Why I Still Learn New Ad Platforms The Same Way I Did At $0 | Ep 922

0:00Let's rock and roll. Okay, so Adam, you're 22. Want to build a multi-million dollar business? Should I start now, fail forward, and learn on the way? Or spend one of your shoes building skills, cash, and clarity? To me, those are one and the same. Like, you will build skills by failing. So I would try and do stuff. Like, just being real. Like, do stuff. Learn from it. And if you can make money while you're doing it, great. I think that for many people, one of the, like, Like, a huge leg up that you can have is working one to three years in the industry that you want to get into. Like, I think there's just, there's huge upside there because you don't even know what you don't know.

0:37And you learn so many, like, default ways of operating. Because when you have to, I'll give you an analogy. So, imagine you've got a pile of bricks, right? So, you've got this pile of bricks. All right, let's say that these bricks represent, you know, stuff that you can use to build. This is going to be a terrible pile of bricks, but whatever, okay? and someone says, go build me a building, right? So you then try and assemble these bricks in a hundred different ways. And the thing is, it's like, if you don't have directions on how to assemble those bricks, you're not going to know what assembly is the correct one for a building.

1:13And so the thing is, is that if you have an ideal building in mind, right, then there may be a few ways that you can correctly assemble the bricks to get a building, but there's going to be way more ways to not assemble the bricks to make a building. And so for me, I'd rather just like, kind of like if you're building a building, like you're building an Ikea desk, right? If you don't have the directions and you have the pieces, you might eventually figure it out. But it's so much, it takes so much more time than having a model to look at because you automatically know. You're like, okay, well, first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna separate my tools over here.

1:46I'm gonna put my screws over here. And then I'm gonna put my blocks over here. Great, so it's the first thing. That's what you do. And then after that, you're like, okay, I'm gonna look at this picture. There's got these four legs. and you're like, all right, let me flip it upside down. Let me put like one, like two, like four. You're like, okay, it's almost looking like a table. But if you have no idea and you've never built a table before, you didn't build anything before, then it's way harder to do. And so that's why I think I would recommend make money, earn, and learn one to three years. Like my first thing out of college, and like college is different now than it was then, but like I did college for three years and then I worked for two years.

2:19And then the next thing I did is I still didn't even start immediately. I then started as like an apprentice at a gym because I wanted to get in the fitness business. So I went to a successful gym owner and said, hey, can I like work for free? Can I mop the floors? And I was like a white collar consultant. So I went from making, I think, I actually don't remember what I'm in. I know I had$50 ,000 in savings. The reason it's like unclear is because I got paid on contracts. It was like very lumpy. Anyways. But anyways, he then basically started paying me minimum wage to follow him around. But like an amazing ROI for me because he was like, oh, yeah, like email marketing.

2:53And I was like, what's that? And he was like, oh, it's this whole thing, right? And again, YouTube wasn't really like around the way that when I started doing this. And so I had to learn the hard way. So that being said, hopefully that helped for Adam in terms of thinking about what to do. And John, what's up? We on? Yeah, John. I was gonna say Alex. Yeah, that's me. John, what's up, man? Tell me about the business. so we help people with turning back in and statica we have an online program okay so online okay yep and you help with back pain got it that's right what's revenue and we're doing nine 95 grand a month okay so you're doing a million bucks a year ruffle okay so you're doing a million a year great how are you so i know you're online are you selling via checkout page or via sales call?

3:43We do a DM to Trier's call to sales call. Okay. So, okay, cool. You're online salespeople. Okay. Yep. Okay. Got it. And how are you getting leads? We have a million followers on Instagram. Okay. One million on IG. Anything else? Yeah. Like 200 grand on TikTok. Okay. Cool. Well, you've probably already seen the difference of the value of 200 ,000 on TikTok versus one million on IG. yeah want me to give you a quick hack to turn those tiktok people into more value please yeah so we have found that the best call to action for tiktok if you want to sell higher ticket stuff is actually make the cta dm me on instagram and then put the link to your instagram wow okay yeah so like on tiktok you get a dm on instagram i know but you already have your DM team set up on Instagram anyway.

4:36So like it works great. Yeah, cool. All right. So that's thing one. Great. So what do you want to do? What's the limit? What's holding you back? It feels like youth consistency. So we have one sales rep and two setters. And I want to get more sales reps, but it's just like one week will be filled a week in advance. And then another week, we barely get, you know, enough leads to fill up one. And then we just end up pitching on every single post. So I just feel fatiguing for the client. So I'm curious, do we start ads? Can Can we start retargeting or do we need to fix something first? How many posts a day are you putting out?

5:06We're putting out one post a day on Instagram. We tested two, but it's just like we really focus on we ended up for eight hours. We make it great, so it's one a day. Okay. I think you can probably make more. I'll just put that out there. I would 100 % not believe in the mythology of like there's a platform limit. There totally isn't. And I pretty much stand by that on every platform. like Fox News puts out one I just looked at this we were calling up this morning does one long per hour on YouTube oh wow right and they do like 300 news right and there's a Bollywood account that gets a billion views a month on Instagram and puts out a hundred posts a day on Instagram jeez yeah so you have to think about it like this so instead so I hear what you're saying with the fatiguing audience I think more realistically you're fatiguing your editor not your audience.

5:56I think they're not making good enough stuff. No, I'm being real. I think they're not making good enough stuff. Your audience has an insatiable demand for value. Wouldn't you believe that in your core? Your audience has an insatiable demand. It will literally never, it's an endless pit when it comes to value and has almost no appetite for fluff and waste. So if we have, let's imagine that this circle represents a million people, okay? When you make a post, you're getting like one to 2 % of your audience to actually see it. right? And so if you make more posts, you'll just have more 1 % to 2 % that see it.

6:32Okay. Okay? Now, where your issue comes up is that when you make your direct call-to-action posts, then it goes from that kind of thicker dot to just like an itty-bitty speck because your reach gets hammered, right? We actually do a call-to-action on every post, like at the end. Yeah, and that's okay. Well, it's not the end of the world. Again, all that matters is like how long is the cta relative to the post right so it's usually like are you doing a mini chat integration yeah yeah so how long is the cta like six seconds is it that's long is it pre-recorded or is it like pre-recorded then stapled on or are you making them native every time it's native but it's the same every time almost yeah so you want to swap out with the lead magnets are constantly oh okay got right now because like why would they respond they already You got it.

7:25Yeah. That's right. So, alright, so I'm gonna write down little nuggets for you. So number one, we're gonna go TikTok, TikTok, DMs to IG as CTA. Number two, we're gonna make more lead magnets so that you can alternate through them. Number three, I think more content is a good idea. Number four is I think you need to lower your time your CTA time. So I would shoot for like three seconds or less for your CTA. Because the thing is, it'll kill the view-through rate. Right? And then that's killing the amount of reach you're getting. Yeah. Okay. And you're doing comment, like book, or comment, whatever, and then it DMed in the thing.

8:11No, we actually do a, like for a free static assessment, and then we just basically say comment for an assessment, and then we book a call on the DMs. Yeah, I mean, that's also a really heavy ask. So it might be worth considering like, a cheat sheet and then a triage question. Okay. Because, I mean, that's like the heaviest right hook you can do. Yeah. I'll give you guys a little insight. On one hand, like when we do ads that are like direct to workshop, that's like quote the heaviest ass. Like, hey, come on to Vegas, right? That's pretty, you know, it's going to have a hurdle, et cetera. Now, when we have a scaling roadmap, which you may have seen ads for, right?

8:46The scaling roadmap has lower immediate ROAS, but over a 60 or 90-day window has superior ROAS to direct workshop. In addition to that, it also has like 10 times the reach. Because getting somebody who's a little bit like, somebody who's like, yep, I want to come to a workshop, they've already consumed, it's almost like warm audience retargeting, more than it's like an ad and a process that nurtures prospects and then warms them up, provides value, et cetera. And so I think if you want to broaden kind of like the net that you're going through, just make the ask that you have a little bit lighter.

9:23So I think, one, you've got your direct, like, if you're doing one a day, I would do like maybe two a week of the direct one. And then do the remainder of them as posts that are like lead magnet centered. Right? Like seven tips to fix this or whatever. Right? And you can spend, I'm sure you can spend a hundred of those things. It's not that hard. And then the triage question is like, hey, are you here for free stuff or do you want to solve the problem for good? And they're going to say, I want to solve the problem. Then you're like, great, and then you're into a sales conversation. That's great.

9:52And then at what point would you start retargeting at? The thing is, okay, this will be great for everybody. If you think about your audience as this pyramid, right? The people who are buying from you right now are this like tiny little top 1 % here. And so there are some things that, there are some actions that could get you to convert just a higher percentage of that 1%, which means that we could make the well or the pyramid larger, which we would do by posting more times and making better content, right? Or we can keep that pyramid the same size, right? And then we can move this line of what percentage we're converting and make that a little bit deeper.

10:33When you add a sales team, that converts a higher percentage of the audience. When you add ads, you're going to convert a higher percentage of the audience because you're just going to have your ads shown to a bigger percentage of people in that sphere. Right? And so it's almost like reaching into forward revenue and pulling it forward, which is fine as long as you're filling up the bucket. Right? So I would... Right, you get what I'm saying with that? So you will absolutely make more money if you have a sales team and run ads. No question. But then you will hit another plateau. And you will still be limited by the growth of your organic unless you create a true cold traffic acquisition channel, which is a different monster and beyond the scope of right now.

11:12All right? And so my recommendation is I would want you to double your content. And if you want to keep one of your CTAs as, because I don't want your business to go down, keep one CTA as your direct to book a call and keep the other and make the second CTA for the lead magnet and just do two a day. Sounds good. Cool? Sounds great. All right. Rock and roll. Appreciate you, John. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for calling Hermosi Highline. All right. So let's take a little, let me look at the chat. What's up, guys? Okay. So as I build a personal brand, is it better to become an authority in a certain skill and then start posting content, or is it better to start posting content without being authority in that skill?

11:53Great question. So my perspective on this, and this probably will differ from other people's, but I can only explain what I do, right, and the kind of thinking process behind it. I never want someone to question whether I'm legit or not, right? And I think that way, and maybe it's because I just have like massive insecurity, who knows? But the reason that I tend to always start with proof, right? And so I would rather, like, and if you don't have external achievements, right, then you need the achievements to be effort-based rather than external, okay? So what does that mean? So instead of saying, hey, I did a$100 million launch, that's an external achievement.

12:30Everyone can see that. Great, lots of money, et cetera, right? I could say, I made 35 ,000 pieces of content. You can control that. Now, whether you did a good job or not is a separate thing. But when you do effort-based achievements, it's kind of like grind or pay, right? And so in the beginning, you don't have the money or the proof to do it, so you have to grind. And so grind-wise, it's like, I'm going to make 35 ,000 pieces of content and document what you're learning along the way. That's fine. Like, that's the game. And so that will be kind of phase one. Phase two is be willing to work with people for free.

13:02people spend way too, like, I'll say this differently. If you're getting started, every single business to this day, I still start with free stuff because I want to get feedback from people. I want to know what they like, what they didn't like, what their pain points are. I want to figure out how to smooth out the process. I want to figure out all these different things. And me trying to guess at that on my first shot and ask people to pay me, I'm like, I don't want to do that. I'm going to have a bad reputation. I don't want it. Right? And so it's going to take you so much more time, think about this, for you to get 10 customers who pay you with never giving anything away for free is going to take a long time.

13:36You getting 10 people to start working with you for free and then using the 10 testimonials you get there to then get your 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th customer is going to take you less time to get that 10 paying customers if you do 10 for free first of whatever it is that you sell. So that's my two cents. More people doing all your stuff is not going to make you less money. I do think, though, that big, big, big picture, it also kind of depends on what you're going to get into. If you want to be, you know, it's like, I want to be a business coach. It's like, well, dude, just look at the people who have the most credibility in business.

14:13They have some big, giant thing behind them, right? I would not try and compete there. I would try and compete on a much smaller pond that I can be king of. a very, not even a pond, like a puddle. Like, just be king of this itty-bitty puddle. And create proof around that little itty-bitty puddle, and you will find people who are willing to pay you because you are a specialist and because they have access to you. Okay? And I'll give you one more tidbit for those of you guys who are starting out, and then I'll take the next call. So, when you're starting out, you always have an advantage. Every position has an advantage on the board of the game.

14:49So, if you're a super baller, you're a G or whatever you want to say, right? My position is to say, don't go with Weenie McGee over here. He's in his mom's basement and doesn't know what he's talking about, right? I have been doing this for however many years and looked at all this credibility and looked at all this proof, right? Cool. Weenie McGee, right, isn't going to be in his mom's basement and he's going to be like, don't hang out with Alex. You're never going to talk to Alex. There's no chance, right? You're going to be talking to someone three levels down from him and you're just going to be a number to them.

15:19I mean, that's what I would say. Of course, we don't operate that way, but that's what you would say. If that's your position, then you say, dude, you're going to get my phone number. It's not, am I better than Alex? Of course, I'm not better than Alex. Own that. Of course, I'm not better than Alex, but I am better than the third rung down on his company, and you're going to get my phone number, and I care about my reputation, and that person doesn't. That's where you compete. That's how you can start getting a foothold, which is why there will always be room in the market for people who are new, because people who are established are going to have their position to play.

15:51Cool, cool, cool. Classic is going to say we're the classic. We've been doing this forever. And the people who are new and upstart is like, hey, I'm a young founder. Just try my soda out. If you like it, tell me. Give me feedback. I'll try and fix it. That's the position. Both can win. And for everyone who's like, I don't think this will work or something like that, it's like, dude, I was in the same position. It's not like I'm 50. You know what I mean? I started at 0-2, and you just have to outwork, right? And you've got to say, I'm willing to do more than those guys are. In the beginning, people don't want to say it.

16:18I'll do it for less. Until eventually you have proof. And then when you have proof, it becomes a virtuous cycle of charging more. Okay. Caller 2, Stephen, let's rock and roll. Until eventually you have proof. And then when you have proof, it becomes a virtuous cycle of charging more. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too, Ben. Because the team collected your numbers. So monthly revenue right now is 54K, right? Yeah. All right. And then ad spend is 3K. That's monthly. Yeah, per month. I got you. This is per month. Great. ads is 3k great per month okay per month industries your medical what do you do uh custom insoles yes i'm a podiatrist oh cool yeah buddy of mine's dad was a podiatrist back in baltimore um okay the offer is insoles for 300 so this is your aov call it right um is 325 i know that you're in pounds but i'm just using writing dollars so it doesn't really matter okay Okay, constraint is Google ads are underspent.

17:18Okay, so you can't spend more than the$3 ,000 a month. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay, are you local? Like, are you running ads for a local business or are you running this ad spend nationally? For a local business, yes. Okay, you're local. So people do that. They come in, they get measured or whatever, and then they get insults, correct? Exactly, yes. Okay, got it. So they're saying they just can't spend more money. yes okay uh i don't know if i believe that how big of a city are you in like what's your 10 mile radius um i i thought he said around 10 kilometers something like that but i was also thinking from yeah maybe he isn't it doesn't have the skills right just to uh to to uh to scale the campaign so to say so i am already in touch with in general our marketing agency that if already checking in with another Google ad specialist to see if they can duplicate certain campaigns and get better results.

18:19Yeah. So I'll say this, Ben. So, I mean, congrats. You're doing 600-ish a year. I would strongly recommend you learning this stuff because it's not that hard. Like, it's really not that hard. Because then you're not going to, like, right now you're saying the constraint of the business is under someone else's control, right? That's a tough position to be in. so I would just want I would want to own this myself and I'll give you a I'll tell you a story that like really changed my person I haven't told the story in a really long time so this will be good so I went to this meetup where everybody was doing you know eight figures or more and at the time I wasn't and so I like snuck in they were like no we think you're going to be you know a big baller because whatever they recognized the the the magic in me um but anyway so they let me come and what was really interesting is one of the guys who was making the most money in the room when he went up and presented, he said this really interesting thing.

19:09He said, I would encourage everyone here, because someone asked him, like, hey, so what are you doing to reinvest in your education right now? He said, well, at the level that I'm at, and he was making, I think, 30 or 35 million. I remember thinking, I was like, oh, my God, this person is God when I heard that. But he said he was making$35 million a year, and he said, I would encourage you to write down a percentage of your income, whatever percentage you're comfortable with, and put that as your learning budget. All right? And that learning budget, he said, you should spend that every month and expect to have zero ROI on nine out of 10 things.

19:38And then the one 10 thing will make you 10 times the money. It's almost like doing a venture bet on yourself from an education perspective. And so I took that to heart. And then I started spending, saying, okay, you've got your 3 ,000 a month. I want you, Stephen, to do$3 ,000 a month that you control. And you say like, I'm gonna spend 100 bucks a day. And I'm gonna see if I can beat this guy. Because I promise you, when it's your business, you'll beat him. Like, you'll suck in the beginning. but you'll quickly learn. PPC for Google Ads is really not hard. You definitely go as far as with that.

20:14Yeah, and the nice thing is that no matter what, if you spend more money on ads, you're going to make more money. So even if you're inefficient, you'll still increase top line. But I think that if you just try and get good and good and good at that, and then I would also reach out to whatever these other agencies are, I don't mind spending more on this because, again, the big picture is you have bigger goals than this, right? 100%. Right. So just don't let your ego get wrapped up in your one month or two month profit. That profit will be there if you choose not to spend money. It's always there, right?

20:40So I would want to take as much of that profit as humanly possible. And I'm telling you how I do things. I take all that profit and I just see that as, this is my opportunity to reinvest in the business. When the business is small, reinvestment is you. You are the reinvestment. And so that's where I'm like, okay, I'm going to pay my current agency. I'm going to pay the next agency. And I'm going to tell both of them, I want them to teach me what they're doing. and I'm going to spend my own budget too. Yeah. Yeah, so that was originally already my plan. So I had Justin call this afternoon with the new agency and I told him from, look, if we go with a Google ad specialist, I want to have weekly calls to at least know what he's doing in the ad account so that I just can follow the guy and that ever may ever have new ideas that I can just try out, but that I understand what he's doing.

21:27Let me tweak it for you. Let me tweak it for you. Let me tweak it for you. You're going to ask how often are they going to be really doing work on the campaign. Let's just guess it's twice a week, okay? I'm going to do something even better for you. I'm going to ask that you don't even work on my account. I'm still going to pay you. And I want to have two calls a week, and all of the work is going to be done on those two calls. That's it. They don't have to do any other work for my account. But I want to be the one who controls the mouse, and I want them to tell me what to do and why they're doing it.

21:58That's a very good idea. Okay? this is how I learned this is how I learned how to run national level Facebook ads this is how I learned how to do it I powered an agency and I said I'll do whatever I'll show up whatever hours you want I was like but I control the mouse and you tell me what to do and I'll do it and I recorded my screen and I would ask questions along the way and they would tell me I'd be like okay so why are we doing this and then within six weeks I was like I get it I don't need this guy anymore

22:22that's genius cool yeah sounds good sounds good definitely going to start that Rock and roll. Congrats on the business, Steven. All right. What type of lead magnets or funnels do you make for them? I'm guessing, I don't know what that one is in reference to. Richard Ferris. Okay. Core question is how do you, is your PE firm? Okay, hold on. Partnered with my wife on our business. We sell jewelry with purpose, natural stones. What would be the best content to post for advertising? We use TikTok. All right. Done. Bro. What are we talking about here? All right. So number one, you should be on TikTok, TikTok shop for sure.

23:00Like if you're not doing that, you should be doing that. Number two, I'll bet you with jewelry, you probably have very good margins with it. And you can probably pay really aggressive affiliate commissions to any other TikTokers who will repost your stuff. And so I would look at, are there small things that I can give out for free? I know that's heavy, but people will be willing to do it. I don't know what revenue is right now, by the way, junior. but I would also double this on Instagram and I would want to do as many collab posts as I can with other influencers with them trying on different things and I think the big thing that I would want to do is I want to tell the narrative.

23:33I want to tell the story behind the jewelry. So I'll give you an idea. Or I'll give you an example. So if you think about selling merch, everyone has t-shirts. There's nothing sexy about a t-shirt and if a t-shirt just has a logo on it, again, it doesn't really matter. But if you say, let me tell you the story behind why this logo or why this saying is meaningful. And so what we have to do is basically pair this commodity of jewelry with the meaning that you then ascribe to it or the narrative or the story that you put on top of it. And so two years ago, I did my book launch for the Leeds book.

24:10And some of you guys might have been there. And I sold like millions of dollars of hats. All right. And people were willing to pay$100 essentially for a hat. Now, obviously, they got two other books and the hat was free. but like fundamentally that was what happened, right? And so what's really interesting about that, the specific event is that I then spent like four or five minutes just saying like, let me tell you about why I wear this hat, what this hat means to me. And so after explaining the meaning behind the hat, then way more people were willing to buy it versus like, hey, do you guys just want to buy a hat?

24:35And so I think to the same degree, you need to do that within your content. And you're like, well, what kind of content should I do? Like show the jewelry, show people unboxing the jewelry, show people picking out between different kinds of jewelry, and then you telling the narrative behind each of them in terms of where was the stone sourced? Why did you design it that way? What does this chain do versus this chain? What do these metals do? There's so much to talk about with your content. And don't be afraid to repeat stuff. Just don't be afraid to repeat stuff. And one of the really interesting things with content is that, I'm going to give a Dave Ramsey example, but you need significantly less variety in your content than you think you do.