Ep612: Kim Barrett – Check Your Capacity Before You Hire

Andrew Stotz 00:02
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 risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And that mission has led me to create the Become a Better Investor Community. In the community, you get access to the tools you need to create, grow, and most importantly, protect your wealth. Just go to MyWorstInvestmentEver.com right now to claim your spot. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from A. Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Kim Barrett, Kim, are you ready to join the mission?

Kim Barrett 00:46
Ready to rock and roll. Love it. Well, I

Andrew Stotz 00:49
want to introduce you're rockin and rollin here, that you've been doing over time. So let me introduce you to the audience. Kim Barrett, is a world renowned million dollar marketing strategist with a focus on Facebook. Kim is an international speaker and trainer having taught marketing around the world and having grown help businesses grow to six, seven and eight figures. Kim is the founder and CEO of your social voice, and Australian based digital marketing agency established in 2015, your social voice helps businesses get heard on social media, and most importantly, build engagement, generate more leads, and most importantly, more sales camp, take a minute and fill in a little bit about the unique value that you bring to this wonderful world.

Kim Barrett 01:37
Thank you so much. Glad to be here and glad to be able to share some of that with everyone as well. So for for us over at Weiss vo myself specifically, there's there's many people that do what we do marketing advertising, every second person probably does have these days. But for us, you know, being around for the last seven years that we really like to have a client focused approach. And what I mean by that is very early on, I got principal, if you will from one of my first mentors, which was Jay Abraham. And he always had this principle and strategy of preeminence, which is whatever is best for the client, whether that's working with you working with someone else, pushing forward to something different. And that's always what we have kind of held close to our heart is like I look at when I speak to a client, like what is the absolute best for them. And sometimes that's not working with us. So we probably refer more business, I mean, we actually do because I like someone to have the absolute best. And that doesn't always necessarily mean for their business for the strategy that they have is going to be me. And I just go look, in an ideal world, this would be what I think would be the absolute best. If I can do it great. If I can't, I'm going to connect you with someone who can. So for us, the because the technical side of Facebook and things like that is simple, but not easy. Like it's relatively simple. Like I teach it, I educate people on it, it's relatively easy to replicate. But getting the right person who understands your business who understand your audience can be hard and having the right and someone who's just like perfected a certain strategy, again, can be hard. So I always like to focus on that rather than going, we do marketing for everyone, everyone has to work with me, I like to be a bit more open, I'm gonna be like, cool if you if I think I'm right, great. If not, I'll tell you the best person in the world that I know of that will help you get that result.

Andrew Stotz 03:27
So let's talk about kind of the ideal situation that someone should be in when they reach out to you like you got to have obviously some sort of budget, they've got to have product, they got to have a service, it should be priced at a reasonable level so that you can get a return on that. They got to be ready to map out, you know, a flow of content to say, Okay, we've got to put people through a process of getting to know you, or, you know, for the listeners out there who are business owners or working in businesses trying to promote their businesses, what type of person or situation would be the optimum for coming to you and getting the most value out of what you're doing?

Kim Barrett 04:05
Yeah, definitely someone who is ultimately for us predominately service based someone who has maybe phone conversations because again, for us, I like to work up into the point of the sale conversion with clients. Because what I've seen so often is that people go, Oh, I'll get you leads. If you don't tell them this, like that's on that's your responsibility. Um, but because we are we believe in preeminence. And we really like to make sure that our clients get the best result possible. We like to look at the full track, and that includes up to the sales point. So ultimately, for us people that have sales conversations with people that have a reasonably priced product, a over $1,000, so that we know, and it's not necessarily because we want them to get an ROI on us even though they do because obviously we charge a fee for what we do with people, but it's so that they have more I would say like wiggle room for error, because you know, like, like investing is like investing in Facebook ads Isn't investment in some way it's got it. But we've got to make it come back to the more budget that we have, where we've got room where we've got margin, the more we can test, the more we can tweak, the more we can adjust. And especially when even when I'm teaching people it's like, then it's like, great, you can still screw up a fair bit, but get still have a positive ROI on your return on adspend ro s, as we call it, the industry. If you if you have that higher price product versus if you've got a widget that you're selling, or let's say glasses that you're selling for 20 bucks, and it costs you 10 bucks, and you have a margin of 10 bucks. That to me is just like, way too tight. And I don't know, like the comments guys. Like I don't know how they sleep at night, though I would be stressing, stressing like crazy. Well, I like the lead process for me,

Andrew Stotz 05:46
then let's let's maybe just take a case study here for a second. And that case study would be me. And let's say my course I teach an online course, which is a guided course it's not a you know, just sign up and take the videos. It's called the six week valuation masterclass bootcamp, they we have we drip content to them about 30 hours of content to the students every day, they get one or two hours of content, we track that they're staying up on those viewings, and then we have assignments related to that. And then we meet most evenings at about 6pm. And we do a live session where we meet everybody and go through what they're learning and all that. And then they have presentations, they have assignments. And then at the end of six weeks, they do a final valuation report of one company and then they present it, the cost of that is $1,400. It's a you know, intense course, in fact, Kim, it's so intense, that sometimes I have to kick ass in the bootcamp and for the listeners out there, I am putting on my boot camp, drill sergeant hat. And sometimes we have to kick ass. But the point is, is that it brings a lot of value to the students. And what I've found is that one of the best ways to sell that is for a student who's gone through a couple of steps of validating that there should be suitable for this, to get them on a 15 minute call with me. And what I've found is that if we've screen them properly, nearly 100% convert, because they're already ready for the product they want the the output that it brings, but when they can talk calling me about it. It's you know, it's a it's a closed, you know, sale, because they can see. And also we have a seven day money back guarantee. So I'm saying like everything I can deliver, here's everything we can deliver, we've delivered to other students, here's some couple of stories like yours. And we have a seven day money back guarantee 100% No questions asked. So what's the risk? And generally we find that so it seems like that type of business would be suit a little bit like what you're talking about? How would someone like me engage you and maybe you could just give like an idea of kind of the steps that you would go through so that the listeners out there could think maybe my business could fit into that 200%.

Kim Barrett 08:03
And some of the things you said there is very interesting. So obviously the first port of call. So I developed over the last I've been doing online marketing for about 15 years, myself, seven years as a company, I developed this method called the advertising cycles, which is where you need to have a conversion mechanism, which is what you're talking about the way that you will transact with someone that will give you money, you'd be able to build a list, which is List Building, which is the warm people that you're bringing in, to educate them on you your process, how you help how you're different. And then as well, we call it the Mogul method, which is like how to position yourself as the Mogul of your industry, which is really comes down to the content that you put out there. The brand awareness you have in the marketplace, podcasts like this, things like that, that you can amplify. So each one of them kind of feeds into one another. But at the very beginning, as we are all investors, whether it be time, money, effort, whatever energy, like we need to get a return. So that's why in an ideal world, if everyone had unlimited funds, they'd start build an audience, then they'll build a list, then they will go out there and convert that. But by that time, most of time, we probably got like debtors knocking on our door being like, hey, we kind of need to get paid, we need some money. So it's like in an ideal world, that would be great. So if you've got like hundreds of 1000s or millions of dollars, you could probably do that strategy and do that and take your time. But for most of us as business owners in like investing in ourselves and in businesses, we've got to start with that conversion mechanism. For me with a product like that, that would be something perfectly suitable for what we were doing I'll go great what's them like if we need to get them warmed up first? What's the most effective way going on eBay for us? Is it going to be to like warm them up from a content series and just go like hit them with content content content, and then offer is it going to be for them to like register for like a masterclass or webinar or something like that where they get really rapidly educated and indoctrinated and in 45 minutes, an hour, two hours. Is it going to be like a little challenge where they can do a couple of little activities and be like, Oh, this seems like something I want to do, and then convert from them. And ultimately, for me, I always like to test and any marketer is, I call it a marketers cop out, because it's like, you've got a test. And everyone's like, what about this? Yeah, so we've got to test them. But for me, I always like to go great if the offer is good and compelling. And we can articulate that because we are like, very, very heavily based in direct response marketing. So all my mentors, like the old school direct response, guys, like there used to do that sort of stuff. Yeah. Dan Kennedy, you know, JJ Abrams. Yeah. Gary Gary Halbert, that Halbert sons now his sons, like all those guys are people that I've learned from and been mentored by to really dial all this stuff in. And we go great. Let's test first I call it the NOC method, niche, offer copy, or niche for my American friends niche offer company. So it's like, whose audience we're going for? The author is like, how are we going to be able to compel them to take the next step, what we're selling, not the course. But it's like, what's the offer going to be for us maybe to get them on a phone conversation and figure out if this is going to be for them? And then the copy is like, How can I articulate and help them understand things better than, like, they can even think of how can I get into their mind where they're like, this is like, this is what I've been thinking about all night, is what I get up in the morning thinking about how can I solve this problem. So those three parallels and that's also what we use for every single marketing campaign ever. If it ever doesn't work, one of those three things is not in alignment. Okay, all you kind of need to have is our frame. So we would test that. And I like to really test that simply enforced with something called a lead ad on Facebook, which is really easy for you to go, Well, can I get and capture someone's name, email, phone number, right? If I can do that, for a reasonable cost, for a product, I will be shooting for sub $20 to be able to indicate that my nation my offer, my copy is going to be correct. And then send them through to our like our conversion mechanism and process booking a call or whatever it might be. If I can get that working, then I know that I have enough data to take that back and build it into one of those like I mentioned, like masterclass, webinar, short course anything like that.

Andrew Stotz 12:14
And the lead the lead ad is takes away the friction of taking them off site or something like that. It just says, Look, does this does it? Can this work? So lead as a good testing point? Yeah, I can see some of the value that you bring, you know, right, from what you've talked about is the idea that you've seen a lot of different lead magnets, you've seen a lot of different campaigns. Whereas when a person like myself and my team, we're like, Well, why don't we try this? And we have no history of knowing what works. And then we think, Oh, how about if we build an audience? Well, why don't we try this. And that's why I say that. The beauty of Zuckerberg is that I ended up paying him to get training on his software. Genius, genius. Well, I think we're gonna have to have a conversation after this. But I think you've given a really good breakdown of what you guys do. And for the listeners and the viewers out there, you know, Facebook is getting harder and harder. And without some sort of expertise. You know, sometimes I feel like, I don't want to pay somebody to help me on this. Because, you know, I could do it myself. Well, no, actually, the amount that you end up spending yourself trying to figure it out, I really start to believe that it's worth to, you know, to get an expert. So I look forward to our conversation after the podcast and now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.

Kim Barrett 13:46
This was an interesting one, because you mentioned before, like all the different categories of people like their different, like worst investments and listen to some episodes and I'm like it when I like went my friend this money or when I bought, like, you know, I really love cryptocurrency, it's like, I remember putting a lot of money into something and then it just kind of disappearing. But for me leading up to it, it was actually in my business. So when I was younger, as I said, so I'm only like 33 So we started this club when I was like 25 You know, young buck being like Alright, cool. I know things about my business. And I've worked in businesses like you know, I've got this down pat and I'm a fast learner. Yeah, exactly. It's I can figure this out. And anyhow, so it started to grow and obviously at the very beginning I was really good at marketing and then I was like, Cool my next step get very good at sales. So I got very good at sales going through the sales process, like understanding how to have good sales conversations and ultimately convert people into into working with us if they're the right fit. So I will just go on like, I used to call them like selling rampages, where I just be like, cool, make sales, bring like new clients in the business. And then my team would have to start obviously deliver on my sales and like start to you know, and obviously I would help them as well. And I was like, Cool. When I'm bringing in a lot of new people, I need to now bring on more staff to fulfill all this. So I need to hire I need to bring people on. And of course, being young, being crazy, just making sales and doing marketing and getting good results, I was like, oh, I'll just bring people on and, and we'll deliver, and not really paying any attention to like capacity, to the throughput to like, properly, probably like quality assurance, all this sort of stuff that I just started like bringing on team and I had at one point, like a ton of different people had to expand and get a new office, because we had so many people coming on board. This is great. And then I had a good friend and mentor of mine, who was like one of my first ever marketing mentors, and he sat me down and he's like, do you see like, are you aware of the problem you have in your business right now? And I was like, do I need more sales? Like just like, should I be selling more? And he's like, no, no, he's like, are you looking at the capacity that your team has? The the price that you're charging, and like what the profit and the margin is that you have left at the end of the day? And I was like, when you say looking at like, how do you like, what do you what do you mean, I was like, of course, I pay attention. And I have like, money in the bank. And he's like, let's look at it. Let's break this down. Look at it all. And let's see what everyone's doing. Like everyone used to track, they still do, they track their time pulling their reports. And I was like, what we're doing what we're charging, were severely over capitalize on stuff. Because I was just bringing people onto this last night, I made this, this easy. And then we have a little bit of like, quiet month or two. And then I'm like, I had so many people, and we're not really doing. Like, we don't have that much of a volume of work. But everyone seems busy. And like this kind of doesn't really make sense. So when I went through it all I was like, Alright, great, I have to basically let go off in probably a two week period, at least for people, at least for me, the buyers that I had, like, lined up doing work here, here, they're everywhere. And I was like, okay, and then I was like going back over the last quarter. And I was like, well, like my worst investment was in people, not because they were bad people. But because I was just spending too much on those people are not looking at what we're achieving, where our limits are not being like, when we hit this threshold, then I need to bring on another person. Because that's the capacity that we have. It was just like people you can you like buy ads, and you can do Facebook ads on the team salary, language bringing them in, because it was hard to find people when it's too hard to find people in Australia that are good at what we do. And so I had a couple people in the US people here, it was just going ballistic, because I was kind of treating it similarly, like just shooting from the hip with how I did everything else. So for me, it was like that human capital was my worst investment because I didn't need it. And I was paying for it when I really shouldn't have and I should have been more responsible, I should have been more precise, that should have understood my numbers, all things good investors in anything need to do. And that was like the biggest, baddest, hardest lesson.

Andrew Stotz 18:15
And you remember a particular day when you realize I got to cut these guys.

Kim Barrett 18:21
I was coming back from an event in the US. And I was sitting at like a, like an airport. And it was like I think it was in Orlando or something like that. I was sitting at the airport. And I was like, Well, this is really not working. And I was like, Well, the first person to go is going to be the last person that I hired, which was a guy out of Canada, who was a media buyer, just come on board and I was like, I really need to stop and I was alright to like, because for me, I have to like push myself to make things happen. So it was like, Alright, if I have a conversation with him and let him go, then I know when I get back, I've got to have all the conversation with the team in the office, which was much harder, especially because it was like just before Christmas. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I'm gonna be like the Grinch ruining everyone's holidays. So that at the airport, I was like, Alright, I have to do it. So I messaged message him and said, Hey, man, I need to have a chat with you. Give me a heads up. I was like it's not gonna be a fun conversation. For me. It's pretty hard. Because of the way the business is out right now. But let me know when you have five and straightaway. He's like, I'm free right now. I was like, yeah.

Andrew Stotz 19:26
Let's get into it. Yeah.

Kim Barrett 19:27
Okay, let's jump on. And as I look, this is what where things are at, this is the situation, we're going to have to kind of like see our contract with you. And he was really great about it. So he understood from that perspective, he also had his own business on the side, but I think he kind of got it, which was which was good. So that was like the point I was like, I've got to I've got to do something and I have to like push myself over the edge to make sure that I could go so that was it. It was definitely hard but at least I was at a restaurant bar. So as soon as I finished I was like to like one beer and a shot of tequila. Thank you.

Andrew Stotz 19:59
And I'll get on the phone. way. So how would you summarize the lessons that you learned from this experience?

Kim Barrett 20:06
I think it is definitely an it's I mean, it's congruent with any investment or investment strategy, which is understanding really tightly your numbers, and understanding and really diving deep into, like, the capacity that you have. And as long as you have that, then I think that's, that can be effective. Right. So that was really the most important, and I apologize, my camera's flashing red bass. Okay, I hope that won't turn off. But I'm still here with you.

Andrew Stotz 20:34
Luckily, we have a large audio population listening. So maybe I'll share a couple things of what I take away. The first thing is, it's easy to grow costs, it's hard to grow revenues. And this is a great reminder. And you know, talking about that painful moment in the airport, is an important reminder for all of us that, you know, it is real, it is painful if you don't get it right. And also, what I take away is, what's your business model, your friend who talked to you was trying to put together the pieces of your business model. And a good example of that about the business model is I like to use the example of a restaurant. And with a restaurant, what you find is that I have a lot of people that say I'm gonna start a restaurant here in Thailand, and I asked him how many tables and they say 10 tables, okay, and what's your average, you know, amount you're going to earn per table and they say, well, let's say 100 bucks per time that people sit down. All right, so now you've got $100 per table. And that's, let's say, 10, tables, the $1,000. And how many times you think you're going to turn over those tables is a well, it's a, it's a lunch place. And so we're going to turn those tables over once, and there's your $1,000 per day, and you multiply that times 30 days, and now you know, the capacity of your business. That's it. You can't grow any further than that unless you change your business model. So what you remind us all is to look at your business model. And the last thing that I would add is just the idea that it is very hard to find good people. And that means that if you are expanding your team, you're probably adding duds, as well as a couple of good people. So keep that in mind, as you're expanding that you could, the first couple of ones that you add may not add the value that you need to offset, you know, their costs, you know, is able to be covered by the revenue. So you want to be really careful when you hire. Is there anything you would add to that?

Kim Barrett 22:41
No, I think that's that's spot on. And like a friend of mine always said, he's like, the worst investment you'll ever make in a person is an average person. Because great people are great. And you know, and they push and they make getting such good results. Bad people, they're bad, you let them go relatively quickly, average, average, and they sit there and they do average work. And they get average results. And they're not bad. So you don't like immediately let them go. They're not great. So they don't push your revenue. And they just kind of sit in the middle. So he's always he always said to me, he's like unless someone is an eight, or like a seven or eight out of 10. And you want to make them a 10 out of 10. He's like make sure you assess that. Because if they sit average, and you can't help them grow, and they don't want to grow themselves, it's like it's going to be it's not going to play out very well in the long run.

Andrew Stotz 23:27
And ladies and gentlemen, go to Episode 92. I had a great interview with lady named inbox song who was a client of mine many years ago and is a fund manager. But she said something that I just thought was so interesting, which was I'm trying to look for the quote, but I can't find it. But it was something along the lines of good companies die slowly. And what they she meant was that if a company had a lot of cash and all that they could make mistake after mistake and you could just stay in the stock. Well, you know, it's still a good company and all that until eventually it drains you. And it drains itself of all of its cash. And I think that what you're talking about the average person, they can drain you slowly. So based on what you learned from this story and what you continue to learn what action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate? Let's say they were in your same situation when you started.

Kim Barrett 24:23
And you've mentioned a few times on here but it's like it's helping gladness from someone that's been to where you want to get to because I as I said I was young and just i Even though I had mentors, I didn't ask them I just did it because I'll figure it out. Like you know, I asked them for certain things, but it's like, well, if I had done that properly, I could have avoided that problem. Sometimes I can be a bit of like I need to touch the stove to see if it's hot to a person. I'm much better at that now to avoid that. But I think that's just like you know, if you want someone who's successful at investing, it's like and you're not doing you know, of course with view like foolish like do that first avoid all the pitfalls. Have a go and get the people that have done what you want them to do. And then if they tell you avoid this, avoid it. Like, it might sound silly, you'd be like, No, but I think I'm gonna do it differently. It's like, well be prepared for them a little bit of pain, which is what I had to do. And that's what I was like, it's gonna be painful, but it's what I get, because I didn't ask for help, I didn't get the guidance is on me. So it's, trust me, it's as much easier to to make it a little bit less of a roller coaster and a bit more smooth than then to go in and have to deal with all of that. So I implore you guys to do that, for sure.

Andrew Stotz 25:32
Otto von Bismarck said, Only a fool learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Don't be a fool. All right, what is a resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Kim Barrett 25:49
I have two if that's okay. One is the book and one is just some support that we can give. So if you're someone who is new to the world of marketing and advertising, and you do want to grow, one of my favorite books is very old. And please don't sit down and try and read it. It's more like a resource guide. But it's breakthrough advertising by Eugene Schwartz, arguably the number one marketing book in like the history of the world, anyone that you say talk about marketing has been influenced by that book. So many great principles. So that's a definitely a great one being that personal marketing. And if you want, and if anything that I've kind of shared like resonates with you and want to hear like more about our approach and see how we help people and get free resources, training and education. We have a Facebook community where I go live, normally, once a week, sometimes once every two weeks, we share as to share stuff, giveaway resources, all that fun stuff. And you can find that which is just over at www dot join my group.com.au That'll take you straight to the Facebook group. And that's just a place where we like to share all that stuff first. And, you know, we have podcasts and stuff as well we share that. And then just all all tons of fun stuff.

Andrew Stotz 26:58
antastic. And we'll have all that in the show notes, ladies and gentlemen. So get in there, sign up and learn. And I'm just looking at the book on on Amazon. I'll have a link to that in the show notes too, for that resource. Eugene M Schwartz. Interesting. All right. So listeners, there you have it, another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't yet joined the Become a Better Investor Community just go to MyWorstInvestmentEver.com right now to claim your spot. As we conclude, Kim, I want to thank you again for joining our mission. And on behalf of A. Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Kim Barrett 27:47
Stay safe out there, learn lots. avoid mistakes and thank you for having

Andrew Stotz 27:51
me. Fantastic. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying, I'll see you on the other side.