In this video, Daniel Fazio, the mastermind behind ListKit, shares the secrets that helped him achieve $3 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) through the power of cold emails.
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Andy:
From zero to a million in ARR in just three months. That is what Daniel Fazio accomplished with his SaaS. And now his business is pulling in $600,000 monthly. In this episode, Daniel breaks down his unconventional marketing strategies, including why he believes cold email is for poor people. Get ready for some hard-hitting advice that might just change how you approach lead generation online. And so if you're already recording, like doesn't let people in the room or whatever, that might be the case, dude.
Daniel: Nice.
Andy: I don't know, man. But dude, what's up with you? How are you doing, man?
Daniel: Good.
Andy: Good. You're in Tampa, right? Tampa is home for you? Yes, sir. Are you from there originally?
Daniel: About like an hour north.
Andy: Hour north. OK. Hour north. Well, what's the name of that town? Spring Hill. Spring Hill. I know my grandpa was in Titusville. Do you know where Titusville is? Um, no. Yeah, don't worry, dude. I don't think anyone knows where it's at. So it's kind of crazy, man. But Daniel, you're the man, dude. Super stoked to be chatting. Oh, shit. You're frozen now. Let me see here.
Daniel: Dude, I fucking I always have problems with Riverside. It's so annoying because the quality is good, dude.
Andy: Yeah, I know.
Daniel: I'm like, I seriously, I get I get the actual recordings higher quality. Like I'm getting that like it happens all the time. You just have to sit here like talk to a frozen face.
Andy: Yeah, it's fucking dude, it's it drives me nuts. I'm not gonna lie. And sometimes the audio doesn't work. I don't know if you've like, noticed that. But like, the audio just like cuts out things freeze. But like, it's the only one that has amazing quality, like you said, like, so it's, it's frickin, you're kind of like, handcuffed. You know, like, you're handcuffed, man. So it's just wild. But dude, so let's talk about list kit. Y'all hit what a million in ARR and what like three months or something?
Daniel: Yeah, it's three months. And now it's um,
Andy: It just hit 3 million ARR yesterday.
Daniel: So it's 12 total now. I think it's been a year. One year at a 3 million ARR. So like 250 points.
Andy: Are you going to spill the beans on how the hell you did it? Cause I'm like, I'm, I, is it the, so I, for context for people that are listening, I hit up Daniel Daniel's cold email wizard on Twitter and he is a cold email wizard. He's probably one of the smarter, like cold email people I've, you know, now this is the first time we've met in person, but, or via zoom, but you, I hit you up and I was like, dude, I have a SAS. how do I, you know, basically what are you doing cold email wise? And then you hit me and you were like, uh, done for you offers. And I go, what the hell do you mean by that? And you're like, we'll talk about it on the pod. So now here we are. And it is that true? Like the one way that you scale this, is that your arbitrage right now? Like what, what is it? Tell me more. Tell me more.
Daniel: Yeah. I mean, Oh, you always have to buy traffic in some capacity, right? So yeah, there's only three ways you're ever going to get customers. It's it's it's content marketing ads, or cold outreach. Yeah, you it, each one requires you spend a different variable. So like with content marketing, you spend time with cold outreach, you spend a mixture of time and money, but that's you spend money, right? So, um, Well, I just decided, I just run the ads at ListKit. That's all I do. Other people do the content. Other people do the cold email. I only do the ads. Really? Yeah. So that's what I, and I came up with the offer. It's a cold email setup offer. So yeah. The problem was that if you're just selling ListKit as the database, so like for context for everyone to ListKit is a database. It has 500 million leads. There's like intent data. You can get all that.
Andy: You're like a ZoomInfo competitor, basically.
Daniel: Yeah, it's the same exact thing. Now, what all these people do is if you're running a database SaaS, what people are doing is they're trying to sell to people who already do cold email or who already use a different database. They're just trying to compete for each other's business. I was like, well, that's kind of dumb. We just go create new cold emailers. Let me just make the TAM.
Andy: Yeah.
Daniel: I was like, well, how do we make it TAM? So we have to teach people how to do code email or set it up for them. Like, oh, let's just charge people for a code email setup offer. So then we started doing that. It's a $1,500 offer. Yeah. We spend $1,500 on ads to get someone to pay us $1,500. And then we get a Let's Get Custom. Yeah. That's literally what happens.
Andy: You break even on the setup is what you're saying. Are you breaking even on the setup?
Daniel: Okay. Yeah. And this concept holds true everywhere, right? So the typical model of, let's go build a SaaS and with our $99 per month subscription and the LTV is $700 and let's pay $600 to get someone who will have a negative cash conversion cycle for like almost a year. So we need a bunch of VC funding to finance this or take out a bunch of debt to finance this. How about we just liquidate it on day one and have a positive cash conversion cycle? Yeah. And you just do that by having a sales team and having a higher ticket offer. That's it. That's all you do. And then
Andy: So you're basically saying, screw it, I'm going to break even. And this is almost like the Russell Brunson model, what he did with the book. He got the book out and he did that book funnel and it was $7.95 or whatever. And he was like, the book's free, you just pay for shipping. And he wasn't trying to make money on his book, but what he was doing is basically No, you're not making money on the book, dude. I'm getting the book so that they read it. And then they're buying my software. And I think that that meters changed a little bit because now you need it like it's you can't do the book play anymore. But you have to do higher ticket still.
Daniel: Right. But it does work. So like for context for everyone else watching this, I also run a coaching company called Client Ascension. Now, that does the same kind of model, but we use low ticket products. So we have something called the COO method. So it stands for Client Outreach Operating Method. And it just introduces people to the concept of using cold outreach to get clients in the first place. So we'll talk about like cold DMs and cold email in there. Yeah, there's upsells in the funnel. Um, and we might like we send, we, we, we do ads for that and that liquidates and maybe like 70%, 80%. So like for every $100 we put in, we get like 70 or 80 back on the front. Now, a percent of those people just joined the coaching program, Client Ascension. And that's where the money gets made. So it's like maybe one out of a hundred or 200 buyers joins Client Ascension. Client Ascension is $5,000 upfront, then $980. The LTV is probably like 15 grand or something. So you can see, if you were to, you put in $10,000, you're getting 7,000 back and you get, I don't know, like a bunch of that, that's where the profit that spread is where the profit.
Andy: And then you, so you lose, you don't lose three grand, but you're, you're paying seven grand to get 10. But then of the people that pay the seven grand, there's four that buy your coaching, which then profits you, you know, 10,000 or whatever, right? Like you, you, you actually net like 10 more without 20,000 from the whole thing. And so that's the game you're basically playing. That's if we were to do it right. So you're almost even saying, let me break even on the front end, right? Or even we'll lose a little bit, but then what we're doing is we got all the backend systems to basically get them to buy the higher ticket offer like Client Ascension, which how much is Client Ascension a month? It's a monthly coaching thing or something?
Daniel: It's a $5,000 initiation fee, and then it's $980 per month.
Andy: Oh, interesting. 980. Is there a reason nine like so specific? I know you got some trick there, dude. What's the trick?
Daniel: It's not a thousand. And 997 sounds too close to a thousand. So I was like 980. It matters. It does. It matters so much. The churn on that is really low because it's a sunk cost. Like, people say the sunk cost fallacy, but it's like, well, yeah, we're human. We all fall for it. Right? Yeah. It's not good. It's not. I don't want to say fall for it as if it's a deception thing. It's just like literally everyone on the planet does this and everyone watching this should also employ some kind of mechanism like that.
Andy: Yeah. This is great for like coaches, because there's a lot of coaches and consultants out there, right? So this is, I think, gonna be helpful for them. Anyone thinking of starting a business. And then once they get into the program, the program is essentially teaching them how to do cold email ads and basically the, you know, lead gem, right?
Daniel: Yeah. Well, if anyone's like running a coaching business, the way a client says used to be a six month program, there's $10,800. to be in it for six months. And now the problem with something like that is people walk in and they feel as if there's a defined ending for this. Like, oh, it's over at six months. Yeah. And then they're thinking if I want to stay in here, I have to pay another $10,800 to be in here for another six months. It's just wrong. It puts this like, stress on people. Where The six months is coming to an end. It doesn't feel good. It feels like a very stressful environment. Yeah, yeah. Now, also, when you switch to something like the 5,000 up front than 908, and you call it it's an initiation fee, it's quite literally what it is, you are initiated into the community, and you are now allowed to be inside. So it's more, it's morphing from like, a defined program with a defined specific result that you have to hit within six months, to instead like, it's a country club. Yeah, I like that. And it's just access as a service. And that's, you can't, you can only really pull that off, though, when you have a bunch of social proof in the first place. So I have like this, I have like this whole offer stream, and I kind of, it's kind of my thesis on how I believe people should sell something. So like, if you if you're a beginner, and you don't have any social proof at all, you have to have a guarantee with a defined end result. But you have to tell someone like, I'm going to get you this result. And if you don't get the result, you're going to get a refund. And now people, people, people don't like doing that. Because it's a really, it's a stressful situation to do that. But when you don't have social proof, you don't have any other choice. There's no, there's no like you need to de-risk for the client. Like, if you don't do that, they just won't buy and then you're just stuck being a beginner with no social proof for the rest of your life.
Andy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what I'm hearing here is that like, what really sells is social proof today. Like that is good.
Daniel: And I mean, it's always been like that, dude. Like if we like how many how many you got 187,000 followers on on LinkedIn. So now you you you've probably transcended past this. Um, um area where you need when you sell your stuff you specific to find and you don't have to do that anymore because your authority level is so high so like yeah so people i'll put it to you like this if if if alex hermosi just came up to you was like um hey $5,000 for a dinner with me or $10,000 for a dinner with me. Like no guarantee. You're like, okay, that's fine. Yeah, he doesn't need it. You know who he is. Random fucking dude who just came up, oh yeah, I'm really good at business. I've been doing this for a while. It's like, well, like I, and you got to pay me $10,000 to come out the door. I'm not buying that. I don't know who you are. And here's the thing, he can say, I've done this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. And I'll be like, I don't care. Because I don't I don't have like, I don't have a- Prove it.
Andy: It's like prove it, dude. Prove it.
Daniel: Like prove to me. Yeah. Why should I care about what you're saying? You see what I mean? So like, yeah, if it is a huge problem, especially young guys have. Um, low twenties, like around there. Um, if you want anybody to pay you for anything, your perceived level of authority on the subject matter must be higher than the way the other person perceives themselves. But the buyer must look up to you.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel: 100% of the time they have to. So if you don't have a bunch of case studies or credibility or followers or authority in any capacity, the only thing you can do is to have a guarantee. To try and just, that's like instead of, that's like you pushing yourself up a little bit. Like that's just a little bit to try and get even with the client. And that's all you can do at that time period.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, you say that and I think of like creator friends that run, you know, like, you know, George 10 grant grammar hippie on Twitter. You know, George, George is a good friend of mine and he's the dude, he's an amazing writer. He's the man. He's hilarious too. Uh, you should, I, have you connected with him?
Daniel: You should, if you haven't already, dude, he's, I think I talked to him a little bit a long time ago.
Andy: Dude, I'll intro you via WhatsApp, dude. Like he, if you don't have his number, he's, you should just know him because I feel like you guys would really jive and I like connecting people. So you guys should do it. But he's, he's hilarious. He had this one email. Um, his email list is great, but he goes, he's all about not having a guarantee. Right? And so, and you guys might have a difference in opinion in this cause he's like, no, no guarantees because dah, dah, dah, dah. But you make a point that he, I think forgets to mention in Georgia. If you listen to this, I still love you. But, You make a point where, yeah, George doesn't have to give a guarantee because George has 250,000 followers on Twitter. People know he's legit. They read his stuff. Right. So like George, you can get away with that.
Daniel: And so maybe he has put an asterisk on that, but like, you know, this, so, so like I came to this, this certified by revelation. So do you, do you use a credit card? Do you, do you use an annex?
Andy: I use Visa, Amex, yeah, a couple of them.
Daniel: You get the points and you put stuff in the credit card, you pay it off immediately. You've never been charged interest on the credit card.
Andy: Oh, hell no. No, no, no, no. That's the dumbest thing you can do.
Daniel: Yeah, exactly. Me and you both. Everyone I associate normally with too.
Andy: Yeah.
Daniel: Right? So now, there exists, you know, the Dave Ramsey, Colt Wood, they're like, don't even have a credit card at all.
Andy: Yeah, dude, I saw Dave, I actually golfed with Dave Ramsey for like one hole in Mexico, like two months ago. That's another story, but it's hilarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel: Go ahead. I want to get to my argument. Okay. I always heard that and I was like, that's dumb. You can literally just pay it off immediately and get the points. And why would you not have a credit card? This makes absolutely zero sense at all. Until I'm talking to my friend one time and he was telling me about his mom. And he can't like he makes sure his mom doesn't have a credit card because she just spends like she doesn't even conceive of it as not. They think it's a debit card. They just do.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. They think it's unlimited money.
Daniel: I started meeting other people who think it's the same just like naturally it's like it's almost it doesn't like click that this is not your money. Like they think like, Oh, I already bought it. Like, why do I have to pay for it again? It's like,
Andy: Yeah.
Daniel: No, that's not how it works. That is functionally not how this works. So now, what I'm trying to argue here is that my argument for you need to have a guarantee in the beginning is the same exact Dave Ramsey argument that people shouldn't have credit cards. Because I can say, I can talk to you and say, yeah, you're stupid for not having a credit card. Like I can say to you, you're stupid for having a guarantee you don't need one. But if I go to some random dude, who's just starting out with his business, it is a really dumb thing to tell him, don't have a guarantee. Because he's literally not going to get any business at all. Yeah. If he doesn't have a guarantee, he will never sign a client literally ever.
Andy: Yeah. Cause no one knows who he is. No authority. No. Yes. Yeah. No proof. Right. Like at all social proof, whatever we say, like someone, you know, all that. And, and what are the, okay. So I think the next question that people are going to ask here is, well, what are some guarantees that I should do? We talked about one, which is like the obvious one is like, that you see a lot of people pushing today is like, Hey, if you don't get results, your money back, right? Or like whatever, or we'll work until we get you. The results is kind of the other one that I've seen. Is there, are those like the two kind of like North star ones? Are there any other interesting ones that you've seen that people can do?
Daniel: Yeah. So like you've got every, every market in every niche is at a different level of sophistication. So what works in one doesn't work for the other. And I'll give you an example. So yeah. Um, Like if you were trying to sell a short form content, Oh, super saturated.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sophisticated is what you would call it, right? Like, yeah.
Daniel: So I came up with this offer a while ago and it was 60 pieces of short form content in two hours of your time. So there was no guarantee on that. It was just like a good value proposition because it was so new of a concept. This is like three years ago, like two years ago. I had a bunch of students at Client Intention who hooked with that. I don't know if you know the student, Eamon.
Andy: Oh, good, Eamon did some YouTube work for me, yeah.
Daniel: Yeah, so Eamon's at like $95,000 a month or something like that. Are you serious? Yeah, he started with that offer. I gave that offer to him. 60 pieces of short-form content, two hours of your time. That was his first offer that I gave him to cook. And then a shit ton of other people copied it. And then I made another one where it's a million views guaranteed.
Andy: I think I remember seeing that ad. I think I remember seeing your ad for that.
Daniel: Yeah. A shit ton of people copy that. Right. Now, neither of those work now. A million views guarantee kind of still does, but one day it won't. Right. So now I'll give you another one. Clavio email marketing. Like you used to be able to just say like, I'll increase your revenue 30% by a minimum of 30% or you get a refund. that cook. Now literally everyone in the planet does that. So now it's not differentiated at all. Yeah. You're the same as everybody else. Now what happens when a market gets increasingly more sophisticated? We're like, oh, we'll give you a refund if you don't get this result. We'll give you a refund if you don't get this higher result. We'll give you a refund if you don't get this even higher result. And that just keeps going forever. Yeah. Until you start hitting unreasonable claims.
Andy: Yeah, you can't make money.
Daniel: Yeah, you're hitting impossible claims. And then people just start to not even believe the claims. So it's like, oh, okay, this is all bullshit now. That's how you know you're in level five. So level five market sophistication, the only way to sell it is via personal branding and being a figure of authority. Or you make a whole, you just step out of that market and you make a whole different offer. So let me give you an example. So the way you do it now for Clavio email marketing, is you have to do what I like to call a risk reduction offer. So it's like you literally reduce the absolute level of risk at all without a guarantee. So what do I mean by that? A normal person could try to sit here and charge like $3,000 a month for their email marketing services. Or you could just sell someone like a $1,000 one time setup. And then if they're happy with that, you can sell them a recurring service later. That is what is working for that market right now.
Andy: At this time, yeah.
Daniel: At this time. Now, the same exact thing is gonna happen with that. That's gonna go through a whole thing. And then that shit is gonna loop right back around where people want a dump for you service again. It's just gonna loop like that forever. That's exactly what happens. This loop also occurs with the oscillation between I'm like a full service agency versus like productized out services. So we're in like the peak productized right now. It's kind of cut. It will over the next like two, three years, it will loop back around to people wanting like full do everything for me. Yeah. And then it will loop back out to productize or no, I want someone for email. I want someone for this, someone for this. And it just loops like that forever.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. Cause right now the big product ties thing is, is huge, right? It's like, Oh, five grand a month, get all the designs you want. Five grand a month, get all the edits you want. Right. And people are doing that. And then, and then, so you're saying what's going to happen with that is people are going to come around and say, no, screw this. I want someone that will do all that. An agency that does all that for me. And it's a one-stop shop basically. Interesting. Interesting. And that loops around is what you're saying. It's like, it's just a cycle, just a cycle. Yep. Interesting. Dude, that is crazy. And so I what I love hearing from you is hearing your stories, because you're literally in the thick of it. And you're constantly like, what's your cue for when you're like, okay, this shit isn't working anymore. It's too sophisticated. This offers and too many people are doing it. Like, what's your cue? Do you just kind of have like signals in the market? Or like, what's kind of your mental model for that?
Daniel: Well, this is this is this is interesting, because something can be like, So like cold email as a marketing mechanism is like a mainstream thing. Like people do this.
Andy: Oh, I love cold email.
Daniel: Yeah. Well, yeah. Something can be saturated in cold email and not be saturated. So this is also another thing. So it's like someone could be like, yeah, you're having a really tough time selling this with cold email. Like try it with ads. It'll work with ads. And then there's other things that don't work with ads that cook with cold email. And it's like, I haven't put a formula behind this, but sometimes certain things can only be solved with certain mechanisms. Yeah. I think cold email is like, here's my thesis on how it is ironic coming from someone who literally has a Twitter account called the cold email wizard. Yeah. Cold email is for poor people. It is. There's literally no way you're gonna sit here and make multiple millions of dollars with cold email. It's not happening. It's the stupidest way that you can try and scale a business. It's the best way to get to your first like 10k, 20k, maybe 30k a month, like phenomenal way to do that. There's no better way to do that. It's the best way to market if you are poor, you have no money. It is the worst way to market if you have a lot of money in no time. Yeah. You're always going to cap out. Say you're using just cold outbound as your marketing mechanism. Yeah. You're going to cap out at like 40, 50k a month. And that's like after doing it for like a year or two. And then every single- and that's okay. That's okay. Because you can make a lot of money by taking like helping people get that much additional business. That's fine. Now everyone, even though like cold email people like they all they all start doing content marketing. So now they now they get to go a leg up. Yeah. And then they get to like 250 to 500k a month. But that's kind of where that caps at for a lot of B2B stuff. Like you're really like- Yeah. You got full blown, like hyper optimized cold outbound and full blown hyper optimized content marketing. There's maybe a couple people in B2B who've hit a mil a month with that. Maybe. Yeah. Most people are going to cap out anywhere between 250 to 500k a month with that stack. And then literally every fucking person on the planet who's going to get past a mil a month, two mil a month, three month, it's off ads. It's ads. It is. It is ads. That's it. Like you need to. And it's funny because just because the fact that I own this account called Cold Emo Wizard, it's like, everyone thinks you have to do all cold email stuff. I remember there's like, um, um, there's, there's someone in client essential, one of the coaches and he runs a cold email. He was like, freaking out about like this, like algorithm all day that outlook. He's like, everything's burning to shit. I'm like, dude, calm down. Like this is not a cold email coaching program. This is, this is like a business growth coaching program that happens to have cold email as a singular component of it. It doesn't matter. We'll fix it. Like cold email will be fine. There's about a million different forms by which you can acquire clients besides sending high volume automated cold outreach. Like you can do other things. This is really important for people to understand because what happens is they start following a set of influencers online. And then the set of influencers sells either a bizop coaching program or done for you services done for you service that helps people with the execution of a particular mechanism. A lot of shit on LinkedIn right now is about cold email.
Andy: Because clay and all that.
Daniel: Yeah, literally everyone. They're all cold outreach experts. And they're all fucking poor. So many of them. All the people who are like really making the money are the people who sell the tools, like the shovels. I'm selling shovels to these people right now. It's not like to talk shit to these people. I'm just like, all of you who are watching this should realize what is happening. Like, and just look at your own results. Like, yeah, you can get some good business with cold email. And if you want to run a 50K a month business and be cool with that, that's fine. Like you can do that. But all I'm saying is that there's exactly zero situation where you're ever gonna get to like multiple millions of dollars straight off gold outbound. It's just so unreasonable and so uncommon of an eventuality that you need to just go learn other stuff. and acquire more sets of capabilities. You need to learn how to advertise yourself. You need to learn direct response copywriting. You need to learn how to put yourself on a video and write a sales page and make a funnel and advertise to people on Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Meta. You need to learn how to do content marketing. You need to learn how to do other things that you just do. Because now what happens is, is like you'll have someone who's like, they're running like an e-commerce email marketing business, but they're like also spending 70% of their time trying to like fix issues with code outreach. And it's like, you're not even spending any time getting good at e-commerce email marketing at all. You're just sitting here trying to finagle the fuck around with like DNS records and domains. And like you spend all of your time doing that. And it's a complete waste of time. It's like you're just actively becoming more poor by clinging on to this poor person mechanism, but just learn how to do other stuff.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. No, I hear you. Okay. I want to get, look, I'm a new, so Where I started, well, you know, I was kind of OG in the cold email space with outreach and like, you know, what, 10 years ago when we started building it or whatever. And so I was really deep into that. And then I use it, started to do content marketing. And you know, I'm okay at that just on LinkedIn. I haven't really gone to other platforms. But now dude, I'm thinking about ads, right? And like, I'm, I'm a noob. I'm an absolute noob with ads. So I've been watching some… I've been trying to voraciously learn all this crap watching every… And it feels like with ads right now, and I want to get your take. They're making it very easy to run the ads. So I'm doing DCT campaigns where I just do one of those campaigns. It's like a daily spin or whatever. And then you test a bunch of DCTs. And it really comes down to the creative is what I'm learning. And it's like, So am I correct in that or is that wrong? Are you doing different audiences and retargeting and all this crap or are you literally just letting the algorithm do its thing?
Daniel: What is a DCT?
Andy: It's one of those creative tests, right? Where you basically like, you basically give it like three images, two pieces of text, and then two headlines. And then it actually cycles all those and then tells you what the best one is. And then you, when you find the best one there, you're constantly, then you do another ad set. That's a DCT ad set. And that is where you test a different type. So now I'm going to test video, three videos instead of three, whatever, two, Yeah. Meta or LinkedIn? On Meta. On Meta.
Daniel: Yeah. So I'm spending $4,500 a day on Meta. Okay.
Andy: I didn't even know what that is. And your stuff works. Okay. So maybe I'm fucking it up.
Daniel: There you go. There you go. So if it's a done-for-you service, there's no situation where it shouldn't just be an opt-in VSL funnel with an application to book a call. And I tested going straight to VSL versus the opt-in first. You put the opt-in first, it's way better.
Andy: Opt-in and then to video.
Daniel: Okay. Now, here's a problem with a lot of people. I'm going to say opt-in now. They're going to do, oh, I'll use the Facebook lead form. No, don't use the Facebook lead form. There's not a single person on the planet who have ever seen profitably scale a campaign to cold traffic and actually get a positive ROAS. Positive ROAS, like you get people to pay you, money using a lead form. Never seen it ever. So here's the idea. It's your own landing page, name, email, phone for the opt in to even get the opportunity to watch the VSL in the first place. I do button under it goes to the next page with the type form embedded. Now I have qualifying questions in this type. So um, Are you a B2B company looking for more leads? Yes, no, yes. Okay, cool.
Andy: Yeah.
Daniel: What's your monthly revenue right now? They picked a range. Are you able to spend $2,000 to get started? Yes, no. And they select that. Now, I have all these different combinations at the end of this type form. Like if someone selected that they make like less than 3K a month and they're not willing to pay $2,000 to get started, I just put an ending on the type form that says, all right, thanks, we'll reach out soon. Now, if someone selects that they're making, I don't know, above 10K a month, they're ready to pay $2,000 to get started, they will show up to the meeting on time. They get redirected to a different page with a calendar embedded on it. Now, they can pick a time. Once they pick the time, only then am I triggering that a schedule, that a website schedule was made, a call booked. So the thank you page that that calendar redirects to, is where the pixel, where the event is. So if someone is selecting the wrong stuff on Typeform, they're never even gonna reach the scheduled call pixel. So now I'm training the data to only, training Facebook's AI to only get the people who actually have money or willing to spend it and will show up on time. You see what I mean?
Andy: Yeah, because the pixel's only after they booked the time, basically.
Daniel: Yeah, so now the problem with lead forms is, or optimizing for leads, is that it optimizes for that event, irregardless of anything else at all. Yeah. So it might get you 10 cent leads or $1 leads and exactly none of them book a call or buy. This is what happens. And this is what people need to understand. They're running. It's a machine. It's going to do exactly what you tell it to do. So only find me people who happen to end up at this page, which is way down the funnel is the most efficient means to do that. And even if because a lot of people be like, well, I won't have a high enough budget to get 50 events per day. So if you get out of learning, it doesn't matter. Just let it just let it not get out of learning and let it just optimize for the better event. And then it works. It works so much better.
Andy: So basically the long story short is get the pixel at the end of the funnel, not necessarily when they hit your landing page. Yeah. Like that's the conversion event basically. Right. Is like, okay, on this page where they've the thank you page or whatever, right. After the form where they book the time and you're like, okay, that means they hit all my check boxes that they're a good fit. So, you know, anything that's showing up on your calendars, is people that were a fit based on their answers, right? So you're not wasting time disqualifying, or wasting your time on calls with people that are, you know, haven't agreed or whatever. Nice, dude. Okay, dude, can we jam a little bit? And I want to get your take on this. So our SaaS Right. We have our SaaS. Now, our SaaS is basically, I don't know if you've ever used one or heard, but it's a digital sales room. Basically, it's Notion for salespeople. That is how I would describe it very simply. You can create a Notion like page, multiple tabs. We can tell you who's on the page when they're on the page. Right. What they do on the page. And then you can even add a conversion event. Again, this is for salespeople, like a pop up with your calendar or something. Right. And they're using it as a digital sales room. So when you're doing like these big In B2B SaaS specifically, when you're doing these deals, sometimes they take three to six months, you know, six months plus. So you're creating a lot of content in the middle of that and you want to store it in one place. And so we kind of created this notion like experience, right? But it's made specifically for that like sales motion. You can also then take video and add it to the page, right? So you can do like video narration of what's on the page. And so what I'm trying to figure out how to do, what I've realized is that we, the best leverage we could get is a bottoms up approach here where we get like, and this is how some of my biggest deals are happening right now. We get like sales reps to start using the product. And then after we get the sales rep start using it, it gives us leverage to go to the VPs and be like, dude, you have 40 people using this. They love the product. Like, let's get your entire team on it, let's do a contract, right? And those are, you know, those are the big dog contracts, you know, 50K, whatever. So what I'm trying to figure out how to do is, holy shit, how do I, so I kind of have that formula, but how do I get more of those people in there using it? I know they like it, it's a great freaking product, right? And it's a great SaaS, and I know they'll need it, because like, it's either that or do email thread hell with files all through an email chain for six months, which is, it's a nightmare. So what I'm thinking is how the heck do I run ads for this? How do I get that bottoms up approach, right? And that's what I'm trying to figure out. And I know I'm putting you on the spot now, dude, and this might not come to you now, but what's kind of an idea you think of for an offer that I can put together for this?
Daniel: So my context approaching this would, I like to sell to, I normally am mostly selling to companies that are between 10k a month and 100k a month. So this is my context with what I'm gonna say. Okay. So I would always be trying to find out how can I liquidate this immediately, this ad spend immediately so we don't have a negative cash conversion. Yeah, yeah. And the answer would be you have to sell us like a high ticket setup in the front. It would have to be like $3,000, $4,000, something like that. And then there's the recurring on the back end of the access to the SaaS. Yeah. So it would probably have to be some kind of like sales team system setup type thing. And it's like, it's, it's like half a coaching program appendaged on top of the SaaS. That's literally what you'd have to do. But no, no, that's, that's, that's to liquidate the ad spend. So that's like, Now, if you have like $30 million, then you can just go try to ram a bunch of free trials and do that bottom up approach and just get individual sales reps on it with literally like a three month free trial. You see what I mean? I don't have that luxury. So I'm always just like, let me just do that then, but just make a, just make like a setup offer of some kind. Like I want to help you set up your whole sales system, your CRM, everything.
Andy: And you got to use this software. I like that. Like some, I'm thinking like, what is something when I describe it? Cause these pages, you can do multiple tabs on them. And the idea is as you have more calls with these sales, you know, in your deals, right? So let's think of like a big deal you were working, right? And, as you work with this potential client, you're building out a business case, and then a mutual action plan. And this is like enterprise sales stuff, right? And then you're building out like a testimonial page. And then you're building out like a proposal document, and you're kind of doing this whole process. And it's really just a content play. And so we have a bunch of templates that you pull in for each tab on the page, right? And you just fill in the blanks. And we also have AI that just does it for you. So what I'm thinking is like, we set up your entire content system, maybe something around that for your sales team. And then we say something like, you don't need marketing anymore. Oh, that might be a little crazy, but like for this content that you're using, but that might be a play there where you, cause let's be honest, a big pain point for sales teams in these B2B worlds, you know, selling list kit is like, if you ever sell sales to people, there's always this clash between marketing and sales. And I asked for shit and they never give it to me. And then the marketing is like, they asked for too much. And then, so I'm thinking that where we say, Hey, we'll set up your whole content system for your sales team. I don't know. What do you think? Is that like for you as a business owner, is that enticing or would you be like, that's kind of stupid?
Daniel: I mean, I just I don't think I have the type of business. I don't think I can give you user insights. Yeah, yeah. Do I have any experience selling it in that target market?
Andy: Yeah. Okay. So that, yeah, again, it might be exact. I won't.
Daniel: Yeah.
Andy: It's like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about. What are you talking about? But I kind of wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, but I get it. And I'm trying to get some like free coaching here. Right? Basically. I'm like, okay, dude, how can I do it? Cause now you've got my mind spinning on this, like done for you offer. And I've seen your ads for that, which are, you're just basically like, Hey, we'll set up this whole system. And if you've been looking for that system, you know that people charge like $5,000 a month for that. And you're like, dude, you're basically just undercutting the hell out of them and saying, we'll just do it for you for $2,000. And we'll teach you how to do it so you don't pay anyone, which is crazy. But the way I looked at that, and I saw what you were doing, is like data… The reason you get data is it's the fuel. And then you're you know, you're instantly, you're smartly, your outreach is the engine. You can't run the engine without fuel. And so for you, you're like, dude, let me put the engine together and give you the fuel to keep it running. And so it's kind of genius, right? Which is like one thing that I'm trying to do right now. Another play that I'm doing is I have this whole like LinkedIn community, right? Where people pay like a couple hundred bucks to get into it. And it's like just on school, it's like a 30 day, you know, it's called brand 30. We've been running it for like, two and a half years, right? It's, it's done, you know, over, over time, over seven figures, which has been awesome. But like, you can tell, as what you were saying, the market got more sophisticated. Right. And now everyone's spinning a LinkedIn course and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I'm like, oh, this is definitely changing. And so now what I'm even thinking of doing with that is the reason we basically built it was to help get people into my SaaS. So the way we grew Taplio was so fast was we basically had this community of people wanting to grow on LinkedIn. Well, we built a tool that was a LinkedIn scheduler. And then we got people in the community to use it.
Daniel: It's literally the best, it's the best model to grow SaaS of all time.
Andy: It is. And so I'm trying to repeat that, right. And I'm like, but there's some friction there now because it's not, you know, our new tool is, there's a component to it that these people can use, but it's not necessarily a LinkedIn tool. Right. And so I'm like, shit, how do I repeat that? Um, and so that's kind of what I'm trying to figure out today, right? Community led growth for those that listening, right? Which is another kind of model, uh, that you can do, which is like, what's your target market? How do we put a service together for them and then create a software that people that, you know, that are in that community can use. Um, which I'm sure you've done with client Ascension as well, right? You kind of like your group of people are now you're teaching them Colemo. You're like, well, Hey, dude, you're going to use our cold email system in order to basically run all these cold emails. It's the best way, right?
Daniel: It's the best. It's so good. It is. It's very capital inefficient to not do that. I can't even conceive of a way where like I, I'll put it to you like this. There's um, like let's get was just on starter story. Um, you know, Pat walls.
Andy: Oh yeah. Really nice, man. Congrats, dude. That's awesome, man.
Daniel: Yeah. It was Andre on it.
Andy: So I think, you know, Andre. Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah, for context for everyone. Andre is the CEO of Liskit. I'm the CMO of Liskit. I'm the CEO of Client Ascension and Andre is the COO of Client Ascension. So we run two businesses together. Um, but so he was on starter story for Liskit. And he mentioned that he runs a coaching thing. And they're like, some comment, it was like the top voted comment. It's like, you shouldn't allow people on here who have a coaching program. It's like, Okay, let me help you understand like how absolutely stupid of a comment that is. Like, one, this is about having a 3 million ARR SaaS, right? So, like, one, we have a software. Two, people buy coaching. Like, it's not like someone's being like a gunpoint forced to buy this coaching program or this course. Like, it's entirely of their own decision. Like, no one's forcing you to buy it. If you don't want it, don't buy it. Like, it's really that simple. And then they're gonna go, why do you, well, if Deshaunce is so successful, why do you sell this? And the answer is because people buy it. Like, for what other reason would I, so like, why do I sell low ticket products in a self-liquidating funnel? Like, low ticket courses? Because people buy low ticket courses. What else should I sell? That's what they buy. It's as if there's a line outside your house of a bunch of people who are like, I want hot dogs and you getting upset when I sell them hot dogs. Why are you selling them something healthy like bananas? Because they don't want bananas. They want hot dogs. They're not going to buy the bananas. Then I had to go bankrupt. No one's happy because they didn't get their hot dogs. I didn't make money. My car gets repossessed. My house goes into foreclosure. Like, everyone loses in this situation. Or you could just tell them what they're buying. So like the idea of appendaging like a paid community, or paid coaching, or a paid course to generate leads for something on the backend is the most capital efficient funnel of all time. And if you're trying to grow literally anything at all, you're very dumb to not do that. It makes absolutely zero financial sense for you to do that. There's a lot of people, well, I'll never sell a course or a coaching.
Andy: Have fun being poor. So we should dig into that. Cause I think it's hilarious, man. Cause a lot of people hate like, they'll hate and be like, whoa, oh yeah, it's probably someone selling a course, right? And it's like, I see that comment and then I just look and I go, dude, you have no idea. When you sell a course, the margins are typically huge, right? It's something that's pre-done and it's something that people buy, right?
Daniel: And it's like, it's- It's something they get results from. Yeah. It works.
Andy: It's crazy. And I think most people that's holding them back from making money. Right? Like you said, you like to say stay poor, but yeah. Yeah.
Daniel: There's only three things you can sell. You can only sell done for you, done with you or do it yourself. And now the problem with a lot of people, Oh, I'll never sell a course or coaching. It's like, okay, well, you just, you're just gonna let off 66% of the demand of your entire market.
Andy: Yeah. Crazy.
Daniel: Do it done for you is only a third of the whole market. There's literally three times as many people who want to buy a coaching and of course, like some people just don't want a done for you service or can't afford a done for you service. And they'd be very happy to pay you for coaching, or, or a course and they would get results from it. And they would tell everybody that they got good results from it. And they would recommend other people buy. Like that's 66% of everyone listening this your market 66% Yeah, yeah, correct, dude.
Andy: Crazy. Like Man, I didn't even think of the numbers behind it. And you thought of the numbers, right? Which is 66%. And if you think about it too, and a lot of people don't realize this, that software businesses, if you look at the big daddy software businesses, a majority of their revenue comes from implementation services. Yep. You know what implementation services are? Coaching. That's all it is. Right. I think there's a study out there. It's like 70% of a lot of software businesses, like the big ones, you know, the ones that are like not, not new ones like us or list kid or, you know, you know, like that. But these big ones that are like sales forces and all that, they're making their money from implementation, man. And so when you think about that's just coaching, that's, Here's how you should set this up. Here's how you should think about it. Here's how you should, you know, do this, do that. And so that's why when I hear that, I'm like, and I'll hear it from people at a software company. And I'm like, you literally sell coaching. If you're at a good software company, you're probably selling coaching. It's just not called coaching.
Daniel: literally what's happening. Yeah. That's exactly what's happening.
Andy: Yeah. It's, it's, it, it, it's kind of just this funny thing. Um, I should write a post on that, which is like hilarious. I'm going to do that.
Daniel: People just have no idea when they're being signed up, but they have, they have absolutely no idea because they're not good marketers. So like, I encourage everyone to like study marketing, like don't just consume people's content. Like, like observe like what they're doing. Oh, yeah, dude. Like, someone got psyoped into thinking that selling code selling, selling course and coaching bad, like someone got psyoped and now you're poor. Like it's like that. That's, that's what it would have.
Andy: Yeah, yeah. And they'll hate on Twitter. I'll see it too. They'll hate on it. It's like, Oh, he made all his money from courses. And it's like, Dude, I look at that and I say kudos. You know, like, they're like, they think that's a dig. I'm like, that's legit. You know, like, congrats. They saw a market and they're like, yeah, I can do that. And guess what? They probably did that as like a one person business. You know, or they were like a few people, nothing crazy. So, okay. One last thing before we have to head out, man, I want to ask you, when it comes to ad creative, How are you thinking about that? Like, are you, are you getting someone to write your script? Are you writing or using AI to write the script? Because I'm asking, cause I think it'd be useful for people. And I also am like, how the hell do I, should I do it? Right.
Daniel: When it comes to creating, this is so, so for context, for everyone I'm talking here, this is specifically what is working from like, Small B2B. As I said earlier, people like 10K a month, 100K a month, agency owners, coaches, those kinds of people. Content creators, the kinds of people you see on the LinkedIn who are creating. This is what we're selling to them, right? Okay. This is my free work practice. The more direct and not cute you're trying to be, the better it works.
Andy: Just be direct. If you want tacos, fucking say we have tacos.
Daniel: Dude, just say what's going on. Videos tend to work better, but my best performing static ad creative for the list kit cold email setup offer says, done for you, cold email setup offer. That's the advert. Right. And then everything else I tried didn't work. Right. And now, and now the best performing ad creator we have, it starts the hook is we started sending 10,000 cold emails per day for our startup list kid got this much revenue, yada, yada. And we will set up the system for you completely done for you. Here's how it works. And explain how it works. Click the button to watch to get pricing. Like, if you say what's going on, it works better.
Andy: Why do people think you have to get cute and get like all like trying to get like super sophisticated with these apps? Like what like what do you think?
Daniel: Because people are just under the impression that if it's gonna work, it has to be complicated. It has to. But the reality is that you have to be so Dude, I made a YouTube video on this one time. You have to be so profoundly stupid, you're bordering on the edge of genius.
Andy: I like that.
Daniel: I like that. It's almost as if the IQ bell curve like loops back around, like you hit one IQ and it like loops back to like 250. Like, that's literally what's happening. So it's like, if you were to take like, oh, Cody most setup offer, what should we do for an ad creator for this? You know the bell curve meme, the IQ, you get the- Yeah, you get the early- Yeah. Well, I think the ad creators should say, done for you, Cody, most setup offer, because that's what it is. And then the genius on the right is going to say, let's say done for you, Cody, most setup offer, because that's what it is. And the guy in the center is going to be like, do you want to supercharge your marketing? Nonsense. It's just dumb. But you need to just like, when you're thinking of stuff, just like, imagine yourself, you got to either go to the far right or the far left bell curve.
Andy: of the genius and the dumb guy. That's such a good way to think about it, dude. I freaking love that. And so you're just being very direct, which is just amazing, man. And you know what, it got me caught up, right? Cause you see all these ads and you think you have to be cute and like have this perfectly designed thing. And like, and it's really like, just no, tell them what they want. Cause typically like, like don't make them think is kind of like my motto is like, if I look at something, I have to think about it next. I'm going back to tick tock, you know, like next, like, Oh yeah.
Daniel: That's actually what it is. It's like, you have to make people think like, like if, I'm sorry, I said that wrong. You have to make people not think. Yeah. What you say needs to be so extremely directly clear and immediately understandable. Because people are just like, this is also really interesting because I'm like the offers coach in clients. I help people with their offers. I was actually explaining this to them yesterday. I'm like, everything I'm telling you guys to do has nothing to do with your offer. Because the offer is like the stack of what they get, the promise result, like all this stuff. Like, everything I'm telling you is just to make a good headline. Yeah. Because like, you're all under the impression that like, oh, you had 100 website visitors. Every one of those understands everything that's out of the website. I mean, you know, like, it might be that exactly zero of those people even read past the headline, because the headline was good. Like that's the reality of the situation. Like if you're not clear, like so stupidly clear and easy to understand, then people just leave. So like for instance, this is interesting too. Like if you sell a done-for-you service, like a lot of agency owners, the problem with a lot of these agency owners is they'll like start sending cold emails and they're not saying their stuff is done for you. So like, they're just assuming everyone knows.
Andy: Everyone knows it's done for you, right? It's all they'll find it in the FAQ on the page or something.
Daniel: Yeah. No one knows this is done for you. This is done for you to literally be the like, right there at the top. It is a done for you service. Like be clear about what exactly this is.
Andy: Dude, you know what this reminds me of? And this is more of a, I swear it just always comes down to copywriting, like is the best thing to study for marketing because it like, copywriting I think is a better study of human psychology than studying any psychology book, right? Like, it's like the best way to study humans, I believe. And I think it was Eugene Swartz or one of the guys said like, your headline is 80 cents of your dollar. which some people call the hook or whatever. But if you have a static image, that image and what it says is your headline. And so that's, that's a great way to think of it. And sometimes I forget that I need to repeat that quote to myself because you're like, well, basically saying 80% of your success is going to come down to the first thing that they see. Right.
Daniel: And so, yeah, I think a big problem with it though, is you tell people to learn copywriting and learn direct response and they like, And they start, they start reading all this stuff. And it gets like, just like this crazy, complicated, like endeavor and like creative feat that they, and it's like, dude, the way I write copy, the only way I've ever wrote copy at all for any piece of copy for every single, I filmed like a hundred VSLs. Like I wrote and filmed myself on these VSLs. and probably, I don't know, maybe another 500 ads. I've written every single ad that even anyone on my companies has seen on, it's I wrote it. I wrote every single ad. Every piece of copy I wrote, every VSL I wrote, I've written every single thing. This is close to probably like a million dollars of ad spend. I don't know, maybe millions of cold emails. I don't write the cold email copy, but all the advertising, every single landing page, You're right. Yes. And this is what I do every single time. First headline. Just explain what's going on. Like, what is this? Like, literally, that's it. Like, just what is this? Like, oh, this is it. Hey, if you're interested in a cold emo setup offer, I'm going to explain how that works. in this video. If you're interested in getting more clients, I'm gonna tell you about our done for you cold email setup offer. That's it. And now what do I do from here? You just answer the first objection that someone's gonna have. So what's the first objection someone's gonna have when you tell them, okay, I'm gonna help you get more clients with a cold email system. It's gonna be like, well, what kind of results does this get? So then I just start presenting evidence of results. Like, here's the kinds of results other people have got. And then now it's like, well, I don't want to be bothersome where it's like, well, here's the kinds of responses you get. These are actually positive responses. And then so, well, I don't want to like break the law. I can't spam. Like, oh no, we can't spam compliant. And then you get this objection, you answer that.
