so today i'm going to be interviewing
rouen and ruan has
an awesome story uh he actually joined
gotcha seo academy back in 2018
uh when he was in the early stages of
building his seo agency developmark
and since then he's really really done a
terrific job he's built it into
a thriving agency um and i
just want to say i'm super impressed
with your work man i just really i'm
proud of you like i'm just proud of you
you know
like i am but he's grown into 150
clients which is
that is not an easy task um and and
we'll be getting into this but like you
know he was at when when he joined the
training he was around that twenty
thousand dollar mark and that's usually
the sticking point for a lot of people
uh and i'm sorry let me rephrase that 20
000 per month
is that sticking mark um and i you know
i talked to so many different people
about this who are
trying to build up their agencies and
that range from 10 to 20
is it's tough to get out of that range
um so it's gonna be exciting to see
like how he was able to go from that to
where he is now
um and it's it's gonna be a lot of fun
so thank you so much for being on man i
really appreciate it
oh you're more than welcome thank you
for having me nathan um i'm more than
happy to talk about my favorite topic
which is
agency right awesome okay so let's
let's rewind pretty far and then we'll
come back to where we are today
okay so what just kind of describe
where you were when you found gotcha seo
academy like just
just kind of broadly so i actually
forgot
how i discovered you i think in the time
i found you on
a blog which was about ahrefs
i think and i was learning about how to
use ahrefs and you put out
a massive article that kind of talked
about everything that you need to know
about ahrefs
and so from there i noticed you were
publishing youtube videos
and then i reached out to you and i
interviewed you on my channel a long
time ago this is a long time ago
probably three four years ago
and so from there i wanted to know uh
more about your stuff and so i went to
your site i saw that you had like an seo
training and and the seo training was
how to grow organic rankings and so like
i popped your your domain into ahrefs
just to kind of see like what's going on
with your site
and i was just like wow about the
results you know
it was like i don't know if anybody's
ever played xbox live but it was like
when you go on xbox live and you look at
somebody's gamer score
and their gamer sport was like crazy you
know it just shows that there was
experience so
from there i was like instantly
interested in learning more about your
approach
and especially because it was white hat
and it wasn't black cat and a lot of the
information that i consumed at the time
was all black cat and because of that um
you know i was struggling to grow my
business because you can't grow an seo
agency black cat you just can't
you're not gonna have happy employees
you're gonna have customers that are
just like really sketchy
you need white hat accounts that kind of
allow you to
grow with them organically and they can
wait for those types of leads to come in
so
i joined your program um i got some huge
takeaways
on the keyword research the keyword gap
analysis
um you know how to create content that
works creating a schedule for that
content
the link building aspect of it um got a
lot of value from that
implemented it into our clients along
with a lot of other stuff that i've
learned
and then kind of just you know started
monitoring the results using
you know basic seo tools that we use um
and started getting good results now
at the time i was very focused on our
agency's
rankings and so i was looking at what
you were doing with your
your city pages i think you had like
indiana something seo or like you had
these seo pages
and so i took what you did and i did it
in new york and
i got the ranking and so i even stole
what you did like uh
you searched new york seo and you found
us you know and then
that started generating us leads which
was awesome and i've always been
uh plagued by you can't get leads online
with seo
which is just complete bs a lot of
people search web search online for seo
companies so um you know that's kind of
how i found you
that's how i went through your
information and how i implemented it
inside of developmark which is our
agency
that's great yeah so what so let's get
more of like non-business so like what
was life like
at that point in 2017 2018 like what
what
was your life like uh well it's more
stressful now
then it was more like i need to figure
out how to sell something that works
because at the time you know you're
taking
a lot of guesses from different industry
leaders
and sometimes it's hard to take all that
information
and compose it into an offer that makes
sense
and so at the time i remember like
there's just so many
ways to go i can go just the seo audit
route where i audit a company's website
i can go the
agency route where i do the services i
can go to youtube route and just build
courses
there was so much stuff that i could do
i was very sporadic with everything
and i think it now i'm more focused i'm
more determined i know what i want i'm
doing
one thing but it's just become way more
stressful
but that's because we're growing so i
can't complain about that so
at the time i remember we got on a phone
call and you kind of broke down
what you were doing and why you were
doing it and stuff like that and you
kind of told me like hey dude like
you're all over the place you know like
you're just all over the place you're
doing youtube you're doing this course
you're doing this agency
they're all getting done 20 effectively
and that was the truth
and so i really just like tripled down
on developmark because that's the
business that i love
and it's it's worked numbers for me
right now um so i would say that i went
from like
less stress confused to more like
determined and understanding of where i
want to go with this
right right and i still remember that
conversation too because we specifically
were talking about youtube and you were
like
i asked you i was like so what like
what's your what's your goal on youtube
and you were like i don't know so
that's when i knew i was like yeah so we
need to we need to like we need to focus
in on what's going to really drive it
and so what
let's talk about why you picked agency
because you had so many options right
you could have you could have been the
mr influencer like
you know that route and you were making
good on that you're making pretty good
money on adsense like you could have
gone that route
um you could have gone the course route
like i have done
um so you had a lot of options so why
did you pick agency to be your you know
you're really
lasering in on that well first of all i
love it
i think that's that's that's the first
thing is i i'm absolutely in love
with talking to clients hearing their
problems
recommending solutions from you know
great teachers that i've learned from
and you know delivering results and kind
of building up an agency
that that excites me i think like for
like
courses it excites me too just not as
much as the agency
right youtube it excites me too not as
much as the agency and so
at that time i really had to make a
decision as to what do i actually love
doing
and keep in mind even at the time i was
24 years old and like you know i didn't
really know
i had no idea like where i was going to
go and like but the agency model
is a really a beautiful model because
similar to the course model
it's very scalable in the sense that if
you can build a predictable
service the same thing every single time
that's why if you look at
development.com you look at our websites
people say our websites look the same
and it's like well duh like we're not a
custom development agency
we're a website marketing company like
websites look similar we run the same
ads we get clients results
simple so like we get a client i don't
talk to them it's when we could scale
that that's the part that gets me
excited very similar to a course where
you record content you get customers to
buy the content they get results you can
keep scaling
um whereas youtube is
um it's very scalable because you're in
front of a video and thousands of people
are seeing it
i'm still making that video like you
can't replace yourself on that camera
at developmark i can replace people you
know they people i don't need to do the
account management i don't need to do
the seo i don't need to do the ads i
don't need to do the
reporting people do that whereas youtube
the most successful channels actually do
this
um think media has recently done this
where they have their employees making
the videos
but even people like future um who has a
large channel with design
you know he's not replacing himself in
the video so to me it's like i'd rather
do something to where i can build this
corporate enterprise
step away from it let people handle it
that's what gets me excited and that's
why i chose agency
also i had an interesting conversation
with neil patel one time
and he told me that his biggest regret
was becoming an influencer and
she should have been spending his time
building a corporation because at the
end of the day
he doesn't really care about how many
people know know him you know he's more
focused on
creating something that's you know
sustainable and stuff so i think
from your conversations neil's
conversations um uh uh uh
uh agency was was my pick those are
those are all really good points you
know
you can't separate yourself really on
youtube that's that's really the
downside like for example
pewdiepie like there's no like if he
doesn't do it there's nothing
like like they just it just does it just
doesn't work so
um but yeah that is and actually even
with with agency
really the the real value of it is that
you can disconnect from the actual
work that is being done and you can grow
it without a personal brand too
having a personal brand certainly helps
i'm sure you've gotten a ton of leads a
ton of clients from youtube
through your personal brand so it
certainly is a path that you can go to
attract
you know appropriately would you agree
with that absolutely
um the personal brand has definitely
helped me in ways that i
you know i can't even fathom at times i
get bothered by it sometimes because
sometimes people won't even talk to our
sales people unless it's me
so there's that dilemma but i don't see
it as a bad thing it's like
i'd rather the opportunity there than no
opportunity at all
um but the personal brand like if people
like look everybody in this room right
now you probably do great seo and you
probably know great seo problem is is
nobody knows your name
and when i when i realized that grant
cardone said that and it hit me hard and
i was like
it's not that i'm bad at what i do
people just don't even know my name
so youtube is a great way to kind of get
out there and i'm sure you've gotten
clients from youtube too
right right yeah and that's
you know there's a lot of trust that is
built
prior to that conversation that you have
with people when you have content online
so like as much trust that you can build
prior to that point it just makes your
job so much easier i mean
if you don't have any of those existing
assets like you on youtube have so much
content someone could spend
days and days you know watching your
content
by the time they get in touch with you
they're pretty much already warm they're
pretty hot already before you've even
gotten on the phone
so that makes your job way easier um so
what are you doing outside of youtube
though to
attract and you know actually let's
we'll get back to that i want to ask you
a different question before we get there
um how are you able to get
from that really really difficult spot
of ten thousand to twenty thousand
dollars per month how are you able to
break through that
what was like if you could name just one
thing that really made the difference
what would that be
well i mean so there's there's a
there is a um
there's a there's a thing that i i kind
of follow with business and it's that
like i'm not in it to make money right
now and
um a lot of the money that we make a lot
of the profits that we make we reinvest
into customers and their success and so
it was very slow
it was one of those things where it's
almost like i got comfortable
at 20k and like i don't need new clients
i just stay where i
am and figure my product out and that
was a very nice position to be in
because my bills were paid uh my staff
was paid
my my overhead was paid and i kind of
had like this nice little 5 000
margin to kind of just like take home
and i just let it sit like that for like
three to six months
and i really just figured out like what
are customers buying from us
what's the start to finish process with
them and what are the standard operating
procedures that we're going to need to
sell this as the service
if you know about developmark we we do
not work with clients unless we take
their website
company policy we will not ever work
with a customer that's using wordpress
we don't work with customers that's
using uh wix we don't do that we always
take their website and host it on our
platform
that is one thing that we do and because
of that we get to kind of clean up the
seo
as we're taking over the site like
you've done seo audits before for
clients
you've found thousands of issues and to
us
it's just like the time it's going to
take us the cost that's going to take
you get a new website out of it and
we'll fix the issues as we transition it
over
and like your course you teach url
redirects you teach how to move websites
to make sure that it's not
creating 404 pages you teach how to
crawl those things
and so like doing that initially then
moving the website over now we have a
fresh
seo perspective and google knows hey
this is a new website
register on search search console
usually we add a bunch of pages
that type of stuff i was figuring out
what is something that we can do the
same thing every single time with our
customers
now once i figured that out then we kind
of started focusing more on acquisition
and that acquisition was really simple
we started asking our customers
uh do you want free three months of
service this is very aggressive
three months of free service refer us a
client simple
we don't get paid on that account for
three months but we do get a new client
out of it every single time
now they know of the program some
clients are free for the whole year
and it's like wow okay now we know how
to get new clients we're not going to
make a lot of money from this
but we are going to grow our customer
base extremely fast and so we started
doing this ridiculous rewards incentive
for our customers
where every time they they give us a
success and they go hey ruan
phone's off the hook right now you guys
are awesome no worries
did you know that you can get three
months free saving you forty five
hundred dollars our average charge is
fifteen hundred bucks a month
saving you forty five hundred dollars if
this type of business owner joins our
company
great email introduction to like three
people right after we send that i swear
to god
and so from there um we started getting
clients youtube started to work better
and then obviously just word of mouth
started to happen as well um
and so once you get that product really
dialed in then it's how do you acquire
those customers and make financial sense
of it me
i don't care about money i don't need it
i have nice things i have a nice office
i have nice employees
that's what i care about uh the nice
employees in the nice office i don't
really need the next things like i have
a bunch of stuff here
probably throughout but um now i'm at
the point where we're at a hundred
thousand dollars per month
and i'm now doing the same thing take a
break
what's next and then now that i can pay
my bills and everything like that with
all the staff that i have
focus on existing clients focus on
products and services
and what's that next step to get us to a
thousand clients which is my goal by 30
and that'll that'll put us at a million
a month that's terrific man that's great
yeah so one thing i really got out of
that is that you
you figured you figured out a way to
standardize your offering
which is something that i think a lot of
people struggle with because especially
with seo there's this belief that
every campaign is different and it
always needs to be customized and always
every situation is unique but in reality
you know a lot of things are repeatable
a lot of a lot of elements of an seo
campaign are
very very repeatable and predictable so
um
what was that process for standardizing
the offer i think that would really help
a lot of people to figure out and also
like
what what verticals did you pick and why
yeah so i i i if you want to standardize
your offer especially in digital
marketing
take the website that's like the first
step because now you're creating a
process for a team
that knows what to do every time they
get an account and it's almost like if
you
like just doing the seo um is beneficial
for cash flow and it works especially if
you're a one-man
two-man five-man 10-people team um it's
very very beneficial
but that's like it's almost like you
know think about your cell phone
you have to unlock your phone go to
another provider get a sim card and then
do the service well
they might as well just get the new
phone at the new place right and so we
we see the website as the cell phone and
then we see the seo as the cellular
service
and our clients every time you get a
phone call right you know that your
cellular service is working
every time a client gets a lead that's
kind of how we're justifying your
platform hey development newly developed
mark new league development new lead
and what starts to happen is something
beautiful starts to happen is
you start to create um consistency with
your stuff and you start to get better
metrics and
our websites are built this fast we rank
people this fast
average time for somebody to get a lead
after using our services is fast you
have more control over this if you're
doing the agency route so i would say if
you want to productize your service and
you're doing the seo stuff right now
consider web design as an entrance to
get to
you doing the seo work for the client
many times these clients have outdated
websites they're not secure
they have incorrect redirects they have
crappy pages they have
bad texts bad images so we're just like
hey nathan's
plumbing company you want a new website
no problem we're going to fly out
photographers to you
we're going to rebuild your website
we're going to add a bunch of keyword
pages like you teach and gotch
and we're going to just kill out of the
park for you and you're going to work
with one company
in terms of verticals last year's
pandemic was a huge
wake up seos there's only a few
verticals that you should be working
with
medical uh uh uh home services and
legal anything outside if you're doing
national seo that's different
um but more local i'm talking more local
um those are the three verticals that
you need to work with
why most of those verticals were open
during the pandemic
and if they weren't open some of them
weren't open for a couple weeks like you
mentioned the dentist which we had a few
too
um but plumbers we didn't have to stop
service we kept billing them no problem
advertising was cheaper they were the
best months was during the pandemic
uh uh attorneys no problem people had
real estate closings people were selling
properties like crazy
now you have the realtor now you have
the attorneys busy verticals that i
found to
not be great is anything like uh
real estate's really hard to work with
primarily because they have listings
they have idx's they want seller leads
and they're competing with zillow who's
actually now a brokerage
restaurants are really hard to work with
they don't have time they don't value
your service
they're always trying to penny pinch um
and anything that's like a coach or
lifestyle coach or anything along those
lines are really hard to work with
um ultimately because you want a
business that's already getting that
branded traffic
people that are already typing in
nathan's plumbing you want those
companies because
they're not going to be the ones to
micromanage your seo results
they're going to hear the phone ringing
they're going to see the leads are
coming from you and that's going to keep
them quiet and you can kind of scale
right yeah those are those are very good
points you have more like recession
recession-proof verticals
is what you're describing yeah and i
mean obviously depending on what caused
a recession that could change right so
like
in 2008 if you were in home services
things were not good
at all so so it does depend but yeah i
mean i i totally agree with that
oh oh let me let me touch on that one
time i'm sorry no go for this
go for the clients that need
professional licenses to do things
so like you're right home services look
remodeling was in the toilet
plumbing hvac was not in the toilet
because
you need heat and you need air
conditioning and you can't have your
toilet
leaking and so the licenses
becomes really important because guess
what there's less of them
meaning there's less competition
customers are more willing to call where
if you're targeting
um i know jonathan henderson does a
really good job with power washing
companies but that's an example of a
vertical
that does not need a professional
license therefore there's thousands of
them
and because of that it becomes more
competitive yeah and i think that's the
difference between essential and
non-essential like that's
that those you know those nuances are so
prevalent now because of kova
you've heard that so many times but but
yeah i mean
in 2008 if you were a general contractor
you got nailed
like there just there was no business
and if you were someone servicing
general contractors you also got nailed
so there is
you know i think the the nuance that you
described
making sure that it is essential no
matter the situation
of what's going on i think that's as
extremely golden
so when you're thinking about
standardizing okay so some things will
come up right someone's trying to figure
out how to standardize or offer how to
productize it
how to create a consistent delivery
process which i think is something a lot
of people struggle with
how restrictive do you get with leads
so you know what the lead qualification
process how restrictive do you get
and how loose do you get or is it always
the same like this is these are the
rules
this is who we this is who we work with
and there's never we don't break that
line
how hard line do you get that's a really
good question
and it's something that's bit us before
and the behind and it's something that's
helped us before so like
i'll take on clients where i see there's
additional opportunity
and else other places um like example
we're doing a hair salon right now one
of my friends owns a really big hair
salon we can't refuse that you know what
i mean
it's not in our verticals it's not
essential but we still do it because she
has a lot of connections
um but then we'll do this e-commerce
store and i'll be the one doing the work
the whole time
and it never ends up to something good
so you know
whatever it's pretty hard line it's it's
very very hard to get something into
development that's not what we do
because in reality you think you do
digital marketing but really you do a
set few things you don't just do digital
marketing
and so because of that we've gotten
really really critical with who we work
with
and generally speaking those businesses
often are the ones that i don't have to
do the management of i don't have to
look into anything my team can handle
and because of that that's who we say
yes to in terms of engagement
and it's really nice to know this too
because when you get this type of lead
coming to you
you're usually really excited you're
like wow this is my perfect customer
i'm going to make sure i do everything i
can to get this account and when you get
the account
you have the sense of satisfaction
knowing that they're not going to email
you
30 days from now saying why are the
phones off why are we not making sales
online
and as you know i don't think there's
anything that stresses me out more
than unhappy customers and to avoid
having unhappy customers
because a success rate is very important
with everything that we do to avoid that
we just work with the same type of
businesses offer them the same exact
things
and do the same service over and over
again right and those services
are website design website management
local seo google ads website chat
so when you uh so let's talk about you
know how you well first of all
in the um in the qualification phase
what
size of companies is a qualifier or a
disqualifier is that something you're
using as a criteria so like
uh maybe like a solo plumber may not be
appropriate for
a company that has many locations and
has many plumbers so what
you know where do you go from there yeah
so believe it or not
um we we take on everybody
okay and the reason why we do that is
because
we tell them look this is going to have
to be done
now or later i mean you have to do this
you have to be online
and so getting started now is going to
have a more of a benefit for you than
getting started in a year from now just
because you're a solo plumber
and we set the expectation with them
this is the most important part
look you're not roto-rooter right you're
not you're not going to get thousands of
leads from the web
your first year in business that's not
going to happen but the fact that you're
already licensed
the fact that you know how to do the job
you're going to get leads you just
are there's millions of people searching
for plumbers every single day
and so our qualification process really
is is this person an
actual business or are they a marketing
person trying to figure out what
development does under the hood so they
can steal it and use it for their agency
we get that a lot because of youtube and
then also
is this person trying to build a
directory those are always just
really bad leads unless it's like an
association that has money and they're
credible branding really comes into play
here
how long somebody's been in business
those types of things are really
important
um and then the last one is just like uh
do they have the money to pay for it you
know it's like
for us i don't care if you just started
your business how we see it our
perception of it
it might not work the best for you in
your first 90
180 a year but you're still further than
you were when you started
and so if a customer is not further than
when they were when they started with
develop
that's when we know we've done a
disjusting to that customer and they
should not be working with us
and we'll kind of release them or give
them some money back or however we
handle that
um and so for qualification process in
our verticals
are they okay with us taking over the
website are they okay with low
expectations starting out are they okay
with the minimum ad spend
those are generally the ones that we're
looking for because service works for
everybody if you're working with a new
business
and it's a new dentist i mean yeah of
course like they're a dentist they're
gonna be around
um it's better for them to get started
now but if you're working with somebody
that's
a college student and they're saying
they want to build a directory
and they're they're into digital
marketing we don't talk to those people
yeah okay that's good to know so you you
mentioned ad spend
so is it a requirement with every client
that they do allocate a certain
amount of capital to ad spend because i
know there's a lot of agencies that
require that because
of how long seo can take you know we we
want to try to drive leads initially
while the seo builds up so is that what
you guys do as well
yeah i mean so um and i'll be really
honest with you
um google ads is uh
it's one of those things where you have
to do it it's like
the lead quality you know uh it helps
the
it it helps the seo i don't know the
myth on that uh but
you know those are some of the things
that we look at but also
um in terms of google ads we build a
client for the ad spend
and most people don't do that most
people actually just have the client pay
for the ad spend
the reason why we build the client for
the ad spend is it gives us a
performance based approach on doing
things
and what i mean by that is we tell them
we're taking a percentage
not build them to directly we're going
to take a percentage from their budget
and so this way they're not seeing their
budget
they're getting leads they're not
questioning where the google ads money
is being spent
and we're making money on google ads
without them seeing a fee for google ads
management
um and so we make that very clear with
them many times they're okay with it
but generally google ads is a three
month or four month contract that we
sign with customers
because once the site goes live and we
turn on google ads their phone's off the
hook
right okay because the budget for google
ads will do is a thousand to three
thousand for most local service-based
companies
okay so when you're so let's talk about
kind of how your proposal process works
so you
are you is it always personalized or is
it pretty standardized on that front too
it's standardized because we sell the
same thing every time
right but even even so even if the
competition is much higher so let's say
let's say you have a uh electrician
versus a personal injury lawyer
yeah where do we where do the
differences come in that's a great
question and
and that really comes into um uh the
packages so we have three packages
i i will i will say that we do have
three packages
we have a starter package which is
a website 10 new pages transfer your
pages new design
we have a competitor package which is
usually the middle population these are
cities like um you know these are like
medium-sized cities
this is a website a lot more pages a lot
more faq content a lot more backlinks
stuff like that
and then we have a market leader package
which is like you want to rank in dallas
you have to buy this you want to rank in
miami you have to buy this so um you
know
those those that packages usually large
amounts of pages on the website
large amounts of link bait large amounts
of links
a beautiful user experience we fly out a
photographer
those social media management because
that helps the seo too
so we have packages to determine the
marketplace but the services that we
sell in those packages are the same
the quantity of what they're getting is
more in different packages
um and so when you do that when you lay
them out and you say hey because you're
in miami
this is the package that makes the most
sense for you usually you have a shorter
sales cycle
yeah that's smart yeah that's that's the
way that we've always done is that
tiered
tiered type of packaging and the thing
that's nice is you really just change
the quantities
so you know the amount of content volume
the amount of link volume
you just really can elevate so give me a
hypothetical situation so it's uh let's
say it's a
chicago personal injury lawyer what what
ranges are we looking at for that what's
your anchor price what's your low price
and your middle
yeah so our our our lowest price would
be uh
3 500 bucks up front for the site and
the seo optimization of it one time we
call this
we call this a um not one-time
optimization
we call this pre-launch optimization and
then on a monthly management fee that
would be like a thousand a month plus
ads
um our middle package is uh usually it's
like 4 500 bucks up front
1500 bucks a month our largest package
is 6 500 bucks up front
3 000 per month okay that package i mean
if we sell those
uh you know i'm very happy of course
um yeah okay that's good yeah it's just
it's important for people to see
like i one mistake that i've seen very
often is
people will build out these custom
proposals and they'll send out one price
okay just one one opportunity for this
client to sign up and
we both know that's problematic because
no matter what
when you see a price on its own it's
always going to look bigger
so it doesn't matter how big it is even
if it's a thousand dollars a month
it's still going to look big because
it's on its own you haven't anchored
them in any way
so there always needs to be at least one
other pricing option
you're doing it the right way i believe
because there's a lot of data to prove
this but
the tiered three pricing options it
works
it really does work because it's
building out that anchor everything else
looks smaller in comparison
so that that's great so let's talk about
um
have you raised your prices
um you know it's it's interesting
because i
i we've thought about it and
unfortunately
we are in a such a competitive
marketplace where we've actually thought
about decreasing our prices and focusing
more on volume
the the beautiful thing about getting
websites from people
and and and i don't really mean make it
sound like that but
you know beautiful thing about doing
clients websites is you start to build
up a massive portfolio
like developmark.com is going through
redesign right now but if you go on our
site it's like
several sites we've done recently and so
just the
volume gets us more leads of work that
we've done so we like that
and to do more volume we have to
decrease our price i don't think we're
at the position to where we're we're the
desired consultant to handle this stuff
for these types of businesses yet
generally people think of like reach
local haibu
scorpion those types of different
companies and those companies can
ultimately raise their price
because they have so much volume and
they don't care about acquisition i mean
i'm sure they do
but to acquisition to me means more than
acquisition to them because they have
hundreds of millions in revenue
and so to me getting a new customer is
very important and so we've thought
about decreasing our prices because of
that
more people will say yes if we lower our
price we're not going to make as much
money
but we are going to acquire more when we
acquire more we have more conversations
we get to know more people we get more
referrals
we get more sites in our portfolio we
get more experience
and so that makes me really happy so we
have thought about increasing our prices
because the
margins of my business right now are
like 20
so out of 100k we'll win that 20 000 you
know
uh 20 000 gets spent right away and
other things that we're investing in
like a reporting
platform and a website platform so um is
that after
after your salary after all salaries yep
that's after all salaries so it's pretty
good i mean i can't complain
um but now we're going to invest in our
own web editor that you can't access
on the public market and that will
really make us a competitive advantage
and then when employees leave us they
can't just take our web
or with them right and so it makes
people want to work at developmark but
it also makes clients want to work with
belmar because we're solving
their industry specific problems with
our web technology
okay um kind of like marketing 360. they
have a platform that works really well
right um and at that rate you really
have a unique selling proposition and
then you can raise your prices but right
now
we're focused more on the acquisition
i'd love to raise my prices but right
now
we're kind of like hey do we charge 2500
instead of 3500 and just get more
customers how much is that of that as a
factor
and we're doing more research on that
but generally we're lowering our prices
yeah let's talk about that let's talk
about pricing because that's it's
interesting that you're trying to go
that route because
um the common philosophy is that you
should always raise your prices
because otherwise you know it's a race
to the bottom right
so eventually uh you'll be viewed and
this is in theory this is not
you know just theory yeah you'll be
viewed as a commodity
right and you're you're you're
constantly competing on price
so you know what what rationale do you
have to go
the other route that this most people
would claim is not the right path
because um you know price is perception
right i mean just price alone like look
at anything like
you you think a rolls royce is much
better than a
toyota i mean one of the biggest factors
is the price
it is it's huge it's a huge factor and
it
it has huge influence on how people
perceive things so
if you're the cheapest guy in the block
what's the perception that you guys have
to handle
to to overcome that yeah it's a good
question i think like also
it's it's how the customer found us also
determines price a lot too
right um i've noticed that with google
leads the customers are more hesitant
than somebody that has been watching me
on youtube or got referred to us and so
price truly is a perception and look by
no means is this something where we're
going to announce a message and say hey
everybody service is going down a
thousand a month
our entrance like the barrier to work
with us
i think we need to decrease and maybe
it's not financial maybe it's something
else
because in your customers mind
they think that what you do is extremely
time consuming
consuming on their end and they're
taking this huge risk just by working
with you so
to us it's like how do we leverage
either financial rewards
or something along those lines to lower
the risk and commitment that they have
their perception of working with us now
in terms of
increasing our prices um we have to
deliver more value at that point and so
right now the value that we deliver is
consistent leads coming to your phone
all day
and you know it's not the website it's
not the seo it's not the ppc it's not
any of that it's for the business that
we're trying to target
it's more of a consistent it's more of a
value rather than a commodity type of
thing
unfortunately though we get the
customers that are like
you're a commodity and i don't want to
pay this much for this service
and at that time we're so interested in
the acquisition of the customer well
we'll say
no problem we have a backup pricing plan
for you
it's very similar to if you were to call
verizon right now and say i want to
leave your service
they're going to half your monthly rate
which you know that's great right
because they're trying to
keep you but you see it as a commodity
you want to leave because there's better
pricing but they've got to do what they
do
so at times i try to not get emotional
when customers call us a commodity
and i kind of just like put put it in
their shoes and then i just go
we want this guy's website he knows
other business people we want to put it
on portfolio we want more experience
at that point we kind of go that route
this also depends on the type of seo
that you're working on
like if you're working with a brand that
has really severe seo issues
and you know there's a lot of thought
expertise going into there's a lot of
hours going into it i mean look your
price
you you should charge a ridiculous
amount at the end of the day nathan
i'm trying to create something to where
we are a product and a service and
it's not so much consulting and at that
point
we can lower our prices because i'm not
investing my time
so if my profit margin stays at 20
percent and we're growing revenue and
we're lowering prices
i don't really it doesn't make an impact
to my profit margin now if that profit
margin starts to go
down then obviously there's something
that i have to look into and and do that
that won't happen as long as we make our
technology better and faster to use
i got on the phone with it's funny you
say this i got on the phone with one of
our competitors
and they wanted like 1500 bucks up front
for a site and this
this is a very reputable company very
extremely rapid
the most popular and they wanted 1500
bucks a month for a fight for the site
and they wanted 500 bucks a month for
seo management and at that point is when
i was like
wow like i need to rethink how i do this
i need to do more margin
less work lower price because if i can
do that
your acquisition is going to go through
the roof your margin is not going to be
affected
and you're just going to gain more and
more and more revenue now if i'm doing a
six hour consultation with somebody
i can't charge 500 bucks i just can't
that's gotta be six thousand dollars
right
and at that point you can raise your
prices because now you're eating away at
your own time
so um it's definitely something
interesting to think about
yeah those those are all good points so
it makes me
think about the fact that you're you're
talking about this um
the difference between growth and scale
okay because i think a lot of people get
those things
a little mixed up so because
in an agency the only way to grow is you
need more people
because people have to do the work right
so and that that's the key difference
between an agency and a course
or any type of information product
because information product has
unlimited scale
because there's unlimited people that
can consume it at any given time
i don't need to hire 10 more people for
people to
to use my product right so for you you
know
your revenue and your expenses are
pretty much going to climb at the same
same rate unless you want to stop unless
you you know you're fine at a certain
level
but for you to keep going you got to
keep growing you got to keep
investing in people and your team so
let's go back who was the first person
you brought on your team
the first person brought on my team was
this guy named tom okay
who's no longer with us okay uh he
started his own consulting business and
we're supporting him in every way that
we can by sending him leads
um so that's good so he moved on you
know it wasn't he was kind of like you
know i want to do my own thing and i was
like no problem
um i'm going to tell you why the
employees is a secret weapon
and it's because we build
things internal that you're just never
going to figure out unless you have this
many employees working at one thing at a
time
like right now we every time we get an
account
we have an analytics platform built for
us it's not for anybody else
and our employees worked for over a year
on this and so
this is an analytics platform that's
going to do a lot of things that we
don't have to pay for like
website chat call tracking text tracking
review generation
those things are all included with the
site and so for me
it's i want more employees i want the
revenue and the expenses to keep going
up
because the reality of it is um we have
a business right now where
cash flow's not necessarily the issue um
the issue is
acquisition and so um we just need a lot
more acquisitions but
nathan to your point when you start
getting more employees to work for your
business you start to create what's
called a trade secret
and trade secrets are valuable business
intelligence things that you
learn just by being in your business and
that employees cannot share or it's
illegal
and so when we have six people on our
design
team and they're creating design
templates for our company
now our product gets easier to deliver
our margins go up our time investment
goes down we have to hire less employees
and things just become faster and
because of that
that's a trade secret they can't take
that design with them if they were to
leave
making develo mark a more unique selling
proposition oriented type of company
and so the employees they help me build
processes they build
templates they build systems i'm not
doing any of that i'm focusing on the
acquisition
that's the value of the employees the
con in the employees is these are real
people
with real complaints with real issues
with real needs
and trying to manage all of that while
trying to manage complaining customers
upset customers keyword rankings going
down no leads coming in over the last 30
days and then
trying to deal with department of labor
claims irs
and all that stuff becomes a nightmare
and
um as long as the employees are happy
i've found everything is okay
employees and customers as long as
they're happy all that other stuff
legal irs all of that other stuff is
just kind of like you know it happens
right right well you just yeah there's a
lot i want to get into there
so um
what gave you the courage to bring on
your first team member
and you said he's not with you anymore
but like what you know what gave you the
courage to bring someone on because
that's something that a lot of people
struggle with because
that transition from being the guy to
having someone else help you which we
know
is a necessity you cannot go to the next
level without bringing people on to help
you
so you know how did you get over that
kind of resistance
to not be the guy anymore and have other
people support you
and support the goals that you're going
for
yeah i mean it's it's one of those
things where um
i was definitely scared and you know now
that i really think about it i was
paying this guy
you know minimum wage and like now
like i was so stressed at that time
about that though like i was making
3 000 a month and i was paying him like
1400 a month whatever the minimum wage
was
and now i'm like my payroll expense is
60 000 a month
and i'm like not as stressed about it
it's really weird
but what i what i am stressed about is
just making sure everything's okay
because there's so much stuff moving
and i don't know so um really like the
resistance causes the growth
and the the more you stretch something
as uncomfortable as it's going to be
nature the universe naturally as long as
you're willing and accepting and you
don't quit
we'll make sure that you stretch with it
and it will make sure you grow with it
but recently like we just hired somebody
for 60k a year and she starts
uh monday right um and hopefully other
employees don't hear this but
um you know 60k a year you know that's 5
000 a month you know like a lot of
people would be really stressed about
that
right but to me it's like i just need
six seven thousand dollars more in
business and this employee i won't even
feel it
we'll get more production she's bringing
her trade secrets she's bringing her
information
we hire people from other agencies who
are getting better because of this
and so you've really just got to make
sure that if this is the type of
business that you're going to do
and you stretch you know that rubber
band and you start to feel that
resistance
it's not going to break as long as
you're willing and you really follow
through with it
um so at the time i was not ready i was
scared and i just kind of like just did
it and look
it was the worst investment i've ever
made for like the first six twelve
months because he was not good at all he
knew nothing he was a friend of mine
that was a huge mistake of mine but it
turned out for the better because he's a
great guy
right yeah that's i just
can't express how important is what you
just said like
i don't know why it happens but when you
finally break through and you do
something that you perceive as a risk
and you finally do it you
you just you just find a way to to
come up with things to support it so
like
perfect from a personal example like
when when my wife and i were deciding to
finally get a house
like we get our house and the mortgage
payment is going to be
2 700 a month i was making plenty
of money to support that but for some
reason that 2700
a month i was like ah man i just don't
know if i can do this
like i just like because i've never paid
a mortgage in my entire life and it's
just like you know
the commitment of that like the the fear
of like oh my gosh i got to make that
commitment every single month they're
like
what's gonna happen but then one day i
was like
2700 is nothing and like i just made
that decision we didn't we bought our
house and like
i've never thought about it again and i
always bring that analogy up when it
comes to hiring employees because
that's how it is too you bring on an
employee it's always scary you're like
oh man i don't know how to be able to
afford this guy like i have payroll
taxes i have
benefits i have you know you start to
you start to
uh come up with every excuse to not do
it right
um but then when you actually do it and
you actually like it becomes a reality
and that person comes onto your team
nothing really changes except you just
grow like i've seen direct correlations
when i bring someone new on my team
revenue growth it happens every time you
go and look at the quarterly growth when
you bring someone else new one i
guarantee for you
you've probably seen growth it's because
you are
at least this is my opinion maybe maybe
you feel the same but
you are freeing up your your mind
to focus on what matters when you bring
someone else on
so it's not necessarily that they're
gonna be so incredibly skilled that
they're gonna just
you know blow your company up and like
you know you're gonna generate a ton
more revenue but it's more the fact that
like
now they're handling something that you
used to handle and now that allows you
to focus on the things that really
matter
and the more you do that now this way
how big is your team now
you're muted
there we go yeah okay um
right now we're at 15. 15. okay so
so yeah so every time you expand your
team you're able to probably do more and
more so i'm sure at the beginning you
were probably
doing everything you were probably doing
the seo you're probably doing the ads
you're probably doing the design
and how stressful was that like it's
like you don't want to go back there
right
i'm sure you don't i was overweight you
know like i was
literally seen in my videos like i was
not healthy yeah
because i was waking up waking up at 4
00 a.m like sending out reports
starting new projects and like i
couldn't do it for much longer
um and you're right you're absolutely
right yeah so how do you
how do you decide in the beginning like
should you focus on
building systems or should you bring
someone on as fast as possible and build
the systems while they're basically
getting integrated what do you think is
the best path there
i mean i would say beyond as soon as
possible if you're really at the demand
um to where you're gonna be i used to
get really scared about business
and like uh anxious and i would have
like anxiety like
hey is this gonna work like are we gonna
be in business now i've kind of gotten
to the point where
nothing really can scare me other than
um you know somebody murdering me
uh because anything can happen like you
you know anything can happen but i would
say
to to the point where you can hire an
employee and have them kind of do
what's taking up most of your time so
you can focus on the standard operating
procedures because
you can't just hire an employee and tell
them to make you a process like that's
not going to work like you as the
creator of the job that you're making
you have to create this stuff and your
first employee it's gonna be really
awkward
they're not gonna have all this perfect
training they're not gonna have all
these perfect things they're gonna have
to learn side by side with you unless
they have a lot of experience
which if you first hire they probably
don't have a lot of experience
because you can't afford somebody that's
requesting 80k to do seo you just can't
and so um i would say just take the risk
get them to work with you
um see if they're reasonable with the
wage you know let them know that you're
a startup and
here's what you can afford to pay you
know check the legalities of your
state's employment uh
laws and then from there have them kind
of do your 80
you still do the 20 of the client work
whatever it is
to just make sure that you're busy stop
taking on so many accounts just kind of
like let it ride for a little bit unless
it's a perfect account
during that time work on your processes
work on your your service and start to
do some of those different things but
i've seen situations where we've gotten
a new employee
i said perfect i'm gonna redesign the
development website
all of a sudden i sign five accounts
that week it was hectic they needed my
help i needed to be on calls
nothing got done with the development
website so i would say um there are it's
okay
to take a dry streak it's okay
it's okay to say i have enough monthly
recurring revenue
my clients are satisfied to only take
the best of the best leads
because when i get desperate i take
whatever lead we can but only the best
of the best leads
keep the staff busy keep them fulfilled
and work on the next meaningful project
that's going to get me to go to kind of
the next stair step
right that's that's great yeah so
is there a certain uh when you're
thinking about hiring is there a certain
revenue
number that you like to hit before you
bring on someone new is there
is there a process in place for when
it's time to hire
um usually i will hear this demand
at this point from our employees that's
usually when i'll know when to hire
people
um we do weekly meetings with all our
staff like one-on-ones
so i'll physically talk to a lot of
these team members one-on-one
in the beginning now that's going to be
impossible as i grow
because you know you just can't once you
once i have 50 people 100 people
i'm not going to do that but you know
it's very interesting
topic vince mcmahon right owner of wwe
do you know
you know vince mcmahon yeah okay um you
know
in an interview he was talking about how
he used to do one-on-ones with every
wrestler too
and then as the wwe started growing and
they started getting thousands of
wrestlers
like ric flair you know the rock
they wouldn't talk to a manager they
would still talk to vince mcmahon
and it's because even though he was this
billionaire with this gigantic company
those are the people that started with
him he's still in contact with them you
know personally
and so um really the goal of it is is to
listen to
your customers listen to your wife or
your girlfriend or your boyfriend
that'll usually tell you it's time to
hire somebody you're working way too
hard
um listen to your employees if you have
them listen to consulting advice
i don't think there's a number that gets
me to think about it's time to hire
somebody it's
usually a demand for work but once you
get paid
it's the pain right it's the people you
gotta notice it
because like if you're seeing that your
reports are being sent out late
hmm probably a good time to hire
somebody to do your reporting
if you get customers emailing you and
saying hey i reached out about this last
week and my ppc campaign still isn't up
probably a good time to hire an ads
person so listen to the market listen to
your employees listen to your people
listen to your friends and get get
advice um but i would say
in terms of revenue i'm known for hiring
people even though we can't afford them
and then figuring it out later which is
not a good strategy to do
uh i'm definitely not the best person
with finances and give financial advice
um but i would say be smart make sure
that you have the monthly recurring
revenue to assume that person before you
hire them
right but to your point nathan it's
always worked for me
so well i mean yeah look where you've
gotten so you but that's because you
pushed out of those
those comfort zones every time and it
probably every time you bring an
employee i guarantee you probably still
calculate the numbers you're like oh man
i don't know
like that that thought well probably
still runs through your mind does it i
mean every time
every every time yeah you just it just
it's
it's human nature right yeah i mean
being status quo
is human nature so you're constantly
having to break through that and take
that risk it's not easy
and it's that's uh you know just
starting a business alone is a risk but
then all of everything we have to deal
with on a daily basis to grow and
hit the next level those are also risks
too
so when you're working with clients um
how
how are you operationally handling those
clients so i know
in a lot of larger agencies
they'll split that work based on revenue
so you know uh 30k
revenue will be one team or one pod
you know that type of that type of split
how do you personally do it
well you know it's a really good
question and i think like right now we
have two teams
so we have um we call them team magenta
and team black
and um these two teams uh kind of just
you know there's there's an onboarding
manager for each team there's a designer
for each team there's a content person
but they all communicate together too
because you know it's not like hey you
versus them
it's more like hey these are just like
the set of points for these new accounts
that come in
um ideally i'd like to have we we found
out that one seo in our company can
handle 100 accounts
and so we still have one seo in our
company
which is awesome no
he doesn't no he doesn't no he doesn't
but he's a very happy guy he loves his
job
right he paid well um but we've just
found
that when you take the website and you
do all this upfront seo work
and then it goes to marketing blogging
social media
um yext those things which we call
marketing it's not seo anymore
the results come in and so it's like for
him the work that he's doing is just
optimizing websites
at before they go live and then making
sure that they they're consistently
updated with stuff like that
um now in terms of design
you know usually it's very hard to have
one designer design a website
so design is probably our content's our
most demanding department
design you usually need like three
designers to really crush a website
so it's hard to do that when you start
when you start growing you need somebody
to do the wire framing you need somebody
to do the icons you need somebody to do
the branding you need somebody to do
templated pages and
each of each our designers have
different roles um but
i would say as long as you figure out
one product or service
you'll know that sweet spot of when it's
time to focus on creating another team
for additional set of clients
once you start to see operational uh uh
falls happening in the business
right okay so as far as in-house versus
outsourcing and working with vendors
what do you do you still work with
vendors
as far as fulfilling some work or is it
purely 100 in-house for everything
well so we have vendors for software
stuff like that
when you say in-house there's a lot of
technology that we're building that's
going to kind of allow us to not pay
some of these vendors
um but a lot of our you know content
writing
even though we have four content
managers in our company
full time a lot of our content for you
know various topics are just offshore to
a company called verblio
websites are all internal seo is all
internal links are all internal
and then everything else is software so
i would say the only thing that we
offshore is
text content for a topic we just don't
have time to research
and urblio does a really good job at
this where they kind of just like hey
here's an article from real person you
get a white label link customer approves
it
they they publish the post so um
a lot of it is in-house and there's a
there's cons to that
um like you pay a lot more in taxes i'll
tell you that
um you don't have the flexibility of um
you know dropping a subcontractor
and you know focusing on your cash flow
and doing some things yourself you have
a consistent payroll which is scary at
times
but then there's the pros of it clients
feel comfortable signing up with you
because you're a real legitimate
business
uh clients feel comfortable because they
know somebody that you've hired
you get that a lot like hey i know you
hired this person i want to work with
you guys
um and then also you have a team and you
build a culture and you build trade
secrets and you do all the stuff that's
well worth
the 11 payroll you're gonna pay at the
end of the year to employ these people
right so what about the link building
side of things though
so you guys are handling that in-house
what and i know you guys don't do like a
ton of
huge link building campaigns because a
lot of it's local you don't really not
really a necessity
but like how how are you handling link
acquisition so it's very interesting and
i think you're going to find my answer
very interesting
um every client that we do monthly seo
for we do blogging for
so like if you were to go to google
right now and type it in what does mold
smell like
our client shows up number one and
feature snippet of a mold company
so our content team creates a list of
blog topics for our clients
and they get them approved by the
customer
we publish them on a consistent schedule
we order all of it at once from verbio
and then we set it up consistent
scheduling in our platform and every
time
one of these posts go live if one of
them starts ranking higher towards the
top search results or we find in
analytics that it's a trending article
we run ppc towards it and so the ppc
clicks
are two cents because it's a blog topic
nobody's bidding for what does mold
smell like i can guarantee you that
um and so because of that a lot of times
of people that are searching this stuff
maybe five or ten out of a thousand of
them are writing an article and they'll
reference our article
that's one way that we're doing it um
the the obviously the next way that
we're doing a really good way of doing
it
is every time we publish a site we do a
press release and it kind of just says
this company partners with developmark
for their growth 2020.
we send it out to 150 articles and all
of them linked back to our site some are
no index some are due index
and then consistent press releases for
our customers that usually
gets us to getting the natural links
that are going google search
the press releases obviously we do all
the citations and yex and stuff like
that
um but then there's also the the the
recommendations that we have
get on expertise.com get on the chamber
get on the better business bureau
um here's some links that your
competitors have um that you can acquire
but we don't do any black cat links
because
we can't afford to lose our reputation
like that and so um
there's really a methodical approach of
going about it if you just write blogs
those blogs rank and you run google ads
to those blogs people are going to
mention them
if you just do press releases because
your customers have news whether you
think it or not
they've hired a new doctor they've hired
a new employee they've done
this they've got a new office they're
doing a new service all of that is
applicable for a press release
right yeah that i like that you're doing
a content-centric approach that's that's
the best you know really the best way to
do it and although like
ranking for those topics probably not
going to drive a whole lot of leads it's
still going to help build that topical
relevance on the site
um and really you know the best way to
acquire links is through informational
content not that transaction no one's
going to link to a home page of a
plumber
so it just it's just not a natural way
to do things
um so you guys really aren't doing any
like editorial outreach based link
building link insertions things like
that you're not really engaging in that
well so what's interesting is um as we
become more
technically sound um we're we're looking
into web
applications more than we are outreach
for links
um uh and one day we will have somebody
that just does outreach for links but
like if you go to one of our bail bonds
websites you know we develop a
calculator
for how much it's going to cost you on a
monthly basis to post bail
and this calculator is only for this
website
and because of that getting those links
are going to become a lot easier if that
client were to engage in link building
so we're looking at these different web
applications to uh
enhance the functionality of the site
which ultimately is going to attract
more links
yep that's that's the way to do it yep
that's
the number one link beta is some sort of
tool or software or calculator those are
those are really the money the money
link bait um
assets so that's smart that you're doing
that all right so i'll start to wrap
this up here i'll ask you a couple more
questions
um let's see so
let's just talk about like what's your
what's your big goal what's your big
vision of
you know where you want to who who do
you want to be you know
in in three or three to five to ten
years
well i'd really like to be i'd really
like to be
a company like scorpion uh i think that
their business model um their work
culture
their product uh their customers all
resonate with something that i want to
do but we're a little
uh different than scorpion in our
approach but
ultimately as a company they really wow
me um
those companies like companies like
haibu definitely want to steer away from
i don't want to be
that's like the to the bottom like
you're going straight for the bottom 200
bucks a month you get it all
you know pay a year up front and it's
worth it's 500 bucks for the year
don't want to do that but i do want to
be like the scorpion of uh
certain verticals now um in terms of
like personal growth
like i want to be doing a million a
month by 30 which is just 10xing my
business right
so that means i've got to get 10x more
employees 10x more accounts
and i've got to operate 10x more
efficiently and so
at that rate i'll be at 100 employees
and i'll have a million month coming in
and then at that rate it's like how do i
get to 100 million a month and then
that's obviously an insane
scale um but you know that's billion
dollar company and
digital marketing agencies typically
don't make it to the billion dollar mark
because
it just it's so new this business model
is so new
you know 20 years old this business
model is that like a lot of these
billion dollar companies aren't around
yet but they will be
if you look at scorpions projections you
look at a lot of these different
companies projections they're going to
hit a billion they just are
um and so that's that's kind of the the
goals that i have and really that starts
with our
our platform and our unique selling
proposition
is like why would a customer choose me
over nathan gotch why would a customer
choose developmark's website over wix
why would a customer use us for seo
other than the millions of feed one
fiverr
why would a customer run ads with us
that's where technology
is what's gonna gets us from a hundred
thousand a month to a million a month
yep that's that's that those are good
goals and uh
honestly accenture which is a public
company they're you know
billion dollar company and they so it is
it is certainly possible
oglavi another one who's just
outrageously big but of course
you know they're getting the big fish so
you know that's
yo so so with that goal what is the
biggest sticking point
to get you there so let's talk about you
going right now from where you are at
100 000
a month to that million dollars a month
what what
right now and of course you may not know
what it is but just based on your
experience what's going to be the
hardest thing to do
to get there you know i think it's
you know i want to say me i really do
but i don't think it is
um i think it's going to be creating a
unique selling proposition and a
marketing strategy that gets us the
customers that we want
so i've already identified what we need
to do to get there
um now it's hey we need a marketing
strategy
that fills our calendars every single
day with high quality people that want
these services
and that will choose development we'll
pay the money up front
um and pay the money on a monthly basis
and to do that is very hard because it's
very noisy out there and we're so
focused on our technology and our
product right now
that we haven't done a marketing
strategy development's entire website's
being redesigned that's a huge flaw for
us right now
um but i think it's going to be
acquisition of customers
is definitely what's holding us back we
could be a million a month right now i
can hire people and sell the same thing
over and over it's not hard we have it
ready we just need the customers right
so what about retention though because
retention is really what's going to
matter the most
so how how much are you trying to
balance that
that equation between retention and
acquisition
well retention we've got down because we
have um things in place that keep the
customer happy
and those things are tracking of leads
reporting dashboard account management a
one account management
company can manage 100 accounts um uh
and then obviously a team that's doing
the work on a monthly basis just making
sure it gets done right
you know clients they leave because of
results but they also leave because they
feel like they're being disrespected by
you and you're just stealing their money
and so if you can avoid people from
feeling that way
they understand the whole business is
not from you they understand that their
entire business can't succeed because of
you
and so when they don't hear responses
back we have a 15 minute response time
in our company
um if it breaks that we send you a a
notification saying hey i know you
missed this message
um here's a best practice to just make
sure everybody gets responded to even if
it's just i saw this message i respond
to as soon as possible right we have a
marketing assistant that responds
to our account management's team right
away if they know they're on a call
those are the little things that we've
noticed clients leave as response time
so in terms of retention as long as we
can keep response time up
as long as we can keep our services
performing as long as the client knows
what they're getting and what they're
paying for every month with our
dashboard
our retention is on board acquisition is
really what our problem is
um and so our retention rates are pretty
high um clients leave us because they
you know for
whatever reasons people leave um you
know and they can
um but ultimately it's going to be that
acquisition for us
right developing a really systemized way
to acquire new leads right
so um so you have your you have your
long-term goals so what's your goal by
the end of this year
my goal by the end of this year is to
fully introduce our analytics and
reporting dashboard
called developdash which will be a
internal
life internal neighbor internal city
for our customers that are using our
services to see their billing
to see their accounts management to see
our tasks that were completed
an activity log on their website
rankings moving up and down
call calls inside of their chats that
are the leads inside of there
all this amazing stuff in one place and
it's gonna be something that we can't
i was going to release to the market and
then i realized how valuable it was and
i was like no no let's just keep it to
fellow mark and my developer was like
dude if you want to sell this to
agencies
it's going to take a lot longer and so i
was like just keep it for development
for now
um so that's my goal by the end of the
year um
and and see like that has nothing to do
with acquisition and
um i don't have an acquisition goal yet
because we got to get our website up so
um right now it's making sure that i
have because one of our biggest issues
right now is reporting
so once i can i can kind of move along
from that that
that problem we're going to start on our
website editor which is going to be
a developer website editor other
companies cannot get access to it
and then it's going to be how do we
acquire as many customers as possible
nice yeah i think it's i think it's a
really good idea you're adding these
kind of proprietary elements to your
business because
it's hard to differentiate yourself in
in the seo space so
a lot of a lot of the bigger companies
do have those internal processes that
can't really be replicated so i think
that's super smart you're doing that
so uh last question so what would be
your advice for other members of
you know our new traffic 2x community if
they they're new to client work
or they're in that 10 to 20 000 per
month range like what would you say that
the one to three things that they need
to do today
or at least you know things they need to
be thinking about
to really take their you know companies
to the next level
and even and also just not to interrupt
you but also
even if they're just running their own
business and they're not an agency like
what are just some core
principles that really make a difference
for you
i would say um i would say
some of the core principles that you've
really got to look into is
um one be seen and be heard yeah like
nobody knows your name that's an initial
issue the reason why you're successful
nathan
is because people know your name you
know they know your blog they've seen
you on youtube they
know you so if you're not being seen
right now first of all get people to
know your name that's gonna be the first
thing
any growth for any type of business
right if we didn't know apple existed
but we but it's such a great product
though you know and it could help us a
lot but we don't know they exist
that's a problem a lot of clients a lot
of you know
my business is like i get upset that we
don't have as many customers as we
should have but then
my team's like dude but like nobody
knows us that's the problem
and it's true just nobody knows us i'm
sure there's a lot of people we can help
but
get your name out there create a blog
create youtube videos
get out there start knowing people
that's that would be probably the first
thing that i would say
um the second thing that i would say is
have a direction
you know what what is your direction
where is it that you want to be and
stick to that because
the bouncing around thing gets old
really fast and it gets very very
um you know it gets very nerve wracking
and you get a lot of anxiety because you
don't know what you're doing
just stick to one thing be decisive and
go after it every single day it's going
to make life you can give you so much
more clarity
you're going to be able to focus and
you're not going to do work to just undo
that work that that was happening to me
a lot
i was doing things and then i was like
i'm not going to do this with the rest
of my life and i just wasted all that
time
that's the next thing and part of that
was like you know
becoming this youtube celebrity and also
you know
investing in these like different things
that i was spending money on and i was
just like that's not even what i want to
do
and so i had to have a real conversation
with myself and say what is it that i
actually want to do and do that every
single day
um and and and then the third thing you
know is you don't need to know that much
to get started and just keep moving
you know you may not have all the
answers to everything um like i don't
have the answers for everything
uh you know there's a lot of things that
i'm dealing with right now that i did
not know
were there and a lot of these are
you know things that you i can't avoid i
have to take care of them
but i would never know if i never got
started and although there's a
consequence now of doing some of these
things
and you know they're not like malicious
things but they're like
hey department of labor we need 20 grand
you know and some of these things like
you just don't know
until you get started but now as i grow
my business i have this experience and i
feel confident
and keep moving forward because i know
stuff like you mentioned accenture right
accenture is a gigantic consulting firm
well they would not be that consulting
firm if they didn't hire people that
went through
all these life traumas and issues in
business so like see your
your issues and your problems and your
your temporary defeats
is what napoleon hill calls them from
thinking you're rich these are not
failures these are just temporary
defeats
meaning time will heal everything that
you're doing inside of your business
take it as learning experience don't do
it again that's the key you do it again
you're an idiot
if you don't do it again you're going to
succeed so my first thing was get your
name out there
um you know my my second thing is uh
i forgot what the second thing was but
the third thing is is just like you
don't know everything and that's okay
keep moving yeah and i was gonna say
just on that last point you know one
thing that you do
exceptionally well is you are very
humble
in seeking out information from and
getting help
and that's one and that is honestly man
that like that's that's a really good
quality to have
because uh there are a lot of people who
tend to have
um egos okay and it's
it's very difficult for them to break
out of that
egotistical nature to actually call
someone up and say hey man like
i just need help like can you just help
me like it's
like and that's that's not an easy thing
to do it takes a lot of humility to do
that and
even in the beginning of in 2018 you
called me up you called me up
like that's that is a humble move and
that i do believe that just that
behavior
talking to me talking to neil talk
probably you probably talked to many
different people
that that behavior is the difference
because
you don't believe that you know
everything and
as long as you maintain that even at the
stages you're at now if you continue in
that same mindsets continue to seek out
that information from other people who
have
um you know already been in your
position and have
gone beyond it man that's that's the
difference and i think that's that's a
quality that you have that i
i would hope that every member would try
to aspire to have
so yeah certainly definitely i mean they
do because they're here right
they are yes and look i'll like
and that's a really good point because
i'll even like buy competitors services
you know like i need to know everything
and if i don't know everything
i'm doing just justice to my customer
and that's an expertise route that's not
like
you don't know anything about business
because nobody knows everything about
business but um you know like like
buy things uh inspect how nathan selling
his course if you want to sell courses
like just spend the money and expect it
and you'll learn more doing that than
you ever would creeping on your page you
know
um and so even like even in our business
we used to
you know ask customers questions about
their services now we're just saying
we're just gonna pay for their service
and we're gonna learn everything we need
to know about it from there um and we
don't have to talk to the customer
and so those are little things that
we're investigating right now because
you putting yourself as the customer in
the shoes of whatever it is you're
trying to sell
even if it's your own agency even if you
have to buy a developmark website for
your fake
business to learn what you're doing then
uh then you're you know you'll be you'll
be good to go
yeah and how did you how did you get
over the
the feeling that you don't want to make
an investment in training or things like
that like what
why is it so easy for you to do that
like what how do you rationalize that
because a lot of people you know they
see
they see a big investment to to learn
from someone like myself
and they get hesitant right because they
think of it as a cost
not of an investment so how did you
overcome that because i know you do a
lot of investing in in personal
development and various training so
how did you get to that point because
that's that's not also not an easy thing
to do as well
yeah i mean i think i think for me is um
you know it's very exciting
to know that you learn something new
that can help your clients
and you're just more confident when you
know more things
and like there's gonna be a question
that a customer asks within the sales
process
and because you took the time to learn
things your you can confidently answer
and clients sense you're confident you
know like wolf sense blood i mean they
just they just know if you're confident
or not they know if you know what you're
talking about
the more educational information that
you have the more prepared you are
everybody's biggest fear is to be on a
sales call where they have no idea what
they're talking about right
client's gonna say no it's gonna be very
awkward um so for me it's really
being the most prepared that i can be in
an extremely competitive marketplace
and look if i gotta pay a thousand bucks
to do that and i have a thousand bucks
coming in
i'll pay it you know but but a lot of
people are different a lot of people see
money differently
and to me money's not real and it just
comes back as long as you keep doing the
right thing so i'm not scared to make
the investment because i understand
there's a lot of money out there to get
right yeah that's that's the right
mentality
thank you so much man i i appreciate you
coming on and uh
it's it's been a while we need we need
to get uh you know back on and do this
again but
uh it's just it's fun to just see where
you started where you are now it's just
it's so exciting and it's just i'm super
super happy for you i'm super excited
for um
you know where you're gonna go because i
know you're i know you're definitely
gonna
continue to continue to grow because you
got the mindset man
you got it so um so i'm
i'm just i'm just happy for you that's
it
of course man all right well we'll talk
again soon and once again thank you so
much
you got it have a wonderful day again
all right man talk to you later thank
you bye