WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.760 So in this podcast, I want to talk about advertising more when you get started, 2 00:00:03.760 --> 00:00:06.720 how much to advertise when you're getting up to a million dollars a year, 3 00:00:06.720 --> 00:00:08.800 and once you get past a million dollars a year, 4 00:00:08.800 --> 00:00:14.640 how I unify sales and advertising into one department to make a beast of getting customers, 5 00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:16.720 and how I think most businesses get this wrong. 6 00:00:16.720 --> 00:00:20.160 No one knows you exist, advertise more. 7 00:00:20.160 --> 00:00:24.480 And so to give you context on this, when I walk through the streets, 8 00:00:24.480 --> 00:00:27.760 I usually get stopped four or five times on like a 60-minute walk. 9 00:00:28.400 --> 00:00:32.880 And when I was launching my book last year, I had, you know, 10 00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:36.160 500,000 plus people who were registered as this massive event, 11 00:00:36.160 --> 00:00:37.680 broke the internet, whatever. 12 00:00:37.680 --> 00:00:40.800 But during the month leading up to it, we're advertising on all channels, 13 00:00:40.800 --> 00:00:43.200 we're running ads, we've got affiliates that are pumping it, 14 00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:45.280 I'm making content all over the place, 15 00:00:45.280 --> 00:00:48.800 and over the four weeks of people that stopped me, 16 00:00:49.440 --> 00:00:53.120 only one person knew that I had a book coming out. 17 00:00:53.680 --> 00:00:55.120 And so every time I'd see somebody like, 18 00:00:55.120 --> 00:00:57.520 hey, you're going to be at the book launch, and they're like, oh, you have a book. 19 00:00:57.520 --> 00:01:00.160 And it's like, how can you not know that I have a book? 20 00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:04.240 There's a story from Henry Ford that I love, which is that he was walking by, 21 00:01:04.240 --> 00:01:07.360 his, the CMO of Ford was right next to his office. 22 00:01:07.360 --> 00:01:10.400 And every day he'd walk by and he'd see the marketing campaign, 23 00:01:10.400 --> 00:01:12.160 he'd see the marketing campaign a day after day after day. 24 00:01:12.160 --> 00:01:14.480 And so three months into seeing the same campaign, 25 00:01:14.480 --> 00:01:16.720 he knocked on a CMO store, he's like, hey, 26 00:01:16.720 --> 00:01:17.920 when are we going to stop running this thing? 27 00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:19.840 He's like, I'm getting exhausted to see it. 28 00:01:19.840 --> 00:01:21.360 And the guy just looked at me, he's like, 29 00:01:21.360 --> 00:01:23.120 we haven't started running it yet. 30 00:01:23.120 --> 00:01:27.440 And so the thing is is that we get so sick of our advertising so much before 31 00:01:27.440 --> 00:01:30.880 our customers or potential customers even remember our names. 32 00:01:30.880 --> 00:01:34.480 And so the extent of advertising that you have to do, 33 00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:38.800 there are so many people in the world and people's attention is so spread thin 34 00:01:38.800 --> 00:01:42.720 and so they're so distracted that in the off chance you actually do get an 35 00:01:42.720 --> 00:01:44.960 advertisement of some Ford in front of them, 36 00:01:44.960 --> 00:01:48.320 the likely that they remember that it was even you and the core message 37 00:01:48.320 --> 00:01:49.840 of that advertising is even lower. 38 00:01:49.920 --> 00:01:54.080 And so many of us have this big fear that we're harassing our audience 39 00:01:54.080 --> 00:01:56.800 by repeating ourselves over and over and over again. 40 00:01:56.800 --> 00:01:58.640 But the vast majority of the time, 41 00:01:58.640 --> 00:02:00.400 not even A, knows you exist or B, 42 00:02:00.400 --> 00:02:03.360 specifically knows the message that you're trying to let them know. 43 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:07.520 And so I like to tell my team and remind myself that we need to be reminded 44 00:02:07.520 --> 00:02:08.640 more than we need to be taught. 45 00:02:08.640 --> 00:02:11.680 And so your audience needs to be reminded more than you need to be taught. 46 00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:14.160 And not about you, but I follow plenty of accounts where like they have 47 00:02:14.160 --> 00:02:17.040 the same four or five messages, more or less that they put out there. 48 00:02:17.040 --> 00:02:19.280 And the reason I follow them is because I like the reminder. 49 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:20.640 I like to be reminded to be patient. 50 00:02:20.640 --> 00:02:23.760 I like to be reminded to not think, take things too seriously. 51 00:02:23.760 --> 00:02:25.920 I like to be reminded that I have to think long. 52 00:02:25.920 --> 00:02:27.600 Like there's are the things that I like to be reminded of. 53 00:02:27.600 --> 00:02:30.320 And so I imagine if that accounts like I already said be patient once. 54 00:02:30.320 --> 00:02:31.600 I don't want to say it again. 55 00:02:31.600 --> 00:02:32.960 They've already heard that from me. 56 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:36.240 It's like no, people have messages that they want to continue to get fed into. 57 00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:39.680 And every time you feed that same message that they like before back into them, 58 00:02:39.680 --> 00:02:42.000 they'll have another positive experience with you. 59 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:45.440 The amount of novelty that's required in content is significantly less 60 00:02:45.440 --> 00:02:47.200 than you think as a creator. 61 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:52.320 Think about it like you're going after a girl and she's with somebody right now. 62 00:02:52.320 --> 00:02:54.400 All right, so you're like, okay, well, I'm going to ease off. 63 00:02:54.400 --> 00:02:56.000 But I'm just going to just let, let them know. 64 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:57.920 I'm just going to throw these little flares out there that I'm, 65 00:02:57.920 --> 00:02:58.960 that I'm, I'm interested. 66 00:02:58.960 --> 00:03:01.760 I'm here. I'm not being disrespectful, but I'm, I'm available, right? 67 00:03:01.760 --> 00:03:06.480 And then what happens is as soon as she gets out of that relationship or whatever, 68 00:03:06.480 --> 00:03:08.400 then she's receptive to your message. 69 00:03:08.400 --> 00:03:10.240 And so the thing is same way it works with customers. 70 00:03:10.240 --> 00:03:12.320 It's that they might not be looking for a marketing solution. 71 00:03:12.320 --> 00:03:14.080 They might not be looking for a plumbing solution. 72 00:03:14.480 --> 00:03:18.720 They might not be looking for an IT services provider for three months, 73 00:03:18.720 --> 00:03:22.240 six months, nine months, but they might like to hear your stuff. 74 00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:25.120 But the moment they are in the market, you're the first one they think of 75 00:03:25.120 --> 00:03:29.760 because you continue to repeat the messages that resonated with them to begin with. 76 00:03:29.760 --> 00:03:32.240 The big thing is the four by four, all right? 77 00:03:32.240 --> 00:03:37.600 Which is especially when you're starting out four hours a day doing the core four. 78 00:03:37.600 --> 00:03:40.160 And so the core four means you're reaching out to people you know one-on-one, 79 00:03:40.160 --> 00:03:42.560 reaching out to strangers one-on-one, making content, 80 00:03:43.280 --> 00:03:45.920 one-on-one or running ads one-on-one. 81 00:03:45.920 --> 00:03:49.440 And so there's the four ways the only things one person can do to let other people know about 82 00:03:49.440 --> 00:03:54.000 their stuff. And so I use the rule of 100 as my, my guide there, which means you either make 83 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:57.840 a hundred minutes of content, you do a hundred hour reaches to either cold or warm, 84 00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:03.920 or or and if you want to get really spicy, or at least a hundred dollars a day of advertising. 85 00:04:03.920 --> 00:04:06.240 Now obviously the hundred dollars a day you can scale as much as you want. 86 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:10.720 But as a baseline for anybody who's starting a business, those are three ways that you can just 87 00:04:10.880 --> 00:04:14.080 say, okay, what do I have to do to let more people know about my stuff? 88 00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:16.640 If you're not making a hundred minutes of content, you're not doing a hundred 89 00:04:16.640 --> 00:04:19.120 out reaches a day, or you're not spending a hundred dollars a day on ads, 90 00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:22.240 no one's going to know you exist. And that is the biggest threat to your business. 91 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:26.800 The reason it's so important as a founder to do this in the business is that you have to be able 92 00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:33.840 to make it rain. And so every business at the most basic level has to advertise before it can 93 00:04:33.840 --> 00:04:38.480 have money, right? So like if you want to make money, people cannot give you money until they 94 00:04:38.480 --> 00:04:44.160 know you exist. And so is a is a prerequisite for making money in business is that you advertise 95 00:04:44.160 --> 00:04:48.080 first and then you have a product that you can deliver on and that's the most basic form that you 96 00:04:48.080 --> 00:04:52.000 have to have. If you just have the product and no one finds out, you will continue to not make money. 97 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:57.200 Until you're at a hundred thousand dollars a month, advertising is all of your focus. 98 00:04:57.200 --> 00:05:00.720 And the main reason for that is if you don't have enough people coming in, you're not going to 99 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:04.560 have enough iterations of the product to get feedback to know if your stuff's good or not, 100 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:08.560 and what you need to do to make it better. Now the thing is is that up to a hundred thousand 101 00:05:08.560 --> 00:05:13.280 dollars a month at that point, it's all advertising. But at some point in order to continue to scale, 102 00:05:13.280 --> 00:05:16.640 you need to fix the product. You need to make sure that people are recurring. You need to make sure 103 00:05:16.640 --> 00:05:20.240 people are happy that they're referring other people that they're staying month after month or 104 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:24.000 they're repurchasing month after month after month after month. And so if you're not solving that, 105 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:26.880 then you've got a leaky bucket. And that's going to be a problem that you're going to deal with later. 106 00:05:26.880 --> 00:05:31.840 And so the smart move is to fix that stuff now so that you can grow a really big business. And this 107 00:05:31.840 --> 00:05:36.000 is one of the biggest mistakes that I made so many times in my earlier careers that you start 108 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:40.160 advertising, you start understanding a cell and acquire customers. And you say, oh, that worked. 109 00:05:40.160 --> 00:05:45.600 I'll do more of it. And you should do more of it. But within this current context of you have to 110 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:49.680 make sure that you're delivering. And so my recommendation is get to a million dollars. So get to a hundred 111 00:05:49.680 --> 00:05:54.480 thousand dollars a month ish. Then put all of your focus on filling all the holes in the bucket. 112 00:05:54.480 --> 00:05:57.360 So that. And what thing is is that when you do that, you're actually going to keep growing. Because 113 00:05:57.360 --> 00:06:01.520 if you keep the same activities and then you fix the holes, you're still going to keep growing steadily 114 00:06:01.520 --> 00:06:06.240 month after month after month, even with the same level of advertising effort. Then once you fix 115 00:06:06.240 --> 00:06:10.640 the holes, then you go back to the front end and say, how do I 10x this? And that is how you can 116 00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:14.880 stare step. Even though your actual revenue growth will still look flat because when you fix the 117 00:06:14.880 --> 00:06:19.920 holes, you'll make more money. But the doingness of the business will shift. Now, if you do the 118 00:06:19.920 --> 00:06:24.000 alternative of that, which is you just advertise more and more more, there's going to get to a point. 119 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:28.640 It's an asymptote. So basically start growing and you start plateauing like this. Because then 120 00:06:28.640 --> 00:06:32.560 your infrastructure is too big and there's too many moving pieces to fix the thing that you should 121 00:06:32.560 --> 00:06:36.480 have fixed earlier. But then you're going to rock in a hard place scenario because then you can't 122 00:06:36.480 --> 00:06:41.360 dial back the advertising because you got all these people that you've hired. But the more you sell, 123 00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:44.960 the more your reputation goes in the tank because the stuff's not good. And so you get a really hard 124 00:06:44.960 --> 00:06:50.960 scenario. And so fixing it first, fixing it early sets you up to build a much bigger business later. 125 00:06:50.960 --> 00:06:56.960 Under a million dollars a year, it's one channel, one avatar, one product. I see way too many small 126 00:06:56.960 --> 00:07:00.800 business owners saying, Hey, I've got two businesses or I have seven products or I have two different 127 00:07:00.800 --> 00:07:05.680 avatars or blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? No, focus on one specific type of customer. And if you 128 00:07:05.680 --> 00:07:09.520 say yes to everyone with money, you're basically saying no to your business because you're never 129 00:07:09.520 --> 00:07:12.560 going to be able to focus and make something really good. You can't serve six customers and then 130 00:07:12.560 --> 00:07:16.240 make a good product only doing a thousand dollars a month. It just doesn't like it's too small volume. 131 00:07:16.240 --> 00:07:20.320 Like you don't get enough reps. And so you need to do one very specific thing, which means you have 132 00:07:20.320 --> 00:07:24.960 to say no to people who aren't that type of person. You serve one problem, which means you have one 133 00:07:24.960 --> 00:07:29.840 product for that specific avatar and you get better and better at templatizing at at productizing 134 00:07:29.840 --> 00:07:33.840 the service or product site, whatever the product is itself making iterations on it. And you advertise 135 00:07:33.840 --> 00:07:37.840 through one channel, meaning you just know how to make cold email convert or you just know how to make 136 00:07:37.840 --> 00:07:42.080 cold calls convert or you just know how to make tiktok ads convert or you just know how to make 137 00:07:42.080 --> 00:07:46.000 YouTube videos that convert. Whatever your channel is, you just stick with that channel because as 138 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:48.880 soon as you're like, Oh, I'm going to do two different things. It's like that's not the objective 139 00:07:48.880 --> 00:07:54.400 of this stage. You just need to get it reliable so that you can then keep tweaking the product 140 00:07:54.480 --> 00:07:59.040 so that then you can 10x the existing channel you're on. Once you get to about a million a month 141 00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:03.440 is when I recommend starting to to think about second and tertiary channels of getting customers. 142 00:08:03.440 --> 00:08:07.280 And part of the reason I recommend that is that when you start a second channel, it's going to cost 143 00:08:07.280 --> 00:08:12.000 your money and it's going to cost you time. And so the reason that you keep that one channel and 144 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:15.840 keep doing it longer than you think is because you need to be able to get it working at the same 145 00:08:15.840 --> 00:08:21.280 level or higher with not you doing it so that you can have the secondary channel. If you're the one 146 00:08:21.280 --> 00:08:26.480 who's gassing this first channel and then you move to the second, well now you have this second 147 00:08:26.480 --> 00:08:29.680 one that's not going to be working out nearly as efficiently as the first one, especially in the 148 00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:33.840 beginning, the first three months, six months. It's not going to be cranking like the first one is. 149 00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:38.000 But the first one's also going to go down because you're not there. And so you spend the extra 150 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:43.440 time there. You put the right people in place. You make sure the training is such that they actually 151 00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:48.320 can meet or exceed what you were doing on your own. And then when you start the second channel, 152 00:08:48.320 --> 00:08:52.320 you can pour resources into it because you still have cash flow from your main thing. And that 153 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:56.960 little switches where most people get lost and they just crush their businesses. So don't do that. 154 00:08:56.960 --> 00:09:01.600 So to give you guys some context, I didn't open up a second channel of acquisition until we're at 155 00:09:01.600 --> 00:09:05.520 four million a month. Now mind you, I started with paid ads because I was good at paid ads. 156 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:09.840 And I learned how to run paid ads in my local business, which then when I went national, 157 00:09:09.840 --> 00:09:15.600 I knew how to do the same skill set. But after four million a month, I was like, okay, I need to 158 00:09:15.600 --> 00:09:21.200 get this second channel going. And so I started increasing that channel via cold email, 159 00:09:21.200 --> 00:09:25.840 cold call, cold DMs with an outbound team. But I say that because a lot of people are like, 160 00:09:25.840 --> 00:09:30.160 shouldn't I do this? I tried to lay that as long as I possibly can because I know it's going to 161 00:09:30.160 --> 00:09:34.400 cost a huge amount of time, a huge amount of money. And it might not work for six to 12 months. 162 00:09:34.400 --> 00:09:40.640 And to give you context, it took me 12 months for outbound to be responsible for half of my revenue. 163 00:09:40.640 --> 00:09:45.920 So it's not going to happen overnight. A lot of businesses don't do this, but you should 164 00:09:45.920 --> 00:09:52.160 unify sales and advertising. So those should roll into the same person. And so I saw this really 165 00:09:52.160 --> 00:09:56.320 early on in gym lunch. We had two departments. We had a sales department and we had a marketing 166 00:09:56.320 --> 00:10:00.000 department. And marketing always said the sales guys weren't closing as many leaves as they should. 167 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:02.880 And the sales guys always said that the leaves weren't good enough or they didn't have enough 168 00:10:02.880 --> 00:10:08.400 leads, right? But when we unify that under a CRO chief revenue officer, which if you're the 169 00:10:08.400 --> 00:10:13.440 founder, that's you, you then say, there's really just an acquisition department. And fundamentally, 170 00:10:13.440 --> 00:10:19.600 as I see it, advertising in sales sit on the exact same continuum. You have low information 171 00:10:19.600 --> 00:10:23.840 buyers and you have high information buyers. And so fundamentally, a low information buyer needs 172 00:10:23.840 --> 00:10:28.480 not a lot of information or already has a certain amount of information to make a purchasing decision. 173 00:10:28.480 --> 00:10:33.520 A high information buyer requires more information or doesn't have as much information when they start 174 00:10:33.520 --> 00:10:39.680 talking to you. And so you have to fill in more holes. Fundamentally, sales just fills in the holes 175 00:10:39.680 --> 00:10:45.600 that advertising failed to answer. And so if you have exceptional best-in-class advertising, 176 00:10:45.600 --> 00:10:50.400 you don't need sales. It's not that they're separate departments. They solve the same problem. 177 00:10:50.400 --> 00:10:55.520 One just communicates one to many. The other communicates one on one. People buy real estate on 178 00:10:55.520 --> 00:11:00.160 the internet via auction. You don't necessarily need to have sales people. If you give a customer 179 00:11:00.160 --> 00:11:04.560 enough information, they can make a purchasing decision. That being said, you're like, wait, Alex, 180 00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:08.320 you have sales people. Of course I do. Because there's always going to be a certain number of customers 181 00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:12.480 that I can get people to buy automatically. And then there's people who still want more information 182 00:11:12.480 --> 00:11:16.400 that, most likely, they didn't see the advertising that answered that question. And so then the sales 183 00:11:16.400 --> 00:11:20.560 person can just say, oh, these are the three piano keys I need to play in order to get you to buy. 184 00:11:20.560 --> 00:11:25.440 Great. And they fill that specific information need to turn the customer from a maybe to a yes. 185 00:11:26.560 --> 00:11:29.920 And so unifying the two departments is one of the highest leverage moves that you can make 186 00:11:29.920 --> 00:11:35.760 as a founder because it eliminates the cross-departmental BS. It's we're all here to sell customers. 187 00:11:35.760 --> 00:11:41.440 And so advertising works hand in hand with sales, not in competition with them so that they can get a 188 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:46.320 pat on the head from you or whatever director is running that department. So oftentimes you are the 189 00:11:46.320 --> 00:11:50.880 chief revenue officer who's uniting both of those fronts. But over time, if you can find someone who 190 00:11:50.880 --> 00:11:55.200 does that, that usually is the fast track to being CEO. So Kale, for example, at Jim Launch, 191 00:11:55.200 --> 00:12:02.080 became chief revenue officer, right? He basically stood on top of sales and marketing so that 192 00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:07.760 he could control the customers coming in the door. And then once he knew how to make it rain, 193 00:12:07.760 --> 00:12:08.640 he could run the business.