Finding Momentum With Nik Robbins

Entrepreneurs have belief systems like, "Once I hit a certain number of growth," like, "When I hit a million or three million, everything is going to be perfect."

Well, today, I talked to one of our clients that was at that magical three million dollar number and actually considering shutting it all down. Until he found us, turned things around, and now he is absolutely changing the world. I'm so excited to introduce you to Nik Robbins from Be Top Local.

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will.

We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few, who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future, and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive, human evolution and we always will be.

This is a very special podcast today that I am crazy excited to record because I'm here with Nik Robbins, who's one of our clients. I'm going to let him explain his business to you in just a second, but the reason I asked him to come on the podcast is because the progress that he and his partner have made in such a short time in our program is extraordinary. And I want him to share with you what the contrast is coming from where they were just a few months ago, thinking if they were going to even stay in business and keep doing what they're doing, to where they are now, where, right before I hit record, Nik and I had a conversation and his business has completely transformed. I can't wait for you to hear about it. Nik, welcome to the podcast, man.

Nik Robbins: Awesome, man. Super excited to be here and share what we've learned with everyone listening.

Alex Charfen: Oh Nik, it's so great to have you here. So just so everyone has context, can you give everybody just 50,000 foot level what your business is and what you do?

Nik Robbins: Yeah, absolutely. So we run a marketing agency focusing on generating new patients for medical doctors. Everything that results around that work are the very niche medical market and we work with just over 100 clients nationwide, helping them get new patients in the door through advertising agency.

Alex Charfen: And Nik, when you hook up with the doctor's office, it is completely transformational for that office, isn't it?

Nik Robbins: Yeah, absolutely. So it's evolved a lot over time. It used to just be lead gen, lead generation, but we've actually built it out to become like essentially a consulting growth agency. Because we held everything that has to do with getting a new patient in the office, from the scripts that the front desk is doing, to how the doctor talks to the patient, to how to actually close the patient. Because we've got in-office clinic directors who we've recruited to come and work with us, to help teach people how to actually close patients, because really it's something that's so misunderstood out there for a lot of medical professionals. They just struggle with.

Then you've got marketers over promising, under delivering, saying it's going to be perfect leads. So anything that has to do with getting a new patient in the door, that's what we specialize in.

Alex Charfen: Nik, do you find that the best doctors often are the worst marketers? Like you have the best physicians, the people who can make the biggest effect and they don't have people coming in the door so they're not actually making the contribution they could?

Nik Robbins: Absolutely, 100%, and that's one of our passions because we want those people to actually go out and heal patients. That's what we want to do. Like you shouldn't have to become the best marketer in order to actually do what you're best at, healing patients. So that's our mission over here, is to work with those types of doctors, the doctors who know that they've got what's going to heal patients and actually take them out of pain, and help them connect with those patients who need their services and get them in. Because what you just said is 100% spot-on.

Alex Charfen: Yeah, I know. I mean, the reason I bring that up is, we work with doctors all the time and what I find is like the best physician is often the worst marketer and sales person. And if you can close that loop, like what you're doing is massive because those doctors are now going to get in front of more people, help more people, have a bigger impact. And I think I've talked to you enough to know that that's pretty much what you live for, is the impact your business makes, right?

Nik Robbins: Absolutely. We want to work with private practice healthcare providers to really go out there and solve pain, fight some of the big traditional healthcare programs that are going on, help the little guys go out and actually do the best by the patient. That's our whole mission, is how do we treat the patient best, and we can do that by working with our doctors to help them get more patients in the door, and heal more patients, you know.

Alex Charfen: Heck yeah. So Nik, I have a ton of physicians that listen to this podcast. Tons. I hear from them all the time. I know that they're sitting there right now thinking, "Okay, I think I want to go look at what Nik is talking about." Where should they go?

Nik Robbins: Yeah. So it's betoplocal.com. That's B-E-T-O-P local.com. And the biggest thing I would say is we're so much different than ... We don't even consider ourselves a marketing company anymore. It's literally like a consulting growth agency. We care about everything. Getting new patients in your door .. In fact, we actually guarantee results. So we guarantee ROIs, things like that, getting new patients in. Because again, we're not just marketers and sales people. We're going to be a in-house clinic directors and people like that, really taking everything with that new patient acquisition to that next level. Because a lot of it just comes down to learning how you're supposed to talk to new patients in cold traffic and things like that. So it's betoplocal.com.

Alex Charfen: Awesome. Okay. So now, towards the end of this podcast, we're going to fill you in on some massive changes that have happened in Nik's business and some of the biggest successes they've ever experienced in just the last few months. But I want to start with, let's go back a bit Nik, and let's travel back through time, back to the problem you were having in your business before we hooked up. So you joined our Billionaire Code Accelerator Program. How long have you been a member now?

Nik Robbins: About six months.

Alex Charfen: Okay. So it's only been six months?

Nik Robbins: Yep.

Alex Charfen: What was the problem before you joined our program? Why'd you reach out?

Nik Robbins: Yeah, so the problems actually going to go back a couple of years. If there's been one thing we've been really good at over here, it's bringing new doctors in. We've been able to sell. We've been able to acquire new clients like crazy. However, what we learned, especially if we start bringing in 10, 15, 20 new clients a month, processes and operations are not our strong suit. And I've literally broken the agency more than once by bringing in too many clients at once. Giant months up and then boom, everything crash and burns, which isn't fair to anybody. Right? It's not fair to the clients if we're not servicing them to the highest ability. So about a year and a half ago, we actually went out really searching. We're going to invest in operations. We're going to invest in this type of stuff which led us to-

Alex Charfen: You're going to fix this.

Nik Robbins: Yeah, what's that?

Alex Charfen: You're committed to fixing that problem.

Nik Robbins: We had to because we knew it was. We're on something special. We have a great product. We're able to get people in, but we're the backend stuff processes, SOPs procedures, running team meetings, culture, leadership, not so good. It's a struggle. It's hard. We'd never done it before. Right? And so we really decided we were going to invest. We invested heavily last year into a company and the traction program, like we talked about here. We saw a little bit here and there, but it fell off.

And then last summer, we decided to open a call center and a call floor. Oh, and we already didn't have the best processes in place. When you sell 40 clients onto a call center and say you're going to start hiring call floor employees and all this type of stuff, it was not a good decision and we ended up having to shut down about four or five months later.

We were sitting here, we were doing three million dollar plus run rates, and we talked about shutting down and just walking away. I mean this is ... It was tough. It was really brutal. We had to do a bunch of layoffs. We didn't know what we were doing from a team or from a culture growth perspective or where we wanted to take the business. And we spent most at the end of the last quarter saying, "Okay, we're going to look again for more operations, more stuff."

Fortunately, big in the Russell Brunson world and all that type of stuff. I've been indoctrinated through ClickFunnels, and I saw you speak two years ago. Yeah, it was last year actually. And if we hadn't just made the previous investment, we literally had it in the back of our mind, "We're going to talk to that guy." But it came back up again November, December when we decided, you know what? Let's keep going. We've got a business here. There's money. There's employees. There's all kinds of stuff. We decided to slip in, in January. I think we made a joke. I kind of snuck in the program without talking to anybody. We just [inaudible 00:08:31]

Alex Charfen: I want to take you back to that for a second because I think your story is so relatable. I think that there's a ton of people out there who've actually solved the marketing equation, and you kind of brought up why. There's systems like ClickFunnels. I personally think ClickFunnels is by far the most superior system out there, the most coaching, the best infrastructure. But there's systems like ClickFunnels where now, you can take a business from zero to a million faster than you ever could in, I think at any time in human history. And you can take that million dollar business to multiple millions faster than you ever could before. You guys did that.

Nik, I want to kind of dig in a little bit here because when somebody hears we had a three million dollar business, we were thinking about shutting down, I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs that have never been there. They can't figure out what that feels like. So give me an idea, as the CEO running your business, what did it feel like to have a business at three million dollars that you were considering closing the doors on?

Nik Robbins: It was rough, man. It was so difficult to walk in, I'm in our office with our team and everything and just be so ... It's like how did we get here? Because we had a meteoric rise. We went from zero to a million dollar run rate in 10 months when I learned about ClickFunnels. And then from one to three in another 12 months because we were able to really grow and scale. It's like, man, we've got so much opportunity here. It was very, very difficult.

What we've found is that leadership, running teams, management, getting the most out of employees with something we'd never done, and it's just like, my gosh, this is so hard. We didn't know if it was ever possible to even get a team operating on its own without us being involved in the day-to-day and everything. Man, it was difficult.

It was one of those things that it's like, we had talked about it. We were like, "Okay, well if we're going to shift out what it would look like," but we knew there had to be more. Man. So it was tough because it's like, how can we walk away from this? At the end of the day we loved the client so much and what we were doing. Because we felt like by working with private practice healthcare providers to help them heal patients, there's good in the world. And we just knew there had to be out there and more, and so we knew we need to invest, Because one of the things that I learned early on is investing in mentors, investing in skill sets, is the only way to get to where you want to go. It's the only way. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on mentors and I think it's the best investment I've ever made by far.

Alex Charfen: I'm the same way.

Nik Robbins: Yeah. We just knew we had to just keep looking and keep searching. We made it this far. So it's like, okay. It's hard, but let's just keep going. Right? To your point with what you mentioned about people who might not get it, it's like guys, I know that it can seem tough getting that first $10,000 month, but just be prepared, because things just get crazier and crazier as you move forward. But that's why you invest in skill sets. You just got invest in skill sets and learn how to just ... You pick up the skills as you go along.

Alex Charfen: So Nik, I know you do a ton of research and I know you know the market really well. What was different about our product? Why did you come to us?

Nik Robbins: So the main reason why was some of the referrals that we had seen and then some of the fact that you actually had experience with our type of industry and what we've done in the agency world. So I'll give it a big shout out to some of the people that I'd seen that have been in your program, and talking with other people who've been through your stuff, and then hearing the way you spoke about things.

One of the things that initially attracted us, and I can really dig into this if you'd like, is it didn't seem like it was a rigid process. It seems like there was a framework but it wasn't just pure, rigid, rigidity, type thing, and that there was going to be some flexibility there. And then, man, here's the other thing. It's knowing your background and hearing about you've done it before. You've been here. You know, there's an epidemic of people who are selling things that they've never actually done. And so, not only seeing the results but hearing about how it was. I was like, "You know what? We need to jump in and give it a shot."

Alex Charfen: That's huge, Nik. I appreciate that. And what's interesting too is you were in another program traction that kind of has the same promise of deliverable that ours has. What was the difference between the frameworks and the structure you used before and the structure that's working for you now from us?

Nik Robbins: Absolutely. When it came with traction, that was when we started understanding that we needed something, some sort of framework. So we did like three or four fly out days. It just never-

Alex Charfen: And that's where they come and they spend a day with you, right?

Nik Robbins: Yeah. I mean, and it's not cheap. And so, getting them to fly out. It was just that one day just wasn't enough to really engrain things. The examples weren't that strong. There was some things that came up in regards to our mission statement and culture. So we'd already been kind of like, what's the point of mission statements, culture? What does it mean? Because most companies you go to, it doesn't really mean anything. It's there. It's on the wall, but no one actually takes it to heart. And some of the things that they let us do, it just didn't mean a whole lot, and eventually things just kind of wore off. And then we started realizing, well, it's like, unless we spend a boatload to fly him out every few months, maybe we won't get it.

And really the rigidness of it. It was kind of like, this is how this always operates, this and then this and then the hierarchy in the org chart goes a certain way. I don't know. It gave us hope that there was frameworks out there, they would exist, it was just, we didn't find it. It didn't have a lasting impression. And within three or four months, we were done. It was already gone. You know what I mean?

I mean, that's a bit about some of the experience there. It just wasn't for us. It felt like it was maybe for giant nine figure companies, maybe it can be more effective. It just didn't feel like it was where we were in that one to five million dollar range that we really wanted to grow out of.

Alex Charfen: How was our product different, Nik?

Nik Robbins: I mean, everything ... [inaudible 00:14:12]

Alex Charfen: I like the laugh.

Nik Robbins: Well, what's crazy is me and Ben ... Ben's my business partner for those listening, who helps with some of the ... Well, he runs a lot of it and made sure we implemented a lot of this stuff. We sat there. In two afternoons, we went through everything inside the program. We watched everything. It was unbelievably easy to understand and see what was being done and it was extremely thorough. There was no questions, but it was also quick. That's the thing. It was like every video was under five minutes, like this is my kind of pace, let's go, okay, we do this. [inaudible 00:14:45]

Alex Charfen: If you do it double speed, it's two and a half minutes.

Nik Robbins: Right? Exactly. Exactly. When I say things are simple, life is simple. Right? It's just not easy. So the simplicity of it, but also the power of it was really the biggest key for us, like the simplicity but the power. It was like, "Oh, my gosh. This is just so genius. There's nothing left unturned for us to put together our team meetings and our daily meetings." The biggest key man, was getting our departments to operate independently of us and actually giving them goals. And so the huddle and the Charfen cadence and tracking our longterm goals.

I mean I can go on and on with it. One, we mastered it in like three ... We didn't master it. We started to begin the implementation process within like two or three days, which was amazing for us. Right? Because everything else is always so complex. But the more that we started doing it and implementing it and then optimizing it, it's built a freight train, man. It's going straight for the moon. It's crazy.

So the simplicity of it, it fit for our business model. We didn't have to force the roles on people. You allow us to actually kind of pick and choose our own roles. For those familiar with traction and things like that, they're always big on integrator and visionary. And that's not quite how it really broke down between me and my Ben. Yeah, I'm definitely a visionary to a massive extent. We didn't really quite fit in an integrative role. It was flexible but just it was awesome, man. I just can't say enough. It gave us direction. It gave us goals that we would hit. It gave us weekly agendas to do. It helped our departments. They're operating independently.

For those of you who think that you're always going to have to do every piece of your business, I promise you that doesn't have to be that way. I thought that forever [inaudible 00:16:30]. It is possible and you guys might be, "Oh, he's just on a call." No, I'm telling you guys, this is real stuff that's happened in our business and we've got ... We're up to 19 employees now. We've never felt more in control of the business, ever. And it's crazy to think that with, back up to the 19 employees. Like we've never felt a better direction and control over what we're doing.

Alex Charfen: That's so awesome, Nik. It gets me all excited just listening to you because I know the more your business grows, the more those physicians help patients, you're working with contribution centered doctors, so they're making a massive impact. It's just awesome. So take us to the moment where you and Ben realized this product was working. like[crosstalk 00:17:08]

Nik Robbins: Absolutely. You know what? Boy, I mean, within two weeks we noticed it was working. But one thing I will say, we do a lot of Facebook ads. We do that for our clients. It's a mix of done with you and done for you, with our consulting and our ads and lead gen. Our ads department always been something that we always had to be very heavily involved in and always looking at, whether it was me or Ben. We'd shift it over the time.

We looked up and it'd been three months and we're like, "We haven't even had to talk to them. it's just working." It's like, "Wait, what is going on?" We can circle it back to the daily commitments, the weekly commitments and getting everyone on the same page. That was something we never thought that we would be able to not be a part of what was that department, because it's complex. It's not easy to run ads.

That was when it really, really connected, about three months in. And then five months in, we have our biggest profit month ever, and we've got a team that's ... even as we're shifting our product and bringing new employees on. The hiring process, I haven't even talked about how great that has been for us. The 4 Rs. I can just go on and on, man. But just quickly to answer question, three months in one of the departments that we never thought that we would not have an eye on, we realized neither of us had talked to him in three months. I'm like, "Wait, you're not really talking to them?" No, and I'm like, it's crushing and the department is working well. It's a great feeling. Let's just say that.

Alex Charfen: That's awesome, Nik. So the only interactions you were having with them were setting up the weekly meetings, being in the monthlies, the interactions in the cadence, but then all that back and forth that you and Ben had, all that wasted time completely eliminated.

Nik Robbins: Completely gone, man. Craziness. We used to have to spend every single day for like an hour and a half going through every campaign with them. And we've got a lot of campaigns that we run. We spend millions on Facebook every year. Right? It was mind blowing, man, when it really hit us both because I thought that he had been working with them still. He's like, "No." I was like, "Oh, my God."

Alex Charfen: And you know Nik, now, like now that you have the cadence and you see that when you give people clear outcomes, clear measurement, they understand their role. Do you see a time where you wouldn't be able to do that with a department?

Nik Robbins: Absolutely not, it's only going to take as a matter of time. And the biggest thing is making sure that we know what we want from the department. If there's some sort of place to get to, absolutely not. I think we could do it with just about anything, and we have. We've started doing it with more and more complex things as our products grow more complex, it's incredible.

Alex Charfen: Well, the next question I want to ask you is what does life look like for you now? But dude, you've already teased it. We've got to share the fact that you guys had your biggest profit month in the history of the company in the last couple of months.

Nik Robbins: Yeah, it was amazing, man. And it was crazy because it came with some turnover in April. Because we're making a shift to our product to do better by our customers and start bringing on the consulting and clinic directors and changing some of the way we do things, and we also lost some pieces. They had some amazing opportunities to go with.

So in the midst of all that, hiring new sales people, bringing new people on, we've had four or five new hires. But because of the hiring process, because of the onboarding process, because of the training ... I mean literally it went from April being, okay, to our best month ever with all that going on. Anyone who's running a business, can you imagine that? Like five new hires on a team that's under 20 people and shifting your product and it's only continuing to grow. Man, we're gaining massive amounts of momentum as you would like to say it. It is true. Momentum is a key term around the office now. It's like, "How are you on momentum? Let's go."

Alex Charfen: You know, Nik, and so here's one of our core values as a company, and it sounds like you've said this over and over again, or at least you're talking about it is that, what we tell people is as you apply our concepts, you're going to find momentum in the process. Like right away you're going to start seeing things that help you feel like you're advancing and moving forward. And it sounds like it's really ... I can't wait to share this with my team because I want to tell them, listen to this podcast. This is what it sounds like when a client gets momentum in the process. Would you agree with that?

Nik Robbins: Oh, 100%, man. Momentum is real and it's powerful. And I got to say this, I know you haven't asked me about it, but the personal life momentum as well that's come along with that is something that I cannot understate enough because that's really what fuels the professional life. And oftentimes we, as entrepreneurs, can ignore that personal side of things, and so that was one of my favorite things about you as well. I knew that you were into high performance optimization. There is no ... We talk about this separation, but at the end of the day, our work is our life. I mean to the point where me and my very serious girlfriend, we run the relationship alive every single day. I mean we've just gone all in on the momentum training and it's been incredible. I just can't thank you enough for what you put out there and I mean jeez, it's life changing stuff, man.

Alex Charfen: Nik, I can't thank you enough for doing this podcast, man. This has been incredible. It's been awesome to hear your story. I know when you joined the program I was excited to work with you because I think you guys have a game changing company, and I know you're hitting a pretty high run rate right now. You're hitting that three million dollar run rate over and over again and actually growing past that. I'm really excited to take you guys pass eight figures because if there's ever a business who can get there, I know you guys can.

Nik Robbins: Absolutely, man, we'll be with you. We're going to be relying on you so we'll be together again, because I know we're going to hit some new challenge as we grow. But yeah, man, thank you so much for everything. I can't thank you enough. It's a life changer. Anyone who's thinking about, just talk to Charfen. That's all I tell everyone. Just talk to Charfen. Any of my buddies [inaudible 00:22:32] go talk to him and I promise you will not be disappointed.

Alex Charfen: All right. So there's two places for everybody to go after this podcast. So one, if you're a physician and you're looking for better leads, you're looking for a sales process, you're looking for consulting on how to get the right people in the door and really be able to serve them at the highest level, go to betoplocal.com. So that's B-E-toplocal.com.

And then if you are listening to Nik and you're relating to what he's saying and you're thinking, I want that same result, go to billionairecode.com. Answer some questions for my team and you'll be given an opportunity to set up a call with one of our team members and we'll explain our programs to you, and show you how we got Nik amazing results like this.

Nik, I've got one request here. Can you come back in three to six months and give us an update? Because I know you and Ben. I've watched you for over a year. I was following you before you guys were clients. I can't help but click on your ads because they're so compelling. I want everyone to hear what you guys do in the next three to six months. Can we do this again?

Nik Robbins: Absolutely, man, would love to be here and be a part of it.

Alex Charfen: Awesome brother, thank you so much. Please tell Ben I said hi, and congratulate your whole team for me. What you guys are doing, in the face of like month to month adversity, to knock it out of the park and have your biggest month, I'm doing back flips over here.

Nik Robbins: Thank you for the framework and the system brother. I appreciate you.

Alex Charfen: You got it.

Nik Robbins: All right, man.