Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Complying To Change With Anik Singal

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Right About Now with Ryan AlfordJoin media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential.Resources:Right About Now NewsletterFree Podcast Monetization CourseJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelVibe Science MediaIn this episode of Right About Now, Anik Singal takes us through his entrepreneurial journey, sharing candid insights into the highs and lows of building a business. He emphasizes the importance of speed, compliance, and resilience, recounting his early ventures in online marketing, the successes he achieved, and the challenges he faced, including a high-stakes legal battle with the FTC. Anik highlights the shift in marketing toward community and brand building, underscoring the need for authenticity and a long-term vision. This episode is both an inspiring and cautionary tale, packed with valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs.TAKEAWAYS The evolving landscape of marketing and brand building. The shift from transactional relationships to community-focused marketing. The importance of brand identity and values in attracting consumers. The need for a long-term perspective in marketing strategies. The significance of reputation and authenticity in business. The impact of regulatory compliance on entrepreneurship. The emotional and personal challenges faced by entrepreneurs. The role of community engagement in modern marketing practices. Lessons learned from overcoming adversity in business. The future of marketing and the necessity of adapting to consumer behavior changes. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Granger, for the ones who get it done. You have to answer every single question. Not only do you have to answer every question, you have to spend, in my case, millions of dollars finding them the answers that they're asking. You cannot ask a single question back. What the hell did you do that got the FTC in your field? You ready?

I'm ready. I have no freaking clue. This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash in checks? Well, it starts right about now.

What's up guys? Welcome to Write About Now. It's always about getting things right. And we're always, hey, speed is time and money. You've got to go fast. That's why we're all about now. And look, I don't ever complain. I wouldn't call myself the chief compliance officer.

I would probably not say that. But after reading this guy's story and after you hear it today, I might be complying a little more than I want. We got Onik Singhal. What's up, Onik? Hey, man. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you.

Hey, I mean, I've got him a rule breaker. But I don't really want to deal with the FTC. So I'm going to be paying attention today, I think. Yeah, I would say, you know, if and, you know, God forbid, when they come, you've got the card stacked against you, man. The deck is stacked in such a ridiculous way. You're no getting out of that. You're not going to win. So the best defense is to not let them see you.

Yeah. And so what they say, knowledge is power. And so that's what we're all about, spread the knowledge. Anik, where's home? Where are we coming from today? Yeah, Maryland. Maryland. So just about 30 minutes from D.C. Oh, okay. Oh, you're in the center of compliance. I really am. I really am. I amids in the middle of my entire case when I was getting my butt beat down by the regulators.

I actually drove up with my team and we were invited into the building. It's a really crazy story I can tell later too because something really crazy happened while I was there. But I walked into the FTC building, went up and presented to them. So like, yeah, I'm, I'm just, driveable. There you go. Author of Don't Say That. You know, like, again, a lot of times this show is about the do's. But I'd like to say today might be about the don'ts. And that's okay.

Because, again, we're trying to inform and empower. And, you know, you just don't really want to fuck with the American government. I'll just say that. You know, it's kind of like you want to avoid audits. and you want to avoid a lot of things, but we're going to try to help you avoid all that today, Anik. Let's set the table for the audience. You know, I'm going to let you go here a lot

because you've got a Hollywood story for the most part. And so let's set the table for everyone, Onik, on, you know, who you are and how you made the wrong kind of history. And now I'm making it right. Yeah, I was going to follow up, Ryan, would say, like today is about some of the don'ts, but if you pay close enough attention

and we'll wrap it all up for you at the end, and there's actually a great do in it and a huge do at the end of the culmination of the story. But 21 years started doing online marketing when I was still in college. I felt like a misfit in college. I kept bouncing around colleges and degrees, thought I was going to end up broke in my parents' basement

because I wasn't liking it. It wasn't for me. I couldn't feel it. But I wanted to be an entrepreneur, man. I was the third grader. with the lemonade stand that hired second graders to run the lemonade stand. I mean, that's who I was. It was in my blood from the time I was a kid.

And so I didn't have any money. So I turned to what was new back then. Ready? I'm going to age myself. Google. It was new. Facebook didn't even exist. And I turned to Google and I typed in how to make money.

And Google, thankfully, filled in online for me. And I was like, huh, that's interesting. What a concept. Sure. Whatever. And I went through all of the different little envelopes, stuff in, survey answering bullshit options and found my way into a forum that talked about selling PDFs and selling information. Now, here's the thing. I was a college kid. At this time,

by the way, I'm on a full scholarship. I mean, I worked hard. I'm never ever the smartest person in the room. I never will be. But I've yet to be in a room where anyone in that room could outwork me. I'm just, that's what I do. I just, you know, so I was on a full scholarship and it was an amazing program. But I understood the concept of that every time the new semester came, my friends would spend three to $5,000 on textbooks. Like we pay for education since we're kids, right? I mean, my daughter is right now, they're two and one. I chase them around with books. Got to read books, right? The value of education is important. And my dad had built that into me too. So it made sense to me. I was like, huh, this is like a legit opportunity, right? Get rid of the

middleman, connect the person who's actually doing with the person who wants to learn it, you know, charge, commoditize education, 50 bucks, 100 bucks. this is amazing. Like this makes sense to me. Problem was, I didn't know what the hell was doing. Didn't know how to build a website. Didn't know how to do any of this crap.

And so I'm on this forum. I don't have any money. And back then, we didn't have all these podcasts and coaches and courses and YouTube. And like just, I didn't, I had to spend money to hire someone to help me

and I didn't have it. So to piece it altogether, 18 months struggled my ass off. Finally, something worked. And in that process, I had lots of failures. And once I found something at work,

You know, it was SEO, affiliate marketing, then email list building, and then, you know, course publishing. And I kind of made my way through it. And by the time I graduated, so I started this journey in college and freshman year. By the time I graduated, Ryan, I was on pace to do over a million dollars. So it was within four years, right? While I was in college, while I was working on part-time job. By the way, here's a funny side story. The first time I ever went to a college football game, now I went to a University of Maryland, go Terps.

We have a pretty intense football program. And at the time that I was in college, we were up there. Our basketball and football program were the best of the best. We were winning championships or at least good, you know, getting far in the playoffs. My first college football game I ever went to, homecoming after I graduated. So when I was in college, I did not go to frat parties. I did not go to college games. I was working hard, man.

I was studying and I was doing my part-time job. When I graduated, I had offers from Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Charles Schwab to come Investment Bank in New York. I mean, I literally was living the dream that all my friends were dying for. And I said no to all the jobs because I wanted to do this. Built my business up. I've had near bankruptcies multiple times now, three times. That's the magic number. So I'm done.

I've been tested. The magic number for a lot of billionaires is they've almost lost everything three times. So I am good, universe. Hear me out now. I'm done with this. I don't want anymore. You know, I've been up and down. I've traveled the world.

I've spoken on stages for Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone. I've partnered with and been business. partners is Robert Giosaki, Bob Proctor, Les Brown, Damon John from Shark Tank, wrote the forward to my last book, Escape. I mean, I've made a movie as I was joking with you. I mean, I'm on IMDB. I made a freaking bond spoof film with a crew of 120 people where I conducted, you know, stunts. I was actually going to do massive stunts, but I ended up having a problem and had to get surgery the week before. So it was either delay the entire shoot, which I didn't have the budget for, or cut out the stunts and do some really, stupid shit and make it look like I'm doing stunts. So, but I've lived a really full life.

I always joke and say, I'm 41. I feel like I've lived at least normal persons, two or three lifetimes. Built my, I've done a couple hundred million dollars worth of sales online now. And built my business at its peak was going to do 40 million. And we were weeks away from selling. I mean, due diligence was complete. I was the rosy picture, the entrepreneur's dream. And my dream was to sell a company by the time of 40.

and I was about to do that. I was 39. And it was really hard, man. You know, when I started 20 years ago, Ryan, my hypothesis, thesis in life, I was so appalled by the idea of someone having a job. It makes sense to me. That's gross.

Why would anyone do that? So my thesis when I graduated college, you know, when I hadn't really met life yet, was everybody should be entrepreneur, everybody. And 20 years later, 21, 22 years later, I stand before you and I'm saying 99.8% of the world should never be an entrepreneur. It's just not for everybody, right? But for me, it's the only path. I just can't see any other way. And so I love what I do. It comes with some really, really, really bad, really hard, trying, tough times. But I take it all in strides. I like it.

Today, I really feel like the don'ts and the do's, it's like, look, when everything was going exactly as I should, building that company for 20 years was the hardest thing I've ever done, short of convincing my wife to marry me. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, okay? And we were right there, man, right there. I tell people this analogy. Imagine you've been training for the Olympics for 20 years.

You get into that, you're running, you're in the race, you're ahead. you're about to win everything you've dreamt of every broken bone hard work bruise every morning you woke up before every every shameful thing that happened you're two steps away from crossing the finish line and you will be the gold medalist winner your life's dreams will have come true you trip you fall you break your ankle not only do you not win that race you can't race for another two, three years. And when you come back, the doctors are like, you're going to have to retrain this entire ankle.

You're back to where you were 10, 15 years ago. So do you still want to win the Olympic medal or do you want to give up on it now? And that's what happened with me. So when the FTC came knocking and came, it was a hard reset in my life. I lost the acquisition. I lost everything.

My daughter had just been born. My first daughter had just been born three weeks prior. The dream was to be a dad for a year and then start another company. And like, I lost everything. Right. So that's my background, man. I've done it all, built it all, done crazy things. I've traveled the world. I've lived in other parts of the world. I'm an experience-driven person, so I'll do stupid things just for the experience. I've zero regrets. And today, the do's and the don'ts. Well, I'm going to talk a bunch,

bunch about the don'ts. The dues I want you to pay attention to is look at what I did with the most tragic, horrible thing that happened to me in my life. And by the way, people always ask me, what is it like to be sued by the FTC? I'm just going to give this example, Ryan, and I'll shut up and let you kind of talk. But I always tell people this. So there was a period of my time in my life that I was in the ICU. I was in the ICU for 92 days. Okay? I was losing two pints of blood a day.

So every day they had to infuse me with two pines of blood. I have a condition called Crohn's disease. They got out of control. My gut, my intestines were literally like eroding. And I was flat on a hospital bed in the ICU. Now, by the way, side story, I would get in trouble. I almost got kicked out of a hospital. You ever heard of someone actually getting ejected, evicted from a hospital?

Because I refused to stop working in the ICU. I would get BlackBerry's. We didn't, iPhones didn't exist. I would get BlackBerry snuck into the ICU by my team members. And I would, because I did a product launch from inside the ICU when I was dying. Okay? Because I was like, as long as I'm breathing, I don't give a shit. If I'm breathing, I'm fighting.

There's no excuses. And that kept me alive, by the way. What else am I supposed to do? Sit there and watch reruns of freaking family guy or something. Like, it's not going to happen. So I'm in the ICU and flat. What happened is if they even put my hospital bed up, meaning I'm not like actually leaning up, the hospital bed is just up.

If I was just like, you know, just sit up, my heart rate would spike to 180. They'd have to put me right back down. So for three months, I was flat. Couldn't get out of bed, couldn't walk, never, never walk, nothing. I was just in, I was in really bad shape. Three months later, they basically said, we don't have a, we don't have an option. We have to do a very, very large surgery on them. 10 hours minimum.

And they told my family 50-50 if he wakes up. Like we just would not be surprised his body is super weak. We don't know. My sister's flying in. My family's flying in to say whatever. And I did obviously wake up and went through hell. I had to set up a makeshift hospital in my parents' basement. It took me two months of physical therapy just to be able to walk up the steps again.

Because don't use it, you lose it. I lost my legs. Six months after that, had to have surgery again. A month after that surgery, I was back. back in the ICU for 30 days, had to have a third surgery. That was a really hard year of my life. Being investigated by the FTC for 18 months was harder. And I say that looking at your dead screen in the eyes.

I'm not trying to make stuff up. So I took what is the hardest part of my life, the most tragic part of my life, the most painful part of my life, the part that of most people, everyone has something like this in their life. Okay, you could have gone through a nasty divorce, you could have gone through,

lost something or someone, or, God, there's anything. And what we tend to do is we tend to compartmentalize it, build a membrane around it, put it away and say, I don't want to touch it, I don't want to see it, but it lives there. It's that little demon that sits there and it eats at you. You can't ignore or avoid it. So for me, it was like, I'm not. I'm front and centering this thing.

I'm going to live it. I'm going to experience it. And what happened in that was it ended up becoming my mission. So I turned the most tragic thing in my life to now what looks like is will be the greatest victory of my life because I wasn't going to let it sit there for my entire life and be this thing, this dirty thing that I don't talk about or I don't deal with, but I was going to instead turn it into the best thing that's ever happened to me. And so that's a little thing I want everyone to think about right now. It's like, well, if there can walk away with something today right now,

what is that little demon you've hidden away? What is that thing that aches you, hurts you, that triggers you, that you've put away, and how could it serve you rather than hurting you? So, anyways, that's my monologue. Thanks for coming to my TED talk today. Hey, man, I don't have to, I like to let my guess, you know, be the heroes to tell the story. You know, they hear me talk every show. But I do, onyck, want to dive.

Like, obviously into the specifics, we'll get to the FTC stuff. I want to obviously build to that. I'm more curious as being, you know, one of the top copywriters and information marketers ever. It's been an interesting, I don't know, 10 years in the space with selling information, coaching, all that stuff. I'd love to hear your perspective about, you know, what's changed, what's the same, you know, in that space, You know, like what you saw and what were some of your business biggest successes in sort of information marketing. Yeah. Okay.

So first of all, it's become a true wild, wild west. And we are due for a shakedown. It's going to happen. It happens in every industry. It's not unique to us. And I've already lived through two of these. The last shakedown happened in 2010, between 2010 and 2012. Quite frankly, we're about a couple of years overdue.

COVID came in and did some weird stuff. Yeah. All right. And it changed the timelines. Otherwise, we would have had an industry correction already. Now, the shakedown, the way it works is too many people are teaching shit they shouldn't be. Let's just face it. Too many.

Look, if you want to act as if for your own self to give yourself encouragement and to give yourself motivation, like, do what you want when it's just you. Yeah, fine. But if I find out that my math teacher is acting as if they know math, and they don't and they're teaching me math. Like, we have a problem, right? I'll never forget. I'll never forget. So I'm fascinated by marketing.

College, college, I walk up to my marketing 101 professor, okay, sophomore year. And he's, I really like the guy. He's fascinating when I listened to him talk. I thought he was really, really brilliant. I walked up to him and he was older, so I kind of assumed that he must have worked as, you know, VP, CMO, marketing for big companies and now he's retiring and he became a professor. I don't know. I went up to him and said, hey, what companies have you?

you've done marketing for. And he starts telling me a list of companies he's consulted. And I said, no, I was curious, like, where have you worked? Like, where have you led, you know? And it turns out he's a 35-year professor. He's never actually had a job in marketing. And I thought, what the I've walked away. I didn't even come to class after that. Honestly, I was so turned off by the whole thing. I'm like, this is such bullshit. So there's a lot of that going on right now in the industry. Okay? And there was a lot of it going on back in 2008, 2009. Here's what happens. When the economy takes, a weird hitch. And I'm not here to say that the economy is going down because that seems to trigger half the people. But can we all agree on one thing? We're in a conflicted economy,

which means half of the world's like, dude, we're in a shit show. The other half of the world's like, I've never seen anything better. Here's another thing we can agree on. Whether it's today, a year from now, five years from now, there's going to be a correction. It has to be. That market's going to go down. It has to. There's no period in history. It's actually healthy. It better correct. Otherwise, we're in for a really big problem later. So given that fact, we know we're going to go through this. We might be in it now. We're going to go through it soon. When that happens, culmination, you've added to that the fact that there is this. So now what happens? The demand pulls back. The amount of money people are spending on stuff pulls back. But you've got an

oversupply of coaches and trainers and educators because they sprang up, right, during like all a pandemic time and it's just or generally this spring up now we got worldwide India it's like growing like weeds in Asia coaches and course sellers so we've got more options more people and it's driving prices down and it's this weird is what's happening though with the increase in demand cost of advertising is going up pricing is coming down demand is pulling back from the consumers it's creating a complete constraint so businesses are going to fall apart and so it's a shake-down What happens now is all the people that really aren't here to be here that know what the hell they're doing, that aren't doing this out of a great place, a passion, right?

People always tell me like, I'm like, I haven't made shit from this, guys. This whole mission, I am in the hole by over a million, maybe $1.5 million. That's right. I know I'm not making that up. I can substantiate this. I'm not in the business of making crap up. I already got sued for that. I mean it.

So, but it's my passion that drives this. I want the message out. And I firmly believe that enough of that will eventually it'll come around, right? And I'm the right person to teach us. I got some other marketers right now that are trying to come and teach FTC stuff. And I just sit there, pat them on the head and say, this is so stupid. You can't. You don't have the story.

You don't have the experience. You don't have the connections. You don't have the knowledge. So I'm seeing a lot of that in the space. And I saw it before and it cleaned itself out and it's going to happen again. As far as what's working, there's one big difference between. What worked 10, 15 years ago and today. One big difference in the infospace.

And that is how people convert. 10, 15 years ago, good copy, you know, sexy copy, video sales page was enough. People came and read it. Today, it's kind of irrelevant. All right? It's kind of irrelevant. We're in a very communal-based consumer base now. Especially with the younger audiences growing up, it's been proven.

studies have actually proven that all generations like kind of like millennial and below will much rather pay more money to buy the same product that they actively know they can buy for cheaper but they'll pay more money because they have the connection they feel to the brand because of how much they believe in the brand and what the what the brand stands for that message so the word I'm coming out here is community it's brand building and this This is not something traditional direct marketers are aware of or even no. I wouldn't be before you today. I could not be here in front of you today, Ryan, if it wasn't for the brand I built.

I always focused on my brand. It cost me millions. I made a lot less money. But I stand before you today in the same industry, tall, proud chin up and nobody, nobody in the industry, you know, persecuted me for what happened with the FTC. Otherwise, for a lot of people, that's a kill shot. They're done. They disappear.

yet before I stand in front of it all. Why? Because my reputation spoke for itself. I had taken time to build a brand. So if you're doing information marketing, your coach, whatever, first and foremost, change your windows. You can't focus anymore on converting same day next day. You've got to do 30, 60, 90 day windows. You've got to do content marketing.

You have to win people over with your substance. And that's where the shakedown's going to happen. Because the people that are acting as if have no substance, the market's going to weed you out. They're going to see right through it. So if you want to do it today versus 10 years ago, sure, you still need to know copy. Sure, you still need to understand funnels. But in the end, believe me or not, the market sees through all of that crap now.

And they're looking for you. They're looking for what you really stand for. And they're looking for what you do when no one's looking, right? They always say, have you heard that thing, Ryan, where if you want to know, teach your daughter that when she goes on a date with a guy, to really judge the character of the guy, watch how he treats the waiter, the hostess. and the person who drove them there. That's going to tell you the character of the person. So for an information marketer, what are they doing between the time that they're pitching you?

How are they serving the community? What is that information? And most people are just not willing to put that time in. They're just not. They're not fond to every single chat in their Facebook community. They're not going to put out podcasts like you do. This isn't easy. People think we just spring up.

But, you know, we had to connect. We had to schedule. You went through a hurricane. You've got a studio. You've got team members. You had to take time away from your schedule. You barely got a chance to eat lunch. Right?

That kind of dedication, Ryan, is what it takes today. And you didn't need that 10, 15 years ago. You just didn't. You could glide through. Well, you're singing from the playbook, baby. I've been in marketing for 22 years preaching brand, you know. And I've been telling people that, you know, because I'm not a classical brand guy, brand builder, not a classical performance marketing guy.

Like I've, you know, I own a digital agency. So, of course, we know funnels and performance marketing, but I'm more of a classical. And I'm telling people, you guys are getting hooked on a drug that ain't going to last with the performance marketing because you're not building your brand. And you got to do both. And the brand stands over time. Because you're just building a house of cards otherwise. And you got to have substance, credibility and some real. I mean, yeah, likeability and all that's important.

But at the end of the day, the substance is what matters, the expertise. And then, and that, and we're talking about like one-to-one information sharing, but even as a brand, you know, you've got to stand for more than just a feature set of your product. It's got to be, you know, stickier than that. And that takes time. You build brand over time and hope for sales overnight. And so it's, I'll give you this. I learned this. I did this.

I'm a, I'm a byproduct of it. that which you build fast will crumble even faster, and that which takes a long time to build will last you a lifetime. So a brand will take you a long time to build, but it'll feed you forever. Yep. It just, and I'm a,

I'm standing before you today, how many people in our internet marketing circle have made it 20 plus years? I can count on probably two hands. I mean, I mean, I mean it, really, right? And every single one of them has a strong brand. but at the same time, learn as a company, we built it as a rocket ship.

You know, there was no slow and steady 10% a month increase, optimize and, you know, do the CRO work and do the split testing and focus on one funnel and painstakingly obsessed over every part of your product delivery process. That ain't me. I didn't do that. We were, you know, and look how fast it grumbled. look look how the foundation ended up being even though I was doing 40 million

it was super profitable and was about to sell what I'm doing today what I'm doing now you know we're for for our software company it's taking us anywhere from three to six months to close contracts with big enterprise companies

but those companies are closing a contract after giving two to three week demo periods they're reviewing it they're having meetings with their C level They're fully buying in or saying no, but when the ones that we're buying in, they're going to be with us for years and they're going to pay big fees. So albeit it's really hard right now in the early stages, but come talk to me in three years when we've got a ridiculous MRR and I'm able to start every month knowing that we're not only covered but in profit. And all I have to do day and night is obsess about that product.

It's a great life. So what most marketers, unfortunately, Ryan, are not trained towards and spin kind of my thing now. I call it change the timeline. And that is flip it over. So many of us want to make the million in 30 days. And now me today, any opportunity that can make me a million in 30 days, I almost always know it's the wrong opportunity. I'd rather make it over the course of a year, but then know that next year it'll make me 1.3, 1.4. and the year after that it'll make me, you know, two.

And then I want that because I know that whatever that is, it's going to grow much, much stronger or much better. So brand is the exact same way. You can't get brand in 30 days. You just can't. Unless you're the Hocatua girl. And then, you know. Yeah.

I don't know. If you want that, brand. If you want that brand, yeah. Because that's your brain you want. And that's going to have a shelf life too, you know. I mean, you know, she's ready. It does. She's right.

Hey, good for her for riding the wave. Yeah. But like always, they eventually hit sand. You know, Arnick, let's get to it. What the hell did you do

that got the FTC in your shit? You ready? I'm ready. I have no freaking clue. You don't? After 18 damn months of getting my, some things I probably shouldn't say. I'm just getting a beat down.

All right? I don't know. Here's the crazy thing. You have to answer every single question. question. Not only do you have to answer every question, you have to spend, in my case, millions of dollars finding them the answers that they're asking. You cannot ask a single question back. They want to answer it. Why are you here? What tipped you off? So let me go over some facts and some stats, right? Because everybody listening right now is like, oh, dude, what the hell do you have this guy

on your podcast where he's obviously a sleazeball scammer asshole? Because you have to see one after them, right? Because, of course, our federal government's never ever wrong about anything. Yeah. My audience knows. My audience knows better. All right. Okay, good, right.

Hey, FTC still love you. We don't hold them coming either. But, yeah. First Amendment, freedom of speech. Come on. All right. Okay. So some facts about our business.

And here's the irony. tell a really funny story that everyone will love. But the main thing, they send you something called a CID. It's a civil investigative demand. Okay? It's a subpoena. Same thing.

They just have a fancy name for it. And in the subpoenas, about 36 pages, it came in a FedEx envelope, which I keep around here somewhere to inspire myself. I don't know where I put it. And it had a huge list of stuff

that I need to do. Oh yeah, dude, I'm a total masochist about this shit. Like, I've got the letter. I got the, FedEx thing. I'm like, I stare at it. I'm like, I, this thing, I need to get over my PTSD about it. Oh, here it is. Oh, so there you go. All right. Oh, dude. I would have fried that thing like the most, like, I had the world, I have the world's biggest pity parties. Like I bring clowns in. I'll bring in little kids. I like, we're going to have a big old pity party, but for one day. And then I burn it.

All of it. Yeah. I don't want any proof like around because I'm, I'm on the upswing. And yeah. Yeah. Well, remember, my up swing has to do with that. That's why I keep it around to remind myself. But yeah, so I had taken this stuff pretty seriously, okay? So, oh, yeah, so I was telling you, I went in and I actually, so the investigative document mostly spoke about things I had said in my webinar because that was like my main main way of selling. I mean, we had sold 56,000 customers on a webinar. It was insane. Like, thousand plus dollar products. If you do the math, that took over $56 million done through webinars.

And that was my main mode of selling. And so they had obviously watched them. And if you watch a four-hour webinar with a marketer, you're telling me they're not going to say something that somebody can twist and somehow make blah, blah, anyways. So, yeah, I said things. I'm not going to, you know, now I go back Monday morning quarterback the thing. I'm like, gosh, and I've said that.

But you're, you know, you believe in what you're selling. You're passionate about it. I love selling. I enjoy this. I enjoy doing webinars. Well, I mean, at the end of day, was it over promises potentially? Oh, sorry. Yeah.

So basically unsubstantiated claims. Okay. That's what it comes down to you. So they pulled these statements. They put it in the CID. They sent it to me and they said, send us proof of all of this stuff. But here's the thing I want you to understand. For the longest time, I had a compliance attorney I consulted with.

I took this stuff seriously because I knew I'm in the territory that gets regulated pretty aggressively and I was growing really fast. So what I did is I had a full-time paralegal in my company. I had, you know, we really kept things tight. And what I was told by many attorneys, by the industry, the thought process was simple. Be good, do good, you're good. Listen, and the FTC comes for those who get a lot of complaints. Duh, that's great.

I was on the sidelines cheering them on. I'm like, let's go, FTC. Look at that sleaze ball. Go get them. Because they give my industry a bad name. So I remember a case came out, not too long before mine. I heard about it. And I said, yeah.

I'm waiting for you. That guy needs to go down. A week or two weeks later, I get the letter. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, time out, time out, what's going on here? There's collateral damage. This is not right. Now, were you vocal outwardly about that, which is what you think got the attention? No.

Okay. You're just saying that was in your mind and maybe with your close circle you were saying that, but you were not even. It's me in the bathroom alone. Yeah, I got it. So my stats, we had a less than 5% refund rate. We had a 0.7% chargeback rate. We had an A rating at the BBB. We were doing 20,000 transactions a year with 20 complaints at the BBB, all 100% resolved.

We had never, over after having served 200,000 customers in a 20-year window, we had never received a legal notice. Notice how I didn't say we had never been sued. I said we'd never even received a legal letter. We had no issues with contractors, vendors, customers, anybody. we had done wrong to nobody. And we had a great reputation. You could Google me. Hell, I've survived 20 years with Google,

mostly good things being said about me, right? There's, of course, a few haters. But here they are. It didn't matter. We did ask. I at one point said, what's going on? Like, I could point to 17 other people that you probably should go after before me.

What is going on? I have no complaints. My customers are happy. They love me. What I was told by my attorneys is the answer they got back was it's irrelevant. I'm sorry, for 12 years, I was told that's the only thing that matters. What do you mean?

It's irrelevant. I have a customer support team. I built three support teams that worked 8, 8, 8-hour shifts. I had one in the Western world, one in Europe, and one in Asia, so that I could cover all time zones, nights, weekends, holidays, everything. 36-minute response time. We're good. And it's like, why did you say that sentence? I knew at that point.

I'm like, all right, this is not going to go well. So I don't think it was complaint driven that got them looking at me. I think there was some guilty by association. There's other cases they've had in the past that I was not a part of in any way. I was not doing business with, but I was friends with those people. I know from people that my name has come up in past depositions where they were asking if I was involved in something. And I clearly wasn't. And those people would say, no, he has nothing to do with this.

But, you know, this is why they say, be careful who you're around, I guess. I don't know. I have no idea, man. They never did. The last question I still asked, when the case was over, done, signed, judge signed, press release out. You're done beating me down. Can I get closure? Can you tell me? Have a good day. So, you know, but that's, that's the thing. They're watching and listening. And technically, if you're breaking the rule, they have, they have, they have the ability come for you. I mean, you ultimately found guilty? I mean, or like, was there a, no. No, so we never went to trial, so we settled. And I still, till this day, don't agree with the case. I don't agree with what they said. I don't think I did bad thing. So you get fined? Okay.

Yeah, so $2.5 million fine. And their fine is also really weird how it works, Ryan. So what they did is I had done in the three-year window that they can go after. I had done $65 million in revenue. And but, thanks to a case that closed in August of April of 2021, It's a long story, but basically, let's just say they lost the ability to go after financial redress. They don't like to call it fines for web-driven sales. And I told you most of my sales were webinars, but telesales.

Ah, section 19. They love that because that's not been hit yet by the Supreme Court. So they found out that about 14 million of the 65 million was done on the phone, it's about 20%. I hated having a sales team, so we kept it small. So they made their case about the 14 million and they show up and they're like, all 14 million of your stuff was fraud and lies. Give it back. I disagree.

So no. All right. Well, then, you know, and I'm like, hold on. What's the damages? And they said the damages is the full amount. What? No. Right?

But so then it's like, what's they going to take to settle this? And this is not what they said. But this is, and I'm going through my lawyers, by the way. I'm just hearing what my lawyers say. What it felt like this, Ryan, was what you got. Yeah. And I was like,

I'm on the streets. What's going on here, guys? Yeah. I'm getting hustled. Like, what do you mean what I got? So I had to do a full financial disclosure. They would not settle. They said absolutely we will not settle.

We'll take you to court. We want to see everything you got. We want a full disclosure. Investment accounts, properties, trusts, companies, cash accounts,

crypto, properties, commercial, residential, your own house, cars, any collectibles worth over 500 bucks or something, everything, we want it all. And then they basically start there. So they call it ability to pay. And so thankfully, my lawyer did a great job and we came to a conclusion of two and a half million. That was,

after a lot of negotiation, months of negotiation. But what people don't realize, people will be like, oh my God, on. I guess that's another, man, you've made millions. Well, hold on a second. I love it. I lost a multi-deck a million dollar acquisition. I spent a million dollars just in team expenses to do the discovery. I spent $200,000 in forensics companies. I spent over a million dollars with my lawyers. I had a company doing $40 million at a 20% profit margin that I lost.

That's $8 million a year. That I had to shut down. Not because the FTC told me to shut it down. They never did. They never cared. They never forced themselves on me. They never, you know. But I was a publishing company, man.

Ryan, if I'm publishing you using your pictures, your face, your message as, and on ads and promoting, and you end up finding out, which I'm never going to hide, even though I don't have to tell you I'm under investigation. It's a confidential process. I would never hide that.

That's not my character. If I call you, I'm like, hey, Ryan, man, just, just a little thing, you know, keep doing what you're doing. Everything's great. You know, the FTC is investigating me,

so what's the first thing you're going to say? We need to back out of this. Timeout. Yeah. We need to pause out stuff, man. So I was in, I paused everything before I even called the experts to tell me.

that this was happening. So I got the notice on Friday, Monday morning, we shut down. We literally shut down. We turned off every campaign, shut down a $40 million your engine. And because 80% of my revenue came from other people that was publishing. So the company I took 20 years to build that literally almost killed me trying to build it, which I finally did it and I unlocked it and I was about to sell it. I lost it. Last two steps to go, I tripped and broke my ankle, right? I'd start all over. So, yeah, I mean, that's what the process was like, and that's, I don't know anything more than that. I can make assumptions.

That's all. So don't say that. What's the ultimate, you know, we'll turn to how we've turned this into the dues and, you know, what you're doing now quickly. But ultimately, if you were counseling our audience, what should they not do? Okay. Five things. So we call it the Pentagon of Compliance, and I'll go through this quickly. Number one, okay, and in no order of importance, okay?

Actually, I think the fifth one is probably the most important. Number one, misrepresentations. They call them out. See, now at this point I actually study different complaint letters and stuff, and I try to see what they say about companies. Misrepresentations are there a nice way of saying what they think are lies. So 22 seats left. That's it.

Come on, 500 bucks discount goes away after 22. And yet here you are selling it for 40. seats, 50 seats, you just made that shit up. That they don't like at all. And that's strictly against the law, okay? Misrepresentation. This bonus is worth $5,000. Whose grandmother said this is worth $5,000?

Where the hell did you get that from? Oh, well, it's taking me 20 years of my knowledge and blah, blah, blah, blah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how this works, man. You can't just make up numbers. They hate that. They hate that. All right, number two, net impression.

It's right there. Why are we not taught this? In Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which formed the FTC, they used the word net impression. This is the only thing the FTC cares about. You know what marketers love to do? Okay. I didn't say you'd make $10,000 a month.

I said you might make $10,000 a month. I use it. Please don't outlawyers. Like, don't try. They already covered that. They say, what is a net impression? They say, if we took your copy and handed it to a stranger walking on the street, a normal average consumer, what would they walk away thinking about your copy? You are responsible

for the assumptions being made by the consumer. So if you are using words and terms and giving claims, you better be damn clear to them. They better not walk away with the assumption that they're going to make that. Net impression is the most important rule of them all. What is the net impression of your copy? Number three, claims. Earnings, implied, performance, and And lifestyle. So you know those videos you love to do in front of your Lambos, all to our Lambros, they hate it. They're so sarcastic about talking about these lifestyle videos of the big houses and the gold chains and the private jets and all that. They can't stand it. But the number one thing that they come for is express earnings claims. Here's how to make $30,000. Here's how to lose 32 pounds.

These are very specific numbers. And if you don't have two types, you have to have proof of typicality. That's what people don't understand. Just because you have three or four people that have been able to do it and you're able to do it is not enough. I can't sell you a Ferrari, Ryan, and say, you're going to win the Formula One race.

What? We've had Ferraris win the Formula One race before. It could happen. You could win the... No. I can tell you it's a fast car, but I can't make these specific claims. And no other industry, no other place do people actually do that.

Number four, substantiation. By far the biggest key. If you're making absolute statements, you need substantiation. So, for example, in mine, I had a claim that I had been top three entrepreneurs under 25 by Business Week way back ago. The problem was Business Week is gone. They nuked their website. Everything's done. I couldn't find the magazine.

It was too old. And so the FTC was like, prove it. We don't see it anywhere. So down to that level. All right. We are the best. Five out of six doctors recommend us. Like these are all things you need to have substantiation and proof of it.

Go through your copy. Look for absolute statements. Create a Google folder. Dump all the proof in there. And if you don't have proof or something, remove it from your copy. This is vital because this letter that came, that's all it was full of. Prove this, prove this, prove this, prove this, prove this, prove this, prove this. With substantiation and typicality, they wanted that.

Last one at least, number five, this is the one. The biggest one that they've been clear. They're not even hiding it. They're beating a drum about this since 2021. Testimonials. They're sick and tired of marketers and businesses using testimonials incorrectly. So there's four rules to that. Number one, you need to have a written statement.

You need to have a written affidavit signed by the customer who's giving you the testimonial. Okay, fine, not a big deal. Number two, ready? It gets tough. Substantiation. If I'm going to use a results-based testimonial, if I'm going to say, you know, Ryan, you just told me, Hey on it, man, your stuff is so awesome. I made $100,000 in sales the next week after,

working with you. Great. Thanks, Ryan. That's amazing. Could you please send me proof? Can I see the screenshots? Can I see the transactions? Can I see proof that it was actually thanks to my training? It's a little intrusive. People say, well, why is Ryan's claim? He has to prove it. Why do I have to prove it? Yeah, you're right. The problem is you took that claim, put it in your marketing, and now it's your claim. So you have to have proof of it. Number three, typicality. I have a thousand customers. Ryan's just one of them. Is that the typical result of a customer who finishes your program? Notice how I said finished, not just bought it.

If it isn't, you can't give the outlandish examples. It has to be within range. It has to be within range. All right. Number four, last from by no means least, you have to have proximate disclosures all over the place. Not just at the beginning in the end. Throughout the copy, you have to be showing people that, hey,

this doesn't mean it's everybody's results. So that's something we share in this book, by the way, depending on compliance. But that's not the only thing. We go through each, there's like 20 plus different things that we go through. But what we share when it comes to compliance is the following. You can't eliminate risk. Just by, you know, when you drive to work, I have to drive four minutes, literally up the street.

Every time I get in that car, I'm taking some level of risk. Right? I can put my seatbelt on. I can have a big car. I can take all these measures to reduce my risk, but there's some level of risk. We can't eliminate what you can reduce it. If you want to reduce it the most, those five things.

Those are your five key focuses. Then there's other things that can help reduce it a lot as well. But the most impact, 80% will come from those five. I do feel like, and that's a treasure trove of knowledge right there, that'll be a little five-minute course

that will, on a can package up and sell his five keys. We'll give them that content too. That's why we do the show. We'll provide value to you and to our guests. But I'll say this, it does seem like every time now I notice the testimonial. It's the little fine mouse print below it.

Not reflective of typical results. Results not typical. Yeah. It's not good enough. It was. They changed the rules in 2021. And they basically said we don't give a shit anymore. Yeah.

So in the past, it was put that. And then, you know, this is why we can't have nice things, Ryan. This is why marketers can't have nice things. because then we go and we abuse shit. And we don't, we go outside the scope of what his intention was. So they just said, you know what? We can't trust all you kids with a ball and a bat. So we're taking away everybody's.

So they just, that's not enough now. They just say, so here's the funny thing. You got to put that still. So you damn more better still put the disclaimer, but you also cannot use non-typical testimonials. There's a lot of people still doing it though. I mean, even big, like, I mean, all over television. I mean, I don't even watch that much TV, neither does anyone else.

But, like, it's still the testimonials on TV all littered with it. They're getting hit, though. They are. I mean, a lot of them have been hit and a lot of them, and it's coming. But, you know, no one knows how the FTC decides who to hit and who not to. God forbid, I would love to just, I'd just flaw in an answer to that. I would love an answer to, like, how they make a decision as to who to go after. But, yeah, man, I mean, a lot of people are doing it. A lot of big companies are doing it. And some of that, you'd be surprised at how many big companies have been hit for misusing endorsements and testimonials. But I also think if you talk to most people from our industry, they have no idea. When I tell someone, when I look at their testimony, I'm like, that's completely illegal.

Like, that's going to get you in trouble. They look at me, they're like, that's an honest, I know the guy. This person is a truth. I said, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that it's truthful. You only covered one or two of the rules, just four rules. People just don't know them. We've turned it into positives as we close out here on it, talk about,

you know, what you're doing today, how you've turned into a positive and all the stuff you're up to. Yeah, man. Thank you for the opportunity to do that. So listen to everybody, my message to you today beyond just, hey, be compliant, which is, of course, important. My bigger message to you is as you walk away from listening to this episode, I'd be curious to see if you could take a few minutes to look inside and see what's buried. What did you bury? What's that painful thing that you put away? It might be a few. I mean, I have a few. And not all of the things I've done. buried, turned into my mission or my message, right? I have Crohn's disease. And I just shared the story with you earlier today, which like, it wreaked havoc on my life. Literally physically almost

killed me. And it has, it is the number one most controlling thing I have in my life. I, there isn't a five second period that goes by that I don't feel its existence. While doing this podcast, I've been reminded I have Crohn's multiple times by my body. Right. And I'm in remission right now. So, but that didn't turn into my mission. Maybe one day it will. But it didn't right now. So what's going on in your life? And maybe you haven't hit that yet and that's okay. But I want you to understand something is that we are a culmination and a collective of all of our experiences, not just the good ones.

And the things that hurt and the bad ones, you know, no, not one person has won the Olympic gold medal without losing a shitload of races, bruises, broken bones, pain, crying, sacrifices, and tough times. No one. You want to be great. You've got to deal with what the greats deal with. And so what can you do? How can you turn your greatest tragedy into your greatest victory? For me, I've turned it into my message. I'm out there on every day trying to do a podcast, talk to people about it, or wrote a book about it. We built an academy that people are loving where we train and teach people about it. I'm speaking on stages. I'm traveling around. And we built an AI powered software that I've invested almost a million dollars building that is now being prospected by some of the biggest companies in the country because it does something that nobody else does.

And so, God forbid, that software takes off could possibly be worth hundreds of millions of dollars one day. And so that's the kind of opportunity that sits in the tragedy that you obviously survived. And in surviving that, what did you learn and what did you pick up that could help others? What would you have wished existed for you that could have helped you avoid that tragedy? And you've got yourself a potentially huge idea that allows you to be of true service. So that's my positive message. If you want the book, you know, don't say that.com. And if you want to check out our software, just because you're curious, we have a demo,

and you can use it for free. We have a 5,000 word free limit. Just go to complily, C-O-M-P-L-I-L-Y.com. And, you know, when you go to Don't Say That, you'll see a podcast. We started a podcast about it with me and the attorney. And now we're all over social media as stuff. So I went, you know, I was the marketing guy. I was the email marketing guy.

And believe me, now, there isn't a single day that I'm not tagged at least six or seven or eight times on Facebook about compliance-related matters. You can pivot yourself and your brand very quickly if the message is loud enough. With all the AI, all the technology, all these conveniences and seemingly technical things, the best things come down to being human. And that's what you are, brother. Thank you, man. Thank you. Hey, guys, you know where to find us.

Ryan is right.com. That's not just hyperbole. It's not just a claim. It can be proven most of the time. You'll out of all the highlight clips, you'll find links, tonic stuff, and go check out. Don't say that. We appreciate you for making us number one,

and we can claim it. We'll see you next time. All right about now. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryaniswright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.