Mark Johnson

He's awoken the people to a true issue.

He's awoken the people to a true issue.

He's awoken the people to a true issue.

Been taking it.

Einer Gott.

What's a big thing that they contradict and don't agree with each other? What's a big thing? That people might not be aware of?

Er weiß, ja. Und

War Abraham überhaupt real?

In meiner Sicht.

Round two comes. So, like murder his kid?

Ninjas are butterflies.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, in my book, I talk about, you know, the different types of investors, um, When you're raising money, you have to look at kind of the avatar and where you are in the growth curve. You know, are you a startup? Are you a more mature business? Are you kind of on a trajectory where you've been around a couple of years and have a track record, prior performance?

And so when you look at a true startup, you know, somebody that's got this idea that's really unfounded or unproven, you know, you're primarily looking for venture capital firms. They invest in startups or, you know, maybe you're looking for what we call an angel investor. That's typically a very wealthy person that may have been a business owner that sold their business.

You know, now they're worth, I don't know, you know, 10, 20, 50 million dollars. They're willing to take those types of risks because they know if they can hit a home run, you know, obviously the return on investment is going to be substantial.

But when you look at the different types of investors, you know, family offices, private equity, venture capital, each one of these different groups likes to focus on different things. Private equity firm likes to buy traditionally existing cash flowing businesses. They come in. They put in some capital, they make some management tweaks, they scale the business, then they exit.

The venture capital firm knows, okay, we're going to invest in five companies. Realistically, we're going to lose money on one. We're probably going to hit singles and doubles on the other three. And then that one, boom, is the home run that makes up for the others. And that's just the investment model.

And so it depends when you're a business owner and you're going out there trying to raise capital that the first thing you do is you identify the type of investor that you want to be focusing your efforts on. Because if you're out there, you know, for example, with a startup and you're talking to investors over here that like to invest in more seasoned, more established businesses.

chances are you're not going to be very successful because your message is not related to that audience.

It's, I'll give you this. I learned this. I did this. I'm a, I'm a, byproduct of it that which you build fast will crumble even faster and that which takes a long time to build will last you a lifetime yeah so a brand will take you a long time to build but it'll feed you forever yep it just and i'm i'm a i'm standing before you today

How many people in our internet marketing circle have made it 20 plus years? I can count on probably two hands. I mean, I mean it, really, right? And every single one of them has a strong brand. But at the same time, Learn, as a company, we built it as a rocket ship.

You know, there was no slow and steady 10% a month increase, optimize and, you know, do the CRO work and do the split testing and focus on one funnel and painstakingly obsessed over every part of your product delivery process. That ain't me. I didn't do that. We were, you know, and look how fast it crumbled. Look how weak the foundation ended up being.

Even though I was doing 40 million, it was super profitable and I was about to sell. What I'm doing today, what I'm doing now, for our software company, it's taking us anywhere from three to six months to close contracts. with big enterprise companies. But those companies are closing a contract after giving two to three week demo periods. They're reviewing it.

They're having meetings with their C-levels. They're fully buying in or saying no. But when the ones that were buying in they're going to be with us for years and they're going to pay big fees.

So albeit it's really hard right now in the early stages, but come talk to me in three years when we've got a ridiculous MRR and I'm able to start every month knowing that we're not only covered but in profit and that all I have to do day and night is obsess about that product. It's a great life.

So what most marketers, unfortunately, Ryan, are not trained towards and it's been kind of my thing now, I call it change the timeline, right? And that is flip it over. So many of us want to make the million in 30 days. And now me today, any opportunity that can make me a million in 30 days, I almost always know it's the wrong opportunity.

I'd rather make it over the course of a year, but then know that next year it'll make me 1.3, 1.4. And the year after that, it'll make me, you know, two. And then I want that because I know that whatever that is, it's going to grow much, much stronger and much better. So brand is the exact same way. You can't get brand in 30 days. You just can't.

Okay. Yeah, you would never buy one of these as like a audio book because it would be, I mean, essentially you're using this as like to build your character and stuff like that. But I think the platform could still make sense then for doing it. I'll say this. Yeah. You would be surprised. I would be very surprised.

But people buy them on audio. I don't know if I've ever seen anyone try that, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be done. People listen, like listening is a very different experience.

Yeah. All right. Thanks.

80.

65.

30.

I have a D&D publishing business, making Dungeons & Dragons books. Cool. And I've spent a ton of time doing the theory of constraints to the product development. Sure. Where I have a background in IT DevOps, so I've been optimizing that. And I've been realizing that I've been neglecting the rest of the funnel for the whole businesses. Do you sell on Amazon? Do you sell Shopify? What do you sell?

Primarily, I do it right now through Kickstarters. So a bunch of crowdfunding campaign, people give you a bunch of money to build this product, you then build that product.

Yes. Okay, got it. Yes, and so... Do you have a pen name? Sorry, do I what? Do you have a pen name? No, it's all under mine. So you're an author? Yes. Okay, cool. Yeah, so I've made two books. I'm working on my third. I got a handful of like other supplements and stuff. Okay.

And so I've done, I don't know, maybe like 30,000 in Facebook ads, miscellaneous other advertising methods, but that's not my skill set and not where I'm good at. So I'm trying to think like, like as going through the exercises, revenue is definitely my biggest constraint at this point. Sure. It's like I've done all the other stuff too much. I've been focused on that.

So I can make a better product faster, but I need a better way to sell it. Like I need a better way to bring in customers. And so a bunch of the people have had great ideas on things to try. Dipping my toes into TikTok, doing miscellaneous things on... my email list.

Yeah, that's what Caleb recommended. So if you were in my shoes and you took like a step back to look at the business as a whole, where would you look at trying to apply your resources to really like build up that revenue as efficiently as possible.

But all of your revenue comes from Kickstarter or they go to Amazon afterwards and then it becomes like... I would say 90% of it's coming through Kickstarter and then... On a regular basis? There's a project that launches every year. Well, the first project took about 14 months to get to the second one. But you only have two books. Yes. So I have a third project that I've already done.

So you have a launch business right now. Right now, yeah.

Yeah, people can go buy the stuff in between launches on Shopify that I've got set up. And I've been thinking about setting up Amazon. You should set up Amazon. Yeah. We sell 50 times more books on Amazon than Shopify. Okay, so would the next play to increase? I do a million a month in books. Okay.

I'm like, they're free.

So setting up Amazon would be like the best revenue boost, ignoring doing any marketing pieces? Tomorrow, yeah, for sure.

Anyways, I'll just tell you.

Yeah.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And on Thursday, you'll hear from the two of us, Chloe Marle and Cho Minardi, as we share our thoughts on fashion through the lens of culture, from the Oscars to the Met Gala, plus conversations with the biggest stars right now.

Some of you guys wonder why I'm bald. Constant deals, higher profits, a roadmap to financial freedom.

businesses traveling and ensuring I get my morning workouts in.

I smoke weed all day, so I would imagine it would be worse if I didn't.

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