Video Transcript:
Jason Drohn:
Hey, what's up? This is Jason Drohn. Welcome to Sales System Experts, Episode 11, with Aaron Parkinson, the man, the myth, the legend. How are you doing, Aaron?
Aaron Parkinson:
I'm doing good. I want to point something out this morning for those people who think that consistency is easy. So my wife wants me to take a weekend off, which is a very rare thing. And she's like, "You're going to take Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off." And I'm like, "I will after I do my Sales Systems Expert podcast." Because I don't want to break the trend. I don't want to be not having the consistency of the 11th week. So, this is my last work thing for today before I take a weekend off. But the point is I did it because I'm committed to it, and that's the end of it, right? So it's not...
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
...to be consistent, but it's a thing that separates good from great, right?
Jason Drohn:
It is.
Aaron Parkinson:
If you're going to do the thing, you do the thing, right?
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
That's it. And then you figure out how to make everything else work around it.
Jason Drohn:
Right. You show up and you-
Aaron Parkinson:
90% of it is just showing up.
Jason Drohn:
90% of it is just showing up.
Aaron Parkinson:
I used to have a gym, a CrossFit gym, which I don't know if you've ever done CrossFit before, but it's very hard.
Jason Drohn:
My wife is very, very into Crossfit. I didn't know you had a gym.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I've been doing CrossFit for six years.
Jason Drohn:
Really?
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I had a gym for two.
Jason Drohn:
In Cayman?
Aaron Parkinson:
No, in Canada.
Jason Drohn:
Oh, okay.
Aaron Parkinson:
And our CFO of Seven Mile owns the CrossFit gym in Cayman that I go to. And his wife has been to the games five times. She's like a leader of the elite.
Jason Drohn:
Really?
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, so that's who we're going to the... On vacation with this weekend is Carl and Wanda. If you look up Wanda Brenton.
Aaron Parkinson:
She's been in the Top 10 for Over 40. I think it's, she did it in her 30s and her 40s. She's in her 40s now. And she's qualified for the world championships five times.
Jason Drohn:
Holy shit, yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, and they as a team have been to the games. As a team, they've won the Latin America qualifier about six or seven years ago. And they went as a team. And some of the biggest celebrities come here before the games to prepare, so.
Jason Drohn:
Wow.
Aaron Parkinson:
We work out a lot of times with people like Sam Briggs and high-level CF athletes, which means I'm the weakest person.
Jason Drohn:
They're fucking ridiculous.
Aaron Parkinson:
I'm just trying to keep up. Wanda and I, they call us the A-team. Because we like to go out and have fun and cause a ruckus.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
And when I try to work out beside her, it's like working out with my eight-year-old. It's very emasculating, I just try to hold on and stay alive.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, the whole mass exodus of CrossFit affiliates has been interesting. And now the takeover by a 10 year CrossFit veteran, it'll be interesting to see what happens with the brand.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. It was interesting with their brand here is they decided to separate and all because of Glassman's statements. If anything, Carl came out and said, "Look, I judge a person by their actions, not by the media." And he broke down all of his actions, supporting minorities, and stuff over the last 10 years. Things that you and I will never do-
Jason Drohn:
Right, yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
... that he has done, but he understood it was stupid to make the comments, bad timing, bad judgment, et cetera, et cetera. So they kind of, they were staying the course, but then another rash of stuff just came out about Glassman, essentially, like a sexual predator. And he was like, "Okay, that's it. I'm done." And it's disappointing because the culture of CrossFit is amazing. The impact and the results on people are amazing. And Glassman is a genius, but Glassman is an asshole. He's said stupid things for a decade, where he's just been so full of himself that he has no filters-
Jason Drohn:
Right, yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
... and eventually, it was going to catch up to him. And now it has and now they're going to have to rebuild that brand. Because your CEO of a billion-dollar brand, can't be an unhinged lunatic.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
They're going to have to rebuild off of his indiscretions.
Jason Drohn:
Well, and even that it went from CrossFit Games to CrossFit Health. And then, he was championing a different thing. And now then this happened. So it was like the death of a thousand cuts, kind of.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I feel like they've got away from their core values and their core business model. And the core values and business model was very much based off of law enforcement, military, pushing the limits, challenging science, redefining what fitness was. Opening people's eyes to what they could accomplish. And then it kind of became more business-related than core culture related, more about the money and the exposure, then the actual core values. And I think what you'll see is they'll strip back down to the core values and refocus on what made them, what they were. And either they'll survive or they won't. I mean, that the reality is the programming is amazing. It's the stuff above that, that's been the problem.
Jason Drohn:
Right, right, right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Which is always directly correlated to the CEO. That's the person that's supposed to be guiding the ship. And he has not done a good job.
Jason Drohn:
Right. Well, that went off on a tangent. But fun, though
Aaron Parkinson:
But, that's what we're here for, this is our show. We can talk about whatever we want.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
I mean, you can take that and implement that into your business. I mean, the reality is, is that as our staff grows, the team grows. And we were talking about this right before the call. You have to become a different person as your business grows and people who are watching this have businesses. And when you're starting your business out, you have to be very much like fire and brimstone and almost borderline psychotic to get traction and get momentum. Anybody who thinks you could just sit down and you fire up a business and it's good to go is delusional. Or just one of the one in a million lucky people. It just doesn't... You and I sit in this chair, 12 hours a day and grind and brick by brick, by brick, that's how businesses are built.
But as the business grows and you increase your team, and you increase your revenue, and you increase your reach, right? Your role, if you decide to be the CEO, evolves with the role. And your role evolves from being the warrior to being the general. And it's not the same person. You have to evolve as a personality because as you grow, it becomes a lot more about who you attract into your team? What are the core values of the company? How do you support them in their ambitions and their career goals? How do you paint that picture to join your movement? How do you keep them motivated and make them feel good about the community that they're a part of? And if you're still the warrior that does not facilitate the feeling of...
Jason Drohn:
Inclusiveness.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, inclusiveness, right? And there are anomalies, there are examples, like Steve Jobs was very much like, "It's my way or the highway." So there are examples of people being like that and still being successful. But for the most part, it doesn't work that way. The CEO is almost like the chief bum patter.
Jason Drohn:
Right, right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? I'm reading this book right now. I don't know if you've read it. It's Robert Iger.
Jason Drohn:
Oh, it's great.
Aaron Parkinson:
...time. He was the CEO of Disney, right?
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
The CEO's job is not to be moving, and shaking, and creating, and causing a ruckus, and doing all of these things. It's about smoothly guiding the business in a very conservative growth trajectory, and keeping it in the guardrails, right? And Glassman is the perfect example of somebody who is not good at keeping things in the guardrails.
Jason Drohn:
Right. Right, right. Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
And he probably should have been removed. When I had my gym, and this is just my opinion. Everybody has different opinions. I mean, Carl has different opinions than I do. And that's okay. We're all allowed to have different opinions. My gym, five years ago, I saw him more caring about more affiliates, more money, more revenue than caring about the independent affiliates and their businesses. It was almost getting like a funnel, where you had affiliates getting started next to each other and five in one town. And it got away from protecting the results of the affiliate and more how much money can we make, right?
And so I thought five years ago, he was no longer the right fit. He had grown up to the point where he had reached the level of his evolution and he was not evolving anymore. And it was the time to bring somebody in that was more polished, and experienced, and capable of that level of business. And had they done that, I think you would have seen the same trajectory. I think if they just stuck with affiliates, exclusiveness, the games, not changing everything, you would just see this... They had Reebok on board. They needed to just in that simply controlled growth trajectory. And then it just kept getting like crazier and crazier, going all over the place.
Jason Drohn:
Right. Well, that's, in that book that you're reading, Bob Iger there, he was the perfect and probably the only person who would have been able to pull off the mergers that he did inside Disney. Because he did just, he just guided people. I mean, including Steve Jobs, including... And at the end of that book, he says, "If Steve Jobs was still around, I think that Apple and Disney would already be merged. They would already be the same company."
Aaron Parkinson:
Interesting.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. You haven't gotten that far, probably.
Aaron Parkinson:
No.
Jason Drohn:
But it was a big takeaway for me. There's, the antithesis of that is somebody like an Elon Musk or a Steve Jobs, who is a very dictatorship. You will do this, you will do it my way or the highway. And I think in the presence of that kind of a CEO, the "Why" of the organization is bigger than the leader. So you have people marching to the same drummer and then you have just an aggressive leader who is challenging them at all times to fulfill on the "Why". Does that make sense?
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, it does. And I think that Elon Musk is one of the first people that comes up for me when I think of somebody like Steve Jobs, right?
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
I think that it's tough to say, you look at somebody like Elon Musk and he's so brilliant, and he's so interesting to listen to, and he's so... I mean, he's essentially the real Tony Stark.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
He is that guy, right? And he's very charismatic and weird, and interesting, and kind of crazy, and all these things. And it's awesome but when you're dealing with managing a company like Tesla, for example, it just needs to be organized, streamlined growth with him giving input. Him being the CEO may not be the wisest decision to guide that business. But we've also seen the reverse when Steve Jobs got pulled out of Apple, the thing tanked.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, totally.
Aaron Parkinson:
It's hard to know if they're the driving force if they're the thing or they're the thing that's holding it down. But if you wanted to look at it statistically across 1,000 businesses, it's usually not those types of personalities are creating the longterm success, right?
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. It's somebody like a Bob Iger.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I know. It's more a Bob Iger, right? And I love Elon Musk and I love Steve Jobs, but I feel like there are anomalies in the CEO role. It's kind of like the referee, in a mixed martial arts fight. You know the referees are a good referee when you're never sick of their name.
Jason Drohn:
Right. Yes.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? When you're talking about the CEO all the time, that might not be the best person to have running the company.
Jason Drohn:
Well, and it's funny because there are times where all you see is Elon Musk in the headlines. I'll be reading the news in the morning and it's like, Elon Musk, Elon Musk. It's like the whole page, nothing. He even comes up with his little category inside of Apple News, and it's like, "Oh."
Aaron Parkinson:
Absolutely. And he goes on Joe Rogan and smokes a joint as any other normal person could, and the stock drops 7%. These are the kinds of things. Bob Iger would not be going on Joe Rogan and smoking a joint.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, I think it's awesome. It's authentic. It's real. It's cool. It's why I like him as a human being. I just don't know if it's the right fit for-
Jason Drohn:
Tesla.
Aaron Parkinson:
... that.
Jason Drohn:
And SpaceX. Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
And this isn't new information. People are constantly calling for his head and trying-
Aaron Parkinson:
... to remove him-
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, totally.
Aaron Parkinson:
... from the... And again, I don't know if it would be beneficial or if it would be a drawback. But it's just, it's abnormal. Let's put it that way. And so this has no bearing on what we were supposed to be talking about today, but-
Jason Drohn:
No, we used supposed to talk about landing pages and sales copy. And, but I like this, this is good. We'll just go on and we can save that one for next week.
Aaron Parkinson:
I mean, I think at this point, we've already gone halfway down the tunnel. I think that we just keep going. And you and I talked about this before the call when you're starting your business, you have to wear all the hats, right? Traditional businesses have executives, and then they've got middle management, and then they've got the executor's, right? And when you start, you have all of them, right? And you're just all over the map. And it's probably the most profitable the company's ever going to be because you don't hire anybody. But it gets you to the point where, like I know this is the metric that I've figured out in my head. And maybe, I don't know, I'm going to ask you the same thing. As an agency, I know we can do $80,000 a month with just me.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
That's the number.
Jason Drohn:
Actually. So the number that I've always run up against is 70, with just me. And then at that point, you're like, "Fuck," but, it's that you're right there.
Aaron Parkinson:
You're 15 hours a day, your adrenaline's dumping the moment you wake up right until the end of the day, you're just like... The to-do list, it's this long. And you're just like..., and there are no days off. You make good money, but it's at the expense of everything else, right? And then from there, you've got to hire... My first hire was... It was Hailey, our operations manager.
Jason Drohn:
She was your first hire, I didn't know that.
Aaron Parkinson:
She was our first hire, yeah. Hailey was our nanny for seven years.
Jason Drohn:
Oh, okay. Okay. All right. So yeah, that's interesting.
Aaron Parkinson:
And then she went on to go to school and... companies, and then she came back around.
Jason Drohn:
And she's a Ninja. She's ridiculous.
Aaron Parkinson:
She's super good. And that was like, "Okay, I need to get all of the admin off my plate." Any schedule, any invoicing, any following-up. You need to start helping me build some structure, I don't have signatures in my emails. I don't have anything. And then from there, it started stacking up with media buyers, and strategists, and copywriters, and all these other layers of stuff. And I didn't start making any more money until the agency got to about a quarter-million a month. It was just reinvesting into the business until it got to the place where it kind of caught up with itself. So there's almost this space that needs to be... where you don't make anything more.
Jason Drohn:
Right. Well, because especially in what we do. I mean, it so resources intensive. I mean, it's human capital. It's, everything is human.
Aaron Parkinson:
That's right.
Jason Drohn:
I mean, you can automate some stuff, but, and not only that it's, everything is a specialist, so. And they don't teach it in school. It's not like you can go hire a car salesman. Or it's not like you can just put in a help-wanted ad somewhere and just say, "Hey, I'm looking for a dishwasher." Do you know what I mean?
Aaron Parkinson:
And I had two family members this year say, "Hey, I see you're hiring. Do you think I could come and work for you?" I'm like, "Sure. You need four years' experience".
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Aaron Parkinson:
You can't just rock in here and know how to do digital marketing. This is a ton of trial and error and experience.
Jason Drohn:
Even then, it's not even like you can go to school and pop out with this kind of experience because they're five years behind.
Aaron Parkinson:
Minimum. And they're usually teaching high level, more business brand, business structure, branding theory. All of the-
Jason Drohn:
Theory.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah.
Jason Drohn:
Stupid...
Aaron Parkinson:
I had this conversation with somebody yesterday where they're like, "Well, my partner worked for one of the big five agencies and they put up a Facebook page and them kind of did a couple of things and it didn't work." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's because they don't know how to do direct response marketing." They're taught the case studies of the big branding, Fortune 500 stuff, which is super important. But it's what you do after you have proof of concept that something jumps out, right? Get proof of the concept that something can sell first, then start to build the brand and the assets around it so that you have something to exit in five to 10 years.
Jason Drohn:
Right. That's, like this book, Billion Dollar Brand Club is entirely about Warby Parker and all the e-com disrupt, Purple mattresses. The e-com companies that started as direct response. And then, I mean, 40% of the revenue is ads. 40, I mean they're just, every dollar they're making in revenue, they're dumping back into... From a front-end direct response sales model. And then they're growing their brand because of it. And then they're achieving billion-dollar exits.
Aaron Parkinson:
They're growing their brand. They're making so many sales because their ads are in so many places versus building the brand and then hoping people resonate with the brand and then buy some stuff, right?
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
And if you talk to anybody in the venture capitalist game right now, if they give you money, they want 60% minimum earmark for Facebook and Instagram ads.
Jason Drohn:
Right. Yep. Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? That's insane where we're at right now, right?
Jason Drohn:
Totally.
Aaron Parkinson:
So, who understand direct response marketing have potentially the most valuable skill on-
Aaron Parkinson:
... presently.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Because no matter what happens, it doesn't matter. Even, I mean, the close second would-be programmers, I would say. I mean like a programmer, somebody who can build apps, but even then you still have to sell it. It's still a direct response, no matter how you cut it up.
Aaron Parkinson:
At the end of the day, something's always got to sell.
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? And, maybe that's what we'll go into next week is how do we figure out if it's going to sell? How do you craft something so that it sells? What are the fundamentals in a direct response world to make it sell? But, I mean, even developers now are becoming commoditized, right? I mean-
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
... they're being outsourced to better talent and cheaper places. Your India's, your Thailand's, all these other places where they'll do it for 12 bucks an hour, probably better than the guy charging you a hundred.
Jason Drohn:
Right, totally.
Aaron Parkinson:
But,
Jason Drohn:
I-
Aaron Parkinson:
To ahead.
Jason Drohn:
One of my clients told me yesterday that she has a one-year-old and they are teaching one-year-olds how to... Like beginner coding now. It's in California, I think. No, in Canada, up in Canada.
Aaron Parkinson:
That's amazing.
Jason Drohn:
That's a part of the curriculum. Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
That's amazing. And one of our clients right now teaches blockchain and cybersecurity. They're an accredited university. And cybersecurity right now is... There's estimated to be a hundred million job openings by 2024.
Jason Drohn:
Wow.
Aaron Parkinson:
And that's like, "What?"
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
And blockchain right now has something like 20 million unfilled jobs. And the average salary is like $160,000 to start.
Jason Drohn:
Wow.
Aaron Parkinson:
And it just shows that developers and programmers are becoming commoditized, but these niche parts of development are vastly underserved. And there's so much demand that the salaries are through the roof. Right? And so there's so much opportunity. I was saying to Liz yesterday, in then sort of the next three to four years when I retire, I'd like to start a digital marketing school in Cayman for locals to be able to learn the skill. I don't... Not for money, just for... And give back because what's one of those things you can do on a small island that doesn't have a lot of resources or industry? Well, go cloud-based, go digital.
Jason Drohn:
Oh, yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? Because that's where everything's still has been going for 15 years and it's only speeding up.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
So I think that would be awesome to just teach.
Jason Drohn:
That would be fun.
Aaron Parkinson:
It would be super fun.
Jason Drohn:
We'll come to visit.
Aaron Parkinson:
Perfect.
Jason Drohn:
Maybe even buy a house there.
Aaron Parkinson:
You'll be the professor. You'll be the other professor.
Jason Drohn:
I like it. That works for me.
Aaron Parkinson:
Media Professor.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, that'll work.
Aaron Parkinson:
We'll create our titles. It will be amazing.
Jason Drohn:
Oh, that's funny.
Aaron Parkinson:
All right. And that, four minutes over, so next week offers and what makes people pull out their credit card.
Jason Drohn:
Sounds good. I'll talk to you soon. Have a fun rest of the day and weekend off.
Aaron Parkinson:
My vacation weekend.
Jason Drohn:
See you.
Aaron Parkinson:
Later.
Jason Drohn:
Bye.