Behind The Revenue

Chad Kodary (00:01.674)
Hey, what's going on everybody today? We have Kevin Anton on for another episode of behind the revenue. Uh, Kevin, thank you so much for joining us today. Um, if, if you can just give a quick intro, tell, uh, tell the audience who you are, what you do.

Kevin Anson (00:18.001)
Yeah, thanks for having me. So we do video ads. So we do primarily video ad creatives. And I've been producing videos myself since 2004. So it's been a while. And about seven years ago, I got into advertising after having the good fortune of working with Russell Branson and started to learn everything that I possibly could about marketing, human psychology. And then I took my video skills and mixed that with marketing skills and

really just kind of changed my journey into making video ads. And so yeah, we've produced thousands upon thousands of ads over the last 20 years.

Chad Kodary (00:59.286)
me ask you a quick question. What is it? I know you said you worked directly with Russell Brunson. Um, a lot of people I've been to probably, you know, five funnel hacking lives. We actually have a funnel builder. We just launched a funnel builder inside of dash clicks. So very familiar with the world of funnels. Russell Brunson, I've learned so much from him. What is it like working directly with him?

Kevin Anson (01:18.281)
So in the beginning, it was really cool. I mean, it was like we were talking every single day on Voxer, we were, you know, I was making videos, sending them directly to him. I was sending my invoices to him. You know, this is seven years ago. And ClickFunnels was still really well known at the time. He had published two books and he's just an amazing guy. I got to go out to Boise, hang out in the offices. I've got, went out there multiple times. And he's just, he's just like, I can sit, when I call someone,

somebody that I can get along with, I call him a bro. I'm like, he's a total bro. Like he really is. He's just, he's down to earth. He says, dude, he doesn't cuss, you know, but he's a, he's just a cool guy. Like you can hang out with him and shoot the crap. And he's just, yeah, I mean, to this day, I talk to him every once in a while now, but every time I do, he's just a really good father, entrepreneur. I consider him a friend and yeah, he's a great guy.

Chad Kodary (02:12.982)
When Russell Brunson comes up to you and asks you for a video, is he giving you specific instructions? Does he know exactly what he's looking for or are you guys just taking the creative angle and creating your own videos?

Kevin Anson (02:25.097)
Typically when we work directly with Russell and he wants us to create a video, he usually will write the script or give some sort of direction on it because, you know, he's master copywriter. But when we work with ClickFunnels, we're working with their team. And so we have the opportunity to write the scripts ourselves, come up with the concepts. We'll just analyze their landing page, maybe look at their VSL, download their VSL, put it in, you know, take that VSL and turn it into ads. So there's a little bit more freedom on that because we've

done it so many times so we know how to write copy, we know how to come up with the right angles and things like that but yeah, there's a difference between working with Russell and working with ClickFunnels.

Chad Kodary (03:03.554)
Fair enough. I also want to ask a question because on this podcast, I like to ask selfish, selfish questions for myself, because I personally, I want to know the answers to these things, like I'll give you a quick example, like for us, we run a bunch of Facebook ads, primarily Facebook and Instagram is really majority where most of our ads been, um, and then maybe a little bit on YouTube for like remarketing and stuff like that.

What are you seeing right now in the video creation world that is absolutely crushing it for let's just say Facebook and the IG, like what type of video formats.

Kevin Anson (03:41.329)
Well, we have like eight different ad types that we look at. I mean, we have frameworks for our ads, so we're not guessing anymore in regards to what types of ads we're creating. But typically it is, you know, the ones that, you know, they usually have a spokesperson, you're usually...

demonstrating, especially if it's for software, you're demonstrating how the software works, you want to talk about people's objections, because everyone has them. It's like they think that it won't work for them because it takes too much time, costs too much money, it's not going to work for their specific situation, things like that. And so, you know, I mean, that's a tough question to answer, because every business is different. There's different offers, there's different ways that you have to speak to your people. Some businesses do really well when you pull out your smartphone and you're sitting in your car.

and you record an ad that way. Other businesses do better when you create a more highly polished ad that looks more professional because people are judging you upon how high of a quality your video ad is. So I mean, yeah, it's just it's just very as I can't give one answer and say this is going to work across the board. But I would say that it's nice. It's good. It's good idea to try both. So try a high quality one and try, you know, an or we call them UGC ads where it looks more of like something that somebody made in the garage on their smartphone. So trying both is good.

Chad Kodary (04:48.694)
So.

Chad Kodary (05:01.538)
So let's take a look at our, our ads framework. Cause I want to dive deeper into this cause I think it'd be fun, especially for the, for the marketing guys out there. Um, so right now, we just started a brand new, uh, Facebook campaign, uh, or kind of like a new strategy framework type thing. Uh, we started about three or four weeks ago and the way that we're doing it is we split it up into four buckets. So we have our first bucket, which is our, basically we just call it cold, uh, cold, warm, hot, and then remarketing would be the fourth bucket. So there's four buckets split up.

In the first bucket, we're basically creating just educational ads, right? And for us at dashvex, we do white label fulfillment and we have a software company for marketing agencies, right? So we're targeting marketing agencies. So the first bucket, we're really just educating people and warming them up. And we're doing video views, uh, as the conversion, right? Uh, so we're not no CTAs. We're not doing anything like that. It just warming people up. And then in the hot bucket, we are, uh, or excuse me, the warm bucket.

Uh, we're doing slight CTAs where we're kind of mixing it in, but we're still doing, we're not directly telling people, Hey, click the link below. It's kind of like indirectly. Um, and then in the hot bucket, this obviously we're going straight for, you know, offers, uh, telling people basically to sign up, schedule a call. Uh, and then in the remarketing, obviously it's people who visit our website, right? Uh, didn't sign up or didn't schedule a call and just hitting them in the remarketing campaign. And what I'm seeing is for every different one of these different buckets,

we're creating like different style videos, right? Um, and for the first bucket for, by the way, have you, I know a lot of, um, a lot of people use very similar strategies like this, where we're just, you're essentially warming up and creating your own audience, creating almost your own level of fame in a way where you're just, when somebody logs in, you're literally there. Every time they log into Facebook and Instagram. Um, my question for you is like in this specific type of strategy, like,

when you're bringing on, let's say a client who's running a similar strategy like this, how do you go about it from like the video ads creation? Are you, like, is your agency, is your company, are you guys the one that are actually going in and writing all of the scripts, creating the actual videos, plugging them into the Facebook ads manager? Like how deep do you guys get with that?

Kevin Anson (07:14.741)
So we only go as far as delivering the video creatives. And so once the videos reach the ad buyer, that's when our job ends, but we do have ad buyers that we work with. But yeah, the creative process is analyzing the person's landing page, having them tell us a bunch of stuff about their ideal customer client, and figuring out like what makes them tick, right? Like who are they, male, female, how old are they, where do they live, things like that, what are their pains, desires, all that stuff. And then we will...

look at one of our ad types, whether it's like you mentioned educating and that's one of our ad types, it's like the educator ad, right? So you're educating people on things that your software, not necessarily what your software can do, but it's like, educating them on like marketing principles or like things that you know, they could be doing in their business. And then you type tee it up with like your software, oh, yeah, our software can actually help you with that. Right. So you're creating that little segue or demonstrator ads, right? There's so many different features that your software has.

and people don't know about it, they don't know how it works. They can visit your landing page, but they still won't really understand how it works without booking a demo with you. And some people don't want to do that. So when you can tie that stuff into the video ad where it's like you talk about one specific feature, it's like, look, this feature we have in our software, you can automatically, I don't know, chat with people over text message or something like that. And you show the feature, explain how it works inside of a video ad, and you're just hitting them with multiple features. I mean, if you look at a

a software like, I don't know, like Kajabi, because I have them up on the screen, they've got hundreds of features. And so there's a lot of things that their software does that people don't know about. So you could create 2050 different ads, like just tackling different features, and you put those out on the internet as ads. And then there's this that one video that someone sees like, Oh, my gosh, I didn't know that it could do that. That's so cool. I'm signing up right now. Like that's the one objection that they have.

Chad Kodary (09:06.498)
So I want to dive deep into what you just said. So you, so like especially for business owners, like myself, I'm the one creating a lot of the ads here at Dashworks, right? It's usually my face a lot of the times or me creating the education, the materials, the videos, whatever it is, right? Business owners, uh, like me and you, we get sick of creating ads. It's, it's very cumbersome to jump in front of the camera and start creating ads. And, and obviously AI is coming into the mix now, especially with videos and stuff like that.

I'm going to leave that for a little bit later on in the conversation. But my question for you is let's say that specific strategy where you're like, Hey, like dash flicks, we have tons of features, right? We have hundreds of features. Would you recommend us to go out and create like loom videos? Cause I've seen people create loom videos. And then I see people take loom videos and actually create full blown like videos with like overlays and effects and all that stuff. Like what are you seeing work better right now, especially for software companies? Is it like the super raw videos where it's like, let me just

whip open a quick three minute loom video and show you this awesome, cool feature and the software, or am I like professionally shooting this or professionally editing it post production?

Kevin Anson (10:12.653)
ones that we do, we do a lot of videos for software companies, we will do a screen recording, and then we will make it more fun to watch. Because if you sit there and record a loom recording for five minutes, and you go through a feature, it's just I guess it's just not our style. A lot of people I don't feel like, you know, they don't like to watch that and sit through it. And that's something that they really, really need. And they need to know how it works. But yeah, we're very

precise and like what the messaging is saying, the screen recordings that we're showing on the screen, we're having big bull text overlays that are pointing out different features and how the simplicity of it and the speed of it, all the things that are like breaking down objections, excuse me, in people's heads. So yeah, we like to do a little bit more of the highly produced ones versus the simple ones. We just don't do those.

Chad Kodary (11:01.45)
Yeah, fair enough. And what like, let's say for a business owner like myself, I needed to shoot that video from you. What would you need for me? What assets would you need for me in order to get for you guys to be able to produce that?

Kevin Anson (11:11.909)
Really all we need is sometimes the client will just give us a login to the software and we can click around and figure it out ourselves. But yeah, we would just need a script from you. Well, we'll write the scripts, but we'll send you the script and then you record it. And if you want to just do a voiceover in your microphone, we could do that. We could use that as your voice. Or if you want to show up on camera, we could put you in the little circle on the bottom left or whatever. So we see your face. But yeah, that's all we need is a recording from a client and then we're off to the races.

Chad Kodary (11:41.806)
And I know obviously this is probably also somewhat of a generic question, but what are you seeing like video length as we try to keep it under one minute? Or does it really depends on the video? What are you seeing now?

Kevin Anson (11:53.509)
Our sweet spot right now is between 45 to 90 seconds. And so that's just the type of ads that we do very rarely. Are we creating an ad that's over two minutes? That's just what we've fallen into what we've seen to work. We've noticed that, um, anything over two minutes, just as an unnecessary, unless you're really breaking down a complex process that people need to understand how it works, then you can get into stuff a little bit longer, but our sweet spot 99.9% of the time is between 45 to 90 seconds.

Chad Kodary (12:23.074)
Fair enough. All right, let's jump into AI because AI, especially, um, in the last couple of podcasts we did, um, it's trending right now. Pretty heavy. Um, I'll give you a fun. So I did a fun little, uh, little project the other day. I told you before, I said, I, I get sick of sitting in front of the camera and creating ads, right? I, it's not fun for me, um, to, to sit and create ads all day. I, especially when there's a thousand other things that I need to do, right.

So for me, um, I went out and I went to a company called Hey, Jen, which you might maybe probably be familiar with already. Um, and I went out, basically cloned myself and started, went, went to Hey Jen, I'll walk you through the process. Right? So I went, I went to Hey, Jen, um, created a, an avatar myself. And then I also fine tune the avatar as well. I had to pay like 70 bucks or something a month, whatever they fine tune it. They make it just sound better. Lip sync is better. Right. Then I went to chat GBT.

I created a script because at this point, if I was going to do it, I was going to really try to replace myself. Right. So I needed to create a whole process out of it. Went to chat GBT created scripts using obviously you know going back and forth with prompts and stuff to create really good style scripts that sound like me.

Chad Kodary (13:48.906)
but it just wasn't there yet. Like you can tell that it's AI, right? Um, what are your thoughts? I mean, I know that, I mean, the reality is these things are only going to get better. They're not going to get worse, right? So like six months, 12 months, like they're going to get it down to the point where like humans don't even need to create videos anymore. Like what's your thought process on this? How do you think that this might affect your, maybe your business or your video production? Um, you know, what's, what's in your mind?

Kevin Anson (14:00.373)
Sure, sure.

Kevin Anson (14:19.037)
For me, whenever I see a video that looks like it was generated on AI, specifically HeyGen, I can tell that it's AI and it immediately discredits the company that is showing the ad. I don't care how good the product is and how much I need it. It just shows that they are cutting corners. It feels lazy to me. I've seen a few ads like that.

Kevin Anson (14:46.993)
my team or share it with other people and like check out this video. You can tell that it's AI and it just is not it doesn't feel good to me at all. So I

Chad Kodary (14:55.062)
That's why, by the way, as a side note, we didn't publish the video that we created. Yeah, because it was just it wasn't mean and I felt the same way. But, but, but I will say one thing, I will say that in six to 12 months, I mean, these companies are just going to get better and better and better. Right. And I feel like a company like Hey, Jen, as an example, they're there in the video world, they're, you know, their goal is for you to replace yourself so you can create video content without actually physically having to be there.

Kevin Anson (14:59.305)
Yeah.

Kevin Anson (15:09.381)
Oh yeah. For sure.

Chad Kodary (15:24.354)
How do you think that that's going to affect video production? Like we know that AI in the last 12 months has replaced content writers, right? Has replaced copy or a lot, right? In, in, in a lot of industries. Now we see AI coming out with like, I think like air.ai and like all these other companies that are eventually, right? Uh, probably going to replace customer service and things like that. Right? Like what are you seeing?

as the future of AI for video. Have you done any research on it? Have you, have you seen anything that's alarming to you for your business?

Kevin Anson (15:59.681)
Not necessarily. I think that it still has a long way to go. And it's a useful tool to help you get ideas and to kind of go from having a blank page to like, okay, now I have some ideas, I have some little snippets that I could use in my script. But when I sit down and write a script, I 100% write it with my own brain. I might go into chat GPT, like I said, to get ideas to get just something to push me along a little bit. But

Whenever I'm writing a script and I'm using AI, I'd say I'll probably use 20% of it and then the rest of it's from me. So I think I think it's amazing for sure. And if it gets to a point where people can get away with using it where it's a live human talking to the camera, and no one ever notices then that's just that's just the game. I mean, that's how that's how it's going to go. And I think that you know, if you can't tell

Chad Kodary (16:51.51)
Yeah. I think if I mean, it's only a matter of time, right. Um, I like, you know, if you, if you rewind back and you think about the AI that we have right now, right. Where even like where Hey, Jen is and chat, she between all that stuff. Like if you're on, you know, three years back, people would have thought you were crazy that there were, there would be something like this, right? Like even I, it's shitty as, as the video was from Hey, Jen, I still sent it to everybody. I posted it on social media because I was actually amazed.

Kevin Anson (16:55.742)
Oh yeah.

Chad Kodary (17:20.618)
by the technology, right? That it was outputting. Um, but I think that I, I really do strongly feel that in like a year there, like these AI companies are going to be fine tuned so well. It's going to be scary.

Kevin Anson (17:34.417)
Oh, I agree. I'm sure it'll get to that point pretty quickly. And yeah, I mean, even going back to the current people who are using it for their ads, I mean, all it takes is one comment on your ads, somebody calling you out saying that it's AI. And that's just it's almost like a bad review. In a way, it's just like discredits you so bad. Like, I mean, it's almost like you have to go in there and keep deleting comments if you want to keep that stuff clean. But yeah, for now, it's not there. But I'm sure it will get there and no one's gonna notice.

And I've seen people do it with their organic content as well. And I can tell right away because it's the way that it like blinks. It kind of blinks the same way every time. And you just know you're like, this is AI. And then people are, you know, slamming that person in the comments. And it just it doesn't it feels disingenuine. But yeah, we'll get there. It's just like I said, it's the game that we play. And if we can get away with it to buy our time back, then I mean, it's not going to stop people from doing it. So.

Chad Kodary (18:29.662)
Yep. I agree. So, so next, next topic that I have, I see that you also recently spoke at funnel hacking live, which I think is so awesome and so cool. Can you walk me through the journey of you even getting the chance to do that? Like, what is it like? Like, do they reach out to you? Do you reach out to them? What is it? I know you obviously have, uh, past experiences with Russell, right? So I'm sure that definitely helped.

But like, what was that like? What do you, what, like what type of credentials do you need to get on that stage and then what was it like also after what was like, you know, speaking in front of 5,000 people, did it help you? Did you get more exposure? You're following girl on social media. Did you get more business? Right. Can you walk me through that? Cause I'm curious about it. I'm sure a lot of people are also curious.

Kevin Anson (19:16.657)
Yeah, getting asked to speak at Funnel Hacking Live isn't what I've learned. Isn't one of those things where you apply for it or you send them gifts in the mail to bug them to put you on stage. It's just one of those things that just has to happen. And lucky for me, I'm in that sort of niche where it fits into his plan with people that he needed to go on stage to speak on particular topics because he has it all orchestrated in his head a year in advance. And he's like, okay.

I need somebody to fulfill this piece and this piece and this piece. It's like, okay, Kevin Anson talks about video ads and, um, you know, that, that fits into our plan perfectly. And so, yeah, it's a message that I got from Russell himself. He's the one he reaches out to people. He'll create a loom recording and he'll just send it to a bunch of people and say, Hey, I want you to speak on stage. This is my way to speak about, are you interested? First of all, if you are, here's the next steps. And so, um, yeah, it was, I mean, I could get into.

Chad Kodary (19:48.439)
Wow, really?

Kevin Anson (20:14.049)
all the details leading up to it. It was a really, really cool experience. I was nervous as hell for months leading up to it. Probably didn't even really work on my presentation or sit down fully committed to the presentation until it was about a month out because I just didn't really know what I wanted to specifically talk about because there's so much you can share but you only have 15 minutes on stage or 20 minutes or whatever they allot you. And so I was...

Chad Kodary (20:20.243)
I'm sure.

Kevin Anson (20:42.729)
changing my slides in my hotel room the night before. Yeah, cause I was like, oh no, I should probably take that out or put this in. So I've never spoken on stage in front of 5,000 people before I think the most people I spoke in front of was, you know, 25 people or 50 people at my brother's wedding. And so it's like huge step up, right? But I think it's just one of those things where if you're not uncomfortable, you're not growing, right? And I knew that going into it. It's like, I want to do this, even though

Chad Kodary (20:45.558)
The night before.

Chad Kodary (21:00.158)
Bye.

Chad Kodary (21:08.643)
Oh yeah.

Kevin Anson (21:10.713)
my subconscious is telling me, don't do this, it's a terrible idea, you're going to fail. But I wanted to. I wanted to overcome that hurdle. So it was really, really cool. And then afterwards, it was amazing. You went from walking through the hall in Funnel Hacking Live and there's thousands of people in the halls, no one really knowing who you are, like a few people here and there. But afterwards, it was just you're...

Chad Kodary (21:24.426)
The aftermath.

Kevin Anson (21:40.005)
you have like a temporary celebrity status where you walk through the hall and people are like, Oh, I saw your presentation. That was amazing. Can I get a picture with you? Or, you know, can you send me some more information about how I can work with you? Things like that. And so yeah, I had the notes app just full of people on my phone that I needed to follow up with afterwards. And yeah, I made like a ton of what's that? Yeah, we booked a lot of business for a minute. And it's still happening. To this day, people are signing up with our agency.

Chad Kodary (21:59.611)
You book a lot of business from it?

Kevin Anson (22:07.657)
who saw me speak on stage, you know, that was what, four months ago now. And so it was cool. Yeah.

Chad Kodary (22:12.822)
Dude, speaking helps tremendously. I have a fun story that I'll tell that kind of relates to this was just pretty funny. So first and foremost, when I started dash likes like six years ago, I was like the biggest introvert I didn't like if you put me in the room full of people, I didn't want to speak to anyone. Like I was always that guy and they were like, he's an asshole. I'm like, I'm not an asshole. I just like I'm shy. I don't want to speak to anybody. Like I just stay quiet and I listen right.

Um, then my team was like, all right, we should start doing webinars. Like we need to like start getting some exposure. Let's start doing webinars. We'll start doing podcasts. Um, and then I remember we, this is probably like a year after we launched, right? So we were, we were taking off pretty good. Um, I was like, all right, screw it. We'll do a webinar. Like I've never done a webinar before. I'll try it. We signed up for zoom. We did web. We did our first webinar. I think there was like 180 people that registered for the webinar and maybe like half the people showed up. So it was like my first time speaking.

really like, especially in like this remote environment, um, where it's a webinar and the chats blowing up. And there's like, I don't know, like what are 90 a hundred people on. Right. Um, and then after that, I kept doing the webinars, right. I would do them weekly and I did that for a year straight. I did like 52 webinars in one year, every single week. I think it was like every Tuesday at 1 p.m. I would do a webinar. I was live doing a webinar because I was like, all right, if I'm going to do it, it's gotta be like a consistent thing. I have to do it. We got it to the point where every time we did a webinar

we would get like eight, 900 registrations. And like, there was like four or 500 people alive on the webinar and a couple thousand people watching the replays every single time. Right. So like one for listeners out there, like consistency is key, like just keep doing the same thing over and over and over and it'll start growing. But one of the funny, what, one of the things that happened was relating to your story is as I'm doing these webinars, a lot of the times throughout those 52 webinars, I would bring on.

Kevin Anson (23:46.357)
Dang.

Chad Kodary (24:05.318)
special guests who would do like a co webinar where they would talk about like a specific strategy, right? Or a specific, you know, topic in the industry, whatever it is, right? And we would call it influencer secrets. It was like the guys that had the big followings and the big fame, we would bring them on and their audience would come on and what, right? So it was a way for us to also get into their audience and tap into their audience is really cool. But then what happens is you become friends with those guys and then those guys invite you to come speak to their events. So I, I remember, um, one time I spoke at Ryan Steumann's event.

This was a while back. Um, and this was, I don't know, maybe like four years ago, right. And he flew me out, uh, to Texas to speak at one of his events. There was a couple hundred people there. Uh, and I remember leaving and we booked a lot of business. And I think like, this was like a month and a half ago, I remember looking at our Stripe account and in Stripe, uh, you can basically see your customer list and you see who spent the most money with you. Right. Um, and that guy, the one guy that I met at

the Ryan Stumann event was one of the people that spent the most money with us in the last four years. It was over six figures that he spent with us. Right. So it just goes to show you that these, these events, like you don't realize it because a lot of the time it's not like instant, right? Where you're like, you're leaving, like you sign up 10 people. But like you said, like even till now, people are still coming up to you or you know, those, those businesses grows and then turns into referrals, right? There's so many good things that happen from speaking. That's why I'll be honest with you.

Kevin Anson (25:11.657)
Yes.

Chad Kodary (25:33.054)
My secret motivation for this podcast is to get new users for our company, right? Is to get the following is to get the exposure, right? And that's really what it's all about. Even now. I'm like, before I jumped on with you, I'm working on our webinar schedule for 2024, and we're going to do the same exact thing this time. I'm not doing 52. I'm going to cause it was too intense. I'm doing half that. So every two weeks we're going to be doing a live webinar because they really help.

Every time after I do a live webinar, revenue increases instantly within 24 to 48 hours for those specific days, right? So we get huge spikes. So speaking is great. And I haven't, I think the biggest stage that I spoke on.

live in front of people was maybe like 400 people, but webinars that we've done challenges and stuff. We recently did a funnel freedom challenge, which was pretty cool. Um, and there was like maybe 800 people there agency. So like remote settings, but 5,000 people, I would probably shit my pants. Um, like 5,000 people is a lot of people. Um, w like when you, how's it like, like within like a minute of you jumping on the stage, is it like total chaos?

where it's like they're miking you up and like you're behind the stage and like, or you like chill back there like, what's it like, before jumping out onto the stage and like the doors open and all the smoke flies out.

Kevin Anson (26:53.87)
Yeah, and I'll say like what you all the stuff that you were just saying right there, I completely agree getting yourself out there, putting yourself out there, even if it's uncomfortable and doing it forcing yourself to do it's uncomfortable. But the exposure that you get over time, it starts to build 100% agree with that. But yeah, leading up to going and speaking on stage, I was surprisingly like the moments before I was about to go on, I was super calm.

And I don't know if it's because I was just telling myself that and I was like, breathing and just trying to like, you know, calm myself down. I wasn't really nervous anymore. I think it was just cause I was like, okay, I came this far. I'm already here. I'm not backing out now. Like we're doing this thing. Plus like, honestly what helped me was they do what's called a, um, uh, I'm going to forget the name of it, but they do like a walkthrough, right? So the morning of you get to go up on stage.

mic check, that's what they call it. So they mic you up and they test just to make sure that you sound okay and all that. And so you're able to pace back and forth on the stage. You get to see where your slides are gonna be because there's like eight different monitors across the stage that only you can see. And you look out and it's just empty chairs and you just think like, okay, well, everyone here wants me to succeed as much as I want them to succeed. Like we're in this together and.

Chad Kodary (27:50.67)
Yeah, that's cool.

Chad Kodary (28:04.043)
Yeah.

Kevin Anson (28:18.129)
It just there was like a calming effect there and it made me feel more comfortable as opposed to if you're just to go out on stage and you had never been out there before. Never step foot on that carpet. It was it was just a lot better. Haven't been able to go through that. But yeah.

Chad Kodary (28:20.558)
That's cool.

Chad Kodary (28:34.562)
That's awesome, dude. Well, congratulations to you on that. Uh, that's definitely a huge milestone. So big win for you. And I'm assuming definitely your business too. Um, a lot of good exposure for you. So w you know, rolling, we're rolling into 2024 now. Um, what's, what's your goals for this year? Like what, what do you want to see at the end of 2024 for Kevin Anson and ads on fire?

Kevin Anson (28:46.046)
Thank you.

Kevin Anson (28:57.993)
So the goal this year is to build a few more things. Number one is the agency, so creating video ads for people. We are running ads right now, and I spent three days building funnels, getting it ready for ads, making some video ads of my own, and getting it live. Yeah, yeah, so.

Chad Kodary (29:18.798)
So you're using your own products.

Kevin Anson (29:23.645)
building that, so like building the marketing system to make sure that we can get clients in, get clients on calls, enclose more retainer clients, things like that. And then the second thing is I'm launching a new version of my video formula, which I sold in 2021 right after the pandemic hit. So I'm gonna be doing probably like, somewhere between like a 497 and 997 price point on that. And I'm really, really ramping it up, like just,

Chad Kodary (29:52.438)
that a course to show you how to show you how to create videos. What is that? What I'm assuming that what that is.

Kevin Anson (29:57.177)
Yeah, it's a course that talks about the 10 ingredients that we always think about when we're creating ads, and then the 10 ad types. So there's different ingredients that go into different ad types. And so I already have this course, I've taught it. It's inside of Russell Brunson's inner circle. So all of his members have access to it right now. But I was just looking at it getting feedback from people and I'm like, this can be so much better. There's so much stuff that I can dive into more specifically chat GPT, even though I just said

Chad Kodary (30:01.998)
cool.

Kevin Anson (30:24.573)
that I don't really use chat GPT. But like for a lot of people who don't understand copywriting, and they've never done this type of thing before, like they need to know like a starting point, like if I tell chat GPT this, like, what can I say inside of my video ad, so I'm gonna show them how to build out their own video scripts using my formulas. And then

Chad Kodary (30:44.938)
All the inputs, basically you're, you're creating all the inputs using chat. You'd be too cool.

Kevin Anson (30:48.081)
Right, right, exactly. And so it's not gonna be perfect, but it's gonna get them to at least 80% of where they need to go to make sure that they're saying the right things in their videos. So yeah, so those are two of the biggest things that I have for this year, growing the agency and launching the new course. And I'll tell you this, for anyone listening, anytime that I'm struggling as an entrepreneur, if I look at what I've been doing,

and my revenue is dropping, it's because I haven't built anything in a while. I swear, like every time I build something that goes out into the world, whether it's a course, putting video content out there, a new email sequence, you know, an article, a new website, like whatever it is, building things is the number one thing that you can do as an entrepreneur to grow your business. Like I can't tell you, even if it doesn't work or if it fails or if it just isn't right the first time,

Chad Kodary (31:23.746)
Hmm.

Kevin Anson (31:48.333)
Any like anytime that I've struggled is because I haven't built things. When the pandemic hit, my agency business completely tanked for about three to six months. We had no clients in because everyone's freaking out in the world. Like there's this huge pandemic happening. That's when I built my video formula course. I spent probably three, four weeks building that thing, worked my tail off on it. And then I sold it to three thousand people. And then I was able to get, you know, one of those awards for it. And so.

Chad Kodary (32:15.946)
Nice.

Kevin Anson (32:16.665)
And then that, fast forward a couple years later, Russell asked me to speak on stage. Had I not built that course and didn't spend the time to do it, like I probably wouldn't even be talking to you. I wouldn't, like all these things wouldn't have happened. Like it's just propelled my business so many different ways. So building.

Chad Kodary (32:34.07)
You know what I've realized when you built things just to piggyback off that, um, not only does revenue increase why agree with you a hundred percent or like 100,000% especially when we launch new products, especially if you're launching new products into an existing client base. Like obviously you're going to see spikes for sure. But for me, what happens is momentum. Like the momentum for me goes insane. It goes through the roof. Like if I'm actively creating new things. So like.

Kevin Anson (32:48.745)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Kodary (33:00.226)
I'll give you an example. My role here at dash clicks has definitely shifted over the last six years. Like at first it was, you know, I was like in it, like I was basically in everything. Like I was in customer service. I was in, I was building the funnels. I was in marketing. I was in sales. I was doing literally everything in almost every department. Um, now, you know, obviously our team size a little bit bigger. We're about 80, 80 to 90 people full time right now at dash clicks. So that.

It allowed me to step back basically and really focus on the things that I like to do. Um, I catch myself primarily 90% of the time in marketing. So I'm dealing with the marketing and the sales for the company, like the front end, uh, the front end aspect of the company. Um, and for me, like I, what I do is I, I basically call it projects. I just work on projects all day. So like, I'll be like, okay.

I'm like, I'm like, just recently I'm like, I'm going to redo the product tours for our software and this is going to be like a four day project that shoot a bunch of videos, right? Create copying all this stuff and it just becomes a project. And what happens for me is every time I release a project, they get like dopamine that literally hits my brain and I'm like, wow. And I just keep going and like these projects, like for me, that's my euphoric moments is when I complete projects, I push them off. I start gaining momentum.

And the momentum for me, what happens is as I start gaining momentum, the revenue goes along with it for like, it happens every single time it happened. Also in dash fixed where we built, we were in the process of building our new software, so we went from version one to version two, kind of similar to like what ClickFunnels, uh, just recently did, or, you know, there's a bunch of other softwares that transition, right? We stopped writing new code on V1 of dash flex and we literally built started coding V2. So you can imagine how.

Kevin Anson (34:26.729)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Kodary (34:49.586)
Insane of a project that is to just stop something that's been running for like four years and build up completely new version of it from scratch It's insane For two years. I basically locked myself in my office and I didn't do any webinars. I didn't do any lives I wasn't basically doing I was just working on like this one project. That was literally I have this massive whiteboard In my office. I was just drawing on the whiteboard sending it to the developers drawing on the whiteboard sending to the developers, right?

Kevin Anson (34:57.586)
Yeah.

Chad Kodary (35:17.166)
And that was the worst two years of my life because our business literally tanked. Um, it was horrible because we, we had no momentum. There was nothing happening and I will never let that. I told myself, I'll never let that happen again. Like I will always be building. In fact, for 2024, my goal is to focus on community. Right? So like I've been like, as you, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, start detaching yourself from your customers.

What ends up happening is you start losing the community because you are the community. Right. So for me, my goal for 2024 is to get back into the community. Like we just opened a brand new school group and shifting all of our, our live members. We have like 7,000 people in our Facebook group, shifting whatever's live or alive in there over into our school groups. And the last couple of days we poured over like 500 members in there and I'm just active in there. I'm posting, we're posting videos, we're posting content. Uh, we started obviously this new podcast recently,

So podcasts are going to be dripping once a week, and then we're going to be doing webinars every two weeks. So like my face is going to be continuously out. And for me, like this whole, this whole is in my, I'm in my office, right? So I basically, we have a full blown video studio and I told myself, I was like, for me to, and you can probably relate to this and I, I was like, dude, for me to go and shoot a one hour webinar for some reason, take six hours. Why.

Why does it take so like I go into the studio and it's like pre-production. It's like getting set up. Things are not working and we have to start fixing things. And we shoot the webinar, right. And then it's like post cleaning everything. It's like, it was so much of a headache for me. Every time I wanted to shoot a video ad or shoot a podcast. So what I decided to do was I literally took the, some of the equipment and I basically put it into my office and I simplified the shit out of everything. I was like, I was going to get a mic. I'm going to get a headset. I'm going to put some, some

backdrops with a light or whatever. And I'm not even using or any of our 4k cameras or anything like that. I'm using like a link 360 or whatever they call it. Right. And I'm like, dude, now every time I want to shoot a video, I want to shoot a podcast, I want to do a training. I want to do everything. I don't move. I just, the play button, I do it. And when I'm done, I just back to where I'm at. Right. So that was one of the biggest things that allowed me to create a lot of content fast without having to jump into the studio every single time, because it's, it's a lingering, it's chaotic. And I hate it, honestly.

Chad Kodary (37:40.93)
So that's for me, for the listeners out there, if you're, if you're dealing with that, like change the scenery up a little bit.

Kevin Anson (37:41.267)
Yeah.

Kevin Anson (37:47.405)
I totally agree with that. And I've actually been starting to make the same exact move because like I have this green screen back here, and the camera and all that stuff. And I'll set up all the lights and make it look all perfect. And then I'll shoot stuff. But to get to that point where I'm finally shooting something and I'm happy with it and you know, I got my tail prompter set up and all these things. It takes hours to get it set up right. And then like, you know, in the weeks following like the lights get moved around. I have four kids sometimes.

Chad Kodary (38:04.927)
It's crazy.

Chad Kodary (38:15.647)
Yeah, there you go.

Kevin Anson (38:17.245)
you know, things just get messed up, things get unplugged, whatever. And I'm like, oh, my studio just fell apart. And so now I'm doing the same exact thing that you just said. I just bought a green screen that's going to go directly behind me. I'm going to sit right here and go on this camera right here. Like I'm not going to have to move because yeah, it's because I was having a hard, hard time too, where it's like, if I wanted to create social media content, I have to set up all this stuff and it just takes forever. And so, but if I can just sit here, if I'm inspired, I have an idea.

Chad Kodary (38:18.999)
Yep.

Chad Kodary (38:33.814)
It's the best, bro. It's the best.

Kevin Anson (38:45.385)
I'll just flick on my camera where I'm sitting right now, record a video and put it up online, right? And so, yeah, the simpler... Yeah.

Chad Kodary (38:51.35)
It's, it's changed the game for me, man. Like I did this, this set up, I don't know, like less than a month ago, like maybe three, four weeks ago, right. And the first day I sat down, like after I finally get everything set up and built out, I sat down and my, my ads person is like, Hey, we need some videos. I was like, all right, cool. I sat down and shot. It was 18 videos within four hours.

Kevin Anson (39:16.37)
Nice. Yeah.

Chad Kodary (39:17.118)
18 videos within four hours. And then I just continued my day. Right. And I did this yesterday. I came in the morning. He's like, I need more ads for whatever this specific campaign or whatever it is. Five ads shot within like an hour and then went, went on with my day. So it's like for me, what I think the biggest realization that I've been having is once you simplify things, cause people don't care if you're, if I'm in the studio or if I'm here, they really don't give a shit. What they care about is the content and they're here for the value. They don't care what, you know, where I am.

Right. So I just, I'm like, screw it. I'm just going to simplify it and produce more content and make it simpler for myself. Unless chaotic.

Kevin Anson (39:53.573)
Yeah, that's awesome. No, I mean, your setup looks good. I mean, it's not Yeah, it's not like Grant Cardone doesn't look great, right? With all the screens and things going on. But like, doesn't need to. I mean, I think. Yeah.

Chad Kodary (40:01.044)
Yeah.

Chad Kodary (40:05.214)
Yeah, we don't need that. We have that in our studio, but I, I'm telling you, I would rather come in here that if I did this podcast, which is, you know, 30, 45 minutes, if I did this podcast in the studio, it would kill half of my day and half of somebody, one of my employees days, because they're in there in the production room on the cameras and we broadcast using, I don't even know what the front like OBS or something like that, whatever, cause we used to like broadcast and record. Right. So like,

You need somebody there manning the equipment at the same time too. So it's just, it's not worth it for me. It's really not. Unless we do like big events. If we're doing like, like we just did our funnel freedom challenge, which is like, you know, it was like a five day event, you know, 20 speakers or something. Then we set up the whole studio, the lighting, we get all that stuff in there for them if I'm shooting a course, like we just shot a course. So I have, I, we did the, we did the setup where it's like white table, a big white board with a camera like facing down so you can in one camera up front face, one camera up top.

and switching between the two, like just a really cool like vibe, especially for if you're watching it. So like stuff like that, I'll go into the studio for, but 90% of the stuff I shoot, I'm in here. I'm not moving.

Kevin Anson (41:14.961)
Yeah, I love it. Yeah, no, I mean, it's funny. I've shot videos on my smartphone in my office when I had all, even though I have all this nice equipment and sometimes those videos will outperform all the other ones. It's just the craziest thing, so.

Chad Kodary (41:25.566)
Yeah. For the recent challenge that we did our funnel freedom challenge, we did a bunch of ads for it. I must've shot like 15 ads, shot ads with the teleprompter in the studio. Uh, I shot at loom videos. I shot like a bunch of different combination of different ads and the ad that I literally was me walking from my car to the office, just with my phone like this talking crushed all of the other ads, we just raw. It was crazy. It was insane. Maybe it was the demographic we were targeting is like, you know,

up and coming, you know, startup business startups, right? Like people that were like looking to start a business and use funnels, you know, to, to build their business. And, uh, but dude, it crushed it. Like that was the one that took off and we just scaled that out. It was crazy. Um, but yeah, so like viewers, um, don't overcome don't over complex. Don't make it complex. I don't know. Um, don't over confuse things. Just make it simple. Produce content. But anyways, um,

Kevin Anson (42:06.302)
Yeah.

Chad Kodary (42:23.475)
I know we're kind of running out of time here. So Kevin, any last words you'd like to say to the audience here?

Kevin Anson (42:31.153)
No, I think I pretty much already said it not to beat a dead horse. But if you're sitting there wondering why more things aren't happening, just build more stuff. One of my favorite quotes by Eileen Wilder, if you don't know who she is, look her up. She says the offer you don't make no one can take. And that means obviously building more stuff but creating offers out of thin air and

putting them out there to the end of the world. I mean, even if it's like making a Facebook post and asking people, hey, comment if you're interested in this or whatever. I've done that so many times in my business. I did it in December, right? When the holidays were about to hit, I had this idea. I was like, I want to make this course on how to do movie trailer style ads, which is what I, we do all the time in our agency. So I put a course together, made a quick, you know, $10,000 on that. It's just like, it's like, had I not put literally

Chad Kodary (43:28.174)
Throw the throw the hook out. You just have to throw the hook out, man.

Kevin Anson (43:30.169)
Yeah, if I had not put that post on Facebook, then nothing would have happened and I wouldn't have made $10,000. So it's like the things that you're not putting out there are costing you money every single day. So just do more stuff, build more stuff, even if it doesn't work. Doesn't mean you suck doesn't mean your failure. Sometimes they don't work. I mean, I'm sure Chad can say that too. Like things don't work sometimes and that's okay. Yeah, yeah.

Chad Kodary (43:42.126)
I love it, dude.

Chad Kodary (43:51.578)
90% of the stuff we do doesn't work. It's like, but there's definitely a high percentage of stuff that doesn't work. So yeah, I agree with you on that. You just gotta keep iterating. Keep track. In fact, once what's funny is sometimes things that don't work. If you just tweak them, they'll work like crazy. Right? Like one of the best offers that we have that we've been selling for two years, it's a nine 97 product. When we launched it, nobody bought it. And we were like, we're just going to tank it. And then we just started tweaking some of the things that, that basically was in the product.

Kevin Anson (43:57.936)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Kodary (44:20.07)
And we tweak some stuff on the landing page and who we were offering it to. And it's our number one seller. Right. So like, just, just keep, you know, just keep reiterating, trying stuff, tweaking, optimizing. That's what it's all about, man. But anyways, Kevin, uh, thank you so much for having us. Uh, hopefully we'll see you here a few, uh, in the future on the behind the revenue podcast, looking forward, uh, to having you on again here soon and seeing some future growth for you. Um, so all the best to you. Thank you so much. And if the viewers.

Kevin Anson (44:32.359)
Absolutely.

Chad Kodary (44:49.618)
want to reach out to you, where's the best place that they can go.

Kevin Anson (44:52.541)
You just go to my website, www.kevinanson.com or our website for agency is for some reason you have to enter the W's I don't know I got to fix that in my domain settings but www ads of fire.com

Chad Kodary (45:07.966)
Love it, man. Thank you so much guys and everybody have a good day.

Chad Kodary (45:13.523)
Alright, awesome.