Henry Kaminski: The Quality of Your Clients Determines the Quality of Your Life

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Today’s guest is here to share that the quality of your brand will determine the quality of your clients and the quality of your clients will determine the quality of your life. He went from a broke designer, racing to the bottom on Fiverr to building a multi-million dollar business. Please welcome Henry Kaminski.

You ready to grow your business? And I love helping entrepreneurs find success. So let’s do this. I’m Damon Burton, Forbes contributor, author of the search engine optimization book, outrank and president of SEO. I’ve been featured on Forbes, entrepreneur and hundreds of websites and podcasts for helping big businesses grow bigger and make more money by showing up higher on search engines, including shark tank, featured businesses, NBA teams, and Inc 5,000 companies.

I’m bringing my successful network to you here@learningfromothers.com. Whether success to you means financial freedom, freedom of time or freedom of the soul. We’re in this together. Welcome to the learning from others podcast.

Ready to show up higher on search engines for words that you can monetize, but without paying for ads, download your free copy of my SEL book outrank. If you visit www.freeseobook.com. Henry Kaminski. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. How you doing? What’s going on, Damon. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I appreciate you jumping on and for the audio listeners that can’t see his exotic background, um, I’m ready to have a dance party. Well, welcome to New Jersey. Yeah. Um, I’m a. So before we jump into, uh, well, actually let’s start, let’s start with your elevator pitch. Right? So I, I told you, I asked two questions.

So question number one is why are we listening to today, Henry? What’s your background? What are we gonna learn from you? That’s a great, great, great question. So I’ve been in the. Graphic design space and branding space for the past 14 years, and basically took a hobby and turned it into a multi seven figure business, uh, over the past again, 14 years.

And so what you can learn from me are the do’s and don’ts of personal branding, uh, and how to really position yourself online. And to really help you monetize your expertise in a way that, um, doesn’t feel like the creepy internet marketer slash online scam artists. Like most people are out there.

Unfortunately. Um, I’ve been able to cut through a lot of that noise through my personality. Um, And my beliefs and values. And I’m here to share those with you today. Cool. Yeah, that’s something I’m passionate about that I think we can, we’ll resonate on a couple points. Um, before we get into that though, what are you suck at Henry?

Ah, I’ll tell you this. I think one of the things that we can have a, uh, an interesting conversation about is getting out of my own head sometimes. Hmm, getting out of my own head sometimes, uh, I tend to suck up at that, uh, if I’m not properly eating and not getting the proper sleep, uh, that happens sometimes.

And, um, sometimes I get in my head too much and I need some help with that. And so I could, I could share with you how I’m getting help and how I’ve gotten help in the past, uh, and how it’s changed my life. Well, yeah, let’s maybe talk about that for a minute, but, but elaborate a little bit on like what kind of stuff you’re getting in your head on like personal and professional above.

Yeah. Self doubt, limiting beliefs, feelings of lack, lack of self worth, all the things that entrepreneurs deal with on a daily basis or on occasion. And. It has been, it has been a wild ride of 14 years being in business. And I wouldn’t regret one second of any of it. Um, but had I had, I had the chance to go back and change some things I probably would, but like what, give me, give us one example.

Well, there’s a cost to everything, right? There’s a cost of leaving a nine to five and starting your own. Right. There’s a cost of putting in the work of building something from scratch, like sacrificing family time. Um, there’s a cost of not being financially intelligent and being that young money air-quotes mentality where you spend every nickel you earn, and it leads you down a path where you can’t afford not to work.

And. Now you’re stuck. Now you’re stuck because business starts to dry up and now you don’t know what to do, right. Or a big, a big industry. Disruptor comes in, I E Fiverr and starts commoditizing your work. Now, what do you do? Right. Um, and you’re lost. You can’t figure out a way out of it. It feels like a black hole that you’re never gonna get out of.

It feels like you have to go out and get a new job because this isn’t gonna work or be sustainable anymore. I’ve been able to push through all of that multiple times. And that is the story that I can share any which way you want to go. You can go as deep, personally, professionally, as you want. I’m pretty much an open book here, um, to help your audience and to perhaps help you see a different perspective on things.

Um, as we all continue to grow our businesses online and do it in a healthy way. Yeah. Well, let’s talk about, um, your, your Russell Brunson story for two reasons. One is I’m fresh off of the funnel hacking live event last week. Did you go? I did not go. Yeah. So, so for those that might not be familiar, Russell Brunson is the gentleman that started a, uh, software company called ClickFunnels, which is like a platform to help you do lead generation.

And I’m a big, so I think it’s a, it’s a, a good transition because a lot of what he talks about is. Is about, um, imposter syndrome and things like that. How do you get past that? How do you find your tribe? How do you find what resonates with you and how do you do it without being the creepy online scam artists kind of guy.

Right. So, um, so, so what’s, what’s the Russell Brunson story. So year five of my. Um, maybe it had been a little bit longer than that. Maybe your six, seven. Um, I was, I was, my business was flat towing. Fiber came out, disrupted the design industry. I wasn’t really happy with the work that I was doing. I started my business actually in the, in the nightlife industry.

So I was doing a lot of the club flyers back in the day that used to get. Pushed underneath your windshield wiper when you were at the mall? Uh, that I was that guy designing and printing all that stuff. And in the tri-state area here outside of New York, New York, and I live in New Jersey now, my whole life.

And, uh, that was a big business back then. And I was able to cut through and connect with a lot of people. Um, and they hired me to, to. Basically designed for all of these nightclubs. So I had an over abundance of work and then I started getting into the liquor companies and the liquor companies started reaching out to me.

I was doing work for Corona and of course, light and Heineken and Greg goose. And it was it. And I was just a one man band. It was just me, but they thought that I was this big company and it was fantastic. And then as I got older and got out of that scene, Business started to dry up because I, I wasn’t, I wasn’t there anymore.

So out of sight, out of mind, these other guys would come in and undercut me and, you know, it was a race to the bottom as far as price point goes. And so. My business started to take a huge hit. And so I needed help. I needed help from an entrepreneurial standpoint, but I also needed help with growing the business and getting out of this hole.

So there was this company it’s still around. It’s called digital marketer and they had this dollar trial to their Facebook. And I was like, well, I have a dollar, I’ll give that a shot and see what happens. So I get into this Facebook group, everybody’s talking about this click funnels program. So I’m like, all right, what the hell is this?

So I start digging into click funnels and Russell Brunson. I start listening to his podcast. This is the power of podcast. Okay. I start listening to his podcasts. He keeps talking about this inner circle program and I’m like, all right, I got to go down this funnel and see what the hell’s going on here.

Right. So we go in and I get on the phone with the sales person and they’re like, you know, it’s $25,000 to be in this group. And I’m like, I barely got two nickels to rub together. I’m running on fumes here that ain’t going to work for me. So he says, well, we have this other program right now. It’s 10,000 and it’s kind of similar, but a couple of things are different.

And I was like, all right, well, listen, I’ll bet on myself on 10. And see, not if this works, but when this works, where this is going to take me, so I pay him 5k. And I said, if I could pay off the other 5k over the next five months, Russell would never do this today. But, um, I shouldn’t put words in his mouth.

Maybe you would, but I took a big shot and they said, yeah, we’ll do that. So I said, all right, so I give them the credit card and I get on the call with Russell. I know I’m nervous as hell. So I’m practicing prior to meeting with them and everything it’s like crazy. Right. So I get on the call with them and I tell them my whole life.

How, you know, my parents started off very humbly trying to start a family. They couldn’t start a family and they tried for 16 years to have a baby. They couldn’t. And finally they, they get me. And at the age of two, I almost died and you know, this whole thing, this whole life of mine, there’s not one coincidence in it.

And I’ve been put on this earth to help a lot of people. And. I’m at a point where I need help right now. And I don’t know where to turn. I don’t know where to go. Uh, and I’m here to, I’m here really naked to help to get that help that I need. And, um, so he starts now. I was a little bit more detailed, I just, for a sec, for the sake of time, uh, and Russell and I are on this call and we are both hysterical.

’cause I think a lot of my story resonated with his, which she’s very open and vocal about over the years. And there was elements of my story that he probably saw in himself. And he said, I got to help this. So he said, listen, I need some help with, with some design work. I got some books coming out. So on.

Uh, would you help me? I said, sure. So he was like, well, how much would it all be? I said, well, what do you need? And uh, he said, well, some of this, some of that infographics here there, I said, all right, give me a couple of days. Let me just, I gotta digest. I gotta see what the, so I knew I was into him for five grand.

So I was. How 6,000,

literally out of my, out of my rear end Damon. And he wrote me, he wrote me back. He’s like, yeah, sure. What’s your PayPal? I said, all right. I think that was the first $6,000 job I ever got in my life. And so we worked together on some stuff. Um, and then I was in his. And we worked together. He was helping me understand funnels and understand how to take my design skill.

Cause that’s where I shine. My design skill was, was getting better and better every day, but I didn’t know how to apply it to funnels. So he was teaching me how to do that. And that’s where the business turned around. Because at that moment I was probably the, one of the best funnel designers on the planet.

And. Uh, since then, you know, a lot of competition has grown and, and, and, um, but what happened was a couple of weeks late, um, few months down the road, again, I’m still in this program and he says, listen, I got like six designers working for me right now. And I don’t know what to do because they’re all bringing me back work.

That all looks like six different ones. And he’s like, I need somebody to come in and really streamline and create a more consistent and cohesive brand for ClickFunnels. If we’re going to take it to where we want to take it. And so. He said, I want you to, if you, if you want to, I want you to come on board and lay the foundation for us.

Now, ClickFunnels had the logo already established, but as far as consistency goes, they were all over the place. So I came in and I spent two and a half years. Working with Russell and the ClickFunnels team branding them online. And I remember that day where I handed off all the assets and we were pretty much done.

And, um, I remember getting a call six months later saying Henry, we hit a hundred million dollars in revenue. And that was probably one of the biggest rewards of being part of that team at the time. And helping them get to that level of consistency with their brand. And so I’ll always be a fan of ClickFunnels.

I’ve gotten 2, 2, 2 comma club awards. Because of my loyalty to them. And I believe in the program, I mean, I believe in the software, I’ve used it for my business over the past six years, and I’ve been able to simplify things down. Um, and really funnel the right people into my business. And so we can talk about that as long as you want and how that, how I’ve been able to do that.

And, um, how I’ve been able to do that for my clients, uh, is super important. Yeah. So I got a bunch of things I want to hit on. Um, one is so, um, we, we have some similarities in our path. So I started my business 15 years ago and one of my first websites was the nightlife website. I still own the domain. It was vipnights.com.

Um, so there’s nothing there anymore, but I would do the same thing. I would go around at the time I worked in radio. So I would take, I would, I would take advantage of being able to get into the events and a lot of the concerts we were doing. And so then I would take and syndicate that because at the time this was where my RSS feeds were new and things like that.

So I would make like an, my website was like an aggregate portal to find out all these nightlife things, but it was the same thing. Like you, like, I just, at one point, um, I, I proactively decided, you know, I don’t think I’m going to do this longterm. Like at some point I will get married at some point, uh, kids.

And at some point I don’t want to be in this smoky environment. And so I kinda got out while I was ahead. And, um, but, but there’s, there’s a lot of other interesting, interesting things that you bring up. So, um, you got a steal on inner circle, uh, $25,000 because I paid a lot more than that recently. Um, and then these books right here, Russell by the time this episode goes live, he won’t know.

Um, so I have these books, I’m given a Russell, so he’s a big book collector. And so I’m going to see him in a couple of weeks and bring them those. So a lot of that’s a lot of, that’s pretty funny, you know, a lot of overlap. Um, did, did he tell you about, uh, in the course of you doing design stuff, did he ever tell you about WP undies?

Oh that it rings a bell, dude. It rings a bell. I don’t, I don’t remember. I can’t recall it, but, but it does ring a bell. He was talking about it at the event the other week. And, um, when you were talking about making designs, consistent, things like that and figuring out like what your, your niches at one point, you know, before click funnels took off.

He started a site called WP undies. And he was trying, he’s still, never said what the product was, but it was something targeted at WordPress, the WordPress community. And he’s like, I go figure it never took off. And he had a logo of like tidy whities over the WPP. Well, I can tell you this. I did not, I did not design that logo.

Uh, otherwise I would have remembered it. I did do some private stuff for him as well. Um, you know, he’s a man of faith and, uh, I did do some things for him that, um, That a lot that, you know, way off the topic of ClickFunnels and digital marketing, which, which was a lot of fun as well. Uh, that’s stuff came out really cool.

Um, but yeah, I was in the inner circle program for two years, two years. Um, met a lot of awesome people, learned a lot from him and everybody else that was in the group. So yeah, I know when I got out, I think it was a year later, he, he doubled the price and it was a. It was, uh, it was a lot more of, uh, a stricter, uh, qualification process to get into that program, which I’m happy to hear.

And the whole thing I got, my first two comma club award, you don’t see them in the screen here. Cause one. My first one fell off the wall and I have to get it repaired. Uh, and the second one I didn’t get yet, but I just got approved for it, uh, like two weeks ago, but the first one was 2018. Um, and the second one was this year.

And when I went to apply to get the second one, there was a lot more, uh, details that I needed to provide. Um, in order to get that second one and obviously, you know, I’m no BS, so I was able to pull up that information and they were like, okay, perfect. And then when I asked somebody inside of ClickFunnels, what that was all about, um, they said that they’re really protecting the reputation around this program and they want to make sure that it’s the real deal.

So I appreciate that so much from them. Yeah, I, you know, what kind of a couple more comments and then we’ll transition to the ClickFunnels topics. Um, but yeah, that’s so for listeners that aren’t familiar with what the two comma club is, there’s two commas in a million plus, right. And so it’s like, have you generated a million in revenue through the click funnels software, but yeah, I heard similar things, um, that, you know, you could, you could basically run.

You know, $999,999 through ClickFunnels and degenerate $1 in revenue, you know, and take a huge loss. And so they’re trying to disqualify some of those things and, um, there was a couple other things, but they’re hearsay. So I don’t, I don’t know how certainly are, but yeah, I think it’s good to move to protect that because it certainly is.

Um, at least in the digital marketing space, it’s become like a brag worthy. Kind of, um, you know, claim to make and it’s, it’s, it’s starting to get diluted. So I think it makes a lot of sense to, to pull that back a little bit. I’m excited, mean I’m happy for that. So let’s talk about, um, let’s talk about online branding, right?

Um, this is something that I’m passionate about mostly because of the comment you made about avoid creepy online scam artists approach, because, um, the listeners know, probably heard me talk about this before, so, um, Bringing up speed on, on my exposure to this is it. Uh, about two and a half years ago, I, I shut down at th at the time I only had Facebook.

Right. And so I was like, I’m just gonna turn it off. It’s there wasn’t anything crazy to happen. It was just wasn’t productive. Right. And so then I, I turned it off and then everybody knows if you turn off Facebook, like it doesn’t really go away. And so I had my wife go through. Shit bless her because she went through and manually deleted every post I’d ever made.

Every comment I had made on everybody, others, anybody else’s wall, every PRI private message I’ve ever sent, received manually unfriended. Every friend I had, and it took like three weeks to wipe this out. And so then when I was done, it wasn’t a big deal because I mostly, I actually, at the time I actually had a hard line between.

Personal and business on social media for if a client would send me a friend request, I wouldn’t accept it. And so it was only about two months, you know, a couple of weeks into, I said, well, there’s that one guy. I need a mess. It wasn’t all the time, but it was just like one client kind of thing that I was maybe friends first.

And so they were already past that firewall. And then I got thinking, well, why can’t I do social media my way? And I didn’t know what my way was at the time, but I was willing to figure it out. And so I, I fired it back up letting you know, I don’t know, where am I. 1200 friends came from because when I turned it back on, I could only figure out about 300 people.

And when I shut it down, it was somewhere around 1500. And so that, that was good to kind of cleanse the. Now to kind of come full circle. The why this matters into transition to you is because, um, at the time I said, well, why don’t I focus on, um, LinkedIn? And so I had a LinkedIn profile, but I never really did anything with it.

It was just the old traditional stereotype of you have your resume on it. But I had been self-employed forever. And so there was no point for it just sitting there. So might as well just actually use it. And so I started to post w w the dance that I had to figure out, like the voice that I had to figure out was how to.

How do I talk about the things that I’m either appreciate, or I’m an expert at so business and SEL or my family, but at the same time, I don’t want to disclose my kids’ names. I don’t want to, to display identifiable pictures of them, but I also don’t want to be like, Hey son, turn around. So I get a picture of the back of your head for this Facebook post.

So it was like, how do I authentically engage and show my appreciation for my wife and kids? And this was. Without being the fake, creepy, online scam artists guru. And, um, so it took about two months before I kind of started to hit stride, but it’s because I was willing to put in the work and figure out what worked for me and about, uh, it was probably about the nine month mark.

I. Took and quantified it. Like I backtracked, I reverse engineered, you know, contract to post contract, to relationship and whatever. And just in that first nine months, it added 150 grand in contracts. And so that was clearly enough to prove its value. And so I haven’t, I haven’t quantified it since then.

It’s exponentially higher, but it’s, but quantifying it at that baseline. Made it really clear that personal branding is effective. And so to kind of maybe to sum it up is like people write checks to my company, but they signed because of me, you know, my company does the fulfillment, but they, they trust in me.

They trust in the relationship that I’ve established. They trust in the subconscious persona that I’ve put out there. So they, they trust in the relationship that you established by paying by, by staying top of the. So there’s my take. Welcome on my podcast. I, my own guest

Henry, you’re the guest. You bring a great point, Damon, and that’s something that we can, we can shed some light on and, you know, after, so this we’re recording this, this, this, this episode, the day after Instagram and Facebook went down for. Pretty much the whole day. Right. They lost something like $84 million in ad revenue.

I heard it was 160 and. Yeah. It was like, no, well, it was, it was like a hundred. Yeah. It was 119,000 a minute or something like that. I heard it was it’s something. Yeah. But what really killed them was their, their stock went down 5%. So talk about that loss. We’re talking in the, in the billions probably.

Right. So, so I’m hearing all this nonsense, the whistleblower the day on Sunday, the whole nine. And. I’m outta here. I don’t need this anymore. I don’t want this aggravation. I don’t usually get a lot of clients off of Facebook anyway, to your point. And I said, it’s one less platform that I need to deal with, because I will tell you there was a time in my life where I let social media mess with my mental health.

Okay. And now I have a four-year-old son and I’ll be doing. If I’m going to let him have that happen to him. Okay. So it’s not that I’m not going to let them on social media or any of that. That’s not what I’m saying, but what I want to do is I want to build his mental toughness and let him know that he doesn’t need no stinking social media to make him feel like he’s a.

Yeah. Okay. So that’s number one. I just want to get that out. So I, I, I deleted Facebook and I, I should say I D activated it. I did not delete it two different digs, right. ID activity, because I don’t want to regret any of that. You know, I’m feeling something today that I might not feel a year from now, so I’m not gonna be so severe, but I will deactivate.

So I, I D I deactivate because I realize where my voice is really heard is on my pocket. Hmm, it’s on my YouTube a lot. And so why not spend my attention and time there, but to your point, people buy you before they buy your product. That’s something that we need to remember. And I think I just put this out on Instagram and I think I, I wish I would have I thought about this a long time ago because not knowing this well, not having it present in my mind.

Every single day got me into some issues. I would say six, seven years ago because I didn’t have the processes in place. I didn’t have the systems in place that I have today. And so I took on work that I couldn’t promise, and it led to a lot of grief. We’ll just put it that way. Okay. But I always did the right thing.

I always gave that money back because I believed in my heart of hearts that I did not deserve that money. If I didn’t deliver on my promise. Yeah, but you know, when you go to refund $40,000 in one day and you don’t have any money left, that’s a big problem. Right? So, so I had to, I had to figure out a way to get out of that mess.

So here’s the quote that I actually learned. Believe it or not guys probably don’t know who he is, but there’s a guy out there by the name of Sammy, the bull Gravano. And this guy was John Gotti, one of the big mafiosos of New York city way back in the day, he was his right hand, man. And when you grow up in New Jersey, that life is very in your face.

Okay. You may not even know it sometimes, but it is okay. And so I grew up in north Jersey, my whole life, well, not north Jersey, but Jersey my whole life. So I’ve been around that lifestyle. A lot. I’ve seen the guys in the neighborhood, I’ve had relatives and so on and so forth in that life that I know of.

And here’s what Sammy said because somebody asked him on his live stream one day on his Facebook group, or YouTube said, what’s the key to running a legitimate business because the guy ran multiple legitimate businesses, but he had his hands in some, some nasty stuff. Okay. Running unions and things like that.

And you know what Sammy said, which really resonated with me. He said, I could have done a lot of bad things, but I always had this conscious about me. And he told this story about this guy that had to, had to hide 800 pounds of marijuana because the DEA. Caught wind that he was dealing. Now we’re talking the 1980s, you get caught with 800 pounds of marijuana.

That’s like a life sentence. Right? So Sammy at the time was broke as a joke. He wasn’t even in the mafia yet. He was like in his twenties. So the guy calls him and says, I need your help. I got to get this weed at. So Sam, he said, all right, I’ll help you. True story. It’s your story? I’ll help you. He puts 800 pounds of weed in his car and drives it down, straight to the house that he was lived, the apartment that he was living in and puts all of that weed in his garage, saves the guy’s life.

Now he’s thinking.

If I were to sell this pot, it would render me about $300,000. And all I would have to do is put a bullet in that guy’s head. And that’s the end of him. And I walk away with 300 K same. He’s a tough guy. He has no problem doing that. You know what he did. He gave the weed back.

And you know what the guy did gave him $5,000. He gave Sammy five grand. Now back then he was back on his rent. And five grand was probably 50 grand these days. Yeah. Right. And what Sammy said was this, if I didn’t deliver on my promise. And other people got wind of what I did, who would ever do business with me again, who would ever want to work with me?

Nobody. And he said, I always thought that way, when I got into partnerships with people, I always made sure I did the right thing. Yeah. And so I think about that and I say to myself, It takes years to build up a reputation online. Let’s bring it back and focus back into, you know, our world, but it takes years when I was going through my struggles of under, under delivering or over promising.

And under-delivering had I not built up my social media presence and audio. That incident probably could have destroyed my business that day. Yeah. But I went out there and I apologized, I went out there and told the real story. I went out there with my tail between my legs and said, this is what really happened.

And this is what I did to make. And I knew that there was a lot of work that I needed, not only from not only professionally, but personally that I need to, to, to, to focus in on if I wanted to make this business successful. And so now in my mind, and over the past five years, my thought processes, this, you can never.

Over promise and under deliver again under deliver again. And two, you always have to think how it takes years to build up your reputation and seconds to destroy it. Yeah. Yeah. I made a post just the other day that, that, um, was touching on this topic in it. And, and basically the takeaway was, you know, don’t, don’t make the easy choices, make the right choices.

That’s it. And that’s what Sammy did, you know, he made, he made the right word and you know, that reputation of his got out. And that’s why he was very successful in and out of that life because he always had, he always did the right thing to. You know, and so very interesting to watch this guy at 76 years old, get out there on social media and tell these kinds of stories.

It’s very fascinating. I don’t even care Damon if they’re, if they don’t even make sense, if they’re they’re made up, I don’t even care if they’re made up. And the guy seen the aisle there’s lessons to be learned. There’s lessons to be learned. What’s uh, what’s the, what’s the short version of, uh, cause now I’m just curious.

What’s uh, what’s the short version of, um, you know, did he ever, did he ever go to prison for any of this now? He’s out two years. He spent in jail. Yeah. 22 years in, in Superman. Prison. So we’re talking, we’re talking the whole, they call it the hole, solitary, things like that. And, um, you know, now he’s out and, um, he’s doing this whole social media push.

He’s got this podcast now and, you know, I know a lot of the people that he’s talking about, not personally, but you know, growing up, you hear the names and stuff. So a lot of this stuff was very interesting to hear, you know, the, these, these backstories, right? So I’ve been, and I’ve always been a Sopranos fan growing up and things like that.

So the, the life has always been interesting to me. Um, and I’ve learned a lot about personal branding through. Organized crime, because I think they, they do personal branding at the best because, you know, Sammy, the bull Gravano, they always had, like you called, there was another guy, uh, the guy, uh, the guy that actually had all the marijuana, his nickname was Patti crooked neck because he had like, because he had a crooked neck.

So like they, you know, the, the mob taught me personal branding. Uh, and it was, you know, at a very young age, but. But the big takeaway guys that I want you to understand is this, you know, if you’re out there and you’re struggling, you know, you, you may have some momentum behind you, uh, but you want to take it to the next level.

You know, one of the things that really helped me go from six to seven to multiple seven figures in business is the relationships that I created and the reputation that I have around what I do. And that has, I think not even my work, you know, my work speaks for itself, but had I not built up that reputation and got around the right people and did that work personally and professionally, I wouldn’t have the success that I have today.

So I want you guys, before you take on another job, ask yourself, can I deliver on this promise? And if I can’t do I really want to take that chance? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, when you got to say, no, obviously it’s painful to turn down that money, but you’re not more often than not. You’re not saying no to S to, uh, sell your you’re just deferring a larger cell later.

Like usually they come back and they, because now they trust you. And, and to the point of relationships, um, I often say the bigger, the account that my company serves, the higher probability that it came from a relation. Like we don’t, we don’t do any, we, we do seven figures in sales and we don’t, we don’t do any ads.

We’ve never spend dollar in advertising. We don’t do any marketing. We’re a marketing agency that doesn’t do any marketing for ourselves. And it’s all come from largely relationships. Well, well, to emphasize your point about branding. So in our 15 years, probably for the first 13 years, it was almost entirely.

Reputation and referrals. And a lot of that was saying no, because we couldn’t, we were being proactive and protecting the brand. Cause we didn’t want to under-deliver, but then we’re not going to, none of those people came back. And then in the last two years after the, when I said I shut down Facebook and did all that, and I figured out what that dance was now, social proof, it, you know, branding personal branding is matching and probably exceeding in two years.

The 13 year headstart the referrals had. Yeah. Yeah. That’s says that’s exactly what happened to me, Damon. You know, once I got, once I got coached up. Personally and professionally and, and, and, and Russell played a big part in that. But then I, I found other coaches like you’re going to meet Mandy king, the mindset coach.

She’s my mindset coach to this day. Um, and I’ve been using, we’ve been working together for four and a half years. So, you know, she had. It’s been such a tremendous help to me from a mindset standpoint to really help me stay focused, stay positive, get through those. Dark and tough times. Um, and, and keep going.

And, and I think that’s what makes me the man I am today. And that’s what makes this business successful is not giving up, not throwing in the towel, not doing what’s easy, but doing what’s right and always finding a way. And I was going to write a, uh, uh, an email about this and send it off to my list today about doing the, doing it right.

I had a client the other day reach out to me and book an assessment. And in the questionnaire I sent him one of the questions. What do you want to improve? What do you need help with right now? And he’s like, well, I’m a consultant sales and I do all this. I’ve been down this, this wheelhouse before with webinars and things like that.

And this time I want to do it right this time, I want to do it where everything’s working together. So when we got on the assessment call, I asked them, well, what does doing it right mean? And he said, Henry, I’ve hired all of these guys individually. And always gotten lack luster results. I need a guide that comes in here that can tell me not what I want, but what I need.

Yeah. And that’s where I think my, my New Jersey personality comes in at best, because I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear. I’m going to tell you the truth. And sometimes the truth hurts, but it, it, but it will set you free. And, and that has been, I think, What makes my business very different than others is that I’m not afraid to speak up because it’s in my best interest to get you the results that you’re looking for, because that’s my reputation.

Yeah, well, there’s two questions I want to get to specifically on the undesigned before we wrap up earlier, you talked about, you know, five are commoditizing your service. So how did you get around that hurdle? Well, I was a Fiverr designer for. Um, and on there, forget it. I had this woman pay me $5 for a business card design front and back, and she made me do it for six hours until she approved it.

So make sure you do the math on that real quick. What did I get paid like 75 cents an hour. So yeah, it was insane. So that got me out of there. So that made me realize what I was worth. And, and so here’s how I, here’s what happened talking to a mindset coach at the time was helping Russell at the time.

And the mindset coach says you think Russell would trust you with his brand. If you didn’t think you had the skillset to deliver. And I said, absolutely not. And he said, do you think businesses would be able to achieve the success that they want without the proper branding and design? And I said, no. So Henry, you played a huge role in the growth and success.

Of people’s businesses. Yes, I do. So then why aren’t you charging for that? And I said, aha. Okay. And then he said, have you ever asked the question, like what one client is worth to you? Did you ever ask the question? How much are they trying to generate in revenue and profits in a calendar year now? Well, why don’t you start asking that question and then ask them, well, what percentage of that goal do you feel comfortable investing in for branding and design to help you achieve where you want to go?

That changed my life. So that started, we started to talk about value-based pricing. We started to talk about talking about the value conversation and that’s when I realized, whoa, why am I charging a thousand dollars for a logo when I should be charging 8,500 for a logo or a 10,000 for a logo. But Henry you could go, go to 99 designs and get it for $500.

Yeah. But did you ever hear the Tropicana story? Tropicana went into a rebrand and they rebranded their logo. When they launched the rebrand, they lost $34 million in sales in two months. Because nobody recognized the logo in the frickin frigerator. So the people went straight to the other brands like Sunkist.

That was a huge rebrand disaster. So pet PepsiCo own Tropicana at the time, PepsiCo needed to rebrand the Pepsi low. You know what they spent on the logo. And if you look that what the original Pepsi logo was and the rebranded Pepsi logo, there wasn’t much difference. To be honest with you. It’s the Pepsi logo that you see today.

Do you know what they spent on that rebrand over a million dollars? I don’t know the exact. But over a million dollars on that rebrand of the Pepsi logo. Why? Because they didn’t want to take the chance of losing 34 million like they did with Tropicana. Yeah. So that’s the difference you want to go? You know, you don’t always have to go and buy the most expensive option you don’t because there’s plenty of things that I buy on a daily basis.

That’s sort of intermediate. And it far exceeds the value. For example, I’ve had a range Rover in the past as a vehicle, and I’ve had a Yukon Denali in the past as a vehicle. And I got to tell you the Yukon Denali. 20 to 30 grand cheaper and it comes with more options and it’s more comfortable and it’s more reliable than the range Rover.

So I’m just showing you a quick example there, but what I will tell you to do is make sure that you understand the value of what it is that you are promising and delivering to your people. That’s going to help you level up. Your mindset and it’s also going to help you level up your price points. Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever met a rain Trover owner that said anything positive about tell you where I’m selling mine, because I’m just done with it.

I’m over it because it’s just, it’s ridiculous. It’s brand new and there’s an issue with it. And, and like, we fixed the issue, but that should not have taken place with a car that’s less than a year old. Don’t get me started. Okay. I, I got, um, I got one of the question, but, but for us, the last question, I got a comment back about click funnels.

You talking about, um, you know, you, you supported them in, in branding and then they went on to do a hundred million. Russell was talking at the event the other week, how they, um, you know, proc, uh, about a year ago, give or take they, somebody, he didn’t disclose who, but somebody offered to buy ClickFunnels for a billion dollars and, and then they declined it.

And in the period, since then, when I reverse engineer the math, because you talk about how many people won the two comma club award and this and this and this because of COVID. Everything has doubled in the last year. You know, prior to this year, there was like 300 and something, two comma club award winners.

Now they’re seven something, 300 of which came in just the last 12 months and on and on and on and on and on. Um, so I just thought that was amazing. Um, you know, uh, another good example of, uh, make the right decision, not the easy decision, that’s a hard decision to turn down a billion dollars, but they felt like they weren’t done.

They felt like they had more to contribute to the community. So, all right. Last question on design, because I agree with this and I have to talk about this all the freaking time. Um, why is it the pretty websites don’t convert? I know the. But I want you to give the answer to the audience, why you don’t focus on the most aesthetically amazing design.

Yeah. So, so you can make pretty websites all day long, but if they’re not functional, they’re not going to operate properly. So I always use this example. It’s kind of cheesy, but it’s back in my dating days. I’ve dated. I used to do. You know, why, let me go backwards. Let me, let me use this instead. I don’t want to throw it.

I don’t want to throw myself under the bus here. Um, have you ever gone on a date with an extremely attractive man or woman and. And then you get to dinner and you’re having the conversation and you’d rather have a conversation with a mosquito because they had more personality than the person that is sitting in front of you.

Yeah. That’s the equivalent of having a really pretty website that doesn’t have personality that isn’t working for. You. Right. And that’s the biggest problem that I see today on, on, on websites is I don’t think that they’re dead. So that’s where Russell and I disagree. I don’t think websites are dead. I think they need to be optimized for current times, obviously through mobile and obviously through calls to action and things like that.

I mean, I constantly audit websites, you know, from clients and I’m like, look at all the money you’re leaving on the table by hiding behind this thing. So you don’t have to be, you don’t have to have a personal brand website and your face and videos plastered all over it. You don’t have to go that route, but you do have to have a website that creates an experience for somebody that allows them to understand where you’re going to take them next.

And so I think websites without personality. Is where people go wrong. And that’s, that’s funny, you bring this up because years ago when Russell and this is what kind of put me in this jam was before I hired Russell, I had spent $26,000 on a website rebrand and I launched it and nothing happened. And I was like, oh, now I’m in trouble.

Now this website was done by an award-winning. Design team. They used to do all the design work for all the comedians, like the Wayans brothers. And so I went to them because like, I really wanted to establish a personal brand. So I’m like, wow, look at Jeff Dunham. He’s he did Jeff Dunham’s website. So I’m like, I’m want to hire the best.

So this guy designs, this gorgeous website, I mean, it was, it was sick from an aesthetic standpoint. I was blown away. I showed it to Russell and Russell said, yeah, it’s. But why do people buy your stuff? Is it because of your designs? Because my designs, quite frankly, weren’t that great at that time, like, I still had a lot of work to do in the, in the, in the skillset category.

And I said, no, he said, why do people buy from you? I said, me, they like me. He said, bingo, where are you on this website? You’re nowhere to be. That’s what triggered me to create my origin story video, which I still have on my website today. I’ve updated it and added to it and optimized it, you know? Uh, ever since, but that one video has brought in so much business because people can really relate to me in that video.

And that video will always be there. I don’t care how old it is. And so that’s, that’s the problem with pretty websites is it’s they’re not functional. They’re not optimized to sell. So you have to optimize. And that’s what we’ve been able to do very successfully for, for many, many years, is being able to see those blind spots and see those leaks and fill them up.

So your website actually makes you money. Yeah. Imagine.

Henry Kaminski. I appreciate the chat. Um, it’s been fun going over some of these, um, you know, uh, shared moments in our entrepreneurial journey. Um, I want to give you the last few moments to tell our audience how they can find out more. Yeah, I think go straight to my website, go straight to my website and unique designs with a Z at the end, not an s.net and you’ll get access to my Instagram.

You’ll get access to my YouTube channel and you’ll get access to a really cool masterclass. It’s about 20 minutes long. And it’s going to walk you through the branding process at a high level. And it’s going to show you what some of the top 5% of entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with. How they scaled to seven figures and beyond with their personal brands and their businesses combined.

And I highly recommend you take a look at that masterclass because it’s going to sh it may highlight some things that you may be doing now that you’re that after watching it, you may say, oh my God, I can’t believe why I’m doing this still. So highly recommend you go check. Very cool. Henry Kaminski, uniquedesignz.net designs a to Z.

Thanks man. Appreciate jumping on learning from others. Naming. Thanks so much, Damon Burton here, and thank you so much for listening to the learning from others podcast. I sincerely hope that today’s guest helped you learn something since 2007, I’ve generated millions of dollars for businesses like yours.

Ready to show up higher on search engines for words that you can monetize, but without paying. Download your free copy of my new SEO book outrank. If you visit www.freeseobook.com today.