August 13, 2024 • 40 mins
Ever wondered how you can master lead generation and turn it into a profitable business? This episode of Side Hustle City is your go-to guide. We’re sitting down with Phil F. Smith, an entrepreneur who pivoted from a traditional 9-to-5 to becoming a lead generation dynamo. Phil’s journey is nothing short of inspiring, from starting a web hosting company back in 1998 to selling businesses and venturing into lead generation in 2014. Learn from Phil as he shares strategies he used to overcome challenges like rising lead costs and the importance of evolving your tactics to stay ahead.
Ready to unlock the secrets of lead generation specifically for the lending industry? Phil reveals an innovative funnel strategy using Facebook ads to generate and categorize leads based on factors like incorporation status and credit score. Discover how offering free automated marketing software with AI can reduce lead costs and expand your reach. Phil also talks about the value of integrating AI to manage a high volume of leads, maximizing data, and doubling revenue. With added insights from industry experts like Kevin Harrington, this episode is packed with actionable advice that can transform your approach to lead generation.
Digital advertising is more than just running ads; it’s about understanding customer needs and adjusting your strategies accordingly. Phil dives into the complexities of advertising across different platforms, from Facebook to YouTube to Google, and the importance of pricing your services based on fluctuating lead costs. Additionally, we discuss the benefits of using WordPress for course management and the evolution of CRM and automation software. Phil’s extensive knowledge and tips on leveraging media exposure for brand building are the icing on the cake. Tune in, join our Side Hustle City community on Facebook, and take the first step towards turning your side hustle into a thriving main hustle.
As you're inspired to embark on your side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. With a team of experienced marketing professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, we are ready to assist you in reaching your goals. To find out more, visit www.reversedout.com.
Subscribe to Side Hustle City and join our Community on Facebook
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started.
All right.
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast Today's
special guest, philip F Smith.
I, like you, got the middleinitial in there.
There's a lot of Philip Smithsout there, I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
There are.
It's funny.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, welcome to the podcast, Phil.
It's great to have you here.
I can't wait to talk to youabout some of this growth
marketing work you're doing andpartnerships with Kevin
Harrington.
People know him from Shark Tank.
You got a bunch of other folksthat you're working with now, so
I'd love to just understandyour story.
What led you into this?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, well, you know, appreciate you having me on.
It's always fun to talk shop.
So you know how I got into theentrepreneurial world.
It was just way back in the dayI was doing that typical 9 to 5
, and it's 1998.
And I had an offer to start upmy own business and I also had
an offer for the job and it justdidn't make sense to me not to
(01:20):
take the chance to start my ownbusiness.
And that was a web hostingcompany, again back in 98, we
sold it in 2005.
I've sold 5 companies since,now, been part of 9 acquisitions
, and the main reason why is Isold one of my companies to an
investment fund and I did abunch of deals with them.
So always put yourself in thesame right room with the right
(01:40):
people, especially if they havemoney, those are fun people to
hang out with.
So I did that.
What I'm doing today,everything is lead
generation-based.
It's all about generating leads, owning the data and monetizing
it.
And when I say monetize it, youcould sell the leads, I could
do affiliate marketing, I couldsell my own services.
(02:00):
But that's the world that welive in.
It's all about teachingcompanies.
Obviously, we do it forourselves too, but we also help
companies generate leads forthemselves, and it's just so
they understand how to monetize,of course, their own leads,
also their own customer base,cause a lot of companies don't
even do that.
So, anyway, that's the nutshell, what I concentrate on every
(02:21):
day.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So for you, you didn't have a lead generation
person to help you start yourbusinesses, so you had to figure
this thing out on your way.
But take us through some of thesteps of actually launching a
lead generation business assomeone who does lead generation
for other people.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
So it's funny April of 2014,.
I was doing some consulting andI helped a company to get out
of their business I'm sorry, getout of their business.
Going backwards, I changedeverything around as a digital
marketing company within sixmonths, turned the whole company
around and sold it and the guykind of the owner, kind of
screwed me over a little bit,but it's fine.
(03:00):
You kind of get used to thatafter a while, unfortunately.
But people always try to takeadvantage of you.
So, but what happened was,because of that happened, I said
you know what?
I'm going to fire all myclients.
I really don't want to do thisanymore anyway and I want to
jump in as lead generationbusiness.
The problem was, like you justsaid, I had no one to go to to
(03:21):
teach me anything, so I had tofigure it out and I knew that I
couldn't just start a leadgeneration business today
without knowing anything.
And how do I even start?
So I said to myself I got tolearn this business inside and
out, from the inside out.
So what I did was I learned howto do lead brokering.
So I literally found leadbuyers, I found lead sellers, I
(03:44):
brokered a deal, I made my cutand I was like, wow, that was
pretty easy.
Now, sales has always been easyfor me.
I've always been one of thosepeople I could just figure stuff
out.
I teach myself Always veryimportant, especially today with
how everything changes so fast.
So what happened was you fastforward.
As I started learning thebusiness I do lead brokering 10,
(04:06):
20 grand a month I was like,all right, this is cool.
But I said you know what?
I started getting some baddeals done.
So what I mean by that iscompanies started selling me bad
leads and of course, I take thehit on it.
I'm the bad guy because I'm thebroker in the middle.
So I said to myself, you knowwhat?
How do I eliminate these guys?
How do I just do this myself?
So, just learning as I go, andbasically a fast forward.
(04:29):
From April of 14, when I started, to October of 14, I ran my
first Facebook ad ever and Istarted generating leads for $18
.
They were for the business loanspace.
So I was generating businessloan leads for $18 and selling
them for $60.
And I was like, wow, this iscool, but I knew it wouldn't
last forever.
You always have to think 10steps down the road.
(04:49):
You can't just start a business, and even if you are successful
, you can't just assume it'sgoing to last forever.
I always just assumeeverything's going to crash and
burn and I need a plan B, and Igot to think about what's going
to happen in 6 to 12 months fromnow.
So I knew my lead cost is notgoing to stay at $18.
And I was right.
In a year from there, inSeptember of 2015, the lead cost
(05:12):
went up to $70.
So, from $18 to $70 in a year,and at that point in time,
though, it was fine, because Iknew it was going to happen, and
I started learning how tomonetize my leads in other ways.
So, for example, I took abusiness loan lead in.
I sold it to a business loanlender, but not every single
lead qualified for a businessloan.
(05:33):
So, for example, I got a lot ofstartups.
They didn't have any revenue,they had bad credit.
What do I do with them?
Well, I started selling them tocredit repair buyers, and then
I started buyers.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Ah, beautiful, yes.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
I found a company that took in leads for credit
monitoring right, for yourbusiness, your business credit
monitoring.
Then I added in companies thatprovided services to startups to
help them get off the groundand get lending down the road.
It was a unique service I'dnever heard of, but they were
buying leads for me.
So I started to figure out howdo I take one lead, filter it
(06:08):
out in their revenue, theircredit score, how long they've
been in business right, and allthese different filters, and I
basically sent them, sometimesin three or four different
directions, right.
So then I had companies come tome, like a company called
LoanMe, and what they did wasthey bought leads between $4,000
a month in revenue and $10,000a month in revenue.
(06:29):
They had companies over $10,000a month in revenue.
So I basically had like eightdifferent lead buyers and eight
different filters.
So what I'm getting at is myoverall lead cost was actually
only like $8.
Wow, right.
My high quality leads were $70,like I said before, the ones
(06:49):
that filtered out to actualbusiness loan lead they were $70
.
Right, because it was only like10% of the leads I generated
qualified for a business loan.
So my $8 lead was just for ablanket.
Everybody bad credit, goodcredit, no revenue.
A lot of revenue didn't matter.
That was an $8 lead, but thebusiness loan leads that
filtered out were actually $70at September of 2015.
(07:13):
But the way I looked at it wasI have an $8 lead.
At the end of the day, how do Imonetize all these leads?
So that's what I startedlearning and then eventually,
two years later, I startedselling courses.
I looked at you know guysselling courses out there and
I'm like you know I could dothis I mean how do you not
create a course?
(07:33):
so I created a course and Icreated a sales video.
Obviously I researched allthese other people that were
doing it and understood how theydo it, what software they're
using, how long are are thesewebinars, what price points
they're using.
So I started just researchingthe industry.
So I came out with a 997 coursebecause everyone else had one
and I basically put it out thereand as only promoting this to
(07:56):
my business loan leads, I wasselling a $1,000 course on how
to start their own business andliterally within 24 hours got my
first sale.
My first month I did 30 grand.
That was September, I think of17.
By the end of the year I didlike 300 grand.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Right, so that's just pure profit.
Right Because I'm justpromoting it to my existing lead
base.
So it was an amazing thing.
And then in 2018, january, Iended up partnering with Kevin
Harrington, who was on the firstcouple of seasons of Shark Tank
, because, just to use his brand, I'm like I need to attach
myself to a bigger brand, getmyself out there.
So I did that, obviously, andI've been working with him ever
(08:34):
since, still work with him today, and that really helped me out.
So what I always tell companiesor anybody that's trying to
start a business, or even ifyou're already in business, if
you're trying to get into abusiness, I love the data space
because it's scalable, it'sautomated.
I'm still a one employeecompany, just so you know, still
a one employee company.
Done multiple eight figures,made the Inc 5000 list five
(08:54):
times, probably six times thisyear.
I've had a lot of success andI'm still a one employee company
.
I still use freelancers, stilluse consultants, of course, but
that's the scalability of leadgeneration, that's the
automation of lead generation,and that's why I love this
business so much because I canwork from home, stay, you know,
be around my kids more and beable to scale a business.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You know it's hilarious about this.
Last week I just won a B2Blender and we're doing all their
pay-per-click ads for them andthey said one of the problems
they were doing it in-house.
Right, they're doing all theirpay-per-click in-house.
They're saying, oh, 50% of ourleads are people that don't
qualify, right, yeah, so youjust gave me an idea.
It's like hey, are you guysselling those bad leads to
(09:38):
credit repair people?
That's brilliant.
Like they, I don't thinkthey're thinking of that.
But for people for reference, alot of people don't know because
they've never taken one ofthese loans or worked with one
of these companies, like an ondeck or one of these other
companies there's a bunch ofthem out there.
Uh, they, they essentially willwork with businesses on the
(10:03):
short term, you know, six months, I think on deck does right,
and there's a preset amount youwould have to pay back.
So you kind of know upfront.
I don't even think they reallytell you the interest rate.
They're just like look, if youlearn, if you borrow 10 grand,
you're going to end up paying usback 11 grand in six months or
whatever.
It is Right, and the defaultrates on these are actually
pretty low from what Iunderstand.
Yeah, it should be less than20%.
(10:23):
Less than 20%, and there's awhat's the like.
There's a lending tree of thisindustry.
It's like I can't remember whatthe name of it is, but Lendio.
Yeah, buddy of mine runs one inanother city.
So these are like franchises,so you can like buy a franchise
for one of these things andessentially do kind of what you
were doing.
But I mean you sound likeyou're.
(10:43):
I mean this was back in the day.
I mean you're talking 2015,2016.
I mean you were doing this waybefore.
A lot of these other peoplewere doing it and it's a great
bit.
From what I understand, themargins are excellent If you
loan to one of these, one ofthese lenders.
Right, if you're an investorand you loan to one of these,
the returns are really good.
And I never knew about thisindustry until recently and I'm
(11:05):
actually working with you knowanother guy who's who's on the
other side of that Like they'reat the hey, let me find lenders
for these, for these companies,but that's a great business to
be in.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, you're 100% right.
You have the syndication side,so you invest in them, right,
which I do.
You can usually make about 50%on your money, which is amazing.
Not going to make that in thestock market, right?
No, so I have something calledLoan Broker Network, which
actually we have over 10,000people that have come in where
we teach them the loan brokerindustry, we teach them lead
(11:37):
generation and through ournetwork, we do $20 million a
month in lending and it'samazing, that's through us and
our partners.
And so, yeah, you're 100% right.
There's a lot of different waysto make money in the lending
industry.
It's never going to go anywhere.
It's good in the bad economy.
It's good with the good economy.
(11:58):
Everyone needs money at alltimes.
We also provide marketingservices now.
So what we do is we generatebusiness leads and we pivoted
our marketing strategies.
But exactly what you just saidyou're trying to generate.
Companies would always come tome and say, phil, I just want
the best leads.
I'm like, no, you're thinkingabout this wrong.
You want every lead and youwant to monetize them as many
different ways.
Then your premium leads becomefree.
(12:19):
Brilliant, right, that's thestrategy.
So I'll give you a funnel ideathat we're running right now
that literally just started thisrecently and it's already
crushing it.
So I'll give you exactly whatwe're doing.
This is a you know, literally aeasily $20 million business.
I'm going to give you on asilver platter Anybody listening
, feel free to go do it yourself.
All right, you ready.
What you do is when you run,let's say, facebook ads, you
(12:43):
want to put out an offer.
That is a hot offer right now.
It's trending, whatever it is.
So AI is that?
What we did was we put out anad right now that say, get
access to our free automatedmarketing software.
So, literally, get access to itfor free.
With AI built in, you can buildout your AI for your business.
So you have the automatedmarketing CRM a need out there
(13:09):
plus AI.
So that's a free offer.
You're going to generate leads.
Right now, we're at $5 a lead,which is ridiculous.
That's crazy.
Especially today with Facebook,le to five bucks.
When they fill out that formthe initial form I ask them are
you incorporated or not?
If they're not incorporated,I'm going to send them off to a,
to a ink file I forget inkfiles, new name, but ink fileile
(13:33):
gives people sets of acorporation Usually make about
$125 a client or a customer thatI send to them.
So if they say no, then I wantto push them over to there.
If they say no, I'm notincorporated, I ask them if
they're interested in a personalloan.
We have someone that doesunsecured personal loans.
If they say yes, I ask them forthe credit score secured
(13:57):
personal loans.
If they say yes, I ask them forthe credit score.
If they're over 680, I'll sendthem there.
If they're over 720, I asksomeone else that can get credit
cards stacking for them.
Get a bunch of credit cards at0% interest, but they need a 720
.
So right now, I just told youabout three different buyers.
Now, if they say, yes, I amincorporated, cool, you want a
business loan?
Now, that's different buyers.
What's your revenue?
What's this?
(14:17):
What's that?
You still ask them the creditscore question because I can
still send them off to the otherpeople.
Then I ask them what marketingservices are you interested in?
Right, you just want our freeCRM.
Or do you want SEO?
You want to be interviewed onTV?
We provide that service.
You want a shark on your boardof advisors?
Kevin will go on someone'sboard of advisors if it makes
(14:37):
sense.
So consulting services, etcetera.
Then from there they go througha funnel where they watch a
video that gives them access tothat free CRM.
It's 100% true, we're not lying.
For $1,000 plus that coursecomes with a free group weekly
call to answer any questionsthey have with their business.
(15:01):
So they're marketing questions,lending questions.
So what this sell is KevinHarrington's team that's done $6
billion in sales is going tohelp you grow your business.
It costs $1,000.
We give you a course and a freeweekly call and Kevin will be
on once a month to answerquestions, just for a thousand
bucks.
The reason why that thousanddollars is important, because
(15:22):
that pays for the leads, right?
So think about it $5 lead, Ionly need to convert half a
percent to be breakeven.
Now I get free leads and thenI'm selling them off doing
affiliate marketing.
Plus, we have our own servicesthat we can sell.
We build out a custom AI forcompanies and stuff like that
too.
So now we have that coming inright.
So now we can literally go to1,000 leads a day very easily,
(15:45):
and now it's just free.
And then we just offer whateverwe offer.
We can upsell through our calls, whatever.
So there's your strategy on pickin whatever industry you want
to be in, whatever is a hot,free offer that you can do, just
getting the cheap data,monetize them through the form,
get all the information you can.
That makes sense.
And then, you know, providesome sort of course, because the
(16:06):
reason why the course isimportant there's no fulfillment
Right, I have to go dosomething, right?
So and again, I like to stay asmall company.
So sell a course with a weeklycall Guess what?
I already do a weekly call, soit doesn't matter to me.
You know what I mean.
So I'm selling something I'malready doing and I'm giving a
course, it doesn't matter.
And of course, yes, I have.
You know, kevin Harrington, westarted working with Damon John
(16:26):
recently.
So yeah, we have that now,obviously to help sell it.
But, to be honest, you don'tneed to sell this stuff, you
know.
As long as you know what you'redoing, that's good enough.
But obviously I've been workingwith them for a long time, so I
use them.
But but yeah, I mean thatthat's your strategy in a
nutshell.
You obviously got to piece ittogether and figure it out, but
it's that's the power ofbuilding something out that's
(16:49):
scalable and automated.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, and just think about I mean, there's a lot of
these companies.
I didn't realize how many therewere.
My wife sometimes you know forher her spa she'll use on deck
Right, so she has an on deckloan out right now and then also
she can use her POS system.
The accounting system that'stied into her POS was Square.
Square Capital offers her moneyall the time there is.
(17:11):
Soon as you go to one of thesewebsites, you are going to get
destroyed with Facebook ads.
As soon as you go to one ofthese websites, you are going to
get destroyed with Facebook ads.
As soon as I started workingwith this client, I've got I
don't know how many now that Iget on Facebook.
Every time I open Facebook it'slike the first thing I see, so
I'm getting hit with tons ofthose.
I probably need to clear mycash and everything so that I
(17:34):
can reset my Facebook ads thatI'm getting.
But you mentioned Facebook adsthat I'm getting.
But you mentioned Facebook adsand I know my client in
particular.
They're spending between$20,000 and $50,000 depending on
what's going on every month inFacebook and Google ads.
Right, but they're smallcompared to some of these other
companies out here that could bespending a quarter mil a month
or more just trying to go outhere and find leads, or they
(17:57):
have to go to a third partygroup and they have to buy those
leads to try to get something.
Your strategy is veryinteresting and it's almost like
it reminds me of the NativeAmericans, right?
If they killed a buffalo, theydidn't just eat the meat, right,
they used every piece of it.
I mean, this is what.
This is kind of what you'redoing out here, and it's smart
because every form that that youknow, whatever that ad is
(18:19):
you're doing, it goes back to aform.
You get the information fromthe people.
People are throwing those leadsaway if they don't think they
qualify.
Right, I mean, this is.
It's wild to me that they'redoing that, and you've come up
with this strategy and you'vegot all these partnerships.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, and like you said before this interview, you
said people don't know what theydon't know right, and that's
the thing with anybody in anycase, and they just don't
understand it.
They don't understand theconcept.
A lot of people think they'redoing something wrong by trying
to sell their customer base ortheir leads something else.
It's almost like spammy orscammy, but it's not as long as
you're giving them like we don'tjust offer people something
(18:59):
they don't ask for, you know.
So if they say, yes, I'minterested in this, then I'm
going to have someone call themfor Kevin stuff.
If it's a day with a sharkevent, you know, if it's SEO
services, if it's whatever,we're just going to say all
right, you asked for this, hereyou go.
You know what I mean.
So if they don't have a companythat's incorporated, then we're
going to say, hey, since yourcompany's not incorporated,
would you like to get one done?
(19:20):
It's actually free, you justgot to pay your state fees,
right?
That's the company's offer.
So we just offer whatever theysay on a form and we put the
stuff in front of them.
Obviously, we'll answerquestions and do stuff and we'll
do what we say we're going todo, but of course, now you have
(19:43):
a captive audience once a weekthat's listening to you.
You're proving that you knowwhat you're doing.
What are they going to do?
They're going to work with you.
They're going to give you moremoney, right?
They're going to want you tohelp them.
So it's the best.
It's almost like you know,people build out Facebook groups
for that reason.
Oh, you know, we communicatewith them through there, which
is great because that's ongoing.
(20:03):
It's 24 seven and we certainlyhave support channels and
whatever.
But that extra weekly callwhere you actually physically
see somebody and you can talk tothem, whatever.
I mean that's a game changer.
So these are things that we doand we give a lot of these ideas
to companies and it kind ofgoes over their head or they're
like to kind of head spinning.
I literally had a meeting todaywith someone that would build
that AI, for in the lendingindustry, they're a large broker
(20:27):
and I said to them and you cansay this to any broker lender
that you deal with you can saylisten, guys, I can show you how
to double your revenue in ayear.
And they're going to be likehow do I double my revenue in a
year?
Yeah, and you say all theseleads that you're generating.
You're generating for lending.
When you come to work every day, you care about closing deals,
(20:50):
right, yeah, that's all we careabout.
Okay, good, but you havebusinesses that are generating a
decent amount of revenue,because it's the only way you're
going to get them approved.
If they do in at least 100 to120 grand a year in revenue, oh
yeah, so they have money tospend.
They need to grow.
They're probably using theirmoney to grow.
What if you provide them withmarketing services?
(21:12):
Website.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Basic website.
Their websites probably lookslike garbage anyway.
Uh, you know we do websites, soit's like I, I'd see some of
these websites and I'm like Ican't believe you.
You actually went to marketwith this website.
Uh, in none of them the seo isterrible.
The on-page search is alwaysbad.
I, I don't.
I honestly I don't know howpeople even find in half their
sites.
They don't have a Googlebusiness account.
(21:36):
It's, it's just, it's, they'rea mess.
And even the local ones, likethe local, the local search,
local search is non-existentwith these people and it's, it's
wild that they're operatinglike this.
But every one of them, I meanthey're ready to go pay for ads
and their website is junk.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yep, and that's the thing I see.
I used to own consultingbusiness, which I sold in 2010
to that investment fund when Imentioned before, and that's how
I got into the fund.
But when I would walk into acompany selling consulting
services back in a day, I wouldshow them a big like pie chart
from New York.
So pizza is a big thing and Isay, listen, here's your pizza
(22:16):
pie, right, and you need youhave eight slices, and these
eight slices are basically eightdifferent things that you need
your funnel to work, your funnel.
When you, if you only got fourpieces when you ordered a pizza
pie, what would you do?
You probably give it back.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Like something that's going on here, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
That's your funnel.
If all eight pieces are nothere, it's not going to work.
All right, everything has towork together, right?
So that's what I would go inand sell them and say, listen,
sure, I can help you drive inleads, great.
But it's going to collapse whenit hits this point.
Even if you are good atgenerating leads, let's just say
(22:53):
your sales process sucks, youknow, let's just say your sales
process sucks.
Let's just say your conversionssuck, or whatever it is.
And I learned a lot of companiescannot sell their own product.
I mean, I've learned that overthe years, so that was how I
used to sell it back in the day,but for today, it's all about
monetizing the data.
And when I talked to thatcompany today and I said, listen
(23:14):
, guys, you're doing funding,great, you're making a lot of
money, wonderful.
But think about all thebusiness that's in these leads.
They generate like 8,000 leadsa month fresh.
They have over a millionrecords to date.
So we're building an AI forthem to contact those million
records that they won't eventouch because it's too much, but
AI obviously will just do thatfor them all day long and build
(23:35):
out the conversation.
So that's obviously what we'restarting with.
But I'm like you guys can easilydouble your revenue just by
starting simple marketingservices.
And the great thing about ityou can outsource everything.
So they could just hire asalesperson, project manager,
take these leads you alreadyhave.
It's not like you have to gogenerate more leads and bring
them through, offer the services, outsource it to any one of the
(23:59):
20 companies out there easily.
That do all the outsourcing forall these types of services
Like Vendasta is one just as anexample and they'll do all the
back end for you and you justproject, manage it and sell it.
You know, and make whatever youmake on it and build that up.
I mean, it's just, it's it'swork.
I'm not saying it doesn't.
It's easy.
You know it's an easy concept,but you still have to execute.
(24:21):
But when you have free leads,how do you not make money with
free leads?
Right, so that that's theconcept.
With them, you already have thedata, you already have the
leads.
You're just selling anotherservice.
And two, they need money andthey need marketing.
I mean, that's it.
Of course they need more thanthat, but those are the two
number one things that they need.
If you ask me, because withoutthose two things, how do you
grow?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
That's right.
I mean, what do you do?
And people don't.
They're terrible at sales,they're terrible at nurturing
leads.
They don't know what a salesfunnel even looks like, or what
software they need in order tobuild out a funnel, what the
processes are.
And, speaking of that, wetalked about Google, we talked
about Facebook.
We haven't talked about YouTube, and I know that's getting to
(25:04):
be much more popular when itcomes to running ads, if your
business can actually run ads onthere.
But what are some of thetechnologies, like a YouTube on
the come up or places that yousee are outside of Google and
Facebook yeah, great places tostart generating some leads from
.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
To be honest.
I mean we only do a volume.
So Facebook's number one interms of volume, youtube's
number two and then Google'snumber three.
So, youtube, you can definitelyget good volume.
It's going to cost you moremoney for the leads, but they
are going to be higher quality.
Google is going to be less.
It is going to be higherquality but less volume and
you're also going to pay for it.
(25:40):
So, for example, one of ourcampaigns where we do all three
uh, facebook will come in atlike eight to 10 bucks.
Uh, youtube could be like 18 to20,.
Uh, google is similar, maybe alittle higher.
It just depends if it's displayor or whatever.
Um, but you know, similar toYouTube, but YouTube will
convert at like sometimes double, even triple than Facebook, you
(26:03):
know.
So, with the same exact adrunning to a very similar
audience.
But you know the difference isand it depends on how you run
YouTube.
But you know Facebook is juststraight display, right, so
you're scrolling through.
You have to have like an uglyad or something that stands out.
You know we put exotic cars andyou have a Lambo and all that
fun stuff.
But you know we put that outthere just to get attention and
(26:25):
it works, of course, but youknow it's like they're just
scrolling through.
Maybe I like it, maybe I don't.
Google YouTube is more intentbased.
Right, they're either searchingfor it or it can definitely do
really well in terms oftargeting.
But your targeting is going tobe based on a lot of what
they're searching for and whattheir history is right, where
(26:45):
Facebook is kind of the completeopposite.
You're kind of just guessing.
So on Facebook, we just targetbusiness owners, business owners
behaviors, and that's it, andit works.
Right At the end of the day, itworks.
It's just not as high quality,but we do get a lot of data from
it.
It works.
It's just not as high quality,but we do get a lot of data from
it.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Youtube less data, higher quality, but it's still
profitable obviously, and whenyou mentioned you had said, hey
look, I just get you know, youessentially give information
away.
I do the same thing with myagency.
I'm like, yeah, sure, I meanyou guys could do this yourself.
Here's what you have to do.
I just tell them they neverwant to do it themselves, right,
they never want to do it.
It's just too much work.
I will literally lay it out forthem.
(27:23):
I'll say, look, I you know, ifyou guys want to do this.
You set up your Google business.
Here's how you do some on-pageSEO.
You know, you got to name allyour images.
You got to put titles anddescriptions on them.
You got to, you know, blog on aconsistent basis.
You got to get a list of longtail keywords.
Those are going to be your blogtopics.
I put it all out there.
Right, they don't want to do it.
They just they don't have timeto do it.
People are they need to work ontheir business, not in their
(27:45):
business.
Right, and and?
Is that your experience?
And I mean you've been in thedigital agency world, so I mean
it sounds like you've got allthis information, but it's like,
who's going to do all that?
Right, like all the stuff we'vetalked about.
They don't know.
They don't even know how to setup a Facebook ad account.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Right, you're 100% right.
And when I was doing consultingI would say, hey, listen, for a
lot cheaper I'll just show youwhat to do.
And you kind of just come upwith me for questions.
But here's the thing Go, eventaking your I wasn't sure
exactly what differentbusinesses you have, but if you
have an agency, you can take themodel I just literally just
said to drive in those leads ata cheap price, put them into a
(28:24):
course where you guys run yourown weekly call just to give
them advice and help andwhatever, and then back all
those into your agency.
So we're just going to tell youwhat to do.
Put a course here, like youjust said.
You give it to them anyway.
Here's exactly how you buildeverything out.
Here's exactly what you do.
I don't know if you do thisalready or not, but back that
into a weekly call, say, hey,we'll even support you every
week.
Come on, be wherever you are,it doesn't matter.
(28:46):
You know it costs a thousandbucks, whatever you want to
charge.
And just, I'd ever see, I nevercharge, I always charge what I
need to for the, how much theleads cost and what my
conversion rate is.
So we literally one day becauseFacebook ads went crazy early
this year, right, so you know,everything tripled.
For us it was nuts, but what wedid was all we did was just
(29:07):
triple our prices.
And we came out, we changed ourservices a little bit, but we
did triple our prices, just tochange because of Facebook
screwed us up and it literallyeverything just worked out so
and then, when everything cameback down we went back down to a
thousand dollars we said, heyguys, we're ending this service.
We got this new service andbecause our lead cost, just you
(29:30):
know, plummeted over the lastlike month, so anyway, uh, it's
just funny, but, um, it's justcrazy how we just literally
price our stuff based on what weneed to price.
That you know.
That's what it is yeah, that'sit.
That's what I tell a lot ofcompanies.
Just price it what you need to.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, are you using like a Kajabi or something to do
your courses?
What do you prefer?
Speaker 2 (29:53):
So we only use WordPress?
I'm pretty sure we useLearnDash.
Is the actual software onWordPress that we use to manage
everything?
I'm pretty sure it's LearnDash,and yeah, that's it.
I only do WordPress.
I don't use ClickFunnels orKajabi or anything else.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
LearnDash?
I haven't even heard of thatand I do.
That's all we do is WordPress.
I mean, people try to use allthese other platforms.
I'm like, look, you're going toget stuck in this gated wall,
walled garden.
You might as well just usewordpress.
You could do whatever you wantwith it.
You have complete access over,you know, to control over
everything.
You know like a like a shopifyor something.
Everybody wants to puteverything on shopify and I'm
like, oh man, yeah, I mean,they've got great plugins and
(30:32):
things like that, but you'regonna be stuck in their system,
you know, and it's just what itis.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
and if you got wordpress, I mean what is like
60% of the websites on the webor using WordPress or something
like that so, yeah, it's crazy.
It's funny because it didn'tmake sense to me, Like when we
started doing this stuff in 2017, we started building up courses
.
I looked at ClickFunnels.
I'm like this is so limited.
Like why would anybody use this?
But it's for people who arejust starting right.
I mean, that's really, I guess,the concept.
But you know, ClickFunnels isnow.
(31:12):
You know, it's normal to have aClickFunnels type service where
, when they first started,obviously it wasn't really
around, so you really had toknow what you were doing in
order to build stuff out.
So there's always someone whoneeds that type of stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
But, yeah, even the CRM industry automated software-
all that stuff just came so farover the last six years.
Oh, and you could patch yourown system together with
different things.
I mean it's like you don't haveto spend all that money on a
salesforce or you know any ofthese other softwares that are
out there.
I mean you could patch.
You could patch some stufftogether, you know.
(31:48):
I mean it's it's not superdifficult but everybody wants
like the hub spot solution orsomething you know and it's
right and we tried them out.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
There's like three grand a month.
When we started using it I waslike why are we doing this?
Just didn't make sense to spendall that money for something
that you can do for way less.
And of course, you have to knowwhat you're doing and most
people don't, and it is what itis.
But with Zapier you canobviously connect anything to
anything if needed.
I hate Zapier, so we try not touse it.
I like to use API, as I said,but cause it does break a lot or
(32:20):
at least it did for us or notbreak, but it just like stopped.
It just stopped working andthen you just have to oh, I have
to read my guys Like I justhave to restart it.
I'm like why do we have to keeprestarting?
Speaker 1 (32:31):
all the time so it can reconnect.
Yeah, it's just.
Yeah, it's going to lose itsconnection.
Well, I you know, and I'msitting here looking at your
logo behind you on your thingand I'm like, wow, you know
somebody who does logos.
I really appreciate thesimplicity of it and the fact
that you've highlighted withthose those lines, those
horizontal lines there PFS,because you know, philip ends in
a P and F is your middleinitial and Smith super smart.
(32:54):
I don't know how many peoplewould pick up on it, but I
appreciate it.
It looks really cool on it, butI appreciate it.
It looks really cool.
And also people, uh, if youwant to go check out his website
and you want to go check outwhat he does and learn a lot
more, uh, you know, from afive-time Inc 5,000 honoree and
a guy who's working with uhpeople from shark tank, it's a
Philip F Smithcom, right?
(33:17):
Yep, is that the uh?
Is that the?
Is that the site you want tocause?
You have a couple of websitesout there, correct?
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, it's fine that, that that one just is the
easiest one.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
And you get home and how do you get people on, like
these television stations andeverything?
I mean, that's another.
Another thing we didn't evenbring up is, uh, you know,
helping people to get on, youknow, Fox business or whatever
it is.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah.
So it's funny, someoneapproached me by the end of 2022
about getting on TV and I'mlike, wow, that's a really cool
service.
I'm like sure, I'll do it.
So I went through the process,just to go through the process
with them.
I said, well, why can't we dothis?
So it took us a few months.
We connected with pretty muchevery major city.
We have over 60 cities now andwe can get you on ABC, nbc, cbs,
(34:03):
fox, even Bloomberg, someothers, nasdaq, and it just
depends on where you're at whatyou want to do.
Then we added on KevinHarrington, so you can be
interviewed by Kevin or withKevin on TV.
Yeah, it's just a cool service.
So, obviously's not.
You know, I always tell peopleit's not really about being on
(34:24):
TV and what you get by being onon the show.
It's more about using thatcontent and your online
marketing, because that's goingto elevate you very quickly and
utilize that in your onlinemarketing.
And, obviously, your brandbuilding, because building your
brand obviously is veryimportant and everybody should
start that right away.
So, but that, that literallysomebody just approached me
about it and the way I think andI'm sure, same thing with you
(34:47):
you just say, well, how can Imake money with that?
So I'm like I could build thisout.
There's nothing proprietaryabout this.
It's just literally putting theeffort in to build the network,
and what we learned real quickwas that we only really need
access like five people to getaccess to everybody.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
We didn't know that at first, of course, but we
started learning.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
And then we realized that there's just networks out
there that once you get into anetwork, they give you 25 cities
, this one gives you another 20cities and whatever, so anyway,
so yeah, it's just a coolservice because I mean, we just
literally can elevate you fromhere to here instantly.
And TV, still from a brandingperspective, is way better than
YouTube and Instagram andanything you do online.
(35:27):
People just look at youdifferently when they see that
you've been on an NBC show orwhatever.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Oh, yeah, then some influencer's channel or whatever
.
Yeah, oh for sure, because it'sstill got that cachet of well,
it's ABC, it's CBSbs.
He must have.
You know, they must really, youknow, want him and there's
something, he's got somethinghere.
If they want to put him on theshow, so, yeah, what is the?
So I'm really interested inthat actually because, uh, you
know, I'm, I'm part of thiswhole cincinnati startup
(35:54):
ecosystem here and you've got alot of people with good ideas
and I feel like they struggle toget that kind of media exposure
.
What kind of investment arepeople looking at in order to
get that?
Are there different packagesthat you sell?
Like, how does that work?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
It depends on the location, but let's just say an
average of anywhere between twoand four grand.
That's it.
Yeah, it's not a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
No, that seems great.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
We also just don't charge a lot of money.
I'm always like let's drive theprice down.
That's how I've always been.
I don't like to overcharge.
If you want Kevin on, yeah,that's 15 grand, which is still
great, if you ask me, because,again, you can use the content
forever.
How do you not make a profitoff content if you can use it
forever when you have a brand,these brands, attached to it?
(36:38):
But yeah, on average, two tofour grand.
If you want to be in, like NewYork City, it's going to be over
10 easily, but you don't reallyneed to be.
That's why I tell people likeyou can be anywhere, it doesn't
matter, and you can even do itfrom on Zoom.
You don't have to be in person.
So I've done in person, I'vedone Zoom, I've done all of it.
(37:02):
Then what I do is I take thecontent, just like you know, you
would take a podcast and justcut it up right into these 10,
20 second segments and just keepputting that stuff online and
it just makes you, you know,look better yeah, and you tie
all that into your social mediaefforts and, yeah, you're going
from there.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
And next thing, you know, you got, you know, months
worth of content off of one show.
So that's how long do theseinterviews usually last that you
get these people on like say itwas like a fox business or
something it depends.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
They're typically going to be no more on again.
On average, no more than fiveminutes okay, oh man, that's a
lot of time to yeah, youpre-submit your question, you
already know what your questionsare going to be, so you're
prepared and whatever.
And some of them are live, someof them aren't.
I always recommend not doinglive if someone's brand new and
(37:46):
they're nervous.
But my first one that I didlast year I did in Connecticut.
It was on NBC and I didn't knowit was going to be live until I
got there and I'm like, oh,it's live.
I I'm not.
Even though I do this stuff alot, I still get nervous.
I'm not a great speaker.
Even though I do my own events,my own events, I'm fine.
But, um, I usually need sometequila, to be honest.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
You're a long Island guy, this comes natural to you
guys.
You're fine, you'll be allright.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
But uh, yeah, I.
I do get nervous, though, butyour power through it.
You know.
You know it is.
You got to get out of yourcomfort zone.
It doesn't matter what it is.
Get out of your comfort zoneand just move forward.
It's the only way you're goingto advance your career.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
That's 100% true.
That's 100% true.
Stop being scared.
Work with somebody.
I mean, from just what Iunderstand about you, I mean
working with you, working withyour services.
I mean this could save peopleyears of just grinding and
(38:46):
trying to get out there andtrying to promote their business
, especially if it's a startup.
And you know, we kind oflearned that the hard way when
we did ours.
Now I would just save the time.
Just go to somebody like youand say, look, I need help, help
me with this, help me with youknow, run some ads for me.
Help me with my lead generation.
Hey, can you help me build afunnel?
Yeah, I'll take a look at thiscourse you got going on.
I mean, just do that.
Yeah, I'll take a look at thiscourse you got going on.
I mean, just do that.
Like you know.
Stop trying to figureeverything out yourself.
That's the whole thing.
I think that's a problem peoplehave.
They think they have to figurestuff out themselves in order to
(39:07):
save money, but then they endup blowing a bunch of their time
away.
So that's what it is.
Well, phil man, this has beengreat.
I love meeting people like you.
I mean, we're kind of in thesame industry.
I mean, some of the servicesyou offer sound like.
I mean these are things thatI'm going to be sending people
your way for.
So I mean this has been a greattime and I really appreciate
(39:28):
you being on the show.
And again, guys, if you want tocheck out Phil's
philipfsmithcom, check out hiswebsite and all the services he
offers.
I mean it's a ridiculous amountof accolades you've been able
to accumulate over the years too, by the way.
So congratulations oneverything you do.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I appreciate it.
Thank you for having me man,it's been fun.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah, have a good one .
Thanks for joining us on thisweek's episode of Side Hustle
City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
(40:07):
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
Thank you.
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started.
All right.
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast Today's
special guest, philip F Smith.
I, like you, got the middleinitial in there.
There's a lot of Philip Smithsout there, I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
There are.
It's funny.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, welcome to the podcast, Phil.
It's great to have you here.
I can't wait to talk to youabout some of this growth
marketing work you're doing andpartnerships with Kevin
Harrington.
People know him from Shark Tank.
You got a bunch of other folksthat you're working with now, so
I'd love to just understandyour story.
What led you into this?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, well, you know, appreciate you having me on.
It's always fun to talk shop.
So you know how I got into theentrepreneurial world.
It was just way back in the dayI was doing that typical 9 to 5
, and it's 1998.
And I had an offer to start upmy own business and I also had
an offer for the job and it justdidn't make sense to me not to
(01:20):
take the chance to start my ownbusiness.
And that was a web hostingcompany, again back in 98, we
sold it in 2005.
I've sold 5 companies since,now, been part of 9 acquisitions
, and the main reason why is Isold one of my companies to an
investment fund and I did abunch of deals with them.
So always put yourself in thesame right room with the right
(01:40):
people, especially if they havemoney, those are fun people to
hang out with.
So I did that.
What I'm doing today,everything is lead
generation-based.
It's all about generating leads, owning the data and monetizing
it.
And when I say monetize it, youcould sell the leads, I could
do affiliate marketing, I couldsell my own services.
(02:00):
But that's the world that welive in.
It's all about teachingcompanies.
Obviously, we do it forourselves too, but we also help
companies generate leads forthemselves, and it's just so
they understand how to monetize,of course, their own leads,
also their own customer base,cause a lot of companies don't
even do that.
So, anyway, that's the nutshell, what I concentrate on every
(02:21):
day.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So for you, you didn't have a lead generation
person to help you start yourbusinesses, so you had to figure
this thing out on your way.
But take us through some of thesteps of actually launching a
lead generation business assomeone who does lead generation
for other people.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
So it's funny April of 2014,.
I was doing some consulting andI helped a company to get out
of their business I'm sorry, getout of their business.
Going backwards, I changedeverything around as a digital
marketing company within sixmonths, turned the whole company
around and sold it and the guykind of the owner, kind of
screwed me over a little bit,but it's fine.
(03:00):
You kind of get used to thatafter a while, unfortunately.
But people always try to takeadvantage of you.
So, but what happened was,because of that happened, I said
you know what?
I'm going to fire all myclients.
I really don't want to do thisanymore anyway and I want to
jump in as lead generationbusiness.
The problem was, like you justsaid, I had no one to go to to
(03:21):
teach me anything, so I had tofigure it out and I knew that I
couldn't just start a leadgeneration business today
without knowing anything.
And how do I even start?
So I said to myself I got tolearn this business inside and
out, from the inside out.
So what I did was I learned howto do lead brokering.
So I literally found leadbuyers, I found lead sellers, I
(03:44):
brokered a deal, I made my cutand I was like, wow, that was
pretty easy.
Now, sales has always been easyfor me.
I've always been one of thosepeople I could just figure stuff
out.
I teach myself Always veryimportant, especially today with
how everything changes so fast.
So what happened was you fastforward.
As I started learning thebusiness I do lead brokering 10,
(04:06):
20 grand a month I was like,all right, this is cool.
But I said you know what?
I started getting some baddeals done.
So what I mean by that iscompanies started selling me bad
leads and of course, I take thehit on it.
I'm the bad guy because I'm thebroker in the middle.
So I said to myself, you knowwhat?
How do I eliminate these guys?
How do I just do this myself?
So, just learning as I go, andbasically a fast forward.
(04:29):
From April of 14, when I started, to October of 14, I ran my
first Facebook ad ever and Istarted generating leads for $18
.
They were for the business loanspace.
So I was generating businessloan leads for $18 and selling
them for $60.
And I was like, wow, this iscool, but I knew it wouldn't
last forever.
You always have to think 10steps down the road.
(04:49):
You can't just start a business, and even if you are successful
, you can't just assume it'sgoing to last forever.
I always just assumeeverything's going to crash and
burn and I need a plan B, and Igot to think about what's going
to happen in 6 to 12 months fromnow.
So I knew my lead cost is notgoing to stay at $18.
And I was right.
In a year from there, inSeptember of 2015, the lead cost
(05:12):
went up to $70.
So, from $18 to $70 in a year,and at that point in time,
though, it was fine, because Iknew it was going to happen, and
I started learning how tomonetize my leads in other ways.
So, for example, I took abusiness loan lead in.
I sold it to a business loanlender, but not every single
lead qualified for a businessloan.
(05:33):
So, for example, I got a lot ofstartups.
They didn't have any revenue,they had bad credit.
What do I do with them?
Well, I started selling them tocredit repair buyers, and then
I started buyers.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Ah, beautiful, yes.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
I found a company that took in leads for credit
monitoring right, for yourbusiness, your business credit
monitoring.
Then I added in companies thatprovided services to startups to
help them get off the groundand get lending down the road.
It was a unique service I'dnever heard of, but they were
buying leads for me.
So I started to figure out howdo I take one lead, filter it
(06:08):
out in their revenue, theircredit score, how long they've
been in business right, and allthese different filters, and I
basically sent them, sometimesin three or four different
directions, right.
So then I had companies come tome, like a company called
LoanMe, and what they did wasthey bought leads between $4,000
a month in revenue and $10,000a month in revenue.
(06:29):
They had companies over $10,000a month in revenue.
So I basically had like eightdifferent lead buyers and eight
different filters.
So what I'm getting at is myoverall lead cost was actually
only like $8.
Wow, right.
My high quality leads were $70,like I said before, the ones
(06:49):
that filtered out to actualbusiness loan lead they were $70
.
Right, because it was only like10% of the leads I generated
qualified for a business loan.
So my $8 lead was just for ablanket.
Everybody bad credit, goodcredit, no revenue.
A lot of revenue didn't matter.
That was an $8 lead, but thebusiness loan leads that
filtered out were actually $70at September of 2015.
(07:13):
But the way I looked at it wasI have an $8 lead.
At the end of the day, how do Imonetize all these leads?
So that's what I startedlearning and then eventually,
two years later, I startedselling courses.
I looked at you know guysselling courses out there and
I'm like you know I could dothis I mean how do you not
create a course?
(07:33):
so I created a course and Icreated a sales video.
Obviously I researched allthese other people that were
doing it and understood how theydo it, what software they're
using, how long are are thesewebinars, what price points
they're using.
So I started just researchingthe industry.
So I came out with a 997 coursebecause everyone else had one
and I basically put it out thereand as only promoting this to
(07:56):
my business loan leads, I wasselling a $1,000 course on how
to start their own business andliterally within 24 hours got my
first sale.
My first month I did 30 grand.
That was September, I think of17.
By the end of the year I didlike 300 grand.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Right, so that's just pure profit.
Right Because I'm justpromoting it to my existing lead
base.
So it was an amazing thing.
And then in 2018, january, Iended up partnering with Kevin
Harrington, who was on the firstcouple of seasons of Shark Tank
, because, just to use his brand, I'm like I need to attach
myself to a bigger brand, getmyself out there.
So I did that, obviously, andI've been working with him ever
(08:34):
since, still work with him today, and that really helped me out.
So what I always tell companiesor anybody that's trying to
start a business, or even ifyou're already in business, if
you're trying to get into abusiness, I love the data space
because it's scalable, it'sautomated.
I'm still a one employeecompany, just so you know, still
a one employee company.
Done multiple eight figures,made the Inc 5000 list five
(08:54):
times, probably six times thisyear.
I've had a lot of success andI'm still a one employee company
.
I still use freelancers, stilluse consultants, of course, but
that's the scalability of leadgeneration, that's the
automation of lead generation,and that's why I love this
business so much because I canwork from home, stay, you know,
be around my kids more and beable to scale a business.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You know it's hilarious about this.
Last week I just won a B2Blender and we're doing all their
pay-per-click ads for them andthey said one of the problems
they were doing it in-house.
Right, they're doing all theirpay-per-click in-house.
They're saying, oh, 50% of ourleads are people that don't
qualify, right, yeah, so youjust gave me an idea.
It's like hey, are you guysselling those bad leads to
(09:38):
credit repair people?
That's brilliant.
Like they, I don't thinkthey're thinking of that.
But for people for reference, alot of people don't know because
they've never taken one ofthese loans or worked with one
of these companies, like an ondeck or one of these other
companies there's a bunch ofthem out there.
Uh, they, they essentially willwork with businesses on the
(10:03):
short term, you know, six months, I think on deck does right,
and there's a preset amount youwould have to pay back.
So you kind of know upfront.
I don't even think they reallytell you the interest rate.
They're just like look, if youlearn, if you borrow 10 grand,
you're going to end up paying usback 11 grand in six months or
whatever.
It is Right, and the defaultrates on these are actually
pretty low from what Iunderstand.
Yeah, it should be less than20%.
(10:23):
Less than 20%, and there's awhat's the like.
There's a lending tree of thisindustry.
It's like I can't remember whatthe name of it is, but Lendio.
Yeah, buddy of mine runs one inanother city.
So these are like franchises,so you can like buy a franchise
for one of these things andessentially do kind of what you
were doing.
But I mean you sound likeyou're.
(10:43):
I mean this was back in the day.
I mean you're talking 2015,2016.
I mean you were doing this waybefore.
A lot of these other peoplewere doing it and it's a great
bit.
From what I understand, themargins are excellent If you
loan to one of these, one ofthese lenders.
Right, if you're an investorand you loan to one of these,
the returns are really good.
And I never knew about thisindustry until recently and I'm
(11:05):
actually working with you knowanother guy who's who's on the
other side of that Like they'reat the hey, let me find lenders
for these, for these companies,but that's a great business to
be in.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, you're 100% right.
You have the syndication side,so you invest in them, right,
which I do.
You can usually make about 50%on your money, which is amazing.
Not going to make that in thestock market, right?
No, so I have something calledLoan Broker Network, which
actually we have over 10,000people that have come in where
we teach them the loan brokerindustry, we teach them lead
(11:37):
generation and through ournetwork, we do $20 million a
month in lending and it'samazing, that's through us and
our partners.
And so, yeah, you're 100% right.
There's a lot of different waysto make money in the lending
industry.
It's never going to go anywhere.
It's good in the bad economy.
It's good with the good economy.
(11:58):
Everyone needs money at alltimes.
We also provide marketingservices now.
So what we do is we generatebusiness leads and we pivoted
our marketing strategies.
But exactly what you just saidyou're trying to generate.
Companies would always come tome and say, phil, I just want
the best leads.
I'm like, no, you're thinkingabout this wrong.
You want every lead and youwant to monetize them as many
different ways.
Then your premium leads becomefree.
(12:19):
Brilliant, right, that's thestrategy.
So I'll give you a funnel ideathat we're running right now
that literally just started thisrecently and it's already
crushing it.
So I'll give you exactly whatwe're doing.
This is a you know, literally aeasily $20 million business.
I'm going to give you on asilver platter Anybody listening
, feel free to go do it yourself.
All right, you ready.
What you do is when you run,let's say, facebook ads, you
(12:43):
want to put out an offer.
That is a hot offer right now.
It's trending, whatever it is.
So AI is that?
What we did was we put out anad right now that say, get
access to our free automatedmarketing software.
So, literally, get access to itfor free.
With AI built in, you can buildout your AI for your business.
So you have the automatedmarketing CRM a need out there
(13:09):
plus AI.
So that's a free offer.
You're going to generate leads.
Right now, we're at $5 a lead,which is ridiculous.
That's crazy.
Especially today with Facebook,le to five bucks.
When they fill out that formthe initial form I ask them are
you incorporated or not?
If they're not incorporated,I'm going to send them off to a,
to a ink file I forget inkfiles, new name, but ink fileile
(13:33):
gives people sets of acorporation Usually make about
$125 a client or a customer thatI send to them.
So if they say no, then I wantto push them over to there.
If they say no, I'm notincorporated, I ask them if
they're interested in a personalloan.
We have someone that doesunsecured personal loans.
If they say yes, I ask them forthe credit score secured
(13:57):
personal loans.
If they say yes, I ask them forthe credit score.
If they're over 680, I'll sendthem there.
If they're over 720, I asksomeone else that can get credit
cards stacking for them.
Get a bunch of credit cards at0% interest, but they need a 720
.
So right now, I just told youabout three different buyers.
Now, if they say, yes, I amincorporated, cool, you want a
business loan?
Now, that's different buyers.
What's your revenue?
What's this?
(14:17):
What's that?
You still ask them the creditscore question because I can
still send them off to the otherpeople.
Then I ask them what marketingservices are you interested in?
Right, you just want our freeCRM.
Or do you want SEO?
You want to be interviewed onTV?
We provide that service.
You want a shark on your boardof advisors?
Kevin will go on someone'sboard of advisors if it makes
(14:37):
sense.
So consulting services, etcetera.
Then from there they go througha funnel where they watch a
video that gives them access tothat free CRM.
It's 100% true, we're not lying.
For $1,000 plus that coursecomes with a free group weekly
call to answer any questionsthey have with their business.
(15:01):
So they're marketing questions,lending questions.
So what this sell is KevinHarrington's team that's done $6
billion in sales is going tohelp you grow your business.
It costs $1,000.
We give you a course and a freeweekly call and Kevin will be
on once a month to answerquestions, just for a thousand
bucks.
The reason why that thousanddollars is important, because
(15:22):
that pays for the leads, right?
So think about it $5 lead, Ionly need to convert half a
percent to be breakeven.
Now I get free leads and thenI'm selling them off doing
affiliate marketing.
Plus, we have our own servicesthat we can sell.
We build out a custom AI forcompanies and stuff like that
too.
So now we have that coming inright.
So now we can literally go to1,000 leads a day very easily,
(15:45):
and now it's just free.
And then we just offer whateverwe offer.
We can upsell through our calls, whatever.
So there's your strategy on pickin whatever industry you want
to be in, whatever is a hot,free offer that you can do, just
getting the cheap data,monetize them through the form,
get all the information you can.
That makes sense.
And then, you know, providesome sort of course, because the
(16:06):
reason why the course isimportant there's no fulfillment
Right, I have to go dosomething, right?
So and again, I like to stay asmall company.
So sell a course with a weeklycall Guess what?
I already do a weekly call, soit doesn't matter to me.
You know what I mean.
So I'm selling something I'malready doing and I'm giving a
course, it doesn't matter.
And of course, yes, I have.
You know, kevin Harrington, westarted working with Damon John
(16:26):
recently.
So yeah, we have that now,obviously to help sell it.
But, to be honest, you don'tneed to sell this stuff, you
know.
As long as you know what you'redoing, that's good enough.
But obviously I've been workingwith them for a long time, so I
use them.
But but yeah, I mean thatthat's your strategy in a
nutshell.
You obviously got to piece ittogether and figure it out, but
it's that's the power ofbuilding something out that's
(16:49):
scalable and automated.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, and just think about I mean, there's a lot of
these companies.
I didn't realize how many therewere.
My wife sometimes you know forher her spa she'll use on deck
Right, so she has an on deckloan out right now and then also
she can use her POS system.
The accounting system that'stied into her POS was Square.
Square Capital offers her moneyall the time there is.
(17:11):
Soon as you go to one of thesewebsites, you are going to get
destroyed with Facebook ads.
As soon as you go to one ofthese websites, you are going to
get destroyed with Facebook ads.
As soon as I started workingwith this client, I've got I
don't know how many now that Iget on Facebook.
Every time I open Facebook it'slike the first thing I see, so
I'm getting hit with tons ofthose.
I probably need to clear mycash and everything so that I
(17:34):
can reset my Facebook ads thatI'm getting.
But you mentioned Facebook adsthat I'm getting.
But you mentioned Facebook adsand I know my client in
particular.
They're spending between$20,000 and $50,000 depending on
what's going on every month inFacebook and Google ads.
Right, but they're smallcompared to some of these other
companies out here that could bespending a quarter mil a month
or more just trying to go outhere and find leads, or they
(17:57):
have to go to a third partygroup and they have to buy those
leads to try to get something.
Your strategy is veryinteresting and it's almost like
it reminds me of the NativeAmericans, right?
If they killed a buffalo, theydidn't just eat the meat, right,
they used every piece of it.
I mean, this is what.
This is kind of what you'redoing out here, and it's smart
because every form that that youknow, whatever that ad is
(18:19):
you're doing, it goes back to aform.
You get the information fromthe people.
People are throwing those leadsaway if they don't think they
qualify.
Right, I mean, this is.
It's wild to me that they'redoing that, and you've come up
with this strategy and you'vegot all these partnerships.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, and like you said before this interview, you
said people don't know what theydon't know right, and that's
the thing with anybody in anycase, and they just don't
understand it.
They don't understand theconcept.
A lot of people think they'redoing something wrong by trying
to sell their customer base ortheir leads something else.
It's almost like spammy orscammy, but it's not as long as
you're giving them like we don'tjust offer people something
(18:59):
they don't ask for, you know.
So if they say, yes, I'minterested in this, then I'm
going to have someone call themfor Kevin stuff.
If it's a day with a sharkevent, you know, if it's SEO
services, if it's whatever,we're just going to say all
right, you asked for this, hereyou go.
You know what I mean.
So if they don't have a companythat's incorporated, then we're
going to say, hey, since yourcompany's not incorporated,
would you like to get one done?
(19:20):
It's actually free, you justgot to pay your state fees,
right?
That's the company's offer.
So we just offer whatever theysay on a form and we put the
stuff in front of them.
Obviously, we'll answerquestions and do stuff and we'll
do what we say we're going todo, but of course, now you have
(19:43):
a captive audience once a weekthat's listening to you.
You're proving that you knowwhat you're doing.
What are they going to do?
They're going to work with you.
They're going to give you moremoney, right?
They're going to want you tohelp them.
So it's the best.
It's almost like you know,people build out Facebook groups
for that reason.
Oh, you know, we communicatewith them through there, which
is great because that's ongoing.
(20:03):
It's 24 seven and we certainlyhave support channels and
whatever.
But that extra weekly callwhere you actually physically
see somebody and you can talk tothem, whatever.
I mean that's a game changer.
So these are things that we doand we give a lot of these ideas
to companies and it kind ofgoes over their head or they're
like to kind of head spinning.
I literally had a meeting todaywith someone that would build
that AI, for in the lendingindustry, they're a large broker
(20:27):
and I said to them and you cansay this to any broker lender
that you deal with you can saylisten, guys, I can show you how
to double your revenue in ayear.
And they're going to be likehow do I double my revenue in a
year?
Yeah, and you say all theseleads that you're generating.
You're generating for lending.
When you come to work every day, you care about closing deals,
(20:50):
right, yeah, that's all we careabout.
Okay, good, but you havebusinesses that are generating a
decent amount of revenue,because it's the only way you're
going to get them approved.
If they do in at least 100 to120 grand a year in revenue, oh
yeah, so they have money tospend.
They need to grow.
They're probably using theirmoney to grow.
What if you provide them withmarketing services?
(21:12):
Website.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Basic website.
Their websites probably lookslike garbage anyway.
Uh, you know we do websites, soit's like I, I'd see some of
these websites and I'm like Ican't believe you.
You actually went to marketwith this website.
Uh, in none of them the seo isterrible.
The on-page search is alwaysbad.
I, I don't.
I honestly I don't know howpeople even find in half their
sites.
They don't have a Googlebusiness account.
(21:36):
It's, it's just, it's, they'rea mess.
And even the local ones, likethe local, the local search,
local search is non-existentwith these people and it's, it's
wild that they're operatinglike this.
But every one of them, I meanthey're ready to go pay for ads
and their website is junk.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yep, and that's the thing I see.
I used to own consultingbusiness, which I sold in 2010
to that investment fund when Imentioned before, and that's how
I got into the fund.
But when I would walk into acompany selling consulting
services back in a day, I wouldshow them a big like pie chart
from New York.
So pizza is a big thing and Isay, listen, here's your pizza
(22:16):
pie, right, and you need youhave eight slices, and these
eight slices are basically eightdifferent things that you need
your funnel to work, your funnel.
When you, if you only got fourpieces when you ordered a pizza
pie, what would you do?
You probably give it back.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Like something that's going on here, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
That's your funnel.
If all eight pieces are nothere, it's not going to work.
All right, everything has towork together, right?
So that's what I would go inand sell them and say, listen,
sure, I can help you drive inleads, great.
But it's going to collapse whenit hits this point.
Even if you are good atgenerating leads, let's just say
(22:53):
your sales process sucks, youknow, let's just say your sales
process sucks.
Let's just say your conversionssuck, or whatever it is.
And I learned a lot of companiescannot sell their own product.
I mean, I've learned that overthe years, so that was how I
used to sell it back in the day,but for today, it's all about
monetizing the data.
And when I talked to thatcompany today and I said, listen
(23:14):
, guys, you're doing funding,great, you're making a lot of
money, wonderful.
But think about all thebusiness that's in these leads.
They generate like 8,000 leadsa month fresh.
They have over a millionrecords to date.
So we're building an AI forthem to contact those million
records that they won't eventouch because it's too much, but
AI obviously will just do thatfor them all day long and build
(23:35):
out the conversation.
So that's obviously what we'restarting with.
But I'm like you guys can easilydouble your revenue just by
starting simple marketingservices.
And the great thing about ityou can outsource everything.
So they could just hire asalesperson, project manager,
take these leads you alreadyhave.
It's not like you have to gogenerate more leads and bring
them through, offer the services, outsource it to any one of the
(23:59):
20 companies out there easily.
That do all the outsourcing forall these types of services
Like Vendasta is one just as anexample and they'll do all the
back end for you and you justproject, manage it and sell it.
You know, and make whatever youmake on it and build that up.
I mean, it's just, it's it'swork.
I'm not saying it doesn't.
It's easy.
You know it's an easy concept,but you still have to execute.
(24:21):
But when you have free leads,how do you not make money with
free leads?
Right, so that that's theconcept.
With them, you already have thedata, you already have the
leads.
You're just selling anotherservice.
And two, they need money andthey need marketing.
I mean, that's it.
Of course they need more thanthat, but those are the two
number one things that they need.
If you ask me, because withoutthose two things, how do you
grow?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
That's right.
I mean, what do you do?
And people don't.
They're terrible at sales,they're terrible at nurturing
leads.
They don't know what a salesfunnel even looks like, or what
software they need in order tobuild out a funnel, what the
processes are.
And, speaking of that, wetalked about Google, we talked
about Facebook.
We haven't talked about YouTube, and I know that's getting to
(25:04):
be much more popular when itcomes to running ads, if your
business can actually run ads onthere.
But what are some of thetechnologies, like a YouTube on
the come up or places that yousee are outside of Google and
Facebook yeah, great places tostart generating some leads from
.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
To be honest.
I mean we only do a volume.
So Facebook's number one interms of volume, youtube's
number two and then Google'snumber three.
So, youtube, you can definitelyget good volume.
It's going to cost you moremoney for the leads, but they
are going to be higher quality.
Google is going to be less.
It is going to be higherquality but less volume and
you're also going to pay for it.
(25:40):
So, for example, one of ourcampaigns where we do all three
uh, facebook will come in atlike eight to 10 bucks.
Uh, youtube could be like 18 to20,.
Uh, google is similar, maybe alittle higher.
It just depends if it's displayor or whatever.
Um, but you know, similar toYouTube, but YouTube will
convert at like sometimes double, even triple than Facebook, you
(26:03):
know.
So, with the same exact adrunning to a very similar
audience.
But you know the difference isand it depends on how you run
YouTube.
But you know Facebook is juststraight display, right, so
you're scrolling through.
You have to have like an uglyad or something that stands out.
You know we put exotic cars andyou have a Lambo and all that
fun stuff.
But you know we put that outthere just to get attention and
(26:25):
it works, of course, but youknow it's like they're just
scrolling through.
Maybe I like it, maybe I don't.
Google YouTube is more intentbased.
Right, they're either searchingfor it or it can definitely do
really well in terms oftargeting.
But your targeting is going tobe based on a lot of what
they're searching for and whattheir history is right, where
(26:45):
Facebook is kind of the completeopposite.
You're kind of just guessing.
So on Facebook, we just targetbusiness owners, business owners
behaviors, and that's it, andit works.
Right At the end of the day, itworks.
It's just not as high quality,but we do get a lot of data from
it.
It works.
It's just not as high quality,but we do get a lot of data from
it.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Youtube less data, higher quality, but it's still
profitable obviously, and whenyou mentioned you had said, hey
look, I just get you know, youessentially give information
away.
I do the same thing with myagency.
I'm like, yeah, sure, I meanyou guys could do this yourself.
Here's what you have to do.
I just tell them they neverwant to do it themselves, right,
they never want to do it.
It's just too much work.
I will literally lay it out forthem.
(27:23):
I'll say, look, I you know, ifyou guys want to do this.
You set up your Google business.
Here's how you do some on-pageSEO.
You know, you got to name allyour images.
You got to put titles anddescriptions on them.
You got to, you know, blog on aconsistent basis.
You got to get a list of longtail keywords.
Those are going to be your blogtopics.
I put it all out there.
Right, they don't want to do it.
They just they don't have timeto do it.
People are they need to work ontheir business, not in their
(27:45):
business.
Right, and and?
Is that your experience?
And I mean you've been in thedigital agency world, so I mean
it sounds like you've got allthis information, but it's like,
who's going to do all that?
Right, like all the stuff we'vetalked about.
They don't know.
They don't even know how to setup a Facebook ad account.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Right, you're 100% right.
And when I was doing consultingI would say, hey, listen, for a
lot cheaper I'll just show youwhat to do.
And you kind of just come upwith me for questions.
But here's the thing Go, eventaking your I wasn't sure
exactly what differentbusinesses you have, but if you
have an agency, you can take themodel I just literally just
said to drive in those leads ata cheap price, put them into a
(28:24):
course where you guys run yourown weekly call just to give
them advice and help andwhatever, and then back all
those into your agency.
So we're just going to tell youwhat to do.
Put a course here, like youjust said.
You give it to them anyway.
Here's exactly how you buildeverything out.
Here's exactly what you do.
I don't know if you do thisalready or not, but back that
into a weekly call, say, hey,we'll even support you every
week.
Come on, be wherever you are,it doesn't matter.
(28:46):
You know it costs a thousandbucks, whatever you want to
charge.
And just, I'd ever see, I nevercharge, I always charge what I
need to for the, how much theleads cost and what my
conversion rate is.
So we literally one day becauseFacebook ads went crazy early
this year, right, so you know,everything tripled.
For us it was nuts, but what wedid was all we did was just
(29:07):
triple our prices.
And we came out, we changed ourservices a little bit, but we
did triple our prices, just tochange because of Facebook
screwed us up and it literallyeverything just worked out so
and then, when everything cameback down we went back down to a
thousand dollars we said, heyguys, we're ending this service.
We got this new service andbecause our lead cost, just you
(29:30):
know, plummeted over the lastlike month, so anyway, uh, it's
just funny, but, um, it's justcrazy how we just literally
price our stuff based on what weneed to price.
That you know.
That's what it is yeah, that'sit.
That's what I tell a lot ofcompanies.
Just price it what you need to.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, are you using like a Kajabi or something to do
your courses?
What do you prefer?
Speaker 2 (29:53):
So we only use WordPress?
I'm pretty sure we useLearnDash.
Is the actual software onWordPress that we use to manage
everything?
I'm pretty sure it's LearnDash,and yeah, that's it.
I only do WordPress.
I don't use ClickFunnels orKajabi or anything else.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
LearnDash?
I haven't even heard of thatand I do.
That's all we do is WordPress.
I mean, people try to use allthese other platforms.
I'm like, look, you're going toget stuck in this gated wall,
walled garden.
You might as well just usewordpress.
You could do whatever you wantwith it.
You have complete access over,you know, to control over
everything.
You know like a like a shopifyor something.
Everybody wants to puteverything on shopify and I'm
like, oh man, yeah, I mean,they've got great plugins and
(30:32):
things like that, but you'regonna be stuck in their system,
you know, and it's just what itis.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
and if you got wordpress, I mean what is like
60% of the websites on the webor using WordPress or something
like that so, yeah, it's crazy.
It's funny because it didn'tmake sense to me, Like when we
started doing this stuff in 2017, we started building up courses
.
I looked at ClickFunnels.
I'm like this is so limited.
Like why would anybody use this?
But it's for people who arejust starting right.
I mean, that's really, I guess,the concept.
But you know, ClickFunnels isnow.
(31:12):
You know, it's normal to have aClickFunnels type service where
, when they first started,obviously it wasn't really
around, so you really had toknow what you were doing in
order to build stuff out.
So there's always someone whoneeds that type of stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
But, yeah, even the CRM industry automated software-
all that stuff just came so farover the last six years.
Oh, and you could patch yourown system together with
different things.
I mean it's like you don't haveto spend all that money on a
salesforce or you know any ofthese other softwares that are
out there.
I mean you could patch.
You could patch some stufftogether, you know.
(31:48):
I mean it's it's not superdifficult but everybody wants
like the hub spot solution orsomething you know and it's
right and we tried them out.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
There's like three grand a month.
When we started using it I waslike why are we doing this?
Just didn't make sense to spendall that money for something
that you can do for way less.
And of course, you have to knowwhat you're doing and most
people don't, and it is what itis.
But with Zapier you canobviously connect anything to
anything if needed.
I hate Zapier, so we try not touse it.
I like to use API, as I said,but cause it does break a lot or
(32:20):
at least it did for us or notbreak, but it just like stopped.
It just stopped working andthen you just have to oh, I have
to read my guys Like I justhave to restart it.
I'm like why do we have to keeprestarting?
Speaker 1 (32:31):
all the time so it can reconnect.
Yeah, it's just.
Yeah, it's going to lose itsconnection.
Well, I you know, and I'msitting here looking at your
logo behind you on your thingand I'm like, wow, you know
somebody who does logos.
I really appreciate thesimplicity of it and the fact
that you've highlighted withthose those lines, those
horizontal lines there PFS,because you know, philip ends in
a P and F is your middleinitial and Smith super smart.
(32:54):
I don't know how many peoplewould pick up on it, but I
appreciate it.
It looks really cool on it, butI appreciate it.
It looks really cool.
And also people, uh, if youwant to go check out his website
and you want to go check outwhat he does and learn a lot
more, uh, you know, from afive-time Inc 5,000 honoree and
a guy who's working with uhpeople from shark tank, it's a
Philip F Smithcom, right?
(33:17):
Yep, is that the uh?
Is that the?
Is that the site you want tocause?
You have a couple of websitesout there, correct?
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, it's fine that, that that one just is the
easiest one.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
And you get home and how do you get people on, like
these television stations andeverything?
I mean, that's another.
Another thing we didn't evenbring up is, uh, you know,
helping people to get on, youknow, Fox business or whatever
it is.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah.
So it's funny, someoneapproached me by the end of 2022
about getting on TV and I'mlike, wow, that's a really cool
service.
I'm like sure, I'll do it.
So I went through the process,just to go through the process
with them.
I said, well, why can't we dothis?
So it took us a few months.
We connected with pretty muchevery major city.
We have over 60 cities now andwe can get you on ABC, nbc, cbs,
(34:03):
fox, even Bloomberg, someothers, nasdaq, and it just
depends on where you're at whatyou want to do.
Then we added on KevinHarrington, so you can be
interviewed by Kevin or withKevin on TV.
Yeah, it's just a cool service.
So, obviously's not.
You know, I always tell peopleit's not really about being on
(34:24):
TV and what you get by being onon the show.
It's more about using thatcontent and your online
marketing, because that's goingto elevate you very quickly and
utilize that in your onlinemarketing.
And, obviously, your brandbuilding, because building your
brand obviously is veryimportant and everybody should
start that right away.
So, but that, that literallysomebody just approached me
about it and the way I think andI'm sure, same thing with you
(34:47):
you just say, well, how can Imake money with that?
So I'm like I could build thisout.
There's nothing proprietaryabout this.
It's just literally putting theeffort in to build the network,
and what we learned real quickwas that we only really need
access like five people to getaccess to everybody.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
We didn't know that at first, of course, but we
started learning.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
And then we realized that there's just networks out
there that once you get into anetwork, they give you 25 cities
, this one gives you another 20cities and whatever, so anyway,
so yeah, it's just a coolservice because I mean, we just
literally can elevate you fromhere to here instantly.
And TV, still from a brandingperspective, is way better than
YouTube and Instagram andanything you do online.
(35:27):
People just look at youdifferently when they see that
you've been on an NBC show orwhatever.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Oh, yeah, then some influencer's channel or whatever
.
Yeah, oh for sure, because it'sstill got that cachet of well,
it's ABC, it's CBSbs.
He must have.
You know, they must really, youknow, want him and there's
something, he's got somethinghere.
If they want to put him on theshow, so, yeah, what is the?
So I'm really interested inthat actually because, uh, you
know, I'm, I'm part of thiswhole cincinnati startup
(35:54):
ecosystem here and you've got alot of people with good ideas
and I feel like they struggle toget that kind of media exposure
.
What kind of investment arepeople looking at in order to
get that?
Are there different packagesthat you sell?
Like, how does that work?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
It depends on the location, but let's just say an
average of anywhere between twoand four grand.
That's it.
Yeah, it's not a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
No, that seems great.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
We also just don't charge a lot of money.
I'm always like let's drive theprice down.
That's how I've always been.
I don't like to overcharge.
If you want Kevin on, yeah,that's 15 grand, which is still
great, if you ask me, because,again, you can use the content
forever.
How do you not make a profitoff content if you can use it
forever when you have a brand,these brands, attached to it?
(36:38):
But yeah, on average, two tofour grand.
If you want to be in, like NewYork City, it's going to be over
10 easily, but you don't reallyneed to be.
That's why I tell people likeyou can be anywhere, it doesn't
matter, and you can even do itfrom on Zoom.
You don't have to be in person.
So I've done in person, I'vedone Zoom, I've done all of it.
(37:02):
Then what I do is I take thecontent, just like you know, you
would take a podcast and justcut it up right into these 10,
20 second segments and just keepputting that stuff online and
it just makes you, you know,look better yeah, and you tie
all that into your social mediaefforts and, yeah, you're going
from there.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
And next thing, you know, you got, you know, months
worth of content off of one show.
So that's how long do theseinterviews usually last that you
get these people on like say itwas like a fox business or
something it depends.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
They're typically going to be no more on again.
On average, no more than fiveminutes okay, oh man, that's a
lot of time to yeah, youpre-submit your question, you
already know what your questionsare going to be, so you're
prepared and whatever.
And some of them are live, someof them aren't.
I always recommend not doinglive if someone's brand new and
(37:46):
they're nervous.
But my first one that I didlast year I did in Connecticut.
It was on NBC and I didn't knowit was going to be live until I
got there and I'm like, oh,it's live.
I I'm not.
Even though I do this stuff alot, I still get nervous.
I'm not a great speaker.
Even though I do my own events,my own events, I'm fine.
But, um, I usually need sometequila, to be honest.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
You're a long Island guy, this comes natural to you
guys.
You're fine, you'll be allright.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
But uh, yeah, I.
I do get nervous, though, butyour power through it.
You know.
You know it is.
You got to get out of yourcomfort zone.
It doesn't matter what it is.
Get out of your comfort zoneand just move forward.
It's the only way you're goingto advance your career.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
That's 100% true.
That's 100% true.
Stop being scared.
Work with somebody.
I mean, from just what Iunderstand about you, I mean
working with you, working withyour services.
I mean this could save peopleyears of just grinding and
(38:46):
trying to get out there andtrying to promote their business
, especially if it's a startup.
And you know, we kind oflearned that the hard way when
we did ours.
Now I would just save the time.
Just go to somebody like youand say, look, I need help, help
me with this, help me with youknow, run some ads for me.
Help me with my lead generation.
Hey, can you help me build afunnel?
Yeah, I'll take a look at thiscourse you got going on.
I mean, just do that.
Yeah, I'll take a look at thiscourse you got going on.
I mean, just do that.
Like you know.
Stop trying to figureeverything out yourself.
That's the whole thing.
I think that's a problem peoplehave.
They think they have to figurestuff out themselves in order to
(39:07):
save money, but then they endup blowing a bunch of their time
away.
So that's what it is.
Well, phil man, this has beengreat.
I love meeting people like you.
I mean, we're kind of in thesame industry.
I mean, some of the servicesyou offer sound like.
I mean these are things thatI'm going to be sending people
your way for.
So I mean this has been a greattime and I really appreciate
(39:28):
you being on the show.
And again, guys, if you want tocheck out Phil's
philipfsmithcom, check out hiswebsite and all the services he
offers.
I mean it's a ridiculous amountof accolades you've been able
to accumulate over the years too, by the way.
So congratulations oneverything you do.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I appreciate it.
Thank you for having me man,it's been fun.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah, have a good one .
Thanks for joining us on thisweek's episode of Side Hustle
City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
(40:07):
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
Thank you.
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