Finding Top Talent: Aaron and Miquella Gaunt's Killer Strategies for Hiring the Best

"Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Collective Clicks podcast. This is another episode in the series with Aaron and Miquella Gaunt from Southern California, who took their business from local to national. With PPC as the primary channel, they were able to do seven figures in revenue just from PPC in their first year. This time, we're going to talk about the marketing decisions they made over this time period to help them get the best quality leads and the most volume of leads possible to grow to that seven figures in revenue.

Aaron, Miquella, I'm super excited to talk with you guys about marketing. Choosing a marketing channel is something we've kind of touched on in a few of the other videos, but I think it's an awesome experience to go deep and talk about how you've done what you've done. Obviously, we work together on this aspect. This is the aspect I'm personally most passionate about and most knowledgeable about, and it's really interesting for me to learn how you view it and why you've chosen to execute on certain elements of your strategy. So anyway, that considered, what are the things that you think about when choosing what marketing channel you're going to go after? Obviously, you have experience with outbound channels like cold calling, texting. It seems like mail's been good to you. PPC, Facebook ads - like what is it that you're looking for?"

Aaron: "Inbound leads, hands down. We want inbound leads for our primary source of revenue now. Obviously, there are different types. I mean, again, a bunch of stuff, but what we want to do, and what I've seen because what our primary business is, is marketing and sales. I know they always say that literally every business is marketing and sales. If I went and we talked about how your business is doing and how you've really did a great job on, let me call it, dominating the space and being a top provider for real estate investors, but it's like, obviously, yes, you are very skilled. Obviously, you have the data to help us get to the next level. That's why we love having you guys as part of our team. But it's also you really got yourself out there. You really marketed your company out there to get yourself known, right? So marketing is huge."

Aaron: "I think if you're going to start any business, you need to be really particular about how you're going to market, who you're going to work with, the market. Obviously, in this case, do you want in-house or, you know, obviously using a marketing agency? But I really, we've been really seeing a lot of good results with your company, and that's PPC and direct mail."

Interviewer: "Okay, now that's helpful. That's helpful to think of. So inbound is primarily what you're looking at, and then you've got a few channels that can fit in there like PPC, SEO..."

Aaron: "Which we need to do. It's the next one."

Interviewer: "Good news is I came here to upsell you today."

Aaron: "There you go. You came to sell something."

Interviewer: "I'll leave with the contract."

Aaron: "Was that a part of the script?"

Interviewer: "Yes, this is the part where you say yes, I will give you more money. So okay, so inbound marketing channels are what you're looking at, and then obviously PPC has been the one that you've chosen to focus on the most, which isn't an unusual choice just considering the inbound nature of the lead. Just a completely different conversation with sellers, which I'm sure is what you've noticed as you've grown to seven figures in PPC revenue over the past year, which is a huge accomplishment. Not a lot of people go that channel alone."

Aaron: "Yeah, yeah."

Interviewer: "Not a lot of people go in like PPC alone as a marketing channel, zero to seven figures in a single year. And there's a lot that plays into that. So yeah, I just want to pick out those different things, and we've changed a lot over this time period about how we're doing things. I know something that we were talking about before is like you've got to have the vision and be willing to give it the time and follow the process, but that doesn't mean that you're unwilling to make changes during that time. You've got to be working on the right things. What are some of the big changes that we've made to the PPC marketing over the past year? Like, us personally, or like what we've seen you guys change?"

Interviewer: "Well, I could probably speak a little better to what we've changed, but unless you notice anything in particular that you really want. But I guess what I'm thinking here is like, budgets are a big factor. Like locations, I know we've made some major changes in terms of that, and that's something I really want to dig into because there's a lot of strategy into like, why do you target this market versus that market and how those different things worked for you. So yeah, there's a lot to unpack there, but like when I think of PPC strategy, I think of two things. So number one, you have the parameters. Parameters are just rules that we have to live within, like we have this budget, we have these markets, this kind of ad schedule, whatever. Those are the parameters. And then you have optimizations, which are like we're adjusting these keywords, or we're changing these bids, or we're going to improve our landing page, we're going to change our ads. When I think of what a business owner needs to know about their marketing, they need to understand parameters, not optimizations. That's why a lot of the changes you'll notice, a lot of the stuff that we talk about together in your marketing, it's all parameter stuff. And the reason is, optimization is that's kind of just what we do. It's not what you have to worry about. But if we're talking about mainly budgets, locations, that kind of thing, what kind of changes have we made?"

Aaron: "Yeah, obviously that's kind of what we look at on our business side because you're going to give us the most high-quality PPC lead there is, right? On the back end, because you know, we've talked about that. You know the difference between, you know, you could have a really cheap PPC lead, but it's not necessarily as qualified as you would want it, you know, regarding negative words, positive words, whatever. And then obviously, the leads that you guys give us obviously have been very fantastic. Now what I see on my end is, you're right, I have control of budget, I have control of kind of like location, and this past year has been definitely a lot of testing, understanding, you know, where do I want... because, and a lot of entrepreneurs, including myself, are going to want to change things and get their hands dirty and mess things up. And that's what my wife would say is, 'You're messing everything up.' Anyway, then I say no, that's what we tell you a few times too."

Interviewer: "We should have had Jeff in this conversation. We could have a little... Where's Jeff? I love that guy."

Aaron: "And so, but no, it's been fantastic because we have... What we want to do is we want to try things out. So when we first, first, first started with you guys, you know, we were doing $10,000, I think, in ad spend a month. I could be wrong, but I think that's what it was."

Interviewer: "I think two, yeah."

Aaron: "And we were just here in Southern California. We got our first deal in like two weeks, gave us a $40,000... I know, I know it's not the... I know you hate me saying that. That's not the message."

Interviewer: "I mean, if you have a good sales process... That was a one-call close, but it happens. But yeah, expectations is a whole... Let's dig into that whole can of worms next. But yeah, continue."

Aaron: "We did, we did, we did. We did have... not guaranteed. Past performance does not guarantee future results. We did have that, and obviously, we... But very just a couple months later, we decided to open up a couple more markets. So we were in Southern California, then we decided to open up Texas, and then we decided to open up everything southern of United States. And we're talking about metro areas."

Interviewer: "Yeah, we did like pretty tight radiuses at first. I remember like we're trying to stay away from anything rural, just keep in the main metro."

Aaron: "And we figured that okay, the idea behind that is okay, if we could get a deal on this metro area, we could move it, you know. We'll be able to dispose of it. Then I decided to open up a lot more metro areas all around the United States, and then I decided to open up states. So I mean, we really went broad, and a lot of changes. And currently, as we're filming this, we're still broad. We, I think we're hitting in like 14 different states, right?"

Interviewer: "Yeah."

Aaron: "And we're doing deals every single day. We're the... because the idea, and every time we strategize is, 'Aaron, if we go this broad, can you dispose of them?' Like, you're asking the right questions to your client to not steer them wrong. You're not just saying, 'Okay, Aaron,' you know what I mean? Like, just do that. You're giving... you're setting the right expectation. Just like your core value said, you're a truth warrior, right? And 110% you're a truth warrior. You're going to tell me the truth on what to expect and what can go wrong. As long as you dispose of them, but sometimes you might even say, 'Hey, I don't know if it's a good idea.' But in the end, you're going to let your client do... kind of like we talked about being a diminisher and letting your client almost have that final say."

Interviewer: "Yeah, right. In some... the best advice you can, but sometimes they have to... they do whatever they want to do, you know."

Aaron: "Exactly. It's kind of like an attorney, right? Attorney's going to give you the best advice. You're paying them for their time, and they're going to give you the advice. You're going to do whatever you're going to do, right?"

Interviewer: "Yeah."

Aaron: "And so anyway, so we decided to open up because what we were looking for is... So, obviously, we made another video where, you know, we were spending up to $330,000 a month. Right now, just this month, we're spending $20,000. The sweet spot has definitely been about $25-30,000. We're... the idea behind that is we're spending about $10,000 per acquisition rep nationwide. So we're at a $94 per lead right now, a nationwide campaign. We have debated on setting up another campaign to go directly into our own backyard, which we might, you know, go up to $15-20,000 per rep. But when it comes to marketing, don't be afraid to spend because, you know, obviously every dollar you put in, you should be getting five to seven back, especially if on the back end everything's set up to get it to the finish line. So when we go into 2024, that's going to be our main focus, and it's going to be to put our dollars into the right marketing machines, ATM, to get those... get that return that we were expecting to get. So and that's going to be, again, PPC and direct mail."

Interviewer: "Yeah. You know, one thing, one way that you're thinking about this that's really positive is you're not thinking about it as, 'Do I want to do a California campaign or do I want to do a national campaign?' You're thinking, 'Well, could we test...' A lot of our clients kind of have like the burn-the-boats sort of mentality where it's like, 'Okay, I was doing this, and now I'm doing this, and then now I'm doing this, and now I'm doing this.' And then like, at some point, everything crashes and burns, and you just don't really know. Was it because I changed the market, or is it because my team stopped working as well? Or like, you don't know what it is. And sometimes, like, there's... marketing's full of good ideas that don't end up working."

Aaron: "Yeah, you have to try them out. Like, if you're going to be in business of any kind of business and be an entrepreneur, you can't be afraid of failure. If you are, you're not... you're not going to last very long. There's big steps we've taken that haven't panned out, but we learn from it, we adjust, and we keep going."

Interviewer: "Yeah, I like to think about it in the terms of asymmetric bets. I'm like the guy that's scared, like I'm conservative. I don't want to... like, you know, there's this... there's this psychological concept of loss aversion that like if you take a dollar away from someone, they're going to be a lot... they could be very unhappy. But if you were to give them a dollar, they'd be happy, but not nearly as happy as they would have been unhappy if they were to lose it. So like, it's the same reason like fear in sales works, for example. Like people are more afraid of like, 'I might not be able to sell my house to someone else' than they are that like, 'I for sure have it here.' Yeah, but anyway, yeah, for me, I just kind of have to like look back at my business and think every single good thing that has come in my business has been through some type of bet that I made. None of them had a 100% guarantee of the results I was looking for, but they were what you'd call asymmetric bets, which means that the upside is larger than the downside, or the expected value of the upside is positive. An example could be marketing. You could say, 'I need to spend $10,000 a month on this marketing campaign for 6 months, and I'm risking $60,000.' A lot of people would stop there, say '$60,000, I'm out.' But then you have to think, what's the downside? The downside is limited. The downside is $60,000. What's the upside? Well, it's that maybe I could figure this out in such a way that I could generate a million dollars in revenue this year in my business. And maybe that would set the stage for me to generate $3-5 million in revenue the next year in my business. And then for a decade, I could get awesome returns and scale this really far. And that's the upside, right?"

Aaron: "Yeah."

Interviewer: "And with an upside like that, risk is very acceptable. I think where I think people go wrong is they don't take enough bets. So they put all their eggs in one basket, or they're just not willing to take those asymmetric bets. They make bets that are like, you know... People are quicker to go buy a lottery ticket than they are to spend $10,000 a month on PPC. Which one has a higher expected value?"

Aaron: "Isn't that crazy?"

Interviewer: "Yeah, but it's just the... it's the world we live in."

Aaron: "I know, it... that's the cool thing about business in general. I'm not going to just say this. I mean, just the fact that you could start a business and I mean, you're just... it's a cash machine that you could create. A cash machine, and wholesale in general, you could create a cash machine. There's always... there's houses. You could always buy them at discounts. Houses are always depreciating every single day, and you're... there's deals everywhere to be found, no matter how many deals... There's still deals. You're going to be a deal finder, you know."

Interviewer: "Oh, absolutely. What would you say your mindset was going into things at the very beginning? PPC?"

Aaron: "Yeah, excited, you know. Because I think that's... I think that's the issue with a lot of new people that try PPC, right? Is they have this high... like, we could shoot these videos, somebody could watch every single video that we're doing, and they're saying, 'I'm going to start PPC tomorrow, and I'm going to make a million dollars,' right? And I think that's where... I think that's where the reality, the expectations kind of get steered wrong because they hear all over social media that PPC is the best marketing channel, which it is. But then if it doesn't work, or if they're not able to close the leads or and get it to the finish line, that it's not a good place to put your marketing. You're going to get... I'm telling you, and this is what a lot of people think, is that I could cold call, I get three cold callers, I get a bunch of leads in the first week. I could spend the same amount on PPC, I get five leads."

Interviewer: "Well, it takes also... or less in one week, right? Sorry."

Aaron: "Yeah, I mean, it takes... expectations, bring it down, you know. One... It takes a lot less leads. I'm not going to say how much, but it takes a lot less leads to get a contract. And that contract could obviously net you a lot. And also, you're going to have better quality conversations. They're reaching out to you. So now you're not... now you're not, you know, banging head against wall against all these leads that are saying, 'Hey, what's your offer? What's your offer? What's your offer?' Right? I'm sure we all been there, been down that road. But now you get to talk to people. Even if they're not a fit, you had a great conversation with that person because they reached out to you. And hey, if it's not a fit, it's not a fit. You get to go part ways and know peacefully."

Miquella: "I think there's a misconception too that people think that like with PPC, they're just going to all be lay-downs, and they're not. I mean, yeah, there's one-call closes, but there's work that the acquisition has put into that, you know. They've spent half an hour, an hour on a phone, or all day on the phone with them and gotten it to... gotten the contract. And then you still got to put in the work to sell it, you know. I think they may... there may be a just disconnect where they think, 'Oh, they're hot leads, it'll be easy, and we're done.' And they don't... I think they forget that there is still a lot of work you have to do on the back end to make it come to fruition."

Interviewer: "Yeah, I... I totally agree with you wholeheartedly. I also think, my personal opinion, the idea that PPC leads are lay-downs, I think is misguided. I think the fact that they... you can be at 10 leads per contract doesn't mean that you will be at 10 leads per contract. They... you're spot on about that because you have to work them differently, and it takes skill. And like, yeah, maybe they spent an hour on the phone with the seller, and you could call that the work, but what about all the training they've done for six months every morning?"

Aaron: "Exactly, like that's the work, you know."

Interviewer: "Maybe cutting down the trees is easy, but sharpening the saw can be hard, right?"

Aaron: "Right, it's true."

Interviewer: "I like that. What would you say is the best... I guess here's what I'm trying to figure out. I want to... I want to hear this from your perspective. How do you know if a marketing campaign is working or if it's not working?"

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