Navigating 2024: Business Trends and Success Tactics

I definitely believe that AI influencers are going to be much, much bigger as we go forward. And I don't like we've seen it. It starts, as you mentioned, it starts in the carnal area usually first. So you see hot girls as AI influencers and they're doing only fan stuff and things like that. But what I think will be really interesting, I've wanted in in several of the businesses, like one or two that I'm the face of. I don't really want to be the face of the business for lots of reasons that we talk about an exit, having an exitable company. You don't want to have a personality brand. You want to have a brand that has a method or the brand itself.

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Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch and today's a snackable episode with Roland where he's going to get into some more tactical strategies that you can start using to live a rich and happy life. If this is the first snackable episode you're hearing, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to some of the other episodes that Roland has put out. And if you want to get notified every time we release a new episode, go to the new businesslunchpodcast.com website and we'll send you detailed notes along with every episode. That's businesslunchpodcast.com www.businesslunchpodcast.com and you can sign up for the free email newsletter where you'll be able to get all the highlights and resources from the episodes.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch with your hosts, Ryan Deiss and me, Roland Frazier. Wonderful to see you guys. Ryan, wonderful to see you hanging out at the beach house, all casual out. I love it.

So cash. So cash on location, on vacation, as I like to say, because it. Because it kind of rhymes. That's why I like to say it. It's fun to say.

I like it.

I like it.

Yeah.

So this is the time of year when both of us take time to think about the new year, as many people do. And I thought it would be kind of fun if we shared a little bit about what we're thinking 2024 looks like for our businesses, for us, etc. What do you. What are you thinking right now?

Yeah, well, I want to add the just before we get started. For all of our listeners, this is kind of part two. In the previous episode, if you, if you didn't catch it, we gave all of our key lessons from 2023. And so this is really us applying based on what we experienced this last year and what we're seeing, what do we think 2024 is going to be about? So just saying, if you haven't listened to that, might want to go over it. It'll perhaps provide some more context. But in terms of what I'm really seeing in 2024, I actually think that 2024 is going to be the first less but better year that we've had in a very long time. And so I think that algorithmically speaking, every single social channel rewarded being everywhere all at once, all the time.

Right?

That was how you kind of got, you know, got, got to be big. I think now what we're seeing and the people that I'm talking to in my own experiences, you know, what people are seeing is the, you know, the, the algorithms are now supporting those things that are rising to the top and where I think this can be problematic for a lot of folks who are looking to, you know, break through in certain niche channels on, know, in, in social. And I'm talking about whether it's TikTok or it's Reels or it's YouTube, I mean, you name your social channel of choice, Twitter, even, all of these have moved away from the emphasis around subscribers and followers. And now everybody's feed across all these social channels is now all AI algorithm driven and it is showing you what they think you're going to respond to. And that where this is unfortunate for, you know, a lot of brands, unless you're entertainment, is most people respond to some of the most kind of base, carnal things and most of the people out there aren't selling that. And so I think that that the way to win in, in social and all the different, you know, these different channels, email is going to be the same way too, for what it's worth is to have less, but better to be in a position where the content, what you're putting out there, you know, you personally or your brand, it needs to be missed when it's gone. You know, your goal for the next year should be to be missed when you're not there. So people are seeking you out because to be everywhere all at once, I think is going to be more than most people are willing and able to do. So that's kind of, and we can get into the implications about how I think that affects content strategies and media buying strategies and things like that. But I do believe, algorithmically speaking, we're already starting to see it. The better stuff is rising to the top. The all the time stuff is just never getting the time of day.

That's really cool. I think, I think it's, it's interesting. I never know because I don't feel like I'm the average person. You know, it's very. I try to be mindful when I'm thinking about our marketing and stuff like that, that, that if I don't like something, it doesn't mean that it's not good, it just means that I'm not the market, you know, or am I the market? Right. But I know that there are people who have valuable things to offer, who I see constantly so much that I get tired of it and I unfollow them. And so it'll be interesting to see. Does that post 10 times a day thing, you know, that Grant Cardone style of, of being so in your face all the time across everything, is that going to continue to be successful or not? I don't know. I definitely believe that AI influencers are going to be much, much bigger as we go forward. And I don't like. We've seen it, it starts as you mentioned, it starts in the carnal area usually first. So you see hot girls as AI influencers but. And they're doing only fan stuff and things like that. But what I think will be really interesting, I've, I've wanted in, in several of the businesses, like one or two that I'm the face of. I don't really want to be the face of the business for lots of reasons that we talk about having an exitable company. You don't want to have a personality brand, you want to have a brand that has a method or the brand itself. You can be Warren Buffett promoting Berkshire Hathaway. But if you die, if you're Richard Branson and you've got Virgin and you die, Virgin continues on. Berkshire will continue on, although they'll need to find another spokesperson because it's been very helpful and important. So how do you, how do you replace yourself in, in a way that doesn't build a dependency on another human being who then can kind of blackmail you into having to pay them more and more because of their ever increasing importance that you're creating by pouring money into media dollars to promote them. And I think one of the big ways around that is going to be AI influencers. And so like for me for our companies rather than having me be the spokesperson all the time and hiring other people or promoting people who are working with us but then would have their own brand and be very likely to go off and start their own businesses on the back of our promotion, I can now have virtual spokespeople that are not me that are giving different perspectives and different appearances as spokespeople for our brand that we control and we own. And I think that's going to be an amazing change that comes across because if you have like you've been able to have the Aflac duck, right. Or the, the Gecko for Geico and those have been cool as kind of animated mascot type things. And I think you're going to have now animated mascot people that look and seem real and that develop followings but aren't real, but they're owned by the brand, which can increase the value of the brand. And so I plan to lean into that. And I think that's a really exciting area for 24 and beyond.

Yeah, see, I take the. And I think it's going to be one of the extremes and I think what's going to work are the extremes. I think there's going to be nothing in the middle. And so this is because what we've been testing is one extreme and before that there was a different extreme. And so on the, on the, on the people front, on the, on the brand front, I think people are going to want real life humans that they, you know, that they know like and trust and that they miss when they're gone. Right. And, and then I think that there's going to be people who are always there and they're like entertainers, but there's so few of those. Right. I mean, so we talk about the Grant. I think Grant will still be granted and Grant's strategy will continue to work for Grant as long as it's Grant and like Alex, like Hormozi, like that strategy will work as long as it is him. I think the opportunity for more people to achieve those results executing that same strategy, that window, I'm not saying it's closed, but it's a crack. It's narrowed dramatically to get in there and when you were there, boy, you better be better than all the incumbents. And I think it's harder to be better than, than the incumbents because they've just been doing it longer than you. They're just better at it than you are. There's a reason they did it before. So if you can't play that game Then the game that I would play is the, you know, is the less but better. And I think that this is going to take the form of long form content. Like so I think long form is absolutely going to make, you know, is making a resurgence. You know, books have always mattered. I mean book, the book is the ultimate long form. But we're seeing for example on YouTube, it used to be, you know, you want to kind of be in the 10 to 20 minute range. Now it's either a short or it might as well be an hour to an hour and a half, you know, and kind of these like little. For a lot of the business content type stuff, you know, the answer is always as long as it needs to be. But the reality is like 10 to 20 minutes isn't very long to teach them where they're like, oh, I'm really glad I did that. So it seems like people are wanting the short, like give me the quick dopamine hit or that I want to go in deep. And, and I just think that that trend is going to play out across all the different channels. I think you got to decide which game you're going to play because trying to play both games I think is going to become problematic.

Yeah, you and I started a business called aifi. My business with a AI agent that makes sales calls. Also we'll will handle customer service, but it, it interacts with people via phone, makes calls to however many people you load up into the, the dialer and then sets appointments. It will sell things, it will kind of do anything that you want it to do in terms of having conversations with people, handling objections, all of that kind of stuff. Text them links to buy, text them links to set up appointments, all that kind of stuff. I think that's different from what we like to normally do which is to go into already profitable businesses. Why would you say we started that business? Like why did we agree to kind of go against what we normally do and say we're gonna do this one from the get go and have a pretty significant investment to make it go as well?

I mean, so I know the thought process I went through is this is something that we wish we had for ourselves. And so if we do this startup and it doesn't work out as a, as a standalone company, we'll be glad that we at least have this core capability within. So I mean it's a valuable byproduct. If it can spin out and exist as a separate company, which we obviously believe that it can, then great. But the quote unquote Startup risk was fairly low because there was value in just having it as a, as an internal service based asset. And I do think, you know, more companies today are beginning to realize that, wow, you know, we can, we can be our own little mini Holdco. And you're starting to see this, you know, kind of holding companies became a bit of a trend. You know, you had a lot of people on Twitter talking about holding companies. You and I have been talking about that forever. You've been talking about it for even longer. You brought that concept to me over a decade ago. Yep, it got cool this year. I think it's going to continue to be a trend into next year because more and more people are realizing, gosh, because of technology, because of AI tools, because of leveraged outsource talent all over the world, we can spin up our own little businesses within our broader ecosystem. And it's not as expensive and it's not as risky as it once was. So why not start up another little company that's adjacent to one that you already have? If you're already spending money on the services, why not try to do it internally? And hey, if it can work out as a business, you know, all the better. And so the reason we started that speaks to another trend that I think is going to exist in 2024, which is the emergence of the kind of small holding company, you know, the, the people spinning up businesses within their existing company ecosystem to perform internal services that they then spin out. Now, it's harder than everybody thinks it is. You know, it's a lot harder than everybody thinks it is. So they're going to have to get good at systems in the operation side. But I do think that you're going to see that as more of a trend for the same reason that we had. We need it anyway. Why not just make it a business while we're at it?

Yeah, and that's it for me too, is that we knew that we needed to increase our outbound sales and that either meant staffing up or finding another way to do it. When we found this solution, it was just so perfect and so well executed that it seemed like that would be an answer to that. And it was less expensive for us to make the investment. The risk of losing the investment versus the benefit we'd get, it's already, by the way, generated, I think three times what we invested in it. And, and we haven't even started yet. But it's also going to give us a huge edge because we plan to use it to consult for equity in the companies too. What's a capability that we can bring to. How about an unlimited sales force of people to set appointments on outbound sales? That's a pretty powerful thing for us to be able to bring to the table. And rather than selling it as a service, what we really want to do is bring that as part of what we bring to get equity in the company. So I think that's a, that's kind of an exciting thing. And the reason that we did it is that it, it enhanced, it was almost like an acquisition. It wasn't an up and going company, but because it was all AI fied and we already had team members who could deploy, wasn't. It wasn't as much of a startup as you might think. Right. So I think it was that we will be leaning into that. Talking about 24. That will definitely be leaning into that. I know Ryan, you're working on a lot of the marketing messaging and we've already done test sales and it's done really, really well. We've got a couple of our existing equity deals that are using it, we're testing it, we're getting case studies and that will be a heavy focus, I think for both you and me this year, as will, by the way, speaking of that, really focusing on our scale and exit business, which is acquiring interests in companies in exchange for the cool things that we can bring and do. So that's a joint focus for us. What are some of the other things you're thinking about for 24?

So another big trend looking at 2024 is, is really the kind of the necessary focus on the supply side of the game and specifically constraining the supply side. So let me tell you what I mean by that. For the past five to almost 10 years, things have just been ripping so much economically, right? There has just been so much growth. There's been some, I mean we obviously saw a little bit of a dip in Covid, but then it just came back and ripped hard, you know, faster than ever. But I mean, bull markets, like everything, you know, economic optimism, you know, it peaks bull market runs the likes of which we've never seen in our, you know, in our lifetime. And so what that has created was this perception of unlimited demand, right? There is always more demand than supply. There was just always that, you know, always that perception of there's just so much demand out there that's being flipped. And so we're seeing the supply demand dynamic, which is the thing that drives all economy. You know, it's not flipped. Demand has pulled Back. Which means there's a lot of businesses who they never really had to think about, you know, what is our capacity and how do we signal that we do have limited capacity? Because everything was just how do we sell more, more, more, more, more. If you look at the brands that, that never forgot this and that really doubled down on it. They became the most valuable brands in the world during the bull time. And those were all your luxury brands because they signaled throughout we have limited supply, limited supply, limited supply. And they never lost that script. Most businesses though, who were not in the luxury market lost that script and they sold to as many people as much as they possibly could. And you've seen those brands drop a lot of from a value perspective. And so I think a big trend in 2024 is saying how do we make our brand a little bit more of a, you know, of a luxury, so to speak. How do we make sure that we signal that we have limited supply? How do we make sure that we're actually constraining supply more? A lot more work needs to be done on messaging the supply side than on simply trying to go out there and generate more demand. And that has been the, you know, the name of the game. So a lot of the marketing that we're doing, again think about the tactics. It's instead of sending people to a landing page where they can buy or they can apply, it's sending people to a page where they can put on a get on a waiting list to register interest to signal that they are interested in it but they can't buy it today. That's something when everybody's wallet out we wouldn't have considered in the past, but now it's necessary. And what it's forcing us to do is to ask the question, how do we make sure that the customer experience is so amazing that people are thrilled when they buy it? And in doing so, that question is inherently going to limit your supply because if you're truly going to deliver an outstanding customer experience, you can't do it for everybody all at once. So yeah, supply side versus demand side marketing I think is going to be a big component. I love it.

One of the things too that, that we, we, we leaned on more because as we were up leveling the quality of the teams that we had, we realized that we needed to look beyond our own networks. And so in using professional search firms to find higher level people in marketing and finance and operations. And I think we'll continue to, to move more in that direction as we professionalize the business. The business portfolio that we've got and as we lean into things like roll ups, which is a, has been a focus for us, but really this year I think will be a heavy, heavy focus. The roll ups that we've started in different spaces, you've got to have high quality team members to do that. And so just buying the companies that you've got or just running the company you've got right now with the people you've got, it's not probably going to be enough. Who got you here won't get you there to that next level that you might be trying to get to. So really look hard at the team you've got and say, can these people get me there? And here's kind of a cool creative way that we found to honor the people who got us there who are part of the company and part of the cap table and we believe are loyal to the company but might not have the skills to go from 20 million to a hundred million or 100 million to 500 million in sales. And the way that we've done that is we've said what we're going to do is take the people who were in the key positions of say sales or marketing or finance or operations or even all of those that we've got loyal. Like they're not transactional, they're not mercenaries hopping from company to company. They came up, they learned, they got, they really did a lot to get the company into that. Not like to $1 million because that's just nothing these days. But to 10 million plus, you know, they've seen something if they've, if they've been there to get the company in a leadership role to that level. So what we're doing is basically elevating those people to Holdco, where they will be effectively the CEO, the CEO of CEOs so that we can get the CEOs in that took the companies from 100 million to 500 million. It's different set of skills, different relationships, you know, different systems, all of that kind of stuff. But who's going to watch those guys, right? So by having people that already have an interest and if they don't have an interest then you might think differently. But, but rather than have that become debt equity and just say, you know, hey, well it was great, you still got your equity and now you go find out something else to do. No, let's, let's take advantage of that. Let's move them up to the holding company because we're going to grow by acquisition and let's Let them Look at the CEOs, help us with the hiring process, participate in it, and then be sure that that person's doing their job. Because once you bring somebody in like that, if you don't have those skills, you might not, you might not have the time or the skills to be.

Able to watch them and be sure.

They'Re doing what they're doing. So the combination of, I guess what I'm saying is we're really focused on in 24, on up leveling the people who are in the operational roles in the portfolio companies and honoring the people who started and have equity and are on the cap table by having them kind of move into a supervisory role. We're using professional search companies to expand the universe of potential candidates that are qualified to do the job, to find the best people. And all of that fits into our growth by acquisition, which is a way of saying roll up strategies for going along. So it's kind of three interlaced things, but all working together and definitely leaning into those strategies going forward.

Yeah, you took my kind of third big trend, which is I think 2024 is going to be the year to build a great team. There has never been as much talent sitting on the sidelines as there is right now. We are, you know, and there's a lot of people who are, who are looking to make moves, they're open to it because they're also not getting again, the supply is, the demand is down. And so the demand is down for employers demanding all their roles. So people who are talented are starting to get twitchy. They want to make sure that they're not stuck. And so if you have a great company and a great opportunity for somebody to come and join you, you've got a great opportunity to build a great team. And in the past, boy, you were competing with so many people, just throwing stupid money at everybody. Because again, we were in a demand side game, we are now in a supply side game. So if you are a business, it's time to signal that you have limited supply. If you are from a product and services perspective, as a business owner, from a hiring perspective, you absolutely are. You know, there's limited supply out there compared to what there was. And so to the extent that you can, that you've got some demand on your end, knowing that supply is limited, you can now really start to build a great team again for the first time and I would say almost a decade as a, especially as a small to midsize business. Similarly to what you were saying, we've been Talking and have been telling the world for years and years now to expand through acquisition. And a lot of people heard that message and they got excited about it and it was always a great opportunity. But it's funny, now people are getting increasingly less excited about expanding through acquisition because so many people tried it and they heard about and a couple people tried to do it and it's hard and, and the competition is so great. And so a lot of people got out of the acquisition game. I think 2024 in much the same way is going to be a phenomenal time to scale through acquisition, to build your portfolio company through acquisition, because there's just not as many buyers. You don't have the tiger globals of the world going up, driving up valuations. You don't have as much capital that is free flowing. People talk about a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines. It is, but a lot of it's scared. A lot of the games that these companies were playing to go in and do the large acquisition that was driving up the valuations were games that were heavily reliant upon cheap debt that just isn't there anymore.

Right.

And so they can't play their same games, which means there's not as many people out there. So all these things that got super cool during like Covid and immediately following, they're now actually going to work better than they did back then when they were quote, unquote, cool. So I think that this is the year to build a great team and I think this is the year to build a great portfolio.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think that going into this year we're really focused on high quality consulting for equity and acquisition deals more than we ever have been. We have multiple media properties, from books to companies to products that are designed to do that. And what's really cool now, Ryan, I think, is that I feel like everything that we've built in the, in the world of the companies that we have together is really designed to drive those two things now. And so it's this, this year will definitely be, let's find, you know, if we found one or two deals, if we found one deal a quarter, that was just a beautiful, sweet deal to get involved in. On those bases, I think, I think we'll acquire a lot more than that. But on the CFE side, that's, that's going to be a big, big focus for this year. And I think there's just no limit to the ability to do those deals and, and the upside that they can.

Bring do you have anything else? I got. I got one more that I see that I can throw out there. So 2024, if you're not selling certainty of outcome, go and review all of your offerings and just be really, really clear. When somebody buys this, what is the specific tangible thing that's gonna be waiting for them on the other side? That was. This was also. If you go back and listen to our last episode, this was a key lesson learned in boom times. You can just sell like, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be amazing. There's gonna be all this good stuff waiting for you. You can have kitchen sink offers, right? Because people believe it, they wanna believe it, and they can imagine a world in which all of these things, all these dots connect and there's a, you know, a pot of gold at the end of their. Of their rainbow. When things get a little bit tougher, when they get a little bit scarier like they did in 2023, that is when people, you know, they get scared and so the aperture narrows and they just want to know, okay, what specific thing am I going to get? That's how they reduce the risk. They're. They're still spending, wallets are still out, budgets are still there. But people want to know, what am I specifically going to get? That was a lesson that we learned way too late in 2023. We saw our conversion rates, our sales, our revenue skyrocket dramatically over really, the last quarter of 2023. Because we asked, what is the specific tangible thing that people are going to get? And when we tweaked our. And usually it means taking a chunk of your big offer and splintering it out.

Right.

Usually it means making smaller promises, but more specific promises. I believe that is still going to win the day in 2024, even though I believe that economically speaking, 2024 is going to be a stronger year than 2023. But consumer. Yeah, the kind of. The consumer emotional cycles always lag. People are always way too optimistic for too long, and they're way too pessimistic for too long. And I think that the pessimism is going to drive still the bulk of 2024. The pessimism, the uncertainty. We've got a major presidential election here in the states that's going to drive tremendous uncertainty right up until the end of 2024. Right. Who knows what that's going to deliver? Nobody. And so you're going to have a lot of uncertainty amidst what I think is probably going to be a pretty solid economy, probably lowering interest rates and all the things that people want to see. So in that time, sell certainty of outcome, but double down because I think at the end of the year stuff's just going to rip. I mean, I think once we got some certainty, once things are dialed back in, I think this is the year to build your foundation 2024, because 2025 is going to be a breakout year the likes of which we've never seen. So don't sit on the sidelines this next year.

Love it.

Awesome.

Well, hopefully you guys got some ideas and thoughts from the things that we're talking about moving forward in our business. Love to hear what you guys are doing in yours. Let us know on socials and share.

The business lunch with all your friends.

Because we would like to in 24 to have more people to interact with just like you. Thank you guys for being here. Ryan, good to see you. And we'll see you guys next time on Business Lunch.

Hey, Roland Frazier here.

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