Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: All right, Anthony, thanks so much for being here. I'm happy to have you on the show.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Of course, brother. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: You have, you've had a fanta and very interesting journey in that you originally started off in online marketing like most people, wanting some time and financial freedom, but then you ended up building this huge business that eventually got acquired. So let's, let's go back all the way to the beginning. What, how did you even find online marketing and what was the thing that sort of drew you to that?
[00:00:58] Speaker A: You know, it's funny, you and I, just before we started, you mentioned Tim Ferriss. I read his four hour workweek.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: All right.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: As I, as I was working three, three different jobs, personal training, interning somewhere else, and then working for, going door to door selling solar hot water systems. And I was like, dang, but you can, you can actually make money without having to physically be present somewhere. And I was just like, my mind was blown. So between that and then, honestly, that was just relevant to our combo we just had. But I found a mentor. Nothing, nothing groundbreaking. I saw a guy on a, on a Tuesday midday shooting, you know, playing basketball, shooting hoops at the gym. And I just said, hey man, what, you know, what do you do that you can play basketball on a midday Tuesday? Said work, work online. I had no idea what that meant. I said, I want to do that. And I said, can I, you know, anybody can work for you for free. And kind of begged him for a job. And it's funny, it was the first time I realized there's a cost to people's time too, because he didn't say yes at first. I was like, what do you, I'm, I'm zero dollars. What do you mean? Take me on? You know, and, and you know, realizing again, there's a cost to his time too, that he'd be investing in me. And finally he agreed. And, and I, you know, my, my father was a retired NYPD cop and my mom worked in my elementary school, so I had never seen, you know, some of the, I got in there as a, and was I 18, 19 years old. And I got to see, you know, $100,000 a day Google AdWords budgets. And I, I, I first I thought there's something illegal happening here. And then, and, and then when I realized there's nothing ille.
This, this is just what a great place I get, I get to learn as an unpaid intern.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Wow. So we're talking a hundred thousand dollar a day Google Ad spend back in what, 2011, 2012.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: It was 2012. Yeah, exactly.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, even today, that's like phenomenal.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Oh, enormous. Yeah. 100. What.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: What was the space that he was in?
[00:02:46] Speaker A: It was. It was jewelry. It was a jewelry space.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Wow. All right, so what. So how did that mentorship work then when you went to him? Like, did he have a process or was he just having you walk over his shoulder? So how did.
Not even knowing what online marketing was and.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Find out to then understanding how to play that game.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: You know, I kind of just dove head first and I took a. Took a course at the time alongside. I was reading everything I could online. And then he. He gave me. And I'll forever be grateful, like, such a long leash. Like, I. I can't remember the number. I'm gonna make it up. But he was like, you have 2500 bucks to spend on anything per month. Like, just to try new shit, just try different stuff. And. And I remember us, we were one of the first Facebook advertisers. So I got this new thing called Facebook where I would choose likers of Oprah. So if you liked Oprah's page and there'd be a little banner ad in the top, right. Much different than what you see today on Facebook ads. But that was the extent of it. Days, hours, the Facebook page, like her. And then it was. And it would just be like a little banner on the right side of the. The newsfeed. But he gave me a short leash to really just experiment. And I treated his money like it was my money and was a good fiduciary and got to really learn on his. His dime. And then, you know, gave me essentially thumbs up and access to. Well, I don't know how much it was access, how much I just kind of took the time of the other employees that work there and the guy running the. The big budgets or the guy doing SEO and just being a nag. And I remember one guy in particular, I. I knew I annoyed him and I didn't care.
I wanted to learn. So I just kept, you know, asking questions and bothering him and, you know, asking if we can get coffee before work and dinner after work and just, you know, just anywhere I could, I could learn from these. From these individuals.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Wow. So how long were you there?
Like, did that eventually, honestly, eventually turn into kind of like a working relationship where he brought you on his team or you just learned what you did and then you started slowly branching out, doing your own?
[00:04:43] Speaker A: You know, I think. And again, I'm trying to reach back 13 years ago or whatever. It was 14 years ago, I, I worked, I worked for free for, I want to say six months. I'll just use round numbers. Then I was getting paid like 12 bucks an hour, which was actually really awesome at the time, for, for a while. And then it was, it was. I worked there until I graduated college and got a W2 job as a online marketer. And I got to really, I picked up. Hold on, I'm jumping all over. So I worked for him for a little bit over a year during that time period, especially when I was unpaid, I got another internship through. I went to Arizona State University, I went to asu. I sorted by the highest paying internship and. And it was 15 bucks an hour. And it was a guy looking for SEO and WordPress and things like that. And I was like, okay, I kind of have an idea what this is. Like, let me apply. So I had both of those jobs. Basically, basically part time jobs, two internships. As I was going through college. When I graduated, I got a W2 job. The, the original job I just told you about, I, I didn't work there anymore. The other guy allowed me to work remote, which now everybody works remote. But at the time I was like, I can literally sit in my bed at night work, bill him for the 15 bucks an hour. I was like, this is a dream. This is awesome. So I go to my W2 job all day long and then at night I work a couple hours literally, you know, in my kitchen and just this, you know, anyone who works remote, just, you know, hopefully people don't take it for granted, you know, today's day and age. But like it was just like the coolest thing at the time. I had no idea that you could, you know, just people would allow you to work remote and build for hours. So. And I'll pause on that and then I can keep rolling from there. I.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: When I made my transition from being in corporate world to online marketing, I remember I used to go home and visit my parents. They live, they have a small farm in Utah, small town in Utah. And you know, I used to go home for four or five days and it's like, I gotta get back. And I remember the first summer I was there, it was just a habit. It was like six days and I was like packing my bag, I gotta get back. And my mom's like, I wish you could stay longer. And then I just had to stop there for a minute and go, I can have to actually go back. I have my laptop here.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: I could. That's cool.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: And I think I ended up staying like three weeks.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: That's badass.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: So, yeah, it was the first sort of experience where I was like, so cool. This is a whole new. Okay. And again, right to your point, then that was. Nowadays they're like, what do you mean you don't work from home though? What is that?
[00:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah. And I think so. I think that was 2013. Ish. And then, yeah, the W2 job and the side hustle, like I said. And honestly the, the internship that turned into kind of like I didn't even realize was my first client because, you know, you know, it's still in my eyes is like an internship I just, I over delivered for, for that individual I'll never forget. Like, he's still actually a really good friend of mine. He went from employer to mentor to. To friend. And I just over delivered. And I just like, if, if I said I'd do it, do something an hour, I'd do it in two hours. You know, I do it in 30 minutes. As an example, you know, whatever it is. Like if I said I was only going to do 10 pages of something, I do 15 pages of something. I'm just giving generic advice, you know, comments here. But I just over delivered the heck out of that. To the point where he was paying an outside. See, like again, I'm making a number five grand a month, whatever it was. And I was outperforming them on at the time, Google AdWords. And I just remember like that was the first time I was like, oh shoot, I might actually be good at this stuff. This is, this is pretty cool. Like if, you know, and for him, of course he's going to smoke and do. It's probably paying me 700 bucks a month to outperform the 5 grand a month guys or whatever, whatever it was. But, but yeah, he just referred me to a friend and then to another friend and then to another friend and then that friend. And honestly, like within the next year I had, you know, probably eight, nine, 10 clients. And it was just like somebody was.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Like, oh, you run an agency and you're like, no, I don't.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it was, and it was just me and I got busy enough to where, you know, I was working on that so much I got fired from my W2 job. But I was making the same amount outside of work as outside of my W2 job as I was at my W2 job. And I think, I think that's a, that's a pretty cool lesson in general that that is when I reflect back that I think I did well is, you know, whatever that term, like, don't quit your day job. Like, I really enjoy how methodically I don't. You know, I'm not proud to say job.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: You got fired because you were making more money than your day job.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Exactly. But, you know, I was. I didn't just, like, say, oh, I've got. I got this business. Let me. Let me quit. And then I had artificial. And then I would add artificial pressure of bills and life and things like that. It's like, I got to make this thing work in the next five minutes. That would have been stress. I would have made different decisions than I did. I would have a different timeline versus, like, having a very abundance playbook to apply to. Meaning, like, you know, how can I grow this? At the time, my. My project worker side work. So, yeah, ultimately got. Got fired and. And, you know, pursued those. Those side projects, for lack better words. I'll pause on that.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: And then what a crazy education, though, to the fact that you're seeing the SEO side and the paid traffic side.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: We just had a conversation a while back, and, you know, they're gonna. I think he said they're gonna do 20 million a year this year, and all they do is SEO, right. So. And then there's other guys I know, and like you said, they're, you know, they'll. They'll do 10 to 15,000, 20,000. One of my friends does 40,000amonth to manage people's campaigns.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Yeah, great. Love that.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: So the fact that you. Yeah, both sides of this coin is, like, nuts to me.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Oh, man, I was so blessed. Yeah, I was. I was mostly focused on SEO. And then I realized you can trackably quickly show your results on paid ads. So I. I very quickly started saying, okay, let me spend more time over here. But, yeah, that's a great comment. I agree. Thank you.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Did you. Did you naturally gravitate in any particular niche as you were doing that, or was you kind of all over the.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Place, to be honest? Who he'd. Whoever he'd refer me to, and he was like an LCD manufacturer. Like, it was like, so niche, it wasn't even funny. So I'd get like, yeah, that's pretty. Yeah. And I'd have, like. I forget, like, Nitro Gloves was like, one of the companies referred me to, like, all these, like a weight loss center, like, just all over the board, like anyone. And it was in this business group that called EO Entrepreneurs Organization for you. You're aware probably as a guest. And I remember stealing the badge as the guest badge and saying, like, I'm gonna be in this room. Like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna get. Get back here. And when I was there, I was like, oh, wait, these are like, all eight of my clients are in this room. Which again, was another good, like, indicator. Aha. That's the right room to. To be in.
And. And again, just, you know, I'll. I'll fast forward a bit. But basically, you know, hired like, like my. My brother when I got busy enough to my other brother than my best friend and my other best friend. And for being an advertising agency, we spent $0 on marketing. It was all referrals, 100% referrals. I think we were probably, you know, nothing insane, but we were probably like 2 million a year in revenue. Maybe 6, $700,000 EBITDA business, like solid business, for sure. You know, reoccurring contracts, things like that. And 000 in revenue. All just over delivering for the customer, upselling them, asking for referrals and. And growing at a really awesome organic, natural pace.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Wow. So that was in the paid traffic space and we were chatting that eventually you kind of left that behind and you went into lead gen. Yeah. What.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: What.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: What. What was it? What part of that journey did you start realizing that that's where you wanted to go versus doing the agency model? Not that you still weren't, but completely.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's. It's funny. Grass always greener. Right? Like at the time. And then I'll tell you what I mean by that comment. But at the time, I'm like, I got clients call me on Saturday night like. Like all, like, they want to talk to me. And I was. I was doing a pretty good job of downplaying myself up, playing my brother, my team, you know, my team at that time. You know, it's funny to say, you know, my brother at the time saying, like, oh, no, this is the guy you want to talk to, not me. I'm not really in the weeds. Which started to become true the more and more we grew. Right. Like I was. I was out selling and trying to learn how to operationally run the business. And he took over client manager, and then people took over running ads, things like that. So I was actually diluting my value as far as like how to run ads or even. Even what's going on with the account, things like that.
So I was starting to get myself out of the weeds. But I was still like the ultimate, like, you know, what's the word I'm looking for here? Like, when you escalation, I was still, like, something didn't go great, like, let me talk to Anthony, you know, and it was still, like, people were still, like, indirectly buying me, which, you know, you and I jammed about. Isn't. Isn't great for a sellable business for sure, but certainly not for a sustainable business either, because God forbid I get hit by a bus or. Man, I. I had the same amount of hours in the day as you do, Travis. Like, I can only work so many, you know, and it's like. And if I'm the product like that, that's exhausting when I'm. I'm the one getting called on all the time. So what. What. What ended up happening, actually, again, a mentor of mine came and said, hey, I want to do this. This lead gen thing in the space. And I was like, what is Legion? I don't even know what that is. He's like, well, it's what you're doing. You're just doing it as an agency. So when you drive calls and leads and you get. You get paid. And I was like, okay, let's give it a shot. So for the first, again, back to my don't quit your day job playbook. First, like, year or two, like, our first year, we were probably on the legion side, maybe 1.8 in revenue, million in revenue, and like, maybe 600,000 EBITDA again on the other side. So it was matched the same, but I was still running both businesses. I was running the agency, and I was running the Legion business because I wasn't ready to shut this down. And as the Legion continued to grow, I finally started dwindling this down and taking more and more resources over here. But I really am proud of the fact that, you know, just when I saw light on a certain area, you know, some people would argue, oh, you could have ran faster, further if you had dumped all your eggs here. But the inverse could have been true. I could have. And I've seen it. I've seen it with my friends where they've got something working and they want. This is the new thing that they want to be doing. And they throw the baby out with the bathwater and they go, you know what? Done over here. This is what I'm doing. And then this flops, and then it's such a pain in the ass, and you're just stuck in a bad spot to try and get back to where you were, things like that. So I am really proud of how Methodically I did, I did that in both career and then, you know, business pivots as well. So to answer your question, how I got in the lead gen, I had, I had a mentor, you know, similarly bring, bring me the idea and ended up being a minority partner of mine on the business and, and growing it.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: And so let's talk a little bit because some people, they hear Legion and they may not know what that is because it means a lot depending on the industry that you're in. Right, so define what you were doing. And again, so I want to clarify. So you, you. He had an agency where people were paying you, you know, five, $10,000 a month and you were running ads. And then how does. And the lead gen then is you're not. You have no retainer, you're just getting paid per. Per performance. So forever.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Call or every.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Whatever need or every customer. You. You nailed it. Yeah. So it's all exactly what you said. Pay for performance versus like an agency is a retainer, although you want to perform to retain the customer. You know, it's not your ads, it's not your website, it's not your money. You just get paid your five grand a month and keep them happy enough to not cancel on you on the pay for performance. It's my money, my website, my ads. All I'm doing is I'm routing the. The lead, the form fill or the phone call to the company. And they're either paying me every time the phone rings or every time a new lead hits their system, or ultimately every time that they actually acquire a customer. So if they're whatever, a pizza shop, as a silly example, you know, pizza shop, pizza's 10 bucks. They know they can put $5 towards marketing as long as I'm under that, even if each phone call, they're paying me a dollar or 50 cents on a phone call. This is a really stupid example. I don't know why I came up with that. I think I was just on a fast and I was thinking how much I want pizza. So anyway, we'll ro. Roll with that example. But long story short, it bakes into the actual acquisition cost that they're able to justifiably bring on a new customer for whatever business that is, whatever space.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: So insurance, when you pivoted to Legion, were you still just you and your brother or how many employees were you?
[00:17:11] Speaker A: No, we. So the agency probably had. I'm going to use round numbers again. Five, six of us. Not massive, but again, great margin. Business reoccurring. Low, low. People Overhead. And then when we went and then just three of us went into the lead gen business. So I, I shared three of the resources, me and two others, I guess I count myself as one that were kind of working on both at the same time. Like 50, 50 on each one. And then as this started to take more legs, I actually hired for their position on the agency and moved the other two full time over here pretty quickly. And then that business started continuing to grow at a very rapid pace where I started pulling more and more resources. And then eventually I just said, okay, this is so large at this point, so much bigger than this that I'm gonna pull all resources over here, unwind this and shut this down and go over. But again, just for everyone reading or listening, like it wasn't until I was doing substantially bigger numbers to the right as I was to the left before shutting down the left.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: So how did the growth go in terms of employees? Like over that. So you started in 2016, there was four or five of you, like at what levels were you bringing on new people? Because eventually you ended up with 18 full time employees.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: 18. Yeah, yeah. So not much. And again, I'm not the right business to talk about like managing human, human people, human capital, things like that. Like it's such a low percentage of my overall capex again ad spend was as you and I talked on, on what I was, you know, paying Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, you know, all those platforms.
But yeah, I think we, you know, I'm going to make up round numbers between agency and this. We were at 5 in 16. Honestly, we were able to grow like pretty rapidly without adding many people. I don't, and I don't even know at what pace we added. But yeah, we ended up at 18 people. And by 2022 when we ultimately, you know, sold the business and mostly what we're adding would be around like media buyers for sure, developers for sure. And then really like comment moderators, which now AI can take care of a lot of that. But you know, I remember I had like five or six people managing comments at one point. Like responding to a Facebook comment, somebody said something or a Facebook message or anything like that.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: People outside of that don't even realize, wait, somebody was paid full time just to answer comments on ads?
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. We found it, it's, it was a revenue generator. So you would ask like, how does this work? And then I'd go in there and respond back and you'd end up calling in and enrolling and you'd be Worth a thousand bucks on that versus like you saying, how does this work? And I never respond to you or I don't respond real time enough for you to take action on it or something like that. So it was actually a profit center for us. It felt like an expense center at first, but then we were able to track it down and say, oh, this is, this is actually a profit center managing these comments properly.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: So, so how did you juggle the day to day business operations with also needing to be in there running ads and running like. Because you were saying, I know for a while there you were saying you were getting away from the weeds and the in the ad lines aspect. How did you deal with that as you started to grow in Legion?
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question. So I never actually ran a single one of our ads in Legion at all. I took media buyer from the agency, so I think I had laid a lot of that groundwork down at that point where I was really the sales guy, for lack of better words. And then I was a lot of the, I'll tell you my exact role. It was sales. So bringing on new customers. It was helping manage clients. Not in the day to day, like, hey, why didn't my phone ring today? But in the, like, let's do our monthly report. Like I'm on that call making sure that we retain the client and they're happy and we're hitting their KPIs. And then it was the overall strategy around the ads, like how we're running the ads, what, you know, sales copy angles, messaging, landing page. Like how are we going around that picture?
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Strategy guy.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: And that was relationships.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Exactly. And that, that was at the agency level. So when Legion came, it was the, it was the exact same thing. I was, I never ran an ad. I was the sales guy and I was, I was hand holding a lot with the client side as well too. The, the relationship side early on. And then towards the end, you know, we'd have customers that I, I never spoke to, I didn't bring on and I didn't, I didn't manage. But it was, you know, at the beginning it was very much hands on.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: How does a weekend find clients for their Legion business?
[00:21:25] Speaker A: How does a lead generator find lead gen clients? Oh, you know what, it's, it's actually the exact opposite. It's in this, when you're taking all the risk, you're interviewing the customer, right? Because if I came to you and I was like again, back to the pizza shop. I was like, hey, Travis, only pay Me, five bucks every pizza I make you. I drive you. You're like, dude, yeah, that's perfect. That's. That. That works for me. But now I have to make sure that you make good pizza. I have to make sure that you answer your phones. You can scale with me all these things so very much as a. When you're a lead gen or an affiliate, you very much should be interviewing the. The other side more than. More than anything, because they're in the process. There's a vetting process on the other side. Since you're taking on all the risk. All you're doing is getting paid when they actually. Money goes in their pockets, when money comes in your pocket. So you got to make sure they're a good job of putting money in their pocket for. For lack of better words. So it's not. It's not. It's not difficult when you come in and say, I'm a commission only sales guy. You want me? And they're like, yeah, heck yeah, I want you.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: So, so what are some of the lessons that you learned being the age that you were especially kind of ending up in an accidental business? Yeah. And so as you grew, like, what are the lessons that you learned from, like, running from yourself to hiring your brother to eventually, you know, having 15 employees? What are some of the. The big thing. Big realizations that you have a business owner?
[00:22:44] Speaker A: I liked fail fast. I love that. That terminology. I think so many people get stuck in, like, I call it, like, the. The mom effect, where you, like, spend three years making this perfect little beautiful company, and you tell your mom, and she goes, oh, my God, Travis, you're the smartest guy I've ever met in my entire life. And you're like, thank you.
Let it out and get it out there and get negative feedback or fall in your face or fail, fail, fail. But I. I love that, especially with how fast things are moving today.
Fail fast. I love that. For me, I guess getting outside of, like, a cute term, like I mentioned, like, being able to effectively make a career move in a business pivot, like, without throwing the baby out with the bath water. I think that's. That's really important. For. For me, I'd say I really enjoyed hiring and working with my friends and family. Like, I know that's taboo in a lot of business books. And listen, I've had conflict on both friends and family, and I wouldn't change a darn thing. I got. I got to go. I got to show up for eight hours a day and work with the People that I love and care about very deeply and care about. And I also had loyal people that worked there and people that treated the business like it was their own, even if they didn't own any, any percentage of it. And yeah, it's so, so that, that's a lesson that I think is a little taboo that most, most people would disagree with. I, I enjoy the heck out of it. Even, even with the, the trials and tribulations that came with it. I'd say I. Go ahead.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Sorry. No, no, go ahead.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: No, I was just gonna say I think I always, always have kept my expenses well below my income. And, and why that's important is back to what we were saying before is besides the obvious reason is there was, there's never artificial pressure. When I make 10 grand a month and I spend three, like that's a very abundant place to reinvest back in your business. It's a very abundant place to not have anxiety about if you lose a client or something happened. Like, and it's totally in your control, keeping your, keeping your burn down, you know, and, and that's a lesson that I really get especially a lot of startups and business owners and people that are just starting to see some success. It's so easy to make 100 grand and spend 110 grand. It's like, whoa, that's, you know, and I see it at all levels. I see that people making that just made $15 million, they spent $17 million. I'm like, yeah, you're worse off than the, than the McDonald's employee. You know, you're in the whole negative 2 million bucks. So that's a lesson that I really think plays actually more into business than people give credit for. And people don't talk about.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: No, I've talked about this in the past. I had a, one of my mentors in Hollywood. I watched over a 10 year period made $50 million cash in pocket after taxes and agents fees.
And a few years after that retired and within seven years was dead broke.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: And then what, and I thought it was a Hollywood thing. And then when I got into Internet marketing, got behind the scenes of, or the big companies doing huge launches and you realize it was. Right. Yeah, it's an emotional, emotional on the launch. But they would spend 1.2 million to make it.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah, it's, it's an emotional, emotional control and emotional intelligence thing. It's, it's, you know, checking the ego at the door. It's, it's realizing that you get you find happiness and things that cost nothing or cost very little. You know, making dinner with my wife is, is infinitely more rewarding than going out to a steak dinner for $500. And I, I, you know, and I'm not saying I had that overnight. That's not true at all. I've, I've owned a nice car and then I got rid of a nice car and now I drive a Model Y, even though I can afford nice cars. And you know, so I'm not saying that everybody doesn't go through their own journey. I'm certainly not pretending to say I, I knew it the entire time. This is how I was like, I definitely have overspent and then checked myself. I've definitely bought something. I was like, wait, this is, I, I'm scared my Lamborghini is going to get scratched and lose $50,000 in value. So I don't even want to drive it. Like, okay, that's so, you know what I mean? Like, why do you have this thing? It doesn't do anything for you. So again, it's, again, no, no judgment if someone's in that place. So that's what I want to make a lot of money to drive a Lamborghini. But I think eventually you realize, you know, and all of us can, any pair of shoes, if you're, you're a girl, you get a nice pair of heels, a guy, you get a nice pair of shoes. Eventually they're dirty and they're in the back of your closet and you want the next pair of shoes. Like, I don't care what brand is on there, they eventually are shoes. And it's the same thing with, with, and for me, I found in my life, with all material things, it's the exact same thing. So anyway, so I know we kind of went on a tangent and rifted out.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: You experienced something that very few business owners get experience, which is you built something that then got acquired and you were able to exit. So did you set out to, to try to exit or did somebody find you?
[00:27:36] Speaker A: I set out very much so. I ran a formal process. So I hired what's called an investment banker. They're commission only salespeople for businesses, for lack of better words. They put together a nice, you know, pitch deck. Just like as if you were, you know, you would imagine someone raising money, except you're trying to sell and you go out and you go pitch it to a bunch of private equity companies and strategic companies that are in your space. You say, here's who we are, here's who we're going want to buy. Right. And you know, I have 70, 70 meetings plus probably of potential buyers DWs down to three or four offers and you accept one and then you know, if you're, if you're blessed and lucky you get you, you're able to, to actually get it to the finish line. Which is much harder than I thought. Getting an offer, someone saying I'll pay you this and then actually getting wired to your account is a much longer journey than, than you would think. So a lot of people celebrate before they're, you know, before the, you know, the chicken. Was it eggs before the eggs hatch or whatever the term. You know, I'm trying to say whatever.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: So you've had a good journey. You went from intern to agency owner to bigger agency owner to exit and you're still a young guy. So what's phase two and three looking like for you?
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question, man. It's very much in that exploratory space right now where I'm trying to figure out what, what do I want to do, you know, with my life and for rest of my life and, and taking a step back of like God, that's a big question. And you know, I, I would have never expected this certainly isn't me complaining. You know, when you're, you do. I'm blessed enough to have had success, you know, everyone's like that's awesome. What's next? And you're like, I don't know, I don't know. And you know, you, and at least for me I built up a lot of like I gotta do something bigger, better, faster than I did before. And it becomes a lot of like.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: That is part of. Yeah, I call that the online marketing virus.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: 100 I. There, there's. I just, I don't know if you know, Justin Walsh is, but he's an influencer on X and he's growing a pretty big business and I think he's ex nice businesses and he was talking the other day about the pursuit of money and that and that was the other thing I thought was interesting with it. The, the online marketing space again. Working behind the scenes is somebody would make a million and a half on a launch and then six months and, and you know, they would kill the team to do it. But then the next launch they're like, oh, we've got to do $2 million this launch. Well why? Because last time we made a million and a half and we don't make 2 million this way. Then I'm going to be embarrassed. I'm the growth guy and there was. And then you. So you just see him and it was like there was always, it was always bigger, it was always more and it was. And I finally realized that.
And I love your opinion on this. From my perspective, being behind the scenes, the biggest probably mistake I see a lot of online business owners make is they never set a. An enough mark.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: When my business is making X amount of dollars, that's enough. I don't need to. But I don't need to launch more. I don't need to go forward. I can hit this point and maintain that and it's enough. It's always. Because you know this very well online space, there is always another way to make more money.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: Always. Of course. Yeah.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: And so you can get in this trap of like, more, more, more, more. And you're always in pursuit of this thing never arriving because you're just chasing this because it's there. And when you know how.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: And I, I, I'll, I'll, I'll supplement that comment and say, I think it's just people or businesses, not even just online businesses. It's that, it's that mentality. And, and I'd say a couple things. I think one is like, you know, I think, I think no matter how much whoever's listening or reading, no matter how much money you have or no matter what you've accomplished or not accomplished in your head or whatever that is, like, don't forget you've already won. Like, if you were born in the United States of America, you're. And make minimum wage, you're in the 1% of the world. Like, I'm blessed enough to have been places that third world countries and God, we take, I mean, we take the sunshine for granted. I mean, you know, you and I in Vegas, like, it's just like so easy to, you know, you know, we got to fight the. What is it? The law of familiarity. Like, man, you've already won. And like, don't forget that no matter how. And of course, easy for this guy to say, but, you know, I mean that like, you know, it's like you've already won and, and yet I guess just rift on your, your. The, the question was, you know, I saw a Florida football documentary when Tim Tebow played there and Urban Meyer was a coach because he goes, I. When he won his national championship, he called his parents and he goes, I just, I feel so blessed. The pressure's off now. I won my national championship. And the episode ends and he goes, I could not have said a more inaccurate statement in my entire beeping life. Entire effing life. And he's right, because now you won one, so now everyone expects you to win the second one and the third one and the fourth one and the fifth one. It's, it's, you know, and then you expect yourself to. And there's a lot of pressure. So I, I've, I think I've done a, not a perfect job by any means, but I, I've, I've challenged myself and tried really hard to, you know, you know, trust in whatever God, universe, whatever you believe in, you know, and still work my tail off. I'm still, I'm still working, you know, eight hours a day because I enjoy it and I'm doing what I want to be doing and I don't need to work another day in my life, but I'm blessed enough to because I want to. And, and I do want to change the world and I do want to operate from a more abundant mindset where it's not chasing money, it's, it's chasing impact. And do I have to check myself on that every day? Yes, of course. And do I make steps where, oops, this is more of a money chasing activity than an impact activity. And it's like, okay, hold on, let's, let's recalibrate a little bit. And, and that's so it's a work in progress, brother. That's the only thing I can say. And for myself, just trying to give myself grace and kind of trust in the process along the way is, is probably the biggest, you know, comment I can, I can make back.
So.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: Yeah, so I know you said that one of the things you're doing now with part of your time is you're starting to mentor other businesses and help them and grow. So for if there's a business that's listening to this and they're like, man, I'm kind of in that phase right now. What, what advice do you give to the people you're mentoring now when it comes to business growth?
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I like, I'm like a, not necessarily like, you know, was a walk, Jocko Willick or whatever, the extreme accountability. Like, I believe the restraint in any growth, in the growth of any business comes down to its leader. So, meaning like the more I can grow as an individual, whether that's through hard work, psychology, my health, my family, things like that, like, I believe that that has a direct impact on my business. I treat my employee, if I treat my wife Great. I treat my employees a little bit, a little bit better than I otherwise would. If I, if I focus on my health, maybe I set good boundaries for them where I retain them longer as an example or, you know, I'm giving silly examples or whatever it is. But like my, my advice is like, focus on investing back in yourself and betting on yourself and in all aspects of life. Because I think, I think it's this the dumbest statement ever around, like sleep when you die, you know, you know, grind, grind out 20 hours a day. I'm like, dude, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. Like, it is just.
And I do agree with going deep and being a specialist in something. So I also don't think you should be a jack of all, master of none. But I do believe when it comes to your life, I do think, you know, relationship, health, your business, you know, faith, whatever it is that you prioritize in life. Like, I do think that there's four or five categories. Finances, excuse me, those probably five are non negotiables for you to always be trying to grow in. And I think they all play off of each other as you grow, become a better leader in business, you're a better communicator in your relationship or as you trust more and you know the process, your business grows as a result or, you know, whatever it is. So I do think those five categories are non negotiables of extreme focus and being excellent and excelling in all five of those. Where I see so many people just trying to excel in business.
And it's what we talked about. You build a business around yourself. It's like we talked about in my agency earlier. And you end up working 80 hours a week, making the same amount as someone as, as a plumber. End up making 200 grand a year, working 80 hours a week, carrying stress, having four employees. I remember in my EO group there was, I think, a plumbing company. The guy was like, yeah, we do 2 or 3 million. I can't remember the number. Two and a half million bucks a year. We'll meet in the middle there. And I was like, that's awesome. And I get into his numbers and he makes like $120,000 a year, which is not a bad living, by the way. But for two and a half million dollars worth of work and employees and headache in 80 hours a week, dude, go get a freaking job. Go, go work a job. You don't, you don't need to do that. And it's because he was so focused. He's not focused on those other five areas of life, in my opinion. Getting himself out of the weeds, making the business his identity. This is all I have. This is all I, all I am. It's like, no, dude, you're. You're a human. You're Travis, you're Anthony, and you're, you're great in these other categories and probably some more other. Other categories too. So the, there was a long winded way to say invest back in yourself in, you know, those five categories. And you know, I'm sure there's someone can challenge me, there's another one, or take one of those off or whatever. But for me, that's that, that's what I, I like to focus on. And it served me really well to be happy and productive in life, clearly.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, we've had some pretty good success at a young age. So, Anthony, thanks so much for your time being here. If, if people are interested in learning more about you or what you do, is there someplace they can go to follow you or, you know.
[00:37:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, just, just search my first last name on Instagram or, or even on Anthony.com and I, I really proud of myself. I respond to everybody that has a question. Again, it might take me a couple days or a week or so, but anyone who's got a business question, again, happy to help or add value. Anyway, again, this stuff's fun for me. I had so many mentors and people pour into me that it's my, my pleasure and honor to, to pay it forward.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, Anthony, thank you so much for your time. This has been a fantastic conversation.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: Forest, Travis, thanks, man.
