The OPA Method: How Paul Counts & Shreya Banerjee Scaled to $100M Without Paid Ads

A lot of entrepreneurs have this mindset that they think about where it's okay to think about money, but oftentimes people think about money too early or too much, I think, and they just forget about the relationship it builds and the credibility it builds. The point is we actually initially didn't make any money on that. We gave value, right? We served others first, which is a huge part of our OPRO, which we'll talk about as well. Just giving value and sharing and serving others, like that's a key part of things.

We did that, and so that opened up the door for Welcome back to another episode of ClickFunnels Radio. Joined with me as always is my main man, Dante Torelli. Dante, I've missed you, man. You've had like a couple of fun episodes without me. I've been out, but man, it's good to get the band back together. Good to see you, man.

It's great to be here, Chris.

Oh, super fun. Hey, and once again, I'm loving the digs, man. This is the right vibe. Everything else, like, come on. I'm here for it.

We got it figured out. Yeah, we do.

We do. But the thing is that people don't see or they don't hear is all the stuff that goes into it, like our producers and everything else, like getting this thing all set up. I'm super excited for our guests today. Like, they have been in our orbit for a long, long time, coming from, you know, mainstream business. I call it mainstream business because everybody who's an entrepreneur knows what I'm talking about, like quote unquote real business, right? Versus like internet business, to, you know, joint ventures and using other people's audiences and so much. These two, there's a lot of fun lore behind these two as well that we're gonna get into, but without much more introduction, these two have done over $100 million in revenue for their clients, which is not a small feat by any stretch of the imagination. So without further ado, I wanna welcome Shreya Banerjee and Paul Counts to ClickFunnels Radio. What's up, guys?

Hey, thanks for having us.

Hey, what's up? So pumped to be here.

Can, can we just address the rumors first? I don't know if you're okay with this.

Oh yeah.

I don't want to make it uncomfortable.

Yes, let's do it.

I like it.

You know, we get these, we get these briefs, right? Like AI is amazing in so many ways and we're gonna, we're gonna dive into this, but it said that you two are life partners and I know that's not the case. So what is going on with this? Why does everybody think that you guys are like an item or that you guys have kids together? It's not true. Tell us more. What's the real scoop?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's not true. It's funny because like we do work so well together and maybe we put off a likable presence together that, which is, you know, people should strive for, you know, in a working relationship or just life relationship, but we communicate really well. We do hang out, but no, we are not married. And in fact, we live in two different, totally different parts of the country. And Shreya is actually married, has a kid and Yeah, so like, they're— it's funny because AI is not always accurate, right?

I think the rumors might come from— so if anybody knows Paul, Paul's an extrovert completely, and he attracts people everywhere he goes. And I'm an introvert, so anytime we're hanging out, anytime, anywhere, I'm always close to Paul because I just kind of like piggyback and go wherever he goes, right?

Anchor.

He's my social anchor. So maybe that's what's confusing people. I don't know.

A lot of social anchors, I've learned. So there's, you know—

yes. Oftentimes in rooms, we feed off his energy.

Yeah, there's not a lot of like extroverts, at least at this level.

So, oh my gosh. Well, I think— okay, so I always love story-based stuff too. Dante, jump in whatever you want. But I think, listen, Paul, you and I knew, like, knew of each other and stuff, but I remember the first time we met, it was over maybe the best grilled cheese sandwich that I've ever had in my life. Oh yeah, take us back and tell us about why this grilled cheese was something.

Oh man, it was, you know, it was incredible. So this, this grilled cheese, this was outside of an FHL event in Orlando. This, this grilled cheese was like the thick Texas toast bread. It was perfectly buttered. And it also had like, I don't know, it was like the perfect amount of cheese to bread ratio. Like it was just stupendous. And to top it all off, it was like one of the lowest cost items on the menu, which was even more crazy to me. So it was like, I ended up, I think you met me and I was on my way back from my third one, which is ridiculous, but like, it was that good. And so since then, I've been known as Grilled Cheese every time we see each other. So it's, I mean, that was the first time you met me was with my grilled cheese.

I almost intro'd you as Grilled Cheese. You know, Ben Harris was there and I mean, we had a good time. All right, I'm gonna ask you one more thing and then we're gonna get down into business too, 'cause I wanna know, I don't know as much about Shreya's background, but we had you go put it on. It's kind of a thing that you do here. What's up with every time we see you, whether it's headshots or anything else, you're wearing it. You are wearing the leather jacket. What's up?

Yeah, so this, this leather jacket, I started wearing it, gosh, probably 2017 or somewhere in there. So I just started wearing this jacket and really like—

what made you start wearing the jacket? You just saw it somewhere and picked it up?

Yeah, I saw it somewhere at a store. I was like, it looked really good. I got it actually Saks Off Fifth Avenue one time, grabbed this jacket. It was like, I don't know, I just felt like this different person when I put it on. Like, it just had this vibe to it, you know? And, and everybody was like, that's such a cool jacket. What's that?

Yeah, there is another part to this story. This is his second version of the same jacket.

Yes. Oh yes. So did you wear the other one in the rain?

First one got destroyed.

Yeah, the first one kind of got destroyed because I was not treating it very well, and and I had it on, like, you know, wearing my backpack, whatever. And so, like, I was like, oh, what's going to happen? Because whenever I go places and don't have the jacket, people actually ask, where's the jacket? And it's like become a part of my brand. And so whenever I speak, whenever I talk, whenever I work, wherever, this jacket is always with me. So I took a picture of it. This is the power of Google Image Search. And I found this jacket on Poshmark and I was like, yes. So like, I finally found one. And then I also discovered just recently that there is a website that can actually custom make this jacket. So I am actually going to be custom making some of these in the future as soon as this one wears out. But the whole lore behind it is like I just started wearing it and it just like if I didn't have it, people would say, where's the jacket? So then I just started wearing it and then people would say, oh, there he is. As soon as I'd walk in the room, they'd be like, there's the guy, Paul's here. You know, the party can start. He's got the jacket. Like, that's, that's the conversation that happened. So I'm like, if this is what the people want, I'm going to give them what they want. And so this is, this is a branding play like the Counts Collection, right?

This is a branding play though. Like, you guys know Rudy Moore out of Miami, Moore Capital. This guy is always wearing red, like his whole thing used to have like the red fur coat. And every time you see him, he's wearing red. So beyond the fact that you just like this as a branding play, it sounds like it's been pretty effective for you.

1000% of branding play. It opens up conversations. It gets— it's memorable. People, you know, always like, you know, you're still talking about Rudy with the red, you know, people talk about me with the jacket, you know, Paul's got the jacket on. Yeah. Grilled cheese, you know, or whatever. Yeah. Insert whatever reference you want. And, and I'll be out there talking on stage and people in the comments are like, love the jacket. That's so cool. Or, you know, whatever. There was one event we spoke at recently and it was a big virtual event and people were talking about the jacket and here I thought it was mine. Turns out they were talking about Shreya's leather jacket. That she had on.

Oh, for real? You have one that matches?

It's not, um, exactly the same. It has some quilting because his is completely quilted and mine has a little bit of quilting.

Yep.

But you guys, if you're gonna go places, it's very possible we see you doubling down on leather jackets.

Oh, we should, we should do that.

Yeah, not as often as we should, but yeah, absolutely.

Then people will really think we're married, and then the party's really here.

Well, Shreya, you were like, is it coming to Miami? Like, it doesn't matter how hot it is, are you pulling out the jacket?

Maybe I should. I'll pack it.

You know, I'm so committed to this bit. I'll wear it in warm weather, like the hottest of weather, like Miami, Hawaii, like you name it. Like, you know, usually if I'm speaking indoors, right? But like, I will, I will fight for some uncomfortableness just to keep the brand going. But, you know, when it's paired with my white pants, that's when, like, it's totally game over. So that's like when people really know it's getting serious.

Even after Labor Day?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't abide by that rule. Like, that's, that's what throws people off. Yeah.

The rules, Dante.

Yeah, I'm breaking all the rules. I know, people clutching their pearls listening to this one probably, but—

You know, well, listen, I mean, that's, I think, something that's interesting. I mean, we tease, right, about breaking rules, but that's, Paul, what you've always done. Like, I run into entrepreneurs all the place, Dante and I talk to them all the time, and they're rule breakers. And I think that there's a little difference between— and maybe why this quote-unquote, you know, working marriage works is because you're two different people. I mean, Paul, you since you were what, 13 years old? You're like selling stuff online before SEO really, or I guess when it's kind of starting. Talk to us about kind of how you're a rebel. You're like, I don't have to make money the traditional way. Like, how did you start? I know it was early.

Yeah, no, I started at 13, but actually it goes even back before that. I started in the second grade, so 8 years old. That's when I made my first sales. I started to sell pencils in as, as an 8-year-old. So kids were showing up to class.

NFL pencils at, at, at school, or what are we talking about?

Oh, we're talking standard straight up pencils cuz kids weren't showing up prepared. So I would sell pencils for 25 cents to 50 cents a pencil. We're going way back. And yeah, this was 30+ years ago and I was out there hawking pencils and my mom actually super supportive. Like I don't come from a family of entrepreneurs. My dad worked in the school system and my mom did as well. And then my mom would actually just like buy me extra pencils cuz she knew what I was doing. So she fully was supportive of this. And so like, I got my little taste of entrepreneurship then. And then I started to do door-to-door sales. You know, remember those catalog sales where you'd sell trinkets that nobody needed, but you would have to go sell it and stuff? Like, I started to do that to raise money. And, you know, all my other brothers— I grew up in a town of 300 people. And so like, the options were you're going to drive a wheat truck or you're going to be a lifeguard. And I'm like, me, you know, I, me and the wheat fields just weren't friends. And so I was like, this just isn't going to work. And so I decided I had to find a better way. And so there I was. And then fast forward to when I was 13, that's when I first started to, uh, go online. It was 1998 and I started to do email marketing, um, at the age of 13.

You were doing dial-up, dude.

Oh yeah. I was on dial-up. Oh yeah. I used to run that cord all the way back. Like it was crazy. It was wild. Back to my little home computer.

You can't skip your first email marketing story, Paul.

Oh yeah.

Well, I'm not gonna let you skip that one.

Tell me about that. I've got pictures here too. I'll have to share this with you guys later, but this is me as a teen running the business way back when.

He's got it chambered, Dante. He's got the picture ready.

Oh, yeah, the picture is ready.

Funny you bring that up.

Yeah, funny you share that story. No, at the age of 12 actually was when I first started emailing because I went to church camp, ended up with 12 different girls' email addresses, and then it worked great until I mail merged incorrectly. Yeah. So, oh my gosh, that's hilarious.

So is that your real first attempt at email marketing? You grew up?

Yeah. Yeah. And it worked great until it was a total failed attempt. Cause I mean, I couldn't send 12 unique messages. Come on. Um, I was, you know, I was a busy kid at 12, right? Like I've got life to live.

So, you know, so many people, so many people have a very similar story to that too, right? Like they, they got a little taste early on, they did a little thing and they were supported. I hear it so many times from people. I was supported by my parents. Or my friends or whoever it may have been. And I just, it's something I hear over and over and over and definitely something I'm going to try and emulate in my life with my kids as well.

Yeah, no, it was, yeah, fully supportive. And, and, you know, you referenced the selling of shirts. So at the age of 13, the athletic director at my school, and I went to a town of 300, right? So there's no excuse for people to not start a business. I was on dial-up internet. Um, you know, I started to sell t-shirts because there was a local company It was probably one of the coolest marketing campaigns, but they were a custom screen print company and they went to every single school in the state and they were like, we're going to look for junior sales reps. And so that's what they did. And they ended up like, the athletic director got it. He's like, Paul, you, you know, seem like a go-getter. So I was already doing these little things. He's like, you should try this out. So there I was starting to sell t-shirts. Now, of course, in a small town, we played 8-man football at my school, like 8-man. We couldn't even have a full— on a regulation field, mind you. So like regulation football field, 8-man football. So you can only imagine if you had a fast guy, you won state. That's pretty much how it went. So it was fun times. So small school, I could only sell so many shirts, right? But I wanted to sell more. And so the athletic director, family friend of ours, was like, here's the athletic director handbook. So there I was at the age of 13. Now the shocking thing, when you go way back to the lore in here on this picture, it actually says AD email project like it's on my whiteboard. And that was actually how I got started. I had no clue that was on that picture. My mom had snapped that picture way back when, and I started to sell these shirts. Well, what happened was I was using a Hotmail account, and this old Hotmail account email address was— did not have a large enough attachment size, so I could not send the proofs. Like, I had to send them like, here's what your screenprint's going to look like, here's the embroidery, whatever. And Hotmail only allowed 500 kilobytes at the time. So I told the owner of the company, I'm like, you've got to get your own website. So fast forward, you know, doing this the hard way for a couple of years, early 2000, he gets a website. I think it was the year 2000. He finally gets a website. He's like, you wanted the website, you learn how to market it. So then I started to learn backlinking, SEO, all this, you know, all the online press releases. That was kind of our first foray into it. And so I learned all that earning minimum wage, which was super fun. And so that was kind of what got me into where I am today, and everything I do now translates back to that moment in time, um, from selling those shirts. So it was, yeah, pretty, pretty awesome, man.

You got the, you got the itch and then you just scratched it now for how many years?

Like, that's 27 years. Yeah, 27 years now.

27 years. Um, Shreya, your, your background's a little bit more what we'd maybe refer to as traditional, right?

Yes.

You kind of, uh, did more, um, Yale School of Management. Come on, that's pretty awesome.

Yeah, thanks. No, I did the more like corporate route. I definitely went that way. It was, uh, 12 years— over 12 years actually in corporate. And actually, I did really, really enjoy what I was doing. It was just, um, stuff like family and time and time freedom kind of became more needed at that point. So hence the switch happened. But before that, even back when I was in college, I got a touch of it, like a taste of it, you know, of the online marketing world. That's why it was very easy for me to come back in.

Yeah. So you were working for— was it GE?

Yes.

Tell us more about what you did there, like in corporate.

I started off as an engineer, so I did mechanical engineering, started off as an engineer and moved over from GE Power to GE Aviation. And then I came more towards the manufacturing side where my job was to make sure all the lines were moving. Properly and if they weren't meeting the production numbers, what can we do to make sure the production was moving so that we were hitting the numbers? So it was more lean manufacturing. I was the lean man— lean leader, I guess, for multiple facilities at that point.

Yes, she's too humble. She's actually a ninja. So that's like a certifiable ninja. So there's— there's—

yeah, you are a certified black belt, correct?

Yeah. Black belt Six Sigma. Which is just a fancy way of saying, um, it's, it's just a fancy way of like statistics. Like, I know how to like fix numbers, make sure. That's all. That's just a fancy way of saying that I do not know any martial arts. I'm not a black belt in any martial arts.

Dante was gonna come like put you in a headlock and be like, what are you gonna do now?

Back down?

No, that was his plan. Come at me, bro.

But now you say you're a ninja with a spreadsheet and that makes me even more nervous. I'm not coming at Shreya, I promise.

Yes.

Well, Shreya, from your perspective, I want to hear the story from you. So, was it, was it you're having your first kid and you're like, oh my gosh, I got to figure this out where I'm not gone all the time. Is that what it was?

Well, um, yes. So he was born in 2015. And at that point when he went to daycare, I think all parents suffer through this where they go into daycare, they get sick, and then you get sick, and then they get sick, and then you get sick. It always happens. Or they get sick over the weekend or like Thursday, and then you get sick by Monday, and then the whole like multiple months goes away in that cycle, right? So work is not usually very kind to that, where they're very accommodating to you being gone all the time. And if you're, if you're going in being sick, you're not there 100% because you're just not feeling yourself, right? So at that point I was like, okay, what can I do where I kind of get my time freedom and not have to justify the time that I'm taking off and not having to say, making tally to see if I have any vacations left that I could take as a sick leave or any of that, right? So that's why I went back to going, trying to figure out what can I do to come back into the online world so that I could have some time freedom.

And you and Paul, you guys have been able to accomplish a lot together that we're gonna get into very shortly. But what was the first thing that you did? What was that initial step into entrepreneurialism?

Yeah, Shreya, what was the, the thing you did first? Yeah, I know you did some—

Oh, I launched a product. Yeah. When I first started, I did a lot of things when I first started in, uh, 2007 when I was still experimenting in college. So I used to buy, uh, on eBay you could buy like these big lots of products and then sell them as like a bundle. So I used to do that. They use— yeah, the good old days, right? Then there was other things where you could buy this bundle of ebooks and then burn the CDs off and sell the CDs of ebooks. I did that.

Yeah. Master resale rights. Come on.

That's right.

Yeah.

I tried that and all of it made little money, but nothing too crazy. The best luck I had was Google Ads, being a— doing affiliate marketing with Google Ads. That was the best thing I made the most money on. Back then. And then after that, once I got into corporate career, I kind of just stopped that completely. When I decided to come back the second time, I was still on the email list. I mean, this was like 12, 13 years after, uh, so I was still on the email list of some of the people that I used to follow back then. So that shows you the power. For the record, I was— no, I didn't even know who Paul was.

Well, that's, that's my question though too, and I think it leads in exactly what Dante was asking, is How did you two get connected and what was the first thing the two of you did together?

Yeah, it was around 2018. Uh, Shreya, go ahead and tell the story.

Yeah, we met at an event where Paul was speaking and we just kind of hit it off, you know?

Yeah, that was a year. So like, I've, I've been in this business so long, I've watched the, the cycles come and go, right? In the, in the industry where I really cut my teeth and got like really well known was the biz op world, the make money online market. And I had this brand called The Real Guys, which I'll talk about later because that's a big part of my journey and my story. And the thing about though, like this, this market kind of comes and goes, right? So the biz op world, the marketing world, like it really just kind of floats up and down. And so around 2018, I was, I was noticing like, okay, this, this world is going to be declining in a big way and I need to be able to come up with something that's more sustainable. Let's not focus on these crazy launch models and and what the economy was doing and everything at the time. And I needed something a little more stable. And so I decided like it's time to kind of go the agency route and go that direction. So I was already going to that event with the intention of saying, if I meet a business partner that understands this or a potential business partner, like this is what I need. So I was speaking at the event and ended up meeting Shreya at the event. We hit it off, found out she was like certified black belt, but understood the stuff like the ninja stuff, all the process things. And we decided like to test the waters by doing a product launch together. So we launched an in all fashion, something called Monster PLR, because why not? And that was our first launch together. We enjoyed working together. And then from there, we decided to form the agency in 2018. So Marketing Counts was birthed. And then at that point, we actually were going from zero to launch. And actually one of our first clients that we landed there, we landed two big clients. One was a former NFL player who we're still connected with. Another one was a publicly traded company. That we in the lupus industry. So we were able to take everything we had learned in the direct response world and apply it in a real business setting. And it was so cool because these, these are, this is a company that was used to getting like a 1% conversion rate on a landing page. Like, let that sit in for a second. Like, that's considered okay by these guys. Yeah. On a landing page, we were able to convert that to where they're getting about, you know, 30% or whatever take. And people were telling their life story about how lupus was impacting their life. And they were like, they thought we were like magicians. And so at that point, it was easy for us to get referrals and other clients. But, but it all, like, it just kind of started because we both took that leap of faith. We met at an in-person event. Like, every part of my journey, every part of our journey, like, I've been at this 27 years, and I would say every little piece of my journey where I've had huge amounts of success came from going to a live event. It was not behind my computer. It was actually going out and meeting people, making these connections. And people ask all the time, like, you know, Paul, what's the key to success? And I'm like, well, sadly, 90% of you won't do this. Um, but the simple key is say yes and show up. That's what I do. I say yes and show up. And so, you know, it might be slightly inconvenient, but I say yes and show up and you never know what opportunities are there. Most people aren't willing to do that. They want to think they want to have success, but they don't show up to the live events. And that's where the money really is made. And that's how we met, was at a live event. That's how Shreya and I met. And at that very same event, Shreya and I actually run the mastermind for a guy to this day that I met at that live event who was already on my email list. And that's been one of our most prolific partners ever. And all these years later, we're still working with him and we actually run his masterminds. You run a big chunk of his business, everything business related. And, you know, he's just become a great friend. And like, that all happened from that same event. I mean, so you talk about an event that I hit in 2018, like, God bless the people that put that event together because my goodness, like, like I got Shreya and another business partner out of that same event.

You know, it's funny that you mentioned, you know, you're an extrovert. You guys already established that, right? And that, that Shreya, you're the introvert. And I think live events can be really, really good for those extroverts, right? You're going around, you're meeting people, it changes things. And this, I think, leads into the fact that everybody has their own skill set. So for Paul, like, man, live events might be it, but you're probably extrovert, like I said in this, but you're also probably the visionary, etc. And the way that I'm seeing this right now and knowing you guys for a number of years now too, is like, Shreya, as far as operations and like fixing problems and like steering this, you might be the engine, Paul, but she's going to point this thing in the right direction to make sure it works. Is that something that you guys figured out? And then, and then take specific roles in that maybe? Kind of talk about your role in the business.

Yeah, I'm more of the operations part, managing a team, kind of, you know, seeing which projects we want to focus on. There are projects that I've vetoed, uh, that, you know, it sounds great, sounds amazing, but it doesn't fit where we're going.

She vetoes a lot. Yeah, I have a lot of ideas. I'm like, yeah, this will be so good. She's like, no, focus, Paul. Yeah, yeah. It's how it works though.

Is that hard?

Yeah.

Is that hard for you, Paul, though? Because like, okay, Dante knows this. Like, I gotta tell you, you have to, when we're talking with Russell, for example, he's the visionary and it sometimes takes a while to communicate with him right. Because if you're talking to a visionary and all you do is just like pour water on that fire every time they bring it up, oh, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. And you're like, Russell actually has a term for it. He calls it black-hatting. And he's like, man, I'm not even done like painting this picture or casting this vision. And you're already pouring water on this fire. Like we've all learned on the team to just be like, okay, cool. Let him, he paints this picture and then we wait and we say, okay, do you want me to go close this loop? I'm a big loop closer. Like, I'll be like, I'm gonna go execute this thing. I'm gonna go make that happen if that's what we're doing. Right? And then he'll be like, no dude, I'm just talking right now. He's like, I'm talking. And then next week or something, you're gonna learn if we're actually gonna move forward with that. Shreya, from your perspective, if Paul's going on this big visionscape, how are you reeling that in without like killing his fire and, you know, like his visions?

You never say no. You never say no. And you kind of have to inception your thought into his head to be like, oh yeah, actually, you know, this was your idea, but this is my idea. So that's what he's thinking. And he's like, wait, I didn't know you were doing that to me. Yeah. No, no, he knows because he comes back. He comes back and says, well, this was your idea, but still, you know, he realized this. We've been working long enough now, but you can't water it down because then it kills— it might— it kills the creativity process and that process that he's in and ideas are coming out of it. The whole idea might not be the right fit, but some part of it might be the perfect fit. That— so you have to kind of let him all out, like let it all out, and then we'll see, go back and see, does it or not. So it happens over multiple weeks, like you said. It's not immediate.

Kids say, let me cook. Is that what the kids say these days?

Yeah, yeah, I let him cook and then I come in and fix the spices later.

Yeah, there we go.

I love that. You can imagine my food's probably pretty bland, so there's that.

No, but it's exciting. It's extreme.

Shreya, yeah, when you were showing up to that event, were you showing up with that event with a goal in mind, like to meet a partner or do anything? Were you, were you hoping to meet Paul, or what was your story on that?

I was, uh, going in to look for affiliate partners because at that point I went into product creation and I was looking for affiliates to help me promote my product. That's the mindset I went into, not looking for a business partner per se, but it worked out Perfectly.

In fact, you paid for an upgrade, right? So you could hang out with more of the speakers and people, right?

Yes. Yes.

So talk about that, cuz like paying to be in the room is important.

It, it absolutely is. The reason, one of the reasons I paid for that upgrade, uh, or it was their inner version of Inner Circle, was because I'm introverted and I don't very well connect with people and I don't like to go introduce myself. And if people come introduce to, you know, to me, I'm very open. I love to talk, but I am very scared to go introduce myself. So being part of a group like that, is very helpful because those people, you're kind of forced to know each other. Right. And then you all come from similar backgrounds. So it's kind of a forced friendship, even though it's not forced, but you kind of feel comfortable. At least it makes me feel comfortable that these are people I can rely on. Everybody else I will probably make friends with as well. But these people, I know that I could rely on.

Yeah.

And then one of the things, one of the things that you guys did, which I think is really cool, which I think a lot of entrepreneurs aspire to, is you guys actually have some curriculum in college courses, in high school courses, info products. My gosh, this is crazy. Like all these people go out and do info products and we're like, I just hope that, you know, my ideal avatar somewhere in wherever, you know, could be some other side of the world or wherever, buys my product and sees some impact from it. How did you actually get this as a curriculum? Maybe talk about that, 'cause that doesn't happen that often. That's big kudos to you.

Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, no, we were, it was one of those things around when COVID hit around 2020, like a lot of schools were just kind of, they were kind of reeling and they were kind of looking for, you know, what do I do for my students? What do we do? And by that point, this kind of goes back to the power of saying yes and showing up, right? So somebody had told me about the opportunity. They were saying, hey, Paul, you should go, you know, they were saying, hey, Paul, you should go work or, you know, go judge this, this event that DECA was putting on. And so it's a program called DECA that was out there.

Dude, I know DECA, man. Come on, I did travel and tourism DECA in high school. Let's go.

Okay, let's go. Yeah, I love it. So yeah, so DECA, which was just this awesome program, right, for kids. You're well aware of it, Chris. And, uh, yeah, just awesome program for kids. They were doing this big event and I was like, I'm gonna go be a DECA judge, you know, because somebody else had told me I should do it. And I was like, why not? So I say yes and show up. Well, through that, I met the people at DECA and they got to know me because, you know, I just make friends with people, right? They got to know what kind of stuff I do and about my business. And so when COVID hit, they actually, I actually reached out to them, the connections I had, and I was like, hey, if there's something that we can do to help, like as far as educate these students, let me know. And so from there, they ended up loving the idea. So we, we created what's called the Marketing Counts Challenge and we put it into DECA. And it ended up going not just there, ended up going to 120 high schools. So it was like fully instilled. And a lot of people are like, well, you know, because a lot of entrepreneurs have this mindset that they think about where they— it's okay to think about money, but oftentimes people think about money too early or too much, I think, and they just forget about the relationship it builds and the credibility it builds and the authority it gives you. And they, they— because everybody a lot of times are trained to think Well, okay, if I have this training in there and there's 1,000 students in it, how much money am I going to make from that? Well, the point is we actually initially didn't make any money on that training. We just gave, we gave value, right? We served others first, which is a huge part of our OPA, which we'll talk about as well. Like, but just giving value and sharing and serving others, like that's a key part of things. And so we did that. And so that opened up the door for us to end up, you know, getting other schools that were interested and then opened up the door for us to get, you know, have conversation with colleges and start to, you know, pitch our curriculum in there where we could generate some revenue. And so, yeah, so it's, it's been amazing. And the coolest thing too is we have students that went through that program that now follow us on LinkedIn because that was several years ago and they're now out of college. So now their company is like looking for marketing people. And so like you talk about the long tail on that. Like it's powerful and the amount of money we've made just from the connections, the credibility and the authority, I can't put a price tag on. But if you were looking at it from a traditional business sense and you had like a traditional CEO, um, they would have been like, no, I'm going to veto this because there's no money coming in. But the, the amount of impact that we've had not only on other people's lives, but at the same time being able to generate revenue that we can't correlate directly to that, it's been immense. Uh, but it all happened by just being, you know, in front of people at the right time.

That also, same question comes up when we go to live events. People ask us, well, how much money did you generate from this live event? And they want to see the correlation, right?

They want ROI.

Yes. Yes. Which is very important. We're not discrediting that it's not making money is not important. We're not, we're not saying that, right. But it is a different mindset. I feel like that's more of an employee mindset because you get you get paid, it's on a clock. Like, you do this, I'm going to get— it's very transactional versus the other one's more an entrepreneurial mindset. It's like, I'm giving and it'll come back to me. I know it, but I'm starting with giving.

Yeah. Yeah. It's always like that. Everybody wants to know, like, you know, did you talk to this many people? Was it a success? Did you, you know, and they forget the fact that if you make one deep connection, it could make you millions of dollars potentially.

Like a Paul and Shreya connection.

Like Paul and Shreya connection. Exactly right. Yes. Yeah. So it's, well, just one of those things, right?

I want to dive deeper into this because let's separate this. When you did this curriculum and everything else, I'm curious because it's the question that people ask you, like, what is the ROI on that? What was the actual— I mean, talk about the tail, that's fine, and I think that makes a lot of sense. But was this something that actually turned a profit? Was it something where you were getting revenue? Like, how did, what was that? What was that setup?

Yeah, it was an indirect revenue source. So it hasn't, I would say like it did not pay off in a big way, meaning like we didn't have a lot of schools come to us and like buy our curriculum. We had one, one school that purchased curriculum and that was it from it. But what it did open up was marketing, like a lot of clients that we landed after that coaching consulting. It came because our curriculum was out there. And it also, at that time, we ended up shifting some of what we were focusing on in our agency. And so we didn't go down that path, but we learned a lot and we actually are willing to go back towards that. We actually have the doors open and we've actually had some conversations with actually a couple major colleges at the same time because of what we learned through that. So we learned from the experience, we grew from it, and, you know, we kind of learned like where, where are schools purchasing? Like that's the number one biggest thing. Like, You would have never known that had you not gotten your feet wet and just jumped into it. So the long tail definitely paid off. We definitely got some, but it was— it didn't become a core part of our business model by any means.

No, but it's still on our resume and we close a lot of clients because of that differentiating factor. Because if they're looking at agencies, we stand out as an expert versus just a random agency.

Yeah, we're the only agency that offers that, right? So for us, we've leveraged it more as like, this is our core differentiator. Here we are years later still talking about it because it is unique. And, you know, we had all the authority with DECA and like they issued press releases and they would send it. We even had a kid that went to their national competition for the marketing challenge, which was pretty crazy. And so it's like free publicity, free press, like stuff you really can't put a price tag on. And if we wanted to say like, okay, we're going to go in and become curriculum creators, you know, for marketing or something, we could, we could have gone down that path, but it just didn't fit our business model. So we didn't like jump 2 feet into it and like, let's just go do that only, you know. So it's— we learned that there's a little more of the, uh, of that process than, than you expect, you know. There's a lot more like of relationship building and connections, and it's who you know and those kind of things, and decided, hey, we can be— serve far more people by doing our own stuff over here. But we still have been able to generate a lot from it, and the trainings students still go through it years later. So it's still out there.

Well, this, this is a great segue into what I, what I want to kind of dive into next with the OPA. Like, listen, if you guys remember, like, if you're old like me, like, I'm kind of a late Gen Xer, okay? 1980. All right. Uh, I remember Naughty by Nature. You down with OPP, right? Other people's. And then the third P wasn't that quite simple, but we'll just say it's property.

Okay.

Your third is not P. It is. You guys remember that? You know, the OPP.

Yeah, you know me.

Yeah, Dante knows it. Yours is OPA. So that's what I think is interesting is you're talking about other people's audiences. Yeah. Talk about this though. This is what's crazy is you put this in front of DECA. That's their audience. It already existed. You didn't have to go create this audience organically. You get in front of these universities and you didn't have to create that audience organically. It's kind of like I went to— what did I go to? I went to AC/DC last Memorial Day in Chicago. And believe it or not, the band opening was the girl who was Cindy Lou Who in the Jim Carrey movie, right, for the Grinch. She has this band, right? But here's my point. She walks in, I'd never heard of her, right? And she's got this like heavy metal band. But guess what she knows is all of these AC/DC fans like that kind of music and they're gonna be interested probably in her music as well. What I see when we talk about these other people's audiences, it's like you stepping into this stadium of somebody else's fans, DECA, the university, you know, another creator or something like that. And now you're stepping in as authority figures like, oh wait, they gave me the mic. Cindy Lou who had the mic. I don't even remember her real name or the band's name, but I remember that fact. Right. So talk to us a little about this whole OPA thing like this, other people's audiences and why you started going down that route.

It's, it's by far the ultimate way to grow business. Like, there was a point recently where I looked back at my career online and I was like, what is the one thing that always moved the lever? It wasn't paid ads, it wasn't, you know, conversion rates, it wasn't all those things. It was relationships that were built where I got in front of other people's audience. And, you know, like, I, you know, it goes way back. I mean, back when I was actually selling the custom screen print embroidery, there was a local embroidery company that did not do tackle twill, which is a very unique way to, you know, display. Like, it was like an old school way on sweatshirts, right? It'd be the big bulky logos. You guys probably remember those, you know, on shirts and sweatshirts, but they couldn't do that. And the company I worked with—

the letterman jacket kind of stuff.

Yeah, like letterman jacket type stuff. Yeah, they couldn't do that. Yeah. But the company I was with could. And then the company I was with, they were, they were licensed with Washington State University. Go Cougs. Um, they were licensed with them and Gonzaga and some other schools, right? Well, this local embroidery company wanted to have access to those licenses, but they weren't certified, so they still wanted to be able to produce stuff and sell in their store. So from that, I ended up getting a partnership where they would refer me a ton of business. And so there I was as a teenager learning the power of networking and connections and other people's audience. Like, that was when it really hit, like Whoa, I don't— they're a built-in traffic source, right? Like, I don't have to go optimize my website. Like, yes, I mean, it's good to do all those things, right? And we do that, but I didn't have to do that. It was them sending us clients saying, we have more business for you, we have more business. So like, that one account was constantly feeding me business. I mean, I was getting like 2, 3, you know, 4 or 5, you know, new sales a week. As a high school kid, that was a lot, you know. Just from this local embroidery company because I offered something they didn't have. So that opened up the doors, you know, for everything that I did in the future. And so when I went through my career online, there was a platform called the Warrior Forum that many have heard about. It's a digital marketing forum. And on the Warrior Forum, they had an audience. It's a built-in online forum, right? Very much like Reddit. In fact, forums are making a comeback. Like Google even put it in their search bar recently. It's like forums are back. And we're going old school again, which makes me so excited. And on the Warrior Forum, they had Warrior Special Offers. And so this was a whole section where you could list your courses, list your offers, things like that. And so I would go out there and I would list my products out there. And so like they had a built-in audience of thousands and thousands of people that were on these forums. So I instantly had traffic just by posting my offer there. I would pay them to list my offer, you know, and then I would instantly make sales. And it was so cool and so powerful. And then a few years later, I became the very first person because one of my products did so well, was the first person they did a joint venture with. And it opened my eyes big time. This was around 2009, 2010. They were actually looking to sell the Warrior Forum and they were like, we want to see if we can monetize this. So they took my product and they were a 50% affiliate. So they got 50% of the sales, I got 50%, and we launched it. Now here's the crazy part. This was a product that I had You guys are going to die at the name of it. This tells you that you don't need to have a good name for a product, right? So this product was called How to Make, How to Make Money with No Money Down Online System. Like, it was the stupidest name.

Did you at least get an acronym?

No, I did not.

SEO is not going to be good on that. Well, maybe it is.

I don't know. Oh, SEO is great because that's the whole keyword.

Yeah, probably because it had all of it.

But the clients didn't know what they were buying, they loved the product because the training was there. But it's like, it's so terrible.

Doesn't sound like a scam at all.

Yeah, not at all, right? Yeah, not at all. And it sold so well. And so that same product, to this day, there's different versions of that product that sell. The new name, or the other name, was No Cost Blueprint, is what I launched with this brand called The Real Guys. And like, so it just became like kind of, you know, we improved the name over time. But the premise was like, I added value. I did something also that was unique. And so at that time, nobody was producing video courses. And so I did something slightly unique that stood out. And so that opened up the doors to a joint venture partner, but it was serving people in there with stuff that they needed, stuff that actually was beneficial. It just goes back to serving the market. And when you add enough value to people, suddenly OPA becomes a thing, right? And so we've kind of coined the phrase You know, we started using the term OPA a lot because, you know, obviously like with the plate, that's why you see me sometimes come out on stage with the plate and I'm waiting for somebody to let me break the dang thing.

But I thought maybe we would let you at ClickFunnels, but no.

Well, Russell was all for it and then Miles was like, no.

So maybe we should lay some like tarp at the bottom and then let you lay.

Yeah, like Gallagher, you're in the splash zone.

But then I always thought like if I break the plate, then it'd be like, you know, what if it clichés and doesn't break, and then that could be a disaster too. So, you know, hit somebody in the shin or something.

So, well, don't worry, do it again next time, ask for forgiveness. Trey Llewellyn did a fake fall at FHL 9.5 and shattered a glass, and the glass went flying into the crowd and hit a lady in the head, and he just asked for forgiveness, and Miles was okay with it.

I remember that. That was wild.

Went into the audience. Oh my gosh, I remember him falling.

Dante, I'm glad you brought that up because I was thinking like, this seems so familiar. Did I dream or something. But that was, that was FHL International. Oh my gosh.

Yep. That's incredible. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So, so like OPA, like it's a celebration, right? In Greek culture, like they break the plate, OPA, you know, and it's, it's celebration.

And so I find interesting OPA as a concept. You found OPA early on doing the t-shirt deal, your first entrance, and you identified, noticed, wow, I can just leverage other people's audiences and just snag their traffic. And then you guys really used Opa to find each other, you and Shreya. Yeah, because you didn't put out a Facebook ad or you didn't go to Monster Jobs or whatever. You didn't try and just go find this person. You said, I'm going to use other people's audience. I'm going to go to this event that other like-minded individuals are at, and I'm going to go there with a goal in mind to find a partner.

Yes.

Amazing.

That's— yeah, that's exactly what it is. Right. And it's, it's been the foundation of everything. So I reference this brand called The Real Guys that I had many years ago, and this brand ended up doing— I mean, too bad we didn't have two commas back then. It would have just killed it. But we were doing— we did well over $10 million with this brand. It was called The Real Guys and we sold. The reason that brand did so well was twofold. One, we ran no paid ads. That was the other thing. We had no paid media. It was all OPA, all affiliates, all other people's audience. And what we also did so well was we were the antithesis of everything. So it was around 2011. When in the biz op world, everything was like super scammy and shady. So there was a lot of stuff like, I'm Mr. X, and like they would hide their face and like they would, you know, you wouldn't know who they were. They wouldn't show their face on camera. And then they would be, you know, have scantily clad women next to them. And then they would have like the fake cars and all that. They're like, I'm Mr. X and I launch software. And like, it was like Ferrari. Yeah, Ferrari.

Yep.

And the two-click software.

You got to hurry up. I got to have this back by two.

Yeah, that's the other rented. They get their photoshoot done quick as they could. And yeah, and it was, it was so wild. They would have like the fake cribs and all that. And so my business partners and I at the time, who we had met through live events again, so we met in person, both these business partners, Jeff Wellman and Eric Coleman, we met at live events at separate times and we decided to burst out on the scene with a brand called The Real Guys. Now, both these guys were customers of mine. They were buying my private label rights courses and like going, man, this stuff's super valuable. And each of them had their own audience. I had my own audience. We decided to form this brand. We're like, let's do the opposite of what everybody else is doing. Let's call ourselves the Real Guys. You know, I have kids who are now grown. So at the time, my kids were very little and, you know, they were small and ended up like we all had minivans. And so we're 3 regular guys that had minivans. And so we branded ourselves the Real Guys. That brand blew up like people loved it because we were authentic, real. We added value to the market. And affiliates went crazy again. They were promoting it. And so that was also like when it really hit me, like, OPA is the way, like, this is, this is the way. And then after that partnership wrapped up, I, I tried to go make a movie. That was probably the stupidest thing I've done in my career. I ended up making one successful movie and then the rest was just didn't work. And so then I went back into this whole scene.

Was that on the Amazon Prime thing? You still have like credits.

You got like— still out there. Yeah. Yep, it's still, still out there. Yeah, it's still on Prime. It's called Hope for the Holidays. So that one actually made it. The other one will never see the light of day, but that's okay. So, you know, and I learned that there's not a lot of money in the movie world. I learned that. So, you know, and I stunted some momentum. But what got me back into the really heavy, back into things and also helped finance the movie was when I was on my own in 2016 through 2018 before I met Shreya. Was, um, I was on another platform called JVZoo and just tore it up over there and sold millions of dollars worth of info products. Again, no paid ads, 100% affiliates by just building relationships and building like little syndicates of affiliates that we would all cross-promote each other and help each other and serve each other and serve each other's audience. And so everything I've always done was OPA. We just started using that term around 2022. We started to, uh, that I looked back at like when we first started talking about our podcast, it was 2022 is when we first were like OPA. And so that was, that's kind of when it was birthed.

Now, when you do this though, you're, you're, there's a fine line here because everybody knows in the affiliate community when you're jumping in to do JVs, a lot of times people, if you screw one of these up, everybody remembers and everybody kind of talks like, oh, you don't want to do business with this person because they didn't pay or their audience was garbage or whatever. So you're out there using other people's audiences. But does that mean that you have to equally then provide your audience to other people? What type of relationships is that like, or transactionally, how does that work? Maybe you can give the— give everybody kind of a rundown.

Yeah, absolutely. Like, that's like what I would say, that's the non-OPA way, you know, like that's the way that— it's not really a DOPA way because we have 3 different versions. We have like this thing we call DOPA as well, which is like absolutely what not to do. This isn't even in that area. This is more like reciprocation is an important part of it. But what I really focused on was adding value in every way. So if the partners I would work with were not the kind of partners that would say, you know, because I just wouldn't work with anybody even if they would send me traffic, if I didn't like who they were as a person and I felt like— because in the, in this world, the make money, in the make money online space, there's some, you know, there's some people that are not, you know, out for the best of interest, right, other than themselves. And so if they were along that line that I would be like, no, I could not work with that person, I wouldn't work with them. And so that was, those are the kind of people that were tit for tat. Like you promote for me and I promote for you. There were some of these guys and I would call them transactional. Yeah. Way too transactional. It'd be like, you sent me 1,000 clicks. I want you to send me 1,000 clicks. And it's like, but your offer's complete trash and my list will hate me if I send it, you know, or vice versa. Right.

Or your audience, all clicks are not equal.

100%. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So it became though, that's what we would reference. Affectionately as a dopa, right? So they're looking at it from a transaction, not a relationship. And so we focused heavy on the relationship side of it. So there are times where some of our partners don't, you know, it's not a direct, like, we go cross-promote you. Like, we have partnerships right now where we run the training academy for several companies behind the scenes, and we're the ones running their training. We don't send any traffic to them. They send all the traffic, but we're adding immense value to their communities. So they're more than happy to promote us and endorse us because their customers win, right? Because of the training they go through that we offer. And so it's, it's about finding ways that you serve and add value. You know, the podcaster example where we run his masterminds, we're not sending our audience there. It's all his audience. But we're in front of, you know, his, his top-tier mastermind that we run, his, you know, smaller-tier masterminds, his other groups. And it's because we add so much value to him at different levels. And so it, it, OPA goes well beyond that. Like traditional affiliates and JVs can be very transactional, but when you go in the relationship route, that's where money can really be made. And that's where, you know, things go deep.

Key differentiator too. OPA is relationship first. Yeah. And it's very relationship heavy. Affiliate marketing, if you're just looking at that, that's more transactional. Like if you wanna just go that route, the differentiator for OPA is it has to lead with the relationship, having a strong foundation with the other person and both parties providing value.

Yeah.

Shreya, you're known often as the fixer, right? This kind of like engineer fixer, right? Have there been any of these transactional type or relationship things where you had to step in and be like, Paul, dude, this one's not gonna work, let me fix this for you. Anything come to mind?

We have left clients because, okay, I mean, if that could go that route, we just weren't going to be able to fix them. So we just politely declined and left. And we've closed out clients that are not like high-ticket playing clients.

Yeah. Yeah, we've heard back.

It's not a good fit.

It's not a good fit.

So you guys then have gotten really good at your filter of who is a good partner, who is a relationship that you really want to foster and grow. Do you have like a guideline or like, is there like a checklist or a framework on if somebody is going to start using OPA methodology? What are we looking for in a good partner?

Yeah, absolutely. So, the way we teach OPA is always serve others first. And so, what we do is, and then I'll answer that question directly too, but it kind of, the whole premise of it though is serve others first. And so, the framework we have is, is instead of like, if you have a podcast, invite them on your podcast. If you have a, you know, one of the things we had a client that did not have a podcast and they did this very well. We just do a blog interview series. And so we actually just did this with somebody in one of our groups. He did this exact concept with his Substack. This person was a brand new marketer. He took his Substack, he did, he made a listing of like the top 7 people in his space in his niche market, which was ADHD for entrepreneurs. So he went after 7 top ADHD experts, did an outreach to them based on how we taught how to find emails with Opax. We teach you like, go out to YouTube, like their emails are usually hidden in there. We teach people, don't go after the number 1 person in that space. That'd be ridiculous. Like, it'd be like people watching this going, I'm going to get Russell Brunson to partner with me. Like, that's not going to happen, you know? But go to the person with 50,000 followers. Like, that person, you know, is going— is never hit up for these kind of deals or opportunities. But what we did, we told this guy to do, which was write an article about this person, you know, about them, you know, and then go out to them and say, hey, I just want to let you know, I love the work you're doing around ADHD for entrepreneurs. I published an article featuring you in it. And it was a simple outreach. And the guy wrote back, was like, that's amazing. Let me share it. So then that person took it to his social, shared it, right? Because everybody's like, look at me, I got featured here. And then it opened up the door. And he goes, what do I do next? I was like, well, the next thing is ask him to do a full interview. He's like, okay, great. So then the guy's like, sweet, I'm gonna do a full interview. So he gave him a list of 5 questions, the guy answers them, he publishes it. Now he's got what we call organic OPA, because now if people Google that guy's name, it shows up in ChatGPT, it shows up in the AI LLMs, shows up on SEO, shows up on YouTube. Now, now you're leveraging that person's audience in a creative, strategic way. And that person— well, in this case, that person did promote it, But even if that person never promoted it, you are still winning cuz you're now getting traction from that person. And all you did was just do a simple outreach. And we did this with the homeschool curriculum that we were the marketing partners of. We tested this in the weight loss and fitness space as well. So we've tested this across many different niche markets and we have like this spreadsheet and everything where it's like, go find this person. It truly is as simple as just being a good human being and like just serving others first and saying, hey, I've got a podcast, you wanna be a guest? Hey, we're doing an interview series on this topic. You wanna go be a guest? We did this with the client and we ended up with several different, you know, outreach partners, like people from the NFL and people that were like, yeah, I'll jump on a call and do this. And then next thing you know, they naturally share it with their audience. And it's just as simple as saying, I love the work you're doing here. I want to feature you on my website. It's nothing crazy. It's nothing like bizarre. And, and again, it's— it also comes across as different because there's a lot of these junk things that are like, You just won the marketer of the year award. And then you're like, okay, I've never heard of you. And then they're like, that's going to cost you $1,000 and we'll publish this. And it's like, that's not OPA, right? Like OPA is giving to people without expecting anything. But what ends up happening is they end up, it's the law of reciprocation. And even if they don't give back to you at all, meaning like they take your interview and you publish it and they don't even promote it, you're still gaining from their audience and you've opened the door to a conversation instead of just saying, hey, promote my offer, get to know, you know, you're, you actually have a chance to get to know that person, to get to know, like, and trust them. And so that's a big part. And, and for us, it kind of comes down to like, what's a good partner? And it's, I don't know, it just, it like, we're sitting here chatting with you guys. It's like, if, if we could have a good conversation with them, we, we can tell pretty quick if they're good people, right? And like, we, we can have fun, we can laugh, we can joke. I mean, from the grilled cheese moment, like, you know, I knew, I knew we'd be, we'd be long friends, Chris, the second, you know, it's— and Dante, the first time we met in person was, was crazy.

5 o'clock in the morning in Las Vegas.

A lot of 5 o'clock in the morning in Las Vegas, you know.

So I hadn't even gone to bed yet, probably.

No, I had not.

Yeah, we were not waking up.

So it's, it's— yeah, when you meet people in cool environments, you know, like you get to see people how they are. It goes back to like the dating world where people are like sometimes literally are saying if you want to know if your future partner is worth pursuing, like how do they interact with the wait staff? How do they interact with people? How do they handle if they can't find parking? How do you know? And, and like, so just naturally being in events, you just get to know, like, and trust people. And I, I wish there was a better framework to say, but it's almost like if you could see yourself sitting down and having drinks with that person, or going out to a restaurant with that person, like, then they're probably a great partner. But if you can't, then, then no, because it's about the relationship, not the business. That's the part that's important.

You're right. I think the hardest thing to say is no, because you, you kind of want to make that— greed kind of comes in, right? Like, I want to make this partnership work, really, really work. The hardest thing to say is no. But if you're not gelling with that person, it should be a flat— like, you could be friends, but it's not like a partnership.

Yeah, right.

So it sounds like you guys— excuse me— you're service-based entrepreneurs and you're looking for other people who have hearts like you, who have goals like you, who also want to serve. And that's the people you partner with. So if I had to take a guess, then if you go to an event and somebody comes up to you and you can tell they're just an absolute shark, not that you're not shark, works, but you can just hear it in their language, in their body posture, in their demeanor. And you just say, the guy or the girl, they're just out here chasing cash. That's somebody that it throws a red flag to you. You're just out of alignment.

They don't connect with us either.

Yeah, 100%.

We could probably name some of them, right, Paul, from some of the events?

Oh, 100%. Yes, 100%. Like, you can— I, I had one recently at an event I was at It's the craziest thing. Person didn't even get a chance to know who I even was, came up, his first word to me was, why? Because he was trying the speed networking method of basically talk to 100 people. And his first word was, why should I talk to you and what can you do for me? And I just turned around and walked away and was like, look at the back of the jacket. No, I'm just kidding. But I turned away. It's things like, right? Like Chris, you hit it on the head. We've all seen them at events and they're just, it's very transactional. Like you said, the shark or the just like, they don't even care about the relationship. And I had somebody ask us once, they were questioning us about OPA. They were like saying, they're like, aren't you just leveraging relationships? Like, they're like, that feels so disingenuous, Paul. Like I could never do that. I was like, it's not at all. I was like, I want to work with my friends. It's like, I want to work with people I care about. I also want to see them win. Like, I— there's— I have helped so many people make money. I made an introduction for somebody who just got a huge sponsorship deal with somebody for his YouTube channel, and the guy's going to me, he's like, I owe you. And I was like, you don't owe me anything. Like, I just made that connection. Like, that's one of the simplest ways of serving people is making connections, because then they're gonna think— they think of you. It's just naturally what happens. But it's— you never serve with like ever thinking like there's never strings attached. Like, there should never be strings attached. Like, this goes back to biblical principles, like just being a good person, serving other people first.

Golden rule, man.

It's a great rule, right? And, and it's funny that this is something that we actually are blowing people's minds with in the business world, because it's like, we're just teaching people to be good humans. Why is this innovative? Like, I don't understand that. But it is. It's, it's innovative because There's more, uh, more nuts and berries out there in the world. I've noticed.

So there you go.

Well, you've, you've, you've, you've obviously been very, very good at this. Um, one of the partnerships that I've seen, I guess, in recent history too, of course with us, has been PLR Funnels, right? And that's been super, super cool. Um, maybe talk us through kind of how that happened, because I, listen, I, I ran partnerships for 2 years for Russell before I'm doing what I'm doing now in the coaching, right? And I would have people hit me up every single day about, hey, how do I do business with Russell? Hey, here's what I could do, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, it's just not how that works. People usually have to come in. Like, I'll give you an example. If I'm sitting in my house and somebody comes through the back window and is like, hey, you wanna buy this vacuum? I'm like, who are you? Where did you come from? And I'm feeling threatened, right? But in the partnership world, so many people do this. And Russell's always like, man, well, be in my, come to, come to the events, like be in the inner circle. Like those are the people that he's partnering with. And you've been in our orbit for a long time. So you're good at this. So talk to us about how PLR kind of came up, what it is, and some of the results from that.

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, the PLR Funnels partnership came about, Russell actually approached us for it. And so that's what a lot of people are surprised. Yeah, that's the easiest way to go. And they're, you know, cause I get asked this a lot. Like, How did you partner with a guy like Russell? I was like, well, multiple reasons. One was I kept saying yes and showing up and adding value. So like, to your point, like going, going to the events, paying for a spot there. This was even right before we were even in Inner Circle.

Front door.

Yeah, just constantly being there, you know, showing up at all the events, supporting, cross-promoting, being one of the few people that comments. Do you guys realize how few people— I mean, you guys realize it, but I'm talking to the people out there listening. Of course, you guys know there's million-plus people following Russell, for example, you'll go to his Facebook post, 15 people will leave a comment. There'll be thousands of likes, thousands of likes, and only 15 people bothered to take 5 seconds out of their day and leave a genuine human-based content. And so like, just— and that wasn't why I even did those things. But you know what, it put my face front and center with Russell. And Russell had followed me for years. And so he'd seen the work I'd done. So I kept adding— I added value to the world with private label rights. And so he was fully aware that I was the PLR guy, right? Like, so he knew that because I, you know, consistently showed up and added value for years. So it wasn't like just out of the blue, he's like, oh, Paul, you should do this. But it was, you know, showing up and it was one of these meetings we had. And Russell's like, hey, somebody needs to do this. Let's do PLR funnels. He's like, this is a million dollar funnel and it's been well over that. So Russell was absolutely correct. And, you know, we actually are going to do our Two Comma Club walk. We haven't done it yet. We've actually well earned that. We're actually going to do our walk coming up. Well, I don't know when, but we'll do it. So yeah, yeah, yeah, we're super excited for that. So, but yeah, anyway, so PLR Funnels became a Two Comma Club winner. It serves thousands of people, helped them launch their first funnels. Even some people in my inner circle even are customers of this and, you know, got to meet us and were like, this is so cool. And it's, you know, it's helped a lot of people like kick off their business and helped us reach an audience that, that we weren't reaching before. And but again, it came from just serving and showing up and adding value. And so that's how those deals come to fruition. It's not— it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't just, you know, it takes time to nurture these relationships, but you can keep, keep showing up, keep adding value. And I tell people all the time, the most basic thing you can do is go to their social, go to different people's social media and leave comments for experts and influencers like If you want to make an impact on an influencer, leave comments because that helps them in the algorithm, that helps push them forward. If you like their content, share it. Next thing you know, there's people that everybody on this call knows that they actually now like and reshare some of my stuff, or they'll go and comment on some of my things because I've been doing that for them for years and I never thought that it would come to this. But next thing I know, I'm getting the follower notification and I'm like, wait, what? This guy followed me. But guess what? I was one of the 3% of the people that were leaving comments. The rest of the 97% of the world just scrolled on by. So, you know what?

I love this too. You talk about like a partnership, like, like PLR Funnels. It is a huge reciprocal, like for both. That's how you know that it's a win. I remember Pedro Adeo at one of our masterminds, he used this analogy and I know a lot of other people have, is it needs to be a win-win-win. Here's what it means. It's gotta be a win for me. It's gotta be a win for you. And then it has to be a win for the customer. Customers, right? If we can do that, and talking about PLR funnels, I think you added like 1,200 users or something to ClickFunnels with that one event, plus it was a million-dollar funnel. So with that, I wanna lead into a segment, okay? So that's the win-win-win side, but we do segments. This one is called Uncover the Funnel. Are you ready? It's brought to you by clickfunnels.com, and we actually have a very special offer right now where you can get 3 months of ClickFunnels for $99. All you have to all you have to do is go to clickfunnels.com/cfradio and check it out, but here's what it is. Uncover the funnel. I wanna know what that funnel looks like kinda start to finish. Like people come in, they go to PLR Funnels, is this a landing page, is it a VSL, where do they go, what are the price points, kinda walk us through the upsells, the downsells, uncover this for us.

Yeah, absolutely, so PLR Funnels, it's an automated webinar funnel. So they go to it, they go to the landing page. It's to, you know, join the next webinar. So it's an automated webinar setup. It's designed, you know, very much with the intent of like, you know, some, you know, an outrageous claim, right? The typical like, like not outrageous, but outrageous to the point where it stops their scroll, right? Like it's outrageous. We're delivering on this claim, but it's like outrageous to the point where they're like, wait, you're doing what? You know? And so, yeah, you of course have to go look at the headline because it's, it's carefully crafted and it works very well. But it gets people to— first thing is like they go there, they register, they pick a time, right? So it's all automated. So we don't have it running as like we don't run them on weekends. We run it Monday through Friday, fully automated webinar funnel. The first thing they do though—

hey, real quick, how often, how often are these funnels? How often are the webinars coming up? Like 5 days a week. It's that it's— but are we talking like, hey, the next one starts in 30 minutes, the next one starts in 5 minutes?

Once a day. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, once a day. So there— once a day we have it timed once a day.

So it's not like it's not happening every 5 minutes.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not every 5 minutes. So there is time where they have to register, but then they have to wait. So like you can go, you can go register, but it does not run on weekends. So it's Monday through Friday. So if you went there now, you could register for like the next day. And I think they run about noon Eastern or something like that every single day. So, so they— that just runs consistently. And then the first thing they get hit with is an opportunity for the MIPKI, right? And so in this case, You know, the amazing, you know, most incredible free gift ever, right? The Russell Coin. The Mifki is you can get 2 free funnels ready to go right into your ClickFunnels account if you become a ClickFunnels subscriber. And so that's like right away, like we're practicing, you know, all the same principles there. And that's how, to your point, Chris, you talked about adding a lot of members to ClickFunnels. That was exactly what PLR Funnels did. And that's how the funnel's designed is to, you know, because we're giving them something of value, right? We're giving them 2 funnels that are working and ready to go. So it's like, just sign up now. And even if they don't have a product, that's what's crazy. Yeah, yeah. They come with the product too. That's the best part.

Like, come with the product.

Yeah. The funnels have a product, they have the emails, they have everything that you need to win. And so, you know, it's the full funnel opt-in page, upsell to your own product, your own product delivery, the emails, the social media posts, like graphics. We thought of it all. And so it's— and it's all evergreen topics, everything from business, wealth, health, relationships, you name it. Like, it's Leadership, like we have it all back there. So, so then the next part of it, of course, after the MIFKI is of course the typical like, hey, reserve, you know, this is your time for the webinar. Make sure you show up, all those details. And then the email sequence kind of flows to make sure they show up to the webinar. And then on the webinar date, the webinar that people attend, they learn all about PLRs. We're pouring into them with value. It's actually a webinar that Shreya and I did with Russell. And it's really fun because Russell was so kind that— well, Shreya, you'll have to tell the story what Russell did.

It's my favorite Russell story. He is so sweet. He's so sweet. I'm short. I'm 5 feet tall. Okay, so I am very, very short. And that day Russell was wearing these shoes that were making him really, really tall. So the guys at the office brought me a little thing to stand on and I was like, well, I can stand on this, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to fall. So Rush still took his shoes out so we would all kind of sort of match height-wise. He's the sweetest. Awesome.

He loves having his shoes off too. Don't let him fool you, he does love having his shoes off. But that is still very sweet.

Yeah, that's so sweet.

It was awesome. Yeah, he's a grounded kind of guy. Yeah, I went and saw him and I was like, dude, did you grow like 3 inches? Like, those are crazy shoes. Like, those are—

I remember this though because it was unique. You were in his office Yeah, you all three were kind of on camera and you kind of like take, uh, you know, different times talking and moving forward. And that is not easy to do. Like, if anybody's ever been on camera, it's one thing to be by yourself. Yeah, it's two to play off of the energy of each other. Russell's very good at it, but I couldn't believe you guys didn't do a lot of dress rehearsal. This— you guys were so good at just going back and forth and like, it seemed just flawless. Go watch the webinar though, by the way, and like, get the PLR thing because amazing too. So keep walking us through this funnel.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So then we do the webinar, and which it is, like, to your point, it's a very unique webinar because there's 3 of us talking and you're going to learn a lot. And so during the webinar, um, we have an offer for 52 funnels and we— it's, uh, $797. So that's the price point. So $797. So it's under the $1,000 price point. It converts like crazy and people love it. Um, but yeah, that's, that's the offer stack. And then of course we've got the, you know, the follow-up email sequence, like closing sequence, you know, this this offer is going to go away, make sure you jump on it. You know, we're removing a few bonuses, all the typical like urgency plays. And it's kind of a week-long campaign from the time like they sign up till like the time they attend the webinar. And then they have like a week-long campaign. The one thing I will say too is if anybody wants to be an affiliate, it's actually one of the funnels people can promote inside of the ClickFunnels affiliate program. So if you want to have an easy way to get people to sign up for ClickFunnels, like just push PLR funnels. It's something different, right? It's not going to be just the standard promote for ClickFunnels. You actually can give them something unique, right? And then if they sign up for the Mifkey, you get the commission, which is pretty cool.

I also think we're all talking about PLR too, like everybody knows what that is. I don't know that everybody knows what that is. Maybe you need to fill us in a little bit more on what PLR is.

Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned that because I did not mention it either. So PLR stands for private label rights. So that is content that you can, that, that you have the rights to sell. So if you purchased a license from us, for example, let's say you go to PLR Funnels, we're giving you 52 ready-to-go funnels. And so in there, these are funnels that are ready to go. These are the products are done, the, you know, everything's done with them. Like we created them. It's a lot of it, you'll hear my voice on some of the training videos. Like it's really good stuff. And we had our team make some of these and we also had a few that we licensed from experts. And so they're really good, good quality courses. And so that means it's a product that you have the right to sell. It's a product that you have the right to give away, that you have the right to create. Yeah. Without having to create. And it's far better. A lot of people have been like, you know, with AI out there, like, AI is good, right? AI can do a lot of things, but it doesn't have the mind.

AI also thought you were married.

Yeah, that's true.

It's not perfect.

We're getting there.

That is That is the best comeback ever for anybody that's like, what about AI with PLR? Yeah, they thought we were married. So the facts are completely off in a lot of cases. Yeah. They do hallucinate and they don't have the mind of a course creator all the way. I mean, yes, there's different things you can do, but at the end of the day, like you're gonna get something that's created by experts and people. And so that's what I love about PLR. So for my entire career, I've been either buying other people's products and then reselling those. As my own, or I've made my own products that I sold the licensing rights to. And so it's still an extremely lucrative business because you don't have to think and you can just focus on the traffic, which I think is the biggest component here. And you don't even have to worry about even what, what are you going to prompt the AI with? Like, it's done for you. It's ready to go. And so that, that part's really exciting. And so that's what PLR is. It's an easy way to get going in a business.

Well, I love this. I think that's one of the biggest things people struggle with in, you know, oh, I'm going to start an online business, but I don't have a course. Oh shoot, now I gotta go create the course. Well, I don't have a product, I gotta go create this product. But with PLR, that's something that is ready to go for them and then they can just go put it out there. Especially if they can find something that they align with, right? And their vision, whether it's health and wellness, whether it's finance or anything else, there's so many different products out there that are ready to go. I love this funnel. This one's been super fun.

Thank you. Yeah, no, it's a super fun funnel. It's also simple. You know, it's got the, you go to the automated webinar, I mean, it's harder than it looks to create, right? But you've got the automated webinar and then it goes to the Mifki and then it goes, you know, follows all the sequences. And so it's worth at least just, even if you don't buy, walk through the process because it's very unique and it's very different and it's a different perspective on ClickFunnels and how it works.

Funnel hack that thing, people. Yeah, go check it out. Not only like see what we're doing, but like see how we're doing it as well. Don't just buy the products, like pull out your credit card so you can actually uncover the frameworks that we use to do this. Yes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Pull out your credit card a couple of days after so you can get that urgency and scarcity sequence that comes afterwards.

That's right.

So steps in the funnel poll sounds like webinar registration step to a thank you page with a timer that's going to kick off when the actual webinar starts, then to a broadcast page where you do the webinar itself, followed by an order form. Am I right so far?

That is correct. Yep.

Then how about OTOs? How many upsells do you have?

So there are no upsells on this. So we kept this one so simple. Yeah. Nice. We actually collaborated with Russell on this. We kept it super simple. So we go directly into just, you know, get PLR funnels and that you get the whole enchilada. There you go.

So order confirmation.

Yep. So order confirmation. The goal is to get them into ClickFunnels. Right. And so They, they need ClickFunnels to make this work effectively. And so it's, it's a very simple funnel. And that was what we designed it for from the get-go.

Which of course then you have your affiliate commissions that come on the back of that.

Yes.

Right, right.

That's— and that's the other benefit, right? So that's, that's the other win for people, especially people that promote it too. You get paid the commission and you get paid the commission on ClickFunnels as well, monthly recurring, which that's got to be a huge part of OPA. Yes. That's a big part of it. Yeah. Huge part of that is those commissions and what you can get on the back end.

I'm so curious. Let's say I'm just starting out, right? Maybe I just listened to this podcast and it gave me a little bug and like, ooh, I want to go try that thing. How, how do people best get started? I have no product. I have no service. I have no thing, but I want to do this. What would you tell them to do?

Yeah. I think the biggest thing, if you're completely brand new, because You know, for OPA to work, you have to have something, something online or something of that. It doesn't even need to be a website, but you could, it could start with the social media side of it. So there's multiple things you can do. There's Facebook groups out there that are very lucrative and very, you know, like active. So if you have a Facebook account, go into those groups and add value to people. Like, I can't tell you how many people, and I'm not saying do this in the ClickFunnels world, but There's a lot of people that go into different entrepreneur groups and they start to leave comments and they leave real valuable comments. So if you're a relationship coach and you go into a relationship Facebook group, you don't go in there and say, oh, you know, go to my website and check it out because at this point you don't have a website anyway. But you go in there and you just leave value, right? You just leave comments, add value. Reddit is incredible for this. So we started doing this within Reddit groups. Where not only would I go in and answer questions, but I started posting videos inside of Reddit, but no pitch, no pitch at all. The pitch was go to my profile where my, where my squeeze page is, where you can go get on my email list. And the best part about it was like I had one video that had 27,000 views. It didn't cost me a penny. Like it was a group in Reddit called the Entrepreneur subreddit. It's got 4.2 million members. I didn't have to build that. I just went in and served them. I just add value to them. And you know what's even— oh, go ahead, Trey.

The key is though, you have to be genuine. You cannot use AI to do this.

Yeah, don't go use AI responses. They'll kick you out. Yeah, they pick up on it quick. Be a human.

Every—

that's the one thing about OPA that I would say. So everybody is teaching, and, and we teach our clients how to use AI, because I mean, it's crazy. You have to use it, right? You have to use it. But I would say OPA is the one concept where you truly need to be a human being. Like, don't try to outsource this to the AI. We get asked this constantly where people are like, could I just do my outreach messages here? And I'm like, God, no. Like, don't. Like, you can do it all day, but it's inauthentic. It's going to get picked up. Like, you start throwing em dashes out there, it doesn't work. It's like when my mail merge didn't work when I was 12. You know, so like it's, it ends up, it ends up backfiring on you. So you really need to like, you know, really focus on, you know, just genuine human connection. And so that's a, that's a great point that Shreya made there.

And, and I think leading with value, like I've got a rule, I'll tell people when I coach, you know, over here on the Prime Mover team, you know, everybody's like, hey, you know, I need a funnel built. We have people, you know, that we refer, but we also have to be a little bit, you know, I guess agnostic maybe in that respect of like, ah, we gotta be careful just about referring one person. But one of my biggest rules is don't hire the person that raises their hand. Like when you go and say, hey, who can help me with my funnel? You're always gonna have a few people raise their hand and be like, I can do it. Like dude, that's probably the person to stay away from. But if there's the person who's been adding value like crazy and then all of a sudden you say, hey, should we use them? They're like, dude, you should talk to Paul and Shreya. They've been adding value like crazy. Somebody then refers somebody And then you see that they've added a lot of value. That's the person that you want to go work with, right? Not the person who's the me, me, me person, right?

Yeah. You've seen this. Such a great point. Yeah. I've seen that work very well. And it's a great, yeah. I mean, I'm so glad you shared that. Cause that's exactly it. Like to Dante's point, like, how do you do this? If you're new, like just go serve people in these communities. Like there are so many communities online now. And here's another interesting thing is that right now, AI like ChatGPT and all that, they're pulling answers from Reddit. They're pulling answers from all these forums now to get responses. So if you're out there, it's a great way to put your name out there, get your, you know, your profile out there and get people to know who you are a bit. And sales and marketing is all about know, like, trust. And you know what I tell people too is it's like, talk about— there's no better way to get ideas for social media content than like perusing these forums. And being like, wow, this question was asked 10 times on Reddit or 10 times in this forum or this Facebook group. Like, maybe I should do a video about this, you know? So it's a great point. Killer market research at the same time.

So, mm, that's so good. Okay. So if I'm hearing you right, I should be going and finding the places and spaces that my customers are congregated already and asking the questions about, and I should really probably pimp up my socials, right? I should have a cover photo because I'm, I'm just pushing their attention back to my socials. It's the law of reciprocity, which is so real. If you guys don't believe in reciprocity, you need to start today. Reciprocity is the realest thing out there. So you go to a Facebook group, you provide massive value to 5 people that has some attention that they click on your profile and then they look at your Facebook page. So we're going to have a great cover photo, right? Uh, we're going to really have a great about section, but Paul, let's say somebody doesn't have ClickFunnels yet. or they're just starting a trial or they're, they're just building their business. They don't have any link in bios, right? Where it's like, hey, here's the thing to get all my free things. They don't have any lead magnets. They don't have any paid products yet. Is there a way for them to still get results from this or should they then be going and making their own things?

Yeah, they, they can still get results with this. It's going to be slightly harder, but they can definitely get results with it. Meaning like, like even on Reddit, I have people, even though my links are there that slide into my direct message. Messages going, oh, I liked what you said about this, you know. So I'm not actively going in there and saying, hey, let me help you here. Or if I see somebody that has a specific thing in response to something I put, I will go in and be like, yeah, I can, I can help you over here or whatever, you know, and then like take the conversation outside. But that's like, you don't always do that. You let them be the one that approaches you, right? That's what Chris was talking about earlier. It's so important. And so you could definitely make this work you, you make a sale or two of a coaching program and, you know, and then the next logical step is get ClickFunnels because that's what you need. And I think a lot of people forget that you can actually make your LinkedIn bio from within ClickFunnels because it's already mobile responsive. You aren't going to have to go pay for one of these other tools. And we actually, we actually have a template for that that we actually give away. We actually gave this away, believe it or not, inside the affiliate training. That ClickFunnels users have access to. So we actually—

I use it, Paul. It's fantastic. I use it all the time.

Oh, do you? Oh, that's awesome.

Absolutely do. It's fantastic.

Yes, that's so cool. That makes me so happy. I love it. Yeah, I think a lot of people were like, they're out there using Linktree and all these other things, and I'm like, you know, we have that in ClickFunnels.

Like, yeah, for anybody— that, that's my fault. I haven't told the world about Link in Bio Funnels. That's on me. Oops.

Oh, when's the best time to plant a tree, Dante? Uh, start now.

Um, I want to talk to the scrapper for just a minute though. The person just getting started, the person that says, I want to do this, I don't have the tools yet, I don't have the resources yet, I haven't made my own offers yet, I haven't made my own lead magnets yet. What do you think of this? Put in that Facebook cover photo, put in there Free consultations available now. DM for more info. Take the attention and push it into a vehicle. Start having real natural conversations with people and make your first sale just over the phone. Just send them a PayPal invoice. Make your first sale, fulfill, do the thing, then put systems and processes in place. Is that kind of how you play the game too?

Figure it out.

Come on. Yeah, that's, that's what I'm saying. I, I would, if I just said that, I'd be unscrewing this mic and dropping it because that was gold. Like that was so good.

Been following you for years, guys. Been following you for years. Estrella, I haven't even talked to you about anything. Do— what do you have to add to that? Anything?

You have to get started is what it— like, a lot of time people are scared of getting started. You just have to get started. Just don't be scared of some— anything. Like, don't be scared of putting yourself out there, especially in these forums. People are sometimes scared that they don't wanna show their faces. They don't wanna do this or that, right? When you're giving advice on a forum, it's just your knowledge that you're sharing. Don't be scared of sharing your knowledge. You might help somebody. Even if you help one person, like we said, leading with value, that kind of goes in line with that. Just get started with that and then you'll see the rest will come. It follows and it follows very quickly, but that's the point to get started.

Yeah, it's, it, it serves you on so many levels too, right? You're helping people, you're getting ideas for your future courses and training and programs. I mean, it's like, it's, it's like market research. You can close clients. Like Dante said, like, link it, you know, there's no link in bio, just go DM me, you know, like, it's as simple as that.

I just, I love it that what you said at the beginning about say yes and then you just do it, right? Everything online in life is figureoutable, right? I think Shreya said, hey, sometimes that you need to say no, right? It's the wrong relationships. But when you see the right thing, say yes. You can always say no later. If it's not working out, you can say no. It's okay. This is not a marriage that you're jumping into. But I think saying yes and figuring it out— you're going to find out, you know, exactly what your life calling is by going, like we've talked about before, Dante, like figuring this out on the menu and saying yes, and then just figuring it out.

And if you don't know, if you don't say yes to a lot of things, you don't know what to say no to. So you need to kind of figure that out for yourself. So you have to start by saying yes.

Yes.

Not be scared of the nose, right? You have to dive in. Next time around, you're like, okay, I'm never doing that ever again. But you wouldn't have known that if you didn't say yes.

Bingo. I think a lot of people don't take any action because of that fear. Well, what if I make a bad decision? What if I make a bad partner? Gang, have you ever been burned by a partner? Have you ever made a wrong choice?

Yeah.

Yeah. So, and you've probably spent time and resource and energy and passion to create a thing for them or to fulfill for them in some way. And it turned out that it wasn't profitable and lucrative and it wasn't a great thing. Did it ruin your business?

No, not at all. Never.

You live, you learn, you move on, you fail forward.

Yeah. So, so true. Yeah. I think people just— that fear is— fear is a powerful thing and it scares people and, and they're so fearful of like something just not going well or You know, I was, I was talking to somebody who was asking me like, well, you know, what do I do? You know, how do I pay for ClickFunnels? And I was like, all right, pull out your phone. There's a really cool app called DoorDash. Go get this app. And, and I actually have a training. I have a training where I actually drove DoorDash for a short time just to teach people how to do this, like how to, how easy it is to make money. $25, you can make $25 to $35 an hour driving DoorDash. And so, you know what? Go drive for 4 days in a month and you're going to cover, for a couple hours each day, and you're going to cover your ClickFunnels fee. There you go. 8 hours a month.

During your own time, whatever you want. Get in the car, go pick up some grub, deliver it. It's like a video game. This is not hard.

Yeah, it's not hard. And it actually, I actually enjoyed it when I did it briefly because I felt like the old game Crazy Taxi. You guys remember that?

It was like pick this person up and deliver it there.

Yeah, it was, it was crazy. I did that to prove a point to some people and like to make the point. I even did it with my kids one day and I was like, hey guys, we're gonna go do something fun. I'm gonna show you guys how to make money. And we did it, actually made money. Like, make— making money, it was— I downloaded the app, same day I was making money. It was in your account the exact same day. Yeah. So I tell people like, there's so many sites— these gigs were not around when I was starting a business. And now the gigs are— there's so many gigs you can do to finance what you're doing.

Walking dogs.

What's that?

Apps for that. There's walking dog apps.

Yeah. Rover, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's like the money should not be an issue as far as like the funnel goes. And then the other fear we have is just fear.

Like, yeah, we've, we've learned that it's excuses. People hide behind that fear with excuses, right? And then they just don't, they don't take action. But the people who succeed are the people who try and exactly like Dante said, they fail forward and then they go again. And then what do you do? You pivot, you pivot and go to what works, right?

Yeah. Nice.

Gang, I'm sorry. I know this has been a, I know this has been a long podcast. I have a parting question, Chris. I just can't help myself.

Let's do it.

We're in AI time, right? It's 2026. It's AI and Shreya, you're certified in Google AdWords, AdSense, and Semrush, correct? So you know a tremendous amount about traffic and as AI has been implementing We can see it in Google searching and ChatGPT searching and Claude searching across the board. What are you seeing with AI and searching and SEO and, and how can people do the right things at this right time to make sure that they're getting in front of those AI results? Or should they not be focusing on that and should they be focusing on something else?

They should absolutely be focusing on that. Cool. So now people are, using these models like ChatGPT, Claude, right, as search engines that back in the day we used to say Google was it. Now it's GEO, generative search engines, right? So you, you get on there by providing value. It's funny how it like all circles around. So this is a perfect question. It kind of rounds it up. You're providing value, whether it's on like Reddit, you're writing helpful blog articles, you're providing value on social media, and that's where all these search engines are pulling, or, um, ChatGPT, they're pulling their answers from. That's how you show up there. But if you didn't create that value, if you didn't go up and show up and answer the question, you wouldn't be there at all. It's funny because I now currently use these systems to like look up product examples. So like if I was looking for a new Roomba, because I actually bought a new Roomba, but I was trying to figure out which one was the best one, and it pulled up articles from people that did reviews on these, in these robots, right? And it linked to their website. So if I would have gone to their website, which I did, and then I clicked on the link, that was their affiliate link. So it, it is still there. The core is still there. The core value of SEO is still there. It's just in a newer way. But what the core is, is good quality content. And if you're sticking with that and you're not just copy pasting AI answers and doing all of that, then you're fine. As long as you're showing up authentically, you're providing good value, you will be fine. But you also have to be there, be there, be out there posting.

So what I think I'm hearing you say is use AI internally behind closed doors to help you save your time and to help an entrepreneur cut off on their drag. But externally, it's gotta be all us. It's gotta be natural. It's gotta be genuine and real.

It's gotta be human. Yeah. Human in an AI world is what we say.

Who'd have thought that's how you'd stand out?

Yeah, right?

Who would have thought it?

Yeah. You guys are awesome. This is awesome. Well, before we go, I want to make sure that we have a way for people to get in touch with you. So Paul and Shreya, where do they go to learn more about you, follow you, and just get involved with what you guys are doing?

Yeah, so you can follow me on Instagram. It is @iam_shreyaenergy.

And then you've got me on Instagram, Paul J Counts. And then if you want anything else, just marketingcounts.com.

Oh, well, this is awesome. You guys are, you guys are great. We could do this all day. Thank you so much for being such great guests on ClickFunnels Radio. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Shreya. And we will catch you guys next time.

Thank you so much. That was awesome.