YEAR VLOG CHALLENGE DAY 5 | First week down!

Alright, Friday. Day 5 of the vlog. Woo, it's actually been a really good week. Got some fun things today I'm looking forward to. Believe it or not, I'm looking forward to my haircut. That's something I'm gonna be doing today. It might be weird, but I love my haircuts. I get haircuts, kinda got this rotating schedule right now where I go full haircut, and then I wait 3 weeks, go in, re— kind of just trim up the sides, uh, you know, get it back high and tight a little bit. And I'll go another 2 weeks, then I'll go full haircut. So it allows my hair to, you know, I go like 5, 6 weeks sometimes without really touching the top of my hair. And, uh, it allows me to do a lot of cool things with it. I can kind of, kind of, you know, push it more forward, you know, mess— make it a little bit more messy, maybe you know, push it over to the side a little bit. So it's kind of fun. Keep it, keep it diversified. Mix it up, switch it up. I kind of have something that's weird about me where I have this fear of just getting old. And maybe that's not weird. I mean, maybe that's more common, but getting old and just, you know, kind of letting myself go and not trying new things and getting boring. You know, you look at these people that have had the same haircut for 80 years. It's like, dude, didn't you ever like want to mix it up or something? Didn't you ever want to like change it up, switch it up? I kind of like that variety, which is weird because I like a routine in my day-to-day life. Like I like a very tight regimented routine. I need that to be able to thrive. If I don't have that, I really struggle to get things done. But I like to mix up variety. So I like to change my style. I like to kind of wear some weird things. I like to try different things with my, my Hair, hairstyles. I had really long hair like a couple years ago. It was all the way down to my shoulders down here. Maybe we'll find a picture and throw that here so you guys can see that. But I definitely think I look better with short hair. It's definitely a lot more low maintenance, which is nice. But yeah, that's why I'm actually going with the 'stache right now, because the 'stache is a little bit of a change. It's a good way to mix it up. And you know, I'm really digging the 'stache. But last night the wife's like, yeah, you know, maybe we, maybe we let the 'stache go. I think it's just getting a little too long for It's getting dirty. It's absolutely filthy right now. But yeah, so that's a little thing about me. So a little bit about the day today. So today's going to be, besides the haircut, we're having some partner meetings. We weren't able to get to those this Wednesday because of the Business Accelerator event that we had. So we're going to make sure that we go over all of our cash flow, our projections for Sweet Rolls Golf and Syndicate Marketing. Which is really good. I've talked about those meetings before and the importance of those meetings and why we do them. And it's just really a great way to help us know exactly where we're always at with our cash, cash position in our business, as well as projecting where we are going to be if we hit certain benchmarks. It's especially important to do cash flow meetings and to run a model with projections and pro forma if you're spending money on ads, which once again, we do very heavily for Sweet Rolls. And obviously we we do as well for Syndicate Marketing. So that, those meetings are really great. So we're gonna be doing that today. And then the other thing that I'm gonna be doing is a lot of content. So I'm gonna be planning content schedule, video scripts, shooting some intros. I've got my video editor right now, our guy in-house that does a lot of our videos. He's got a ton of different videos and things that we've created from other pieces of content that we've chopped up. And so I need to shoot a bunch of intros and hooks for those pieces of video. Pieces of content. And we're really just trying to dial in the socials and get a lot more momentum and traction there. And it's always hard. I mean, it sucks being in my position where you're like, dude, if we would have just started doing this like a year ago or 2 years ago or 5 years ago, like where would the channel be? Where would our subs be? Where would our— where would my business be? But you can't think of it that way. And you just got to take action. You just got to get started. So that's what we're doing. We're diving into it full-fledged, jumping in, which is why again, once again, we're doing on this vlog. So that's gonna be really cool and, you know, maybe I can get you guys into some of these meetings and some of these other things that we're doing as well. I got a couple follow-up appointments with some prospects. I'll be following up, sending a bunch of follow-up emails today. I believe we have a couple onboarding calls for some clients as well. So yeah, busy, busy day. It's gonna be awesome though, really looking forward to it and let's freaking get it. Trying to think what else I can talk about, man. The sun is bright right now. Let me get those little sunglasses on. Oh man. Woo. Man, those little baby blue eyes I got do not, do not bode well in the sun. Do not bode well in the sun without sunglasses. So especially when I drive to my office, it's like directly southbound on I-15. So it's like right in the sun. So I definitely need the sunglasses on. This is maybe a little bit of an interesting take for some of you, but I mean, you look at all of these billboards that are on the side of the road on the freeway. Businesses are spending who knows how many tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars for these billboards, especially, you know, not those digital ones that rotate, but if you have a dedicated billboard like this, you know, LASIK Utah Eye Center billboard right here, I mean, I don't even know how much that costs, but it's significant, especially where we're at right here driving, you know, on the main stretch of highway. So why would you spend money on those billboards? What's crazy is I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, be the bearer of bad news, but I doubt that any of those billboards have ever generated any of these businesses a greater return on their investment than what they actually invested in the cost of the billboard. So why do billboards exist? Well, billboards exist because businesses don't understand that there's a better way. You know, for every single person that's driving down this freeway, let's just say Take that Utah LASIK Eye Center billboard, for example. How many people that drive on this freeway every single day are number one, going to see the billboard? Number two, if they happen to see the billboard, are the right person that's like got bad vision, that has discretionary income, and is a perfect candidate to get LASIK eye surgery to improve their vision? The chances are, if you were to do the math on that, I bet you it's less than, you know, a percentage, probably a half of a point, maybe even less., and the cost of the billboard is the same regardless of how many drive past it or not, how many people are actually in the marketplace for that or not. So if you really think about it, let's just say it's 1% of every car that drives past that billboard, sees it, and happens to be a perfect candidate for that eye surgery. You're still spending 99% of your marketing budget, of the billboard budget, on the cost of the billboard to people that honestly have no business right now seeing your advertisement and, or aren't even interested. Well, then there's, you know, well, wait, Tanner, what about all the people that could be potentially interested? Isn't there some value to just have your brand out there? Yes, of course. It's called brand awareness marketing. And once again, it's a great way to operate if you're an operating business that has so much discretionary cash that you don't even know what to do with it. If you got so much additional cash that you're already cash flowing so well that you can afford for your marketing, you know, your offense is now defense in the sense of I don't want a competitor to buy up that billboard and advertise, then by all means, go ahead and do that. But the majority of small business owners aren't in that place and aren't in that position. And I could probably go look at the books of, you know, that Utah Laser Center and say, you guys, you know, what's your average cost per lead? What's your average cost per consult? How many people do you need to be talking with every day? What's your average cost per sale, cost per close? Like, they couldn't probably give me any of those metrics because they're spending so much money on pieces of marketing that aren't tangible and trackable. So my take on all of this is only invest in traditional marketing, billboards, radio, news, TV, print, first and foremost, if you have so much money that you're generating that you don't have to see a return on your marketing. But even then, why not get a tangible, trackable return on, on your marketing if you can, which is why you should go digital. Digital marketing is the way to go. And here's the reason why. Let's assume that in a given area here, there's maybe 10,000 people, you know, scattered across the valley that are perfect candidates for LASIK eye surgery. Okay, let's just say there's 10,000 of these people. Well, if we created an ad directly talking about the pain points and the frustrations of these perfect candidates, things like blurred vision, things like maybe not being able to see at night, things like, you know, they're noticing a decline in their vision. We can create an advertisement, it's a video ad, and that video ad video ad can perfectly address the fears, the pains, the frustrations, and the ideal solution and outcome. And we can posture and present that solution as, hey, come and get a consult, let's see if you're a good candidate. And we can film all of this in a short 20, 30, 40, 50-second ad. That ad is going to be scraped, crawled by Meta, and interpreted as this is an ad for LASIK. And this, this, you know, ad talks about this, this, this, this, in this? Well, Meta knows the online behavior of every single one of their users, and they have, I think, over 3 billion active monthly users on between all of their platforms and socials. So the overwhelming majority of people in this local area, and really any local area, use Meta and Instagram. And when they have an account with Meta and Instagram, they've actually forfeited their data privacy, which means Meta can interpret all of their online activity and behavior They have billions of data points on every single one of these individuals. They know going back retroactively to when they sign up with their account, how much money they spent online, what products they've spent money on, you know, their credit score, their education level, the conversations, their online, you know, behaviors, the things that they consume, the things that they're interested. If they're looking for a surgery, if they're seeing a decline in their vision, something as simple as increasing the text size on their phone, that's a good indicator that maybe there's some vision loss there. Or if they're actually researching blogs and researching LASIK or looking into other things that could potentially help them get better vision like glasses, then they might be a perfect candidate for us to spend money on our ads. So when we actually publish that video ad, what happens is Meta is going to take all this information, the billions of data points that it has on all of their users, and understand exactly what our ad is, who it's for, and what we're trying to solve. And it's going to put our ads only in front of the people that have the highest probability of clicking and engaging cheap. So when you juxtapose that, you compare and contrast it with a billboard, what's a better use of your ad spend? Truly, what's a better use? Without a shadow of a doubt, it's spending money on digital marketing. Not only that, you can see what type of ads are performing. You can see your cost per clicks, your KPIs in real time. You're not just spending money every month and hoping to see a trend over the next 3, 6, 12 months with your, with your billboard there. You're getting real actionable insights into the performance of your campaign at every step of the funnel. If you set it set up correctly. So I'm not anti-billboard. I'm anti-spending money on billboards until you have the ability to do so. Meaning, let's say this Utah LASIK Eye Center crushes their direct response marketing, their digital marketing. They've got so many people coming in, it's absolutely dialed, and they are just making so much money through their marketing that they now have a lot of extra cash that they can afford to go and just do a bunch of brand awareness. Perfect. That is when you would want to do that. That is when that would make sense. This is like the Super Bowl, perfect example. These companies that spend money on Super Bowl ads, you know, tens of millions of dollars, what companies are they? These are the companies that have billions and trillions of dollars, okay? That are, maybe not trillions, but they are trillion-dollar companies. The Apples, the Amazons, because they have so much extra money, they have things so dialed in that they can afford to spend a bunch of money on brand awareness campaigns. Now, was Amazon spending money on billboards when they first got started? Probably not. I don't know the answer to that question, so that's a dumb, dumb, dumb question to ask, but I would highly doubt that they were spending money on billboards. They were probably spending money on Google Ads, ads and banner ads, display ads, trying to get people on the internet to their store. So anyways, moral of the story is focus on marketing that's going to move the needle. You want to focus on the most minimal amount of input that you can, you know, give in your marketing campaign to get the maximum amount of output. And if you can't track it, it can't be measured, it can't be improved. Approved and it can't be reported on. You'll never know how effective that marketing really is. So anyways, quick take there on my way to the office. I'm rolling in right now. Um, it's going to be a freaking great day. Let's go. All right. I'm off to the haircut. Pretty stoked. Um, on the morning so far, it's been really productive. Uh, plan my day, responded to some emails, uh, sent some follow-up, uh, emails and texts to some potential prospects. And then I actually shot some content with Bruce, my video guy, for about an hour or so, just some really cool intros and hooks and some stuff for the YouTube channel. And honestly, what this week has taught me more than anything else, as like the first week of me trying to vlog day to day, man, I have a tremendous amount of respect for anyone. I don't care who you are. I don't care how, you know, what you do and how stupid your content is, man. If you create content consistently and you just have the grit and the determination to just create, create, create, I tip my hat. I respect the crap out of that type of a person because this is hard. It's something that takes an extra amount of attention and detail and thought into everything that you do. And you know, I'm obviously running my businesses and doing everything that I normally do throughout the day. So it's like I'm adding more responsibility workload to my plate, but I feel passionate about it. I feel, I feel like I want to do it. It. And I think it's going to get easier and easier over time, of course. Which brings me to a topic of discussion I think we should talk about as it relates to anything in life. The hardest part is the beginning. The hardest part is starting something. Starting a business, it's never harder than when you're barely, barely first starting, right? You get momentum. Momentum. It's like a snowball that rolls down a hill. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger and picks up more and more momentum. And I honestly feel sad for the people that just have a hard time getting that going and getting started for whatever reasons. Um, you know, maybe, uh, factors that are outside of their control, things that keep them from doing that. It's, it's really, uh, sad, uh, that people have a hard time getting going with things. And, you know, there's a quote that makes me me so scared. It scares the absolute crap out of me. But it's like, you know, I can't remember who said it, but most people go to the grave, most people die with their best thoughts, with their best ideas, with their best music, with their best, you know, words with them. Meaning that they never extracted and honed the craft and the skills and the thoughts that they had. So I don't want that to be me, which is why I'm pushing myself to once again get uncomfortable. And it kind of sucks at times. Like right now, I wish I could just go to my haircut, listen to some music. My hand is cramping a little bit from holding my phone. Ah! But I got to do what I got to do. So yeah, after the haircut, I'm going to run to the bank really quick and then I'm going to go back and probably have another meeting with my video guy. And then I've got partner meetings this afternoon. So, kind of some housekeeping items. For the rest of the day. But, uh, yeah, overall things are going really well, uh, this week, and I'm really stoked for next week. A couple things about Syndicate Marketing as we kind of recap last month, um, as this is kind of our, you know, month in review now. I, I like to do kind of a post-mortem at the end of every single month, and personally what I do is I go over my— all of my expenses, I go over all the, you know, income that I had. I create kind of a profit and loss statement personally. I, you know, take care of some donations and things like that. I believe in charitable donations. I believe in giving back. That's something that I'm very passionate about and I do. So I factor that into kind of my postmortem. And then I also plan a budget with my wife where we're going to budget and plan out the next month and then the next week. And this is something that we have just started to really do because for a while there, we didn't really have a budget and we were just spending, spending, spending. And I don't care how much money you make, but that is never a good strategy. You know, no matter how wealthy you are, you should have a budget and/or a strategy and a plan. So we kind of were stupid for a long time. Now we're kind of having to hone it back in and get on a budget, be more disciplined. And, um, but as it relates to Syndicate Marketing, when I go through the profit and loss statement, we had one of the best months we've ever had as an agency this last month. Really, really grateful for that. And it's been really fun this last month. And once again, just super stoked where we want to take the business over this next year. Um, but as I'm looking over the income for this last month, one of the reasons why we had such a good month, we had a lot of projects coming in, a lot of, you know, big websites, a lot of big funnels, and not as much like monthly recurring revenue. So the goal is that we need to convert all of those individuals in that project into retainers. We want to build and grow that monthly recurring revenue, that MRR. If you're not familiar with that term, long term so that we can create more predictability and more sustainability with our business. So moving on to this next month, that's one of the things that we really want to do is we want to take the projects, we want to find a way to convert that into MRR, as well as to fulfill and deliver for the existing clients that we have to continue to keep them on board. And once again, grow and grow and grow and build, build, build our business. So some thoughts on my mind as I go to the haircut today and the rest of day, but, uh, so far everything is good. Solid week in the books. Heading out, um, got a clean office. Gotta leave the weekend with a clean office, that's the key here. And a restocked fridge. Um, these new tonics, I gotta say, pretty, pretty sweet. They just came back in stock. Uh, right now, kind of the favorites of the fridge would probably be The Choco Goes and the Slate Milk Chocolates, really good stuff. Um, but yeah, overall really productive week. Feel good about, uh, what we did, what happened. Made a couple new hires, got a new graphic designer on board, got a new project manager on board, and, uh, closed some deals. It was awesome. Awesome. So on the way home, end of the day, wrapping up here. It's actually the first time this week I think I've driven home from work while the sun is still out. So getting home a little bit earlier than normal today, which is great. Got the wife, she's making enchiladas, but she forgot cheese at the store. So I gotta run to the store, grab some cheese, 'cause you know, you can't have enchiladas without cheese. I mean, I'm pretty sure enchiladas, like cheese is like one of the main, like 3 main ingredients. So how she forgot cheese, I'm not sure. It's like tortilla, sauce, cheese, maybe some meat. But overall, once again, pretty good week. Feel really good about the direction, the strategy that we've got going on with some of the content, some of the lead acquisition systems. And of course, I'm gonna be dropping a lot more videos about kind of the technical setup, the technical strategy on how we're going to be building out our channel, how we're going to be building out our content, and also, um, some of the campaigns that we're running to really get a lot of eyeballs on our content as well. So that's gonna be cool. And, um, yeah, otherwise Also, we're, um, gonna be probably hiring another editor, somebody to manage the editing of these vlogs. We've got, uh, you know, an editor in-house who's a total stud. He does really, really good work, and I think that these vlogs might just be a little bit— not below him, but they're just a little bit too time-consuming to go through and scrub everything. So we're gonna probably try to find someone off offsite overseas that we can pay, you know, $5 to $10 an hour to kind of bust these vlog content videos out faster that can still do really quality work. So we've got a couple of resources there that we're gonna be looking at, looking at doing. Those are the main takeaways. Honestly, over the weekend, be hanging out. I'm gonna get— spend some quality time with the fam. Mike would take my car up the canyon, little canyon drive. Which would be way fun. And, you know, eat some good food, spend some time, you know, just relaxing and planning out the next week. And maybe I'll do another video or a little vlog of my planning session and what we've got on the docket for next week so we can hit the ground running hard. But with that being said, guys, I'm gonna check out. First week in the books of the vlog, and see you guys next week. Let's go!