Inside How Hormozi’s Book Launch Broke The Internet - Tobias Allen - #21

- We sold close to 100,000 books in a single day. Like, the launch broke the internet. - How much did you make? - Well, in a single day. - You broke the internet before mostly. Why did you leave? - He was competitive environment and it was addiction. - Relative to the value that I provide. Like, I don't share on all of the upside. It's kind of a crap gig. - How come you're drawing Simon's script? - Kind of made me an author I couldn't refuse. I've helped scale a lot of stuff and I've never really had ownership in it. I've objectively made quite a lot of people a lot of money. Has there ever been the hunger to do it all yourself? - Absolutely. There are some days where I'm like, it would be simpler to just grow one business and have all of the upside. - Tobias, thanks for joining us. You were the brains behind the Alex Romosey book that broke the internet. Tell us about where that started. - Yeah, so in terms of book launches, Alex obviously has a trilogy. So, 100 million offers, 100 million leads, and then the last one, money models. Each book is a matter concept. So, offers was all about making an offer so good. People without stupid saying no. Launched on Kindle for like 99p or whatever the price was. Bleeds, which was the one I was involved with, was proving that the concepts in the book were effective for lead generation. So, it was all about registering as many people for a live event as possible, using each of the mechanisms in the book. Content, outbound, affiliates, ads, et cetera. And the launch took a life off its own. So, we've registered, this was two years ago, about 560,000 people for a live event, and broke the internet when kind of the tech collapsed 'cause it couldn't handle that volume at the time. And that was across content, ads, affiliates, employees, cold outbound, kind of like you name it. And I think it got a lot bigger than a lot of us expected. For the affiliate program, for instance, I built that from zero to about 29,000 affiliates in six weeks, and they were all promoting the book for free. We had a competition where the top 10 could win a session with Alex, and then anyone who referred 10 people got a bonus chapter that wasn't released to the public. That kind of broke the four-minute mile, I guess, of like launches or book launches. A lot of people have tried to emulate it since. And yeah, we saw close to 100,000 books in a single day. Yeah, it was a good experience. - Was the fact that it broke a positive or negative? - So, from a brand perception standpoint, positive, like the launch broke the internet, from a like numbers standpoint, probably like lost half of sales. So, what would you rather? - It's like shorter pain and a lot of financial pain for a long-term game, but to be able to say like, I released a book that broke the internet, literally. - Yeah. - It's pretty cool. - Yeah, I'd say so. I think, to be honest, I think that the net brand like was worth more than half of sales being lost. - About four million in a single day, four to five million. So, you lost millions of dollars, but the long-term effect of it is great. And I guess for you personally, to be like, well, I was the company lost four million dollars. I can be say that I broke the internet. - You get the bad, you got the pain so much. - Yeah, like it was, to be honest, and this is this pricing thing, it wasn't anything necessarily new for me, which is well to say. I was already the affiliate program. Candidly, that was the first time I was doing anything with affiliate marketing, just took a life of its own. But prior to that, I was actually doing e-com and the agency I was working with, we were doing stuff with sweepstakes. So we had these six week promotional cycles, giving away trucks, trailers, boats, like pretty intense, like six week cycles. For me, that was basically what the book launch was. So I'd done dozens of those, like for the last couple of years, previously. And so for me, it was basically just doing another giveaway. And then it was just registering as many people for this live event. And so that is kind of like, it's quite funny when you look back, things start to make sense. That experience that I had with sweepstakes, really, I had built a really solid foundation for me to do kind of a launch like that, which is kind of wild when you think about it. - Are there other business models that can steal that competition launch model? - Yeah, I think, I think any business can. So one of the playbooks that works really well is something called the scholarship play or giveaways. Like I think any business can actually run a giveaway and use it to sell either services or coaching or you name it like functionally, it's what's called like a lead attraction offer. So and you can stick that in front of anything. So like, obviously there's a benefit if you make it congruent to the thing that you're selling. So let's say you're a travel agency. Win a holiday. Like anyone who's kind of redged, like putting their hand up saying, I wanna holiday is actually a really good lead to then sell a holiday to. So I think any business can do it. - Does it have to be B2C though? - No, B2B. So like the scholarship play particularly, can work in B2B instances. So I think of like selling to personal trainers as an example, you might have like certification. So technically this is B2B. You might offer a scholarship on your education or your scholarship. So like think of like Harvard, they do scholarships. Basically as you've got your main priced item, you give away, you give away it for free. And then the way you monetize on the back end is you give people partial scholarships. So you promote this thing. You've got a free giveaway, which gets lots of people raising their hands who are interested in the thing. You give away one and then behind the scenes, you have assess a team reach out. And the script is kind of like, hey, we saw your application. Obviously we can't give you the main prize because that's gone to someone. But we're actually doing something called a partial scholarship, which is valid for the next five days. Instead of X, Y, Z price, it's this price. And if you've got thousands of people put their hand up for this thing, you can make a lot of money on the back end by giving away these kind of partial discounts. It's an effective advertising strategy. And I think anyone can kind of do it. - So you broke the internet with Homozi. - Why did you leave? - So Alex has a great saying, which is, it's not one silver bullet, but a bunch of golden BBs. If I were to like sum it up, I was 28 and I had two goals that I wanted to hit before I was 30, which was be a millionaire and have a family. When I sat down and looked at the trajectory, I was at an acquisition. I had two years to do it, and the math wasn't mathing. And so it was really a personal decision of like, look, I'm gonna need to hit my goals. So I'm gonna make the move. And that's kind of what it came down to. And about three weeks ago, I had daughter. So, he had the target with family. And then in terms of stock, normally speaking, that's kind of valued over seven figures. So not quite what I had in mind when I set the target, but normally it was a bet that I needed to take and it's paid off. - What were your steps after leaving that acquisition? - Yeah, a lot messier than they probably should have been. I left, and then I joined a business called FanView as their CMO. They were during, it was ahead of a fundraise process. Candidly, I knew they were gonna be successful when fundraising. And so for me, it was also being able to collect that as a story. Like, one of the things I learned from the team is, it's like collect stories. 'Cause it's just generally like collect stories. And so I wanted to a story of a raise in kind of a startup environment. 'Cause a lot of what I've previously done and was in bootstrapped businesses. And so, yeah, I took up a CMO position. We ended up raising about 22 million. It was an oversubscribed round. And then I helped them scale their creative volume by about like 70, 79% compared to the previous quarter. So we went from like 5,000 creators a month to about 20,000 creators a month. Which obviously when you're fundraising, like seeing a parabolic growth curve is quite attractive to investors. But credit to the team, like FanView team is incredibly skilled. As it stands, that business is now on I think a 200 million run rate. So it's worked pretty well. Interesting me in terms of tactics for the audience. The primary method of that growth was actually scaling their affiliate program. So when I go into a business and look at what's scaling, I mean credit to Alex 'cause he taught me essentially all of the frameworks that I used today. It was more better new as a framework. Like in terms of growth is finding what works and doing more of it. That's the highest risk adjusted return. You max that out and then you then do it better and then you match that out and then only then do you do new stuff? So when I went into fan view I was looking at like the P&L and where creators were coming from. And the world thing was it didn't actually make sense. They had a monthly budget tracker and there was like paid ads, brand partnerships, affiliates, content, like PR. There was like a lot of kind of noise because they were trying to do lots of pods at the same time. And it was really a process of elimination because I was looking at the numbers and I was like well the volume is not coming from paid ads and it's not coming from PR. And it was basically like taking the box of like where the hell are these creators coming from. And it turned out it was the affiliate program. It was driving a lot of the revenue. It was kind of like a blank hole on attribution. And so when I started there was maybe like 170 ambassadors and the goal for that quarter was to just take it to 500. It's this idea of the theory of constraints. What's working? How do you do more of it? And then someone in that tree says oh we can't do that. And then the question is why not? And why not gives you the answer to what to focus on? And so the why not was why can't we scale from 170 ambassadors to 500. And the answer was like process. It's like really boring. So we need we need like there was one guy kind of doing it. It's like we needed to fix the onboarding. We didn't even hit the 500 target initially. It was like maybe like 375. But that was enough. It was yeah, affiliates and partners and yeah really good experience. So rather than trying to be diversified everywhere, it's okay to go and call what's working. Yeah. Why can't we do that now? We actually switched PPC off. Yeah. Switch because like this was the other thing is like as I was working out what was growing in the business. Switched PPC off and the business still grew. So it was clearly like PPC was not the thing moving it. PPC means paper click for anyone watching. And yeah, you'll be shocked at the number of businesses that at least established businesses to be clear. They have something that they've done that's worked. And then they kind of forget about it and start chasing like these new shiny objects. And sometimes it's really boring. Like it's cold email. They send 20,000 cold emails a month. They're trying to do Facebook ads over here when they could just send 40,000 emails and double the business. Do you think that's the biggest mistake you see in entrepreneurs, mate? There's a lot of kind of silver spoons centering with entrepreneurs right? That's the new shiny thing. Yeah, I do. There's a lot of mistakes entrepreneurs make. That's definitely one of them. I think the biggest one is honestly pricing because depending on what industry you're in pricing determines your ability to hire well, where your marketing budget comes from, how much you can spend on marketing. It's like your margin is your margin for error. And it's your margin for growth. Unless you were funded like five years was like if you've got millions in the bank, that is an absolutely different playbook. But most people don't have millions in the bank. So it's then a question of how do you get that budget? And my answer is simple. You go out and sell and you make sure your product has profit so that you can reinvest it. Sounds oversimplified, but actually it's probably something people need to. Yeah, I mean, I was obsessed with business growing up. My dad taught me sales around the dinner table. Quite unconventional. But I read a lot of business books like CEO Burke, strategy books like you name it was a nerd. And like one of the simplest definitions is kind of like a joke. It's like a million hours got asked how did you get rich? And he was like I found that I could buy water for 50 pounds and sell it for a pound. And I did it a million times. Like that's I think quite a reminder of like you strip everything back and it's like how does business make money? And then how do you do more of that? Yeah, I saw a, I can't remember who it was but a quote the other day and it was so I was like what's the biggest lie you've been told in business? It's not that simple. So what do you mean? So no, that's the biggest lie. It's someone saying it's not that simple because it is. Yeah, it's it's simple but not easy. So like at acquisition I was so how I got there even in the first place is I was actually referred to Alex by a mentor. And my understanding is there are a few names putting the ring at the same time. And now the two guys that they were, Alex asked who will work till their eyes bleed and there's one guy who's more interested in lifestyle and then there was obviously me. And I can't see anymore. Like it's why I'm wearing glasses. But I, I was having a chat with one of my friends the other day. It's like I still get a lot of people reach out to me because of the work that I'd previously done. And I'm kind of still coming to times that I'm no longer that guy that I was during that period of time. Like when I say I was like an animal, I was waking up working until like the this like I was on Vegas time and working in the UK for the first year. So my work schedule was like 10 am to like three four in the morning, like a year straight. And I was working like double days. My relationship went to shit. Apologies for swearing. I missed so many different things in terms of family engagements and stuff like that. And towards the end my health was also suffering. Like I started getting migraines and nose bleeds because clearly being that sleep deprived is not a good way of functioning. I don't know how I did it if I'm being honest. Did you hate it? Did you love it? Dude, it was amazing. Like the cultural acquisition was all winners. So like it was a competitive environment. You're like you're with some of the best people like just competing. And it was addictive. Like when is when was kind of one of the portfolio sayings. And it was just really true. It was like you felt like you were winning. We were growing really quickly. At one point I had like a leaderboard on my desk of all the portfolio companies. And it was like taking off the daily revenue run rate 5,000 a day, 10,000 a day, 100,000 a day. Like just taking it off as like a leaderboard for each of the businesses. And it was like game fight. So the whole your whole work felt like a game. So you I guess to work those kind of hours and put yourself through that would be horrible if you ate it. But if you and I imagine everyone at acquisition, if you're working for Alex Warmozi you know that you know what it sounds for. And it's like I'm here to work and I love it. It's kind of the fact that you have to have to. Yeah. And the other thing is I had quite a lot of imposter syndrome when I first joined. Like like I came from an agency environment. My previous title was like copy specialist in like an equal agency. And I went from that to director marketing at 25. And I was in boardrooms in Vegas at times where like I was one of the youngest members of staff with people who were like mid 40s, 50s who done all this incredible stuff. And I was like the marketing guy. Like when I first joined I was completely out of my element. My first paycheck acquisition I blasted it on an internet program. Like an online like like I was always reinvesting everything back into myself. And like that first check went straight into high ticket program. Just kept kept kept to going. And the other thing a lot of people don't realize is when I first joined acquisition was my moonlight. So I got the offer in like November. I was in an equal agency. November is like Black Friday like busiest time of the annual Christmas. Yeah. I had like half a dozen clients that was doing all the email marketing agent like marketing for like copywriting design building out in Clavier for Black Friday. Like I couldn't just walk away from that because acquisition was there. And the other thing was it didn't feel real. So I actually acquisition was my moonlight from like November to January. So I was also like working kind of two jobs. Oh, when you say moonlight using you are working. Yeah. So I do the agency like 95 and then acquisition was five to like four in the morning. Yeah. And did that from November till about mid January. And like leaving that agency was one of the harder things that I never like leaving a business because like I always like like working with the team and it was like a really good group of guys. But I couldn't do both at the same time at that point. And like acquisition was like it was there. And I needed to kind of go all in. So yeah. How does almost it compare to you know in real life compared to how it is online? Exactly same. Like what you see is what you get. Honestly there the entire team is world class. And yeah it's what you see is what you get. Like I don't think they would have been as large as they would have done if it was fake. So I guess the people that come to acquisition like want to work for that want to work for the version they see on that. Yeah. So if it was a different version in person you wouldn't get the same time. Yeah. It's worth noting that also the business has also changed. So obviously I haven't been there in like two years, but like when I left it was becoming quite corporate And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's it's just a lifestyle of a business like at the point You you start having hundreds of people you kind of need some corporate structures to make sure it's like running probably And the irony of that unless you manage it is a lot of the entrepreneurial talent that helped get it to that point Starts leaving. Yeah, and you see this across a whole bunch of businesses So you sort with acquisition with some of the key members like leaving You're seeing it with Stephen Butler with flight story like people know yeah, and it's not Because the business is like failing actually it's oftentimes it's because it's victim of its own success and Those entrepreneurial characters that are builders They don't do very well in a corporate environment. Yeah, I can't think of anything worse Yeah, and it it's that's kind of the stuff that has to be managed or like Worked around that must be tough for some like Alex who's like loves the idea of all these kind of entrepreneurial Killers winners like everyone who's gonna work right say to their eyes bleed And then know your corporate and now everything has to be a little bit more by by the book a little bit more Yeah straight down the line and it must be quite a hard thing for him to To move on to in that sense, so I don't know exactly, but I would that would be where my impression would lie Just because of but the other thing is the game changes So I was speaking to a fairly one-on-on entrepreneur in Australia a couple weeks back He's sort of a billion dollars online and He's put CEO in place for one of his businesses the one that made him like the most most majority of his money um, and it was really interesting because in Ecom right now affiliate armys is like the like the shining object like tiktok shop things like creator ugc All of that playbook What's really interesting is that founder was super interested in that creator playbook But the CEO that he'd put in place for this business It was nowhere on the road map and It was interesting seeing that Kind of lack of tension to be quite honest because this entrepreneur was was quite Sophisticated in the sense of like I put this CEO in place to run the business like I'm gonna step let them do their thing Um, and so as much as I'd like to say like Almost you might miss the entrepreneurial side of things There's also just a live stage of the business where You've put good people in in position and you can just have to kind of like trust that That's what they're gonna do and That frees up your time to do other moves or other things Again depending on whatever the strategy is Yeah, how can we join Simon Scrib? Yeah, um So Jack who's the CEO just can't be kind of made me an offer. I couldn't refuse um The other thing is the mission. So Um in terms of the offer it was about getting equity um Like for me right now a personal rule is I've helped scale a lot of stuff and I've never really had ownership in it or the right Agreements in place like I've objectively made quite a lot of people a lot money um Well, he's helped in some way shape or form um and For me at this stage is like If I'm getting involved with something I'd like some stakes or like ownership in the thing Yeah, and the thing with Simon is is that's what he wants to do um same with Jack and so uh That's one of the reasons for wanting to to join there is like ownership and then the other thing is on the mission side. So Um, we was saying just before this podcast on like a mission that Really lights me up is helping provide more jobs for people Uh, I don't think everyone can be an entrepreneur which might sound controversial but In the last 12 months. I've done probably about 800 to 900 consulting sessions one-on-one With people wanting to be business owners and wanting to be entrepreneurs and um some of them are doing it because of necessity They actually don't want to be an entrepreneur. It's just they've been dealt a bad hand and this is the route For them or this is where they're feeling they have to take um, but then others are Just candidly maybe a little bit misguided because entrepreneurship is perceived to this sexy thing Um, but you guys were saying like you guys were at the pub done the raid and seeing kind of all the finance bros Like they go in at nine they finish at five six They don't have to worry about payroll sales marketing Hiring they have a great life. They're in good money. They live in London Yeah, they have a appointment that makes after work like yeah for some people that's everything Yeah, and like businesses and everything um That's something I've Kind of had to learn the last two years like Everything was about business when I was at a position Like for the last years it's kind of been like Trying to get joy out of a dog walk Yeah, I was Kind of things um, but uh weirdly family helped with that um, yeah like Uh, and it was it was it was good experience because Like um, we did quarterly reviews like it's kind of like a typical business practice At acquisition we would go into a conference room. They'd be like two executive assistants and like a note-taker everyone would present a slide deck of like last quarters results and what next courses focus was going to be in Like it was quite like this dressed up thing Famous quarterly was We got a mansion in Spain Um, we were in the back garden having a barbecue listening to music and just talking about like where to take the business over the next quarter Like wildly different experiences and yet objectively both working like Like families 200 million a year run right now um Didn't matter that they weren't in a conference room wearing suits like there's different ways of doing business And so that was a learning lesson um the other thing with with the family leadership like credit to them uh is They were just so hungry for knowledge like On the ROI on a dog walk like the leadership team would regularly go for dog walks to like think and Listen to audiobooks like they were all reading like three books at the same time like getting lunch in the office The CEO always had like airports in listening to a podcast by like Naval or some like CEO of a tech startup like they were just sponges for information um and They put a lot of important time on the thinking time where it's like The ROI dog walk or something as simple as like a walk um It's very opposite to hormones use like just do the thing doing that. Yeah like again different ways of doing business But both both work um And I think that's a valuable learning lesson is like when you see these entrepreneurs on social media and whatnot like There's a there's a concept in NLP neuro linguistic programming this idea that Your brain is computer and you can program it one of uh one of the more useful ideas in in that discipline is is like take what is useful Like for you and your situation like there might be a lot of information presented Give yourself permission to just cherry pick the thing that's going to be useful for you and discard the rest um And so for me that's kind of been that process is like uh what's useful here what's useful there um and like how can you Create this this interesting like canvas or or um Collage of all of these ideas. You're gonna have very different experiences of you've got Alex from a z Yeah, fan view. Yeah, so I'm in script. Yeah, three extremely different individuals, right? Yeah, I guess it's for you Like you said the the mansion in Spain versus the border versus yeah, god knows I'm what script's gonna do it But there oh no, no, no, that's a weird dude. Yeah, I think it's important to have Like a grand mission in business or is it this is a great business model that was suffice Um, I think it comes down to the entrepreneur um, I think mission is is is definitely super valuable Both tactically and also just for sense of purpose in what you're doing um, I wouldn't start business without a mission That said you don't need it um Like fan you didn't really have a mission it was all about the money Yeah, it's totally like it was a great cause they were yeah Um, so put in a lot of kids through college um But I've met a lot of entrepreneurs like that like um Plenty some entrepreneurs just are simply I want to make as much money as possible Yeah, it's not like a mission there or like they just they want to make money in the businesses of vehicle and it doesn't need to have Lots of wrapping around it. It's just quite like cold-hearted like cold cold-hearted or just Just very just straight into the point um and candidly that some of those guys Great guys to be around because you just know where they stand and There's like no bullshit. I always feel like they're the ones that will never be happy though um So it's an interesting one, some of my friends who come to mind, they had a business doing about 140 million a year and then they lost it and so they went from, and they were quite money hungry, not money hungry but like they were quite honest with, I just want to make money and I'm watching them now and it's just like, they, one of the founders has taken up mountain biking, loves it, like it's, it's, it's kind of like nothing has any meaning except the meaning you give it, they, yeah it didn't, it doesn't really matter, like they just pivoted and kept going, like it's been quite interesting to watch because like after that experience of them kind of losing the business, I was having a chat with them and I was still in business mode and they were just in like lifestyle mode and it was, there was kind of an interesting conversation because I felt like I wasn't, I felt like we'd lost a lot in common, but that was just me because I was obsessed with business, like there was, there's was actually a good reminder of like there's more to life around business and like, objectively they were good people to learn from because they'd had both and so now in terms of their value is they both got multi-millionaires and they're, they're young families and they're just prioritizing, prioritizing, raising their kids and it's like, what comes to mind with them is like no one you've won, like they've done a business, they've made money and like they know when they've won and they're looking for joy in other areas of life and so I, like, this kind of conversation would have gone completely over my head like five years ago and you're like no, yeah just work, present day, I tend to spend a little bit more time thinking about some of these things and so I mean it's been really like a really good kind of advisor or guide with me on that side, slightly things because he's one of those rare entrepreneurs that prioritizes the other stuff in life while also wanting to build a big business, like one of his beliefs is easier to run a bigger business as an example so like that belief means that he's growing a big business but at the same time he will happily take a Thursday off to spend with his son or he'll take a meeting, an important meeting with someone in a field because he's with his son like doing something with a hawk or like archery or something like he, so I'm going to prioritize other things in business and was I guess the takeaway there is like you have the ability to set the frame of how you do business and it's up to other people of if they want to default into that frame, like at acquisition my calendar was open like in six o'clock in the morning till one o'clock at 1am, now it's between like certain times and I don't take meetings on the weekend and both work, one gave me an edge during that period of my journey, this one equally kind of gives me an edge because it makes it harder for me to reach ironically but people have to change their schedule to get a hold of me and it also then obviously frees up my time to do some of the other stuff. What else are you working on with Squib and help bank at the moment that excites you? Yeah, so it's a lot, so it's a group structure, we've got a number of businesses underneath it, help bank I think is really exciting, it's an entrepreneurship platform that we want to help people for free, we've got a mission of helping 10 million people start a business. For me that's exciting because I've grown a couple of platforms before and I enjoy doing it, so I think we can make a really big difference in people's lives, so for me that's a really exciting business, we've got an instant coffee brand that we just launched called DreamBrew, that is interesting for me because a percentage of profits go back in fun dreams at scale but also it's for me on a personal level, it's a chance for me to go back into like DTC where I quote, quote, grew up and go back into like a harder method of growing a business. I actually think DTC is one of the harder businesses to grow, DTC stands for Director Consumer because of margins, so like a can of coffee if you think about how much margin you've got in a can of coffee like the marketing paper has to change to make sense for what it is, so like we're going to be testing paid ads and seeing if that's viable but if not I have to go to cheaper advertising sources to make that work, so the challenge of that excites me and then I believe somebody's be public with it but we're looking at fundraising for a bank, so an entrepreneurship bank within the next 12 to 18 months and if we are successful with that then I think that will be a really incredible business to scale and again because of the impact but also for me on a personal level, people I learnt advertising and copywriting from, I took a lot of inspiration from Ogevee, Ogevee and Mehta, they had the Amax account for like the longest period of time before I got taken from them by a guy called Leicester Wonderman, for me like the bank could potentially be like my Amax story as Amax became a global name, I've studied their playbook and learnt from copywriters who wrote Amax ads, what's the Tobias version for the dream money or what not? You've now worked at the top of the marketing team essentially at acquisition, at help back with Simon, a fan view before, you can probably get any marketing job in the world you want to write, the problem, not the problem, the question I have has there ever been the hunger to do it all yourself? Absolutely, yeah, if I wasn't with Simon in the team right now I would probably be doing it on my own, and the reason for that is, my current title is GMO, so Chief Marketing Officer, if I'm being honest, I think it's a terrible title to have, which might be surprising, but what that means is you're leading the team, you've got all of the pressures of, so I'm going to see him over group, so I've got all the pressures of like growing multiple businesses at the same time, and relative to the value that I provide, like I don't share on all of the upside, even with equity and things like that, it's kind of a crap gig, like real talk, there are some days where I'm like it would be simpler to just grow one business, and have all of the upside, and so the short answer is yes, if I wasn't doing this I would absolutely be doing my own thing, I think the GMO title is obviously a lot of people aspire for it and want it, I don't think it's all that it's made out to be, because another thing is when you're leading the team, you're not in the weeds doing the marketing that maybe you enjoy in the first place, you have to like step up a level, and then the other thing is like just a lesson I've learned, because I've worked across so many different businesses now, it's like you are not the business, like for most of you who don't have equity or maybe like maybe have token equity or whatever that situation is, there is a day where the company might no longer need them anymore, or depending on the founder like they might not be loyalty, so they would give some of the best years of their life growing a business, and then two, three years later they're kind of ejected for someone else, nothing to show for it. Yeah, and I was at a dinner in London the other day, there were multiple CMOs in the room, I don't even know how they got there, because it was like a laid back dinner, one was for one of the biggest jewelry stores in the UK, another one was had previously been like CMO of like PayPal Europe and whatnot, it was fascinating to watch what they were doing now, because they were kind of on a career break, like they'd given best years of their career building these businesses and doing all of this cool stuff, and yeah, here they were at the dinner, and one of them was talking about being a personal trainer, and like doing fractional CMO stuff, I've got some controversial opinions on fractional CMO, I think it's the pointness, but like against that backdrop is like they'd basically spend their careers growing other people's stuff instead of their own, and that's kind of like why I don't think it's the best gig, unless you're smart with getting ownership early on, maybe joining a newer startup to be able to be on the cap table, other than that, I actually would advise people to get rid of the shiny title and focus on the profit and like running in the bank account without the prestige. So I guess that's why you've taken this opportunity, it's because part of a journey equity in it, and the upside is something you'll benefit from, yeah, what's something that you're working on right now or in the future that you could teach us about? - Yeah, so what's biggest business competition? So we launched that on Monday. In terms of the lesson that I think could be valuable is the opportunity for them to have multiple marketing playbooks to help grow it. We've spoken about this idea of UGC, user-generated content. I think for any business right now, they could leverage some form of UGC or creator to help grow their business. 'Cause creators could be anyone from the 18-year-old kid making content in the bedroom to celebrities. And the barrier to work with creators is a lot lower than people think. Like if you've got a viable business or a viable idea or you can maybe the gift of the gab, like you can DM a lot of these creators and get access easier than people realize and start a conversation and maybe work with them in some capacity. So UGC playbook and any business where maybe a founder doesn't want to turn up on camera like this, there's nothing stopping you hiring someone who will do it. Like you're seeing content series come from restaurants where the staff are doing skits in the restaurant. Like the owner's not the person on camera, but the employees and members of the team are. Still works to get viral videos out and views which ultimately grow the restaurant. So I think a creator playbook can be used for any business. In terms of how we're doing it for the world's biggest business competition, I told you we've got 20 influencers that we're in the process of onboarding. Each of them are gonna post two times a day across platforms, which gives around 1200 to 4800 pieces of content on a monthly basis that we don't have to create that promotes this thing. It takes work to set that up, but like a lot of businesses could do that. Just again, it's simple, but like doing it is the hard part. And in terms of like simple set up, everyone can send an email. Everyone can send a DM like, it's just kind of the creativity to do so. So that's I think valuable there. The other thing I think that is useful for businesses is this idea of partnerships. Like we spoke earlier about margin and having margin in a business to fund growth. Help bank normally doesn't actually sell anything. Like we've got a kind of rule which is we'll never charge for advice or help. So how do you make money there? In terms of one of the ways that we do it is through sponsors or partnerships. And so we make a commission from promoting something else, let's say Shopify. So if you're wanting to start an e-con brand, basically the number one tool that everyone is using in Shopify. And so if we recommend that, we can get commission based on doing that. And it creates kind of like a symbiotic relationship where we're serving our audience with the best tools that they'll be using anyway and we can get paid to do it. That idea exists for most businesses. So if you are a business with low margins, how can you partner with a business with higher margins and collect a commission based on kind of being a middleman? And I think a great example of that that most people would recognize is what trip have done with calm. So trip are the energy drinks brand. Remember what I said earlier about like the economics of selling a canned beverage is quite slim. They've partnered with calm and you'll often see like the calm logo on their drinks. Calm is an app. They sell, I think they sell a one-time membership for like 500 pounds or they've got like weekly or annual pricing. You've got that app economic model attached to a soft drink, the underlying economics or margin of the business has changed and the war chest that you're now able to get to change your marketing is a huge unlock for that drink brand. And so they're just getting an affiliate from calm just for putting like QR code. Yeah. Everyone signs up and they'll get a cut. It's so simple, isn't it? Yeah, and it shows the value of attention. The more people you have, whether it's online content or physical products, if you've got people looking at your staff, there's so much more opportunity beyond whatever just that thing is. Yeah, and then the thing with attention is to a degree it's pay to play. Like, I tell people you can buy or earn attention. Earning is what we're doing today where you turn up on camera, you package content and you aim to get views with it and you're putting work in to make something valuable that gets distributed. There's also a pathway where you can basically just whip your credit card out and buy influences or buy paid advertising. And the reason I mentioned the calm thing is like that unlock of that partnership gives them a new credit card to be able to run paid advertising at scale. Because if you go on their website, when you buy a trip online, it automatically comes with a free three month, three week or three month membership to calm that you're kind of renewed into online. And so they've got that economic model where they can figure out what their average order value is of the two things combined and just take that into the front end. And so previously maybe they had like a pound that they could spend on ads now with trip, maybe they've got like 20 quid. And like A, that changes the economics as a business. But also imagine like because obviously you don't like business to a degree is a competitive, you are competing with other brands. Like now it's tripped versus Coca-Cola or the other brands. And these guys can spend like 10 pounds to get sale on matter. And these other brands can only spend a quid. Like who's going to start to win in the advertising auction? So like one of the other things I learned from Homozi was how to engineer these situations like CAC to LTV where if you can't get a cheap customer acquisition cost, how can you how can you get more? How can you sell something expensive or the partnership playbook which I think I've been honing with Simon and the team of like, 'cause we can't sell anything. So that's a constraint is like how do we partner with brands that have something and create that kind of relationship? - We see that on a daily basis with brands that come to us like, I want a launch podcast and okay, you're going to have someone who's going to host it, you're going to pay for the production, you're going to put the time into it. Or you put a budget into leveraging the trust that this existing podcast has to promote your product. It's like, that's the pay to win option. This one has a higher ceiling, but it's a lot fucking hard and it'll take a lot longer. But if you have the budget, then we're not pay to have the access to it, which is incredible. - This is interesting. I guess you are in a way an old-school marketer coming from E-Com, but then you've gone through the info space with Homozi and Squibb. Do you think the personal brand is as important as people portray it to be? - Yeah, yeah. I used to hate the personal brand in conversations. Like, I was always obsessed with direct response. But what brand gives you is an undeniable edge. Like, the way I run marketing is very often by the numbers. So you have key performance indicators or KPIs on how you would expect a funnel to convert. In a pure traditional direct response business, there's a lot of numbers that you can kind of like use across industries that you attach to each funnel step. And it's quite like mean in the sense of direct response is very harsh. Like, unless you've been at the coalface of customer acquisition, you don't know how hot the stove actually is. Without brand, those numbers are, there's a lot less room to be flabby. With brand, everything's like skewed in the positive direction. Like, it's like a magic aura or halo that surrounds your metrics that allow you to do things that other businesses aren't able to do. And so, like, brand is super important in that sense. Like, I used to get annoyed at the branding conversations. But as I, I guess, get older or more sophisticated, there was actually times where brand beats direct response. And like, there's a guy called Davey Fogati who talks about it where the UDI initially used direct response to get to a certain stage. And then the company went through a process of split testing their direct response assets with branded assets. And the brand assets started to beat the direct response ones. And then they became like a branded business. And so, the reason I think brand is so important is I actually think it's kind of like an evolution of where large businesses ultimately get to. Like, Nike, when my argue started with direct response or direct selling, Phil Knight selling shoes out at the back of his car. Now where they are is like massive brand, where they're doing these massive brand campaigns. Like, so I think brand is actually super important and it's definitely worth the investment. - I guess you have that benefit of A, you can probably charge more. And B, you have, at least in the personal brand side of it, you can have a negative CAC. So if I can get some sponsorship, which then pays for everything, and then I'm getting customers off these posts, so it's a pretty sustainable business. - Yeah, and you see it in the numbers. Like if you're tracking blended CPA, so like the amount you spend per month over the customers, like brand gives you a lower blended CPA. And so like you can actually grow a business a little healthier as well, if you've got a good brand as well. - Not longer term as well. You turn off direct response, you stop getting results. So I'd be thinking when we're pitching sponsorships, or someone if it's an evergreen podcast, it's like that's gonna be seen for years to come. People are gonna be aware of you, they might see a Facebook ad, but they'll click it because they've seen you on a podcast, et cetera, et cetera. Right, we more or less need to wrap up. I just wanted to ask, what are the three biggest things you've learned from those three massive projects you've talked about being leading the marketing for Hormozzi and the book launch and everything with that. Your current role will be a script, and then that kind of intermediate one with the fundraising at Favio. - Yeah. - What are the, if you were to attribute one massive thing to each of those experiences, what would they be? - Yeah, so from a paid advertising standpoint, it is engineering a superior LTV lifetime value. How do you get a marketing budget to spend more on advertising? Partners, higher pricing, all of that stuff, that buy and large has more leverage in it than trying to get cheap customer acquisition costs. That'd be less and less number one for me, more like a big takeaway. - Is that across the three or for Hormozzi? - Ah, of course the three. That playbook I've used across each business. Next one is, I say mission, like you asked if it was needed, and mounts was like it's not really, but like a business with a mission has similar to brand, like it helps with brand. Like it gives you something to stand for and a reason to exist, which helps with hiring and it helps with, again, customer acquisition. Like it helps with closing sponsors. Like people have shared values and like a shared reason, and I think a business with a mission is super important. And then the third one is maybe more on personal side, meaning 'cause I've made those mistakes, is smell the razors, like obviously there are seasons and there's times where you can go all in, but some of the more successful entrepreneurs I've met, they were just smarter, like they didn't need to chew glass and kind of work into their eyes, believe it. They just, they had more leverage, Horm. So I think in terms of that final thing is like, there's a lot of hustle culture online, but there's quite a loud voice, trying to find those entrepreneurs that are doing things differently and like have managed both, 'cause they do exist. And there's an Aristotle quote, which is like some mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain two opposing thoughts without accepting either of them. Like look at both sides of that entrepreneurship or argument of hustle versus like lifestyle and take what is useful. Because going back to what we said earlier, business can be a lot simpler than people make it out to be, or like get customers and make sure you make money from those customers. Yeah, so simplicity, like smell the raisers and try and keep things simple. - Sound. - Thanks for your time. - Yeah. - Been a gentleman. - Cool. Thanks guys.