Talentagentur mit 3,4 Millionen Umsatz: Raus aus dem Stress

0:00Unternehmer/Gast Adam Jacobs, you've been on you've been always a bridesmaid, never a bride, right? You've always been on the on the on the list but never made it. Am I correct? That's That's correct. >> your com- your comment in the group. I made sure that you that you got in. Okay, revenue business and problem. Also, it sounds like you've got like something in the background. Oh, dude, just mute mute us in the background. >> Is that better? Okay. >> Just mute me.

0:26>> So, I own talent agency group. So, we own the talent agency for actors and models. Photo studios. Doing 3.4 million in revenue. >> For your photo studio. Turn me down in the background. Mute mute the background. I can hear myself. Okay. So, we're talent Yep, switch I've switched you off in the background. We've got a human acting and modeling agency and now we have a photography a chain of photography studios as well.

0:56So, as well. Okay, modeling agency and photography studios. Okay, got it. Correct. We're doing 3.4 million in revenue and we'd like to get to six at a much higher margin and less and significantly less stress or less talent, I guess. That's the best way to describe it. And that's the problem is that you want less stress? Uh I guess in the sense of So, the talent agencies are very very difficult in the sense of we it's hard to commoditize them. So, we basically we started by selling um preparation Cuz we get 5,000 applications for the agencies a year. So, you don't know you know, we basically started to try and productize many of those leads um because you can't guarantee the outcome. So, You're like if you're ugly, you're ugly.

1:48There's nothing I can do, right? Yeah, exactly. So, if they don't book work, they get very you know, they get aggressive regularly. Yeah. So, we tried to the photo business was founded to I think we tried to sell all the leads we don't want up coming else and also try and monetize it on the front end. Uh-huh. Okay. And the problem is?

2:13So, the problem is that as we've been through of setting that up, we sort of set sort of stopped selling through the preparation so we did preparation packages by the agency. Um and it proven to be quite quite, you know, difficult to sort of make make the pivot over to just the photos. And it's for the agency. Um proving to be very very challenging.

2:40So, the Okay. So, you had a modeling agency. Can you give me a split of the revenue between the modeling agency and the photo studio? Uh the photos business is about just a little over $1 million. Okay. And the rest And 2.4 is through the agency. Okay, got it. Okay. So, >> With most with a with a big chunk of that being put like actual workshops and preparation as opposed we only get a commission of 20% on booked work so we don't factor that total the total volume of cash into Yeah. that revenue. And most of that 2.4 is prep work not percentage.

3:18Correct. Yeah. Okay, got it. Um okay, so then and then you just randomly started a photo studio, right? Correct. >> [laughter] >> If the photo studio disappeared, would your life be easier? If the agency disappeared, my life would be easier. All right, interesting. What are the margins between these two businesses? The photo studio has has much healthier margins. All right, well tell me what the What is it? Uh So, the gross gross profit is about 60% on the photo business. Mhm. Uh the agency part

3:55>> No, but I don't care about gross. What's net? What's net? What What sorry? Net margin on photo. Net Net margin on photos about 25 to 30% depending on Okay, so you're making whatever, 250 grand here. Right? Yeah. Okay, and what are you making on the 2.4? On 2.4 about another about the same.

4:20That that another 250. Okay, got it. So it's half the margin. Okay. So I guess So the question I have is like what what part of the modeling agency business do you not like? But uh the fact that you can't control the outcome for for the talent. Uh and then the I know it's also just a very difficult nature of, you know, high high churn of your talent if you're not if they're not succeeding. Well, dude, it's just because you're you're taking the bottom.

4:51That's the issue. Taking Taking the bottom? No, you're taking the bottom. You're you're a bottom feeding right now. So you're making more money Yeah, right. And so like there's nothing wrong with agencies. There's gigantic multi-billion dollar agencies. There's nothing wrong with the model. The issue is the avatar. Yeah. Right. So I'm guessing that you're running ads to get these modeling people.

5:18No, mostly organic. Uh so people just heard of you and then they just Organic isn't like they just come from like Instagram and stuff? Uh Instagram and uh Google like SEO things like that. Okay. Um got it. And so you want to get to 6 million. Honestly, we got to pick one of these businesses. Just we got to do one of them.

5:42Yeah. Like you're CEO of both, right? Yeah. Yes, I can. Well, um yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. How would you get customers in your photo studio if you did photo studio [ __ ] We do a lot of giveaway. Um like we do a lot of a lot of giveaways is the main thing. Yeah, model call giveaway. Classic. Yeah. Okay. So Yeah, I mean, that's that's one business. The modeling agency scales a little better cuz you don't have to open up brick-and-mortar stores all the time.

6:16Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. So, which one do you want to do? You just got to pick one, man. Like if I said So, if your modeling agency disappeared, would you be happier and you'd be able to grow Would you be able to double the photography studio? Yeah. How long have you had the photography studio? Uh 14 months. Yeah, it is a little new. Uh you said how many locations? Uh two.

6:42Okay. Um Honestly, you just have you just have to make that call. Like I like if if I get you to do one thing from today, is that you pick one. Yeah. Yeah. Like Zuckerberg didn't have an Airbnb. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's true. But yeah, but the main the main advice thing is just pick one and go go ham on that.

7:11Because if you had half your time back with the problems that you're dealing with either of these businesses be solvable? Yeah. Right. You only have enough time to maintain them, not grow them. That's Yeah, that's very accurate. >> Right. And when you talk when we talk about switching costs, it's like there's talk there's cost switching, like task switching, and then there's like business switching. So, you have to like completely switch context. You're like Right, I'm talking about people showing up for photography shoots, upselling into portraits and packages, and then you're like, "Wait a second. Models, I've got to go outbound to get a brand deal for so and so, right?

7:44Alex Yes. It's just two completely different businesses. So, both of them make the same profit. Um I would say that modeling agency scales easier, but you sound like you hate that. Uh and so, pick whichever one you want, get all the time back, and go all in on that. I mean, just push all the money to the agency side to profit the business. Sure. In the in in the in the in between. But like the diff the I'm telling you what the difficulty with the studio is going to be, I said, you know, is finding talent at each of the locations will be tough. You're also going to deal with ad fatigue, cuz it's a local market, and if it's all ads driven, it's very little recurring revenue.

8:23Alex You can get some seasonal if you do families. Are you doing What kind of shoots are you doing? Uh we're doing model We're doing model portfolios. Model shoots, what do you know, right? >> portfolios. Right. So, I guess you can get up, you know, they're probably get updates every year or two, maybe. You would know that better than me. So, I think if you if you just say if you position it as models get updated pictures at once a year, that might be a great way to get them into an annual subscription. That's probably the angle that I would go with on the photo studio to make it a little bit more recurring.

8:54Okay. Yeah, that's good. But just pick one, man. I I There's nothing I can tell you in this call that's going to matter except for that. Okay. Good. Good. Good advice. All right, that's all you got to do is just pick, and then you got to commit, man. And not not have this happen again. That means you stay the path. You You pick, and then you commit. Stick with it. Thank you. Appreciate you, man. Congratulate Hey, listen, man. You're obviously good at doing stuff. You're making millions of dollars a year, but you got to focus it.

9:25Thank you so much, sir. That's good. That's a good point. Thank you. You bet, brother. Talk to you then. All right. Okay, bye. Tootles. Cheers. Cheers. All right, I'm 49 trying to build a real estate wholesaling business. You should start. All right. I need a I get

9:48Alex >> Hey Alex, my name is Angelo. I sell personal training to people um age 45 plus. Okay. Right now I'm at 300k revenue and I would like to be at 1 million. Um the thing that's stopping me is that right now I have three locations. I grow way way too fast. So one location is filled with like 180 members paying on average 80 per person.

10:14Um one location is at like 46 people also paying the same and another location is at 105 people also paying the same. So that's the situation I currently in. Um >> you're making 300,000 between three locations? Yeah, combined. Cheers. Who's doing the PT? >> Yeah, I know. So one and two.

10:41Um people come one time per week 20 minutes normal clothes. They don't sweat with a personal trainer. We train like six people per one hour. So every 20 minutes two new people is high intensity 45 plus 55 until 65 is 80% of my clientele. And it's 80 bucks for the 20 minutes? Like excluded 9% VAT.

11:06So on average 80 euros, yeah. Okay, and that's per 20 minutes? Um per month. Per month so they get four 20-minute sessions for 80 bucks? Exactly, yeah. Margins could be 80% if if we are doing like if we are utilizing 85% of the sessions which is the case in one of the three locations.

11:32The reason why I grew so fast to three locations, I acquired one last year for 15k, so basically nothing. And I set up another one. It's a brand new. Okay. >> [sighs] >> So, if you get these ones to full capacity, do you get to a million? Um not sure. Um Well, what does a fully What does a filled facility make?

12:00No, um I I was I was thinking to grow each facility to 300 people. So, 900 in total. Yeah. Okay, got it. So, what's the issue? Right now, I'm not getting enough leads. I'm a little bit cash constrained as well. So, I was doing like a lot of outreaches on WhatsApp, old members, old leads. Yeah. Got me some new clients, old clients back, but um How do you get customers now?

12:30I'm sorry? How do you get customers now? Um say yeah, right now right now at the moment Yeah, just with one reach out using the AI. Well, good on good on good on my AI, but um you need a more scalable way of getting customers right now. Uh not that that's not scalable. I mean, how many how many new customers can you get per day?

12:58Alex Yeah, if I'm doing the sales, I could do maybe yeah, 10, but I also have a team. You can get 10 customers a day via outreach? Yeah. Okay. Well, then shoot, that's 300. 10 a day, 30 days, 300. You need to get 300 at each. That's that's a lot. That's too much. But I also got a lot of clients using Facebook ads. But right now yeah, because cash constraint, I didn't have uh Well, are you actually cash constrained or is the offer that you're What's the offer that you're advertising?

13:34So, right now Yeah. The offer we are advertising, yeah, I just set up some new ads today. What I'm now advertising is like when people don't get like results in like 4 weeks >> Mhm. they they get the next 4 weeks for me. Sure. Okay. What's the price though?

13:56Alex Like 90 97 euros and a setup fee of 59 euros. Okay, what's it What's it cost to get a customer for you right now? Um With the old Facebook ads, it was like 200 250 euros. Per customer. Okay. That I mean, that sounds right. >> Yeah. So, it's not that you're cash constrained, it's that you're not charging enough on the front end. So, you need to sell the find end thing.

14:26So, I think that you should have something that's called like on ramp or on board. So, it's like listen, we're we're able to sell PT at $80 in small groups because people get on boarded for 6 weeks. That on boarding costs $600. And then at the end like then you go into the normal thing.

14:47So, for the first 6 weeks I charge 600. 600. Mhm. Give them a meal plan, weigh them in every time. Meal plan and and weigh them in. Weigh them in. Mhm. Have you read my gym launch secrets book? No, no, no. I wrote an entire book on how to run a gym. You should read that.

15:13Yeah. I'm going to do that. That is my first and only real recommendation for right now. That being said, I think you run on six-week challenge. $600, you lose 20 lb in 6 weeks, and if you do, you get the money back. But but um yeah, the thing is that the people who come to to our location Mhm. is that um They don't want to lose 20 lb. Cool. So, all we do is we make a different goal.

15:43Yeah. You want to They all want to tone up and feel good, right? Yeah, like um they want more >> know the problem. I I was literally in the gym industry for a while. I I I know what you're we're dealing with here. So, they want to get in shape. The biggest problem they have is accountability, and the thing they're afraid of is getting hurt, right? Yeah. Right. So, you sell that as the program. The reason that we do it this way is because people struggle with worried about getting hurt, which is why we do more onboarding to make sure you don't get hurt. You're worried about accountability, which is why we put the dollars on the line to make sure that you show up. And we want to make sure that you feel you get kick-started in your fitness, which is why we're going to put some goal, cuz if we don't measure progress, how are we going to know what's working? All right, so I'm going to take your body fat at the beginning, body fat at the end. You might stay the same weight, but we're going to change the numbers around. It gives you something to target towards.

16:32Now, 3 weeks in, we're going to say, "Hey Sandra, hey Dan, you guys have been doing great. You're down 4 lb. How you feeling?" "Amazing." So, you realize this is a lifelong journey, right? Not something we're going to do in 6 weeks. "Yep." "Okay, amazing. So, this is what I want to do. I want to match your commitment cuz you've already showed up every time you said you were going to do, and hopefully you feel like I did too. I'm going to take that money that you put towards this, and we're going to roll it towards the year. That way we can make this a lifestyle rather than a quick diet. How's that sound?"

16:58"Fantastic. You want to just prepay for the year right now?" That's what most people do. >> [laughter] >> It so It sounds like you said that a lot of times. Yes, I've also taught 6,000 gym owners how to sell this. So, yes. But um okay. Tell me why you don't think that's going to work. Go for it. Tell me. Like okay, I'm going to try this new offer and then I'm going to give that back to them like the 600 euros they invested.

17:28Yes, but how are we going to give it back to them? I don't I don't know what I'm >> We're going to credit it. We're going to credit it towards them staying for the year. You want to do that right now? Okay. So functionally what you're going to do is you're currently at 80 bucks, right? Yeah. You're going to pop the price up to 130. People are going to come in on this offer and then you're going to knock $50 a month off for the next 12 months.

17:56That's $600. So you're going to take 130, subtract $600 per month. That means you're going to be at 80 bucks a month, which is your current price, which means they can prepay for a thousand bucks, they get the rest of the year. Okay. Sounds uh It also comes with a t-shirt. And to to be honest, it um yeah, I have to look up on the internet how to do the meal plans and everything. I've never done that to be honest. It's not hard, man. I promise you. Uh the other thing you should do is after you meet them with them like you're you're you you sell them right now, you should have a nutrition consultation as your first consultation.

18:33Sell 200, 300 bucks in supplements for the whole 6 weeks, which means they're going to need 2 months worth cuz it's 6 weeks. So you'll sell three or four products times two up front and that'll liquidate your cost of acquisition just on products. You don't have to do any more sessions. Cool? Okay, okay. I I um This is this is really important to me so I just want to like reframe what you said to me so I yeah, I need to make sure that I understand yeah, what you're teaching me.

19:01So um new offer 600 6 weeks and I have to sell like supplements for the 6 weeks. Mhm. The supplements are worth like two or 300 bucks. >> Mhm. Uh and besides that uh meal plan. Mhm. And you weigh them in every week for the six weeks. And then Okay. Give them a goal. If they hit the goal, they get it back. The point is not that they hit the goal. The point is that they start the process.

19:28You pitch halfway through. Do not wait till the end. Okay, great. Uh and then one more thing um I have to get get them in, of course, and um do you have any any advice on the uh Facebook ads part? Uh like uh not Do you have any advice like uh what what I am what I'm currently uh stuck at is like creating ads. >> Right now static ads are doing the best.

19:54I know cuz I talked to the gym launch team like last week. Static ads are are outperforming video for most people. I still think that better video outperforms statics, but most people suck on camera, and so statics outperform video for most people. So, if you're not good on camera, try statics first. My preference is to have the my my personal preference is to have videos of many customers working out in unison. So, if you can get people to do sit-ups or push-ups in unison or jumping jacks in unison or or, you know, ab cycles where they have their feet on the ground and they're doing the little thing. If you get everyone to do everything at the same time, it's very attention-grabbing, and then you have the offer in the copy. Cool.

20:30Yeah. All right. >> That's it, man. Easy peasy. Million bucks. >> Yeah. >> [laughter] >> Thank you Thank you very much. I've been waiting for this for a long time. >> Buy my book. And then read it. If you're 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 Roadmap, 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 in 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. I want to thank you by just booking 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.