0:00

Neil and I have an agency owners group called

0:02

the Agency Owners Association. All

0:04

you have to do just go to marketing school dot io

0:06

slash Agency. Once again, it's Marketing school

0:08

dot ioslash Agency to learn

0:11

more. And now back to the show.

0:13

Did you know that shake shack is

0:16

doing a promotion that's targeting

0:18

Chick fil A. No, So here's what this

0:20

this image looks like. I'll show it to shake Shack

0:23

is offering free chicken sandwiches on

0:25

Sunday, and so basically for

0:27

Chick fil A, for Chick fil A and

0:29

you eat chicken too.

0:30

Yeah, I'm gonna go get this.

0:31

Chick fil A doesn't offer they're not

0:33

open on Sundays, that's why they're targeting

0:36

them. But it's free. Do you have to order anything else or

0:38

is it just free? No? They the bet is that they're

0:40

going to buy more stuff and there's

0:42

zero chance that you're just going to buy

0:45

one?

0:45

Is it one per person?

0:47

Probably?

0:49

Oh, I'm gonna go this time.

0:50

See look I just I just sold Neil with an

0:52

ad. You can thank me later shake Shack.

0:55

The chicken sandwich is pretty good during the pandemic.

0:57

I'll reward myself every Sunday because I live

1:00

above a shake shock and I'll get two

1:02

two chicken shacks, okay, and

1:05

ten nuggets, and that would be my gift.

1:08

I love it when you said free yeah,

1:10

well yeah, yet to use the code

1:12

Chicken Sunday one minute? One minute?

1:14

This is Can you text me it?

1:16

It's Chicken Sunday, dude. But I remember

1:19

I got a text evil Chicken Sunday,

1:22

Chicken Sunday. Okay, free

1:24

chick no, not chick flash free, shake shack.

1:26

Oh yeah, chicken free, shake shack. Chicken Chicken

1:29

Sunday is the code. Those of you listening are probably

1:31

going to do the same thing. Now. It's

1:34

a really the chicken shock is great.

1:37

Now, I'm gonna get this every Is it only

1:39

one time where you can go every Sunday? Dude, I don't know. I haven't

1:41

done this yet. That's

1:43

a good deal. Neil and I were talking

1:46

on the phone about this the other day. But I was just telling

1:48

Neil some of the numbers of these school groups. So

1:51

Sam Ubbins was fortunate enough to I was fortunate

1:53

enough to he let me invest. It was cool. So

1:56

I hope, I hope school continues to grow. But

1:58

there's these school groups as Kool

2:01

for anyone want y thank you. And these are

2:03

like communities, right, These are like private groups like you

2:05

can use like circle dot so you can use skool.

2:08

Alex Tramosi invested a significant check, it

2:10

seems like into school. And so there's

2:14

these groups that are doing like five hundred k month, two

2:16

hundred and fifty eight k a month. And I showed Neil

2:18

this one group. It has like two thousand people in it paying one hundred

2:21

and twenty nine bucks. And this group is

2:23

basically about how to like get

2:25

women and make money. And then there's

2:27

another group for how to make money online for

2:29

French people, and that group has three hundred

2:32

people in it and they charge nine

2:34

ninety nine a month, right, so that group's basically doing

2:36

like three hundred grand a month. And so these

2:38

groups are just communities at the end of the day, and people

2:40

are longing for community, people are longing for connection

2:43

because a lot of people are just working from home now, right, So

2:46

I think this is interesting. That's why we created the Agency

2:48

Owners Association group. If you go to marketing school

2:51

dot io slash agency you can learn more

2:53

about it. And we have our

2:55

mrs growing. It's now at three k. See last time

2:57

I told you, it was like twenty two hundred or something,

2:59

right, So, so I was like,

3:01

it's going to grow, it's gonna compound slowly. Wait,

3:04

so, so here's the disconnect. So every week we

3:06

record this podcast and then Eric tells

3:08

me, oh, you know, we got this

3:10

agency program. What is it called? Agency Agency?

3:13

Agency Owners Association, Agency Owners

3:15

Association.

3:16

He's like, it's growing. So I was like, okay,

3:18

cool.

3:19

I thought Eric was charging people like.

3:21

Five grand a year or ten grand a year or

3:23

something.

3:23

I don't know why he was charging and we were

3:25

just making some money or he was making some money.

3:27

I was like, all right, whatever. And then

3:29

he's like, oh, our MR keeps.

3:31

Growing and he keeps saying em or I'm like, I don't know what

3:33

the heck he's talking about. If you're doing in

3:35

person event, you're charging for the in person event, where

3:37

the heck is the MR. So then the

3:39

other day we were on the phone and he's just

3:42

like, our MR is growing. It's at two

3:44

grand. And then I asked him like, what do you mean MR.

3:46

And he's just like, oh, we charge him monthly

3:48

fee, an annual fee, monthly fee, monthly

3:50

fee, and it ends up breaking it down or

3:53

they pay up front or just monthly. It's just monthly one

3:55

forty nine, and I'm going to keep upping it to two hundred and two

3:57

fifty to three hundred. I'm going to keep helping it.

3:59

Yeah, you can charge annually, but you.

4:01

Can't charge only on it. They don't have that option.

4:03

Oh, they don't have that.

4:03

They should have that option. They don't, Yes, because then you can

4:05

just if you just say discount twenty percent.

4:07

Yeah.

4:08

And when Eric was going

4:10

through this process, I was like, oh, cool, He's like

4:12

it's recurring, and I was like, oh, now

4:15

I get what you mean by mrr. At first,

4:17

I just thought you were charging like five ten grand and

4:19

be like cool. We're meeting up and we can

4:21

discuss how to grow agencies, and we bring a

4:23

lot of them together and we all figure out how to grow

4:25

each other's agencies. And by the way, I actually

4:27

we share some of our lead flow with people in

4:29

the group. And so basically based on how you engage,

4:32

you're qualified to get lead flow, and so we

4:34

have a community manager that handles that. Right. So we're trying to

4:36

gamify a lot of it, and then the more value

4:38

we add to a group, the more, we'll charge for it, So join now while

4:40

it's while it's cheaper. But then what

4:42

we'll also do on this podcast is, because we can be very

4:45

transparent about this, we'll just share how it's growing

4:47

and what we're doing to grow it over time, and you guys

4:49

can watch us build a community from scratch in public

4:52

and you can just take whatever it

4:54

is that we're doing that you like, and hopefully you

4:56

get to grow into yep.

4:58

Yeah, all right, So what's the last topic?

5:00

We have a couple more? All right, go for it,

5:02

you go, you go? Do you have so many blank spots?

5:05

All right? So, I don't

5:07

know.

5:07

Did you see that Meta opens up quests os

5:09

to third party hardware makers? I saw

5:11

that in passing. Can you explain it?

5:13

Yeah?

5:14

So Meta has their

5:16

devices for virtual reality. You

5:18

guys may have seen them, and you

5:20

know these are like think of like Apple Vision

5:22

Pro. I don't know how many people actually have the Meta

5:25

devices, but think of Apple Vision Pro and

5:27

what they're pretty much doing is licensing

5:30

out their software.

5:33

So then that way your operating system, think of

5:35

like Microsoft Windows. But

5:37

for anyone who is creating these

5:39

virtual reality devices, hardware

5:42

or whatever it may be, you can run on Meta's

5:44

OS system.

5:45

I think it's a cool concept.

5:47

I do think virtual

5:49

reality is going to be big, not yet.

5:52

Like if you look at the vision Pro, no one talks about

5:54

the vision Pro anymore. I got my niece

5:56

and nephew vision Pro. You know how many times they use

5:58

it? Like two?

6:00

They use it more than two.

6:01

But like asking, like every once in a while we use

6:03

it, people slowly

6:05

stop using them. He then has one,

6:08

right, my brother in law, he barely for

6:10

his kids. No, I bought one for his kids. He

6:12

has one for himself. Yeah, I bet

6:14

you he barely uses. I haven't asked him, but I would bet

6:16

a million bucks that he barely uses. He probably doesn't

6:18

use it much.

6:19

No.

6:19

So then, like when you look at these devices,

6:21

they're too big, they're too clunky, they're

6:24

not really integrated though you're

6:26

talking. So there's the oculus, which is a little clunky.

6:29

But their ray bands are not. It's just sunglasses.

6:31

And I saw a video the other day where the

6:34

there's a girl wearing a ray band. She's walking up to like

6:36

a monument and she's like a ray band

6:38

or whatever, Tell me what this is, and then it identified

6:40

the building that she's looking at yes,

6:42

But the problem is is people want the technology

6:45

and the big device in the small ray bands,

6:47

yes, and that's not there, and eventually

6:50

you'll get there, just like everything gets there. Like remember

6:52

the computers we used to buy were huge and super heavy,

6:54

or the TV Yeah, now you have me here. Yeah,

6:57

and like the big boxes and stuff, but now

6:59

it's all in here, so yeah, it'll

7:01

happen. But that's the problem is people

7:03

want the technology of the vision

7:05

pro and ray bands and

7:08

it's not there yet and it'll take many many

7:10

years to get there, but eventually I think it will. It might be Meta

7:12

that can get there. I mean the stuff they're doing now like

7:14

open sourcing Lama and then the virtual reality

7:16

stuff. It's like they're pretty

7:18

impressive in terms of their they're pacing right now.

7:21

So we're just idiots for not buying when they're at fourteen.

7:23

I think it's as low as twelve the pe Anyway

7:27

Villa, but I think it was less than ten at one

7:29

point. We should tell people what they should

7:31

do about the TikTok band. I

7:34

think people should do nothing about the TikTok band.

7:36

Exam Us company will buy. You

7:38

don't have to worry. They have to divest in twelve

7:40

months. I'm sure something will get figured out.

7:42

Like worst case scenarios, they have to divest. The

7:45

other scenario is like they'll just settle some in some way,

7:47

shape or form. Okay, TikTok

7:49

is a Chinese company, all right, you're

7:52

from China, correct your no,

7:54

No, No, Taiwan and Hong Kong okay, my

7:56

back, but basically China. Okay, so

7:59

you know, but you know the culture of a lot of people

8:01

in China correct, And

8:03

I would say this is universal culture, by

8:05

the way, but we'll just say China because

8:08

it's a Chinese company. Let's say TikTok

8:10

is worth one hundred billion dollars, easy to say

8:12

somewhere around there.

8:13

Yep.

8:14

Do you think any person in China

8:17

would let go of one hundred billion dollars? No?

8:19

Yes, Do you think any person.

8:20

In the world would let go of one hundred million dollars?

8:22

No? Exactly, either zero or

8:25

one hundred billion. You will take one hundred billion

8:27

or eighty billion or whatever it is. It doesn't matter if you're

8:29

Chinese, American, Indian, you

8:31

know, Mexican. It doesn't matter what nationality

8:34

you are. No one's gonna let that money go away.

8:36

Someone will buy it, just like last time when

8:38

Trump tried to ban it and you had Oracles

8:40

trying to step up. I believe Walmart was trying to step

8:42

up. And there's a few companies like, yeah, we'll buy it together, and

8:45

you're going to see the same thing, but they'll pay

8:47

more money because TikTok is bigger now. And

8:49

when you look at it, it's not really

8:51

a thing of is it going to get banned.

8:54

It's the question of is

8:56

it going to be Chinese own? Oh, not going to be Chinese

8:58

owned?

8:58

Cool?

8:58

Who's going to own?

8:59

Its going to be some American company because

9:01

the US doesn't want someone else to

9:04

own h access to a lot

9:06

of the data. And then instead and

9:08

then people are like, oh, won't be tiktoking on. Probably

9:10

still be TikTok and have a licensing deal or

9:12

whatever. But instead the

9:14

US government will have next to choke

9:17

here in America instead of next to choke somewhere

9:19

in China where they can't really choke them. I think,

9:21

look, yeah, yes, I

9:23

think this will all get worked out at the end of the day. I think

9:26

TikTok has the best algorithm versus like Instagram

9:28

reels or YouTube shorts, because when you look at

9:30

YouTube shorts or reels, it's just a lot of random

9:32

stuff. TikTok does a good like. No, I

9:34

don't use TikTok that much. I don't know if you do. But

9:36

when I remember, I would get sucked into a

9:38

cycle when I used to, like look at it a little bit, It's

9:41

like it was pretty spot on, and I can

9:43

see why people would just use it on and on.

9:45

It's too valuable to just let it go to zero.

9:48

What's funny is the ideal buyers of

9:50

it is Google, a Microsoft,

9:52

a Face Oracle, yeah, or but

9:56

these buyers will never you

9:58

know, be able to buy it because the government

10:00

is going to say monopoly, antitrust

10:03

or whatever they're going to call it. I don't know what it's actually

10:05

called from a legal aspect, but they don't

10:07

want Facebook to own more social networks.

10:10

Yep.

10:10

But it probably would be easier for

10:12

them to just say, Facebook, you own it. If we're upset

10:14

Mark Zuckerberg, we have our neck

10:17

to choke. Do you remember do

10:19

you know what the most the single most

10:21

important event is in the history of Facebook

10:26

buying Instagram for probably a

10:28

billion bucks or two billion. It's a good guest,

10:30

but no, so so here here's

10:33

what it is. And he talked about this on the podcast too, but Peter

10:35

Teal actually confirmed this. This is actually back

10:37

in twenty twenty three. So the

10:39

most important single event in the history

10:41

of Facebook, this is from Peter Teal, by the way, Popular

10:45

Investor, was in July of two

10:47

thousand and six, we were about two years into the

10:49

company's history and we received a one billion

10:51

dollar acquisition offer from Yahoo. The

10:53

company had about forty million in revenues, no

10:55

profit, it was just a college site. The

10:57

management team was a little bit nervous about

11:00

a twenty two year old CEO, and there are about

11:02

three of us on the board, and two of us thought

11:04

maybe we should take the offer. Now, let's just pause for a second.

11:07

Would you take the offer at that age? I certainly would.

11:10

I would have too, Okay exactly because

11:12

we're not as smart as Mark ducker Rick. So

11:14

let me continue on here. So Mark

11:16

started the board, Jillie, honestly, I would have taken an

11:19

offer. I would asked for two billion, because

11:21

at that time Facebook was growing

11:23

like a wildfire, yep, and you saw what my

11:25

Space sold for and mice. You

11:27

know, I don't know if my spell sold for after before,

11:30

but either way, my Space was a piece of crap compared to

11:32

Facebook.

11:32

Yeah, I would to try to get two billion.

11:34

My point is we probably could ask for ten, right, But point

11:36

is we would have settled around one to ten.

11:37

Right, Yeah, I don't even need ten. I would

11:40

get two.

11:41

Exactly if you had a gun to my head, I probably would

11:43

have taken the one, even though I'm saying exactly

11:45

so, we would have we would have tapped out, right. So

11:48

Mark started the board meeting,

11:51

was saying, well, it's just going to take

11:53

ten as we just have a quick

11:55

formal board meeting to turn this down. And

11:57

we both we both said we should

11:59

talk about it more, and we had a six hour long

12:01

discussion about pros and cons of doing it.

12:04

It was like, Mark, you are twenty two years old.

12:06

You would make a quarter of a billion dollars. There

12:08

are many things you can do with this money. And

12:10

Zuckerberg said, I don't know what to do with a

12:12

quarter billion of dollars. I

12:15

mean, I guess I would start

12:17

another social networking site, but since I

12:19

like already have one, why

12:21

would I sell it. The key point that

12:23

Mark made that convinced us

12:26

not to sell was that there was a whole

12:28

series of specific products that the company

12:30

was going to be launching in the next six months.

12:33

They were clearly not valued by

12:35

the would be acquire and we thought, you would

12:37

know, we would probably be safe waiting

12:40

and they shouldn't and they wouldn't

12:42

go away that soon, and we would we could go on, go ahead

12:44

and do this. Sorry, got a little jumble there. The

12:46

only one big thing was Mark

12:49

believed in what he was working on.

12:51

And if I think about the podcast

12:53

that he was just on, he talked about this

12:55

in this moment and he's like, look

12:58

and we've talked about this too. It's like, okay, you could sell,

13:00

but what else would you be doing. It's like, well, no, I would go

13:02

back and do the same thing. I'm having a lot of fun. I like

13:04

the people that I work with. Why would I stop?

13:06

Like what would I do with the money?

13:08

Yeah?

13:08

I had the same option as his, but for less

13:11

money. And I said no, And people,

13:13

you know, were telling me, you're crazy. This is a

13:15

lot of money. We talked about this, like what else are you going to do?

13:17

Yeah? Yeah, what else I wanna do? I love what I'm doing.

13:19

Yeah, Like I'm like, it gives me purpose in life.

13:22

Yeah, so you don't want to sound like no. Yeah,

13:25

and so that was the single most important event because

13:27

it would have been game over if you'se old.

13:28

So yeah, but I have no investors.

13:30

Yeah yeah, that was a six hour board.

13:32

I mean but bute, Like so the one billion, like the twenty

13:35

five percent would have gone name. So that that's just the math for you

13:37

guys. Right, Like a lot of people talk about raising VC and

13:39

all that, but you've raised before,

13:41

right, you know, I've raised some money at the end

13:43

of the day, Well, you've raised VC. So you had a

13:45

board. You know what it feels

13:48

like, Like there's a difference between bootstrapping

13:50

and VC. Do you want to tell people? This message

13:52

is brought to you by leveling Up Founders? And Leveling

13:54

Up Founders is an invite only event

13:57

for founders. It happens once a year, usually

13:59

during August and Pacitendies

14:01

include people such as ali Apdahl, Cody

14:03

Sanchez, Neiol Patel, An sll

14:05

On. The list goes on and on, and

14:07

ultimately it comes down to the quality of the group

14:10

of the people we try to create, keep the group high

14:12

caliber, that's why it's invite only. So if you

14:14

are a founder at the top of your game, you can go to leveling

14:17

up dot com slash founders to learn more about it,

14:19

and then you can apply and we'll see

14:21

you. On the other side, boose chepping is you do whatever

14:23

you want. VC is you've got a board

14:26

who can help guide you, and they

14:28

can give you money to help grow faster.

14:31

It's great. There's also drawbacks.

14:33

Because if you have bad board members, they can derail

14:35

the company and create issues or try to replace

14:38

people. There's pros and cons. I

14:40

think vendor capital makes sense for a lot

14:42

of businesses. If you're trying to build something we're seeing

14:44

for the fences, yes, not just speaking

14:47

for the fences, because these days there's

14:49

cloud and AI, there's a lot of technology

14:51

that makes it cheaper to create these businesses. But

14:54

if you're creating something that requires a lot of

14:56

money, like hey, I want to build a chat GPT,

14:58

go raise money, it's too hard to do that without someone

15:01

else's money.

15:02

But on the flip side, if.

15:04

You're in a big tam but you can build a nice

15:06

sized business without raising anyone anyone

15:08

else's money, and it's not really needed, like, you don't

15:10

need tons of capital, you should bootstrap.

15:13

I prefer bootstrapping.

15:14

But I don't like dealing with authority

15:17

and someone telling me how to run a company. Mm hm.

15:21

You also don't like dealing with you

15:24

also don't like dealing with people management too, Yes,

15:26

And I also don't like doing board meetings or

15:28

any of that.

15:29

It's not my style.

15:30

And every time we've had private equity offers,

15:33

I always tell them I'm not interested. A lot of times

15:35

they want to meet up in person, and I meet them in

15:37

person, I get my free meal, like this Sunday

15:40

I'm gonna go to. Last

15:42

time was a four Seasons meal was at

15:44

a restaurant there.

15:45

I was like, all right, this is cool.

15:47

Actually no, the last one was in Marina del Rey.

15:50

They brought food to the office. It was really

15:52

good.

15:52

And most of these guys are pretty sharp.

15:54

They're pretty sharp. I didn't care.

15:56

I was just getting to know them. They weren't necessarily trying to do

15:58

a deal with me. I wasn't trying to do a deal with them, like, let

16:00

me just go get my free food. But I prefer

16:02

it when they come to me and we do a freemail. Yeah,

16:05

it's more convenient.

16:06

Yeah, like pick a Russia in Beverly Hill.

16:09

All right, but either way, I'm a cheap date because

16:11

I don't really eat fancy food.

16:12

Familiar.

16:13

You don't eat a lot. You don't drink, and you don't

16:15

eat a lot, so you're cheap. Yeah. Yeah,

16:18

this will be the final thing we can talk about. Do you know about the

16:20

Amazon oh by the way offering?

16:22

No?

16:22

Okay, So back in the day

16:25

when Amazon was moving into

16:27

prime video, so keep in mind, they had they

16:29

had Amazon Video on Demand that didn't work out. They

16:31

had Amazon U boxed that didn't work out. So

16:34

when they you know how Amazon Prime you pay eighty bucks

16:36

a year for it right now or whatever. They give you all the videos

16:38

like have you seen Fallout? Fantastic? Yeah,

16:40

it's great, so good, you finish so good.

16:43

Okay. So anyway, with Amazon

16:45

Prime, they weren't They weren't like, oh, we're

16:47

going to charge you more money for this. It's just like it's

16:49

rolled into the cost, right. And the whole thing

16:51

with this is like you know, they're not

16:54

once they pay for like the hosting and everything else,

16:56

like you know, there's marginal costs, like everything

16:58

is just profit afterwards, right, they just need to acquire more users.

17:01

And so Amazon, what they said

17:03

back in the day was like because they had to compete with Netflix, like,

17:05

oh, by the way, like, you guys get this free library

17:08

of content from MGM and all the new content that we're producing

17:10

is just included, right, And it's nice

17:12

to see that Netflix did that back in the

17:14

day too. So when they had the DVD

17:17

subscriptions or the DVD what they stripped

17:19

you to DVDs, there's a lot of cost tied in

17:21

with that, a lot of variable costs, right. Eventually,

17:24

so when they started they launched streaming, they're like, oh, by

17:26

the way, you guys get streaming too. Eventually, streaming

17:28

overtook their their DVD rental

17:31

business like very quickly, and Netflix

17:33

became became Netflix. But it takes again

17:36

guts to be able to make that bet and look

17:38

into the future and do it like on oh by

17:40

the way type offering, because trying to charge people

17:42

a separate thing, there's more there's

17:45

more resistance to it. Yeah, And the

17:48

cool thing that Netflix did and Amazon tries

17:50

to do this as well. They can toinually try to kill their own

17:52

business and try to reinvent themselves.

17:54

I think that takes a lot of guts. It's hard to do.

17:56

But when you're doing that, it's really hard

17:58

to be like, oh, you got to pay for all this. They test

18:01

it out and if it gets traction, then they figure out pricing

18:03

later time by increasing things or adjusting

18:05

things removing options.

18:07

That models worked out really well.

18:08

Like Bark Cuban lives to say, how do I kick my own

18:10

ass? That's what people should be thinking about all the

18:12

time. So that is it for today. Go to marketing school

18:15

at iisoslash Agency to learn more about

18:17

the Agency Owners Association. Please don't forget

18:19

to rate, review, subscribe.

18:21

You know we meet in person for this. We've got

18:24

Brad from record edit podcast dot

18:26

com and uh yeah, we'll

18:28

catch you in the next episode.