The Dimond Download with Cardinal Mason and Ben Bader

Hey, welcome back to the diamond download. You might have noticed something. Maybe you haven't but Chase is not here. What do you mean? I'm right here. I'm Chase Diamond today. You're not Chase. I'm Chase just a little younger. A lot younger. Those those three things are definitely true younger. My name is Ben Bader and I'm filling in for Chase Diamond. Welcome Ben Bader. We're going to have a great conversation about the topics that we wouldn't normally talk to Chase about because Chase is probably too old to be even thinking about this stuff and we're young guys. This one's really for the kids. Okay, but we are going to keep it PG and it's going to be chill for anybody who doesn't know Ben is like, can I call you my CMO or is that disrespectful to you? I'll be your CMO. I'll be your CMO and COO. All right. He's my he's my entire C suite for copy MBA and we work together day in day out. Chase is very familiar with that. That's the only reason I was able to get Ben on this podcast because Chase worked with Ben once upon a time when he was 50-50 with me, but we got some topics here. We're gonna fly through them. So for anyone who doesn't know Ben runs an agency and it's like his main thing. And so I would love to hear from you the best and worst parts of running an agency, especially an agency sort of like yours. Yeah, good question. And I have like two completely different agency experiences because I was when I was working with basketball trainers, you remember that it was just completely different like the type of clients. I was working with the service was different. I I'll start there what I liked about that agency. It was very productized just to give everybody a quick breakdown. Like I was running Facebook ads for local basketball trainers, and then I'd set up go high level on the back end to help him closely. It was very easy to set up like they it was a it was a dumb niche to pick but it's like the typical Legion model that people do in real estate solar HVAC, whatever but the best thing about it was it was so productized where like everything was just like I could I could have five clients or 50 clients and there'd be no difference in the fulfillment like as far as actually doing the work, but now it's completely different. So now I'm working all in the education and info space and we do pretty much everything under the sun. Like we we do email campaigns. We do ads. We do funnels. We do we help with sales teams like CRM bills everything. So I guess my favorite thing about it right now is the clients that I'm working with because it's just fun. Like I'm working with you. I'm working with my boys and we're scaling together. Like it really feels like you're a part of a team like and it's not oh, this is my client. It's we're together on this team making this thing go to the moon. That's the coolest part about it. Yeah, it's just the people we're working with right now. Who's the worst part? Is that the question? That's the worst part. Worst part is having to deal with clients like Mason, bro, like the worst part. So because my service is flexible like because we're doing a lot it makes it messier. It's harder to I guess I haven't learned enough about like building SOPs and like really having systems down to like make it more hands-off for myself. Like everything's very time involved. Like that's that's the thing when you're working with my agency. You're working directly with me and Sanjay and like it's very intimate but we're wearing a lot of hats and we're doing a lot of different stuff like for me to to build a team. I have to teach them so many different things that we're doing like even small stuff like tech set up like it would just be a headache. So I guess that's the worst part about it. But again, I kind of am in a spot where my skill set allows me to do all these different things with with info product businesses. So like it's an advantage as well. This is so funny how like our agency experiences are like flipped where it's like the best part is my team and the worst part is the clients. I have some clients that I absolutely adore but like just in my market like it's just like so the people are so likely to turn and like it's very likely that people don't want to work with just an email agency. They want to work with basically the U of e-commerce where it's like they want full performance marketing across the board. They want them to do everything and just be sort of like a growth partner. Email marketing for e-commerce interesting because like they'd so competitive that you just I feel like most people I talked to the do it like they just have to charge a flat retainer. Like even if they're really good, they don't really get a performance because there's just so many people maybe I'm wrong in that but that I've never met an email agency that charges performance that didn't regret it like right after where it's like if it's a good deal for you the client's not going to want to pay you like they're not like if you're if they're doing 200k a month of email and then you come on and then all of a sudden start taking 10% like all of a sudden now, they're just charging you or you're charging them 20 like people will do that which makes literally no sense and if they offer the performance thing then it's a bad deal for you or it's like yeah, I'll give you 50% of my business and you make $100 a month extra. What do you think about a scenario where you come in there are doing 200k a month through email and then you take upside of 200 it's five grand a month and 10% above 200 maybe five grand is too much for you. If I wanted to I could make it look this is but I could make it look like I'm making the 300k a month of email even if without actually changing anything. What about using something like triple well actually our paid sponsor of today's episode. I don't know if we can say that. I'm totally kidding. Not our paid sponsor. They haven't paid us anything. We have no obligation to shout out anybody. Wait, who are we paid by? Respond to my Rolex today. I don't know dude like there are it's too easy to just manipulate and also like e-commerce aren't used to paying performance. It seems like their margins just straight up don't allow for it. And so like on 200k a month of email revenue, they might only be like taking like 50k a month and then if you charge them 10% then they're paying you out almost half or it would be over almost half. Yeah. Anyway, I think in general. Agencies are really good business model to start really hard to scale like in your case. I've been saying to you that you should just like bring on a little Ben junior and just let him shadow you for like two three weeks and just pay him a grand a month to just be on calls with you and watch you as you work. From the corner. Yeah. No, I know I would die that would work. That's probably the way to do it. I'm just like too caught up in everything to where I think everybody goes through this when you're like you're good at what you're doing and you feel like you're the only person that can do it. It's like not true, but it's a limiting belief that you have to eventually break. But right now I don't care to break it. All right, let's move on to the next one the psychology behind leaving your own rat race. So the reason that I wanted to ask you this because like the way that you and I both talk about like leaving our own respective rat race is like very romanticized like you were in college at the time. So was I I like had this big thing where it was like I just pedestal eyes the idea of making money online so much. I'm sure you did too. Like what was it like for you to sort of break out of being sort of like Top G in whatever frat you were in and then, you know transitioning over to online business and kind of like isolating yourself a little bit. It was it was interesting because I was having so much fun in college, but I wasn't built at all. Like it was it was like I was having so much fun, but I didn't earn any of it. So like you can't truly be at peace if you feel like something has been handed to you that you didn't go through firm wills and tribute and tribulations of the right word. If you didn't go through the pain of actually earning something you're not going to feel good about celebrating nothing. So like that was the position that I was in where I was just like, all right. I have to actually build something with my life and you know after four years of college, like I didn't want to be in a position where I'm like, holy ---- and I have to get a real job. So I I pretty much just bet on myself. I gave myself a window to where I was making enough money to support myself, but it was still kind of a leap to like get out of college when I did and I'm glad I did it now looking back but it was definitely like a jump from having everything like being in a in a college town ton of friends absolutely loving it, but I just had to make that sacrifice for the long-term. I think that's true with a lot of the people that I've seen you probably seen across like could you have insight into you know, a bunch of different like make money online sort of business models and you probably see that a lot of the students that are in those types of programs the one succeed the fastest are the ones that have the biggest why right like they're the most like desperate to make it work like like you had a you were very motivated to do it because you knew like you recognize the importance of fulfillment kind of right away. And so you knew that this was pretty much the only path for me. It was literally my only path to make six figures without doing some sort of like shitty sales job or working in like a trade like doing something like that and I didn't want to do that. So like yeah, don't wage me to work with my with my brain. And so I thought like if it's not this then I'm going to be like sincerely poor for a very long time. So copyright was like very easy for me to get started because I had one singular focus was all I wanted to do. Yeah, see people who are like a lot of like before I started like at least the inner circle like I thought that a lot of people that would do really well be the ones that already had experience. They were making probably six figures and like a sales job or doing something else where they're already kind of printing and then transitioning the copy would be easy because they already have experience dealing with like people who have money and stuff like that and they're already you already know what it feels like so it would be more normal to them. But now it's usually the people that like are kind of hopeless like us, right? Yeah, I always perform better when my back is against the wall in some way and like I've had to do that manually like I grew up in a good family good home like I could have followed the path and just like lived a happy little life, but I had to put my back against the wall if I actually ever wanted to build anything that I was proud of and I couldn't just rely on enjoying the normal path. It just wouldn't have made me into a person that I am proud of being and that goes for anything dude like everything I've done. I perform best when I don't really have another option or at least I make it so that I feel like I don't have another option and when you're in a scenario where you're you're privileged like you you grew up in like we talked about our friends that grew up really poor like they had no other option just by default. It's like okay if you actually want to make good money and live a cool life, but you have to start a business. Sometimes you have to manually put your back against the wall to to become who you want to be. I agree. Yeah. I mean I like like our boy Luke like is successful for a reason like he brute force his way to success because there was no other option and like if he didn't do that then like he wouldn't have just been middle class and had like a sad existence like working a regular job like he would have been like destitute and so like that was his motivation. Yeah, I we actually probably had it harder because we had it easier or it's like it was not that like we weren't living a terrible life, but we know that in the long run like it would have just been bad. So like we had to invest time up front even though things weren't like particularly bad. You have to leave something good to build something great. I love that. Okay, we're flying through these last one. I guess I hadn't hear advice for people who don't think they can make money. But I think we can sort of turn that into like you and I both love like giving like little platitudes like beginner entrepreneurs and we kind of just did that but like is there anything else you got left in the can? Sorry, what was the like original question advice for people that like basically don't think they can do it. Like I was thinking more along the lines of like people who are you know, really unconfident and like have crazy anxiety about being able to do this kind of thing. You're always going to feel like you're in over your head like even now sometimes I feel that way but you just learn to deal with it like especially in the beginning. You're just pretending to be somebody that you're not you're getting on a sales call and like saying you can do all these things and you probably haven't really done before like you don't really have the data to back it up, but you have to get over that fear and that I think it's just being naive enough to trust yourself. There's a power to say naivety. Good work. Huh? Say naivety. Yeah, you have to like find this delusional confidence in yourself that I'm not this person that I that I want to be right now. But if I just pretend to be them long enough, I will become that person and you will get over that fear and you're going to learn on the fly. You're going to learn how to fly the fly the plane while you are flying the plane. That's the best way to do it and you have to force yourself into that. And I have a little tidbit on that. So I remember when I when I went to college, I wasn't going to join a fray like if you'd asked me before and I was like no shot. I'm not I'm not doing that and then like I went to all the rush week parties and I was like ----. This would be fun. Like I had no idea what I was getting myself into because for anybody that doesn't know like a frat will hold rush week events and those are like all fun. It's just all parties and stuff and then if you get in if you get a bid you're pledging for two to three months and pledging is not fun at all, but the ignorance that I had of like not knowing that got me into it and if I knew what I was signing up for I wouldn't have signed up for it, but I ended up doing it because I was already in it and I was ignorant enough to like not know what the other side actually looked like so that's the same concept with business like think about it in the way that we that we sell products. It's always like oh, this is the easy step by step system. That's going to show you how to go from here to here in 90 days. You're selling the easy part. You're selling the okay. This is long as long as you follow this, you're not going to fail and it's true, but there are going to be things that come up. There are going to be challenges, but if you don't position it as that way where it's like a simple framework to make money online or to get any result. They're never going to start because you can't tell somebody that hey, this is going to be really hard. It's going to take like really a year to two years to make the money that you want to make and they would never do it. But if you tell them like hey, if you stick to this like you're going to find success. Within a time period. That's how you get people in and then once you're in it, it's just like, all right. I'm already doing this. Like why would I back out now? Yeah, like the whole like year to year thing like that's what if we had to capture like a hundred percent of like 20% of people will get results within like three four months, but like everybody else it's going to take them some time. But yeah, you have to like use examples of people who do it really quickly so that they can see that it's even possible for them. Otherwise, I think like I think of responsibility as like a muscle and like it's one of the things where like you need to be like physically strong mentally strong and also another thing you need to be strong is your level of handling responsibility. And so like if you've never run a business before or like been responsible for your own income if you're going to make a freelancer or whatever like a solopreneur then like you're not going to really know how to handle it. It's going to feel really hard but over time you're going to be like, all right, I'm strong enough in this domain to make 5k a month and then you're going to like strengthen that muscle even more and then you're going to be responsible enough to make 10k a month or 20 and then you can feed yourself and then at one point you start to have employees and you're responsible for like feeding them and making sure that they have a salary and like you just learn how to handle more and like most people who have just kind of had everything handed to them like even you know, like they get a scholarship and then they ******* go work a job, you know where someone's paying them like a decent salary like they haven't really had to like push that hard for anything like there is no responsibility there like they're barely responsible for themselves like someone else is responsible for their income. So I think like once you start to like develop that muscle then you become the type of person that people really trust. That's why I think like entrepreneurship is one of the best things you can do like for your like overall character like it makes you have integrity. It makes you someone that people want to rely on you become like one of the most attractive people in any group because of what you've been able to like the level of responsibility you've been able to handle. You have a high tolerance for the unknown is the the biggest thing. I think like there's going to be plenty of things where you think something's going to pan out the way one way and it pans out a completely different way and you have to be comfortable with that. That's why most people would just rather elect to take a safer route because you know, if you show up every day like you're going to get 80 grand a year whatever the salary is like it all you can do is show up and you're getting paid with this. It's like there's so many factors so many things that could go wrong or go right so many different paths that you can stumble down like I'm sure I know you got into copy early, but I think for a second like you thought you were going to be a setter. I'm sure at one point you're like, okay, I'm going to build an econ brand. I'm going to do whatever else mine was the same way like starting with basketball starting agency with basketball turns before that I was running I was doing videography after that. I was I was making ad creatives for for econ brands and all of those things. I was like this is going to be the thing this is going to be what I what I really scale and they weren't but they led me into something that ended up being right for me and like right now with the agency that I'm running. I could see myself running this another couple years, but I'm not married to it. Like if something changes or if another opportunity arises where I'm like, yo, this is this looks like a better path like I I'm not too hesitant to like be aware that paths are going to change. You can build that sass. I don't know probably not. I mean, especially right now like with the agency everything so hands-on and like we're scaling and clients are crushing it. So like that would be a project for another day. But again, if like something comes up where I'm like, yo, this is a higher leverage opportunity that I think even if I'm sacrificing a bit right now, it could pan out in the long run like I'm not completely against any idea or anything that I that I kind of fall into you just stumble into different opportunities and some of them work out. Yeah, this is great. I think we crushed it. Hopefully Chase watches his back and he's proud of us and he's not ashamed to you know us for taking over. Yeah, if you enjoyed this follow at Ben H Bader on Twitter and TikTok. And if you're a woman follow on Instagram. And yeah, so I'm at Cardinal Mason Twitter and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Cardinal Mace. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.