Searchable Transcription

[00:00:02] Who won the. Is. You know, I go down here to speaker, click on the carrot.

[00:00:19] Let’s say. Can you guys hear me?

[00:00:21] If we can

[00:00:23] Slow everyone’s quiet, yeah, I’m not be so quiet.

[00:00:28] Hey, man, what’s up?

[00:00:33] We really have to do. And now I’m on this side.

[00:00:43] This is omnipresent, Gabe. No, I’m

[00:00:45] On the side.

[00:00:46] I thought you guys were about to start freestyling or something. Cool. We got it. We could do that.

[00:00:54] If everybody how is everyone doing? We have just

[00:01:04] You guys coming from happy hour. Patrick’s already asking a question, Patrick with a K. We were at. We were using dream. I think it’s Io.

[00:01:14] Yeah, it’s allows you to send to multiple groups as well as YouTube at the same time. So pretty good. It was pretty cheap. I think it was a month or something. Yeah. So we just finished a two day event. We’re in Orlando, Florida, and it was kind of like an event for SAS companies, but a lot of a lot of content that can be applied no matter what your business model is and a ton of really high level people, which is awesome, like it was all that. So we’re going to keep it kind of short. We’ve had a long few days of talking to people and just like Firehose trying to absorb as much information as we could. But we wanted to come in here and share some of our big takeaways. So we each have kind of got our notes of the things that that we got from the event that we want to share with you guys. But before we get into that, as always, let’s start off with some wins. Who’s got some wins? Michael Webull, it’s good to see you on the call, man, Neal. Michael, I know that your I think you were you had some like commitment that just wrapped up, right? So are you going to be a are you going to be hanging out with us on the calls? No, actually. So I usually go to church on Wednesday nights, actually, but we got a sick family, so we’re home today, so I thought I’d hop on.

[00:02:33] Thanks for joining us.

[00:02:34] Yeah, it’s good to see your face on here, man. I’m sorry about the sickness. I hope everything’s OK. Yeah, it’s all good. Thank you. Yeah, you’re welcome. Not will. What’s up, man? How are you, Lenny? Devin? What’s up, brother? Anyone got some winds for us? Patrick, I’ve got a

[00:02:52] Thing where I’ve hooked up with some people in our group, some really good guys that we’ve helped each other and a few things. And a shout out to Lou Domenica too, by the way.

[00:03:05] Love you. Yeah, yeah, he’s awesome.

[00:03:08] But me and him go back. We’re into the music together. So he I knew he was in northern Virginia. I had a client up there, filled them up. I needed someone else. He got me in this group that he’s in.

[00:03:20] I found a couple of clients. So show new clients. That’s play

[00:03:25] Group. Everybody helps one another if anybody need. I’ve helped some

[00:03:29] People know we go back and forth. Yeah, yeah. One of the things I wanted to get into is like, there’s a post that that went in here. The last I think it was yesterday, we were at the event. So it’s hard for us to kind of moderate things and kind of like on the fence because there’s like some value in the post. But there’s a lot of negative negativity and I just like some housekeeping, just not going to tolerate that in this group. I know that that’s like something that can bring down other groups, but this group is all about helping and community supporting each other. We can have disagreements on things, which is kind of like, I don’t want to stop that from happening, but they need to be done in a respectful way. And there was some things in there that that weren’t respectful. So just as a housecleaning, whether you guys are watching this live in Facebook or a replay, that’s not the vibe we’re going for, and too many of those things will get you kicked out of this group. It’s really important for me to keep a positive culture in here, so just a little housekeeping for that. There was another post a week ago where I kind of falsely attributed some things to Brian Orser camp. He has the one click influence. I don’t have a lot of experience with one influence. I think Ryan is an awesome guy. I’ve never heard anything bad about him. So any of you guys that that saw that original post maybe didn’t see my apology for that situation. I just want to clear the air on that. Is a good guy. Ok, cool. Do we have any other wins? Anybody else got any? What do you got, will? What’s up, man?

[00:04:59] Well, it’s good to see you. Yeah, yeah. I’ve got a couple of wins brewing, but one one quick one is just got another purely gen client four thousand a month.

[00:05:13] This awesome

[00:05:15] New niche. So I’m excited about the niche and digging into that one a little bit. And then I’ll just say a bit like a shout out to that rocks, boulders, pebbles

[00:05:24] And sand thing that we talked about. Oh yeah, at the

[00:05:27] End of the year. Yeah, that is that is it’s been a great system. It’s like easy to implement and it’s keeping me on track. So like we talked about quarterly goals, I’m ahead of those already, but that’s a nice win to throw in. On top of

[00:05:42] It, like one of my takeaways from this event is the lady who is the chief marketing officer for Drift. Because of use drift, it’s like a chat program. She was actually like kind of what she was was a big I think she was part of the C-suite at Salesforce for a little while. She spoke this morning and she talked a lot about this planning, right? So like, obviously like, I think Salesforce is a you probably know better fortune. One hundred. Yeah, yeah, maybe like Fortune 20, I don’t know. But she was she. So she was one of the speakers at the event that they were here and she was going into planning. And that was one of the big takeaways for me is she has a dashboard that she looks at every day, and on that dashboard are her quarterly and 30 day goals. But she still like the big piece for me that was like she has a pacing metric that she monitors on a daily basis to determine whether they are on pace or off base. And she gave an example of when they were off pace, and she basically did a daily stand up with everyone on our team for, I think was like ten days in a row. And so the course corrected it and got back to where they went. So she like it’s it’s it’s a it’s an example of, hey, we’ve got a goal in being off pace is not acceptable and I’m going to take immediate action to fix that and kind of correct the ship.

[00:07:06] And this is the obviously one of the biggest, most successful businesses in the world. The one of the one of the leaders of that company is using this. There’s no reason with a business that’s that complex why we can’t be doing that with the types of businesses that that we’re running. And you guys, this is like, this is basic. So like what you’re doing well with the rocks in the sands, if you guys didn’t see that training, I encourage you guys to go check that out. I think it was the training right before the end of the year because we were trying to set up our yearly goal, right? So that’s something that we set our goals, and I didn’t have that pacing metric in our business and this last weekly meeting that I. With my team, it was obvious to me that we need to make some adjustments and how we’re running this weekly meeting, and I’ve been kind of playing with what do we need to change to make this more this meeting more effective and more efficient? And when she said that that they have this piece in metric that tells her whether she is on pace for her 30 day goal for her 90 day goal and she looks at it every day, this is exactly what the people in my company should be paying attention to and I should be paying attention to if they’re going to meet their goals.

[00:08:18] We need to have this on. We need to have this right in front of us, right? They also talked about how Airbnb had their their goals on inside the mirrors in the bathroom to actually have a mirror in front of the urinal. And they had their goals so that as the people are trying to go to the bathroom, their goals are in front of their face. So these are the companies that’s kind of like fun and like whatever. But it’s serious to these people and they like there has to be a reason why you miss your goal for these companies. And like one of the things that one of my big takeaways. The guy who runs this, this is not for most of you guys unless you’re in the closet running a SAS company. This is probably not the course for you guys, but the guy who leads us, his name is Dan Martell. Brilliant, brilliant guy. And some of the people that are his clients are like Clickfunnels and Unbound, and like some of these like huge time doctor. Some of these huge companies are. This guy is actually forty two years old, brilliant mind connected with all these, all these, all these different people. And he was saying he has pushed this and I’ve heard him push this in the past. Is this like don’t don’t create the culture of failure for your team, right? Don’t let them.

[00:09:37] Don’t train them, that it’s OK to fail, right? And by not having your team stick to the things that we have agreed are our goals and not monitoring them. And then they miss it. Then you’re teaching them that it’s OK to fail. So that was one of the big takeaways for me is like, we’ve set our goals and like my team is like building their their weekly goals and stuff based on what they have set for the quarter, for the year. This type of thing. But we don’t have the metrics in their face. And like, I think without them, there’s a really high chance that we’re going to fail. And when when you don’t build a system or a culture where it’s not OK to fail, then your results are going to suffer. And it’s just like, you’re not going to you’re never going to get to where you were. You planned to, where you what your goals were. So that was, for me, one of the big takeaways from from from this week. But congrats. I’m so happy that you’re using this. I know where you were before. We’ve been on a few calls. We did that coaching call, right? I think we did the coaching call right before the rocks and sand. So it was kind of like a one two punch, right? So yeah,

[00:10:42] And I mean, that’s I’ve even brought that into my professional life and use that and these little like linear and nonlinear type of goals and metrics that you track. Yeah, it’s like to what you just what you just said adds on to that perfectly. But even that those those two things that we talked about were have been really helpful in the what has it been seventy five days, 60 days since we started that, right?

[00:11:09] That’s cool, man. Are you on pace ahead ahead of pace? Nice, man. Awesome. So I want you to and this goes for anyone that’s in the same situation as well after you achieve your goals early. I want you to evaluate the goals that you planned, the success that you had with this stuff and see how, whether you’re on pace or off pace or ahead of pace, how can you be more accurate with this in the future and push yourself further, right? Obviously, these goals are pushing you to get ahead, which is phenomenal. But I want, I want I really like to see it where it comes down to like, maybe like the last week where it’s like you’ve set such a stretch goal that it’s pushed you outside of your comfort zone to a kind of like a new level that maybe you didn’t think you can achieve, right? And maybe you’re already there. But when you’re ahead of the pace from the beginning, I just want to ensure that you’re choosing something that’s like stretching enough that your cue to cue, too. Awesome. Awesome. Congrats on that. Well, that’s awesome. That makes me. It’s really rewarding to hear someone that’s taking what we’re doing and run with it and be successful. So super cool, man. Congrats on that. All right. Do we have any other wins? All right. What about you guys, have you got any wins?

[00:12:33] Got wins. I’m here with you guys. I mean, that’s a that’s a big win. Whoa. Any time I get to spend time.

[00:12:38] Oh yeah, man. Congrats. But what an accomplishment.

[00:12:43] I would say so. No, I mean, we onboarded a new client on Monday before heading out here to Orlando. So any time getting in the mix with the new client, that’s always a win. A company has done 10 million over the last five years, and so we’re looking to help them do some more more of the millions. Yeah.

[00:13:01] What about what about wins from these last two days of the event?

[00:13:05] Yeah. So if we were to freeze frame up wins in terms of, I think, relationship, any time you can get in the room with other talented people, people who are ahead of you, people where your peers is incredible made a lot of really awesome connections and unless lessons that you learn too. Same thing Katie Foote, who was the CMO of Drift, one of the things she talked about and we all we hear this a lot in marketing, but is she? The way that she is, I’ll share the story and then kind of explain it later. So we hear this idea of like the hero and the villain, right? So as you’re out there prospecting and working with prospective small business owners and your prospective clients, we’re always told that, hey, we will we should be making our clients the heroes in our marketing, not ourselves. So whether you’re doing life results in advance or you are, you’re doing SEO or web design, whatever services you’re offering, really, your marketing should one hundred percent be revolving around the pains, the aspirations of your ideal client, you need to understand them better than than they do. And as with any good story, there’s always a hero and there’s always a villain, right? So there’s something that you’re up against, which I think it’s really easy. I’ll give you an example in our space in the rank and rent space or in the Legion space, in the local space, the villain might be Home Advisor. The villain might be other agencies that have given crappy service that have not gotten a return on ad spend for your clients. All of the people that said, Oh, I’ll get you to the first page of Google and never did right, it could be whatever the the system industry unphased character.

[00:14:49] That is what you are up against when you were on the phone and you’re trying to close new deals. And Katie talked about this thing. She was talking about her sales presentations when when they’re going and trying to land these big enterprise deals for the drift. Or when she was with Salesforce, she talked about the crack slide. She was like, She’s like, the crack slide was always super important, and I literally like, I drew a picture of it. See if we can see it here. So you can see there’s a crack down the middle of the slide. Like it’s like cracked. And on one side, there is the hero because I’m the hero on the on the other side, there’s the villain, and then Patrick is the crack and all. In all actuality, Jeff would be Jeff would be the hero in this situation. But this idea of as you’re talking with someone, you kind of want to put your arm around the customer, be like, Hey, I’m on your side. We are both up against this villain, right? Which a lot of times if you can. If you can paint the picture of what the small business owner is up against, you’re going to have a whole lot easier time of winning their trust. So I’m like, Hey, I’m on your side to like, go and beat this villain and you make again, you make them the hero in that story. Like, Hey, let me show you how you can beat Home Advisor. Like, here’s how you can beat the big box stores that are trying to compete that can outspend you. Here’s how. Here’s how you can do that, and I can help you do that. So that was it. That was a huge stick, right?

[00:16:13] I think this is for more information on this, this mindset. I think there’s a really good book called The

[00:16:18] Art of Storytelling. Yeah, story brand story, brand story, brand story. Donald Miller story brand.

[00:16:25] Yeah. So that was awesome. What about you, Jeff?

[00:16:28] Well, the win, I guess, would definitely be being here and breaking bread with other SAS company owners and founders. I mean, it’s just a whole different world of people who have created real companies with, you know, potentially hundreds of thousands of users, potentially multiple companies under their belts and multiple exits and things like that. It’s just a whole different category of business owners in the room and people who are just really creative thinkers, really skilled and bringing things together in very different innovative ways to create value in the market. And I think that’s amazing. And just to be around that level of people for the period of time that we have been and really hearing their stories and just understanding and recognizing the value that all of us have with the experience that we have and to put those things together. They had a speaker yesterday, Ron Friedman, who was talking about pattern recognition and know we’re kind of wired for pattern recognition. But the way the innovators are doing it is their pattern recognizing in various different industries or across different verticals of all different types or just ideas in general, and pulling them all together in a unique way to create value in the marketplace. And I was telling Patrick that a few years ago, when I was sort of transitioning careers before I even got in Legion, I was really looking. I’ve always been sort of like future minded, and I was looking at a lot of the technological advances that were coming into play. And I have a Trello board that had like different types of technology categories and then specifics under each one, and that link to different maybe things that I had experienced or my knowledge and each one of those and I could see it in a visual representation because I was literally intentionally teeing that up so I could see how these things were fitting together going forward.

[00:18:25] And that’s like, I’ve always, I think, been way ahead of my market when I’m sort of my brain, the way my brain works and the way that I creatively innovate. So Legion sort of anchors it in where I have to be present, I have to deliver today, which is amazing that I have all those skill sets that I’ve developed, but the idea is to bring these things together technologies, ideas, people, relationships. I didn’t even have that those different categories together. I was just focusing solely on the technology, the bringing them all together in a way that you can create value in the market. I think it’s amazing. It was just another sort of insight into things that I’ve done right and things that I’ve done, I guess wrong, if you will, in my past. But bringing it together in a new way and sort of reinvigorating that idea of how how to bring these different things that you know together in a new way. So that’s amazing. And the other thing that really struck out to me or struck stuck out to me was this concept of FDI. If you guys anybody FDI is

[00:19:32] Typekit, type it in the chat if you know what you stands for. So the guy here, the guy who runs that Stan Martell, it’s actually his license plate, says Jay FDI.

[00:19:42] And so it stands for just fucking do it. So the hearing somebody at Dan’s level like having that is sort of like his mantra is like, Yeah, I mean, I’ve been talking about mindset and doing my mindset Mondays and things like that. And the reason that I’m focused on that specific thing right now is because I’m recognizing that I’ve put in so much work over the last several years to change my mindset. I used to be very fear based. I used to be very scarcity mindset like money, like it’s it’s all scarcity. And I just I was programmed that way and it took a lot to overcome that. And now I’m really starting to reap the rewards of that. And so this JFT concept, which is another way that you can reprogram literally your mind so that if you say that enough times, the next thing next time something comes up, that maybe is something that you would normally procrastinate or something that you don’t really want to do. It’s not the the the the thing that you really want to be doing that day. Fdi comes in your mind. You’re like, See, I just fucking do it. That’s what that’s what winners do. That’s what people who are actually succeeding do. They just fucking do it. I’m just going to fucking do it. So that’s another way to kind of like anchor in and change your mindset.

[00:20:58] So I think that’s amazing. And then the other sort of bigger takeaway for me was that here in the SAS academy there, you know, you think, Oh, I’m going to grow a company and I’m going to exit, I’m going to sell it. I’m going to have some big exit and get a big chunk of change. I talked to several people in the room that they’ve had an exit and they sat on the beach for a year and twiddling their thumbs and then they’re like, they want to get back in the game, right? They have no purpose. They have no real impact that they’re making in the world. And so they get bored very quickly. And I think that’s I can see that’s true for any any of us standing here is that, you know, exit sounds great. Big chunk of change sounds great, but sitting around doesn’t sound fun to me like I I kind of like. Accepted the fact that I’m sort of a workaholic and I’m living with that with that and and really maximizing the the benefit of that because I love what I do and I love the things that we can create together in this, in this space. And so I’ve accepted that and recognize that even if I had an exit, I’d be bored, right? So I’m just going to start over and then, well, who do I want to find? I want to find somebody else who I who I trust like Patrick.

[00:22:13] I want to find somebody else who’s creative and who can implement who can execute Patrick. Like, you know, it’s like, why? Why would I need to exit right now? I think a lot of these people are recognizing that they would rather just continue building on the business model that they’ve set the foundation for rather than exit. So it’s like a shift of mindset because it just everybody seems to gravitate towards this idea that you’re going to create a company to sell for a bunch of money and then go buy a sailboat. But why don’t we just continue to build the company? Go buy a sailboat sailboat and have more time for ourselves, you know? So those are really the three big takeaways for me. And again, just being here in this space and this energy with a room full, I think over what two hundred people gave like a couple of hundred people who are all founders, a lot of them multiple founders, it’s a whole different category of people so really excited about what we learned here and when we got to experience and all the relationships. Like I said, just amazing.

[00:23:11] Yeah, the relationships were the most exciting. You forgot a big win in your personal life. So talk about J. Fdi, right? You want to share that?

[00:23:20] Well, yeah. I mean, I posted in the groups about if you guys saw the videos is that I actually did the skydiving last weekend, which was amazing. And it was a long time coming. I met somebody about a year ago who was who was skydiving, and when COVID hit, he had some time on his hands. So he went big into it. And now he’s doing competitive skydiving, like doing formations and all this crazy stuff. But when I met him, just I asked him a couple of questions about I didn’t have this burning desire to go. Skydiving wasn’t something I ever necessarily wanted to do. It wasn’t anything that I necessarily said I wouldn’t do. But the way he approached, it was really very much about personal development mindset, about how expansive it can be to go and test yourself in that way. And so I just tuned into that and I was like, one day I’m going to skydive with you. And it was literally over a year. I think I’ve met him in December of last year, like fourteen months later. It’s just a great example of setting an intention and seeing it realized in real time. And despite all of the things that have happened in the last, you know, time since I met him and all of the things that could have gone and set me off track, or that I could have just forgot about it or whatever.

[00:24:39] It’s like I just kept that intention going again, back to mindset. It’s like what you say and what you speak into the world, what you think and to the world. It’s like you can make it a reality. And the next thing I know, I’m flying to Florida because we had the opportunity. I knew I was going to be here at this event. The logistics made sense. The next thing I know, I’m staying at this guy’s house and going and skydiving with him. It was amazing. I really feel like it was. You know, I held I held center very well. The way I put it is that I didn’t freak out at all, and a couple of people in the skydiving space mentioned that most people who come in for their first dive, they get really amped up. And then as soon as the dive is over, they crash down. Like I was like even Steven the whole time. Emotionally, mentally, very stable because I’ve learned how to handle stress at a very high level due to a lot of personal challenges that I’ve been through. But this was a real test of doing something that most people frame is, Oh, this is scary.

[00:25:38] This is dangerous. You know, you could die all the all these different things, right? I didn’t let any of that get into my head, and I didn’t grow up playing competitive sports or anything like Patrick did did. But I didn’t get that when I was younger. And so just to be able to go through that process and do something that was very challenging for me from from some angles, but it didn’t throw me off course. It didn’t spin me out in any way. That’s a new thing that has given me a whole nother level of confidence that I’ll be able to bring into my business life, be able to bring into my personal life in new ways. And I just definitely see the value of it. If you approach these things in these ways and very mindful, very intentionally, you can definitely grow and learn from it in ways that you can’t even imagine. So I encourage you all to kind of face. I was challenged to sort of face something that’s a scary thing in your life, and I just I knew I wanted to do it anyway, and I just, I just executed, took the step. And here I am, you know, so pretty awesome. Super cool. Super cool.

[00:26:45] Yeah. Calling you, Steven from now on. Oh yeah, Steven. Even Steven, even Steven.

[00:26:49] Steven, yeah. So the JFT stuff. So Dan actually expanded on that quite a bit during the talks, and he was talking about like it was like the level of certainty he had where like just taking action, he’s like, I guarantee you if you take action, you’re going to be miles ahead of the person that sits there and analyzes things. The course corrections you can do by doing a trial run. Sorry, we’re outside of that. The or something. So I think that’s a mistake that I see that’s common with with so many of you guys, we’re we’re trying to analyze everything and try to try to get everything perfect. And I guarantee you, no matter how much time you spend trying to analyze a market, make the perfect website perfect content’s perfect backlink. Whatever it is, you’re trying to make perfect. It’s not going to be perfect. You’re going to make mistakes.

[00:27:44] So like he says, it’s OK to have a shitty first draft.

[00:27:48] I like that. I like that line. Yeah, that was super cool. So the guy who spoke Kevin Friedman, he’s a Ron Ron. Ron Friedman, best selling author, author, the book that he’s written a few books. One of them is called Decode Greatness. I took away a ton from that, so some of the stuff I got, yeah, so some of the stuff I have on here is like. First thing is to become a collector of things like start collecting the things that that you want to master. So for me, like like, I’m really focused on this software and how to make the software better for all the users.

[00:28:24] So I’m just curious, like those on the Zoom show of hands, do any of you have a swipe file? All right, Neil’s got us by down. Ok, cool, like some of you guys have a swipe. Ok, cool. Yeah. Because the collecting thing is huge.

[00:28:37] You could be collecting all the swipe files, right? So that’s the first thing is to collect the thing that you’re trying to improve. So for me right now, I’m I’m signing up for all kinds of different software like software that is in our neighborhood, right? And looking at how they’re doing things. And I didn’t know to do this when I started. I just kind of like built things based on how I thought that they should be used, and there was like complicated situations that we got ourselves into that there’s other models out there that have already been proven and better. So like collecting things. The second thing is like reverse outlines

[00:29:11] To expand on that just a little bit. When he was talking about collecting things, he gave several examples of like artists and musicians and things like that that were that are known there were known collectors of the art that they were trying to create. So the idea was that you can take other people’s ideas and they they kind of harped on like R&D is like Robin duplicate. It’s not that you’re copying word for word, piece by piece, but you’re taking ideas, different ideas like the best of the best from each different angle that you see or that you’re exposed to. And the more that you’re exposed to, the more those angles that you’re able to bring in and put together in any way. So I think like Picasso was big on that, but I can’t remember the exact examples that he gave. I got I got one. Yeah.

[00:29:55] One of the examples of really awesome to hear that. Yeah, like, I was great, you guys. That’s a book. I mean, we were here. So they gave everyone here a copy of the book. But I was like, I actually had it in my cart by the end of the speech where I’m like, I’m buying this thing. But he gave this example where it was talking about like deconstructing so like the way to greatness is to kind of like, deconstruct other successful people, other successful ventures. So he gave this example where they did this like study. The study was basically there was like two groups of people and they were going to create art for three days. So the first group of people, they’re just going to create art day one, day two and day three. And then at the end, they’re going to compare to see where there’s more creative creativity. The second group of people, they’re going to create work on day one and on day two, they’re going to take the best work that’s available and they’re going to copy it and try to reconstruct that work in on day three. They’re going to create work again. Unique like, right, they’re going to create unique art. So they compared the level of creativity on day three between the two different groups and the ones that had copied on day two blue, the other ones out of the water. And the reasoning was that when you’re going through this process and you’re copying this the greats, you’re forced to kind of like, evaluate how they did it, why they did it and the level of comprehension on something goes way up.

[00:31:21] So then when you try to take that skill, you have a higher level of mastery. And then when you go to try to apply it to your own stuff, the work was not at all in common with the stuff that they had copied. That wasn’t what it was, but they had reached by deconstructing some of the some of the best art they had reached this like way, higher level of competence and comprehension to. They had learned skills, right? So that was one of the big things. Another thing was reverse outlining. So basically, you can go through and you can look at maybe the best ranking Legion websites in your area. And maybe you go into maybe you choose the best from a bunch of different areas and you’re going to kind of outline what they’re doing. What do they have in common? Right. So he gave us a news article and there’s like a format, and he went through several different stories, right? I think he used like A. And then he used like Star Wars and Harry Potter, right? The the pattern that exists where it’s like an orphan and like all these different things. So they’re following the same pattern, right? And one of the things is like if the pattern becomes too repeated, then it’s like, it’s not going to be a successful, but we’re a long way from that, especially in this space that we’re in. So being able to go and kind of look at some of these people that are doing things really, really well and form an outline of what they’re doing well, maybe if any of you guys are running like a Facebook ad and you see like a company that spending a lot of money on Facebook, you’re seeing these ads often, then you could deconstruct that, find out what they’re doing.

[00:32:47] So it’s called a reverse outline where you’re outlining after it happens. It’s like, what are the major things? What’s the pattern that exists? And then how do we recreate something like that? That’s good for us, and this doesn’t need to be something that is has to be like so industry specific. So if you see something that’s working, like, why is it working understanding that? So that’s kind of the pathway to greatness. Another thing is to unlock the key metrics, right? So he was going through and he was comparing like apples website with Samsung’s website and apple. Apple has this like beautiful website. It’s like known as its like industry leader for its like design and style and all this stuff. So he went through and he had metrics for like, how many banners are there, how many of their banners are there here, how many of their banners. They’re on Samsung. How many buttons, how many calls to action, all these different company prices, so he came through and you just like compared those two different things. So that was a way for him to kind of like, deconstruct this stuff. So I thought that was like super cool. He made it scientific on how he did it. Do you guys have any more takeaways from from that guy?

[00:33:49] No. Yeah, I mean, I think that the reverse outlining was so huge because I think we are all. I think everybody that’s on this call right now is doing that in some format where we’re taught to go find inspiration to model what’s working. We’re already doing research on our competitors to see what we need to do in order to beat our competitors right, but really took it a step further to where you’re not just seeing like what they’re doing, like how many backlinks they have or how many words they have on their page. But going a step below to like what is what is actually the the structure beneath this strategy that is that is causing this this site to win or this page to win or this story to win the pattern thing is so interesting. I took a screenwriting class in college and we read this book called Story by Robert McKee, and he unpacks all these famous screenplays, you know, rocky like we were talking about Top Gun, one of my favorite all time cinematic masterpiece, Top Gun. But you know, you look at a lot of classics, The Godfather. Any of these movies and almost all of them followed the exact same formula in terms of if you looked at the actual script, it was like Page Fifty four was always where the hero like met like a hill he couldn’t overcome. Like, that’s when knocked Rocky gets knocked down for the first time or gets beat, right? That’s that’s when the hero hits that kind of like pit of despair. And so it again, there are these patterns where you could literally look at these different screenplays. Look at them side by side. So you’re not just looking at one you’re looking at in our space, maybe you’re looking at a bunch of different sites collectively and you’re going, Yeah, I know what I need to do to beat this one site with this one niche.

[00:35:38] But when you look at it as it more of a pool, you’ll start to notice the patterns of like, OK, here’s where these. These sites tend to focus on three to four very specific services. Their home page might include things around team. There’s all the ones that seem to be doing the best have photos of people where like you can see the whites of their eyes and they’re looking in the camera versus stock photos of like on site stuff or whatever. Who knows what the patterns are. And then sometimes you’re going to find stuff that bucks the trends and then you’re going to have to figure out, OK, well, why is this one this? This website has no content on the home page, and it’s ranking number one, and it looks like a pose. Like what? What, what is actually happening here? And that’s why I think a lot a lot of times our initial we’re going to look at a thing. We’re going to try to reverse engineer it. It doesn’t fit into our model of what we had previously said would be the thing that would work that like, Oh, it has to have so many words and it has to have so many backlinks. And because it doesn’t fit that model, but we’re like, but it’s still number one, we disregard it. And I would say that’s actually very much the thing that you should regard that you should look at and go to. This does not fit my pattern. But it is working.

[00:36:57] This is the greatest opportunity to learn, because when the pattern you’re not learning, I think beyond this, beyond this like deconstruction of greatness, this whole storytelling thing is phenomenal for sales. It’s like if you guys you guys shouldn’t be selling based solely on numbers. He mentioned this. I haven’t had the chance to watch this yet, but he mentioned that the best TED talk, the most popular TED talk that’s ever come out is this Sir Ken Robinson? So he deconstructed this on why it was so great. This was like something with the education system and how it is so. He was pitching this like education system, and he used no stats. It was all stories. So the most engaged TED talk was had more stories than a lot of the other ones and the way that he told them. So he deconstructed that. So when you guys are going to try to sell someone, if you want to really grab them, the story matters.

[00:37:52] That’s where I get story on that. Does anybody know who Perry Belcher is? Yes. No. Ok. Harry Harry knows very well. Ok, so Perry Belcher, co-founder of Digital Marketer, Insanely talented marketer, especially in like the the survival space, the e-commerce space had the pleasure of doing some deals with him and we were we were talking. And Perry is a fantastic storyteller and we’re having this conversation. He was actually talking about a what do you call it, like a study, a study, a test, whatever you want to call it, where they gathered. All these items, these like piece of crap items from a garage sale swap, meet whatever random rubber duck old doll. Just like think of like whatever you would get at a garage sale, just somebody else’s trash. They purchase it. They went ahead and put it up on Craigslist for sale, and they did a split test down the middle on one on one half of the items. They just gave the description of what the item was. This is a rubber duck. It’s in great condition. Just like new made in nineteen seventy eight, it’s vintage. Whatever has this special logo on it. The other half, they actually told a story about it. They’re like. This was my great, my great grandmother’s rubber duck. She came to Oregon on a wagon train and she brought this duck with her. And now my baby is has had this rubber document special to us.

[00:39:31] Tell me what crazy thing I need to do to get one. The the the price is that they got for these comparable because all these items were within the same price range, you know, like five to ten dollars. They got like five x the price on the items. Same exact items. The ones that have the story in them. And that’s why telling me the ability to communicate a story when you’re on the phone with the prospect, even when you’re writing the content on your site, you can phone it in. You can use A.I., you can whatever to spin up these these sites that are going to generate leads for your clients. But at the end of the day, the goal is eventually to connect with the human being who’s going to place a phone call, who’s going to buy some kind of a service. And now I’m not saying you need to go in and talk about how my grandma started this business and I’m, you know, doing concrete countertops and we’ve been in business forever. Don’t don’t fabricate something that’s not there, but you need to understand the story of what is important to that customer, which I think might be a good transition into this idea that we talked about a lot this week, which was was it the past flow, pace, pain, aspiration or pain agitate solution? So this idea of if you can understand again, most of us, we all know not to go and say, Hey, I’ll get you on the first page of Google.

[00:40:55] We know that, but a lot of us still resort to like, Hey, I can help you, I can help you get get leads. You’re only going to have to pay for performance. That’s still kind of phoning it in a little bit where you’re talking about what you’re actually going to be. Maybe the feature, the thing that you are going to be selling your customer or what’s more important is to understand, like what is the actual existing pain in their business right now? I know for a lot of you, what you’re up against is the fact that you are you are trying to close somebody who has paid two or three or four other marketers or agencies or freelancers who have not gotten them a return on their ad spend. And now you’re up again, like that is the pain that you’re up against. So to have the ability to go in and explore that, to be able to agitate it and understand it deeper than even they do is going to be incredibly important and understanding it both. Where was that that little drawing that we had, we were talking about, like above and below? Oh yeah.

[00:41:55] So there was this idea that we talked about this idea of of frustrations and fears when it comes to pain. So the business owners that we all serve, they have some very specific frustrations. The frustrations are the surface level things, the things that they might talk about with their team. They might talk about with their spouses, about maybe even the only things that they really recognize. It could be things like, you know, leads are slowing down now. Now, some big box stores, some franchise came into the neighborhood and we’re not getting as much business. That’s the that’s the frustration. So you need to be aware of what those things are, the very practical surface level, what are the frustrations of my potential client? But then below that kind of like like deeper than that are really the fears which are those are how is this actually going to affect me, the entrepreneur, the things I’m probably not going to talk to my team about the things that keep me awake at night. They’re like, shoot, if, if, if lead flow continues. At this rate, I’m not going to be able to make payroll. I’m going to have to cut my nephew who’s been working with me and I, and I’m going to have to like, lay off family or I’m going to have to shut down the business.

[00:43:10] I’m going to have to put my tail between my legs. I took this business over for my family, and now I’m going to have to be the one who it ends with. Do you guys know that? I think something like ninety six percent of businesses that go out of business? The way that they go out of business is by shutting their doors, it’s not by an exit, it’s not by a sale, it’s literally just like turning off the lights. Ninety six percent of businesses that that are business owners, that transition. That’s how they go out of business. That’s a very real fear for a lot of business owners, especially in a time such as now, especially if you’re dealing with someone who’s whether it’s brand new and it’s like they risked it, they realized they didn’t want. They wanted to be in charge of their own fate. Now COVID happened, and they’re going to go start their own business or they inherited it from family. So you have to understand again, yes, what are the very practical? I’m not getting as many calls as I used to get. I’m having a hard time finding labor to do the jobs that I want to do, whatever that is. But then beneath that, what’s actually there and the best way to do that is having conversations with clients. That’s why I love being. Make a

[00:44:15] List. Make a list.

[00:44:16] And one of the things that are top of mind.

[00:44:18] One of the things they pushed throughout this was like a common theme is the customer is the source of truth. Right? So like you guys, the part of the keys of what Gabe is explaining here is this frustration is it’s good to be aware of it because you want to understand your customer. But the way that you sell is not going to be based on the frustration. That’s that’s what their head is. The frustrations what is going to sell them is when you go after their heart and their heart is like, Hey, they may have to go get a job right or they may have to like, fire their nephew. Right. So like, this is where the sales are going to happen is people are going to kind of like mentally justify things based on like this kind of surface level thing, but they’re going to make the buying decision based on emotions. So you need to go a layer deeper and really understand the thing that scares them and like, get in touch with that. Let them know that you understand what they’re going through, what their fears are, because that’s going to set you apart from all these other people that are trying to sell the same services. If you can, like, speak to them and you know, like, you’re like, Oh, this person, really? This person really knows me. This is like exactly what I’m going through. How different is that from like, Hey, my name’s Patrick, I’m going to get you on the front page. You’re going to have, like all these leads and stuff, it’s like, you’re going to love it. It’s gonna be great. It’s completely different than, Hey, are you? Are you worried about potentially going out of business because of the quality or something like this? Do you have employees that you’re going to have to let go? What is your life going to look like six months from now if you continue to have this problem?

[00:45:44] So I love this question. One of them was Why is this still a problem for you?

[00:45:51] Yeah, that’s the Oh, it’s so good. The exposure you have.

[00:45:56] So, yeah, first, you have to identify the pain, right? And you point this out to them and then the agitation is like, it’s

[00:46:04] Why is this still a problem for you? And then they answer and they’re like, Well, we’ve tried so many things like, I’m already so busy or I. I tried paying someone to do that they’ll open up to you even more.

[00:46:14] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then and then you’re the solution, right? You’re offering the solution. How are you going to be different? How are you going to provide this stuff? So, yeah, those those are awesome. The customer being the source of truth was phenomenal. One of the takeaways I have is the webinar stuff. I’m going to not go too deep in that, but I want to give you guys a structure on how to build a webinar for the people that you’re trying to to pitch how to build like a winning webinar. Take these people in here and then kind of like move them into being clients.

[00:46:47] So cool. Well, one other thing that was a takeaway for me was just we kind of touched a little bit on relationships, but just seeing being in a room of two hundred other founders and people who are doing amazing things and creating things from basically scratch is that you find people who have a lot of crossover with what you do, not a lot of crossover, but a lot of potential partnership, venture type of things where when you do see the fit, it could be really beneficial for both sides of the equation. And getting in a room like this really gives you a lot of opportunity to connect with people like that where they have something amazing and it’s something that you don’t do directly. And it definitely helps both sides of the equation, I think is awesome. So that’s also a huge takeaway.

[00:47:38] Yeah. You know, this group, guys, this group there’s. Just based on the price tag to get into this group, there’s no way that you’re in this group unless you’re a high performer, so looking around with two hundred people and I would say. Probably 90 percent of these people are doing more than a million dollars a year. And I would probably say more than 50 percent are doing more than like four or five million dollars a year. There is a lot of things that they have in common. And when we go back to deconstructing success, like you look around the people in the room there, they were like all in shape. They were almost all of them fit. They’re all reading books. They’re all like, have this mindset of like self-improvement. There’s just so many things that they have in common. And that’s not just like some random coincidence that these, like two hundred people, all have these types of things in common. They’re open to help, and they’re very giving towards like helping other people and like sharing this stuff. So, you know, there’s this idea of kind of like. You’re not going to make these transitions if you don’t fit that mold, and I didn’t always either. There was like whoever you are and where you are now, you are exactly where you deserve to be. For the most part, I mean, there could be some like crazy exceptions, but you are. You are at the spot that is an average of your decisions.

[00:48:57] Right. So if you are doing really well and maybe something happened, like maybe the crash, the crash happened or whatever it was and you lost, you lost things, well, that’s part of you. That was a decision that positions you where you weren’t diversified. There’s people that survived the crash that or all these different. Whatever it is, you’re an average of your decisions and whoever you are is where you deserve to be. And the changes that you make in the self-improvement stuff that you do, the books you read, all these different things are going to change you to the person that you need to be to get to the next level. Right. So I am not getting to our first like seven figure year is not the same thing that’s going to get me to my eight figure, my first eight figure here, right? I’m not. I’m not the person that I need to be to get there, but we’re putting in the effort to try to to try to level up and have the potential to to have a year like that. And being around the people like this, this was this was phenomenal, like we were in that other group and there’s a lot of really high level people in there. But this I didn’t realize what we were getting. I kind of like assumed, but to get here and to kind of be like,

[00:50:05] It’s a different, it’s a different crowd, that’s for sure. So we’re talking about referencing traffic and funnels in Nashville. So there’s a lot of really, really smart people there, and people are doing amazing things there. But being in a place where there’s founders that are creating products and not just like coaching programs and things like this, it’s just a different categories, a different mindset, a different level of people in the room here.

[00:50:30] So it’s amazing. Yeah, I mean, some of these guys are, you know, we did our first level of funding and we raised $15 million and I took part of this money and then I created a new company in Dubai. And it’s like this this guy is younger, younger than me. You know, he’s thirty five years old and I’m just like, Holy cow, this person after person, you’re hearing these stories, and no one’s no one’s talking down to you. There was actually a couple of people that were in this group where I was like, I don’t ever want to talk to that person again, for the most part. Everyone was like, really

[00:51:03] Like people in every group.

[00:51:04] Yeah, yeah. That’s why they’re dropping me off the jack in the box after this. Exactly. Yeah. No, no logo. No logo on this one. I’m right there with you. Spencer Yeah. Spencer Yeah. And who else? Who else wanted

[00:51:21] Somebody else wanted these guys? You guys? Yeah, we’re kind of like doing an order to order two.

[00:51:25] And then just I’ll I’ll send you the check on Venmo.

[00:51:28] You you’re going to use all that. You’re going to

[00:51:30] Be grateful you waited till the last the next round. Spencer, now that we’re talking about Lululemon,

[00:51:35] The higher we had to get, we had to get some quick stuff out really level up. Maybe there could be Gucci, Gucci, Gucci jogger hoodie.

[00:51:44] Yeah. Yes, good.

[00:51:45] So one of the cool, like one of the cool ones is like we sponsored the Traffic and Conversion Summit in San Diego in September. And then one of the founders here who runs was called to safety like a YouTube

[00:52:00] Video ad vault.

[00:52:01] Yeah, really cool guy. But he actually recognized us from like, he’s like, Hey, did you guys sponsor this? Which is like for us? I mean, that was awesome because like, we had an amazing time at the conference, but to actually be getting like brand recognition from a complete stranger and the digital market, I mean, that was pretty awesome. That was kind of like a win for us for the first time. We really like run into somebody else that that that knows our brand now. Just it’s kind of a cool, cool first thing to happen. All right, guys. So we were going to keep this

[00:52:34] Short and we were talking about a ten to ten minute. Yeah, we

[00:52:37] Get excited about this stuff. I do.

[00:52:39] It’s good stuff. It’s phenomenal event. Yusuf on Facebook, says he’s down for the webinar stuff,

[00:52:45] So we’re going to make that into a trading. Yeah, we’ve learned a lot about like training. Like a lot of this stuff of how I’ve been training. You guys is like, I don’t have like decades of experience teaching people this stuff. I’ve kind of like done my best to put together an effective way. But some of the stuff we went through today for over the last couple of days has been a lot more effective model to kind of like teach people things. So I’m excited to distill some of the stuff and give you guys more effective training for the future and have it be kind of more structured and organized. We’re still like some of the free flow, but so that’s another big takeaway. There’s so much it’s hard to like. I’m still I’m still kind of like processing all the things that we’ve gone through. The relationships for me are the most exciting, the most exciting.

[00:53:34] It is exciting to be in a room with like, like kind of like light. Hundreds of companies like like Lead Snap, like a SAS company. It is exciting to be around more people with that kind of mindset, and I have one more lesson. What was the name of the hotel?

[00:53:52] The Hilton Hyatt Regency? Lake Buena Vista Hilton? There’s there’s like three Hilton Lake Buena Vista.

[00:53:59] Ok, that’s an important lesson. Do not order the nachos at the bar. Wherever this hotel is, we do not do it.

[00:54:06] Lake Hilton Buena Vista, Orlando. Do not order the nachos. Don’t order the nachos. Not worth it.

[00:54:14] Also, don’t park in Disney Springs because that’s what a nightmare that was. All right, guys. We are going to go enjoy our last night together here. I hope you guys got some value from this. We’ll get it a little bit more organized.

[00:54:26] And yeah. Spencer. Yeah, it was more like ballpark.

[00:54:32] Yeah.

[00:54:34] All right, guys. So we’re going to sign off here. I hope you guys got some value from this and one of the things like create these opportunities for yourself. I know that I would not be here without the friendships that I have made along the way. This is what happens to gain when you take them on vacation, right? It’s like I didn’t have a chance to walk in today, so I’m going to run them around the building a little bit and wear them out. And we got him his own room, though, so we don’t have to deal with this stuff at night. All right. You guys have a great week. I hope you guys got some value from this. What I was saying is like, find these opportunities wherever you guys are, whatever groups you’re in. I know that we’re going to be putting together some of our own live events so that we can bring, bring you guys and kind of like, get us all in the same room and bring in some talent from some of these, some of these people that that we’ve had the privilege of creating these relationships with through whether it be this group or some of our other groups or other other really high level performers that I had the privilege of creating friendships with. I want to give that to you guys, but until then, seek these opportunities out because it doesn’t have to cost what we paid to get into something like this or it’s local groups. You just have to be proactive about about finding these. And I mean, you can it can make a world of difference. I certainly know I would not be where I am without the friendships that help me along the way with this type of business and other other types of business model. So you guys have an awesome week, you guys create some wins. You got seven days before our next call. I’d love to see you guys crush it with with a ton of wins and everybody stay safe, stay healthy and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Take care of my friends. You’re welcome,

[00:56:19] Guys.

[00:56:21] Michael, help your family recover soon and you don’t get whatever sickness they have. All right, we’ll see you guys soon. Take care. You’re.