Transcript of From $50k Loss to $100M Win

You're listening to the Vault Unlock, where the real secrets of success are revealed. Every episode, one founder, one confession, one strategy that created income scale and unstable growth. Forget the hype. This is unlocking the code they swore they would never release. The playbook is revealed, the vault is unlocked. And we're back on another episode. And today we have the myth, the legend, the one Mr. Douglas James. So happy to have you here. I know that we've crossed past a couple of times to get to this show, you were telling me before the show, you just came back from LA. I want to say, appreciate you early morning being here with us. How are we doing today, Doug?

I'm excellent, Kavon. Thank you so much for having me, brother.

Yeah, I really, really appreciate it. Can't wait to get in because I know you have so much to share and give here. Just for those that are listening, tell us who is Douglas James?

Yeah, man. I'm married, two beautiful daughters. Got to start with that. A man faith and serve 10 years active duty in the Navy, United States Navy. I eventually found digital marketing, realized I didn't want to be in the Navy for 20, 30 years, and started to make a lot of money. I started to work with a lot of local businesses, helped them generate leads, got really good at running ads. After about six months, I was making my annual salary that the military was paying me on the monthly basis. So that got the attention of a lot of active duty guys that I was working with. So they were coming up to me, Hey, how do you do this? How do you make money? And so I just got into coaching, and I ended up helping over 10,000 active duty members transition into the online space. We scaled that company up to over 100 million in revenue, helped a lot of people, did a lot of good. And now I'm building a company called LeadFi, which is a software that helps business owners identify real-time buying power. When somebody opts into your funnel, your marketing, you basically know their exact credit score, their income, how much they can spend on the credit cards, all that stuff.

So we're focused on that now. But I just love disruptive technology. Anything with AI, blockchain even, all this stuff that people are scared of that don't know how to use. And that's inevitable. That's going to be around for the next 50, 100 years. That's going to really transform how we work and shop and eat and everything, find spouses or whatever the case is. I love that stuff. So I consult equity for a number of companies doing so. I'm doing a lot of stuff. But at the end of the day, for me, it's just always been about helping other people get to where they're trying to go. I remember early in my journey from when I got out of the military, I was reading Zig Zigler and Tony Robin. I just have a quote, man. It's help other people get what they want and you will have all you want in life. And that always resonated with me because I was hyper successful in the military because I was focused on my sailors. And I just transitioned that energy to people on the outside in the civilian world and entrepreneurial world, and I was able to find success.

So I'm a big believer in giving.

If only it was all that easy, though. So I want to really deep dive in here. Yeah. And if we go back, you're in the Navy again. Obviously, thank you for that service. Let me ask you this, what was it? You said that you found digital How did you find digital marketing?

Yeah, good question. I mean, I legitimately was just... Well, let me tell you this story. So it was 2014, 2015, somewhere around there. The data, it's probably late 2014. I get back from a deployment. I was in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, in the Philippines. It was a humanitarian mission. We were literally building schools for kids out there. And it's still to this day, it's some of the best work that I've ever experienced or done as a human being. Over there, it's very rural. You go there, people don't have clothes, shoes, or just the modern things that we're used to. I remember the last day we I think it was Roja City. We're in a super rural part of Philippines. I'm a corpsman, was a corpsman, and I work with the Sebes. The Sebes are the construction battalion. So if they... Anything that needs to be built, they build it, and I go to make sure they don't hurt themselves or take care of them if hurt themselves. So I remember we were going up this hill, this really high hill, and we're carrying boxes of crayons, coloring books, stuff for the kids. And we get up to the top, and we didn't see a kid the whole few weeks we were there.

And we get up there doing this, literally hundreds of kids. And he just ran up to us, hugged our legs, saying, Thank you, thank you, USA, USA. I remember it clear as day as yesterday. And I just remember just feeling this super euphoric feeling of what it feels like to do amazing for someone else. And I've had validation and feedback from people over the years, but to actually see it in the eyes of kids, I was like, holy crap. So it made me, it really shifted my way of thinking at that point because I was in the Navy at that point for only five years and I had just made E6. So for those that aren't familiar, E6 is like a high level supervisory position in the US military. I can be in charge of of people. And I made E6 in five years when it takes the average person 12 years. So that goes to show you how much of a go getter I was, right? Yeah. To keep it short. But I felt like I did all I wanted to do in the military. And then having this experience with the kids, I was like, man, how do I do more cool shit like this, but not just with my time, but monetarily so I can have a bigger impact.

Those shifts were happening in my mind. And I I wanted to have a family, too. I wanted to have kids. So I get back from that deployment. My girlfriend, Sonia, was waiting for me, which is my wife now. We solidified our relationship, eventually got married, had two beautiful daughters. But when I got back, I immediately started to Google and search things. I'm like, dude, how do I make money online? How do I hire my boss? How to kill my job? Dude, so I was searching things that a lot of people search, and when they're lost and tired of their job and sick of the rat race. I was doing all of that. And that landed me on finding search engine optimization, SEO. You would go to Google, you see the ads at the top of the search. You're like, why are these businesses here? And why do I want to click them before anything else? Because they're at the top. So I found a guy on YouTube talking about SEO and how he's making all this money. And so I started just to learn from him.

And this is back in 2014?

Yeah. Yeah.

Just like, I call it the second wave. There was the three wave, but the first wave is the early 2000s when it was what it was. And then I find the 2008 was a wave, and then 2013 to about '16 was another wave. So you got in early and you saw what was going on. I want to just go. I think it's super important because what I'm hearing from the story, something really changed on that trip. Something really changed in you. Perspective. It was almost like you had an internal, external transformation. Can we talk about that? Because I believe your business is a direct reflection of who you are on the inside. And if you're confused and scared and lost on the inside, your business is going to be confused, lost on the outside. So for you, it seems like something really clicked.

Yeah, man, it's interesting point to point out there. So this dates back probably a lot further than even that short story. I'm not going to go too deep on this, but I came from a childhood that was pretty chaotic. I experienced things that really no children should ever experience. I have two beautiful daughters. If you're a parent, you have kids, right?

Yeah, I got two girls myself. I get it.

Yeah, dude. You know your kids, they're sponges. Daddy's Superman. Anything he does or mommy does, it's like gold. They take as truth. I saw things growing up that I should never see. I now have an example of what not to be of a parent. I want to pour the best I can into my kids. But what I found through that experience of trauma, going to bed, not knowing if I'm going to eat, physical verbal abuse, it was just all the things you can probably imagine, to be honest with you. But I ran away from home at 16 years old because I was fed up with that lifestyle. That eventually got me into the military because it was either that, go to college, when I was a 1. 4 GPA high school student. Or jail. Yeah, actually. I got caught shoplifting that target at a young age, too. I did go to jail for a night, and it was horrible. It was either that jail or homeless. So go to the military. I found what I was doing, though, is I was burying my head in the ground like an ostrage and just focusing on success.

That's all that mattered to me. Be great, do good, and everything else will figure itself out. And that worked for a good amount of time. And a lot of entrepreneurs do that. But what I found, at least from my experience, and a lot of people that I talk to, they're usually running from something. What is it you're running from? And for me, I was running from dealing with those memories and that trauma that cooped up over all those years. I hit the high rank in the military. I made a bunch of money, helped a lot of people, did a lot of good, married my beautiful wife, had two daughters, created a non-figure company on my way to my second non-figure company, doing all these things. But what I realized is success doesn't silence your soul. You have to address those internal things that are haunt you. I had, at one point, turn around and looked back and say, Hey, I'm not going to allow this to live rent in my brain anymore. I'm going to forgive and let it go and move on so I can have growth and sustainability for my own family, for my own kids.

Because it was showing up on how I led, how I might have shortly reacted to my wife, all of these things, making bad decisions at times with money. I'm not perfect. I've made bad decisions in business life in general. I had to let a lot of that go. So that transition was paramount for me because it was holding me back like a ball chain wrapped around my ankle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see a lot of entrepreneurs, and I mean, I think a lot of people go into entrepreneurship with that type of I would say past trauma. It's to prove something. It's to prove them, to prove their story wrong and to prove everyone else right or whatever it might be. But let's get in because you said a $100 million company, that's That's not small business there. That takes a lot of work. To me, it takes finding or cracking that code. What was that? So you said you found SEO, and then you started getting the SEO. How did you, going from SEO, turn into a $100 million business?

Yeah. So SEO allowed me within about five months, to replace my annual salary in the military on a monthly basis. I was making around 50 grand a month.

Okay, about doing what? Because I want to be very... For people that are listening, what does that even mean?

So what I would do... I was helping local businesses get ranked high on Google. But, specifically, what I was doing... So that's the overarching, but What I would do is I would create these micro websites in the small cities. So I live in San Diego. In San Diego, there's these sub-cities, Escondido, Chula Vista, Encinitas, and they all have maybe 100 to 300,000 people population. So instead of ranking for San Diego, I want to rank for Escondido. There's only 200,000 people there. So I can get a site rank super quick for a carpet cleaning company or a dentist or something because nobody's going after it. Everyone wants San Diego, right? They're forgetting about the micro city. So I would get a site ranked, my own site, ranked within like 30 days, sometimes a week. Number one for dental, carpet cleaning, auto detail, limousine company. And And then I would just basically get... I would target a business owner. I would get their personal contact information. A lot of it lived online on Google. A lot of these mom and pop businesses, they'll put their personal contact on the website. Back in 2015, it was super easy.

Or you can use a tool like Sales Genie and pay 50 cents and get their phone number anyway, their cell phone. So I would do that. And then boom, rank the site number one. All of a sudden, boom, it's blowing up with leads. People are calling the phone number, texting, email selling. And I would just redirect that traffic instantly over to that business's cell phone number. Now they're getting called like crazy. Like, what the fuck? Why? I'm getting all these leads to my phone. This is amazing. But what the heck is going on? So I would let that run for a day or two, and then I would call them up. And I would say, Hey, this is- Hold the door here.

Okay. Wow. Not cutting you off, but wow. You're telling me... See, this is so gold. This is what most people don't do. They don't You were actually building the site, ranking the site, getting people to call. Let's call this, this is a dry cleaner in a small town in San Diego. All of a sudden, his phone is going off the hook, going, I don't understand why, but this is amazing. And then a couple of days, let's call it what it is, maybe a couple of weeks, a couple of days, maybe even a month later, you call them and say, oh, by the way, have you noticed that you've gotten some more calls? Yeah, that's me. Me. And what? I love it. I love it. Keep going. I just wanted to make sure I was hearing this correctly.

You got it. I would call them and say, hey... And I would every single lead When they got a call, they would hear a whisper message, new lead from Douglas James. And then the person started talking. So they kept hearing Douglas James when they picked up the phone.

What?

How did you do that? It's through the software that I was using. You can do a whisper message. Hey, new lead from Douglas James, press one to receive. So they would click one and then instantly be connected to the person that was calling my website for limousine party bus service.

Whatever it might be.

And then I would say, hey, this is Douglas James. How's those leads been working out the last couple of days? And it'd be like, dude, this is amazing. We got to sign up. I don't know you, but I love you. Let's get it done.

And then what were your package is going for?

Yeah, I would just basically sell them like 20 bucks a lead.

Okay, so you were selling leads. Awesome. Okay, you were selling leads.

I was selling leads. So every time someone called, every time they received a phone number in their CRM, I would just charge them $20. That's it.

And you could control that because you knew how many calls were coming in because you were building it.

That's it. That's it.

So you control that whole supply chain. You weren't relying on them to tell you how many leads they were giving you. Not at all.

I owned the website. I had the tracking. I knew how many leads and calls it was generating. I had all the calls recorded, literally everything. So if they didn't want to do business with me or they want to try to screw me over and say, Hey, do you want to pay you? I would just turn it off, and then I would immediately send it to another business owner.

Okay. So myself, I've created a lot of businesses. I've seen a lot of people come up with ideas that's just going nowhere. There must have been something before this, a greatness that that you knew that clicked? What was it that thing that everyone... Because everyone can go try this, and it's not going to work. But something changed for you. Something worked for you where you're like, I got this. What was that? If you can recall, what was the thing that just turned everything on for you?

I had super fast success with that. Really, what clicked and solidified in my brain was the first dollar I ever received. I remember getting a check for seven grand because my first deal was actually... It was a big deal, and they actually negotiated. I eventually settled in on $20-$30 a lead, but they wanted to do performance. It was actually better for me because they gave me a third of their net margin. I remember my first check that they ever cut me was for seven grand. I was like, Holy crap, this works. I took my wife or my girlfriend at the time, which is my wife now, out to dinner. We celebrated and we did it up, the wine, everything. Yeah, man. And that's when I'm like, This is it. Because I have a mentor. His name is Dr. Jeff Spencer. He was an Olympian, and he trained like 40 gold Olympians as well. And he was with Lance Armstrong through all nine Tour de France's. He's like an old G. He's a Yoda. He's 78 years old. But anyway, he talks about how There's a roadmap to success, and it starts with a daily grind period where you do work, but you don't necessarily expect a certain result in the short term.

You just put your head down, you do the work and you trust the process. That's it. You just trust the process and you do the thing until something happens. And that's what I did. And it's not until you get a result that belief is established because you're basically riding on hope the whole time. So until you get a result, that's when you're like, oh, this does work. I have a result. I've proved it to myself. Now it's even easier just to keep going through that daily grind phase because you know there's a belief at the end of that tunnel. So I just put my head down, dude, for two or three months learning this. And all that money really came in in the back half of that five or six months. So I almost made no money for about three months to four months, actually. And I just I just kept building and doing my process. So that's really what solidified it for me. But here's the kicker with this, dude. The way I was ranking sites and the way I was learning to do this, turned out to not be so great. So what happened was one day, and I had about 20 something clients paying me somewhere between a thousand to 2,500 bucks a month back then.

Okay, yeah. They were all ranked number one on Google for all their perspective, carpet cleaning, auto detail, whatever. And I wake up one day and all my sites disappeared from page one of Google for their perspective search. And I'm like, what the F? My clients are calling me, what's going on with the leads? I'm like, I don't know. And then I get an email from Google that says, Google released a new algorithm update. It was called the Penguin. And I'm like, what the is this? So basically it was flagging people that were using Black Hat processes to rank's websites. I don't know what the... I don't know what Black Hat was. I was just following what the YouTube guy was saying or the guy I was learning from. Turns out the way I was doing it, it wasn't like they didn't like that, right?

Yeah, yeah. So it affected a lot of them. Yeah, so let's talk about that, because it's very important what you just said there, because some people don't know that. I know that a little bit because I've dabbled in the Google space, right? There's this concept of Black Hat, which is nowadays, I could be wrong. Not many people dabble in that because it's not a long term play. Yeah. How do you explain Black Hat?

I would probably just say it's ways of loopholes or gamifying systems and manipulating systems to get the result. In some ways, maybe not complitely, what I would just say. It's just going around their policy, finding loopholes. And Black Hat could be considered for a lot of... There's White Hat Ways to do things and black hat things.

And then there's the gray area, right?

Then people will say the gray area, right? And honestly, when I think back, a lot of it was gray zone because Google's policy has actually changed many, many, many times. Because of these things, yeah. Now you got things like AI. So now they're writing terms and conditions about all kinds of things that were even relevant 10 years ago, right? So this is always a navigating, transforming landscape that we're having to deal with. But it's basically saying there's the right way to do things and the wrong way to do things. I was doing it, I guess, the wrong way.

The wrong way, but you had no idea because you were just following this guy on YouTube and you were like, this is working. So going back to that story, because we're leaving this on the cliffhanger. Like, so what happened? So now you're getting success, you're feeling good. Fast forward, you're taking the wife out on dinners and you're looking at this going, okay, I'm making more money than I ever made in my life in a month than I would make in a year. And it seems like you were, well, obviously 100 million, I call it wildly successful. But before it became 100 million, you're doing X amount of dollars a month and then boom, you wake up one day and it's like it's over. It's like someone shut off the tops. What do you do Yeah.

Well, at that point, most of my clients were like, this is a scam. Like, screw you. Basically, they had a very negative reaction, unfortunately. And I was like, I'm sorry. What do you want to do. But I did have a small handful of clients that were willing to hang out.

Yeah, they trusted you that knew that you were not doing this on purpose.

Yeah. And it wasn't everyone was like, but some people, they're short-tempered. Yeah, absolutely. They have a thing that goes wrong. They bail out, whatever. I had five or so clients that were sticking around. So I was like, look, I'm going to learn Google ads and Facebook ads. Because I would look, I would go on Facebook and I would see the little sponsored ad. And I'm like, okay, that's something Okay, I'll go on Google. I see the sites rank at the top. Let me figure out how to do that. So now I started looking at that. And of course, I sucked at it. I didn't know what I was doing in the beginning. Lost almost all those clients. After two weeks, 30 days, they were gone. I had one client that stuck around. It was my first client, the Limousine Party Bus Company. And they were like, dude, let's just figure this out. Let's go back to a performance model. I'm like, okay. So I really put my head down, learn Facebook ads, learn Google ads. And after 30 days, they cut me another check for almost eight grand. Okay.

So there's so much. I wish we had so much time. There's so much things I love to talk about from the entrepreneur perspective of that moment where you're at the high and then you lose it. And when you do, I believe, when you have good relationships and you do good things, good people will stay around it because you just said they can see the long distance versus just a short distance. You as an entrepreneur, you're sitting there in that even that first 30 days, you went from making all this money to no money, learning something so uncomfortable. Back to the drawing board. What's going on with you in that moment? How are you staying in the game? How are you keeping it above water and not losing your hair and freaking out?

All I got to say is I had the belief. I knew this world was legit, the online marketing world in general. But I was smart enough to realize that SEO is not the play. I need a pivot. And that's when I noticed ads. And I would find people online talking about making $4 with $1 on paid ads because it's literally like an ATM machine that gives you instant returns. So at that moment, I was just extremely, extremely determined. And yes, I was I was very, very frustrated because I basically lost my $50,000 a month business overnight. Instantly. It was devastating. It truly was. And I had to show up to work the next morning in uniform So this happened at 6: 00 AM. I got to be at work at 7: 00 AM in uniform, at attention, checking in. So, yeah, dude.

You're talking, but you're still in the military at this point?

I'm active duty. Yes.

I had no idea. Sorry. I thought, okay, so I thought you would be... I assumed, see, don't ever assume. I assumed you were already done. So you're in the middle... I'm not laughing. If anybody who's an entrepreneur can understand this Stress. You're trying to sit there in active duty while this is going on behind the scenes. My God, again, the strength, the resilience, the determination to stay in the game. There's no joke there. And I'm I'm going to assume back then, you didn't deal with your shit either at that point. You hadn't dealt with the stuff we were talking about earlier. So you got all that trauma coming up in so many which ways. You must have been a wrecking ball inside.

I was. But here's the thing. The success and drive to figure out business buried the trauma. So that was a good thing. It capped it. So that was good. But I was very much like, Dude, yeah, I was a wreck. I was a wreck. At lunch, I was taking two hour lunches. I was going to meet clients during lunch, changing out of uniform, getting into street clothes. Sometimes showing up late to work and leaving early. My superiors in the military didn't make my life transition easy either. And I did not give them a good reason to take it easy on me either. But I was still active duty for four years doing this before I actually got out. So by the time I got out, I was making already a couple of hundred grand a month when I got out the military.

Wow. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's not going to make those superiors happy either, right? There's going to be a little jealousy there. And then you're not also doing the rules, going against the rules. That must have been very challenging. So what happened going back? This is wild. I love it. What a great story. So going back, everything falls apart. You then figure out, you looked at, again, being forward site, seeing the future. You see ads, you see the Google ads, you start learning it, you start growing it. And you're telling me it was only 30 days. Literally, it was only 30 days later, you're right back at your first $8,000 check again.

Yep, 30 days. And then only about two, two and a half months, I was back at 50K. Pretty cool. So once I figured it out for them, dude, I just took that same case study and I took that money and I did my same strategy. But instead of waiting two to four weeks rank a website, I could turn on a Facebook ad or Google ad and immediately get leads that day. So I just took the same websites that I made, which were just basically one-page funnels, right? Yeah. And I would just run traffic to them and start getting calls again instantly.

To the same pages that you had.

To the same pages that were already on Google. They were just on page 20 of Google.

Exactly. So instead of relying on Google to send you the traffic, you're just paying the traffic to go there anyways.

That's it. And then phone numbers started-Bring it again. And then all the clients came back. Some didn't, but most of them came back, and then I got even more clients back. So I got the 50K within two months, and then that grew to six figures pretty quickly after that.

And then how did that company... Because that's an agency service company, right? How does that company grow to $100 million?

So that company didn't. It's the coaching consulting that got me up to those numbers, right? Basically, I was not quiet about making money when I was in the military. I was telling my colleagues and friends that I was serving with. I bought a $200,000 Mercedes.

How can you not? Really? I got to say it, even me, how do you not, when you're surrounded with that type of mindset, and I'm not saying it in a rude way, but there's a certain type of mindset of someone who's making 80, 100, 120K versus someone who's making million dollars a year. And you know that. There comes a different mindset there. How do you not want... And a person like you who wants to help people and you're seeing them struggle and you're seeing them in this mindset that doesn't serve them, how do you not flaunt it in a way and tell them that you can help them and show them? I mean, that's what I do with my agency, too. I try to help all my friends that are stuck in that six figures. I'm like, Hey, come over here and going to make a couple of six figures from working from home. What are you doing? What are you doing struggling and working for the man? So I get that. I love it. All right. I'm just picturing it right now. You're the captain in the military driving in a $200,000 Mercedes, and everyone's going, what is going on?

I mean, if you wanted a target on your back, I don't think there was any more bigger one than that.

Any military base you drive on, you got to stop at the check station and show your ID. Every time I would roll up the guys that were on duty to check the ID, they thought they were getting like, oh, this is about to be an officer. We have to salute.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'm like an E6 active duty guy, which is a good high position in active duty. But I'm not an officer. They look at my ID and they look at the double take like, What's going on here? Because E6 in San Diego So with housing is probably about $6,000 a month.

Yeah, well, there you go. Okay. So, yeah, your car payment was $6,000.

Or at least a third that, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's awesome. Okay, so then you said then you turned into a coaching business. So because you were so loud and because eventually people were like, What do you do? I want to teach you. I want to learn what you do. Instead of doing the thing you're doing, you started teaching people the thing you were doing, and you ended up making more money. Now, this comes up for a really big discussion because I see so many people market against that, or so many people say, Oh, they didn't do the job. They're just teaching people How did I do the job? And what people don't realize, I think you and I agree on this is because we're in the same space, there actually is more money teaching people how to do the job than it is doing the job itself. But you got to become a master of that job if you're ever going to actually teach it properly and be able to have the impact. So do you find that that's that statement to be true? Do you find that people confuse those two things?

100 %, dude. Michael Jordan, Tony Robbins, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, they all have coaches. They all have coaches, right? If there's somewhere you want to be, you have to go find people that have done it, right? And you can eventually out shine and outmaster them. And that's the point of being a good apprentice to eventually do better, right? So I've had many mentors and coaches over my life. I've spent at least a couple of million at this point over a decade for different coaches and mentors. I've networking with some of the biggest people that you probably know that we've been in similar rooms with. And even work with them, done business deals, ran ads, all the things. So I'm a huge, huge believer in that because I've experienced it firsthand. When I first started, I was learning from some guy. I didn't know who the heck he was on the Internet. That was technically a mentor.

Absolutely.

But I think what people... If I didn't have the story I had for you the last 30 minutes, and I just came here and I said I did 100 million in coaching, you'd be like, Oh, you're one of those guys that that coach people on to do the thing that you didn't actually do. So I actually did the thing. You did it.

Yeah.

I actually did the thing, and now I legitimately talk people, right? So that's the difference. And what happens is in our industry, the Internet marketing space coaching industry, there's a lot of bad actors, fly-by marketers. I've been around for 10, 11 years. You've been around for a long time. You've probably seen a lot of these kids that come in and make it a couple of million and you never see them again, or you might see them pop up a few years later and they got the next thing that they're trying to sell. But the market has been hit for over a decade now hard with Facebook ads. So buyers are way more sophisticated. They know what's going on. They know what an ad is. So you really need to build trust, rapport fast. And you better be genuine, because if not, you're going to have a high cost per lead, high cost per call, right?

Yeah, it's going to be. I mean, I think we live in this world, too, where people just don't trust anymore. So not only is it being genuine, is the amount of trust. They're very aware, and there's so much trust and credibility that goes into it and authority that goes into it to be successful. Again, you and I would both agree. This isn't 2017, 2018. 2017, 2018, we blew up a company at 38 million, 18 months. You're not doing that today the way we did it back then. It's just not going to happen, right? So I totally get that. So then now you have the coaching company. So you figure it out, man, there's so much nuance in the story, which I absolutely just love. And the fact that you did the job before you got paid. I just want everybody to understand that. You did the work without even knowing you were going to get paid. You did the work and you did it well, that it got you paid more than you could ever expect. And then when things went to shit, it's part of my language, instead of quitting, instead of sucking your thumb, you dug deeper, rolled up your sleeves, and asked the biggest question, now what?

What How do I do? Where do I go? You sound like you figured that out pretty quickly. Thirty days later, not only are you doing more than you were when the thing blew up, you double that. And then you turn this into a coaching business, where now you're coaching people to do the thing that you mastered. And from there, that coaching business goes to 100 million. What was it in the coaching business? Because a lot of people have coaching businesses that can't even get it to six figures a year, let alone 100 million. What was it that changed for you there or connected or just the thing that took it off? Or you said, I finally found the formula.

Yeah, what I'll say is I have another mentor's name, Randy Massengill, and he says there's two tyrants of leadership. So there's scrutiny and expectations. So whenever you do or succeed or better yourself, you create space between you and other people. They're here. You were here, now you're here. They get uncomfortable with that. So they're either going to scrutinize you or expect things from you. So number one, scrutiny. I told you, my superiors did not make it easy for me. They actually tried to get me kicked out the military, had my rank and money taken from me, thrown in the brig, all the things, dude. They were not happy, but it got kicked up to the CEO of the command. He's like, Hey, you didn't break any rules here. You can have a nice day. And I was in there with my superiors, and I about faced and left, and I could see the steam coming off their head. They were so pissed. So I cruised out the remaining three and a half years in the military making six figures a month, and nobody could F with me, basically. And I just did my time, honorably.

I got an honorable discharge. I did my time, I did my job, and I built my business. That's a scrutiny. The expectation part is a beautiful part. I had a Master Chief come up to me, E9, that's the highest rank you can go, active duty. Hey, man, I'm 45 years old, been in Navy for 25 years. I'm getting out next month, and I don't want to sit in a classroom full of 19 year olds. Will you teach me what you do? Because that's what you do. You have to go back to college and get your degree and all that.

Whatever, EED, all that.

Yeah, I went home, created a course, gave it to him. Worst course you've ever seen, uploaded a Dropbox. And the next week, and he landed a client making a thousand a month. He came back, gave me $900. And I joke, and I'm like, dude, where's the other hundred? Thought you made a thousand. It's the only nine. But no, I was very grateful. But that's when I realized people are willing to pay you for what you know. So I just doubled down on that. I realized there's a lot of that whole system, active duty to even get finding a job. There's a class you go through called Taps. It's like a week long. And the system's broken, bro. It's horrible. I went through it. The best they do is show you how to set up a LinkedIn profile and a resume. That's it.

Well, that's the typical... I don't want to go too deep in there, but that is the typical person teaching the class who's never done it themselves. Exactly. They haven't done anything. They don't know anything, and they're just teaching it scolastically. And scolastic does not work in the real world.

Not at all. So I realized there's a massive opportunity here to help military transition online. So I doubled down on it, created official course, all the things. I created programs that went from do it yourself to done with you to done for you. Then I started having masterminds and in-person experiences and all the things. Sold packages up to $55,000. And we We got to the point where we were actually building marketing agencies, running ads for them, and closing their first client for them, and then giving them a franchise in a box is basically a lot of work at the end of it. And that was my top-tier program. And we did all that in about two or three days. I at my penthouse in San Diego. So that's the journey that I went on.

I've been in that penthouse actually many years ago, I might have been in that penthouse.

Yeah, it was a while back, right? Yeah. But yeah. And then I didn't just help veterans, dude. Obviously, It turns out a lot of people want to know how to make money, right? And if you have something real that works, a lot of people will be willing to invest with that. I work with surgeons, nurse practitioners, the bartender at TGI Friday, all over the board, dude. It's been highly successful. But what I found that worked best for me because lead quality is always an issue. So the way we solved it back then is we would actually target higher sophisticated type of investor people or net-worth people. I would speak to the nurse practitioner that was running around the hospital floors for 20, 30 years servicing patients, and she's tired. She wants to be at home with the kids or the grandkids, and she wants to turn her career experience into an online business. I say, well, what if you're a lead provider for private medical practices all over the country? You have 20 years of nurse practitioner, you know and speak the lingo. Now you can be the go to lead provider to provide new patients to their clinic.

So I would do that for them, the guy that's been roofing for 20 years, the guy that owns the restaurant that's tired of the restaurant but has 20 years of running a restaurant experience. So now he's going out helping restaurants all over the country generate leads. So that's how I would get them to transition out of their career and get into the all in line lead generation space. And those people were willing to spend 25 to even 50K to They come learn from me.

For sure they would. They got the money and B, they have the experience and they know what their experience is worth. They're not fakers. They've done it. So for sure, it makes sense. Yeah, I love that. And then why the transition? You went from this $100 million coaching business, and now I know we go into the SaaS product. We're going to do a part two on that one because this is just so fascinating. But just to leave us on the hook there, what How was the transition to change from the coaching to a software?

I spent 30 million on ads. We were spending at peak about a million a month on ads, right? And because we were selling high ticket, I couldn't look at my PnL month to month. I had to look at it over a quarter because I knew two months were going to be in red, one month was going to be green, but it was going to be like, boom, like this and make the quarter look good. I had two quarters back to back in the red, and I lost over $11 million. That's ad spend, payroll, tech, legal, all the things you can think of. Lost a whole lot of money. Conversions dropped. We didn't know what the heck was going on. I hired the best of the best, couldn't figure it out. Maybe it was ad fatigue. Lead quality was an issue. Marketing team said the leads were great because the applications had high income. But the sales teams guys are like, Dude, they're broke. They're lying on the application. I basically got introduced. At that point, I was at my lowest in business trying to figure it out. Got introduced to my partner Eric, who's been in the financial world for the last 20 years.

He was working on some technology, but had no idea how to put it into digital marketing. And I came and I'm like, Dude, let's partner. I know I can fix this for you. So we came together and I created leadfi. Ai. And basically what it does, right when somebody gives you their name, email, phone number, I'll get you their exact credit score, how much money they can spend on their cards, their annual income, debt to income ratio, even pre-approvals for additional funding. And I can also get all their assets. So 401k, IRA, real estate, stocks, bonds, CDs, ETFs, everything, dude. So now, without a shadow of a doubt, you know if they're financially capable or not, you can inject it into your sales process, how you run your ads online. It's beautiful now.

It is. And I know a little bit about it because we discussed it, but I definitely want to go deeper into it for you on part two, if we may. I'll ask you this one last question as we come to an end, because the resilience, the determination you had, I love the entrepreneurship of getting the job done before they even pay you. Someone is sitting there and they're listening right now, and maybe their business isn't working or they're on the cusp, if you remember, the cusp of giving up what is comfortable to go in the abyss of the unknown for a better life. What would you say to them?

Man, so what comes to mind is this quote from Virginia Satire. She's like a legendary author. And the quote is, Most people choose the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty. So, yeah, that hits. I get goosebumps every time I hear it. So picture this. There's two doors, right? Door number one, the life as you know it, same job, same career, same business, whatever it is. You're not happy, you're not fulfilled, right? The same car, all the same stuff, right? 99% of people will go through door number one because they're certain of what they're going to get, but they're miserable there or unhappy, or not fulfilled. And that's very unfortunate. Door number two, it's all your goals, dreams, aspirations are behind that door. Everything that you want, a better business, multiple locations, scaled, the white picket fence, the new house, the better education system for your kids. All the things are there. But it's hard to step through that door because you're I'm not 100 % sure, like, well, that's going to play out. It seems super high, risky, and it's a miserable feeling to go through that and take that risk. But I got to tell you, man, every single multimillionaire, billionaire that I've ever met, I always ask them, hey, door number one, door number two.

They're door number two all day. And even Damon John had a conversation with him, and Damon John said, Hey, door number one for me was driving a taxi in the streets of New York, weren't if I was going to get stabbed in the neck. Door number two got FUBU, which is a multi-billion dollar brand. So choose your heart. They're both tough, right? Which one is going to bring you more success, fulfillment, opportunity for you and your family? So I, as entrepreneurs and myself, definitely, I have to choose number two daily because it's a daily discernment. It's hard every day, right? I get up. There's days I don't want to do shit. I don't want to take calls, do all the things. But I got to think about why did I Why am I here? And my kids, my family, my faith, those are the things that really push me forward. And when I see the impact that I have on other people's lives, and I know what I know is going to change their life, I feel it's my moral duty, my moral obligation to show up every day for them. Door number two is where it's at, man.

Always choose.

I love it. So in life, you got your options. Door number one, it's comfortable. A way of saying it was like this, if you go through door number one, your life will be easy. What is it? Your life will be easy, and that's why you'll live a hard life. If you go number two, your life will be hard, but that is why you'll live an easy life. So I love it. And again, Douglas, thank you so much. The story is incredible. I appreciate you. People that want to get to know you, they want to find you, where are they coming?

Yeah, go. I mean, Instagram is probably the easiest place. Just go there. Douglas James should be the first one to blue check, but I think the handle is @the_douglasjames. My main website is leadby. Ai. You can check that off if you like as well.

Awesome. All right, Douglas. Thank you so much.

All right. Thank you, K-Von.

And that was another episode with the Vault Unlocked, where Proven Builders, real strategies and unstable growth happens. Subscribe now because the next Unlocked could be the one that rewires your business forever. This is where the playbook is revealed and the vault is unlocked.