1 Mistake Cost Him a $30M Business! | Anik Singal

Most marketers don’t realize they’re just one FTC crackdown away from losing it all.

Anik Singal, Founder of Complily Inc. and Lurn Inc., knows this all too well. He built a $30 million empire—only to see it crumble thanks to one FTC investigation. In this episode, Anik pulls back the curtain on the devastating compliance blunders that nearly took him out and busts the myths around FTC compliance that could be putting your business at risk.

Here’s what we cover:

-The marketing missteps that make you a target for the FTC (are you guilty?)
-What your compliance lawyer won’t tell you, and yes, it can hurt you
-The ONE question you should never ask on a sales call!

After facing the FTC fire and clawing his way back, Anik's now sharing his hard-earned wisdom with “Don’t Say That” — your essential guide to avoiding legal landmines in marketing.

Learn from his mistakes so you don’t have to make your own.

Follow Anik Singal at:

https://www.complily.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniksingal/
https://www.instagram.com/anik/
https://www.facebook.com/AnikSingalcom
https://www.youtube.com/@AnikSingal

Anik’s Book: “Don’t Say That”

https://ww.dontsaythat.com/go/

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

Transcript

ANIK: Every day there's something happening, something going on. And I've been taking blows left and right. I mean, I almost went bankrupt. When people ask me, how do you get to get through this? How are you still standing? You're still happy. So excited. How do you get through this? Because I understand success.

It's just a game of probability. It's literally statistics. That's all it is. If I keep getting back up at some point, I'm just going to win. The Content Capitalist Podcast.

Ken Okazaki: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Content Capitalist podcast. Today, my guest is somebody who's done some really big moves in marketing, in promotion, especially online, and then gone to hell and come back to tell the tale and also tell us how to avoid a lot of those things.

Anik Singhal, welcome to the show.

ANIK: Hey, thanks for having me, man. And, uh, I would tell you it's even worse. People ask me, where did I go? I say, I went where hell goes when hell has been bad. And I've come back from that to talk about it. So it's even worse.

Ken Okazaki: You know, I think that there's two people who have really done something like what you've done? Like in other words, gone to, a would say, would you say meteoric? Is that, is that saying too much? Or would you feel that was meteoric at some point?

ANIK: No, I mean, the only reason I wouldn't say it was meteoric is because it took for a while. It took us forever, right? I was dialing that business model in for like 17 years, but towards the last few years of it, we had figured it out. And we were, I mean, the year, the year that, uh, we've got taken down, we were going to do 40 million.

And I feel very confident that the following year after that, we were probably going to do 70, 80, 90. So we had, the rockets had turned on. I had the perfect team built. I had the systems down. I Figuring it all out, which was what made it even more tragic was just that we had, I spent my whole professional career trying to figure that out.

And the exact moment that I did actually, I was a few weeks away from stepping down as the CEO and I was six or seven weeks away from selling the company. Um, and, uh, The exact moment when it was all figured out and done was when we got, you know, we got hit and, and it all disappeared within the moment.

Ken Okazaki: there might be some people who don't know the story. Could you give us the cliff notes version of what kind of company were you building and how you got it to the stage where it was? And then what is this, you know, to hell and back, uh, you know, scenario that we're addressing here?

ANIK: Sure. Yeah. So, uh, I've been doing this stuff now at this point for 21 years. I started in college and information marketing has always been my thing. I love it. Um, especially in the internet marketing and teaching people how to build online businesses arena. I've been doing it since I was, I was in college.

it's been very good to me. I mean, I've, literally, gosh, man, I've done everything you can imagine. I've literally made a movie. I've made a bond spoof film that's officially listed on IMDB. I've traveled the world, spoken on stages for Tony Robbins, grant Cardone, and some other really big names I've been business partners with Robert Kiyosaki, Les Brown, you know, Bob Proctor, Damon John from Shark Tank. Um, I've lived in other countries. I've just like, I'm 41 years old and I genuinely feel like I've lived multiple lifestyles, lifetimes, because of this whole business model. And I took that company and it wasn't easy by any means.

And I took a business that traditionally is meant to be a multi million dollar business. Uh, you become a brand authority on a. Particular topic, You can make 3, 4, 5, 6 million a year and you net 50 60%, make a couple million a year. and It's great. And at the age of 25, 30, when I was able to do that, I thought, this is boring as hell.

Or What am I gonna do this rest of my life? Let's go for the mountain. Let's let's conquer the next mountain. And so I wanted to build that, information marketing business into this behemoth. And the way to do that was I built a publishing company. So I knew that I can only take myself so far, my brand, my face.

I only know so many things and I don't want to be filming ads all day and working and doing webinars all day. So here I have really mastered the art of building the right funnels, the right copy. I've built the most amazing team. I know how to buy ads. I know how to sell things. Why don't we just take that, templatize it and bring in other brands there.

Sounds very simple and very easy to do and was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. Um, it is not that simple. It's not that easy. And it took me years upon years of millions and losses and lots invested to finally dial it in. We dialed it in maybe late 2020, and then early 2021.

And so now it's time to start scaling it. And so 80 plus percent of our revenue came from publishing other people, right? And their face and their likeness, but we own the content, license it. And so we took that and we just skyrocketed, man. So in 2021, we did like 30 million. 2022, we were scheduled to do, you know, but, but check this out.

And I'm, I'm open and ready to talk about this. 2020, we were super profitable at about 15, 16, 17 million. I can't remember, don't quote me on it. 2021, we took off. We were like 30 million, not profitable, like marginally. Barely ridiculous, right? It's crazy. Sam Evans talks about this, to multiple people though, but it was because I was heavily investing in technology.

I wanted to build a tech company and that was millions of years. So with 2022 comes around, I decide, Nope, going to turn this into a What's a publishing company. What it is going to get those profit margins up to 20, 25 I'm going to grow the company to 40 million and I'm going to sell this thing and then take those assets and go build a tech company.

I'm going to not do two at the same time while ruining both the Anyways, So beautiful plans, It was all great April. My wife delivers our first baby. So it's like even better. I'm like, I come home from that. I'm like, I'm done. I want to retire for a year. I want to be with the baby and the company's almost sold.

We're through due diligence. And, uh, that one horrible day, it was like May 21st of 2022 or 22nd. It was Friday. I'm three days back from paternity leave. And, uh, I get a FedEx package from the FTC. Now one moment changed my life and I find out that I'm under investigation by the FTC for deceptive advertising.

And, um, and that very moment, I, and by the way, I was on the phone at the time that it came, I was on the phone with the HR attorney planning to announce, because my birthday was coming in three weeks. I was planning to announce on my birthday that my right hand was now going to be promoted to CEO. And I was stepping down and that he would shepherd the company through the sale.

And then he would go on to continue being CEO, post the sale. Um, and I put the phone down and I opened the package and realized that moment that the sale was done. Even though we had spent hundreds of thousands going through due diligence, and we were done. It was like, you know, we were six, eight, six, seven, eight weeks away from probably transacting.

Um, and so I knew that that was done, um, gone. So lose a deck of millions right there. And that very moment, I also called my attorney. I have a compliance attorney I'd worked with. Um, and when you talk, when, when you hear why I was shocked by this is because I had been actively preparing for something, not preparing for it, but actively cautioning against it for 15 years.

I had a compliance attorney. I had a lot of rules in the company and I had a great customer support team. I'd never once been sued by any customer, any employee, contractor, nobody. We had an A rating at the BBB. We did 20, 000 transactions a year. We had 20 BBB complaints a year. That's like huge. And they're all resolved.

We had great. Just weird. Customer base, I loved us. Average support response time of 36 minutes, days, nights, weekends, holidays. So I built a machine to not create complaints because my understanding was the FTC comes for you if you get a lot of complaints. And so I knew that very moment that I had lost everything now investigations by the FTC are confidential.

I don't have to tell anybody. I don't have to tell the experts and the people that I'm publishing. But Ken, that's not me.

Ken Okazaki: like if I know that the FTC is watching me clearly, and if I'm using your stuff, they're watching you too. I owe it to you to tell you. So Monday morning, 9am, I called everybody in and I just said, that's it.

ANIK: We're done. Shut the company down. So 40 million a year business that we had taken 20 years to build. It was just, it was over on the spot because I'm going to have calls that day with each of the experts to let them know that I'm, under investigation before they even ask me and have that awkward conversation with me, just asked me to turn their promotions off.

I want to be able to tell them I already did. So, um, Friday I get that notice by Thursday, I lay off 80 percent of my team because there's no revenue coming in. Like I have to, and it's been two and a half years and we're still figuring out our grip and getting back and I'm learning a lot in that process.

But, you so we ended up getting, we ended up,

Ken Okazaki: at the time.

ANIK: And so we ended up settling with the FTC. It took 18 months. It was. I mean, here's the best way I can describe what I was going through. So Ken, I had a period of my life, it's a long time ago, um, where I was hospitalized. I was, I was in the ICU for 92 days.

I have a condition called Crohn's disease. It can get pretty bad at times. I was losing two pints of blood a day. So I had to get transfusions every day, two pints. And, um, the other thing that was going on during that time was like, they couldn't even put my hospital bed up. If they put my hospital bed up, my, my, my heart rate would spike to such a level that they, they'd have to put me back down.

 I was in like, my life was under risk. And finally they got to a point where they had to do a surgery on me, where they said, 50, 50, if he wakes up from this and, I did, obviously wake up. It led to the hardest recovery. Two months in my parents basement with a makeshift hospital. Took me two months to be able to walk back up to the middle floor.

I had to go through physical therapy on my legs, because if you don't use it, you lose it. And six months after that, I had to have another surgery. And a month after that, I was hospitalized for another month and had to have another major surgery. So in the course of that year, I had three major surgeries.

Lost my life a couple of times. And I'll tell you that being investigated by the FTC for 18 months was actually harder than that year of my life. Mentally, physically, you know, we had, I just had had a baby. I ended up having, we had two babies during the investigational time. Um, 18 months, man, it was just hell.

It was just, you know, we spent millions, I burned millions, lost millions upon millions of dollars. And, uh, we had turned over 600, 000 documents over to them. both my attorneys, I have two attorneys, both of them have almost 20 years of experience doing this. Both of them said in their entire career. This was by far, by far like 10x large, 10x the closest second discovery that they've seen.

It was just, we turned, we had so much stuff, and about a few months into the process. My light bulb went on and I said, why do we not know this stuff? Like, there are so many rules and regulations that just are not clear. We, we don't, why do we not know this stuff? Like, this should be taught, this should be talked about.

This should be out there. And so I thought, gosh, you know, I'm gonna write a book about what I've learned in this thing and, and I just never expected that it would turn into this huge mission and that it would turn into this massive thing that everyone's just. you know, flocking towards and learning and um, and that's so it's kind of like turn your mess into your message has happened to me at this point.

and so that's the full story. You know, that's the whole shebang. You know, am I a horrible person? I like to think not, I've got a lot of data points that back up my side of the story. But of course, if you read only their perspective or their story, I I sound pretty bad.

Ken Okazaki: Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. And I do, I'm imagining going through what you went through. And no, I would, I would rather lose. a leg or an arm then go through that. And I don't think I'm exaggerating too much.

Uh, Well, I guess the thing about a financial or business calamity is you can recover.

If I amputate something, I don't know if it's going to grow back. So 

ANIK: Yeah, it's 

Ken Okazaki: to think a little further ahead.

ANIK: if it grows back, then you're going to be a very interesting person. So,

Ken Okazaki: I'm not a lizard.

ANIK: yeah.

Ken Okazaki: Some people, there's theories, uh, dude, Here's, here's what I'm wondering, right? So you get this letter, you shut everything down, you lay off 80 percent of your staff. And from then until now, what are you doing? Like, are you just living off your savings and just like, just dealing with, with lawyers and meetings and, and home life?

Like what's going on in your life?

ANIK: Yeah, yeah. So first of all, thank God we had been very, very, very, very, very wise with our money. So we had saved up a decent amount of money. we did do some revenue events, so we pivoted and we had new programs start and we did a few things and nothing really hit at the level that we'd love for it to hit.

So the last couple of years has just been losses. And if I'm being honest, it was, it's been me putting money out of my pocket to keep the company afloat. Um, yeah. And that's because I want to keep the band together. I've got an amazing team that, you know, most of my people now that are with me, I've been, I think.

6, 7, 10 12, 15 years. I can, we can talk with Our eyes, like I can be at an event and just look at them and they know what I want done like that. Can't be easily let go of. so, you know, um, I've done a lot of different things, but when I remember one thing, I I was already kind of burned out on the marketing space.

I was selling the company. I mean, I done it for 20 years. So at this point to find myself back in it From the ground up, it was like, you know, I really want to do this. But at the same time, my whole compliance training business, like it wasn't ready. I mean, this book alone took six months to write, if not more, the software took a year and a half to create and between you and I, I'm not really so sure at the time when I was thinking about it, like, who the heck cares about this?

It's such a boring topic. Like who wants to learn about FTC compliance? Like it's going to be a fail. Except for when I finally got out in the market and started talking about it. And it's like, The droves of people that came and like, my best cost per book sale. My best. This, my, I'm like, I haven't seen anything so great.

Maybe, you know, blessing was a curse. I'm sorry. Curse was a blessing,but yeah, it was just, I don't know, man. I don't know what I was doing. We were just hustling, you know, and in, I could go back and talk to myself two and a half years ago. I would actually give myself advice to do it differently because I think when the attack happened, I got into.

Fight mode so fast that I wasn't being very strategic and I didn't give myself the time to just mourn and absorb what had happened. 'cause I went into full blown fighter mode. But I know how I am. I, that's

Ken Okazaki: You said like, mourn and absorb what happened. Like, like you're talking as if it was a done deal as soon as you got the letter. Is that how you felt?

ANIK: So. Well, that's what I was told. for about one month, you know, you go through, you go through stages, it's like literally is like, um. losing someone. So it's like the first month is like denial, right? So it's like the first month, you're just like, nah, they got the wrong person. Like they made a mistake.

I'm going to, this is going to just go away. just like, they just, they made a mistake. They got the wrong guy, you know? And then, you know, your lawyers, they, they don't want you to be hopeless. So they kind of guide you through that, but like, they kind of let you know that like, Hey.

It's a total, like if you receive a CID, uh, that's a civil investigative document or a demand, they probably been watching you for a year plus now. They don't send those out unless they're like, they've already written your case. that point you're defending yourself mostly to mitigate and reduce the damage, but the chances of it going away are in the single digits, percentage wise.

And so I, began to accept that over the month or two, but. Part of me knew the minute I got it that this was, this was very serious, right? I had to shut everything down. And I, so I, I understood the seriousness of it, but, um, .I think as entrepreneurs, right, we are so, so innately afraid of going through a lull or a period of silence because we feel it will be forgotten.

We feel like the life will move on without us. And the truth is just, this isn't the case. Had it could even taken a few months off to just absorb everything, right? Cause I've got this new baby at home that I'm trying to be a part of. I've got like. my in-laws were living with us. Um, I've got this business and I've got my employees and I've got customers and I've got PR and control, like, I've just like, you know, and I'm not telling my parents.

I, I told myself I wasn't gonna tell my parents until the settlement was done 'cause I didn't want them to worry. They don't want them to go through that journey of 18 months worrying with me. And so it's had a lot on me, but yeah, your question originally was what was my day like? It's just like a whirlwind.

It was constantly pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot, new project, this, that, this, this, this, that. And, and it would just, it didn't need to be that. Like, I think it could have been slower and a little bit more strategic and perhaps the whole situation would have been different, but, um, but we had good days. Like we would have really good months where things would start to show some, some momentum and it was like, here we go.

And then we just Collapse. Right. And it was like the economy tanked. you know, our, our industry took a hit. I've, I've lost millions in other investments because of the interest rates and all. So there's, there's real estate that I had done. So I've been taking blows left and right, the last two and a half years in every way you can imagine.

I mean, basically in many ways, restarting. so even things that I thought I had set away, nest eggs, right? That were like safe investments in that they poof, they're gone.so it's just been like kind of. Like especially this week, if I'm being honest with you Ken, like we were just laughing, um, because I did a podcast before this one where I was interviewing a guest.

And we did a killer episode for 40 minutes and just Riverside didn't record it. and then yesterday we had a Facebook ads account go down for no reason. Right? Yeah. It's, it's, it was a killing it. I was like, at the best of the best with it, you know, and it was just killing it.

And then a day before that we had had something else go down and it's like, this been one of those weeks. And, but I gotta tell you, it's been like that for the last two years. So it's every day there's something happening, something going on. And all I know is this, all I know. And people ask me, how do you get to get through this?

Like, how do you, how are you still standing? Are you still happy? Are you still excited? How do you get through all of this? Um, because I understand success. It's just a game of probability. It's, it's literally statistics. That's all it is. If I keep getting back up at some point, I'm just going to win. Right.

And so like, it's. It's been tougher this time than the past times I've had to get up. But I also had a 5, 000 pound gorilla whack me across the face pretty hard. So, you know, I'm a little dizzy from that. Um, but yeah, it's been, you know, I I've been a really, really, really intentional about being a great father and a great husband.

Um, as a matter of fact, today, um, Is one of the few days that I will be leaving this late from the office, I always leave by five o'clock um, So that I can be home to be there with the kids But you know I got my parents came home today. So my wife has support but mornings, first two hours, kids home by five, last few hours kids I've actually The kids have made me so efficient.

Like I've made my, my day is so much better now because I get things done during the day. But yeah, I, I'm very proud to say, if someone asked me this on a different podcast, they say, what are you most proud of, of the last few years as you've journeyed through this? And the first thing that came to my mind was that even through all of this and the hell that I've experienced, I can confidently, very confidently say, I've been an amazing father and a great husband.

I won't say I've been an amazing husband, but I've been a great, good to great husband, but I've been an amazing father. I, you know, I don't think the kids would even know that there's something that's happened. And that was very intentional. It was very priority for me. I was like, I'm not letting this become the downfall of my family.

Not a chance.

Ken Okazaki: Well, thanks for sharing that. I want to jump into talking about the actual compliance part and stuff that content creators or advertisers can use. But before I do, uh, I just had, I want to mention something, you know, how you said success is just a matter of, you know, it's a numbers game, how many times you get back up.

And I remember, you know, there's this YouTube channel, Dude Perfect. You've probably seen these guys, right?

ANIK: I've seen them around. Yeah, I've not really watched so much. Yeah. Yeah, Well,

Ken Okazaki: You know, what they do looks amazing, but then they actually had an expert come in there and interview them and try to figure out like, how do you do these trick shots?

And they said it's a numbers game, but the thing is that every time you do like, you know, a full court, you know, basketball shot, on the first time you're going to try to get that swish, it might take you 500 attempts, right? But the second one will come in roughly half that time, third one will come at 175.

So it is the repetition, but then your success rate. ratio starts going up because you've done it that many times. So there's that as well. And I see that your success rate, because you've been doing it longer, you're going to have a higher ratio of hits simply because you're like, Oh, I've gotten to this stage before.

And, uh, and that, that I think is also a huge key in, in, you know, actually any more home runs.

ANIK: And so Ken, that's the interesting thing, right? Um, that's not been the case over the last couple of years. So that was what was interesting was my ratio of wins to losses was lopsided.

Ken Okazaki: Well, would you of those, like, you're, you're like hitting like more challenging or bigger, you know, goals?

ANIK: definitely.

Oh, a hundred percent. higher though? Well, then we've just gone to the next level is what you've done.

Yeah, yeah, that's true, right? Cause my, my burn rate and what I'm trying to attain and break even point is just like, is probably higher than most people's like aspirational goals in their company altogether, right? So that, that's a good point, but I will share one, one thing that's interesting.

So my company. When we were doing about three to four million a year, this is years ago, I almost went bankrupt. So this was like 2008, 2009 when the collapse happened. And by 2010, it really hurt our industry. And I went down and out big time. I was down and out for about 18 months and we came back. And when I came back, I took the company straight to like eight, nine million.

And then around eight, nine million, We had another issue where the company went and we almost went out of business. This was in 2018 and we came raging back and got all this almost as high as 40 million. And so at 40 million, we had another issue now with the FTC and we've gone down again. And, and, and funny enough, I do think about this and I do say this, I say, you know, I wonder, I wonder where we're about to go now.

Like next, next goal is like that a hundred million. Like, am I going to springboard right to that? 

Ken Okazaki: All right, I got two questions. Number one, why didn't your compliance attorneys before spot any of this stuff?

ANIK: ah,

great question. Um, you know, uh, attorneys are very, so if you think about the concept of push versus pull, they're not proactively on you unless you're paying a ton of retainers or whatever, which we weren't. So it was more like we had to reach out and take any review. If I had to have a complaint, one of my biggest complaints that I would have is that, They give very very safe weird vague advice, and it's so vague that at times you just end up not taking it, Cause you're like whatever.

 it just doesn't make sense, It's, it doesn't sound important almost, right? Versus the attorney that I work with now, who 

Ken Okazaki: to keep themselves out of liability for their advice? Is that what they're trained 

ANIK: Exactly. Yes. 1000%. It's to keep themselves out of liability. Exactly. Um, it's, it's, you're getting lawyered and, um, it's not something I really love.

And the attorney I work with now, Greg Christiansen, I mean, this is all he's done for 20 years. Literally. It's all he's done. And he is not that, I mean, he will look you dead in the eyes and be like, you cannot say that. Say it this way. And I love that about him, but I didn't find him until a few months into my case.

So, you know, he didn't get a chance to help, but I'm very confident if you feel, if he was my attorney for the first for the last 10 years, and I'm very confident this would not have happened. Um, so part of it is on me and as on the client to not proactively reach out and get absolutely everything minutely reviewed.

Part of it is on the attorneys not giving great feedback and understandable feedback. another part of it is just to be very frank, you're, you are at risk of what the attorney doesn't know. And that kind of sounds horrible, but truly it is. So, Greg Christiansen, He is a compliance attorney. 20 years he's been up against state AGs and FTC.

He has been in so many meetings and so many rooms that he knows what's behind the scenes. So there, there are rules that are not written. This sounds horrible to say, but it's true. There are things that are not written that you can't do that are discussed behind closed doors, but Greg has been behind those closed doors and taken note of it and remembered it.

Whereas other attorneys, if they haven't been behind those closed doors, They just won't know that knowledge. And they're only going to know that, which even now at this point, CHAT GPT knows by just reading the Federal Paid Commission Act. And I fell into that a little bit. So the exact specific thing that actually got me in trouble and had this thing not been there.

Now I'm not an attorney and I'm going purely off of what my attorney told me. But so I don't know if this is true or not, but the thing I'm told is if this one thing had not been in our calls. I actually, the case would have been really, really weak and there would have been most likely a good, a good chance of it just going away.

And that was this question, what is your goal? Four words, what is your goal? The problem with that on a telephone call is that the other person replies and says, well my goal is 10, 000 or 12, 000 a month, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there's no reasonable way for the salesperson to respond to that.

That the FTC doesn't immediately consider an implied earnings claim. So the only way to reply to that, so that it's clear is to say, that's great, Ken, that that's your goal. I want you to fully understand and acknowledge that we cannot make any attestments or promises to that. We are here to simply coach you and guide you.

And we have no idea if you're going to make any money or not like that. Like, can you imagine how abrasive that would be as a response? You'd be like, dude, what the hell? I just told you what my goal is, but that's the only thing. 

Yeah, any other answer, any other answer such as, oh man, that's a great goal, Ken, like we can help you do that.

Well, that's an implied earnings claim. So you have to have all the substantiation, typicality, studies and all of that. So that was happening on our calls. And, we went down for that.

Well, I can tell you a conversation. Yeah, these are recorded. And so there's a whole nother debate about, you know, how long should you keep your recordings around?

I thought I was doing a good job. I thought I'm being a good citizen by keeping them all around. But actually it's a lot of exposed risk. I had calls for years and that's a privacy policy risk. I mean, you know, those calls could get hacked and those are private conversations that could get leaked. That's not good.

But, um, I, I, I remember a conversation I had with my attorney, which is seared into my mind now. This is obviously once I've got the CID. I asked him to call Greg. I said, could you please confer with Greg? He didn't want to, right? It's a little ego thing sometimes with attorneys.

But he did call Greg and he called me back later and he said, you know, it's really interesting. Craig said you're not allowed to say what is your goal. He said it's an implied earnings claim. Oh, I've never heard that before and I remember thinking Look what the, you know, what do you mean? You never heard that before?

Dude, what the hell do I pay you for? You know, and that made that had me really upset I mean, I was I was fuming about that. So, um Yeah, man, it was a little mix of a lot of things. And, uh, quite frankly, it was just, I got misinformed. I got lack of information. Maybe I didn't, I didn't, uh, Oh, the last thing also is this was many attorneys for years would Say this and teach this.

And it made sense at a common sense level. It made sense. It said, look, the FTC is a large, it's, it's, it's a large organization, but it's not one with unlimited resources. There are millions upon millions of businesses that they have to oversee. So here's how they function. When there are a lot of complaints, their eyes look at you.

They are there to protect consumers. So the minute a company starts hurting consumers, they step in. And for the longest time I thought. Yeah. Reasonable. Makes sense. That's sounds very reasonable. So, Hey, let me build a company that doesn't create any complaints. Let me have ridiculous customer support. Let me have three customer support teams that work eight, eight, eight hour shifts in different time zones so that we are covered.

Let me have the best merchant accounting records, the least refunds. Let me have a huge coaching team and a staff that answers questions really well. And let me just have this big brand that people can trust. And we did, we nailed it, we did a great job, but, and we didn't have complaints. Like I said, BBB rating was an A.

Like, I mean, we didn't have complaints, we didn't have issues. Um, but, they also, hey, just because, A regulatory body has done things a certain way for a long time. Doesn't mean they have to keep doing things a certain way, right? They can do whatever the hell they want. And at some point it seems like, I have no evidence to back this up.

And it's just conjecture. It's just my experience. It seems to me like the, the, the regime has changed a little. The, the way they go off after an approach now, it's not, well, I mean, I was told because we asked about it. We said, Hey, what the hell? What gives? Like, we don't have complaints. And they were like, irrelevant.

We're like, what do you mean irrelevant? They're like irrelevant. Complaints or no complaints. The rules are the rules, you're breaking the rules. And so that's like, oh, oh, we're gonna play like that. Like, wow. Okay. Um, didn't know that. Right. So, but now you can tell that they are, they're more about the rules and if you break them, you break them, whether you are getting complaints or not, they say is irrelevant.

Ken Okazaki: Would you say that their investigation could have been triggered by a certain revenue, you know, revenue number, or was there 

ANIK: I, I thought that too. But 

Ken Okazaki: you out?

ANIK: nope, they won't tell ya. We tried asking, um, many times, just you know, when the case was closed, even, when it was like done and settled. like, can you just give me closure like. No one tell ya. I can tell you that they had watched my webinars. They had pulled sentences from four and a half hour webinars.

 I don't think it was complaint driven because typically people complain to you as a company first, before they go and we never let a complaint go unheard and unsolved. So I don't think it was that, It's not a revenue number because, um That was a myth that a lot of people carry. I carried for a while too that, Hey, you know, they only go after big companies, but, um, Greg's dealing with a client right now that barely does from what I understood.

And I don't, I don't know what the client is or anything, but that barely does a half a million a year. Um, Greg has settled cases before where. the person had to sell their watch to settle the FTC's fine. Um, 50, 000 settlements. One, case, I don't know if Greg settled this one or if he was involved somehow, but he told me about it What just made me laugh was they took the guy's minivan and I'm like, damn.

Damn, if you take someone's van, like, um, but he had to sell his minivan. So there are definitely many, many instances of cases where they have gone after smaller player, smaller players. You just don't hear about it, right? Because bigger players 

have a bigger 

Ken Okazaki: Like, yeah, they might have, you know, 500 sales in the lifetime of their business. You know, Anik, I really appreciate you saying that right now, because I think that a lot of people are under the myth of those two first things. Yeah. It's still this common belief that if your customers are all happy and getting amazing results and you're, you know, you're under or at like seven figures, you know, then they, why would they care?

Because we only hear about the bigger cases. So I think anybody listening right now has maybe, you know, puckered up their sphincter a little bit. It's like, oh, shoot, that's me. You know, like I've got great customer support. My, my clients love me. And, um, I'm barely making a million, so there's no way they're gonna look, you know, in my

ANIK: this is why I shared this story. you know, in the sense of guys, we had happy customers. I've had customers that have offered to refund me the money that the FTC sent them because they're like, we don't deserve this. Don't want it. Don't care. Um, we didn't have complaints.

I've never been sued. We served almost 200, 000 customers. Just since 2015, we had 247, 000 transactions. We've done nine figures in revenue.I had a 26, 000 square foot physical facility out of which I worked every day. I'm not showing up Public address Easily Findable, I'm not showing up every day. if I'm out there conning people.

20 years, I went through that. With not one case, Not one Most, Almost all people in the industry, Even today, even after I've been hit publicly by the FTC, even still, most people will say nice things about me because I've taken care of people. So I was one of the good guys. I know if you read the complaint letter that the FTC wrote, there That's not how it comes off.

But remember, we're not on the same side. They're not in the business of making me sound good. And I'm not even offended by it. I just get it. But we had great customer support. Happy customers, great products. not complaint heavy. And yeah, we were, we were, we were much larger in size and in revenue, but it's not like, you can't, I'm one of the good guys.

There are bad players in the industry. So I'm okay is just not true. It's just not.

Ken Okazaki: All right. Thanks for that. So I think by now we've got everybody's attention and they've, they heard the horror story. They realize that they're just as much a target as, you know, the a hundred million dollar guru. What are the, some of the biggest misconceptions? And I'm sure like as you scroll through Facebook, Instagram, you're seeing ads or even organic stuff.

People are making mistakes and it makes you cringe. Give me the top two or three that you're seeing that are still 

ANIK: So I'll just tell you the top one. This is the one this is the a welcome mat. outside the door of your business for the regulators. And by the way, it's not just the FTC so we have to understand something. There are 50 States in the United States, there are 50 state AGs, Europe is coming up quick now.

Your EU has its own regulatory bodies and they are swinging fast. Um, but in the States, uh, there are 50 states, and so each state AG, sounds smaller. can bring a case against you, a consumer can bring a case against you, a lawyer can bring a class action against you. So this is something that Greg always says and it's left a mark in my head.

It's a funny example, but he says, hey uh, Ken, who would you rather have slap you across the face, rip your arm off and beat you to death with it? A 5000, pound Gorilla, a 3000 pound Gorilla, a 1000 pound Gorilla or a 500 pound Gorilla? And it's like, how about neither? Because they all sound painful as hell. And that's his point. He's like, it doesn't do so.

The FTC is the 5, 000 pound. The state is the 3000 pound, but they still hurt just as much. And so, um, the FTC has come out very clearly. I mean, they are pounding on this since 2021. There is no Like reason for people not to heed this advice because they are making it so distinctly clear. The welcome mat on your company is Misuse or miss.

Yeah misuse of testimonials according to their rules. Okay. Here's what a marketer says All right, Ken, you're in my Facebook group. You made a nice post about me and said, you know, I took Onyx training and I made a hundred thousand dollars in sales the next month. I love Onyx. Onyx is great. I know you, Ken, I know you to be an honest and truthful person.

And you made a post in my public Facebook group. I get super pumped and excited. I'm so energized by it. I take a screenshot of it. It's a truthful post. I don't mean any ill will or any bad intentions. I take a screenshot of it and you made it in a public arena. So I'm assuming you don't mind, you know, and then I just shove it in my webinar.

Shove it in my page. Shove it in my VSL. Most marketers, most businesses do this. And little did I know that that testimonial is completely illegal on every level. Okay, number one, I don't have a signed affidavit from you. I don't have a signed release. Number two, I don't have a substantiation. Just because Ken said he made 100, 000 based off of my help, I need him to prove it.

I need to see screenshots. I need to see bank accounts. I need to see proof. I need a signed affidavit from Ken saying he's not lying. Yeah, that's crazy. People go, well, why do I need to prove what Ken said? Well, as long as Ken said it in your group and you didn't use it, that's Ken's problem. But the minute you took a screenshot of it and put it in your marketing, it's your claim now.

You can't be saying that without having validated first that he did it. I don't know anyone that actually does that. Number three, this is the one that kills results based testimonials. And that is, that has to be the typical result of a typical customer. I can't cherry pick. If I have a thousand customers out of which 10 of them have had raging success, let's say 20, 20 have had raging success, multi seven figures in success, but I have 980 other customers who've either done nothing.

Not even experienced it, maybe made nothing, or made, you know, a few hundred bucks, a few thousand bucks. But then I make a webinar where I only highlight the 20 stories that have done multiple six figures and seven figures. The net impression walking away from that webinar that a customer has is, The average result of a customer who watches this or who buys this is going to make six or seven figures.

Now we can argue whether that is really truly the average net impression, but that is the stance of the regulators at the federal and state level. They agree on that. So now what they're saying is, no, you can only use testimonials of the typical. So if Ken made a hundred grand, but that's way out that side, the typical, you can't use it.

It's, it's outside. Number four is we think we substantiate testimonials once at the beginning and say, this presentation is for blah, blah, blah, blah, purses only. And then once at the end, and that's enough. Nope. Every single time you use a testimonial, there has to be a prominent and proximate disclosure every time.

And so there's four rules right there. If you want to know how they got into my company, the door that they used to get in, the very first letter I got from them was full of things they wanted me to substantiate. So the second thing, Okay. So there's testimonials, which they wanted me to substantiate. But the second thing that they will use to come in the door, because it's just too easy, are claims.

So I just said earlier to you that since 2015, I've sold 247, 000 courses. That's a very specific number. Why do I know that? Because I had to turn over the documents. I had to prove things, right? But I have proof of that. I have physical evidence of the fact that I've done that. Okay, I've, during my case, they brought up a statement I was used to make in prior presentations that I was top 3 entrepreneurs under 25 as rated by Business Week.

BusinessWeek got bought out by Bloomberg, and Bloomberg nuked it, and all the, everything was gone, and it was years ago, too, so I couldn't find physical magazines, online, the website was gone, I couldn't find the article, the FTC said, prove it, we don't believe you, we can't find this anywhere, I said, well, I'm not making this up, and they said, well, prove it, if you don't prove it, if you don't have, you should have proof, well, how could you say this without having proof already, You're telling us you know this to be true, but you can't even give us a URL.

All right. Thank God for way back machine. I found the URL. So what are the claims? What are the absolute statements you're making? Three out of five doctors, four out of five doctors recommend the supplement. Show the study. Did you just call up five doctors? Three of which happened to be your uncles and aunts.

What's the study? Who commissioned it? Who did it? Show it to me. I want to make sure that it's substantiated, the things that you're saying. Most marketers are out there getting excited saying things like, um, you know, You could make 2, 000 a day with this and then marketers will be like, I said you could. I didn't say you would.

Like, they don't play that game, man. They don't care. It's a net impression. They don't see the difference. They don't think the consumer listening sees the difference. So, testimonials, and your absolute statements. I'm not even going to say claims because claims is easy. People understand claims, but what you don't understand is absolute statements.

Things that you are saying that are so definitive that you need to have evidence of it. When you get, God forbid you ever do, if you do, get a CID. You get that, It's going to be full of things that need to be substantiated. That's it. That's what it's going to have in it. A bunch of stuff that it'll say you need to prove that this is true.

Ken Okazaki: got it so basically do a hell of a lot of homework and don't say anything you can't fricking prove and he said something about testimonials and when it's got to be the average result not the top so in this case would it be fair to show numbers as an average result instead of testimonials like the average customer.

Will have X results and you have some proof of that

ANIK: Yeah. So you have to have solid proof of that. Um, and you have to define what an average customer is. So, um, body. com is great about this. They have a program called P90X. And so they've actually established typicality, which is not easy to do, right? It's a tough thing to do. You have to change the whole.

Process of delivering the course, you have to like really build it into how you deliver your program. But they're very good. So they say, Hey, for the average customer who finishes our P90X program physically and nutritionally, so they define who the average customer is first, which is. really important. Good to do. It's actually that part's in favor of the business, right?

So all the people are like, well, 90% of my customers don't even go through my course. Well, first of all, that sucks, and that's a problem in the eyes of the ftc. They'll hold you accountable to that, but you can excluded them from your typicality study because you can just simply say, for the average customer who completed all 10 modules or, yeah, by the qualifier, right?

The average result was XYZ. And so at that point you can use results based testimonials, but I'll caution everybody because I did not, I haven't done this and I will tell you, man, my conversions are rocking without the results based testimonials and I'm using character and experience based testimonials and they're killing it So on this mission, I want to tell you about some names that you should use to get some knowledge on the Well, firstly, It's a lot of people that are very happy with this. Like I feel comfortable. So you don't have to overwhelm and overload people with all these results based testimonials.

What that innately does for you, Ken, what I have found with compliant marketing, because the other myth, by the way, if we're going to talk about myths is a lot of people make the automatic assumption that compliant marketing doesn't convert. I did too, for the longest time, I literally used to joke. That I think it's time for me to retire from marketing and go, go, go launch a subway chain because I don't know how I can sell anything if I can't say anything.

And the truth of it is it's not true at all. Compliant marketing actually converts really well. I actually, today, if you took away the FTC's hand over my head and just said, Onik, it's all erased. It's all done. You can go back and start doing marketing the old way you were. I would look at you Ken and say, no, thank you.

I love what I'm doing now because I use a simple example. Upmarket, downmarket. When you use a lot of hype marketing with all the results and everything, you are driving customers that are downmarket. You are driving customers that don't have as much knowledge, that are not as capable, that are more vulnerable, and that are more gullible and more desperate.

And those are the very customers that A. Complain, B. Get hurt, and C. Don't stick around. And they don't buy more stuff and D don't get results Cause they don't actually do anything with it. But when you're more real and when you talk real and you don't use all that hype and all the bull crap you actually attract the more professionals, you get upmarket, whereas the upmarket people.

They don't want to get rid of their wayerness and they can't take any risks. they can't manage the value process Yeah, that's what any concert audience looks like eyes. and they're designing to I don't know how I got on that little bit of a rant, but you know, compliant marketing works. And you just like, I want to caution everybody from making the assumption that they have to use results based testimonials.

Ken Okazaki: All right, let's Give me some examples here. Let's say there's uh, Let's say there's somebody who's got a coach and course course and coaching program like implementation, right? And let's say that it's going to be about, uh, build something you're familiar with building an ads funnel, ads based funnel.

So how do you turn this around and make a character base? If they're not a well known person, for example,

ANIK: Yeah. So, um, character based testimonials such as, uh, um, you know, Ken is one of the best coaches I've ever worked with. We got started right out. From the beginning, I was able to get my funnel up and running quicker than I could have ever imagined. He delivered on everything he promised.

He's incredibly accessible and I'm going to be working with him for a long time. And I would suggest anyone else thinking about it, work with him immediately. You will thank me later. instead of a testimonial that says, can, can help me build a funnel that made me 38, 000. Um, it's just. that just opens up a whole boatload of stuff.

Now, funny enough, in the client and coaching world, you actually can establish typicality a lot easier because you have less clients, less people, you know what they're doing, you know what they're getting. You probably have a higher success rate, higher number of clients actually getting results. So by all means go, go, go establish typicality.

It's mostly in the course selling world that it's almost nearly impossibly

hard control who's buying it, right? there's no hard to establish typicality. yeah. And if I were to get a testimonial, like what you said, a character testimonial, would I still need like a signed affidavit? Or is that in effect? If there is a number related

Yes, good question. You don't need an affidavit, but you need to sign permission. You still need some form of permission, right? So it's a bare

minimum digitally checkmark or something? Would that be enough?

Ken Okazaki: or 

ANIK: Yeah. So it's, I just had this conversation with the attorney. So I want everyone to remember one thing. I'm not an attorney. I'm not an attorney and I'm not giving any legal advice.

It's just pure

experience. 

Ken Okazaki: way you're speaking, though, sounds like, you know, this pretty well and better than a Yeah. I got to tell you, Ken, I sometimes debate. I'm like, let's go to law school. Let's just go get that degree. It's three years

Your parents will be proud. I mean, Indian parents, right?

ANIK: Now, I think my parents are good, man. They know, they know I'm not built for all that. They gave up on the higher education with me a long time ago.

it really just depends on the testimonial, but yes, so, I wanted to use VideoASK. VideoASK is a, you know, visual testimonial

system. 

Um, 

yeah, it's great, right? And so, in that, you can build a little checkbox. permission consent thingy and it's not really a docusign or anything it's just kind of a checkbox.

I sent it to greg the attorney and I said can I do this will this count and he basically replied and said yeah this is okay as long as it's very prominent it's very understood and obviously they're going to the page to give a testimonial like it's This will be okay, but watch every testimonial and if it gets any claimee in there, and if there's any kind of absolute statements or result statements, then we need a, then it's a very different process.

We need a proper signed release. So, you know, I still err on the side of caution, especially given where I am right now, because I'm, I'm going to be watched for about, you know, nine more years at this point by the FTC as signed on to. So I'm just being extra careful. So I get signatures anyways. Um, and then.

Like, when you get a social proof picture, so like, uh, I think, Ken, you were kind enough to have sent us a picture of you holding the book, um, and we use it on our

site. Well, if you, First one from 

Tokyo. 

Absolutely. Um, and so if you remember, I actually messaged you and said, do I have your permission to use this book?

So to use the picture. So because that's not a testimonial, but it is still me using your face and likeness. But that's enough for you to respond to me and say yes, and I have a screenshot of that chat Like that's good for that purpose. But now if you went to like a testimonial it'd be like, hey Can you check this off or can you quickly sign this like two paragraph thing?

And then if you wait made me this like glorious endorsement, I'd be like, all right, dude, I need like a proper Release form from you. And it's, oh, the other thing is depends on celebrity status. So if I'm dealing with someone that's got some name prominence in their face and like, I'm, I'm essentially going to be attracting a customer base because of them.

They'd have a bigger claim in the future to saying that I used their face and likeness to generate commercial gains. Um, in that situation, I want a very proper. Things signed from the get go. Um, so like that's another thing, right? So if I'm working with someone really big and I wanna go ahead and sign things so they don't change their mind six months from now. 

Ken Okazaki: We're almost at the end of this and I've got a hard cut off, but I really want you to kind of give us an overview of what is the software that you Developed as a result of this and who's it for?

ANIK: Yeah. So first of all, we wrote this book, right? So don't say that, encourage everyone to grab a copy of it. Um,

digitally, 

Ken Okazaki: down below guys. If you're watching on YouTube, there's a link. If you're on the podcast, check out the show notes. We'll get

ANIK: Yeah. So, so, you know, this book, honestly, here, I wrote this book. Okay. So I ghost wrote this book on behalf of myself and Greg. It's a great read. It's a fun read. I'm a copywriter by trained nature. So it's a story driven. It's not legalese. You're going to actually enjoy reading it.you're going to enjoy parts of it.

The other parts you're going to want to

like, you're not going to enjoy 

Ken Okazaki: here. There we go. Let's get that

ANIK: Oh, there you go. Awesome.

Ken Okazaki: have permission to use this screenshot.

ANIK: Awesome. Thank you. So, um, but the software that that's been my, you know, when I started this journey in March of 23, cause my legal bills were coming in at 20 to 30 grand a month just to review my webinars and videos, sales pages, and it was taking forever. I'd send something to the attorney, take three weeks to get it back.

I'm like, gosh, this is not the pace at which we marketers move. So at that time, chat GPT, chat GPT, AI, AI. I'm like, I wonder if we can just quickly code something to do that. I thought it would take me two, three, four months. We'll be done. Okay, took a year and a half. It has been one of the most complicated things.

It is not just prompting Chachapati, there's context involved. There's so much involved. So we have finally done it. We built a tool called Complyly, C O M P L I L Y. com, and within minutes, you can scan pages, you can transcribe and look at videos, audios, you could set up automated systems to listen to your sales calls.

And we give you a quantitative score back. So you can kind of get some grade level.

Pick apart out of 23 different violations and warnings and seconds to show you. Now we are not lawyers. We are not complete and final sources. We are still in beta and working and we're not legal services. imagine how much faster you can get some early feedback and imagine how much money you can save with your lawyer because you can go through this process first before you submit it for approval. So we've gotten tremendous feedback. People are loving it and actually probably by the time this episode releases, is we're going to have released a free scanning feature on the website. So you can go to comply.com, type in your URL or upload up to 2000 words and get a quick gauge of how good or bad it is. And then from there, make a decision as to whether you wanna just, you know, upgrade your membership and be a part of it. But this is my mission now.

We're building brand compliance, FTC compliance, regulatory compliance, affiliate compliance, all of it into one tool to help businesses and lawyers, by the way. So now lawyers, it doesn't have to be push versus pull. Lawyers can actually get proactive feedback because comply. Will be the watchdog for your business and monitor everything you're doing on the internet for compliance and it'll pull your lawyer in whenever it's needed.

So now finally, the tool that I believe could have saved me from the mess I went through is what we've built.

Ken Okazaki: That's amazing. You know what would be the real win here? This reminds me of that movie, Catch Me If You Can, if you get hired or your software gets hired by the FTC to start scanning what's going on to spot, uh, you know, the 

ANIK: of people have brought that up. Yeah, a bunch of people have brought that up there, there. It's funny, uh, without sharing

Ken Okazaki: I mean, it potentially could be a thing if it's as good as 

ANIK: So, I heard, and I don't have any way to back this up, but I, I did hear from somebody else who comes from the MLM space, they're a lawyer in that space, and they did, they said that the FTC's already begun using AI to, to fine detect violations, and so the joke was, you know, it's a, the joke that they were making was my AI versus theirs, like Terminator, you know, it's got one AI versus another, But, uh, well, I do have a meeting coming up actually very soon with someone who had A pretty high role in a regulatory agency.

They're, they're no longer, they're, they, they were former at this role. and so we're actually talking about a board seat. So, I mean, you know, this is, this project for me is, this is my next 10 to 20 years of my life. Like, we're, we're trying to build something truly that covers a need that doesn't exist.

And, uh, a lot of people are taking notice right now, and a lot of people are getting behind it. So. Yeah, I mean, hey, I, I, it's, it's going to sound crazy, Ken, but I carry zero ill will towards the FTC after this whole thing is done. And they honestly have always just felt they were doing their job and, you know, and the, the lack of knowledge shared, it's not really their responsibility.

It's ours. And I'm taking on that, that mantle. I would like to share what I learned and now marketers won't be able to say, I already know. Well, you had a chance to know, you chose not to know.

Ken Okazaki: All right, Anik, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. I think we could go on for hours. I've got a list to go get back to your kids. Guys, if you didn't yet, grab the book. There's a link down below. Uh, also, uh, the software, we're going to drop the link down below so that people can check it out.

Anik, I want to close this off. If you could ask a question to the listener who's a marketer. So that they're going to be able to answer in such a way that they'll get a hint. Like, am I compliant or is something off? What questions should they be asking themselves? 

ANIK: Are you telling a single white lie in your marketing? Are you giving fake values? Is anything in your marketing stretching the truth? You know the answer to that.

Ken Okazaki: Guys, ask yourself that question. I'm going to do that myself. And I do think that there's some stuff I have to polish up. Not polish up, actually, maybe just trim down is what I'm going to say. Anik, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And everybody else, I'll see you next week. 

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.