[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today, I'm lucky enough to be joined by the one and only David Wong. I heard there's only one of you. Hello, sir. How are you?

[00:00:37] David: I'm good, man. How are you? Thanks for having me on. There's definitely half a billion of us,

[00:00:41] Jay: I did not know that until we talked before the show. So very interesting where'd you grow up and what kind of impact did that have on your entrepreneurial journey?

You've done a lot of stuff I've seen, you know co founded found a bunch of stuff. where'd you get started? I

[00:00:53] David: born and raised sort of in Ottawa, small town moved out here to Vancouver because the weather is a little bit more, milder in terms of winter and summer. We just get a lot of rain. So definitely kind of grew up in the big city back and forth between here and Toronto nowadays. So, really shifted my kind of thinking in the way that I operate by the fast kind of hustle life.

You know, it's great for some period of time, but it definitely Leads towards some areas of burnout, which I've had several sessions of and really just, you know, started off as a freelancer, grinding my way up to being like, hey, you know what? I didn't want to work on the schedule of my clients as a freelancer and kind of just being all on me.

I wanted to build a team around me. So I'm like, the next kind of stage up from there was how to work within a team. As a contractor, as part of a bigger team where I'm just responsible for kind of that one thing. I don't have to deal with the clients. That was great at some point as well, but you know, I felt like I was then working for the man, even though as a contractor, I wasn't directly employed with them.

And so with those two experiences, I'm like, Hey, you know what? I got the inner lookings of how a business and a company actually works. Let's just step outside, try to start my own agency. And then JD Leads Online kind of became the thing between me and my co founder. Funny story between me and my co founder actually is that we, I was actually one of her freelancers in 2015, met on Upwork.

And then I was doing work for her on and off for four years. And then come 2019, that's the year I basically was like, Hey, you know what? No more freelancing. I'm not doing no contract work anymore. I'm going to go ahead and start this agency. hit me up and was like, how about we do this thing together?

Because my whole thing is operations back end. I love building stuff, right? And her side is more front end, client facing doing the sales. And so for me, I'm very much the opposite. I didn't really like sales all the time. So the two of our heads putting, coming together kind of just made a lot of sense to me and that's how the company started involved.

[00:02:45] Jay: Wow,

I love that Very similar to my journey with JD AQA. I hired one of my freelancers to be my COO and she Changed the game for sure. So tell me a little bit about any of the first business. What was the first business you tried to start?

[00:03:01] David: there was a company called geo filter plus, and basically when Snapchat started coming out with the geo filter feature and we were able to submit it kind of ourselves. I think it's like 20 a day, worked with a lot of wedding planners and photographers who had, you know, obviously weddings and we designed the geo filters, got a launch on the day of, so that they can upsell that as additional service.

And, you know, we basically kind of took a cut of that, that was going well, a lot of interesting clients. And then one day we got a message from, Snapchat. Telling us to stop using, stop doing the thing and also to stop using the yellow even though the hex code was not the yellow.

And with that being the case, we're just like, you know what, I'm not going to try to rebrand this or anything like that, just kind of move on to the next thing.

 and yeah. We never actually sold, we never cancelled the domain or brought it down, and then recently I actually checked back the inbox and there were actually a lot of inquiries even after that we moved on from it, so in hindsight, I was a little bit kind of naive, I should have, you know, done something alternative with it or kind of rebranded it, and I think I probably could have automated that and made it self sustaining in a way, but, you know, I didn't know any, didn't know as much back then.

And then, After that, the next thing, a lot of e commerce stuff. So, I've done a lot of dropshipping as well. So, you know, e commerce that was from Amazon to eBay dropshipping when it was early days before everybody on YouTube started teaching it and started giving away all of our secrets made it so much harder.

Profit margins back then were good. They were like 10 to 15 percent nowadays. You're lucky. You can get away with 1 percent and then that's like before you even have to pay the eBay fees and all that other stuff. and so that was a good business. 18 months took it to a million dollars in revenue. it was interesting because.

I thought that it was so easy for those of you listening, quote unquote, easy because it only took 18 months and I got it to, you know, made a million dollars in revenue on my brick, you know, there's nothing I can't do. So I got a little bit kind of, cocky if you will. And I was like, well, whatever the next thing I started, you know, I have what it takes to take it to a million dollars and no time.

And I think that mindset that I had after that was really kind of the roadblock. In terms of, you know, getting down and dirty with what was actually needed to build the next thing up to the place that we are now.

[00:05:15] Jay: about that roadblock. How did you realize it was a roadblock and how did you get over it?

[00:05:22] David: Oh, I think I was definitely stuck in it for at least a year and I knew that I was in hindsight. Now I know that it was because when I had a lot of conversations back then with people, I would always lead with, Oh yeah. I started an e commerce business, took a million dollars in 18 months. And then they would just be like, wow, you know, kind of like really talking me up, pumping me up.

And so I felt good about myself during that time. Right, and I started walking around giving people advice trying to be like that guru If anybody was like approaching me, he asked me how kind of I did it and then at the same time I also stopped doing the dropshipping thing I actually sold it to somebody else's for some odd number of aetherium at the time when it was still worth something and I guess when I started one this agency and before that I obviously tried starting kind of Many partnerships with other people doing joint ventures and stuff like that.

 I had this mindset that like, okay, great. We just have to come up with a product, sell it to a bunch of people as possible, as much people as possible. And that's kind of it. But what I soon realized was everything that you needed to learn about product market fit. Is there even an actual need or are you trying to sell something to somebody that where the problem doesn't actually exist?

[00:06:36] Jay: Right

[00:06:36] David: Right. and obviously for me coming with e commerce, it's like whatever I was selling, it was the top rated thing on Amazon. Everybody was already buying that thing. So it was easy. Like I didn't need to learn whether or not there's a product market fit. So learning, understanding that there's that and then also understanding how do you actually do sales?

Because again, eBay and Amazon, they're marketplaces. People are coming to buy from you. So it made my life a lot easier. Whereas when you own an agency, you probably know yourself. You gotta do a lot of outbound, a lot of 

[00:06:59] Jay: 

[00:06:59] David: And so I was like, why the heck is business not just coming to me? Because.

It was coming to me like hotcakes, in e commerce, right? So I kind of sat down with myself and realized like there's a lot of kind of Me being naive about things and ignorant the ignorant debt of how a business actually works how sales works how making sure that you know You're serving people in the right way.

I was like, oh crap. I was being a freaking idiot I think that I already have, like, just because I made a million dollars doing e commerce drop shipping where I didn't even have to start my own, build my own website, didn't have to do my own marketing, didn't have to design my own product, that I can apply that skill and do the exact same thing in a service based business, like, it's just not it.

[00:07:45] Jay: Makes a lot of sense. Two things there. And one, somebody, actually both of those nobody has ever mentioned, but the first one I find very interesting. It's very easy when you make a million dollars or two million dollars in a business for people to see that and for them to trick you into thinking that you know the answer to their problems. And I think a lot of people fall into that trap. You see so many people on LinkedIn and on wherever just I can scale your business to whatever and I think those are the guy and I've always equated that to like The teach can't do kind of guys right because from zero to a million. Yes it's not a an easy thing to do, but it's doable and like, you know two million Okay, it's doable to get to five and they get to ten is like another level Of understanding business and how things work and I think a lot of people will get to that one to two million dollar level And just go you know what it's easier for me to teach other people and have them pay me How to do it than it is for me to scale my own business up to five or ten Which is always what I think in the back of my head when I see these guys who are out there Who are the gurus?

That's a great point and the number two upwork Has the same trap effect like you were describing where That's a marketplace And you can run a really successful business on upwork But then find yourself with no customers if Upwork was to dry up or there was no leads coming in because you may not have this magical offer, you were just in the right place at the right time.

And I think you kind of explained, you know, a little bit of my experience where I didn't get to that point, but I saw it coming when the Ukraine war happened and they cut off all the Russian contingents, everybody, and I thought, that would really suck if that was me. If I, if my entire business was just Upwork and you're doing a couple million through Upwork, and then that goes away you've established nothing.

You have no brand, you have no outreach like you're talking about, you have no kind of avenue to actually having a successful business. So I think, those are both really great points. so talk to me about, you guys do B2B sales and I'm curious, you know, again. Maybe like there's 500 million David Wongs.

[00:09:54] David: I feel like there's 500 million b2b lead generation services What really makes you guys different and how the hell did you figure out how you can stand out at all in this very? very crowded very, you know beat people over top of the head that we're here kind of space It's crowded. Any guy who thinks that they can find an automated, like, I could name 50 LinkedIn automation tools out of the top of my head and there's a new one popping up every day. A lot of people try those things, they kind of get burnt by that because they can't figure it out and they just assume that LinkedIn.

Legion doesn't work at all, period. And so, a lot of people that we talk to kind of come from that space, or they've worked with an agency or a freelancer who says that they can do this thing XYZ, maybe found them on Upwork, they don't deliver, you know, we get a, we deal with that fallout. and it's the majority of our clients actually come from that space, and the thing that really makes us stand out from our competitors when we have these conversations, is the fact that we don't just do the lead generation part, we actually care about your conversions, because at the day, people only stay with us if they actually make money, they make ROI from our campaigns.

Right. It may not be within the month, three months, or even half a year, depending on how long your sales cycle is. So for us, it's really important to get clear on, hey, how does, how long does it typically take for you to convert a lead, to an actual client? You know, some people could be six months, 12 months, especially in B2B, like the sales cycle is much longer, depending on how many levels 18 months.

So making it clear, and so they understand like, okay, great. If typically it takes you 18 months. You understand that if I got you a lead and a call on day one it you're not gonna get ROI Until probably month 18 and so setting those expectations really clear just that we're all on the same page in that sense there Okay, great.

Once that's set. The next thing that we look into is a okay, how do we? Reverse engineer their funnel to let them know and give them projections as to okay by this time in this day or this month Assuming that we booked this number of target calls for You should be able to make ROI by month nine, double your investment by month 13.

So, and you know, just really giving them realistic numbers and also, conservative numbers based on, you know, for example, especially if they've never done outbound sales before, and they say a lot of people come to us and say, Hey, you know, I can close one of two people, 50%. Okay, hold on. Is that inbound sales or is that through referrals?

You know, it's a lot easier when somebody's already making a warm introduction. It's a lot different when we're doing outbound, right? So getting clear on that and letting them know, again, setting that expectations. And then when we actually walk through our process, we show them, it's like, we don't just leave you off at booking.

Getting you a lead and telling you to go book in the call with them. Some people do the appointment setting as well, where they actually set up the call. and they just kind of hand it over and like, you know, you're on your own. What we do is we also manage their CRM. So we're HubSpot certified, making sure that we actually can get their adoption into managing the leads.

We get feedback, we get data on how each deal is going. And then we have a sales manager on our team to manage that process, reviewing, providing suggestions, optimizations, and feedback. And then we also have a sales coach on our team and a sales director who actually reviews client call recordings, email correspondences, um, coaches them on soft skills, and really just seeing where we can add value in terms of making sure that these products are converting.

[00:13:07] Jay: Love it. 

[00:13:09] David: That's kind of the secret sauce. The closer you can take them to the end goal, the better it's going to be, right? Otherwise, they're just thinking they're paying for leads.

You know, the problem could very much be that you have the best leads in the world, but if you guys suck at selling, then it doesn't matter who you work with.

You can be working with Gary Vee and his agency and you suck at selling. Sorry, dude. You're still gonna suck.

[00:13:28] Jay: It's a good point So I'm going to throw a couple words at you

and just kind of tell me what they mean to you today.

[00:13:37] David: sure.

[00:13:39] Jay: Let's go with one that I love. Money. What's the word money mean to you as a guy who's been successful, done some different things, you run a business now. What does money mean to you as an entrepreneur and as a business owner today?

[00:13:54] David: I'm not afraid to say it. Money equates to freedom for me. You know, 

[00:13:57] Jay: very common answer, it's a very common answer

[00:13:59] David: It is 

is. You know, I mean, like, just to be frank,

you know, I walk into rooms and some people ask me like, Hey, you know, what do you want to get out of this? I'm like, I want to do business, right? I'm not trying to walk in here and be like, you know, cocky is not the right word, but like, you know, be business oriented, but I hope that everybody in this room is business oriented.

And it's not that I got to make money off each other, but it's like, who do you know in your network that needs my service? How do I know my network who can, who you can serve as well. Right. And really support each other in kind of that way. So I think for Definitely money equates to freedom, not looking for a whole lot, you know, I have my ambition set on making a good amount, investing a good amount, you know, five mil in some time in the future into something safe, live off some dividends based on that, and then be able to continue working just for the sake of doing something that I love.

I think that's the bottom line of it, you know, working to earn. Sometimes you're doing things that you don't necessarily want to do. Right. but once I, I believe that once I can get to the point where it's invested, I live off dividends and I can truly only do the work that, and not worried about earning and just be able to do the work that I want to do.

[00:15:06] Jay: Love that. Alright, I got another word for you. And this should hit home for you. PSYCHOLOGY.

[00:15:14] David: don't get a psych degree. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. So I know where you got this from. And so let me tell you kind of the background of how psychology kind of came about. So in high school, I was trying to go straight into business school, got rejected by the one that I wanted to go to got accepted by a second one, but I'm like, Hey, you know what?

let me just go into the arts, the faculty of arts in the, with UBC instead. So I can just transfer into solder like the business where that I didn't want to go to. After the first year, I got 45 percent differential calculus. And in order to apply to transfer, they take the average of all attempts.

You need a minimum of 72 percent in differential calculus to apply. So I needed 100 percent in differential calculus two times in order to bring that average up to 72. So I was like, okay, what's the next kind of best thing that would put me on track to, to lean towards, you know, business marketing, that type of thing.

And I figured kind of psychology was that next best bet, you know, understanding how people think their behaviors and everything like that. And so landed in psychology. and after getting the degree, I still wasn't convinced that it was really helping me in many ways. But over the years, as it started to, you know, learn more.

you know, personal development, sales skills, how to communicate with people, networking. It's really starting to kick in and understand where those principles that I'm learning through psychology is showing up,

like how do people, why do people behave in a certain way? Why do they have that temperament?

It's like, Oh, well it's not them. It may be the environment that they grew up in and therefore, you know, can't take it so personally and you can't always blame it on them.

[00:16:54] Jay: Yeah, that's what I was wondering if how it wrapped back around. I assume that was kind of the story to some degree where maybe there wasn't a direct fit but maybe later in your career you started to kind of see, especially as you developed as a business owner and an entrepreneur. How the psychology I mean because you pick some of that stuff up even just as business or without a Psychology degree you kind of under start to understand people and like people who work for you and people with their clients and like just Things different scenarios and stuff.

So I love that answer Hobbies give me some hobbies of a successful entrepreneur that gives you some time to reset

[00:17:35] David: golf too cliche?

[00:17:36] Jay: No Golf's beautiful.

It's a beautiful sport. It's the hardest sport on earth.

[00:17:41] David: Yeah, golf is one of them for sure. started a couple years back, but this year I really kind of got serious with it. Took some lessons and playing more of the courses, doing a lot of networking on the course, filming content, in the cart, kind of in between So that's been great.

Another really good hobby of mine back in the day was Taekwondo. I used to compete quite a bit for the national team, before I quit, I think about seven years ago. And then after that, it's just been, you know, trying out different work classes. I'm subscribed to ClassPass. So, you know, it's been classes, weight training, boxing classes, whatever fits my schedule.

Realistically, just get myself active, I go. You know, I don't, I'm not really attached to the kind of one thing I like learning different sports and techniques and the form I think that the foundation of those sports is very important to me because it applies really to life as well. It's like, okay, great.

It doesn't matter if I'm going to taekwondo, even though it's a combat sport, when I go to boxing, the foundation and the form is different and being able to learn how my body needs to adjust to those things really kind of translates back to, you know, how I have to be kind of agile, even in business life, it's kind of the same concept and just being disciplined in that.

[00:18:49] Jay: The National Taekwondo for Canada? Wow, that seems like a pretty exclusive company.

[00:18:57] David: That was, it was a good run. I'll say that it was a good run. It was intense. A lot of, you know, cutting weight, hard days, training, long training days, you know, six hours, four or five days a week. cut out, missed out on a lot of social stuff that was happening back in high school. And even when I was in university, cause I was training so much in hindsight, I wish maybe I spent a little bit more time, you know, socializing and going out more and all that stuff, but it is what it is

[00:19:24] Jay: Alright, one more from the words list. This is two words. Personal branding.

[00:19:31] David: huge. I think, everybody. Has a personal brand these days, whether or not you're a business owner or not, I think the people that we look at and we want to associate ourselves with, even if it's just a friend, it's like, the personal brand is less about kind of you as a business and your product, but it's like, how do you carry yourself?

What's your personality like? Is there someone that I want to spend time with? You know, I have friends nowadays where we can sit together for three, four hours, sipping on a drink, and we could barely be talking at all, just hanging out and enjoying each other's company. That's kind of it. Right. And it's because I'm attracted to their personal brand.

We get along well, you know, and even on a business standpoint as well, I have associates where, you know, we go to a whiskey bar, we sit down, sip on cocktail, just talk about random stuff, not business related. And eventually we get business done. And that again, it's only because we vibe with each other.

Well, personality and I think personality and personal brand kind of go hand in hand nowadays. you know, back then, if you asked me this question, maybe five years ago, I would have been more, Yeah. Yeah. Leading towards personal brand meant the type of content you're putting out the branding that actually went to like the design the colors and all That stuff but nowadays it's like, you know, people use that much more curated feeds nowadays It's more kind of natural and you and I think it's just leaning more towards how does this person talk?

How do they carry themselves? What are their beliefs and their viewpoint certain things? So for example when I look at content by Ryan Panetta Alex Ramos II, it's like, you know, they don't have beautiful graphics Or anything like that. It's just subtitles on a video, but it's more about what they say, right?

And I believe with their standpoint and viewpoint in doing business, then I think that's a personal brand.

[00:21:16] Jay: I think Alex Ramosi's muscles have part to do with his personal brand. His,

[00:21:20] David: it helps. If you run a chain of gym businesses back in the day, it definitely helps to have

some muscle.

[00:21:25] Jay: being jacked,

 you know, I think I would probably show that off if that was my personal brand, too.

[00:21:31] David: I think wearing a wife beater, I mean, like, that's his outfit. It's a personal brand. 

[00:21:34] Jay: all the time. 

[00:21:35] David: all the time.

[00:21:36] Jay: Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess you've earned it at that point. Alright, so Mystery Question Time, we'll wrap with this. Non business related. If you could do anything on earth, and you knew you couldn't fail, what would you do?

[00:21:51] David: Oh, that's a heavy question. I don't even dare to think about that sometimes.

[00:21:57] Jay: now's your chance! You know, there's no failure, there's

no bad answers. 

[00:22:04] David: If I were to do anything... No chance to fail. That's so not, you said non 

[00:22:09] Jay: Non business related. People weasel their way out of this question with saying, I will have the biggest business on earth, or whatever, so I switch to non business related. A bucket list item, something you're afraid to do because you're afraid to fail, what would it be?

[00:22:23] David: Oh, I would want to get a house in a beachside Malibu.

[00:22:27] Jay: Okay. Beautiful.

[00:22:28] David: That's it. Like,

I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I know I want that.

[00:22:32] Jay: fail, so you're good. I like that. Alright,

if you want, if people want to find you, David, how do they do that?

[00:22:40] David: Easiest way, LinkedIn, do a search for David Wong, plus JD Leads on the back, so just the letter J and D and Leads, you'll find me, I'll probably be the first one at the top, if you put JD Leads, if you put just David Wong, you'll probably find a ton of other people that, there's gonna be doctors, there's gonna be martial artists, there's gonna be, I once googled David Wong, and a news article about a criminal came up, and that's not what I want.

So make sure David Wong JD leads on LinkedIn. if on Instagram, Mr. David Wong. So Mr. David and then Wong with three G's at the end, will be the best way to find me there. Otherwise, send me an email. David at JDLeadsOnline. com.

[00:23:18] Jay: And is it, what's the website URL for JDLeads?

[00:23:20] David: JDLeadsOnline. com.

[00:23:22] Jay: Got it. All right, I'll put it on the show notes. Everybody can find you.

All right, Dave. you're very, inspirational guy, dude. A lot of cool stuff, a lot of good applicable lessons. So thank you for being on and we'll talk again soon. All right.

[00:23:33] David: Appreciate you having 

[00:23:33] Jay: Thanks, Dave. 

​