1329: Skylab Digital: Crushing Lead Generation in Insurance Verticals with Chris Shihadeh

Robert Plank 0:00 Hey, we're here. We're back on the podcast. And do you sometimes is have real struggles with your entrepreneurial journey? Are you always wondering, like, what am I doing? What is it leading to? You have setbacks, failure, stress, all these problems that pile up. Well, we have Chris Shihadeh from Skylab digital.com, now. Skylab digital is a Scottsdale based company specializing in lead generation, and Scott began when he was six years old with a neighborhood car wash, but that evolved to data brokering, tax resolution, digital marketing, and now he's found success in the pay per call industry, which is Skylab digital. They generate over $20 million in annual revenue with just 10 employees, which is amazing, right? Use the tools, the resources at your disposal to accomplish a lot with a small team. So Chris, glad to be speaking with you today.

Chris Shihadeh 0:52 Robert, thank you so much for having me. Really excited to be here.

Robert Plank 0:56 I'm excited too. And so what are you all about? We kind of introduced you a little bit. But what currently has you just so fired up, excited, passionate, focused,

Chris Shihadeh 1:05 yeah, we're Amy paper call industry is a newer space, newish space that has a maximum, a ton of potential. I'm really excited to be in our really niche industry. It's a space that you can connect with really great entrepreneurs, really great buyers, and really get great team members. That, to me is, is this the success? The the formula for a winning team, winning success?

Robert Plank 1:33 Well, very cool. And so, just to catch us all up, what is pay per call? Because I imagine maybe different people have different ideas. So like, what? What is it all about what's the process?

Chris Shihadeh 1:42 Great question. So in traditional lead generation, you will put up a website, try to collect information and then either send them an email or call them or whatever to find out if they're interested, or sell whatever you're selling in pay per call. There's no it's a 100% contact rate. So what we do is we're going to build ads, build tons of creatives, place them on different platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook and and Google ads, and be able to run them to our landing page, do a quick qualifier, and then we'll put a call button to generate an inbound phone call. Once they tap that button, they route directly to our buyers. So our different agencies to sell whatever product they're in, and it's 100% contact rate, so you don't have to worry about generating 1000 leads. Hope you get in touch with 20 of them, or 1000 or 500 of them. You get 100% of them on the phone, and then you can qualify them from there.

Robert Plank 2:43 Very cool. So you're saying ads to the landing page and qualify, and then the calls come in, and then you qualify them more. And it seems like a very efficient way of going about it, right, versus, like having the call list or versus all these other ways, like only email marketing or hoping to qualify them on the page. And so what brought you to this? We mentioned a little bit about how you kind of went from all these different adventures. But why is pay per call so exciting? Why did you land on this as what you wanted to do?

Chris Shihadeh 3:15 It's it's kind of an opportunity that presented itself when our current lead gen campaigns, like many people in pay per call, started in traditional lead gen, we were doing lead generation for the mortgage industry for several years before we got more into the insurance space. And with insurance rate, with, sorry, with mortgage rates tanking down to 2% lead generation was really non existent. At that point, we ended up pivoting into the insurance vertical. Started testing out pay per call versus lead gen, and it turned out to be a lot better for both us and our buyers. The industry has definitely shifted towards more of a pay per call space than a lead gen space, and it's been, it's been a win for all parties.

Robert Plank 4:04 Well, great. And why would someone want to do pay per call versus this other Legion like, I imagine, if someone's willing to overcome that nervousness of being on the phone, they're more of a serious lead. But I mean, you tell me, why should we be thinking about pay per call versus some other alternative?

Chris Shihadeh 4:21 It's a far more scalable opportunity. And if you really want to build a sizable agency, it's, it's, it's an opportunity that that you can really scale notably faster than you can with lead gen, the metrics and KPIs that you look at in lead gen, you end up looking at a different set of metrics that end up being usually better for both the consumer and the the agency, the buyer and also the marketer like us. So usually it's a win win for all parties involved. There are some downsides to consider. I. Um, that, you know, with with pay per call, like, if you have one agent, sometimes it can be more difficult, because you have, what, if somebody calls and you're on the phone, right? It's really built for companies that have a sizable agency of at least five to 10 or more people to make sure that you can get out of your seat, or, you know, go to the bathroom without having to miss a phone call, because then, then the inefficiencies may happen.

Robert Plank 5:25 Oh, sure, and, and so, like, that's a little bit as far as, like, what people might not be considering. But, you know, sometimes someone might be listening to a podcast like this, they say, okay, great. Paper call Chris gave me some ideas. I'll go. I'll go and do it. And that's fine, but then it's way better for someone to go, like, Skylab digital and have someone set that up and so, like, what are people missing? If someone was like, Oh, I'll bootstrap it, I'll DIY it, and they set it up and they fail. Like, what mistakes do you see happening when someone tries to set a paper call themselves

Chris Shihadeh 5:59 a lot of times it's not testing enough. It's it's not building enough creative. It's not testing enough campaign. It's not willing to lose money, which in any advertising campaign, is something that you really have to do. You have to be willing to to fork up a burn budget, some money you're going to light on fire just to learn data and if any, any company that thinks they're just going to spend $1,000 in yield 1500 is oftentimes sorely mistaken. And that's something that you know, especially new companies. When you deal with experts like us, then you you kind of mitigate that that problematic and that those losses,

Robert Plank 6:42 well, okay, so you're all about the exchanging money for data and trying stuff out, figuring out what works, and speaking to that. It's always fun on a podcast to jump into some stories, right, and figure out, like, Okay, you had some kind of client come to you and you you worked your magic, you set some stuff up, you put people to work. You know, did those tests, you figured out some results. What do you have along those lines, like, what kind of like client success story do you have for us?

Chris Shihadeh 7:09 We've been very big in the Medicare space for a very long time. Now it's been been six years, which may not seem too too long, but in our industry, there's a lot of people that come and go on an annual basis, and we've we've grown with all of our buyers substantially. They're writing policies at an excellent closed percentage and continuously growing, which is evidence that what we're building and the way that we're reaching out to consumers and explaining the product is is very substantial. Right now, we're generating well over a million calls a year on good days. During our busy seasons, we're generating upwards of 20,000 phone calls per day and selling them to our agencies. They're writing a ton of policies on it, so I didn't get all the metrics of what they are, but roughly a 15% close rate on billable call, which is pretty substantial.

Robert Plank 8:11 Oh yeah. And I love hearing about stuff like that, right about the volume that's required, and then what you kind of work and you shape, and we heard a little bit about how you you started with, like, the neighborhood car wash, and I'm sure you've been through all sorts of ups and downs, right? Especially something where you're talking about managing people, especially when talking about ad budgets. I mean, it's like, it's super scary, especially at first, when you're still figuring things out. And so as far as you and your entrepreneurial journey and this company you built like, what kind of struggles have you gone through? What have been the ups and downs,

Chris Shihadeh 8:46 many downs in the Fortunately, a few ups as well. You know, the downs are, the downs really hurt. Growth is, is painful, and certainly dealing with employees is provides the most growth and probably the most internal struggle, the most hurt that I've had as an entrepreneur. There was a point in my career I had to to lay off or fire almost the entire team, everybody except for one person, and basically restart everything from scratch. Was a very challenging point, and didn't think I could do it. I just was in a very negative mindset that I didn't know how to hire. I couldn't build a team. And it's really tough to get good at hiring. I put that as a major goal of mine, and I ended up doing so it's it's something that once you get good at hiring, you can build an eight a player team, set the expectations, set accountability at another level that you've done previously. And in my opinion, that's how you build a very strong team. That's how you build a team that can do $20 million plus in revenue with 10 people or less. Yes, so get good at hiring.

Robert Plank 10:03 Very cool, and so you're saying, Get good at hiring. You said to figure out those expectations and the accountability. And, like, I think that's such an important, understated lesson that you have to figure out people. And it's like, if you don't, then guess what? You're the bottleneck, and you've literally built yourself a job. And I know that, just like money is such a fickle beast, isn't it, Chris, I know that for so many years, I agonize every little purchase. I didn't think about placing ads. I resisted anything to do with hiring other people, because I just thought maybe I was greedy or something, right? And you think about, well, it's not all about you. It's about what you're growing, what you're building, and if you were trying to do it all yourself, it's not sustainable, and it's not something that you can sell later. And so well, I know, like, about five years ago, I finally got over that mindset, and I was like, What the heck was I doing up until now? And so did you have any kind of, like, mental blocks of this? You said, like there was all these, like failures of hiring and firing, like, what changed for you as far as solving the problem?

Chris Shihadeh 11:09 I think I had to hit rock bottom, really, with my previous team, and it came to a point where I didn't have a choice. My mental health was at a level that was not sustainable. And, you know, I tried just continuing on the motions for the better part of a year, knowing that it was not healthy and trying to continue on, probably for the money, because we were there was some level of success there monetarily, but not worth it from a mental aspect. And the team was a terrible culture fit, and I realized that I didn't know how to build a good culture. And these are tough things to admit to yourself as an entrepreneur, because as an entrepreneur, you have to have some sense of ego a little bit to even think you can try to do any of these things by yourself. And as you get more experience, that starts to starts to suppress, and you start to realize that that you need other people to really take you to the pinnacle. Now I'm far from the pinnacle, but I realized that I will need to get these skills of building a good culture and building a good team around me in order to achieve both financial success, emotional success and happiness. And it's certainly not an easy thing to do. I hope that others don't have to hit rock bottom in order to get there. But for me, that's what I had to happen.

Robert Plank 12:48 Yeah, sometimes that's what it takes, right? If you just keep on being arrogant, stubborn and resisting, maybe that's maybe once there's no other choice to change your ways. But like you said, yeah, hopefully someone changes the course before it gets to that. And so it's great to think about especially it seems like you're tapped into your own awareness and your own goals, right? You mentioned about some of these things, like your emotional health and what financial success looks like. And you have to wonder if a lot of people just kind of go through the motions and they're drifting along, and they don't really know what they want, and then you end up with just all this randomness. And so, like, this whole idea of the company culture, I used to think it was like, just a bunch of hot air, right? This thing was a bunch of fluff. But then once you realize, like, Okay, well, it means that you figure out your mission, vision values, you figure out what you believe in and what's not acceptable. And then you get everyone on the same page, don't you? And then when all your people kind of average out with all the everyone's behavior, then if there's some bad apple coming in and they don't match up with your values, you're like, Hey, that's not a good hire. And but that's just me, just kind of, you know, making stuff up, pontificating. And so as far as this sort of scary, intimidating keyword of culture, like, what does that mean for you? What have you figured out?

Chris Shihadeh 14:08 Great question. I believe that the company culture is the owner's culture, and you can hire people that have your culture or don't, and if you don't, then you're going to have, like, what I the scenario I described earlier in this podcast. What I found was, when I asked people what company culture they like in an interview, they all say the same thing, I don't want to be micromanaged. I don't want to be you know, they y'all hear the same three or four responses when I'm doing interviews. Now, I try to weed out people as best I can and make it seem as challenging or as difficult as it is, to make them say, hey, you know what? This isn't for me. And I want people to tell me, this is, this is not. This is not the culture that I want to be. Part of and that's great. That's going to save us both time and heartache and headache, if they were to come in and be the wrong culture fit. And, you know, I let them know straight up. Hey, look, it's the faster that we can, we can come to this assessment now, the better it's going to be for both of us and and it's weeded out several people that may are going to end up being great employees for another organization, but it just wouldn't be the right ones for us. I know pretty early in my career, that was the opposite philosophy I was trying to sell people of why they needed to work for me, because I needed such person. And now it's not the case. Now I need it to be the fit, not the end result, the result. I can teach the result. I need them to be a good fit first.

Robert Plank 15:47 Well, great. And you give this sometimes, especially with the startups, right? Like someone does like, six rounds of interviewing at Google, nine rounds of interviewing at Microsoft, just to really, like, see if it's a fit. And so, like, how do you know if it's a fit. Do you have the like, the the company culture, like, explained in a document? Is it written down? Like, how do you know if someone's continuing with you or not?

Chris Shihadeh 16:12 So there's a couple trigger words that I look for in an interview. I love to hear the word curiosity. I love to hear the word, what can I do more? Like the sentiment of, what can I What else can I do? Like, what, what other jobs can I take on? I'm not, I'm not going to be fulfilled with just this specific role. Maybe not fulfilled is the right word. But like, the sentiment of of, I want to be able to do more and and I I want to be able to learn how to grow in other areas. And so these are some things that I look for, or look for sentiments of, or even just sprinkles of within an interview that lead me to say, All right, this person has innovation, which is one of our core values. This person has courage, which is one of our core values. And these are, these are things that that you can't really just get a singular word out of them, but I want to hear them talk and say, All right, I can tell that, whether you know it or not, this is a value that you will emulate within us, within our organization.

Robert Plank 17:19 Look okay, so you want, you want problem solvers, basically, right? And someone who's like, figuring out alternatives, and I'm all about curiosity as well, and I think that it is underrated, right? Like I heard something about, I had some friend who was like, talking to some Gen Z person, and they have this stereotype of like they're always on their phones. And this person like they were asking them about something like, pre 911 and the kid was like, Well, I wasn't born then, like, what you have an infinite knowledge, go and look it up. And so I think that that's that's great to think about, as far as especially the entrepreneurism is be seeking problems and be be looking for solutions, and don't just, like, stop and tell me why you can't do something like figure out some other way of going about it, or at least be be like kind of incrementing towards success. And as far as you shared so much with us here, so far right about what you built and what's possible with pay per call, and what you figured out as a business owner, and you know, as far as, like, your own kind of internal struggles, right? We all struggle with stress management and time management and the FOMO, is there anything that you're currently like working on, like bettering yourself, any any area of personal development?

Chris Shihadeh 18:33 Yeah. I mean, there's, there's lots, but I'd say the biggest one that is as of late, and kind of my wife is gonna laugh when she hears this. But self reflection is something that I need to continually get better on. It's, it's an area that is very important. And I, you know, one of my, one of my positive traits, is that I take, I make decisions very quickly. And, you know, I kind of just, I figure out the end result and pivot very quickly a lot of times. That means I won't go back and assess my work as much as I probably should, and assess personally my awareness and things like that. Being able to self reflect continually is a very important trait that I'm currently working on and trying to build habits around improving that.

Robert Plank 19:27 Yeah, and I think that's useful and powerful, and it's easy to kind of go one extreme or the other, right? To just be arrogant or then to the you think it's self reflection, but it's more of the pity party of being down on yourself, feeling sorry for yourself and like, that's not self reflection, right? That's not figuring out, like, where your strengths are and where you could be better. And so, like, that's part of why you're here on a podcast, right? Cheaper than a therapist, talking about yourself and about the mistakes, the missteps, and then how you're moving forward. And as far as giving us awareness about Skylab, digital. And you have your proven track record, your data driven approach, your transparent communication. Like, what am I not asking you about Skylab? Like, what should people know that you just wish there was more awareness about?

Chris Shihadeh 20:12 You know, I think our industry is growing. It's an incredible space, and a lot of people are trying to get in. And I'd say this is still the ground floor of pay per call and and lead generation and our specific niche, there's traditional lead gen industries, which are typically insurance industries, mortgage related industries and so forth. But the world and the country need need more of these agencies. They need more companies to to grow and to be able to provide consumers with comparative outlets, to be able to get the products and services they need. And, yeah, I think it's, it's something that I'm out actively trying to get people to come and enjoy it with us.

Robert Plank 20:59 Well, very cool. And, yeah, like, I think it's a really exciting way of going about your marketing and your sales, right? Because there's all this this fear of, like, ai de personalizing things, but it can hyper personalize, right? You can set exactly the right person up to talk to you and your company. And then on the flip side of that, if someone is in in one of these verticals that you operate in, where they are looking for a solution, or they're stuck in some way, and they just need to get hooked up with the right person to solve their problem. It can be a really magical thing. And so how does somebody know if they're a right fit for Skylab digital? What are those disqualifiers and qualifiers?

Chris Shihadeh 21:39 Well, from a business perspective, we're looking for for agencies in one of the insurance verticals that we're currently running in life insurance, health insurance, Medicare and companies that want to grow their their agency. So typically, we have agencies of five to 1000 agents that are taking inbound calls and selling policies for you know, or anybody that's even interested in learning about it and and starting one be happy to chat with and and try to provide some knowledge or expertise on the lead generation and agency side.

Robert Plank 22:18 Very cool. Well, if someone needs it, if they're in one of these insurance verticals, they should go to Skylab digital.com and Skylab digital designs, launches and scales and optimizes direct response marketing campaigns that get you loyal companies and better profits. Their premier, Premier marketing agency, and they specialize in driving quality calls and leads to growing businesses through strategic digital marketing solutions. And Chris and his team would love to have a chat with you. You go to Skylab digital.com there's a form at the bottom there. You can get in touch. You can fill that out. You can put them to the test, right? You can see it, because sometimes you fill in the forms and you hear nothing, but he'll follow up with you, right? He'll, he'll shape you, he'll market you, and he'll, he'll qualify you. And then you can have that chat and hear about that four step process that he has where they define the object, the objective, develop the strategy, execute the campaign, monitor, analyze and adjust. And it can be an exciting time ahead for you with new possibilities and these new approaches to getting your leads, to getting your leads problem solved, and sparking these conversations. And before I let you go here, Mr. Chris, as people are heading to Skylab digital.com it's time for the scary part of the show where I try to put you on the spot and ask you for a quote or lesson that has served you, and you've already given us so many lessons. But as far as like ending the show on a high note, what do you have for a quote or lesson?

Chris Shihadeh 23:50 Oh, let's see here. One of my favorite quotes in our space is from the advertising Master David Ogilvy says, half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is, I don't know which half, and it's can a testament to us continuously testing when, when he was building creatives ages ago, they didn't have ways to really optimize campaigns as much as they do now, but the overall sentiment of not, of of never being okay when after you find a winner, and still, let's find the next one, let's find the next one. And you could have five massive winners at a time, but you may have to spend a lot of wasted money to find that. And that's a mantra that we we operate by today,

Robert Plank 24:43 and it's a great mantra, right? It's helpful as far as setting our expectations and knowing what we're going after. So I know half my money is wasted on advertising. I don't know which half, and if you try to tackle this problem by yourself, then it's it's really easy to fail, right? There's a lot of things that can go wrong. So why not go with Mr. Chris Shihadeh a at Skylab digital.com where they know this stuff, they love this stuff. They can help you get it figured out. They can help with real time bidding, in depth customer insight, lowered acquisition costs and quality traffic, where they connect your sales team with consumers that are actually interested in what you have to sell, what a concept, and it's what we want, and it's what you should go after by going to Skylab digital.com, and thank you, Mr. Chris, for showing up, stopping by giving us so many cool ideas and so many solutions and insights. Ahas, I really appreciated what you brought to us.

Chris Shihadeh 25:38 It was great to be on. Thank you so much, Robert.

Robert Plank 25:42 All right.