Side Hustle City
Step into Side Hustle City, the ultimate podcast for entrepreneurs, creatives, and anyone eager to turn their side hustle into a full-time passion. We bring you real-life stories of resilience, innovation, and success from diverse entrepreneurs who’ve made the leap from side projects to profitable ventures. Whether you're exploring entrepreneurship, looking for business insights, or seeking inspiration to fuel your journey, join us for valuable tips and motivational tales. Transform your passion into a thriving business with Side Hustle City, where dreamers become doers.
Side Hustle City
Mastering Lead Generation: From 9-to-5 to Entrepreneur with Phil F. Smith
Ever wondered how you can master lead generation and turn it into a profitable business? This episode of Side Hustle City is your go-to guide. We’re sitting down with Phil F. Smith, an entrepreneur who pivoted from a traditional 9-to-5 to becoming a lead generation dynamo. Phil’s journey is nothing short of inspiring, from starting a web hosting company back in 1998 to selling businesses and venturing into lead generation in 2014. Learn from Phil as he shares strategies he used to overcome challenges like rising lead costs and the importance of evolving your tactics to stay ahead.
Ready to unlock the secrets of lead generation specifically for the lending industry? Phil reveals an innovative funnel strategy using Facebook ads to generate and categorize leads based on factors like incorporation status and credit score. Discover how offering free automated marketing software with AI can reduce lead costs and expand your reach. Phil also talks about the value of integrating AI to manage a high volume of leads, maximizing data, and doubling revenue. With added insights from industry experts like Kevin Harrington, this episode is packed with actionable advice that can transform your approach to lead generation.
Digital advertising is more than just running ads; it’s about understanding customer needs and adjusting your strategies accordingly. Phil dives into the complexities of advertising across different platforms, from Facebook to YouTube to Google, and the importance of pricing your services based on fluctuating lead costs. Additionally, we discuss the benefits of using WordPress for course management and the evolution of CRM and automation software. Phil’s extensive knowledge and tips on leveraging media exposure for brand building are the icing on the cake. Tune in, join our Side Hustle City community on Facebook, and take the first step towards turning your side hustle into a thriving main hustle.
As you're inspired to embark on your side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. With a team of experienced marketing professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, we are ready to assist you in reaching your goals. To find out more, visit www.reversedout.com.
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Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, my co-host. Let's get started. All right. Welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast Today's special guest, philip F Smith. I, like you, got the middle initial in there. There's a lot of Philip Smiths out there, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:There are. It's funny.
Speaker 1:Well, welcome to the podcast, Phil. It's great to have you here. I can't wait to talk to you about some of this growth marketing work you're doing and partnerships with Kevin Harrington. People know him from Shark Tank. You got a bunch of other folks that you're working with now, so I'd love to just understand your story. What led you into this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know, appreciate you having me on. It's always fun to talk shop. So you know how I got into the entrepreneurial world. It was just way back in the day I was doing that typical 9 to 5, and it's 1998. And I had an offer to start up my own business and I also had an offer for the job and it just didn't make sense to me not to take the chance to start my own business. And that was a web hosting company, again back in 98, we sold it in 2005. I've sold 5 companies since, now, been part of 9 acquisitions, and the main reason why is I sold one of my companies to an investment fund and I did a bunch of deals with them.
Speaker 2:So always put yourself in the same right room with the right people, especially if they have money, those are fun people to hang out with. So I did that. What I'm doing today, everything is lead generation-based. It's all about generating leads, owning the data and monetizing it. And when I say monetize it, you could sell the leads, I could do affiliate marketing, I could sell my own services. But that's the world that we live in. It's all about teaching companies. Obviously, we do it for ourselves too, but we also help companies generate leads for themselves, and it's just so they understand how to monetize, of course, their own leads, also their own customer base, cause a lot of companies don't even do that. So, anyway, that's the nutshell, what I concentrate on every day.
Speaker 1:So for you, you didn't have a lead generation person to help you start your businesses, so you had to figure this thing out on your way. But take us through some of the steps of actually launching a lead generation business as someone who does lead generation for other people.
Speaker 2:So it's funny April of 2014,. I was doing some consulting and I helped a company to get out of their business I'm sorry, get out of their business. Going backwards, I changed everything around as a digital marketing company within six months, turned the whole company around and sold it and the guy kind of the owner, kind of screwed me over a little bit, but it's fine. You kind of get used to that after a while, unfortunately. But people always try to take advantage of you. So, but what happened was, because of that happened, I said you know what? I'm going to fire all my clients. I really don't want to do this anymore anyway and I want to jump in as lead generation business. The problem was, like you just said, I had no one to go to to teach me anything, so I had to figure it out and I knew that I couldn't just start a lead generation business today without knowing anything. And how do I even start? So I said to myself I got to learn this business inside and out, from the inside out. So what I did was I learned how to do lead brokering. So I literally found lead buyers, I found lead sellers, I brokered a deal, I made my cut and I was like, wow, that was pretty easy. Now, sales has always been easy for me. I've always been one of those people I could just figure stuff out. I teach myself Always very important, especially today with how everything changes so fast. So what happened was you fast forward. As I started learning the business I do lead brokering 10, 20 grand a month I was like, all right, this is cool. But I said you know what? I started getting some bad deals done. So what I mean by that is companies started selling me bad leads and of course, I take the hit on it. I'm the bad guy because I'm the broker in the middle. So I said to myself, you know what? How do I eliminate these guys? How do I just do this myself? So, just learning as I go, and basically a fast forward.
Speaker 2:From April of 14, when I started, to October of 14, I ran my first Facebook ad ever and I started generating leads for $18. They were for the business loan space. So I was generating business loan leads for $18 and selling them for $60. And I was like, wow, this is cool, but I knew it wouldn't last forever. You always have to think 10 steps down the road. You can't just start a business, and even if you are successful, you can't just assume it's going to last forever. I always just assume everything's going to crash and burn and I need a plan B, and I got to think about what's going to happen in 6 to 12 months from now. So I knew my lead cost is not going to stay at $18. And I was right. In a year from there, in September of 2015, the lead cost went up to $70.
Speaker 2:So, from $18 to $70 in a year, and at that point in time, though, it was fine, because I knew it was going to happen, and I started learning how to monetize my leads in other ways. So, for example, I took a business loan lead in. I sold it to a business loan lender, but not every single lead qualified for a business loan. So, for example, I got a lot of startups. They didn't have any revenue, they had bad credit. What do I do with them? Well, I started selling them to credit repair buyers, and then I started buyers.
Speaker 1:Ah, beautiful, yes.
Speaker 2:I found a company that took in leads for credit monitoring right, for your business, your business credit monitoring. Then I added in companies that provided services to startups to help them get off the ground and get lending down the road. It was a unique service I'd never heard of, but they were buying leads for me. So I started to figure out how do I take one lead, filter it out in their revenue, their credit score, how long they've been in business right, and all these different filters, and I basically sent them, sometimes in three or four different directions, right. So then I had companies come to me, like a company called LoanMe, and what they did was they bought leads between $4,000 a month in revenue and $10,000 a month in revenue. They had companies over $10,000 a month in revenue. So I basically had like eight different lead buyers and eight different filters. So what I'm getting at is my overall lead cost was actually only like $8. Wow, right.
Speaker 2:My high quality leads were $70, like I said before, the ones that filtered out to actual business loan lead they were $70. Right, because it was only like 10% of the leads I generated qualified for a business loan. So my $8 lead was just for a blanket. Everybody bad credit, good credit, no revenue. A lot of revenue didn't matter. That was an $8 lead, but the business loan leads that filtered out were actually $70 at September of 2015. But the way I looked at it was I have an $8 lead. At the end of the day, how do I monetize all these leads? So that's what I started learning and then eventually, two years later, I started selling courses. I looked at you know guys selling courses out there and I'm like you know I could do this I mean how do you not create a course?
Speaker 2:so I created a course and I created a sales video. Obviously I researched all these other people that were doing it and understood how they do it, what software they're using, how long are are these webinars, what price points they're using. So I started just researching the industry. So I came out with a 997 course because everyone else had one and I basically put it out there and as only promoting this to my business loan leads, I was selling a $1,000 course on how to start their own business and literally within 24 hours got my first sale. My first month I did 30 grand. That was September, I think of 17. By the end of the year I did like 300 grand.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Right, so that's just pure profit. Right Because I'm just promoting it to my existing lead base. So it was an amazing thing. And then in 2018, january, I ended up partnering with Kevin Harrington, who was on the first couple of seasons of Shark Tank, because, just to use his brand, I'm like I need to attach myself to a bigger brand, get myself out there. So I did that, obviously, and I've been working with him ever since, still work with him today, and that really helped me out.
Speaker 2:So what I always tell companies or anybody that's trying to start a business, or even if you're already in business, if you're trying to get into a business, I love the data space because it's scalable, it's automated. I'm still a one employee company, just so you know, still a one employee company. Done multiple eight figures, made the Inc 5000 list five times, probably six times this year. I've had a lot of success and I'm still a one employee company. I still use freelancers, still use consultants, of course, but that's the scalability of lead generation, that's the automation of lead generation, and that's why I love this business so much because I can work from home, stay, you know, be around my kids more and be able to scale a business.
Speaker 1:You know it's hilarious about this. Last week I just won a B2B lender and we're doing all their pay-per-click ads for them and they said one of the problems they were doing it in-house. Right, they're doing all their pay-per-click in-house. They're saying, oh, 50% of our leads are people that don't qualify, right, yeah, so you just gave me an idea. It's like hey, are you guys selling those bad leads to credit repair people? That's brilliant. Like they, I don't think they're thinking of that.
Speaker 1:But for people for reference, a lot of people don't know because they've never taken one of these loans or worked with one of these companies, like an on deck or one of these other companies there's a bunch of them out there. Uh, they, they essentially will work with businesses on the short term, you know, six months, I think on deck does right, and there's a preset amount you would have to pay back. So you kind of know upfront. I don't even think they really tell you the interest rate. They're just like look, if you learn, if you borrow 10 grand, you're going to end up paying us back 11 grand in six months or whatever. It is Right, and the default rates on these are actually pretty low from what I understand. Yeah, it should be less than 20%.
Speaker 1:Less than 20%, and there's a what's the like. There's a lending tree of this industry. It's like I can't remember what the name of it is, but Lendio. Yeah, buddy of mine runs one in another city. So these are like franchises, so you can like buy a franchise for one of these things and essentially do kind of what you were doing. But I mean you sound like you're. I mean this was back in the day. I mean you're talking 2015, 2016. I mean you were doing this way before. A lot of these other people were doing it and it's a great bit. From what I understand, the margins are excellent If you loan to one of these, one of these lenders. Right, if you're an investor and you loan to one of these, the returns are really good. And I never knew about this industry until recently and I'm actually working with you know another guy who's who's on the other side of that Like they're at the hey, let me find lenders for these, for these companies, but that's a great business to be in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're 100% right. You have the syndication side, so you invest in them, right, which I do. You can usually make about 50% on your money, which is amazing. Not going to make that in the stock market, right? No, so I have something called Loan Broker Network, which actually we have over 10,000 people that have come in where we teach them the loan broker industry, we teach them lead generation and through our network, we do $20 million a month in lending and it's amazing, that's through us and our partners. And so, yeah, you're 100% right.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of different ways to make money in the lending industry. It's never going to go anywhere. It's good in the bad economy. It's good with the good economy. Everyone needs money at all times. We also provide marketing services now. So what we do is we generate business leads and we pivoted our marketing strategies.
Speaker 2:But exactly what you just said you're trying to generate. Companies would always come to me and say, phil, I just want the best leads. I'm like, no, you're thinking about this wrong. You want every lead and you want to monetize them as many different ways. Then your premium leads become free. Brilliant, right, that's the strategy. So I'll give you a funnel idea that we're running right now that literally just started this recently and it's already crushing it. So I'll give you exactly what we're doing.
Speaker 2:This is a you know, literally a easily $20 million business. I'm going to give you on a silver platter Anybody listening, feel free to go do it yourself. All right, you ready. What you do is when you run, let's say, facebook ads, you want to put out an offer. That is a hot offer right now. It's trending, whatever it is. So AI is that? What we did was we put out an ad right now that say, get access to our free automated marketing software. So, literally, get access to it for free. With AI built in, you can build out your AI for your business. So you have the automated marketing CRM a need out there plus AI. So that's a free offer. You're going to generate leads. Right now, we're at $5 a lead, which is ridiculous. That's crazy.
Speaker 2:Especially today with Facebook, le to five bucks. When they fill out that form the initial form I ask them are you incorporated or not? If they're not incorporated, I'm going to send them off to a, to a ink file I forget ink files, new name, but ink fileile gives people sets of a corporation Usually make about $125 a client or a customer that I send to them. So if they say no, then I want to push them over to there. If they say no, I'm not incorporated, I ask them if they're interested in a personal loan. We have someone that does unsecured personal loans. If they say yes, I ask them for the credit score secured personal loans. If they say yes, I ask them for the credit score. If they're over 680, I'll send them there. If they're over 720, I ask someone else that can get credit cards stacking for them. Get a bunch of credit cards at 0% interest, but they need a 720. So right now, I just told you about three different buyers.
Speaker 2:Now, if they say, yes, I am incorporated, cool, you want a business loan? Now, that's different buyers. What's your revenue? What's this? What's that? You still ask them the credit score question because I can still send them off to the other people.
Speaker 2:Then I ask them what marketing services are you interested in? Right, you just want our free CRM. Or do you want SEO? You want to be interviewed on TV? We provide that service. You want a shark on your board of advisors? Kevin will go on someone's board of advisors if it makes sense. So consulting services, et cetera. Then from there they go through a funnel where they watch a video that gives them access to that free CRM. It's 100% true, we're not lying. For $1,000 plus that course comes with a free group weekly call to answer any questions they have with their business. So they're marketing questions, lending questions. So what this sell is Kevin Harrington's team that's done $6 billion in sales is going to help you grow your business. It costs $1,000. We give you a course and a free weekly call and Kevin will be on once a month to answer questions, just for a thousand bucks.
Speaker 2:The reason why that thousand dollars is important, because that pays for the leads, right? So think about it $5 lead, I only need to convert half a percent to be breakeven. Now I get free leads and then I'm selling them off doing affiliate marketing. Plus, we have our own services that we can sell. We build out a custom AI for companies and stuff like that too. So now we have that coming in right. So now we can literally go to 1,000 leads a day very easily, and now it's just free. And then we just offer whatever we offer. We can upsell through our calls, whatever.
Speaker 2:So there's your strategy on pick in whatever industry you want to be in, whatever is a hot, free offer that you can do, just getting the cheap data, monetize them through the form, get all the information you can. That makes sense. And then, you know, provide some sort of course, because the reason why the course is important there's no fulfillment Right, I have to go do something, right? So and again, I like to stay a small company. So sell a course with a weekly call Guess what? I already do a weekly call, so it doesn't matter to me. You know what I mean. So I'm selling something I'm already doing and I'm giving a course, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:And of course, yes, I have. You know, kevin Harrington, we started working with Damon John recently. So yeah, we have that now, obviously to help sell it. But, to be honest, you don't need to sell this stuff, you know. As long as you know what you're doing, that's good enough. But obviously I've been working with them for a long time, so I use them. But but yeah, I mean that that's your strategy in a nutshell. You obviously got to piece it together and figure it out, but it's that's the power of building something out that's scalable and automated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just think about I mean, there's a lot of these companies. I didn't realize how many there were. My wife sometimes you know for her her spa she'll use on deck Right, so she has an on deck loan out right now and then also she can use her POS system. The accounting system that's tied into her POS was Square. Square Capital offers her money all the time there is.
Speaker 1:Soon as you go to one of these websites, you are going to get destroyed with Facebook ads. As soon as you go to one of these websites, you are going to get destroyed with Facebook ads. As soon as I started working with this client, I've got I don't know how many now that I get on Facebook. Every time I open Facebook it's like the first thing I see, so I'm getting hit with tons of those. I probably need to clear my cash and everything so that I can reset my Facebook ads that I'm getting. But you mentioned Facebook ads that I'm getting. But you mentioned Facebook ads and I know my client in particular. They're spending between $20,000 and $50,000 depending on what's going on every month in Facebook and Google ads.
Speaker 1:Right, but they're small compared to some of these other companies out here that could be spending a quarter mil a month or more just trying to go out here and find leads, or they have to go to a third party group and they have to buy those leads to try to get something. Your strategy is very interesting and it's almost like it reminds me of the Native Americans, right? If they killed a buffalo, they didn't just eat the meat, right, they used every piece of it. I mean, this is what. This is kind of what you're doing out here, and it's smart because every form that that you know, whatever that ad is you're doing, it goes back to a form. You get the information from the people. People are throwing those leads away if they don't think they qualify. Right, I mean, this is. It's wild to me that they're doing that, and you've come up with this strategy and you've got all these partnerships.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like you said before this interview, you said people don't know what they don't know right, and that's the thing with anybody in any case, and they just don't understand it.
Speaker 2:They don't understand the concept. A lot of people think they're doing something wrong by trying to sell their customer base or their leads something else. It's almost like spammy or scammy, but it's not as long as you're giving them like we don't just offer people something they don't ask for, you know. So if they say, yes, I'm interested in this, then I'm going to have someone call them for Kevin stuff. If it's a day with a shark event, you know, if it's SEO services, if it's whatever, we're just going to say all right, you asked for this, here you go. You know what I mean. So if they don't have a company that's incorporated, then we're going to say, hey, since your company's not incorporated, would you like to get one done? It's actually free, you just got to pay your state fees, right? That's the company's offer. So we just offer whatever they say on a form and we put the stuff in front of them. Obviously, we'll answer questions and do stuff and we'll do what we say we're going to do, but of course, now you have a captive audience once a week that's listening to you. You're proving that you know what you're doing. What are they going to do? They're going to work with you. They're going to give you more money, right? They're going to want you to help them. So it's the best. It's almost like you know, people build out Facebook groups for that reason. Oh, you know, we communicate with them through there, which is great because that's ongoing. It's 24 seven and we certainly have support channels and whatever. But that extra weekly call where you actually physically see somebody and you can talk to them, whatever. I mean that's a game changer. So these are things that we do and we give a lot of these ideas to companies and it kind of goes over their head or they're like to kind of head spinning.
Speaker 2:I literally had a meeting today with someone that would build that AI, for in the lending industry, they're a large broker and I said to them and you can say this to any broker lender that you deal with you can say listen, guys, I can show you how to double your revenue in a year. And they're going to be like how do I double my revenue in a year? Yeah, and you say all these leads that you're generating. You're generating for lending. When you come to work every day, you care about closing deals, right, yeah, that's all we care about. Okay, good, but you have businesses that are generating a decent amount of revenue, because it's the only way you're going to get them approved. If they do in at least 100 to 120 grand a year in revenue, oh yeah, so they have money to spend. They need to grow. They're probably using their money to grow. What if you provide them with marketing services? Website.
Speaker 1:Basic website. Their websites probably looks like garbage anyway. Uh, you know we do websites, so it's like I, I'd see some of these websites and I'm like I can't believe you. You actually went to market with this website. Uh, in none of them the seo is terrible. The on-page search is always bad. I, I don't. I honestly I don't know how people even find in half their sites. They don't have a Google business account. It's, it's just, it's, they're a mess. And even the local ones, like the local, the local search, local search is non-existent with these people and it's, it's wild that they're operating like this. But every one of them, I mean they're ready to go pay for ads and their website is junk.
Speaker 2:Yep, and that's the thing I see. I used to own consulting business, which I sold in 2010 to that investment fund when I mentioned before, and that's how I got into the fund. But when I would walk into a company selling consulting services back in a day, I would show them a big like pie chart from New York. So pizza is a big thing and I say, listen, here's your pizza pie, right, and you need you have eight slices, and these eight slices are basically eight different things that you need your funnel to work, your funnel. When you, if you only got four pieces when you ordered a pizza pie, what would you do? You probably give it back.
Speaker 1:Like something that's going on here, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's your funnel. If all eight pieces are not here, it's not going to work. All right, everything has to work together, right? So that's what I would go in and sell them and say, listen, sure, I can help you drive in leads, great. But it's going to collapse when it hits this point. Even if you are good at generating leads, let's just say your sales process sucks, you know, let's just say your sales process sucks. Let's just say your conversions suck, or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:And I learned a lot of companies cannot sell their own product. I mean, I've learned that over the years, so that was how I used to sell it back in the day, but for today, it's all about monetizing the data. And when I talked to that company today and I said, listen, guys, you're doing funding, great, you're making a lot of money, wonderful. But think about all the business that's in these leads. They generate like 8,000 leads a month fresh. They have over a million records to date. So we're building an AI for them to contact those million records that they won't even touch because it's too much, but AI obviously will just do that for them all day long and build out the conversation. So that's obviously what we're starting with.
Speaker 2:But I'm like you guys can easily double your revenue just by starting simple marketing services. And the great thing about it you can outsource everything. So they could just hire a salesperson, project manager, take these leads you already have. It's not like you have to go generate more leads and bring them through, offer the services, outsource it to any one of the 20 companies out there easily. That do all the outsourcing for all these types of services Like Vendasta is one just as an example and they'll do all the back end for you and you just project, manage it and sell it. You know, and make whatever you make on it and build that up.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just, it's it's work. I'm not saying it doesn't. It's easy. You know it's an easy concept, but you still have to execute. But when you have free leads, how do you not make money with free leads? Right, so that that's the concept. With them, you already have the data, you already have the leads. You're just selling another service. And two, they need money and they need marketing. I mean, that's it. Of course they need more than that, but those are the two number one things that they need. If you ask me, because without those two things, how do you grow?
Speaker 1:That's right. I mean, what do you do? And people don't. They're terrible at sales, they're terrible at nurturing leads. They don't know what a sales funnel even looks like, or what software they need in order to build out a funnel, what the processes are. And, speaking of that, we talked about Google, we talked about Facebook. We haven't talked about YouTube, and I know that's getting to be much more popular when it comes to running ads, if your business can actually run ads on there. But what are some of the technologies, like a YouTube on the come up or places that you see are outside of Google and Facebook yeah, great places to start generating some leads from.
Speaker 2:To be honest. I mean we only do a volume. So Facebook's number one in terms of volume, youtube's number two and then Google's number three. So, youtube, you can definitely get good volume. It's going to cost you more money for the leads, but they are going to be higher quality. Google is going to be less. It is going to be higher quality but less volume and you're also going to pay for it. So, for example, one of our campaigns where we do all three uh, facebook will come in at like eight to 10 bucks. Uh, youtube could be like 18 to 20,.
Speaker 2:Uh, google is similar, maybe a little higher. It just depends if it's display or or whatever. Um, but you know, similar to YouTube, but YouTube will convert at like sometimes double, even triple than Facebook, you know. So, with the same exact ad running to a very similar audience. But you know the difference is and it depends on how you run YouTube. But you know Facebook is just straight display, right, so you're scrolling through. You have to have like an ugly ad or something that stands out. You know we put exotic cars and you have a Lambo and all that fun stuff. But you know we put that out there just to get attention and it works, of course, but you know it's like they're just scrolling through. Maybe I like it, maybe I don't.
Speaker 2:Google YouTube is more intent based. Right, they're either searching for it or it can definitely do really well in terms of targeting. But your targeting is going to be based on a lot of what they're searching for and what their history is right, where Facebook is kind of the complete opposite. You're kind of just guessing. So on Facebook, we just target business owners, business owners behaviors, and that's it, and it works. Right At the end of the day, it works. It's just not as high quality, but we do get a lot of data from it. It works. It's just not as high quality, but we do get a lot of data from it.
Speaker 1:Youtube less data, higher quality, but it's still profitable obviously, and when you mentioned you had said, hey look, I just get you know, you essentially give information away. I do the same thing with my agency. I'm like, yeah, sure, I mean you guys could do this yourself. Here's what you have to do. I just tell them they never want to do it themselves, right, they never want to do it. It's just too much work. I will literally lay it out for them. I'll say, look, I you know, if you guys want to do this.
Speaker 1:You set up your Google business. Here's how you do some on-page SEO. You know, you got to name all your images. You got to put titles and descriptions on them. You got to, you know, blog on a consistent basis. You got to get a list of long tail keywords. Those are going to be your blog topics. I put it all out there. Right, they don't want to do it. They just they don't have time to do it. People are they need to work on their business, not in their business. Right, and and? Is that your experience? And I mean you've been in the digital agency world, so I mean it sounds like you've got all this information, but it's like, who's going to do all that? Right, like all the stuff we've talked about. They don't know. They don't even know how to set up a Facebook ad account.
Speaker 2:Right, you're 100% right. And when I was doing consulting I would say, hey, listen, for a lot cheaper I'll just show you what to do. And you kind of just come up with me for questions. But here's the thing Go, even taking your I wasn't sure exactly what different businesses you have, but if you have an agency, you can take the model I just literally just said to drive in those leads at a cheap price, put them into a course where you guys run your own weekly call just to give them advice and help and whatever, and then back all those into your agency. So we're just going to tell you what to do. Put a course here, like you just said. You give it to them anyway. Here's exactly how you build everything out. Here's exactly what you do. I don't know if you do this already or not, but back that into a weekly call, say, hey, we'll even support you every week. Come on, be wherever you are, it doesn't matter. You know it costs a thousand bucks, whatever you want to charge. And just, I'd ever see, I never charge, I always charge what I need to for the, how much the leads cost and what my conversion rate is.
Speaker 2:So we literally one day because Facebook ads went crazy early this year, right, so you know, everything tripled. For us it was nuts, but what we did was all we did was just triple our prices. And we came out, we changed our services a little bit, but we did triple our prices, just to change because of Facebook screwed us up and it literally everything just worked out so and then, when everything came back down we went back down to a thousand dollars we said, hey guys, we're ending this service. We got this new service and because our lead cost, just you know, plummeted over the last like month, so anyway, uh, it's just funny, but, um, it's just crazy how we just literally price our stuff based on what we need to price. That you know.
Speaker 2:That's what it is yeah, that's it. That's what I tell a lot of companies. Just price it what you need to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, are you using like a Kajabi or something to do your courses? What do you prefer?
Speaker 2:So we only use WordPress? I'm pretty sure we use LearnDash. Is the actual software on WordPress that we use to manage everything? I'm pretty sure it's LearnDash, and yeah, that's it. I only do WordPress. I don't use ClickFunnels or Kajabi or anything else.
Speaker 1:LearnDash? I haven't even heard of that and I do. That's all we do is WordPress. I mean, people try to use all these other platforms. I'm like, look, you're going to get stuck in this gated wall, walled garden. You might as well just use wordpress. You could do whatever you want with it. You have complete access over, you know, to control over everything. You know like a like a shopify or something. Everybody wants to put everything on shopify and I'm like, oh man, yeah, I mean, they've got great plugins and things like that, but you're gonna be stuck in their system, you know, and it's just what it is.
Speaker 2:and if you got wordpress, I mean what is like 60% of the websites on the web or using WordPress or something like that so, yeah, it's crazy. It's funny because it didn't make sense to me, Like when we started doing this stuff in 2017, we started building up courses. I looked at ClickFunnels. I'm like this is so limited. Like why would anybody use this? But it's for people who are just starting right. I mean, that's really, I guess, the concept. But you know, ClickFunnels is now. You know, it's normal to have a ClickFunnels type service where, when they first started, obviously it wasn't really around, so you really had to know what you were doing in order to build stuff out. So there's always someone who needs that type of stuff.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, even the CRM industry automated software- all that stuff just came so far over the last six years. Oh, and you could patch your own system together with different things. I mean it's like you don't have to spend all that money on a salesforce or you know any of these other softwares that are out there. I mean you could patch. You could patch some stuff together, you know. I mean it's it's not super difficult but everybody wants like the hub spot solution or something you know and it's right and we tried them out.
Speaker 2:There's like three grand a month. When we started using it I was like why are we doing this? Just didn't make sense to spend all that money for something that you can do for way less. And of course, you have to know what you're doing and most people don't, and it is what it is. But with Zapier you can obviously connect anything to anything if needed. I hate Zapier, so we try not to use it. I like to use API, as I said, but cause it does break a lot or at least it did for us or not break, but it just like stopped. It just stopped working and then you just have to oh, I have to read my guys Like I just have to restart it. I'm like why do we have to keep restarting?
Speaker 1:all the time so it can reconnect. Yeah, it's just. Yeah, it's going to lose its connection. Well, I you know, and I'm sitting here looking at your logo behind you on your thing and I'm like, wow, you know somebody who does logos. I really appreciate the simplicity of it and the fact that you've highlighted with those those lines, those horizontal lines there PFS, because you know, philip ends in a P and F is your middle initial and Smith super smart. I don't know how many people would pick up on it, but I appreciate it. It looks really cool on it, but I appreciate it. It looks really cool. And also people, uh, if you want to go check out his website and you want to go check out what he does and learn a lot more, uh, you know, from a five-time Inc 5,000 honoree and a guy who's working with uh people from shark tank, it's a Philip F Smithcom, right? Yep, is that the uh? Is that the? Is that the site you want to cause? You have a couple of websites out there, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fine that, that that one just is the easiest one.
Speaker 1:And you get home and how do you get people on, like these television stations and everything? I mean, that's another. Another thing we didn't even bring up is, uh, you know, helping people to get on, you know, Fox business or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's funny, someone approached me by the end of 2022 about getting on TV and I'm like, wow, that's a really cool service. I'm like sure, I'll do it. So I went through the process, just to go through the process with them. I said, well, why can't we do this? So it took us a few months. We connected with pretty much every major city. We have over 60 cities now and we can get you on ABC, nbc, cbs, fox, even Bloomberg, some others, nasdaq, and it just depends on where you're at what you want to do. Then we added on Kevin Harrington, so you can be interviewed by Kevin or with Kevin on TV. Yeah, it's just a cool service.
Speaker 2:So, obviously's not. You know, I always tell people it's not really about being on TV and what you get by being on on the show. It's more about using that content and your online marketing, because that's going to elevate you very quickly and utilize that in your online marketing. And, obviously, your brand building, because building your brand obviously is very important and everybody should start that right away. So, but that, that literally somebody just approached me about it and the way I think and I'm sure, same thing with you you just say, well, how can I make money with that? So I'm like I could build this out. There's nothing proprietary about this. It's just literally putting the effort in to build the network, and what we learned real quick was that we only really need access like five people to get access to everybody.
Speaker 1:We didn't know that at first, of course, but we started learning.
Speaker 2:And then we realized that there's just networks out there that once you get into a network, they give you 25 cities, this one gives you another 20 cities and whatever, so anyway, so yeah, it's just a cool service because I mean, we just literally can elevate you from here to here instantly. And TV, still from a branding perspective, is way better than YouTube and Instagram and anything you do online. People just look at you differently when they see that you've been on an NBC show or whatever.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, then some influencer's channel or whatever. Yeah, oh for sure, because it's still got that cachet of well, it's ABC, it's CBSbs. He must have. You know, they must really, you know, want him and there's something, he's got something here. If they want to put him on the show, so, yeah, what is the? So I'm really interested in that actually because, uh, you know, I'm, I'm part of this whole cincinnati startup ecosystem here and you've got a lot of people with good ideas and I feel like they struggle to get that kind of media exposure. What kind of investment are people looking at in order to get that? Are there different packages that you sell? Like, how does that work?
Speaker 2:It depends on the location, but let's just say an average of anywhere between two and four grand. That's it. Yeah, it's not a lot of money.
Speaker 1:No, that seems great.
Speaker 2:We also just don't charge a lot of money. I'm always like let's drive the price down. That's how I've always been. I don't like to overcharge.
Speaker 2:If you want Kevin on, yeah, that's 15 grand, which is still great, if you ask me, because, again, you can use the content forever. How do you not make a profit off content if you can use it forever when you have a brand, these brands, attached to it? But yeah, on average, two to four grand. If you want to be in, like New York City, it's going to be over 10 easily, but you don't really need to be. That's why I tell people like you can be anywhere, it doesn't matter, and you can even do it from on Zoom. You don't have to be in person. So I've done in person, I've done Zoom, I've done all of it. Then what I do is I take the content, just like you know, you would take a podcast and just cut it up right into these 10, 20 second segments and just keep putting that stuff online and it just makes you, you know, look better yeah, and you tie all that into your social media efforts and, yeah, you're going from there.
Speaker 1:And next thing, you know, you got, you know, months worth of content off of one show. So that's how long do these interviews usually last that you get these people on like say it was like a fox business or something it depends.
Speaker 2:They're typically going to be no more on again.
Speaker 2:On average, no more than five minutes okay, oh man, that's a lot of time to yeah, you pre-submit your question, you already know what your questions are going to be, so you're prepared and whatever. And some of them are live, some of them aren't. I always recommend not doing live if someone's brand new and they're nervous. But my first one that I did last year I did in Connecticut. It was on NBC and I didn't know it was going to be live until I got there and I'm like, oh, it's live. I I'm not. Even though I do this stuff a lot, I still get nervous. I'm not a great speaker. Even though I do my own events, my own events, I'm fine. But, um, I usually need some tequila, to be honest.
Speaker 1:You're a long Island guy, this comes natural to you guys. You're fine, you'll be all right.
Speaker 2:But uh, yeah, I. I do get nervous, though, but your power through it. You know. You know it is. You got to get out of your comfort zone. It doesn't matter what it is. Get out of your comfort zone and just move forward. It's the only way you're going to advance your career.
Speaker 1:That's 100% true. That's 100% true. Stop being scared. Work with somebody.
Speaker 1:I mean, from just what I understand about you, I mean working with you, working with your services. I mean this could save people years of just grinding and trying to get out there and trying to promote their business, especially if it's a startup. And you know, we kind of learned that the hard way when we did ours. Now I would just save the time. Just go to somebody like you and say, look, I need help, help me with this, help me with you know, run some ads for me. Help me with my lead generation. Hey, can you help me build a funnel? Yeah, I'll take a look at this course you got going on. I mean, just do that. Yeah, I'll take a look at this course you got going on. I mean, just do that. Like you know. Stop trying to figure everything out yourself. That's the whole thing. I think that's a problem people have. They think they have to figure stuff out themselves in order to save money, but then they end up blowing a bunch of their time away. So that's what it is.
Speaker 1:Well, phil man, this has been great. I love meeting people like you. I mean, we're kind of in the same industry. I mean, some of the services you offer sound like. I mean these are things that I'm going to be sending people your way for. So I mean this has been a great time and I really appreciate you being on the show. And again, guys, if you want to check out Phil's philipfsmithcom, check out his website and all the services he offers. I mean it's a ridiculous amount of accolades you've been able to accumulate over the years too, by the way. So congratulations on everything you do.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. Thank you for having me man, it's been fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have a good one. Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side Hustle City. Well, you've heard from our guests. Now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, side Hustle City. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.
