Digital Social Hour - This One Strategy Took My Agency from $71K to $4M/Month | Rich Feola DSH #535

Starting point is 00:00:00 Being skilled in ads is a really good skill because you're able to scale super fast with a lean team. I work very little. Like now I work on my coaching program, which is pretty much reserved, but now I'm restructuring the whole coaching program and just kind of giving everything away. Not that many people who are able to invest in a super high ticket. This is incredible. This is changing my business, but I want to offer it to more people on the back end. You know, people want one-on-one consulting with me, then they can, they can pay for that. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it. If you follow or subscribe, it helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests,

Starting point is 00:00:39 and it helps us grow the team truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting. And here's the episode. All right, guys, here with Rich Fiola. We're going to talk Legion today, aren't we? Yeah, let's do it. It's not the sexiest business, but it's a moneymaker. Gets the job done. Yeah, and you've scaled to $4 million a month in 18 months.

Starting point is 00:00:59 Yeah, in my ad agency, yeah. So I started the ad agency in 2017, and it was basically a side hustle. Like most people started their ad agencies, right? There's so many coaches who started an agency and then they said, hey, you know what? I can actually make more money by coaching people how to start an agency, even though they didn't really scale their agency that far. And so I started as a side hustle. It took off. I ended up selling my financial practice. I was a financial advisor before that. And that's when I really started getting into lead gen.

Starting point is 00:01:29 I wanted to learn how to generate leads for my financial advisory practice. And I just found that there was a bigger hunger for businesses to grow than there were for senior citizens to invest with me. So that was a fun journey and then scaled it up and went through some challenges with the traditional ad agency structure. I considered starting a coaching program, teaching people how to start agencies, but I thought, you know what, I think there's more potential in the agency space. And that's what took us from

Starting point is 00:02:05 about 71 grand a month to 2 million per month in one year. And then about six months later after that, 2 million to 4 million a month. Wow. So in 18 months going from 71 K a month to 4 million a month. Yeah. And how many people that you have to hire to get there? So that's the interesting part. So for me, part of my unique process was that, well, let me start with the traditional ad agency structure. So the traditional structure is there's the founder, who often does a lot of the sales. Maybe they have one salesperson, then they have a series of account managers who manage the accounts and develop the relationships with the clients. And then like a team of in-house digital marketers to run the ads. And so I had that in the beginning stages. And I decided that it was just a nightmare

Starting point is 00:03:03 trying to manage an in-house ad team, doing the sales by myself. I hired a couple more salespeople. I had like two or three other salespeople at that time. We actually, before we were at 71 grand a month, we were actually at 300 grand a month like a year before that. But what happened was that I got that dreaded alert in 2019 that no one wanted to see from Facebook,

Starting point is 00:03:25 which was even restricted from advertising. No longer advertise Facebook's products or services. So we lost like 120 clients in a day. Damn. Yeah. Your business manager got banned? Yeah, business manager got banned. My profile got banned.

Starting point is 00:03:40 Holy crap. A bunch of people on my team's profile got banned and everything just got shut down. And we structured it in such a way that everyone was on our business manager because I didn't want to go the traditional route of getting added to the client's business manager for a couple of reasons. Number one, when we've done that in the past, they would just remove us and steal everything. Number two, I didn't feel like it was what was in the best interest of the client because we had some issues where we used another client's business manager.

Starting point is 00:04:07 And through no fault of our own, their business manager got shut down. And there was like a wave of this happening in 2019 when it first started. It seemed like Facebook just cracked down on a lot of smaller advertisers that were doing like less than hundreds of millions a month or hundreds of millions a year, I should say, in revenue with them. And so when that happened, I had to rethink how I'm going to structure my agency. So I structured it in a way that basically solved a lot of these problems. Because what I noticed was my salespeople would often over-promise to just to make a sale and say whatever the client wants to hear. You know, we're going to get you so many leads. We're going to grow your business, yada, yada, yada. And then when it got passed off to the account manager, the account managers weren't skilled

Starting point is 00:04:52 in customer service. They were advertisers. You know, they didn't know how to talk to clients. They didn't know how to retain clients. And oftentimes they were fighting with the clients because the salesperson set the improper expectations. So what I decided to do was fire all of my in-house ad team when I restructured it and transition the salespeople to managing the accounts. And then I found some media buyers overseas that I trained on our whole process and let them kind of take it over. And so now the, like managing 10 in-house marketers was like off my plate. I didn't have to do that. So I shut down our office space, moved to Vegas from New Jersey and just took the

Starting point is 00:05:36 company remote in 2019. And then from there, just hired more and more salespeople. Wow. And then they would manage the accounts. Now, the thing that was different about this model was that now the salespeople who are now the account managers could focus on four main things. Number one, bringing in new business,

Starting point is 00:06:00 you know, making sales. Number two, retaining those clients because they're skilled in overcoming objections. They're skilled in managing client expectations and being able to convince them to continue on with their campaign. And then number three, get referrals from those clients to organically grow the business. And then number four, to get clients to extend their contracts and increase their spend, therefore increasing the lifetime value of the clients over time. And by them focusing on those four things only,

Starting point is 00:06:30 it basically created a franchise model of our agency where each account manager had their own book of business. And this is something I learned from the financial advisory space. As a financial advisor, you have a book of business, book of clients, and you get paid a residual income based on their investments. So I decided to no longer pay my salespeople a one-time commission where they were hungry for that next sale and over-promising just to make a commission. But now they're building long-term relationships and get paid a residual income on the back end for every client that renews. So now they're focused on retention and our retention went from like 40 to 90 holy crap literally overnight yeah and there was a lot of other things that helped with this obviously the pivot from facebook primarily to google and

Starting point is 00:07:17 youtube yeah which in our niche actually ended up working out really well um no one was really doing it at that time and then so the quality of the leads got better. And then also our account management process was just dialed in. And so it was really just kind of growing on top of clients weren't canceling. So it was just like, as long as our sales were going up, our recurring monthly revenue just kept going up. And I'm so glad, you know, later that I didn't, you know, switch and quit my agency because, um, I may have never discovered that. Yeah. Being skilled in ads is a really good skill because you're able to scale super fast with a lean team. You've seen agencies grow to a million dollars per month while working 10 to 15 hours per week. Right. Yeah. I mean,

Starting point is 00:08:01 that's what I say, right? It's like, I work very little. Like now I work on my coaching program, which mid-ticket and just kind of giving everything away. Because I think, you know, there's just not that many people who are able to invest in a super high ticket. Everyone that's in it is like, this is incredible. This is changing my business, but I want to offer it to more people. And then just on the back end, you know, if people want one-on-one consulting with me, then they can, they can pay for that. But just kind of give it away on a mid-ticket level. Yeah, there's very few industries where you could scale like that, work in that hours. I really can't think of any other than this and maybe crypto.

Starting point is 00:08:55 Yeah, exactly. So I mean, the beauty of it is that as the founder now, I'm not doing sales, I'm not doing account management, and I'm not doing ads. So by outsourcing all three of those things, all I have to do is just direct the company wherever direction has to go. You know, I'm, I'm focusing most of my time on offer creation. You know, how are we going to go from adding 80 clients a month to adding 150 clients a month. How are we this quarter going to initiate a way to acquire 400 clients and maintain this retention? So I'm just focusing on the numbers and focusing

Starting point is 00:09:33 on where I'm going to go next. And I'm really just mostly spending most of my time thinking than I am in the business. Wow, that's brilliant. And that's what a CEO should be, right? Right. A thinker. It shouldn't be someone just hands-on doing everything. And a lot of people want to micromanage as a CEO. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to say that I don't micromanage sometimes. I do get in the weeds sometimes when it's necessary, but it's not like this perfect utopia that I'm in. But that is the goal, is to ultimately be out of the business. Yeah. What industries have been a main focus of you recently and are you excited about? Yeah. So we started in solar. So we have mostly solar energy clients. Our company's called Solar Exclusive. And then about three and a half years ago, I launched Roofing Exclusive. And I talk about this in my program.

Starting point is 00:10:28 When I originally launched Roofing Exclusive and HVAC Exclusive three and a half years ago, it was kind of a distraction. Because I used the same account managers that were in the solar space to add in roofing and HVAC. So now we're doing three niches. And it actually took away from the potential growth that we had in just the solar niche. So in my training, I teach about how there's vertical scaling and then there's horizontal scaling. So vertical is when you're going really deep in one niche,

Starting point is 00:10:56 as deep as you can go, to the point where you almost cap it out. And then horizontal is obviously the more generalist approach that a lot of agencies take where they're like in a bunch of different industries, right? But it's tough to systematize things and make it streamlined when you're in so many different industries. And for me, just being in three was kind of a distraction. So we ended up stopping focusing on roofing exclusive and HVAC exclusive and just really went deep with solar.

Starting point is 00:11:21 And that's when, you know, we just kind of took it to its max. And now we're, I launched like six different sub-brands simultaneously with different account managers. And by doing that, we've already turned off two of them. And we're scaling four of them. Because I wanted to test like six different ones. So I did turf, which is like turf installation companies, all home services. So turf installation, water treatment, window remodeling, kitchen remodeling, bathroom remodeling. We're also getting into insurance, which is my background, insurance and financial advising. So we're doing some financial advisors and also insurance agents. So we're kind of branching out and just kind of just throwing a bunch at the wall and just hoping that it sticks.

Starting point is 00:12:10 Yeah. And then kind of go from there. But this process of horizontal scaling just started for us about three months ago. And I've been documenting the whole process so I can train my students on how to really build an agency from scratch. Because that's basically what I'm doing. Because we're not like building it under one massive brand. We're building it under separate brands for each individual industry. Interesting. Why wouldn't you want to bundle them up into one

Starting point is 00:12:34 company because then you could sell that down the road? So actually my attorney recommended that we separate it and structure it in such a way so that we can sell particular sub-brands individually to strategic buyers in those industries. Got it. So for instance, let's just say, for instance, I wanted to sell the solar exclusive brand. I could sell that while maintaining ownership of all the other sub-brands. I see. And then I could sell the other ones. I could bundle them all up if the price is good enough, but I could also just sell one at a time. And then I don't lose my entire business. Because it's really a cash cow.

Starting point is 00:13:12 And we've been able to do a lot of great stuff and charitable work and stuff like that that I'm passionate about. And I don't know if I want to lose my income source. But I'd love to potentially sell some of these sub-brands and then continue the process of going out and diversifying into other ones. Have you found a sweet spot in terms of price offering? Because to run lead ads, you probably need some good margin, right? Yeah. So we've tested this a number of different ways. It really comes down to the value that we're providing to the industry, right? Some industries make a lot of money per sale. Some industries make less. So we kind of have to structure it in such a way that we're still making margin, but that still

Starting point is 00:13:50 makes sense for the business. Because otherwise, if the cost per acquisition isn't there, they're not going to be retained. And that's what I really wanted to focus on in my agency, was retention. So we don't have retention. And you know, this is why agency owners pull out their hair all the time. It's like they put all this work into a client and they just end up canceling. And it's like, you're always bringing in new clients to replace the ones you lost and you can't really scale. So yeah, it's been strategic on, you know, it's different for every brand. Yeah. Agency model's tough, man. Cause you're charging monthly and then you're charging percent of ad spend. So for them to profit, it's tough sometimes. It can be, it can be.

Starting point is 00:14:31 But you know, that's why I'm so thankful for my team and what we've done because we just tend to get really good results for all of our clients. Like if you don't have really good results for your clients, it's impossible to scale an agency. There has to be some differentiating factor of your advertising and your marketing that somehow makes you special compared to all of your competitors. And if you can find that, I think that's one of the hidden secrets of our agency is that we can provide really good results, whereas a lot of other agencies are kind of always scrambling trying to find the thing. And I think sometimes we get marketer brain where we're like,

Starting point is 00:15:10 we think we have to split test everything, you know? But like sometimes it's just good to just stay the course and do some things that are kind of cookie cutter. But if it gets results, why change it? Yeah, bread and butter, stick with it, right? Yeah. Yeah, how important is the ad creative compared to the product? Do you have like a formula that you use for your ads?

Starting point is 00:15:31 You know, it's kind of, it kind of is a formula. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like, you know, focusing on the pain points, obviously, like any good marketer would do. And then solving those pain points with the benefits that we provide and solutions we provide. And then just really kind of measuring, you know, ultimately, like, especially in home services, because before I was a financial advisor, I knocked on doors, selling windows and selling roofing. And, you know, the whole commission structure at the company that I worked where I became a manager and, you know, wrote scripts for the company and stuff like that. The whole structure was based on not only just setting a lot of appointments

Starting point is 00:16:16 on the doors, but also how many of those appointments actually transitioned to an actual meeting. Like kind of like, you know, in the digital space, we talk about like, hey, I can fill my calendar with high ticket sales calls. But if my show up rate is terrible, it doesn't really matter how many bookings you got. It depends on what is your show rate? What is your actual cost per sit? What is your actual cost per show up?

Starting point is 00:16:37 And so by focusing on those things, the ad creative kind of becomes less important. It's more of the back end. It's more of ensuring that, at least streamlined from the beginning to the end, somehow to get more people to show up and generate that interest over time. Because not every lead, not every pre-booked call or appointment is going to be the best quality. And sometimes they have to be nurtured very effectively. And we just know how to prepare clients for that reality, that it takes time.

Starting point is 00:17:07 It takes time to dial these things in. You need to be in it for the long haul, et cetera, et cetera. And usually a lot of our split testing that we do is usually on the back end more than the front end. Got it. There was a recent FCC law passing. what exactly happened there? Yeah, so the new FCC law is going into effect in January. And this law is basically outlawing mass text technology, auto-dialing technology, and AI technology for any leads that don't have one-to-one consent. So one-to-one consent is basically, the consumer has given express consent

Starting point is 00:17:49 to one company to contact them. Now, before this, in the lead gen space, all the publishers and all the things that happen with like ping posts and all that stuff, before, you could just have blanket consent. You could have a disclosure above the phone number or below the phone number that stated that these leads can be called by anyone at this link. And you just put a link,

Starting point is 00:18:12 you just list all the people you sell your leads to. Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest? We'll click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life. Click the application link below, and here's the episode, guys. And that was easy because it was just blanket consent. But the federal government caught on to this because now consumers get called by so many people because the leads just keep getting resold over and over and over again. So it's like this whack-a-mole where you have to ask them to remove you from the list. And you can never get off because the leads are always resold. So this law is putting an end to that where now the disclosures are going

Starting point is 00:18:55 to have to be per company. Now, I'm not sure exactly how people are going to initiate this. I'm sure there's going to be some technology that they figure out, but I'm glad that I set up my agency the way that I did because the way we set up our agency originally was that everyone would get an exclusive campaign. So we set up, you know, landing pages, automations, ads individually for each client. We manage their ad spend and then essentially um the leads go only to that company and like everyone has a separate exclusive campaign now the disadvantage with this is that if you have multiple clients in one region they can compete against each other but most legion outfits what they do is they just send everything to one landing page, compile all the leads with blanket consent, and then redistribute the leads on the back end and resell them multiple times. So that is what's not going to be able to be done anymore.

Starting point is 00:19:55 So it was actually by the mercy of God that we set up our agency seven years ago so that it was already set up exclusive. So for us to be compliant, all we have to do is just change that disclosure from being a link with all of our clients to just the company unique so that only that company can get those leads. Now, I think this is good for the lead generation industry. I think it's good for most business owners. The reason I think that is because now the government's going to be like really watching these auto dialers and this mass text technology and this AI technology. See if people are using it by the letter of the law. And if they don't, on the fifth page of the FCC ruling, it says that they've given carte blanche authority to AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile

Starting point is 00:20:39 to block businesses from being able to contact consumers. Holy crap. And this isn't just like, oh, they blocked my number. I'll just buy a new number. It's like on the EIN level. Damn. So it's going to be very challenging for people to continue to do what they're doing. And it says in the ruling that they can actually do this,

Starting point is 00:20:58 even if they suspect that you broke the law, not necessarily that you did. So it's going to be a real challenge. But I think it's good for the consumer because now they're not going to be getting blown up by so many calls. Basically, there's an expiration date on all age leads. So all age leads are not going to be able to be called anymore after January of 2025. So what does that mean for the people who continue to run ads? It means that the people who do fill out your lead forms and do become leads are not going to be blown up all the time by your competitors.

Starting point is 00:21:31 So that means more people are going to be likely to answer the phone. They're not going to be getting annoyed with so many excessive calls. So the show-up rate and the pick-up rate is going to be better for the clients who stay the course, which is actually a good thing, I think, for the industry. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out over time. I will say it is annoying as a consumer if I fill out my phone number on a site.

Starting point is 00:21:51 Like I just did one last week. I wasn't even selling a house. I was buying a house. Put my number on the site. Six different realtors called me. Yeah. I was like, what the hell? You're probably still getting calls.

Starting point is 00:22:00 Dude, it was a home value calculator. It wasn't even like I was looking to buy the house. I was just seeing how much it was worth right and they're asking if i want to buy it six different people wow pretty crazy yeah and they probably get a fat commission on that so probably yeah and then like they could sell it to other people but you know i'm still getting calls from things that i filled out like six months ago it's annoying yeah yeah lead gen space is fascinating though. I know some heavy hitters in the space. Yeah, I'm sure.

Starting point is 00:22:28 Like it's very possible to do eight, nine figures in that space. Yeah, totally. You know, it's, it's, it really drives the whole economy, honestly. Yeah. Cause you need leads. Yeah. And a lot of people suck at getting them. So yeah, that's where you come in.

Starting point is 00:22:43 Yeah. Did this take off first year? Were you profitable at first? I was profitable, but not super profitable in the first year of my agency. You know, we first were like on a pay per lead model. And I think it works great for some people who can really dial that in. But for us, it was like when we had some clients in certain regions, we didn't know that like, I was like super green to the lead gen industry. But like there's, if I'm running a campaign for solar in New Jersey versus a campaign in Arizona that's had solar for decades,

Starting point is 00:23:22 or California where solar's been there for decades, but like New Jersey six years ago, it was like a brand new market. There weren't many solar companies. It's kind of like a developing market. So the same ads, the same process is not going to work in two different States. So when I thought, Oh, I'm going to build this agency on a paper lead model, I know that I could generate the leads for this. I'm going to charge this. This is going to be easy money. Yeah, it's going to be easy money. But then when we went to some of these tougher markets,

Starting point is 00:23:52 it was like, oh, man, I'm losing money. So we had to redo the model. Interesting. And we shifted to retainers. So a lot of it's timing then. Yeah. When a new product hits that region, you just go all in. Yeah, it is.

Starting point is 00:24:04 And I know there's a lot of people in the lead gen space that do that. They just kind of wait for the next opportunity and just make a ton of money and then move on to the next. But it's been great to build a consistency and build a brand in a space. And our team is just so phenomenal. I can't stress enough how amazing our team is. And during economic challenges and you know um industry challenges like i can say that

Starting point is 00:24:29 we never had to lay someone off that was essential to the company well great and no one's ever quit that was essential to the company that's even more impressive than me yeah so like all my account managers like i was explaining before our sales people like some of them been with me six seven years some of them have been with me three four seven years. Some of them have been with me three, four years. We have a couple of new ones who are setters first, and then we promoted them to account management. Cause that's really our model. Like we, we hire setters, they set appointments for the closers, and then we promote them to closers because the setters see how much money that the closers are making. And like my top sales guy, he can make anywhere from 50 to 70 grand a month. Holy crap. Yeah. And it's like his own business opportunity. And the setters see that and they're like,

Starting point is 00:25:06 man, I want to be the next guy who gets called up, you know, like they're on deck and they want to be, they want to go in and go up to the, their, have their opportunity to be at bat. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:17 And, um, it's like a cycle. Yeah. And, uh, you know, we've had to let go of some people that,

Starting point is 00:25:22 you know, weren't a good fit or did something wrong or didn't perform well. But overall, it's been a great journey. That's impressive, man. $50K a month as a closer is the highest I've ever heard. That's crazy. Yeah. And that's because of this structure, right?

Starting point is 00:25:36 Because the way I look at it is I'd rather have lower profit margins and higher revenue because it's a safer business. It's a safer business. You look at any big business in the S&P 500, their margins are very minimal, but their revenue is insane. And those are the safest business to invest in in the US stock market, because they have so much revenue. They have so much diversification,

Starting point is 00:25:59 even though their margins are lower. So I'd much rather have a bigger agency with more revenue and lower profit margins, rather have a bigger agency with more revenue and lower profit margins rather than have an agency with lower revenue and super high profit margins because you're only like a few months away from going out of business. If you lose some key clients, you lose a big whale client, you lose a series of clients because of something that happens, like you're right back down to 20 grand a month. Interesting. Yeah, I've never heard that take. Most people aim for the most profit they can, but that's interesting.

Starting point is 00:26:27 Yeah, it's unorthodox because that's really how most agency owners go toward this is that it's like, it's the side hustle culture, right? It's like, I want to make as much money as possible with the least amount of work that I have to do. But that's not how business owners think. Business owners think, how can I diversify myself

Starting point is 00:26:46 and generate the most revenue so that I can have stability and a more diversified company that's less likely to go out of business? Interesting. Yeah. I mean, that's why you're doing the numbers you are. Almost 50 mil a year, man. You think you could take this to 100 a year? I do. Yeah. That's the whole plan of like doing this six launches that we just did of the sub-brands and the horizontal scaling. We're gonna have to do a lot of hiring because it takes time to build

Starting point is 00:27:14 like a brand new agency from scratch, right? I mean, it took us like three years to get to the point where, you know, we were even had the potential to get to 2 million a month. But like, it was like three years of struggle. But now that I have the formula, I can do it in a very short period of time. So I really believe that I can do it. Like I did with solar going from 71,000 a month to 2 million

Starting point is 00:27:34 a month in a year. And then the 4 million a month, six months after that, I think I can do it with these other six. I just don't know how fast I want to do it. Absolutely. Because it's like, you know, I love my free time. I like going to Malibu, hanging out at my beach house with my family. I like seeing my daughter grow up. Yeah. You know, I enjoy, you know, going to church and enjoying my time

Starting point is 00:27:55 with my friends and family. And I never want to sacrifice all of those things, which I think are core, you know, to my values to just make a ton of money. my values to just make a ton of money even though I do make a ton of money I I don't want to overwork to the point just to to like blow it up interesting but I could I could do it I just don't want to sacrifice that anymore because I know I've sacrificed it in the past yeah it's kind of like now that I've got some cushion it's like well do I really want to sacrifice it that much? So I'm just building a good team underneath me to implement that. And, um, I've been really privileged. That balance, right? It's

Starting point is 00:28:30 the game we play. Yeah. Do we want to work 80 hours this week and sacrifice everything or do we not? Yeah. Sometimes you have to. Yeah. Sometimes you do. And there's definitely been seasons where, you know, I've had to put more focus on the business. Like there've been challenges in the solar energy space where the industry's really gone through some rocky stuff especially with interest rates going up um so you know there have been times where I couldn't put in the 10 or 15 hours a week I had to put in 40 or 50 but I could always decide if I want to okay I'm only going to put in 10 hours this week and it won't crash and burn yeah which is great it's a great option to have so you put in 10 hours a week I do won't crash and burn. Yeah. Which is great. It's a great option to have. So you put in 10 hours a week. I do that daily. What are you doing with the rest

Starting point is 00:29:08 of your time? So a lot of my other time I spend on reading the Bible and studying Christianity. Okay. That's one of my big passions. And I also spend a lot of time with my coaching program trying to build that up now that I have that going. But yeah, just volunteering my time and my money for causes that I care about and spending time with my family. So religion has been a big part of your life? Yeah, absolutely. From the start or did you come into it recently? I was raised in a nominal Catholic family. But when I went to college, I studied music at a very prestigious music conservatory. And in high school, I followed around this band called Fish, which is like a continuation of the Grateful Dead.

Starting point is 00:29:56 Yeah, I've heard of them, actually. It's like a hippie scene. They actually just played Vegas at the Sphere. I actually went a couple of the nights. It was phenomenal. But I still love their music. I actually went a couple of the nights. It was phenomenal. But I still love their music. I still appreciate their music so much. But it was very much like a hippie drug culture, right? So when I went to college, I was studying music and I didn't have time to party anymore.

Starting point is 00:30:18 I was at one of the most prestigious music conservatories in the world on scholarship. And I needed to take it seriously. And then after my freshman year of college, I kind of had, you know, a come to Jesus moment and started going to church and reading the Bible and learning about it. And then just kind of took off from there and gone through various different seasons of my life. But it's always been a core part of my life since college. Nice. That's cool, man. Yeah. Religion is something that fascinates me. Really? I'm sure you've seen some of the guests I've had on. There's some interesting takes on it. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. But I think having some sort of belief or faith is powerful, no matter what it is. Right. Some purpose. I mean, definitely because otherwise, why do you

Starting point is 00:30:56 do what you do? Yeah. Yeah. That purpose is something that I've found recently and it's changed my mindset completely. Yeah, definitely. That's great. Yeah, because every other business I had before this, there wasn't really a purpose other than money. Exactly, yeah. And that was kind of empty. But money can be a religion for people. What do you mean? Well, money can be a religion.

Starting point is 00:31:16 It just means that they're worshiping how much money they make. I mean, when you think about worship, it doesn't necessarily mean you're bowing down or praying five times a day or facing a certain direction, like going through religious rituals. It's really more of like, what do you focus your mind and your time on?

Starting point is 00:31:36 If you focus your mind and your time on making money, then money is your God in a sense, right? I mean, worship is just, the origins of the word worship originally were worth-ship. It's like what you find worthy of your time and your effort and your focus. So whatever you find worthy of your time,

Starting point is 00:31:54 effort, or focus is your God. Interesting. Yeah. The people that have money as their God, though, I just feel like long-term, it doesn't seem to work out. You know what I mean? It seems kind of just unfulfilling. Yeah, you all those posts from like there's a there's all those like

Starting point is 00:32:08 you know pages and stuff like i always see stuff from like jim carrey you know like jim carrey always talks about how like money didn't really solve all his problems you know it wasn't it wasn't until he like found purpose in his life that he realized that true happiness was found in in that you know even though he made so much money. So I think you're right. I think it's a very wise thing to recognize that, yeah, money doesn't solve everything. I think it's good to have.

Starting point is 00:32:33 Yeah, it's good to have. It's good to have to make sure you're not struggling and it doesn't bring unneeded stress to your life that you don't need. But just think about the sheer volume of people on planet Earth. Most people aren't as privileged as you or I to make a lot of money, especially at a young age. It's very rare.

Starting point is 00:32:54 Super rare. Even if you think about the 1% in America, you have to make, I think it's like $600,000 a year or maybe $800,000 a year or something like that. Is that household or is that individual? I think it's household. grand a year or maybe like 800 grand a year or something like that. Is that household or is that individual? I think it's household. Oh, that's not.

Starting point is 00:33:07 You're in like the top 1%. Wow. It's like, it means 99% of people in America, the richest country in the world, like make less money than you. Which is like you have such a great responsibility to like make sure that you're using it for the right purposes. Yeah. Yeah, that's important to me. Before I was using it in, I wouldn't say selfish, but just mainly on myself. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:33:29 I've been there too. I've been there too. It's like, it's not easy like to come into a bunch of money and be like, all right, well, you know, 20 years from now, my 20 year later version of me, how are they going to think about me making these decisions now? You know, I didn't think about that, you know, cause I was young and stupid and all those things but like you know you kind of have to think that way it's like what would your future self say you know when you're 85 years old on your deathbed like what do you want that story to be right and that's something i think about

Starting point is 00:34:00 often same yeah i don't want any regrets. Yeah. Definitely. After seeing certain people close to me pass away with just massive regrets, it's like, dude, that ate at them their whole life. Right. You know? Yeah. I want to live my life. Rich, I didn't, I didn't think we'd turn there, but it's been fun, dude. Anything else you want to promote or close off with? Yeah. So just check out, um, for, I mean, obviously everyone here is like marketers that are probably listening you could check out ad-visory.com that's my coaching company it's a play on words so advisory so it's ad obviously for advertisement and visory is a suffix that means vision so it's just like visionary ad agency coaching so ad-visory.com you can learn more about my coaching program it's gonna become mid-ticket very shortly.

Starting point is 00:34:45 Hopefully by the time this goes live. And then you can take everything for a pretty low amount of money that I've learned over the last seven years scaling to $4 million a month. Perfect. We'll link below. Thanks for coming on, man. Thanks.

Starting point is 00:34:57 Yeah, thanks for watching, guys. We'll link below. Check it out. See you guys tomorrow. All right.

Digital Social Hour - This One Strategy Took My Agency from $71K to $4M/Month | Rich Feola DSH #535

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