The History of Internet Marketing #428

All right, welcome to another fun-filled episode of Marketing to Niche Podcast, episode three. All right. Boom. We do have a special guest. I feel like this is the first one I've been on, but this is number three. That's why I was calling you a very special guest. All right, I like it. Things happening without me. That's how things eventually need to work. Of course, Aaron's not here. Those of you who have tuned in to the first two episodes will notice you won't hear his voice, but we do have Chris. And we're rotating different people in and out, so this is just kind of a free-flowing format. Exactly. So, today's episode, we're focusing on actually the history of internet marketing. The history of internet marketing. I like it. And it's kind of a special episode as well because we are going to interview Chris. I know there's so many people out there that want to know more about Chris, what makes him tick, what he's done, how he has taken eWeb results and made it this massive company. Yeah. So, let me go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself, you know, family background, companies, everything. From the beginning. From the beginning of time. All the way up to Bobblehead. All right. All the way up to Bobblehead. We have the Bobbleheads over there. So, I started my first company in 1991. That company is SES Research. It's a carbon nanomaterial manufacturing business. I was still in college when I started it, and that business is still up and running. I think we'll probably touch on it maybe a little bit later in kind of this conversation. That business is, because it's a research, a business that serves the research market, it's really small, right? So, the market that's available is small and looking for additional opportunities. I bumped into a business partner, incredibly talented at graphic design, incredibly talented with computers. I'm a programmer by nature. And so, we said, hey, let's get together and start eWebStyle at the time. Got an interesting

story about that. I'll add that here in a second. And so, we started eWebStyle. And I guess the interesting story is, okay, first thing, you've got to make a website, right? You're now going to start marketing to people, make a website. And my business partner, who was also involved, is also one of the business partners in eWebStyle, Robert. We said, hey, the website's up. Go check it out. And the next day, he came back to us and said, I can't find it. And I'm like, okay, well, that's a problem. And it turns out, we had the domain name e-webStyle.com. And that was what we were going with, because eWebStyle, without the dash, was not available. And so, as soon as, and we, I know we had mentioned to him that there was a dash at some point. And the fact that even after mentioning it to him, that he couldn't find it, meant we had to get the domain without the dash. And so, we got that. That's a whole other interesting story, how we ended up getting in that. And probably shouldn't be told, actually, on camera. And you started eWebStyle in 1999, correct? In 1999. So, I always joke, like, Al Gore invented the internet, and then we started eWebStyle. So, that's how that goes. So, we're delivering websites, really good websites. And we had people who were interested. It turned out, it seemed like everybody we gave a website to, either the day we gave it to them, or exactly 30 days later, they came back to us and said, hey, great, thanks for the website, this great website. How do I get it on the first page of Google? And I actually had some pet projects in competitive industries, and so knew the process. Mostly what I knew about the process was that it's incredibly time-consuming, and it's actually gotten more time-consuming, more involved, more complicated, and there's more competition now than there was back then. So, we really kind of stayed away in the early days, because it was just

me and Javier. We stayed away from SEO, but kind of understood, if you understand business, that residual income is a smart decision for your business. So, how do you make residual income a smart decision for us, also a smart decision for customers, and the way you do that is by delivering value. So, if you ask somebody, what is the ROI of having a website, is there an answer? Like, is there an answer? It depends, right? That's the answer. Right? It depends. Well, it's kind of like a business card. If you ask somebody, hey, your business cards cost $150, what's the ROI on your business card? Do you even get money off a business card? Well, if you land a client, you just don't know. It's not arbitrary, but it's so... Nefarious, right? Like, you just do... Nefarious has an evil connotation. It's just unknown, right? It may be, if you don't have those business cards, you never get any business, right? With a website is, maybe I don't close. I think I heard you guys on a phone right now, a guy didn't even have a website for a long time, doesn't include it in his email thread. So, people, there are some people who can do business without websites, but most need them, and it's a credibility piece. Yes, yes. Switch the gears a little bit and turn that into, okay, now we're driving traffic to that website, and now we're responsible for making sure that traffic actually converts into customers, and you've got a fee per month, and it can be traced to specific customers per month. So, now you've got a traceable ROI, right? We believe that marketing is not an expense, it's an investment, right? And the way you invest is with internet marketing. Well, you know, I've been getting a lot of conversations with clients, a little bit bigger clients that are... We're competing against, like, PR firms, right? And so, we're talking about billboards, we're talking about radio ads, we're talking about magazine spreads, and the thing that I

keep going back to is internet marketing can be tracked. You can pivot, you can change direction on what you need. Like, if you're going to do a radio, do, like, Spotify or Pandora, where you can target your customers, but that's the real advantage, not just can you interact with customers now online, you can now target and see what happens with those marketing dollars. So, you really can be a lot more effective and change on the fly if you see things going a different way with, like, A-B testing and stuff. Yeah, it's a traceable ROI, right? And there's nothing more traceable than internet marketing. So, we had customers asking for internet marketing for SEO, you know, really, they asked for, how do I get on the first page of Google? That's SEO, right? Search Engine Optimization. So, a couple of years down the road, we ended up hiring our first kind of internet marketer, first search engine optimizer, and now, off we are, we're doing search engine optimization. And then, in 2009, you know, we started the podcast, the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. And that was, you know, an important part of eWebStyle history. How many episodes are we having? We're on episode, what is it? 428 will be today. 428 episodes. So, what is that? 224 hours of content, plus of content. Wow. More than 2 million downloads. It's a hit. We're at, like, 3, well, we've been totaling it up, right? What's... It's, like, 3.7 million. 3.7 million. And that's across, like, all platforms. Not just iTunes. Not just iTunes. So, I don't even think you can say we're the most popular on iTunes. We are the most popular... Internet marketing podcast. Internet marketing podcast. Period. In the known universe. Yes. In the known universe. So, yeah. So, that podcast was an important day. And then, I would say another important day was when we decided to change the name to eWebResult. So, I believe in self-development. I believe in, you know, constantly pushing the team to be better. And everybody

here believes in that. And so, I have a business coach. And one day, the business coach was, like, I think you need to change your name, right? We were eWebStyle at the time. And I'm, like, okay, well, what do you think it needs to be changed to? And he was, like, eWebResults. Because I keep, you know, talking to my customers, who ultimately become our customers. And they're, like, hey, they're focused on results. They deliver results. It's PPC results. It's search engine optimization results. It's website results. And their name is eWebStyle. He was, like, you need to be eWebResults. And it was one of those, you know, if somebody says, hey, change your business name, right? The guards go up, the shields up, a board, like, fight. And it didn't really last that long. I was, like, yeah, no, that's a good decision. So, now we are eWebResults. All right. So, we've got a background. We talked about the podcast, which I will ask. I want to know some more about the podcast later on. But what, you know, you've touched on some great things that you've done. What are your, like, greatest successes? Like, what, you know, top two, three, whatever. So, by far, the podcast, right? That's one of the greatest ones. If you read a book by Jim Collins, From Good to Great, he talks about, I think it's a 30-mile march. And that's in the context of, you know, going through Antarctica. There are days when you could do a lot more than 30. And there are days in Antarctica where 30 is a struggle. And so, if you just set this pace and you just keep hitting 30 over and over and over again and delivering over and over again, it's easier, you know, one day and maybe two days. And then it's really hard the next day, but you end up with a good balance. And it's the people, it's the explorers who push too hard too fast and then not hard enough when they need to. And so, I

really believe that our podcast is our 30-mile march. You know, it took a complete year, 12 months, before we got our first phone call from the podcast. Wow. Right? And so, that was, you know, obviously some commitment goes there. And we've talked kind of regularly about that podcast and the value it actually brings to our team, irrespective of the leads that come from it, right? And so, now it's our biggest lead generator. It's probably about 40% of our business comes through our podcast. Thank you, people who sign up and connect with us. And not only that too, like as an eWebResults team member, for me, like if I need, like, man, I'm learning something new, I can go back to the podcast and, you know, listen to the two experts here. And I'm like, oh, okay, wow, like, hey, that's how you do it. Like, it's always, it's, you know, it's a history document that's always going to be there and that I have or anyone else has to go back and say, hey, I wonder, you know, if they search this. And, of course, you know, they're all searchable, so it's great just, you know, even before Matt, but it's still, it's great that there's all this information out there for people to search. Yeah, so the value of the podcast is the resource that it generates. A lot of, you have a book that just came out. Show that book. That's Build Your Brand Mania. It's awesome. And one of the things that it talks about is you need to become a recognized expert in your field, right? And you know this enough to write a book about it. I know this from reading some bits and pieces here, like, okay, that makes sense. But the question is, one, how do you become an expert in your industry? And then, two, how do you show it, right? Because I fundamentally believe it's not that hard to become an expert. I mean, you need to read a ton. This guy reads more than anybody

I've ever met. And you've got to read a ton. And then I really believe the expertise sinks in when you teach, right? And so this podcast is really about sinking in the expertise that we have by teaching others what we know. So really, that's how we kind of define being, that's how we become the expert. And now how do you share it with other people? So let's say your environment was, we've done some training at the Small Business Association here in Houston. And if that's your environment, yes, you can share that. But it might not be as powerful as, hey, the way you know we're experts, and we can share this, is we have an internationally recognized podcast. We are internationally recognized experts at search engine optimization because of our podcast. So it really kind of folds together, and it's the method, it's the podium from which we teach, and also the sign or the badge that we wear as being internet marketing experts. Well, I feel like the podcast keeps us up to date, right? Like, we're always reading new articles trying to decide what we're going to talk about on the podcast. So we're always reading through the news, and we know what's going on, and we see where the market trends are happening. And I'm seeing updates all the time. Google, Facebook, they keep changing stuff. And if you're not on top of it, or you have someone that's feeding you that information, you know, you're going to get left behind. I mean, every time you log into something new, like you log into Google Hangouts, Google Voice, you look at Google AdWords, they change that format. Oh, the other day I was like, what just happened to this? Yeah. GDPR, right? Yeah, GDPR. It's a massive change. So, yeah, and we will read anywhere between five and ten articles before we even hone in on the articles that we're actually going to discuss in the podcast. So, yes, the expertise is even deeper than what we're doing. Or even write our

own. I mean, yeah, we're starting to do a lot of, like, guest posting, you know, and that's another way to create authority to somebody else's traffic, right? And it's mutually beneficial. And so there's a lot of ways to create yourself as an authority. I'm not wanting them all. Right again. Right again. Right. So, yeah, I think the greatest success really is the podcast and the value that it brings both to the company and to internet marketers in general. Yeah. So we talked about your greatest success. What is the one, and you may not have any failures. Right, right, right. But what's the one. We all do. Let's be realistic. What's your one failure that stands out the most? And would you go back and change it? So, because you kind of thankfully prepped me for this, and I was trying to think of failures. I've had other businesses. I wasn't prepped for this question. So why don't you take it? So I've had a number of businesses, and as I look at those businesses, I've closed some. I can think of one where I was actually selling radar jammers, right? So for police radar, you guys didn't know this. So for police radar, right? So the radar detector you have in your car, there are things called radar jammers. And we were selling them, not for long. It was probably six months or something. And really what caused us to stop selling them is I actually hooked up with a cop, and we did a test, and it didn't really seem to work. And at that point, I'm like, okay, I'm no longer comfortable doing this. Of course, the manufacturer has all these, well, if you're speeding up, and like all these reasons why it didn't work in that context. But I was like, no, I think this is, you know, I'm a little uncomfortable with this. It's not necessarily a failure because we actually didn't make our investment back, right? So everything that we put into that business worked, but it was time spent

on something not valuable. I'll say like within the context of eWebStyle and eWebResults, there have been some failures and things that I would absolutely change. And I think one of them is we recognized at one point in the company that we were spending too much time on each customer, right? We weren't actually tracing the employee time close enough, or at all, and therefore not close enough to understand where was our time going, who was getting the attention, and how much attention were they getting? And so we ended up in a situation where it was hard, very hard for us to be profitable because we were actually continually over-delivering to our customers. Now, I'd much rather be in an over-delivery standpoint, right? But if the company isn't making money because that piece isn't being managed properly, then we're not going to be able to, you can't over-deliver to a customer for too long if you're broke and out of business. So I would say definitely getting on, that was a mistake, not really tracking that time, and then getting on to where we are tracking time is important. And we're actually, we have something called Time Doctor, shout out to Time Doctor, for tracking time. It's great. It's great. But I really want to get... And by great, he means annoyingly good at keeping me on task. Well, I'm waiting for those RPGs, like where you basically build a character based on experience on like different clients who work, like the gamification of the time tracker. And I feel like the... That would be a game changer? Yeah. I like it. Yeah, I think it's, yeah. There's a, in fact, I literally just sent an article this morning to one of our customers. They were looking at gamifying their training program. And so I saw an article in the process of reviewing for the podcast that was about gamification and forwarded it over to her. So, yeah. All right. So, you know, we talked about why you started eWebResults, eWebStyle, kind of in your background. We

learned a little bit about the history of eWebResults, the podcast, all that. So what interested you, though? I don't think this question really came out as, what interested you in internet marketing? Right. So that's interesting. I can say, so I started the first company in 1991. I was still in college. And I studied mechanical engineering, actually, so I didn't study marketing or anything, even on the creative side of things. And I felt inside, even before I got out of college, that there probably wasn't a business in the city of Houston that I couldn't go in, bill a decent amount, and deliver more value to that company than I was billing. But I'm a 19-year-old kid, so how is that going to work? And I think, I tell that because it relates to how interested from a very early age I was at helping businesses, at being able to contribute to a business at a high level. It turns out there's a lot of serendipity in eWebResults, because at the time I bumped into Javier, he's one of the co-founders of the company, still one of the owners of the company. And I bumped into Javier, he's an incredibly talented graphic artist, really good on computers in general, and I had programming experience from the engineering days. I'm like, let's get together. And like I said, SES Research, good company, working, but a small market, so let's start this company. Well, that's one of the things, too, that we don't ever talk about. Right. We have a whole IT side, infrastructure side of the business, where we service clients 24-7, we have servers going, we do hosting, there's a lot of other things that we offer, even though we spearhead it with the internet marketing. With the internet marketing. Yeah. So, and that's an interesting story, how do we even get into internet marketing? We had, I mean, into IT, is we had customers who would like call us up and say, do you guys do IT? And we're like, well, no, not really, but what

do you need? Yeah. And they're like, well, I need a printer set up. And I'm like, well, we did that yesterday for ourselves. So, and then we would just start billing that. So, yeah, we definitely do IT. And I think you guys might have some appreciation for how that IT background helps really, like when we start having these email delivery problems, and when we start having, like, we're migrating one customer from one place to the other. I can't tell, like, just this week, we've got a customer who's working with another internet marketing agency who's come back to us for, because they're hosting with us, and their internet marketing agency is asking us to do stuff that they should know how to do. And we do, just because of that kind of IT background. So, yeah, IT is an important one. Well, even when we launched our own website this week, you know, knowing that we have the background and skills to do that, where we're not going to lose search rankings, the website's not going to go down. We transferred somebody else to us, too, where the other company, I mean, like... So, this is, yeah, a dirty pool. They decided to stop using a company that was burning them, basically, right? Like, that might be a reasonable way to describe it. They shifted, so they say, hey, we're going to start using this other company, and mysteriously, their website goes down, right? And so, we get it up in 24 hours. Yeah. And that's what's cool is when you tell people, we are all in-house. Yeah. We literally are all in-house. Yeah. When you see Javi walk out of here with a big cable thing of a fiber wire, you're like, oh, wow, this is... He's going to go do IT, he's going to go install cables at a... You don't know how many more questions I'm starting to get that. Right. Like, where's your team at? Who's base there? Yeah. And I'm like, we're all in-house, all the expertise are here, and that

makes a huge difference for a lot of clients. Well, I think it goes back to... So, we can talk about the industry in general a little bit. I think even when you started, my story was more about, hey, when we talk to new prospects, about 80% of them have been burned by one company, right? Yeah. And that's just no longer true. Like, it's just not true. When we talk to people now, about 90% have been burned by two or more companies, right? Like, it's just really bad. And so, some of that is the outsourced companies, and so they're trying to do it on the cheap, and it doesn't work. And so, like, hey, if I'm going to work with you guys, where is your team, right? And how is your team? And so, I believe in full disclosure, full honesty, we have employees. So, these are not outsourced people. These are employees in other countries, right? So, Venezuela is one, and Bulgaria is another, but they're employees. Like, they get... They've been here longer than me. They've been here longer than me. And you can text them day or night anytime, and they are on it. So, I don't even consider that like an outsource. It's taking advantage of the... And passing that on to the customer, the financial, by offshoring it, but they are employees. Yeah. All right. So, I want to dive a little bit deeper into the podcast. Okay. You know, like, I think, you know, you talked about kind of why you started it, but, like, there's still, I feel like there's still some more you can talk about the podcast. It's like, you know, I know that it's, it's, you're giving away, like, so, but, yeah. Basically. Yeah. Everything. So, I, okay, two, two stories. One, just because it's kind of cool. So, it's taken years, right? So, we're talking, what, 2009, 2018, so, nine years, and I finally met somebody who knew me from the podcast out in public. Yeah, that was recently. That was recently, right? So, I

have met up with podcast listeners, all right, punch in the face to Dean Calhoun. Punch in the face is a good thing, by the way. I have bumped into, I've actually intentionally met podcast listeners, but this is when I was sitting there, my wife and I were talking, we're at an event, and two people at the event came up, and he's like, do I know you? Like, how do I know you? And I'm like, well, I do have a podcast. That's how I know you. I was like, really? So, that's kind of cool. And then, you know, we get the call every now and then where people were like, hey, it's, I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity because I've been listening to the podcast so long. So, that's kind of the fun, the fun side of it. Yeah, we give a lot of information away on the podcast. So much so, and this is a, this is, I'm really kind of proud of this. We've got a podcast listener. His name is Manny. He's actually a customer of ours. And we had him on. He was like, so far, the only podcast listener that came on to actually give a testimonial. And he talked about how he took his traffic, I think it was in the hundreds of visits per month to the thousands and tens of thousands of visits per month, listening to the podcast and implementing the stuff that we said on the podcast. Well, I think that that's something really important, too. A lot of companies that are out there, they're very hard to get a hold of. Right. Okay, there's very limited access to try to get your voice heard if you're a client. And we're really geared towards an educational company. And so, people can call us and get on the phone with us. And we do these monthly results calls. Right. You know, the MRCs. And they have time with us. And we explain things. And we teach things. And they understand them. And they understand. And

I think that that's one of the biggest selling points or differentiating points for us versus other agencies is we really go above and beyond on the education part and teach them. Bring on a new client, actually. Talk to. I said, hey, I'll set everything up. And then we'll do, like, a profit plan or, like, a coaching session. Right. And I'll teach you how to use it. And then, you know, you run with it and come back if you need anything else. And he's like, well, how are you guys going to make any money? You know? And I was like, well, we really just want to help a lot of people. And we manage a lot of bigger clients. And we really do this as a kind of a give back to the community. You know? And we're coming out with a number of, like, different information-based products and stuff like that because we are education-oriented. Focused, yeah. And I think that that, gosh, I've heard that over and over again. In-house team. Yep. And then, like, you actually, like, take the time to, like, explain stuff to me. You know? So just to talk, like, our process, right, starts with a 15, sometimes 30-minute call. It goes into the kind of profit plan that you talked about. It's $4.99. It's risk-free, 100% refundable. I will personally refund your money if you don't get value out of that. And I can say that because I don't have to worry about it. Like, everyone who calls in and participates in that first 15 to 30-minute call, like, they're giving us reviews about how much valuable information they got from that first call. Right? Let alone if they move into the profit plan. A lot of people are like, hey, like, we usually go, like, 30, 40 minutes sometimes with these clients. They just call in and we're like, hey, like, we've got to keep going, but we need to. And we've done that a few times. Like, hey. There's more value to give, but we've got to.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's, you know, it takes time and, you know, time is money. And even talking about, like, example, like this morning, the guy that we moved his website and taking over, he called. He was, you know, he was a little upset about not being able to find something. And rather than just saying, oh, here it is, send it to him. We sat down. We talked on the phone. We walked in step by step. Hey, if this ever happens again, here's where you can find it. Don't ever worry about it. It's not, you know, we have backup. By the way, it was leads for the customer. Yes, yes. So, yeah. So, no wonder he was so concerned about it. Yeah. But it's, like, being able to take the time out and hearing his voice when he called at 8.45 this morning and talking to him and sending that to Chris. And then at 11 when he called and he was still in panic. And by the end of that phone call, he was like, he was calm. He was like, oh, hey, yeah, let me send you this other stuff, blah, blah, blah. Like, it's great that we have that relationship with the client because now they know, oh, wow, they're here for me. We're in their corner. Yeah. You know, we're in their corner. We get it. We know, you know. Yeah. If we lose leads, we freak out. Yeah. And if you want to talk about this a little bit, Chris, I know you don't want to push it too much, but you have a very successful e-commerce business. Yeah. So, e-commerce can be challenging, right? And I'm going to describe why sometimes it's challenging when an e-commerce lead comes in. So, e-commerce often fits into really two desperate categories. One is, it's like, it's a hobby and they want to grow it and they tend not to have kind of the revenue to invest in it. Or they've figured out the magic sauce and they're off and running and we can

help. Yeah. And actually do that and we may end up more in a consulting role. But there is this space in between where we can help companies grow. So, my original company as a carbon SES research, as a carbon nanomaterial manufacturing company, ended up in the supplement market because of one of the products that we have. And so, e-web results has helped SES research go from a half million dollar a year business to a 2.5 million dollar a year on online revenue sales, right? And those are through the kind of processes that we already know and implement regularly of proper remarketing, proper shopping cart, abandoned cart follow-up, marketing and display marketing in the right places, good search engine optimization, good conversion optimization on the website. So, yeah, we've got that capability. And again, it takes a broad base of skills to be able to do well in any e-commerce environment. And those e-commerce can be the environments where people know what they're looking for and are looking for it and we just need to do better than the competition. Or those environments where people maybe don't know that they're looking for your product, don't know you exist, don't know that they necessarily need your specific solution. We can help both of those, right? So, yeah, those are some of the more challenging ones and we get excited. So, since we're on the subject, and I'm sure because you're going to get a lot of questions on this one, hopefully, how come you, like, why do you trust e-web to do the marketing for SES? So, it's a good question. So, SES, yeah, went from, well, frankly, mostly because it's gone from half a million a year to two million. Obviously, I'm kind of spot-checking everything and it's a great place for us to actually test out to put some new employees to give them opportunities to work in this environment because I'm overseeing it personally because I'm vested in the other company. I mean, in SES research, yeah. So, the reason that I trust e-web

is because, like, I know what our capabilities are. Like, I know that we deliver for our customers, right? And so, it's one of the things that I just believe if you're not willing to put your money where your mouth is, then maybe your mouth should be somewhere else, right? Like, so, we're absolutely putting, so, I'm going to tell you that SES is one of the biggest or is the biggest customer of e-web results because of how much effort e-web results is putting towards SES and getting compensated for. So, yeah, I mean, I'm willing to put my money, my money, into e-web to buy the marketing that e-web delivers. So, yeah. That's awesome. Absolutely. All right. So, you know, looking back to when you started e-web results, what piece of advice would, if you had a time machine, you could get in there and go back and talk to younger Chris back in 1999 and say, hey, do this. Is there some advice that you would give him? Yeah. Well, and I haven't even talked about this. One piece of advice would be to find Mac faster. And buy stock in Google. Because Matt has joined us and really spearheaded a lot of things, a lot of capabilities inside of the company, hopped into the podcast and delivered on that, and also written a book. Brand mania. Build your brand mania. Well, helping us to achieve more and focus on the right things. And so, yeah, if I could go back, I would want to find Matt a lot faster. I would also, because I mentioned, you know, one of the potential flaws or biggest failures is not keeping track of time. I would want to keep track of time from day one, right? So even as it's Javier and I literally in my office, in my house, like we should have been keeping track of time there, we had actually had conversations that we knew that was what we should be doing, but really enforce it in ourselves so that then as the company grows,

it becomes part of the culture. Well, there was a couple of guys out of England that called in that wanted us to do some white labeling for them. And they were selling websites under, you know, under $500, under $1,000. And, you know, that was my advice to them is really look at how long it's taking you to build the website and what you're promising because you might be over-promising and to deliver at that level, you might lose money. Yep. And so I think it's really, really important in the ready, fire, aim, you know what it is, you know, find one product that you can do over and over and over again until you scale it, right? And scale that product. And I think, you know, when you end up, when you see people who are making websites for $500 or $1,000, you know, if you're in your pajamas in your home office, you can do that. And if you're not really keeping track of your time and not valuing your time enough, we, it's important for business owners not, you know, we advise our customers regularly, don't compete on price, right? Because I love this phrase, if you compete on price, you should never compete on price because there will always be somebody willing to go out of business faster than you. That's like the army. Yeah. Cheap is better. Yeah. You've got to be careful about that. No, you do. And the time thing too, I've never really been tracked on time until I got here. Right. Because it wasn't a big thing in the army. It was usually, I mean, there was deadlines. They knew what you were doing. But they, yeah. And so it's like, oh, hey, like, and being a broadcaster, like when I shot video, I had two hours to shoot it, edit it, and get it up on the web. And the reason being on that is because then it becomes a history document. It's not news. It's, you know, it's evergreen. Right. It turns into, you know, it's

not breaking news. And so, like, using Time Doctor here, you know, shout out to Time Doctor again. Yeah. But it's, it really helps me. And I think that I still, like, I still have a lot to learn on it because it's new for me. Right. But it is such a great tool because then I can look down there and I can see, oh, wow, I've spent way too much time. That was a lot longer than I thought. On this. On this. It always, it always seems to take longer than you think. Like, any time you're doing anything, it's like, oh, it's just going to be sounding fast. You're going to pop off, like, a three-minute email. Yeah. Like, 15, 20 minutes later, you're like, okay, send. And I always worry, too, because I'm, like, waiting for the day for Chris to come in and say, I see that you were looking at social media for three hours. But, no, I mean, it's great. And you need to do four. Yeah. Because it helps me, like, if I'm writing a blog, okay, well, I want to be able to write a blog in two hours. Right. And so, and I want, like, with the research and everything, because most people are three hours, so let me do two. You know, let me figure out, because then I can use that hour for something else more valuable within the day. Yeah. Because really, that's what it comes down to. If only there was another hour in the day. I wish. I always. Well, and that goes back to delivering, you know, yes, we have kind of ingrained in our culture to over-deliver and over-communicate with the customers, right? But if you do that to the detriment of the hours that you're billing for that customer, you just won't be able to do it forever. It's going to stop. And here's the point. And I think a lot of people come to us after they've gone to multiple different people that were cheaper, okay, and they're like, wow,

y'all are so expensive. Well, we do it right. Yeah. Right? And it's expensive to do it right, you know? You've got to have the expertise, and you've got to spend the right time. I can say, like, the market price for PPC right now, like, bare minimum, is too low. Oh, yeah. Right? You cannot manage a PPC account for $200 a month. No. You can't spend the time. I don't even, even if you're $50 an hour, that's only four hours a month that you're spending on that campaign. That's tight, right? So, people, you need to know that it's a time thing. It takes time. And the more expertise you're going to get applied to it, the more expensive the time is. Yeah, you're looking at the wrong numbers. You look at how much money you're going to make if we can get the leads down and all that and run the math that way, then going, oh, well, this is going to cost me tax. So, a business owner who's kind of focused on their own bottom line could look at it this way, right? So, if I hire this company and they're 20%, let's say, half the cost of this other company, yes, I might save 50%. But in this industry, you typically give three to six months to anybody, right? If you're giving them three or six months and it doesn't work, you've lost three to six months of additional revenue. Manny just chimed in. He said his traffic went from 200 visits per month to 100,000 visits per month. What's the lead generation? What's the revenue? And if you don't make that happen in those three to six months, the biggest expense isn't even what you're paying them or us. It's the value that you could have generated for your business. Adam, did I get you sick of that? No, no, I water one down the wrong through. So, if I, yeah. No, I think the opportunity cost is really what you want to look at and that's what you need to figure

out when you're going into it. And also, in PPC, people are like, hey, I want to spend 200 bucks a month. And it's like, there's certain thresholds. No, I mean, there's certain thresholds for different things that you want to do. And so, a lot of times people come to us and they're like, I want this or I want that. And the reason we started doing the profit plans is because it's basically like an hour or two of consulting on the front end to come up with the right strategy. I was actually on the phone with a guy today that was in a profit plan and, you know, he came in with a bunch of different ideas of like what direction that he wants to go. Ultimately, we left the call. I was going, I got to figure out what I want to do. Yeah, because we were trying to help formulate this strategy and we were kind of showing him where the pitfalls were and where the successes could be. And we gave him a better idea so he doesn't go down this rabbit hole and then lose a bunch of money in time and then figure and have nothing to show for it. And so, it's really, really important to come up with what that strategy is, find out where you want to go and then work backwards from that angle. And that's what we hope you do. Yeah, and that's the part of that. We call it from problems to profits. What problems are you having and what profits are you missing out on? Yeah. Well, uh... Good, you got your voice back. Or most of it. I was going to ask you if there's anything else you'd like to add, but I think we've covered... Yeah. I feel like I've gotten to know you better. Yeah. In this process. Yeah. I didn't know that I was a radar jammer or something. No, I didn't know that. I didn't know a lot of this stuff. No, and I just think everything's great and

now our listeners, you know, are going to have a better idea and, you know, like the big thing, too, is like, you know, showing that you trust eWeb results with your other company that, you know, you start at 91, so it's even older than eWeb. Yeah. That's the best thing you could have. If you're starting an e-commerce business to have an internet marketing company that you own and that you can put your resources to, I mean, really, that's a lot of our strategy is we're managing some bigger clients, we're helping people out, and then we're using the internet marketing experience we have to start other businesses and make more revenue streams. And you'll see more with info products, you're going to see more with a lot. The book being kind of the, I don't know, almost the tipping point of the product side of things. Well, all right. That wraps up another episode of Marketing to Niches podcast. I like it. Number three. Next week. I still don't know how you made two, and I'm not on. Next week, maybe Chris will be here. You're in Russia. Yeah, then the other one, you were on a phone call. Oh, no. No, thanks again for, you know, for letting, sit down and interview you and find out, you know, what internet marketing, the history of internet marketing from your standpoint. We'll have to do another one and dive into your other company and how you can, I think probably people have an interest in that. No, I mean, with this podcast, that's what's great is we can, we can go. We can go into different niches, so we, you know, we can look at plumbing, you can look at real estate. Yeah. So in C60, SES Research. Yeah. Shameless plug, sorry. Thank you. I'll pay you later. But anyways, you know, that wraps up our episode, so. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.