879: COLD OUTREACH... and ALL the reasons why it MUST be in your marketing mix w/ Austin McCulloh

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and I'll tell you what.

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If you're tuning in to today's episode, thinking it's a brand new week and I'm ready for some awesome and encouraging and inspiring business content, well, lead generation may not be something that you want to think about, but the truth is, today's episode may not be one that you want, but it is certainly one that you need, because we've got an incredible entrepreneur who's really going to open your eyes to the real fuel behind any and every single one of us growing our own businesses.

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So today's guest his name is Austin McCullough.

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Austin is the founder and CEO of Reply Assist, which is a LinkedIn prospecting software for financial advisors that is based out of Chicago, illinois Way too cold for me to be there.

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I've already told Austin that Austin's current seven-year journey in entrepreneurship began as a licensed investment advisor representative before shifting focus to lead generation for financial advisors.

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Through his marketing agency, austin McCullough Advising, he generated over 53,000 leads for past clients, which helped lead to the agency being successfully acquired in early 2023.

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Over time, austin saw many financial advisors spending significant time on prospecting and facing constant rejection, while seeing minimal results.

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This prompted him to create reply assist, providing a much needed solution to the entire financial services industry.

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And before I bring Austin into today's conversation, if you have objections, where you convince yourself oh my business is different, oh, my industry is different, austin has navigated a world that is very complex.

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There's a lot of rules and regulations, so all this stuff that he's going to tell us today, it's important for us to take it on board and think about how we can implement it.

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I'm personally very excited about this one.

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I'm not going to say anything else.

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Let's dive straight into my interview with Austin McCullough.

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All right, austin.

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So many reasons why I'm excited about today's episode.

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But first things first.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thank you and thank you for the great introduction.

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That was about the best I've ever had.

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Thank you, Brian.

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Heck, yeah, all right, well, that's a high barometer.

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I'll take that early praise.

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Thank you for that.

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Well, I'm really excited because I could have tooted your horn in so many different ways, but I love the fact that you focus on something that you heard me say it's the fuel for business growth that a lot of people want to ignore.

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So we're going to talk a lot about that, but before we get there, take us beyond the bio.

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Who the heck is Austin?

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An awesome aspiring or not aspiring someone who is an accomplished entrepreneur, even at a young age?

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Austin, who the heck are you?

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How'd you start doing all this cool stuff?

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Sure, I'll touch on that last bit.

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So I'm a 27-year-old entrepreneur.

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I've been full-time in entrepreneurship for about seven years, graduated from the University of Iowa when I was at Iowa actually this is following playing college football I played for two years, tore my ACL second time.

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I was like you know what?

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I'm going to hang up the cleats be finished with that Ended up starting an online hiring agency.

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We were teaching English to Chinese children.

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Wasn't the great, the best business model or anything, but I learned a lot from that.

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That transitioned into, obviously, working as a financial professional.

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So I was a financial advisor licensed financial advisor, which relates to what I'm doing now and then, after actually kind of taking focus away from being the financial advisor, I started the coaching business Austin McCullough, advising.

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That was once again, not the best business model.

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At the core of it.

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I wanted to coaching business Awesome Color Advising.

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That was, once again, not the best business model.

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At the core of it.

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I wanted to help people really see that they're capable of doing whatever they want Any more.

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I don't love the mindset stuff just as much, but it is very important, and when I mean when I say I don't love it as much, I'm just saying it's the focal point.

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But anyways, since we weren't able to get a ton of traction with the coaching business, I saw an opportunity in lead generation because there were many financial advisors who weren't getting enough clients.

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That's because they weren't getting enough meetings set, and so I just saw the opportunity, ended up using a software for our clients to help generate leads for them.

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The business ended up getting enough traction to the point where I was interested enough to just list the business to sell it.

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Fortunately, some was interested enough to buy it, and then that was up until early 2023.

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And then since then, over the past year, we've been building reply assist and we fortunately launched it officially a couple of weeks ago.

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So now we're actually bringing on customers, which is for somebody who's a sales marketing guy like me, building products for this long.

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It got to me from time to time, but I'm really glad that we launched.

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And so that's a quick summary of who Austin McCullough is.

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I love sports, love being social, getting out and about, but I just love business going to be completely honest.

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Heck, yeah, I love that overview.

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Austin, the only thing I'm going to give you crap for here in today's episode is that you played the wrong version of football.

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I'm sorry to say that here on the air, so I won't hold that against you, though, although I'm sure listeners are curious if they are into American football.

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What position did you play?

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I was actually a nickelback for our team, which was a hybrid between a safety and an outside linebacker, so not the band nickelback.

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Yeah, I was on the defensive side of the ball.

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Perfect.

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Well, I'll show my football ignorance here.

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I don't know what a nickelback does.

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I don't know what a safety back a safety does.

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I don't know any of these things.

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Austin, that's about all we do there you go Perfect.

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Well, that's the entirety of the sport.

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So I do want to go back in time, though, because I do think it's important.

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It's something you and I were talking about even before we hit record here today is that, when you and I both look back at our own personal journeys man, we didn't know so many things when we started our first businesses, and you kind of gave us that in your overview of this was a terrible business model and it didn't work out.

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The Chinese tutoring service, austin, I love you, went down that road, but I will also make the argument that those things, even though they didn't take off in the way that you hoped, they actually contributed.

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They are part of why and how you're here today, and that's why it made it into that generous overview that you shared with us.

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So take us back there.

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What went wrong in those cases?

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And then in the rearview mirror, which we can always see 2020, in the rearview mirror how did those set you up for all your understanding.

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Why is cold outreach so important?

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Why is lead generation so important?

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What were those building blocks?

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Yeah, that's a really good question.

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By the way, to start with the online hiring agency, which I still hate saying the name, but it's called Supercorn Tutoring my co-founder is from China and he actually helped come up with the name, so actually, no, he came up with the name and I just adopted it.

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I was fine with that.

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But anyways, the main problem with that business model was the managers for the Chinese company that we worked with.

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They would find the actual students in China for us to teach and we were responsible for finding the English tutors and we found them from colleges to teach English to the children.

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The problem was they didn't the company.

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They didn't want to pay us more for our tutors.

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And yet if they weren't able to pay us more, we didn't have great margins, so we weren't able to hire the best tutors.

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And yet if they weren't able to pay us more, we didn't have great margins, so we weren't able to hire the best tutors.

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Our tutors were solid, but they weren't licensed, trained, et cetera tutors.

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So in a business model like that for let me actually skip forward, then I'll skip back For reply assist we're bootstrapped, which means we're self-funded.

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I was fortunate to be able to do that.

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But in a business model like Supercorn Tutoring, I actually would have raised capital if I was more aware of it and if I would have understood the dynamics of business, because in a business model like that, if you don't have the greatest margins at the beginning, you can make up for it on the back end.

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But we didn't have the free flowing capital to make that happen at the time.

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So that was a big takeaway there.

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Also the fact that I don't know Mandarin and me and my co-founder we weren't the closest, so I needed to rely on him a lot and we weren't able to create the type of relationship we needed to with the Chinese company.

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So there's just a lot of friction in that business model.

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In terms of the coaching, the main issue that I saw with that was I reflect on my past experience the fact that I was a licensed financial advisor, so I quickly pivoted.

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Within the first few months of running the one-on-one coaching to, I was like you know what?

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I should probably start reaching out to financial advisors, because I understand the problems I deal with of not being able to get enough clients.

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But what I realized is a lot of them already have coaching because they have a manager, they have an upline, they have some type of managing director who they can lean on to ask questions, and that's already free to them, and it's somebody who's probably been in the industry longer.

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So the fact that I was trying to charge money for that a lot of people didn't want to do.

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But in terms of actually serving up the leads, we've never delivered the leads on a platter like having people pay per lead.

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I don't actually like that model a ton.

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But I realized, though, through social media and this was during the COVID time a lot more business professionals were starting to use social media like LinkedIn, and so why not use a software where it's actually automating the invites and the messages sent, which speeds up and technically automates the process of shaking hands online, because what that does is it gets a lot of conversations started.

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Now there's a lot of gaps in the process, hence why Repliesys was created.

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But for that period of time during I don't know about 2021 to 2022, it was a huge pivot and it was a huge solution to a need in the marketplace of financial advisors just not having enough conversations, because a lot of them and I'll end on this note they would rely on their family and friends.

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But when I was a financial advisor, I personally hated doing that.

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I didn't want to be pushy at all.

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I didn't want to sell something to somebody who didn't necessarily need it.

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Obviously, family and friends always need something, but I just didn't want to be that person with my family and friends.

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I would rather upset a complete stranger by pushing a little bit too hard than my family and friends.

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So that's how I found a need in the marketplace to pivot the business model from coaching to lead generation pivot the business model from coaching to lead generation.

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Yeah, austin, I don't want that last point that you made to go unnoticed.

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I think that's such a powerful point and obviously we can throw a heck of a lot of shade.

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I think we both would unite when it comes to throwing shade on the network marketing model, and that's for so many reasons.

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Is that the entirety of their I'm going to put this in air quotes their strategy of selling is to tap into your personal network, and you and I are very united in the fact that we don't want to do that.

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We don't want to use our personal networks for those, because the reality is there are.

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I'm going to use quite a few cliches and analogies here in today's episode, but there are a lot of fish in the sea and the truth is, just because we know them and they're close to us doesn't make them our ideal customers and clients, and that's why I love what you have done, not only as a financial advisor but, of course, with reply assist that now you help people not only find where the fish are, but go after the fish.

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It's probably why I live in Florida and I've never been fishing a day in my life.

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I don't want to wait for the fish to come to me.

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So talk to us about that proactive outreach, because I feel like it is something that scares most people, but you put it so succinctly there that it's strangers and it's also targeted.

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It's something that you know you can help these people walk us through, because, knowing that we're starting from ground zero with a lot of people that are saying, austin, cold outreach to strangers, how the heck am I going to do that and why am I going to do that?

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that's another great question.

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You know a lot of thoughts are going through my mind right now, but let's talk warm market and then we'll talk like cold calling.

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So if I forget, remind me.

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So with the warm market it's very finite too, like your warm market.

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You have your family, so you have aunts, uncles, parents, cousins, siblings.

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Then you got your friends, which is only so large, or technically should be, if you want to have quality relationships.

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So that's maybe a couple hundred people, but the cold market is essentially infinite.

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It's not technically, but like on linkedin, there's I don't know, I think there's a billion users now and there's hundreds of millions, I think, of the united states or at least 100 million.

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So within reason of linkedin's limits of being able to do outreach, like every single day you're contacting a new person, new group.

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You're never really going to run out of people to contact.

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So one thing is that it's a much larger group too.

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Is that again, with the whole complete strangers?

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Why would you want to ruin rapport with somebody who you actually love and care about and actually know well and they're integrated in your life?

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I wouldn't.

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I'd rather.

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I'm personally, I'm not the, I'm not rude, but I'm not the nicest person in the world, and so when I'm talking to people, I'm okay with upsetting somebody who's a complete stranger, who I'll never see again, especially when sometimes you upset people and you don't even mean to.

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It's just messages can get miscommunicated.

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But to go to a third point, with cold calling, for example, that's something that a lot of financial professionals used to do, or a lot of just salespeople in general.

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When you make a cold call, first things.

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First, you don't even know if the prospect's going to pick up Okay.

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Second, if they do, you're hoping that it's a good time for them, which it often isn't.

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And then a third thing is you can't really brand yourself.

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That's one thing I like about social media.

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Like, let's even put LinkedIn aside, it could be any of the social media channels.

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When you're reaching out, your prospect can accept the invite or follow you back whenever it's a good time for them.

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They can respond when it's a good time for them.

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Then also, you have a bio like, especially on LinkedIn.

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They can see.

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That's why I'm such a big fan of.

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I'm not a branding guy, but branding is important because when they come to your profile, they can learn about you.

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That way, no-transcript, there's enough prospects.

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You can brand yourself.

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It's just there are more steps, and that's why a lot of people do it wrong is because they're too focused on themselves and not focused enough on the prospects.

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They don't know who they're targeting.

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So there's a lot involved, but once you get the steps down, it's honestly pretty simple.

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Yeah, I love that overview for so many reasons, austin, again, because I think that you do such a great job of painting that contrast between you.

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Talk about cold calling, and none of us want to be cold call we all.

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I still don't understand how, here in 2024, we haven't figured out an app that stops these spam calls from coming through to us.

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But what we're actually talking about is something that you're showing up in people's inboxes, whether it's a LinkedIn message or an email or however you want to reach out from a place of service that's non-intrusive.

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They can read it when they want.

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They can reply to it when they want.

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They can reply to it if they want.

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They don't even have to, because they can see your message right then and there and decide for themselves what to do.

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So talk to us about what that outreach looks like.

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Again, I'm just playing off the fear that so many people have, myself included.

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When I started my marketing agency back in 2012 in Boston is I remember I walked into a local sandwich shop and I said to the guy I was like I'd like to speak to the owner and he said well, I am the owner, what do you want?

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And it was terrifying for me, even though he was right there and he said yeah, talk to me.

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So, austin, how do we effectively outreach on an initial message with a complete stranger?

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You know it's funny.

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Thanks for giving that example first off and then second off.

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I'm actually pulling open our portal because I want to give I try to just add as much value as possible.

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I'm going to literally read the campaign connection request message that I've been sending out recently because it's been working so well for me.

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So for anybody listening, if you're trying to do outreach on LinkedIn honestly model off of this script, okay it's, it's worked really well.

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So the script is and I won't put any personal information in there.

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It says word for word it's good seeing you actively use LinkedIn.

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Comma first name, so it plugs in their first name.

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This is a great platform for advisors because I'm reaching out to financial advisors.

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Then I go by the way, so I do BTW, so it's a little bit shorter, it doesn't take up as much text.

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One Hope everything down south is treating you well because I'm reaching out to advisors down south.

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If I was reaching out to just one state, I would say that Then I go to this.

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My favorite part can't promise, I don't have anything to promote.

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And then in parentheses I say I think I can be a resource, and parentheses comma.

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But I can promise I'll be respectful by not being pushy.

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The reason why I like this script so much and I've, for anybody doesn't know.

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I've made about 13,000 prospecting contacts.

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I've scheduled like 800, plus calls from LinkedIn specifically, so I just use this process a lot.

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What I like about that end bit is you're starting the conversation, but it's not just a casual back and forth conversation where neither of you really know what you're talking about.

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What I like about this is, yeah, it's going to lower my acceptance rate a little bit because it's getting a little bit more straight to the point, but I'm bluntly saying that I'm not going to be pushy, and so what that's doing it's it's addressing a potential objection that they would have before they even mentioned it.

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So that's just something that I'm.

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Fortunate that I, just, through having some time to think, came across that.

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But anyways and I'm sure, brian, you probably have a comment or two on that bit but I want to add more value if I can.

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So then, once the conversation has started, there's a pretty simple framework that I like to go off of Transparently.

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It's not the freshest in my mind.

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If you want me to pull it up, I can.

00:16:07.615 --> 00:16:12.206
But the first bit is, once a prospect responds back, always acknowledge what they say.

00:16:12.206 --> 00:16:15.998
So that's the first thing, because people want to know that you're actually listening to what they had to say.

00:16:15.998 --> 00:16:16.938
They want to feel important.

00:16:16.938 --> 00:16:17.779
That's the best way to do it.

00:16:17.779 --> 00:16:21.764
So if they say like, hey, sorry, I was busy with work, like you could ask them a little something about work.

00:16:22.244 --> 00:16:26.488
Two is ask a follow-up question, that's an open-ended question to kind of guide them forward.

00:16:26.488 --> 00:16:32.474
So like when somebody reaches, responds back to me to this whole message they go thanks for reaching out.

00:16:32.474 --> 00:16:35.337
I appreciate you not wanting to be pushy, I go sure.

00:16:35.337 --> 00:16:37.861
I try to be respectful as I can Do, you mind.

00:16:37.861 --> 00:16:40.144
If I ask a question, so I'm also asking for permission.

00:16:40.144 --> 00:16:57.681
And then, as the conversation continues, as they start to give me more ammunition, which they start to tell me more about their situation, then once the conversation gets larger or longer, I recommend scheduling a call together and I just say that messaging back and forth is efficient and effective typically, and then usually they're in agreement.

00:16:57.681 --> 00:17:02.174
So that's the best way to get a call scheduled Again.

00:17:02.174 --> 00:17:03.379
If specifically, um, and that, then usually they're in agreement.

00:17:03.379 --> 00:17:04.924
So that's the best way to get a call scheduled again if you want me to pull up in the document.

00:17:04.919 --> 00:17:06.172
I will, because that wasn't the most clear, but that's the major framework.

00:17:06.172 --> 00:17:06.768
I would say no, I'll tell you what.

00:17:06.768 --> 00:17:10.526
Austin, honestly, I am very appreciative and thankful for how transparent you are about this stuff.

00:17:10.526 --> 00:17:12.175
Listeners, that's real life copy.

00:17:12.175 --> 00:17:15.083
Austin is reading from his computer right here right now.

00:17:15.083 --> 00:17:17.817
That's real life copy that he's actually taking action on.

00:17:18.137 --> 00:17:28.285
And, austin, I'm to praise that here publicly because, as someone who gets a lot of pitches, every single podcast guest we get at least I mean, I personally get at least 25 pitches a day in my email inbox.

00:17:28.586 --> 00:17:32.063
People are hitting me up in Facebook messenger, which I don't even open, unfortunately for them.

00:17:32.063 --> 00:17:37.481
But those messages they're so vague and confusing where I don't even know where it's one day going to lead to.

00:17:37.481 --> 00:17:39.644
A lot of them will just on Facebook messenger.

00:17:39.644 --> 00:17:41.969
I get messages all the time where people are like hey, how are you?

00:17:41.969 --> 00:17:56.144
Hey, I saw you published a book and they expect me to do the workload, whereas you're telling them hey, yeah, I may have something to sell to you, I may be able to be a resource for you, but most importantly, I just I want to connect with you and have this conversation with a purpose.

00:17:56.144 --> 00:18:05.546
So I really appreciate those insights, austin, and along those lines, I think it answers the biggest question that I have when people outreach to me is where is this going?

00:18:05.546 --> 00:18:08.644
So, for listeners, where does this go, austin?

00:18:08.644 --> 00:18:11.053
What does this sales process look like?

00:18:11.093 --> 00:18:26.721
Because we're talking about cold outreach today, but this is really only the first step in what is an intentional and strategic process, the most important is and this is a intentional and strategic process the most important is and this is a lot of things in life and thank you, by the way know where you're headed.

00:18:26.721 --> 00:18:30.464
Actually, it's funny as we started bringing on customers, our second customer asked me that question.

00:18:30.464 --> 00:18:32.385
She goes I'm starting to get responses, but now what do I do?

00:18:32.385 --> 00:18:34.528
And you got to think about it.

00:18:34.528 --> 00:18:40.471
If you are wanting to lead to a meeting scheduled, you need to find a reason for what would get the meeting scheduled.

00:18:40.471 --> 00:19:02.701
So if, let's just say, I send that same script, the connection request script that I was reading off before, and a prospect responds back to me and they just say thanks, that's all they say, I might go sure, mind, if I ask you a question, then if they say yes, then the onus is on me to have a question prepared to lead the conversation forward.

00:19:02.701 --> 00:19:05.719
That's another reason why I like LinkedIn messaging is because you don't have to think on the spot.

00:19:05.838 --> 00:19:17.521
I'm honestly, I'm not as good on my toes as I am when I'm able to take time to think, and so I'll always have questions prepared, but sometimes, based on their profile, I might ask something like if they've been an advisor for one year, I might ask them.

00:19:17.521 --> 00:19:22.656
I might say you know, do you use LinkedIn outreach for any of your client acquisition?

00:19:22.656 --> 00:19:25.285
If they say yes, I go one route with the conversation.

00:19:25.285 --> 00:19:26.876
If they say no, I go another.

00:19:26.876 --> 00:19:29.223
And if they say no, I might say is there a reason for why you don't?

00:19:29.223 --> 00:19:30.576
And then I might give the reason.

00:19:30.576 --> 00:19:33.619
I might go okay, well, are you open to using LinkedIn outreach?

00:19:33.619 --> 00:19:36.624
And if they say yes, I go okay, great, why don't we go ahead and schedule a call?

00:19:36.624 --> 00:19:37.984
And actually I want to give one thing.

00:19:37.984 --> 00:19:46.266
This is helpful, for actually I was going to touch on one part of our software, but I don't want to talk about the software and be salesy or anything like that, so I'll just leave it as is.

00:19:46.595 --> 00:19:51.420
No, Austin, I'm going to be the one that pushes you then, because I know you're not going to share it with us for the purpose of sales.

00:19:51.420 --> 00:20:01.660
We're going to talk about your website, all at the end but lay it on us that assists people in this process.

00:20:01.680 --> 00:20:02.241
I'd love for you to share it.

00:20:02.241 --> 00:20:02.663
Well, it was funny.

00:20:02.663 --> 00:20:09.009
People sometimes ask me why I called the business Reply Assist, and it was because in the marketing agency that I sold about a year ago, we also did the generations for financial advisors.

00:20:09.009 --> 00:20:10.740
It was just more of a service-based business.

00:20:10.740 --> 00:20:13.148
One client I can think of her name.

00:20:13.148 --> 00:20:15.076
I dedicate the entire naming to her.

00:20:15.076 --> 00:20:16.578
Her name's Diana.

00:20:17.961 --> 00:20:28.200
She would always reach out over Slack, which is where we did our client support, and she would send a screenshot of her conversation and she would say reply assist or assisted reply or something, cause she just wanted a quick response.

00:20:28.220 --> 00:20:31.683
So we'd need to help her and we would actually tell her what to say back to her prospects.

00:20:31.835 --> 00:20:36.558
We saw their response, we saw her response, um, and so I had that name just kind of teed up.

00:20:36.838 --> 00:20:48.452
But the main idea, the first idea that I had behind reply assist, was not just to have the automated outreach but to help these advisors come up with the response for how to respond, because people don't know how to lead the conversation forward.

00:20:48.452 --> 00:21:05.000
That's actually why it's cool that I was thinking about it and what I wasn't going to say we actually in our inbox we have a generate reply button that when a user clicks it, it creates a personalized and relevant message to send to the prospect, and that's something that is a huge value add, at least to the financial advisors.

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:25.704
That I've seen is because they don't even necessarily know what to say to the prospect, because prospecting online is different than like a phone call conversation, and so being able to click that button, even if they don't like the reply, they can edit it, they can click it again to have a whole new reply, and so it's just a feature that, instead of having to think from scratch, there's guidance to build off of.

00:21:25.704 --> 00:21:26.890
So that's just what I kind of wanted to mention.

00:21:26.910 --> 00:21:39.003
Yeah, I absolutely love that, austin, and those are the real life tools that, whether you are a financial advisor, whether you're someone who's ever going to be fortunate enough to use reply assist or not, there are tools out there and Reply Assist is one great example of that.

00:21:39.104 --> 00:21:41.487
Obviously, chatgpt continues to evolve.

00:21:41.487 --> 00:21:52.501
There's so many things that it can do and the point is, whatever the tool is, there's AI generative powers that can help us in these things, and then when you tie it, you cannot replace the human strategy behind it.

00:21:52.501 --> 00:21:56.436
Ai is only as good as the inputs that humans have given it.

00:21:56.436 --> 00:22:05.102
So, austin, hearing your strategy and the way that your mind thinks on this really intentional level, I think is really powerful for all of us to implement in our own businesses.

00:22:05.102 --> 00:22:15.123
But I don't think we can have a conversation about cold outreach while not talking about an inevitability, rejection and the mindset that goes along with it.

00:22:15.123 --> 00:22:25.145
Austin, as someone who has done cold outreach in most of my businesses, I know the not so thankful and appreciative and not so kind replies that we all inevitably get.

00:22:25.145 --> 00:22:29.026
Talk to us about that, because it is an essential part of cold outreach.

00:22:30.096 --> 00:22:31.121
You're really good at what you do.

00:22:31.121 --> 00:22:31.501
You know that.

00:22:31.501 --> 00:22:40.234
So the first thing that comes to mind is that's another cool part about the cold outreach on social media.

00:22:40.234 --> 00:22:43.805
First thing that comes to mind is that's another cool part about the cold outreach on social media, since there are more people.

00:22:43.805 --> 00:22:48.079
If one person rejects you, you have plenty more people, okay, so that's just one thing to internalize and that helped me a lot.

00:22:48.079 --> 00:22:50.655
The second one that stands out a lot it's funny.

00:22:50.695 --> 00:22:54.753
I was, uh, back home last week in iowa and I think you mentioned about living in chicago.

00:22:54.753 --> 00:22:58.280
Anyways, I was going to show my mom a conversation.

00:22:58.280 --> 00:22:59.943
Uh, that got from a prospect too.

00:22:59.943 --> 00:23:02.249
Let's just say he was a bit beyond rude.

00:23:02.249 --> 00:23:04.121
Okay, so we'll just leave it at that.

00:23:04.121 --> 00:23:10.263
And obviously, even to this day, after how much sales marketing I've done, I'll just say sales specifically in prospecting.

00:23:10.664 --> 00:23:17.685
It still frustrates me sometimes, especially when you send a message trying to be considered Like it was actually from the message that I read off earlier and the guy just misread it.

00:23:17.685 --> 00:23:26.219
But the way to handle somebody who gives an objection is just to be understanding, because a lot of the time I used to do this a lot, and a lot of people still do.

00:23:26.219 --> 00:23:33.169
When you reach out to a prospect and they're closed off or they give you an objection, you don't win the battle by trying to debate with them.

00:23:33.169 --> 00:23:34.554
Debating doesn't work.

00:23:34.554 --> 00:23:39.487
What you need to do is you need to honestly, even if you don't feel like you need to apologize.

00:23:39.487 --> 00:23:48.368
You should apologize because clearly you struck a chord in some negative way, and then ask them a follow-up question and just be like you know.

00:23:48.388 --> 00:23:50.317
Clearly there was some misunderstanding, so how could I have done it better?

00:23:50.317 --> 00:23:52.567
And what would have been a better way to approach you?

00:23:52.567 --> 00:23:56.018
Because if you ask questions like that, typically it gets them to lower their guard.

00:23:56.018 --> 00:24:01.424
And then also, if you say you know, what could I have done better, take that and use it like a mirror.

00:24:01.424 --> 00:24:07.300
So if they say you know, maybe your message could have been shorter, then your messages going forward should be shorter.

00:24:07.300 --> 00:24:13.195
If they say you know I'm going to be honest, this just isn't the right time of year, okay, then set a follow up and follow up at a future date.

00:24:13.916 --> 00:24:22.675
I think a lot of salespeople would be surprised at how open a lot of prospects would be if they just listened to their prospects more Like.

00:24:22.675 --> 00:24:24.320
There's way too many, and I'll end on this point.

00:24:24.320 --> 00:24:26.500
There are way too many salespeople with their own agenda.

00:24:26.500 --> 00:24:28.147
That's not what sales is about.

00:24:28.147 --> 00:24:32.816
Like you get a lot of people getting into sales because they want to make a lot of money, but like you make a lot of money because you solve problems.

00:24:32.816 --> 00:24:36.702
If you actually help people get to where they want to be, not enough people get that at all.

00:24:37.304 --> 00:24:38.746
Yeah, I totally agree.

00:24:38.746 --> 00:24:42.318
And the other thing that I think they don't get is something that you just brought up.

00:24:42.318 --> 00:24:46.207
It's the powerful F word, and that is follow-ups.

00:24:46.207 --> 00:24:52.880
Austin, as much as we're talking about cold outreach today, one thing maybe that scares people even more is following up.

00:24:52.880 --> 00:24:57.398
I know that, especially in my early twenties, I always felt like just following up meant pestering.

00:24:57.398 --> 00:24:59.664
I didn't know that following up could be of service.

00:24:59.664 --> 00:25:00.988
So walk us through.

00:25:00.988 --> 00:25:02.981
What does following up actually look like?

00:25:03.683 --> 00:25:09.457
Yeah, I'll ask this first Following up manually or following up automated?

00:25:09.930 --> 00:25:11.517
Ooh, give us both Austin.

00:25:11.517 --> 00:25:12.855
Yeah, I want you to take us both of those.

00:25:12.855 --> 00:25:15.317
First let's go manual and then we'll go automated.

00:25:15.880 --> 00:25:19.278
Okay, if you're following up manually, it's more work.

00:25:19.278 --> 00:25:31.258
You got to take the person's contact information, like their first name, last name, their email, put it in your CRM, whether it's like HubSpot, salesforce, whatever and then you got to set the due date to follow up with them and have a reminder.

00:25:31.258 --> 00:25:38.318
The reason why you want to have that is, quite frankly, if you're prospecting on social media, you probably need to have a large enough pipeline that you can't remember the names of all your prospects.

00:25:38.318 --> 00:25:39.311
I'm not going to lie about that.

00:25:39.311 --> 00:25:43.836
That doesn't mean that you don't care about the people, but it means you want to have as strong of a pipeline as possible that you can manage.

00:25:43.836 --> 00:26:06.409
So, manually, you do that and then, once the due date comes up, you go craft the message, and what I always recommend is let's say it's on LinkedIn, just to stay consistent, if I have a prospect named Tom Smith just some random name and he says follow up in three months, today is May 14th, so that would be was that June, july, august, august 14th anyways.

00:26:06.409 --> 00:26:10.385
So on August 14th I would see the reminder in my email or wherever I get notified.

00:26:10.385 --> 00:26:22.362
I would go into LinkedIn, I would go into the conversation with Tom Smith and I would reread the past few messages as well as go to his profile, see if there've been any major changes and ask a relevant question based off that.

00:26:22.362 --> 00:26:29.772
Typically, if you're going to follow up, you want to get what's coming to mind right now is you want to get, like, the consent to follow up.

00:26:29.772 --> 00:26:37.675
So you want to make sure, even before setting the follow up date, I would say hey, tom, you know, obviously, like now doesn't seem to be the right time, do you mind if I follow up in three months?

00:26:37.675 --> 00:26:39.652
So I kind of skipped that bit, but I wanted to add that in there.

00:26:39.652 --> 00:26:41.798
So that's the manual side of it.

00:26:41.798 --> 00:26:43.261
Brian, any questions with that?

00:26:43.261 --> 00:26:54.013
Anything you feel like I've been leaving out?

00:26:54.013 --> 00:26:54.074
No, I'm loving that.

00:26:54.074 --> 00:26:55.384
I will consent in a little bit, but walk us through automated following up.

00:26:55.384 --> 00:26:56.326
Automated following up, that was actually funny enough.

00:26:56.326 --> 00:27:00.652
I'll keep this short because, again, I don't want to be sales pitch-like, but with reply assist, that was another need we saw in the marketplace.

00:27:00.751 --> 00:27:05.711
A lot of the lead generation softwares in existence, like what I've used, were aimed at getting the conversation started.

00:27:05.711 --> 00:27:10.859
But once the conversation was started, that's where the human had to take over respond to their messages, do their follow-ups, et cetera.

00:27:10.859 --> 00:27:20.617
And the problem is follow-ups are very tedious, time-consuming, boring and, quite frankly, a lot of the time you don't get anything out of follow-ups.

00:27:20.617 --> 00:27:27.230
Like, let's say that you reach out to a hundred people I don't know, maybe 50% will still never respond to you because they're not active on the platform.

00:27:27.230 --> 00:27:28.732
They just don't want to talk regardless.

00:27:28.732 --> 00:27:31.317
So a lot of advisors I've seen just don't do them.

00:27:31.376 --> 00:27:32.057
So I was like you know what?

00:27:32.057 --> 00:27:33.819
Why don't we just put that in the software?

00:27:33.819 --> 00:27:35.301
We just automate that whole process.

00:27:35.301 --> 00:27:43.136
And so it's where, if the uh, if the prospect is the last person to respond, there's not going to be any follows because our user needs to respond.

00:27:43.136 --> 00:27:54.605
But if our user is the last person to respond and the prospect didn't respond within like a week or two weeks or whatever you could set the cadence, then the follow-up is going to, or the the follow-up cadence is going to know to send a message based on that.

00:27:54.605 --> 00:28:00.895
So that's how you can automate it, because nobody in sales I'm sure that you could attest to this nobody in sales wants to do follow-ups.

00:28:00.895 --> 00:28:02.621
So that's the automated side of it.

00:28:03.109 --> 00:28:17.159
Yeah, I love that, and, Austin, I'm going to continue to put this huge disclaimer in today's episode is that obviously I'm a very big fan of cold outreach for many of the reasons that you've shared with us here today, especially because it is essentially an unlimited pool.

00:28:17.159 --> 00:28:25.480
It's so hard If you show up to work, if you're an entrepreneur, you sit behind your laptop in a coffee shop and you're thinking where's my next sale coming from?

00:28:25.480 --> 00:28:31.739
And you're only jogging through the people you've shaken hands with or you've exchanged business cards with at networking events.

00:28:31.739 --> 00:28:39.436
Not only is it going to be limited, but also you're going to get burned out, and I think that that is not scalable.

00:28:39.436 --> 00:28:39.617
For sure.

00:28:39.617 --> 00:28:40.961
It's not a really sustainable growth model.

00:28:41.001 --> 00:29:00.484
And so, austin, I want to say that disclaimer and then also add on to that is that a lot of people confuse cold outreach with spam, for example, and so much of what you're talking about today is being of service, and that's why we have been so excited to have you here on the show today, because it is such a great way of doing cold outreach and what you've built with reply assist.

00:29:00.505 --> 00:29:05.902
You've talked to us about a few features that really are built to be of service to the people that you're reaching out to.

00:29:05.902 --> 00:29:14.792
But even with all of that said, a lot of people are going to think well, is it legal for me to do this?

00:29:14.792 --> 00:29:17.565
I know GDPR scared so many people when the EU passed that a few years ago as everyone thought.

00:29:17.565 --> 00:29:20.733
I heard everyone say those three words email is dead.

00:29:20.733 --> 00:29:26.071
Everyone was convinced GDPR killed email, but obviously it's still going strong.

00:29:26.071 --> 00:29:33.951
Linkedin outreach, facebook outreach, outreach on every platform is still going strong, but you also navigate the complexities of the financial world.

00:29:33.951 --> 00:29:44.432
So, austin, give us some of those things and I know you're not a lawyer, but give us some of those considerations that can give people that freedom to realize that reaching out of service is a good thing.

00:29:45.596 --> 00:29:49.711
So one thing I would say is, yes, it's allowed to do, but that's a really good question.

00:29:49.711 --> 00:29:52.075
It's a legitimate fear that a lot of people have.

00:29:52.075 --> 00:29:58.230
Um, what I would say what stands out the most is whether it's on email or social media like linkedin.

00:29:58.230 --> 00:30:01.160
They definitely put limits on compared to what they had a few years ago.

00:30:01.160 --> 00:30:07.751
Like, even on linkedin you used to be able to send 100 invites per day roughly, and now you're able to send between 20 to 25.

00:30:07.751 --> 00:30:16.265
It was actually less and linkedin limited, or they, uh, became less strict, so it went from 100 to 20 and then back up to 25.

00:30:16.265 --> 00:30:19.936
So it's reducing it by a fourth, but I honestly think that was good.

00:30:20.250 --> 00:30:21.694
When it was happening, I was worried.

00:30:21.694 --> 00:30:24.736
As somebody who was in the lead generation space, I was like, uh-oh, what's going to happen.

00:30:24.736 --> 00:30:30.343
But what it did is it forced us all me especially to focus on quality over just quantity.

00:30:30.343 --> 00:30:32.252
You want to have both in your sales outreach.

00:30:32.252 --> 00:30:42.230
And then one thing to touch on, which I was going to touch on before, but I just forgot the way to not come across as spammy is to make it as personalized as possible.

00:30:42.230 --> 00:30:47.017
That's why you noticed in my connection request message I had the first name I mentioned, advisor.

00:30:47.017 --> 00:30:59.512
I try to mention the state because when you're personalized enough, it doesn't seem like automation, it seems like a person genuinely reaching out to want to know more, and so it's just that the problem with a lot of people in sales.

00:31:00.114 --> 00:31:04.482
I won't target any type of person specifically, but some people.

00:31:04.482 --> 00:31:08.461
Their messages are so awful and I'll see these and, brian, I'm sure you get plenty of them.

00:31:08.461 --> 00:31:14.300
You go in your email, especially like the spam folder, go figure, and it will say like five minute meeting, 15 minute meeting.

00:31:14.300 --> 00:31:16.375
Hey, can I grab a time on your calendar for X, y, z?

00:31:16.375 --> 00:31:17.984
And I'm like I don't know who you are.

00:31:17.984 --> 00:31:25.751
And especially when you're talking to a successful business person, they value their time the most and so you can't just reach out asking for something from somebody.

00:31:25.771 --> 00:31:29.876
You know that's one of those philosophies I like from Alex Hormozian.

00:31:29.876 --> 00:31:36.285
We could talk a lot on him, but he's a big fan of give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, get, so you don't even have to ask.

00:31:36.285 --> 00:31:46.923
Now, I don't typically get that far along in the process, but not enough salespeople lead with the approach of giving first and asking questions and trying to solve somebody's problem is a form of giving.

00:31:46.923 --> 00:31:52.598
You don't have to just give a lead magnet like give somebody your time, like how many people don't feel heard in today's cluttered world?

00:31:52.598 --> 00:31:54.682
So that's another thing that can help a lot as well.

00:31:55.303 --> 00:31:57.853
Yeah gosh, I love and appreciate those insights.

00:31:57.853 --> 00:32:08.872
Listeners, you can see why we've been so excited to have Austin here on the show, because this is a different and a better way of cold outreach that all of us can implement, and Austin shared with us.

00:32:08.872 --> 00:32:29.861
Some of those real logistical challenges on a platform like LinkedIn is that they will limit your messages and you just have to play to the rules of the game, figure out whatever game you want to play, figure out the rules and then maximize your chances of winning according to those rules, which Austin, as a former college athlete, you understand that better than most is that all of these things is a game.

00:32:29.861 --> 00:32:46.141
There's metrics that go along with it that serve as the scoreboard, there's strategies that we can use to win, and I love the fact that so much of it is baked into a product that you have put together to be of service to others, because you understand the game, you've played the game and I think that's such an important perspective to that.

00:32:46.141 --> 00:32:48.733
You did introduce us one part of the game.

00:32:48.794 --> 00:32:54.301
One of your tools that you bring to the game with you is you've already mentioned it a CRM and a lot of entrepreneurs.

00:32:54.301 --> 00:32:59.377
I constantly argue that it's the one tool every entrepreneur needs, and way too many don't have it.

00:32:59.377 --> 00:33:03.854
What does a CRM look like for people who have never worked inside of sales?

00:33:03.854 --> 00:33:05.679
What is a CRM, if there is?

00:33:05.679 --> 00:33:12.344
I actually don't know the answer to this, so I'm genuinely asking for my behalf as well Is there some sort of CRM baked into reply assist?

00:33:12.344 --> 00:33:15.796
And then, what sort of CRM solutions are out there for people?

00:33:18.792 --> 00:33:18.894
Man.

00:33:18.894 --> 00:33:22.915
First off, I'm in complete agreement with you the reason why it's so important.

00:33:22.915 --> 00:33:23.739
So I'll touch on this first.

00:33:23.739 --> 00:33:29.775
The reason why it's so important to have a CRM is because it's like a spine, it's like a backbone to your business.

00:33:29.775 --> 00:33:32.696
Without a CRM, everything's just disorganized like.

00:33:32.717 --> 00:33:37.271
I remember old clients who keep track of the prospects they need to follow up with literally in a notebook.

00:33:37.271 --> 00:33:44.337
I'm like god, you just like, because within a crm let's say you misspelled somebody's first name you could go edit the first name and then it's all good.

00:33:44.337 --> 00:33:45.220
Or their email address.

00:33:45.220 --> 00:33:52.063
They reach out to you like hey, I need to use this different email address so you can go update it because it's online, it's saved in the cloud, whatever, and a notebook.

00:33:52.063 --> 00:33:54.287
You'd have to cross it out, maybe start a new page, it's just.

00:33:54.287 --> 00:34:00.133
And then there's a bunch of things scribbled out in different colors and you got to flip through the pages and, honestly, the pen fades anyways you get the point.

00:34:00.133 --> 00:34:02.923
Um, so that's huge reason to use the crm.

00:34:03.744 --> 00:34:12.858
There are a lot of crms out there that they are very enterprise like I won't even say any companies, because I like them but for small businesses they're not necessarily the best.

00:34:12.858 --> 00:34:21.076
So you know one software I actually did like a lot because I used it in the past business, was Kajabi.

00:34:21.076 --> 00:34:27.811
It's not just a CRM, but what I liked about it, what they do so well, is it's all and I have no affiliation with it, by the way, but it's all in one.

00:34:27.811 --> 00:34:34.835
You can collect payments, you can have your website, you can have your email list, you can do coupons, you can create offers, you can have your membership there.

00:34:34.835 --> 00:34:37.077
It's all in one, and that's what a good CRM does.

00:34:37.077 --> 00:34:43.099
And so, to answer another question that you had, yes, repliasys does have a CRM baked in.

00:34:43.099 --> 00:34:52.824
We want to across, but I'm going to use replies as an example.

00:34:52.824 --> 00:34:58.248
So, when we were thinking about creating the software, we knew that you start with campaigns, which is what our.

00:34:58.248 --> 00:35:01.599
That's how the automated outreach starts through software like ours.

00:35:01.780 --> 00:35:09.016
Okay, then, once conversations start coming in, you want to save the prospect's contact information to your CRM, whether it's like reply, assist or another one.

00:35:09.016 --> 00:35:17.795
Now, now that contact information come in of the people who are actually accepting your invite and responding because those are people who are interested to some degree you want to keep them one consolidated spot.

00:35:17.795 --> 00:35:20.416
It's better to have their phone number and email.

00:35:20.416 --> 00:35:20.757
If you can.

00:35:20.757 --> 00:35:25.820
Not everybody puts on their LinkedIn profile, but then you have them all in one spot to reference later.

00:35:25.820 --> 00:35:37.240
And then, once you get a call scheduled, let's say that you have a deal section of your pipeline then scheduled.

00:35:37.240 --> 00:35:39.438
Let's say that you have a deal section of your pipeline, then you could go put intro call scheduled so you can organize the deals that are closer to getting closed.

00:35:39.387 --> 00:35:51.661
So in the last business this is when I really figured it out and so that's why I was so big on it within reply, assist is because as we start bringing on sales reps, all of our leads are in one spot, not just mine but any of our SDRs, sales development representative and then you have the CRM.

00:35:51.661 --> 00:35:56.818
So let's say that one of the SDRs leaves the business, we can take those as the contact owner.

00:35:56.818 --> 00:36:02.659
Let's say, tommy Smith now is the example we can reassign his contacts to myself or to another SDR.

00:36:02.659 --> 00:36:06.516
And then also all the deals that are in the pipeline are in the deals area.

00:36:06.516 --> 00:36:14.018
So we can see the leads that are not just the fresh ones that we started talking to maybe a couple months ago, but these are people who will close this month.

00:36:14.018 --> 00:36:18.125
So in terms of forecasting revenue and profit for the business.

00:36:18.125 --> 00:36:19.574
That's why I like having a CRM.

00:36:19.574 --> 00:36:25.222
I think I'm just, as I get more and more into business, I think I'm just going to be a bigger advocate of CRMs just because they are.

00:36:25.222 --> 00:36:26.971
I'd be lost without mine.

00:36:27.652 --> 00:36:39.882
Yeah, not only an advocate for CRMs, austin, but what I'm hearing and seeing in your own entrepreneurial journey is just how important your sales background really is to every single thing that you've done so far in your entrepreneurial career.

00:36:39.882 --> 00:36:47.291
And that's why Reply Assist is baked into all of that sales experience that you've had up to this point, because these are the essential ingredients.

00:36:47.291 --> 00:36:52.880
So, also, I just want to do a quick shout out to Travis Rosser, who is the founder of Kajabi, who has been on this show.

00:36:52.880 --> 00:37:00.902
So you say that you're not affiliated with him, but he is a near and dear friend of the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast, so very cool that that software is a great example.

00:37:00.902 --> 00:37:04.057
So I appreciate you sharing that real life example of a software.

00:37:04.117 --> 00:37:06.202
And, austin, I do want to transition.

00:37:06.202 --> 00:37:16.105
I knew we'd be short of time here today, but I want to talk to you entrepreneur to entrepreneur, not just as the subject matter expert, because you did share here at the top of this episode about how it's been a bit frustrating.

00:37:16.105 --> 00:37:20.246
You are not a technical founder and you've been working on an incredible software.

00:37:20.246 --> 00:37:22.416
What's been the most eyeopening experience?

00:37:22.416 --> 00:37:30.061
Cause you're walking into it as, yes, an experienced entrepreneur, but now you're a tech entrepreneur, austin, what surprised you about that journey?

00:37:32.471 --> 00:37:33.554
God, you and your questions.

00:37:33.554 --> 00:37:36.996
You should be good at this, but I'm still just surprised at how good you are.

00:37:36.996 --> 00:37:49.498
I had to be humbled as a salesperson, because this is another thing Alex Hormozy talks about Sales doesn't matter as much as marketing and marketing doesn't matter as much as product.

00:37:49.498 --> 00:37:52.800
And that was one thing that I had to really shift my perspective.

00:37:52.800 --> 00:37:53.420
It was early on, I remember, and that was one thing that I had to really shift.

00:37:53.420 --> 00:37:53.922
My perspective was early on.

00:37:53.942 --> 00:37:58.646
I remember arguing with my CTO because I wanted to take some time to work on a lead magnet.

00:37:58.646 --> 00:38:00.938
And this was like over half a year ago.

00:38:00.938 --> 00:38:03.518
And he's like focus on the product.

00:38:03.518 --> 00:38:05.478
Why are you focusing on a lead magnet right now?

00:38:05.478 --> 00:38:06.896
Like we don't even have anything to sell?

00:38:06.896 --> 00:38:13.804
And it frustrated me at the time because that's what I knew and that's what a lot of entrepreneurs or a lot of people in general, they want to go towards, what they know.

00:38:13.804 --> 00:38:18.673
But what you know is why you're at where you're at right now and it's tough, especially me.

00:38:18.673 --> 00:38:19.597
I love certainty.

00:38:19.597 --> 00:38:26.163
So like, trust me, I actually don't think I'm like a true, true entrepreneur, not even as much as my CTO and co-founder.

00:38:26.163 --> 00:38:30.585
Like I'm more of an executive because I like the structure, but hey, you got to get there somehow.

00:38:30.585 --> 00:38:40.128
So, anyways, it's just a process that as an entrepreneur, you constantly have to learn and grow new things, even when it's not what's comfortable.

00:38:40.128 --> 00:38:47.041
And that was the biggest takeaway that I had was to just focus on the product because, quite frankly, when the product's really good, it's easier to sell.

00:38:47.041 --> 00:39:02.650
You keep retention, it's easier to build a business, you can duplicate yourself, come up with sops, the standard operating procedures, and it was just it's just been a gradual perspective shift to just see how important it is to focus on the product rather than the sales and marketing actually.

00:39:02.769 --> 00:39:03.913
To finish up, one other point.

00:39:03.913 --> 00:39:11.840
Um, you know that's one thing I get frustrated with I actually made a linkedin post on this recently are the uh, you know it's funny entrepreneur podcast.

00:39:11.840 --> 00:39:13.672
You get a lot of people who just go out and sell.

00:39:13.672 --> 00:39:16.518
You know, like courses, a lot of them have good intentions.

00:39:16.518 --> 00:39:38.030
If you are using a service to come up with a course and you're just trying to put a little few bits of knowledge, I don't know if it's the same as like creating a true product from scratch and that's coming from somebody who's had a course, somebody who's had a coaching business, and so it's just again I know I'm saying this like five times around focus on the product, and it's going to make everything so much easier.

00:39:38.820 --> 00:39:40.688
Yes, I couldn't agree more.

00:39:40.688 --> 00:39:52.251
And, austin, we have so many overlaps in our entrepreneurial backgrounds because, similar to you, I used to, once upon a time, I used to sell online courses, I used to do group coaching programs and all of those things were so near and dear to my heart.

00:39:52.251 --> 00:39:57.760
But my question was how much am I enabling people through content, whereas we need to actually serve people?

00:39:57.760 --> 00:40:00.061
So huge kudos to you, holy cow.

00:40:00.061 --> 00:40:05.686
I have so many friends and guests of this show who have gone on to grow incredible software companies.

00:40:05.826 --> 00:40:11.009
Austin, I know how much work goes into it and you have attacked that with such vigor and resilience.

00:40:11.009 --> 00:40:16.193
But I think behind all of that is really that entrepreneurial mindset that has been on display for us here today.

00:40:16.193 --> 00:40:17.313
So huge kudos to you.

00:40:17.313 --> 00:40:18.514
I love seeing that progress.

00:40:18.514 --> 00:40:25.579
And with all of that in mind, the last question that I love to ask guests on these episodes is what's the one takeaway?

00:40:25.579 --> 00:40:27.320
You can take this any direction you want.

00:40:27.320 --> 00:40:42.686
We covered so many important things for all business owners and entrepreneurs to think about in today's episode, but you also bring with you seven years of entrepreneurial background, so I'm personally excited to see what that one takeaway, or that one piece of advice is that you want to leave us with here today.

00:40:45.110 --> 00:41:04.655
I'm probably only saying this because it's so relevant and actually happened within the past couple of days, but a lot of people in entrepreneurship think about consuming more, reading more books, taking more courses, and that's good, but at a certain point you know most of what you need to know.

00:41:04.655 --> 00:41:05.722
You don't know everything.

00:41:05.722 --> 00:41:08.170
You never do, and I realized I know less than I used to think.

00:41:08.170 --> 00:41:15.554
That's just humility, but you have to become very stringent with your boundaries and with your time.

00:41:15.554 --> 00:41:25.083
There could be people who you love being around friends, family, whatever who you enjoy them as a person, but they're taken away from time in business.

00:41:25.083 --> 00:41:29.945
Or you have other distraction hobbies, like, let's say, people play a lot of video games or they go drink on the weekend all the time.

00:41:30.648 --> 00:41:38.623
As an entrepreneur, if you want to be successful, you have to take a hard look in the mirror and be able to let's call it sacrifice those things that you like for what you want the most.

00:41:38.664 --> 00:41:55.141
I know that's kind of cliche, but it's a really tough decision and I've had to go through more and more of them over the years, whether it's letting go of money to be able to make more money right, like investing in a course or investing in marketing or something like that, but you have to be able to let go, and that's something that I don't think enough people grasp.

00:41:55.141 --> 00:42:19.351
Everybody wants to cling on to the life that they have now, but that's what's preventing you from getting to your next life, and I want to just say that from somebody who, like any true entrepreneur, has had to deal with that a lot, and they have to continue to deal with it, and so we're telling you to do that, and, obviously, anybody who's listening I'm sure a lot of people are successful themselves who are listening but, like you, gotta let go of that and, um, once you do, it's going to free up room and space for you to continue to grow more.

00:42:20.132 --> 00:42:21.054
Yes, gosh.

00:42:21.054 --> 00:42:22.978
So well said, austin.

00:42:22.978 --> 00:42:25.846
I ask that question at the end of every single episode.

00:42:25.846 --> 00:42:35.764
That is one of my favorite answers to that question of all time, because this is the real stuff that I don't think people talk about often enough, and I so appreciate your the real.

00:42:35.764 --> 00:42:40.762
I mean the emphasis that you put on the fact that another online course isn't going to rescue you.

00:42:40.762 --> 00:42:42.286
It's not going to be that one breakthrough.

00:42:42.286 --> 00:42:49.166
This is the real stuff, austin, that you've come here and shared with us today, and I'm so excited for listeners to go deeper into the work that you do.

00:42:49.166 --> 00:42:50.987
We actually did come across you on LinkedIn.

00:42:50.987 --> 00:43:00.788
Our team was so excited to reach out to you and invite you to come on the show today, and you have been such a wealth of knowledge, so I know listeners will want to go deeper into the world of all the great things you're building with Reply Assist.

00:43:00.788 --> 00:43:02.489
So drop those links on us.

00:43:02.489 --> 00:43:03.992
Where should listeners go from here?

00:43:04.893 --> 00:43:05.855
Super easy to find.

00:43:05.855 --> 00:43:15.606
So for Reply Assist, wwwreplyassistcom, you can find us on LinkedIn, instagram and then, if you ever want to see anything for me personally, just look up Austin McCullough.

00:43:15.606 --> 00:43:22.769
I think the name is going to be in the show notes, but we just keep it pretty straightforward because I know in terms of SEO, I want to keep it consistent, so you'll be able to find us.

00:43:23.269 --> 00:43:25.112
Yes, listeners, you already know the drill.

00:43:25.112 --> 00:43:32.927
As Austin alluded to, we are making it as easy as possible for you to go and find all of Austin's relevant links, including replyassistcom.

00:43:32.927 --> 00:43:35.157
Super easy, that's replyassistcom.

00:43:35.157 --> 00:43:39.585
All those links are going to be down below in the show notes, wherever it is that you're tuning into today's episode.

00:43:39.585 --> 00:43:44.650
So, austin, on behalf of myself and all the listeners worldwide, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

00:43:45.813 --> 00:43:47.054
Thank you, brian, I appreciate you.

00:43:52.320 --> 00:43:55.034
Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

00:43:55.034 --> 00:43:57.862
If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

00:43:57.862 --> 00:44:07.088
Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at thewantrepreneurshowcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

00:44:07.088 --> 00:44:15.847
There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

00:44:15.960 --> 00:44:17.907
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00:44:17.907 --> 00:44:19.505
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00:44:19.505 --> 00:44:23.010
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00:44:23.010 --> 00:44:33.972
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00:44:33.972 --> 00:44:42.452
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00:44:42.452 --> 00:44:43.786
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00:44:43.786 --> 00:44:48.429
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00:44:48.429 --> 00:44:49.813
Initiate a live chat.

00:44:49.813 --> 00:44:59.253
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