If you’re an internet marketer then you might know Dennis Yu.
He’s kind of a big deal. After all, if you’ve spent over a BILLION dollars in ads…
… for clients that include the likes of Nike, Red Bull, and the Golden State Warriors…
… and was featured on New York Times, CNN, and various other outlets…
… all while being an ‘O.G.’ Yahoo! Engineer?
Then your story is DEFINITELY something people would want to hear about.
In this episode of Founders Go Naked, I’ll be stripping away the glitz and glamor…
… and get right down to the saucy secrets behind Dennis’s success, including:
- How he went from Yahoo! Engineer to Digital Marketing Guru
- His formula for making money from all of his agencies – without much intervention
- Why “going local” might be your BEST bet at making your business successful
- His unique presentation formula to get 6-figure paydays with Webinars
[00:00:00] Terence: Hey guys, I’ve got Dennis Yu with me today on Founders Go Naked. Dennis, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:06] Dennis Yu: Welcome Terence. And I won’t go naked, but I will tell you everything.
OR listen here:
Transcript:
Diving Deep into Dennis Yu's Impressive Career
[00:00:10] Terence: All right. So Dennis, just for those of you who don’t know him, he is, I just have to read my notes here because he’s been involved in so many things.
One of the key things is that he is the author of the book, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Advertising, and he wrote that with Perry Marshall. Another guy who is really famous in this space. Yep. And he’s got the book right there. If you’re watching the YouTube video and he’s managed over a billion dollars in ads for clients like Nike, Golden State Warriors, and he’s been featured on New York Times, CNN, and many other international outlets, and he’s the founder of Blitzmetrics.
Which is a portal for training internet marketers. And he also has sold millions of dollars worth of products on webinars. But most importantly, and what I admire most about him, is just he’s a humble guy who genuinely wants to help people. And that’s why he’s here today. So Dennis, welcome to the stage.
[00:01:09] Dennis Yu: Awesome, Terence. Let’s help coaches make more money through webinars. Most people talk about it. We’ve done it.
Getting Personal: Favorite Foods, Countries, and Hobbies
[00:01:14] Terence: Yeah. Dennis, let’s start off with a few fun questions. I want to know what’s your favorite food.
[00:01:19] Dennis Yu: I love anything with meat, but probably Brazilian barbecue is my favorite.
[00:01:23] Terence: Ooh, um, sounds very nice anyway.
And what’s your favorite country to visit?
[00:01:28] Dennis Yu: Ah, Norway. I’ve been up there many times to Northern Lights. I’ve been close to the North Pole, which is technically governed by Norway. I’m semi famous in Norway. I’ve spoken at the big digital marketing conferences there.
[00:01:39] Terence: Nice. Nice. I’ve been to Norway once, that was like 25 years ago.
I never saw the dark of the day because I went in summer. Uh, so that was quite interesting. And tell us what are some of your hobbies, Dennis?
[00:01:51] Dennis Yu: I like to eat meat. I like to travel. I’ve been in 10 countries in the last two months, and I like creating jobs. I like to play golf. I love outdoors. I think I’m going to, for my birthday, probably do like a crazy hike, like Mount Hua Shan in China, I’m going to do the Ironman later this year.
I turned 50. You just turned 50. So we’re the same age. And I like to explore and do things.
[00:02:13] Terence: Wow. 50 years old, climbing Hua Shan, that would be a great experience. I’m sure. Do you speak any Mandarin by the way?
[00:02:19] Dennis Yu: That was my first language.
[00:02:21] Terence: Oh, really? Okay. Fantastic.
[00:02:22] Dennis Yu: And the first words I learned in English, weren’t the same ones that most people learned.
[00:02:27] Terence: Yeah. What, what is your life goal?
[00:02:32] Dennis Yu: Million jobs all over the world in certificate, you know, people that get certified in digital marketing and we’re a quarter of the way there, which is good.
The Journey from Yahoo Engineer to Digital Marketing Guru
[00:02:39] Terence: Wow. That’s a great achievement. So Dennis, tell us about your journey. I mean, obviously you’re very successful today, but how do you first get started?
When do you first get started?
[00:02:50] Dennis Yu: I was a search engine engineer at Yahoo almost a quarter of a century ago, if you can believe it. I feel like it was just yesterday when we were building the search engine and no one knew what search was. Now there’s everyone who is an SEO expert, but being an engineer, we had to protect the search results from all these people building websites, trying to trick us, all these now internet marketers trying to use social media. Also, trying to trick the same algorithm because now it’s social media, but same thing, trying to trick the algorithm, trying to go famous, trying to drive sales, obviously.
And I’ve always been on the side of let’s do things the right way. If you’re good at what you do, then you deserve to rank. You deserve to get the most shares and most visibility on YouTube or Facebook or whatever that is. And I’ve been very lucky to be around people who have done really well and learn what their techniques are and openly share everything.
So if you Google my name, you’ll see it’s all there. How to do public speaking. How to get a knowledge panel. How to get a million fans on social media, right? And my life’s mission as a math and engineer guy is to make everything based on a clear standard. So it doesn’t matter what some expert says.
[00:04:00] Terence: Right. So you were there in the early days of Yahoo with, is it Jerry Yang, the founder of…
[00:04:05] Dennis Yu: Jerry, David, all those guys. David was the richest man in the world under 40. Probably the highest paid programmer too in the world. He managed the homepage at Yahoo. We played Frisbee twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at Baylands park.
And he drove a piece of crap, gray BMW. I want to say it’s like a 1987 BMW. He still lived at Stanford in like an apartment, a two bedroom apartment. He lived very simply, even though he was a billionaire. And I just love being around folks like him because we were trying to do good things and it wasn’t about the money or the flash.
[00:04:38] Terence: Hmm. Yeah. So how long were you at Yahoo and then what was the next step for you after Yahoo?
[00:04:44] Dennis Yu: I was there in the early days and I left in 2005 and it was sort of a gradual transition because I already had done a lot of public speaking because the other engineers didn’t want to speak. So I would speak at conferences.
People would try to ask me all of these SEO questions. And so I did some consulting on the side. I helped a lot of friends who ran big companies. They are CMOs at these big companies and, you know, we all know each other. And so I built a good network because, you know, if you’re Yahoo, then you’re known in Silicon Valley.
You can talk to anybody that you wanted to. There’s a great network. So it made sense to start an agency. So I started doing consulting for a lot of the people that I knew when I worked at Yahoo. And from there, it’s just been growing into many agencies. So I coach a lot of agencies and I’d love to see them do well, especially local agencies.
The Power of Specialization in Digital Marketing
[00:05:34] Terence: Okay, and why is it that you have that special affinity to local agencies?
[00:05:39] Dennis Yu: Local is easier to do. So when you’re doing something for a plumber, it’s the same campaigns, it’s the same websites, it’s the same everything you do for all the other plumbers. You just change the city, change the name, change the phone number, right?
And you know that a broken toilet or a leaky pipe or whatnot is the same thing everywhere. Doesn’t matter. Same thing for a landscaper or someone building a pool or a chiropractor or a real estate agent or a pest control company. It’s very repeatable. If you are doing consulting or coaching of any type and you take on any random kind of small business, it’s all completely different.
Say you have five clients, then every client is different. You basically have five agencies. And it’s very hard to run five agencies, especially if you have a small team or it’s even just you. Forget it. So I love doing things where each agency does one thing. Like my friend, Danny, he runs a pest control agency and he specializes in just SEO for pest control.
So it helps pest control companies rank in the maps, rank on pest control or pigeons or whatever the pest is, you know, bedbugs or cockroaches times the city name. And he’s very good at it. And he’s well known in that industry. He knows how to drive the results. He has an SOP. He can therefore delegate it to VAs and other people to repeat the same thing.
So it’s not him having to provide the service himself personally every time, or worse, do consulting, right? Of course, all of our time is valuable and you’re worth whatever you want to charge, but you got to deliver results. So if you want clients to continue to pay you every month, you have to drive the results.
And we know we can drive phone calls. For $45, $50 for a customer that works for psychiatrists and flooring companies and veterinarians and whatever. So there’s a clear ROI. And so the lifetime value for these local businesses, you know, if you’re an agency serving a local service business is very high because you keep them for years and years.
Most coaches, they lose the client after, you know, they get the money up front, sell high ticket and never get any money again. It’s a very difficult business because you have to keep acquiring new customers. I don’t like doing that.
[00:07:47] Terence: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that that’s such an important distinction. I think just having that ability to scale with one niche, like obviously my business is a little bit difficult because I serve many different coaches and like you say, every single coach.
Challenges and Strategies in Coaching and Consulting
[00:08:04] Terence: So it’s a different niche. It’s like kind of having a different marketing team for every single client we have.
[00:08:10] Dennis Yu: And coaches are all different stages. Some people, they only have a business and they maxed out their credit card just to join some sort of high ticket program so they can sell high ticket.
What a terrible business to be in. Unless you can clearly develop, you know, drive sales. How do you know that you can deliver sales, Terence? Or how do you qualify people? Right? Coaches will say that they’re doing $50, 000 a month, but maybe they did it just one month. Maybe they don’t have solid execution.
Maybe they don’t have a clear niche. And now you have to solve all those problems before you can actually help them build the business.
[00:08:41] Terence: So true. So Dennis, I mean, you yourself, you run a coaching business, right? Essentially. And, um, so…But
[00:08:48] Dennis Yu: I don’t believe in coaching. I believe in results. I believe in apprenticeship.
[00:08:51] Terence: Okay. Tell me the difference……
[00:08:52] Dennis Yu: We’re not here to talk to people every week where they have a question and they can ask any random question. That’s not structured. It’s not repeatable.
[00:08:59] Terence: Okay because in your, in Blitzmetrics, you serve not just agencies, right? Uh, I mean, you have a lot of different other people that come in, so how do you kind of, like, is there a particular niche that you serve or how do you serve everybody?
[00:09:15] Dennis Yu: So I make money initially as a generalist. So I was famous for Facebook ads, for example. So I created this thing called Dollar a Day, which is very well known, right? People that learn how to do dollar a day, which is amplifying something that’s already working. So if you have something that’s already working, then you can run Facebook ads against it.
And the algorithm will find you more of the same kind of customers. Same unique value proposition, same everything. If you have something already working. If you don’t have something working, then Facebook or any channel, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, it’s experimentation. So we don’t want to do that. I want to do something that’s very easy.
So someone who is, you know, I have 50 clients of the same type and a repeatable model and clear reviews and people really like what they’re doing and they have high retention. We can take them to 500 clients, right? So that is industry independent, but I put that out there as a course. So people can go through the course, not implementation.
Cause if you’re having to implement, and there’s so many different coaches that do so many different things, you would have to have expertise like that coach in that area. So if you’re doing life coaching, if you’re helping someone who’s a life coach and you don’t know life coaching, or if you’re helping, you know, dads who are, you know, single dads who had to overcome divorce, or my friend Cletus Coffey serves former professional athletes who are now trying to build a career and get back into life after being a professional athlete. That’s a whole different model. Every one of those is a whole different model. And if you don’t understand their model, you can’t really help them. You think you can, but you can’t because you’re… the content, the advice you give them isn’t going to be authentic enough for their audience to believe that what you say is authentic because it has to be video now, right?
And if you can’t create video that’s convincing to their audience, then what kind of coaching are you doing? Yeah.
Building Credibility and Achieving Success in Coaching
[00:11:06] Terence: So Dennis, what’s your advice for someone who’s a business coach that is like, you know, serving everybody that wants business growth right now? What would your advice be?
[00:11:17] Dennis Yu: This is the most common problem.
I’ve seen this for 30 some years. So my friend Jeff McCallum, he ran a restoration business, grew it to millions of dollars, sold for lots of money. Right? The whole exit, this is the thing everyone dreams of. And then he decided a few months ago that he would just start coaching small business because he wrote a book and the principles in the book do apply to any kind of small business, but then he started creating all this content around every single angle of small business and, you know, you have to discover your why and hire staff and look at your cashflow and all of these things that every business has to do.
And he couldn’t keep up and make enough business, you know, make enough content that would serve any kind of random small business. And I said, Jeff, you have scaled a restoration business. You are well known in restoration within restoration. People’s houses get damaged because of fire, flood, mold, you know, a hurricane.
And there’s a lot of people in that industry, that they’re making only a hundred thousand dollars a year, and they want to know how do you grow a team and get to 20 or 30 million dollars. And you already have been coaching these people. Why don’t you start, I told him, with restoration and finally he has and it’s working and I said, once you nail restoration and you build that to a 10 million dollar a year coaching business, then you can go into landscaping and like whatever other category of small business.
But don’t start out as your first thing, making the beginner mistake of, well, I don’t have any business, so I’m going to try to offer it to everybody because, you know, I’ll take anyone right now. So if I just open up my gate to anybody, anybody, I’ll get more business. That’s the most common beginner mistake we see in coaching because you have to have credibility.
So this guy, Jeff McCallum is credible as a restoration company. He knows how that business works, so he can help someone who’s growing a restoration company. If someone is a painting contractor, he doesn’t know how to help a painting contractor. This is a completely different business.
[00:13:16] Terence: Yeah. So true.
[00:13:18] Dennis Yu: Even if he’s good at selling and webinars and all that, how can he help these people?
Right? It’s not about selling. Most of you guys out there who are under a million dollars a year think the problem is selling. You think the problem is leads. The problem is delivering the ROI. That is the focus.
[00:13:33] Terence: Right. So delivering results.
[00:13:35] Dennis Yu: Yeah, because we deliver results. You get referrals. You build a reputation.
You speak at conferences, all of that stuff. It’s not in how many cold calls and using AI tools to do cold email spam and all that. I promise you, I know this is what all the lead gen bros and all the young beginning coaches or people that just start in the consulting. That’s what they think it is. How do I get more leads?
It’s the, that’s the immediate way to identify when someone’s a rookie.
[00:13:59] Terence: Yeah. So Dennis, I got a question about credibility cause you know, you’ve been like on all this like major media platforms, you’ve spoken on stage on all these big events and all that stuff. Like obviously that didn’t happen overnight.
How did you build your credibility in order to get to those big platforms?
[00:14:18] Dennis Yu: I had the CEO of American Airlines as a mentor and I learned how to speak. And I started doing Toastmasters, speaking in front of five or six people, and then I learned how to speak in front of a thousand people, and I learned how to sell in a webinar, and I learned how to interview other people on stage.
These are all levels of higher progression and learning how to communicate, and when you can speak clearly on video, the media notices that and they will bring you in because I have spoken at so many conferences on Facebook ads, for example, and what to do with the data. CNN saw that. And so they invited me into Atlanta to be in the studio and I debated Mark Zuckerberg in front of millions of people, live.
[00:15:01] Terence: Wow. That’s cool.
[00:15:02] Dennis Yu: When that happened, the New York Times had some issue about Cambridge Analytica or the Washington Post had some issue about the Russians trying to, you know, manipulate the U. S. election. So they quoted me and NPR saw that and they quoted me. And the L. A. Times, when they saw that I was already in the media and I was reasonably well spoken, well, now I’m the go to guy.
And then USA Today sees that. So every time USA Today has a question about data privacy and social media, they know they can reliably count on me. So you build a reputation. So speaking in the media and authorship and all that starts from you having achieved something notable. A lot of people have it backwards.
They think, well, if I can get on TV and if I can speak, then I’ll become famous. And then everything happens. No, no, you do something notable that puts you on TV or on the big stages. Right? People have it backwards. They think, well, once I become well known, then I’ll have all the clients. No, no, no. Take care of the clients that you have.
When you do in one niche, you become known as like my buddy, Welton Hong is the funeral home guy. So he coaches and serves funeral homes. He could have chosen anything, but he chose funeral homes. And now he has a business that makes almost a million dollars a month serving funeral homes. So if there’s a question about funeral homes, the media knows that Welton Hong is the funeral home guy.
He’s not talking about internet marketing and SEO and Lead Gen and AI. And he’s not talking, I mean, yes, he’s talking about that but for funeral homes. Right? Okay. And now that he’s built that business to over 10 million dollars, now he has another agency that does like windows and glass and you know, that kind of thing.
My buddy Ali Awad is a personal injury attorney. He built his personal injury attorney business in Atlanta to 10 million dollars. And then he started a conference. For all the other personal injury attorneys to learn from what he did using social media to grow his law firm. But if he didn’t credibly know how to drive more cases of people who got in car accidents, Hey, you get in a car accident, call me.
And then he says it in Spanish and then he says it in Arabic or whatever. And he gets all these clients because on social media, he’s saying, here’s what to do if the cops pull you over, or if you don’t have insurance, here’s how to work with insurance or, you know, whatever it is. He’s, he’s doing, he’s using social media to build his law firm.
He did that first. Then he coaches all the other personal injury attorneys. Why? Because he’s credible and they all want to do what he did. If he started doing coaching first, before he built a successful business, he would be like all the other random people on TikTok.
[00:17:42] Terence: Right, right. Those who just built a, just started a coaching course and then decided to become a coach, right?
[00:17:48] Dennis Yu: What credibility do they have versus all the other millions of people that are coaches?
[00:17:52] Terence: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:53] Dennis Yu: See, I’m a search engine engineer. So if someone has a question about ranking on Google and, you know, showing up on Google with Google ads, like I can credibly talk about that because I’ve been a search engine engineer. Not just like some random guy. Not just because I went to a weekend seminar where I learned something about SEO.
[00:18:08] Terence: Right. So it’s about putting in the hard yards, getting the results.
[00:18:12] Dennis Yu: If you’re going to be a coach, you’re ethically, you have to help people achieve something that you have done first. So don’t just become a coach because the kids have now left the home and you need to do something and you’re a 53 year old mom or something and you decide you want to go into coaching because Brendan Burchard says that you can do it.
Tony Robbins, you walked on the course. Now you’re going to coach people. On what? It has to be from your experience. Otherwise you’re fraudulent. You’re a hypocrite.
[00:18:42] Terence: I agree a hundred percent. So Dennis, what would you advise someone who’s just starting off? Like, you know, the 53 year old mom, like you said, okay, I want to contribute to people.
The Importance of Delivering Real Value and Results
[00:18:52] Terence: So what should she do in the first instance before going and offering coaching services?
[00:19:00] Dennis Yu: Consider where you can add real value. Not where you can sell. Maybe it’s in your connections. Maybe it’s the involvement you have in your community with the nonprofit. Maybe it’s, you know, you’re also a real estate agent.
Maybe it’s, you know, how to raise children in a certain way. Maybe you’re a Mormon and, or maybe you escaped the Mormon church, for example. And you have some stories on other people that have gone through that same experience, right? Whatever the experience is, all of us, when we really think about, if you’re a 53 year old mom, you have five decades of experience that’s unique to you. Pull out some of those things, especially the struggles that other people can resonate with, and you can sell high ticket against that.
[00:19:44] Terence: So if they don’t have credibility, do you suggest they go and just help people for free at the start or?
[00:19:51] Dennis Yu: No, that’s a clear, that’s a clear path for disaster. A lot of people try that and it makes sense. Well, I don’t have credibility and I can’t charge $50,000 for high ticket because, you know, what am I going to do?
I’ve never charged $50,000 before. Maybe I’ll charge $500. But you and I know, Terence, the $500 clients are very different than the $20,000 clients. The $500 clients are nightmare clients. They’re just, they expect the world. It’s just a very hard, it’s just very hard to take care of a $500 client. It’s… $500 clients expect way more than $50,000 clients.
Yeah, they just do. And if you don’t, those of you listening or watching, you probably, you might not know this, but those of us who have made millions of dollars doing webinars or selling high ticket, we know that when you lower the price to a certain point, like it doesn’t matter how good you are, these people are going to refund and complain, call you up five times a day, you know, that kind of thing.
So you do have to start with higher ticket, but then it’s like, well, but I don’t have any experience. How can I sell a package of $20,000? Right? I don’t think I can on a straight, you know, in a zoom call with a straight face, say, okay, the price is $20,000. So what you do is you co-join or work with someone else who’s a success, successful mentor like my buddy Dan Henry has done something like 43 million dollars.
You probably know him. Probably one of the top in for product sellers on the planet. I was with him in Dubai three weeks ago and I saw him in one hour make $450,000 in a webinar selling high ticket. So 22 people bought a $20,000 package. He was on Josh Forti’s mastermind. We were spending the whole day together.
Okay. And a rented Rolls Royce in Dubai making silly videos, which Dan Henry, he’s hilarious, right? We’re making fun of each other. And then we leave that, haven’t even had a chance to eat any food because we were out, you know, making videos the whole day and then jump straight into the webinar. So, right.
We order some food while he’s doing this one hour webinar. The food comes door dash to the penthouse suite that he’s at. And so we wait until the webinar is over before we eat. Cause I think it’d be rude if I started eating while he’s still trying to finish this webinar. But you have someone who knows how to sell high ticket because he has the cred.
He knows how to talk to the audience. He’s leveraging the trust of someone else. In this case, he’s selling a Josh Fortis mastermind and they split it 50-50, which is what usually happens when you sell to someone else’s audience, right? I’ve done a lot of selling the other people’s audience and we split it 50-50.
So the last few, the last five webinars, I probably did half a million dollars. So not amazing, but okay. You know, anywhere from $70,000 to $120,000 per webinar, selling something that’s mid ticket, say $2,500. So, if 50 people buy at $2,500, that’s $75,000, but then half of it goes to the host and half of it goes to me, but then our team has to fulfill.
So that costs money too. That’s another 15% or 20%. And then we have to allocate maybe 5 percent for refunds. So, you know, at the end of the day, you know, the $120,000 webinar, I might only see $20,000. I know a lot of people do a lot better than that, but I want to actually deliver a good service. So we have VAs, we have team members actually provide value and answer questions and not just like, Oh, we made all this money, here’s your download and that’s it, I just.
A lot of people do that. I don’t believe in that.
[00:23:17] Terence: So why do you believe in over delivering so much compared to like other people who just like do the other thing, whether it’s collect the money and essentially, you know.
[00:23:30] Dennis Yu: If you are in this game for more than just, I’m going to make, make a whole bunch of money in one webinar and then leave.
If you want to build a reputation, if you want other people to invite you to, you know, co launch something, a campaign or a webinar or a coaching program, then they want to know, how did your last three launches do? How many people showed up? What percent of them bought? What percent of them refunded? What was the feedback?
And if you did poorly on, if you drove a lot of sales, In that last one you did, but people were complaining saying it was low value or you didn’t deliver what was promised. How likely, especially because it’s a very small world, how likely is someone else going to want to partner with you? So I have a good reputation.
I did another one, John Lee, just last month. And we did another one a year ago and we made, you know, $80,000 – $90,000 selling a mid ticket thing on our dollar a day program. I know it works because I’ve sold it hundreds of times, but I also use what Perry Marshall calls the, if, if then else guarantee, have you heard of this?
I think it’s absolutely critical. Anyone who’s selling anything, whether it’s a service or high ticket or software, you should use the, if, if then else guarantee. And that way you can sell with confidence, with no refunds, with no problems, expectations. It goes like this, if you meet certain criteria, like you’re making at least a million dollars a year, you have this kind of business, you fit this particular kind of niche. You’ve been around at least, you know, next, whatever it is like the criteria. And if you log into the program, attend the weekly coaching calls, do the, whatever it is that you need to do. Then I guarantee this result, 20 percent increase on the revenue or you grow your email list or you generate this many leads or your conversion rate improves or like whatever this, that. So if this, and if this, then I feel very confident about driving that result.
And if you think about your SOPs, everything we have like this is full of SOPs. So I know someone, for example, who’s doing well, generating leads on Facebook, they’re going to succeed on TikTok. If they’re brand new and have never generated leads, I would never make a guarantee that they would win on TikTok.
Maybe they will. Maybe they’re not. Too risky for me, but if I know they generate leads and they meet certain criteria, then I know that generating leads on TikTok is going to work for them. If not, you know, if, if then else, else refund and or we will keep working with you until you’re successful. But we never want the "else" to trigger because that would just like be saying, Hey, Terence, I’m a heart surgeon.
I guarantee you the heart surgery surgery will be successful else I give you your money back. You know, if I kill you, I’ll give you your money back. You know, if I’m a pilot, Oh, if you get on the plane, I guarantee you that we will not crash and die. A guarantee doesn’t create more confidence, right? Right.
It doesn’t. You should still use this if, if, then else guarantee because then you’re making it very clear and you’re publishing, not making it a secret. This, if you have these ingredients and you follow the recipe, then I guarantee chocolate chip cookies. Or whatever the recipe is, right? All of us as coaches or who are in programs need to think of what we have as a recipe and the clients are bringing the ingredients.
If you are not clear on what your ingredients are and because you’re saying like I service anybody on the planet. Any small business, I can help them. You do not have any qualifications. You have no way of consistent delivery. You have no way to know or to set expectations that you can even deliver and you have no credibility.
So I like to say, if, so here’s an example, if you are in home services in the United States and you’re doing at least a million dollars a year and your customers love you, you’re at least 4. 5 reviews or 4. 5 stars, you know, 50 plus reviews, then I can guarantee that you’re going to get at least another 20 percent more to your business within 90 days.
I know we can do that because if they have this criteria, then that’s, those are the things that I need to be able to execute for any of our agencies, right? Cause then our agencies have checklists on how we do everything, how we do SEO, how we optimize ads, how we do all these different things. So I feel good about that.
If they don’t meet any of the criteria, then we have to say, sorry, you know, we would love to take you on, but we just can’t, maybe we could succeed, but you know, we just, we don’t want to take something that is any kind of risk of failure. And most coaches need, they want business so bad. They’re willing to just do anything and say, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, we can do that.
And that just gets them in more and more trouble. In a situation like that, it’s better not to take the money. Even if you need it, then to take the money and deal with the headache later and this is going to scar on your reputation later.
Why Working with Successful Clients Matters
[00:28:34] Terence: So if someone does not meet the criteria and they say, look, Dennis, I’m totally fine with not having the guarantee.
I just want to buy the course. Would you still take them?
[00:28:43] Dennis Yu: You can buy the course, but then you agree if you really want this, you agree that if you’re not successful, it’s on you. But even still, and they’d be like, oh yeah, yeah, I can take the money. And they agreed. We don’t have to honor the guarantee, but I can tell you from having done this many times, even if they agree, they become way more effort because they call you all the time.
They’re just like all this kind of stuff. Just ask you stupid, simple questions. You know, they’re just so much harder, even if that, but then a lot of them, they’ll forget. That they agreed to this thing and they’ll say, well, I want my money back cause you know, I tried it and you know, I really just don’t think this programme is for me.
Like I’ve done that many times when I first started out doing this kind of stuff, cause I wanted to help people. And there are people who clearly were not qualified. They just started their business. It was desperate. And I told him like, hey, you know, this is our criteria. And cause I didn’t know any better.
I was young and I’m like, hey, this is the criteria. But you know, if you, if you understand there’s no guarantee, I’ll still help you. You know, so they would pay the $2,500 and whatnot. And then a couple of weeks later, after we’ve done all this work. They’ll say, you know what? I want a refund. I just don’t think this is for me.
Right? Like, yeah, but what about what we said? Yeah, but I just want my money back. Cause you know, I really needed to pay rent and you know, all this like. Okay, fine, here. Here’s the money back. Right? And then that might be all the money in my bank account. Right?
[00:30:04] Terence: Right. Yeah, so it’s really not worth it
[00:30:08] Dennis Yu: Better to work with people… here’ s the bottom line. If anyone is paying any attention or if you’ve got a video editor who’s pulling out clips, if you’re running a coaching business, work with people who are already successful and don’t desperately need you. If they desperately need you, that means their business has problems and then you don’t want to solve all those other kinds of problems, right?
Unless you’re that kind of coach, in which case good luck, right? You want people who are already successful, but you can offer them one little thing and because they’re successful, they’ll pay a lot of money for a little bit and they’re very happy. I have a lot of clients, they pay a hundred thousand dollars and you know, they, their business grows from 10 million to 11 million. That’s fantastic. They’re very happy. Yeah. They get a 10%, 20% increase on a hundred million dollars a year business that goes to 120 million. Mm-Hmm. , they’re very happy to pay a hundred thousand dollars. Someone who’s doing $10,000 a month and we give them $20,000, you know, 20% increase.
They’re not happy.
[00:31:06] Terence: True.
[00:31:07] Dennis Yu: So wouldn’t you rather have a 20% increase on a $10 million a year business? Absolutely. Yeah. So why would you help someone who’s $1,000 a month? Even if you increase them to $1,200 a month, which is a 20 percent increase, they’re going to want to pay you $50 for that.
[00:31:24] Terence: Yeah. So true.
[00:31:26] Dennis Yu: And it’s the same amount of effort. Actually, it’s less effort to grow someone from 10 million to 12 million than it is from zero to 1000. I have done that many times. I prefer it’s way easier because there’s more data. There’s more things to work with. You have a clear value, you know, unique selling proposition.
Someone who doesn’t have a clear business, you are a co founder with them. Do you want to be a co founder? How many co founders can you, you know, how many businesses can you co found? Yeah, it’s not coaching anymore, and so new coaches don’t understand that. They end up wanting to help so much. I just want to help.
Now you’re a co founder. You have to solve all these strategy problems, find the market fit, figure out what the message is. They don’t have any testimonials. They don’t have any clear proof. They don’t even have the skill to deliver the service. Now you’re trying to learn that skill and you think it was a matter of copy or motivation or they’re like, increasing their mojo and their self esteem or, and, you know, no, it’s that their underlying business is faulty and they don’t deliver a clear value. How do you solve that problem? So never take those people on.
Attracting High-Value Clients as a Coach
[00:32:28] Terence: So Dennis, I got a question. How do you attract as a coach? How do you attract those people doing eight figures, seven?
[00:32:36] Dennis Yu: Masterminds full of other people like that.
If you look at who’s in my newsfeed and who I’m spending time with, those are the people, you know, whoever you show that you are with is who you attract. It is that simple. I had lunch a couple of days ago with Roger Wakefield in Dallas. He is the best known plumber in the United States. He sold his plumbing business for 30 million dollars, something like that.
And all the plumbers know who he is. And we have an agency that just serves plumbers. So I love showing that I’m with Roger Wakefield. I take a picture of us having Mexican food. And I say something funny about that. Or we’re flying Southwest Airlines together. Or we’re at his compound in Dallas. And I’m on his podcast.
I love featuring that. So be very intentional about who you spend time with. Cause that shows, like, cause if I’m spending time with Roger Wakefield, then all the other people that are like Roger Wakefield are gonna say, oh, I should probably spend time with Dennis. And that’s what happens. All these other people who are well known in home services because Roger Wakefield will tag me in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube.
It attracts other people in his audience. Right? If you’re, if you spend all your time around people who are broke and have just started their business and are struggling, you’re going to get more of the same. And is it a surprise? Good point. It’s that simple, really.
[00:33:57] Terence: So as a coach, like if you want to hang out with these people, I mean, they’re not going to just say, yes, yeah, just hang out with me.
How do you…
[00:34:05] Dennis Yu: Sure they are. If you’re friends with them.
[00:34:06] Terence: …watch those relationships?
[00:34:08] Dennis Yu: So people say that it’s all in your head. If you deliver value, if that’s the audience that you serve, if you’ve clearly driven value for that audience, for people in that audience, they love to talk about you. I was in a mastermind this morning with some eight figure entrepreneurs and they were going on and on and on about how their teams have gotten access to my courses and they love what they’ve learned about digital marketing.
They’ve learned so much, and they’ve implemented so much of it and their SEO is better and they’re telling all the other people in the mastermind about this. And some people who didn’t know about our courses, they came in and signed up for our stuff because they heard other people talking about it.
I didn’t even have to say anything. It’s all word of mouth and reputation. If you don’t have word of mouth and reputation, you need to solve that issue first. It’s not, if you try to sell and you don’t have those things, then you’re going to be making stuff up and you’re going to be getting yourself in a difficult situation.
You don’t want to be in that situation where you have to like fake it till you make it. What a horrible place to be.
Leveraging Experience and Authenticity in Webinars
[00:35:12] Terence: Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. So Dennis, what other tips do you have for someone like that’s doing webinars? I like your, um, if, if kind of process, but what else can you tell us?
[00:35:25] Dennis Yu: Webinar, you should teach from your actual experience, tell real stories.
Don’t do the hero’s journey where you talk about how broke you were and now you’re successful, and then you try to sell people into that. That’s what most people do in webinars. And it’s just a waste of time. Go right from the start. Share real value. Now, if you don’t have real value, don’t do the webinar or you can interview somebody who has done it.
So if you’re at the chicken and egg and you don’t have anything to say because you have no experience, then you can partner with someone else who does have experience. And that way you can credibly, authentically, legitimately talk about something. But if you’ve never done it, I know a lot. I know a lot of people who have never made their first million dollars and here they are giving advice on how to make a million dollars. Fraudulent. Because they see all the other internet bros do that too. Fake flexing on Instagram. Don’t do it. You’ll be found out and then you’ll be on baller busters like Hayden Bowles and Gavin Lera and all these other people, Tristan Parmley, all these people that are faking it.
Brandon DeBauer, all these people pretending like they’re successful and they have nothing. Fake fake media. Don’t do that.
[00:36:31] Terence: What if the people have genuinely like gone broke and then like they have the kind of like hero’s journey arc?
[00:36:39] Dennis Yu: Okay. Well then talk about how you actually overcame that.
Everyone’s been broke at some point. Every entrepreneur I know has failed multiple times. Great. You talk about that, but then show what you actually did and make it so it’s repeatable. Give some real value. Don’t just tell stories.
[00:36:56] Terence: So do you actually get into the tactical stuff or the strategy stuff?
[00:36:59] Dennis Yu: Everything we do is tactical.
I don’t hide anything. If you look at my Facebook or LinkedIn, you’ll see I, I share exactly how I do everything. There’s no secret. Google me. Look at the thousands of YouTube videos. You wanna learn how to do whatever, it’s, it’s all right there. I publish the audits. I publish us as we’re building campaigns.
I publish, you know, how to go about doing public speaking. I show everything behind the scenes. One of the things how build relationships, right? How to get plane tickets for cheap, you know, how to fly business class using upgrades? I show how to do all of it.
The Strategic Advantage of Sharing Knowledge Freely
[00:37:29] Terence: So one of the things the coaches will probably be thinking, if I show everything, then why would people want to sign up for my course?
[00:37:35] Dennis Yu: Because the people who have the money will pay you for help, and the people who don’t have any money, you don’t want to talk to them anyway. So just give it away to them. They were never going to pay you anyway. So that’s a huge mindset shift. People who are new, they think it’s a secret. Look, I know the top people that do webinars and info products.
And the secret among all of us is we give away our best content for free. Ask anyone who’s successful. They’ll tell you that’s true because I’m not afraid of other people doing the same thing. I’m not afraid of other people implementing dollar a day, which was like my secret, right? I’ve spent a billion dollars doing this.
I give it away. And if other people use it and they’re successful, I applaud them. And then that makes me look good because look at how many people have implemented a dollar a day technique. All it does is strengthen my reputation. It doesn’t take any money away from me at all. Don’t be so small minded thinking that you’re the only one with the secret.
There’s nothing I’ve heard anyone say that is not common knowledge, right? There’s no knowledge you have that’s so special nobody else knows it, right? We’re all basically saying different variations of the same thing.
Optimizing Course Offerings for Diverse Needs
[00:38:40] Terence: So then I also noticed on Blitzmetrics, you have a lot of different courses. I, is there a reason why you have a lot of different courses?
[00:38:49] Dennis Yu: Yeah, we’ve got 155 courses depending on whether you’re, you’re an agency or you’re a VA or you’re local business, but then as part of it, you might also wanna build your personal brand.
You might also want to learn step by step how to make a hundred thousand dollars with the webinar. And I show you how to do it step by step. And I even do it as I’m putting together webinars as I’m doing the webinar, after I do the webinar, I show exactly how we do it. How do you start a podcast? How do you do SEO?
How do you do these different things? So it’s like a library. We call it our Thousand Task Library. So there’s a thousand tasks in there. Actually, there’s more than that now. And we show exactly how we do all of it. And you can literally Google it. You can Google Thousand Task Library Dennis Yu, and you’ll see, here’s all the tasks. Click on each one.
See exactly how we do it. Videos, screenshots,
[00:39:39] Terence: Yeah.
[00:39:40] Dennis Yu: You know of anyone else that has published SOPs to that level? Tactically.
[00:39:45] Terence: Not that I can think of.
[00:39:47] Dennis Yu: Yeah. So that’s, that’s a competitive advantage we have. And anyone who wants to publish what they have and they want us to share it, I’m happy to share it too.
If someone has found a better way to do a press release, for example, or to like do local citations or to set up TikTok ads, I’m happy to push their stuff or even interview them or whatnot. Whoever has a better version of anything that we’ve done, I would love to use their version. Because that makes me look good, right?
Then all it does is reinforce the fact that we have the best SOPs in digital marketing. And the best people in digital marketers, social media examiner, all the other people, they agree. It’s not because I say so, they all say that we have the best SOPs. And if you have a better SOP, let’s hear it and I’ll link to you, right?
[00:40:35] Terence: Yeah, yeah. Is there a strategy to have like so many courses? And how do you balance that?
[00:40:43] Dennis Yu: It’s not because… I mean, we’ve made millions of dollars selling courses, but we’re, we’re not doing it to make money to sell courses. We needed to do courses because in order for us to scale our agencies and have reliable delivery, that was the only way we made these courses for ourselves, because we found these VAs and these new agency owners, they’d make all these mistakes.
So we had to build the courses for our own people, but it was so good, the other agencies would say, hey, can, can we get access? Like, sure, here.
Focusing on Local Services for Agency Success
[00:41:13] Terence: Okay. Dennis, you mentioned you have agencies as well. How many different agencies you have and what niches do they serve?
[00:41:23] Dennis Yu: Oh, it was maybe like a dozen and they’re in local services.
I love local. I think local is the best way. There were some agencies of ours where we support them and they started off doing influencer marketing or TikTok ads or going viral on social or doing video editing or some kind of general thing or coaching even. But most of them have realized that that’s such a hard thing to do to create sustainable ongoing revenue.
Cause you have to keep acquiring, acquiring cause you keep losing clients, which they never talk about, but they lose clients. Right? And most of them have turned around and eventually chose a vertical, like my buddy Keagen, had a seven figure influencer marketing agency. And then he said, you know what?
This is so hard. I have to deal with all these clients and they’re all different. I told you. And then he started going into roofing. So now he serves roofers and he says, oh man, I wish I started doing, you know, serving roofers earlier. It’s so much easier, you know, 10 million dollars roofing companies are left and right everywhere, but 10 million dollar folks who run a YouTube and sell e commerce with like, that’s, those are so hard. There’s people who have six and a half million subscribers on their TikTok and they’re making a thousand dollars a month, like so hard. But roofers all day, like we just keep signing up more roofers, he tells me. I’m like, yeah, see, I told you.
It’s very clear. We know what a roofer does. We know what the value is. We know how to execute for a roofer, every single roofer. I don’t care what city they’re in. It’s the same thing versus someone who’s very, very unique. And there’s only one of them. And we have to create this custom thing and figure out their customer base and edit videos.
And it’s just so much work versus like another plumber, another landscaper, another real estate agent, another veterinarian, right? I love that. My buddy, Danny, I told you he does pest control and there’s not that many agencies that specialize in pest control. There’s a lot of digital agencies. There’s a lot of SEO people.
There’s a lot of people that build websites, right? I get 20 people a day. Hey sir, I’ll build your website for you. No dude. Danny focuses just on pest control companies. So he’s got limited competition. I think there’s 200, 000, 300, 000, something like that, pest control companies in America and Canada.
That’s fantastic for him. So much room. Okay. This is what coaches… are not local. Coaches are not local. Coaches, you’re competing against everyone else on the planet. It’s just, isn’t it right? It’s harder to win in the NBA than it is at the local basketball team. Right? The local, whatever YMCA. I would rather, you know, win like, why not win where it’s easy to win, right?
[00:44:05] Terence: Yeah.
[00:44:06] Dennis Yu: Versus taking someone who’s just started a new business, and they don’t even have the infrastructure necessary. They don’t even have a team. Most coaches are serving people who are solopreneurs. Solopreneurs are some of the hardest people to work for because they don’t have their act together. I love working with companies where there’s a founder and they have a team of people that render the service that is not the founder because they can pay money.
They won’t think twice about $10,000 a month as a retainer. Right? If you’re doing coaching, it’s kind of hard to, it’s, can you squeeze $10,000 a month out of an individual? That’s pretty hard on an ongoing basis. They might pay you once or twice, but will they pay you month after month $10,000 a month as your fee?
[00:44:47] Terence: Pretty hard unless you’re Tony Robbins or someone like that,
[00:44:50] Dennis Yu: But in local all day long. Because for a 10 million dollar a year plumbing HVAC company, all day. Car dealership, you know, uh, artificial turf company, a dermatologist, all of these, right? They have real businesses that are doing over a million dollars a year, which is not a lot of money.
And they have no problem paying 1 percent of that. If they know you can provably generate five times more or sometimes 10 times more, you put in 10, 000, we’ll guarantee you 50, 000 back. And they do it over and over and over again. We rescue so many companies, largely home service companies, pool companies, electricians all day.
You can Google me and see how many we have. You can see example after example.
Final Insights: Doubling Prices for Better Clients
[00:45:40] Terence: Well, it’s fantastic. So, Dennis, what’s, uh, one final word of wisdom you would like to leave people listening who are coaches in regards to their business? I mean, we shared so many things, but is there any other thing that you would like to share before we leave?
[00:45:58] Dennis Yu: I’ve seen a lot of coaches and a lot of failure. The most common piece of advice I’ll give you that I’ve seen work is Double Your Prices. Most people are afraid of doing that. Doubling your prices will give you a better client who you’ll have to do less work.
[00:46:13] Terence: Super simple.
[00:46:14] Dennis Yu: Yep. It’s that simple. And I’ve seen a lot of agencies, a lot of coaches implement this advice.
Most of them won’t because they’re afraid of losing clients or they’re afraid of whatever, but of the ones who have, I can’t think of one that has not been more successful by increasing their prices. It takes, it’s really like a mental thing to overcome this fear. But once you overcome that fear, double your prices, watch what happens.
Watch how many people, how many other people, I did a podcast with Alex Berman, who’s well known in the agency space on why you should double your prices and what happens even I’ll lose clients, I’ll lose clients. Try it. Watch what happens. The best clients are happy to pay you. The ones who leave you, they were the complaining ones anyway.
Because if you have 10 or 20 clients, let’s say, and you rank them top to bottom, you have the one or two clients that you really like that pay you the most. And you have all these other ones that are just like, whatever. And then the very bottom, you have these ones that you really don’t want because they’re just a headache and they don’t pay you very much.
So when you double your prices, you’re able to put more effort against your best clients. And you make more money with less energy because you end up firing these ones. Think of it this way, if you double your price, there should be clients of yours that are getting value five to ten times whatever they’re paying you.
So they should have no problem if you double the price. If they have a problem with you doubling the price, your value isn’t high enough.
[00:47:32] Terence: Good point.
[00:47:34] Dennis Yu: There you go.
[00:47:35] Terence: Real true, Dennis. Fantastic words of wisdom there, Dennis. So Dennis, one final thing, if people want to follow you and your words of wisdom, obviously you’ve got so much to share.
Where to find you?
[00:47:46] Terence: What is the best place for them to find you?
[00:47:49] Dennis Yu: Google me, Dennis space Yu, and you’ll see a knowledge panel on showing up on Google. And I would say if you were a coach, you should have a knowledge panel too. If you don’t have a knowledge panel, you’re not authoritative. And if you Google knowledge panel, Dennis Yu, you’ll see step by step on how to do that.
Google is my business card. You Google me, follow me on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, whatever. I’m happy to help out anybody, right? Just tag me on Facebook or something like that. I want to say there’s enough room for all of us to win without having to do, you know, scammy stuff.
[00:48:23] Terence: Yeah, so true. Well, fantastic.
Thank you so much, Dennis, for this, your time and for sharing so much to our listeners today.
[00:48:32] Dennis Yu: Awesome hanging out with you on the podcast. And if you’re considering being on Terence’s podcast, Founders Go Naked. Don’t be deterred by the name. I think it’s a lot of fun and it’s a great opportunity to have a great conversation with other entrepreneurs that are helping other coaches.
So go check it out. And if you like my episode with Terence, then you might consider being on Terence’s podcast too.
This podcast is hosted by Terence Tam, author of Lead Surge: 8 Radically Effective Marketing Funnels for Coaches and Experts. He is also the Founder of Radical Marketing, a digital marketing agency that partners with high-ticket coaches to scale their businesses with Webinars – by using a proprietary blend of story ads and battled-tested sales funnels to achieve better returns on ad dollars.
