Mar 3, 2017 · 1h 8m · mixergy
#1417 How Sam Ovens is helping everyday people start their own consulting businesses
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this Mixergy interview, host Andrew Warner speaks with Consulting.com founder Sam Ovens about overcoming early skepticism, engineering diagnostic sales frameworks, and scaling an online consulting education platform to tens of millions in revenue.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Andrew holds 36.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Andrew as informed peer 3.6 Guest teaching 4.6 Guest disagreement 1.3 Andrew pushing back 2.4
speaking balance: gold is Andrew, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 41:30 Sam dismisses conventional logic via measurement analogy
Sam forcefully rejects standard single-metric evaluations, arguing via his purple monkey degrees analogy that human perception is incapable of understanding any concept without an opposite comparison.
Hardest push from Andrew ▶ 40:20 Andrew challenges Sam's claim of reading HegelAndrew openly doubts whether Sam genuinely read dense 800-page philosophical works like Hegel's Science of Logic or is merely citing them to sound intellectual.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 58:35 Sam reframes audience targeting through pixel intelligenceSam dismantles standard digital marketing advice about tight niche targeting, explaining how training algorithmic pixel data allows him to target the entire United States at $30,000 per day.
Andrew holds their own ▶ 36:12 Andrew applies 'Becoming Steve Jobs' thesis to mindsetAndrew demonstrates deep subject mastery by contrasting Walter Isaacson's static biography with the dynamic evolutionary framework in 'Becoming Steve Jobs' to reinforce Sam's identity point.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Andrew as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Andrew pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Business Ventures and Lumpy Mail Strategies | 4 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Andrew recaps Sam's early trajectory through The Foundation and his initial lumpy mail campaign using mini trash cans and Yellow Pages ads. Sam explains how he paired a cash-flow-positive service business to fund his software venture. The conversation is collaborative and explanatory. | |
| Designing a Strategic Consultative Sales Framework | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Sam breaks down his consultative sales philosophy based on exposing the gap between a prospect's current and desired situations using strategic questioning and silence. Andrew actively listens and relates anecdotes about students keeping the script confidential. | |
| Sponsor Message: Visual Sales Pipelines with Pipedrive | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Andrew conducts an ad read for Pipedrive, explaining how he uses visual sales pipelines to manage Mixergy guests and leads, with Sam briefly validating the importance of structured sales processes. | |
| Diagnosing Core Problems Across Diverse Industries | 5 | 6 | 2 | 4 | Sam explains why superficial fixes like new websites fail compared to diagnosing core problems and finding power-law customer segments. Andrew challenges the premise by walking through concrete applications for Mixergy and yoga instructor niches. | |
| Mindset Shifts, Identity Evolution, and Hegelian Logic | 6 | 8 | 3 | 5 | Sam details his mindset framework based on Hegelian logic and identity evolution ('who am I becoming'). Andrew offers counterpoints citing the 'Becoming Steve Jobs' biography and playfully questions whether Sam truly digested Hegel's heavy philosophical texts, prompting Sam's 'purple monkey degrees' thought experiment. | |
| Sponsor Message: Hiring Elite Developers with Toptal | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Andrew presents a mid-roll sponsorship segment for Toptal, outlining how development shops use Toptal to expand technical capabilities on demand. | |
| Democratizing Consulting, Domain Acquisition, and Scaling | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Sam articulates his ambition to become the 'Henry Ford of consulting' and details hiring early employees directly from his customer base. Andrew presses him on why he refuses to state the exact purchase price of consulting.com. | |
| Facebook Advertising at Scale and the Tai Lopez Partnership | 4 | 7 | 1 | 2 | Sam explains his Facebook advertising strategy of training conversion pixels to target broad national audiences without niche segmentation, and breaks down his multi-million dollar affiliate partnership with Tai Lopez. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Sam Ovens generated $18.25M in 2016 primarily from one training program
“Selling online training programs, or only really It was mostly one online training program, ah, helping everyday people start and grow their own consulting business.”
Pairing service and product models eliminates the cash flow trough
“With service businesses, they have, they don't have a trough in the cash flow model, but with product businesses, they have a very big trough. And by trough, I mean, you know, capital expenditure and outlay before revenues start coming in. So I just paired a s…”
Auditing specific client mistakes sells better than pitching general competence
“It's just really powerful to point out actual mistakes instead of going to someone and saying, I'm so good, I can help you. Everyone's first reaction is prove it, right? So it's so much more powerful to go in and identify problems.”
Ovens has acquired 10,500 customers across all consulting training programs
“Fast forward to this current day, I mean, I think we've had 10, 10 and a half thousand customers of, for the different iteration, if you add up all the different iterations, all the different customers, about 10 and a half thousand.”
Making prospects articulate their own problems outperforms direct pitching
“So instead of me saying those words to them, I ask questions which make them say that to themselves, because it's so much more powerful that way. If I come on and I'm like, I'm so good, I've got this amazing thing for you, it's gonna do all of these things for…”
Customers buy transformations of themselves, not products or services
“No one buys yoga because they want yoga. No one buys Mixergy because they want Mixergy. They buy it to achieve something and to get a desired version of themselves which they've got in their mind.”
Sam Ovens claims to have read 16 books by philosopher Hegel
“I've read like probably 16 of Hegel's books, not just that one.”
Sam Ovens paid between $300,000 and $1M for Consulting.com
“It was in between a 1,300,000, somewhere in there.”
Sam Ovens plans to eventually take Consulting.com public
“I think with, you know, a company like mine, I've got some plans for it in terms of, ah, like I do want to float it eventually, and the speculative value of some things is, it means, it can mean a lot. It's not a wise idea to mention every asset on the balance…”
Existing customers are the best source for early startup hires
“The best place to start is in your customers, because you have a lot of people in your customer list who understand they're very early in their journey, and it would probably be a smart idea to go work for a company for a year, and to, because you're going to …”
Consulting.com spends $30,000 per day on Facebook advertising
“Some time, most of the time, 30 grand a day.”
Consulting.com has logged over 700,000 Facebook conversion pixel fires
“So I've put Over 700,000 fires on my conversion pixel, so it is so smart that I can target America, and I do.”
Traffic from Tai Lopez generated $4M to $6M in revenue
“Thai alone I don't want to give specific numbers just because it's private for him, but it's in between In between four and six million just from Ty's traffic.”
Sam Ovens completely rebuilds his consulting course from scratch twice annually
“It's more like, honestly, it's probably version 17 or 18. Like, I, even when there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, and people tell me this is the best course I've ever done, or this is the best course in the world, I still, just for fun, because I just am …”