The Game with Alex Hormozi - Make Your Offer So Good They Feel Dumb Saying No | Ep 855
Episode Date: May 13, 2025In this Q&A episode of The Game, Alex (@AlexHormozi) answers audience questions on shifting from small clients to whales, building irresistible affiliate offers, and crafting guarantees that don�...�t kill your margins.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast, you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Wanna scale your business? Click here.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition Mentioned in this episode:Get access to the free $100M Scaling Roadmap at www.acquisition.com/roadmap
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You want to present your offers at the point of greatest deprivation, not the point of greatest satisfaction.
So if I walk into a restaurant and I'm starving and I say, I want a steak, I eat the steak,
waiter comes back. And they're like, how's the steak? I'm like, oh, it was delicious. Thank you so much.
They're like, great. You want another steak? I'm like, no, no, I'm good. They're like, oh, you don't like the steak?
And you're like, no, I love the stick. It was great. It just seems weird. That's
we get these weird sales conversations. Hey, Alex. Thanks for everything that you've done.
I'm James. I sell custom branch railings to homeowners. We did 420 or so last year. I, we did 420 or so last
year, I was, I've read 10x is greater than 2x. And so last night it was coming to me again,
like, do I really just want to double or do I want to try to 10x? And so what I want to try to do
is to develop a network of product specifiers, architects, designers, contractors that can act
kind of like a referral network. I want to shift away from the minnows. And to focus more on
whales, we had one client last year, about $50,000 worth of handrails. And if I could get 10
10 of those in a year, then I would double revenue just with 10 clients. So kind of what are my best
strategies to go about achieving that. So where did you source the single whale this year?
She found me. It's all inbound. It's all through search. Okay. So SEO or PBC?
SEO. Okay. I just started Facebook ads about three or four weeks ago. They were going pretty good,
qualified about half of the lead so far. So I would, so if you want to go whale hunting, then I think
your initial thought strategy of finding the architectural firms and engineering firms or whatnot is a good one.
I would probably try the outreach method as my primary way,
because you can be hyper-targeted in terms of who you're reaching out to.
And the key to making it work, though, is like, what's in it for them to refer you business?
Are you asking me that?
That's an excellent question.
So architects will typically in a plan, like if they make a set of plans,
they'll specify what kind of tiles to use and what kind of windows to use, et cetera.
So we've gotten plans in the past where it's like it's got the pictures from the website
with the CAD drawings and everything on.
the plants. And so it's like how to persuade them to do that kind of in absentia. And I should also note
that we ship nationwide. So this is not like, you know, a hyperlocal. Are you shipping or are you,
are you doing installs or no? No, we haven't done it. Are you just, you just, you just,
ship product. Interesting. Got it. Then who are the decision makers? Well, right now it's been
primarily residential is what it sounds like. Right. It's primarily homeowners. We've done some
commercial work, you know, but it's primarily homeowners who are, you know, you know,
looking for something different.
And so it's very, what I call intentional inbound search.
It's like they're looking for something.
They're deliberately searching it out.
They find it, you know, we have a lead magnet kind of, which is like 250.
Yeah.
It's a SEO.
Yeah.
Well, this is a fundamental change in business strategy.
So you're aware of that.
So with that comes risk.
Because like if that, obviously the lowest or the highest risk adjust to return move or
lowest risk, I guess, is to.
probably add in, like if I were like tomorrow, what I do, I'd probably just add PPC in right now
because you already have something that's working on SEO. I would probably see how can I get
way more articles written so that my SEO traffic can go up? Can I tackle more, you know, more
keywords? That's like the for sure will work and make you more money play. The going after whales
for sure can make more money because why not add zeros to things. It'll just be a completely
different sale and you'll have two levels of sales. So sale number one is going to be for the
affiliates and then figuring out what's going to make it worth it for them. And the second level is
what's the actual sale to the whale customer. So who's the decision maker with the whales?
Like the final decision maker? It's going to be the homeowner, whoever's doing the project.
So you just want bigger homeowners? The architects have the ability to specify it and to put it in
front of the client. So like we also did another one, which was about $60,000 for a guy that was doing
a development of Airbnbs in Virginia. He put up like,
like six yurt kind of things.
Yeah.
And, you know, so I had two bit, very...
So both of them were architects that sent you these.
The one was an architect and the other was a construction company.
Okay.
Yeah.
So you're going to have to go B2B outreach is the, basically when you look at Core 4,
that's going to be what you're going to do.
And then they're going to be your affiliates.
And so the million dollar question is, what's in it for them?
So my, my proposition would be...
So there's three ways you can do affiliates.
at least in the world of Alex.
So you have they sell your shit for you and they get a commission.
That's option one.
That's typically my least favorite option, but it is an option.
Option two is that you give them some morsel of something that you sell, that they can
sell for 100% markup.
They could keep all the money, but you get the introduction.
This is my favorite way of doing it.
The third way is that you basically allow them to just bundle in your free thing with
their services. Now, with architecture firms, it's not like they're going to bundle in a railing
for their service, but just for everybody else. Like, those are the three things. So it's like,
they bundle your, you're basically your lead magnet in for free with their thing they sell. So it makes,
it enhances the value of their overall package. You give them the things that they can upsell
your lead magnet for an amount of money that they can keep 100% of or they just sell your stuff and
they get a kickback. Is there a version for this where they can just upcharge? Like you can do
a small portion of this that they get 100% of? A hundred percent?
I don't think so, like maybe some kind of contractors or architect discount.
We wanted them to be stupid to say no.
Yeah, because like the generic leg, you get 20% kickback is just like everyone does it.
Like, who here does 20% kickbacks for anybody who refers to your business?
You can raise your hand.
I'm not going to be upset.
Okay.
And so the point is that, and you probably know in here has referred to anyone else's business.
And it's because no one cares.
That's kind of the point.
And so it has to be an irresistible offer.
And so if we give away the lead magnet or something, think about it as like,
My KAC for a $50,000 customer is the cost of the lead magnet.
And if I close one out of three introductions, then it's 3x the cost of lead magnet is my cost to a car car customer,
which is usually pretty darn good.
But it sounds like a new resistible offer to the architecture firm because they're like,
we can just sell this and keep 100%.
You're like, yep, just make the introduction and I'll deliver that.
And then when you talk to the customer, you're like, yeah, I'll deliver that.
Here's one rail.
But you need 10 more.
And then you make the sale.
Does that make sense?
I'm not entirely sure.
like people would order the entire project.
Okay.
It's not like you can just, like I can't just ship you a sample and be like, hey, look, here's a.
Yeah, then you're going to have to do the commission base structure, which is not my favorite,
but that's probably the way you're going to have to do it.
So either you can do the discount.
I mean, I would say, guys, I have 20% that I can play with here.
So you can take all 20 and give them no discount.
You can take a 10% discount and then they get, and then you get 10% kickback.
Like, this is what I got.
I'll make it work whatever you want, but this is my bare bottom price.
Okay.
And I think that's what, like, that's the outbound strategy.
So should I then, in turn, raise prices for direct-to-consumer?
Yeah, I love that.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Love that for you.
My name's Cody.
I sell roofs of people.
We did $140 million last year.
I'm trying to do $250 million this year.
Trying to figure out how to follow the principle of giving away more and, you know,
guarantees and bonuses when I have such high hard cost and such a high ticket item.
Yeah.
Well, what are gross margins right now?
40%.
Gross.
What's not?
10 to 15.
Okay, got it.
Do you want to sell it or do you just want to keep it forever?
Well, I actually just sold my roofing business and now we're part of a P-E firm that now I'm directing that entire.
So are you the platform?
Yes.
Okay, so you're the platform and how many tuckins have they done?
Eight.
Got it.
How long has it been since they started?
About three, four years.
I just got acquired 30, or we just closed 30 days ago and now they're trying to roll everything into my brand and I'm through head.
Yeah, got it.
Okay.
So sorry, go back to the original question.
If I have, like, better context on this, whatever.
So how do I give, you know, follow the principle of give away more value, make the, you know, offer so good it's, it's, you got to feel dumb saying, no, when I have such high hard costs, I, you know, I can't really do a money back guarantee.
I can't really give away more than a, you know, a roof.
Well, the question is, is it, is that the constraint?
Well, like, is that the thing that's limiting the growth of the business?
In my theory, yes, because if I create a good enough offer, then I could roll that offer out to the other eight, eight other brands.
and that would be the biggest amount of leverage that I could deliver in the shortest amount of time.
And is everyone insurance-based?
That's why they acquired us because we're retail.
So you're the only guy selling just new roofs.
Everyone else is doing storm chasing and damage repair, and shit like that.
Correct.
And what they want us to do is bring the retail model to the other brands and add another layer is,
we sell everything 100% virtually.
So no in-home appointments.
It's all, you know, digital.
And so that's what they, that's the vision is taking that, you know, nationwide.
Centralized sales virtually.
Right.
So you want an irresistible.
roof off her. I'm going to blow the roof off. I feel like if I were in your position,
the first thing that I would do would be centralize everything first without trying to change.
Basically, I would take the model that I already know works. What was your revenue before you
did the, before you were acquired? Okay, you're doing 20. So I would like, in terms of introducing
levels of change, so this is actually pretty good for everybody. Like, I will typically not
try and change like five things at once. And so you centralizing all sales is going to get
cost efficiency improvements and you're going to be able to have a higher
sales utilization, so you probably cut off the bottom third of the sales force that's low performing,
that alone might give you a 25% lift in general because the best sales guys will take more of the
sales and you'll have centralized all the costs like we'll have centralized all the cost, right?
And so you'll have an increase in revenue and a decrease in cost that's paired.
That would probably be my first step.
Part of the acquisition deal, that's the only way I did the acquisition is if they were going to
give me full control and centralized sales.
So, but like, I wouldn't, I mean, I know the question is about roofing, but like,
that's what I would do first, and that will probably take you six months or more, realistically.
In terms of the offer to roofs, an offer that's worked really well in home services is instead
of being a money-back guarantee, I position it as a profit guarantee. So it's like, listen,
you want your thing to be on time and on budget, probably. And so I guarantee that I will deliver it
on time and on budget, or I'll give you my profit, which is 20%. Whatever. And that way,
it's like you're not underwater and you still have 40% gross margins. So you're not really losing
on the deal. But then people are like, okay, so he's got skin in the game. And so that's a way of
closing significantly more deals because the two biggest obstacles that, well, you would know this,
but in most home services, it's on time, on budget. And probably for roofs, it's like in how much
am I going to be displaced, how much it's going to interrupt my life. And so I would put my
guarantee around those items and then just have a marginal amount that's back. But it's really just because
all they don't, so the big thing that just with guarantees is that people don't want their money back.
They want the roof. And so they just want to know that, you know,
you care enough to make sure the roof gets delivered.
And so that's really the solve for the guarantee is it just pays down risk of them not getting what they want.
And so as long as that gets accomplished, you don't have to do with money back.
You can just do it with some money back that gets them to say yes.
Is that how?
Does that make it?
Perfect.
Hey, Alex.
Hello.
Thank you for the content you create.
My name is Mahal Fatal.
I'm the founder of Elfan.
What?
I'm the founder of Alfand.
El Sen?
Yeah.
Okay.
So basically we sell tools to creators have to make more money.
And we also simplify how brands collaborate with creators.
Okay.
I mean you say tools like software.
So software and service agency tools.
So we have a music label, a creator agency for big creators, and then a platform as well.
All right.
So I'm coming to that just in a bit.
I know the focus topic.
We made around $4.3 million last year.
And basically my goal is try to get to $100 million.
All right.
Now the issue here is.
What's the split between the three in terms of revenue?
One million for the creator agency.
Okay.
1.3 million for the music label.
And then the rest is on the brand side.
And the brand side is you
basically being an agent to do
connecting it both.
But basically what I've been doing
is that I realize the disruption of AI
that's kind of coming in.
I also saw the scalability
what we were doing because I've been in the YouTube
space for a while.
So a lot of these services
aren't going to be scaling as much.
So in the past two years,
I've been taking that profit
and putting into a tech platform.
Basically, it's like a creator store
where you can sell your services,
digital products, but also items that you love.
So the skincare that you use,
the hair,
the shoes, and you'll earn a commission.
And we use all of that data to make it easier for brands and know what creators to work with.
Because right now, in influencer marketing, it's like a spray method, right?
I'm going to pay.
I have no idea how much conversion they're going to actually get me.
But our integration shows you for a thousand clicks.
They get you these number of visitors and then they end up buying.
My challenge here right now is that I'm trying to scale that business.
But my business model is we make money when you make money.
So on the brand side, we get a 15% commission or a margin on all the spend.
And on the creator side, we get around 8% from whatever they make with their fans by selling these digital products and courses or affiliate links.
Okay.
My issue here is I got 40,000 creators, but only 1,000 are making money.
Right.
And I've been kind of struggling between going on a SaaS model to be able to scale because when I do any social marketing, we get a creator that comes on board, but they don't make money right away.
Uh-huh.
So it's not like you, you know, and the longer it takes you to recoup your ad spend is not usually a good metric for scalability.
So I'm kind of pivoting.
Should I go into a SaaS model where whatever I make from the creator, I'll just be like,
hey, like just pay me that price and I take 0% from you.
And then I just charge the brands, the commission to collaborate with those creators.
This way I can scale the business and a much faster.
Say the last part again?
So instead of me making percentages from creators, I provide them the same tools that a lot of them make money.
And I keep 0%.
Okay.
But then let's say they have to pay like 20 bucks a month.
Sure.
But then I still make my money on.
the upside on the brand side by connecting them with these creators.
Okay. So switch to a subscription.
Switch to a subscription, yeah.
Okay.
Because right now, like, I have 40,000 creators who signed up, but I'm really making money
off a thousand. Right. And it's free to sign up and you only get paid if they get paid.
Yeah. So you're in a pro-sumer audience. So if you look at like Shopify, for example,
it's super, it's, if you look at the amount of people who've tried to build marketplaces,
almost all of them fail. And it's my opinion that the best marketplaces,
do run as SaaS and then once they get to scale, they can, they can kind of push more marketplace.
So like Shopify, for example, like it's $29 a month or whatever it is because they know that the
vast majority, like they make more money charging $29 a month than getting 4% on zero for the
vast majority of stores. But people continue to pay for the hope that someday they will make money.
And so I think the idea of switching to SaaS is not a bad one.
I am concerned about the four businesses that you have.
so because in order to win at SaaS you have to be like all in on software and so the alternative to that would be instead of letting creators come on for free you would charge them to come on which you could do has like a one time setup fee and then maybe increase the likelihood that they win either path would work but if the ultimate goal is that you want to build a network of creators then you want to have the lowest barrier possible on the creator side so I'm still thinking of a
free tier and a pay tier with some minor benefits, but then if you really want to make money,
you got to end up big subscription.
Yeah.
Yeah, you'll have to play with the feature set because that's always a bitch.
It's just a path of least resistance to getting to 100 mil.
Yeah, so I think adding the subscription for the base and still maintaining the revenue that
you get from the sponsors make sense.
I would maybe push back slightly on the hypothesis that they can't convert anything because
it dramatically decreases the value of the network
from the sponsor side.
Some people will pay for impressions.
Yeah.
And so those guys can for sure deliver those.
And so maybe there's like two tiers
that you can sell,
you have another product on the ad side
or the media side.
That's just something to consider it.
Perfect.
Thank you.
That's all.
You just validated my thoughts.
Oh, good.
I'm glad.
I'm thinking the right way.
No, I think it makes sense.
Yeah.
Either have to, basically,
you have to position as higher ticket
and do premium of wake level onboarding and then select only for the really
good creators and that would be like you charge five or $10,000 and you really get them set off
or you basically flip the other way, go freemium, and then it's all based on like basically
media arbitrage where you're just running tons and tons of ads to get people under
the platform and you just know what your average revenue per platform user is.
Perfect.
Thank you.
Hi.
I'm Mauricio.
I sell corporate training focus on soft skills to large companies through.
Who owns soft skills?
What?
You help who do soft skills?
Which I train companies in soft skills.
Okay, got it.
and coaching, et cetera.
We do $1.3 million in revenue.
On a project-based model,
I would like to be at $100 million subscription-based model.
And what's stopping me is project-based model is more lucrative.
So I feel like stuck with these whales.
Okay.
That doesn't want the subscription model.
So project-based isn't bad.
You just need to demonstrate.
So this is the concept of recurring versus reoccurring.
right and so if you go project to project there's nothing wrong with that as long as you can
demonstrate that you have a high renewal rate between those things and so i'm in general i do like
having kind of project based stuff because typically you can price two to three times higher than
you can for a subscription and so you have usually way better cash flow because people are willing to
commit to a certain amount for this period of time versus you know this forever which is what a
subscription feels like even though realistically we know that it's not that that that case so you want
to get to a hundred million dollar a subscription business you have
have a $1.3 million non-subscription business, I would say, I don't think the limited to your
business is that. So we'd have to dive a level deeper and say, like, what's stopping you from
getting to $10 million with your current model? Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for
you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter
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And we show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level.
It's all free and you can get it personalized to you, so it's about 30-ish pages for each of the stages.
Once you enter the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow.
It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part
It's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes.
And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com forward slash roadmap, R-O-A-D map, roadmap.
Yes, we are now aiming to smaller companies on the subscription base.
Yeah.
And the whales are staying the same, basically.
So that's our strategy to, like, this year we're aiming for 40% of subscription-based model.
From all the revenue?
40%.
40%, yes.
Is subscription already, or that's the goal?
No, it's the aim of this year.
Okay, got it.
And you said you have whales.
Yes.
And you have small companies.
Smaller, yes.
What percentage of companies are in either bucket revenue-wise?
Nowadays, it's like 80, 20.
So the whales have, are almost everyone.
Just do more whales.
Okay.
I'm serious.
So how do you get whales?
We have an outbound sales team
And we are pretty good at it
So we get into a whale
And then sell it to more apartments
Yeah, of course
So what stops
So what's the limiter on your outbound team?
People
Okay
HR HR is a way
So recruited
Yeah
Okay, got it
So if you had twice the outbound team you have now
With equal skill
Would your business double?
Yes
Great
So what stops you from doing that?
You don't have a recruiter?
Yes, but it doesn't worry.
Okay, so you have a bad recruiter?
Yes.
Okay.
So hopefully this line of reasoning was fun for everyone,
but that's what we have to work on.
Like, you don't know,
like the rest of the stuff that we talked about is basically irrelevant.
And you need to go get another recruiter who's good
and can get you outbound guys.
Basically, and you will continue, like, my advice is to continue increasing the
op-on team until you can't handle the sales anymore.
Right.
That's it.
Wales, and Wales fundamentally like it's not uncommon for them to be work on projects for,
just extend the terms. So if you, if you sign, you know, they're current doing six-month
engagements, try to go for 12 or 18-month engagements. Okay. Does that make sense? Yes.
Yeah, and that's, that's just as valuable. Like, if you have like a five-year contract with a
Fortune 500, it's recurring. As far as like an investor would be concerned, it's the same thing.
Make sense? Yes. All right. Hopefully it's simpler.
Hey, my name's Joshua. I'm actually a car.
as well, like Chris.
I have a great product that I would love to tell you about.
Self-cracking.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's funny.
Yeah, so me and my wife, we run a family chiropractic center in the UK.
Cool.
And our current revenue is around 750.
We'd like to get it to 2.3, perfect the model, and then scale.
Okay.
This is what is currently my predicament.
So we averaged 48 new clients per month last year, consistently,
from two main channels, referral and Facebook meta.
Okay.
What was this?
What?
So it's 35% referrals, 65%.
Okay.
Yeah.
Got it.
Yeah.
And excuse me.
Sorry, I'm a bit nervous.
Thanks.
You're 3565 referral versus meta.
You did 48 customers per month.
Yeah.
The issue that you have 750, you want to get season.3.
Yeah.
So my question, and I think what's stopping me is determining where I should be focusing,
because we get great results.
for clients like they get, but, you know, even if they have an amazing result, like a lot of
those clients leave, which is fine. And then come back to only need us. It's terrible. Yeah. And I'd
love to have more clients to stay with us longer term from like a membership perspective. And when I
look to our churn retention rates, our gross retention rate is 47%. And then our net retention rate is
74%. So once we've done expansions, upsells and everything else,
it brings it up, but we still lose a lot of,
we leave a lot of money on the table on the,
because we're losing.
You lose half your customers,
but you keep a little bit more revenue.
So you're talking revenue retention versus load.
Yeah, so I'm like,
which one do I focus on?
Do we expand the marketing and just keep pumping the machine?
Because I literally feel like you,
I've got to a stage in my business where I'm still in the clinic,
still serving patients.
I love my clients.
Yeah.
But like,
you know,
even if they've had an amazing change in their life,
like,
it's like you with the weight loss.
Like,
I've got to the point now where I'm like, man, like this doesn't excite me anymore.
Like, I know I can help serve more people if I can just become more of the owner rather than the operator.
I've stepped my shifts down from, you know, five days a week to like two now.
And if you made more money, you'd definitely be happier.
So I'm, yeah, I was a joke.
Okay, so you have a location.
You're doing 750.
What does it cost to open a location?
We own the building.
Well, outside of real estate, what's a cost of outfit the location?
Oh, outfit it. So we, so we're pretty lean. Like, we outfitted our current one. That was 100,000. Okay, got it. What's profit? We kind of keep it. We've kept it low the last few years, but we, yeah, it's like, it's like 13%. Okay. Yeah. So you need to fix that. Yeah. Okay. So there's a lot of like, you know, owners earnings and stuff. Well, what's SD? So sell discretion earnings. So what do you make plus the profit of the business?
So me and my wife, we draw 100K.
Uh-huh, each?
No.
Total.
Yeah.
You have 13% on 75, so another 100, so 200k on 750.
Yeah.
Okay, got it.
So whatever, that's 20, 30, 30%-ish margins.
Okay.
So you want to get to 2.3.
Why 2.3?
Because this is what we worked up for our build, like our practice.
We could, if we were at capacity.
Okay.
So that location can do $2.3 million.
Okay.
So the issues we have to solve.
retaining customers. Now, if you keep 50% of customers, like if, let's say you lose half your
customers, you're one, but then after that, they stay forever. That's fine. We just have,
it's like, in next year, you'll double. If that isn't the case, then, and you lose half of those
customers the next year and then half of those the next year kind of thing. I would see what we could
do to improve that. That being said, you're in a business that traditionally is marketing heavy.
It's kind of like weight loss because like people get fixed and then they're like, yeah, deuses.
So the strategy that I've seen that has worked really well in the chiro space is basically going significantly higher ticket, number one, and number two, niching down in terms of the different problems he solved.
So this is like neuropathy, you know, diabetes stuff, those types of like kind of segments.
Yeah.
And having more targeted advertising for those avatars and selling significantly higher price packages.
And that's typically how those businesses will get to like a few hundred thousand dollars a month just with one like very small store.
And so typically that that model is a, you run ads for some sort of free workshop, free dinners, free whatever.
Pretty much how we did it and we built our business.
Okay.
Like, because we really.
So then what's the ticket price that you're charging?
It's different based on the-
Well, you've sold 50 customers a month and you're doing 60K.
So the average is around like it depends because every plan is different for the client.
So we don't just give like a here's your plan.
No, I know.
But if I just did simple math, I'd say $60,000 a month, 50 new customers, average customer
is 1,200 box.
Yeah, it's a box.
Okay, so it's not the same model because I'm talking
$10,000.
Right.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
More?
Yeah.
So I think you have to get niche down in terms of, so like, if you're doing
all those things, I think you probably should need to add a zero to your price tag.
We're already the most premium in our, like, area.
Like, well, then it won't change.
You'll still be the most premium.
Okay.
And which one would you focus on them?
Would you just focus on like just filling the front end or would you try and fix the,
because you talked about like, fix the chair and like get it to less than three.
Or would you double down on both?
Would that be the-
Well, if you keep half your customers,
you're pretty close to three.
So again?
You're pretty close to three
if you keep half your customers.
Right.
When we track it,
it varies between three and seven
depending on the month?
I mean, are the things that you could do
to improve it, sure?
I think you have more of a model issue.
Okay.
Like, you obviously get to acquire customers
and you're doing a decent enough job keeping them.
If we need to improve
how much money this thing makes,
it's either a pricing thing.
Basically, it's an offer and pricing thing.
is that you need to charge more so that you can make more money.
And then once you have the cash flow,
then the expansion becomes pretty straightforward.
That goes for basically everyone.
Like a lot of times it's like, you know,
we're doing 20% and you have what I would consider it's like a normal business.
It makes money.
We work hard,
but there's no, like, you never feel like you really can like get ahead.
Yeah.
It's usually because there's some significant hole in the business.
And you're decent at both sides.
And I think that the issue is that you just need to be making way more
money. Okay. Which is, I think you need to add more. Do you sell physical products and consumables?
Not really. Do you sell like braces and orthodox? In a care plan, it will be based on like,
yeah, we do adjustments, massage. It might be like traction, whatever. Yeah. So the key is there's two
models that have worked really well. One is where you basically upsell them some sort of machine that they can
take home and do other work. And there's a big markup on that. And the other is supplets.
because you can sell years worth of supplements
or six months worth of supplements up front
make a really good bit there
and it doesn't increase your operational drag at all
because you just make the sale,
give them the product.
That makes sense?
Yeah.
That's what I would add in
to justify the higher price
so that you could make more money per customer
which will then make you more money overall
which then fixes the model,
which then allows you to go.
Gotcha.
That makes sense?
Yeah, cool.
Thank you.
Rock and roll.
All right, thank you.
Hey, Alex.
My name is Nacho
and we sell,
surf coaching to intermediate and advanced surfers.
We do 700 a year and we'll like to be 5 million.
Okay.
And what's stopping us right now, it's basically our lifetime value to pack, it's 3 to 1.
But that's because we change our program, our online program.
We change it from two months to yearly.
Okay.
So we can raise the price.
Yeah, exactly.
And also you have a longer time window.
So hopefully.
Exactly. Yeah. So my question is, how would you go about the ascension process once they finish the year or even do it before they end the year?
Yeah. Well, it's definitely not at the end of the year. So you have four. So there's four places that you can do.
Ascension upsells. I'll walk through these. Okay. So these are kind of the spaces that you can do the upsells. And this is the order for your business. If you already sell something expensive up front, which I'm guessing is now,
the annual, then you can ignore, well, I mean, honestly, no, I'm going to say it. So you can immediately
upsell people, hey, now that you bought this thing, do you want to get something else? That's if you
want fries with your Coke. So that's that type of upsell. Now, if that's not the nature of the
upsell that you have, then this is where you'd begin offering it. So you can ignore the first one and the
other four will apply. Okay. So 24 to 40 hours, that's probably when you have some sort of onboarding
call, right? Boarding. Ah, there you go. And so the best upsell that you can,
tag with this is more help with that thing you just bought. And so either that more help or better help.
So that would be like a higher qualified coach. This is a master's level three coach. He only
coaches people who are whatever. And so if you want, it sounds like you might be a good fit for that.
Do you want me to set you up with a call there? Right. So you can immediately ascend people who just
bought. Number one, that'll also help you off set Kack, bring up, bring up cash forward. The next one is
when you have some sort of milestone. So they get up on their board for the first time or they do
the first flip or whatever, you know, whatever big milestone that somebody might have,
you know, within the first 30 or 60 days of being inside of your thing, right? At that point,
you say, hey, we'd love to help on a call. Let's see what else we can do to help you like,
you know, capitalize on the momentum. And that's when you say, cool, let's take this next level.
So milestone, you know it's a milestone. For them, you're saying, let's capitalize on the momentum.
Let's keep the party going. The halfway point is what we position as a feedback meeting,
which is like, hey, we want to check in. We want to make sure that things are going all right.
And the nice thing with the feedback meeting is that you have, you have a lot. And the nice thing with the
have one of two options. So they are unhappy or they're happy. Here's the cool part. If you're
unhappy, then it probably means that you need more help from us. So you should buy our other thing
that has more help than the thing that you have. If you're happy, then if you like that,
you're going to love this. Seriously. And then finally here, what's this last chance? So this is going to be
the smallest percentage of sales. And so for many of you right now, this is a lot of you. This
is where you try to do your ascensions. And the reason that you're not getting as many
as you want is because you're waiting until here. You have to, like, that is literally the last
chance. You've already lost most people. So you want to, you want, so there's these, these buying
windows that occur for a customer. And you want to present your offers at the point of greatest
deprivation, not value. I'll say again, you want to present your offers at the point of greatest
deprivation, not the point of greatest satisfaction. So if I walk into a restaurant and I'm starving and I
say, I want a steak. I eat the steak. Waiter comes back. And they're like, how's the steak?
I'm like, oh, it was delicious. Thank you so much. They're like, great. You want another steak?
I'm like, no, no, I'm good. They're like, oh, you don't like the steak? And they're like,
no, I love the steak. It was great. And they're like, I'm, I'm good. I'm satisfied. It's, I'm fine.
And they're like, well, then why don't you, you don't like my restaurant? What's wrong with you?
And all of a sudden, it just seems weird. That's we get these weird sales conversations.
But if I wanted to sell two steaks, when the person walks in the door, I'm like, are you
starving. They're like, dude, I'm famished. I'm like, cool, you want two steaks? That's when you sell two
sticks. Now, once I have a steak, I'm satisfied with my steak, but I have some deprivation around
sweets. And so I'm going to be like, oh, how's the steak? It was delicious. Oh, you know what?
pairs really great with that. Our lovely flambay, right? Or I don't know what dessert name,
ice cream and brownie. That, that's what goes well with this, right? You want one of those? Sure.
You know what? I'll take two. So we want to make sure that we sell, and this is a huge,
misconception in the sales world is that they're like sell at the point of greatest value.
Sometimes the point of greatest value creates deprivation for the next goal.
So if I solve your leads problem, I'm going to create your lead nurture problem.
And so it makes sense to then sell the next thing at that point if the next thing I sell is lead nurture, not more leads.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, sure.
Okay.
So for you, right now, it's going to probably be an extension where you can have the quality upsell that you can immediately do.
and then you basically make the ask at these different occasions and it's open-handed.
So it's like, hey, long-term, where do you see yourself?
Cool.
Sounds like you're ambitious.
I think you might be a good fit.
Can I set you up with?
He's amazing.
He's helped 17 people who look just like you, accomplish what you want.
You'll love him.
Yeah, and you will have the closer to jump on that call or because the thing is that-
You set it.
You set it for the closer.
Okay.
The thing is that they only see the closer when they buy and the second time they're going to
buy.
So they're not in contact with them.
So it feels like...
I get it.
I've tried to skin this 100 ways to Sunday.
And no, I have.
I've tried every permutation of this.
And I've had everything work.
So you just have different problems.
You can have your kind of team of people who are doing the education get trained on kind of the upsell.
They're going to benefit from the fact they have more rapport, more trust.
And they're going to have talked to them more times where it's not a sales conversation.
So that's one option.
Second option.
And this is my favorite of the options.
but require somebody with more talent,
is that you have one back-end sales guy.
And that guy's positioned as the master coach or whatever,
the master educator, the level 17.
And so when they see that guy, he's so well positioned that he's like,
hey, I'm checking on the team,
I want to make sure that they're doing a good job,
has everything going, great.
And then that guy has the positioning to just close everybody.
And it doesn't feel weird.
Okay.
I have done the front-end sales guy talks to you again,
and I also still had that work,
but it's a little bit more sales.
heavy. And so I would, I would prefer, if I were you, I would probably find, if you have one guy who's
like the best guy, what happens is you've got all these leads that funnel to front end closers.
And then the people who do the delivery, then funnel them to one guy. And so you only need like
one, given the fact that they're not working leaves, they're working customers. So for you to actually
book out somebody who's one guy, you're going to be doing 20 million a year. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Only one question about the milestone. Because like what we do is basically
like a fitness program where you want to get to a huge goal and they accomplish the first milestone.
But what we offer is kind of the same thing, you know.
But at that point when they reach the first milestone, you will only go and try to upgrade in something like more quality, but the same.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
More quality.
Perfect.
Thank you, Alex.
Yeah, you bet.
Hi.
I'm Jacqueline.
I know we talked about.
Dentists.
Yes.
$3 million.
5% profit margins.
You have five different ones, three are part-time.
Perfect.
Wow.
Great memory.
Yeah.
You're in Dallas.
This 30-year-old business, I inherited from your father.
Yes.
Yep.
And my social security number.
Just carry it.
I can pull it up.
So I know we talked, yes, last night, which you obviously remember.
And a couple other people from your team, we talked about this issue, that my number one
constraint probably isn't our cancellation rate.
But it is something that I'm, like, really perplexed about and want to at least go back.
with a little bit of something to share with my team about.
Sure.
So our cancellation rate is a little over 30%.
And this past year, we've lost like a million dollars because people made appointments,
confirmed them, and they didn't show up.
So if you have any insight on what we could do to start improving that, I would be really
grateful.
Yes.
I don't think it's the constraint of your business.
So number one is you're going to want to make sure that.
the, I've obviously like that that time is the right time for them. And we ask questions like,
is there anything that will possibly get in the way of you showing up for your meeting? And so we call
this an integrity tie down. And so after you get a time slot, you want to ask that right afterwards
because it like gets, like shakes them out of their like mind. For whatever reason, it works. So
I could come up with some narrative for it, but it works. Number two is, I think I mentioned this
yesterday, but I think it might be worth considering pulling up appointments, like to basically, can we
bring them up sooner so that we have increased shop rates. The next one is, let's see here.
You want to make sure that you have automated reminders, which you probably do, but then you
want to have manual reminders on top of that. So if you have, I would have an office iPhone and you
want to send manual text at three times. So you're going to send the manual text at 24 hours.
So basically we think night before. Second text is going to be morning up. And the third text is going to be
60 to 90 minutes prior, basically when they have to like get your shit together, get in the car.
So three within 24 hours.
Mm-hmm.
And those are manual.
So you want those to be blue iPhone messages if possible.
Okay.
Now, ideally, we like to have some sort of selection that they pick that we've, like some cost we have incurred.
So this works exceptionally well for brick and mortar, so I'm sharing it with you.
And so in the gym space, obviously, like, we'd say, hey, Sharon, I've got this shirt.
Tell me what size you're at.
and I'll pull it aside for you.
And so when you come here, I'll give it to you.
Or it's like, do you want red or do you want blue?
Like, just do some sort of A.B.
Ask for them.
And so it could be as simple as like, you're going to, you're going to pull, I mean,
because it's the dentist office, right?
And so you're like, okay, what can I give them?
Well, I always get free shit when I go to the business office.
And so just like have them pick the free stuff that you put in their goody bag.
And then I would send them a picture with their name on it so that they're like,
oh, man, they incurred this cost just for me.
I have to show up now, right?
So that's another one.
Okay, we got that.
Because you're having the issue because someone books and like six months later is they're cleaning or whatever, right?
That's the problem here.
Yeah.
Well, we call and confirm their appointment a week in advance.
And then we call and remind them again three days in advance.
And then we call them and text them again a day before.
And they'll say, yeah, I'm going to be there.
And then two o'clock comes and they don't show.
I think you're reminding too far out.
Okay.
Like if I schedule an appointment on Saturday, Monday morning is a different universe for me.
Yeah.
No, I'm just being like super real.
And so I think a lot of people are that way.
And so all of the manual reminders are like if you want to like I use the automated ones for the far out.
Like, hey, you're seven days away.
Hey, you're three days away.
Okay.
But I would have the ones that you're putting the real effort in 24 morning and right before.
Okay.
And then have the incentive, have the personalization.
And I will bet you dollars to donuts that.
that on its own would work. Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Oh, you bet. Hi, thank you so much for all your content you make. My name is Lori Ann,
and I sell personal finance courses and coaching to women. We do 30 million. For women.
Pardon? Four women? Ah. With a plus.
Like, screw the guys. They don't need to save money. You know, they can learn from someone else.
I'm messing with. So we do 30 million in revenue. That ends. Thank you. I would like to be at
I don't know revenue, which comes to my question.
That's right.
And what is stopping me is our CAC to LTD ratio.
Both, CAC is too high, got the team working on volume right now.
LTV is too low.
Okay.
And AOV is too low on our front end.
So I think it's actually a cash flow.
She's straight, potentially, but I'm a little confused on where, like, exactly to go to work.
Okay.
How do you acquire our questions right now?
Primarily meta.
So it's all paid ads?
Yeah.
Okay, so all paid ads and you're running to what?
Webinar, 2K webinar.
Okay, are you have a low ticket offer before the webinar?
Are you charging like something as like a self-liquidating offer on the front?
Free webinar, no.
Never done a self-liquidating offer.
Okay, so free webinar on the front end.
You have a $2,000 offer.
Okay.
Then what?
$2,000 or 12-month payment plan for $200 a month, which is why our AOV is like $9,000.
Got it.
And then acquisition costs like $1,500 on the client.
And then we have a back end.
Okay.
That's 10K.
a 7% upgrade rate. Yeah, it's low. Outsourced sales team right now. And so LTV is like 2400.
Yeah. That's the problem. Yes. That's why I'm here. Your essential, yeah, no, your century is too low.
You will probably have to bring the sales team in house if you want to really fix it. It's very hard to influence the team.
You'll want the ascension to be integrated into the onboarding. And so you sell the $2,000 thing.
You have your onboarding call. The onboarding call, the onboarding call,
the finish of the onboarding call is they set their goal setting call with what would become a setter
and then that setter sets for a closer. So they actually get three calls. So they have webinar,
buy. They have an actual onboarding call because you want them like, do you want to make sure you
deliver one on one or that's a group one minute. You can do, well, you can start with a group.
You can start with group and then you will make more money if you go to one-on-one. It is more
But like we actually did this. And I have a video that breaks down everything that you need to know.
Okay. Yeah. And so one-on-one is better. But if you're going to start, start with the group.
And their way of getting off the call, like saying like, okay, you're dismissed, is that you show me that you have confirmed your booking with your next call.
So that way you have 100% through through line to the next. Now they're customers. They're going to show up.
The goal setting call basically sifts for who, like what's your goal? Cool. What's that? Basically just do another sales call again.
end, and then you push people into the ones you can afford it, that makes sense, into a closed
call with basically an invitation to join something that has more help or work associated.
Yes. Okay, great. You'll probably need to get third-party financing in place.
Oh. Yeah. On front-end. Oh, for the sales calls. Yeah. And front-end. Like, you should definitely
have some BNPL options. So buy now, pay later. You should probably have a few. Okay. We have money
back end. We don't have one on the front end. Also, with the webinar, I would recommend split testing,
the first five minutes. So retest two or three different intros and look at LTV. That will make you
money. But the biggest issue is that you're upselling 7%. Like you need to be at, you want to be at
at least 25 and you should shoot for 50. Okay. Okay. And so just one more question as that's like a longer
term solution, right? That's going to take time. You mean to bring in a sales team in house and really
optimize that process. Why does it have to be a long term? Just a time it will take to
find a sales leader and recruit and like shift leads from the you need to hire one person
really good sales director and then you hire six recruiting firms that do sales and say I need 10
guys from each of you and you can add a 60 person team for like two weeks okay okay we just added
40 guys in two weeks to want to work on these you just paid a bunch of like if if we're doing that kind
of volume we're just going to go to somebody who has a big network of people that they're that's
their full-time business recruiting sales guys so it's like great these are requirements
go get them.
Yeah.
And I'm willing to pay for the speed.
So if it's, and you can also negotiate if you're doing multiple, like the same of multiple.
So it's like, hey, normally, you know, it's 10 grand per head, but I'm going to buy 20 from you.
So I'll do it for five.
Okay.
So you pay 100 grand and all of a sudden you have an apartment.
Okay, cool.
So action on that immediately.
And then while we're doing the recruiting and getting that person up to speed, just keep spending
basically as much as we can afford to spend on the front end to keep like lead flow coming into the back?
Realistically, if you spend less, you will typically, Roas will increase.
Typically.
YouTube's not that way, though.
Kind of random.
The more you spend, the more profitable gets.
It's wild.
Yeah, it's the shit.
Anyways.
But all that to say, like, if you have a cash flow issue right now or like, you know,
it's like, it's self-inflicted.
Like, you can just spend less and improve the returns.
But your CAQ is appropriate.
$1,500 to acquire our customer in that base.
Not that much lower.
where you're not going to like you're not going to get below a thousand and so this is a back end issue
like you just have to increase the essential rate and that's it okay thank you you about awesome okay
