture studios are becoming more common. And for any agency owner out there listening to this, it's a great thing to tack on with your, with your core service offerings because client services is great. You get cash flow and clients pay you right now. But as you, as you get better at your craft, like buying performance media, selling creative services, whatever it is, there's some brands that come along where they might not make sense for your retainer or it's, it's, you know, it's not a good fit for that. But you're like, yeah, I'll play the long game with this brand, like, I, you know, I'll give my time and efforts right now in order to yield from it later. So that's. That's what I tried to do at first, but I was too aggressive. So we started five brands. Like I said they needed maybe 30k each. That's 150k. And then I hired a few people on my team. So I was on a burn. And, like, my personal savings was, like, dwindling. It got down to, at some point, under $10,000 from everything I saved up. And I was like, this money's going to come. It's just taking a while. Because brands that were start work, you only get paid if you have ownership in a brand, if A, it sells or B, it takes cash distributions every month. Right. So for a lot of the brands we were starting, the money's just not there at the table at first, so you have to wait. And watching my bank account go down, I was like, okay, we're taking on clients now, but as soon as, like, we're cash flowing, then we'll sunset the agency. And Shaq, that was. That was the plan. But then, like, the agency started to grow. Tommy, my partner, had done a great job of stabilizing it, growing it to the point where, like, okay, it's really hard to give away, like, 100 mrr, you know, you know, revenue stream and just sunset it. So then it became of, like, can we find the right partner for, you know, to merge with that can, like, continue? The vision for the agency is even thinking bigger than us because for us, it was initially an afterthought that became something that we didn't want to give up.

Now, I have so many more questions on this, but before we jump into that, let's go and do a little bit of an ad read to some of our incredible partners for allowing these incredible conversations to continue on. So we'll see you in a second, guys. Hey, I also want to tell you guys about our other company called Constant Creative with 2Ks. And if you're looking for on demand editing at any time all around the world at a rate that makes total sense, you guys can find us@constant creative.com. and we are back. So this. This kind of put me into a couple of more thoughts. When we were gone on the break, when I was like, how do you get your revenue per Head? About 200,000, $300,000 on average, I was.

Like, all right, let's drive my background, like, before I quit accounting, like, don't ask me any accounting questions too. I knew that like for client services in general, you need to be operating like what's healthy is 3x your fixed like people overhead. So like you know, people opex, you should really be charging, you know, billing out their rate three times higher than I guess what you, you have internally. So we always strove for that. But yeah, you're right. You go through these growth like bulk and cut phases where you're like, we're really going to thin things out, you know, and invest in the team because we need to in order to hit this next stage of growth or vice versa. Sometimes you're biz dev ing too hard and you biz dev past like your internal talent. Then you got to catch up on that side.

No, this is the base. Even Josh had to give me some feedback for the younger stage. Like you have to over hire versus inbound because at the end of this day, the larger you get on the agency side, you're, you're a glorified HR team selling time. Right. And so. Or human capital. Human time. When you and I came together, you guys had two parts of a geck. So you had two parts of the business. Can you talk a little bit about choosing the different revenue streams? Because even now when I, even when I talk with Menard Menards like hey, I'm going to build an affiliate arm that's driving rev to straight bottom line and I'll have the normal agency clients. So you guys almost have like an info and you have the agency with normal ecom. What was, why did that happen?

They're becoming more popular now. Like three, four years ago. When I started, there wasn't even a name necessarily for what we were doing. I was calling it like an accelerator or an incubator like Techwood. Now like growth studios or startup studios or venture studios are becoming more common. And for any agency owner out there listening to this, it's a great thing to tack on with your core service offerings because client services is great, you get cash flow and clients pay you right now. But as you, as you get better at your craft, like buying performance media, selling creative services, whatever it is, there's some brands that come along where they might not make sense for your retainer or it's, it's, you know, it's not a good fit for that. But you're like, yeah, I'll play the long game with this brand. Like I, you know, I'll give my time and efforts right now in order to yield from it later. So that's, that's what I tried to do at first But I was too aggressive. So we started five brands. Like I said they needed maybe 30k each. That's 150k. And then I hired you people on my team. So I was on a burn. And like, my personal savings was like dwindling. It got down to, at some point, under $10,000 from everything I saved up. And I was like, this money's going to come. It's just taking a while. Because brands that were start work. You only get paid if you have ownership in a brand, if A, it sells or B, it takes cash distributions every month. Right. So for a lot of the brands we're starting, the money's just not there at the table. At first, you have to wait. And watching my bank account go down, I was like, okay, we're taking on clients now, but as soon as, like, we're cash flowing, then we'll sunset the agency. And Shaq, that was, that was the plan. But then, like, the agency started to grow. Tommy, my partner, had done a great job of stabilizing it, growing it to the point where like, okay, it's really hard to give away like a hundred mrr, you know, revenue stream and just sunset it. So then it became of like, can we find the right partner for, you know, to merge with that can, like, continue? The vision for the agency is even thinking bigger than us because for us, it was initially an afterthought that became something that we didn't want to give up.

No. I have so many more questions on this, but before we jump into that, let's go into a little bit of an ad read to some of our incredible partners for allowing these incredible conversations to continue on. So we'll see you in a second, guys. Hey, I also want to tell you guys about our other company called Constant Creative with 2Ks. And if you're looking for on demand editing at any time all around the world at a rate that makes total sense, you guys can find us@constant creative.com. and we are back. So this, this kind of put me into a couple of more thoughts when we were gone on the break. When an early agency is looking to take on clients, in their mind, they're not necessarily looking to structure deal where they're not going to get paid, but doing the work. But did you have any dilemmas around this? Or you're like, I have to play the long game. But it almost went to the point where it was a little bit too much. How would you advise agency owners? Because you don't have to be new or anything. You can, you can probably take on an equity play at any time.

Yeah, no, like, that's the thing is do it from the jump or at least have it in your mind. And if you guys find me on social and hit me up if you want to know how I structured those deals so that you have protection. Because what, what you don't want to do is a ton of time into something, and then all of a sudden they're like, yo, peace. And they treat you like an agency, like it's a contract. And you're like, no. Like, we're partners in this. So that was one lesson I learned right, like, right from the beginning is that I was doing deals without any sort of contract at first, just off of trust. And people just misremember. It's not like it's not their fault, it's not your fault. It's just you didn't have anything on paper. So memory's hazy. So a lot of times we run into situations, they're like, oh, we didn't have anything. So when our first few brands, like, failed, some of them didn't fail in the traditional sense of, like, it wasn't working. They were just like, oh, okay, like, I don't remember what the deal is. You know, let's figure out some sort of buyout option. Which is fine. That is, that's a perfectly fine scenario. But to, to answer it more tangibly for you guys right now, think about when you entertain like a biz dev call and the client's like that. You say, like, that'll be 5k for 3 months contract. They're like, oh, that's too steep for us right now. Maybe someday we'll be able to afford that. And if you feel really good and you did your audit right, and you're like, this brand is going to be something. Like, would you guys entertain something where it's no money down right now, But I take a piece of the business. And a lot of times that can be structured without seeding capital. Me personally, I was seeding a little bit of capital just to give us like marketing operation room because I like to use paid media. So I'm like, cool, we'll seed in 30k for this business so that we can spend it in ads, right, and make some money. But you don't have to do that. They might be like, yeah, man, I will vest you over time. And a very common structure for kind of growth agencies is, you know, you can invest in over time or revenue tiers. So you can be like, hey, we'll take you from you know, doing 20k MRR a month to 100k. And if we hit that, you know, 50k threshold, that'll give us 1% of equity in your company. If we hit that 100 mark, that'll give us 2%. So yeah, I know it might be confusing on surface level, but guys hit me up. I'm really happy to help, especially in that area because there was a lot of learning lessons. But yeah, keep your options open because it gives you one more way you can maybe close a client. It's just not the cash flowing deal you might want.

You've been able to do info and you've been able to do E comm and you've been able to do kind of like media. Where have you liked the most and what did you think there's been the most you've done? Even Legion I think too. Is there an area where like oh wow, I should just do this or just spend more time on this?

Yeah, like our portfolio thematically it's all in info and unless you're seeing this five years in the future and we have different brands, when you go to my site that's where I continue to the most value like I have now. I'm kind of known in that space. I have a lot of synergies that I can apply across all of our portfolio because they are all elearning where if I were to mix in D2C there would have to be a really good reason at this point for me to want to take it. Yeah, I have bought for D2C. I think it's very interesting. It's like ROAS numbers for info. Like anything over one is great for info because you're making money on the front end and you have no Cogs for like D2C. Like obviously sometimes you need to be at 3.4X for that offer to even work right because of all their fixed operating expense and variable costs. So that's like the cost difference in it but the actual buying difference is more so it plays in my strengths to do info and Legion because there's a lot of copy finesse in D2C e com I see a lot like there's more optimization talent as far as media buying goes on that side there are probably some good copywriters, like you have some great copywriters on your staff. But a lot of times like the actual mechanics matter more or the creative strategy matters more than the actual copy.

I completely agree with this. If I would have done this all over again, I probably would have been building heavily in the Legion or info space. Just because there's more margin to play with the. The ops, there's not as much overhead. You can't. You don't need to limit anything unless you're trying to do fulfillment on a higher ticket offer. And it's been the only info product I ever did, I don't even own, which has been crazy.

Yeah. And there's like a lack of good agencies, the service info brands. So if you guys are watching this, hit me up because there's still people like to this day, they're small info brands. You know, it's not probably a fit for structured, but it might be a good fit for like you guys. They're really underserved. There's a lot of competition for D2C clients, I feel like, especially the high growth, trendy ones like you guys have.

I wanted to ask you about when you were in the process of potentially exiting and then when you eventually exited, you were kind of doing something at the same exact time. How did, how did that feel to be like, cool, done. Shove this off my brain and went into info. And is there one that you. That you have right now that you're like super interested in on one of your clients?

Yeah, no do. Great question. It did it. It helps so much to get that off. And you guys have done a great job of servicing the clients. Like, I have yet to get a message from a former client that structures service where they're like upset or calling me. And I'm like, I anticipated that happening, to be honest. Like multiple times, I'm sure. Yeah. No, like you really, you were instrumental in making that. Otherwise it might not have gone so smooth. Because it's one thing to get yourself out of something, it's another to get your headspace out of it. Right. Because those people have a relationship. And then the info brands that I'm looking to kind of publish this year, we already have like a Q1, Q2 roadmap. I generally tell people though that there are. We always monitor market for education and demand. And a fun example is like during COVID like, you know, learning to, you know, bake sourdough bread, I got really, really popular. And at that point we start asking our questions. Do we find the world's best sourdough bread maker and make a course around him? Right. We didn't but that cookie general music production during COVID that informs like our strategy. So we're always taking a market backwards approach of where is their demand for education. And we're really good at being second Mover. So yeah, we usually have a comp. We want to see that comp be an eight figure brand in info. And those are our biggest brands is we don't have any nine figure brands but our biggest info brand is in real estate investing and does did 40 million in revenue last year. Great profit margins because there's no cogs and it's on on pace to do like 48, 50 million this year. So. And they're on TV you guys. I'll plug them since I don't have too much to plug. They're on Saturdays on A and E called triple digit flip.

No way. This is, this is. I've always thought about this stuff too because there's two core areas. One is like holistic living where it's a better. A better for you process to understand yourself more. And then one that's obviously extremely close to my heart which is public speaking or knowing how to give the correct presentations. And that's an education of how to structure it, how to present it. And then at the end even that offer would potentially be we get to seed you to other major events so you can jump on stage potentially if you're worth it. Those areas are how do you vet to know of a prod. If I know you said you take a good a market back first, but is there any area you're like, wow, that's actually a different idea. I didn't think about this.

So two parts of that question. Let me make sure I understand the second part. But the first part of like how do I vet people? Very much there is a standard process I have, but for a technical expertise. The biggest one that I've screwed up historically has been like stock trading. At that point I phoned a friend who could vet it for me and I was like, cool. So I'm going to vet it for like is there a heart there? Like is it a good business partner relationship? Do they have the desired intangibles to teach in an effective way? But then it's like, are they actually a good trader? I have to usually find someone who can vet that for me if it's like that. So yeah, big learning lesson. That brand ended up failing. And then we were like wondering when it wasn't getting traction. At first we're like, is the person not a good trader? Like are we like going after the wrong target market? Do we use the right ad channel? We just had no idea what the problem was. And then eventually we shut it down and we kind of learned the lesson that we missed the mark on multiple fronts, but the vetting is super crucial. And then what was the second part?

How do you know when you would come across an idea or a topic that even though it's not like baking bread or these potential trendy areas of opportunity, do you even try it or do you ask them to, like, prove anything else to you? It's not necessarily vetting of the. But it's vetting of the idea and the concept. Yeah.

So what we do, we monitor about 10,000 eLearning courses every single week. I'm using about 75k worth of spy tools that we have.

Oh, my God.

So do. It's. It's crazy. It's crazy. Kind of like it's a cheat and a huge moat for us too. And what we do is we monitor kind of traffic spikes. The biggest, like, free one. It won't get you all the way there, but you can use similar web, especially the Chrome extension. You can go to any site and kind of see if the traffic trend is up or down. And from there, with info, we can use it to approximate revenue. Because a lot of times I'm familiar with the funnel path and then I have a good sense of the benchmarks for that funnel. I'm like, cool. So their revenue is probably either from here to here. Right.

Wow.

And have that range. And then we'll be like, okay, are we interested? Then what I do is we make a list of people or we try to find people and get their opinions on what maybe they're doing right and what they're doing wrong. So I'm like, what are they teaching? Like, what is like, you know, And I'm usually looking for contrarian opinions at that point. I'm not looking to vet it for right or wrong. I'm usually looking for them like, oh, they're like teaching stock trading all wrong. Like, I would do it this way as opposed to this way. So I'm looking for differentiation, not necessarily, you know, ability to. To trade. And then if I have the differentiation and a contrarian opinion, then I usually have a strong personal brand. And then it's a matter of vetting them if they're actually good. But yeah, that's the general process. And all of our brands, that's a common theme, is they all have strong opinions and they all have a unique way of doing things that leads to student success. We, we mps all of our courses, which is a fancy way of saying, on a scale from 1 to 10, would you refer this course to one of your friends? And yeah, all of them. If it's not going to get over 9 off the initial. We're, we're generally not interested in publishing it. We're trying to make world class education because there's a lot of people trying to solve the guru problem of just people that you know are really good at pretending like they know some stuff and then they kind of let people down.

It's so difficult. Especially when I've had a couple conversations with agencies in the space that are contemplating doing a course that's like kind of like a bolt on to their service. So it's either done with you done for you or done beside you or done done with you done for you. Do you think it's a viable option for agencies are looking for cash flow coming in because you can either do a group, you can do one on one consulting. But there is a reason to drive revenue through a course, especially education because.

There'S a lot of people trying to solve the guru problem of just people that you know, if you're don't.

Even if that client was never going to be a good fit for you, you might have to give that good downsell. Have you guys thought about that?

It's a great model. And honestly this year might be like I never did a course myself because I just love, I like being behind the scenes. But honestly, shout out you and a few other people have kind of convinced me this the year I'm gonna kind of come out in my show and, and start putting myself out there because good things happen generally speaking. And my fears of just like, you know, getting recognized on the street and stuff like are probably aren't actual fears. You know, like do you ever feel safe because of all the kind of, you know, social distribution you have now?

I always say I'm very well known to a small group of people.

That's, that's what I want to. So yeah, if I can achieve that, it can only help, right? But like you guys, Shaq, like if you and Josh like did some sort of hybrid on like how to grow agencies course, like you guys have probably already thought about it, it might be even doing something it would crush. Like you guys have the track record, you have the expertise, you're still close to the problem and growing your own agencies. So those you check off all the lists like for me, if I was looking to, to publish. So if anyone else is listening to this, yeah, like add a service whether it's consulting or some sort of hybrid because you're going to get clients who don't want to buy. You're like done for you at whatever retainer and then you're like cool. How about like $2,000 a month? We'll meet once a week for like a client call and then you'll go through like the course of how we buy. And you can train your internal team is that, that happened a lot to us is people just wanted, they're like, look like six month contract. You train our team and then we're probably going to cut you. I'm like, cool. As long as we know and we're like upfront with each other about this, we can work something out. I love that.

That, yeah, better in the dark.

So yeah, the worst thing is getting blindsided by clients who are like, yeah, you're doing a great job. And then next month done.

And one thing, one thing we see with the info side, especially with the agency, is it's such a, especially if you're running paid ads for your agency. It's such a good way to lower your customer acquisition costs. Not always getting it to zero, but you know, it's a great way to basically do marketing for free if you have that downsell in there because you're able to then lower that customer acquisition cost when you're, when you're running paid ads for it.

Yeah, like I never did this, but it wouldn't hurt. Like for our brands I run like low grade retargeting with our like earned PR placements. So if you're in HuffPost or Entrepreneur or whatnot, just throw like $5 a day, $10 a day at like your target market and just keep them, keep them aware that you're an expert at what you do. Right. So you get one piece of Burn media. Another little info hack is take five and I hired you people on my team so I was on a burn and like my personal savings was like dwindling. It got down to at some point under $10,000 from everything I saved up. And I was like, this money's going to come. It's just taking a while. Because brands that were start work, you only get paid if you have ownership in a brand. If A, it sells or B, it takes cash distributions every month. Right. So for a lot of the brands we're starting, the money's just not there at the table at first. So you have to wait and watching my bank account go dollars a day and advertise only to journalists who work at publications. So you syndicate one earned placement to like just show it to journalists and then other journalists will pick it up. That happened with Sam Ovens. And how he ended up getting on Forbes 30 under 30. We started with one article. I targeted just anyone who worked at Forbes, Anyone worked at HuffPost, anyone who worked at like all these posts and just made sure they were down. I was like, okay, we're taking on clients now, but as soon as like we're cash flowing, then we'll sunset the agency. And Shaq, that was, that was the plan. But then like the agency started to grow. Tommy, my partner, had done a great job of stabilizing it, growing it to the point where like, okay, it's really hard to give away like 100 Mr. You know, revenue stream and just sunset it. So then it became of like, can we find the right partner for, you know, to merge with aware of him?

What a hack. So is that first placement a paid placement?

Can be, it can be, it can be free. Like, the way I look at it is, are you going to trade time or money? Like, you can either. There's journalists who will take money under the table. And ethically, I'm not a post that can like, continue. The vision for the agency is even thinking bigger than us because for us, it was initially an afterthought that became something that we didn't want to give up.

Now I have so many more questions on this, but before we jump into that, let's go into a little bit of an ad read to some of our incredible partners for allowing these incredible conversations to continue on. So we'll see you in a second.

Guys listed doing that personally. But if you are, you can just do it what I would call spend time, like develop a relationship with a contributor, ask them what they want to publish. Like, hey man, what's getting you?

Hey. I also want to tell you guys about our other company called Constant Creative with 2Ks. And if you're looking for on demand editing at any time all around the world at a rate that makes total sense, you guys can find us@constant creative.com. and we are back. So this, this kind of put me into a couple of more thoughts when we were gone on the break. When an early agency is looking to take on clients in their mind, they're not necessarily looking to structured deal where they're not going to views.

What's your most viewed article? Cool. When I have someone that has a unique play on that topic, is it okay if I reach out to you? They're going to say yes, Because a lot of times they get bonus stuff, views or page views and then you bring them something valuable.

Yeah, because it's something that We've seen a lot in the agency space recently is PR firm get paid but doing the work.

But did you have any dilemmas around this? Or you're like, I have to play the long game. But it almost went to the point where it was a little bit too much. How would you advise agency owners? Because you don't have to be new or anything. You can, you can probably take on an equity play at any time.

Yeah, it's kind of popping up and doing more paid placements. So yeah, I don't know if it's necessarily makes sense to know like that's.

The thing is do it from the jump or at least have it in your mind. And if you guys find me on social and hit me up if you want to know how I structured those deals so that you have protection. Because what, what you don't want to do is a ton of time into something and then all of a sudden they're like, yo, peace. And they treat you like an agency, like it's a contract and you're like, no, like we're partners in this. So that was one lesson I learned right, like right from the beginning is that I was doing deals without any sort of contract at first, just off of trust. And people just misremember. It's not like it's not their fault, it's not your fault. It's just you didn't have anything on paper. So memory's hazy. So a lot of times we run into situations, they're like, oh, we didn't have anything. So when our first few brands like failed, some of them didn't fail in the traditional sense of do that versus an earn.

But you know what, you know, is there a difference, I don't know your expertise behind that, but is there a big difference between the paid and the earned placement?

So sometimes like when I've, you know, I don't want to say bribed, I guess bribed a contributor. What I normally do is I write the article for them because I'm like, cool. They get bonus off page views. I'm going to give them money, I'm going to bribe them, I'm going to write the article for them. Like take the work off their hands. All they have to do is hit play and they're going to look good in front of their boss. But generally speaking, I fancy myself a good ride. It wasn't working. They were just like, oh, okay. Like I don't remember what the deal is. You know, let's figure out some sort of buyout option which Is fine. That is, that's a perfectly fine scenario. But to, to answer it more tangibly for you guys right now, think about when you entertain like a biz dev call and the client's like that. You say like that'll be 5k for you know, three months contract. They're like, or something like, I'll write something that like actually is going to hit like not only for your audience, but make us look good. Oh, that's too steep for us right now. Maybe someday we'll be able to afford that. And if you feel really good and you did your audit right, and you're like, this brand is going to be something like would you guys entertain something where it's no money down right now, but I take a piece of the business and that's, that's usually a huge win. Now some of, some of the publications, like they can get fired for taking money under the table. So someone like, I have a lot of respect for Fast Company. Like Fast Company can't be bought. At least not the people I reached out to. So you have to do that the hard way, right? They have high journalistic integrity. Wall Street Journal, same way you can't really buy into Wall street unless a lot of times that can be structured without seeding capital. Me personally, I was seeding a little bit of capital just to give us like marketing operation room because I like to use paid media. So I'm like, cool, we'll seed in 30k for this business so that we can spend it in ads, right, and make some money. But you don't have to do that. They might be like, yeah man, I will vest you over time. And a very common structure for kind of growth agencies is, you know, you can invest in over time or revenue tiers. So you can be like, hey, we'll take you from, you know, doing 20k MRR a month to 100k. And if we hit that, you know, I've heard tales of people maybe giving a writer like 50, 60k for an article, which is so much. They're basically like risk my career money, you know, in order to do that. Otherwise I have some standards. So it just depends on the publication. Some blogs, like they might be the CEO of it and they're like, dude, this is how it works. It's now 50k threshold, that'll give us up 1% of equity in your company. If we hit that a hundred mark, that'll give us 2%. So yeah, I know it might be confusing on surface level. I'll pay to play like I'M not. You know, everyone pays me. So you just kind of have to learn the game. You know, which publications take money, which ones don't.

And then once you.

But guys hit me up, I'm really happy to. To help. Especially in that area. Cause there was a lot of learning lessons.

But you have one. You're running some paid ads to it.

Ads, yes. Indicate it. I learned that from Ryan. Yeah. Keep your options open because it gives you one more way you can maybe close a client. It's just not the cash flowing deal you might want.

You've been able to do info and you've been able to do Ecom and you've been able to do kind of like media. What. Where have you liked the most and what do you think has been the most? And even you've done even Legion I think too. Is there an area where like oh wow, I should just do this.

Called it trading up the chain. But he never used paid media to do it. He would take an article he, he earned in like let's say HuffPost and then he would email other contributors and be like look at this. And you do it from different email accounts. He'd be like, get the whole team be like yo, did you see this? You should cover this too.

So just spend more time on this.

Yeah, like our portfolio thematically it's all in info and unless you're seeing this five years in the future and we have different brands, when you go to my site that's where I continue. So to me I'm like that's, that's a really time intensive way. I'd rather just take 100% to add the most value like I have now. I'm kind of known in that space. I have a lot of synergies that I can apply across all of our portfolio because they are all elearning where if I were to mix in D2C there'd have to be a really good reason at this point for me to want to take it. Yeah, I have bought for deep paid ads target all these people. So I just maintain, you know, a list of 10,000 people to see. I think it's very interesting. It's like Roas numbers for info. Like anything over one is great for info because you're making money on the front end and you have no Cogs for like D2C. Like obviously sometimes you need to be at 3.4X for that offer to even work. Right. Because of all their fixed operating expense and variable costs. So that's like the cost difference in it. But the actual buying difference is more so it plays in my strengths to do Info and Legion because there's a lot of copy finesse in D2C. Supru. You won't spend more than a few hundred dollars like circulating that article to anyone who might be a journalist in this space.

I think for any agency that's looking to try and get some sort of recognition or honestly you can use this for client acquisition too. Look what we've been able to do. We've been a major contributor to getting them on XYZ publication. Wouldn't you like this as well because of all the revenue we've been able to drive them.

Ecom I see a lot like there's more optimization talent as far as media buying goes on that side. Ecom I see a lot like there's more optimization talent as far as media buying goes on that side. There are probably some good copywriters like you have some great copywriters on your staff. But a lot of times like the actual mechanics matter more or the creative strategy matters more than the actual copy.

I completely agree with this. If I would have done this all over again, I probably would have been building heavily in the Legion or Info space just because there's more margin to play with the ops. There's not as much.

There are probably some good copywriters. Like you have some great copywriters on your staff. But 100% you could sell it as a service, you could do it as a value add. Like that's as an agency overhead.

You can't. You don't need to limit anything unless you're trying to do fulfillment on a on a higher ticket offer. And it's been the only info product I ever did. I don't even own which has been crazy.

Yeah owner, you should definitely be looking for ways first month to go over like above expectations because so many people and there's like a lack of good agencies the service info brands. So if you guys are watching this hit me up because there's still people like to this day they're small info brands. You know it's not probably a fit for structured but it might be a good fit for like you guys. They're really underserved. There's a lot of competition for D2C clients. I feel like especially the high growth trendy ones like you guys have.

I wanted to ask you about when you were in the process of had.

Bad especially performance marketing agencies like over promise under deliver. Like I would really strive essentially exiting.

And then when you eventually exited but you were kind of doing something at the same exact time. How did. How did that feel to be like cool done. Shove this off my brain and went into info and is there one that you that you have right now that you're like super interested in on one of your clients?

Yeah, no do great question. It did. It helped so much to get that off. And you guys have done a great job of service over deliver in that first month.

No, I agree with you. Would you as like a party know for the audience on this stuff if you were to give anybody wisdom about if they're even if they're just about.

To start seeing the clients? Like I have yet to get a message from a former client that structures service where they're like upset or calling me and I'm like I anticipated that happening to be honest. Like multiple times I'm sure. Yeah. No like you really you were instrumental in an agency.

Let's go even that route. Right. If you're they were going to just where would you tell them to making.

That otherwise it might not have gone so smooth. Because it's one thing to get yourself out of something, it's another to get your headspace out of it. Right. Because those people have a relationship. And then the info brands that I'm looking to kind of publish this year we already have like a Q1 Q2 roadmap. I generally tell people though that there are we always monitor market for education.

And demand kind of invest most of.

Their time in if they're just starting on the biz. Dev revenue is like get clients and then figure out how to serve them like second. So like you're never going to end. And a fun example is like during bid like you know, learning to you know, bake sourdough bread. I got really, really popular and at that point we start asking our questions do we find the world's best sourdough bread maker and make a course around them? Right. We didn't but get to a point when you're just starting where most people aren't going to be like yeah I'm going to hire five people like put myself in the debt and then go get clients because you know I want to be able to that cooking general music production during COVID that informs like our strategy. So we're always taking a market backwards approach of where is their demand for education and we're really going to be in second mover. So yeah we usually have a comp. We want to see that comp be an eight figure brand in info and those are our biggest Brands is we don't have any nine figure brands but our biggest info brand nervousum most people who are successful Shaq, I don't know how you and Jake did it. Go out and get clients first then figures in real estate investing and does did $40 million in revenue last year. Great profit margins because there's no cogs and it's on on pace to do like 48, 50 million this year. So. And they're on TV if you guys I'll. I'll plug them since I don't have too much to plug. They're on Saturdays on a E called triple digit flip.

No way. This is, this is. I've always thought about this stuff too because there's two core areas. One is like holistic living where it's a better. A better for you process to understand.

Okay now that I have this client I'm going to go build the team after that. So that'd be like just general advice number one second piece of advice would be set expectations. That's the number one thing I learned with client services is remind the client of the goal, remind them yourself more.

And then one that's obviously extremely close to my heart which is public speaking.

Or knowing that you're progressing towards the goal. If you're not progressing towards the goal, tell them what you're going to do about it.

Remind to give the correct presentations and that's an education of how to structure it, how to present it and then at the end even that offer would potentially be we get a seed you do other major events so you can jump on stage potentially if you're worth it. Those areas are how do you vet to know of a prod If I know you said you take a good flush a market back first but is there any area you're like wow, that's actually a different idea. I didn't think about this.

So two parts of that question. Let me make sure I understand the second part. But the first part of them that you're behind but you haven't forgot and this is what we're going to do in order to hit. If you do that you say how do I vet people Very much there is a standard process I have but stay close and have tight communication windows and you you reduce the risk of them churning or surprising you because clients aren't going to always say they're not happy with you until they cut you. That's just the fact. For technical expertise the biggest one that I've screwed up historically has been like stock trading. At that point I Phoned a friend who could vet it for me, and I was like, cool. So I'm going to vet it for, like, is there heart there? Like, is it a good business partner relationship? Do they have the desired intangibles to teach in an effective way? But then it's like, are they actually a good trader? I have to usually find someone who can vet that for me.

You're so spot on this. And it is. We did the same exact thing. We. We knew we needed to close and they were like, fuck it. We're going to figure out how to solve this and that. I think that is the right way.

Of doing it if it's like that. So, yeah, big learning lesson. That brand ended up failing. And then we were like, wondering when it wasn't getting traction. At first we're like, is the person not a good trader? Like, are we, like, going after the wrong target market? Do we use the right ad channel? We just had no idea what the problem was. And then eventually we shut it down and we kind of learned the lesson that we missed the mark on multiple fronts. But the vetting is super crucial. And then what was the second part?

How do you know when you come across an idea? Because it's at the early stages. How do you get them in and how do you retain them? But you can't retain them if you can't get them in. Like that there's dia or a topic that even though it's not like baking bread or it's not these potential way around it.

Yeah. If you, if you feel unethical about it, you can always refund the client.

If you're like, yeah, trendy areas of opportunity, do you even try it or do you ask them to like, like.

We have a great CRO team. And you're like, shoot, now I need to go hire CRO. If you don't find them, just prove.

Anything else to you. It's not necessarily vetting of the person, but it's vetting of the idea and the concept.

Yeah. So what we do, we monitor about 10,000 eLearning courses every single week using about 75k worth of spy tools that we have.

Oh, my God.

So, dude, it's. It's be like, hey, man, like, I thought we had someone lined up for this project that was going to help. Didn't work out. I'm gonna have to give you your money back. No one's gonna be mad about that.

No, I appreciate you, dude. This has been probably the one that I was looking forward to, especially because we can Talk about all the. The nerdy. The nerdy. So then next time I'm going to ask some very specific things around AI and what would. What would your AI agency look like? Because I know you're going really deep on this, but I'll give you some time to prep for that. Okay.

I have been thinking, like the AI stuff that's happening right now, I've just been waiting for everyone to get to the tipping point and talking about like we are. So I had like a two year head start. Yeah, Shaq, if you want to bring me and just we do there like the AI stuff that's happening right now, I've just been waiting for everyone to get to the tipping point and talking about it like we are. So I had like a two year head start. Yeah, Shaq, if you want to bring me and just. We do tools like, there's nothing that I enjoy talking about more. Yeah, it's. I've been playing with so many.

We're going to do a Tool Time for sure with you.

Cool, cool, cool.

Yeah.

Right before this is a last party Note, I asked AI ChatGPT specifically tools like, there's nothing that I enjoy talking about more. Yeah, it's. I've been playing with so many.

We're going to do a Tool Time for sure with you.

Cool, cool, cool. I'm going to 2023 affiliate world in Dubai. What are the I can't miss speakers for media buying wow. In back with you and Jordan Menard. So I also. Let's go tattoos. Bonus points. If they have tattoos, I'll send it to you guys.

Dude, that is awesome. Please shoot me that, brother.

I will.

That'll be a good tweet.

Yep, exactly. I got you guys. So. Yep. Even. Even right before this, as a last party Note, I asked AI ChatGPT specifically. The AI knows about you, man. I. I didn't know if it did, but it does.

That is. That. That is actually. I am. I'm blushing. You can't see because the sun's now in my, my, my lens, which is fantastic timing.

But Fish, I am good.

I'm grateful for you, buddy. I'm grateful so much, Joshua. And as always. Where can we find you, Fish? Where can we get a hold of you, man?

You guys can find me on social. Just search. I'm Instagram Nick Fish on Facebook in Fisher is my. My handle. Or just go to gexa.com you can find me from there. That's our startup studio, Venture Studio for info. So right now we're looking for a director of marketing for one of those big brands I just mentioned. Perfect. The one real estate investing on the TV show. So if you guys are especially like a senior media buyer, maybe like your upward mobility has been blocked to director level, whatever it is. But you're good at buying media, specifically Facebook, YouTube, or a paid social channel. That's top of mind. Coming into a cool ecosystem. It's very entrepreneurial. Other than that, just follow along. You know, I just like to meet good people, especially ones who are up and coming. The type of people, honestly, Shaq, that you attract in your audience. Hit me up. I always answer questions.

This is true. This is how we came to be friends and eventually business partners. So definitely take him up on that. He does take the time to give you some answers. And I am very grateful for us. And that is. That's another one of the books over here at the agency algorithm with your boy Shackelford and Joshua Kobayashi Johnston, Nick Fish. Thank you, buddy. Have a great rest of the weekend. And, guys, you know where to find us. On the Spotify's, on the iTunes, on the YouTubes. Thanks for being around. Take care.