Joshua Chin 6:16
What’s it? What’s the weirdest character that you’ve met?
Eddie Maalouf 6:20
With this character?
Joshua Chin 6:22
I’d like person Yeah. If you remember anything that stands out like
Eddie Maalouf 6:31
those the weirdest person that I’ve met
Joshua Chin 6:35
so many people
Eddie Maalouf 6:39
do I need to give a name don’t
Joshua Chin 6:41
just you don’t have a person? I mean, in your in your university life?
Eddie Maalouf 6:46
Oh, am I university life? Oh my gosh, I met so many weird people. Dude. Look, I’ll tell you what, what I found very often in university people, which now I look back and think is weird Back then I thought it was like cool. I met a lot of people in university, especially who like, have to overcompensate their confidence and their ego in a certain way, because they don’t feel that self confidence. So that’s kind of like a weird person, weird character that I met very often in college, it was hundreds of different people. It was usually like fraternity guys that are super loud and over the top. But it’s funny. Now I see these people, you know, five, six years later, and I look back and they’re like a completely different person. They’re not that person anymore. They realized how weird that individual was. I don’t know. Besides that, I guess I haven’t met any, like super weird people that I think of because I kind of like forget about them
Joshua Chin 7:35
make sense? Makes sense. It’s funny. Yeah. To some degree, we kind of shape our identity and a personality, your own the people around us. And the context of where we’re at, I guess in a frat house, you probably going to be in a certain way. Maybe because everyone else is in a certain way. But obviously that’s that’s something I’ve never experienced in my, in my university, out here in Singapore. Say,
Eddie Maalouf 8:04
yeah, so you didn’t meet anywhere people there.
Joshua Chin 8:06
Yeah, definitely. We don’t have to the frat culture that that you guys have. We don’t have frat houses. I don’t think in the in the way that you guys have it. So it’s weird. For sure. Yeah. So.
Eddie Maalouf 8:19
So you asked me what the weirdest person I met. So what’s your weirdest person that you’ve met? It’s a very interesting question. Because you don’t really Yeah.
Joshua Chin 8:27
And I think it’s like, the these are the questions that we often don’t think about. And it kind of tells me a little bit about what how you think. And this the, the places where you place your attention on? And in. Alright, is a tangent, but I think it’s related. That’s probably going to answer your question. In, in my conversations with, with friends who are not in business, we’re not running your company, not running a startup. The conversations often go to what someone else has done, what someone else is doing, and how someone else is. And that’s a big reason why you struggle with that question. When I asked you that, because you don’t think about these things. You think about what’s next for you, and your business? And how do you then empower people around you to level up and move into the next stage of their lives? Versus how someone is, if that makes sense? I think that’s a makes a lot of sense. I think that’s that’s a big difference in terms of the the mindset that differentiates someone who is in business and running a company versus someone who is not.
Eddie Maalouf 9:47
But even though take it further, you know, there are people who run their companies who are looking outward rather than inward all the time, you know, that could also reflect on their character. I know a lot of people who run companies who always look at other people people on what they have and what they don’t have and get on. I mean, rather than being focused on what they’re focused on what’s around them. So, I mean, it could take, it’s not necessarily just a business owner thing. There are business owners, I guess that would probably answer Oh, dude, I got a long list of weird people that I know. You don’t I mean, it kind of because that’s where the phrase is that make sense?
Joshua Chin 10:20
fairly true. fairly true. Um, Lifetime Fitness. How do you you know, in that that job, and how do you end up crushing? Every single sales rep in the in the company? In America? You’re, you’re there for six months? Eight months?
Eddie Maalouf 10:36
Yeah, I was there a total of six months? Yeah, six months, March, April, May, June, July, August, six months. And so here’s how I crushed it. So, one, I think naturally, I’ve always been a salesperson in my life, I’ve always been a good communicator, right? You don’t you’re not an introvert if you go and knock on every door for nine floors and random people at college. Yeah, so that and by the way, if someone’s listening, and they’re in university or going to university soon, I highly recommend this. It’s really uncomfortable. It’s really weird. Other people think you’re really weird sometimes. But quite frankly, develops a character that no one can touch. Dude, I can go toe to toe with anyone and in most conversations, settings, or networking settings, because I’m not afraid, like in my pint prime peak of ego, as a 19 year old kid, you know, where everyone’s showing off, and I was trying to look good and get the best girls. I was willing to do that. And so it breaks down your ego a lot and allows you to deal with rejection and just situations in general, I highly recommend it for people but Lifetime Fitness, I basically had those characteristics already. And here’s the situation, by the way, just to kind of wrap up my earlier story of entrepreneurship. My dad, I never even understood working for other people. By the way. The only reason I worked at Lifetime was because I actually started a company overseas. In Lebanon, I got basically the top 10 revenue, supplement companies in the US to give me an exclusive license, I was only like 18 years old, to sell their products exclusively. And all of the Middle East, no one else could compete. And I had the license to all their products for a few years. And in the time that I was getting certificates worked out to import products. I had to find a job. And I figured I was good at sales. And I could you know, I’m already in fitness, I’m learning about supplements, pre workouts, proteins, protein bars, like I’m in that space, let me just get into that space, where it’s a position. And this is something important. And I think it says a lot about the people that say something like this. But when I was in that position, I knew I wasn’t going to work somewhere for like, two years I knew was going to be temporary. And so I wanted to work somewhere that I knew it wouldn’t hurt to leave them. Right. You know what I mean? Like gym sales jobs. These guys change all the time. You don’t I mean, it’s nothing new to them, but me going and like investing six months into a marketing firm and really becoming a big part of the business. And then leaving would like really hurt the company. It’s a dick move. Exactly. And so I knew this from the start. And so I treated it as such, um, that being said, you know, I went into lifetime, this is a cool story. We went to training, they, they have a very good onboarding system. This is something I learned and it’s something I talked about in agency founders is like onboarding talent. For you to be a salesperson at lifetime. Not only do you have to pass interviews, but you have to train in the club paid for like, two, three weeks, sometimes a month. And then they fly you to Minnesota, their HQ with like 50 other people that are trying to sign up to be a salesperson. And they put you through rigorous testing for a week. I mean, dude, like, half the class failed and got sent home. It’s like, actually pretty serious. And I was like, Whoa, this is intense. I didn’t expect this. Like if you showed up to a 530 workout class. 531 They sent you home on a flight. Wow. Yeah, it was insane. Yeah, so I was like, Yo, this is it kind of got me motivated to I was like, Yo, this is a sick company. Like, we’re about to like, only have all stars on the team. So came back, there was two to three days left of the month, and the team was way behind quota. And I just looking at the team, I spent a month with them. At this point, I just knew I was the best sales guy. And I was like, and you know, I’m the youngest by far by like a 10 year margin at least. I’m the youngest guy. Everyone’s in the early 30s. And up I’m like 2221 I’m little shit compared to them. And I was like, I was telling the manager, I was like, Yo, let me take in the hot leads. Like the ones that walk in are the ones that call those are hot leads. I’m like, yo, let me get some. And I’ll close and we’ll hit quota and he’s like, No, you can’t because your month doesn’t start till March, which is in three days. So you can’t actually get their leads. You’re still a train, okay? I’m like, Okay, can I call old leads? that no one has talked to in a long time. And he’s like, Sure, go for it. So I locked myself in an office and I just picked up the phone, calling old people that have never responded to yours. And I closed more memberships and the rest of the team combined and they hit quota. And from that moment on, I was like, it clicked in my head. I was like, Dude, I can, I can just dominate this, if I can do this with people who don’t want to sign up and answer us. Imagine people who want to sign up and walk through the door call. And so I approached that job for six months with that mentality, I always had the most phone calls, I always had the most emails, I always had the most text messages sent.
And I did things effectively across the board. I think that’s important, especially starting a business. Lead Management is like such an important thing that everyone neglects. And really the thing that made me better, obviously, my sales skills played a big part in this. But it wouldn’t have been what it was, without the hard work and organization of my CRM, like I knew every day, all I had to do is log in. And at 8am, my computer would tell me the 65 people that I needed to follow up with today, you know what I mean? I didn’t leave it up to my memory to chance to anything, I would just always put a follow up tasks on each person, and I would clear them every single day. And over time, you know, I just had people lining up at the door to sign up with Eddie, there’d be like, I’d have to tell my friends to sign up my memberships for me because so many people are on the door. And it was just this compounding effect of you tell your friends you tell your friends you tell your friends and constantly outreaching right people. That’s a big key in sales. I think everyone always looks for like the hacks and the tactics and you know, the closing statements and things like that. But in reality, it’s I think
Joshua Chin 16:43
it’s the follow up and the consistency of the of the follow ups. 100% What do you think, like, Look looking back at, at your your experience, and kind of carrying it forward into into your agency today. And your many businesses, you have to you have to hustle, you have the the talent. But at the same time, you had the right opportunities that were that were a perfect fit for your talent and your hustle. Have you and now you’re in a position where you’re able to say no to a lot of things. And you probably get opportunities come by your desk every single day. How do you identify things to say yes to and things to say no to? What’s your decision making criteria?
Eddie Maalouf 17:37
Have you ever seen that chart? That’s like time money?
Joshua Chin 17:40
No, remind me what saying that? Okay, cool.
Eddie Maalouf 17:43
So it’s essentially a four way chart. There’s four quadrants. And it’s like, how much? How much time and money? Is this going to cost? And then the third quadrant? third column is essentially, how much return is this going to bring me and so I make all my decisions based on that. low amount of time, low amount of money, high amount of return potential, I’ll take that offer. low amount of time, high amount of money, I don’t want it low amount of money, high amount of time, I don’t want it all I view those as distractions. So sorry, it needs to register as low time low money for me to take it on right now, in the position that I’m at currently, right, you don’t have any
Joshua Chin 18:26
money, you mean like the money that’s that’s involved in making that happen? Like the resources required?
Eddie Maalouf 18:32
Exactly. So if I have to put its perspective to everyone, right, if I have to put $50,000 to start something, I’ll do it. If I have to put $300,000 to start something, I’m probably gonna hesitate on it. So that being said, I built a software and it took me, you know, $250,000, to get to a point where I could sell it. So, again, that was really low time and what I thought was really low money. But over the course of two years developing, it ended up being a lot of money and really low time. So it’s looking back, it’s probably something I wouldn’t have taken, I would have just saved 250 grand to invest in my current businesses that I have, just because it ended up being a distraction, because of the financial distraction, it makes
Joshua Chin 19:16
sense. returns now we talk about returns, I tell him about returns for your business, or returns in general, just pure ROI.
Eddie Maalouf 19:28
Pure ROI. So it doesn’t necessarily need to be on adspend doesn’t need to be even on the money just yet. Sometimes there’s like a net ROI that isn’t essential. Like, you know, us owning marketing agencies. There’s a financial ROI. But then there’s also the ROI of I can start whatever business I want. And I can pretty much take care of 90% of the payroll that I’m going to need for that business without adding any payroll to that business. I can just start something from scratch. Have the emails done, have the content done Have the website done, have the ads done. And as long as I have a sales guy and a customer support person, I can start some sort of company off the ground. That’s an ROI. You can’t really measure financially all the time makes it you don’t I mean, even getting equity offers for people to just give you half their company because you have these resources. That’s
Joshua Chin 20:20
exactly and now talk to me about your your content strategy, I think that you have one of the most impressive content, production, consistencies and quality in the game, for any marketing agencies come across. For you guys listening, if you haven’t checked out 4Media, Marketing for me is one word and in marketing, on YouTube, you’re definitely missing out a so much so much good content out there. I’m just gonna break it down quickly. You have three different shows. Podcast being one of them. That’s 4Media Uncut podcast, you got click or scroll where you and Andrew Reiner review actual social media ads based on creativity, copy, relevance, the performance of it and all that stuff, the agency, which is kind of like a parody of the office, which is an actual, kind of like a reality show of your agency in the actual office that you guys operate from. Now, number one, my first question is, what is the how do you what’s the thought process behind doing all these things, because it’s a lot of work that’s involved.
Eddie Maalouf 21:44
So a lot of money to that some people don’t realize, we probably spend between payroll and resources, probably about 40 grand a month, making content for ourselves, which is super expensive. It’s brutal, actually. And we’re still even figuring out how to streamline and just be better, we brought another person on the team. So that kind of adds to the total cost. That being said, Here’s my logic, okay. I believe, Josh, you know, I believe you’re the same way. We have found as entrepreneurs, we know how to make money. If the world shifted today, in six months, we’d be okay. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow may not be next month. But in six months, if we have six months of life savings to live off of I think in six months, no matter what we’ll be finding a weekend make money. So that’s one thing we’ve solved right is just how to make money, especially with the internet. Now, that being said, there’s one thing that’s, that’s becoming more valuable, and dollars are becoming less value. And it’s this chart of attention. And I draw this in a lot of my presentations, I put the amount of content made online daily over the last like five years, and moving forward. And it’s like this exponential scale. So it starts and then it goes up, right. And so it goes up faster, faster, faster. And every day, people are making more content as a collective whole of the world, and more content is going online. But every day, we all have the same, you know, three to four hours to fuck around and watch something that’s not that’s, that’s not relevant to our work, you know, like Netflix, social media, whatever it is, attention is the same contents getting more and more and more attention saying the same. Therefore, your attention is becoming so much more valuable because there’s so much more content to watch. And so I look at it as minutes, not as engagements. If someone can watch my podcast for two hours and spend two hours of their time with me, that is so much more valuable than 100 Instagram posts. Do you get them saying that is like another level of a relationship that’s built with that person? And so I said, Listen, I’m going all in on this organic content game. I want to make a library of the best content. I want people who want to laugh to laugh. I want people who want to learn to learn, and I want everything in between. And so we’ve made it a commitment and we’ve made it a financial obligation. Like we’re literally spending money every month on this we have to pump out stuff, or people are getting fired because we’re just wasting money for nothing. That being said, Josh, it is the hardest thing in the entire company is the internal I’ve no
Joshua Chin 24:29
doubt. I’ve no doubt man. When you you know, in your in your, in your board meeting or in your leadership teams meeting. How do you? How do you think about the financial returns? We talked about that the returns time and money that’s involved? This being one of them. I’m presuming that the returns that you’re expecting from this project has to be incredibly high for us to be willing to spend 40 grand a month on a project like this, what’s that return that you’re looking for?
Eddie Maalouf 25:08
I’m looking and here’s what I tell my team all the time, like, no matter how much money we make, no matter all of that, when we’ve really made it is when everyone that we talked to, has heard our name, or has said our name in some capacity for media marketing. And so I’m trying to get to the point. And this is a long play here at the end of the day, is where I want to be omnipresent to the point where everyone knows who we are, I don’t care if it’s even an ecommerce brand or not. I want you to be like hanging out at a coffee shop, talking to like your mom’s friend. And she goes, Oh, I love that thing I saw from for media. You don’t I mean, that’s, that’s where I want to get to as a company, I want to get to that point. Because I truly believe when you’re at that point, you’re you’re untouchable, you know, you have that much reputation, that much name, you don’t even need to do anything anymore, you’ll have to just turn people away every day for the next few years. Just from that organic standpoint, and here’s the thing, it’s very hard to catch up with time, you can catch up with money, you can catch up with your quantity of content, but you can’t catch up with time. So if I just started this two years ago, and then you know, Josh’s team decides to start it two years later, there’s two years I got on Josh, that that are just such a gap that it’s hard to cover. It’s not like you can spend your ads,
Joshua Chin 26:31
that’s the thing catch on 10. The earlier you’re you’re starting out, the bigger your advantage becomes. And I think people don’t realize that it’s not just about the money that you’re spending, that’s already a massive barrier, you’re adding to the competition, but also how much more content and how consistent and how early on you are and producing that content. One of the toughest things that I personally find, then it’s just a personal bias type of thing is how long the payback period is, in terms of an investment like like this, it’s going to take months, years before seeing, like a substantial investment that covers for the cost of the production of content. Is there. But you know, in the interim period, like over the months and over, like the number of videos that you guys have made? Have you seen any sort of return client acquisition, which are hiring?
Eddie Maalouf 27:38
What has paid off? Biggest payoffs is HR already. People really want to work for us, like, just this week, I had a guy move from another state, literally move his entire life, his girlfriend is still in the other state. He moved, he drove all the way down with this stuff. And he started working here, he got a new apartment, he got everything just to work here. I guarantee if we weren’t posting content that would have never been seen. And yeah, right. It’s crazy. And it’s not only the case, me posting content, I had someone from another country fly in so that we can have a serious discussion about acquiring their agency. They do very well they do seven figures a year. And that would have never happened if we never posted a content because he knew me content. And so there’s like so many intangibles. But on the client side, dude, I get on so many. It’s nothing feels better, I promise you, then getting on an onboarding call with someone or a sales call. And they go Yeah, I’ve seen every one of your podcasts. I’m like, dude, like, What is he saying this guy? You don’t? I mean, I don’t even need to say anything. I’m like, what what do you want to do with us in the content? I mean, let’s get started. So that’s, that’s, I mean, I’m already seeing that. But I want to see it at scale. Right now how I’m viewing it is if I have the best looking Instagram, the best looking YouTube with great content, which this year education is going to be a big part of that I’m posting a lot more educational content this year is part of the game plan. But if I’m if I have the best looking stuff, and I’m going toe to toe with four other marketing agencies that I don’t know, and that owners making decision on all our agreements, fairly similar. I’m going to win, because they’re going to look and be like, who should we trust with our direct to consumer products? This brand who posts really fire videos all the time and images, or this brand who just posted graphics from Canva with cool tips about yours? Yeah, you don’t I mean, yeah, and so that’s the advantage that it gets the more we spend on ads, the more advantageous our organic content because it was
Joshua Chin 29:48
for media mean, never asked you that little towns in Atlanta. Yeah.
Eddie Maalouf 29:53
Or like why it’s for media. Why is crowded?
Joshua Chin 29:57
It’s a Do you want to The real reason or the story that I tell people, no one you make them. Yeah. What’s the real one? What’s right. So Chronos, that’s the Greek titan of time, right? The guy that controls time, controls the flow of time specifically, in, in my opinion, the true wealth comes from freedom of time, just being able to control and decide what you want to do is eliminate amount of time that you have. And that’s kind of how I view ourselves in relation to the work that we do our clients. We’re essentially giving them back time, and money, right. And we’re trying to do the same with our team as well. We have a massive remote company, massive remote team. Massive, way too big, right? It’s like, one of the biggest things that I try to create in, in our culture is to create time and the opportunity that people may not have outside of Chronos. And the whole thing is that people should want to come to Chronos to work because they can, not because they have to. And they should continue working in the company because they can because they have to. And that’s what Chronos represents. Now, the real reason I love it, no real reason. The real reason is that I went to a site. I’m not sure if it still still exists, but it’s it’s a random name generator dotnet. And I put in a couple of keywords I clicked. Yeah, I clicked on randomize a couple of times, and Kronus popped up with a K like, KR o n o s. I was like, that sounds cool. Let me make it a little bit different. Let me swap out the K for CH, CH R o n o s, like, alright, that’s my company name. And that’s,
Eddie Maalouf 32:02
yeah, that’s crazy. My story, the real story, is the lawyers on the phone. I’m in Lebanon. And this is when I wanted to create this company five years ago in the summer. And I’m on the call and the lawyers like, yeah, he’s in America. He’s like, Okay, well, we got to make an LLC. First. I’m like, okay, like, whatever, just make one. He’s like, Well, we have to put a name on the LLC. I’m like, does this name have to be my doing business as name? He goes, No, it doesn’t. But you know, ask me something. So I’m okay. Let me get back to you in an hour. So I took at the time who I thought would be all the founders. It was me Maalouf last name. My friend Musa. Last name. My friend. Magra last name. And my wife oneness. Last Name eventually, Maalouf. Yeah, 4am for media. So I was like, okay, cool. This looks cool. I can make a cool logo with a four and an M, for media marketing. And I never changed the name from there. And they never became the founders. And that’s the actual reality of the situation. But now it’s all full circled. And my entire C team is M last name. So it worked out.
Joshua Chin 33:18
For people with with last name, sorry, you
Eddie Maalouf 33:22
know, we’re already full on stuff. But it’s just it’s just like, that’s the actual story. I remember exactly where I was standing when I had the conversation. I just never bothered to change it. And I built such a name around it that I’m not, you know, I’m not I’m not going and
Joshua Chin 33:37
it’s so funny. Every single especially agencies, every single successful agency owner that there are even Mute six, I think has, like the name Mute six has absolutely no meaning to it based on as far as I understand. Is every single person I came across us like, yeah, it doesn’t mean anything. What is Chronos mean? I was like, Yeah, doesn’t that you wouldn’t want to know what
Eddie Maalouf 34:02
yeah, like, what is zoom in? I mean, exactly, yes.
Joshua Chin 34:05
I think people place too much of an emphasis on what, how important. Names are company names are that they just end up not getting stuck on the wrong things, placing their attention around things that don’t necessarily move the needle. Yeah, dude, great story. I want to ask you, what is the future of 4Media? And you mentioned acquisitions. What is an ideal acquisition target for you? And how do you think about the whole agency game so far?
Eddie Maalouf 34:40
Um, okay, so future for 4Media. It’s always been one of my goals, and I’m gonna do this and then, you know, bring me back on when I do just so I can say that. Basically, I’m trying to build like a fun factory warehouse, essentially where we work. That’s like another level of an office. I’m talking like an HQ. where people essentially want to like, literally come out of school and like apply to work for for media, like, that’s their dream. That’s where I’m trying to get to, I think I can get there in the next five years, and build something like absolutely insane that everyone’s like, Dude, this is like one of the coolest places to work in the world kind of thing. That’s where we want to go. Now, you mentioned the acquisition game side of things. So there’s two kinds of acquisitions that we’re focused on. One is ecommerce brands, and the other is an agency. And so with the agency, what I’m looking for is really good leadership. That’s like point number one, I even acquire an agency that didn’t have great numbers just because their leadership was good. And I completely turned them around in a month. And now they’re part of us. But essentially, what we’re doing is I’m going to other agencies, you know, let’s just say Josh’s agency is really good at email. But I’m also really good at ads and content. And essentially, what I’m doing is I’m going into these agencies. I know Nick Shackleford does something similar Tommy Patterson from weekend is something similar. And essentially, what I’m doing is I’m negotiating a deal to buy them out at their current rate that they’re at whatever the valuation is, I’ll buy out, you know, 70% of the business example 80% of the business sometimes, and then they will become 4Media company. So for example, for media Atlanta, and then we’ll have for media, London, we have foreign media, Vancouver, etc, etc. And the point is, I’m acquiring this leadership that has been in this industry for a few years, that has done the things that they need to do maybe not fully the right way to scale because they don’t have those resources, or they don’t understand those capabilities yet. Or maybe they just don’t have the name. And essentially, what I’m doing is instead of you know, Josh’s team, just doing email and SMS, now we’re doing ads for everyone. Now, we’re doing email for everyone, as well. And we’re also doing content for everyone, etc, etc. And so I can increase the valuation of that business increase of mine, because now we’re one company essentially merged. And most importantly, dude, from a content standpoint, right? That 40k a month gets lighter and lighter and lighter on want to have more and more and more locations, because now everyone’s benefiting from my 40k a month, not just me. And now everyone’s using the 4Media name, not you know, you’re not advertising as Kronos, you’re now advertising as for media, and so am I, and so as London and so as Vancouver, and just having the unified name allows us to get to that point that I’m trying to get to, which is everyone knows who we are much, much faster. And so essentially, I’m using this as a way to bring on really top talented people, they have to have, we have to have a mutual respect for each other. At the end of the day, you know, business owner or business owner, we both have to 100% believe that US merging in some way, shape or fashion will make us bones better. You don’t I mean, and those are the people that I look for, and it was so funny. Like, one guy was like, okay, dude, how about I exit the agency? And I just give you 100%? I don’t want 30. I don’t want 20. How can I give you 100? And I was like, dude, honestly, I don’t even care that I don’t even want your agency. I just want you. You don’t I mean, I don’t even want your agency like, like I obviously I do I want your clientele, I want the people that are on your team. But all of that is nothing without you, I just be buying nothing that’s gonna disintegrate, I need you to want to build it as well not just like, be here on a salary for a year and leave. So I’m trying to build a super team, essentially, I just find that that is probably the best way to
Joshua Chin 38:28
make sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Along along your journey, and you’ve been building agency, and businesses for a long time, though. Has there ever been any regrets? And I? I say regrets, but that’s a that’s a heavy Word. Let me let me rephrase that. If you could go back in time, right and change anything at all? Magic lawn? What would that thing be? I
Eddie Maalouf 39:01
wish well, first of all, I took I did what everyone tells you to do, which is invest your money. And I made a lot of money. But I also lost a lot of money. At the same time. I think I would have been more aggressive financial with my company rather than my investments. Over like the last couple years, I invested a ton into my businesses, but like, I also, you know, when my stocks were really high, I was like putting more into them to make more instead of putting more into my companies at that point. So I think just having a stronger cash reserve. Now we have, you know, maybe six months of business expenses in the bank, which took people like, oh, six months, it’s not a lot like six months and our monthly expenses is a lot. It’s a lot of money. Yeah. And so we’re okay on that. And I feel much safer and much more aggressive now because of it. But if there’s like one thing I could really just like Wish I Knew six years ago, it would be Systemising things and creating SOPs and checklists and actual rules that everyone needs to follow. I built up a lot of my dad’s companies had I just understood a little bit better. And I did I just never did it. You know, I was like, oh, we need the SMM like, Whatever had I just sat down and like, built out SOPs, standard operating procedures, understood what our KPIs were, and what’s over and what’s under, and just actually had a process for everything where I can just like, copy and paste new people into these roles. I think I would have absolutely blown up my parents company 100x What it is now, those were the pieces that were just missing, because we were a franchise and licensing model. And I just felt like we didn’t have those things in place. I think if I just sat down and like really understood how valuable they were, all my businesses moving forward would have required less of Eddie’s time. But because I didn’t have those things and really didn’t understand how important they were. And I wasn’t taught them right. If like, my father doesn’t know them, he’s not going to teach me them, I have to go seek that information myself. That’s definitely something I wish I could go back and like really understand the value of I know, Louis, your business partner loves that kind of stuff from what I understand. So I just wish I knew that like six years ago, I think would have been a game changer sense.
Joshua Chin 41:15
Make sense? percent I?
Eddie Maalouf 41:17
What about you, bro? What’s your biggest regret?
Joshua Chin 41:19
I’m very, very similar i for the first first three years and bearing in mind that this is my first job, right? So I have very little experience to draw from everything that we know today has been through conversations like this self, right? And now I wouldn’t say self thought taught or self self made.
Eddie Maalouf 41:43
I mean, use god i Sorry. I like someone taught you information you bought it or
Joshua Chin 41:49
exactly right. So a lot of the things that we know are just, but kind of as a result of that, that whole conversation around yeah, we have no experience. And just this is the first thing that we’re doing the first business first job, the first everything, we got to be a little bit more conservative. We can’t be too aggressive, we got to be. And that’s just, that’s just nonsense. That’s just bullshit talking. And I think that if we had the, the a little bit more confidence in ourselves earlier on, we would have been a little bit more aggressive with how we moved, how we executed and how invested our reserves into growth. Because a lot of the you know, a lot of times we have the option of do you go a little bit more aggressive, take more risks? And I’ve said no, because we want to move a little bit slower and make sure that things don’t break. And maybe it’s a good move. But But But yeah, I feel that on hindsight, I’ve been using the excuse of, I’m still young, I don’t have experience. And that whole identity is just made up. Like nobody knows what you’re doing. Right? You’re still figuring things out even at your stage at your level. But you have the conviction and your business and your skills, and who you are and your character that you will figure things out along the way. I think that’s that’s maturity. And that’s what that’s something that I lacked for a long time. And I think that held us back for a bit.
Eddie Maalouf 43:35
So what would you have done differently? I guess spend more on ads, like what what exactly would you have done to be more aggressive
Joshua Chin 43:41
fit, spend more on growth, especially with with hiring. That’s one of the one of the aspects that I I never like when I say hiring, I’m talking about hiring really high level talent that would be able to replace certain functions that I serve, for example, takeover. Revenue completely. That’s probably a bad idea. But takeover. Yeah, I mean, like to go to Finance. For instance, if we had hired our finance manager today, like a year or two back, we would be in a much different place today. So yeah, thinks things like that. I’ll tell
Eddie Maalouf 44:25
you finance manager is probably one of the most important things that we’ve hired. Game Changer. We have a full time CFO I know a lot of people at our size. Don’t use one they use like a part time CFO and then like a part time accounting. Full time CFO CFO has been a game changer. He allows the CEO to make way better decisions. And one of my friends Billy Gene. I went over to his office, spent a day with him and his team. And my main conclusion was I needed a CFO. That was like one of my biggest takeaways that’s like What I walked away with it. And next week, I asked one of my account managers who’s really good with numbers and finance, I was like, Hey, listen, I need you to make me a chart of our, our churn rates based on this, based on this, based on this, based on this, based on this, based on this, I gave him like six, seven filters. He’s like, cool, got it, let me figure it out. Next day came to me with a full PowerPoint presentation of the churn per salesperson per service per everything. And I completely I made like, six pivotal company decisions that day based on that data, and I made him the CFO as well. So just even having someone who’s just really good at these things, and has the time to fill out these numbers for you, I think is important, like even, um, here’s how far CFOs go. It’s not just finance, but like, you know, we we are now moving to a pod structure. And he basically, I basically, it was like, Hey, listen, I need to know. And do think about it, we have 50 team members working on these accounts, essentially, on the calm side. This is not including content team, I’m talking just like emails, ads on different platforms, copywriting. And I was like, Listen, I need you to find me the best possible scenario of us switching or pod structure who’s with who, so that the least amount of clients are changed between people who are working. And he went, and he built 315 person teams based on clientele. And there was only one client out of like, 60, that ended up not working with the same people that they were working with one out of 60. And it was a client that like, we barely have to talk to crazy. So like, you need someone who can just solve that problem based on inputs and excel and things like that, like that was such a relief off my head, we don’t have to figure it out. What are
Joshua Chin 46:50
some of the key skill sets that he had, that you felt this is just my CFO, this the guy,
Eddie Maalouf 46:59
um, finance background is important. I’ve noticed, and this is a very key factor, that he has prioritizes the company over himself financially. Like even when he gets to present what his bonus structure should be, I’ve seen him cut it in half, without anyone telling him to, because he ran the numbers. And it didn’t make sense for the company. Even though it wasn’t even that bad. It was just like, in his, he needs to be stingy for the company, but understand what his growth and what needs to be spent for growth. And I think the the main factor, because this is like a big deal, is he needs to have blind trust in the CEO, blind, like I need to my CFO is the stingiest guy, which is good. He’d stops us from spending money, I’m sure we all need. But I also can walk into his room and be like, Listen, I’m throwing an agency event in three months. I don’t care what it costs, as long as we don’t lose money. I promise you, we’re not going to lose money. I’m just not promising you, we’re gonna make any, I just want to the best thing in the world. And he goes, do it. Yeah, you don’t. I mean, instead of being like, well, we need to focus here, we need to focus. He’s like, I believe you do it, whatever money we need to spend, let’s do it. But let me draw up some budgets and show you what we should be spending so we don’t go over. Very interesting. So I think those are important factors, for sure. But Excel is everything. Like he needs to be like, you know, Excel master PhD level. Because that he can just solve any problem if he understands how to use Excel. It’s just an amazing calculator. You don’t I mean, with conditional formatting and colors and things like
Joshua Chin 48:43
and it sounds like he’s probably better at what he does, then then you ever can, or should.
Eddie Maalouf 48:51
Not even I can’t never get close, unless I sit there learning it, which is not the time
Joshua Chin 48:56
make sense. Makes sense. i My biggest takeaway from that is find someone who’s much better at what they do, then then you ever can be or should be, and put them in a position to succeed. And then screen for values and alignment and skill sets that you need to for them to succeed in that space. Exactly. Edie for people listening, what’s the number one advice that you have for for for people who may or may be a couple steps behind where you’re at right now? Whether they whether it be running an ecommerce brand or an agency trying to get to the level that you’re at what’s what’s your advice?
Eddie Maalouf 49:40
Make a team fast. So um, at the end of the day, I think back to our podcast together on my podcast, something you and Lewis did was you hired someone before you even should hire someone basically, you just like knew we need to hire someone to take this off our plate. And I think that’s thing, I think that’s the hardest decision to make as a business owner, I don’t think it’s even close, I was talking the other day with someone about it. And I was like, look at that first time that you have to hire someone is hard. But it’s even harder, because what’s gonna happen is you hire someone, they suck, or they leave or whatever the case is, that person is not going to be there. And then you have to make the decision to do with it. It’s like, that’s what’s hard. And I just want to encourage everyone on here, if you don’t have the money to hire someone, find a partner, so that you can both work without having to pay each other. I think having a partner is important, but to build a team as quickly as possible, you’re gonna make less money. It’s just a fact. But you need to always think ahead. And something I’m always doing is hiring ahead of time ahead of needing someone because I don’t want to be in a position where my team isn’t prepared to take what we’re trying to do. And just do it, dude, at the end of the day, if you have the team, if you have a partner, even if you’re doing it by yourself, like, there’s no reason you can’t do something, it just might take less or more time than you’re thinking. But whatever it is you want, you can get it done if Elon Musk can do what he’s doing, and he used to live in, you know, South Africa. And if Jeff Bezos can do what he’s doing, if these people can do what they’re doing, you can do what you want to do, which is like a million steps less than them. You don’t I mean, like that’s such an attainable and achievable thing. And just know more people in the world are doing it then you think don’t let the world fool you into thinking there’s not a lot of money or a lot of successful people. There’s way more than you think. They’re just not on all their they’re not all on social media and being loud about it. They’re mostly the quiet percent.
Joshua Chin 51:42
Eddie, thank you so much for your time. What is the best way to connect with you for people interested in learning more about 4Media, or even just have chat if you mark
Eddie Maalouf 51:52
my Instagram Eddie Maalouf, it’s Eddie Maalouf messaged me shoot me a DM tell me you heard me on this podcast. I’d love to connect with you guys. Anyone that is listening to Josh is definitely someone that I would love to connect with. And you know, this is a really good guy. Thank you would love to give you guys whatever rally awesome,
Joshua Chin 52:11
guys as usual. Links will be in the show notes. Go to Chronos.Agency/podcast for the latest episodes. And Eddie, thank you so much. Love chatting with you as always. And if you guys haven’t checked out Eddie’s podcast yet, the latest episode is out with me and my co founder, Louis. Oh, two and a half hours long episode. Crazy, crazy. Jam packed of value. Talk about things that we never talked about. If so, if you want to get to know me and my co founder Louis and his first time on a podcast, like ever, definitely go check out that episode. It’s on for 4Media Marketing YouTube channel, you will not miss it. I believe it’s called the title of that episode called owning a seven figure agency but living in dorms. Fun, very fun. Eddie, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.
Eddie Maalouf 53:09
Appreciate you man. Thank you so much Josh.
Outro 53:14
Thanks for listening to the eCommerce Profits Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get notified of future episodes.
