← Making It with Jon Davids
Making It with Jon Davids
218 - This simple website pulls in millions a day (steal the strategy)
01:08:20
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- [00:00]
John Davids
James, I have been looking forward to this for days, man. Do you have a tab, a Chrome tab open in front of you?
- [00:07]
James Camp
I do. I want. Yes, I do.
- [00:09]
John Davids
Now I want you to go to injury.com.
- [00:12]
James Camp
Oh, I'm already excited by this.
- [00:17]
John Davids
What's up, guys? JD here. And today I've got James Camp, who was an Internet kid just like me. He figured out early how to get a lot of attention and traffic online back when that was a brand new thing to do.
- [00:29]
James Camp
And.
- [00:30]
John Davids
And we're gonna get into it today. We're talking about business growth, selling to big companies, how we each think about leveling up in our careers and our businesses. A lot of good stuff here. You guys are gonna love this conversation. Of course. Get my best stuff to your inbox@johndavis.com and now let's get to the show. You're listening to Making it with John Davids.
- [00:58]
James Camp
Like, this is already, like, right up my alley.
- [01:00]
John Davids
This is so good. Okay, injury.com and just tell me, paint a picture for people that can't see it. What are you looking at?
- [01:06]
James Camp
I'm looking at a lead form for Morgan and Morgan, which is a law firm that is a injury attorney. Pretty direct response to you. And actually, this speaks to me in many, many ways. It warms your heart? It warms my heart, yes. Yeah.
- [01:23]
John Davids
So, James, you just said a lead form. So in layman's terms, it basically says a headline that says car acc. We make filing an injury claim easy. And there's like five stars and 100,000 five star reviews. And so basically, you land on this site and they want you to click a button and give them a bunch of information, right?
- [01:43]
James Camp
Yeah, yeah. And actually, what's interesting too is I recognize Morgan and Morgan only recently because of the marketing they've been running recently, which is super specific to them. But that's why I do recognize that name.
- [01:55]
John Davids
Put a pin in that. We're going to come back to this landing page in a second, but I'm going to go back in time and just kind of tell you the background why this website exists. So go back to 1988, and there's this guy named John Morgan, and he's a young lawyer. He's been in the business for about six years. He breaks out on his own, and he starts a firm in Orlando, and he's a personal injury lawyer. So he's doing things like slip and falls, car accidents, whatever. Okay. So business is okay. And he's basically getting leads from referrals. And the reason for that is because Back in the day, this is back in the 80s, there was actually a Supreme Court case that had just ruled that it was okay for lawyers to advertise to run ads. But up until then, up until like the 70s and 80s, in America, lawyers couldn't actually run ads. So, like, none of them did. You would never see a commercial, a radio ad, a billboard for a lawyer. And then in the late 70s, early 80s, it becomes legal. But most lawyers still aren't doing it because it's just tacky. Like, they feel like this is kind of below me, so they don't do it. And this guy James, who's a new lawyer, is like, screw that. I'm going to run ads. Why not? So he starts running ads in Orlando. And these are basically like just ads on the radio. You know, buy my stuff if you were slip and fall, whatever. And this guy's crushing it. In fact, it gets so good that he sets up this call center in his office where he's got people answering the phones 24 7. Because he's just like, he's getting tons of business.
- [03:21]
James Camp
Cool.
- [03:22]
John Davids
So that's all going well. He starts running commercials, tons. So it's, this is Orlando, then it's Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Texas, Austin. He's kind of all over the place. Fast forward to today. Morgan. And Morgan is the biggest personal injury law firm in America. So that's kind of the snapshot story. And so it got me thinking. I went down a rabbit hole and did a bunch of research. And the first thing I saw was that when I go to injury.com, who owns it, say it loud and clear. It's Morgan. And Morgan. Okay, so that takes us here. So what this kind of like, this whole story is like, okay, this is a guy who practices law, and I'm going to assume that he's a good lawyer, he's got a good case track record. But, like, this is just a killer marketing landing page. And if they're doing this, what kind of crazy stuff could. Could they be doing that we're not even seeing? So tell me. Like, you're. You're the pro when it comes to lead magnets, landing pages, all this kind of stuff. Like, just give me like a walkthrough on this page and tell me why this works so well.
- [04:20]
James Camp
Well, I mean, the first thing I notice is the scroll at the top, which is. Which is just uses a bunch of social proof, essentially, as seen on. And then they throw logos that they think that the people are going to recognize, which they do, Right? Obviously, NBC cnn, Fox. But also that scroll is a reminder subconsciously of a scroll when you're watching news.
- [04:42]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [04:43]
James Camp
Like foxstar doing that scroll. Like a ticker tape.
- [04:46]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [04:46]
John Davids
It's sort of.
- [04:46]
James Camp
Yeah, it's like a ticker. It's like watching stocks go across the screen. Something about it feels okay. This is legitimate. What I like about it too, what they're doing is just very, very clear. It's not a lot of copy. It's not pretty. All it is is direct response. It's supposed to call you out in a very specific person in a specific place. You know, car accident. Question mark is two words.
- [05:09]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [05:09]
James Camp
Super fast. We make filing an injury claim easy. I mean, the point is to just immediately get everyone to follow one path. It's very. I said earlier, it's very direct response. And what I like about this, which I think a lot of people don't do, is that from the jump, unless you go all the way to the bottom, there's really only one path. Like, it's classic direct. Direct response marketing. There's only one thing that you can possibly do on this website, and that's essentially contact them to. For, you know, for them to take your injury claim case on. There's no, like, there's nothing else totally.
- [05:43]
John Davids
You can hit the blue button. If you scroll down a little further, there's another call to action. But it's the same thing. It's sign up in two minutes. So they have like the same button, you know, within one scroll. And then if you go further, you basically testimonials. And it just keeps giving you that absolute, like, click here to get this free thing. And the other thing, which is like, it's sort of. It's. The premium aspect of it is this is injury.com. i mean, this domain must have cost him a million bucks.
- [06:08]
James Camp
Well, here. So that's. So there's a think. I don't know how to explain it. I'm sure there's like a much more clever way to explain it with some terminology that I don't know. But when it comes to domain names, like, there's. I often. I'm the type of guy who's like, oh, your domain doesn't matter. It really doesn't. In 99% of cases, I think that your domain name does not matter. But there are super premium domain names where all of a sudden it becomes very, very, very worth it. You know, injury.com, i think sex.com sold for like $20 million a few years back, right? Yeah, I know people were looking@deposit.com for a deal I was working on where these one word domain sold three years ago.
- [06:44]
John Davids
I think business.com is owned by Bloomberg. It was like 6 million bucks.
- [06:47]
James Camp
But something like that becomes super valuable. What I do think is really interesting too, as I've thought about this myself for projects, is, is if you, if you can go far enough on that end of one word domains being valuable, you probably, it's not a bad investment.
- [07:00]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [07:00]
James Camp
You're never going to lose your money on. I mean, it's not going to zero. Like if I go spend you know, 100 grand on like my personal injury.com, it's still a good domain name, probably is still not that cheap, but it might be tough to find that buyer for it.
- [07:16]
John Davids
Right.
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James Camp
But injury.com someone's going to buy injury.com always. You know, I think it's a. And it just is so memorable and so simple. They probably get type in traffic for it, which I don't think people even think about.
- [07:27]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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James Camp
Like people just being like typing in injury.com totally.
- [07:30]
John Davids
I mean they probably get like SEO, you know, Google probably indexes anything with the word injury. Probably injury.com is at the top of the list. And I'd imagine it's similar on the LLMs on ChatGPT and so on.
- [07:41]
James Camp
It's a great point.
- [07:42]
John Davids
So, okay, so the other thing here is, so basically you have this law firm that almost seems like they don't even need to have a law firm because like you and I talked a bunch of times about this. I remember. And I've heard you talk about this in other pods too, which is like a great business is just a business that collects leads and hands them off to others. So even if Morgan and Morgan didn't exist, this site is super valuable just as a lead magnet.
- [08:06]
James Camp
I mean, yeah, I mean, I think that's people. Anyone. It could go like Lending Tree, right? Like any of those. Right. They're just lead brokers. All they do is they take this data and what they could do here, what Morgan and Morgan could do, which they're not, but someone else could do, is take this data and then go sell it to 10 different injury attorneys at the same time.
- [08:23]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [08:23]
James Camp
So they would, they'd collect right here and they would say to 10 different injury attorneys, pay us 500 bucks a lead or I don't know, probably good injury claim, it's probably worth a lot of money and say, we're going to send them to you in real time. You can call them and you can pitch them yourself. You know, I think people don't recognize there's a lot of that.
- [08:41]
John Davids
You know, it's actually even better. So because law is regulated, what Morgan and Morgan actually does, I might be getting some of this wrong, but it's directionally right is they have a whole referral network. So they have lawyers all over, I think in 48 states. And they can send leads that their way. They cherry pick the best cases for themselves, they send everything else away and they take 20% of whatever the settlement is because lawyers can do that without lawyers. You and I couldn't do that. But if you're a lawyer, you can take, you can actually take a commission of the settlement.
- [09:10]
James Camp
I love that. There's probably a bunch of industries like that, right. Like where I would assume real estate commissions as well. I don't think you can take unless you are licensed to do so. Carry on capital, you know, excel in securities. You have to be licensed to do so, you know. But I love that. I mean this is a huge, I think that the average person doesn't really understand. I don't mean like that they can't, they just don't see that in the back end. This is happening everywhere, right. So I see it all. As someone who recently looks for car insurance too, you'll see it everywhere with car insurance, like you think you're signing up for insurance, quote, you're not. You're signing up for a lead magnet where they then sell off your data to 30 insurance brokers. Right. That's why you're going to get same with loans.
- [09:48]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [09:48]
John Davids
Yeah. So this episode is brought to you by my Playbook social media selling machine available right now@johndavids.com playbook. Most brands post on social media like it's a lottery. Spin the wheel, pray for likes, and then wonder why sales don't move. In this Playbook, I'll show you how to turn your feed into a customer getting engine where every post moves people closer to buying, where you're not trying to go viral. Instead you're using a process that turns content into cash flow and doing it in a way that's predictable and on brand. Get it right now for free at johndavids.complaybook. that's johndavids.combookbook. when I was growing up, one of the guys on my street who had a big house and whenever as an adult, I think back to the guys who had big houses and I'm like, what did they do? And there was a guy on my street who had a Big house. And I remember what he actually did, I found out when I was in my 20s, was this guy owned a bunch of taxi licenses. They're called medallions, pre Uber. And so he owned like 20, 30 of them and he would rent them out to taxi drivers who would pay him basically like whatever, 2,000 bucks a month for the medallion. But here's the thing, in order to own the medallion, you had to yourself be a licensed taxi driver. So this guy actually had his taxi driver's license, but he never drove a cab. But like that's the example. Like he was only able to own the medallions because he had the taxi license.
- [11:13]
James Camp
Well, I think one thing that is really, really interesting about this model, basically affiliate model, is there's a downside and there's a positive side. I was a big affiliate marketer when I was a kid and I've done a lot of advisory to affiliates that are now trying to build brands. A couple years ago, a lot of people that were making a lot of money just taking a commission and thought, oh, I want to own the whole, you know, the whole value chain. I want to own the brand. Right. Which is the obvious thing to think. Well, here's the interesting part is that let's say it's easier for me to think in sort of consumer for a second to explain this, but let's say you're a direct to consumer brand, right? And on a good direct to consumer brands, probably operating like a 15% EBITDA.
- [11:48]
John Davids
Margin at the bottom.
- [11:49]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [11:49]
James Camp
I mean after everyone's getting paid, if you're tiny, doing a couple hundred grand a year, maybe you're making 30%, you're taking it home. But in general, at scale, 10, 15% margins would be totally reasonable. Okay, so I, and then you might pay an affiliate to run ads for you or take commission and give them 25%. So then you, you know, as they, you think, oh well, the affiliate, like they're screwed because they only get the commission from that one sale. And then later on the, you know, the brand gets to keep that 15% in perpetuity. Yeah, but the brand has to do all the fulfillment, the brand has to do all the customer service. The brand has to actually do all the work.
- [12:22]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [12:23]
James Camp
And so even though maybe it feels like more short term money, the affiliate side of this, like you don't own a brand, although Quilly, Morgan and Morgan owns a brand here, they've created like the brand equity and the value, it's like you might actually make more money than the brand does. In a lot of affiliate things with way less work because you don't actually have to fulfill on the product now. You don't get the enterprise value, you don't get the forward multiple on the exit. But like 99% of businesses will never sell. And the reality is that I think most the annoying part for a lot of people about running a business is the fulfillment is the customer service. That's so true. So I think a lot of people later on realize like, oh, maybe just being an affiliate is better. I make more than the actual business does on each sale and I never have to speak to a customer ever again.
- [13:06]
John Davids
So anyway, I've heard John Morgan say in other interviews that their 20% take on the firm on the referral cases are pure profit and it is a massive contributor to their bottom line. So I totally buy that. I almost wonder at this on this landing page, injury.com I almost think that they shouldn't have the Morgan to Morgan logo. Like I wonder if that's actually taken down.
- [13:31]
James Camp
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where it feels like just benign. And it is just like connecting you only with the best law firm no matter what.
- [13:37]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [13:37]
James Camp
As opposed to potentially Morgan and Morgan. With that said, you know, I think, and I could be totally wrong, I think I saw an ad for Morgan and Morgan somewhere recently that was like very sort of fun forward looking on social. And I think they're like the number two. Did you say the number one? Number two. They're like top three number one personal injury firm.
- [13:56]
John Davids
In fact, the only law firms that are bigger in America would be like the biggest white shoe corporate law firms. But in terms of like personal injury kind of stuff, these guys are the number one.
- [14:05]
James Camp
I mean. Well, the other part of that is that like I always find it funny. Like I've had some success, you've had some success. But I'm sitting here pontificating on, on like how they could actually run their funnel better. And clearly they are, they figured it out. You know, I mean they, they've, you know, like they've figured out how to grow in a way that I haven't.
- [14:23]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [14:23]
John Davids
$2 billion law firm in terms of annual revenue, income, whatever. So okay, this is so. This kind of. So when I saw this, and the reason I was so excited to talk to you about it is because this is the same kind of stuff that you and I were probably doing when we were like 17, 18, like I was doing in college. I was doing this on a small scale. I made 300,000 bucks doing this. I built a business making 300,000 bucks a year. It's a one man show basically on affiliate type stuff. I was getting traffic from one place, sending it somewhere else. And I know you were doing similar things and the kind of like mind breaking part of seeing injury.com for me was like, oh, this also works on a $2 billion level.
- [15:04]
James Camp
Sure.
- [15:05]
John Davids
What's that back end like? If your back end is I'm selling lemonade, you're going to make a certain amount of money. If your back end is I'm, I'm, you know, settling 200 like, you know, lawsuits a month, you're going to make much more money. So it's really about the back end that defines like the leads are the leads. But it's like how are you monetizing them?
- [15:21]
James Camp
Yeah, yeah. I mean, in general, I mean the first time this really kind of clicked for me, I was same thing as you, you know, in my late teens doing a lot of affiliate marketing. I realized that with volume you could get paid more right than initial than, than they were paying you initially. But the thing that clicked for me a lot in the past few years along these lines was like anywhere that someone is placing an ad, as long as that ad is running, and we're assuming it's profitable because the longer it's running, it's profitable, right. An affiliate network or an ad network is taking a vig on that, right? So Google takes 50% basically of every click on a, you know, on a website or YouTube ad if you're getting a dollar for every thousand views to make this super simple, right? That means that hypothetically you could be getting, there's someone's paying $2 for those thousand views on your website and then if you can go direct to them, you can literally double the amount of money that you're making. Now obviously again, there's much more fulfillment process, there's how you're, you're qualifying those leads, et cetera, et cetera. But then even more to your point, which is that if someone can pay $2 for that lead, it's because they're buying that lead profitably, right? So let's say that they're running on a healthy margin. Maybe that $2 click they're paying that you're getting a dollar for, that Google's taking a dollar of they're actually making into $6. So to your point, like if you actually own the backend, that click that you as a website owner or an affiliate or whatever, right, like creator are getting a dollar from might actually be worth $6 if you can own more of that value chain.
- [16:47]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [16:47]
James Camp
It's just interesting to think that way.
- [16:48]
John Davids
Well, and that's. And that's. I totally hear you.
- [16:50]
James Camp
That.
- [16:50]
John Davids
That's why category selection is so important. Like, if you had to say, if you had to build an affiliate site that, like, drives people to buy lipstick versus an affiliate site that drives people to get their credit card or their mortgage, obviously, like, you can do way less volume and every single person is way more valuable on the second one. So it's like, yeah, I could sell a thousand, you know, sticks of lipstick, whatever. Cool. But if I can. If I can help you sign up 10 credit cards this month, I'll make more money. So, like, you. You have to really think about. And the other side of that is, is that I think about the creator economy and I think about all these people that are building channels on YouTube, Instagram, whatever. And because of Influicity, we get so much inbound from creators that are trying to make money from sponsorships. And at the end of the day, I'm like, you could have 500,000 people following you on Instagram, but unless you have a backend, like, you really can't rely on sponsorship as your main monetization. But if you had a backend, a product, a haircare thing, a financial services advisory, whatever it is, like, hey, how about giving finance advice and then having an accounting firm on the back end? Like, that's where there's real opportunity.
- [17:57]
James Camp
Yeah. And you can sort of pick up, I know creators who own a business, but also, like, I don't want to say pick up crumbs because it's a lot of crumbs, but, you know, do you make very good money in sponsorship deals on the side as well?
- [18:08]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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James Camp
It's not. Sorry. Not all. All or nothing. I do think what's really interesting is your point about credit cards. Sometimes the best way, it's just hidden.
- [18:18]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [18:18]
James Camp
Like the Points Guy. Like, that's what I always talk to people about. Like, the Points Guy is classic. It's how to credit card hack points for flights.
- [18:25]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [18:25]
James Camp
Points guy does $35 million a year. You know what I mean? Serious. Yeah, yeah. It's owned by. Who's the owner? I forget.
- [18:33]
John Davids
Points Guy.
- [18:34]
James Camp
Dot com.
- [18:34]
John Davids
Your life rewarded.
- [18:36]
James Camp
Yeah.
- [18:37]
John Davids
So I actually have. I've heard of this guy, but I haven't gone to this website. So if I go tothepointsguy.com. it's. It looks like a blog from 2008.
- [18:45]
James Camp
Yeah, yeah. And it's owned by a company called Red Ventures. Yeah.
- [18:49]
John Davids
Okay, I know Red Ventures.
- [18:50]
James Camp
Red Ventures owns the Penny Hoarder. They own points guy. Like, you know all these blogs, right, that are just making affiliate commissions, you know, and I bet, let's see. I'm very curious. Rev Ventures revenue 2025 is estimated to be a billion, although they have been at 2 billion before. So, you know, so the points guy.
- [19:12]
John Davids
In particular, which is just one piece of Red Ventures, the points guy makes money. So if I go to the site, I see an article at the top, American Airlines adds new Rare Boston route. Okay, cool. So if I, if I click on this, I'm going to see ads for like credit cards. Is that the idea?
- [19:27]
James Camp
Yeah, for credit cards. Right. And so then they get paid a commission for anyone who signs up for a credit card.
- [19:32]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [19:32]
James Camp
And so like they built this whole brand on reviewing flights and reviewing airlines and how to stack credit card points and they're just a funnel for amex really. Do you know, I mean like you know, for, or other credit card companies.
- [19:45]
John Davids
But yeah, they probably get paid.
- [19:47]
James Camp
I mean, I haven't seen, I haven't looked at the payouts on a credit card affiliate signer in a long time. But I mean the, the ones I remember were like three to five hundred dollars. And I bet for them they get way more.
- [19:57]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [19:57]
James Camp
Three different. If you're advertising, if I can see that, I, whatever you see, the average Joe can get paid for sending a sign up. I promise you, if you're sending them $20 million of signups a year, you're working directly with the advertiser, you're getting paid much more money. So they're probably getting like a thousand dollars plus, fifteen hundred dollars plus for every credit card signup. And then America credit cards are affiliate.
- [20:19]
John Davids
Back in my affiliate days, we had Capital One and this is like 2006, 2007. So capital one was paying us, or the agency that represented Capital One was paying us like 90 bucks.
- [20:32]
James Camp
Sure.
- [20:33]
John Davids
It wasn't even accepted. It was, it was application, but the application could have been denied. So you have to figure they're going to deny like whatever four out of five people and then, but then the agency was probably getting paid like 200 bucks and then Capital One was paying 500 bucks. So yeah, the money is real here.
- [20:49]
James Camp
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean that's sort of the first money I made in my life that felt significant was we were just brokering offers. So what I mean by that is like we were just brokering leads. So freecreditreport.com was the first big one. I ran a lot which were 37. So I remember freecreditreport.com ads. Many people will not, but basically it's owned by Experian and it was credit monitoring. It wasn't free though. It was free for the first seven days and there was $120 a month. But we were getting paid. I think at one point I was getting $45 for every sign up to free. For every free trial on freecreditreport.com we were paying out 28, 29.
- [21:24]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [21:25]
James Camp
So we were just taking that middleman. And you do that with a few thousand leads a day, all of a sudden you're doing a pretty big business.
- [21:31]
John Davids
Yeah. The other one, Red Ventures is a big one. Industry dive is the other. Have you heard of these guys?
- [21:37]
James Camp
Vaguely. Sounds familiar, but let me look them up.
- [21:40]
John Davids
So industry dive, if you go to like there's marketingdive.com they have all these dives.
- [21:44]
James Camp
Oh yes, I do know what this is. Yes, yes, yes.
- [21:46]
John Davids
So this sold, I think it sold for like $500 million to Informa Tech Target. And basically this was the same model where we're just going to build these highly verticalized business trade websites. So like marketing dive, you know, talks about what's happening with PepsiCo, what's happening in the ad industry. And literally it was like the same website design, the same writing team. Let's just like blast out and build our mailing list as high as we can. And if you have a marketing, you know, marketing dive.com, i don't know, maybe they get whatever 15,000 unique visitors and they've got a mailing list of 20,000 people. But this is super valuable to anybody who wants to reach marketing executives. This company sold for, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars.
- [22:28]
James Camp
Yeah, yeah. Well I think that the trick there is to really niche down right. Is to find that vertical that you want, that you want to be in. I think that in general I've been advising a couple of companies recently and everyone's so worried about giant tams. And like to be honest with you, unless you are playing in like adventure where you have to have this 10, 11 figure outcome, you don't really need to worry about Like I promise you there's enough people in your niche in 2025 to build a multimillion dollar business, like any niche in the world. Like if it's specifically white poodles grooming, I would bet that we could figure out how to pull a million bucks a year off of selling off leads. For example, about Grooming for white poodles in the United States. I mean, I'm sure there's 100,000 poodle owners with a white poodle. I'm making this up. Obviously I haven't done that research, but.
- [23:16]
John Davids
A buddy of mine is in the weight loss nation. He's crushing it. He's, he's done, I don't know what the annual revenue is, but like lifetime business revenue of like $70 million over the last like decade. And his niche is weight loss. But in weight loss it's women. And in Women it's over 45. And in over 45, it's like experiencing problems with menopause. So it's like he goes that tight and that is tens of millions of dollars a year at this point, just selling like a service to those people.
- [23:45]
James Camp
Well, and to go with that, that I, I think it's really important to recognize, to circle this back to the marketing function here if you want. You know, I'm a 30, I told you earlier, I have a torn meniscus, right? 37 years old and very active. I live in Los Angeles. I was doing a lot of distance running and I have a complex medial tear in my meniscus. I've had two surgery consults. I have another one on Thursday tip with the third person to get an opinion. I'm going to have three surgeons. If one of them says to me, hey, we do. Or I'm an orthopedic surgeon, I do knees, I do ankles, whatever, right? You know, like, all right. And one says, oh, well, you know, I do knees for old people normally. And then the third person says, like, I normally work with athletes in their mid-30s who have complex medial tears in their meniscus, who want to get back to being active unequivocally, like, I'm signing up for him, it doesn't even matter. Like there's, there's just not even a question at all. And I think people don't recognize that this goes back to that old marketing, you know, adage, like you sell one thing to one person, right? And like, I promise you that that one person exists a hundred thousand times over, you know, you know, like in, in the world. And luckily, because new people are born every day and new people, you know, to that point about he sells it to 45 year old women, right? Like every day there's 10 million new 45 year old women. I mean, like, it's not like that ceases to exist. Everyone continues to age and grow and you know what I'm saying? So it Always is there. It's so true.
- [25:07]
John Davids
This episode is brought to you by my Playbook website selling machine, available right now@johndavids.com Playbook. Here's the truth. Your website is either making you money or it's costing you sales every single day. And most businesses just aren't optimizing their websites as they should be. This leads to fewer meetings booked, lower average order value, and just a whole lot of people clicking away as fast as they arrived. That's revenue you're losing. You can change all that right now with the insights in my Playbook website selling machine. Grab your free copy@johndavids.com Playbook so you, you, you mentioned that you're kind of, you're going Your first, you're 37 and now you're having your first, like, medical stuff, that you got to worry about your body or whatever. But you also told me before the mic's heated up that you're going through a bit of an existential crisis because there's a business. So tell me about the business you're working on now that is not going well.
- [26:03]
James Camp
Sure. So I've. This is existential crisis number two for me. I think that I will probably call it my midlife crisis.
- [26:10]
John Davids
It's only 10am and the day is still young.
- [26:12]
James Camp
There could be four by the end of the day. No, but I had one in my mid-20s. I ran off to Malaysia for a year and a half and like totally reinvented myself. And like, I realize now 37, the average male lives to like 78. This is roughly midlife crisis. Right. So it sort of makes sense here. So I have decided for the first time ever. I spent a couple years trying to decide what I want to do next. I sort of sold a company. I bought a company. Sold a company, did a lot of advisory work for small brands, people buying brands. And after a couple of years, I really didn't, wasn't excited by that anymore. So I decided I want to either go buy something very big, like $100 million, and took a couple of swings at that. Me and a couple of friends tried to buy Playboy. That didn't really work out.
- [26:52]
John Davids
Serious.
- [26:53]
James Camp
Yeah, I mean, not. It didn't get that far. We spent a few months on it, got a couple, got like Fortress was going to refinance the debt. There's like a, you know, 200, $300 million of debt on the business. It trades at like a $60 million market cap. It's the top, top 10 most recognized brands on the planet doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue trading below $100 million market cap. We wanted to make a tender offer to buy Playboy, right, To take it private, restructure it, and then sort of take out the porn. Because porn in an AI world is pretty screwed, you know. And I think that. And want to make it more of like a lifestyle brand with hotels and coffee table books and totally all that stuff. And anyway, that didn't work. But so then I came across this business idea which was starting from scratch. And my world has been, as you know, for the past few years, like buying and helping people buy things, right, that already have traction. And that's been my shtick, right? It's been like, skip the 0 to 1, why don't you buy something, right, that already has some traction? Because I've made it work for me. And so I decided I want to build something from scratch. And I realized it was not going to be the way I normally do things, which is sort of bootstrappy or a little bit of capital. And I put up a little money myself to skip the 0 to 1 so I could pay developers. And I've been working full time on it. It's a vertical SaaS business that makes compliant messaging software for financially regulated firms. So if you're an investment, that to.
- [28:11]
John Davids
Me, like, I'm five.
- [28:13]
James Camp
Yeah. So if you are, I'll explain it to you like you're eight, because five might be. We'll do eight. So if you are an investment bank, if you are a registered investment advisor, if you are a, A crypto company, if you're a fin tank, a fintech, a fintech, if you're any of these financial companies, right, you have all this messaging that goes to investors. So to you, to me, to everyone. And you are regulated by regulators on what you can actually say, right? And what they do is they take your messaging and they archive your messaging. Every message you send if you work at an investment bank is put into an archive for the next five years, I think maybe seven, depending on the firm.
- [28:53]
John Davids
And that message, that archive is there.
- [28:54]
James Camp
For one reason and one reason only. That is so the SEC or finra, so a regulator can come say, you know what, John, you broke the law there. We should fine you, right? So there's hundreds of millions of dollars of fines that these banks pay every single year.
- [29:10]
John Davids
So if I'm a bank and I send a message out and then let's say I say get this savings account product, whatever it is, and then somebody, let's say a year later, complains that they did that thing and they were screwed. And it was whatever. The SEC might want to look back and see what the message was. Is that the reason you would save it?
- [29:29]
James Camp
Yeah, essentially. Essentially. And so there's hundreds of millions of dollars every year of off channel comms fines. So what does that mean? That means exactly that, right. That people are saying things that they should not say essentially to the wrong people and they only you get fined later.
- [29:50]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [29:50]
James Camp
So my point was in general there's a bunch of agentic abilities to make sure that people don't say illegal things, whether on purpose or by accident in an AI world. And so I have spent and now that's probably more like for 15, maybe like a 21 year old would understand what I said, maybe not 8 or 5. I apologize.
- [30:10]
John Davids
But I sort of get it. I sort of get it.
- [30:12]
James Camp
I mean we don't, if you don't think of it not as banks, right. The FTC is much easier to understand, right? Like if a brand makes a claim like you're gonna lose £100 in 10 days guaranteed, right? That's illegal. The FTC comes in and says, John, you can't say that, right? Like we're going to fine you $300,000 for lying, for false advertising.
- [30:31]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [30:32]
John Davids
You know what it reminds me of, James, is like if you're in an employer employee relationship and if you're an employer, if you're a smart employer, you keep all records and document everything. Like if you want to do it, if you want to be buttoned up. But if there's ever a case where a labor board or the government, whatever looks at a case between an employee and employer, they're always going to side with the employee. And the reason is simple. They just, they say we're going to assume that you as the employer have more resources, you have more experience, you have more access to lawyers than a single employee. And so they always side with the employee. And it's got to be the same in the finance world too. Which is why you said they wait longer and they also always, you know, sue you because yeah, if you're JP Morgan, obviously you should know better. And if I got screwed by something you said, even if it was an accident, even if you didn't mean it like that, you still have to side with the little guy. So I totally get that.
- [31:20]
James Camp
So yeah, so I mean to make it super simple, we act as like a AI compliance officer. That's a, you know, we, we, the business I'm building basically is an AI tool that helps banks Stay compliant helps banks not break rules.
- [31:33]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [31:33]
James Camp
I mean, that's probably the easiest way to explain it. And so what I want to pull something up right here really quickly. How, how much was J.P. morgan fined last?
- [31:46]
John Davids
Oh, seriously, I bet you. Listen, like, I wouldn't be surprised if it's almost like a line on their P and L where it's like, these are the fines that we know we're going to have to pay next year because. Because they're going to slap us with all kinds of liability.
- [31:58]
James Camp
20, 23, 75 million. 20, 20, 920 million. You know, big fines, right. And so they're for different things. But point is, it's very different. Selling AI compliance software to banks is very different than sort of what we spoke about recently. And that's because of how, how regulated that space is, right? Same thing obviously with the lawyer stuff, right? Like, it's just they don't let just anybody come in and do it, so totally get it.
- [32:22]
John Davids
So how does this relate to your vertical SaaS? What, what is your solution to this?
- [32:25]
James Camp
So the solution is basically this ambient compliance copilot on your desktop everywhere. Every person in a bank, bank being the broader term to put it in a financially regulated firm, but has a little desktop copilot that sort of helps them stay compliant and then does a lot of agentic work that a compliance officer would do in terms of archiving, understanding where the messages go, and then doing audit prep. That opens up a whole different world, a whole different, much longer conversation. But all these firms get audited all the time. And so compliance officers do these mock audits. It takes them months to prepare basically for like getting ready to go fight regulators and make sure that they don't get fined. So I love this man. Like that, can I invest?
- [33:04]
John Davids
It sounds great.
- [33:05]
James Camp
I appreciate that. I appreciate that. The difficult. It's funny because I have a bunch of money circled and I put up a bunch of money myself. The difficulty that I've been hitting is, and this is a much longer conversation than just this pod, but like is there's two ends of the market and one, the very long tail of the market is these very, very small RIAs, registered investment advisors, guys who say, hey John, let me manage your money for you. You've got a retirement account, you've got your 401k, you have $300,000. Let me help you with that. And those are one to three person shops. Now the problem is that those shops don't have a lot of money, right? They do have a burning problem which is that they're worried about getting fined but they don't have much money. And then the other very far end of the market is like bank of America is Schwab, is Fidelity and those are the firms that will pay you 3,4 million dollars a year to make sure that everything works. The problem is selling into one of those firms is just very, very, very complex and different than what I've done.
- [34:00]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [34:00]
James Camp
There are two to three year sales cycles with procurement teams and 20 people have to sign off. And you know, you don't just call up, you don't just cold call the chief compliance officer at JP Morgan and say, hey, how are you doing today, John? Want to, you know, do you want to check out our software? It's a much more complex process. And so us, it's trying to find what part of the market we serve correctly upfront.
- [34:23]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [34:23]
James Camp
Like where do we go to market gtm, so to speak.
- [34:26]
John Davids
Yeah, the whole like selling to enterprise versus selling B2C or even selling mid market. So like when I started Influicity 2015, an ad agency specifically for enterprise clients because I didn't know any better and so we were just selling influencer marketing services. But because I was a dummy, I was like, okay, I'm going to sell to l' Oreal and Procter and Gamble and Domino's Pizza. Because just like those are the names I knew in my head when I thought about brands. And so we would go, I would go like literally every other week to New York City and I would sit in the ad agency offices and I would sit with CMOs whenever they'd give me time. And I had some relationships from my previous company. So like, but it was a lot of hustling, a lot of door knocking and like that was how I ran inflictly for the first five years. And we did, we did pretty well. But yeah, every sale that I made was six months and a whole lot of phone calls and a whole lot of rejection. And like then you would close one or two deals, but those one or two deals would be, would pay for everything else because they were six figure deals. And so like that was one life that I lived. And then in the next five years, kind of 2020 to 2025, we met, we went much more mid market. And, and I would say SMBs. But here's the interesting thing. If you're talking mid market in the USA, you could have companies that are still 50 to 100 million dollars in revenue and they still have, you know, like whatever 5 million bucks to spend on marketing every year. But their CMO or their VP of marketing is not getting hit up 17 times a day like, like the CMO of L'. Oreal. And so what we found was, okay, these guys, like, they've got scale, they've got size, they've got real businesses, they've got real executive teams. Like, this is the market. And so for us, like mid market is now the sweet spot. We're actually even going down further to like small business. Like companies under 10 million in revenue. But like there's a ton of companies that you can sell to that no one's ever heard of because, like, they're just the biggest ones in this region. But it's funny that you kind of have. And like the end of this story is like when I talk to people who grew up selling to consumers versus people that grew up selling to enterprise to B2B, it's like two totally different types of business. Like you said, if you're used to selling with a landing page and a click, that's very different than selling to a billion dollar enterprise.
- [36:45]
James Camp
Yeah, yeah. I mean, incredibly different. I think that's one thing that's been kind of what excites me about it. And ironically, why I'm a lush for pain, right? But like doing stuff that's kind of hard and I'm very. It makes me excited to do it. But then there's another. The other piece of my brain is like, what are you doing, James? Like, why are you not doing what you're really good at? Which is like consumer. Like, I really understand how to convert someone through marketing, right? As opposed to a sales function.
- [37:07]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [37:07]
James Camp
Like there's a very big difference. And even to your point, you know, I had a conversation with a friend who sells managed IT services to Fortune 500, like true enterprise contracts, 5 million plus a year recurring.
- [37:17]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [37:18]
James Camp
And you know, for him, I asked him how he does this, right? And he goes, listen, it's probably our fault. He's a partner at a firm that does this. Very successful. Because it's probably our fault. We tried SDRs, we tried LinkedIn, we tried cold email. None of that works for us. Because what I do is I befriend someone who's high enough up in the org that I want to work with that they can walk me through the procurement processes. If it does not exist, and it might take six months, it might take a year, but by the time we get to procurement, they're signing off on it already. Because Joe, who's their cmo, has told Them, don't worry. He's the man. Let's do it. I said, well, what happens for people that don't know what that is? I said, what happens if there's an rfp, right? What if happens? Like, what if you have an RFP process? You know, normally at big orgs, there's a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to protect everyone from this kind of stuff. They'll say, like, well, if it's over a $500,000 contract, as an example, we have to do an RFP process. We have to send a request for proposal to 10 agencies and see all the bids that they give us and pick the best one. He said, okay, well, if it's a $500,000 contract that we need, we just chop it up into, you know, to $250,000.
- [38:20]
John Davids
Oh, my God.
- [38:21]
James Camp
Are you serious? Yeah. And he goes, and they'll walk you through. I mean, as long as. And this happens all the time, right? Like, in this, you know, it's just. How do the. It's a little bit nepotism, for lack of a better term, right? Is. Is the way you're structuring it. Some people hate Hormozi. Some people love Hormozi. I think he's very polarizing, but actually a fantastic marketer. Hormozi said something very recently that, that I thought was apropos of this and incredibly interesting and correct, which was that it's very hard for businesses to scale over $10 million a year. If you're selling things that cost a few thousand dollars a month, you either want to be selling things that cost a few hundred bucks a month, that a small business, even on its worst month, can continue to pay you, or you want to sell things very upmarket to firms that 10 or $20,000 a month is nothing when they're having a bad year, right? And I think that we get stuck in our little bubbles and we don't recognize that. That, you know, a McKinsey, a Bain BCG, you know, I mean, I have a lawyer now for this new company that's Oric. You know, my attorney's $1,450 an hour, right? Like, I, you know, my point is, like. And he doesn't make money off me. His hope is that we're going to IPO one day, right? Like, he's not really excited. In fact, he defers his fees with my company. He defers his fees with me. He says, hey, we'll give you your time for free for up to $20,000. While you raise this capital, because I know you're going to raise this money and I want to be your lawyer when you have to pay us $6 million for your IPO.
- [39:43]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right, right.
- [39:44]
James Camp
And so we get stuck in these little bubbles where we think like, oh, $5,000 is a lot of money, but to your point, if you go up market enough, there's someone paying $50,000, $100,000, a million dollars.
- [39:55]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [39:56]
James Camp
And so true. You just got to figure out where you want to sit, where you want to play. To your point, like, do you want to hang out with the six month or one year sales cycle where you're taking people to dinner because that world exists, or do you want to go hop into Meta and throw 20 different ad creatives in tomorrow and see if they're going to convert? It's two different worlds. Yeah.
- [40:13]
John Davids
You've got to choose your game. And then you also, like, I've had many moments that have, like, they're frame breakers where it's like, oh, I got to this point and now I realize that everything that was limiting my beliefs before is gone. It's just like I hit the delete button because I've actually accomplished this thing that I didn't think was possible. We've had experiences where the thing that we used to sell for $1,000, we're now selling for $30,000. And the only reason for that is because we just changed the customer. We said to this person, this is only worth $1,000, but to that person, this exact same thing is worth $30,000. And like that exists all over the place. I want to tell you one quick thing. So do you know David Rubenstein, Carlyle Group?
- [40:55]
James Camp
I do know Carlyle Group for sure, yeah.
- [40:57]
John Davids
So David, David Rubenstein was one of the three co founders and he's the guy, he's kind of the most public. I think he's probably the only chairman ish involved at all. But so David Rubenstein said in an interview because like Carlisle went in the 80s from being like nothing to now one of the biggest private equity firms in the world. And he said, you know, we would bring on people like former presidents, former ambassadors, the president of France. We'd bring them on as like advisors to Carlisle back in the 80s and 90s and their only job was making a phone call and setting up a meeting with this prince in Dubai so that I can go there and pitch Carlyle Group. And like he, he said like, very, very simply, like, the reason we had, I think it was George H.W. bush as an advisor is because he had a better Rolodex and he could get meetings that I couldn't. And that was the whole business model.
- [41:48]
James Camp
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that at that scale. Well, this, what's interesting is that you've made me realize thing something here. But I was gonna say at that scale it's all relationships. But what you realize is that even the marketing scale, when we go to circles, to injury.com, right? Even the very consumer focused, you're essentially trying to compress the belief and trust of a relationship into a landing page, right? Into your marketing copy, into your funnel. All sales and marketing is just relationships, right? So at scale, that relationship is just interpersonal. Like how well do I know and trust this person? The thing about consumers, you're just trying to compress. I always say that sales and marketing is just trust compression, right? You're just trying to get that trust and that relationship built through 100 words a copy, right? That belief that this is the right person to work with, that this is the right. You know, and I think I always used to say that I did a lot of advisory work for brands and there was a point where I was working with like expert insight firms who were like charging a thousand dollars an hour for my time, right? They were taking a little piece on it, whatever. And what I always used to say is that, you know, I'm positive that I could look at any sales funnel and find like a 1% inefficiency. But if you're making a million dollars a year, that 1% inefficiency is only worth $10,000, right? So you're not going to pay me $100,000 to fix that 1% inefficiency for you. But if you're making $100 million a year, right. That 1% inefficiency is a million dollars, right? So at a million dollars, sure, you'll pay me a hundred thousand dollars a year. That goes exactly to your point. About the exact same thing that you're solving to the right person is worth $30,000 versus worth a thousand dollars.
- [43:25]
John Davids
What's this pain worth eliminating? If we can eliminate this pain for you, what's that worth? My sister runs a dog walking business and I have this conversation with her because for a long time she was selling her dog walking and dog training services to like just anybody. And I said, go to the richest neighborhood in the city. Go to the people who have the biggest houses and the nice cars in the driveway that are all owned by their businesses because they don't Pay for anything themselves. And like their dog that they just got because their kids have been annoying them, who's ripping up their couch and peeing on their $17,000 rug. To that person, training that dog right now is worth $5,000, $10,000 versus this person who wants to train their dog. But they'll pay you, you know, 50 bucks an hour. Like, yeah, you just find that customer.
- [44:10]
James Camp
I mean, I think, you know, it's very interesting. I think this is a perfect example of it. It only clicked for me in the past year or two when someone broke it down, was flying private. So a lot of people fly private for fun. Whatever. You're rich, you do whatever you want with money. But let's talk about it actually from a business perspective, right? If you are a senior partner at McKinsey, for example, just as an example I use often, or even a normal partner, McKinsey's billable day rate's probably 15 grand. 20 grand. That's not even an exaggeration, right? You're talking about like a $2,000 hour at an eight hour day. Yeah, yeah, it's probably 15, $20,000. And a senior partner more, right? That gets built for the firm. So now let's say, or let's say, let's make it easier, let's say you, you're someone who's very successful and you make $5 million a year, right? $5 million a year is $100,000 a week that you're taking home, right. 52 weeks a year, 5.2. At 100,000 bucks a week, every workday is worth 20 grand to you, right? So for 20 grand, if I can go book a PJ for $11,000, just as an example, that fits a better timeline for me or time frame for me and I can work on the plan the entire time and I can actually get to Des Moines because obviously a lot of the work for private jets is much more like, like hubs, like third tier cities. I don't mean like middle America. Yeah, yeah. Like places where there isn't a giant, like aren't like 40 flights a day, right? So if I can get somewhere where I want to be in the same day and maybe bring my whole team with me, Maybe I bring four people who also are worth, you know, 5,000 bucks a day, 2,000 bucks a day, their time is worth that, right? Like Absolutely. Spending $10,000 in that private jet flight is worth the money unequivocally. Now, for me, I'm not billing $20,000 a day. So for me to spend $10,000 on a private jet flight would be stupid, right? But for the right person, it actually makes sense on a piano. And it's very hard to comprehend until you're in that world that there is money floating around like that, right? That there is value in business at that, by the way, 5 million. Let's go really up market to the, to the private jet people. There's people make, there's plenty of CEOs making $50 million a year, right? So their time's worth $200,000 a day, right? $2,000. Of course I'm going to fly me and my team on a PJ instead of going two, three, you know, and I'll stop, I promise, in a second. But a $2,000 a day at a 10 hour workday, it's $20,000 an hour your time is worth, right? I mean, let's just be real about that for a second. At $20,000 an hour. Of course I'm going to take a helicopter to the airport as opposed to sitting in traffic for an hour and a half. Of course I'm going to take a PJ as opposed to going to the airport for two hours. Because with the pj, I drive onto the tarmac and walk onto the airplane. And if I can save an hour and a half of going to the airport and going through TSA, I just saved $30,000 just in that one function. So anyway, it just, sometimes it clicks for me.
- [46:51]
John Davids
I've had these conversations with people, like because of the podcast, I talk to a lot of super, super wealthy people and when the mics are off, the things that they tell me and the things that I see, like if I go to their houses or whatever. By the way, these are not flexes at all. Like, they don't show this to anybody. It's not about that at all. It's like, no, the reason I have two nannies and the reason I have this, the reason I never cook a meal is because. Just what you said, like, yes, between the hours of, of, you know, whatever, nine and five, I know that every hour and every 15 minute increment is worth this. And it just makes no financial sense for me to make my own breakfast. Like, I can't, like I'm doing a disservice to my, my team, my family and. But then even on like a micro level, because this is all like up in the clouds. Okay, I get it, but like, how could 90% of people use this? Think about something as simple as like, skip the line here or like pay the additional 30 bucks for parking here. Because yeah, like it is, you know, I even hear people say like, you know, there's this whole like this theory of like don't spend money on coffee or don't, like don't, don't spend the $2.50 a day, you know, Gordon Ramsay type mentality. It's like okay, I get it. But, but here's the other way to look at it. What if making that coffee costs you this time? That you can't take your kids here and you can't, you know, you're late for work. No actually going and stopping and paying for the coffee so that I can be at work this much longer and make that much more money. People are very much set in this like deficiency mindset of like I save everything. It's much easier if you save money. The most you could possibly get to is zero. Like I'm spending no money.
- [48:22]
James Camp
But if you, but if you spend.
- [48:24]
John Davids
But if you actually spend your time making money and try to maximize. There's no upper limit.
- [48:29]
James Camp
It's infinite. And I think actually the perfect one that I get myself caught in all the time because and my girlfriend tells me all the time I'm too frugal, right? Like is I'm constantly. But I also didn't have money for a lot of my life, right. And so that's. It's very tough, right. To break that mindset is buying flights. I will spend three hours looking at flight prices trying to figure out the right time. Do I want to get to the airport at 9am and oh, I'm going to get to the airport at 6:00am you know, oh, should I buy this? The reality is is that and I will spend two to three hours and I don't mean necessarily in one sit like sitting down but like looking at flights over a two week period about something I'm thinking of doing. And I will end up saving like 60 bucks, right? 60. I 100% can tell you I think my time is worth more than 60, 20 bucks an hour. For sure, for sure, for sure. You know and I think to your point, actually it's just a nice reminder. You never know when a conversation will remind you of something. It's a nice reminder. Like you said, money is in many ways infinite. I really, really forget the money printer. Right? Forget that inflation exists, but it actually just ethereal and we print it off. When we go back to me saying that there's always a new 45 year old woman in for a weight loss product, right? Because people always age into being 45. People always age out. There's like a new, you know, and I'm not saying they're suckers, right? But you ever heard that saying, there's a new sucker every day. It's because there's always just a new.
- [49:44]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [49:45]
James Camp
So same thing happens with money. So in my mind, when you have this scarcity mindset about money, I never have cash. I happen to have here. You take a $5 bill, I give John a $5 bill and all of a sudden my $5 is gone.
- [49:56]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [49:57]
James Camp
But the reality is now John has $5, right? And now John's going to go spend that $5 somewhere else. Maybe then that $5 that gives it to Mike and Mike says, oh, I need to buy a service from James for five bucks. So I get this five bucks back again, right? Money, like this is where GDP gets complicated. But my point is that like, money kind of is infinite. And the moment that you start realizing that, like, getting rid of it does not necessarily mean that it's gone. It means that it's going into the ecosystem and there's more of it to float around, you start getting less really scared about where it is, like, and how you're going to get it back.
- [50:29]
John Davids
I'm 100% with you. And like, the economy is built on money moving. It's not about, yeah, like, you actually don't want money to be made ever. Like, money printing is actually the thing you want to avoid. You want money to move around. And so I totally agree with you. And that's also why, like, even things like buy local, support your local store, like that really matters. Because when you live somewhere and the stores near you, the coffee shops, the restaurants are getting no business that is actually bad for you. Because now you live in a neighborhood that is like crumbling because the local business can't survive. So it all, like, it really is circular. And opening your mind up to that is super important. This episode is brought to you by my social media selling challenge, available now@johndavids.com do you ever feel like you're just wasting time and money posting content to social media that goes nowhere? No likes, no comments, and much more importantly, no sales. Well, you can change all that right now. My social media selling challenge gives you the training and tools to turn your posts into a predictable sales system. And you can do it all in just 20 minutes a day. Spots are limited, so join now. Visit johndavids.comchallenge I wanted to ask you something else though. So right now you are kind of at this Point where you've done this B2B thing for five, six months and like maybe you're going to stick with it. I don't know how you're feeling about it at this point. The question I have is why not just stick with a thing that you're an absolute beast at? Why try to do something that where you're starting from level one again?
- [52:03]
James Camp
Because I'm an idiot. I don't know. I mean, I think this has sort of been my life, you know, I think that I. I jokingly say I'm a lust for pain. I don't know what the reality is. I'm sure there's like something in my brain that's broken that like constantly want to just try and do something that is new to me. It sounds cheesy man, but I really do believe like we're here once in this lifetime and you know, we've got one opportunity to actually make things happen. And part of it is like this kind of woo woo serendipity where like this fell into my lap. So specifically I was so lost. I mean, I sat at this desk that I'm sitting at right now, couple million bucks in an account, brand new car, living in Beverly Hills, like tears rolling down my cheek, like I don't know what I want to do. I'm so lost. And I recognized that I was actually really happy when I was living with my ex girlfriend in a studio because I didn't have enough money and I was chasing a dream that I thought was big and was exciting and working with people I liked. That's cheesy and sounds corny, but is 100% the truth. So I recognize that money is not the key to happiness. I want a ton of money for sure. I love money and I want a lot of it. But it is not fundamentally what makes me happy. So long story short, I just realized I had an opportunity that came across my plate last year to help a financially regulated firm, to help a financial firm as a cmo. And I took on the side a fractional job and I found this problem while I was at that job. And the point you're saying about moving and it's better for the economy, I generally, I spent, dude, I spent years sitting at the bottom of the tree trying to become Buddha. Like you know, there's the story of Siddhartha, like that, you know, he trying to figure out what's next, meditating on things. And the moment that I just started moving again, the moment I started actually putting my brain at work at things all of a sudden, something really fell into my lap. I came across this idea and I was like, oh, this is interesting. And then I realized that I knew someone who was a fund manager who said, oh, I love that idea. Like I would put up capital for this. It just like serendipity. And so I don't know what will happen. But what I'll say is this, is that like many of the decisions that you have in life are pretty small decisions. When am I going to make coffee? Like, am I going to hop on the podcast with John at 8:30am on Tuesday or Wednesday? Right. They're not very, very big. But every once in a while for me at least, you're given an opportunity in life where there's a very clear fork in the road and you can take a chance at trying to go in the not so easy path on that fork. And if it works out, it just changes the rest of your life forever. And they don't happen very often. At 26, it happened for me. I moved to Malaysia. I was like, I got to get out of what I'm doing. I got to do something different, I got to do something new. And I changed my life astronomically. At 31, we ended up selling this business for over 30 million bucks. I only started that business because I moved to Malaysia, like all these things. And so this sort of came to me and I thought, you know what.
- [54:40]
John Davids
This is a huge.
- [54:41]
James Camp
I'm unhappy in where I am work wise in life. And here's an actual opportunity that if I really just bang my head hard enough against this brick wall enough times, maybe we'll work, right? And if it does work, it will just change everything for me. And by the way, if it doesn't work, I'm very blessed. I've had a couple of wins. I'll go back to doing what I'm. That's easy. I'm phenomenal at, right? For sure. But, but I think every once in a while you're given an opportunity and it's sort of, it defines who you are. Are you the person that looks at this fork and says, you know what, I'm going to go try and do this kind of crazy thing I'm not really good at, but we could change everything. Or am I not, you know, and so that's where I'm at.
- [55:18]
John Davids
I think my standard, like 90% of the time advice to most people is if you're looking to get to that next level, take the game that you've already been playing and just find a new angle. Or a new usage. And so you don't have to start at zero. So if you're doing, let's just take like Internet marketing or you're doing law or something, you have a law degree, you probably shouldn't start totally from scratch. But maybe taking that law degree and doing something else, having another application. But I think the other 10% of the time what actually happens is people are sticking with the thing they've been doing the longest and they actually are following the wrong rule. In that case, it's like, no, no, no. Like sticking. This thing was never that good to begin with. And the example I give is just the personal example, which is I sold. I was the enterprise sales guy for whatever, five, six, seven years, because that's the thing that I had started doing seven years earlier, but it wasn't the right move in the beginning. So like keeping to go with it for the longer time because I had been doing it, oh, I should build another type of enterprise. Like, no, no, no. Just cut bait. And that was the kind of 10% of the time where I had to say, you know, this is genuinely not what I like doing. I'm not very good at it. I'm not very successful at it. Let me go ahead and try something totally different. And it sounds like you're kind of playing with that too.
- [56:34]
James Camp
I am. And I think that there is, to your point, and maybe it's sort of me forcing it. But like, if I really think about what my background is, the company I sold in 2020 was a financial media platform. We spoke to retailers, we spoke to consumers. That's what we did. We got people to read about stocks, about equities, markets.
- [56:50]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [56:51]
James Camp
But who was our customer? It wasn't retailers. It was actually public companies that were buying IR packages, investor relations packages from us. So I played in the space a little bit. Then that's the biggest one I've had. And then I spent six months as a CMO for equity crowdfunding portal, where basically you sell securities, you sell private investments to retailers. And then I did a JV with Agora Financial before that. My point is to say that I've never spent, I've never played exactly where I'm at. But when I really think about the successes I've had in my life, I bought a hearing aid brand in 2021 and sold in 2022. The only reason I did that was because I made a lot of money selling this financial media platform.
- [57:30]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [57:31]
James Camp
But like, I've actually at my core done a lot of marketing of a financial product to people before.
- [57:37]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [57:38]
James Camp
And when I think about what we're selling now, even though my customer directly is a. Is a enterprise client, the reality is what I'm enabling them to do is to sell their products to retailers because, you know, one's getting fined because they called up the other fund that they know and say, hey, dude, we're going to do this deal together. They're getting fined because they're making. They're making claims to the average mom and pop to the average consumer.
- [58:05]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [58:06]
James Camp
And so my point is that even though it's not exactly in my.
- [58:11]
Interviewer/Moderator
My.
- [58:11]
James Camp
Past expertise, I've looked for, I think it's important to your point, though, to look in the Venn diagram and find the skill sets and find really at its core, what you've done before and pull it into that new thing. Because I'm 37, it'd be like, I'm not going to go say, unless I really despise my life, you know, and everything I've done. I'm not going to go say, I'm going to go be a personal injury attorney.
- [58:29]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [58:30]
James Camp
But like, like, can I take what I'm good at with marketing and content and try and apply that? I actually think there's magic if you can take the good direct response marketing and the good consumer marketing and figure out how to throw that into an elongated sales cycle so you can compress that trust in an enterprise world.
- [58:44]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [58:44]
James Camp
Whether it's you're running podcasts or you're running newsletters that are making it so that your ICP now actually trusts you over time. So it's not just a cold call.
- [58:53]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [58:53]
James Camp
I'm trying to take some of the things that I've done and I'm good at and apply it to sort of this vertical that is, that is banking products. But.
- [59:03]
John Davids
And the challenge you run into is you're realizing that enough of the skills that you have from that old world are not applicable enough right now.
- [59:11]
James Camp
Yes. And so that's the wall I'm hitting. So do it. Go hop on. You go yap on YouTube. You mean go yap on IG. That's great.
- [59:17]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [59:18]
James Camp
But like, the. And like, do I know how to build direct response funnels? For sure. Like, and get people to buy a product in the first click. Right? That's what I did for long. That's. Any affiliate marketer is great at that.
- [59:26]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [59:27]
James Camp
Because you're just getting a cookie for the beginning. But point is that, like, the wall that I'm hitting is that some of the things that I've been great at before are not applicable today.
- [59:37]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [59:38]
James Camp
And so now I'm trying to figure out how to get better at those things. So like how do you get better at enterprise sales?
- [59:42]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [59:42]
James Camp
Gtm. Like what's that function look like? You know, right.
- [59:45]
John Davids
Are you more of a cash flow bootstrap guy or a VC funding person? And is that, is that changing also?
- [59:53]
James Camp
It's a great question. I think, I think it sounds really cool, hypothetically to build a $10 billion business. You know, I, but knowing me, I don't, I don't know if I'd be good at running. I'm sure the board would oust me way before we got there, right? They'd be like, listen, James, you're not good. You'd be gone in Series A. Yeah, for sure. Fine, I'll take my liquidity, you know, sell some secondaries and sleep on the beach. But no, I think what's interesting is that the world today, the narrative is told that capital raised and venture is what's sexy, is what's cool is what's fun. Now I spent the past few years pitching the exact opposite. Where I'm trying to go with this is actually a hybrid of the middle. So spoken to a lot of funds and some of the early funds I spoke to were like, oh great, you're going to make a $200 million company. But that's not really compelling to us, right? Like, I don't want to write you a check right now unless you can tell me the story you're going to tell at your series B.
- [60:41]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [60:41]
James Camp
Because we need you to have a multi billion dollar liquidity event for our fund. That's our thesis, right? And I've recently found some funds that fit much more. What I'm interested in is like how do we get to 10 to 15 million dollars in ARR in five years, right? And spit off some EBITDA along the way. Because once, listen, if you get to 10 to 15 million dollars in ARR in five years, all the big funds are there to give you more money to take it to 10 billion if you want.
- [61:05]
John Davids
You have options, you have options.
- [61:07]
James Camp
Optionality is what I'm trying to create here.
- [61:09]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [61:09]
James Camp
But you also can just take a liquidity event, right? And in the right vertical, you know. And can I build a $10 million business on a 20% EBITDA margin? Sure, yeah. I've done it before, right. Like it's, it's what I know to how to do. And so the smaller funds that I've been talking to and the ones that are New York based, which are mostly like ex investment bankers who run small like 50 $100 million funds now going back to our world of like what's a lot of money versus a little money. Like a $50 million venture fund is a very small venture fund, right. And they have a totally different mandate than a $5 billion venture fund. Those guys are like, actually was very refreshing. Had a meeting last week, two weeks ago with a fund in New York where the partner was like, I want you to stop talking to anyone who's going to ask you how you're building a billion dollar company. He was like, I'll give you money, but you have to stop talking to anyone who's asking you how you build a billion dollar company. He's like, let's just go build a 100, $200 million company and then if the optionality is there to keep going, we can keep going. Or what. People don't realize about a liquidity event, about an exit. That exit only exists because someone else thinks they're going to make more money off that business.
- [62:10]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [62:10]
James Camp
So like in his mind he's like, let's go get 150 million bucks and somebody else can take it to a $10 billion company if that's what they want to do.
- [62:17]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [62:18]
John Davids
I think building a 10 million or $15 million company is actually a noble business goal for any business. Regardless of like if you want to get to that billion dollar, there's like a very small sliver of companies that I'll call like, you know, the pre revenue VC backed company where you're basically all you're trying to do is get users on board and there's no monetization. But like I'm going to get to a hundred million users or a billion users and you're like the classic Facebook or the classic Instagram. But most businesses, even if they're venture scale, they still make money on the way. Like they still sell a product for money and they make money. And so they'll get to $10 million and then you'll look at them and say okay, this can reasonably get to 100 million or a billion if we pull these levers. But here's the thing, regardless of that, even before you get there, having a $10 million ARR business is freaking awesome. So like just do that.
- [63:15]
James Camp
Oh yeah. So I mean, I think having $10 million ARR is first of all obscenely awesome. It's also achievable. You also avoid sort of this Icarus type thing, which I think happens in Venture a lot. Which will bring me to a good story I have with some. Someone from a 16Z. You know, Icarus flew too close to the sun and his wings melted and he fell into the sea.
- [63:34]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [63:35]
James Camp
A little bit of hubris there. So what's really interesting about Venture, I was at a meetup, this little table, fireside chat with some people From Andreessen Horowitz, a 16Z super famous venture firm, and some other people were speaking. And Adam Newman, the founder of WeWork, had just started his new company. Now to remind people about WeWork, reached a 70 or $100 billion valuation from SoftBank leading it and then blew up.
- [64:03]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [64:04]
James Camp
Adam Newman, by the way, along the way made billions of dollars himself selling secondary, selling shares. And he was like leasing. He bought the buildings himself and his little vehicle and then he would lease them to WeWork. He was crushed.
- [64:15]
John Davids
Did you see we crashed the HBO special?
- [64:17]
James Camp
No, no, but I feel like you.
- [64:19]
John Davids
Got to, got to see we crashed.
- [64:20]
James Camp
I definitely need to after this. So I was at this meetup and a16z had just written Adam Neumann a new check, right? A check for his new startup after everything at WeWork had blown up. And we're sitting in this little 15 person thing and we get to ask questions. And someone said, has anyone seen, you know, I heard a 16Z wrote a check to Adam Newman for his new startup. And the gentleman who was speaking, who is not at a 16Z who was at the fireside chat as well, said, I think that's stupid. I don't know who would ever write Adam Newman a check ever again. You know, clearly he's just a crazy person. Things don't make sense. And then the woman who was a partner at a 16z got to answer her question, got to give her answer about Adam Neumann. And the question was, why would you guys give Adam Newman money after all that? And she said something very interesting, which was incredibly telling to me about Venture. She goes, it is my job to make bets. When you think they're bad bets, all I do is make bets that the consensus is our wrong bets that no one thinks will work out. That is the only way we make these Giant. Giant. Giant wins. And it was a reminder that the thesis of Venture, especially with Andreessen Horowitz, a firm that big, is they are bidding on ousand x errors, ten thousand x errors. And the only way you can find that alpha, the only bets in the world that have a 10,000x attached to them are ones that everyone Thinks will not work.
- [65:42]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [65:43]
James Camp
Because if everyone thought they would work, they would make that bet immediately and it would lose its 10,000x potential. And the only reason it's 10,000x potential is because people do not believe it works. Risk and reward are inherently tied always and forever. And the higher the possible return, the higher the risk. So their venture thesis is, let me.
- [65:58]
John Davids
Bet on things that you think are.
- [66:00]
James Camp
A bad idea, because we think that they're going to win and it's okay to them that 99% of their businesses will not reach that thesis.
- [66:07]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [66:07]
James Camp
Then most of them will fail. So it's just a different way of looking at investing.
- [66:11]
John Davids
It's 1000% true. If you had a venture fund that was hitting at an 8 or 9 out of 10 batting average, it would be a very bad venture fund because all of their wins would be the most obvious ones and they'd be maybe making 2x or 3x. Like that's great for a family office or that's great for, like, you know, an S&P 500 investor. But like, if you're a venture fund, you either make the thousand X or the ten thousand x return or you don't get your next raise. You're not kidding. Your LPs are not putting the money in for them for to double their money. They're putting their money in so they can make, like you said, 100 times their money. That's why it's venture. So I totally get. And I think people also just like entrepreneurs listening, need to understand the game they're playing. That so much of success in business of like, what is the game I'm actually playing? How do I win at this game? Don't try to play someone else's game and then wonder, oh, geez, it's not working.
- [67:02]
James Camp
It's not.
- [67:02]
John Davids
It works for them, not for me. Yeah, because they were playing a different game. If I was playing basketball and you're playing baseball and I was trying to throw the ball at you, you'd be like, well, what are you like, what, What, what, what sport are we playing here? It's all, it's all good, man. This was awesome. James, if you're, if you're a listener. James, Camera just went out. This is perfect timing, man. I want to end it right here. I so appreciate this. Thanks for coming on today. Thanks for listening. If you're a fan of the podcast, leave a rating and review on this episode and get my best stuff to your inbox@john davids.com we'll talk to you next time. This episode is brought to you by Influicity's new tool, the AI Ads Generator, available now at johndavids.com ads. Great ads aren't about luck. They're about leverage. The brands that win are the ones who can launch faster, test smarter, and outspend everyone else without wasting a dollar. That's exactly what the AI Ads Generator gives you. Instant ad copy that speaks to every customer and feeds the algorithm high performing variations your competitors can't keep up with. It's like strapping a jet engine onto your marketing. And right now, it's free. Yes, it's free. Go to JohnDavids. Com ads that's JohnDavids. Com ads.