• Intro…
  • Story — bulk of pod
    • Didn’t say when he was a kid that he wanted to be in SEO
    • 6 years old…1st taste of entrepreneurship
      • magician…volunteer…balloon octopus
    • Magic books/kits –> doing paid gigs @ 9 years old
      • top hat
      • roofing company book him for a party…$25 + tip –> another party
    • Performing at a restaurant every Friday 13 – 18 years old
      • learn how to be adaptive
    • College: Minnesota –> Florida
      • right after high school
      • didn’t do magic for about 1.5 years
      • some entrepreneurial dabbling: eBay arbitrage
      • “that’s the real world”
      • did graduate
    • Marketing internship…Classified Ads vs Google…–> Paid
      • –> having to be in the office doing a lot of stuff he didn’t enjoy
        • like showing properties, etc
      • felt trapped
      • he liked marketing
      • ~2 years
      • still doing magic gigs on weekend
        • per gig: ~$150-$250 –> $250 – $4,000
        • making $14/hr – $20/hr @ real job
        • driving/travel lot of the time — max 45 min
        • total show time ~ 1-2 hours
        • making more than the professors by the end of college!
      • felt he “should be doing it”
      • night and weekend company calls
      • very stressed out
    • Father was a biz owner
      • expected to join his biz
    • Getting advice from others…Beware!
    • Finished up school…quit “real” job @ 2007
      • everyone at college thought he was insane
      • finance degree use
      • turned down post college jobs
      • fellow students thought he was nuts
      • a bit scary
      • some family thought he was nuts
    • Magician Biz
      • ~ 40 shows a month from about 2007 – 2014/2015 ish
      • A lot of the best gigs were from the internet
      • Took his little website & expanded it out to more areas
        • added pages for every city in Florida
      • Consider growing your side gig expanding beyond where you are now…
      • $4k Exxon 1.5 hour gig
      • A lot of his growth came from taking what worked and expanding
      • transition from magician to business owner mindset…
        • started referring extra biz from friends…
        • on the phone all day coordinating performers
        • didn’t want to be a coordinator…fallen into another job
      • Asked himself: “where was the value here?”
        • getting the leads was the value
        • burned out with coordinating all magicians
        • large magician agency spending $30k-$50k/m on adwords…
          • sent him an email…offered sample leads…responded right away…
          • first day sent him 100 leads…blew him away
          • lasted for several years
          • cherry picked the shows he wanted to do himself
          • ended up selling the website to this magician agency
    • Has applied the city page strategy over and over again
      • “service area mindset”…
    • started taking SEO Clients @ ~2013
      • SEO Only?
        • …to start just SEO services provided
        • …did a little bit of Adwords — didn’t like it
        • likes the art and science of SEO
      • started taking on clients when sending leads to the magician agency
      • slowed down shows heavily…
      • referral business…
      • “Aren’t ranked #1 in Google? Then we haven’t talked yet.”
      • Didn’t really take on a lot of clients…
      • Exploring and having fun with SEO…
      • Loves testing things…
    • ~2015 ~ 2 years into agency –> ~ 30 clients
      • fallen back into the grind…
      • spending a lot of time on the phone…
      • wasn’t setting boundaries…
        • web design/web tech
    • Son was born…
      • shift in mindset…
      • didn’t enjoy the agency…
      • let go of most agency clients…forward them to students
      • transitioned back into lead gen
        • + teaching & training — what he really likes
      • VA taking on a lot of his work
        • he was doing all the work himself before!
    • Now
      • don’t take on new clients
      • have a few large lead gen sites
      • passion is on teaching & training
      • working with outsourcers…platform to use his formulas + pair with people who he’s trained to work those formulas
      • the means to buy the nicer things in life…improve health
      • effectively buy back some of your time
    • Future Plans? 3-5 years
      • NOT the agency
      • Training & Teaching — expanding Modus8
      • First Full Time USA team member in July 2019
        • coordinating a lot of his stuff
      • Goal: bring people together that have formulas that work
        • bring the formulas onto the platform
    • If you had to start all over/other people starting now…
      • Find something that works
        • gigs @ a restaurant
        • SEO in a city
      • copy that working something…
        • in a way that others can do it
        • “formulas” — systems, documentation
    • Hiring Gig you know vs Gig you don’t know
      • systematize self vs using others who already know
      • taking into account the costs of building your own systems…
      • if can plugin and get it right now, will buy it from someone else
    • Modus8 development
      • ~$50k over about 10 months
      • –> scrapped code and started completely over ~ early 2017
      • invested 6 figures in the development
    • GMB’s affecting city page strategy?
      • city page strategies by itself isn’t the only thing that will drive
      • best is GMB + city page
  • Outro

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