[Top Agency Series] Using Outrageous Offers To Win Customers With Dave Valentine

David (Dave) Valentine is the CEO of Avadel, an agency that helps people connect with their ideal prospective clients. He owns eight businesses that have collectively generated over 1 billion dollars for over 1,000 clients, including major brands and Fortune 100 companies like Target, Time magazine, and American Express.

Having risked a heart attack from burnout at age 29, Dave realized he needed to learn how to scale his businesses without being overwhelmed by stress. Merging conscious capitalism with an unconventional marketing approach, Dave has rapidly grown his businesses by investing in people rather than paid advertising.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• What is an outrageous offer, and how do you structure it?
• Dave Valentine shares examples of outrageous offers that work for agencies
• What are the components to consider when mapping out an outrageous offer?
• Dave talks about the mistakes people make with outreach
• How Dave earned his Fortune 100 clients like Target and American Express
• Resources that can help you with direct response
• The common problems entrepreneurs face growing their businesses
• Self-care tips to avoid burnout as an entrepreneur
• Dave talks about the six core values that drive business
• How Dave helped a high-end wholesale cannabis company

In this episode…

Do you want to acquire more clients? Have you considered leveraging outrageous offers?

Many companies become stagnant after reaching a certain point of growth. Why? Because they don’t know how to gain new clients. According to Dave Valentine, who owns several profitable businesses, companies can customize and leverage outrageous offers to acquire customers and thrive. Stay tuned to learn the tried-and-true strategies from the expert!

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz welcomes Dave Valentine, CEO of Avadel, to discuss tips to acquire customers through outreach and outrageous offers. Dave talks about the components of an outrageous offer, the mistakes people make with outreach, how to flourish with direct response, and the six core values that drive a business.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Dave Valentine
• Dave Valentine on LinkedIn
• Dave Valentine on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | TikTok
• Avadel
• Outrageous Offer

Special Mentions:

• Second Bite Podcast
• YOUR Referral Partner

Books Mentioned:

• The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest by Dan Buettner

Related episode(s):

• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast”
• “[One Question] Building a Platform to Empower Others with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast”
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital”

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:15 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs leaders today is no different. I’m Dave Valentine of davevalentine.co, check it out. And before I formally introduce you, I always like to mention past episodes that people should check out and our mutual friend Jason Swenk, I did two episodes with him. And he talked about how he built up his agency to eight figures and sold it and then he talked about how he’s acquiring agencies and what he looks for in acquiring agencies. I also had Todd Taskey, on who helps agencies sell to private equity. And he talks about kind of valuations, what people should look for. And in his Second Bite Podcast, he kind of interviews people that have had the Second Bite when they sell the private equity. So check out that there’s a lot of other great agency interviews and others on inspiredinsider.com. And what have you learned from Jason, Dave?

David Valentine 1:23 

Oh, gosh, man, Jason and I have known each other for a decade now. What haven’t I learned from Jason? One of the things that happened in my experience was I’d always been in house doing marketing. And I had never been on the agency side. So when I started my first agency, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I mean, honestly, like, I knew the marketing side, I was a great practitioner. But I really didn’t know how to get clients how to build systems and operations. And so I went to Jason and he was selling like, an agency playbook. I think it was, like 1500 bucks or something. This is a long time ago now. And he had a book out, or maybe that was later I can remember. But anyways, man, I’ve learned so much from him. He was the first person that kind of showed me how to do acquisitions as well. And so he has been someone that has been a mentor, and now we’ve become peers, and friends, and he’s somebody that I just I love to connect other people with, because he’s a great human being, and an excellent business owner as well. And whenever I find those sorts of people, I hold on to them tightly and cherish their friendships. So yeah, Jason is incredible.

Jeremy Weisz 2:39 

I love it. So this episode, by the way, is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships, partnerships, and we do that by helping you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for companies to launch and run their podcasts we do strategy, accountability, and all execution around it. For me, David, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade and the profile that people and companies I most admire. So if you thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to rise25.com will answer anything you throw our way. So without further ado, Dave Valentine owns eight businesses that have generated over $1 billion collectively, for over 1000 clients, including major brands, fortune 100, companies target Time Magazine, American Express, and we’ll be talking about the topic too about burnout. If you’ve had a business, I think you probably have experienced burnout, at least I have. At a young age his Doctor kind of gave him a rude awakening and basically said you’re preparing yourself for a heart attack. So and he was overwhelmed with stress. And now he runs multiple companies from the mountains. His sounds like a Tommy Boy, or Chris Farley in a house by the river with three waterfalls. But, Dave, thanks for joining me.

David Valentine 4:09 

I’m so excited to be here, man. It’s always a pleasure to chat with you here man, I’m loving it.

Jeremy Weisz 4:13 

One of the things that I do a lot of research ahead of time that want to talk about is I think we both geek out on direct response and sending lumpy mail and also outrageous offers. Okay, and people could check this out on davevalentine.co/oo. So when you think about outrageous offers, talk about that. What is an outrageous offer?

David Valentine 4:46 

Yeah, so there’s two forms of outrageous offers, right? So one form is I want to give people an experience, get them into the door, whether that’s a digital storefront or a physical storefront, so that they will make other purchases. So a great example of that This is cost goes 499 rotisserie chicken, what do they do? They still have it for 499. In fact, they put out the data, they lost $21 million chickens last years. But here’s the deal. They’re so smart. Costco is a brilliant company. They put it next to other prepared foods, which are high margin products for them. They put it next to the wine and the beer, high margin products for them. And when you go into Costco, and you go all the way to the back, what do you instinctively do? Oh, yeah, I forgot we’re having our friends over on Friday night, we should pick up some chips and dip and oh, man, we need this. And we need that. And as one friend said to me, yeah, it’s at least a $250 fine to step into Costco. And that’s true, right. So that’s one version of an outrageous offer is getting people in the door. The second one is, hey, I’m going to create something that sounds too good to be true. And it’s actually really too good to be true for the business. It’s not too good to be true for the consumer, it’s too good to be true for the business. One of my favorite ways to talk about this Jeremy is right now, at&t is doing a deal where if you switch, they will give everyone that switches an iPhone 14. Okay? at retail, it’s like $1,000 per phone. So if you have a family of four, they’re all having a cell phone, you get $4,000 in hardware? Well, first, you got to remember, at&t is not paying 1000 bucks for that piece of hardware, there may be paying 500 or 600 bucks, okay, well, there’s that. Well, then at&t knows they’re not dumb. They figured out the numbers on this, if it’s a family of four, they all do an unlimited plan, it’s 250 bucks, 300 bucks a month. So they’re gonna make that money back easily in the first year. What do they always do, hey, let’s sign me up to tier. So that’s a version of an outrageous offer, it sounds too good to be true. I’m getting this for free. And in reality, what you’re doing is you’re exchanging time for money, which is what always happens. And so a lot of times what I find Jeremy is that small businesses, and so I would consider anything under $10 million when you’re a small business. Small businesses avoid that like the plague. They don’t want to give out an outrageous offer, because what happens if they can’t deliver? Right? And so a lot of times, what I end up doing is I end up coaching, service based companies and SaaS based companies, hey, how do you create outrageous offers something that sounds too good to be true, that’s results oriented for your clients and customers. But they actually have to take some action in order to get the guarantee, they have to take some action in order to get the offer. And whatever that is, there’s so many different ways you can structure these offers. And the way that you present them really makes a difference in whether or not people engage with them. And what we’ve found over and over again, for the eight companies that we own, is that when we have an outrageous offer, and we find the one that really sticks with people, what instinctively happens is those companies just start to skyrocket, and revenue and clients and customers. And it becomes a thing that it’s really easy for people to engage with. And then it’s also easy to acquire and keep customers around.

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