I'm so excited!
- Well, Dan, I'll never forget the day
I was sitting on my floor
and I was so broke it hurt,
and I remember having the realization
that if I was allowed to work,
because I'm Canadian, from Vancouver Canada,
and I was in America and I was thinking,
you know, if I was allowed to work,
like, it's such a privilege to be able to work.
Like, I got that in that moment.
Like, it's such a privilege to work.
If I was allowed to work in America
I could do anything I want.
So, when I look at my back journey all the way up,
I actually never thought I was going to
necessarily be an entrepreneur.
I just knew that I was made for more,
there's like a knowing inside you
when you know that you're supposed to be,
I mean, as weird as the word is, rich.
Like I knew that I was supposed to be wealthy.
I knew I was made for more.
But, where my life was sitting
was sitting on an empty apartment floor
in Las Vegas so broke that it hurt.
And when I had that realization
that I was not only made for more but my bank account
was not representing where I wanted to go,
I started seeking anything I could do
to figure out how to get really good at sales,
get really good at talking to people,
landing with people.
I don't think balance is real,
but I do think the way you strategize your business
makes a big difference.
I sell one product very well,
and then I cross sell products that they need.
- Can you maybe walk us through your model
like, what's your signature product,
and then what's the ascension?
How does that work?
- We do have an info product.
We don't push it very much,
even though I think it's great,
we're probably missing the mark on some of that.
Again, sometimes you let things bleed as you scale up.
So then you pick it back up
and add it into the strategy,
but we typically sell a year long
program called PACE Private.
And we teach them how to build email lists
that are super targeted,
right, they're all referral based email lists.
And then we teach them how to sell to that.
So it has a high ROI.
I'm about to do the same type of build,
I'll probably have about 100,000 opt ins
in the series of about ten days,
and it's all referral based.
I like that because it's hot.
It's kind of hard to screw up hot traffic.
I mean, even if you're bad at your marketing,
it's still hot traffic
so it gets the entrepreneur's cash flowing.
So we bring them through that program,
we teach them to sell to that email list,
teach them how to build it,
and then create products and selling them.
- You're creating that audience first, right?
That's your signature program.
- Exactly.
So that's what we do in that program,
but what we're committed to
is we're committed to teaching them
how to be generous entrepreneurs,
which creates a culture inside of our company
where all the entrepreneurs are hiring each other
and they're not just a community.
I mean, to give you an idea,
in ten weeks they referred 700 people,
that 700 showed up of the 900 people
that they invited to my last event.
Like, we are a community that shows up like that.
So I'm actually teaching them leadership in that program,
like, hidden underneath the monetization plan.
The email list and the seller.
- I love it, I love it.
- So once we go through that year they choose in or out.
About 70% of those people,
we add anywhere between 40 and 70,
sometimes a hundred people a month to that program.
Once they go through that program,
70% of them come to a Mastermind that they do
between the 9th and 12th month that they,
like, towards the 9th or 12th month of ending that program,
does that make sense?
- Got it, yeah.
- It's like their year end Mastermind,
but we time it so that it's between
nine and 12 months, 'cause--
- Got it, so they've already gone through materials,
the implementing, you're getting results.
- That's right, that's right, that's right.
In that Mastermind, we teach them 12 month ascension plans,
and all this stuff,
but what we do is is in those two days,
we make them an offer,
and the way I make the offer is,
I'll pitch them in PACE,
I pitch, pitch, pitch to get them in PACE CLUB.
So when they go through PACE, through that year,
they get to end, they go to their Mastermind.
At that Mastermind, I'm not pitching them anymore
because I want them off the bottle.
You know, I want them to be thinking for themselves.
Did you gain value here,
do you wanna be with us,
do you wanna spend the next four to five years with me
so that I can really help you build a significant company
versus coach hop?
You know?
And so 70% come to that,
60% of those people say yes to another year program
and they stay with us for three to five years at that point.
- I know you, you're very structured, right?
How do you manage, how to do structure your company
in a way that you could do that?
That could apply to all entrepreneurs, right?
'Cause most of the time, you know,
they hit the glass ceiling and then they're stuck,
and they're the control freak
or they can't let go, what do you--
- Yeah, and you know,
everybody knows you gotta innovate,
but first of all, I really focus on growing my leadership
more than trying to add new strategies to my business.
And I grew multiple millions
by just selling three and a half months a year.
And I have my own sales team.
It used to be one person, then it was two people,
then it was three people, and now it's grown
and continues to grow.
And so the strategy, again, was selling one thing
and selling it really well, and it still is.
But it's infrastructure in the team.
So we focus on leadership.
My whole team has been through leadership trainings.
We actually bought a leadership training,
brought it in-house because at the end of the day,
if you can't think smart, you can't get there.
I mean, think about it,
if you know a formula works
and you run so many people through it,
why does a certain amount of people
succeed and others don't?
Well, they have a certain base level of leadership.
Even said control.
When I exploded in real estate,
not to like, throw this interview in a different direction,
but I went from being completely stuck,
not being able to sell anything,
to 170 million dollars in sales
and I was the only person who sold.
And I had an assistant in my office.
And what I did was a leveraged
other investor bases databases.
Whole 'nother story,
but how did I explode to that?
Well, I mean, I stopped controlling conversations.
I mean, I literally would get on a phone call
and I would cut people off
because I thought I knew better,
and nothing was coming together.
There's nothing worse than being ambitious
and feeling like the rug keeps getting
pulled out from underneath you.
But that's typically a sign of being too intense.
There's a difference between intensity and driven.
So I actually think the game is leadership,
and that's all I focused on.
So went from three and a half months a year of selling,
and that's all I sold,
and did a multiple seven figure company,
and then moved it to now we sell every single month.
For me, it doesn't work for me
to deliver products that don't have coaching,
for me, just for me.
Because I don't feel like enough people go through them.
And because I know that I didn't
create my success in two years,
I created it by staying on one thing
for five to eight years, you know what I mean?
So I have to enroll my clients to just stay here.
And so which means, that I've gotta get them results.
So I over deliver in coaching.
So we have a whole coaching department right now,
and the coaching department,
now we're working on monetizing that department
because it's an expense to the company.
But all the way growing the company,
I watched my profit margins.
So I wasn't like, oh, my God,
that's the way to grow,
I'm just gonna risk, risk, risk, risk, risk, risk.
I literally was like, we have to stay at
a 30 to 35% profit margin.
And I still get paid.
So that's been my measurement.
Even when I didn't understand my P and Ls,
I just understood that profit margin.
And I focused on the step that I was in
and the thing I could control
and if that profit margin went down,
I went and sold more and then I would like,
look at where am I investing
and make sure that I'm investing in lead gen,
or on people.
- Yes.
So what I'm hearing is,
number one, you're very focused on just one thing, right?
You're very focused on getting that down
and very good on lead gen just for this
and very good at converting, right,
and also delivering the program, right?
- That's the base.
Nothing works without that.
- Yes, and then from there,
now when you say that you went from selling it
in a few months a year to like once every month,
talk to us a little bit about that.
- So I delivered the product live through conference calls.
I'd sell for three months,
and in that three months,
that wave would go through for the year,
and I would teach them live until I had a group
that we had a bunch of people
go from startup to six figures, right,
and that is not an income claim.
But we had a bunch of people pop.
And I was like, you know what,
take all those recordings and put them in (mumbles),
make them a system for people to go through.
And one of the challenges people had is
when you had really ambitious people,
they didn't wanna wait til the next week
to get the next step.
And so they wanted to go.
And I'm like, sorry, like
- You gotta focus.
- this is the structure.
So now they can unlock modules
and go as quick as they want and rock it out.
But then the problem we have to innovate is
I know myself, I mean,
I've bought info products and they are still not opened.
Because of the fact that it's hard to create time
even if, like, I probably have three Pinterest accounts,
or three Pinterest trainings,
'cause I know Pinterest is a new,
I think it's an untapped market for lead gen.
- Also for your audience, too, right?
- Yes, and so I finally hired somebody,
but it took me forever to find a Pinterest team
that actually knows what they're doing around traffic.
And so I bought like three programs
and it's like, it is not my best use of time
to figure out how to run a Pinterest account.
You know what I mean?
Like, it doesn't make sense.
It makes more sense for me to do, you know,
nine, ten events in a month.
That makes way more sense than me learning how to do...
So when I look at just that, I'm driven.
And I look at that, I'm like,
they're never gonna watch these modules.
(laughs)
So even though I can get them to buy
and get them excited,
the amount of leadership it will take me,
as far as connecting with them and inundating them
to keep them motivated, is more than I wanna give.
So I built a coaching team that meets with them
every 10 to 14 days
and they have to watch at least two modules
before they met with their coach.
And then once a week, I meet with all the coaches
on a Zoom call, 'cause we're all around the world,
on a Zoom call and I coach the coaches.
And I wanna know what's goin on with their people
so I can coach the coaches.
Now our next step is we're gonna actually create
a certification program for our PACE coaches.
They don't have to pay for it, they get it for free,
but it actually even systemizes them even stronger
to go out there and just really make an impact.
At the end of the day, our focus is really, truly,
everything we think about in the company is,
how do we get more people successful?
We don't obsess about how to grow
because we compound 'cause people stay with us.
So I don't have to do as much on the front end,
even though we're kinda (mumbles) in that area,
we've figured out traffic now.
But even before I figured out traffic,
I don't have to do as much
because we compound, because we do such a good job
at helping people get their results.
And I don't think entrepreneurs, many of them, get that,
they work really hard on one aspect
and they forget that people really have to get the results
and they get frustrated when people complain.
It's like, the client is one of those, a PR company,
and she's like, God, I have all these clients
and they're all complaining 'cause they feel confused.
I'm like, stop, it's just feedback.
- Yes.
- I'm like, well tell me what did you give them?
She told me, I'm like, girl, like,
that one question, like, what's their vision.
Ask Jesse Itzler, a friend of mine,
Sara Blakely who owns Spanx, her husband,
I asked Jesse Itzler before he launched his endurance thing,
I did the first two endurance programs with him.
And we sold it to our community
and he got really clear in what he was doing.
Guy is so inspiring.
But asked him, well, what's your vision for this,
when I was talking to him
and he was brainstorming what to do next.
And he's like, I mean, he didn't know what his vision was.
It's like he couldn't answer that question,
what he could answer is what he loved.
Which was empowering people,
living his life and his life resume.
So I'm like, to my client I'm like,
you just asked them a loaded question
and you wonder why they're confused
'cause you gave them three other steps with that.
- That's correct, I can see that, I can see that.
It's such a good point because if you think about
where entrepreneurs when they're stuck,
they lack the vision or they lack clarity, right,
and always, you lack clarity,
you lack the ability to take action.
And I love how also hearing the way
you structure your business,
you structure your business
around your lifestyle preference.
- Hundred percent.
That's why I'm not on the speaking circuit.
- Yeah, right.
And I think I made a mistake myself as well earlier on
where I structured my life around my business, right.
It's always the business pulling me.
Okay, the business requires me to do this,
it requires me to do this,
it requires me to do a lot of different things.
And when I realized, no, no, no,
why am I even doing this, right?
What am I doing it for?
Is it just for like, ego, dollar amounts,
I can compare, or awards and all these things,
what am I doing it for?
If I'm doing it for other people
then I have to ask myself,
do I enjoy the process, right?
Like you said, you could do so many events,
but if you do too many events
then you get exhausted,
then you don't like it, you get burn out.