SPI 523: The Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Growing a Business with Los Silva

SPI 523: The Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Growing a Business with Los Silva

Pat Flynn:
We all make mistakes in business. I have made several, and I’m going to talk about many of the mistakes that I’ve made, in the next episode, in our follow-up Friday episodes. But we’re going to talk today with Los Silva. And Los Silva is somebody who I recently met, who I’ve been just fascinated by because he is coming from the E-commerce space. He has a website, EcomPowerhouse.com. That’s with one M, E-C-O-M-powerhouse.com. [Editor’s note: Please visit http://mm.ecompowerhouse.com if entering the URL directly in your browser.]

But in getting to know Los, I’ve begun to realize that his secret to success is actually very different than what a lot of people talk about. And you’ll find that as you listen to this episode, that it’s kind of almost counterintuitive. But when you really break it down, it kind of makes sense. And it’s a good kick in the butt for some of us. It was a good kick in the butt for me to listen to this episode, because sometimes the best way to grow is to actually slow down.

And I think many of us who are here listening to this episode today, well you’re listening to this for a reason. So I invite you to sit back, relax, enjoy this episode with Los Silva. And he’s going to talk about his origin story a little bit, which is really interesting, coming from the eBay world. And having gone through a lot of failures himself, and then finally landing on something that he just was really good at and then he leaned into. And that’s kind of the story that you often hear. And I’m so happy, because this is one of those hero’s journeys. And now this hero, Los, is going to be sharing his advice with us. So sit back, relax. This is going to be awesome. Here we go.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it’s all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he’s secretly plotting to win a Pokémon card tournament one day: Pat Flynn.

Pat:
What’s up, everybody? Pat Flynn here. And welcome to session 523 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. My name is Pat Flynn, here to help you make more money, save more time, and help more people too. And all those three things have to happen. I think that in order to be fulfilled, those three things have to happen. Yes, making more money, that’s going to be the result of helping more people. But we want to do it in a way that saves us time. I know a lot of people who make a lot of money who have very successful businesses, but they don’t have successful lives. And I think Los, as a fellow father, he and I connected and I think you’re going to enjoy this episode. So here he is, Los Silva from EcomPowerhouse.com.

Los, welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Los Silva:
Thanks for having me, man. Yeah. Excited.

Pat:
I am so stoked to chat business growth with you, and all the things that seem to slow us down and how we can get out of that. That’s exactly what you’re an expert on. You have these amazing companies that you work with, with different business owners. And we’re going to talk about some of those things too. But I want to get to know you, Los, and how you got here. What’s your origin story in terms of marketing and business growth?

Los:
I’ve been doing this for close to 20 years. I’m old, dude. I’m going to turn 40 in September.

Pat:
Hey man, we’re close. I’m 38. I turn 39 in December. So we’re in the same generation.

Los:
Yeah. Good. I started doing stuff on eBay when I was in college. And I started flipping video projectors and Crown Victorias. It sounds super weird, but I just found items that were expensive. My friend had a dealership where you could go out and get the Crowns. So we’d sell those and I’d flip them on eBay. And then we’d sell InFocus video projectors.

From there I was like, “Man, these have good margin. I’m making pretty good money.” I remember, I was making $480 per video projector on eBay. And I was like, “Man, what else can I sell?” So I became a distributor for some electronics. And in those was Bose speakers. I couldn’t sell it, so it was kind of black hat. But I didn’t know anything. It was like, let’s throw it up there and see what happens. It turns out I ended up becoming one of the top sales guys. That business became one of the top reps for Bose, until I got kicked out of eBay because I wasn’t supposed to be doing that.

From there on I just kind of kept doing stuff online. I didn’t know that that was an algorithm. I didn’t know anything. So from there I just started doing more ecommerce. That got me into weird things like JVZoo and Warrior Forum. And I started reading how to make money online, buying courses. And I bought this one course from a good friend of mine now, Ryan Deiss, called Let’s Get Social. I started implementing it. And I was like, “Man, I’m going to work with that guy one day.”

I learned media buying. And then from there on I made a course. I put it on Udemy, so long ago. It was called Media Buying Academy. Ryan bought it, and then he ended up publishing me. So from there on I started connecting with them and we did some projects and just started doing more and more, and learning about just ecommerce all the way to … I’ve done everything except for affiliate marketing. I’ve built brands, sold brands in ecommerce, in the high-ticket space, in the event space, in the just digital ascension, digital product space as well.

So at the end of the day I kind of look at everything almost the same because I’ve done it for so long. But that’s pretty much how I got started, man. That whole journey is about 12 years of just ups and downs and ups and downs until you start finding your path and you’re like, “Okay, I think I know what I’m doing. This seems to be pretty consistent.” And now I just feel like I just do the same thing over and over again.

Pat:
How long did it take you to get to that point where you’re like, “Oh, I’m in my groove now”? Was it right away? How long did it take?

Los:
No. It probably took me three years. The first year I can tell you I made $30,000. The second year, I think I made like $60,000. And the third year I made $135,000. The fourth it was like $500,000. And then I was like, “All right, I think I know what I’m doing.” And then from there on we just kept growing and growing and growing. But it was ups and downs and ins and outs. I tried everything. Because you don’t know what you don’t know, so you might as well try everything. And you don’t know what niche you’re going to go in. There’s so much to do online. It’s kind of what’s going on with crypto and NFTs now, and all these things. There’s so many ways you can grab a hold of something. But I learned I’m going to be good at media buying and understanding how to make money through emails and just focused on that.

Now if you can do that with one thing, to a degree you can kind of do it with everything. You know what I mean?

Pat:
How did you land on that niche? I think that when you said you’re going here, you’re going there. A lot of people listening can resonate with that because there are so many options. How did you land on that? And how would you recommend people who are really in the ups and downs right now, how do you help them land that plane in a specific lane?

Los:
I would tell you to do more at the beginning. Everyone’s going to say, “Focus on one thing.” What is that? And what if it sucks? For me it came down to a point of I was poor. I didn’t have money. Once the eBay thing stopped, I had to start from scratch again. I tried to go be a waiter. And I had done so much for so long that I couldn’t even be a waiter. So I was just struggling to try to find my way. And I kept going to all these events, and you’re doing podcasting, this guy’s doing content marketing. You don’t know. So the big thing that I realized was, okay, people are going to pay to get leads. And so I should probably learn how to have an acquisition way of getting leads. And so that was my first thing.

And then as I was going to all these events, I also heard a lot of people talk about “back end,” and I didn’t know what that was. It was like, “I’m good at building people’s back end.” And I’m like, “What?” So I just started working on that. Now that people come through the front door, how are we keeping people? And so inadvertently, by accident I learned how to do front-end marketing and then how to monetize people on the back end.

And as far as niching down, I still don’t have a niche. Now it’s even more broad, right? But I did a lot of different things. I will tell you, a lot of people tell you to go with your passion. I think that makes sense if you’re established. But at the beginning, you got to go with what is making traction for you, what’s getting you momentum. You might not be passionate about local marketing, but if you have 10 accounts, it’s easier to scale that to 20 than it is to jump onto affiliate marketing or build a podcast that’s going to take, realistically, five years to really go with.

Once you have the opportunity, now I just do things I love. My business partners are my best friends. I don’t do business with people … I think you have to earn that opportunity. At the beginning, you kind of just have to be scrappy and just do what you got to do. You know what I mean?

Pat:
Yeah. And be okay with being scrappy. And being scrappy means you’re going to mess up a little bit, you’re going to not know. You’re going to have to take, like you said, chances. I remember doing the same thing and saying yes to opportunities just because I wanted to force myself to learn those things. And sometimes you go with it, sometimes you don’t. But as long as you’re like, “Okay, this is a part of the process. This is the journey. I will find my way to that thing, eventually, as long as I keep going.” But it can be hard, dude. I know some people, they just get so down. Whether it’s because of their perfectionist mindset, or they don’t do things because it’s not perfect. Or they try it once and they fail and they’ve been conditioned, like how I was, that you have to be an A+ student. If you’re not good at something, don’t do it.

How do you break out of that mindset thing? Because you know this, and everybody knows, it’s all about what happens in the mind, right? How do you approach the mind when it comes to success in business?

Los:
So I think you’ve got to fail. You have to. I think it’s the most amazing, perfect, great thing. If you just have never … you’ll never really be that successful. You have to understand that failure is opportunity to learn. And it humbles you at the same time. Everyone wants to win because you see what happens, especially now, for people that are just starting with social media. Everyone is great. Right? Everyone’s perfect. Everyone’s beautiful. Everyone’s great. And that’s just not true, man. Everyone’s failing in secrecy and they’re not speaking about it enough.

But you can’t look at someone’s … I can’t look at you if I want to start a podcast today, even with an audience, and expect I should be like Pat. You’ve put a decade into this, man. You’ve done so much work. You deserved exactly to be where you are, because you’ve put in that time. People have the audacity sometimes, and the nerves to be like, “Well, I should kind of just jump in that and I’ll hit your numbers fast.” Man, that’s not going to work, dude. You work on your body, it takes time to bulk or cut or get into certain shape. You want to learn jiu-jitsu, it’s going to take a decade for you to get a black belt. You want to go to college, it’s going to take you years to get a degree, to get a job, to get good at that. Why don’t you give this the respect and time that it deserves?

And if you think about it, “Man, this is my career. This is where I want to go,” you would be a little bit more okay with the time and the learnings and the failures and the climb, so to speak. So I think that for people that are beginning, you got to look at things … it’s a slow climb. And then mindset is what’s going to keep you … Ego is really a big part of what’s going to keep you from moving forward. Because then you become good at something, and then you’re like, “Well, I don’t want to give it to Steve who works here, because I’m better than that.” Well, you’ve got to move. There’s seasons in business, right? Like this season, you hustled. And then this next season, you’ve got to learn to hire and delegate and be good. And then next season you’ve got to learn to lead. And then next season you’ve got to learn to create and step completely back. And that could take forever. That could be your whole book. You know what I mean?

Pat:
Right.

Los:
That could be the whole play. But everyone wants to just jump in fast because everyone’s screenshotting Ferraris and stuff on social media. Most of that stuff’s rented. And it’s not fulfilling. You didn’t get into this business or life to buy a Ferrari. And if you did, honestly, that’s super petty. You shouldn’t want that. You got in here for freedom of time, freedom of choice. That’s what I love about business. I have time freedom. I have choice freedom. I can hang out with the people I want, the people I respect, the people I admire. I get to learn. I get to take the time off. That’s more important than the cars and the things. So don’t get lost inside of that, because you can. You can get very lost. And that’s where your mind can go because you’re not keeping it clean and focused on yourself.

Pat:
That’s so key. So many takeaways there. We often have to zoom out sometimes, or get outside perspective on things because we’re so sucked into it. As I often say, you can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle. Getting around people, like you said, is really important. And I love your take on failure being part of the process. I was listening to one of my kids … I know you have a couple kids as well. They’re in school, right? And they had their orientations for the year. And I was listening in on Zoom and the teacher was like, “Fail. We want your kids to fail, and you have to support us with that. Because failing, it stands for first attempt in learning. F-A-I-L.” And I was like, “Oh, man. I’m so glad they’re finally teaching this in school because I was conditioned to hate failure, that failure was bad.”

Again, it’s all about the mindset, like you said. And taking things in seasons. I love that too because I think a lot of us try to … as much as it’s important to stay consistent, sometimes you need to take a break. I know a lot of entrepreneurs take sabbaticals and stuff to walk away from stuff for a while, and then come back in even stronger. And as Gary V. often says, “Having that macro-patience for results, but micro-hustle in certain moments on certain things.”

When we finally start to get our groove, like you said, this is oftentimes where either ego comes into play: “Oh, I don’t want to hire people because only I can do this.” Or, “I can’t trust anybody else with this.” But as you know, you have to get out of that mindset when it comes to growth.

And let’s talk about the biggest mistakes that people make when they finally have a business kind of going, and the things that stop them from going to where they could, as far as growth, and the things that keep them where they’re at or even burnout. So, in your mind, maybe let’s start with the one that comes to mind first.

Los:
It is first and foremost ego of wanting more and not thinking really just about the business. And secondly, I think that it’s also not hiring slowly. Everyone wants to … You read these books and everyone’s always talking about, “Oh, hire fast. Fire faster.” Blah. Blah. Blah. Think about who you need immediately to start taking some of your time. If your business is scaling, you’re going to need people. That’s what’s going to come next. It’s either people or you’re going to grow your business through more people, more opportunities, more SKUs, or more offers. So more is going to require more time demands. And so you need to think of, “Okay, I’ve got this map for the business,” and right now the reality is you probably need an assistant. And that’s the first thing you’re going to need.

The second thing is maybe I need to outsource and hire a media buyer, or I need to bring some people in. And what people tend to do, this is where they kind of suffer, they’ll just throw that to somebody. “Oh, that’s an agency. Yeah. Works. Hey, man, do it. Do the work. You’re hired to do the work.” I need better understanding of what the work is. I need you to have more passion for this right now. I need you to be dialed in on the numbers. I need you to have a good idea of what I’m doing so you don’t get screwed over. You need to take patience with people and teach people and learn people, unless you’re in a bigger position where you can just go hire someone who is an expert.

But even then, you should know a little bit about what you’re actually having conversations about. I think people just give their business away quickly and then they’re like, “Oh, yeah. That guy ruined it for me.” Dude, you ruined it for yourself. Because it’s your baby. It’s your business. And you’re out here handing it out, like I got this email guy, got this guy. This guy says he’s good. All right, let’s see what you can do. They’re paid to do something, but they’re only paid to create something for you. You’re the one that has to give them direction and teach them how to do this. And I think people just kind of … it’s a huge mistake I see with people. They just hand their business away and they let go: “I’m delegating. I’m a delegator.”

Pat:
Do you think that’s maybe influenced a little bit by the Tim Ferriss era and The 4-Hour Workweek and how cool it is to delegate and hand things off? I mean, there’s obviously benefits to that. But what you’re saying is, well, maybe we’re doing it without a lot of thought or intention, right?

Los:
Right. I think the context sometimes is lost on those conversations. Everyone thinks, “Let’s delegate.” But you’re talking … a person who’s saying it, let’s say it’s a Gary V. or a Tim, those guys have big companies. They have to delegate because they’re moving into different directions. And you’re taking it as, “Yeah, I just got to let my business go.” And at first your business is your baby. You have to take care of it. You’ve got to nurture it. You’ve got to plant and give it water. And you’ve got to really take it every step of the way. Sometimes if you delegate too quickly, no one’s going to be able to do anything with it because there’s nothing really there yet.

Let’s say this business is doing $20,000 a month. It’s not really a business yet. Let’s be candid about that. And if you’re already giving it away at 20, then what are you giving? What all is it doing right now? Who’s doing what? Delegation comes from knowing what someone needs to hand off, and knowing exactly what those KPIs, key performance indicators are for that other person to do the work, and having an expectation that is managed for success. That’s a strong way to delegate something.

If I just said, “Hey, Pat. Help me do the podcast.” What’s the podcast? How many times are you going to do it? What’s the direction? What kind of audio are you using? There’s so much that goes into it. If I just throw it at you and I’m like, “Oh, he didn’t really help me. He sucks,” I suck. I didn’t give you direction. We didn’t have a real identity to what the goal was in this conversation and what our goal is in X amount of time, X amount of testing, et cetera. You got to be more dialed in with your business.

Everyone is in a rush at the beginning to just make money, but no one sits back for a second and goes, “Hey, who am I talking to specifically? What am I doing? What am I willing to sell? Who am I willing to serve? What do I need past my assistant? What am I really unskilled at that I can learn a basis just to have a conversation or hire someone to teach me the conversational pieces so I can then go delegate that task? And what are the KPIs inside of that particular thing that I’m not very good at?” Now I know that that’s handled, I’m going to stay in my strong suits and speak or podcast or sell, whatever the case. I think that is a strong sense of delegation. But people just use that as an excuse to say, “Yeah, I read it in a book. I just want to get rid of the business fast.” A founder gets rid of the business. Prior to that, you have to be an operator and then a CEO. And then you can be a founder and be like, “I’m outside of that now.”

I have a few companies that I don’t run; frankly, I don’t even really know who works there, because I have CEOs inside that company. But it took me 10 years or eight years for that business to stand on its feet. I was a CEO prior to that and took a year to interview this person to manage that business. We took all the steps that were necessary and appropriate for that to all happen. You’re not going to grow something that you’re trying to let go of that fast.

Pat:
Yeah. It’s like having a kid, right? Imagine having a kid and then just being like, “Yeah, go.” You got to nurture it. You got to help it stand up, like you said.

Los:
Right.

Pat:
I love what you said about working with others. And honestly, that’s a good indicator as far as that’s the right company to work with, because if they’re asking you those questions like, “Okay, what are the key KPIs here? And what are the things that we need to look at? And who is it that we’re doing this for?” Well, then that’s a good sign that that is a person or a company that you could potentially imagine supporting the business the way that you would support it, versus, like you said, “Okay, go.” And then they create it and it’s lifeless at that point. So I love this idea of slowing a little bit.

You also mentioned, when you mentioned one of the biggest problems that often gets in the way is our own ego, when it turns to growth. And just growing because that’s what everybody’s supposed to do, growing to grow. And I’d love to chat about that really quick before we get into some, perhaps, marketing strategies and things that can help us amplify what we have. But we had a person on the show once before, his name was Paul Jarvis. He has a book called The Company of One, basically meaning “Hey guys, let’s slow down and let’s consider do you need to grow?” Let’s make decisions based on your actual goals, not just because your friend’s growing or everybody else is growing or you read it in a book. What’s your take on purpose in business and growth, and how to know when to scale up or maybe it’s okay to not do so?

Los:
I’ve done this for a long time, and for a long time I just had an ego of wanting to compete with other people because that’s what I used to learn at masterminds. Everyone’s like, “What are you doing? Well, he’s doing 100. He’s doing two. He’s doing three. He’s doing four.” So I got to be there. I got to be a part of the conversation. And it didn’t do anything for me. It didn’t help me. I didn’t get better. I didn’t get bigger. When I stopped looking at everyone and started looking at myself, what do I want? I love my kids. I want to hang out with my kids. I want to do vacations with my friends and business partners. And that becomes X amount of money. I’m like, “All right, I can afford that.” So that’s what I’m doing this for.

Then I started to let go and I started to be a little bit more … it felt fresher to not compete, not compare. And business just started to work for me more, because I wasn’t working to be something that I didn’t even want. And I think that we … the beauty and the bad side about social media is that we are subliminally conditioned to want things that other people have. Because you don’t sit down and go, “Man, that’s not me.” I just did a podcast with my buddy Cody. We were talking about what do you want, what do people want? “I want to get more money.” Why? “I want to get a big house.” Why? “Because it’s got to fit my nice car.” Why? “Because that’s what you have.” Why? “Oh, well, I don’t know.” You don’t even know.

And you got into this business, like I said, everyone gets in because they need to make something and then they want freedom or they had a job and they’re like, “That sucked. I didn’t like the way I was treated,” and all that. You think you can do better. But then you get lost once you get into the cycle of social and groups and this, whatever. And you’re like, “Yeah, I’m just competing to compete.” And you’re not even competing to win for yourself or win for your family.

So I think that people need to go back and journal a little bit more. Kind of go back to old-school ways of doing things. What was today? Did today make me happy? What’s my goal? Going back to that business that I was talking about, I, for a while, was trying to take that business to eight figures. And then I realized, man that’s an HR issue. That’s so many more hires. Profitability at $10 million, it was about 10%. And at $5 million, which is where it’s at, it’s about 33%. I was like, I can have a smaller business and make more money, and that I’m not even involved in. That makes more sense than, “Yeah, but the other one’s 10. And Steve has a 10.” Who cares, dude? Who cares? You got to start being more selfish and start … selfish for yourself and for your family, not selfish for competing on an ego basis. Because it won’t serve you. It won’t help you. It’ll, if anything, cloud your judgment to make good decisions and to start letting go and start thinking more about your business.

Every time I’ve built a business, when I don’t look around, it works faster. When I’m looking around, I’m like, “Oh, let me try this page. Let’s do this. Let’s do that.” You’re not in your own path. And I think people need to get into their own path more.

Pat:
That’s such wonderful advice. It’s hard, though, like you said, with social media, our friends. We got to play that comparison game. It just happens automatically.

Los:
It does.

Pat:
But when you compare yourself to yourself last week, to yourself last month, to yourself last year, that’s where you win with competition. And that’s what I used to struggle with. I’ve had my business for much longer than that person, but they’re already more successful than me. Something must be wrong with me. Or let me go do exactly what they’re doing. And like you said, I’m looking around. I’m not looking right in front of me. How many of you listening right now need to put the blinders on? I think that’s most of us sometimes.

Los:
Right.

Pat:
Dude, so good. All right, I want to go through a little thought experiment with you. First of all, this has been awesome. You have something called Powerhouse. So before we get to the strategies, what is Powerhouse? I know you have some really amazing things that you can do to help support others. So what is that?

Los:
So Powerhouse is a company that I started with my partner, Josh Snow. And what we do is basically we used to speak … We still do. But we speak all the time in places. We found that masterminds are just … they’re amazing and it’s kind of a mastermind. But it’s just events and there’s no real support inside of that. And so what we created was kind of like a consulting mastermind combination at the beginning.

So what we do is you fly down here. We work with you quarterly. We help you with KPIs. We help you hire your team. We help you train your team. We do audits of your business. We don’t do any service work in that side, but basically take the mastermind experience. We have the three events and that whole thing. But also you have a full year of getting custom, bespoke, just work for you. Anything you need. We get in a call between 24 and 48 hours with you. Our team can help you. And our team spent $100 million online. We’ve built and sold companies. We’ve sent billions of emails. So you’re not talking to Jerry who just got a bachelor’s. You know what I mean?

Pat:
Jerry, man.

Los:
So it’s a lot of really custom stuff. That’s what we built with Powerhouse. And then as we started to see that people needed more stuff, we built Powerhouse Accounting, which does accounting for ecom brands. Powerhouse Support, which is all American support people. And then Powerhouse Campaigns, which is lifetime value and email marketing. And we’re about to launch Powerhouse Teams, which is us training other people’s teams with our frameworks, our systems, and our processes so you have better team members. Because a big thing that we’ve always found is, like I said, everyone’s always trying to hire someone quick. It’s like you should probably hire more people in-house and have people learn systems. And you should learn some systems and some processes. You need to know a little bit more about lifetime value. And you need to know a little bit more about what’s going on with ads, why your stuff isn’t working. And you probably need some tough love sometimes.

We’ve had a lot of people that have come through that were doing $6 million a year in COVID. And then COVID changed and they’re like, “Hey, nothing’s working anymore.” Well, that business had this kind of a ceiling. You need to pivot. You need to work on some different stuff.” So it’s kind of a combination of just really an all-encompassing thing to help companies really scale and grow. And we really want to focus on just companies that are really delivering value. We don’t do drop-shipping and we don’t work with companies that are just trying to make a buck because we also help companies sell at the back end of that. If you have a company that’s working. We just helped a guy sell his company. So we really want to work with people that want to deliver value and create a lot of success and create capitalism, bring employees on and support people.

Pat:
Where can people learn more to get access to you and those things?

Los:
Where people can learn more is at EcomPowerhouse.com. That’ll have all of our information. We’re actually having an event here. It’ll probably be past for this. But it’ll be in November. And we’re always having events and hosting different things like that. We’re big on building community. So, EcomPowerhouse.com.

Pat:
Nice. Awesome. Well, we’ll put a link in the show notes for you and for everybody listening. Okay, thought experiment. I have a product. I have a little bit of an audience built through a social media platform and maybe a YouTube channel or a podcast. I created my first course. I have no idea how to sell it. Yeah, I could send some emails out. But I know there’s a lot more to it. How would you help a person like that maximize their opportunity with that product that they’re selling?

Los:
Man, I’m going to switch over here. I would tell them not to sell the product, and to instead use social media to build a beta testing group of 10-15 people and just create social media content. Let’s say you have a little bit of YouTube, a little bit of Instagram. Make content on Instagram, make stories. Reach out to the people that are interested through a poll inside of the stories. And then just have open conversations.

Instead of selling something. Let’s say the product cost $100. Instead of doing that say, “Hey, listen. This is going to come with a little bit of coaching, consulting and stuff as well. And we’re going to do it for 60 days and it’s going to be $2,000.” Okay? Sell those. That way you have money for ads later on. And you have 10-20 testimonials that you can use. You’re going to need testimonials before you launch something nowadays, because everyone is going to focus on your reviews more than they’re going to focus on your sales pitch.

If you don’t have reviews, if you’ve never done this, it’s going to be like … it’s going to suffer. But if you can go through the experiment of those 60 days, showing people on social media, taking videos, boop, like that. And just showing people that you’re doing this, it’s going to create more curiosity. It’s going to get people more excited. More people will start backfilling for the second cohort. And then you can launch it and then you’ll have a little bit of money for ads. You’ll be able to do podcasts and create some videos that are livestreamed or something like that. And set up a Facebook group that you can create as a community as well. And show people what you’ve done, how you’ve helped a person go from X to Y and Z. And that’ll give you more traction and it’ll get you more notoriety. It’ll get you more shares. And then you can consistently have those conversations, inside of Instagram at the beginning.

And then once things start to scale a little bit, you can start putting a little bit of money towards ads. But you can probably run this cycle until you get to $20,000, $50,000. And then try to take it into ads. I wouldn’t recommend you just start from there, because you probably don’t have the budget. It’s brand new for you. And no one really understands how strong organic marketing can be if you’re just actually doing outbound and outreach and trying to connect. And also giving the value, being that guy or girl that’s on stories and making more content and creating all these things.

And a lot of people will be like, “Well, that’s a lot of work.” Yeah. Business is a lot of work. It’s technically going to be free. It’s your time, which clearly you have, instead of going out and spending money on ads, because we don’t know how that’s going to convert. Most likely it’s not going to convert well if you don’t have enough of an audience. You probably don’t even know who you’re talking to, because it’s brand new. And you have some followers, but you want to create this little cohort to see who this resonates for, so you can tweak your marketing and your sales page and stuff as well.

Pat:
That’s the big theme of today’s conversation is you kind of have to do the work. You can’t just hand things off anymore. And I love this approach because you get real with what it is you’re providing. It almost forces you to understand how to talk about it. And you get real-time feedback. You get real-time conversations in and around this thing. And I think that, again, not competing with the others who go, “Oh, I just had a seven-figure launch,” or, “I just made tens of thousands of dollars on this launch.” But getting, like you said, a small beta group to validate this, to test. And even if you fail on that, you’re at least having conversations to learn what didn’t work so you can figure out what works better.

It reminds me of this Benjamin Franklin quote. It was like, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.” You’re showing the story about it. You don’t have anything to share yet when you’re just starting out. So you’re collecting those things up front. So you’re saying if I had spent time to actually create a curriculum, maybe not even put it into a digital course quite yet, but actually run people through it in a more cohort style first so I can get some testimonials before I then launch the digital version of that course, and make it automated eventually?

Los:
Yeah. Or if you already have it, let’s say in a Kajabi or some Teachable platform, whatever the case.

Pat:
Yeah.

Los:
You can say, “Here you go.” But we’re going to have class almost. Class is in session Mondays and Wednesdays. And we’re going to go through the course, see where you guys are failing, see what problems are arising. And I’m going to create more content to fill the void. Because they might be like, “You know, you didn’t explain video three very well where you talk about XYZ. And I didn’t really get it.” Okay, I’ll do a better job with that video so it’s more dense and you can understand it a little bit better. Or, “I’d love to have a PDF for this. There’s nothing that I can just grab.” Okay, now I can make it better. “You know what, I’m really struggling with something that’s not even in the course.” Okay, this is a problem that this avatar is really having. Now I know how to solve it. And you’re delivering value.

You’re also connecting with people. Human connection in social media is often really forgotten. And the people that are doing it the best and that have the biggest audience, they have a deep relationship with that avatar, that person, and that connection. And most people just want to get that quick, “Hey, let’s sell 500 courses.” Blah. Blah. Blah. That’s just a lot of refunds waiting to happen because you’re just really throwing something out, expecting big returns.

And I don’t like to do the course thing. I think that if you create a lot of value, you can charge more and deliver a really good result for someone because you’re putting in the time to help them, or your team is putting in the time to help them. But I think it’s a better approach than to just throw something out because you have some sort of audience and some sort of engagement. Because it could also backfire. You have not really gotten feedback on some things. You are assuming that they want something. That could resonate with them. But also it could not resonate with them. And then they could see that as “This person’s just trying to make money off me. They didn’t really want to help.”

I’d rather make a little bit less money at the beginning, really give value, and then later on slowly grow it and grow it. Because your name, your reputation, it’s social. So it can go viral. It can continuously grow. And if you’re active on your Instagram, if you’re actively shooting videos. When we’re talking right now, if I’m going like this, boom. We’re talking and I’m sharing it on my stories. Mike just got a great result from what we did. Pat is so excited about this. And then Pat, you retweet it. Now I’m sharing the story and the journey of what I’m doing, which gets me more followers. And what you’re needing, which gets more people inquiring about that.

So I think it’s a better way to start things. And then you can start slowly scaling. But I think with any social media platform, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, they’re all strong and they all have their own pocket of people there. You can get it started and you can work that organically until you get to a pretty good amount of revenue. And then take it into really media buying.

Pat:
I really like that. I’ve heard of this phrase before called work in public, where you share things as you are creating. And actually now that I’m thinking about it, I did this a couple times with a couple projects. I have an invention called a SwitchPod. And that was a two-year process to invent something and prototype and put it out there. But we didn’t just keep it secret and then launch it one day. We were bringing people along the ride the entire time, to a point where … Yeah, you’re right, when we launched it, we didn’t even have to sell it anymore, because it was already sold—

Los:
They already knew.

Pat:
Yeah, exactly. So we could do the same things with our digital things. And it’s interesting because all the things you’re talking about doesn’t require purchasing some new platform or all these other things that have a high friction rate. This is, you have access to it on your phone right now, to share and have conversations and be open.

So, okay, let’s say we do that, we share some behind-the-scenes. We’re creating this thing. We share some success stories. A person reaches out to us and goes, “Hey, that’s really awesome. Can you tell me more about that?” Or, “How can I do something similar?” Where do you take them from there? What’s that conversation like?

Los:
I would want to take it on the phone. Let’s say that someone reached out through Instagram DM. So you take it, “Hey, what’s your business? What are you doing?” Kind of setting the call up. But then I would take it to a phone call and just get to know the person. See if they’re a good fit too. Like I said, we work with a lot of different companies. One thing that we never work with is drop-shippers. We get on calls, and if you’re doing something, even if you’re making a trillion dollars, it doesn’t matter. It’s not a fit for us. I think you need to start with that. We could’ve made a ton more money in the Powerhouse if we had accepted drop-shippers. But it would have hurt the community that we’re trying to build over here, because they’re known for grabbing a product and just ripping it. So I don’t want to have real business owners over here while these guys are essentially potentially able to take their stuff. So you got to know who you’re talking to.

It might not be a good fit, speaking wise. We might not get along. And so I want to get on the phone call. I also want to test to see how this is working, like, “Hey, so this is what we’re offering. This is what we’re doing.” And gauge the conversation as well. And again, you could probably close this whole thing over direct message. But there’s another touch point, another connection like, “Oh, I got to know Los. I connected with him. We vibed a little bit. It was good. And so I signed up.” And then it also helps you on your sales skills. I think anybody in the world should have some sort of communication and sales skill. It’s just talking and having EQ and talking with people. It’s just good to know. It’ll help you on your writing. It’ll help you on your speaking.

And if you’re in this kind of industry, you’re going to write and speak. Point blank, period. So it’s important to try to speak with as many people as possible to also get feedback. Maybe they didn’t resonate with the offer and so they might say no to me. Okay, so now I know how to make it better. Everything I do, I always just try to figure out how fast can I get the feedback.

Pat:
Yeah. I love that approach. So if I’m going to be posting on social media, considering how easy can I get on a call with somebody from here. And so I love the idea of a poll, because on a poll you can actually see who says yes or who says no, and then reach out to them specifically. So I love that idea. And then getting them on a call. Getting people on a call, that seems kind of scary. And how do you make this easier for us? What’s the easiest way to make that happen? Because from creators that maybe they’re more introverted and that’s kind of scary to them. But even on the receiving end it’s like, “Oh, this person on the internet wants to now chat with me on the phone.” How do you approach it so that it’s actually easy on both sides? What are you using to call? Is it your actual phone? Or is it some other platform?

Los:
I give people my phone number. To this day I still take sales calls too. I give people my phone number. I still always love taking calls randomly.

Pat:
It’s very personal feeling, right?

Los:
Yeah. I’ve never really encountered creepy people, because you’re talking to them on social too. You can kind of do a little bit of a background check.

Pat:
Sure.

Los:
You can also just do Zoom. If you are introverted, you can take it to text or you can keep the conversation there. It could be Facebook Messenger. It could be as simple as staying in direct message. Most people nowadays talk through text. Most people don’t call each other on the phone that much. So I understand that hesitation. So you can just keep it boom, boom, boom. I’m just texting you and talking a little bit more, getting that feedback.

But I would open the door to telling people to get on more phone calls because it’s something that’ll break the ice. It helps you in your communication skills. I think it’s a good thing to do things you’re scared of. So if you’re scared of being on the phone, get on the phone. It doesn’t need to make you a professional salesman, but just get on the phone. It’s a good idea to do things that make you scared. Everything that I’ve done in business, I’ve been terrified of. But I’ve done it so repeatedly that now it’s binary, it’s ones and zeros to me.

Pat:
Yeah.

Los:
Same with you. I’m sure when you started podcasting you weren’t like, “Well, this is it. This is what I’m great at.” You consistently … that’s really business, man. I really think that doing uncomfortable things for a considerable amount of time and not giving up equals success.

Pat:
One hundred percent. One hundred percent, Los. Final question here to cap off that very strategic approach to a launch, for example, is I’m on a conversation. Maybe it’s through the voice messaging app in a direct message platform. Or maybe it’s actually on a Zoom call or something live like that. A person’s interested. They want to purchase. Cool. Where do we send them? Do we just go, “Go to the sales page.” Do you send them to a checkout page? Do you invoice them? If you’re just starting out and you’re launching in a beta, tactically what works best there?

Los:
So you can do it a few different ways. You can take them to a sales page, stay on the call and make sure that they’re going through it all.

Pat:
Nice. I like that.

Los:
You could lose that sale. All right, if you send them an invoice, you could lose that immediately. So I would take their credit card and be like, “All right, cool. We’re going to do this now.” I would probably have some sort of agreement ready or something as well. Maybe you can do some Rocket Lawyer, LegalZoom quickly because you’re kind of being scrappy right now. $100, you’ll find some sort of agreement you can fix up. And you’re like, “All right, cool. I’m going to take your card. I’m going to send you this agreement.” You sign it through DocuSign. And we’re good. You could also just take them to the sales page and just have some one-click page setup like a ClickFunnels or SamCart or something like that.

Pat:
SamCart, yeah.

Los:
Those are just a few softwares that you can use. But stay on the call, because what you don’t want to do, especially when you’re beginning this, “All right, cool. I’ll just talk to you about it later then. I’ll send you a link.” They might go away. And you already kind of did all the uncomfortable stuff. Let’s just stay on for three more minutes and be like, “All right, is everything good? Are you set up?”

Also, make them feel comfortable. Don’t just … because we’re starting off, right? Don’t just throw something at them like, “Hey, everything good? Okay, cool. It shows over here that you did check out. We’re all good, man. Okay, so next steps. This is how we’re going to do this onboarding. Stay tuned for this email. Okay, great. Thanks. Great talking to you, and I look forward to seeing you inside.”

Pat:
I like that. Yeah. That’s great. You’re almost like a concierge in that experience.

Los:
Yeah. And if you’re starting this right now, it should feel like a concierge. You should go a little bit above and beyond because you want to build that brand, you want to build that recognition. You want to be known for, “Man, that person just treated me right.” Because all we have online is our reputation. And if you lose that, you’re done.

Pat:
So good, Los. Dude, thank you so much. One more time, it’s EcomPowerhouse.com is where you want to go to check out Los Silva. Man, thank you so much. Where can we also connect with you on social if we want to just say hi and thanks?

Los:
@loshustle is my Insta. I’m always on that thing. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Pat:
Bro, this was amazing. Thank you. Appreciate you.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And notes of Paul Jarvis in this episode. Paul Jarvis, author of Company of One. He was mentioned. And like I said in the beginning, maybe you needed to hear this. Because sometimes growth means letting go of things. Sometimes growth means not taking on more things, but actually slowing down and putting other things aside. It’s very similar to what they say when you go on an airplane. When they do the demonstration and you perhaps have heard this before. But when the mask comes down, the oxygen mask, you have to put it on yourself first before you put it on others. Because if you work to try to put it on somebody else and you pass out as a result, then you are now a burden and you are not able to help others. And when you just really quickly make sure that you are okay to help others, then you can help others even more, and help even more people.

So let’s put that mask on ourselves first really quick so that we can then take care of others. And that might mean removing some stuff so you can have more space, taking care of yourself physically and mentally, and hiring out. And hiring out in a smart way, not necessarily a gigantic team, like Los was saying. But find those big levers that you can pull and that you can hire for, those dominoes that you can knock over that will knock over all those other dominoes for you. And you’re going to find a lot more, ultimately, happiness. It takes work. It’s not an overnight thing. But it is totally worth it. Los, having done this for over two decades. Myself, just for about 12 years. It is a long game, and I hope you’re in it for the long game too.

So, everybody, check out Los Silva. You can check him out at EcomPowerhouse.com. And of course we always put the show notes over on the website. It’s SmartPassiveIncome.com/session523. Again, that’s SmartPassiveIncome.com/session523. Thank you so much. I appreciate you for listening in. I appreciate all the reviews that have come in. We are closing in on the end of the year here. We’ve got about a month and a half left. But make sure you subscribe, because in the next episode, the follow-up Fridays, it’s just going to be you and me. I’ve got a lot of mistakes that I’ve made personally that I want to share with you to, A, have you realize that we all make mistakes. And B, hopefully avoid those mistakes that I made so you can have results even faster.

So thank you so much. Until then, peace out. Take care. And I’ll see you the next one. Cheers. Oh wait, and before we go, just a big shoutout to SquadCast, that’s the tool that I use to conduct these interviews. And there was a technical error on one of our sides. I don’t know whose fault it … it was nobody’s fault. It was just, technical errors happen. And I lost the recording. It just got lost. But thankfully SquadCast had a backup. And that’s why the audio quality wasn’t so great. It was a cloud recording backup versus a local recording backup. I’m so thankful because it saved us a lot of time and hassle. So thank you, SquadCast. Full disclosure, I am an affiliate and an advisor for SquadCast. They didn’t pay me to say this or nothing, I just had to thank them because they rescued the day there. So thank you, SquadCast.

All right, that’s it. Take care. Peace.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We’ll catch you in the next session.