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How do you create a marketing system that works and brings in clients while you sleep? In this episode, Sharran reveals his Underdog Growth System, a powerful framework for those who want to grow without the burnout associated with constantly hustling.
Drawing from his experience scaling billion-dollar companies, Sharran breaks down the mindset shifts, real-life strategy, and the motivation you need to turn your underdog status into explosive growth.
If you’ve ever felt like the odds were stacked against you, this is the playbook you’ve been waiting for. Tune in and discover how to leverage your grit, outgrow your competition, and build something great.
“You don’t need to hustle. You just need to build something different–you just need to have some kind of plan.”
– Sharran Srivatsaa
Timestamps:
02:32 – Do you have a clear and compelling offer?
04:15 – The power of the one thing: One campaign, one goal
05:23 – Talk to one person and use their language
06:35 – Sell the outcome, not the tool
08:19 – Post where the money is
09:16 – Do you have a follow-up system in place?
10:25 – How to replicate one big idea
12:08 – Treat your marketing campaign like a product
15:14 – How to build a lead sprinkler system
16:32 – Why ship it broken is the way to go
Resources:
– Sharran’s Email Sprinkler System
– The Next Billion by Sharran Srivatsaa
– Join the Future Proof Community
– Join the 10K Wisdom Private Partner Podcast, now available to you for free
– Join Sharran’s VIP Community
– ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing
– Sharran’s Partnership Program
– Grab Sharran’s 4-Week MBA for Free
Connect with Sharran:
– X
– YouTube
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Sharran Srivatsaa. Welcome back to the Business School Podcast and I’m reminded of a Warren Buffett quote that says, if you don’t make money while you sleep, you will work until the day you die. And I think now in the whole marketing driven technology world, it has never been more important.
[00:00:16] Everyone is on all the time. Bots are searching on our behalf. AI agents are working, whether you use them or not. Someone is searching for something at all times and they can find you and they can want to do business with you. So. In this episode, I’m gonna break down for you what I’m calling lovingly the underdog growth system.
[00:00:31] How do you create a marketing system that. Works while you sleep. That brings you clients while you sleep. It is not the hustle. It is a clear system. I give you 10 big ideas and then I also give you a way in which you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to figure out where it’s broken. I give you a way on how you can figure out exactly how to just drop this into your business, and it all starts right now.
[00:00:59] One thing is for certain, just because it’s tried and true doesn’t mean it’s working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to. How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth.
[00:01:21] That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharran Srivatsaa and Welcome to Business School.
[00:01:33] So I think most people have gotten it wrong. Most entrepreneurs think marketing is about getting attention. That is true, but attention. In itself, in its raw form, does not pay the bills. You know, sales actually does. I’m managing partner at Goldman Sachs once told me that, uh, nothing happens until a sale is made.
[00:01:50] He actually walked me on the sales floor and he made me look at all the people, and he said, all of these people that you see, they’re all waiting for you, Sharran, to make a sale. I will tell you that the, the, uh, the reason I’m sharing this episode with you is I want to walk you through something that I fondly am naming the Undergrad Underdog Growth System.
[00:02:06] Uh, it’s a, it’s a system that I kind of put together to teach you to turn marketing into a, a machine of sorts that brings in clients while you sleep. Now, honestly, this is not about going viral, and I don’t have like a random tactic. It’s about building like a system that actually works for you, something that makes you money when you are offline.
[00:02:24] The more offline we can be and still make the money, that’s when we actually win. I got 10 super tactical ideas for you, so let’s kind of break it down. Here’s big idea number one, which is you gotta fix your offer in some way. Now, if your offer is not clear and compelling, in other words, if your offer is not sharp, meaning if the offer is not clear and compelling, then no content you make will ever save you.
[00:02:45] So say what you do, who it’s for, and what result they will get, and how fast, right? What you do. And who it’s for. That is clear what result they will get and how fast that’s compelling. If, if your, if you don’t have these four pieces, [00:03:00] what you do, who it’s for, what result they get and how fast you don’t have clear and compelling.
[00:03:05] And that’s what’s important if you have clear but not compelling, it doesn’t work. If you have compelling but clear, that’s not, doesn’t work either. You need clear and compelling. So for example. Let’s say, I actually remember I worked with a web design agency and their, their whole thing was, uh, they had this beautiful website and they, you know, their tagline was, we make websites.
[00:03:24] Like, I thought that was pretty good, right? Like, we make pizzas, we, we sell burgers, but we changed that to we’ll build and launch your optimize website in 10 days, including the SEO setup, or we’ll work for free for the next month. Now that’s clear and compelling. That brought in like 14 or 15 new clients.
[00:03:40] Right? When we did that, and it changed the game for them because they started to believe in that. They started to believe in fixing the offer, which is clear and compelling. People don’t pay for just the design, they pay for the results. Right. That’s what’s important. The question I would ask yourself is if someone asked you, Hey Sharran, do you have an offer?
[00:03:53] What is your offer? Like, do you help people sell homes? That’s clear. It’s not compelling, right? So now how do you make that compelling? Now if you don’t know how to make that compelling, therein lies the challenge because you have real estate agents, mortgage brokers, investors, all thinking, oh, I sell homes.
[00:04:09] But it’s clear, but it’s not compelling, so you gotta fix the offer. Here’s number two, which is. I would say you want the one campaign, one gold big idea. So the problem here is that most people treat marketing like a buffet because it makes them feel better about themselves. Do a little Instagram, they do a little podcast, a little newsletter, maybe an ad.
[00:04:29] They do a social post. They’re like, oh, and then they say, Facebook ads suck. And they say, Instagram doesn’t work, or their reels didn’t work, or whatever. But. Let me tell you what works. Everything works, everything works. You just quit too early. Everything works. You just didn’t do have enough focus. We’ve gotta play one kind of clear goal, which is like, Hey, I gotta book some calls, or collect some emails or start free trials or what have you.
[00:04:48] And then you gotta write that goal on top of every content document on everyone, right? And if that, if the thing that you’re making, the post or the reel or the idea, whatever, does not support that goal, just don’t do it. [00:05:00] One campaign, one goal. Because when you do that, it keeps you really focused. Now, if you’re, if you’re crushing that, you can always say one campaign, two goals.
[00:05:08] You can do that. But I will tell you in in today’s hyper instagramy world, when people are just flicking through stuff, sitting on the throne, they need one thing to hit them. And if they don’t have their one thing, they’re not gonna pay attention. That’s idea number two. Here’s idea number three, which is talk to one person.
[00:05:24] I would offer, don’t start a video with, Hey guys, or don’t start an email with Hi everyone. Write to one person. Don’t write to the crowd. Write to who’s your best client. Because our best clients come from our best clients. The one who can send you referrals, the one who pays on time. The one who reads your emails.
[00:05:40] You know who that person is. Write with that person in mind. Write to that person. Use their word. Use their language. Use their pain point. Use use. Use their like. Use real names of their. Pets and their, and, and their children and their on the car, they drive use. Just anonymize it. But you can use their language.
[00:05:57] I, I rem remember this, my friend actually told me, he said he pulled a line from like a real customer review and he said, uh, he was in the dog food business. He said, I want something that doesn’t ma mess with scout’s. Stomach scout was their, their puppy that beat the whole premium, multi-grain dog food by a mile.
[00:06:15] Marketing is not about sounding smart. Marketing is not about sounding cute. Marketing is not about making yourself feel better about yourself. It’s about sounding like them. It’s about sounding like the one person. It’s like sounding like your avatar. Avatar because your best clients come here from your best clients and you gotta talk like your best clients.
[00:06:32] So here that is idea number three, which talk to one person. Here’s a big idea, number four. Which is somehow find a way to sell the outcome, not the tool. Like the person is not buying a drill, they’re buying a hole in the wall. You’re not buying the drill, you’re buying the drill to drill a hole in the wall.
[00:06:44] We know that you gotta be ultra focused on the result. Nobody buys a CRM automation. They buy. What do they buy if they’re not buying CRM automation? What are they buying? They’re buying no more. You know, no more lost leads or automated lead follow up or saving 20 hours per week. That’s what they’re buying.
[00:07:01] Right? And one of the ways I like to do this, I, I’d like to list what sucks for your customer and list what they want. Instead. I call this the, you know, the frustrations and the aspirations. What are they frustrated by and what are they aspire to? So are they frustrated by not being able to lose weight?
[00:07:15] Cool. What they aspire to lose weight every week. That contrast, that’s what makes people move, right? So try this like some with a. Some with a, some start off with like a sick of blank, right? You know, Hey, are you sick of, are you sick of? Clearly you know that I have not written this down. I’m trying to make this up as we go.
[00:07:31] Are you sick of, you know, not being able to lose weight even though you are on a diet, you’re working out, you’re sleeping well, and you do your own meal prep, well then try this, right? Or the other one is, hey, what if you didn’t have to hire three more people to manage all your accounting? What if you didn’t have to give up carbs and still lose weight?
[00:07:54] What if you didn’t have to? I dunno, invest. What if you didn’t have to save, uh, 10% of your income, but could still have your money grow and be ready for retirement? What if you didn’t have to? You gotta sell the outcome, not the tool. No one wants to buy your 401k plan. No one wants to buy your fitness program.
[00:08:08] No one wants to buy your real estate services. No one wants to buy your mortgage company. No one wants to do any of that. They just want what they want. So you are just the vehicle for them to get there. So sell the outcome, not the tool. Here’s big idea number five, please post where the money is. You know, I’ll tell you what’s sexy.
[00:08:23] Likes are not sexy. Views are not sexy. Clients are sexy. And you know what’s not sexy? Wasting your time trying to go viral on random platforms where your audience doesn’t even use if you, I, if, if you are trying to reach a business audience and you’re posting on TikTok, like it doesn’t work, they’re probably on LinkedIn and email, right?
[00:08:44] So all I would do is I would just track your last 10 clients. Your best lines. Where did they come from? Where did they find you? Find the source. Where did you and, and, and what did they do next? Did they find you on LinkedIn and send you a dm? Did they find you on Instagram and actually like, you know, click on your story.
[00:08:59] Did they see an ad and call you a number? What did they do? Just do that. Run the winning play over and over and over and over and over again until that, it doesn’t work anymore, right? You just gotta ignore the rest post where the money is, because what’s sexy? Are clients not anything else. Here’s the big idea.
[00:09:15] Number six. You gotta create follow up like a system and not like a blast, right? I know it’s, oh, it’s follow up, it’s consistency, blah, blah, blah. Like most people, here’s the reason you don’t. Most people like you and I, we don’t buy on day one. In fact, you’re listening to this and I’m not even selling you anything.
[00:09:32] It took a while for you to get here. That’s fine, but if you’re not following up, you’re throwing away all the leads. The interesting part is you should not buy any leads into your lead gen system. You should not say leads is a problem. If you can’t show somebody, if you can’t show me, if you can’t show your team a follow-up system, the job is not to get more leads.
[00:09:48] The job is to have a follow-up system that actually collects the leads. Otherwise, you have a bucket without a, not even a leaky bottom, no bottom. That is just dropping stuff in, and you’re hoping that you’d catch raindrops, right? You’re throwing away the leads. You’re throwing away money. You’re burning cash.
[00:10:03] Maybe you set up a simple email system. You, you teach something, you shift a belief, or you answer a question, or you do the shrine, email, sprinkler or whatever. Maybe do it two, three times a week. You let your emails do the heavy lifting. At least it starts because now you know that even if the leaves fall through the cracks and you don’t call them, the email catches them and it does it on autopilot.
[00:10:19] You gotta set up a follow-up system. If not, don’t buy any leads. That’s number six. Here’s idea number seven, which is, uh, it would be awesome if you can multiply one idea so you don’t need more content. You need more use out of your best content. So for example, if, if, if you don’t, if you just look back at your last 10 posts, I guarantee you there’s one of them that did better than everything else.
[00:10:42] Maybe your one tweet did better than everything else. Now you just take that and you repackage it into something else. You take the tweet and you make it a carousel. You take the, uh, the carousel and you make it a newsletter. You take the newsletter and you make it a video. I will tell you this, and my, my partner Alex from Rosie, talked about this.
[00:10:55] I know his system. He, this is what he does. He, he’s a. He tweets a lot. So every time there’s an idea or a thought, he tweets it and at the end of the week he looks back and see which of the tweets performed, whichever’s tweet performed. He takes the exact tweet and he makes a shortform video out of it.
[00:11:13] Then he looks at all the short form videos that performed, and they all probably have some kind of pattern. He takes all those short form videos and then he makes long form is out of it. That’s it. So because he tweets, he tests the market, and so all his stuff is so much more consistent because he’s de-risking the number of reps he needs.
[00:11:29] Your job is to take one idea that has actually worked and repackage it and do it again. All right? In fact, you can do it with, you don’t, it doesn’t even have to be yours. You can go look in your niche and you can be like, all right, hey, I’m in real estate and I saw this post. Do really well. Do the same exact thing for your market.
[00:11:45] See if you’re a coach or a consultant and you’re like, Hey, this person did this thing really well in the fitness world. I’m just gonna flip it for the business world. Don’t change anything. Just change. Make. If you see something that works, make very, very, very few variable changes. Otherwise, it’ll stop working and then you might as well have started afresh from the start.
[00:12:02] So number one, multiply a one idea and repackage it. That’s how you win. Cool. Here is big idea number eight. I really hope more people do this, which is to treat marketing like some kind of product. Think of your ca, and here’s what I mean by it. Think of your campaign marketing campaign as like a product launch.
[00:12:17] It’s not a one and done thing. You gotta say, okay, if what is the goal for this product launch? I’m gonna have to sell a hundred things. Cool. What is the goal for this? This piece of marketing? I want to get. A hundred likes. Great. What is the message? Will this message get me a hundred likes? What worked before?
[00:12:33] Oh, these three things work or should I use it again? What, what flopped? Make sure I don’t use those again. What do we make them do next? You’re literally taking the things you, you want to know what already worked. Why would you do things that didn’t work? You want to be creative, but you could take your creativity and still put it in a system.
[00:12:48] You’re like, what worked? Try that. And if you want to be ultra creative and try new things and just because you think that it’s new and you’re curious whether it works, then you’ll, you will not accept that it didn’t still go 80 20. You can still take creativity and put it into a system, still have the ideas, have to check the boxes, go with the things that actually worked.
[00:13:04] You gotta treat marketing like a product launch. One of the really important things that we do on our team is we do a retrospective, which is we’re like, Hey, every week, by the way, this is 100% the truth. We, we look at all the posts that performed well and we look at all the perform the posts that performed badly, and we know why and why not.
[00:13:19] And we just try to do more of the things that perform well and do less of the things that perform badly. That’s it. So simple, right? I dunno if you know this newsletter called Morning Brew. This is all they did. They built this referral system where other people started referring morning brew to get bigger email subscriber list.
[00:13:35] Right. And they, this, their entire company was, you know, I think sold for 10 to millions of dollars, was all just an email list with news. They tested it. They did more of what worked. What do they, what do they go? They call it scale the winners and kill the losers, or something like that. They tested it.
[00:13:49] Adjusted, scaled it. I bet. Like you may say, well, Sharran, I can’t do, I bet there’s something that is in your business that’s working right now. If you, maybe you’re cold calling and that’s working right now, do more of that. Maybe you’re doing Instagram and it’s working right now. Do more of that. Maybe you’re doing Facebook and it’s not working.
[00:14:04] Don’t do less of that. Maybe you’re doing Twitter and it’s not working at all. Do less of that. I will tell you this, when I was in the real estate space. I realized that I know the real estate agent avatar very well. ’cause I, you know, I spent a lot of time with them and I realized three things about them, which was, number one, they checked email because a lot of their clients emailed them.
[00:14:21] They had contracts, et cetera. Number two, they, uh, you know, they didn’t have a lot of time. So when they, when they had time, they would, you know, they would go through short form, you know, reels, short form video, et cetera. And three, they were in their car a lot. And so they listened to podcasts. So, what did I do?
[00:14:37] I wrote email, I made short form, I made podcasts. And I didn’t do any long-form YouTube, which is why I don’t have a YouTube channel because I was so focused on this, that that is the reason why I don’t have YouTube channel. And now it’s not good or bad, but in the, you know, 1.5 million agents real estate space, you know, total addressable market in, in that world in a broad way, I was king.
[00:14:58] Uh, we were able to use my brand to build a billion dollar business on the backs of my brand, which is really cool. I don’t think almost anyone has done that. And the crazy part is that there is a way to do this if, if. You just did the retrospective. You treated marketing like a product. Alright, I got a lot.
[00:15:14] My last two big ideas, which is you gotta have some kind of lead sprinkler. I wrote down, we lead sprinkler just as a fun way of sharing this, which is because you are busy, I get it. I’m busy too. You, your leads still need warming up while you are sleeping or in meetings or dealing with fires or what have you.
[00:15:31] Right? So we are at a point now from the world of automation where you can build automations for new leads and for people who did not like buy you or work with you. And it’s super easy to do if you don’t have access to a simple like email marketing system like a. You know, ConvertKit or a active campaign, or a HubSpot or, or MailChimp or whatever, it’s very easy to say, a lead comes in, send them this email.
[00:15:52] If they don’t click on it, send ’em another email. If they don’t click on it, send ’em a text. If they don’t click on it, send ’em this. If they don’t click on it, you can free-write all of these and then just get leads, and then it’ll just work on autopilot. But we’re unwilling to do that. We’re like, oh, that’s too hard.
[00:16:02] If it’s too hard, find somebody on Upwork to set it up for you. If it’s too hard, find a 13-year-old. My son can do that. Right. We’ve gotta build some kind of sprinkler system. That’s why I call my email marketing system the email sprinkler system. ’cause it sprinkles all the emails on a constant basis. And it’s very, very helpful overall.
[00:16:19] And that’s why this is, this is really good. Okay. So you need some kind of email sprinkler system that dramatically reduces your cost of acquisition because it it, it doesn’t let any leads fall through. Kind of fall through the pipeline, right? Alright, here’s big idea number 10. This is a very product based idea, but I think it applies to everybody, which is ship it broken.
[00:16:38] I remember my, you know, one of my first founders of the first company that I worked with said, just ship it broken. He always would say, just ship it broken. I’m like, man, I’m not really, he’s like, just ship it broken. But here’s what most, this is what most people get stuck on though. They want the perfect funnel.
[00:16:51] They want the flawless script. They want the super polished design that makes ’em feel better about themselves. Nope, nope, nope. You just need version one. We call it the shitty first draft. Just something that works well enough so you can test it. Something that works well enough that it can prove to you that it, it actually can work.
[00:17:09] By the way, I dunno if you know this, even Airbnb started with just like three photos in a form. So just launch the thing, you can fix it later. You don’t even know if it’s gonna work, and you think that it’s gonna affect your reputation. No, it’s not. Just tell them, Hey, we just made this. We wanna make sure that it works for you.
[00:17:22] Like tell them the truth and that people will know that it works. You gotta ship it. Broken ship. It broken. I can never forget that my, like he was the craziest technical founder and he’d be like, I’m just gonna keep shipping. Ship it broken ship, it broken. I’m like, aren’t you embarrassed? That’s your work.
[00:17:36] He is like, no. The people that are buying from me now will buy from me later when the product is better. Ship it broken. It’s crazy, right? By the way, let me share this with you. There. There, what I did here is if you go to the show notes of this episode, click on the description, go to the show notes. Uh, you could turn this whole system into something that works for you.
[00:17:53] I actually am giving you the full transcript. You don’t even have to like get the transcript. I’m giving you the full transcript. You could just copy. Just copy the whole transcript, paste it into like ai, and then tell the, tell the ai, Hey, I want you to learn this undergrad underdog growth system, become my business coach.
[00:18:09] Ask me five questions to apply this to my business. Then they say, what is the first step I should take? You’re taking literally my entire coaching. This is a system you’re putting in a chat, GPT, it already knows stuff about you. It’s gonna ask you a few questions. It’s gonna tell you the next lowest lift thing to do.
[00:18:24] Let the tools help you work on your business, not just in your business. Right, and which is why I’m giving you everything. So just. Go to the landing page that of course I’m not, there’s no email squeeze. You don’t owe me anything. You have nothing to buy. I have nothing to sell. You just, I’m giving you everything.
[00:18:38] I’m spending the time, I’m spending, the resources, I’m spending, the creation effort, I’m spending, the money I, I’m giving all of it to you and I, you have no way to pay me for anything. I just want you to do better because I’ve learned this the hard way. You don’t need to hustle. You just need to build something different.
[00:18:54] You just need to have some kind of plan. And I just want you to realize that all this marketing stuff, marketing is not magic. Marketing is not making things that make you feel better about yourself. You want to build a system, you wanna build something that’s repeatable, one that works while you sleep.
[00:19:06] And that’s why this is super, super important. So this is the underdog growth system. I just wanted to use a word underdog in something and how it really teaches you how to bring in clients while you say, Hey, if you like this, can you do me a favor? Can you screenshot this and tag me That way I can make more like this for you.
[00:19:21] So please go get the ai, drop all my stuff in AI and hopefully it helps you, but. Do me a favor, screenshot this and tag me that way I can make more like this for you.
[00:19:38] Hey, it’s Sharran, I have a cool gift for you. Since you like this podcast, I actually have an ultra super-secret private podcast that I make just for my partner companies and the CEOs and influencers that I advise. It’s called 10 K wisdom because I try to wrap 10, 000 worth of value in every single episode in just under 10 minutes.
[00:20:02] That’s why it’s called 10 K wisdom. It’s raw. It’s real. It’s got no intro or outro or anything like that. It’s just straight to the point and to the insights. Since you like this podcast, I think you will like that. So for the first time, I’m making it available to you. Just go to 10Kwisdom.com the number 10K wisdom.com and my team will activate it for you as my gift. Go to 10Kwisdom.com. I’ll see you there.