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Chad Kodary (00:02.57)
What's going on everybody. We are on another episode of behind the revenue. This time it's with my good friend, George, kind of foot is from the silver spoon agency. Fun, fun fact here before we even get started. George, uh, now that I'm sure you guys will hear how he's crushing it and, and, and doing an amazing job between both having an agency and launching a software. George was once in our coaching program called dash elite. And this was how long ago George, a couple of years ago.
George Karafotis (00:32.203)
Hey man, good to see you. Yeah, it's been like four or five years.
Chad Kodary (00:35.086)
four or five years, brother. So, so walk me through a little bit about kind of how you started in the agency space, what you're doing right now. Give me like a little one or two minute spiel about what's going on in George's life.
George Karafotis (00:47.275)
Like you said, I'm George Karaforis. I started as a professional guitar player and I was a first, I started marketing my bands and I was touring the world, I was having fun and at the same time I was making sure we get the right advertisement behind it. So I got very passionate about it. I went to the university to study marketing a little bit more. So took it to the next level and I started with courses.
Tai Lopez and a couple other guys that I coached by and then I found Dash Elite. So before Dash Elite, I was running the agency and before that I was working as a freelancer for four years, three, four years. So in total I've been in this space for like 10 years now, really, really doing this professionally for the last eight for sure. So it's been a great journey, man. I'm so, so grateful, you know, all the things you showed me and you know.
because of you, I managed to form a partnership out of nowhere with a guy that turned out being partner of a lifetime and we're crushing it. So very.
Chad Kodary (01:50.636)
Caesar man.
Chad Kodary (01:55.47)
Yeah. And just to add some context here, cause I think that's one of, one of the coolest highlight stories of dash elite. Um, so just for some context for the viewers. So George has partnered with another gentleman called Caesar. Uh, they both have what's called the silver spoon agency together. Uh, George and Caesar both joined our higher ticket coaching program, dash lead a couple of years ago separately. Okay. They did not know each other. It was separately. They both paid separately to join the program.
And then while being in the program, you network. That's the whole beauty of a fucking coaching program. It's like you're networking, you're meeting people. What happened is, and if tell me from wrong George, you were more of like the techie background. I love doing marketing guy. Caesar was more of like the sales. I want to like jump on sales calls and just sell shit all day. And then together you guys kind of form this partnership where like he was controlling and kind of managing and dealing with all the sales stuff, sales and prospecting.
And on your side, you were like behind the scenes doing all the work, running all the odds, email campaigns and all that stuff. My right or wrong.
George Karafotis (03:00.235)
Yeah, exactly. On point, 100%. I started as a paid media specialist anyway. So I was coaching people for that and then I started the agency. I had already a team built and the processes and systems. So it was a great partnership. It made a lot of sense.
Chad Kodary (03:15.758)
Dude, amazing. What was, what was, I know you guys were ramping up pretty quick. I remember you guys telling me that you were dealing with also bigger, larger brands that, that had basically a higher price tag that you were charging for media services. What, what in your agency, what was like the peak month that you've guys have ever gotten to like sales? Like, what was your highest performing sales month in your agency?
George Karafotis (03:41.225)
350 ,000, 335 ,000.
Chad Kodary (03:43.246)
Amazing dude. Yeah. 350 ,000 at that point, like $350 ,000. Well, in a month of sales as an example. So 350 K in a month. What was, uh, how many clients were you managing for that 350? Like, cause I know you guys were dealing with more of higher ticket sales.
George Karafotis (04:02.987)
So it was around that point that we changed a little bit the prices and we updated some pricing and we have now a lot of different tiers because you know, you know, when scale like you need that low ticket and you have to build all the rest. But so I think we were managing around 55 and 60 clients. Yeah, when we did that 350.
Chad Kodary (04:12.3)
Yeah.
Chad Kodary (04:21.774)
Nice man. And, and you're still managing your agency. Caesar's still on board. You guys are still doing this thing together and scaling up. Love it, man. How are you? Yeah, dude, I get it. How are you right now? I'm going to ask some questions that I'm sure you guys at home listening are probably going to want to know because a lot of the people that are watching this podcast are agency owners. We have a lot of agency owners that watch a show.
George Karafotis (04:31.679)
Absolutely. Yep. We'll have a take of your fun. Yep.
Chad Kodary (04:51.854)
And somebody that's listening to this and they're like, dude, 350 K a month in sales, like scaling up to that amount. That's a big agency, man. Right. So what's like the secret sauce? Like what got you to that? I know obviously time is a component, but like, is there anything in your agency that you guys did or are doing now that was like. This, this was the game changer. This was that thing. Right. And if so, what was it, dude, what's the secret sauce?
George Karafotis (05:18.773)
Absolutely. So the first thing we focused on in the agency wasn't to just get hired, you know, close a lot of deals and clients. We focused on the first 10. We made sure that we really crush it for them, like build great signature strategies instead of just going and closing everybody. And we use those case studies to increase, first of all, our pricing because now we know we gain a lot of confidence.
I know what I'm talking about. I'm going to back it with data. I'm going to prove to you that this strategy works. I'm talking about returns of investment that were like, I'm still saying that to other agency owners and like, there's no way until I show them. We had clients that were like doing 13 X return on advertising spend. We had other clients. We did it for a client last year, 22 X. Yeah. It was...
Chad Kodary (06:10.382)
What vertical was that?
George Karafotis (06:14.987)
actually was restricted as well, like from Facebook, like it's a restricted category, but we managed to pull this off with a strategy I called the Trojan Horse. So it was a bit of a backdoor strategy, but it worked. It was in the investment space. Very interesting project. Yep.
Chad Kodary (06:32.078)
Nice.
And so when you guys are running ads, is it, is it just primarily like Facebook and IG or are you doing like cross platform all over the place?
George Karafotis (06:43.147)
we'll do a lot of cross platform because I understood from around 2020, the marketing world started shifting a little bit and then the iOS 14 came in, changed the game. So we figured out that we have to go back and just build more of kind of like a system, kind of like a 360 approach from the offer to the line page, the headline to how we market everything like top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, how to structure everything. And then at that point,
I was 100 % sure and I told my team guys, we need OmniChannel. No matter what happens, if the client cannot support that, it's not a good fit, we will not sign him. That's the other thing I wanted to tell everybody that's listening to and is a young agency owner starting right now, don't sell yourself short and make sure that you understand that you're not good for everybody and don't go and sign everybody. Sometimes it might hurt you because you're gonna...
You're going end up allocating a lot of time and you will think that you will get a lot of money later, but that's not the case. You to find that balance. Yep.
Chad Kodary (07:49.806)
Yeah, you end up burning all your resources. Yep. What was the perfect client for you?
George Karafotis (07:57.387)
The perfect client is the client that actually is definitely making seven figures so they can invest the right amount of money. They know a few things about marketing, but they understand that they're not at the level where they can run their ads on their own and they don't have to tell you everything you have to do. They listen and they're open -minded and they understand the process of how marketing
You know, it has different stages and it's gonna take some time. But when you find that formula, it works. It's, you know, there's no going back.
Chad Kodary (08:37.454)
Yep. And your, when you say, uh, they have enough money to spend, uh, for an agency. What was the, what were your, what was your core offer primarily that you guys were pitching or you'd be talking like a $2 ,000 retainer, 10 ,020. Like what, where were you guys at?
George Karafotis (08:55.147)
Yeah, and I wanna just, I made a mistake there. I said spend, I wanted to say invest. Marketing is an investment, so that was my mistake. So when we started scaling in the beginning, our starting point was at 7 ,500, believe it or not, but that was for the whole system, like per month.
Chad Kodary (09:04.342)
Got you, okay. Yeah, that's true.
George Karafotis (09:22.575)
Then we shifted the pricing a little bit. We realized that we need to introduce a more kind of like an intro package Which is the 4 ,000 and it goes up to 35k depending and that's of course based on ad spend On the 35k plan is not only ads management. We do like we create funnels line pages We have a couple video ads the scripting the whole nine yards the whole thing. Yeah
Chad Kodary (09:41.518)
Yeah, you're doing it all. Yeah. And when you're obviously this is excluding ad spend, right? They would have to pay ad spend on their own. Okay. Making sure adding some context in there. And so you guys, you're obviously you're signing up new clients, right? I think the biggest, the biggest.
George Karafotis (09:50.219)
Yes.
Yeah.
Chad Kodary (10:02.286)
And it's, it's like, I have this story.
Chad Kodary (10:07.982)
like you probably.
prospecting sales, right. And then like scaling up from there, right. And scaling can be in the form of fulfillment teams, hiring processes, protocols, but like, dude, like you don't even need any of that stuff because you don't even need any of that stuff if you don't have sales, right. And then if you're not selling, like there's first of all, you can't even sell anything if you don't have prospecting or leads in your pipeline, right. So it's like a domino effect. You need to first tip over the first domino, which is prospecting. Then once you have leads on your calendar, booked appointments, all that gets
goes into sales. Once you start producing sales, then you can start scaling that up and basically getting more of that thing. Right? So like for prospecting 90 % of agency owners will probably just hit a brick wall and they can't even get people to just speak to them. What's been the secret sauce for you to actually get people to speak to you? Are you running ads? Are you doing SEO on your website to generate leads? Is it been all referrals? Like what's been like your thing?
George Karafotis (11:10.731)
So you're 100 % right. You need flow conversion retention, three stages. And actually, I had another few young entrepreneurs. They were starting the agency space. And they reached out to me, and I gave them two tips. I told them, in the beginning, you actually taught us most of that part, especially for cold outreach in the beginning. You're going to go crazy, because you have two options.
Chad Kodary (11:32.27)
Yep.
George Karafotis (11:39.883)
You're either gonna have time or you're gonna have money or you're gonna have both. But when you don't have money and you're starting out, you're gonna allocate a lot of time. So you're gonna grind and hassle as much as you can and you're gonna build the cold outreach. That means whatever you can. It means email, it means SMS, whatever you can do. And then you can, you want also to fix your SEO as much as you can. You know, you have the team already, you're an agency, so fix your SEO and make sure you do enough outreach.
Start with a couple of ads, release a lot of content, social media. Just expose yourself to those things as much. Even if you're shy and you don't want that, you need to be there every single day. LinkedIn is powerful. We found another platform recently that works great and it's called Alignable. So it's great. And another secret tool that we use, and I just want to give this out to all the marketers that are listening.
Chad Kodary (12:21.358)
Yeah, you have to.
Chad Kodary (12:27.756)
Yep, familiar with that too.
George Karafotis (12:38.097)
And believe it or not, if you really know how to filter the questions there is bark .com bark .com Is a great platform to get you're not gonna get a lot of leads from there or like very quality leads You're gonna get but you're gonna get to a point that you know how to pre -qualify And then you're gonna start hitting the good ones non -stop. So then
Chad Kodary (12:43.406)
Yep, we've used that.
Chad Kodary (13:01.23)
Yeah, we tried. We tried bark .com. Um, we tried bark .com I think for, I don't know, maybe like one or two months. It was just like another, like little side thing that we were, we were just kind of split testing. Um, we got, we got deals out of it, but I think it's you're right. Bark .com was like one of those things where for one, I think you need like a mid tier or a higher ticket package. We were starting with like the website stuff, but you can't make the numbers work on bark .com selling like websites. Um, it needs to be like more of like a full.
you know, full marketing suite, like a thousand plus, uh, monthly retainers minimum. Um, because for those of you guys who don't know how bark .com works, it's like a credit system, right? You like buy credits and then your leads based on the questions that they answer will be worth a certain amount of credits. Obviously the higher quality leads will cost you more money in credits and the shittier leads will cost you the least amount in credits. Right? So obviously if you're a marketing agency or you're just on the network, you want to get,
George Karafotis (13:37.163)
Yes.
Chad Kodary (14:01.134)
the better quality leads who you're going to end up paying more, but you need to make sure like George is saying, and I agree with you 100 % like how to pre -qualify because you don't want to accept the lead, right? The second you accept the lead, that's when you pay. So pre -qualifying, uh, with the questions I get exactly what you're saying makes a lot of sense. What were you guys like, and by the way, are you guys still doing these, you know, some of like alignable, uh, bark .com? Are you still doing that till today? Like you're doing that actively right now. So I can ask you some like real time questions.
All right, let's have some fun with this because let's peel the onion back and have some fun. First of all, who's running because you need somebody in there in bark, right? Who's running bark? Who's running a line of bulls at Caesar? Is he the one that's dealing with all that stuff? OK.
George Karafotis (14:31.147)
Yes.
Awesome.
George Karafotis (14:45.291)
And usually what I do is I went.
George Karafotis (14:55.475)
certain filters you can add, and the more you refine them, the better.
get back.
George Karafotis (15:07.337)
any leads that don't have verified phone numbers. We almost got scammed once. We almost got scammed. The email was verified, but that's the easy part. The phone number wasn't, and we didn't pay attention. We were just slamming the phones, me and Caesar together, and we ended up with a very big deal, and we almost got scammed. I was like, oh my God, I was like so close. Yep. That is it.
Chad Kodary (15:10.542)
Yep, yeah, because nobody answers. Wow.
Chad Kodary (15:20.654)
Hmm.
Chad Kodary (15:31.47)
That's crazy. So how much are you going to do? Like some quick rapid fire of just shit. That's questions that are just like at the top of my mind that I'm sure viewers are probably going to want to know. Like one, what do you guys spend a month? I think when we were doing park, we were testing, we're spending like maybe like a thousand bucks, 2000 bucks a month. It wasn't much, but what are you guys spending on bark .com right now?
George Karafotis (15:54.347)
three to five.
Chad Kodary (15:55.566)
three to five grand and what's the return that you guys have been seeing and before you answer that question how long have you been doing this for because that's probably why it's in good context.
George Karafotis (16:03.267)
three, three and a half years.
Chad Kodary (16:06.35)
Okay. So you've been doing this for a while. So you've got your system dialed in. You're spending between three to five K a month on bark. And what's the return that you're seeing that you're getting and what are you actually like, what's your thing on bark? Do you have like a package that you sell to a lot of the people that come off bark?
George Karafotis (16:22.731)
You answered it yourself before you said it's more kind of like a you know 360 you need to plan to sell actually that's what we do exactly because we figured out that only by selling the website was a profitable so the moment we shifted and we tested that enough our average return on investment on bark is 8 to 10 X right now
Chad Kodary (16:40.718)
Wow. Great. And then, okay. So bark is one thing. Is that like the main thing that's just driving a shit ton of leads for you guys right now? Or you guys also maybe running Facebook ads or a funnel or you do like, what other thing talk to me about? Cause I'm just curious as like the breakdown of how people are coming into your world. That silver spoon.
George Karafotis (16:59.339)
So we have cold outreach through email, but we have built an entire system. We have our welcome to our world series where people just get to know me and Caesar a little bit more. And then we dive deeper into how the agency works and we give them tips and stuff like that. And then we move to the pitch, which is further down the road. Yeah, we have around 20 preset emails that are automated. And then...
Chad Kodary (17:03.31)
Okay.
Chad Kodary (17:18.722)
And that's people need to opt into your email, right? So.
George Karafotis (17:27.243)
We have different flows depending on the answers. The other thing we do is cold email outreach, which is only seven emails and it's a different structure. We have also LinkedIn cold outreach where we use a.
Chad Kodary (17:38.606)
Hold on one second. I want to die. We're going to get through each one of these. But I want to peel the onion back so people understand a little bit more. So the first one you said, so we got through bark, we got through alignable, we get it. And by the way, for alignable, are you spending anything there? Or is that just like a networking thing? I haven't really used that.
George Karafotis (17:53.419)
No, it's a networking, but the good thing is it's kind of like LinkedIn for small business owners, but also bigger ones, but you have more opportunities to talk with each other because it's not that flooded as of yet. Yes.
Chad Kodary (17:54.924)
Okay.
Chad Kodary (17:58.958)
Yeah, that's what I got.
Chad Kodary (18:07.894)
Got you. Okay. All right. And then you said that you're doing a lot of, uh, uh, cold DM or cold emailing, right? What, what software platform are you using to just blast out or using like G mass or woodpecker? Like, what are you using for that?
George Karafotis (18:22.187)
So we're using right now for the call. So we're using kind of like the same system that we are for a while we've been using that and we use the, what's the name instantly? That's the one. Yeah, because it changes a lot of like automatically changes the accounts and we have a lot of different accounts. We did the demark the whole thing, the email deliverability. So we make sure everything is on point and we switch in between when we send those emails. So.
Chad Kodary (18:35.244)
Instantly. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yep.
Chad Kodary (18:41.986)
Yep.
Chad Kodary (18:50.978)
And how many emails are you sending a day?
George Karafotis (18:55.051)
We're setting around 2000? 1500? Yeah.
Chad Kodary (18:58.956)
2000 a day. Okay, cool. That's great. And, and where are you getting the data from to send those emails? Cause you have to obviously have to load that up into instantly, right? Or using like D seven or you some other network.
George Karafotis (19:09.419)
We use a lot of different scrapers. One of them is ours. It's part of our software I was talking to you about. And we also use D7 still. We've seen that sometimes it really works. And some industries it doesn't, but it's hit or miss with the software. I would say D7 is quite good, especially for home services. We found out.
Chad Kodary (19:14.51)
Okay, cool. Yeah.
George Karafotis (19:36.305)
We found that out from you, of course. So we've been testing that for a while and then I just, you know, started diving deeper into that more and more and more. So we got the system down. It takes time. It needs, you know.
Chad Kodary (19:38.158)
Yep, we use 27 for home services, yeah.
Chad Kodary (19:48.238)
Yeah. Oh yeah. Everything takes time and everybody who's watching this, like if you think that this like George built this agency overnight, dudes have been doing this for years already, right? You're almost on like a decade, right? So like this shit takes time. Okay. This is not like an overnight thing. So I'm going to keep, I want to keep drilling in because this is a fun talk for me and probably the user, the viewers are like, Oh, no, it's writing down notes and shit. Um, so.
Instantly, you're sending out 2000 outbound emails a day out of those 2000 outbows. What's like on average open rate and what's your reply rate?
George Karafotis (20:22.507)
So our open rate is actually really high for cold emails. I was surprised. I'm like, OK, so the subject lines are really good because this is what we'll get them in the first place. We had some campaigns that were around 33 % open rate for cold email. It's above the industry average, which is awesome. We had other campaigns that didn't perform that well, like 22%, 25%. But it's quite good.
Chad Kodary (20:33.324)
Yeah.
Chad Kodary (20:38.958)
Great. Yeah, yeah.
Chad Kodary (20:48.11)
And for context, what's like that first email? What is it? Like, what's the goal? You don't have to say the email, but what's the goal? Is it to book them on a call? Is it to give them an Insta site or an insert? What's your, what's your whole goal?
George Karafotis (21:01.291)
The first email is just to get them a little bit interested about what we do. And it starts, are you open to discuss something? It's not like I might have an opportunity for you, but we don't say much. We've seen that this one works better than just giving the offer right away. So we kind of like try to paint the picture as we go and we actually.
Chad Kodary (21:16.782)
Okay.
George Karafotis (21:27.755)
Talk to them about scheduling something with us, I think around email three, if I'm not mistaken. So the first two are more like, you know,
Chad Kodary (21:35.214)
So I would assume with that type of messaging, your reply rate is probably high too because there's curiosity factor, right? And you're not really telling them and they're like, who the fuck is this guy emailing me, right? Let me see what he wants, right? So what's your reply rate on that?
George Karafotis (21:40.075)
Yes.
George Karafotis (21:46.963)
Yep.
It's around, I would say, 30 % are opening that. I would say it's around 22, 25%. And then of course, as you funnel them through and funnel down, it's obviously gonna drop a lot.
Chad Kodary (21:55.214)
Great.
Chad Kodary (22:00.686)
Yeah. Cause what I've seen with email marketing and tell me if I'm right or wrong, obviously you're still doing it. So it works to some capacity, right? It's just, there is manual labor as much as it's automated, you still need to like feed the list and do all of that stuff. Right. Um, is it worth doing? Like I'm assuming you're still doing it. So it's worth it. Right.
George Karafotis (22:09.035)
Yes.
George Karafotis (22:21.899)
It is worth doing what we found out that really made it work even better. When I have people that are even more interested, I'm trying to look them up and find them more linked in. And sometimes I start, I continue the conversation, you know, through messaging. Because we've seen that shift in the platforms, like all these platforms that are favoring messaging more. I'm sure you're familiar with that and you're testing that already. Instagram DMs, now they're...
they're applying changes, you know, they're making some changes on the Instagram DMs as well. Facebook is favoring the messaging ads again a little bit more. LinkedIn is really big on the DM, I mean, on the cold outreach, it's blowing up. So I feel like the platforms want to just make sure that they keep people on their platform. So they're gonna favor your ads as well when you send them to them, like to send a message instead of just taking them off the platform.
Chad Kodary (23:12.622)
Gotcha. Hmm. Very cool. And then, so cold email, I'm assuming you're also probably, I think you said it before, you're doing also DMS, cold DMS on different platforms. What are you, what are you doing? Like, is it like, I'm assuming LinkedIn probably is one of them. Maybe like you link or something like that.
George Karafotis (23:32.683)
Yeah, we use a different platform. We use Connected. But also we use for Messenger. We send DMs there. Yeah, with Pepper. Yeah, Meta. So, yeah. Pepper, yeah. Yeah.
Chad Kodary (23:43.726)
Facebook Messenger or Meta Messenger.
Meta messenger. And what is that? Are using like pepper or something for that or something else? Pepper. Cool. So we just, we just had Franco on not too long ago on our, on the podcast, which was fun. Um, so, um, so pepper connected. What was that? Yeah, he's great. Yeah. And, uh, so, okay. And how are those? Because dude, let's be real for a second. Like the DM thing is so oversaturated. Like everyone is doing it. Right.
George Karafotis (24:00.523)
Frank is awesome. Yeah. Frank is awesome, yeah. I know. Yeah.
George Karafotis (24:16.233)
and it's.
Chad Kodary (24:16.526)
So how are you standing out from all of these people that are literally doing the exact same thing? Cause every agency owner I know, especially the ones that are either even the startups, like they're, they want to do like the automated messaging and like, that's like the thing. Cause they're scared to jump on calls or they're scared, you know, they're scared to run ads. Right. So it's like, they revert to the first thing, which is, okay, let me just do like automated emails, automated DMS. Right. So like, how do you stand out even in, let's talk about just primarily the socials.
George Karafotis (24:22.667)
you
Chad Kodary (24:45.614)
on the DM side, how do you stand out?
George Karafotis (24:49.003)
So great question. I figured out that the more I post and share like good content, valuable content, I share a lot of value about marketing. And I also share success stories. I see that people will just reply faster because I feel like everybody's living on their DMs these days. And it's something that...
People will go and check all the messages, but sometimes they're gonna see, who's this guy? If they don't know you, they'll be like, I wanna click on his profile, sir. Exactly. And this is what I do as well. So I just did a little bit of reverse psychology and I'm like, if this is what everybody does, I need great quality content right away so I can get those people start engaging with that and then also gonna reply back.
Chad Kodary (25:24.334)
I always do that. If someone messages me, I click on their profile.
George Karafotis (25:45.835)
to be like, okay, I might know something from this guy. And once again, we started very friendly and genuine. Like, I really wanna know more about them anyway. So it's not like...
Chad Kodary (25:56.718)
What's the opener that you send on Facebook using Pepper? What's your opening message?
George Karafotis (26:02.955)
Let me read one for you. Just for everybody.
Chad Kodary (26:06.286)
Go ahead. Cause I've used pepper before, but I feel like, especially on Facebook, you know, when you get those messages and you're like, dude, are you serious? Like you're really like, this is the opener that you're sending me. Are you trying to like sell me something right here right now? Right. So you have those people that just don't know how to do it. Right. So like, how are you doing it? I'm curious.
George Karafotis (26:19.561)
Yeah.
George Karafotis (26:23.723)
So it's gonna be hi Chad. Hey man, I noticed we're both at the part of the same group here, you know, on Facebook. Always looking to grow and support my network, man. If you're open to it, let's connect George. Boom.
Chad Kodary (26:30.102)
Yep, yep, yep.
Chad Kodary (26:36.366)
Cool, all right, so a nice little opener and your reply rate's probably higher because it's a friendly message. And then from there you go into actual conversation mode. So that's...
George Karafotis (26:44.619)
Then, yeah, it's going to be like great to connect, man. I hope you're doing well. Just a quick intro, specifically help owners, your industry, and we'll build consistent growth with steady flow of new business. That's not something you'd be interested in. Would you, Chad? So stuff like that. And yeah, and it's very like, we're not saying more. And then it's like, if not, that's fine. I'm still glad we connected. Let's keep in touch.
Chad Kodary (26:53.422)
Yep, yep.
Chad Kodary (27:02.574)
Got you. Okay. So you're start converting them into a sales goal.
George Karafotis (27:13.259)
And I just leave it there. Usually they reply back after that. Like, okay, let's see what, you know, he seems, he looks friendly, good content. Let's, let's have a conversation. You know, it won't hurt.
Chad Kodary (27:26.126)
Yeah, I think what people also need to understand is like, you can't do this by sending like 10 DMS. You need to be sending volume of DMS emails, like because there's a small percentage that'll end up converting, but like you need to do this in volume. How many DMS are you sending a day on Facebook? Let's or whatever meta.
George Karafotis (27:45.067)
So we're very careful with that.
Chad Kodary (27:47.406)
Yeah, because there's restrictions. You'll get smacked on the hand there.
George Karafotis (27:50.667)
Yes, so we started very slowly. We started 10 to 15. Now I think we're up to like 30 maximum. We don't want to exceed that because I've been building the profile. I mean, in my Instagram account, you know, because I had that for using in the first place. I don't want to lose that account. Like I'm really building it consistently and I have a nice growth. So I'm very careful. And we use our own profiles too, you know, so you have to be careful.
Chad Kodary (28:01.07)
Okay, fair enough. Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Chad Kodary (28:10.444)
Yeah.
Chad Kodary (28:16.078)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And what you should don't P don't I hate when people create like these spam profiles and it's empty and they're just DMing people like that shit doesn't work. Yeah. Um, okay. Cool. Uh, okay. I love that. So we talked about a couple of different things, bark alignable, you know, organic DMS, uh, organic mass emails. Are you running any ads?
George Karafotis (28:23.339)
Yeah, it makes no sense.
Chad Kodary (28:42.382)
Let's go into like paid ads or are you just primarily focused on organic? You are running paid ads. Okay, cool. Let's talk about that. Cause I think that's been the funnest part for me now, especially like lately I've been really into ads, especially for DashClicks Um, we're running a lot of ads right now. We've been primarily organic for a long time. You know, my journey, like we've, we've done, we've crushed it in the organic space, just organic leads. Um, but I want to talk, I want to know like for your agency specifically, um,
George Karafotis (28:47.947)
Yes, we do.
Chad Kodary (29:11.822)
running ads, what's your ad spend? What's the strategy behind it? Are you sending people to a funnel? Are you doing Facebook form fills? Are you sending them to account? They pay like, what are you actually doing? Can be like a funnel breakdown if you can, because that's the fun. That's the fun stuff that I like.
George Karafotis (29:22.827)
So.
George Karafotis (29:27.819)
Yep. So, so right now we just paused the ads like a couple of weeks ago because we're building a completely new funnel and the new lead magnet and it's a three tiered FAY like strategy. It's, I presented that to my team and they're like, dude, you're nuts. You're crazy. I'm like, perfect. That was exactly that. That's the reaction I need. That proves to me that I'm that crazy to offer something so good for free.
to get started so I know the lead magnet is gonna just kill it. It's gonna crush it. So I'm excited about it. We're gonna start at around 100 to 150 bucks. And let's face it, advertising is simple, especially when you have like a nice lead magnet. You just have to figure out that low ticket offer for how much can you sell it, what is your cost per lead. If you can match that cost per lead and break even, you will run ads forever. You can scale that account.
Chad Kodary (30:25.55)
Yeah, 100 % dude.
George Karafotis (30:27.243)
because it's basically free money to run that, because it recycles.
Chad Kodary (30:28.962)
Let's, let's talk about, cause I like to, um, I'm going to ask like metrics and numbers and fun stuff like that. Like, do you have a campaign that you ran on a previous funnel that even if it's not active now, maybe that you were running in the last year or so, whatever it is, right. That was targeting people to pick them up as an agency client, like a retainer for your agency. Um, and what did that look like? Who were you taught? Which one? Three different funnels. All right. And what just give me.
George Karafotis (30:48.491)
Yes, yes, three different funnels. Three different funnels we have.
Chad Kodary (30:55.726)
quick overview, like what were the funnels? Were they lead magnet funnels or what were they?
George Karafotis (31:00.043)
So the first one was get our seven step ROI guide, for example, for e -commerce, just seven steps to ROI, maximizing your online sales and stuff like that. That was the one for e -commerce. Yes, free. We had another one that was like for homeowners, sorry, for home services, home services businesses. And it was like HVAC and roofing and stuff like that, which was get our geofencing strategies and lease guide just for geofencing on home services.
Chad Kodary (31:03.662)
Okay, cool. Lead magnet, right?
Chad Kodary (31:11.214)
free lead magnet, right? Okay.
Chad Kodary (31:19.212)
Okay.
George Karafotis (31:28.811)
Very powerful, it was a free guide once again. The third one was schedule a call to get our lead flat system. So that was a click to call to schedule right away. Yes, we wanted to test direct appointments. Of course, more expensive cost per lead, but still worth it because it gets less volume, but more targeted. Yes.
Chad Kodary (31:35.822)
Okay.
Yeah, directs. Yeah, that's straight direct marketing. Okay. Yeah. Good.
Chad Kodary (31:48.558)
You're getting calls. Yeah. So let's, let's have some fun real quick. So let's just say on like the two lead magnets, we'll get into the call one last on the two lead magnets one. Um, before we go into like metrics and fun stuff like that, you have a funnel. I'm assuming the funnel. I will guess what it is. And you tell me from right or wrong, you have a lead opt in page where you're giving away this free PDF for name and email, possibly phone number. Um, and then you have the thank you page where you probably have that download, or you're going to tell them that you're going to email them.
And then you have, I'm assuming a video on that page that's maybe getting them to the next step in your funnel. Are you taking it from email from there?
George Karafotis (32:27.083)
No, it's both. We have a video and we also follow with email. Both.
Chad Kodary (32:31.182)
Okay. And you're okay. Good. Uh, and then, uh, and I'm assuming that video is sending them to an application to get on a call or just getting them on a call. Okay. Cool. Very cool. So it's normal, normal funnel. I've had, I have tons of them like that. Um, let's have some fun. Let's break down some metrics. What was your lead costs when you're running Facebook ads to just get opt -ins for your lead magnet? Rough numbers, seven to 10 bucks. Cool. And then people would go.
George Karafotis (32:40.043)
Exactly, schedule an hour calendar.
George Karafotis (32:46.539)
Yes.
George Karafotis (32:53.931)
So the lead magnets were $7 to $10.
Chad Kodary (32:58.99)
and then what percentage of people would actually book a call.
George Karafotis (33:02.955)
It was around 30%. Yeah.
Chad Kodary (33:05.004)
Wow. Okay. That's high. And then what was your, well, if it's 30%, I'm assuming your cost per booking is probably, all right, I'm shitty at math. What was your cost per booking? I don't want to do the math now.
George Karafotis (33:16.847)
I mean it was it was 30 % to to get to that that that page the scheduling page and then it drops like slightly a little bit more But I would say I would say the cost per scheduling it was around Damn, I can't remember this one was a probably around 70 bucks Close to that because there's seven to ten dollars and it will you know every ten people were getting was a 30 % of that Of all the people so it was around that number
Chad Kodary (33:34.318)
Okay, great.
Chad Kodary (33:43.534)
Okay, and then here's a fun number. What was your show up rate?
George Karafotis (33:47.979)
Okay, so in the beginning on the first funnel...
Chad Kodary (33:49.87)
I love everyone always starts with that at the beginning. What was your show rate? Just tell us, rip the bandaid off.
George Karafotis (33:55.407)
So in the beginning the show up rate was around 20 % of all the leads.
Chad Kodary (33:59.662)
Okay, which is normal because the people hate showing up to shit for whatever reason. Okay.
George Karafotis (34:04.725)
Yep, exactly. What we did after that though, the great part, it was that we actually were, we started charging 97 bucks for the appointment for the call. And we were actually, if you show up and we're good fit, we're going to apply that as a credit to your monthly package. We increased that.
Chad Kodary (34:17.742)
for the calls.
Chad Kodary (34:26.446)
Got you. Cool. But when you did that, your, your percentage of booked calls, your cost per book call skyrocketed obviously, cause now they have to whip their credit card out. Right. Yeah. Okay. But that's good. That's a great way to do that. And are you, did that work after doing all of those things? Did you run that for a while or what? Cause there's, look, dude, there's funnels that I have that are fucking bust. I ran for like six months a year and you only really realized that.
George Karafotis (34:36.373)
Of course. Of course.
Chad Kodary (34:51.758)
After a couple of months or maybe even six to 12 months of running it, cause you're doing your numbers, you know, you're, you're trying to average things out. Right. So like, was that, would you run that funnel again? Would you turn that funnel on right now? No. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Cool. I just shut a funnel off last week.
George Karafotis (35:03.339)
No. There's only one reason I'm saying that. There you go. It's all about testing, man. Nonstop. But the reason I'm saying that is I figured out that the value we're providing was not enough for where I want to take my agency and what I want to do with this agency. I want everybody to be talking about the crazy offers we have.
Chad Kodary (35:12.462)
Yeah, yeah, 100 % dude.
Chad Kodary (35:26.478)
Okay, fair enough.
George Karafotis (35:31.371)
how we build the entire system for companies and just be very successful with what we do because we have great case studies. I think we're, I would say almost top 10 % with these type of case studies, like with that return on investment. And we run ads very successfully in a lot of different industries. We managed to generate around $150 million generated just from ads for our clients. So.
Chad Kodary (35:57.134)
Nice using high -ros to track or anything else. Hi, Rose.
George Karafotis (36:00.715)
We used, we used, we used Hyrus for a long time. We stopped after a while and now we're shifting into like the server side tracking more. So we kind of like take care of all the setup ourselves with the GTM. We do advanced data layering. I got, I got two guys just in the backend working on that. So all the fun stuff.
Chad Kodary (36:19.182)
Nice man. Cool. And if you can, before I'm going to want to, we want to go, I know you're, you know, you started up a software too, which we're going to get into here in a second. But before we wrap up the whole agency side to your journey, like if you could tell somebody that's starting an agency or at the beginning phases, like if you rewind, right. When you started dash elite, or maybe even before that, like what's the best piece of advice that you can give somebody if they want to start getting leads and booked appointments and sales, like within the next 30 days.
What would you like? What would you do out of all the things, dude? Cause you've, you've tested so much shit in the last five, 10 years, right? Like, and you know, you're like, and I just asked you, would you turn that campaign back on? You said no. Right. So like out of all of those things that you've split tested, what would be the number one thing that you're like, dude, I would never fucking shut this off ever.
George Karafotis (37:11.243)
Okay, so first of all, I would say...
George Karafotis (37:21.835)
Focus, I would say for somebody that starts right away, I would say one clear thing. It's more value equals more customers, more leads. So make sure from the very first post, whatever you do, think ahead, like 10 videos later, make sure you have a nice sequence. People like to follow that and they will establish a pattern and they will understand, okay, this guy has great content, great value.
And further down the road, a couple weeks later or months, you're gonna schedule that call with these people just because they understand your value. So more value, definitely it's gonna give you more leads. The other thing is create an unreasonable lead magnet, spend a lot of time on the top of funnels, spend a lot of time on cracking the code and really sit down, have a lot of sessions with your team, just the power players of your team, everybody that's a killer.
bring them in, don't think that you will do everything on your own. Pick up their brains, brainstorm, and just understand like Ogilvy said, when you're reading the headline, you're spending 80 cents of the dollar because headline is the most important thing. You need to dial that in even for your lead magnet. Just split test a couple times, but have a lead magnet that is just out there. Also, small tip, you can start with a lead magnet if you want to.
Chad Kodary (38:44.302)
you
George Karafotis (38:47.179)
leads to a sale later, instead of just saying, get 200 leads, start with how to. If it's a guide especially, just start with that how to in the beginning. It really helps a lot based on the testing.
George Karafotis (39:03.947)
then you have.
George Karafotis (39:07.723)
need to add scarcity, you need to make sure that give them a reason to do something right now.
George Karafotis (39:17.899)
Think of.
George Karafotis (39:22.699)
Let them take out.
Chad Kodary (39:24.558)
So would you say, would you say running ads? It's that of all the things that you've done, would you say that running ads is the way to do it? Or would you say that maybe doing bark or doing cold emails or cold DMS? Like if you could just, if you, if I put all of these prospecting, I'll reframe the question. If I can put all of these prospecting tactics in a bucket and I said, George, you can only pick one thing out of this bucket. Which one would you pick?
George Karafotis (39:50.699)
going to be LinkedIn Outreach.
Chad Kodary (39:53.292)
LinkedIn Outreach. Bam.
George Karafotis (39:55.179)
messenger.
George Karafotis (39:59.723)
great offer. Make sure you have some content on social media.
Chad Kodary (40:03.374)
Okay. Love it. All right. Good. That was good context. So now, um, I know that you're starting a, uh, or you're starting or started a software. Um, so tell us a little bit about that. What does the software do?
George Karafotis (40:15.243)
So it's a great concept, a great idea. It's basically, it's kind like we're having our own pixel, just to make it simple for everybody. And it de -anonymizes the website traffic. It's ideal for B2B. We're exploring now to add more B2C, stuff like that. But it de -anonymizes the website traffic. It shows you exactly where they clicked. We have a nice backend with one click. You can just send the leads.
potential leads to your HubSpot, you can reach out to them because you get emails and phone numbers and revenue of the company, stuff like that. You get the top C level. So you get their email, the company email and the phone number and you will get the revenue of the company wherever the person clicked and we have video recording as well. So you can actually see where they clicked and what all the actions they performed. And then you have the backend where you can blacklist countries that you don't want to get leads like showings from.
Or like you can blacklist specific companies and industries and stuff like that. Yeah
Chad Kodary (41:17.966)
Quick question. So I know there's, there's a couple of comp there's, there's a couple of companies that do this, right? The, where they, they'll show you basically your visitor traffic, right? It's like, Hey, I got a thousand visitors this month. Who the fuck are all these people? Right. And then they basically give you a list in real time of every visitor as they come and you can get all the data from there. Right. Cause they use different tactics and stuff like that. Um, to basically go out and syndicate all the data and put it into like a customer profile.
Right. So you're saying that you're basically doing that, but you're also doing that with like a hot jar attached to it type thing. And then you're using that in conjunction.
George Karafotis (41:51.147)
Yeah, that is everything. Everything happens real time too. You get on the backend, you get reports daily to your email. How many people, how many companies you got, and then you can click anywhere and check that. Of course, you store the video recording of the data for 60 to 90 days retention. You won't need them for more than that. You're gonna need just the email and stuff like that. But you won't watch a recording that's 60 days old, especially when you get a lot of traffic. Wouldn't make sense, yeah.
Chad Kodary (41:55.066)
Cool.
Chad Kodary (42:07.438)
Yeah.
Chad Kodary (42:11.686)
Yep, you don't. So what are people that you are using this tool? What are like the use cases? Am I, am I a company that gets 10 ,000 visitors a month and I just want to know who those people are and get their pull, extract their contact info so I can do other things with it? Or am I like a marketing manager or a CMO that's trying to like optimize my funnel?
right? And I'm looking at like my recordings and like, you know, like heat maps and stuff like that. So like, what are all of the different use cases that you see with that?
George Karafotis (42:47.371)
It's a great question. It actually can be used for both, to be honest. And the other thing we've done, we advise our beta testers to try this, or doing a beta test. We have a 14 -day free trial, so everybody can just start playing with it. Without a credit card or anything like that, you just create a profile and account back end and just start playing with it. What we've seen is that you can get all these people that are visiting, and because you're going to get the company email.
and all the information, you can export that and then you can upload it on Facebook, LinkedIn ads, stuff like that. And then you can really target those people specifically, or you can reach out to them on LinkedIn and be like, hey, I saw you reached out to our website. You can make it more specific, especially if you're using a combination like a nice cold DM, outreach software, it can really be very beneficial. And then the other part you can do, of course, if you don't wanna use it for ads,
Chad Kodary (43:36.19)
Yep.
George Karafotis (43:45.547)
You can even try and do like, you know, cold calling now, you know, with the change of laws that can be very tricky. So this is why we do not advise on that. But sometimes people would like to cold call if they see somebody visiting the website a couple of times. So you use that for, you know, calling a little bit like hot jar, but not specifically to that. You're going to use it more of a sales standpoint. You want to see where they click just to see.
Chad Kodary (43:58.67)
Yep. Yep. Fair enough. And the software that you have, so is it release or you in beta or you talking about that?
George Karafotis (44:14.667)
what they're interested for, interested for instead of, you know.
George Karafotis (44:26.699)
Yeah, it's in beta. We're looking forward for a release. Probably, we're looking at around, I would say, one to two months away. We're not far away.
Chad Kodary (44:35.382)
Nice. Nice. And what are you going to charge for the software? What's like your tiered?
George Karafotis (44:41.323)
So we have the started plan is at 97 bucks a month. Second one is 297, the third one is 497, but we're looking about.
Chad Kodary (44:43.982)
And I'm assuming it breaks it by visitors or the amount of data that you're tracking.
George Karafotis (44:53.727)
visitors and recognitions per day. So, yeah.
Chad Kodary (44:55.918)
Yep, got it, cool. Awesome, man. And what's that software called? Hercu, Hercu Leads. Hercu Leads. Caesar, Hercu Leads. You know what that reminds me of?
George Karafotis (45:00.907)
Hercules.
George Karafotis (45:04.683)
And it wasn't me, it was Caesar that actually thought about it. It's a funny story how we came up with the name.
Chad Kodary (45:12.448)
Tell me if I'm right or wrong. Cause the first thing when you said that Hercules, I think, have you ever seen the movie, the nutty professor where he's like, Hercules, Hercules? No, that part. I think is that, was that where it's from where he got it from? No. Okay. Cause that's the first, you should have that as like a GIF when you people come on the page, you should put the dude there and the hero section.
George Karafotis (45:21.131)
Yeah.
George Karafotis (45:24.811)
No, no, it's...
That's a great idea. So here's how we came up with the name. It's crazy. We're in Miami and we're hanging by the pool. And sometimes I behave like a little kid when I'm having fun. So I just let my hair down. Remember I have long hair. So some kids by the pool and they were looking at me like I was just swimming and stuff like that. Caesar was laughing because all the kids were looking at me and I just let my hair down.
Chad Kodary (45:43.054)
We all are.
George Karafotis (45:58.451)
I was like, Hercules, Hercules. And I was making fun. And Caesar was smoking a cigar. And he's like, George. He was shouting in Miami at the pool. There was a lot of people. I'm like, what? Come on, come on. I thought something happened. I'm like, what? He's like, I found it. Hercules. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm Hercules. And I couldn't hear him. You know, he was far away. He's like, no, dude, Hercules. Let's go upstairs and buy all the domains.
Chad Kodary (46:09.902)
Leads. You got the domain, Hercules? There you go, man. All right. I love that. So hercules .com.
George Karafotis (46:27.947)
And that's how we got them all. Yes.
Yeah.
It's not AI. But it's not so live yet. This one, we have just the app for the beta testers on the back end, but we're getting there.
Chad Kodary (46:38.542)
dot AI. Okay. Cool. Still good. Okay. Well, by the time this podcast comes out, hopefully it'll be live. You can check it out. So Hercules. All right. I love it, man. Well, look, you guys have been crushing it in space. I've been watching you and Caesar's journey for a while now. I'm obviously very close with you guys. Um, you've been in our, in our world and dash clicks for a long time. Um, and now we're in Europe. So I'm super excited to see more of your journey.
George Karafotis (46:48.715)
Oh yeah, exactly.
Chad Kodary (47:06.862)
Um, and, uh, if for any reason, anybody wants to connect with you, where's the best place that they can reach you.
George Karafotis (47:13.547)
I would say our website probably, but also my social media profiles, George Karaphores. You can find me at LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. I like creating great connections with a lot of people. I'm offering a lot of free tips. I'm there to make a difference in the agency space, but also in the marketing world. And then if they want to reach out to the agencies, silverspoonagency .com.
Chad Kodary (47:42.33)
Love it, dude. All right, guys, you guys heard it first from George Karafotis all the way from you're still in Greece, right?
George Karafotis (47:44.011)
can tell us there.
George Karafotis (47:51.499)
I'm coming back in two and a half weeks, actually.
Chad Kodary (47:53.08)
coming back the man's coming back. All right love to have you on brother and we will see you next time have a good one.
George Karafotis (47:59.723)
Thanks man.