Omnichannel - Sam Zohouri- How to Scale over a 100K/month

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Send us a text podcast RSS Sam Zohouri- How to Scale over a 100K/monthSam and his business partner managed to scale up to 100K AUD relatively fast in their business by niching down and mastering that specific Niche. In this episode, Sam will tell us how he managed to get passed by the 100K mark, and what key mindsets he adopted in order to scale up. He shared some insights on his team-building process, hiring and firing, and managing performance within the team. Finally, Sam also talked about his own agency’s lead qualification process, and closing techniques as well.Get a FREE Copy of the High Converting Online Events Book: https://book.dominikalegrand.com/

Welcome, everybody. You are listening to the Omni Channel podcast, a podcast from digital marketers to digital marketers. I'm your host, Dominique Haldegrand, and my mission is to help fellow marketers and entrepreneurs to grow their businesses online. So buckle up and let's get started. hi everyone in today's episode i had a chance to talk to sam and he has been absolutely amazing in giving so much valuable advice i don't even know where to start we spoke about how he's got his agency over 100k and what were some of the mistakes that he had to learn through the process. We talked about qualifying clients, we talked about what are the mindset that someone had to adopt when it comes to scaling your businesses. We also talked about

hiring and firing and the process of going about that and how to build a company culture that is based on transparency sam also shared his techniques in closing and if you guys are interested in he said some very very important key things when it comes to your closing technique and we also talked a bit about the pandemic and how he managed to persevere despite the pandemic. So we have so many interesting topics we covered throughout this podcast. I really hope that it's going to be just as interesting and insightful for you than it was for me. So if you're interested, keep on listening.

All right, Sam. First of all, thank you so much for saying yes to my podcast. It's lovely to have someone like you here who helps agencies scale up from 100K per month. She's insane. Can you tell a bit more about your niche and how did you get into this business the first place right yes so look i started with sales and i think that's something that's like everybody denominator right that's a really common denominator like we got gary v like we used to

pick like you know flowers out of people's backyard and selling it back to them and we got seberry from king kong as well like you know they all kind of people's backyard and selling it back to them. And we got Sebre from King Kong as well. They all kind of started from sales and then moved to marketing. And I think I kind of had the same journey as well. Me too, by the way. I work for GE. Oh, really? Okay.

What did you sell? I was selling medical devices for scientists. Okay, awesome. Yeah, so I was selling perfume. And I was in a shopping center. I or just moving around selling in different shops. And, you know, and that's where I was kind of like, you know, very passionate about, you know, the fact that we can influence someone, whether offline or online, like that's where that passion begins. And then I moved to marketing with my business partner and one of my closest friends at the time, and we're still working together.

It has been my journey. So it moved from, from you know and the fact that i was good at sales it'll it really helped me i think that's like the key to moving from zero to 100k for me it happened really fast and the reason really wow it happened quickly like it happened really quick and i think it still could be quicker if i knew the fundamentals of you know if I knew the fundamentals of running an actual business and it happened because of sales you know it happened because I was good at going and knocking on people's door that's how I used to how like you know that's how I started initially I was knocking on people's door and like okay look I want to grow your business let's have it let's book a time you got 20 minutes I'll come back on

this date on this you know in this time and then we talk about you know how we can grow your business and that's how i was getting the you know the initial clients and uh and then there was the point like especially like when you go the first 100k like uh in you know aud there's a point where you know you you cannot have more time to actually work on the client to get them result and you want to grow your you know you you cannot have more time to actually work on the client to get them results and you want to grow your you know you want to turn 100k to 200k like you want to double up your money again and then there's just that ceiling where you're kind of stuck because the more time you're putting into getting clients then you see like you have less time to actually work on those clients

and you stop you know reducing the quality of your delivery of your you know your service you start losing clients. And then there's that sort of ceiling that it's like I'm almost stuck. And that ceiling exists on every stage of business. You want to go from 100K to 200, 200 to 400. That always is there. So that was the ceiling I faced at the time. Then I started learning a bit about team building. It doesn't have to be me who do everything.

Me and my business partner, we can get someone. By the way partner we can get to 100k all by yourself or with your business partner yes with my business partner that's insane i thought you had like a whole team running at the 100k and you just expanded somehow after yeah i got to 100k then i had like you know and i was kind of stuck there for a very long time, because of that same reason I was mentioning, like, I just, like, okay, I'll do the job, like, you know, and then it's just, it's hard, like, I don't have time, you know, I want to get more clients in, like, I'm getting clients, and by the way, not every client, like, you know, I didn't know how to pre-qualify a client, I get someone, and they're just, you know, they're not a

good business people themselves,. And I'm just investing my time into someone who's not delivering their own service right. And then they're not having that pre-qualification. And one mistake I made, if someone is listening and if I want to, my goal is to add value to people listening to this podcast. One thing is focus on one thing. You don't need to be good at everything that's what i started doing i'm like okay i want it all i want to have it all i'm super enthusiastic i'm super passionate i want to be every industry i want to tackle every you know i want to expand my service as much as i can and i want to be the biggest i can so that's it sounds good in theory it just doesn't work and

it's just the slowest route you can you know you can go forward so you know so that's how i'm trying to like even still to this day i'm trying to sharpen up like you know what exactly i'm good at and just try to eliminate most of the things that i'm good at and start being great at one thing it's a you know it's a good worst great you know you cannot be you cannot make your first million being good at what you're doing like you have to be excellent at the end of the day and thrive for excellence absolutely yeah just look at one thing like see what like what everything you're doing right now what is one thing that you can be the best in the world at and try to find it doesn't have to be too complicated like you know that's a problem with you know the the academic way of

learning about marketing like you go on youtube and you search about you know what i need to do and there's all these different terminologies there's all these even things you can do but at the end of the day like just it all of that it just be just putting terms into things that you know we just want to make something we want to make a meaning out of nothing and we over complicate the processes to a point where it just be just confusing like where do i get started so just focus one thing just try simplify everything and be good like you know for example be good at like you know be the best in the world at getting leads for certain niche, which is what I'm trying to do. So right now, my niche that I'm focusing on is in flooring and blinds.

These are the two industries that I'm, you know, I'm very dominant on, like, you know, trying to dominate Australia on these two niches. And I'm getting them leads and I'm helping them nurture the leads and, you know, convert them into customer. But being good at less things, it just just it helps me to grow a lot faster so you are essentially with the sales are you are you still doing say are you still closing or or are you with the lead gen for myself I'm closing as well okay that's like the CEO you you cannot escape it. You know, it's something that the CEO, CEO is always going to be something that they're going to be doing. Yeah, so you have not outsourced the sales process.

You still keep that in-house and you do that yourself. I did try it. So I did actually have a team. So, you know, and we grew the team. Like we had a team of three full-time salespeople. They were getting the leads. You know, we were getting, we were doing our own marketing as well and then we're trying to you know have meetings like there was a point there was a month where we had at least three booked in appointments every single day and that was like an ongoing and we didn't have enough

you know uh i think the sales team that they were not experienced enough and i realized like i was kind of like that sales is something that no it's people don't want to do you know it's like something that like we want to kind of run away from it like someone I hope someone else can do it for me so I was in that position I'm like okay no I want to you know my conversion rate is going to be always the highest and if I is like you know that so that so so so I'm still I mean still involved in that process but we're not getting as much new customers as you know we used to because we're not getting as much new customers as you know we used to because we're pre-qualifying customers like for the first time like this

year for the first time that people coming to us and i'll tell them i'm not going to work with you that's something i could not imagine before i'm like oh i want more money you know so that that mindset switch kind of happened in my mind so i'm like okay the focus is on them getting results do you think you also have to raise your prices in order to disqualify some people absolutely so i was a bit so you know so if you don't dictate the the client going to dictate the processes the prices so me knowing a certain exact this is what we're going to do this is how we're going to work this is how much we're going to communicate and this is how it is like we i mean doing this for a while i know what works what doesn't work so this is how we're going to do it you know i'm always open to

optimize the processes but that that like not just the prices but even the how some some clients that want to have daily meetings i'm like no we're not going to do that it's going to waste your time and my time so that became one reason we are getting less clients and obviously the industry itself as well that's really good i think that's important to leave have those boundaries as well and just know okay this is what we're going to do and we're not going to do a website for you and we're going to do that the rest of it um so uh are you still and you said you're working in home improvement and that's your niche right yeah and what do you think is is next for you like in that aspect you said you want to dominate australia do you want to you know step out from that as well at

some point the country itself yeah well that's something that you know i it's you know it's something i think about but i think i'm i'm still haven't been close to even dominating those two niches in australia like the market if i dominate those two industries i'm you know like i'm talking million plus income so i have i'm not closer so but if i so there's two two routes that i'm thinking in my head what i'm gonna what's to be my next move. So once I dominated these two industries, it's either going to be me making these two, focusing on the same niches, but going to other countries. You know, the UK is very similar, how the market is compared to Australia. So I can tackle the UK.

Or alternatively, I can add new companies within new industries within Australia that are very similar to those two. Like home improvement. So those are the two routes. I'm sure once I'm closer to dominating these two industries, then I will be making a more certain decision. But for now, those are the two potential routes for me to go in future so we talked about your qualifying process and you said you pre-qualify leads can you talk a bit more about that how does that look like for you yeah so it starts even from like when you who you're going to be targeting like so i'm not targeting every business in oceania first like there's a few things that

i'm qualifying in the customer avatar. One is obviously the client himself. They have to, you know, that's something that we talk about through the sales process as well with them. So first, they have to be from these two industries. You know, they have to, you know, they have to actually want to grow their business. And they need to have to be, you know, have the capacity to have enough more work for them to make it worth even having another agency helping them to even grow faster. And then if they don't have the desire, like some people, they just want to maintain their income.

There's a lot of them in Australia. I think Australia is one of the best countries in the world. But one downside is people don't have the same desire as they have in America. Not every business owner wants to be the fastest they just want to have a good relaxing life where you know they can go to the beach and enjoy the time with their family so yeah absolutely so those businesses actually those people are the people when you know we right now we're not you know that's something that we reject through the pre-qualifying because if they don't want to grow like obviously they can have a fun life i'm not saying that i just want to get people who don't want to have fun no i want people like that but uh but i don't want people who don't want to like you know don't want to grow their

business and once they come in one other thing that will pre-qualify them on is their personality their characteristic they have to be already good at sales they already have to be good at delivering their you know products so that's something that we you know we can talk to them communicate and make sure that we get their agreement on but we're gonna give you this list you're gonna waste all your you know we're gonna we're gonna waste all our efforts getting your leads so how do you in practice you said they already have to be making sales so they're not you know some scammy business they have to have a desire to grow and they have to be in a certain industry like for your for yourself it's your niche so um in practice like how does

it look like do you get in a call and be like hey do you want to grow your business or you put essentially already filtering it out by you know an advertisement that is hey do you want to grow your business like how do you actually in practice go about the filtering process yes it's a list building so i usually we either call them or we also run ads as well so we get like a list and so it starts the pre-qualifying starts from the list building so like i've figured like so far from you know what i've been like you know that analysis that we have done people with low page likes who have created their page recently and who are in these two industries, they have the highest chance of converting. So I created a list.

So I have this Excel file and I stored it so I can target and start contacting these people, whether through email marketing, SMS marketing, and also through like Facebook ads, we have, you know, we run Facebook ads as well. And then when we, and then we book a time for us to talk to them. And then when we are talking to them, that's when I figure out if they're good at sales, you know, and then if they, and the rest of the, you know, also the rest of the things that, you know, we need to, this is how we work. Do you agree with this? This is what we do. This is what we expect from you. It's not only what you expect from us. This is, you know, this is our expectation from you. You know, I want to, like, I want to have a good repetition in this business.

Like, you know, I've been, I have happy clients. I don't want to, I don't want my repetition to be ruined. So will you be able to, you know, will you be able to do your part for us to succeed together? And if they say yes, then that's when we go ahead. Wow. That's really good um so can we talk about then the scaling because you said you were stuck at 100k and and kind of what are the practices what are the mindset shift that someone has to implement in order to get past that mark yeah so first of all you got to be profitable so so that's the thing you got to know your input and output. You've got to know exactly how much it costs you to get that customer, how much is going to be money that ends in your pocket profit that you can either put in back in the business or something that you end up yourself with. That's something that's really important. Especially, again, passion can sometimes be dangerous. You know, the fact that I wanted everything, I wanted to do everything, you know, all the services in the world I want to offer them.

Like that, that's dangerous. Same thing happened with, you know, with income as well. So at one point when I was stuck, I realized the reason is I'm just focusing so much on the income, not on the profit. And that like the way, you know, in book, investing books like Benjamin, you know, so what they say is if you want to assess a company's health, if their company is healthy or not, you see if the profit is there or not. You don't look at the income. It's the profit. So that's one thing. So you've got to realize, OK, this is how much profit I have.

And that becomes like a success measure in your head. And like that, that already like you start playing out. Like you said yourself as well you increase your prices if you have to because you make sure okay this is not profitable so that's one way you can you can scale to bigger because with that money you can start getting more team members and it all becomes about building systems and building people so you got to be good at these two things so you're going to see okay looking from the bird uh you know bird eye from like looking down like what is my organization lacking what is something

that i cannot do myself i prefer to give it to someone else and you start breaking down your task so i if i show you like my task management the way i manage my own tasks like there's four different columns which is i i learned it from uh seven habits of successful people. And it says break down it in four columns. And, you know, the things that you, and that's how you can tell, you know, which one, which tasks you can dedicate to someone else. And then you start thinking, okay, I need someone who can do these things.

So that's like, that's the way I go about this. And that's what helped me to grow to, you know, to grow past that 100K by just systemizing and also building the team. And then I can, it's like, okay, cool. Profit, system, building team. And now I can replicate the same success I had and I can double, triple, you know, etc. How much time do you invest in training these people? Or do you already look for people that has those skills that you're looking for uh it's both so it has to be like these people that you know they have to obviously

like what they're doing so we have weekly meetings where we discuss you know we have meetings where we discuss about certain things that i think that's necessary or something that maybe the company is lacking at the time so we like one person even like the the managers in the company they actually will do you know their research they will talk about what the rest will get advent you know benefit from and that's like the sort of culture we have so everyone's kind of promoted to learn new things so they prepare a presentation every week and also like the so that's that's the ongoing the ongoing thing we have but uh you know initially it's also really important, like, who you get in your team.

Because, you know, in a book that was recommended by Jeff Bezos, Great vs. Good, or Good to Great. Good to Great, yeah. The book suggests, yes, so the book suggests, like, you get someone, you pre-assess them, and then when you get them, you're either going to work with them for two months or you're never going to work with them again. And by the way, that's another mistake I made initially as well, which was kind of making it harder to move from 100K to 200K. Because I was getting people and I was making them become someone else. I was hoping, you know, I build relationship with them. You know, I don't want to end that relationship. I believe that, you know, I initially believe that they're good in the company. And I said yes to them. And I started, you know, expecting things

that I cannot do. It's like, it's very hard. This is the hardest thing to do, but it's the art of firing at the right time. Like, I think it it's something it's our responsibility as leaders to know when someone is not good for for the company as hard as it sounds and as hard as it you know it can feel because it's not it's not a good feeling when you you know when you say hey no it's you know like you know sally we we gave you we gave you the chance but we cannot work anymore it's the hardest thing to do but it has to happen. For those people that you fired, and obviously that's like you said, it's the hardest thing to do, especially when you built a relationship with someone. Do you have any tips to go about that? Yeah, so you've got to build a culture of transparency.

You have to be transparent with everyone up front, and then you also promote promote that concept to everyone so you expect the same thing from everyone as well and that makes it a lot easier you know tell them like look i'm not happy with your output like i'm not you know i'm not getting result i'm not doing this for the sake of you know you got to this is how like this is the first person that fired, which was really hard for me to do. And this is how I thought about it to make it, you know, to kind of get it, you know, to understand like why it should happen. So look, if I don't fire them, first of all, it's not good for them. Because I'm, you know, I'm incentivizing them for the wrong thing. It's going to affect their characteristic.

It's going to form a new personality new personality which then no one no other company will also like so they're gonna be left jobless when i say no to them so i gotta be upfront and tell them you know you know not for my sake for their sake and the second thing is i'm not like it's not just me you got to think of the company like you got to prioritize the company before you yeah like prioritizing yourself it's just you know it's ego-driven it's not it's not like if you want to focus on growing the company then the company comes first if the company is not you know if if the company going to be damaged if the other employees in the company who are also being you know getting money like to support their family from from us then you know i'm not i'm

not going to risk their you know their life so you gotta you you got to be upfront. There's no easy shortcut about it. You just got to do it. You got to be like, okay, look, this is the time. Like I gave you one warning. Obviously, you know, we try to give people a chance, but it's just you got to be quick about it. Because people don't choose. You can never learn a fish to fly.

And I had to learn that the hard way. Do you think that it's just partially because of your somewhat being inexperienced at the time of trying to wishful thinking hiring someone and believing in them when their skills were not there and kind of now you pay more attention to who you're hiring so you're not have you don't have to fire people that often as well. Yeah, that's right. It's just lack of experience. I mean, I never had like, you know, I never like I started this all myself and my business partner,

which we both didn't have a previous business experience. We didn't go to like a business school. We're just like, we're learning everything, you know, like firsthand experience. Yeah, on the go, like you say. So yeah, so that's one reason. And also like we you know i

used to believe in something gary van der truck says as well you got to hire fast fire faster so i'm right now i'm on the edge of hiring slower and firing faster i think that's been more effective in you know in our company just make like you say it have more candidates like to talk to more people whether you talk to clients whether you talk to employees you got like talk to more people, whether you talk to clients, whether you talk to employees, you got to talk to more people. And then, you know, you can, you have more, when you have more options, you instantly become, you know, more picky and your standards go higher. Wow. So you also mentioned that, you know, in order to start scaling up, you have to be profitable and you have to kind of pick your team. What are, what are the other things that you could recommend for someone who wants to scale up i mean building a system and building a team like you can break that down

to so many different components and like it just is a you know it's an it's gonna be like each of this this topic like it's something that you can you know search about and it will take you you know days weeks and months like some people will try to you know search about and it will take you you know days weeks and months like some people will try to you know be excellent at these two things for years and you know they still have room for improvement so those two things are like i think those two things help me to grow like because when you can learn how to replicate that then that's one one way you can obviously grow you need to save more time the other thing is um i guess one thing is the platform we started using like the system the system like we started using platform where clients can

communicate with us a lot easier we're using uh you know we we started using platform where like facebook group but it's just for our business you know it's like it's our own platform where clients can come and we all communicate together so it saves so much time for our team to also, you know, not having to overly communicate, which happens a lot in marketing. Oh yeah. Yeah. Of course, like, especially with meetings, like, you know, a lot of some of my, you know, I was fortunate to work with some franchise,

like some well-known franchises here in Australia. And one thing that they always like, they always tell me is the marketing has just become all these pointless meetings. There's this meeting paradox that happens in marketing. People just talk over and over again for hours every week.

And then you ask them at the end of the meeting, what's now? What's happening now? And it's just like nothing. So this is what I would say. One more thing. This is one more thing that's also important. Result over everything like it just that when you and this is something that i probably would have said maybe two years ago as well but now the way i understand that is just so

different like your clients result like that's what you get paid for and there's nowhere you can escape that like you're gonna start not losing clients like not losing unqualified clients if you're getting them result they're like they all want to be beat you like there's no like that's you need to improve your skills so that's one other thing that you know i started becoming a bit of more of an analyst like looking at like you know what what's working in the company what's not working in the company i was like okay so this service like we like we're offering like five services, let's say. And out of these five, like majority of our income is coming from this one. And out of this one, like this is the method we're using in this one service

that's getting majority of the client result. That's why I ended up choosing, you know, flooring and blind because that method was working the best for them at the time. So that became my niche. That started improving. So, you know, so that became my niche that that started improving so so so that you know so the metrics of result that should be something that you religiously look at all the time and see like what's what can you go and what components you can add to give you one simple example like just you know you get a lead you can get it you know you can

have a lead generation for this uh home improvement for your. And you get all these leads in an Excel spreadsheet and you give it to client. By just having, you know, that's the easiest thing you can do. And there's so many other components that you can add to this system where you can improve the conversion. You can have funnels.

You can have, you know, you can actually learn about branding, which just opens up your, you know, you're going to think about marketing in a different paradigm. So, and then you start, you know it's you're going to think about marketing in a different paradigm so so and then you start you know by having the leads and now you start sending them an sms and it's sending them and uh you know sending them an email right up right away after they sign up like how much would that increase the conversion and it's a big number so we you know so we did this test and we realized okay, okay, so business doesn't have to be complicated,

but let's simplify everything, write it on a whiteboard. What are these components that will have the highest amount of outcome for our clients? And let's just duplicate that for more people. And that's how you can break through the 100K. Yeah. I think it's important to be able to bring results to your clients. And I do think that because some of them are not really good at sales as well, by doing the SMS, the reminders, I think you increase the chances of the leads actually showing up, converting, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Like, you know, we had it for ourselves included. We were getting lots of appointments. I also mentioned before as well. And there was a time where we're getting lots of appointments i also mentioned before as well and there was a time where we're getting lots lots of appointments and not many people like let's say one out of five turn up like that's a waste of time i don't i don't remember the exact data if it was one out of five or one out of four but i remember it wasn't it wasn't any good impressive number we started uh you know having three three you know pre-written email three pre-written sms that

they get you know they receive even before the before the meeting like you know, having three, you know, pre-written email, three pre-written SMS that they get, you know, they receive. Even before the meeting, like, you know, like an hour before the meeting. Or your meeting is going to be started soon. You ready? With a question mark. You know, do things to be on top of the client's mind. Because in some cases, like, people are so busy right now. Thanks to social media.

Like, just everyone forget what they, like, what was the last ad you saw on Facebook? Like, people don't remember. They might haven't signed up for it, but they forget about it. So that's like, you gotta be on top of people's mind. And the person who follows up with the customer more online or offline, they win the client.

Yeah. So you mentioned that you were really good at sales. What are your techniques of closing a client? If you could share a few of your what you do when it comes to when it comes to say when it comes to closing for example yes plan but look so one thing is framing so that's like you know i think if you pre-frame the conversation you have with clients right like your chances just increase so much you know there's something i learned like one good person

that you can learn this from is dan lock i i don't like so there's a lot of opinions about him yeah like there's a lot of mixed opinions about him like i always say like a lot of like videos i claim that he's a scam artist like i don't like you know i'm not against anyone like i i think i like everyone you can learn like even people who might not have the good intention you can still learn a lot from them and well that's one thing that I think Dan Lok is great at. He's good at framing the people he talked to. So one thing I learned is when I talk to new clients, I tell them up front at the very start, look, this is, you know, there's two outcomes that could happen after this meeting.

We could either stop working together or, you know, we can, we can. Yeah. So that pre-framing, like it helped me a lot by pre-framing. And so I started like, I mean, by just doing it more i got better at it and one the method that i'm using is the jordan uh jordan belford's methodology in cells so the how he has a straight line so he's okay so they're always the goal is to close like no matter what any time at any stage you're talking to the client whether you're just saying hi, like you always should be closing. And that's like, that it actually works.

Like sometimes like you could talk about, like, you know, you start talking about the lockdown in Melbourne and it just becomes a, it becomes a new conversation. So that already tells the client that you don't, your time doesn't matter. You know, you don't value your time as much.

So it just, you know, you always should be calling, still like not, like not be disrespectful to the client the client obviously but you need to make sure that the client knows your time matters and you know you're there for one reason so you actually use the technique when then luck says you know dear mr prospect we are going to have you know either we have business together or we don't you know i'd rather you say you know to me than say i think about it right that is the technique that you use that's right yeah that's right so that's the that's the way he pre-frames the meeting and that's actually working definitely it helps a lot yeah because they like if they like there's so many clients like it's so much

easier to close them on the spot when when i like when i measure when i set it and when i the time i should i didn't say it like that actually has a big impact so it's my conversion rate has definitely gone higher wow i have to start doing that because again i do the same thing when i make them say yes but at the same time i've never been so up front because i thought that this technique is a bit like upfront. But I think it's also disqualifying people who are not, they don't want to work with you, right? Why hide it? Yeah, look, the one thing is like the mindset of like, when you can, sometimes you can talk to clients and like everybody wants to be liked.

Like I want people to like me but uh people if you even like like go through your life the decisions you made you end up buying from people who you trust not from people you like and there's like that you know and that's something that dan like i think that's something that he's kind of focusing on he's not like he's not the most charismatic guy on the planet but he's very trustworthy when he speaks. He speaks calm. He speaks slowly. So, yeah, that's one thing I learned as well.

And the other thing is asking the tough questions from clients. Sometimes we get scared to ask them. And that transparency also reflects on the way they talk to me as well. It also becomes more transparent. When I'm talking to the client, hey, look, is it the money? You don't have the money? And it's cool, but it's not going to be disrespectful when they know I have this sort of attitude where I'm transparent with them.

They'll also be transparent with me. Like I said, I work with franchises where I bet they haven't shared their finances to many people, but they share it with us. Because I tell them, look, marketing is like accounting. Like, you've got to trust your legal team, your marketing team, and your accountants. Everything. I need to know your data. How much money do you make? And these are tough questions to ask.

But they end up becoming, you know, it helps with you closing the client. Because you need to know why the hell they're not getting it i think um what helped me is to be adopting a doctor mentality when you don't consider yourself as a salesperson but as someone who genuinely wants to help and they need to know the symptoms in order for you to you know help them cure them absolutely yeah i agree definitely um so let's talk about the pandemic a bit if you don't mind and just sure has it been any impact on your business definitely i work with flooring and blinds like i said like they're not online businesses they're you know so it does affect you know we have so i have to adapt really quick like from early on that okay what we're gonna do

now they're gonna we're going to do now? They're going to, we're going to get them leads like they cannot actually, the client cannot go to them anymore, which is like right now in Melbourne, there's a lockdown. So we had to readjust quickly, like, you know, that. So it kind of pushes me to even think outside of what my service scope is. You know, but I have to do it because I'm like,

you know, I know that like we need to think outside the box for client, but we have virtual showrooms now. The client can be there without actually being there you know so now we have like we can actually book online meetings you can you know we can so there's there's ways you can get around it and by just like you know have you need to just be better at getting more qualified nurtured leads for our clients so those leads are still happy to say yes to deals that are like you know harder to get say you know it's usually harder for them to say yes but yeah it adapts like you know it's just the right the pandemic force like especially with marketing like you've got to be

really good at what you're doing to you know to still get the same you know not the same obviously the result has gone down it has got harder for me to get new clients it has got harder to get the same client's result but it's not impossible it still like, you can still push through the, you know, it's people versus virus. Like you got to push through the force. Wow. That's awesome. I think it's important to have the skill to be adapting to the situation that's in front of you. I think you did really good with the virtual, the virtual, you know, meetings as well. I think that's a really good idea that you come up with. You mentioned a lot of books as well during our conversation.

What are the most important books for you that really shifted your perception and helped you grow your business yourself? If you could recommend a few for the listeners right okay the book i read is not it's not like you can probably read the summary and you can get the idea of the book like it's not really practical when you open the book but it really changed my life it's 5 a.m club so it's a concept where you gotta wake up by 5 a.m in the morning and then you have to have a rigid routine where you follow every morning and that gets you ready for the day to have a good productive day.

And that was a really good book that, again, the concepts might not be that much. It's just, you got to wake up 5 a.m. You exercise, you read a book and like self-reflect. But that book just like, Ireflect but that that book just like you know like i've been following that sort of routine and it's been helping me to be a lot more productive i feel like that you know the like there's few things like you know we all know it's good but we don't do it you know like for example one thing is self-reflection like we don't really

go through our day and see okay i got this many things done yesterday i you know this was the outcome for this client this project and this is what i got and this is what i did this week this is what you know and then you start self-evaluating like what could i have done better you know what what could out of all these tasks i did like i go i go through my tasks like what could i have i eliminated what kind of could i have improved on and that that like self-reflection help helps a lot exercise helps like i'm more energetic when i exercise and also reading a book too like you know just i try to try to read books every morning and try to kind of acquire new knowledge and try to not just read but to implement it like straight away like try to turn it into like actual wisdom trying to you know i mean the learning is not enough but so that's one good book that helped me and the other one uh yeah good uh

good to great that was a great book as well like you know that that's like kind of it that that's the book that kind of helped me to think of you know i gotta think make things simple just be great at one thing just be the best at one thing and forget about everything else like business doesn't have to be too complicated uh the other one is sell like crazy by sebre that's a great marketing book so he talks about sales but he said he's a marketer so he talks like you know you learn about copywriting you learn about funnels you learn about you know how you can have your landing page like it's very helpful it's very practical so that's a great book as well yeah i guess those are the top three that i can yeah thank you so much for those recommendations um i have a segment that i started to implement lately and it's about fuck-ups if you had to mention what was your biggest fuck up during your agency career, what would you say?

There's plenty. There's plenty. Look, we had this, you know, so one big fuck up that I can think of on top of my, like, you know, it probably is the biggest one. We had a client and this was like at the time this was our biggest client at the time like a majority of our revenue came from this one client and like this was going to be like like this was we're talking a million dollar deal like this was going to be a massive massive project and i became you know i just didn't focus on it like you know you you only get opportunities a few times in life.

And certain opportunities kind of boost you up so much. And at the time, I just thought that's my norm now. I'm going to get every client that is going to be the same. And I didn't put enough time and focus on that one client and just treated them like every other client, even though it had that potential. It wasn't just conversation. Like we were going that way. Like already most of my income come from there.

So I think not being like, you know, I like to say like that I'm very capitalistic, but I should have been more capitalistic at the time. Like the client's giving me more money. I need to, you know, I need to serve more value to those clients that are giving me more. Same with, same happened with employees as well. Like, you know, you got to look at your employees. Whoever is doing more, they got to serve more value to those clients that are giving me more. Same happened with employees as well. You've got to look at your employees.

Whoever is doing more, they've got to get more incentive. And if that's not the culture, which is not in most businesses, I see a lot of experienced people who are working for a long time. That's not the way they set their business. There's just a fixed income. So not having that capitalistic approach, especially with that client that was my biggest focus um yeah i think um obviously when you start out you don't really

know those things as well so i think that i would explain so would you go about it differently now would you be like okay if it's the highest paying client and i focus all my energy or most of my energy on that, right? Yeah, I will be capitalistic. I will see how much my income is on that client and I'll put the same, like I will allocate the same amount of time on that client. I'll make it more fair.

Yeah. Well, that's a good question. Let's go back a bit about company culture and team building because I feel like your approach is a bit different than anyone else's because you said, well, you have a Facebook group, and then you don't waste time on meetings too much. Do you have still a very clear expectation from your employees? Or how do you go about that to build a company culture yeah so like look we have weekly meetings you know like i say we so we want to have a culture of growth we want to have a culture of transparency like again like that's a really big one because like later on when you want to fire them it's going to be impossible like it's going to be hot like you're going to be stifled but when you have that transparency it's a lot easier and also that you know obviously the expectation has

to be clear it has to be clear you know you got to know every single person if they're confused they're not going to work the like this is like lack of work lack of productive is it's caused by you not being certain about what you're doing or what you're here for so that happens with you know with employees sometimes as well they might like they need to know to the dot exactly what your expectation from each project is. And we even have our hourly KPI, where this is what we're expecting from you. This is productivity. They calculate the GPA of the whole country by their level of productivity. You've got to be productive. A company that's, you know, that's growing is productive.

So we need to measure that. So we have KPI, hourly KPI. And we discuss, we have a weekly, we also have a weekly accountability meeting as well. Where we go through, like, we actually go through numbers. If there's certain questions we have, we ask them like, why is this client result? Like like what is the outcome for this client gone down what happened like we you know what's happening with this sort of content like the engagement seems going down

like so we we have that type of meeting to to make sure everyone knows that this is you know we obviously care about the client the client's result and we you know we want to be productive and we also want to be growing while being transparent. It's so interesting when you mentioned that you are thriving for excellence. And I think I heard it from Brian Trace initially the first time. But he was also mentioning that if you pick a niche,

for example, you want to be excellent at what you do, right? In your niche. He said that you have to pick a niche and you have to see if you can be the best at. Obviously, you have to look at who is doing really well. And you have to see if you can exceed that person. And if you can't exceed that person, you have to pick a different niche or different, you know, career, whether it's sales or marketing.

Absolutely. So like I said, like you got to choose one and it's the the concept of blue ocean strategy like it just be too messy if you try you know if you cannot like right now marketing is a as red as it gets like every every street corner there's someone who claims to be a marketing expert so we need like we cannot be good is not enough anymore good in good is not enough to break through like you know the income barriers we need like, we cannot be good is not enough anymore. Good is not enough to break through like, you know, the income barriers. We got to like, you know, so that's, I totally agree. Like you just got to see what, and like, if you already, like, if you haven't established

a company, like you want to start a new agency, then, or if you're like early on your agency, then you got to look, okay, like, you know, what, what am I, you know, so there's a few questions you got to ask. Like one is right now, currently my current my current income like where is it coming from what what is the exact service that i'm offering that is coming like you know where is that coming from the second thing is what i'm good at you know what are you personally you and your team like what everybody like you know in your team or yourself like what are you good at that you can offer and also where do you see that you know obviously starting like you say starting the competitors starting what

others are offering like you know how can you compete with that like how can you be the best in the world like it's how much there's how much there's supply in the market for that service and again i went to like i think this is really something that most people and it's very practical but most people fell short on it like you can i called most of our competitors and i said i'm a client to see what their process is like wow you can get so much knowledge like you can get so much there's so much insight you can get especially like you can go for people who are way ahead of you and then you can still like you know not still but model let's say you can model what they're doing and implement it for your own business like you know not still but model let's say you can model what they're doing and implement it for

your own business like you know it's a concept of like similar to what russell russell bronson call it funnel hacking like you can you can hack someone's business you don't have to you know some cases you don't have to reinvent the wheel yeah i think that's a great advice to just go to your competitors and just be a customer and see how they treat you what are the questions that they're asking you especially if they're trying to sell you to let them sell you let them see what you know yeah how they do it yeah definitely i think it's a great approach and a lot of people are afraid of even doing that just going to their competitors and just see what they have to do because i don't know why yeah i mean it's one of those things like the like you know the when you break down your task list like you know into four

category so the way i do is the same with the seven habit of successful people one is things that are urgent and are important that you have to do then you cannot avoid there's one that's urgent and not uh not important so those things you gotta outsource one is this important not important and not urgent you gotta outsource and there's one that people never spend time on this is working on on your business not in your business things are that are not urgent but are important people like people don't like i don't think i see enough leaders and ceos spending enough time here enough leaders and CEOs spending enough time here. Like, if you spend enough time here, your income will go higher.

The rest will just maintain where you're at. So, like, the challenge is how can you save more time and be more productive so you can spend more time on tasks that are not urgent but are important, like calling your you know competitors there's many tasks like that that we all know what's the right thing to do but we just because we're kind of stuck in the business it's hard to break out of it um i heard from a lot of agency owners that their ultimate goal is to really step out of the agency and just be observing and just make sure everything is automated and maybe spend 20 just you know closing people perhaps or just have one task that they keep for themselves and the rest they outsource like what's your take on that because i don't feel like you want to step out of the business

anytime soon no look because look there it depends what you want you gotta be self-aware you know i did this the gary like at one point i was a point like i was kind of opposed that idea it's like why you got to be the greatest like why would you say someone they should be patient like just let them you know i want to be i want to be the greatest now so one thing is you got to know yourself because i gave that advice to many of my close like you know my either relatives or my friends and i convinced them to become business owners and like i because i'm influential and i wasn't responsible because i influenced them to become business owners and like I because I'm influential and I wasn't responsible because I influenced them to be someone they're not and then they like you know

and then down the track so you got to see what you want out of life and then you make you think backwards right now I'm taking the approach of being the greatest business I can be and like I want to be I don't want it to stop so uh yeah so you got to be in a position where everything is automated and systemized and you know as much as you can you can dedicate but you still have your input still important working on the business it doesn't like I'm not I don't want to be in a place where like the business earns money I get income and I sit in like near the beach with my laptop you know with my partner and I'm just enjoying, like, I don't want that. So I'm just self-aware and there's nothing wrong with that,

but there's nothing wrong with like any approach that, you know, people want to have. So if, you know, if that's something that makes you happy, like I like, I like working. I like, you know, I like, I like to hustle. I like to, you know, I like to come to office at the same time just work grind grind it out and try to see where i can improve and improve myself build my characteristic you know start learning more and there's no stop to it i don't like there's no there's no point of stop so that's like that's where i'm self-aware it's not good it's not something that everybody has to follow but it's

just i know if i if i don't have anything to do, I will come back to do this. So if you don't have to do anything, what will you do? It's just like, you know, some people want to want, you know, I know, you know, some people might not want to work as much and that's fine. But it just starts from knowing like, why do you exist? Yeah, I think that's great.

And I feel the same way. And I always get shit on by people like oh my god you're a workaholic like why can't you just stop you work on the weekends like um and a lot of people obviously want to step out of their businesses so i'm so happy that that you have the same like mindset that you just want to grind and you want to work and no matter what you feel um fulfilled and accomplished to be doing what you're doing right now. Yeah. And if, if you just had to do nothing that you would not feel as productive or,

or fulfilled personally, I feel the same way. So I'm so glad that there's someone else who feels the same way. Yeah. We're totally on the same page. Absolutely. I relate. Yeah. All right. Thank you so you so much sam for being here and giving those advices do you have something that you do do do consulting like is because obviously you have a really good insight on how to scale up from that 100k is this something that you're planning to do more and help agency owners as well um can you tell us a bit more about that or it's just something that you wanted to share with the listeners no i will be opening uh you know i will be opening my channel where i will do you know i

will try to aim to add value i got nothing to sell so you know but my my ultimate goal is to add value and you know help people i know it's not easy sometimes you know you don't know some of the questions you have especially uh you know i think one challenge one thing that i can add value with with my upcoming channel maybe i can send you a link and then maybe i don't know you can put it somewhere but uh some you know one thing that i what i see is we we consume contents from people that are so ahead of us that their advice is not really personalized for us anymore it's like you know they're like you know you look into the book principle by ray dahlia and they might they might say like build the business

top down like you know you're like oh it's a cool concept and we you know we're like okay that's good but sometimes certain things don't apply to you where you're at you gotta know like from like the 10 10k a month business like you know the principles that you gotta follow is different from 20k from 30k to 40k so i think like you know so i can hopefully be more relatable to people who are where i you know where i'm at or where i was you know like a year or two or three years ago wow I really can't wait do you already have the channel or you you want to create it in the future oh I haven't uploaded any videos yet but I will I will be uploading soon okay cool okay we'll make sure to link your channel in the description as well of this podcast yeah for sure whenever it's airing so

people can come learn from you do you also do consultation for for people that are in need of your input as well like is this something that you are thinking about doing to consult people who are listening and like okay i need sam to tell me how to do this i'm not i'm not doing like you know just i will i will have to dedicate time to if i want to go on you know if like i will i will be on my channel i will obviously try to respond to as many comments as i can and i will make videos what people you know but i'm not right now i'm not doing any okay one-on-one conversation uh consultation oh that's okay i think a lot of people can learn from the the videos as well that you're gonna put out all right thank you so much sam for being here you're awesome no worries thank you good luck same voice i appreciate thanks everyone thank you so much for being here bye bye all right take care goodbye