How Jason Wojo Runs Ads That Print $140 million/Year | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

0:00Some people talk about marketing. And then there's Jason Wojo. For seven years straight, I've posted like an addict on all platforms. At just 19, he was running socials for barbershops. By 25, he'd helped scale over 1 ,300 businesses. Like right now, we're not in like an economic recession. We're in a trust recession. His agency, over$140 million in online revenue. Like I have a lot of nice cars. Get out of that world because it's just like full of shit. From zero calls on his calendar to a pipeline full of cash flow, Jason cracked the code on ads, content, storytelling, and scale, but without selling his soul to the vanity game.

0:38In this episode, we talk about how to actually grow a business, not just look like one. We cover lead gen, funnel psychology, team structure, and why Just Get Me Leads is the surest sign you're not ready to win. If I just stick around long enough, I'm going to get away. This one's for the builders, the marketers, the quiet killers, and anyone chasing legacy over life. Welcome to Coffees. Quick break. Thinking of going independent? Don't do it alone. At eMortgage Capital, our hybrid broker-banker model gives you real support, instant lead access, 160-plus lenders, and nationwide reach in 46 states.

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1:33Jason, what's your morning routine as a young man here these days? Oh, man. My morning routine, I always like to wake up around like 6.30, 6.45, and I like to take a drive in the morning. I feel like the best time I have is sometimes when I am alone and I get to think and I have like my ideas. So I always just get up, do my teeth, all that fun jazz, get dressed. And I just take like a drive for 30 minutes, 45 minutes. I let the wind hit my face. I just get to think about the day. Some people jump up too soon in their morning routine and I'm just like I feel like you get to action too quick. You don't get to process anything.

2:09And then I get to decide like what my day is going to look like. because I don't really set my calendar anymore. My calendar gets blocked. I see a lot of entrepreneurs that have like this big stacked calendar and they're like, oh, yeah, I got a lot of meetings. I'm like, I have zero calls on my calendar at all times. I always put like the big blue blocks every single day. And now I just do like podcasts. I'll do speaking events. I just focus on things that are like really revenue driven. But like as far as the morning, I get my coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. I drive around 45 minutes and then I come back.

2:42and then I usually will listen to some music for a little bit. I kind of just take a little walk too, and then I'll go back in the house by 7, 45, 8 o 'clock, and then I work on the most important things for the first hour and a half of the day. Now, you're a young guy. What age were you when you started in ads? I was 19. Yeah, I was 19, going on 20, and I was just doing stuff for local businesses like barbershops, restaurants, just social media management. Nothing to have to do with ads. I learned the organic piece first and then business owners started saying to me, hey, do you run ads? Hey, I just want more leads.

3:22Can you help us do that? Then I had to learn ads and then I was selling the service back to them. Now, what's your opinion on an organic strategy versus a paid strategy? What can get you to notoriety faster? I look at organic as like a supplement. If you run ads, your offer needs to be good. Your sales process has to be even better. Like the marketing on the front end, people are like right now we're not in like an economic recession. We're in a trust recession. It's harder for people to really trust people. So it's like, all right, I run paid traffic. I get a lot of clicks. I get a lot of leads.

3:53They're going to go to your page to check out your organic. Am I posting every day? Is this someone I can trust? What's their tonality? Like what's the posture? Is this somebody that I can actually give my money to and do business with? So I look at organic as a supplement because if your organic is like nonexistent, your paid ads will suffer. And I just see it night and day difference. Like when you're running paid traffic and doing really well, it's usually a reflection of how transparent and how well your organic is doing as well. Because people like if I look at a Facebook ad right now, I'll see a thousand clicks, right?

4:23Let's just say we have a thousand clicks. Okay. About 400 of those clicks are people clicking your profile picture first, then going back to the ad if they like your organic. So like 40 % of your traffic is looking at organic first to then decide, hey, do I want to go to their landing page and make a decision, make a payment, buy an event ticket, opt in for a webinar, whatever it is, then they'll make that choice. I never thought of it like that. Now, you've scaled – the documentation here says 1 ,300 businesses. Now, what's the common thread that you see amongst all those and what really have you seen as the most effective strategy to scaling amongst those 1 ,300 companies?

5:10So it's always about the four key parts that we find in a business. So one is their offer is like really good, right? When you have a business that is doing, let's say, one to five million a year. One to five million a year is a business that is considered a small business, but it's not something that is what we call scalable yet. One to five million to me is a business that is decent organically, takes care of their customers, has a decent team. They get a lot of referrals. They're able to build that network through that piece. and then I look at a business that has what we call a scalable offer, something that will get them from$5 to$50 million.

5:50Like$5 to$50 million, you just pour gas on the fire with paid traffic and you can scale a business with just paid ads. And then with that supplement organic like I'm talking about. And then if they have a good offer, okay, you have a great offer. Next piece is your funnels, your landing pages, your copy, the content. Like now that they know you have a good offer, can you actually close them on the next page? So you could have a great offer, and then they go to the next page, and there's incongruency. There's no storytelling, no infatuations. The sales process is wrong. The funnel's wrong for the wrong prospect.

6:22How the prospect even learns about the product is different. Like let's say you run a landing page with just text and an opt-in. Okay, but your prospect might want to learn through a quiz funnel. They might want to come to a webinar instead. They might want to go to a local event first to see you in person to buy something, hire a ticket. they might want another type of version of a sales process, which we're going to do the third piece, which is the sales. You could have a great offer, great landing page, but then we look at your sales team. What's your leadership look like? What kind of KPIs are you tracking?

6:49What KPIs are you spending more money on based on what's a winner and what's not? Then the fourth part is usually leadership. Leadership really dictates how everybody follows your offer, your sales process, your fulfillment, the customer journey, all of that. If I look at your leadership and I see that there's faults or a lack of commitment or a lack of hierarchy there's no employee maturity model there's none of these things in the business it makes it harder for them to actually scale and grow even if their offer is great wow i didn't really now i've noticed something on like your specific content strategy you run paid ads on all your postings that's why i'll see like you know you go to zero to 100 get a lot of reshares get a lot of you know and um i i've never ran paid ads on my own content strategy.

7:35It's always been organic. But then again, the only way I'm able to get organic reach is because I do entertainment. You're straight doing marketing content. So you have to run paid ads, right? So that's where the drop-off is. My question for you is, can a normal non-business owner use paid ad strategy to grow their own following like you did? Yeah. Or because you did it with an offering. How can someone do it without an offering? So without an offering, that's usually going to be like – like you were talking about entertainment. So if I was doing entertainment posts, I would have to be spending money on advertising with the intention that I'm doing other things on the side that make me money like brand deals or affiliates or partnerships in some capacity because if I'm just a personality, I have to make money through other means.

8:25So like if you're entertainment but you show something in the video that's entertaining, you're like, hey, go buy it. The link is in my bio. Now you're just getting a bunch of funneled buyers and you're getting a piece of the pie. So that'd probably be through like affiliates or there's like artists or comedians, right? So like they'll run traffic and they want to sell tickets to their event. So, I mean, it's usually like lower hanging fruit purchases, but like with my stuff, like, yeah, I mean, when it's educational, you can just pump money behind it. And then I just retarget 50 % of the views.

8:54So like those hundred thousand views per video. So, okay, if I get 20 ,000 of them to go past 50 % of the watch time or 75 % of the watch time, I'll retarget them to an educational value post that will then get them to then take an action, book a call, join my school group or something that shows not buyer intent, but like intent to engage, intent to move into the next process of the customer journey. So that's just how I want to lead them that way. Because if you just go straight, like pressure click to a book call really quickly, like it's harder to close them because they're not nurtured as much.

9:25So when I pump all the posts, I'm able to retarget them 50 % of the views. And now they are someone who said, oh, yeah, I've seen your stuff. I've watched your videos. Like I'm ready to become a buyer instead of I don't know who the hell you are. I saw this post. I'm new to this. There's two different avatars that I'm trying to click with. And I think the way you're marketing is like you're like a celebrity to entrepreneurs because every entrepreneur knows who you are. And I think you've done that by design. How have you been able to penetrate the entrepreneur market? Every entrepreneur is familiar with Jason Wojo.

10:00So is that just through the lookalike audiences that you're emulating on Facebook, Instagram? Is that the strategy? Yeah. I mean there's more to it. So for seven years straight, I've posted like an addict on all platforms. So that's like – When you say all platforms, because I'm on all platforms, that's like TikTok, Facebook, IG, LinkedIn, we post, but like, we just take what's on threads. If you know what threads is, it's like the Instagram, Twitter, that we then just take the posts and then copy and paste it to LinkedIn. Or we take long form YouTube videos and then transcribe them and turn those into thread, Twitter, and LinkedIn posts.

10:41But like the strategy for us for years was just, I was always under this, like one quote that I've always lived by, which is if I just stick around long enough, I'm going to get a win. I just post so many times that you can't leave the feed without seeing me. And then on top of it, we just run paid traffic. So it's not only Organic that built the name and the brand, but we spend a lot of money on ads every day, probably more than the average individual. So we just spend so much to where I'm trying to funnel people into the school group. I'm trying to funnel people into the book and call funnel, low ticket funnels, webinars.

11:14We run so much traffic. We get hundreds of leads a day. and I'm just looking to run the traffic to break even. I don't run a business to make money on the front end. Most businesses do that. I mean, I play the lifetime value game. That's the one KPI that I've always driven in the business because lifetime value will save a business regardless of what state it's in. Yeah, that's just the same play we have right now. What I've identified is that, like from a personal perspective, like if I ran paid ads personally, that would destroy my organic engagement. that would so you'd have to be reliant now the algorithm is like i got you it actually won't it won't no it won't no that the whole if you spend money on ads organic goes down that's a whole facade oh really a whole facade people will use that angle because they're scared to lose the organic stuff that they're doing but paid ads is like putting fire on it's like putting gasoline on a fire you already have the fire it's the organic it's the brand it's the messaging.

12:16It's what you do. And then you just put gas on it, which is, Hey, let's throw some money every day on Facebook and Instagram, all those platforms. And then just like make the fire bigger. It's kind of like what they say when someone makes money. Okay. If they were an asshole before, they're going to be one. Once they make money, the money is going to show you the true colors of who the individual is. So if you have a good offer, a good business, good organic, and then we just pour gas on it with paid ads, it will show the true colors of what the market thinks. That's a really big difference between organic and paid.

12:45Organic, you can sell as much as you want. Like I can go on live right now and I could probably sell 10, 20, 30 grand of just like coaching done for you services. But if I go on paid ads, I now have to have like a really good funnel and a good ad and good messaging because the cold market is what's going to tell me what works and what doesn't. But organic will always buy for me because they know, like, and trust me. So that's where the two differ. But like, yeah, dude, paid Paid ads, it's just an amplifier. I mean that's what I've heard. People have said that especially with YouTube. I tried it on TikTok.

13:19It didn't impact my TikTok. I've been terrified to try it on Instagram. I wouldn't do the boost post. I would go in the back end. You just go back end ads manager and run like conversion campaigns so it doesn't mess with your front end. Like that's what I do. I don't run the boost post or run engagement. I only will take the post and run it as a conversion campaign. So it's going for a lead, for a purchase, or something that has buyer intent. I see. Now, your agency boasts like you've done over$140 million in online sales. At what point did revenue growth start to feel like a numbers game rather than like a mission-driven endeavor?

13:57I think it was more of a numbers game when I had a bigger team. How big is your team now? 58. to a team of 58 when we went past like 40 35 team members that's when it started to become like a numbers game because like as we scaled like yeah margins drop but then we had to focus on more product market fit more lifetime value raising prices having better sales people sales manager in place all these things had to be incorporated but like the whole numbers game thing is like I didn't want it to be a game. I want it to be like a slot machine. Even if I had 100 visitors a day versus 1 ,000 visitors a day, I want to make sure that when I cha-ching the slot machine that the amount would be about the same.

14:45I don't want to have the law of diminishing returns. Unfortunately, when you're hiring a bigger sales team, you're going to take on people who are not as great. You're going to have these outliers that fall within the cracks. so it's like i i just think once the team was bigger i had to play with the numbers more so that i wasn't screwing stuff up as the margins fall i see yeah now one thing i i really like is that you were in actually you were actually in entrepreneurs 30 under 30 now how do you transform like those accolades into like tangible clients what's the strategy there is just like running ads behind it or yeah we use them in ads like when i'm when i have i have certain ads for each part of the funnel so it'd be like top of funnel middle funnel bottom of funnel bottom of funnel ads are all retargeting so that's where i'll start talking about those things in the ads top of funnel is like hey here's who i am and what we do middle of funnel is like here's why running ads are important and bottom of funnel is like here's why you should work with us we have this result this case study this accolade etc so i could just like get them to the bottom because at the top they don't really care about that as much because then it's just me me me like I'm just talking about me, but the ad is supposed to be about why you get a benefit or a result.

15:55So I want it to be about the prospect. But yeah, of course we use it. We have badges on the landing pages. We use it in our pitch deck. We use it for – we run a lot of events, so we put a menu in front of everybody where we talk about accolades and the price points and all that. So we use it. It's just not something that we use first because then it makes us look like egotistical and weird. So yeah, it's like – I've always wondered how to use that in a funnel strategy like all the accolades we get. Like all these awards we're getting all the time. We got like dozens and dozens of awards, tons of awards we get every year.

16:30Well, you don't have to say in the video. Like the way that we use it now is we just have it in the background. So like you've probably seen those ClickFunnels awards that people get for like making X amount of money or whatever. You could just like – if I were shooting an ad right now, like I would put a ClickFunnels award behind me and another ClickFunnels award here. and then the Inc. 5000 and like the 3930 thing underneath me. Like that's what I would have in an ad. I wouldn't say it out loud though. I would intrinsically let the prospect decide, oh, I know what that is. Because here's the thing.

16:59If they know what those things are, they're going to buy something. Like if they understand the validity of it. But if I have to explain it, then I'm like I'm looking like I'm trying too hard. It's like a needy feel. So if I just have the awards behind me, I'll let the prospect sit there and go, okay, that makes sense. I know what that is. So you're doing a lot of podcasts right now and you're going to do four podcasts. What do you think the value is of podcasting for your business? Especially you're meeting all these entrepreneurs who need your services, I'm sure, besides actually the relationship.

17:31So the crazy thing is I never pitch or anything to anybody when I come to podcasts. I don't. And the funniest thing about it is that I'll do like maybe like four to eight a month, give or take. Like I'll do two travel weekends or two travel weeks or whatever, but like they'll wind up asking me if I can do it. I don't actually like do anything marketing wise. It's like really weird, bro. It's interesting. I don't use it to generate income or anything. I use it to network and like meet the next person. And that's how I really got a lot more views over the last two, three years and really started having bigger networks and like starting to network with real business owners.

18:08Yeah. Not just like – not to be that guy but a lot of these coaches on the internet, they're not networks. They're just clowns. It's like it's not – they're not real business owners. Yeah, we have a saying here. Those who can do, those who can't coach. Yeah. So it's like now I'm just – I just do podcasts for content for collaboration posts because it helps out both pages. And then the third would be just like, hey, if I can help in any way, then I can help. If I can't help, no harm, no foul, I still get content. So it's like, oh, it's a win-win. But for you, like you're going into and you're talking to entrepreneurs because most of the people who have podcasts and have the leisure of podcasting are successful entrepreneurs, I would say.

18:47Yeah. So just the one-on-one you get with me or you're doing Alberts or all these and whoever else you're doing while you're in SoCal, which has just mega. And you're doing days right after. It's like you racked it up, you know, like maximizing. And everybody's a successful entrepreneur. So it's a great way for you and your business, I'm sure. but I just you know a lot of people undervalue you know the what a podcast can do for a business you know I've used it and it's I feel like it's catapulted all my networks my relationships my friendships my and for me my personal growth like I'm over here I'm asking you questions that directly impact my business and my strategy so you know it's a win-win for me um now Now, what I find fascinating is like you've developed like a key method on focusing on like strategic business aspects.

19:39Now, which of these clients – which clients most often under – you know, most clients often underestimate it. But how does that really impact their success, like the different aspects of marketing strategy? When they underestimate it, they typically become impatient because they don't understand how much work it is. So they just look at ads and advertising as, yeah, I want to spend money. I want to get clicks. I want to make money. And I'm like, dude, there's so many more things to this puzzle. And they don't want to understand that because Facebook, in the beginning of Facebook's time, they made the barrier to entry so low.

20:17You got a credit card. You want to spend$5 a day? Come join us. Little did Facebook realize they were misleading people in the wrong fashion because what do half the people that we talked to say? I spent a lot of money on ads. I did it on my own. It didn't work. I'm like, well, yeah, because they made the barrier entry so low. Like, in my opinion, what they should be doing is they should be validating, like, your taxes, LLC information, all this stuff. I know that might seem small to bigger entrepreneurs who are listening to this because it's like, oh, yeah, you're supposed to have that. But, like, dude, they let people who are low-hanging fruit solopreneurs in their garage take a credit card and spend$10,$20 a day,$50 a day.

20:53And it's just like it becomes this thing where people start throwing the word saturated around because there's no barrier to entry. So like when they underestimate it, now they get impatient because they're like, oh, ads don't work. This other person I hired didn't work. And I'm like, dude, your landing page or offer all these things. Oh no, just get me the leads. I'll close them. I love those people. They're like, just send me leads and I'll close them. I'm like, when you say that, we know you can't close the door. Like we know you're not good at sales because it comes down to the prop, like the actual sales process, your lead nurture.

21:23Like what's your, what, what is your like Ascension model look like? What are all these things in the business that actually matter that drive the business forward? And you don't know it. You're like, that stuff's not important right now. I just need leads. I need to make money. And I'm like, bro, you don't – you're not a real business. It's crazy. And they just skipped all the steps and they don't understand how many layers there are. I mean you're a brilliant marketer. That's what you are. And there's so many components to attaining that. And people don't – they see Jason Wojnar. They're probably thinking just Jason's running my ads.

21:54They don't know that you've got 60 people underneath you. like that you're directing you know like creating strategies and and really brainstorming with and i'm assuming you're all decentralized and they're u.s based or overseas or how many people so i would say about 85 percent of our staff is u.s and then 15 is going to be international yeah because those are like developers and graphic design like for me to find graphic design in the u.s and do developers in the u.s would just be too overpriced yeah for the amount of workload that we need it's just too expensive. So who's in the U S that you hire?

22:26Like marketing managers, media buyers. The reason why we don't do overseas as much anymore is because the clients don't like it. Yeah. They care about results. But if I put a client paying five, six, 7 ,000 a month and they go on a call with somebody who is like in India or in Pakistan, they automatically are just like, I don't trust them. I want a refund. Like they just don't like it. The, the, the professionalism is like not there. So all the marketing managers and the media buyers and the copywriters that we hire now, they're all US. Leadership is US. Yeah, it's more expensive, but it gives off a better tone.

23:03It's like when they get on the calls, I can't have people who are international ascending clients or upselling things to them. Like someone who's getting paid$3 an hour in Pakistan is not going to send a client from a package to, hey, we have this too. Hey, we have mastermind with Wojo, hey, we got this. They're not going to trust the person. They're like, I could just get somebody on Fiverr myself. So that's where we started to see that. And that was four years ago. I had VAs like four years ago and the business was stuck at 200 grand a month. And I was like, I'm stuck at 200 grand a month because I'm so bottlenecked because I can't trust these$3 an hour VAs.

23:38It just doesn't work. So all the people online who are pushing this VA stuff, like some things, yes, like video editing, fine. VA it. Graphic design, VA it. Social media management va it developers va website building yeah you could va it but like when you have client facing people in the u.s where i'm talking to like real franchises and business owners they're already pissed they're like no i don't want that so yeah who are some of the biggest companies you've worked for uh guaranteed rate harley davidson um are you working with the cmos directly or how are you working? I'm literally just in a group chat with, it's just, we call it the GR leadership chat.

24:21It's just like this WhatsApp group where I'm just with a bunch of like, yeah, we got CFO, CMO, um, director of brokers, director of brokerage, like all these like directors and corporate titles. And I'm just like, okay, this is what we're doing. I mean, it's, weird going into that corporate realm. The funniest thing about that was that I closed that deal because I gave them one tip. And they like spent a lot of money on like the hockey logos to like be behind the hockey ring and the baseball ring. And I got introduced to them by one of my good friends, Jen Beeson. She's like a really big mortgage lender.