What We Would Gamble On

0:00If you had, let's just say, you know, X amount of dollars to just throw at something right now, what's the one thing you would gamble on? I gamble from a work perspective investment standpoint so you and I kind of joked around Solana right what would be that yeah this is not financial advice but I would uh probably bet on more crypto or crypto whatever you want to end up calling it um other than that uh I would invest more in just doubling down on really good people like if if I had you know extra$10 million a year for three years, I would go hire$10 million worth of amazing. That's not a gamble, dude.

0:40You kind of know it's going to work or not work quickly. You can cut it. No, but dude, I've hired a lot of amazing people and it usually doesn't work the way I think in most cases or people will tell me. Hiring amazing people helps a business grow. Yes, he has a lot of books. He's smart. He reads a lot. Unlike daddy. Daddy doesn't read enough. No, I don't. I need a lot. Okay. So when I've hired amazing people in the past, what I found is they typically don't produce the results as quick as I want, and some don't produce the results at all. And what I found is it's not just about hiring amazing people.

1:17It's about hiring amazing people at the right time. Sometimes a business isn't ready for it. And I'll give you an example of this. So I was talking to my CEO, Mike G, and he was talking about one of his buddies. And his buddies are interviewing at other agencies. I was like, man, I know you talked about having him for a global role. And we have so many global clients in different countries working on cross selling and then bridging accounts from country to country, division to division, and it would help with the land and expand. He's like, great idea. He would be great for that role. He's just like, we're a year to two years away from really needing it.

1:58He's like, we have global accounts, but they're not big enough global accounts. And they're going to be harder to land and expand. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, that role is really effective when you can generate a lot of eight figure accounts. He's like for seven figure accounts is not as effective for eight figure accounts. You can really balloon them up and make a massive ROI from it. And he's like, if you look at us, he's like, we get seven figure accounts, but he's like, it's not like every day that we're getting eight figure accounts knocking on our door and he was just saying wait till year 10 where we just finished year eight this year so i was like cool so great candidate if i hired him it would be a waste of money that's why i say if i had 10 million dollars for like three years straight i would make a ton of hires and just be patient yeah so what i would say to that um one i this is maybe practical for people but i i actually have a an Apple note on who to hire and also for when, right?

2:53Because sometimes it's two, three years out or so. Sometimes I continue to talk to someone, it's like three years or so. Now to that point, I still look at it as us making an investment. You never know with people, like you're lucky if you get it right, I don't know, 50, 70 % of the time. I actually did the math on ours. We have a 70 % success rate in the last 12 months. But all that to say is I think the best investment, not financial advice, at least for us, is to plow it back into our own businesses. That's why I don't look at it as a major gamble because we're betting on ourselves. But if we're to gamble, again, not financial advice, we'd probably be messing around with crypto right now.

3:24Something that's maybe not altcoin crazy, but maybe like a little that's kind of up the stack, like a Solana, for example, that has more room to run. But anyway, that's just me and just Neil and I just kind of messing around with crypto. So we have another one here. How about best biggest marketing win for 2025? five? My biggest marketing win, I would have to say, is doing, and we were doing this in 2024, and even in 2023, but we ramped it up more and more, has been doing in-person meetups, where we handpick the right type of enterprise companies, and we give speeches to them in different countries.

4:03So there may be like 20, 30, 60, whatever people in a room, and we'll give speeches and build relationships that generates a lot of revenue for us in the long run uh if i look at my leads year over year it's funny because i got a message from solo who heads up marketing and he's like dude we need to run more ads leads are down and i'm like you're just looking at a total count let's say leads are down 30 i don't know what the number is and and then i was breaking down i asked him the question like do you know the rfp numbers in 2023 just in the united states He's like 16, 17. I was like 16. That's right.

4:35And I was like, what about 2024? He was like, we got a 50 % increase. I was like a little bit more, 25. And then he's like, okay. I'm like, what are we at for 2025? And he's just like 38 the last time I checked, maybe 39. I was like, we actually hit 40. So I was just like, maybe we'll get 41 before the year ends. But I doubt it now because we only have around, call it 11-ish days before the year ends. but when you look at the RFP count, those are the right type of leads and more of our RFPs are larger in size, they're more services and they're more regions where they need help in. So it's like, yes, you're looking at total leads but you're not looking at the type of leads we ideally want because if you look at the ideal type of leads we want, it's actually up drastically globally.

5:24Yep. I would say for us, it's outbound email and what I mean by this is We work with a company called Sales Automation Systems. So they did a great job, but we decided to kind of take it in-house. More so, my sales team wanted to take it in-house. And you, because that means you think you could do it better. Well, I mean, the reason, and I'll give kind of my reasoning for this, and maybe some of them will listen to this, but the reason I set us up with Sales Automation Systems, they actually take a commission. And I knew that tax would be so irritating to my sales team, but I wanted to get it going because I've been talking about Outbound for a while, but we weren't really getting much movement there.

5:56at. I was like, okay, I'm going to go with them. We're going to place a tax on your commissions. So you're just like, screw that. Right. And then now what's happened to their credit, to the sales team's credit now, um, we're, we're taking it in-house and, um, you know, it's because what sales automation systems does is it's great. It's, it's, it's very, um, I think we probably hit three or 400 ,000 sent four, three or 400 ,000 emails. I think we got 200, I want to say 200 or 250 responses from it. And we actually, I think we closed, um, maybe three deals from and these are all icp fit these are because we're targeting more b2b especially b2b sas um and so we we that's what i would say like they were very good at staying on top of the different um offers um in addition like i'll tell you what worked the 105 not 100 but 105 dollar amazon gift cards that still gets people to respond because you show me and it says i'll show you the outcome right um so yeah i i've been surprised because in the past i've tried to make outbound work and it just never worked so uh credit to sales automation systems if you guys want to try it first, I would certainly recommend it because they've done great for a lot of companies.

6:59Go ahead. What was your deal? Okay. So you ended up sending out Amazon gift cards to potential email, potential customers. So sales automation systems or whoever you're using now internally, you would go pull a list together of ideal companies. I'm assuming you're doing account-based marketing. You would then target the specific individual and you would start giving them offers and stuff like that, like free Chipotle or Amazon gift cards. I'm assuming you tried$100 and you know$100 doesn't work. So hence you said$105 is better. More so. $100 still works, but because so many people are doing it now, you want to stand out a little differently, right?

7:33So some people will send AirPods. I know of a B2B agency that actually sends AirPods. I'd rather just give them the money. And we do the gift card, plus we try it with different offers. One might be for Carrot. One might be for ClickFlow. One might just be for... You're giving them an Amazon gift card in exchange for what? To get on a call with us. Okay. And then for every phone call that you do, how many end up signing up? Yeah. So the only numbers I have for you is we've closed three. And this is like we started with them three, four months ago or so. And then 250 people responded, three closed.

8:05So three out of 250, which means you still have more in the pipe. At 250, you sent$105. So$26 ,250 in gift cards, right? I'm assuming that sounds right. and out of the$26 ,250, you're also paying sales automation system. So how much do you - No, no, no. Sorry, sorry, sorry. So$250 replied, but it's a certain percentage of them that got on the call. I just don't have that number right now. Yeah. So you didn't have to give all of them a gift card? No. So let's just cut it in half. Let's just say$13 ,000 in gift card spend. Okay. So$13 ,000, you closed three deals. What was the total contract value of the three deals?

8:40I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. I can say each deal averages, Let's just say each deal averages around$20 ,000 to start. Per month or one time? Per month. Okay, so you close, call it$300 ,000,$700 ,000, or what is it called? I don't know. My math's bad today. It's okay. $780 ,000,$720 ,000? You close$720 ,000 in revenue, cost$13 ,000, and then you had to pay sales automation. And let's throw another$20 ,000 on top for our sales automation systems. So let's say we paid$33 ,000 or something like that. And they closed it or do they pass it off to your team? No, we close it. If you've ever built a website, you know how tough it can be to keep a strong design while ensuring site performance is fast.

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11:38Yeah, exactly. Right. But again, I knew that would apply pressure to really get it going once it really starts to hurt. Right. But what I would say is, again, I believe we closed three deals. And I do know the amount that we paid to 33 grand, that is in fact accurate. So yeah. $33 ,000. Okay. And then plus internal commission. So it's worth it. Yeah. It's worth it. And now it's like, okay, how do we just ramp in it? How do we just micromanage this process more? Because you're constantly having to test different offers and you're constantly having to rewarm email boxes and things like that. So outbound works because what's interesting to me, Neil, is when I see some of the responses, because the responses come through Slack and I'm staring at them.

12:18I'm like, oh, like a lot of people are like, oh yeah, our strategy is actually changing this year. We'd love to talk right now. Our strategy is changing this year. So sometimes it's not even about the gift card. Sometimes it's just hitting people at the right time because 99 % of people aren't ready to buy and market typically. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, okay. Now let's switch over to biggest marketing loss. I'll start first on this one and then you can go next. I think our biggest marketing loss this year was actually on the carrot side of things. And what I mean by that, so carrot's my LinkedIn account-based marketing product, which still gets leads and still gets customers, by the way.

12:48But it's a very niche feature. And what's interesting to me, Neil, is I've actually talked to a handful of people at competitors recently who have worked at similar type of companies. and they've all since left those companies. And they said that it's just really hard to sell in that niche. And that's why those companies aren't growing that much. And so had we done more, had I been, I think, more involved with customer development in the beginning, I think we would have gotten to that insight faster. So I would say that biggest marketing loss is not doing enough customer development because we still have a great product, but I would say it's more of a niche feature than like a full-fledged product.

13:25Yeah, I would say my biggest marketing loss for 2025 is a toss up between two. The one for the agency would be we didn't do enough local marketing, like in countries like Italy and Germany and places like that to make it well known. And when I say didn't do enough marketing, we had boots on the ground, but a lot of the events that had our ideal customers in those regions weren't willing to pay me to speak and they're used to charging speakers. and like DeMexico and stuff, and we should have done it. You can pick up a lot of great customers from these events. They charge everyone. I really do believe we should have done it.

14:08I would say that was a big mistake on my end in 2025, but we're going to change that in 2026 and we're going to try paying to speak. I've never done that before. We usually always get paid. I'm not talking about airfare and hotel. I'm talking about airfare, hotel, and money. So it's going to be a total 180 where I had to pay my own airfare, my own hotel, and pay to be on stage, right? So I'm curious to see how that goes. But it's good that you don't have such high ego where you're just like, oh, I'm not going to do that. So whatever works for the business. Yeah, whatever works for the business.

14:41In a dream world, I wish it was we could pay to speak and it wasn't me who was on stage and someone else could speak and it would perform just as well. I'm not saying that I'm the best speaker or anything like that. But if it performed as well, I'd be so excited because then I wouldn't ever have to travel to speak and other people can do it for me. We do have some amazing speakers. Just we don't have an amazing speaker for every single country. And on the software side, I would say one of the biggest marketing losses was we didn't invest in product. You know, I had so many calls with my team this year on marketing and the people running marketing and software, they're like, we're losing traffic on some of these softwares.

15:20We need to run ads, more competitive. And I'm like, guys, software marketing works very different. If you have an amazing product, you just get more popular without doing tons of marketing because we already have a big enough base. If your product sucks and it's not keeping up with the Joneses and everyone else at the competition, you're going to lose traction and you're going to lose visitors over time. And I'm like, what you need to do is not spend as much money on ads and marketing. What you need to do is take that money and just create more products and release them for free and it creates a better flywheel from a marketing standpoint than it does to go and run paid ads, at least for software.

15:55You know what? One of our, I'm talking about both of us, our biggest loss this year is not having someone on top of our podcast, the work that we do on the advertising side, because there's a lot of good advertisers and I wish we just had someone to kind of man it, but we don't. And finally, we're getting some deals through, but it has to be you and I kind of doing the dirty work, which is fine. But I wish we just did something sooner about it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So final two here, and then we can move on to some of the topics, the other topics we have.

16:28No, I think that might be it. Is there anything you want to add to this one before I continue? Go for it. Okay. So did you see, I mean, okay, this is a good topic for us to talk about. So the topic here is how to make millions from podcasting. So there's a good couple of examples here. So Acquired FM, they charge, I think,$2 million per quarter for it to own the mid-roll, maybe$2.5 million to be the primary sponsor. Yeah, that's a lot of money. And Lenny's podcast, so Lenny's podcast used to be more of a product podcast, but it gets a lot of downloads now. And he sells mostly ads to companies like, I don't know, a lot of tech companies that you know, like Notion, for example.

17:06The Founders podcast is sponsored by Colossus, which is, they have to invest like the best podcast. I think these ear balls, not ear balls, but these ear lobes, these ears are very valuable ears just because of the caliber of people that you're listening to. And the reason I even came up with this topic on how to make millions for podcasting is because one of the co-founders of the Acquired podcast, I don't know why more people don't copy our long-form way of doing these business analyses. I would even argue, Neil, that our podcast, we have done well with advertising in the past on this podcast.

17:38I would say that I see this podcast as a touchpoint. I don't think it's the last touchpoint when it comes to driving conversions, but at least for our sales team, they say 60 % of people know of us because of the podcast or because of YouTube or because of something else. And so I do believe this is a very valuable touchpoint because I'll tell you what, Neil, one last thing. I got so many messages. I don't know if you did, but I think I got 10 messages in the last day or two because our feed was messed up on Apple And so many people are messaging and saying, hey, I listen to your stuff all the time.

18:09Hey, it's not working. It's not working. It's not working. So I know we're doing something great here. And I know for a fact that we've actually driven millions from this podcast, not just from advertising, but on the actual customer side. I don't think I got one message. Maybe because they know you won't respond. I try to respond. It's also people that can't find. Well, my email is not that hard to find, but a lot of people check your LinkedIn messages or your Instagram messages, right? I actually check Instagram messages. Yeah, but not from general people, right? I do. I check all of them. You do?

18:39I get a lot of leads. I get probably three to four leads a day on Instagram. Really? Uh-huh. Wow. That's a lot. I have my phone right now. I'd pull it up, but my daughter took my phone. I believe you. I believe you. And they'll tell me budget and everything. No joke, three to four leads a day. Will you ask them to budget yourself? Are your team managing your Instagram? A lot of people have my Instagram login. Yeah. It's good to know. It's good to get that reminder every now and then. LinkedIn, I check probably three, four times a week. we also get good leads from there. Yeah. LinkedIn has been great for the DM type leads.

19:10Instagram, I can't say I've gotten good leads from Instagram. Anyway, but that's how you make millions from podcasting. It can be either a product or service you sell on the backend, or you can sell ads for very expensive. And when you have a long form podcast, like an acquired or, or I don't know how much founders makes, but Lenny's podcast as a solopreneur, I think he does well for himself. I think it's, it's extremely valuable intention. Okay, guys, that's it for today. Neil came in sick. Thank you, Neil, for doing this sick. and we'll see you guys next week. Hopefully we'll be in person. So goodbye.