Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (03:01):

And, um, and so I got mad respect for, for, uh, Mr. Kyrie Oliver, the founder of influx interactive. How are you doing today, man? I'm excited to have you on the show. Thanks for being here, Kari. Thanks

Kyree Oliver (03:13):

Guys for having me. I'm happy to be on.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (03:15):

So you have an incredible story. I'd love just to get the audience a little bit up to speed about like, how did you come from what, you know, what you're doing before and how did you end up here where we're at today?

Kyree Oliver (03:27):

Yeah, well, it, it doesn't make sense. Um, I played football in college. I was a division one athlete. I went to university of Idaho. Um, ended up moving home after a while, helped my friend run his gym. And then he and I actually both started working with Brendan Burchard at the same time. Anybody who doesn't know, it's kind of like a junior Tony Robbins, but focus a little bit more in the business space. Um, and we just started volunteering at his events. We went to one event and one of his right hand ladies said, we need bigger dudes for the front of the room because we're going to grow the events and we don't want people acting crazy. And so my friend who is an ex NFL player, I'm an ex college football player. We both just started attending all his events in Northern California, which is where I grew up.

Kyree Oliver (04:17):

And that same friend book started his speaking career. I started doing public speaking and, uh, he'd hired a marketing company, the same friend, um, probably like six months. He's paying him like 3,500 a month and then 1500 a month in ad spend. And it was just kind of to grow a brand. He didn't really have anything to sell yet. And I think they had gotten him to like 30,000 followers on Facebook. And I started making fun of him one day because he had 30,000 followers and anything he would post would get like seven to 10 or 12 likes on it and nothing past that. And so I just started saying, Hey, maybe time to look into something else because people obviously aren't, aren't responding to what you, what you're currently putting out. And then it kinda got serious. Like, Hey man, do you even know what they're doing?

Kyree Oliver (05:04):

Do you have any way to check that they're actually being beneficial to you? And he said no. And so I started looking in at Facebook insights and, uh, saw that they were buying like clicks and followers from the Philippines and probably just pocketing the rest of his money. And so I just told him, Hey, fire them, let me try to figure this thing out. And if I can pay me a few hundred bucks a month, um, and I, at the same time I was interviewing a lot of people. I was really trying to figure myself out after college, after anybody who's played sports or especially high level of sports. When you leave, you have this weird identity crisis of I'm no longer Kyrie the athletes. So I'm who am I now? And so my remedy for that was I'm going to talk to as many people as possible about their lives, what they've done, right, what they've done wrong, what they love, what they hate, what they regret, um, and try to get a really good view for myself.

Kyree Oliver (06:00):

And I realized as I was helping this friend market himself, you make people feel understood. Therefore they seek to understand, and it's kind of this reciprocal thing back and forth. And probably after maybe six months, I started to think, um, I learned about Facebook ads and kind of just heard about it and then started wondering whether that could transfer over. Can I get somebody to make a purchasing decision based on their belief systems, based on their identity, based on how they relate to themselves in the world around them. And, uh, I started going to like seven, eight figure businesses and just saying, Hey, let me run your ads for you. If you can guarantee me an ad spend of like 25 to $35,000 a month, I'll run your ads for $500. And I did that for like 18 months. And I think when I picked my head up, I'd done like 24 mil.

Kyree Oliver (06:52):

And I thought that was okay. And then I looked at all, the influencers in the marketing space are doing like two or $3 million. And we're making millions talking about doing two or $3 million in revenue. And, uh, it was very, very confusing at first because I didn't think I was good at what I did. I thought I was okay. And I realized that just like the standard for excellence was very low in this space. And coming from athletics, the standard for excellence is really high. And so a really easy way for me to come in and just say, I'm going to outwork. And hopefully I'll perform mostly other people in this space and make them look really bad.

Zach Johnson (07:30):

Okay. So let me get this straight. You went around telling people, if you give me 20 or $30,000 a month in spend, I'll charge you $500. I'm missing. I feel like I'm missing something here. You were just like, literally that was your retainer. $500.

Kyree Oliver (07:43):

I was living in my apartment in Chandler, Arizona. My rent was 1400 and like, I'd have to go hustle the day my rent was due because I had to like buy dog food the day before. And I was a little bit below. I didn't,

Zach Johnson (07:56):

Meanwhile, you're managing like hundreds of thousands of dollars in meetings.

Kyree Oliver (07:59):

Yeah. Yeah. I got like five or six companies to say, yeah. So I was making like 2,500, three grand a month. I wasn't doing well, but I was learning really fast. I was pulling like 16, 18 hour days locking myself in my apartment. I'll talk to him, talking to anybody wild man, that athlete in you definitely gave you some killer fricking skills for this afterwards. That's for sure, man. There was so much crossover and I was up for it now though. Right care. I mean like we're getting paid today.

Zach Johnson (08:33):

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Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (09:49):

Any additional work, check it out@funneldash.com. So there's, so some of the folks listening are agencies, and they're always cares about, you know, the, the high level operators, right, that are doing everything themselves and how much leverage is in that, right? Because most people say stack on the client's churn and burn hire media buyers, but you have some really deep, you know, client relationships. So I don't know how much you're comfortable sharing here, but maybe for the other agencies here, like peel back the onion a little bit. I was like, what really is possible as you went from, you know, completely and utterly undercharging to really creating a model that works for you and, uh, your clients.

Kyree Oliver (10:34):

Yeah, it's all just been a learning process. I mean, I'm 26 right now. I started doing this when I was 21. Um, started the interviewing stuff when I was 19. And so it was just really like molding and shaping. I was with a business partner for like six months and then we stopped working together and I built up a team of six. I thought I wanted to do the agency route for a minute. And then I realized quality control was a huge issue with the agency route. And it's kind of a built-in issue when you're not the person who's doing the thing, that thing sometimes gets left undone. Um, and so I just really, I saw one of my friends who did like a little boutique agency and he had like one or two employees and I thought I want to do something like that. And then still quality was an issue. So I just said, Hey, I'm going to do it myself. I have the results compared to again the market. And so I'm just going to lean all the way into leverage. I'm gonna leverage my time. I'm gonna leverage my talent and I'm going to get paid really well per project so that I don't have to manage so many projects.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (11:40):

I love that. I love that. So should we get into it? What do you think, Dylan? And I'm ready to cut this one. All right, man. Let's hear it. What's, what's a rich ad. It's working for you right now.

Kyree Oliver (11:57):

Um, one of our, what my e-com clients is doing really well, um, I won't say what it is, but it's in the sports niche. Um, they just launched six weeks ago. We launched our first campaign. Um, we're spending about 120 grand a month and so far, so about six weeks in, um, we've spent probably about 200 K and I'd say, I think we've made like 1.4 back. Ooh. Yeah.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (12:31):

Talk to me, tell me more. Is that to me?

Kyree Oliver (12:36):

Uh, so again, my background's in human behavior, human psychology. Why did we do the things we do? Why do we believe the things we believe? And I use that information and I literally sit here at my desk, in my office with my eyes closed when I'm starting up a project. And I really start to dig into who is this person and what do they need to hear right now to do what we desire for them to do for us, which is purchase a product or create a subscription. And so like with sports, you start to think, I think about the kids in high school who were like never on the basketball team, but loved everything basketball. And what else are they interested in? What else is their life look like? Um, what do they believe to be true about themselves? All of them believe that they could have gone to Yuan.

Kyree Oliver (13:20):

You know, if, if this hadn't happened or if they hadn't gotten hurt or whatever, even though they never tried out for the team, that was part of their identity was like, I could have done it had I had, I attempted. And so you give people this vision of that ideal lifestyle for themselves and they purchase based on believing that about themselves. Um, not some people go towards the negative. Some people go towards like people's fears and insecurities to sell, and I try to stay away from that as much as possible. I just really don't want to deal with the, uh, the moral and ethical burden that I've seen other people go through when they promote products based on fear and, uh, and lack. And then I talk to them behind the scenes and they're miserable and they can't figure out why. So I've always tried to keep my conscience clear on that side. So I like, again, I like catering to people's beliefs. I like catering to who you think you are and finding a product or a service that matches that ideal self. And then talking to you, like your ideal self and making sales off.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (14:26):

You're like the guy that's just like gonna just reach into somebody's soul and just like make their heart beat, dude. Like, even, even like, I don't know who your clients are, but like I've seen, you know, some like sometimes I pay attention to my feet sometimes not, but I was just pulling up some of the stuff that you know, that you post on Facebook. Um, and there's like some gold on this stuff. He's just like heart, heart, you know, just life reflecting moment. Uh, stopping posts where you're like, this is, this is crazy. You're like Mo August. You're like, make sure you never success your way into apathy. Like what, Oh my gosh, like who's dropping leads. I'm going to probably Kyrie the prophet. I feel like, um, there was another one. I was just, when it was before this, I was looking at another one before the show. You're like a lot of people run around driving Chrysler, 300 businesses swearing up and down that it's a rolls Royce Phantom to your customers, but branding won't fix that bad business problem. I do this just like, this is so good. Last one. I'm going to stop. Just talking to you about tear you down here on the poor right here.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (15:40):

I believe every human has sort of genius in, uh, what's has some sort of genius inside of them. Most of us just ruin it by trying to be somebody else. I'm just going to go cry in my closet right now. So like, dude, if you're, if you're, uh, if you're putting like that much like deep soul searching thought into your client's ad campaigns is your Facebook posts. Uh, and imagine that, that you probably know your, your customers, audiences and customers better than, than probably they do

Kyree Oliver (16:13):

Inside and out. Well, I usually have to tell them who their audience is when we get started here to think your audience is, and then let's disrupt all of that and all the branding courses that you've taken and really dig into who needs what you have

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (16:29):

And are these prettiest out. I imagine it's a pretty established businesses that think they have their buyer personas, locked and loaded. And then you come in, like here's a curve ball.

Kyree Oliver (16:38):

I think it's like 50, 50 man. Um, I work with a lot of like new ideas because I really enjoy the new ideas and they got some investor capital or they're transitioning from something else where they have some capital to throw it ads. And, uh, they know who to go to, to, to make it work now as opposed to a year and a half now after burning through a few other people. Um, so I'd say it's probably about 50 50 with established businesses versus, Hey, here's an idea. Can we run with it?

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (17:08):

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have this new thing called add card and add capital will hit you up on it. After we have some like game changing ideas and thoughts about how we want to fund people's ad spend. So that's a problem with the show deal and we just meet all these amazing marketers. And I like, I'm like, Hey, Kyrie, you know, it's 500 bucks a month, right? Is that, um, man, uh, if I could just hire all of them, that'd be amazing. Um, dude, so good. Such good stuff. Uh, I want to know that you're not perfect though. Tell me, tell me about a poor ad, man. Tell me, but don't tell me like, w we had, uh, we had somebody on, they was like, it was like this humblebrag. He's like, well, it was ad campaign that I thought it was bad, but turned out to be really good. And then, so we ended up making money on it, but that's like my worst stuff. And then we get agencies on. We actually just kind of tell them to stop. We were like, won't even let them do this. Like, yeah, I don't know, man. Like I don't, I just don't have anything, you know, that's really losing right now. I'm like, all right, well, you can't be on the show.

Zach Johnson (18:13):

I only hit home runs. You know,

Kyree Oliver (18:17):

You're not here. Those people, I always ask them to show me their bank account. Oh really? Like in real time, like let's hop on zoom. Don't don't show me the screenshot that you bought off of Fiverr of somebody else's campaign. You open up your ad account and show me what you're actually doing. Because when I go into the back end of some of these gigantic businesses and realize they're struggling to maintain like a 1.3 X return, it's hilarious. When I see the owner of those companies posting online, how incredible their eight figure businesses, not realizing it takes eight figures in spend to make the little bit more of eight figures that they're making. Oh my gosh. It's sad.

Zach Johnson (19:00):

Yeah. I've definitely heard some birds out there. Yeah. We spent roughly, you know, 1.2 million on ads had a killer return. Walk me with 30,000 profit. Like, wait,

Kyree Oliver (19:10):

Those are called e-com sellers. Yeah. Great man. We're making like five, 6%.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (19:18):

Yeah. Oh my gosh. All right. Tell me what's what's not working.

Kyree Oliver (19:26):

Yeah, actually I just, uh, refunded a client shoot three weeks ago. Um, and I actually did retainer and some of the ads spent, I think I split the ad, spend back with them, um, because they have,

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (19:41):

How does that work? Uh, how do you, why are you splitting that spend with your clients? So I need to first know this.

Kyree Oliver (19:46):

So I, I run a few businesses with them. Um, I run a few of their different ads and they had one of those great ideas that I got behind and I said, Hey, this thing's going to absolutely blow up, put money behind it. And let's go. And I think I ran, we ran ads. I think we gave it like seven or eight weeks and it literally just wasn't taking off. Um, it was in a market that's really, it's difficult to find the buyers. I usually tell people all the time, like, you know, can we market this thing? And I say, as long as we're marketing to anybody, except for men over 45. Yes, because men over 45, just aren't on Facebook and Instagram as much as everybody else in the world. Um, and this was one that I really believe could take off and I was behind it and we got on, uh, horribly. Like I think, I don't think we went negative, but we were close in like net. We were probably negative. Um, we, we, I don't even think they spent that much. It was maybe 20 grand that we've spent on it. Um, maybe made 24 back and again, after costs, we were, we were bad. And so I reformed,

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (21:05):

We were bad

Kyree Oliver (21:08):

And I don't, it's not often, cause it's not often something that I can pinpoint and saying, Hey, this is just something I wasn't able to do. Um, and obviously as a, as an agency or as an ad run, or you're trying to mitigate that from the front end, if I go in and look at your sales page and that's garbage, I'm not going to say, yeah, let me run traffic to the sales page. I'm going to send you to my guy who will make your sales page convert that I worked well with that. I think you can do a good job with, I did a few years of that whole, let me only control the traffic and then blame everybody else for everything when it goes wrong. And it just doesn't, it doesn't fit what I want to do with my business right now. So again, I proved the rest of their process. I thought it was amazing. I tried running the ads and it just, like I said, it took a on us and I returned my retainer. And then I think I returned like six, seven grand of the ad spend again, caveat is I work on other projects and I make a lot of money from these clients. So it was something I was okay doing to save the relationship with the client.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (22:16):

How do you return six, seven grand when you're the one paying for the right debt for me as I work, what do you mean? Well, like, I mean, so they were facing,

Kyree Oliver (22:28):

They're paying for ad spend. Oh, got it. Okay. Yeah. So all my clients pay their own ad spend. Um,

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (22:33):

Got it. Okay. I thought you said you threw in some of your own money on ads. I'm like, dude, if that money was gone, I like you, you refunded what you spent and I'm like, how's this happening right now,

Kyree Oliver (22:42):

Again on a random client. There's absolutely no way. But if you're making, you know, triple what you just gave back on them or saving the relationship to be able to do that.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (22:54):

Oh yeah, yeah. Wow. Cray Cray. So, uh, man, I think, you know, we're getting into this, this next segment here. I I'm going to keep this brief, but like I think what you just talked about there of, it's not enough to just own the media side of it and the clicks and then just be like, Hey, if your funnel doesn't work, then it's on you. Right. You have to be thinking through about the funnel and the conversion and the media, um, these days to really be a competitive media buyer and marketing partner. I think the, I think the next step is kind of what, you know, what you basically just did right. Is, is really taking it into it's a financial conversation and you have, I mean, you play squid, put money on the line, right. And I think more and more traditional agencies that have just kind of lived and died by their retainers, that you're going to see a lot more, you know, that, that either help their clients, you know, manage more of their finances, more agencies that are getting more revenue share or upside in the businesses or agencies that are really just gonna put some of their own money on the line and, and uh, and you know, try to get more than $500 a month.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (24:21):

Yeah. So I wanted to use that as kind of a precursor transition. And this next piece is really around some financial principles of how you're thinking about, you know, things for yourself and also things for your clients. I love how simple you keep things. Um, you know, in the business I love, uh, just a complete and utter satisfaction with working with seven, eight clients and going deep with those and, um, staying focused on that. Right. And building expertise there versus, you know, just grabbing for straws on a lot of different areas. So, you know, in the, in the, in the frame of, you know, keep it simple. What are you learning in this space? Um, what, what, uh, what are some of the things that you could share with the audience?

Kyree Oliver (25:09):

Yeah. Well, for one, I want to say, I understand both ways of doing, I understand my way obviously, which is why I chose it and understand like the burn and turn route. I understand like you got bills to pay. You're trying to build a business and burn and churn is, is a way to do it. It's obviously never intentional, but a lot of when you have a higher volume of projects happening, do you have a higher volume that won't work. And again, I think there are inherent problems with that way of going about things. Uh, but you also hopefully learn quickly and learn to transition quickly. So I don't think there is necessarily a wrong way of structuring the business unless you're not making any money and you're not getting results for clients, but if you're doing one or the other, hopefully both. When I approach a project, I always approach it with like, when you're talking about structuring or putting skin in the game, you have to look at your level of business, um, your results based on the size of the, or compared to the size of the business that you're looking to take on.

Kyree Oliver (26:14):

So there's so many people, there's so many agencies who just want retainers and they retain to their way to whatever scale business they have. Then there's clients who want to only pay based on performance. And these two people butt heads all day long and all night long because the clients are tired of getting people who charge a retainer and don't produce results. And the agencies are tired of getting clients who don't want to pay for the work that needs be done for their project. And I think a lot of these people just there's a lot of friction between them. And so what I explain to people when they come asking me for like pricing and packaging is if your results, your previous results outweigh the size of business that's coming on. There's no way you need to be putting skin in the game up front.

Kyree Oliver (27:04):

They need to be paying a retainer. And that's my response. When people ask me if I'm, if I'm willing to do just a performance base, I'll say yes, and you have to be spending a minimum of $150,000 a month, and you have to show me proof of concept. Like you have to show me that there's people actually interested in who have bought at a pretty decent volume and be willing to put the ads from behind it. And then yes, I would love to take 15% of revenue minus aspect. And that scares almost all of them off because the yes and thing is one of the best things I learned in like sales negotiations, because you're not telling them you can't do it. You are saying, yes, I can do this. And here's what I require. And typically the requirement is above what they're able to do, which is the exact same thing that they were trying to do to you.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (27:56):

Oh, this is gold, man. I love this dude. I think every agency in the world needs to hear negotiation strategy here for, uh, when a client says, Hey, can you do performance only?

Kyree Oliver (28:10):

I love it. When they ask me for performance. Absolutely. I'll do performance. Here's what you got.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (28:18):

Yes. But you're right. Like it's not, it's not a gimmick. It's really like, if you want to performance, you got to show me product market fit. You got to show me traction and you got to have marketing budget, right? Like to throw at it.

Kyree Oliver (28:33):

It's got to be based on your success. If you never been successful, take on clients for free. If you've never run a successful campaign and you don't have any proof start doing free for bigger companies, start writing sales pages for them. Start adding more to what you do. But if you have something to leverage, leverage the out of it.

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (28:53):

Hmm. I love it. How are you killed this, man? Thank you so much. You've been an amazing guests on the show. Tell me a little bit about what you're excited about next and, uh, where people can learn more and get in touch.

Kyree Oliver (29:06):

Next is Q4 black Friday and those holidays

Dylan Carpenter Speaker 4 (29:14):

That's

Kyree Oliver (29:14):

When we pay for the girlfriends new person, whatever.

Kyree Oliver (29:23):

Well, one, the biggest thing I would tell people is, again, if you identify as a marketer, human psychology is the best thing you're going to be able to do for yourself. I was telling these guys before we got on people, tactic themselves to death. You go on every group you buy every course on all the tactics to do. Your campaigns still don't work because you don't understand the people on the other end of the screen. So get in touch with those people. Literally, I have a lot of my clients literally reach out to them, email somebody who's bought your product and say, why did you buy my product? Reach out to somebody who got to the sales page and didn't buy and say, why didn't you buy my product? They're going to tell you because they have nothing to lose. They don't know you interview 20 people and get their information and tweak your process. Based on that same thing. As if you're selling your services as an agency, somebody says no to you. Please give them a follow up, send them a little gift for their time and say, I'd love to pick your brain about what part of us working together. Didn't work out for you, their ego around that Tyree.

Zach Johnson (30:34):

You're amazing. Thank you so much, man. Even in an Epic guest, we'll definitely have you back on the show. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Be happy. Thanks you guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich. Add more at podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich ad or ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or at.com/review. Thanks again.