Ravi Abuvala is the founder of Scaling With Systems, a business accelerator which works to bootstrap and scale their clients’ businesses leveraging paid advertising, sales funnels and fully-trained overseas assistants.
In the past 14 months he has scaled 2, 7-figure businesses with less than $1,000 of his own capital and 4 commission-based employees. Today he has worked with over 500 firms around the world and placed 630 virtual assistants. He has spoken on some of the largest stages in his industry, been featured on Fox News, Forbes, and Entrepreneur.
[Podcast Transcript Using Artificial Intelligence]
Umar Hameed 0:06
Are you ready to become awesomer? Hello everyone. This is Umar Hameed, your host and welcome to the No Limits Selling Podcast, where industry leaders share their tips, strategies and advice on how to make you better, stronger, faster. Get ready for another episode.
Umar Hameed 0:35
Hello, everyone. I'm privileged to have Ravi Abuvala here today, he's the founder of Scaling With Systems. Ravi, welcome to the program.
Ravi Abuvala 0:41
Thank you so much for having me on here. Very excited to speak with you. I've been looking forward to this for a little bit.
Umar Hameed 0:46
So you reached out to be on the podcast. And I was like, Who's this Robbie character that wants to come on. So I looked at your stuff, and I went to a webinar that you had that was in the can, and it blew my mind. So tell me about what it took to create that webinar. We're gonna put a link to it in the show notes. Because if you're listening to this, you need to see that.
Ravi Abuvala 1:04
Yeah, so it's pretty much the cumulation of I'm a big fan of foundational copywriting foundational marketing, foundational sales. That's what I teach all my clients as well. And, you know,
Umar Hameed 1:13
Nice.
Ravi Abuvala 1:13
I really believe in long form, right? So long form, copy long form sales letters, long form everything. And so most people you see online, they kind of talk really high level, and it's very, you know, frizzy, and you're not really learning anything where I was like, Well, how can I sign up in the marketplace? So, I mean, I have adverts that are, you know, books long, I mean, like pages and pages long. And then I have actual, my webinars that I have on here as well. We're diving inside of my companies. So I'm lucky enough that I've been able to scale a few companies to seven figures, so I can speak about it pretty easily. But whenever you're talking about things like product market fit, you know, outbound prospecting, paid advertising, it does take a little bit of time. So but yeah, it was an absolute blast to create. And the funniest part about it was the first time I shot it, it's about an hour and 10 minutes, hour and a half. First time I shot it I the audio wasn't recording, so I had to go back again and shoot it again. And I've done that a few times.
Umar Hameed 2:06
You know, what's amazing is when that happens is a horrible thing to have happen. But always, always, always, when you go to redo it, you do it.
Ravi Abuvala 2:13
Yeah, the second deck is always better. Yeah, well, you just definitely don't want to have it happen again. So you're like, this is gonna be the best one?
Umar Hameed 2:19
Absolutely. So one of the things that I noticed was this is that a lot of people have this fear of I'm going to share my expertise, and they'll take all the expertise, and they'll run away and I'll lose a customer, which turns out to be complete bullshit. If you kind of hesitate on sharing your knowledge, you don't attract as many people when you give away things freely. They go, Oh, my God, you're an expert. I got to work with you.
Ravi Abuvala 2:40
Yeah. And it's funny too, because I'm so happy you brought that up. I had a call yesterday with one of my clients who starting a YouTube channel to start generating more leads. And he's like, you know, you give away the farm on your YouTube channel, right? I don't want to give away that much stuff away, because the exact same reasons that you asked and it's a valid concern. But I really subscribed to two different things. The first ideology is by Dr. David Buss evolutionary psychology, but it's pretty much law of reciprocity. If you give some something to somebody, they in turn will most likely if they can, in some way reciprocate, right, whether it's buying from you, sharing your stuff, liking yourself, whatever it is. And so that's why I like to put out great content for that reason. But the second reason, which a lot of people don't realize is, inadvertently, people subconsciously, correlate the quality of your content with the quality of your product or service. So if I was to put out terrible content, really high level not really go into anything that everyone's gonna be like, Oh, this, this guy's probably just like, okay,
Umar Hameed 3:34
Poser.
Ravi Abuvala 3:34
Yeah, he's a poser, or whatever it is. But if I go really in depth and blow people away, they're like, I just got this for free on his YouTube channel, what happens if I pay this guy some money? What kind of content would I get from there?
Umar Hameed 3:44
Absolutely. And the other part is, I have tried a million things myself, and I suck at a lot of things, especially like handyman kind of stuff, it's much better to pay a professional and when someone gets the farm from you, this would be a small percentage of people that are going to go Thank you very much. That was awesome. I'm going to go execute, and they're going to do a good job, but there's gonna be a ton of people that are going to try it and fail miserably. And the smart ones are like, I'm not even wasting my time. Let's just hire this guy who knows how to do it. And he's gonna help me get to the finish line a lot faster than anyone else.
Ravi Abuvala 4:13
Yeah, it's pretty funny that you bring that up, because that's that's exactly how I think as well, because the people that are gonna take it and do it on their own, they were never gonna buy from you in the first place. Right? So like, what is the you know, why even worried about those kind of people. So just like long form copy, like, no one's gonna read it, no one's gonna watch as long form videos. If you are speaking to your target market, they will write because like, there's, there's actually shortage of quality content, in my opinion, that speaks directly to a niche on the internet. And if you're able to deliver that to people, they'll just consume, they'll just click refresh on the page until you launch a new blog and your YouTube video, whatever it is.
Umar Hameed 4:45
Going back to, you know, long form webinar, anyone can do a long form webinar, but it takes a trick to do a long form webinar that keeps people glued to their computer. So it has to be high quality content and it has to be laid out and A specific way that unfolds the story as you go. So how do you how do you make that out?
Ravi Abuvala 5:05
I would love to be able to claim that I came up with it, but I'm the first to give out credit, credit where it's due. And so I, I really love and I teach foundational stuff, like I said a little bit earlier on. So one of my favorite people of all time is Dan Kennedy. He wrote the ultimate sales letter, you know exactly who he is great book. And also David, David Ogilvy, as well, because to be on advertising one of the original like madmen, advertising agencies, and but...
Umar Hameed 5:31
Yup.
Ravi Abuvala 5:30
...for Dan Kennedy and David Ogilvy, they talk about structuring sales letters in a way that converts and it's so funny because I have this conversation all the time. So in my office, I have hung up here, some really incredible sales letters, like the Wall Street Journal, two men, they sold $2 billion to The Wall Street Journal, some really, really big ones...
Umar Hameed 5:36
Wow!
Ravi Abuvala 5:38
...and the reason why I have those hung up there is because back then your sales letters, you know, you had to send them in the mail. So they had to be letters in the mail. And then once you got in the mail, you have to open them, then when you open them, you read them while you're sitting down. And then you If you liked it, you had to go the letter had to be good enough that you had to go to your you know car or your drawer, pull out your wallet, get your credit card, and then you would write down or write you get your checkbook, write it out, then send it back in the mail. And then you'd have to wait 7-14 days, and then you'd get whatever you bought. And so I respect those people a lot, because in my opinion, there was a lot larger obstacles versus today where it's like, watch the webinar book a time buy, right or watch the webinar, buy on the webinar, if it's something like that. And everyone's used to instant gratification. And so the reason I bring all that up is just because I like the way they do their styling. So that's how I do it, where you actually like, you know, you start with a really strong, bold claim for us. And it has to be something to go back up how you can scale a business to from zero to seven figures in under six months, while retaining 50% profit margin. I've done that before. So I can make that claim, then there's proof below it. So like, why should people listen to you like because they definitely, as soon as I said that it will be a bunch of people on here is like, he's not telling the truth. He's a liar, right, and then you show proof for it. And then you walk them through your background story, you walk them through unique insights, you walk them through, you know, their options of doing it on their own. So there is definitely we teach in our program, definitely a formula that you have to follow. And once you understand what that formula is, whenever you're watching any webinar, or any kind of ad or anything like that, from now on, you're, you're that's that's adding the credibility. Well, I won't take credit for it. But it is very, it's cool to watch it. So that's just how my mind works. I geek out on that kind of stuff.
Umar Hameed 7:25
Brilliant. So let's talk about Scaling With Systems because most people hate frickin systems, but you can't build a business without them.
Ravi Abuvala 7:32
Now, it's interesting, because I hated systems as well actually didn't know what systems were. So you know, I dropped out of law school, I started my first business first eight months, we did $3,000 in total revenue, I mean, absolutely abysmal. And I'm thinking that this isn't for me, I go, I go to a mastermind in Atlanta, Georgia, I've meet my future coach there. And he's like, you know, you're doing this all wrong, you're focused on the wrong things, you're trying to do everything yourself. So I ended up hiring my first virtual assistant right out the gate there. And in order, I don't care if it's a virtual assistant, or if it's a Harvard graduate, or for someone to come into your company and be efficient, you need some kind of training procedure, or some kind of like, you know, copy and paste...
Umar Hameed 8:10
Oh yeah!
Ravi Abuvala 8:10
...hey, this is what you do. Or if they just come in there, you have no idea to do and then you just have two people that don't know what they're doing, except right now you're paying money for somebody not know what they're doing.
Umar Hameed 8:13
Yup.
Ravi Abuvala 8:17
And so, for us, I that kind of forced me, I paid them, I hired them. And that forced me to develop systems and really the first systems that I developed, which is what I recommend other people to do, because it's a little bit more fun, or like lead generation systems. So how can you set it up? So you have booked appointments leads coming in every single day on autopilot without you being involved? And that will lead to more cash in the door? And then you'll understand...
Umar Hameed 8:40
Umm...mmm..
Ravi Abuvala 8:40
...that, okay, like, you'll make that kind of correlation your brain, okay, systems work and systems make me more money. Let me start systemising, maybe the less sexy stuff like payroll or back end fulfillment, or any one of those things.
Umar Hameed 8:51
Brilliant. So why don't you walk us through one of your most challenging clients that you brought on? Because I mean, it's fun to talk about the success stories right out of the gate, then we'll talk about a success story. So somebody that actually made it at the end, but adopting your methodology was challenge?
Ravi Abuvala 9:07
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I had a gentleman from India originally. So gentlemen, in front of mine from India, obviously, my dad's from India. I know we were just speaking about it before the call from Pakistan. And he comes in he says, You know, I want to start this business, I want to scale up but my Indian accent is gonna prevent me and I can't do it because
Umar Hameed 9:26
Yeah.
Ravi Abuvala 9:26
I'm thinking I'm stealing your money, whatever it is. And so he was one of my first original clients and this was back when I was doing you know, real intensive one on one stuff right now I have a lot of it laid out and like kind of in a box business in a box. But that was back when I was really intensive one on one work. And so I was like, Look, if you can prove product market fit. If you can find something that resonates with your marketplace, we call it the whisper test. So if you can whisper in someone's ear, this bold claim are what they want. And they wake up and they say, "Oh my god", I like they pull out their credit card. They're not gonna care what color you are. What's your accident is they just want that in solution. They want that transformation.
Umar Hameed 9:59
Yes.
Ravi Abuvala 9:59
So I sold him on that. But he still was like, I don't know. And so we spent a lot of time up front. He was originally doing advertising. He was an advertising agency in his original doing for one niche, and it wasn't working. And we realized, because his offer wasn't great, they didn't really want what he was offering, it was kind of a nice to have on a need to have. So then we changed it around a little bit, pivoted to a new industry that he had no previous experience in, but that they needed this problem that he knew based on our research, and then he sold his first people, hey, I can solve this problem for you. This is okay, here's $1,000. And then he went out and solved it after they paid him. So proof product market fit, then he figured out how to solve it. And then he got a great case study from that. And the case study was so incredible number that every single person they reached out to after that, hey, here's my case, study, here's my case study that, I want those same results, I want the same results. And you know, at this point, he has a sales team underneath them, so it doesn't really matter anymore. But he was able to hit a seven figure business by being you know, what the same quote and quote, limiting abilities that the Indian actually was worried about. And he was able to actually knock it out of the park there. So it was interesting, because I think business limitations can be overcome pretty easily. But it's those personal mental limitations that you're just like, there's no way I can get this, no one's gonna buy it from me, I didn't actually, you know, you're, you know, laughing your way to the bank.
Umar Hameed 11:16
So that's my area of expertise is changing human behavior. So that story really kind of resonate. What's interesting is human beings are meaning making machines, when something's going on, we got to make meaning out of it. And the meaning he made was the reason I'm not selling isn't my offer, it's my accent, or I'm too old, or I'm too young, or this or people are stupid, or whatever that thing is. And what you really need to realize is, that's what you need a coach, that's what you need somebody that can see things clearly and go, "Huh, maybe", but it could be this, let's test it and see what's going on. And certainly you gave him proof positive that it's not your asking dude.
Ravi Abuvala 11:48
Izzzzzzzzzzzzzzt's great to because I love I love capitalism, capitalist economy, I love a free market. I like the idea that like, realistically, if you can provide value to somebody, they're gonna pay you money, if you can prove that you can provide value to something somebody wants, they're gonna pay you money. And obviously, sure there, I'm not saying there's not discrimination in the world. But if you're able, there's gonna be a vast majority of people that like, Look, I just need this solve. And if you're able to solve it, it doesn't matter to me at all. And you can prove that you can solve it. Let's do business. And so that's, that's why I love business in the first place.
Umar Hameed 12:16
So tell me about like one of the things Oh, here's a stupid joke that I've told on this podcast many times, how do you make a salesperson cry? How
Ravi Abuvala 12:23
is that getting the
Umar Hameed 12:26
so one things you do for your clients is help them set up a system for lead generation, also having people calling on their behalf. So walk me through one of those so the listeners can go, I don't want to pick up the phone I want to hire. Help me. Yeah. So
Ravi Abuvala 12:39
the number one issue that we usually see, when clients come inside of Scaling With Systems is they don't have enough leads, then the number two issue that comes up after that is they don't have anybody to feel those leads, or they don't want to feel the leads themselves. So let's assume that you get lead generation down? Well, the great thing about the first step there is inside skilling systems, we give our clients a fully trained virtual system. So we have virtual assistants in the Philippines, we train them on about a 60 day training program. So they can learn the same stuff that pretty much our clients are learning but how to actually implement it, how to create sales funnels, how to do outbound messaging, how to do cold calling, whatever it is. But a lot of times what will happen is after you get to the point that the person's like, Look, I'm interesting, what you have to offer, I'd like to speak a little bit more, that's usually when people freeze up on the phone. And so you kind of have two options there. Number one, we have a whole high ticket sales process formula inside scanning systems, it's incredibly in depth, we've sold over $5 million in about two years, and I broke down the exact process that we did in order to do it. But the second option is, you know, pros or cons, there's about 40 million unemployed Americans United States right now. And the nice thing about business once again, is that you are able to find, you know, really quality people and the universal laws apply. So hey, like for us, we look for a hungry competitive people that are willing to learn, like, all of my sales reps have played competitive sports in the past, because I want them to be really competitive against each other, right? And so some of the things that we teach is asking what systems is where to find these reps, and then how to use systems to ramp them up so that you're not having to spend your time on them, so that they're able to take calls for you. And the interesting part about it is, it could be 30 days, it could be 60 days, it could be 90 days in but all of a sudden, you have a virtual assistant that's doing all your lead generation for you, that's tidying up appointments and then you have a sales rep that's fully trained, that you didn't even have to train that's taking these appointments for you. So that is when you start talking about waking up in the morning with payment notification on your phone with your merchant processor, your cash register ringing and you're not being involved in the process at all.
Umar Hameed 14:30
Brilliant. You were talking about you know, going after athletes I was just doing a podcast interview earlier today with Cameron Herold and he is the CEO or used to be of One 800 Got Yeah...
Ravi Abuvala 14:41
Oh yeah! Sure.
Umar Hameed 14:42
He said when they started they just hire athletes and that were like driven to succeed and go making app.
Ravi Abuvala 14:47
I love it. It's literally in our application processes like what competitors sports Have you played in the past because, you know, it's not only where they compete against themselves, but especially in like a sales team. We have like leaderboards that we post inside of our and by the way You know, I run a 30 person, team, everyone is remote. So you don't have to be anywhere in the world. Like none of these salespeople are next to each other everybody's remote. But that's kind of the nice thing about the time that we live in right now, it doesn't really matter too much. And so, you know, we've a 12 person sales team, everybody's from United States, to Europe, to Southeast Asia, all across the world, and Australia, and they're still able to have kind of that camaraderie and that competitive edge. That is the whole reason we were looking for these, you know, sports players in the first place.
Umar Hameed 15:26
But Ravi, you don't understand. If they're not together, we won't be able to build I mean, going back to Cameron for a second, I was asking him just before we finished up, I'm not sure if we recorded it. It's like, hey, you're famous for public speaking, how's that happening in the time of COVID, it says, You know, I just spoke in India, and instead of flying over there and getting my shots, and going through all that dreadful process that I did it for a smaller amount, but I basically had a cup of coffee came to the computer and did it, they're happy, I'm happy created the interaction. And so it's a new world as COVID has a lot of negatives. But it's also changed this new world that we were envisioning, of being connected no matter where you are, and doing business. It forced us to kind of realize...
Ravi Abuvala 16:07
Yeah.
Umar Hameed 16:07
...this year...
Ravi Abuvala 16:08
it was a wake up call for a lot of people. And you know, I don't want to speak too lightly about COVID. My brother has two restaurants in Florida. So like he was definitely hit pretty hard by it...
Umar Hameed 16:16
Oh Yeah!
Ravi Abuvala 16:17
...I definitely understand that it affected a lot of people. But the smart business owner Ryan Holiday writes a great book called the obstacles the way the smart business owner, they're like, Okay, how can I pivot and turn this into a plus. And so honestly, for us, COVID was really great, because it forced people, okay, I need to learn how to sell online, I can learn how to sell online, like actually learned itself, watching courses, learning from coaches, I don't have to go to events and masterminds and all this kind of stuff, I can just sit on my computer and learn as well. And so it just kind of sped up what I think was already I don't think I know what was already happening, which was just like this transition online. And you know, the people that weren't able to to adapt, well, they probably died. But the people that were able to adapt, especially a lot of our clients really, really knocked it out of the park. So yeah, I'm not complaining with it, you don't need to have the in person team. You know, we have a relatively successful company, we're all been virtual and remote. And there's also benefits of having in person stuff. But I'll just tell you right now, I'm happy that when all this went down, I didn't have an office, a three year lease and an office space with like, you know, 20,000 square feet somewhere, I was able to be like, Oh, I just moved from San Diego to Miami about a week ago. And you know, I just made that decision didn't change anything in the company just made a decision in about a few days.
Umar Hameed 17:26
Brilliant. One of my friends runs selling power magazine, and he was saying that, uh, no live events. So a lot of their business comes from those live expos. And he said, you know, the first one we did, okay, the second one did. Okay, third one, we figured out formula. So actually, our speakers and our vendors got higher quality leads, and a ton more of them at a lower price. It's just great for the attendees. It's great for the people sponsoring...
Ravi Abuvala 17:50
It's infinitely scalable. It's infinitely scalable.
Umar Hameed 17:52
Yeah.
Ravi Abuvala 17:53
I mean, have you seen like Tony Robbins? How he has it with his like...
Umar Hameed 17:56
Oh yeah!
Ravi Abuvala 17:57
...well, all the videos for I mean, it's just like, you know, he adapted and he knocked it out of the park. So, and I host live events, I do a few live events every single year. So I definitely get it. And there's there is something to be said, I'm not taking away from live events. But I'm just saying, you know, we can sit here and talk about oh, well, I missed live events, we can do it. Or you could just be like, how do I figure out how I can duplicate this on an infinitely scalable platform like the internet?
Umar Hameed 18:17
Brilliant, we're gonna put a link to your webinar, but walk me through if somebody listening to this goes, Oh, my God, I want to work with Ravi, what's the first step in starting to?
Ravi Abuvala 18:26
Yeah, so pretty easy, you can just go to scalingwithsystems.com or you could, like Umar said, he'll put a link down below to some free training that we have. It's not like a typical free training you see online on our site, he actually enjoyed watching a lot. So it's, it's gonna go really in depth, and it'll answer a lot of your questions that you guys have there. But either on Scaling With Systems or on the webinar, there's gonna be a get a price button, all you have to do is just book a time there, you find it on a calendar that works best for you hop on a call, and then it's just a very nonchalant, 30 minute call, we're just trying to figure out, do you have a business? Are you trying to scale? Are you ready to scale or maybe you're not ready to scale, you know, what kind of structure your business is looking like. And then if it makes sense, after we offer some actionable steps, we'll just be like, Hey, I think that you could benefit from our program. And we can talk about next steps from there. So very, very easy process. At the very least, if you watch the webinar, hopping a call, you'll get a lot of actionable steps that you can take. And then at the very best, you might be able to, you know, three, four, or five, six times your business over the next 90 days.
Umar Hameed 19:21
Brilliant. So Robbie, before we take off, you run a business you lead people remotely give us three pieces of advice that people listening to this that they could implement today to just build better.
Ravi Abuvala 19:32
Yeah, so the first thing I probably say is kind of what I said in the middle of it, but you need to remove yourself from arguably the most important position inside of your company. And that's lead generation. I mean, without leads and new flow coming in, you're pretty much just at the whim of the society, the world government, whatever you want to say, right? So the first thing you do is okay, how have I been getting leads in the past three months, six months, nine months, 12 months? And how can I create it could just be a quick little video on your computer or on your phone? How can I hire someone to do this for me, and that'll remove yourself from the process, what you need to do, because let's be honest, you're not going to do cold calling or cold emailing every single day. So first one is remove yourself from the lead generation process. The second one is, for me personally, was hiring based on soft skills, training on hard skills. So hiring people that believed in the vision believed in what we were doing that had the competitive edge, right? That that believed in teamwork that believed in where we were going, that likes kind of the win-win situation for us with the virtual assistants and our clients that would work for free if they had needed to have by hiring those people and soft skills and then saying, Hey, here's how you do sales. Hey, here's how you do, you know, lead generation, hey, here's how you run Facebook ads, here's how you do training, whatever it is, and and that's really important to us, because I've done it the opposite, where I hired someone who was quote and quote, the best in the world that let's just say, Facebook ads ended up not buying into the vision, he was just there for a paycheck, it didn't work out. So that's number two. And I guess number three would be Umar referenced earlier as well. But, you know, it doesn't have to be me. But if you are looking to speed up the process, and anything, I just spent $20,000 a few days ago to learn one thing that I already implemented, that's gonna be drastic in my company, just the smartest people in the world, they pay to get ahead, you're paying for more time to get more time back, right. So I'm 26 years old to be able to get to where I was, when I was 24 years old, I have put almost $100,000 over a year into different coaching programs to learn to wear it and then back in my business as well. And so once again, doesn't have to be me, I don't care, right, it's not gonna change my life. But if you really want to speed up the process that you're doing things on right now, I would really recommend purchasing into someone's program learning from a coach, that's been exactly where you want to be. And at the very least, you'll learn something interesting about yourself or your learning that maybe something's too good to be true, but at the very best, like I said, you might see some incredible growth in your business.
Umar Hameed 21:45
Brilliant. Ravi, thank you so much for being on the program. It was a joy having you here and we'll have you back.
Ravi Abuvala 21:50
Thank you, Omar. Appreciate it.
Umar Hameed 21:56
If you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and leave a five-star rating. And if you're looking for more tools, go to my website at nolimitsselling.com. I've got a free mind training course there, that's going to teach you some insights from the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and that is the fastest way to get better results.