Black Entrepreneur Blueprint 569 - Jay Jones - How $30.65 In Ad Spend Made Me $500 In 3 Days

[00:00:12] Welcome to Black Entrepreneur Blueprint, the number one podcast and resource for Black entrepreneurs. I'm your host Jay Jones and Black Entrepreneur Blueprint was created specifically to educate and inspire Black entrepreneurs to launch, build and grow successful, sustainable businesses. Join us as we help build an economic power base in the worldwide Black community by building and supporting Black owned businesses.

[00:00:41] If you're currently an entrepreneur or want to be an entrepreneur, you're invited to join us each and every week here at Black Entrepreneur Blueprint. Welcome to the BEB family and get ready to elevate your entrepreneur IQ. Welcome to the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint, episode number 569.

[00:01:07] I'm your host Jay Jones and today we have another outstanding and informative show in store for you. Today's show topic is How $30.65 In Ad Spend Made Me $500 In 3 Days. How $30.65 In Ad Spend Made Me $500 In 3 Days. Guys, you know entrepreneurship is really just an arbitrage play. What's the old saying?

[00:01:35] Buy low and sell high or create low and sell higher. So today we're going to delve into a case study of one of my new businesses and I'm going to talk to you about lead generation again and the importance of mastering lead generation for yourself and if you want to for other people as a lead generation business. Now before we get to today's show content, I just want to share a few things with the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint family.

[00:02:02] First and foremost, I want to welcome all first-time listeners to Black Entrepreneur Blueprint. Welcome to the BEB family. Please stick around until the end of today's broadcast and I'm going to share all my social media contact information and resource links such as the link to one of my newest projects called the $7 Cheat Code. So if you want to learn how to generate revenues, be able to grow and scale your business, go to

[00:02:31] $7cheatcode.com. That's the number 7, D-O-L-L-A-R, cheatcode.com for more information. I'm telling you guys, you need to learn how to maximize efficiency, be able to grow and scale your business and that's the only thing guys that's going to stop you from going out of business. There's no such thing as standing still as an entrepreneur. You're either going to continue to move forward or you're going to get pushed back by the tide.

[00:03:00] So go to $7cheatcode.com for more information. Now let's get ready for today's show content. You know, ever since I started the podcast over 11 years ago, we're on episode 569 right now. I never thought it was going to turn into what it turned into, which is such a blessing. One of the core factors that I have seen over these 25 years as a serial entrepreneur, 20

[00:03:28] years as a business coach and over 11 years during this podcast is there's one commonality that I see for businesses that aren't working to their maximum efficiency or who are about to fail or already gone out of business. And it's really about lead generation guys. Lead generation is the lifeblood of any business.

[00:03:51] You guys, if you're not familiar, this industry, the lead generation industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. If leads are or qualified leads are the bloodline or the lifeblood of your business or any business, what makes you think that businesses can do without leads? They can't. The ones that know how to generate the leads are the ones that are going to grow and scale.

[00:04:21] And if you don't know how to generate them, guess what? You're going to have to buy them from somebody else. And what does that do? That cuts down on your profitability. And I'm going to break all of this down in my case study today. In addition to talking about what is the lead generation business? Why is it important to master lead generation? And how can you get started quickly to test a business concept with lead generation?

[00:04:46] But the foundational principle with any business guys is getting a consistent flow of qualified, not BS or garbage leads, qualified leads. That's what allows companies to grow and scale. So let's talk about what is the lead generation business. Simply put, it's the business of generating leads in a manner that's profitable for your business or the business you're selling leads to, right?

[00:05:15] So it's the business of generating leads in a manner that's profitable for your business, if you're using them for yourself or if you're selling them to some other company. So if you spend $25 on a lead to sell a pair of socks and you're only making $15 on the socks, that means you lost $10. So you'll go out of business consistently if you keep selling that product with those price

[00:05:45] points, right? So you have to learn how to pretty much arbitrage, buy low, sell high. So you have to create low, sell higher. And that's what mastering lead generation is all about. Anybody can go out and throw a whole bunch of stuff on the wall and see if it sticks. The problem is, is it going to stick? And if it does stick, is it profitable for you to run those ads?

[00:06:10] You know, I'm going to digress real quick for a second, but we talk about the three types of media, paid media, earned media and owned media. We're talking about paid media right now. So when you don't have owned media, that's media that you own and control that nobody can stop, be it a newsletter, be it a podcast, be it a blog, uh, whatever it is that's owned media. So this podcast is owned media.

[00:06:38] Nobody can shut black entrepreneur blueprint down. I can do a one podcast a day. If I want, I can do 20 a day. I can do one a year. I have complete control. I own this media and what goes over these airwaves is, is what I control. So nobody can shut that down. So that's the best type of media owned media. I can promote anything I want on here. I promote other companies products and I promote my own products on here. They're all vetted.

[00:07:06] And I make sure everything is cool before I, you know, go into an agreement or contract with a company to promote their products. And of course my products, I stand by everything that I do now that's owned media earned media is when somebody or some platform newspaper, radio, TV magazine, or whatever does an article or they feature you. So it's not something that you pay for, but it's somebody say you got interviewed on your

[00:07:35] local ABC station. That's free media. That's earned media. Say black enterprise wants to write a story on you in the, in their magazine. That's earned media. You can't control that. Right. And the last one guys is paid media. And we all know what that is. You're paying to get your message out there. You're paying for exposure. You're paying for Facebook or Instagram ads. You're paying for being Google ads, YouTube at whatever it is.

[00:08:03] That's paid media. And that's usually the first way that most people try to generate sales is they'll pay for, they'll pay for, uh, for advertising. Now, the beauty about paid media is if you know how to work it and you master it, you'll be able to generate infinite leads, right? Infinite qualified leads.

[00:08:27] If you master the art of paid advertising, the bad side or the flip side is if you don't know what the heck you're doing, you're going to be spending more money than you're making. Okay. So what is the lead generation business? Simply put guys, it's the business of generating leads in a manner that's profitable for you. If you're generating leads for yourself or profitable for other businesses.

[00:08:54] And because there are so many types of businesses out there that need a high consistent flow of leads, this industry guys is, is just waiting to be tapped. It's literally wide open. Think about what business you're in, or if you're still in corporate America, what type of company you work for? How do they generate sales? What is their revenue model? What are they selling? Would they like more of those qualified leads?

[00:09:23] I don't care if it's a physical product that they're selling a digital product or service. Every business needs qualified leads and they are willing to pay for them. So there are big conferences out there like leads con, uh, affiliate summit, things of that nature where, um, you would be surprised. People are making a million dollars a day. Now they're doing crazy volume and ad spend, but they're making and generating a million

[00:09:53] dollars a day, selling leads, generating leads for companies and selling leads. And on today's show, I'm going to break down in a few minutes, my case study, how I spent $30 and 65 cents and made $500 literally in three and a half days. Okay. And I'll tell you how to, you know, how I went about that. So the first thing I wanted to talk about guys is what is the lead generation business?

[00:10:20] We did that understand and recognize that he who generates the leads is the master. You want to master lead generation. He who generates the leads is the master, because if you can't generate your own leads, you're going to be going somewhere else. All right. Now, why is important to master lead generation? I just told you he who knows how to generate qualified leads is the master.

[00:10:48] Qualified leads are the lifeblood of every business. So if you don't know how to efficiently generate leads on your own, that means you're going to have to buy them from somebody else like me. Right. And when I sell them to you, I'm going to sell them at a profit. So if you want to control your vertical and I'll give you a real life example in a second, you need to know how to generate leads.

[00:11:11] So I was talking to a gentleman that was actually in the insurance space years ago. He started out out of college and he was selling several different types of insurance, final expense insurance and other life insurance products. He was also selling, I believe, what a lot of people in the insurance industry call mortgage protection. But really, all it is, is a term life insurance policy that matches the expiration date of your mortgage.

[00:11:41] So it'd be a 30 year term that will cover your mortgage in case, God forbid, something happens to you or whoever is the breadwinner or spouse and partners of that property. But all it is just a sweet way to sell term life insurance. Anyway, so we were talking about his route into going into the lead generation space. So he started out selling, you know, you know, these types of insurance policies, mortgage

[00:12:10] protection and final expense policies, which are death policies, usually smaller value death policies. And what he found out was when he started, like a lot of people in the insurance industry, that he wasn't making a lot of money in terms of his contract. So when you contract out with an agency or directly, you can start out as low as 50% commissions anywhere going up to 110, 120% if you know the business.

[00:12:38] And so he started out low on the tier. So he's only making 50% commissions. So once he understands that, man, I can, I can start my own thing and make a hundred percent commission or 110, even 120. Now, if those policies get kicked back, then you're going to get charged back. So what he did was he started studying. He went out on his own and he was unsuccessful.

[00:13:03] So he came back, started working with another agency for another year or two. He learned the business and now what he was getting was, I think he was getting 85%. And the reason that he was getting 85%, he said, was because the agency owner who was getting 120%, whatever, had to cover all the marketing expenses, which IE lead generation.

[00:13:29] So he thought to himself, wow, if I can generate my own leads, I won't need to work at this agency. And so what he started doing was he started playing around with Facebook ads and, and all types of paid media. And he got pretty good at it. And he started generating a whole ton of insurance leads. Now, as he developed this skill or mastered this skill, he was one of the top producers, uh, and he kept producing.

[00:13:58] Finally, it dawned on him. He said, man, I can help other people do this also. So this is what he did. He started growing his own agency and generating leads in the States that he was licensed in. He would generate the leads for his agent. Now he's getting the overrides on his agent. He's building up a, a phone room, a call center. And then the States that he wasn't licensed in where he got leads, he would sell those

[00:14:28] leads off. And eventually it got to the point where he was controlling the vertical. He had the lead generation and he also had the fulfillment, which is selling the insurance leads himself. So now he went from working in a agency to going on his own, to coming back to an agency when he failed to building his own agency. Now he's also building, he's in the lead generation business.

[00:14:56] He's selling leads to other insurance agents, and he's also gone into different markets. So he, in addition to that, I think he's doing health insurance and he's doing auto insurance too. So he's generating leads for himself and others. So you have to understand the importance of being able to master lead generation guys. So it gives you options. And I always say, if you got options, you in good shape.

[00:15:23] Now all your options might not be great options, but as long as you got a couple of options, you still in the game. So now he's generating over a million dollars a month, just selling leads. That has nothing to do with what his insurance agency is bringing in, which is a couple million a month. He's selling leads and making over a million dollars a month, selling qualified leads to

[00:15:51] other insurance agents, brokers, and companies. He even sells to big companies like Allstate and State Farm. That's how big he's gotten right now. Everybody needs leads guys. This is why it's important to be able to master lead generation. So that's a story about a guy that I met that went from pretty much zero to multi millions of dollars a month in the lead generation space. Let me give you my case study.

[00:16:20] So I've been talking about lead generation ad nauseum for a long time. And one of the things that I dedicate myself to guys is giving you information that's going to move the needle, giving you the information that's going to take you from point A to point B. I'm not out here with all of this fluff and BS, you know, histrionics acting silly, trying to get likes and views and all that. I'm giving it to you straight and uncut, right? No BS.

[00:16:49] I want to help you move the needle from A to B to elevate your entrepreneur IQ. And I want to talk about this case study because I'm in the lead generation business for my mortgage business anyway, right? And I talked about this several, several episodes ago. So I'm back in the mortgage game, small boutique shop. I generate leads for my mortgage business.

[00:17:14] And when I get leads that come in from states where I'm not licensed, then I actually sell those leads. So, you know, I'm making extra change, just doing what I'm doing. I sell those leads, qualify leads for a hundred dollars a lead. And now just recently I've gotten into another vertical, which are legal leads. So now I'm selling leads to attorneys and I've set up several systems.

[00:17:41] They're kind of multi-tiered or multifaceted, but I set up several systems and just recently, and this is literally my second weekend. And within the last three and a half days, I made $500. I'm not even trying hard. And let me break this down to you. So, uh, I'm selling leads to lawyers and what I'm doing is I'm running paid traffic.

[00:18:05] I'm running on multiple platforms, Facebook, Instagram, uh, also Google, right? Testing it out. And this is what I want to tell you guys. And I want you to understand that you don't start coming out the gate, running paid ads and dropping $500 a day, a thousand dollars a day, you know, start out simple.

[00:18:26] Mine was $14 a day, literally $14 a day just to test and get some feedback and let, uh, Instagram, Facebook, and Google do their thing about serving the ads to the right community. And so I, at, as of this taping, I spent $30 and 65 cents in ad spend over three days.

[00:18:49] And I generated five qualified leads for attorneys, which I've been paid $500 for a hundred dollars a lead for qualified leads and attorneys, depending upon the type of lead, they can pay anywhere up to, you know, from a hundred to $400 personal injuries, like two 60 to $400. You got DUI, you got, um, you know, marriage divorce.

[00:19:18] There's all types of verticals, obviously within the legal, uh, in the legal vertical itself. So you just have to determine what type of leads that you want. So I ran some test ads. This is actually, I didn't even change the ad yet. The first ad out the box, I ran and I started getting numbers like this. So literally I got five leads for $30 and 65 cents. So that's $6 and 13 cent per lead.

[00:19:45] I sold those leads for a hundred dollars a piece. So I made $500 off of $30. Now just imagine being able to multiply that exponentially. Now it's not going to be dollar for dollar, right? Just so now if I put in, uh, $90, that doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to triple my output. So you have to take it slow, but literally $30 to make 500.

[00:20:13] I'll do that all day, every day. And that was over a three and a half day period. So you see guys, when I'm selling to these attorneys and you're probably wondering, well, why are they going to spend a hundred dollars for a freaking lead that costs you $6 and 13 cent because they haven't mastered the art of, of generating qualified leads. Think about how many people that are in the service business. It might be yourself, right?

[00:20:42] Say you're in the lawn care business. You're in the plumbing business. You're a technician or whatever. You're great at what you do, but you don't know how to generate qualified leads. Are you going to sit there and starve or are you going to pay somebody to generate qualified leads that you can go and make money on? You look at Angie's list or it's Angie right now that that all that is, is lead generation, right?

[00:21:08] So you have to understand how big this market is. Um, my buddy, the other day, he was getting something done, uh, at his pool. He need, no, he needed some, um, concrete. He said he went on one of these apps and he said within two minutes of finish and he had like 17 people calling him and texting him, you know, trying to give him a quote. People, the service people, I don't care what business you need, you need qualified leads.

[00:21:37] Now, what side of this lead equation do you want to be on? Do you want to be on the side where you can generate your own leads, qualified leads, or do you want to be on the side where you have to pay somebody? So once again, these attorneys are paying me a hundred dollars for these, for these leads that cost me $6 and 13 cent. But the beauty of it is it's a win-win for everybody.

[00:22:03] So out of these five leads, if they get a personal injury case from one of them, right? They're probably going to generate thousands upon thousands of dollars. So even if they, they, they spend a thousand dollars with me, say they get 10 leads and out of the 10 matter of fact, just say they get 20 leads from me at a hundred dollars a piece, that's $2,000.

[00:22:26] And out of those 20, only one of them turns into a case, a case that they win and they get 65, $70,000 minus they'll probably get 35, 40% of that. So just say they make $28,000 on a $70,000 judgment. And guess what? They spent $2,000. Is it a win-win for them? Yes. Is it a win-win for me? Hell yeah.

[00:22:54] And the beauty about lead generation guys is you're not selling or doing the final sale. You're not doing the final sale. So once you create the qualified leads and you send them to your lead buyer, if you're in the lead generation space, they have to sell it. They have to make sure that they can convert those leads into sales. Not you. You're selling the lead.

[00:23:21] It's up to them to make that conversion. Now, one of the things that's important, if you do get into this space is you have to make sure the people you're selling leads to are equipped to answer the leads, be it a phone call, uh, be it text or whatever email notification. Because if you're sending live phone calls to somebody, to a legal office and nobody's there and it's going to voicemail, guess what? That's a lost lead, but that's not your fault.

[00:23:51] You made the phone ring with a qualified lead. So you have to understand that the, the people that you're working with who you're generating leads for have a procedure and a process to be able to accept those leads. So for example, one of the lawyers I'm sending leads to, they don't want leads after 6 PM Eastern standard time because their offices are closed. So I have them set up 9 AM to 6 PM.

[00:24:20] And so when leads come in, based on how it's routed, it's going to go to, you know, around Robin, I got three attorneys and they'll rotate. And based on the certain criteria, you know, Oh, don't give a lead to this attorney after six. Okay. It's going to go to somebody else. And so these are the things when you're in this space that you have to be cognizant of, because if they can't support what you're doing, the leads that you're sending, they're

[00:24:48] not going to make money and get pissed off and they're going to blame you. So they need to have procedures, policies, and people in place to, to respond to those leads. And the faster that you can respond to somebody after they raise their hand and say, Hey, I'm interested, you know, in a personal injury lawyer. I had an accident and I need to talk to somebody ASAP. And if you're not on it ASAP, guess what they do? They go and they'll find somebody else to call.

[00:25:17] And what I've done, uh, with my lead generation business and it's super new is I'm not working for those individual legal firms. I'm building my own brand. So all the leads are coming in to my platforms. I distribute and sell the leads. I'm not setting up a lead generation business for ABC legal firm in Philadelphia where I'm building them landing pages.

[00:25:45] I'm doing, you know, uh, advertising and marketing for them. Nah, these are my leads. So if you get funky, don't want to pay or whatever, I'm going to cut your water off. Right. And I'm going to be like, okay. All right. Guess what? There's another law firm that wants qualified leads. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. So now I'm building my business. I'm developing a lead generation business that I can eventually sell.

[00:26:14] And I'm starting out in my local area and then I'm going to branch out, you know? And so this is the thing. I control the leads. I control the vertical. Once again, mastering your order lead generation. He who generates the leads is the master. And that's what it's all about. Now, and you can think about this also guys, in terms of lead generation, you don't have to be the be all that ends all for that company.

[00:26:41] You're generating leads for you can be a supplement to what they do. So right now is springtime. So here in the Northeast, I don't know about a lot of other areas. You got cats knocking on doors, selling all kinds of stuff, windows, roofing, siding, or whatever. Now, those companies may not be getting enough leads as they need. So they may look to supplement what they're doing naturally, knocking on doors with some other type of lead generation.

[00:27:12] So you don't have to be the sole provider of leads for a company. You can be a supplement to the company. Just think about how every business needs leads. And if somebody says, oh, I got enough leads, then that's great. But 99% of businesses that you ask, hey, could you stand to have some more leads? Did you want more leads? Are you looking to grow and scale? Yeah.

[00:27:37] Now, it's not that simple because you have to provide them with qualified leads and they have to make sense price wise. Remember the scenario I gave you, you know, you want it to be a win-win situation. So you have to look at number one, what is the lifetime value of a new customer for the business that you're serving? Or if it's a one-time shot, guess what? Hey, are they going to make enough money where it makes sense?

[00:28:03] So when I sell my mortgage leads, you know, the average for a broker, I don't know if you're a loan officer, but for a broker, you're going to make anywhere from say two to two and a half points, which are percentage points on the loan. So if you're doing a $500,000 loan and you're making two points, you made 10 grand. So would you spend a hundred dollars for qualified leads? Yeah, you would spend a hundred dollars.

[00:28:29] As long as you know, they're qualified and you have an opportunity to speak to the person and close them. Yeah. I could buy 10 leads. That's a thousand dollars. I closed one. I made 10,000. It's a win-win situation. Now with businesses that don't have such a high ticket, you have to be able to generate leads at a lower, at a lower cost. So if you're working with a carpet cleaning company and they're making $250 to clean four

[00:28:59] rooms or whatever, you know, you have to be able to sell them these leads where it makes sense for them. Now, one of the other things is you have to take into consideration once they get these leads, they need to be able to learn how to upsell. So when they go in for a $250 job for four rooms, they may try to upsell some other stuff, an additional room or whatever. So your job is to understand what they're going to generate from those leads and then

[00:29:28] price your leads accordingly. And what we're talking about today, guys, is how a $30 and 65 cent in ad spend made me over $500 in three days, not over, but $500 in literally three and a half days. And we're talking about what is the lead generation business, why it's important to master lead generation. And now I'm going to talk about how can you get started quickly to test your business concept.

[00:29:56] So without leads, you have nothing. Okay. Nothing. I don't care. You want to have qualified leads. So here's a simple way to test guys. Um, I just told you about a $30 and 65 cent test that already made me $500, right? So use Facebook forms, right? Not, you don't even have to create a landing page.

[00:30:21] If you Google Facebook forms, you create a Facebook ad and then you have them click to fill out a form name, email, phone number, or whatever, whatever information you need. Based on the type of lead. This is the simplest way to test your concept. So if you're a CPA and you're trying to help people with tax issues, you run an ad, you know, Hey, free consultation.

[00:30:48] Well, O back taxes, free consultation, name, email, phone number. You'll get that lead through your Facebook, your meta ads account. And then whatever your process is, either you call them or whatever, you know, set up a call. And now you generated a lead. You didn't have to do anything but create the physical ad on Facebook. It could be a video ad. It could be an image.

[00:31:13] It could be a combination, but that's a simple way to get started quickly to test your business concept. If people are filling out your, your Facebook form and they want help. Guess what? That seems to be kind of viable. Now, the question is, are you able to convert those leads into sales? All right. So what you want to do is you want to go on Facebook, set up a Facebook form, or if you're

[00:31:39] on Instagram, depending upon what's your favorite platform, uh, tick tock, you know, Twitter, well, X now, whatever it is, whatever platform you're comfortable on or where your people are going to be, whatever you're selling. So there are a lot of people that are successful selling on tick to, uh, for things I didn't think that would, would actually go over well or work well, but you never know, you know, where your people are, you know, where your audience likes to be.

[00:32:09] So you run a test ad and see exactly what type of response you get. I ran $14 a day. So it's still going on $14 a day for four days. So this ad isn't even finished running by the time I finished this. So you're talking about what? $28, $56 a test, four days, $56. And I've already made $500 off of them. That's a no brainer right there. Rinse and repeat.

[00:32:39] So next I'm going to try to scale it up a little bit. I'm going to let these numbers run for, you know, this last day. I'm going to look at the numbers and I'm going to take it from say $14 a day, maybe to $25 a day. And if I continue to get the response and the profitability, I'll keep inching it up, inching it up, inching it up. I was listening to a podcast today about lead generation.

[00:33:05] And this one guy says he runs a million dollars in paid ads a day, a million dollars a day in paid advertising to run a fill. He does affiliate stuff a million dollars a day, but he's not doing like. Low end affiliate stuff. He's doing like the Affordable Care Act. He's doing insurance and all that good stuff. And they're making tons upon tons of money.

[00:33:31] And I'm telling you guys right now, the skill that you want to learn is to master lead generation. If you can master lead generation, you will always, always be able to stay in business with your own business or sell qualified leads to others or do both. But master that, you know, that's one thing I would tell people, because just think about how many failing businesses that are out there.

[00:34:01] You may know some of them. You may be one of them. I was one of them for a while or several times. So there's no shame in that because you have to learn. But yeah, you know, I'm sitting there and I'm like, damn, I don't have anybody to talk to. I don't have any leads. I'm sitting there working on busy work, which doesn't amount to nothing when I should be out there connecting with new clients. You know, so if you're in the service business, especially financial services, mortgage, accounting,

[00:34:32] CPAs, whatever, lawn care, house cleaning, whatever it is, it's imperative for you to have that lead generation. So think about how many people that you can help if you learn how to master this skill. Before we get to the last segment, guys, let me just share my contact information and my resource link. So I mentioned at the top of the show, $7 cheat code.

[00:34:58] If you're looking to grow and scale your business, go to the number seven, D O L L A R cheat code.com for more information. It's a short three minute video where I talk about there's a cheat code to growing and scaling your business. And this is something after you generate leads, there's another step that you have to have in place that a lot of people don't, or if they do have it in place, they don't know the

[00:35:26] sequence or the way to make it work. It's kind of making or printing money on autopilot. All right. So go to $7 cheat code.com. The number seven, D O L L A R cheat code.com. Now, if you want to connect with me guys, anything long, hit me on my email. Jay Jones at black entrepreneur, blueprint.com. J A Y J O N E S at black entrepreneur, blueprint.com. Facebook black entrepreneur, blueprint.

[00:35:54] I have two Instagram accounts. The first one is Jay Jones for real. J A Y J O N E S. The number four R E A L. Second one is black entrepreneur, blueprint. Also Twitter X, uh, Jay Jones, zero zero one J A Y J O N E S zero zero one LinkedIn. Just go on the LinkedIn type in Jay Jones black entrepreneur, blueprint. Connect with me there. Also YouTube.

[00:36:22] Make sure you guys subscribe to the YouTube channel. We have additional content on YouTube that is not on the show. Go to YouTube, type in black entrepreneur, blueprint, hit that subscribe button. Now for all you first time listeners, we drop a new episode every Monday morning, 5 AM Eastern standard time on all your major podcast platforms and YouTube. So wherever you're listening to this or watching this, hit that subscribe button.

[00:36:49] So you'll be notified when the next episode drops. Now let's get ready for this last segment. I just want to tie up a couple of things here, guys. There's certain foundational principles that you're going to need. To grow and build a successful, sustainable business. All right. Number one, you got to have a quality product or service that goes without saying. And that's not even necessary because it's unfortunate because there've been a lot of

[00:37:17] people and companies that have been selling BS for years and still making money. But we want to have a quality product or service, something that's tested, something that works, something that does what it says it's supposed to do. Right. That's number one, number two or number one, a, you got to generate leads family. You got to generate a consistent flow of qualified leads.

[00:37:44] If you want to build a successful, sustainable business. Some people's businesses are great when it's boom time. I've had businesses that I was flying high when it was boom time. And then when the economy changed, I was, I was ass out. Right. That wasn't a sustainable business. Sometimes you can't help with the environmental factors. So when I had my first mortgage business, I, I got crushed like 99% of the other mortgage

[00:38:13] companies by the financial crash in 2007, 2008, wiped me out, almost lost everything, was able to be blessed and build it back up. But sometimes, you know, the environment, the economy is going to either you can ride with it or you can fall with it. But the key is trying to build a business that can be sustainable in any market fluctuation. All right. So I know some lawyers, right.

[00:38:40] During that time, um, when, when the mortgages were going crazy, uh, everybody was selling real estate agents, making crazy money that couldn't sell, sell their way out of paper bag. Uh, now everybody's making money. Mortgage cats that didn't even know what the hell they were doing were making dollars and everything was good when the interest rates were good. And we had all of these silly ass loans, you know, uh, option arms and all of that where everybody could get approved.

[00:39:09] As long as you had a pulse or a heartbeat, man, they were approving loans. And so that was great. Then when everything's starting to tighten up and the credit tightened up, then a lot of those businesses, most of them went out of business. And even the good ones went out of business because it was a whole shift in the whole economic structure, uh, and how, how things were done with the credit. Credit was super tight.

[00:39:33] You know, I remember trying to do somebody with a 727, 19 credit score, want to do a purchase. And, uh, they wanted to put down, uh, 10% when normally at that score, you can go a hundred percent if you want to, if you, you can do FHA 96.5%. So it was just crazy. So you have to be able to, to, to build a business that's sustainable in any economic condition. And, and back to what I was saying about a lot of these attorneys.

[00:40:03] So, uh, many attorneys that I knew were doing real estate closings. They were doing settlements. They were making money hand over fist doing 10, 20 settlements a day. People coming in their office, bang, bang, bang, knocking them dead. So now when the economy turns, guess what they start doing? Now they're a bankruptcy attorney. They were like, you know what? I got the ability to make money in any economic climate. Climbing is good. I'm doing real estate settlements. I'll do a couple of bankruptcies here and there.

[00:40:33] Oh, economy is bad. Let me focus on bankruptcies and I'll do a couple of real estate settlements here and there. So you want to bulletproof your business. You want to have a business that you can, that weather any storm lead generation. Business is one of those type of businesses. Guys, industries are going to go up and down, but the concept of generating leads is never going anywhere.

[00:40:58] So if this is something that you're interested in, start digging in and doing some research, you know, hit me on email, whatever. If you, if you want any tips or, or want to run a couple of things across me, I'll be more than happy to, you know, sit down and rap to you about it and see if it makes sense for you. You know, one of our, uh, BEB family members, I was talking to a couple of weeks ago, good brother, man. We've known each other probably since damn near the podcast started.

[00:41:29] And, uh, you know, and he is in the, uh, the space of appliance repair. And we were just talking about, you know, I was telling him about lead generation and where he gets his leads from. Um, and I was saying, you know, if you don't feel like driving all over the place and you're generating leads, you can sell your excess leads to other, uh, technicians that are out there, you know, appliance technicians that are out and don't mind handling it. And that's another source of income.

[00:41:59] You go ahead and run the leads, right? Run the ads, excuse me. And the ones that you don't want to do are too far away, or you don't think are, uh, make sense fiscally. Then you'd be like, Hey, look, man, I got, I got a couple of leads over here. He's the $25, whatever it is. And you just made money doing what you normally do. So it's a business guys where it's never going to go out of style.

[00:42:25] Every company, everybody in business needs qualified leads. The only thing that may change is what industries are hot at the time, you know? So mortgage was hot at the time back in 2020 and 2021 when interest rates were crazy low, it was hot again. Now you got people jumping out of the game because they don't know how to generate qualified leads. Well, they say a high tide rises all ships, right?

[00:42:52] A low tide brings them down too, but you have to have the ability to weather the storm and the lead generation business is not going anywhere. And what I would probably start with, if you're in a business where you can't handle, uh, leads and other geographies or things of that nature, start learning how to generate leads for yourself in your own business. Like I do in the mortgage business.

[00:43:17] But if I get a lead that's outside of a state that I'm not licensed in, I go ahead and sell that lead. I make a hundred dollars qualified lead just doing what I'm doing. So that's where I would start. If you're interested in getting into lead generation business, uh, actually this episode lasted longer than I thought it was. Cause I was going to try to make it short, but I got on a tangent here, but I want you

[00:43:42] guys to understand how important it is in terms of being able to generate your own qualified leads on a consistent basis. It's the difference between going out of business and being in business, having a good business and having a great business, being able to scale and not being able to scale. So that I hope you guys understand the impactfulness of lead generation and how important it is to your business as you grow.

[00:44:12] Now I say this each and every week family, because it's true. We get more and more downloads because of you, the BEB family. I appreciate you guys so much. Please continue to spread the word about the podcast. Utilize the website, blackentrepreneurblueprint.com. We have all types of free resources. Go to the site, hit the learn tab in that dropdown. We have content about growing and scaling your business, marketing mindset, e-commerce, everything

[00:44:40] you need to help elevate your entrepreneur IQ. Remember, it's not about me. It's not about you. It's about us. It's about building an economic power base in the worldwide black community by building and supporting black owned businesses. Love you guys. See you same time next week. Peace.