Sabri Suby on Irresistible Offers and Cutting Through Noise

Kirsten Scott0:00
Hello everybody, how are you?

Daniel Hakim0:03
Welcome.

Kirsten Scott0:04
Talk the same amount of shit. Good morning, gentlemen.

Daniel Hakim0:06
How are we?

Kirsten Scott0:06
Good morning. Thank you all. Thank you all for joining us today. If you can pop on your cameras, pop them on because we'd love to see you. We're sitting really close to the computer. We'll be able to see what you write, be able to see your faces, and we obviously want this to be as interactive as possible. We'll just keep letting people in while we're waiting. And thank you all for joining us. Today's conversation, I want to focus a lot on cutting through the noise. It's something Sabri's done incredibly well in his business, and he helps other businesses do it. And in doing that, has helped them generate over $7.8 billion in revenue. So he knows how to make, he knows how to make businesses stand out, essentially. And we want to pick his brain on all of that today so we can get our businesses standing out, cutting through the noise. And attracting clients in often what are crowded markets. First of all, Sabri, thank you so much for being here.

Sabri Suby0:58
My pleasure.

Kirsten Scott0:59
Guys, you've heard me say it before, but our mission at BOA is to make quality networking and advice accessible to entrepreneurs at every stage and in every location in Australia. And today we have, well, we're very lucky that Sabri's given us his time and he's completely open and generous to sharing his knowledge with all of us. As I mentioned, we want to learn how to cut through the noise and also learn some of the key lessons from his career to date. Now, Sabri came from— I don't know how to call it, but you didn't come from a background of business or wealth. You came from humble beginnings. He's the founder and CEO of the marketing agency King Kong, which is one of the largest and fastest growing marketing agencies and companies in the country. He operates the company in over 136 countries. They've generated over $7.8 billion in sales for their clients, and the company itself is worth just under $100 million. Um, Sabri is also a Shark on, um, uh, that great show Shark Tank, and is the author of an amazing book called Sell Like Crazy, Uh, which actually I was just, I was, um, you better have a copy. I don't, but I was talking to Cub members. We're in the clubhouse in Melbourne today.

Sabri Suby2:20
I'm out.

Kirsten Scott2:20
And, and what Cub members loved it. Um, and, and everybody had read it and it was fantastic, but you should have brought me a copy is what should have happened. There should be a whole given me a signed version. But, um, so thank you so much for being here today.

Sabri Suby2:34
My pleasure. Um, thanks for having me.

Kirsten Scott2:36
Now I did want to start, uh, oh, sorry guys, remember questions as we're talking, write your questions, put them in the chat and I'll call you out, uh, to ask. Your advice to Sabri directly. But first of all, I just want to start. So you grew up in Byron Bay, uh, it was a single mother household, um, and you— King Kong wasn't your first business. And I've read that you had many failed attempts— don't call them fails— but you had many attempts, man.

Sabri Suby3:05
I wear them proudly.

Kirsten Scott3:06
That didn't work. Now, a lot of people in that early stage of business journey when you, when things aren't working, even with your current business now, or when a business fails or you stop doing it because you need to move to something else, how did you mentally handle that? Like, how did you not give up? What was, what was, how did you view these adversities? Because obviously, ultimately, if you don't give up, you win. And that's what led to King Kong.

Sabri Suby3:30
Yeah, I think that, like, you know, the hardest of steel is made in the hottest of fires. I've certainly sat in a lot of hot fires and had a lot of failures along the way. But I've never met any successful entrepreneur that didn't have multiple failures under their belt. Like, it's very rare that you hear somebody that their first business just took off and it just comes down to how bad it is that you want it, right? So it's like, it doesn't matter if you get punched, if you start a business and it fails and you get punched in the face, it's like if your hunger is there, that's great enough. You're not just going to give up on that, on that first rung. So you learn everything from those failures as well. It's very rare that you launch a business and absolutely every single thing fails. It's like scar tissue. Entrepreneurs have a lot of scar tissue of getting these failures and then just using that on the next thing. And even on these things that are failures, there's certain elements of those businesses that do work. And you take that and you take all of those learnings and those hardships and, and you roll it into the next one. So for me, I had, you know, it wasn't that I had many businesses that I ran into the ground that were failures, but I had some wins and I exited a few businesses. I sold a few businesses. I made a bunch of money with a bunch. As well. Um, but it was that constant up and down of like getting my teeth kicked in as an entrepreneur, which I think is everybody's path and passage that they typically go through.

Kirsten Scott4:50
And so what would be the most important piece of advice to someone who is kind of stuck at the moment where, you know, the business isn't working how they'd want it to? Yep. What's that ultimate piece of advice?

Sabri Suby5:02
I think the biggest learning curve that I had early on in my career is that I, in my first couple of businesses, I sold what it is that I wanted to sell and what I thought would be good and that I had interest in and that was convenient to me. And then I thought, hey, how do I go out into the marketplace and now sell this? And that is completely the wrong way to go about it. Realistically, what you need to do is find out what is the market completely starving for? What would they crawl across crushed glass to get? And then sell that solution to the marketplace. So it's not coming from a place where it's just serving to you and what you're interested in. It's what there is a really innate need for. And a lot of entrepreneurs then go out with what it is that they want to sell. They go out to the marketplace, they try to sell it. Nothing's working in the business. They're struggling. And then they try to put lipstick on a pig. They try to take this dog of a business that they've got and make it attractive and sell it rather than just being like not emotionally attached to that individual thing and going, okay, what is it that if I didn't have a product, I didn't have a service to sell. If I just did very thorough research on the market and I saw one, what was selling well and what people were buying in irrational quality and quantities, what is that product?

Daniel Hakim6:12
Mm-hmm.

Sabri Suby6:12
Right. And then having a look at that and then thinking about, is there anything that you could bring to that? Are you passionate about that? Is there a spin to that business model that you could bring? Um, because then you've got, you're going out there and you've got the wind in your sails. You're not swimming upstream. So That's the biggest fundamental thing, is looking at what is already selling and what there is already an appetite for.

Kirsten Scott6:33
Thank you. And so you started King Kong in 2014, it was. And starting King Kong, what was the, um, what was the biggest issue you had at the start? Like, what was the— what were the biggest challenges you had to overcome? Sorry, that noise is my laptop is now like synced to my phone for some reason, like a new update. I don't know if you guys can hear that.

Sabri Suby6:55
I was checking it out.

Kirsten Scott6:56
I thought it was my phone too. It's the laptop when I'm getting a bing on my phone. But so sorry if you guys hear that. We're using my laptop today because the team's in Sydney. But, but, um, yeah, so what were the biggest challenges at the start of KingKong and how did you overcome them?

Sabri Suby7:08
Well, the first one was getting customers, right? So I didn't have any money at the time. I'd recently gotten married, um, and I just come off of a string of businesses, some that worked, some that didn't. Um, I poured whatever money that I had into throwing a wedding for me and my wife and I came back to Melbourne. It was a— I did like a destination wedding, came back to Melbourne and had no money and spent it all on the wedding. Yes, effectively. And I took the money that I did have and I bought a Logitech headset for $37. And then I took another $25 and I put that into a VoIP account and I started cold calling people, going back to my roots. I started in sales when I was 16 years old, cold calling people. And if you don't have financial capital, you need to use human capital, right? And sweat equity. And that's what I used. To launch the business. And it had been a while since I was cold calling people, so it was definitely a lot rougher than what I remembered. And I got my teeth kicked in for the first 3 days and just got told, I got cursed at, told to fuck off, all the usual stuff, and got my first client after 3 days. And then I just worked like a dog, to be honest. I worked 18 hours a day for the first year. And after 6 months, I was, I brought my wife into the business and convinced her to leave her corporate job and come and help me out. And then I was, you know, doing all of the hunting by day and the farming by night, as we say, where I was doing, I would bring on clients in the day and then work all night to basically fulfil and deliver those clients. And did that for a year. That was very difficult to do that. It was very, there was no balance in my life at that stage. And then I made the decision to build something that was a lot bigger than myself. I got an office and built it to a team of 13. So I'd say that realistically there's, the first hurdle is one, getting clients, then it's getting good at getting clients and then not having enough team. I call it getting through Death Valley, right? Every business goes through this stage where you're bringing on clients, you're so busy, and then the decision becomes like, do I hire people to come in and help me with this, or do I keep doing it myself? I don't have enough money to hire people, so what do I do, right? And you have to go through this period where you have to be doing the work and bringing on the clients.

Kirsten Scott9:20
And then it's safe to say that's somewhat the hardest part of any business is that start part where, like you said, you're hunting during the day and you're farming at night. You just have no rest. Time's the biggest thing.

Sabri Suby9:32
Yes.

Kirsten Scott9:32
You basically have to sacrifice every other part of your life, otherwise you don't have enough time to make it work. Yeah. But once you do push through that, and it's not just a push, I'd say it's a figure out.

Sabri Suby9:43
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott9:43
It's like, how can I operate this without having to do everything myself?

Daniel Hakim9:47
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott9:47
Being able to afford the people that I need to do those things as well.

Sabri Suby9:51
So— Yeah, and it's that chicken and the egg because it's like, I can't afford them. So like, I can't afford them, so what do I need to do? Well, I need to be that person, but it's like, but I'm already doing everything else. So, but even once you get through that, I wouldn't say that that's just the hardest part. That's the part that you need to figure out the Rubik's Cube, but then it doesn't get easier. You just get better.

Kirsten Scott10:10
Yeah, yeah, you get better at business essentially. Now you entered, I don't know what the market was like in digital marketing back then, but now it is certainly a very crowded market.

Daniel Hakim10:19
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott10:21
What did you do to cut through the noise?

Daniel Hakim10:23
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott10:24
Right, you were a young entrepreneur, you're a new business, you entered a crowded market, it's the hot place, there's a low barrier to entrance into that market. How did you win people over? How did you differentiate your business?

Sabri Suby10:36
Yeah, it's a good question. I was very late to the market, I would say. I had already built a digital agency in my 20s. That was the first business that made me a millionaire, to be honest. I did that, I dropped out of university, I started it over summer break and that took off. And the market was very, very different in that climate to when then I started King Kong. So the waters were already bloody with competition when I started King Kong and everyone was like, man, it's like there's no shortage of digital agencies. Like, what do you, I don't think this is a good idea. And it was the thing that I did to really stand out is that all of the agencies were talking about This is how many impressions you're getting, this is how many views you're getting. They were all talking about these intangible, these vanity metrics as I call them. And we were the first agency to come out, I had a strong guarantee. So I would actually physically guarantee people performance, otherwise I wouldn't get paid. And no one at the time was doing that.

Kirsten Scott11:31
What does that mean? So if you don't make sales from our marketing that covers the marketing, you don't have to pay us.

Sabri Suby11:36
So when I first started the business, we started as just a local SEO agency. So I was cold calling people that were running Google AdWords and saying, hey, your Google AdWords, how's it going? Going for you. How about we get you ranked onto the main street of Google? You're on a side street, you're paying high street rental prices. I can guarantee to get you on page 1 of Google, um, and if I don't, then I'll basically work for free.

Kirsten Scott11:58
But so the lesson there is focus on truly the one thing that your customers want most, not the other rubbish that, you know, people crowd their products with. It's like, in your case, it was you want clients, essentially. Like, you need, you need new clients. We're going to focus on just that metric, and in fact, we're going to guarantee that metric. Now, a lot of people get scared. If I guarantee it, what if they ask for the money back? When realistically, when you do guarantee something, how many people are asking for the money back?

Sabri Suby12:24
Look, if you have more than a 5% recall rate on your guarantee, then you're not doing a good job. Okay, right. But effectively, I have a saying that if the offer doesn't keep the founder up at night, then it simply isn't strong enough. Most people do not have irresistible offers, they have resistible offers. It's an offer that everybody can resist. It's like, hey, how about you buy my shit? And if you buy my shit and it doesn't work, oh, so be it, right? Like, I can't really help you out. So we went out to the market with a completely irresistible offer. And that was the thing that really made the difference. Instead of trying to get into a situation with people where we were trying to have a convincing argument, you have a compelling offer. Infinitely more powerful.

Kirsten Scott13:06
Yeah, I love that. So everybody here today can think, is the offer that I'm pitching, is it irresistible? Is this an irresistible offer? Not just a nice to have, not just, oh yeah, that's a good idea, but do I need this?

Sabri Suby13:17
Yeah, and you want your customers to be asking the question of how are they able to deliver on this.

Kirsten Scott13:23
Yeah.

Sabri Suby13:23
And if they're not, then it's like, okay, it's not irresistible.

Kirsten Scott13:27
Now, um, you have obviously done marketing for, uh, for I don't know how many businesses, but thousands of them. And what do you see businesses do wrong in their marketing today? So non-irresistible offers is probably one.

Sabri Suby13:42
That's one. But way before that, the biggest thing that they do is they kind of operate their business like it's the Dark Ages where they're like a merchant. They lay out all their wares. This is their website now. And they're like, hey, like they make an offer to somebody that's not irresistible. They haggle a little bit back and forth on price and then they try to get a deal done. Where that is like the old way of doing things. So the biggest thing that most people don't do right now is you want to treat your prospects like they're already paying clients. The first, the first transaction that happens with anybody out in the marketplace is them giving you their time. And so that's the first sale that is always made. Am I putting out content and information that is valuable to my prospects that they will first give me their time and attention for? And then secondly, that they'll give me their contact details for.

Kirsten Scott14:32
Mm-hmm.

Sabri Suby14:32
And you wanna be providing value in advance to your audience before you ever make the ask. Where most people are just so desperate to make that ask, their ads are basically just selling things.

Kirsten Scott14:44
Mm-hmm.

Sabri Suby14:45
Where they're not selling information, they're not leading with their best foot forward. Instead, what you wanna do is you wanna be putting out guides and free reports and books and anything that's gonna be of value to your marketplace before. So that you're not trying to convince them to do business with you. They are consuming it, they're getting results from your free information before they're ready to buy, because only 3% of the market is ready to buy, and the largest part of the market is in information gathering mode. They know that they have a problem, but they're not specifically looking to solve that problem right now. Um, and it's basically putting out content to help them solve that so that when it does come time for them wanting to do business or to to solve this problem, you have already controlled that whole buying process and that criteria. Who do you think they're gonna go with? The person that's been nurturing them for 6 months, or they're gonna do a random Google search and go to someone they don't even know?

Kirsten Scott15:35
And even if they're not consuming all the content per se, they are seeing that you're putting out content. So they know, okay, he or she is the person that you speak to about that particular topic or that, you know, that area of expertise.

Sabri Suby15:49
Yeah, well, it's not that they're not consuming your content because if people are problem aware and they understand that they do have a problem but they're not looking to solve it right now, they are gonna be consuming that information. If you're putting out content that you know is gonna be resonating in your market and you look at that by views and retention rate and all of that kind of stuff, but they are consuming the information. And it's like, you know, there's a statistic that shows that in a B2B environment, 72% of the purchase decision is already made before the time they reach out to the salesperson.

Kirsten Scott16:17
Yeah, wow.

Sabri Suby16:18
So like it's gone are the day where, you're like, all of the information is distributed by your sales team. Like, if that's the way that you're operating, you're losing out on so much business, it's ridiculous. Because jumping on a call with a salesperson is a very threatening thing, and you only do that when you are completely ready to buy.

Kirsten Scott16:39
Yeah.

Sabri Suby16:39
And that's the only way that you're communicating with your marketplace. Then what is happening to all the other people that aren't in the 3% that are looking to buy? You're just ignoring them.

Kirsten Scott16:48
Totally. So one thing I love that you said, you alluded to, was almost taking baby steps in terms of the sale. So it wasn't like go in straight away to sell your product. It was, you know, earn their time in reading some content that you create. It was earn their— get the ability for them to give you their contact details, you know. Then it's get the meeting, then it's whatever it may be.

Sabri Suby17:13
What—

Kirsten Scott17:14
getting leads is one thing, or getting people interested in you is one thing, but what— and you're exceptionally good at sales and scaling as well— how do you— what tips do you have in terms of actually converting the leads? So let's say, uh, um, um, taking into account, yes, what you've said about the pre-marketing, basically the vetting in the sense— what, once they're ready, or once they've called, or once you've booked a meeting, what tips do you have in terms of the conversion?

Sabri Suby17:40
And yeah, so first of all If you are a good marketer, your job is to make the whole Cumberson sales process redundant, right? That is the job of marketing. It's to make the leads so hot that they're already, already willing and able to buy. And so that's the first thing to understand. And so you want to do a lot of that heavy lifting in the pre-sales component of it. And if you find that you're jumping on sales calls and you're dealing with lots of objections, That is a telltale sign that your marketing is not good enough.

Kirsten Scott18:12
Oh, good.

Sabri Suby18:13
All right, so then once you've done all of those things, the first job is to put out content that gets people to raise their hand of saying, hey, I'm interested in this. Like, I'm consuming it, I'm giving you my contact details, I'm interested. And then it's understanding that prospect so well that you can put— the most powerful thing to do is to put together a VSL, a video sales letter, that is all the most common objections, questions, concerns, things that come up on a sales call. And putting that into a video sales letter that does a lot of that grunt work from your sales team. So some hacks of doing that is your sales team is on like Zoom IQ or whatever it might be, getting transcripts of all of your sales calls, putting that into ChatGPT, say, hey, give me the top 30 common objections, questions and concerns of the things that are happening on their sales calls. Taking that, writing a video sales script that just hammers and addresses every single one of those points. And after somebody downloads that and says, yep, I'm interested, then they arrive on the video sales letter that runs them through a further— it's not just a sales process, it needs to provide further value and move the ball further up the field and provide more value in that VSL and answer those objections and start to like burn that fire of curiosity and desire in what it is that you've got. And then ask them to take the next step. To book in a phone call where what most people do is they disregard all of that. They have a landing page and they book people straight into a phone call and then they wonder why they're not making enough sales.

Kirsten Scott19:41
Again, it's, it is back to the baby steps. It's like earning that little inch each time.

Sabri Suby19:47
Yeah. Sales is seduction. It's not rape. So you can't just go in and go straight for the sale immediately. There is a process to do it. Like just as you wouldn't go on a date with somebody and propose to them on the first date, right? It's, you know, you're moving them from a dating app to Instagram, then Instagram to text message, and then texting them, and then coffee. And then it's— there's a process to it. And it's the same thing in sales and marketing.

Kirsten Scott20:11
And businesses need to formalise that process and implement that process. And in terms of the VSL, just to confirm, so you would like auto-email that VSL to anyone that submitted interest? Is that, is that how you—

Sabri Suby20:23
they would arrive on that VSL the moment that they consider that they put down their interest.

Kirsten Scott20:28
Okay.

Sabri Suby20:29
So instead of just saying thank you, it's on its way, it's like, it's thank you, now here is the secret system to get the instant benefits that you want immediately. And then that runs them through that process. But yeah, and then, then it's email nurture and everything pushes back to that video sales letter that does a lot of the heavy lifting.

Kirsten Scott20:46
Now you mentioned, um, I think it was a CRM, I can't remember which one, as you were speaking, that, uh, records, um, the sales calls and conversations.

Sabri Suby20:55
Any, any like modern-day VoIP system is going the ability to transcribe and record phone calls.

Kirsten Scott21:01
Okay, so what are other, or do you have any other technologies that have automated part of marketing or sales cycles that you currently use?

Sabri Suby21:11
I have, and we can talk about them, but it's really important to understand that it is psychology, not the technology, that makes the millions. So like, it's not about having the best CRM, otherwise every business would be doing millions in revenue, but they're not, right? So they're just the delivery vehicle for getting out your message.

Kirsten Scott21:30
Right?

Sabri Suby21:30
Whether you want to use Infusionsoft or HubSpot, Keep— like, all of the ActiveCampaign, it doesn't really matter. Whatever the one that is that you're going to use and it's going to work for you, that's the one that you want to go for. Most people spend most of their time obsessing over the technology and not the psychology. I've seen, like, I've got clients that do billions of dollars in revenue that have, like, the most ghetto technology stack you've ever seen, but the psychology is right.

Kirsten Scott21:59
Yeah, well, I guess they've got that irresistible offer. Their marketing is— is— their messaging is on point.

Sabri Suby22:05
Yeah, you advanced people always do the basics.

Kirsten Scott22:08
Yep.

Sabri Suby22:09
Yeah, so like, and it's the people that get obsessed with all of the most advanced techniques, they don't follow the fundamentals, and they're just constantly chasing their tail.

Kirsten Scott22:18
Um, now you're on Shark Tank, you've had a lot of experience, you're an investor in other businesses, you've had a lot of experience in listening to pitches and things. And I just wanted to ask a couple questions on, um, on you as an investor.

Sabri Suby22:32
Um, do you have an idea to pitch me?

Kirsten Scott22:33
Do you? I do not. I do not. Um, but, um, two things. One is you've heard a lot of pitches. So to people that are listening, um, who are looking to raise capital, yeah, what is a definitely do not do when pitching to an investor?

Sabri Suby22:50
Mention excuses to why your sales are only so small, right? That is the number one thing, is successful people never claim to have a lack of resources as to why they're not successful, because we all know it's all about your ability to be resourceful. So if you're already telling people excuses of why your sales are so small, or why you're having these roadblocks, or why the numbers and the storey isn't as great as it possibly could be, I'm out. I'm out immediately.

Kirsten Scott23:17
Yeah, because you're in— people that have excuses will always have excuses. Indeed.

Sabri Suby23:21
Yeah, you can either have excuses or results. Pick one.

Kirsten Scott23:24
And so then on the flip side to that, what are— what do you see in the businesses that you do invest in?

Sabri Suby23:32
I see entrepreneurs that have the ability to run through walls and take whatever losses that they've had along the way and wake up, dust themselves off, and go after it and get it again because That is the ultimate thing. Like, I'm not betting on the business, I'm betting on the jockey because the tide, like the seas are going to get rough. The storm clouds are going to arrive. And I don't want to look at somebody that's only had a clear path and think, okay, this is going to be great. I want somebody that has got the scar tissue to prove that they've got the failures, they've had the hardships, and no matter how hard they get kicked in the teeth, they just get up and they keep getting after it.

Kirsten Scott24:06
So really, you're investing in the person, their ability to overcome adversity.

Sabri Suby24:09
100%. Because business models change. Markets change, market conditions changes, and you need to have the ability to be able to navigate that. And the business doesn't navigate that, the entrepreneur does.

Kirsten Scott24:22
Guys, I'm going to ask one more question before we move to Q&A. So if you've got questions, I'd love for you to throw them in now. I guess my final question, Sabri, is, and what is the— what, um, I don't say the most important tip, but what is something everyone here today can do to help their business cut through the noise within their industry?

Sabri Suby24:44
Yeah, it's not going to be some sexy algorithm hack that everybody probably wants to hear. The biggest piece of advice is like the thing that people don't ever do is just simply look at what everybody in your marketplace is doing. So have a look at the biggest advertisers on Google Ads for the keywords that are, that are in your market. Then have a look at their Facebook ads library and put absolutely everything into a Google Sheet with links to their landing pages, their ads, their offers, their price points. Call every single one of those competitors up, listen to their sales process, listen to what it is that they say, and then do the absolute opposite of what they're doing, right? Because that, by definition, if you want to stand out, you cannot do what everybody else is doing. Yet most people are looking at what other people are doing and they just simply copying it. So then that adds so much noise and static to the marketplace that your customers, right, they're not buying in a vacuum. They are speaking to all of these people as well. And if they cannot look at the offer and differentiate it, then you're going to have a very difficult time on the sales calls trying to articulate to people how you're different when everybody's saying the same thing.

Kirsten Scott25:54
That's great advice, guys. We're going to move to questions. You started in your bedroom with a shitty computer. You hired an EA when you knew you could make it rain and you believed you'd have the cash flow, but you didn't have it yet. Looking back, if you were starting again, what are the conditions for, for your first hire and what business department should they sit under?

Daniel Hakim26:11
Yeah.

Sabri Suby26:12
So the way that I always look at it is like hiring when it hurts and having a look at where your time is going. So the number one thing that the most like that everyone needs to understand is that the money is not made in the making or providing the goods and services that it is that you sell. You don't not make money that way. You make money by selling the goods and services that it is that you have. So the first thing that it is is you need to sell them, right? And the majority of your time will be, should be spent in the beginning on selling them. And it's not a thing of like, oh, but I need to also do the work. Yeah, we've already established that. So you need to do that after hours. You need to sell when your customers are awake and when you can actually sell them. And then you need to burn the midnight oil and deliver on those, on that work. And you want to look at all of the activities that are doing in your business that are not moving the money needle and you, there are the things that it is that you want to basically hire for. So, in the beginning, like I know that I can hire devs that know how to do SEO or know how to do, build websites and all of those kind of things. Having the ability to be able to sell and communicate like the founder and be able to compel people and have that much belief, That is a hard thing to replicate in, in the beginning. So I want to first look at all those things that I'm doing, outsource those things, and then, then I want to hire somebody that is going to replicate what I'm doing to ring the money needle and do more of those things. So I would typically say that the area that you want to focus on is depending on what the business is, it's hard to kind of just give a general answer, but looking at account management, fulfilment of the work. Um, and, and they're the things that you want to outsource so you can keep ringing the cash register because you need money to hire these people.

Kirsten Scott27:59
And in this situation, some founders aren't natural salespeople. Would you say then for those people they should hire a salesperson?

Sabri Suby28:06
That— yeah, if you're getting into business and you don't have a co-founder, there has to be somebody in the business that is the expert at selling.

Kirsten Scott28:14
Yeah.

Sabri Suby28:14
And the ideal situation is that it is one of the founders. It is very difficult to outsource a function that you have not mastered yourself. Yeah, because otherwise you do not know what success looks like. So like, I've— I'm of the belief that like, it doesn't even matter if you like sales or not. Like, you have to learn it. Like, that is the most important skill in business. I agree, because you might not be on the phone selling it one-to-one, but you're going to be selling talent to come and join. You're going to be selling the vision of what the business is going to look like in 5 to 10 years.

Kirsten Scott28:43
Totally agree. Henry, do you wanna ask your question?

Sabri Suby28:47
Yeah, sure. So thanks so much guys for this. Um, if you were 22 again, which skills would you be looking to develop in order to complement a dream to scale a company? And then how would you go about attaining these skills? Yeah, great question. I would master the skill of communication and salesmanship. So I think that the market has definitely changed right now. It's like, even though that I started my business you know, doing cold calling. Now you're just doing different forms of communications, whether it's organic TikTok that can blow up, I would basically master the skill of communication and storytelling. And that is communicating in a one-to-one sales environment, but then also producing content that is also, you know, a form of communication and storytelling to go out there and get organic views and bring organic visitors into your business when you don't have money to advertise. And the way that I would do that is naturally by getting reps in. And like, you can use your phone and start producing content right now. I would probably be doing, you know, 3 to 4 organic TikToks or Instagram Reels per day and trying to master the hooks and what hooks gets the most views and how do I tell storeys in that to engage. I would look at— I get a Chrome extension called sort by TikTok where you can look at any creator and you can sort all of their content based on what gets the most views and engagement. And then I would transcribe those and I would study them. I would write them by hand every single day to find out what were the language patterns, the hooks that get people's attention. Then I would be using those organic views to book phone calls in and doing sales calls. And I would listen to those sales calls every day. I would consume sales content on YouTube. But, you know, in order to become a master of anything, you know, it's not just about watching it, it's about doing it. You can read and learn about all this stuff. I had never read a sales book until I was very later on in my career. Like, I didn't even know that sales books even existed, to be honest. And so I just learned by being on the telephone and doing it every single day and getting real feedback from out in the marketplace. And there's so many gurus online. The bar— the barriers to entry for people to produce content is zero now. So there's a lot of armchair experts out there that are talking about doing things that have never done them. So you need to be very careful where you get that information. And the best place to do is just to look at the marketplace and have a look at, you know, who is getting the most attention, like looking at the— using those plugins to see what is actually working and studying what they're actually doing and not what they're saying to do.

Kirsten Scott31:29
And what was the programme you mentioned that listed the order of the—

Sabri Suby31:32
Sort by TikTok. Yeah, there's a lot of Chrome extensions. That's the one that I use.

Kirsten Scott31:36
Awesome. Um, Krish?

Daniel Hakim31:38
Yes, hello. Hi, thank you so much, Sahari. Super inspired by your journey. My question is around your initial few days. Did you focus on what your strength was, which was sales and that enticing offer, or did you do what everybody else does, which is also lay the other foundations of marketing, like set up your website, socials. The reason I ask is, as a sole founder or a co-founder, we often are overwhelmed with all these different parts of business. So did you focus on what you're good at and just focus on that, or also do the groundwork with everything else?

Sabri Suby32:10
So I did not even have a website when I started my business. I created a PDF report that I just created online. It was ghetto ass thing and I would literally call people up and just send them that because it's movement, not meditation. You can sit down there mucking around with funnel builders and websites and CRMs and hosting and all of this nonsense and get bogged down in what doesn't matter. None of that stuff was going to pay my rent when I had no money in my bank account. Like I needed to be speaking people and I need to be solving their problems and communicating that an offer to them and getting them to buy and all you need is a PayPal, Stripe account and a a PDF in order to do that. And then I just had literally a one-page landing page for the first year of my business. And I did $1 million in that year with a PDF and a one-page website. So like, you don't need to have the fanciest things. Everyone's looking at like somebody's Chapter 12 and they're trying to replicate that at day one. They don't need to do that. So you just focus on what is the thing that's going to move the money needle for you.

Kirsten Scott33:13
Right?

Sabri Suby33:13
What is going to actually drive transactions? And that's the area that is you want to focus on.

Kirsten Scott33:19
I think a good— I think a good point there as well is that you said is that you often you're comparing yourself to someone else's stage 12, I think you called it. It's like someone else is like they're further down, they've been there longer, they've done it longer. At the start you don't have all of that, you know, it's just focusing on the most important thing at that point in time and then the most important thing at the next point in time, and eventually you end up with with, with, with what you were looking at from someone else.

Sabri Suby33:43
Yeah, because everyone, like, it's like when I started my business, I was coming to the party late and there was people in there that had so much more cash than me that was spending, you know, $150 grand a month on Google Ads that were the King Kong that is today. They were that then, right? And it would have been easy to sit around and be like, oh, I need to be as good as that person and have all of the things that they've got in place when I simply did not have the financial resources to do that, but everyone has an advantage. So I didn't have an advantage on that front, but I had the advantages that I was the founder. I was the knowledgeable person that was speaking to that person straight out of the gate. So whatever strength that you've got, you use that in the beginning, right? It's like if you're going up against people that have massive teams where they're going to be charging more money than you because they've got all this overhead, right? Or you're not going to be dealing with the sole principal of that. And so whatever it is that you've got, you need to use that at that point.

Kirsten Scott34:36
And at the beginning, often your advantage is that you're the founder dealing with the person, so you can really win them over. You know, as a person, you can win them over.

Sabri Suby34:43
Indeed. And the crazy thing is that I still have clients that I signed up from my bedroom that are still clients today and that are grandfathered in at the old rates and all of those kind of things.

Kirsten Scott34:54
And they probably loved watching it.

Sabri Suby34:55
Exactly.

Kirsten Scott34:56
Yeah.

Sabri Suby34:56
And it just goes to show, it's like when you've got that one-to-one communication, you're using the things that it is that you can, leveraging that relationship and as much as you possibly can. And they're all advantages that you've got. It's like, you might not have a big sales team, awesome. Look, you're not speaking to a salesperson, you're speaking to the founder. You're getting literally one-to-one advice from me. I'm not some salesperson that's just telling you what it is that you wanna know. I'm actually gonna give you the exact solution that you need. And I'm not gonna charge 5 times the price of what these guys are charging. It is just me. I do have an overhead. And the good news for you is that you get this premium service from me at an absolute steal of a deal.

Kirsten Scott35:32
I love it. Um, um, and Reena, are you there, Reena? Because your question— yeah, perfect. Sorry, because the question is a very good one, very specific to you, which I think is great.

Daniel Hakim35:42
Thank you, Sabri and Daniel. Um, I was looking forward to this call for a while. Um, I have your book, Sabri, so I've just started reading that now.

Kirsten Scott35:53
Thank you.

Daniel Hakim35:53
I've also got the audio for when I'm in the than sitting in the car. So I'm really enjoying it. Um, I have a skincare brand. I formulate and manufacture my own skincare, um, because I was tired of all these other brands. So, um, so I've been making my own products for many, many years, and they are quite unique. But I've had 3 marketing agencies who just don't seem to get it. And in the end, after many months and no success with these marketers, all I get is, oh, it's a flooded market out there and there's a lot of, you know, skincare brands, a lot of beauty brands, and that's why. Well, you could have told me that in the beginning. But I'm not sure exactly what I have to do in order to get my brand out there and just show how unique it is. I'm 61 years old and I've been using my products for many, many years.

Sabri Suby36:59
And you look great.

Daniel Hakim37:02
Every time people see me, they think, oh, what are you doing? And then, and then I tell them what I do and they say, oh, that's where you've got great skin. So People said, well, you're the face of the brand, you should be doing something. And I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing.

Sabri Suby37:19
Well, you're in the right place today. I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do. Yeah, you have a pen and paper? Do you want to know exactly what it is you need to do? Because I'm about to tell you. All right, this is what you're going to do. So first of all, go to my YouTube channel. And I created a video on there that's— the title of that video is How to Sell Something for 23 Times what the competition is. And it's actually all about skincare. And it's all about something called a hero mechanism, which is you create a hero mechanism for your product that educates your market of why it is entirely different to everything else that is out there in the skincare market. Now, a great, a great place— I'm going to get into the, the underarching marketing strategy, and then we'll get to the tactical stuff. So the first thing it is, you want to just go through the process that's in that video. It will make you millions and millions of dollars. I promise you, if you follow it exactly what I'm about to tell you, it will. So you go through that process, create a hero mechanism for your skincare product. The way that you do that is you look at the ingredients, you look about the process of how it's made, um, and you can even go to ChatGPT and start saying, tell me fascinating storeys about the origin of this specific ingredients. I'm not going to go through the whole process of that video because it's on there, right? And then go through that to make it unique. Then what I would do is, because you are the face of it and you are the, the brand voice of it, I would just start making organic TikToks every single day. I'd be putting out 2 to 3 TikToks. I know that you probably don't like the idea of getting in front of the camera. It does not matter, right? You either want it or you don't. You just have to— if you're uncomfortable, that's a telltale sign that you need to do it. So Go and make 2 to 3 TikToks a day following that formula and just telling your story, right? You know, I, I'm 61, I can't gatekeep this any longer, I've been using this blah blah blah, and you, you'll just study the market. Once you start clicking on the skincare products on TikTok, you're gonna— your feed is gonna be flooded with what works. If you do use that plugin that I said before and you start looking at brands and influencers and all of the what they're doing on TikTok Shop, in the States for skincare, you'll get a really good indication. You'll start putting out reels that start getting 100,000 views, 200,000 views. Like, you'll be surprised. Even on Shark Tank, when I was on Shark Tank, the amount of people that came out that had early traction, all of these people typically got that early traction from organic TikTok. So we're in a gold rush right now. Then there's that component of it. Then, so that, that's how you apply from tactically. Then what you need to understand is with skincare, is that you do not make money on the first sale when you sell skincare. You are selling a consumable product, and if your skincare product is good, you should be willing and able to lose money for the first 3 to 6 months, right? Let's just say that your jar of goop costs $100, okay? And so you're selling it for $100. It is very typical that that jar of goop might cost you $100, $150, even $200 to sell it, but you're not in the order business, you are in the reorder business. And your product is going to be so good and so phenomenal that people are not going to buy one jar, but they're going to be buying jars for the next 3 years. So you might lose money on the first transaction, but a business owner gets a customer to make a sale, and a business builder gets a customer to start a relationship. So don't just look at the profitable part of actually acquiring that customer, you will be able to acquire them for profit in the beginning if you're just on TikTok and you're using organic. But when it comes to like paid ads and hiring agencies and all of those kind of things, if you, let's just say, put $5,000 into the machine and you get $5,000 out of that machine, which is break even or at a loss when you factor in cost of goods, that is a win because then you get the second sale, which is all profit, and the third sale and the fourth sale. And the product's so good that people go tell two of their friends., and then that's how you make money in it. But if you're just looking at a one-for-one, it's almost impossible to make it a profitable exercise to get customers for a skincare product of just running ads. That's not how it's done. It's done on the back end of that proactive— I know that's not what you do, but all these big skincare companies that are running direct-to-consumer ads, they have like a 3 to 6 months payback period to actually make money.

Daniel Hakim41:53
Okay, thank you so much. Um, we've got over 58 awards and people that try it just love it. Uh, return rate is about 98% of return customers, and we've had customers like— some of my older customers are over 10 years old.

Sabri Suby42:14
Yeah, so you've got a great product, but unfortunately there's a lot of people that have great products that are broke. So you need to figure out what is the delivery vehicle of selling that in a compelling way. And the place that, that you start is creating a hero mechanism for your product. And then that's the first thing, because then you're articulating that it is great and how it is different and superior to everything else that is out there. And then you need to find a way you can actually get that message out there and get attention and have people give you money and make that a profitable exercise.

Kirsten Scott42:46
And Rina, someone in the chat wants to know what your brand is, so you should put your link in the chat because they'll probably— Rachel wants to find out more about it. Ben, do you want to ask you a question?

Sabri Suby42:55
My question is just to see if your target, like your audience, your market, whatever, is literally a specific profession, mortgage brokers. Has anything changed or it's the same playbook?

Kirsten Scott43:07
Is my—

Sabri Suby43:08
yeah, it's the same playbook, or if anything changes for specific professions or not.

Kirsten Scott43:13
When you're selling to a niche market.

Sabri Suby43:16
Sorry, say that again. So my clients are literally just mortgage brokers, nobody else.

Kirsten Scott43:22
Yeah.

Sabri Suby43:23
So everything we spoke about today, is it the same playbook or is it certain channels you go down or? No, it's exactly the same playbook, right? If you're targeting mortgage brokers, you need to understand, are they doing refi or is it first home, right? So then there's two different avatars from there and then you need to intimately, cause like Mortgage brokers is a big umbrella, but it's like somebody that's looking to get their first home is entirely different to somebody who's on their third mortgage and is looking to refinance it to, you know, free up some cash so they can go on a family holiday or whatever it is. So you need to intimately understand those different buyer avatars. What keeps them up at night? What are they tossing and turning and unable to like sleep about? And it's the exact same process. It's like giving them information, make them a compelling offer, jump on a sales call, and do your thing.

Kirsten Scott44:10
Shannon, do you want to ask your question? It was about the book. So, yes, look, excellent. Sorry, I'm sorry.

Sabri Suby44:18
Godfather of ThoughtWorks, Shannon Tesch, is currently crushing it. Thank you. You're welcome. She smashed it with what they're doing with bottled water. So their marketing boss, Godfather of ThoughtWorks, you wrote the book a couple of years ago. What has developed in your thinking since then?

Daniel Hakim44:38
What's changed?

Sabri Suby44:39
What would you recommend differently to what's in the book today? The only thing that I would think to, to kind of add on to it, to be honest, these principles have been working for over, you know, 200-300 years. So humans don't change. The technology changes in the way that you get it out. So the only realistic thing is like just looking at the platforms of like, what is it that, that I would do now? And I think that we're in this day and age where you can put out organic content. You used to have to have a big following for things to take off. That is not like— followers don't even matter anymore, right? You can put out your first video on YouTube and do a million-view banger. And it's the same thing on TikTok and all of these platforms. Um, so the only thing that instead of cold calling, I'd probably be making like— I'd be doing both, but I wouldn't just be doing all of the cold calling. I'd be using different technology just to reach my people. In the beginning and just understanding and studying humans and studying markets and how they move because their psychology hasn't changed. It's just where they're hanging out and how do you approach it. But all the stuff that I talk about doing in the book, I am still doing it right now to bring in multiple millions of dollars per month.

Kirsten Scott45:51
Can we ask one more question from Marian? Do you have time?

Sabri Suby45:53
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott45:54
Marian. I just think it's a great question for everybody.

Daniel Hakim45:57
Hi Sabri, thank you for the chat. My question is, so basically we are working in the hospitality industry, we sell compostable packaging to cafes, and after that first initial chat with cafes and introducing product and sending a follow-up email, it's usually really hard to get a response, whether it's positive or negative, just because of the busy— like, the busyness of the hospitality industry. Do you have any recommendation on how to increase response rates in a crowded and busy industry where people barely have time to spend with their family at home? Yes.

Sabri Suby46:42
Could you please give me the 30-second rundown of what your sales process looks like right now?

Daniel Hakim46:49
We at the moment, we do a face-to-face approach where we go and see café face-to-face, present the products, um, and, uh, follow up with them afterwards. Yep.

Sabri Suby47:01
Okay, sure. And so I, I agree that that's the only way to actually go out into that marketplace because these people are busy as hell. You have to actually go into their, to their restaurants or cafes and do it. Okay, so that you go in there, you run through the product, and then you send Follow-up email and then what?

Daniel Hakim47:20
Well, either we hear back from the people or we don't.

Sabri Suby47:26
Okay, so how many times do you follow up?

Daniel Hakim47:30
2 to 3 times.

Sabri Suby47:31
Yeah, that's not enough. So the fortune is in the follow-up, Marian. That is where all the money is made. The last mile is the least crowded. You've done the hardest thing by actually getting in front of these people and making your offer. But you're right, they're very, very busy. And what most people do is they follow up once, twice, 3 times and they'll be like, I haven't heard from this person, so they're probably not busy. Um, so they're not interested. The thing is that they're busy and they've got a lot of problems in their business. There's staff quitting, there's all these issues, there's fulfilment issues, there's all these things that are happening that are infinitely more pressing than the issue of moving to a recyclable compost costable solution, right? And so you don't need to take that as their silence is that they're not interested. They're simply busy. If the only thing that I would do to change in, in your situation is I would do what we call multimodality follow-up, where I wouldn't just be using email to follow up. I'd be using all the modalities: text message, physical mail, emails, phone calls, everything. And I would build out a systemized follow-up process that every single lead goes through in order to get the outcome. And I would take those 3 follow-ups that you're doing right now, and I would turn that into a bare minimum of 12.

Kirsten Scott48:51
I completely agree with that. The sales are always in the follow-ups, even if you were to go back in physically, of course.

Sabri Suby48:57
Yeah, I would go back in physically as well. If you do nothing more than just that, you will double your sales.

Daniel Hakim49:04
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott49:05
Guys, I want to thank you all for giving us your time this morning and for joining us. Um, Sabri, I especially want to thank you. That was absolutely brilliant. You truly are one of the masters in the field, and we're all very lucky for your time and generosity and knowledge as well.

Sabri Suby49:17
Thanks for having me on. I hope everyone got some, some takeaways that is going to go make you guys some money.

Kirsten Scott49:22
Have a great day, guys.

Daniel Hakim49:23
Thank you all.

Kirsten Scott49:24
See ya.