Jeremy Weisz 17:53
So when you were getting those 100 clients, were you literally just going door to door and knocking on doors, like you were just…
Jason Hunt 17:58
Literally knocking on doors, going in there and pitching or trying to getting past the gatekeeper, right?
Jeremy Weisz 18:05
What was your pitch like initially when you walked in to just grab attention, because obviously people are defensive when you’re walking in, what would you say?
Jason Hunt 18:16
Yeah, I mean back in 2016 because I definitely wouldn’t take that approach today, but back in 2016 I would basically walk in and look for a business owner, right? And I made the wise decision of joining certain local communities such as B&I, looking at guiding myself to local chambers and things like that, which can always help leverage that. Like, hey, I’m Jason. My company’s fresh crowd. You know, we’re part of the BNI here in Oakville. We’re part of the chamber. We do this, that and the other. And then taking advantage, because being savvy with Facebook ads is we could run Facebook ads in certain postal codes as well. So if they saw me walk into their business, maybe they also saw a video of me talking about social as well, and their social media feed 11 o’clock at night. And that was the goal we’re trying to go for. It really, Michael, those areas that we want to target. It was really geographically based in terms of where we wanted to target initially, because we wanted to get that kind of omni-channel presence.
Jeremy Weisz 19:13
Yeah, it seems like, Jason, you’re very good at kind of using certain principles, especially like social proof and credibility, whether it’s Osmos or using the local chamber, and I don’t know, I’d argue a little bit with you about maybe people should go door to door, a little like, just walk in there’s a personal face to face, like we’re all, I don’t know, I’m always behind, like, it’s an email, and it’s not saying it’s definitely harder to go in person, but it’s also personally, you’re meeting the person, as opposed to sending all these emails or sending social media stuff, I think, a little face to face or phone calls good..
Jason Hunt 19:48
I would say face-to-face, absolutely. But I also think that we’re now in a time in our lives and in life where time is of the essence, and I think time is also a bigger commodity now, whereas, like, for example, phone calls, you said phone calls there a second ago, I hate phone calls. I never pick up my phone call. Am I losing business by not picking up my phone potentially, but I’m also losing time by the amount of people and noise that is hitting my phone on a daily basis. There’s noise on social media, there’s noise in my inbox, there’s just noise, noise, noise everywhere. So almost a constant battle for people is trying to eliminate all that noise and get to what matters most, whether that’s family time, whether it’s that response to an email, whether whatever it is you’re trying to weed through all the crap to get to what really matters. And I think that’s a big challenge for people.
So when we talk about phone calls, I tried the phone call route back in like 2018 2017-18, where I would call 100 small businesses a day. Activity, activity, activity, breed sales, and I’d maybe get three demos from 100 calls. And at the end of the day, you screen your eyes and look at it. It’s like, was that time well spent? I don’t think it was. How many people did I piss off by just taking them away from whatever they were doing at that moment in time to try to have a conversation so I can get my sales pitch? It’s like, I don’t know. And for me, maybe it’s great to hire an external agency that can do that work. But for me as a business owner, I took more pride, or took more enjoyment in going to local events, speaking at local events, meeting face to face, at my booth, talking to business owners to understand what they really want, need. That’s something that’s totally scalable, because AI is never going to replace that either. So that’s always going to be there. So the face-to-face, I agree, telephone, not as much.
Jeremy Weisz 21:40
You mentioned this about standing out, right? There’s a lot of noise. Talk about how, as an agency, again, we were talking a little bit about saturation of digital marketing, etc, about how do you stand out?
Jason Hunt 21:53
Yeah, I think the big thing for agencies now, because really, a digital marketing agency is a dime a dozen now, you know, and I think Ty Lopez’s SMMA program really created that.
Jeremy Weisz 22:05
I don’t know what that is, I’m not that familiar with that.
Jason Hunt 22:07
This is all years ago, basically, you know, so have your social media agency out of a box. Here’s how you do it, here’s, here’s how it works. And, anyway, that was a big thing, which I noticed there were a lot of people finishing school and starting their own social media agency, the area became quite saturated, probably around 2019 I would say 2020, as well. And from there, I mean, you look, if I open up my feed now on Instagram, I’m going to be inundated every third post with some sort of an ad somebody’s trying to sell me leads or something like that. And I think AI is not slowing that down. It makes it very easy to do a lot of work with the help of AI, whether it’s building out nurture sequences or doing some sales automation stuff. So if you think about it, what separates one agency from the next? And I think the most important thing that an agency needs to do is build brand, right? And a lot of agencies like brand, oh, I don’t need brand. I just want leads. It’s like, no, because the better brand you have, and the more recognizable or credible you are, the better leads you’re gonna get.
Great example of that is, having my podcast. I’m at Episode 214, been doing it since February 2020, and I find that any lead that has seen a video of me on YouTube, a video of me on Facebook, and listen to my podcast, and subscribe to our newsletter, and a lead that has come in through that sequence of having all these touch points ends up being a way better client, a way better client for us and I draw the comparison. Okay, we ran some campaigns last year for half price social media management. We ended up getting 34 leads, 34 sales on a spend of $7,000 so we made like a 50x return on ad spend. And every single one of these clients didn’t last more than three months. They were looking for a cheap deal, cheap offer, and they came in the door and just was in and out.
It did not create a very long-lasting client. Nothing against their services. It was organic social media posting. But if I have a client, the same type of client that came in after listening to my podcast for three months longer leash they’d be with us for years, right? Because they’re making the decision to work with us, as opposed to being pushed into some half-price or opportunistic offer, right? So I think that’s very important to know. So how does an agency stand out? Well, they got to build a brand and be known like and trusted with their user base.
Jeremy Weisz 24:43
So Jason, people, we are looking at the merged.ca we’re on the podcast page. Talk about some of your favorite episodes.
Jason Hunt 24:50
Yeah. So I’ll tell you a bit about the podcast. So right now, you’ll see this on Merged. The Merged Marketing Podcast stops at episode 200 but if you go to jayhunt.social, that’s my personal site, and that’s where I carried on the podcast and rebranded it to Drop The Mic. Reason for that, we wanted to disconnect it from the brand and make it more about the conversations I’m having with my guests. And there in the format kind of changed as well once I went to Drop The Mic from Merged Marketing Podcast. Merged Marketing Podcast was very corporate. I had a lot of people reaching out to me to get onto the podcast. The format would be about a 20-minute conversation. Essentially, they would just do a sales pitch or talk about their framework. But as I went over to Drop The Mic. This is where I started actually choosing my guest, hand selecting my guests to come onto the show. And these are people that are really subject matter experts, speakers on their topics, and we dive into what motivated them to become the marketer they are today.
And so, to give a bit of a back story, I do a lot of them seeing and hosting of conferences, and I speak at conferences, so I have the pleasure of meeting speakers from around the globe. And a lot of these speakers are the people and guests that you see on my podcast Drop The Mic. So one of my favorite guests in conversations I had one with Brendan Kane, episode 201. Brendan Cain is a world-renowned speaker on marketing. He’s got a million followers. He wrote the book How To Get 1 Million Followers. He’s worked with the likes of Taylor Swift and the NHL. He was a fantastic guest and a fantastic method for attracting users to engage in content. So that’s 201 Brendan Kane, if you scroll up there, see there? Yeah. So you got Dennis Yu, a very well-known Digital Marketer as well on Episode 202. Every one of these speakers, from 201 up to 214 are all world-renowned speakers on the topic of marketing. And they’re to be honest, they’re really strong, authentic conversations, as opposed to sales pitches.
Jeremy Weisz 27:02
Love it, yeah. I Dennis on. He’s really, really knowledgeable, for sure. And talk about some of your favorite conferences.
Jason Hunt 27:10
Yeah. So I mean some of my favorite conferences. I go to Europe twice a year. The European Summit is an affiliate conference where you got people from around the world visiting the europeansummittestconferences.com is the website. So for them, it’s, it’s, really, it’s about 2000 people, but it’s, it’s a, really, it’s an intimate gathering. Sometimes you go to those big, massive conferences like Affiliate World and things like that, and it’s just overwhelming with the amount of people that are in attendance there, and you can’t really build close connections or have intimate conversations with people. It’s more like a two-minute conversation. Oh, what do you do? Oh, I’m looking for traffic. Oh, cool. I’m looking to buy traffic on these websites, and that’s it. You don’t have a chance to build relationship. But at TES, The European Summit, those conferences are really about spending some extra time with those people you know, going to intimate dinners.
The conference itself, geographically is very tight, which is great because it allows you to see people multiple times, and so it’s very easy to carry on a conversation from somebody meeting at the bar to seeing somebody at a booth. And the talk is a very different format for the speakers as well. As you’ll have four speakers speaking at a time. Each of the rooms hold about 50 rooms. Each of the rooms has about 50 chairs in it. So even the seminars are very intimate as well. And you have everybody talking about anything from AI to TikTok to SEO. Lot of SEO speakers as well. But yeah, this is, yeah, definitely a good show for affiliates, anybody looking to explore new niches and stuff with affiliate marketing. It’s definitely a good, good conference.
Jeremy Weisz 28:53
You’ve done some work for events too. Talk about that.
Jason Hunt 28:56
Yeah, yeah. So aside from them seeing and hosting, I hosted the AW Summit, which was in Bucharest, Romania last year. Sorry, not last year a few weeks ago. So hosting that conference was really cool. They had an amazing venue called Face Convention Center in Bucharest, where I felt like I was hosting the Oscars, which is pretty cool. But yeah, doing, aside from doing hosting, I do a lot of Facebook and Instagram advertising for conferences to drive attendee registrations. That’s really fun, because you get to work with an industry that’s actually pretty fun and sexy to work in, because you get a lot of people that engage on a conference, on event content, as opposed to working with like insurance, right, where people are not as engaging on that content. So with events, it’s actually pretty fun to work with to get people to engage and do giveaways and all that type of stuff.
Jeremy Weisz 29:46
What’s been a fun giveaway?
Jason Hunt 29:49
I think giving away, well, for example, we’ve done one. We’re giving away a three-night stay at in Turks and Caicos. You can get leads. We literally were getting leads for 20 cents per lead doing that giveaway, which is insane. So you can just imagine 1000s of leads for 20 cents a lead. Now keep in mind, I mean, depending on what product you’re selling, that may or may not be relevant, but in this case here…
Jeremy Weisz 30:16
I always like fun ideas. Yeah, yeah.
Jason Hunt 30:18
We use a platform called King Sumo to run our giveaways, which is a fantastic platform because it encourages people that enter the giveaway to easily share the giveaway. So it’s great exposure for the brand. And they do it at like a click of a button. So once you submit your name into the contest, it says, hey, do you want to share this to Twitter? Do you want to share it to YouTube? Do you want to share it to Facebook, Instagram, and you can do it at a click of a button. And by sharing it, you get extra entries into the giveaway, so you can see how that can be amplified.
Jeremy Weisz 30:49
Any others Jason, that either you’ve done or you’ve seen like I’ve seen people give away Tesla. I mean, really, just interesting stuff. What else have you seen that maybe your company helped with, or maybe you just saw.
Jason Hunt 31:03
I mean, so one that we one, I’m just thinking, small business here, you know, one we’ve run for a restaurant in the past, which is really good. We’ve done a lot of these for restaurants, is giving away concert tickets. So, we had a restaurant that we did a contest for where we were giving away tickets to Rod Stewart. So we had Rod Stewart tickets, which was fantastic. So all we had to do with the targeting of that is target within the 10-kilometer radius of the restaurant, and then target anybody that had a like for Rod Stewart, anybody like Rod Stewart, and this particular campaign went bonkers on such a small budget too. I think we only spent like, probably, like, two, 300 bucks on the con, on the giveaway, and it got 1000s upon 1000s of engagements and tags and conversations happening. I think it was like, tag a friend that reminds you of Rod Stewart, or take a friend that loves Rod Stewart.
Was a call to action, and it just went ballistic. And that’s the good thing about tickets, is you’re able to, or, with that type of a giveaway, is you’re able to specifically target people to have an interest in that thing you’re giving away, as opposed to giving away an iPhone, you know what I mean, or even giving away a trip to Turks and Caicos. Like, if you can be very specific, and get, like, a, you know, a book giveaway or a concert giveaway, you can really get the messaging in front of that user as closely as closely as possible, and that’s where we find conversions work best. On the paid ad side, is if you can get that message to resonate with the person seeing it, you’re going to get a better conversion cost every time.
Jeremy Weisz 32:33
So I know you do a lot of different types of businesses, right from we talked about the event, businesses, the resort, the Turks resorts, we talked about restaurants, but you’ve even helped landscape companies. So, what kind of stuff do you do with them?
Jason Hunt 32:50
Yeah, so interesting. We got a great example of it. Back in 2017 we had this local landscaper. His name is Colin. He came into her office for a meeting, and this guy was just basically cutting grass, cutting lawns in the area. His business was generating 200,000 a year, and he was very, very ambitious. He wanted to grow the business. So we decided to say, hey, you know what, Colin, how about you focus on growing the business. Give us a percentage of your company, and we’ll worry about the marketing and lead generation. We gave this guy a shot. He said, let’s do this. And so he’s like, sure, let’s do it. In the first year, we grew his company, from 200,000 to 1.3 mil, he was totally focused on the operation.
Didn’t have to worry about the marketing. In one in year two, he went from 1.3 to 1.5 year three, he went from 1.5 to 1.7 and at that point, said, you know what, I think I’ve created a strong Blueprint here. Let’s franchise. So he actually went out and found three franchises in the area. So we had a total of four locations, and then he got that company to two mil. So now Colin travels with me to conferences around North America talking about his case study, which is pretty cool.
Jeremy Weisz 34:04
I love that model a little bit. Why do you think more agencies don’t do that or kind of take a percentage?
Jason Hunt 34:12
Yeah. So I think the big thing is that you got to partner with the right people. We’ve tried this before with other businesses, and they kind of flopped, right? So we didn’t just, first at bat hit it out of the park, right? So it takes partnering with the right people. And goes back to what I said earlier in the conversation, is finding the right people to offset your weaknesses. In Colin’s case, he was not a good marketer, but he was a great, he ran a great operation, so we ran with it, right? And took that off this plate and let him run the operation. I also think a lot of business owners to their to their fault think they can do it all, and they’re okay wearing many hats, or they don’t want to give up any percentage of the company, because it’s their company. You know what I mean, even though it could get into the finish line much quicker. But sometimes it’s very hard for a business owner to do that.
So I do think there is a certain element of trust that goes into it first, and you have to build a relationship with somebody before you have that conversation. Just had a conversation with a guy yesterday that wanted to buy 25% of my business. And I’m like, buddy, we just kind of met three weeks ago. Let’s walk before we run. And to be fair, if it was 2017 I might have been like, yeah, it’s a great idea, let’s do it, but I’ve just learned my lessons, and you just got to make sure you’re partnering with the right people.
Jeremy Weisz 35:29
Talk about structure of that for a second. Jason, you don’t have to share specific numbers, but when you work out a deal like that, are you then going to get a certain amount of payments per month or per year, or is it only upon sale? I’m sure you’ve kind of dealt with different deal structures. What have you found is a good thing to think about, if someone’s thinking of structuring something like that?
Jason Hunt 35:54
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s a long-term play, right? So, I mean, the value that we would bring to that company is that what they don’t have to pay a marketing person or marketing team. So the equity is essentially, we’re essentially working for free, right? A good deal for them. Good deal for them. It’s sweat equity. And we don’t want to do this deal with everybody, right? Want to be very selective with who we do it with, but also depending on the level of ownership, we would offer mentorship. Obviously we’re on the board in some cases, we’re actually hired as employees. We’re getting salary from those companies depending on the level of involvement.
So there are multiple benefits that come along with it, but it really depends on what the scope is, how much work is involved, and to kind of structure every I would say that none of them are the same by any means. We have companies where we’re 5% owners or 10% owners, and other ones where we’re 25 or closer to 50% owners. So in those cases there, obviously we’re much more involved in it, but it warrants it based on the percentage that we’re getting.
Jeremy Weisz 36:59
What have you learned that you bring in the business from being a rock star.
Jason Hunt 37:06
Rock star, it’s funny when I go on these podcasts, it’s usually the first question. So, but just to give some a frame of reference, so back in 2005 I was living in Japan, and I started a rock band, and I noticed through that experience of singing on stages and going on tour in Japan, I realized I was a much better marketer than I was a singer. So through that experience, it really drove me towards marketing and helping other people become rock stars in their industries. And hence, the book I wrote back in 2022 is called Drop the Mic Marketing, and in that book, essentially I’m telling people how to find their social media voice and how to become those rockstars in your industry, because essentially that’s what you are as an entrepreneur in your industry is, and the ability you have to use social media almost as your microphone or megaphone to be able to spread your word, spread your message.
Jeremy Weisz 38:01
Love that, Jason. I have one last question before I ask it. I do want to point people to merged.ca They can check out more. Obviously, we talked about Drop The Mic podcast, and now we know where the name comes from. He was an actual rock star in Japan. Last question, Jason is about mentors? It could be distant mentors, meaning, like books that you love, that you recommend, that you like, or personal business mentors, someone who’s really helped you throughout the years. What are some of your either distant mentors or personal mentors?
Jason Hunt 38:40
I think there’s one book that really comes to mind when I think about this question. I really, I read it years ago, and it’s kind of like, sort of my personal Bible. It’s The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan.
Jeremy Weisz 38:54
I had Jay on the podcast. That’s a great, yeah, fantastic. Yeah.
Jason Hunt 38:58
Oh yeah. I love this book. It’s a fantastic book. And really, the premise of the book is really to focus on the one thing, and that one goal in mind at the end of the tunnel, right? Like, what’s that light at the end of the tunnel that you’re trying to get to? Because, as a business owner, you’re, you’re, you’re hit with so many decisions to make in a single day, but every decision should really lean into what that main one thing is. And when you’re a business owner, you go, you get shiny things passing by all the time. So how to distinguish what actually matters from the shiny thing passing by is a very difficult and daunting task at times. But if you have that one thing in mind and that light at the end of the tunnel, then everything becomes easy. All decisions become easy. So definitely give credit to that book and Seven Habits for Highly Effective People. Another one I have next to my desk here, another fantastic book that I live by every single day.
Jeremy Weisz 39:50
Thanks for that. Any business mentors throughout your journey that have influenced you?
Jason Hunt 39:56
Well, without a doubt, I mean just giving the time frame on when we started, which was, you know, early 2016 this is at a time when Gary Vaynerchuk was so, so popular, and the hustle culture, which you kind of retracted and went backwards on. But definitely, I’m going to say, I’m going to give credit to hustle culture for getting the business off the ground and getting to 100 clients as quickly as I did, going door to door. All stemmed from hustle culture and that it was funny. We used to say. We used to always have this abbreviation in the business, EPLG. EPLG stood for empty parking lot grind. Are you the last car in the parking lot when you leave in the office? If you take that photo and send it to the team, and we praise people for that. You know, back in 2016-2017, bit of a different world back then. So, yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 40:50
I mean, certain things get us to a certain place, right? I mean, early on, that’s what was needed.
Jason Hunt 40:56
100% but it’s interesting, because now AI is doing a lot more of the hustle than we do now.
Jeremy Weisz 41:03
Love it, Jason, I wanna be the first one to thank you. Check out merged.ca. More episodes of the podcast, and we’ll see everyone next time. Jason, thanks so much.
Jason Hunt 41:12
Thanks Jeremy. Thanks everyone.
