Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses, and I do it for an audience of entrepreneurs who are often listening as they’re building their companies. And usually I talk about . . . Well, I talk with software developers about how they built their software companies.
A little while ago, though, I got really excited about chat as a way of reaching an audience. I thought that my audience was using chat more than they were using email. Why shouldn’t I reach them via chat? And that got me on a path of understanding how it gets done. I invested in a couple of companies that do this, including ManyChat, which is now becoming the platform for creating interactive engagement via chat via Facebook Messenger. So the way we reach customers via email using tools like ActiveCampaign or MailChimp, etc. ManyChat allows us to do all that via Facebook Messenger, and it’s just blowing up.
I’m going to be speaking at their conference, and I saw that Brett Linkletter is speaking too. And then I also found that when I asked people who was doing chat well today, not one day, not in the future, not someday, not poised for success, but who’s doing it well today, Brett Linkletter was the person who I kept hearing about. He is the owner of Misfit Media. They are a direct response restaurant marketing agency. I invited him here to talk about how he built up his agency, why he’s focused on restaurants, and how he’s getting clients. And then beyond that, I also want to find out what’s working for him and his clients using Messenger marketing.
And we could do all that thanks to two phenomenal sponsors. The first is the guy, a guy named James Altucher, one of my past guests. He has got a book on side hustles. I’ll talk about the “Side Hustle Bible” that he’s come out with later, and I’ll also talk about my second sponsor, Toptal. If you’re hiring developers, you need to check them out. Brett, good to see you here.
Brett: Thanks for having me.
Andrew: Brett, how big is your business? How big is Misfit Media revenue-wise?
Brett: So this year we’re hoping we’re going to break probably 2 million in revenue, hopefully. We’ll see.
Andrew: Wow. And last year, how far did you get?
Brett: Let’s just say this. Going from January to now July this year, we’ve already doubled in size. I hope by end of the year we’ll probably do four times in size, is the goal.
Andrew: Got it. So we’re looking at the roughly 500 to 700 last year.
Brett: Yeah.
Andrew: Okay. Great. You know what? This is completely off topic, but you’ve got one of the coolest Instagram accounts of anyone that I’ve interviewed. What is behind that? Do you have like a professional photographer taking photos of you? What’s the deal there?
Brett: Well, thank you for that. I appreciate that. No. So it’s funny. So, early on in my marketing career, I actually was a photographer and filmmaker. That’s kind of how I got into the space. I never really studied in school and it was kind of like as a hobby. And I started an agency just like everyone years ago where the goal of an agency was just producing content and posting it online. That was really what agencies did back then, right?
As of today, I don’t really shoot anymore a whole lot for business, but I still like as a hobby, and I still travel quite a bit. So this year alone I’ve been to eight different countries. And so I always bring a camera, enjoy shooting, having fun. Back then also when I was doing that kind of agency model, I thought originally, “Hey, if I can build a great personal brand, have some kind of cool following along with it, that can only help me as well.” So even though today my business has not really centered around content, I still really enjoy it and I like to share some stuff once in a while, I guess.
Andrew: I just posted it in . . . We’ve got a live audience for this interview. I posted in the chat. Guys, go see for yourself. This is definitely the cool . . . . I can’t imagine I have interviewed anyone who’s got a cooler set of photos on Instagram. So you are a photographer, you were saying how you got into the agency business. What was the first thing that you did to get started?
Brett: So, I mean, I started really young. So by the time I graduated college, I already done three different companies.
Andrew: Really? Which ones? What did you do?
Brett: My sophomore year in college was when Instagram got really big, and so I got obsessed with, “Oh my God.” Like, “Hey, apps are the move right now.” Right? That was in 2012. And so I started an app at my school USC. It totally failed, it was not really working well, but learned a little bit about apps, got really excited about the space.
Next business after that I actually started it was kind of funny, but it was actually a girl’s bikini calendar at my time at USC. That was the first time I started doing Facebook ads and kind of experimenting in that kind of space and learning about digital marketing. That year in college, I got introduced to what was a foreign idea to me, which was a digital marketing agency. And the thing I loved about that was like, “Hey, I can work with brands I like. I don’t have to be the guy making the products, but I can do what I love, which was digital marketing,” which at the time I really knew nothing about right, but I just I loved the space and I loved how the internet was exploding like that. So, right after school, I got started really, really quick. And I was only 22 at the time. And shortly after I got hired at Casamigos Tequila, full-time job as a head of social media. I got hired and fired within three months and then I really pushed my agency and I never looked back ever since.
Andrew: I saw that you were interested in this type of stuff going back to college. Where was it that I saw? Rockstar energy drink. You were a student ambassador for them. Why?
Brett: Oh my God, that’s a long ago. Why did I do it or why . . . ?
Andrew: Why did you do it and what did you do for them as a student ambassador?
Brett: They literally would just send me products. Maybe it was the same thing. My Instagram was cool or something, I was taking cool pictures. It’s weird because for myself, and every business I’ve started, like I used to also a men’s hair company, a hair product line. And I like products. I like making products. I think it’s cool. But my heart is in promotion and marketing and advertising. So I’m not a great product developer or I don’t make great products myself, tangible or digital necessarily, but I love the promotion of it. I love helping people grow their businesses. I love growing my business. I like working with big deals. You know what I mean? And that’s fun for me. So I don’t know. The Rockstar thing that sounded interesting. I did it. It wasn’t really much of big thing for me, to be honest with you. But it was cool to get some free drinks, energy drinks, I guess whatever.
Andrew: So was the calendar business where you first learned about online marketing. What did you learn that got you fired up when you were promoting the calendars on Facebook?
Brett: Well, I just thought it was so incredible how you could literally . . . I mean, at the time you spend 10 bucks reaching thousands of people. I mean, right? It was so easy too. I mean, it was stupid. So I just thought, “Wait a second. There’s something here. Why is no one touching this thing right here? Like, this is so valuable.” And again, I barely knew what I was doing, but it was exciting to me. Right? And it was exciting . . . As a college kid, I was broke. I had barely any money, but I had 10 bucks to spend on an ad. And at the same time it was really cool to be part of something. I don’t know. I think growing up as a kid, I think people start businesses with two reasons, right? One, they really want to succeed and they want to achieve something great, or two, they really hate the standard that everyone follows. They really hate what people are doing on a daily basis and they want to try to deviate away from that.
Andrew: Yeah.
Brett: So I think I’m kind of 50-50. I knew I did not want to wear a suit every day. I didn’t want to get a standard corporate job. And I really want to do something different and cool, and so I just was trying everything and anything I could. I mean, again, like, I knew absolutely nothing. I just kind of dove into whatever was seemed fun and made sense, and so at the time that sounded fun and cool. I was a college kid, and why not?
Andrew: And then you got a job doing it professionally, and on the side you created Misfit Media. Was this like a side hustle? It was.
Brett: So it was kind of a side hustle and so here’s what happened. To just kind of backtrack even further, right after college . . . So this guy basically he had this marketing agency, right? Spoke at one of my classes at USC. And that’s where I heard about marketing agency. That’s my first kind of . . . First time I heard about it ever, right? He asked people in the class if anyone had a real business. It was an entrepreneurship class. I raised my hand and mentioned the calendar, everyone laughed. But this guy on his agency had heard of my business and I guess one of his friends actually purchased the calendar. And I was like, “Oh, wow, that’s pretty cool.” And so he was really intrigued by what I was doing. He was really impressed by my young age of doing this thing. He said, “Let’s try it after class. I think I have an opportunity for you.” And he introduced me to influencer advertising.
Andrew: Okay.
Brett: So, in school, I was managing about probably 50 or 60 influencers with him as kind of his side hustle, but kind of running that project. It didn’t end up being a good route for me. I ended up totally hating working with influencers. To this day, I’m like, “I just don’t want to touch that space. It’s not for me.” I don’t work for a lot of people but I just don’t . . .
Andrew: But you guys had clients who were paying you money, you then took some of that money and gave it to people who were big on social media and saying, “Promote these products that we’re getting paid for.” Why didn’t you like it?
Brett: I just I didn’t like . . . I didn’t like being rely on other people to have success. I didn’t like to be like, “Hey . . . ” They sent us product . . . “You got to do this post.” I feel like I was babysitting a ton of people. That’s why I like ads because you can just turn this thing on and run with it versus relying on people. So did that, find out I just really didn’t like it. I was working really hard on something I just didn’t really appreciate. Got out of it, started Misfit Media, which at the time was just producing content, pushing content out, working with clients. I loved that. This guy saw back what I was doing and said, “Hey, wait, Brett is doing some other cool stuff. Let’s now bring him to Casamigos and see what he can do there.”
Andrew: Casamigos is the tequila brand that was started by . . . Who are the two celebrities? It’s . . .
Brett: George Clooney and Randy Gerber.
Andrew: Got it. And by the way, I’m on the original . . . one of the first versions of Misfit Media. You said, “We do web design and development, search engine optimization, photography, social media marketing, graphic design, film production.” It looks like you were just starting out and saying, “Here’s all my skills. If you want any of these just pay me and I’ll do it.” Is that the thing that you were doing?
Brett: We were the agency for everyone model. It was the worst.
Andrew: And by we, you mean, was it just you? I’m trying to figure out who was in the company back then.
Brett: So, yeah. So, back then, it was really just me. I had a couple of freelancers working with me on the side. Like, I had this one girl that was helping me just manage Instagrams, but I was pretty much doing everything.
Andrew: And how did you get clients?
Brett: So my . . . This is so crazy. My first client ever actually came from a post on Craigslist.
Andrew: You posted on Craigslist or you responded to one?
Brett: I posted to something on Craigslist saying, “Hey, digital marketing services. Here’s my email.”
Andrew: Wow.
Brett: Someone emailed me. I couldn’t believe it. That one client was actually a watch company called MN Watch Co. This was like years ago. Small little company here in Los Angeles. That guy also ended up launching two more brands which ended up being my first three clients, which gave me suddenly somewhat of a portfolio to work with.
Andrew: And what were you doing for him at first?
Brett: Literally, meeting on a monthly basis talking about their new products, taking the new products, shooting them myself, shooting the models, shooting them just whatever I can get cool content with, and then posting on Instagram. That was it. I mean, that was literally it. It was so bad.
Andrew: On his Instagram.
Brett: That was it. Instagram and Facebook. I mean, I can’t believe I got paid to do it now looking back on it, to be honest with you.
Andrew: Ben is saying, “Brilliant story so far.” But I guess I get why it made sense because this is the early days of companies being on Instagram, taking a photo on your phone and posting it doesn’t do justice to watches, and in the early days, they’ll take anything. Just get it . . . Just the fact that a brand was on Instagram at all was amazing, right?
Brett: Oh, it was cool. I mean, like, looking back on it now it sounds crazy, but you’re right, it was working. I mean, literally, I would post a picture. It get 1,000 likes, they sell some products and I’m like, “Wow, this is really working. Digital marketing is that easy? Wow. I’m going to do this forever.”
Andrew: I kind of feel like it’s that easy, and you tell me having been in this space for a long time yourself. I feel like it’s that easy in the beginning when there’s something brand new and people are . . . There’s enough of an audience in it. You don’t have to be great. You just have to show up. Podcasting in the beginning. If you just were on it, there’s no one else to compete with. It was me and NPR when I was starting out. When I started with email marketing, it was me and your mom who was emailing you and your boss who was emailing you. And I feel like the same thing is happening with chat now. There’s not that much competition yet. With Instagram the same thing. So you got that client who then turned into three case studies because he had two other businesses. What happened next? Was niching down next or was it more of you getting other clients?
Brett: So what came next was kind of crazy. So I felt really confident. I still had my job at Casamigos. I think I was making like a $50,000 salary plus I had three clients pay me 1,500 each. So suddenly like as a kid going for not making a whole lot to that, I felt like I had a lot of money. So what did I do? I spent it all. And I spent it all on starting two new businesses, one, which was my men’s hair company, which is called Hudson & Hammer. It’s like a men’s pomade grooming product company. That totally ended up being the worst business ever. I had ton of fun, but it lost a ton of money.
Andrew: Why?
Brett: It was one of those things where digital marketing is great and I love it. I always recommend. If you’re going to start a business, digital market is a great place to start because why? The only thing you have to invest is your time. You don’t need money to invest to start a digital marketing business, right? Hair company was totally different. I how to spend thousands of dollars, tons of time and research to develop the product, just created before money even came in, right? I’m down now $15,000 before I make a dime.
Digital marketing services, hey, you charge a client 1,500 bucks, you start making that week. Easy, right? So lost a ton of money upfront. And then the other business I started was actually a company called Boostly. I did it with two other friends. And it was an Instagram growth tool which actually I just sold about a year ago. So double down on my businesses, now I had three. And I’m sure as entrepreneur, though, if you’re dabbling in three different spaces like that, I mean, you can’t do everything well, so I was kind of doing an average job in each business, which was a huge learning lesson. I think you go all in on one thing now and you just don’t look back. I started those two businesses, though.
Andrew: Why didn’t you stick with Boostly? Why didn’t Boostly grow bigger?
Brett: So Boostly ended up growing decent in size. When I sold it, I mean, it was decent . . . I mean, when I sold it, the value was a quarter million dollars.
Andrew: Wow.
Brett: I think at our best, they were doing something like $50,000, $60,000 a month with like 180 clients or something. And it was cool. It just here’s the thing. I think in any business, especially for me, I want to feel really good about what I’m doing for people. And I think early days, Instagram growth and all that like, hey, look, it’s cool. It’s fun. Everyone wants followers. But at the end of the day, I didn’t really believe in what we were doing was helping that business really create a lot more value for them. And I didn’t feel great selling it. And my heart was . . .
Andrew: I’m wondering why. So I’m on boostly.io. Right. That’s the site. And what you offer is real followers. I pay, I get real followers following me on Instagram. And you felt that it was what?
Brett: I just . . . I don’t know. It didn’t feel like I was . . . Okay. If you were to ask me this question at that time, I was like, “Great. This is awesome.” Right? As you know, social media is changing so much. A follower today is not a follower as it was three or four years ago, right? With engagement rates going down like crazy, all this stuff, I really believe in paid advertising. That’s my thing now. Organic social media is great, I still respect it, I still love it. But if I’m going to sell one versus the other, it’s going to be paid advertising all day long over building someone’s following.
Andrew: Because if I have followers, they don’t necessarily see my posts anymore the way they did before, and you don’t have as much control over it, where with paid, you’re paying. There’s a clear expectation of results from the site and you have full control over what you do, what you post within reason.
Brett: The biggest thing is yes, that but also direct ROI. You can’t really prove a direct ROI from building someone’s following and then saying, “Hey, you grew 10,000 followers. Here’s what you made back.”
Andrew: Right. Right.
Brett: I like cutthroat businesses where like, “Hey, look, give me 1,000 bucks, I’ll give you 5,000 back and I can prove it.” That’s [inaudible 00:16:36].
Andrew: Got it.
Brett: That’s where my heart is at and that’s what I love. So that’s kind of why . . .
Andrew: Well, most people don’t like it. It feels a little bit too mercenary, but it does give you a clarity on your life, clarity for your customers about whether you’re helping them or not. The people at the serve team who are watching you, they’re saying, “This is exactly what we’ve been looking for, what I’ve been thinking of,” says the person who is watching. You, I guess, they’re connected to you. They came here to watch you. And then they’re also watching all the other stuff that we’re doing here live today. Got it. And so you were building those two businesses, you closed them down. Here’s the interesting . . . Oh, actually, you sold one, the other I see you . . . Is Hudson still available? It’s still online? The grooming product?
Brett: It’s actually really sad. So I actually just threw away the last box of product that I had literally yesterday. And it was funny because . . . So our office . . . We’re in Culver City. And we’re growing like crazy, and we’re hiring probably three new employees in next few weeks. We went from a team of, by the way, 3 in early January to now going to be 11 or 12 within a month. So it’s like really crazy.
Andrew: Why? What’s happened that it’s taken off so much?
Brett: It’s really . . . Well, first of all, it was us really honing in on our own personal ads for our agency, right? Last year or maybe a year and a half ago, I was doing everything from cold calling, emailing, networking, getting referrals. I don’t touch any of that now. Every single customer that comes to us has to go through a number of hoops just to get on the phone with us, AKA, we’re running ads all over the country. We get good qualified leads. I only talk to people on the phone now that are actually qualified, make enough money, are great for our service. And what does that do? Boosts my conversion rates on selling these people. I mean, I would say right now, one in three restaurants I speak to on a daily basis will sign up for our service on the spot just like that.
Andrew: And that’s the other thing that you got into, focusing not just on what services you want to offer, but who you want to offer them to.
Brett: Exactly. Exactly.
Andrew: Okay.
Brett: And I think so much the time for marketing agencies is like so many of these guys they want to serve everyone, they want to do every service because why? There’s money there. So I think the old mentality was like, if someone approaches you and says, “Hey, I want to build a website and you don’t have a website experience,” the old mentality was, “Just say you can do it and figure it out later.” I completely disagree with that nowadays.
Andrew: Do you have any bad experience doing that saying yes to something and then regretting it later?
Brett: Totally. Oh my God.
Andrew: What’s one thing that sticks out?
Brett: Well, it’s just . . . Okay. So you want to look at your time and how you value your time, right? So, for me, right? I look at my time with a certain value attached to it. Now, that time and my value for doing whatever it is I’m doing is at that value, and if I deviate away from that, well, now I’m losing that revenue. So let’s just say this. Let’s just say I speak to three restaurants within three hours. Our average client pays us about $1,500 a month for six months, right? And I’m closing one in three of these calls. So where is my time in this hypothetical scenario? It’s $500 an hour is my time, right?
So if I’m taking away from that now and working on some miscellaneous project for some client I didn’t know how to do, well, I’m burning money, I mean, literally burning money for something that I don’t even know this is a proper service for. Are they paying us enough money to cover that? Absolutely not. Right? So it just . . . I think for me and my business partner, especially, we’re very big on systems and processes and really honing in and buckling down and heads down on what we have to do in front of us and not deviating away from that. The moment you deviate away, you’re spending time on some stuff that really isn’t benefiting your business in the long run. Maybe it’s a quick check like that if you need it, but it’s not contributing to the long-term benefit of your company.
Andrew: All right. I’m going to take a moment to talk about my first sponsor, and then I want to come back and ask you about how you figured out what to focus on. And at some point, I’d also like to hear what your sales process is. How do you get to a point where you know one in three people who you talk to is going to buy from you? My first sponsor is a company called Toptal. That’s where you hire developers. Right? You know Neil Patel, right?
Brett: Yeah.
Andrew: He’s a digital marketer who’s now got a big digital marketing agency. And one of the things that he told me was that he is doing services now instead of software, but the way that he can do SEO and other marketing services faster for his clients is, he hires developers to code things internally, not external tools that people pay him to use, but internally. He sees, “What are my people spending the most time on play? Great. I’m going to hire a developer to create software that does that better than people so they don’t have to keep doing repetitive tasks.”
And so I brought up an ad for Toptal with him and I said, “You probably never used Toptal because you’ve got such a big network.” He goes, “Oh, no, I do.” I said, “Why? You’ve got network.” He says, “People over-estimate the value of a network. And it is important, but it’s not the most and only important thing.” He says what they underestimate is the value of time.
He says he goes to Toptal because with Toptal when you need to hire you can often hire the best of the best. We’re not talking about cheap labor. Best of the best developers at a reasonable price often hire them within a week. I’ve hired people within two calls I get on. They pick the two people for me to talk to, I like the person I want, and then that person often starts within a day or two. It’s unreal. And it’s because Toptal has a network of the best of the best developers.
If you, Brett, ever decide that you need to hire developers, if anyone listening to us decides that they need to hire developers, go to Toptal. And I’ve got a special URL where they’re going to give you 80 hours of Toptal developer credit when you pay for your first 80 hours in addition to a no-risk trial period. This is a no-brainer. If you’re hiring, if you’re thinking of adding development to your team, you got to go and check them out. It’s top as in top of your head, tal as in talent, toptal.com/mixergy. And Mixergy, of course, is M-I-X-E-R-G-Y.
So how did you get to the place, Brett, where you could focus in, you say, “You know what? This is the only service I do. These are the people that I service.” Which one came first?
Brett: So there was a process to it, obviously, right? So it kind of started like, okay, so back then the early days we were an agency for everyone. And then we decided, “Okay. There was a pivoting point. Do we want to focus on really paid advertising content or do we want to focus on some of the SEO stuff or just content or just production or whatever?” And me and my partner were like, “Hey, paid advertising it’s got to be in the mix, so we’re going to do paid ads.” Okay.
We were still doing, basically, all kinds of industries, though. I mean, we were doing fitness studios, sunglasses online, girls’ bikini brands. We even . . . Or to the . . . We were selling Botox at one point for . . . It was great for [inaudible 00:23:22] as well. Anyway. So we were just doing paid ads for all these different industries. And then we stumbled upon restaurants, just honestly by accident. And one of our first restaurant clients actually was a really big restaurant here in LA called Tommy’s Burgers, called Original Tommy’s. Killer client. Basically, they have 34 locations here in Los Angeles. They’re like world famous. They’re a fantastic company, but they’re super old school in how they do all of their marketing. So we stepped in there, just did some basic Facebook ads and literally crushed it. I mean, they told us that within the first three months, they saw like a 5% to 10% growth across the stores we were doing this for and we’re like, “That is insane. That never happened.”
Andrew: You mean, people were coming in and buying burgers because of an ad that they saw online.
Brett: Yes. Like crazy. Like crazy. I mean, keep in mind, this company they are heavily reliant on, first of all, just the reputation. Second of all, they had never run any kind of ad online ever. They do radio and TV. So, when we brought them to the digital age, suddenly it was like, I mean, fireworks were going off, right?
Andrew: Well, what’s the ad that you would do? I would think a company like them, a restaurant like them would just do Yelp. Somebody searching for burgers, they want to advertise to that person, and then that person comes in. What’s an ad that works for you for Facebook for a burger joint?
Brett: We just did an ad targeting locals within like two or three miles of each of the restaurants that we were doing it for, and we said, “Hey, come in and show this ad for a buy one get one burger.” That was it.
Andrew: That’s it. Okay.
Brett: That was it. That was it. Literally, that was it. They told us they saw this insane return. And so suddenly, we’re like light bulb, “Wait, this is an old-school industry that’s never touched digital marketing. If we just take our expertise, all these other fields and apply it to restaurants, we’ll do really well.” Right?
Andrew: How did you get them as a client? How were you getting clients back then?
Brett: So back then I used to do a lot of like cold email outreach blasts. So I basically compile a list of a ton of emails of businesses I thought were good for us. I put together a cold outreach campaign, and just email literally every single person with a link to book a call with me. And I’d get some calls, but it wasn’t the best strategy, obviously. This client specifically actually came through a family friend. So, thank God. That was amazing.
But that was really the big aha moment for me because I was like, “Hey, look, I’m busting my ass for all these other industries trying to do well.” It’s really hard to do well, as you know, digital marketer sometimes you just can’t get that ROI, right? But suddenly with just minimal effort, I was crushing it for this amazing restaurant client. So that was the big aha moment for us.
After that moment, we decided let’s start looking at more restaurants, started using that exact same model, just literally, Facebook ad would show this ad for a free something. That was working really well. And then we dropped all of our other brands, and we were just doing restaurants. And then at some point, we brought in email to that, and then hence we found chatbot marketing and we were like, “Wait a second. Bingo. This is our service.” And then since doing that, that’s how we’ve been . . .
Andrew: What’s your service now that’s taken off?
Brett: So, basically, what we do now is we’ll run an ad on Facebook or Instagram. It’ll be similar, right? It’ll be like, “Hey, buy one get one burger.” But now in order to redeem your offer, you click Send Message, right?
Andrew: And that brings them into Facebook Messenger. And once they’re in Messenger, they’re subscribed and you can follow up with them.
Brett: Exactly. So they click Send Message, our system, obviously, through ManyChat, sends them a coupon directly to their phone. It says, “Input your email to get your coupon.” We also want to capture an email too.
Andrew: Yep.
Brett: Put in their email, get the coupon. Now in order to redeem this offer, just bring this coupon into the restaurant. They come into the restaurant with the coupon on Messenger, they present it to their cashier or server at the restaurant, the cashier or server asks the customer to simply tap the button on the coupon that says “Redeem.” By tapping Redeem, they activate the coupon, ensures it’s the first time use and it’s not expired.
And then upon finishing their meal, we send them one more message say, “Hey, thanks for coming in. Now, how much did you spend today?” A customer types in, let’s say, 40 bucks, and now all the information we just captured through an automated chat flow. It gets pulled and put into an Excel spreadsheet and tracks everything from the reach of the campaign, the impressions, the engagements of the ad to the opt-ins on Messenger and emails collected to the customers who came through the restaurant store, who they were by first name and last name, what time they came, what they spent, and the total revenue earned directly from our ad campaigns. And so then I go to the restaurant saying, “Hey, guess what? I just made you 10 grand.” And they’re like, “What?” And I’m like, “Check it out. Here’s every single customer, what time they came . . . ”
Andrew: Their names, you can get the faces of them, you can get the amount that they spent, the time that they did, you give them a spreadsheet, and you say, “Look, I delivered this.” That is brilliant. And the only reason you get all that, the names, the faces, etc. is because Facebook Messenger just gives it to you when somebody subscribes, when they say, “Yes,” or in your case it’s redeem a coupon. And now you also get the follow-up messages, don’t you? Where if they bought a burger today, do you come back later on and say, “There’s another burger available,” or something?
Brett: Totally. Oh, yeah.
Andrew: What’s the follow-up on that?
Brett: So every client is kind of different, but the way we sell it is . . . So it’s kind of like this. So let’s just say John comes in and redeems an offer for a burger. Okay. John clicks that button, gets the coupon, comes in the restaurant. Okay. He spends 40 bucks. The next day, after he’s come in, we may send him another follow-up messages saying, “Hey, John. Thank you so much for coming in and we really hoped you enjoy your burger,” because we know the guy. “But you know, John, here at our restaurant we offer our customers a variety of other awesome menu items and we’d love you to come back and try something new. And on your next visit when you spend 40 bucks or more, we’re going to hook you up with a free appetizer. Here’s an offer for that. This expires in two weeks.” So then that guy John, he turns around comes back again. He spends other 40 bucks, and now that’s 80 bucks in revenue. And guess what? I haven’t spent anything for that time because now he’s in our database. I talked to him for free.
Andrew: Wow-wee. Yeah, that is the brilliance of chat, but it’s also the way that you thought to do it. Now, I understand, you ask him for an email address, Facebook automatically pre-populates a button with the person’s actual email address. All they have to do is press the button and it goes to your chatbot. You then use Zapier to send it over to your email software. I get that. What are you using to make sure that they only redeem that coupon once or that there’s some kind of activity that happens when they press Redeem?
Brett: Totally. So there’s a condition. So, if the customer is already in our database and already redeemed it, it’ll say, “Oh, I’m so sorry. You’ve already redeemed this offer,” or “You’re already in our database. This is for new customers only.” By the way, I . . .
Andrew: Uh-huh. Sorry, go ahead.
Brett: Well, I’ll get into it. My focus is specifically on new customer acquisition. If you look at restaurants with the biggest pain points they may have, which by the way, also going back to why we chose this service, we chose this service not just because it’s cool because you can track it, but we chose it because the biggest pain point in the restaurant space is new customer acquisition and tracking it. So we’re like, “Okay. You can’t get new customers, you can’t track it. Let’s just do that.” So, look, I want to bring customers back to . . . I want to increase retention, but at the same time I want to focus on specifically new customers, because you also don’t want to cannibalize customers that have already come into the restaurant by giving them buy one get one deal. So, if someone is already in their database, per se, it won’t let them get this offer. It’ll say, “Oh, I’m so sorry, you’re part of the list already or it’s for new people only.”
Andrew: And you get a list of their current customers somehow that you can put into your system?
Brett: Well, there’s two ways you can do it, right? So, when we run the ad like the top of the funnel to new people, if the restaurant has an email list or like a text list, obviously, you can take those emails or phone numbers, input them into Facebook ads and exclude that audience completely so they never see it.
Andrew: Right.
Brett: But the way that we do it, typically, I don’t like to do that. I’m like, “Hey, look, if we get some current existing fans that come through this funnel, that’s not that really big of a loss, but in your database now we can talk to them and maybe increase that frequency.” But really, what we’re trying to do here and what we’re kind of most famous for, we call it campaign stacking, is we’ll run campaign month one, buy one get one burger. Some people come through initially, and for everyone who doesn’t come through in that first month, if they don’t come in within 30 days, it’ll send them a reminder message saying, “Hey, you never came in. Do you still want this offer because it expired? But if you want we can give you another one.” And if they say, “Yes,” we give another one to come in the next month.
Well, as we enter month two, though, let’s just say I run like a buy one get one sandwich deal, I’m now going to take everyone who opted into that first month of promotions and I’m going to exclude them from returning to the ad. So now I only reach new people. And I bring in a whole new group of people. And based on our follow-up sequences within ManyChat, I bring in a whole new group of people, plus some people from that first month are also now making their second visit or their first visit, so now I’m making more money in the second month than at that first month.
Andrew: Got it.
Brett: Momentum starts building like that.
Andrew: And then you have the ability to send them one more promotional message after they interacted with you. If you want to reach them again, then you buy ads to get them back? Right?
Brett: No. We just send out a broadcast. And I know as of what like last week, there’s been a few changes on that subscription messaging and whatever. So far, it hasn’t affected us. I mean, we’ll send out one time a month . . . Sorry. One time a month we’ll send out a broadcast to our entire group about just really anything. But yes, initially, there’s like a specific flow. So, like, hey, they opt in for something, upon their first visit, they may get something else. And if they don’t come in within 30 days, we may send a reminder. That’s [crosstalk 00:33:09].
Andrew: Right.
Brett: Yeah. But if someone doesn’t do anything, they’re still going to also each month just receive a message. “Hey, by the way, we now serve green salads,” or, “By the way, we’re opening another location,” or just . . .
Andrew: Just news about it. And the benefit of that is you get to stay in front of them, but also if they interact with it by pressing a button, they’ve now interacted enough that Facebook will allow you to promote to them and then you can come back in with a coupon or something else that’s totally kosher.
Brett: Totally. Yeah. And on that note too, so like for sit down restaurants what we’ll do is like a retargeting outreach campaign to everyone in our database. So we’ll say like, “Hey, book your reservation. You still have this coupon.” So we’ll reach them on the ad plus Messenger if we need to, plus maybe email if we want. So you’re really hitting them on everywhere.
Andrew: And the beginning of this was before you even got to Messenger was you getting them into email. So you’re buying ads for restaurants and doing what? Like for Tommy’s, all you were doing was saying, “Show this ad and you’ll get buy one get one . . . You’ll get a free burger when you buy one.” You then said that you started layering email to promotions like that. How did you do email?
Brett: So it was . . . Looking back it’s such a bad strategy, but . . .
Andrew: I love that.
Brett: So we’d run a campaign. And it’s so funny. I don’t know why early on, like sometimes . . . You know certain times in life where you’ve done something and it may be significant or insignificant but for some reason it just really sticks with you? This is one of those ads that just always stuck with me. I don’t know why. We ran an ad for when a free year supply of cheeseburgers, a whole year of cheeseburgers. And the ad was literally like a beach sunset picture, I think, taken from Bali or something. That was the ad with a bunch of cheeseburgers just photoshopped all over the place. And it said, “Click this to win free cheeseburgers for a year.” And it was so funny looking back. And I got to find it. It looks hilarious.
People would click the ad, they put in their email to win free cheeseburgers for a year. At the end of the month, we’d have like a raffle and we’d picked someone to get free burgers for a year. And then me and my partner would literally go to Staples and literally print out like 52 coupons. It was one burger a week for the whole year. These new coupons for this free burger offer, and then send it to the customer. And then of all the other emails that we had collected from everyone [inaudible 00:35:36] raffle we would just email them offers. That was it.
Andrew: Got it. And now you’ve got their email address because they registered and they got a coupon which brings them in, but also you have the ability to keep following up with them.
Brett: Totally.
Andrew: And was there trouble with email that led you to discover chat or was it just you constantly looking for new stuff?
Brett: Well, me and my partner really hated the whole thing of going to Staples and actually printing out these coupons and we [inaudible 00:35:59] of that. But also, obviously, the average open rate, at least for restaurants on email today is like 15%. It’s pretty bad. A lot of times is lower for restaurants because they have terrible email list. But Messenger, obviously, it’s over 80% within a minute.
Andrew: Yeah, open rate.
Brett: I mean, we’re seeing like . . . We have about 140 clients right now. We see at least on our list about a 90% to 92% average open rate through Messenger.
Andrew: That’s huge. Think about that. Anyone who has an email list right now should go look at their open rates and just revisit it. We don’t look at it anymore because we have a sense of where it is and we move on, but it really is at best 25%. That’s what we’re seeing industry-wide. And for many people, it’s way worse. You get over 90% open rate on your Facebook Messenger messages?
Brett: Yeah, it’s stupid. It’s amazing.
Andrew: That’s huge. That’s unreal. So I get . . . So what you’re saying was you had an open rate issue or a coupon issue?
Brett: Well, we had both. And you just . . . You can’t . . . It’s also this. I mean, you can’t track nearly as much information through an email funnel that we were sending out versus Messenger. I mean, literally like for email, it would just be like a centered email, which, by the way, it takes a lot of time to set up all these email templates. It was insane. Now we basically just copy and paste chatbot flows and it’s pretty awesome.
Andrew: Right. That’s the beauty of picking a single market that you’re going after. You have a specific template flow and now you redirect it. A burger joint in California doesn’t care that there’s one in New York that has a similar flow that started out similarly but eventually they adjust. Right. So you were saying, “Look, I didn’t want to have to deal with all the headaches of email.” And that’s what set you off to look for chat.
Brett: Here’s the thing too, like, going back to my partner and I are so big on systems and processes. Like, I’m a huge believer that, like, you don’t really build a great business, you build a great system for your business, and that’s the business, right? So ManyChat was like the biggest eye-opening opportunity ever for us because it was like, “Holy crap. We can literally create this system that just prints money for restaurants.” And honestly, okay, every client we have, yeah, we’re doing different kinds of offers, we’re doing . . . It’s a different restaurant. There’s different branding associated with it. But, I mean, I could tell you right now that like, pretty much it’s a copy and paste model, right?
Andrew: Yeah.
Brett: I mean, like . . . Okay. I can sell a restaurant right now and within one hour, they’re giving me their credit card, we’re charging for 1,500 bucks on the spot. Within a week, five days, they’re up and running and then pretty soon now we’re collecting another check. It’s just so system and processed. I remember back then we’re working with a client, it would take me 30 days maybe to close a client, a lead if it was a good lead, 30 days. So a whole month because I don’t get paid if don’t close this guy. Then another 30 days of brainstorming what we’re even going to do. I don’t get paid for like two months. Like, that’s terrible, right? So doing chatbots was, “Okay. I can track this stuff. I can create a system that I can just repeat over and over again. And I can collect a lot more data and do a lot more things than I can even do close to on email.” So it is amazing.
Andrew: Right. I’m going to take a moment here to talk about my second sponsor and then come back in here and ask you a few questions. I think we ended up getting so many people going over to this URL a moment ago. I’ve never had this before where I think we just shut down the whole site.
Brett: No way.
Andrew: I’m still going to add . . . Yeah. I think . . . Well, yeah. I think we suddenly triggered some weirdo thing on the site that’s saying this is probably a bunch of . . . Weird. Is it still working for you guys? The Side Hustle . . . All right, here. I’m going to talk about my second sponsor. The second sponsor is a guy named James Altucher and he’s done everything. He was a hedge fund manager, he created a software company, he was blogger. He’s doing a bunch of different things. He bought an ad . . . He was a Bitcoin person. He bought an ad for me for something that wasn’t really working. We said, “Listen, I know I did a bad job reading the ad for you. I know it’s my fault. I completely accept that responsibility. But what do you think is ideal? Do we give him his money back? Do we do something else?”
And he said, “You know what? Here, look, I know your audience, there’s some people who haven’t started businesses. The majority of your audience, Andrew, has started businesses. There’s some people who haven’t started businesses. I’ll tell you what, Andrew, why don’t you just give them my book on how to start a side business?” So, if you’re interested, here’s a person who started several businesses who’s going to give you some ideas for a side business that you can start. The book is called “The Side Hustle Bible.” And the URL where you can get that right now for free, I went through and I got it for free to make sure that there’s not like some hidden fee or anything.
Here is what you do if you want it. It’s the . . . You have to actually put in the word “the” in the URL, thesidehustlebible.com/andrew, my name. So thesidehustlebible.com/andrew. It looks like it is finally working right now. I think they’re not used to me doing a live read of an ad and then a bunch of people all going at once. Usually, it’s in my podcast, and then people will go hit the link as they’re watching it. Cool. And thanks for jumping in into the chat, the live chat and answering questions. Brett was asking, “Is it 1,500 a month?” I was asking that too. And 1,500 is your retainer fee, and then in addition, it’s the ad spend that you do?
Brett: No, it’s the ad spend on top of that too.
Andrew: Yeah. So, in addition, they’re also paying for ad spend. And then do they pay for their ManyChat account in addition to that?
Brett: We cover that, but it’s so cheap that it’s not a big deal. Actually, I was going to say, so whoever asked that, do you want me to give like my . . . When the client asked for the price, do you want me to say how I say it? Like, it’s . . .
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I want to get into the systems of it. Yes.
Brett: Okay. So, first of all, for anyone selling, like, you got to have a script, like, oh, my God.
Andrew: You still have a script, a sales script?
Brett: Totally. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Andrew: What’s in the sales script? That’s a pretty big binder for anyone who’s watching live. What’s in it?
Brett: This is gold. This is gold. So I took 600 calls last year, just last year. I probably done around 400 this year. I still follow this thing. I mean, I haven’t memorized, but here’s the thing. Remember, systems and processes. When you . . . Most people sell, they just say random crap that comes up their mind. It’s not a repeatable system. When you have a script that you follow, I know that I’m going to close 33% or better through this. Period. Last month, I closed 70%. Okay. But if I follow this every single time and I do the same thing on my ads every single time, I know I can predict what’s going to happen. If I change my sales script every time, it’s unpredictable now. So guess what?
Andrew: So you literally will go . . . How do you go through a sales script with another human being who’s going to ask you questions, who’s going to interrupt you?
Brett: Because I’ve done it so many times, I know exactly what they’re going to say before they say it.
Andrew: How do you get to the point where you know exactly what they’re going to say? Do you . . . At the end of each call, did you use to write it down so that you would have an answer for everything next time it came up?
Brett: No. So here’s the thing. I’m a huge believer on sales. You have to be . . . You got to take the alpha role. You’re the alpha, they’re the beta.
Andrew: Okay.
Brett: They’re privileged to speak to you. Hey, look, I’m one agency. There’s millions of restaurants I can work with. You’re lucky to speak to me. That’s how you want to look at it, right? So, when I go over my sales script, here’s the first thing I say. First I ask, “First off, are you the sole decision maker in your business?” I want to know if they can make decision on the spot or not. If they don’t, I say, “Hey, let’s do another call later with someone on the phone.”
Then I say, “Here’s how the phone call is going to go. I’m going to start off by asking you some questions about your business and the application that you sent through to work with me. You applied to work with me. Then, if it sounds like I can help and it sounds like we’re a good fit, I’ll explain what I have to offer and how that works and everything. Then at the end, you can make a decision about working with me or not. Sound cool?” And then they’re like, “Oh, my God. Okay.” And they’re so diligent and they listen.
And then I go through a number of questions. And it basically just shows the restaurant that they’re doing a lot of things wrong. Ninety-nine percent of them have never touched chatbot marketing, 99% of them have no idea how to track their ROI from their marketing.
Andrew: And your questions are leading them to recognize that they didn’t track ROI, they didn’t try this new tool called chatbots, etc.
Brett: So, by the way, I never said the word bot on a sales pitch.
Andrew: Right. I shouldn’t use the word bot anymore either when I’m talking to people who have no interest in it.
Brett: Well, here’s the thing. So you and I are like, hey, we’re talking about bots all day. It’s cool, right? But to the average person, they look at bots as like, “Oh, this is some kind of weird Instagram growth bot, fake followers.” That’s what they think of it as. So, when I say any of this stuff, all I’m doing is showing the restaurant, again, they have a problem, it’s not working, they want to grow, you should talk to us. And all I’m doing is trying to . . . They have an issue, they want to go to this place, and I’m the perfect bridge to get there.
Andrew: And do you ask them what this place is? Do you ask them, “Where are you trying to go?”
Brett: Totally. I’d say, “Hey, how much money are you making?” They say, “All right, 100,000 a month.” I’ll say, “Okay. How much do you want to make in the next year?” They say, “Well, I do want to do maybe 150,000.” I say, “Oh, that’s awesome. And what would that money allow you to do?” You want them to like, think about their dream, like, “Oh, if I had 150,000, damn, I could open up another location, I could take my wife on vacation, I could show the kids, I could travel the world, I could do all these things.” They start imagining what their life could be like.
And then you say, “Okay. So why don’t you just go do that? Why do you need me to do this?” And then they start selling . . . They start selling me on them. “Well, I just think you’ve worked with some big restaurants. You’re so great. You could really help me get there.” I say, “Of course, I can. Well, do you want me explain how it works?” Literally, selling themselves on it.
Andrew: Because you’re saying, “Why don’t you do it?” And they could then tell you why they can’t do it, what problems. I don’t know how to do this. Marketing. Advertising hasn’t worked for us that type of thing.
Brett: So here’s the exact question it is. So I’d say, “Okay. And when do you want to fix this problem and really start growing your business?” And they’ll say, “Right now.” And I’ll say, “Okay, cool. And . . . ” Where is it? “And what’s stopping you from achieving this goal on your own?” And they’ll literally tell you, “I can’t do it.” And then I say, “Okay. Well, I can, so let’s work.”
Andrew: How did you get to the point where you have this script? How did you create a script like this?
Brett: So, first of all, I’m huge on getting like private online coaches. Like, me and my partner alone probably invested like close to $50,000 on coaching, online courses, coaching, all that kind of stuff. But a coach only take you so far, at some point, you really got to do it yourself. So we got a pretty good . . . I read a ton of sales books, by the way. Like, I love sales. That’s a . . .
Andrew: What’s a good coach? What’s a good sales book? Recommend.
Brett: “Negotiating as if your Life Depends on it” is amazing. “Pitch Anything” is really good. But if you get that book “Negotiate as if your Life Depends on it,” it’s by a guy who was an FBI agent and working with like hostage negotiations. And basically, saving people’s lives negotiating with crazy people, then he applied these same principles negotiating to business, and suddenly he was just killing it. So I was attracted to this book because when I look at business, I look at business as like a sport and war. I’m like, I’m so about that. Like, it’s like, “We’re going to do this, we’re going to be the best, and we’re going to just destroy everyone else in our way.” Like, that’s how I approach business. It’s kind of crazy. But that’s why I like the book and that’s why the book is . . . It kind of goes on that mentality, right?
Andrew: Yeah. By the way, the book I think it’s called “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if your Life Depended on It” by Chris Voss. I read it. It’s a fantastic book. He’s so good. And is there a coach that you recommend?
Brett: A coach?
Andrew: Yeah, coach. You’re saying that you also been coached.
Brett: Yeah. So we have a ton. Okay. One coach who is just amazing is Sam Ovens. If you guys haven’t . . .
Andrew: Sam Ovens, really? For consulting services. I know him, of course.
Brett: Totally. Sam Ovens, his gig Consulting Accelerator. That’s a killer. I mean, the thing I like about his course is that . . .
Andrew: I bought that.
Brett: There’s a lot of great coaches out there, right? But what’s so cool about Sam’s course, is because it really follows like a specific route, like you do this first, then you do this, then you do this. It’s not just, “Hey, learn Facebook ads,” because a lot people know Facebook ads, but it’s like, “All right. How do you get clients? How do you service those clients? How do you onboard?” So, Sam’s process is great. I think depending on where someone is in their business career, like, there’s a coach for every different level.
Andrew: So what I’m hearing you say, though, Brett is, you’ve got coaches and books to give you the fundamentals of the outline of the script or the script, then you would adjust it as you got on calls with people.
Brett: Totally. So we basically took Sam’s foundation for his script and how like he thinks, which is brilliant. And then we created the script based off that and then wrote our own based on, like, what was solving problems for our restaurants.
Andrew: What’s your process of like . . . If you see that somebody asks a question, how do you come back and adjust your script based on what they’re asking?
Brett: So a good question. So what we’ll do is like, first of all, I record every single call I ever do so that way I can go back and listen to myself and see what sparked interest or what was actually deterrent to them buying. And when I close every deal or whatever after every single call, I always, always, always write down my emotions of how I felt because I think emotion is huge in a sales call. Right? So I’ll write down, “I felt really good about this. I spoke very patiently. I was attentive, I was confident, but I didn’t close it. And I think I didn’t close it because the person didn’t trust me.”
Or I was . . . Actually, on this call I was hung over and I felt like shit, but they bought. And I think they bought because they just related to me.” So I’ll like . . . And I look at all that and be like, “So what’s the common pattern here?” And so I’ll literally change my tone on sales calls based on my notes. And I’ll change the verbiage depending on when I listened back if I hear something that sparks someone’s interest.
So here’s one line I baked into my sales script after I noticed it started really, really exciting people, is I give them my spiel and I’d say, “Now, the focus here is on ROI, obviously, we want to give you guys a return on your investment. And look, you’re going to get followers and likes and exposure and all those awesome great things people love talking about, but at the end of the day, that’s not what I care about, that’s not my focus, because let’s be real, you can’t deposit likes into the bank, so I don’t care about that.” And then the restaurant is like, “Oh my God, I love you. Yes. I don’t want followers.”
Andrew: Yeah.
Brett: And they just relate to that. They’re like, “Thank you for saying that.” They’re just like, “Thank you. I don’t care about likes and followers. I want money.”
Andrew: And you’re noticing that and adding it to your script and you’re paying attention to what doesn’t work and removing it from the script and you just keep . . . All right. Now I understand how you got to the script. Let’s talk about how you got to process of getting people on the phone with you. What is that process now and how did you get to it?
Brett: So early, early days, again, Sam was kind of showing us. We also we’ve invested in . . . You know Billy Gene? Billy Gene’s marketing . . .
Andrew: Yeah. I get messages from him a lot about how much he likes Mixergy interviews, which I love. I love hearing that from him.
Brett: He’s like one of our biggest mentors. We love Billy.
Andrew: He focuses on how to buy ads right.
Brett: Yeah. Okay. Here’s the thing. Billy is . . . We’ve gone through his programs years ago. He actually sold us on his course when we only had $2,000 a month in revenue, and we had to literally go into credit card debt to get his course back then. This was like years ago when he was just getting off the ground too. So we’ve known Billy for a long time, he’s very close to us. Actually, he just spoke to him yesterday. We do like a monthly coaching call with him, just one on one.
And at this point for us, he’s just a big mentor for us on the high level stuff, right? So here’s the thing. We knew to grow our agency, we had to generate sales, obviously. To grow an agency fast, you want to generate sales faster. Well, doing the whole like cold call, cold email referral approach is super slow and clunky and not predictable. Right?
So Billy says this one day . . . This has always taken me to. He said, “All right. Brett and James, you guys, if you have a client that’s not doing well, their campaign is sucking, what do you do?” And we say, “Well, we do everything in our power to try to fix it so we can keep the clients so they can do well and make money.” He goes, “Okay, great. So why do you treat your ads for your agency like shit? Why don’t you try to fix your own ads? Why are they still doing shitty? You should be your best client. Treat yourself like your best client.” And I was like, “Holy shit. What the hell are we doing?” And so at that point, we started focusing . . .
Andrew: Oh, I think we just lost your connection. Can you guys see him okay. I am for some reason seeing a frozen screen from him. Slava, can you . . . Oh, wait. There we go. You’re back. Good. We lost you there for a second. So you started fixing your ads, and the top of your funnel is your ad.
Brett: So here is the thing. So, like Billy said, he’s like, “Treat yourself like your best client. If you’re running ads for yourself and it’s not producing a return, go to work to figure it out, like, make it work because you’ve got to care about yourself more than any other clients.” So we just doubled down our ad strategy. We started investing in our content behind our ads. We got a few more courses on inbound marketing. Did I lose you guys again?
Andrew: Yeah. What’s going on? Why don’t we give it a moment to . . . There we go. You’re back.
Brett: Good.
Andrew: Good.
Brett: Okay. So right when I get to where the rubber meets the road, I feel like I kind of . . .
Andrew: I know. That’s painful. Okay.
Brett: So, basically, what I was saying is that we started treating ourselves like a client, like our best client. Okay? And so we started really focusing on our ad strategy, our inbound marketing strategy. And so now what we do is at least one day a week my partner and I really dedicate our time to writing out our ad angles, writing new ad copies, creating new content for those ads because we’re spending probably about 20 to 25,000 a month on ads, we’re reaching literally millions of people. And people burn out on your ads. You need to consistently produce new stuff for them to excite them.
So, like right now, I can tell you right now, our best performing ad is literally me sitting at this desk and saying, “Hey, here’s my client, Miller’s Roast Beef. They made 10 grand on the first month. Here’s my client, blah, blah, blah. They made 7 grand.” That ad is crushing it. It has like 400,000 views or something. And literally, people . . .
Here’s how the spiel goes every single time. I say, “Hey, are you a restaurant owner with multiple locations? Great. Well . . . ” And then we go to the angle, which might be something along the lines of like, “Hey, can you not track your marketing? I know. Doesn’t that suck? You can’t really prove your results? Well, guess what? I have a free case study that explains exactly what I do for my clients. If you’d like to get that free case study, click this link.” They click that link, it takes them to a VSL, which is Video Sales Letter.
Andrew: Video Sales Letter.
Brett: They click that page, they watch the VSL. And I don’t collect an email at that point. I just give them . . . They can just watch the email. They’ll watch the video. Okay. It’s like 15 minutes. It’s basically me just selling the person who clicks the link, right? That’s all it is. They watch the video, they’re kind of pre-sold, then they click to apply for a call. It’s an application. You can’t just talk because you got to apply, right? They watch the video, they apply. It’s like a 15 question survey. They go through the survey, then it goes one of two things. This where it gets really cool. We links in the InfusionSoft recently. This is new for us.
So, if the client . . . We ask them how much they’re making. If the client is making under $35,000 per month, it’ll then direct them to . . . We also have a restaurant marketing course that people can take. And say, “Hey, it’s not the best fit for us as a client, but look, you took action on this, we want to reward you for that. Here’s our course. And for a limited time, it’s only 997.” So, for people who aren’t making enough money, we direct them into our course to buy. That pays for our ads. Actually, it’s pretty cool, so now we have free ads.
Andrew: Really?
Brett: Totally. I mean . . .
Andrew: That breaks even on the ads roughly.
Brett: No, no, no. It helps on the ads spend, but . . .
Andrew: Got it. Okay.
Brett: It’s awesome because, hey, you’re making money without doing anything, right? It’s like an ecommerce. So that covers some of the ad spend so we deter those people. I mean, at least we’re not throwing those people away. Even when you pay for a lead, I want to make some money off of it.
Andrew: Right.
Brett: I’ll throw them into that course. If they’re making 40,000 to 60,000 or 60 to 80 or we have different segments. It’ll say, “Okay, great. Now, here’s a link to book a call with someone from our team. And actually, be on the book call with me or someone from our team or one of our sales guys.” And that’s it, and then we’ll take the call, and then every single person that works with us, they follow the script to the tee. They’re closing 30% to 40% of them. So it’s just a system and process, like, that’s it. Like, every single time it’s exact same thing, same offer, period. And that what’s literally closing deals on a daily basis, really.
Andrew: And that’s . . . You know what? So one of my questions to you is going to be, why aren’t you sick of doing client work because everyone who does client work feels like they’re done with it and they want to move on to something else because everyone asks for something different, every potential customer is a different process to win them? And I see the answer. The answer with you is you’ve got a system for getting clients, and you’ve got a system for a . . . And a clear product when you’re selling people for delivering it. So there’s none of this crazy making, “I need this type of SEO. I need something else.” This is great. Ben Jones is saying, “Brett, you are the GOAT, the greatest of all time.” I’m seeing a lot of enthusiasm for your process by the way you’re doing it.
Brett: [inaudible 00:57:42]. Thank you. Okay. Here’s the thing. Like, so many people overcomplicate this. Like, the only thing people care about is making money, so why does everyone make these crazy bots that do all these crazy animations and all this crap? Like, why is everyone doing this and this and this? It comes down to ROI, like that’s it. And same thing for us, right? Like, me and my partner last year, every single day we just make random videos and post them on YouTube. We thought this was what we were supposed to do. That was so stupid. Oh my God. Every single day I was posting a million Instagram stories. “Hey, here’s marketing . . . ” Nobody cares. It’s about figuring out what system works for you and then pumping that like crazy. Like . . .
Andrew: And for you the system is buying ads and adjusting what happens after people buy ads. The Instagram stuff, I was impressed by the look of it. That’s not helping your business, so why waste time on it? YouTube videos, you stopped doing YouTube videos?
Brett: So we still YouTube. We do YouTube ads too. And look, once a week, once a month, I try to keep it active because YouTube is still obviously an amazing place. I’m not discrediting it at all. I still think people should post on YouTube. I just think if you’re going to choose one or the other, you only have so much time, it’s focus on something that’s working for you and it can produce that direct ROI that you can track.
A lot of times on YouTube I see so many new entrepreneurs who are just putting out so much content and they’re stressed and they’re burnt out. “Why isn’t this working?” Well, dude, like we had a team of 10 to 12 now. So I have help to do all these different things. But when you’re first starting, you can’t. And if you’re going to focus on something that works, focus on something that shows you ROI so you actually can feel good about yourself and keep growing it with predictability versus playing this guessing game.
Andrew: So one thing that I was wondering, you kept mentioning contents. So I went to Ahrefs. That tells me like who’s linking to you, what content is doing well for you, what your organic search process is. I don’t see that you’re doing much there. I see random links to you on there, like totalfood.com, I get that, but like forums from a non-tech is big for you, but that’s not something you’re cultivating. You’re not doing much content strategy, are you?
Brett: Not really at all.
Andrew: None at all, right? And that’s intentional because buying ads works better for you.
Brett: I mean, it’s just like . . . Like, okay. I just spoke with my partner yesterday about PR. We have never really looked at PR, we’ve never really invested in it, we’ve never even tried to get write-up plans for anything. I think we’re going to maybe start. I think we’re going to looking into it and we’re going to start investing in this more.
I totally think that’s great. But for us right now, I mean, we’re still a small team, right? Ten people are going to be 12 people next month. Hey, I don’t really have someone who can really manage that that well and all I know is following the system I have in place right now is working and we’re growing. And so my mindset is like, “Hey, look, let’s get to what we’re doing now. Let’s double by next year. And now let’s look at other ways that we can reach our audience to build more credibility.” Like, okay, if someone just asked on my note, “Brett, I’ve seen a ton of your haters on your ads and reviews.” I have so many haters.
Andrew: Somebody said that? I don’t see that in our live chat?
Brett: It says, “Question for Brett. I’ve seen a ton of haters on your ads and reviews. What’s your philosophy?”
Andrew: Oh, good.
Brett: I think anyone big in the space digital marketing today is always going to have haters. Always no matter what. And here’s the thing. I actually like . . . If you want to let it not get to you, it gets to me sometimes and I respond back. I’m just like, I’m that kind of guys like talk shit, get hit. Like, I’m going to come back at you, like . . . So I used to respond and then my partner is like, “Yo, Brett, come on, man.” I’m like, “All right, I got to cool off.”
But here’s the thing. I think you got to expect haters like you expect rain. It’s just going to happen. I mean, people love putting people down like us today that are like, “Hey, you’re this guru . . . ” I’m like, “No, dude. I have this service and I like to help restaurants. Get off my back, man. Chill out.” People are going to hate you no matter what because they’re jealous and this and that.
Honestly, I tried to just deflect them as much as I can. I try to delete the comments if it’s not really helping. If someone says something, though, and I see an opportunity to make me obviously, like, look better and great or whatever, I’ll reply and give them . . . And engage in some really good conversation about it. Say, “Brett, your service is crap.” I say, “Okay. Let’s talk about it. Why do you think it’s crap? I’d love to chat with you about this?” And then I’ll engage in the conversation and people are like, “Oh, that’s kind of cool.” And then someone might sign up and say, “You know what? I saw your ads.”
Andrew: Yeah.
Brett: [inaudible 01:02:05] to this guy, and I liked your points, so then I signed up. So, actually, haters can actually help you if you know how to engage in that conversation with them.
Andrew: Yeah. I feel like sometimes what they’re really doing is they’re bringing up objections that other people are too wimpy to bring up. And if they do it in an aggressive way, fine. I’ll deal with the objection.
All right. Why don’t we do this? I’m going to tell everyone how they can go and find your site, and then we’re going to end the official Mixergy interview, and we’ll do screen share and you’ll show us what you’re doing with Facebook Messenger marketing. Is that how you promote it? You said you don’t call it chatbot. How do you promote it? What’s the word that you use?
Brett: We just say direct response marketing.
Andrew: That’s it. The fact that you’re using Facebook Messenger versus email versus something else doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t come up.
Brett: In our marketing, we don’t really talk about it.
Andrew: Okay, I get that. I feel like the word chatbot took off. Facebook called it bots for a while. They had their bot store. It does become scary to people who are brand new to this. All right. Anyone wants to go check out your site, the freaking your design, whoever does your design of everything is really good. Like, I love the homepage with that meal on top with the beautiful background. I just love your design. All right. It’s misfitmedia.com. That’s it. misfitmedia.com. At some point in the past I saw that you had like the black and white skull with the helmet on top of it and now it’s more stylized than that. It’s still the same logo.
Brett: I’m like a true rebel at heart. I love tattoos. I love rock and roll. I love that stuff . . .
Andrew: What does your tattoo say? When you raised your arm up I saw that there was one that . . .
Brett: This one?
Andrew: Yeah.
Brett: It says, “Things turn out best for those who make the best out of the way things turn out.” It’s actually a quote by John Wooden who was a UCLA coach, but my great grandfather always told me that. It just means a lot for me. And kind of memory of him, I got from him. But, yeah, it was my first one. My parents freaked when I got it. But I love it.
Andrew: I love that statement a lot. All right. I can see you doing it. And for everyone who wants to go check you out, misfitmedia.com. I want to thank the two sponsors who made this interview happen. The first if you’re looking to hire developers to build your business, to help you grow really the best of the best company right now is Toptal. Check them out at toptal.com/mixergy.
And the second, James Altucher is saying, “Look, Andrew, your ad sucked before.” I accept it. Actually, he didn’t say it. I said the ad suck before. I said, “You know what? I’ll tell you what. Let’s just give people a free book instead of whatever it is that we were going to advertise.” And so he’s offering a book on how to find your side hustle, it’s called the . . . Put that in the URL, thesidehustlebible.com/andrew. And I did mention Ahrefs. I should say, I think they’re coming back to sponsor some things, so I’ve got some connection to them, but they’re one of many tools that I use when I research guests. Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
