Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

Show Notes

Jake Setterlun
https://jakesetterlun.com

OutScaled - Consultants and Coaches
https://outscaled.io

LinkedinAds
https://www.linkedads.io

Transcript

My guest today is Jake Setterlun.

Jake got started in business when he was 19, as he was navigating college and searching for direction in life.

Along the way, he experienced remarkable successes and setbacks, including scaling a business to $1 million a month, then losing it all and having to rebuild from scratch.

His experiences have given him a unique perspective on business, in particular, startups.

He has a lot to say about starting a business from scratch and scaling it.

His businesses have been featured in INC and Yahoo Finance.

INC gave him an award for being the fastest growing marketing company.

He's going to share some of his experiences with us, so we can learn from his mistakes.

Welcome to my show, Jake.

Thank you so much, Daniel, for having me.

So tell me, everyone probably would love to know, especially young people, you're 19, you're in college, I've been there, except I took engineering.

How did you, tell me your story, your first business, and then of course, everyone probably want to know how you scaled it and then lost it and you're starting over, which is inspirational by itself.

Yeah, so it's been a journey.

I've been at this self-employment, entrepreneurship, whatever you want to call it, journey for almost 10 years now.

I started when I was in school for engineering.

I had, as an engineering student and just a college student in general, you do internships.

I had did an internship that was in a super corporate environment and I was like, this isn't for me and being the stubborn 19-year-old I was, I was like, I'm going to start my own business because I want to work for myself.

And I started a prototyping company.

I realized very quickly that you can start a company, but people don't just flock to you.

You know, wanting to pay you money.

So I ended up learning a lot about marketing and then marketing, learning the marketing, you know, really jumpstarted everything in terms of actually owning and doing marketing as a service, having different agencies and things like that.

So again, kind of jumped from.

And a startup, real quick, I always think a startup with apps like software, maybe that is that just because there are so many businesses that are software or startup can be any business, right?

Yeah, I think it could be any business.

There's definitely, I, you know, I got involved a lot in those groups in college.

And I feel like startup is a good word for somebody that's starting from nothing, maybe, whereas, you know, sometimes you get in a lot of like investments and do business, the traditional route where you have a book of business and you just kind of branch off.

But I would definitely classify it as a startup where it was just really starting from nothing with a business plan and getting into just kind of the marketing realm and doing that as a service.

So for people who have not had these terms, when we say scaling a business, what does scaling mean?

Like simple definition?

That's a good question.

I would say the best definition of scaling is growing a business.

But when I think when you think of scaling, it's not so much like just like growing the business, it's how can I expand on like literally everything that we're doing.

And when somebody says scaling, it's I want to go up, I want to grow and I want to do it super quick.

So it's growing your team, growing your revenue, you know, growing your client base.

It's fast.

In other words, it's not just get big, it's fast, get big fast, like acceleration hit the gas.

So absolutely.

Just kind of like a rocket ship going up.

Absolutely.

Oh, so I'm back to your story.

You didn't tell me about your scaling success and then what happened to make it go down?

Absolutely.

So we started doing marketing as a service, you know, and kind of got into that space.

We started off doing social media posting.

That led us into advertising and I ended up networking with an individual that was down in Chicago.

I'm from Milwaukee and we were like, hey, let's start this business.

He had a background in real estate.

And at the time, the real estate market was doing really well.

So we basically came together and we're like, hey, we're going to do this marketing for real estate agents and really just took off.

So we had a really good offer.

We had, you know, just a really good market.

It was kind of like right time, right place, right service.

And it's scaled.

And, you know, we were starting to hire out salespeople.

We had a fulfillment team that was unfortunately outsourced.

And I'll get to why that's unfortunate.

But we just started, you know, just kind of shooting off and scaling.

And it almost seemed like every month we were doubling what we were doing.

So we were doing $40,000 a month, then $80,000, then $160,000, and then $300,000, and then $600,000.

And then eventually we got to about, I would say, 12 months later.

It's probably closer to 11 months, 12 months from that point of like really just taking off.

We had reached a million dollars a month, which was kind of the peak of everything.

And we were like, this is amazing.

And we're in our mid 20s at this point.

Like we don't know how to run businesses.

We're just two kids that, you know, had a good product, had a good service and we're able to get it out there.

And unfortunately, when we got to that point, kind of the peak, we started to hear from customers and they obviously were reaching out to us and they're like, hey, your support team's not replying to us.

We need help.

What's going on?

And come to find out that this outsourced fulfillment team was hiding a lot of stuff from us.

Obviously they want to keep our business and you know, that reputation of that support team.

You know, once we heard that, we did some investigation, tried to bring them in house, but at that point, the damage was done.

And we basically crashed and burned.

We had scaled back and it wasn't overnight.

Did you get the fulfillment team for resources?

Like you didn't have the money to hire full time staff?

Is that why you went outside?

So it really came from a note.

So we definitely had the money because just candidly, we were paying that fulfillment team $7000 ahead every month.

So a person every month, we had like 25 people with them.

It wasn't so much, we were paying for the ease of just, hey, if we need to add somebody, like take care of it, train them.

They, and they took care of everything.

So they took care of getting on Zoom calls with clients, setting up accounts, all of the fulfillment.

Like after sales, they were taking care of everything.

So it was really peace of mind.

For us, it was like, okay, like again, we don't know how to run this business.

This guy's, you know, he's in his 40s, 50s that owned the company.

He knows what he's doing.

Like he's a good partner to have, you know, to basically manage that side of the business.

Because, you know, again, we don't know how to have this just whole organization.

So if we can have different individuals that do have experience, then it would make sense.

And yeah, just unfortunately.

So, you know, seven, seven thousand doesn't seem like if I was making a million, I would I would go home.

I want to pay this guy seven, which that's not a huge amount for staff on their part.

Yeah.

Didn't you think ever like maybe we should check in and see if they need more money?

Because maybe they're cutting corners or well, so we were paying, we were actually paying seven thousand dollars per full time person.

Oh, we had 22 full time people with.

Oh, OK.

That's a lot.

So that's a good amount for us.

It was like, we're paying them a lot.

That's actually 70, 70K a month.

It's a pretty good set.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Though, OK, long story short, come to find out the employees were only making about 2200 of that 7,000 that the business was making.

It's like you have all this work, the company is getting a bunch of money.

The actual worker is not getting paid what they should.

And these are these are like in office, US based people.

They weren't overseas or anything like that.

So it's like they needed to be making at least half of right.

So, but long story short, you know, again, nothing against them.

You know, it is what it is.

But we were like, OK, we need to start bringing this team in house.

And at that point, again, damage was done.

We we made the transition.

It took us about 12 months to bring everybody back in house.

We had to fire them transition.

We actually had team members from the outsource team that came over to us after they found out that we were waiting with them.

People liked working with us.

It's just the circumstance.

Customers, you lost your customers, it sounds like.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So again, about 12 months went by and we weren't able to write the ship.

So we were scaled back.

If you want to call it that, crashed, whatever.

We were at about doing about 30 to 40 thousand dollars a month.

At that point, we weren't making any money from the business.

Along that 12 months, we were putting money back in.

But we finally got to a point where it's like we had this team.

We were breaking even.

We weren't getting paid as owners.

But that doesn't matter.

The business is good.

The business is solid.

So that was about three years ago.

And since then, thankfully, everybody's back in house.

And we've scaled up.

So is this your same scale?

What's the name of your business here?

The one you have now?

Something scale?

Outscaled.

Outscaled.

Same as kind of.

Yep.

It's a branch of it.

So Outscaled is kind of like the parent company.

And then we have like the backend software.

I don't know if you're familiar with Go High Level, but it's like the backend system that we have.

And then we have different branches for each industry that we service.

So we still do marketing.

And again, one thing I like to tell everybody is like we have a really good product.

We have a really good service.

It's just we didn't have a good structure.

And now that we do, we...

Well, you learned.

You learned.

Yeah.

So your basically product now is since you went from 0 to 60, how basically if a business wants to grow fast, that's what you help them do.

Exactly.

So the way that we have it set up now is we've been able to continue to...

So we still have a few of our own marketing agencies that we own, operate, and they're in different industries.

So we still service real estate, although the market's not crazy anymore.

So that's been a little slower.

We have insurance.

We have home services.

And then Outscale, the whole point about Outscale is now it's kind of like we have this team, we have this like solid team that really knows how to onboard clients, how to fulfill everything.

They're just really, really good team members.

And individuals.

So we've started making joint ventures and partnerships with other companies that basically were like, hey, if you partner with us, we can help fulfill your clients.

We can help with sales.

We can basically be your growth partner.

Can you give me an example?

Because being, you know, I've had a lot of small businesses, either consulting or something, or basically I'm just one guy or two or three guys.

Can you give me an example of a company you've worked with that's scaled and how they did it?

Absolutely.

So I'll give you an example.

So we had an individual that came to us and we're very picky.

We don't charge money for this partnership.

It is really a partnership.

It's something where like we vet the individual, we make sure they have a good product and we had one individual that came to us and he had a very unique service that he helped home service businesses basically increase their exposure online.

It's through, I don't know if you're familiar with SEO, but instead of ranking their website, you would rank their Google profile.

So they would get all these calls coming into their business and he had a really good method, really good way of doing things, but he wasn't able to grow.

He didn't know about the business.

So he was like, hey, I have this really cool product.

Do you guys want to partner on this?

And we were like, absolutely.

This seems like, you know, really, really awesome.

And he, you know, we went through everything and the way it works is, you know, we basically, you know, plug our systems into what he does.

So it's a digital, is this a digital product?

It's a digital, it's a service.

It's a monthly service where we're fulfilling on specific things every month.

So to wrap my head around the, I try to get a picture in my head, like, what do you act, like, not just you, but what does this actually look like?

So his service, is it physical or digital?

So it's like a manual service.

It is digital, but part of the puzzle, without getting too into it, is we'll go out there and we'll do a research on, let's say that we want to help a Med Spa rank higher and get more calls and drive more traffic to their business.

We'll go out there and say, okay, what keywords do we need to rank for?

And then we'll put out specific content on Google that will rank for those specific keywords.

Okay, so it doesn't matter what business you're in, physical or digital.

Absolutely.

You're using the search engines and then you're teaching people, you have some kind of package software knowledge that is helping generate the leads by the search engine and then you funnel them or you have a strategy to help people close these leads, it sounds like.

Exactly.

Yep.

So we, when we're working with somebody, it's full service, it's everything from start, which is like generating the new business and then also having a process for them to close and actually bring those people on.

So you have a new book, The Offer Code, that's on your website, it will be in the show notes and it says, how to break things down and create a winning offer in any market, that sounds like good, bad, or whether you're new or old to the market, and how to succeed by, I'm putting air quotes around standing out from your competition because it sounds like that's a strategy.

How do you do what to me basically sounds like, succeed in any business under any circumstances?

How does your book, The Offer Code, tell me about that?

Absolutely.

So this is something that has been the forefront of every business that we've had, all of the partnerships that we've made and helped other people scale their business.

It's always been, you need a good offer because a good offer is going to not only communicate what you're going to do for your client and allow customers and everybody to come to you, but it also allows you to stand out from your competition.

So I'm super passionate about creating a right offer, but just to give you a little tidbit into what that looks like and to creating a good offer and why it's so important is you've heard of Facebook ads and your neighbor probably does Facebook ads and can do Facebook ads for people.

So if I go out there and I just say, hey, I do Facebook ads for X, Y, and Z, would you be interested in working with me?

It's like everybody does that.

So it's not super unique.

It's not super special.

But if I go out there and I say, hey, Mr.

Real Estate Agent, I help realtors get qualified leads with sellers that are looking to sell their home using voice AI technology and paid ads.

That's a super unique offer.

And it kind of tweaks something in their brain that's like, huh, like I, you know, I've heard of all this other marketing stuff, but I've never heard of somebody that does quite, you know, that unique service, I'd be interested in learning a little bit more about your service.

So the offer is what gets somebody, you know, peaking their interest in getting them in the door that's allowing you to present your product and potentially work with them.

So it does sound like it does just sound like a play on words, though, because the Facebook, you can use AI and the Facebook's a paid ad, too.

It's kind of the same thing in a way, too.

It is a play on words.

It's, you know, the psychology, the plan words where, again, like, it is one of those things where it's like we're so good.

Like we could take nothing and make it sound really good.

But at the end of the day, there are definitely like good offers and bad offers because, like the individual we talked about that we partnered with that got businesses more calls for the business, like that's a super unique offer because nobody else was doing that.

Yeah, so as I speak about that, like when you get the call, you also have a business, I think, that helps people once they get the lead generation, especially on LinkedIn.

Let's talk about LinkedIn.

Yeah, getting paid ads on LinkedIn are just doing the closing.

What do you, how do you help people on LinkedIn when, say they get the leads from the SEO, how do you help them close it?

Yeah, so that really comes down to our sales team.

And being able to present, again, kind of all ties back into the offer, but having a sales presentation, that's something that we have in house, that we have a sales team that will actually close those clients for you.

But obviously part of that is having your offer and then being able to display that in a solid presentation.

We're very big on visuals.

A lot of people like to just sell verbally and just talk, talk, talk, but we are really super keen on actually showing and presenting like, hey, Mr.

Prospect, hey, Mr.

Client, this is exactly what we're going to do with you.

But obviously part of that is after they come in from SEO, after they come in from LinkedIn, we're going to actually help and be able to assist in the sale from taking the prospect and actually turning them into a customer.

Well, that's great because I thought you were going to use AI to do everything from like chat to BT.

You have a real person selling it, it sounds like, not an automated system.

Yeah.

So we definitely use voice AI a little bit as far as like lead qualification and confirmations and stuff like that.

But sales are all real people.

It's voice AI real quick.

That's like you're talking to a computer.

Yeah.

Now it does almost sound like you're talking to a real person, but it's really that language model taken into voice.

And what's happened basically is the latency has gotten so good now, where you can actually have a one-on-one communication with it.

And it's pretty darn good.

It's like a pretty real conversation.

Yeah, which I'm breaking this down now.

You're an engineer, too, like how does work process?

AI just goes out and scrolls the internet for what's out there.

So it probably is going, what's the percentage probability if I tell the potential client this?

That'll work versus I tell them this.

It's just running through the loops and all that.

A hundred percent.

And figuring out which is what I guess a real salesperson would do, maybe.

You know, in sales, it occurs to me, my brother's in sales.

We're talking about flexibility.

He's like, he's getting ready to go and he's a CEO.

But he's got to deal with other CEOs, you know, every company's got to, someone up above you unless you're at the very top.

And even then, you know, you're working for, you're presenting to a client, presenting to a client.

And for whatever reason, the client is, you are not even on the same page.

The client wants something different and you can give it to him.

I wonder, tell me, does the AI have a, is it able to tell when it's time to be flexible and go off the map and off course versus stick to the script?

It does and that's kind of the creepy part about it now is that it has gotten good enough to actually have full conversations.

And I don't know how much you've played around with AI, but we've been using voice AI for a couple of years now and before it was a script.

So we had to write a script word for word for word on how that it's going to communicate with the prospect.

And now what's super crazy is we can prompt it like a chat GBT prompt and basically say, Hey, you're talking with so and so your goal is to book an appointment with that prospect.

Just go off and do your thing and it will come up with questions and run it through an appointment setting process.

So it's pretty, it's pretty, Oh, so it's a little easier than that.

All it has to do is get the appointment.

It doesn't have to close the deal as well.

No, no, it does not.

We're not using it to close.

I know some people are, but that's, that's a little bit, I think we're a little far out from that just quite yet.

Because if you, you got to be able to book an appointment with somebody, if you can't do that, then you're really not going to scale, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Again, voice AI, it has its uses.

And I think one of them is being able to be like an assistant type of role.

But yeah, closing, that's a, that's a challenge.

Well, if it's a lead, it must be somewhat credible.

They're searching for you.

If you can't at least get a robot to say, can we have a conversation with the real person?

I'm just a chat GBT robot.

You're in the right spot.

Yeah.

What kind of hangups?

But it's still a little, what's a little spooky is someday, I'm sure it'll almost get to where the robot tries to close you, knowing too much about you and what you need.

Maybe that's okay if you really met to be there and you're selling the right product to the right person.

I guess that's all good, right?

It's, it is, it's spooky.

It's a little weird.

I'm waiting for the day where it will be able to like interact with your computer and or interact with a CRM and then it just is closing people, taking payment, like all of that.

That'll be, that'll be crazy.

I don't even know if we'll end up getting there, but it's super interesting.

Well, the good part is then you can just go back to doing your job, which is managing your company.

I'm sure those people are getting paid, are actually getting paid and not, the owner's not taking all the money.

That is very true.

That kind of stuff.

So, so that would, so, so that would be a good thing.

If people are not there yet, like ready to call you, what can they do on LinkedIn on their own?

Until they get frustrated and go, I need to call Jake.

Strategies for the internet in terms of search engines, closing deal, just scaling your business.

Yeah.

I think some of the biggest things that I like to tell people is just start interacting with your industry.

And if you're like, I want to start getting into this service or I have this product that I want to sell, the best way to move a step forward and a step forward is just having more conversations, whether that's, you know, on LinkedIn, just DMing somebody and connecting and be like, Hey, I saw you're the president of this company, or I saw you work for this company, like, would you be open to a five minute conversation?

You know, I want to run something by you, see what you might think about this product or calling up businesses or emailing them.

To me, that that's always been the biggest way to move forward, because after you start having those conversations, then it's OK, going back to the offer, I need to change up my offer because this industry really doesn't like this piece of what I'm offering or this function of my product, so now I need to change that, tweak it and then bring it back out.

That's when people start saying yes to whatever you're offering them.

You know, they refer other people and then that's when you actually have a business, you can start doing some advertising.

And when you talk about starting a conversation, you, as some people do this, I get it, I get these kind of emails.

So I've written 12 books.

I'm not a full-time author.

It's just part of what I do.

I'm a show, I'm a business.

It's a business card.

I'll get these, these cold messages on LinkedIn structured really well from an expert that can help you write a book or do whatever.

And they know nothing about me.

They're offering to help me write a book.

They don't know that I've published 12 of them.

Do you suggest people do their homework at all or just do shotgun?

Just throw it out there and see what hits.

I think, yeah, that's, no, that's a good question.

I apologize to cut you off.

I think the biggest thing is your intention.

If you're really, your intention really is like, I just want to have a conversation, I want to get feedback.

I think doing research isn't the most important because you don't actually have intent of getting anything from them besides the conversation.

And maybe you can add some value to their, you know, their life, their work, whatever it might be.

So if it's super like, you know, one-to-one return, I think that's totally fine going in cold.

I think if it's, I have the intent of selling you, then that person's also gonna want to, you know, feel like, okay, like this person did their research to reach out.

So then I would definitely come up with something, do some research on that person, on that business before you reach out.

Even if it's you're cold calling a business and saying, hey, I'm on your website right now, I saw you do X, Y, and Z, you know, this is what we offer, you know, we might be able to align in what we do or help you out, would you be open to a conversation?

Even just doing the minimum of Googling them, I think is gonna get you a lot farther than just, just blasting out random messages expecting people to say yes.

Oh, and it just crossed my mind.

What do you think about this, Jake?

Save myself the Google time if I just asked AI, AI, tell me if this flower shop needs help with their digital marketing campaign, or I'm gonna write a script.

AI, write me a script, I'm calling this flower shop, it will probably give you something halfway decent, right?

And yes, absolutely.

That is, that is, I wanted to say unfortunately, but that is definitely kind of where we're at, where you could even set up, I don't know how familiar you are with Zapier or make.com, where you can plug a ChatGBT prompt in there.

Let's say I have a list of a hundred people I want to email.

I could, before I send the email, I could say, ChatGBT, give me a summary of this business, and then, okay, ChatGBT, here's the summary of this business.

Write me an email.

I can write to this business that's custom, offering to help them.

This is my service.

Write the email, and then copy, paste, send the email.

So I think yes, I think we're there.

But you know, and on the back end, though, about the flower shop works both ways.

ChatGBT, I just got an email from Jake's marketing company.

Yes, I do need this.

How good are they?

What's their track record reviews?

Yep, ever, right?

Yeah.

Yep, yep.

And there's that too.

So it's both ways.

We're in a super weird, weird spot.

I heard somebody the other day actually say that we're in like 1996 or 1999 or something like that, compared to like the Internet boom with AI.

So it's like we're just starting to scratch the surface.

So it's super interesting where it'll be.

Yeah.

And it comes to mind is in the old day, you did business with somebody trusted, I think more than anything.

And the AI that's probably a little bit, I mean, how can you tell if you can?

Until you get on the phone, right?

Make the call, get on the phone.

I think, yeah.

I don't, I mean, yeah, you could ask Chachi BT, but I think it really, we're still gonna always rely on human interaction and human vetting.

Because at the end of the day, a big part of sales is that they like you, or you buy from people you don't buy from companies.

So, I think there will always be...

Sort of everyone orders on Amazon and...

Yeah, there's probably a lot of businesses that you can think of.

It's just the business.

Yeah, but the small businesses.

Yes, it's interesting.

We're in a weird world just along for the ride.

Do you use funnels in your model?

We do.

We do use a lot of funnels.

So, all of our lead generation goes through funnels.

And we're super big on them.

And the reason being is for us, when we bring in qualified or when we bring in prospects, we want to make sure they're qualified.

So, funneling allows us to run applicants through a series of questions to make sure that our sales team is talking to somebody that is actually going to benefit from what we're selling versus getting on the phone with somebody that just might not be interested or might not even benefit from what we do.

It's like a Q&A question and answer flowchart, or is it literally the funnel where I sold you this, now did you know most people that buy this, they also benefit from this, and you keep marking up in prices, is it that kind of funnel or is it just the qualifying them kind of funnel?

There is definitely that kind of funnel, like a purchase funnel, but we use it more on the front end, which is like for lead qualification, lead generation, where it's twofold, right?

Like we don't want to waste the prospects time if they're just not qualified or not a right fit for what we do, but then our salespeople don't want to talk to people that it's not a right fit, so we ask them usually anywhere from five to six questions, just saying where are you at in your business, how long have you been around, and based off that, we're just using if this then that logic that basically says okay this person is right for our product, this person is not right for us.

In other words, if you have no real product ready to scale, don't call your company hoping that you will invent them a product to sell that will make them a million dollars a month.

Have something that you feel overwhelmed.

Tell me if I'm getting this right Jake.

You have something you feel is good, you need staff to do, you can't have staff, you don't know how to get started, but it's something great and you're already making some money off of it, right?

That's spot on.

Yeah.

I wish we could just plug something into everybody, but you got to have something that's kind of working and proven.

You don't help people develop a product as much as you scale it.

Exactly.

Sell it, sell it.

Basically, you're helping them sell it.

Exactly.

Yep.

Yeah.

Well, that maybe that's the best way to express it because all of these terms scaling and funnels, you're almost like a, what's the service?

Well, you're advertising and what does it call the service that helps people not just advertise, but help close the leads.

You could call it like client acquisition, or yeah, client acquisition, which is kind of just everything from the marketing all the way to taking them and closing them.

What for somebody listening if they were wondering, instead of having to go to your site and do the questions, what is your good fit for you people, for someone to come to you?

Where should they be that in their business?

Yeah, so the ideal customer for us is somebody, just to use revenue, because revenue just kind of relates to everybody.

They're usually making anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 a month with their product or service.

So really just, they're in the beginning stages, but they have something that's set in stone and that's repeatable.

And then at that point, it's like, okay, this is repeatable.

Plug in Jake and what they got going on.

And then that's when they're able to scale.

And then what you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but I'm just putting myself in the model.

I got $5,000 a month.

That's not a whole lot, but I'm able to just do that full time.

What kind of impact is working with you going to have in the short term in terms of the revenue sharing or how you make money yourself?

Absolutely, so that's something that is super custom based off every situation.

Obviously we are in it for the equity.

We're not in it for a paycheck.

We're not in it for a lump sum.

We don't say like, oh, you have to pay us a bunch of money upfront and then we'll start working.

So it really depends.

And that's something that we would look at.

And if we really saw potential, we would probably say, okay, you wanna be making this much money because you need to live and that's totally understandable.

We'll do a rev share after this revenue mark.

So if you wanna make five, maybe we get to $10,000 a month.

And then after that, we do some kind of rev share.

I see.

And what about, I've heard some of these companies, the search engine companies, they will charge, they'll use cookies, I guess breadcrumbs on your website to see where you go to shop for stuff.

And then they'll track you and then they'll do paid ads.

I've seen or heard of companies that will help you with this.

They literally need to charge you $10,000 a month.

And then take a year before you get any return on it.

And then that seems high risky.

What's your take on that and how's it different from what you're doing?

Absolutely, so I can't, I would never, I don't want to put those people in a box or just generalize.

But at the end of the day, we don't charge and we don't run off that model because we know what we're doing.

And for us, the long term profit comes into us both winning the business growing.

And when the business grows, everybody's happy and we can share profits.

I think a lot of those companies will just take anybody on as a client and they're just charging monthly because they can and they just want to make money.

Well, another thing that I discovered through the Grapevine or almost working with some of them myself, say you pay them X thousand dollars a month and they tell you some of that money is going towards targeted ads.

I was shocked at how little was actually going to the ads and how much was going into, and you are paying for their expertise, but it's like 10 to 1.

Like you could do the ads, they weren't actually paying that much for the ads so much as their whatever their model was.

I have heard too many stories of people that are paying $4,000, $10,000 a month for a marketing company, and the marketing company is making 90% of what they're getting paid, and the rest is actually going into the fulfillment or the ads or whatever.

So, yeah, that's.

And how does your model different, what you do?

Yeah.

So our model, it's just, it's a rev share.

We're looking at it basically from, you know, what's your profit?

How much extra can we bring into your business?

And then we'll negotiate some kind of percentage, whether it's off gross, whether if it's off net, every business is a little different.

And then whenever we're doing like advertising, it's always the business is going to pay for it, but the business is going to pay Facebook.

It's not going to come to us and then we pay Facebook.

They're going to pay Facebook directly.

We're not going to be the middle man or anything like that.

So it's very much built on transparency and really just mutual growth that if we're impacting your business, then that's certain that we would want a cut of that.

Yeah.

I'm sure you have a contract too where if it's not working out for either one of us, we can a fair way to cut our losses or something like that as well.

Yeah, that does happen.

Sometimes we'll get into something and we'll be like, hey, this isn't working.

And thankfully for the business, we don't charge.

So it's like, hey, no skin off your back.

But we'll cut and we'll just say like, hey, this isn't working.

We're going to go our separate ways.

So our team isn't...

How do you protect yourself if you do something that's like Wizard of Oz spectacular for a client and they scale to a million and decide, you know what, I don't like my contract with Jake and I don't think I should revenue share with him.

How do you protect yourself from that?

Or you just like it can happen and just is what it is?

So with that, that definitely comes down to the contracts that we have where we lay it out pretty well.

And I mean, we've been doing this for a while now.

So we've gotten very good at really looking at like, this is exactly what we've done and documenting our work.

So that if there is a dispute, we haven't gotten into that position.

But if there ever was a dispute, like, you know, we're going to just part ways with you.

And then we're like, hey, we have this contract.

And they're like, whatever.

Well, what I was thinking of is, say, you do help me take an invention or service or digital product, whatever, and really scale it.

And you did help me.

Yeah.

But now I'm kind of like, you know what, I don't want forever to be attached to, maybe my shareholders don't want forever you to be attached to this other company.

There's always a way to work things out is what I'm asking.

Yeah.

And at that point, again, we haven't had that happen, surprisingly, because that's definitely something that is very realistic.

We would probably go down some kind of a buyout.

Like we've had companies that have sold, well, we've had a contract with them and we have gotten part of the exit.

So I guess that that kind of relates, but it would probably be some kind of a mutual buyout where it's like, you know, we need to cut this agreement or terminate this agreement.

You know, how can we?

I would think that that wouldn't be really common because if you did help somebody, do help somebody scale that significantly, whatever you're doing works, why would they not still want to work with you, right?

And that's kind of the model that we've really gone to.

And I think that's why it hasn't happened is when we partner with somebody, it really is a partnership where it's not just us getting new leads and generating more sales.

It's we're helping with your backend.

We have resources for the books and for paying people, backend software.

So it really is like a merging and a partnership, not just surface level, we're going to get you more sales.

So what's one good piece of advice you have for someone starting a business or in the process of scaling that you wish you knew when you were there?

Absolutely.

So I would say, pick something, have some conversations, and stick to it until you figure it out.

I flip flopped a lot in the beginning in terms of different marketing industries, services, things like that.

And I truly believe if you stick to something and you just figure it out, you can make it work.

That doesn't mean if a market really doesn't like what you're selling, definitely switch it up.

But tweak it, don't just completely do a 180 and go into something completely different.

So stick to something and just really put your head down and try to make it work and have as many conversations as possible and get industry feedback from your customers.

And something that you like to do that you enjoy doing?

For me, I really love work.

I really like the aspect of being able to help companies scale.

Because I look at it as a larger picture that I'm able to help employ other individuals.

You know, it's not just me either.

It's, you know, we have a whole team, but we're able to give back.

We're able to help people scale their businesses, get freedom, and then plug in people that are, you know, employed and have.

Hopefully happy, you know.

Yeah, that's actually what I meant too, is in terms of your advice, stick with something.

Would you, do you have any advice for people who, oh, we're just doing this to make money?

Yeah.

Or versus find something you're a little bit passionate about that you're going to spend all your time on.

Any advice in regard to that?

Yeah, I don't think it has to be like a passion, but find a way to make money off your passion.

And so, if, let's just say, you're super into video games, maybe you could get into some kind of consulting where you help people grow their Twitch following or their something.

Maybe you make people custom gaming rooms or something like that.

So, it doesn't always have to be you're making money off your passion, but you can use your passion, use your expertise and turn that into some kind of a business.

Yeah, that's a perfect example.

It's like some bands that are really famous guitar players.

Like, you know what, if I was Zach Wilde, Ozzy Osbourne.

Yeah.

But, you know, if I wasn't in the band with Ozzy, I'd be teaching guitar or working in a music store.

And if you don't want to do either one of those, why are you trying to, why are you getting into this line of work?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I 100% agree.

So, to be in the show notes, your website's Jake Setterlun, S-E-T-T-E-R-L-U-N, and the offer code is the outscaled, or your business helps people scale, outscaled.io.

Anything we haven't talked about, Jake, that you think would be helpful to, for both doing your marketing strategy in your business, and also if they're just back to, you know what, I'm not there yet, I'm on LinkedIn.

What can I do to help build my business?

Yeah, nothing that I can think of.

I think we hit it all.

So yeah, thank you so much for having me.

It's been a blast.

Thanks so much for being on my show.

Awesome, Daniel.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.