SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Ep 456: $700k Agency Enters Group Coaching Space. Why? With CEO AriMirza
23 Oct 2016
Chapter 1: What was Ali Mirza's journey before starting his agency?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, every Monday I give one of you a hundred bucks to invest in your idea and to get to the top. To enter, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you subscribed. Last week's winner was Dr. Paul Vasquez. Dr. Paul Vasquez with My Ads Nation.
And he currently is working a full-time job and is dying to get out. Guys, a little CEO weapon for you. I hate going back and forth via email to set up a meeting time. You know, you gotta send 12, 13 emails, go between your inbox and your calendar.
Chapter 2: How does Ali Mirza price his consulting services?
It's a pain in the butt. I started using nathanlaca.com forward slash assistant, totally free, which I loved. I reached out to the founders and said, you should pay me five grand. I'll make you a sponsor on the podcast. They did. I'll tell you more about the tool and how I negotiated a deal later on in the episode. But for now, check it out. nathanlaca.com forward slash assistant, totally free.
nathan latke here this is episode 456 coming up tomorrow morning you guys are going to hear from tommy gibbons who sold over 4 000 units of his tool that helps teach kids how to code with over 2 million dollars raised top tribe good morning our guest today is ali mirza he used to sell personal insurance door-to-door in soviet canada now eventually he got fired and decided to start building sales processes and freelance sales for other companies
Currently, he's about to launch his new online learning platform, which we will talk about. Ali, are you ready to take us to the top? I am ready to take you to the top. Okay, tell us what you currently do and how you make money. Right now, I build sales processes for mid-market companies anywhere between $1 to $20 million in range. Okay, and how do you make money?
Chapter 3: What challenges did Ali face with his first client?
I make money based off of that. So I charge them for my services. OK. And so tell us more about kind of your pricing plans. How do you charge them? So, I mean, again, it's like asking how long is a piece of string. But I mean, at the end of the day, I don't charge based on the revenue that they're making. I've never really fully understood that model.
But the way that I charge is based on the amount of work I have to do. So I don't set like billable hours or anything like that. Um, my, my programs range anywhere between, I think the smallest one I've done was probably 20, $25,000 all the way up to a one I did for about, I think it was 130,000. It was the one that was all said and done is what I charged them.
And is that a, like a monthly retainer? Is that total project value? That, that was the total project value.
Chapter 4: What is the unique value proposition of Ali's consulting firm?
I do have, um, ongoing, uh, client contracts as well what are your typical retainers my typical retainer would be anywhere between um 5 000 all the way up to 25 000 depending on you know what sort of engagement it is and tell us the story of somebody paying you five grand per month and what they're getting for that
So a client that was paying me five grand a month, they had a professional services organization. Can you name them though so we can put a real face to it? Pardon? Can you name the company so we can put a real face to it? I cannot. He would freak out if I did. Okay, well then don't talk about him then. Talk about somebody you can talk about. It makes it more real.
Okay, so let me think about someone that I can talk about. Like HOF Logistics you have on your site, HH Land Developments you have on your site. Okay. I can talk about HHS land developments.
Chapter 5: How does Ali plan to scale his new online coaching platform?
So HHS land developments was the first one that I took on as an ongoing consulting client. And they did not pay me a retainer. That was the first one I took on. And that's where I kind of learned what I was doing. And if I took them on today, that would definitely be anywhere between a $10,000 to $15,000 a month retainer, plus then a commission on the back end.
I charge a retainer on the front end just for me to engage in my services. Um, and, and for me to actually cultivate your leads and then do all the prospecting and everything. Uh, cause I got a team of people that helped me with that. And then on the, how many employees do you have? I've got four employees that are, that are, uh, W2.
And then I've got a bunch of contract people that I work with that are self-contracted out for many different things. Got it. Okay. So what year do you found the business in? Uh, 2011.
Chapter 6: What is the concept behind Ali's Monday morning meetings?
Yeah. And what was first year revenue? First year revenue. We were, I think somewhere in the range of just shy of 200, probably one 80 something. Okay. That's not bad. Uh, one 86. Did you, I mean, did you come with a client list or Rolodex? Did you leave a bigger agency or something? So, no, I, so I left, um, my insurance company, uh, or I got fired.
And so, and then, so I took a little bit of time off, kind of just, uh, moseyed around here and there. And then that's when I kind of, it really just fell into my lap. Um, a client or I guess they became a client, but yeah. someone I knew connected me up with HH line developments. And that's how I started the company.
Chapter 7: What are Ali's revenue goals for the first year of his new business?
And that's when I was really trying to figure it out. That's why I didn't charge a retainer. And then fast forward us. So first year revenue was 186 in 2011. What was total 2015 revenue? 2015. I think we were about 700 and probably 80 something, 790, somewhere between there. Okay. And it's September of 2016. Now, what do you think you'll do in 2016?
Well, we'll probably miss the 600 mark, but we'll probably be somewhere in and around there. And now I should, I should kind of address that. Um, we were, sorry, you said you'd do like five 50, five 60, somewhere between there. Okay. Maybe a little bit higher, but yeah, somewhere around there.
Chapter 8: What advice does Ali give to his younger self?
Okay. And you said you wanted to address that. What do you want to address? Yeah, we're basically back to startup level now because we picked up from Soviet Canada and moved to Atlanta and we didn't get our first check this year until March. So really it's March to September. Our, excuse me, our five and change that we're tracking for.
And what is the, how many unique customers are you working with this month, September, 2016? unique customers, meaning new people that have come into the pipeline. No, just unique. How many customers are you working with this month? How many are paying either retainer or you're working on a project for them? Probably I think five or six. Okay. All right.
So let's, that's helpful on the agency side. I mean, and what's your goal for this? Is this just like a cashflow thing for you or what? Um, yes. I mean, everything's a cashflow thing, but you know, this is something that I really, at the end of the day, I don't want to become a sales training firm. I'm really looking to become a, uh,
uh a leader in the consulting space so no different than the way you go to like a pwc boston consulting mckinsey for whatever it is that you do go to them for i know those places have their sales divisions but you know not to throw shade on anyone they're not doing what i what i can do uh as far as sales so i want i want to be the industry leader when you need a sales process a sales team any
resulting anything that's to do with sales you come to rose garden consulting why are you better than these other guys because i've sold i know how to sell yeah but they would say the same they'd say they sold billions worth of dollars well that that's a completely different thing um they're doing large enterprise sales where they're just emailing out a proposal um you know what the best way we can we can go back and forth as to who's a better salesperson you know what no
No, you're telling, my point is, you're in front of a huge audience right now. Basically half an NFL stadium is listening to you right now. So the more specific you are with who your ideal customer is, the better. Saying you're going to sell more than one of these big guys is baloney. So specifically, why should someone come to you over one of those other guys?
So I would have to say that it's the process behind on how we do it or what our process actually is. We look at who your clients are. We create a unique user profile. I take a lot of the stuff that marketing agencies do as far as how they target their marketing. And bring that into the sales world, because a lot of people, what they do is they'll create a one size fits all sales script.
And with your unique value proposition, the seller, I kind of flip that around. I say, OK, it doesn't matter what you're selling. What matters is what the person is buying, what your client is buying. And that's how we really need to address. And that's what our messaging needs to be. So.
for susie in procurement she may not be buying your widget because of all xyz factors she's buying it for well how it affects her we need to figure out what that is and that's the messaging we need to we need to send uh versus you know bob and you know wherever else um he's buying it for another reason for efficiencies and whatever so we need to figure out that stuff and work backwards from there how the messaging should be who um how do we get these people how do we get in front of these
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