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Welcome back to the game. Today I have a throwback for you. This episode discusses strategies for building a business without feeling bad about making asks.

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And so main points are how to give first and how giving first builds good will and brand value and I'll translate that into more tactical stuff.

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How often to make asks backed with actual data. So I think this kind of puts the debate at rest.

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And then finally how to ask when you know that that's what you need to do.

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So you want to make money online but you don't want to feel it key or sleazy to the people who know and love you when you ask them to give you money.

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So there's a good way to do it and there's a bad way to do it.

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The good news is I can show you step by step how I got my first 20 clients posting on social media for my personal training business a decade ago and have continued to use that in each company going forward.

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And build brand and good will at the same time. And this is a sneak preview from my upcoming book $100 million leads which you can check out at acquisition.com for slash leads.

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So there was a friend of mine a while back who had a podcast that blew up like early days podcasts like it skyrocketed it and very quickly he had millions of downloads.

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And his business started to grow a lot and it was almost a hundred percent from people who were listening to his podcast.

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And so he realized he made an ask during one of his podcasts he made a lot of money and what happened was he learned the wrong lesson.

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He thought when I make an ask I make more money and so what I'll do is I'll just make more asks and so he did make more asks and he then made a little bit more money.

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And then he continued to make less and less and less until eventually his listenership dropped and dropped and dropped into then it got to the point where he didn't even feel like making them anymore right.

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Because it wasn't worth it because he had lost the good will of his audience.

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And so the key point I'm going to talk about today is mastering the gift to ask ratio.

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Now you obviously have to have an audience which I talk about at length in hundred dollar leads and other content that I make so I'm not going to get into that part.

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I'm just going to talk about mastering how much to give versus how much to ask.

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Gary V. popularized the whole concept jab jab jab right hook right which is the idea of giving giving giving and then asking right not take but ask.

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The good news is that this ratio has been incredibly well studied. Why?

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Because the biggest media companies in the world want to be able to ask on their platforms as much as seemingly possible without losing viewership listenership audience.

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On television for every forty seven minutes of content there's thirteen minutes of advertising.

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So you think about that as it's almost like a three to one ratio between how many ads three and a half to one between how many ads there are and how much content there is.

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If you look on Facebook Facebook it's every four posts there's one ad right so four and then one four and then one.

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What I want to do is give you my slight tweak on the give give give ask concept.

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Instead of give give ask I'd like to just change it to give until they ask you.

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You can just consistently give and give and give and then only when someone reaches out to you to say hey how can I found out more how can I work more closely with you how can you do this can you help me out etc.

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Only then do you sell and my personal preference here is actually to give in public and sell in private whenever you give you deposit goodwill into the audience right and it basically precedes reciprocity because.

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From a persuasion perspective if you give someone something first they're far more likely to comply with your request later right and so the idea is that you force people to get favors from you at scale by providing good stuff that builds goodwill that later when you do make an ask many people feel obligated just through social construct.

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To comply when someone helps us we feel indebted to them we want to help them back right that's how society works but with media we can do that at scale you can gain goodwill and provide value to millions of people at once but then it all funnels back to one person and that's why it's so powerful and it's free.

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When you do it that way your brand consistently is reinforced publicly and you continue to grow and expand it will force you to keep that content amazing so that you continue to reinforce your reputation.

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Hey real quick guys are you a business owner or you want to start a business well the first thing that any business owner needs is someone to sell their stuff to.

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And I spent the last decade getting proficient at advertising to the point that right now I have a 36 to one return on advertising meaning for every dollar put it I get $36 back and I spent two years and 2000 hours writing 19 drafts of my next book $100 million

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$100 million leads where I share everything that I've learned for you.

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And if that sounds at all interesting go to acquisition dot com for slash leads to register for the event it's actually free everyone's invited it's virtual I'll see you there if you consistently give and give and give then what happens is your audience compounds and this is something that I didn't understand for a long time was that the audience is the asset not the content you make so I make a video that it disappears in three days on my news feed what that one piece of content is is it got me 300 more people to start seeing my stuff and then they permanently enter the

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audience provided I don't ask too much too frequently in the beginning it'll be really small and if you can hold off and you keep giving you keep giving you keep giving you eventually never even have to ask publicly because instead of asking you just start getting transparently this is something that I've now personally experienced and I was like I don't know but you know what I'll give it a shot let's just see if I can make a bunch of business content and see if that will attract one million $5 million $10 million profit per year businesses not revenue profit so that I can invest in them and help them grow and it turns out it did.

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There's two ways that asks work in content and so I want you to think of your asks as commercials you're interrupting your own content with a commercial about your stuff an integrated approach would be like during the content like hey if you want to learn more about this stuff got a hundred million dollar leads and you can go check it out it's as cheap as I can put it on Amazon with them still considering a book I think is 199 because it's so much thicker than my first book they wouldn't let me put it at 99 sets there's too many images inside of it so that would be an example of an integration it's natural it comes up as you're talking and then you can point

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into it and you get back to what you're saying integrations work better for long form contents PDFs books videos podcasts log posts those are all things that lend themselves to integrating in very small percentages of the total amount of time it takes someone to consume something for example if I made an integration and I started with a minute about something valuable and then I spend five minutes in the middle talking about my thing and then I spend two minutes on the end you still need to keep the ratio of minimum three to one because remember televisions 13 minutes to 47 right for a 60 minutes lot in terms of commercials

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so that's the max and so for me I would rather be at like 98% give 2% ask the other way is intermittent which means in between things intermittent is typically better for short form platforms if you have 10 Instagram posts or 10 tiktok reels on the 11th one you make one that's a little bit more about your credit repair services that you offer or your national lawn care franchise that you have franchise opportunities for people to buy into right whatever it is and then you go right back

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to the pre-programmed show it's even harder because if you're doing multiple posts a day I wouldn't do more than 3% so once or twice a month one post that feels reasonable and you're not going to lose audience and so fundamentally the actual cost of the commercial is not money but good will how much of my audience am I losing by making this ask I though to be clear I always want

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to under ask my audience personally so if you're new to making content now hopefully you've been using social media if you haven't been so using social media then what I say what I'm about to say doesn't apply but if you've been using it like a person so like you post on

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Instagram like when you go out with the boys or whatever like you use it like a user might use it right believe it or not you've actually been providing value to certain people for an extended period of time and so you actually do have a decent amount of good will and I

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wouldn't normally say this but I think there's some element that I can appreciate of if you took an action and you get immediately reinforced for taking it then you'll believe that this could actually work for you if you make your first post what I would just call

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like a declaration of business which is just saying like hey you know you guys have maybe been following me for a while you might know me you might not from personal from college from work from out of the bars this is what I'm doing with my life now and I would love to give you

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guys something for free that would benefit you and if that sounds cool awesome if not keep following me posted more about this stuff very quick very simple and I was actually able to find my first public

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declaration of business this is April night actually coming up on 10 years I took my decade in business how about that for those of you know me you know

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two things one I am terrible with all things technological still true for example I just heard about Spotify a few weeks ago seriously two I love

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training slash nutrition and fitness more than well a whole lot so today is sort of special because it marks today when my

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love of training vanquished see me trying to use fancy words vanquish my fear of technology what do I mean for the better part of a year I've been taking part in a free

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personal training project that I would give away free personal training to anyone who's willing to give 500 to $1,000 to a cause of their choice give value for extent

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a period of time for a small group of people to prove that you know what you're doing so you can get testimonials by the way this way they wouldn't

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have to be motivated by the same thing as me but be motivated to give to their cause and benefit themselves when I first introduced the idea I was

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happily surprisingly not a positive board I received so almost a year from my first client I now have a website to formally show some of the

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transformation that I've gone underway using my programming and it's a formal means of contacting me about signing up I currently have a few slots open on my roster so

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drop me a quick note if you're interested thanks so much take a second to check out some of these ridiculous transformations in record time what I make this post

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again today probably not but I'm proud of the kid who did it because I had I'd given value for free to people free because they didn't pay me I had

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them pay someone else because I wanted them to value it but making that first declaration of business post was actually how I got my first 20 paying

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customers I got 20 people who messaged me because I to be fair I had always been in shape and people had known me my whole life as a guy

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who's always obsessed with fitness so it made sense that I would make that my next natural thing and so you provided value to people for a

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long period of time you can make your first post a light ask which is just declaration and asking for support and then you can start the

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business now if you have no content up to that point show them what you've been up to and then you can make your ask I would

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encourage you to make that first post because I think it'll show it's possible and I think if I can get you that first

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when you'll be far more likely to continue and if you're wondering well at what point do I fully right hook my

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audience and just drain it of good well real talk part of the game is quote leaving money on the table so let me give you an

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example friend of a friend had a tequila business that was pretty big big enough that the rock approach to Wayne Johnson and the rock said I

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would like two thirds of your business and mind you when you did that that might have been a big ask I don't know they said no now fast

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four years later the rock started his own tequila brand which is now with six billion so they probably would have made out

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really well with that but here's the thing if the rock had done that deal at that time he might have actually lost out on what he

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ultimately made with Tehrmana and so that means if someone says hey Alex can you endorse my thing if I say yes today it's

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probably going to be a bad deal for me because in two years my audience would be significantly larger and so will yours when

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you're thinking about these right hooks there's a huge time component and the thing is that compounding gets crazy near the end

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every time you decide to make the right hook if you hold it it could be 10 or 100 times bigger 12 months 24 months later could you

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imagine if two years ago when I started making content and I just started getting early engagement my YouTube videos and

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Instagram and people start DMing me they're like hey can you mental rate which I don't do if I said sure I'm going to do it I

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would have stopped my growth curve and I would have just been just another dude but by holding back and it takes a lot

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of self-discipline self-control and patience which by the way if you want the definition for me operationalizing

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patience is just figuring out what you do in the meantime you don't actually wait you just figure out what you

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do in the meantime because I am in the game of making money my goal is to always have significantly less

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supply than I have demand and I always want to keep that demand because that is the holy grail of what you

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want which is far more people who want to do business with you than you have capacity to do so the strongest

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driver of pricing power and profits is supply and demand when we make content what we're actually doing is

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artificially shifting the demand curve in our favor and the other side of this is that if you are the

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business owner you control supply and so you can inflate your demand in terms of the amount of people

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who want to work with you or buy from you and at the same time cut your supply and when you have that

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happen price goes through the roof and so do your profits and so for me I'm all about growing as fast

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possibly can which means you got to give as much as you possibly can just keep giving and people will

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start coming to you you'll start not even having to ask you'll just start getting and if you're going

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to ask because you need to put food on table which I understand then make sure for me I would be

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way more than the three to one ratio I'm more like 10 times that would be like a 30 to one ratio

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of giving to asking so I keep maximizing my growth and keep my brand compounding while still

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making a little bit of money for me because I know that long term the more I hold back my ask the

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bigger it will be if you just like that episode then you are going to love the free virtual event

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that I have for my next book 100 million dollar leads and before you click away listen to what I'm

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about to say fast forward three months from now your friend is using something that you didn't have

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access to and their business is growing another person posted about how grateful they are that they

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went to the event because they're using these skills that they learned from the free thing that I'm

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going to give to only people who are there life and give you some context we have the tech now

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that we are going to scrape every single person who is at the event and they will be the only

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ones who gain access to a project that I've been working on for four years which means that

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every person who is not on the link live is not going to get it and I'm doing that because I know

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I'm going to piss off 99% of people who are not there and it's because the next time I say

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I'm going to give away something it's going to be awesome you're going to want to be there

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I want people to believe me and if you haven't taken action on yet go to acquisition.com

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four slash leads I'll see you there

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real quick guys I have a special special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast

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Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap it's

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breaking scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business so you've got

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marketing you've got sales you've got product you got customer success you've got IT you've

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got recruiting you've got HR you've got finance and we show the problems that emerged at every

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level of scale and how to graduate to the next level it's all free and you can get it personalized

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to you so it's about 30-ish pages for each of the stages once you answer the questions it will

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tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow it's about 14 hours of stuff but

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it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you which probably

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will be about 90 minutes and so if that's at all interesting you can go to acquisition.com

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four slash road map R-O-A-D map road map