Ep 18 | $21M in ONE MONTH | How a Solo Agent closed $21M in July 2023 | with Brian Danney

[00:00:00] JK: You see people get to 10, 20, 30, 50 K a month depending on how it is. So it's a 12 month coaching program and it's four figures a month or five figures a year. Yeah. And we just help you monetize your audit. Some people takes. Two days. Some people take 90 days, some people take a year. But eventually the goal is just to turn your audience into and getting more money from it.

[00:00:20] JK: Not grow it, but make more money from it,

[00:00:23] Lucas: Hello everybody and welcome to the episode of How to Scale and Agency. I'm on with d JK Molina. Thank you JK for being on the show. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having me, bro. So jk, you got a big story recently where you were able to sell tweet Hunter. You made the number publicly in terms of what the sale price was.

[00:00:40] Lucas: So it was around 1.4 million with some potential growth after the fact for owners of the company. It was acquired by LEM List, who I'm very familiar with. So, and I know a lot of people in the community are as well. So jks been great to get you on the show. And feel free to introduce yourself or anyone who.

[00:00:57] JK: Alright, so I'm I'm Lucas' number one fan. I direct the fan club pretty much, you know, but right now I'm just, yeah, so you made the introduction, but I'm co-founder of Tweet Hunter. we just sold it and now I just show people how to monetize their Twitter audience.

[00:01:11] Lucas: Yeah. So let's start with the sale.

[00:01:15] Lucas: And we don't need to go into any details you don't want to go into. This is a very open-ended interview, but I think one thing that. You know, people do wanna know is. If you're going to launch a software product after or during having an agency, which a lot of agencies do, my agency does, and others as well.

[00:01:31] Lucas: When is the right time to do that, in your opinion? if you are gonna launch one and then sell it, is there a point where. You feel it's worth it or you feel like it's a good decision to do so. And then feel free to reflect on your own experience or not, but just like general feedback for people who are thinking of growing and selling an agency or a software product.

[00:01:49] Lucas: Right?

[00:01:50] JK: It depends on which one is gonna make you the most money, I feel. So we disclosed the numbers, and we can talk about this because it's, it's Yeah. Public tutor information. Sure, sure. So 1.4 mil, but the business was making more than a hundred thousand dollars a month. So it's not exactly like it's a one x multiple.

[00:02:04] JK: Right. For what we made in a year, it wasn't exactly like life changing. TiVos and Thomas deal, that's 12 million. , but they need to stay. My deal was 1.4 million, right? Yeah. there were a few reasons why we couldn't steal it further, and the biggest one was, in my opinion, I was doing too much instead of focusing on the thing that was going to make me richest, which was growing.

[00:02:27] JK: Tweet hunter. Exclusively, right? Yeah. So I was just, just right now I had a talk with an agency owner. He was wondering about launching a discord and launching a product and then launching a SaaS, and that works. But as you grow as an entrepreneur, you realize in the beginning, money is your most valuable asset.

[00:02:48] JK: and then time becomes your most valuable asset, and then attention becomes your most valuable asset. So is it worth it launching a silver product now? Well, how much is your attention being put in the right place then as the question, right? So if you look at it in longer time, in like a longer timeframe is which one has the most potential to make you the most money in 3, 5, 10 years?

[00:03:11] JK: Right. And I'll focus just on that. Big reason why I think 300 wasn't, didn't get a bigger multiple or I didn't just keep growing. It is because I diverted my attention where I shouldn't have. So I don't think it's a question of when, I think it's a question of if, if you think that is what your best path to wealth is, do it.

[00:03:31] JK: If not, focus on the agency. Keep

[00:03:33] Lucas: growing it. Yeah, that's really interesting. it seems like we both had like similar experiences this year in the sense that I launched version two of my software and I've been pretty open about this. Because I'm the only developer on the project, I kind of made some mistakes.

[00:03:46] Lucas: I rushed the delivery a little too quick. And things weren't as good as I wished they were. But the big thing is that even though V1 was like growing incredibly fast, and so I think the, the big lesson for me, and it seems like maybe in a way it was also for you and maybe for agent agency owners listening, is that it's very interesting and appealing to launch a software product.

[00:04:06] Lucas: But maybe the best way to do it is just to launch a software product that makes you more. . And then if it's making you more money and, it's making your agency and your clients more money, you could always just sell it to people for even more money, but you don't even need to focus on it because if it's making you money, it sells itself.

[00:04:22] Lucas: What's the, it's like product led growth, you know? So and then obviously having the right kind of attention paid to the different elements of what businesses, you know, I

[00:04:31] JK: also feel like sometimes we do things because of just the metals, the imaginary. Yes. Or I wanna be a founder that exited, or I wanna reach six figures.

[00:04:40] JK: I wanna be a seven figure entrepreneur. It's, it's the medal, the kind of accolade you get. But trust me, guys, like, I'm not saying selling 200 was a mistake because there were other considerations, but better than knowing I exited the company would've been, I'm Rich's. And I think that's cooler. Honestly, I'm just being honest,

[00:05:01] JK: I think that would've been a better accolade to me, but I was so cut up and obsessed in the beginning with selling it. Yeah, it wasn a mistake because there were other considerations, but having the money is cooler than having the title

[00:05:13] Lucas: and the buyer. Yeah, dude, that's the same. Oh man. I just, I wish I could go back to myself like earlier last year and, and tell myself the same thing.

[00:05:21] Lucas: Cause I, I was caught up in a lot of the same stuff and, you know, I tell people this phrase that I've, I've written down and tried to repeat to myself over and over again, which is, you know Don't let your abstract goals change your physical reality or your actual reality. Cuz a lot of times we, you know, we create these goals and then we get distracted and we do it for the cloud and we do it for whatever, and then it, it kind of detracts from cash flow or increasing the pay we can make to ourselves and just living the kind of life we wanna live.

[00:05:49] Lucas: So I totally get that and, you know, it's, it's definitely a consideration. So what's next? Jk what are, what are you doing now? What's the next thing? It's

[00:05:56] JK: just tweeting clients. I actually made a commit the biggest lesson that Fi Hunter was don't do too much shit. Do one thing,

[00:06:02] Lucas: I had the same thing. I feel like we just, both had the same Yeah,

[00:06:07] JK: bro, it's just cause and you, you, you need to like get to the, like, get the price and realize like, man, it isn't that cool, you know? No. Yeah, yeah. But right now I made a promise to my business partner, Ryan. I'm not gonna start a business for three years.

[00:06:21] JK: I'm just gonna stay with you. Right, right. So yeah, so just tweets and clients for the next three years, showing others how to monetize, not grow their Twitter audience.

[00:06:33] Lucas: Yeah, it's really interesting, you know your whole concept of, of likes not ca or what, what likes aint cash. Likes say cash. Yes. I, I'll say likes not cash, but that's not right.

[00:06:42] Lucas: Likes aint cash. That's actually stuck with me a lot, obviously for branding purposes. It's really good phrase cuz it just ingrains your, that that thought into everyone's head. And I've, I've been thinking about that a lot recently. So What is that plan though like? do you see growth or, and for anyone who doesn't know, I mean you've been able to grow a pretty substantial Twitter following online and, and now also on YouTube.

[00:07:03] Lucas: I've been seeing some of the YouTube videos pop up as well and it's doing pretty well. I mean, does growing that business for you, is it basically just growing social media to establish a higher premium on your services and be able to sell more? Or is there like other ways that you've thought about growing that business?

[00:07:19] Lucas: Is that the main way?

[00:07:20] JK: It's two ways. So it's footer organic, mainly because people eventually start listening. Like if you say the same thing 10,000 times, somebody's gonna say, Hey, what's up? Right? Like, that's just right. Now the other move is, I mean, the exit of Tweet Hunter is not gonna be kinda just wasted.

[00:07:40] JK: It's a good marketing angle. It's like the thing you need to get to your destination, which is making more money, is the Lexi and Cash method because you are already sold on Twitter. Whereas on other social media like YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, I can't sell that because I need to sell you on Twitter first.

[00:07:59] JK: Right? So if you see my marketing changes a lot, the messaging of the marketing changes a lot on Twitter. It's Lex and Cash Method On other social media, its, you need to get on. My sale is, I'm vouching for Twitter. I'm Elon Musk's, number one guy, . So I'm basically using the angle as in, hey, we built a company and sold it for over a million dollars with just Twitter organic.

[00:08:21] JK: There's a lot of money here. It's not just German and politics. Right. So that's kind of the second angle. It's on Twitter. Just keep doing what I'm doing, I think. Yeah, just getting the word out there, but another social media platform. I'm trying to convince people that Twitter is the place to be.

[00:08:35] JK: Right. And hopefully that'll

[00:08:36] Lucas: turn out into sales for me. Yeah, it's been really interesting. I have you know, there's a couple of platforms that have been going through a lot of turbulence this year. You know, TikTok being one of them, Twitter being another. And even with all that turbulence, what is your best case for why Twitter is the best place to be or why it's an awesome place to be right now?

[00:08:54] Lucas: I mean, do you have an argument for why that is? I mean, obviously use your own case study and that's great but if it was like I'm the general business owner, what would you say to me as to why Twitter is the best place to be?

[00:09:04] JK: because Twitter is in the social media. It's a networking platform. Like how do we, how do you and I meet from Twitter?

[00:09:10] JK: Twitter, yeah. How do I meet my co-founders? Twitter, right? And I build my startup and solve it with a guy on Twitter. So yeah, it's a networking platform. Really. How is ROI? Thing you can do is connect with other people at your level or ahead of you, even better. So yeah, that's why like if you're interested in building a network, which will make you more money, you need to be on.

[00:09:32] Lucas: that's really interesting. Now I do wanna ask you a little bit about Lela, just whatever you can share because I'm curious what it was like meeting that team because they've been a huge story right now in the agency world and software world, do you have a sense of like what the team's, like, what their mission is, what they're trying to grow towards?

[00:09:48] Lucas: I mean, when they acquired you guys, they brought on your other founders to basically keep growing the assets. So there's some sort of big mission or goal there. what is that? do you have any insight on what their goals are?

[00:09:58] JK: Yeah, yeah, a little bit. So Dion, who's a Le Empire, c e o, he, he, it's a cold email thing, right?

[00:10:05] JK: Like lemons is cold email. However, yeah. He realized that cold email still works still good, but it works so much better when you have a personal brand associated to it. Yeah, because if you send me an email and you're a nobody, then it doesn't make sense. But if they click and you have a few thousand Twitter followers, then your status is higher.

[00:10:24] JK: They're more likely to respond. Yes. So beyond was from the beginning, interested in a tool that helped you build your social media as well? He was actually more interested in LinkedIn than Twitter. That's the funny thing. Yeah. Like he was more interested in Tapio, which is the tweet hundred twin. Right. On LinkedIn.

[00:10:41] JK: Yeah. However, like he, here's where it gets crazy, dude, like Thibo, who's her co-founder he's French, right? Ke also French, and they both build the startups. and he realized, Thibo realized that these dudes went to the same middle school cuz he found a picture. They went to the same middle school. So he knew GUI was looking for something like that.

[00:11:05] JK: And we've been trying for months to get a a broker to get us a buyer deals didn't really make sense. So he just messaged Guill like, dude, we went to the same middle school. Let's have lunch. We meet up for lunch in. Two weeks in, we got a letter of intent signed. He was actually like, serious about this and Wow.

[00:11:21] JK: We couldn't have known that. Right? Yeah. It was that middle school connection. And the way he actually DMed, Guillon was, through Twitter and then through WhatsApp, right? Again, Twitter connection, right. Crazy dude. Like broker couldn't do. A middle school connection could, and if you go to my profile, I actually have a picture of these two guys and you go to Tebow's profile, there's appear of those guys like, wow, crazy.

[00:11:43] JK: But imagine, dude, some dude you went to middle school with, buys your company for eight figures. It's fucking crazy. And it, it happened I never expected that, but it was kind of the perfect storm. That's why I consider myself very lucky. Yeah. Not only for the team, but the opportunity to grow.

[00:11:58] JK: And this Dion thing. Like, man, like I'm

[00:12:01] Lucas: blessed. Right. In that sense. That's so interesting. And then how did, Alex Berman get into this? Cause I've had him on the show a couple times now and I haven't talked to him in a few months. was he on the team with you guys? What was

[00:12:09] JK: that situation?

[00:12:10] JK: Yeah, They replicated the strategy we used on Twitter. So we realized that on Twitter, if you pair up the product guys with this dude that has an audience, he just violently harasses their audience with Provost. Right? Right. So we did that with Twitter and then I had like no LinkedIn followers, but Alex did.

[00:12:30] JK: So Alex was just kind of their muscle on LinkedIn. I was their muscle on Twitter and. We just kind of did the same strategy essentially. Funny cuz if you check LIOs, which is tweet hunters twin, if you check Tabos onboarding, it's very like, similar to Twitter, like tweet hunter one. It's like this dude going over a voiceover, it's a pdf and then you're, it's, it's the same thing.

[00:12:54] JK: It's just, you know. Yeah.

[00:12:56] Lucas: That's so interesting. Yeah. He's, he's a great entrepreneur and he's just been doing this now for so long with the different software products he's launched and it's been a pleasure interviewing him on the, . But that's so interesting. I do have to comment on that as well when it comes to amplifying the people who are the salespeople and the kind of like personal brand.

[00:13:13] Lucas: I've been evangelizing this method, which I use for my own team, which is basically have every single sales rep launch a podcast. and then basically make them into an influencer by establishing authority in a niche. And by doing this, every single person gets more shares, they get more virality, and they basically can sell at a premium because the person who they're talking to sees them as an authority.

[00:13:37] Lucas: And that's already been working for my brand and for my business. And so I'm curious, like do you think that every sales team on the planet should basically turn all their sales people? Online influencers in a sense, to try to build up their brand? Or do you think it's only for some salespeople and some teams where it makes sense?

[00:13:54] Lucas: I think it's entrepreneurs

[00:13:56] JK: and in Yeah, in general. Cause yeah, I think it's entrepreneurs in general. I don't really have much experience running a sales team. I mean, I, it can't hurt. It's the highest or white thing you can do. Not sure, but it can't hurt. Yeah. And every sale, like every sale is closed way easier if you have status.

[00:14:15] JK: Right. Right. This is why the Hollywood actors get like their parties and they invite girls and every girl says yes. It's because of the high status. Yeah. Right. So it's easier to close sales when you have that. Yeah. Can't hurt. I mean, should you, I don't know.

[00:14:29] Lucas: Does it? Right. Certainly not . Totally get it. Hey, the last few minutes of the interview, what I wanna do is I actually am very interested in using your guys services, and so I, I was gonna bring it up to you after the call but I wanted to ask you if, you feel comfortable, feel free to.

[00:14:46] Lucas: Kind of explain your services to me now on the call and on the interview because maybe people listening might wanna use it too. I actually am very interested. I, I was gonna ask you after, but then while we were talking, I was like, well, what a great opportunity to share what you do. Feel free if you'd like because I, I am interested in, potentially working with you guys.

[00:15:02] Lucas: If there's opportunity there, feel free whatever to share whatever you'd like about that.

[00:15:06] JK: When it comes to problems we don't fix is we don't fix building Twitter audiences. We don't fix buying retweets and we don't sell SaaS or info product sales, which are low ticket.

[00:15:18] JK: We only get, it's called tweeting clients, so it's designed to get clients. So if you're not getting that many book, causing your calendar, If people with less followers, then you are making more money than you if you feel like you need just traction and direction just to clear your game plan to acquire clients.

[00:15:34] JK: You see people get to 10, 20, 30, 50 K a month depending on how it is. So it's a 12 month coaching program and it's four figures a month or five figures a year. Yeah. And we just help you monetize your audit. Some people takes. Two days. Some people take 90 days, some people take a year. But eventually the goal is just to turn your audience into and getting more money from it.

[00:15:55] JK: Not grow it, but make more money from it, because yeah, that's what

[00:15:58] Lucas: we do. . And do you guys do the writing or you guys do all the writing? Is it like ghost writing services or is it, how do you guys do We edit

[00:16:04] JK: it. We edit it. So it's coaching, right. So we tell Yeah. Yeah. We show you what to do. Right. But I mean, we want you to focus on growing the business, not writing, so, right, right.

[00:16:14] JK: When you post off, we edit it for you before it goes live to make sure it's as engaging as possible. Yeah.

[00:16:20] Lucas: That's very interesting. Yeah. I mean, and that's, that's the key, you know, I think. I've obviously been on a whirlwind ride for anyone who's been following my Twitter stuff over the last 12 months.

[00:16:29] Lucas: I've been pretty open about everything that happened there. But you know, I think one thing I have learned and I've learned this from listening to people like Alex or Mosey, who everyone's obsessed with nowadays and I guess I am too is. You gotta spend money on these channels. Obviously you wanna spend it once you have money, but you wanna spend money to actually hire people who know what they're doing.

[00:16:48] Lucas: I mean, it's the same reason why people come to me for lead gen stuff when it comes to scaling sales teams, because I have spent so much time doing that for my own company and other companies. Now I have people who do my short form content on like videos. I have people who do my podcast editing. I don't do those things on my own anymore.

[00:17:06] Lucas: The first year I did because I was just testing, testing, testing. But then I feel like you really do need to have experts on your stuff cuz it's just gonna accelerate everything They've already done. Everything. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, you don't need to think about it. You get that time lifted from your brain as well.

[00:17:22] Lucas: Little promo for your services, but I feel like, you know, hey, if I'm interested in using JK services, I'm not gonna cut off this at all. In terms of commission, just letting you guys know because I actually am interested in using 'em. I've been thinking about it for a while. So for anyone listening.

[00:17:36] Lucas: Definitely feel free to hit up JK for that. What's the best way for them to do that if they want to uh, reach out and uh, work with you?

[00:17:44] JK: Yeah, so you can go to tweets and clients.com and book a call. There's gonna be a quick video there where it shows what problems we fix and where we don't fix, but those are problems You have book a call and let's see what

[00:17:55] Lucas: happens.

[00:17:55] Lucas: Yeah. Incredible man. So tweets and. And you know, for everybody listening, JK has been able to grow his business also his Twitter following now YouTube as well. And been able to sell Tweet Hunter for 1.4 million. And that was acquired by LEM List for anyone who's just tuning in now. And we're really excited to see the things that he's got in the pipeline in the near future.

[00:18:18] Lucas: So thank you everybody for listening to the show. Thank you JK, for being on the show. Really Appreci. Thank you for having

[00:18:22] JK: me. Bye everybody. Thanks. Bye.