$50M Sales Strategy | James Sackl

Behind every multi-million-dollar business, there’s a strategist pulling the strings.

For Sales Sniper, that’s James Sackl. He’s not the one in the spotlight, but he’s the guy behind the scenes making sure every move is calculated, intentional, and backed by real data.

In this episode, James breaks down how his work with Sales Sniper & 7th Level was the secret to reaching $50M in combined revenue.

His strategies: focusing on testing assumptions to avoid bad investments, scalable systems and making sure each company decision is based on market research and solid data.

We also covered:

• Why most strategies fail
• How to avoid making disastrous decisions based on assumptions
• The power of data-backed decision-making

So if you’re serious about building a business that lasts, you’ve got to hear from this episode. Click play and start scaling with precision.

Follow James Sackl at:

https://www.facebook.com/james.sackl.3/
https://www.instagram.com/salessniper_
https://www.salessniper.net/

Follow Ken Okazaki at:

https://www.instagram.com/kenokazaki/
https://www.youtube.com/c/KenOkazaki
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-content-capitalists-with-ken-okazaki/id1634328251
https://open.spotify.com/show/09IzKghscecbI7jPDVBJTw

Content Capitalists YouTube

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Trailer
• 0:14 Introduction to the Content Capitalist Podcast
• 0:39 Meet James Sackle: The Strategy Mastermind
• 1:24 Sales Sniper and Seventh Level: Clarifying the Business
• 3:40 The Role of a Business Strategist
• 4:22 Consulting for Mid to Large Scale Companies
• 10:55 Common Mistakes and Misconceptions in Business
• 14:13 The Importance of Critical Thinking in Business
• 18:39 Entrepreneurial Mindset: Winning and Adapting
• 21:44 Building Momentum with Small Wins
• 21:56 The Liquid Death Marketing Strategy
• 22:47 Turning Ideas into Actionable Plans
• 24:16 Testing and Validating Your Product
• 26:24 Personal Story: The GoBox Journey
• 29:41 Evaluating Market Need and Risk
• 34:59 Balancing Quality and Profit
• 37:25 The Importance of Brand Value
• 41:00 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript

James: Some people just know how to win and they want to win and they find ways to win. If you can't figure out how to win, this is a high chance. You can't figure out how to adapt, how to move your strategy. The Content Capitalists Podcast.

Ken Okazaki: Hey, welcome to another episode of the content capitalist podcast. Today, my guest is different than most of the other guests.

And here's the key difference. Most of the people I bring on the show want to be the rock star. They want to be the one in front of the camera. They want to be the one who gets recognized as that's the closer. That's the viral sensation. That's the CEO, but many times what they're not seeing is the person who sets up the strategy that allows that person to become the rock star.

And that's who we have today, James Sackle. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Ken. Pleasure to be here. Does that sum it up for you? Do you feel like you're that person who helps to elevate cause that's an important component, the person who's in front of the camera, right? Then there's also the level that they can reach is going to be largely determined about by the strategy. That's used to get them there. 

James: Yeah, I think so. I've never, really enjoyed the spotlight, if that makes sense. you know, doing content, being on social media, I've done quite a bit of it in the past, but I've always liked that kind of private sort of aspect and sort of like to work in the shadows. so happy to take that role.

and I always feel like I've had more enjoyment in. building strategy, putting plans in place as opposed to being on the front lines. Yeah. 

Ken Okazaki: Got it. 

Now you're working with, a pretty decent sized sales agency. And I know that there was a time where, it kind of stopped promoting for a while. And then I believe you guys are much more active again. could you tell me at the, when you guys were doing this, I remember I I heard a number.

And correct me if I'm wrong, you were doing about 30 million a year, a little while ago, is that right? 

James: Um, no. So we had multiple entities, right? It was a bit misconstrued. So, Sales Sniper was the company that I worked for. We reached, I'd say about 17 million a year and within three years of business. however, there was a lot of, confusion. Uh, my business partners and client of ours are over their seventh level, which was a completely separate company, different ownership structures, different business models, and the way that they operate.

that they were earning about. $30 million a year as a client of ours, which there was ownership structures for pretty much all parties involved in that. so collectively you're probably looking at close to $50 million between the entities at, I'd say the, peak of that. whereas in to distinguish the difference.

Sales Sniper was a sales agency. essentially what we specialized in there was going into a business, putting in a sales team, help developing the strategy around how they can accumulate, I guess, market share in the particular area that they work in. and then having the tools and able to be able to market, build content plans.

Build marketing plans, build operational plans to essentially support the growth while the team sold for them. one of our largest clients was that of seventh level, wherein, we essentially took over the business from an operational and backdoor perspective and helped build that up as they were a client of ours growing.

So growing that entity essentially helped improve the, both entities growth. We learn a lot of things. That company was a sales training organization, hence the very similar crossovers and a lot of confusion about how the two works simultaneously. so we had a lot of,clients very similar to that, but provided quite a different service as to how that operates, which was also confusing because we Before we took them on as a client, we also did a lot of sales training at the same time. 

Ken Okazaki: Hmm. All right, thanks for clearing that up. now I think I get the picture.

James: Yeah. Yeah.

Ken Okazaki: what you described to me right before we started recording was that, you're a lot like the spotter when there's a sniper on the battlefield. You're the one who's, you know, reading the wind direction, The distance, the angle, the movement, and giving the sniper, , the data and information they need to hit their target and.

Could you walk us a bit more detailed into that? And does that analogy come from any real life experience?

James: Uh, yeah, that analogy has always come from, um, the business partner I had with, uh, SalesSnapper before I exited that company, uh, which was Matt, um, I think he's probably been on your show at one point in time. No doubt. yeah, it was something that he come up with. So I've always just utilized that as an easy way to explain things because it, Made sense and it was something that stuck.

But, um, I guess to elaborate on that, I do a lot of, I guess, private consulting for, uh, sort of larger, mid to large scale, clients. So, companies that are doing anywhere between one to $3 million up, up to 50, 60, $70 million a year. And in that process, what I typically do is I'll have a, whether that's a CEO, someone on the board, a director, non executive or executive positions, uh, will come with a, what they've built as a, Strategy for growth, whether that's in the area of accumulating more money, reducing operating costs, et cetera, et cetera.

they will either come with a plan that they have where they want that, how do I say critiqued, or they will come with no plan and they're looking to develop a plan. Um, it's a word. typically you do in that instance is, come in and assess what they're currently doing, go through a process where we look at, All of the decisions that or all of the assumptions that they've made as to why they believe their plan is good, um, and go through and try to provide justification as to whether or not that makes sense for the particular market that they're either investing expanding into or targeting a new area.

and to do that, we tend to look at a lot of benchmarking data. A lot of that financial models, a lot of the market research that they've done to come up with figures to support things. And then, we just try and sort of break down that decision making process and aim to, want to make these suggestions, these critical positional sentences.

And you want to hear the expected feedback from, um, listen, we given feedback, we'll respond. And basically we're just, we're not really brainstorming anything or knowing anything by heart, right? You've made assumptions that That amount of videos is going to result in X amount of viewers. What we would do is we would break down the numbers.

It's like, why is this? Let's look at your past stats. Do the numbers align with your goals? And very simply, if that's a no, we need to adjust your goals and make them more realistic. Or we potentially need to explore certain investments, whether that could be spending money on better camera, cameras, better filmography, et cetera.

Yeah. That is, you know, in the market, your competitors, what they achieve with new videos and how we can match that to align your stats with the goals to see whether you need to do more work or whether you need to adjust your goals. So lot of the time is. Essentially, I'll support, you know, whether that's a CFO, a COO, CEO, MD, whatever it need to be to really, really pull apart some of that business to give them justifications that allows a business plan or a growth strategy to make sense.

And then adjust it accordingly so that they can take the appropriate action. We would go through that process and say, okay, well, we've now determined that that doesn't make sense. Here are some of the actions that you need to take, set that out into a quarterly plan. Who's going to be responsible for this? In what order do these actions need to happen to achieve that goal? and then set them out in a tangible long term plan so that they can get to point A to point B. And in that analogy that you use, what we're really doing is, as you said, the wind speed is just going to be benchmarking data or statistics, past history, Um, future trends in whatever market that they may be playing in to in the same way to say, know where to aim.

Essentially, all you're doing is giving the right tools and backing it up with data where it's available, um, essentially so that they know where to shoot. Using that analogy, it was a very long winded answer apologize.

Ken Okazaki: No, no, no, no. I think I'm getting the wider scope of this. And are you usually interfacing with the CEO, the CRO, CMO, all of the above? Like who's the person who's going to get the strategy to the level where it's ready to be shown to you? 

James: that tends to be determined by the size of a company, right? So they, typically if you look into companies that have revenue of You know, one to five, perhaps 10. It's usually a single person. it's usually the CO at that point who is wearing all the hats and is, you know, to keep costs down, they don't have specialist people in those roles or at least, you know, if you're a 5 million company and you have a COO or a chances are.

They're probably not at a level where they could be in a public company, right? So usually the skillset and education isn't at highest level at that point in terms of relatively to a publicly traded company, right? , however, once you get past 10 billion mark, usually to grow, the strategies in which you take require significant investment.

You know, growth isn't cheap. Well, depending on what industry you're in, but typically growth is not cheap. so to manage the level of risks associated with that growth, people tend to hire. Specialist people that have experience, quite often in a corporate world or a corporate setting, because there becomes a lot of interaction that, that you need to take with, uh, lawyers, that it becomes a lot of governance.

Um, not so much in world of content creation, they're very relatively simple models, but I tend to work in, um, more, more of a complex business environment, if that sort of makes sense. So at that level, it's usually like a single entity, and that's usually the founder, which is. I lied concussion. my favourite companies owns ship board.

Um, for me, this Bellator contracts, these contracts, uh, this compound forgetting something one minute ago, has a 10 million in and 30 Someone on the board, whether they're in an executive role or a non executive role, and presenting to the board to say, Hey, here's what I found. You can choose to accept it.

You can choose not to accept it. That's on you. so in those instances, it's, not a specific individual. I present that to the board and they'll make a decision as to who becomes responsible for that strategy. in the various parts of executing it, because often it's, very multi tiered and requires, more than just a single person to, to act on 

Ken Okazaki: yeah, interested in hearing a bit more about that, you know, three to 5 million, or let's just say like this. 7 because I have a feeling most of the people listening are in that range, even below 7 figures. 

And let's say they can't afford services like what you do, can you share some of the things that the most common mistakes, the misconceptions, the decisions that seem to make sense, but don't usually work out, that you've probably seen patterns in?

James: absolutely. I think like the single biggest mistake that, um, the CEOs and, or founders in this instance. Um, it happens in large scale companies, not just smaller ones is as humans. We all have significantly biases towards ourselves. And if I think something's a good idea, it must be right. You've got no one to. Typically at that size, you don't have, always have someone super reliable to push back on you, particularly when there's a power, dynamic with you being a founder, or in most cases, a sole owner of a company and you've got some stuff, often that produces yes men and you don't always have that person that'll push back and say, no, that idea sounds dumb.

so I think bias is, is one of the biggest things. And, um, The process which I kind of explained is usually is the remedy to it, right? Which is just as business owners, whenever we make a decision that has financial impact, meaning if I make this decision that's going to cost me a lot of dollars, whether on staffing to undertake it or by missed revenue, meaning it doesn't work, I've lost opportunity.

there's always a dollar figure to every. decision that we make. So as a business owner, our thought process should be to try and disprove our assumptions rather than trying to prove them. Exactly right. Because it's very easy for us to find evidence to support our decisions. However, if we're taking approach where.

Ken Okazaki: I'm laughing because this is me. You know, I've, I've done this so many times.

James: Absolutely. And I sit here and say this. But it's more of a, uh, do as I say, not as I do type thing. Like everyone becomes

Ken Okazaki: Well, it's, it's human nature, right? We've got our amygdala that is, really, you know, pulling this puppet strings and our PFC, our prefrontal cortex is, you know, telling us, no, no, let's run those numbers again. Does this actually make sense? And the part of you with that urge, you know, basic instincts are fighting that so hard because you want your idea to be right so

James: exactly. Right. And, and that's just where restraint comes in. So if we think about trying to disprove ourself, uh, it helps us remove bias and. Helps us remove that need to want to be wrong because we're looking for ways if we can't disprove ourselves It's a good idea. And the thing is like business owners.

They're a different type of person. You know what I mean? They are that that people who get after it, right? Like they want to progress They want to make decisions and they want to do it quick and right, you know So acknowledging that Allows us to

Ken Okazaki: would you say that you, that maybe there's different strategies for different stages? Because if we look at things like how. you know, how Apple started, how Nike started how all of these, companies that are runaway successes, like the. They literally had all the odds against them and like Facebook and then somehow the founder, because of their genius and their persistence push through, but at some point they had to stabilize.

and then bring in this type of critical thinking. 

Would you say that there's, there is a phase where you could ignore critical thinking if you've got nothing to lose and, and so let's talk about that. How do you reconcile that? And if a founder is, coming at you with that type of talk?

are you trying to talk them off the, you know, off the roof let's 

James: Yeah. So 

Ken Okazaki: that, 

James: it's a, it's a balance, right? Now, here's the thing. If you go through that process and you try and find something to disprove it, often you can't, and that's a good sign. So, Everything comes down. It's like a seesaw, you know, and okay, I've decided I want to go start this business.

There's a lot of competition. Okay. There's some factors that say don't do it. but I've also assessed that competition. I feel like I could do it better. The purpose of going through that process and trying to disprove is not to make it hard and fast yes or no is to give us like, as I said, we've made some assumptions.

I think I can dominate this market. It's understanding the risks associated with it. So if I say,

yes, I'm going to 

Ken Okazaki: not a surprise when the, after it all plays out and you can be prepared for the, you know, the rebound or the backup or something.

James: exactly. And the difference is when you've gone through that process, you're fully aware of the risks. You're fully aware of what can go wrong. At that point,See, think of this like an investment. If you buy, say something is stable, you know, you put money into a investment fund that's spread off around 10 stocks.

It's the losses on one account for the gains on another, and you get a stable return. If you put that into something like a meme coin, you fully understand that's either going to shit the bed or it's going to be a moonshot. Right. Logic says. Depending on your risk tolerance, go down the path of the investment fund.

However, the fact that you know the risks, you've made it now a decision that if this goes wrong, I'm willing to accept those consequences and I'm willing to deal with them because I understand it. that's the difference between my buddy told me I should buy this. You don't understand the risks.

It loses your money, you blame him, you no longer have a relationship because you didn't understand and accept the risks, right? Therefore, you're jaded, you become resentful because they've made a decision, whereas the reality is, you didn't use any critical thinking to analyze what decisions being made.

that's the thing with entrepreneurism, it requires innovation. If you don't innovate, you don't compete. Well, at least in most cases. So it's not about a hard and fast yes and no, it's about understanding the risks and consequences with any given strategy. Because when you understand them, the problem that a lot of business owners make is they have this one idea and that usually becomes a yes or no for them. When you've gone through a critical thinking process and assessed this strategy. You're now able to compare it against alternative strategies, right? You're now able to compare the outcomes, say, I've got this idea. I want to start this business. Cool. Let me think about it. Is it a good decision? Maybe yes.

Is it highly risky? Probably. you then get another idea and you're now able to compare, A against B. They may be apples to oranges, but you understand the potential of the apple and the risks of the apple compared to the potential of the orange and the risks against the orange. And now you can make a better decision as to which strategy should be undertaken, either individually Or together and in what order, if that sort of makes sense.

Ken Okazaki: So as an...me ask you in this way though,

James: 

Ken Okazaki: I'm guessing that a lot of entrepreneurs who are listening at the earlier stages are not going to be able to afford hiring a consultant like yourself or probably shouldn't even based on, you know, their revenue. But do you think from the perspective of an entrepreneur who is probably going against the advice of all his colleagues and family to start this business is making a ballsy move.

Do you think that they have the capacity? to dispassionately find opposing data and make a decision based on logic. Is it even possible for not saying like outliers. I'm saying the average guy who quit his corporate job or who dropped out of college and decided, I'm going to go into business. 

James: Yeah. I mean, if you look hard enough, you'll find a reason not to do it. And the difference between entrepreneurs is they accept the risk and they move forward. 

And the reality is like, I'll use this as a perfect example. Like if you have a good idea. ah, you don't have the money to fund it, you go and get venture capital, right?

Now, venture capitalists will tend to fund the eye, better entrepreneur over a better idea, Right? Right? The reason being if you have a great idea and a terrible entrepreneur, it'll never work well, maybe it would. It's less likely to. However If you have a good entrepreneur with the average idea, the high chance is the entrepreneur will figure out a way to change strategy, right?

Meaning that if his idea was average, he will then realize that that's not great and find a way to adapt the company, right? So in the same way that I would encourage people to, whether it makes sense or not, if you're thinking to start a business and go down a pathway, just do it. Unless it's a really dumb idea, you know, like if you'd come to me and said, Hey, I've got this idea.

I want to make a watch to compete with Apple watches. I'd say that's insane. That's stupid. However, you come up with a brand new if someone said, I just want to take regular tap water, you know, filter it and sell it in cans for 5 and call it liquid death. like, would you say that's a bad idea or would you? Well, it may be right. As an idea,

Ken Okazaki: I mean, there's so many externalities, like what's their marketing acumen and their connections and market experience and stuff. And they could have probably made the case that it's a better idea to do it than not to. But something really piqued my interest when you said that, and I've heard this before, you know, VCs will bet on the entrepreneur more than the company or product. And the difference between a good entrepreneur and a bad one, or a mediocre one. To you, what are the biggest polarizing characteristics? You named one, which is the ability to adapt and move forward, regardless of market conditions or, obstacles. I think you said, what are some other things that you've seen? 

James: I think like it just comes down to, um, your ability to win. Right. So,

Ken Okazaki: You have a track record of winning. That's,

James: yeah, yeah. Like some people just know how to win and they want to win and they find ways to win. If you can't figure out how to win, there's a high chance, you can't figure out how to adapt, how to move your strategy. and that really becomes clear when you meet people 

When you say win, I, to me, What that means is, if you set a target and a timeline, then you hit it or surpass it more than you don't. Is that what you mean? Or is there another, I think, Uh, winning is just such a, it's a broad term, right? Like, you have a sales call with someone. You want to sign them as a client, you find a way, you know, maybe that's a discount, maybe that's offering extra service, maybe that's taking the extra time to do it, depending on what stage you're at. The point is, you don't let them go, you find a solution that's going to work, that's winning, right?The business isn't producing a lot of cash. He got bills coming up, you know, you figure out a way to make

Ken Okazaki: the money

James: exact the like the, to me, that's winning is just doing the shit that needs to be done to progress you forward, right?

Ken Okazaki: Just taking those little, a clear roadmap, right?

James: yeah. And

Ken Okazaki: the trail if you need to.

James: that compounds, right. If you can do that on little things, you can do it on big things. And you build momentum from doing it. 

But I wanted to just go back to the liquid death example, because I feel like I could probably translate that into A way that it makes sense from what I've said.

So you..Are you familiar with the brand? I've seen it advertise a lot on podcasts and things. I've never had it, 

Ken Okazaki: I haven't either. I can't, I wanted to buy it, but they don't sell it in Japan. And it was like six, seven dollars. I don't, I don't, I, like for me, the price did not matter. It was just like, you know, do you remember the brand Supreme? they sold bricks for a hundred dollars

James: Yeah, I know they, yeah.

Ken Okazaki: a red clay brick and it had the logo stamped into it.

James: Sounds crazy.

Ken Okazaki: I wasn't into Supreme, so I wouldn't have bought it, but Liquid Death, you know, like, it's just a cool thing, but go ahead. I'm, uh,

James: I assumed it was an energy drink. So not bottled water. Right. Okay. So if you think about it, it sounds like a pretty dumb idea. Yeah. 

In, you know, in like a two one minute elevator pitch, like, eh, maybe my question would be, if you're an entrepreneur and you had this idea, I would say, cool, maybe it's a good idea.

Maybe it's not. I don't know. the question would be, is would you market it? How would you sell it? How would you fund it? Right. if you could answer those things. All of a sudden now you've thought about it enough to put a financial model, you've thought about it enough to do some market research to determine if people want this as a product, you've thought about it enough to figure out a way in which you could price it so people would sell it.

Now, that's what I mean by justifying your assumptions. So if you say that I think I've got a good idea, my question would be, well, show me how it's a good idea. They would say, well, we've looked at the market. There isn't anything. There. We have a marketing strategy, used product placement in people's podcasts. And we feel that we have enough money to fund research and development to find good flavors that are not out there and people want. We have a tester, and you can try it! It tastes good! In that instance Now all of a sudden you've started to build a plan, not just an idea. And we assess the plan as opposed to the idea.

It's like, sure. Maybe that has a bunch of traction. Then you would go through different phases to test that idea. It's like, okay, let's. 

Produce a minimal viable product that is a, let's get a couple of cases. Let's send them out to people, see if they like it. If it comes back that a lot of the people that we send it to like this.

Like the flavors, like the product that might make sense for us to get some investment money or fund it ourselves to buy more inventory, to pay for some marketing, to sell more of it. And then we put a plan in when we hit X dollars, we take the next step. Then X dollars, we take the next step. And that's how you turn an idea that may or may not sound like good at the start.

Then in the next time, maybe a look the next things that So yeah, lets get into it. it. Let's provide this service and product for a couple of people, get that testimonials, get that feedback to improve it. And then let's decide to market. We're going to build a content strategy where we answer questions about the particular area.

We're an expert, build up some social, uh, what's the right word? I'm looking for some social credit, some social leverage, social proof. That's, that's the better word. Then all of a sudden, we've now got this refined product. Uh, and we can use the socials that we have created to push that product to the market and that's going to determine our success.

So for instance, if you come and you had an idea where it's like, I'm going to teach entrepreneurs how to, you know, Film podcasts, or, so that they can do that. You would test that you do it on a couple of podcasts, gets the social proof and then sell it to that larger audience. And put a plan in place in order to take market share.

IE, get more viewers. Which are essentially leads for you to sell that product to. Right. And that's all just like a tangible, straight forward, logical process that allows us to get a result

Ken Okazaki: You just, you just step it up little by little. I'm going to tell you my personal story a bit, and I'd like you to tell me how I could have done better, potentially. 

Uh, I don't know if you've heard of something called the go box. Is that something that's ever come across your feed?

James: GoBox is, from my understanding cause I know we had worked together in the past. I don't think that we ever met.but I do recall, and correct me if I'm wrong. You had a product where it was like a camera, the boom box, all this type of stuff, and you would ship it off and send it as a product in a box.

So someone could start. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I do recall

Ken Okazaki: So this was something that, one of my clients asked, like, Hey, could you help me to set up a home studio? And no, no, no. I had helped them set up a home studio, but they wanted to take something on the go and they described it to me. And I said, no, I don't know. You know, we don't do hardware.

We're, we're an agency. Right. But it was very convincing. We got the first, a prototype to him. He loved it. He stuck it on Instagram and got like thousands of messages or comments, I mean, and a lot of them were, where can I buy one of these? So he calls me up and says, you should consider making a product out of this.

If you could get it to market, you make a lot more money than with your agency is what he told me. So I kind of stuck with me and then I developed into something. I made a small batch of a hundred of these things. And, but before I, you know, hit the trigger on that production, I had this decision to make, I had, I really questioned, you know, what's a comment on a.

Instagram, you know, photo worth compared to what it's going to cost me. So I had a decision and I figured what I'm going to do is spend enough money so that I never, I'm going to wonder, did I not, you know, push hard enough? I took it to a trade show in San Diego. And it was full of marketers, traffic and conversions.

I'm not sure you probably heard of that one.

it's pretty much the biggest conference for marketers happens once a year. And my hypothesis is that before I'm going to plunk down a bunch of money on, producing these, I want to know that there's the people who've never heard of me, who've never seen me and not doing me a favor are willing to look at this and pay money for it. So I think altogether I spent like 40, 000 or 50, 000 between the booth, the flights, you know, a couple of staff, and I was ready to walk away if nobody was going to commit to paying money for it, but this is my, decision point, you know, cut the losses and continue as a hobby, or this is a real business, um, over three days, we did multiple six figures each day from total strangers. And to me, that was market validation. I was like, okay, great. So we had enough units to deliver on those. We quickly assembled, shipped them off. And since then, there's, been a very steady trickle, not a flood of purchases, just word of mouth or people coming across. So for me, that was decision point two.

Decision point one was to even make something that I could sell. Uh, you know, the first one was just something that was made for one person. Very custom. The second one was something I could make a hundred or a couple hundred and now I'm at the stage where I'm bringing it to mass production level. I've got my patents filed. I spent a lot of money on lawyers,

James: Yeah. Not cheap.

Ken Okazaki: not, and slow, you know, but I've got a design firm and I'm putting even more money into getting into where I can bring the cost down, the quality up and the production at a much higher level. So. I feel like I'm tracking roughly what you were explaining there by testing the market at each stage before making a quantum leap to, you know, bet my house on it, for example, how would you look at this and what questions should I be asking

James: I think you made really good decisions there. All right.some would disagree. Other people would just say, no, go all in, you know, but that's often like a mindset coach, but really that's your biggest, it depends on your risk tolerance. Right. So let's just evaluate that. you had a product, you established that there was a need for it.

However, you didn't understand the size of that need. Yeah. So essentially you had the assumption that yes, there is a need and you wanted to justify it before I go and, invest all this capital into something you wanted to get justification. That there is enough need for this wanton service to make sense, putting the money into it, right.

That's what's called, you've done some market research around your, uh, what you look at typically is a total addressable market, right? You may not have done that in a traditional sense, like what your Consulting firms like Deloitte, Bain, McKinsey and that all teach, but you've taken the steps to decide how large this market is and if there is a tangible need that is going to net me returns, right? Which I think is a very, very smart decision. Um, particularly when you want to protect your capital. Right, if you spend 40 grand on something and there's no buyers just because one dude on YouTube wanted it, you're probably going to lose a lot of money. If you've gone to a trade show and decided, Oh, wow.

There's hundreds and hundreds of people. That's a great decision From there, you've obviously negotiated contracts with suppliers, spent some IP and, done that. What I would look at is, um, from this point is, if I was giving advice, I would assess the contracts that you have with suppliers.

Right. Try and get them so that you don't have to put the cash down to do it. Meaning if you have options or something equivalent to like an options agreement with your supplies, you can say, Hey, I want to lock in 500 units. At X price, however, I'm only required to purchase the inventory in blocks of 25, whatever that makes sense.

Meaning I want first shipment by this date, this date, this date, this date. however, I'm only locked in to buy them. segmentally, meaning that you can not have to put up all the cash for the inventory. You can segmentally do it as you sell it. All right. I would also do a lot more market research as to who your audience that is going to use this. And then in this instance, it's probably social media people who are. Utilizing social media. we try and look at some of the benchmarking data as to the rate of growth of that industry, right? So if you, if we know, and it's probably really high growth rate in this industry, thanks to like technology development and whatnot, let's just say the social media industry is growing at 20 percent a year as to the amount of funds it generates.

You can assume. that planning next stock is the thing that really matters.

People who work in social media, try and do some advertising, get some data as to how much percentage of that, whether you can get six in a hundred, ten in a hundred, then you can use the industry growth metrics to determine year on year, how much you could probably grow based on the growth of that industry.

And. How much portion of that market share that you can take. All right, then I would probably look at ways in which to, work with your suppliers so you can negotiate those contracts based on your estimates as to what you're going to grow. Therefore, if you think that you can grow by a hundred customers, a quarter, You can negotiate better rates to push your margins up based on the volume that you're selling it at. Then looking at ways in which you can get repeat customers. Cause that might be quite a difficult one for you if someone buys a, podcasting kit. Do they need another one? No. Maybe you start to work on now, what's the upgrade kit look like? You know, Hey, we've got your mic. We've got this. maybe it comes with, you can get like the, the road cost to

Ken Okazaki: or some type of a priority service warranty or something that could be a, an ongoing cashflow? 

James: so that's a great way to manage that cash flow, but what are the supplementary income streams that you could do to that? anyone that purchases a thing, perhaps they get, you know, a partnership with Riverside. You can get them discounts on Riverside for a kickback.

Um, you could potentially offer them a producer in the way that you have your brilliant producer on this show. There could be other ways in which you can do editing services for them, because if you're selling them one product, You're building trust, particularly if that product performs really well for them, they're more likely to buy other services from you.

So I would look at all the different ways in which you can generate income, not just from your main business, but getting an idea on how much that can grow. Because When you start a business like this, there's two general, like two really good books on the way that you go about this, the scale process.

There's blitz scaling and the lean startup, right? Two books. Most entrepreneurs have read them. Most entrepreneurs I don't think So, Blitz scaling is just go aggressive. Put as much money into growth, take market share as quick as possible. The Lean Startup is like, let's get things right. Let's make sure all the products perform.

Let's get the right products in there, but grow slower because we're focusing on a better product. Now, if you're getting patents, chances are people will copy you if they see you successful. Now, with your patent, I don't know what it's like, but I imagine it's specific products, but they could just get different products, like different microphones, a different setup. Are they going to compete with you? So ideally, if you could take the market share quicker, If you've got those plans as to how you're getting that, market, you've got really good financial models. Chances are, you can probably go and find some money, right? That money can fund your marketing attempts.

It can fund better contracts. It can help your cashflow so that you can scale and hit. those customers faster so that you can sell the additional services and get yourself to a level of profit. Now that thought process is only workable once you've got really good data. Once you're starting to justify your assumptions and have built out a really good business model. Because if you show all that people will invest in the entrepreneur because you've thought about these things. You've thought about how they're going to get a return back. So that ultimately you can take market share and serve more people and whatever your purpose of that business is, you can hit it harder and faster, right?

And just get things done quicker. Cause as you said, like, at the start, like. Liquid Def, that company fails if they don't get the money behind them because as soon as they try to expand Coke, Pepsi, they're going to see that as a competition and bring out a competing product and price them out of the market because they have the funds to be able to put it in every store, draw market share through that. Marketing channels. So people forget about liquid death, and then they buy that alternative product instead, whereas liquid death will probably promote market to a point where it's harder for those companies to compete with them. So they're forced to buy them. The founder sitting there with that little idea that they made of. putting water into a can and now high fiving each other because they're getting a massive buyout from sell on the company. 

Ken Okazaki: You know, uh, we got to wrap up soon, but this, you actually pivoted to a point that. It's really interesting for me because it's tough to quantify the value of a brand and like to put a number on it. There's brands, for example, like GoPro, uh, Liquid Death, uh, or Red Bull, who are not the dominant company.

And there's cheaper and, you know, arguably better products than them, but they've captured a market segment because they own the brand, you know, with Red Bull. and GoPro. They both are very similar in that it's about action. It's about adrenaline. It's about amazing world class athletes doing, you know, death defying things.

And that's a brand that like for example, GoPro's competitor now, probably biggest one is DJI or Insta360. They're making similar cameras, similar features, but they definitely don't have that shine on the brand. Um, how do you factor that into these scenarios?

James: Well, it's unfortunate, right. And the reality is, it's never the best product or service that dominates market share, right? It is always

Ken Okazaki: So I'm going to say Apple is doing pretty good.

James: Yeah. Okay. I mean, exceptions to the rule, right? Um,

Ken Okazaki: Well, actually it's just a preference thing. If you look spec for spec, then Apple is not. But if you look at the customer experience, which actually is an extension of a brand, then we are talking about brand again. But it's just the numbers that, you know, you're just paying way too much for technically.

James: That's why, uh, people always have problems when companies sell, because if you were once the best company in what you do and you sell it, people were there, you know, real capitalists, not content capitalists, are there to extract as much money out of it as they can. And usually that service goes downhill in the pursuit of profits, right?

I think like for people, like the best comment here for the businesses of your size is. Most of the time, people need to make a decision whether they want to be the best at what they do or whether they want to make the most money from it. Most of the time, the two are not equal. for instance, GoPro, they could make better cameras, but their profit margins would suffer and they've got the brand where they don't need to because they're going to sell enough because they have the ability to market.

Right? So, in that instance, it's like a professional service. You can be the best in the world, or you can make the most money. And that really dictates to the ability for you to market and to sell. Often, the ability to sell and market outweighs the ability to deliver a perfectly good product most of the time. 

Like, for instance,

Ken Okazaki: in point, McDonald's. 

James: Yeah, exactly right. They make pretty average burgers. They sell a hell of a lot more of them, you know, than the burger shop that prides itself on the best meat patty in the world. You know what I mean? and I think that's something that people think that, as they're growing their, their brand, uh, as a personal brand. You could be the best at what you do. The problem is usually the audience doesn't know that you're the best at your do they see the person who is in their face more often and don't have the skillset to discern whether or not you're better as a service provider. that's just something that we have to accept as entrepreneurs that are.

I'm more of the guy that I like to be the best as opposed to being in front of people and I am fully satisfied working with less people and feeling satisfied that I'm doing a brilliant job as opposed to doing that to mass people and doing something arguably of less quality. And I think as business grows, we need to make that decision.

Do you want to go down path A or do we want to go down path B? And it's a personal choice. 

Ken Okazaki: Yeah. 

James, we've got to wrap this up. And we've been talking for an hour. Thank you so much for the value you've added. I really appreciate the balance you brought to our regular listeners who are usually hearing people talking about doing amazing launches and, viral videos and things like that.

You've brought in a perspective that is not the shiny object, but it's the vitamin supplement that we actually need to keep our businesses healthy. I appreciate that. Now, if anybody wanted to learn more about you and find out or potentially connect with you, maybe they are. Running an eight figure business that needs your services.

What's the best way to get in touch with you? 

James: Probably Facebook. Uh, just my name. Like I don't have an Instagram account. I don't use a lot of things. Um, I get all my clients through referrals. It's a pretty, pretty interesting way to do things. Yeah. But, um, yeah, just find me on, Facebook's probably the easiest thing. Otherwise, um, that's literally it. 

Ken Okazaki: Okay, so guys, we'll put that, the link down below. If you're listening on the podcast, then check out the show notes. And if you're watching on YouTube, then it'll be down in the description. And until next week, uh, I'll say bye and signing off for now.

No hassle, worship here, we're a different breed. Action is what we got if action is what you need. Us content capitalists, we're breaking the flow. Cuz the old ways stay, new stories to be told. So content capitalists, get to the press.