All right. Hello, and welcome to the seven figure agency podcast. Super excited to have a special guest with us, Sean dill from the Black Diamond Club. Say hi, Sean.
Hey, what’s going on everybody.
So we’re gonna, we’re gonna do something a little bit different on today’s episode. Recently, we had tristin, from Cairo revenue with us. And he talked about the inception method and how he aligned with a joint ventures strategic alliance lighthouse, as Dennis you would say, to to really accelerate the growth of his agency within his niche. And, you know, we talk at seven figure agency a lot about your basically one joint venture away from a seven figure business, but finding that joint venture, structuring it correctly. You know, putting your best foot forward is much easier said than done. And so I thought it would be awesome to have Sean on to kind of talk about it from his perspective, we’ll let Sean talk about you know, his business and what he does. But as I see it, he is with the idea of joint venture in a space that somebody might want to align with. He coaches in a very specific vertical, he’s got clients that that respect him and trust him. And he probably gets approached all the time from people saying, hey, I want to sell to your members. But if you don’t do that in the right way, you can turn that person off really quickly. And so Shawn, thank you so much. I’m excited about hearing about this whole process, this Inception process, from your point of view.
Oh, thank you so much for having me. You know, I got to actually, I’ve been around you sort of vicariously, there was one time that Dennis, you and I were working on a project. And I believe that he jumped on and did I don’t know, if you were on his podcast, or his training in his group, I think that was what it was, I think you were doing a, a piece with his group. So I got some exposure to you then. And then you did the interview with Tristan parmley. And I listened to that because Justin posted it on his page. And then I reached out to Tristan and I was like, You know what, it would be great if because I’ve had that exposure to you that we jumped on. And we talked about how to help your viewers listeners, your your clients to understand how to properly approach the relationship structure the relationship, so that they can get to that seven figure level. And so I’m super excited to dive deep with you and see what we come up with.
That’s awesome. And thanks for volunteering to do this because this is different than our normal, you know, our normal format, but I think it’s gonna be super valuable, like you said, For our listeners. So before we dive in, tell us a little bit about you and kind of the coaching that you do in your core business.
Well, I’m a, I’m a chiropractor by profession. So went to school at Logan college became a chiropractor. This was in 1995. So I’ve been in practice for many, many, many years, I practice for a little while in Costa Rica, I wrote the law that regulates chiropractic practice in the country, they’re in Costa Rica, moved back to the United States, I’ve had some time in education, I taught at life chiropractic college West. Then eventually, I started a franchise of chiropractic offices called the specific chiropractic centers that are located across the country. But I’m heavily involved in chiropractic politics, chiropractic education. And then we began consulting, and we began relationships with people like Jay Abraham’s, and a lot of what we’ll talk about today, you know, my wife and I, she’s also a chiropractor, Lacy book, we’ve learned these relational capital strategies through Jay Abraham. And then we’ve built a consulting group that’s called the Black Diamond Club, we have about 600, just over 600 service providers. So while they’re not all chiropractors, mostly chiropractors and they are all looking to reach more people with their service. Basically, we talked about reaching more people making a bigger impact and creating the lifestyle that we deserve. And so one of the things too that I love about your your initiative, because it’s called seven figure agency, so it’s not like called like, you know, an okay agency. And there might be some people who might even and I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but might even you know, view that negatively, like, Oh, my gosh, Josh is all about the money. It’s not about the money. But look at the end of the day, you you need to have you need to have financial success in order to make a bigger impact in the world. And we shouldn’t be ashamed of that. So yeah, the goal here is to give people some insights I want you to get actually get it’s not just a pipe dream or something that’s a flashy name, get to that seven figure, that seven figure mark in your business, so that you can give back I mean, look at what you’re doing, helping other people so it’s not about just grabbing Of all the all the little crumbs that you can, once you hit a certain place in life, then you’re able to give back. You know, those are those are a lot of the primary tenants that we believe.
I love it, I love it. So you get this powerful network of predominantly chiropractors because that’s your background and other service providers. Talk to me a little bit about some people that might have, you know, come to you in the past and been like, Hey, you know what, I’ve got something, I think your bet your members could benefit from knowing that they could draft on your authority. It can talk to me about some of the ways you’ve been approached on that front in the past?
Well, number one, first and foremost, is that is the the cold direct mail, just sliding into your DMS, right? I mean, and honestly, I’ll be honest with you in, in the Black Diamond Club, I mean, if you’re doing that, as a digital marketer, you know, you’re getting you’re being made fun of in groups, right? People will post screenshots, look at what this person, you know, approached me with. Oftentimes, the person that’s approaching hasn’t done their homework. So they’re telling me about how they can help me to get more clients in my clinic, and I own a franchise like I’m not actually in practice. So just mal informed, you know, that the thing is, is that we value long term relationships. And I think that first and foremost that the first thing is, not everybody does, right. And so I think the first thing is, you have to decide, are you in this for the long haul, because I honestly believe that if you’re going to build a seven figure agency, one of your core values needs to be long term relationships. I mean, nobody is trying to build a seven figure agency off of one off clients, like you don’t want to just come in and do one thing, and then be done. So if the idea is retention, then that is one of your core values. And you can’t really I mean, just think about it, you can’t build a long term relationship sliding into someone’s DMS. It’s just like in regular life, right. And I think because we’re in in the electronic world, I haven’t had this experience, but I have two daughters who are both in their 20s. And and and I can observe this, you know, the majority of people that are millennials or Gen Z’s will actually meet their significant other through the internet, through these online dating apps. And online dating apps is the same way, right? You don’t just come sliding in and be like, Hey, I think we should get married, you have to develop rapport. But I think more importantly, you have to become relevant, right. So that’s why you work so hard on your picture, your profile, or whatever that’s called the first impression picture, the words that you write, because you need to become relevant to the other person before they’ll even give you time of day. So just sliding in and saying, Hey, I can help you to get more clients or I can help you to build your digital presence. I’ve seen I can help you to get to 100,000 followers or whatever the thing is, you’re leaving basically with your cleats, right? You’re leading with what’s in it for you and you’re not you’re not you’re not mining the information to understand what the other party really needs or wants.
So that’s that’s the that’s the everyday sloppy Hey, I can help you. But I haven’t like done one ounce of research about you. I know nothing about you. approach. Now to the contrary to that, if you haven’t gone go back and listen to the interview with with tristin on kind of the inception method that he had Dennis you used and kind of how they’ve scaled the seven figures in their Cairo revenue specific agency. Like talk to me about that relationship, how it was formed, kind of how it was how it was different?
Well, first of all, you know, this is a unique interview, because I do understand who Dennis you is, but I want to make super clear that one year ago, one calendar year ago, I didn’t know who Dennis you was somebody could have been like Dennis, you and I know that. Yeah, you know what everybody here is like, wow. Like you, Dennis, you is in my house right now. And so I know a lot of people are probably like, wow, I wish I could hang out with him and have dinner with him one year ago. I didn’t know who he was. And what happened was there was an issue that was occurring with Facebook, it was a minor issue. But Facebook Lives were not being being being saved to the user’s accounts. And it was happening and it got posted inside of our membership group. So I reached out to a really good friend of mine, Connor Blakely is also not in the digital marketing space. But Connor said, Well, let me connect you with Dennis because Connor is a big relationship guy, a big connector, and he connected me with Dennis and Dennis was like, yeah, let me explain to you a little bit about how this works and what’s going on. And I was like, well, this is super useful. Thank you so much, because dennis is a genuinely nice guy, very giving guy. And then Dennis said and This to me is the key for everybody. Then I said, Hey, if it would be helpful, I would be more than happy to come into your membership group. And I could share This so that it’s not me telling you and then you trying to go back because you’re not a digital marketer, why don’t I just do a live with you? And we’ll, we’ll explain this to the members. And then that way, they’ll get the full value. And I think that’s step number one, right? You become relevant by providing value. This is something that I could not have done myself. And then here’s the next thing. So we did that we did the live, the members absolutely loved it, they were like, this is the best thing ever. And so Dennis was like, Well, if you’d like, I could come back. And I could begin to teach my one minute video dollar a day strategy. And again, he didn’t deliver I mean, so if your follow if you’re a follower or fan of dentists, you can learn this and in a 30 minute, or 45 minute live, so he did what we called part two. And then he said, if you’d like I can do part three, where he began to explain the three by three grid. And this is genius, because he was providing massive value. And I do want to have sort of a frank and open discussion because I want to give all of your viewers and listeners value because here’s the reality. In three Facebook Lives, it literally is impossible that a service provider who has no expertise in digital marketing, actually learned anything that they could do on their own. I always call this concept give them just enough information to make them dangerous to themselves. So sure, they’re out there making their one minute videos and probably trying to upload them but they don’t really understand, you know, targeting retargeting and pixels, and they don’t understand the editing, they don’t understand what converts. And so this opened the door perfectly. But I want to make sure that everybody understands something that up to this point, Dennis did not make a single offer, there was no opportunity to engage, there was no opportunity to buy anything, he was just giving information. And very intelligently, he was arming the members with enough information to be dangerous to themselves. One thing I didn’t explain earlier, and what we do is we run what I believe to be the world’s largest growth conference exclusively for service providers. So one of our mantras is Look, if you’re providing a service, a big service to the world, you must embrace the idea of being an entrepreneur, I believe that the world’s best, I’m gonna say this for digital marketers, the world’s best digital marketers live in relative obscurity, simply because they refuse to embrace the idea of marketing and selling their service. There’s genius people that we just don’t even know who they are probably smarter than dentists, or any of the other names in digital marketing. But they’re, they’re broke, they’re living somewhere, they have a laptop, and they’re genius. But they don’t embrace the idea of being an entrepreneur. So I invited dentists to speak at that growth conference, people like Jordan Belfort, Eric Thomas, then as you were, they’re coming in to teach people how to how to how to grow their business. And I told them as dentists, I think that you should finally make an offer, or you should make an offer. And Dennis told me, he said, I’ve done 800 appearances from the stage and I’ve never once sold from the stage, I get it. But with this, this is different. Like, everything has been said, Let’s make an offer. So he offered his digital plumbing. And I think it was a $2,500. That was the was the price point. And Dennis sold, I think 70 or 70 of these packages from the stage. It was this was done during COVID. So this was in August of 2020. We had 350 people in the room, social distance and all of the all of the things that we had to do, but he sold 70 people the package mean right there on the spot. And that was the first opportunity that people actually had to give him money. So he did about five months worth of rapport building and relevance building before he offered now. That was the convergence. summer camp was the convergence of Tristen and then it so Tristan had joined the group. And Justin hat was beginning his hustle. And he had a handful of chiropractic clients who were also in the group. And then that whole thing converged and created just the most beautiful partnership, right, they’re through the events called summer camp. And from there, they have now been able to because now it’s monetized. You know, up to that point, it wasn’t monetized. And now it’s natural. And it’s normal for them to be able to say, look, I can offer you help. These are the packages that are available. And now the group is consuming and it doesn’t really even feel like they were sold anything that it was it was just a natural relationship. And again, to go back to that I don’t feel like and I hope my wife doesn’t feel this way. But I don’t feel like my wife sold me something. It was a natural evolution of a relationship. But if we’re going to be honest, of course, there’s a sales if she sold herself. I sold myself and now we’re in a relationship and so the same thing happened. Dennis just did it brilliantly. Tristan was doing it brilliant. And then they realize like, hey, rather than compete, it actually would make sense that we’re doing this together, you have virtues, I have virtues. And then we could do this. And then the smart thing was then the last step was then we sat down the three of us and they were like, Look, let’s see if we can form something together a venture together where everyone could benefit. I will say this too, one of my other strong principles here. And I think this is so often overlooked, especially, I think, for digital marketers dealing with their clients, but also dealing with their own business is the power of endorsement. And endorsement is more powerful than testimonial. So everybody wants testimonial, but testimonials, usually someone you don’t know who they are saying, Josh is great. And you’re like, well, it’s I don’t know who you are. And outdoorsman is a figurehead that has already a position that has credibility with an audience that you’re trying to capture. And they’re, they don’t even actually have to use your service. They’re just endorsing you or your service, and saying that if they were for their audience, if they were in a situation, this is who they would turn to, or this is who they would use, and so I am able to come in and provide endorsement now I some people are like that might be unethical, I actually do use their services so and I when I met Dennis, my, my digital marketing was a mess. And so Dennis interesting are in the process of cleaning all of those things up for us from websites and social media channels. And I even invite people if you want to follow along and watch the cleanup process. I mean, jump on with me, because it’s a swipe and deploy. And I’m not doing it, I’ve just handed them the keys. And they are slowly beginning to control our content control our digital plumbing controller, the way everything is set up so that we can be actually a testament but also provide endorsement at the same time.
I love it. So where would they follow you on that on that journey?
Well, we’re on all the channels, because then it says you got to be on all the channels. So we’re on Facebook, Dr. Shawn bill. Basically, the handle we use across the channels is at Dr. Sean Bell, Dr. Sean, dill, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, all the things, they’ve made some incredible speaker reels for me. They’re starting to come out with some really great content. And we’re super excited for what they’re doing with our stuff.
That’s awesome. So the main thing that stuck to me, as you were kind of explaining this, this evolution of this this relationship was the solve a problem? Right? You had a problem? Dennis emerged as somebody that had the answer wasn’t coming to you saying, hey, you’ve got 600 chiropractors plug me in and let me give you 10%, or whatever the relationship? It was, you’ve got a problem. Here, I have a solution. And then you seeing Okay, wow, that was really helpful. And then hey, if you want let me share this on a grander scale with with your group, right, not asking for anything, just let me let me help solve that problem for them in general. And the group was like, wow, this was amazing. Thank you so much. And and the relationship naturally evolved as a function of developing a relationship and solving meaningful problems for your member base.
Well, and also, I want to challenge everybody to think I want to point out that the problem that Dennis was solving was not really part and parcel to his core business offering, right. So it’s not always like, well, I can solve the traffic or conversion problem. It might be a connection or relationship, it might be my ads manager is broken, I don’t think so just understanding like, Hey, I’m just here to help. I’m not I don’t have my hand out I’m offering, because I value the relationship. So it comes back to that, like, do you value the relationship, we must become relevant to the lighthouse first. And so whatever that means, and I’ll give you a couple of other things that dennis is really good at, and you kind of have to stalk Dennis to pick this up. But I and I’m very open on my on my Facebook profile, the one that that’s where I’m posting, when this is happening to me, I use a, I use a marker so that people knows I will write I will begin to post with, we love getting gifts. And I think that you know, if you haven’t read gift, ology, like that is such a great book writer with john rulan. And in understanding how giving appropriate gifts can open the door. And so dennis is a big fan of popcorn. And he sent over to us after we had done these lives, and he sent over a popcorn machine. And what that does, right is it’s it’s if you send an appropriate gift, is it ensures that that I’m going to post that and I’m going to tag dentists, right and so and it’s going to strengthen the relationship. So again, you’re not going to send me a coupon. If Google actually does this, right. You set up an account and I’ve got $150 coupon for AdWords. Well, no, no, it’s not. It’s not giving me a coupon for the thing that you do. It’s appropriate gifting and all you have to do is stock somebody on social media, you can figure out a lot about what they like, and then when you send them an appropriate gift that is instant mean instant relevancy. Jay Abraham was telling me, he never did this, but he wanted to write a book that’s called relevancy rules. And I always, always encouraged him like that that would be such a great book, because it’s so true. That’s how you win is you become relevant to as many people as possible by solving their problems by being nice by making connections by appropriate gifting. And then once you are relevant, you’re actually in the driver’s seat now to make an ask,
hmm, powerful, I love it. And it’s such a great explanation of kind of how this relationship started, how it developed any any relevant things to talk about, like kind of where you guys are headed, and things you guys are up to together, going forward.
Oh, my gosh, I’m super excited about Cairo revenue as a company, you know, we we invest in in a myriad of different companies that has to be in our portfolio, one of the ones that we’re most excited about, and I and again, I think that I just want I hope that the listeners are listening to this not as an endorsement of Dennis interesting, because I want that to be them at some point, as well, because anybody could do this. And and, and again, because I didn’t know who Dennis was, I can take the liberty to say like, no, Dennis is held in high regard. But I’ve spent extensive time with him, he’s a human being like everybody else, right. But having said that, that’s what makes me so excited about Cairo revenue is the people that are on board. And I think that if I were in anybody else’s shoes, I that’s that’s the thing. It’s not the knowledge and I get it. Dentists interesting are extremely bright, but it’s, it’s the people, they’re real people, people. And sometimes that’s hard in the digital marketing space, too, because, you know, it’s a tech thing, it’s a very analytical process that we’re delivering. And so you have to find that people side, you know, they’re developing some tech that I think is going to be unbelievable, we also own a software company. And so they’re working to integrate into our software company, where we’ll be able to track and trace, not in a COVID kind of track, and trace the Digital Marketing Leads as they come into the office, and then actually be able to see once they’re in the office, how they grow. Because, you know, when in the digital marketing space, you’re creating leads, and then you can we can track the conversions, but we don’t know, then from there, when they came in exactly how much money they spent, we don’t know if they referred more people. And so now we can really begin to place a true ROI on you know, not only just the service that you’re paying for, but also your ad spend. And I think that’s going to be very, very interesting in the service space. I mean, in just, you know, the relationships that they bring to the table, I think that this has the chance to be super expansive, we’re looking at potentially other verticals, bringing jumping in as Black Diamond Club grows, it’s all one giant ecosystem, too. So like, if we’re going to, if we’re going to create the digital marketing space, we have to be able to support it, because we get the leads and the conversions, but then you have to have a strong business model, then, I think for a lot of digital marketers, if you’re driving leads and conversions to a business, but they’re botching them up from there, it’s not your fault, but you’re probably going to get blamed, right. And so we need to have a system that will speak to that as well. And then also just help them to grow and scale because ultimately, you know, leads and conversions are on the front side. But every business owner, every true entrepreneur, really is thinking in terms of a couple of things, scaling is probably one thing that’s on the foremost of their minds, and freedom, both in terms of financial and time, freedom. And so oftentimes to when you just create, you know, 200 leads into a service business, that can sometimes be overwhelming, and they may not want that, because now it’s like, oh, you just need to dump all of these leads, created a whole bunch more work for me. So if you can begin to solve for that, and so you know, that’s the that’s sort of the direction that we’re looking at in Cairo revenue to try and take this beyond just the leads and conversions front side, and deliver all the way down to the end point where we can actually create freedom, both financially and timewise. For the for the clients,
I love it, it really sounds like it’s gonna be a next level solution for the industry. You know, not just let’s generate some leads, not just let’s give you some coaching, but really helping them look at their entire business model, and kind of the the wealth development and the freedom development aspect of it as well, which, you know, haven’t seen fully delivered elsewhere.
Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s super exciting for us. You know, and I and I think that too, what I want to make sure that we have captured too, is that I think a lot of times when I’m saying this, what I’m trying to put myself in the position of the viewers and listeners, and I think that sometimes what I’ve perceived too is like Yeah, but that’s that’s because they’re dentists interesting. And and that’s not true. I think that if you understand relationships, and you can go out and build this, then you have the opportunity to really leverage because as a digital marketer, you also want to scale right? And you want to get your book of clients. But eventually, you know, I know that Dennis talks about VA is I know that’s a very popular, you want to scale, you can’t do it all by yourself. And then eventually you have enough clients if you know, you have account managers, and you have all of this, this machine that’s going and that’s all operative learning lessons that you have to pick up along the way. But you have to start somewhere, you know, and so trust in he started somewhere. And then as he started somewhere, they started from two totally different points. But thankfully, they weren’t like, okay, so because he’s dentists, I could never, I could never collaborate a partner, and thankfully, neither of them were like, because that’s Shawn, I can’t collaborate and partner with them either. If we could sort of disrupt the thought process that’s out there, you know, just just bombard them with VMs. And, and educate, educate people that you just have to figure out, you’ll do some research, do some study, figure out what’s important to them? What whoever your lighthouses, whoever you’re targeting, for your inception, and then start to move your way into those circles. There’s also, you know, the concentric circles of relationships, and people that they may know. And so, again, to reiterate, the Dennis, you relationship began with a relationship with Conor Blakely, he’s a Gen Z marketing guide, doesn’t know anything, or isn’t talking about digital marketing, but made that connection. So maybe you would look at and say, okay, so who are I want? I want to have this particular lighthouse? Who are they connected to? No, so we’ll seven degrees of relationship and how can I approach them, rather than just running in directly? What value can I provide to my potential lighthouse? And then I think the last thing is, how can I become relevant, so that I can initiate that relationship?
Love it, love it, love it. So you know, as you’re listening to this, you know, for every Shawn deal that’s out there, I know, Shawn deal, you’re exceptional, and the world that you’re in, you’re exceptional, as as it is. But there are other consultants, there are other influences. There are other people in whatever vertical you’re in, whether you’re working with auto dealers, or you’re working with Plumbing Companies, your roofing working with roofing contractors, you know, this same strategy, this Inception method applies, right, I think the lessons that you should take away from this session is, don’t just find that person that’s got, you know, the coaching relationship with 500 of your ideal prospects, and send them a DM and say, hey, I want to I want to introduce myself to your members, like, think more strategically about it, take the insights that Shawn shared, and kind of the model that that Dennis has laid out and trust and have kind of used and think about how you can layer that into your into your digital marketing agency. 100 other kind of insights to add on top of that? Well, yeah,
let’s not, let’s not just limit it to the consultants in the space either. Like there are people that are highly influential in their, in their space. So there’s plumbers who aren’t consultants, but are highly influential. Maybe they maybe they speak even on, maybe they’re teaching other plumbers how to be financially wealthy and independent. And that’s sort of their thing they’ve discovered, maybe they teach plumbers how to get into real estate, but because of that, they they yield tremendous influence. And you can then begin to infiltrate, I mean that in a very positive way into those relationships as well. And I think that that’s what happens is, you know, we live in this very swipe and deploy world. And so, you know, we just look at look at things, and I always tell people that, you know, there’s always more than one right way to do anything. There’s nothing that there’s just, this is the only way to do it. And so we’re here discussing one way, and I and I want to challenge people to think about how you can expand it out. There’s another way that that can be done. I mean, we could go on, you know, because I love this stuff. But another thing is, for example, if I were targeting, let’s say that I wanted to target dentist, anything that had a formal education, well, I could target through professors, and especially retired professors. So if I could find that there was a dental school, and that there was this one professor that taught there for 50 years before they retired. If I could create a relationship with that professor and ask that Professor to endorse me, like Do you realize how powerful that would be when all of the dentists who hold this person in high regard that that person is now saying, hey, look, I’ve discovered this digital marketing agency, and I honestly believe that if you want to see more clients, this is your ticket like that will fill your business and so and that’s an easy like, they’re, they’re not being, you know, bombarded with DMS and people, they’re, they’re retired and you can try and find a way you find out what they’re interested in. Maybe they’re at the local, maybe they’re a member of the Kiwanis Club and you show up and you begin to participate and you forge a relationship around a commonality and then You ask the right once you once you’re relevant and you have the relationship you can ask, there’s so many angles that we can take. Because and listen, here’s what COVID did. I said this in March COVID, placed an extraordinary emphasis on relational capital. Why? because money is beginning to shrink in the marketplace. And so money is not flowing as much as it did say one year ago. But relational capital still plays. And so the influence world, and I’m not talking about Instagram influencers, I’m talking about actual professional influence has a new premium placed on that. But we should be shopping, you know, it’s a holiday season now. But we should be shopping, just like we would shop for deals on something we want to buy, we should be shopping for relational capital, and there are tons of deals out there and that sense through, you know, x professors, people that that yield influence in other areas. I’ll give you one of my favorites. This is in our in our book, none of your business is, for example, if I were a if I were a realtor, and I wanted to gain more clients, who I would actually target is a divorce attorney, because every divorce attorney is sitting across from somebody that yes has a relationship, a legal relationship issue, but more likely also has or most likely also has a property issue. I need to find a house, I’ve got to sell the house I and so if the attorney was like, Look, here’s my recommendation like that is a natural fit. And I want to encourage everybody to think about oh my gosh, like, okay, so who influences what am i picking? Am I am I picking plumbers, dentists, chiropractors, realtors? And then I need a list of who yields influence over them. And then I need to start to figure out in 2021, how do I forge relationships with the influencers? Who influence my ideal client or my target market? And it’s not that hard. It’s not, I think that part of the thing too, is we see or maybe we hear, you know, target your lighthouse, target your, you know, go for inception, and then we go right straight for the individual versus trying to target the periphery and gaining that influence. I mean, and look, frankly, you know, that’s how you and I are talking because of a common influence through through dentists. If I just reached out to you and you didn’t know who I was, what would be the point? Like, what are we going to talk about?
Yeah, I’m powerful, deep, deep stuff. If somebody wanted to get that book, what would be the best place to to get that?
Sure. Our book is on Amazon. It’s called none of your business. And it’s a super easy light read, I think it will be super useful. It’s geared at service providers, just like your viewers and listeners to help them to expand and grow their business.
Sounds great. I’m gonna be check it out. Make sure you guys check that out. It sounds like a great, great book, deep concepts here deep stuff. So once you’ve got that strategic relationship in place, and just like this kind of shift gears for a second, as as the as the influencer yourself, what are your top priorities from that strategic alliance? What do you expect from them? What do you want from them in order to make sure they’re performing at the highest level? And you continue to feel really good about the relationship?
Well, let me give you like, so the overriding answer would just be value, right? Because, and I think that’s super important for for anytime that you’re coming in, and I and again, I understand the space digital marketing when we talk about leads and convergence. But let’s let’s then talk about first value, right? So even if you’re if you’re servicing one of my clinics, I want value over leads, right? are you providing value are you bringing value because value can can supersede leads, maybe I didn’t get very many leads. But you provided me with some strategy that in the few leads that we got, we converted at a higher percentage mean value is number one. But let’s look at this in three sort of three phases. I think, if I were to generalize over anything that I’m looking at, in a business, what I would want to do, first of all, you have the learning phase. And I think this is where you know, for what we’ve been discussing, people want to try and skip the learning phase. It’s the educational phase, it’s the time when I have to get up to speed, I don’t know exactly your business and what you do in the business model, and you need to be patient there. Because the lighthouse really needs to understand and learn what it is that you’re doing. Why are you different? Who do you serve? What do you help them to accomplish as an end objective? The next thing is the execution phase where I want to see it happen because anybody could talk a good game and say, you know, theoretically, we could do this. We could do that. Just last night over dinner. We were talking about how a franchise can tie in ad spend and you know the child parent relationship through ads accounts, you know, probably something that everybody’s like dub I as a lighthouse, I’m, I’m you know, had to go through the learning phase, but then I want to see it like, Did you have any examples of like how that works and Dennis was like, sure, you know, for example, Ashley home furniture and, you know, we can, we can show you how that has happened. So we, we want to observe the execution side. And this is so important, because learning and execution come before the last phase, the last phase is equity phase. So once once I understand it, and then once I watched it, and we’ve seen it this, like I was saying earlier, like even in my own case, then we can discuss the compensation side, I will tell you this, too, I say this a lot with not even just digital marketing, all of the things that people would like for me to get involved with to help them to sell it inside of the group is I’m really not interested I don’t I don’t do a lot of affiliate marketing. So you know, when you come to somebody who has really any degree of success, and you’re like, I can give you you know, a commission on what you sell, or I could give you a percentage of what you sell, that’s not that interesting. And I’ll tell you why. Because of the last last section, it’s of what you sell. So you can give me this really small, you know, monetary benefit on my work, selling his work. And then I have a lot of things to sell some of my own things, some of the things that I’m involved with, why would I choose to sell your thing, if I’m getting $100, when I can sell a 25,000 my thing, and I get all of it. And so selling spaces is limited as well. So what’s far more interesting is equity. So you know, in terms of you know, and that’s, that’s every, once you hit a certain point, every deal is structured on that, you know, basically, convertible notes are all over the place where you know, if you needed capital or somebody coming in, and then providing you endorsement, consulting, etc, helping you to get to a certain space and then having equity. Now equity is interesting to most investors or most lighthouses, because one then as the more they are selling, but it’s increasing the value, not just on a commission level, but the value of a thing that they’re invested in the value of the actual company, because the more clients the company servicing, the more value the client has. And although you might not be thinking necessarily of a sell, at some point, they probably are. And the more they can help you to build your company, it goes beyond just selling units. But now it goes into building your company. And if you’re looking at a lighthouse I got, I’m going to assume that the person also understands business because they, they’re successful. And so you’re going to want that from them as well. And so if we can walk through those phases, learning execution and equity, and not rush it, it’s like dating, just let it let it you know, take shape naturally. But if you knew those phases in advance, I think that you could you could get this done very easily. And listen, because it does take time, from the point that you met the person and began the relationship to by the time we’re actually discussing equity, you You should have seen your business value increase as well. So yeah, whatever that increase has, has happened as a result of that relationship over time. Just give it back to them just in percentage, not in not in monetary, but just say my business has increased by 20%, I’d be willing to discuss a 20% equity stake to continue the relationship in an effort to now try and grow my business 400% because you’re actually now signed on the dotted line. And so from a business perspective, that that’s how that’s how I would approach that
very, very, very interesting, cool, cool stuff. In terms of plugging in, you know, once you’ve got that relationship, what would you like to see your your venture partner, you know, whatever the relationship is, how would you like to see them plugging in doing trainings for you showing up at the events? Can you just talk a little bit about how they could best, you know, make sure that they plug in and add value?
Yeah, in my world. Number one is it goes the opposite direction, right? So again, if you go and look at Dennis’s Facebook profile, and this is not, you know, staged or even solicited, but when Dennis would tag me or you know, tell people to check out Black Diamond Club. That’s where the massive benefit is for me because I could not have gotten that normally. Absolutely. When dennis is at events, then again, we’re leveraging Dennis’s knowledge. Dennis knows how to do digital marketing. And so when dennis is like, Hey, you know, did you ever think about this to try and get more exposure for your events? Or did you ever think about doing this to sell more ticket for tickets for your events, and he’s not doing that at that time based off of a monetary relationship because it’s just building that value. And then lastly, I think one of the things is is when when I see the members of My group interact with both dentists interesting. And I see how they take to them. Like, that’s the biggest thing. They’re not theirs, they’re not selling again, the relationship that’s with our members from in my eyes is far more valuable than the relationship that they actually have with me personally, because when I see my members absolutely going crazy, and you know, because they’re there, and because they spend time with them, and they, you know, look, these guys travel all over the country, and they meet BDC members, and they take pictures with them. And then the BDC members, even in our private group are like, Oh, my gosh, there’s so nice. That’s what makes me feel good, because it makes me look good. It makes me look like I have cool friends. Right. So that’s like the that’s like the biggest value. And again, I think that that’s a departure if you want to really win this game long term. And I think that you would agree with me and you and your position as well, is that it’s not about the money. Like, because I made an extra 10,000 or $20,000, or even $100,000 in a year because of that is not is not an interesting to me, what’s really interesting to me is is the is the influence that’s gained is the relationship, the relational capital, and by extension of them, so when I see I see our members really taking to them, that’s what really makes me feel really good, because it makes me look good.
That’s awesome. So amazing insights here, thank you so much for sharing some some really good information about, you know, the concept of the JV from the angle of the the joint venture person, and really, the psychology of it being much different than you’d think about on the onset, right? It’s not just about let’s go find them an additional stream of income and convince them we’re gonna give them 10 or 15% of the revenue they generate for us. But really adding value solving problems. And looking for long term, you’re really strategic business alliances. powerful, powerful stuff. Be sure that you you connect with Shawn on Facebook, Follow him you’re going to see his journey. Check out his book again. Look it up. Is it minding your business? If I got
none of your business,
none of your business? Sounds that sounds like a great book. Shawn in in closing here, any additional thoughts or insights you’d like to share with the listeners?
Well, yeah, I mean, I love I love this idea. One of the things that we live by is that you cannot give what you don’t have, you know, so there’s there’s no amount of poverty, that that will make somebody else rich that you can you can’t be poor so that someone else can be rich, you can’t be you can’t be sick, or someone else can be healthy, you know, in this COVID world that we live in, you can’t be sad so that someone else can be happy. You know, when I saw your interview with Justin, really what I was inspired by, you know, one is trust, and who is a super inspirational speaker, I think that he’s a model for a lot of people to emulate. And number two was I just I wanted to share because I know that there’s more interesting than I know, you know that because you That’s why you do this work, and you service your community, you know, so so selflessly and you’re constantly giving, but if maybe another voice could come in and maybe inspire someone. I am always super motivated by Rosa Parks. And I always think that this was a simple seamstress and I understand all of the conspiracy theories, and maybe she wasn’t, but look, at the end of the day, you know, the story is that she was a simple seamstress. There were there were powerful people, right. So there was, you know, Martin Luther King, and there were civil rights leaders, there were the dentists use of of that time, but they actually couldn’t shift the needle until a person, a regular person decided to wake up one day and make a stamp. Maybe that’s just environmentally. But what I what I want to say with all due respect, is that it’s not Josh, it’s not me, it’s not the people that you know, you get to see on the screen, it’s you. And I just I just hope that by being here today, that somewhere someone is like, you know what it is me and but it’s not going to happen unless like Rosa Parks, you know that one of the things that was really crazy is that when Rosa went in sat down and the bus driver called her by name, and what that means is that she had been on that bus hundreds of times before and went to the back. But there was something about that day that Rosa Parks made a shift and she just decided not today and and listen. Your life if you’re walking around the world, your life has been impacted by that one decision that that that that lady made. It doesn’t matter. Your life is different today because of something she did. And someone who’s watching. If it’s just one person, someone who’s watching, you can make that shift. You can find your lighthouse, you can educate, you can inform, you can grow your business you can have you know, maybe you maybe the next thing is you’re going to have the eight figure agency we’re talking deca millionaires because of what’s possible because the whole the whole engine environment, the whole mindset, the mindset can can shift on one person’s one person’s actions. And again, wasn’t Martin Luther King Malcolm X or any of the civil rights leaders? So it’s not Josh, not Sean’s not Dennis, you, it’s not any of the other leaders in the space. It’s you, whoever’s watching this, and you’re feeling that call, like, 2021 is your year, like, step out, start applying the things that Josh and all of his guests have been teaching you and decide to go for it. Because look, you can change the world. And I know that that it might, some people might be thinking, like, how can I change the world? Like, but you absolutely can. You just have to be willing to step out. I mean, look, you’re watching this because Josh made a decision right to change your world. And so now this is your opportunity to repay him back.
Awesome, powerful stuff. Thank you so much for taking the time it was an honor and a pleasure. If somebody wants to learn more about you any any other place, you want to direct them to learn more about you
sure, they could jump on our website. My wife and I have a website Sean and Lacey calm sh A w n and Elysee y and also you can check us out at Black Diamond Club comm that’s our membership group. We’d love to have you in there’s tons of other digital marketers in the space and you’re getting to learn alongside with Justin and Dennis is they’re teaching others how to do that. We promise you will make you feel right at home. Awesome.
Well, thanks again. Great stuff. It was an honor to have you with us today. Have an amazing afternoon and we’ll talk to you soon.
Thanks, Josh.
