105 - Why Traditional Marketing Tactics Still Beat AI and Automation

Vit Muller sits down with Dan Wardrope, founder of Flexxable and author of the Amazon bestseller "The Instant AI Agency," to unpack Dan's "Trojan Horse" offer: turn a client's old, "dead" leads into booked appointments and revenue before you ever pitch AI or retainers. Dan explains how to run database reactivation in HighLevel, structure performance and revenue share deals, and use his two-line SMS framework plus AI follow-up to revive pipelines and create long-term, scalable partnerships. You'll also hear smart client acquisition plays (including a whiskey-with-a-lock direct mailer), how to use AI to sell AI on sales calls, and a case study adding $1.2M in incremental revenue with a simple abandoned-cart API handoff.

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- How to position and sell the Trojan Horse offer

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About Dan Wardrope

Dan Wardrope is the founder of Flexxable and author of The Instant AI Agency. A former engineer and semi-professional basketball player from Australia now living in the UK, Dan has been an early pioneer in performance-based lead generation and database reactivation since 2018. He is the creator of the Pay Per Lead Blueprint and the popular “two-line SMS” reactivation framework, helping agencies build stronger offers, generate hands-free revenue streams, and create what he calls “can’t lose” opportunities using AI, automation, and smarter client acquisition systems.

Highlights 🔥

Key points we talked about in this pilot episode!

• 👉 [00:02:00] First 48 Hours in HighLevel - Dan explains the initial steps when accessing a client's HighLevel account, focusing on reactivating old leads and structuring performance-based deals.
• 👉 [00:03:00] The Hedge Fund Mindset for Agencies - Dan shares his inspiration from hedge fund strategies, emphasizing the importance of creating offers that minimize risk and maximize potential profits.
• 👉 [00:06:00] Creative Client Acquisition Strategies - Discussion on innovative marketing tactics like sending a whiskey bottle with a lock code to engage potential clients and secure meetings.
• 👉 [00:10:00] Dan's Journey and Evolution in Marketing - Dan recounts his career path from engineering to marketing, highlighting key moments that led to his current success in performance-based lead generation.
• 👉 [00:44:00] The Two-Line SMS Framework - Introduction to the two-line SMS strategy that sparks high response rates, with examples of how it can be tailored for different industries.
• 👉 [00:24:00] Scaling and Upselling After Initial Success - Dan discusses the importance of building trust with clients through initial wins and using that as a foundation for upselling additional services.
• 👉 [01:04:00] Challenges and Lessons Learned - Dan shares common mistakes agencies make, such as over-focusing on perfecting their website instead of engaging in sales conversations, and how to avoid these pitfalls.

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More info about this episode:

• Type: Audio (Explicit )
• Link: https://podcast.highlevelexperience.com/episode/why-traditional-marketing-tactics-still-beat-ai-and-automation
• Authors: Vit Muller
• Copyright 2024 vitmuller.com | highlevelexperience.com

everything's just evolving so fast, and there's something that

worked no longer works and you have to innovate and try something new.

How do you then--

what do you do?

What's your process?

Most time I sh- I start shitting myself.

I'm like scared, oh my God, if I'm honest, right?

Is there a scenario where you just do the database

reactivation and use the AI to book the appointments, but the actual

appointment is handled by the client?

Yeah.

that's what we always do.

So that means out of 2,000 old leads, they'll get 60, give or take 60 new

appointments that they never had before from their old stuff they'd given up on.

Okay?

the client still has to show up and close.

On the rev share, you're exposed to their sales team.

How do you protect against that?

That's what the test is for, their initial test, okay?

so you got skin in the game, okay?

But if your sales team doesn't work these leads like I know they can, then we're

not gonna go ahead after the test, okay?

What are the two beats those lines have to hit to spark

a reply without sounding spammy?

Yeah.

So the first message would be,

Hello, everybody.

Welcome to another episode on the High Level Experience Podcast.

My guest today is Dan Wardrope, founder of Flexxable and author

of the Instant AI Agency.

He's been running performance-based lead gen since 2018, back when it was paper-led

and nobody had slapped an AI label on it.

His angle now is what he calls the Trojan horse.

Instead of trying to sell a business AI as another expense, you go into the

database they already own, reactivate the dead leads with his trademark

two-line SMS system, and make them money before you ever pitch anything.

Sell profit first, AI second.

Basically, he's the guy who gets paid to make money appear out

of the leads you already have.

Today, we're going to dig into how agencies can build this into

HighLevel, run it on performance, structure revenue share deals, and

use AI follow-up to turn ghosted leads into booked calls and closed revenue.

If you've got a dusty CRM, this is your field day.

Please welcome to the show Dan Wardrope.

Thank you so much, Vit.

I love that intro, man.

You've done your research.

That was very impressive.

Very impressive

Thank you, Dan.

Great to have you, mate.

I've been seeing you across the internet.

You've been busy.

I'm sure maybe the guys have seen the ads.

it's, it's… The- these are, like, good ads.

You obviously put a lot of effort on them.

They're not like a, a low-cost type of ad. You have a

Yeah.

value to it.

Yeah, we try to, we're not really talking about ad creatives

today, but as, as you said earlier, I used to run a pay per lead agency,

and I re- I realized back then that it's the volume of creatives, right?

it's not so much trying to write the perfect ad, it's about

throwing a lot of mud against the wall and s- and see what sticks.

And we try and do that.

We try and have one new hook, one new angle per week.

I get in front of the camera, record a little video, and then pass it over to

my team, and they take it from there, and it, yeah, it seems to work pretty well.

It keeps things fresh,

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I can think of who's like a comparable, like at that level,

obviously, Bi- Billy Gene, right?

he goes, that's a whole another level.

But you're close to it.

It's, it's impressive.

But yeah, let's go sh- let's go straight to the money, with what you do.

So let's say you drop into a client's HighLevel account with 8,000 dead leads.

Walk me through the first 48 hours.

What goes in?

What goes out?

What's the first thing you show the client?

let me rewind the clock a little bit and I realize, I, the,

the reason, the, the whole reason I wanna run marketing campaigns and

I'm a, a marketer at heart and a copywriter and I like selling, right?

So when I realized, that's who I am and what I like doing, I, I kinda c- I came

across a few challenges as I started to grow my business and grow my pay per lead

agency or grow my, AI automation agency.

I've always wanted to create offers that, clients rarely say no to

or they don't wanna say no to.

So when I moved from pay per lead over to what we're doing now, I likened it to, I

guess we wanna hedge fund managers, right?

and this, I realized these guys had something nailed because they're the

richest guys on the planet and the way they operate is they take other

people's money and then they invest it in the market and then if it goes up

they take their fee plus the percentage of the profits and if the market goes

down then they take their fee anyway.

So they're so smart they realize that they just can't lose.

Okay?

So when I understood how the richest people on earth are trying to make

money, I realized that, maybe I can try and figure out something like

this for the agency game and the marketing world and I haven't really

seen anyone else do it properly.

And what I came across was an offer where I could reach out to, a business

owner and ask if they had any old leads they'd given up on, which is

pretty much any business on the planet.

And then if they say yes, then I explain to them that I can turn

them into appointments or sales, on a performance basis and I ask

for a little f- a little kind of like skin in the game fee up front.

But if they're happy with that and they can see the value in what we're

offering, then it's almost always a yes.

Okay?

So I enter relationships with clients with this in mind so I

know that I can't lose, okay?

Which means that I'm-- there's no desperation in my pitch.

I'm like, "Okay, if it works, fantastic.

We've got, we build a longer term relationship with a client, we can

sell them other stuff and if it doesn't work, I've still got a little bit of

m- money for my time and the client's happy because we tried something they

were willing to do and we just move on." It's it's literally the offer where you

can't lose and when I figured that out, things started to change in my world

and I've been teaching that for a while.

So I wanted to give you a bit of background on how I came across

this offer and what that looked like and what my thought process w- was

behind it before I dive into the nitty-gritty of that's where I've been.

Apologies for jumping a little bit backward but

No, that's actually good because as I was saying that question,

in my head I was like, hang on a minute, we should have maybe gave that--

gave you a bit of a space, just a bit of a backstory because it's about,

relatability and other folks listening.

So it's always good to hear that bit of a backstory that, like your own journey.

feel free to, feel free to dive into it a little bit more before we get into it.

But one thing, one thing I wanted to follow up on with

that database reactivation.

you said you can't lose, and if it doesn't work out, you don't really,

you don't really lose either way.

But I'm thinking, what if…

Because at the end of the day, it also depends, on their own reputation.

So if you're reactivating to an old list, and if you've got a really bad

reputation in the market, nobody's gonna take you up on that offer anyway.

So what if have you-- maybe you've done it, but, what if you like looked

at that and go back to that business owner and say, "Hey, look, we've done

it. Sometimes it happens, we ran it against an old contacts and, if it

doesn't work at all, sometimes that's a…" 'Cause it's like a litmus test in

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

what does the color say?

It's like, look, there's the business owner, like it didn't work out at all.

In our experience, generally, that kind of indicates, really

bad, like bad goodwill in the marketplace, maybe a low reputation.

there are other services that we can provide to help you improve that.

Would you be interested in that?

Exactly.

into a win,

Exactly.

another opportunity.

That's key.

There's always an opportunity.

I was-- I, I'm ad-libbing here and going a little bit off key, but we're-- at

the moment we're sending, in order to land clients like this, we're sending…

I've just grabbed this 'cause it's on my desk, but we're sending this bottle

of whiskey to, to clients, and it's got a little lock code on top, right?

And in order-- and there's a letter that goes with it.

And, and what happens is when they get the bottle, they read the letter and it's,

written by me and it's compelling copy.

And then they wanna get the good bottle of whiskey.

So they call in and I get them on what I call a coffee date, and I

present the offer I just explained to you, and it's it's killing it.

You know what I mean?

But one of the guys in the office, said, "You know what? This is working so well,

but not one woman has, has got back to us as an owner of a business." And

we've sent a few out to women, right?

And I was like, most people would say stop sending to women." But then I was

like, "How about we follow up with them and say, 'We sent you a bottle of whiskey

in the post, but you haven't got back.

Maybe it should have been a bottle of pink champagne?'" question

mark at the end of it, right?

and that could open the floodgates and get the conversation started.

So what you just said there, yeah.

Whatever loss there is or whatever you think there's-- you can always use it in

another way, exactly as you explained.

so that's key.

That's just good marketing, man, and it's like lateral thinking.

And I try and get, people in my team to think laterally as well,

but sometimes it's a skill that you can't teach, unfortunately.

like with that.

Yeah.

I'm actually-- Let me just run a real quick prompt to my Claude.

one of the things I've been working on the last, couple of weeks is, creating a

massive, like I've indexed every single interview of the last 100 episodes and,

I've been watching Dan Martell's recently, not recently, about a month ago, his video

on using Obsidian and Claude and all that.

So I actually dropped all the episodes into an Obsidian, and I just remembered

I had Johann Nogueira on one of my earlier episodes, and he shared

a brilliant, old school strategy.

like when you showed me that, like whiskey with the lock on it.

That's I love it.

It's like creative because there's just too much vanilla shit, right?

And he shared a really cool strategy.

Again, envelope, like regular send it to somebody via a post.

But he had like a, a sequence.

I'm just gonna quickly run this and then we'll come back to it.

yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, do it.

This w- it's working.

It's gonna-- it's costing us, I think about 400 bucks to land a client that's

in a usually an eight or eight, minimum eight-figure business owner, right?

You c- like everyone's trying to do automation and AI and mass spray and

pray and fucking LinkedIn this and cold email automation that, and Smart

Lead this, and I'm like, "Mate, I'm just going old school when everyone

else has been crazy AI automation."

People value real stuff now, not an SMS blast with AI kind of copy.

It just doesn't work anymore

Yeah, absolutely.

Let me just run this.

So I'm gonna use my-- By the way, Whisperflow.

How awesome is Whisperflow?

Hey, Claude, can you please check against the, the vault?

I want to look up an episode with Johann Nogueira.

He shared an awesome strategy with, doing a mail campaign, like a old

school, letterbox, mail campaign.

Can you bring that strategy up?

I wanna, reference it in an episode that I'm in right now.

All right.

Let me go press go on this one, and we'll come back to that one.

Awesome.

Yeah.

So where were we?

I-I've been bouncing around all over the place.

where were we?

I guess we, I wanted to share a bit more of a backstory.

How did you get to where you are now?

Like a, a bit of a story, I guess.

I, and I jumped in and asked you a specific question on the,

What happens?

we derailed, but let's go back to that.

Yeah, tell us like, I know I've seen what you do now and what you're about

now, but how did you get to this point?

yeah, I used to-- I, I'm an Australian, as I know

you spent time in Aus, Vit.

I moved over here in 2002.

I was actually played basketball, believe it or not, which was my

kind of early passion as a kind of young kid and teenager, and I was

kind of borderline professional.

So I ended up coming over here to come to one of the lesser European

leagues and I also was not quite good enough at basketball that I had to

study as well 'cause I knew I was gonna get a-- have to get a job.

So I was doing engineering and kind of part-time engineering work with

basketball, and then I got to about 32 or 33 and the body gave up and I realized

that, I only had a job left and nowhere to escape with something that I loved doing.

And I found myself as an engineer filling out spreadsheets, like in an office with

100 other engineers and I was like, A-and I was actually in the sewage treatment

industry as well, so I was literally doing day trips out to poo plants.

and I take a look-- took a look at my life and I was like, "Man, something's

gotta change here, pretty quick."

So I ty-typed in "make money online" into the internet in September 2009,

which is 17 years ago now, and it's, it took me about seven or eight years

to actually finish, quit that job.

And I tried.

I-- Like, I'm a very reactive, creative person, a-and I

love shiny objects as well.

whenever someone would make an offer to me, I'd buy it without thinking about it.

I was like… It's just the way that I am.

And then I would fail and spend all my money, and then

I'd have to go back to work.

And I did this two or three times.

And eventually, I started running… 'Cause I ran an SEO agency for a while.

I was terrible at that.

I was using all black hat techniques 'cause I was too

reactive and wanted fast results.

and that crashed and burned.

And then I had a few clients left and I realized that I

could, you do paid advertising.

I could run Google Ads, and Facebook was just becoming a thing back then.

And I knew that I was onto something, and I landed a few decent sized

clients at 1 or $2,000 a month each, and that was enough for me to realize

that I was close to something.

And then one day a client came down and he took me out for a steak dinner

'cause we got him some results, and we had a glass of wine together.

And, he said, "We've got… Listen, we've got a, a 40,000 pound budget

per month to spend on ads, and we wanna spend all of that on ads.

And rather than pay you a retainer, we want you to get paid

whenever one of the leads that you present us turns into a sale.

We're gonna give you 10% of the commission," or whatever that might be.

So we suddenly had this client and we put our credit card on the… they paid us

an invoice each month for 40,000 pounds, plus a performance basis paid, in arrears,

a month in arrears after we'd made the sale for them based on their ad spend.

So I was getting invoiced 40,000 pounds plus VAT, which was 48,000 pounds a

month, plus an extra, it was about 20,000 pounds or something extra.

And, like it was the wow-- it was the, a dream client, okay?

And, and they introduced us to someone else who wanted to do-- 'cause this was

my f-first performance-based deal, okay?

So what happened next was, they int- we got such good results for them.

We introduced them-- They introduced us to one of their friends, and

then, it, the snowball effect of this performance-based deal started happening.

and there was this offer in the UK called the PPI, the PPI scandal, which

was when people were mis-sold payment protection on their credit cards.

It was like an ambulance chaser, ambulance-chasing industry.

But every single adult that had a credit card in the UK was due £4,000

back on average from the government, basically, from the financial service.

It was the biggest offer that I've ever seen in my life, and everyone was

making money, the claims companies, the lead gens, like the consumers.

It was just free money.

And, one of the clients who I was introduced to said: "Listen, we're

just gonna pay you 18 pounds a lead, and get as many as you can. I

don't care where you get them from, Twitter, Facebook ads, Meta." Probably

there was no TikTok back then.

"SEO, it doesn't matter.

As many as you can, and we'll pay you i-in advance, for 1,000 leads a

week, 18 grand a week or whatever.

And, just get as many as you can." So it was smash and grab time,

and, we milked that for a while.

I literally bought a h- bought my house with the money from that, and

it was like the happy days, okay?

and then what happened is that offer ended.

but we had this, this pay-per-lead, skill set and a bunch of clients that were

looking to move on to the next thing.

And, I also-- I think I bought, Sam Ovens' course.

I don't know if Sam Ovens.

You probably do.

He was,

a bell

yeah, he was this guy that bought the urlconsulting.com, and

it was the first time I'd learnt about creating a product to help other people.

And I kinda did my research and realized that everyone was talking

about starting SMMA agencies or, how to charge retainers or whatever.

And I quickly understood there was a gap in the market where no one on the

planet was talking about pay per lead or performance-based lead gen. And I created

a, a course called the Pay Per Lead Blueprint, and we started running ads to

it, and it just looked-- It just took off.

and that took me on a

since you had a strong social proof then that,

that would be a no-brainer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

we had advertorial, so we used to run ad to advertorial to quiz type funnel, right?

So we had all these templates that were working for us, and we just gave

them to our students, and a lot of students did really well out of it.

and then what happened is that things got tricky 'cause Facebook, we used to

advertise via brands that we would build.

So we'd build a URL called dansdebtconsulting.com or whatever,

and we'd build a thin brand around it, send the traffic to that thin

brand, and then sell the lead on as they went through a quiz on that page.

Okay.

And it was pret- it wasn't a, it was a bit gray hat, but it was allowed, and this

is how a lot of people were crushing it.

I just had an interview with, one of my ex-students the other day, and he built

a, a u- a brand called timesharetracy.com 'cause there's this big industry in

America, which is the timeshare exit, people trying to get out of their exit,

tr- trying to get out of timeshare.

And he sold that for a million bucks to one of his clients.

And it was the glory days, and we did really well out of it.

But then Facebook started, like, cracking down, and they didn't

allow these thin brands, and a few ad accounts got down and I realized

that, it's a bit tricky teaching this.

I may- maybe need to come up with a new alternative.

And that was around the same time that AI b- started becoming

a thing about three years ago.

And what we had was a bunch of old clients and a bunch of students

who had old clients that had a lot of leads and they didn't know what

to do with them, old leads, and the offer was born, the one that I

explained at the start of the podcast.

Does that h- does that help?

That story help?

Yeah, no, it does.

And, in this role of marketing, I've been in it since 2010, but

really fully like last six years.

I've noticed, like there's these things, like everything's just evolving

so fast, and there's something that worked no longer works and you have

to innovate and try something new.

And now there's AI and a lot of other things.

But I wonder, what's your process like when you're observing this and

you're starting to notice something is probably on, on its, last bit of it.

How do you then-- Like,

Pivot

you… Yeah, how do you-- what do you do?

do you observe?

Do you, do you-- What's your process?

Most time I sh- I start shitting myself.

I'm like scared, oh my God, if I'm honest, right?

But what, what-- I've been in the game a while just like you, Vit, and,

I've learned over time that these points, these obstacles that people

come up against, it's like the, the whiskey versus the pink champagne

thing I just explained before, okay?

That there's always a way ar- around it, you know, or through it or over it.

You've just gotta be open to looking for it at the time and almost look

forward to when that moment comes.

It's a paradox, right?

Because it's the most challenging times in your life, in your business career

because you think this is, it's dead.

Like pay per lead's gone, right?

Like I can't teach this anymore.

But off the back of that, a whole new world has opened up, which is vastly

more exciting and more profitable and, I created the database reactivation

offer, which means that, with pay per lead, people had to risk their own

money for the, the, the ad spend, okay?

So sometimes you'd be spending £25 or 25 bucks to get a lead and

you're only getting paid 18 bucks.

Imagine trying to sleep at night with that, okay?

But now we've got an offer where you just, like I was explaining with the

hedge fund managers, you just can't lose.

So look forward to the tough times.

it's a bit of a cliché, but that's the

Yeah, I think Warren Buffett talks about it.

He, he talked about it a lot where in the-- when the economy is down

and there is a lot of businesses that lose, but then there is businesses that

win in those tough times because they look at it outside of the box and they

just come up with something different.

Yeah.

so it's… Speaking of something different, I've

got the, I've got the thing.

So basically, this is from Johann.

Johann, a good mate of mine, Johann Noguiera.

it's the, it's a FedEx style envelope, right?

So the recipient name handwritten, confidential, stamped across it.

Confidential stamped across it.

And something you can feel inside it, so you know it's not just a paper, right?

The handwriting plus the book gets it past the gatekeeper

Ja

and makes it irresistible to open.

So you send one per week for five weeks and goes like this.

The sequence… I feel even like, should I really share this?

Now everybody's gonna do it.

It's too late now, man

Yeah.

yeah.

So it's, the, the sequence is plastic dinosaur, magnifying

glass, a dice, a chess piece, and, a postcard guy with binoculars.

Let me break it down.

The plastic dinosaur.

Post-it Note, "Your systems have gone the way of the dinosaurs." The

letter says, "You'll go extinct if you don't act." Point to a video URL

and, His real goal on that one he was mentioning isn't the click, it's the

dinosaur, that it sits on the desk as a permanent reminder for that person.

Week later, magnifying glass.

"Use this to read the fine print."

Not the, in the letter that he sent or whatever.

Yeah

We guarantee to increase your bottom line by 20%.

And then again, go watch the video.

Brilliant.

Introduce us, Matt.

Yeah, I'd love to, I'd love to talk to him

yeah, I will.

Yeah.

Dice.

I'll do a proper intro after this.

Dice.

Can you guess what that one is?

dice.

you're-- if you don't call us, you're rolling the dice with your future, maybe?

You're rolling something like that

It's to do with the future.

So it's don't gamble with your business future,

There we go.

right?

And then a call to action.

chess piece, week four.

We've made our move, now it's yours.

And then you go the last one is like the b- the guy with the

binoculars like, "Hey, we're looking out for-- we're looking for you.

just tell us you're okay.

we don't want you to s- we don't want to sell you anything.

you ha- you just haven't replied to our last four things.

Text us and we'll never contact you again."

Nice

it's the reverse psychology is the point.

It's like, "What do you mean you'll never contact me again?"

Yeah.

So that's the nuts and bolts of it.

guys, episode 86.

Episode… I had him on twice.

He's a good mate of mine.

I had him episode 14 when he shared it.

Episode 86, we've revisited that strategy again.

This is the thing that I'm doing now, the podcast, by the way, if you're wondering.

There is, there's so much awesome, like so many awesome strategies and people

that I spoke to over the last two years.

Some of these strategies, y- I can guarantee you this is, timeless strategy,

Yeah.

So you're gonna hear me, guys, you're gonna hear me bring up this more

often now that I've connected the brain, the whole podcast repository with Claude.

I'm gonna bring up these things, so keep an eye out.

But the whole purpose of it is just wanna highlight, guys, you might

be listening to this episode, might be your very first time on this

podcast, or you're listening more.

I just wanna surface these older stuff so that you go back to them and, this

way, you get more value out of the new episode as well as the old ones.

Anyway, back to you, Dan.

Let's,

so imagine what his offer is.

I don't know what his offer is, okay?

But imagine that the five-letter thing that you just explained with

an offer that they can't say no to when you combine it with the

offer that I just explained, okay?

they just don't, they won't say no to it.

and the way that we, the way that we sell them on the call, once we get

them on a call, is not to sell at all.

We use AI to sell AI.

So we'll build them a little demo, and you can do this in the, in OpenAI.

And we-- there's the tight ass way of doing it, which is you can log into

OpenAI, and you can use a little, extension called StyleBot to remove all

of the branding and everything around OpenAI and just have it so the con-

the conversation's happening, in front of them, and they can type in their

answers and they get blown away, okay?

And we, in my high ticket program, we have a tool called the Sales

Wingman, which is a SaaS product, which will mimic that conversation

and get them to interact with it.

And it also sells stuff like, speed to lead or, 48-hour reactivation

or reputation management or social.

Like it, that it can do everything.

which brings me to my next point, okay?

Once you get a result for them, that's when we found it's the best time to

sell them all this other stuff because there's a lot of people that might be

listening to this call that are very excited about selling $25,000 kind of AI

builds or some s- whatever it is people are selling, okay, to business owners.

We've found the best way to do that is to get your foot in the door first, build

some trust with an offer like this, and then the world's your oyster for upsells.

I call it getting my claws in afterwards, okay?

Because once, once you've got them a result, then you're like, "Hey,"

"we've got these amazing results for you from your old leads."

Imagine if h- the question I usually ask is: How often do your, does your sales

team call the leads in, for how many days?

And they're like, we probably call them 16 times over the first two days, and

then we give up after that." Perfect.

Why don't you hand the leads to us after 48 hours, and

then we can do the same thing?

It just means we get fresher data, and you're gonna get better results.

And then suddenly you build a passive income stream because you API the

leads straight into HighLevel.

The sequence works, and you just, you're just getting paid, automatically, really,

especially if it's a per appointment deal.

so I like to move people, transition them from a CSV file upload into HighLevel

to get them their initial quick wins, and then after the wins, you get them

on another Zoom call, show them the speed to lead stuff, or perhaps they're

generating leads 24/7 and they wanna-- they want help with out-of-hours leads.

Or when you speak to them, you realize that they're getting lots

of calls from their Google Ads and they-they're going unanswered outside

of working hours, and then you can sell them a voice AI solution.

Th-the world's your oyster after you get them that first result and they trust--

know, and trust you at that point in time, and then you can, sell what you want.

Does that make

there a s-- Yeah, no, I love it.

Is there a scenario where you just do the database reactivation and use the AI

to book the appointments, but the actual appointment is handled by the client?

Yeah.

that's what we always do.

Okay.

so the-- let's say the simplest form of doing this is that you get on a, what

we call a coffee date with a client.

You show them how this works, and we have a spe- I'll talk about that

in a sec. They say yes to the offer because most do, why wouldn't they?

And then you ask them to send a CSV file over of maybe 2,000 leads,

something like that, which they do.

You upload into HighLevel, you press go.

let's say it's for a mortgage broker or let's say a solar company

because everyone understands solar.

roughly we get about 30% of the people to respond to the initial message,

which is 600 people out of, 2,000.

And then roughly 10% of those people, give or take, will, will-- should book

an appointment if the data's good.

So that means out of 2,000 old leads, they'll get 60, give or take 60 new

appointments that they never had before from their old stuff they'd given up on.

Okay?

And you can charge per appointment for those 60 if you want, or you can, if

it's a fast turnaround to sale, you can take a p-percentage of the, the

sale price, whatever the client wants.

But-- and people get hung on this, it's n- hung up on this.

It's not so much about making money on that first thing, right?

Don't argue or barter or fall out with a client over money

because the real long-term win is the g- is the relationship.

It's the next thing you're gonna sell them.

Is to get them a result and they refer you to a brother who

owns a much bigger business.

Okay?

Making money up front is never the-- should never be the goal with

this, and if people find that really hard to wrap their head around

A goodwill, building a reputation is the most valuable.

Like you wanna get to a point where, you wanna get to a point where you

speak to a client and he goes, "Oh, man, g- great that I've got you here.

I was just talking about you the other day." that's what you want, right?

So yeah, it's the investment into the relationship and playing the long game.

Now, you mentioned rev game, revenue share.

So like in this situation it's get paid per booked appointment, but do

you also do s- models where get a revenue share from the deal close?

You mentioned it with your old client.

okay, so you do.

So let's talk about the client side bottleneck then.

So if the DBR books the appointment, the client still has to show up and close.

On the rev share, you're exposed to their sales team.

How do you protect against that?

That's what the test is for, their initial test, okay?

'Cause the way that I see it, if you're not making a m- about making money up

front, is it's a litmus test to see whether you wanna work with the client.

And I even say that on the call.

That's how cocky I am now with the offer, okay?

So I'm like, "We're gonna run this, okay? And I'm just gonna, I'm gonna

ask for 500 bucks up front." And that's we're losing money on this,

It's just to pay for the SMS

This is to pay so you got skin in the game, okay?

But if your sales team doesn't work these leads like I know they can, then we're

not gonna go ahead after the test, okay?

So this is not so much about, I wouldn't say that to their

That's a f- you're flipping it on its head.

It's we're not gonna go ahead.

It's not about you.

If you're gonna go ahead, but we're not gonna… That's brilliant.

so when I say when you p- when you change it that way and

you get cocky after all, you've done this for a while, they're like, "Oh,

I haven't heard this before. I better put my sal- my best sales guys on this

because I don't wanna lose these guys." and the perfect world scenario is

that they get appointments, they make sales, and you move on after the test.

But, sometimes that, that doesn't work and the test fails and you can

s- you chat to the client and see if there's something else they need

based on why the test didn't work.

But if you're asking about how to trust a client to pay you on performance

based on what's coming back from the test, there's plenty of ways to do that.

For example, any client worth their salt will have, s- read-only CRM

access, so you'll be able to tag everything that comes in and see what's

working and what's making the sale.

or, most of the time, when I'm talking to you, Vit, I know y- I can tell

you've got like an Aussie twang.

You've lived out there.

I've got a good feeling when I'm talking to you.

I know I can trust you, okay?

And people say, "Oh, that's a s- stupid thing to do. Like, why would you trust

someone without ever meeting them?"

You can just tell, right?

And if they wanna mess you about, then just turn it off, right?

go on to the next client.

But my, my, my gut is always correct, and the best relationship I've ever had

in performance-based deals like this have always been gut-based and always

me wanting to drive up to Manchester and, return the favor and buy them a

steak dinner and a b- a bottle of wine.

and that's what it's about, It's not about long-winded contracts and

like tying peoples down because th- it's just they can wriggle out of

anything if you try and do that and they get a bad taste in their mouth.

Yeah, absolutely.

there's a reason why all of us HighLevelers like to once a year go crazy

and go to Dallas and just hang out, right?

it's the human factor.

it's the real, yeah, connection.

Yeah.

a couple more, technical questions on the reactivation.

This one is about list hygiene.

So how old is too old?

Like what do you do with a database that's like never had,

say, consent captured properly?

Yeah.

you run it

Yeah.

So it's a good question.

If they haven't got the right consent, then you can't message the leads.

I just wouldn't go there.

Okay.

Some clients are comfortable taking their own, their risk on that, but

you can get in a lot of trouble.

So you've gotta make sure that they have the right consent

before you can send an SMS.

And people I say that to go, "Oh my God, I can't believe it.

Dan, this sounds amazing, but 10% of the companies that I think

10-- only 10% of companies are gonna have the right consent.

The whole model's crap.

This is bullshit," right?

Like my pink champagne like analogy.

What I say to them is like, " Perfect.

It looks like none of your old leads have the right SMS consent, but what

we can do is we can just tweak your, your privacy policy now and change your

consent, and then you can start SMSing your leads for the first time ever and

get to 2026 like your competitors are.

How do you wanna get started?"

Type thing.

So there's always-- You can always flip it, and then if you've got that, then you

can sell them a, a speed to lead version.

Like not just getting two-year-old data.

You can get their 48, 48-hour data, for example, which is much fresher

and it's like it's coming through like an API rather than a CSV file.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hope I answered that properly.

The fresher the data you can get, the better is the answer.

'Cause I was gonna my follow-up to that was like, okay,

so how, h- how do you go about it?

So you might ask them, they give you the CSV file.

Do you go by the ward?

when they say, yeah, they're, they're, we have consent.

Do you go by the ward?

Do you,

Data pressing-- data processing agreement.

We have a simple one-pager that they have to sign before we do anything.

That's the only thing we ask for

That way you protect your own ass.

Yeah.

No contracts, no nothing for the test, just the data processing agreement

And then on the GHL side is just, like a… 'Cause you still

got, like it's an Australian business, for example, you still set up Reg

bundle or do you use a third party for the, like Gary's myCRMSIM or

Yeah, we have-- I've got a call with Gary coming up actually.

but we use, HighLevel's, what is it?

Lead connector.

Or you can connect Twilio to HighLevel as well.

we tend to u- we tend to use Twilio, and there's a few other slightly

cheaper services in different parts of the world that we use as well because

we're sending a lot of volume, so the SMS costs can add up over time as well

Mm-hmm.

Awesome.

All right.

So what happens after, like after the well runs dry?

Say a 5,000 contact database is, can be a finite resource.

Say month four, like what's the offer in month four, for

Yep.

Yep.

Okay.

the best way to explain this is with, a client that we've got at the moment.

and they, believe it or not, sell-- This is the weirdest industry.

They sell, gun training certificates over in America.

I didn't even know this was a thing, okay?

But you have to get a certificate, and you have to do a basic training

to be able to have a firearm, okay?

Oh, is it, I thought it was like a gun training, like

to be a trainer to train somebody

No.

No, it's to hold a firearm.

and, what they do is they sell a $97 training certificate where they have to

come in and, they don't have to come in.

I think it's all online.

But anyway, the, the funnel looks like this.

It's an ad that they run to a landing page which has name, email, and

phone, and then there's a credit card on the n- on the next step.

Okay?

Which means, there's a drop-off.

Okay?

So half of the people, yeah, half of the people go through the first step

and, don't finish the second step.

So there's a lot of wastage there.

And when we first approached this client, we took all of their old

data and we started making sales.

so they generate 1,000 leads a day, sometimes up to 4,000.

It's big business.

Okay?

So we took maybe 20,000 of their old leads and we made sales at maybe 1% or

2%, which was, maybe 40 sales out of two-- 20,000 leads or something like that.

It wasn't many at all.

but we got en- we had enough to show them that this worked.

Okay?

And when we were able to do a little loom of the conversations happening back

and forth and the sale being made and the money hitting their account, and we

were absorbing the cost, and we might've made a little loss up front on that one.

It was enough for them to realize that we were onto something here.

So the next stage for us was to say, "Listen, you've given us 20,000 old

leads, but how about you A- you API the lead across to us half an hour after

they've abandoned cart and not bought? So give them half an hour to buy, and if

they don't buy, send them over to our, our system and we'll run exactly what

you've just seen." and that campaign's been running, now for just over a year,

and it's made the client an additional, We checked the stats the other day.

I think they're up around $1.2 million, in revenue that they

previously would've just lost.

And as a thank you, they've sent us, I think it was about

$225,000 in commissions.

And this thing, we set it up and it's just running.

it's just running now.

we barely even have to look at it.

But sometimes the s- sometimes the SMS goes down because there's too much

volume and we have to tweak it and fix it, but the messaging's all running.

The AI's set up, the prompt's done, and it just client loves it.

They just send us, I don't know how much, $10,000, $15,000 a month

or whatever, and it just comes in every month and we don't do-- It's

the easiest money I've ever earnt.

Wow.

And so that's a, that's the fixed subscription model.

You st- you still have the rev share or that was like a, just a nice

thing that they've done for you?

It's a rev share, so they-- the, it's $97 a training

certificate and they pay us 15 bucks.

Okay

15 bucks per sale.

It's like an affiliate deal.

It's like an affiliate deal almost.

And we-

is f- they don't really have a cost either, right?

'Cause they

They don't have-- They love it, man.

They're making as an extra $1.2 million in their business in a year.

And this is, it's about, I think we had a look and it's about 13% extra than

what they would've earned without us.

Okay?

So you're looking at a business, probably a $20 million business or

something like my stats are-- I need to think about the stats, but it's

roughly a 13% uptick on what they were making for exactly the same ad spend.

And that could be their enti- that could be the profit margin for their business

that they've just made out of nowhere.

And that's the power of AI, right?

Like this can-- It's never been done before, and that's why

I think, the economy's about to explode as like business.

Like this is one business out of 400 million on the planet.

You know what I mean?

There's just so much opportunity right now, that it's not funny.

and that's why I love leading with this offer

This is awesome.

So I'm a big nerd on when it comes to stuff and like

diagnosing funnels and all that.

do you use something like GERU, for example, where you like model the f- GERU?

No, no.

I'm not much of a geek like you.

I like s- selling stuff, and I let the rest of the team

work out all the geeky stuff.

Yeah

yeah.

So Gyro it was bought by, by Russell, from ClickFunnels, but

it used to be its own, company.

I bought-- they had this really short window when they were transitioning and

like I got a hold of to a lifetime deal.

So ah, awesome.

Anyway, long story short, it's a visual, system.

It's a, it's like an automation design, like a flow thing.

you build a flow and then you can press a button to calculate.

So basically at each point you determine-- you just allocate, the conversion

percentages based on real data.

Then you press a button, you show it to the client, "Look, this is what it

looks like right now." And then it's if we g- if we just tweak, if we tweak

it here and if we tweak it here, and then you just press a button again.

It's like a cool visual, thing.

So like for building case studies I think it'd be pretty cool.

Like that one that you just said, that's…

Yeah, it's very powerful.

And here's a little secret that I don't tell too many people.

I've probably blown it now.

The, the biggest win was just sending an SMS to their old-- to the leads, okay?

The-- Half the time they just buy on the first SMS.

Okay?

Just sending an SMS was the biggest win, not the AI that was attached to it.

Like that's pretty incredible when you think about it.

and how many business owners on the planet have never sent an SMS to their

old customers or, or unconverted leads?

It's like hundreds of millions, it's a big opportunity

Yeah.

and that's SMS, right?

Then you've got

WhatsApp.

WhatsApp as well.

Yeah, we do WhatsApp too

What do you think about the blue bubble?

Have you noticed like a significant in-i-i-improvement in

We haven't really done that.

You're talking about the, the, the iMessages.

Yeah, we haven't really done that.

I was just speaking to Graham, my tech guy, about that yesterday.

He said it's expensive compared to what we're doing at the moment

It work

I could be wrong and maybe we need

pay for them

I think in order to run

The setup.

Yeah, okay.

I'll introduce you to somebody.

you're talking to Gary, so talk to Gary.

and, he's got something, that could be interesting because the way I understand

it, and I haven't im- implemented it in my thing either, but I've got it in my, a

To-do list.

Yeah

is that the actual sending of iBlue, Blue Bubble, iMessages is free.

And then with the right vendor, if they have proper setup, then

if it doesn't deliver, then it'll automatically default to SMS.

So you always deliver.

Interesting

But in the US, for example, everybody's-- like most

people in the US use iPhones.

They're very used to using, receiving iMessages, and they're also very used

to receiving marketing SMS messages.

So it's the-- it differentiates.

Yeah.

it, I would think it increases

please do make the intro because, we're not perfect.

this is sometimes when it works so well, you get lazy, right?

So I, I, and it's funny 'cause I just spoke to Graham today ab-about that

today 'cause we're running, this is another little thing I got going on.

I invested in, a business called, truninja.com.au, which is, an

indoor adventure park in Australia.

the ones where the kids swing off all the stuff.

and the re- the reason I invested it is because my brother, runs it with a

friend, and I-- they needed money to expand, and they've got three locations,

one, one in Adelaide and two in Sydney.

and they're growing rapidly.

But I knew I could control this expansion with my skill set,

my, auto- AI automation skills.

And we're running, a database reactivation offer to their old

customers to be able to sell party bookings, which is like the holy grail

of they're best, they're high ticket.

They're like 750 bucks or 1,000 bucks or something like that.

More, I think.

More, maybe 1,500 bucks.

And, they want loads of them.

But what we're finding, and we're still early in this journey, is that

in Australia, the SMS costs are are so expensive compared to America that, we're

not sure we can cover, 'Cause some of these, like one, one of the locations

has 1,000 customers per day coming in.

So if you're, SMSing 300,000 people a year, that's a…

And they're getting back and forth with those SMSes.

Yeah

There's gotta be an ROI.

Do you know what I mean?

So any way we can reduce the cost of, if you're listening to this, please

reach out to me, because, yeah,

I think the, the

a conversation.

the, the standard thing that always improves

conversion is the personalization.

More personalized you can get, the better, right?

So like my personal experience when my parents visited back in January,

we, we drove up to Gold Coast.

We went to-- We, we got an Airbnb in Tamborine Mountain.

Shout out Tamborine Mountain.

If you guys are ever there, they got really cool glow worms cave.

but they also had this park, like you said, and, I, I paid, a kids version.

I put my s-son there with an instructor s- for him to have a go.

I went on to this crazy big zip line, and that was me in the morning whilst

my w-- 'cause they didn't have enough people, so we had to do a swap.

I did the zip line, they did the, the climbing thing, and then we swapped.

Now, in the afternoon, I was doing the climbing thing between the trees and,

like the, the monkey thing, right?

And I'm competitive.

Like I, I like it like once, once you go, so you go, right?

it's good workout.

But what I found annoying is, if you got stuck, you couldn't just disconnect.

You had to go all the way back.

And if there were people on that line as well, then that's screwing everybody up.

Like you literally, everybody has to go back.

and vice versa, you might go really fast and then you get stuck because

in front of you there's just a lot of people that are just slower, right?

So I would be thinking, okay, who are the people that come here for just for

shits and giggles, they wanna try it?

Who are the people who do this like more like a performance, like a

workout, and they just wanna have a go?

And how can we offer them times where they can do it when it's not so busy?

And, and if it's like a dead time, just, let's just charge

them more for that privilege.

Do you know what I mean?

You're a marketer at heart, man.

And that's, that's-- that brings me onto the next thing, thanks for prompting

me, is that you might-- people listening might be thinking, "How do we get such

great response rates from people's old data?" you could have-- getting the

data is one thing, but getting results from the data is the second thing.

And we developed this thing, and don't tell me how we came up with

it, it just, it magically happened.

But we, we-- and you mentioned it at the start, it's called a two on SMS.

Okay.

So in the, example I'm, we're doing for my brother's adventure

park, which I'm a part-owner of now, so I'm calling it mine too.

but what we do is we, we send the first SMS to like a, a one-month-old lead, and

it says-- it's almost exactly like this.

It says, "Hi, it's Sarah here from True Ninja. is this the same Vit who visited us

a little while ago? Question mark." Okay.

Now it's, "Sarah from True Ninja, the indoor adventure park.

Is this the same Vit that visited us a, a month ago?

Question mark." Okay.

The individual thinks that this is, actually Sarah 'cause

they don't understand this AI.

They're not marketers like us, right?

So it gets an insane response rate, and in this case it'll be 30, 40, 50%.

And what happens then is when we use our lateral thinking, our marketing

skills, and what we've done for Evan's business is to say Great.

My manager asked me to reach out because we have a f- a handful of

discounted kids' parties that we need to book out before the end of the week.

Would that be of any interest?

Do you know what I mean?

So you've got someone that's come in, that's had a good time, and now we're

able to get them intrigued about a kid's party that they can get a discount on.

And when you get a high response rate and the conversation's started, and

then when you place a well-thought-out offer like that, and for your

example, it might be something like, if you were on the, Oh, great.

Oh, great.

My ma- my manager's just said the, the zip line's been super busy

lately, and we have a few sessions where you can use it uninterrupted.

would you be interested in coming along, right?

Question mark.

Okay.

And then suddenly you've got something that's personalized and actually solves

a, a problem for them, and then they respond again, and AI takes over and

will send the booking link for that particular session or that kid's party.

And it just kills it.

For, for solar, it would be something like, "Hey, it's

Sarah here from solarpower.com.

Is this the same Joe that was looking to save money on

energy, a couple of days ago?

Question mark." And he goes, "Yes, it is." "Okay.

My manager asked me to reach out because we have, a summer holidays

deal at the moment combined with a battery, a solar battery.

would it make sense for us to talk?" Something like that. And then you've

got, very targeted, well-thought-out marketing messages rather than, " Hey,

it's, Solar Power here. Buy this 25% off summer deal." You know what I mean?

As the first message.

do you follow what I'm saying?

Like this makes a huge difference to what we do

It's difference between talking at them to talking to them.

I'm already picking a bit of a framework here from these examples that you shared.

I've heard this framework from somebody else, do you know Taki Moore?

Yes, Taki Anoa

I don't know if it's his thing or, but it's basically the

engineering a conversation because you want to create a conversation.

How do you engineer a conversation if you're talking to somebody first time?

it's all about effort.

If you give somebody open-ended question, now they have to think.

If you give them yes, no, yes, no question, that's an easy one.

Binary.

And right, and then once they respond, then you can

go into this or that question or, and then open-ended afterwards.

it just makes sense.

But just back to the two-line SMS.

Yeah

could you break it down?

Like not the secret sauce word for word, even though you've given examples

already, but like the atana- anatomy, like what are the two, what are the

two beats those lines have to hit to spark a reply without sounding spammy?

Yeah.

it's pretty self-explanatory.

it works for any niche.

so let's say it's, p-pick an industry and I'll do it

Okay.

tiny homes.

I got a guy actually who sells these.

He gets these units made in China.

He's, he just sources the secondhand trailers.

He sells the trailer and the unit to somebody,

Yeah.

just have to have a land to place

so how does he generate the leads then for the sale?

mostly, tiny home expos

Experts

you wanna get people to feel and see the unit and they can walk in it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And how does he collect the data?

So does someone opt in for something at those expos?

yeah.

we build a form, that him and his team fills up when they're

talking to people and yeah

Yeah.

So the first message would be, " Hey, it's Vit here from Tiny Homes.

Is this the same Dan that visited the expo and had a look at one of our

homes the other day?" Question mark.

Okay.

That feels like a one-to-one message.

Okay.

And they definitely went and visited the expo, and they definitely

saw the tiny home because they've opted in a couple of days ago.

So you get insane response rates.

It will be a yes.

Okay.

And that's your chance then to create an offer.

And usually I can guess that what the offer might be or guess what

might work, but the best person to talk to about this is who?

It's the business owner.

They'll tell you what moves the needle for customers.

So they might be able to-- They might have a discount deal that works, but

it's not always about the discount.

It might be packaging up the trailer with the home.

I don't know about the offer, but they'll tell you what that is, and

they'll tell you what moves the needle because they know their business so well.

So the second message would go something like, " Fantastic.

I just packed up the expo and we had a couple of show trailers that we're

looking to get rid of at a lower price.

Would you be interested in having a call and I can video share with

you?" Or whatever that might be.

Okay.

So if you send that out to 200 people that want to have a show trailer that's

at a discounted price, he's going to sell them like that, I guarantee you.

Okay.

And this is where-- Do you see how carefully crafted-- I'm good at this

because I've been doing it a while, okay, but do you see how that's going

to be vastly more impressive when you're demoing it to the client and

it's going to get vastly better results?

And when you're doing this on a performance basis, that's what

makes all of the difference.

It's like night and day because everyone can sell a bot to a client, but no one

really understands the psychology of how to turn to get the reply to start

off with, like Taki talks about with the binary stuff, but then present an

offer to them in a way that they're just like, "Hell yeah, I want to take this."

And that's where the skill is.

And I bet you if he ran that campaign at the expo, he would sell

a couple of show homes from the database of that day like that.

I could almost guarantee it.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

I'm writing it down.

I'm gonna contact him tomorrow,

Yeah, there we go

a client of mine.

we built, we build a full… That's an example of a client where we did, did

like a full scoping for three weeks, like a big double diamond process.

I don't know if you heard about double diamond

No, what's that?

A human-centric design thinking process.

The first diamond is about figuring out the core problem

that you're trying to solve in the business that's worth solving.

And then the second diamond is about figuring out the ideal solution, the most

effective solution to solve that problem.

So with clients, with businesses, we know that with high level,

with AI, with automations, we can solve a lot of problems.

We can increase efficiency, we can cut costs, we can increase conversions.

There's so much.

But, if you get a client who's, like interested, doing it like a big proper

overhaul, and let's say I talk, I talk-- tell them like, "Look," maybe

the client's like in his 60s and has had this business for a while, and you're

like, "Hey, you plan to retire one day?

are you-- what are you doing with this business?

You looking to exit?

You looking at… what are you doing?" "Yeah, may- yeah, maybe one day would

like to exit." So then "Okay, cool.

Look, you know what quantifies the value of the business, right?

You probably have an idea.

one of the main thing is that is it gonna be able to run without you and

how streamlined and systemized is it?"

And, you can give some sort of a figure and a just com-common sense figure.

It's like you could probably tell that if you have a business that's fully

automated and uses AI automation, would definitely sell at a higher

value without even mentioning numbers.

There you go.

So that's like you get a yes.

"Okay.

So look, the best way, if you're interested in this, Mr. Business

Owner, and look, you've got a, you've got a, you've got a big turnover.

you've got a, big organization, so there is a lot of complexity, which is good

because that means there's a lot of different, things that happen in your

business, and every single one of those is an opportunity for optimization.

Would you be interested in doing like a full diagnostic on this?" And then

this is how I've done it with him.

So we sold him a design process.

It was a full, analytics on his current business.

So it's And that's the first diamond.

So we had a follow-up meetings.

Each meeting was like 90 minutes, and I would have lots of questions.

I'm asking him how he's running the business, what is he finding, where is

the problems, where is not problems.

And I'm just using a visual mind mapping tool like in ClickUp, you can

do mind mapping or on Canva, and I just map-- I just start putting all these

different, things that he mentions.

What is his buyer journey?

What are his products?

The team, what the team does.

What is the backend operations, fulfillment?

All those different things, I put it there, and I say, "Cool. We'll

meet next week." Between that week, I'm just looking at that.

I'm looking at research in the industries.

I'm looking at competitors.

I'm researching And I just wanna get a full understanding

of that business even more.

Then we have a follow-up meeting, where we might ask for additional questions.

And then usually by the meeting three, I have a pretty good idea where, the

biggest problems, will have a biggest return we're solving So then we go

into the design phase and I say, "Cool, I'm gonna meet you in a week time.

What I'm gonna do now is now I have understanding of your business, I'm

gonna put together a system." So I usually go with the buyer journey first.

So I start with a pipeline and stages, and then on the second pipeline is

all about the backend and fulfillment, because stuff that happens once

you convert that you do as a team.

And then on the back of that, you start breaking it down into

nurtures and different opt-ins and lead magnets and AI and different

custom fields and qualification and what… So map it all out.

It's a big package, right?

So then I meet the client, I say, "Cool. Look, here's what I've come up with,"

but it's based on the first diamond.

So the diam- double diamond, by the way, is problem and then solution,

but each diamond is split in half.

So the first half of the diamond it's, di- I always get it

wrong, divergent, convergent.

One of those terms means open wide and then the other o-

Yeah.

Divergent I think means going like that.

Yeah.

and then converging.

Yeah, so divergent is the first half, and it's about there's no limits.

It's just absorbing as much information, about, what's happening, and how feedback

loops, feedbacks to customers, right?

All that.

The second diamond is when you start to distill it down, but you

can't distill anything down unless you had the full picture, right?

That's why the first diamond, first half's so important.

So then you distill it down.

That's like the core problems you figure out.

You speak to client, they agree, "Yeah, that would definitely be the

biggest return if we could solve those problems." you go to that second diamond,

and that's the, again, divergent.

Here is a model that I think would be great.

What do you think?

And then you have that 90-minute meeting, and you go over it visually.

You share a screen.

They go over it with you.

They give you some extra feedback.

yeah, no, like that.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And by the way, y-you probably didn't pick up on it, but there's

also this other thing." So they give you even more context.

Yeah

It's actually really good at those meetings.

It's no longer to just speak to the business owner themselves,

but usually their team as well, 'cause they do the day-to-day.

and they give you this extra info, extra context.

Then you go again, "I'll meet you in a week." And then you spend

a whole week just optimizing that based on the feedback.

Do it maybe one or two more times, and then you come up with a visual

representation of that system that they agree on, like you both agreed

on, and then you quote them on the build, and then you go and build it.

So there's zero scope creep.

The s- benefits of doing this is, A, it's how you sell a high ticket.

It's how you get paid to do the design in the first place, so

you're not doing it for free.

And then you avoid scope creep and, and you do something that's like super epic.

but how did I get here?

I segued from something with… Ah, it was just

yeah.

what I was just thinking, that sounds very a val- very valuable service, but, I, I

don't know how you got in front of that client, but I imagine you probably did

something beforehand to be, or you knew him somehow or got referred to him before

you could offer something so big to him.

Is

You have to build trust.

Yeah.

So it was a i- in-person meetings, back in Canberra.

there's a really cool place.

No, this place is called, Canberra Business Innovation Center.

They do government grants for startups and all that, and they

also have networking events.

I met him through one of those SME brekkie things.

And then, yeah,

so that's-- that's one of my favorite ways.

That's how I got my breaks, So I went to BNI networking

and developed relationships, which is what it's all about.

But, if you wanna be able to sell packages like you just explained, Vit,

then what I've found is to develop that like you did, like the trust factor

beforehand, and what a better way to do it than with our offer, okay?

Because then you see that you've got them a result.

They see, how well it works, but then, oh crap, looks like your, your leads

aren't being answered out of hours.

Oh, look, a lot of these people called in, but you haven't got voice AI, or, oh,

we just had a look at your Google reviews and, a lot of people aren't moving forward

because you're 3.8 out of five and all your reviews aren't answered, and you've

got no system to, do review management.

and then you can start upselling all of these other things, which

is what we're doing, essentially what you've just done there.

and it all leads

the, it's like doing it from the other end.

Yeah

I think I know what you were probably going to say as

well is like the process I've just explained, that's not very scalable.

It's ex- it's exciting.

It's a lot of fun, like for like somebody like me, like nerdy, it's a longer, cycle,

bigger money, but it's not scalable.

Whereas what you're saying is something that's more, productized, foot in the

door, and then on the base of that relationship you then start to anchor.

It's like peeling the onion.

Yeah.

That's what we find.

And we, we-- I spoke briefly about the Sales Wingman, which is a pr-product

we have, and on that we are able to demo reputation and Google reviews,

like a social replies, like a mini chat type thing that is easily done now.

we've got inbound voice AI, which we've managed to link to Google

Gemini, which is freaking unbelievable.

and some-- like a lot of these businesses just demo the voice AI and where do we

sign up?" and we've got abandoned cart system as well for e-commerce stores.

And each time after we get that win, we just get them on another

call and let AI do the selling.

they go through the

Like an out- outbound call, voice AI outbound?

no, it's inbound.

It's, it can do outbound as well, but this is more for, businesses that

were in the adventure park space.

My brother was getting 100 inbound calls per day, and none of them

were get an- getting answered because they were just so busy.

so we've just, we're just

that's an e- that's an easy win.

Yeah, it's an easy win, but you'd be surprised how many companies,

would kill for something like this.

They don't even know it exists yet, right?

so yeah, it's exciting times

Let's talk niches.

Like niches that slap versus niches that flop.

Where has this system crashed and where does it struggle?

Like any tweaks you make for home services versus med spa

versus insurance versus coaching?

Yeah.

as I was explaining before, it's not about making money on the first go.

The test is about seeing whether you wanna work with them and figuring out, whether

they've got what it takes to become your partner rather than the other way around.

Okay.

it depends, but like I would probably not wanna work with a client that's

not advertising to begin with.

so it's in any niche, it doesn't matter.

But if they're not generating new customers or new sales, via some sort

of like traffic funnel, like whether it be SEO or, Google, or whether they're

putting up billboards or, whatever.

As long as they've got consistent lead flow coming in and they're an

established business for more than, say, three years, then I'm willing

to give them a go on a test, even if they've got a small database.

Because all I need is a little Loom video that shows a person coming through and

responding to the two-line SMS and then making a booking or paying for a $97

training certificate, 'cause I can use that as an asset to be able to let them

know that something's possible here.

Or, I wanna show them that I'm invested in helping grow their business, and

I could say, "Listen, we, we-- you've only got 500 old leads, and look,

we've made a few sales, but I've just noticed that, you guys have a lot of

inbound calls and n- and they're not being answered outside of hours."

Immediately then you've got a little voice AI package you can sell

them, which is pretty hands-off.

AI does all of the work, okay?

So it's, it's not so much about the niche 'cause it works in

home improvements, it works in finance, it works in info products.

It works in low-ticket, training certificates like I just explained.

It works in, high-ticket services.

it works in mortgage, it works in solar, it works in, I can't-- Like tiny homes.

It, it works at events.

It works for, anything I can think of where people have a database of old leads.

'cause the win is the relationship first and the upsells and stuff second.

does that make sense?

No, it does, does a little sense.

And, Yeah, definitely makes me think about my model a little bit more as well.

that's not my only model, by the way, but yeah, it's,

It's not for everyone.

It's

Yeah

not for everyone, but it's takes me back to what I was explaining

about the hedge fund manager, right?

They've got a b- the, a business that wins or loses in any, any market, and

that's what I wanna try and achieve with my business so I can sleep at night,

with the hedge fund managers, that they would have to have some

credibility and reputation, so they would have to make… It's like a ratio.

The ratio has gotta be, I think in their mar- model, it's probably that's probably

a secret ratio, and if you go below that, then that's, you're not gonna get any, any

You still need to get results, right?

You still need to get results,

It's the average.

On average, we- we're up.

We're always up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the market beats most of the hedge fund managers anyway,

unless you're Warren Buffett.

It's all a big scam.

Let's not get into that though.

That's not now.

okay, so you figure out, this formula.

You know how it works well, but obviously you've had to, but

you've had to get to that point.

So what are some biggest fails that you've seen running this, either

yourself or somebody else, a client?

What broke, what you changed, and how agencies can avoid that flace- face plant?

Yeah.

it's interesting 'cause I see like I'm-- I'll be honest, I've sold…

This is an-- the book that we-- this is based on is an Amazon bestseller.

I think we've s- we're getting close to 50,000 copies, maybe

more, 50, 60,000 copies now.

This has sold a lot of copies and, a lot of people have been through this book

and, the biggest mistake I always see is people, 'cause what we give away in the

book is an agency website as well, right?

and guess what?

Guess what everyone does before-- Guess what everyone does first when

they, when they-- most people do first.

They go and build their agency website because they need to ha- you know, they

mess around with font colors and pages and making sure that there's a case

study on there and the case study's all right and then they send it to their

brother-in-law to make sure he critiques it and, suddenly it's four weeks down

the line and they haven't had a single sales conversation with the brother-in-law

who owns a mortgage company.

Okay?

'Cause they're too scared to kinda get started.

So the biggest mistake I make, and I don't think this is just for my offer,

it's for anyone, really getting started in the game, is that, the fear factor

about actually selling something that they believe in 'cause they don't trust

themselves, they don't trust the offer.

and that's why I like what we do as well, because you can't lose.

Okay?

You position it as that you wanna work.

if you're an experienced guy or an inexperienced guy, if you're

an experienced guy, you can say, position it like, "All right. We're

only working with co- companies that really know how to close."

Okay?

"So if that's not you, then let's not go ahead because…" And then I'm be-

I become the chooser, not the chosen.

On the other end of the scale, you got the, the new kid on the block

that's just started and they can say, "Listen, what have you got to lose?

I'm brand new, okay?

But like I'm taking all the risk here.

I'm only asking for 500 bucks.

Skin in the game.

If it doesn't work, then no harm, no foul.

Either way, it doesn't matter." Okay?

It's an offer that's very easy to sell and there's also really not

much that you can do wrong and nothing to be too scared about.

So my, my general-- if I can lead a horse to water but I can't make them drink.

And what I'm trying to do with what I teach and what I've written about in

this book is a s- is a system where people can just come in, send a message

to their brother-in-law mortgage broker, "Have you got any old leads? I've

got something to show you. and don't worry it's on a performance basis."

And get on a call and close him and get started, okay?

'Cause that's the first domino.

After that you're good to go.

Messing around with an agency website and getting it perfect is the biggest

mistake I make, procrastination and not actually selling something

and having a sales conversation and building a relationship with someone

and that's scary and I get it.

But y- if you don't do that then and you don't put your big boy or big girl pants

on then you- this isn't the game for you.

This is about getting uncomfortable and trying to sell something.

Does that help?

with something, yeah, no, that's great.

Yeah, and I resonate to, to that, to quite a lot of extent 'cause I am

that type of guy who's like, I like to have everything, all the ducks in a

row, make it look good and everything.

So I take a little bit longer on my end.

But,

You're doing okay

it's an o- ongoing internal conversation that

I always have with myself.

It's yeah, but you know, that's-- then there's also I'm not gonna

be apologizing for who I am and I just enjoy doing it that way.

Could I have had bigger business if I was different?

I could have.

I happy right now?

I, yeah, I'm happy.

It's growing.

It's not growing rapidly, but, but yeah, I think the big thing

with what you said is, confidence.

how do you boost that, build that confidence in what you're selling?

And if it's something that's easy and it's, and obviously this whole model,

it's, it's not complex to learn, it's not complex to fulfill, then yeah,

it makes a lot of sense to start with something like that because you can

do the student approach even, right?

You just approach the businesses, like you said, "Hey, I'm just starting

out. I'm, a young bloke starting an agency. Hey, I'd really if you give

me a chance on this." so you're not

Yeah, be honest.

you don't have to boast, you don't have to bullshit,

you're just being honest.

And honesty is,

Here's a little trick as well.

So you can say, you'd be the new guy, you can say, you can do the

demo with a guy and show them.

It's gonna cost you 500 bucks, that's it, to get started just

to scan the game type thing.

They're like, "Oh, yeah, I'm not sure about that. I don't

think this is the right time."

That's fine.

It's just that, when we-- if you do wanna come back to us, it's gonna be $5,000 to

get started because I'm brand new to this.

It's fi- it's 500 bucks.

That's it.

But if you don't wanna do it now, that's fine.

Just to let you know that if it's in a couple of months from now.

I've made offers to lots of other mortgage brokers in, in, in our city and, I just

wanna let you know that's the deal.

And that's fine.

I'll s- I'll see you later.

Oh, hang on.

let's have a conversation about this now.

do you know what I mean?

So it's a nice little objection handle there too

And if you wanted to be a real, like real, ballsy, then

you go, and if they go, "No, no worries, N8N, I'm not interested."

And you go like, "Yeah, no worries.

I'm just gonna go and see," and then you just mention the competitor down the road.

Yeah.

I don't like to-- that's ballsy.

I don't like to, be a prick about it because you never know where

that relationship might go or who they might know or who they might,

what might happen in the long run.

But I don't-- you know when you, you kinda have a bit of a bad taste, when

you say something and, I, I never get it right the whole time, but saying

something like that would leave a little bad taste in my mouth, And probably

ruin a relationship 'cause all about relationships as, as we've established

Yeah.

Tell us about the book

Yeah.

the book is about what we've spoken about today.

really, it teaches you how to, position the offer.

It te- it explains the offer, which hopefully if you're

listening, you'll also-- you'll know what the offer is by now.

it will teach you how to position the offer to be able to close the client

on the coffee date, and then after they-- and demo it like I explained.

it'll, it will teach you how to write the two-line SMS.

and then after that it will teach you how to build an integrated,

bot using HighLevel, with the two-line SMS pre-built into that.

So it will work and you just need to fill in the blanks for your niche and

develop the first message and the offer on the-- in the second message basically.

And then it'll just run like clockwork after that.

it comes with, like very extensive training on how to

s- how to set everything up.

It's pretty easy actually.

That's the other thing, right?

The book's written in 2024.

Okay.

This is-- And people say, "Why would I buy a book on AI in 2024?" Because

this is gonna work in 2028 and 2029.

It's SMS and AI is-- there, there's nothing complex about it.

It's not gonna get outdated.

It's not gonna get saturated.

and that's why, people when they say that, I'm like, "I'm not writing

another book on this because it's just gonna stay working as it is."

What if you-- I've just been food for thought, I

guess, my observation, right?

So the book is called "The Instant AI Agency." And,

let's plug it in for you guys.

So head over to highlevelexperience.com/instantaiagency,

just in one word.

highlevelexperience.com/instantaiagency to, to get to the book,

buy it, and all that.

Now, my observation, so like you said, so 2024, but the strategies are timeless

and they'll work and you know it.

But at the face value, I'm s- I'm seeing… Because

it's like the funnel, right?

The first thing you see is the hero image, then the headline.

The headline's gonna sell you on the next thing.

And at the face value, what I'm seeing is the label of the

book, "The Instant AI Agency."

And if I go to Amazon, then the next to it, somewhere on

that page, you'll see the year.

So I don't have that context of, that this is really timeless strategy.

I'm just… You know what, I think, Alex Hormozi says it.

It's yeah, it's the same offer.

We just skin it.

Every week we just do a different skin on it.

I don't know,

Yeah.

you're right, and it's an objection.

when I'm explaining myself and explaining how the timeless

nature of the book, right?

People understand it and get it.

and I have-- I've handled that objection because, obvious.

But if s- if someone's looking at it for the first time, it is a problem.

so it's something that we have thought about.

what I'm probably gonna do at some point in time is re-skin it

and lead with this whiskey thing.

So I'm gonna teach people how to get the coffee dates and h- and what to say, and

then the next bit will be how to position that offer and close the bigger clients.

I think that's eventually where it's gonna go.

So if you're listening to this podcast and you think that's a good idea, then

leave us a comment or something, because that's, I think, where it's heading

Brilliant.

Dan, thank you so much for jumping on.