Joe Troyer 0:38
So when we were getting started right before we hit record, we talked about and after we hit record pretty directly we started talking about going after the end in mind and having the end in mind and you talked about how important that is. For me the light bulb that I get people to understand that that has worked and I'm curious what your lightbulb is, but when I talk with agency And I say, do you want to do this forever? And they're like, No, I'm like, so it's a business then right? It's not like a freelance thing, because you want to be able to exit one day, all of a sudden, they go, Oh, crap, like,
This isn't like if it's freelance, nobody wants to buy it, I have to build a business. And that's how I've been able to get people to have that aha moment, john, where they finally like, treat it like a business. And they niche down and they come up with a core offer, and they they get serious about the things that are going to move the needle. I'm curious for you, john, with all the people that you've coached and all the crazy success stories that your students have had, what's the thing that have? What's the thing that has helped people to have that that aha moment?
John Logar 1:40
I think the biggest thing is, is that concept of thinking bigger, you know, thinking having that idea so well, okay? If I want to have this as a business, then this then I can't do this on my own, but the bigger hose I need people, I need help. I need support, to be able to do this and so now the considerations are bigger. The You know, you're sitting here thinking, Okay, if I step out of business, I need to be in a position where it still runs without me. That's the that's the thing, I've got to start hiring certain people so that I can scale you cannot scale without hiring people.
There's no you know, unless you're in an e commerce business, whereas just you and a store, yeah, you can make a million dollars, a couple million dollars, but you're gonna have to work really, really hard. And the margins are really, really small. In this business, the margins can be really big, if you get the right and the other thing is, is a lot of people undervalue their skills. So in in your, if you're building something, if you have some skills, you can systemize those skills and those skills becomes saleable.
Those systems that IP that you're developing can set scalable, I have champions now that are developing products to support their market, they use that as the entry point and then they use it done with done for you as a secondary opener. All they do the reverse they go we do a done for you, but to get you up to speed. We've got this program Hear, that we want you to invest in so the thought process really is that I want to be able to step out of my business and have my business to grow. I have to hire a team to scale I can't do this on my own. And I've got to get really serious about sales. consistency in sales is critical in this business.
I had the good fortune to sit down with Robert herjavec, the guy from Shark Tank from Hirschbeck industries, you know, I saw exited out of $300 million business has another business of 200 and $50 million in the cybersecurity space and he's This is what I'll never forget the conversation was I sat down to look at the end of the day all bullshit aside, Robert you know what's it got it What's it take to make and help happen in a business and he just said to me john, when times a great sales above all else, when times a ship sales above all else, sales solves all problems. So So and on the other flip side of that he didn't have this as a quote, but he says and then sales creates all the problems. but
but but salespeople So if I look at the people that I work with our number one focus is to get consistent and being able to bring on clients every single month. The philosophy that I like to take is one client every 10 days, the average client should be investing between 25 and $36,000 plus per annum in your business, if you're running a recurring model, no less than that very hard to make profit less than that. And you want to be working with people over time. You want to have clients for years to come not clients for a 30 days, 90 days.
And this is the mistake a lot of people make when they're just starting out is they're doing this trial thing. You don't need to do if you're using resource partners like invisible PPC, you don't need to do a trial. You've already got case studies, you've already got results. You've got 100 200 cause threaded clients that you're managing that's a toolbox that you can bring to people and say hey, I'm my team manages over 200 clients in the marketplace in 50 different nations. My team is responsible millions of dollars with ad spend every single month.
My team has the resources, the systems, the processes Is to leverage your opportunity. And to get the best possible results is we need to scale. And to scale means we need to work together in a process that we're going to be working over a period of time, not over 30 days, you can get people, you can get basic results, you can get some results. But you can't give people the results they're looking for in 30 days. And he's certainly even at 90 days, the results are just starting to kind of create momentum. And they give up.
And so what happens to the marketplace is we have taught them to give up every 90 days to go and find somebody else. This is what the market has told you. So one of the things I would highly encourage you to do is they can't buy it unless you offer it. And what you want to offer is a 12 month program. And minimum of 12 month programs they're going to be within 12 months are going to stay with you for another year or two years. If you look after them if you nurture them have great client relationship.
But that's that's a trick. That's the trick. And here's the thing, don't call it a month of the month contract. Don't call it a don't call it a 12 month contract, and don't call it Oh, we're doing Facebook ads for 12 months management friend as 12 months we're not doing that, or we're doing what you're the words you should be using is we have a 12 month business development program.
And one of our core areas is Facebook or AdWords or army retargeting or whatever it is that we do. It is not everything that we do. And people will pay for strategy, which is what most people don't charge for. People will pay more for strategy than they will for the service. Right? We have people that I work with it, just sell websites, right, but to buy a website from them, you've got to have a $25,000 development piece before you buy the website.
You've got to give him 25 grand upfront to the blueprint on your website. Your website is going to cost you between 150 and $300,000. Plus websites right website developers small team five people working on major projects making two to $3 million a year selling websites right systemized process IP around strategy. Strategy is a line item that you need to put on your invoice for clients. Because you're thinking about that on how to get better results with one, when
Joe Troyer 7:03
somebody brings a business to you Dustin, like what? What are some of the kind of qualification criteria? Like what are you looking for, in order for it to be one of those one, two or three deals that you take on at a time? Obviously, I'm sure you get hit with a lot of deal flow. And obviously, you're gonna have to turn a lot of those down. What are the things that that people need to be doing now, so that they can come to you and make sure that they can work with somebody that's that's a good broker and not representing literally dozens and dozens if not hundreds of different businesses.
Dustin Struckman 7:35
Yeah, that's a really good point. And that's that's exactly right. That's the other side of that hands on approach is that we're very selective in the businesses that we that we work with two things. I have a an E book called exit on demand that or white paper actually I call it that, that goes over everything you need to do to make sure your business is ready for sale, high level you know broad strokes, stuff. is actually accomplishable not down to the nitty gritty sometimes we have to refer people off to a consultant is going to work with him for a year to get the financials in order and get a you know, a growth strategy that makes sense. So the business is sellable. But high level, there are some basic things that that you need to do that are covered in that white paper. And then what I'm looking for when when I'm evaluating a business is I like to see a business that has profit. A lot of there's there's
a kind of there's a couple couple points of education right and and i think before I get into into that, let me dispel some of the confusion out there were SAS businesses in in particular and and I know that most of the audience here is is agencies right but SAS business in particular, have this notion that you can sell a business without without Any profit and that is true once it gets to a certain size. So m class businesses are fairly unique in that, that once they get to a certain size, you can sell it based on a multiple of top line revenue. But even SAS businesses and and every other kind of business is only going to trade on a multiple of profit. So if somebody comes to me and says, Yeah,
I've got this great business, you know, it's, it's not making profit yet. But there's a ton of potential, that's not something I can sell. That's something that you know, you might be able to go to a VC and convince them that you've got this great idea. And all they need to do is give you money to you know, get it profitable, that that meant that may work, but that's not my world.
So buyer, people who want to acquire businesses, they want to buy on a multiple of profit. So that's the first thing is that the business needs to be profitable. And for a smaller business, say a business that's making less than 500,000 a year in net profit, that can be the definition of profit can be a little bit more Flexible doesn't have to be a really rigid EBITDA it can be SD or you know seller discretionary earnings.
So but once you get above about 500,000 in in net profits it needs to be more formalized and it needs to be Eva which means that it that in the profit is after, after someone running the business takes their salary. So under that under that price range, it's acceptable that that you consider the money you're taking out of the business personally to be profit, but above that, it really needs to be it really needs to be formalized with you know, a CEO or somebody a salary in place and then profit is after that.
Joe Troyer 10:40
So that's the first number is 500,000.
Dustin Struckman 10:43
Yeah, around there, you know, it's not easy.
Joe Troyer 10:46
I'm seeing like a mil mil and a half and it's it's all SDE and they're trying to pull out their multiple on on SD and I'm like, What do you mean there's no team here. The owners work like 80 hours. A week like I don't want to I don't want to buy a job like, no. Like, that's right. That's Yeah,
Dustin Struckman 11:05
that doesn't fly. That's exactly right. And and, you know, and it's just it's just, this is all coming from what the market, what the market will bear right. And this is something that I that I spent a lot of time educating my brokers and then also educating sellers on is that this is not my opinion. This is not you know, just like Dustin's rules. This is this is what buyers, buyers say to me when I put up a business and I said, Yeah, it's 640 top line and, and 630. net, they're like, no, that's exactly. It. You know, we have to we have to make allowances for somebody to actually run that business. Yeah. So and that may be the case you may be you may be running your business with with no one in place.
And there are SAS businesses, not agencies, but there are SAS businesses that can coast for a year or two without anybody running it. Yeah. So yeah. So let's let's, let's talk about maybe the next criteria, which applies very specifically to to agencies and this is something that is important for agency owners to think about, which you talked about is to have a management team in place. Right? If you're if you're trying to sell a business and claiming that there's more than 500,000 or four or 500,000 in profit, there needs to be a management team that is running that business because that's exactly right. If somebody's going to pay a million and a half dollars, they're not trying to buy a job. They're they're buying a business and so that business it's they absolutely are going to come in and they're going to provide vision and leadership and you know, make make plans and strategies, but there needs to be a team in place that's that's executing the daily operations of the business Spaceman.
Joe Troyer 12:43
When when you look at launching a new brand, and you look at launching a new product going into a new vertical, what's what's the 8020 right like what what are the things that like you would do differently now than when you started brands do in your first breath Like, what are the shortcuts? What are the things like forget about this? Everybody says, do these things don't do this, right? Just focus on this, like, What? What's the 8020?
Ronnie Teja 13:10
I think the one thing that I would definitely focus on a lot more, this time around would be like twofold. First of all having the right people in place, I can't I can't stress that enough, right having a well trained people. You know, you can, it doesn't need to be cheap. And it doesn't need to be too expensive. People think expensive means that you're getting a better quality and people think cheap hiding vs in the Philippines, or India or something. Just because is a gasp I think it's everybody's read the four hour workweek. It's not really relevant in this case. Right? Just it's it that that book has destroyed a lot of businesses. What I what I highly believe is this good talent can be found anywhere in the world. It can be found in the slum. And reo can be found in Nicaragua. It can be found in Bosnia, it can be found in Kazakhstan can be found in Islam, right?
Having these having the motivation of these people is your job as entrepreneur is to is to get these people together. Right? So basically back to what I had said earlier, what problem are you trying to solve? Right? Once you find out what problem you're trying to solve, you need to find the people who want to help you solve the problem. And if the people that who you're trying to hire don't believe in what you believe in, you know, it's very easy for people to see through that quite easily. So, you know, your employees will know you're bullshitting. They know that they're going to be you're going to be up to no good. So please, don't don't hide those kind of people. So people just want a job. And you know, I was a working man for somebody once and I just wanted a job. I wanted my 50 $60,000 a year and I was like, Man, I'm so happy. You know, just give me my 5060 grand, I'll go home.
I'll work eight hours fee and that's it. You don't want those people. You want people Who come to work every day and they have a spring in this step the second thing is which I believe you know ties in with quite importantly is the product that he create has to has to have an own right if you yourself are not going to use it please don't put it out in the market you know i when i first started making waters I went to trading houses I went to like all these and I got like honestly man, pardon my French it's like I bought tradition watches I was paying like $8 $8 for a watch and I was like, Man these these watches are but people will buy them Don't worry about it. You know and then a denki my first bands on on Facebook and Google people like you know, you know, I was living that short term mentality and honest to god I would never go back there. And this is a I'm coming up quite clean and honest with you guys.
It's like it's it's not the way to it's not the way to go. And you know what, I would have made 150 thousand dollars and Next month, yeah, sure what would I have done I would have taken it and run away home and that's it, what got gone and gone and left for like three months or four months in Europe for the summer or whatever. It's such a, it's such a short term mentality, right? So hence that then the second time comes, which is like, Oh, I want to build a product, I want to build a brand I want to build something for the long term. When I build that, the people I'm surrounded with, find my vision, extremely motivating. Right? So I have a good one to two. So that is why I can run 15 brands because people are excited about a good product that they send to customers. And they feel amazing about providing great service for a good product that customers are using.
Joe Troyer 16:51
Thinking about e COMM And Google and Bing and shopping. What do you think is kind of the the 8020 What's like your biggest And of the four hour workweek, obviously, like, what what are the big things for anybody doing eecom? Or having clients that come to them or prospects come to them with eecom? What's the 8020 of Google ads and Google Shopping for e commerce?
Daryl Mander 17:17
I mean, it always comes down to the core trifecta, doesn't it? The your targeting your ads and your bids. So 8020 is just get those focus on those three things and get them dead on right, like you're targeting. So if you're doing paid search, that's going to be your keywords. If you're doing display, that's going to be your audiences or your retargeting or, you know your, your contextual keywords. If you're doing shopping, that's going to be down to your product feed, and
then your creative your ad copy. Like what ads are you putting out there? How's their CTR That quality score that kind of thing. And then it's bids and budgets, like, those three things are like if you get everything else is just details, isn't it when it comes into PPC, like that, really what we do with with this and with most forms of online advertising is just make sure we get the right. ads targeting and bids.
Joe Troyer 18:21
Yep, definitely. Yeah. At the end of the day, Google, especially I yeah, pay per click, especially Google. And Bing. I mean, at the end of the day, it's just a math equation between those three things really, and then profitability. Right? And I think people overthink the heck out of it. Right? And it's just like, well, you have your data, you've been running it. Now. Let's just let what's your profitability and where do we need to be? Okay, right now, what's the average position? You know, what's our max? You know, what do we max able to pay per click? All right, great. Let's start trimming it back. And then split testing against it. So love the love simplicity. I'm curious, Darrell, in your business. How often when you take on an econ client, do you have to get involved with CRM, or upsells, or something on the on the back end, so to speak, so that you can effectively do your job right? managing the traffic and the paid ads. But yeah.
Daryl Mander 19:24
So CRM we don't get involved with and I draw a clear line there. clients often ask me this and say, What can you do for our landing pages. And my line is always the same insight. As PPC specialists, we we have some knowledge over what works in terms of your landing page and your CRM. But it's limited to just doing enough to make Google happy. Like we can tell you if your landing pages so terrible that it's going to cause issues with your PPC campaign. But beyond that, beyond like landing page, but best practices, like things You can do to increase your site conversion rate beyond good enough, that's not us. And hey, if you want that kind of advice, let me refer you to someone else in in my network. So I think it's really important to keep that Rolodex of of your, of your colleagues in it within the wider marketing industry and be able to refer leads, and just focus on what your specialized that so I focus very much on Google ads, PPC, e commerce, someone comes to me and says, Hey, I want to really need SEO or SEO or web development, or I need Facebook ads for a lead gen campaign. I'll just say, That's great.
That's not really what we do, but maybe I can put you in touch with with someone who does do that. So I try and draw a really fine line there. But that's not to say we don't get sucked into this stuff sometimes. But for us, the most common place we get sucked into back end stuff is around tracking, conversion tracking, and installing pixels. And sometimes clients just don't have the expertise or resource in the house to be able to effectively install tracking pixels when we send them the instructions.
So over the years, me and my team, we have picked up some skills in Shopify, we know our way around the back end of Shopify me know how to install Google Tag Manager on our own without any help from a from a web developer. And I think that's kind of necessary. And we've picked up more knowledge on the Google Analytics side of things as well. And then beyond that, like everywhere else, I just try and try and draw clear lines, tell kinds where the traffic is. We don't, we don't we can't help you with your SEO. We can't help you with your lpo or your car or where the traffic goes. So I'm very good at traffic. We're very good at paid traffic, but if you need anything else, just let me know I can refer you to someone but that's not us.
Joe Troyer 21:55
So tell us about profit first.
Mike Michalowicz 21:58
So Profit First, currently My most popular book, I think, and I'm very proud of, but I think I have another book that's gonna kind of supersede that one, I have a new book launching in April. Profit firstis what came about from the realization that the vast majority small businesses are not profitable. And I was one of them for way too long. And I was wondering, like, why am I not profitable? The, the key reason I started my business was for profit, like I wanted financial freedom. I didn't do it and there was a study is conducted. There's 100 and 80 million small businesses globally, that's defined by the SBA as a company that's $25 million in revenue or less, and 83% of them are surviving check by check. No profits, dying on the vine, and I'm like, why is this because there's a whole reason we do this, what's wrong with us? And that's when I had epiphany for me is like, Oh my god, the formula profit is the wrong formula. We're told that sales minus expenses equals profit. That's the formula and it's wrong. because it tells us that profit is last. It's even in our vernacular, so we call profit the bottom line, because the year end, all those terms a profit comes last.
Here's what's wrong with that. when something comes last it's human nature to say it's insignificant. You know, those guys are real jerks. That's why they're last on my list. That's why they're bottom feeders. You know, your health Have you ever had a health scare? You would never say you know what i really i start putting my health flast you put it first. It's human nature. Something that's last is insignificant can be avoided and we delayed when something is important that comes first, I put my health first and my family first I put my best friends first. That's the profit profit we're setting is a comes last.
So in execution, most business owners wait to the end of the quarter and the year. Look at their income statement, no profit. Oh, darn it maybe next year and we literally wait another 365 days, or this is a leap year so three to 66 days for profit. Here's the new formula why teach in profit first its sales minus profit. He was expensive. So profit comes first. in action. Every time we have a sale money flows into our business, we take a predetermined percentage that money profit, hide it away in a profit account. And the left over is what's available to operate the business. So now you have to operate your business within the confines of what you define as profitability. If you want to achieve 10% profit, take 10% profit first and you can only spend what's left over were reverse engineering profit. In fact, this system has been around forever It's called the pay yourself first principle it's existed in personal finances I'm just the guy says this applies to business finances too.
Joe Troyer 24:38
It's funny, at a young age I actually got introduced to that my dad got out you know the little envelopes and you gotta you got your paycheck. Now, this goes in here this goes in here and it wasn't exactly laid out right like profit first is but but ultimately, like, here's how you manage your money. And ultimately, Man, I wish I would have just applied that to business a whole lot a whole lot sooner. are
Mike Michalowicz 25:01
the answers meto Me too, because my mother taught us the system. She had an envelope for the mortgage, one for the church that we went to, and one for food. And ever, she'd grab the food envelope and go to the food store and she worked with the food envelope. So it's probably the first we do and we set this up in our bank. So the real simple system is have we call the five foundational accounts income profit owners comp tax and op x I explained all in detail in the book. But money flows in the income account, and we allocate it to the different envelopes if you will.
Now since we've pre allocated money at the bank to its intended use, when we log into our bank account, and most business owners run their business off their bank accounts, so continue to do that, when you log in. Now you know what the intended use of the funds is before you spend it. If it's for operations of the business, it must come out of op x if it's for your profitability comes out of the profit account. That's the core concept is so it's the envelope system matched with a few other things that pay yourself first principle so forth, applied and that's the basics there's more steps to prevent yourself from stealing from yourself and so forth. But the foundationally you're taking your profit first allocating to its intended use and working within those parameters.
Joe Troyer 26:12
So me running the agency and marketing side of the business, like it's pretty profitable. If you want your bottom line, right, it definitely pay attention to things. But I never used to really pay attention to it because there was always just lots of cash sitting in the bank account. So I thought, right and so I just operated it like, you know, the whole thing was just mine and it was all profit, but it wasn't and that was that was wrong. So man, I love like the I get a little Twitch and it's like, you know, how profitable Am I I log in and I see you know, my profit account and I see exactly how much money there is and it's down to the dollar. Yeah, it was down to the set and it's like the flick of the wrist like it's it's nice finally knowing where I actually stand.
Mike Michalowicz 26:58
That's my favorite part isBased upon behavior, we've always done logged into our bank accounts to look over how much money we have. We now start to see the flow of cash through our business we see what's money is available for profitability for profit. what's available to pay ourselves a salary, which is different profit profit is a reward for being a shareholder. Owners compensation is a salary for working what we do in our business to the work we do. We even reserved money for taxes. So when tax time comes, the business can pay your taxes and this is regards you have an S Corp. C Corp, your business can always pay your taxes.
You do it through a special mechanisms. You guys speak with an accountant to do it, right, but the money can be reserved. And then you see what's truly available. And so one example is if $1,000 flows into your business, I used to say $1,000 to spend wrong, some of that goes to profit, some goes to owners comp, some goes next, I may only have $600 for my business or $400. But now I know what we have to work with. And what's so amazing about human nature. I talked about the concept in the book, it's called Parkinson's Law. It's human nature to work within the confines what we have If we have more money, we will spend more. If we have less money, we'll spend less force frugality. But also we become very innovative and we stretch the dollars. So this, I'm very honored and proud to say that we've over 300,000 companies have successfully implemented profit first, and are more profitable than ever before. Because of this, it's it's pretty ridiculously simple, but it works.
Joe Troyer 28:22
On another podcast recently, I heard you break down kind of the different buyer personas of people that buy and I thought that that was really cool. people that buy sites and the different personas, can you walk through kind of high level who those different types of people are? Because I think that matches up with what you just said, right? It's like you're coming in, you're brand spanking new, but you want to buy SAS like, that's not that's not quite fair.
And I think I think it's important that people will like sometimes people just don't even know the right questions to ask, right? So they come in and it's just like, Yes, I want that. Right, but they don't understand the ramifications of that as a decision. So I think it would be cool if you could walk us through the different buyer personas so to speak.
Gregory Elfrink 29:04
Yeah, recurring revenue is great. So the code breaks. Oh,
Joe Troyer 29:08
yeah, exactly.
Gregory Elfrink 29:11
Yeah, so the different buyer personas and we have seller personas too, but seller personas tend to be a little bit more common like with what they share. buyer personas is really based off a few different things. So the most common of them all is what we call newbie norm. They're the ones just starting off maybe they are that person with 500 k just because they're new doesn't mean they don't have money they often can have a lot of money maybe they're a real estate investor stockbroker, whatever it is just a high net worth individual, but they're not super skilled yet with online business. There's so just trying to figure everything out. And if you're the seller selling to someone like newbie norm, then I always advise you to be very supportive of you know, so 30 days support which is pretty normal, maybe offer 60 days support, they probably won't, you know, need it. But the point is, is to make them feel confident that you're there with them. Not that you're just like, you know, gone like smoke and mirrors. The moment that you get the money, right? So those are newbie norms. And like I said, those are very common mainly because our business or industry is growing so much. So you always are going to have more new people than the veterans typically.
Then the next one that is really common is portfolio, Paul. So this would be like probably a lot of people in your audience that are pretty skilled at affiliate marketing, they're building out real brands that are monetized or affiliate sites, or Amazon FBA businesses, or e commerce stores it all, you know, doesn't matter in terms of business model, but their basic premise is I want to build a portfolio of high cash flow streams, right. And they sometimes diversify through different business models, or more likely the same business model but diversify with different brands and maybe different paid traffic or different traffic sources in general, that kind of thing. The next one is flipper Fred and so this is where we get half of our name actually as Empire Flippers and these are the guys just like real estate flippers, right?
You come in and you buy a house for, I don't know 40 K or 50 K and you do renovations and Worth 100 k 150 k and you flip it right. So same as that concept, they come home by 100 $200,000 saved from us, they increased that net profit and then they sell it for almost double or sometimes much more than doubled depending on how well they did usually over a six to 12 month period. Since I've been with EF I've seen the same business sold, I think four times. So it's pretty cool. Two times that business went up significantly as well. So that's the those three are probably the most common of them all.
And then there is ones called like strategic Sally for insurance, for instance. Now you'll if you use a broker like us, it's unlikely you'll find a strategic Sally because they typically won't use a broker because the what they're looking for is so specific, that unless the broker goes and finds the deal for them, they're often not going to find what they want on the marketplace. It does happen. It's just really rare. Those that person is like say they owned a jump rope business, right? ecommerce sells jump ropes, and they go and find an affiliate site all about fitness. And so there's synergy there where the sum of their parts are greater than individual or however that saying goes. So, so they though they're willing to pay a higher multiple typically than other buyers because they understand the value of what that synergy can bring to them. And then there's an investor Ivan, so investor Ivan, he is similar to portfolio Paul, typically less online business skills, but they tend to understand the model. And they'll usually have an operator who's actually running the business and they're more like the money person.
So they supply the capital, and they tend to love especially e commerce businesses, because a lot of the reasons why sellers sell ecommerce businesses because they want to take the cash out right, like Amazon FBA, very capital intensive business, you're always putting more money in to get to that next margin break, right? And so investor iving can come in and just instantly deploy that cash and get that economies of scale right away. They'll increase their margin so they tend to love e commerce businesses, but They buy other ones as well, of course. And finally, this guy is called Do It Yourself Dave or DIY DIY Dave. And usually this is like the second transformation, what happens to a newbie norm once they get into it and understand the business a little bit better. This is someone that is like, you know, ready to roll up their sleeves, they like to buy stuff, particularly that have a problem that they can go and fix. You know, they really want to get into the nitty gritty of everything. So those are the different kinds of personas of everything.
Joe Troyer 33:30
So Craig, what's your method of staying afloat and staying up with all the trends and updates in the industry? because like you said, I feel like the basics are the basics. They're the best practices, they're the fundamentals, and they're frankly, what most people skip, and don't get done. Right. Yeah. And you've talked about them repeatedly. But it's because so many people are freaking out about, you know, the the whiz bang Gizmo of the week or the month and it's really because they Not to talk about like most of the shit that works and is the fundamentals are staying the same. So So how do you stay afloat? Right in terms of mentally what's working what's not and stay on top of the updates How do you keep your game sharp?
Craig Campbell 34:16
i think you know master means in dealing with the right surrounding yourself with the right people in the industry. I've got a lot of friends as I've mentioned before, the likes of Julio, and people all over the world, that we regularly have masterminds and set me in and shoot the shirt and show each other like, hey, look at this tool. I'm using it does this or you even doing a podcast with Alexa? You? You may see one thing via the outtake and go fuck he said, That's I need to check myself. And so I think putting yourself out there. I speak at a lot of conferences anyway and people say he's at every conference, Gordon? I don't only go to conferences to speak is the networking been at the bar after that and you'll catch up with a whole bunch of Guys, when I really feel there's massive value in that allows me to keep on top of things, you know, go get off your ass and going and meeting these people and spending time with them, like you did when he was over in America, you meet up with the guys here, had a few beers showed each other a few trips and boom, you know, you have no doubt in my mind with the guys that were there, you've packed up something. And you'd be crazy not to do that in a regular ongoing basis.
So I try. And at least once a month when I'm at an event, hook up with other people or go to an event if I'm speaking in America, I will, you know, meet up very solid people in the days leading up to the event as well. And I'll be sucking as much as I can. Obviously I'll be offering value to them as well. But I'd quite happily meet where you join. We could set the in and shoot the show or the in on a talk and beers. And we both leave that pump with a lot more value in you. Maybe just something Try getting something to go on action something and I think that's the only real way you can do it get get to masterminds, or just meet up with people for a beer, or whatever, you know, people are very very open to meeting in someone's in Florida, why not shoot up? You know, the lights at your see all the fancy a beer or going out for a meal?
Let's do it. And people are very open to that. And I'm not sure. Personally, I don't know what it's like in America, but in the UK people know. And what, they don't have great social skills. So they're not up for going out with a stranger for a beer and asking them some stuff, you know, and I think that's where the problem lies us. That's gonna mean to block what people say, I could never go out with your I've never met in my life, what am I going to talk to him about? Whereas someone like me, I could probably talk to you for fucking 40 hours solid and always this stuff. So I think that that's the last in making as far as I'm concerned.
Joe Troyer 37:01
Yeah, for sure. No, I think it's just like that. And in the United States, and people have perceived perceptions of levels that people are at and where they are at, and I can't talk to that person. Like, that's all just bullshit in your head, right? As long as you have the mindset like to, like you said, to basically lead with value and to help them as well, right, like, it's going to be very well perceived. So will you get blown off every once in a while? Yeah, right. But more often than not, I don't get blown off, right. And most of the people that I'm outreaching to and trying to connect with have no idea who that guy. So it's not like, you know, it's because I have an audience and that's why it works for me. That's That's not it. Right? It's just that I put out more effort and try more than most people.what's worked for you with dentists and in terms of getting their attention so that you can actually then have that sales conversation.
Zach Anderson 37:52
So I've actually used the same system since I started which is really, really easy. There's two ways I've I do this, I do this either through cold email outreach. Just a very simple message saying, Hey, are you accepting new patients? Taking them? You know? And they always answer yes. And taking them through a sequence of trying to get them to engage, or what I do, and this is more old school, but it works really well. If I go into a city, I'll basically go into a city, I'll look at that particular city, like who's ranking on top, and then I'll do a video. Literally why that because I'll do some deep research. Like, I don't understand how many citations read, I'll get deep research takes me maybe an hour to do it.
And then I'll have all those those notes written down. And I'll record a video of why that person is ranking number one and how you can take them over and then send that email or send that video to every single one in that city. And I usually get one I can get at least one pretty much every single time. But that's that's like, well, I don't think people do that type of stuff anymore. I used. I did that when I first started out and people are like so lazy now that they don't want to go into that, but it's probably one of the most effective ways like If I really need a customer, that's how I do it.
Joe Troyer 39:03
I hit on that so hard man all the time with my people. You know, with the agencies, I work with invisible PPC, the agencies that I coach at Digital triggers, it's like top, how hard is it to come up with a, you know, 20 minute audit that you can run for a market? Right to figure out, you know, for Chicago dentists, right? what's working and what's the competition have and how do you beat them? And to record a video that's personalized and to knock that out? right and then send it to everybody in the market? Like, how lazy Do you have to be to not to not see the ROI and notstrategy? Yeah. Do you want to know my secret sauce,I don't ever share with anybody.
I want the secret sauce, man. We all want it. This is
Zach Anderson 39:49
I've never actually I've never shared this publicly to be honest with you.I just called people No. So I basically can guarantee a dentist I can get ranked in Six months, like number one. But yeah, let's do this, I have to have the right dentist. So I'm not gonna reveal any of my customers I don't want them to be you know, destroyed everyone market to them so how I do it and they This is this you're gonna you're gonna know this is dumb simple you like that's easy to do. So what I do is if I just wants to approach me and I start working with Mike Okay, this is this is the game plan, this is what we're going to have to do.
Do you want more business off the internet? Yes. Do you want to get more patient software? Yes. Is that like your number one goal to grow your practice? Yes. Okay. So this is what you're going to have to do. And if you're not going to do it, we're not going to work together. You're gonna have to change the name of your practice and get a new URL. And he's like, What? I'm like, yeah, we are changing the name of your practice. And we're getting you a new URL. And they're like, so like, for example, Chicago dentist, right. I mean, that's a huge I wouldn't be able to get Chicago dentist dot com. But I may be able to get the Chicago dentist calm or North Chicago dentist calm or something like that. So the first stages, they read, they, they they change their name, they register that with the state so that it shows up in the, you know, the on as a whatever called DBA.
So it shows there. And then basically we get the URL, whatever the business name is. So whatever the business name that we choose on, let's just call it the Chicago dentist. That's their new business name. They get a new time, they get new everything. I'm like, do you want to win or not. They go down that path. We get a new URL, we then move we usually redo the site because we want new new code on the back for Google to to crawl. And then we go to town on the directories of updating all of them or making new ones if we can't update them and just saying Screw it. And then we go to town on press releases. And I'm done in about three months in there. Three months are already on page one and about six or Like number one for Chicago dentist,
Joe Troyer 42:02
but that is huge. So ultimately, at the end of the day, you're going after almost like an exact match domain because we know keyword loaded business names rank, you're just throwing it in a little variation, right the or north or downtown or something like that. So that you have a very close to variation of the exact match name.
Zach Anderson 42:25
And you know, this is it was scary for me to do this in the beginning, becauseI had a dentist that was willing to do it. And now I'm like, so confident with it, because I've got like, like all of them just pegged, that will do it. I mean, pegged, pegged at number one, like they don't move. And so you know, and I show it to them, I have the results. And they're like, That's nuts. I'm like, tell them go type that in, go type that and go type that and go type. They're like, Ha, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, what you got to do it. And they're like, yep, like, does it What does it matter and so that's my Secret squirrel behind the scenes, I'm a good salesperson, so I can do it.
But it is amazing. It's kind of like think I mean, the way I always try to explain them, it's like think about this, Google's job is to give you the best results possible, so that you keep coming back to them. So if IBM, you know, wants to, they don't need to rank for their own name, because you type in IBM, Google, to show you IBM, it's the same concept. If your Chicago dentist, and your name is the Chicago dentist, and it's legit, it's not fake, you're not trying to screw the system. And that's the whole thing is that's why I'm like change your name dva the whole night. And so that's how that works. And so that's my little secret sauce of how I can get a new dentist and, and just go to town on it. It's not very difficult to get them
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