7 Lessons from a private room with 44 Millionaires

The Event Lowdown: What Happened#

We threw this event recently. You can check out the video here if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tZHPIumiW0.

Who was there? About 44 people combined. Most were Samcart sellers, but we also invited some folks who aren’t, just buddies of mine who run businesses doing over $100 million a year. We thought they’d bring a lot to the table.
How long was it? Super short, just one day. Ran from around 9 am to 4 pm, so about seven hours.
Was it worth it? Yeah, totally epic. Got a bunch of big takeaways.
Did you charge? Nope, we didn’t charge a thing. Didn’t even try to make some, uh, “cheesy ass offer” at the end. Just wanted everyone together to share value.

Why We Did It#

My biggest reason for doing this, and this is kind of how I kicked off the day, was because Samcart isn’t just for digital products anymore. A lot of people still don’t know this.

Physical Products vs. Digital Products: Our biggest sellers on Samcart sell physical products. It’s not even close, by far.
- We only have one digital product seller doing over $100 million a year.
- We have like eight physical product brands doing over $100 million a year.
- Yeah, seriously, not even close.
Why physical products are big: It kinda makes sense when you think about business simply. Physical products can be a little easier to sell. You don’t always have to explain everything; you can just show a picture like, “Here’s the skateboard, you want it?” Also, most physical products tend to be way more mass market than digital ones.

So, we had all sorts of different businesses there.

Who Was In The Room? The Qualifications#

Okay, let’s break down who made it into the room.

Minimum Revenue: Your business had to be doing at least $1 million a year. We’re talking seven figures minimum.
Average Revenue: But get this, the average revenue for people in the room was $25 million a year. Pretty big players, scaling up and doing really well.
Revenue Scale Present: Some companies there were doing a combined billion dollars a year in revenue. Crazy, right?

These folks weren’t just selling different stuff, they were selling in completely different ways:

What they sold: Some were just selling courses, some high-ticket coaching, some ran agencies, some were physical products, and others did masterminds and live events.
How they sold: About half the room used mostly paid ads. The other half used mostly organic content. A few were in the middle doing a mix.

The Big Goal: Mixing Ideas#

There’s a lot of value in having that mix.

At a typical event, everyone running ads just talks to other people running ads, trying to find the next best Facebook ad trick.
In this room, maybe because of the scale everyone’s at, they get that once you’ve nailed one thing, it’s time to move on to the next strategy or acquisition channel to keep growing.
So, there was a ton of cross-pollination. That was really my main goal. If you’re relying on one thing, say organic, and you want to explore paid ads or social media, having all those people who are pros at it in one room is gold. It was a lot of fun.

Behind the Scenes: The Samcart Team#

We had half the Samcart team right there in the room.

Why? So they could listen in on these business owners talking.
- It really brings it to life for them.
- They got to look around and see, “Holy cow, we actually power some seriously big businesses!” It’s hard to see that impact just looking at data online. What we do actually matters.
- Also, it’s a chance for them to learn. Sometimes they might think I’m or you’re crazy for some marketing ideas we push, but then they see 44 other people thinking and doing the same stuff. That validation is huge.

So yeah, that’s the high-level picture of why we did it and how it turned out.

Getting People There: Qualifications & How It Grew#

Let’s talk about how we got these folks to show up. Remember, there was a limited number of spots. It ended up being about 45 people total.

Initial Thoughts: Thinking like a marketer here. We hadn’t done a live event in a long time. The last one was in Baltimore back in maybe 2016, for something before Samcart was big. We had maybe 15 people there, and it cost $5 grand a pop.
Target Audience: We knew we were inviting very, very busy people. They don’t usually go to small, intimate events unless they know for sure they’ll be around their peers. They aren’t looking to have dinner with fans trying to get a picture.
Expectation vs. Reality: I knew it would be tough to get a lot of people. Based on the past event with 15 folks (different offer, different time), I thought if we could get 15 to 20 people, I’d feel pretty good. We weren’t inviting everyone on our list, just maybe 100 to 200 folks we were focusing on.
Original Target Qualification: We were initially focusing on businesses doing eight figures plus, meaning a $10 million minimum.
Starting Slow: We aimed for 15 people to get the first one off the ground. It was a little slow at first.
Momentum Shift: But then, you could feel it pick up. When a couple of big names said they were coming, that changed everything. Now we had something. It wasn’t just “Hey, we’re doing an event and not telling you who’s coming or what’s happening.”
The Pitch Changed: Now we could say, “We’re doing an event, and this thing is legit! You’ve never been in a room like this.” That’s what I started texting and emailing people.
Room Setup Drama: We planned for a U-shaped table, mastermind style, everyone facing each other. But it just got out of hand. Suddenly, we had 45 people. We had to change the room setup, order way more food, and order more of those Samcart awards you see back there that we’re rolling out.
Final Qualification Reality: So it ended up being a minimum $1 million a year** business to be in the room (seven figures), but as mentioned, the average revenue ended up being **$ 25 million a year. Wow.

The Marketing Secret: Confidence#

Okay, so how do you get 40+ people making that kind of money to get on a plane, come to Austin, and show up?

There’s really only one way: It’s built on confidence.
What we teach in our coaching groups all the time is: Confidence is the memory of success.
If you want to do something like this one day, or just make selling way easier, you need to create successes for people.
When you have a bunch of successes with people, then all you need to do is tell them “when and where.”
This whole event was “sold” with just a couple of emails, a short PowerPoint video (a couple of minutes long), and text messages.
There was no big huge marketing funnel, no long sales letter, no scripted webinar, nothing.
Why? Because you had their confidence. All they needed to know was when and where.
That’s what we preach constantly in marketing: Get to a point where people just need to hear “when and where.”
Examples: We use The Grateful Dead in Accelerator. They have this festival in Mexico (“We’re just gonna go party with the Grateful Dead in Mexico”). People ask “when and where?” There’s a group who will go spend 3 days partying with them. Then they did The Sphere in Las Vegas. “When and where?” Again, a group goes. Look at who gets booked at The Sphere: The Eagles, U2. They’re booked because they have a fanbase built on confidence who will just say “when and where” and show up, getting up from wherever they are.
That’s the marketing plan: Build confidence. Create successes that build confidence. Then you can just tell people “Hey, when and where. It’s Austin on this date. Here are the qualifications,” and people will show up.

Yeah, it’s like for anyone listening who’s thinking, “Man, I’d love to get the top players in my niche at my event,” or if you have relationships with them…

Building Relationships: The Long Game#

What this event reminded me of is the kind of thing that put me on the map way back in 2011, 2012, and again in 2016.

My Start: In 2010, I launched a baseball site, then met you, pivoted, and launched Get 10,000 Fans. I was in the online business world.
The Big Names Back Then: The biggest players were guys like Ryan Dice, Jeff Walker, Evan Pagan, Frank Kern. And folks like Lewis Howes and Amy Porterfield were coming up.
My Position: I was on all their email lists. None of them knew who I was directly. They might have seen my ads or heard about my performance. “Your performance on the field gets the attention of the people you want to get, whether you know it or not. The better you do, the more people know who you are.” I had a “couple hundred thousand followers on Facebook” back then.
The Problem: I never really capitalized on that attention. I wanted relationships with them. They seemed cool, I could learn from them, and in a perfect world, they’d promote me, we’d partner, help each other. But you can’t just walk up and say, “Hey, never met you, can you promote my stuff?” They’ll never talk to you again. You’ll be that person they talk about negatively.
The Playbook: So what do you do? The playbook is simple: Go help them. Offer nothing but value. Ask for nothing in return, expect nothing in return.
The Lewis Howes Story: That’s what I did. That’s how I became friends with Lewis Howes. This was maybe 2011 or 2012. I was on his list. I saw he had a big launch coming up. I remembered that. I joined his affiliate program. Now I’m on his affiliate list, getting emails rallying the troops about launch dates, contests, prizes for the top 10.
The Contest Prize: The big prize for the top 10 was an invite to a one-day Mastermind in New York where everyone would get together.
My Goal: I said, “Okay, this is it.” I wasn’t just going to get in the top 10, I was going to win this damn thing. Nobody had ever heard of me, so it would be a two-for-one: I’d get in the room with them, and they’d all be wondering, “Who are you?” And that’s exactly what happened.
Going All In: I don’t even think I told Lewis I was promoting him. It was a great offer for my audience (Facebook marketers who needed LinkedIn stuff back then). I promoted that thing harder than anything I’ve ever promoted in my life. I might have even spent money on ads just to send more people his way and climb the ranks. It was a goal because I wanted to know this guy; he was doing cool stuff, a sports guy, we had a lot in common.
The Result: You can’t just call them up, but you can get their attention. There’s always a way. That’s what happened. I won the contest and trained up to New York. Lewis texted me right after saying thanks. He offered to do a webinar together. I think I have a picture of that first webinar somewhere. I did it on the master bed in Amy Porterfield’s first apartment. It’s like the worst photo ever. It stings looking at it now.
The New York Mastermind: But I trained up to New York and got in that room. It was me, Lewis Howes, Derrick Halpern, Amy Porterfield, James Wedmore, and a couple of others. And we are all friends to this day. For me, that felt like walking into the freaking Orioles locker room and everyone knowing who I was.
Value in the Room: Again, during that whole time, I didn’t ask anybody for anything. I then tried to deliver value in that room. None of them, maybe other than Amy, were doing much with Facebook marketing back then. So I just spilled the beans, told them everything I was doing. We were doing really well, about two or three million bucks at that point. I showed them my ads, everything.
Lasting Impact: Again, that’s how we all became really good friends. They’ve promoted me over the years, I’ve promoted them. It’s super valuable to know the big players in your niche and not just go at it alone all the time.
This recent Samcart event just reminded me how powerful face-to-face relationships and just helping people out in your space are. How important that is.

The Real Marketing Plan#

You know, it’s funny. All the “marketing” for this event – step two was send some emails and texts. Step one was build relationships for 15 years. Yeah, like that’s how it works.

Another Example: Patrick Bet David: You see this with other people too. There’s a guy, Patrick Bet David, who runs a podcast. You’ve probably seen him. He’s got a show. I remember seeing him when that was starting. Then suddenly he had Kobe Bryant on. Then someone else, maybe Cuban. You can trace it back. He started with maybe the Lakers, whoever, somebody there. That drew a little circle. Then he got this person, that drew a circle. Then that drew another. You know what I mean? Slowly but surely, all of a sudden, you’re getting these A-listers. But he started really small and slow and built it up.

The Surprise Takeaway#

So, let me ask you this: Was there anything that really surprised you that you heard from all these people?

Yeah, what’s always surprising is you realize how simple everybody’s business is.

You look at names like Marie Forleo (was in the room), Wedmore (was in the room), Truvani (humongous physical product brand in the room), Rapid Radios (in the room). Some of these are like nine-figure plus big businesses.
And you start asking them about how they’re doing, what products they’re working on, a little bit about… (The text cuts off here, but the point about simplicity is clear).

The Core Simplicity of Business (No Matter the Size)#

You know, when you look at businesses, especially the ones doing really well, you start seeing something interesting. At their heart, like, everybody’s business is surprisingly simple. We tend to overcomplicate things, don’t we? We let our teams get too big, or we try to juggle way too many things at once.

But really, when you strip it all down, every successful business is pretty darn simple. There’s usually just one main thing that truly moves the needle.

Someone might have organic traffic totally dialed in. Like Kristo – he was in the room, and that guy just absolutely crushes it on YouTube.
Or Ryan Pan, also in the room, who kills it on Instagram.

Yeah, sure, these folks might have other little channels – maybe a podcast, run some ads here and there. But when you look at what’s really driving the growth, it’s usually:

One primary traffic source
Leading to one great product
Often with a great backend offer

They just leaned into what they were naturally good at, stayed patient, and a few years later, they’re doing $5 million, then$ 10, then $20, then$ 50, then $100 million. It’s kind of the same story for almost everyone, no matter their size.

I think we all, whether we’re at $100 million,$ 10 million, $1 million, or haven’t made any money yet, overcomplicate everything. We think getting to the next level requires a ton of extra work or stuff we actually don’t need.

But honestly, even at the biggest levels, the business can still be very simple. You can keep things pretty cut and dry and still pull in some really big numbers.

That simplicity, and the fact that you can see someone doing $50 million a year and realize they aren’t doing something you think is super important, is pretty eye-opening.

They look at me like I’m nuts sometimes because I do zero social media posting. They’re like, “How on earth are you guys doing $40-$ 50 million a year and you don’t post anything anywhere? You have 112 followers on Twitter! How is that even possible?”

And to me, it seems crazy when they’re not running ads, or they’re not emailing their list very often. We all get so set in our ways, and what we do works. But it’s genuinely shocking when you meet someone the same size or bigger business than yours, and they’re doing kind of the polar opposite of what you are.

There are a bunch of lessons in that, but that’s one of the most surprising things you see.

The “Everything Works” Principle (Yes, Everything)#

This goes back to something we always say in all our coaching programs, and something you and I have said to each other for years: Everything works.

Yeah, seriously. There are still companies out there making money from circulars. You know what I’m talking about? Those coupon things stuffed in your mailbox? People still do that! There are people making money with postcards, billboards, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and everything in between.

When you get a bunch of successful people together, it kind of blows up a lot of the talk you hear in the “internet marketing world,” like we were just talking about yesterday. There’s always something declared “dead” today – email, webinars, the VSL (Video Sales Letter). “They’re dead!” And now there’s some “new way.”

But what you realize when you’re with people who are actually playing the game at a high level and winning is that nothing is dead.

What it is, is finding the right marketing channel that you are going to thrive with.

Like I said, some people are just more drawn to being on camera, or being creative, or running ads, or whatever it is.

So, to me, that’s it: everything works.

Product Quality: It Matters, Especially at Scale#

You know what’s funny? Thinking about that room full of successful business owners, there’s something I didn’t see at all. I think it’s because the average business in that room is doing around $25 million a year.

What I didn’t see was bad products.

You would find what I’m about to say in a lot of million-dollar masterminds, especially in the “make money online” space. A lot of times you walk into those events, and there are some legit people, but their products… let’s just say they’re not great.

Seriously, you can succeed with a bad product and make $1 to$ 5 million a year. But it will eventually die on you. Why? Because you’re just constantly having to acquire new customers who buy once, find out your product is crap, and never buy again or tell anyone good things. Eventually, you run out of new people in your market, and the dream is over.

But in this room, there was not a single bad product. In fact, some of the products are truly the best in the world.

Take the Rapid Radio guys. I have one of their things on my shelf. It’s like a prepper walkie-talkie that works Nationwide over LTE with basically zero subscription cost. Instead of a $100 a month satellite phone, this thing is like$ 50 a year! I think it’s like $200, and you get a two or three pack. I actually used one from my desk to Scott’s house in Austin, Texas. Legit, real-time walkie-talkie. That is an insanely cool product! I don’t even know if anyone else in the world makes one. There’s a reason why they do crazy revenue.
Even the digital product folks, like Marie Foley, who was there. You don’t get a better product than hers. She’s perfected that product over 15 years, just focusing on one thing. I can tell you, it’s world-class.

Thinking about that now, I’ve been in a lot of legitimate rooms before where everyone is at least in the six or seven figures. In those rooms, maybe half the people are just really aggressive marketers, and that’s why they’re there. It has nothing to do with their product quality.

But you don’t, or I don’t think you find that, when you get north of $10 or$ 20 million a year. It’s extremely difficult to have a bad product and stay alive and scale up.

There’s that whole joke about McDonald’s. They sold a billion hamburgers! Imagine how many they would have sold if they were good hamburgers! (Even though they’ve done alright!)

Even when we talk about specific examples like Tread Athletics – remember them? Yeah. That’s an example from a slightly different, but related, industry. What they did is they perfected the training for a very specific type of elite-level growing baseball pitcher. They’ve just dialed that in. I’ve spoken to hundreds of people who have gone through their program, and for that specific group, they are far and away the industry leaders, pioneering a lot of things.

So yeah, you’re right. If you’re going to build something really big, you’re going to have to be world-class. You’re going to have to be great. You’re going to need something – I don’t want to say an iPod or something that revolutionary – but something that is head and shoulders above the last option. Like the iPod was so good, we don’t even remember the MP3 players before that!

For anyone hearing that, you don’t have to have an iPhone-level product right away. Should you strive for it? Yeah. But if you’re in the course world, for example, most courses are just not good. They’re not well put together. The information might be okay, but they’re extremely long, bloated, not to the point, not edited well, not organized well.

Sometimes, just organizing it better might mean you have the best product in your market. If you had a terrible product that was well organized, it would make it a little bit better!

Yeah, just think about what else you can add to make it a little bit better than the other options available to your customers. That’s all you need. You don’t gotta be light years better, just a little bit.

Or sometimes, what do you have to take away?

Yeah, are you writing 20 more pages of rambling that doesn’t need to be there? Are you adding things?

It’s funny, because Steve Jobs said when they were always taking things away from devices – the plugs, the buttons – his philosophy was: if it doesn’t contribute to the function of the device, it shouldn’t be there.

Remember how the buttons were on the first phones? They took them away.

Gary Halbert said a very similar thing, but for marketing. He said if there’s a word on the sales page that doesn’t contribute to the sale, you should remove it.

Two very different people, but that would be an interesting conversation to sit in on (maybe in heaven!).

But yeah, it’s interesting because ultimately, your product might just be too bloated. Just streamlining it, focusing it, making it more specific – that can make it great. That can make the difference.

The Consumption Challenge (Especially for Digital Products)#

I think a huge problem, especially in the digital product space (though I’m sure it affects physical products too depending on what you sell), is that no one actually goes through anything.

You might sell 10,000 courses, and only 500 people actually finish it. Maybe 10% complete everything.

So that’s a big deal. It might have absolutely nothing to do with the content of your course, ebook, or program being bad. If someone could just figure out how to get 20% of people to go through a product, they’d probably unlock scale they’ve never seen before.

Why? Because people are buying a result. They’re not buying your course, your ebook, or your coaching program. They want a result.

And the reason why I think most courses have zero word-of-mouth marketing going for them, and all the marketing falls squarely on you as the marketer (you have to crank on social media, start a podcast, run ads, send emails, hound people), is because no one gets what they bought.

Now, it’s not entirely your fault. People also need to do the work. But you should act like it’s your fault because you should try to solve it.

If no one’s getting the result, whether it’s their fault or yours because they’re not going through your stuff:

They’re not that likely to buy from you again.
They’re not telling anybody about how great your course is, because they got nothing from it.

So just think about it that way. If I were in that business full-time, I’d spend a straight week thinking, “What are 100 different ways I could maybe get more people to actually go through this damn thing, use it, and get the result?” I think people would be shocked how much that would help.

Speaking of consumption, we were talking yesterday about the Ultimate Creator final product. My first product was 18 DVDs! I still think it was the best thing I ever did. We were very early to put it online, to digitize it.

I don’t know if you remember, but back then, you actually had to load the whole video online. Remember the loading and buffering? You had the little digital hit counter showing how many views.

What we started seeing was, when we laid it all out and had to break it up online, we could see where people were going. For the first time, they could kind of choose their own adventure. All of a sudden, the things we thought were super important, nobody really cared about.

So, one thing I’d suggest to anyone is: look at your product. Go look through your analytics. What are people actually engaging with? If people can self-select parts, go look at that data. Highlight the best parts and focus on those.

Sometimes, the best way to improve your product for consumption is to divvy it out a little bit. Give it in doses and portions. Let people have one great experience, then another, then another. That’s the path to consumption.

It’s like if you want to drink a gallon of water. You do it a sip at a time, right? Chugging it is not good!

So, that’s what I’m thinking about there.

Common Challenges Across Business Sizes#

Okay, let’s wrap up this one. I know we’re running out of time. What’s something you saw when you were in that room with all those high-level people? We tend to think, “Oh, they must have these incredibly complex problems. They can’t possibly be dealing with the same things I am as a smaller business or someone just starting out without a following.”

What did you see as similar challenges they face at higher levels that people just getting started face too?

Yeah, I actually made a list. I know the top three off the top of my head:

Paid Ads: This was number one. A lot of the people in this room – probably over half – their bread and butter is organic traffic. They have a big podcast or a huge Instagram following or whatever. All those organic people wanted to figure out how to make ads work better for them. This was perfect for us because some of the best media buyers in the world were actually in that room!
Organic Traffic: This was the inverse of the first one. All the people who relied heavily on paid ads wanted to know about organic. “How do I just start posting to Instagram? What’s the secret to getting a whole bunch of views, subscribers, etc., and turning that into revenue?”
Scaling Profitably: A big topic was scaling up – continuing to grow the business while maintaining or improving profitability. This is a huge thing. You get past $2, 3, 4, 5 million a year, and you're trying to get to$ 10, or $20, or$ 50 million. It takes money to do that! You’re hiring people, and you might end up making the same amount of money at $10 million revenue that you made at$ 5 million. Yeah, that happens a lot. Your business is bigger in gross revenue, but you, as the owner, are making the same or even less.

And then a absolutely huge topic was Team.

I mean, I learned that the hard way. It’s why I’m not CEO anymore. (I can tell that story on another podcast, we’ll do that one next!)

Look, every business is different, but I think, at least in my experience in the digital product world, you can get to $1, 2, maybe$ 3 million a year with basically no team. I mean, I had my brother, so I kind of had a partner, and we had maybe three or four outsourced helpers. But after that, like, you need real humans. Ideally, smart people nearby who can help you grow and take things off your plate.

And that is the most challenging thing.

You think putting together the perfect funnel is hard? You think Facebook ads are hard? You think SEO is hard? None of it comes close to finding and keeping great people. Nothing comes close.

And everyone in that room struggles with it. Everybody’s team isn’t operating at peak efficiency. Everyone could use more A-players.

Yeah, that was a big, big one for sure.

Alright, sweet. So let’s wrap up this one. Next one, we’ll talk about why you removed yourself as CEO, because I think that’s something a lot of people have trepidation around, right? Like, giving up control of something, especially something you started – for most of us, it feels like your child, right?

Wrapping Up This Episode#

So, there’s that difficult thing to do. It’s quite the challenge, really.

We’ll make sure to properly talk about that on the next one. We’ll dive into it then.

And with that, that officially concludes the first second episode.

All right, good deal.