How to Operate Multiple Successful Businesses with Johann Noguiera

Transcription of Episode

[00:00:00] Ryan Chapman: Hey, this is Ryan Chapman from Fix Your Funnel with another of our interview series. I've really enjoyed these, and today I have a really special guest, Johann Nogueira. Johann you're kind of a... You've got a really neat story. You've been a customer of Fix Your Funnel for a couple of years, and that's how you got to know me and I got to know you. At least that we exist. We just start talking for the first time here today. What people may not know is before we start talking on the podcast, we always have a "before the podcast recording interview" where we kind of just talk and get to know each other a little bit better. And I was just really compelled by your story. You, you are a business owner that's running four businesses, which, you know, people talk about that, but as you went through each of the businesses, these are for legit businesses, not for hobbies that we're calling businesses. Tell us a little bit about your story. I think it's very interesting and educational for business owners in general.

Johann Noguiera: Fantastic. I'd love to, and thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here. And by the way, my first interaction with you was I received a box in the [00:01:00] mail and I opened this thing up and there's this beautiful cookie. I think there was two cookies in there along with your book, and I opened it up. I was so excited that it was, you know, direct mail works, you know, you had it all set up, through your automation and to this day, two years later, I still remember getting that box going oh my God, this is freaking amazing. I have to do this for all of my clients.

Ryan Chapman: I appreciate it.

Johann Noguiera: Well done. Well done.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. That's interesting how little it takes to show people that you appreciate them. You know, as a customer.

Johann Noguiera: For sure. And over the years I've sent so many people there, anybody who ever talks about, you know, text message automation, I might just get a Fix Your Funnel. You've got to get those cookies, try those cookies.

Ryan Chapman: We appreciate it, we appreciate it. But yeah, go into your story. And you know, I didn't get to ask you this before we started to record, but you mentioned that you started in agricultural science.

Johann Noguiera: Correct.

Ryan Chapman: What got you [00:02:00] from there.To doing what your first business started yo. Cause it kind of seems like that doesn't match up at all. Right?

Johann Noguiera: It completely does not match up. So I was doing agricultural science and climate change and secondary bio fields. I was doing my PhD out in this remote town, those 14,000 people there. And I was, I was traveling there, you know, during the weekend. So it was a four hour drive out there. Sorry, I was traveling there during the week and on the weekends I'd come back home. Now when I came back home, I had a girlfriend, and so I proposed to her. In Australia, we have scholarships for our PhD, so I was in a $20,000 a year scholarship, and people told me, Hey, you're getting engaged, you have to spend half your money on this, on your engagement ring. Me being the young, silly, impressionable person, I went and bought this diamond ring for $10,000. And at that point in time, it's a lot of money because I didn't take into account, you know, my living costs or anything. I just went, Oh, I make 20,000 a year. I'm going to go buy [00:03:00] 10,000 ring. 3 months later, I paid this thing up because I did a three month payment plan and I see this ad online saying with the pretty much the exact same ring. Diamond ring that I just paid 10 grand for for $2,000 and I went wait, what the hell? So I said, it's gotta be a fake. So I buy it on my credit card. It arrives I take it to the jeweler who just charged me that $10,000 and I said what do you think of this? And he goes, Oh wow, I'll give you $5,000 I went, Oh, that's interesting. Now mind you, $400 a week was my wage at this stage, so he just offered me $5,000 I just made $3,000 I was like, wow, that's amazing. Hell yeah. Here you go. And so sold him the ring, took that $5,000 went back to this website where I bought the diamond ring from, bought more things, came back to him, sold him more stuff, and I think it's about six months later, I end up with a duffel bag filled with about $200,000 worth of diamonds by just by buying and trading. And [00:04:00] here I am this, you know, everybody knows that I'm a PhD student and that I'm on a scholarship except on the weekend, I'm shouting the entire pub, you know, drinks are on me, your dinner's on me. I'm buying everybody food and everything like that, and then everybody's going, there's something wrong here. This guy has to be a drug dealer. There's no way in hell he can do this. So that's, that's sort of how I got it. I got a little taste for business and then soon as my, you know, my PhD was coming along, I just couldn't, it's a very solitary life and I'm a social person. And then one day we ended up on this yacht. And we're on a conferences, a science conference, and I said, I can't wait to own a yacht and one of the scientists who's 65 years old said, there's no way in hell you're ever going to earn a yacht on a scientist wage. I went, Oh, well, that kind of messes up my plans. You know, there's a couple of other instances happen, and I went, Holy shit, I need to get out of science. This is not going to give me the lifestyle that I want. And at this [00:05:00] point in time, I've discovered Tony Robbins and you know, like I can achieve anything. So I started, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this website that I was buying all these items from, they had an affiliate program, so sign up to their affiliate program. Now, I didn't even have didn't even have to buy any product, all I had to do was generate traffic to the website and I was making, you know, 15% commission. Now the average spend was a thousand dollars that people spend on those websites. I was making $150 from a, now this is 2007 mind you, I was spending 20 cents on the ad on the click, and I was making $150. So now if they thought I was a drug dealer, now that you know, they think I'm a freaking tycoon, I'm just churning like, it's literally just churning money. It's insane. And 2007 Facebook was very young and all I was doing was targeting people who were 25 to 35 who were in a relationship. And my ad said, buy [00:06:00] diamond rings 90% off. And people will just click and click and quickly, if they didn't buy the diamond ring, they'd buy jewelry for themselves. So it was pretty good. And so from there I went into CPA marketing. So cost per acquisition, we were doing it for all the banks. So we were generating leads for credit cards. If you went into Google and type, you know, Commonwealth bank credit card application, my ad would be at the top. And this is CPA is much more lucrative than just affiliate marketing because you're getting paid per lead. So the CPA network would pay me about $200 per lead I was generating and on Google, my click would cost me $6 so 10 people clicked on it and I got a 10% conversion. It cost me $60 and I was making $200 am my, my profit is $140. And there was, you know, 1800 searches a month just for that one keyword. And so I had all these campaigns going, by now I've got this house and cause in my early twenties partying, drinking too much. And then my parents came up to me and said, you quit your PhD. At this [00:07:00] stage I quit one the one month before handing it in. And I said, what are we going to do? All the other families are embarrassed. We can't, you know, we don't know what to tell the other families. Now in my, in my ethnicity, having a title, it means a lot. So I was like, okay, got it. So I built it, built a digital agency, and then I was like, okay, cool. You know, Hey, we can buy these templates. I was paying for us for 75 bucks, and I actually loved building a website, bringing a vision to life. So I'd sit down and build this thing and charge $500. And at this stage, it's not about the money, it's about the satisfaction of bringing something to life. It took me a month to build a website and I was like, yay. Oh my God, look, I built the website and yeah, one month to build a website for 500 bucks. It does not make economical sense, but it was like a passion slash hobby. Until I found all these other people who love doing it better than me, and they were way better than me, and they can do it in two days as opposed to my one month. So then I said, Oh, I can outsource this. I went up [00:08:00] to all the agencies in Melbourne and that's where I lived in Australia and said, Hey, I can build these things better than you, faster, new, cheaper than you, and at a better quality than you. Send me the work. And so they sent me the work, we gave them a free trial, and they loved it. And so now to this day, 10 years later, we have, you know, 36 agencies that send us work all day, every day. And we have 92 families, a team of 92 and so 92 families are getting fed because of that one little thing all those years ago. So that's, that's business number one. This is number two. I moved into this, moved into this apartment, messy. My philosophy is I am a bumblebee. So bumblebee, I don't know if you, do you know what a bumblebee is, by the way? Because...

Ryan Chapman: I know what it is, I don't know much about it.

Johann Noguiera: So bumblebee, it's body to wing ratio means that it should not be able to fly. Its body is way too big. And so it shouldn't be able to fly, but it still flies because nobody told it that [00:09:00] it shouldn't be able to fly. So business number two, this guy, you know, I'm living in this building. I keep getting these pieces of paper onto my door every day. That's the notification system. By the way, this is 2012 now. A notification system, but, Hey, my windows are getting cleaned, my copies are getting cleaned. I went up to the building manager. I said, how much is this costing? And he said, it's a $365,000 a year, exercise where somebody is walking around the building, putting these papers onto the door. And I just went, wow, I can fix this. I said, Hey, why don't we build apps for the building now? App technology was just coming around this age.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah.

Johann Noguiera: And he goes, I don't know what that means, but you're a brown guy, so I'm sure you can build that stuff. Can you build me a building management system? I said, hell yeah, I can build you a building management system. And so we took six months. We reverse engineered all the other building management systems that there were, and I built this business management system, showed it to him, he goes, I love it. He goes, tell him, let's show it to the owners corporation. I show it to them. They're like, Holy, this is amazing. Let's, let's have that. [00:10:00] And he goes, why don't you tell them about your app idea? He was actually mocking me when he said this, and so I told them, I said, all right, I'll talk to you about my app idea. And I told them about how we can do notifications. We can create a community, we can create all these cost efficiencies in the building. And they went, wow, we love that. We'll have that too. I'm walking out the building. He comes chasing me and goes, dude, how much money did you just make? And I said I did all right. He said, how about we become business partners? He goes, I control all these other buildings. I've got a huge portfolio. I don't know anybody who does tech, you're a tech guy, let's partner up. So we partner up. I go, hell yeah, let's go for it. What a ride. We partner up two years later, he goes, Hey man, I'm going to retire. He's 70 years old. I'm like, Oh man, we just built this amazing tech. We've got all these case studies. We had the best, the premium buildings in Melbourne running our systems and you want to retire? He's like, yeah, so I have a problem now. My problem is he's the sales guy. I'm the tech guy. I'm not a sales guy. So I sit there and I don't know what you believe, but I said, universe, please, I need something. I cannot go door to door selling this tech to these buildings [00:11:00] and I get a phone call from these guys the next day going, Johann, we've been trying to copy your systems for the last two years. We can't do it. What's it going to take to partner with you or to buy you out? I said, well, you can't buy me out, but I'm interested in partnering up. Let's have a chat. So we sit down, we have a chat. They've got to start talking to me about numbers that I'd never heard of. They told me about how they want to build this company into a hundred million dollar company. Now at this stage, my money mindset still could not comprehend. So I couldn't imagine what a hundred million dollars even looks like. I have to write it down on a piece of paper going, how many zeros is that? Holy shit, you know? And so I said, yeah, let's, you know, let's do this. And I said to them, I go, dude, you know, my company at this stage is doing a million bucks. I go, am I going to be a hundred times more stressed than I'm currently now? And they go no, we don't build businesses like that. We'd build businesses in the proper strategic way. And nobody had ever said that to me before. And I said, wow, so let's do this. Let's go on this journey. And [00:12:00] so we go on this journey and in four years, and this took me two days a week, four years, we built that company to a $20 million a year revenue. And it was the most incredible thing, and I went, wow. The way that we built that company, it was extreme. Every thing that we did was strategic. We created amazing joint ventures with the right people. Now, just to give you a little bit of the backstory, one of my business partners in this business, this, there's five of us who built this business. One of the business partners, he bought a company that was turning over $6 million dollars, which is in our industrial area just around here. And he bought it for next to nothing, because they were actually, they turned over 6 million, but they were spending 7 million a year. So there's too many companies out there that are, you know , what's it called? Those vanity numbers. Oh yeah, we do make a lot of money, but yeah. What's your actual profit margin? So they were losing money. So he buys it. Him and his partner for next to nothing, and they flip [00:13:00] it around and in four years they turned that into a $700 million a year revenue company. And then he exits at this stage. So you know, him telling me that he was wanting to build a hundred million dollar company, he's like Johann, I could do this in my sleep. Okay, interesting. Now, that company that I just told you about that he took to 700 million, it is now on the stock exchange for one point $2 billion. This company, what they do is they produce hand creams, so you know, lotions and creams for your face. And they did one joint venture. So joint ventures is a passion of mine. I did one joint venture with a pharmacy company in the, what do you call it, in the UK, who has a distributor issue of 2,500 pharmacies. So that one deal has now increased their market cap by so much more. So one of my, one of my philosophies is you're only one deal away from changing your entire life. But, so that's, that's company number two and company number [00:14:00] two. Now I've systemized.

Ryan Chapman: Okay, now you gotta stop here for a second because I think most people, they're hearing this and they're going, is this guy for real? Because to have one company that does well is a big thing for a lot of peopl. To have a second company and it seems out of nowhere to just sure, you know, rocket up to $20 million a year company two days a week almost seems unreal for people. Now you're going to tell us about two more. Go ahead. Go ahead cause I already heard the story so I know it's good. But the thing is, some people at this point are going, well I can't even believe this. Who has Ryan got here.

Johann Noguiera: Well, when I tell the story, I sit here thinking, Holy shit, you know, I was just...

Ryan Chapman: You almost can't believe it yourself.

Johann Noguiera: Try to try to build $500 websites and learn about technology. And this is how it went into media buying all this stuff. And business is just, business changes the world. So my philosophy is every business owner out there [00:15:00] has the power to change the world, and it's not the governments that change the world. They just add that to, you know, to regulate and handcuff creativity. Business owners can literally overnight just change, pivot one little thing, and you can change your entire life.

Ryan Chapman: We see it all over the place, don't we?

Johann Noguiera: If we certainly do. And I'm just, I'm just so excited. You know, I've got chills when I talk about this stuff cause it's so exciting for me. So while I'm enjoying this amazing success, this is how company number three was formed. Two of my friends, unfortunately took their lives. And this had a huge impact on me because one phone call, you know, one conversation could have literally changed that, changed their lives. At the funeral there's 500 people there for one of them, and it's not just about them, it's the amount of other families that got impacted by this one decision. And that one decision could have been changed [00:16:00] if, if I could have had that one conversation and so I was devastated by this. And especially cause there's certain... Cashflow problems are so easy to solve, and I'll get to that in a second, but...

Ryan Chapman: So is that, is that what happened with these two guys? Is both of them found themselves in some cashflow flow crunches? They couldn't work your way out of it?

Johann Noguiera: Exactly. So cashflow issues led to the businesses being in trouble, led to the taxes being overdue, led to them fighting with their families, with their spouses, and it just sort of, you know, there was a domino effect. And then from that, it just cascaded into a place where they couldn't see any, any way to come back. And then the staff starting to leave and then projects failing because they couldn't deliver. And that's just, unfortunately, that's what they did. So any of us, we've all sort of experienced tiny little bits of that where, you know, your deadlines [00:17:00] getting missed, et cetera, clients getting pissed off and all of that just compounded on top, which may make their lives unbearable. And so that's, that's what happened there.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah, I was gonna say, so, you know, that caused you to do something. To form the third business, which is not as interesting because this business is a nonprofit.

Johann Noguiera: Correct. It cost me more money than it's made. It's definitely a not profit business. It's not officially a nonprofit. It's just a Johann paying for it right now, and it is built just before I get to what it is, I was at a, I was at a seminar. And one of my friends said, look, you gotta come to a seminar. I haven't been to seminars in more than a decade since I started my business. And I go to the seminar and it's just one full day of just pitching, pitching, pitching, and I'm just sitting there getting more frustrated, more frustrated, and I make friends with the person sitting next to me. She's a 65 year old lady she's about to buy this package of this dude on stage who's selling 800 hours [00:18:00] of audio on how to make money on eBay. And I'm like, please, please don't do that. Cause you know, each hour of each hour of audio, it takes about eight hours to implement. And he's telling you 800 hours you'd never going to be able to implement this. And she said, I'm not as young as you. You know, I don't have enough time. This is, this is my legacy. She goes, I've left my children nothing. And this is my final bit that my final chance to make something of myself and make something for my family at 65 years old. And she had $26,000 in the mech account, and she goes and hands over $25,000 to this guy. And I was cringing and this is unfortunately the sad part of the business education industry in Australia, and I suspect it's over there as well.

Ryan Chapman: It's everywhere.

Johann Noguiera: And yeah, and these guys, these guys are trained in NLP to extract money from audiences, you know, seldom hopes and dreams even when they are not doing what they claim to do. And so [00:19:00] that really, really agitated me. And I said, man, there's all these charletton snake oil salesman out there claiming to be business coaches claiming to be business gurus. And they haven't actually built a proper business. They don't even... Their businesse is selling stuff. And so it's like, yeah. Wonder what I could do if I could actually educate my community. And so we built a business called Business Authorities, and this business was built with. All, all the people who are experts at what they do. I, I'm not an expert at everything. I'm a great deal maker. I can, I know how to, you know, show value, create value, et cetera, and make sure that there's a win, win, win for everybody. But I'm not a tech guy. I told you about the bumblebee story, I own a software development company, I've never written a line of code. I have my skin color as my advantage, but that's pretty much it. So from, you know, from that I recruited 10 people. I said, Hey, this is what I want to do for the community. I [00:20:00] want to run an event, I want to have no pitching from stage, and I want to give the audience your best strategies on how they can increase the cashflow, increase their leads, have more time, and you know, make more profit so that they can have a greater impact in the world. I want you to help them get free. And so we did this. I brought 10 separate business owners and trained them for one year to be able to work in unison. Now 10 alphas, you know, people who are pretty much at the top of their game to make them work as one is a hell of a task. I had no idea what I was doing. It was literally like rounding up cats. And so we, we run this event. Everybody, you meet in all these industries, you know, people who've been promoting Tony Robbins and all that. They said, Johann, you cannot run an event and charge a thousand dollars per ticket. Only Tony Robbins does that. And I said, okay, well thank you for your advice, but I'm going to do what I'm going to do anyway. And I run this event and we have 150 [00:21:00] people attend and the event is sold out. We have an amazing two days. And that sparks this movement of people walking around, calling themselves business authorities now. And so then we create the business authorities community. And in one year we've got 3000 people in there, we've got, I think, 700 people who are interacting on the Facebook page all the time. We have quarterly events where people just come... But the purpose of the events is so that they can create joint ventures amongst themselves and you know, learn from the experts of people who are at the coalface with the main topics we talk about is more leads, more profit, more time, and more impact. Now that business was built to create impacts, it was not created to make a profit. Although, you know, my mentor keeps telling me, you do need to make a profit at some stage because you don't have to keep funding it. I said, yes, I know. So it has now created 1,080,000 impacts. What is an impact? One impact is, you know, you come to one of our events, you [00:22:00] buy one of our anything. A child gets water for the next year. A child gets education for next year. We ran an event in November because it was freezing in Europe, you know, children in the Ukraine and got clothing for the entire winter. And so that's, that's what we talked about. This business was about to create impact. And then I told you about the, the third, the second business, which took four years to get to 20 million. I said, Hey, what if they could redo it and do it much quicker? So we built the Fort Business in October last year, and it's a, it's a digital agency with four services only. We only do automation, strategy, platform builds, and app builds because those are most, highly profitable for us, but high return on investment for the end user. So it's a win, win, win for everybody. So that started in October. What are we now? March by the end of end of February, we had 7 million in the pipeline. So I think we're going to beat our record.

[00:23:00]Ryan Chapman: That's great. So essentially then, because of what you've learned along this journey. You've pulled all those pieces together and you're in a position now to really create a company the way you'd want to.

Johann Noguiera: Exactly. It's not guesswork anymore. That first company was pure guesswork, blood, sweat, and just extremely low profitability, high volume, but low profitability.

Ryan Chapman: Second one is sort of right place, right time.

Johann Noguiera: Exactly.

Ryan Chapman: You did have a, you had a Genesis of an idea that was, you know, the, the thing that made the thing start to happen, but it was just kind of, things fell in place. Third one is really a passion, right? Of wanting to help people and especially business owners. And the fourth one seems like it almost combines all of those, but now it's done intentionally.

Johann Noguiera: Exactly.

Ryan Chapman: So if you like, the only reason I hesitated to have you tell your story, and of course I had you tell it cause I [00:24:00] thought it was really important for people to hear. But the only hesitation I had is some people might think, Oh, do I need to own four companies to be successful? And then the question I want to pose to you is, you know, obviously this is your life. This is the experience that you've had. This is where you are. You're not going to throw things away that you've been given. And things that you've worked towards. Because there's both of that that goes on in these situations. But if you, if you found yourself having to start all over again, which of the four types of companies would you do? Cause the first one is obviously that one is really an employer, right?

Johann Noguiera: Right.

Ryan Chapman: You're helping a lot of people by giving them jobs. The second one is an equity play. Because it's a longterm play. The third one is, you know, making an impact on people's lives and giving to the community. The fourth one is cashflow. Which one of those would you start with?

Johann Noguiera: Cashflow. It all comes down to cash.

Ryan Chapman: Tell me about that. Why is cashflow such a big deal.

Johann Noguiera: Because without the cashflow, you [00:25:00] can't really do anything with the cashflow. And by the way, we wanted to bootstrap this company. I didn't invest any money into the company. I wanted to prove that we could build this from scratch. And we built, one, by understanding exactly who our ideal clients were or are. And two, what is the product that can solve most of the problems of that ideal client? Turns out it's automation. So the fourth company is built purely to provide a service of automation. Now we've all seen the technology curve. You know, there's a adoption curve and automation two years ago or even four years ago, was still in the on the left hand side of that curve. Now it's about to become mainstream and people are just so excited about automation. When we go in and we do a presentation around what automation brings to the table they're blown away. They're like, wow, you could replace three of my staff. Or your automation [00:26:00] is does enough work to generate three extra staff for us, or it's like having three extra staff for us. I said, yes, most definitely. I said, we're going to create this amazing machine for you that's working for you. 24/7, 365 days, no sick leave, no issues, no, you know, whatever. And it's always there working. And once it's working, you can only build on it so it can only continually get better. And they are blown away by it, then that return on investment is massive.

Ryan Chapman: I have to call you out. You said that earlier that you're not a salesman. You, you were telling a story. You are a salesman. That got me excited as you were telling that story. You know, I've been around automation since 2007, you know. In terms of, in particular Infusionsoft using it and, our own company. And then as we built the company that, that expanded its capabilities. And, you know, I think I've become so accustomed to what automation can do. But [00:27:00] you're right. I think mainstream is finally picking up on it. There's so much talk about, AI and machine learning in the news and things like that, that finally people are starting to understand, Oh, maybe this is something that could work for me. Maybe this isn't just for Silicon Valley.

Johann Noguiera: Exactly, and that's, that is our pitch. That is what we talk to them about. We say, Hey, you know what machine learning is, you know what AI is, but you don't have the most basic fundamentals of automation. If I email you or if I enter in my details into your thing, into your contact form on your website, I get a thank you message sent. I go, what the hell is that? I go, you need to build a relationship. You need to nurture me. By the time I call you the next time I need to be sold, and now you have this machine which is there, which is educating me all day long. And then by the time I make that phone call to you, I'm already sold on exactly what I want. I'll give you an example. I have this, you know, I went through one of the people in our industries, I went through one of their funds. And it was a high ticket funnel. [00:28:00] By the time they finished nurturing me, I get on this personalized phone call with their sales person who's meant to design up the system for me, live via Zoom and I, as soon as the phone rings, I go, Hey, I'm really excited. What do we need to get started? He's like, Johann I'm going to design a system for you, just be your agency. I go, look, I already know that you've probably done this a hundred times, for 10 other agencies just pull me up one of those. He goes, no, no, no. This is a personalized thing. I go, look, I'm already sold. I already know exactly what he's going to sell me. Take my credit card, charge it for $25,000. Let's go. And he's like, this was the easiest sale I ever made. I go, yes, because your automation is so good. I'm ready to buy because I already know exactly what I'm going to get. I've got a PDF that tells me and outlines what I'm going to get. So I've, I've read the details. He goes, wow. And so automation right now is the most exciting place to be. And because it is the bridge between AI and machine learning and a normal business.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. So how do you connect? [00:29:00] So you talk though about a cashflow business being the first one that you would start. And in this case you're, you're writing on top of what is already a wave that you see that's coming. Is that, is that key to creating a cash flow company? What's key to creating cash flow company?

Johann Noguiera: Value.

Ryan Chapman: Okay, tell me about that.

Johann Noguiera: So I'll give you an example. If we talk to any business owner, what is the one of the number one problems? It's leads. So if I was to, they said I needed more leads, I'd say, okay, we can attract the right leads to you. But can you convert them? We can only convert them if you have one offer. So this is an issue with my other, my first business. There's a hundred different things that people can buy from us. If you nail down your one offer, Fix Your Funnel. What is the offer? There's only one thing I can do on there. Sign up for an account. And then once I'm in the ecosystem, there's so many other beautiful integrations, which I didn't even know were there. And then I can [00:30:00] choose my own path. So it's, it's an incredible, you've designed it so well. And so just like, so the person has to know who they're going to say, they need to know their numbers, they need to know the profit margins, they need to know deliverabilites. They need to design the entire customer journey. And they need to know the value that that adds to the client. So at the start of my story, I told you we were selling websites $500, we now sell websites for $50,000 what is the difference? The difference is we're selling them an all in one solution. Before we, we thought we were in the business of building websites. I'll tell you another quick story, and this will, this will make sense as to what business are you really in. So Henry Ford, when he built, you know, Ford, he had 700 trucks, which he ran, and he was trying to sell to the full rail companies in America. They looked at him and told him to piss off and they weren't interested because they're in the rail industry. Oh, sorry for my language. By the way, it must be an Australian thing. [00:31:00] You might not swear, but we do. So anyway, so the rail companies said, no, go away, we don't, you know, we're not interested in your 700 trucks. No 80% of shipping is now done by trucks and 20% by rail. If those rail companies had realized that they're not in the rail industry, that they're in the transportation game, they would have bought that for pennies on the dollar, and they would own all the trucks. Right? So when, when I was building websites, I thought it was the website building game, but what does a website do? A website is on online 24 hours a day, 365 your ideal clients are coming there. If you've done the traffic generation properly, they're getting an education. They're understanding exactly what the benefits are of interacting with you. They're getting nurtured. They're going, they're opting in into whatever optimally you have. They're getting nurtured. They're understanding your entire product. All automatically, and then when the phone rings, they're ringing to make an order. Now is that worth $50,000?

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. So you recognized that the business you were in was [00:32:00] in providing prepared and qualified leads.

Johann Noguiera: The business we're in is in the lifestyle and freedom business. Because no longer do you have to go out and have meetings. You don't have to send follow up emails and long things explaining what you do. You now have videos which are going out to your ideal clients saying, Hey, you know, glad you opted in. This is what we do. This is how we're going to help you. And look first. And by the time they've declared that...

Ryan Chapman: I'm glad you took that ' cause you took a step further than what I was saying. Cause what I was saying is one of the things that you're doing for them, but you are going to actually say what they get out of it, which is very different from just the thing that's being done. That's I guess where a lot of people get confused when we talk just about features instead of the benefit of the benefit of the feature, which is where you really want to be spending your time. That's a, that's a, that's very cool. So that's, that is then the secret then to you to creating cashflow is being very aware [00:33:00] of what value it is that you're bringing to the market.

Johann Noguiera: Exactly.

Ryan Chapman: And then communicating that in a way that they can go, Oh yeah, that's what I want.

Johann Noguiera: All about value. So my belief around money is that the more value you can create a marketplace, the more people that appreciate that value, the more money is in your bank account. So right now, if anybody who's listening thinks about their bank account, your bank account reflects the number of people you're serving. If you think about it, where we're, I'm recording this, we're recording this. I'm on my phone. So everyday by me using my phone, I'm giving thanks in a certain aspect to Steve Jobs, right? Because he created this thing. This device is part of my life. It's, it's reflected in their bank account. I use Facebook everyday. It's reflected in their bank account. I use Gmail, I use Google. It's reflected in their bank account. The number of people you're serving, the more people you can get out there, the more people you can add value [00:34:00] to, especially for automation, because you can get through to a lot of people. You know the bigger of back account is going to get, if your bank account is small right now, it means you're only serving yourself and your major family.

Ryan Chapman: That's very interesting. I like that. So then if you see somebody that has a small bank account, your first bit of advice to them is to look at what are they focusing on.

Johann Noguiera: Correct. Who are they serving, and how many people are they serving and why are they serving so many/so little people. It is, in this day and age, it is so easy to, to build a a hundred thousand dollars a year or $250,000 a year business, because you don't have to serve that many people. The average, you know, especially in automation, the average transaction is about $5,000 in Australia. Yeah. I don't know what it is up there, but you know, for Infusionsoft to build it...

Ryan Chapman: Could be in the same ballpark.

Johann Noguiera: Yeah, correct. So on that 5,000 a month. You know, how [00:35:00] many, how much, how many clients do you need to get to a hundred thousand dollars a year?

Ryan Chapman: So it's interesting because I think that there's two parts to that, right? One of it is, you know, getting the math right, wrapping your head around who you're going to serve, the value you're going to bring, but just like there was sort of, for you, when you're telling the story about your, your second company, you get, you have to wrap your head around the idea that you could create something that would be that valuable.

Johann Noguiera: For sure.

Ryan Chapman: The idea of a hundred million dollar company wasn't something you could even fathom. You had to, you had to start stretching your brain, and if it weren't for the confidence of your partners, you know, that may not have been something you could even have imagined could happen. Right?

Johann Noguiera: I would never have imagined that that would be part of my life or my trajectory.

Ryan Chapman: Sure. So sometimes you need somebody around you that believes a little bit bigger to help you.

Johann Noguiera: Exactly. Always, always be stretching. And at the start of the year, like I believe in manifestation. At the start of last year, I said, please, [00:36:00] you know, universe, give me, give me some really, really cool mentors. And now I have three billionaires as my mentors. I was like, you literally get what you ask for. It is so funny. And this happens every year. Every year I asked for something and I get it and it's because I focus on it and yeah, there's amazing stories around how I met those people and all that. But yeah, we'll talk about that another day. I don't want to...

Ryan Chapman: Well you probably weren't sitting in your office and then they just came up and found you though.

Johann Noguiera: No, no, no, no. I was sitting, I was sitting at a cafe, I'll tell you the story about one of my billionaire friends sitting at a cafe and having a coffee, and I see this guy limping past me, and I recognize the limp because he had torn his ACL, and I had recently discovered this over tearing my ACL in a tennis incident. So ACL is the knee, I botched it and tore my ACL. And so I see him limping I said, Hey, what happened to your knee? [00:37:00] And he goes, I tore my ACL, I said I've torn my ACL too, but I bet you my, my story is better than yours. And so he sits down. He goes, sure, let's have a chat. And we talked for two hours, and then when he's getting up, he goes, you know, I've not been able to spend more than five minutes with anybody because generally everybody's pitching me stuff or I get bored of them because they're not, they're not on the same intellectual capacity because I think you and I could really get along. I said, all right, cool. Where do you live? Turns out he lives 10 doors down from me.

Ryan Chapman: Oh really?

Johann Noguiera: He went to the same school as me and he's about 10 years my junior. So it's quite funny because he's in this, he's built this amazing company and he's 10 years younger than me, and I'm getting advice from him now. Yeah, and that's me putting egos and stuff beside, but it's just incredible what he's done. And you just never know what's around the corner or who you, who you about to meet.

Ryan Chapman: So I think that's interesting cause you had to step out of your own little bubble. And engage in the conversation in the first place. It wasn't like he [00:38:00] just came up to you. You had to do something. I think that's the reason I want to point that out is because I think sometimes people imagine , okay, things are just going to come to me, but I've never seen anything just come to somebody. They have to be doing something, you know? That's not the right thing, right? You've, you've gotta be doing something and hopefully the best thing that you know, how and in that process and just being willing to give and create value for people now you start seeing opportunities and doors open.

Johann Noguiera: Exactly. There's a really good meme, and it's this guy standing in the forest with his mouth open and his friend walks up to him and says, what are you doing? He goes, I'm waiting for a duck to fly into my mouth because I'm hungry.

Ryan Chapman: It's sad because so many people find themselves in that situation. Right? I was having a conversation with a kid that I went to high school with and he's kind of fallen more to the socialist type of idea and it comes from his good heart, right? He wants [00:39:00] to help the poor and the oppressed and the people that suffer. I think that's all, you know, to be admired and good. How you go about doing that is an entirely different thing. But, you know, I think that the, the main cause for people suffering and struggling is that the way that they see the world is wrong. They see it as things have to show up to me, or, you know, when, when am I going to get the lucky break? Or why am I so unlucky? Instead of recognizing that maybe there's a different way this thing works. You're, you're chuckling. What was your thought.

Johann Noguiera: Because back in 1996, I'm showing my age right now, but in 1996, I read this book called Unlimited Wealth by Paul Zane Pilzer znd this book transformed my view of the world. And the premise of it is pretty much anywhere you look, there is wealth lying around everywhere and all you have to do is help other people get to what they want to do. In the, in this world, [00:40:00] nobody actually cares about you, nobody cares about me, they care about themselves. So if you help them go from A to B, wherever they want to go, you will get rewarded in return. And that philosophy stuck with me. And so because of that, I became a supporter of every human being that I meet I just want to help them. I want to help them get to where they want to go, because by me helping them, they're like, Oh my God. Yeah, you helped me so much. Let me connect you with this person. And then that'll take me on another journey, another exciting adventure. And it's just, I just love meeting people.

Ryan Chapman: That's what I find so neat is that when you get that philosophy, you can't hardly go wrong. You know, I, I just can't see how you can go wrong with that philosophy of just wanting to lift and help those around you. Because when you do that, I think, yeah, I refer to Him as God, that he can open your eyes to things that he would like to put into your life if you'd receive it. You know what I mean? [00:41:00] He's not one to force things upon you, but if you open, open your heart to receive things, he would love to be able to have some people helping them out and all you have to do is just give him a chance. But that means you got to do something. You don't have to do it perfectly. You don't have to do it right. You just got to do something and then have that willingness, like you're saying, to want to lift and serve other people. And he will. He will teach you if you're going the wrong way. If your business math is messed up, you know you're doing everything wrong. He'll get you on the right path eventually if you keep on trying. Cause you know, I see that almost in this, in your story, right? You had that part where you had all the cashflow that you used to create the first company, but yeah, there's some things you would do differently today if you had to start that one over, I could tell.

Johann Noguiera: For sure.

Ryan Chapman: But you were doing something, right? And, and from that sprung something that, you know, blesses the lives of 92 [00:42:00] families as you said. And then with the next one again, you saw a problem and you're like, how can I help that person out? And it just turned into a big opportunity for you, cause I don't know, you know, that you really thought it was going to be anything near what it turned into when you started that. You knew, you know, there's something that probably could be fixed let me see if I can. Now I think that if somebody can take that whole philosophy, you know, cause one of the things that I've noticed is that, you've got people that seem to be stuck almost in, in classes, right? So you got the, the person who's the struggling entrepreneur. Always trying to get to that place where they can at least not be hustling all the time, right? But they've covered their expenses. They've got enough extra around that. They're not worried about what's going to happen next. And there always seem to be bouncing in that realm. And then you got your next group is the people who have made it past that hump. They got something good going on, but it kind of gets into a comfort zone, right? And they're kind of just, [00:43:00] they kind of sit there and it never goes anywhere. And then you got the other group of people that get a little bit bigger than that, but they can't imagine getting beyond, you know, eight figures, you know? That's just, eight figures is just like the top of the world for them. You know? And it's interesting as I've met people from each of these different groups, there's definitely a mindset, a way that they view the world, that the changes as they, as you go through the different stages of where these people find themselves. And it's interesting that now you're being mentored by billionaires, how you're getting a different, it's almost like, do you see the mindset you started with in '96, is it changed any with the interaction with your billionaire friends?

Johann Noguiera: I was, I was in the struggle entrepreneur for that mindset for so long because my, my justification now, this is, this is the keyword justification. I would cover my bills, I'd make sure everybody was getting paid, and then I would take two weeks to just learn a [00:44:00] new course. And I'd go and buy new course, and I started learning Edwards, and I started learning Facebook and I started learning all these other, and my justification was, but I'm learning something and I'm improving myself, but at the same time, I was depriving my family of the time with me. Of, you know, being able to take them out and go and do other things because I was, yeah, yep. All the bills are paid. Everybody's getting paid. I'm going to use this a little bit of extra time to learn and upgrade, but then when I realized all I had to do was make a little shift going, Hey, guess what? You can, you can move from the struggling entrepreneurs into the next level where you've got amazing people who are managing, by the way, the best thing I ever did was hire a general manager in my company. He took away all the stress. I didn't even have to, I didn't have to work in the business anymore. I was no longer self-employed. I was now a business owner because the business ran without me and that shift...

Ryan Chapman: That's a pretty big shift.

Johann Noguiera: Yeah. That shift [00:45:00] transformed everything.

Ryan Chapman: I remember reading The Cashflow Quadrant and seeing that little diagram and being very disappointed because I thought being an entrepreneur was the same thing as being a business owner. I thought, Oh shoot, that's not the same thing.

Johann Noguiera: That's right. That's exact same disappointment I had. All this time I thought it was a business owner. I'm just self-employed. Oh man. So yes.

Ryan Chapman: What was the, what's the shift then that you noticed that happens? That is that one of the first shifts is going from, cause you, you called it justification. I like to call it the story I tell myself. Right?

Johann Noguiera: Yes, exactly.

Ryan Chapman: There's a story that we tell ourselves that keeps us in this little cage of our own making, and if you think the cage is real then that's the problem. Isn't it?

Johann Noguiera: Yeah, but there is no cage. [00:46:00] It's, it's crazy. Let me share one more quick realization. I, I have the privilege of speaking to some of the most successful people, and I also have the opportunity to speak to people who are very poor in their mindset. The distinction that I've noticed between the two, every time I meet anybody who is successful now, it doesn't have to be monetarily successful. It's just successful. The first thing that they do is they tell me everything that they want to achieve. They tell me all their ideas. Now you see the difference between the poor people, poor in the mindset, they tell me, I've got this great idea, but Johann, I can't tell you this idea because I know that you have a software company and you're going to copy my idea. What? They go, I can't tell you the idea yet, but I'll tell you when it's ready. I'm like, alright, so I see them a year later. I go, how's your idea going? You know, in a year you must have achieved a lot. Ah, you know, this thing happened and then I got busy with [00:47:00] work and this year this is going to be the year that I'm going to do it. Okay, cool. And then anyway, three years later they go, Uber copied my idea, or Uber is copied my idea, or Facebook stole my idea. That was my idea. Well, okay, that's interesting. Whereas when I meet successful people, they tell me about all their plans and then what's annoying is it's human nature. As soon as somebody tells you. So I'll give you an example. As soon as somebody says, Hey, I'm thinking, I've got to figure out how to, you know, people aren't reading their emails that much anymore, but I need to be able to get to them on their phone. Should I build an app? I go, no, you don't need, you don't need app. You just need text messaging. Go to Fix Your Funnel, they'll help you out. Get it all set up there. And you know, by them telling me their problem, I can tell them the solution because I've already got the experience around what I need to do.

Ryan Chapman: And so that's almost sad because the person who's struggling in that situation where they don't want to tell anybody their ideas doesn't realize the idea isn't the real easy part. It's, you got to do all this [00:48:00] stuff, right? You gotta get the people and the resources. Yeah. So you could tell me every idea in the world, and I've heard a lot of great ones, but I can't possibly imagine me trying to implement even a fraction. You know, I've got my team and we got what we're working on and you know, that's, yeah. If anything, if I hear somebody with a great idea, I want to encourage them so that, you know, that's something I can utilize. So I don't need to create everything. I just want to be able to have access to it. Well, that's great.

Johann Noguiera: I met this guy the other day and he told me that he'd registered 400 domains and they're all great ideas. I went, Oh my God. I was like, and he said what do you mean? I said, well, the 400 domains, what happens after you have the domain? What's next? He goes, well, I'm gonna build a website because it's, yeah, but it's okay. I've got click funnels. It's fine. So, okay, cool. I go, what? What are you going to put on there? He goes, I've got a mate who's a copywriter. He's going to write all the copy for me. Okay, well then you have to go sell it. He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got, you know, I'll [00:49:00] figure out how to sell it. I go, you're talking about 400 complete different businesses that he had ideas for with all multiple different business models and he was planning to build all these out over the next couple of years. I said, start with one. One is all you need. You don't need, you don't need 400, Mark. It's a lot of work you put on your plate and then you're setting yourself up for failure because what happens when I meet you in six months and I say, how's those 400 domains going for you? How many have you launched? And he'll say, none. It's, you get defeated, defeated, defeated, and then you self sabotage and you go I'm not going to do this.

Ryan Chapman: Just start with one, right? Get some base hits, get some things to happen. It's interesting what will happen 'cause like, you couldn't have predicted the path that took you to where you are today. Could you?

Johann Noguiera: No one, no one can, no one can predict where life takes them. You can design it as much as you can. Like me and my wife, we do an [00:50:00] exercise every quarter. We sit down and we design who is in our life, who is out of our lives, what finances look like, where do we want to travel? You know, how do we want to raise the kids? Who the kid's friends are going to be like, we literally plan out as much as we can, but life throws you these curve balls which you do not expect and we cannot anticipate. And it takes you on these amazing journeys which you couldn't have planned for. So yes, but having a plan is good because it gives you direction.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. And that's all you need is some direction. So you can start putting your energy into focus. And then at that point, now you'll get to see the fun part. Which is what happens.

Johann Noguiera: Every day. I give thanks to the Lord for all of my blessings and all the people around me. It's just incredible.

Ryan Chapman: Johann, this has been a real pleasure. I want to thank you for, for making time to share with, those who will listen to this episode of the podcast. I hope that if you, you've been listening that maybe you rewound a couple of times [00:51:00] and listened cause what I've noticed is there's some subtle differences between those who are successful and those who are not. There's some big things, right? We talked about mindset and kind of things like that, but maybe just evaluating what story are you telling yourself? You know, looking at the business from just on the practical side of the cashflow and by making sure that the business has cash flowing. So that, you know, are going to be able to stick around long enough to learn the rest of the lessons that the business needs to teach me. But you know, just in that story that you're telling yourself that that has such a huge impact. I hope that folks that are listening that you'll, you'll think about what stories do you allow yourself to use to keep you in a little cage of your own making? If people wanted to connect with you either for the Business Authorities community or with EarthLink Alliance, which is your automation company will be the best way for them to go about reaching out to you?

Johann Noguiera: For sure. They can go to [00:52:00] businessauthorities.com or they can go on Facebook and search Business Authorities community, join the community. There's amazing people in there. You'll meet some likeminded people, and with EarthLink Alliance, it's earthlinkalliance.io so those are the kinds of things. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure talking to you.

Ryan Chapman: Oh my pleasure.

Johann Noguiera: Thank you so much.