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.
VSL Queen scaled to 8 figures by proving female on-camera talent nearly doubled ad conversion rates, then systematically targeting home service businesses with ruthless margin discipline.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- Agency owners stuck between $1M and $5M who want a real case study on breaking through the next ceiling
- Founders running UGC or creative production businesses curious how niche positioning and talent strategy can drive 8-figure revenue
- Advertisers and media buyers who want the data behind why female on-camera talent outperforms in direct response
- Couples or partners co-running a business who want a candid look at how another team split ownership and scaled together
SKIP IF…
- Freelancers or solopreneurs not thinking about building a team — this conversation assumes agency infrastructure
- Viewers wanting quick agency tips — at 79 minutes this is a full journey interview, not a tactics video
The full version, fast.
VSL Queen, a husband-and-wife UGC agency, scaled to eight figures by discovering that female on-camera talent nearly doubled conversion rates for their clients' ads — then building a business around that single insight. The path from zero to $1M came through cold outreach and stacking social proof in info-marketing niches; from $1M to $5M through systematizing production and pricing discipline; from $5M to $10M by expanding into home service businesses while keeping marketing costs at roughly 10% of revenue. The conversation maps each growth stage including the specific hires that unlocked scale, margin discipline decisions, and why staying lean and profitable beat chasing revenue growth at any cost.
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.
00:33guestEmily
00:33guestAustin
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:50
01 · Cold open
Cole sets up the guests: Emily and Austin from VSL Queen, a UGC agency that scaled to 8 figures.
00:50 – 06:30
02 · Origin story
Emily filmed one of Austin's VSL scripts. Results nearly doubled. That insight became VSL Queen. Cold DM playbook landed first big-name clients.
06:30 – 12:30
03 · Authority stacking
Cole explains the Alex Becker pattern: land the best case studies in the industry first, everything else becomes downhill.
12:30 – 18:20
04 · What VSL Queen does for clients
Creative testing partner: strategy, scripting, casting 40+ female talents, editing, delivery to media buyer. Also helps with ad setup, lead filtering, funnel.
18:20 – 25:30
05 · Zero to $100K/month
Emily was running five jobs. $50/day messenger ads booking ~2 qualified calls/day. Pure product-market fit.
25:30 – 35:00
06 · Scaling to $500K/month
Raised prices. Expanded into home service. Identified top 10% of clients and repositioned marketing to attract only them.
35:00 – 43:00
07 · Staying lean at 10% marketing cost
Emily's constraint: marketing never above 10% of revenue. Competitors run 25-35%. Forces creative efficiency over checkbook marketing.
43:00 – 52:40
08 · Why home service beats coaches
Operators are married, mid-30s, kids, already have revenue, do not churn. Buyers are often wives. Female creative matches the buyer persona.
52:40 – 1:00:10
09 · Hitting 8 figures
Killed smallest package. Rev-share with 5-10% of clients. Lead aggregators in law, insurance, home service. Emily and Austin remained only closers.
1:00:10 – 1:06:40
10 · The 3M Framework for better ads
Messenger, Message, Money Math. Goal: 33% ad win rate vs 10-15% industry average. 100K Script Ad Vault for proven scripts.
1:06:40 – 1:12:20
11 · Building a funnel that converts
VSL funnel for info/agency. Three Cs: Call Out, Core Problem, Conversion Mechanism. Speak to problems only qualified buyers have.
1:12:20 – 1:16:20
12 · Does AI video work?
AI gets cheaper leads but lower quality-to-close. Cole hybrid: AI hook (5s) then proven UGC body. VSL Queen: real people still win on win rate.
1:16:20 – 1:18:34
13 · Working together as a married couple
Three years dating before business. Clear role split. Emily enforces 6PM cutoff. Vision: kidify the business.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Swapping a male founder's face for a female UGC creator in the same ad nearly doubled bookings with zero additional ad spend.
- The cold DM that built VSL Queen's first client base was eight words: 'Would you be totally opposed to testing a woman in your ads?'
- An 8-figure UGC agency keeps marketing costs to 10% of revenue — referrals and reputation carry the rest.
- Spring is consistently the best time of year for info-marketer ad costs and lead quality, not because of better creative, but because of market seasonality.
- Working with one well-connected client who can introduce you to 10 others is more efficient than converting 10 cold leads independently.
- A husband-and-wife team scaling to 8 figures in a service business proved the model before hiring — one proven script, one female face, one dramatic result.
- Expanding from info marketers into home service businesses gave VSL Queen a second market when the first started getting crowded.
- The unique mechanism — female on-camera talent converting better than founder faces — only needed to work once to become a repeatable, defensible positioning.
- Agency owners who are in all their own content are leaving a high-leverage testing opportunity untouched by never running a female variant of their best-performing ad.
The face is not the whole ad.
VSL Queen playbook
Swapping to a female face nearly doubled conversions, but the real unlock was pairing that face change with proven scripts, correct market targeting, and a 10% marketing cost ceiling that forced efficiency.
- Build an ad vault: any ad that generates 100K+ goes into a doc. Reference it before writing new scripts.
- Aim for 33% win rate on creative. If you are at 10-15%, you are at industry average, not a competitive advantage.
- Use the 3M Framework before killing a concept: change Messenger OR Message OR Money Math before declaring the idea dead.
- Track marketing cost as a percentage of cash collected. Above 20% means your ads need to improve, not your budget.
- Qualify leads through the problem you speak to, not just the callout. A problem only a 1M+ business has will self-select the pixel toward 1M+ businesses.
- Home service operators have better LTV and lower churn than coaches. Nobody is saturating that space with great creative yet.
- Use AI video as the first 5 seconds only then cut to proven UGC. One winning ad becomes 20 test variations at near-zero incremental cost.
Terms worth knowing.
- UGC (User-Generated Content) agency
- A production company that creates short-form video ads styled to look like authentic content from real users — typically filmed by on-camera talent in a casual, first-person format — rather than polished studio commercials.
- VSL (Video Sales Letter)
- A long-form video ad, typically 5-30 minutes, designed to walk a cold or warm prospect through a persuasive sales argument and drive a specific conversion action such as booking a call or making a purchase.
- Female creative
- In direct-response advertising, a video ad where the on-camera talent is a woman — a format tested here because it nearly doubled conversion rates compared to male-presenter equivalents in the same offer category.
- Cost per qualified call
- The average advertising spend required to book one phone or Zoom sales call with a prospect who meets the minimum criteria for a high-ticket offer, used to measure paid ad efficiency.
- CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)
- The senior executive responsible for overseeing all marketing strategy, campaigns, and team operations within a company.
- Info marketer
- A business that sells knowledge-based products such as online courses, coaching programs, or memberships, typically using paid ads and high-ticket sales calls to acquire customers.
- Home service business
- A local company that provides hands-on services at a customer's property — such as roofing, HVAC, plumbing, or landscaping — distinguished from online-first businesses by its geographic and in-person nature.
- 8 figures
- Revenue between $10,000,000 and $99,999,999 annually — a shorthand used in business contexts to describe scale without stating an exact number.
Things they pointed at.
06:15channelAlex Becker
07:10channelJoel Kaplan
1:14:50toolCling AI video
1:15:20toolFathom
Lines you could clip.
02:10
“We didn't spend any more on ads, and we're probably getting about double the amount of bookings. The only thing was just the face change.”
06:12
“Once you get those best case studies, everything after that is like so downhill.”
35:24
“Why was our marketing cost percentage 11% when our goal is 10%? It almost puts a constraint on it where you have to think, okay, how should I operate differently to fit within that constraint?”
1:00:14
“Our goal is a 33% win rate on ads. Every three ads we make, one of them can profitably buy. Industry average would be like 10 to 15%.”
1:17:00
“We call it kidifying the business. I wanna be able to take a tennis lesson at 10AM.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 12:30denseOrigin story and founding insight
12:30 – 18:20steadyService delivery and client onboarding
18:20 – 52:40denseScaling journey 0 to 8 figures
35:00 – 43:00denseMarketing cost discipline and operations
43:00 – 52:40denseWhy home service beats coaches as clients
1:00:10 – 1:06:40denseAd creative frameworks 3M and win rate
1:06:40 – 1:12:20denseFunnel strategy and qualification
1:12:20 – 1:16:20steadyAI video pros cons hybrid
1:16:20 – 1:18:34steadyHusband-wife co-founder dynamic
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.
analogy
So most people think that agencies are a business that can't scale. But who I talked to today, Emily and Austin from BSL Queen, have a UGC agency specializing in producing female creatives, and they scaled their agency to over 8 figures extremely profitably.
So in this podcast, we break down their journey of scaling to 8 figures. So how do they get from 0 to 1,000,000, 1,000,000 to 5,000,000, 5,000,000 to 10,000,000, and their plan to scale even beyond that. So enjoy the podcast.
So you guys own a 8 figure UGC agency called VSL Queen. Right? Yep.
And so I'm curious, you know, especially with a UGC agency and, you know, the name VSL Queen, it's rather unique. So how did that all start? Because you guys do it together as husband and wife.
Correct? Correct. And so how did it all start?
How did you guys start working together? Like, what's kind of the story behind all of it? Yeah.
It it involves
Austin directly. He, um, so he had an agency for a while and would always be, like, walking around the house, like, filming all of his own ads for his agency. I made him a lot of content for the agency's clients.
They were they are a bunch of pet brands and, like, other supplement companies and stuff. So I was always making them a lot of, like, standard UGC content. Sure.
And then I was like, hey. I'm getting pretty good results for these brands.
What would happen if you gave me a script to film for, like, one of your own ads? And this was, like, I don't know, four, four and a half years ago. And at the time, ton of personal branded agency owners, info guys.
Like, it was always very standard for just, like, that personal brand to be the only person in their ads and
ended up taking one of his scripts and basically shot that video and, like, that ad did well. How much better did it do? Because and the main premise here as his agency or unique angle is that it's a lot of female creators Yeah.
In the ads. Right? So did that ad do significantly better, which is kinda like what spurred the idea?
A 100%. Yeah. I mean, it was it was like,
woke, insane amount of, like, new bookings, I I think, on calls. I I ended up filming the VSL two, which, hence, eventually where VSL Queen came from. Yeah.
But shot the VSL and yeah. I mean, they
yeah. Would you say? Do you remember, like, exactly?
Yeah. I mean, it was just like, wait. Is this actually a real result right here?
Like, this is like, we didn't spend any more on ads, and we're probably getting about double the amount of bookings. Okay. So it conversions twice as much.
It was a just It maybe right under double, but it was, like, right about double the results. And the only thing was just the face change.
Yeah. So then what ended up happening and this is actually where you're indirectly involved here.
I ended up filming my first like VSL for this offer. Right. And I was like, hey, Cole Gordon's testing out women in his ads right now.
Right. I was curious and ended up using my boyfriend.
He was my boyfriend at the time.
Ended up using my boyfriend's agency and kind of prove it prove the concept out. Yeah. And so, anyways, yeah, you you, like, were clearly onto something too at the time, but it was definitely a little more yeah.
Just guys weren't really doing that. Yeah. That's interesting.
So that I remember when we first started really testing it, it was in 2023 in the spring. K. And so 2023 in the spring for our industry, for whatever reason, is the best ad cost.
Like, we just are like, we're going through that action right now. Yeah. There's always just and your marketing team I mean, granted marketing team my marketing team does a phenomenal job.
But, also, like, I even remember when I was running the team back then, because this is before I had the CMO. Like, we thought we were just crushing it. Like, we're doing the best ads, all this stuff.
It's also a headwind or it's also a tailwind of spring for our industry is just the best. Mhmm.
I don't know why that is, but it's the best ad cost and the best lead quality. Not that the rest of the year is, like, garbage, but it's just the best time of the year. Agreed.
And so it was 2023, and we started just taking their proven scripts and testing women in the ads. And, I mean, same thing with us.
We probably got, like, 300 to $400 cost per qualified call. And I remember it being some one points, like, when we first did it, like, it breaking $90 Yeah.
Which was insane. So you guys had the same experience. And then, okay, continue the story.
You're like, wow. These these results were crazy. Yeah.
What if we do this for other clients? What happened next? I was actually working for another
agency at the time, and they started to prove out the concept with me as well-being in their ads as well as their clients' ads. So it was a chiro lead gen agency working with a bunch of chiropractors helping them get patients. Sure.
Ended up making some some of the chiropractors ads, but also was making that agency ads as well. Those did well. He ended up connecting me with Joel Kaplan, started making Joel a bunch of ads for a lot of his different offers.
Then I nailed a pretty killer DM script. And my my DM script was basically like, hey, agency or info guy.
You're in all your content. You're pretty good at what you do right now. Your ads look your ads look good, but would you be totally opposed to testing out a woman in your ads?
And I got, like, five yeses. And couple weeks, months down the road, like, five really killer case studies.
And that was really where we were like, okay. Let's
we're onto something here. Yeah. Emily Emily did a great job of landing some pretty big names in the Just three outreach and DMs.
Cold DMs, really good script. That compounded.
As soon as she nailed that, it really set us up to transition into ads. Just like, our ads did very well because of that first round of authority she built with some of the clients she was able to secure.
Yeah. And I think on top of that, I was in some of those bigger
named ads. I was either, like, speaking on those guys' behalf in the ads or, like, I was just kinda representing those brands. Yeah.
And then that started to lead to some pretty natural referrals and things like that too. Yep. So what what's really interesting what you guys did, it's very
it's very proven. I lost a lot across a lot of companies I see hit 8 figures. So I got this from Alex Becker, which you you know, you'll when I say it, you're gonna see you're like, oh, yeah.
He he did this exact thing. He did the same thing where he stacked, like, the you want the best case studies in the industry, basically.
And then once you get those, everything after that is, like, so downhill. Like, he did the what he focused on was he got, like, the Tony Robbins and then Dean Graziosi's and all that stuff and the Alex Ramosi's. But then he also got the best, like, media buyers and the best agencies.
And then when you say those people in your ads, it's pretty easy to like, everything just works so downhill from there. Yeah.
And I inadvertently I mean, it's kinda common sense, but I inadvertently did the same thing too because for me, I landed Frank Kern.
And then from him, I got Dean. And then from Dean, I got Tony. And then from Tony, it was like, everybody.
Right. But, you know, when I had the I remember filming the first ads and having those three as, like, the top authority in terms of my proof section. Yeah.
It just, like it almost allows you to capture the industry. And so anytime I think about and I try to tell people, like, to go into a new industry, a huge part of that is, like, who's the best people in that industry?
And then it can go kinda go downhill from there. And that was exactly, like, the the bigger agency guys at the time were the very ones that I was, like, putting into my DM scripts because those are the very ones that we had worked with. And, yeah, it was cool.
That's cool. So I wanna get into you guys and your journey and scaling to eight figures. Because even as an agency, that's really rare to do.
Like, lot of agencies, it's tough for them to actually scale. And then the way you've done it is so unique just being a UGC agency. But first, just to understand a little bit more about what you guys do.
Like, what's the actual deliverables
of a client that you work with? Like, when you're working with a client, like, what do you actually do for them? What do you give them?
Etcetera. Yeah. So we come on as a creative testing partner.
And what we essentially do is we agree to a certain amount of final video ads that they're gonna wanna test with our team every month. We have a couple guys that actually test net new ads with our team every two weeks. So we figure out the cadence of delivery that they wanna have in a testing process.
Yeah. And then yeah. I mean, we come in.
Our whole unique approach is we've got over 40 talented data backed women on the team that are all the on camera talents. So come in and essentially handle all the strategy and the scripting that's going into the ads that we produce.
We handle all the casting and coordination with the on camera talents, and then get a good edit on the ads. And in most situations, hand those off to their respective teams, whether that's off to a media buyer or, like, another media buying agency,
and let the ads cook from there, look at the results, and then rinse and repeat going into subsequent months. And how how hands on do you have to be in terms of, like, helping do you help the client at all with their creative testing process? Like, do you have to do that, or do these clients already have that down?
What is A lot of them struggle with the actual setup of the ads, I would say. Like, they don't know how to filter out bad leads. So you oftentimes have to give them direction on this is how you set up an ad.
This is how you filter out bad fit leads. This is how a funnel should look. You take them from ad to
conditional logic lead form to VSL to then they book a call. So some people, need help on that part, and then that's typically where we we give support on the on that process. Yeah.
Because I was gonna ask, like, how important is it for your clients? I'm sure you obviously want them to have, like, everything all figured out, a good creative testing process, a good funnel, a good controls, whatever. Do you have to work with people who have that, or do sometimes you kinda have to, like, help them sorta, like, fine tune and build their marketing size of the client.
Like, guys who are
already running ads successfully, it's a little bit more hands off. For guys who are let's say under $1,000 a day in ad spend, they're typically needing some hand holding a little bit.
So we have like SOPs or bonuses that just come for free with really any ad creative package. And do you always model their controls,
or do sometimes you just have you're, like, looking at the controls and you're like, yeah. I think we should just write something new.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, it's it it depends on size of business. Like, if the again, if they're if they're not if they're if if they have a successful business and they're already running ads, yeah, you might look at their control and then expand on that. Yeah.
Typically, the easiest levers to pull, you have changed the face, you have changed the messaging, You could change the environment, or you could change the accessories and props.
And those are kind of the four different things you could do differently to the ad. And then the lowest hanging fruit typically ends up being the face. Yeah.
That makes sense. Because with us, what's you know, we place salespeople in the companies. But what has always been frustrating,
even though we've kinda used it to our advantage, is that similar it's like, I bet you probably wish. Like, okay.
I wish every single one of my client had, like, a killer funnel. They have controls. We can just, like, change the environment phase, prop, whatever, and then we know it's gonna work.
Right? But in reality, you probably have some clients who you're like, oh my gosh. Like, your funnel sucks so bad.
Like, your your lead nurture is really tough, etcetera. And it's the same thing with us where most people reach out for salespeople, but their marketing is, like, trash.
Right? So we kinda have to, like, fix their marketing and give them the salesperson and fix their sales ops and fix their sales management, which is fine. Like, that's what I designed the company around to do because it's just such a common thing.
But, yeah, it seems like you guys run into the same problem. Yeah. And sometimes they'll even wanna sell they wanna sell one product.
So let's say they wanna sell like, let's say it's an electrician and they wanna sell
let's say they want to sell some niche wiring that they do. But instead, you might know that the best things working for electricians would be, like, installing new generators or EV chargers.
Yeah. You have kinda pull them. Even though it's not what they wanna do, they would love to just get sales on their other products because this is what the market is resonating with most.
You have to
you you wanna sell things that are already being bought on Facebook, and that's helped give direction for a lot of those type of to do the same thing. And it's like, hey. Okay.
I know you wanna do that, but do you wanna do that, or do you wanna make money? Exactly. And I'm like they're like, I wanna make money.
So okay. So I wanna walk through, uh, the scaling journey. So we we we talked about how you guys started.
What was, like, zero to the first 1,000,000 like for you guys specifically? And, like, what did you have to figure out? What were kind of the keys, etcetera?
So
let's I mean, can start talking about a million per year. Mhmm.
Yeah. So we'll We'll get to a million a month later. Zero to a 100, I wanna hit first, I guess.
I started the company working five jobs. I was working literally five full time roles and was doing VSL Queen on the side.
So at the time, I was working for a couple different agencies, info offer.
I was full time at a fintech startup.
Oh, jeez. I
prior to that, I I also worked for NBC. Whatever. I was learning a lot, though, in getting so much exposure with the different info guys, with the agency owners, and so on and so forth.
And so when I was putting VSL to Queen together, I was kinda, like, taking a bunch of those little nuggets along the way. Like, I like how they do things here. I saw firsthand how Austin's other agency was running and, like, seeing what I liked there, what I didn't like, so on and so forth.
And so, really, the first, like, zero to 60 was me just being an octopus in a lot of different directions, doing a ton of different things.
I I basically I remember coming into Austin's office one day, and I was like, I'm done.
I I am stopping everything. I'm I'm quitting and closing doors, and I'm going all in on VSL queen.
And he was like, let's go. Like, it's about time. Like, you you yeah.
You're ready. And I felt really ready. Like, I was I was pumped up.
And so probably, like, two months before doing that, Austin also was like, hey.
Um, I think it's about time that we turn on ads for VSL Queen. Mhmm. And I was scared.
Like, it's funny because, like, all the clients that we had worked with thus far, obviously, all they do all day is ads. Yeah.
But taking the leap to, like, stop my little DM outreach journey and, like, turn $50 a day of messenger ads on was freaking scary. So I I had my I had my little DM funnel kinda kick in.
We were booking we were probably booking two really qualified calls a day at $50 a day in ad spend.
Oh, that's wild. And it was a joke. I mean, it was it was an absolute joke, and
we were just, like, looking at everything. We're like, okay. Like So did you know when you were doing that, you were like, holy shit.
This is gonna, like, scale like crazy? He did. Yeah.
He he probably did. Yeah. Because I was always a little naive to the one, like, push and spend, and Emily's like, no.
Draw it back. Draw it back. It's too much.
Yeah. So it's that it's that balance. I just I just went into it, like, not
wanting to scale some, like, massive company. I just I wanted every single week, I would be like, I wanna remain efficient.
I wanna be hyper hyper efficient. I don't wanna I don't wanna come on to manage a huge team. In my other roles, like my role at the fintech, I managed a five person team, and I I didn't like managing people.
Mhmm. And I I'm just a really, like, fast worker, and I I wanted to just leverage my, like, good speed on things, and, like, just felt like I could get a ton of things, yeah, done.
I don't know. Were there any other things that were, like, going on between zero to oh, I guess one other call out for zero to a 100 k was us primarily just working with agencies.
So our our core market was agency owners and info offers. Okay.
When we
when we got into scaling,
I don't know, hundred to five hundred k was when we really started to open up and working with home service guys. 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.
So 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 all purpose booking, and it'll increase your show rates. So 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. So if you're interested, go to saleskick.com.
Check it out. Now back to the video. Yeah.
Let's talk about that in a second, though. So zero to a hundred k a month really just and this is how it is for 99% of people is you figure out what's the product market fit and the offer. Yep.
And then you just gotta get a good way to acquire the clients that's repeatable. Right? That you can, like, pull the lever, like ads, and get more people coming in.
And then your bonus wise is that and this is this is the same thing I had when I scaled, and I gave a talk about this. But there's a difference between, like, an offer that works, and then I had a name for it.
I named it, and then I forgot what I named it. But, like, just a offer that is just gonna go nuclear. You know?
Like, an offer that is, like, truly, like, okay. You've really found something here, like a Blue Ocean offer or something like that. So you guys got get what I'm saying?
And you guys kinda had that. Like, you see that with, like, the $25 book calls and even maybe how the sales calls were going. Mhmm.
You're kinda like, man, there's, like like, you feel it. There's, a pull forward to it.
Yeah. You know? So that's a big part.
Okay. Before we go on to a 100 to 500 k a month, you worked at NBC.
What was that? What was that all about? That that's just interesting.
Yeah. So I have a background in acting and, like, always wanted to do something in actually, like, being an it like, a live actress on film, whatever.
I I worked in their content distribution group. I was actually gonna go and work on the Jimmy Fallon show, but I I didn't end up doing that. But, yeah, I I did it it was an internship, but, you know, it it was very much going to lead to a job post grad, and COVID
sent things south there. Yeah. But, yeah, I I worked in the in the content distribution department.
So was it owned? So you were like you weren't like a news anchor? No.
No. I thought you were like journalist. The end goal, though.
Right?
Honestly, no. I I knew TV. I I
did some of the productions. Yeah. Yeah.
But some of that probably I mean, even that, it's interesting. You were building skill sets that you're using now in in some way, shape, or form. Yeah.
No. I mean, I was like a professional child actress, and, like, what what we do like, what I'm doing all day and, like, coordinating the team of all of our on camera talents and stuff, like, there's there's so much synergy with, yeah, what I was So you're building skills you didn't know you needed all the way back then. That's how it happens with a lot of people too.
Okay. Hundred to five hundred grand a month.
Okay. What were the keys there? What were the challenges?
What was that like? Yeah. Well, one other thing I wanna comment on real quick was you mentioning kinda feeling the the real momentum here of the offer and who we were serving.
I think at the time, UGC agencies, especially for ecommerce, were a little bit more of a commodity, and they they definitely are today.
The fact that we were leading with obviously, we had we have the female hook, but we also are serving agency owners and info guys at that time.
There really weren't any other content agencies out there Right. That were trying to service those guys. I don't know how you felt it for, like, you recruiting the couple different talents that you were using at the time back in 2023.
Right. But I doubt that you were working with another like agency
of of what we do. Right? No.
I mean, we just found our people. I don't even know how we found them, but it was funny. We found this one lady who was the best performer, and then all of a sudden, she be she started showing up in everybody's ads.
Yeah. Maybe you guys used her. I don't know.
But, like, I remember her name was Crystal. No. We don't I don't think we still use her.
But No. All of a sudden, was like we was like, we should have signed, like, a freaking noncompete or something with Crystal. Like, Crystal's in our competitor's ad.
She's in this other person's ad. Yeah. But, no, like, it wasn't it's it's it's interesting.
It wasn't like a like, intuitively, I knew it. I knew, like, okay, if you have different faces.
Because I first started with Aaron. We were talking about him earlier. And I was like, cool.
Aaron can shoot the same thing as I shot, and sometimes Aaron's works better. And I'm like, okay. Like, I'm out.
You know? Like, I don't wanna do this anymore. Like, I'll rate the ad, but if I don't have to shoot it Yeah.
Like, great. Because I you know, as you scale, you'd be more and more creative, and then that's like a founder bottleneck or whatever. And then, you know, we started having I was like, you know, if and it works for Aaron, it'll probably work for all these other so we had, like, women on my team, etcetera, then UGC creators, and it kinda just snowballed from there.
But I agree. Probably when you guys started, it wasn't like a I think people were more actively looking for it now.
Probably when you guys first launched, it was more of like when they probably saw your ad, they were like, oh, I never thought about that before, but it makes sense, which I think helps a lot. Yeah.
I think our winning hooks at the time were like, hey,
business owners, do you hate filming your own ads? And do you feel awkward on camera? Those hooks were gold for us.
And, yeah, I think it was a message that a lot of guys that were being very much content creators for their brands and stuff even then,
that message hit. They're like, yeah. I hate doing this.
I feel kind of uncomfortable when I have to do this. Other thing that I don't know if you knew this or not or considered it, is especially if you look at the term it's it's very funny how this works.
If you look at the cons like, you know, my market is like or core market at least when we started. We work with a bunch of different industries now. Was coaches, consultants, and agencies.
Right? But consultants and agencies are mainly dudes. Even even if they're doing the same stuff, a dude will identify with a consultant more than a coach on average.
Coaches, though Are all women. Mainly women are way more identified with that. And the other thing is too is there's a lot of women who only work with women.
And so I think a lot of people intuitively know this. And, like, I'll see I'll give you an example because I am able to see so many offers.
I'll see the same offer, like, with very similar copy, and a guy will be doing it, and he'll just be bombing like, hey.
It'll suck. Woman, same thing. And it's, like, it's crushing.
And it's just because it's not just because, you know, she's a woman and she's in the ad. It's just that there's a bigger market over there than, like, there's not a lot of, like,
dude coaches, in my opinion. You know? I don't know if you guys felt the same way.
Yeah. I mean, we see the same we work with a lot of well, it's kind of like if you're an agency owner and you're there's so many bro like, agency owners kinda look like you and I. Like, they don't look like Emily.
You look like an agency. I look like a traditional agency owner. Cole's like, I don't identify.
You look you
look like you took Joel Kaplan's program. Exactly. You know?
But
but I think that's important because when you go to make ads, you kinda look like everybody else, and there's natural sales resistance.
Yep. So it just does not hit the same. And then same thing with we work a lot in the blue collar space.
A lot of blue collar guys kinda look the same. So if you can instead and they're selling to wives of the household.
They're selling to women Oh, interesting. Years old. So if you put somebody who actually looks like a wife of the household in the ad, It's not Emily who's actually our best, you know, phase for that industry.
It's actually it tends to be an older an older demographic. Who just looks like the buyer? It lit yeah.
Okay. I wanna talk about this home service thing, but first, you gotta answer a 100 to $500 a month. What were the big key shifts or big challenges you had to overcome?
I think we increased our price point. We had bigger price point options, and we spent more on ads and did more of the same. And we tapped into other markets?
And we kind of we we saw, okay. Who are our top 10% best customers? Who are, you know, bottom 10% customers?
Shifted your marketing. Yeah. Let's just literally shift our marketing to go after our top 10% who make us the happiest.
Yeah. Have a five or 15 k call out on who's spending what on ads. So What about operationally?
Because, I mean, scaling a done for you business is hard to scale. So was there any operational challenges there?
We brought on a small but very mighty team. I mean, people doing extremely, we just have really clear roles for what each individual is doing, and all they do all day are those roles, whether that's we're talking copywriting, we're talking editing, being the on camera talent.
Austin and I have actually remained as the two closers, so did not bring on a sales team. Nice.
And
yeah. I mean An example of that would be, like, our copywriter. It sounds so small.
Like, oh, I'll put the copywriter in the Slack channel with the client. But that that communication over and over and over again in that process, for us, our model, like, not that scalable compared to it's just like a machine.
Him doing all day Yeah. Is Exactly.
Yeah. And yeah. I mean, we have a gal that's fantastic at client comms, and she has a great little dynamic going with that copywriter.
And, I mean, the conveyor belt just is
it's moving. And it's so simple. Like What what's allowed you to keep so I mean, you're you're kinda saying a lot of this stuff already, but you guys run a really lean, like, high margin operation.
So what's allowed you to keep everything so just, like, lean?
Because a lot of agencies like, there's another one I know I'll give you an example. I won't say who it is.
But they're big, but I know their margins probably aren't as good. Right?
Just because it's like a lot of agencies, they do 900 things for clients. Right. And then it just becomes this big bulky operation.
Um, so, obviously, part of that is you just focus on one problem. You know? Is there anything else that that's helped, like, operationally?
I
think one thing is, like, Emily has no ego.
So it it's me seeing there's a lot of, like, content out there that's like scale, scale, scale, higher, higher, higher. Ad spend 20 to 30% of your revenue.
And Emily is just like, I don't understand that. So she'll challenge me and be like, why was our marketing cost percentage 11% when our goal is 10%?
And it's it almost puts a constraint on it where you have to kind of think, okay. Well, how should I operate differently to fit within that constraint?
And I think that's been a big unlock for just keeping things lean because we've just not even allowed ourself the option to, you know, make those extra hires and and and spend more ad spend.
So it it it's just forced us to keep things leaner.
Yeah. What you're saying is basically, you've made your scaling decisions not based on analogy and what other people are doing and what are the standards of the industry and instead, like, challenging the assumption from the very beginning of, like, well, why do we even have to do that? Mhmm.
Yeah. I like to do the same stuff, you know, but it's like getting your team to do that too
is is big. A 100%. Getting you getting you a little bit more on board for it too was I mean, it's
yeah. I mean, you and you hear of home home improvement guys too. There it in that industry,
it's five to 10% marketing cost as a standard. So I think the I think the agency and the info spaces have been okay with being kind of inefficient.
Everybody's okay with 20 to 30% marketing costs, and we see firsthand all these other businesses out there that are very, very efficiently spending a lot on ads and keeping marketing costs at that, like, five to 12% range.
Mhmm. And it's opened up our eyes to just test way more ads.
I mean, the the whole lever to pull is essentially the product we sell. So just have way better content and don't make excuses kind of for, like, why
ads are so expensive right now. Yeah. Well, that's huge because most companies I can tell you this because I work with a lot of companies in the space.
Their marketing cost is usually between 2535%. Right. Right?
And obviously that's a third of your whole cash collection And just the difference between that, that's like a 3x. So like, you know how Hermozy talks about LTV to CAC?
Mhmm. So you could do a calculation to figure that out and a lot of the dah dah dah, and you got to look at a bunch of stuff. One of the biggest proxies to actually look at that and just kind of see what it is very quickly is just look at how much cash you collected and how much went to ads.
Because over time, that basically is your LTV to cash. Right. Right?
And so what you're saying is like, you can operate at a 10 x when a lot of other people are operating at, you know, three Three. Yeah. Which crazy.
Right? And so okay. Home serve I do wanna talk about this.
And so you you tested, I think, the home service market, and that proved to be a big winner for you guys.
So one thing I wanna point out is I've seen a lot of companies in our industry, they have a tendency, and I'm even to a degree guilty of this myself, but we're trying to break out of it, of automatically just, okay.
Well, we're just gonna target coaches. Like, we're just gonna target the industry. Like, we're just gonna target other info entrepreneurs opposed to looking at other traditional businesses out there.
And I've seen like, a great example of this is Daniel Isles. Do you guys know who he is? So I talked with him, and I was like, you know, you know, congrats on your success.
Like, what do you think are the biggest shifts? Right? Should have him on the podcast.
But what do think of the biggest shifts? And he was like, yeah. The biggest thing was I just was targeting coaches in the beginning, and then I started targeting, like, traditional businesses.
And then all of a sudden, we raised our prices to, like, 30 to 40 k, which was, like, way higher than what we had before. And we were doing, like, 3,000,000 a month in, like, three months, you know, from, like, you know, not 3,000,000 a month. Very much, much lower than that.
They're rapid scaled. And so a lot of people, they're they're stuck in going after info. I'm curious.
What have you experienced? Like, what's been like, working with, like, home service businesses, like, give me give me some examples of, like, the type. Like, what's the size?
What type of home service, and what's been working with them like versus, let's say,
the info agency bro or Your agency bro, 23 years old in a basement? So the home service guys are awesome. They're like, let's talk, like, psychographics real quick.
They're married. They they've tipped the guy.
Three years old. Yeah. Two two little two little girls.
They're they're they love their team.
Like, they're they're trying to obviously scale up their business, scale up their team. But they've got a family to feed. They they care about their
Yeah. They have they have new they have new responsibilities. Right.
It I mean, it kind of fits in perfect because they want to we we call it kidifying their business. We want to kidify our business one day.
But for these guys, they want to kidify their business, so they might hate filming ads or they don't have time to film ads or they just don't want to because they have a family. So that plays into it a lot. We're a creative system where we'll just do it for you.
Big unlock. And then the second thing is with new responsibilities of kids, they're motivated to make money, and that's what we're helping them with.
So those two things, we've just found it. Our service is, like, made for them, and an agency owner coach doesn't necessarily have that. Well, do you find that they
have more money than the average coach? And number two, that their LTV working with you is better than, let's say, the average info coach person?
I'd say both. Yeah. That's what I would imagine.
Yeah. Because number one, they they're probably more likely because here here's the thing about the coaching space that I think is there's, like, biz op, and then there's kinda, like, coaching.
You know? Because you can kinda just say there's no barrier to entry to be a coach or an agency owner. You can kinda, like, watch a YouTube video or something, and then all of a sudden, you're now an AI agency owner, you know, because you watched the YouTube video, and then you decided that's what you're gonna do.
And so, yeah, you might have an offer, which means, I guess and you have an LLC, which means you have a business. But financially, you're not much more qualified than, like, Bizob.
You know? Whereas if you're like, there's a bigger barrier to entry to, like, at least having some employees and doing 500 k a year, for for instance, as a plumbing business or something.
Sure. You know? Like, you have to kind of have you're gonna have better credit.
You're gonna have at least some better cash flow. So I'd imagine they're
they they They probably have more money. Vehicles. And they're and they're probably I'm I'm imagine they're probably not as likely to churn based on, like, their business.
Oh, all a sudden, my business went under. Yeah. You know?
No. We yeah. We never face that.
I mean, even even your 500 k call out, I'd say we're mostly servicing guys that are closer to that, you know, already like 1 to 3 mill a year mark. Yeah. 1 mil plus.
Yeah. 1 mil plus is That's generally the market I see. Yep.
Yep. And, you know, they've got at least two to three guys that need appointments to run. And, I mean, we we love to work in the remodeling trades.
They're typically selling a 12 k plus thing. The service guys, I mean, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, they have high ticket things to sell.
Their narrative's a little bit more different just because they, in a lot of situations, historically, have gotten most of their business from Google.
And all their Google leads in the service trades normally have that, like, emergency thing to fix, and that emergency thing to fix is not always the high ticket thing. Yeah. And so if we're able to and what we've been able to do is kinda, um, just reframe the offers and get out ahead of those, like, emergency things and instead market the full replacement on the HVAC unit or the EV ascension to a panel upgrade or the water filtration system, whatever it is.
And, yeah, those have all done, you know, very well. The other thing I'll add on to that is
there will be money going into garage door replacement, window replacement, AC replacement.
So without marketing, like, they're still getting business. So they have more runway, more cash. Where an agency coaching model, it's like you get clients by marketing.
There's not just cash going there, which is why you if you look at a lot of, like, private equity, they're going they're buying up trades businesses because there's money getting
Well, and the and the biggest thing too, I think, is that it's it's everybody's starting in HVAC or this or that or in private equity. Ever all the private equity shops are, like, all over that right now. Mhmm.
I think the best positioning you can have because there's also AI, right, which people see home services relatively AI resilient. I mean, if robots are remodeling your kitchen, then I don't know what we're we're living in.
But, know, okay. I mean, what what other pivots am I gonna make right now? Like, going with home services or clients is a pretty good bet.
But I think a good way to position yourself is literally how you guys are where you're kind of attached to the industry, but you're not, you know, the primary actor in the industry. So it's kind of like if that's the gold rush, you're, like, selling the shovels and the picks and not you're not rushing for the gold. Does that make sense?
Yeah. That's fair. Cool.
500 k a month to, you know, 8 figures, 1,000,000 a month, etcetera. Just more of the same, or what what's been the biggest shifts there?
We killed off our smallest package. So naturally selling higher ticket things.
We, um, we haven't mentioned this to you yet, but with about five to 10% of the businesses that we're partnered with, we actually do manage their campaigns.
Okay. And so with that five to 10% pocket, we don't take a percentage of ad spend.
We don't have equity in the business. We actually have a rev share model in place. Oh, nice.
I think a lot of guys, like, love the equity share approach because it sounds good. It sounds good.
Yeah. I'm not a big fan. Yeah.
I mean, the likelihood of these guys selling eventually, it's like Very low. Okay. Well, I think I think the rev share model has it really started to pick up steam going from, you know, that 500 to a mil, because we just started getting really killer results with our our guys that we're actually running their ads for.
And
Yeah. So that increased your client LTV.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean And then outside of that, what you just spend more on ads and And then you notice and then you notice, okay, who are the biggest rev share clients?
And what if we, again, position the marketing to go after those guys. Yeah. And it just it's it's just filtering out more, honing in on who your best clients are in the marketing, and then it just gets better and better and better.
And the other larger creative partnerships we were landing in that phase was also service serving, uh, lead ags.
So we would partner with lead aggregators and essentially come in to be their number one creative provider. Yeah. They need a lot, a lot, a lot of volume of content.
And so they've been, you know, fantastic partners as well, I'd say. And are those people mainly in home service? Uh, we we see it all.
I mean, we're in law. We're in insurance. We're in home service.
I'd say those are our three
core largest categories for the lead aggregators. Yeah. Law has gotta be a big one.
It is. Yeah. PIs kill I mean Yeah.
That's huge. Yeah. And they they do Facebook ads too.
Oh, yeah. Because I know it's Google. Do right.
They're it's so expensive. You know, million dollars a click or whatever it is. Yeah.
Cool. Uh, so what is ultimately the next step then? So, like, where do you wanna take this business to or scale it?
What's the vision? Do you guys have the same vision? Is there disagreements between where you guys wanna take it?
We're we're just trying our butt our best out here. We're we're I eventually, we're gonna we call it kidify the business.
So we're gonna try to not work as much as we are now. I would say that's the main thing. We obviously wanna progress, do better, make more money, help more clients.
But eventually, the next phase will be, alright, we can't be on sales calls all day long Right. And doing a ton of work and just working long days.
Even though we have a good work life balance, it's just not we wanna be able to, at 11AM, go to like our favorite brunch spot and I wanna be able to take a tennis lesson at like 10AM and and be able to do that type of stuff.
Right now, I can't, but that's just I'm an able
person right now, so I'm I'm working. Yeah. We're loving it.
I mean, we we love this current stage, and I love how I I love the the controlled scale, I guess, that we've had.
But yeah. I mean, I think I think the next phase will be developing out a little bit more of a of a mini team.
Yeah.
We we made a mistake of bringing on two closers that were part time, and, I mean, won't do that again. So I I mentioned it's just been us on the calendar.
Yeah. We did, you know, try try it out with It even sounds like you just need, like, one really good person. We do.
Yeah. And you could just pay them well, and then you're gonna get all that time back. And
then do you need people for, like, operate like, somebody to manage the ops, or is that already kinda there? It's there.
Um, Yeah. It's
I mean, I think me stepping off the calendar as well as you on on calls is gonna allow for us to give a little bit more attention to the ops there too.
But we have a a small but mighty team there that's Yeah. I mean, it would it would be, in theory, pretty simple to double right now. Uh-huh.
Would you guys ever exit the business or no?
Not even thought about it?
I mean, I I can't say the thought hasn't crossed our mind, but, like, it's not on on our Yeah. You're not planning to But do you never know.
What's cool about what you guys have done is that if you ever did want to do that, it's on the table. But if you build your business in a way in which it doesn't require you guys to be on sales calls yada yada yada, Number one, you could exit, but also a good executable business is a good business to just have.
And having a lot of cash flow coming in is great. A lot of people who have a big lump sum of money, it's interesting because a lot of those people are born in the tech world, and they really want the cash flow.
Whereas our industry has the cash flow, but they're all like, my gosh, I don't have an exit. You know? So it's just always grass is greener on the other side, in my experience.
That's what I've heard. So one thing, just in terms of what you're seeing with the industry now, number one, I'm curious, I mean, obviously when you did his ads, it was like twice the performance.
Do you have any stats in terms of like, on average, how much better just swapping a female face does? Do you have those numbers?
I I would say
there's a lot of things with creative that you can improve. So you have the face.
You have like, the way we like to look at it is like there's three m's on improving an ad. Number one would be change your messenger or we would call this like the three m framework.
Number one, you change your messenger. So for example, if you're selling to homeowners and currently it's a blue collar guy, maybe try putting a wife of the household in the ad and that's something that can improve the ad.
So that'd be m, messenger. The second thing would be the message. So a lot of what I think we're good at is, yeah, for marketing purposes, we say put a female in ads to increase your ad ROI, which we see to be true.
But that alone because a lot of people think they could just go throw their wife on camera or, you know, anyone. Yeah. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna get them their best performing ads.
So that's where on the message on the message side, I mean, we I mean, we're we've worked in over a 100 industries. We work with very big advertisers. We can see, okay, what ads are producing the best.
And even if it's in another industry because, you know, human psychology is you know, it's relatively transferable to other industries.
We could customize it for that offer and still win on proven messages. Mhmm. And then the third one is the money math.
So a lot of people, if ads fail, as you probably know, you've worked with a lot of people, you see the money math on the back end just doesn't even make sense. So if you could fix that as well as even to the market you're selling to sell to the highest your top 10% customer who actually could easily afford your services,
it allows you to get ads at scale. So I'd say that's really where we're improving the ads. It's it's not just the face.
I I know that. It's it's really everything. I know.
So you're really helping. It's it's kinda the same thing I do with sales. Like, I can't just give you the sales rep, but I have to, like, improve your entire business so the sales rep can succeed.
Yeah. Like, you can't just give them an ad with a female in it. You gotta make sure it's in the right system.
I was just curious if you had, like, a data, like, oh, generally,
probably even just that is Our our main thing is like our goal is 33% win rate on ads. So every three ads we make, one of them can profitably buy.
Pretty high. Yeah. Very high.
Like, I think industry average would be like 10 or 20%. 10 to 15. And then the third thing or the second thing would be our goal is to get their best performing ads within three months.
And if we could do that even with big advertisers, like, that's a big win regardless of how we get there. Because we do have guys on our team.
Sometimes we will put a husband and wife in the ad together.
So that is something we we use. But Well, I think sometimes, like, the bar is either really, really high or what we're working with, it's quite simple to Yeah.
Do super well. I mean, you take a you take the blue collar guy. He's in the company shirt.
He's standing in front of his wrapped truck, and, you know, he's trying to spit out an offer. I'll give you a thousand dollars off your HVAC unit.
Yeah. It's like. Let's just redo it from scratch.
Let's just I mean, yes, putting a female in there, we're gonna we're gonna double the ROAS. Right? Like but sometimes, you know, we're working with accounts that have over 400 active ads in them already.
Mhmm. And it's like, okay. Game on.
This is gonna be a little more but but they're working with us for different reason. Maybe they've already tested out a female, but they just need a they're they're trying to get out of their like, for an example, like, having, yeah, 400 active ads.
Oftentimes, those businesses, they have their own internal creative infrastructure already humming. They're just trying to get out of their own, like, echo chamber of ad ideas as an internal organization.
Makes sense. They tag team us and say, hey. You guys get exposure to so many other industries.
You guys are probably sitting on so many other winning scripts with really talented people that we'd be equally excited to test within these ads. Like, let's let's just throw you guys into the mix here.
We're not gonna try to tell you what to do either because we have our own thing that's pretty nicely dialed. And then that's just, um, yeah. It's a different game, I'd say.
But Yeah. What are some, like, interesting ads or ad concepts
that you've seen work really well? Like, if you just think about maybe a specific some specific examples
from clients or something. Well, concepts like I mean, one hook that has done really well and it's you could use it in a lot of, uh, industries.
It'd be like, hardly anyone bothers with this, but it's the easiest way to save big as a homeowner. That I mean, that would be the hook. So that hook can get put onto Anyway.
Like tons of different offers.
Well, and I think even going back to one of our first killer case studies was me working with the the Cairo agency, the lead gen agency there.
And you take all of your agency guys and your info guys out there that all kinda recite their ads the same. They're all kinda, like, trying to do the same thing.
Some of them maybe are now testing with props and having fun with it there. Yeah. But, like, my winning ad for them, like, four and a half years ago, I we, you know, we had an image of the ad, and I'm, like, singing to the camera.
This ad right here generated a doctor 20 noob. And, like, that was so weird at the time for us to do something like that, but, like, it crushed.
So, I mean, we we still use that concept today,
that. Yeah. We're seeing a lot of our best ads right now do have proof that is believable.
And if you can have a process internally to be able to grab those clips from clients and then put them into your ads, longer shelf life, and those ads just they they can hold much bigger spends and and be And when you say proof from believable
proof, you mean like case studies that the client has and you're clipping it in? What do you mean? A
lot of it would be like you do a client check-in call and and this would be right after a big win. You're just checking in with them and they're like, man. Yeah.
I had one of these the other day. I was like, man, Austin. And this guy was super skeptical.
We spent 4 k on ads and we generated a $120,000 in sales.
And it was just and this guy does not really run ads like that. He he's like new to advertising. And that's just a I'm like, great.
Clipped. Hit him up afterwards. Hey.
Can I get some a little love and support? We're doing a competition this week that aiming to get three positive video testimonials this week.
We're at two. Would it be crazy if we just use this for our marketing purse purposes? He's like, of course, you can.
Sure. Use it. That's great.
So then you could build a process like that and then you use that in your content. Yeah.
And it and it just We need do more of that too. Just coordinating it, you know. It just it just making the ass to having a copy and paste template that everybody knows to to use.
Because in your client conversations, you're probably gonna get those like really unique sound bites that are good.
Yeah. We had I mean, we had another one too where guys like, well, guys, last year was awesome. We made $4,200,000 from BSL Queen ads.
And I'm like, alright. That's great. Like, I'm same same process.
Clip, can I use this? Great client relationship. And then you just have this flywheel of proof that you could use in your ads on proven bodies that you know have already worked.
Yeah. He'll use them as the hook, and then we have, like, our one to two proven bodies right now. This is, like, for BSL queen ads.
Yeah. That frame has been Any other things that just typically, like, work really well for clients that when a new client comes on, you're just you're always kinda going back to those, like, key winning ideas. Is there one or two more?
A lot of it is gonna be using a proven creator that is proven on tonality and authenticity. So they've already proven themselves to us that they have that.
Uh-huh. And then the second thing is
They have a lot of data backing them too. Like, it's it's one thing to just 100%. It's one thing for somebody to be to actually be able to deliver a good ad, but our team of 40 have a lot of data on them to Yeah.
And actually. 100%.
And then the second thing is we have a rolling Google Doc of just ads that have done a certain amount in revenue. We we we call it our, like, 100 k script Ad Vault.
So any ad that's What's the best one? Oh, I don't know the best one off the top of my head. But there's I mean, there's tons of them.
It's just been like years of years of like building that up. So then you could see, okay, well, what if I just customize this script? You could pull stuff from a bunch of different scripts and then customize it for another company and it has a very high hit rate just by
having something that you can reference. If you're looking for a mastermind to take your business to 10,000,000 a year plus, then you wanna check out our 8 figure boarder mastermind. So after doing a 100,000,000 in total cash collected for my own companies, I've created a mastermind where I really pull back the curtain and show you exactly how I've done it.
So I not only share with you what's working for us across marketing, sales, fulfillment, operations, finance for all of our different companies, at the same time, you can network with some of the top people in the industry and also listen to world class speakers like Patrick Bet David, Dean Graziosi, Neil Patel, Tom Bailu, and many, many others.
So if you're interested, check out the link in the description and get more info. And so when you're picking the UGC creators for you guys internally, right, you're hiring these people, what do you look for?
Because even admittedly for us, I mean, we might have them just test out and, like, hey. Try out and just do some ads, and we just kinda, like, look and see how they're doing. Right?
But I'm sure you probably have some of the more I'm sure you probably do that, but, also, what have you noticed or, like, the key traits of UGC creators that do ads that are just like your best performers with authenticity,
tonality, all the stuff you were saying? I have the acting background, so I actually have a lot of friends from my past working for us now. Yeah.
That's perfect. We've created a really great dynamic with our tight knit core group. A lot of them also have friends that are in the industry and are killers on camera.
Nice. Every couple months, we'll say, hey. Like, know of any other friends that are doing this type of thing?
And they say, yeah. I've got three ladies that I think would crush. And, you know, we have our audition process and slowly trickle them into the the equation.
And, I mean, to Austen's point, we've definitely got our core group that Yeah. Do or die are gonna, like, kill it most of the time.
But, um, yeah, I'd say between my my connections and just being in the film and acting industry in the first place had was was a really nice way to initially Because build it
with me, it was like when I first started doing sales recruiting, like, I wasn't a recruiter. Right. I just knew a lot of sales guys.
Right. And so I just, like, look at my network, and I make a post. And I'd be like but I had so many people follow me for sales training that I had in the beginning a really good amount of people.
Then one of my favorite sayings, it's very, very similar to what you're saying, but one of my favorite sayings for sales is good salespeople know other good salespeople. And so one of our three top sources of recruits for our pipeline is just asking salespeople who were proven to be good.
Like, hey, who else do you know? Because a lot of times, that's the first time that they're selling something that's remote. They're making 20 ks a month.
They're not having to go door to door. And they're like, oh, man. Like, yeah, when I worked in Southwest or whatever selling books, I know 10 people who would kill for this.
And they're killers. And they're tired of going door to door. So Well, what's been cool too is I'd say gals that are more in our age range,
funny enough, you end up asking if their moms have any experience in it. Because, like, if they've got the personality for it, sometimes the moms are also,
oddly enough, really good. And we we put that yeah. We we put we put them into the into the system.
There there are some things to, you know, fine tune, but they're they're also really, really good. And what's helpful about the growth partnerships as well is we can we have better insight into the real numbers of how those ads perform as well. So it's very easy for us to look at and kinda be like thumbs up or thumbs down just based on the data of like, okay, this ad clearly is crushing it.
Who like, what was the name of that creator? Good. Alright.
And then, hey, this creator? No. And and that's how we're able to kind of foster just people that are actually proven.
Nice.
In terms of, like, funnels and ways to acquire clients, have you what are the things you see just most working in, especially, like, our industry right now? Is it the standard stuff that you would expect, or have you seen anything unique?
Good ads,
filter out bad fit leads through conditional logic, lead form, or standard. We're using a, uh, calendar system that does it within the calendar system.
Yeah. VSL, booking page,
thank you page. It's it's it's basically a standard VSL funnel is our is our is our still our bread and butter. And still for clients too.
Have you worked with any clients where you see some, like, weird something weird? You're like, holy shit. This is different, but it's working really well.
Oh, no.
Like, I I like the VSL funnel. There I mean, our home service guys aren't rocking with a VSL funnel. We go straight from the lead form to to booking.
But Yeah. That's that's totally different though. Yeah.
I mean, in in the trades business or some stuff, you you might have a an AC pricing calculator. How much does it cost to replace your AC in 2026? That's a unique type of funnel, and that is more to the people we're serving.
But if you're an agency or a coach, who I know is probably a lot of people watching this, I mean, a standard VSL funnel works really well. Where you want to try to to solve for is, like, how can you create a so, basically, there's, the three c's.
You have your you have your call out. So who are you act can you fix your call out by going more up market?
What problems are you speaking to? So core problem would be the second one. So, like, sir like, rich people have different problems than not rich people.
And then the third one is conversion mechanism. So what type of angle can you put on something that is already being sold in the marketplace?
The mistake is you do you try to sell something that you can't find another 7 to 9 figure company running meta ads for. But how could you take something like an example,
SEO, proven in the marketplace. A lot of people are buying SEO. It will always be a thing.
But that if you just run, hey. We do SEO for companies, it's not good enough. Yeah.
So what type of conversion mechanism or unique mechanism can you do to and and make that sound better? Yeah. I call that just unique mechanism is like the main word for it.
Right? But for people who don't, like, sometimes they're like, unique mechanism. What's that?
And then they think it's just like a name, like p 90 x. Yeah. And it's more of a easier way to think about it, I tell most people, is is just how are you meaningfully differentiating yourself?
Because if you're just like, hey, I do ads, you're basically a commodity. Right?
But if you're able to position yourself in a way where there's something unique and different about what you're doing and you're meaningfully differentiated. It's really what what it is is it's because you're different, you're giving somebody a reason to reach out. But another thing you said was really good was the call out and then also talking to the problems in a way where you're talking to problems of people who are are actually in the more qualified portion of your market opposed to the lower portion.
So what are some examples of ways you've done that for clients and, like, what you recommend people do there? Because just to give you context, I'll tell people the same thing, and they'll go like, okay.
Well, yeah, I'm gonna for my health offer, I'm just gonna say, hey. Busy professionals. You know?
And, like, okay. Great. But everybody thinks they're a busy professional, so you just still get the bottom of market.
So what do you tell clients to do for that? So a lot of what we're again, a lot of our clients are in the local service space, so that's that's what's most relevant. But it it goes back to you have your call out.
But your call out might not just be, hey, Georgia homeowners. You also could do county specific call outs, which we find to be really good.
So you're you're going even more niche where you might not be able to scale as far Yeah. And spend more money on it. But if you have a bunch of counties you're running ads for, crushes.
So that would be the call out. But then you also have certain hooks that scale better than other hooks.
So, you know, hardly anyone bothers with this, but it's easiest way to say big as a homeowner. That's a that's a broad kind of problem aware type of hook.
So you have that. Core problems within that, in Florida, we have hurricanes.
So one problem for maybe an affluent person in Florida is they care about peace of mind and not being displaced when another hurricane happens in Florida.
Mhmm. That's a rich person problem. Right.
Not, hey, are your energy bills really expensive? Exactly.
So that's a much different problem in in in the actual what you're speaking to in the ad. Yeah. And then you just take it all the way through.
But that I mean, just kind of think what what do these people
actually care about? Speak to that. Yeah.
Do you know who John Matson is? He was the very last person I had on the podcast. And so he's the best example of somebody who's done this really well.
So he does basically like online personal training. I mean, there's a lot more like better stuff to the product than that and they do like some integrated medicine and stuff like that. But you could categorize him in the online personal training space.
He does $50,000,000 a year. Now I know because I would say probably 10%, which is a large segment of my clients are in the health space.
Most of them, even if they're really good, they struggle to get past, let's say, 300 to 600 a month.
And so if you look at the differences between John and them, John charges 10 k on the front end and 40 k on the back end.
They're charging, like, $3,900. Right? So why is he able to do He's working with he works with super wealthy people.
Now, obviously, if I went to any of these other people and I was like, hey. You should just work with wealthier people.
They're like, well, we're trying. We're calling them out. Hey.
Moms who are busy professionals over 40. But the key is, and what he was able to do so much better than everybody else, is sure the callouts like, hey. If you're making a 150 k a year and you're a dad or whatever and you're over 40.
But what everybody misses is he only speaks to problems that resonate that only those people would have.
A great way to think about it too is if I talk about lead generation as a problem, I'm going get a lower segment of my market than if I talk about, hey, do you need a closer? Right?
Because by the nature of speaking to that problem, it presupposes that you already have lead generation. If I say, hey, do you need a sales manager?
Same thing. If I say, hey, do you need a client success director or a client success person? Same thing.
Hey, do you need an outsource CFO service because your books are a mess? Same thing. Does that make sense?
Totally. And so that's where I think people miss is you have to speak to the problems in a way where and this is the problem with biz op is because if you're just like, hey, do you want to make money?
Like, you're just the pixel's just going to optimize down to the deepest, darkest pits of Facebook and people who you're like, I don't even want to work with these Yeah. You know, like like they're getting out of jail or they're homeless or they got a tattoo on their face.
I'm not even kidding. Yeah. I to run a b to c on that.
So like the key is is you have to speak to the problem that those people are experiencing that the other people won't resonate with. Yeah.
One thing to add on to that too is just
built like, having runway to be able to pay what an industry average cost per call is or cost per client of that marketplace.
Because sometimes you okay. Well, yeah. I'll just I'll go after if I'm an agency owner.
I only wanna speak to 8 figure ecommerce companies. Unfortunately, there's less of them out there.
So you're gonna pay way more for that customer. So you just have to be prepared for that. And then that's where it's it is helpful to, you know, have good practices of saving money, having runway
so you can get in the game on that. Yeah. The key is finding and this is what John did as well is because he basically his audience is accredited investors.
Investors. I know that's like he's not calling them out that way, but through studying what he was doing, I was like, okay.
He's just going after accredited investors, which is a great example of, like, he intersected enough TAM with still high enough quality.
Does that make sense? Because I mean, yeah, I can't. If I called out, hey, are you a business owner doing 1,000,000 a month?
I'm not going to get like My cost per acquisition might be like 25 ks. It'd be crazy.
So AI, what are you guys seeing with AI?
Because we're using some AI creatives that are just made up.
It's not even and they're female too, not even a real person. And they're doing pretty well. So are you guys using AI?
Are you guys thinking about doing that in your road map at all? Have you seen, like, it's tough to get those to work? Like, what are your guys' thoughts?
I'm sure you've thought of it, obviously. Yeah. We've seen some some decent
top of funnel metrics with some of the AI videos. So you'll get a cheaper lead. You might get a cheaper booked meeting.
But from a show rate standpoint, from a cost to close standpoint, we've had businesses literally run our ads parallel with a pretty robust testing system on AI videos.
Uh-huh. I had a guy that was literally testing 10 new AI videos a day, spending $10 a day, had 20 creatives from our team, actually turned our 20 ads off because the AI videos seem to be producing better. They were producing a cheaper lead, and they were producing that cheaper call.
But from a sales metric standpoint, our our ads were attracting a much higher quality individual. They were scaling more efficiently.
The the AI videos tend to break after you know, $10 a day is not not a lot of money in ad spend. So, like, they were kinda bugging out a little quicker.
And yeah. And then and then, I mean, I what we see in the home service space, a lot of these guys are toying around with AI videos and things as well.
And you mentioned it earlier, but from, like, a skepticism standpoint, I kind of view an ad as that, like, initial handshake through the screen.
Right. How do I feel after watching whoever it is on camera from an ad?
The AI, you can still tell. Yeah. And It eventually will be there.
It's yeah. For the time being, I mean, our focus is real people. We just see it work better,
but it doesn't mean that AI doesn't work. It just we find, like, lower win rates. There's probably a way in which you can just I mean, if I was you, for what this is worth, consider adding it into what you're doing because it could just so the way the main way we use it, if I'm remembering correctly, is you're like you're right.
Doing like a two minute full ad through AI is really tough because number one, it actually costs a lot of tokens to actually make that. And then you gotta like you you might only be able to put out ten or fifteen or even thirty second clips is the most I've through Cling at a time.
Right. And then sometimes, like, you produce the next clip, and it's like, the person freaking looks different. And and they just don't sound as good.
So you need a lot of b roll and a lot of editing. But the way we use it is essentially, we'll have somebody in the first five seconds whose AI dropped the hook, and then it goes into a proven ad, whether that's UGC or somebody else.
Interesting. So, like, it can turn sometimes a winning ad into, like, 20 variations if we do it that way. I've seen the opposite too.
You put a real person five Yeah. Seconds
and then it goes into a proven ad. Yeah.
Yeah. So yeah. Both ways.
That's cool. And are you guys using AI at all in your, like, operations or anything to streamline, like, management staff, anything like that?
Not not really, to be honest. We're like, our focus is what is a constraint, and it's it's how can we get more customers, how can we get more value from our clients, and how can we make our clients more money.
And in terms of, you know, kinda where I feel like our constraints are, it's it's just filling up the calendar space and and, yeah, just kind of doing more of the same and and making it better.
So we haven't spent the time probably we should be on AI, but, you know, in the future, that could be more of something that we do.
Yeah. Yeah. My suggestion,
we hired a guy in South Africa who and it's not even an expensive hire, who is like a beast with this stuff, like 5 k a month.
You should just hire one of those people and just let them let them, like, build some stuff in your company. I'm curious, like, what are what are, like, one or I'll two things that give you a bunch of so that's the thing is, you know, what's really interesting is that I've thought about this a lot.
Is it's definitely made our employees more productive, there's no doubt.
But it's not something that's necessarily replacing labor. I almost just think it just makes our business work better.
So I'll give you a few examples. So we have, for certain clients who want salespeople but they're not ready for salespeople, we'll set up and launch their ads for them, their initial ads. And so we'll have to set up the funnel and the GHL and all this stuff.
We have a whole software that this guy built that basically, after they input their assets and their data, the agents just do it. So we have that software, and then we still have people who have to communicate and face with the clients, obviously.
But that just allows it to all of the API connections and the connections and all it's all gone. So that's a really good one.
Another one for sales and this wouldn't work. It doesn't really matter for you guys right now. But if you had a bigger sales team is we have, let's say, 10 or eleven, twelve salespeople, 13 salespeople.
And that's closers, and we have more setters, etcetera. Well, can't even if I have two sales managers, they can't review every call. And what they're trying to do, and the way we do it, is we're trying to essentially figure out, Okay, what are what I call the fringe deals?
So what are the calls that could have closed that didn't close? And those are usually the best ones to review. But obviously, finding those is a certain process.
So you can train we have a whole software that does this now that basically is trained on all my sales training, yada yada yada.
And it basically scores each call depending on how it was conducted. And then it flags anyone that is a qualified lead that probably could have closed but didn't close.
And then those are the ones where we can find because the thing is, the reps, a lot of times they don't submit to review the calls that could have closed but didn't close because they think they're going to close.
Usually it goes to a follow-up and they're like, oh yeah, it's going close. By the time the follow-up doesn't show up, they've already moved on.
They're, you know, they're not even thinking about it anymore. They're like, oh, that's kinda weird. So but we can catch those deals before the follow-up.
And then sometimes what we do is if the call if the manager reviews it and finds there's a bunch of issues, it's like, that's not an 80% follow-up. That's like a 20%.
But then the manager can intervene and actually call the person before the follow-up and then actually raise the probability a lot.
So all QC manager stuff, that's good. We have ten, twelve account managers who work with clients.
Same thing with them, an account manager dashboard, making sure they respond with Slack at all the same times. We can see all their unresponded channels. We can see any clients based on sentiment that's unhappy, you know, or that might be a risk in the future.
So, like, these are things is that replacing anybody on my team? No. But is it making my company work better?
Yeah. You know? And so, like, for you guys, you could literally have, through AI, let's say, a software that's hooked up and API to all of your clients who are running ad campaigns.
And then you could probably see with all your creators and all your UGC creators, like, leaderboard of who has the best stats, like, who got the most spend, who got the best CAC, who got this, and then even do comp competitive awards, like, on on a leaderboard. Like, that's something you could do.
Is that a big constraint in your business right now? No. But that's just an example of something fun.
So there's all sorts of stuff and, yeah, just just I do use Fathom. I love
Fathom for it'll automatically go into close, and then you have a breakdown of what was so what was the problem, you know, what do we talk about, what are next steps, and it just make if you forget what you talked about on the call, it it makes it very easily
Yeah. Or it's, like, easily packaged for you to, uh, I mean, all my sales guys kind of just jerry rigged one version themselves, but we have, like, in a way nicer, like, proposal that they can, like, press a button and just based on the transcript, whatever, generates 95% of the proposal.
Yeah. And then it's just like, okay. Edit.
Edit. Edit. Edit.
Done. And it looks amazing. It can even pull in case studies that are essentially just like the client to embed in the proposal.
Or like on a sales call, uh, this is super easy. You just collect your Claude, the Slack. We have a Slack channel that's client wins.
All client wins go in there. So Claude, the client wins.
That channel's been around since 2019. So, you know, you'll know this as you have closers because you're in a in a space where you can probably remember a lot of your clients. I can't even remember a lot of my clients that I had five years ago even if they were super successful.
And my sales guys weren't here five years ago. Right? So they can just ask Claude, hey, I'm talking to a roofing business doing 2,000,000 a year struggling with lead gen.
Is there anybody like this? And it'll just search that channel, pull up three people even if it's from freaking 2021. Right?
And so, um, because, as you know, if you have a really good, like, perfect just this this case study's banger and it's exactly like the person I'm speaking with, you know that person's gonna be more likely to close.
Totally. Because you're just like, yeah. Like, this person's literally just like you.
Yeah. You know? We have those prebuilt out, but we're not using AI.
We just a little, like, yeah, just a little chat. Like, I'm talking to this person. Bam.
Because then once you have you know, you guys are the sales salespeople right now, so it's just not as big of a deal because you remember so much, and you can just sell well. But as a salesperson, like, they're not gonna know and memorize all those case studies. I mean, they you know, if you train them right, that's what we try to do.
But now we don't have to do that. They just ask the bot. And then bada bing bada boom.
It's good. Nice and easy. Yeah.
So let me see if I have anything else. Oh, had one more thing.
So it been like, so husband, wife working together, how do you guys divvy responsibilities and what are like the challenges and also the cool things about working together as a married couple?
I feel like responsibilities have been pretty clear
the the whole time. I I'd say I wear, like, mostly a CEO hat and Austin wears mostly CMO hat.
CTO a little too. You do mean, you know that is. A CTO?
You're like on the back, like, doing all your nerdy
stuff. Yeah. We're just two people getting after it.
But yeah. See, I'm more CMO, CEO. She's more on creative.
I'm more on Growth. Our growth partner, Retro
stuff. I started just as sales and then when we got when we had to take a lot more calls, you ended up jumping on sales.
So yeah. I mean, the split's been fairly I don't know.
It hasn't been yeah. It's been straightforward to me.
Yeah. In terms of, like, the dynamic, I personally love the dynamic.
I can't imagine, like, having any other, like, business partner. Yeah. I feel like we we work very, very well together.
Like
And what do think allows you to do that? You know?
I would just say good communication. It's I mean, we we all have the same goal of we want to keep improving as a partner both in our relationship, both in business, both in health, both in our family life.
So as long as we're just waking up, putting our best foot forward, I mean, it it it flows very it it's really not as hard as what people might think, and I don't know if that's just unique to us. Yeah. But we have a really easy communication style and and And we did date for three years before doing anything business related together.
So I think, like, dating,
we sussed out, like, things at that level, like, figured out communication. Well, we did we did business before we got married. I know, but we've been together now for a little bit.
Yeah. Yeah. So the first three years, we really you did your thing, I did my thing, like, at that time encouraged me to do, like, RIA and, like, had me you know, we but we were very much doing our own things.
And I think figuring things out as a couple and, like, getting to know each other there and then, like, going into business, we had a lot of that stuff kinda already sorted, and then
business was a little bit more, I don't know, easy, straightforward. Do you think there's certain couples who are definitely not meant to be business partners? Yeah.
A 100%. Yeah. Why is that?
Because they haven't really figured out the couple thing together first. Yeah. That's probably true.
And then, like, good luck trying to do do business together. I
would imagine your your marriage and your relationship has to come first 100%. And it has to be solid. And then from there, it makes the business part a lot easier.
Yeah. I I agree. And I think something that I I care a lot about doing other things.
Like, I can't work for sixteen to eighteen hours in a day and not have, like, touched grass.
Mhmm. I I'm always the one that's, like, asking Austin if we can, like, play tennis before we, like, start our workday.
Or he wants to be on the laptop past, like, 6PM, and I'm like, hey, it's time for us to go out to dinner now. Like, he wants to grab the laptop and, like, work at 10PM at night, and I'm like, no.
It's time for us to go to bed. Like, I I need to do a lot of other things than just, like, the company.
Otherwise, I don't really like, I I do feel like the company's pulling me away from, like, other things that I genuinely really still need to do. And
I think that's been a little bit of a dynamic that we've sorted out together. I think do you like it, though? Yeah.
I think I think having those goals of, like, we want to play tennis in the mornings before we start work. We wanna go grab a coffee before we start work. We wanna be done by 6PM so we can go to a restaurant we enjoy.
So if those are our goals, well, it forces us to work much faster, less time for binge and Instagram while you're kinda in between calls.
Like, you're just you're just dialed throughout the day, and then afterwards,
you have fun and you can go play. Yeah. Yeah.
That's that's how I am as well is I am like I started seven or eight, and then I ended I mean, I end ritually at five every single time.
I don't know how people just, like, carry on their work throughout the evening. But the thing is with me is when I end up five, I'm fucking exhausted.
And I really am very, very efficient.
I used to be, back in the day, down to the fifteen minutes of what I'm doing every hour. That was a little overkill. But I'm very efficient and mindful outside of lunch, basically.
I just want to maximize that time, which I'm glad I did because I think it sets you well up for kids. I don't know how people who just let work just go into all hours of the night.
Don't know how first of all, I don't know. That just sounds unpleasant to me. But second of all, it's like, how are you going to build a life then?
Because you have to have things have to they be have to, yeah, compartmentalize or have certain boundaries, etcetera. Yeah.
Yeah. I I and I think you tell yourself, well, I'll just work harder and longer than everybody else.
And you kind of tell yourself, like, I will be better if I do that. But, I mean, when you're when you're staying up late till 2AM and then you wake up later and you have just such variance in your day to day schedule, it's so hard to be actually focused, dialed in during the day compared to just you you do have those schedules.
It I find it easier to just build momentum and and get what we need to get done done. Yeah.
And we're, like, hungry to start. Like, we I mean, we love
work. Like, don't get me wrong. Yeah.
But it's definitely, like, what we wanna be doing right now. So the other stuff isn't like yeah.
But
yeah. So thanks for coming on, guys. I they find you at VSL Queen, probably easiest way to find you guys?
Yeah. Yeah.
Vslqueen.com. Instagram's vsl.queen.
Sweet. Alright. Well, yes.
Was fun. Yeah. Yeah.
If 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.
Most people assume an agency tops out somewhere around the founder's bandwidth. Emily and Austin proved otherwise. They built VSL Queen to 8 figures while keeping marketing spend at 10% of revenue. Cole Gordon takes them through the whole playbook: the single face-swap that doubled conversion rates, the cold DM script that landed big-name clients, and the disciplined constraint that kept margins intact while competitors burned 25-35% on ads.
How they asked for the click.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
