https://www.listennotes.com/e/b25d946a46da4d71a27ed88d1ce5a71b
29 Jan 2023 · 15 min
Vince Reed talks with Mike and Connor about shutting down his app company and what he learned. He's now moving into real estate digital marketing and shares stories from building and failing at previous ventures.
It's kind of like people that, you know, you understand digital marketing and they're like, yeah, I understand digital marketing. But you and I know they really don't understand digital marketing, right? On the level that we know it, right? So the only other time I sat up and changed my mind, I can't believe I'm going here. I don't want to offend anybody.
What's up, everybody? Welcome to another recap show. This is for episode six. of the DM.
Six already?
Yeah.
We've been flying by these episodes. Just felt like yesterday we were filming episode one, right?
Yeah.
Geez.
I mean, I don't know if that's a good thing. If time is flying by, I don't need to get any older, Mike.
Well, we're having fun doing it, though.
That is true.
We're having a lot of fun. That is true. Here with Vince Reed, the star of the show. I'm Mike, head of production here at the DM.
And again, as always, wouldn't be possible without you.
Appreciate it.
And ladies, chill out, man. He's gonna start charging $59.95 for an application.
I don't know what he's talking about.
These girls gotta slow down, okay? Now he's got too many choices, all right? So I'm just letting them know, I gotta, you know.
I appreciate the help.
And I like how you tried to blurp out the OnlyFans. You know, I'm gonna bring it back.
I didn't even say anything about that. All right, moving on. How's it going, Vince?
It's good, man.
Yeah?
Having a good time, enjoying the process. I mean, like the wall says, hold the vision, trust the process.
You can't see it right now, but that's what it says. Hold the vision, trust the process. Besides the DM, you're building up eBooV, the company.
It's building.
Yeah, it's growing. I mean, we're seeing it grow.
It's crazy, man.
That's the main, ship that's bringing us all through this. The DM is a big aspect of it. And, I mean, obviously you don't see all the behind the scenes stuff, but this is building of the company and it's not all sunshine and rainbows. You know, it's.
It's.
There's some stuff that we still have to deal with.
Yeah.
A lot of sunshine and rainbows, Mike.
It's always sunshine and rainbows here at the DM. All right.
A lot of late nights. Always happy.
There's nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. But it is the journey. And I think we were talking about it yesterday too at lunch. That's the biggest part that sticks with you. It's just the journey, just the grind, putting everything together, the process.
Absolutely.
It's not the end goal, but it's like what you do in between.
I agree. Couldn't agree with you more.
Well, there you go.
There we go.
So let's dive in. First off, the app company, you had to shut that down. You had six figures of recurring revenue that you had to stop. Why?
Hit the stop button. Recurring, multiple six figures. I said stop. Would you have done that?
See, that's the question that I put on the post today.
Because here's the thing. Nobody was complaining because people had an app. just so everyone knows, you know, we were just saying we're gonna get it in both the Apple and, you know, Android store, but people knew, like, depending on the kind of content, sometimes they knew that they may not get approved in Apple. So no one was even mad. I was more disappointed because it was a promise I wanted to make sure happened. But I do wanna clarify just something. So most people that got in got both apps, right? It was like, and when I say most people, there was hundreds of apps being purchased. So when at the end, when the second we knew that they would not get approved, let's say there was a hundred apps, all of those people got refunded. They didn't get an Apple. Like we just refunded all of them. So, you know, it wasn't like people were mad that didn't, you know, I just wanted to make that clear.
Yeah.
So most people would, even if it got denied, we would keep working with it, and then it would get approved. Once we realized people that did not get approved, like, weren't going to happen, then those people got refunded. Okay. And then the people that were paying recurring for training, because there was training inside the members area, I was teaching, you know, how to get leads and stuff on apps. We stopped their payment and we serviced them for a year. We kept teaching them. We let them have it. Oh, wow.
So even though we weren't accepting new customers, so technically. You could have, 'cause you knew this in the back end, what was going on.
Yeah.
Technically you could have just let this go on.
100%, yeah. I could have made another 10 million.
But why didn't you?
I gotta sleep at night, Mike.
That's right.
You wouldn't be here if I was that kind of guy.
That's right.
Right?
I mean, it was one of those things like, you know, it's not worth it.
It's not.
Long, you know, the kind of, for that to be the kind of company that I envisioned it, It had to, we had to get him approved in both Apple and Android. I mean, if I would have changed and said, oh, we're only gonna do Android.
Right.
I mean, and it's your reputation too.
Right, exactly. You know, but I guarantee you people would have kept buying.
Oh.
'Cause when we stopped it, we just cut off the more people can get in, people were hitting us up, we want a wrap, we want a wrap. So it was going on for a.
Minute after that, so. Okay.
Well, anyhow, eventually you have to shut that down. That's what happened. Yeah, so we shut it down, but, you know, we refunded everybody that didn't get it in both. And then we kept servicing, even after I canceled the payments for a year, kept training those people, let them have access to the training. And they still had their app, technically. Okay. Until eventually we just had to cut everything.
Apple just-- yeah, Apple denied, denied. It was back to picking up the pieces for you, right?
So what was the next move? You know, I mean, you know, at the time, just like, you know, for those of you who have watched all the episodes in the beginning, when you're searching for how to make money on Google, you start over again. You feel like the world's coming to an end, especially when you're that close. Again, just bringing up product market fit. Such a cool experience to just see your product just jumping off the shelves without you doing anything. Right. Right. And you think to yourself, are you gonna ever have another company that hits that sweet spot? It was the perfect timing. So that part hurts.
Right?
Because you put all this energy into it and then you got to start all over again.
Yeah.
So yeah, just down and depressed. But, you know, my right hand man came at the right time. He was the honestly, his energy fed kept me going. You know, sometimes I come in here and I'm like all this stuff on and I see you guys working hard and I'm like, I got to keep it together. These guys think I'm down and they're gonna get down. So, you know, it was it was cool having him around because he kind of kept me kept me going, as you guys saw at the end of the episode.
You get the call from, was it the VIP guy?
So, because we want to talk about.
The branding video that you get in those videos.
Yeah, okay. So, you know, I went to an event somewhere during that time, and I saw a video of my mentor. It was like a story video, and everybody was in tears. I'm like who made that video? So I hunted the guy down and he said he was gonna be in Vegas and he could make me a story video and it was the same time that my my buddy from the VIP party was gonna be there speaking at an event so I just timed them both together.
Okay, so you meet up with the guy from the VIP party youy walk into the hotel room of his and what do you see all these computers?
Yeah, it's crazy and it was it.
Was like something from the matrix well.
It was something from the matrix, but But what, you know, I can see it right now, like the details of his, like, analytics on those screens. And these were all funnels.
Arrows and down and red, green, and.
Then there was just all, like, you could see everything. Right. It was really cool. So these were the funnels. These were the funnels. All the numbers from the business.
And he was very particular. Very particular.
Let me just sit there and just looking at it. Like, you look at it, I didn't see anything moving. I mean, there was so much going on, but he knew.
Yeah, yeah. It was cool. So you guys go to lunch and you think that you're gonna have one steak for yourself and he's gonna have another. What does he do? He splits it up?
You come to me in Vegas. In Vegas, I'm like, we're gonna, whatever you want, right? We have a good time. And this dude, man, I'm still mad. The steak was all right, but I don't even eat Porterhouse steak. This thing was massive. And then, like, you know, I joked around about cutting it, but they actually cut the steak for you. It's like, cut. to make it easy to share.
Yeah.
But I was joking with them like, oh, let me cut your steak some more for you since we're sharing a steak. Right, right. Yeah, it was cool, though. That's good. I do appreciate him.
He saved me, like, 40, 50 bucks.
Right.
So. But he, he brought up a good.
Point about Warren Buffett, because that's someone that he. Yeah. For him, it was all about watching it grow. That's all he cared about, was how much could he make and watching the number grow.
That's how he kept score after that. Is that when you go out and meet Mr. X? 'Cause you're already in Vegas.
I didn't make the episode. That didn't make the episode. But there was another Mr. X experience. And for those of you who've missed Mr. X, go back and watch a couple episodes. You'll be wanting to see more of Mr. X. But yeah, there was a Mr. X episode that night. Can you give us a little brief? Let's just say my right-hand man woke up with a pretty bad hangover. It wasn't your right-hand man, though. Excuse me, not my right-hand man. My buddy from the VIP party woke up with a pretty bad hangover.
Yeah.
Thank you for catching that, Mike. See, he's always on it. Always catching it, always got it. So, it was so bad he almost didn't make his talk.
Right, 'cause he had to speak the next day.
Yeah, he had to speak the next day. Wow. Yeah. So it was a wild night.
Okay.
Thanks to Mr. X. Yeah.
Well, you know, Mr. X always, he's always there. Now you, saw what the VIP guy did. He kind of brought you through his whole process and you're like, okay, let me do this for myself. And you come up with the idea of teaching digital marketing for the real estate industry.
Yeah, so I saw what he was doing, but I didn't really understand it all, right? I mean, it's kind of like people that, you know, you understand digital marketing and they're like, yeah, I understand digital marketing. But you and I know they really don't understand digital marketing right on the level that we made we know it right, right that's where I was with what he was doing like I just knew what he was doing and I thought I knew right.
He was just on a different level.
But he was on a whole nother level. Yeah, and youd know at that point he hadn't really broken down everything to me but I knew enough to know that I need to do something like that and you know my background was in real estate so I went and bought the domain on online real estate secrets.com which I still owned to this day. So I'm taking offers for anybody in the real estate space that wants to buy that domain. And we went, I just got to work, you know, started to do what I thought he was doing at the time.
Right. Right.
For that business.
How long did it take you to get up to the point of ready to launch? It was a couple months? Several months.
Okay. Several months. Like, I mean, it had to be, it was over three months of just working hard. I mean, 'cause we had to create a lot of content.
I mean, this was a whole new business. and you brought up your, you know, your, your right hand man with you.
Yeah.
We came and we, we worked every day. Every day we seriously worked on our business, worked out, worked on the business.
Yeah.
Work we didn't do. We didn't go out pretty much. Just, that was it. Yeah.
Just one cycle.
Yeah.
Okay. And then after that, you say that the day before the launch, you just, you don't have a good feeling about it. why?
Okay, so I'm trying to think if I should say so. The only other time I sat up and changed my mind was my. I can't believe I'm going here. I don't want to offend anybody. So it was my. My girlfriend from college, right?
Okay.
We had this relationship where we would break up, get back together, break up, get back together. And there was this point where we broke up, we were going to get back together, and I sat up and had the same thing. I said, you can't keep doing this.
Mm-.
And I didn't, and then I met my wife now and everything was good. So not to bash her, but it was just, that's what happened.
That's how it is.
Anyways, that same thing happened. So I knew, like, I believed in that. Like, I had that same, you can't do this feeling. And now looking back, you know, it's like, whatever that feeling is, I'm always gonna listen to it. You know what I mean?
'Cause you don't wanna leave behind- I.
Couldn'T leave behind- Client base. Yeah, because, you know, I had- built, you know, from all the way back to NetDivvy, it was digital marketers, it was the home-based business industry, it was affiliate marketers, it was these people trying to, you know, build a business from home or online. And that was me, 'cause I had lost it all and I went on Google, so I tried to make money on Google. So I felt I was leaving those people, I felt like I was leaving me behind. Like if there was someone that, let's say like I was learning from my mentor and he went and did like, Something else okay in my head. I just didn't feel like fulfilled with teaching that space right everything that I knew because I knew there was so much more yeah, and especially the way everything ended with global apps.
Mm-.
I had to go go finish finish what I started.
Yeah, you didn't want it to become another disaster again. Yeah, so so you're you you're still contemplating, you know what to do eventually youy have the idea okay, I need to start something different, you know, go back to the original customer base that you had, but still teach the same things that you've learned to them, right?
Absolutely.
But you still have to tell your right hand man, this new business venture.
Yeah, so, you know, we put in all this work and I'd still remember it like yesterday. I remember when he pulled into the parking garage and he was walking and I'm like, man, I'm gonna lose my right hand, and he's gonna be like, enough of this guy. So, but, you know, he did the complete opposite, which I knew that I had the right one.
Yep. That's when you knew.
Just like I know you're the right one, Mike.
Oh, thank you.
And you're the right one, Connor.
Thanks.
Dad.
I appreciate it. Connor with the ones and twos, always producing, and, That I think that's a wrap.
Watch the show.
Watch the show. Watch the show. We're out.
Great.
Peace.
Later, guys. Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave a review and if you want to watch live episodes, be sure to jump over to YouTube and check them out. Adventure TV. I'll see you there.
More from Vince
Shady Lawyers Use Legal Tactics to Bankrupt My Business - The DM Ep.8 w Vince Reed
Insider Reveals His $50,000 Digital Marketing Strategy - The DM Ep.7 w Vince Reed
Digital Marketer Describes His Journey From Broke To 8 Figures - The DM Trailer w/ Vince Reed