Making It – Episode 14
From Factory Worker to Founder (Daniel Levis)
Daniel Levis: My name is Daniel Levis and you’re listening to Making It. And my gig is called Science of Client-Getting. And we help coaches, consultants, agencies, advisors, service, pros and solution providers to get clients.
If you had asked me when I was a kid who I wanted to be when I grow up, I would have looked at you with a blank stare and told you I had no idea. And so for the first half of my life, I was about the least ambitious person you could ever come across. Never finished high school, worked in factories, construction, and the most embarrassing straight commission sales jobs you could ever imagine right from the time I was a teenager. And owning my own business was not something that I ever thought I would ever do. You know, that costs money. It takes talent. You need an earth shattering idea.
And it really wasn’t until the Internet came along and I started seeing other idiots making money online that I thought maybe this idiot could do the same. And every time I took some action toward that end, I think my biggest mistake was shooting too low and waiting too long. And I think there was something about my upbringing that kind of gave me those beliefs. So I had to get over that. We didn’t have a lot of money, and my uncle was the only entrepreneur that I knew in my family, so I guess he was my role model because he was the only person I knew who was an entrepreneur, who was a business person.
What he did, he actually had several businesses. But when I was a kid, I would go and I would work in his plastic cup factory. And so I saw somebody who was making money on their own, doing their own thing, building a business. And because I worked in that business, it had a big impact on me. And then later on, when I grew up, he had another business, and that was tool and die business. So he would do machine shop and that kind of thing, and I would go and work for him here and there. It’s really because he was the only one I really knew. And so that had a big impact on me because he just thought differently.
He had a different perspective on life. He wasn’t all about, you know, go to school, get an education, get a job. Everybody else in my family was like that. I just had no interest whatsoever in school. I spent a probably six hours out of the day in the smoking area and not going to class, to the chagrin of my family. And so I just kind of drifted after that, worked in factories, did menial jobs. It wasn’t until I discovered selling and commission sales, to be more specific, that I became somewhat interested in work. And so I think if you don’t have that kind of a role model, you know, you’re probably going to do what everybody else around you has done, and that is go to school, get a job kind of thing.
I think it all started back in the 1990s when I was in corporate sales, selling various software platforms and data networking services. And online marketing for me was an answer to voicemail. Instead of beating my head against the wall, dialing for dollars, I started generating leads for myself online in much the same way we do this today, you know, problem solving information offered in exchange for email address, which then offered a free consultation of some kind. And that was a time of industry consolidation, you know, where one big company would get swallowed up by another big company. And if you were in sales, this caused all kinds of problems.
And from the year 2000, I think I must have started over about ten different companies over the space of just a few years. And so I finally had enough of that and I thought, hey, why don’t I teach other salespeople how to generate leads online? And I went on my own in 2004 and I was very lucky. I was able to basically replace my income the very first month through a joint venture with Dr. Joe Vitale. He sent my offer out to his list and I captured several thousand email addresses and I’ve never looked back. And for the past 20 years I’ve been crafting various offers, offers, most of them new and improved variations on a theme, selling stuff online.
And I think it was 2020 when we released the Science of Client-Getting, which is a comprehensive system of selling, comprising offer lead gen traffic, conversion and follow up specifically for selling intangibles like coaching, consulting, advisory agency services and solutions. I think my biggest mentor is no longer with us. His name is Clayton Makepeace and he was one of the most successful copywriters in the direct mail space. And we started working together when he wanted to build an online consultancy and do online marketing. So I was lucky enough to work with Clayton for two or three years before his death. And that was just probably the most educational experience and the person who helped me the most.
One of my favorite quotes is from Peter Drucker. And I think this is probably really, really good advice. And the quote is, the purpose of advertising is to make selling superfluous. And when you unpack that, it has a tremendous amount of impact and it informs the way you go about your marketing in a really beneficial way. And what he means by that is that when you’re advertising, you’re not pitching, you’re basically educating. If your advertising is educational and you engage your prospect long enough in that educational process. It makes selling superfluous. So when you actually speak to the client, the sale is perfunctory. It’s a mere formality because your marketing has done the selling for you.
What does making it mean to me? It’s a moving target. Making it, when I first started in business, was basically just making it to the end of the month before the money ran out. And as long as I didn’t have to work for somebody else, I was making it. Of course, you make a certain amount of money and you prove to yourself that you can walk upright as an independent free agent in the world. And then making it began to take on a new meaning for me and my business became part of my identity. It becomes like a mission, what you were put on this earth to do, and this is healthy to an extent. You know, you got enough money to meet your material needs and you need a bigger reason to keep at it.
But that definition of making it wears out as well because you can only have so much impact in the world by yourself. And sure, you may be helping people, but all you’ve really done is built yourself a glorified job. And at that point making it took on a more literal meaning, as in, what am I making? Making it at this point means making a system that helps people obtain a given result without you having to physically help them obtain that result.
A business where machines and other people do the work for you while you manage largely from a distance. So you’re doing something that gives you a great deal of satisfaction at scale, while at the same time having plenty of caching and plenty of time to enjoy it. That’s my current definition of making it.
I think if I had to start all over from scratch and leverage what I learned, I would take some skill that I’m good at and that I enjoy doing something that I feel really good about transferring that skill to others. And then I would find somebody else who has made it, as in built a system that helps others to acquire that same skill and I would do what they do. In my case, it’s about helping coaches and consultants and advisors agencies service pro solution providers to get clients. Well, guess what? Science of Client-Getting is not really about sales copy, or cold calling, or becoming a social media butterfly on Facebook or Instagram, or spending endless hours talking to clients, or doing things for clients once you get one. It’s about building systems that automatically fulfill all of those functions.
If I had to do it all over again, that would be the biggest lesson. I would build a business like that in the first place. And this applies regardless to what your skill is. I think that the biggest mistakes that people make are mindset mistakes. I see a lot of self sabotage. I see a lot of imposter syndrome, you know, people underestimating their skills, undercharging, I see not following through. You know, they go in one direction for a little while, and for some reason they see some bright, shiny object, and then all of a sudden they’re chasing that. And just a lack of continuity, a lack of a plan. You know, you got to have the right plan, but once you find one that has some traction, just stick to it.
My biggest mistake, I think, was just not believing enough in myself and just kind of holding back and not really swinging for the fences. For a long, long time, I didn’t advertise. I just did joint ventures and stuff like that. And that was my source of traffic to fuel the business because I didn’t feel I could advertise profitably. And when I decided that that was just another limiting belief and I took it seriously, I was able to do it. When you free yourself from the need to have somebody else promoting you and endorsing you, and you can just become independent in that way, it’s just a transformational experience.
I’m Daniel Levis and you’re listening to Making It. You can find me at www.daniellevis.com. That’s D-A-N-I-E-L-L-E-V-I-S dot com. You’ll find the link in the show notes. Plus there’s a link to a resource called the Buying Emotion Color Wheel.