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My First Million5 Business Ideas To Start Today With $0 ft. Shark Tank's Sabri Suby
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70 min read · 13,535 words- 0:00 – 1:04
Intro
- SPShaan Puri
Today, I'm talking to Sabri Suby. He is kinda like the Australian Gary Vee. He's got a marketing agency. He's on Shark Tank Australia. He's a fun guy. I wanted to brainstorm with him businesses that he would start today. So next 18 months, where is the opportunity that he sees? If you're starting from scratch, you got no resources, maybe no experience or capital to start with, how would he still make it? 'Cause this is a guy who took his laptop and basically built one of Australia's biggest growth agencies, and I wanted to hear what he would do today. So we brainstorm ideas, and then at the end, we talk about some of his sales philosophies, 'cause he's a very good sales guy, and, um, also some of his life philosophies, how, how he lives his life a little bit differently than most. So enjoy this episode with Sabri Suby. [upbeat music] What's, what are some ideas or business ideas that you are excited about right now? So trends that you're seeing, opportunities you see. If you weren't doing what you're doing right now, what things would you be interested in? What businesses would you go create?
- 1:04 – 7:28
Idea: Done-For-You Channel Growth
- SSSabri Suby
So I've got a few, and I'll start from like... I- I- I'll lead up with the best one, what I think the best opportunities are, right? So I would say the, the, the first thing that would be a very, very compelling offer is when you're running a business and you start with one traffic channel, right? And you kinda start with one traffic channel, you make an offer, you get something working. It might be Google Ads, it might be Twitter ads, it might be, you know, TikTok. It doesn't matter what it is. You run with one channel. You see some success. And then, you know, you got sales coming in, customers are coming in, and like a lot of businesses, there's always so much more opportunities that are flying by you. And it seems like the bigger that you get and the more success that you have, the more illustrious that these opportunities are. And the challenge is that focus is the main thing when, what I have found when running businesses, because I had shiny object syndrome really, really badly in the beginning of my career, and that's where I had these ups and downs, and I made money, and then I lost all my money, and then I had to do everything again. And it was all because I lacked focus, and I was just looking for the next new sexy sales channel or the next new business model. And so that's something that I see for a lot of businesses, and they know that they need to focus on one thing. So they focus on one traffic channel, but as a result of that, they also then say no to a lot of opportunities. So I think that a very good opportunity right now is to reach out to businesses that are running ads on a platform, whether it be Google, and say, "Hey, you got your funnel here. It's all dialed in. It's obviously working, but I noticed that you're not running any Facebook ads," right? And that's alwa- always because they need a team, they need expertise, they need to do something, or they tried it and it didn't work 'cause they tried to use the same funnel they were using on Google Ads on Facebook from hot traffic to cold traffic, and it didn't work. And you just say, "Look, I'm gonna do everything for you. Don't pay me a cent. I'm gonna build the funnel. I'm gonna run the ads. I'm gonna show you that this works, and I just want a percentage of the sales, right, from this traffic channel." There's no, there's no risk, and it's only gonna result in something if it's actually proven. And I think there's so many platforms that you can do that with. There's a lot of people that are, like, really all in on Facebook ads right now, right, and Meta ads. And they're kinda waiting to see what happens with TikTok and the ban, and they're not really running that yet. Well, you could come to those people and be like, "Awesome. What we're gonna do is we are going to run TikTok as a platform for you, right? We're gonna build the funnel." 'Cause what a lot of people don't understand is there's different compliance for TikTok and Facebook. "So we're gonna build all of that for you. We're gonna run the ads. We're gonna do everything. You're not doing it right now, and we just want 10% override, and we'll do everything."
- SPShaan Puri
Nice. And so what do you think of, what do you call that, that pitch where it's not... Like, it's like a reverse sell basically, or you're... It's a killer offer where you're offering them something that they'd be, they'd be a fool to say no to, right? It's a no-brainer. Do you have a, a phrase for that? 'Cause I know you're good with coining terms around this stuff.
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah, I, I, I call it the Godfather offer, right? So it's like making, making, like, you know, your prospect's an offer that they simply can't refuse. And when I think back now to, like, all of the roles that I had that, you know, the companies were crushing it, they were growing very, very quickly, they were all had a very, very strong offer. Like, that was the one thing that was the throughput to all of that.
- SPShaan Puri
We had the same thing happen in e-commerce. Um, a lot of stores are on Shopify that are not on Amazon, and what you can do is you can go to every Shopify store that's not on Amazon in a very simple pitch, a very kind of rinse-and-repeat pitch. You basically would search for a Shopify store above X in traffic, which you can go use Similarweb or whatever to, to... The Chrome extension will just tell you that. And you say, "Great." You reach out to them cold, where you can always get the, the business owner's email, and you say, "Hey, I noticed you're not on Amazon right now, probably because it's a big lift. It's kind of operationally intensive. You don't know where to s- to do blah, blah, blah. Um, but I did a little research, and three of your competitors are on Amazon." There's another tool that will tell you how much somebody's selling. So you say, "Your competitors are doing a million dollars a month on Amazon right now, and actually, there's low competitiveness for this keyword. I think there's... I think you're leaving X dollars on the table. It'll take some time to ramp up, but I can do that for you. Leave the items in your warehouse. You don't even need to, to ship it to Amazon yet. We can start simple, and then we can get more complicated once it starts to show results." And you could pick up, you know, 5K a month, 10K a month clients, and, you know, 10 5K a month clients is 50,000 a month that really one person who understands Amazon FBA could do. And to understand Amazon FBA is like you're four months away from being good enough to operate this for one store, and then you do it for two stores. By the time you do it for two stores, you can do it... You, you'll be able to do it for 10. You'll just have to hire a couple people. And so I think that that's another example of people just find so- find a group... Uh, find a class of businesses that are not on a channel and make them a custom killer offer, or as you call, a God- Godfather offer to, uh, to do business with you.
- SSSabri Suby
Exactly. Yeah, and I think that that's is, that is something that is Not, not a lot of people are talking about, and it is a very nice shoo-in. You're already being able to identify a, a group of people that would be a perfect candidate for what it is that you've got, that have money, right, but they don't have time.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SSSabri Suby
And they don't have the expertise in that channel, and just bringing that to them and making it, um, a very res-
- SPShaan Puri
But the mistake here is people try to do this for podcasters. They're like, "Hey, you should be posting clips," or, "You should do this. I'll do it for you." And then what they forget is that most podcasters don't have any money, or they don't have enough... They don't make enough money on a podcast to be able to do this. And so y- you wanna go fish in a pond where, uh, something like e-commerce works 'cause if an e-commerce store is still in business three years later, it's making money. And [laughs] and for them, it's very easy to say why they should do this new channel because it will also generate money right away. You can make a strong case for why Amazon is worth it, 'cause it'll generate revenue from day one. Whereas posting your podcast clips on TikTok is kinda silly because you're not necessarily gonna get money or even podcast subscribers from it.
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah, it's harder to justify the sale, right? Like, if, if, if you're giving someone an ROI, it's a much easier sell than just like, "Here's another expense just to-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
... get clips chopped up for you, and you already don't have no money."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] All right, what's
- 7:28 – 13:02
Idea: Affiliate arbitrage for Chiropractors
- SPShaan Puri
idea two?
- SSSabri Suby
So idea number two is, I think this would probably be the place that I start, I would start if I didn't have any skills. And so one thing that's present right now is that CPMs on Facebook are through the roof. And there's only pretty much one certainty, other than death and taxes, and that is that the cost to advertise next year is gonna be more expensive than this year. And it's gonna keep going up, and it's gonna keep going up. And so what's happening right now is a lot of these SaaS businesses that have these CACs that are very high, they're really feeling the pinch. And their payback period's gone from six months to 12 months to 18 months, right? Um, I think I read a report the other day about Salesforce, and their payback period is something crazy now, like 24 months or something, or even longer than that.
- SPShaan Puri
Yes, two or three years I think it was.
- SSSabri Suby
Two or three years, right? And so that is going to continue. People are gonna continue to feel that pinch. So I think that, you know, as long as that continues to happen, there is gonna be an arbitrage with people that can actually deliver people customers with a lower CAC. And so a great way to, to do that is that a lot of these businesses, whether it's HubSpot or GoHighLevel, ClickFunnels, Hyros, all of these guys, they offer insane affiliate commissions, right? Um, I believe HubSpot's affiliate commission is 40%, which is just astronomically high. So what I would do is I would-
- SPShaan Puri
Well, put that in dollar terms roughly. What do you think that i- what do you think that means to deliver a customer? So this is... The HubSpot affiliate is basically the... The bottom tier of it, it says, is 30% recurring up to one year. And so I don't know what the, um, the average price point is for, for this, but-
- SSSabri Suby
What do you see on the pricing page?
- SPShaan Puri
Okay. Marketing Hub is $800 a month. Marketing Enterprise Hub is $3,600 a month.
- SSSabri Suby
So let's just pick the 800, right? Um, and then we're saying that they pay you over, over the year, you get 30% of that. So that's three grand, right, is basically what you're gonna make for not doing a lot.
- SPShaan Puri
Per customer without having to operate and maintain that customer. You've, you've offloaded the rest of that to the, to the actual company themselves.
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah. And, and there's some that are even more lucrative than that, right? If I say, if you look at Hyros, they say that they pay a minimum of 1,000 and up to $15,000 for a customer. And there- there's, there's countless of these guys. So what I would do if I was in this niche is I would pick one niche. Let's just say it's chiropractors, and I would build out a full funnel that I know converts for that niche with an offer, the opt-in, the email flows, and everything. I would then build a list of people in that, uh, for all chiropractors in whatever the geography is that you wanna service. You can do this on Upwork. You can do this with BuiltWith. You can do it with a whole bunch of them. And then I would run a campaign or an outreach to these people, or I would cold call these people, and I would say, "Hey, I can see that you're running ads right now, but you're sending them to your homepage," right? "Just tell me the date that we can hold the funeral for all the money that's being murdered from you doing this."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
"So instead, what I'm gonna do for you is I've already built you a funnel, and here it is," right? You get the email flows. You get the landing page, the offer, everything like that, the text messages. "You don't need to pay me nothing for it. I usually charge $5,000. All that I ask is that you sign up through this commis- through this affiliate link in order to sign up and get this funnel through HubSpot for free," right? Of course they have to pay there, and then I get my kickback. And that is something where a lot of agencies that service chiropractors or dog washers, or it doesn't matter the niche, these people are actually charging for that. So if you're able [laughs] to go out there and actually just offer people, or the same thing with Hyros, right? It's like their guarantee is, like, they'll guarantee to give you an uplift of 15% to 20% in revenue from that. Build a list on BuiltWith of all Shopify stores, cross-reference the ones that are running Facebook ads that have the Facebook ads pixel on there, and I will guarantee to increase the revenue-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- SSSabri Suby
... tracked from your ads by 20%.
- SPShaan Puri
Interesting. Okay. So I thought you... I didn't understand the, the genius of your idea here. So what you were say- I thought you were just saying, "Hey, HubSpot pays an affiliate commission. Become a HubSpot affiliate. Run traffic to get people to sign up for HubSpot." But no, no, no. You had a two-step system. You were saying find a bunch of people that if they were sophisticated in their funnel would have enough leads where they would need to use HubSpot. [laughs] So you're like, "Let me just do g- create a free turnkey funnel for chiropractors, then go to the chiropractor and have them just give that to them." And they're like, "Wow. Thanks. Really, what's the catch?" And you're like, "Oh, the only catch is that these leads need to live somewhere. They should live in HubSpot. Use my affiliate link when you sign up, when you go ahead and, and make that official there." And so that is how you would, you would generate a higher volume of customers for these SaaS products, is by giving away the thing to the, to the end user who needs to use it. Correct.
- SPSam Parr
All right, look, the question that Shaan and I get asked constantly is what skill set did we develop early on in our careers that kinda changed our business career? And that's an easy answer. It's copywriting. We've talked about copywriting and how it's changed our lives constantly on this podcast, and we give a ton of tips, a ton of techniques, a ton of frameworks and throughout all the podcasts. Well, we decided to aggregate all of that into one simple document so you can read all of it. You can see how we've learned copywriting, but you can see the resources that we turn to on a daily basis. You can see the frameworks, the techniques we use. It's in a simple document. You can check it out in the link below. All right, now back to the show.
- SPShaan Puri
Okay, smart. All right, cool. I like it. Gi- give me another one. Give me a different one. Is there one that you have that's not as internet marketing?
- SSSabri Suby
Well, I, I, I do. I ha- They, they are pretty much all kind of in that internet marketing
- 13:02 – 14:50
Idea: Live Chat as a service
- SSSabri Suby
niche. What another one that I think... I'll hit you with two more. So the next one that I would do is there are 400 million small businesses in the world, right? There's 60 million in America. There's five million in the UK. There's two million in Australia. And as everyone moves online, and there's people all over at all different time zones that wanna get in contact with these business, a lot of these businesses have a Google My Business listing, right? A Google page with their reviews and all of those kind of things. Um, and the thing that very, very few of these people offer is live chat. So I would offer live chat as a service. Um, and if it was just me and I was trying to start a side hustle. You know what I mean? I could do it after hours, whereas where a lot of people don't have the manpower to offer support after hours or to be able to field inquiries. And again, it would be free. I would say, "Hey, I'm gonna do this for you, no charge." So I don't need to try and convince these people to do it, right? A compelling offer is infinitely more powerful than a convincing argument. So I do not wanna get into a convincing argument over the phone that they should do this and they should pay me money to do this. I would say, "Cool. I know that this can increase your sales by 10% because I can look at your Google My Business listing and see that you're getting so much traffic after hours that you guys aren't open, where no one can get in contact with you. I'm gonna field those leads. I'm gonna nurture those leads. I'm gonna then send them to your sales team or even close some of them for you through chat, and I want a 20% commission as a result of do that." I would start it as myself until I got it going, and then I'd hire some people in the Philippines or wherever it might be to actually service that. And I think that that is something that for people that are running ads or that already rank on Google is just a nice little shoehorn. It just, it just fits.
- SPShaan Puri
Uh, okay. I like it. What, what would you
- 14:50 – 17:39
Look for customers with a bleeding neck
- SPShaan Puri
target? So when you're... Let's say you were at the beginning and you're trying to build up. Are you trying to make these into $20 million companies? Are you trying to get to $1,000 a month? Are you trying to replace a job? What's your mindset if you were starting from the beginning here and you're thinking about one of these kinda hustler ideas where you're gonna be doing the internet marketing for somebody? What would be your goal or your approach to that to get to that first milestone? How do you think about that?
- SSSabri Suby
I can tell you how I thought about it. At, at the beginning it was like just operation don't be broke, right? Like, you are broke right now and you no- you need not to be broke. So it wasn't like I had this big, like, elaborate vision of having these, all these team members and multiple offices and a book. All of that. No, none of that. It was just like, you need to not be broke, right? So what I look for is people like what I call customers that have a bleeding neck, right? The, the neck is bleeding and they need an immediate solution to solve that problem. And so I like to try to get as close to, like, the revenue producing activities for business as possible because that's the oxygen, right? That's the blood of a business. Um, and I think that the way that I would think about it straight away is first replacing my income, either was just started as a side hustle. And everyone kinda has this magical number of, like, 10K per month that they wanna get to per month. And I think that going through this route is a way to very, very clearly get there. But the other lens that I like to look at it for is, like, what are the skills that I'm going to need to possess in order to make this business get to $10,000 per month? And what are the half-life of those skills, right? Am I gonna be learning just Facebook Ads that what I know right now with Facebook Ads is gonna be infinitely different in the next three years? And so the half-life of those skills is probably 36 months, and then I've lost those skills, and then they don't compound for me. So then I would be looking at it as like, what are the skills that I'm going to acquire that this might be a little dirty down side hustle at 10K per month, but I can then use those skills and build something that is really big further down the line and it's gonna serve me. Um, which will bring me to the, to the last thing, right? Which I think that this is the best business opportunity right now for people that wanna get started bar none. So the, the idea that I wanna speak to you about is something that you need no money to begin with, right? You don't need to show your face. You don't even need to use your voice. There's nothing about it at all that you need. And it is a market that is completely exploding, and it is a way that you can earn, at a bare minimum, $10,000 per month, and there's proof of people making 100, 200 grand a month with this. Do I have your interest?
- SPShaan Puri
You, you have my interest. You have my attention.
- 17:39 – 26:42
Idea: $100K/day opportunity with TikTok Shops
- SSSabri Suby
So we all know that TikTok Shop is exploding right now, right? And what we're also seeing right now is that obviously the whole war between these platforms is now YouTube Shopping is about to have a second crack at it, and they've just launched their thing. And so what TikTok Shop is, if anybody that doesn't know it, TikTok Shop launched their platform which allows brands to sign up to be, to offer affiliates and to have people sell their products with a product tag on it, and then they get a percentage of whatever sales that they drive toward, towards that business. And this thing is exploding. Like, social commerce under that umbrella is completely exploding, and we're kind of in a war right now- For like Gen Zs and these younger generations, like everyone wants to get in on these guys 'cause they know, right? If they don't focus on them now, they're gonna be dinosaurs in the next five years. So what you wanna do is you can use, uh, a website like Calo Data, or there's another one called FastMoss, and you can go through and you can find the best-selling products on TikTok Shop. And then they will tell you, not only they'll show you exactly the revenue that these products are doing, they'll show you the, the TikTok videos and the reels that people are using to actually sell these things. Now, you might be thinking right now, I can hear them, I can hear the objections coming out of the back of the crowd. "I don't wanna show myself. I'm not a content creator." Well, this is where the magic happens, right? You don't need to do none of that. So what you can do is, a lot of the people that are selling the most through these platforms is they're using ElevenLabs, right? Cool, 20 bucks a month, we're good to go on that bad boy. And you can start to look at the scripts on something like Calo Data and have a look at what are they writing in them, get them transcribed, figure out what's making the ones sell the most, what's the one making g- get the most views, reverse engineer that. Then you can plug that into something like ElevenLabs. It will give you the voiceover for it. And then you can use Midjourney or whatever free AI generation tool to create the images for that, and then throw all of that into CapCut, and away you go, and the boys are cooking, right?
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
The boys and girls are cooking if you do that. Um, and you might be thinking, "Yeah, that sounds okay." Like, there are people printing with this. There are kids out there that used to work in Chipotle that are earning 50 grand a month doing this. And it's not by doing 1,000 of them, right? It's about doing one a day.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. What's an example? How did you, uh, how did you stumble across these kids? Or w- give me a, a story about somebody you met that's doing this.
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah. Well, I saw... I, I, like I s- kept on seeing all these crazy ads for, like this stuff, and it was like called shilajit resin. And I was like-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
... "What the hell is shilajit resin?" And it was like this black tar, and it was like an ad that came up and it was like, "What would happen to you... This is what would happen to you if you ate shilajit every day for 14 days."
- SPShaan Puri
And what, what is shilajit resin? I've never even heard of this one.
- SSSabri Suby
Shilajit is like a, it's like a black tar that they get in the Himalayas in India. And it has like all of, like the essential minerals inside it.
- SPShaan Puri
You drink it? You put it on your teeth? What do you, what do you, what do you do with it?
- SSSabri Suby
It's a wild black syrup, and they sell it in these t- tiny little, like jars that look like a lip balm jar, and it comes with a golden spoon. And for anyone that runs ads know that that is immediately killer, right?
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Yeah.
- SSSabri Suby
That it's a little pattern interrupt. This black tar. It looks really weird on the, on the, on the feed. And so I started to see these things everywhere, and they were all AI voices, and they were making the most outrageous claims that I've ever seen, that it doubles your testosterone. Um-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
... it increases your pencil size, as they call it.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
And it does all these wild things, right? And all these like weird people getting jacked with this black tar all over them. And I started to, to look... Then once I clicked on one, the algorithm knows, and I start seeing these things everywhere. And I was like, "I need to go down this rabbit hole. I, I need to. Um, I am a man of the internet and this is my duty, so I will go down and I will start to investigate this thing." And so I found this company called BetterAlt Himalayan Shilajit Resin that all of these TikTok affiliates were pushing. Um, and then I found Calo Data and I plugged them into that, and I saw that they were selling 91,000 units, right, over like a 90-day period. It was like 1,000 units a day of this shilajit resin. And I was like, "That is insane." And then I went further down the rabbit hole and these guys had done just shy of $9 million in shilajit resin.
- SPShaan Puri
In 90 days.
- SSSabri Suby
In 90 days through a TikTok shop.
- SPShaan Puri
So 100, $100,000 a day on TikTok Shop.
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah. And that was the tip of the iceberg, 'cause then I went over to their funnel and started to have a little look and started to see what I could find. Um, and there was like thousands and thousands of reviews. And then if you go to their website, that they, they say that they've sold 9.5 million servings.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
Right? And it, it was... It, it, it's crazy. Like, it was m- it was like a $200 million worth of shilajit if you looked at... It calculated that based on their lowest average order value.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Yeah. Th- okay, so they're crushing it. What's the other one? The like Guru Nanda or whatever that is.
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
The te- is it teeth whitening or what is that thing?
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah. You, you would've seen this Guru Nanda Oil Pulling Kit everywhere. These guys are all over TikTok. Like, they do lives. It, it, the- their funnel is, is very crazy. Also-
- SPShaan Puri
And who's behind this? Is this just like two 26-year-olds or like who, who is... How did they do this? 'Cause it sounds like some ancient Indian herbal recipe or something like that.
- SSSabri Suby
Which is exactly how it's meant to sound, right? Like you-
- SPShaan Puri
But, but it's crushing on TikTok Shop, so I assume it's like a guy with a, you know, zero high fade on a, uh, you know, haircut-
- 26:42 – 29:24
Get paid to learn the most valuable skills as a marketer
- SPShaan Puri
100%. This is, uh, a great idea, and the, the beauty of what you just said is you're gonna learn these more timeless skills, copywriting, understanding consumer psychology, video editing, video storytelling, knowing how to, um, utilize social, social media to go viral. All of these things which are horizontal skills that could be used on a- in any business, but you're gonna get paid to do it. You're getting paid to go to school to build the most valuable skills that exist for marketers of going forward, uh, by, by doing this as a either affiliate or as a retainer, um, uh, con- you know, consultant for some of these brands.
- SSSabri Suby
And that's the reason why I think it's the best is because the skills that you're getting and getting paid to get are gonna serve you for the rest of your life. Like, these are not skills, these are not shiny objects that are gonna go away. Like, we are gonna be communicating in 20 to 30 years from now, right? And it's gonna even be a more hyper fragmented, there's gonna be even a greater war for attention. Um, and if you get the reps in now, if you're uploading a TikTok a day, right? Just imagine the skills and the understanding that you have on s- human psychology in a year, in two years' time, and what that will allow you to do if you go into a more legitimate business, and you know this, and you know all of those skills, what you'll be able to bring to those businesses.
- SPShaan Puri
I mean, I think this is great advice for people early in their careers, people whose main attribute and asset is hustle and willingness to learn things and figure them out. If that's all you have going for you, then this is the perfect type of thing for you, especially if you don't have, you know, coding skills, right? If you can't build in other ways, then, you know... Which is me. I was that guy, right? I was 21 years old. I didn't have coding skills. I didn't have any assets. I didn't know an- You know, if I was a great investor, cool, I don't have any money to invest, nor do I have any track record to be able to go raise money to invest, so I can't do that career, uh, yet. Um, I didn't have any skills to, to build software. If I could've built software, I would've built software, but I would've had to have learned that first in order, uh, in order to even build a, a product in that category. Whereas this is something that the, the bar to enter is so low that it's applicable advice to, to anybody who's at the beginning. I'll just say that. So I don't necessarily think it's the best, but I do think it's the best for a certain group of people, uh, who are in a certain context where they only have certain attributes and they have certain things that they're, they're lacking at that time.
- SSSabri Suby
Correct. You just don't need, like, anything to get started other than time, and that's, when you're broke, that's all you have is time. And the reality of it is that most of these people are already spending four and a half hours a day on their phone. So in, that, that's where I, I believe that it's, yeah, it's, it's a very ripe opportunity.
- 29:24 – 32:18
Kill the little bitch inside
- SPShaan Puri
You have a few phrases that I like. I want you to tell me about them. One is, "Kill the little bitch inside." [laughs] What is this? It sounds like a David Goggins phrase.
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah. I just, I think that there is a duality of man that is present, and whenever, like, you know, you're trying to do something that is hard, there's the little bitch that comes out and starts to whisper in your ear like, "Hey, it's cold outside, Sabri. Like, you've been working out all week, man. Just, it's okay. Just roll over and go back to sleep." Or, "Hey, you've already had really great conversations this week. You've sent out some very promising proposals. You don't need to make another 20 cold calls," right? "Just knock off for the day and go hang out." And there's always that, that little bitch that comes out, and typically the harder the things that you do, the more loud it gets, and it is the best salesperson That exists, 'cause it knows all of your little weaknesses. It knows all of your little vices.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
And it knows exactly how to hit those pain points. And it's... I have found that the harder things that I do, the more it's my ability to silence that person and to do things despite them. And I have, like, an interesting relationship with that little voice that lives in my head, because if it rears its ugly head and tries to say that stuff to me, then I just put it through pain. So if it's like, "You need to skip the gym," like, "You got a little bit of a tweak in your muscle, like, don't go," it's like, just for recommending that, like we're gonna finish the workout with 15 minutes of hill sprints. Like-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
... you, you, you shouldn't have come out here today.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] You wanna send it into isolation.
- SSSabri Suby
Exactly. I, I wanna let it know how, what, what, what, what will be accepted in this relationship.
- SPShaan Puri
So not only do you ignore it, you penalize it for being there so that it doesn't rear its head again.
- SSSabri Suby
I do.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SSSabri Suby
Because I think that, like, the biggest lie that people tell themself is, like, the lie every day. Like, the people that say, "I need to work out," or, "I need to do this," or, "I need to do that," and then they start their day by, like, lying to themself and not accepting that. Like, for me, it's just, like, binary. It's like if I know that I'm not gonna do something, then I'm just not gonna say to myself that I'm gonna do it, 'cause I don't wanna teach myself that I make promises to myself that I don't keep. Like, that's a really bad thing. So if I feel like I don't wanna go to the gym the next day or that there's gonna be a reason why I can't go, I'll just say it now. I'm not gonna say I'm gonna go and then lie to myself.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] What do you do when you get caught in that situation where you thought you were g- you, you said you were gonna do something, you didn't. So you, let's say you-
- SSSabri Suby
I have to pay tax
- SPShaan Puri
... you didn't catch it ahead of time. Yeah, what is, what is the tax that you pay?
- SSSabri Suby
The, the tax is always more volume.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
So it's always more of the thing that I said I was gonna do that I didn't do.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Not only do I do it, I now have to do more.
- SSSabri Suby
I do.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
I have to. It, it, it comes, it comes to collect.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- 32:18 – 44:31
Philosophy: Have more fun
- SPShaan Puri
What are some of the other big ideas that you, that serve you well, either life philosophy, uh, maybe a lifestyle technique you have, maybe it's a belief you have that you think most people don't live by that, that you do, that have s- that has served you well? So I think what I'm asking is what's some wisdom you can drop on me, but the wisdom is in the form of something you actually take action on?
- SSSabri Suby
I think that the... You know, when I started my career, I thought that I needed to look and act a certain way. And, you know, I was, you know, watching business shows, I had read business books, and I was like, "Okay, I need to be, like, this serious dude. Like, I need to wear a blazer, and I need to show up like a businessman." And as a result of that, I had to act a certain way, and that certain way wasn't really a way that was indicative of having a lot of fun. And over the years, it's like the world just, like, tries to beat you down to being, like, vanilla, right? And to fitting in and, like, not being that, like, dark, rich chocolate or that person with a bit of showmanship or a bit of flair and a bit of fun to it. Like, people think, "This is business, so I need to act a certain way." And I, I definitely fell into that. And so one of the philosophies that I try to embrace is just to have more fun, and to everything that I do is just to have more fun in my life and in my business. Because at the end of the day, like, the revenue, the sales numbers, the profits, and all of that kind of stuff, like, the years roll by, and unless you're having a lot of fun doing what it is that you're doing, like, nothing else matters. So, and it was actually, like, it was only after I started of on focusing on having more fun did I start making a lot more money. And so, like-
- SPShaan Puri
What's an example? So what'd you do that was more fun, and how did that h- what, what, what was the turn of events that led to more money? Or were they not connected?
- SSSabri Suby
No, they were definitely connected. So obviously, like, some of, some of the things that, like, I would say that are fun is that, like... A specific example is about a year and a half ago, I put together an ad campaign, and usually when I put together an ad campaign, I'll be like, "Okay, how do I make this convert the best?" Right? That is the goal. It's like, "How, how do I just make it convert?" And to cold traffic, 'cause that's the game. And then I was like, "Let me just think about, like, what would be the, the funniest ad. Like, what would be... What would I need to do to have the most fun?" And I, I started from that place of just having just a wild, fun ad, that regardless of the, whether you were in business or not, it would be entertaining and fun. Um, and we did all types of outrageous things. One of them was, like, having me dressed as a priest, and we had Lord Zucks and Lord Elon in the background. And we were having a funeral in a church for the money that is being murdered in most people's ads campaign, right? And that was a whole lot of fun making that ad. And everything that we did in that, in that whole script was a lot of fun. It was funny. And that one campaign tripled our sales. And so that, that is a very transactional example, but it's more so about, like, what is it that would be fun? So I try to do something that is, like, you know, really big and have a big swing, something that's really risky every year. Um, because I know me, and I know the urge that I have as an entrepreneur to g- like, always keep engaged and to have, to scratch that itch. And the big sin that I made early on in my career is I looked at scratching that itch through other business opportunities and other, like, things. When what I do now is I'm present that that is the law of gravity. I'm always gonna wanna do new and novel things, but I have a new and novel thing that I do that is attached to the main thing. Right? So it might be a new campaign or a new channel or a new offer that I'm gonna run, and that will scratch that itch. And I think that, like, getting wrapped up in working, people as they get older in their life, they start to take things a lot more seriously, and they forget that like, yo, we're just all here having fun at the end of the day, right?
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Yeah.
- SSSabri Suby
Like, what's the point of you not having fun? So I like to talk to strangers, um, lots of strangers. You- we're told from a very early age not to talk to strangers. Strangers have got everything that it is that you want. My wife was once a stranger, right? Like, my customers, my business partners, my best friends, all of these guys were strangers to me. And so I think that that is something that is underutilized. Having parties and, and entertaining people. It's so easy to get caught up in organizing your business life and the meetings and the events that people don't take that same vigor and discipline with planning fun and making, like, events fun. And when you do that and you have fun and you've got all of these things that you do in your downtime, it just makes you, like, bring so much more zest in life to your everyday business because it's not like this just never-ending constant grindstone.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, there was a great Google principle I think called 20% time that they had for a, for a period, which was they acknowledged that the most talented people, the best programmers that they wanted to hire, they would never be able to just chain them to the desk and say, "Optimize these Google ads for the rest of your life" And that they needed the 20% time to just say, "Go work on whatever you want." And you're either- you're gonna do it anyways. You're either just gonna do it when you go home, and that's gonna become a side hustle, it's gonna become a new company, it's gonna become a reason to leave. It's gonna become so much more fun that you're, you're just kinda disconnected from your job 'cause the fun is what you're having outside of the, outside of the job. So instead they said explicitly, "Use 20% of your work time to do something completely different than what you would do in your normal day-to-day." And out of that came some really great ideas. I know with Facebook, out of their hackathons, which are their, their version of like, "Yo, let's just build some shit. Forget the process, forget the product, forget the roadmap, forget everything. Let's just build some shit tonight, have beer and pizza" And I think, like, the like button came out of that. The most pushed button in the history of the universe [laughs] came out of, came out of somebody in a hackathon saying, "Hey, what if we added that to our product?" And so I think that there's great examples of this, um, in business as well. We used to have a do cool shit budget, which was we would take 20% of our time, but we'd also take, I think it was like 10% of our money. We said 10% of the marketing budget has to be a no ROI play. Meaning, we think it's awesome, but it's not measurable, it's not clear, it's not proven that this would work. And it was only out of that extra 10% that we would do things that were the kinda big swings, out-of-the-box ideas that might result in a big winner or might result in we just tried something, we learned some fun, we have a good story to tell, we move back on, and we, we had a creative release that we now use to do something else. Tim Ferriss was on the podcast and he said this well. He goes, "I've learned that just 'cause I charge my batteries doing something silly doesn't mean I have to use them doing something silly." So for example, he will do something that's not, quote-unquote, productive because it charges his batteries. And he's like, "Now I have batteries to go do more productive stuff if I wanted to. If I only ever do the super productive stuff but it's just draining my batteries, that's not better."
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
"That's not the w- that's not the way."
- SSSabri Suby
And I think that that is even a more powerful example, right? Because, like, looking at, like, Google's, like, you know, their 20% time and all that, that's still tied to work, right?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SSSabri Suby
But it's more so, it's like as we get older, like most people think that getting old means getting boring.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SSSabri Suby
Like, just think about it. Like, think about most people as they get older and they have the kids and they... all of these things happen, then it's like they just feel like that that is almost, like, a whole path to being boring and just, like, fitting in and doing stuff. So, like, there, there's this annual survey that they do every year that is the happiness index, right? That measures people based on their happiness. And if you ask most people, like, "Are you happy?" Or like, you know, "If you had to rate yourself on a scale of one to 10, how happy would you be?" Most people say seven.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, seven.
- SSSabri Suby
Right?
- SPShaan Puri
Obviously. [laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah. But I don't like to live at sevens, right? Like, I, I, I, I, I wanna be very happy and I want my life to be very, very full, and I just think that there's far too often we take things far too seriously that do not need to be seriously, uh, taken seriously, and we just, we feel like that because naturally we're getting older or we're getting more cynical. And it comes back to you need to do silly things that do charge you and that you do get energy for, um, because you wanna have, like, those sprints. It's not about sitting down and working 16 hours a day just grinding on something because you've got the hours to do it. It's about doing your most meaningful work, and I find that I do my most meaningful work when I focus on having more fun with everything that I'm doing. Because it's like if you're gonna compete with somebody, it's like the Naval quote, right? You wanna do things that feel like play to you and that look like work to others.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SSSabri Suby
So if you can inherently have more fun doing those things, you're gonna do them for longer, you're gonna get better, and you're gonna see better results.
- SPShaan Puri
Can I read you a quote about this exact topic? Uh, an hour before this podcast, I was supposed to be preparing for the pod, but I was deep in a rabbit hole on Sylvester Stallone [laughs] of all people. [laughs] I was studying the, the, the story of Rocky and S- uh, Sly, and he said this quote. He goes, "I think that life belongs to people who can make a sick joke out of it all." And he said, "If you take life too seriously, I don't know, either you th- y- you either think one of two things. Either you think that life is a comedy or you'll feel that life is a tragedy." And I just love that. And, and, you know, it reminds me of I was at a Tony Robbins event once, and there's 7,000 people from 56 countries and they're... we're all totally different ages, groups of people, different s- you know, backgrounds, different economics, different everything. And he says something, he goes, um- Show me what a depressed person looks like. How does a depressed person stand? If s- don't say a word, just how do they stand? And everybody instinctively does the same thing. We hu- you know, you sort of shoulders down. He said, "How do they breathe?" It's like shallow. It's not deep breaths. He said, "How does, how does their face look?" And you could see everybody, regardless of background, knew. We all knew the protocol. And he says it. He goes, "You guys have practiced this, right? [laughs] You know what stressed looks like. You know what depressed looks like." Because it is y- y- we all know instinctively what that looks like. You said something earlier, which is that we all believe that as you get older, you get boring. Nobody says that out loud, but I think it's an implicit belief that's baked into all of us, just like knowing that, well, if I wanna be in a low energy, depressed state, I should hunch over, breathe kinda shallow, shuffle my feet, and talk, talk in a low voice. That is gonna manifest that. In the same way, I think that most people truly do believe and accept that as I get older, life becomes more boring, and that's crazy. We gotta, like, uproot that and eradicate that as a, as a default way of, of, uh, of accepting how things are gonna go, because it's these beliefs that are so ingrained in you that you don't even really acknowledge. Those are the ones that kinda drive your life.
- SSSabri Suby
Correct, and it's all driven by the activities that you do. If you think about, like, why are you, like, more energized and excited for life, you know, when you're maybe in your 20s as opposed to being later in life, right? Just as an example. And a lot of the times, it's because people stop doing new things, and it's like they, they just repeat the same thing every day. So-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- SSSabri Suby
... instead, it's like that, the manga quote of like, you know, "Show me where I'm gonna die, so I never go visit there." It's the same thing.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
Same activities.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. [laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
You wanna look at, like, w- w- why are you... Like, why do you have a little bit more pep in your step when you're younger? You're always doing new things. You're taking big swings. Like, there's all... And there's always a gain, you know, to quote the little bitch in the back of your mind that's saying, "But yet I have kids now. I have responsibilities. I have certain things that I need to do." Whoever said that means that you can't do also new things or that you can't also have fun while doing those things. And it's just-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- SSSabri Suby
... little exercises that you can put in, in your daily life that you, you make the ordinary extraordinary.
- 44:31 – 45:44
How to be better at small talk
- SPShaan Puri
This is a little small talk, uh, pro tip. One of the most common questions people ask is, like, "So what's new?" That's what we ask people when we see them. "What's new?" And if you're ever on the receiving end of the what's new question, it's like, uh, "Oh, God. What's new? Uh, hmm," like, and it's sad. It's like n- nothing's really new. Well, for most of us, nothing is just new between the last time we saw you and now, right? Like, we're still working that same job. We don't change jobs every week. Still got the same kids. They're still around. Still got the same... Most of the things we do are the same. And so asking what's new is a terrible question to ask, and it puts the other person in a sort of, uh, y- you sort of pin them into a sort of [laughs] sad realization about their life in the, in the moment. A different small talk question that I think is i- generates much more interesting responses is, um, what's something you're excited about coming up? So I'll ask people this all the time, and I'll be like... And I'll say, I'll even say, "What's new?" So that it, the question doesn't sound different. I'll be like, "What's new? What's something that you're looking forward to right now? What are you excited about? What's coming up for you?" And then they'll tell me, like, "Oh, I'm really looking forward to this thing that I'm gonna go do, this show I'm going to, this thing I'm gonna go see." And then they light up because people light up when you ask them what they're looking forward to, 'cause we need things that we're excited about and we're looking forward to. To your point,
- 45:44 – 47:53
Invest in building your year
- SPShaan Puri
we should be b- you... building the muscle of having more fun, of building, planning things that we're excited about that are going to be fun.
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah, you gotta engineer them. You can't just wait for them to happen by chance. Um, and the best way that I have found to do that is just to sit down at the start of the year with your partner, whoever it might be, and, like, not... As, as everybody plans out their work year, right? They're like, "These are the projects that I wanna do. I wanna do it in Q1. Then we've got this." It's like do that about your own life, right?
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SSSabri Suby
"I'm g- we're gonna go on a holiday here. I wanna try this here. I wanna do something crazy here," right? Uh-
- SPShaan Puri
What are some examples you've done?
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah, so s- some of the stuff that, that I like to do is I like to look at, like, all the different areas, like, of my life, my relationships, wealth, all of those kinda things, and you start to have these pillars. So the pillars might be, like, for me, I like to go away every 90 days. I've got three daughters, uh, my wife. I work very, very hard, and I like to... I love to travel. I like to go through, like to do cooking classes, experience new cultures, and I don't wait for when I need a holiday. I just plan them in advance 'cause I know that, you know, a 10-day holiday is gonna give me that zing. It's gonna give me that juice, and I come back and get way more done in that next quarter. So, like-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
... we like to plan the year in terms of, like, all the holidays that we're gonna take. And then a little hack that I, I like to do if you've got kids and you go traveling is whenever we go to a new city, you know, every year we go to multiple new countries, try to go to multiple new countries a year. And wherever the cities or the countries that we're gonna be visiting, I go to ChatGPT, and I ask it to write me a children's storybook about that. And I read that to my daughters leading up to going to the countries.
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- SSSabri Suby
And it's incredible. Like, you can say, "No, make it, like, uh... Had three characters, and these are the characters' names," and they're all my-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
... daughter's names. And then, like, it fuses all the things about that culture into it, and it just makes everyone bought in and so much more excited.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, 'cause the anticipation is always more fun than the p- than the actual event them- [laughs] itself. So that makes sense to actually invest in the anticipation part of it.
- SSSabri Suby
Indeed.
- SPShaan Puri
And you have a pretty interesting, uh, set of interests that align with what I'm interested in. You like... I asked
- 47:53 – 51:42
Showmanship
- SPShaan Puri
you, I texted you. I said, "Hey, what should we talk about on the pod?" Uh, and you said to me four words, of which I'm actually interested in all of them. [laughs] One, the first one you said was showmanship. Talk to me about showmanship. Why is this on your, on your mind?
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah, I think that, like, you know, entertainment is, like, the currency that buys the attention of your prospect and of your marketplace. And showmanship for me is, like, you know, it is, it's a lot of things. Like- It's storytelling. It's being able to have, like, stage presence and energy with the way that you show up, and it's also visual storytelling and being able to surprise and bring drama and excitement to, to whatever it is that you do. And I think that in, regardless of the business that you choose to build, you very quickly, once you get to a certain height, you realize that you're in the people business, right? You're in the, in, in the, the business of leading people and communicating to those people, regardless of what the product or the industry that you're in. And it just becomes infinitely more important with your ability to be a showman and to bring, like, a bit of pizzazz, you know, a bit of that sauce to things that seem ordinary, right? And that can seem mundane and boring, whether it's a j- a job advert that you're writing or an interview that you're conducting or a team meeting that you're running an all-hands on deck, and it's just one of those lost art forms where people just, like... Most of our communication is done through text and email, so I think that people just naturally just get to a plateau where they don't really emphasize it anymore, and I think that with everything that's happening with content creation and, and, and stuff like that and the importance that people are placing on building an audience, there's like, you know, a renaissance of, of, like, showmanship that is having to come back.
- SPShaan Puri
I like that you said, uh, "Showmanship is the currency that buys the attention of your prospects." That's killer. You, uh... I, I, it seems like it's kinda polarizing, right? The people who are out there creating content on TikTok and, and, uh, and YouTube, they probably know more than anyone how important showmanship is, and they're benefiting from, from doing it. And then there's a whole bunch of people who are opted out of that. That sounds complicated, hard. I don't know how to do that. And they're living in emails, text messages, maybe where most bo- business owners live, and I think I buy what you're saying, which is that when you're communicating through, let's say, just emails or, um, or you're running ads, you tend to kind of conform or subdue yourself into a very transactional, just dry, informational way of communicating, and that that actually does you a disservice. Is most of the new business you get through content you're making on your YouTube channel?
- SSSabri Suby
No, I... We, we, we run a lotta ads. Um, so we, we get that as well. I look at it as, like, the whole ecosystem, and the, the YouTube content is a way to also get more reps in, right? I understood that, like, if I wanna become a better storyteller, if I want my hooks to get more dialed in, if I want the whole thing of retaining people's attention, learning all these storytelling techniques, foreshadowing, and all of this kinda stuff that, you know, I kind of really came up through the whole tutelage of direct response and learning my way through that and understanding that, like, the, the landscape is changing and, like, you really need to become even better at storytelling. And all of those reps that I get in on YouTube, I can then translate them to all the ads that I do, the emails, the video sales letters, and whatever else that I'm gonna do, even presenting and just being a showman. It allows me that instead of getting feedback of maybe doing a launch or a campaign every quarter, like, I'm uploading a YouTube video every week.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SSSabri Suby
So it just, it, it, it's about practice.
- 51:42 – 53:26
The difference between good and great
- SPShaan Puri
What's... Let's say if I'm good, what's something you've learned in the gap between good and great on storytelling, uh, or showmanship through content?
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah, I wouldn't say... Like, I, I, I wouldn't put a crown on myself and say that I'm great yet. I think I still got, I've got [laughs] ways to go, but I think that fundamentally it's understanding the, the principles of, like, how do you first hook somebody's attention, um, and then retain it and then be able to make an ask? And I think that the, the place that a lot of people start is really focusing on how to make an ask. They f- they think about how to write the most, you know, influential copy, the most persuasive copy to have a, a, a huge amount of emphasis on the offer, um, and the ask that you're making to your audience. And I think that the number one thing, if you want to improve the conversion rate of anything on any vehicle, the thing that you need to focus on is improving the consumption first. And so, you know, I, I think that you'd wanna place a disproportionate amount of your effort on first getting that consumption, and the way that you do that is by understanding the hook and understanding the lead, right?
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SSSabri Suby
So how, how do I have either something that's gonna be a pattern interrupt or a pattern match to my market, um, and then how do I slowly just foreshadow? How do I build stakes? How do I have where I, I, I'm basically delaying a payoff out of that and have multiple storylines in it? Because if you can do that and if you can earn that viewer, even if, like, yes, you wanna have a very strong offer, but it doesn't matter how strong the offer is if you don't get people to that part of your whole pitch anyway.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- 53:26 – 54:45
Stop praying to the internet gods
- SPShaan Puri
And you have a, um, you have, uh, an interesting method here that you [laughs] I, I just was reading one of your titles that I really like. Uh, the title of one of your most popular videos is Sell Like Crazy: Stop Praying to the internet gods. [laughs] What's the premise of that video?
- SSSabri Suby
Is that, like, a lot of people sit around and hope and pray, um, to Zucks about that they're gonna get cheaper CPMs, right? Or everything would just get easier with my ad account. It's like the, the algorithm wouldn't be so wild and so volatile, or people, you know, basically beg people for referrals, and they sit around and operate their business by whatever fate falls in their lap. But most businesses don't have a repeatable, predictable way to actually put a dollar into a machine and turn it into three or five or $10 back. Um, and with all the businesses that I've seen, with the thousands of clients that I've worked with, all the businesses that I've actually been an employee of, you know, that's the one thing that those people all have, is a repeatable process to go out there and get clients. Because if you do not have that, you have an expensive hobby. That just is worse than a job because you, you don't get vacations, you got all the stress, you got everything else that you need to deal with, um, and you end up working double the amount of hours than you would in a normal job. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Right. Right.
- 54:45 – 56:33
How to get your target market to raise their hand
- SPShaan Puri
What are some examples of these, um, repeatable systems which might be just a sales funnel, a great sales funnel that you've seen right now that, um, you could, you know, teach me about or tell me about?
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah, I think that, like, if you, if you look at it on, like, a lead gen perspective, you know, a, a basic funnel is having somebody having a piece of information or a video or a free report or something that you can get your target market to raise their hand in a sea of people and say, "Hey, I would be interested in learning more about that." And that's the first, like, cardinal sin that most businesses make, is that they go out to their market and they conduct it like that they're in the Dark Ages. They lay out their wares like they're in the marketplace. They can say, "These are all the products and services that I've got." There's a little bit of haggling back and forth on the prices, and then a deal is done, right? They're just like get a quote, buy, buy, buy, where you will get 10 times the amount of people if you go out to your marketplace with something of value to try and educate people, and basically lead with your best foot forward, and use a piece of content that you know that is gonna be bait to get that person to raise their hand in a sea of people, right? And it can be a free report about anything. And then once you get them to raise their hand on a very small ask that is not confronting, it's not intimidating, then you have them arrive on a page where then you make your offer, right? Where then it's a two st- a basic two-step funnel. So instead of saying, "Get in contact with our sales team," or, "Get a quote," you say, "Here's a free piece of information." They download that. Then you arrive them on a page that makes them a Godfather offer to get on the telephone. And you just get 10 times the volume of people that will come into communication with what it is that you do if you do that.
- 56:33 – 59:47
Sabri's 1M copy book funnel
- SPShaan Puri
So what's an example of so- a, a specific example of someone doing this?
- SSSabri Suby
Um, so in terms of, like, we do that a lot. All of our clients do that. But there is, like, in s- say for instance you're a digital agency and you wanna sell your digital agency services. Instead of being like, "Hey, we can help you grow your business with digital marketing," you're like, "Here is a free report of the 22 things that you need to know when running Facebook ads."
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SSSabri Suby
Right? And then that's only gonna pull people in that are interested in running Facebook ads, and a percentage of those people are gonna be interested in having someone run their Facebook ads for them. That's it on the lead gen side, right? Then if you've got, like, the e-commerce side of things, again, it's ab- about being able to first go out there and get people's attention through, through content. Um, and then the brands that are crushing it the most is they're not like, "Here is our goop in a bottle. Here is our protein shake," right? All of these people now, if you look at the landscape with TikTok and everything that's going on, they hit you with a piece of content that just looks c- it just slides under the radar.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
It's completely organic. It doesn't look like a sales message. And then you're watching it 'cause it's very interested, and the algorithm does all the optimizing for you, and then you get to the end of it. And then they make the ask.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SSSabri Suby
Right? So if they're selling, like, a testosterone boosting supplement, they're not like, "Here's this testosterone boosting supplement."
- SPShaan Puri
Buy it. [laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah. They're like, "Did you know that testosterone in males has dropped by 70% over the last 10 years?" And it's like, that will get someone's ears to kind of perk up and go, "Okay, what is that?"
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SSSabri Suby
And did you know the reason why-
- SPShaan Puri
Or, or they'll post a, a clip of Joe Rogan talking about testosterone. It just looks like it's a, someone sharing a clip of Joe Rogan. And then [laughs] it starts to go, to weave you into an actual, uh, a product pitch later.
- SSSabri Suby
Exactly. Like, I saw a brilliant one the other day. Like, I'm in the process right now of building a house, and it was a, a reel on TikTok. And the guy's like, "These are the best 20 things that you definitely wanna be building inside your house that nobody tells you about." And he's like, "You want a whole house water filter. You want this dehumidifier for your whole property."
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SSSabri Suby
"You want these essential oils that diffuse and go through your AC. You want heated tiles." And I'm like, dude, like, this is fire. And then at the end of it-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
... and he's like, "And all these things are expensive. And so if you want... You, you must be thinking, like, 'How, how much is this gonna cost me?' Well, I've just put together a course that shows you how to buy and flip homes so you have the money to buy all this stuff-"
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
"... putting in." I was like, dude.
- SPShaan Puri
Oh, man, that's a-
- SSSabri Suby
He got me hook, line, and sinker.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Yeah, that's a absolute judo flip at the end there. [laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
Exactly.
- SPShaan Puri
He's like, "And forget about having a home. You can't afford it."
- SSSabri Suby
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
"But the way you could afford it is if [laughs] you take my course and start learning how to make money online." Uh, that's amazing. You did a, you did this with your book, right? I remember going down the funnel once of your free book. Um, and I was like, this is very, very smart. He's got a free book funnel. Tell me about this Sell Like Crazy book funnel. H- how many people have, have bought, have gotten a book from you fr- through this? I would guess it's a pretty ridiculous number.
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah, we've sold a million copies now.
- SPShaan Puri
But are you selling them or are they free? I thought they're free.
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah, like, it's free plus shipping.
- 59:47 – 1:03:54
The Yes, Yes, Yes, No Funnel
- SSSabri Suby
and the funnel.
- SPShaan Puri
And when I saw this, I was like, this is genius because books are not good money makers anyways. So instead of trying to make a profit charging nine bucks for a book, you're like, "Let me give away a free book on teaching you how to sell," and then you would create what I call the Yes, Yes, Yes, No Funnel. The Yes, Yes, Yes, No Funnel is you hear somebody telling you how to do something, how to get better at something. They're not selling you anything. And you say, "Yes, yes, yes. That all makes sense. That's true. That's a great example. That's a great point. Yes, yes, yes." And at the end you just say, "No, I don't have the energy to do that." [laughs] And at the end, what you're hoping for, the ideal prospect for a lot of these businesses, is somebody who is now convinced that you know your shit, but they're also convinced that they don't have the time, the energy, or the skill to go do it themselves. And then you could say, "If you don't want... I'm giving you the playbook, but if you don't wanna do this yourself or you don't have the time to do this yourself-" Th- luckily we're here, we do this for you. And you have a marketing agency, for example, so you could teach people, you could give away how to do marketing and people would do yes, yes, yes, and at the end they would say, "No, but I'd rather you do it for me. You've, all you've done is convince me that you are an expert at this and I want to now enlist you to do it."
- SSSabri Suby
Yeah, and I think there's a caveat to it though, right? And so like what a lot of people do when it comes to book funnels or any of these kind of things is they effectively make the book like a thinly veiled sales pitch to do-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- SSSabri Suby
... exactly just that. And one of the things that like, you know, I think I started it in the different way. Like I started in a position where it's like we were getting so much inbound to what we were doing and, you know, we're a premium agency. There was a lot of businesses that could not afford to work with us, and they would always ask us like, "Who, who else would you recommend?" Like, right, "Who's the no-frills version of what it is that you guys do?" And in the beginning I was like, "Okay, let me try to find some people that kinda know what they're doing and send them their way" And they would always come back to bite me in the ass and they'd be like, "Hey, you recommended this person, and they just murdered my money." Right? So, and so I just decided then I was gonna write like a playbook to help those people, to get them to a point where they may not be ready right now, but let me give them this stuff for free. Let me literally no holds barred give them exactly the playbook and not hold anything back. And then maybe in the future they might come back as a client, and if not, that's completely fine. So there's a lot of people that just, they go the opposite route and they go, "Let me build the, the yes, yes, no funnel. And let me just make basically the book a sales letter for my core offer." And so I was very conscious of not making that the, the, the situation, um, because I want it to be something like books is interesting. Books is not like a YouTube video of a reel, right? Like that book is gonna be around in some capacity hopefully long after I am gone. Um, so you really need to pour a lot of time and energy to make it the best that you possibly can. And so yeah, like I think that that's the distinction to make is that it's not a bait and switch of like, yeah, you buy the book and it's just like you h- I'm gonna hold back all the secrets, JuJu. The, the secret 11 herbs and spices, baby, you're not gonna know them.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. [laughs]
- SSSabri Suby
Right? And you, you need to literally lead with your best foot forward and do give them everything, and then if they arrive at that decision, they don't feel like, "Okay, he's given me everything but the secret little part that turns the machine on."
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, I think that's a good, a very good point. Awesome. Well, dude, thanks for coming on, man. Uh, I knew I would learn some stuff about marketing, but I also got some good life tips and, uh, life wisdom out of this, which is always, always a good thing for me. So I appreciate you coming on. Where can people, uh, find you or get more about you?
- SSSabri Suby
It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Um, you can check me @sabrisuby, um, pretty much on all platforms, and if you liked this, you can go to YouTube and check me out.
- SPShaan Puri
Awesome. Thanks, man.
- SSSabri Suby
No problems. [outro music]
Episode duration: 1:03:54
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Transcript of episode kuivk5PdW4I
