How To Generate 100 Plus Sales Meetings in 2023
Dave owns seven businesses that have generated over ONE BILLION dollars collectively for over 1000 clients, including major brands and Fortune 100 companies like Target, Time magazine, and American Express.
At the age of 29, his doctor said, “Are you prepared for your heart attack?” Dave realized he needed to learn how to scale his businesses without being overwhelmed by stress. His life depended on it.
Merging conscious capitalism with an unconventional marketing approach, Dave has rapidly grown his businesses by investing money in people rather than paid advertising.
After selling his first business, Dave acquired three more companies and has put $3 MILLION into businesses this year. His mission is to employ over 200,000 people and revolutionize how we reward good talent.
Dave wants to be so big that governments can’t ignore him because his companies take up too much of their GDP. Simply put . . . he wants to buy back the freedom that greedy individuals and corporations stole.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-valentine-95564891/
David’s Book Recommendations
$100M Offers, by Alex Hormozi
The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield
The Obstacle Is the Way, by Ryan Holiday
Grist for the Mill, by Ram Dass (no audiobook)
Experiments in Truth, by Ram Dass
This Week Show’s Sponsors
Zoho: Zoho.com
Sensei LMS: Sensei LMS
BlogVault: BlogVault
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
LaunchFlows: LaunchFlows
Show’s Full Transcript
[00:00:00.250] -introduction
Welcome to the WP-Tonic this week in WordPress and SAS podcast, where Jonathan Denwood interviews the leading experts in WordPress elearning and online marketing to help WordPress professionals launch their own SAS.
[00:00:14.970] – Jonathan Denwood Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP-Tonic show. This week in WordPress and SAS. I’ve really been looking forward to this interview. Guess has had some weather problems, but it wouldn’t stop him from coming on to the show, folks, and it’s going to be a great discussion. He seems up for it. I’ve got David Barrette with us. He’s the CEO of Adaid. Hopefully, I pronounce it correctly, but my ability to butcher my guests and their company’s name is unsurpassable. As you’re a regular listener viewer, you have observed so regularly. So I was going to let my cohost Kirk introduce himself. Kirk, would you like to introduce yourself to listen to some viewers?
[00:01:05.660] – Kurt Von Ahnen
Yes, Jonathan. Great. My name is Kurt Von Ahnen. I own an agency called Manyana Nomas. We focus largely on membership and eLearning-type properties. And the whole thing with Manjana Nomas is about being on time and under budget.
[00:01:18.980] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great. And in this interview going to be discussing David’s specialty, which is generating leads for agencies and SAS. It’s an important subject, always important, but on steroids in 2023, he’s got a lot of experience. I’m really looking for this interview, but before we go into the main meat and potato of the show, I’ve just got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We’ll be back in a few moments.
[00:01:53.260] – Advert
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[00:02:57.850] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks. I also want to say that I’ve got a new major sponsor that is zolo.com. Zolo is looking for some great partnerships in the WordPress agency community and in the developer community. And if you’re a SAS and you’re looking for a CRM and other great marketing and managerial tools, Zoho is amazing, and it’s amazing value as well. So go over there. They’re looking for some great partnerships, so go over to Zoho partners and see what they’re offering. They really want to build their connections in the WordPress community. David, so can you give us a quick outline of your background and how you got into lead generation, and what drove you drove you to where you are now?
[00:03:58.080] – David Valentin
David, yeah, so when I was a kid, I was an entrepreneur. At the age of three, I was selling drawings that I had done as a three-year-old to friends of the family for $40. At the age of ten, I was selling candy bars and pencils, and pens out of my backpack. And I’ve always had this sense of building businesses is kind of what I’m up to. When I was 18, I started to get into marketing and advertising. I tell my staff this now, and they look at me sideways. But I was doing it on MySpace and Friendster, and Facebook wasn’t even a thing yet. And in my early days, Twitter wasn’t a thing. And so, like, all these social media platforms that we have now were not available. But I kept my deep, doing some video editing, doing some Website 1.0, and really started to develop into joint, going towards marketing and doing the agency route. And so, at the age of 25, I started my first grown-up company, as I like to say, and built that thing up over the course of four years into a nice little seven-figure business that I networked my way to.
[00:05:17.110] – David Valentin
And then I went to the doc, and the doc said, hey, you know, you’re you’re 29, Dave. Let’s do some tests. You’re about to be 30. Let’s kind of give you a physical. And I start going through the process, and he says, hey, you’re the most stressed out person we’ve ever tested. We’ve tested 4500 people. If you don’t change what you’re doing, you’re not going to see 40. I had two small kids at the time. I was like, wow, I’m going to have to change some things.
[00:05:47.470] – Jonathan Denwood
The reason why Green Dave, is you look very chilled out. I get the vibe that you’re a very chilled out person.
[00:05:56.530] – David Valentin
Yeah, I am. Now, I had to do some sincere work to figure that out. One of the things that I did for my business was I started generating leads and meetings through cold email outreach and creative direct mail follow up, and it exploded my company, and it led to me being able to exit. And then now what I did was when I left that company, I was able to take the best part of our lead gen and then give that away to other people. Now through Avidil, and I’ve also either started or purchased seven other businesses. And so I now get to run eight different businesses from the mountains, in the woods, on a river. It’s not a bad life.
[00:06:41.230] – Jonathan Denwood
So what led to just a quick follow up question. What led in to the present company, which you’re the CEO of, and you make some bold statements on your website, but I checked you over and you got a lot of experience in this area, so I’ll give you credence about being able to well, it’s true, isn’t it, David? There’s loads of people on the Internet making all sorts of claims, isn’t it, David? But I checked you over and you got a lot of experience and you got some credence, but your company makes some bold statements about being able to generate leads and getting people in front of on the business to business, what they did before I throw it over to Kirk. What made you focus in that particular sector, Dave?
[00:07:45.990] – David Valentin
Yeah, my real goal is to serve entrepreneurs, and a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with how to generate meaningful leads. A lot of times, especially in the BTB space, what I hear is, let’s network our way, let’s network our way. And that’s what I did. And I have compassion for those people. So when I looked at it, I just went, what would be a meaningful results that we could generate for B to B companies that would actually help their businesses grow? I believe that small business is the way, right? And so I’m like, all right, what can we do for that? And it came down to what we could put meetings on their calendar. That would be the most impactful thing that we could control, that would actually help these businesses grow. Obviously, I’m not built to take on sales calls for all these companies. We toyed with that idea, by the way, Jonathan, just so you know, we’re like, man, what if we took these and sold them? And it’s not off the table for right now, though. What we’ve done and said is, we can generate these meetings and then we’re going to train our clients how to close these deals.
[00:08:51.090] – David Valentin
So part of what all of our clients get, it’s one of the questions I ask for every company that I own. After they sign on, what’s the next problem that they’re going to have? Right? So the minute that someone says yes, they immediately start to doubt, did I make the right decision? How can we start to give them the confidence and the ability to be actionable on the decision they just made to invest in their company? And so part of that is putting them through free sales training. And it’s highly effective because we take so many Cold meetings every single month for every business and most of our clients don’t. Most of our clients are still growing their business via referral, they’re growing their business via affiliate. If they’re in the SAS space, they’re growing their business in some other way. And so doing Cold email outreach, doing creative direct mail follow up, that sales process is a foreign concept to them and so it requires a new way to approach the selling process and we train people how to do that. So I got into it, honestly, Jonathan, because I was like, this is going to help agencies SAS products more than anything else.
[00:09:55.660] – Jonathan Denwood
So basically through your experience, you saw the need for yourself and you just thought that you could fulfill something that you were looking for and needed in an effective way.
[00:10:09.330] – David Valentin
Yeah, and I think that a lot of times my best businesses come out of the space of what do I need right now? Or what do I need back then? Or what do people need in that space? In that circumstance, how can we help them? A lot of times I think entrepreneurs trying to do something new and fresh and it’s like, actually, if you just take an old model and use it in a new way, interacts with it in a new fashion, you may actually have the best business out there. There’s something interesting that I found that was 20% of businesses fail because there’s no market need. And so it’s people that come up with a new idea and there’s just not a market need versus something that and this is everybody listen to this. Or an agency. There are agencies a dime a dozen, right. There are hundreds of thousands of us. And the reality is there are new ways to do old things that can generate lots of revenue.
[00:11:05.870] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it really resonates with me because I’ve used SEO and content marketing to drive traffic to my website and then convert it. But I am actually looking to do B to B outreach myself among the midst of planning it all out. So it kind of jewel with me. So. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:11:33.470] – Kurt Von Ahnen
Thanks, Jonathan. David, when I heard that we were going to be talking to you, I looked some things up, right. Because I was like, I got to know what I’m talking to this guy about. And I was really intrigued by the outrageous offer, messaging and stuff like that. And I too am really drawn to small companies and small business and helping them with all their stuff, with the membership and the learning sites and stuff. And I am constantly amazed at how when I talk to a lot of small business owners, they don’t really have a firm idea of what their main offer actually is or what their outrageous offer could possibly be. What’s your methodology for overcoming that obstacle or getting people to really embrace that outrageous offer key offering that they’re going to put out?
[00:12:20.270] – David Valentin
Yes. The first thing is, what is it that your clients really want? So your clients would say, Well, I want something that I want a website that’s going to generate more revenue. Okay, great. What is the more revenue gets you? Does it get you more time with your kids? Does it give you more peace of mind? Does it allow you to grow and scale so that you can sell because you want to be able to exit and go write your novel? What does it do? It’s really getting close to your customers and asking them questions that are going to be of value to you and to them. One of the things that we teach in our sales training, Kurt, is you don’t just dig for pain. That’s important. Like, hey, what does this mean for you if you don’t do this, what is it going to cost you? But you also pull out what’s the dream? What’s the goal? And if you can get close to that, you start to get the seeds of a great offer. And so that’s where we start out is what’s the dream? What’s the dream outcome here for your clients?
[00:13:19.240] – David Valentin
And then the next place that we like to go is, hey, listen, what’s the main thing? Right? So if the dream is I want to sell my company, let’s say, what is the ultimate main thing that we need to be selling to them, then? Is it actually we’re going to increase their revenue, which we’re going to help them increase their profit. What is the main thing for agencies? It’s almost exclusively, I’m going to help you increase your revenue and maybe I help you with your profits, right? So if that’s the case, then we need to be talking about it in that fashion. Hey, look, we work with this client. They saw X result in Y time, right? So I love to say 90 days or less is a very strong case study. So if I say, hey, I worked with Kurt, we did some SDR work in the first 58 days, we booked 24 BDB meetings. He closed three of them, and that was $97,000 in revenue in the first two months. That’s a really strong case study. That’s extremely powerful. People go, wow, that’s a lot of money really fast. That’s a great turnaround time.
[00:14:29.960] – David Valentin
I could see the value in that, man, I want to enjoy that as well. So the next part of that outrageous offer is honestly looking at what’s a guarantee that you can provide for agencies almost exclusively. You’re going to have to provide a conditional guarantee. Hey, listen, we guarantee A, but you’re going to have to do BCDEF, or maybe it’s just BC, right? But they have to do something in order to get the guarantee. What is it that they need to do? And this was the thing that I figured out in my first agency. I was running Facebook and Instagram ads, and I started to realize everybody wanted to guarantee. So what I would tell people is, hey, listen, I’ll guarantee you a return on ad spend, but you have to give me a few things. So thing number one, I need to be able to approve the landing pages of each product page. Thing number two, I need free shipping for all new customers. I’d love to have it for everybody, but I need it for at least all new customers. Number three, I need to have a product a month that I can reduce to at least Map pricing.
[00:15:36.370] – David Valentin
I’d really love to be able to do it like 20% above cost. I want to discount something huge. And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to set up some systems on the back end that are going to upsell for a product that’s going to be complimentary to the one they purchase. If you give me that, I’ll give you a roast guarantee. Now, a lot of people, they’d say, okay, cool, let’s do that. But I don’t know if I want to give you all that. I’m like, that’s fine. We can still work together. I just can’t guarantee a return on ad spend here. But if you want to do that, I will. So some of them would say yes, and then they’d be our best customers. Right. Because if you have that outrageous offer, if you can guarantee something, even if not everybody qualifies for it, if you’re using it in your marketing current, it does wonders for how many meetings you book. It does wonders for closing sales. It does wonders for how people understand how to interact with you, what they’re going to get. It’s a huge deal. And when you think about it, every large company that you can imagine has a great offer at and T right now, hey, you switched to us.
[00:16:36.590] – David Valentin
We’ll give your entire family iPhone 14s right now. Free to free to you. Well, that’s a lot. If you have a family of four, that’s four grand worth of equipment that they’re just giving to you, how do they afford that? Well, they know they’re going to make it back. Right. So outrageous offers are something that sound too good to be true, but are actually extremely lucrative. The other example I have for this too, really quickly, and it’ll be done is Costco. Costco does whole chickens for 499. They put them at the back of their store. It’s huge stores, right. 499 whole rotisserie chickens. And then what they do is they put the alcohol and the other prepared food, they’re high margin items right next to it. So what they figured out was last year they lost $21 million on chickens because it cost more than 499 to produce those chickens. Right. But out of that, the average purchase price, again, think this. You’re going in to purchase a $5 chicken. The average person when they left Costco, just going in to get a chicken, spent $119. So they didn’t spend the $5. They spent more money doing that other stuff.
[00:17:43.380] – David Valentin
And it was a really valuable offer.
[00:17:46.070] – Kurt Von Ahnen
I must be doing it wrong because I always said that going to Costco had a $200 cover charge.
[00:17:53.110] – David Valentin
Yes. My wife has an expensive all right.
[00:17:58.970] – Kurt Von Ahnen
Jonathan, can I throw it back to you?
[00:18:00.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I think we go for our middle break, folks. It’s been a great discussion so far. I knew David would be an interesting guest. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:18:14.250] – Advert
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[00:18:46.330] – Advert
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[00:19:24.070] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks, I just want to point out that if you’re looking for a great hosting partner for your WordPress agency, look at WP Tonic. We specialize in elearning and community websites, but we work with any agency. We got premier WordPress hosting, plus we offer a suite of plugins that will just work fantastic. That over got over $10,000 worth of value, which you get as part of the hosting plan. So go over and sign up at Wptonixpartners, WP Tonicpartners and work with us in building your WordPress agency with a company that’s got over 15 years of experience in the WordPress community. Let’s go on to our next question of the interrogation. David, we have ways of being to get the truth out of you, I think, and I’ve struggled with this. It’s just mind blowing. It’s been a three year journey. I’ve got over 15 years experience in the WordPress area, david as a developer working for agencies. Oh, God, that made me lose all my hair. David working for local agencies in northern Nevada. Then I worked for myself with face to face with that’s been an interesting ride. And then I found my speciality about four years ago.
[00:21:09.270] – Jonathan Denwood
But it’s been such a journey. It’s finding that key offering and how to explain it effectively on a website. It seems easy, but it’s not at all. Got any insights about what we’re talking about? What is the key offering, and you got any kind of insights that you could put in three or four minutes about how you find it? Yeah, only a small question, David.
[00:21:43.810] – David Valentin
Well, it’s interesting. You’re not the only one, Jonathan. Every entrepreneur that I talk to struggles with this. And one of my favorite friends in this space, he put it and he said, it’s really hard to read the label on a wine bottle when you’re inside the bottle. And that’s what it’s like to figure that out, to put it on your site, to figure out your messaging. So I get brought in a lot to consult with agencies and SaaS companies, and I help them figure out how to do this, right? Because it is a challenge. Since it’s a challenge, the way that I’ve kind of figured it out is I always go, hey, listen, people are not here to purchase a feelgood thing, right? They’re not here because you’re a media buyer. It’s not what they’re here. They’re here because they need the results that a great media buying agency gives you. They’re not here because they need a new website. They’re here for the results of what a new website can bring you. So if you lead with results oriented language, right, is it going to save you time? Is it going to make you money?
[00:22:49.960] – David Valentin
Either in revenue and profit is going to increase, it’s going to make you more healthy, it’s going to help your relationships. Those are the four things that you can do in every aspect of any product or service you sell. Those are the four things people are always asking, like, what’s the Mercedes been? And I’m like that’s status, which is all about relationship, right? That’s all that that is. It’s all about relationship. And so if you distill it down to really simple terms, it actually gives you the ability to make it really simple for other people to pick up what you’re doing. So it really is getting down to what is the main thing, what do they want if they engage with us, what is going to make us different? What’s fascinating to me, Jonathan, is I go on to so many agency websites and I know that it’s an agency site because it’s got a beautiful design. It’s got really flowery. You want to stand out, we make you stand out in the crowd. And it’s like the same sort of like it’s got some sex appeal to the copy that’s written and it doesn’t drive any results.
[00:23:50.750] – David Valentin
And I love to ask agency owners, hey, how many leads you get into your website every month? And they’ll go like, one, two? I’m like, well, yeah, it’s because you have no call to action. They don’t do the things they would do for their own clients to themselves. And so, yeah, it’s really just sizzling down what is the result that clients are going to get if they engage with you? And if you can do that, you’re going to be ahead of 99% of agencies.
[00:24:17.410] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s kind of linked to the Greek philosophers. They say the biggest challenge is to know myself, and most people don’t bother. But it’s normally your friends and your close partner and your friends and your family that know you better than you know yourself. And I think you’re describing that, isn’t it? You could be in the weeds, can’t you, and not really understand how you’re being seen by others? Can’t you?
[00:24:54.430] – David Valentin
Yeah. If you’re struggling with that and you’re like, hey, I don’t know what to do and I can’t afford to hire someone to help me figure this out. You can talk to your current clients. Hey, what made you say yes to working with me? I’m just curious. Why do you continue to work with me? What’s in it for you? What are you looking for? What are you trying to get? And they’ll be honest, right? Sometimes they’ll tell you something that you don’t want to hear, too. I had a consulting client of mine. She did this. She started asking for her clients. Hey, why did you engage? One of her clients said, Because you’re cheap. And I was like, do you want to be that? She goes, no, I don’t want to be cheap. It became this kind of dialogue of, how are you presenting yourself? How are you marketing yourself? How are you selling yourself? Is it presenting in such a way that is actually where you want to go? And again, it’s funny fellas like, we’re talking about people that specialize in marketing, and they miss the boat on their own stuff, and it happens all the time.
[00:26:01.490] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I have a ta.
[00:26:04.210] – Kurt Von Ahnen
Well, you opened with being stressed out with your first company and having to make some changes. And then we’ve got a stat here that says that 72% of entrepreneurs suffer some type of mental health issue. Do you have any suggestions or kind of, like, best practices for entrepreneurs to kind of stay out of the weeds and keep their head on straight?
[00:26:26.880] – Jonathan Denwood
I just want to say, David, I totally know that on Bonkers, I’ve just accepted it. David Kurt works for me on some projects, and everybody that works for the years accepted that they’re dealing with somebody. That’s pretty bonkers.
[00:26:45.790] – David Valentin
Yeah. I am a huge believer in self care routines and habits. So it was one of the things that led to me, at 29, not doing well. When I was in high school and in college, I was an athlete. I worked out on a consistent basis. I ate well. I took care of myself. I meditated regularly, and as I got older, had a business that was successful. You know, only 7% of companies in the country do seven figures. So I was in the top 7% of entrepreneurs and business owners, and I was struggling because I had two small kids. I had a successful business that needed me to be everything to everyone. I needed to go to networking events and dah dah dah dah. And ultimately, what I ended up figuring out, Kurt, was that I needed to put those practices back in place. So if you’re at a point right now, you’re listening to this and you’re struggling, I’ll tell you exactly how I got started. Three days after I had that conversation with my doc, I just went, okay, you can’t not do anything, but you don’t have time and space margin right now to do what you really want to do in the future.
[00:27:57.020] – David Valentin
So what can you do? So I gave myself some very low bars of success. You drink a glass of water, you walk for five minutes a day. Anything more than that is gravy. But success, glass of water, five minute walk. Now, 19 out of 20 days, I’d do a 30 minutes walk or more, right? Or I’d go for a run or I’d go lift at the gym. That being said, there was one day out of the 20 where five minutes was all I could do. It’s all I had in me. Most days, I drink way more than a glass water. Just one. I’d have many. But there were some days where, man, I went straight from drinking coffee to, oh, man, it’s 06:00 at night. I should probably calm down and have a beer or something to kind of, like, bring myself down. Okay. Get a water in between, because there are just days where you’re running hard and fast. So it was simple things like that. Now, what I do is I do an infrared sauna four days a week. I lift or exercise. Six days a week, I go get out in nature.
[00:29:09.330] – David Valentin
Like, there was a study that was done that shows that if you look at a living green plant for three minutes, it has a noticeable drastic change in your cortisol levels. It reduces them by 52%. So if you just get out in nature and you move and walk around, you see trees, you breathe clean air, it does something for psyches. We were not supposed to be in buildings as much as we are. And I’m sure just like, everybody listen to this, I work on a screen all day. We didn’t evolve to look at screens. This is a new concept to humanity, and it’s a challenge. And so we need to engage our more ancient parts of our minds and bodies in order to have the sort of mental and physical health that is necessary in order to have and find success in the businesses that we run.
[00:30:00.270] – Kurt Von Ahnen
Yeah, well, for one, I’m a strong believer in beer therapy as well.
[00:30:05.070] – David Valentin
There you go.
[00:30:05.650] – Kurt Von Ahnen
Kurt I jumped right into that in the afternoon, and for me, it was mountain biking. David I’ll stare at the screen and nothing’s happening, and I’m not being productive, and I go, you know what? I just go out and pedal for an hour or two. I come back, and I can knock.
[00:30:19.100] – David Valentin
Out two, three days worth of work.
[00:30:20.630] – Kurt Von Ahnen
In an afternoon after a mountain bike ride, you know? But I think everyone’s got to find their their niche. Everyone’s got to find their their magic button, you know?
[00:30:27.930] – David Valentin
Absolutely.
[00:30:28.750] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Kind of really it also really resonated with me, David, because just to share something. About 18 months ago, about two years ago, I’m six foot, but I had gone up to £310 in weight and I wasn’t very happy and that I had a really big beer belly, but I didn’t drink that much and I only have one meal a day. Now and I’m £190 and I walk. I haven’t done it because it’s all been ice and snow and I’m a bit worried about taking it already. About two weeks ago, I slipped and landed on my head. But I normally walk about 5 miles a day, two and a half miles in the morning and two and a half miles in the late afternoon or the evening. And it really does make a big difference getting out and walking and just getting out there. Because most of us are spending too much time in front of a computer, aren’t we?
[00:31:40.980] – David Valentin
Yeah. And it’s the thing that we keep kind of finding out a couple of different things that are just really not healthy for us. One of them is inflammation, the second one is sitting and so it’s like, yeah, we have to find ways to move, it’s really important. Yeah.
[00:31:57.760] – Jonathan Denwood
And I tried all different kind of carry reductions and the reason why I just have one meal, it’s really difficult to really overeat with just one meal.
[00:32:07.590] – David Valentin
That’s right.
[00:32:08.890] – Jonathan Denwood
And I think applying the same thing to your personal life or personal situations, you should apply. You need to work out a simple plan of action to buy end result and have something that’s sustainable and keep it simple and I think you can apply that to your business problems as well, don’t you? Would you agree with that?
[00:32:34.290] – David Valentin
Absolutely. Most of the time what I find, I’m sure you two find this as well, people become frozen in time, they become frozen from taking action because everything’s convoluted, it’s complex and they haven’t simplified it. One of the things I talked about, my leaders that run the different companies, I’m like simple actionable and repeatable. That’s what our communication style needs to be, needs to be simple. We need to give them things that they can take action on and they need to be able to repeat that action in order to continue to find success. And that’s true for our personal lives as well. To your point, Jonathan, in business, in our personal life, we need to have steps that we can take that are simple actionable and repeatable. And so if we do those things, then we’re going to find success because we know, hey, this is measurable, we’re able to see the results, we’re able to continue to do it on a regular basis and it really makes a big difference in personal and professional life. So, yeah, I think that you’re spot on.
[00:33:36.370] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, let’s go wrap it up with a couple of fun questions I always like to ask my guests. So I don’t know if you ever watch any British TV. BBC. The Time Lords. The Doctor. Who? The Time Machine. So if you had your own time machine and you could go back, I’m going to speak for you, eventually you get, as I chew out, hopefully you’ve got something a bit more than that, but if you had a time machine and you could really go back to the start of your ultra journey. Is there anything that comes to mind that you wish that you knew at the start of it? You wish you could go back and say it to yourself?
[00:34:28.950] – David Valentin
Yeah, there’s a lot. Right. But if I was going to pick one, it would be get the marketing and messaging right for yourself first before you worry about the marketing and messaging for other clients. As an agency owner early on, everything that I did was all about the clients, and it made it so that it was really hard to grow because we didn’t have the messaging down, we didn’t have the offer down, and it took us four and a half years to figure that out. If I could have figured that out sooner, I’d be four and a half years further along in my journey than I am now. That’d be really helpful.
[00:35:05.890] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great. And over to you, Kurt.
[00:35:09.570] – Kurt Von Ahnen
I was writing down a note because I thought that was an amazing statement right there. A lot of folks messed that up because you’re in such a hurry to help the client, you forget about yourself. David, I guess the next thing is just what kind of books, websites, courses, what’s inspiration for you and what could you recommend to our listeners?
[00:35:31.930] – David Valentin
Yeah, okay. I’m going to give your listeners some things that perhaps they’ve heard of, and then I’m going to give them some stuff that I’m sure that they haven’t certainly not for business, because I think that it’s really helpful to have some of these ideas. So, number one, if you’re looking to get some Outrageous Offer stuff done, you can access some of that through my website. I actually put together a free course for that. Dave Valentine COO for outrageous offer. It’s a free e course. I usually charge $2,500 for people to go get in on that, but I’m giving it to your listeners for free. Some of the things that I really love as far as when it comes to business stuff, alex Hormones 100 Million Dollar Offers is a fantastic book that every agency owner should read. It’s going to help you with your own marketing, your positioning, your sales. It’s also going to help you with your clients. Absolutely love that one. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is a seminal work that I read every single year. Have either of you read that book?
[00:36:40.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I have a while ago, but I probably have to go back to it. It’s always interesting to read a book I suffer from. Sorry, I was going to utilize the word suffer. I don’t suffer. I have dyslexia and I tend to listen to audiobooks. But it’s always fantastic to go back, either read or listen to audiobook. Even a book that’s really influenced you because you go back and listen to it and normally you’ve missed something and it affects you in a different way, doesn’t it?
[00:37:22.670] – David Valentin
Yeah. I am one of those people that I’ll pick up a handful of new books every year just to see what else is out there. For the most part, I reread really impactful books over and over and over and over again. And Jonathan, to your point, I do a lot of audiobook content, and there’s a study that came out last year that shows listening to a book is just as beneficial to our brains as reading the book physically. So if someone starts to say, oh, you just listen to the book, actually, it’s just as beneficial as reading it. So don’t let anybody denigrate you or put you down for listening. The next one that I would say is fantastic. Ryan Holiday’s book the obstacle is the Way is great. He talks about stoic philosophers. If you don’t have any sort of spiritual or religious bent that helps you get through the madness of being an entrepreneur, I kind of think that entrepreneurships like AA, it’s helpful to have a higher power. And so I give a lot of my staff that are atheists when they’re looking for or agnostics or what have you, when they’re looking for something to hold onto.
[00:38:32.460] – David Valentin
I give them Stoic philosophy as the framework for how to handle the challenges of everyday life. And then the last book that I’m going to give that I’m sure no one’s ever given, I’m a huge follower of a man who died in 2019. His name is Ram Das. He was a Jewish he was formerly known as Richard Alpert. He was a Jewish professor at Harvard of Psychology and started to engage with psychedelics back in the 60s, before anyone knew what they were, before they were banned, before they were legal. And he was doing these experiments, and he started to realize that he was having some sort of breakthrough, but no one could tell him what was going on. They would have these experiences. They’d be high on drugs, and he’d see through the veil or whatever you want to call it, through the nature of reality, and then he’d always come back down. And so he ended up traveling to India and meeting a man who did things that he just couldn’t explain and started to just love him so much that he ended up being converting to Hinduism and being a teacher. And he used Hinduism and Sufiism and every sort of mystic tradition from every religious background you can imagine, he engaged with and he taught with.
[00:39:49.420] – David Valentin
And I love Ramdas for so many reasons. But one of them, and the reason why I mentioned him here is that in all of his teachings, he likes to remind people that we’re all interconnected, we’re all irrevocably interconnected. And so he had this statement. He would say, do what you do with another person, but never put them out of your heart. And so often business is hard and you have to make tough decisions and it affects people’s lives. And so he challenges me in a positive way. Can I love this person and still write them up? Can I love this person and fire them? Can I love this person and pursue a legal suit because they’ve harmed my companies? And how do I do that? In a very conscious way. Anyway, that’s a fun one to throw out for you, Kurt.
[00:40:46.030] – Jonathan Denwood
You get top bark. We give the interviewees folks a list of questions. You’d be surprised, Dave, the amount of people that still covered the show unprepared. Are you okay just to stay on for some extra bonus bonus questions?
[00:41:12.740] – David Valentin
Absolutely.
[00:41:13.560] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re going to wrap up the podcast part of the show, folks. I like to keep it to about 30 below 40 minutes. Dave, what is the best way for people to find out more about you, your company and your ideas?
[00:41:30.190] – David Valentin
Yeah. So you can go to Dave Valentine Co. You can check me out there. Like I said, Dave Valentine COO for that outrageous offer. Ecourse. And I’ve got another offer for your audience, if it’s okay. The SDR firm works with a lot of agencies, and so if someone wants to have the soliciting of this, you’ve never done SDR, you’ve never done cold email outreach, and you’d like to try it out. Send me an email. David at Avadel agency. Ava D-E-L Agency. Send me an email with the name of this podcast and the headline, and I’ll get you set up with three meetings for free. Anyone that wants to take advantage of that meetings.
[00:42:13.270] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a very generous offer, David. Thank you so much.
[00:42:17.530] – David Valentin
You can also find me on any social media platform at real. Deval is my handle for TikTok, Instagram and Twitter. So there you go.
[00:42:25.570] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. And Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:42:31.470] – Kurt Von Ahnen
If they’re watching the video, they can see how to spell my name and Curtin Von on it on LinkedIn is the best way to find me. I’m on LinkedIn every day. I connect with everybody. It says Follow, but click more.
[00:42:43.680] – David Valentin
Click Connect.
[00:42:44.790] – Kurt Von Ahnen
And let’s do a discovery call, if you want to call it that. Let’s call it an ice breaker. But it doesn’t have to be a sales session. Just has to be getting to know each other. And I like to meet the people that I’m connected to.
[00:42:55.370] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great. We’re going to continue the discussion. You’ll be able to watch the whole interview on the WP Tonic YouTube channel, plus some more questions we’ve got in this great interview. Like I say, just go over to the YouTube channel WP and search for WP Tonic and you find all these in views, plus the bonus content. And please subscribe to the channel. I do another show. We got a ton of really interesting content on the channel. Please subscribe. It really supports the show and we’ll be back next week. To say that I’ve got some amazing guests coming up in the next couple of months is an understatement. I’ve got some really interesting and diverse people. We’ll be back next week. Thanks so much. See you soon, folks. Bye.
[00:43:43.930] – Ending
Hey, thanks ail for listening. We really do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group? And also to keep up with the latest news, click WP Tonic.com newsletter. We’ll see you next time.
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