← The Vault Unlocked
The Vault Unlocked
From $50k Loss to $100M Win
00:47:23
From Navy uniform to nine figures, and nearly losing it all. In this episode of Pitch Me, Kayvon Kay talks with Douglas James, a Navy veteran turned digital entrepreneur who built a $100M coaching business and now leads LeadFi.ai, a data-driven SaaS...
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- [00:01]
A
You're listening to the Vault Unlocked, where the real secrets of success are revealed every episode. One founder, one confession, one strategy that created income scale and unstoppable growth. Forget the hype. This is unlocking the code they swore they would never release. The playbook is revealed. The Vault is unlocked. And we're back on another episode. And today we have the myth, the legend, the one. Mr. Douglas James. So happy to have you here. I know that we've, we've crossed paths a couple times to get to this show. You were telling me before the show you just came back from la. So I want to say appreciate you early morning being here with us. How are we doing today, Doug?
- [00:41]
B
I'm excellent, Kevon. Thank you so much for having me, brother.
- [00:43]
A
Yeah, I really, really appreciate it. Can't wait to get in because I know you have so much to share and give here. Just for those that are listening, tell us, who is Douglas James?
- [00:53]
B
Yeah, man. So I was, you know, I'm married, two beautiful daughters. Gotta start with that. A man of faith. And, you know, served 10 years active duty, you know, in the Navy, United States Navy. I eventually found digital marketing, realized I didn't want to be in the Navy for 20, 30 years, and started to make a lot of money, right? I started to work with a lot of local businesses, helped them generate leads, got really good at running ads. You know, after about six months, I was making my annual salary that the military was paying me on the monthly basis. So I, that got the attention of a lot of active duty, you know, guys that I was working with. So they were coming up to me, hey, how do you do this? How do you make money? And so I just got into coaching, you know, and I end UP helping over 10,000 active duty members transition into the online space. We scaled that company up to over 100 million in revenue, Helped a lot of people, did a lot of good. And now I, you know, building a company called LeadFi, which is a software that helps business owners identify real time buying power. When somebody like opts into your funnel, your marketing, you basically know their exact credit score, their income, how much they can spend on the credit cards, all that stuff. So we're focused on that now. But I, I just love disruptive technology. So anything with, you know, AI blockchain, even, you know, all this stuff that people are like scared of that don't know how to use and you know that's, that's inevitable, that's going to be around for the next 50, 100 years, that's going to really transform how we work and shop and eat and like, everything, you know, find, you know, find spouses or whatever the case is. I love that stuff. So, you know, I consult equity for a number of companies doing. So I'm doing a lot of stuff, but at the end of the day, for me, it's just always been about, you know, helping other people get to where they're trying to go. I remember early in my journey, from when I got out the military, I was reading, you know, Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins, and I just quote, man, it's help other people get what they want and you'll have all you want in life. And that always resonated with me because I was hyper successful in the military because I was focused on my sailors, and I just transitioned that energy to people on the outside in the civilian world and entrepreneurial world, and I was able to find success. So I'm a big believer in giving.
- [03:15]
A
If only it was all that easy, though. So I want to really deep dive in here.
- [03:20]
B
Yeah.
- [03:20]
A
And. And, you know, if we go back, you're. You're in the Navy again, obviously. Thank you for that service. Let me ask you this. What was it you said that you found digital marketing? How did you find digital marketing?
- [03:34]
B
Yeah, good question. I. I mean, I legitimately was just. Well, let me tell you this story. So I. It was 2014, 2015, somewhere around there. I, you know, the, the data, it's probably late 2014. I get back from a deployment. I was in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, in the Philippines. It was a humanitarian mission. We were literally building schools for kids out there. Right. And it's still, to this day, it's some of the best work that I've ever experienced or done as a human being. Right, right. You know, you know, over there, it's very rural. Like, you go there, people don't have clothes, shoes, or just the, you know, kind of like modern things that we're used to. So I remember the last day we were. I think it was Rojas City. We were in a super rural part of Philippines. And, you know, I was a. I'm a corpsman or was a corpsman. And I work with the CBs. The CBs are the construction battalion. So if they, you know, anything that needs to be built, they build it. And I go to make sure they don't hurt themselves or take care of them if they hurt themselves, ourselves. So I remember we're going up this hill, this really high hill, and we're carrying boxes of crayons coloring books, you know, stuff for the kids. And we get up to the top and we didn't see a kid the whole, like, few weeks we were there. And we get up there, dude, and there's literally hundreds of kids. And he just ran up to us, hugged our leg, saying, thank you, thank you, usa. Usa. Like it was. I remember it, like, clear as day as yesterday. And I just remember just feeling this super euphoric feeling, feeling of like, of what it feels like to do amazing for someone else. And I've had validation and feedback from people over the years, but to actually see it in the, the eyes of kids, I was like, holy crap. You know, so it made me. It really shifted my way of thinking at that point. Because I was in the Navy at that point for only five years and I had just made E6. So if for those that aren't familiar either, E6 is like a high level supervisory position in the, in the US Military. Like, I can be in charge of hundreds of people, and I made E6 in five years when it takes the average person 12 years. So that goes to show you, like, how much of a, like, go getter I was, right? Yeah, you keep it short. But, you know, I felt like I did all I could, wanted to do in the military and then having this experience with the kids, I was like, man, how do I do more cool shit like this? But not just with my time, but monetarily so I can have a bigger impact. So those kinds of, like, shifts were, were happening in my mind and I, you know, I wanted to have a family too. I wanted to have kids. Yeah, right. So I get back from that deployment, my girlfriend Sonia was waiting for me, which is my wife now. We solidified our relationship, eventually got married, had two beautiful daughters. But when I got back, I immediately started to Google and search things. I'm like, dude, how do I, you know, make money online? How do I hire my boss? How to kill my job, dude. So I was like, searching things that a lot of people search that when they're lost and tired of their job and like, you know, sick of the rat race, right? I was doing all of that, and that kind of landed me on finding search engine optimization. SEO, right? I would go. You would go to Google. You see the ads at the top of the search, you're like, why are these businesses here? Right? And why do I want to click them before anything else? Because they're at the top. Yeah. So I found a guy on YouTube talking about SEO and how he's making all this money. And so I started just to learn from him.
- [06:56]
A
And this is back in. This is back in 2014. Yeah, like, just like the. I call it the second wave. Like there was that first. Well, there was like the three waves, but like the first, you know, the first wave, like the early 2000s, when, you know, it was what it was. And then I find like the 2008 was a wave, and then 2013 to about 16 was another wave. So you got in like early.
- [07:19]
B
Yeah.
- [07:19]
A
You saw what was going on. I want to just go. I think it's super important because what I'm hearing from the story, like something really changed on that trip. Like something really changed. In you perspective, it was almost like you had. You had like an internal external transformation. A. Can we talk about that? Because I believe your business is a direct reflection of who you are on the inside. And if you're confused and scared and lost on the inside, your business is going to be confused, lost on the outside. So for you, it seems like something really clicked.
- [07:52]
B
Yeah, man. It's interesting point to point out there. So, you know, this kind of dates back probably a lot further than even that short story, you know. You know, I'm not going to go too deep on this, but, you know, I. I came from a childhood that was pretty chaotic. You know, I kind of experienced things that really no children should ever experience. And I have two beautiful daughters. So, you know, if you're. You're a parent, you have kids, right?
- [08:20]
A
Yeah, I got two girls myself. I get it.
- [08:22]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude. So, you know, your kids, like, you're. They're sponges, you know, their daddy's superman. Like anything he does or mommy does, it's like gold. They take it as truth, you know. And, you know, I saw things growing up that, you know, I should never see, so I. I now have like an example of what not to be of a parent, you know, So I want to pour the best I can into and into my kids. But what I found, you know, through that experience of, you know, trauma, going to bed, not knowing if I'm going to eat, you know, physical verbal abuse. It was just all. All the things you can probably imagine, to be honest with you. But I ran away from home at like 16 years old, you know, because I was fed up with that lifestyle, you know, and that eventually got me into military because it was either that. Go to college when I was like a 1.4 GPA high school student or. Or. Yeah, yeah, actually, yeah. You know, I. I got caught shoplifting that target At a young age too. So, you know, I, you know, and I did go to jail for, for like a night, you know, and it was horrible. He was either that jail or like homeless, you know, so go to the military, you know. So I found what I was doing though is I was like burying my head in the ground like an ostrich and just focusing on success. Like that's all that mattered to me. Like, be great, do good, and everything else will figure itself out. And that worked for a good amount of time. And a lot of entrepreneurs do do that, you know. But what I found, at least from my experience and a lot of people that I talk to, they're usually running from something like, what is it you're running from? Right? And for me, I was like running from dealing with those memories and that trauma that I, that cooped up over all those years, you know, and you know, I, I hit the high rank in the military, I made a bunch of money, helped a lot of people, did a lot of good, married my beautiful wife, had two daughters, created a nine figure company on my way to my second nine figure company, you know, doing all these things. But what I realized is success doesn't silence your soul, right? You have to address those internal things that are, that are haunting you. So I had to at one step, at one point turn around and look back and say, hey, I'm not going to allow this to live rent free in my brain anymore. You know, I'm going to forgive and let it go and move on so I can have growth and sustainability for my own family, for my own kids. Because it was showing up on how I led, how I might have shortly reacted to my wife, you know, all of these things, making bad decisions at times with money. Like, I'm not perfect. I've made, you know, bad decisions in business life in general, you know, So I had to let a lot of that go, you know, so that transition was like paramount for me because I was whole. It was holding me back like, you know, like a ball chain wrapped around my ankle.
- [11:06]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear. I, I see a lot of entrepreneurs and I mean, I think a lot of people go into entrepreneurship with that type of, I would say past trauma, you know, it's just prove something, you know, they're, they're to prove them, to prove their story wrong and prove, and to prove everyone else, you know, right or whatever it might be. But let's get in because you said, you know, 100 million dollar company, that's, you know, that's not, that's not small business there that, you know, that takes a lot of work and takes to me, it takes finding or cracking that code. Like what was that? So you've said you found SEO and then you started getting the SEO. How did you going from SEO turn into like a hundred million dollar business?
- [11:47]
B
Yeah, I. So SEO allowed me within about five months to replace my annual salary in the military on a monthly basis. I was making around 50 grand a month.
- [11:59]
A
Okay. About doing what? Because I want to be very, you know, for people who are listening. Like, what does that even mean?
- [12:04]
B
Like, so what I would do, I was helping local businesses get ranked high on, on Google. But specifically what I was doing. So that's like the overarching. But what I would do is I would create these micro, micro websites like in the small cities. So like I live in San Diego. In San Diego there's these subsidies, you know, Escondido, Chula Vista. Yeah, Encinitas. And they all have maybe 100 to 300,000 people population. So. So instead of ranking for San Diego, I want to rank for escondido. There's only 200,000 people there. So I can get a site ranked super quick for a carpet cleaning company or a dentist or something. Because nobody's going after. Everyone wants San Diego. Right. They're forgetting about the micro cities. So I would get a site ranked, my own site ranked within like 30 days, sometimes a week. Number one for dental, carpet cleaning, auto detail, limousine company. And then I would just basically get, I would find the. I would target a business owner. I would get their personal contact information. A lot of it lived online on Google. A lot of these mom and pop businesses, like they'll put their personal contact like on the, the Website Back in 2015, it was super easy. Or you can use a tool like sales genie and pay 50 cents and get their phone number anyway. Their, their cell phone. So I would do that and then boom, rank the site, number one. All of a sudden, boom. It's blowing up with leads. People are calling the phone number, texting, emailing, and I would just redirect that traffic instantly over to that business's cell phone number. Now they're getting called like crazy, like, what the fuck? Why I'm getting all these leads to my phone. This is amazing, but what the heck's going on? So I would let that run for a day or two and then I would call them up and I would.
- [13:46]
A
Say, hey, the door here. Okay, this is. Wow.
- [13:51]
B
Wow.
- [13:52]
A
Not cutting you off, but wow. You're telling me. See this is so gold. This is what most people don't do. They don't. You were actually building the site, ranking the site, getting people to call. Like, let's call this. This is a dry cleaner in a small town in San Diego. All of a sudden, his phone's going off the hook, going, I don't understand why, but this is amazing. And then couple days, let's call it. Let's call it what it is. Maybe a couple weeks. Couple days, maybe even a month later, you call them and say, oh, by the way, have you noticed that you've gotten some more calls and traffic? Yeah, that's me. And what? I love it. I love it. Keep going. I just wanted to make sure I was hearing this correctly.
- [14:39]
B
Okay, you got it? Yeah. I would call them and say, hey. And I would. Every single lead, when they got a call, they would hear a whisper message. New lead from Douglas James. And then the person started talking, right. So they kept hearing Douglas James when they picked up the phone.
- [14:55]
A
So what?
- [14:57]
B
Yeah. So when I knew that it's through the call software that I was using, you can do a whisper message. Hey, new lead from Douglas James. Press one to receive. Right. So they would click one and then instantly be connected to the person that was calling my website or limousine party bus service, whatever it might be.
- [15:14]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [15:16]
B
And. And then I would say, hey, this is Douglas James. How's those leads been working out the last couple days? And it'd be like, dude, this is amazing. We got to sign up. Like, I don't know you, but I love you. Like, let's get it done.
- [15:28]
A
And then what are your packages going for?
- [15:30]
B
I would just. Yeah, I would just basically sell them, like, 20 bucks a lead, you know?
- [15:35]
A
Okay, so you were selling leads. Awesome. Okay. You were selling leads. Yeah, yeah, I was.
- [15:39]
B
I was selling leads. So every time someone called, every time a. They received a phone number in their CRM, I would just charge them $20. That's it.
- [15:47]
A
Because you could control that, because you were. You knew how many calls were coming in. Cause you were building it.
- [15:52]
B
That's it. That's it. Wow.
- [15:54]
A
So you controlled that whole kind of supply chain. You weren't relying on them to tell you how many leads they were giving you. They were not at all.
- [15:59]
B
I own the website. I had the tracking. I knew how many leads and calls it was generating. I had all the calls recorded, literally everything. So if. If. If they didn't want to do business with me or they want to try to screw me over and say, hey, do I Pay you. I would just turn it off and then I would immediate to another business owner. Oh.
- [16:17]
A
So it. I. I've tried myself. I've created a lot of businesses. I've seen a lot of people come up with ideas that's just go nowhere. There must have been something before this, a greatness that, that, that, that you knew that clicked. Like, what was it? That thing that everyone. Because I. Everyone can go try this and it's not going to work. But something changed for you. Something worked for you where you're like, I got this. What was that? Like what. If you can recall, what was the thing that just turned everything on for you?
- [16:49]
B
Yeah, I had super fast success with that. And I mean, really what clicked and solidified in my brain was the first dollar I ever received. You know, I remember getting a check for like 7 grand because my first deal was actually. It was a big deal and they. And they actually negotiated. I eventually settled in on like 20 or 30 a lead, but they wanted to do performance and it was actually better for me because they gave me a third of their net margin. Right. And I remember my first check that they ever cut me was for like seven grand. And I was like, holy crap, this works. You know, And I took my wife, or my girlfriend at the time, which is my wife now, out to dinner. We celebrated and we did it up the wine, everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and. Yeah, man. And that's what I'm. This, this is it. That. Because my. I have a. I have a mentor. His name is Dr. Jeff Spencer. He was. He was an Olympian and He trained like 40 gold Olympians as well. And he was with Lance Armstrong through, like, not all nine Tour de Frances. And yeah, he's a. He's like a OG he's a Yoda. He's 78 years old. But anyway, he talks. He talks about how there's a. There's a road map to success. And it starts with a daily grind period where you do work, but you don't necessarily expect a certain result in the short term. You just put your head down and do the work and you trust the process. That's it. You just trust the process and you do the thing until something happens. And that's what I did. And it's not until you get a result that belief is established because you're basically riding on hope the whole time. So until you get a result, that's when you're like, oh, this does work. I have a result. I've proved it to myself. Now it's even Easier just to keep going through that daily grind phase because you're always, you know, there's a belief at the end of that tunnel. So I just put my head down, dude, for two or three months learning this, and all that money really came in, in the back half of that, five or six months. So I almost made no money for about three months to four months actually. And I just kept, I just kept building and doing, doing my process. So that, that's really what like, you know, solidified it for me. But here's, here's the kicker with this, dude. The way I was ranking sites and the way I was learning from to do this turned out to not be so great. So what happened was one day and I had about 20 something clients paying me somewhere between a thousand to 2,500 bucks a month back then.
- [19:24]
A
Okay. Yeah.
- [19:25]
B
And they were all ranked number one on Google for all their perspective. Carpet cleaning, auto detail, whatever. And I wake up one day and all my sites disappeared from page one of Google for their perspective search. And I'm like, what the f. My clients are calling me. Yeah, yeah bro, what's going on with the leads? You know? And I'm like, I don't know. And then I get an email from Google that says Google released a new algorithm update. It was called the Penguin. And I'm like, what the is this? So basically it was, it was flagging people that were using black hat processes to ranks websites. I didn't know what the, I didn't know what black hat was. I was just following what the YouTube guy was saying or what the guy was learning from. Turns out the way I was doing it wasn't, wasn't like they didn't like that. Right.
- [20:12]
A
Yeah, a lot of that. Because that's a, it's very important what you just said there because some people don't know that I know that a little bit because I, I've dabbled in the Google space. Right. There's like the, this concept of black hat which is. Nowadays I could be wrong. Like not many people dabble in that because it's just like it's not a long term play.
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B
Yeah.
- [20:31]
A
How would you, how do you explain black hat?
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B
It's probably, I would probably just say it's ways of loopholes are gamifying systems and manipulating systems to get the, the result may, you know, in some ways maybe not compliantly what I, what. I'll just say it's just going around their policy finding loopholes. Right. And black hat could be considered for a lot of. There's white, white hat ways to do things and black hat things.
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A
And then there's the gray area.
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B
Right.
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A
And then people say the gray and I.
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B
And you know, honestly when I think back, a lot of it was, was gray zone because Google's policy has actually changed many, many, many times because of these things.
- [21:15]
A
Yeah.
- [21:15]
B
Now you got things like AI. So now they're writing terms and conditions about all kinds of things that were even relevant 10 years ago. Right. So this is always a navigating, a transforming landscape that we're having to deal with. But it's basically saying like there's the right, kind of the right way to do things and kind of the wrong way to do things. Right. Yeah, that's that. And, and I was doing it, I.
- [21:37]
A
Guess, the wrong way. But you had no idea because you were just following this guy on YouTube and you were like, this is working. So going back to that story because we're leaving this on the cliffhanger, like, so what happened? So now you're getting success, you're feeling good, you know, fast forward, you're taking the wife out on dinners and you're looking at this going, okay, I'm making more money than I ever made in my life in a month than I would make in a year. And it seems like you were, you know, well, obviously 100 million I call wildly successful. But before it became 100 million, you're, you know, doing X amount of dollars a month and then boom, you wake up one day and it's like it's over. It's like someone shut off the tops. What do you do?
- [22:16]
B
Yeah, well, at that point most of my clients were like, this is a scam, like, screw you. Basically. Like they had a very negative reaction unfortunately, you know, and I, you know, I was like, what? What? I'm, I'm sorry, like, what do you want me to do? But I did have a small handful of clients that were like willing to hang and like, yeah, they trusted you.
- [22:35]
A
That knew that you were not doing this on purpose.
- [22:38]
B
Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't. Everyone was like, you know, but some people, you know, they're short tempered.
- [22:42]
A
Absolutely.
- [22:43]
B
Thing that goes wrong, they bail out whatever. I had like five or so clients that were like sticking around. So I was like, look, I'm going to learn Google Ads and Facebook ads. Like, because I would, look, I would go on Facebook and I would see the little, you know, sponsored ad and I'm like, okay, that's something there. Okay, I'll go on Google. I see the sites ranked the top Let me figure out how to do that. So now I started looking at that, and of course, I sucked at it. I didn't know what I was doing in the beginning. Lost, like, almost all those clients, or after two weeks, 30 days, they were gone. I had one client that stuck around. It was my first client, the limousine party bus company. And they were like, dude, let's just figure this out. Let's go back to a performance model. I'm like, okay. So I really put my head down. Learn Facebook ads, learn Google Ads. And, yeah. And after 30 days, they cut me another check for, like, almost eight grand, you know? Okay.
- [23:36]
A
So.
- [23:36]
B
Right.
- [23:37]
A
There's so much. I wish we had so much time. There's so much things I love to talk about from the entrepreneur perspective of that kind of moment where you're at the high and then you lose it. And when you do, I believe when you have good relationships and you do good things, good people will stay around. Because you just said they're. They're. They can see the long distance versus just a short distance. Yeah, but you as an entrepreneur, you're sitting there in that. Even that first 30 days, you went from making all this money to no money, learning something so uncomfortable, back to the drawing board. What's going on with you in that moment? Like, how are you staying in the game? How are you keeping it above water and not, you know, losing your hair and freaking out?
- [24:23]
B
All I got to say is I had the belief. I knew this world was legit, the online marketing world in general. I just. I. But I. I was smart enough to realize that SEO is not the play. I need a pivot. Right. And that's when I noticed ads. Right. And I would find people online talking about making $4 with $1, you know, on paid ads, because it's literally like an ATM machine that gives you instant returns, you know? So I was. At that moment, I was just extremely, extremely determined. And, yes, I was very, very frustrated because I basically lost my $50,000 a month business overnight instantly. Like, you know, it was devastating. It truly was. I showed, and I had to show up to work the next morning in uniform. Right. So this happened at, like, 6am I got to be at work at 7am in uniform, at attention, checking in. Right. So, yeah, dude.
- [25:26]
A
Oh, you're talking about you're still in the military at this point?
- [25:28]
B
I'm active duty, yes. Oh, I had no idea.
- [25:29]
A
Sorry. I thought. Okay, so I thought you're. I. I assume. See, don't ever assume. I assumed you were already done. So you're in the middle. I'm not laughing, I'm laughing.
- [25:41]
B
Yeah.
- [25:42]
A
If anybody who's an entrepreneur can understand this stress, you're, you're trying to sit there in active duty while this is going on behind the scenes. My God. Like again, the strength, the resilience, the determination to stay in the game. There's no joke there. And I'm gonna assume back then you didn't deal with your either at that point you hadn't dealt with the stuff we were talking about earlier. So you got all that trauma coming up in so many which ways. Yeah, man, you were, you must have been a wrecking ball inside.
- [26:13]
B
I, I was. But here's the thing. The success and drive to figure out business buried the trauma. So yeah, oh yeah, good thing. It capped it. So that was good. But I was very much like, dude, yeah, I was, I was a wreck. I was a wreck. I was at lunch, I was taking two hour lunches, I was going to meet clients during lunch, changing out a uniform, getting into street clothes.
- [26:38]
A
Oh yeah.
- [26:39]
B
You know, sometimes showing up late to work and leaving early, you know, like I was doing. I, you know, I, my superiors in the military didn't make my life transition easy either. Right. And I did not give them a good reason to take it easy on me either. So. But I, yeah, I was still active duty for four years doing this before I got, actually got out, you know, so I was making like by the time I got, I was making already a couple hundred grand a month when I got out the military.
- [27:08]
A
Wow. Yeah. Well, I mean that's not going to make those superiors happy either. Right. There's got to be a little jealousy in the there and then. You're not also doing the rule, you know, going against the rules, that must have been very challenging. So, so what happened going back. This is wild.
- [27:22]
B
I love the.
- [27:22]
A
What a great story. So going back, everything falls apart. You then figure out you looked at again being forward site, seeing the future, you see ads, you see the Google Ads, you start learning it, you start growing it and you're telling me it was only 30 days? Literally it was only 30 days later. You're right back at your first eight thousand dollar check again.
- [27:43]
B
Yep, 30 days and then only about two, two and a half months, I was back at 50k. Pretty cool. Wow. So I just, once I figured out for them, dude, I just took that same case study and I, I took that money and I did my same strategy. But instead of waiting two to four weeks to rank a website, I could turn on a Facebook ad or Google Ad and immediately get leads that day. So I just took the same websites that I made, which were just basically one page funnels, right? Yeah. And I would just run traffic to them and start getting calls again instantly.
- [28:18]
A
To the same pages that you had.
- [28:20]
B
To the same pages that were already on Google. They were just on page 20 of Google.
- [28:24]
A
Exactly. So instead of relying on Google to send you the traffic, you're just paying the traffic to go there anyways.
- [28:30]
B
That's it. You know. And phone numbers started bringing again and then all the clients came back. Some didn't, but all of most of them came back. And then I got even more clients back. So I got the 50k like within like two months. And then that grew to six figures pretty, pretty quickly after that.
- [28:49]
A
And then, and then how did that company. Cause that's kind of a agency service company, Right. How does that company grow to a hundred million dollars?
- [28:58]
B
So that company didn't. It's the coaching consulting that got me up to those numbers. Right. So. So basically, you know, I was not quiet about making money when I was in the military. I was telling my colleagues and friends that I was, you know, serving with. I bought like a two hundred thousand dollar Mercedes.
- [29:19]
A
Well, how can you not really? Yeah, how do you, you know, you know, I got, I gotta say it, like even me, like, how do you not when you're surrounded with that type of mindset, and I'm not saying it in a rude way, but there is a certain type of mindset of someone who's making 80, 100, 120K versus someone who's making million dollars a year. And you know that there, there, there comes a different mindset there. How do you not want every. And a person like you, who wants to help people and you're seeing them struggle and you're seeing them in this mindset that doesn't serve them. How do you not flaunt it in a way and tell them that you can help them and show them. I mean that's what I do with my agency too. I try to help all my friends that are stuck at that six figures and like, hey, like come over here and you'll make a couple six figures from working from home. What are you doing? What are you doing? Struggling and working for the man.
- [30:06]
B
Right.
- [30:06]
A
So I get that. So I love it. All right, so you're, you're, you're, I'm just, I'm just picturing it right now. You're the captain in the military, driving in a $200,000, Mercedes. And everyone's going, what is going on? I mean, if you wanted to, if you wanted a target on your back, I don't think there was any more.
- [30:29]
B
Bigger one than money. Any military base you drive on, you gotta stop at the check station and show your id.
- [30:35]
A
Yeah.
- [30:35]
B
Every time I would roll up, the guys that were on duty to check the ID they thought they were getting like, oh, like at a tent. This is about to be an officer. We have to salute.
- [30:44]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [30:45]
B
And I'm. And I'm like an E6 active duty guy, which is a good high position. And actually. But not. But I'm not an officer.
- [30:53]
A
Yeah, not an officer.
- [30:54]
B
My id. And they look at the double take, like, what's going on here? Because E6 in San Diego with housing is probably about 6,000amonth.
- [31:03]
A
Yeah. Well, there you go. Okay. So. Yeah, yeah. Your car payment was 6,000 or at.
- [31:10]
B
Least a third that, right?
- [31:12]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's. That's awesome. Okay. So then you, you said, then you turn into a coaching business. So because you were so loud and because people, eventually people are like, what do you do? I want to teach you. I want to learn what you do. Instead of doing the thing you're doing, you started teaching people the thing you were doing and you ended up making more money. Now this comes up for a really big discussion because I see so many people market against that. Or so many people say, oh, they didn't do the job, they just teaching people how to do the job. And what people don't realize, I think you and I agree on this, is because we're in the same space. There actually is more money teaching people how to do the job than it is doing the job itself. But you got to become a master of that job if you're ever going to actually teach it properly and be able to have the impact.
- [32:02]
B
Yeah.
- [32:03]
A
Like, so do you find that that's like that statement to be true? Do you find that people confuse those two things?
- [32:10]
B
100, dude, Michael Jordan, Tony Robbins, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, they all have coaches. They all have coaches. Right. And people, they, you know, if there's somebody, somewhere you want to be, you have to go find people that have done it.
- [32:26]
A
Yeah.
- [32:27]
B
Right. And you can eventually outshine and outmaster them. Right. And that's the point of being a good apprentice to be. To. To eventually do better. Right. So I had a. I've had many mentors and coaches over my life. I've spent multiple. At least a couple million at this point over the. Over A decade, you know, for different coaches and mentors. I've, you know, networking and with some of the biggest people that you probably know that we've actually been in similar rooms with.
- [32:56]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
- [32:57]
B
And even work with them, done business deals, ran their ads, all the things, you know. So I'm a huge, huge believer in that, you know, because I've experienced it firsthand. When I first started, I was learning from some guy, I didn't know who the heck he was on the Internet. Right. That was technically a mentor.
- [33:14]
A
Right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
- [33:16]
B
So. But I think what people like, if I didn't have the story I had for you the last 30 minutes and I just came here and I said I did 100 million in coaching, you'd be like, you know, oh, you're one of those guys that, that coach people to do the thing that you didn't actually do.
- [33:34]
A
You did it.
- [33:34]
B
Yeah, actually did the thing. And now I'm, I legitimately taught people. Right. So that's the difference. And what happens is in our industry, Internet marketing, speech coaching, there's a lot of bad actors fly by marketers. I've been around for 10, 11 years. You've been around for a long time. You've probably seen a lot of these kids that come in and make it a cup, a couple million, and you never see them again. Or you might see them pop up a few years later and they got the next thing that they're trying to sell. Yeah, right. But you know, the, the market has been hit for over a decade now, hard with Facebook ads.
- [34:06]
A
Yeah.
- [34:07]
B
Right. So buyers are way more sophisticated. They know what's going on. They know what an ad is, you know, so you need, you really need to build trust rapport.
- [34:17]
A
Yeah.
- [34:18]
B
Fast. And you gotta, you better be genuine because if not, you're gonna have a high cost per lead. High cost. Right.
- [34:24]
A
Yeah, it's gonna be. I mean, I, I think we live in this world too, where people just don't trust anymore. So not only is it being genuine is the, the amount of trust. They're, they're very aware and they have to. And there's so much trust and credibility that goes into it and authority that goes into it to be successful again. You and I would both agree. This isn't 2017. 2018. 2017 18. We. We blew up a company at 38 million. 18 months. Not doing that today the way we did it back then. It's just not going to happen. Right.
- [34:51]
B
Yeah.
- [34:52]
A
So I get, I totally get that. So then, now you have the Coaching company. So you figured out, man, there's so much nuance in the story, which I absolutely just love. And the fact that you did the job before you got paid, I just want everybody to understand that you did the work without even knowing you were going to get paid. But you did the work, and you did it well, that it got you paid more than you could ever expect. And then when things went to shit, it's part of my language. Instead of quitting, instead of sucking your thumb, you put. You dug deeper, rolled up your sleeves, and asked the biggest question. Now what. What do I do? Where do I go? You sound like you figured that out pretty quickly. Thirty days later, not only are you doing more than you were when the thing blew up, you're double that. And then you turn this into a coaching business, where now you're coaching people to do the thing that you mastered. And from there, that coaching business goes to 100 million.
- [35:48]
B
Yep.
- [35:50]
A
What was it in the coaching business? Because a lot of people have coaching businesses that can't even get it to, you know, six figures a year, let alone 100 million. You know, what was it that changed for you there? Or connected or just the thing that took it off or. You said, I finally found the formula.
- [36:08]
B
Yeah. What I'll say is I have another mentor. His name, Randy Massengill. And he says there's two tyrants of leadership. So there's scrutiny and expectations. So whenever you do or succeed or better yourself, you create space between you and other people. Right. They're. They're here. You were here, now you're here. They get uncomfortable with that. So they're either going to scrutinize you or expect things from you. So, number one, scrutiny. I told you, my superiors did not make it easy for me. They actually tried to get me kicked out the military, had my rank and money taken from me, thrown in the brig. All the things, dude, they were not happy. But it got kicked up to the CEO of the command. He's like, hey, you. You didn't break any rules here. You can have a nice day. And I was in there with my superiors, and I about face and left. And I could see the steam coming off their head, they were so pissed. So I had to. I cruised out the remaining three and a half years in the military making six figures a month, and nobody could f. With me, basically. And I just did my time honorably. You know, I got an honorable discharge. I did my time, I did my job, and. And. And I built my business. That's a scrutiny the expectation part is the beautiful part. You know, I had a master chief come up to me. E9. That's the highest rank you can go active duty. Hey, man, I'm 45 years old. Been in the Navy for 25 years. I'm getting out next month and I don't want to sit in a classroom full of 19 year olds. Will you teach? You do. Because that's what you do. You go. You have to go back to college and get your degree and all.
- [37:31]
A
Whatever, Ed, all that. Yeah, yeah.
- [37:32]
B
So, yeah, I went home, created a course, gave it to him. Worst course you've ever seen. Uploaded to Dropbox. And the next weekend he landed a client making a thousand a month. He came back, gave me 900 bucks. And, and I joke and I'm like, dude, where's the other hundred? Thought you made a thousand. It's only 900, you know. But no, I was very grateful. But that's when I realized people are willing to pay you for what, you know. Yeah, right. So I just double down on that. I. I realized there's a lot of that whole system active duty to even get finding a job. There's a class you go through called taps. It's like a week long and the system's broken, bro. It's. It's like horrible. I went through it. They, the best they do is show you how to set up a LinkedIn profile and yeah, resume, like that's it, you know.
- [38:18]
A
Well, that's the typical. That let's. I don't want to go too deep in there, but that is the typical person teaching the class who's never done it themselves. They haven't done anything, they don't know anything, and they're just teaching it scholastically. And scholastic does not work in the real world.
- [38:33]
B
Not at all. Not at all. So I realized there's a massive opportunity here to help military transition online. So I doubled down on it, created official course, all the things. I created programs that went from do it yourself to done with you to done for you. Then I started having masterminds and in person experiences and all the things. Sold packages up to $55,000, you know, and we, we got to the point where we were actually building marketing agencies, running ads for them, and closing their first client for them and then giving them a franchise in a box is basically model work at the end of it. And that was my top tier program. And we did all that in about two or three days at my penthouse in San Diego.
- [39:17]
A
Wow.
- [39:18]
B
Okay. So that's kind of like the Journey.
- [39:20]
A
I've been in that penthouse actually many years ago I might have been in that penthouse.
- [39:24]
B
Yeah, it was, it was a while back, right?
- [39:25]
A
Yeah.
- [39:26]
B
But yeah, so. And then I didn't just help veterans, dude, obviously. Turns out a lot of people want to know how to make money, right? And if you have something real that works, you know, a lot of people be willing invested with that. So we work with, I work with surgeons, nurse practitioners, the bartender at TGI Fridays, like all over the board, dude. And it's been highly, highly successful. But what I found that worked best for me because lead quality is always an issue. So the way we solved it back then is we would, we would actually target higher sophisticated type of investor people or net worth people. So I would speak to the nurse practitioner that was running around the hospital floors for 20, 30 years servicing patients and she's tired, you know, she wants to be at home with the kids or the grandkids and, and she wants to turn her, her career experience into an online business. So I say, well what, what if you're a lead provider for medical, private medical practices all over the country, you have 20 years a nurse practitioner, you know, and speak the lingo now you can be the go to lead provider to provide new patients to their clinic. So I would do that for the, for them. The, the, the guy that's been roofing for 20 years, right. The guy that owns the restaurant that's tired of the restaurant but has 20 years of running a restaurant experience, you know, so now he's going out helping restaurants all over the country generate leads. So that's how I would get them to transition out of the career and get into the online lead generation space. And those people were willing to spend 25 to even 50k to come learn.
- [41:01]
A
They would, they got the money and B, they have the experience and they know what their experience is worth. They're not fakers. They actually, they've done it. So for sure that makes sense. Yeah, I love that. And then, and then what? So while the transition, what you went from this $100 million coaching business and now I know we go into the SaaS product, we're going to do a part two on that one because this is just so fascinating, but just, just to leave us on the hook there. What, like what was the transition to change from the coaching to, to a software?
- [41:35]
B
So when you're. I spent 30 million on ads. We were spending that peak about a million a month on ads. Right. And I, because we're selling high ticket, I couldn't look at my P. L. Month to month. I have to look at it over a quarter because I knew two months were going to be in red, one green, one month was going to be green, but it's gonna be like boom, like this and make the quarter look good. I had two quarters back to back in the red and I lost over $11 million. That's ad spend, payroll, tech, legal, all the things you can think of, right? Lost a whole lot of money. Conversions, drop. We didn't know what the heck was going on. I hired the best of the best. Couldn't figure it out. Maybe it was ad fatigue, right? You know, lead quality was an issue. Marketing team said the leads were great because the applications had high income, but the sales teams got. Guys are like, dude, they're broke. Like they're lying on the application. So I basically got introduced at that point. I was at my lowest in business trying to figure it out. Got introduced to my partner Eric, who's been in the financial world for the last 20 years. He was working on some technology but had no idea how to put it into digital marketing. And I came and I'm like, dude, let's partner. I can, I know I can fix this for you. So we came together and I created LeadFi AI and basically what it does, right, when somebody gives you their name, email, phone number, I'll get you their exact credit score, how much money they can spend on their cards, their annual income, debt to income ratio, even pre approvals for additional funding. And I can also get like all their assets. So 401k, IRAs, real estate, stocks, bonds, CDs, ETFs, like everything, dude. So now, without a shadow of a doubt, you know, if they're financially capable or not, you can inject it into your sales process, how you run your ads online. It's beautiful now.
- [43:17]
A
Yeah, it is. And I, and I know a little bit about it because we discussed it, but I definitely want to go deeper into it for you on part two. If, if we, if we may, I'll ask you this one last question as we come to an end, because I just. The. The resilience, the determination you had, the just. I even. I love the entrepreneurship of like getting the job done before they even pay you. Someone is sitting there and they're listening right now and maybe their business isn't working or they're. They're on the cusp, if you remember the cusp of giving up what is comfortable, to go in the abyss of the unknown for a better life, what.
- [43:55]
B
Would you say to them, man. So what comes to mind is this quote from Virginia, Satire. She's like a legendary author. And the quote is, most people choose the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty. So, yeah, that hits every. I get goosebumps every time I hear it. So picture this. There's two doors, right? Door number one. The life as you know it. Same job, same career, same business, whatever it is, you're not happy, you're not fulfilled, right? The same car, this, you know, all the same stuff, right? 99 of people will go through door number one because they're certain of what they're going to get, but they're miserable there or unhappy or not fun. Fulfilled. Right? And that's very unfortunate. Door number two. It's all your goals, dreams, aspirations are behind that door. Everything that you want, a better, you know, a better business, multiple locations, you know, scaled the white picket fence, a new house, you know, the better education system for your kids. All the things are there. But it's hard to step through that door because you're not 100% sure. Like, wow, that's going to play out. It seems super high, risky. And it's a miserable feeling to go through that and take that risk. But I gotta tell you, man, every single multimillionaire billionaire that I ever met, I always ask him, hey, door number one, door number two. They're door number two all day.
- [45:16]
A
Yeah.
- [45:16]
B
You know, and I. Even Damon John, you know, had a conversation with him, and Damon John said, hey, door number one for me was driving a taxi in the streets of New York where and if I was going to get stabbed in the neck, right? Door number two got him. Fubu, which is a multi, multi billion dollar brand. So, you know, choose your heart. They're both tough, right? Which one is going to bring you more success, fulfillment, opportunity for you and your family? So I, as entrepreneurs and myself, definitely, I have to choose your own number number two daily, because it's a daily discernment. It's hard every day, right? I get up, there's days I don't want to do, I don't want to take calls, do all the things. But I got to think about, why did I start this? Why am I here and my kids, my family, my faith, those are the things that really push me forward. And when I see the impact that I have on other people's lives, and I know what I know is going to change their life, I. I feel it's my moral duty, my moral obligation to show up every day for them, Right?
- [46:18]
A
Yeah.
- [46:19]
B
Door number two is where it's at, man. Always choose.
- [46:22]
A
I love it. So you in life, you got your options. Door number one, it's comfortable at this a way of saying it was like this. If you go through door number one, your life will be easy. Your. Your life, what is it? Your life will be easy. And that's why you'll live a hard life. If you go number two, your life will be hard, but that is why you'll live an easy life. So I love it. And again, Douglas, thank you so much. This story is incredible. I appreciate you. People that want to get to know you, they want to find you where they come in.
- [46:49]
B
Yeah, go. I mean, Instagram is probably the easiest place. Just go there. Douglas James should be the first one to blue check. But I think the handle is at the un underscore. Douglas James. My main website is lead by AI. You can check that out if you like as well.
- [47:02]
A
Awesome. All right, Douglas, thank you so much.
- [47:04]
B
All right. Thank you, Kayvon.
- [47:05]
A
And that was another episode with the Vault Unlocked, where proven builders, real strategies, and unstoppable growth happens. Subscribe now, because the next unlock could be the one that rewires your business forever. This is where the playbook is revealed and the Vault is unlocked.