(00:26): Hey everybody, it's your boy, Mark Evans. D M hope you're having an amazing day. Today's show's going to be a little bit different. As you know, last week we had our hundreds show. So again, thank you so much, everyone. It gave messages and joined the Hey a month club. Thank you guys so much. I'm super excited and honored that we're on this journey together. As you know, we got a lot of big stuff to do moving forward. In the meantime today, what I want to do is I wanna bring on my right hand, man, Peter, him, and I's been rolling together for a long time. He was in the real estate comp actually was, yeah, you were in the tech side company, things, you know, virtual deal factory back in the day. And then we started doing real estate stuff together and kinda share that story.
(01:08): How that evolved as well as talking about data. If you own a company, this is the call. Maybe if you're like a, you know, maybe you're a small time business owner. Maybe you're maybe you're a solopreneur right now, or maybe you're trying to grow a company wider. And this is a definitely a conversation you wanna listen in on and it's gonna be laid back. This is Peter and I hanging out. I'm in Parkland. He's up in Jupiter, Florida area. And like I said, we've done a lot of stuff together made and lost millions of dollars together over the years. And we're gonna share with you guys the raw truth about data. Cause everyone has data. Very few people know they have it. Very few people know like what it says. Very few people understand how important it really is for scalability. And we're gonna talk about, you know, all this stuff, if you, maybe you selling products on e-com, maybe you're selling products outta the front door of your facilities.
(01:58): Maybe you're a real estate investor, which Peter does a lot of real estate stuff at a company we own. And you know, you, you need good data, so you're not wasting your time wasting your energies. But if you're sitting here listening to this thinking, like I need to grow my company, I wanna grow bigger. This is the show. This is the conversation you need to understand cuz this is what changed our business and our life in every business that we work with. And not say there's not confusion and cross problems as you scale as it always is, but that's why it's important to understand what's going on. So Peter, what's going on buddy? Oh, how you doing? Little cold snap today for us down here in Florida. Yeah know up.
(02:40): Yeah. No, definitely. So Peter, we met I don't 14 years ago. It's been 12 years now. It'll be 12 years in April, I think. Yeah. Long, long, 12 years, long time. But now like Peter and I meant actually he was doing tech more like CTO work. We had a website, we built out called virtual deal factor. That was for investors. It's like a Facebook, if you will, for investors where they'd match people up and connect and talk deals and, and kinda, and I started, that's where we started and then, you know, or I actually had I webinar sold webinar and I was like, oh. That worked really well. And we had no clue how to facilitate it. And then Peter's like, oh, I could jump in and help, you know, build out some basic, you know, my basic back then it was different, but like a structure where people get picked up plots that they bought. Cause we were selling land and sure enough, that's what we got. And then Peter, we just kinda evolved from there,
(03:37): Right? Yeah. I mean, really, it was just about how do we, you know, you found the bottleneck, right? Like you could sell to a number that was so much more to a multiple than you could fulfill. So the question that became, how do, how do we fulfill it quicker so that we could sell quicker? And that really is just, it's kind of the same thing we talked about still to this day across all the businesses, right? How do you just speed things up, which brings the revenue up. And that's a lot of what we'll talk about today. Cause it's all data based on the data and some of the KPI based, but really what are you doing with the information you have and how to kinda, you know, take that to next level? Yeah.
(04:10): I mean, Peter, we've seen this cause you, you know, we've helped a lot of people over the years through the events we've done back in the day, but we've seen a lot of people where they over prepare and undersell. I'd much rather see you not to say, be reckless with this, but oversell and overprepared, you need to do both. And I get it sometimes you're so deep in the trenches you forget to sell. I was just talking about a buddy today, working out by dude, the sales arm should never stop selling if it does. You're out of business. Everyone thinks they're oh, I'm a, you know, I doges, oh dude, you're a marketing company first and your product is dog leashes. And if you don't sell dog leashes, you don't have anything. So the way totally. Right.
(04:52): Yeah. Yeah. And that's really where it crossed over for me because I was like you said, a tech guy systems, guy more an engineer mind. And I crossed over into sales a little bit was some retail experience and, and kind of boots on the ground stuff, but never the level and the speed that, you know, today's world lets you sell at. So that's where it really crossed over for me and realizing that like, Hey, if you do this the right way, you're selling 27. Like imagine in your head all the time. There's things moving that are just going to change to change. That's the way you want set these businesses up. I mean, that's ultimately how youre a business owner and now you can elevate from there instead of working inside the business. This is back. Like, let's just kind of put some timelines on this because I don't, you know what we're talking about guys? There's like real time here. You're cause I was in Georgia when I did that was so I left in 2010 in Georgia. So I think it was like, It was, it was right. It was 2010 I think, right near oh 9, 20 10. Yeah.
(05:50): You know, cause I remember us sitting there, like I said, Peter was more like, Hey, let's make sure it's right before we do anything let's engineer by the way. And that's a lot of people. Right. Cause you know, they wanna get it right before they get it going. And my whole philosophy's always been, you don't have to get it right. You just gotta get it going. And I did that webinar not expect, I knew we were gonna sell some, but I didn't expect we sell or the number it was. And I broke the system. These are what we call good problems, you know? Yeah. Like my problem was, I'm gonna have to give people their money back. I don't wanna ever do that if I, if I, if I have the product obviously, but like if I can't fulfill, you gotta, you gotta give 'em the money back. But for us, what happened is we actually, like you said, with the 48 to 72 hours, we had an infrastructure in place could facilitate exactly what we sold. It's not, like I said, it's too many people are trying to solve problems that they don't even know exist. And are what, like I said, are problems oversell and like, oh, am
(06:57): Knows. Everything in sales is involving a human being. It's never gonna be perfect. Like it's, it's always changing, you know? And that's, we know that now more than ever from the last couple years. So when you think about that and you wanna build these systems that really work the right way for you they're, they're always changing. So it's more about like, you know, the, the couple top things that you need to take care of in there and it makes sure you're designed for, but after that, it's all testing. Honestly, it's a, it's a science experiment across everything. I think this is gonna happen. Let's throw a thousand into that marketing channel measure. The results did that work, didn't it. Okay. Here's our benchmark number. Let's do it again next week. Do we go up or down? And you just start playing with all this stuff and that's how you really, you create a marketing cycle. That's moving with your customer base instead of like, we're gonna, and everybody's gonna into it. That used to be how things were done. But now you, these are all feedback loops. Like we're moving so much quicker now. That you could put something out there that's kinda raw. Get some feedback, adjust off it, put it out again. It's all iteration. So it's all just this over and over again.
(07:52): Yeah. I think Peter, the biggest thing, what we're talking about is, you know, data, probably one of the things cause you I've is people I'll estate about this. And this also does work in business by the way. So is how are you? And then the second question is what's your cost to acquire a client? So there's lead, it's cost to acquire a lead, a cost to acquire a client. A lead is just the name and email phone number maybe, or just a phone number, just something, a warm body. And then a client is someone that's converted. And then the next question on top of that is cool. Now that you know how much it costs to get a lead, how much it costs to get a client much. Does this client work to you? A lifetime value customer, right? How much is the lifetime value of that customer?
(08:45): And if you can understand these four data points that I just shared with you, you understand why, you know like why it's simple. It's not easy, but it's simple to scale a business because if you come to us, Peter and I like say, I wanna do four real estate deals a month. Like awesome. How many deals a month are you doing now? One. Cool. How much are you spending? Well, you know, lot of word of mouth from like bucks a month. Okay. How mu how, like how much does it cost to acquire a deal? It might cost 25. Let's say 2,500, but you're only spending a thousand a month and you're sitting here wondering what you're doing wrong. I need to talk to more people. I need to do it. You're right. You do. You need to market to talk to people. People aren't just walking around saying, Hey, motivated seller, Hey, I need sell my house.
(09:28): Right? So if you need to do four deals, it's just basic math cost, $2,500 to acquire that deal. I need to do four deal. My investment. I need to be spending $10,000 minimum every single month, like consistently. And if you get consistent with that, you start seeing your numbers start scaling up because now all of a sudden you're starting to gather data. And then you're looking at how obviously you need to know how much you're making per deal. On average. Let's say, if you're making 10 grand a deal, now you're spending 20 to make 10. I mean, Peter, that's what we do all day every day.
(09:59): I mean, all you're talking about is ROIs. You know? So now you're just getting to what's my return on my marketing spend different businesses, call it, you know, return on advertising, spend different terms across it. But all these things, all these KPIs that are floating around your head, they all mean the same thing. So in the real estate marketing world, it's really simple because you're spending marketing dollars to get to that deal. It's a pretty simple, you know, a to B point, there's not, you're not looking at lifetime value as much. You're just looking for like month to month. How do I keep churning out that return? And, and there's two parts to the problem. Always that, that a lot of people miss. So there's the spending part in the, are you just, are you putting enough into your system to get out, to have a chance to get out what you want?
(10:38): And then there's the optimization part. So many people are lost and like trying to optimize before you're even putting stuff in there because they're so afraid that like, oh, I'm gonna spend money and nothing's gonna happen. And you know, like I, I kind of get it, but then like, how do you think you're gonna grow? If you're not willing to start to push the limit on some of that stuff. And you know, if that's the issue, figure out how to gain some clarity on what's happening in your marketing. So now you can spend with some kinda confidence.
(11:02): Yeah. I mean, I think the thing is, again, there's so many people are frustrated. Like why can't I grow? Like if you guys see guys like Peter and I, and you're seeing a scale stuff almost effortlessly from outside in, by the way, there's a lot of effort internally. So don't, don't assume that we're not doing it, but what it, what what's really happening is we understand that we're in the marketing business first and to be in a marketing business successfully, you have to understand data. And if you wanna understand, you have to reverse engineer where you wanna go again. I wanna dos a to acquire customer. I need invest 10 a. Now I have that allocated. That's all I need to know. It's in motion. There's a lot of different ways you can do direct mail, you know voice broadcasting, text broadcasting, cool calling, you know, there's a million different ways to do it.
(11:50): We're not saying, Hey, this is the only way that's a whole nother conversation, but your data would tell you what to do by the way. And sometimes by the, this is very interesting, Peter too. And you know, this to be true is like you might spend $3,500 on one channel in marketing, let's say texting. And then you might spend a thousand on cold calling, but that's phase the data phase. Two of the data is how much are each one of those leads bringing into you in dollars in revenue. So let's say if I'm spending 3,500 on texting to get a deal, but I make 25 grand, cause it's a little bit different plan, a little different list, a little different type of like audience. I, I spend 3,500 make 25, grand it over here, I'm spending a thousand, but those deals like are 7,000. You know what I mean? So I'm only getting a very small 1000 to make seven, or would you rather spend 3,500 to make 25,000? Right? So this are two separate pieces of data that you need to start understanding
(12:49): Really that the answer to that question is even about, you know, Hey, I wanna spend more, spend more, spend more that that's what you're trying to solve. The question now becomes about the next step. Like, okay, you have all these channels, you can run. What are they outfitting for leads and what can your team handle? Cause a lot of people do that the wrong way as well, right? They just pump money in the front and then they're like, oh, well I did it. I, I quadrupled my spend and I got nothing good outta the end. Like the end result did not multiply what happened in the middle and between there, right? Did you flood you? You quadrupled your spend, but the one person you had, they didn't quadruple and they were already overloaded. So that spend kind of, you know, didn't get dispersed the right way.
(13:24): So you have to watch how this stuff works together. But this is what we're talking about. You know, where everything here comes down to a simple metric at each one of these steps to where you could say, okay, that doesn't look right now. You know where to dive in it. That's the way you kind of like step back and you run this stuff. And now we always like to say, you know, step back and imagine you're on a, in front of a whiteboard and you have each of your marketing channels with these key data points and you say, okay, I wanna spend more now, where do I put it? Do you put it all in one channel? Do you spread it across each one? And now some of these other questions start to come up. Well, okay. If I go double this channel, can we even handle that? And you start to kind of figure out how to work those pieces together. I that's ultimately the place you're trying to get to where now you're looking at it at a business owner.
(14:03): Yeah. And let me, lemme simplify this. Cause you guys are listening to us on a treadmill or driving like, holy, what are they talking about? And by the way, Peter, do you have like a form, like a simple marketing audit document that we could plug in where they can go to a website, you know, in the show notes here, we'll give you guys a link and then you can follow along, like on your own time, like how much am I spending marketing? It's Casper lead cost. Do you know all that stuff that we're talking about? But here's another thing too guys is all lead sources are not created equal. I cannot stress that enough. You know, there might be a lead source. Like I said, you're spending a thousand dollar, but the, the grind is so much harder. Like you're texting, you're replying.
(14:40): Your conversion rate might be one in a hundred, right? It's just a different animal. It's not bad. It's just different. And if you only have limited time and limited marketing budget, you might wanna spend more per client because maybe your conversion's 25, 30%, I'm talking about effort here. So if you have 50 people waiting to make phone calls, that's a different path than if you only are a one or two show where you need to be maximizing every single conversation. So from a lead to conversion, done lead to conversion done, and the higher quality of the lead cost, the, the higher conversion typically you'll have. And this is where I see people up. Peter. I see them, they do it for a month. It doesn't work. Like they thought whatever that means by the way. But this takes time. You know, I recommend three months minimum in there.
(15:32): Cause not only are you scared shitless your first month, cause it's probably the biggest investment you've made in your marketing budget. Right? Cause now you can't go to the club, go buy a bottle. Cause you go spend, you go rent a, a Lamborghini for a weekend for five grand bucks. You won't spend five grand in your business right. To grow it. But you know, when you get in there, like the first month is always like, oh my God, it's kind of working. I kind of need to start tweaking now. Right? So Peter, you deal with this and push button CMO all the time. Like what, what's your ideas and thoughts on this?
(16:00): Yeah, I mean, so we, we talk in our business about a 90 day cycle for that stuff. So you really need to let a channel go at least 90 days before you can see the real metrics come through all the way through your pipeline. Really it's whatever business you're in each step a customer has to go through in your pipeline before you truly acquire them before you get the sale. Each one of those steps has a different kind of timeline to them, right. And a different metric inside there. So that's really, you just have to align it to your success metric, right? So if you're a real estate investor and you run stuff for a month and your success metric, what you're looking at to tell it or not is deals that's very rarely gonna come out. Well, cause it's hard to close the it's hard to have the conversation, develop the relationship, get it, another contract, check the property, sell it and, and get that all closed out inside of 30 days.
(16:47): So that timeline to that metric is especially the retail side. So you know that the timeline, the timeline in the metric or misaligned versus if you, if you're looking at it inside the first month and you say, okay, how many leads did I get? And how many of those did I talk to? You know, that's a real simple thing that inside of 30 days, you can do it enough at that activity to have that metric matter a little bit to you. So just to align those steps and, and look at it the right way and then give it the, in mind to come all the way out the way through to get the return. And like you said, so many people jump in and starting right away, which I'm not gonna say don't some stuff ha some things have to be adjusted. The problem is, is you're tweaking without understanding what the right or you're on a, like hasn't had time to happen yet. So you're ending up adjusting thinking. You're trying to make it better, but you're actually making it worse because you're doing it off of the wrong visibility. So just let it run. I mean like you had a reason, again, like a science experiment, like in the beginning you ran it cause you thought something was gonna happen. Give it the timeline, set it in the beginning, give it the timeline to let it happen and just watch your sub along the way.
(17:53): Well, real quick here, back to tweaking. The biggest problem is, is typically people go balls to the wall, the gate, they spend grand, they get offside and they think they need to change everything. The problem is you don't have any handles. You don't know what's working. Don't fix, what's not open and run new business, run a new marketing channel to the model that you have in place and then make tweaks one at a time. Cause the problem is if you tweak five things at once and something breaks, you don't know which one is wrong or right. Cause you tweak too many things. This is just like sales copy and your sales copy. There's a thing called the handle. Let's do one that we're using pulling the, the, the, like we already have data. We already know what this produces today. And we know like, and then I'm gonna change the subject line. I'm drive thousand eyeballs. The thing line change now increases by 5%. Cool. Now that's the new handle. And then, okay, now I'm gonna change the call to action button from it deteriorated. Okay. Well change it back to blue. Cause it's working better blue than paint. Like if you try to change headline button, call to action video, do this, do that. Like now of a sudden it, it bombs and you're like that marketing channel sucks, right? The marketing channels. Clearly not you. Cause you all these edits. It's the marketing channel. No man, you gotta slow it down. You gotta take it one at a time.
(19:15): Well, these directed, like you're, you're, you're doing intentional tweaks anticipating an outcome and then measuring if that outcome happens, right? So like, OK, we're gonna tweak this one little thing and it should increase open rate. Cool. Run it for a day. What happens? You know, did we increase open rate? What was the multiplier? Let's see if we can multiply it again. Change it again. Nope. We went down. OK. Let's go back. And then you just micro tweak. You're just trying to optimize. But you know, again, that's tiny optimization. People are trying to like solve everything. Like you're saying in one, like flip a switch and solve it all. It just doesn't work that way guys. It's a, it's a moving I the way I like to think about marketing again, because it's human based. It's there's just constantly a moving organism. It's growing, moving around.
(19:54): You have to like get smart about how you do stuff. That those are the tweets, you know, figuring out language or a little bit of copy that changes people's reaction a little bit gets you a little bit different response. These are tiny little micros you make along the way, but that doesn't change. Like you're running to channel for 90 days. These are small things that you plan on doing. So probably the best way to get your mind around it is if you're going in going, I wanna spend 10 grand on this channel right now, back off and go, OK, how much a month do you wanna spend for the next three, six months? Set it up that way. Start that way. Once you go run the first month, if you see stuff working, then you can increase. But if you just go to the wall month, one and two comes around and now you can't pay for it. Like that's not the right way to run these marketing channels. That's common mistake people
(20:38): Make, oh, we see it. We see it every day. I think too. You know another thing, most people listening, you need to on at communicating because the thing is, is when you're doing cold marketing, cold marketing conversations have to be a little bit tighter. They have to be a little bit stronger. You have to be a better listener. It's not like if Peter says, yo mark, here's a deal. Boom, he's already established relationship, word of mouth relationship. They I'm almost, he's already built me up as the, with cold marketing to get to warm prospects. You have to understand that you have to build a different rapport. That has to be tighter. Has to be, Hey, what's going on? They, they, they don't know who you are. You're, you're a brand new person in their world. So most of the time too, most people suck on the phone.
(21:24): They suck at conversations. And then that's just one P how quickly if the phone rings, are you answering it? And if so, what's what are you saying? Or is it going to voicemail? If it goes to voicemail, what are you saying? And then the second layer of that, how quickly are you replying back to them? Cause a certain marketing channel, typically, I don't know how you guys buy, but how I buy is when I want something, I need to solve a problem. I call until someone answers the phone. So the marketing may be working, but the problem is you're not working cause you're not playing around. So therefore again, what they do, always Peter, they blame it on the marketing. No,
(21:59): It's yeah. I mean, it's a very thing. There's big pieces to that. You're about, so like one of the things we see is, you know, on the real estate side, you're getting, trying to get in touch with smaller investors. And a lot of these investors have full-time jobs or other commitments, right? So most businesses out there, you know, we wanna be a business, so we're gonna do this the business way. What do they do? They have their teams from to every day, right? And they're like, oh, of the channels. Like's are like, you're targeting the right people clearly, because if they're at work, they're gonna have some kind of financial issue at some point, right? They're not stable enough to be answering the phone between nine to five. That's a great thing that actually points to your marketing is getting to the people you want.
(22:42): But you're just not touching them the way you need to to get the connection. So again like there, it's focusing the process on the wrong metric. The metric is increase the connection rate. If you're having an issue, it's not the leads, increase your connection rate. Cool. What happens then? Like as you talk to more of those people, what's really going on inside there. So it's a simple solution. You start calling from six to 8:00 PM during the week. And here's the best thing we, how long have we been saying this for like 12 years? Like call on Saturday, call on Saturday, call on Saturday. If it's funny too, cuz we saw this in Columbus, Ohio. If the Buckeye are playing in town on Saturday, cool. Like figure out what time the game is. You can actually call around the game. Cause the game happens. They stop like Saturday is the, you have not guess what they're off on Saturday. You can them then dont certain holidays cuz they're afraid to there's ways to do those touches the right way. Obviously I'm not saying bombard them, but like you have to start aligning the process and, and your actions for the success. You're trying to get outta these marketing channels.
(23:44): I mean dude, in all seriousness, everyone listened to our voices. Most people suck at marketing. They're. They're playing a game of fear. Like what if I lose money? Hey what? You're going to lose money. I guarantee it. But you're going make way more money than you lose Peter. We still lose money. We spend money on marketing, marketing. It blows up something breaks. This doesn't happen that doesn't we've sent out direct mail postcards with the wrong number on it. It's called life. But guess what? We didn't stop. We didn't quit. We found the problem. We solved the problem. And we went on to make millions from that's. How winners win too many people, foot around talking about boom. Cause they're afraid. Cause you think marketing costs money. It does. It will never cost you money. If you have a plan, if you execute the plan and not only that most people again, you have to get better at communicating via text, via phone, via in person. Stop going for the jugular on the first, Hey Peter, what's going on, Peter? You know, this is how I talk. This is how we do it. Every in the real estate every day in any business what's going on, not like, tell me about your house. How many bedrooms? What's the carpet look like? What's the road. Why are you selling? How much you boom, boom, boom. Like it's not script via
(25:03): Again. The marketing, like see it. So, and other point I was gonna, I was hoping we'd circle around on is, is understanding when you're calling people and talking to 'em based on what you're saying to them, how they're reacting, what it really means. Cause people do this wrong all the time. We'll talk about that with numbers or not interested responses. The marketing is there to start the conversation, get the spark and then enable you open that door slightly to enable you to start the relationship, not banging the door and go close the deal, right? So you have to start that relationship with the marketing piece and all that comes down to your follow up. So when Mark's talking about that energy you have in marketing, which you're afraid, afraid, afraid. If you're afraid and follow up. If you're not chasing after people constantly and not taking know for an answer, we'll talk about what that means in a second.
(25:50): It's the same attitude. You're not gonna win in that game. This phone game of follow up 80% of where the deals are happening is all the stuff that's already in your pipeline. It's not from the new marketing. The new marketing is just continuing to feed that it's all sitting there in the follow and everybody does this, right? They'll call leave a voicemail, but not send the text. Like why in this world with the way people communicate. If you really wanna talk to that person, why aren't you sending the text? Right. So take a step back. Like I dunno what to say. You know, It's like it's, it's just nonstop stuff. But like, you know that and then people go, oh, well the channel's not working because they're all saying Nope, wrong number. Like, okay, well are they going no wrong number up in the first five seconds of your spiel because you're rattling off a 32nd intro. Yeah, no. They don't know who you are. You're calling from a number they've never seen before. If you're calling out of a dialer, it's coming up stand likely, which now they answered, which is amazing even to happen. And now you're blowing it by trying to rattle off this whole thing to try and catch, know this in the first 30 seconds. And what do you think? It sounds like, sounds like a telemarketer and they're going Nope. Not interested. Cause what's the easiest way to get off your list. Nope. Not interested. Right?
(26:55): So people they're like it salesman. So you know, you look at this stuff happening. That's what eats away. Every, every week I talk to operations on the real estate side. It doesn't matter how much they're spending nothing up to 60,000 a month. And it's always the same thing. It's always the deals that are sitting in the pipeline that are being lost because of assumptions on stuff like this, not following up the right way. I had a big operation that was twice a day on people, five days. I mean just such aggressive calling, but never once sending a text message to him, you know, it's just, it's stuff that's like as gaps sometimes they're they're, you know, glaring gaps that affect it. But you just have to get better at follow up and just talking to people like these are human beings. You're trying to talk to, right? So like
(27:42): Human beings and technologies evolving, right? Our conversations are getting better. The more you get told, off the better you're gonna get. If you keep staying in the game, cause they're call, they're gonna say up. You're like, oh wow. Yeah. My wife said the same thing anyways. Tell me about your house. You know like, and you realize it's not rejection. They're not saying off saying that in their cause they dunno what to say. So have fun with it. You get better at that. You understand how to navigate these conversations. How through effort through conversations. Good and bad. Oh wow. That worked like every call you're learning. Wow. Don't say that on. Wow. Don't say that. Hey, my phone hung up. Hey, sorry. I can't hear like, there's so many ways to enter a call to make so, and I don't care what business you're in.
(28:23): I know we're talking about real estate. I don't care what business you're in. If you have an outbound call center or someone that's contacting prospects, which if you don't, you're absolutely crazy. Cause most deals like Peter's saying too, you know, this is why most people aren't successful is cause they think, you know, they're going for the one nightstand deals. I said marketing out phone, but the deal. Yeah. That's how I like to close by the way. But I also know typically, you know, the cycle, you know, 30, 69, depending what your, your cycle was. That's you know what happened was from effort 90 days today, it's just coming to, so's why you to have lifetime of how is each customer worth. If you really wanna get real serious in eCommerce world, you know, or any business that is selling real product insurance, et cetera, the question is how much can I spend? How much more can I outspend my competition to acquire a client? Cause you might have to spend $300. It sounds crazy if you don't understand what I'm saying, but you might have been $300 to an acquire customer, buy something for hundred you're.
(29:34): Well that were, you know, that mind your own numbers. That was one of my biggest shows actually we talked about last week is now I know I can go spend 300 to make a hundred today to build 1500 in the future total or I could try to do what everyone else doing, play this game where I'm spending $20 to make a hundred or maybe spend 90 to make a hundred, like whatever that game is. And now you're competing against a bunch of people as opposed to go overspend. And when you really understand lifetime value, this is how you can really, really change the game. An opportunity.
(30:11): Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest things we always understood along the way, even when we didn't realize it, you know, with a lot of the direct mail we were dropping on, on, you know, a lot smaller game than, than the stuff we have going on now. But it's the same mentality. Like we were always trying to figure out, okay, if everybody else is trying to do the cheapest card, how do we do the more expensive one? And the reason really for it was we understood the value of the, the difference in the entire world of the people you can reach. And Hey, we got 'em to respond once now they're in this tighter circle that we can do a lot more with, right? So you you're willing and retail. They do this all the time, right? A lost leader. You're selling a product out there to draw people into the store.
(30:46): You're gonna lose money on that product, but you're hoping they're gonna buy other stuff. So that's the whole idea behind it, by understanding the value of your customer long term, whatever that long term means for you. You start to play a game that's different because you're playing a long term game where all these people are out there trying to bank, bank, bank play the short term game, you know, spend 10 grand. Now make as much money on it a month as possible, and then quit instead of no, I'm gonna spend this for 12 months increasing every three months and here's how we're gonna do it. You know, it's a much, it's a business, it's a business versus a, I mean, that's the difference?
(31:18): Well, again, I, I think, you know, you guys can understand. There's a reason McDonald's still is running commercials. Mcdonald's is still running billboards. Mcdonald's still running advertisements and newspapers. If you are not relevant with your message, you'll become irrelevant. Eventually I G I don't care how big or how small you're you'll become irrelevant. So you always have to be thinking about fun. You know, you got like a lot of people like, again, Peter, that's another thing too. Everyone's very delusional. Oh, I do this. Everyone knows my name, especially in real estate. Right? Everyone's like D I'm so glad you're here. This is exactly. I
(31:51): Cool let's title companies and see if they heard of your company, what LLC do you buy? And they're like, Nope, never. Nope. Never heard of Nope. Never heard of Nope. Nope. Never heard of. And it's like, well, I knew it's because again, you have delusional thinking. I used to do the same thing. I still do sometimes by the way, but delusional thinking, no one truthfully knows who the you are on the grand scheme event. You're like a speckle of water in the ocean. Nothing. So you have to always be in relevant. You always have to be in front of people. You have to always be forging new relationships, all like not all relationships last forever. It's just part of life. Right. It's just hard. So you gotta always be constantly plugging in new people in your life.
(32:30): We're the impressions game. Like it's all about that's the world we live in now. It's, it's all about how fast you have to do it. What's the time you can get away with, you know? So like if it's specific channels, like text cold call, stuff like that versus PPC, like it's all about getting in front of people as often as you can, where they're actually gonna see the message. And then what's the message that's gonna work. That that's the whole game we plan. That's why text is listen guys. The, the stuff, the biggest companies in the world are doing, they're doing it for a reason, right? So they're using these channels for a reason because of how those costs work out and the impression game, you just keep getting that message in front of people and you keep acquiring them on a, on a real simple scale, you know, on the delusional piece, there's also a piece to just assuming that like, everybody's seeing what you're sending, right?
(33:15): So I see people do this all the time. They send an email and like one you're assuming their open rate is accurate, which we know that doesn't give you everything, but like, you're sending a message out. You send it five times and you're like, oh, anybody who wanted to respond to it has already respond to it's like, no, dude, like people are busy. They're not seeing it. Even if they open it, they're not reading it. Like there's so much going on. Take all that assumption out of it and just go, okay, like maybe that's not happening. How do I make sure I get my message in front of them? I hit 'em via email, text and calls. Right? So like I overlay this stuff to make sure I'm gonna put out there in different channels and allow them to respond back to me on their terms, the way they're gonna, that's why text is so affected because people don't wanna get on the phone as easily as they'll respond to a text message. So these like you, you have to start looking at these and like take the assumptions out and just, it's just actions and impressions. You just gotta keep hitting people with good messaging and then start test you start adjusting it a little bit. That's it? Every game at every channel. It's
(34:14): Cause you are ONM. You be spending six figures. A if you're not you, you don't have a business. You know? And I, I know it might sound like very rude or bra rash, like brash in your face. The reason is cuz it is. You've been playing small. I remember going to all these events and all these guys, I dude, I'm doing this now I'm doing this. They're just bouncing around. And I'm I always ask like, how much are you spending on marketing? Oh, I'm a word of mouth. And I'm like, so you have no business. Word of mouth is not a business model strategy. By the way, stimulating word of mouth is right. I can have word of mouth. I'm not saying that's not amazing business, but how do you stimulate word of mouth? Well, I could direct market. I could market to the people that I've done business with to get testimonials, send them money trees, which we do.
(35:00): Peter send, 'em a, all these things for social, like social proof, like, Hey guys, thanks for the money treaty blah, blah, blah, follow direct, get boom. That right. That's how you drive different types of eyeballs. But at the end of the day, you know, when I'm talking to someone, I'm like, how much are you spending on marketing? They say five grand, grand or grand. And yet in the same breadth or complaining about their business, isn't growing. My natural question always is, well, how when's the last time you scaled your market? You know, they, they haven't, if anything, they've actually pulled it back. Right? I fired a company back listen a long time ago when we were having tough times financially as a company. And the first thing they said, we gotta cut this marketing. I said, you're. I fired him right there on the spot. Why marketing is never an expense. It's an investment. And if you truly believe that you would invest accordingly. Cause if you could put a dollar and get back, why the wouldn't we be trying ask to do this? How, how times can I do it every minute? Right? Yeah.
(35:55): I mean like what action can, what actions can we push a button today or take today to increase revenue? If you're a word of mouth business, you got nothing. Like what are you gonna do? Call people and be like, Hey, can you go start talking to other people for me? Like that's not gonna work. I was curious, I was gonna in the beginning of this, you know, affiliates, right? So affiliates are interesting part of this because people don't consider them marketing, but when done the right way, I mean, it's tied to a commission piece to where they're driving sales for you. Right? So that is a way to now if you have an affiliate network that drives consistent sales for you, and now you can take action and activate that network, that is a marketing channel that you're able to activate to increase revenue. So it's just about what can I do right now? Increase having revenue to cause a bump in revenue. And that's, that's all your marketing.
(36:42): Yeah. And all this, like, you know, Peters saying, let's say if you're sending an email to your prospect list to stimulate conversations and you're getting 10, 20% open rate by the way 20. Right? So it means did not see it. It's not like people around saying, oh, can't wait till mark. Come on, mark. It's been a minute. No, they're busy. They got kids. They got life. Things are happening. However, if it's a very important message, maybe you're trying to raise money. Maybe you're trying to sell a deal. Maybe you have a special offer going on that you have limited inventory. And you know, this client typically buys this kind of stuff. Maybe what I would recommend is you take your email list, you scrub it and get phone numbers as well. And just shoot a text and or ask for their cell phone number for in the privilege to do this.
(37:30): By the way, everything we're talking about is legal, do it the right way. And you set em and say, Hey Peter, I just, you message. Check it out. Email that's I don't say, Hey Peter, this is mark. I've worked really hard to do you like, you know, it's don't over talk it, just give him a quick heads up. Think you're texting your buddy. Yo Peter, check your email done. Right. They know from me. Cause it's my numbers on thing. But like, Hey it's mark. Check your email. I got you something. And then now all of a sudden you're like, stop check I'm in or I'm out cool either way. But you would see your open rates drastically increase just with that one strategy, you know? Yeah.
(38:07): Same thing with you know, so again, that's that's how do use the data? Just like I was saying, right? So how do I give them an impression on different channels? So how do I use the data I have I'm to now touch on them? Same thing with this is something that's working really effectively for the guys on the real estate side is going in, skip tracing, getting E emails. And we know they're not all good, but they're not emailing 'em out where you have to worry about scrubbing 'em and balance rates and all that. They're just loading them in to, to Facebook targeting stuff and letting the PPC work that much better for 'em where it makes sense. Right. So that's a very cool thing they're starting to do. That's using the data in a different way than how real estate investors have been using it in the past. So that's very cool. You start to see guys overlay channels, right? So like where before you only did direct mail. Now it do is you hit 'em direct mail and cause you're getting a phone number now you, well, Hey did you week after it goes out or weeks after. So all these pieces come to like what, what do have
(39:15): Get on the phone? It remind me, yeah. This true story. When I was 18 years old, I, my parents used to dispatch it Saturday night at 10:00 PM. And you know, back before internet existed, kinda like now, but I'd straight home for right. 9 59 I'd at, I'm running out getting it. I'm like mom and dad go to bed. They're drinking beer, hanging out, having fun, smoking cigarettes. And I'm sitting in the literally the dining room with a rotary phone calling sellers at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night. True story. Like you gotta put yourself in the customers. They, they literally just pay dollars to run an ad in a new to sell their house. Do you think anybody else is calling at 10 o'clock at night and oh, well you can't call your 10. O'clock the dude. They just ran an ad. They, they obviously are motivated to sell if I call 'em and they say F you I'm not motivated. Cool. Sorry to bother you. Hey, it's calling about your property F you cool. Hey, it's calling about your property. Yeah. Thank you for calling. I can't believe you're calling so, but wow. I really need to sell this today. Awesome. Now I'm in the game. I'm the first contact. I'm the first person called em. I'm nice. I'm professional. Like do like people they're like, well, you know, I don't call seven 30 cause I'm kinda busy. It's not about being convenient about being profitable thing. Yeah. Ahead. Sorry.
(40:36): Yeah. And that, that really kind of sums up a lot of what we've talked about. And what I see is that too many people are designing their, their sales processes, marketing processes, all that kinda stuff without the customer in mind, like thinking about who's the customer, how, how do I get through to them the right way and value at tour? Right? So like that first and foremost, if you step back, think about that, am I design and things the right way, all this other stuff makes sense. How do I hit 'em the right way? Do I send a text to, when do I call him all that stuff? Makes sense. And then take however you're feeling about it and just get a little bit more aggressive with it and see what happens. And then a little bit more aggressive and see what happens. Like that's the problems.
(41:11): People just don't push, take what you're doing. And like do all those actions in one week instead of six weeks. Right? If you're very simple example, I see guys doing list marketing and they'll go pull a big list and contact it over nine weeks. And it's like, how do you do that same activity in two weeks? Cause what's gonna happen. You're gonna speed up every revenue, conversations, all that. So you have to kind start looking at things that way. And then ultimately guys like the marketing, no matter what you're doing for the marketing, none of it is gonna work. If your sales process and your follow process, isn't tuned into getting to the you're right. Do in touch with every single person that is in my CRM, right? Without fail nonstop. Even if they say no, I'm still gonna check in with them three months from now.
(42:01): Cause conditions change. Understanding that like the people that you're afraid to, to run into, to talk to the angry ones that just emotionally on you, those are the ones that are the, the best customers. Like those are the ones you need. If they're a motivated seller and they're yelling at you guess what? They're not too happy with their life. I don't want the guy who's sitting by the pool in Florida. I don't want mark to be the investor. I have to call to convince, to sell me his property. Right. That's gonna be the hardest sale. What's gonna be the easiest one is the ones like, you, dude. I can't deal with you right now. Don't ever call me again. Cool man. And sounds like you got a lot going on. Apologies. Didn't mean intrude. If that's the house, if this is the house you own, like I'm really interested in buying no matter what the situation is, I can help you out. Like that's a human to human touch. That a lot of people don't do that. Just go past the, but that piece out there and see what else is there. Those are the best deals always. And those are the ones everybody is like, like too afraid to call too afraid to ask the next question. I, whatever its the emotional outbursts are the ones like don't be afraid of those. Those are the best deals out there. Learn how to navigate. You'll be the one of the rock stars on the phone.
(43:07): Yeah. I mean like you're a, you know, vent. They, the more they're they don't even know it. They're just venting and I'm just sitting back like yep. Mm noted. Yep. Yep. And all I'm doing is going to use this on the crafting of the message to the next conversation to moving forward. Yeah. Like Peter said, it's like, wow. Yes, you do have a lot going on. I would like to make your life a little bit easier by taking over this property that you have, that you posted, blah, blah, blah. There's some many ways to enter that. It's like, listen, I I'm not for everybody. I move pretty quick. I might solve your problem way faster than you wanna solve it. You wanna sit there and talk about for the next five weeks? Or do you wanna knock this out in five days? I'm already SU that's called assumption selling by the way.
(43:48): So I mean, there's a lot of stuff here over the last 26 years I've learned. And another thing real quick here, another problem. I see a lot in roll here in a few, but is you know, when you're talking about PPC, by the way, it means pay per click. It's one of the most expensive marketing channels out there. Dollar wise that doesn't again, that's just one piece of data, most expensive dollar wise. However, those leads are typically very, it's like gold, right? If you get that lead and you call and you can convert, there's literally no. And you can literally make more money than you typically would ever make if, if you're competing against 10 other people. Right. So it's funny. I talking with the guy like man, PPCs outrageous. And I'm like, OK, what's that mean? And he's like, I'm paying $500 a lead.
(44:30): And I'm like, okay, cool. How much are you making? Well, we make 25 grand a deal, but man, I used to pay a hundred for the same lead. And I said, okay, I used to pay a hundred for the same lead. How much did you used to make with that same lead two years ago, it was like seven grand. See, the thing is, people get this twisted. Like let you gotta look at the full picture, not the one piece, the next que and my, I asked him, I was like, dude, how much you spend in a month? He's like 30 grand a month. I was like, well that's your problem. You need to be spending a hundred grand a month. Cause he's, he's trying to grow, but he's focused on the wrong problem. He's focused on spending 500 when he used to spend a hundred it's different times, man. You know?
(45:07): Yeah. I mean, honestly we, we asked the different question, right? So in our head markets similar on this one, he's more looking like, okay, if I'm making 25, what's the highest cost per customer. I can come up to. How do we spend what's the number we can spend before that number gets crossed. Right? So like instead of, oh my God, it's 500. I'm scared. We're like, cool. How do we drive to a thousand? But double the traffic coming through. Yeah.
(45:30): And, and not on that, dude. You literally squash every competitor in your marketplace. You're you're freaking out about 500. Could you imagine what some other smalltime investors, Don or other person that's investing in marketing, like marketing against you? Like dude, you'll smoke them. Cause you know, your data data gives you. Confidence gives you direction. Data gives you swag data is gonna bring by the way you get this data and you're gonna employees, you're gonna have better staff. You're gonna better team. Why? Cause they have opportunities to make more money playing the game that most people are playing. The reason you can't hire good people is cause you don't have any opportunity for 'em to grow and scale. Cause you're playing put, you're playing small. You're SIFY the opportunity because you're scared put being a pusy that's the ultimate goal there. Right? Being a pu step, your marketing game on it is scary.
(46:15): It is going to fail. It is not going to make you money sometimes, but if you stick with it and you start working and understanding real marketing, I promise you, you will make more money than you've ever thought possible. Cause you understand marketing. I don't care if you selling coffee real estate, dog leashes are it doesn't matter. It works once you understand how it works. And that's, what's cool about this. So, Peter, I know you have two companies push button CMO in direct skip. Can you talk about like direct skip what that does? That's mostly for real estate investors and some other industries, but just give a quick synopsis. Yeah, I mean,
(46:50): Yeah. I mean direct skip. So for real estate investors you guys know that, but as list builder and skip trace. So, you know, going in targeting the neighborhood, you wanna find a property in or cash buyers in certain neighborhoods building a list off that, skip tracing it, getting phone numbers, email addresses, reaching out to 'em. So you guys kinda understand that already. The big value add for you directly is we hit really corporates, LLCs trust better than anybody else out there with constantly tested. So that's massive for you. And really just the, the level of data. So we've gone, we've tested this data for three, four years really longer than that. Cause this goes back to using list source eight, 10 years ago, but tested it got into the most premium channels all the way up and, and just gotten the best collection of data to put that stuff together.
(47:32): So that's the easy one for real estate investors. If you're outside of real estate investing what's cool about it is really anything you're looking for in terms of either phone numbers or email addresses, we can help in some way. So it just becomes a matter of what data do you have. What do you try to do with it? Been helping a lot of different industries now do different things. So, you know, guys in call centers that are trying to access different customer bases, but we can source the data using their input lists and different things. So hard conversation to have here on that level. But we could probably open up a, a way for if you guys are in real estate, we'll make it really easy for you to get access to that system. That it's pretty straightforward. If you're outside more to set up a call and talk about KPIs, these other things, or maybe how the data can, can be used in your business, we're always looking for, for different applications.
(48:16): So the data we sit on is super, super powerful. The contact data is like 99, 99 0.9% accuracy it's credit bureau source. So it's constantly updated, constantly refreshed. And then the we have is updated every morning. So it's, you know, the, this is highly, highly accurate stuff that lets us get in touch with sellers and buyers of all levels. So even up to big hedge fund buyers and corporations pretty easily. So we're even testing you right now with some, with some companies outside of real estate that have done business and another another industry where we can kind of back source their contact and phone, get in touch with their CEO. So very powerful stuff. There's a lot of different uses and that's dot, right? That's the
(48:54): Domain. Yeah. That's direct skip.com. If you guys just go to direct.com and sign up for that, you'll, you'll get the normal package. You'll get some free hits in there to test around with it. And again, anything from there you could reach out to us and any kind special application we can definitely help you out with. Yeah. So again, for being here, Peter, how much free traffic are you giving 'em how much free skips? Yes. You guys will get 500 free skips and 500 free property downloads just to get in there and get rolling. And then, you know, if you're a power user and you're doing hundred thousand 200 a month, once you sign up, reach out to this. Sure. No, we'll talk about that. That in Skips, yes. In skips, yes. In skip rates, you know, some of you guys are doing that if you've got platforms. So we've got an API on that system as well. So if you've got a platform or you've got a custom podium solution, stuff like that, all those things can be tapped in via API to us to, to get that information as well, which is super powerful. So we, we serve a bunch of different platforms out there that you know of. I don't wanna say it, but we serve a bunch of 'em and then even down to, you know, personal CRMs that, that people are kind of doing and looking into. So again, the whole idea behind direct dip is what I wanted to do was take the data question out of it, right? So like there's so much going on that you're trying to figure out in marketing and your processes, we talked about so much of it today.
(50:07): How do you just eliminate there's so many little things that you can, that you're trying to figure out and all these things, the more you can eliminate as not an issue, the easier it is to focus on getting the other things. Right? Right. So if you eliminate the data and the probability of those being the wrong people or bad phone numbers out of what you're doing for outreach, you eliminate that error, that percentage down the line that you lose. So the whole, whole idea of it is how do we set that up the right way, get it to you at, at a better price. And then let us, as the data guys continue to do the work and evolving what's in there, how to use it. We're constantly announcing new features, new, new ways to filter new ways to get to the people you're trying to. So that's really what you want. Like you guys don't need to think about data all day long. We talked about it enough today. You know, use, use somebody like me use somebody like us that is in that all day long in the backend, looking at, you know, what we have, what we can take action on and figuring out a solution for you on how you can use that in your business. That's what I do with a lot of big companies now.
(51:03): Well, if they're spending three to five a month on marketing, you know, Peter will get on the phone with you for 15 minutes, do a quick run down audit of your marketing path. You know, give you a couple tweaks. It's free. It's we don't, we're not charging for it. We wanna be a value add to you. But you know, there could be an opportunity that you plug into some of the stuff he has to offer. We call that push button CMO, where he's kind of like the chief marketing officer of your company. He's like I said, he's, he's spent many, many, many, many millions of dollars and of spend not counting, earning of understanding the data. So he could actually come in there and help expedite everything we're talking about. And as you guys know, we're all about by time. This is the fastest way. Know my time.
(51:45): I know there, no question, mark Gavins. When he step in the do he's closing deals, how to tell him what the stand for. I'm a deal maker, a deal maker, but I'm not just a deal maker. I'm a dream maker. The journeys where it's at, it's all about the process. Come to get over to the project, a small town in Ohio. So I know how it is. Did not come from a lot of money. I remember as a kid wanted to make money breath and see no one making more than that. Graduated high school with a 1.8, like sure. They held me back. I owe my principals and teachers are alive just to witness this I'm own boss somehow here running two way, figure businesses, walk away from it. I be good, but I've been called to help people just like, y'all learn the game.
(52:33): It's come to everybody chasing the money, but I'm not chasing the money. I'm out here chasing the purpose. Yo, I've been working my life. What guess what we had? Is it gonna get us where we wanna go? It's come to come to learn, come to come over. I'm that? Teach him what I, what I know and how I did it to discover freedom there. Ain't no question mark Kevins. When he step the doubt, he's closing deals down to sell him what the stand for. I'm a deal maker, a deal maker, but I'm not just a deal maker. I'm a dream maker. The journey's where its at. It's all about the process over to the hill project.
(53:27): This is the podcast factory.com.
