Ep308: Andrew Muller – Test Your Ideas to Know What the Market Wants

Andrew Stotz 00:04
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community, we know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. This episode is sponsored by Ace dots Academy's online course, how to start building your wealth investing in the stock market. I wrote this course for those who want to go from feeling frustrated, intimidated, or overwhelmed by the stock market to becoming confident and in control of their financial future. Go to my worst investment ever.com slash deals to claim your discount now. Fellow risk takers This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz, and I'm here with featured guest, Andrew molar. Andrew, are you ready to rock?

00:51
Hey, I'm ready to rock man.

Andrew Stotz 00:54
Let's do it. All right. So I'm going to introduce you to the audience, I have to say that I was really excited to get you on the show because you are an expert in a subject that's so hard for a lot of people like me, particularly for finance people, people that have it all. We understand the numbers, but we don't understand marketing and reaching the market and all that. So let me read your bio before becoming a marketing entrepreneur, Andrew work for Microsoft in their pay per click division. His company, Andrew Mahler creative now specializes in a new type of hyper agile market testing called the market testing incubator, where he's able to test hundreds of ideas in a month. His average market test costs $2.63, which is about 50 times 50 times cheaper than the industry standard. His ultimate goal is the idea of lowering lead costs. He helps clients who are spending 1000s of dollars on media buying a month, but are not getting the return on the investment that they need to recoup that spending. And take a minute and filling further tidbits about your life.

Andrew Muller 02:15
Yeah, well, I kind of developed, I think just talking about how I got into that is probably probably a good place to start, I did quite a bit of marketing work across the decade with strategies that were given to me, from the top down. And I have you ever heard that story about this company who is shipping out toothpaste and they keep having QA problems where the boxes get shipped empty, the clients are mad at them. And so you know, they put out the RFP, they spend like $10 million on this fancy scale solution that puts alarms out if anybody if you know, if a box goes out empty, and then you know, within a few weeks, they find that, uh, it stopped working and they go down to the they go down to the floor, and one of the employees has just put a fan in front of the belt. So all the empty boxes blow off, because they're so annoyed by this alarm that keeps going off. It's like a $20 solution that that competed with their $10 million solution, it's like, if you just talk to somebody on the floor, instead of doing this top down bureaucratic approach, which, you know, is an organized way to get things engineered, like maybe you did not need an engineering solution. Um, I got a lot of marketing campaigns like that, where I'm sitting here on the ground floor being like, like, I know how to, I know the software works, I know how the platform works, I can see the numbers and I can see the way people are interacting with our ads. And none of this makes any sense. But I don't have the authority to change direction, it's like you're trying to sell a product that doesn't have enough margins on it to actually be profitable, you know, I can be the best marketer in the world. And I cannot fix this without some more authority over the process. So I moved into strategy where I was able to start planning this, my success rate went up significantly, when I was able to spend, hey, eight or 10 hours with a client, doing a full discovery process planning out a proper strategy for their business. But, but what would happen is you'd spend three or four months working on this strategy. And then, you know, a few more months working on the project itself, and you'd launch this project and then on day one, you'd have your fingers crossed going well I hope it works. I hope the strategy we picked works like I'm using industry standard knowledge and theory to make this happen. And it always worked better than what they had before. But you know, to really blow it out of the park I realized there's something missing here and it's and and there needs to be some sort of pre market vetting to happen before we decide to launch it right if you're gonna you know, sometimes you launch some lead magnet which is like, you know, using the internet, it's download our free ebook or whatever, you know, seven ways to improve your stock market investing or something like that, right. And usually the person gets you in on an email list and sells you something later. And what I found is that that was the biggest difference between a winner and loser was just the headline. And to put one of these books together, I mean, you have to pay a writer, you got to pay a graphic designer to do the Adobe InDesign to do the layout and then like build a cover for it. And then you have to build a landing page you spent like $4,000. And maybe it's a terrible concept that nobody is even interested in.

Andrew Stotz 05:35
I've never done that.

05:36
Yeah.

Andrew Muller 05:40
Like, like I had an accounting client last year. And we did some, like, we had a bunch of different lead magnet ideas. And our worst one was $25, a lead to bring in a lead. And our best one was $2 a lead. And it was like we didn't even do anything yet. Like all we did was just test out the headlines.

Andrew Stotz 05:59
And wait a minute, just stop for a second. Because for the average person listening, who's a business person, they've devoted themselves to their idea. They're trying to bring it to market. You know, you're just explaining things that are just so simple, that they're even hard to understand that something so simple as testing something before I even have, let's say, the product like just write headline. I mean, come on. That's crazy. Tell us more.

Andrew Muller 06:24
Everybody, I always find that people are worried about that. They will What about the people who click on that ad and so dude, like six people are going to click by the time I shut it off, like I big I mean, I'm not this is kind of part of the hyper agile thing. Like Usually, people are going to drive a lot more traffic, the Oh yeah, we can conclude this as a statistically significant test. It's like, buddy, like, this is not science, like we are trying to make a profit here. And there's, there's a science to business, but there's also an art. And

Andrew Stotz 06:54
let's talk about that for a second. So what you're talking about is the concept of trying to do a B testing and going out there. And one of the questions that people ask is, you know, what, if I go out and say that I'm going to offer something or give something or do something, and I don't actually have it, and then I find out that, you know, oh, it wasn't really as attractive as I thought. So now I gotta tell those people that well, not gonna do that. And I would say, first thing is, the first thing you've said is, wait a minute, the one that doesn't work isn't gonna have that many people anyways. Right? Yeah, you're not going to disappoint a lot of people. Number one. And I would say, number two is that if you really want to do something, you know, to mitigate that say, unfortunately, I wasn't able to offer this, but here is a free gift, or here is something one of my other products that you know, as an apology or something like that, to give, you know, you could do that. So if someone is hyper, you know, concerned about their reputation in that sense, you could do that. But anyway, if you had no tolerance for risk as far as people, so they could like just a few people seeing that, you could do that. I would

Andrew Muller 07:59
say like the general argument I would make with an agile methodology is that you should drop that attitude, that attitude is going to destroy you. Like just by attrition. Over time, there's so much opportunity cost lost. And the general principle is that I mean, if the 8020 thing, like everybody's talking about, I don't know if I need to define that here. But instead of trying to get that 99% certainty, let's just get like 80%. And some of our tests are going to be wrong, because we don't have enough, but we're going to run 200 times as many tests. So it's, it's like, Okay, well, I had 20 false positives, but I had 200 winners, and let's just pretend each winner is a 2% increase in your, in your efficiency or like a 2%. decrease in your costs.

Andrew Stotz 08:53
Speaking of the word to, I think I'm about two ways to kind of finish this discussion. And the first way is, one idea that I was thinking about is maybe for the average person out there, who is just getting started in launching products and all that. Maybe you could just give them some advice from your experience to say, you know, here's one or two things that really make a difference number one, and then for number two, for someone like myself as an example, who has products, I'm out in the market, but I would love to figure out how I could access you know your services, and understand more about how I could tap into your knowledge on that. Maybe you can also just explain like what your company does and what type of person or company it's suitable for.

09:36
Right? Well, do you mind if we just use you as a case study firm?

Andrew Stotz 09:42
So like, I promise, I won't cry with all my mistakes I've made him.

Andrew Muller 09:46
Well, that's what that's why we're here, right? So, so Tell, tell me something that's on your Horizon.

Andrew Stotz 09:53
You mean like a product or

09:56
a product or a service or

Andrew Stotz 09:59
a content my newest product is a course about how for the average manager of a company, how to understand financial statements. And that is called finance made ridiculously simple.

10:13
Okay, great.

Andrew Muller 10:14
So you have a headline there, finance made ridiculously simple. So what I, here's what I would do, I would go on Facebook, and I would run that headline. And if you want, you can run it with like an image of yourself or something like that, you can just make it super, super simple. It doesn't really matter what the traction is, because you're going to run something out and you're going to compare the two. So if they both do terrible, but one does less terrible than the other than you know, to go in that direction, okay? And then kind of iterated upon that one, so

Andrew Stotz 10:45
and how different? How would I come up with that other title? Would I come up with a completely different way just tried to change a name like I would check,

Andrew Muller 10:53
I sold a word that what we try to say is if you're looking for a needle in a forest, first make sure you're in the right forest, then then check the trees, then the branches, then the leaves. If you're at the right leaf, and you need to find a needle, it's pretty easy, actually. So like, what's the forest? What's the biggest change that we can make? So I would make a dramatically? So finance made ridiculously simple. Is that what you said? Yeah, yeah, so that's like, God, kind of. There's a bit of levity in that title, right? Like it's meant to, it's meant to say, hey, you're used to these stodgy sort of finance books, but this is actually going to be fun. Hmm. So you've taken the fun approach. So what I would try is taking a not fun approach, like try maybe more of a benefit laden approach. So like, what's the biggest benefit that someone will have from reading your book, or survey taking the course,

Andrew Stotz 11:40
they're gonna be able to, and they're gonna be able to be a better manager, a manager that can understand finance, they can understand their CFO, they can understand the finances of a business.

Andrew Muller 11:50
Okay, so they have a boss? Yep. Okay. How to Start impressing your boss with your finance skills or something like that. Right? Like, like, they find some motivation, that they have, like a big a big motivation for my clients. Like, usually I work with clients, they do, they're spending at least, or they want to be spending at least $5,000 a month on ads, and they're ready to rapidly scale their business. They're like we have, we're ready to hire the salespeople to handle the incoming leads. We're like, you know, so it's like, Hey, we have like three lawyers, and we don't want to hire anyone else. Like, that's not the right, that's not the right client for that particular service, although I do have some basic management as well, for the right person.

12:31
Now. Um,

Andrew Muller 12:31
so what I find that motivates people is like, sometimes there's marketing directors at a larger Corporation, who want to work with me. So one of the phrases that I found was, you know, I'm afraid my boss won't trust me if I mess up the paid media strategy, right? Like that was a really weird, like, people really responded to that ad that I've put out. And it's kind of weird, because they're not really ads. They're just statements, but people will click on them if they grab

Andrew Stotz 12:58
their curiosity. So what you're saying there, what you're highlighting is the pain.

Andrew Muller 13:05
Yeah, that's an example of something you could try. And you could see, are people more motivated by something by the finance being fun? Or are they more motivated by the pain aspect? I mean, I've been copywriting for a long time, which is writing to sell writing time swayed. And they always talk about how fear is actually a very powerful motivator. But until I started this sort of testing strategy, it was all of a sudden, it was so easy. It was like, hey, this ad 10 people clicked on and this one one person clicked on. And they and the same amount of people saw it, like 400 people say,

Andrew Stotz 13:39
for like, another one would be, you're never gonna get promoted. Until you understand finance, or you know, or something.

Andrew Muller 13:48
Yeah. Or until you understand these five principles about finance or something like that, too. You know, so that is not just a clickbait title. Like, it's, I mean, there's a little bit of a clickbait Enos to it, but then would you, would you

Andrew Stotz 13:58
send them to some sort of, I mean, what I, when I understand putting something in front of an audience, but then what would I do next?

Andrew Muller 14:09
I would, I would just send them to your domain. Like, now we're getting really into into the nitty gritty of it,

Andrew Stotz 14:15
but there it is.

Andrew Muller 14:16
Yeah, I, like, I wouldn't worry too much. People, like some say, See, have like five people click on that. Yeah, like five out of a 7 billion. Like, it's, you know, like, you really haven't saturated your market with something broken here, anything like that. They're gonna go to the website, they're gonna be like, Oh, they probably screwed up the URL or something, you know, you got to do it. If not, it's not really like a huge deal. What I find like at that level of testing, like you're not even gonna have anybody sign up for anything. You're just seeing if they even respond. So you really don't need to worry about people signing up. And then went to a landing page that had like a lead magnet and maybe the lead magnet was the wrong title, because you had been running three or 410 tests right. So Other thing you can do is you could always put on the thank you page. Thanks for signing up. We're currently building this. Yeah, touch you have something, just something like, you know, very unoffensive

Andrew Stotz 15:13
for now. So let's go to the next step, which is that, let's say there's a guy like me, I've got a medium sized business, I'm trying to grow it. The truth is, I hardly have the time to do that. And to follow that up, and I'm going to make all kinds of mistakes along the way, you know, in wasting money and time, how would someone like myself use your services or your services for someone like myself?

Andrew Muller 15:37
Yeah, I mean, that that sounds like about about the right person, like typically. I mean, I work with startups, I find, like, started to just gotten investment round, they're like, hey, in the next six months, we need to penetrate the market, we need to have a message that penetrates and like a good message like people, we need to get our messaging strategy, right, like, what does that mean? It's like, I can tell you what it means because I'm in the interface. Facebook ads is just I use all the ad platforms, Google ads, and LinkedIn and whatnot. Facebook ads is really great, because you get fast feedback. And their algorithm tells you about people very, like, like, I it's like, I'm reading matrix code at this point, you know, like, Oh, yeah. So. So what's really interesting about that is a good message. Like, you know, this, I'm just, I'm just giving some examples. Don't hold me to them is like we're paying $1 per click for every person that comes to our website. And amazing message, like six cents a click, right? Like that's, that's, that's the difference between a good messaging strategy, and a poor one is getting 20 times the traffic or 15 times the traffic for the same cost.

Andrew Stotz 16:45
And what what level of spending would someone have to be at to use your service? Yeah, I

Andrew Muller 16:51
think like in you're getting into like the five or 10 k a month range. Usually when I start testing, I'll do like a six to eight weeks of like, just testing. So it's like, We're not trying to drive leads here. We're just testing a lot of different messaging. And then we take we call our winners gold coins, it's like, these are the ones that people really respond to, these are the warm messages that people just can't help. But but they just want to know Yep, and, and that we so we got our bag of gold coins, and then we start and then we build like your landing page. And it's like everything on that landing page has like been something that's tested in one. And now I'm like reading heat maps to see what people go through. Oh, everyone's dropping off right after the above the fold. Why don't we put like one of our winning headlines right under there to keep people reading or, you know, and you can test anything videos, testimonials, problems that your avatar has solution, the way you phrase, your solution, like, everything is worth testing. And ultimately, we're building a sales funnel, right? It's not It's not that complicated. Like, it's like I market testing incubators, a term that I tested, that people really, really responded to. So I use it.

Andrew Stotz 17:57
Yep. And what one last thing, then for the listeners out there who want to, you know, use your service want to contact you? What's the best way to do that?

18:07
Um, probably email, like,

Andrew Muller 18:08
My website is Andrew Mueller. creative.com.

18:11
And m, you

Andrew Muller 18:12
ll er M for Mary. So, my email is Andrew at Andrew Miller creative calm, and I have a booking link on my website as well. Um, it's a very, like, I'm a very one to one kind of salesperson. I don't, this is a very difficult skill to scale. Like, you know, even people have been doing marketing for a decade is just very, very hard for them to learn. Yeah. So it's like we work with a pretty limited number of clients. Okay.

Andrew Stotz 18:42
So for the listeners out there, you know, you've got that Andrew Malone, creative, calm. And also I'll put all that in the show notes. So you can go there. And I just have to sneak in one last little question.

18:53
Yeah, go ahead.

Andrew Stotz 18:53
Why is it that a person like me, who's searching around for a person like you? Why is it so hard to find the person that can really bring the results? I mean, it's not hard to find the people that say they can bring the results. But it's hard to find the people that can really bring the result. But you know, if I, if I want to hire an accountant, I can just say, I put out an ad in the newspaper, hire the accountant, bring him in, sit down right next to me, and let's get this rolling position but for this position, it's like if I want to say okay, I want to find somebody that understands pay per click or that understands how to build that, you know, funnel and all that. I can't find them. I it's very hard. Why? Um,

Andrew Muller 19:37
that is honestly a big question. And I'm happy to take some time to articulate it. But I mean, the first thing I would say is, what I've learned is, there is a lot of different lateral skills that go into being able to do this like just knowing the interface is not anything, right like experience is such a humongous Get a portion of it because it's like, like I'll give you let me tell you about an insight that I've noticed b2b way harder to market than b2c business to business, like you're trying to find somebody inside a certain company, you're usually talking about a skeptical, educated audience. And it's very hard to reach them where they are. It's like, almost like they contact you. I'm not saying that this is not happy. But like when I'm reading those heat maps, for example, like getting those people to scroll compared to like b2c, like you're selling some consumer app or a consumer product. It's like, sometimes the first version I put out on a b2c one does really good and like people are like, ingesting half the page, and I, you know, I only have to make five or six variations, and it's like, Damn, I cracked this page to meet b2b audiences,

Andrew Stotz 20:45
I just spent made 60 variations, and I just got them to start scrolling one pixel down the page, like they're very difficult to market to. And is it because b2c is really focusing on the person is, has individual pain that they want to solve, as opposed to company pain? And you know, there's a lot of different moving parts to that, and

Andrew Muller 21:06
I'm not, I'm not sure if that's exactly why it is. I think that I think part of it is that that audience has been marked as expensive. Mm hmm. Like, though usually people like Like, if you want to say you want to target somebody who has a high income, like you're just going to pay a lot. Yep, to target that person. So. So Facebook kind of does that to you, right? And LinkedIn, same like LinkedIn, it's like, average cost per clicks are five to $10. a click, right, because it's all business people. And and if you start to compare that to other platforms, it's actually not that out of line with when you Oh, like on Google, I know this guy getting $1 click, it's like, Yeah, but as you're marketing to businesses, or as the marketing to like an individual trying to renovate their house, right, a very different

Andrew Stotz 21:50
sort of thing. This idea that you've just talked about how the one of the reasons why it's hard, it's because it requires very different skills, such as, you may be very analytical, and you can set up the ads and you can set up the analysis, but you may be really bad at language.

Andrew Muller 22:05
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or you're bad. You're bad at the psychology of selling or, or what I brought up with in b2b and b2c is a strategy components like, Listen, I've, I've dipped my fingers and a lot of different accounts. And I've noticed,

22:19
why is this one's so hard, Damn, this

Andrew Muller 22:21
thing is hard. Like, I've been working on this for months, and I can't crack this and you start to like, see those, you start to see those patterns, right. And you're in, you're able to make insights from them, which is, you know, like, your, one of your key talents as an entrepreneur is being able to make insights. So yeah, so why you can't find that person is I like, I don't think there's very many of them that exist. Yep. And most, most of the b2b people, it's like, well, we've never created a marketing funnel. We don't, we don't. And it's like, Okay, well, so you're doing something new and experimental. You're basically a startup, even if you've been in business for 50 years, because you're doing something that's completely new, you have no proven track record. And, you know, it's like, it's like, I'm fine to do something experimental. But it will be hard, it will be like starting a business all over again. But what's the benefit, you don't have to focus, you don't have to be completely counting on referrals anymore. It's like you actually can take control of your scalability rather than just waiting for it to happen. Naturally. That's the end of the

Andrew Stotz 23:28
rainbow. Well, ladies and gentlemen, don't miss this opportunity. Andrew is very accessible, you can go to Andrew Molyneux creative. He's got his email up there, he's got his booking link up there, contact him, and see if he can help you. I know, it's an area. That's a challenge for me. And I know, it's a challenge for a lot of other entrepreneurs. But now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one ever goes into their worst investment thinking and will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it. And then tell us your story.

Andrew Muller 24:03
Right, so I have I mentioned the word attrition earlier. And that, that's that's a very dramatic word. That's going to tie into my story. So I bring you down. Yes. Yeah, like just just over time, and everything culminates all at once and you realize what's happened, you know, you look back, oh, seven years went by and look at what all this has been happening to me the whole time. And I just and you know, and you didn't even notice it, so it's not my story is not quite as dramatic. I've seen some of the stories, oh, I lost $200,000 on this real estate investment and like, you know, got my, my calling my eyes out to sitting in the rain and, you know, death by 1000 cuts, minus more death by 1000 cuts. So it's a bit of a mistake of youth, but I So, I guess the context going on. I'm 16 years old. I'm about to graduate high school now. You got to work but the last summer like I if people aren't watching on video, like it's like you and I have probably kind of a similar build, like, I'm not, I'm not doing construction man, like, like, you know. So I'm sitting there thinking how can I not dry wall? That is all I can focus on when I graduate now it's time to pay rent, now it's time to pay bills, like that's just kind of the family thing. What am I going to do? And that's and that's how I started my career really was I, you know, I've got I'm going to use my brain and do something. So do you? Do you remember Google AdSense? Yep. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's not as common anymore It used to, but it used to be real hot, real hot way to make money. So the idea was, like, you build a content website, lots of rich content, you get high traffic numbers, and it's like, you know, 5000 people a day, sort of sort of traffic. And then you just like you, you know, you're on the Google AdSense. And that's like the retirement plan. And this is what I'm gonna do like for the rest of my life. So being a young person, I chose a niche that you can never make any money at music.

26:11
So

Andrew Muller 26:11
immediately, a very difficult to monetize. I mean, there are some guys doing it doing it these days who have food, like good, like music courses, how to market your band and stuff. And maybe they're like 15 $100 for the course. So like, some people have figured out, but it's like you're marketing to people who have no money? Most likely, you know, so very little market research. And anytime I ran into market research that went against what I wanted to do, I just did what I wanted to do instead. So it's like, oh, maybe we should start this whole column about this. Let me let me let me see what else is going on. That's then I there's no data on this whatsoever. Because nobody cares about this. And nobody even wants it or has even considered wanting it ever. It's like, well, I'm going to spend six months doing it anyways, because that's what I think I should do. At one point, I made a course on how to use like a music production software. And I don't know if there's any production software out there that had more free videos already available on YouTube that were better than what I was producing. So I fast forward. I'm probably 23 years old at this point, and I go, this was like my retirement plan. And from the start, it was doomed. And now I am totally screwed. And it's like, I because I've invested all my skills into this thing that doesn't work now. I mean, luckily, some of those skills were transferable. But the whole idea was never to work for clients initially. I mean, when you're 16, what do you know, you're an idiot. You know, and I transition and it turned into this thing where it's like, Okay, well, now I'm working now I'm that guy at the bottom given getting the strategies given to me and I'm not in control, which, you know, drives me a little bit nuts if the person above me is not competent. If they are then.

Andrew Stotz 28:00
Can you remember the kind of the moment at the age of 23 or so when you realize this isn't gonna work?

Andrew Muller 28:09
Yeah, I was starving.

28:14
Yeah, I am.

28:16
Yeah, because I had I had to,

Andrew Muller 28:18
I had to work a few jobs at the time, and I was on Ei and it was my that's in Canada. That's employment insurance. I think they're probably different in the States. So just making no money at all it just enough to I remember one time I ate vegetarian for an entire week, and it was an accident. Like, I wasn't like a moral thing or like trying to be healthy. It was just like, well, I guess that's a guess that's what I can eat is leftover borscht. portobello mushroom borscht? Four days old. I've eaten this every day. And man, that is a bad meal to reheat. Like you don't want to eat him read a meal with lots of mushrooms in it. Four days in a row.

28:56
Yeah.

Andrew Muller 28:59
Yeah, so um, so I'm sitting there. And it's like my last month of Ei. And it's like, I am going to have no money on my I'm living off of like, $650 a month total, like living in a commune, just so that I can have cheap enough rent. And it's like, I'm totally screwed. And I just I gave up on that dream. And you know what, it was the right thing to do. I should have given up on that dream. It was a dumb dream. It was a great start to like an entrepreneurial career of saying, okay, you're not going to drywall, like everyone else in your family or do like a blue collar. Do something because you're that's just not how you are. It's like I grew up I had asthma and stuff. Like I was like my kid, you know?

29:44
Sorry.

Andrew Stotz 29:44
Yep. So then how? So? What did you learn from this and kind of how did you turn this into, you know, what you became?

Andrew Muller 29:54
Well, the next month I started working for other people at agencies. I was like, I have all these skills. I've done everything in internet marketing, I've done email marketing, I've written a comp 500 article website. I've yet done paid ads, I've done marketing strategy, like I've really done everything automation, and this or that, or anything that was not lost. Yeah, it's like, it all wasn't lost. But I thought like, Damn man, like, This is, uh, this dream is

30:21
not good.

Andrew Muller 30:24
And it's like, and I should have noticed it right away. And it's and so while I learned a lot of things, I mean, this is definitely an early planting experience for what I do. Now, you know, I had, I had a period of probably about four years, like I said, where I was, you know, I'm working for other people. And I'm like, and I'm, and really at that point, you're just diagnosing the problem, you're like, this is what's wrong with this industry. This is what people are doing wrong, they get a bright idea. And then they go to market with that bright idea, because someone on the board liked it. And it's like, Nah, man, like, you gotta focus on your customers always. So I think that, I think that my story is one where I am the type of person like, I'm a flat out ADHD guy. And one thing that can do is make you really rigid in your thinking, you know, you get one idea, and

Andrew Stotz 31:14
you stick with it

Andrew Muller 31:14
for 10 years, and which is not really good. So but you know, it's like, it's kind of like the story of the guy who gets the brain damage, and then wins a memory competition, you know, because he's trying that much harder, because he has this personal thing to overcome. So yeah, I've grown my teeth to dust trying to make myself be agile, it's like, stop going in that direction. It's not working immediately, like, look for the signal from people, you know, you talk to people, and, you know, like, I mean, like, I sent you my bio, and you were like, Hey, I'm really into this, like, I can't wait to talk to you. But and that's and that is the difference between pivoting really quickly. And, and, and, and not pivoting really quickly. As soon as you get that feedback, and you go, Okay, I'm going to keep going in that direction. Or you get that feedback. And you like, I think the lesson is just about putting your own ego aside, which you can never even recognize, like pride is the hardest thing to recognize. Because it's just your lens. Like, that's just how the world is, is that I'm right about these things. Like, you know, why can't people see this? So, um, yeah, like, starting with what the market wants. And people say this all the time, and you go, Well, I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that market research. It seems really boring. I like this thing that I'm doing. So I'm just going to spend a year doing this failing thing, instead of spending one day of market research to just pivot my, my direction. A lot. And it's like, it's it's definitely that, like, an ounce of prevention is like a pound of cure. Yeah, cure, right, that's that that's the same. And so I think Facebook's ads is so amazing, because it's like you've been given this think tank of people who don't know you're watching them. And they're just gonna click on things they find are interesting. And this is a way that you can test the market. You know, pick, pick an audience that's somewhat similar to the people that you would want to market to, and then just compare your own numbers to each other, like, you can do it wrong, and it will still be a million times better than doing it. Not at all.

Andrew Stotz 33:17
So let me let me summarize a few things I take away. And when I think about the way marketing is done by most people, most companies and I would say by myself, I can imagine like, if I was to set up a marketing company, I know how I know, I just figured out what I would call it. Thank you for calling whim marketing, where we come up with our marketing ideas on a whim.

Andrew Muller 33:44
I think you might want to market test this.

Andrew Stotz 33:49
See? How many times do I just come up with on a whim, I come up with an idea. And I just put it out there and say, right, you know, and, and as opposed to, you know, welcome to agile marketing. Welcome to Andrew Miller creative where we truly test your ideas so that you don't waste your time pursuing unprofitable ideas. So that's the first thing that I'm thinking about is just the idea of change your way that you're thinking for the listeners out there to focus on testing your ideas and taking your ego out of it as you said. Second thing is it reminds me also of a personal story when I I, when I got out of high school, I didn't have any money, my parents said time to be on your own. So I basically worked in a factory and I worked there for a while until it drove me nuts. And then I took other jobs and then eventually I figured I would go back to school. But then I went back to school and university I somehow got someone to from the state of Ohio to give me a little bit of money to go into school. And then after one, one term, one semester, I decided this isn't for me. I mean, come on, I can outsmart this and so I quit and I went To work for a company selling, I was selling electronic assembly, you know, like we were going to, you know, give us your blueprints, and we're going to assemble your electronic products and stuff like that. And so I went to sell for these guys. And it was brutal. I mean, it was brutal, and cold calling cold knocking cold calling cold knocking is all draw, there was no salary. And, and, and I worked for like four months and I got I finally did get a customer that was a big customer and I bought them. And then they started getting that customer. And then at the end, these guys didn't want to pay me,

35:37
oh man,

Andrew Stotz 35:38
and I had to go in and fight with the CEO and, you know, got some miserable outcome of that. And that's when I can literally remember going into my car at that time and thinking, I've got to get educated. You know, I just, I'm not going to be able to survive if I don't have something to to add. And I've just got to go back to school. And that was when I started to go back to school. So you reminded me of that moment. And that moment was a motivating force. And I've studied all the way up to PhD in the area of Finance. So I really, you know, use that as a motivator. Sometimes. Sometimes getting boxed into a corner that I boxed myself into. I could have just listened to other people's advice, right?

Andrew Muller 36:22
I want Yeah, but they don't dado No, no, no me

36:28
being boxed into a corner. To do so you're not boxed into a corner. But anyway, you got to come up with the

Andrew Muller 36:33
Yeah, well, and that's part of the reason I brought up, I brought up that story, too, is like to think about, where are you still acting? Like you did in your youth, like, you know, cuz nobody develops every part of every part equally, right? Like you still leave some of those behind. That's the challenge for the listener out there. You know,

Andrew Stotz 36:54
what can you take from Andrews story to kind of give you a wake up call that, hey, I'm being too obstinate in a particular area. And this discussion, it doesn't have to be marketing, but it's the idea of opening yourself up. And that brings me to my final takeaway. And this, this one's going to be a little bit maybe controversial. But what I would say is that, there's a great saying in the world of marketing, I'm world of quotes, which is revenue is proof of concept. Right? Yeah, it's a great saying because, you know, you can come up with an idea, test it and all that. But if you can't get somebody to pay for it, then the concept just doesn't work. And so, but I'm, I've added a second part to that quote. And I say that what most people don't realize is that revenue is just the beginning, running a business, right? There's a lot of steps to delivering that product. There's a lot of steps to you know, how you continue to market that product, the human resources, managing the people involved, the accounting, all of these different skills that people go and do an MBA or whatever for. And all of those things need to come together to make a business actually last. So I say, revenue is proof of concept. Profit is proof of competence.

Andrew Muller 38:14
Right? Okay. I like that. Yeah. And the thing I would add from the marketing perspective is like, marketing is not sales. Those are two different things. Marketing is bringing someone to the door, and the salesperson takes them across the finish line. And there's, there's always a tension between marketing people and sales people, we brighten the leads. Now the leads aren't high quality enough, they're hard to convert. It's like, Well, you know, and everybody's got metrics that are kind of competing with each other. Somebody, somebody has to give a bit, but um, that's probably one of the things that I find frustrating is if somebody says, Well, we don't have any sales. It's like, so you don't even prove a salesperson can sell them. If you have some sales and you just want to scale it's like, Okay, well, you've at least proven that people want this. So we can scale it like I can't fix your business for you just with a marketing campaign. Like all we can do. Spread the word effectively. Yep.

Andrew Stotz 39:03
So marketing is not sales and sales is nonprofit.

Andrew Muller 39:07
Right? Right. Nice. Yeah, yeah. Well, definitely. I've been watching a lot of Kitchen Nightmares lately. So I just constantly Gordon Ramsay telling people that they're, you know, that they're their books aren't balanced. Why do you have 12 staff and like three customers here?

Andrew Stotz 39:22
Exactly. It's a full package. And that's the reason why many businesses fail because they may have a great idea. They may even have great sales. But if they don't know how to manage the whole business, then they can fail. So based upon what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn, what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate and think about that 16 year old that 18 year old that young person out there that says I got I got this is it I'm devoting my life to this,

Andrew Muller 39:52
right? Yes, sir. So what we're talking about is a mindset shift to trust other people. And if you've grown up In a nowhere town like I do like is is not entrepreneurial people I'm surrounded by, right. So it especially as a young person, like you have wacky ideas that are dumb. And maybe there's a seed of one of those ideas is actually really brilliant and you can feel it inside of yourself, but then people don't, they don't really react poorly. So like, if someone's very young, then you need to find a way to shift your mindset so that you can trust other people. You know, like, like, for me in music, like it's like people are precious about their art, right? And it's like, I talk to people, I get advice. I hate all the advice and it's stupid. what it took for me was to hire a professional and pay someone who's done dozens of albums, who has some experience and now I trusted their opinion. And now it's a case other people have something to offer even your precious darlings, that you don't want to like, maybe you need to cut these. So you need so if you inherently don't trust other people like I that's a foundational thing to start with. And you probably have a good reason not to trust people. But there are people who are worth trusting listening first believe in that, and then find that person. And, you know, it's a who do I know that I kind of trust their opinion, and chances are, that person will be more tempered than the like, arrogant, like annoying people who just can't wait to give you their opinion, um, though, but the one thing you can do, if you can deal with that mindset thing is find a way to test for you. I love Facebook ads, I recommend learning like just a very, very basic, anybody who's an entrepreneur, as a business person, like it is not technical, anybody can run an ad and you can run an ad for like five bucks. Yep. And, you know, you just run a few ideas and compare them, it's like, well, you know, just put some text in there, don't worry too much about it. Because if you made a mistake, you probably made a mistake on all five ideas. So they're still relative to each other, and you can still make some judgments on them. So find a way that works to test for you. And nobody will do this. And it will benefit you more than almost anything that you can do in business, I think, because then you don't go down those dead paths.

Andrew Stotz 42:01
I have a little story about this, my best friend who runs our coffee business in Thailand, Dale, he's a drummer, and I think I see something behind you of some instruments. But Dale is a drummer, and he played in a jazz band, a jazz trio. And he was, you know, enjoying it and all that. But he hired a friend of ours named Bob King, who's a really amazing piano player, and just eccentric guy. And he hired. It's not they hired somebody asked him Bob, could you come and just listen to me one day, and you know, and then give me your feedback? And Bob said, Absolutely. And, you know, there's a lot. That's a challenge right there, you know. And so Bob listened to him. And then he basically sat down with Dale, and he just said one thing he said, You're not taking any risk. Right, right. Yeah. And the audience knows it. And right, therefore, you're not bringing your personality to the audience. You're not bringing something special to the audience. And you just not taking any risks. And in Dale way, he became a much better drummer. And he realized that just that one little piece of advice, I trusting someone else, just totally changed the way he played and the way he expressed himself through his instrument.

Andrew Muller 43:22
Yeah, like, they don't need to be an expert, either. Like I have made huge arrangement decisions, because somebody who is just a layman, oh, this is how it makes me feel like don't maybe don't interpret the person's prescription for what should be fixed. But like, Listen to the way people are feeling because it means something. Like I was always taught that if some customer complains about your business, it's because they care and they want it to improve. Yep. Like don't sit there getting mad at somebody who is like, whatever like be like, okay, like, What are you? What's the truth that you're saying about how we should improve things?

Andrew Stotz 43:54
And his race? The listening process?

Andrew Muller 43:58
Yeah, dude, listening is like, you know, I'm a terrible listener, but I've become much, much better in the past five years.

Andrew Stotz 44:04
All right. Last question. What's your number one goal for the next 12 months? Um,

Andrew Muller 44:09
I just, honestly, it's a pretty boring, it's a pretty boring thing is like, I just want to double revenue. And I don't and I want to do it, no teeth grinding, no white knuckling. Like something that just kind of honors myself as a human being like, I've done, I've done that I've done the grinding my teeth to dust I've been like, I'm just going to output. I'm just going to produce this. And it's like, I think that I think that a lot of people can do that. To do that. Well, like keeping your sanity, like I and I just, you know, because like, I think that your mind will take it out on you. It will age you like I've lost more hair in the last three years. Like you just, you know, you know what I mean? And it's just like, it's not sustainable, even though like you see examples of people and you think it's sustainable. You know, and I don't think you have to find a way to reconcile that and wake up and be happy to be happy to be alive. And that's a you know, I think that's a challenge, especially right now. This is a very trying time. I don't know this may be the strong time that the hard time that makes strong men, it's hard to tell you know, or women

Andrew Stotz 45:26
or destroys them.

45:27
Yeah, yeah, just tell.

Andrew Stotz 45:30
All right listeners. There you have it. Another story of loss to keep you winning Remember to go to my worst investment ever.com slash deals to claim your discount on my how to start building your wealth investing in the stock market course. As we conclude, Andrew, I want to thank you again, for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever. In the your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

45:59
Yet testing,

Andrew Stotz 46:01
boom. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow, and most importantly, protect our well. Fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying I'll see you on the upside.