150 LinkedIn DMs a Day Is Not a Growth Strategy

0:00And my name's Matt. I sell accounting services to real estate entrepreneurs, so property managers, developers. We're doing 250k this year. We're only 11 months in. >> Oh, congrats. >> Thank you. I would like to be at, you know, 100k per month. Right? Um I think what's stopping me is not enough leads. I've been doing like cold DMs, cold email, and people here told me to do more of those things, but I'm kind of tapped out. Like it's becoming a mess.

0:28>> You personally? >> No, like software and have a VA that's helping me. >> Okay. >> So, I'm not sure what to do to get more leads. >> Yeah. >> So, uh so you sell to real estate professionals. And when you say real estate, you okay. DMs via social media? >> Yeah, LinkedIn, Instagram. LinkedIn is really what's driving it, >> Okay.

0:53>> I also do podcasts, like I guess on podcasts. I've done four. That's gotten me some clients as well. It's really been like a spread across all those things. >> Yeah, it's a good problem. >> Yeah. >> So, um Do you have somebody else who's doing the actual services? >> Well, yeah, like an offshore team that takes care of 95% of the heavy lifting. >> So, you're just in charge of acquisition primarily. Like you need to market it somehow.

1:17>> do a lot of fulfillment, like I review the files and everything, but like all of the heavy lifting, the bookkeeping and everything, that's pretty much taken care of. >> of your time is going towards front end versus back end? >> Too much on the back end. >> I got you. >> And that's what I realized, and you focus on the constraint, that you need to do more front end. That was like my main takeaway from this, but where where on the front end, I'm not sure. >> Yeah, so um Okay, so one LinkedIn should be able to allow you to scale more in terms of your outbound efforts. So, you can go through Sales Navigator and then basically create a

1:49>> I can only do 150 connection messages, though. >> I think you can do more. I feel like cough like there's a way. >> Yeah. I can I can create another account and then I'll can that account. >> big companies use LinkedIn and they're not like capping at your sales velocity. >> Do they do cold DMs or do they do ads? >> No, I know they're not I'm I'm talking from a DMs perspective. >> Yeah. >> Um now ads obviously you can scale like pretty straightforward. Um So, okay. There is a solution. I am just not the one who's like DMing every day and so I don't know the the the click here answer to that. Um but there is a solution. That being said, in order I would still go back to front on this, which is I like you have to get more of your time back because right now I can feel let me just you know hold not overstepping. Um I feel the stress. You know what I mean?

2:39Of what's going on. Um and the good news is this, man. Like it's been 11 months. You have a business doing 200k a year, that's awesome. That's really cool. So, congrats. >> Thank you. >> But in terms of the uh way to get customers, if LinkedIn is working really well for you I I'm very confident that there's a way to do more. Um but if for some reason the gods of LinkedIn have just banned you from doing this, um then running LinkedIn ads might just be the next best thing. Cuz if all the people are already there, you already know what the targeting is, and you already know what the offer is cuz you can use use the basically the the same structure that you use in the DMs, you just do it at scale um via LinkedIn, then that might just be the kind of the next best bet. You may be able to I whoever's really good at LinkedIn ads are um you may be able to do uh ads that go to message. Is that true?

3:26Can you do that? >> You you can use dripping pipe and actually you can surpass the limit of messages you can send on >> There's a way. And you have a will. >> You can also run ads actually. So, >> Okay. >> if you want we can talk after. >> [laughter] >> Appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> No, but I I say to the say like the So, this is a a better meta thing here is that um you have so little time and tension.

3:52Like this was a 60-second figure-it-out. You know what I mean? Like and I'll bet you if you had all your time back, you would have figured this out in one day. That you could have done more more DMs, but it's like you're barely getting those done and then it's like it's not coming in fast enough and then you've got fires on the back end. Um but you're not doing anything wrong. It's just this is the season and so whenever you start a business, you always incur debt. It's something that like it took me a long time to understand is every business incurs debt. It's just which debt you want to incur. And so you will either incur talent debt, like you don't have any good people, right? You'll incur technological debt, so you have like no IT systems in place. Uh you'll incur financial debt if you wanted to take money on. And sometimes if you take money on, then it allows you to get the IT infrastructure in place, get talent that you otherwise couldn't afford. But then you have to pay the financial debt back. So it's really just which debt do I want to incur and which one do I is easier for me to pay back. And so right now, you've chosen I'm not saying it's wrong to take on technical debt and talent debt as the primary two types of debt. And so you're you're paying it right now and how you're working.

4:55Does that make sense? >> Yeah. >> And so the stress that you're feeling is normal and it will this may sound terrible uh but it will go away at like never. >> [laughter] >> And uh it'll just change. >> [laughter] >> You'll just have bigger problems. Uh but yeah, so but I I I just want you to like you're not doing anything wrong. I think there are ways to scale the outbound. In order to do that, you still need to get the back end fixed, which is what we do is we look at a time calendar, we map out all the minutes of the day, we try and block those into what are the what are the activities that we're doing that have the lowest leverage, give those to somebody else, and then you need to spend it as quickly as possible, um you need to get to like 6 hours a day of promotion.

5:38>> Okay. >> And you basically need to keep doing that until you're probably at about between 1 and 3 million a year. And then you'll have the additional cash flow to be able to bring somebody else in who's high level who can take some of this load off of you. I'm guessing you don't have an operator. >> No, I need to >> Right. Yeah. >> But not right now. >> So, there This is kind of like there's no right way up the mountain. >> Right. >> Um if you This is This will apply to a lot of you.

6:05There are Like you can see this with math. So, it's not like a like like theory here. Like let's say you're doing a million dollars top line and you have 25% margins. Good business, $250,000 in profit. Okay. Well, if I want to bring in somebody who's really good to help me out, I have two options. I can either do that person's job and then work 18 hours a day and then still have money so I can feed myself or I bring that person in have no profit because the cost of somebody who's like that is 180, 200, whatever, maybe some upside. And then all of a sudden it's like my profit's gone. And so that's why that period is so terrible because either you're working yourself to death or your business feels like it's on thin ice because if you pick up, you lose money.

6:46And so that's why we call it the swamp. >> Exactly. >> So, yeah, you just like the good news is that every entrepreneur has been there before you and you will make it. >> Thanks. Appreciate it. >> Hi. Um I'm Jacqueline. I know we talked a little bit >> Dentist, yes. 3 million, 5% profit margins. You have five different ones. Three are part-time. >> Perfect. Wow, great memory.

7:12>> Yeah, you're in Dallas. It's 30-year-old business. You inherited it from your father. >> Yes. >> Yep. >> And my social security number is I'm just kidding. >> I can pull [laughter] it up. >> Um so, I know we talked yes last night, which you obviously remember, and um a couple other people from your team we talked about this issue um that my number one constraint probably isn't our cancellation rate, but it is something that I'm like really perplexed about and want to at least go back with a little bit of something to share with my team about?

7:42>> Sure. >> Um so our show rate or our cancellation rate is a little over 30% and um this past year we've lost like a million dollars because people made appointments, confirmed them, and they didn't show up. Um so if you have any insight on what we could do to start improving that, I would be really help uh grateful. >> Yes. I don't think it's the constraint of your business. One moment, please.

8:10I'm pulling up my uh my little my little doodad here. Okay. So uh number one is you're going to want to make sure that the I I feel like that that time is the right time for them. And we ask questions like, "Is there anything that will possibly get in the way of you showing up for your meeting?" And so we call this an integrity tie-down. And so after you get a time slot, you want to ask that right afterwards because it it like gets like shakes them out of their like mind. For whatever reason, it works. So I could come up with some narrative for it, but it works. Um number two is uh I think I mentioned this yesterday, but I think it might be worth considering um pulling up appointments.

8:52Like to basically can we bring them up sooner so that we have increased show up rates? Um the next one is uh Let's see here. You want to make sure that you have automated reminders, which you probably do. But then you want to have manual reminders on top of that. So if you have I would have an office iPhone um and you want to send manual texts at three times. So you want to send the manual text at 24 hours uh so basically think night before.

9:21Uh second text is going to be morning of. And then the third text is going to be 60 to 90 minutes prior. Basically when they have to like get your together, get in the car, and and and >> Just three within 24 hours. >> Mhm. And those are manual. So you want those to be blue iPhone messages if possible. >> Okay. >> Now uh ideally we like to have some sort of selection that they pick that we have like some cost we have incurred. So, this works exceptionally well for brick and mortar, which is why I'm sharing it with you. And so, in the gym space, obviously, like we'd say, "Hey, Sharon, I've got uh this shirt. Uh tell me what size you're at.

9:59And I'll put it pull it aside for you. And so, when you come here, I'll give it to you. Or it's like, "Do you want red or do you want blue?" Like it just do some sort of AB ask for them. And so, it could be as simple as like you're going to you're going to pull I mean cuz it's a dentist office, right? And so, you're like, "Okay, what can I give them?" Well, I always get free when I go to the dentist office. And so, just like have them pick the free stuff that you put in their goody bag. And they and just and then I would send them a picture with their name on it.

10:27>> Yeah. >> So that they're like, "Oh man, they incurred this cost just for me. I have to show up now." Right? Um So, that's another one. Um The Okay, we got that. Um Because you're having the issue cuz someone books and like 6 months later is their cleaning or whatever, right? That's the the problem here.

10:51>> Um Yeah, well, we call and confirm their appointment a week in advance, and then we call and remind them again 3 days in advance, and then we call them and text them again a day before. And they'll say, "Yeah, I'm going to be there." And then 2:00 comes and they don't show up. >> that you're you're reminding too far out. >> Okay. >> Like if if if I schedule an appointment on Saturday, Monday morning is a different universe for me. >> Yeah. >> No, I'm just being like super real. And so, I think I think a lot of people are that way. And so, all of the manual reminders are Like if you want to like I use the automated ones for the far out.

11:25Like, "Hey, you're 7 days away. Hey, you're 3 days away." >> Okay. >> But I would have the ones that you're putting the real effort in 24 morning and right before. >> Okay. >> And then have the incentive, have the personalization, and I will bet you dollars to donuts that that on its own would work. If you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.