1:49:54Cole Gordon · Interview
Content vs Ads: Experts Debate Which Is Better in 2026
A timed, poolside debate where Cole Gordon pits his own CMO against an organic-agency founder over one question: which $10M business is worth more?
July 3rdThe argument in one line.
The funnel almost never decides whether you win — simplicity of execution and the strength of your sales team do, which is why the application funnel and direct call funnel beat every clever alternative for anyone advertising from a standing start.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A coach, consultant, or agency owner running paid ads to book sales calls who is choosing between funnel types and wants to know which ones actually scale.
- A high-ticket operator stuck between $50k and $300k a month who keeps switching funnels hoping the next one fixes a problem that's really about sales or fulfillment.
- A media buyer or growth lead who wants a concrete testing system (cost-cap campaigns, break-out rules) instead of the ecommerce tactics that don't fit lead-gen.
- Anyone optimizing sales-call show rate who wants the levers: booking windows, setter quality, confirmation sequences, and single-vs-double booking by segment.
- A founder building an online-services or B2B-service offer who wants to know which offer structures and guarantees convert on cold traffic right now.
SKIP IF…
- You sell primarily through an organic audience or personal brand — the whole ranking assumes cold paid ads with no existing brand.
- You run an ecommerce store — the hosts repeatedly flag that ecom economics and media-buying tactics are a different game from high-ticket lead gen.
- You want beginner definitions of what a VSL or opt-in is; this assumes you already speak the language of direct-response funnels.
The full version, fast.
Two operators who've collected over $150M from cold ads rank every high-ticket funnel and conclude the funnel type is rarely the bottleneck — simplicity and sales-team skill are. The application funnel (ad to application to sales call) and the direct call funnel (VSL) are the only A-tier picks because they force you to nail a clear offer and a great ad, while indirect VSLs, auto-webinars, low-ticket ascension, and challenges demand advanced copywriting or a specific market and mostly stall. Beyond funnels, they push for the most direct offer possible, done-for-you positioning, clarity over cleverness in creative (a plain red-square ad beat their best copywriter's work), and a rigorous show-rate system built on tight booking windows, better-paid setters, and confirmation tracking that turns a lagging metric into something you can split-test.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Create a free account →Who's talking.
00:00hostCole Gordon
00:30cohostSpencer Vaughan
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 01:27
01 · Cold open + $150M setup
Highlight-reel of the spiciest lines, then a SalesKick plug and the frame: what's working in funnels, offers, media buying, creative, and show rate.
01:27 – 04:03
02 · Group & DM ads funnels
Group funnels graded F (traditional) to C (paid school); DM ads funnel C-tier, good to $50k/mo but stalls past $100k.
04:03 – 12:28
03 · Application & direct call funnels (A-tier)
The two winners. Application funnel forces a clear offer and great ad; direct call funnel adds a VSL. Includes the opt-in vs no-opt-in math (~30% rule).
12:28 – 18:36
04 · Indirect VSL funnel (C-tier)
Now only for advanced copywriters; the market's skepticism means proof-stacking and guarantees beat clever indirect marketing.
18:36 – 24:12
05 · Auto & live webinar funnels
Auto-webinar dropped from A-tier (2017) to D-tier; live webinar making a comeback, C-tier, works best in women's markets and for high-energy personalities.
24:12 – 27:44
06 · Three paths to acquisition
Order-takers via elite marketing (Becker), great sales team via app funnel (Cole), or both (Hormozi) — the last is how you reach hundreds of millions.
27:44 – 37:53
07 · Low-ticket, challenge & quiz funnels
Low-ticket ascension B-tier for the right market, D-tier for most; challenge funnel D-tier; quiz funnel promising as an opt-in in disguise for B2C.
37:53 – 50:10
08 · Best offers working now
Done-for-you trend, the barbell principle, sell the result not the vehicle, and 'you can't create desire, only channel it.'
50:10 – 55:02
09 · Health & AI offers
Differentiated premium health offers (telehealth feel) and AI-flavored business-opportunity offers as the current frontier.
55:02 – 1:07:06
10 · Media buying strategy
Targeting is nearly dead; broad/open audiences win; the cost-cap testing campaign lets a full calendar still test new creatives cheaply.
1:07:06 – 1:16:09
11 · Creatives that convert (the red square)
Clarity beats production: a plain red-square ad became the best performer. Five-to-seven core concepts, the rest are variations.
1:16:09 – 1:26:09
12 · The $100k-$300k sticking phase
The limiting-belief plateau: fear of relinquishing control. You must grow until systems stress to know what to build next.
1:26:09 – 1:36:09
13 · Show rate optimization
Booking windows, rolling availability, and the setter-pay story: +30% pay cut ad spend by $250k/mo via better-showing calls.
1:36:09 – 1:39:55
14 · Email & SMS reminder system
Three reminder streams; the LNS turns show rate from a lagging metric into split-testable confirmation copy; written content beats video for consumption.
1:39:55 – 1:46:38
15 · Single vs double booking
Segment by application data, source, and credit score; ~40% double-booking is optimal; company email and 700+ credit predict higher shows.
1:46:38 – 1:54:24
16 · Lessons from Dean Graziosi
Everything works, they're all tools; most people have campaigns not companies; longevity and profit over chasing zeros.
1:54:24 – 2:03:33
17 · Online services economy + worst mistakes
Renaming the industry, then two self-deprecating stories: Spencer's $7 print-on-demand t-shirt and Cole's Becker Skype call with no pixel installed.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The funnel almost never decides whether you win — the hosts note nearly every funnel can work, so simplicity of execution and sales-team skill are the real variables.
- The application funnel wins because it strips acquisition down to ad, application, sales call, making it nearly impossible to focus on the wrong thing.
- Direct offer advertising is so cheap to test that you should almost always start there rather than betting on a long indirect marketing process.
- Facebook engagement of ads now exceeds engagement of organic content, so a great ad is the highest-leverage asset on the platform.
- Blaming a 'trust recession' for ads that don't work is an excuse — the market is just more sophisticated and skeptical, which you beat with more proof and stronger guarantees.
- When Hormozi's ads stopped working, the fix was simply 10x-ing the proof, not a new funnel or angle.
- A plain red square with the offer text on it became their single best-performing ad, proving clarity beats production value.
- Most operators only have five to seven fundamentally different creative concepts — the rest is variations that say the same thing to different pockets of the audience.
- The real skill isn't how many offers you can sell, it's how many different ways you can sell the same offer.
- Removing the opt-in usually lowers cost per acquisition, but keep it only if the extra cost stays under about 30% above your no-opt-in cost per booked call.
- Cost per lead is a vanity metric — the hosts ignore it entirely and optimize for cost per acquisition and ROI.
- The barbell principle: done-for-you offers for wealthy buyers and mass-market B2C both work, but done-with-you offers for mid-market clients sit in no man's land.
- You can't create desire, you can only channel it — tap an existing want (passive income, more clients) and redirect it toward your offer.
- You have to grow until your systems stress or break to learn what to build next, so over-systematizing before you scale is procrastination dressed as diligence.
- The $100k-$300k per month sticking phase is really a fear of relinquishing control, not a marketing problem.
- Raising setter pay 30% cost about $25k a month but cut ad spend by $250k a month because better setters booked calls that showed and closed at far higher rates.
- Rolling calendar availability and a two-to-three-day booking window are non-negotiable basics most teams still get wrong.
- Confirmation rate is the leverage point for show rate: when a lead texts back that they'll attend, they show up around 90% of the time, so you split-test copy to raise confirmations.
- Company-email leads show up far more than Gmail leads, and credit scores above 700 correlate with meaningfully higher show rates.
- People don't want the modules — the hosts admit they could remove course content entirely and not lose sales, because buyers want the outcome and the service, not information.
- Report profit, not top-line cash collected — banks only accept profit, and chasing bigger revenue numbers is why fast-scaling companies vanish.
Simplicity and sales skill beat funnel cleverness.
WHAT TO LEARN
Across every funnel, offer, and channel these operators graded, the winners share one trait — they remove moving parts so a clear offer and a good sales team can do the work.
03Application & direct call funnels (A-tier)
- Start with the application or direct call funnel because they force a clear offer and a great ad, the two things that actually decide whether cold ads work.
- Test the direct offer first — it's cheap to make and easy to understand — then scale by adding an indirect hook that pivots to the same offer for colder audiences.
- Keep the opt-in only if it costs less than about 30% above your no-opt-in cost per booked call; otherwise remove it for a lower front-end CAC.
04Indirect VSL funnel (C-tier)
- Beat market skepticism with proof and stronger guarantees, not by blaming a trust recession; when ads stop working, 10x the proof before changing the funnel.
- Reserve indirect marketing for advanced copywriters or as a scale layer on top of a direct funnel that already works.
07Low-ticket, challenge & quiz funnels
- Almost any funnel can work, so stop funnel-hopping to escape problems that are really about sales, fulfillment, or your own skill level.
- Treat low-ticket ascension as an advanced B2C move that liquidates spend, not a starting point — get a call funnel to $400k-$800k a month first.
08Best offers working now
- Position offers at the barbell ends (done-for-you for wealthy buyers, mass-market B2C) and avoid the done-with-you mid-market that has neither a big TAM nor premium appeal.
- Sell the result, not the vehicle — buyers want the outcome, so frame your offer around what they already want, not your process.
- You can't create desire, only channel it, so tap an existing want and redirect it toward your offer instead of manufacturing demand.
11Creatives that convert (the red square)
- Write for clarity over cleverness; a plain ad that states exactly what you do and who it's for will outperform polished copy that leaves the reader guessing.
- Call out your exact buyer in the ad by revenue, ad spend, or the specific problem they have, since creative now does the targeting the platform used to.
- Accept you only have five to seven core creative concepts and scale by making many variations that say the same thing to different pockets of the audience.
12The $100k-$300k sticking phase
- The $100k-$300k plateau is fear of losing control, not a marketing problem; grow until your systems stress, because the break tells you exactly what to build next.
- When you're doing 15-20x ROAS, the answer is almost always spend more and hire more closers, not endlessly optimize a working funnel.
13Show rate optimization
- Fix show rate with the basics first: two-to-three-day booking windows, rolling availability, wide slot ranges, and better-paid setters who book calls that actually show.
- Bad setter show rate is usually a setter-quality problem, not a booking-script problem — pay for closer-level setters and it pays for itself many times over.
15Single vs double booking
- Treat confirmation rate as the lever for show rate — a lead who texts back that they'll attend shows up around 90% of the time, so split-test the copy that gets that reply.
- Segment leads by application answers, traffic source, and signals like company email and 700+ credit score, then single-book high-show segments and double-book the rest.
- Aim for roughly 40% double-booking of the calendar — past that you get too many live calls and diminishing returns.
16Lessons from Dean Graziosi
- Optimize for profit, not top-line cash collected; chasing bigger revenue numbers with thin margins is why fast-scaling companies quietly collapse.
- Build a company, not a campaign — longevity and infrastructure matter more than a single viral marketing moment.
- Every tactic works in cycles and comes back around, so master the fundamentals instead of clinging to whatever funnel is trending.
Terms worth knowing.
- Application funnel
- A funnel where the ad sends people straight to an application form and then a sales call, with no VSL in between. The ad itself carries the full pitch.
- Direct call funnel (VSL funnel)
- A funnel where a direct ad leads to a five-to-fifteen-minute video sales letter that opens with the offer, then a sales call. 'Direct' means the offer is stated upfront rather than after a long educational buildup.
- Indirect (marketing)
- Advertising that leads with content, a free training, or a hook rather than the offer, pivoting to the pitch later. It shifts the acquisition burden from sales onto marketing skill.
- Opt-in
- A step where a prospect gives their email before reaching the offer. It builds a list and feeds setters and email follow-up, but usually raises front-end cost per acquisition.
- Setter / Closer
- A setter qualifies and books prospects onto sales calls; a closer runs the actual sales call to make the sale. Setter show rate and closer close rate are tracked separately.
- Show rate
- The percentage of booked sales calls where the prospect actually attends. A core lever for high-ticket profitability since ad spend is wasted on no-shows.
- Cost cap
- A Meta bidding setting that limits how much you'll pay per result. The hosts run cost-cap campaigns far below their normal KPI to cheaply surface which new creatives can convert.
- CAC / Cost per booked call
- CAC is cost to acquire a customer; cost per booked call is the ad spend required to book one sales call. The hosts optimize to these rather than cost per lead.
- Risk reversal / Guarantee
- An offer term that removes buyer risk, such as 'results or you don't pay.' A strong, unwatered guarantee signals legitimacy and lowers acquisition cost.
- Liquidation (front-end)
- Recovering ad spend from an initial low-priced or webinar purchase so later high-ticket sales are pure profit. Very hard to achieve in 2026, per the hosts.
- Single vs double booking
- Placing one prospect (single) or two prospects (double) in the same calendar slot based on their predicted show rate, so closers get a full slate of live calls without wasted time.
- LNS (Lead Nurture Specialist)
- A person or system that texts and messages booked leads before the call to get them to confirm attendance, since confirmed leads show up far more often.
- Open targeting
- Running ads with no audience restrictions, letting the platform's algorithm find buyers. Works once the pixel is conditioned and the offer is dialed in.
- Online services economy
- The hosts' preferred name for their industry — businesses selling high-priced services (coaching, done-for-you, consulting) online — instead of 'high-ticket' or 'info,' which they find inaccurate or scammy-sounding.
Things they pointed at.
1:27:00toolHiros (attribution/tracking)
1:44:40toolArcades (AI UGC creative)
18:00bookAlex Hormozi — $100M Offers (guarantees/value equation)
25:00channelAlex Becker (marketing / mastermind reference)
1:47:00channelDean Graziosi (35-year direct-response lessons)
36:00channelThe Acquired podcast (Facebook ad-engagement stat)
1:36:00toolHubSpot (email/CRM)
51:00productDr. Pompa (functional-medicine offer example)
Lines you could clip.
00:45
“Blaming the trust recession for your ads not working is one of the lamest excuses. You just run a bad business.”
1:05:00
“Our best ad was a red square with the offer text on it. Not even close. It's so easy to copy — we shouldn't even tell people this.”
1:15:20
“It's not how many offers you can sell. It's how many different ways you can sell the same offer.”
46:00
“You can't create desire. You can only channel it. Think of desire as a moving parade and place yourself in the stream.”
1:28:20
“We raised setter pay 30% — cost an extra $25k a month — and it let us cut ad spend by $250k a month.”
1:53:40
“You can't deposit revenue into Chase. Chase Bank doesn't accept units contracted or top-line cash collected. They only accept profit.”
1:18:00
“You have to grow to know what to build. You need to stress the infrastructure to know how to build the infrastructure.”
56:40
“Just tell them what you do. And if what you do isn't compelling enough for your market to buy, you can only polish a turd so much.”
Where the conversation goes.
01:27 – 37:53denseFunnel tier list
37:53 – 55:02denseOffers that work
55:02 – 1:07:06steadyMedia buying & targeting
1:07:06 – 1:16:09denseCreative & copywriting
1:16:09 – 1:26:09denseScaling psychology / sticking phase
1:26:09 – 1:46:38denseShow rate & booking systems
1:46:38 – 2:03:33steadyIndustry philosophy & war stories
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogystory
00:00We've done over a 150,000,000 cash collected from just spending money on ads, and this is by CFO,
00:06uh, Spencer. Blaming the trust recession for your ads not working is, like, one of the lamest excuses. You just run a bad business.
00:12Yes. But, like, just because someone buys a $27 product doesn't mean they're gonna buy 10,000 on a product. But then we're just like, dude, we just put in all this effort.
00:17Let's just scale our Yeah. We have clients that have paid $3.04, 5,000,000 a month with that phone. So like, it can absolutely work.
00:23We shouldn't even tell people this. Yeah. It's so easy to copy.
00:26I know. Hey. So before we get into the podcast, today's actually a very special day.
00:30So I'm here with the CEO, Spencer Vaughan of SalesKick.
00:33And essentially, we've released something that is gonna really revolutionize the industry in terms of sales ops and sales processes. And so if you wanna check out what that is, you can click the link in the description.
00:42You'll see all about it. It's one of the coolest things. We've been working on it for how long?
00:46Two years. Two years. So this is something that I am just so freaking excited about for our industry, and it's gonna help you decrease your cost per book call, increase your show rate, and so much more.
00:56So click the link below. Check it out. Now we'll get to the podcast.
00:59So we've done over a 150,000,000 cash collected from just spending money on ads, and this is my CMO, uh, Spencer, for closers and also business partner with SalesKick. We'll get into that later.
01:10So what we wanna talk about is what's really working now with marketing. So we're gonna go through what's working funnel wise, what's working offer wise, what's working media buying strategy, what's working creative wise, and what's working show rate wise. And so we're gonna start with funnels, and I wanna I want you to give me a funnel tier list.
01:27So I'm gonna give you the funnel and you're gonna give me s tier through f tier. Yes.
01:33Okay. So the first one is the good old where I got started back in the day, group funnel.
01:41Oh, dude. Well, if the the traditional sense of a group funnel being on Facebook, whatever's below an f tier.
01:48Whatever whatever's below that, that's where the traditional one is. You know, I mean, there there are some people having some success obviously with like a a paid school or a free school group funnel with ads.
02:01I still, you know, in order to have that work, you need a dialed in, you know, setting team. You need good high ticket offer. And I just don't think it's the most optimal way.
02:12Like, you you'll see as we go through this. I prioritize simplicity
02:17over everything else because if you have something that's simple, it's gonna be easier to scale than if you don't. Right. So, I mean, I would say it's probably like the school version of it's probably a c tier from ads.
02:27Obviously, organic's totally different. Yeah. But you're talking page, so that actually is low ticket, which is totally different.
02:32Yeah. Yeah. But even free from ads, school funnel, I don't think we It's it's I tried it on Sam's behalf because he asked me to.
02:39This is in, like, when school first started. I was like, I'm gonna validate the school free school funnel. And we just had we had a struggle with it.
02:46Now it could work better now because there's more network effect in school. Back then, nobody was using school. Like, I was you know, we were one of the first people even on the platform.
02:54Yeah. Uh, I would give it an f tier as well. I already have my grades, but I'm gonna let you grade first.
02:58Alright. That's fine. The DM ads funnel.
03:01Uh, I think in certain niches, it's okay. I mean, it's it's certainly a way to get to your first 50 k a month. Like fit very popular in fitness.
03:09Getting past 50 to a 100 k a month, extremely challenging and everybody gets stuck like 70 to a 100 k a month. Um, so I think, you know, if you're starting out, probably c to b tier.
03:24If you're trying to get past a 100 a month and, like, build a consistent business and actually scale something,
03:29probably lower, probably, like, d tier. Yeah. I I put c tier because it is good for certain niches, like you said, who maybe your messaging is not as dialed in.
03:38Yeah. So you can kinda make it up through the conversation Yeah.
03:41To get your first 50, maybe a $100 a month. Yeah.
03:45I've never seen anybody scale it really to, like, $2.50 No. Be honest. It's basically But it is a good like just to get your ads working and then it sets you up for another funnel we're gonna talk about next, which is I know one of your favorite the app funnel.
03:59Which is by the way, just add right to the application. Yes. Right?
04:03Yes. Yeah. I think I think
04:06it's so simple. It you know, so I talked about this yesterday at the event. It just allows you to focus on the most important parts of getting something to add to work, is like having a great offer, extremely important, obviously, dialing that in, Having an excellent ad, like also overlooked.
04:24Because if you have, for example, the DM funnel or the other funnels I'm sure we're talk about, um, it's easy to get confused and focus on on other parts of it when the funnel is not working because there's so many moving parts. That funnel is just like ad application sales call.
04:40Mhmm. Pretty hard to not focus on the right thing. Yes.
04:43So
04:44I think I think, you know, legitimately, we still use this. Well, yeah. Exactly.
04:48It it's definitely a tier. Yeah. And I would say there's two there's two parts of it.
04:52There's either a direct messaging app funnel where that's the classic. You just state the offer.
04:59You state, you know, you just follow like a very direct like, the first line is the offer, and then it's a lot of proof and then supporting stuff on the offer. And then it works really well because it's just so low friction. Yeah.
05:10And it really makes sure your ads work first. The other way you could do it that we do it is app funnel indirect to direct, but all in the ad.
05:18Mhmm. Right? Where you're starting with maybe a messaging that's not, you know, it's a hook or it's content driven or whatever.
05:24But then after about like thirty seconds in a video ad equivalent Yeah.
05:30You're pivoting to something that sounds like, so if that sounds interesting to you, here's my offer to you, you know? So that's a way you can actually scale the messaging once you cap out the direct. So I think that's important for everybody to know.
05:41And the other thing, just so everybody knows what an app funnel is, really the key of it is saying everything you need to say to get somebody to book a call in the ad. Yes.
05:50Right? So, like, before I we called it the app funnel. I used to call it, like, the AdaCell because instead of used it used to be, you know, the ad was just to get them to watch the VSL.
06:01Yes. Right? And then the VSL, you tell them everything they need to know to book a call.
06:05Yes. The ad like, the app app funnel, really, it's like, you're just saying everything you need to say in the ad, which works better because more people watch the ad. So you just have a higher impression account.
06:15And so a lot of times, you get better people. Now the quality, depending on your niche, could vary.
06:21Yeah. But a lot of times, what I think we found is that the quicker we could just get to the point, the more people who have money just book. Because people who have money don't wanna,
06:30you know, rig them around with your VSL and your thirty minute thing or whatever it is. Correct. One thing actually on that note, and this applies to all the funnels as well, but most people don't realize this, and I we were talking about this a couple weeks ago.
06:41But there's, um, I think this came from Facebook directly. I heard this first in the acquired podcast that, uh, the engagement of ads is greater than the engagement of organic content.
06:52Like the the overall engagement of the platform increases with ads, which is like insane. It's like the first time in history it's ever happened. Yeah.
06:58And so I say all that to say like, that's why like when we talk about focusing on the ad and making a really excellent ad is so important with I mean with any funnel and the application funnel forces you to do that. Right? Mhmm.
07:11You can't, know, oh I'm gonna have kind of a you know half assed ad or so so ad, and I'm gonna have it really dialed in VSL. It's typically doesn't happen anyways. Not gonna have a good ad.
07:19You're not have a good VSL. Um, so it forces you to do that, and then it sets you up to do more complicated stuff later if you want to. Yep.
07:26Okay. Next funnel on the tier list, the call funnel but direct call funnel. Yeah.
07:32I I And we have to explain for the audience what that actually is. So direct call funnel is you lead with the offer. So the offer's coming out, you know, usually in the ad or extremely early in the marketing process.
07:45And you know, it's like the polar opposite of the way things used to be back in the day, back in the OG days. I'm sure I'm sure we'll talk about that. Yep.
07:53I think in general, let me kind of separate the two things.
07:58So first of all, direct advertising. I would almost always start with for two reasons.
08:04Number one is, much easier in most cases to get that to work than to get, you know, some indirect super long marketing process or, you know, copy.
08:14So that's number one. Number two is, and I think this is just as important, even if you're in a niche or an or an offer where you're not sure like it it kinda seems like indirect might work better, the direct is just so easy to make, you might as well just try it.
08:28Like there's not really a reason not to do it. Mhmm. So if we're saying, you know, direct, because you said call funnel, that could be an app funnel or VSL funnel or anything.
08:36Right? I would just say in general, I would typically always start with direct. If we're talking did you mean by call funnel, you mean like VSL funnel?
08:44Yeah. So in this the the difference between the call
08:47it's really a VSL funnel. But the the traditional call funnel is if it's direct is the ad is direct, and then the VSL is direct. And it's essentially the ad might be ninety seconds.
08:57The VSL is gonna be five to fifteen minutes. Yeah. And but it's all direct.
09:01So the VSL is also gonna start direct. And then, you know, our framework is you state the offer. I mean, the first ninety seconds of the VSL is very similar to the first nine it's basically the ad.
09:12Yeah. But then the only difference is is you tack on more information supporting why it works so well.
09:18So it's kind of like a reverse sales letter in a way Mhmm. Where it's like, here's everything you need to know, but then, like, there's more stuff at the end for the higher information buyers to wanna know, okay. Well, why does it work so well?
09:30Yeah. Which is why the second part of the it start so you probably wanna if you wanna know why this works so well, you know? Yeah.
09:35Yeah. So that's probably why it works. I mean, if you've watched my ads, this is like that and the app funnel is basically the Yeah.
09:42Yeah. I would say both of them are I know I said a tier. I guess, Tyler, we say s tier.
09:45Maybe I said a tier for the application funnel. Oh, yeah. We met s tier.
09:47Yeah. Met s tier. Yeah.
09:49Yeah. Obviously, direct call funnel, I mean, same thing. Like, it's it's very, very good.
09:52Let's just let's just remove s tier and only go a tier because it's now we've already configured it. So a tier is the best for us. So I I would say that the call funnel, yeah, add to the VSL, then do an application, etcetera.
10:06Yeah. Still a tier. And sub question,
10:11with or without an opt in? Well, let me just say this. Most of the time now, if you track things properly, without having no opt in is going to yield just a better result, lower CAC, all that.
10:25If you can get the opt in to work, that's ideal from building your your, you know, email list and and that whole standpoint. But that being said, for the love of God, if you do get an opt in to work, please do not, you know, do your pixel conditioning on a lead event.
10:44Like, for the love of God, do not do that with a call phone. Yeah. That that is terrible.
10:48But in general, mean, we we we removed our opt ins a long time ago and mainly just from a front end cost per, you know, acquisition.
10:58It's it's significantly better in most cases. It's But one of those things I would always test and and Yeah. See.
11:03Yeah. I would say for anybody wondering,
11:05basically, the advantage of having an opt in is that you have more you have leads more leads for your setters, and you have more leads that are gonna book through email marketing on the back end.
11:15Correct. So how do you know basically, if you remove the opt in, you have to get a cost reduction as such that it outweighs what you would have gotten from the setters and the emails.
11:26Yeah. So the percentage I tell clients is that it's about 30%.
11:31So I would be willing to pay 30% more cost per book call from, like, the only ads direct calls, not obviously with everything combined, if the if it's through an opt in.
11:42Yeah. If it's anything more than 30%, it's just better just to remove it.
11:46Does that make sense? Yeah. So if it's like I'm trying to think of what the you know, if I was getting a $130 or a $100 calls, I would pay probably, you know, 130, 100 and fifth to a 150 Mhmm.
11:59Cost per booked call if I could add the opt in. Yeah. Because the setters are gonna book the best calls, and also a lot of good closes come from email for whatever reason.
12:05Yes. They do. But once, like, we've tested it to where we've had certain funnels where essentially adding in the opt in doubled the cost per book call or like flat out just it didn't even work.
12:17Yeah. It was like $2,000 cost per book call. Yeah.
12:19It's ridiculous. So in that case, it obviously works better. Well, and and this this pre assumes that you have a good setting team and you're doing consistent email marketing.
12:28Yes. Which most people aren't doing. So then if you're not doing any of that, you just don't do the opposite.
12:32Yeah. Okay. So the next one is the VSL call funnel indirect.
12:38Yeah. What tier? And again, a tier is gonna be the best because we we started basically saying a tier was the best.
12:43Yeah. Yeah. A tier a a tier is the best.
12:46would say for the vast majority of people, it's probably c tier in my personal opinion. The the people that can get it to work these days are exceptionally good copywriters that are advanced marketers.
13:00What's actually interesting about this is, you know, pre you blowing up and making the direct call funnel a thing, everything was indirect. It was all indirect.
13:09Yeah, it was. And back then, there was much more of an emphasis on marketing ability rather than sales ability.
13:18And you kind of coming in has shifted the focus now to sales ability. So in the last five or six years, you've had all these people flood into the market, start a business, and they've built their business from the ground up with direct offer advertising. And for those people going from direct offer to indirect, they're like, oh, it's just a tweak in your messaging.
13:36It's like an exponential increase in difficulty because it's putting a lot more of the emphasis on the acquisition or the the, uh, you know, shouldering the weight of the acquisition on marketing rather than sales. And most people that have come in the last five years just don't have the skill set to do that Mhmm.
13:52Fundamentally. Yeah. So I would give it a c tier from that standpoint.
13:56If you're excellent copywriter, you've been around for a while and you're in, you know, you've tried the direct offer, you've you've tried multiple offers, it doesn't work, you have to go direct. I mean, honestly, it'd be like one of those things where like, I might just do a different offer.
14:09Mhmm. Um, but I know I've written indirect stuff, written webinars. Like, I know I could probably get something to work if I needed to.
14:15Yeah. Um, so that's I So you're kind of like but it it depends on your skill set. That's why I put it b tier because essentially,
14:23if you are really good at copywriting, obviously, it can work. The the the cases when to have indirect messaging, which means the ad is gonna advertise, like, a free training or a free video training or whatever it is, a free case study.
14:37And then the VSL starts with more content driven and then pivots to the offer. So, I mean, that's what we did with RCA back in 2020. And, I mean, that funnel did 20,000,000 a year.
14:48I mean, I don't know how much it collected over its lifetime, but it was a lot from when we did it. So it obviously works. It works less now because people's I think it's a couple of different reasons.
15:00People's attention spans are just less. They just wanna get right to the point. I think the other thing is that there's kind of more of an information asymmetry issue with the market to where buyers are becoming more and more skeptical and demanding more information upfront.
15:15And then the way they're trying to kind of essentially sort who's essentially the good providers versus the bad is or, like, if I'm if I'm a seller, the way I'm trying to essentially signal that I'm a good provider because everybody's so skeptical is doing, like, all these guarantees, which is that's why I think that's a big reason why like, a lot of people think that it's Hormozi's book that essentially created the whole, like, offer guarantees thing.
15:40I think that's part of it. I also think it's people are so freaking skeptical that that's just what they respond to. It's like they wanna they wanna go towards stuff that eliminates their risk as much as possible because that actually happens in all markets.
15:53Over time is as buyers kinda get burned and the market sophisticates, it sorta shifts towards, like, the sellers essentially have to signal that they have a guarantee or like, does that make sense, essentially?
16:05Like, they're trying to signal that they're a good person. It's almost like kind of business peacocking. Yeah.
16:10It's like you're trying to signal that you're legit by doing something that's costly to you, that somebody who's not legit couldn't do. So I think that's part of the reason. And also just mimicry, like, see me doing it or whatever.
16:22That's what was saying. I was like, dude, I There's that as well. Yeah.
16:25But also people think it's a people think it's a trust recession. Oh, we're in a trust it ain't gonna get any better. It's it I don't think it's a trust recession.
16:32I think it's really just the market's been around long enough to where if you're a buyer, you bought in several things, and you're just getting burned and burned and burned and burned and burned, You're looking for signals of people who are legit.
16:44And what are the signals? Okay. I'm gonna give you this guarantee.
16:47What are the other signals? Just massive proof stacking. Like, the best ads are literally did you hear Hermozzi's story about how he had to go back in because all their ads weren't working at Gym Lodge, the private equity company didn't know what to do?
16:58And all he found out was just, like, they were using way less proof. And so he just, like, 10 x the proof and the ads worked again. Yeah.
17:05I mean, it's like if in the same thing with Becker and his ads, like, what does he just do? It's pretty much basic marketing principles, 10 x the proof of everybody else, and that's why it works.
17:15So I think that's a big shift to that. I'll I'll I'll just say this as a as a final note to that. Blaming the trust recession for your ads not working is, like, one of the lamest excuses.
17:24Yeah. I always thought, oh, we're in a trust I was like, shut up. You you your copy sucks.
17:29Yeah. You just you just run a bad business. Yes.
17:32You know? Yes. Yes.
17:33People are more skeptical. They're more broke. Well, the market's more sophisticated, and people are more broke.
17:37I will end off the indirect call funnel with this. The best way usually to do it is if you have direct working, and then it's like a layer of scale. You know, first, you kinda still do the direct funnel, but indirect to direct.
17:50And then you could try to go to colder markets by essentially being more the more indirect you go, the more colder you get. Right?
17:57So it can kinda layer on as a good place to scale. The only other time I think people should do it is if fundamentally, people would have no desire for what you're offering, which is rare, unless there's significant education towards it.
18:13Yeah. Right? But even at that, I would still try to do it in the ad.
18:16Yeah. And it's very rare that stuff like that exists. You know?
18:20Most of the times, there is some sort of solution aware market. Mhmm. And people think, like, that market's, oh, it's so small.
18:25It's gonna get capped. It's like, no. You need to probably make more ads, make more creators, or whatever.
18:29Yeah. I mean, I've seen direct people with direct funnels get to, like, 4,000,000 a month, you know, and and and tons of different industries. Okay.
18:35Call funnel indirect. Okay. B tier?
18:39You kind of did like a a tier c tier. No. No.
18:41No. I'm saying c tier. C tier.
18:43Okay. Fair enough. Alright.
18:45Auto your your classic. Your your your baby. Auto webinar mid ticket funnel.
18:51Yeah. In, uh, 2017, a tier.
18:54In 2026, uh, I would say d tier, you know? Yeah.
18:58It's pretty low.
18:59There is people who have it working. When when you get it working, it it It risks. It's the best.
19:05The way to get it working now though, you have to Yeah. Have to have to upsell and all that. Yeah.
19:08I mean, in its traditional sense, yeah, it's it's d tier. If you have a and again,
19:13it's like it's funny because people and I've seen this over and over again with our clients, just with people in this in this space. It's like they get one funnel working and then they they bump up against like scaling limitations, challenges, whatever it is.
19:28And they're like, I can't scale this funnel. And they build up this whole narrative, these false beliefs about like it's a funnel. And like, I need to jump from this funnel to that funnel.
19:35And by the way, half the time when they like, the challenges that they're facing are like sales related, that switching the funnel literally changes Nothing is. Nothing at problem again. Yeah.
19:44Yeah. It's like, we're just gonna have the same problem, but now even even more. Um, so
19:49so yeah. So I would say d tier. It's hard for me to say that as, like, the former webinar guy.
19:53Yeah. Yeah. You know?
19:54Well, what I would say is I do know people so they if you're gonna try to get it liquidating on the front end or, like, very high liquidation Yeah.
20:04It's pretty much f tier nowadays, in my opinion, just because that's pretty much impossible. The way to get it to work, like the clients I have that do have it working, which is very few, because you gotta be also really good at copywriting Mhmm. And, like, your offer has to be good.
20:18Yeah. It would have to be some sort of fancy AI thing or just something that's, like, I don't know, just a really good offer.
20:25But the way we got it to work and also the way like, I have a few clients, the way they're getting it to work, and it's kinda funny, is you liquidate 40 to 60 on the webinar. And then, obviously, there's an onboarding call, then you do the onboarding call to a sales call, then they credit the investment towards if it's like a $2 auto webinar or one grand auto webinar, they and they credit that towards like a 10 k.
20:47Mhmm. But what most people don't understand is the way we got it to work is all the people who just opted in, who didn't even watch the webinar, we just called them and sold the 10 k directly, which means you have to have a good setter team and you have to have a good closer team.
21:01Yeah. And just to give people, uh, like, an idea, we would do 300 RCA sales a month at 10 k.
21:0860 of them would be from the auto webinar upgrades. Mhmm. 240 would be from the setters calling people who were like, yeah.
21:16I watched, like, ten minutes. Yeah. And the nice thing was because the damn thing was so long, we just we just didn't even tell them about the $2, which it was a limited time offer that they had to, you know, they had to pick.
21:27So that was also being legit. Alright. Different version.
21:30This one's an interesting one. Mhmm. Is the live webinar funnel, like doing it twice a week.
21:36This is kinda coming back. It is. It's coming back.
21:39It's making a comeback. It's coming back. You know, it's it's it's one full circle.
21:43Right?
21:44I think, look. Some of these funnels to go back to the point I just made are crutches for having a poor sales department.
21:54Yes. What a lot of people are doing with the live webinar funnel now that people have seen do it. It's not like it used to be where you'd pitch your product and it was a mid ticket.
22:04People are doing the live webinar for three hours and booking sales calls. And they're like Yeah. Yeah.
22:08Closing 60% of people. It's like, well, yeah, dude. No shit.
22:11Mhmm. They just spent seven hours going through your your ad, your funnel, reading your emails, showing up to webinar, of course you close at 60%. Yeah.
22:17Yeah. Yeah. From a standpoint of like building a sustainable business and not having to do live live streams twice a week unless that's like your thing.
22:27You know, I'd say it's definitely better than the auto webinar. It's easier to do than that. But I would still say it's like c tier.
22:32You know, the the only way I would rank it higher would be like if you have someone this isn't a great example, but like the energy of, like, Pace Morby who's, like, willing to just Yes.
22:45Go to town, like, travel the I mean, this is always a different example, but, like, travel the country, meet everybody, just, like, loves the community. It's, that type of personality can pull this off and probably make a ton of money from it. Aside from that, it's not the best model in my personal opinion.
22:58Yeah. It does work at some verticals, though. Like, I have clients that do crush it with this.
23:05Uh, the issue is getting people to show up. And I think a lot of that, again, comes down to the audience and the offer. Uh, women markets tend to like it better.
23:15I don't know why that is. Don't know why. I just I mean, look at Shelby Stabbs doing 5,000,000 a month with this.
23:22So for her, it's like Us tier. You know? Yeah.
23:23But but that's also organic. But or or it's combined I mean, mean, that's she got a million followers.
23:29She'd been doing it a long time. Like, it's a combined organic That's right. Paid thing going on, which is also why it probably would work for somebody like Pace Morby.
23:36Yeah. So I think if you're like that, man, it can crush. Yeah.
23:40But and and for what I do see it work in a lot of women markets, I know if I ran it, I just feel like people wouldn't show up.
23:47I know remember we ran it one time for RCA, and we were like, I was so skeptical people would show I had Martinez do the webinar because I didn't wanna do it. And there was, like, six people who showed up and, like, two three were clients already or something. Yeah.
23:59I remember. The poor guy had to do the whole webinar for, like, three people. So getting them to show up is the tough part.
24:05I do think it can work. As a list reactivation, monthly.
24:09That that's a good That's right. Yeah. That that that actually that would be, like, a tier.
24:12Yeah. Uh, and I do think you mentioned just as a little side note, if we can go on a little detour.
24:17Uh, a lot of people, they essentially they eat they try to fix their sales team problems with marketing.
24:25Mhmm. And I think it's an important, like, side quest to go on. There's kinda two ways well, there's really three ways that you can approach acquisition.
24:34The first way is being so strong with your marketing that the sales team is like order takers. Right? And, like, that that that's kinda what if you can knock this funnel out or even if you can do a liquidating auto webinar, which is very, very hard, you can essentially do that.
24:50The problem is is you gotta be extraordinary either on social media or as an extraordinary marketer and have an extraordinary offer to do that. But, like, the OG king of that is Alex Becker.
25:00Mhmm. Right? To where, like, he would just make his marketing so good that the because, you know, he didn't wanna manage the sales team.
25:05Right? So that's that's that route.
25:07Then you have my route, which is, like, run the app funnel, which is a ninety second ad, and then just have a really good sales team. Yeah. Okay?
25:14The third route is you just do both. So the you know? And that's very rare to see, but I would say the own one of the only people I think is doing both would be Hormozi.
25:25To where, like, you'd like, if I took that guy's lead, I'd probably close 95%. I mean, I don't know how you couldn't. You know?
25:32But I know his sales team is, like, legitimately really good. Yeah. And he's generating basically order like, it these people are just taking orders, and they're really good.
25:43Yes. So the third route is where you wanna I mean, that's how you get hundreds of millions if you can nail that. If you can nail both.
25:49And and and on the note of those three paths, I totally agree.
25:52Uh, on the path of making your marketing so good that your sales team's order takers, If you're sitting around and you're like, wondering right now if your marketing is good enough for that, the answer is no. Yeah.
26:02Yeah. You know? Like, it's kinda like finding out a market fit with SaaS.
26:05Like, they always say, like, you'll know when you have it. You know? Like, if if you're just able to hire sales reps and they're just instantly closing at, like, 30 to 50% with, like, all like, very poor ramp up, you probably haven't.
26:18But like Cole was saying, to get there with, like, pure ads nowadays, almost impossible. It's gonna be awful.
26:25You you need some sort of large brand, and ads could be a part of the your your marketing. Really good offer to where people are willing
26:33to go through and commit to a challenge Yeah. Or some sort of virtual event or a live webinar Yeah.
26:40To where they they're like, the offer is so attractive and the, like, the market is so good and so new Yeah. That they're willing to commit so much time.
26:48That's why, like, for whatever reason, there is markets, and a lot of them I see with women to where they wanna do that. Yeah.
26:55Um, if I tried to do that again, you know, I had, like, three people show up. Hey. If the way you sell your product or service is through phone sales, you need to stop using booking systems like OneSub, Calendly, iClose, and other booking systems that aren't designed specifically for a phone sales approach or a phone sales team.
27:10So we at SalesKick just launched a new calendar and booking system that'll decrease your cost per booked call because it's conversion rate optimized specifically for call funnels, whereas most other calendar systems are meant for corporate booking, and it'll increase your show rates.
27:24So we've had clients see 30 to a 100% increases in their show rate because our calendar system is specifically designed for call funnels and other funnels that are high volume sales call booking funnels. And the software does so much more. It's really the only product designed specifically for sales teams with inbound booking systems.
27:40So if you're interested, go to saleskick.com. Check it out.
27:43Now back to the video. Uh, okay. Next funnel on the list, low ticket.
27:47So this is a low ticket to high ticket ascension.
27:49Yeah. Not my favorite funnel. Not my favorite funnel.
27:55I'm just crapping on everything. Um, well, look.
27:58Uh, for more advanced folks, especially in b to c, obviously, you know, I mean, we have clients that make, you know, $3.04, 5,000,000 a month with that funnel. So, like, it can absolutely work.
28:09Is it something that the majority of the people watches? I think, like, you know, kind of people go through this market.
28:14They go through the cycle of, like, you know, they try a call funnel, and then like, it's like, oh, I can't close the people. It's like, you know, like the same thing you just said.
28:22It's like, okay. Well, I need different marketing. Then they'd like jump to like a low ticket funnel or a webinar funnel or something.
28:28And it's hard to get it to work. Yeah. It's really hard.
28:33I mean, case in point, you and I, I mean, did we we tested two or three between the RCA book funnel back in the day Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
28:39Couple other low ticket, you know, variations. So it's like and we and and to be fair, we did get to a point where we had some pretty legit traction,
28:47but then we're just like, dude, we just put in all this effort. Let's just scale our call for Yeah. What are we doing?
28:51It it was just much easier to do that. Yeah. But what's the what's the well, how would you list it?
28:57I would say for certain markets, uh, I would put it at b tier for certain markets. I would say for the vast majority of people watching this, it's d tier.
29:06It's like either either they're in the right market, but they're just not ready to take on that challenge or they're just in the wrong market and it's just it's just a complete distraction. Yeah. You're a bit of a hater on a lot of these.
29:16Big big app funnel and call phone guy. Yes.
29:20I I like it, but, I mean, I agree with everything you said. It's it's a more heavier marketing approach.
29:27It's harder to get to work. It's also, like, it's usually best to try an app funnel or a call funnel first and really get that dialed. Like, I tell clients, try to get to 400 to 800 a month minimum with one of those funnels, and then you can test that funnel on the side.
29:41Because if you can get the thing is, if you especially if you're b to c. If you're b to b, don't even bother. Yeah.
29:47But if you're b to c, if you can get that to work, you can liquidate a lot of your spend, and it essentially changes the all the economics of your business, and you can scale way further.
29:57Mhmm. Because the other issue with b two c as well is it is tough to keep the pixel from just optimizing to the absolute worst people on the planet.
30:05And having a purchase pixel really does help that. But it's very hard to it's very hard to even know what those people are gonna buy unless you have like, if you've had if you've scaled a call funnel to $500 a month, you you get an idea of, okay.
30:20Here's my customers. Here's the perfect person. Here's what they want.
30:22Here's the type of low ticket offer they would really respond to, etcetera. So I do think if you can get it to work, it's, like, amazing. But the problem is is it's it's not where I would start, and it's hard to get it to work.
30:35And for b to b, it's kind of meh. I I also think it's funny. I was talking to someone at the event yesterday,
30:40and I use this example. It's all shared here.
30:44So, uh, when you're when you're building your offer, you're hiring your first couple salespeople, it's really easy to allow the salespeople to sell you on changing your business.
30:55Well, that's also true when you're on Facebook and you're allowing marketers to market to you to tell you you need to switch funnels. Mhmm. Like case in point, there's a lot of I think, um, I'm not saying these people are lying about this.
31:08Like I'm sure it's true in certain situations. But for example, um, the old adage, buyer leads buy more often.
31:17Sure. But like just because someone buys a $27 product doesn't mean they're gonna buy a $10,000 product. Like Mhmm.
31:21And and from what we saw, at least today we had like that wasn't necessarily correlated, right? Mhmm.
31:28Even like the the idea that like show rates are better from people who buy lower ticket stuff because they're buyer leads wasn't necessarily true either. Yeah. So I I just I think there's like, I'm not anti I mean, I gave it a b tier for the for the right markets, you know.
31:42I'm not I'm not a hater of low ticket funnel. I just think it's very complicated
31:45and you really need to be the right person in the right situation for it to make sense. Yeah. And what's also interesting about that funnel is it literally does not work without a good setting team.
31:54Same thing with the auto webinar. So if you need setters,
31:57you can book a call. Right? That is what we do.
32:00So, um, the last one we'll do is the, uh, challenge funnel. Yeah. It's it's interesting.
32:07This one's kinda fallen out of style in the last, like twelve months. Like I've I've heard about it less and less. Really?
32:12Yeah. It's interesting. It's more like like the the people that I heard doing challenges are now doing webinars, more I I I feel like.
32:22Um, so you know, I don't know.
32:25I mean, personally, this is the one I have the least experience with. I think it's it's okay. It's kinda like one of those things where it's like Give me a tear.
32:33Yeah. And I will. I will, dude.
32:35I will. Don't get don't. I will.
32:36Alright. I think, you know, it's like look, if you're gonna do a live challenge, first of all, like weekly or monthly or whatever, as a promotion, a tier can be great as a back end promotion.
32:50Uh, for front end paid, there are very limited situations where maybe it makes sense granted in my personal opinion. You know, it's like go through the the list of efficiency.
32:59It's like challenge funnel, multiple day thing that's live. Then you do a live webinar that's one day that's live. If you can get that to work, that's much better than this.
33:07Yeah. It's just less time. And I think I gave live webinars of c tiers.
33:10I gave this, like, a d tier in my personal opinion. Yeah. I I've again, I've seen it work.
33:15And when it does work, it can absolutely rip if your sales team is good. Sure. Uh, the prop weirdly, though, it works the all the markets I've seen it work with clients,
33:26all women markets. I don't know why that is. I think just think they like challenges.
33:30Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.
33:31Live webinars too. But, um, it can work when it does work, it is one of those things where it can turn your sales team order takers.
33:40And then if you're actually really good with your sales team and your setter team with that funnel, I mean, it can can scale really big. Yeah.
33:47That's kinda how I look at it. You know? Can can we add a funnel, actually?
33:50Yeah. I'm confused. Any any we missed?
33:52Yeah. Quiz funnel. Oh, okay.
33:55Yeah. What do you think about the quiz funnel? Well, we really never gave it a good hearty test.
34:00No. Don't. But the idea of it, I really like.
34:03The idea of it? The idea of it, I am a big fan. Ask to your idea.
34:07Yeah. Yeah.
34:09The it's interesting because the way we thought about the quiz funnel internally, which I think would be interesting for you, is this kinda like it's really just like an opt in in disguise. Yeah.
34:18You know? And going back to what we're saying before about the direct, uh, call funnels, you know, opt ins at least nowadays for the most part, uh, just make the cost per per call, cost per MQL too expensive to use.
34:34And so we stopped using it, but then we're like, well, can we get creative and like give someone a little bit of incentive, uh, to to opt in via the form of a quiz and getting getting your your, uh, results. So we gave it a little bit of a test.
34:46It's something that I definitely wanna test more, uh, this year. With that being said, what I will say is, uh, I know a couple of b to c clients right now that were inspired by our our limited quiz test Yeah. That are actually doing pretty well.
34:59Really well. I know another one too who's not even a client, and I he's my buddy. And I told him to do it because he was in the health space.
35:06And, essentially, I was like, add a quiz in front of your VSL or whatever. Just, like, frame it like a quiz to do the pixel conditioning essentially so that, like, that because you can get way more information if it's a quiz. Yeah.
35:17Then I'm like, only send the right things back to the Pixel because he was getting, like, $10 quizzes. So it's still a lot of data. Yeah.
35:23And that is the most effective way to really increase quality for b to c. Yeah. And you can it's basically still just a VSL funnel, but you just frame it as a customized VSL.
35:34And maybe you do record two or three little versions of it,
35:37and you can get way better quality that way. Yeah. So I do actually like that.
35:42Where would we tier that one? I think for b to c, like, with what you're saying, if you can get the cost low enough, it's pretty good. Like, it it can be b tier, potentially a tier.
35:50Yeah. The key thing with this, though it's funny, like, with the truth, all the funnels.
35:55Gotta have a good setting team. You know? You gotta be able to set people from the quizzes.
35:58Yeah. Extremely important. If you have that, that'd be great.
36:01Yeah. Book a call down below. Alright.
36:03So Perfect. What about well, actually, I missed one. Lead forms.
36:10In almost all circumstances, f tier. Yeah. I would say d tier, but I I think I'm just nicer than the overrated, my opinion.
36:17Yeah. The issue is I have heard that there's something Facebook released or there's something you can do to eliminate the spam.
36:26And if you do that, it's a lot better. Yeah. But the issue is is you just get a lot of spam leads.
36:32Well, and people like, they start with a lead form for whatever reason, and then they like get used to having like, you know, $12 leads. And then you put them on any other funnel Yeah. They they they have like a normal cost per lead then they're like upset.
36:43So who cares about your cost per lead? Yeah. Cost per lead is stupid.
36:46I don't even look at it. People ask me what what's a good cost per lead? I'm like, I don't even care.
36:49I care about cost per acquisition and ROI.
36:52Alright. So let's move on. And and by the way, all of the that whole tier list is all about ads.
36:57Right? So, obviously, if you're, like, famous on social media or whatever and you're like, well, live webinars work well for me, great.
37:03You know, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about specifically working when you have no brand
37:07Yeah. Basically. One one thing actually, final note to hit on the funnels and you were saying this last night.
37:13I don't know if you wanna share this a little bit more, but, um, you know, notice how we never said any of these funnels absolutely don't work.
37:22Like, at some point, all funnels, all acquisition processes can work. It's not that they don't. Maybe not the group funnel.
37:28Okay. Yeah. That that one might be That's that's what that's what I'm might be RIP'd.
37:33But aside from a group funnel, all these things can work
37:37and it's more about how you execute it, the simplicity of getting it to work. That's the big thing for most people. And then the level of skill set of your of your sales organization.
37:46Yeah. And just your skill sets also as a marketer Yeah. And where you are and your progression.
37:50Because, again, like, low ticket can make a lot of sense or even the webinar thing can make a lot of sense, but you have to really know your market very well to be able to do it. So Yeah.
37:58Let's talk about offers. And this is just kind of general spitballing, but what offers do you see working best on ads right now?
38:06I have I have some written down. Yeah.
38:08Well, the more done for you you can get, the better. I mean, that's just like the general macro trend of the industry. You know what's funny is I first experienced that because I had my biz op before we worked together, obviously.
38:20Yeah. And $7 offer, scale up to like $800 a month. It was it was good.
38:24Mhmm. You know? And then have that following out with my business partner, then I was like, okay, I'm gonna launch this done for you thing.
38:30And I ever told you like the story of like the results I got from that, but, um, you know, I was like, I had these false beliefs, these limiting beliefs about my ability to market. Because like like, take something off the ground at that point because I had ran that one business for for so long.
38:45I was like, can I do this again? Right? And so I wrote this VSL for this, you know, same thing.
38:50It was just like, we'll do it for you. We'll build you a business. And it was a 30 k offer.
38:54You had pay upfront and then you had to sign a five year contract. 30 k a year plus a profit share.
38:59And I was like, was like, know, if we get like three sales the first month, like good. That's a good start. Right.
39:04Know? And we ripped like 26 sales and I was like, holy shit. And then I learned about Yeah.
39:10Yeah. But I say that to say, like, I think both I mean, even on the b to c side, especially obviously more, you know, make money niches, kinda like we talk about if you want a higher quality lead, solving a better problem.
39:21Solving a passive income problem on side for someone is going to get you inherently a better quality lead typically than if you frame your offers like, we'll help you quit your job. Yeah. Um, so that's kind of the the general macro trend.
39:36And then, I mean, you know, aside from that, you have the the the the core markets of wealth, relationships, um, and health. And, I mean, there's offers working really, really well in all of those right now that I'm aware of and that you're aware of.
39:51So
39:52I don't know if you have Well, you one thing I wanna point about what you said is kind of the I call it . So what works really well right now is on one end, you have, like, usually more b two b done for you or just done for you anything in general. So that's on one end.
40:09As you as you move up to wealthier customers or businesses or whatever, it's kind of like it needs to be done for you. Right? Yeah.
40:16And then on the other side of the barbell is like mass market b to c. Right?
40:22That also works really well. Anything kind of, like, in between that is not great. You know?
40:28So I'll give you an example is people who go after co like, if you wanna go after people who start a coaching business, great. If you wanna go after people who need a done for you service and already have a coaching business, great. But if you're trying to be like a coach that's done with you for somebody doing 10 k a month, I call that no man's land.
40:46Yeah. You know? Or, like, if you're trying to have work with a realtor doing 20 k a month, it's, to do done with you, you're kind of on, like, this middle of no man's land to where you don't have the advantage of a super massive TAM, and you also don't have the advantage of a really good done for you offer, which, again, as people have gotten more sophisticated into the market, they move towards, I just want stuff done for me.
41:09I also want guarantees. I wanna limit my risk, which kind of reflects to our Hermosy's value equation of, like Yeah. Perceived likelihood of achievement, how much work and sacrifice do they have to put in, what's the time delay.
41:20Like, that's kind of why that shifted more that way in my opinion. One thing on offers too, and this is so funny because
41:26yesterday at the event, there was a few people I talked to, and I was just like, man, I wish I would have said this, like, on on stage. A lot of if you're if you're, you know, pre revenue or you're early stage, you're kinda just getting your offer validated. Uh, one of the big mistakes that I've seen lately is, you know, you have your vehicle and then you have the result that you're you're you're delivering.
41:49And a lot of folks early on confuse those things and, like, their offer becomes about the vehicle, which in certain circumstances can work. But for example, like I was talking to a, uh, client, uh, that was like we we had a big discussion about this.
42:07It's like, hey. Like, I help someone tell better stories. Right?
42:11And there's a certain market we talked about. I won't talk about it here, but where that could work. But in most markets where that's gonna work is going to be help them tell better stories to get a result, to get an outcome, right?
42:21Another example of this is like talking to a lady with like kind of a mindset offer And like, again, same thing.
42:27It was like, oh, I help people that wasn't even improve their mindsets. I help people learn this process.
42:32And it was like, okay, yeah, but people want the result of the process, not the process. Right? And so if if you're early on or if you maybe you're getting like some clients who are organic and you haven't really dialed in cold ads, that could be a reason why your offer is not working is you're focusing on the vehicle rather than the end explain that is you can't create desire.
42:49You can only channel it. So if you think of that's all trying to move towards a result, it's like a stream.
42:55Right? Like, you can either in the case of, like, doing sales recruiting, we just, with a direct offer, just place ourselves in the stream. Right?
43:03Yeah. Whereas with RCA, back when I launched it at least, nope.
43:07Like, there wasn't a big group of people out there that even knew what high ticket closing was or remote closing or whatever, uh, let alone wanted to become one. So what I had to do is the stream was, okay.
43:19Everybody wanted to do passive income, Amazon FBA, drop shipping, affiliate marketing, whatever. And, basically, the messaging had to essentially tap into existing desire and channel it to create new demand.
43:33Mhmm. Okay? So I was like, hey.
43:35Don't do any of this. If all you want to do is make a little bit of money, blah blah blah blah blah, and do it remotely, because back then, like, remote work wasn't as, like, common as is now. I was I was like, instead of doing all that, do this instead.
43:47So I was basically channeling it to create demand. So in your example with, like, the storytelling thing, people aren't out there saying, you know, they don't wake up and they're like, I wanna be a better storyteller today.
43:59I mean, there's maybe some people, but not a lot of people. But what they do want is to get clients. What they do want is, you know, a career shift or whatever.
44:07Or they're a corporate speaker. They want to get more clients and not be less boring in a corporate speaking. So you have to tap into that and kind of meet them where they're at.
44:15Yep. And then through your copy, channel it into what you're doing.
44:20Yep. If that makes sense. Exactly.
44:35Ridiculous. Hard part, product market fit, creating something somebody wants. Like, so many people in my DMs pitch me new thing for sales managers that has to do with AI that I'm like, yeah, but nobody wants this.
44:48Your sales man the sales managers don't want this Yeah. Etcetera. So On the note, b two b SaaS too, one piece of advice for Mosie gave me when I first met him back in early twenty twenty four.
44:59And, you know, at that stage, my SaaS was like 10 k a month, you know? Mhmm. And I was like, yeah.
45:06And what he told me to do, which everyone who has a b to b SaaS hates hearing this, but it's true. It's great advice. He was like, yeah, dude.
45:12So get it to a 100 k, you know, a month and then just wait a year and see what happens. You know? Like, literally just get to a 100 k a month, wait a year to see churn, retention, like, those core metrics, fix the product, make it good, and then you can scale it.
45:26And every time I tell a SaaS owner that, they go, I don't wanna do that. It's like, okay. Well,
45:31then you're not gonna have success with ads at scale and, yeah, be able to do Yeah. What's really interesting I you could tell me if you're, uh, if I'm wrong about b to b SaaS, but I feel like what people do is they really wanna get the product right and then, okay, the product just goes like crazy. It's almost very similar to a service business where you you gotta get to, like, a million or two a year with CSMs, basically, with a tech enabled service.
45:51Mhmm. I mean, you would have a product. Don't get me wrong.
45:53I'm not saying you're selling a service. So there still has to be a product first. You know?
45:57It's not like you're an agency who's lead gen and you happen to do a little bit of Like, there's still a product, but it's basically getting there with, you know, you have a product, but it's a lot of service as well. And then you you have to get there to even know what the hell to build because you have to be working with customers who are actually paying you.
46:18Not saying they would pay you, paying you. Yes.
46:21You know? Correct. And that's what you've done.
46:23That's what Becker's done. You know, a bunch of other people too. Yeah.
46:25I I think I think to some degree too
46:28where people go wrong is SaaS is like, it's such a wide category and there's different types of SaaS's. So like technically, I mean obviously it's different business, but Sam and Hermozzi and school is technically b to b SaaS, technically.
46:46Now obviously, they're network effect based SaaS. Mhmm.
46:49Whereas what I'm doing is a, you know, sticky dis and switching cost based Completely different. Yeah.
46:55And the way you build those companies is completely different. But people will confuse. They're like, they'll get advice from like this side and then bring it over this side.
47:01It just doesn't make any sense. Mhmm. Um, so, yeah, I I think for for the type of SaaS I built that, you know, Becker did, etcetera, 100%.
47:08Yeah. You just kinda have to really work with your customers to understand, like, what are the things that drive them to stick around and not leave?
47:15And that takes just a long time, even for someone that was in the market. You know? Yep.
47:19So I would say b two b SaaS if product market fit rips. The other one is instead of software, it's just service as a service. Service as a service.
47:27Service companies. Yeah. And, obviously, with with closers, you know, we're a great example of that.
47:33But, also, with b to b services, I mean, there's a create I I won't say who it is because I don't know if they want me to say their profit margins. But there's a UGC agency
47:43Mhmm. That
47:45people might know. I don't know. But a UGC agency that obviously works with, like, ecommerce companies, home service companies, works with coaching companies, all sorts of stuff.
47:55Just does ads. Yeah. And they're doing 800,000 a month with $600,000 a month profit.
48:00Not bad. Pretty sick. But the key with that is, just like a SaaS, you know, because it's a service, is you get the you get the customers, you get the businesses, and then the key is is how much they pay you after you get them.
48:12Yeah. Right? I mean, that's because the marketing is gonna be a lot more expensive, and the sales process is much harder than b to c, in my opinion.
48:19It's much easier to sell train a closer to sell a b to c emotional sale Mhmm. You know, make money or fix your relationship type product than it is to do you know, b to b, there's multiple decision makers. There's multiple calls.
48:34There's sometimes where, like, legitimately, you can't one call close. The the the solutions could be a little bit more customized. The pricings could be a little bit different.
48:42But once you get those people, if you do a great job, they can pay you way so much more money Yeah. For so much longer of a time.
48:49And then you have great l LTV to CAC, which allows you to scale much further. Yeah. And and other services too,
48:55what you want to be careful of doing b to b is, you know, you start with like, okay.
49:01I'm gonna help you know, I'm gonna do this thing in their marketing. And then, you know, it's like clients come in and it's like, well, like they're not getting results because this other thing. And the next thing you just know, it's like your your business is just their business.
49:12You're just trying to do it and then now you can't scale. Yeah. And so you do have to be disciplined not to do that.
49:17And but if you can do that and you can consistently get people results, there are certain services too.
49:25Like we've talked about this like email marketing services dude. Like from a fulfillment standpoint. Now getting clients a little bit harder.
49:32Right? Yeah. Yeah.
49:33Yeah. But, uh, there's just certain services you can do where, like, they can provide a high clear ROI,
49:39but they're easy to fulfill, especially not with AI. Yeah. It was yeah.
49:42That that one's tough because as business owners get more savvy with AI, I think they're just gonna write their own emails. Oh, I agree. But, um, there is probably an arbitrage window right now.
49:53What Eddie likes to do is sell them on ads and then give them the email marketing for free for a certain amount of months. I I don't know the exact offer, but it's something like that.
50:01Yeah. And then he knows if you can get them on email, the LTV is, like, way longer because, obviously, like, you gotta send emails even if you fire your ad agency.
50:10They may be like, oh, I love your emails, but, you know, whatever happens with ads. Another one I like weirdly is health.
50:17Uh, some of my biggest clients, 50,000,000 in health, 100,000,000 in health. Um, the key with that though is it's not just health, but it is differentiated health, especially if it has a medical telehealth premium feeling to it with good messaging that allows you to charge a really high price point.
50:39Like, I talked to Jon Matson on the last one. Mhmm. And, I mean, he's doing 50,000,000 a year and with a call funnel.
50:46Call funnel for the win. And, I mean, the key with him is, like, he basically has the same lead flow is the way I think of his offer is he basically sells a health offer with the same lead flow as if I was raising money for, like, a multifamily investment through ads.
51:03Oh, yeah. Like, he basically gets accredited investors who want to invest in their health.
51:08The crazy thing is you can do that in any b to c, though, if you frame it the right way. Yeah. So you can do it in relationships, for sure.
51:16You can do it in health, for sure. But you have to be not just like, you can't just say in your ad busy professionals.
51:23Right? Like, the callout has to be there. It's more about how you speak to problems that only those people would have Mhmm.
51:30Which requires you to understand that market. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Yeah.
51:35I mean, you're you're 100%. I think I mean, we had experience with a health company of our own that scaled Yes. Potentially.
51:41We did. We didn't we didn't do the high net worth thing, though. We did not do We probably should've.
51:45Yeah.
51:46Probably should've. Yeah. So Probably should've.
51:49You know, mean, granted, we we had I think we had a lot of success there. But Yeah. Um, I mean look, if you can dial the messaging in right, like you're saying if it's differentiated either in, you know, the problem that you solve, how you solve it, which was kind of what we do is like, you know, we're solving undifferentiated problems and with undifferentiated clients just in a unique way.
52:09Right? Yeah. Um, or like you mentioned with John and his company, um, you know, going after a specific group of people that can pay a lot more.
52:18Yeah, it can it can definitely work, and I completely agree. So Yeah. The key with that is that, you know, you can't do it's almost like a lot of fitness people just do online personal training.
52:28Like, if you're doing that, you're cooked because that's just a commodity. Right? That's like saying relationship coaching.
52:33Like, you're cooked. You know, you have to frame it. So in the dating space, it's it's more about, okay.
52:40Like, what's something a high net worth like, it could be high net worth people prenups or high net worth divorces or it could be really high successful people who have dating problems because those problems are way different Yeah.
52:55Than average dating problems. So if you speak it's more about if you speak to those pains Yeah. You can get those types of people.
53:02You know? Uh, same thing with health is you gotta differentiate.
53:05So what's bad, again, is per like, online personal training. Bad. But, hey.
53:09Have you been to a bunch of different doctors and a bunch of different companies? And you know something's wrong with you, but nobody can tell you what's really wrong with you. And you spent money doing this, and you spent money doing that.
53:19And, like, that's one thing, like, Pompa does so well is theirs is, like, so much more, like, functional medicine kind of, like, telehealth y type of thing. And, obviously, they do a lot of revenue. So another good offer is, um, what do you think about this?
53:31Basically, anything it's like anything with AI, but specifically AI related business opportunities.
53:41So there's a couple. Right? You have the big one is AI consulting, AI agency.
53:46That's like the new SMMA, basically. Yeah. I've even seen it's just so funny.
53:51It's like everything's just AI now. AI, ecommerce.
53:54Yeah. I've seen, like, AI you know, because there's that one company. Have you heard about the company that valued at 1,400,000,000 with two employees or three employees?
54:04And they're a telemedicine company. I've also heard they're a scam. So I don't know what the the situation is with that.
54:11Yeah. Yeah. But that's like the AI kind of like e comm thing.
54:15Yeah. But anyways, if you're selling that in the info space,
54:19I think Yeah. Mean, anytime kind of the new frontier.
54:22Yeah. Every every three to four years, you know, something kinda new cycles into the industry, and it's like the hot thing for a couple years.
54:29Yeah. It's definitely AI right now. So I'm gonna continue that way for the most part.
54:34Probably. For for at least the next couple years for sure. I think that no matter what your offer is, if you can figure out a way I was even thinking about this as I was prepping for the pod.
54:42I was like, if you could figure out a way to just add AI somehow into what you're doing so instead of Amazon, you're now an AI Amazon, AgenTic Amazon Yeah.
54:52Or whatever. I mean, that's probably a good offer. Yeah.
54:54Uh, anything you could do like that, I think, the better. Yeah.
54:58You know? Because everybody it's just gonna get people's attention.
55:02Yep. Okay? So okay.
55:03Let's move on to media buying. So not creative. It could be creative testing.
55:09Right? But we'll talk about creative as a separate section, like how to make good creatives or what creatives are working. But in terms of, like, actual media buying strategies, what's working right now or what's some things that we've actually tested?
55:23Which this could be a light section because I know that Yeah. The main thing is really creative. Yeah.
55:27Well,
55:28to hit that point for a second before I there's a couple of things I could I could I could say. But, you know, just the general trend is media buying is becoming less and less and less and less important. Mhmm.
55:38As platforms just remove targeting options and all that. So and I think that's just gonna continue especially with, you know, uh, Metabot Manus and like who knows how they're gonna integrate that into their app like who knows, you know.
55:51So like, I just think in general like especially for high ticket like ecom that's different, you know. Like there's obviously different industries Yeah. For what we do.
55:59Definitely way less important than it used to be. Can you explain why e commerce is different? Yeah.
56:03Because the margins are much smaller and they need well, couple things. Margins are much smaller.
56:08So if they can figure out little pockets of the audience, they also have massive TAMs typically.
56:14Yeah. They have little pockets of the audience that, uh, have higher, you know, lower lower CAC and a higher return, and they can specifically use media buying hacks to get to those people.
56:25That helps them a lot. They're also just because, like, this is just a general observation. I think you've seen the same observation.
56:32Businesses that have lower margins that rely on ads have to be on the absolute cutting edge of what's working. Mhmm. Like case in point, uh, when we were, you know, maybe eighteen months ago now, maybe a little bit longer, we were looking to get into Twitter ads.
56:47Every single person we consulted, ecom.
56:49Yeah. You know? So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
56:51Well, I think you're missing the big one, which is there's a fundamental difference between lead gen or, like, high ticket and ecommerce. So with high ticket, you can only book like, I only need to book as many calls as my sales team can take.
57:05Mhmm. Right? But with ecommerce, that's why they use certain things like accelerating, uh, accelerated spending and cost caps and big caps and all that stuff Because, like, it really doesn't matter.
57:16If there's a pocket of three days where I could get five times the conversions that I can normally get Yeah.
57:24In that three day pocket for whatever reason just because CPMs are low or the the I the the the iron roar, whatever it is, right, and advertisers aren't spending as much, if there's a weird three day pocket where I can get customers technically at a CAC that's gonna get me, let's say, a 1.3 is what I want.
57:42Right? If I can find that pocket, I literally wanna spend as much as humanly possible. Granted, there is probably, like, inventory and certain constraints.
57:50But those aren't, like, the constraints you have with the sales team. Correct. So the the reason the strategies, I think, fundamentally are so much more advanced is because it's more about how can I grab as many conversions in the day as I can or as little as I can because also they don't wanna like, it doesn't like, us, we have so much more elasticity in our spending because it's high ticket to where, like, just want the calendars to be full for the most part Yes?
58:14Every single day. Yes. Whereas with them, it's like, you don't wanna overspend, but you don't wanna, uh, underspend either.
58:19Yes. And so that's why the cutting edge is always on e commerce because they have that sort of dynamic to it. It's also why most of the strategies they teach don't really make sense for us.
58:31Correct. Because if I if I have a three day span where I can get five times, let's say, the conversions for the same amount of cost, all I'm gonna do is book out my calendar for two weeks and then get terrible show rates. Yeah.
58:43So it doesn't make sense. I think that's the biggest fundamental difference. Correct.
58:46Anyways
58:47Back to back to Back to whatever the loop was. Yeah. So with our industry, the couple things that we've seen.
58:52First of all, in general, broader audiences are better. Yeah.
58:57That assumes you do everything correct creatively, which I know we'll talk about in a second. Uh, that's number one. Even to a point where we have a lot of clients and to some extent us that have had success which is literally open targeting.
59:08Right? Yeah. Again, pixel needs to be conditioned for that and you gotta do things right creatively.
59:13So that's number one. Uh, the biggest kind of update I would say in terms of, um, what we figured out is in the last maybe six to twelve months. You know, as you scale your call funnel, obviously, as you just mentioned, the primary function is just to fill the sales calendar.
59:30Right? Yeah. This creates an interesting dilemma where if the calendar's full and the ads are performing really well, you quite literally have no capacity to test.
59:41Because okay, could cut stuff that's working well to test stuff that's not working. Yeah. You know, like it just doesn't So you end up in this weird situation.
59:48So what we started doing about, uh, maybe six to nine months ago now, is launch a bunch of new creatives and thousand dollar a day campaigns, $2,000 a day campaigns and
1:00:00And cost cap it at far below the cap of our normal KPI. So it probably won't spend. If it does spend, you're getting bookings for far cheaper than you normally would anyways.
1:00:11Right. Spending 10% of its budget to an organization is like nothing for us.
1:00:14Yeah. Right? Yeah.
1:00:15And that has actually been huge because number one is it helps us sort through, well, cool. Which creative should we actually break out and start testing with a regular campaign when we have the ability to do so. So it's been huge from that standpoint.
1:00:28And I think, you know, as we haven't said this yet, but the last, you know, four months, we've had two months in particular that I've had some of the lowest CAC numbers we've had in a long time and that's for various reasons. But I think some of the underlying changes we made to testing things certainly had an impact on that recently.
1:00:45So, um, that's I would say like the biggest thing. Aside from that with, uh, you know, Andromeda being out, we've moved away from dynamic creative.
1:00:53We now just launch things, throw the ads in there, and let Facebook do its thing. Yep. And,
1:00:58you know, it's it's working great for us. Basically, it's chat mode. Yep.
1:01:02To where you just throw them all in there and see what happens. How many do we throw in there? You know, it depends.
1:01:07We for the testing campaigns, I mean, dude, yeah. I I think as many as we can. Yeah.
1:01:11You know? Once we have winning variations or, you know, winners, it's typically less, You know?
1:01:20But anywhere from 10 to 15
1:01:22Yeah. You could put 50 in there, honestly. It doesn't even matter.
1:01:25So just to be clear on the on the cost cap, because I'm not even this is, you know, my this is my ad account, and I'm not even a 100% clear on what's going on. So there's a cost cap campaign. The budget's, $5 or whatever it is a day.
1:01:38But, obviously, the the caps are so low and so competitive that we're never gonna spend $5. Correct. And we just throw pretty much all new creatives in there and just see if anything spends at all.
1:01:49Correct. Yeah. I think that's so much better than because I know everybody a lot of people do the sandbox and then the thing.
1:01:55Uh, we've tried that, like, three times, uh, because I always hear so I hear somebody talk about it, and I'm like, we should try it because everybody's talking about it. I don't know.
1:02:04It just doesn't work as well for us. Yeah. And I also think there's an issue with that in the sense that, number one, if you're sandboxing stuff and it's ABO and it's super low budgets, it takes a long time to get statistical significance.
1:02:17So you're working off of a lot of data that's incomplete. And I think there's a lot of false correlation between stuff that works in there or doesn't work in there and stuff that actually ends up working. But it makes sense with the cost cap because if it does work in there and it's booking calls in KPI and and Facebook's serving it, that probably is a higher indicator because it's already in a campaign that's optimizing for cost per book call and is at a decent etcetera.
1:02:40And with the sandbox thing, the biggest mistake I've seen people try to do with call funnels
1:02:45is they'll like judge the initial performance in the sandbox off a like like you said, completely different metric. It's like, oh yeah, this one's getting a great cost per lead, so we should put in a scaling campaign.
1:02:55It's like, dude, that has like zero correlation. Like the one time our media buyer made a campaign and he just put the, uh, clip of Michael Jordan dunking a basketball dude. At the beginning of the ad and it got like a 5% CTR.
1:03:07We're like, well, don't really think this is because of, uh, that's gonna convert. Yeah. No.
1:03:12That was that was, uh, yeah. All I remember from that is it was I was, like, my first two weeks working with him.
1:03:18And I was just, like, running through the ads, and it was I just remember, like, looking at the sheet. Was like, oh, the Michael Jordan ad. I was like, fuck.
1:03:24What is this? What is this? Dunking dunking a basketball.
1:03:27And then after that, after he dunked, it's like, if you need setters. Well, let's let's let's do it.
1:03:32It was ten it was a ten second clip. The first ten seconds of ad was just Michael Jordan. And then the headline was Michael Jordan business advice.
1:03:42And then people laid on a page, it was RCN. People laid on a page. It's like Oh, it was RCN.
1:03:47Remote closing.
1:03:49It was just like Didn't convert, but it did get good CTRs. CTR. Literally, it was like I don't even know if we tested it because I was like, this isn't gonna work.
1:03:56Uh, what else? I mean so you mentioned Andrew Meta.
1:04:00Does targeting even matter? You know, it's funny. I I think I don't wanna say it doesn't matter at all, but I definitely think it's way less important than it used to be.
1:04:10But the way I kinda think about it now is just like, you know, look, Facebook's a massive platform. If we can help kind of nudge it in the right direction a little bit, probably gonna help.
1:04:21But, you know, certainly, I don't I don't think it's like anywhere where it used to be where it's like, man, we need to like get down to the nitty gritty and have very small audiences and and all that. So, you know, I I I listen.
1:04:33If if you have a brand new ad account, brand new offer, I would certainly have some targeting. If you have a conditioned pixel and you've really dialed an offer, like, we've seen plenty of people crush it with open targeting at this point. So I for anybody who's wondering, I mean, a lot of people, it just works with open targeting.
1:04:50Um, we typically do targeting, but it's like the audiences are 20 to 50,000,000. I mean, they're they're really big. Yeah.
1:04:55Uh, how do we test ads? Like, not not that creatives, but when we're testing a new campaign, can you walk through how we do it? Yeah.
1:05:02That's the whole cost cap thing. Right? So Well, not just the cost cap, but then when we launch a new campaign, $500 a day.
1:05:08Oh, yeah. Yeah. So
1:05:10alright. So we get a whole batch of of creatives that are new. Like I mentioned, throw it in a campaign, cost cap.
1:05:15If you wanna get very technical, we take, uh, the KPI for that, uh, that number, and we usually start the cost cap at 65% of the KPI.
1:05:28So if it's, you know, a $100 for example, we'd start the the cost cap at $65, $60. And usually around that range, it'll spend five to 10% of its total budget. Right?
1:05:37Mhmm. Uh, then based on that, we watch performance. And, um, you know, basically a 100% of the time, you know, two to four of the ads depending on how many you have in there will get all of the spend.
1:05:51Uh, and then you just take those ads out, and you're like assuming it got, you know, relatively enough spend to like know it's okay, that's some traction. We'll break that out into its own CBO campaign.
1:06:02We have obviously our control, uh, audiences which for us is just classic influencers, like Yeah.
1:06:10Yeah. Influencer stack. And then the other one is just a 10% look alike.
1:06:14Um, and then, uh, roll that out $500 a day. Uh, we have our internal rules of, hey, we're gonna spend three to five x. The, uh, KPI, MQL cost, which for us is about $500 a day for anywhere between, you know, lowest Yeah.
1:06:31Three days if it's like really shit. On the highest end, six days if it's kinda borderline. And then at that point, if it works, it really just goes back to the thing I brought up earlier, which is like, okay.
1:06:41Well, what do we need to do from a sales calendar standpoint? Is there a lot of room? We need to scale the budget.
1:06:47Uh, is there not a lot of room? If there isn't a lot of room, we just kinda queue it as like, okay. Well, when we have ability to scale or we need to or whatever, this will be one of the highest leverage things we can do is just kinda duplicate this out and spend more on it.
1:07:00And and then, you know, obviously, if we can do that right then, then then we will. So what about what about creatives?
1:07:06What's working with creative
1:07:08right now? Glad you asked. Yeah.
1:07:10And so I'm excited for this Fun story. Yeah. I love telling the story, dude.
1:07:15So
1:07:16we have a couple of internal copywriters that work with us. Excellent guys. And there's one in particular that's really grown a lot the last eighteen months.
1:07:25It's become a really good solid copywriter. And for the first time in his time working with us, he's got not one, but he's got two winning ads at the same time, which, you know and know that doesn't sound like a huge accomplishment, but to to give him his flowers because he deserves it, we we our standards for ads are extraordinarily high.
1:07:44We're an extremely competitive direct response niche where your stuff has to be legit to even have a chance of working, let alone working. And to have two ads at one time working is is awesome. So, like, great job.
1:07:55But started showing up to meetings a little bit, was a little bit kinda, you know, egotistical. You know?
1:08:02It was kinda felt like he was taking over. You know? Yeah.
1:08:04Yeah. And, you know, it's like I'm like, man, I gotta bring this guy back down to Earth, dude.
1:08:10Yeah. I gotta I gotta remind him that I'm the CMO for a reason, and you still have a lot to learn, pal. And so I was kinda thinking, like, how am gonna do that?
1:08:19You know? With a sales team, it's like, you know, you just kinda get on some calls, close like six deals in a row, and you guys are like, yeah, you're not that good.
1:08:25You know? But you can't know, how do you do that with the marketing teams? Was like, okay, I'm gonna just like ride a banger ad that's gonna like outperform his two ads.
1:08:32And then I was like, well, I can't just do that. It used to be like embarrassing. Like it needs to be like an ad that's like, dude, this ad's beating your ad, dude.
1:08:40And so I was on Facebook just like on regular Facebook scrolling and some guy had posted just like a regular Facebook post.
1:08:49And you know, like you could do like the background color thing. So he did that and he did it bright red and it caught my attention. And I was like, that's what I'm gonna do.
1:08:57So I went I took our like all of our offer statements. I took, like, our our best performing banners.
1:09:04I just put them in front of red squares. Not even really that aesthetically, be honest with you. Like, I just kinda did a like, I don't wanna say half ass job, but I did, a decent job, but, like, not great.
1:09:13And then we just ran that as that best ad we have. Like, not even close. Red square.
1:09:18There's a red square with With text. Need setters and closers. Click below.
1:09:23Best ad. We shouldn't even tell people this. Yeah.
1:09:26Yeah. Because this is gonna ruin it. Yeah.
1:09:28I know. It's so easy to copy. I know.
1:09:30It's got a shelf life now, so maybe we'll delay the release of this podcast. Yeah. But well, I think I think there is actually one lesson from that, you know, aside from the don't just copy everything.
1:09:40Aside from that, I think the lesson is, um, with copywriting and creatives.
1:09:47You know, we've said this for for years. Clarity Yes. Everything.
1:09:51I I was gonna say the same exact thing. Everything. So a number one is, uh, it shows you how important having a great offer is and having it being not just great conceptually, but also easy to understand and clear.
1:10:04So you can literally just put that on a red square and get people to click and buy, you know, or book book a sales call. So that's number one. But number two is it also just shows you like, man, uh, I just think in general people way overcomplicate this stuff.
1:10:20Yeah. And especially professional copywriters, but even just offer owners. It's like, guys, just tell them what you do.
1:10:26And if what you do is not compelling enough for your market to buy, then, you know, either reframe what you do, but . Mhmm.
1:10:36Yeah. Yeah. I I totally agree.
1:10:38It's
1:10:39a lot of it when I look at clients' ads, it's just like, I don't know what you're saying. It's just Yes.
1:10:45What you gotta have clear communication.
1:10:48The clearer the communication is, usually the better it works. Mhmm. At least it should be your starting point.
1:10:52That's like the prerequisite. Yeah. You know?
1:10:54So it and it's it's you can write indirect stuff, but it's so tough if it's not clearly communicated. Yeah. Uh, well, what else works?
1:11:03Yeah. Well, I mean, just to go through the fundamentals. So number one is you need to have a clear call out.
1:11:07We kinda mentioned in the in the targeting section of this podcast that like targeting is kind of dead or like pretty damn close to it. Mhmm. The targeting now is done via your app Yeah.
1:11:17Via your creative. So very clearly calling out who you want. And I think there's levels to doing this.
1:11:23So there's like the classic coaches and agencies. Like, okay, cool. That's a group of people.
1:11:28But you can also segment that group of people by, you know, certain revenue level, ad spend level, amount of clients or something even further to a point. Or the problem they're experiencing. Yeah.
1:11:37Or the problem that they're experiencing. And so I think, you know, both in what we just said about clarity, also being not just clear on what you do, but who you wanna work with to a point where you're literally just saying it verbatim in the ad, in the copy is like required today.
1:11:53Um, so that's number one. Number two is, um, you know, we talk a lot about risk reversals.
1:12:00One thing that I don't think works very well, uh, now this is a little bit more contextual. It's not as black and white. So risk reversal, if you don't know the term is like a guarantee, right?
1:12:10Mhmm. Another way of saying that. And you know, obviously, there's the classic or you don't pay which still works great.
1:12:17Right. No issues. That's where I recommend everybody starts.
1:12:20Um, but there's there's sometimes, you know, this is especially true with like usually newer offer owners. They get a little bit like kinda scared about that, and they have like some of the some like limiting beliefs and they have some fear associated with you don't pay or like having really a guarantee at all.
1:12:35And so then what they do is they kinda like water it down and they half ass it and they're like, hey, like we'll help you get the result and then if we don't, then we'll just like keep working with you. Right.
1:12:46You know? And I just have always seen that doesn't work, you know? Or if it does work, it's definitely not optimal, and you can certainly get a huge cost reduction by having a stronger guarantee.
1:12:55So, I mean, that's just like one zero one stuff. Mhmm. And then just, you know, being having strong I mean, it's all the basic stuff.
1:13:02Like having strong proof, being clear about what you say, having a clear offer, having a a specific call out, and in some cases, multiple call outs. But yeah.
1:13:13I mean, it's it's and then if you wanna get if you wanna get a little bit more advanced than that, if you're doing direct offer stuff, obviously, the the the next the next step once you have that validated and working and scaling is, can we have this direct offer? Can we just do an indirect hook to the direct offer?
1:13:28Yes. Yeah. That's also great.
1:13:30Works really well. Although I will say, funny, I was talking to someone yesterday, and they were spending like, I don't know, couple $100 a day on ads.
1:13:39Like, very, very low scale. And but their ROAS, literally 20 x cash.
1:13:44Yeah. Yeah. You know?
1:13:46And I see this all the time. I'm like, yeah. Like, man, you're crushing it.
1:13:49And they're like, yeah. I just made like eight creatives to test. I'm like, dude, I think just gotta spend more money on ads.
1:13:54Yeah. Like, just on your one ad. Just spend more.
1:13:56They're like, you think it's not gonna like, you're very far from creative. You're very far. You know?
1:14:01Yeah. Yeah. You are.
1:14:02So that that's my general,
1:14:05you know, thesis around Well, a lot of people say just on that note, a lot of people you know, Hormozi talks about more, better, new. What I found is that people, they like to like, at first, they they're doing well, at first, you have to do new because you gotta start something.
1:14:20Mhmm. And then what's funny is is people go like, some people people very rarely stick with more.
1:14:28What happens is is they do a little bit more, and then they shift to better, and then they procrastinate in better. Mhmm.
1:14:35It's like a perpetual procrastinate there when they actually need to go back to doing something just just more of what's working. Yeah. Which is like the classic, like, well, you're doing 10 or 20 x on ads.
1:14:46Why aren't you just spending more and hiring more salespeople? And they're like, well, you know, I think I need to do this with my fulfillment. It's like, no.
1:14:51You don't you don't even know what to do with fulfillment yet till you kinda, like, strain it or break it or whatever. Or they're like, well, I think my ad cost is gonna go up. Okay.
1:14:57Great. You're doing 20 x. You know?
1:14:59So there's that. Or they go from more a little bit of more right to new again.
1:15:05Yes. You know? That's like the other thing that's very key is there's and it just depends on there's it really actually and both both both of it is actually driven by fear.
1:15:15And I'm not saying like, we all have fear. You know? I'm not saying these are fearful people or whatever.
1:15:18But it's like they're scared to scale or fix the next problem. Yeah. So they just go to doing something new and starting over until they hit the same barrier again, or they just procrastinate and better forever.
1:15:30A lot of our clients, it's procrastinate and better forever, where it's like they just try to optimize and optimize and optimize, and I'm like, I think you just need to add more salespeople and spend more money. Yeah.
1:15:39Can you actually share a little bit of what because I I think this will be so impactful for a lot of people listening.
1:15:44What you were sharing yesterday about the once you have something validated, there's like this phase of business that's like the limiting belief phase.
1:15:53And it's like the oh, I have to like build all these foundations and I gotta like like and without actually stress testing anything. Yes.
1:15:59They kinda get stuck there. So, usually, this is between
1:16:0350 and 250 or 50 and $300 a month Mhmm. Where, essentially, you get something off the ground, and you get it to this point where it's working.
1:16:12And really what happens is it's it's the first phase where you actually are required to relinquish some degree of control. Mhmm.
1:16:20Right? To where either you can't have every sales call, you can't do, uh, all the you don't know all your clients' names.
1:16:27You don't work with every client individually. It's kind of that phase. And so what happens is is people just procrastinate there, and there's just kind of this fear of like, okay.
1:16:36If I scale past there, like, are all my clients gonna hate me? Are they gonna show up at my house? Are they gonna freaking egg me in the street if they see me in the street?
1:16:42Are they gonna, you know, all refund and charge back on you know, they don't even have refunds, but they're like, they're all gonna refund. And so people like to perpetuate in that kind of, like it's the biggest limiting belief sticking phase is usually a 100 to $300 a month. Mhmm.
1:16:55And, like, they're trying to just, like, make their closers go from 22% to 28%. And they're just, like, constantly focused on that. And I'm like, dude, you're doing, like, 15 x ROAS.
1:17:06Like, just hire your next closer. Spend more on ads. Or they're like, need to I need to fix my fulfillment.
1:17:11Fix my fulfillment. I'm like, you have to essentially grow a little bit more to stress or break the fulfillment even a little bit and, you know, .
1:17:21Like, you gotta because because once you stress the systems, it gives you clarity on what to build next. Yeah. And so that's like the big concept here is that you the people like to over systematize and just sit there and build spreadsheets and build systems and build this thing.
1:17:35And now with Clog Code, it's like you can just spend hours in that thing. And you don't even know what to build until you start to stress or even break those systems, then it becomes a 100% clear on what to build. Yeah.
1:17:46So the clear thing the clear example I have is that when we were doing the recruiting in the very beginning at first, it was just essentially me getting people from my audience because I had a lot of salespeople following me. Mhmm.
1:17:58And then and then, you know, I had one recruiter, and then eventually we had two recruiters. And we had no idea how to eventually build a 20 person recruiting team that does full cycle, that does outbound, that can do customized search. They can go to different countries.
1:18:10We could do multilingual. We can do in person. We can do virtual.
1:18:14We can do door to door. We can do everything. I had no idea how to build that, but we just kinda took a step, took another step.
1:18:19We kept selling more clients, and then the systems would stress. And then we would figure out, oh, okay. We need to separate roles and have recruiting coordinators and Rams.
1:18:26Rams work with the clients. Recruiting coordinators are actually the ones who source the deals. And then it's like, okay.
1:18:30The next thing is we need to move over to an actual centralized, like, data system. So we use Asana.
1:18:36Then that broke. Then we moved to HubSpot, then that broke, then we moved to an ATS. And so it just kind of but would I had known any of that from the very beginning?
1:18:43I mean, I would know now if I restarted all over from scratch. But, I mean, it was just easier and better to build those things over time and let it break or stress a little bit, and then you get the clarity of how to actually do that.
1:18:57The only reason I didn't go through that phase myself but I I really did, like, from a 100 to 500 because, basically, really, a 100 and to 200 a month, which is where I was at, to 500 a month was a thirty day span for me.
1:19:10So, like, we just jumped. And that I felt myself being super stressed because I didn't know who the clients were.
1:19:17I couldn't work with everybody. But what got me through it is is when I was a full time salesperson, essentially, the the program I was selling, all the clients, the guy who you know, Taylor, who I used to work for, this was the main thing he would hammer home with people Mhmm.
1:19:31Is they would stay in this procrastination, over systematized type of phase. And they just you need to grow to know what to build.
1:19:39Like, you need to kind of, like, stress the infrastructure to know how to actually build the infrastructure because it ends up being different for all the clients. So you have to create the problems, and then you know what problems to solve.
1:19:49So that's kind of the Yes. The main And on the note of that, on the back end of that,
1:19:53uh, this is a very controversial take, but that is the single biggest problem with the theory of constraints is that theory of constraints presupposes that there's a problem that exists. And so if you're at fifteen extra hours, you're like, I gotta follow the theory of constraints.
1:20:07Well, my share rate's not or this is my close rate's not good for whatever. Then instead of just realizing, like, actually, wait a minute. The constraint the theory of constraints is around a system growing until it breaks.
1:20:18The system hasn't broken. They continue to grow. You have to you have to increase volume to know where the constraints is.
1:20:23Yeah. And and so I think I think people can can sometimes misconstrue. Because, obviously, theory of constraints is very helpful, but people can misconstrue that and and be like, well, I need to keep looking for problems when and then they're just kind of making up a problem.
1:20:33That is not it. Hey. If you're enjoying this video and you wanna work more personally with either me or my team, we can help you in two different ways.
1:20:38Number one, we can help you install marketing systems so you can generate more leads and ultimately scale the revenue of your business. Or b, we can help you with your sales team by placing setters or closers in your business. And if they don't perform, you don't pay.
1:20:50We can also help you scale your sales team, systematize your management, all of that stuff as well. So if you're interested in either of those, there's a link in the description or in the first comment. You can check it out.
1:21:00Now back to the video. Back to creatives. So red squares Red squares.
1:21:04Well. The one thing I wanna highlight what you said was, uh, what works really well in the beginning is just doing a direct offer.
1:21:12Okay? Now and and even if you do low ticket, we tested a bunch of ads when we've done low ticket over the years. Do the direct offer for low ticket where it's just like, for $27, you can now get this thing.
1:21:24Yep. Uh, that actually worked the best too. So you do as many different variations and versions of that as you can.
1:21:30Mhmm. Right? I would say and this is what you said.
1:21:33I'm just highlighting it to kinda come back to it. Then the way you scale that is you have to sorta enter into the conversation they already have in their mind, whether it's the problems they're experiencing, trying to solve, or something that's gonna catch their attention, and kind of go indirect for, like, twenty seconds, and then you pivot to the same offer.
1:21:50And that expands your market so much for the direct offer. Right?
1:21:54But it's still I mean, you could still just make the offer in the ad. Everything is in the ad. Yes.
1:21:58So that's kind of the concept there. Um, in terms of AI, are we how much are we using AI for creatives right now? Yeah.
1:22:06So we use AI primarily,
1:22:09uh, right now. And, uh, well, for creative specifically, uh, for additional creative production, like UGC style stuff.
1:22:16So to give a shout out to a software that we've liked a lot is Arcades. And I know it's funny. We first got on Arcades, I think, early on when Arcades was around.
1:22:25And then, like, in the span of that coming coming up, there was, like, v o three popped up and, like, other stuff popped up. And we tested those things, and, obviously, we had some stuff work work with that. But I will say the way Arcades has their system structure where it's like, it's a real person that, like, essentially is lending out their likeness, and it was filmed, like, how an ad would actually be like, their their likeness was originally filmed how an ad would actually be filmed for space.
1:22:50It just converts really well. It's funny. Someone yesterday, uh, at the event asked, like, have you seen a a difference in conversions or, uh, in any changes in in those metrics with, um, you know, AI ads versus regular ads?
1:23:02In short, no. I do think it's kind of skewed data from our standpoint simply because all of our video ads are either edited to a point where it's really hard to tell the difference between a human That's true. Yeah.
1:23:15And then also, you know, the ones that aren't that way are like the Loom style ads that we do, which is another format that's working really well right now, where it's literally just a Loom video. With a document.
1:23:25With with a doc. Goes back to clarity, right? Yeah.
1:23:27But then it's just like this little circle at the bottom of the screen that like, you know, it's kind of it's such a small part of the screen that it's kinda hard to be like, oh, that's AI. You know? Uh-huh.
1:23:35Um, so that's that's the main way that we're using it now.
1:23:41But, yeah, I don't know if you had another point of that. You're No. I mean, what's interesting is that we really only have and this is what I talk about is we probably only have, like, five to seven fundamentally different creative concepts.
1:23:54Like, we have our direct offer, then a lot probably have several more indirect hooks into the direct offer. There's not that many, like, fundamentally different creatives we get.
1:24:03And when we get one, that can unlock, like, an extra $100 in spend. Yes.
1:24:08Most of our volume is just creative ways to use different faces, AI, different editing, different backgrounds, different way it's filmed, uh, different formats like the Loom video, etcetera, the red square to just say the same exact thing.
1:24:23Yes. And that's why, you know, I came up with this saying a long time ago. It's not how many offers you could sell.
1:24:28It's how many different ways you could sell the same offer. Right? It's actually the same concept because in a weird way with the more, better, new thing, what's interesting about the better phase is you are kind of finding different new ways and new ads to just communicate the same thing that ultimately hits different pockets of the audience because it resonates in different ways or it's new or whatever.
1:24:48And then that essentially raises your ceiling for scale. And on the curve of diminishing returns, kind of like puts you back further on the curve Yeah. Before you actually have to, you know and then it allows you to do more if that makes thinking, like, you know, to go back to what we were talking about earlier about the people that are, like, twenty extra hours and have something that's working, and they feel like this need to, like, make a bunch of different ads.
1:25:10The it's not necessarily, like, a bad thing per se because it'll help you understand your market better if you do more research and all that. It's it's it's more of like, hey, this is just the easiest path to grow your business.
1:25:22And if you have something that's working, let's just spend more money on that, make more money from it. And to your point, yeah, like there's angles and there's variations.
1:25:33Don't go make a bunch of angles if you have one thing that's a 20 x cash rose. Probably don't need to do that, especially a $100 a day. But as we scale that, sure.
1:25:41If you go from a $100 a day to $2,000 a day, probably want a couple different variations of saying the same thing. Mhmm. That makes a lot of sense.
1:25:48Um, so I I think, you know, there's there's nuance there where it's like a lot of our creative testing. The reason why we're able to spend so much aside from the change that that that we made from a testing standpoint on the media buying side is also just like, hey, like we emphasize making a bunch of variations of stuff we know works, and it's much higher likelihood of working again.
1:26:09So show rates, what's working there? Yeah. Well That's a big one.
1:26:14That's a big one. Um, Yeah. So a couple of key things.
1:26:19Uh, the first thing is is I mean, and this is just like following all the basics.
1:26:24Like, let's just let's just recap the basics. It's like, number one, your booking window should be two days, three days maximum, um, with very, very few exceptions to that.
1:26:36Like, if you're like a founder doing all the sales calls and you have to have maybe four days or something, okay. Not ideal. Um, but, yeah, two days is, like, recommended.
1:26:46Also, this is a nuance thing, but rolling availability is so important.
1:26:52So rolling availability is when your calendar shows you the next couple days of open appointments rather than the next day the the next two days just period. Uh-huh. Because what happens is, like, you know, it'll be Friday morning.
1:27:04You're not taking sales calls Saturday, Sunday. And so now, you know, if you don't have rolling availability, it just shows you, hey. Here are your Friday appointments, and then that's it.
1:27:12Right? And, obviously, you know, this is kind of aside from share rate, but, uh, you ain't gonna book any calls if there's no availability.
1:27:19So let's fix that. On the note of share rate and availability, next thing is, and Hermosa says this all the time, is just opening up as many slots as possible on the calendar.
1:27:29Uh, this is especially prevalent, this mistake, uh, with smaller businesses, with smaller teams where it's like they have one sales rep or this them taking the calls and they have two hours open, you know, every morning or something and it's just that that doesn't work.
1:27:44So you want a good wide range of availability. I would especially preface, we've done a man, we should have pulled this up before, but, um, we've done a couple times. Share rate reports on per day as well as per time Yeah.
1:28:00And we found that like PST in the afternoon and evening, specifically PST time, pretty good show rates.
1:28:07Yeah. Like Yeah. That's usually better.
1:28:09So make sure your reps are talking that time. But, also, you know, if you have the ability to to do that report, I would do that. You know what's interesting?
1:28:15Matt found the same exact thing with dialer
1:28:18with answer rates in PST afternoons into evenings. So staggering reps to do that. We should we could do that, but, know.
1:28:27Yeah. My reps like to have dinner They do.
1:28:30And family time. We probably should do it though. Probably should probably should stick somebody on it.
1:28:35Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
1:28:37So that's on the, like, calendar side. I mean, other basic stuff is, you know, you gotta separate ads call share rate versus setter share rate. KPI for setter share rate is minimum 70%.
1:28:49We've seen it get much higher than that. Yours is, like, eighty five ninety. So
1:28:52that's just, the minimum. You could buy if you probably touch on Well, I'll just yeah. I was figuring I'd have to get to it at some point.
1:28:57So with setter show rate, I mean, TLDR is if your setter show rate's bad, it's usually not like everybody likes to think, oh, it's probably something they're saying at the very end when they're booking.
1:29:07I mean, it could there is certain things you should say. Okay? If you wanna know what they are, I have videos on that.
1:29:12You can just check them out on my YouTube. But the main thing is usually that your centers just aren't good, and they're just booking an appointment to get off a call.
1:29:22So if your centers are really good and, like, just think about it. If, like, you get cold call in the middle of the day, most cold calls are terrible, and you talk to an extremely intelligent person who makes you think about your business or your life differently, you're probably gonna show up on the next call.
1:29:36Yeah. If it's like, if you call the person, they're probably gonna have a 100% show rate, 90% show rate. Like, if you as the founder called the person.
1:29:42Yeah. So if we know that as an extreme, we know that, okay, that's probably true. So the number one thing is training your setters to make them good.
1:29:49A lot of times, it's just hiring better setters. Mhmm. You know?
1:29:52Uh, it's worth saying, I feel like I said on every podcast, like, the last, you know, freaking three months, is that we basically raised our setter pay by about 30%. It cost me an extra $25 a month.
1:30:04We got so much per more production because we essentially were able to hire better setters Mhmm. Just by getting into a different trough of, like, the recruiting talent pool. And because our setters were, like, closer level, basically, setters, they booked so many more appointments that showed and closed at such a higher rate that we were able to reduce our ad spend by $250 a month for for basically a $25 investment.
1:30:25Yeah. So that was unreal, and it made the calendar way more efficient because the setter calls show more.
1:30:31So that's the whole setter deal. If you wanna know how to train your setters, I'm sure there's stuff on the channel. Uh, other basic mistakes that come up surprisingly
1:30:38a lot is just a complete lack of consistency in the funnel process, uh, for the for the for the lead and prospect, uh, where, like, they'll land on a like, let's say they're doing a VSL funnel.
1:30:51Land on a VSL page. It's like a white background, and they go to the application page, like blue. And then they go to like the thank you page and it's like orange.
1:30:58And it's just like Jeez. I mean, I've seen that I I realize.
1:31:01Yeah. You know? Another another one that weirdly doesn't happen as much as the colors thankfully, but like does happen sometimes is like someone will like they're in their stage of validating their offer.
1:31:11And then they they tested like three or four offers. Right? And they finally get one that's like, okay, this is working.
1:31:17And then they start scaling it and they're like, oh, crap. Like my share rate sucks. What's going on with my share?
1:31:22And then I audit it, and I'm like, well, bro, your ad, the offer's this. Your VSL, the offer's, like, slightly different.
1:31:29It's this. But then you get to the application. You have your application from the first offer.
1:31:32Completely different offer. Like, completely different pain points Mhmm. Desire, like, everything.
1:31:36And then guess what your confirmation page is from your second offer. It's just like, dude, don't you think people are a little bit confused? Yeah.
1:31:42You know? Yeah. So surprisingly,
1:31:45uh, common. Yeah. Better ads gen not generally, always lead to better show rates.
1:31:50Yes. Yes. And we even do something.
1:31:52You have to do our audit system to be able to do it, um, because it's kinda complicated. But every two weeks, we look at show rate per campaign. Yes.
1:32:00And because we're able to do that, we have identified sometimes. It's it's a more of a leading metric than waiting forty five to sixty days in a bunch of accrued spend to look at CAC. Yes.
1:32:11Because, you know, with Hiros, you can look at cost per acquisition per campaign, but it gets the statistical significance. Let's say if your CAC is $3.
1:32:18Yes. You're gonna have to spend, like, $20, probably $30, in my opinion, because also all the sales don't necessarily log to the right ad. Correct.
1:32:25So you're gonna spend a bunch of money to figure out which campaigns have the best CAC, and it's tough because sometimes they'll get three sales in a week, so other times they'll get zero, you know, or did they really get zero and it just didn't log? So but you can look at show rate per campaign, and if the show rate per I mean, we've seen it to where you have show rate per campaign is at 30%.
1:32:44Yeah. I just know that's not gonna work. I've had other ones that are 70%.
1:32:47You probably know that's gonna work. Right? And so but it also shows because a lot of b to c people will get terrible show rates.
1:32:54I'll look at their ads and I'm like, yeah. But you're just getting scammed traffic. Like, it's really bad.
1:32:59But also talk about, uh, what they should do with email, SMS
1:33:03before lead nurture Yes. Stuff like that. Well, before I hit that, actually, the note of doing that thing, new version of SalesKick, we'll be able to do that in Hiros natively Nice.
1:33:12Which is pretty sick. So that'll be great. Uh, on the on the note of emails and SMS, um, so there's kind of the way I look at it, there's like three different reminder sequences for ads calls you need to have.
1:33:26First is just your basic automated communications. Uh, this is, like, your, you know, automated messages that literally is, like, very clearly automated. It's like, your appointment was booked at this date.
1:33:37You know? Do not reply or whatever. Right?
1:33:40Same thing with your email. Like, your booking system probably sends out some basic emails. It's just like, here's your appointment.
1:33:45You know? Then you have, what what we do in HubSpot, but you have, like, your, you know, actual written copy emails.
1:33:53You know? For us, what we do is we introduce the sales rep at their meeting.
1:33:58You know? We just have, like, kinda some similar copy that pre frames them as an expert and all that and, you know, gets them bought into that a little bit as well as, you know, continually sends them our homework video or, like, kind of confirmation page to get them more bought into the agenda and what they're gonna, you know, learn or, you know, etcetera.
1:34:12Um, and then we have our LNS system, which is a whole another stream of communication. So LNS stands for lead nurture specialist. And the goal of that is like, you know, first and foremost, this isn't rocket science, but would you guess?
1:34:27People who write down and confirm via text that they're gonna show up to a call show up more often. Yes. You know, like rocket science.
1:34:34Right? Mhmm. And so, um, a lot of times, you know, the reason why a lot of people struggle with share rate is it's like a lagging metric that could have, you know, as Hermosa says, there's no one silver bullet.
1:34:45There's a 100 golden BBs. So there could be like a 100 factors that affect your share rate. And because it's a lagging metric, it can be really difficult to identify what the core problems are.
1:34:54Well, what's nice about having an LNS is we we track internally like, hey, we know our confirmation rate, meaning people who respond to the LNS and say they're going to attend the appointment is let's just say 50%. And when somebody confirms the appointment, we know that their chances of showing up are like 90%. Right?
1:35:11So okay, cool. Well, guess what? Now we can instead of having to, like, guess what affects share rate, we can just split test our copy when we send the messages, the vehicle in which we use, like, we text on SMS?
1:35:23IMessage. We talked about that. Right?
1:35:24Mhmm. WhatsApp, you know, etcetera, to increase that confirmation. Right?
1:35:28Because we know, hey. When people confirm this, they show up at 90%. Right?
1:35:31So it takes it from a lagging metric and gives you something actionable on the front end to to do that directly correlates. Right? So that's been huge.
1:35:39Couple tips on that that, like, universally work really well is number one, we send the initial block of text. And I say block intentionally because human beings do not typically send massive paragraphs in one text out of out of the blue to somebody.
1:35:54It's usually like, hey, Cole, and then send. Then, you know, this is da da da da. Send.
1:35:58Right? Um, but when you send that Intercepts to make it personalized for the person, like, legitimately from their application, that typically yields higher confirmation rates.
1:36:10We've tested, and this is both at closures.io as well as at sales cake with a bunch of clients. Um, you know, the difference between confirmation rate and what we call confirmation show rate, um, based on at what point do you confirm.
1:36:24So meaning do if when the person books, do you confirm immediately? Do you wait till twenty four hours before? Do you wait till five hours before?
1:36:30Whatever. And what we've seen is that it's almost always better to confirm as soon as possible. And the reason why is your confirmation rate will be significantly higher, obviously.
1:36:42Now, the drawback to that is your confirmation share rate will be a little bit lower. Like, obviously, if you confirm an appointment two hours before the appointment and someone says, yes, they're going to show up. Right?
1:36:52But in general, the throughput
1:36:54overall The overall shows as high. Yes. So
1:36:57so that's that. And then if you have a, you know, good LMS system like we have at SalesKick and what we've built out at closures.io, it's not just about confirming them one time, but it's continually nurturing them throughout the process between when they book them on actual calls.
1:37:10Sending more stuff. Yeah. Yep.
1:37:11Um, so that's on the reminder side. I didn't miss anything.
1:37:16Well, there's email.
1:37:17Well, the basic email reminders. Right? The only thing I do wanna add we actually haven't run the secondary test on this because we forgot.
1:37:24But, uh, I did notice our show rates have been a lot better the last month or two. Yeah. Um, and this could just be for no reason at all.
1:37:34Or remember, one of the things I noticed is we would send, like, six or seven content based emails before because it's like we wanna hammer them with a lot of you know, I kinda got this from Jeremy Haynes too. It's like you wanna kinda hammer them with a lot of emails.
1:37:46If you make them valuable and it's just content based, they can't get really mad that you're sending them content. Yeah.
1:37:53But, like, by the nature of you sending them valuable stuff, you also you also are reminding them about the appointment. Yeah. So I started doing that and sending them a bunch of videos, and then I realized, okay, they're opening the emails a lot.
1:38:03They're clicking a little bit, but then they're not even watching the videos. So I, like, tracked it all the way through.
1:38:08Yeah. So then I was like, let me just have all of the content just be written Yeah. In emails.
1:38:14And I don't know if that is a direct correlation in show rates, but since we did implement that Shorts have been much better. Um, the show rates have been much better. Yeah.
1:38:22And regardless, even if they're not better, I guarantee more people consume the content because it's written. Yeah.
1:38:30So, like, I don't know why you wouldn't do that. So we do send a pre call video. Yes.
1:38:34We do send one video still that's like the main video we want them to watch. That's the one we also send through the LNS, and a lot of people do watch that. Yeah.
1:38:41But like the other stuff I would send them on like, you know, I had a training on how to go from zero to eight figures and this and that. They're, like, you know, thirty, forty minute videos. They just weren't watching that, so we just converted that into text.
1:38:51Yeah. And then even if they read half of that, that's more consumption
1:38:55than it you know, they weren't even watching the video, basically. Yeah. In general, like, if you want to improve your share rates, it's kind of a to make very simplified, three steps.
1:39:05Number one is implement best practices in your marketing material, in your funnel, etcetera, to ensure you're, you know, you're getting the lead in the best possible place that you can from a Sherry perspective.
1:39:17That's like the first third. Second third is do the exact same thing. Implement best practices, uh, for your, like, pre call process.
1:39:25Right? And, you know, best practices are a lot of stuff we just covered. There's probably a little bit more, but in general, if you do what we say, that'll help a lot.
1:39:33Then the last third is where I think people can get stuck when they've already done those two things, and it requires a very detailed level of tracking and, uh, data, you know, just review. We've been able to do that obviously at clipers.io.
1:39:46But like what you just said is a great example, which is like, yeah, sending them content's great. We found for our audience that actually having them read it yields a better result. In order for us to figure that out, we ought to not only track the open rate, click through rate, but also the show rate of the people who read the emails.
1:40:00Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:40:01Who watch the video, etcetera. So and I think that's where people can get stuck with show rate issues is, you know, to solve a marketing problem, to solve a sales problem, takes a very different part of your brain than solving, like, a deep operational issue.
1:40:15Yeah. And,
1:40:16um, and yeah. So I just you know, it just goes back to, like, you need a good operating system. You need good tracking.
1:40:22Yeah. And to be clear with show rates, the overarching goal is, yes, to increase the show rate, but it really is to increase the number of live calls held per month Mhmm.
1:40:31Per closer. And so this is where the double and single booking comes in, which is we look at all of this data.
1:40:37A a part of the data that we look at is you could even look at how much they interact with emails, but we actually don't do that. We look at, do they confirm? Do they not confirm?
1:40:45That's, like, the biggest one. Right? And then we also look at stuff in their application.
1:40:50So there's different show rates depending on what they put in revenue level. Mhmm. There's different show rates even depending on the the handle of the email they use, Gmail versus company email versus Yahoo, AOL, whatever.
1:41:01Mhmm. Company email is by far the best. Gmail is actually the worst.
1:41:04Yahoo and I AOL for whatever, like, second. You know?
1:41:07But company email was the best. There's even okay. What type of offer do they have that could relate to the show rate?
1:41:13Uh, employee count could relate to the show rate. Uh, the length of response categorized into different buckets. Do they respond to the open ended sections with one word versus a lot of words versus, like, paragraphs?
1:41:23It's like, I think we found the middle one Yeah. Was the highest show rate. So if you identify segments of what their application data is and you identify, okay, that segment is, in our case, we like above 67 and a half percent, then we let that stay on the calendar single booked.
1:41:40Correct. And then stuff that maybe is not as much, we double book. Yeah.
1:41:43And ultimately, our goal, and this is a hard science to get, is the optimal number I mean, it really depends on your actual show rate. But if you know what your net show rate is, for us, we know the optimal number of double bookings is about 40% of the calendar.
1:41:57Mhmm. Right? After that, it's just too many live calls, and there's diminishing returns.
1:42:01Below that, the closers aren't getting enough live calls. We we also have segmented by source. So we know that we not weirdly.
1:42:08I mean, this makes sense. But if they come from the website. Mhmm.
1:42:11Even if they originally came from an ad, but then they went to the website Mhmm. And then they booked, that's like a we always single book it show rate.
1:42:21We also know, similarly, if they even come from an ad but then book through Instagram, whether it's through DM or link in bio, that's always a single book.
1:42:30And those are usually probably higher information people, so they've just done more research before they booked. That's my I don't care what the reason is. I just know that's the reason.
1:42:37Yeah. Yeah. Or sorry.
1:42:38I just know that they do show higher. So those are all single booked. Yeah.
1:42:41And a lot of times, think a 100 k a month are also plus people are single booked. YouTube people, single booked. But then a lot of other people depending on what they put, whether they confirm, don't confirm, a bunch of other data points you can aggregate together might be single booked or might be double booked.
1:42:56Correct. Right? So that's the whole like, if you really wanna have a fine tuned sales ops system, you have to have that all in place.
1:43:04And I know you're not gonna be nice enough to say it, but SalesKick basically does that to essentially, does all of that in a software that's that's pretty cheap, way cheaper than you could do to build a sales ops department.
1:43:17So Yeah. You can go to salessaleskillskick.com.
1:43:20Saleskick.com. If you wanna check that plug, sir. Yeah.
1:43:22Yeah. You're not gonna plug it, so I had to plug it. I appreciate it.
1:43:24On on on the note of, um, data points that correlate to Sherry too, one thing that's really interesting because we we obviously, there's some companies that do this now. We're one of those companies that has the financial data piece. And we've seen that by and large, uh, credit score can directly correlate to share rates.
1:43:41Yeah. So which kinda makes sense if you think about it. Like, it's a level of responsibility and all that.
1:43:45Um, so just easy trend to remember is anything 700 above,
1:43:50significantly higher share rates than anything below 700. There's another data point you can factor in. Exactly.
1:43:55And you can also, like, kind of combine and it's almost like, you know, how an audience targeting with Facebook. This is getting pretty advanced, but, like, you know how you could do, like, I want them to follow Tony Robbins and and they have to follow Grant Cardone and they have to follow this person. It's almost the same.
1:44:09Like, you could be like, they have to confirm. Like, what's the sure rate of people who confirm and put this in their application?
1:44:15And then those two things by themselves might not be above the threshold of single booking Yeah. But together could be.
1:44:23And again, like, you're not gonna be able to do that on your own without, like, an actual software system to do it. Correct. So
1:44:29moving on, you had some questions for me. I do. I do.
1:44:32So we were talking yesterday at dinner, and I know this preview a couple days ago, you had a dinner with some of the larger names in The States. Dean Graziosi,
1:44:42Jeremy Byner, Pace Morby was there. Uh, John was there. Uh, Chandler Bolt was there, and Brian Brandon Pulliam was there.
1:44:49I think I hit everybody. If I forgot somebody, I'm sorry. Well, it it's funny.
1:44:53You're still you're still important, I swear. You were, uh, you were sharing some of the lessons that Dean was sharing with with y'all.
1:45:00The man. Yeah. So well, I mean, it's it's I like I said yesterday, I can't like, I'm gonna say what he said, and it's gonna sound super basic because I'm not Dean.
1:45:12And he just the way he would frame it and say it, it it was just dropping bombs. Like, they were just amazing.
1:45:19But, you know so the thing about him that is I respect so much is he's been in the industry, like, legitimately, the direct response industry, coaching, helping people, whatever you wanna say it, for thirty five years.
1:45:32Right? Which it's like Dean and Tony, and then there's basically, like, no like, there's there's a huge gap between whoever the next people are.
1:45:42So, you know, he started in legitimately, like, infomercials with real estate. Then he's been through the auto webinar book funnel phase where you do the book to the auto webinar to the high ticket thing.
1:45:52He's done the challenges, the affiliate promotions. He's done a I mean, he's literally done everything, which one of the things he said that was really interesting is, uh, after all that experience, he's just seen over time that everybody likes to cling on to tactics, whether it's this AI thing or it's low ticket or it's high ticket or it's this funnel.
1:46:12And he was like, it's all bullshit. He's like, I've been doing this thirty five years. There's never been a time where something like, everything works.
1:46:21He's like, everything literally works. It's just what works for you. They're all tools.
1:46:25What's your problem? Find the right tool. And, like, how proficient are you at using the tool?
1:46:30Yeah. You know? So, like, everything has worked, and then things also just come back around again and again.
1:46:36Like, now, like, were talking about live webinars are kind of coming back. Yeah. I feel like the high ticket funnel was out, then it was all low ticket.
1:46:44Now it's kind of, like, also back again. Yeah. You know, there's just so much stuff that just comes round and round and round.
1:46:51Another thing that he said was really interesting is, you know, most people have campaigns, not a company. Yeah.
1:46:56And so he was talking about, you know, when people and you see this all the time. Like, they come out of nowhere.
1:47:03They hit a million or 2,000,000 a month or 5,000,000 a month even. And everybody's like, oh my gosh. Look at this person.
1:47:08They're amazing. It's like you have to weigh the person in a timeline and not just in, you know, what's their revenue right now.
1:47:18Oh, they just came out of nowhere for the last two years. Because so many people, they might be able to get a great marketing campaign.
1:47:24Doesn't mean they can, number one, run a business. They can do it. They can, uh, have a great team.
1:47:29They can be a great leader. They can do right by their clients. And, you know, that really resonates because I've just worked with so many clients over the years who skyrocket like crazy, and then boom, they're just gone.
1:47:41It's like, where did that person go? And and and sometimes even the the fact that they skyrocketed so fast is like an indicate I mean, they they just they left as soon as fast as they came up.
1:47:52Yeah. You know? Because they can't build the infrastructure and everything behind it.
1:47:56So, really, longevity in this game, I think, is the coolest thing and the thing that you have to respect most about people. And it's just funny.
1:48:04I mean, it from his perspective, makes sense. Like, he's been doing it thirty five years. He's probably not even gonna, recognize you as a legit person until you're in, like I don't even know.
1:48:13Maybe at least you're five, but maybe even longer than that. I don't know what his barrier is. But, you know, I've seen that so many times with clients.
1:48:19Eight figures, boom, gone. Eight figures have a client revolt and FTC Yeah. Or whatever.
1:48:24Well, it's sad it's sad because it doesn't have to be that way. Mean, obviously, you you kinda blew up and you had a skyrocketing moment and, like, you're you're still doing great. Like, you're running a good company.
1:48:34And there's there's there's examples of that too. Like, it doesn't have to be that way, but I think people just, you know, they just focus on the the wrong stuff and yeah.
1:48:44I I don't know if you have a take on, like, a deeper take on what causes that to happen. Well, I I think just they grow faster than their skill sets allow
1:48:54them to build the infrastructure to support the Right? So, like, they and the other thing is that, well, so on the first thing, what I mean by that is they're good at marketing and sales.
1:49:06They grow really fast, but where they lack is systems, client fulfillment, leadership. They lack on back end, uh, certain things like that.
1:49:13And so their clients just all, like, don't get results or their team always leaves. Like, team churn is something that'll just set you back and back and back and The other aspect of that remind me of the question because I had another I had a part two.
1:49:26Oh, well, just what do you think causes the Yeah. It's the skill sets and then oh, man. I had something that was also really good.
1:49:33It'll come back to me. Well, one one I can add is just, like, failed partnerships.
1:49:37Well, that is a huge one. Yeah. Yeah.
1:49:39That's, like, super fifty fifty. Yeah. A lot especially with younger people.
1:49:42Yeah. You know? You just get in a partnership and it's just the wrong person.
1:49:46Expectations aren't set up from the beginning. Also, both people come into money really quickly, and then Yeah. People change when they get money.
1:49:53Yeah. And then then, yeah, you you set up the classic,
1:49:56yeah, we're we're gonna be exactly fifty fifty partners. So if anything happens, we're gonna be stuck. Yeah.
1:50:01You know? That's what I did. Yeah.
1:50:03There you go. There you go. Cool, man.
1:50:06Yeah. Last question I thought would be kind of fun to end it with is obviously, dude, you've been a part of so many different offers.
1:50:12We've worked on a ton together, obviously.
1:50:14And I'm just curious, like I remember that what I was gonna say. Okay. I remember what it was.
1:50:18I was like, I'm not gonna let this go. The other thing and I've noticed this a lot recently. Morse I mean, it was always been going on.
1:50:25I've just always realized it. But the second thing in terms of why people they flutter out is it has surprised me how many people in this space just care about adding zeros.
1:50:36So I was telling you this yesterday. Yeah. Adding zeros and just trying to get to 5,000,000 a month, 7,000,000 a month, or whatever million a month that is the big number for them.
1:50:45Yeah. I get it, you know, because when you make a YouTube video and you're trying to, like, get people to understand why they should listen to you, you wanna state your I mean, I do the same shit. I I I get it.
1:50:54It works better in marketing if you do it. So you're kind of always trying to, like, you know, build your authority. That's part of the marketing message most of the time.
1:51:02Um, but so many people chase the big revenue or cash collection figure. I mean, heck, a lot of people, they just report contracted, not collected, which if you're a corporation and you're working with enterprise businesses, that's fair because they legally will pay or they know because they don't wanna get a lawsuit.
1:51:20Yeah. But, you know, if you're working with, like, small business owners doing 10 to $20.30 k a month, Like, if you're I don't care that you lock them in for a three month a three year contract.
1:51:30Like, they're not gonna pay that. Right? Uh, a lot of them are not gonna pay.
1:51:33They're gonna churn. Right? But you're reporting revenue and not collected.
1:51:37So there's people who do that. But even if it is collected and they're reporting that, they just report that and they're like, oh, we're this big. We're this big.
1:51:44We're this big. And then behind the scenes and I know this a lot because my advantage is, you know, we have a recruiting company.
1:51:51So when there's mass exoduses of companies, I get the recruits, and then, you know, we just kinda hear what happens with the companies. Yeah. And a lot of them are just, oh, yeah.
1:52:00There was no profit, so they cut the staff by 40%. And I'm like, okay. Well, that's what you'd probably get for scaling so fast, but people just wanna be big.
1:52:09They wanna add the zeros. And that's another thing Dean said is, like, you know, he literally went through that phase at a certain time where, you know, he got all the way up, I think, in one business to 200,000,000.
1:52:19This is way back in the real estate days. And he was like, I was making literally the same amount of money as I was making at 50. And at 50, I had less stress, and I was getting my clients better results.
1:52:27You know? So I've thankfully, I've always been really vigilant about margins because you can't take revenue and deposit it into Chase.
1:52:37You can't take units. You can't Chase Chase Bank doesn't they don't they don't accept units contracted or your top line cash collected.
1:52:46They only accept profit. And I wanna deposit into Chase Bank. Yes.
1:52:50So I've always been like, I wanna grow the profit. And then sometimes I tell people, you know, what our profit's been over the years.
1:52:57They're like, oh, man. You're so good at the profit thing. I'm like, I don't know.
1:52:59I'm just trying to run a business.
1:53:01I just wanna make money. Well, it's so funny because it's like, this industry is so well known for being a cash flow business,
1:53:08and then people don't focus on cash flow. Yes. And that's the other thing that he said too.
1:53:12He gave this, uh, spiel about gratitude, which sounds so basic. The way he did it though, I was like, yeah.
1:53:19I'm I was like, I gotta be more grateful. But also just how, uh, there is just few so few businesses where you can really you know, if you go into the tech space and you tell somebody, like, what your profit is or what your cash flow is in a business like this, they're always like, oh my god.
1:53:35Like, I wish they're like, I wish I had I wanna start a coaching business. And then our our space is like, I wanna start a tech business. You know?
1:53:42Yes. Of course. And both work, obviously, and both are great.
1:53:45And tech is a bigger opportunity vehicle, you know, clearly from market valuation and exits and generational wealth level. But, I mean, they you know, you're you're delaying a lot of gratification with profits.
1:53:57When I, uh, you know, a couple years ago,
1:54:01I brought my business partner, SalesKeg, who's from the technology SaaS space, to a boardroom event. Mhmm. And he left.
1:54:07He was like, dude, he literally his exact words were, you guys found, like, this little weird matrix of the world where you can just make a bunch of money. That's exactly where it sounds like. Yeah, dude.
1:54:16Yeah. Welcome to info. Running ads.
1:54:19And it's not even really info.
1:54:21It's I call it now because I'm trying to think of, like, what is our industry even called? Yeah. Because it's not really info.
1:54:29Info assumes that you're selling information.
1:54:32Yeah. That's true. And
1:54:34you gotta have a really amazing, new, unique thing nobody's ever heard of that AI you can't prompt AI now.
1:54:42You can't go to Google to actually sell information. I think that's dead. Mhmm.
1:54:47I think what it really is is we're in and is it the high ticket space where, like, first of all, that just sounds terrible. It sounds like a scam. And then, you know, it's like, oh, we're high I I just hate that name.
1:55:02And so I really would call our space the online services economy. Like, I think that's what it really is. Because if I think about who I I I work with the industry, and what's the requirements for businesses that I work with outside of certain revenues and, you know, they gotta be ready for a salesperson, etcetera, is that they sell a service that is high priced and, generally, they sell it online.
1:55:23Granted, I can also work with in person people. Yeah. But, generally, they're selling it online to anybody in The United States or potentially Canada, big five countries, etcetera.
1:55:32So I really feel like it's the online services economy. Because even if you sell b to c, like, take somebody who's doing a health or a dating or whatever, they're not just selling them a course.
1:55:41They're selling them a lot of like, you have to have the support, the coaching, all that stuff anyways Yeah. Which is a service. Yeah.
1:55:47So I really think it is the online services economy Right.
1:55:51Not the high ticket space, which sounds like a scam. And, um, certainly not info because, I mean, we're not even selling info anymore.
1:56:01Yeah. People only wanna go through modules. I know.
1:56:03It's like, I could probably remove the I could probably I mean, it would we we need the modules. I could probably remove them though and like, I we wouldn't make less sales. I'll tell you that.
1:56:12They they don't want modules.
1:56:13That's true. Yeah. Alright, dude.
1:56:15Well, last thing I had just because I thought it'd be kind of fun to end with. I'm I'm curious. Mhmm.
1:56:18And I'm gonna share my story. Think it'll be funny. Is, uh, what's in your all of your years marketing, different businesses, stuff we worked on together, yourself before getting into the online services economy?
1:56:28Yeah. I know you had an agency. I think you did some econ.
1:56:31Like, I don't know. Oh, jeez. Ugh.
1:56:32Like literally everything you've ever done. What is the most embarrassing
1:56:36or dumbest marketing mistake that you've ever made? So I have I told you about the t shirts? So okay.
1:56:43I'll just tell you. Yeah. So as I was just there there was I had, like, kind of two different eras as a sales rep.
1:56:49There was the because I had an agency, and I I ran out of money. So my initial goal of getting into sales actually was to just get better at sales, make money so I could, like, start my agency again or start some other business that was gonna make money.
1:57:04So, like, the first era that was kind of the first era. So I was selling and trying to get better at sales.
1:57:10This is really my first sales job. After I went to my second sales job, I I I cut this out. Yeah.
1:57:14But I would, like, sell, and then if I had a no show, I'd, like, work on my little online business, You know? And so which is like, that that's that's bad. Don't do that.
1:57:22Okay? Like, I mean but back then, you know, the culture was was different back then because, like, you didn't like, it was all about inbound and Yeah.
1:57:32Oh, we're not gonna follow-up or we're not gonna do outbound to get clients. It's more about, like, you booking in and why should we work with you?
1:57:41Like, that's kinda like was the meta in the space, which is also terrible. Like, it just makes no sense. But anyways, I just was young and I was, like, not really fully bought in to loving sales yet.
1:57:52So in my downtime, I was dabbling with other businesses. And I I couldn't do an agency because you need to do sales calls and it's too much fulfillment.
1:58:00So I was like, I'm gonna do ecommerce. So I bought this 30 k mastermind. And in that, there was, like, different tracks you could do.
1:58:08And I was like, I'm gonna sell I was like, I'm gonna do the print on the man t shirt track. So I create the way it was taught is you create a Facebook page, and then you put out a bunch of, like, meme type of content to generate a following.
1:58:22And then once you have a little bit of a following this is when Facebook pages, like, got a little bit more engagement, like fan pages Mhmm. Is you would pull the audience on, like, different shirt designs. So you would, like, reverse engineer the product before you release the product.
1:58:35So you would create them through 99 design competitions. Okay. And then you would pull a lot of the designs through, um, the audience, and then you would feedback loop that into 99 designs.
1:58:44So, like, that took me, like, a whole month, and I'm like, I created the perfect t shirt for my niche. And then so I launched this t shirt to my Facebook audience. Nobody buys.
1:58:55Yeah. And then I'm like, okay. I'm gonna run ads.
1:58:57Yeah. So I'm like running ads to my t shirt, and nobody's buying.
1:59:02Like, I'm spending, like I spent, like, probably a grand or $2 on ads. Like, nobody bought like, I had, like, three add to carts. Nice.
1:59:09And so I'm like, goddamn it. I'm gonna get a fucking sale out of one of these add to carts.
1:59:16And I was a sales guy, you know, so I was like, okay. I called all three add to carts and I only I got to call them over the course of days.
1:59:24I finally got, uh, an answer from an old woman. And eventually, after about thirty minutes, I hard closed her into the t shirt for $7.
1:59:36And so that was it wasn't I wish I could say that was my first sale, but it wasn't my first sale. It was, uh, I had made many high ticket sales, but I was very proud of that t shirt.
1:59:48And, you know Yeah, dude. And what was funny is I ended up buying one of my own t shirts because I was like, wanna see maybe I'll wear this t shirt. This thing, like, the print was, like, over here.
1:59:58Like, I'm not kidding.
2:00:00It was legitimately fucked. It was like like this lady, this old lady, I mean, the best she was doing with that t shirt was wearing it to bed because you weren't gonna wear that in public.
2:00:10It's like the logo was literally over here. Yeah. The only way that would make that story better it'd be if she charged back.
2:00:16She didn't charge back. She didn't charge back. That would be pretty funny.
2:00:20Yeah. Mine mine was from the same thing very, very beginning of my, uh, career. This is like my first month running YouTube ads ever.
2:00:29It was, like, 2018. Okay? And I had this, like, little, you know, auto it was actually I think it was still live at that time.
2:00:37Webinar I was doing. And what we would do is we'd rent email lists with like, you know, we're in the real estate niche, so it's pretty easy to find email list in our local area and we do it that way.
2:00:46And then joined Becker's mastermind back when he was doing the his info mastermind before the SaaS one and taught me YouTube ads. So I'm, doing YouTube ads.
2:00:56And the way he taught it was, when you get started, you do manual bidding. Like, you get things rolling. It's, like, way back in the Don't do that today, obviously, but way back in day.
2:01:03So I set things up manual bidding. And dude, like, it worked. Like, we skyrocketed.
2:01:09We did, a 100 k the first month. I was like, oh, you know, I was, like, 21 or 20, and I was like, you know, I thought I was, a billionaire. And then, the, you know, I was like biz op and it was like, you know, like the old school Alex Becker ads where it's like the drawing on the screen.
2:01:25Yeah. Yeah. You're trying to draw on the screen.
2:01:27Yeah. Was drawing on the screen. And so like the second month, you know, I had, like I was spending, like, maybe a thousand dollars a day, maybe on ads, and which was, like, a lot for us.
2:01:38Holy shit. You know? Um, well, the second month, like, maybe a third or half of my ads got rejected.
2:01:45You know? And that's the first time I ever went through that. So I'm just, like, panicking.
2:01:49You know? I was just like, oh my god. And I was in this mastermind with Becker.
2:01:53And so I was in the group, and I was just like, guys, I need help. Please help me. And Becker, I mean, shout out to him, dude.
2:02:01Because now that I'm on this side, like, I've been in the industry for a while, I'm like, cannot believe you did this in the first place. But he got on a call with me, one on one, on a Skype call. This was, like, pre Zoom.
2:02:11Skype. Skype call, dude. Gets on with me.
2:02:16We're on for five minutes. And he goes, yeah, pull up your ad account.
2:02:20He's like, okay. Where do you have your pixel set up? And I go, pixel.
2:02:25I don't have the pixel set up. He goes, what the fuck are you doing, dude? And just for like, the entire five minutes was just him cursing me out, calling me stupid.
2:02:33And he's like, I'm not even gonna fucking help you. You can figure it out. Just ended the call.
2:02:36No way. Yes. And I was like, I needed to hear that, dude.
2:02:40I was like, that was pretty bad. Wow. Did you ever tell him that later on?
2:02:44Well, dude, yeah, I worked with him for a long time, and I what what I realized was, a, I needed to hear that because I was being an idiot. And, b, he he gives direct feedback.
2:02:54So, you know, I I saw him not to that extreme because it was it was one on one with with with my call. But on group calls, but, like, later on when he had iron, he would do group calls and people would ask, like, stupid questions.
2:03:05He'd literally just be like, that was a stupid fucking question.
2:03:09But I was like, let's go, dude. I was in iron. We were all in iron, man.
2:03:12Yeah. Iron was great. It was.
2:03:15Yep. Cool. Alright.
2:03:16That's a wrap. Saleskick.com if you guys wanna check out Yes. The best show rate system in the world.
2:03:22Brand new form of booking system just released. Alright. We'll see you guys.
2:03:25If you enjoyed this podcast, you're also probably gonna like this podcast I also did recently that you can check out by clicking the screen right here.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The title is the hook: $150 million in cash collected from cold ads, distilled into a live tier list. Cole Gordon opens with a cold-open highlight reel of the spiciest lines — calling the trust recession one of the lamest excuses, admitting the best ad they ever ran was a red square — then hands the funnel rankings to his CMO Spencer Vaughan, who spends two hours grading every funnel he's spent real money on.
How they asked for the click.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
