Jay Vics 0:00
When you're putting out social media content for your business, the last thing you want to do is 100% of the time just be talking about you and your business instead of you know, I think 20% is good, but in that 20%, post a review, right? Share it in your newsletter, your emails, right? Everything you do, and you can actually then, that's gonna lead to monetization.
Mickey Anderson 0:23
Most business owners and entrepreneurs are secretly sick of hustling. And if you are too, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Hustle Less, Profit More Podcast with me, Mickey Anderson, where we're revolutionizing success, because you should have it all, business success, lasting wealth, freedom, and fulfillment. Join me on this quest to uncover the keys to defining and achieving success on our terms, so we can all hustle less and profit more.
Mickey Anderson 0:57
Jay Vics is the founder of JVI Mobile Marketing, a digital marketing, and media agency founded in 2012, he helps small business owners grow their businesses using content, paid traffic, and reviews, which is exactly what we talk about in today's episode. We go deep into how you can use reviews, as well as paid traffic and content to scale your business. I hope you enjoy this episode. Alright. Well, first and foremost, I love having other marketers on the show, because obviously selfishly I get to talk, talk shop with you. But the other thing that I really love is the value of information and experience, not just from education and industry, but from personal experience growing a business that we get in these conversations. And I'm so excited to have you here, Jay.
Jay 01:45
Thanks for having me. Mickey. I, you've become one of my favoritest peoples in the, in the DM community. And when I realized, when it clicked that you had this show, I was like, "Yeah, I have to be on that. Like, how do we, how do we do this?" Thank you.
Mickey 02:01
Awesome. Well, I would love to because I have a feeling that today there are going to be so many nuggets from your personal experience and evolution both as a business and a business owner that we're going to get from so I would love to start with how did you become an agency owner back in 2012? Where did this business come from?
Jay 02:18
Yeah, luck, dumb luck, and an app purely by accident, really. So I built my first website with HTML self-taught in 1996. Right? So I've always been around like web technology. But then as my career started to get moving, I tried my hand at sales. I tried my hand at marketing, little bit of internet marketing, but I always stayed close to that technology. And when I say about one of those sales jobs I had gotten out of the marketing digital marketing website, it was mostly website world, wasn't, wasn't so much network marketing. I was selling phones for a Verizon retailer. Right, I was, I was a cell phone rep. And I was at a business conference, I think was Action Coach, right? That's a big franchise in the world Action Coach. And this friend of mine who owned a really cool business back at the time, he was trying to find something on her phone, and she said, "I wish somebody would teach me how to use this stupid smartphone." And she glanced over at me. And I initially wrote down how to use your stupid smartphone. And I made that the title of my very first class and I said, "I'm going to teach people how to use their stupid smartphones." Everybody says that "This is a stupid smartphone model." Right? So I started teaching workshops, and doing workshops on Android, right? I don't, I'm not an apple person. I never owned an Apple phone. So I couldn't teach people that. I actually had a friend that he started that workshop, right? how to use your iPhone. But I taught people Android stuff. And what I was realizing a lot of the people come into these workshops were slightly older, several of them owned businesses, they wanted to be able to use their phone to keep up with the kids and the grandkids who, who want don't live close or whatever, what it dawned on me. These guys are trying to learn how to use it personally. But they own a business like they need to learn how to use these technologies in their business. Right? So that was where the seed was kind of born. And then I looked for a way to do it. And at the time in 2012 mobile apps were like the next big thing. And so I actually re, I resold or was a white label reseller for a company called business apps out of San Francisco. And I started as a mobile app builder because they had a really nice, easy way to do it. And I got my apple license, my Google license and did that. And I started building local business apps why I eventually retired that part of the, that service because people don't want to get Joe's pizza app on their phone anymore. It's like not a, not a thing. So we don't do it anymore. But I started with that and it was like a side hustle. I had a full-time job about 500 bucks that I could spend on doing whatever I'm going to do with this. My wife was like just use some money. Let's not be taking all our personal
Jay 5:00
funds to fund this idea you have here. Right? So
Jay 5:04
the voice of reason was coming in. Yeah. "Where did the mortgage go this month?" Yeah. So that, what happened though Mickey was that people started these new clients that I was getting, were like, "What else can you do?" Or "Do you build websites?", "Do you", you know the next thing I started doing was text message marketing, which I still do to this day, I have a, I resell somebody else's platform for text message marketing. And but then it was like, "Do you what do you know about Facebook advertising? Can you manage our social media pages?" And that that was, that was, that was the biggest lesson I ever learned don't manage other people's social media pages. It's the worst, we started doing it like full speed ahead. And then people were like, "I would have never said that on my page," like, "Oh, God." But anyway. So we only do it now with very generic content, or we try to feature others in posts. That's a big thing. We'll probably come back to later in this. But, But yeah, that was the longest winded answer to by accident. And I must have done a few things right. I can tell you I've done a ton wrong. But I've done some things, right, because 10 years later, I'm still doing things in that space. And I think my, my biggest learning lessons have been pivoting when I'm doing them wrong, or I'm doing them poorly, because I'm not perfect. I've made a lot of I've made a lot of mistakes. And I've had customers leave because I wasn't doing anything near what I thought I might have tried to promise them. So...
Mickey 06:30
You know, I love that answer. Because I think a lot of times we idealize people, especially business owners who think "Man, they must have had the perfect plan and everything in place." And like the strategy and everything went after win after win. And then hearing stories like this. First off, it humanizes the whole process, because now I can so relate on so many levels have been mistakes. But I think the key theme that keeps getting reiterated with these stories is it's not like the brilliant, great ideas that are the things that are making your business grow long term. It's when things don't go right, learn from it and keep moving. Right? Just keep moving in the general direction, right of what you can do, I'd love that answer. You could give us a little bit of explanation on how you serve businesses now. That'd be great.
Jay 07:14
Cool. So again, many years of trying to be everything to everyone, right and, and learning what doesn't work. And what I don't want to do, versus what I, what I know I have proven success in has led me to this point where, you know, 10 years 10 plus years later, I've realized, you know, I'm not the best at Google ads, but I'm running them for four different clients, right? But I'm not the best at that. And you know what, quite honestly, I don't really like to go to ads.google.com and start adding keywords and negative keywords and this and that. So what I think now has happened is that I'm finding these partners and these specialists that I can then white label out the services to to people who are better than me, because that's only going to produce a better case study in the long run, right? But I've really narrowed it down to a few different industries that I really enjoy working with. And one is just the franchise industry. So whether it's the the franchisor at the top or any of their franchisees, we find that we have some really great ways our hashtag for it is telling your story, right? We like to get them to tell your story. We do videos, we do a podcast, web series called Meet the Experts, and we have a lot of really great ways to to improve their local presence online, and their visibility. So franchises, great, e-commerce companies, I don't care what the product is, if you've got a Shopify store, and Shopify specifically, although we just started with a new client who's doing something with WooCommerce, but luckily, they've got a website person. So I think I think it'll be just fine. Because I've never done a WooCommerce store. Although I'm familiar with WordPress, we have a lot of WordPress clients. But e-commerce, we're really good at growing an email list, again, letting people tell their story. And then conveying that story through content has been ,has been really good. As a matter of fact, one of our e-comm clients, they're in their third year of business, and we've been working with them since month three in business. And we are year to date, same period through September versus through September of last year up 405% in sales volume, and we've doubled the average order size. So those are the kinds of case studies that make me like you know what, I'm not doing everything wrong, like something's go right, right? You know, because so many times I you know, you think about it when you make a mistake or you fail or you let somebody down or you feel like you're letting somebody down or you just you have a campaign that just "Wow, that bombed," right? You tend to dwell on that and you don't give yourself credit for the good things. And that's me, I dwell on a lot of these things. So a lot of times I'm always so focused on what I've done wrong. I can't just see the beauty the forest for the trees or whatever that thing is but e-commerce that's the second and third, I spent three years
Jay 10:00
and over $12,000, building an online review, reputation management tool software tool, it's software as a service subscription-based tool to help companies get more client reviews, more customer reviews, there's, I look, I jumped into a crowded marketplace. I know it. I know it's a very busy marketplace. But we are. So we focused so heavily on getting reviews as a way to grow other people's businesses. And we know how important reviews are that having my own software to help my clients was the initial goal. But then when I realized, "Wow, I've got a viable product that I can bring," we added a cool functionality. And this is why I'm saying home service businesses because restaurants could use it and dentists could use it and plump, you know, doctors, whatever reason I say home services, we have this unique thing where every employee, so like if you have let's say you have a pest control company, and you got 10 service technicians that go to people's homes, each of those service technicians through our software, they can each have their own link their own personalized link to get their own testimonials. And then when they leave the when the customer leaves a review for the technician, then they're taken over to say, "Hey, what do you think about our company as a whole,?" and that one can go to Google. So you're getting an testimonials on your staff so you can see how they're doing. And on your company as a whole. There isn't very many other softwares that do that. And so Home Services, businesses that have people going out in the field, people working in the field, really great industry for me. So I've gotten it down to three, and I know exactly how to treat each one and help them.
Mickey 11:40
You know, what I love about your story is, a lot of us as entrepreneurs are just hard on ourselves. It just innately. I feel like it's one of those character traits that if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you are likely really hard on yourself. You're at achiever, and you're focusing on a goal. And every time you're not at your goal, you're you're thinking about why you're not at your goal or how you're not goal yet. And sometimes the goal post is really far. But I think a lot of times we assume that everyone else is super confident. Everyone else has got it together, they've got it figured out. But the truth is, we're all really hard on ourselves. And I think if we can all come together and like give each other all our own pat on the back and say like, "Hey, like you've come a long way. And just remember that and you're not alone," I think is a big validation we could all use for sure.
Jay 12:22
I'm really glad you said that too, Mickey, because I find one of the things one of the reasons why I think sometimes is agency owners and people who are in business, they look at other people that do a similar thing or the same thing. And they feel like they're in competition. And what happens is then you have this seeming ego competition where everybody, "Oh, they just look like they've got it all together." "Oh, they Whoa, they made the seven figures, right? Oh, wow, eight figures, woof." They you know, and then it becomes this, like, I don't want to say the word because it's like --
Mickey 12:53
I know what you're thinking.
Jay 12:54
Yeah, it's like a swing and some swing in competition. And I just, it bothers me because I don't ever want to be perceived that I don't ever want to come off as that, like I'm flawed. And I try really, really hard. Right? I try to make friends and network and grow. You know. And you know, I think sometimes what happens though is this industry puts people up on this pedestals, right? And then you immediately think, "Oh, well, I'm not at that level. So I must not be very good." But really what happens is, "Do I have a roof over my head? Am I comfortable? Is my family happy?" Right? "Are we able to still take trips and do things that it doesn't matter? If I'm at seven, six figures, seven figures or eight figures, life is not that bad?" You know, and I think that that's one thing that I have to tell myself often remind myself of- often.
Mickey 13:47
You know, one of the things that I learned, I want to say the hard way because I for sure, for a long time was very self, I was very insecure about my mistakes and my shortcomings. I have some great strengths. But I also have some like, gaping holes in terms of weaknesses.
Mickey 14:02
But the more I tried to cover them and hide them, the bigger they became and the bigger of a block to my success they became once I started openly sharing about how I struggled in certain places or needed help or didn't know something, the more open I became to getting help and support and growth and all of a sudden they weren't as big a weaknesses because I had incredible people who were helping me or stepping in for me. And I think that right there is one of those lessons that people will learn over time. Hiding and pretending is not how you're going to achieve success because you're just going to keep moving up and feeling like an imposter when you can open up and talk about those things. Although you're still gonna have negative thoughts at least you're not gonna be alone.
Jay 14:40
You're 100% right. And I think what happens too, is let's just take him for example. I was asked to speak somewhere, right? And the DM community and I was asked to speak and do a partner training day and after that, I almost had this feeling inside of me now I was like, "Oh, people are gonna look up to me as one of the
Jay 15:00
Most people now," so I can't be as open, you know, in the community. And what I found is just the opposite in this particular community that you and I are both a part of is it has been, you know, it's okay to not have it all together or not know how to do something or knowing what you need to be doing. But just you're paralyzed by this fear of the imposter syndrome. You know, and you're like, "Guys, just give me," Ryan Deiss said it recently. You know, the proverb, you can teach a give them a fish and elite for a day teach them officially for life. And he's like, sometimes we just need the fish. "Just give me the fish, just now." And then it gets me by and so that I can continue to learn how to fish because I think that's what we're all still trying to do. Right? Is get better at fishing. What a great analogy.
Jay 15:47
But being able to not be afraid to just say, "Hey, guys, Anybody got a fish? I could have?" Right. And I was able to do that with the software. You know, I've been dipping my toe in "Oh, now it's public beta." Now. It's like, "I'm only telling it to people I know." It's like, I heard it earlier today. Before we got on this, this call. Just launch it.
Mickey 16:07
Yeah, yes.
Jay 16:08
You know, and that's sometimes the just do it, you know, dang Nike. But, you know, they're right. You know, just do it. You can always make it better. You can always revise, you can always pivot, you can always change course. And that's what life is.
Mickey 16:24
Yeah. Well, you know, what I've learned, and I learned this from my husband, who's in the military, he's very high level, and he talks about the learning curve. And he's like, "You'll learn at a certain pace, when you're not doing things and you're just focused on learning." The learning curve increases exponentially. Once you start doing, and it's higher quality learning, it's faster, it's just way more intense. But until you get moving and trying and testing, you're gonna stay at this slower lesser learning curve for way longer. So dip your toe and start moving and learn on the go. And that's the best thing you can do. And I've been trying so hard to do that I struggle with perfectionism as well, right? You want it to be perfect. You want it to be you never want to fail. You never want anyone to see you fail. But the truth is, that's the best way to learn sometimes.
Jay 17:08
Sure. No, you're, it's, he's right. You're right. It is. It looked back at anything we've had to do. We had to do it right, you had to actually try to do it. For me. I used to play in a band, a punk rock band years ago, like 20-something years ago now. And I've dated myself a lot.
Jay 17:25
But, but I played bass, right? So you know, bass to a guitar player is like the four-string beginner instrument, right? To a guitarist, right? And I never knew how to play guitar. And I always thought, "Yeah, I can, I can play a little bit here'" and there, and I can. But if I want to get good at playing the guitar, I need to pick up the guitar and work on it. Right? And just do it, right, because I can read music theory, I could read, you know, books, I can watch videos of, you know, guitar tutorials, but if I don't have the guitar in my hand, you know, then, then is I'm not really learning, you know, the learning curve is gonna go up when I pick that guitar up. And that's when I'm gonna get good at it. And I've even just taken a few lessons. And I've seen massive improvements. And it's like, "Wow, yeah, that's all it took."
Jay 18:13
Yeah.
Mickey 18:14
You know, this topic, I have had conversations just like this on the topic of hiring, because I think a lot of new business owners start and they're like, "Okay, I need to have everything ready and the perfect hire before I make that first hire." So they wait, and wait and wait and wait, assuming that one day, they're gonna get it together and just know, but it doesn't happen. And I think sometimes we just gotta make the first hire,
Mickey 18:37
and learn as we go to What's your philosophy? Your take on that?
Jay 18:40
That's a really great question. I don't have any other full-time employees. I have about eight different contractors that I use and communicate with on a weekly basis. So they're not full-time, but they are. They're my team. Right? So it's, you know, we, they join our team, huddles, and our meetings, and they're on our reporting sessions, and a couple of them join us on quarterly planning, and they know the financials, but they're still doing a lot of their specialized client work. I am terrified of hiring a full-time employee. And here's why. I've learned, again, like exactly what you said, operations is not my strong suit running business during the hiring stuff. I've thought oftentimes, alright, I have too much work for me to handle, I need to get some help. That's usually the first thought that goes through. The problem is, we then find somebody that we're like, "Oh, yeah, you seem smart and talented, and we can work together. But I don't know what to give you now." because it's all up here. And it seems like it's triple the tour to get it out of my head and into their task list. Right? So I've done that. It's like, "Oh, great, you're gonna help me do all these things that you have no idea because I can't figure out how to tell you or document it." Right? So documenting process. What are we doing right? That's the first thing what what what are we doing? What do we need this person to do? And I
Jay 20:00
I still I bet you my three of for my next contractors, I will make this exact mistake. And I'll have to come back and watch this episode where I jumped into it and I didn't have it documented and the process is documented enough. So on the topic of hiring, I'm probably not the one to ask. However, I feel like the people that I've brought in, I've adapted them or gotten them into their own lane. But the person who's been with me the longest, her name is Heather. And she's amazing. She got out of college and I found her through this like paid internship program was called, I think it was apprentice or something like get apprentice. She's been with me over three years now, maybe it's close to four. And but I didn't really know what she was going to do. When I brought her on. I was like, just trying to give her little things. What we've realized this, she's an aspiring copywriter who wants to eventually run her own copywriting agency. So what have I tried to do with Heather for the last two years? Just give her the writing jobs. Like here are you write the clients emails, you write my emails, right? You do the writing, right? And, and then Veronica up in Detroit, she is my social media manager. And she helps with a couple of clients that we actually will post some stuff for. But she's managing all of our social media brands. That's what she wants to do social media management. So knowing that, and then I tried to give them the freedom to make it their own. Here's the brand guidelines, here's, you know, me, here's how I would talk do it. If I see an error, this is the thing they all love. When I see such a mistake. I'm like, "Hey, can you just change this it was you got to an I where a P was no big deal, just go ahead and fix it." Or "Hey, can we take that one down?" And rarely do I ever have to do that. But like, I never get angry, because who's the person at fault there? It would be me like I didn't tell them what to do or not to do. If they make a mistake. I don't, I don't get it doesn't, it's, I've got enough thick skin on my team's mistakes. Because ultimately it would fall back on me anyway.
Mickey 22:01
You've created like a safe place for them to fail it hit that learning curve. I love that. You're, you're practicing what you're preaching, you're giving them the opportunity to test on the go and learn as they do that. I love that.
Jay 22:13
I think the word is grace.
Mickey 22:16
I have the word written up on a, on a chalkboard right now in front of me.
Jay 22:20
Amazing.
Mickey 22:21
Absolutely. You know, I had this idea. I haven't told anyone about it. So I'm curious to know your thoughts on this. But one of the things because I, I also don't have any employees, I've worked with a ton of contractors under a different business I was managing I hired employees all the time. And so I had experienced that with my own business. I have also struggled with that. And one of the things I was thinking about, but I wasn't sure if it was a viable idea was hiring someone specifically to help me figure out what my long-term hiring plan would be hiring someone to come up with the processes to look at who I would be hiring to figure out the tasks that they would do for short term, and then have an idea of where it could go so that I could just start playing and not feel so overwhelmed. I'm not sure if that actually exists. But if it does call me.
Jay 23:01
Yeah, no, I you know what? I think it does. And I think it's brilliant that you're thinking about it and something that we need. I do know somebody who's like a fractional HR executive, so he can help with like employee playbooks and systems and processes and knows a lot about hiring. I know somebody here locally, I'm friends with them. We did a digital marketer meet-up together. He was one of the other speakers. But yeah, somebody that's it's really an operations manager would be the fancy term for it. But that's a great, it's, there's definitely a need. There's a need for every solopreneur, who wants something more, right? That's a good tagline for the solopreneur, who wants something more?
Mickey 23:39
I feel like we're coming up with that business idea right now.
Jay 23:42
We just we just inked a partnership. You didn't even know it.
Jay 23:46
Yeah, there we go. We'll be exhibiting at TNC next year.
Jay 23:52
So right next to keep.
Jay 23:55
But yeah, so I think you're That's brilliant. I've never thought of it in terms of that, like, how do I find somebody that can help me do the things that I'm not good at? And maybe that's something I need to start talking about amongst the community. Because I'm not good at that. I, you know, I need somebody who I can just interview with like, "Hey, why don't we just have like, why don't we talk for an hour each day about what it is that I do. And you just take copious amounts of notes and, learn me and what learn what I do and learn what my team does. And then you document the draft of it. I'll come in and read it and review it and edit it, but you doc because I'm not going to document it." And I need to.
Mickey 24:36
Yeah, I'm very similar. I'll get stuff started, and like, but I will not finish it.
Mickey 24:42
It'll sit half done. That's my biggest challenge. I used to come with someone to come in and take my stuff and like, "Just do it." Yeah, I'm the same.
Jay 24:50
Right there with you.
Mickey 24:52
All right. One of the things that I really want to talk to you about and I'm super excited about is reputation and reviews because I know this is an expertise of yours and I know
Mickey 25:00
Oh, especially with those startups, small businesses solopreneurs. This is something all of us, we want to be the local name in our industry. But getting there feels really hard, it seems almost ambiguous. So I would love to know kind of your framework or how you look at building reputation for businesses.
Jay 25:16
I love it. And thank you for bringing that up. Because it is something that I do. Every day, I realized I have more of a passion for it than I than I initially thought. And it seems like a dry topic. But then you think about it. It's like "When's the last time? You didn't check the reviews before you went somewhere? Yeah, when you're traveling to go to eat or to go to shop," right? And then and then it was posed? Like, would you go to a business that had no reviews? Or 30 reviews? Even if the 30 reviews were like a 3.6? And most people would do that they'd go over the no reviews, because they at least people have tried. They're like, alright, "Well, if that's our option, and we're going to take that, but I'm not going to displace it. Nobody's talking about." right? So there's a lot of ways that now reviews influence our decisions. But in the local space reviews also influenced Google's decision, although not a manual on their algorithm of where to place you on that chart. So having those reviews is not the be-all end-all by any means of how you get ranked or anything like that. But reviews are only going to help you in the proximity at which Google is going to say, "Yep, this company is legitimate." The other the other thing I think is very important to look at when talking about reviews is the ability. Everybody needs to get them. I don't know how to word this any better. Everybody needs the ability to get reviews, but people don't know how to ask.
Mickey 26:42
Yes.
Jay 26:43
Right? How do we ask for reviews? We all know we need them. We all know how important they are. We all know how it's influencing everyone's buying decision. But yet when I talk to business owners, and I say "How are you getting reviews," some of the business owners will say exactly how how to get reviews. So how do we ask, right? And I've talked to business owners, and I've said, "How are you getting reviews?" "Oh, we ask our client customers or clients." And I say "Okay, well, how come you only have like 21 reviews? And you've been around for 15 years? How many are you asking? If you only had 21 clients, you're not still around. So you're not doing it." You know, people say, "Oh, I'm doing a great job at this." So when you really look at it, it's like, "No, you're really not." And the good news is that, you know, there are tools out there that can help you. So as I mentioned earlier, like we've been building our own, it's called local Fivestars, right? And it's a platform where you can connect it to your Google business profile, which used to be Google My Business, Google business profile, connect it to your Google business profile, set up the account. And then when somebody leaves you a review up, first of all, you just have a link, you can send out a link, you can email it out, you can text it, so all they have to do is tap on it and get to your review page. And or you could just send them the link, you know, just copy and paste the link and then click on it. But either way, they're just going to have to tap on it. And it takes them to your own little landing page with your logo and your name. And if you have more than one location, there's a drop-down, you can select the location that you were at. And if they leave you four or five stars, this says "Oh, thanks so much for the great review, would you mind making this public on Google," and they can, they can then click and and type in the review. And it copy. And this is something that the other tools don't do, it'll copy the text a lot of the softwares you have to type it if you type it in here and then go to Google, you have to retype it again, and that drives people crazy, ours, when you type and you click submit, it actually copies what you put in the clipboard. And it takes you over to the Google review pops up the box and all you have to do is paste it. So we do.
Jay 28:48
I don't know how many users are going to totally know that as the more people hear about it, but but it also captures the less than stellar reviews internally. Right? So if somebody did leave a one-star review, they get a page that says, "Hey, we're sorry, we fell short. We'd love to," you know, "Fix any problems. So please, we take your concerns seriously fill this form out." And that's part two is you have to make it easy for customers to leave a review. Right? Part three. So hold on, so I'm trying to I'm losing things I'm derailing a little bit. So but that's normal. Part three, then is you have to utilize the reviews. Right? So how if you get all these reviews, are they good? Just sitting on Google? How do you use reviews to make to win you more business to win you more win more trust right to your cause. So we built a we have a little snippet of code that you can copy and give to your web person and let them paste it in for the people that may not know you know, or they may not manage the website, little piece of code. You can create a testimonials page on your website and all those reviews whether they went to Google or
Jay 30:00
not all the good reviews for five stars can filter and it's a widget, it filters them in on, on your webpage. So even if the people didn't go to Google when they left that good review, and it stayed internal, now those reviews are going to show up as testimonials on your webpage. And we have a little, you may have noticed here I got to a website and at the bottom corner, you'll have like a little pop up so and so just bought this 20 minutes ago from so, you know, we're so and so did this or so and so did that we have a thing that has, like, you know, "Jane Doe five stars,", "Oh, this business was great." And it's like a little carousel pops up with recent reviews. So we built that into the software tool as well so that people can share their reviews, because that's a big thing. I mean, you know, if they're just on Google, that's great. But how else you are you trying to you know, reinforce that and use it we talk in terms of the customer journey, right is eight stages to the customer journey. And reviews are the only thing I feel the only area or tactic, tactic isn't the word, competency, the only digital marketing competency that can be plugged in at every stage of the journey. Think about it. You want to get traffic? Share your reviews in your ads, right? Engagement? send them to your reviews page, check out our reviews here, the subscribe stage, put reviews on your landing page to get people to opt in convert social proof get them excited. Ascension? Yeah, you got your reviews here, get them to buy get the upsell, "Oh, I bought this upgrade and it was," you know, and then obviously advocate is reviews and then promote, yeah, share those reviews everywhere. So every stage of the customer journey reviews can they fit? They fit and that's probably why I'm so passionate about it because it's the one thing that sticks no matter where they are.
Break 31:50
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Mickey 32:28
And you know, you highlighted right there a big mistake that a lot of business owners do not just in the, the getting reviews or any of the tactics they choose.
Mickey 32:36
It's they stop at like the first step. So I'm going to use it for this thing. But they forget that Okay, so if my goal is to get traffic, I'm just gonna get traffic, I'm gonna leave it at that instead of "Okay, now that I'm using this thing for traffic? Is there a way for me to monetize it? Or is there a way for me to increase retention with it?" Like, "How can I push this further and give it more use?" And I think we do that with paid ads. I think we did that with social content. We just think it's engagement, but we never see, is there a way to monetize my content? Or is there a way to, you know, deliver more value to my existing customers with it and play and push the envelope with the things that you're doing? Instead of doing 18? Different things? How can I take this one thing a bit further?
Jay 33:16
Yeah, yes, if you can push reviews, and all areas of the journey, and you actually use them think about, put a review on your business card or in your email signature, or on your website, or on, you know, have them on Google, share them to Facebook, create a Instagram, quote image with the review about your business, right? And now I'm wanting to say that when you're putting out social media content for your business, the last thing you want to do is 100% of the time just be talking about you and your business instead of you know, I think 20% is good, but in that 20% post a review, right? Share it in your newsletter, your emails, right? Everything you do, and, and you can actually then, you know, see, that's going to lead to monetization, you know, I don't think you could say, "Oh, this review led, led me to this $100, or this $1,000, or this $100,000." But it could because you never know and said, You know, I was evaluating people but your reviews made me choose you and I have a good story about that. We my wife and I were moving. This is six, seven years ago and we had to get a moving company because my wife's new job was given us relocation reimbursement so we could hire a moving company which is great. I highly suggest that to anyone ever moving don't do it yourself. Just look if you want hire me, I'll come make sure you don't start loading stuff into a truck. Like...
Mickey 34:37
Don't offer pizza. Don't hire your friends, just get the moving company.
Jay 34:41
Right. So we
Jay 34:45
were getting. So I'm evaluating these moving companies are getting three estimates. Right. Let's get three estimates. The one we picked was actually the one in the middle as far as price, right? There was one that was more expensive, one that was cheaper. what sold me on them and it wasn't really
Jay 35:00
reviews but it was just this one thing when you talk about but it's very, very much aligned with reviews because it's the testimonials Company A the cheap one had like a one page flyer or something, why we should do business to them, company C had like this really nice, highly beautifully designed graphic design, you know, portfolio of nice colorful things of why you we should choose them. And they were the most expensive, Company B had a little folder that you can open up just like a basic folder that has the slots to put stuff in. And in this right pocket was a stapled stack of about 20 pieces of paper. And the only thing that was on these pieces of paper were names and phone numbers. And he said, "Yeah, this is a list of our past customers over the last 30 years. This is their names and phone numbers. If you want to see how we did you can call any, any one of them you want." Now for all I know Mickey, that guy could have went to the room, I could have went to the old old phonebook and printed out a list of names and phone numbers. I was sold. I was sold like that is confidence. Because they're just saying, "Look, we're gonna we're gonna put our money where our mouth is you call any of these past customers? And, you know, do your due diligence." Right? is what we would typically call it. But I was like, think about that. That's how your reviews act. I mean, I bought from that, that company like I hired them, like the next day. I never even called a single person. I just them showing that to me and giving me that was enough. And that's again, the power of social proof.
Mickey 36:27
Yes. And you know, I love that example. Because as much as Yeah, he could have faked it, the amount of brand damage that would happen if he did fake it. I'm sure the risk was so high that my assumption is it had to be true, right? Whereas if one person found out it wasn't true, there goes this business. But it's bolt, it's out there. And the chances of someone actually calling all these people is very low. But I'm sure the success rate after producing that piece of paper. Wow, I love that example.
Jay 36:55
Yeah, no graphic design needed. Print the list of names and phone numbers of your past customers, it was like literally 20 pages full. So there must have been, I don't know, seven or 800 names and phone numbers on that list. And, and again, one of those things, it's still seven years later, I, I've shared that example so many times because I talked so much about online reviews and reputation and word of mouth and getting, getting people to say nice things about you and your brand.
Mickey 37:23
Yeah. Now, I think this is a place where everyone listening, we can all do better. When it comes to reviews, I think we can all ask better ask more frequently, and use them in a lot of different places that we're not right now. So I want to like give the listeners some homework.
Jay 37:37
Awesome.
Mickey 37:38
And say, strategically set up a way to ask for your reviews. Are you sending emails? Is that automated? Like how are you making this easy for the customer? And then what are you doing with those reviews? Come up with a plan, do one more thing if you can.
Jay 37:51
Yeah. Yeah. Checklist. Checklist. I've got some I've got I've got some of those. Yeah, for sure. You know, and I would say I would take it one step further and say, instead of starting, especially for an established business owner, if you're starting today, then start asking today, right? But if you've been in business for five or 10 years, go back to those past customers. I always tell people, I'm like, "Look, you've been in business, how many years?" "Oh, 12." Right? "Okay, great. Why don't we try to get you a couple of 100 reviews by next week?" Right? And then you, "Just go upload their customer list into any site. It doesn't have to be mine. I'm not here just to promote a piece of software. But go and automate that process." But go back to those several 100 past customers and say, boom, "Here's it, and do it all at once automated make it, make it simple on yourself. But a lot of people are like, "Oh gosh, now if I start now, it'll take me a long time to get 50 reviews." like, "Not if you've got 700 past customers or 7000 past customers should take you a couple hours or a couple, couple days."
Mickey 38:54
Yeah, if you're hurting for the cash, you know, skimp on the professional design and invest in getting the reviews right?
Jay 39:00
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I won't tell my graphic designer.
Mickey 39:04
I won't tell mine either.
Mickey 39:07
Oops, when it comes to reviews, I think hand in hand with reviews is, is reputation but also visibility exposure. If you don't have exposure, if people aren't finding out about you, it's really hard for them to talk to say nice things about your business and I know that getting exposure for small businesses is something else that you really specialize in and I'd love to know your take on how small businesses can start getting more exposure in the marketplace.
Jay 39:31
Well, video is everything I'm gonna cut right to the chase on this one video is everything look, look at Tik- TikTok has the most engagement of any social media platform on the planet right now. And all it is is a video platform Instagram videos, they've come out with reels we got to keep up with TikTok, Facebook's doing the reels, YouTube's doing the shorts like everything is video. So here's the problem. When I tell business owners like "Hey, looking from the outside in," we can see all the glaring things that they could put
Jay 40:00
probably do. And then when I'm like trying to figure out how to grow my business, I'm like, "Huh," I was like scratching my head, right? But I can I got the answer for you, you know, I just don't have the answer for me. So when I tell people when I tell business owners that they really, if you, if you help somebody do X, Y, or Z, if you solve this problem, well then maybe make a video where you've given them a tip to do something, you do it, I've seen you do it. Right? So, you know, give them a tip, give him a thought for the day, give him something as matter of fact, playing on I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you something that I just got, bear with me, this is impromptu.
Mickey 40:35
Let's do it.
Jay 40:36
I was, I was at the dollar store with my daughter last week, because when she does something really good, we like to reward her. But you know, I don't want to spend five bucks every day or a couple of days. We take her to take her, to the dollar store. Because to her, it's like, whoa, new toy, right?
Jay 40:53
But while I was in there, and I don't think it's going to show up on on camera, I saw this cube, donate food, pay it forward, give a compliment, buy local, pick up litter, and volunteer.
Mickey 40:08
Wow.
Jay 40:09
So what I was thinking of doing, I saw it and I was like, these are things that I need to do better at. So what I was thinking is, on Monday mornings, I could or on Fridays, I could do a TikTok where I roll the die and put a challenge out and say, "Hey, everybody should go do this this weekend, I'm going to do it, I'll be here," or you know, just something where we can do something better for our community. So again, just another idea for video. But but here's the problem. And I know I've said here's the problem like four times, and I haven't gotten to it yet.
Jay 41:42
Business owners are in sheer terror, when they think about picking up their phone and creating a video. It's the same thing that we do when we're thinking about like growing our own business. But we're comfortable with that sort of thing. We're just, you know, not comfortable in other ways. You know, to us picking up a video, picking up the phone and making a video or recording in front of a webcam is like we're just used to it now it's easy. Business owners are still terrified of doing that. And then they think of, "Well, I have to be I have to know how to edit the video. I have to know how to do this and that and like," Look, you have to start somewhere. So
Jay 42:18
to answer your question that you asked me 17 minutes ago, I started a series a couple years ago called Meet the Experts. And a lot of people have said, "Oh, your podcast, you have a podcast." And I've even I use the word all the time because it's the it's like the industry standard lingo. But it's not a podcast, really. I don't really have a theme or a Magus kind of do. I don't really have like, it's not a well planned out thing. Here's what I do. I interview business owners, and let them tell their story. I asked them some easy questions, let them talk about their products or services about them about how long they've been in business. It's not a lot different than what you're doing here. But when we're going a little bit deeper into certain things, but and we livestream it. So that's when it's not a recorded thing that we go back and edit we can that's next. That's, that's we're just launching that now. But we we give them the video, and then they have some video content. The problem then what not only were they scared to do this in the first place. So now we've got this video that we created with them, right to make it easy, have an easy conversation, stream it, it's on video, it's on YouTube forever, Facebook, none of them share it, they don't share it, they don't put it on their website, they don't know what to do with it. And I'm like, "Well, that kind of defeats the purpose of me doing a free interview series to kind of, you know, network and get exposure for my brand if the only people who ever see it are the people in my audience," right? So now we have launched a package where we'll actually will cut the video up into little sound bites for you. Well, we got the, we got a Libson account so that we can submit the podcast to all the different places. And I also have a press release service where we could send out a press release of every article, it gets about 500 pickups for $347. Right. It's like I'm not doing it for free. But, but now we say now we're basically able to say "Good!" now we've solved one problem, you're too terrified to get in front of video. And we're going to be able to create short videos where But now, we're also going to show you and how to maximize we're going to help you maximize the reach and the people that are going to see it. And then if you want something a little bit more white glove will actually do it will connect to your account, we'll put it on your website, we'll do it all for you. So instead of giving you the content, and sharing, it we'll actually, we'll actually do at you and your hands off, right, like complete done for you. So we did just launch that because that was a big problem. But I think the question was on like gaining exposure for a business, I think video is, is key. And if you're a local business, there's a litany of other things you can do like making sure you have an updated Google business profile. If you're working on SEO, make sure the content you're writing about you know is
Jay 45:00
A good mix of featuring others, spotlighting others, and, and showcasing a particular product or highlighting on a keyword or something you would like to be found on. But SEO is so hard. It's such a long-term game
Jay 45:14
that I think local, just visibility, and then using social
Jay 45:19
is a great thing. And one more thing, maybe we piggyback this into something. I read a book rec, do, are you the one that told me about content-based networking?
Mickey 45:29
Yeah, that was me.
Jay 45:30
Mickey changed my life. I gotta tell you about it. Can I just skip the next question and just go right into the story? I was pretty sure you actually did. I bought the book the day you told me to. But I think I even said already ordered. Yeah. bought the book. I still have it here. I'm on like my third read-through right now. And it's becoming filled with ink on those pages. That's why I like ordering books still and not doing you know, books. I like to take notes and write on them. Yeah. But I learned something that I basically what that book was about is meet the experts. What I'm doing is letting people tell their story and featuring others in my content. You know, the big thing James, in the book the author James Carberry talked about was be like Oprah, right? You want to like features highlight others' stories, other successes. And so that's really shaped kind of the direction we're going with Meet the Experts. But it's been the most transformational book I've ever read. In all the years I've been an agency owner and I've I've heard a bunch I'm still working are still trying to get their story brand. And I'm trying to read all the books that everybody wants me to read. But that one was like four days, I went right through it in four days, I couldn't put it down. And then the second time, I was like, I got to circle these things. And now I'm telling I'm teaching my team, "Hey, why don't you try this email to get somebody?" and what we're doing with our clients now is we're finding people in their target audience that they'd like to get in front of. And we're reaching out on their behalf saying, "Hey, we're doing an article for a client, we'd love to feature you and are you up for it?" Right? And we're starting to put articles out on our clients, blogs that are featuring people in their target audience. So then the sales reps can then give them a call and say, "Hey, I saw you run an article on our blog site, I'd love to talk to you about your needs for this other service." Yeah. But to cap that off, James Carberry, the author at the end of that book, he put his phone number in there, and he said, "Go ahead and text me." Well, dammit, I texted him that day, since I read that texted him. Within minutes, he wrote me back. And it was a real, it wasn't even an automated reply. Like it was like it took about 15, 20 minutes. And it was like a real well-thought-out reply. And he added his calendar link in there. And I booked a Zoom meeting. And last week, I had a Zoom meeting with him. And he gave me 30 minutes of the wisdom that went into writing that book and how I could use it to apply to my show and my business. And so I'm, I am now forever, eternally grateful to you for, for recommending that book in the first place. And so thank you,
Mickey 48:01
you're welcome. You know, another member of the DM community recommended it to me, and I had the same aha moment. And I knew I had to share it with everyone. Kristina Hooper.
Mickey 48:09
Thank you, she shared it with me. And you know, I've shared it with clients, I think one of the things we forget is that it doesn't have to always be all about us. The more we just highlight our ideal clients and make them the superheroes or the superstars, the better. And it just makes life a lot easier. It takes the pressure off of us and being on the video as well, because we're trying to make the other person the superstar. We don't have to be the star of the show. Make the other person feel as great as you possibly can. And ultimately, that relationship, maybe not instantly but down the road will either lead to work or lead to referrals and connections.
Jay 48:44
Or a new best friend who knows, right? Yeah, something you said there that ties in in 2016 I did a workshop in the local business community where I was living at the time, I did a workshop because we came up with this acronym of the four types of content you should be putting out into the world whether it's so we did it for social media, but for their social or for blog. And I came up with this acronym called LENS which in 2020 was a great, great time to promote this thing. But 2016 I came up with this LENS acronym and I share it I've got videos on it, but it's listening, educating, networking and selling what we're talking about here is a lot of the networking right side of it. But listening to me the listening is not just listening to what people are saying about you but it's no it's engaging with your audience like asking a question on social media, doing a poll, getting them to say something so that you can see what they're thinking or you can get get them to engage with you right so that's the listening is more about engagement, but EENS didn't sound as good so I had to find an L for that. Educating I mean, engaging and educating shouldn't have been the first two so EENS didn't work LENS worked a lot better. But E is for educating and that is like, how can you teach people something tips, top 10 tips, top
Jay 50:00
seven tips. Top tip, right? Did you know that this industry goes back to you? And maybe things about the industry or something, but not, not directly about you just helping other people putting value out there? Networking is everything we talk about how can we feature and spotlight others? I always tell local businesses, I'm like, "What do you like to do here locally?" "I like to go to this restaurant," "Good." Go find something they posted and share it on your business page and be like, "I love going to this restaurant," and tag them. Right? Like, just go talk about other people, right? And then the S is selling. And I always say that that should be 20% of the time, 80% of the time, focus on other people or what you know, other things that don't relate to your product services or you, and then 20% of the time, it's appropriate, you can talk about it. But again, going back to that that's so we've been doing we've done that LENS, I have a logo for it, and we've done workshops on it, but that LENS thing is, is still going strong. I mean, I probably need to talk about it more, because it is kind of like a signature talk, so to speak. But But yeah, so that's it tied in with what you're saying and what we're talking about.
Mickey 51:04
Totally, you know, I was just talking about this, this morning, I'm running a five-day email marketing challenge. And we were talking about email strategy or content strategy in general. And I was talking to you about the strategies I see in most business owners. And if you have to go let me know.
Jay 51:18
No, I'm good. I'm good for about another 30 minutes or whenever, whenever we're good.
Mickey 51:22
I was saying that most business owners look at it like a series of sprints, they'll produce a bunch of promotional content, or they'll sell, sell, sell or post something and then they did stop.
Jay 51:31
Right.
Mickey 51:32
But in truth, your content strategy is more like an ultra marathon. You need to keep moving the whole time. And every once once in a while and tactical legs, you're going to push it, you're going to try and pick up the pace and race and gain and, and that's your promotional content. That's when you're you're focusing on launching or product promotions and whatnot. And you know, there's an ebb and flow of the two. But if you dead stop in between, right, your race is gone. It's not sprints. If you look at someone trying to do an ultra marathon at no point, are they going to sprint all out and then stop and do that repetitively? It's just a disastrous strategy. And so how can you keep moving and I love the LENS, because that really shows you the first three-quarters of it is that steady state, just keep delivering value, and then the 22nd 20% of the race, push it.
Jay 52:18
Oh, gosh, that's an amazing analogy. So that's something else I got a steel frame. You're teaching me something. Every every week, I'm learning something new. That's a really good. Yeah, well, that was a really good one too. Because what I was thinking about is I'm so out of shape right now, my wife and I were working out with a trainer. And before that we had done CrossFit. And before that was a trainer. But we go through these ebbs and flows where we get into shape, and then we stop. And then we like, "Oh, gosh, I've gained five pounds, 10 pounds." And then we got to start again. Right? And what happens and this is a good, good thing for your audience that hears this. If you do that, then next time you try to go back in shape for the first two days, you walk like a baby deer, and nobody wants to walk like a baby deer just sitting down to go to the bathroom is
Jay 53:07
worst and yeah, so yeah, so so I would say don't be a baby deer.
Mickey 53:13
Yeah.
Jay 53:14
Just stay steady. Don't be a baby deer.
Mickey. 53:16
Just keep moving, even if it's a walk.
Jay. 53:18
Yeah.
Mickey 53:19
Right?
Jay 53:19
Just do something. Yeah.
Mickey 53:20
I love it. I want to touch on one thing really briefly before we close up and it paid traffic. And I think it's one of those things that we see is this super complicated place where only really successful businesses go or people who have a lot of cash go, but the truth is paid traffic can play a role in a ton of different businesses at different stages. And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what you look for in a business when you're looking at using paid traffic either for you know, growing exposure, or increasing sales, that sort of thing.
Jay 53:49
So the companies that we work with, and I've got a lot of experience in the different platforms in the ads, like we've done Google, we've done Facebook and Instagram. We were doing TikTok now and which I fought for a long time. But one of the things that I look for is how do we I don't care about eyeballs this is really the the gist, I do not care about eyeballs to the site. Eyeballs mean nothing to me. It's vanity
Mickey 54:13
A 100% vanity. Yes.
Jay 54:15
So my ads at the top of funnel is to get them just to that subscribe stage, like how can we get them from not knowing about us to at least getting their contact information, right?
Jay 54:28
And so even on our e-commerce products we took we took an e-commerce company from zero when we started, same company, this is a direct correlation to that case study I was talking about earlier, zero to 6300 target audience people on their newsletter email newsletter, and they've only had, you know, whatever, however many sales but there's a lot more money in that news in that newsletter list. So when we run paid traffic, we spend most of the money on the strategy to drive
Jay 55:00
to get email addresses and names, we feel like then we can begin a relationship with people. And we're not trying to sell them anything without them knowing who we are. So they have a good really nice downloadable guide that we made for them called The Ultimate Guide to Home Lighting. So we've been really experimenting, we did a lot with the Facebook lead ads. And now we're having a tremendous amount of success with TikTok lead generation ads, the lead ads, right. So it's not, we're not trying, we're not doing a traffic objective or just an engagement objective. And we're doing lead generation objective. And you know, we're doing really well with that we're generally two to $3 to get an email address, which is pretty good on a on a higher ticket item. We're oftentimes just trying to get that information. We're not trying to sell something, again, trying to sell somebody before they know who you are, is like saying, "Hey, for our first date, we should pick up the names of our future children together." It's just not good. It's creepy. It's not smart. Right? So what,
Mickey 55:57
I love that.
Jay 55:58
I think, and then we take a small percentage 10, 15, 20% to do some retargeting, which is getting hard with the pixel issues and the iOS issues and never like Facebook, I think I've pulled most of our ad dollars for myself and our clients off of Facebook now, and Instagram, they're just not performing. Like you can't get the same, you know, everything's more expensive and, and they're just not doing well, because Facebook's quite honestly not getting the data it once got, right people are like, Oh, I'm so glad we have all these privacy things. And I'm like, Let's push me out of one area of my business completely, because I don't want to mess with it. But one of the things I do look at when I think about who I could run ads for, obviously, an industry that is allowed to run ads, first of all, so like CVD is out and these other formulas and treatments and all this other stuff a lot of times are out. Cryptocurrency was, was out for netizen and then it was out and then it's partially in and then they can't make up their mind. But so we do a lot more now with Google. And here's my thought as an agency owner, going way back, circling back to the beginning, we're not great with Google ads, we're good, we're okay, we're gonna get some results, what we've decided to do as a company, because you know, as I try to be everything to or as I try to reverse from being everything to everyone, and try to rein it back in, I don't want to give up clients, I don't wanna be like, "Hey, you gotta go somewhere else for this now," or I don't want to have to say no to somebody who might be interested in the service. So what we're doing now is making partnerships with specialized agencies who specialize in these things, and bringing them on and saying, "Look, I don't want you to have interaction with my client, I'll handle the interaction with the client, I'm just guiding their strategy. I need somebody that can fulfill this." and we'll send them over the customer journey, the avatar, tell them what we're trying to do. But let them develop the creatives and and the keywords and this and that. And then on TikTok, we're still doing pretty good, because as long as you have some video content, people are really engaging on TikTok. So that's been a really good platform. But really, it's just
Jay 58:04
traffic, cold, cold. And then retargeting is really the only places we dive too much into. But you're right there, it goes even deeper than that means it goes you can do advertising at so many different levels with a lot more filters and conditions that happen if this person visited this page, but not this page and didn't do this or did that. I, if somebody wanted all that, I would probably say I can manage it for you, but I'm gonna hire, I'm gonna, I'm gonna find a company that can do the fulfillment because it's not something I want to do.
Mickey 58:34
Well, you know what, I think that's actually sage advice. And it's kind of as much as we were talking about paid traffic, I think there's a bigger lesson there. And that as a business, a lot of times we assume that we have to do it all. It has to be under my name, I have to be the expert or someone on my team has to be the expert. And it's the only way I can make money and build my business and grow. And that's not true. Affiliate relationships, referral relationships and partnerships are huge and a great thing to help you grow your business, especially if you're at that like awkward growth stage where you can't manage additional staff or you're not ready to, but you have clients who have demands and needs that you want to serve. And I love that I think it expands the mind to think "Okay, if I can't do this, let me brainstorm ways that someone else can but I can still benefit my clients can still benefit."
Jay 59:17
I'm right there right now, that awkward stage. That's where I'm at in business right now. I want to say yes to everybody and do all these things. But what, what I'm realizing is to get more business and to continue growing and to even get to the point where I can hire those people and get past that, I'm going to need more and better results. I'm going to need to show more and better results. My smile and my, my words, and my fancy flyers, or webpage is only going to get me so far. Right? What you know, I bet you'd be a good salesman, right? But what happens is what sells a lot better than that is if you have lots of case studies and lots of results and I had not focused on that. But here's the thing that I
Jay 1:00:00
I'm glad we're expanding on it, opening the mind on it, bringing in an outside specialist, sure you're gonna give up some profit? Absolutely. But when you bring on that specialist, give up that profit, in exchange for that case study, they're going to do a much better job, right? Sure, I'll do it myself, I'll do it myself. Because I don't want to spend the money, well spend the money, let them do it, do a better job than you could have done, and then take their results. And that becomes a case study for your agency. So you can still have the client relationship, right? But, but give up some of that profit and have people do it, you know, obviously, we have to remain profitable to you know, so the IRS, well, we have the IRS doesn't seem like it's just a hobby, right? We have to become, we have to show some profit at some point, or the IRS is like, this is not a business, this is a hobby, alright? But, you know, so we have to be profitable. But we can, we don't always have to have, you know, these, these big profit margins, especially if we're, if the return for that trade-off is way better results that are going to sell you and take you much further. And then before you know it, you're hiring that specialist onto your team, you know, then paying, you know, that outside agency, and that's if you really wanted to grow, I'm at the point where I'm like, I really don't want a team of 20, 30, 50 people I'm good with like me, and a bunch of specialists and I can talk to the customers and I don't need to grow much bigger than that. I still think it's scalable. If I'm doing it, all the work, it's not scalable. But if I'm just managing client relationships, well, I could manage a lot of client relationships. And, and maybe, maybe all I need is a couple of project managers or a couple of specialists on my team. And maybe my team is six people at some day full-time. Right? Well, that's great. That's I'm happy. I'm comfortable.
Mickey 01:01:45
Yeah, I think a lot of times we get caught up in the more and more and more mentality where it's like, oh, but it's not successful, unless I'm doing shoot figures. And I have a 20 person team and yada, yada get on it, we all have our opportunity to define what's good for us. And I think if we stay in our own lane and stop, you know, seeing the shiny objects, we'll, we'll all just feel a lot better about ourselves.
Jay 1:02:04
Shiny objects, si, shiny object syndrome is a real thing. And it goes and it just one, one more thing to circle back to though, when you said that is it comes back to success for me is my family's happy, we go on lots of fun little trips and vacations. Sometimes I bring my laptop, once in a while, I don't have to we go to the beach every year, we've got good food, we can afford the Costco membership. Like we could want more. And that's not all on me either. My wife has a decent job, but by no means are we like you know, I'm not running a 20 person, eight-figure agency. I don't need to though, as long as everybody's happy. And my life has a good balance. To me. That's That's my success. Some people that's not that wouldn't be enough. Right? Would I want a little bit more? You know? Sure. Of course I would. And do I firmly believe that I'll get there? I sure do. But, but at least I know that my bottom-out point right now is happiness and balance.
Mickey 01:03:03
Yeah, you know that if I learned anything from this, and I learned a lot, but the two big takeaways that I'm taking from this conversation are first and foremost is know your why know your goal, know what it is you're working for. Right? Are you working to live or living to work? What, what is that you want. And then the other side is you have to be scrappy.
Mickey 01:03:21
You have to be scrappy, and know that you can get through whatever is gonna come but you got to get through it. And the only way to do that is to fail and learn and grow and keep going. And so for me that just that mentality of know your why and be scrappy along the way, I think will serve me and everyone else who's listening.
Jay 01:03:40
I hope so. And thank you so much again, this is, this is awesome.
Mickey 01:03:43
Jay, for our listeners who are thinking, oh my goodness, I need more reviews. Man, I need to get more exposure. Maybe I need some ads to where can they find you and learn more about you.
Jay 01:03:54
There's a few ways that I'm going to give you, for reviews, I would just say just go to local5stars.com It's just local, the number five and then stars.com. But if you really just want to get in touch with me or learn about agency or any of the other stuff for visibility, or being a guest on meet the experts to tell your story. I'm happy to, happy to have them on have some established business owners on the show. Just go to jvimobile.com or jayvics.com. So either one of those will get you to me if you want to if you want to reach me jayvics.com is going to do it. That's my, my page.
Mickey 01:04:31
Awesome. I'll link them in the description below so everyone can find them. Jay, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure chatting with you and learning more about you, your life, your agency and all of the incredible lessons we got from today.
Jay 01:04:42
Thanks so much. If it helps one person then it was a success. I appreciate it.
Mickey 01:04:45
It did, it did. Absolutely.
Jay 01:04:47
Thank you.
Mickey 1:04:50 (Outro)
Thank you for joining me in another episode of the hustle as profit more podcast. Thanks to our season one sponsor, Sterre Pursuit Marketing and Communications. You can find show notes and resources at hustlelessprofitmorepodcast.com. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to rate and review us where you get your podcasts. Join us again next time to uncover more of the keys to achieving success, wealth, fulfillment and freedom. Thanks for listening!
