In episode 32 of Wake Up to Wealth, Brandon Brittingham interviews Drew Carrell, CEO at LeadZolo, as he discusses the challenges he faced in the early days, including the importance of focus, the value of being in the right rooms, and the critical lessons learned along the way.Tune in to gain insights into the intersection of retail management and investment strategies. SOCIAL MEDIA LINKSBrandon BrittinghamInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mailboxmoneyb/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brandon.brittingham.1/ Drew CarrellInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/drew_carrell/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewcarrell/WEBSITESBrandon Brittingham: https://www.brandonsbrain.org/homeLeadZolo: https://www.leadzolo.com/
Chapter 1: What challenges did Drew Carrell face in the early days?
This is Wake Up To Wealth, a podcast dedicated to helping you change the way you think about wealth. And now, here's your host, Brandon Brittingham.
Hey, what's up, everybody? We are back with another episode of Wake Up to Wealth. And today I've got my good friend Drew Carroll with us, who also happens to be a sponsor of the show. We appreciate your support of the podcast and we appreciate the support of everybody out there. We are consistently in the top five in the United States in investing.
We've hit one a few times and we usually are trending in that one to three spot. So we want to thank everybody out there for listening. Thank you to all the sponsors that have helped support the show. And 40 to 60,000 of you out there are listening to us every time we dropped an episode. So we really appreciate it. But hey, Drew, thank you for being here with us today.
Thanks for the opportunity, man. I really appreciate it. And it's absolutely my pleasure to sponsor such an awesome podcast. I've been listening to it a lot the last couple of weeks. So cool. Appreciate that, brother.
Hey, so question for you. So just tell us, like, if someone doesn't know, obviously, I know who you are. I know what you do. But, you know, give us kind of the 30,000 foot view of your background and then kind of what you do today, because it is pertinent to a lot of people that are listening that are investors out there.
Yeah. Yeah. Not to get, just to give you the 30,000, not to get too much into the backstory right now. I come from retail, plain and simple. I used to run grocery stores. A large part of running grocery stores is logistics, like keeping shelves full, believe it or not, is a very complicated process, especially in like fresh foods.
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Chapter 2: How did Drew transition from retail to media buying?
Like I was working in what would be the equivalent of Whole Foods up in Canada. So it was pretty intensive. And It wasn't long until I learned that what I loved was the data and making data-driven decisions. And that kind of brought me into this media buying world, which at the time I was completely ignorant of.
But once I started seeing ad accounts and seeing how companies were scaling with digital marketing and things like that, I just knew that that's where I needed to be. I was on fire. I remember watching the very first YouTube video. So... I transitioned out of retail into media buying.
And then, you know, we went through some different models and some struggles, ended up landing, discovering the real estate investing industry, which was funny to us because we thought that it was just a bunch of crooked realtors trying to like sell people's deeds to their houses.
But once we kind of learned what was going on there, it was very obvious to us the industry was kind of prehistoric in terms of how they were marketing and how they were scaling their companies. So we knew there was this huge opportunity to marry digital marketing with investors. And so that's what we did. And we passionately dove into that. We cut off everything else.
We had some other businesses at that time as well. We sold one. We shut down another. And we're like, this is where we got to go. We got to go deep. So we ended up, through some iterations, of course, landing on this paper lead model. So what we learned was real estate investors need to be real estate investors. And they need to be great at that and great at sales.
And they kept getting lost in the world of marketing. So our resolve to that was... Don't worry about landing pages. Don't worry about ad accounts. Don't worry about anything. We'll just connect through CRM. We will run nationwide advertising and we'll only give you the leads that you want in your area. And it's really just kicked off 2,500 clients later. We're, we're doing awesome.
We're having a lot of fun nationwide advertising. Like I said, we're cracking into TV now looking at radio for 2025. It's going to be, it's going to be a lot of fun.
So the company that you do now is focused on... What is that company called? And then that company is focused specifically on getting PPL for real estate investors, correct? Correct.
Yeah. So that company is called LeadZolo. And we are... 100% focused on highly motivated off-market leads for real estate investors. So all of our advertising is 100% would you like a cash offer on your home to sell it quicker rather than listed on the market? So that's the angle that we drive for.
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Chapter 3: What is LeadZolo and how does it serve real estate investors?
They would then host the webinars and then convert people off the back of it. And it was interesting. It's kind of a fad. I know people don't want to say that right now, but at the end of the day, like if you're following ClickFunnels and Russell Brunson, what he's doing is amazing and exciting, all these funnels and webinars and stuff, but it's super fatty. And when I say that, what I mean is,
it's really kind of hard to model a company who does that, who has done that for a long time with a lot of success, right? Like you and I could name the two big ones off the top of our heads, Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone. They're doing very well with the model, but even them, they're both kind of
new into it right so it's it's not proven but it's very exciting so when we're running this agency for people with webinar funnels what we found was there was a lot of longevity there was a lot of people looking for a quick buck they had products that really only kind of helped current trends and there was no like sustainability uh to these businesses so they're like coming and going and coming and going and for us it was like we want an industry that
is here. That's going to be around for a long time. I want to sit back like Bezos and go, I don't care what's going to change in the next 10 years. What is going to be true in the next 10 years? And so for us, real estate is going to be happening in 10 years. We know that. We know what's going to be happening in 20, 30, 50, 100 years.
It might look dramatically different as we learned with what's happened to realtors recently, but it's still going to be there. So for us, it was this, how do we churn out of what's kind of fun, but we could kind of see it tailing off into something that we could just focus on and build a legacy through. And so we knew real estate was the option for that. So when we started looking over here,
It was interesting for us to see, you know, we were talking to some people that we got introduced to that were doing multiple six figures a month. And we're asking them, like, how are you doing that? And they were like, I don't know, we pulled data. I got some kids in my basement that are cold calling people. I'm... I have my I have three girls in the apartment. This is a true story.
I have three girls in the apartment building. I put up like a sign in the mail room of their apartment building saying anybody who wants to make some extra cash, call the number. So they had three girls who were handwriting letters. Hey, I want to buy your house for cash. And then they were mailing them and like they were doing multiple six figures a month. And we were just like, holy shit.
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Chapter 4: What lessons did Drew learn about business culture?
Sorry, I don't know if I can say that.
No, you can listen. You can cuss on here. They're used to hearing me talk, so you're good.
Cool. Yeah, so for us, it was just like, holy shit. If these guys are able to find gold in the Yukon with sticks and rocks, imagine if we walked in and showed them what a bulldozer was or an actual shovel was. What are they going to be able to do then? And we were really ratified in our very first case study of the whole thing when we had an investor come to us.
Again, that was when I thought he was a crooked realtor, but that's besides the point. We ran a bunch of ads for him. We spent 20 grand. where it was coming to like the meeting with the client and we're just like, we're 20 grand in the hole. We'd only gotten like a hundred leads. So we were like, it was costing us 200 bucks a lead. And at the time it was crazy to us.
Cause we're getting like $4 leads for Tony Robbins webinar. Right. So we're just like, we sit down, like we figured this is the, you're getting your ass fired meeting. And the guy's just like, I made a quarter million dollars last month off the leads you guys sent me. Can we 10 exit this month? And we're just like, what is going on?
So that's when we knew like that, that was literally the moment I looked at my partner and I was like, we're stopping consulting immediately. We're going to sell the YouTube ad agency and we're going all in, like we're going all in. And that, and that was it.
Yeah. So that's a, that's a, that's a pretty good point you just made there. You know, that number one, that's a bold move of, Hey, we're going to stop doing other things and just focus on one thing. But that is, Do you think that part of your success has been that this has been like the maniacal focus of we stopped doing all the other shit and we're just going to focus on this one?
Yeah. I think to clarify. Yeah. It's not, I, we certainly didn't sell ad like that day. It took us a year. And, and honestly, our first like year with lead dollar, we didn't make a dollar. So like we're pulling salaries from this other agency.
So it was like, it was this moment like where we knew we needed out of it, but it was kind of paying the bills and like the 15 hours a week that we're putting into it. It doesn't sound like a lot, but absolutely it was a lot of energy. But it was that moment. I remember when we sold like, Um, we sold and then I was immediately fired by the new owner, which of course was kind of the point.
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Chapter 5: Why is maniacal focus important for success?
We didn't know how to like price it and hand it to people in the way they fucking wanted it. So even when we did overcharge, which we thought were overcharging, but we weren't.
people for it then their next question is okay cool can you just put this into my crm make sure my top closer gets the best leads my worst closer gets the worst leads and i was just like can you like what is the crm and so like so so so now we have to like go through and we had to navigate all this but we we knew like we're to the point where we're gonna have to take a loan from stripe because stripe was offering us like 250k or something at the moment um
uh, at that, at that time. And so we're just like, do we pull the two, like two 50, like with two 50, how many more leads can we generate? Do you think we'll have the system cracked by then? Um, but for us, it wasn't a, it wasn't a, if we'll crack it, it was a when. So we had that to hold onto. And we've been through the monotony of 10 years. My partner owned the company for 10 years.
I was only part of it for three, but he had 10 years. He was working on that company to get it to a million dollars a year. It had 30 employees, right? It was like a net of 4%, right? So like we knew that that's not what we wanted to do. But we knew that time and persistence would get us there. So we're willing to, I was willing to take a second mortgage on the house if I had to.
It was, we were so passionate about the possibility of what we could do.
Yeah, that's remarkable. It's it's this is the stuff that a lot of times when people look at, you know, you're sitting at 18 million in revenue and people just don't really know or understand or appreciate what it took to get there. You know, so I appreciate you breaking that down for us. Now, what do you think? So from going from one hundred thousand your first year, 18 million, your third.
There's probably all kinds of things you could say that got you there, but what do you think is one of the most important kind of lessons or things you did that you could say, Hey, this is, I can tie this to why I think we got here.
Sure. I'm going to just straight out be controversial. And that's fine. Bring, bring on the haters in the comments. We were too focused on VAs and cheap labor. That was our problem with our other agency. It was, how do we get an $800 Filipino or, whatever, right? Some cheap labor.
And not that like I'm against it and totally, we definitely have VAs now, but what we weren't looking at and what we weren't concerned about was what is the culture of our company? Do people want to be in our company? Because if people don't want to work in your company, nobody wants to work with your fucking company. And we'd lost that.
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Chapter 6: How did Drew achieve significant revenue growth?
And if you're looking at the long-term view of building a championship team, it's why if you look at the sports professional analogy, they go out and acquire a shit ton of talent and they pay them well, they pay the coaches well, they pay the staff well. Uh, that's how they win championships. And then the flip side of that is, uh, you could have all that.
And if you don't have the culture, no one's going to gel together. So, I'm actually glad that you said that because I do, you know, I have a lot of coaching clients and talk to a lot of different people in the entrepreneur world. And, you know, the just stick a V.A. on it to fix the problem, I think sometimes is not the smartest thing to do. And there's people that have mastered that.
Don't get me wrong, but it's very hard to build a culture virtually online. And it's also very hard to scale a company with just using VAs. You know what I mean? And I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of people will not admit that.
And, and I can check out, like I can check out for three months. And when I come back, revenue will be up. Conversions will be up. Like everything will be up. And I couldn't do that. If, even if I was talented enough to have a complete VA team and everything is systematized, I have to show up every morning to manage that. And, and, Maybe I got to hire a manager, but the manager's a VA.
And so I still got to manage that. It's like, no, I have people whose only filter is, is this in the company's best interest? If they can answer that question as a yes, they're allowed to make any decision. Our customer support team is allowed to make any decision up to $25,000 so long as they can answer a question yes to that.
And so because of it, I don't need to have an SOP if somebody says this. SOP if somebody says this. SOP if somebody says this. We have SOPs. But most of our SOPs are about, here's your box. go operate in your box. And what I want is people who just love to have autonomy with, with some guidelines.
Yeah. Yeah. So, and then you, you, you obviously felt, which I think a lot of people make this mistake too. You felt probably a year ago or maybe even sooner that you had to get that C-suite employee and you, you went out and actually pulled the trigger where that's where a lot of people get, get, get stuck too, is that
Um, they're afraid to hire, they hire for where they're at and not where they're going. And then they're afraid to pull the trigger to hire for where they're going. And it sounds like you guys did that right. Probably at the right time of you saw where you were going, but you hired for where you were going.
in retrospect, I'd want to say I wanted to do it sooner, but I never, we never would have because of the P&L, right? Like we just never had space to do it where we just kind of, we had a bit of space enough that we were like, all right, let's do this. And like, to your point, I remember talking to my business partner. I was actually in San Diego with Kent when we like made decisions.
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Chapter 7: What role does company culture play in business success?
And they're looking and they're listening for the wrong things where I think the point that you just made is where the real value is.
And I remember too, I remember talking with Billy Jean and this is really early in my career. And so I was like looking up to this man as an idol in marketing at the time. And now of course, and he said, he wanted to tell us all a story or whatever it was. He's like, I just paid 18 grand for a mastermind last weekend. It was 18 grand for the two days.
And he goes, the one person on my team goes, well, what do you get for 18 grand? And he goes, I looked at that person and go, it's not what they're going to give me for the 18 grand. It's what am I going to take from that mastermind for the $18,000 I spent? And that was a shift for me right there. It was like, fucking right. It's not up to them to make you successful.
It's up to you to make you successful. They're giving you a forum. You go pick the fruit, right? If you're just going to stand there and hope that apples are going to fall into your basket, you're fucked, right? Like go. look for what's prime, spend your time, be detailed, be methodic, and just be there and take it in and understand that it's going to be one big shift.
It's going to be one big shift. It's not going to be a notebook of fucking tactical, how to spam YouTube to make money idea. Yeah.
A hundred percent. So, um, well, a lot of great information. I'm glad that you came and You shared a lot of great, great insight. The last thing that I want to end with is what I always went with is we call the show Waking Up to Wealth.
And what it really is about is teaching people about money different, teach them how to think different to your, you know, to a lot of points that you made, actually letting them see behind the curtain of what it's really like to be an entrepreneur and these lessons that we learn and really what all this shit is about. So I ask everybody the same question. What is waking up to wealth mean to you?
And it can be whatever you want it to be. It's what your version is.
Sure. I think I know for me personally, the definition of wealth has been the hardest thing for me.
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