Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Los Silva: What Kind of Content Are You Making? - 099

Episode Date: May 18, 2019

As the founder of SVG, a million dollar business that focuses influences to reach new levels of success, Los Silva knows a thing or two about content. In this episode of Inside Look, Bedros and Los dive deep into what it takes to be a successful social media influencer, from content to community. Watch or listen now to discover what it takes to transition from a content creator to a business empire builder and vice versa.   “If we always follow the same process, we might end up losing” “The empires are built on the back end, not the front end” - Bedros Keuilian   Here’s what you’ll discover: 2:00 - How Los helps people elevate their social media outlets, and makes them more money 9:20 - How “behind the scenes” people can still become a successful content creator 11:10 - Los’ vetting out process, how he picks who he helps vs. who he won't give the time of day 14:00 - How important micro continuity can be in growing your influence and empire 16:00- The steps you need to take for a successful launch of your brand   “You need to have a consistent desire” “Content is one thing, and consistent value is an another” “They aren't business people they are content creators” “If they don't have the desire it sucks” “Content, conversions, community, lead to conversions” -Los Silva  

They need to have desire and a consistent desire to want to become that person and to learn and to get in there and work. A lot of influencers a lot of times feel like because they create content, that's that. But that's the beginning. That's only the beginning. You need to consistently create the content and expand and go into more what you're talking about, doing shows and what else can I do and value. Content is one thing. And then consistent value, Facebook lives, podcasting, just answering DMs like a normal person, and all that kind of stuff, you need to be able to do those things.

Welcome to another episode of The Empire Show. This is another inside look. I'm Badros Kulian. And with me, I've got a very special guest, Mr. Lose Silva. Lose is the founder of SVG. And SVG is an organization that takes influencers and helps them take that massive audience that follows them and turns them into a brand

and a financially responsible business. Lose, welcome to the show. What's up, man? Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming, man. Appreciate you. So I love the model that you have, and the way we met was from our mutual friend, Drew. Drew Manning. Yeah. Right? Fit to Fat to Fit. And for those of you that don't know Drew, look him up. He's the guy that gained 76 pounds of fat. He's a personal trainer gained 76 pounds of fat, documented the whole process, ended up on every late night show and talk show on the planet, and then documented the process of getting back to fit and started a show, a TV show from him. A best-selling book. Got a book. Got a two seasons out of a TV show. Right.

Yeah. And you, of course, connected with him, and we're going to go broader into what you do. But I love how you find people who are great at creating content and building a following. And I can tell you this, as someone that coaches and consults entrepreneurs, when myself and Craig Ballanty, my business partner and co-host for the Empire Show, we'll get these DMs and we end up taking a screenshot and sending it to each other. Hey, I got 1.5 million followers, but I only have $2,000 in my bank account. in my bank account, and I want to smash my phone.

You're the guy that helps them elevate their brand and make money. There's a lot more of those guys than you would think, right? Just like you're saying on the DMs, I know a ton of influencers, huge influencers, 8.8 million, 2 million, 3 million, and they're killing it. They're on TV. They're on social. They're doing all these things. And you, as a viewer, you're like, oh, my God, this dude's everything.

And then they're going home to a small apartment, you know, God bless them. but like they're trying, but they don't know what to do. They don't know what to do next. They're not business people. They're content creators. And I think that everyone sees all this content all the time, like build a business, hustle, Gary Vaynerchuk, get it, get it, get it. And you're like, yeah, I got to do it.

But just because you can make content doesn't mean you can run a business. It doesn't mean you can be an operator. It doesn't mean you don't even know if you're an integrator or what you are, right? And so these people try and then they get overwhelmed and they're like, oh, and now I don't have time for my content and everything's dying. And they're sensitive butterflies, the majority of them as well. So then they get a little depressed or a little sad, and they're like, whoa, and they're in their cocoon a little bit more.

And so I help them. I kind of build the whole operation for them. We do everything. You do content. We'll do the rest from operations, logistics, shipping, fulfillment, funnels, emails. I mean, I literally sometimes even that person behind the camera, like, say this, say that, say that. Yeah. You know, and it's a lot of fun, and it really has built a good business helping a lot of

people. Well, you know what? So we're going to do a deep dive into this because you specifically do it for the health and fitness influencers. Yes. Right? And in this day and time where I look at Instagram as a TV network, like Spike TV, right? And you can create literally your own channel that has its own flavor. And so now everyone can have a following and get people to Google over them, etc. A lot of dopamine hits where that's concerned. Why are you choosing to be behind the scenes and not creating your own personal brand and network. So start there. So twofold, right?

I'm doing that now. But this all started because four years ago, actually, I didn't have this, I wasn't doing this. I had a failed partnership, right? And to not go too detailed into it, I decided in that relationship that I was going to give that person everything. Because I kind of equate that time in my life.

I remember I kind of equated it. Like, I tell everybody, it's like having this crazy, ex-girlfriend that you know you could be like no you could say your thing and then they're gonna go spray paint your car because they're crazy right I was like man I see where this is going and we have way too many friends in the same circles I'm good bro and I thought to myself that day I was at the Marriott at Trafficking Conversion in an upstairs overlooking the boats we had this conversation and I thought to myself that day I was like man you can leave and have it all and if I

start over with nothing and I can do it again then I know that I'll deserve this time like what I get right and so I started from nothing again. I started doing consulting, speaking a little bit because I have connections and you know, I've been in the space for a little bit. And that kind of led me to starting an agency. I didn't want to do an agency, but I also didn't have the balls to go back into I was just kind of like a beat up dog. When you say you start an agency for our viewers and listeners, explain what an agency is. So I was helping people build and grow their sales funnels and advertising and I was charging them a premium. By buying traffic. By buying traffic, yes.

So by buying media and also by helping them with their sales funnels and sequences and all that kind of stuff. And then at that point you realize, you know what, an agency is not my thing. I didn't want it to be my thing, but I didn't, I was kind of like getting back up there, right? I was like, man, I don't know what to do. I gave a lot of stuff up. And so I was kind of like, I don't know what to do. Like I gave everything that I had up, right? And what year was that, by the way?

Whatever. For 2015. Yeah, yeah. And here we are January 2019. And so then I had an information. influencer come to us and say, hey, I don't have money to like, because we used to charge a lot, like 15 to 20,000 a month, right? And he was like, I don't have that, but why don't you own this business with me. I was like, all right, dude, whatever, we'll try it. That month we hit 100K.

And then I was like, man, I wonder if I can do this again. And I tried with another one. That month we did like 20, but three months later, we did 200K. And then I was like, man, I think this is a thing. And then I kept trying and kind of working with them. And I was like, okay, I see. And then I started to get to know their needs, their issues, what they want to do, what they don't want to do. And then I was like, you know what? I think I'm going to drop all the agency stuff and I'm just going to build this. Got it. Now, stop right there.

Stop right there. I'm going to take you back for a moment to that first influencer that came up to you and goes, hey, look, you charge 15 to $20 grand a month. I don't have that kind of money. I've got the following. I have no idea on how to run a business. Right. Right. So why don't we go into business together?

You may not be able to tell us who the influencer is, and it doesn't matter. Obviously, there's probably someone that we all know and follow, et cetera. That's great. And that's not the point here. But I want you to dive deep into so that this can be a great lesson for our viewers and listeners that you saw some form of opportunity. In other words, your business model was X. I always say we have a process of X, but sometimes the procedures are different, right? If we always follow the procedure or the process, we may end up losing. Sometimes you've got to change of procedures in order to win. So you decided that you're going to go into partnership with this guy? Is that a guy? Okay. And what was the thing that you guys launched to his audience that... It bombed, actually. We had to do... Oh, okay, walk us through that.

So we had to do two or three iterations. We were launching a six-month transformation kind of a program. Got it. Right? So it was an information product. Yeah. And we were like, all right, this seems like it's the next logical step. Let's launch this.

Let's see how we can do. And it did okay, but then it stalled, right? And for me, I needed this to have scale for me to be able to do. to make good money, right? And it didn't. And rather than just being like, no, it didn't work, dude, we kind of came up with more ideas, and then he said, well, I have this other thing.

You know, I did this and I kind of like never used it as just another course. I said, all right, let's give that one a shot. And that is the course that kind of jumped everything. That course itself has sold over 300,000 copies in the past two years. That is nuts. Yeah.

So on the heels of that, you decided, hey, I think there's something here. And did you go to other influencers? Did they come to you once they saw what you did here? I've never gone to an influencer. They keep coming to me. And do you like it that way? No, no, I would love for more to go to more people, but still to this day,

this is all so new that if I slide into some other person's DM guy or girl, they're like, dude, you're a scammer, you're this or that because they've been so broken and beat up. Red flag, red flag, red flag. Yeah, and so I kind of let it, like it's a small niche, like the entrepreneur circle. And so I let the results do the talking, right? Like I can go, hey, ask your friend, ask your friend, check their account. Like, boom, boom, boom, we're doing this, you know what I mean? And so now it's a point where I kind of have almost like a waiting list and I can't take that many people on.

So we started an accelerator to help more people. Gotcha. So let's say that someone's like, you know what, I really like what Loss is talking about. I'm more of the behind the scenes kind of person. I'm more of the strategic planner. I'm more of the copywriter. I'm more of the, I can get the ducks in order. and I know several people who are influencers

that I think I can build a product on their back. What is the first step they would do to become a loess in their specific niche? So first, it's not about being a lois, it's about who you're working with, right? So let's say that this person is working with someone who has a huge following, and a digital, you have to assess,

like, what assets do you have? What are you doing this influencer, right? Do you have something physical that we can start launching? Do you have all digital? Do you do coaching today? like where do you monetize today? And honestly, a lot of these guys and girls don't monetize today.

Or they have some sort of an e-book or something, but mostly they're making money from promotions, right? As in sponsoring other people's stuff. Yeah, as like, hey, I'll pay you $500 to $1,000, even $10,000 or whatever. And even that's kind of like up and down because they don't know how to charge themselves. So they'll go from like, hey, this is $500, and then the next post is $5,000. And because there's such a gap, they don't get a lot of more offers. So it consistently keeps them down.

So the first thing that I would do is focus on, okay, who is this person? Who is this person's audience and how can I help this person's audience grow or succeed or fill this void or like make them feel prettier? Yeah, right. Yeah, that's interesting. That is interesting. So what are you looking for in an influencer? Because, let's be honest, there's a lot of people who are influencers or at least have big followings. I don't know if they'd be influencers, but they have big following.

But then you look at the number of likes or the comments they're getting. then you realize, wait a minute, those aren't real people, or if there are, they're somewhere in South Africa or Brazil and probably never going to buy. What is your vetting out process? So my process is threefold, and it almost never has to do with how much influence they have. First off is I always have this like barbecue analogy. Do I want to be able to be with this person a year from now at a barbecue with our kids? If that's a no, piss off. Like, I'm good.

I don't need this, right? Because it's always going to be a no. It's never going to be a like, No, well, maybe, man. No, dude, it's a no right now. So that's a strong no for me, because I spend most of my life working. I only want to work with people. I'm super stoked to work with, and I can get excited because I'm building the brand.

So that's like step number one. Step number two is they have to know how to speak. I've worked with influencers that have in the eight millions of followers and you're like, wow, and they're real, but they're models, right? And what I mean by that is they're like, boom, boom, the pictures, boom, here's my angles. Hey dude, I need you to do a quick live, let's do this real quick. They're not going to do it. They're like, oh, they're insecure, they're scared.

You can't have that. Or they can't string a second. You gotta be ready. Yeah, you gotta be ready at any point. Here's a phone, boom, let's go. You know what I mean? So they need to be in that capacity or the third one. They need to have desire and a consistent desire to want to become that person and to learn

and to get in there and work. A lot of influencers a lot of times feel like because they create content, that's that. But that's the beginning. That's only the beginning. You need to consistently create. the content and expand and go into more what you're talking about, doing shows and what else can I do and value. Content is one thing and then consistent value, Facebook lives, podcasting, just answering DMs

like a normal person, all that kind of stuff. You need to be able to do those things. If we can do that, you can build influence. And honestly, you can do it if you're not in the millions. You can do it if you're at the tens of thousands. Really? Yeah. All right.

So let's talk about some of the best performing influencer and, you know, you know, the best performing, those business partnerships you've had and what that looks like, the products they sell, the courses you guys launched, the apparel maybe, or is it continuity? Because I'm so curious about this stuff. Like, is it continuity? Is it consumables? Is it apparel? Maybe it's all the above.

Is it coaching? It is all of the above, but again, it goes back specifically to the influencer, right? The best thing for anybody that's trying to do this and wants to start testing these things out is what is this influencer actually passionate about? The one thing that never worked for me is telling people what I think we should do. Because then if they don't have the desire, like, yeah, let's do that. It's not going to work. It sucks.

It's always bad. But things that always work really well, it only has worked always, is digital products upselling into more physical goods. Right. And then trying to find a sweet spot for a recurring. We're doing a lot of microcontinuity recurring things now, staying in the $9 and under. first thousand people, maybe $5 to get that like real loyalty people in there and then ascending into like about $10, keeping it at about $10 and just getting floods and floods of people in there. For those who don't know what microcontinuity is, why don't you just give it?

So it's a recurring, it's like your Netflix payment, right? It's just $10 a month. It feels easy. The wallet doesn't feel it. And if you see it, you're like, dude, I'm not going to go cancel this right now. Because I might use it later. The time it takes me to go cancel this, I might just wait another month and see if something cool comes out. right and so that's really good but also the people that you're getting there

are rabid buyers and lovers of the person yeah love that person so they're loyal fans they're the most loyal fans so inside of that you can create discounts to all the other things that you offer if indeed you want to offer more stuff so really what I just heard you describe is Costco mm-hmm they're paying some small fee I know Costco has their annual fee but otherwise they're they're paying some five or ten dollar fee thereby identifying themselves as hey I'm a rabid fan of so-and-so. And then you go, all right, great, this is my universe. Like in franchising, we call it our franchise universe. This is my universe. And I have, for example, we have about

800 franchisees right now, and we sell them in addition to our franchisee. We sell them coaching. We sell them this baby boomer training program on top of that, supplements, etc. And so you've got this universe that you create of the rabid fans and you're able to sell them more products, services, and goods by giving them more value. Right. So I'm curious. going back to that first influencer or maybe one that you recently did so you can remember the process more. In other words, if I'm an influencer, I'm going like, yeah, okay, this all sounds good, but I don't want to work with LOS. I don't want to work with someone. I want to learn to be an entrepreneur myself.

You took a course that this person had, that first influencer. And obviously they weren't successful with it. And you're like, hey, let's see how I. So what is your launch process to make it successful? So if you don't want to work with a LOS or anything like that, I'll give you guys the exact steps that we do to launch something out right so the first thing that we do is we see what assets are available let's say for the sake of this conversation it's a digital course so we'll create a sales funnel we'll use something very

simple to test which is click funnels yeah that way we can iterate if something doesn't work whatever and then we build a sales funnel which is a front end something light at around thirty seven dollars forty seven bucks just to make some sort of impulsive buy like okay I could I could get this okay And then we go into an upsell, right? The upsell is microcontinuity, getting someone into the $9 to $10 range a month, maybe, hey, do you want the whole year now, buy it for $67 bucks or something like that? And then we have one more upsell as well.

We don't do too many more we could, but we want to keep a good customer experience and good value inside of that. And so that's why we leave it there. If they don't take any of those things. So is it two or three upsells? It's three upsells. Three upsells. Right? And so what that will do is.

it'll give you a good, decent, average order value for you to run ads. So what you need to do is try to build this out and then run some ads because you want to be able to have a good average order value, and then you run ads to try to maintain a smaller cost per acquisition. So if this cost me $50, but I can get people in at $40, even at $50, I'm okay with it because I'm acquiring a customer that I know loves me. Explain to them why it's because right now I can just see heads blown. like wait what the fuck are you talking about dude if I just made 50 bucks off a

person how can I acquire the next person for 50 bucks I'm breaking even probably losing money after processing fees so so a lot of influencers hate this right and like really in general people hate this right because they're like dude we're not gonna make any money and I think of like dude we're building an empire right because if people come in for free technically let's just say 50 50 it cost me 50 bucks to acquire someone and I make $50 on the sale so I meant zero right that's just a front end sale that's a front end sale that's a front end and sale. But I want to be able to spend a million dollars that day if possible, right?

Like we spend about a million a month on ads. And I want to hopefully spend more, right? It just depends if I can't. But because what I'm doing is I'm bringing these people in, I'm giving them the value that they wanted, I'm treating them right, I'm giving them immediate content sequences, giving them more content, more value, no heavy upsells right now, just treating people in, getting them back into my world or these people's world, right? Getting them more in indoctrinated into that and then we sell them more things. Hey, do you need supplements? Do you like this jacket? This is the jacket that they wear, blah, blah, blah, right? And then we build more community. So I have this system. Because let me, let me just, for those that were like, wait, duh, I didn't get it.

Let me translate what Lose is saying even clearer. And you couldn't have said it any clear, but I think I know the language here. Yeah. It's our audience after all. So you've created this audience. You basically have gotten nothing from them on their front end sale because the $50 that they paid you is what it cost you to get that $50. But what you did do is you created this community where now you can go in there as the influencer and go, hey, I just launched a supplement line. Hey, I just launched an apparel line.

Or, hey, my friend has this course that you might want to buy with an affiliate link and take commission off that. And that is 100% profit because there's no more marketing dollars spent on that universe of people, correct? Correct. And that is where the empires are built on the back end and not on the front end, folks.

Right, right. Go on. Yeah, so we have a system. If you're doing the funnel and you're doing that, you have to touch on the four or five Cs, right? So it's content. What kind of content are we creating that we can put out on ads? Conversation, what kind of conversations are the influencers having on DMs

and just engaging, right? That moves us to community. Are we building a community inside of Instagram, inside of Facebook Live or Facebook groups, right? And then if we have these things, if we have all these three things going with ads, then we can expect conversions. But if these things are missing,

then we're probably not getting conversions because then you're just throwing sales. Then you're just some pushy dude being like, hey, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, do you want this? Here's another ad that asks you the same thing. Brilliant. Brilliant. Content, conversations.

Community. Community conversions. Yeah. And so what I'm really hearing you say is it's almost like meeting someone at the bar. Like if I saw a smoking hot woman at the bar, I'm not going to just walk up to her and say, hey, look, I think we should get married,

start a family, and have some babies because I'm probably going to get pepper sprayed. On the flip side, if I can actually make her laugh, maybe buy her a drink, make her friends laugh, ask her on a date, meet her parents, and over time, I could probably propose, and if she's not crazy, marry her, start a family, and my likelihood of success of getting the outcome that I want.

Yeah. So everyone's trying to get the conversions first, but I love how you've created this culture of, You know, we're going to create a community, we're going to communicate, and then we're going to ask for conversion. So what are some of the more, I don't know, maybe higher profit margin things that you might sell to that community once you created it? So the biggest highest profit thing, specifically because we're in that space, is coaching, right? You can sell more detailed, structured coaching. You can sell whether you're doing keto, you're doing if it fits your macros. It doesn't matter what you believe in, because what you believe in is what you believe in is what you're

audience is buying right you have this digital side where you can try to hit the masses then you can have a more one-to-many opportunity where you're helping people in a more detailed way really working with them really coaching them really guiding them and that's the most profitable thing that you can do right at the end of the day everyone wants to get away from time to money and that makes sense but very high level of time for a very high level of money is always going to be one of the most profitable things you can do absolutely now you've gone and done something way different

And I love how you see, because Instagram still is pretty brand new when you really think about Instagram. It's still pretty brand new. And you saw an opportunity and you're like, hey, I'm going to jump on this because there's a vacuum here. There's guys and gals that are health and fitness influencers. They mean well. They want to create a business out of this and they want to help people. But they're just doing the helping people part. But then you saw that they were getting depressed.

They were getting funky because they would launch something, it would make money. And so you came in and said, hey, I think I might have the solution to this vacuum. But then as you're working with them, and just correct me if I'm wrong here, you saw them being approached and they weren't able to negotiate for themselves. So again, guys and gals, this goes into seeing opportunities and striking while the iron is hot. So you created this higher level of management. Yeah, so we started a brand called the label that represents people and kind of puts them in our label, right? Sure. And so the reason I saw that is because I was talking to so many influencers that were like, yeah, dude, I'm about to do.

this brand deal and these numbers have actually happened, they're going to give me $500 a post. And I'm like, no, let me get on the phone. We'll get it for $12,000. And they're like, impossible. Like, let me get our call. And I did it. And then I was like, let me see if I can do it again. Same thing, right? I never just jump in. I'm like, can I do this four or five more times? And then once I, like, hit four or five baby home runs, I'm like, all right, let's do this. Right? And then I started approaching them and said, hey, what would it look like if I was your manager and you bring the deals to me? I'll close them, but I'll take a percentage of everything that we do. They're like, yeah, of course, because I'm going to make my money in strides because I'm selling it more expensive than you anyways.

Right. And they don't have to spend the time and their frustration on the phone. Right, which they don't like to do. Right. And I love being, I'll make a sale. And you're going to sell it for multiple of what they were going to sell for. Yeah. So it's not like they're losing anything out.

You're making a pie bigger and you're saying, can I have a slice of it? Exactly. Brilliant model. So it's really no different than how an agent or a manager works with an actor or actress in Hollywood, right? Yeah. Great. So what is the next step in what you're doing or that you, I'm going to ask you two questions. So we'll go here.

What is the next step in what you're doing that's going to scale your business specifically? So in the next few years, we have two goals, right? We want to be the proctor and gamble of the space, right? Basically create multiple brands with multiple influencers. Whether you like him or not, you like me or him, it doesn't matter. I own them both. And then the second side is launch an accelerator to help more. We get a lot of people now that I have started putting more content out saying, hey, help me, help me, work with me.

And I can't. It doesn't make sense. We're very specific with the kind of people that we do take on in that kind of relationship. So we want to kind of build an accelerator that's more actually like a business accelerator in the health and fitness space. Just because I'm passionate for health and fitness. At the end of the day, I'm a bro. I work out all the time. I love doing it.

And like it's a space that I can be in for the rest of my life, you know. Gotcha. So explain the accelerator. So someone maybe has a small following, but they have the desire. They're good communicators. It's not great, but they're good. They have a small following. Maybe they have some charisma, but they're not quite someone you're going to work with yet because it's just not worth your time investment. That's right. So the accelerator program is something they can get on board with and learn skill sets that might eventually qualify them to work with you or at least qualify them to make a lot more money. Yeah. It's like a business baby college, basically. We take them through and we go, hey, this is you. this is your mindset. The first thing we try to clear up is their actual mindset because a lot of times if your mindset is wrong, I'd rather have a good mindset than a good skill set because a skill set you can acquire, but the right mindset like you need it every single day. Like if you're not there, you're broken. You know what I mean? Let's talk about that for a moment. Let's just cut everything else out for a moment and just talk about the mindset factor where business success is concerned. Like what do you see that are some of the most limiting mindsets right now in

the health and fitness influencer space? I think they try to compete too much with themselves. They're over-worrying about other people instead of collaborating. I think they feel that they're not enough. So scarcity-mindedness? Scarcity-mindedness. They feel like they can't break through something. They can't learn something.

They can't just put more time in. Limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs. And overall, I just see them basically pulling away because they don't have the mindset to fail forward. Gotcha. Lack of resiliency. If there is a failure, if I fail, like I expect it.

And like we, you know, we launch everything with expectations to fail. Like, that is how we launch things. But it's fine. Like, I have no problem with it. We're going to be fine. We're going to make it successful because that's the mindset and that's culture of our office. Right. Like, that's who we are.

If you expect to succeed immediately and it doesn't work out, it's a huge blow first to your ego, then to your mindset, and it can set you back. And so if they can start thinking with the. right mindset and abundant mindset, hey, I need to collaborate more people with more people. And if I fail, it's all good. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here until I die, is like a thing that I think of, right? And so I'm just going to continue to be here until this shows up for me. I'm going to keep showing up for this, right? Got it. That's a great analogy. I'm going to be here until I die. Do you believe that too many of them retreat? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it comes along with this world of social, right? Like, you are judged so heavy now that if you see a failure and they're like, oof, I kind of want to like put it under the rug or do something like that. Bring it up. Let them know that you failed. It's all good. You're more human because of it. You're more loved and more respected because of it.

Failure is normal. It's more normal to fail than it is to just hit it out of the park every day. That's kind of weird. You know what I mean? That is actually super weird. What are you? Superhuman? Right.

And so like people start to question that instead of like, man, like, so I did this. It didn't work out, guys. like, I'm sorry, you know, I'm going to try another thing. We're going to try some new shirts. We're going to try this new program. I apologize. It didn't work out. I refunded people.

It's fine, man. It's going to be okay. If you think it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. I'm going to ask you this because with the accelerated program and also with the big-time influencers that you have, you probably have some pretty good stats to share with me here. What percentage of people have the mental breakthrough versus what percentage go, fuck that. it's not for me. Like I'm not, all this mental game that you're talking about, it's not for me. Few. I would say, there's 10%.

10% have the breakthrough. Yeah. Ooh, man. So there's 90% that go, you literally go, here's the answer to your success. No, thank you. It's, it's, yeah, it's that way. What do you think that is? Comfort, man. Comfort kills.

There's so many, once you start to have success with things, it feels. comfortable and so why would I want more when I already have, right? I'm already kind of like famous. People love me. They adore me. They love all my pictures. And I'm making money. What else is there? But to me, like, that's just the beginning because I think of, well, what's the impact that I can make and what's the business that I can grow like legacy level, like that my kids can be like, wow, like I always have this thing. Like I always think of, I want to create everything thinking that my daughter is going to stand on stage and explain what I do. And so I always don't want to be like, yeah, you just like sell some stuff on social.

I don't want that. I want to be like, you know, he sells, he does this. This is how he impacts. This is who he is. Like that's some role model shit that I want to be for my kids. And that's the kind of person that I want to work with. And that's the kind of people that I think get there, you know, take that next step. They don't want to just make money.

They don't want to just be famous. Dude, and that's, that's, Lois, you just nailed it, man. That's empire level thinking. I mean, really what you're saying is you want to build. the type of business that can go, did I impact every single person that I could have? Versus, I'm satisfied with the people that I've impacted. In an attempt to impact more, if I fail, I don't like the idea of that. Yeah. Right? And so you're saying, hey, I'd rather have my daughter get up on stage 10, 20 years from now and explain what dad did to create this empire.

Yeah. What a different way of thinking, folks. And I want you to start adopting that empire weight of thinking. There's people that own jobs, and it's better than more having a job, I suppose. and there's people who build businesses, and there's people who build empires. Empires, there's legacy wealth that you can pass along and literally impact the world. Like if you're one of those people right now

standing around with your arms cross going, somebody should do something about that. When you make empire levels of money, you're that somebody that can do something about that. And that's what's huge to me. So I've got this friend, his name is Clayte. He owns Infusion Soft.

You've heard of Infusion Soft. And Clayte wrote this amazing book called Conquering the Chaos. In the first three chapters, he, and all of you should read this book, but in the first three chapters, he talks about something very powerful about the value of personal development and self-development. And I'm bringing this up to you because I'm curious to see what your position is and how much you see this in the influencer space. Clayt says that, now in Fusionsoft, by the way, is this big marketing automation, email delivery platform, shopping cart system. And the value that Clayton has, or the benefit that he has, is he gets to see millions of businesses, big and small, some similar, right?

Some fail and some thrive. Some multiply and some barely puts along. And so he decided one day, I'm just going to start reaching out to a lot of these people, out of curiosity, because he's an engineer, right? And he goes, I'm going to figure out, like, why are you thriving in this industry? And why is that guy not thriving when he sells the same stuff for about the same price because he could see behind the scenes? And what he found was that over 80% of the time, the reason the people who were thriving, they retained their employees. In other words, they had employees that became team members, right?

And that team got behind the boss's vision, and they started to take that vision to its fullest potential. Those who weren't thriving had a constant churn of employees. In fact, he figured out, after doing the math, that for every phase of growth, and he defines in the book, A phase of growth is 3X growth in revenue. So if you go from 100,000 to 300,000, that's a phase of growth. 300,000 to 900,000 to a million is a phase of growth, that you'll lose 80% of your employees in every phase of growth, unless you do this one thing.

Personal development, self-development. Because why does the CEO continue to stay on board with the company, yet 80% of the employees are gone? The CEOs typically start reading books and go to workshops and masterminds and coaching programs and develop. They fail to develop their team. And I'm curious, where does self-development fall in this ecosystem of influencers or the team that you have built? So self-development for me personally is like one of the most important things.

And it's one of the biggest things that I do with my team. So it doesn't need to fall. I always try to work on the influencer, right, as almost like a mentor, like help them out, think through. Like I make them, but I do the same exact thing with my team. I send them a text and I go, hey, what do you want to do in three years? What are you doing? what are you doing here? What are we doing together? Like, what's it look like? What's the barbecue look like? Like, what's the situation? How are you making money financially? Are we partners yet? Are you

doing this? Are you doing that? Do you run one of these brands? Right? And so I put it in their place and I leave and I let them think through that. And these answers, I try to work these answers into my life, into the business that we have. And so we, funny story, like, I started this business, right? And everyone here is an ex-bartender, hairstylist, club promoter. And now this, they all run 100 million emails. They send, we don't own 100 million emails, run in eight figures in media buying, multiple funnels, do the whole thing,

like operating machines. So no one's coming out with an MBA. Execute, no one has, we don't even take that kind of stuff because your attitude is just, for us, it's too much. Like we have to have, in our mission, we have to have a savage mindset, right? That's why we're at SVG. It stands for savage, right?

Because you have to be a savage. at everything you do. You have to be willing to die in there, die at work, right? Like, it's just this mindset of growth that I'm willing to do anything for my family, for like my team, for everything. And so I work a lot on that. Like, my favorite book is Simonsonix's the next leaders, leaders eat last, right? Like, I love that stuff. And that book describes me, like, to the T. I'll do anything for those guys because I will put myself first. I'll be there at the office first. I'll leave after them. I'll do all these things because they know, like, that dude doesn't play. we're here to do it, we're here to do it together.

Lowe's, I'm curious, where did this attitude, mentality, mindset, philosophy come from? I can't imagine you were born with it. Maybe you were. I don't know. Like, it's always, it's, I've always been the same way. And I think now, like with the team that I've built over the past four years, it's just expanded because I've let myself, I used to be more in the internet marketing groups that went to a bunch of masterminds and did that.

And what happened to me at that point is I got to comparey. Like I was like comparison bears with everybody. Like, oh, but he's the best. Ah, man, so I'll do that. Well, he's this. He's that. And I was like, what the fuck am I? You know, what am I doing?

Like, what do I need to do? And then I stopped for a little bit. I took a break. And I just, like, operated. And I said, I'm just going to build these things and focus on me and focus on my team. And I take my team on retreats. Like, every quarter, we all go on retreats. I bring my team.

I spent easily over $100,000 on them, on their, coaching for other people, friends, different things like that, and always trying to improve because if you don't improve, you stall. And if you stall, you're going backwards. And if you're going backwards, you're falling, man. And that's just the way I think. Huge, huge. So how does someone connect with you if they want to learn more about you or just want to jump in

and say, hey? Yeah. So the easiest thing, you can slide into my DMs on Instagram. It's at Los Hustle. And if you guys want to apply potentially to work together, it's the influence engine. dot com. Got it. And what is the one question, if there is one, that I should have asked but didn't ask

that would benefit our audience? How long does it take? I get this from a lot of influencers. How long does it take for me to start making money and what do I need to do for that? Ooh, good question. So it's the answer. So it takes as long as effort that you're willing to put in, right? It doesn't take, there's no number.

It takes the effort that you're going to put in. The majority of people that ask that question are wrong because they ask that question saying, well, if I barely do something, what do I get back? That's really what they're asking. That's really what they're saying, right? Like, hey, if I, how long does it take for me to make money? I don't know, bro. I'm not you.

How long is it going to take you to give value to the people that follow you? And how much are you willing to give? You know, how much content are you willing to do for free? How deep are you willing to set those roots into that relationship with those people? I promise you that we are living in a world. where this is the beginning. We will have, like, IGTV will be on your TV at the Marriott and on Irvine when you're like, dude, what do we watch? Let's watch Bezos on IG. Boom. That's going to happen. Like, we are moving into this place. If you don't really hone in on the

people that follow you and love them and nurture them and trust them, they're going to go to me, they're going to go to you, they're going to go to somebody else, and we're going to monetize it, and you're just going to get stale because you're not willing to do consistent love and value for people. Oh, folks, I'm going to finish off with this one thought here. One of my mentors, and I'm sure you know this guy, Dan Kennedy, has a really great thing. And he's a direct response marketer, and he's a little rough around the edges. But he says, people are walking around with their ambillical cords in their hands looking for someone or somewhere to plug it into. And you nailed it.

If it's not you, it's going to be someone else. And so if you've got the influence, if you've got the audience, if you have the talent but maybe don't have the audience yet and aren't willing to do the work to build that audience, then the people who are looking to plug in their financial ambilical cord, their mental well-being umbilical cord, their entertainment ambillical cord. They're going to go plug that into somebody else, and you're going to miss out. So, Lois Want to thank you so much for joining us on this episode.

Wonderful content that you shared with us. Ladies and gentlemen, if you like this episode, please share it. Give us a five-star review. And above all, don't forget to tell your mama. See you later. Hey, thanks so much for being here for today's Empire Podcast show. We would love for you to do a quick little favor for us. Just go to iTunes and give us a five-star rating.

Leave a comment, share it with your friends. And if you're interested in growing your business faster, go to bedroskulean.com forward slash empire. Fill out the application to see if you're a good fit for our Empire Mastermind Group.