Resilience, Reputation, and Real Lessons in Entrepreneurship with Anik Singal

All generations millennial and below will much rather pay more money to buy the same product that they actively know they can buy for cheaper but they'll pay more money because of the connection they feel to the brand because of how much they believe in the brand and what the brand stands for that message the word I'm coming out here is community it's brand building and this is not something traditional direct marketers are aware of or even know I could not be here in front of you today if it wasn't for the brand I built this is right about now with Ryan offered a radcast network production we are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes you ready to start snapping next and cash and checks well it starts right about now what's up guys welcome to write about now it's always I get things right speed is time and money you got to go fast that's why we're all about now I would call myself the chief compliance officer I would probably not say that but after reading this guy's story and after you're here today I might be complying a little more than I want we got on it single what's about it Amen thanks for having me appreciate you that kind of a rule breaker but I don't really want to deal with the FTC let's set the table for everyone on it gone who you are and how you made the wrong kind of history started doing all my marketing when I was still in college wanted to be an entrepreneur man I can have any money and I turned to Google and I typed in how to make money and Google thankfully filled in online for me and I was like well that's interesting what a concept and I went through all of the different little envelope stuff in survey answering bullshit options and found my way into a forum that talked about selling PDFs and selling information here's the thing I was in a full scholarship and it was an amazing program every time a new semester came my friends would spend three to five thousand dollars on textbooks we pay for education since we're kids with the value of education is important it made sense to me I was like huh this is like a legit opportunity get rid of the middle man connect the person who's actually doing with the person who wants to learn it charge commoditized education 50 bucks hundred bucks this is amazing like this makes sense to me problem was in what the hell was doing didn't know how to build a website didn't know how to write didn't know how to do any of this crap and so I'm on this forum and I don't have any money and back then we didn't have all these podcasts and coaches and courses and YouTube and I had to spend money to hire someone to help me and I didn't have it to piece it all together 18 months struggled my ass off finally something work it was SEO affiliate marketing then email list building and then course publishing that made my way through it and by the time I graduated I was on pace to do over a million dollars within four years while I was in college while I was working a part time job my first college football game I ever went to home coming after I graduated so when I was in college I did not go to frat parties I did not go to college game I was working hard man I was studying and I was doing my part time job when I graduated I had offers from Morgan Stanley JP Morgan and Charles Schwab to come investment bank in New York I literally was living the dream that all my friends were dying for and I said no to all the jobs I want to do this built my business up I've had near bankruptcies multiple times now three times that's the magic number so I'm done I've been tested the magic number for a lot of billionaires is they've almost lost everything three times so I am good universe hear me out now I'm done with this I'm wanting more I've been up and down I've traveled the world I've spoken on stages for Tony Robbins Grand Cardone a partner with and been business partners with Robert Geosaki Bob rocker Les Brown Damon John from Shark Tank wrote the forward to my last book escape I've made a movie I was I was joking with you I mean I'm on IMDB I made a freaking bond spoof film with a crew of 120 people where I conducted stunts I was actually gonna do massive stunts but I ended up having a problem and had to get surgery the week before so it was either delay the entire shoot which I can have the budget for or cut out the stunts and do some really stupid shit and make it look like I'm doing stunts but I've lived a really full life I was joking say I'm 41 I feel like I've lived at least normal persons two or three lifetimes built my cut my done a couple hundred million dollars worth of sales online now and built my business at its peak was gonna do 40 million and we were weeks away from selling due diligence was complete and my dream was to sell a company by Thomas 40 I was about to do that I was 39 it was really hard man when I started 20 years ago my hypothesis thesis in life I was so appalled by the idea of someone having a job and it makes sense to me why would anyone do that my thesis when I graduate college when I hadn't really met life yet was everybody should be an entrepreneur everybody and 20 years later I stand before you and I'm saying 99.8% of the world should never be an entrepreneur it's just not for everybody but for me it's the only path I just can't see any other way and so I love what I do it comes with some really really bad really really hard trying cuff times but I take it all in strides I like it and today I really feel like the don'ts and the do's is like look when everything was going exactly as I showed building that company for 20 years the hardest thing I've ever done I tell people this analogy imagine you've been training for the Olympics for 20 years you get into that you're running you're in the race you're ahead you're about to win everything you've dreamt of every broken bone hard work bruise every morning you woke up at four every shameful thing that happened even embarrassing thing that happened you're two steps away from crossing the finish line and you will be the gold medalist winner your life streams will have come true you trip you fall break your ankle not only do not win that race you can't race for another two three years and when you come back the doctors are like they're gonna have to retrain this entire ankle you're back to where you were 10 15 years ago do you still want to win the Olympic medal or do you want to give up on it now and that's what happened with me it was a hard reset in my life I lost the acquisition I lost everything done it all built it all done crazy things I've traveled the world I've lived in other parts of the world I'm an experienced different person so I'll do stupid things just for the experience I've zero regrets people always ask me what is it like to be sued by the FTC I always tell people this there was a period of my time in my life that I was in the ICU I was in the ICU for 92 days I was losing two pints of blood a day so every day they had to infuse me with two pints of blood I have a condition called Crohn's disease it got out of control my intestines were literally eroding and I was flat on a hospital bed in the ICU I almost got kicked out of a hospital because I refused to stop working in the ICU I would get blackberries Iceland didn't exist I would get blackberries snuck into the ICU by my team members I did a product launch from inside the ICU when I was dying because I was like as long as I'm breathing I don't give a shit if I'm breathing I'm fighting there's no excuses and it kept me alive I'm in the ICU I'm flat what happened is if they even put my hospital bed up if I was just set up my heart rate would spike to 180 they'd have to put me right back down for three months I was flat couldn't get out of bed couldn't walk never walk nothing I was in really bad shape three months later they basically said we don't have an option we have to do a very very large surgery on them 10 hours minimum and they told my family 50-50 if he wakes up like we just would not be surprised his body is super weak we don't know I did obviously wake up and went through hell I had to set up a makeshift hospital my parents basement took me two months of physical therapy just to be able to walk up the steps again because don't use it you lose it I lost my legs six months after that had to have surgery again a month after that surgery I was back in the ICU for 30 days had to have a third surgery that was a really hard year of my life being investigated by the FTC for 18 months was harder and I say that looking your dead screen in the eyes I'm not trying to make stuff up I took what is the hardest part of my life the most tragic part of my life the most painful part of my life the part that of most people everyone has something like this in their life could have gone through nasty divorce you could have gone through lost something or someone or God there's anything and what we tend to do is we tend to compartmentalize it build a membrane around it put it away and say I don't touch it I don't want to see it but it lives there it's that little demon that sits there and it eats at you you can't ignore avoid it so for me it was like I'm not I'm front and centering this thing I'm going to live it I'm going to experience it and what happened in that was in order to becoming my mission so I turned the most tragic thing in my life to now what looks like is will be the greatest victory of my life because I wasn't going to let it sit there for my entire life and be this thing this dirty thing that I don't talk about or I don't deal with what I was going to instead turn it into the best thing that's ever happened to me it's a little thing I want everyone to think about right now as they can walk away with something today right now what is that little demon you've hidden away what is that thing that aches you hurts you that triggers you that you've put away and how could it serve you rather than hurting you anyways that's my monologue thanks for coming to my TED Talk today hey guys if you've ever built a website before you know how quickly it can turn into a time suck recently I've been playing around with Wix's new hybrid editor called Wix Harmony you basically start by telling it what you're trying to build you prompt it to generate a professional great site just like you want it and here's the part I like you can easily go back and forth between AI and hands-on editing whenever you want the AI agent Arya is an expert in website design and business you can answer questions or perform direct actions throughout the process which has been huge for me when I'm trying to perfect the book of my website you've also got built-in tools for selling bookings and marketing pretty much all the stuff you actually need once the site's live if you're building anything right now a side project brand business whatever Wix Harmony honestly makes it easier to get out of your own way and start making stuff happen go to wix.com backslash harmony that's wix.com backslash harmony start your website today as being one of the top copywriters and information marketers ever it's been an interesting 10 years in the space with selling information coaching all that stuff what's changed what's the same in that space what you saw and what were some of your biggest successes in information marketing we are due for a shakedown it happens in every industry it's not unique to us and I've already lived through two of these the last shakedown happened in 2010 and 2012 quite frankly we're about a couple of years overdue COVID came in and did some weird stuff it changed the timelines otherwise we would have had an industry correction already now the shakedown the way it works is too many people are teaching shit they shouldn't be if you want to act as if for your own self to give yourself encouragement and to give yourself motivation like do what you want when it's just you but if I find out that my math teacher is acting as if they know math and they don't and they're teaching me math like we have a problem I'll never forget I walk up to my marketing 101 professor sophomore year he was older so I kind of assumed that he must have worked as vpcmo marketing for big companies and now he's retiring and he began a professor when I've told him I said hey what companies have you done marketing for and he starts telling me a list of companies he's consulted and I said no I was curious like where have you worked where have you led and turns out there's a 35 year professor he's never actually had a job in marketing I didn't even come to class after that honestly I was so turned off by the whole thing there's a lot of that going on right now in the industry and there was a lot of it going on back in 2008 2009 when the economy takes a weird hitch and I'm not here to say that the economy is going down because that seems to trigger half the people can we all agree on one thing where any conflicted economy which means half of the world's like dude we're in a shit show the other half the world's like this is never see anything better whether it's today a year from now five years from now there's going to be a correction has to be that market's going to go down it has to it's actually healthy it it better correct otherwise we're in for a really big problem later so given that fact we know we're going to go through this we might be in it now we're going to go through it soon now what happens the demand pulls back the amount of money people are spending on stuff pulls back but you've got to oversupply of coaches and trainers and educators because they'd spring up during like all the pandemic time generally this spring up now we got worldwide India it's like growing like weeds in Asia coaches and course sellers so we've got more options more people and it's driving prices down and it's as weird with what's happening though with the increase in demand cost of advertising is going up pricing is coming down demand is pulling back from the consumers it's creating a complete constraint businesses are going to fall apart and so it's a shakedown what happens now is all the people that really aren't here to be here that know what the hell they're doing that aren't doing this out of a great place a passion people always tell me like I'm like I haven't made shit from this guys this whole mission I am in the hole by over a million maybe 1.5 million dollars that's right I know I'm not making that up I can substantiate this I'm not in the business of making crap up I already got sued for that crap it's my passion that drives this I want the message out and I firmly believe that it'll come around and I'm the right person to teach us I got some other marketers right now that are trying to come and teach FTC stuff and I just sit there pat them on the head and say this is so stupid you can't you don't have the story you don't have the experience you don't have the connections you don't have the knowledge so I'm seeing a lot of that in the space and I saw it before and it cleaned itself out and it's gonna happen again as far as what's working there's one big difference between what worked 10 15 years ago and today one big difference in the info space and that is how people convert 10 15 years ago good copy sexy copy video sales page was enough people came and read it today it's kind of irrelevant we're in a very communal consumer base now especially with the younger audiences growing up it's been proven studies have actually proven that all generations millennial and below will much rather pay more money to buy the same product that they actively know they can buy for cheaper but they'll pay more money because of the connection they feel to the brand because of how much they believe in the brand and what the brand stands for that message the word I'm coming out here is community it's brand building and this is not something traditional and direct marketers are aware of or even know I could not be here in front of you today if it wasn't for the brand I built always focused on my brand it cost me millions I made a lot less money but I stand before you today in the same industry tall proud chin up and nobody in the industry persecuted me for what happened with the FTC otherwise for a lot of people that's a kill shop they're dumb they disappear I stand in front of it all why because my reputation spoke for itself I had taken time to build the brand if you're doing information marketing your coach whatever first and foremost change your windows you can't focus anymore on converting same day next day you've got to do 30 60 90 day windows you've got to do content marketing you have to win people over with your substance and that's where the shakedowns gonna happen because the people that are acting as if have no substance the market's going to weed you out they're gonna see right through it for an information marketer what are they doing between the time that they're pitching you how are they serving the community what is the information and most people are just not willing to put that time in they're not fond of every single chat in their Facebook community they're not going to put out podcasts like you do this isn't easy people think we just spring up we have to connect we have to schedule you went through a hurricane you got a studio you've got team members you had to take time away from your schedule you barely got a chance to eat lunch that kind of dedication Ryan is what it takes today you didn't need that 10 15 years ago you just lied through as we close out here on it talk about how you turn into a positive and all the stuff you're up to we are a culmination and a collective of all of our experiences not just the good ones and the things that hurt in the bad ones not one person has won the Olympic gold medal without losing a shitload of races bruises broken bones pain crying sacrifices and tough times no one you want to be great you got to deal with what the great deal with what can you do how can you turn your greatest tragedy into greatest victory for me I've turned it into my message I'm out there on every day trying to do a podcast talk to people about it a wrote a book about it we built an academy that people are loving where we train and teach people about it I'm speaking on stages I'm traveling around and we built an AI powered software that I've invested almost a million dollars building that is now being prospected by some of the biggest companies in the country because it does something that nobody else does god forbid that software takes off could possibly be worth hundreds of millions of dollars one day that's the kind of opportunity that sits in the tragedy that you obviously survived and in surviving that what did you learn and what did you pick up that could help others what would you have wished existed for you that could have helped you avoid that tragedy and you've got yourself a potentially huge idea that allows you to be of true service that's my positive message if you want the book don't say that calm and if you want to check out our software just because you're curious we have a demo and you can use it for free we have a 5,000 word free limit just go to completely clmplily.com and when you go to don't say that you'll see a podcast or all over social media stuff I was the marketing guy I was the email marketing guy and believe me now there isn't a single day that I'm not tagged at least six or seven or eight times on Facebook about compliance related matters you can pivot yourself and your brand very quickly if the message is loud enough with all the AI all the technology all these conveniences and seemingly technical things the best things come down to being human and that's what you are brother thank you thank you hey guys you know to find us Ryan is right.com that's not just hyperbole it's not just a claim it can be proven most of the time you out of all the highlight clips you'll find links tonic stuff good check out don't say that we appreciate you for making us number one and we can claim it we'll see you next time I'll write about now this has been right about now with Ryan Alfred a radcast network production visit Ryan is right.com for full audio and video versions of the show order one choir about sponsorship opportunities thanks for listening