Ryan Alford (2:22)

Yeah, really what it is. And so what do they say? Knowledge is power. And so, yes, that's what we're all about, to spread the knowledge. Anik, where's. Where's home? Where are we coming from today?

Onyx Singhal (2:32)

Yeah. Maryland. Maryland. So just about 30 minutes from D.C. oh, okay.

Ryan Alford (2:36)

Oh, you're in the center of compliance.

Onyx Singhal (2:39)

I really am.

Ryan Alford (2:40)

I really am.

Onyx Singhal (2:41)

Hey, I am in the middle of my entire case when I was getting my butt beat down by the regulators. I actually drove up with my team and we had, we were invited into the building. It's a really crazy story. I can until later too, because something really crazy happened while I was there. But I walked into the FTC building, went up and presented to them. So, like, yeah, I'm drivable, you know, right there.

Ryan Alford (3:05)

There you go. Author of don't say that. You know, like, again, a lot of times this show is about the do's, but I'd like to say today might be about the don'ts. And that's okay because again, we're trying to inform and empower and, you know, you just don't really want to fuck with the American government. I'll just say that, you know, it's kind of like you want to avoid audits and you want to avoid a lot of things, but we're going to try to help you avoid all that. Today on let's, let's set the table for the audience. You know, I'm going to let you go here a lot because you got a Hollywood story for the most part. And so let's set the table for everyone on it, on, you know, who you are and how you made the wrong kind of history.

Onyx Singhal (3:56)

And now, you know. Yeah, I was going to follow up. Ryan would say, like, today is about some of the don'ts, but if you pay close enough attention and we'll wrap it all up for you at the end. And there's actually a great do in it and a huge do at the end of the culmination of the story. But 21 years. Started doing online marketing when I was still in college. I felt like a misfit in college. I kept bouncing around colleges and degrees. Thought I was going to end up broke in my parents basement because I wasn't liking it. It wasn't for me. I couldn't feel it. But I wanted to be an entrepreneur, man. I was the third grader with the lemonade stand that hired second graders to run the lemonade stand. I mean, that's who I was. It was in my blood from the time I was a little kid. And so I didn't have any money. So I turned to what was new back then. You ready? I'm going to age myself. Google, it was new. Facebook didn't even exist. And I turned to Google and I typed in how to make money. And Google thankfully filled in online for me and I was like, huh, that's interesting. What a concept. Sure, whatever. And I went through all of the different little envelopes stuff in, survey answering bullshit options and found my way into a forum that talked about selling PDFs and selling information. Now here's the thing. I was a college kid at this time, by the way. I'm on a full scholarship. So I mean I work hard, I'm never ever the smartest person in the room, I never will be, but I've yet to be in a room where anyone in that room can outwork me. I'm just, that's what I do. I just, you know, so I was on a full scholarship and it was in an amazing program, but I understood the concept of that. Every time the new semester came, my friends would spend three to $5,000 on textbooks. Like, we pay for education since we're kids, right? I mean my daughters, right now they're two and one, I chase them around with books, got to read books, right? We, the value of education is important. And my dad had built that into me too, so it made sense to me. I was like, huh, this is like a legit opportunity, right? Get rid of the middleman, connect the person who's actually doing with the person who wants to learn it. You know, charge, commoditize education. Fifty bucks, hundred bucks. This, this is amazing. Like this makes sense to me. Problem was I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Didn't know how to build a website, didn't know how to write, didn't know how to do any of this crap. And so I'm on this forum and I don't have any money. And back then we didn't have all these podcasts and coaches and courses and YouTube and I had to spend money to hire someone to help me and I didn't have it. So to piece it all together, 18 months, struggled my ass off. Finally something worked. And in that process I had lots of failures. And once I found something that worked, you know, it was SEO, affiliate marketing, then email list building, and then, you know, course publishing. And I kind of made my way through it. And by the time I graduated, so I started this journey in college in freshman year. By the time I graduated, Ryan, I was on pace to do over a million dollars. So within four years, right? While I was in college, while I was working a part time job, by the way, here's a funny side story. The first time I ever went to a college football game Now I went to a University of Maryland. Go Terps. We have a pretty intense football program and at the time that I was in college, we were, we were up there. Our basketball and football program were the best of the best. We were winning championships or at least good, you know, getting far in the playoffs. My first college football game I ever went to homecoming after I graduated. So when I was in college, I did not go to frat parties, I did not go to college games. I didn't. I was working hard, man, I was studying and I was doing my part time job. When I graduated, I had offers from Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Charles Schwab to come investment bank in New York. I mean I literally was living the dream that all my friends were dying for. And I said no to all the jobs because I wanted to do this. Built my business up. I've had near bankruptcies multiple times now three times. That's the magic number. So I'm done. I've been tested. The magic number for a lot of billionaires is they've almost lost everything three times. So I am good universe, hear me out now. I'm done with this. I don't want any more. You know, I've been up and down. I've traveled the world. I've spoken on stages for Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone. I've partnered with and been business partners with Robert Kiyosaki, Bob Proctor, Les Brown, Damon John from Shark Tank. Wrote the forward to my last book Escape. I mean I've made a movie. I was joking with you. I mean I'm on IMDb. I made a freaking Bond spoof film with a crew of 120 people where I conducted stunts. I was actually going to do massive stunts but I ended up having a problem and had to get surgery the week before. So it was either delay the entire shoot, which I didn't have the budget for, or cut out the stunts and do some really stupid shit and make it look like I'm doing stunts. So. But I've lived a really full life. I always joke and say I'm 41. I feel like I've lived at least normal person's two or three lifetimes. Built my company, done a couple hundred million dollars worth of sales online now and built my business at its peak was going to do 40 million and we were weeks away from selling. I mean due diligence was complete. I was at the rosy picture, the entrepreneur's dream and my dream was to sell a company by the time I was 40 and I was about to do that I was 39, and it was really hard, man. You know, when I started 20 years ago, Ryan, my hypothesis thesis in life, I was so appalled by the idea of someone having a job. It didn't make sense to me. It's gross. Why would anyone do that, right? So my thesis, when I graduated college, when I hadn't really met life yet, was, everybody should be an entrepreneur. Everybody. And 20 years later, 21, 22 years later, I stand before you and I'm saying 99.8% of the world should never be an entrepreneur. It's just not for everybody, right? So. But for me, it's the only path. I just can't see any other way. And so I love what I do. It comes with some really, really bad, really, really hard, trying, tough times. But I take it all in strides. I like it. And today I really feel like the don'ts and the do's is like, look, when everything was going exactly as I should, building that company for 20 years was the hardest thing I've ever done. Short of convincing my wife to marry me, it was the hardest thing I've ever done, okay? And we were right there, man. Right there. I tell people this analogy. Imagine you've been training for the Olympics for 20 years. You get into that, you're running, you're in the race, you're ahead. You're about to win everything you've dreamt of. Every broken bone, hard work, bruise, every morning you woke up at 4, every. Every shameful thing that happened, embarrassing thing that happened, you're two steps away from crossing the finish line, and you will be the gold medalist winner. Your life's dreams will have come true. You trip, you fall, you break your ankle. Not only do you not win that race, you can't race for another two, three years. And when you come back, the doctors are like, you're gonna have to retrain this entire ankle. You're back to where you were 10, 15 years ago. So do you still want to win the Olympic medal or do you want to give up on it now? And that's what happened with me. So when the FTC came knocking and came, it was a hard reset in my life. I lost the acquisition. I lost everything. My daughter had just been born. My first born, my first daughter had just been born three weeks prior. The dream was to be a dad for a year and then start another company. And like, I lost everything, right? So that's my background, man. I've done it all, built it all, done crazy things. I've traveled the world. I'VE lived in other parts of the world. I'm. I'm an experience driven person, so I'll do stupid things just for the experience. I have zero regrets. And today the do's and the don'ts. Well, I'm going to talk a bunch bunch about the don'ts. The do's I want you to pay attention to is look at what I did with the most tragic, horrible thing that happened to me in my life. And by the way, people always ask me, what is it like to be sued by the ftc? I'm just going to give this example, Ryan, and I'll shut up and let you kind of talk. But I always tell people this. So there was a period of my time in my life that I was in the ICU. I was in the ICU for 92 days, okay? I was losing two pints of blood a day. So every day they had to infuse me with two pints of blood. I have a condition called Crohn's disease. It got out of control. My gut, my intestines were literally like, eroding. And I was flat on a hospital bed in the icu. Now, by the way, side story, I would get in trouble. I almost got kicked out of a hospital. You ever heard of someone actually getting ejected, evicted from a hospital because I refused to stop working in the icu? I would get blackberries. We didn't. IPhones didn't exist. I would get blackberries snuck into the ICU by my team members and I would. Because I did a product launch from inside the ICU when I was dying, okay? Because I was like, as long as I'm breathing, I don't give a shit if I'm breathing. I'm fighting. There's no excuses. And that kept me alive, by the way. What else am I supposed to do? Sit there and watch reruns of freaking Family Guy or something? Like, it's not gonna happen. So I'm in the icu. I'm flat. What happened is if they even put my hospital bed up, meaning I'm not like actually leaning up the hospital bed, just up. If I was just like, you know, just sit up, my heart rate would spike to 180. They'd have to put me right back down. So for three months, I was flat. Couldn't get out of bed, couldn't walk, Never, never, never walked. Nothing. I was just in. I was in really bad shape. Three months later, they basically said, we don't have a. We don't have an option. We have to do A very, very large surgery on him, 10 hours minimum. And they told my family 50, 50 if he wakes up. Like we just would not be surprised. His body is super weak. We don't know. My sister's flying in, my family's flying in to say whatever. And I did obviously wake up and went through hell. Had to set up a makeshift hospital in my parents basement. Took me two months of physical therapy just to be able to walk up the steps again because don't use it, you lose it. I lost my legs six months after that, had to have surgery again. A month after that surgery I was back in the ICU for 30 days. Had to have a third surgery. That was a really hard year of my life. Being investigated by the FTC for 18 months was harder. And I say that looking you dead square in the eyes. I'm not trying to make stuff up. So I took what is the hardest part of my life, the most tragic part of my life, the most painful part of my life, the part that of most people, everyone has something like this in their life. Okay, you could have gone through a nasty divorce, you could have gone through, lost something or someone or God, there's anything. And what we tend to do is we tend to compartmentalize it, build a membrane around it, put it away and say I don't want to touch it, I don't want to see it. But it lives there. It's that little demon that sits there and it eats at you. You can't ignore or avoid it. So for me it was like, I'm not, I'm front and centering this thing. I'm going to live it, I'm going to experience it. And if what happened in that was it ended up becoming my mission. So I turned the most tragic thing in my life to now what looks like is will be the greatest victory of my life because I wasn't going to let it sit there for my entire life and be this thing, this dirty thing that I don't talk about or I don't deal with. But I was going to instead turn it into the best thing that's ever happened to me. And so that's a little thing I want everyone to think about right now. Is there can walk away with something today, right now. What is that little demon you've hidden away? What is that thing that aches you, hurts you, that triggers you, that you've put away and how could it serve you rather than hurting you? So anyways, that's my monologue. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk today.

Ryan Alford (15:35)

Hey, man, I don't have to. I like to let my guests, you know, be the heroes to tell the story. You know, they, they know, they hear me talk every show, but I do Onyx want to dive like obviously into the specifics. We'll get to the FTC stuff. I, I want to obviously build to that. I'm more curious as being, you know, one of the top copywriters and inform information marketers ever. It's been an interesting, I don't know, 10 years in the space with selling information, coaching, all that stuff. I'd love to hear your perspective about, you know, what's changed, what's the same, you know, in that space, you know, like what you saw and what were some of your biggest successes in sort of information marketing.

Onyx Singhal (16:28)

Yeah. Okay, so first of all, it's become a true wild, wild west and we are due for a shakedown. It's going to happen. It happens in every industry. It's not unique to us. And I've already lived through two of these. The last shakedown happened in 2010. Between 2010 and 2012, quite frankly, we're about a couple of years overdue. Covid came in and did some weird stuff, all right? And it changed the timelines, otherwise we would have had an industry correction already. Now, the shakedown, the way it works is too many people are teaching shit they shouldn't be. Let's just face it, too many. Look, if you want to act as if for your own self, to give yourself encouragement and to give yourself motivation, like do what you want when it's.

Ryan Alford (17:12)

Just you, yeah, fine.

Onyx Singhal (17:14)

But if I find out that my math teacher is acting as if they know math and they don't and they're teaching me math, like we have a problem, right? I'll never forget. I'll never forget. So I'm fascinated by marketing college. I walk up to my marketing 101 professor, okay, sophomore year, and he said, I really like the guy. He's fascinating. When I listened to him talk, I thought he was really, really brilliant. I walked up to him and he was older, so I kind of assumed that he must have worked as vp, CMO of marketing for big companies. Now he's retiring and he became a professor. I don't know. Went up to him and said, hey, what companies have you done marketing for? And he starts telling me a list of companies he's consulted. And I said, no, I was curious, like, where have you worked? Like, where have you led? You know? And turns out he was a 35 year professor. He has Never actually had a job in marketing. And I thought, what the. I walked away. I didn't even come to class after that. Honestly, I was so turned off by the whole thing. I'm like, this is such bullshit. So there's a lot of that going on right now in the industry. Okay. And there was a lot of it going on back in 2008, 2009. Here's what happens when the economy takes a weird hitch. And I'm not here to say that the economy is going down because that seems to trigger half the people. So. But can we all agree on one thing? We're in a conflicted economy, which means half of the world's like, dude, we're in a shit show. The other half of the world's like, this is. I've never seen anything better. Here's another thing we can agree on. Whether it's today, a year from now, five years from now, there's going to be a correction. Has to be that market's going to go down. It has to. There's no period in history. It's actually healthy. It better correct. Otherwise we're in for a really big problem later. So given that fact, we know we're going to go through this, we might be in it now, we're going to go through it soon. When that happens. Culmination, you've added to that the fact that there is this. So now what happens? The demand pulls back. The amount of money people are spending on stuff pulls back, back. But you've got an oversupply of coaches and trainers and educators because they sprang up right during all the pandemic time and it just generally they spring up now. We got worldwide, India, it's like growing like weeds in Asia. Coaches and core sellers. So we've got more options, more people, and it's driving prices down. It's this weird. What's happening though, with the increase in demand. Cost of advertising is going up, pricing is coming down, demand is pulling back from the consumers. It's creating a complete constrain. So businesses are going to fall apart. And so it's a shakedown. What happens now is all the people that really aren't here to be here, that know what the hell they're doing, that aren't doing this out of a great place, a passion, right? People always tell me like, I'm like, I haven't made shit from this guys. This whole mission. I am in the hole by over a million, maybe $1.5 million. That's right. I know I'm not making that up. I can substantiate this. I'm not in the business of making crap up. I already got sued for that crap. So I mean it. So. But it's my passion that drives this. I want the message out. And I firmly believe that enough of that will. Eventually it'll come around, right? And I'm the right person to teach us. I got some other marketers right now that are trying to come and teach FTC stuff, and I just sit there, pat them on the head and say, this is so stupid. You can't. You don't have the story, you don't have the experience, you don't have the connections, you don't have the knowledge. So I'm seeing a lot of that in the space, and I saw it before and it cleaned itself out, and it's going to happen again. As far as what's working, there's one big difference between what worked 10, 15 years ago and today. One big difference in the infospace, and that is how people convert. 10, 15 years ago, good copy, you know, sexy copy, video sales page was enough. People came and read it. Today. It's kind of irrelevant. All right? It's kind of irrelevant. We're in a very communal based consumer base now, especially with the younger audiences growing up. It's been proven, studies have actually proven that all generations, like, kind of like Millennial and below, will much rather pay more money to buy the same product that they actively know. They can buy for cheaper, but they'll pay more money because they have the connection they feel to the brand, because of how much they believe in the brand and what the. What the brand stands for, that message. So the word I'm coming out here is community. It's brand building. And this is not something traditional direct marketers are aware of or even know. I wouldn't be before you today. I could not be here in front of you today, Ryan, if it wasn't for the brand I built. I always focused on my brand. It cost me millions. I made a lot less money. But I stand before you today in the same industry, tall, proud, chin up. And nobody, nobody in the industry, you know, persecuted me for what happened with the ftc. Otherwise, for a lot of people, that's a kill shot. They're done. They disappear. Yet before I stand in front of it all, why? Because I. My reputation spoke for itself. I had taken time to build the brand. So if you're doing information marketing, your coach, whatever, first and foremost, change your windows. You can't focus anymore on converting. Same day, next day, You've got to do 30, 60, 90 day windows, you've got to do content marketing. You have to win people over with your substance. And that's where the shakedown is going to happen. Because the people that are acting as if have no substance, the market's going to weed you out. They're going to see right through it. So if you want to do it today versus 10 years ago, sure, you still need to know copy, sure, you still need to understand funnels, but in the end, believe me or not, the market sees through all of that crap now. And they're looking for you. They're looking for what you really stand for, and they're looking for what you do when no one's looking. They always say, have you heard that thing, Ryan, where if you want to know, teach your daughter that when she goes on a date with a guy to really judge the character of the guy, watch how he treats the waiter, the hostess, and the person who drove them there. That's going to tell you the character of the person. So for an information marketer, what are they doing between the time that they're pitching you? How are they serving the community? What is information? And most people are just not willing to put that time in. They're just not, they're not respond to every single chat in their Facebook community. They're not going to put out podcasts like you do. This isn't easy. People think we just spring up, but, you know, we had to connect, we had to schedule. You went through a hurricane, you got a studio, you've got team members. You had to take time away from your schedule. You barely got a chance to eat lunch. Right. That kind of dedication, Ryan, is what it takes today. And it didn't need. You didn't need that 10, 15 years ago. You just didn't. You could, you could glide through.

Ryan Alford (23:54)

Well, you're singing from the playbook, baby. I've been in 20 marketing for 22 years preaching brand, you know, and I've been telling people that, you know, because I'm not a cla, I'm a classical brand guy, brand builder, not a classical performance marketing guy. Like I've, I've become, you know, I own a digital agency, so of course we know funnels and performance marketing, but I'm more of a classical. And I've been telling people you guys are getting hooked on a drug that ain't going to last with the performance marketing because you're not building your brand and you got to do both. And the brand stands over time because you're just building a house of cards otherwise. And you got to have substance, credibility, and some real, I mean, yeah, likability and all that's important, but at the end of the day, the substance is what matters. The, the expertise. And then, and we're talking about like one to one information sharing. But even as a brand, you know, you've got to stand for more than just a feature set of your product. It's got to be, you know, stickier than that. And that takes time. You build brand over time and hope for sales overnight. And so it's, I'll give you this.

Onyx Singhal (25:06)

I learned this, I did this, I'm a byproduct of it. That which you build fast will crumble even faster. And that which takes a long time to build will last you a lifetime.

Ryan Alford (25:17)

Yeah.

Onyx Singhal (25:18)

So a brand will take you a long time to build, but it'll feed you forever.

Ryan Alford (25:23)

Yep.

Onyx Singhal (25:23)

It just. And I'm, I'm a, I, I'm standing before you today. How many people in our Internet marketing circle have made it 20 plus years? It's, I can count on probably two hands. I don't mean, I mean, I mean it really. Right. And every single one of them has a strong brand. But at the same time, learn as a company. We built it as a rocket ship. You know, there was no slow and steady 10% a month increase. Optimize and you know, do the CRO work and do the split testing and focus on one funnel and painstakingly obsess over every part of your product delivery process. That ain't me. I didn't do that. We were, you know, and look how fast it crumbled. Look, look how, look how weak the foundation ended up being. Even though I was doing 40 million, it was super profitable and was about to sell. What I'm doing today, what I'm doing now, you know, for our software company, it's taking us anywhere from three to six months to close contracts with big enterprise companies. But those companies are closing a contract after giving two to three week demo periods. They're reviewing it, they're having meetings with their C levels, they're fully buying in or saying no. But one thing, the ones that we're buying in, they're gonna be with us for years and they're gonna pay big fees. So albeit it's really hard right now in the early stages, but come talk to me in three years when we've got a ridiculous MRR and I'm able to start every month knowing that we're not only covered, but in Profit. And that all I have to do day and night is obsess about that product. It's a great life. So what? Most marketers, unfortunately, Ryan, are not trained towards and spend kind of my. My thing now. I call it change. Change the timeline. And that is flip it over. So many of us want to make the million in 30 days, and now me today. Any opportunity that can make me a million in 30 days, I almost always know it's the wrong opportunity. I'd rather make it over the course of a year, but then know that next year it'll make me 1.3, 1.4, and the year after that it'll make me, you know, 2. And then I want that because I know that whatever that is, it's going to grow much, much stronger and much better. So brand is the exact same way. You can' brand in 30 days. You just can't. Unless you're the H girl. And then, you know.

Ryan Alford (27:46)

Yeah, I don't know if you want that brand.

Onyx Singhal (27:50)

If that's your brand you want.

Ryan Alford (27:52)

That's gonna have a shelf life too, you know, Like, I mean, you know, she's ready. I. Hey, good for her for riding the wave. But like always, they eventually hit the sand, you know, Ar, Let's. Let's get to it. What the hell did you do that got the FTC in your shit?

Onyx Singhal (28:13)

You ready?

Ryan Alford (28:14)

I'm ready.

Onyx Singhal (28:15)

I have no freaking clue. You know, after 18 damn months of getting my some things I probably shouldn't say just getting a beat down. All right, I don't know. Here's the crazy thing. You have to answer every single question. Not only do you have to answer every question, you have to spend, in my case, millions of dollars finding them the answers that they're asking. You cannot ask a single question back. They want to answer it. Why are you here? What tipped you off? So let me go over some facts and some stats, right? Because everybody listening right now is like, oh, dude, what the hell? Do you have this guy on your podcast where he's obviously a sleazeball scammer asshole. Because you have to see one after him. Right? Because of course, our federal government's never, ever wrong about anything.

Ryan Alford (29:07)

Yeah. My audience knows better. So. All right. Okay.

Onyx Singhal (29:14)

Okay, Good. Right. Hey, ftc still love you.

Ryan Alford (29:17)

We don't hold them coming either, but.

Onyx Singhal (29:19)

Yeah, First Amendment freedom of speech. Come on. All right, okay. So the some facts about our business, and here's the irony, and I'll tell a really funny story that everyone will love, but the main thing they send you Something called a cid. It's a civil investigative demand. Okay. It's a subpoena. Same thing. They just have a fancy name for it. And in the subpoena, about 36 pages. It came in a FedEx envelope, which I keep around here somewhere to inspire myself. I don't know where I put it. And it had a huge list of stuff that I need to do. Oh, yeah, dude, I'm a total masochist about this shit. Like, I've got the letter, I got the FedEx thing. I'm like, I stare at it. I'm like, I. This thing, I need to get over my PTSD about it. Oh, here it is.

Ryan Alford (30:08)

Oh, so there you go.

Onyx Singhal (30:10)

All right.

Ryan Alford (30:11)

Oh, dude, I tried that thing. Like the mo. Like I had the world. I have the world's biggest pity parties. Like, I bring clowns in, I'll bring in little kids I like. We're going to have a big old pity party, but for one day. And then I burn it. All of it.

Onyx Singhal (30:25)

Yeah, I don't want any proof playground.

Ryan Alford (30:26)

Because I'm, I'm on the upswing and.

Onyx Singhal (30:29)

Yeah, yeah, well, remember, my upswing has to do with that. So that's why I keep it around.

Ryan Alford (30:33)

There you go. There you go.

Onyx Singhal (30:34)

To remind myself. But yeah, so I had taken this stuff pretty seriously. Okay, so. Oh yeah, so I was telling you, I went in and I actually. So the investigative document mostly spoke about things I had said in my webinar because that was like my main, main way of selling. I mean, we had sold 56,000 customers on a webinar. It was insane. Like thousand plus dollar products. If you do the math, that's like over $56 million done through webinars. And that was my main mode of selling. And so they had obviously watched them. And if you watch a four hour webinar with a marketer, you're telling me they're not going to say something that somebody can twist and somehow make. Blah, blah, blah. Anyways, so, yeah, I said things I'm not going to, you know, now I go back Monday morning, quarterback the thing. I'm like, gosh. And I said that. But you're, you know, you believe in what you're selling, you're passionate about it. I love selling. I enjoy this. I enjoy doing webinars.

Ryan Alford (31:31)

Well, I mean, at the end of.

Onyx Singhal (31:32)

Day, was it over promises?

Ryan Alford (31:34)

Potentially.

Onyx Singhal (31:34)

Oh, sorry. Yeah. So basically unsubstantiated claims. Okay. That's what it comes down to. So they pulled these statements, they put it in the cid, they sent it to me and they said, send us proof of all of this stuff. But here's the thing. I want you to understand. For the longest time, I had a compliance attorney I consulted with. I took this stuff seriously because I knew I'm in the territory that gets regulated pretty aggressively. And I was growing really fast. So what I did is I had a full time paralegal in my company. I had, you know, we really kept things tight. And what I was told by many attorneys by the industry, the thought process was simple, be good, do good, you're good, listen. And the FTC comes for those who gets a lot of. Who get a lot of complaints. Duh, that's great. I was on the sidelines cheering them on, like, let's go ftc. Look at that sleazeball. Go get them. Because they give my industry a bad name. So I remember a case came out not too long before mine. I heard about it and I said, yeah, I've been waiting for you. That guy needs to go down. A week, week or two weeks later, I get the letter. I'm like, whoa, whoa, time out, time out, time out.

Ryan Alford (32:38)

What's going on here?

Onyx Singhal (32:39)

There's collateral damage. This is not right.

Ryan Alford (32:41)

Now, were you vocal outwardly about that? Which is what you think got the attention? Okay, you just saying in your mind and with your close circle, you were saying that, but you were not even.

Onyx Singhal (32:53)

That's. It's me in the bathroom alone.

Ryan Alford (32:57)

Yes, I got you. Yeah.

Onyx Singhal (33:00)

So my stats. We had a less than 5% refund rate. We had a 0.7% chargeback rate. We had an A rating at the BBB. We were doing 20,000 transactions a year with 20 complaints at the BBB, all 100% resolved. We had never over. After having served 200,000 customers in a 20 year window, we had never received a legal notice. Notice how? I didn't say we had never been sued. I said we'd never even received a legal letter. We had no issues with contractors, vendors, customers, anybody. We had done wrong to nobody. And we had a great reputation. You could Google me. Hell, I've survived 20 years with Google. Mostly good things being said about me, right? There's of course a few haters, but here they are. It didn't matter. We did ask. I at one point said, what's going on? Like I could point to 17 other people that you probably should go after before me. What is going on? I have no complaints. My customers are happy. They love me. What I was told by my attorneys is the answer they got back, was it's irrelevant. I'm sorry. For 12 years I was told that's the only thing that matters. What do you mean it's irrelevant? I have a customer support team. I built three support teams that worked eight, eight, eight hour shifts. I had one in the western world, one in Europe and one in Asia. So that could cover all time zones, nights, weekends, holidays, everything. 36 minute response time, we're good. And it's like, why'd you say that sentence? I knew at that point I'm like, all right, this is not going to go well. So I don't think it was complaint driven that got them looking at me. I think there was some guilty by association. There's other cases they've had in the past that I was not a part of in any way I was not doing business with. But I was friends with those people. I know from people that my name has come up in past depositions where they were asking if I was involved in something and I clearly wasn't. And I was told and those people would say no, he has nothing to do with this. But you know, this is why they say be careful who you're around. I guess, I don't know. I have no idea, man. They never did. The last question I still asked when the case was over, done signed judge, signed press release out. You're done beating me down. Can I get closure? Can you tell me? Have a good day. So you know, but that's, that's the thing. They're watching and listening and technically if you're breaking the rule, they have, they have, they have the ability to come for you. I mean you're going last year found guilty.

Ryan Alford (35:27)

I mean no.

Onyx Singhal (35:28)

So we never went to trial. So we settled and I still till this day don't agree with the case. I don't agree with what they said. I don't think I did bad.

Ryan Alford (35:35)

Did you get fine?

Onyx Singhal (35:35)

Okay, yeah. So two and a half million dollar fine and their fine is also really weird how it works, Ryan. So they, what they did is I had done in the three year window that they can go after I had done 65 million in revenue and. But thanks to a case that closed in August of April of 2021. It's a long story but basically let's just say they lost the ability to go after financial redress. They don't like to call it fines for web driven sales. And I told you most of my sales were webinars. But telesales, ah, section 19, they love that because that's not been hit yet by The Supreme Court. So they found out that about 14 million of the 65 million was done on the phone. It's about 20%. I hated having a sales team, but so we kept it small. So they made their case about the 14 million and they show up and they're like, all right, all 14 million of your stuff was fraud and lies. Give it back. I disagree. So, no. All right, well, then, you know, and I'm like, hold on, what's the damages? And they said, the damages of the full amount. I. What? No, right, but so then it's like, what's it going to take to settle this? And this is not what they said, but this is. And I'm going through my lawyers, by the way. So I'm just hearing what my lawyers say. What it felt like. They said, Ryan, was what you got? Yeah, I'm on the streets. What's going on here, guys? Yeah, I'm getting hustled. Like, what do you mean, what I got? So I had to do a full financial disclosure. They would not settle. They said, absolutely, we will not settle. We'll take you to court. We want to see everything you got. We want a full disclosure. Investment accounts, properties, trusts, companies, cash accounts, crypto properties, commercial, residential, your own house, cars, any collectibles worth over 500 bucks or something. Everything. We want it all. And then they basically start there. So they call it ability to pay. And so thankfully, my lawyer did a great job and we came to a conclusion of two and a half million. That was after a lot of negotiation, months of negotiation. But what people don't realize, people will be like, oh, my God, Onik, that's another man. You've made millions. Well, hold on a second. I lost a multi deca million dollar acquisition. I spent a million dollars just in team expenses to do the discovery. I spent $200,000 in forensics companies. I spent over a million dollars with my lawyers. I had a company doing 40 million at a 20% profit margin that I lost. That's 8 million a year that I had to shut down. Not because the FTC told me to shut it down. They never did. They never cared. They never forced themselves on me. They never, you know, But I was a publishing company, man. Ryan, if I'm publishing you using your pictures, your face, your message as and on ads and promoting, and you end up finding out, which I'm never going to hide. Even though I don't have to tell you. I'm under investigation. It's a confidential process. I would never hide that. That's not My character. If I call you and I'm like, hey, Ryan, man, just. Little thing. Keep doing what you're doing. Everything's great. The FTC is investigating me. So what's the first thing you're going to say?

Ryan Alford (38:46)

We need to back out of this time out.

Onyx Singhal (38:48)

Yeah, we need to pause our stuff, man. I paused everything before I even called the experts to tell them that this was happening. So I got the notice on Friday. Monday morning, we shut down. We literally shut down. We turned off every campaign, shut down. A $40 million year engine. And because 80% of my revenue came from other people that I was publishing. So the company I took 20 years to build, that literally almost killed me trying to build it, which I finally did it, and I unlocked it, and I was about to sell it, I lost it. Last two steps to go. I tripped and broke my ankle. Right. I'd start all over, so. So, yeah, I mean, that's what the process was like. And that's. I don't know anything more than that. I can make assumptions, that's all.

Ryan Alford (39:33)

So don't say that. What. What's the ultimate. You know, we'll turn to how we've turned this into the dues. And, you know what you're doing now quickly. But ultimately, if you were counseling our audience, what should they not do?

Onyx Singhal (39:53)

Okay, five things. So we call it the Pentagon of compliance. And I'll go through this quickly. Number one. Okay. And in no order of importance. Okay, Actually, I think the fifth one's probably the most important. Number one, misrepresentations. They call them out. See, now, at this point, I actually study different complaint letters and stuff, and I try to see what they say about companies. Misrepresentations are their nice way of saying what they think are lies. So 22 seats left. That's it. Come on. 500 bucks. Discount goes away after 22. And yet here you are selling it for 40 seats. 50 seats. You just made that shit up that they don't like at all. And that's strictly against the law. Okay? Misrepresentation. This Bonus is worth $5,000. Whose grandmother said this is worth $5,000? Where the hell did you get that from? Oh, it's taking me 20 years of my knowledge. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how this works, man. You can't just make. They hate, hate that. All right, number two, net impression. It's right there. Why are we not taught this in section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission act, which formed the FTC? They use the word net impression. This is the only thing the FTC cares about. You know what marketers love to do? Okay, I didn't say you'd make $10,000 a month. I said you might make $10,000 a month.$ I use please don't out lawyer. Lawyers, like, don't try. Yeah, they already covered that. They say, what is a net impression? They say, if we took your copy and handed it to a stranger walking on the street, a normal average consumer, what would they walk away thinking about your copy? You are responsible for the assumptions being made by the consumer. So if you are using words and terms and giving claims, you better be damn clear to them. They better not walk away with the assumption that they're going to make that net impression is the most important rule of them all. What is the net impression of your copy? Number three, claims, earnings, implied performance and lifestyle. So you know those videos you love to do in front of your Lambos? All to our Lambros. They hate it. They're so sarcastic about talking about these lifestyle videos of the big houses and the gold chains and the private jets and all that. They can't stand it. But the number one thing that they come for is express earnings claims. Here's how to make $30,000. Harris ought to lose 32 pounds. These are very specific numbers. And if you don't have two types, you have to have proof of typicality. That's what people don't understand. Just because you have three or four people that have been able to do it and you were able to do it is not enough. I can't sell you a Ferrari, Ryan, and say you're going to win the Formula one race. What? We've had Ferraris win the Formula one race before. It could happen. You could win them. No. I can tell you it's a fast car, but I can't make these specific claims. And no other industry, no other place do people actually do that. Number four, substantiation. By far the biggest key. If you're making absolute statements, you need substantiations. So, for example, in mine, I had a claim that I had been top three entrepreneurs under 25 by Business Week way back ago. Problem was, Business Week is gone. They nuked their website. Everything's done. I couldn't find the magazine. It was too old. And so the FTC was like, prove it. We don't see it anywhere. So down to that level, all right, we are the best. Five out of six doctors recommend us. Like, these are all things you need to have substantiation and proof of it. Go through your copy, look for absolute statements, create a Google folder, dump all the proof in there and if you don't have proof or something, remove it from your copy. This is vital because that this letter that came, that's all it was full of. Prove this, prove this, prove this, prove this, prove this, prove this, prove this, prove this. With substantiation and typicality. They wanted that last but not least, Number five, this is the one, the biggest one that they've been clear. They're not even hiding it. They're beating a drum about this since 2021 testimonials. They're sick and tired of marketers and businesses using testimonials incorrectly. So there's four rules to that. Number one, you need to have a written statement, you need to have a written affidavit signed by the customer who's giving you the testimonial. Okay, fine, not a big deal. Number two, you ready? Gets tough substantiation. If I'm going to use a results based testimonial. If I'm going to say, you know, Ryan, you just told me, hey, Onik, man, your stuff is so awesome. I made 100 grand in sales the next week after working with you. Great, thanks, Ryan. That's amazing. Could you please send me proof? Can I see the screenshots? Can I see the customer? Can I see the transactions? Can I see proof that it was actually thanks to my training, it's a little intrusive.

Ryan Alford (44:29)

Yeah.

Onyx Singhal (44:30)

People say, well, what is Ryan's claim? He has to prove it. Why do I have to prove it? Yeah, you're right. The problem is you took that claim, put it in your marketing and now it's your claim. So you have to have proof of it. Number three, typicality. I have a thousand customers. Ryan's just one of them. Is that the typical result of a customer who finishes your program? Notice how I said finish, not just bought it. If it isn't, you can't give the outlandish examples. It has to be within range. It has to be within range. All right, number four, last but by no means least, you have to have proximate disclosures all over the place. Not just at the beginning and the end. Throughout the copy, you have to be showing people that, hey, this doesn't mean it's everybody's results. So that's something we share in this book, by the way. Depending on a compliance. But that's not the only thing we go through each there's like 20 plus different things that we go through. But what we share when it comes to compliance is the following. You can't eliminate risk just by, you know, when you drive to work, I have to drive four minutes literally up the street. Every time I get in that car, I'm taking some level of risk. Right. I can put my seatbelt on. I can have a big car. I can take all these measures to reduce my risk. But there's some level of risk we can't eliminate. But you can reduce it if you want to reduce it. The most depend those five things. Those are your five key focuses. Then there's other things that can help reduce it a lot as well. But the most impact, 80% will come from those five.

Ryan Alford (45:53)

I do feel like. And that's a treasure trove of knowledge right there. That'd be, that'll be a little five minute course that will. Anna can package up and sell his five, his five keys and we'll give him that content too. That's why we're, why we do the show. We'll provide value to you and to our guests. But I'll say this, it does seem like every time now I notice the testimonial. It's the little fine mouse print below it. Not reflective of typical results.

Onyx Singhal (46:25)

Results not typical. Yep. It's not good enough. It was. They changed the rules in 2021 and they basically said, we don't give a shit anymore. Yeah. So in the past it was put that. And then, you know, this is why, this is why we can't have nice things, Ryan. This is why marketers can't have nice things. Because then we go and we abuse shit and we don't. We go outside the scope of what his intention was. So they just said, you know what? We can't trust all you kids with a ball and a bat. So we're taking away everybody's. Yeah. So they just, they, that's not enough. Now they just say, so here's the funny thing. You got to put that still. So you damn well better still put the disclaimer. But you also cannot use non typical testimonials.

Ryan Alford (47:08)

There's a lot of people still doing it though. I mean even big like, I mean it's all over television. I mean I don't even watch that much tv. Neither does anyone else. But like it's still the testimonials on TV all and littered with it.

Onyx Singhal (47:20)

They're getting hit though. They are. I mean a lot of them have been hit and a lot of them and it's coming. But you know, no one knows how the FTC decides who to hit and who not to. God forbid. I would love to just. I just love an answer to that. I would love an answer to, like, how they make a decision as to who to go after. But yeah, man, I mean, a lot of people are doing it. A lot of big companies are doing it. And some of the. You'd be surprised at how many big companies have been hit for misusing endorsements and testimonials. But I also think if you talk to most people from our industry, they have no idea. When I tell someone, when I look at their testimony, I'm like, that's completely illegal. Like, that's going to get you in trouble. They look at me, they're like, that's an honest. I know the guy. This person is a truthful. I said, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that it's truthful. You only covered one or two of the rules. There's four rules. People just don't know them.

Ryan Alford (48:07)

We've turned it into positives. As we close out here, onyk talk about what you're doing today, how you've turned it into a positive and all the stuff you're up to.

Onyx Singhal (48:16)

Yeah, man. Thank you for the opportunity to do that. So, listen, everybody. My message to you today beyond just, hey, be compliant. Which is, of course, important. My bigger message to you is as you walk away from listening to this episode, I'd be curious to see if you could take a few minutes to look inside and see what's buried. What did you bury? What's that painful thing that you put away? It might be a few. I mean, I have a few. And not all of the things I've buried turned into my mission or my message. Right? I have Crohn's disease. And I just shared this story with you earlier today, which, like, it wreaked havoc on my life, literally physically almost killed me. And it is the number one most controlling thing I have in my life. There isn't a five second period that goes by that I don't feel its existence. While doing this podcast, I have been reminded I have Crohn's multiple times by my body. Right? And I'm in remission right now, so. But that didn't turn into my mission. Maybe one day it will, but it didn't right now. So what's going on in your life? And maybe you haven't hit that yet, and that's okay. But I want you to understand something is that we are a culmination and a collective of all of our experiences, not just the good ones and the things that hurt and the bad ones, you know, no, not one person has won the Olympic gold medal without losing a shitload of races, bruises, broken bones, pain, crying, sacrifices, and tough times. No one. You want to be great, you got to deal with what the greats deal with. And so what can you do? How can you turn your greatest tragedy into your greatest victory? For me, I've turned it into my message. I'm out there on every day trying to do a podcast, talk to people about it. I wrote a book about it. We built an academy that people are loving where we train and teach people about it. I'm speaking on stages, I'm traveling around. And we built an AI powered, powered software that I've invested almost a million dollars building that is now being prospected by some of the biggest companies in the country because it does something that nobody else does. And so God forbid that software takes off, could possibly be worth hundreds of millions of dollars one day. And so that's the kind of opportunity that sits in the tragedy that you obviously survived. And in surviving that, what did you learn and what did you pick up that could help others? What would you have wished existed for you that could have helped you avoid that tragedy? And you've got yourself a potentially huge idea that allows you to be of true service. So that's my positive message. If you want the book, you know, dontsaythat.com and if you want to check out our software just because you're curious, we have a demo and you can use it for free. We have a 5,000 word free limit. Just go to comply. C o m p l I l y dot com and you know, when you go to don't say that, you'll see a podcast. We started a podcast about it with me and me and the attorney and now we're all over social media and stuff. So I went, you know, I went. I was the marketing guy, I was the email marketing guy. And believe me, now there isn't a single day that I'm not tagged at least six or seven or eight times on Facebook about compliance related matters. You can pivot yourself and your brand very quickly if the message is loud enough.

Ryan Alford (51:19)

With all the AI, all the technology, all these conveniences and seemingly technical things, the best things come down to being human. And that's what you are, brother.

Onyx Singhal (51:32)

Thank you, man. Thank you.

Ryan Alford (51:34)

Hey guys, you know, to find us, Ryan is right. Dot com. That's not just hyperbole. It's not just a claim it can be proven most of the time. We'll find out of all the highlight clips. You'll find links, tonic stuff and go check out. Don't say that. We appreciate you for making us number one and we can claim it. We'll see you next time. All right.

Ryan Alford (51:56)

About now, this has been Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.