Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Alex Khassa, Founder of Clients Blackbox

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Founder of ClientsBlackbox.com. He helps large retirement planning firms triple their revenue using his wildly profitable virtual marketing system.Learn more:http://clientsblackbox.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-alex-khassa-founder-of-clients-blackbox

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach, and today we have with us Alex Kasa, who's the founder of clients Blackbox. Alex, welcome to the program. Thanks, Mike, for having me. Thank you, guys. for listening. Hey, I'm excited to talk with you because I always love people that have their fingers to the pulse of the industry. And I know you focus on financial services. So I want to hear

all about what you do and what this secretive black box is. That's always curiosity and opens up that loop in your brain. But before we dive into that, give us a little bit of your story and your background and how you got into the industry. Yeah, I'd be happy to. It's a little different. I was not a financial advisor before. I was not in the industry for decades and decades. I basically started getting involved in digital marketing about eight or nine years ago. And I started as a freelancer. I was learning different skills that are needed for the industry, like copywriting, media buying, strategy, what kind of videos do well on social media. And I started to learn and perfect how to run social media advertising that generates a profit.

Anybody can spend money on social media ads and lose money. Right. That's a commodity. But can you spend a dollar and make 10 back and not just spend a dollar and make 10,000, but spend 10,000, make 100,000 and spend $10,000 and spend $10 million back and do that at scale? So I was very curious about learning how to do that. And I learned how to do that. And I got lucky in 2020 because we had a pandemic going on and everybody wanted to go digital and online because they couldn't do seminars or whatever else they were doing in person to get new. clients. So at that point, I was not just working with financial advisors. I was working with coaches, consultants, people that sell courses, people that do e-commerce, sell stuff on Shopify, do dropshipping, people that do real estate, people that do all sorts of different things. So I had about 50 clients in 2020 that were in different industries, and three of them were financial advisors. And all three of them, all three of them, I use the same system on. And all three of three of them had a 10 to one return on investment. The first lady, her name is Jennifer. She's from

Bocah, Rotata, Florida. She spent $8,000 on ads and made back $95,000. She referred to us. The second financial advisor, we used the same process on him. He spent $13,000 in ads to make back $150K. And then the third financial advisor was also referral spent, you know, 10 or $12,000 a month and it was making $100,000 a month in income commissions every single month. And they all had the same system and it was repeatable. But at those, at that time, those were the first three advisors you work with, but you work with coaches, consultants and all that. And so I'm assuming that the results weren't as dramatic there. So these three stood out. And all of a sudden, you're like, wait a minute, this is a ripe for opportunity to help serve this community. Yeah, that is correct.

We did have people that had success in the other industries, like we had this couple that were selling fitness courses and they, you know, basically took their fitness expertise and built a million dollar business and stuff of that. But it was not consistent. Like, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a person that likes formulas, consistency. And if I can do the same thing a million times and automate it and productize it and build a business out of it, that's what I want. I don't want to reinvent the wheel every single time. So as you said, I saw a consistent result in this industry. And at that point, I've learned a lot about the value of focus in business and how you can, really become number one at whatever you want if you decide to not do anything else.

So I just decided to not work with anybody else unless they are in financial services. And specifically, they are in the retirement planning industry. They're helping 55 to 75 year olds that are retiring soon or already retired to plan for their retirement, you know, using products like annuities and using the stock market as well to keep their money growing. So over the past three years, we perfected that. We're spending now millions of dollars per year on advertising for our clients. And we've got much larger case studies than what I just mentioned.

That's huge. I know you're a learner, a book reader, because I see that in a lot of your videos. So I think that you'll appreciate this many times when I'm doing a presentation, like live or something. And I just came back from Texas last week where I did something similar to this. And I said to the group, you know, you either win or you. And they're like, lose. And I'm like, no, you win or you learn. And so I'm sure that through that process of what you were describing there, there were

some times where there was hiccups and hurdles and you're like, okay, that didn't work the way I wanted. So what can I learn from that? Let me polish this, tweak this, and you get it to the point where it is that systematized, consistent result. Talk a little bit about some of those times where the results didn't go the way you wanted and then you adjusted, not totally 180 degree change, but just a little pivot here to then work toward the results.

that you wanted. Yeah, great question. So this actually happened a lot in our first year of just focusing on helping financial advisors because I practically had nobody know me in industry at that point. Nobody knew what I can provide for them. So at that point, I was asking people, and what I realized is those kind of people who don't have the budgets or high enough budget for marketing did not get results with what we were doing, not because what we're doing wasn't working.

it was just not working for them. It was not a good fit for them. So what we did eventually is we just said, hey, you can't do this unless you spend at least 5K a month on ad spend. And that started working better. And people started closing at least one deal a month. Meanwhile, the guys that were spending $2,000 a month, that we were not getting any results.

And then after a while, I saw that the people that were spending 5K a month, the ones that transitioned and started spending more 10 or $15,000 a month, those are the ones that were staying with us and getting way better results. and the ones that stayed at five, they would get results one month and not get results in next month. So it was very volatile as well. So then we started saying, well, I only want to deal with people that want to stay with us for a long time.

So I'm going to require you to spend at least $10,000 a month. And then that should remove the volatility from your results because you're going to get enough people to talk to that you're for sure going to close at least one or two people and make your money back in probably nine times more money. And that's for their own good. That's for the advisors on good. You know, you use the word spend, but I know you actually meant invest because it's not an expense when you have a proven track record of when you put in a dollar, you get out, you know, more than a dollar. So I love that you notice that trend, like the people that are dabblers, like, oh, I'll throw a couple bucks at it and to see how it goes. That's not enough to prime the pump. And when you get into the, like you were saying, 10,000 and above in spending, now here's where the true results are.

you get out into that blue ocean space. Correct. Yeah, absolutely. And it is spend and it is an expense if you don't spend enough. If you spend enough, it becomes an investment and it pays you back and it pays you back tenfold. So after we required people to spend at least $10,000 a month on ad spend, and then we took it to another level, nobody left. Everybody stayed. Everybody was getting great results. There was no volatility in their results. They were closing business and they had, they were hitting enough volume in terms of how many people they're meeting with that they were turning those into a business that they stayed and they grew their businesses and then moved forward right now we say you have to spend at least 15 to 18

000 a month per advisor because now we're focusing on working with larger firms not just individual advisors because we found that to be easier for us to provide way more value and get compensated equally for the amount of value that we create so right now as the date of this recording in January 24th, 2024. For somebody to work with us, they have to have at least 30 advisors in their firm that they were responsible for, and they have to give us at least five to start off with.

And those five, they should spend at least 50K a month of ad spend, excluding our fees to get started. And that kind of a team, we can ramp up much quicker because I can take them from five to 30, then add another 30, which will be easier than the first 30 advisors

and then really double their business. and therefore, you know, do a lot more business for them versus dealing with 30 individual advisors, which is a little bit cumbersome for us. You know, I love what you're saying there. And again, knowing that you're a reader, you'll appreciate these correlations. But it reminds me of like the 80-20 thinking Pareto's principle. And then also I'm reading a book now by Dan Sullivan, you know, 10x thinking is easier than 2x. And it's all of those things.

You notice these trends. And then you're like, for your own good, here's now the new. bar. And because you can go to a large firm that has, you know, many agents and go, give me the first five and then we're going to get to work with the next five of your agents. And you can give explosive results. And it reminds me of, have you ever read the book, um, 212 degrees? No, no. It's a really good one. So look it up on Amazon, but basically, um, water, you put a pot of water on the stove at 100 degrees. It's a hot water at 200 degrees. It's hotter water. At 210 degrees, it's really hot.

211, it's hot, but 212, bam, that's when it boils. So it's like that critical mass. It's like in your example of when they spend this much money, they get okay results. When they spend more, they get better. But when they spend at this level, that's when it all comes together, that critical mass. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, again, for their own best interests. But yeah, what you do for them is we just put them in front of qualified prospects.

We go nationwide and virtual so we don't really run the campaign. locally. That's one of the things that we had to kind of call them is they want to get the in-person meeting but I'm like, this is only going to work if you go nationwide. And everybody that said no to that and chose to go in person

and just target their immediate area or the next couple of states near them didn't work for them. So we have these guidelines to make sure that they're successful and we only really get paid long term if they stay with us. So it's in their best interest. Yeah, everybody wins. It's a win, win, win.

So I want to dive into some more success stories and case studies and examples, of course. But it makes me think something, you know, when you look you up online and when you look at your videos, you know, you can throw out numbers and you can throw out results and anybody can think in the back of their mind. Yeah, but what if that's not true? Now, when you have people doing videos saying, Alex is great because that's wonderful and you've got so many of those. but why are you qualified? Because after all, people that go online and watch your videos, they look like you look like you're 15. So here comes an advisor or a group of advisors that have, you know, a whole team and they're like, why am I going to trust what Alex says, even if he's throwing out these numbers? Tell us a little bit about your pedigree,

a little bit more so with the digital, because I think that that's something that people need to have checked off in their brain to go, all cylinders are firing strong. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I've been gifted and cursed with the baby face. So I know. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I mean, who would you want to do your marketing? Do you want like a 60 year old who's barely can use a computer and send you an outlook email? That's a good point. Or somebody.

You want your tech to work, you call your grandkids. Yeah, exactly. Or somebody who is born into this space and really understands you because he's only working with people. This is what people don't understand is I don't really do anything outside of. of helping people that are in a retirement plan and get more clients. And when you compound that focus for the last three years now, you can become the best at that and do it at scale. So because we don't really take any projects and actively reject money, like I say no to money

every single day that is outside of our focus, that gives us the competitive advantage of just focus. And we don't really do a lot of different things. There's a lot of other marketing companies that say, we'll do your SEO, your website, your email marketing, your drip campaigns, your video will fly out to you and we will, you know, shine your shoes. That's what that sounds like to me. But we really only run these ads and fill up your calendar and consult you on how to do a little bit of the calls and make sure that you're successful. We don't really do anything outside of that. If you want to do your SEO, great.

Do it somebody else. If you want to build your website, right, there's a lot of great people that are at that. They're great at that. But we try to stay narrow and just focus on one thing. And we have become the best at it so far. And we're looking right now to double down what we're doing and just do it for larger and larger firms so that we can create a bigger impact. You know, and again, like I know, I've mentioned several times, you know, reading books and correlating it in the book, 10x is easier than 2x. one of the things they're talking about is expertise versus mastery.

You know, you can be good at something and you can even, you know, work toward that 10,000 hour of expertise. But when you get to the level like you're describing, that then attains to the level of mastery. And that's where things really start clicking as well. And it's almost like you don't want to leave working with that person because you wonder what their new thing they're going to learn next that you're going to miss out on. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And we've gotten better year over year.

and just to give you some numbers that are currently on our website, we've educated over 350,000 pre-retirees and retirees. We've generated over 10,000 qualified opportunities for financial advisors. And the pipeline value of investable assets we've generated is over $5 billion. Wow. I'd love to tax those numbers soon, but that's not nothing. That's over the last three years and we'll do way more this year. Yes. You know, and again on your website, you're really forthright into your whole process. And I know that I love the name of the, company client's black box because it's like, what is that in that black box? Well, it's not that you're saying it's so secretive that I'm not going to tell you because really the, I want you to

talk about a little bit of from the 30,000 foot view, you know, you say the webinar model is broken because, and I'm paraphrasing and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, you get people to register and then it's two, three weeks down the road and then they don't attend. And then if they attend, they don't stay to the end. But your process is a little bit different to where it gets people what they want right now. And I love the fact that you say, you know, here's, you know, here's kind of the bones of what we do. But behind the scenes underneath is the black box where you're kind of pulling the strings

and you know what kind of metrics and ads to put out there. That's where the true secret sauce comes in. Kind of like if you had a, you know, $200 guitar and you handed it to the world's greatest guitarists, they'd make it sound like a $30,000 guitar. So talk a little bit about your process and what you're about. methodology is there? Yeah, happy to. So webinars are the old way. They're dead. And here's why. What if instead having people register for webinar, wait three to 14 days for the webinar to happen, then maybe 15 to 30, maybe 40% of them show up. And then they have to watch a whole 45-minute

presentation where most of them drop off. And then they have the opportunity to book a meeting with you. what if having them go through all of that, you just have the buyers watch a short 10 to 15 minute PowerPoint presentation. That's the first thing they see. And that presentation is compliant, customized, and rendered to you. And then they can book the meeting with you right away.

Wouldn't that be better? That optimizes for speed to lead. That doesn't waste their time. And most importantly, the people that have the most money and have the biggest problem are not going to wait around for a webinar of 14 days from now that happened. they need to see something that's going to solve their problem right now, and they want to go and book a meeting with you right now.

So after switching. Because it's on the forefront of their mind. They're wondering about this thing, and they're like, okay, now I get out of the flow and out of the groove. So I really like that methodology. One question I was thinking when you mentioned the video, is that 10 to 15 minute video something that the advisor needs to think about and create, or do you give guidance on the flow of the presentation? Great question. The advisor is not a marketer. They're a closer.

They're a salesperson. We don't have to do that. We give them the PowerPoint presentation done for them. They just read what's on the slides, and it's branded to them. This way, we don't have volatility in the results of our clients. So I can constantly say, come in, say these words. They're working for a dozen other advisors, and you will have a full pipeline. Wow.

That's cool. Because you've tweaked and always keep an eye. eye on what's working and what's not working. And I'm sure you even can get some analytics and go, ooh, it looks like people are dropping off at this moment. So what was being said at that moment? Oh, let me go ahead and we'll tweak the slide right before it to keep people's attention. So I really like that because if you hand me a PowerPoint slide and I just have to have my vocal, you know, intonations and and voice inflections and if it's on video, I'm smiling or whatever the case is, give me the train track and I can run on that. That's really cool.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of things you should not say on a PowerPoint presentation that will either get you the wrong people or turn the right people off, which we've learned a lot. We've tested dozens and dozens of different publications, hundreds of different ads on Facebook. And honestly, the first two to three hundred thousand dollars of ad spend that we started off with our client's money was just a testing budget to figure out what works. And afterward, we found the exact, what's the best ad? What's the best presentation? What's the best setting for the calendar to increase their show rates? All of that, we figured it out to a good enough level with that first couple hundred thousand dollars.

And then we started spending millions of dollars and then we fine-tuned every single part of it. Like, for example, we know that I know that if I say a certain word in my ads, I will get a lot of people to book. Like, I'll get a really good cost per booked appointment. However, none of them will show up or they'll have a really low show rate to 30, 40% show rate and none of them will buy because I attracted them with the wrong hook. Had I said a different thing to them, the same prospects. Had I said a different thing to them in the ad, a different thing to them in the PowerPoint presentation, which would have positioned me in their mind differently,

they would be way more likely to book the meeting. I might lose the bad fits and I'll keep all the good fits and have the ones that are good fit actually do business with me because I've said something in the right way. All of that we've learned through millions of dollars of ads, and we're still learning every day. I love it. It reminds me of Dr. Robert Chaldeenie's latest book called Pre-Suasion, which is what you need to do to persuade someone, but it's the things you do to set the stage and like the pre-framing in their mind. And that's exactly what you said, the words. If you use this word, that prospect's mind is in a different place that doesn't leave.

to the next step and the next step. So you've talked about some good success stories. What's your biggest success story so far? Yeah, so far, I had one guy, one advisor, came to me in June of 2022. He was with the broker-dealer, and he was using webinars. And he was doing okay. He was doing 10, 12 million a year. And his goal was to get to about 25 million a year.

And he told me, hey, if I can triple my production in three months, I'm going to do this. I said, heck yeah, let's do it. Yeah, I guess so. That's a pretty healthy goal. Yeah, yeah. And I think, honestly, I think the industry is plagued with people that have been burned through other marketing companies and opportunities before that they hit their goals too low. This guy set his goal so high.

And I knew it's a perfect fit from the first moment we talked on Zoom back then. And I said, yeah, like, we're going to freaking do it. If you'll spend the money on ads and you already have a process to close these people, I'm going to get you the appointments and you will triple your production. So five months later, he gives me a video testimony that's on my YouTube channel, Alex Casa, of him tripling his production. He was before working with us doing about $100,000 a month in income. Now he's doing, not now, but five months after that, he did $300,000 a month in income

and close about $7 million of annuities around that period. which is like in just about 45 days, which is ridiculous. Yeah. And since then, so that was June to November of 2022. In 2023, he hired six internal advisors, opened his own RIA, and then he did about $40 million in FIA production in about six months. And then this year, we brought on another advisor. And also we brought on for him.

him about eight or nine external advisors who are now paying him to run his ads that he pays us, but it's a percentage of their production on the back end. And his shop this year should do about a hundred million minimum in production. And every advisor on his team is currently bringing in 3.2 million a month in new assets, half AUM, half FIA. and if anybody's interested in seeing what that looks like, go to Clientsstockbox.com slash partner. Everything I'm saying right now sounds crazy because of 15-year-old is saying it, but please go

to the link and you'll see the proof and you'll call his eye and they'll verify everything that I've just said and that's our biggest case study so far. And honestly, we want to go further. He's very ambitious. We want to take him to the next level and we're looking to work with people that are as ambitious and have the budget to go to the next level. You know, the cool thing there is he got that proof of concept with his production and then he turned the dial and had you ramp it up a little bit more, a little bit

more. And now it's just like exponential, exponential. That is spectacular. So you've talked about kind of where the industry has come in the last few years with virtual and now people that are you kind of, you know, helping them, bringing the business to them from all over the country and whatnot. What do you see in the next five years for the financial advising industry? What trends are you seeing better on the horizon?

Yeah, I'm happy to answer that. Here's how I kind of look at it. If you want to grow your company, you need to do something that other people are not doing. If everybody's using seminars and webinars, and most people aren't even using webinars, but if everybody's doing seminars, how do you think you're going to outperform your peers if you're doing what everybody else is doing? So seminars are amazing when they first were invented, I don't know, in the 80s or 90s, whenever they were invented, they were great because nobody was doing them. It was dinner seminars and it was educational seminars and they're still working. You can still get a good return on investment if you figure that out. And then people started figuring out that, hey, people, baby boomers are more and more comfortable doing business virtually. So let's go to webinars. And that started happening around 2017, 18, 19, 20. And some people are just starting to adopt that. But the webinar model has been replaced by, essentially our system. Because think about it like this. If we're all competing for the same attention on the social media platforms, okay, we're all paying for the same attention. And

Facebook sees that somebody has registered to a webinar about retirement planning that's going to happen in seven days. Okay. They're going to add them to an audience that says, okay, this person is interested in retirement planning. Okay. I'm going to show them my ad that says, hey, you just watch or you just registered for a webinar it's a waste of your time go watch my 15 minute presentation it's going to save you time and if you like it you can book a meeting so on day two after they register for your webinar facebook has added them to that audience and now i'm going to be able to get in front of them and then target them and get them to book a meeting with my advisor the next thing so on day three they meet with my advisor they do the first meeting it's a fit or it's

not a fit but let's say it is a fit for that advisor they're going to have another meeting with the advisor in a few days to present and then they're going to close. All before your webinar happened. Yeah, it's irrelevant at that point. Like, who cares about your seminar or webinar? It's speed to lead. How can you get to the appointment or the person when they need you, when they're looking for you, when their interest has been created?

So every person that's running webinars right now that's seeing a low show up rate, everybody that's running seminars right now that's seeing a higher cost per attendee, a low show it's because we are spending millions of dollars getting some of your people and other people as well. So that's where I see the industry going from a marketing standpoint. It's who can get in from the prospect the fastest and help them and answer the question the fastest, especially in this social media age. Unbelievable. Well, Alex, it's been such a pleasure learning for what you've perfected and keep perfecting. So if someone is interested in learning more, what's the best way that they can do that and then reach out and connect with you.

Yeah, happy to. So just go to Clients with an S blackbox.com. Clients blackbox.com. You'll find everything that you can connect me with me on there. I have a YouTube channel, Alex Casa, and you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Happy to connect with everybody. Yeah, if you have any questions, happy to answer them. I'm most reactive or responsive on LinkedIn and email and also a little bit on my YouTube

channel. But if you would like to become a client, then client stockbox.com. Excellent. Well, Alex, thanks a million for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you today. Yeah, thanks so much, Mike. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.