Why I Still Learn New Ad Platforms The Same Way I Did At $0 | Ep 980

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Podcast: The Game with Alex Hormozi
Episode: Why I Still Learn New Ad Platforms The Same Way I Did At $0 | Ep 980
Date: December 18, 2025
Host: Alex Hormozi

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Alex Hormozi unpacks why he continues to approach learning new advertising platforms with the same rigor and humility as when he was just starting out. Through live business call-ins and insightful solo commentary, Alex shares practical frameworks for skill development, scaling marketing efforts, and adapting strategies for both beginners and established business owners. The episode is a masterclass in continuous learning, organic and paid acquisition, creative ad strategy, and niche authority building.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Skill Building, Earning, and Industry Experience

• "You will build skills by failing. So I would try and try and do stuff, like just being real. Like, do stuff, learn from it." – Alex Hormozi ([00:21])
• Alex emphasizes the importance of hands-on experience, advocating for gaining 1–3 years of industry experience before launching your own thing.
• He likens assembling businesses to building furniture without instructions: experience and models shorten the learning curve.

2. Organic Growth & Social Content Strategies

Guest Business Case 1: John's Back Pain Program

• John (caller) reports $95k/mo in revenue using Instagram and TikTok for lead gen, primarily selling via DMs to sales calls.
• Content Volume Myth: Alex debunks the idea of audience "fatigue" with too many posts, explaining that platforms limit reach per post — more quality posts reach more of your audience.
  • "I think more realistically, you're fatiguing your editor, not your audience. Your audience has an insatiable demand for value." ([05:41])
• Platform Tactics:
  • For TikTok: Use call-to-actions (CTAs) directing viewers to DM on Instagram, leveraging your existing Instagram DM team.
  • Vary lead magnets and keep CTAs brief (under three seconds) to optimize view-through and engagement rates.

Key Advice for John

• Increase post frequency (at least double).
• Rotate and improve lead magnets to maintain engagement.
• Shorten CTA time to boost post reach.
• Use lighter "asks" (e.g., offer cheat sheets instead of directly booking a call on every post), thus broadening lead capture.
  • "If you want to broaden kind of like the net that you're going through, just make the ask that you have a little bit lighter." ([08:19])
• Start paid ads and sales reps when ready, but recognize organic strategy as the long-term growth driver.

3. Authority, Proof, and Personal Branding

• Alex advocates for building proof (external and effort-based), which means documenting progress and giving away skills/services for free to collect testimonies.
  • "When you do effort-based achievements, it's kind of like grind or pay. Right? And so in the beginning, you don't have the money or the proof. You have to grind." ([12:02])
• Starting in a small niche or "puddle" is more effective than challenging established giants.
• Beginners can compete by offering direct access and stronger customer focus:
  • "Of course I’m not better than Alex, but I am better than the third rung down on his company. And you’re going to get my phone number." ([14:57])

4. Learning Paid Traffic Hands-On

Guest Business Case 2: Stephen's Local Medical Practice

• Stephen is capped at $3k/month in Google Ad spend and feels agency-constrained.
• Alex’s story from an 8-figure mastermind:
  • Budget a set percentage for ongoing learning, accepting that most learning investments won’t offer immediate ROI, but the ‘10th’ will pay off big time.
  • Urges Stephen to operate his own campaigns or at least “control the mouse” during agency collaborations for maximal practical learning.
    • "I control the mouse and you tell me what to do and I’ll do it. And I recorded my screen and I would ask questions along the way and they would tell me… within six weeks I was like, I get it. I don’t need this guy anymore." ([21:27])

5. Content, Collaborations & Storytelling for E-commerce

Audience Question: Jewelry Brand Using TikTok

• For brands selling physical products:
  • Leverage TikTok Shop.
  • Use aggressive influencer/affiliate programs.
  • Double down on Instagram and collaborate with creators.
  • Most importantly: Tell the product’s story to imbue value and differentiate.
    • "You need to do that within your content... pair this commodity of jewelry with the meaning that you then ascribe to it or the narrative or the story that you put on top of it." ([24:45])
• Content variety is overrated; the same core idea, restated through different examples and stories, keeps audiences engaged ala Dave Ramsey.

6. Scaling Ads—Identifying True Constraints

Guest Business Case 3: Liz Scaling a Marketing Automation Agency

• Liz is stuck trying to scale Meta ad spend for her $600k/month business.
• Alex diagnoses that ad campaign structure isn’t the bottleneck; creative is the real constraint.
• Scale is limited because the messaging and offers are only resonating with the "bottom of funnel" (highly aware/warm) leads.
  • "If you have a hard ceiling on your advertising spend... it's typically because the nature of the hooks and the content that you're talking about only really relate to the bottom of the funnel." ([29:53])
• Move up the funnel: Create curiosity-driven hooks for less-aware audiences, use lead magnets instead of just sales calls, and provide so much value up front that prospects want to buy.
  • "Give away all the secrets, all the sexiest stuff, put it in your lead magnets, put it in your ads... they’ll be like, I don’t wanna deal with that. I’ll just have them do it." ([32:46])
• Recognize that campaign tweaks matter far less than strategic creative changes for true scaling.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• "You will build skills by failing. So I would try and try and do stuff, like just being real. Like, do stuff, learn from it." — Alex ([00:21])
• "I think more realistically, you’re fatiguing your editor, not your audience." — Alex ([05:41])
• "Your audience has an insatiable demand for value... and has almost no appetite for fluff and waste." — Alex ([05:44])
• "Be king of a very—not even a pond, like a puddle." — Alex ([13:56])
• "I control the mouse and you tell me what to do... within six weeks I was like, I get it. I don’t need this guy anymore." — Alex ([21:27])
• "Give away all the secrets, all the sexiest stuff, put it in your lead magnets, put it in your ads." — Alex ([32:46])
• "Content variety is overrated... people still tune in every day when they know what the message is, because they're like, I wonder how this will apply to a stripper. I wonder how this will apply to somebody who won the lottery..." — Alex ([25:45])
• "It doesn’t matter—like, how you’re doing your bidding and campaigns is like, we’re talking about, like 5% differences... Strategic in nature is what gets you to the next level." — Alex ([33:10])

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:00-03:19: Skill-building vs. earning; importance of real-world experience; "building with bricks" analogy.
• 03:20-11:35: Social content strategies, lead generation, CTAs, posting volume, and audience "fatigue" myth (John’s case).
• 11:36-16:30: Branding, authority, and personal proof vs. external validation; "puddle" niche competition framework.
• 16:31-22:29: Learning by doing in paid media; controlling ad spend and agency relationships (Stephen’s case).
• 22:30-26:05: Storytelling and collaboration strategies for e-commerce; lessons for jewelry/TikTok content.
• 26:06-33:10: Scaling paid ads, identifying real limits (creative vs. media buying), lead magnet and funnel strategies for marketing services (Liz’s case).

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Episode Takeaways

• Always seek direct experience—learning by doing trumps theory or outsourcing, even (or especially) when you have money.
• Maximize the value you give and the number of quality touchpoints with your audience; don't be afraid of "too much content."
• Diversify your lead magnets and make softer asks to widen your funnel and nurture colder audience segments.
• When scaling paid ads, creative strategy beats ad set structure—move up the funnel and educate with value.
• Beginners win by being accessible, giving away value, and outworking established players, while established players leverage credibility.
• Storytelling and narrative turn commodities into brands people care about.
• Maintain a relentless commitment to self-education—invest a set percentage of income and experiment knowing most investments won’t pay off immediately.

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This episode shines as a dynamic Q&A and tactical marketing breakdown with Alex Hormozi's signature clarity, humor, and intensity—packed with actionable advice for entrepreneurs at every level.

Transcript

[A]

Let's rock and roll. Okay, so Adam22, want to build a multi million dollar business? Should I start now, feel forward and learn on the way or spend money? She's building skills, cash and clarity. To me, those are one of the same. Like, you will build skills by failing. So I would try and try and do stuff, like just being real. Like, do stuff, learn from it. And if you can make money while you're doing it, great. I think that for many people, one of the, like a huge leg up that you can have is working one to three years in the industry that you want to get into. Like, I think there's just, there's huge upside there because you don't even know what you don't know. And you learn so many, like, default ways of operating. Because when you have to. I'll give you an analogy. So imagine you've got a pile of bricks, right? So you've got this pile of bricks. All right, let's say that these bricks represent, you know, stuff that you can use to build. This is gonna be a terrible pile of bricks, but whatever. Okay. And someone says, go build me a building, right? So you then try and assemble these bricks in a, in a hundred different ways. And the thing is, is like, if you don't have directions on how to assemble those bricks, you're not going to know what assembly is the correct one for a building. And so the thing is, is that if you have an ideal building in mind, right, Then there may be a few ways that you can correctly assemble the bricks to get a building. But there's going to be way more ways to not assemble the bricks to make a building. And so for me, I'd rather just like kind of like if you're building a building, like you're building an Ikea desk, right? If you don't have the directions and you have the pieces, you might eventually figure it out. But it's so much, it takes so much more time than having a model to look at because you automatically know. You're like, okay, well, first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to separate my tools over here, put my screws over here, and then I'm going for my, my blocks over here. Great. So it's the first thing. That's what you do. And then after that you're like, okay, I'm going to look at this picture. There's got these four legs, and you're like, let me put the leg number. Let me flip it upside down. Split leg one, leg, two, leg, four you're like, okay, it's almost looking like a table, but if you have no idea and you've never built a table before, you didn't build anything before, then it's way harder to do. And so that's why I think I would recommend make money, earn and learn one to three years. Like my first thing out of college. And like, college is different now than it was then. But like, like, I did college for three years and then I worked for two years, and then the next thing I did is I still didn't even start immediately. I then started as like an apprentice at a gym because I want to get in the fitness business. So I went to a successful gym owner and said, hey, can I, like, work for free? Can I mop the floors? And I was like a white collar consultant. So I went from making. I think I actually don't remember what I made. I know I had $50,000 in savings. The reason it's, like, unclear is because I got paid on contracts. It was like, very lumpy. And anyways, but anyways, he then basically started paying me minimum wage to follow him around. But, like, an amazing ROI for me because he was like, oh, yeah, like email marketing. And I was like, what's that? And he was like, oh, it's this whole thing. Right. And again, YouTube wasn't really, like, around the way that when I started doing this, and so I had to learn the hard way. So that being said, hopefully that helped for Adam in terms of thinking about what to do And John, what's up? We on John? Alex. Yeah, it's me, John. What's up, man? Tell me about the business.

[B]

So we help people with corning back in estatica. We have an online program.

[A]

Okay. So online. Okay. Yep. And you help with back pay. Got it.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

What's revenue?

[B]

And we're doing nine. 95 grand a month. Okay.

[A]

Okay. So you're doing a million bucks a year. Roughly. Okay, so you're doing a million a year. Great. How are. So I know you're online. Are you selling via checkout page or via sales call?

[B]

We do a DM to tria call to sales call.

[A]

Okay, so. Okay, cool. You're online salespeople.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Yep. Okay, got it. And how are you getting leads? It's.

[B]

We have a million followers on Instagram.

[A]

Okay. One million on IG. Anything else?

[B]

Yeah, like 200 grand on TikTok.

[A]

Okay, cool. Well, you've probably already seen the difference of the value of 200, 000 on TikTok versus 1 million on IG. Yeah. Want me to give you a quick hack to turn those TikTok people into more value? Please. Yeah. So we have found that the best call to action for TikTok, if you want to sell higher ticket stuff, is actually make the CTA DM me on Instagram and then put the link to your Instagram. Wow. Okay. Yeah.

[B]

So, like, on TikTok, you get people to DM on Instagram.

[A]

I know, but you already have your whole DM team set up on Instagram anyway, so, like, it works great. Yeah. Cool. All right, so that's thing one. Great. So what do you want to do? What's the limit? What's. What's holding you back?

[B]

It feels like youth, consistency. So we have one sales rep and two setters, and I want to get more sales reps, but it's just like, one week will be filled a week in advance, and then another week, we barely get, you know, enough leads to fill up one, and then we just end up pitching on every single post. I just feel fatiguing for the client. So I'm curious, do we start ads, can we start retargeting, or do we need to fix something first?

[A]

How many posts a day are you putting out?

[B]

We're putting out one post a day on Instagram. We tested two, but it's just like, we really focus on. We edit this for eight hours. We make it great. So it's one a day.

[A]

Okay. I think you can probably make more. I'll just put that out there. I would 100% not believe in the mythology of, like, there's a platform limit. There totally isn't. And that's on. And I pretty much stand by that. On every platform, like, Fox News puts out one. I just looked at this. We were calling up this morning. Does one long per hour on YouTube. Oh, wow.

[B]

Right?

[A]

And they do, like, 300 views.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And there's a Bollywood account that gets a billion views a month on Instagram and puts out a hundred posts a day on Instagram. So you have to think about it like this. So instead, so I hear what you're saying, with the fatigue, the audience. I think more realistically, you're fatiguing your editor, not your audience. I think they're not making good enough stuff. No, I'm being real. I think they're not making good enough stuff. Like, your audience has. No. Has an insatiable demand for value. Would you, like, believe that in your core, your audience has an insatiable demand? It will literally never. It's an Endless pit when it comes to value and has almost no appetite for fluff and waste. So if we have, let's imagine that this circle represents a million people. Okay. When you make a post, you're getting like 1 to 2% of your audience to actually see it. Right. And so if you make more posts, you'll just have more 1 to 2% that see it. Okay. Okay. Now where your issue comes up is that when you make your call, you know, your direct call to action posts, then it's like goes from like that kind of thicker dot to just like an itty bitty speck because your, your reach gets hammered. Right.

[B]

We actually do a call to action on every post, like at the end.

[A]

Yeah. And that's. Okay. Well, it's, it's not, it's not the end of the world. Again, all that matters is like how long is the CTA relative to the post? Right. So it's usually like, are you doing a many chat integration?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So how long is the cta?

[B]

It's like six seconds.

[A]

Is it. That's long? Is it pre recorded or is it like pre recorded then stapled on? Or are you making them native every time?

[B]

It's native, but it's the same every time almost.

[A]

Yeah. So you want to swap out what the lead magnets are constantly. Oh, okay, got it right now. Because like why would they respond? They already got it. Yeah. Right. So, all right, so I'm going to write down little nuggets for you. So number one, we're going to go TikTok, TikTok DMs to IG SCTA. Number two, we're going to make more lead magnets so that you can alternate through them. Number three, I think more content is a good idea. Okay. Number four is I think you need to lower your time, your CTA time. So I would probably, I would shoot for like 3 seconds or less for your CTA. Because the thing is it'll kill the, it'll kill the view through rate. Right. And then that's killing the amount of reach you're getting. Yeah. Okay. And you're doing comment, like book or comment, whatever, and then it DM them the thing.

[B]

No, we actually do a like for free static assessment and then we just basically say comment for an assessment and then we book a call at dms.

[A]

Yeah, I mean that's also a really heavy ask. So it might be worth considering like a cheat sheet and then a triage question. Okay. Because I mean like that's like the heaviest right hook you can Do? Yeah, I'll give you guys a little insight on one hand, like when we do ads that are like direct to workshop, that's like quote the heaviest ask, like, hey, come out to Vegas, right? That's a pretty, you know, you got to have a hurdle, etc. Now, when we have a scaling roadmap, which you may have seen ads for, right. The scaling roadmap has lower immediate roas, but over a 60 or 90 day window has superior roas to direct workshop. In addition to that, it also has like 10 times the reach because getting somebody who's a little bit like, somebody who's like, yep, I want to come to a workshop, like, they've already consumed, like, that's almost like, it's almost like warm audience retargeting more than. It's like an ad and a process that like nurtures, you know, prospects and then, you know, warms them up, provides value, et cetera. And so I think if you want to broaden kind of like the net that you're going through, just make the ask that you have a little bit lighter. So I think one, you've got your direct. Like if you're doing one a day, I would do like maybe two a week of the direct one and then do the remainder of them as posts that are like lead magnet centered, right? Like 7 tips to fix this or whatever. Right. And you, you can spin. I'm sure you could spend 100 of those things. It's not, it's not that hard. And then the triage question is like, hey, are you here for free stuff or do you want to solve the problem for good? And they're going to say, I want to solve the problem. They're like, great. And then you're into a sales conversation that's great.

[B]

And then at what point would you start retargeting ads?

[A]

The thing is, is okay, this is, this will be great for everybody. If you think about your audience, is this pyramid, right? The people who are buying from you right now are this like tiny little top 1% here. And so there are some things that, there are some actions that could get you to converge just a higher percentage of that 1%, which means that like, we could make the well or the pyramid larger, which we would do by posting more times and making better content. Right. Or we can keep that pyramid the same size, right? And then we can move this line of what percentage we're converting and make that a little bit deeper. When you add a sales team that converts a higher percentage of the audience, when you Add ads, you're going to convert a higher percentage of the audience because you're just going to have your ad shown to a bigger percentage of people in that sphere. Right. And so it's almost like reaching into forward revenue and pulling it forward, which is fine as long as you're filling up the bucket.

[D]

Right.

[A]

So I would. Right. You get what I'm saying with that? So you will absolutely make more money if you have a sales team and run ads, no question. But then you will hit another plateau and you will still be limited by the growth of your organic unless you create a true cold traffic acquisition channel, which is a different monster and beyond the scope of right now. All right, and so my recommendation is I would want you to double your content. And if you want to keep one of your, your CTA's as. Because I don't want you to, like, I don't want your business to go down, keep one CTA as your direct to, you know, book a call and keep the other and make the second CTA for the lead magnet and just do two a day. That's good. Cool.

[B]

Sounds great.

[A]

All right, Rock and roll. Appreciate you, John. Awesome.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Yeah, thanks for calling her Mosey Highline. All right, so let's take a little. Let me, let me look at the chat. What's up, guys? Okay, so as I build a personal brand, is it better to become an authority in a certain skill and then start posting content, or is it better to start posting content without being authority in that skill? Great question. So my perspective on this, and this probably will differ from other people's, but I can only explain what I do. Right. And the kind of thinking process behind it. I never want someone to question whether I'm legit or not. Right. And I think that way. And maybe it's because I just have like massive insecurity. Who knows? But the reason that I tend to always start with proof, right? And so I would rather like. And if you don't have external achievements, right. Then you need the achievements to be effort based rather than external. Okay, so what does that mean? So instead of saying, hey, I did $100 million launch, that's an external achievement. Everyone can see that. Great. Lots of money, et cetera. Right. I could say I made 35,000 pieces of content. You can control that now, whether you did a good job or not is a separate thing. But when you do effort based achievements, it's kind of like grind or pay. Right? And so in the beginning, you don't have the money or the proof. To do it. So you have to grind. And so grind wise, it's like I'm going to make 35,000 pieces of content and document what you're learning along the way. That's fine. Like that's the game. And so that will be kind of phase one. Phase two is be willing to work with people for free. People spend way too like I'll say this differently if you're getting started every single business to this day, I still start with free stuff because I want to get feedback from people. I want to know what they like, what they didn't like, what their pain points are. I want to figure out how to, how to smooth out the process. I want to figure out all these different things and me trying to guess at that on my first shot and ask people to pay me. I'm like, I don't want to do that. I'm going to have a bad reputation. I don't want it. Right. And so it's going to take you so much more time. Think about this. For you to get 10 customers who pay you with it, never giving anything away for free is going to take a long time. You getting 10 people to start working with you for free and then using the 10 testimonials, you get there to then get your 11th, 12th, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20th customer is going to take you less time to get that 10 paying customers if you do 10 for free first of whatever it is that you sell. So that's my, that's my two cents. More people knowing about your stuff is not going to make you less money. I do think though that like big, big, big picture, it also kind of depends what you're going to get into if you want to be, you know, it's like, I want to be a business coach. It's like, well, dude, just look at the people who have the most, who have the most credibility in business. They have some big giant thing behind them, right? I would not try and compete there. I would try and compete on a much smaller pond that I can be. I can be king of a very. Not even a pond, like a puddle. Like just be king of the Z puddle and create proof around that little bitty itty bitty puddle. And you will find people who are willing to pay you because you are a specialist and because they have access to you. Okay. And I'll give you, I'll give you one more tidbit for those of you guys who are starting out and then I'll take the next call. So when you're Starting out, you always have an advantage, all right? Every. Every position has an advantage on the board of the game. So if you're. If you're a. If you're a super baller, right? You're. You're. You're a G or whatever you want to say, right? My position is to say, don't go with Weenie McGee over here. He's in his mom's basement and doesn't know what he's talking about, right? I have been doing this for however many years and looked at all this credibility and looks all this proof, right? Cool. Weenie McGee, right? He's gonna be in his mom's basement, and he's gonna be like, don't hang out with Alex. You're never gonna talk to Alex. There's no chance, right? You're gonna be talking to someone three levels down from him, and you're just gonna be a number to them. I mean, that's what I would say. Of course, we don't operate that way, but, like, that's what you would say, right? And so if that's your position, then you say, dude, you're going to get my phone number. And so it's not, am I better than Alex? Of course I'm not better than Alex. Like, own that. Of course I'm not better than Alex, but I am better than the third rung down on his company. And you're going to get my phone number, and I care about my reputation, and that person doesn't. That's where you compete. And so that's how you can start getting a foothold. Which is why there will always be room in the market for people who are new, because people who are established are going to have their position to play. Coca Cola Classic is going to say, we're the Classic. We've been doing this forever. And the people who are new and upstart is like, hey, I'm a young founder. Just try my soda out. If you like it, tell me. Give me feedback. I'll try and fix it. That's the position both can win. And for everyone who's like, I don't think this will work or something like that, it's like, dude, like, I was in the same position. It's not like I'm 50. You know what I mean? Like, I started at 02, and you just have to outwork, right? And you got to say, like, I'm willing to do more than those guys are in the beginning. People don't want to say it. I'll do it for less until eventually you have proof and then we have proof. It becomes a virtuous cycle of charging more. Okay. Caller to Stephen, let's rock and roll. Until eventually approved and then we approve. It becomes a virtual cycle.

[D]

Nice to meet you.

[A]

Nice to meet you too. But I'm going to. Because, because the team collected your number. So monthly revenue right now is 54k right?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

All right. And then ad spend is 3k.

[D]

That's monthly.

[A]

Yeah. Per month. I got you. This is per month. Great. Ads is 3K. Great. Per month. Per month. Industries, your medical. What do you do? Custom insoles.

[D]

Yes, I'm a podiatrist.

[A]

Oh cool. Yeah, buddy of mine's dad was a podiatrist back in Baltimore. Okay. The offer is insoles for 300. So this is your AOV call it right. Is 325. I know that you're in pounds but I'm just used to writing dollars so it doesn't really matter. Okay. Constraint is Google Ads are underspent. Okay. So you can't spend more than the 3,000amonth. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. Are you local? Like are you running ads for a local business? Are you running this ad spend nationally.

[D]

For a local business?

[A]

Yes. Okay, you're local. So people, people do that. They come in, they get measured or whatever, then they get insults. Correct?

[D]

Exactly.

[A]

Yes. Okay, got it. So they're saying they just can't spend more money.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. I don't know if I believe that. How big of a city are you in? Like what's your 10 mile radius?

[D]

I, I thought he, he said around 10 kilometers, something like that. But I was also thinking from. Yeah, maybe isn't it doesn't have the skills. Right. Just to, to, to, to, to scale the campaign so to say. So I am already in touch with in general our marketing agency that is already checking in with another Google Ad specialist to see from if they can duplicate certain campaigns and get better results.

[A]

Yeah. So I'll say this man. So I mean congrats. You're doing you know, 600ish a year. I would strongly recommend you learning this stuff because it's not that hard. Like it's really not that hard because then you're not gonna like right now you're saying the constraint of the business is under someone else's control. Right. That's a tough position to be in. So I would just want, I would want to own this myself. And I'll give you a. I'll tell you a story that like really changed my personal. I haven't Told the story in a really long time. So this will be a good one. So I went to this meetup where everybody was doing, you know, eight figures or more. And at the time I wasn't. And so I like snuck in. They were like, no, we think you're going to be, you know, a big baller, because whatever, they recognize the, the, the magic in me. But anyway, so they let me come. And what was really interesting is one of the guys who was making the most money in the room, when he went up and presented, he said this really interesting thing. He said, I would encourage everyone here because someone asked him like, hey, so what are you doing to like reinvest in your education right now? He said, well, at the level of Matt. And he was making I think 30 or 35 million. I remember thinking, I was like, oh my God, this person is God when I heard that. But he said he was making $35 million a year. And he said, I would encourage you to write down a percentage of your income, whatever percentage you're comfortable with, and put that as your learning budget. All right? And that learning budget, he said, you should spend that every month and expect to have 0 ROI on 9 out of 10 things. And then the 110 thing will make you 10 times the money. It's almost like doing a venture bet on yourself from an education perspective. And so I took that to heart and then I started spending, saying, okay, you've got your 3,000amonth. I want you, Steven, to do $3,000 a month that you control. And you're saying, like, I'm gonna spend a hundred bucks a day and I'm gonna see if I can beat this guy. Cause I promise you, when it's your business, you'll beat him. Like, you'll suck in the beginning, but you'll quickly learn. PPC for Google Ads is like really not hard.

[D]

You definitely go start with that.

[A]

Yeah. And the nice thing is that no matter what, if you spend more money on ads, you're gonna make more money. So even if you're inefficient, you'll still increase top line. But I think that if you just try and get good and good and good at that, and then I would also reach out to whatever these other agencies are. I don't mind spending more on this because again, the big picture is like, you have bigger goals than this, right on a percent. Right. So just don't let your ego get wrapped up in your one month or two month profit. Like that profit will be there if you choose not to spend money. It's always there. Right? So I would want to take as much of that profit as humanly possible. And I'm just, I'm telling you how I do things. I take all that profit and I just see that as this is my opportunity to reinvest in the business. When the business, small reinvestment is you, you are the reinvestment. And so that's where I'm like, okay, I want to, I'm going to pay my current agency, I'm going to pay the next agency and I'm going to tell both of them I want them to teach me what they're doing and I'm going to spend my own budget too. Yeah, yeah.

[D]

So that, that was originally already my plan. So I had Justin called this afternoon with the new agency and I told him from, look, if we go and forth with the Google Ads especially I want to have weekly call to at least know what, what he's doing in ad account. So I just could follow the guy and that ever, may ever have new ideas that I can just try out, but that I understand what he's doing.

[A]

Let me tweak. Let me tweak it for you. Let me tweak it for you. Let me tweak it for you. You're going to ask how often are they, are they going to be, you know, really doing work on the campaign? Just, let's just guess, it's twice a week. Okay, I'm going to do something even better for you. I'm going to ask that. You don't even work on my account. I'm still going to pay you. And I want to have two calls a week and all of the work is going to be done on those two calls. That's it. They don't have to do any other work for my account, but I want to be the one who controls the mouse. And I want them to tell me what to do and why they're doing it. That's a very good idea. Okay. This is how I learned. This is how I learned how to run national level Facebook ads. This is how I learned how to do it. I hired an agency and I said, I'll do whatever. I'll show whatever hours you want. I was like, but I control the mouse and you tell me what to do and I'll do it. And I recorded my screen and I would ask questions along the way and they would tell me, I'd be like, okay, so why are we doing this? And then within six weeks I was like, I get it. I Don't need this guy anymore. That's genius. Cool.

[D]

Yeah, sounds good. Definitely going to start decking.

[A]

Rock and roll. Congrats on the business, Stephen. All right, what type of lead magnets or funnels do you make for them? I'm guessing I don't know what that one is in reference to. Richard Ferris. Okay, core question is, how do you does your PE firm? Okay, hold on. Partnered with my wife on her business. We sell jewelry with purpose, natural stones. What would be the best content to post for advertising? We use TikTok. All right, what are we talking about here? All right, so number one, you should be on. I mean, TikTok. TikTok shop for sure. Like, if you're not doing that, you should be doing that. Number two, I'll bet you with jewelry, probably have very good margins with it, and you could probably pay really aggressive affiliate commissions to any other TikTokers who will repost your stuff. And so I would look at, are there small things that I can give out for free? I know that's heavy, but people will be willing to do it. I don't know what revenue is right now, by the way, Junior, but I would also double this on Instagram, and I would want to do, like, as many collab posts as I can with other influencers, with them trying on different things. And I think the big thing that I would want to do is I want to tell the narrative. I want to tell the story behind the jewelry. All right, so I'll give you an idea. So. Or I'll give you an example. So if you think about, like, selling merch, everyone has T shirts. There's nothing sexy about a T shirt. And if a T shirt just has a logo on it, again, it doesn't really matter. But if you say, let me tell you the story behind why this logo or why this saying is meaningful. And so what we have to do is basically pair this commodity of jewelry with the meaning that you then ascribe to it or the narrative or the story that you put on top of it. And so two years ago, I did my book launch for the leads book, and some of you guys might have been there, and I sold, like, millions of dollars of hats, all right? And people were willing to pay $100, essentially for a hat. Now, obviously, they got two other books and the hat was free. But, like, fundamentally, that was what happened. Right. And so what's really interesting about that, the specific event is that I then spent like four or five minutes just saying, like, let me tell you about why I Wear this hat, what this hat means to me. And so after explaining the meaning behind the hat, then way more people willing to buy it versus, like, hey, do you guys just want to buy a hat? And so I think to the same degree, you need to do that within your content. And you're like, what kind of content should I do? Like, show the jewelry. Show people unboxing the jewelry. Show people picking out between different kinds of jewelry, and then you telling the narrative behind each of them in terms of where was the stone sourced? Why did you design it that way? What is. What does this chain do versus this chain? What are these metals do? Like, there's so much to talk about with your content. And don't be afraid to repeat stuff. Just don't be afraid to repeat stuff. And one of the really interesting things with content is that I'm going to give a Dave Ramsey example. But, like, you need significantly less variety in your content than you think you do. So think about what Dave Ramsey has done for the last 35, 40 years, however many years it's been. He has told people to spend less than they make. That is. That has been his core message. Don't go into debt. Spend less than you make. Cut up your credit cards, Pay off your loans. That's more like, obviously, it's the seven baby steps, and that's awesome. But my point is this, is that people still tune in every day when they know what the message is, because they're like, I wonder how this will apply to a stripper. I wonder how this will apply to somebody who won the lottery. I wonder how this will apply to somebody who's got a kid who's going to college now, and it's a good college or it's a bad college.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so the thing is, is that you can have a single framework or single core product or concept, and the variety will just come from the examples that you use. Cool. All right, third caller is Liz. Liz, let's. Let's get. Let's get busy. Liz.

[C]

Hello.

[A]

Hey, Liz, what's up?

[C]

I'm good. How are you?

[A]

Excellent. You're on Hermozy hotline. So you've got monthly revenue of $600,000 a month. Congratulations. Badass.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

Welcome. Rich, you gotta buy me some jewelry from. From Junior. All right. Okay. Ad spend is 150,000amonth. Okay. A little high there. Got it. All right. What are your margins right now? They didn't ask that. But what are your margins?

[C]

Well, before we started, so I've been preparing for a million A month for the last three months. And so I started building the fulfillment team. And in the last few months, my margins have been 25%.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

But before that it was 45%.

[A]

Yeah, got it.

[C]

So in the last few months, I've been trying to scale, built a team, tried to sell my own ads. Haven't managed. So that's it.

[A]

Okay. Industry is marketing automation. Okay, so who's the target?

[C]

Many cat funnels.

[A]

Oh, many chat funnels. Okay, got it. So thank you. Make it easier for me. Okay, Many chat funnels. Okay, great. And then your offer is. It's for e commerce brands. Okay, cool. And they got to be doing over 10,000. Sorry, $25,000 a month in spend. That's their requirements. Okay.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

25K a month. Okay. What's your, what's your price?

[C]

60Amonth.

[A]

60Amonth. Okay. 6K per month price. What's churn right now?

[C]

Between 5 to 10%.

[A]

Okay. Okay. So 5 to 10% churn. Let's just use 10% to keep it simple. So 60K. What are. What's gross profit on the. On the service of 6k month?

[C]

Well, we were breaking even in month one, and then we're starting to profit in terms of month two.

[A]

No, but that takes into cost of acquisition. I'm saying what are gross profits on the service? So how much does it cost you to deliver for a $6,000 a month customer?

[C]

About 2K. 2 to 3K.

[A]

Okay. 2 to 3K. Okay. Okay. A little bit high, but that's fine. Okay. Cogs. So cost of goods sold. Okay, great. So what's the question? How can I help? Now that I have context.

[C]

I've been struggling to double my ad spend. So our meta ads break when we push from 5k a day to 10k a day. Yeah. So the question is, should we Instead of multiple 1k a day campaigns which might be competing against each other.

[A]

They're not.

[C]

Don't worry about date. Everything will do a.

[A]

They're not. Don't worry like that. That media buying mumbo jumbo. Don't worry about it doesn't matter. Okay, keep going. So you want to scale your ads and they're not scaling. Okay.

[C]

Correct. So is the one master campaign that's standing 7 to 8k a day with one single asset ton of ads better than multiple 1k a day campaigns?

[A]

I have no idea. I actually don't think it matters being real. I don't. My whole. My whole life, that has never been the thing that has limited me. Said differently. I don't think your bidding strategy is the limitation for all your business is not getting to a million dollars a month. This is why it's valuable to have properly identified constraints.

[C]

Is it creating them?

[A]

Yes, I think it's probably the creative. How are you thinking through the hooks that you're choosing?

[C]

Well, I'm researching using ChatGPT, whatever ads I see online, what feels good, what counts.

[A]

Interesting.

[C]

I roll those up.

[A]

Okay, so I'll tell you, I'm going to guess right now that that's probably the issue. So I. Are you familiar with the five levels of awareness from this is Eugene Schwartz?

[C]

Yes, I am.

[A]

Okay. So you have to translate those levels of awareness to the types of hooks that you're. That you're making. So I'm going to guess. So if you have like a hard ceiling on your advertising spend, like once you get over a certain level, like, you can't spend more. It's typically because the nature of the hooks and the content that you're talking about only really relates to the bottom of the funnel. So you're talking about most aware customers who already know about your types of offer or, you know, solution or product aware customers who know about. They know about manychat or they know about you or they know about your offers. Right. So it's. You're talking to a very, very warm audience. And so Facebook only has a very small amount of people who are, you know, doing $25,000 a month and know about this specific type of product offering. And so that's the only people that are showing the ads to. And so we have to start like at the, at the extreme, right. You would have the unaware customer who is purely, you have to get them purely on curiosity. Like your, your business is losing, you know, thousands of dollars a day because you don't have this one integration. That would be something that someone who has no idea about. Anything to do with ManyChat, anything to do with marketing automation, they might take the next step. Now what happens is as you go up funnel, right. You go to higher or basically lower levels of awareness when there's way more people. Sometimes the funnel has to change and so does the lead magnet. Are you just making a straight offer in your ads? What's the funnel?

[C]

Yeah, making that offer to book a demo.

[A]

Yeah. You're like, you are so level. You're so low on the, on the, on the awareness thing. Like, that's the issue. You have to make it easier for someone to take a step. They don't know who you are. Just saying, hey, book A sales call is a tough ask, right? And so this is why, like, lead magnets and things like that make sense. It's like you might need to have a longer process of breaking even, number one, and a longer process of educating the prospect, and you need to have wider hooks. And so one of the big things that happens in, like, the whole marketing world is some people are like, oh, lead magnets don't work. Or they do work. If you just say, hey, buy my shit, you. You will get higher roas than have a lead magnet, but you will be very quickly capped by the amount of people who are. Who are warm. And so you've probably heard the whole, like, 97% of the audience isn't ready to buy right now, and 3% is. So right now, you're spending all your time on that 3%. If you want to scale this thing, you got to be able to go up.

[C]

Makes sense.

[A]

So you might, right? And so the hooks are going to be like, how to double AOV, how to decrease, you know, your CPAs or whatever the, like, types of language that you can make there. And it's like, here's six ways that you can decrease CPAs. Now. All of them might include using ManyChat to do it. And they'd be like, oh, shit, this is really good, good stuff. And if you're super hands on, which it sounds like you are, if you're charging $6,000 a month, like, you can give away all the secrets. I promise you, just give away all the secrets. It will not matter. Give away all the secrets, all the sexiest stuff, put it in your lead magnets, put in your ads, put in your little video sales letter that you have, right? And people are gonna be like, I don't wanna deal with that. I'll just have them do it.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, you're right.

[A]

Cool. Okay. All right. Rock and roll. Good stuff. This was fun. Let's do this again. You bet. Liz. I just want to make sure that you're not like, here's what's crazy about this, because I think this is good for everyone. People will stay stuck at this level for, like, years because you keep thinking it's like a media buying thing. It doesn't matter. Like, how you're doing your bidding and campaigns is like, we're talking about, like 5% differences, like the things that are going to get you from, you know, 600,000amonth to a million or multiple millions of dollars a month. It's going to be strategic in nature.