– Welcome everybody to Building My Legacy Podcast, today I have with me, Jared Curry. Jared Curry is fascinating. I don’t know how many of you at the age of 18 had a vision as to what it was that you were gonna do and the business you were gonna create first of all, and then go for it. Jared did that. And so, I think, what an amazing story you have and I’m gonna have you share that in a little bit but what he talks about, he is founder and CEO of Scope 16 Marketing, and it’s a digital marketing company. And for those of you who are thinking about building a legacy and are wanting to organize that and really look at, how do I have major reach with the, and have the impact that I want? Digital marketing is critical. So with that, Jared, let’s get started with your story and how you got into digital marketing. It’s this new year self-taught and yet there’s so many moving pieces. So, please share your story.

– Of course. And I just wanna start off by saying thank you so much Lois, for having me on. So excited to share my story with your listeners, right? And I’m sure everyone out there who’s listening right now, is really interested to know kind of how I got started. So, it’s quite a funny story, right? I was, I believe it was my junior year of high school and one of my friends came up to me and said, Jared, you need to watch this webinar. And it was a webinar from this person named Billy Wilson who basically taught other young individuals how to start their own marketing agency. And since then Billy’s become an amazing friend of mine, coach and mentor, and we’re helping each other out right now constantly on growing both our marketing agencies. And it’s funny because it was this, it was the year, it was the school year, the beginning of the school year, I would say about September, and previously before that, I just had finished reading the book, “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. My favorite author of all time, Lois. And all you out there listening, I’m sure you’ve read the book. And if you haven’t, definitely check it out. But I just had finished reading the book and I knew that entrepreneurship was for me. And I knew I just had to continue to build up, not only my wealth, but start to create my legacy. And I figured that once I watched that webinar from Billy Wilson I knew I had to purchase his course, which was $700. And at the time I was barely, I was, I just had turned 17 and I was like, oh my God, that’s a lot of money, right? Now it’s, I look back at and I’m like, this is the best investment I’ve ever made. It was . And it was a lot of money for me back then, and I had to borrow it from my parents but it’s been extremely worth it.

– So, okay. So, you learned on the webinar, what were the things that were covered that allowed you to really get a handle on it? ‘Cause I, many people who look at digital marketing get overwhelmed with all of the parts. There’s so many moving pieces and there’s a lot of big buckets too, that everything fits into. So, I get the webinar, but there’s more than that, that got you really with both feet wet and so that you could stand on firm ground.

– Oh, 100%. And for everyone out there listening, you may be familiar with a story that Bill Gates likes to tell and Warren Buffett, they like to tell us well. And it was the story of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and how they knew each other’s kids. Not a lot of people know that. And when they were 10 years old, I think it was Warren’s father or Bill’s father, one or the other, they sat both of the kids down and they said, boys, and I’m paraphrasing by the way. But they said, boys, what is the number one most important thing you need to succeed? And they gave the, and I think it was Bill’s father gave them a piece of paper and they didn’t, Bill and Warren, they didn’t look at each other, but they both wrote down the same thing. And that was focus. And it was so interesting. They said that was the number one key to success. And keep in mind, they were like 10 years old. And that story was in the webinar. And as well as in the course. And once I heard that story, it blew my mind. If kids at the age of 10 who are both multibillionaires right now, can say at an early age, that focus is the key to success. I knew that’s what I needed to focus on. No pun intended. And since then I’ve just been focused on one thing and that has been growing agency. And because there’s so many different moving parts of digital marketing, it’s taken a lot of work, but it’s also taken a big team. I have a big team, with that comes a big payroll, but I do have a big team. And,

– How big is your team?

– I’m sorry?

– How big is your team?

– We have about 10 employees in total and eight of them are full time.

– Wow! Wow! I’m impressed. I am very impressed. You also talk about a system that you have in place. It’s called the unique 8 Figure eCommerce Blackhawk System. Can you share a little bit about what that is and how you employ it?

– It’s funny Lois. Everyone asks me about the Blackhawk System. And I wish I could tell you everything about it, but of course, there are some proprietary pieces of information, but I will dive into a few key things, right? And the Blackhawk System is simple. First, it’s about nurturing the cold audience then about building ad copy that converts. And number three, it’s about really ensuring that the media bind that you have in place, which of course is running the ads, is systemized and has a really, a lot of targeting and a lot of data and stuff like that. So, I’m gonna explain all of that ’cause everyone listening out there is like, what is he talking about? So, I’m gonna dive deeper into each.

– Okay, please do.

– Right. A lot of agencies out there, I’ve noticed, they use the same ad for every client. They copy and paste it over and over again. There’s not, it’s not unique to the individual’s business. And every business is unique as you know Lois. And to the people who are listening I’m sure a lot of you guys own your own business and you understand that your business is unique, it’s nothing like your competitors, you put your own blood, sweat, and tears into it. So we try to make sure we’re conveying the same thing within our ads. So, to first start off with, I’m gonna talk about expert copywriting, right? So, I have a great team of copywriters and I don’t know a lot of agencies that really have a full time copywriter. I think they, a lot of agencies outsource it but I made it a mission to make sure that I actually had a full time copywriter because it was, I would say about eight months ago we were writing our own copy. I was writing a lot in the copy for the agency. I didn’t have a big team there. We were still growing, still trying to make it happen and I noticed one big thing. The metric that a lot of people overlook is something called CTR. And that of course, is click-through rate. And what that meant is that my copy wasn’t up to par. And one of my clients wasn’t getting the results I thought they should have got it. They were getting good results but I don’t wanna get good. I wanna get great results. And because of that, I hired a copywriter full time from that very moment, and I said, this is never gonna happen again. Were going to get exceptional results and the way we accomplish that is by making sure that we had an expert copywriter in house to make sure that the copy we were creating was in a sentence, it was indef copy where we literally spent an entire day learning about the business and getting creative ideas where we can create and write unique ad copy that was going to convert, right?

– Tell me something before you go on. ‘Cause I think this is huge. When you do copy and you hired a copywriter, what kind of criteria did you use in selecting a copywriter?

– Yes. Great question. So first things first, I didn’t want someone who already was writing copy. And I know that sounds funny. It sounds crazy. But I didn’t want anyone who wrote copy. Why? Because a lot of copywriters have a lot of bad habits, right? So with that being said, I made sure I hired someone who never really wrote ad copy but they were number one good at selling, and number two, they enjoyed writing. So, my copywriter wants to go into the movie production business, right? So, he’s going to write and indef copy because he enjoys it. He wants to be a script writer one day. And with that being said, I knew that he really did enjoy what he was doing and he wanted to learn. ‘Cause you can always teach them the persuasive techniques. That’s easy. But no one can really teach that love and passion for actually writing, right? So I made sure he, number one, loved copy and writing copy, and for all roles in our organization, it’s a three-step interview process. So it’s pretty strict. But I will kind of, I won’t touch on that. It was more so making sure I hired someone that had a passion for what they were doing.

– Wow! Okay. I am curious because many people who are listening are also hiring. So what’s your three-step process at work? Can we go up to talk about? I can just tell.

– Yes, a great question. First things first, everyone goes through a job description post. And we don’t post our application on the top like a lot of other people do, we posted all the way on the bottom. I wanna make sure that they read the application and I wanna make sure that they understand all the criteria, all the bad things about the job, well, the good things about the job. And then they have to go through the actual application process. On that application, this is typical for some organizations I believe, is they have to attach a video. Saying, a 60 second video saying why they should want the job or why they should be hired or considered for the job. That automatically deters a lot of people. Especially since we’re a digital company we need people to show their faces. We need them to be able in comfortable doing that. We’re on Zoom every day with our organization. So, by making sure they’re submitting a video it’s making sure that they’re comfortable with that, number one. Number two, I don’t really look at resumes. In my opinion, I don’t look at resumes. I didn’t go to college. You don’t need a college degree to work at my company and my team members, they’re doing pretty well, salary-wise, right? They don’t need a college degree. All I need to see is passion. I need to see commitment and that’s it. And a willingness to learn, right? So, once they go through the actual written application part we put them through a pool and we typically try to get at least 20 different applicants for the same position before we start our interview process to make sure that we have enough data, kinda to look at, and then we have our first interview which is done with my COO, his name’s Luke Simmons, and he’ll interview them just to make sure it’s a culture fit. I don’t care about skill set. I just wanna make sure that the culture is strong. I value culture tremendously. Especially since we’re a digital company. We have to make sure we’re preserving that culture and making sure that they adhere to our core values. We have something in our company called core values and our team reads it every day. And it’s kind of like our Bible, I guess you can say. And that’s kinda what the first interview is for. The second interview, it’s more so for skillset. My COO is also doing that interview. And then the third interview, that’s where I step in and that’s where I play quality control. I tell them right from the beginning look, this is, I don’t care what they said on the first two interviews, their job, the applicant’s job, is to impress me now. I am the final line of defense. And that is how I hire. That’s how we make sure that we are getting the best of the best because I’ve learned from the past. You bring on the wrong people, it doesn’t, it’s not just a money problem, but it’s also a time problem. Training people takes a lot of time. I don’t wanna mess up. I wanna make, that we’re getting the right people from the get go.

– Okay. So we’ve divert, diverged a little bit. And I wanna come back. We were talking about your Blackhawk System. Copywriting, number one, and having the best copywriter getting them trained and getting your ads to be unique and specific for each client. So, what else is part of your black, does the, is that what copywriting contains for you or are there other items relative to copywriting that we should talk about, before we move on to other parts?

– Yeah, of course, that’s the main part. It is just making sure that we have a strong copywriting process for all of our clients. And it’s really unique, right? Actually, something that we do that I don’t think other agencies do. We actually do something called an audience hypothesis session with the client. Where we’re trying to spend almost the entire day with them just to learn about their business. We’re asking them questions and stuff like that. So that’s just one other thing I wanted to add to copywriting, but to dive deeper into everything.

– What is an audience hypothesis?

– Yes that’s, we’re literally asking questions, we’re interviewing people who have bought from that specific company before, so we get all their, we try to get as many customers as we can and our copywriters are actually interviewing them and asking them questions so we can get into the psyche in the mind of the actual buyer, right? We’re sending out surveys to their email list to kind of learn more about the company and get more input from the other customers, right? And we’re typically asking the business owners a lot of questions. It’s a really long and drawn out process, but it makes it all worth it when they see the copy at the end of the day. ‘Cause we’re primarily working with ecomm businesses, right? So return on ad is important, right? For every dollar you get in, you should be able to expect three, four or $5 back and you should be able to track that. The Blackhawk System kind of allows us to do that if we’re doing it the right way, which is what we aim for. So, just to dive into some other parts without getting too much into the weeds of everything ’cause I know your listeners want to learn more about the Blackhawk program, and that really is nurturing cold traffic.

– I’m sorry. Repeat that please.

– Nurture cold traffic, right? So, it’s funny. It’s a something called upside, that I learned a long time ago. And it’s a marketing terminology and essentially, everyone in the beginning is gonna be unaware of your product.

– Yes.

– Most people are gonna be unaware of your product. There’s billions of people on Facebook and Instagram. It’s, not everyone’s gonna know who you are but we can get them to know who you are and get them to understand you and understand your brand, right? So, what we’ve tried to do on our end is making sure that for every person that comes into our funnel system the first ad is not asking them to buy anything. We don’t want people to buy on that first touchpoint. It takes about eight to 12 points of contact until someone actually purchases something. We just want to teach them about the brand. Maybe give them a testimonial video. Why did you start the brand? What is the mission statement? And that’s the first ad. Then the second ad is more about the benefits of the product and why they need it. Keep in mind. We’re not telling them to buy anything yet. We’re sequencing the ads. So imagine you go on Facebook you see one ad where you learn about the company, then you see another ad why you need the product, and you see a third ad, how it’s gonna really benefit you. And then the fourth ad or the fifth ad, maybe we start to talk to them about, possibly purchasing the product. But we’re not getting them the purchase until far down the line. Why? Because we’re decreasing our cost per acquisition, we’re increasing our return on that spend because it’s a warmer audience and we’re actually building a brand. We’re not trying to make a quick buck. And it’s funny, right? It’s like the story, people buy for one of three reasons, right? Lois, what type of, what’s a sneaker brand that comes into mind?

– Sneaker brand? Let’s see. Everybody, Nike, right?

– Exactly. And I’m sure everyone listening out there, if you’re listening right now and you probably don’t have the same brand Nike, Adidas, same companies, right? People buy for one of three reasons. Brand awareness, convenience, or direct marketing. Direct marketing. The old school way of doing things. Billboards, TV commercials. A lot of my competitors do in the agency game, they’re trying to get people buy right away. It’s, in my opinion, it’s ineffective. From the data we’ve seen, it doesn’t work as well as building a brand. We’ll dive into that deeper. Then there’s convenience. Convenience is when I want Chinese food or sushi, I go down the street, the FujiYama Mama, there just so happens to be a sushi place. They never ran an advert to me, ever. But just because they were selling in sushi and I was driving down the street, I got lucky. That’s like gambling on your business. Not all customers are gonna get lucky and see the product that they want right in front of them. Right? It’s like gambling on your business. I know for the people out there listening you guys don’t wanna get them on your business. But the third way is brand awareness. It’s why Nike came up in your head. It’s why I brought my computer, because it’s an Apple. I know the brand. I understand the brand. And that is why people buy people. Simon Sinek says, people don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it. And if they understand, if they know the brand, they’re gonna know your why. If they know your why, they’re gonna know the brand. And that’s what we’re trying to do in the Blackhawk program, nurturing cold traffic so we create a brand we build the brand and they understand the brand.

– Wow! Okay. So, you’re right. Copy becomes hugely important so, nurturing cold traffic turning them into warm and then hot leads and contacts. Then from there, what do you do?

– Yes. And this is probably the most intricate part and this is the actual media buying process itself, right? And this is something a lot of people neglect. But the most important role at our organization are the media buyers themselves. The reason why the media buyers were once was, getting all the ad copy from the copy team, they’re putting it all together. So for everyone out there listening, if your marketing agency never talks about their media buyers, it makes me question who their media buyers are. Are they based in the Philippines or a part of India where they’re not high quality or they’re not trained media buyers? Where are they getting their media buys from? Are they just copying and pasting ads? Because a media buyer should be able to think. They should be creative. And they should be able to know exactly what’s gonna happen because they read the entire white paper for the Facebook algorithm, for the Google ads algorithm. Your media buyer should know this information. So we put a lot of focus on our media buyers to make sure that the copy that we get from our copy team to make sure all the data that we get is accurately put together into our ads so that when we trade the ads, they actually work. A lot of people can create a Facebook ad. But can you do it the right way? Can you set it up the right way? Because I don’t know for the visitors, I mean, for the people listening right now I don’t know how many ads you guys are running on Facebook but most of our clients, we’re probably running about 300 ads at one time on Facebook. That’s not as simple as pressing a few buttons. It’s pretty intricate and we have to really know our stuff and that’s why you have to make sure you have amazing media buyers on your end. And that’s the Blackhawk program. There’s a lot of other stuff that I wish I could tell you but if I did, I’d have to kill you .

– So, there might be a lot of people to kill them. So, you don’t use people that are outside of outsourced, they’re all within your company in terms of ad buy and, but your employees are virtual. So where all are they located, all over the United or? Okay?

– So, we have team members in Canada, the US, the United Kingdom and other parts of Eastern Europe. And that’s where our core team lies. Everyone’s vetted every, we make sure everyone’s fully trained but we try to keep it within those, mainly, predominantly English-speaking countries and we kind of go from there.

– Got it. Okay, so one of the things that you also talk about is how people don’t leverage all of the resources that are available to them especially in Facebook, like with Instagram stories. So, talk a little bit about that please. And where there are lost opportunities.

– Yes. That’s a great question Lois. So, for everyone out there listening there’s a few things that you guys can do right now. Number one, make sure you have something called the Facebook pixel on your site. If, Lois, have you ever been on a website? And I sure, I’m sure you have. Where you go shopping, I don’t know if you’re a big shopper but, you go shopping and you don’t actually buy but then you start seeing ads pop up all over the internet.

– Yeah, pretty sure.

– The reason why companies can do that and you’re probably like, wow, how did they know that? They’re spying on me and is creepy, right? But it works. It’s called retargeting. And it’s a lot of, it’s something that a lot of people are missing out on and where your biggest returns are gonna be. And I wanna create God-like omnipresence for your brand. So, it becomes a hygiene standard. When they go on your website, that they will see your ads. If someone goes on my site, we follow them all over the internet YouTube, Google, Facebook, Instagram, any app that they have they’re gonna see one of my ads, for my agency, right? And the reason why we do that is because like I said, people don’t buy till that effort of contact. So we have to constantly keep reminding them of the brand and we’re trying to create brand awareness. So we, you want to make sure you’re retargeting. And for everyone out there listening, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. And that is not having a pixel on your website. And if you do have a pixel, you’re not leveraging it. You’re not sending people who go on your website ad, even if they don’t purchase, you need to send them ads. If they do purchase, still send them ads. For the brand, yes.

– So, that takes a process and the pixel helps you track and to follow, right? So what else, Jared, are things that people could immediately do to really be more savvy with e-commerce?

– And this is what any business that you only have you guys don’t, if it’s not an ecomm business you can still implement the same exact strategies. And it’s funny, Warren Buffett, he has his private Rolodex and it has the world leaders, royals and major executives of massive companies in a file cabinet. But guess what? There’s something, and that Rolodex is worth a lot. It is, it’s, you can’t even put a price on it. It’s just so valuable. But I’m gonna tell you something that I want more than that Rolodex from Warren Buffett. I want your email list. I want your data. A lot of people have an email list that’s just sitting there. You’re not doing anything with that email list. But what they can do, they can plug that into Facebook and they can run ads from their current customers’ email lists to people who are most similar to their ideal customer via something called a lookalike audience. So they’re running ads to the most ideal customer someone who’s, who looks exactly similar to their current customer in terms of economic status, geographical location stuff like that, interests and stuff like that. Then you can do something called a custom audience where we’re sending all your current customers ads, getting them to purchase something else. So, all of that data is just sitting there and no one’s using it. Lois, it blows my mind when I get on the phone with brands every single day, I ask them how big their email list is. They tell me, and I ask them, what are you doing with that email list? And they think that they’re doing some email marketing or using MailChimp but they’re not doing anything else with it. And there’s just so much money on the table. It breaks my heart actually.

– It is amazing what money does get left on the table. Isn’t it? So, Jared, our time is almost up. I love your passion. I love how you have it. Just go for it. Things that we haven’t talked about that you really think are important for the audience to know.

– Yes. I wanna just tell a quick little story. At the, from the age of, since birth to, until I was four I wasn’t able to speak. I had a speech impediment and any words that they’d come out of my mouth no one could understand. It took a long time, a lot of progress, a lot of hard work, I still remember I had speech therapists and everyone, and it was difficult, I knew there was something wrong with me. And even past the age of four I knew that I couldn’t articulate my sentences the way I could, right? And it stuck with me. But what stuck with me the most is the resilience and the passion to not give up. Persistence beats resistance and I learned that every day, not only in business, but in life. And if you just keep going, one more, take one more step, one more, a little bit more action, you will succeed. For all your, everyone out there who’s listening right now don’t give up, just keep going. Eventually, you’re going, you’re gonna make it. I promise. Just don’t give up. And you got it. We’re here to build a legacy. What’s gonna in the next 100 years, we’re not gonna be here, but our legacies will. It’s time to make a difference. It’s time to make an impact. And life’s too short to give up. And that’s the one last thing I wanted to mention.

– It’s a beautiful way to end Jared. Thank you so much. Persistence is everything. Isn’t it? And not giving up. You give up and you have nothing. So, Jared, thank you so much for your wisdom and your time today, and then thank you all for listening to Building My Legacy Podcast today as well. We will have information about Jared in the show notes. So if you wanna get in contact with him you will be able to get information about him in the show notes. And should you have any further questions, just contact us and we will be glad to pass the information on. Thanks so much.