The Builders

In this episode I'm joined by Darrell Evans.  Darrel is the Founder of MindShift Business Coaching.  He's serial entrepreneur and investor with a proven track record of helping companies achieve real results.  We start the episode giving him the room to talk about his story and share his journey as an entrepreneur.  He takes us from his childhood where he caught the bug.. to selling sports wear.. to working at Taco Bell (from Fry cook to General Manager).. real estate.. to the mortgage industry where he discovered marketing online.   Until we land on what he's doing today running an agency and consulting.   In these conversations we don't plan where we land.  In this case, we circled back to 2003 where he started marketing online and his experience with email marketing.  Learn how he approaches email and stays 'top of mind'.  What are his secrets to building out content.  How does he save time?  How does he create his follow ups (drips)?  How does he write? We have a nice discussion about how anyone can start writing their emails.  He shared a simple 3 step process to creating emails that provide value.  And we share our experience with conversational writing.  So much to learn from Darrell.  Enjoy the episode!

In this solo episode I share a couple of stories from my own web design agency.  2 distinct, fresh experiences that illustrate how an agency can work with other company's teams or other experts.  Cross-functional, agile teams are amazing when they are implemented in organizations.  This is first hand experience from the trenches. First I share the story about a new initiative between my agency and another companies team.  On my side there are two resources we've committed to the project.  One is a web developer that's already been doing work for this company for the past 2+ years.  And another is a more recent addition (to this project) on the design side.  On the other end we are working mostly with their copywriter, but also 2 founders and their back-end web development team. Second I share a simpler situation where our client hired a conversion export to help them with their eCommerce store.  I'm analyzing, working on the wireframe, copy and helping redesign those pages.  In the process I may also bring in a specialized copywriter to help with the sites copy. Once this is done, my development team will translate the new designs onto the WooCommerce pages/templates. One of the huge benefits of agencies and companies working together like this is the ability to achieve goals one couldn't do alone.  Bringing in other teams and experts into a project can not only help deliver more quality results, but spur more innovation, creativity and productivity.  It's a beautiful thing to behold.  Enjoy the episode!

In this solo episode I talk about ChatGPT and other AI solutions.  Solutions we have been using way before ChatGPT and where I'm seeing the future in the context of our web design agency.  While there are two sides to this conversation and many are only seeing the negative aspects.. I focus more on the positive.  The understanding that we aren't fighting this and we need to adapt.  That if I help and encourage my team to use these tools, it only benefits our clients with greater results and efficiency. There's so many great opportunities to use solutions like this already.  We've been using other AI solutions to help with content that I'll discuss.  We've used it to help with content, presentations and more.  There are things specific to our design process where ChatGPT is going to be used.  And we're looking at other solutions where we can leverage these tools.  Do these technologies change a lot?  Yes!  But that doesn't mean the 'human' is removed from the process and our clients will only want to deal with bots.  How does this affect our team?  Should they be worried that an AI bot will replace them?  I answer this question and more in this episode.  

In this solo episode I talk more about the new vertical my agency is launching into -- insurance.  Having an insurance background, this was probably always going to be a thing at some point.  But the way we've positioned ourselves as an agency, the team we built, the processes etc, is optimized to meet this new challenge with true confidence.   In true 'The Builders' fashion, I break it all down from the trenches.  What got us here?  Why are we so confident?  And why define a vertical in the first place?  It's probably obvious, but it provides a lot of benefits.  We can sculpt our offerings and what we build to a very specific use-case; specializing.  But also, it now allows us to execute on the marketing and sales side of things on a completely new level.  We can better target this market and, because of Matt's background, communicate with them in a way that should close more sales! I also dive into the numbers game.  What sales experience in the past did I attain (hint, I was an insurance agent for a decade) and how does that apply to what we are doing now to help insurance agencies?  Packed with lessons from the trenches.. enjoy!

In this solo episode I provide an update for my own business and what we're building. Actually, last year was the year we worked on building so we could launch into this year with a couple initiatives and start marketing them. Before I dig into that I provide a brief update of how my web design agency is doing. The first initiative I cover is our launching into the insurance vertical. We're going to be building websites for insurance agencies (for starters). I'm really excited to help agencies enjoy the fruits of having full-site editing block themes. And of course, these are custom sites and include design as well. I talk about how we're actually going to market it. I hired some help.. who is she, where does she fit in and what's she going to do for us! Then I provide a Unified Toolkit update. We're also poised to start marketing and driving traffic to this project. How will I be doing that? And then I bring it all together and give a little insight into the grand vision. How do all these projects plus my agency all work together as a unit? These aren't all individual strategies. They all tie together and form a long term vision for the Unified brand! Enjoy the episode!!

In this episode we are joined again by Jennifer Denney. She is the founder of Elevated Marketing Solutions and has been in digital marketing for over 15 years. Her 3rd time back, it’s always a great, insightful conversation about agency life, running teams and businesses. We start out by talking about what it means to tie revenue to employees and some potential pitfalls there. It’s always important to make sure employees don’t just become a number.. she shares her thoughts around this. Then we talk about agency growth. What are her feelings about growth and why did she decide to keep her own agency small? Finally I moved us into a conversation about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applied to business. With her psychology background this is something we really connected on; we shared ideas from books we’ve read. And then we circle back talking about employees.. Hiring people because of their POTENTIAL. Good stuff.. enjoy!

To we are rejoined by Joe Matz.  Joe had a light bulb moment, a campfire, an ah-ha…!  And he wanted to share that with us.  This new focus is what our conversation revolved around.  If you do guesting on podcasts or want to, THIS is your episode. He runs some groups where podcasters and guests come together to ‘mingle’.  From that he himself has learned a lot.  He shares some of the lessons he’s pulled from these groups and his own experiences being a podcaster himself. Why do people want to do guesting on podcasts?  What holds people back?  How are podcasts evergreen?   These are some questions we answer.  And we land on highlighting some of the common mistakes guests make.  GREAT stuff if you want to get your message out there and share your own stories on podcasts.  Enjoy!

In our 100th episode I’m rejoined by Doland White!  He was my first guest that took a chance on me.  This is his 4th time back!  As always, we had a ton of fun.  I don’t think I laughed so much on an episode.  But through that we dove into some really great topics and he dropped gold. We start by talking about the company he works for, Brave Thinking Institute.  Their mission statement is, “We empower people to create and live a life they love.”  They teach people how to build and bring dreams to life and have certified over 4500 life coaches that are out there in the world helping others. We talk about his role there as their ‘Chief Operating Officer’ (COO).  What does that all entail?  How does he help operationalize their strategies?  What experience has he brought to the table and how does he think about this role?  I found this most interesting because from a business owners perspective, these are roles we may have in our own companies or will need to fill someday. We touch on time management and maintaining relationships while being busy in our day to day.  What can we do to make sure we don’t lose touch with those that we care about and are grateful for?  I had him talk a bit about his personal relationship with Bob Proctor.  He shares what was it like meeting him for the first time and his personal relationship with him off stage. And finally we land on something I’ve wanted to talk to him about since the first episode.  His music!  Turns out he is part of a group called, “Dave and Doland”.  His and Dave’s relationship writing and creating music goes back 30 years.  They even have songs on the radio!  How did they meet?  And what does music mean to him.   So many insights in this episode..  enjoy!!

Today we are joined by Irina Poddubnaia.  Irina is a SAAS founder and a business consultant who specializes in Operations and Processes Optimization. She has over 8 years of experience in eCommerce with its different challenges and obstacles, from running a fulfillment center in China where she was living for over 2 years to launching her own software TrackMage. We, of course, start by talking about her journey as an entrepreneur.  Why did she go to China to do business?  What lessons did she learn from her experience and how did that, years later, influence what she does today?  Who helped her on the tech and programming side? She has an amazing solution for eCommerce stores for customers to track their orders.  Heavily focused on the fulfillment side of things one of it’s core features is capturing traffic that many businesses give away to other large companies.  Instead, keep that traffic, capture it, provide more offers and increase sales! We also have some fun talking about what it’s like developing software, testing software.. and what a mess Facebook is. haha.. Fun conversation.  Enjoy the episode!!

Today we are joined by Per "The Price Whisperer" Sjofors. I think as businesses we can all agree that pricing is one of those things that can make or break your business. If you don't price yourself right, it could lead to all sorts of problems. Per is THE pricing expert and it was a real pleasure talking with him! We start, of course, by diving into his story. He's helped build or grow multi-million dollar companies before doing what he does today helping businesses with their pricing strategy. Through it all, his CEO journey, he always was fascinated by pricing and the impact it has. In fact, he had developed a formula years ago and thought he had it figured out. Today, he admits that formula did not work. Today he has new ways of developing a businesses pricing strategy including using an AI system he built to help crunch the numbers. He shares real stories and examples from the trenches (which we love!). Learn the power of increasing prices and how it can help select your best customers. Learn how to defend those decisions to your paying customers or clients. Learn what willingness to pay research and how people equate value to price. And finally I asked the question, how does a small business figure out how to price their products or services? What methods can be used? Great stuff! Important topic for all of us.. enjoy!