Alexa D'Agostino: Founder and CEO of THYNK Consulting Group

 So I always say, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you're scaling, you're trying to get multi-six figures, seven figures.
 First is, you have to get out of the, I'm going to do everything myself mentality.
 If you're a business owner, you have to have some sort of skill. It doesn't mean you have to do it yourself,
 but you have to understand it. You can't manage a marketing company or social media company or a lead junk company.
 If you don't at least have the basics and the basic understanding of what needs to be done,
 and that's where people failed. I was thinking small because I didn't have the confidence.
 I had confidence to build 7, 8, 9 figure brands. I never had the confidence or even the clarity to build a 10 figure brand.
 And now I do it. Now, I'm charting towards that path.
 You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
 Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast.
 I'm Ryan Alford, your host. You know, we say if it's radical, we cover it.
 But we're talking radical marketing today. We're talking marketing by modification with Alexa,
 Deistino. What's up, Alexa? What's going on, Ryan? Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
 I know. I'm excited. We grab we got to meet and working on a joint venture and it's like,
 you're like, let's talk on the puck. It's like, hell yeah. Let's do it.
 And then when you told me marketing by modification, I'm like, all right, you had me a modification.
 I know we'll get into that. But founder and CEO of Think Consulting Group.
 I know you work with a lot of that. I'm going to let you go down a lot of different
 avenues with Think. I know you have a lot of things you're touching.
 Excited to be working with you on the Think Billions event coming up soon here.
 Yeah, absolutely. So Think Consulting Group, we have Think Tank, which is our coaching.
 So we help entrepreneurs scale, scaling mostly to six seven figures. That's our sweet spot.
 And then we have Think Fuel, which is our full service marketing and PR department.
 And I cannot wait for the Think Billions event either. It's going to be incredible.
 And you can see in every single company I have, the word Think isn't there.
 Because for me, you have to really think through everything. And when we first started
 thinking, what do we want to name our company? We said, well, think because that's in order to
 do anything in life. You've got to think. You've got to allow yourself the time to actually stop
 and think to be creative, think to be innovative, think about what connections you need,
 think about everything that you need to succeed. So that's where the name Think came in and we've
 carried it through everything. Yeah. Hey, it's a brand new guy. Yeah. I love it. You carried it
 through. I know your host of the Think Millions podcast as well. We'll talk about that in a bit.
 It's funny. You talk, you know, hearing you say that, I'm like, it should be like, oh, no
 shit. Like you got to think about something. So yeah, I mean, it's funny. We think what we think.
 I'm not sure there's enough thinking now. It's a lot of a fire rain ready.
 But at the end of the day, it's become a law start for what it truly takes to get from point A to
 point B. Absolutely. You know, and that's where the marketing by modification came in. So,
 you know, I started my first business at age 18. I grew up with a household of entrepreneurs.
 My family's from Cuba. They couldn't speak the language. Came to America had no choice but to be
 entrepreneurs because they couldn't speak the language. So growing up, our dinner table conversations
 was always around problem solving and always around thinking and how to solve problems. So we did not
 have a normal childhood. I mean, everyone in my family, from my mom, my dad, my cousins, my aunt,
 everyone's an entrepreneur. So I started my first official business at 18. Actually, a funny
 YouTube and TikTok videos about my first businesses and second grade that almost got me expelled.
 But, you know, I always thought through what is success. And I started my career as a program
 developer. So I'm actually five degrees three technical. And I always thought I'm going to be a
 developer. I'm going to be developer. But I ended up falling in love with marketing and the creative
 aspect of it. So while I have a very logical mind of thinking, I was like, I absolutely love
 the creative aspect in that part. But then I started realizing like really creative is data.
 Like content's not king. It's really data because you don't know what content works without
 data. So I started to infuse a lot of data and the logic side into the marketing side. And that's really
 how we became successful very early on. And when I sold my agency, which was my fourth exit,
 I went to go get my PhD and took about a five year hiatus from entrepreneurship. And I came back
 my wife and I were walking. And I said, what should I name my next company? And my wife goes,
 well, why do you think you've been successful? And I said, because I love data and I've infused
 that my marketing goes so kind of like marketing by modification. And I go bingo. I'm like, I love
 that. And that's how marketing by modification was was born. And now we teach that philosophy. Because
 everybody thinks, and I'm sure you can see this yourself owning an agency, everybody thinks you
 have to have something perfect out of the gate. And in fact, you don't. And in fact, you know,
 spending months and months and months to create something perfect half the time doesn't actually
 give you the results that you want. So we believe in speed of implementation, get it up, get it out
 and then modify until it works the way that you want and get the results that you want.
 Bingo. The key to marketing now is iteration. And that's what you just described, modification,
 iteration, everything can be approved. But you don't, there's never a perfect piece of content,
 a perfect website, a perfect whatever it, but you can get real time feedback. And the data
 can lead you to what that improvement should be. I love that. And I mean, that's just the key. And
 so many people get so caught up in perfection in their own mind, mind's eye, right? And it just
 doesn't exist. And a lot of times what we see at this point, we've coach hundreds of people. And
 what we see is people get stuck in that last 10%. It's easy to get to 90%. But then it's that last
 10% that people get stuck on, especially in the creative world. So I always say, if you want to be
 an entrepreneur, you're scaling, you're trying to get multi six figure seven figures. First is,
 you have to get out of that. I'm going to do everything myself mentality. That's the first thing.
 The second is you just got to get it done. Just get it out. Who cares what people think? Who cares
 if it's perfect? Half the time, I don't even care if they're spelling errors. Just get it up and
 get it out and test and fix it later. But we get so stuck in that has to be done perfect. It has to
 be done this way. And I always say build up where they even come, put a landing page up, see
 people even want it. So many people, how many people have you seen where they spend millions of
 dollars or thousands of dollars creating something and then nobody wants it. And it flops.
 No, it's key. Mark Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix, talked about this exact topic and how
 people get so stuck on their idea and their idea and their idea and sometimes the idea is shit.
 But you got to find out faster and the best entrepreneurs have this perclivity to action
 and doing things and getting it done. And that's where a lot of people get stuck. It's brilliant.
 It's exactly the kind of coaching and mentoring. I think a lot of people need.
 It's support, right? So to us, there's a lot of different angles of success. And obviously,
 the first is mindset. You've got to have the right mindset. You have to have the right attitude.
 Tell me who you hang out with and I'll tell you who you are. And it's so true. And we had a perfect
 example of a student who has really been knocked off their game the last couple of weeks. And we
 finally boiled down to. It's just the people that she's surrounding herself with. And so for us,
 mindset's the number one. If you don't have that, you don't have anything. But then the next part is
 confidence. You have to have the confidence. And then the third is skills. You've got to have
 skills. And so that's where marketing comes in. If you're a business owner, you have to have
 some sort of skill. It doesn't mean you have to do it yourself, but you have to understand it.
 You can't manage a marketing company or a social media company or a lead gen company. If you don't
 at least have the basics and the basic understanding of what needs to be done. And that's where people
 fail. You have to have the basic skills to be able to understand sales and leadership and
 marketing. And these are important skills that you have to have. And these are all the things
 that we like to cover because a lot of people will go to school. But the reality is school doesn't
 teach this stuff. They're teaching philosophy and things that for the most part, I don't know what
 my degrees I actually use in my business. But for me, it's really about learning the skills
 that you need, gaining the confidence. And you have to have the clarity, you have to have clarity
 in the direction that you're heading. Yes. It's funny. Listen to you talk. And the art and the
 science of marketing, you blend this perfect amount of both that I can tell, like getting to know
 you better here and you talk like you having that that developers background makes sense now,
 especially with the data and like the scientific, but then there's an artistic
 quality to you. And I think there that's the secret sauce with marketing these days is that
 combination of those two things. But so it talks me a lot about like your perfect customer or like
 the people that you're helping the most. I know you're doing the coaching and things like that. So
 let's frame that kind of like customer journey, like who that customer, who that person is,
 and where you take them from, you know, A to Z or whatever that process looks like.
 Yeah. It's actually interesting. So if I take you back to the beginning of my career before
 I sold my fourth business, I would have had a very different answer. So when I started my business,
 I was really seeking money, money, money, money. And I was taking on bigger and bigger clients,
 right? You know, you're in this marketing world. I was taking on Fortune 500 clients,
 a lot of red tape, not, you know, sometimes the best clients as much, but they're the best paying
 clients. And so what I learned was as my company started to grow, grow seven figures,
 multi seven figures, eight figures, and it started getting bigger and bigger, the less happy I became.
 And I was so results driven that I was driving my team, driving my team, driving my team. So if
 you would have asked me in my 20s, it would have been anybody that's going to pay a lot of money,
 right? And so when I sold my business, my fourth business, which was the first agency that I sold,
 I sold another one this spring, which was my sixth exit. We, I went on that five-year hiatus,
 where I went to go get a PhD and teach. And I really spent five years trying to figure out who
 do I want to be. And it was one Christmas where I sat down with my father who recently passed away.
 And I said, I'm like, what is wrong with me? Like I, I was making so much money. I was like netting
 millions to my pocket. And I was miserable. Like, what am I missing here? And he said, because you're
 passionate, shocker, I'm Cuban, right? He goes, you're passionate. And you weren't passionate about
 the clients you were working with is like, you've got to find people that you want to work with.
 And that give you money. Even if it's a little less money, but you're passionate, you're going to be
 that much happier. So it completely shifted my entire perspective on what kind of clients I wanted to
 work with. And what I realized at that moment was it is important to be passionate about the people
 you work with and the people that you work for. So now I only take on projects and clients on
 the coaching side and the agency side that I want to work with. And that's it. And if I don't like
 a client, we just fired a client. I actually just did a whole podcast on this exact topic.
 We literally fired a client that was a six figure a year client because they just were not nice
 people. And we just didn't, we didn't want to work with them. And I said, see ya. And I fired
 them. So to answer your question, it's people that are good people that have a mission that
 understand the value of having support and people around them that are easy to work with and
 who have a drive. And so those are the best clients for us. I mean, we've helped people scale
 in every single industry you can imagine. The largest client we've ever scaled was 350 million.
 We've scaled at this point for companies past nine figures. We're well above 25 at this point
 in the eight figure range. And I mean, we're well above 75 in the seven figure range and a lot in
 the six figure range and the hundreds. And so for us, it's there's a there is a formula to scale.
 And it's just you have to have the drive and the passion. And so that's why in the name of our
 program is actually called passion CEO, which is funny, which is our coaching program. Because I
 think you've got to have the passion to really scale. Yeah, I love all that is I started to ask you,
 you know, you've had six six exits. Like, you know, I think you answered it, but I want to I want
 for the audience. Maybe if they didn't catch it, I think I caught it, which was you've been
 gradually maybe moving to think you're more passionate about, but maybe put what were all the exits
 about was a really that that movement of, okay, I built this. I mean, was it always the plan to
 have this many exits? No, it all kind of just unfolded that way. So being part of a marketing agency,
 I was always brought on as equity partners at some point of the project. The first two projects
 were apps, I owned 50%, 149, 150, but that gradually happened after we built the app and they
 needed my marketing then to push it to the next level. But what's interesting is this think
 billions of that event that you and I you and I are very successful, right? But what one of the things
 that I never realized, I never thought billions, I really never did. I never thought until I met
 Howie, I didn't even know that word, it really existed. I always was go, I'm so successful. I've made
 multiple nine figure businesses. I'm like a powerhouse and then I meet this guy. I'm like, oh my goodness,
 this is even a possibility. And now on partners with him on a project that it's actually a very
 probable reality. We're going to build a billion dollar company and my mind is blown. And why I
 share this is because for me in my exits, I was always building million dollar companies. I was never
 building a billion dollar brand. And I never really realized that until I met Howie. And so the
 whole concept that one person can change your life, one connection can change the trajectory of
 where you're heading. Look at me now, like it's completely changed my life in so many different
 ways. I was thinking small because I didn't have the confidence. I had confidence to build seven,
 eight nine figure brands. I never had the confidence or even the clarity to build a 10 figure brand.
 And now I do. And now I'm charting towards that path. And I mean, so you're, you know, I say this,
 I say this out loud. It's like one of my catchphrases. Even that's kind of a weird statement
 eating your own dog food. But like you're, but you do. And you are like like literally because,
 you know, you're coaching everyone and doing all these things and you've been over successful. But
 you could be billion successful. Like and even you have recognized that and you've seeked out and
 met people and you know, you're involved in this thing billions thing and you've recognized and
 you're doing the same things you're coaching others to do. And I think that's where the authenticity
 comes from. And I think that's what people can really like get their head around because I think
 sometimes there's people that coach and do these things. And you're like, you don't really,
 you're not really buying what you're selling, you know, but like what you just said is you're
 embracing everything that you're kind of coaching others to do. Self awareness is so important. And
 I'm the first half my master classes. I come on sharing what I'm doing wrong or the things I've
 realized in the moment. It's we're building businesses now. We're not coaches that had a successful
 business 10 years ago. We're literally building businesses now. So we're coming live to our
 students teaching them what's working now? What's not working now? What mistakes have I made? What
 am I learning? Where am I growing? I literally had a whole master class a couple of weeks ago
 where I shared how it was disappointed in my leadership the last 60 days. And why? And I'm packed
 everything. I'm never ashamed to make mistakes. I'm never ashamed to be self aware of what I could
 be better at. It to me, you should be ashamed if you're not looking at yourself and growing as a person.
 So to me, I want everybody. I don't care. Even on our podcast, the Think Millions podcast,
 like I'm very open and vulnerable on what I need to be better at and what what I'm learning. And
 that's part of growth is growing yourself. So I spend a lot of money on coaching myself, a lot of
 money on improving me as a leader, improving me as a human being because that's what life's,
 it's what it's about. And you know, you don't ever know what you're going to unlock when you do that.
 And I think even for me, personally, like, you know, getting that connection through you with
 Howie. And you know, I feel like I know how he already and have ever really been in the room with him,
 but we'll be shortly. And but that notion of thinking bigger, which again, is one of those things,
 all that just sounds like not that big a deal or yeah, what? No, it is a big deal because
 even successful people can unlock something further greater. Like we're all so self limiting creatures
 on something, you know, like we don't even realize it, you know, and it's like that self-awareness
 you talk about is so key. And I think, you know, unlocking that for people in both the good and the
 bad, you know, it's not always about, you know, being self-aware if you're just a total dick or
 something, but like, though that's important. But it's also unlocking like, okay, I'm not thinking
 as wide or as deep about this as I could be. Yeah. And it's actually interesting. My coach
 last week on my coaching call said to me that I have a broke mindset. And I'm like, no, I don't.
 I'm like, I do not have broke mindset. I spend money. I invest and he's like, yeah, but there's
 different levels of broke mindset. Your version of broke is different than somebody else that's
 just getting started. And his point was you're at the point now where you're trying to create wealth.
 You know how to make money, but now it's time to create wealth. And you have a broke mentality
 because you're not thinking wealth. You're thinking making money. So you don't have a wealth
 mentality. And I thought it was really interesting. So I was kind of taken back. And at first,
 I was kind of defensive. And I listened and I just let him talk, but I was quiet. I was literally
 like, and I had to unpack it. And I was like, so days went by and I'm like, talking to my wife
 about it. And I'm like, this MF told me, hi, I had a broke mindset, you know, like talking crap
 behind him. And then my wife one day goes, she goes, you know, I kind of see his point a little
 bit, you know, we are we are scared sometimes to invest. But the thing is, is our investments
 are bigger now. And while you're just starting out, people have a broke mindset that they don't want
 to spend money. They did make money investing themselves, invest in their business. And what they
 do is they take all the money out, out, out, out, oh, great. I'm taking a six figure paycheck.
 Well, what if you took a seven figure paycheck, right? But you can't do that unless you invest
 in your business, invest in people and get out of that. I'm going to do it with my self mentality.
 So he is right. It's just a different level, right? I'm at a different level of a broke mindset,
 right? But I thought it was interesting. No, it's super interesting. I I had not. It's funny.
 I like you think you heard every term before. I don't know that I've actually heard that phrase
 that way. Like broke my but it's not and it first you hear broke and you're like, okay,
 but it kind of has a double entendre a little bit of of how you can take it. And for you,
 you know, scaling and things like that to the different level. But, you know, I do,
 you know, I'm thinking like clients I deal with that that kind of have that a little bit like
 investing in marketing and branding and things that, you know, pay over time and not overnight.
 And I think that's a hard thing for business owners to kind of get over as well. We all
 are conditioned to want it yesterday. And, you know, for, you know, people like us that have been
 in business for a while. We haven't figured it all out, but we've both learned that you build
 brand over time and not overnight. It's actually funny. I had a client. It was partly my fault,
 again, is self awareness, right? So we got this client and we thought we set expectations
 up front. And so we're about four weeks into it. Now granted, you understand what this means.
 We had to create a whole brand from scratch. There was no social media, no brand, no logo, no
 colors, no messaging, nothing. So within, like, literally less than four weeks, we create the whole
 brand. And within four weeks, we literally got ads up and we started to serve them. So we get
 about nine days into serving ads. And I get this email and it's like, this isn't working.
 We're five weeks in and I have no clients. I go, you had no brand, you had no messaging,
 you had no website, you had no social. And we are literally on day nine of ads. And we had gotten
 at that point 11 leads. And there's a very competitive market. I said, you have no brand recognition
 at all in this area because this person moved from a different area. And, you know, from that
 experience, I really realized that not everybody understands what building a brand means. And
 what success means people want that silver bullet tactic. And at the end of the day, that works for
 quick money, but not a sustainable growth of a company. And for all the new entrepreneurs,
 people trying to get the six, trying to get to seven, you got, you have to do a little bit of both.
 Yes, you need quick money, but you also have to build a brand. Like look at Ryan's brand. He's built
 this massive brand and people follow him because he's trustworthy. People want to do business with
 people they know like and trust. They trust Ryan because he's not only good at what he does,
 but he's built that trust through content and building a brand. And that takes time. It doesn't
 happen overnight. That's 100% right. Bingo. And I appreciate the kind words. But I think it's like
 literally the hardest thing for people to understand. They get it once you say it. And
 it's the challenge with working with individuals, which I give you a lot of credit for. But we work
 with funny like in my career, you know, I have a weird trajectory. Like I came up to the ad agency
 business and was the hot shot ad guy worked on some largest brands, largest campaigns, most
 advertising, most recognizable campaigns, you know, early middle career. I think I'm still in
 middle career, hopefully, aren't we? But the yeah. And I hope so. And then now owning my own agency,
 we work with medium sized companies. And so it's a little different dynamic. And they do expect
 things quickly. It's refreshing to hear that I'm not the only one that gets goes phone calls sometimes.
 The all the time. But it's about studying expectation. We've gotten better at that as an agency.
 That's what was so funny, you know, in my, you know, like starting the agency for five years in.
 And it's like, okay, we've got some battle scars from, you know, probably not doing that as good as
 we should have, even though we knew it intrinsically, but going, okay, here's what's realistic here.
 Exactly. Yeah. So it's like, do you want to build a six figure brand and you want to build a eight
 nine 10 figure brand? Yeah, no. And the answer to that is, I don't know, probably, yes, and yes.
 What, you know, like, so we're, what's molded you? I mean, what's been your influences? Like,
 obviously sounds like big family and things like that. Like, on a personal level, like, what's kind
 of been some of your biggest influences over the years? I would say being an athlete has really molded
 me at a really young career. I mean, I mentioned my, my family were entrepreneurs and what I didn't
 mention is we, we spent a lot of time going through building businesses and innovation and problem
 solving, but what I didn't mention was all the hard times too. And seeing my parents go bankrupt
 once, seeing 29 people walk out on my mom, right, because of bad leadership or situations. And
 seeing hard times and building businesses as much as they were successful, they had hard times too.
 And I think that really molded me as a person to have this resiliency because I never saw them give
 up ever. And that, to me, was something that molded me as a human to just never give up because
 things might get hard and things might get difficult, but as long as you have the right head
 and the right intentions and the right people around you, you will be successful. You will make
 it through it. And it might seem hard in the moment, but those hard moments are what make you
 who you are and those hard moments are what make you even more successful. So for me, when I
 have hard times, I use that to springboard myself into a better situation. And I've made bad decisions,
 I've made the wrong decisions. And instead of sitting there regretting it, I look how can I
 be better moving forward and what have I learned from this situation? And that's propelled me to be
 better and better. And so for me, it's been a lifelong journey of looking at
 improvement and growth and not ever looking back, but always looking forward.
 I love that. There's only one thing you get looking back and that's a hurt neck.
 That is true. Nothing in that review mirror other than bad memories sometimes.
 It lacks a, so let's talk marketing a little bit. You guys have the PR arm,
 marketing arm, full service, things like that. What's your in this world of social media
 and the news cycle, which is strange, but and splintered? What's your perspective on the marketing
 mix these days with PR versus paid versus all of those things? Yeah, I mean, as you know, we do
 paid media as well. We're actually one of the largest private advertising companies in the US.
 So we do a couple hundred million of paid ads every year. And so we're still very bullish on
 paid ads. But obviously, organic has grown, which is why we've grown think fuel, which is the
 creative arm and really pumping out the PR and the organic content creation and the social media
 side. I think it all depends on what part of your business you're in. If you haven't hit six
 figures, my advice always is, especially if this is your first business, do organic start by making
 sure people want your offer. The worst thing that you could do is put paid ads on an offer.
 When you don't know people want it, all paid ads does is amplify what isn't working. So I always
 say get traction first organically, make sure that it's working. And then once it works, then you
 pour the gasoline on, then you pay, do the paid ads. So again, it really depends. Now if I have
 a company that comes to me that's already making revenue, I will pour the gasoline on pretty
 immediately. But we still do it in a phased approach, even when I have a client that just started
 with us a couple months ago. And the first two weeks, we literally just did impression-based
 display to get the data. Then once we got the data, we figured out what messaging's working
 and then changed to a more CPA model, a cost per acquisition model to then use that data to really
 infuse the right messaging to the right people. And it exploded. But we took the time to learn first,
 even at a big company. This is a multi-seven figure, almost eight figure company. So even at a
 bigger level, we're still doing a very similar model. We're just using paid advertising to get
 there quicker. So the approach is the same. But if you're starting off, don't just dump money into
 ads. There's so many ways that you can build a six-figure income. We actually made in our coaching
 program multi-six figures without a sales funnel, without paid ads, without anything. Literally,
 all we did was use Instagram. That's it. And we built a multi-six-figure account within 90 days,
 too. A two-com, a click on award was being you do a million dollars in the civil funnel within
 four and a half months. And probably the, I would say, the last two and a half months, we actually
 had a funnel. So don't feel the pressure to dump money into paid ads. And I've seen people
 dump their life savings into this stuff. And then it doesn't work because they don't have the
 right offer. A lot of truth there is I love the, you say so many things that I relate to you,
 but it's like dumping, you know, paid ads like it amplifies both the good and the bad. You know,
 like, it's like nothing worse than amplifying what is it going to work. And there's a lot of that
 going on. Unfortunately, you know, people go straight to the ads and we got to make sure you
 got the right offer, the right message, the right creative first. And too much learning from that,
 it's like bringing back horror stories of some clients we worked with. The Alexa, how many of these
 companies you work with? We haven't really talked about this, but and imagine it's something but
 like personal branding for the CEOs. How much in your playbook is that? And do you see that as a
 necessity these days? I mean, obviously there's tons of companies that don't, you know, the CEOs not
 known or whatever. What kind of your perspective on, you know, CEO or, you know, high executive personal
 branding? 100% is very, very big. So we've gotten more into personal branding. I would say the
 last two years when I sold my business in 2014, personal branding wasn't even really a thing.
 People were doing it, but it wasn't, I don't even think personal branding was in the dictionary.
 Like it wasn't something people were knowingly doing. And when I came back in 2019, also I'm
 personal branding was the new thing. I've never been in front of a camera. I've never done a
 personal brand. I was the nerd in a dark room like coding on a computer, you know, and then I
 come back five years later. I'm like, I got to go in front of the camera. What?
 Like, but it helped me build a multi seven figure company within six months because I kind of
 leaned into it. And I look, I'm a big believer. And I, I've got to do it myself and learn how to
 do it myself before I start doing it for others. And I learned that from my father because he,
 he worked at IBM. He actually managed all the manufacturing plants worldwide and I was 12 and he
 brought me into one of the plants. And I mean, he reported directly to the president. And so we're
 walking through and he's like, Charlie, how's your kids? Susan, how's your husband doing? And then
 he's walking me through the entire plant machine by machine explaining every little thing about the
 machinery. And I said, Dad, you're a high level executive. You report to the president. Why do you
 know all these people? And why do you know this? And what he said changed my world and my life. And
 he said, Alex, if you want to be a CEO one day of your own company or a big company like this,
 you better know every part of your business. So I took that to heart with the personal branding.
 And I figured it out myself first. I wanted to be able to create a seven figure brand myself
 before I went and developed it for other people. And that's exactly what I did. And it is 100%
 a big thing that we offer. And pretty much almost every single client we're building out the
 personal brands of all our clients too. I was kind of like leading the witness. I knew what the
 answer was for the audience got to hear it. But like it's I say this like it pays to be known.
 And the days of hiding behind the desk or I mean it's not that you can't do it. Of course you can.
 There's plenty of examples of successful companies that you don't have founders or whatever
 that are out there. But I guarantee if we lined up 20 companies right now. And the ones that have a
 a strong personal brand behind the company no matter how good the products are. I guarantee you
 the success rate is just higher because of. And what people understand is it's not just being famous.
 It's being known and being authentic and having some relationship to your audience and to
 who people that they buy from you or that research. And people are researching you no matter if
 you know it or not. And I think that's the thing that you have to unlock with people is like
 they're looking you up. So do you want to control the narrative or do you want what someone else may
 have just written about you at some point controlling the narrative. Yeah. And there's different
 levels right. So there's being an authority which now everyone's an expert. So I always say you
 got to skip the expert stage now because now there's so many experts out there. So you know,
 authority to me is what other people are saying. That's where PR does become important because
 now you become an expert by your own social media by what you share. That's a bottom line base.
 You have to do that. But then in order to become authority you need others to be talking about you.
 Then the next level celebrity authority which is where you and I are right where we're I'm heading
 more that way. You're already there. But now what celebrities and people that are at a different
 level and it doesn't necessarily mean like came Kardashian. What it means is celebrities within
 that industry. Right. And what are they saying about you? And so you have to go up this ladder
 because now there's especially since the pandemic so many people have entered the marketing space.
 They have entered the coaching space, the service space space. So many more businesses have gone
 online and we're in the culture and the world where everybody wants to be at their own boss.
 And what is done is it's created a much more competitive and an environment where people don't trust
 as much. And so now we have to almost do 10 times the work to gain the trust. And unless people
 trust you, they're not going to do business with you. Back in like 2007, think about the the world
 of Black Hat SEO, how easy it was to get clients. And I knew what I know now back then I would have
 built probably a 10-figure company, right? Because it was so easy to get clients and you would just
 like talk to them for 30 minutes and they would sign up with you. Now it's like what is it like 22
 times? You have to basically get in front of somebody to get them to even book of all with you.
 It's a lot, a lot of work. Yes. Funny you're bringing up SEO. That's my newest venture.
 SEO is dead and I own it. And so it's but they're true, but there's a different version of it,
 a company I'm launching in a month. We talked to you about next week, but it's a new intent
 optimization is what we're calling it. There's some other sexy stuff behind it. I can't talk about
 just yet, but we're going to be doing a huge campaign. There might be a funeral or burial
 for SEO coming up. I would love that. I would love that. I love when I see marketing companies
 promoting SEO and people will ask me like, oh, will you do SEO? I go, yeah, we'll optimize your
 site, but I'm not wasting your money. I rather put that $2,500 to $5,000 other people charge you
 to pay into paid media. Yeah. It's just the reality is there's a lot of wasted money in SEO and it
 still matters to be on it, but Google's changed the game so much with what you see. And you can spend
 it's really about getting known and being those terms that drive intent and not there's a lot
 of stuff that can get searched that you can get optimized for, but it's not driving a sale or a
 behavior or or truly an outcome that you want. And so I think that's one of the things we're
 going to be pulling the curtain behind, but I decided about that. Alexa, if people want to get
 involved, learn more about you. Let's talk about some of those channels where people can find you
 things about think, think millions, all those things. Yeah. So you can go to thinkmillions.com and
 check out our coaching program there, our podcast is there. You can also get our podcast on Spotify,
 Apple, all the great podcasts, whatever you're listening to right now, you can Google it.
 It's the Think Millions podcast. And if you want to reach out on Instagram, it's Dr. D.R. Alexa
 DeCastino. Perfect. Gotta love it. Well, I am super pumped that you came on the show. I'm excited
 to further our relationship and you can't wait to see a next week at Think Billions.
 Me too. Thanks for having me, Ryan. Great. Hey guys, you know what to find us? Theradcast.com. You
 can search for Think Millions. You'll find all of the highlight clips from today's episode with
 Alexa. Also links to all her channels. You know, to find me, I'm at Ryan offer on all the
 platforms, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. You'll find me there. We'll see you next time.
 All right, cast.