WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.840 So you want to make money online, but you don't want to feel icky or sleazy to the people 2 00:00:03.840 --> 00:00:07.600 who know and love you when you ask them to give you money, so there's a good way to do it 3 00:00:07.600 --> 00:00:11.920 and there's a bad way to do it. The good news is I can show you step by step how I got my first 4 00:00:11.920 --> 00:00:17.280 20 clients posting on social media for my personal training business a decade ago and have 5 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:21.200 continued to use that in each company going forward. And this is a sneak preview from my upcoming 6 00:00:21.200 --> 00:00:25.600 book, $100 million dollar leads, which you can check out at acquisition.com for slash leads. 7 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:29.920 So there was a friend of mine who had a podcast that blew up and very quickly he had millions 8 00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:34.880 of downloads and his business started to grow. It skyrocketed and it was almost 100% from people 9 00:00:34.880 --> 00:00:39.040 who were listening to his podcast and what happened was he made an ask during one of his podcasts, 10 00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:43.360 he made a lot of money. He thought when I make an ask I make more money and so what I'll do is 11 00:00:43.360 --> 00:00:47.840 I'll just make more asks. He learned the wrong lesson and so he did make more asks and he then 12 00:00:47.840 --> 00:00:52.320 made a little bit more money and then he continued to make less and less and less until eventually 13 00:00:52.320 --> 00:00:57.040 his listenership dropped and dropped and dropped because he had lost the goodwill of his audience. 14 00:00:57.040 --> 00:01:01.840 The key point I'm going to talk about today is mastering the gift to ask ratio. How much to give 15 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:06.880 versus how much to ask? GaryVee popularized the whole concept jab jab jab right hook which is the idea 16 00:01:06.880 --> 00:01:12.480 of giving giving giving and then ask it not take but ask. The good news is this ratio has been 17 00:01:12.480 --> 00:01:18.960 incredibly well studied. Why? Because the biggest media companies in the world want to be able to 18 00:01:18.960 --> 00:01:26.080 ask on their platforms as much as humanly possible without losing viewership listenership audience. 19 00:01:26.080 --> 00:01:31.760 On television for every 47 minutes of content there's 13 minutes of advertising. If you look on 20 00:01:31.760 --> 00:01:37.040 Facebook every four posts there's one ad. It's almost like a three to one ratio between how many ads 21 00:01:37.040 --> 00:01:41.760 there are and how much content there is. What I want to do is give you my slight tweak on the give 22 00:01:41.760 --> 00:01:49.680 give give ask concept. Instead of give give give ask I'd like to just change it to give until they 23 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:57.200 ask you and that's when you know your audience is ready for you to make an offer and my personal 24 00:01:57.200 --> 00:02:01.760 preference here is actually to give in public and sell in private. Whenever you give you deposit 25 00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:05.760 goodwill into the audience. If you give someone something first they're far more likely to comply 26 00:02:05.760 --> 00:02:09.520 with your request later. When someone helps us we feel indebted to them and we want to help them 27 00:02:09.520 --> 00:02:14.400 back right that's how society works but with media we can do that at scale. You can gain goodwill 28 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:20.000 and provide value to millions of people at once but then it all funnels back to one person and that's 29 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:24.720 why it's so powerful and it's free. When you do it that way your brand consistently is reinforced 30 00:02:24.720 --> 00:02:30.080 publicly and you continue to grow and expand. It will force you to keep that content amazing so that 31 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:35.120 you continue to reinforce your reputation. If you consistently give and give and give then what 32 00:02:35.120 --> 00:02:38.880 happens is your audience compounds and this is something that I didn't understand for a long time. 33 00:02:38.880 --> 00:02:43.120 The audience is the asset not the content you make so when I make a video and then it disappears 34 00:02:43.120 --> 00:02:48.400 in three days on my newsfeed what that one piece of content is is it got me 300 more people 35 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:54.560 to start seeing my stuff and then they permanently enter the audience provided I don't ask too much 36 00:02:54.560 --> 00:02:58.480 too frequently. In the beginning it'll be really small and if you can hold off and you keep giving 37 00:02:58.480 --> 00:03:03.680 you keep giving you keep giving you eventually never even have to ask publicly because instead of 38 00:03:03.680 --> 00:03:07.760 asking you just start getting. Transparently this is something that I've now personally experienced 39 00:03:07.760 --> 00:03:10.320 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 40 00:03:10.320 --> 00:03:15.040 a bunch of business content and see if that will attract one million five million ten million 41 00:03:15.040 --> 00:03:19.840 dollar profit per year businesses not revenue profit so that I can invest in them and help them grow 42 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:25.200 and it turns out it did. Now there's two ways that asks work in content and so I want you to think 43 00:03:25.200 --> 00:03:30.320 of your asks as commercials. You're interrupting your own content with a commercial about your stuff. 44 00:03:30.320 --> 00:03:33.760 An integrated approach would be like during the content like hey if you want to learn more about 45 00:03:33.760 --> 00:03:37.200 this stuff go at a hundred million dollar leads. A hundred million dollar leads is coming out and 46 00:03:37.200 --> 00:03:43.120 there are eight methods that I talk about advertising and by design I'm using all eight to advertise 47 00:03:43.120 --> 00:03:46.640 this book and at this point you already have two hundred thousand people who have registered 48 00:03:46.640 --> 00:03:51.680 for the book launch live which is on this day Saturday August 19th so that would be an example 49 00:03:51.680 --> 00:03:55.840 of an integration. It's natural it comes up as you're talking and then you can point to it and you 50 00:03:55.840 --> 00:04:00.480 get back to what you're saying. Integrations work better for long form content books videos podcast 51 00:04:01.200 --> 00:04:05.680 those are all things that lend themselves to integrating in very small percentages of the 52 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:09.680 total amount of time it takes someone to consume something. For example if I made an integration and 53 00:04:09.680 --> 00:04:14.240 I started with a minute about something valuable and then I spent five minutes in the middle talking 54 00:04:14.240 --> 00:04:19.200 about my thing you still need to keep the ratio of minimum three to one because remember television's 55 00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:24.400 13 minutes to 47 right for a 60 minutes lot in terms of commercials so that's the max and so 56 00:04:24.400 --> 00:04:31.680 for me I would rather be at like 98% give 2% ask so if we looked at the total seconds of this video 57 00:04:31.680 --> 00:04:35.360 the gift to ask ratio is still super strong and I'm not going to lose audience because of that 58 00:04:35.360 --> 00:04:40.640 ask the other way is intermittent which means in between things intermittent is typically better for 59 00:04:40.640 --> 00:04:47.120 short form platforms if you have 10 Instagram posts or 10 TikTok Reels on the 11th one you make 60 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:52.960 one about your services that you offer and then you go right back to the pre-programmed show it's 61 00:04:52.960 --> 00:04:57.120 even harder because if you're doing multiple posts a day I wouldn't do more than 62 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:04.080 3% so once or twice a month one post that feels reasonable and you're not going to lose audience 63 00:05:04.080 --> 00:05:08.880 and so fundamentally the actual cost of the commercial is not money but goodwill how much of my 64 00:05:08.880 --> 00:05:15.120 audience am I losing by making this ask I though to be clear I always want to under ask my audience 65 00:05:15.120 --> 00:05:19.760 personally so if you're new to making content believe it or not you've actually been providing value 66 00:05:19.760 --> 00:05:23.280 to certain people for an extended period of time it's you actually do have a decent amount 67 00:05:23.280 --> 00:05:27.920 of goodwill if you make your first post what I would just call like a declaration of business 68 00:05:27.920 --> 00:05:32.160 which is just saying like hey you know you guys have maybe been following me for a while you might 69 00:05:32.160 --> 00:05:35.840 know me you might not from personal from college from work from out of the bars this is what I'm 70 00:05:35.840 --> 00:05:40.240 doing with my life now and I would love to give you guys something for free that would benefit you 71 00:05:40.240 --> 00:05:44.240 and if that sounds cool awesome if not keep following me will see more about this stuff very quick 72 00:05:44.240 --> 00:05:49.200 very simple and I was actually able to find my first public decoration of business which is here 73 00:05:49.200 --> 00:05:53.760 this is April 9th actually coming up on 10 years I hit my decade in business how would that 74 00:05:53.760 --> 00:05:58.240 show for those of you who know me you know two things one I am terrible with all things technological 75 00:05:58.240 --> 00:06:03.360 still true for example I just heard about Spotify a few weeks ago seriously two I love training 76 00:06:03.360 --> 00:06:07.360 slash nutrition and fitness more than well a whole lot so today is sort of special because it 77 00:06:07.360 --> 00:06:11.040 marks today when my love of training vanquished see me trying to use fancy words vanquished my 78 00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:15.520 fear of technology what do I mean for the better part of a year I've been taking part in a free 79 00:06:15.600 --> 00:06:19.040 personal training project that I would give away free personal training to anyone who's willing to 80 00:06:19.040 --> 00:06:23.680 give 500 to a thousand dollars to a cause of their choice give value for extended period of time 81 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:27.040 for a small group of people to prove that you know what you're doing so you can get testimonials 82 00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:30.880 by the way this way they wouldn't have to be motivated by the same thing as me but be motivated 83 00:06:30.880 --> 00:06:34.720 to give to their cause and benefit themselves when I first introduced the idea I was happily 84 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:39.200 surprisingly not a positive board I received so almost a year from my first client I now have a 85 00:06:39.200 --> 00:06:44.320 website to formally show some of the transformation that I've gone underway using my programming and it's 86 00:06:44.320 --> 00:06:49.440 a formal means of contacting me about signing up I currently have a few slots open on my roster 87 00:06:49.440 --> 00:06:54.080 so drop me a quick note if you're interested thanks so much take a second to check out some of these 88 00:06:54.080 --> 00:06:59.120 ridiculous transformations in record time would I make this post again today probably not but 89 00:06:59.120 --> 00:07:04.240 I'm proud of the kid who did it because I had I'd given value for free to people free because they 90 00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:08.080 didn't pay me I had them pay someone else because I wanted them to value it but making that first 91 00:07:08.080 --> 00:07:12.400 declaration of business post was actually how I got my first 20 paying customers I got 20 people 92 00:07:12.400 --> 00:07:16.800 who messaged me because I to be fair I had always been in shape and people had known me my whole 93 00:07:16.800 --> 00:07:21.840 life as a guy who was always obsessed with fitness so it made sense that I would make that my next 94 00:07:21.840 --> 00:07:26.000 natural thing and so you provided value to people for a long period of time you can make your first 95 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:31.840 post a light ask which is just declaration and asking for support and then you start the business 96 00:07:31.840 --> 00:07:35.760 now if you have no content up to that point show them what you've been up to and then you can 97 00:07:35.760 --> 00:07:38.560 make your ask I would encourage you to make that first post because I think it'll show it's 98 00:07:38.560 --> 00:07:42.000 possible and I think if I can get you that first win you'll be far more likely to continue 99 00:07:42.080 --> 00:07:46.560 and if you're wondering well at what point do I fully right hook my audience and just drain it 100 00:07:46.560 --> 00:07:52.080 of good well real talk part of the game is quote leaving money on the table so let me give you an 101 00:07:52.080 --> 00:07:57.120 example friend of a friend had a tequila business that was pretty big big enough that the rock 102 00:07:57.120 --> 00:08:04.480 approached him Wayne Johnson and the rock said I would like two thirds of your business and mind you 103 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:09.280 when you did that that might have been a big ask I don't know they said no now fast forward years 104 00:08:09.280 --> 00:08:15.040 later the rocks started his own tequila brand which is now worth six billion so they probably 105 00:08:15.040 --> 00:08:19.840 would have made out really well with that but here's the thing if the rock had done that deal 106 00:08:19.840 --> 00:08:25.040 at that time he might have actually lost out on what he ultimately made with Termana 107 00:08:25.040 --> 00:08:29.520 and so that means if someone says hey Alex can you endorse my thing if I say yes today 108 00:08:29.520 --> 00:08:33.680 it's probably going to be a bad deal for me because in two years my audience would be significantly 109 00:08:33.680 --> 00:08:38.640 larger and so will yours when you're thinking about these right hooks there's a huge time component 110 00:08:38.640 --> 00:08:43.760 and the thing is is that compounding gets crazy near the end every time you decide to make the 111 00:08:43.760 --> 00:08:49.600 right hook if you hold it it could be 10 or 100 times bigger 12 months 24 months later could you 112 00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:53.920 imagine if two years ago when I started making content and I just started getting early engagement 113 00:08:53.920 --> 00:08:56.880 my YouTube videos and Instagram and people started DMing me they're like hey can you mental 114 00:08:56.880 --> 00:09:02.400 wait which I don't do if I said sure I'm gonna do it I would have stopped my growth curve and I 115 00:09:02.400 --> 00:09:07.360 would have just been just another dude but by holding back and it takes a lot of self-discipline 116 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:12.800 self-control and patience which by the way if you want the definition for me operationalizing 117 00:09:12.800 --> 00:09:15.920 patience is just figuring out what you do in the meantime you don't actually wait you just 118 00:09:15.920 --> 00:09:20.400 figure out what you do in the meantime because I am in the game of making money my goal is to always 119 00:09:20.400 --> 00:09:24.400 have significantly less supply than I have demand and I always want to keep that demand because 120 00:09:24.400 --> 00:09:30.000 that is the holy grail of what you want which is far more people who want to do business with you 121 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:36.000 than you have capacity to do so the strongest driver of pricing power and profits is supplying 122 00:09:36.560 --> 00:09:41.440 demand when we make content what we're actually doing is artificially shifting the demand curve 123 00:09:41.440 --> 00:09:46.640 in our favor and the other side of this is that if you are the business owner you control supply 124 00:09:46.640 --> 00:09:52.080 and so you can inflate your demand and at the same time cut your supply and when you have that 125 00:09:52.080 --> 00:09:56.880 happen price goes through the roof and so do your profits I'm all about growing as fast as I 126 00:09:56.880 --> 00:10:00.080 possibly can which means you got to give as much as you possibly can just keep giving and people 127 00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:04.320 will start coming to you you'll start not even having to ask you'll just start getting and if 128 00:10:04.320 --> 00:10:08.080 you're going to ask because you need to put food on table which I understand for me I would be 129 00:10:08.080 --> 00:10:12.080 way more than the three to one ratio I'm more like 10 times that would be like a 30 to one ratio 130 00:10:12.080 --> 00:10:17.680 of giving to asking so I keep maximizing my growth and keep my brand compounding while still 131 00:10:17.680 --> 00:10:22.320 making a little bit of money for me because I know that long term the more I hold back my ask the 132 00:10:22.320 --> 00:10:23.040 bigger it will be.