How To Get MORE LEADS For Your Agency And Close MORE SALES With Alex Schlinsky – S2E3

Alex Schlinsky 0:03
I was really, really stupid for like six years and I still make good money. So if you’re not as stupid as me, you could probably make a lot more. And I think that’s hopefully what you’re taking away from this podcast.

Chris Bruno 0:12
Welcome to the all about digital marketing podcast, the show that dives into the best strategies, tactics and tools for entrepreneurs and marketers looking to exponentially increase their results online.

Travis Ketchum 0:27
Welcome back to the all about Digital Marketing podcast. I’m today’s host, Travis Ketchum, joined by Alex Szalinski. How’s it going, Alex?

Alex Schlinsky 0:33
Hey, Travis, thanks so much for having me, man.

Travis Ketchum 0:35
Yeah, my pleasure. Hopefully you’re staying cool down there in the Florida temperatures.

Alex Schlinsky 0:39
No, definitely not. It’s extremely muggy, hot as heck out here.

Travis Ketchum 0:45
Cool. Well, you run a pretty interesting business called prospecting on demand, you want to give us kind of a quick recap of what it is. And what’s your sort of main stickers.

Alex Schlinsky 0:54
Yeah, absolutely. So prospecting on demand is a membership community for agency owners, coaches and consultants were purposely boutique company. Because I think the other coaching programmes out there are really built to scale their programmes, our businesses, the opposite. Our business is to scale your business, because everyone on my team already has another business, whether it’s an agency or something else. So we get to pour in our insights from our current businesses into yours. We strictly work with 50 people and no more. So we’re very deliberate about who we can support. So we can have a white glove service versus a hey, here’s the Zoom Room with 75 people and members area with 1000 hours of coaching material. Good luck. I don’t love that model. So we changed up the space a bit. We’re big on culture and community. We run four events a year, getting ready for a big one up coming here, Travis and Tambo, which I’m super excited about. So that’s what we’re all about. It’s a lot of fun.

Travis Ketchum 1:50
Awesome, awesome. Yeah. I mean, you have a lot of exciting testimonials of people you’ve worked with, which is, you know, the transformation is the most rewarding part about doing this whole business. Right? Absolutely. 100%

Alex Schlinsky 1:59
That’s the best thing like literally while we’re on this podcast, and I know that a lot of people are listening via their phone, but we use everything on Slack is how we deliver. And while we’re on this podcast, I just got a notification from our clients that said, Man, I love Piaf, which is painful. And it’s a $6,000 painful for three months service. And I just love seeing like wins and celebratory experiences plus, like, because of our community style, like we create, like, honestly, like real relationships, we have inside jokes. It’s just fun. It honestly is just fun. Now, not not everything is fun. Obviously, it’s still job. Sometimes it’s not fun, sometimes challenging. But it’s very rewarding, especially, you know, wins that aren’t just financial, financial winds sell Travis, you know, like, those are the ones that people care about when they’re making a decision. But the ones that really inspire me, and, you know, trying to not be cliche here, but obviously, I think it is cliche. You know, the ones that really inspire me or get me motivated as someone says that we’ve helped them more deeply than just their business. Like we’ve affected them personally, we’ve helped them get out of their shell become more comfortable in who they are, become comfortable in the uncomfortable, being more confident in what they do, being more satisfied with what they do, feeling like they’re part of a community and not alone. Like those things are incredibly inspiring to me. And when I get those messages, unsolicited, especially because soliciting them is valuable, but unsolicited I mean, wow. It’s like just incredible. I mean, it really changes your point of view of what you’re doing. Like it makes you just feel a lot better. Someone messaged me the other day, and they’re like, I feel respected, appreciated, and motivated. When I’m here, you guys are all my tribe, I’m so grateful to be a part of this, like, wow, that’s what a what a resounding statement that is more than I close the $10,000 deal, even though that’s amazing, too. So it’s just an interesting experience,

Travis Ketchum 3:50
for sure. And you know, what’s amazing about the entrepreneurs journey in general, and I think this is true, especially for agency owners, you know, in my, in my long, long, long ago, passed about four lifetimes ago now feels like you know, I did do some agency work. You know, but being entrepreneur can can feel pretty lonely and isolating at times, right? I mean, my wife goes to some events with me sometimes and she can tell you know, when I’m lining up, because I’m around my people, you know, and that’s a big deal to be around. You’re kind of people that understand you that think like you but the idea of of going to a cubicle clocking in and clocking out, you’ll have the only benefit really have you can not respond to emails after hours and get away with it. Sometimes, right, whereas your entrepreneur, your hats never fully off. But that trade off is not wouldn’t happen in a million years for most of us, although, sometimes you wake up questioning your sanity, right?

Alex Schlinsky 4:41
I think I questioned my sanity every day. Mostly because of we were talking about this right before we started the podcast, but practising what you preach is a really important thing. I think part of the reason why I’m really good at coaching certain things is because I deal with those things all the time. There’s this idea of First Person coaching that I think not enough people do When you go to an event or you do networking with someone else, and someone presents you with a problem that you are intimately familiar with, you have this incredible insight on how to solve that problem. And then when it comes to you having that problem yourself, solving, it becomes much more challenging. So whether it’s like mental health, which is such a common like through line for entrepreneurship, especially in the world that we live in today, which is like very heavily capitalist environment, hustle culture, nothing is good enough, you’re never get going to get success. Define successes as not a reality. Competition is like very cutthroat. You know, when you when you get to this point, and I’m coaching on, you know, the things that really matter and defining your success and carving out time for family and identifying the things you really want to do. And then when I get overwhelmed, you know, I know the answers, but then I got to do it myself. Right. And this is what I always tell people that allows me to feel better at night, which is being a personal trainer is infinitely easier than doing the work right? It is way easier to say hey, Travis, I need you to run two miles today. Eat no Oreos the whole week and do 100 Push ups every single night before bed. I finished the sentence that was easy. It was easy job to do. You know it’s hard. Not eating Oreos for sure. I mean, that’s by far the hardest. You know hashtag Oreo lover over here. Best cookie in the world by far. Anyways, but

Travis Ketchum 6:21
are you a devil stuff fan?

Alex Schlinsky 6:24
I like all Oreos, but honestly, I

Travis Ketchum 6:25
don’t care. You don’t discriminate. Okay, Oreos,

Alex Schlinsky 6:27
I think golden Oreos are heresy or blasphemy. I can’t believe people eat that garbage. Chocolate. What are we doing here? That was like, Yeah, it’s like, look, the regular Oreo. That’s the move. But in terms of like doing the 100 push ups or running a bunch of miles like those are hard to do. So I always explain to my clients that the reason why I’m able to coach this effectively is saying the solution is easier than doing the solution. It’s it’s like you can’t be talking that action. You got to be about that action, but also having an umbrella forgiveness and recognising me as you being which is all I am. I’m not some robot or perfect person. I’m not always going to be perfect. I’m not always going to run the miles. I’m not always going to not eat Oreos, I’m not going to always, you know, do the push ups, even though I want to even though I’m disciplined to and I get myself as best I possibly can. Forgiveness on that. But still, you know, no matter what I do, it’s it’s always a challenge. Because when I see my clients implement the things that I’m asking him to do. And then I don’t hold myself to that same standard. I feel bad about that. My question my not sanity, but my integrity on that. And that’s just me being very raw and very real. Even though I know, like I said, I’m a flawed human being. And I just have to continue to get better with discipline. And over time, I think I will continually get better. And that allows me to have what I call an umbrella forgiveness.

Travis Ketchum 7:47
For sure. I mean, I think it’s a pretty common term that a lot of entrepreneurs get used to is, you know, the cobblers kids have no shoes. It’s, it’s so easy to, to, you know, be the seller of shoes and not excuse yourself or some laughs Yeah. Yeah, just and it’s not because of lack of, you know, ethical fibre or anything bad. It’s just like, you get so tired of doing the things or telling the things or, or tweaking the things for everyone else, sometimes you forget to do it for yourself. For sure,

Alex Schlinsky 8:17
absolutely at what I found in this format, or mindset related to the like Chef eating his own cooking kind of thing. One of the best ways that I’ve come to feel confident with myself on this is just recognising that when someone does something you ask them to do, and they do it in a great way, holding yourself accountable. That same standard is extremely valuable, but also being transparent with them that you want to be held to that same standard because of the result they got. It creates this incredible reciprocal environment. I’ll give you a quick example. One of my clients that I got to meet in person in Chicago and our last event, she looked really healthy from the previous time I saw him and I asked him about it. And he was like, Well, I’m working on this new programme, this new like Chino diet thing way over my head. He’s like, Alex, I think you would love it. And I’ve been saying for some time since my heart surgery, which if you didn’t know that people listening, I had heart surgery about two years ago that I wanted to get more physically fit. But it’s easy to do, just like anything else to push it off. Just say you want to do it, but you don’t do it. And so I push it up, push it up, push it off. And he said, I would love to hold you accountable to doing it, like you hold me accountable to all the things you’ve helped me with in my business. And when I heard that, I got concern that now I’m going to be held accountable to something instead of myself. And that type of accountability is what allows people to do it. And that’s what I recognise about the cobbler shoe, or the chef’s eating metaphor, which is like, the thing is not that they’ve been told to do it is they’re held accountable to doing it. So it’s not just self discipline. It’s also not letting someone else down. And now starting this programme, this this workout regimen has helped me because I know I have accountability for it. And I found that to be really really valuable.

Travis Ketchum 9:53
Yeah, totally agree. So I mean, I kind of want to get a little bit into the you know, origins Are you prospecting on demand? You know, but it sounds like you help a lot of agency owners get those, you know, wins transformations both financially as well as just sort of feeling supported and plugging into an ecosystem that they just don’t get elsewhere, which is awesome. But how did you get there? Like what started prospecting on demand? What was the sort of kickoff story? And how was that sort of shaped your worldview as you now build this business?

Alex Schlinsky 10:25
Such a good question. And what I’ll do is I’m trying to give you a summation in essentially the last 12 years, but I’ll just do a quick format prior to going to college because I think there’s value to understanding a foundation. When I was younger, both of my parents were entrepreneurs. My mom ran an art studio in Aventura, Florida for a decade, she had over 1000 students, she did it by herself, she was incredibly successful with it. And not just successful, she was doing something she was very, very passionate about. She’s an extremely talented artists in a multimedia format can really just create anything, it’s pretty amazing to see. And then she taught 1000s and 1000s of kids, and after school programmes for a decade, building a very successful business. She was so good at it that inspired my dad, who was a funeral director for two decades to quit his job as funeral director, which is a very, very challenging job, basically being around death every single day, which is pretty much the worst time of the family’s lives for 20 years straight. And me being the youngest of his three children. That’s hard to go home every single day. Because the unfortunate reality of life Travis is not everyone passes away. And, you know, Disney fairytale, a lot of them are unfortunate circumstances, whether it’s car accidents, or cancer or whatever it might be. And that takes a toll on so my dad wanted to make an impact on the world in different way and become a financial advisor. And when my dad became a financial adviser took about two years. But suddenly, things really changed in our family that was young at the time, I was 13 I think when my dad stopped being a financial stopped being a funeral director became a financial adviser. But I could tell some things had changed, being like a preteen, like from 13 to 15, where our cars had changed from like a Nissan Altima to like a Lexus. And our trips had changed from like, we’re going to drive for hours to Disney, to we’re flying to Vancouver for a week. And then we’re taking a week long trip on a cruise to Alaska. So okay, things have changed, right? Obviously, pretty clearly, my mom was able to retire because of my dad’s success. And then unfortunately, when I was a freshman in high school, my dad had a massive stroke is stroke was a brain aneurysm. So literally a piece of his brain exploded. Thankfully, he lived. But he didn’t work for two years because of the the recovery period, which we don’t have to get into here. But it just wasn’t good. And thankfully, the good news is just as a side note of this, he’s alive and well today, thank God, he’s 63 years old, he just had his birthday, he’s 15 years past his surgery, or past his stroke. He’s met my son. It’s amazing. You know, I’m incredibly grateful for that. So I don’t ever want to like say the story without that. But because of my Dad’s experience, what we quickly realise is the path that my mom and my dad took, we’re both I’m the business there is no business path, right? So if my mom ever got sick, God forbid, there was no business without her. There was no party palette, which was what her business was. When my dad got sick, there was no business because he was the one that was the only person doing the financial advising. And when you have money involved, no matter how much you love, Josh lynskey, my dad, you’re not going to leave your money unattended for two years, you gotta go get another, you know, financial advisor. And so my mom had to unretire and get a job and try to restart and sell paintings and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, we there was some very adverse effects that we lost the home that I was born in, which I know is very challenging for my parents. And it was very hard for us to deal with that. And, you know, when I went to college a few years later, now that my dad was healthy, one of my goals was to ensure that anything that I would ever build or do that it wasn’t solely relied upon me, that was one of the main things that I was trying to build. But I still thought I was going to become an attorney or a psychologist, but it was like, Oh, I’ll be a part of like a bigger firm, not just my own. Like I wasn’t actually very entrepreneurial at the time. But here’s the crazy thing. Inherently, I was entrepreneurial. I just didn’t have the paradigm to understand what that meant. When I went to school, I needed help with money. So my next door neighbour was an attorney. I went to do an internship with him before I went to college, and the first day can’t do his car, Travis. He said, Alex, why do you want to become an attorney? And I gave him the whole like, I’m a high school senior going into college spiel of like, I want to make a difference in the world and follow that kind of stuff. He was like, Okay, great. My mission over the next 30 days is to ensure 100% You do not go into pre law and you don’t become an attorney. Because not to tell me as we’re driving 35 minutes to the Miami courthouse of why this is the worst life ever. Why he wishes he didn’t do this, how he’s trapped. It’s terrible. It’s awful. I was pretty crazy. I never saw anyone being that transparent to me in my life. So like, my life had been really shielded from that. From that point prior, like everyone was always kind of doing the roses and daisies version of life, even when my dad was sick. It was the roses versus roses and daisies version. And this guy was like, this is the blunt reality. This sucks. And I can’t get out of it because I have to provide for my family. And I’ve done this already for 15 years. And it’s like, wow, this is crazy. So he was very smart. Facebook had just released business pages on Facebook, and he realised that it would become very big. He was right. And he started to ask me to post them once a day on Facebook, and send a constant contact newsletter once a month, which I did. And he paid me $1,000 a month to do that. And he was getting a lot of reach from this because this before was a pay to play marketplace before ads were on Facebook. And he was getting business from it. And so he said, I’m gonna ask you to do more on him and pay you more. And when I went to college, I went to Orlando University of Central Florida and asked him just logically he went to UF I said, Do you know anyone in Gainesville, or in Tallahassee or in Orlando, that are attorneys that I could do the same thing for and he sent me like 20 attorneys from the United States that he went to college with that he still posted. They do like a WhatsApp group all the time of us, like, you know, law school thing. And half of those became clients. And it was the easiest thing in the world. Travis was like, 19 year old Alex like wearing a suit pretending to be super, you know, like, again, entrepreneurial, and they’re like, oh, Lloyd sent you boom, check money, I don’t care what you say, do whatever you’re doing for him. I’m red

Travis Ketchum 16:25
referrals are amazing that way. And it’s 100, almost 100% Close,

Alex Schlinsky 16:29
especially at that, like age range where you’re expecting all this stuff to be so like, challenging. It was just easy. And so for four years, I worked with about 10 attorneys, 15 attorneys on average, making about 10k a month. Yes, I was a stupid college student. Yes, you can imagine when I was buying with that money, but most of it was for school. Other things, also transparently, nothing too bad. But you know, the standard college stuff, buying stuff from my girlfriend because I thought I was a high roller buying drinks or my friends because I thought I was a high roller. Never in my mind. And I think at a marketing agency, I was just like, This is my side hustle. And I’m really smart that I’m making this happen. And I’m going to school to become a psychologist. That was my brain. school ended four years later, and I realised that I was completely burned out on the idea of going back to school, because to become, you know, a clinical psychologist, you got to get your Masters, you got to go back and like I do not have it. I can’t make it happen, Travis. So inherently I started thinking how it’s gonna make money and I’m already making money doing this. Can I get more attorneys and so research started happening. I know this sounds absolutely outrageous that I did zero research on this business model I already had for four years, but I just really didn’t have the paradigm at all that this was a business it was just my side hustle. So you just have to understand my mindset was so focused on school that I couldn’t even think of that I can make more money doing this. Now start searching as soon as you search retargeting ads happen. And thus, Tai Lopez came into my life, Dan Henry came into my life, Dave Rogan was or came into my life. Who else was at that time? I think those are the main three at the time. And it blew my mind. I was like, Oh my God, I’ve already been doing this for four years. Wow, this is crazy. So I bought a couple of courses. And I had my wife quit her job as a as a, you know, waiter. And I’m like, if you can help me build the operation side, I can sell like I’m definitely capable. And I did door knocking because I really liked doing that. And I love just showing up and just being myself and being like super loud and abbr aureus. And I might be

Travis Ketchum 18:23
the first person I’ve ever met that actually enjoys knocking on doors to make sales. Love

Alex Schlinsky 18:27
it. One of the big things. One of the big things I’ve learned in my life is my willingness to hear no more than someone who’s willing to say it. persistence and perseverance is a really, really important key. And something that I can attribute a lot of my success to, and I’m just a dog when it comes to that. I’m just a wolf. That’s who I am. It’s how I was bred. I’m born and raised. Well, my parents are just who I am, like to the core really sincerely, and, you know, doing this process and get a lot of nose, which I was ejected at the time, but the winds so far away the nose and most of the winds were like, essentially the audacity of this kid. That’s what it was. Yesterday, I’m 150 $500 an hour attorney and you’re coming into my office cannot answer the man, the audacity. I’ll never forget someone said I like your panache. You just don’t forget when someone says that because panache is just not a word that people use, and I’ll just never ever forget. And he said that. You know, I sold a lot and probably got to like $50,000 in recurring revenue. Less than a year after I graduated college. I was like, Dude, I am brilliant. I just thought it was the smartest guy in the world. Honestly,

Travis Ketchum 19:37
that’s pretty typical for that, you know? 1920 2020

Alex Schlinsky 19:41
That’s the reality. I just thought I was not Yeah, got married. All the money that we had saved. We went on a Euro trip for a month. We spent a lot of money about $30,000 went to I think it was nine cities five different countries for an entire month. It was incredible. I did zero work. I handed the business off to one of my high school friends and tell them I’ll pay you 10k Just to handle this and he was like, oh my god, it’s incredible. Really, like, you’re amazing. I’m like, I’m a good friend. I know. It’s great. Just handle the business. Nothing bad’s gonna happen we’re good. Left with like, I think it was roughly like 30 some 1000 or so I can’t remember exactly something around there came back to about like 2500 lost every client basically, I didn’t do any appropriate CSM management telling him I’d be gone i i was just being stupid. Like, honestly, I was just very immature, didn’t really understand what it took to run a business. When I came back, I was the most ejected ever felt because really, if you remember the start of this story was my dad’s experience. I recognise I didn’t learn anything. I didn’t learn shit, honestly. And it was very upsetting to me, that I would let my pride get in the way of learning something that my dad had to unfortunately go through a potentially death’s door to make this happen. And I didn’t learn anything. And I was very upset about that. So from there, I really reinvested my time into building a real business. And that’s where I invested in de roga Mosers programme, which I can clearly say was the most impactful investment I ever made. He really realigned me appropriately. Austin Netsy. Gotta give him huge props to about six months after that is scaled to x programme, it honestly made a complete difference for me change everything about what I do, and I built a real company. And then I handed that company off. And then I started building pod about a year later. So from 2015 to 2017, I was building the agency. And it was very successful six figure company, easy, was very easy to run very easy to scale. And then I started a pod in order to really help people do the same thing, learning my lessons. And now here I am, six years later, into pod. And it’s just incredible what we’ve done. And what we’ve accomplished. And the story over the last 12 years is insane, and so many elements inside of that story that didn’t share it because it would take forever to do so. But like, in that timeframe, I worked with the Miami Dolphins, or the UFC, I had open heart surgery, I had my first child, I bought my first home. You know, it’s just, it’s crazy. You know, we’ve employed over 25 people, we’ve made more than $15,000,000.10 years. It’s incredible what we’ve accomplished and what we’ve done. It’s hard to fathom how naive I was. But I think the value that I bring to people is recommending and realising like, we’re playing the longer term game, like, I was really, really stupid for like six years, and I still make good money. So if you’re not as stupid as me, you could probably make a lot more. And I think that’s hopefully what you’re taking away from this podcast. Like, I was very stupid. I one of my pitches in my trainings when I do live, live live events, Travis is I’m like, I ran a six figure marketing agency for four years. And I didn’t even know and people are like, You talking about and this is the story of that.

Travis Ketchum 22:46
Yeah, I think you know, it’s pretty common for us to look back on our old selves. Like, anytime I look at you know, old work I’ve done in the past, right with old sales copy or decisions I made or when to sell or when not to sew or how I price things or how I even named product I like you know, I was just like, What are you thinking? You’re so dumb, you know, and I’m sure that future Travis is gonna say the same thing about current Travis right. You always look back and you always feel underprepared at the time that you made the decision when you look back, but you know your current state you feel you feel like you have a grip on things, you know, maybe you can feel some bravado when you’re younger, right, and things like that. So

Alex Schlinsky 23:24
maybe I think I think we can definitely take the maybe away, I was definitely feeling myself. 100% very cocky, very arrogant. I don’t I’m not ashamed of that, though. Honestly, traps when I look back, it wasn’t like I was trying to like stunt on other people. I was truly just proud of myself. Personally, I was proud of myself, which I don’t think is a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of yourself. I think if you lay your pride, touch on other people and you and you think you’re better than someone because you’re making more money, I think that was the thing that I’m ashamed of back in the day that I thought making more money, money makes you a better person. And one of the things that I’ve identified is, no matter how much money you make, it does not make you a better person. No matter how much money someone else has, it doesn’t make you better, it doesn’t make them better than you. You’re the thing that my dad used to always share with me. And then I really want to impart upon my son and I believe this so much like, I have a very unique last name, you know, like pretty much no one else in the world has Szalinski has the last name. You know, my dad would say all the time that the Szalinski name is not Alex’s name, the Szalinski name is our family name. And you must represent that family name with integrity with generosity, and care and love. And my dad would say that all the time. And that’s something that I really strongly believe in. I think it’s easier to say when you’re 30 or 31 years old than when you’re 18 or 19 Because you just want your dad to shut up and be like yeah, whatever okay all man like let me do my thing. But that that’s the only thing I would say I was ashamed of during that time like thinking truly that oh, I’m better than these people because I make more money which is totally ridiculous and totally not true at all. So but again, like I think there’s it okay to feel those things as long as you, you know, get better over time. And that’s what I feel. So what can they have done?

Travis Ketchum 25:06
Yeah, so what specifically how would you make that transformation? Like, you know, part of it is, is just general maturity of Yeah. growing older, right. Like, like, the more I feel like the more that I learned, the more I realised, I don’t know. Right? Like it’s it becomes this like an exponential thing. Yeah. Like, a true expert thinks they know nothing. And an amateur thinks they know everything.

Alex Schlinsky 25:25
I love that. That’s really good. What did I What was the big transition? For me?

Travis Ketchum 25:30
It’s probably wasn’t one thing, but like, Can you touch on like maybe two or three events throughout your life that helped sort of nudge that shift may be faster than just age alone?

Alex Schlinsky 25:39
Yeah, I mean, for sure. The biggest one, by far, you know, is the surgery of course, you know, when I was 29, I was told that I would have to have open heart surgery at quick backstory on this for clarity. So when I was 18 years old, on a standard, you know, checkup with the doctor, he told me on a heart murmur, I went to the cardiologist, they said, I was born with a congenital heart defect, that I’m guaranteed to have surgery in my life. 99% chance, very unlikely to not have surgery when you have a bicuspid aortic valve, which is what I was born with. And he basically said, though, you don’t have to worry about it, you’ll be like 60 or 70 years old, when you have, you’ll be good. And by that time medicine be great, blah, blah, you know, the Alright, so 10 years later, I had somehow accelerated the clock by 30 years. They’re like, at 29. Now you have to do the surgery. And my recognition of that was that how hard I was hustling for 10 years, I was just revving the engine, not really understanding like, your body is a temple type thing, right? Like, if you rev an engine of a car, you were in the car, you were in the engine. And that’s what happened. My heart was the engine and I was revving the engine full throttle for 10 years straight because I told you already. I’m a duck. I’m a wolf. This is what I do. What is relaxation? I don’t know what that means. What is taking time off. I don’t know what that means. I bought into David Goggins yelling while he’s running, I bought into Gary Vaynerchuk billion dollar agency guy, that having a side hustle for going to sell vintage toys at garage sales, because that’s the right thing to do. So while I was making money in my marketing agency, I had to build pod while I was making money in my marketing agency, I had to go become a journalist. And then I read dolphins because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Right? That is how it’s supposed to be. But the reality was, like a very strong reality check was that is not what it supposed to be. What what I really defined was success is defined as a subjective way. What’s one man’s boring is one man’s life’s greatest work. And that’s just how it is, right? Like, some people are amazed by a mathematician TED talks to me, I’m like, I’m gonna die. If I have to watch a two minute TED talk on math. Some people love talking about sales, psychology, and other people want to die listening to it. And that’s just the human experience. And so to me, what I recognise, like in terms of my maturity was that I was letting my definition of success be defined by people that I don’t give a crap about no offence to Gary Vaynerchuk, or Grant Cardone, or David Goggins. But I don’t care what they think, because they don’t care about me. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people, I’m a bad person, it really made me reflect on what I actually care about the most, which is when the doctor tells you, you have to have open heart surgery, and you’re faced with mortality, potentially at 29 years old, which is not something I expected or wanted, you quickly shift every single priority that you have. My wife ended up finding out that she would be pregnant when I was having the surgery, which is crazy, because I wanted to be a dad more than anything, particularly after my dad living through this experience. And I know a lot of people stories are not like that their dad had a stroke and died. Mine did not he lived my mom live, I have both of them available to me, I call them right after this podcast, which I will, I’m grateful for that. Right. I think just life slapping me in the face at 29 was by far the biggest. Prior to those experiences, I would just say being humbled by recognising like some people that I worked with making significantly less money were such greater givers than I were, like givers to their religious community. Like that’s was the one of the biggest things I saw, like religion, like very religious people are incredible givers. Like, they give so much to their church or synagogue or temple or whatever it might be and like, and they’re struggling financially, and, and I used to think like, how is that so twisted, and it’s not, it’s just the priorities of money is not the priority. And that really showed me a lot.

Travis Ketchum 29:15
Probably also the way that they sort of see themselves and their life purpose in general, but that’s a life of service sales individuals and 100%. And that when you think about, yeah, what can we gain versus what can we give

Alex Schlinsky 29:29
back? What can we give first of all, can we gain was something I really needed to learn. I didn’t want to become like the bro culture marketer, but inherently I just did, and just became that person. And it’s so weird how that happens without reflection or intention, because of the people you surround yourself with. And then you look at yourself in the mirror and you’re like, Who the heck is this guy who is staring back at me? Because it’s just not who I was, at all, but it’s who I became. It’s very strange how that ended up. happening. But I would say now sitting here, you know, nearly two years post surgery, I have an 18 month old son, I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished and what I have in my business and more importantly, what I have in my life. I would say, you know, I’m proud of it, I would say the biggest change for truth is hiring a coach that has nothing to do with money. So my coach that I work with, is a leadership coach and has nothing to do with money. He does not help me make money. He helps me strictly on mental health and how to be a better leader, not a better leader in business, a better husband, a better dad, a better person, the best Alex, I can be. I’ll give you a quick example that I think is so valuable. That a month and a half ago, we lost a couple legacy clients, people that have worked with us for a long time. And it’s very emotional for me, because I love these people. And we work in them for so long. And it was just tough, you know, and I call, we have a what we call flare call, like once every three months if I need to call like he’ll make it happen. And so I message him like flare, and he’s like, I got you calls me and we’re chatting. And he’s like how Shearer doing, that’s my wife’s name. I’m like, what did we do? What do you talk to me? He’s like, how shoot. And I’m like, I don’t want to talk about my wife. He’s like, but that’s, that’s what matters, right? That’s, that’s the thing that matters, right? And I could tell what he was doing. And I was like, I want to be resistant to that. I want to talk about my feelings about the clients leaving. He’s like, how’s that? Like? That’s my son’s name. How are you doing spending time with him? Do you have anything planned this weekend? And I could tell what he was doing was trying to refocus me on what really matters because losing clients happens. You don’t lose your wife, you don’t lose your child. Those are the things that really matter to you, Alex, that’s what you’re here to help get my help with. And Henry,

Travis Ketchum 31:38
do go crazy. Some people do lose those things that’s important to remember and be grateful, right?

Alex Schlinsky 31:44
Because if they don’t appropriately prioritise them, and that’s kind of explained to me, right. He’s like, these are the things that you’ve prioritised. When I started working with him, we did this thing called the wheel of life, I think some people have heard of it, it’s like, you represent the eight most important categories of your life, and you know, where you feel you are with them right now and where you want to be. And of course, part of those is, you know, business relationships, religion, family, children, like those types of things. And, you know, most people really want to be better parents and better partners. And that’s something I really wanted. But my brain focus so much on business, because that’s why I’m I’m a wolf. You know, that’s why I’m like I said, but I think learning those things, and having a coaching that strictly for that is very valuable. So that’s one of the things I’ll still be doing pod. My coach is now part of coaching and pod for that reason. We do a mindset call every Friday. It’s not for business, it’s strictly for mental health. It’s the only call, we don’t record in the programme for the purpose of the very sensitive nature of the topic.

Travis Ketchum 32:45
Awesome, awesome. Well, I’ve got I’ve got kind of two more questions for you here. And then we can probably move towards closing it up. The first question is, if you can go back and have a chat with 19 year old Alex, and you’re the one driving the car. Oh, man, not the neighbour. What would you tell him?

Alex Schlinsky 33:02
Man such a good question. Look, I think that

Travis Ketchum 33:05
you only got the DA only got the short drive. You can’t tell him like all the pitfalls about life. You just yeah, maybe got maybe a trip to Starbucks, yeah. tend to, you know, 10 to 15 minutes. What are the what’s the highlight that you’re going to try to meet? I’ll tell him in that car ride.

Alex Schlinsky 33:18
Simplicity is the answer. So I have a three step process that I go through now for everything in my life that define design, do. What I end identified is, if you don’t define what makes you happy or satisfied or comfortable in life, then you’ll never achieve it, never be able to do it. And then you’ll have so many people that are always feeling that they’re arm’s reach of success, or they’re never satisfied. Because there’s always a greater mountain to climb. There’s always a bigger fish to catch no matter what, no matter what mountain you’ve ascended, there is always bigger one, always. And I don’t think I understood that when I was 19. And so I let other people define for me, other people designed for me, and I did when you do what others defined and what other design, you don’t get fulfilment in what you want it. And I think that’s part of the reason why I had, you know, my surgery have to happen sooner, because I was pushing that engine so much. So, to me, that’d be the biggest thing I would say, like, really clearly define it. And that would be the lesson I would give anyone. And just in case you’re fearful of this, because there’s two reasons why people don’t define or design and do instead of most people just end up doing right, and they just kind of endlessly, randomly just kind of do these things. What we’ve identified is there’s two main fears that people have related to this. And the first is the fear that they don’t actually know what they want. They don’t actually know what will make them happy. And so they never define will make them happy. But here’s the thing, like you can define it, achieve it and realise it’s still not enough and then you optimise for it and that’s okay. That’s okay. Right. And then the second thing that we’ve identified is, what if I’ll never achieve it? What if my A definition of happiness success or fulfilment is something that’s so lofty that I’ll never be able to do it. And the idea is if you shoot for the stars and miss, start a failure, right? The most important thing is trying giving your best. And so those things are are the things that I would teach myself back in the day. I wish I could do that, honestly.

Travis Ketchum 35:18
Yeah. Couldn’t we all be ultimate life hack? Just learning from future futures? Oh,

Alex Schlinsky 35:22
one other thing I would do is I would tell him the winner of every Super Bowl winner in last 10 years, so I could bet on each of those games and make my life way better with way more money.

Travis Ketchum 35:33
You would Marty McFly yourself? 100% No doubt. Yeah, for sure. Okay, and then so the second that’s great answer. By the way. The second question is, you wake up tomorrow, you have $1,000, a laptop, no other resources, and 30 days to restart everything. What do you do?

Alex Schlinsky 35:57
Okay, cool. So let’s use my previous example. What’s the what am I working towards? What am I trying to accomplish? What do I need to do? So I know the finish line, right? Well, the problem this that I always do with people that I work with is Do you know who Usain Bolt is? Right? Pretty much every single person on this podcast will say yes, do you know Mo Farah is some people might know him. Most people know him. Mo Farah is the Usain Bolt of long distance running. Right? So Mo Farah does marathons and he’s legend I think he still has the world record like whatever. 20 years later or something. It’s pretty crazy. So simple question, Travis, who wins in a race? Usain Bolt? Or Mo Farah? depends on the distance? And that is the answer to your question. So I need to know the distance I need to know the finish line. So you’re saying I have an $1,000 budget? I’ve got 30 days and I’ve got a laptop to do what?

Travis Ketchum 36:47
To restart your business, you don’t have your existing business, you don’t have existing client list all you have is your knowledge, a laptop and $1,000. And you want to get back up on your feet? What do you do?

Alex Schlinsky 36:56
Yeah. So the first thing I would do is I would define exactly what I want. For me, the thing I would need is first to identify what are my baseline expenses that I have to take care of, if I say that my baseline expenses are $3,500, that’s what I need to work towards immediately. First and foremost, if I have an $1,000 budget for that, the likelihood of me being able to invest $1,000, to get money back from that is probably not very, very strong, I’m probably actually hold the $1,000 just as a last ditch effort, just in case I needed that for, you know, whatever opportunities come my way. First thing I would do for sure is get clarity on what is the easiest service to provide the easiest service to provide that has the highest margin for the most valuable person I could speak with. Usually, for me, what I would do back in the day is my religious network. So my dad was the president of our temple. So 500 person family shul that a shuls temple, it just allowed us to create so much opportunity by simply going to the people and saying, Hey, I’m running this business, would you be open to becoming a beta client of mine to test it out? And the answer, and reality is, they do want to help you. So I’d definitely start there. If you don’t have religious affiliation, or that type of network, then it’s your local network, meaning who do you know who is in your in your local area? Where can you go door knocking door knocking is just not a thing? Most people do any more? Because they don’t have the audacity to do so? If you’re more willing to hear no, they are willing to say it, you will get the answer. So those would be the steps that I would take very clearly, I would sell these products. And as soon as I can get to the margin of $3,500, then I would start investing in advertising for that product. So I can scale again. Every outbound methodology for prospecting or outreach for client acquisition is a means to an end. The means to an end is to run ads, ads is always going to be the method that’s what’s needed. Wherever you run them is different Instagram or Tiktok, or Facebook or YouTube. Those are completely all different platforms. But those would be the methods I would do define design do.

Travis Ketchum 38:57
So do use your panache to go door to door to get that initial funds.

Alex Schlinsky 39:01
That is correct my panache.

Travis Ketchum 39:03
You know what I love about that one little piece of that, that answer that you had, as you said you would find that would be the most valuable to the right person and, and the story I like to bring up to remind people that is, you know, it’s it’s I’m pretty sure it’s a fake story. But like let’s say it’s damn allegory. allegory. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the, you know, hydropower plants stops working and Try as they might, they can’t get it to run again. And the power plant is losing all this money because there’s there’s water flowing through here, but the you know, the hydropower plant isn’t running and need to get going. So they’re willing to pay a lot to make this thing run because there’s outsized value for them to get right. So they have this guy come and look at it and say, you know, can you fix it? He goes, Yeah, I can fix it. It’ll be $10,000 So the company has to decide, well, is it worth $10,000? We have this huge opportunity. We need to make it work. 10,000 So yep, all right. 10,000, this type of contract, guy pulls out his hammer walks around to one specific spot and gives a one good whack and immediately the power plant starts running. They say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you all you did was swing your hand For one that’s not worth $10,000 He goes, alright, let me rewrite the description, swinging the hammer $1 Knowing where to swing $9,999 And you know, it kind of puts the point of it doesn’t necessarily you no matter what your what your work load is, it’s how valuable that workload can power somebody in finding the right person.

Alex Schlinsky 40:23
So a lot of people have, like, kind of the audacity to be like, your time is now worth $1,000 an hour. It’s like you’re not paying for the time for an hour, you’re paying for the 12 years of expertise that I have on this to accelerate your growth. Like, if I’m going to save you 50 hours? Of course, it’s worth it. No question. And then the other idea related to the hammer thing, which adds a funny story. In general, it’s like, the idea of feeling confident in your pricing comes down to not what something is worth, it’s what something is worth to the prospect based on the value you’re providing to them. That is ultimately the key. Right? So like, I think, yeah, it’s totally worth it. The thing that’s funnier to me, though, as we close out here is like, that’s the classic. Dude, you hit it. Or TV isn’t working? Did you hit it?

Travis Ketchum 41:12
Yeah, you know, and I agree, because a lot of times you see, especially in the business world, right? It’s like, oh, you know, this speaker, author, yada, yada, yada isn’t worth that price. And, and maybe they’re not, but the biggest thing is, are they worth it to you? Right, because, you know, I’ve seen, masterminds, people will, you know, will gladly pay a million dollars to go, you know, I meet a couple times a year, absolutely, they can make 1050 $100 million out of the education or the connections that come out of that. And that is what’s being brokered, right, if you if you take someone who’s underprepared for that opportunity, even if you paid their fee, I they would never get the value out of it, because they don’t have the situation or the resources or, or the needs to make that leverage. worthwhile. And so when you’re as a business owner, I always think about, like, you know, how can we be as valuable as possible? Like, you know, I run an email marketing platform, right. And so I, for us, one of our hallmarks is amazing. deliverability Well, if you have five subscribers, or no email list at all, you probably aren’t even problem aware that deliverability is a thing, right? But if you have 10,000 subscribers, 100,000 subscribers, millions of subscribers, if I can get you a 4% Bump, which is, I’d be embarrassed if that’s all I could do. You know that that could be worth six, seven figures, right, depending on your audience size. So finding people who it’s worthwhile and providing your service there. It’s the same job, really, but one is worth a lot more to a certain kind of individual. And that’s an amazing positioning. 1,000%. Cool. Well, thank you so much for your time. I know we’re kind of up against here, but really appreciate you taking the time sharing your story. If people want to begin touch with you and learn more about your background or you know, your your business and how we might be able to learn more about what you do and how you can help them as in their agency. We have a lot of agency owners that listen to this. What’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Alex Schlinsky 43:01
Yeah, I mean prospecting ondemand.com Probably the easiest thing to remember because following my last name can be challenging. If you want to follow me Facebook is where I post my personal stuff, and then it’s aggregated by my team everywhere else, but I post on every platform Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, etc. But facebook.com/szalinski SC, H, Li N sky, if you message me there, I’ll happily help you. You can also easily find me like I said prospecting ondemand.com.

Travis Ketchum 43:30
Great. Well, it’s been a real pleasure, and thanks for your time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai