Generated $2.5B With Performance Marketing - Cem Atik

On this episode, Gemma Teak, the German operator who's generated $2 billion in revenue buying

scaling and selling SaaS and e-commerce companies breaks down how to spot undervalued businesses, fix what's broken and scale them into massive exits. The show starts now.

“All right, everybody. Welcome back. Tim, I'm excited. Have you on the show?”

Have you to be in here? So there's a couple of people out here who know about sales and they know about scaling and they know about SaaS, but they might not know about you. So give everybody a little bit of an idea of what you've done, the revenue that you've generated, give you a little bit of detail to who you are and what you've done. Sure. Yeah, I'm Sam from Germany, basically a small marketing nerd, I would say, and I make my passion to my job and also, like, yeah, like, like my

roadmap that I just, yeah, want to share with people, I would say. So what I do is really simple, we buy businesses, we scale them and then resell them. Really simple. Mainly, we are just talking about e-commerce and SaaS businesses. Yeah. Yeah. To just keep it quick. Yeah. That's pretty much it. So, but when you talk about doing that, you've generated a certain number of revenue and sales and scaling. Can you talk a little bit about that to get the audience to go, "What the heck?"

Because Sam, it's a huge thing that you've done. Yeah. When we're just talking about how much revenue you'll begin to rate for businesses, we are actively, yeah, was working on, yeah. We reached last year to billion dollars. So little numbers. Nothing, nothing big, little numbers there. So you've done two billion revenue for the companies that you didn't even start. You used to acquire them, you scale them, you systematize them, you go from there. So a lot of people

have a lot of questions going, "Okay, I have a SaaS company. I want to own a SaaS company. I want to buy companies. Let's go through this whole process. Let's go through when you're looking for businesses to buy and then we'll get to what we're doing if you're scaling one. When you're looking for businesses to buy, that are these SaaS companies. Where are you looking and what are you looking for?" So the first thing is a couple of years before, when we were starting with this idea,

I was thinking like, "Okay, how we can do that?" And I just, I just trade since I'm 19 a lot, yeah, and I was thinking about foreign Buffet. What he does is pretty much the same only in another industry. He just tried to figure out really undervalued businesses, yeah, get involved and yeah, growth together with them. And that's basically a pretty similar process. We do it a bit differently, because we're especially looking also for businesses that are going close to being

bankrupt sometimes. So buying a business out from the insolvency, it's a huge leverage for us, just imagine a business that makes 30 million revenue last year. Can be maybe sold this year for

one million, which is insanely cheap for sure, yeah, that's one thing. And the second thing is,

we usually, I mean, this is more a network thing. So it's not like you can do a lot of ads for it, or you just can talk about it. We already do ads for that in Europe, yeah, but mainly these context or these leads or businesses that could be interesting for us, coming over our M&A network. Over the last years and also because we are investor back, happy to be able to say that, yeah, we have a huge M&A network, over 200, 300 M&A consultants, yeah, that are interested to just

give us the best possible deals, because they know that the percentages that we share are much higher than the competition, yeah. So you win with money, basically. So that means if a M&A consultant usually gets 5%, be pay him maybe 7, yeah, that he gives us the good leads. Sounds bad,

“but it is, it's just how the world is. Absolutely. Why do this with real estate for years?”

We're, you know, your real estate agents are going to get 1% or 2% of whatever they sell. I'm like, well, I'll give you six, and I'll just let all the deals come to me first. So like, this is not complicated. It's just how the world works. Now, when I'm doing it in real estate, there's various specific things we're looking for. You're looking for very specific things in businesses and sales models. One of the things that you're looking for when you're looking for a business

and they come to you and they're like, hey, I used to make 30. I'm now worth 1. How do you know that that one that has now 1/30 of the valuation? How do you know that it's actually going to be valuable

and that you can monetize it? So basically, the most important things are the unit economics.

A lot of people are under estimating this. Yeah, a lot. How much my software codes

“until the user can use it is a really important metric and no one has this on. Yeah. Overview”

this number, basically. So how big is my overhead? Did I have another other Alpax codes? What are actually my monthly average codes that I have to provide this services is the most important thing?

yeah, I know that I have 40k balance. You could basically or basically gross profit. Yeah.

And I just need to pay tax and other stuff. But I know my business is healthy, right? So if you don't have a control about your unique economics and I see, yeah, your P&L and I see that you're just spending like 35%, 50%, 60% and overhead. Yeah. That's a big no-no for us. Yeah. We're just looking for smart, lean, clean setups that are not too complicated to dive in. Yeah. Because once we dive in and make it bigger, I mean, you know how it is. Yeah. If you just scale a business, it's getting

so freaking complicated. Yeah. And yeah, well, you don't need this from the beginning. Right. So when you go in and if they're this lean and they've optimised this and they've done their job really, really well, why do you think they're not making the profits? Why do you think they can't scale? What is their issue that they're going to? If they've already built a

“system, then this lean may have to suffer that's operational. Where are they failing?”

That actually depends. Sometimes it is as easy like they don't have a sales team. Yeah. Sometimes it is like their lead, my lead gen is not like not really effective enough. Yeah. Like let us say you just do ads, Google ads or meta ads. Yeah. And you just send people or you're redirecting to your homepage. I mean, look, why to your homepage? Right. What a hell is your intention? Yeah. You just want to sell a service, then promote your service on the way that someone can

test it at least, at least a bit before he actually be able to realize if he really needs this

or not. Yeah. And that is basically changed the process completely. That's mostly the main issues.

One, they don't have a really effective sales team. And the second one is that the lead gen is not optimized or they didn't even test offers. Right. And these are the main core common issues, actually. So, so walk me through people come to you and they're like, okay, I don't even know how to do lead gen. I don't even know how to do any of this. Walk me through kind of a step-by-step what they need to do. Like, okay, your software is good, but your lead gen sucks, your marketing sucks,

your value ladder sucks. How do you walk them through? Can you imagine a company who needs a adhesion example or will just create one in our minds? Walk me through one of the things you do.

“What are the next five things you need to write now to turn this around? Let us talk about telehealth.”

As example, we have a business we are working with. They're doing telehealth. They selling monoxidil. Monoxidil is for a hair growth for people like, yeah, we are not both like me, yeah. So, what happens here is you don't sell monoxidil. You sell a lifestyle, a feeling, a result. Yeah. And you just need to promote this result. Yeah, not not monoxidil at all. Yeah. So, instead of saying, like, hey, by our monoxidil, you should change the angle and say, hey, grow your hair at her back,

or six months until your old hair is back. Something like that. So, you just need to be really precise and really sharp with what you are saying. People are not buying monoxidil because they just run to buy monoxidil. They buy monoxidil because they expect a result for that. So, selling the result and the feeling is much better. But, let us stay on telehealth. Let us say you are just a platform for mental health. Yeah. So, instead of saying, hey,

I'm a platform for mental health. Come here and talk with people to get better. Yeah. You can say, like, are you depressed? We have people you I can't talk with. Are you have

X? We can help you to do Y? Yeah. And this is always a thing. If you just want to sell something

to me, you just need to talk about a pain point. Yeah. Right. Just need to talk about my pain point. Yeah. Just make it make me much more clear that I have this pain point and then sell the solution for it. Yeah. And that's pretty much it. So, I think a lot of people get that. We'll stay with the monoxidil side of the people going about there's a million people out there that so a million offers. There's a billion people on Reddit. There's a billion people all over the

place that are showing, hey, this is what it looked like now. And then six months from now, it looked like this. There's a busy people doing that. How do you break three through all of that and become signal versus noise? That actually depends on two factors. So, first of all, did you really need to set yourself apart? This is the one more important thing. Sometimes, there's so, there are so many niches. There are so competitive that you don't even need to sell

something special. Yeah. Because the demand is so important. It's so huge that you just can build a foundation. Do your browned work. And then you can just think about how I set myself apart. That's the first thing. Let us say there is a niche which is also medium competitive. Yeah.

“And you just want to find a way out and set yourself apart. Then you should maybe just”

more think about like, how can I combine my solution also with a no-brainer offer? So, that means

for it. But you send one or even two weeks of testing for free. As example, yeah, it's only

only as an example for you. But yeah, you just need always to tweak your offer and also tweak

what exactly you're just providing to your audience. Right? So, as example, you have still in telehealth. You can give them a week test trial or at least one session for free. And look here, someone who used something and is happy with that will like, like 100 times, more interested to convert or to just buy the service instead of someone who has no idea about what you guys exactly are doing. And that's pretty much the, you just need to a B test your offer.

And if you find something that works, don't stop there. Find more offers because as more angles you find as better, you can grow up because let us say free sample is working fine. Let us say, yeah, two weeks free sample is working better than one weeks as example. Okay. Then I know this. Yeah. So, we stop doing one. And that's basically a process. You just do a B test over a B test, test different angles, different offers and try to figure out what is

“working the best. And as more offers, that works you find as fast and you can scale. That's how”

business is scaled from from zero to seven or even eight digits within a year because they don't stop to test. Right. So, what are some of the tests that you've done? Because you've done a lot of A B testing. What are some of the tests that you found like, these work, these are good ones, versus the ones you've done like, you probably shouldn't try these. What are things that are work and then where do you test them? Is it Google ads? Is it Facebook? Is it Graham? Is it where

are you doing this? Because I agree with you. A results face marketing is came for me. It's always

it goes back to the idea like, hey, this is a product. This is Billy. This is what it looks like before. This is what's after. And you're selling a lifetime. This is what we talk about all the time with Adville. Adville doesn't sell ibuprofen, the drug inside. They sell a little magic pill that gets you back to spending time with your kids or getting back to work or whatever it is. We get that.

“I think all of us understand that. But what are some of the AB testing that we run into?”

Like, hey, you should probably do this. This works better than this. That is pretty, I mean, there is no, yeah, just answer it. You just can give over every industry. But what you can say is that people who are able to do free trials, they are much, much more likely to convert than people without free trials. I mean, we all know that that's really common. But we can go a bit deeper. We figured out that services which have a great onboarding process,

convert to up to 40% higher than software is which have no onboarding process. So it don't need to be complicated. You just need to tell them how you use your tool properly within video, within short intro, induction, yeah, a loom video is enough. And even that, people showing what the tool exactly does in action is something that increases the conversion rate.

Yeah. And that is the AB test that you just can test. And it's always successful for the loom video.

Yeah, with loom video, without loom video, I mean, test it, test it with whatever you want. You will always win with the loom one. That is one AB test that is working really good. It's

“nothing special. Yeah. Also something about like, when you just highlighting really important”

buttons in the dashboard. Yeah. So if you just highlight the button in the dashboard, which is really necessary to move forward in the process to using the software, right? A lot of people are not just, yeah, realizing that. But if you just highlight something, people want to click on it. And if they click on it, and there is an error message, why is it not working? Yeah. That is usually and trigger point that people are starting to explore the software. It's stupid. But that's really,

yeah, really something that is working. Yeah. What else? There's so many tests. I mean, I have a whole library about that. Right. I would love to hear more about the test, but also where do you test them? Like people are like, okay, I've done all these things. Where do I send the loop videos? Where do I send the intro? Where do I spend my money? What is the best ROI on which platform? Because a lot of times people ask this. I'm like, well, it depends on where your platform

lives, where your people live. It depends on their watering hole. But have you found very specific platforms that have better ROI and convert on a higher level? Because again, if you're talking too billion in revenue, a lot of things you're doing that other people aren't. There's a reason your investors invest with you. Water some of those things. So the highest regenerative investment to you actually get on LinkedIn and on Reddit. Yeah. Maybe two channels that, yeah. I mean,

everyone knows they are, yeah, massive, but no one has them as their main source in the channel. So

services are solving. Yeah, or the pain points of a lot of entrepreneurs as an example, people would start to ask questions getting curious about what you're doing. Yeah. And writing a piece of content is definitely much cheaper than when you just, yeah, doing ads over meta. Yeah. So all right. The highest return of investment is really on organic content. Yeah. So Reddit, maybe maybe acts LinkedIn. That is working with the highest return of investment. Yeah. But you just

need to be able to sell yourself talking about pain points and be able to put this into the lie right frame that it's working for the audience you're targeting for. Right. The channels where you just can grow the fastest is for sure meta, Google, and also, I mean, TikTok, TikTok affiliate is

“going also, yeah, getting bigger and bigger in this area. Yeah. Yeah. But, but honestly, if you just”

ask me, highest, highest return of investment, LinkedIn, Reddit, I would also say TikTok and maybe Instagram and also shorts. So every, every, where you can post organic content and has the chance to go viral is a good platform if you just are low in budget in the beginning, at least. Yeah. So from there, when people go into this, there's a lot of people that they try and give lead max. They're like, oh, or they use USCG, or they use, he's artificial AI people saying, hey,

this is, I use this product and it's amazing. And we're getting skeptical of all that. Everyone's

like, yeah, but that's, that's AI slot. That's, that's that. When you're given away for things, when you're doing these these organic ones, how are you, are you using AI? Are you using other people to do it? Are you creating these reviews? What are some of the things that you're doing to help convert people? So, especially when you are in the startup phase, I definitely recommend you to do the videos with real people because I mean, let us say you are the co-founder, yeah, and you just

“want to do founder ads. So that's the best thing on the no-brainer that you just, yeah, talking”

by yourself. That's first thing. The second thing is using AI works later on really great, but instead, the only thing that AI should do in the beginning is maybe writing scripts, helping you to find the right frame, testing different angles. This is something where you can use AI really good. But honestly, what I would do is make a post on LinkedIn, say that you're looking for students, yeah, will you pay 50 or 100 bucks an hour for, and they should just promote your product. You

just send them a framework, and then you have like 100, 200, 300 UCG videos talking about your product.

Yeah. Right. I mostly hope never do that. Yeah, I mean, it's so damn simple. I mean, there are

so many students on LinkedIn who are who are looking always for your opportunity like that. That's one thing. And the second thing you have, you have a library about maybe 200, 300 UCG videos, then you just give them to a color, and then you have 500 videos. You can post them on your organic channel. You can just use them for ads. Anything that you just have in mind, right? You can use them basically everywhere. You, you protocol going to can channel a couple times, and I know

“people are going to ask. So like, what is he talking about organic channel? Is that my blog? Is it my home page?”

What do you mean by an organic channel for you? Organic channels, basically, are in my opinion, are TikTok for sure. YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, yeah, and LinkedIn also for sure, right? You can also try acts, yeah, but I would stay on the free big ones, which is TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Instagram for sure. Yeah, actually. So from there, let's talk about, you're getting this business, and most people don't have a problem when it comes to getting business. They're

a problem keeping up with it. How do you deal with the scale? How do you deal with this influx of all of this traffic? How do you deal with regulations, and all that? So how do you, how do you handle that type of growth when all of a sudden there's an onslaught of people begging for your product

in one day, and you just don't have the platform for it? The first thing that we always

starting with is basically the website, the landing page, the leaked magnet page, whatever we are starting with, because you can do the best ads in the world. You can just do the best advertising in the world. If you're landing page is not converting, it is not converting point. There is nothing else you can say there. So the first thing is just really creating a page, which is based on data, yeah, highly able to convert. I mean, there is a lot of websites you can check out. You can check

out your competition, but I would recommend to check out, in the e-commerce space, maybe the Baymart Institute, it's a huge website. You can just buy a huge network, a platform. You can just buy a plan there, and they just give you the new CRO updates, CRO convert rate optimization, which are really, yeah, which are really important and really huge. And that's pretty much it. You start on your page. If your page is not converting, there is no point to move forward. First thing is

yeah, with different offers, test them. Yeah, so that's the first thing. Don't you set this up?

“I'm going to interrupt here. What was the name of the website again? Because I literally”

are going to write it down right now as well. Baymart Institute, let me just send it down to you. That's an Institute, which is working with the biggest brands, especially about e-commerce, and there's also one force as I will just check out my library, but I mean, they're working together with Google, Adidas, Shopify, Levi's Amazon, and they do all of these UX research and tests. And I mean, there is no better source that you just can find to get valuable and

valid information than the Baymart Institute. I will put all these links in the sur notes as well that will get access to Sam. So, because these are the tools that people want. These are things that are like, okay, what the hell is Baymart Institute? Because I can do this for a long time.

I've been staying in business for 20 years. I've never been that bad. I'm like, hold on,

I'm going to do that. So, what the hell is going on? So, what are the other tools? So, go, now we're getting into this. You open up, what are the tools of the trade that you have that you're using like Baymart that are like, what the heck? This already does my CRO for me? I never have to be like, for example, when it's years ago, I used to use something like template monsters, themeforers.net, because I didn't want to make websites because I was just not making websites anymore.

That came in that problem up from like 16 bucks a pop. Those are what work anymore, because they don't have the integrated CRO into it. So, what are some of the tools that you're using on a daily basis that get you there? So, for testing landing pages, usually using onepage.io, it's a platform or a website builder, yeah, really really common here in Europe. The good thing is, in the days of cloud code, you just basically build a website, upload your CI, tell them exactly what you want,

give them the information that it needs, and he builds an HTML code, then you just can basically copy and paste, and then you have a perfect website. And then you say, hey, give me five different offers based on this, and then you have five different websites in the same CI, perfectly shaped in this shape. You just want to test, right? Yeah. I mean, if you just look like 304 years back, yeah, it was really a mess, yeah, to test new offers or new angles. Now it's, it's a matter of

minutes, because you have cloud code, he is doing your, your pages, yeah, at least the CI, yeah, and then you just need maybe need to change a bit, and that's it. You can just change a test, five different offers at once. Beautiful. So, onepage.io. Yeah, onepage.io is a huge tool. We use, we have also made by, I mean, my partner make this, yeah, because he's doing more the business development thing. He set up with our team, a certain CO dashboard, you could say,

with lovable, yeah, where you can see your most important metrics, yeah, which is really important,

because as I said, yeah, you win with unit economics from the beginning, and also also by the axet, by max, if you just want to make a business axet ready, and want to make it attractive for investor, you just need to highlight your best numbers, and you just need to be aware of your best

“numbers. And that's why we're using our own dashboard, yeah, where we can see all this numbers.”

Well, yeah, what is the customer lifetime value? What is the, what is the, what is the customer acquisition cost? Yeah, all of these, how much we spend, how big is our return of investment? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all of these things here, as you just said in mind, about other tools, for sure, cloud code, we use a lot of cloud, yeah, we also use, usually as a platform, we use versatile, for, for our SaaS businesses, maybe pretty sure you, you guys hear about that, yeah,

for, versus it was a really great platform where you just can build and deploy, yeah, SaaS projects. We usually like to work with versatile because it's really simple and user-friendly. Beautiful. Now, so let's go through this. You're using these tools. You go through this process. We have to talk about fulfillment. We have to talk about scaling. When do you bring in other people? Where do you hire from when you're doing this? Because as you're bringing more problems on,

there's customer services issues, there's charge back issues, there's a bunch of all these other issues. When do you bring in real people? How much of that of you, all the meeting with AI? Because again,

two people here's a number. Oh, I've done two billion. Yeah, you don't hear all the headaches

and the charge backs and the customer service and all the other trash that comes with it.

“How do you deal with it for lack of a return to the site that comes in with all of this?”

So, let us say we have just problems with charge back. Yeah, usually, I mean, people are using stripe or any other services. Yeah. Over the last years, we have also just getting in touch with a lot

four party countries are using maybe the service, right? Then there is a service that I just

“have in my network and I can just talk with them directly and say, okay, we just need you guys”

for this project. That's one thing. So, a part of that is for sure networking and finding the best payment provider payment processor for your SaaS solution. That's one thing. Let us say we are just in a good position and we just want to expand to TikTok shop affiliate. Yeah. Then I have this example, a good contact of my Mika. Yeah. He's doing this spatially for SaaS businesses. Yeah. So, I just go to him and say, like, Mika, we have a new project here. Can you just look over it

and he's checking it and says, okay, I can do this or I can not do this. Yeah. And I mean, everyone can just reach out to Mika, but here's one thing. We're working on these different service providers on different projects. Yeah. So, the pressure that I just put on a business, yeah, because he's working on like four or five projects is a whole different story. And he will

“also rethink if he's just accepting a new project or not twice. Because you know, if he's”

failing a project, yeah, he will just maybe lose all their projects because if I see someone is failing, it's just really off. I just change the service provider, usually. Yeah. On all projects after one. And that's yeah. And that's pretty much it. Yeah. You are just reaching points. We say, okay, I need another channel to expand our reach, our growth, our sales. Yeah. And then you just

basically plug and play that. Services that we cannot provide by ourselves, we usually like to

outsource because it's easy and it's cheap. If you just hire three people for people that is mostly like at least twice or even three times more expensive than hiring a good service provider with a lot of reputation in this area. So, where do you find these service providers versus, because it sounds like you're not hiring individuals. It sounds like you're not going on up work.

“It sounds like you're going in your finding in a different place. Where are you finding these people?”

I mean, over the last years, a little isn't my network, but usually I find them over a context. Yeah. So, I asking someone, as an example, I did, you know, a good guy who's doing meta. That's example. Yeah. Or LinkedIn. LinkedIn is basically a really good source for that. So, because how I decide which people work with me together depends really on two things. First of all, how is the wife if I just talk with the person? Is it a cool guy? Is he great? That's really

important. The personal notice really important. And the second thing is, what are the businesses this guy work before? If I see brands like AG1, like Pablo B. If I see big names behind him,

yeah, then I know he will never ever risk, at least a tiny bit of his reputation,

only for just getting another 5k more, right? So, I usually look for people who have the luxury situation that they can decide, yeah, with which they work together with. And they are usually look more expensive than service providers who don't. Yeah. That's, that's a big myth. Yeah. Right. So, if you're going in and people want to do this as well, are there certain sizes that you're like, you don't sell that? Stop doing that. You know, if you're

going in and you're bringing this size provider versus that provider, what are the ones that you know convert really, really well versus the ones that are just complete? They don't convert it all. When you're trying to scale them. Yeah. So, there is one thing that is really great in says, and that is if you're just solving an issue from an audience that has money. Yeah. Right. So, that's in huge, if I, I mean, if you just, if you just do anything for

veterans, as example, with your, with your says, the chance that you just will fail or your audience as much likely smaller is, I mean, it's, it's pretty obvious because veterans are, I mean, how many veterans or the biggest pop military of veterans, you know, that they are maybe, yeah, not interested in you do that because they don't care, right? So, if I just go to handyments and try to sell them and SaaS solution for their phone, they will say like, I use my

phone since 20 years, why I should use now your solution, right? But, but there's Torles, yeah, and he's by real estate and he has issues to manage all the, all the 500 of apartments that he has. And if I can solve his issue there, it's huge. I, um, as example, I, I'm right now, right? And I can say five or even ten minutes for every flight. Yeah. It's, it's a no-brainer because they, they save millions of dollars. Yeah. So, right. If you just can have, if your, if your SaaS solution

can save people a ton of money, that's a huge thing and a huge no-brainer, but you always need to be

You're going to do the same amount of work, no matter what you're doing. Minus will do it for people who can pay you thousands of dollars versus paying you pennies. And we did this in the best, for example, I have is I taught someone human behavior in sales and he said, cool, I've mastered this ability to sell. I know it better than anybody else. I send him down. He trained with it. I was like, cool. We're going to do now. He goes, I'm going to find the most expensive product

I can find to sell. Texting the same amount of energy that gives me the best ROI. So, he went in and he sells access now into these huge funds all throughout the bottom and he's crushing it. Where this other kid took the same amount of knowledge in the same training and went and he's selling Netflix subscriptions. I'm like, you're screwed. It's the same amount of energy to the same thing but you're going to make a dollar versus a hundred thousand dollars for each one of your closest.

So, there's just really simple basic things like that. What are some of the pet peeves that you

run into that you're like, God, I wish if I never talked to you because I'm not buying your

company because you're overvalued and I want to get a 130 ratio, which is what you're normally working into. What are some of the things you wish you could tell owners of sales companies? You're like, guys, I wish you would just do this. Please, just for the love of God, do this.

“Honestly, I would love it more than everything else if everyone would care about their unit”

economics as like they care like and like and family member because this is more important than everything else. I just talk with businesses which doing hundred million, even 150 million and I say, like, hey, we have really good numbers. We have a huge profit margin in the same again. We have an habit day about 55% and I was like, you know, you don't it. And they said, yeah, we have. And I say, if you have that, the first thing that I do is get all my money, all my influence that I can

get my investors and give you a hundred, two hundred million to bring this to work even better.

Yeah. And saying, like, okay, let us see. So, what we did is just, yeah, do a creating a P&L with them together. And we see that it's not like just with this 55% EBITDA because what I see is they, these guys was doing 60 million. Yeah. And they had 40 employees. That is not working. 40 employees, 60 million 55% EBITDA. No way. No way. No way. There's numbers going on. And we are talking about devil opers. Yeah. We are not talking about like, like,

like someone who's working in a shop or so, we're talking about devil opers. They are insanely expensive. So, for now, for about another six, eight months, but after that, they're going to be very cheap. Sorry, guys. Yes. Screwed up. When you walk into an environment like that, and you're acquiring these businesses at a fraction of the cost, do you just wipe, so say, sorry, guys, you're 55,

“are you 40 developers? Have a nice day. You give off pink slips or how do you handle that normally?”

So, usually we're just looking from the beginning. If someone has a huge overhead, yeah, at least our CFO is looking over it. And, yeah, just try to give them some tips. Even if we are not

interested to invest in them, we always give them a little roadmap or an audit. You can say, like,

hey, these are the things you guys should fix. Otherwise, they are later on, you will fail. Yeah. That's always something that we do. We just always try to provide value. Yeah. Because even if we are not working together with, it's for free to help people. Because I already did the work to make my own research, why I should just not give them these information for free. Why? It's common stuff. And the work is already done. Yeah. So, it's like having a podcast where

all you do is get about proven information. Like this. What is this? What are some of the road maps that you do? Because again, I don't monetize this in any way, shape or form. What are some of the road maps that things that your team gives to the people that are like, listen, guys, we're not going to buy you. You're a lost cause at this point. Here's some stuff go do this.

“What are four or five things that you feel at the top of your mind that you're going to give out?”

So, we usually give a road map with priority points on it. So that means based on their numbers and based on their current stage of the business, what are the points that have the most priority to fix? Because they bring more revenue or they save more cost. That's usually the first list that we just give out. So like, hey, reduce this because this is ending in acts. Yeah. Hey, do this because you will generate estimated more revenue in acts. Yeah. That's usually what we tell.

And the second thing is for sure that we give them also a little mind map or yeah, a little a little, yeah, might maybe could say about like things. They, they should just have that they currently have in their business that are manually, that they could outsource or even optimize with AI. This is also something that we do because, I mean, there are so many things in these days that you just can really simple automate with AI that coasting you may be 40 or 50% of labor work, right?

And you just want to, want to reduce that if it's working. So can you give me an example of some of those things that you guys are automating with AI? Really simple. Let us say you're just doing

spend money without revenue, right? So you can, you can write a script that is doing this automatically.

“Point. Yeah. So that's one thing. 30 minutes every day. You can do this for search terms,”

for locations, for devices, for everything. Yeah. And if you just up fully optimize your account, Google ads account as an example, you save at least or your employee saving at least one hour. And he can just instead of focusing on optimizing, he can focus on the next steps to scale. Yeah, figuring out new, new keywords, just doing more, it be testing into campaigns, doing more experiments. And that's thing, just focusing more on scale instead of optimizing or just, yeah, spending time

and optimizing that you just can automate with AI is really simple. Because it's really simple.

Let us say you want to spend $100 each search term max before you just made a decision.

Then you said to, to insert term ex-gloor as example, a script that I built by the way, hey, please check all keywords out that spend over $100. If the return of investment is under one, cut it, point. Yeah. So simple stuff. And that saves you a lot of time, especially when you are just having ad accounts, which spending $10 or $20 a day. Yeah, it's a massive release in work. Yeah. So when you're doing this, how do are you using AI to quickly speed up that

ROI? In other words, if you're like, hey, go test these, don't spend this much money on these, because if it's all over 100 bucks, now you're getting back and you're getting this instantaneous feedback,

“are you using AI to adjust the A/B testing or you're still doing that manually?”

Unfortunately, A/B testing is still a lot of manual work. What we do is talking with AI to get different ideas, brainstorming, testing different angles. But AI is a good module for doing data-driven decisions, right? So that works great. But to say like, hey, test this virtualist example, it's right now not working. Maybe in like a couple of years, I'm pretty strong that we will be on this point. But right now it is more for doing manual work that is really data-driven.

As I say, like, we reach point A, and spend if it's profitable, let it run, if not cut it. Yeah. So then AI is working with the grid. So right now, we know that AI doesn't mean artificial

intelligence. It actually needs always incorrect. What tools are you using to offset that?

Are you using cloud are you using? Open cloud are you using? What are you using? What is your main go to? Cloud code mainly also open class sometimes, but more our AI expert is using it for building automations. Yeah. So I'm not so involved in that. I using a lot of cloud code. I use gamma app to do presentations, especially for our projects when we are just talking because a lot of people

are actually not really understanding what we're doing. Yeah. To make it more visible, attractive, and understandable, we use gamma dot app for that. Yeah. Then people are understanding like, oh, okay, there is a Parliament. I understand this as example. So that's, yeah, one thing, what else we're using? I'm just thinking about, I mean, there's so many tools. There's like four or five things that is going to my mind for everything that is official. We also use

an integration to make, yeah, make.com, pretty, really common. As example, we were working in a partnership and you're riding on click-up, also a project management tool. You're right, a message on click-up that is going to me. Yeah. And I don't react within 25 minutes. I get

“an notification on my phone because for us, the most important thing is answering in time. And I think”

it's also the biggest showing of respect if you just answer just a time. Doesn't matter what happens. Yeah. Yeah. If you just say, okay, I got your message. I'm in a meeting right now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Everyone has time for it. Right. When do you sit there and say, okay, this is the AI, this is, this is going to be a person. We're still in that environment. I need a person out of demand before. What are the things that you're like, I don't see that changing

anytime soon? I mean, a lot of things in the health care industry won't be changed. Bye, AI. Optimized. And yeah, that we just have a lot of less work. That's far enough, I'm sure, but health care or any kind of work that the Plumber do does like a handyman does. I mean, that's pretty obvious, right? What I still don't see, maybe I'm a bit too skeptical at this point is that AI just really start to thinking by itself based on your mindset. So what I try

right now is to clone myself and cloud. Yeah. And I just work on this since four months and I

cloud is understanding me. He can do all the decisions like I would do. Yeah. But in the moment where emotions has a relevancy and your decision, it's still hard to to really just get a correct or even a really solid answer from cloud, right? Because I mean, it's an AI. There's no feelings inside it. The cloud cannot reproduce feelings right now. Yeah. Right. And also in that

problem that I have, my problem that I have with cloud is it's still always in correct. There's

so many times where I'm like, hey, go do A, B, and C. I'm like, awesome. I've trained it. I've spent months training it. And all of a sudden it does X, Y, Z. I'm like, no, no, no, A, B, and C. But oh, yeah, I'm sorry you caught me. And I'm like, what do you mean I'm sorry you caught me? So everyone's like, oh, no, it's going to take over. It's we're going to be mad Max. It's going to be terminated or two. We're going to robots that kill us the next six months. We're not there yet people relaxed.

Yes, it is an extinction level event for employees. It's just not going to happen in the next six months.

“It's still way far behind. And yes, it's it's picking up and it's picking up. But I think the best”

example of this was they said it was going to take another six months to two years for chat GPT to have a timer. I was like, are you kidding me? Sam, all of a sudden said it. I was like, are you kidding me? So we're not there yet. Relax, people. We're not going to have to be wiped out at this point. You breathe. But for the people who are running into situations that want to know how you do what you do. Sam, and they want to step up. One of the things that they can start doing,

where can they learn, where can they pick up some of these details or is this just trial and error?

So first of all, always rely on data. So there is so many data online. I mean, we have

big brands like hotspot, which are just releasing so many case studies. Yeah, there are so many big brands in the SAS area, which are just openly talking about their tests and what they're doing. Just read the information that you just can find with Google. Yeah, that's my first definitely my first

“recommendation. Yeah, it's so simple, guys. Google. Yeah. The second thing is, I would just definitely”

recommend to be active on LinkedIn because there's a lot of people which are really valuable things on LinkedIn, especially about SAS, especially about e-commerce. Yeah. And the third thing is just feed this information to your cloud code. Yeah, even if we are not on the sky net more. Oh, yeah, moment right now, it takes a while until we are just reaching sky net. But feed cloud with all the information that you get creates skills and based on that, asking them in question and see

this cloud, not us, and source of knowledge, see it as a sparring partner that has a different opinion and telling you, yeah, things from his opinion. Yeah. If you just see cloud as an sparring partner, the result of you just get to get from it will be much better. Yeah. I just have, like, really long discussions with cloud. Yeah. Even my wife says, like, the fuck are you doing? And you're just talking with an AI. And I said, yeah, yeah, but he's just giving me answers that let me think about my decisions.

Say, like, you are still talking with a, with a machine, are you insane? Yeah, that's that's basically my wife. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's it. Yeah. Just using it as a sparring partner, cloud is your friend. Yeah. And cloud will help you to make your life easier, exact that and use cloud for that. Yeah. Right. Doesn't matter. Right. And understand, you can't make a first time a tree when it comes to cloud. There's certain things, it just can't do yet.

So just exhale, relax, breathe through it. What are some of the things? Yeah. Do you not see? Yeah. There are times where it's funny because there's time for I bark at it and it gives me better results than when I'm nice to it. I'm like, what the heck? Why? Why are you doing better when I yell at you? I don't understand. He's not making me yell at you. But sooner or later, all that information will come and do a robot and it'll come to my house and it'll kill

it. I've, I've made peace with this. All the times I've yelled at it, it will come to my house

“and it'll kill me at some point. That's why I'm always polite, always saying things,”

always asking, yeah, please, like a little real gentleman because I don't want to be the person

in that position where it says, like, hey, you remember like 25 years ago, you told me an asshole, I don't want to be in this person with that. Okay, I'll be dead. I'll be, I will, yeah, I'm down in that situation. Well, wait for you from the line that's going to be turned and put it to ovens because it's just, we're all going to die. I just, I get, I'm so mean to my AI. It's embarrassing. What are some of the sizes that if you were going to do it? That, you know,

some of the success rate you had. I know you talked about cell things, the people that have money and you talked about that. What are some of the victories that you've had with your personal brand and what you guys have offered? Can you tell me about some of the grand slams that you've hit? Yeah, um, we're, I just need to be a bit careful here because I cannot say too much about them

that it's, it's, it's still really old fashion industry where you just need to hide a little

“information, but we just started to work like one and a half years ago on a SaaS business,”

which was doing barely seven digits. So they was just right right now crawling to the seven

digits and after 12 months we hit the first 45 million in revenue and right now we are just going to

yeah, we are just in the direction to passing the 100 million annually on the end of this year and that's basically like 99% of the work is based on informations that you just can find online. Really test with a huge paste and execute. We've the same paste and what are working you keep? What is not working you just pulse? That's basically love it. When if someone comes in and then want to track you down and they want to connect with you

“and they want to learn more about it and they're like, hey, how do I do this? What's the best way for”

people to get a hold of you and to connect with you? Actually, LinkedIn is the best source of contacting me. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, post trying to post every day value of it if it's hard. Yeah, I would say definitely LinkedIn, that's what is your LinkedIn way to find me and what your LinkedIn is? It's basically my my first and my last name so it's Sam Addick and my

title is 2 billion plus in revenue and x is ready by design. We build both buyers. We're in a really

simple love it. Sam, I'm really helpful and really grateful that you gave all this information.

“It was I think people actually got value. They're going to go and they're going to Google. They're”

going to start being a whole lot nicer. They're going to stop selling stuff that people don't want. One of the things I love about you is that you're all about value. You're not here pushing products here. I'm trying to sell anything. You're actually like, hey guys, this is what you need to do to try and help people out. I appreciate it so much. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for your time, Charles. And if I was able to help at least one person, this was definitely

worth from my point of view. Jim doesn't chase trends. He hunts for broken businesses, rebuilds them from the inside and walks them toward an exit. A kid who started trading at 19

now moves 2 billion in revenue a year and the lesson underneath all of it is simple.

Know your numbers cold, sell the outcome instead of the thing, and let a strong network put the right deals on your desk. We'll catch you on the next episode.