In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Larry Yu, co‑founder of High Converting Ads. Larry shares a formative year‑long experience with a network‑marketing venture during his freshman year of college, emphasizing the danger of blindly following dogma and the importance of critical thinking. He then outlines his core expertise: a systematic, numbers‑driven approach to Facebook paid advertising that treats campaigns as holistic funnels, using spreadsheet mapping, benchmark metrics, and daily tracking to identify weak links. Larry offers broader business wisdom, urging listeners to curate the influences around them—people, media, and books—because we become the average of our closest circles. He advises his younger self to practice patience and avoid shiny‑object syndrome. On happiness, he argues there is no single key; rather, happiness is a dynamic equilibrium driven by progress toward goals. The book "The Power of Now" stands out for teaching presence and meditation as tools for emotional mastery. His favorite quote, from Jim Rohn, stresses wishing to become better rather than wishing for easier circumstances, highlighting a victor‑over‑victim mindset. Finally, he directs listeners to his company website highconvertingads.com and the Instagram handle @thetwinsoninsta.
Chapters
Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Larry Yu with us. He is the co-founder of High Converting Ads. So welcome to the show, man.
Thanks, Tyler.
Of course, thanks for hopping on. We appreciate it. Uh, we'll dive into the first question. The first one I have for you is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Okay, awesome. So a specific story doesn't necessarily come to mind, but it's more like a reflection on like a year-long experience. That's what it does. I definitely think it's worth sharing because I learned a solid lesson from it. So it was like around like freshman year of college when my brother and I were pretty much got sucked into a year of burning a lot of friends, undermining a lot of credibility, and like wasting a lot of time. To make a long story short, Towards the end of freshman year, me and my bro, my twin brother by the way, we pretty much committed in our minds that we were gonna be entrepreneurs. And we essentially decided to like just give the deuces to school and we took a year off. We took our sophomore year off to explore business opportunities. And even though we had several decent ideas on our plate, we somehow fell into a network marketing opportunity. See where this goes. So, Like, first of all, I want to be clear that most of the people in that organization, they're really good, like, kind people, and they shared a lot of great training, like, you know, Jim Rohn training, Tony Robbins training, and for that I'm very grateful. But in so many other ways, it was the blind leading the blind. And the leaders in the company, they were edified and positioned to be like these all-wise, all-knowing individuals. And to be fair, many of them were very capable, but also a lot of the things they said and did and recommended It just always seemed a little off, but because of groupthink, people, they just accepted it and passed along beliefs and, you know, quote-unquote best practices like they were gospel. Things, for example, like dial for dollars, or network marketing is the only business that you can start with just a few hundred dollars. Not true. Or like to prospect for new members, you should go out and cold approach people on the street. And so like things like this, the list goes on. And like all of these things were shared based on what had worked in the past and on the premise of pretty much if it worked in the past, then therefore it'll work in the future. But that's not true, right? The world is changing. We need to evolve with it. And like, say, for example, cold calling, it might have worked in the past and it might still work, but doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way to go about things now that we have technology advances, etc. In fact, I would say cold calling is pretty inefficient in most situations. But then yet I would be there sitting in a room because everybody's doing it, cold calling my list of friends. And so there are many other instances during this year-long experience in which I pretty much followed advice more or less blindly. And it was a waste of time, burned a lot of relationships, but there was a lesson there. And it's pretty much that you have to critical think for yourself. You really do. Especially when things are presented to you in a dogmatic way. That's what I found. Like dogma or any black and white thinking, it's almost always always a signal to— it's time to think about that topic more thoroughly yourself and come to your own intelligent conclusions.
Yes, man. Thank you for sharing that. That was a lot of lessons in there.
I appreciate it.
Yes, man. The next one I have for you, man, is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Okay, awesome. Yes. My brother and I, our background for the last couple of years has been in paid advertising. Among other things, but primarily Facebook paid advertising. And our biggest tip for that is to approach Facebook advertising in a numbers-based, systematic way. One of the biggest mistakes we notice our clients making, and we've definitely made ourselves in the past, is focusing in on one particular element of the campaign, whether that be like CTR or CPC or audience targeting or some bidding strategy or whatever. Like, we focus in on that too much. And the truth is, one of those things might be the thing that you need to improve, but you won't know for sure unless you are tracking, looking at your campaigns as a whole. With every campaign, there is the traffic component and the conversion component. And if you don't look at it in a holistic fashion, you can't really identify what's causing the weak links, and therefore you might be fixing the wrong problem. Many times than not, we find our clients don't actually have a traffic problem or targeting problem, they actually have a conversion problem. And so to leave your audience with something like, how do you, like, what do you need to do? All right, you need to plan out things holistically. So the steps for that is like, one, you map out all the steps of your funnel on a spreadsheet. Two, you set goal benchmark metrics and conversion rates for each step of the funnel. Three, you run traffic and track data every day or week, and the numbers will tell you exactly where the weak links are. In our opinion, this is the only way to advertise scientifically.
Mm, love it. And what is your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?
Yeah, I actually answered this in another interview once, so I'll stick with that answer. Since it's a loaded question, I'd say the best advice would be to be extremely conscious of the influence that you let into your life. You really are the average of the 5 closest people to you, or whatever number of people closest to you. And so I think it's like mind— really being mindful of like who is around you, but also like what type of media you consume, like books you read, TV shows you watch, et cetera.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Have more patience with the project— the projects that we pursue and avoid shiny object syndrome like a plague.
And kind of going a little bit a different path, but in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
To start, I think the key to happiness is to first realize that there is no one key. And I alluded to this before, but I think whenever there's black and white thinking, that's like a pretty much the path to being unhappy. I think happiness is like a dynamic equilibrium and therefore, you know, there is just never one key. But if I was to sum it up into something to take away, I'd say progress towards goal is a major key.
Yes, I love that answer. And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Very tough question, but I'd say Power of Now is one of the books that stands out. The number one thing I learned from that is the importance of presence. And with that, all the various techniques for finding presence. I think meditation, like daily meditation, has been an incredible tool in helping me master my emotions and overcome challenges. You know, in life.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
Victim of doing things in your control, which is, you know, all we can do anyways.
Laurie, so we actually lost your connection there. So if you could say again, what is your favorite quote and why?
Yeah, of course. So it's a quote by Jim Rohn. It's, "Don't wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don't wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don't wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom." And I like the quote best because it's all about becoming the victor and not a victim. It's all about doing things in your control, which is, you know, pretty much all we can do anyways.
Yes, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find you online?
You could go to the site, highconvertingads.com, our site, highconvertingads.com, or you can follow us on Instagram at thetwinsoninsta.
Perfect, man. Thanks again. We appreciate it.
You got it, Tyler Wagner. It's good being on.
The podcast you just heard was published with Anchor. Got something you want to say to the creator of this show? Send them a voice message using the Anchor app, free for iOS and Android.
