Zach Johnson (00:05:58):

We had, you know, it took a while to get there with the show, I'll be honest, like the first, you know, a couple dozen of guests or, you know, they had like an agency arm and they had like a couple of things. And of course the agency like had no failures and no four ads. And so we had to like roast, you know, we had to just roast like random ads on the internet, which is great, but, uh, it there's so much more value when somebody is really willing to kind of, uh, pull back the curtain a little bit and, and share that, um, they do have some kryptonite that they're vulnerable to failures as failures. Okay, cool. Let's just get into that. Well, one of the things that I like, you know, what you're up to is, uh, you're, I feel like you're more aware than most of the F the financial side of your business.

Zach Johnson (00:06:48):

You know, I, I, um, there's a good article that came out last month by Andreessen Horowitz, and it's basically all about embedded financial products and financial services and how it can two to five X, the value of your customers. And one of the things that I love, what you're doing is you're starting to build that ecosystem for yourself, and it's starting to like, it's at the early like grounds and starting to shape. Um, but you're aware of it, right? And you're aware that like, Oh, you know, there are some opportunities here whether it's investing, you know, having those, you know, that financial arm as an investment arm to buy and acquire businesses, whether that's having an investment arm or access to capital to fund, you know, ads or inventory or projects, or bring in private lenders and private deals, or it's just, you know, having access to this, to, to, you know, spin up new projects and, um, and new brands and offers faster.

Zach Johnson (00:07:48):

That is exactly what we're trying to do with this show. It's obviously a play off rich dad, poor dad. And we love how thought that was an original concept. Yeah. There's something called rich dad, poor dad and no, bro. No, I think what he did was amazing. Like he, he does it like a ton of great financial education and it doesn't happen enough in our space of advertising and agencies. And we get so focused on the metrics and the campaigns and the CPAs, and it, there's a whole financial component that we're trying to highlight here. So I'm excited to dive into that. Um, but, uh, I'm also excited to hear about your failures, but let's kick off, uh, this rich ed Dylan, let's, let's get into what's what's working right now.

Dylan Carpenter (00:08:35):

[inaudible] Oh yeah. I mean, this, this is a super solid ad, especially with everything going on. I feel like it just pops. So, I mean, I'll go ahead and just read it. The copy itself just really calls out the audience, you know, Hey, president Trump needs our help to protect our great country from the radical left show, your support with this limited edition head. And you have to pull on there, which is a pretty new, so, I mean, this is a bad-ass ad. And I feel like with the times it's probably some fun targeting and fun copy to write. We'll go ahead and kind of break it down for us. Cause this has got to be

Maxwell Finn (00:09:04):

Sure. So we started realizing, um, about, I would say about a year and a half, two years ago, how powerful interactive content is in your marketing. Um, you know, meaning quizzes and polls and things, top of funnel that interact with your target audience and getting them to engage, share value, make micro-commitments, it's a really powerful, uh, marketing tactic and Facebook rolled out video poll ads. Um, about nine months ago, maybe a year ago when they put into beta. Um, but typical Facebook, they rolled a feature out in the most useless way. It was only available for like traffic and reach object, like really weird objectives. And it was, it was very specific to how you could use it. They've now opened it up to conversion objectives. So it's actually useful for marketers that are watching that show. Um, and what's great about it is just out of the gate that ad you saw, we were already running pretty much that exact same ad and getting, you know, a 1.2, 1.5% click through rate on it, which was profitable.

Maxwell Finn (00:10:08):

Once we put that video poll feature on it, we're now getting four to 5% click through rates on it, because think about it the, the way somebody clicks through an ad right now is they see the ad. They see promoting a product, promoting a solution to a problem and they click buy now or shop now, learn more, sign up whatever the call to action is. Whereas if you can put a, a more thought provoking, engaging question on it, where it's, you know, yes, no, or whatever the choices are, it dramatically increases the likelihood somebody that's going to click on it because it's less salesy. It's more about them and their opinion and their feelings. You can push more of an emotional button with your copy. Um, and that's really what this, this project has been all about. It's a really interesting brand to run ads for, especially as somebody that's kind of apolitical, like I I'm pretty down the middle when it comes to politics.

Maxwell Finn (00:11:00):

So learning this audience and learning what they resonate with, what words resonate, what triggers them and stuff like it makes creating copy and creating questions really easy. Um, and so that's, what's beautiful about this is like people, especially in politics, and this is all about knowing your audience, it's all about knowing, like what do they care about? What drives them? What motivates them? People really want their voice to be heard. People really want to share their opinion. They really want to feel like somebody cares about their opinion. And so if you can create a format that encourages that, and you're the person facilitating it, it builds a really interesting connection out of the gate because you're that person that's giving them the platform to share their voice. And you say, I care about your voice. Right. Um, and then you're able to present an offer.

Maxwell Finn (00:11:52):

That's directly related to the question you just asked. And the cool thing about the video poll ads is, you know, I'm, I'm kind of lazy with this ad and, and both options go to the exact same place because frankly like, frankly, you know, with who we're targeting the manual was saying, no, I'm not going to have president. Trump are pretty small. I think it was 99% when I clicked this showed. Yes. But, but when you're running, you know, another product, like you could have two options that go to two different offers based on their answer, which again like is great because it increases your success rate. Like if now you're not limited to a single destination, if now you have two options, so you can present two problems, two solutions to an audience and have two pathways. That's pretty powerful as a marketer, because with most ads, you're basically like, I hope that the way I'm presenting this problem and the solution that I'm offering and the angle and the way I'm offering it is going to trigger and relate to the person on their side.

Maxwell Finn (00:12:53):

Chances are, it's not going to trigger most. People's not going to relate to most people to me, that small pocket. So if you can double that, it's, it's pretty big, especially if you're like breakeven doubling it, you know, all of a sudden it makes it more profitable. How, how long was this ad running actually? Was it something that is knocked out for a month? Has it been running six months consistently? I'm kind of curious on the kind of creative fatigue with this type of, uh, so this, uh, I think we launched this one like three weeks ago. So this is, this is like new, we just started, started running these and that's why I was excited to share it. Cause I haven't really talked about it anywhere, this diverse place and talking about it. Um, what was interesting though, is that exact ad had been running for a lot longer. So we literally took an ad that was already working and probably should've fatigued and we put it into this new ad unit and all of a sudden CPA strop, and it got us another life out of it, which is pretty cool. So like instead of having to do a creative refresh, you can almost do like an ad unit refresh where you're changing up the actual ad unit itself, not really the creative of the copy, but just changing the way it's kind of presented and get that extra boost out of it.

Zach Johnson (00:13:57):

So cool, man, I I've seen that for book funnels. Uh, we've been looking at this for the rich and poor ed book. Um, do you want an ebook or do you want a physical book? Right. And um, also, you know, we've kind of starting to play with this ourselves with ad card, right. Is, you know, you're a similar prospect in the sense that you have your, you have an agency cap on sometimes and then you have a brand owner cap on. And so the way that we talk to agency owners is totally different than brand owners. And, uh, and it's interesting to see like, you know, uh, those kind of jumped ship a little bit and it's, it's awesome that you can actually pull those off

Zach Johnson (00:14:37):

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Zach Johnson (00:15:37):

Check out ad card@funneldash.com. What I want to know is how did you get into bobbleheads? Because I thought your whole business like was off this, these coins. Yeah. So like w who came up with this idea of like, Oh, we need a bobblehead and we're gonna, we're gonna start, this is going to get a second product, a second of the coins.

Maxwell Finn (00:15:57):

So we, I mean, currency has been our bread and butter. Um, that's we did in 2016, that's what we started with this. And again, we wanted to expand skews and expand our product line. The challenge though, is the market's super saturated. Like there there's a diamond dozen people selling, you know, hats and shirts and pins. And like, it's so easy to do that. The currency is unique because it's really us currency in order to do it. You actually need to hold a significant amount of cash with banks to get, because your inventory is money, right? So if you want to sell, you know, a million, $2 bills, that means you need to have $2 million in cash sitting somewhere, essentially. Um, so we have a partner that we worked with for years. That actually is one of the few people that does this and holds, you know, million dollars in this bank, a million dollars, this bank, which is crazy, right.

Zach Johnson (00:16:49):

Wait, wait, wait, I want to talk about this for a second, because this is, this is a lot like my business over it at Capitol, right? There's people that basically have money in banks and it's a little bit different. Where are we going to lend it out? But like, this is, there's literally people that like, this is their niche. And they're like, I keep money, like a lot of money in banks so that max can thrive with proud Patriots. This is a thing.

Maxwell Finn (00:17:13):

Yeah, it's a mix. So there's, um, basically there's a few players in this space that have the ability to print on us currency. So they have all the infrastructure, they have printers that can print right on the $2 bills and coins and stuff. And their inventory is Eisenhower dollars, JFK, half dollars, $2 bills. And that's what they're printing on. But in order to get the clean coins, right, the uncircled weighted coins and bills, like you can't just go into a bank and say, can I get a million dollars in $2 bills, right. Or can I get a million, you know, $2 or a dollar coins? Um, so you need to have relationships with different banks that can get you this uncircled currency in order to do that, you need to hold certain reserves with those banks, um, to make the deal work. And you also need a crap ton of insurance and stuff like there it's, it's crazy that the guys' facility is like an unassuming warehouse in the middle, like, you know, in a weird place, like nobody would ever know that that's like basically a mint in there, the guy's office. He has like a million dollars of like bills stacked up and like, uh, it's crazy. Um, but anyway, so yeah, that, that's, it's a cool, it's a cool product line. Um, and what's money. Money is the inventory. That's just like, yeah.

Speaker 6 (00:18:33):

Money and money is the

Maxwell Finn (00:18:34):

Inventory, which also is great from a marketing perspective because it's like, you're, you're selling something with tangible value. It's, it's real currency. Again, we're selling, we're selling $2 bills for a lot more than they're worth, but still there isn't, there aren't many things that you can buy where if you wanted to, you could just take that thing that you bought and go to the bank or go to the store and use it to purchase it, which is kind of cool. It's like, if you ever needed to, you could take your $2 bill collection and you can go and use those $2 bills to buy something and put it back in the bank. So it's from a marketing angle. The real us currency has been huge for a lot of people in this space are like tokens. Like they're just making like metal stamps with Trump's face on it and stuff.

Maxwell Finn (00:19:16):

So there's only a few that do real currency. Um, but anyway, so the way we've been expanding that business is we're consistently rolling out new designs to print onto the bills and coins. So we obviously have one working on right now for the debate. So anytime there's like new stuff in space force came out, we had a space force bill that crushed. So we'll call it the new design. We test a lot. And, you know, I would say every few pop and they'll do, you know, a few hundred grand in sales. They'll like, have a good pop. And then they kind of taper off because there's a set audience for currency. It's not, it's not a massive audience. People that buy these things, but they're great gifts, people that are collectors like to buy them. Um, so yeah, that was a way we were expanding our skews, but we wanted to diversify a little bit.

Maxwell Finn (00:20:02):

We didn't want to be like a single skew or a single product category company. And, you know, we get because of the brand, we built pitched product all the time. Like, Hey, I have this thing and this Trump thing and this, you know, Republican thing. And we had connected with a guy who did a Trump bobblehead in 2016 and he crushed it, but he's not like a marketer or an entrepreneur just made a mold he's you can make molds of bobble heads and did really, really well that like, Hey, I'm going to do this again for 2020, but I have no idea really what I'm doing. And I'd like to sell a lot more of them. So can we do a deal? So we we've done a deal with him. We get an exclusive deal where he makes the bobble heads and we put them on Amazon, our store. We basically get the rights to do all the e-com distribution for the, the products. Um, and it, it's, it's a little different because we've been doing, we've had this luxury and this goes to like our financial, um, and hopefully it's, I can still can still hear me. Um, cause he turned into a map, which is, you're a good looking map there. Um,

Zach Johnson (00:21:14):

So the thing with the

Maxwell Finn (00:21:15):

Currency is we've been so fortunate cashflow wise because like, it is essentially print on demand. Like he can make as many know he can make a certain amount, ship them out directly. Now we're moving a lot to film it, our own film on center, just for other reasons. But like we have like net 45 payment terms, like just ridiculous payment terms with him. So we're just so cashflow positive. The Bible is a little different because they're, you know, they got man like mold, Bible ads and design, it gets it's a lot more intensive. Right. And so we actually have to, you know, get into the inventory game now, which is a little different, but we still have great terms with them. I think we just, we ordered, you know, like I think 20,000 to do a test and the test crushed. And so we put like another order of like 50,000 and right behind it. Um, and like I told you now where now that we saw the bobbleheads are crushing on a pre-order, we're able to shift them to now actually for sale starting in a week, but should increase conversion rates. Um, now we're expanding that. So now we're like, Hey, there's a sleepy, Joe, Bob they're coming out, which is him in pajamas that I think will do really well at the test that actually, as we speak, we have our buyer starting to the ads for that. Um, so that's really where it came from. And again, it's

Zach Johnson (00:22:29):

Weird thing. Cause like, if I'm, it's so funny because it's just like, it's so who you are like it literally for the last several years, you've literally just had action figures behind you and like Baba, like you're actually selling them to, Oh my God, that looks Hey. Oh my gosh. That is so funny. Yeah.

Maxwell Finn (00:22:53):

It's an interesting business. It's, it's an eyeopening business. It's like, I tell all my friends this cause then I, I really stay out personally. I just stay out of politics because this is the reason like we've run so much spend on political ads over the last four years. And literally to the point where we've probably, I mean, our ads probably generated millions, not tens of millions of comments over the years and I'll every now and then I'll go through them, look at the comments. And I, can I tell you what it's like when they share these long, the posts about how stupid Trumpers are stupid Biden, Israel, super Republicans are Democrats. Aren't all the. And they list all the reasons I tell. Like I have never once on a single comment on a single ad, seen somebody list up all the reasons why capitalism is stupid or socialism is stupid. And the person on other end say, you know what? I changed my mind and I've been a diehard socialist my entire life. But your argument on capitalism really convincing on this Facebook ad. So now I'm a capitalist or vice versa today, except for today, we're going to do this.

Maxwell Finn (00:24:01):

It's never happened. It's never happened. And I, and I don't think it ever will happen. Um, so I always just feel bad when I see people like spend so much time writing these posts to like the data's in and the data shows that you have no chance. You're apathetic nuts, man. Well, okay. A little bit. Let's let's, let's dive into this poor out here, max. Isn't perfect. I just, I want to know, I want to know its failures. It's a good part. It's a good part.

Speaker 7 (00:24:33):

What's been recent. Maybe something crashed and burned. Maybe it was in the past a strategy or an

Maxwell Finn (00:24:37):

Offer. Let's let's at least the beast

Speaker 7 (00:24:40):

A little bit.

Maxwell Finn (00:24:45):

Let's do it so we can spend the next 40 minutes on, on losers. Um, you know, the, the big thing that's really bombed for us multiple times. And I think this will be useful for a lot of people watching, because it's still a strategy that's talked about. So frequently we have lost our shirts numerous times on free plus shipping, like, like free plus shipping, especially for, well, we'll send the prime Patriots lane and we can talk about more, more failures too, if you want, but like free plus shipping. I know here's the thing about it. Like we've run free plus shipping for some big names as an back when we did agency stuff and those big names sometimes can motivate and inspire others to do those strategies, the time of books for a second, or like what, what is there? So, um, I don't want to give the specifics cause I don't want to throw anybody in the bus, but like, um, but like specifically for our brand, for coin, we've tried to do like a free coin, a free bill, things like that.

Maxwell Finn (00:25:49):

Um, you know, just pay for shipping, but we we've done other physical products, other brands in space that do physical products, lower ticket, um, physical products. The problem is people see that while they're doing, they're doing big revenue with free plus shipping. What they don't see is that these companies have these really special backend deals in place that make it economical, right? Meaning they have some type of co-reg deal in place where they're selling that buyer lead for five bucks, 10 bucks, 15 bucks. So you might try to do the same thing that they're doing and think will I, the same, same models into our products. They're making it work, but you don't have the other component, which is some person that's really good at monetizing data. That's in your industry. That's willing to backstop your losses. And so because people don't see that they just get into anything, Hey, free plus shipping, I'm going to build a, you know, a multi-million dollar funnel giving away a product for free.

Maxwell Finn (00:26:48):

Um, we've tried it numerous times without that backend co-reg kind of deal in place and it just doesn't work out. Like, I don't know many people nowadays, I ver maybe a handful that actually are running anything similar to that with any real volume. So part of it is it's not really economic on the front end. The other part is the quality difference is massive. Like what's made our business. I think so effective on the collectible side is we don't do that anymore. Like we, all of our ads now are going to premium prices. So we're saying, and we keep, we test prices all the time. Like we'll throw out a test. What if we charged $2 more? What if we charged $4 more? What do we charge? $6 more. What's the last density there. So we'll sell, you know, this Bible and for this is the 49 99, the, you know, the bills we sell for 29 99, $2 bill, we sell for 29 99.

Maxwell Finn (00:27:45):

And what's amazing about that is the person that's willing to spend that amount of money on a product is willing to spend more on average on the initial order and come back and buy again. And again, like we've seen so many, we have a Slack notification that comes into one of our channels for this offer and any kind of thing. There's like a 500 plus water. It's like a notification comes in. We have multiple a day. Like we had somebody yesterday place a $2,500 order, $2,500 on our highest priced product is the Bible ed, you know, in the thirties or forties. So like they'll come in and they'll buy every SKU Avenue, Shopify store, they'll buy all the upsells to buy multiple things. And that happens like we'll have a few thousand dollars plus orders, right? Every week they come in. And so that's, that's the thing I think a lot of people don't think about is, Hey, I'm starting this offer.

Maxwell Finn (00:28:40):

I want to scale. I want to do all this revenue and stuff. But like, what we're focused on is, well, I want to build an asset, right? We did the offer thing in 2016. Offers are great. If you scale, you can make some good cash, but then they disappear. And then you're back to the drawing board. Like I want to build something that we can sell, sell for 20, 30, $40 million in a few months. Like that's what I want to do. And to do that, you need to focus. What are what's a buyer going to look for? What's a buyer going to care about. Do you think a buyer there's going to value our company at a higher valuation? If we have a hundred thousand customers who on average and $75 in there or shorter and over 150 over the lifetime, or do you think they're going to, you know, a value of company higher than it was a hundred thousand customers on average spent $7 and don't come back. Like, that's what we started thinking about. And that mind shift was huge for us instead of chasing initially scale and initial volume, focusing more on building an asset and what the quality looks like. I actually bought my first free plus shipping really early in the past a week

Dylan Carpenter (00:29:42):

From snow is when you're speaking about that, there's some lip balm cream and I'm like, Hey, well, why not? You know, but I mean, I've, I even tested a couple of those and man, it usually just brings in low quality traffic once you kind of finished that. So, I mean, it's, it causes more harm than good for sure. So, I mean, that's, that's a killer.

Maxwell Finn (00:30:01):

I'm surprised at the texture. I didn't know Josh was running any, any free plus shipping.

Dylan Carpenter (00:30:05):

It was an email. Yeah, I saw it and I was like, dude, I always wake up a chapel lips. It's like, why not?

Maxwell Finn (00:30:11):

It is a great product. They just, they shouldn't be given away for free at all. As I say that they sent us a big box of samples for free. So it's just a little hypothetical there.

Zach Johnson (00:30:22):

That's awesome, man. So let's move into this last segment mean. I want to dive into some financial principles when it comes to advertising and um, I think there's really two big, uh, parts that I really want to dive into is obviously, you know, how you guys negotiate terms with your partners on the agency side or how you're doing this, you know, on the brand side. But I also want to get into, you know, how you're looking at, um, starting to network with other investors and, you know, your, your appetite is starting to get a little bit more sophisticated in terms of like what to do, you know, with outside money. And I think a lot of people, you know, kind of start out, it's just like, I'm never going to take on investor dollars, like ever, and I'm going to own 110% of my business. And uh, it's really cool to see kind of people graduated of like, Hey, look, if it's the right terms and it's the right fit and it can be deployed in the right way. Um, that's, that's smart money is what they say. So walk us through how you're thinking about things.

Maxwell Finn (00:31:26):

Sure. So w we'll break this down in two parts. So we'll start with the first is just how we're looking at performance offers and just to be clear. So on the agency side, we really not, we really, we don't do any, um, typical agency deals anymore. Meaning percent of ad spend, um, everything we do is performance-based and, uh, and there's a lot of reasons why we do that. I won't, I won't or you guys with it, cause it's not, not this topic unless we want to talk about it after, um, what we, what we realized is let's focus on developing deep, deep relationships with a handful of performance partners instead of trying to work with every network out there, which is where I think a lot of people, when they get into affiliate marketing forums, marketing, they just go to all the networks. And there's, there's a lot of great networks out there, right?

Maxwell Finn (00:32:14):

But there's also a lot that are just volume plays and they really don't care too much about building deep relationships with our affiliates because it's, it's a churn again, they've shown many coming in. It's like, why would I give you special terms or work with you? Because I have a thousand other guys sign up every single day to, to run ads for me. So we incense said, let's okay, let's build deep relationships with two or three networks that are more boutique that are more selective. Let's prove to them that we can do volume that we can actually produce. And then let's start going to them and saying, Hey, we want to be more exclusive with you guys. We want to work at a deeper level with you. We want to be your go-to testing partner. We want to be transparent with data and share with you.

Maxwell Finn (00:32:58):

What's working creative-wise is working audience-wise so you can bring that to the advertiser and bring that to other partners in order to do that, we need some things. And one of those things is we need basically a dedicated law school Briony offer. So we've gotten to the point now where we don't go out of pocket to test offers, which is huge, right? Because when you're, when you're in the performance world, it is a numbers game. So most offers that you test are going to fail. And so if you can get guaranteed loss pools, you can test more rapidly, more frequently without actually having to put the cash out there to do that.

Zach Johnson (00:33:38):

And I would also say that, well, one, I think this is one of the best things that's happened in the world of performance marketing affiliate marketing a long time is idea of going deeper and this idea of loss pools. Second thing I want to say is that I think nine times out of 10, the brand owner is willing to lose more money on testing then the affiliate or the performance

Maxwell Finn (00:34:01):

It's partner, always, almost always.

Zach Johnson (00:34:05):

And so, you know, your affiliate is going to throw down like two, three grand, five grand, 10 grand. If you're James van, Elswick maybe 40 grand or a couple of hundred grand. And so, uh, if he's really into it, but, um, but yeah, I think that it's, uh, yeah, the, the, the brand owners committed, right. And there, uh, it's just such a no brainer man. And it's like, Oh, a great way to de-risk the business. And I think this innovation has really happened. I want to say, like this year, I want to say like, in the last like 12 months where, um, where there's been so many agencies, you know, on the retainer model where this is like this, this is the, the, the vehicle, if you will, to get you into performance marketing. And if you're like an agency listening to this and you're like, I want to be a max Finn when I grow up and, or like, you're just like, I can't get away from the retainer model.

Zach Johnson (00:35:06):

I really want to get into performance, but like, I don't have the bank role right. To, to get into it. And you should absolutely not like go take out ad capital. So like make the leap into performance marketing, use debt for that. It's crazy risk. I think this loss pool is a game changer. And I think, you know, in the next three years, you're going to see a ton of agencies only really the best of breed are going to be able to make that jump because the, the loss pool is going to be, you know, the thing they're going to ultimately have to break through to, to become basically what you're doing, which is purely a hundred percent performance.

Maxwell Finn (00:35:43):

Yeah. And the key there is like how you position it to the network, right. And to the advertiser on the other end, um, they actual brand, like, don't just say, Hey, I want five grand during the offer, right? Like it's, you know, like, here's, this is a 5k investment and we're going to test X amount of creative. We're going to test X amount of audiences. We're going to be transparent with the results that we're going to get you. So you're going to get a lot of data, a lot of insight into angles that work angles, that don't work. And so if you were either or the network or the brand, even if you lose all five grand, which usually if you're at a five or 10 K loss pool, most people that are actually doing the media buys are not going to burn through all of it.

Maxwell Finn (00:36:28):

If the offer sucks, they've got bombs, you're going to call it quits before that. So your risk as the offer owner is like pretty light there. But even if you did, even if you went all in 5k 10 K, you're still getting a ton of data, a ton of information, insight that you can then bring to your internal media buyer, to your agency. Whoever's running the traffic for you. And that's worth a lot just to have that insight. So positioning it's huge and also developing deep relationships. So we have like two networks that we must work exclusively with and they bring us every single new offer that comes into a platform. They bring it to us before it goes to anybody else. Here's the offer. Here's when it's launching, here's the details. Do you guys want to run out? We want to test it. Yeah, it's coming do 5k.

Maxwell Finn (00:37:08):

We'll do 10 K and we'll get going. And we built such a history with them. We've made them so much money and we've made a lot of money with them that we now have built that trust. And so it works. So again, it's not something you can go out. I'm not going to say day one, you want to get a performance marketing. You're going to go to one of these networks and say, Hey, I know you don't know who I am. I know I've made, you know, money. I want five grand. Like that's not going to be likely, but if you're selected and you tell them out of the gate, Hey, we're looking to develop a deep relationship, deep partnership. We don't want to work with a lot of networks. We don't want to run tons of different offers. We want to go with you. Like, what do we need to do to get to a place where you're comfortable making this happen? And they'll probably tell you, Hey, well, we need you to run two offers, three offers. We need to get to this number of sales a day, whatever the information is, now you have a goal to hit. And once you hit that, now you have a really good potential deal structure in place for future offers. How many

Zach Johnson (00:38:05):

Doing that kind of one-timer offers more or less? Are you testing one or two or five or six

Maxwell Finn (00:38:11):

Kind of different? So it depends on the capacity of our buyers, right? So how much stuff are they scaling right now? How much stuff's working right now? Um, because again, it is a numbers game. So you might, we might go, you know, a month of testing stuff where nothing hits and then another month where all of a sudden two or three offers in a row hit. And that buyer's time is kind of limited in what they can do. Um, you know, I would say I'm most, we're, we're four to six new offers a month, um, going into Q4. It changes a little bit because we've started doing more burst campaigns for black cries every Monday, which is that's another like huge, huge profit maker. If you, if you're accounting media buyer going to some networks and saying, Hey, are you guys doing any special campaigns for that weekend?

Maxwell Finn (00:38:59):

I didn't even notice a thing like this is new. This started with us last year, one of our partners. So we have a deep relationship with it came to us like two weeks before black Friday and said, Hey, we had this big brand. Um, they wanna move like 75,000 units over the weekend, in addition to what they're planning to internally. So they're going to double their CPA. They're also running a 50% off sales site-wide. Plus they're adding all these special gifts to the order and we're going to work with two partners, scale it for them and hit that goal. Do you want to do it? So of course, of course we want to do it. The problem is like we were, so last minute I was running, I was running 10 ad accounts at the same time, because we had to, we didn't have time to build any up.

Maxwell Finn (00:39:45):

So they were all like 5k for the first few days. And we were trying to scale up till, you know, like 200, 300 grand a day in spend. Um, eventually they got there on Monday, but like, that is a huge opportunity because if a lot of these fast growing DTC brands that have these huge goals for that weekend, maybe they're venture backed. Maybe they have been a big capital investment behind them that want them to hit certain, certain sales goals. And so they're willing to get super, super aggressive just to move a ton of inventory over that weekend and do big numbers. And, uh, so we're,

Zach Johnson (00:40:19):

This has, uh, this has like, um, Tofor and giddy of like written all over it. These, these types of contracts, I feel like, uh, if there's one

Maxwell Finn (00:40:33):

These aren't specifically with, with giddy, giddy is one of our partners that we do a lot of stuff with. Um, but tobra that dude just wicked smart. Like he's, he's one of those,

Zach Johnson (00:40:44):

A legend of being able to negotiate this stuff, right? Like he, he is a pioneer of coming up with all kinds of new ways to negotiate with brands. And I feel like we're talking about the two here that we talked about today, which is lost pools and burst campaigns, which, you know, TM a max fan. That's not already a phrase, but a tofu has probably got like several other dozen that we don't even know about. And he'll never tell

Maxwell Finn (00:41:11):

Us

Zach Johnson (00:41:14):

Until you're across the table from him in a negotiation and he sends you the contract and then you get to see what it is exactly. Oh my gosh. I love this guys. Um, okay. Let's say this other part. Right? So talk to us about how you're thinking about investment and, you know, bringing in, you know, some of these

Maxwell Finn (00:41:34):

Folks into your, your brand's projects, things like that. And so we were,

Maxwell Finn (00:41:38):

We were talking before we went on the, uh, the live here and then I started recording.

Maxwell Finn (00:41:43):

Now, you know, there's this interesting problem

Maxwell Finn (00:41:47):

Opportunity happening right now, where you have

Maxwell Finn (00:41:50):

This dichotomy of wealth. So you have over the last six months of a lot of people struggling, a lot of people hit really, really hard on the other side of the spectrum. You have people that are upper middle income and upper income are doing better than they ever done. Or like, if you're, if you still have your job and you were making, you know, a hundred thousand, 20,000 plus, like this has been a

Maxwell Finn (00:42:16):

Great time economically for,

Maxwell Finn (00:42:18):

For that slice of the economy, that slice of society. The problem though, is where do you put your cash? If you've already, you're already, you know, invested in stock market, you're already heavily invested in real estate. All the asset classes are at sky high valuations, right? Like it's a great time

Maxwell Finn (00:42:36):

Real estate because my mortgage rates and stuff that was great for us buying your house. But like we knew, you know, we built our house probably yeah.

Maxwell Finn (00:42:43):

The peak. Uh, but we just, we just didn't care. Cause we're not, it's not an investment for us. Um, so a lot of these guys and ladies, women are seeing e-comm, they're seeing where's the growth opportunity in terms of ROI. Like where can I get in as if I invested in Amazon 10 years ago or Apple 10 years ago. Right? You see those charts, you look at the 10 years,

Maxwell Finn (00:43:05):

Five-year charts of these companies. And you just feel like an idiot because you didn't invest right. Just a little line. And then, and then this, and so e-com is,

Maxwell Finn (00:43:13):

Is the hot thing, right? Like we've seen a decades worth of the adoption curve happen in six months, which is crazy. We've seen all that,

Maxwell Finn (00:43:22):

These technologies and trends that probably would have taken five, 10 years

Maxwell Finn (00:43:26):

To reach the thresholds. They've hit, they've hit in the COVID world. Um, and so yeah, the people that like the opportunities come about really fast, but they haven't had the time to educate themselves. Right? Like if the adoption curve is five, 10 years, those investors have five to 10 years to learn the market, learn how to invest in it, all this stuff. And even just having investing infrastructure, being developed simultaneously, none of that's happened. So we've had just tons of our people in our network that have a few

Maxwell Finn (00:43:56):

Million dollars in the bank and cash ready to invest.

Maxwell Finn (00:43:59):

They're like, Hey, do you, do you know any

Maxwell Finn (00:44:02):

Stores that are looking to sell? Do you know, is there anywhere we can put this capital to work in your world? Because all we see is your world just going like

Maxwell Finn (00:44:08):

This and we want to be involved in it. And so it's a really interesting time if you're in e-comm, if you're in performance, if you're in this world to either correct capital by kind of

Maxwell Finn (00:44:22):

Wising people and collecting a fee and being kind of a deal maker or raising a

Maxwell Finn (00:44:27):

Fund and, and direct in that as well, or invest in your own capital, like there's just so many opportunities to get access to cheap capital, to do really interesting deals. Um, I mean that, that's like a big focus of ours right now is how, what do you think?

Zach Johnson (00:44:47):

Yeah. So do you think this is like outside money? Meaning like people and just totally different careers. I know nothing about online marketing and it's your white collar professionals, or do you think this is more like, uh, just say older generation of entrepreneurs that had different businesses and are, you know, just sitting on cash.

Maxwell Finn (00:45:11):

We see both right now. We see, um, we have guys that are like old money, like run family offices that are more traditional investors that are reaching out to us and asking, you know, what are some opportunities right now? And then we see people that are deep into e-com that have, you know, a portfolio of brands that are looking really actively to buy more stuff, because now's a great time to be acquiring income producing assets. Like there's just so much opportunity out there where people that got started, they started at a cool product. They launched Shopify store and, and maybe it's, you know, doing 1,000,002 a year. And, you know, it's bringing in a quarter million dollars in profit, but they have no idea how to do anything to scale that, like they're not business owners, they're not operators. They just found a cool product and, and it's growing.

Maxwell Finn (00:46:04):

Like there's a lot of those individuals out there. And I know like Roland Fraser and those guys are doing a lot with their program about teaching, how to acquire businesses with no cash down. So there's a lot of really interesting ways to acquire businesses right now that I'm not an expert at, but like we're, we're working with those guys in terms of consultant advisors to come up with creative ways to acquire businesses, because there's a lot of like, Hey, well, you know, we want to acquire a business. Will, you know, basically pay you 12 months over the next 12 months, you'll get 1% of the profits come out of the business. If we hit this, if we don't hit this goal, the business returns to you. If we hit over this goal, we acquire X percent of the business. There's a lot of interesting strategies, um, that I'm seeing people use right now. So it's like people might be watching and saying, well, Hey, I want to get involved, but I don't have $5 million in cash that, you know, I can acquire businesses or invest in businesses. So, uh, it's, it's a good time for people that are, you know, maybe not flush with cash, but still want to get involved. Plus people that are obviously have, you know, a good amount of cash and vice versa, if you need cash or you're looking to sell a business now is probably the best time in history to do that.

Zach Johnson (00:47:14):

Yeah. There's a, one of, one of our, um, add card holders is, um, an agency that acquired the, uh, the company called Brandless. This company was valued at 500 million, like just the new a year and a half ago. And, uh, raised 240 million kind of spun out of the, you know, VC San Francisco Bay area. And these guys picked it up for like, I think their inventory was like eight figures and these guys picked it up for like seven figures. And, um, that it happens like all the time where a lot of those, you know, people are kind of coming out of like their series C can't raise another round and they just have spent just ridiculous amounts of money. And it's really just like, who's the lowest bidder, uh, so that we can have the biggest write-off, you know, for our VC partners.

Maxwell Finn (00:48:16):

It's huge. I think that's, that's a tsunami right now as these there's the last like five plus a years VCs with chasing purple rights, like the purple model, the capture model of just pumped tons of cash into DTC brands, have them spend an obscene amounts of money on marketing and branding and all this stuff don't really care about profit. And then eventually it will become profitable, which is the typical Silicon Valley model that has never worked ever in every bubble it's led to every single bubble is that mindset. And it, they, they never learned, but like, yeah, I mean, now they're you look at away like these brands that like, we've, we have their suitcases and it's an awesome brand, but you have this brand that's raised tons of money and happens to sell products that are only for travel. And there's been no travel for six months. Like there's a lot of companies like that that have built a hundred million dollar Mo you know, potentially even billion dollar brands and are going to go bankrupt and be bought for pennies on the dollar. If you have the capital, I know like, uh, Ty Lopez and those guys they've been buying like pure one, they've been buying all of these big, big retail brands for pennies on the dollar and just getting, you know, making to run on the inventory and just bring it all in line, which is crazy

Zach Johnson (00:49:33):

When you look at structuring these deals. Right? So, so the first from a lot of people have, is like getting access to the money, you know, where are these conversations happening, but you're starting to build that network, right. And people are now starting to look for you to deploy that. How are you starting to think about structuring it on the money side to make it a win for them and a win for you?

Maxwell Finn (00:49:55):

Yeah. So what we're looking at, and again, like, um, just to be clear, I'm not a, uh, not a, a money guy and not like involved in the actual like negotiations and deal and stuff. But what I will say is what we're looking to do is come on in an ideal scenario, you come on as an advisor for the company where a member of the board, you get paid a director's fee, essentially. So either quarterly or annually, you get paid to be that advisor role. Plus you get a piece of the sale. So you'll get a, you know, a piece of the exit when it does sell. So you get cash coming in to help grow the company, and then a bigger chunk of cash when the company sells, thanks to your support as an advisor and a resource there. So for us, that's, that's kind of, we're looking for, obviously there are other ways to go about it.

Maxwell Finn (00:50:49):

You can be more passive where it's just like here's cash to invest in. They're acquiring somebody else comes in and operates it and runs, and you're not involved, or you're just facilitating and connecting someone with money with a store. And you're just, Hey, I want a piece of whatever you get for helping you get the deal. Um, so there's, there's a lot of ways to look at it. We like the kind of hybrid approach where you're an advisor or board member plus, and owner and getting a piece of the exit. Um, just because like that, that's, I think the ideal compensation model for the skillset that you have, that I had, that people in our industry have like, and it's unfortunate, the compensation model that most of us will never get, like most people who are talented at marketing and media buying, they get paid peanuts in the grand scheme of things because they get paid a percent of ad spend over a few months or a year they get fired.

Maxwell Finn (00:51:43):

And that company, that agent, that company hires another agency who gets them to the next stage, the next stage, next stage, that company sells 50 million, a hundred million. And, you know, maybe you made $50,000 over the lifetime of that. Whereas like, Hey, if we're going to provide our, our Rolodex, our knowledge, our resources, our labor, we want to be paid now. And we also want to have part of the upside because at the end of the day, like what we do is such. And when I say we, I mean, collectively, like our industry is such an important piece of the growth story for our companies. That it makes sense to have a piece of that growth that you're, you're contributing to that advisor and exit model is really exciting

Zach Johnson (00:52:30):

On the flip side, right. On the money side. Right. If somebody is sitting on a million bucks and they say, you know, max, like, how can I put this to use? Are you guys looking at that from a debt perspective? Do you guys look at that from like an equity perspective? Because part of this is like, you guys are figuring it out, right. And this is kind of the fun part of the, having the conversation when I was kinda saying, Hey, max, you, you have all the answers here, like tell us. Uh, but it's always interesting, you know, to see like, you know, where, where are you're tilting, where you're looking and, you know, somebody has capital to deploy into a project. There's a lot of ways to structure that. And there's a lot of ways to screw that up and out and how to structure that. And, uh, I'm, I'm curious where, where your heads up.

Maxwell Finn (00:53:16):

There's, there's a few, a few models there. One, like, I think it depends on who you're getting the capital from, um, and what they're used to in terms of how they structure deals. I know, um, some of the guys that are our family office guys that are more traditional money, they're, they're investing in doing more convertible debt type deals, at least that we've seen. And essentially what they're doing is, Hey, we'll give you half a million, we'll give you a million. We're going to assign an interest rate to that, to pay it back. Uh, if you pay it back within a year, two years, or the timeframe is, um, it either converts into a small piece of equity or no equity, if you don't, then it converts into a bigger piece of equity in the business. So it's not like, Hey, you didn't pay it back in full you, you know where you're going to, we're gonna take everything.

Maxwell Finn (00:54:05):

It's, it's essentially like a pretty, a pretty easy way to structure deals because, you know, you're not really putting a hard valuation on the company that it's, it's a little easier just diligence wise. Paperwork-wise um, and it's one of the ways we, we raised money back when I did the startup world when I was doing startups and stuff. Um, and it was definitely the easiest when you're doing those versus when we actually did equity rounds and stuff in terms of just the legal work and all that stuff. Um, so that's become pretty common from we're seeing for those guys, but then there's people that just like, they want to just buy, you know, 80% of the company outright. It's a, um, you know, we want to buy 80%, you can retain 20%. You're going to stay on for a year to operate and help with that transition at which point, um, you know, there's a transition there of whether we buy all the additional 20%, whether it'd be like you retain the 20%, whatever that might be new sound as a board, a board member.

Maxwell Finn (00:55:04):

Um, that's probably the other role where I don't think there's a lot of people out there, unless it's a PE firm where they have infrastructure and resources and companies in place to acquire something outright and roll it into a portfolio. If it's an individual investor or a few guys, or if she went in, like they don't want to run the whole thing. Like they want to take a big chunk of it, but they still want to have, you know, a team in place to run a day to day. Um, they're not probably like super excited to run a, you know, a $5 million a year, you know, apparel store, whatever it might be. Right. So that's, if it's equity, that's the, the most common we're seeing right now.

Zach Johnson (00:55:46):

Yeah. Oh, it's super interesting. I like, I like the approach of coming in and, you know, somebody owning 80% of it and, you know, somebody that's an agency owner coming in and, and, and getting 20% equity in something to facilitate the whole transaction and, uh, you know, and operate it for the next year or two, it sounds like a great deal. Um, so it's really cool. I appreciate you sharing all those things and also being able to admit that you don't have it all figured out just yet. Of course. Um, but yeah, that's, it's fun, man. Well, tell me what you're excited about right now. What, what do you have coming down the pike? How can support you and, uh, where can people lean, uh, learn more?

Maxwell Finn (00:56:28):

Yeah, I mean, I'll probably be for the next few months just to like ghost cause I'm having, uh, my, my baby boy's coming in in a week, so that's going to be the priority for a while. So for me it's been the last month or so planning and getting the team up, you know, making sure everything's taken care of for Q4 it's, you know, the timing is, you know, having a baby right in Q4 our business season. Um, you know, it's, it's a lot to plan for, but from a business focus, you know, we have our educational business, which has never been a huge priority for us just because it's, it's not a super sexy business exit wise. Like there haven't been any people. I know that I've been able to build a very, very large educational business, especially if it's built on the back of influencer, like an influencer or a guru, because it's your personal brand, essentially.

Maxwell Finn (00:57:18):

Uh, so unless you're like Tony Robbins or something, like, it's very, very tough to build something. I think masterclass that, that world is going to be more interesting. I think that that's the model that you can build, you know, a hundred million dollar billion dollar company on education. Uh, but so for us, like we just give away everything for free. Like we're switching purely just to, I don't want to make any more courses. I don't want to sell any more thousand dollar courses, $2,000 courses. Um, I'd prefer to just, here's all our content enjoy it. We'll build a newsletter, we'll have a list we provide content to. And then we monetize through partners that provide valuable resources and let them fulfill and do all that. Um, so that's really info. We're putting together some cool free resources for the next month or two that we'll put out there.

Maxwell Finn (00:57:58):

Um, and all this stuff, like I don't want to send it to all even landing pages. Like if you go to unicorn innovations.com, it has everything like, that's all you need. All you need to go and check out. Um, Q4 is obviously big for performance, so we're, we're really building out those burst campaigns, getting ready for some big deals. They're setting up all this stuff that we set up with our financing, with our ad account. Like just all the things you're going to need to be able to spend a hundred thousand dollars a day. Um, because that becomes logistically challenging. And most people like you don't think about it until you get to that point. So we've been to that point, we know what breaks and now we're going back and thinking, well, let's, let's make sure we plan everything appropriately. So we don't miss out on the potential.

Zach Johnson (00:58:37):

Let's call it a hundred, a hundred K a day, toolkit.com.

Maxwell Finn (00:58:42):

I like that.

Zach Johnson (00:58:45):

I like that. It's sponsored here sponsored by ad card and ed Catherine. That's awesome right now. Okay, great. Yeah. And as you know, congrats on, on, uh, um, pad Patriots, I feel like this is going to be an Epic season for that brand as well. And, uh, you know, I think that, uh, you know, hopefully you guys are considering an exit here, you know, come the end of the year. As I feel like this would be a phenomenal season to really be queuing that up. That's the plan.

Maxwell Finn (00:59:14):

So the planet, I don't think any of us are, are passionate about growing a huge conservative business. So, uh, what we're passionate about is like fun challenges. And this has been like a fun, challenging project. So yeah, the goal we kind of unanimously across the partners and say, let's absolutely blow this up in Q4 let's. As we're doing that, we have a bunch of conversations happening about exits let's find a good partner to sell it to, and let's take a good amount of cash off the table and then roll the rest of it into acquiring new businesses and new projects. That's that's the plan going into 2021.

Zach Johnson (00:59:46):

I love it. Max. Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. You're an amazing guests here. You're always so thorough and open and transparent and I we'll definitely have you back on the show looking forward to it.

Speaker 8 (00:59:57):

Appreciate it. Thanks. [inaudible]

Zach Johnson (01:00:04):

Well, thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich add or ed 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 ad book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ad for at.com/review. Thanks again.