The 8-Figure Whisperer - Mark Young

0:00Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Everyone thinks the secret to scaling past$10 million is better funnels and bigger ad spend. Today's guest, Mark Young, founder of Rise Agency, proves that's exactly why most brands get stuck. The show starts now. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the show. I'm really excited to be on here. Mark, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate the invite again. Again, yes. We had a little bit of a kerfuffle the first time. We're glad to be back. We'll have to talk about that where my systems completely break down, which, hey, you know what?

0:33That was on me. I apologize. So mine do it too. So for the few people who don't know who you are, tell us more about you. What do you do? Who are you? Yeah. So again, I appreciate the invite. I am obviously Mark Young, as you just said. I hate that question. Is that terrible? I'm just such a non-self-promoting person that when someone's like, tell me about yourself, I'm like, you know, I'd really rather talk about you. Who am I though? I'm a guy who just likes showing up in the world as a real version of me, I think, And especially I'm an advertising and marketing guy. And I own an agency that is we specialize in direct to consumer and e-commerce marketing.

1:13So a lot of e-com stuff. We're media agnostic. But I like showing up a genuine version to me, which, by the way, I use that, which sounds like real fluff language. I acknowledge that. But the reality is, is as a marketing guy, you kind of have the skills to show up however you want. And I think it's a special skill set to not show up as someone you aren't. I think that's actually a skill set, if that makes sense. In the beginning, as an entrepreneur, you try to put your hat and put on different hats at the same time. Then you have to get back to going, well, who am I really? And have that authentic thing.

1:43Most people along the way. Yeah, I don't want to be a chameleon. Like, I don't want to just fit into a situation. Like, I want to genuinely be me because I think there's, especially in the marketing world, and this is a lesson that I really, really, really double down with because the majority of the brands we deal with are entrepreneurial. And I say that we really double down on the storytelling of that founder's story because the reality is, is in the e-com world specifically, like we have commoditized darn near everything that a person can buy. In a commodity world, we need to really focus.

2:17And I know we may disagree a little bit here on some of this, but in a commoditized world, relationship matters much more than transactions because relationship leads to transaction. trends and actions don't lead to relationship. And I think we just need to prioritize the way those things go. So I say that with the founders and the entrepreneurs that I work with and coach on a regular basis, that's one of the things that I really, really emphasize with them is genuinely be yourself. Quit trying to chase an audience that you're never going to resonate with, that we need to get this loved by few rather than liked by many down.

2:56and I think the only way to do that is to be your authentic self and one of the things your marketing agency does differently than a lot of the other ones is you the people you interact with on a high level these are high performers these are high earners these are people in exceptionally high side yeah these are business owners these are entrepreneurs these are in many cases we work with a lot of brands I would say 80 percent of our of our our book of business is all working with health and wellness brands that and I would say that they're they're swimming upstream because these are countercultural-type brands that are supplements.

3:26They're medical devices. They're not big pharma. They're not insurance-covered things. They're patient-paid things, right? Like you're not getting this covered by insurance. We're not selling knee replacements. We're selling red light therapy devices that actually lead to reducing joint pain. Like very, very different sell. and authenticity is so important in that conversation. So they're actually studying things that actually help people is what you're saying. Strangely, yes. Imagine that. So like H5 and all of those things. Yay, good stuff. Yeah, good times, good times. Yeah, really, really helpful, healthy stuff.

4:04Before we get into all that health stuff, I wanted to talk about, you know, in that environment, that is a different niche that most people go into. And it's different languages. For example, if I was going to create a dating website for women in their 20s, it would be very different verbiage and copy than a dating website for women in their 30s. very different environment. You're talking to entrepreneurs who are ultra successful, who have now reached the point where they've got the lion that's been chasing them kind of in a cage. They've got funds under control, but now we're trying to penetrate a market that is that ultra, that deck a millionaire, that cent a millionaire, that environment that are in that.

4:34There's a different way of communicating to that. How do you instruct and how do you work with your clients and what do you have them say? Well, I'm going to say this, that is, it doesn't matter to me how much money that the entrepreneur has. I believe that every one of us experiences that same spectrum of emotions. And that is, I love there, there was a meme online years ago that was, you know, I'm, I'm crushing it. Oh my God, I'm going bankrupt. This is amazing. You know, I'm, I'm the best at what I do. Oh no, the world is going to end here. If I don't finish this report, it's like, and it's captioned a day in the life of an entrepreneur, right?

5:09Like this was not the entrepreneur's month week year this this was literally a day in the life of an entrepreneur and um and i will say that the thing that that that i enjoy and i laughingly say it's because my my educational background is actually in clinical psychology and i say that i'm i tend to be the entrepreneur whisperer um and a lot of that is that entrepreneurs high performers anybody that gets to that that top position in their space and it could be because you've got a top position in your company, right? So no one understands where you're coming from because everyone else is on payroll.

5:46And it could be that in your family, you're the highest performer. So no one at Thanksgiving understands the day you're having because no one around the table has your experience. And it could be in the friend circle that you're part of. But the one thing about high performers, these entrepreneurs, these people that I work with on a daily basis, there's a lot of rooms that they walk into that feel lonely yes um and and i i mean i'm sure you can relate to that in a lot of ways too right yeah we i've got something called eo in my 20s and i've never i don't drink i never have it's not my thing but it really felt like like aa for entrepreneurs where you stand up you're like hi my name is charles i don't know the difference between my business life and my personal life oh yeah it's well because that's yeah exactly welcome charles welcome welcome here yes you are in the right place and it is very lonely being a successful entrepreneur.

6:32So getting in with them and connect with them, you'd have to be a whisperer on some level. Well, and to that point, when I when I actually meet with new clients or, or, you know, even have conversations with people I've worked with for years, the the reality is, is I always start with the human on the other side of the call. And that is, you know, when I'm telling them, look, like, in order to make our next step, like, you've got a 10 million dollar business, and we're trying to grow it to 100 million dollar business at this point. And telling them, like, I'm going to give you a couple of options here on where we need to go with this.

7:05But please understand that me blue, you know, throwing a blue ocean kind of kind of plan to you doesn't mean that I don't understand your concerns with cash flow. Like I'm a business owner as well. I realized that there are a lot of good things. And usually that's where the conversation goes is this. And I tell them like, there's a difference between a good business decision versus a good cash flow decision. And usually they're at odds. Yes. Because a good cash flow decision. What is it? Yeah, very, very often those two are at odds. Absolutely. And I mean, the idea that, you know, growth is fantastic, but it comes with a cash cost.

7:39And sometimes that cash cost means borrowing. And sometimes borrowing means giving up margin and the growth isn't worth giving up the margin for the borrowing. Like, sure, you can grow the business, but you just gave away any incremental profit that you just earned in interest from the borrowing. Like, why grow? You know, I deal with with entrepreneurs on the regular who for for most entrepreneurs and I'm going to say that 10 million is really where I see the break point. Like, that's a number like that is a number where when I have clients that are under 10 million, like that is the target. Like it, eight digit is their world.

8:15And unfortunately I'm having a, a conversation with them on the regular because I'm trying to throttle them back. Let me give an example. We may spend media efficiently or aggressively, but you can't do both. Right? Like when we're buying, whether it's digital media, radio media, whatever, whatever it is, and, and I will get an entrepreneur. I have one in particular, in fact, true story. I just fired her recently because she was just a bad client. But it was a bad client that I must have this and this and this. And you're trying to explain that we can spend aggressively because 10 million is your number and you want anything to hit 10 million.

8:57But in doing so, we're going to lose all of the efficiency. And your accounting is so bad that you're not even making profitable sales at this point. You're just chasing a$10 million number and then you're upset. Like you have to scale smart. So I'm often putting plans out saying, look, we can get to your number, but it's going to come at a cost and, or we can make you a lot of money, but it's not necessarily going to get to your number at the rate you're trying to get there because there is scaling, there is testing, there is all of these things that need to go in there. and unfortunately I will say that where I find most entrepreneurs fail particularly in the e-com world is lifetime value and that is they are so busy trying to get a new customer on the books and transactions transactions transactions that they fail to realize that your best customer is the one who's already bought from you and we call it life cycle marketing and it's like trying to explain to them that making a wreck of your follow-up is the fastest way to lose a customer.

10:06And there was an example recently given. It was in a book that I just read. You know Joe Polish? I'm sure you know Joe. Genius Network Joe. Joe's a good friend. And I just recently read one of his older books. And Joe's big deal in carpet cleaning was his big deal, right? And his book, Piranha Marketing. And he gives the example of a guy who was so overwhelmed by the just the incredible work that this carpet company had done. And he just loved it and he paid extra for it and so on and so forth. And the next time he needed his carpets clean, he forgot the name of the company and hired someone else.

10:41It's funny because we both live in South Florida and we drive by something that says, your wife is hot. There's a, there's a billboard that says, your wife is hot. Yes. And it's an air conditioning company. Yeah. I was like, what's the name of the air conditioning company and they're like, uh, you have no idea. Everyone knows the billboard, but it's a complete failure because they don't remember the name of the company. So to your point with carpet, you're not doing the followup. You're not building that relationship. You're not building that rapport. So it's absolutely. If I bought from you once, I gave you permission to keep talking to me.

11:10And if you don't, it's a snub, right? And the followup is horrible. And it doesn't have to be a great deal of things. Like what are the ways that you had encouraged people to follow up with previous clients? So there's many, and it really depends on the vertical that they're working in. Probably the way that I talk to my clients most often and encourage them to do is a well-managed email database. And that is, I will say that there is a false reality that Instagram followers are the way to go. And I... Huh? Thank you for saying that. I've been trying to get this in people's ears for... about. Oh, it's a joke.

11:49And the problem is it's a vanity metric and nobody wants to talk about it, that followers on social media is fine. The problem is, I'll draw this comparison for your listeners and say that it's a vanity metric. And the problem is that the algorithm is stacked against you to begin with, because let's assume you have 10 ,000 followers on your Instagram feed at a high, high, high number. The algorithm is only going to ever show your post to 5 % of your audience. I said, except so I think you need a period in front of that five, two to two to three is normal. Right. Cause I'm in, so I went live the first time I ever went live and I just got a hundred thousand followers.

12:28I was like, this is amazing. I'm going to have like 20 people on here when I go live. Five people showed up. And I had like, yeah, like 40 people. I was like, what's that? And I felt horrible. I was like, what's going on? And then I watched Dwayne Johnson, the rock go live and he's got millions of followers. And there was like 2000 people. And I was like, all right, I feel better now. And I logged off. I was like, Well, the thing is, and that vanity metric is so, so terrible because you take a 10 ,000 followers, that's 500 people are ever going to see your post. And yet we spend so much time curating that post so beautifully and making sure that the image is just shaded correctly.

12:58And it's like, and then the worst part about it is of the 500 people who ever see your post, again, 500 is a really generous number because it's probably closer to 200 to 300, but we'll play it generously. The reality is, is most of the people that are part of the 500, the algorithm will find the people who usually engage with their posts because they think that those are your most active, engaged audience. Well, that includes you. That includes me. That includes my marketing director. That includes the receptionist. That includes my friends, my wife. And you run through this entire list and it's like you're going through the list of your people and it's like, oh, this post has higher engagement than normal.

13:37And I'm like, literally, you're just entertaining yourself. As opposed to 10 ,000 people on my email database, let's say on our super low side, I mean, a 25 to 30 % open rate, and I would be putting triage on your email database. But a 25 to 30 % open rate on email list means I just got 2 ,500 to 3 ,000 people to hear the whatever message I wanted. And we spend so much time trying to get followers and not get a database signed up. Right. And we don't actively build that database. So like, for example, we're getting 1000 downloads a day on the podcast, which is wild, but we are doing nothing to capture those people.

14:21That's tragic. We're starting to work on it. So in those situations where it is tragic and you have to do triage, what are the things that you immediately tell people? Say, hey, hey, you've got this, you've got this audience. People are coming to you. You want to build it. You want to sell more. You want to hit numbers that like, because there's a big difference between what I want and what I really need. And that's a conversation you're having before. Like, oh, I want to make 10 figures. I want to become a tech millionaire. Congratulations. But what I really need is if I had a half a million dollars of residual income coming in every year, I wouldn't show up for my job anymore.

14:53So that is a conversation that most entrepreneurs aren't willing to have. And that's where people like you and I come in. I'm like, no, what do you really want? Let's have a real conversation. And people just aren't having that conversation. So for those people trying to do that, how do you capture those? How do you gain, what are the best ways to get a hold of those people? Oh, gosh. So I'm going to get into what I refer to as social exchange, which is a sociological term that talks about the I give to you, you give to me, because there's what we call reciprocity. And the easiest way to actually work on building a database is this act of reciprocity.

15:25Like I generously give you something and then in exchange, you intuitively feel the need to give me something in return. So usually what we find in those email data, I mean, one, let me back up quickly and say, usually, usually the way that most people end up building their databases, they just, it's an entire list of past purchasers. Right. So congratulations, all the people who you talked into buying from you are on your list, but where are all the people who've never engaged with you? That becomes the bigger problem is how do we engage the people who are not there because those are the ones you still need to convert.

16:02That's your colder list. but we really really push again it really depends on the brand but i'll give you an example i have a a list that i run called fitter over 50 and it's a newsletter it's 100 a newsletter and i actually put about five thousand dollars of my own money a month into just getting leads from instagram and, and Facebook. So all meta platform where I pay about a dollar for an address and, and people get a promise that leads to a page that literally just says, you know, uh, and I want to say that the sub, I'm going to sound terrible. It's fitter over 50 dot life is the website, but it's a blog site.

16:46And the entire blog site is 100 % filled with articles about aging defiantly. And it's, and i use the word aging defiantly because that actually so that that is an opt-in word because i don't want to age gracefully i have zero interest in aging gracefully charles like i turned 50 in about three four weeks and oh so i made it this far right um but but literally turning i got you by about a month and a half i did 48 so i'm chasing out oh there you go there you go same demo um but the but the reality is is like turning 50 i'm like one of the things that was going through my head was like, this is a thing.

17:24So for quite a while now, I've been running this Fitter Over 50 database. I have tens of thousands of people on the database already, partially because I bought them in. But what I measure on it isn't how many people I can buy. What I measure is the open rate. Because the engagement that I get out of this audience is great. So I have thousands of people every week end up on this database who open this and read the articles. And I can see how many people are clicking through. But the whole point of the articles and again, aging defiantly, the voice of this newsletter that I write myself, um, is all set up and, uh, you know, screw what everyone else says about aging.

18:00Like, uh, this is ridiculous. Like I have no interest in, in growing old. I have a, you know, I want to grow great and die suddenly. Like I have no interest in living forever, but I also have no interest in living in a feeble state. Like I'm going to do everything versus quantity of life. You know, I spent eight years in a hospital. I want both. And it's, it would be great to have both. And with my, I think there's things that are changing that. A friend of mine has, you know, intense TBI and he got into HBOT and all these other therapies and it's completely reversing all of that. And his biomarkers are changing and it's really cool stuff that he's done.

18:35So when you're going into that, you know, I know you mentioned you were buying the list when you're providing value to that, since you're specifically writing, you know, you're, you're using the laws of reciprocity when you're providing value, how many value offers do you give before you ask? How many, how many do you go? Yeah. So, so I will say that the, the unusual thing about that particular list is because the, I'm only asking the more information you ask from, from a person, the less likely do you already to get it? Right. Right. If I ask you for your name and email address, all right, you can block me.

19:08You can unsubscribe. Like the, the exit is pretty quick. If I ask you for your phone number also, whoa, the stakes just went up, right? People are a little bit weirder about that. I asked for your address. All right, delete. Like we're done with this relationship. So there is a way to stage that. Um, for me, I'm not looking for any of that information. I just want you to name and phone and email address. Um, and the reason is it says, I'm going to promise you value from the beginning. That's a, that's a get in on the list, join the movement, um, become part of this. And every week I literally just provide value for zero ask.

19:39Now, what we do with that list is over time, I build this list that's got tens of thousands of people on this list. Well, now I end up throwing in a this, you know, this email sponsored by, like maybe I do an aging hack that is, you know, related to cardiovascular fitness. And then at the end of cardiovascular fitness, I give you the recommendation of a nitric oxide supplement that I strongly recommend. And by the way, here's a coupon code if you want to try it. now I'm playing the affiliate game. The affiliate game becomes passive income. But the reality is, is that, again, I'm doing that as a passive conversation with people.

20:19For entrepreneurs who are trying to sell their own products, it's about providing value. It's the reciprocity. It's like, how are you educating people? How are you engaging people? Because the people who aren't willing to buy right now are a different audience than the people who bought already. And the other thing that I find is that there is such a bent towards and part of its laziness, by the way, and part of its laziness on the part of your marketing department. So anyone who actually is doing this stuff and just doesn't see a result from it, it's because you got a lazy marketing team. Because the reality is the people who have bought from you are an entirely different database and they need a different voice.

20:59They need a different offer. They need a different conversation. um you know if i bought from you we're already friends and there's such a voicing difference between people who are part of the family versus the people who are not because i don't walk into other people's parties and just start talking as if we're familiar we're not right but at the same time if i've already bought from you three times and you're talking to me like i'm a stranger we clearly don't have the relationship i thought we did um and actually i'm gonna laugh at this Charles. My first book that I published was actually called date your clients.

21:34Um, and what's funny is like the entire book is this walk through how the way that we treat relationships and the way like you talked about, if I wrote the copy for a dating site for a 20 year old is very different on the way I would write copy for a dating site for a 40 year old date, your clients is the same thing. It's like, why are we doing so many stupid things in business that we intuitively know how to do correctly when we're, when we're in a dating relationship, like, like you make a first impression really well when you're going on a date, right? You spend an extra half hour, you do a few extra pick a pushups, you vacuum the car, like you do these things.

22:12Cause you just, you prep for it. Like, you know, guys, like I hate to sound terrible, but it's like, you make sure the house is clean because you just never know if you're coming back. Right. Like you just, you do these types of things intuitively. But when you go into a client meeting, like, do you take that same type of care to make a first impression or is it just another tuesday right like you don't people don't prep and what's what's horrible when we talk about this relationships all the time if you do what you did in the beginning there won't be a net and people talk about all the time in relationships we talk about in business relationships as well but a lot of people don't know how to value stack their offer either they don't know how to provide enough value and connect so when you're talking to a demographic that is the higher and they're at that higher level What is the advice you give them?

22:54You sit down and say, okay, I've seen your offer. What got you here won't get you there. Right? It's a Tarzan idea that, you know, Tarzan goes to the jungle blind to blind. He's got to let go of what used to get him or he stops immediately. Correct. So when you've got to let go, which is terrifying for a lot of people saying, well, no, this got me to nine million. Like, right, but that's not going to get you to 90. So let's pivot this around a little bit. When you're going through and you're working with them and you're helping pivot their offer and you're changing their value stack, What are some of the things and some of the questions and even some of the mistakes that they make?

23:24Yeah, good question. Well, the biggest mistake that I find most entrepreneurs make is that they start to treat their teams like family. And I know that sounds crazy from a guy who just said we need to value relationships more than transactions. Right. But again, it's where you are in the stage, right? Just where you are. Correct. Correct. But every business has a life cycle. And the reality is, is that the people you spend all your time with now aren't the people that you spend all your time with in the next stage of life. And part of that really boils down to, you know, you may have had a marketing team that got you to a certain stage, but that needs to shift.

23:58And you need to find out if you have the right leadership team for the current stage of your business, because I assure you, it's a different leadership team. And if you have a leadership team that people have been in your business for 20, 30 years, you have the wrong team. Like I just recently had to move my COO out of the business. And it was a painful thing. It was a long-term personal friend who had been with me for a long time through thick and thin. But it's like, you can't get me to where I need to go. And now you're hurting the business. and this challenge for most entrepreneurs in that space is that and this is the advice that I give you, if you have a good team, they know when it's their time.