The $80K/Month Side Hustle | Sean Ferres

When your side hustle makes $80K a month, is it still a "side" hustle? 🤔

Sean Ferres dropped out of engineering school to become a full-time music producer & DJ, playing gigs on hot air balloons and yachts, and chased his music dreams. But passion doesn’t always pay the rent.

He turned to copywriting and funnels, & had an instant knack for it, but it was when he started coaching other copywriters that he went from scraping by to making $80K a month!

In this episode, we talk about:

• How Sean scaled to $80K a month with a side hustle.
• Funnels, copywriting, and the real cash flow strategies most coaches get wrong
• Funnel secrets that drive consistent cash flow

Sean’s story is living proof that you can can excel at more than one passion, and make bank while you’re at it. Hit play.

Follow Sean Ferres at:

https://www.instagram.com/seanferres/
https://www.instagram.com/bigmoomusic/
https://www.youtube.com/@bigmoomusic
https://www.facebook.com/seanferrespersonal
https://www.facebook.com/bigmoomusic
https://www.youtube.com/@seanferres
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6kibRmkPunppTddl6kgvNe
https://music.apple.com/ph/artist/bigmoo/1186847599

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
• 0:19 Introduction and Guest Welcome
• 0:55 Wild Stunts and DJ Life
• 3:18 From Engineering to Music
• 5:00 Entrepreneurial Struggles
• 7:04 Discovering Copywriting
• 13:02 Building a Coaching Business
• 18:21 Current Coaching Program
• 23:13 Email and Facebook Funnel Strategies
• 23:50 Instagram Funnel Insights
• 24:20 Challenges and Successes with Shoutouts
• 26:21 Social Media Strategy Breakdown
• 35:05 The Power of Controversial Content
• 40:50 Future Goals and Aspirations
• 44:50 Music and Business Integration

Transcript

Sean: It's actually easier to make eight figures a year than it is to make seven, if you build it right. But you can have an executive leadership team, CMO, a manager, an integrator. They run all the day to day operations, manage your team, hold them accountable. And you can just really step out of the business and just be the face of it.

You can outsource it as much as you want. Content Capitalists Podcast.

Ken Okazaki: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Content Capitalist Podcast. My guest today is somebody who I've seen online first, and then I met him in person. And I'll tell you what, he's exactly the same, same guy. You know, sometimes there's. People have a two faced kind of thing. This guy's the same dude.

Sean Ferris, welcome to the show. 

Sean: pumped to be on my friend. It's, uh, first thing in the morning.

Ken Okazaki: that was a new Aussie term. Pumped of. What's pumped of, man?

Sean: yeah. It's good to be here, man. It's good to see you. It's good to catch up in Fiji, and I know we've been trying to do this for a little while, and I think my assistant is giving you the runaround on Facebook, but it's good we got to connect finally, so

Ken Okazaki: All good. All good. 

So, dude, when I, like, you show up on my field a lot, you do some wild stunts. Like, you took a tiny little DJ set, or kind of a big one, into a tiny plane, and then you decided to fly all All around, like, was that around Sydney? Right. And you had, you know, like a bunch of, you know, hot chicks there and you had a party in a plane and you had parties in like penthouses to where you got shut down and you had like, uh, jet skis in the pool.

Sean: Um, what is it with you and parties? Is it an Australian thing or is it a you thing? Or is it just like, tell me about that. Well, I am a DJ, so outside of my business, that is what I do. I'm a music producer and a DJ, and um, the Party stuff, I mean one of them, the, the house party, that was, uh, that was some Project X shit, I'm not gonna lie. I just wanted to have, heh, one good Project X party in my life, and that was my 24th birthday, was super expensive, I think was like 16 grand went for about three days, probably wouldn't do it again, but I'm glad I did it.

Let's put it that way. Um, don't remember most of it, but that's a different story. So yeah, the other stuff though, I just like to do creative mixes, you know, and unique places. And so I've got a monthly radio show like most DJs, but rather than just recording it in my studio at home, I think it's always cooler to Do it somewhere unique, you know, so I've done DJ sets on, you know, yachts in a tiny airplane.

As you said, not a lot of stage, uh, they were hot because one of them was my housemate. Okay, so they're just, just friends. and then did one on a hot air balloon recently, uh, in a golf cart on the back of a golf cart, going on a golf course, um, abandoned tunnel for Halloween, like lots of, lots of fun, crazy stuff.

 keeps life interesting, you know?

Ken Okazaki: Yeah. You got to take it to the top of Mount Fuji next. 

I've done one on a mountain actually, in the snow. That was tough. Yeah, Mount Fuji would be, yeah, that'd be pretty crazy. Yeah, it would be crazy. And about all the tourists, you know, seeking the serenity of, uh, you know, a Zen sunrise, they're going to be thrilled to have you right there setting the tone,

Sean: They would love the pumping hard style in the background, you know, as the birds chirp and the sun rises, it really adds to the serenity.

all the stuff. So dude, you've got this going on. You got this life where you're a DJ and you throw cool parties, shoot cool videos, hang out with cool people. And then you've got your business where you coach people on how to become copywriters and how to become, you know, financially free and abundant. Are these two separate things or is there any kind of crossover with this? Yes, uh, they're totally separate. 

So, the only reason I actually ever started the business with the copywriting stuff was because I didn't want to be a broke musician. So, I got out of high school, I went into mechanical engineering, I was actually going to build planes and rockets and fun stuff like that.

 do really well in school. I was a massive nerd, you know, physics, engineering, that was my jam. And I did a year of that.

Ken Okazaki: you as a physics nerd, dude. Like, do you geek out on like Elon Musk and stuff? What he's doing with the rockets? Or is that like

Sean: think it's super cool. Yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah. Um, like a year into engineering, I kind of realized like this isn't taking me down the path that I want to go down because as much as I was passionate about, you know, rocket science and stuff. 

I was definitely more passionate about doing something on my own. So I've been very entrepreneurial since I was, as long as I can remember, a tiny kid, I used to sell lollies at school, just to like my classmates and stuff. Um, I don't mean drugs, by the way, I mean actual like candy lollies, whatever from the store.

 but yeah. And then, so after a year of engineering, I was like, man, this is, Taking me literally directly towards this like nine to five life that I don't want. And I don't think I'm smart enough to be the next Elon Musk realistically. I know my limitations and I don't think I'm going to be like CEO of some rocket company.

So like the only way I can be sort of self employed and entrepreneur do my own thing is if I do something completely different. So that's when I just did a full 180 and I just started producing music instead, you know, cause I've always been really into specifically electronic dance music. So ever since sort of 2010 era, like, you know, the come up of Avicii, Swedish House Mafia, I got really into it and yeah, so I was like complete 180.

Uh, parents didn't, didn't love it. They didn't talk to me for a little while after that. 

Um, but yeah, and then, so that kind of began this year long period of just eating shit. So the whole of 2017, I was basically trying to figure out. How can I make money in the shortest amount of time? But make like a good amount of money so I can just focus on music.

 Right. Cause I don't want to be working at Subway. You know, it's like pretty, big blow to the ego to go from like engineering degree to like, I'm just going to drop out and like, you know, work a minimum wage job while I make music, you know? So it's like, I'll see what else I can do.

Um, yeah, that kind of began the entrepreneurial sort of path. And I tried, man, I started and failed at so many different businesses in the beginning. Like it was everything from

Ken Okazaki: Let's, let's hear some of these. But before you do that, what's the last time you got paid an hourly rate for something? And what was it?

Uh, my last job, I was working in a warehouse for minimum wage pretty much. Um, uh, Merlo, oh yeah, what's it called? It's a coffee warehouse. Um, that was 2018. So I was 20 years old, 20, I think I just turned 21. Got

20. I just turned 27. So that was six years ago. And what's going on in your mind as you're doing it? Like every day, just like, I can't do this anymore. like this is shit or were you like, this is okay, but maybe there's something better. Like, what was the intensity of, wanting to do something different? 

Oh yeah, I want it out. I'm million percent. 

Sean: I mean, when I was in the, the warehouse, I was, yeah, I was wanting to get out of there basically every second. every second I was devising an escape plan to get out and, um, I would literally, I was probably a terrible employee cause I rocked up to work.

an hour late every day. My whole philosophy was like, I will just work faster than everyone else to kind of make up for the extra time. And so, you know, they're sitting there working and kind of like, you know, slow motion, I would smash a double cappuccino, like pack boxes, like a madman at home. I would just go off and take these, like extended bathroom breaks where I would be in there for like 20 minutes.

Just like smashing DMS, sending outreach messages, trying to get clients. lunch break. Same thing, trying to get clients. Boom, boom. Um, but yeah, basically it was, it was a James Bond operation. I was like, get in, get out as quickly as I can.

wait, what were you trying to get clients for at the time that you were working? Um, yeah. So that was towards the copywriting phase. 

Like I said, before that, before I even discovered copywriting, I ate shit for quite a long time and it was about a year of starting and failing these different businesses. This is my whole year in 2017. And so the way I just remember it, the way I actually got into it was kind of hilarious.

It was a bit of an accident, but I actually went to see the Australian Open in Melbourne. So we went with my family and I just put this random bet on one of the underdog players, just like, it was like five bucks, just like as a joke. And this guy actually ended up beating the world's number one, who was Andrew Murray at the time.

 And so I got, the odds were, I don't know, a hundred to one or something crazy, right? And so I turned this five bucks into like 350. And I was like, whoa, okay, that's crazy. And then I basically convinced myself that I was a super genius and I just started betting on all the players. Now, granted, tennis is a sport that I do follow, but I was like blindly guessing.

There was, there was no strategy. It was, it was just like, I like this player. I like that player. I think he's a good player. And then I just guess, and I actually made enough doing that, where I think I made on a couple grand or something over the tournament, which was enough because I didn't have a job at the time.

I'd recently been fired from. or something, I can't remember. And that was enough to tide me through for the month. And I was like, okay, this internet money thing. I was like, this is real. All right, let's see what else we can do. And then that kind of sent me down the path of just starting and failing a whole bunch of different little side hustles and all that sort of stuff.

And so I think the next one was like binary options training and then it was drop shipping. So I started this online store and I was selling. literally everything from like catch me outside. How about that? Like shirts and mugs back when that was the meme, uh, selling like weed socks, just all sorts of stuff.

Uh, just random shit basically just on Facebook ads and. I actually did make sales. I made some money, but I was spending more in ads than I was making because I had no idea what I was doing. I had no training, no mentorship. I didn't go through any course. I was just like, I'm going to try to do this dropshipping thing with like no, no marketing or

Ken Okazaki: where'd you get the idea from? If you didn't, like, was it just like you saw a random TikTok where someone talked about it and you said, yeah, I could do that. And you, you didn't bother taking the course or anything? 

Sean: Yeah, I think, um, there was no TikTok back then, but it was probably Facebook, uh, some posts or probably an Instagram post or something. Where as, you know, they explained the business model and I was like, oh yeah, you buy cheap stuff from Alibaba, you set up a Shopify store, you run ads and you sell it. I was like, okay, I can probably do that.

 And um, yeah, I made some sales. It was cool. It's like the Russians seeing the 4 paypal sale. I was like, wow. You know, but then, Obviously, business economics wise, wasn't a very profitable venture because I had no idea what I was doing. And yeah, then the, then the next thing I think was like a online, the next thing I saw, um, I saw an ad for this French company and they reckoned that they had developed an algorithm that could beat roulettes, online roulettes, within like five spins, they could guess the correct number. And I was like, that's probably bullshit, but it's only 50 bucks. I'll give it a shot. What do I have to lose? I'm broke anyway. And so I did it and I signed up for the software and it actually worked. I was like amazed. And I'm sitting there, I was sitting there in university, right? I was studying like, I was also, by the way, I was studying a dual degree.

So engineering business. And then once I dropped out of business, uh, engineering, I kept doing the business degree. And then I was also doing the diploma of audio, like, uh, studio production. So I was sitting there in the music class and just listening to the lecturer, like talk. And I'm just like, spin, spin, spin, spin. 

And I made like 500 Euro in one, like 30 minute class. And I was like, I've cracked the matrix. This is it. I'm out. See you bitches later. It's like, this is it. I've solved like, this is a money glitch. Never gonna have to work again. Uh, I was just, yeah, just, just super excited about this thing. I went to go withdraw my money and they casino would not let me because they accused me of cheating.

Which technically I was cheating, but yeah, that was, that was pretty devastating. And then, um, yeah, there was a couple of more things. I think I got into like some, uh, it was Forex training rem rob it.

Ken Okazaki: did they figure it out because of your bedding pattern or something? Or, could, did they have like a software detection to see that you're, you got some kind of layer of software on it? 

Sean: No, so honestly, you go into the terms and conditions and it literally says if you use any type of strategy at all, even including the common like betting strategies as like the Martin Gale strategy where you double down on your losses, like all that sort of stuff. You're not, you're not allowed to, you literally use any strategy at all.

 And they basically say, we reserve the right to let you withdraw your money under any circumstances. And I'm like, okay. So this is obviously highly rigged against me. And, um, they just, yeah, they're in Cyprus or something, so you can't touch them and it's like, this is how they make money. They're basically

Ken Okazaki: So basically, mathematically, if you win, then you would have used a strategy. So that's pretty much how they're going to sit.

Sean: yeah, no, exactly. So I was like, okay, this is a dead end.

Ken Okazaki: that's true. Yeah.

Sean: Nothing's happening here. Um, yeah. And then after that it was like Forex trading. Got into like a MLM thing for awhile. Not a pyramid scheme, like it was a legal MLM, but it was. Involved with the Forex trading, which actually I made the most money from that cause I was like learning to trade.

And I was like sharing the trading bots around and stuff with other people. I built a team of like 12 people, actually. We were all under me, we were all on this like training journey together. And I was like, Oh, this is really cool. I'm making like passive income and all this stuff. And then one day I was in, I was on holiday actually.

I was in Japan. This is with my family. And then in the span of one week, my entire team of like 12 people, they all just left. They all just cancelled, they all quit. And I was back to zero. I was like, again, here we go. And then eventually after like just a year of that, I was sick of it. I was like, man, okay. 

Rather than trying to go at this alone, why don't I actually hire a coach, a mentor, like someone who's actually been there and done it. 

I can just show me the ropes and so I don't have to figure it out myself. And that's when I discovered copywriting. And so that was actually through Jason Capital. I don't know if you know him, he's done a lot of different things over his career, but at that particular time he was teaching copywriting.

And I was like, okay, I get, I actually get this as a skill. Like I can see why this would be genuinely valuable to businesses. And if I would learn this, You need to pick up a really hard working high income skill. It's not just some market fluke thing, you know, that's a here today and gone tomorrow. So Jason gave you some basic skills or taught you some skills and then why'd you pick Gmail marketing? Like why that? And not, you know, dating or, you know, DJing or something. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess the coaching is the next phase. So, so yeah, the first thing, um,I remember I was in Italy. I seem to travel a lot. This is my mum's 50th, right? So we all flew over. We went for week long hike to Dolomites. It was beautiful. It was amazing. And he had this webinar. I was at three in the morning.

Italy time. But I was like, this is my ticket to financial freedom. So I'm like, I'm going to stay up until 4am, watch this thing. And you got to the pitch at the end. And I was like, I was already, I'm in, like, no matter what, I'm in. It's just a question of if I can afford it. And so it got to the end and I think it was 2, 500 USD, or it was three payments of a grand, basically.

And so when you convert it to Australian dollars, it was like 1, And I looked at my bank account and I literally had all my accounts, savings, tax accounts, like every single dollar in every account and cash altogether was 1, 350. I was like, oh, dude, I'm 50 bucks short of like, just the, just the first payment of a three pay plan.

 I I was like, ah, man. But you know what? I was like, we're flying home tomorrow and I have a piggy bank somewhere in my cupboard that I haven't touched since I was like 10, full of coins. I was like, I bet there's 50 bucks of coins in there. And so I raced home, smashed open this piggy bank, counted all the coins and it was like 79 of coins or something.

 Straight to the bank, like deposited in my account, call up the guy, Kenny, I'm in, got the payment, submitted it. And I was like, okay, so now I have 30 days to make at least 1, 400 bucks again before the second payment. It was like, I can probably do this with this skill. And yeah, that, that began the copywriting journey.

And so guess I had a bit of a natural knack for copywriting because we went through like program, the course, the assignments, you have to write emails as homework, right. And you would submit the homework to the coaches. And the feedback I got was like, They literally asked me like, did you actually write these yourself?

I was like, yeah, uh, you know, there's no AI back then or anything. And so they were like, dude, this is top three out of like 500 people who've been through the program. Like, you're pretty good at this. I was like, Okay, cool. Um, and then, so I guess I was, I had a bit of a natural skill, but also, you know, I worked hard at it as well.

Like I was a good student. I was, I was going through it. I was taking it really seriously because it was do or die. I was like, I can't afford to take this seriously because I don't have any money. Right. Um, and so, yeah, I was like doing the homework, the assignments, the outreach exercises and everything.

And so, yeah, within 30 days I made enough to cover that second payment. That was all good. And then, kind of came the next part, which was getting clients. And so none of these programs at the time, there were, you know, a couple of other copywriting programs that didn't cover getting clients. You know, they gave you this sort of generic email script and it wasn't very good. And I was like, huh, okay. So I have this great skill, but I can't seem to figure out how to get clients. So it wasn't taught. I was like, okay, so I've got to figure this out. And I had this theory that instead of just sending these terrible canned scripted messages to people, You know what? Maybe if I just talked to them, like a person, if I just reach out to business owners, and I, maybe pick something from their website or their emails, you know, I signed up for the list, I go through the funnel and I actually identify particular things that could be improved.

And I maybe reach out and offer suggestions and insights and value rather than just trying to pitch them and just sort of do it organically like a friend. I feel like that would go further than just. These blatant copy paste scripted messages. And it turns out that was right. And so I managed to get my first few clients pretty easily. 

Um, and then was actually at 10k a month as a copywriter within I think about 30 days after graduating the copywriting program, which was like insanely quick. And for me, that was just an unfathomable amount of money at the time, because again, I was like working in a warehouse. I'm in a wage. I think it was making 40.

100 a day or something. And I was working a DJ job, playing weddings on the weekend too. And I just, I couldn't even believe it. I was like 10 grand a month. This is like, I'm the richest man alive. This is just insane. Um, and yeah. And then, so obviously like word spread throughout the program.

Cause like I kept getting clients and posting in the group and everyone was like, dude, how are you doing it? How are you getting clients? Like no one could get a client to save their life. And um, I just kinda started helping people just for fun. free, fun, just as a favor. And, it became a point where I was like, Hey, this is taking a lot of time, helping all these people free.

 And I discovered, I actually enjoy the coaching way more than the actual writing. Like I get such a kick out of helping like you give someone piece of advice, they do the thing, they get the result and you just feel so Important, I guess, like I had such a big impact on even a small number of lives, but it's like having that direct impact on someone's life.

 I was like, this feels amazing. I love this. It's like very rewarding. It's fulfilling. And, um, whilst I was, I guess a good writer, I, I didn't enjoy it that much. Um, but I enjoyed the coaching a lot more. 

And so eventually after a few months, I transitioned and then went full time into coaching and I just helped copywriters to get clients.

And that was my thing for, Yeah, I mean like six years now it's been since then. That's cool. And right now, is it, uh, like. So what is the coaching format actually? Look like, like weekly live coaching or like DMs or all the above. if someone pays to get into your program, what do they get? Yeah, so pretty much the way it's been from the beginning. It was a, I did some one on one stuff at the start, but then I basically discovered after doing enough one on one, everyone has the same exact problems. Everyone has the same, I'm giving the same advice on every call. I was like, okay, I could probably just put this together in a training.

 And so, I just basically made a 10 week training, which went from like. Completely zero. Here's how to choose your niche and your service and position yourself as an expert. Set up your social media, et cetera, et cetera. Then here's how to do outreach properly. Here's how to do follow ups. Here's how, what to say when they reply.

Here's how to get them on the phone. Here's how to close 'em on the phone. Here's how to retain the client. So, I mean, it's a 10 week sort of done with your program where you do live coaching calls every week, some with me, and then over the six years, obviously I've hired quite a few coaches as well.

And so we've got a really, really strong coaching team. And the bit that I think I'm really proud of is the two this kind of came full circle. So the two copywriting mentors that I was learning from in Jason's program. and the BBC Japanese script writing program, which more people know than I do is this I own Tai Lopez, V Shred, BioTrust, you know, it's multiple nine figure companies.

 They were really, really good at email, way better than me, obviously, like they were my coaches. And so I was like, Hey, would you, if I paid you, would you be able to put together like a email copywriting training that could take beginners from like, you know, zero to not world class, but having good enough skills to get paid. 

And so we had a rev share thing going on for a while and I just paid them, you know, 300 out of every sale that I made because my thing was three grand. So I paid them 10 percent and yeah, they put it all together. And then that's where we could eventually start working with beginners and helping the beginners learn the skill and then become copywriters.

And so that was really cool to work with them and have them on board. And then I've, I've hired some really strong, I would consider A lister copywriters to be on our team. So I can't say who they've written for cause they're on NDAs and stuff, but you know, they've written for like all of your favorite internet marketing.

 gurus, and, um, made combined for a hundred million dollars or more for the clients. And so they actually review people copy every single week and give them feedback. And so there's like six calls a week in total. Yeah, it's become a, quite a beast of a program.

Ken Okazaki: a week. Hmm. And are you, uh, like, you have clients in the U S, Australia, UK, like every, every English speaking country pretty much, or are you just localized in Australia?

Sean: All over the world, it's been that way from day one. There's more copywriters in America by far than Australia. Australia's tiny in comparison. 

Ken Okazaki: It's more people. 

Sean: U. S. U. S. is the biggest, definitely. I mean, it's more people's, copywriters, So there's. There's a bigger market. UK would be second, probably Canada third, and then maybe Australia fourth. 

Ken Okazaki: So tell me right now, what is your, like the main driver for finding clients for your coaching program? How does that work right now? 

Sean: Whether it's you personally, your marketing team or whatever that is. Yeah, so we do a variety of activities, organic, paid. We have two main funnels, I would say. So the first one and the one I've been running for five years or so, it's from, actually it's from Taki because I joined Taki, uh, About a year after I started my journey. And um, the funny part is it is coaching business.

I never wanted it to be anything big. I only wanted to make like five 10 KA month on the side and just produce music full-time, right? 'cause music is still like my full-time career sort of aspiration. And the pandemic hit. And I went from making like 10 20 KA. This is also around the time I joined Taki's uh, Black Belt Mastermind, so he definitely had something to do with it.

 But we went from 10 20k a month to 80k a month, 90k a month within about six months, and so it was just like, boom!  Now I have this million dollar a year coaching business, that I never wanted, but I was like, shit, okay, this is like a real company now, I guess. I got, I've got team members, I got all this stuff, and I was like, I never intended it to be anything like this. But this beats the pants out of working in a warehouse. So I was like, I'll keep this million dollars a year thing. This is pretty nice. And then it was a matter of like outsourcing it a bit at a time. So I can get my time back so I can do music, but in terms of client getting, so we run a hundred lead bundle as Taki calls it, which is basically just a lead magnet ad on Facebook.

 So I have a, I put together a cheat sheet. It's like a copy paste script. Copywriters can use this to get their first client. I've been running that same ad for like five years and I haven't even needed to like change it. 

And so it just worked. And so we get them on email lists, we get them in a Facebook group, nursing them through email and the group.

And then we just do the odd sort of spear email where it's like, Hey, I'm looking to take on five people this month to help them go from 0 to 10K. You know, if that interests you, you hit me back, I'll give you the details, like that type of thing. So that's one funnel. And then more recently over the last couple years, we've branched out a little bit more into sort of general math market, like biz ops space, I suppose.

 because we have that email copywriting skill, we can take people from sort of. It's a pretty good within 10 weeks with the combination of the email training and like the coaching feedback that they get. 

So the Instagram funnel is the other one. We do Instagram shout outs. And so we partner with people like Big networks of pages and they all do the shout outs and they say, Hey, if you want to make money online in 2024, here's a 20 accounts you need to follow.

You've probably seen a bunch of those. Um, you know, it's a Brandon Carter blah, blah, blah. And then me, you know, I'll be one of them. And so that's how we grow the Instagram. And, um, it's a super simple funnel. Like we just post nurture content on their stories every day. And then we just DM every new follower, you know?

And so we just start as many conversations as possible. 

And are you finding that profitable from the get go or did it take some time with the, the shout outs method? Yeah, you do have to dial it in. It's not, you can't just get traffic and then just make money. Like the whole thing has to be congruent, you know, it's got to be dialed in. So the first six months we did the shout outs in house ourself, I still have the tracking sheet. It took us I think, four months before we found a winner, I would say, because you're testing a lot of different posts, a lot of different creatives.

You know, were using those Twittercharacterstyle style posts. Where it was uh, you know, the, some random hook or example, or it's like, here's the five steps I did to quit my 9 to 5, or make my first thousand dollars in the line step one, blah, blah, blah. And then the step five is like learn Gmail copywriting.

And it's like DM me the word Gmail to learn more. That was a bit of a cringe example, but you know, those sort of carousel style posts. Um, and so We tested so many of those from here's how Google makes a hundred million dollars And that's like they're this empire and because they use email and blah blah blah all the way to you know Burger King this guy got fired like those kind of creative viral angle sort of stories and We tested them on tons of different pages before we eventually found a few winners And we class winners as anything that can get you followers for a dollar per follower or less And it took a long time to crack that.

A lot of effort, a lot of reaching out. I had someone on my team do this. They would reach out to the page. You've got to negotiate rates. You've got to schedule a shoutout. You've got to send in the post. You've got to check in. You've got to make sure they actually did the shoutout on that day at that time.

And you write all the results in a spreadsheet and track This is how many followers we got that day. You do one shoutout per day. So you can actually track and measure it. It's quite a lot of work. Eventually, we just partnered with an agency. So his name's Gilad, uh, Awareness of Success. He does a fantastic job.

Ken Okazaki: He just does it all for us, which is way easier. And they guarantee 1 per follower. So it's like no effort and it's a better result than we were getting on our own. So that's what we do now. That's, can't beat that. That's a good example of the who, not the how, right? Like you, you knew the how, but it was just too much of your energy and time. And, uh, find the who then better result and probably make you more money in the long run. Dude, thank you for breaking that all down. 

Now, how do you look at social media in terms of Like you've got your personality and your music, and then you've got your business and I see you post about both all the time.

Sean: All right. Do you see it as like, this is where I just put everything about me. Uh, also your girlfriend who has another career and you're very openly talking about that, or she did, I'm not sure if that's still going on, um, What is social media for you? I suppose it depends on the platform because I use every platform a little bit differently. So for Yeah, well, uh, Instagram is very much strategic and tactical. And we post specific content to elicit a specific response. to a specific audience to generate a stimulus, which makes them reach out to us.

 You know, it's all very systematic, right? And so it's designed to nurture, educate, entertain, and then ultimately get people to raise their hand and say, I'm interested in learning more about this. So with my stories, I'm always posting tons of proof and results and screenshots and client results to generate and raises.

We just try to start as many conversations as possible, but I like to obviously in a way that it's, sort of edutainment, as they say, you know, Teaching people, he is kind of like the high level overview of copywriting, which by the way, is just email copywriting, but with deliverability in mind.

So you get inboxing in Gmail. The reason I chose that term is because it would appeal to, this is when I moved to the more mass market BizOp audience. It kind of accomplishes two things. So if you are totally new and you have no idea what copywriting is, you're like, Oh, Gmail. use Gmail. I know what Gmail is.

 How do I make money with Gmail? So it's kind of a bit intriguing. And it's more understandable than copywriting because most people have no idea what copyrighting is. I think it's legal protection. And then the other, well, it is. But this you know, this towards. So the other one is for existing copywriters who already are email copywriters.

They know what copywriting is that they see this new thing and it's like Gmail copywriting, like what the hell is that, right? And so if you're a beginner or you're an expert, it still has that element of intrigue of like. Okay, I think I semi understand this, but like I need to know more about it, right?

That's why I chose the word Gmail. Um, but yeah, I mean, so that's Instagram. It's pretty like tactical and niche specific. YouTube, same deal. ever since I've, I started following Hamozy's advice about a year ago, where he just said, give your best stuff away for free on YouTube.

I was really hesitant to do it in the beginning for a couple reasons, like number one, because I thought, well, if I give my best shit away for free, then like, When people pay and they've already got the best stuff, won't they be disappointed? ? Uh, but obviously like the, the real value is I guess the community and the coaching and the support and stuff that they obviously can't get from a video.

And then we're constantly leveling up new strategies and so it's becoming better over time. The second big. Problem that I had was like, wouldn't my paying customers get off? If I give this. all the strategies that they pay thousands of dollars to learn for free you know, on YouTube, I was like, wouldn't they get really mad? and there was one line in, um, hundred million dollar leads book back there from Alec Simoni, where he said that this changed my paradigm completely. and he said that Your paying customers don't discriminate and they don't really notice or actually care where they got value from you whether it was your free stuff or your paid stuff.

All they know is when they see more valuable stuff from you, on whatever platform, whether it's paid or free, it just reaffirms to them that they made a great decision investing into you. So they were like, this guy's really smart. I did. I'm so glad I chose to buy his thing because he knows what he's talking about.

 And I was like, huh, I completely shifted my, my paradigm. And I was like, okay, well, I'll give it a shot. And ever since we started doing that on YouTube, we've had much more success. And we had a lot more clients coming from there. I don't have a big channel by any means. It's only like 8, 000 subs. I also only post about once a month.

So I'm going to start taking YouTube a lot more seriously, um, in the, in the future, but yeah, so that's, that, that was pretty huge for us. And then Facebook's kind of just, I don't really have a, much of a strategy. It's kind of just a bit of everything, a bit of music stuff, business stuff, off the cuff, random thoughts that I have.

Ken Okazaki: And, uh, it's kind of just everything in one little world, I suppose. Okay. Yeah. I kind of sense that like when you're on Facebook, it just feels like you're kind of your daily diary, right? like here's what's Ferris doing today. Right? Um,

Sean: I suppose it's just showing a lot of different sides of me and, um, it's more for, you know, Building a personal connection I suppose. The only one really strategic thing that I do on Facebook is with the stories. So this is something I figured out years ago, but I still hardly see anyone capitalizing on it.

 And it's the difference between Facebook stories and Instagram stories is people might think well who you checks or who watches in Facebook stories. And I used to get really low views on my Facebook stories. So what I then figured out was on Instagram, obviously, it's On Facebook it just has your profile picture in a circle, and you can't see the story, you just see if someone has a story, you have to click on their profile picture to see what it is.

 But on Facebook, it shows the thumbnail of the story as the first slide. And so you can completely manipulate how many views you get, just like a YouTube thumbnail, by choosing something that's eye catching for that first slide. And so I figured that if I put something eye catching, which could be big red text, it could be a supercar, it could be My girlfriend by far is the biggest thing.

I can see why women love social media. They get a lot more attention than me. Um, or even just a selfie. So that gets way more attention than just like whatever business posts I would have. So just by putting that first, instead of getting a hundred views on a story, I might be able to get 300, 500. The highest I've had was actually over 2000 views and I didn't even have 2000 friends at the time.

So I don't even know how that works, but you can completely game the system and get literally as many views as you want almost. I have got these slides up already and I have actually had a couple of questions by people have asked my time, so I thought why don't I just try and answer them.

So for example, if you just watch my slides video on how to use BSV, BSV is a very powerful is explained over and over again, you will get 10 million views for that video. on my entire sequence, because then I would, of course, it would be, uh, about business, tips, value, lessons, testimonials, all that stuff I would normally share on Instagram, and then a call to action at the end.

 So I was like, that's 5 to 10 times more eyeballs on all my testimonials, on all my calls to actions, meaning 5 to 10 times more inbound 10 times more conversations started, and more calls booked and sales. So that's one thing that I do that's very like intentional on Facebook. And then the other side of that is obviously you got to have the audience.

So really simple thing that I do is I. I used to do this myself, then I hired a VA and now I've found a software that has it for me. But you just add friends from targeted Facebook groups, right? So you go into niche Facebook groups about whatever, who have your audience, because there's groups for everything, right?

So if you work with plumbers or people who want to lose weight or my case copywriters. Then you know, there's tons of copyrighting Facebook groups, including my own group. So I would just go into those groups and just add friends. And so maybe 50 percent of people accept. And so that way you can grow your friends list.

Just like an email list, right. Where it's like, this is your audience and you have to worry about posting groups where you, you know, the admin lll. bans your post, blocks it, or whatever, and there's all of this politics. You can post whatever you want on your own profile and stories, within Facebook's terms, and so you can just grow this big Friends list basically and then that's like going in an email list.

Right? And so the more people you have and the more people who see your stories, especially if you're doing sort of the first side hat. And yeah, that's pretty much the strategy. And I recently, I found the software it's called friender, and so it will actually do this for you, which I used to have a via do so.

You can just give it the URL of a group and you can enter a key word. For example, Copywriter. and it will only add people from First World countries in that grou. And it will add, you know, whatever the limit is on Facebook. It. All stay under that, so you don't get blocked. I've never had a problem being walked and it just adds, let's say 30 friends a day, but it's with it up throughout the entire day.

 So it kind of just runs on autopilot 24 7, just adding friends, building you this friend list. And then it can actually send personalized DMs to them as well. So when they accept my request, it'll say, uh, you know, Hey Dan, thanks for connecting or something like that. And then based on their location, it will mention that somewhere in the message.

So it will say like housing sobering Peru or, you know, wherever. Um, and so that way it's, you know, It's unique, it's personalized, which means obviously you, you're not copy pasting saying the same message, so you don't get blocked. But then also it seems like a real person because it's like, Oh, he knows I'm in Germany.

He must, must be a person, not a bot. Um, so yeah, that's been huge too. And so that's kind of how I've turned Facebook into a little client acquisition system ecosystem by itself.

Ken Okazaki: got it. So you got these three platforms, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and they all have their uniqueness and you're using the strengths on each one. I love how you explain that. Cause a lot of people. They come to me with my agency and they're like, Hey, let's create this piece of content and just stick it everywhere. And it's so hard to get them to understand how different each platform is. And the tools are different. The culture is different. The expectations are different and you've broken it down really well. Love that. 

Um, I'm looking at some of your posts and you don't mind just saying stuff even if it's controversial.

Sean: So you get hate comments or whatever. When you put up posts, is there something in your mind that is thinking like, I want this to be, you know, level 8 out of 10 controversial or like, you know, 5 out of 10 value, uh, 10 out of 10 hook or something like, is there some kind of balance in your mind that goes on? Yeah, definitely. I do like to ruffle feathers when it comes to posts. And so I've just found that the more controversial Your stuff is, the more engagement it gets. Now, of course there's a fine line. Like you can't just go around saying like, fuck white people or something, you know, whatever, just for the sake of being controversial.

 So it's like, I basically say things that I fully believe in and you just turn, you just dial it up a little bit. So maybe instead of a seven or eight out of 10, it's like a 10 out of 10 with your certainty. Right? So maybe instead of just like, Yeah, I think, you know, Mac is better than PC. That's my opinion, right?

 That would be like a 7 You would just dial it up to an 11. You say like, anyone who uses a PC as a dumbass, or you know something like that, right? So it's like kind of saying the same thing, but just a bit more, just more intense. And so then anyone who uses, you know, Mac's going to be like, amen, you're right.

And then anyone who uses PC is going to be like, Fuck you, you're wrong, here's why, you know, PCs are better, blah blah blah, and they'll go, they'll get into arguments and all that sort of stuff, and so, yeah,I became numb to the hate a long time ago, really, I mean, you start running Facebook ads, and that hardens you very quickly, get told to, like, kill myself every day, and it's just like, oh, whatever, you know, it's like, whatever, uh, just random people on the internet talking shit, so it's like, I, I got over that a long time ago, it was, in the beginning, it was pretty, like, whoa,

 You look at the,posts that perform the best and it's always the ones that are a little bit controversial, right? I mean, Andrew Tate became like, you know, he's an extreme example but became the most Googled viewed man on the internet, just by clip. Purely by being controversial, right? And you know, he spoke a lot of truth.

He's a good speaker and so on. There's a lot of factors, but yeah, like with Instagram, for example, we would start to notice that what was going viral on a lot of these shout out pages. Cause the beauty of working with the agency is they see hundreds of pages and what's performing over hundreds of pages.

And then they can, they can say, Hey, this is what's doing well on these 300 other pages. You should do your own version of this, right? So the ones around like, you know, here are three lies. I'll never tell my future kids or three, uh, things I'll never let my future wife do. Or like,someone was like, a few months ago, I found out my wife was a gold digger or something like that.

My girlfriend was a gold digger and I was like, Oh, whoa, like what happened? Um, and then it's like, you know, some cheesy, transition where it's like, you know, she saw the gold in me or something like that, where it was like, you know, I was, I was busting my ass. I was earning no money. I was trying to build a future life for ourselves.

Uh, but she supported me the whole way through. And like, you know, now we're making millions of dollars and like able to give her the life that she wants and deserves. So it's kind of starting with that, like controversial hook or angle where it gets people, what's this, you know, so some people get triggered, some people like, Yeah, it's a whole thing, but yeah.

Definitely. I mean, like you gotta get attention. You know, that's the name of the game. You can't get attention. Nothing else matters. It doesn't matter how good the rest of your content is, how good your editing is, how good your bottom of funnel is, the call to action, nothing, like nothing matters if you can't hold people's attention for more than three seconds you're just going to scroll away.

Ken Okazaki: Right. I think probably the one phrase that we need to forget that we were taught as kids is don't judge a book by its cover. It's like nowadays video, no, each, every single video, every clip is judged by the cover, which is the hook, the headline, the thumbnail, and everything is judged by the cover. And, uh, yeah, it's just outdated information.

 It's not true anymore. 

Sean: I mean, it's called like the Halo effect. Right? And so people literally like it or not, people judge a book by its cover all day, every day. So the better, something looks at. It's why even just like having a good design for a funnel or a lead magnet or something, you can make it look sexier. People perceive its value to be higher, right?

Something that looks better. People, people perceive human beings that are more attractive to be smarter, to be like more capable, more caring, you know, so on and so on, have all these personality traits, which they maybe do or don't have just if they look more attractive and that applies to everything. So yeah, it's hugely important.

Yeah, a hundred percent true. Which is also why girls have a much easier time on social media than guys. They just look better. I mean, let's face it. I'm wondering how much of the, the planning and the content, like how much of it is off the cuff and how much of it is planned and shot and edited and then,put out later. Yeah, I mean, so for long form stuff like YouTube, that's all scripted, and planned, and, scheduled and all that. Most of my posts, actually, uh, and my emails, I have a copywriter on my team who writes that. So, honestly I don't write any of my Instagram posts that's fully handled by someone else. I don't even I don't approve it.

It just, he writes it and posts it. So like, I actually have a great time when I log in on my other account and I see, Oh, what did I post today? And I'm like reading my own post. I'm like, Oh, that's interesting. And so it's like, I'm just a consumer basically. My stories, obviously are me. That's all me. Um, my emails, I have someone else usually write the ideas.

 About 50 percent of my emails are 100 percent me from blank canvas to final thing. The ones that he writes, I will always go through them and edit it and make it really me and make it how I want it and send it. The only reason I haven't let go completely of the emails, it's because again, I'm teaching email copywriting.

I have an audience of email copywriters who are judging the hell out of me for every email I send. And so I'm like, these have to be A1 because, uh, you know, obviously it's like, I got to lead by example. If I'm trying to pretend I'm, you know, it's like, If you're a fitness coach, you know, who's obese or something, it's like, okay, dude, it's not very 

Ken Okazaki: You can only wear a body suit for so long, eh? 

Sean: Yeah, exactly.

Ken Okazaki: Got it. Got it. 

Sean: Hey, we're coming close to the end here, but tell me like, where do you see us going? what's the next level for you? It's a good point. So I was thinking about this recently, actually at Noosa, when we were at Taki's last event. And the only reason I ever actually scaled twos. Kuhn's. Seven figures in the beginning was I was on, whatever newsfeed, I think it was YouTube or Facebook or something. And this Taki guy pops up on my feed and it was like this two minute video.

And he was making this argument that it's actually easier to make a million dollars a year than it is to make a hundred K because you can outsource to a team. You can run ads, you can, you know, you don't have to do everything yourself like you do when you're at, let's say 10K a month. And I was like, huh. Interesting. Maybe I can do that, right? Because my whole goal was earn the most amount of money in the least amount of time so I can do music. And I was like, well, if I can earn 10 times more and work less, sign me up. So I gave it a go and I did it in like six months. And sure enough, it was right. I was like, wow, okay, I actually am earning more and doing less.

This is great. Have a team. They run Wester before me. Like, this is cool. Run ads. You don't have to do outbound. And this is cool. that's what I did for the last few years. And uh, Noosa came along and same deal again. Taki gets up on stage, gives his talk, does his thing. And he's like, hey, You know what?

It's actually easier to make eight figures a year than it is to make seven. Because if you build it right, that's a big caveat. But you can have an executive leadership team, you can hire like a CMO, a manager, you know, integrator, they can like run all the day to day operations, manage your team, hold them accountable.

 Uh, you can just really step out of the business and just be the face of it. You can just do the content, maybe some coaching, and like that's really it. You can outsource it as much as you want. I was like, huh, that's interesting. And so now I'm like, all right, well, let's see if he's right. So I don't know if eight figures necessarily is, uh, somewhere I want to go because again, music literally is my number one career goal or aspiration.

Like I'm trying to be a full time producer and DJ and like a touring DJ. And so I want to grow the business to the degree that I can still keep it my side hustle. And it doesn't take over my whole life. Like it did for a while, a few years ago. I think the, the number that I have in mind is 300K a month.

 Aussie dollars. For the only reason that that is over a million dollars a year profit USD, which is the minimum eligible criteria to be able to work with Alex Hamozy. inacquisition. com. So I actually got invited to go to the Acquisition HQ back in January this year because I won the affiliate competition.

I didn't win. I came number four out of like 26, 000 people. So, um, the way that I did that was one of my, one of my clients, my students who went through my program landed Alex Samozy as a client and he became his chief copywriter, then eventually his CMO. And then, so he's now, you know, I can't say his name, but he's like, CMO of acquisition.

com. Kind of a big deal. And so he reached out to me and he was like, Hey, we're having this affiliate competition. Wink wink. If you want to get in early and start promoting it now, you stand much more of a chance. Um, and so I became number one, like straight away, even with my pretty small audience. And the more people that started joining, uh, you know, eventually it was like 26, 000 people.

It only takes one Grant Cardone to make a post and then instantly he's number one. And I'm nothing like that. Because of his audience size. But yeah, I fought tooth and nail, uh, promoting the hell outta this thing so he could finish in top 10. So that's how I got to actually interview Alex Ho Mosey, and then.

 got the invite to fly out to Vegas for the first. Now, they do them every week, back then that was the first ever one that they ever did, um, live in Vegas, and so that was really cool, I got to meet him. And, um, yeah, I think that became like a goal of mine, whether I actually want to partner with him in the future, whether I, they only take on two businesses a year or something, so it's very unlikely, but I think it would be cool to at least be eligible to do that, because it's kind of got me in this frame of mind that maybe I could actually build this business as a sellable asset.

 So maybe I can grow it to the point where it runs without me, I can outsource. Everything, build systems, build a team, build structure, and then potentially actually exit at some point, you know, for eight figures or whatever. And then I won't need to basically work ever again. I can just do music for the rest of my life, which should be amazing. 

I just remembered a post you made a little while ago. And I want to ask this last question before we end this, you put it out there that, I think the post was something like, is it normal for a business to be making seven figures with absolutely no CRM running it? Tell me about that. Yeah. Uh, I still don't really have a CRM to be honest. Until the other day I signed up for a GHL, but we're still not even really set up in there yet. So I've kind of just been free balling it for, you know, six years and it's, it's worked out fine. You know, we've made like four and a half million dollars.

I just haven't really bothered to have a CRM. I still seem like much point, obviously we have like an email database and we have like spreadsheets and stuff where we track things. But yeah, for the most part, like I don't have like a HubSpot or a crazy CRM tech stuff. I just, maybe I should, maybe I'd be a $10 million business if I had one.

But yeah, 

Ken Okazaki: Or maybe you need to

Sean: just find somebody else to take care of the CRM stuff for you. Like, I mean, why should you spend all the time figuring it out? Just. Find, you know, whoever's the head of marketing, if it's you right now, then find somebody else and that'll be their baby. And then you get to stay above that and just coach them. I mean, there's tons of things in my business though, like. I could and should be doing if I wanted to really grow and scale. And so it's like, you know, post three YouTube videos a week, two short form videos a day, you know, all this, all this stuff. I get on more podcasts and do more like, uh, collaborations and affiliate work.

And I know that there's, I know intellectually all this stuff that I could be doing, but it's still, it's like the constraint is it has to be my side hustle. And so I'm like looking for just like, what's the biggest sort of 80, 20 stuff that I can, I know if I do this, I get the highest returns. And I only have to work, let's say three, four hours a day, and then I can do music.

So I'm still figuring it out and getting a high leverage activities, but yeah, I probably, I would move a lot slower than someone who was in this full time just because I'm trying to juggle two

different careers 

Ken Okazaki: most people would, be jealous to even get there as a full time thing and you've, you're doing it as a side gig, so that's a,double win there. So I want to give some love to your accounts here. So could you let us know? If people want to find your music, where should they go?

Sean: If they want to connect with you on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook, how do they find you? Yeah, for sure. Um, the music stuff, my artist name is BigMoo, B I G M O O, one word. So I'm on Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud, Instagram. wherever you listen to music. The handle is bigmoo music. And then business stuff, just my name, Sean Ferres, S E A N F E R R E S on Instagram, YouTube, and all that stuff. I've got the same handle everywhere.

So if you want to come, come say what's up on Instagram or Facebook, happy to have a chat and say hello. Uh, if anyone needs a copywriter, by the way, I work with like 600 of them. And so I'm happy to refer you to a copywriter too and see how we can be a value. That's great. And, uh, is there anything somebody could download if they just wanted to get the fast track and kind of see if they want to work with you? Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you're an existing copywriter, I've got my client side command cheat sheet, the script. Um, but honestly, I think the most valuable thing would be my YouTube playlist. So I've got a free, it's literally a free course, how to go from zero to 10K a month. And it's just a condensed version of my like high ticket program with all the same information, like really good stuff.

Like don't just discredit it because it's free. We spent enormous amount of time on this thing, um, to make it available for free for this exact reason, to nurture people, help them.

Ken Okazaki: Everybody and YouTube's probably the best place. Great. Well, Sean, thanks so much for spending your time and everybody who's listened all the way to the end. I think you should definitely check it out. Also go to YouTube to watch this video if you just listen to the whole podcast because, uh, like he's got a cool setup going on. He's got the, the RGB lights in the background, red cap, uh, definitely playing the role of the, of the DJ here.

Sean: Yep. And, as far as everything else goes, yeah, definitely check out the channels. Music's good. Uh, I, I play that on my workouts from time to time. nothing else, but on my work every now and then I feel like I just need that extra pump. I'm just like, yeah, big mood. And that's on my Spotify Uh, so thanks for making that music. Hell yeah. Do you have any favorites? Dude, I don't know the names. I just hit it on, it's on, uh, uh, what's it called? Shuffleplay on just the artist and I'm working out. So I'm not looking at my phone. I just, that was a big moo. got a whole variety of stuff in there. I've done collabs with like Elliot Hulse, Jason Capital, Baydress, Koolian, Joel Brown. I did like entrepreneurial

Ken Okazaki: they're all musicians.

Sean: No, they're not. They just set out these like motivational speeches, which I went, um, I found on YouTube and I just cut out one sentence from each

Ken Okazaki: Yeah. You, you hear their voices in there. Just like the vocalizations that I was wondering. I didn't know they're those specific people though.

Sean: And I just made it and I sent it to them and I was like, Hey, do you like this? And they're like, well, this is amazing. Thank you so much for making this. And, um, they promoted it and they had huge followings. That's how I actually got my initial traction on Spotify going. And I always say I managed to get a free Mustang, which is my dream car at the time, um, from Spotify because the royalties from Spotify were like a thousand a month.

My car payment was like 800 a month and I got a hundred percent of the royalties because it was my label that I put those songs out with. And, um, yeah, so that was pretty cool. But yeah, I make a whole variety of stuff. Most of it's more hard dance these days, maybe not for everyone, but good, uh, good for gym, that sort of thing.

Ken Okazaki: Yeah. Works in the gym. All right. Thanks so much. And, uh, for 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.