Searchable Transcription
[00:00:00] You guys doing. What’s up, Jeff?
[00:00:04] Hey, how are you doing, Spencer?
[00:00:06] How are you, man?
[00:00:07] I hear you got some wins, man. You’re like reaching out to me privately saying I got wins. I got wins.
[00:00:13] I did. Yeah, it’s it’s been crazy, man.
[00:00:16] Is it that good?
[00:00:17] Oh, it’s it’s it’s been. We’ve been on a roll man.
[00:00:21] Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, I see your positive post on your private Facebook page just about you loving the journey and the work that you’re doing and all of that. That just thrills me, man, to to know that somebody else is really loving the journey the way I do and seeing the challenges as really, it’s just a game, you know? And I wanted to talk a little bit about that and the mindset section here. Patrick tonight is traveling. He’s in Nashville for the traffic and funnels event. I’m not there because I have to be in Austin at another event this weekend for a graduation ceremony from a coaching program that I’ve been involved with here. So I would have been in Nashville for only not even half of the event. So he went ahead and went and then I’m able to cover the lives. So it all worked out. So it’ll be the the team here, team team Jeff tonight so we can go ahead and start off with when Spencer, what do you got?
[00:01:20] Yemen, so things have been been going quite well. I missed last week’s call or part of the winds part. So last week we negotiated a 12 percent revenue or I guess I should say, yeah, revenue share with a roofing company in Georgia. We’re working on that contract, so I’m taking 12 percent of his business. We’re not we’re not messing around with, Hey, these are the leads that I sent you. I told him, I said, I’m not going to play that game. We’re going to deploy all our assets for 12 percent of your company. He did. Only a quarter million last year because he was out storm chasing for, I think, five or six months out of the year. So we’re hoping to do five hundred thousand. We’ll double his revenue this year, which puts puts, you know, six K in my pocket a month when we’re initially going to fire up Google ads so that the money that he’s actually given me, we’re actually bringing some value until we get these legions and get his personal site and everything built out. But we both have skin in the game, so that’s that’s a huge win, 12 percent of this fella’s company. And then with the last let’s see, this week we’ve collected ten thousand in revenue for a couple of site builds and some some GMB optimization.
[00:02:50] And then over the course of the last seven days we’ve collected. About. Fifteen k total. And I’m hoping I have I have two other deals I’m hoping to close by Friday, which would make this a 20 K week from starting on Monday. So we we have negotiations for $6000 website e. Com Like Planter Landscape Planner website that has AECOM in it and then another another five thousand on the table as well. So we’re hoping to close these and have a 20 K week, which if you guys know where I’ve been like, you know, you hear me talk about twenty five K months, a twenty k week would just absolutely fucking shattered things. And you know, I know you guys there have been listening. You hear the strategy I’m using, which is Patrick’s strategy with using that audit, and I will encourage the hell, and I’m going to say it again, like, make sure you guys are using this in your prospecting method because there’s a lot of contractors. They don’t understand what we what we speak about. They don’t understand the technology. Part of this, I see Graham shaking his head because he comes from that background of things that even though Graham is a sharp dude, but you know, a lot of these contractors, they don’t understand what we’re doing or talking about.
[00:04:09] But when you show them the visual of the heat map, it’s like it clicks and closing these people. It’s literally I get on a Zoom call after sending this the audit over to them. Hey, what was it that that really sparked you to get on the call with me? These are the people these people are reaching out to me saying, Hey, can we get on a call? I need help. Obviously, there is no better place to be when you’re in sales as far as being in power like that to where you’re like, Hey, what was it? They tell you within three minutes, you know, like they they hate their marketing company, yada yada yada. And it makes closing so much easier because when you send over the proposal, they’re already like, I’m buying it from this dude, because he’s now proved to me and built my trust in a matter of a forty, you know, doing like forty five minutes to an hour of research and doing a 15 minute audit, you’ve now won them over and closing like closing nowadays, Jeff, I don’t know if you guys you personally use this when you’re lending clients, but closing nowadays is like the easiest thing ever. So I want to encourage everybody to start, including the heatmaps in the audits.
[00:05:16] Wow, that’s that’s awesome, Spencer. And man, you’re just crushing it. You’re getting so much success. I mean, you have so many numbers flying around there. I couldn’t even add it up. So I mean, that’s amazing. Like, I know we’re doing wins here and I am struggling to get everything live on Facebook. So would you expand upon what that deal looks like when you took equity? Like, how did that go step by step? Did you write a contract and is it like for long term? Like, what are the parameters of like, like how would somebody make that happen if you could expand upon that just a minute? While I try to get this live stream thing figured out, I really appreciate that I want to hear it because everybody has their own sort of approach to how they would hammer something like that out. Some people write it on a piece of paper and other people go through attorneys and whatever it is. But like, how did it? How does it look on your side? And how do you feel comfortable with the trust that you have between this company and that you’re going to get paid what you do and all of that, if you don’t mind?
[00:06:24] Yeah, yeah. So so initially, how the conversation came about was it’s a it’s a guy that he or a few years ago when I was prospecting using, you know, software that automatically befriends people and groups. There’s there’s tons of them out there, you know, pepper or I use a software called Be Louder. We we came in contact with this, this gentleman. I’ve watched his work. I’ve seen I’ve seen the struggles that him go through a divorce recently. I’ve seen like him buying this brand new house with his ex wife and like all this stuff. And so you see this real human nature, you know, this real human part of this fellow. And so I hid. I was going through my friends list because here’s the thing with that prospecting method, you got to get really creative. You can only go to the well, so many times and offer like, Hey, I want to do an audit for you, like in groups and things like that. And so I kind of used up these coaching groups that I that I’m in, where I’m the only marketer. They’re not getting hammered. Those are the groups that I would recommend you guys try to get in. Like, I’ve just kind of fallen into a couple because I was the GMB expert. And so people wanted that GMB expert to coach his own private students like, Hey, can you come talk to my private group of my coaching students now these guys are already used to paying.
[00:07:44] So anyway, I came across this guy, I sent him an audit. Just there’s tons of problems. The guy doesn’t even have a website. And he’s just kind of a good old boy working like he’s from the nineteen nineties with basically word of mouth and almost like Yellow Pages marketing. And we joked about it. So he’s like, Man, I’m not willing to. He’s like, I just don’t want to come out of pocket that type of money, you know, like to pay for a new website and this and that. And I’m like, OK, like whatever, man. He’s like, you know, I’d be interested in a partnership like I’ve talked to, like revenue share with people before about it. And the one thing that I’m not willing to do is a revenue share deal on the leads that I send over. And it’s not that I don’t trust it, it’s that I just don’t. That’s just not what my business wants to be. I don’t want to be micromanaging and saying, Hey, did you pay me for this and that? So I shot him back. I kind of. I reached out to some other colleagues that have a little bit better understanding of like what type of money there is to be made with in the roofing business, what the margins look like and started doing just some, some math.
[00:08:54] And I honestly probably would have been happy even at about a nine percent of that of that of the of the revenue with this guy. But I had just shot it out to him. I said, Hey, man, I was kind of looking about maybe about 12 percent of revenue of your company like and that allows me to deploy one hundred percent of my assets. Like, I’ll have skin in the game now, so I will go and I will will will make millions of dollars together. And he’s like, Yeah, you know, that kind of sounds good, like, let’s jump on a call. So we jumped on a Zoom call and he’s like, Man, I was talking with my friends that are are in the roofing business. Other people that are business owners and different businesses and ask them, like, Would you do this deal with this guy? And he goes, one hundred percent of them said, you’d be stupid not to. And he’s like, So I’m in man. He’s like, I’m in at 12 percent. He’s and I said, OK, well, let me tell you a little bit of what I what the expectations of me are going to be. You know what I expect us to do and kind of how it how it’s going to look? Because his main concern was he originally told me he didn’t want to be a big company.
[00:09:59] And I said, What is your concern about being a big company? I said, because if I if I come to be a business partner with you, I’m not going to be the guy that’s like, Oh, man, like, you only want to do a million. Like, like because I don’t if you’re if you’re narrow minded like that to where you only want to do a certain amount of money or you only want to be so big, like, I don’t know if I can help you because for me, I want to get us both rich. And he agreed. He wants to be wealthy. And I said, I can help you get there. His main thing was growing too quickly and sacrificing the quality of work. And and also, he’s he, you know, everybody has staffing challenges right now. And so him and I agreed with, you know, I said, here’s the thing. Initially, I’m not going to be able to control what happens because we’re going to focus on his brand first, I said. But we’re going to know, like if you’re like, Hey, dude, I’m ready in the next couple of months to go to to grow more. I said, then I will start building legions and we’ll be able a little bit, be able to control a little bit of the of the growth volume.
[00:11:07] With that, I said, but I’m going to be taking on all the all the expenses of this growth and the marketing piece of it. And so I reached out to my my local attorney here. Here’s where it kind of got a little bit weird. Was there like, well, I don’t know, Georgia law, so I can’t educate you on if it’s going to be best to do the contract in Georgia or if it’s going to be best to do the contract in Oregon. And so I didn’t know really how to research that, but my business thought was like, Well, if the business is based in Georgia and if I ever have legal issues, I would much rather fly to Georgia and deal with Georgia law than to try to have some dude appear in court in Oregon. And it just seems a lot more messy. That’s right. So I decided to refer me to an attorney in Georgia, and we’re working on paperwork right now, and hopefully we’ll close on this next month or next week because it’s going to be a simple contract. I feel it’s basically this is what’s expected of me, and you’re going to owe me 12 percent of your company. It’s it shouldn’t be any like there’s not going to be a whole lot of stuff and it’s going to be you and you’re getting
[00:12:20] 12 percent off or 12 percent off the bottom line. Like, how does that
[00:12:23] Work off the top off, the revenue? Because I don’t I don’t want to be the guy that’s like, you know, have my business partner screw up on because I don’t know anything about roofing, right? Doesn’t know anything about marketing, like he can’t put his trust in and try to know what’s going on with what we do. I don’t know how roofers work, but if he screws up on the bid, I don’t want that coming out of my out of the bottom line. So and the thing is, is that he’s hiring some door knockers, which. You know, so he’s putting some boots on the ground to start knocking doors. He wants growth. I want growth. And so he’s willing to give 12 percent of his company because he knows the power that I that I have, and he’s been following me for free few years. So, yeah, so hopefully that’s awesome.
[00:13:09] Yeah, man. Yeah, that’s yeah, that’s really cool.
[00:13:15] I see there’s some questions coming in.
[00:13:17] Yeah, those are the kinds of deals that I look forward to. We have a few of those in the pipeline. I guess it was about maybe a year ago when I really started thinking in those terms and trying to find people who could potentially do deals with me like that and who could grow and who know their business so well and understand the value that I bring to the table. And I think I’ve mentioned it on a couple of lives where with this one guy, the proposition is really just to go big with him over time and in three to five years. I think we could we could. Well, and I mean, let me back up. So in a couple of years, I think will be to the point where it’s out of his hands is out of his ability to manage it. And so my vision is that we would do some kind of a joint venture, something in the realm of what Spencer has done here. And but but take real and real equity stake like a 50 50 equity stake. Run it up a little bit more over the next few years with bringing in management to help do that and then sell it to a national brand. And then we both cash out.
[00:14:19] So that’s kind of the way we’ve hyped it up together. And who knows, you know, I mean, I’d like to have a dozen of those things in the pipeline, and maybe one of them will work out like, who knows? But I mean, that’s part of the beauty of the game, in my opinion. And, you know, just getting in with these guys who are hungry, they know their business really well, they’re going to need skills along the way, just like we are. They’re going to need to build skills along the way and we can help them do that in a lot of ways and provide support for them so that they can help so that we can help them grow their company. But then we need to get paid when you get paid at the end of the day. So and this is amazing, Spencer, I’m so glad to see that you’re kind of going down this track too, because this business is far beyond the thousand fifteen hundred and two thousand a month client. I mean, what you can do, the types of deals that you can get your your hooks into if you just stick with it and build that reputation for yourself is off the charts.
[00:15:14] Yeah, I want to answer Will Smiley’s amen. I’m not sharing in any business expenses or liability insurance or anything like that. You know, as I’ve stated this, you know, roofers are making 40 to 50 percent on these roof jobs, so he’s going to go sell a ten thousand roof pocket. Five of that pay me out the 12 percent of the of the 10. And then, you know, there’s a lot of profit there for this guy. And I know the power that I bring. So it’s a nice deal. Like, I think it’s a I think it’s an amazing deal. Like I said, I would have been happy at about nine percent. But hey, if he’s willing to give me an extra three because he sees the value and he’s talking with his business partners, I was going to talk him out of it. I shot high. He didn’t negotiate. I’m the better salesperson. I don’t know if that’s good for me, if he’s out there knocking doors, if we’re a company or not.
[00:16:05] So well, maybe that’s the way he does business. He tells them a price. And if they don’t want to pay it, he walks. You know, maybe he doesn’t negotiate his prices. He he bids, he bids where he has enough pad in there and and if they don’t like it, then go, go get somebody else who’s who’s maybe not going to do it right or is going to not do it on your timeline or it’s going to somehow, you know, jumble the deal at the end of the day.
[00:16:28] The other the other piece I want to mention about this, you guys, is that I did research. I did hours of research to make sure that the actual market can allow me to go in there with legions and actually make some serious cash because it is in the Atlanta area, but it’s in the outskirts of Atlanta. And when I looked at the actual city that he’s in, he doesn’t have like a GMB or a website. We’re going to dominate just even that one city. So I knew when I started seeing some of this stuff that it was going to be, it was going to be nice.
[00:16:59] Patrick’s asking if you are going to get in the weeds on his sales process. I would say that probably, probably not, unless he’s fumbling the ball all over the place.
[00:17:11] Here’s the thing you guys like for what I’m going to be doing. Like initially, like build out a website optimizes GMB that’s going to like he’s going to think I am a hero and a god by just that. And you know what, at the end of the day, if if I don’t grow his company one little bit, I’m pocketing three K. And I’m not saying that as an asshole, but I’m confident that we’re going to grow this thing. So I’m not going to get in the I mean, sales are sales. I can tell you, when I start making his phone rang, he’s going to have to step up and he’s going to know, like, you know, hey, we need to start doing something when you start closing these deals, right?
[00:17:48] Well, and to your point, Patrick, that’s kind of what I was saying was that you build so many skills in the lead gen model that you can come in and consult on sales. You can come in and consult on some of these other management, leadership and mindset. All these other things that we’re learning to build our own companies or a lot of those things are that are what the contractors need to know to build there as well. So you become way more valuable over time. She’s still stacking all these things. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for. For running us through that exercise there, Spencer and taking over the winds category. Who else has some wins? I know, I know Spencer is a really tough act to follow, but every little win counts.
[00:18:29] Who else wants to win on the board? I’m not scared. All right, Devon. So I posted it earlier in the group to just because, I guess, impatience or was fresh at the time. And yeah, I got the keys to just twenty six hundred member,
[00:18:46] Business oriented Facebook group. Oh, that’s right. Cool.
[00:18:49] Yeah, just for asking. So I’m now the admin of a Facebook group of 2600 business owners.
[00:18:55] Now, how did you get that just for asking? I mean, so
[00:18:58] I’ll preface it a little more completely than in the post covered over the span of two weeks. That this happened with the first one is I just joined a bunch of Facebook groups for the specific niche. And I had noticed a marketer in there who is a slime ball. You know, it’s like everything in this industry we don’t want to be, you’re just lowballing everybody, so you’re destroying the price point for marketers. But then he’s also destroying these actual small business owners. Gmb is doing terrible, spammy stuff like Fiverr CEO that’s just tanking everything and then just not acknowledging any of it and just trying to take up all of these clients in the space. So I just reached out to the admin of the group with nothing originally other than just good intent of saying like, Hey,
[00:19:43] This guy’s a loser, you got to get them out of here.
[00:19:45] And they said, thanks. And from there, it was just a conversation we’re having. And they had told me, Actually, you know what? I don’t really like that this group is just given to me. I just, you know, I haven’t really done anything with. I don’t log on. And from
[00:20:00] A separate conversation I had
[00:20:01] About a week after that with someone else, I was telling him, You know what? Pricing is a big issue with this industry. What would you? How would you feel if I actually made a Facebook group that was designated just for helping people understand how to bid, how to give prices, how to get them put? So you’re not undercutting other people in the market to the entire industry benefits and helps a lot of small business owners grow. The resounding response from it, the people loved it, so I reached out to this admin owner and I said, Hey, like, have you ever thought about using this group for this purpose? And they were like, No, that sounds great. And I said, You know, if you want, since you don’t log in, I’ll do it. You just throw me the keys.
[00:20:39] So, wow, that’s amazing. That’s a that’s a huge asset. Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:45] And I did nothing.
[00:20:47] Sorry, but what’s really at the right time, right? Yeah.
[00:20:51] But what’s really cool about it is the fact that this positions me to really provide a lot of authoritative value to people who are just starting out in this industry that aren’t my ideal client, but it positions me as someone who can provide consistent value for a lot of people to differentiate myself from a lot of people who are just joining groups.
[00:21:11] And yeah, well, I mean, even, you know, twenty six hundred, it’s a lot of people. It’s like even if you got 10 percent of those people to engage and 10 percent of those people to become a client in some fashion, you’re talking twenty six clients. That’s that’s that’s pretty good. That can make an agency, you know?
[00:21:28] Yeah, yeah. No, it’s a fantastic funnel that
[00:21:31] So did he he he let you take over the admin privileges or he flat out handed you the group,
[00:21:37] The admin privileges. But so I first started out by, I was being very tentative with any change I made. I was running everything by them and shooting them messages just to say, Hey, I don’t want to bother you. How do you feel about this? What’s your opinion on that until they finally just became very laissez faire on and they’re like, Do what you want that you feel is going to be best?
[00:21:57] Fantastic. That’s awesome. Kevin, congratulations. That is a massive win because we all know that if we were kind of try to build a Facebook group from scratch, I know people who have done it successfully in a short period of time. I couldn’t figure it out. You know, it’s it’s a struggle. So to have have one handed to you like that that you can kind of repurpose and make it what you want and use it as a funnel is amazing. Yeah, that’s really cool. Anybody else have any wins? Those are a couple of big winners right there this week.
[00:22:26] Devin Kevin’s forgetting about another way, and I was I was able to help him out here. Yes. Yeah. Spencer Spencer got me a very elusive address in Portland, and if I ever have a firstborn, I’ll probably give you rights to it or something. I don’t know. I’ll make it worth your while, but don’t see how you get a GMB and a much needed market. So. Oh, is that right? Well, I have a couple of address being local here. There’s using that that photographer method I had seen Devon had actually posted in a local group with a with a different method, and I reached out to Amazon Hey man, because I loved it, actually. And he’s like, Dad, man, that method works, except in Portland. And I was like, Well, matter of fact, I happen to be here and I happen to have some GMB address sitting in my inbox. Let me reach out to him on Facebook to see if it’s still it’s still a go. And. And she said, yep, so. So we’re working on getting a GMB postcard for him to this gal.
[00:23:25] That’s awesome. Anybody else have any wins? I guess we can’t pull any off of Facebook because I’m not live in Facebook. I don’t know what’s going on with this re stream function, but I’m on other people’s accounts and who knows what, but we’ll just upload it later. No big deal.
[00:23:41] I’ll give. I’ll give a quick link, Jeff. Go for it. Let’s hear it. So I got a new two thousand five hundred a month lead gen client. Ok. And it was actually about a year, thirty thousand a year.
[00:23:59] Ok. Yeah, yeah. I’m trying to do the math here, yeah, that’s right. All right,
[00:24:03] Cool. And I had another client in there, really, client. I just had somebody who was taking a lead and they kind of they just sucked. Actually, they were bad. It was one of the early ones that I did. I was doing per lead and it was a low price and I was very happy to get rid of them. And I just did a little bit more work in searching for a kind of vetting out business owners. Got a pretty good one. So I think 2500 is the starting point. Probably should talk to Spencer before maybe sold myself a little bit low there, but I think room to grow. And it was it was nice getting rid of somebody who was kind of like pain in the neck and getting them, getting to work with somebody who’s like a good business operator
[00:24:55] Who can grow with. Yeah. And see, I’m learning from you guys because when I find those people, I tend to give them an easiest, the easiest road possible to do business with me. So I tend to low ball on the front end. I anchor them very high, but I let them kind of get get a really good deal for the first month or two because I want to solidify the relationship and let them know I’m in it to win it for the long term. Now could I? Could I ask for two thousand five hundred instead of seven, fifty or a thousand or twelve fifty or whatever the number is? Yeah, I could. But I, you know, when I find that person that I think is going to be that long term client, that’s going to rock it with me. You know, again, I it’s not, I guess maybe there is a little bit of fear that I’ll lose them if I price them too high because they are hard to find, you know, and I don’t want to around sell it, reselling my asset three different times to try to find somebody over the course of however many months, you know? But I guess maybe I should anchor high shoot for the middle and then if they if they if they start to turn on me, then maybe, maybe go lower. I don’t know. You know, it’s always it’s always a work in progress.
[00:26:07] It’s always different, right?
[00:26:08] That’s always different, right? Yeah.
[00:26:11] Yeah, yeah, I was happy, I was happy to get that old out with the old in with the new
[00:26:15] Yeah, yeah, because I just closed a deal on one of my personal assets that I had a guy last year paying me about a thousand a month. And it was up and down. You know, I hadn’t really done a lot to it over over the years. I had screwed it up. You know, it was one of the first things I ever built. And because of all the things that I do with Patrick and his agency and and lead Snap and all of that, I just kind of put that stuff on the back burner and I had a guy paying me a thousand bucks a month, which was probably he was probably underpaying me. But the lead count was like a roller coaster up and down and going in and out of the pack and all of that. So I got another company a couple of weeks ago and I brought them on at six hundred a month, but I anchored them to four thousand. I said, You know, this thing’s really going to once I really pay attention to, it’s going to be worth four or five thousand bucks a month. But I need to have some income on the short term. So that’ll give us both an operative. The companies only about a year and a half old. But there there’s three or four partners, I think, and and they have all the the system set up, you know, they have an office staff and all of that in place. So I have high hopes for them. And I was willing to take less because again, it’s like the lead volume is all over the place. I can’t guarantee anything. I don’t feel good about it if I had taken a higher amount. But you know that that little amount will give me a lot more opportunity to and breathing room to kind of like do the things that need to be done. So when we come into spring, then it’s going to be like, Hey, now it’s now it’s a thousand fifteen hundred and twenty three thousand whatever we can justify. So that’s kind of the way I’m taking that one.
[00:27:55] Yeah, I like that. It’s good approach to just put that number out there. It’s like, here’s the vision that we’ll get to. So they’re not just thinking, Well, oh, I was only fifteen hundred. You doubled it like they have that anchor and it’s really powerful.
[00:28:11] Yeah, yeah. We’re kind of hitting on some of the things I kind of had outlined here. I kind of outlined the agenda if I do the wins and then go over some prospecting stuff and then some sales. And for the sales, it’s like we’ve had some deals where, you know, we try to take care of our clients, but sometimes they kind of take advantage and that that can happen. And it’s always kind of in flow and you have to discern what is the right move in the moment and sometimes you don’t make the right one or or whatever. And so, you know, as the kind of client manager, you know, sometimes I feel like I’m being taken advantage of because I can see right through these people like they’re trying to get the best of us, you know, and not pay for it or take advantage of the situation. And so I’m more inclined to cut them off. But I don’t know the whole story of some of the relationships of these clients who have been with us for longer than I’ve even been with the agency and things like that. So I have to take all that into consideration.
[00:29:16] But some clients that are, you know, you think you’ve got them, you’ve got them at a high number, you’ve got them, you’re crushing it and paying you and all that kind of stuff. And then next thing, you know, something happens in their personal life and maybe they get thrown off track with their business or they have a family member who is ill or whatever the case is. And next thing you know, the whole thing goes south. It’s just part of the game, you know, so it goes back to the mindset of just recognizing that this is not a passive income stream, in my opinion, I don’t treat it as such. I think some people get in here and they want to build a passive income portfolio and you can make it sort of passive. But I think at the end of the day, if you’re really going to continue to build, grow and win long term that you’re going to have to get your hands dirty. That’s my opinion, and I like that. I like that because then it allows me to continue to learn and grow along the way, too. So, so that’s what I think.
[00:30:15] Jeff, to piggyback on that man, you sparked a thought, I guess another way that I had was one of my renters long term renters. He rents a landscaping site for a measly six hundred bucks a month, but he’s been sick here now for the last month. He just called me and he’d say, Dude, I’ve been sick for the last month with COVID and some other issues going on from it. But he’s like, Unfortunately, I can’t pay you. And I know it was a big stress on him and his family, and he just lost his dad here less than a month ago, and then his grandfather’s in the hospital in Iowa with COVID and having some medical problems from it. And I just like I’ve been so blessed here recently in my business, I was able to tell this guy like Ronnie, don’t worry about it, dude. Like, you focus on your family. And I know this has been a big stressor for you and your wife. But but don’t worry about the six hundred bucks. It means a lot more to you right now than it does to me. And I don’t mean that in a cocky way. But right here months ago at six hundred bucks, what a minute. 18 months ago? Yeah, now we’re kind of got this thing chugging along. I was able to bless him and he was like, Oh my God, dude, he’s like, he started crying, and this is a man that doesn’t cry. He’s like, You don’t understand what that meant to me, and I really, truly appreciate that. And I was I got off the call and I was like, Man, that felt frickin amazing to be able to say, I mean,
[00:31:38] What you’re saying, what you’re saying, Spencer, that’s the reason I love my job, you know, I mean, I wasn’t I didn’t have the skills or the time or whatever that, you know, to build an agency like Patrick did. So Patrick is in that place where he’s able to give back and you lose one client. It’s not going to second affect your bottom line. You take on a new play, it’s not really going to affect your bottom line that much. So you have the ability to sort of help people when they need it. And that solidifies a relationship. That’s exactly what I’m talking about, and it feels really good to be able to do that. So I have the benefit of piggybacking on on Patrick’s success as a sales and client success guy to be able to come in. And when people have an issue like that and be able to give them the benefit of the doubt again, you have to be careful because the tables could turn and it might start taking advantage of you eventually. But that’s really part of the beauty of this business model is to be able to make an impact like that and to have so much abundance and Leeds, Leeds or gold, in my opinion, I’ve said it before. It’s like I just treat them. They’re like the gold. They’re the magic that makes businesses happen and you control them. So you have the ability to to sometimes give these guys a break or to give them a gift like like Spencer just gave his client.
[00:32:55] And I think that makes all the difference in the world for the type of business that you’re running, the type of clients that you’re going to attract, and the type of success that you’re going to have long term. You know, you’ve had a lot of success here the last few months, and it’s great to hear that you’re giving back when when it’s appropriate. I mean, that’s part of the reason I’m in this game because I want to create enough abundance where I’m able to give back to to others who need it, not just clients and not just other people in the Legion world. But when I’m running around, I had, you know, I was blessed with multiple mentors in my life who who taught me how to give. I just never had the abundance to do it. You know, I traveled with this business guy in Mexico for about a year, and he had several businesses. And man, he would he would make up. He’d find any opportunity to give back like any opportunity you would just find like just somebody playing the guitar at a Mexican restaurant or something like that. And people are giving him like one peso or something, and he walks out and gives them one hundred pesos. It’s 10 bucks. Like, who cares, you know, whatever.
[00:34:00] Like one time we were walking down the street in Mexico City and there was an old guy down begging on the street for money and had cataracts. You barely see and whatever. And he’s like, Hey, hey, Jeff, go get that guy. Let’s take him to lunch. You know, he’s probably like 90 years old. Like, you know him taking a bath and who knows how long, whatever we walk into the restaurant with him and give him lunch kind of have a little conversation with them and and whatever. And everybody’s looking at us like, what are you doing with this guy? And as we walk out, he pays for the guy to eat there for a week like he just paid up front, like made sure that all the waiters and everybody heard him do that so that they wouldn’t just take the money and not let him in or whatever. So I was exposed to people who were who have been exposed to people who are really big on giving back, and that has always planted a seed for me. And that, you know, that way that I want to live my life and to share the abundant whatever abundance I have, you know? So it’s awesome that this business model gives you the opportunity to do that. I want to just roll off the back of that to guys, you know, a friend
[00:35:09] Of mine who was really struggling and I mean, he couldn’t pay his power bill, couldn’t pay. He’s living from paycheck to paycheck.
[00:35:17] He had a really bad experience, his wife
[00:35:19] Was had psychological problems, committed suicide, left him with the young kid. He lost his farm like everything, just went belly up and we ended up joining J-K together, right? Anyway, he was getting screwed by this guy he was contracted to, and I ended up dominating the whole area without him even asking me. I just went out and did it right, so I just dominated the whole area anyway. Fast track. Now, a year later, he rings me up. He’s now a counselor on the local municipality, right? So he actually gets to implement legislation in the city. This is how far this guy’s transformed, right? Wow. He’s now making more money than Jody Rockefeller. He has just proposed to his his girlfriend, right? So now he’s going to get married, right? Because this guy’s in his 50s and lost everything right? So he felt really inadequate. Now he’s able to say, Hey, now I can get my house back, I can buy a house so I can do all these things right. And just the other day, man, he just he just lumped 20 grand in my account. What does he have? A blue suit? He got me this money, right? That’s the sort of shit that you can do with this. Like, this is what I think, Spencer. We were having a quick chat today. Like, Man, how good is this game? Like, is there anything on Earth like this shit, right? There just isn’t. I mean, the parameters in so many different areas you could go to with this, there’s so many
[00:36:40] Things you can do
[00:36:41] Because the world runs on those phone calls, the world runs on those sales, you know, the world runs on people buying things and sharing a lot and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, I mean, that’s a pretty big win for me. Honestly, you guys, this is probably the best drugs out there. Honestly, like if you if you can get the money coming in for yourself and then be able to start blessing other people like, you know, I don’t know if you guys been following Shaquille O’Neal lately with that dude has been hanging out and blessing some some kids at Wal-Marts and stuff. He says that he wakes up on a daily and if he can’t go bless somebody, he doesn’t feel like he’s done his job. And, you know, he’s like, What am I going to do with all this money? You know, it’s like, you can’t take this crap with you. So as long as you’re living the life, traveling, doing whatever you want to do, like as well start blessings in people and and I’ve seen some stuff like that in my local community. I don’t know. It’s right now that’s a little bit uncomfortable because I feel like people kind of flex and do things in the wrong manners these days with doing that kind of like this social media type of blessing type stuff where they’re like, you know, leading the hundred tip for the waitress or whatever it is. But but honestly, man, like being able to tell people like, you know, with what I hear from Graham and then being able to tell my my client like, Hey, don’t worry about the six hundred bucks like, you know, like focus on other things and I can get healthy and really distressing your life.
[00:38:05] So it doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t always have to be money, and it doesn’t always have to be a lot of money. Like a little bit can help a lot, you know, along the way, like like my examples of the guy I was working with to like buying people food or leaving 10 bucks to a guy who’s probably making ten bucks the whole day or whatever. You know, it’s the little little things add up, and the bigger you get, the bigger impact you can make.
[00:38:31] Well, when your client tells you he has only a few hundred bucks in his bank account, you know he has a family to take care of. Right, that man. And you have to understand that this guy is a military man, which I say that because I think people that have been in the military have a harder time with showing weakness, and he sees that as a weakness. And he’s like, Dude, this fucking hurts my pride to tell you that I don’t have the money to pay you right? And I was like, Dude, I respect that, that, you know, just vulnerability of being a man to man and saying, I can’t pay you. And I know that he was probably expecting me to say, Well, you know, just hit me up when you can get it. But when I told him, Hey, don’t worry about it this month, he’ll take care of your family, go see your family and get yourself healthy. It was just, you know, like grown men crying on the other end of the phone. Like, that’s I’ve never experienced that. And you know, that’s that’s crazy to me.
[00:39:24] So well, how awesome is it? I know you have already said that. It’s awesome, Spencer to be in the seat that where you can make that kind of an impact and give somebody a break. I mean, that’s that’s amazing. So thank you guys for sharing all that. That’s awesome. Patrick is asking something about Facebook groups I was going to share in my prospecting stuff a little bit about what I’m doing in Facebook groups. So maybe Spencer can kind of chime in on that. But I wanted to start with just a little bit of prospecting, and this is maybe basic for some of the people on the call. But I wanted to lay it out there because I do get a lot of messages about prospecting and like, how do you do it? And things like that. So I just wanted to go over like three different quick and easy methods. That I would do and how I would do it. Craigslist, Facebook and the Home Advisor list. And just keep it simple. So any time I’m going into Craigslist, I would just go into the services section and just just search whatever the niche is that that I’m doing. If it’s landscaping and then I keep it simple, spelled it wrong landscaping. I keep it simple when I reach out to these people. I did a couple of texts yesterday, actually it signed me out to do that.
[00:40:48] So. And again, when I’m trying to keep it simple for them, I’m just trying to get them engaged because especially if I have something that’s producing, like I know that I can give up a certain number of leads to try to get a client, right. So if I’m not going into a big conversation with them and I just get them interested enough and open to accepting a couple of leads, then I can vet them out. After that, I’m willing to give up two three five leads to do that instead of trying to go in super big with them from from jump and turning them off because they think I’m home advisor or something like that. This is just an easy way to gain their trust right away and let them know how I’m not asking you for anything. I’m not asking you to open your wallet. Let me put some money in your pocket. So this was a message I sent literally yesterday morning. I saw your ad on Craigslist looking for someone to work with on referrals for this type of work. Are you open to something like that? He’s like, Good morning. Sure. You know, it’s like it was like that simple. And then I sent it to another guy. Same message just copied and pasted.
[00:41:58] He said, Yes, I said, cool, I’ll send you a few and see what happens. No worries either way. So after that, I’ll just send them a couple. So it’s easy to go in here and look for whatever your niche is and you can kind of vet through them really easily. You can see if they’re if they like. This guy has pictures. More than one more than two. It looks like he’s not like super professional, but you never know like a lot of times, what I’ll do is I’ll take this number and I’ll search it and see what comes up. And if it’s like some review site with a bunch of bad reviews on it, then I will contact them. So I’ll do a little bit of due diligence on them before. Sometimes you’ll put the number in and it’ll be a website and it’ll be a bunch of business listings and then you can kind of legitimize this guy looks like a one off type of a guy. But what we’re talking about landscaping here, although he does do retaining walls, and that may not be his main number. So. So that’s just a little bit of an easy way to use Craigslist if you haven’t been on the Craigslist game. I’ve pulled some really amazing clients off of Craigslist. There are a lot of like non licensed non insured types on there, and especially for bigger niches that are going to require more, or that licensing is going to be more of a factor to the the customer themselves.
[00:43:26] And if they’re going to hire them, they’re going to want to know that they have insurance and the license and whatnot. But for, you know, for the most part, you can find decent people on here, at least to start engaging. And again, I’ve found quite a few really good people. See, this was what I pulled this number. It’s on the Better Business Bureau and has some other stuff up here that you can go and kind of do some deeper due diligence and figure it out. The one that I told you about earlier on the call that I just got that I pulled on for six hundred bucks. I found them on Craigslist because there are good people on Craigslist. They don’t know Jack about marketing. They don’t know even where to start. And if they’ve talked to anybody at all, maybe they’re there. They’ve been priced out. They feel like they’re asking too much. They don’t understand what the what they’re going to do for that money. And so they just they they don’t pull in a marketing company to do that. So so that’s kind of the way I’ve done it, which.
[00:44:32] Right.
[00:44:40] Right. All right.
[00:44:42] Can you guys see my screen? Hey, Spencer, can you mute, I think you’re I think you’re you’re it’s like showing you a static or something. I think. And then on Facebook, I would come on here and like, I just looked up Cincinnati contractor, so if I were going to prospect on Facebook, I would come in and join a couple of these contracting groups. And you can see there’s there’s all kinds of I just look up specific niche and contractors in general, and they usually have a group in the local area that is specific for contractors or handyman. They usually don’t have something for very niche specific like landscaping, but that might. But usually these contractor groups are just for every everybody. So I haven’t gotten into any of these groups yet. I just went on here and requested to get on. Sometimes you can see this one. I’m not even a member of. You can search in the group without even being a member. It depends on how the group settings are. So sometimes many times actually you’re able to search the group without even joining. So I would just search
[00:45:53] In here landscaping. You could even post in that group to. Pardon me. I said you can even post in there, too, without
[00:46:01] Being a member.
[00:46:02] Yeah, I just saw that. Oh yeah, yeah. That can actually post in it.
[00:46:06] So then you can. Yeah, that’s right. So then you can start to see like these guys, that looks pretty nice. I wonder if you swipe that off of pixels or something or if that’s actually their work? Who knows, right? But this looks like a legit company, and it’s pretty recent. So that’s definitely somebody I would be doing some due diligence on and then I would just go down the list and see who else. This guy looks like more of a handyman. He’s kind of he’s cleaning up leaves and stuff like that. Like, I probably wouldn’t call him because I want somebody who’s more focused on the specific service instead of jumping all over the place. I mean, landscaping is a little bit different. This is all related, but a lot of times you’ll find people who are handyman who are like, Oh, I’ll I’ll fix your door or your window and I’ll do your your junk removal and whatever. Like, I try to stay away from those guys because that’s kind of like the Jimmy pickup model. And that usually doesn’t suit the type of company or business that I’m that I’m trying to create or do business with. So that’s kind of how I do the Facebook groups. Here’s another one I got in that one, but you kind of get the idea. So I would go through and vet that through all of the local contracting Facebook groups and any other business group that I could find. There’s some that are run by real estate agents that are also can be very helpful because real estate agents are, you know, they’re everywhere and they want to be as helpful as possible.
[00:47:36] So if you drop a message in there and say, Hey, I’m a local homeowner and I look for a landscape, we recommend like a lot of times they will actually. You’ll get a list of like 10 people right off the bat, like if you go in like Spencer said and make a post here and say, I guess it’s in this group and say, Hey, can anybody recommend a local landscaper and do it like that? Then they would just, you know, everybody in the group would just kind of start hitting up their name, tag people. So then you then you can reach out to them on messenger and say, Hey, I found you and somebody recommended you in a Facebook group. That’s a that’s more of a warm intro. You kind of get from cold to warm really quickly. And those scenarios you can say, Hey, Billy Bob recommended you in this Facebook group. And if they know who that person is, then whatever you’re going to get a little bit more attention. So that’s the way I would do it, trying to get back to my main screen to see the question Patrick had about Facebook groups. He was asking how Spencer does it when he goes in Facebook groups back to it. Spencer, what do you do in Facebook groups? Well, I’m
[00:48:55] Trying to get this thing started again. Yeah. So like I said, I. I’ve got involved with some coaches, people that are coaching one specifically guy, he coached coaches back people and then the other one is a landscaping coach. And so the methods that I’ve been using is, you know, just obviously the landscape escaping coaches, referring people over to me, which which helps with the pipeline. I’m also essentially the the marketing expert in that group because he doesn’t have marketers in it. And I go and appear in his private coaching sessions sharing tips like the last one I did was like I did a slide show presentation for eight eight things your website must have an order rank rank on Google. So I went through this kind of like a checklist and show it and explain things and immediately you’re an expert. And so these guys are like, Oh crap, they’ve already paid a coach five K to improve themselves. They’re there ready to pay a marketer to improve their business. And so going in there, what I’ve done is after we initially, I had that big push with the audits around the holiday season when Patrick was running the contest, I had to then become creative. So the one thing I would make sure that every one of you guys have done is optimized your your personal Facebook page, because what I do is I go in, I will go into the landscaping group and do like some funny landscaping means and say, you know, Hey, can you relate? And like these landscapers just start laughing, you know, because the one thing that a lot of people that are running groups struggle with is that mix, you know, of of business and mix of just like funny, like just stuff that has nothing to do with whatever they’re selling.
[00:50:58] So, you know, Gary Vee talks about, I think it’s what jab, jab, right hook or jab, jab, left hook that marketing book and he talks about, you know, basically that that method. So I’m not constantly pushing, Hey, I can help you with your marketing services. I’m posting construction teams where people are laughing and you know, for damn well, they’re going and clicking on my profile going, Who is this guy? And they’re seeing it’s optimized and like, Holy crap, this guy helps people like me. And now you have people reach out to you and you’re not pitching anything that’s been amazing here recently. So also make sure your Facebook page.
[00:51:39] Yeah, that’s awesome. I don’t optimize mine as much as I could because I’m not doing that kind of outreach, but I can definitely see the value of it. And I’ve talked about the meme selling before. There’s a guy named Drew B. I think his name’s Wilson or something. You know that guy Spencer. He worked with Ryan Stillman hardcore closer. So he has a course on it, actually, and I haven’t taken the course or anything, but I just like the idea. And so I communicate with my some of my clients via mean like when something cool happens or whatever. I’ll drop a meme in the in the text or in the chat and and it just built it to help build a relationship makes you more relatable. It makes people want to do business with people who are fun. You don’t want it to be lame and just like always. They know they can call you, and they don’t have to be afraid of what the conversation is going to look like. Like your your client, Spencer, who didn’t have the money or whatever, it’s like if he were in that position where you had all this rapport that you’ve built with him over the course of the relationship, that sucks that he had to make that call. But when he made it, I don’t know if he was in this position, but you were in that position. He would probably feel like, OK, well, I know Spencer is a good guy. He’s he’s he’s fun to be around. He’s fun to do business with. I know he’s not just going to lash out at me or whatever the irrational fear is that somebody might have when they’re in a disadvantageous position like that.
[00:53:04] And then it just kind of like builds on itself as far as, like when you call and it’s like, Hey, you know, I noticed the call volume is up from seventy five to one twenty five in the last over the last couple of months. It’s time to kind of like reassess what my value is here. You don’t have to be afraid of that conversation either, because you’ve had these sort of more personal interactions and you laugh together and you’ve shared things together. That’s kind of the way I tee it up like every conversation I have. I’m not specifically thinking about what might happen in the future, but I know that I’m building a bank of of, how do I say, good deeds within my mouth? But my flip in my mind, I’m yeah, I’m building. I’m building a bank of sort of like the ability to reach out to them and and and contact them with things that maybe aren’t so fun later on. You know what I mean? So goodwill is a good way to put it. So so that all that all checks out. I love that. And you want to check out meme. Meme selling. Drew B. Wilson, I believe, is his name. He has a website and I see he has like a podcast on a site called Sales Sniper. So if you just look up, meme meme Drew B. Wilson, D Ari WB Wilson, then you can kind of figure out what he does. You don’t need to buy his course or anything. It’s pretty simple, but it’s very effective. You know,
[00:54:36] A couple of time, but a couple other methods. Jeff, I’ll touch on that have have have helped as well is like, I think as I think everybody that looks like the whole group is full of men tonight, currently on the call. I think every one of us have a hard time telling people you’re proud of them and you’re doing a good job. And when I like so when, like the landscaping coach posts something about such and such as business and they’re like, I’m making sure that I’m engaging in those conversations like, Dude, that’s awesome. I’m proud of you like that. Those are huge accomplishments, whatever. And I’m not doing it from a from a perspective of like, maybe this will get me a sale. Doing it from a genuine place, because these business owners need to hear this from other grown ass men that they’re proud of them. The other thing too, is that when people are posting in these groups, what I try to do is I try to comment with a gift. If you know anything like most people don’t comment with gifts, and if you comment with a gift, you kind of stand out and they go, Whoa, who is this guy? Or That was funny, or it’s a it’s a more, I guess, a better way to communicate than just, hey, congratulations or cool or whatever. Right? Kind of gives a little bit more personality.
[00:55:54] Well, and and people’s attention spans continuously get shorter and shorter. So looking at a gift is easier than reading three or four words. Congratulations, dude, or whatever. It’s just the nature of the reality of the current times, right? Yeah, that’s awesome, Spencer, so thanks. Thanks a lot for sharing all of that. I don’t see any more questions on that. The other prospecting method, it’s not even a method, it’s just let me see if I can find this again is most people just don’t even know that you can just Google Home Advisor like Home Advisor St. Louis landscapers, and they’ll give you the top twenty five people. It’s not always a direct hit, like sometimes they give you like somebody from carts, gates or whatever. Maybe they do landscaping. Maybe they don’t, but it certainly gives you a solid list to go on like I’ve been, you know, continuously blown away by, especially when I was doing a lot of outbound prospecting that I thought I had tapped out everybody in the city and a specific niche or whatever. And I’m like. Next thing I know I find a list of 30 more people, more companies who do business, and it just goes to show you that there’s so much competition out there and most of these niches, and it’s just an endless stream of potential clients for us. And it’s just a matter of finding them, reaching out to them, hitting them at the right time with the right message. And and that’s the game that we keep talking about. It’s like you’re not going to win every time you don’t spike the ball every single time.
[00:57:27] But when you do and if you get the numbers up, it is a numbers game. The next thing you know, you’re you’re doing some deals like like Spencer or some of these other people and and life like becomes a lot better because then you can get back and all these other things. So, yeah, I’m shocked that HomeAdvisor has all this available, but I guess they kind of have to because they’re trying to pull people in to hire these people. But I mean, here’s your prospecting list for landscaping in St. Louis right here. So that’s a that’s an easy one. And then finally, on on sales, I just wanted to talk about, I mean, it’s kind of what we’ve already been going going over just organically in this conversation about just like taking the journey with clients and being open to what might come up and giving them the opportunity to continue to do business with you, even if they are in a disadvantageous position, because that builds that goodwill for the future and really solidifies the relationship for you in a way that’s going to get them to not only continue to do business with you, but you can get them to ask you for referrals like and like if you were, if you needed clients right now, Spencer and you gave that guy the benefit of that six hundred bucks, you can say, Hey, you know what? I’m trying to grow my business to know what you could do. For me, that would be as valuable as that 600 bucks.
[00:58:56] Maybe give me a couple of referrals of other contractors in your city who who might want to do business with me, and we’ll just call it a day on that six hundred bucks. I’ll just credit that to you, and it’ll be all good. I mean, you don’t seem desperate right now, Spencer, but that would be one way that you could you could get value from this person in return for the value that you’re giving them. It sounds like there’s some other circumstances there where maybe you don’t want to put any pressure on them based on a loss in the family and sickness and things like that. I probably wouldn’t ask. Certainly not at that moment, but, you know, maybe later on say, Hey, you know, maybe maybe in two months from now when he’s got his train back on the track and Spencer needs some new clients. Maybe that’s a good ask. Hey, I’ve given you a couple of months like, you know, one favor you could do for me, just just give me some referrals, you know, and I bet he would bend over backwards to give you referrals at that point, you know? So that’s kind of the way we do it. And and I know that any like we had, we had one client we did a similar thing with. I think Patrick has mentioned him on a line he gave us like 12 referrals like, you know, just bang off just one right after the other and we closed, I think three or four of them, it’s great, you know, so so building those relationships can really make a huge difference over time.
[01:00:16] All right, so that’s that’s all I have. Patrick has another question here. There are scraping tools to scrape DNA and new domain registrations. They can be there. They can be used for prospecting too. Yeah, they can. I just don’t think it’s necessary to do that. I think some of those domain registrations that can be way early were way late in some cases. And, you know, based on everything else that we have at our fingertips, just just Craigslist, Facebook and the Home Advisor list, I mean, I rarely have to go beyond that. You know, there’s certain niches that are really particular and are probably not the smartest niches to go into from a due diligence standpoint and just an ease of doing business and finding a client standpoint. But you don’t know what you don’t know. And next thing you know you have it, it’s an asset it’s producing. You want to monetize it. So, you know, I have had trouble finding clients for some of those and specific geographic locations where it’s just just wonky geography, like we have one in Cape Cod, you know, and it’s like the booth out there. And like, nobody wants to drive from one end the cape to the other, especially during the summer when everybody’s at their vacation homes and whatever. Like, I just it’s just like I shake my head because it’s crazy to try to find somebody to fill that. So but the lists are out there way beyond way easier, I should say, than scraping domains and jobs and whatnot.
[01:01:51] I do see the value in that, and it can certainly come in handy if you’re targeting really specific niches that are not sort of the run of the mill type of stuff where where that could come into play or if you have a very specific way that you’re you’re prospecting. But just for the general prospecting we’re talking about here, I would say it’s almost, you know, overkill at that point. Patrick is also saying so there. Here’s a hard question how do you accomplish all this prospect selling SEO services, research the market, build out the legion and rank those jobs? Do you use a team of VAS for fulfillment? Yes, you do. Spencer, we certainly do. We have. We have. Probably, I don’t know, I think between both companies. Twenty five employees ish now. And I don’t know what that looks like on your side, Spencer. Maybe you would be a better person to answer that question about how you have it. I have a VA for my personal portfolio, and he’s crushing it for me. I brought on one guy about six months ago and he was doing pretty good, but then it wasn’t going so well. So I got a new guy and he’s just killing it, and he’s really helping me reposition all of my assets so that I’m going to be able to monetize them at a much higher level going forward. And I’m really excited about that. But I only have one, so I’m not running a team. Spencer, what do you have on your fulfillment side? How do you do that?
[01:03:22] Yeah. So I think what we’ve talked about this previously on a live where, you know, I was able to personally grow my agency to a six figure agency with basically me doing almost one hundred percent of all of it. Then when the prospect?
[01:03:43] Sorry about that.
[01:03:45] It’s all good when the prospecting method, you know, when when Patrick showed us that around the holidays, I really started to sell and I was like, Man, this is not good because I couldn’t I? Yeah, the one thing is, you guys, you guys can’t be the cook and the host and the bartender and all of it, you guys have to like. The biggest thing for me was once I hired a team, I have a team of Vas in Pakistan, and as we grow, he just keeps hiring developers and hiring positions that we need. So, yeah, so he’s building out his team and popular.
[01:04:24] Well, it’s like that mass IVR spam drawer like Graham said. That’s what it is, man. How many people have gotten ten thousand calls from Ohio in the last month? I mean, my god.
[01:04:36] So yeah, I found my VA actually was a was a VA that I see Patrick was asking was from a guy that I know from another Legion group. He had worked with this guy, and so I hired him for a small project of just it was 10 10 Legion website builds. They were all clones of each other, and I did the content for them and they they cranked them out for a really inexpensive price. And so I just kind of slowly was building this team. He slowly added, People, and that’s where my 10k months went to that. Twenty five k months. And now it’s like. All like the hardest thing right now, currently for me is there’s not one hundred percent of everything that I trust the team to do because they’re not 100 percent exclusive to me. They do have some other people that they do work for. I do have like he has my own separate developers and people that work specifically just on my projects, but I also don’t want to until I can fully trust them, like I’m still optimizing the jobs and things of that nature. So it’s that much. The analogy that I can give is that I am one hundred percent foot on the gas a hundred miles an hour. Sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Then I have to let off until like 50 miles an hour as I’m fulfilling, like the GMB optimization piece of things and kind of doing these things over here. I know once I’m able to basically just sell and be the face of the company when they’re doing one hundred percent fulfillment, we’re going to be easily doing somewhere to 60 to one hundred K months. And Jeff sees this on Patrick side of things. For me right now, it’s it’s just that balance of growth while I’m fulfilling. So it’s it’s this it’s kind of a tango. It’s this, this very unique dance that I’ve no experience in. But I can tell you, I’m excited as hell every day to wake up to do it.
[01:06:36] Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, that is in part of the reason that I came on board with Patrick is because Patrick spends a lot of his time with the software. If you don’t have that other project, so to speak, then you would probably continue to do sales and client management because that’s where the real rubber meets the road. That’s where I believe you’re going to have the most opportunity. That’s where I have the most fun, you know, not fulfillment, for sure. But you get to know people, you get to make an impact, you get to see where they’re at. Give them a break. Whatever it is like, all that stuff happens on the client side. So I, you know, who knows where it’ll go? Spencer but you could definitely at the numbers you’re talking about, continue to do sales and client management and then be fine with that and then just manage your remote team. That’s great that you’ve had so much great. Great luck with your your, your VAS and your fulfillment. I know that’s not always the case. I had a guy somebody was asking where I get my vas. I don’t really actively recruit. I had somebody reach out to me on LinkedIn and said, Hey, I see what you’re doing and I’d love to work with you. And I was like, Well, that’s the kind of person I want to work with.
[01:07:51] Somebody wants to work with me, you know, I don’t have to convince them. So he just was. His English wasn’t. He was from Africa. His English wasn’t as good as I would have liked. And you know, it was it was good work, but it wasn’t great work. And then after I kind of like, let him go and just decided to go out on my own. A few weeks later, another guy from Africa reached out to me on LinkedIn and saw what I was doing to do post on LinkedIn sometimes. And so, you know, he was he presented himself in a different way and and whatever. So I gave him a shot. And next thing, you know, he’s crushing it for me. And then we had somebody recently that I was I was actually hiring to do a website for a client outside of Patrick’s agency and all that client I’ve had for years before I even started working with Patrick. And she wants her website redone on a very specific platform called Web Web Flow. You guys probably know what it is, but I don’t know how to use it. So I was hiring somebody off fiber to do that. And he’s a rock star. And it’s like, Well, we might be able to use him in the agency.
[01:09:03] So it’s like you just kind of come over, you know, come across these people and get a feeling about them. We’re kind of dialing it in a little bit tighter on on who we hire. You know, Patrick is kind of said that he doesn’t want to hire anybody he wouldn’t hang out with outside of work. That’s a pretty high standard, you know what I mean? But you want to hire people. You want to you want to work with, and that’s it. So I haven’t done a lot of active recruiting. I know that we we have posted on different job boards and indeed and even LinkedIn and stuff like that along the way to try to find people. But, you know, finding the right person who’s going to kind of be in alignment with you overall, who’s going to understand the business and be able to grow and learn new skills and recognize like in like in Spencer’s case, where he’s growing very rapidly and to be able to absorb some of that fulfillment and take take all that stuff off of Spencer’s plate so he doesn’t have to worry about it. Like, that’s, you know, be thankful because that’s not the easiest hire in the world, you know, it’s not. It’s not super. Are easy to find that just looking on a job board or something.
[01:10:20] Yeah, trust me, Jeff, it hasn’t been easy. I think you guys probably remember when my team was plagued by this, this virus in Pakistan that you get from mosquitoes. Yeah, my team was very, very sick for a long period of time. You know, so and then there’s also the challenges of them just getting used to what your expectations are and what you’re not willing to accept. And so there’s times and there. So they’re kind of developing their processes while we’re developing our processes, but it’s allowing me to create SOPs as well as with the videos written out SOPs and being able to say this is the standards that we that I expect and please don’t give me anything that’s under these standards, because if you do, I’m sending it back to you and it’s costing your team more money because we pay on a per project basis, because I learned from our mentor Patrick, never to pay your team on an hourly rate because they’re going to screw you. And so the poor project base, so so I in my agency, every website that we put out, it has it has to pass. The one hundred percent like that client is stoked by it, like they want to show it off to everybody. If there’s any little thing like no matter how minor it is, we’re fixing it. We’re putting out the most, the best product that we can, right? And the team is slowly learning like, you can’t just send me something that is not going to be perfect.
[01:11:41] And if it’s not set up exactly the way client is going to, that the client wants it, that it’s coming back to you. And so it’s just this kind of, you know, I constantly am having to tell my, my, my guy and my team lead that, like, be a boss. And I think in no matter what language you speak, that you can kind of understand what that is and like, you need to be the boss and you need to be letting your team know like, don’t don’t give me crap, because if you give me crap, then and I try to pass that crap on a Spencer, he’s not going to accept it. So the expectations and and so it’s just being patient with each other. Plus, if you find somebody like, I know a lot of people in Third World countries or some of these countries that that obviously we’re getting BS from, you may not be able to believe one hundred percent of what they say. But my team lead, I’m like, you know, when we start talking about being able to give back, here’s a fellow that told me that he needs to build a house in the next six months and that I’m going to be able to keep prayed to Allah for me to come into his life and he needs to build a house.
[01:12:48] And I was like, Oh, OK, like, I like, that’s great. He then proceeds to tell me, This is this breaks my fricking heart that if he can’t build a house within the next like, like year ish or so that his girlfriend that he’s been with for like over three years, that he wants to marry and their culture, he’s not able to marry her and that his that her parents are going to marry her off to somebody else. Now you can call bullcrap, but this guy has been basically super motivated over the last four or five months that we work together, and this is part of my personal goal to help him build his house and to marry his, his his fiancee. This gal that he’s so in love with. That’s awesome. And so like, yeah, you could say like because my you know, you’ve heard these stories of people in Africa telling here or whatever. You know, it’s like these really elaborate stories. And so like my girlfriend, Jen, when she was over in Africa, she kind of saw firsthand what it was like. And so she asked me, she says, Do you really believe this stuff he’s telling you? And I truly believe it, 100 percent. I mean, shame on him if it’s not true, right? But I’ve got
[01:13:56] A goal like that, too. I trying to. I tend to believe the best about people. And you know, my my and my VA right now is from Rwanda. And he’s he’s very skilled. I know he’s had, you know, corporate jobs and things like that. And he he definitely lays it on thick about how he wants to do Legion and all of that. But at the end of the day, he’s performing, you know, at a high level and he’s giving me the kind of results that I want and that I’ve wanted for a couple of years and just haven’t had the resources to to to hire somebody and to find the right person. And so we’ll see where it goes. He has the capacity to do similar to what your guys doing. Spencer, as far as like running a team and things like that, who knows if we’ll ever get to that point. But in the meantime, I pay him and I told him from the get go. You know, it’s all based on results like, I don’t care how many hours you work, if you can deliver a super high quality product, you know, in the quantity that I’m asking you for and it only takes you an hour a week, then good on you. Figure it out. I don’t care if he’s hiring 12 other monkeys to do it for him or whatever. It doesn’t matter to me. I want the results and I’m paying for the results. I’m not paying for him to be sitting at a computer for a specific amount of time, you know, so I really take it. That way, and if he can get it done cheaper and again, it’s high quality work and a very high, high level niche that I’m working in and. But, you know, it’s all about results for me.
[01:15:28] Yeah, and the guy’s already invited me to his wedding in Pakistan and whenever this is right and I’m like, I don’t know, man, I was, I was googling, is it safe for four Americans to be in Pakistan? You know, I mean, like, he’s like, You’re fine with me.
[01:15:44] Only only when you’re personally invited, I guess.
[01:15:48] I don’t know, man, because they’re their their celebrations over there, like week long celebrations with their with their religion. So it’s like a week long wedding of like all nations and and things. And it sounds absolutely amazing if I can guarantee my safety. So. So I don’t think a guy would go that deep and say, Hey, come, come, come, and I want to invite you to my wedding when when I marry her. So that’s pretty elaborate.
[01:16:15] A last question, Patrick is asking, keeping up with GMB, is this time consuming? How do you have? How do you do it with VAS? You run it all through the software, right, Spencer, or how you do it?
[01:16:27] That’s what timekeeping?
[01:16:29] No, with logging into GMB and all that and you
[01:16:34] Don’t mess with my GMB. You don’t mess with you. Ok, so yes, they do. They they’re messing with some of my personal GMB with doing, posting and things like that. They’re logging in through through the email. I don’t actually have them added to the GMB. I probably should, but I haven’t had any problems with them going down.
[01:16:55] Yeah, that’s where the API comes in, Patrick, where you can log into all your GMB through the software and then you don’t have to. You can give VAS specific access to specific things and firewall them. And so they can have the log into the the software, but not the log into the specific GMB and still still manage in that way. Depending on what all you’re doing with them. So. So that’s that. So we’re at about almost coming up on an hour and a half. So I don’t see any other questions. Anybody else have any final thoughts here. I think there’s a great live. I really appreciate the energy Spencer and Graham and you guys have brought this evening, Devin as well. And just all of your wins and just the, you know, it makes me and I know it makes Patrick feel really good about what we’re doing when we can go and show other people, you know, certain things that allows them to build a business for themselves where they’re making a bigger impact. It’s like that wings of butterflies or whatever like Pebble in the in the in the water and the ripples in the water or whatever. So it’s awesome to hear all of these wins and all the ways that you guys are building your own businesses and benefiting and creating abundance for yourselves and sharing that with with others. It’s awesome. Thank you so much. All right. Well, we’ll call it that. All right, you guys have a great week. Go get some wins. Let’s let’s convene here again next week and share even more great insights and wins that we have in our businesses. And if you need any help along the way, just reach out and we’ll do what we can. All right. Thanks a lot. Everybody take care of.