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Welcome back to another episode of Never Been Promoted. Hey, I’m your host Thomas Helfrich. Thanks for showing up today and listening. We are joined today by a Jeffro Fulkerson. Jeffro, we're gonna quickly say hello. Hello. Hello. We're gonna talk about FroBro today. A FroBro. God. Listen, guys. I just had the flu. Mister. Yeah. It's gonna be bad. Just so you know, I'm I'm gonna not make sense halfway through this. And that's probably pretty normal, but I'm gonna mumble a bit as well. So but before we come back to Jeffro, if this is your first time here, thanks for showing up. Hope it's the first of many. And if you've been here before, I do hope you continue to come back. You know, our mission is to help a 1000000 entrepreneurs just get better at entrepreneurship, help them unleash that entrepreneur, help them cut the tie, explaining the logo a bit, Cut the tide of the things that hold you back. The excuses you make. The fears that you won't let go for some reason. These are the things you're gonna need to really be successful in entrepreneurship. And so I wanna make sure that, you know, you learn from micro mentoring, which is what we do in this podcast. You learn from someone's journey, and such. So before we get going, please get out there, do the 5 star review if you like the podcast, on Apple, Spotify, or Amazon and follow the YouTube channel if you can. It never been promoted. But let's get back. Jeffro, thanks for joining us today.
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Yeah. I'm excited to be here.
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Now if you guys are listening, you don't see this. He has gorgeous hair, and the fact that he calls it Fro Bro Web Technologies. I think has real related to his amazing hair. Like, it's like it's something like, it looks fake. It's so good.
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But it's all real. It's the Greek heritage. You know, that nice, curly, thick hair.
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I mean, it's big. It's if you've if you've ever seen the movie Fletch, they're like, you know, he's 6 foot, 6 foot 7 with his fro. I think you're probably like like you get a good 4 inches out of that. Yeah, pretty good. Maybe 3. That's sure. You would take it you would take a moment and just what do you know it before you do that? Let's do a small icebreaker your hair is not enough for the icebreaker. I think what we need to do here is probably think about what's the weirdest smell you've ever smelled?
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Well, that's an interesting question. Weirdest smell. Well, nothing jumped to mind. I mean, I've smelled some bad smells or stale smells. I don't know. I feel like maybe on a a hike or something, going into a cave, just some blast of some stale air, that can be pretty weird.
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A blast of stale air. If you go deep enough in a cave, you guys have ever gone caving. The it's weird. Gone that deep. But it like, if you ever got, like, just slightly deep enough in just the air compresses and it gets very hard to breathe. Yeah. It's just I know what you mean. It is a good smell. Yeah. Yeah. My mind was at LA Fitness walking by the the steam room and it opened. It smelled like a mix of onion, b o, curry and feet. It's only I can spread. And it's something you don't you know, some things you can unsee, you can unsmell that.
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It's just permanently seared in your nostrils. I just don't even wanna
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I don't even know what to say about it. I just I just avoid that area of the gym. A 100%. Can't can't do it again. You wanna talk about your background a little bit? Your your guest your origin story?
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Sure. Yeah. And my background doesn't involve a lot of just weird smells, fortunately. But I always, had kind of the entrepreneurial itch. Like, I always wanna do things and make money. I had a lemonade stand and, you know, we had bikers that would go past our house early in the morning right on the main street. So I'd sell lemonade and chocolate chip cookies or coffee or whatever. And then in in high school too, I would go to we'd have a Smart and Fine. It looks like a bulk store, and I'd buy the candy and Cracker Jacks and things like that, the king-size candy bars. And I'd sell it to my classmates to try and make money to buy a new CD player for my car. So, I I was always doing stuff like that and, always trying to, do things my own way with school projects and stuff. And, you know, people are making dioramas. I'm like, come on. Can I make a video? You know, would that be cool? So it's it's kinda fun because I have that creative side, but I I'm into technology and just the entrepreneurial spirit is there. And so, you know, running my own thing feels very natural at this point. I started FroBro originally as a side thing because I had a I was working at a startup at the time, but I would do websites here and there. So I started FroBro, and then over time, I kinda shifted to that to be my main thing and kinda built it up into more of a full digital marketing company and doing more than just websites. So, now I've got my own podcast trying to educate people on digital marketing and helping them understand why it's important. Especially these days, you can't ignore it anymore. Like, you used to be able to get away without it, but you can't ignore it now.
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So Oh, you can. It's just not advisable. Correct. It's a big space. Right? So we're you know, I'm I'm an marketing agency as well, you know, and it's like, you you know, it's one agency typically can't do everything for you. For you guys, like, how did you kind of pick your niche?
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Well, it kind of lined up with my background. So I'm a programmer by trade. Done a lot of work on servers and websites and web applications. And so it made sense for me to kind of live there, because I know and understand websites. I can make good websites. I can make them load fast. So there's tons of web designers out there that can make a website look good, but they don't know how to optimize the back end. They don't know how to do the integrations or, you know, customize it too much. So I can do both. Right? I can make it look good. I can have my copywriters write good copy, but then I can also make it load fast, optimize, you know, set of caches or whatever else I need to do, customize it, integrate it with their CRM or their other tools, whether that's HIPAA compliant, the patient intake forms or anything like that. Like, finding someone who's able to do that is that's that's what makes me stand out. Right? Because I know the technology side, and I can speak engineering and sales. You know, I can talk to normal people and still understand how this stuff works.
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Yeah. Oh, and that's and I think that's the lesson, right, is that you find it if you're a marketer or whatever your business ends up being marketing or anything, you draw upon something in your past and then serve a ancillary market or something in the same way. I think it's sometimes it's very hard to completely reinvent yourself into something new. Right. Slower path for sure. What do you, like, currently love about what you're doing and maybe what you is not so lovable?
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Well, I love that I get to help transform people's online, billboard, essentially. Right? You know? Because there's some great companies that have been around for a while. They're reliable. They do good work. You know, they show me all their before and after pictures. I'm like, wow. That's amazing. Then you look at their website, and you're like, that's terrible. I wouldn't hire you. And so then I get to take these people and show that to the world. Right? Churn it create a website that's gonna work for them from a business perspective so they can stay in business and help more people, but also let people know, hey. This is how good they are. You know? They're worth the price they're asking. They can do what they're promising. They're not just some fly by night organization. They're here to stay. And so kind of creating that is the fun part. And then I get to work with them long term most of the time because then they host with me. I maintain their site. Sometimes I help them do SEO to get more business or whatever it Sometimes I help them do SEO to get more business or whatever it is. But I think that's a great way to start the relationship is by kind of elevating them in the eyes of the world. Awesome. And and, you know, marketing agency is a tough business.
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What do you find maybe the most challenging in the business?
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I think the most challenging thing is that a lot of people have had bad experiences with other agencies. And so now they view every other marketing agency with this lens of, oh, you're just trying to screw me over. You're just trying to lock me into a contract and milk me for as much money as you can and just tell me, oh, yeah. It's working. Just gotta wait a couple more months, you know, without showing real progress. And so when you've gotta overcome that objection every time, I think that's a challenging aspect of it because, like, I know we can do good work. I've got examples to prove it. But even if I say that, there's people still gonna doubt that. And Yeah. Yeah. That that's a big challenge.
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Well, it it's a huge it's a it's a and it's not so much, I think I think you just went to the super negative side. We're like thinking you're intentionally out there to try to, you know, just take money and milk it. I think a lot of times it's peep the service providers, market providers don't really know what they're doing. And so so I think that's the problem is they're actually sincerely trying their best. Mhmm. They're just not, you know, but but there's also there's a flip side of that too, right, is that I see, hey, we can execute everything perfectly, But it and maybe a good example, like, is is you're working with another solopreneur. Downstream, their stuff's a little broken. Like, they're not very good on camera, but they think they are. They're not very good at selling, but they think they are. They their offer's all over the map. It's not clear what the hell they even do, and they're, like, mad that you can't get someone in a meeting. Like, but I don't even know what you do, and you don't you can't explain to me in 30 seconds. Like like, there's there's a lot of fault that goes downstream in in
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at the same time, but sometimes some of the agencies not knowing what they're doing exactly. But you mix those two things together, it's not gonna work for sure. Yeah. And and in that same line of thought, you know, a lot of people expect there to be a quick fix when you hire a marketing agency. Right? Like, oh, okay. If you update my website, then we're good. Right? Right. You know, then I can say buy, and I'll just have customers forever. But it's like, no. No. We fixed one problem. Okay. Now your website might convert better. Now we gotta look at your ad campaigns, or maybe we gotta look at your SEO to get people to the website. You know, there's there's different layers, and people don't necessarily understand how it all works together. And they just think, oh, if I just fix this one thing, I'm golden.
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Yeah. And and and it's funny because especially in specific marketing, a lot of times, the first question asked is, what are you gonna do with the website? So, for example, like, you know, my agency focuses on LinkedIn a lot right now, and it's we can't advertise that because we're not, you know, LinkedIn's a trademark, so you can't run a Google ad. Right? And so it's like, how do you leverage the website in your sales cycle? And for some, it's just to get some people check you out, you check out. It's that simple. You don't need SEO. You don't need just be very clear what you do, what you do for people and leave it at that. And then your other marketing channels get there. I think some people don't realize that you have to understand how it's going to be leveraged because if you're you know, if it's a lead magnet type of a site and set it up as such, don't make the giant big, you know what I mean? Like, so I do do you have that problem as well where you're, you know, sometimes people come in with an envision of their site. You're like, but that's completely opposite counterintuitive to what you're trying to actually accomplish with it.
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Yes. Definitely. Some people know just enough to be dangerous or they think they're better at design than they really are. And, you know, I'll come back with the mock up and, like, here you go. This is way better than your old site, and, you know, this is what it is gonna look like. And then they're like, okay. That's good. But can we move this over here and make it 5 times as big and change this font color over here? And I'm like, I mean, we shouldn't. Like, why hire me if you're just gonna undo all of my, you know, work and non experience?
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So that can also be a factor. I I know when I I've been through plenty of website people. The the guy that we currently work with to do this for his firm, I said, if you don't tell me exactly what we need to do and why, I'm influential enough to influence you badly like I have every other person I've brought on ahead of you. I go, because I'll I'll just say what I think and it's not right. And I go, so you gotta be able to convince me and tell me no, we're doing it this for this reason. And it's funny because if you don't have that kind of control over your own domain, someone who is influential or just can see through that will just, you know, anyway, I think that's a that's a big piece is so, you know, if you can push back as a as a developer perspective and what you're trying to build for people, then I think that uncomfortable ness that you might have with the customer is much appreciated because you're like, you hired me to be the expert. If you want to influence, we can, but it's not going to work. So where do you wanna go? And sometimes that's a hard convo and and and, you know, you lose customers sometimes, but those you're gonna lose anyway because they were they're chasing over and they're they're If I wanna put my name on a website,
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I wanna be proud of it. Because if if the customer ends up changing all this stuff, I'm not gonna put it in my pro portfolio because, basically, I didn't do that work, and I I don't like it. So,
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yeah, I wanna be able to would recommend it. It's not what I Exactly. And what's this pivot here for a second here? I think you're you describe kind of the you've always had this calling, but do you remember an actual moment when you were like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur initially and then you said to go work for somewhere? Usually that calling comes back and it's like, yep. Now is the moment I'm gonna do it. So so can you and I see this almost every entrepreneur. So if you don't have it, I'd be surprised. But do do you have something similar where you ignored the first one and then you came back? Yeah. I mean, I as a kid, like I said, I was always doing this stuff. And so, like, like, that's what I wanted to keep doing because it's fun.
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But, you know, the path and what we're taught is you go to school, go to college, get a job. Right? And so, I mean, as a kid, my grandpa was like, you're gonna be a millionaire by the time you're 30. Like, I wasn't. But, you know, he saw the way I did things as I was into computers and entrepreneurial, and so that was his prediction. And, like, I, of course, wanted to do that. But I did go to school, graduated with a computer science degree, got a job working on cell phone games. And it's I don't know. It's hard to explain if I was just a combination of lacking my own ability as a programmer or just, you know, needed more experience first, and I did it. But then I, ended up taking a job not related to programming. This is something I was also interested back at the the university working with college students. And then I went back to programming so I can make more money because I was gonna get married. And I always had something on the side. Like, that's the thing. Like, the edge was always there. Like, even though I was doing a regular job, I would try selling stuff on Amazon, or I was starting a blog and trying to monetize it through, ebook or whatever it was. And so that was always there in the background, but I never had the full commitment to it until FroBro where I was like, the mentality shifted. I'm like, I have to burn the ships and just go full bore. Right? Otherwise, it's not gonna happen. And so, it makes a huge difference. Yeah. It really does.
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Have you, already pivoted your company a few times? Like, well, that's not gonna work. Like, you're like, alright. Let's do this. Let's do that. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've tried all sorts of different campaigns and offers, and I think that's
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initially, you know, it's frustrating. Like, why didn't that work? I thought that was gonna work. But it I think it's part of the process. Right? You gotta try stuff that the market wants and find out what the audience responds to, so you don't have to get it right the first time. You just gotta keep trying stuff, and listening to feedback and iterating until you get there. So I started as a freelancer. Right? And then I add additional services because I realized, oh, my clients don't want just a new website. They want more customers. Right? So and so I add an SEO or this or that or get better copywriting. And and so it evolves over time, and they add on additional services to kind of support that endeavor, so it kinda grows and evolves over time.
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You're you're, you sit on something very important. People don't want a website. People don't want social media. What they want is revenue. They want customers. Now some people just want vanity, but it usually ties to revenue. I want followers because I want to monetize my ads. I want to sell them a product or something and and this is a big piece. I think from out there when you're building any product or service is that you have to sell people what they want Like, oh, you want more customers? Well, we do that through great fast websites with SEO and other things. Right? Like, oh, you want a new website? The first question is obviously why. But getting on the same page for that, I think it's so important for the kind of thing you offer because if you're not tying it to a central purpose of let's make pretty to make pretty like what's the point of that right? Yeah, you know, I like you evidence that so sometimes like, you know, people like, oh Landing Pages. You see some Landing Pages are just they look horrible. But then you talk to the people who only like oh that one kills that one does like, you know, 10,000,000 a month. You're like and I struggle with that because it's like man that's out of brand. I'm like, who cares? It makes 10 minutes. Oh my god, that's good point. But that sometimes is the mentality is like, what do you really want? Do you want to look good or you want to make money? And sometimes the ugly stuff looks anyway, so I'm I'm on a tangent a bit there, but that do you see that? Do you could you continue to struggle with that with some of your customers, even your own offerings of doing something because it looks good versus that's actually not aligned to a value that why people buy?
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Yeah. And my mentality is that, you should do the messaging first. Right? You know, that's why those ugly sales pages perform well is because they spend all their time on getting the messaging right, knowing the customer, getting the offer right. That's why it performs. Right? That's the most important piece. So, yes, you could go back and make it pretty after that. It's not gonna make a huge impact in your conversion rate because it's the messaging that matters. But if you wanna simultaneously support your brand image, right, and your perception in the marketplace, to justify your prices or whatever, you can make it look good. You just don't do that first. Right? It's the engineering mentality. Form follows function. Right? So get the functionality right. That in this case, for a sales page, it's getting the copy right, knowing your customer, so that it works. Then you can add, you know, stuff. You don't wanna get so flashy that you're distracted. But if you can get it on brand and still not mess up your messaging, then you can have a little bit of both. But the messaging is the most important piece. No doubt. What what's, one of your best success stories? I guess it depends what, you know, the the end goals are. I I mentioned earlier a site where we did HIPAA compliant patient intake forms. That was a pretty cool one because it's a WordPress website. Before, they just had all paper forms. Right? And so they'd have patients fill stuff out, bring it into the office. And then, of course, with COVID, that was a lot harder because people weren't going into the office. Nobody has fax machines anymore, and it's hard to, like, scan it. And so we built them patient intake forms through WordPress, and it was a whole HIPAA compliant setup so that people could fill it out online, submit it, and then their PCCs could process it. Right? And, so that was cool. And we had other integrations for that site as well, with the, you know, what happens after that and and CRM and all that. But that was a really cool one. I've been working with them for several years now, on, obviously, the hosting the website and doing SEO. And they've now changed, electronic medical record systems that had patient intake stuff built in, so we kinda switched off the WordPress ones. But it's kind of that evolving process of working with them because your website is a tool. Right? It's never done. You're always making it better and helping it meet the needs of the company where they're at today and what the customers need today. So I like that one because they have the same mentality, and they're open to changing it and evolving it over time. Because some clients, like, you build them a website once, never hear from again for years, and it goes stale again. Because you didn't accomplish their goal, and and then they fire they quietly fired you. Right.
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Is there a is there somebody who shouldn't build a website?
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Somebody who shouldn't build a website. Well, I think you have to have a website these days. Otherwise, you don't exist. So even having a mediocre website is better than not having a website, in my opinion. But I also would reiterate that the website's never done. So start with the mediocre one and make it better. Whether that means hire someone to help you or go through some courses, figure out how to make it better, listen to podcasts, figure out what you need, and, like, oh, that's that's what I'm doing wrong. I need to fix this over here. Like, okay. Make it better. Just start and then iterate.
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Yeah. What's, what's the biggest, maybe, tip you can give just from the marketing standpoint of of websites? Like, give maybe, you know, the list is, like, you know, you're redoing a site. Maybe it's your first one. What's the 1, 2, 3 every time?
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I always wanna start with understanding what the site's for. Like, what's the goal of the website? So in some cases, it is to get customers. In other cases, it's to get investors. Sometimes, it's to provide resources to existing clients. And depending on what the answer is to that question, I'm gonna approach the site a little bit differently. Right? If I'm just serving my existing clients, okay, I don't need to spend as much time on compelling marketing copy. I just need to make it look nice and easy to navigate so they can get in and get what they need. Right? If I'm making a site for investors, then I'm gonna be keeping that in mind as we write the messaging and including different things on the site that they might care about. Right? And most of the time when we're working with a business, it's they want sales, and so we're trying to cater to that to make sure the website is optimized for conversions. And, so step 1, answer the question of why. Step 2 is figure out your overall plan and how the website fits into it because, the website is kind of the hub of all your marketing efforts. Everything points to it, and you do need to do it right first before spending money on campaigns. Otherwise, you're not gonna you're you're just gonna waste a bunch of money. So figure out what the website is, do the messaging first, then make it look good, then you can run your campaigns to it. So just make sure you do things in the right order and understand the different levels that you know, changing the website isn't the silver bullet that's gonna fix all your problems. It's one piece of the puzzle. And so just go on one piece at a time to knock it out, then you'll be fine. Right? And I agree with you. The messaging do it backwards first. So is SEO part of your strategy
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or not? If it is, start with that. Right. Your messaging of what you want to say and how because there's a technical pieces, right? I think some people don't realize, like what you put in your H1, your header is sometimes more important than the image. Right. Because of how people And so some of the technical aspects of this, I think, are super important as well from I think a lot of people come from a design stand for it first. And I and I've been one who's been guilty of that. And it just kills performance. It kills it. It doesn't actually accomplish what you need, and it then ends up being, just overall bad experience. Right. If it loads too slowly for someone who doesn't have a high speed Internet connection, they're gonna leave. They're gonna go back to Google and click on the next site. Well, in Google, like, right now, so the new SEO, right, it's really it's a mix of technical, high technical with beyond. Right? What you're saying in podcast, video, your blogs, your social media, and it's surrounded around the company. So it's it's, I think, a little more complex for SEO in the future.
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Yeah. There's a ton of different factors that Google looks at, to determine your ranking. I was gonna say one other thing related to SEO as well because you're talking about, you know, putting keywords in your h one tags and stuff. And that's important. The thing you wanna remember as you're doing that is that messaging for humans is the most important. So you don't wanna sabotage all that copywriting that you've done, those sales messages, in order to appease the robots or to get a higher ranking. Right? Yeah. So you gotta walk that fine line, find the balance of making sure my messaging is gonna convert a person when they land on the page and not make them think, oh, that was written for a search engine. Right?
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So Well, I think you're you're right there. And and so there's there's differences for people to get into your site and then if they're on some kind of blog of where you're trying to immediately direct them away from the you know, after they've read a paragraph or 2, you're like, hey. Check this out. This should immediately help you where you're like, get them away from the SEO blog to here's our landing page. It explains exactly what you want. So, maybe what can lead us just kind of pivot forward here a little bit. So, if you looked ahead, right, and you look to, you know, fast forward a year And I I and I and reflect back now. What did you accomplish? What are you proud of?
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So I will be looking back and saying I'm proud of how much I've grown revenue because that means I brought in more clients that trust me and my work and are sticking with me, hosting with me, doing maintenance and SEO. And I will also have expanded my team slightly, so that I can handle more clients and make sure things aren't falling through the cracks. So that that's kind of what I've been working on, and we're we're moving in that direction.
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Falling through the cracks, are you having troubles with your, your back end operation scheduling? Tell me tell me what you mean by that. Because I think that happens a lot as your scale, like, you miss emails. You're like, not miss deliverables, but you miss the follow-up, the communication.
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Right. What do you and I I hit that because every company goes through it. So that's why I'm Sure. Yeah. No. And and I think what a lot of people do, and I did this too, is I kind of I wanna jump to scaling before I'm ready for it. And so I I almost skipped the growth phase. And when you do that, you can get yourself into debt and cause other problems. But at the same time, you're gonna find the holes that you need to plug in your business. Right? So, that's what I did last year is I tried to go too fast, and I found some things that, oh, okay. I need to do this better. I need to make sure this is in place before ramping up again. So I scaled back, and then I've been slowly building back up again doing some other things right that I got wrong, last time. So, yeah, things like making sure the fulfillment can keep up with the quantity of new clients coming in. Yep.
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That's one piece of it. Yeah. Go ahead. Please continue.
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Because, you know, there's the chicken and egg problem. Right? You can expand your team. So, like, okay. I can handle a lot of capacity. But then if it comes in more slowly, you're just paying this team and you're leaking money. Right? Whereas if bunch of people sign up all at once and your team's not big enough, now you're scrambling to hire and keep up and keep your promises to say I can finish this in a month or whatever. So those are the type of type of things that you gotta fix. Like, even if I know how to do it, how to make the better website, like, literally doing it, there's not enough time of the day. So I have to have systems in place and a team in place that can follow those systems in order to deliver.
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You're you're, this is the problem of a services based company, period. Right. Is is hunting and delivering, and and the only way to get out of it is if you're not doing any of the work except maybe the sales piece and then later or not the sales. Like, so you have to get out of the moment. And and where that happens sometimes is you this is where margins get cut, and this is where people hate it because it's like, now I gotta go find a third party that I can trust that I'm only making 12% on margin, where if I had my team, I'd be making 60. Right. And you're like, but that's a scalable model in your in your mind. You're like, no, I want to make 60% of margin. Well, you can't because you'll have to carry costs and unless you have an endless supply of people coming in. And so so part of the question is, what kind of business do you want to do? Like, I want one that makes me, you know, I want a net 10 k a month that I get to take home. And after taxes, that's what I have. And I'm good. And it's like I'm never gonna get rich, but I'm going to be I'm going to be in a great spot. Right? That mentality is what breaks entrepreneurs minds is like you're trying to get to this, you know, legendary level of something and you're like, can't get there. So I've you've you've you have that feeling sometimes of of what kind of company do I want? What do I really need from this? And and why the hell am I in this business if that's what I want?
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Yeah. Well, you gotta look long term. Right? So instead of saying, okay. I want 60% of this $200,000 pie. Like, no. No. I I'd be okay with 2% of a $100,000,000 pie. Right? Like, that's the direction you wanna go in. And, of course, when you bring people on, you give them ownership of the company or responsibilities. You're sacrificing a little bit of those margins, but that's what allows you to grow to that level. So if you've ever had the thought, like, I wanna be a x $1,000,000 company, you literally can't do it by yourself. There's not enough hours in the day. And so, like If you can't very you have a much bigger company than you think. Right. And I was gonna say there's a very small percentage revenue yourself. Your company's worth a lot. I assure you. Right. There's a few, you know, independent niches that, you know, you can do really well by yourself. LinkedIn actually is 1. If there are some people on LinkedIn doing really well. But at yeah. You have the opportunity to go bigger with other people. Yeah. Not a 100,000,000. But
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but yeah. So you go ahead. No. I was what's finish your thought there because I I was gonna follow on that. Like, go ahead.
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Yeah. It's really just like you said. What do you want this company to be? Is it just you know, instead of working for someone else, you're working for yourself? Okay. That's great. Some people want that. And, you know, flexibility is amazing. Right? But if you really do wanna get to that point of freedom, time freedom,
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then you're gonna have to hand stuff off and trust people and train people to get to that point. You're a 100% right. And and, listen, I I struggle with myself. Right? So I've started I have an agency. It it does, you know, deep 6 figures a year. And I look at it going, is that really what I want? And people would be like, you're out of your mind. Like, why would you even question that? Like, just keep repeating it. And I'm like, but it it's not getting me the the freedom of time that I that I need. I'd rather focus maybe a lot more energy on this podcast and building a community of entrepreneurs, all this other stuff. So it's interesting because you'll come to these points of, like, but what could I build that would significantly reduce my time and still be able to produce a business? And so I I guess one of the advice I give out because I'm in the thick of this right now where I'm like, alright. Well, that one, you know, if I could do less customers on that one and then have this other thing that spins up here, you know, that makes this much money and then you're starting to kind of diversify. That's extremely stressful and a lot of entrepreneurs go through that and they can't do multiple ones. But I I I think I come back to that because you're you're you're right. What do you want your company to be? And listen, if you make a 150 k a year and you you break out and you go make your own and you're you're out there and you're grossing, you know, 12, 13 k a month, be happy with that. You just created your job. Now are you gonna be a retire? Like, you're gonna be the same, but we are probably gonna be you're gonna still have to work. But the truth is you just created your own job. You know? And no one's taking that away from you except you. There's no layoff. There's no so some of its mindfulness and stuff. So, anyway, I'll get off that because I think that's a big challenge of entrepreneurship. Is this Alex Hermozy, Elon Musk, these guys who are wildly successful and they're like, oh, you know, it's easy. Just do that. It's not the truth is if you could replace your income you're killing it if you can do more than you used to you're really killing it. And if you're one of those few lucky few that exit and have a you know, 7 figure exit awesome for you. It's like that's so rare. It's a it's it really is rare. It's it's I don't think it's as common as people believe. So I think just getting your I'm gonna stop talking. This is your podcast. What keeps you up at night? The side your hair.
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I was gonna look in the morning. Actually, the hair doesn't keep me up. It does get flat in the back, though, if I lay down in the back. That's what I'm saying. You're gonna flush that out. And if you're late, you're like, oh, that's hours of work. Yeah. But I think the things that keep me up at night are when I've, like, last year, I mentioned, you know, that growth attempt. Right? I had, you know, debt that was building up because the team was too big, and then the film filling it was taking longer. And so those are the things that were keeping me up because I knew there were these problems, and I had to figure out how to fix them. Right? And that was very stressful. Now having come through that, obviously, I learned a ton of lessons from it, but I'm still slowly paying the, paying that off. Right? The the pain of going through that and, you know, the debt too. Like, it still takes a while to work back through it. And so that's why I'm going a little more slowly this time, making sure I do it right this time and not just I think we get so impatient. Right? We have this picture in our head of what entrepreneurship is supposed to be and, like, I'm not there yet. I gotta move faster. I I see all these guys on social media, like you mentioned, Alex Rosie, whatever. They're doing all these things. How come I'm not there yet? And so we push. But if you're skipping steps and you're not ready for it, you know, it's gonna come back to bite you. So the things that keep me up at night are when I've made those mistakes, and just trying to understand how to fix them.
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But, yeah, it's all worth it eventually. And maybe dive into that a little bit because I if you're okay with it, because this is, this is a thing that puckers everyone up is when you can't make bills, you're you're you're like, oh, god. If if I don't do this right, I'll have to shut every well, not really shut everything down. You have to restart. Like, I'll have to get rid of people and just do it myself for a while again and I'm back. Do you want to and that and that's a horrible feeling because, like, I I feel like every year I face this as a marketing agency as well where and I'm going right here, we're in May 2/24. I'm going through a kind of cut the fat moment of, hey, how can I reduce cost by 3, 4 k a month? Because a few customers have left. You're like, oh, wow. You know, unexpected, like, whatever. Mhmm. What what if, can you just dive into that a little bit? Because that's a real thing that happens, and that's something that I think often keeps people from becoming entrepreneurs because they're afraid of that moment and how you navigate it.
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Yeah. I think if you have to get past the glamorization aspect of it and realize that, hey. Being an entrepreneur is hard work. Running a business takes hard work. You can't just gloss over the things that are hard or tricky or unsavory. Like, you gotta get good at looking at the numbers. Like, you gotta understand the unit economics of what you're selling. Unit economics of what you're selling. And don't just feel like, oh, if I only had a couple more customers, it'll all work out. Like, you have to take a good hard look at your expenses and be like, okay. Is this ever going to be profitable in this current setup? Right? What do I need to cut, or how can I redo this? Do I need to raise my prices? All of that factors into it. But if you you get to a point where you're like, okay. I spend this much to get a customer. It takes me this much to fulfill for that customer. That means I have this much profit coming in. I can afford to pay my contractor and then pay me or whatever. Now you've got a breakdown, and that can grow and stretch as more customers come in or shrink, when they don't when they're not here. And that can work when you structure your business with contractors, for example, where it's a project basis. Whereas if you've got a full time employee, that's a little harder because your expenses are now fixed and the number of clients fluctuate. So some months, you're doing great, and the employee is stressed. Other points, employee's bored, and you're stressed because you don't have enough clients to keep paying them. And so that's something you have to take a hard look at and figure out.
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Oh, listen. I'm I'm on the same page with you on this one a little bit of, I've avoided w 2 for 3 years and used contractor and labor arbitrage to deliver because, cash flow kills companies and in a services based business. I'm going to operate that as long as possible because it's really expensive to pay yourself and it's like you look at it. You're like it doesn't even make sense sometimes to set up W2 for yourself because you're like like why would I spend 25 percent additional money to pay myself? It's like it just had so much cost. It's like I get it. It's how you buy things, but you're looking at it from a low cost like don't rush into that is my advice. I think at some point you have to do this scale your business, but right in a business like yours in particular right where you're always against, you know race to the bottoms and commoditization and labor arbitrage. You really have to have a value add so people pay us based prices even if you use labor arbitrage to deliver. Like, you're you're in a spot where you really have to add a value to the equation and find that niche that just doesn't wanna work overseas. They wanna just pay for a really good product and service and work with someone local, so to speak. Yep. I assume that's a big struggle at times for you as well because you're always running into the $1500 website and the $25,000 will do all that you can from India's. How are and maybe just how are you dealing with that? Because you're in a place that's really hard to scale, like, a big number. So how are you how are you working how are you thinking through that? Because I think you're probably in the middle of it right now as well.
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Yeah. So, I mean, typically, my sites start at, like, $6,000, and they go up from there depending on how much customization you need. And that I talked about earlier. You know, that's a differentiator for me is knowing the technology in the back end and being able to make the site that the person wants that actually works for their business as a business asset as opposed to something that just looks pretty. Right? Because anybody can pick a template and throw up a website, but it's not gonna convert for them. So that's a big value add there. And now I treat those one off projects as just simple project based things. So I have contractors that I pay them x amount for writing the copy for a website. Right? And so I know what my costs are going into it for the one off projects, and then that segues into the recurring, subscriptions, right, with the hosting and maintenance. So I know what my profit margins are there because the server costs are fixed. You know, the maintenance costs are pretty much fixed. Most customers don't need a whole lot of attention each month, especially if I can automate things like updates and, scans for malware or whatever. And then, of course, SEO too. Right? Like, I know what my SEO team costs per website, and then I know what I charge for it. And so I now have a model that can grow and shrink as the months change, the ebb and flow of clients coming and going. Because sometimes they have budget issues. Maybe they like the work we're doing, but because they got hit with a big tax bill or and they had a client that didn't pay. You know? Now they can't pay me. And so it's not that I did something wrong in some cases. Just that they've gotta go deal with their crap before they can come back to me. So, that's kind of the way I approach it now is understanding the breakdown of everything I'm offering. And I also now started offering a lower end website product using AI. So I know that I can't provide a $6,000 website for $500, but I can build you one with AI for $500 as a starting website. I'm in. Maybe you'll still wanna host with me, and when you have more budget, then we'll make it better.
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Right. So now you can start at $500, or you can, you know, do the full on custom one. I think you just nailed something really important. So you you have a tip of spear. And and I'm I'll listen. I'm gonna follow-up with you after our podcast of an idea that I have where I wanna get something up that's good enough that leverages a type form to mimic something I'm gonna develop down the road later. Sure. Because you can man you can you can mix things like type forms of Zapier's and things like this to kind of just drive your initial proof of concept to say, hey, there's a market for this. Let's get a few customers and then just reinvest to go build, yeah, instead of building a big website, not knowing if it's the right one or not. So, I would love to talk to you about that. And I think, anybody out there, I'm gonna leave you with that hanger. If you wanna learn how to use AI yourself, it's really hard to go do, in my opinion, to go use AI to go build a website unless you know how to build websites. It's you think it's easy, but it is not. There's so many technical connections and things in the background, security and speed that you're you you need someone who knows how to host it, set it up, and then go leverage that. If you don't, you're you might as well just go train and become a web. It you you know, it's not it's just not that easy yet to do. Yeah. I I doubt you would argue with me on that one at all. Nope. Totally agree. Alright. So hey. Listen. Conscious of time, I wanna ask you I'm gonna ask you 2 questions more. 1 is how to get a hold of you, who should get a hold of you. That's the last one. So don't don't waste your answer on this one. If there's one question I should have asked you but I didn't, what was it?
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That's a tough question. I think I mean, you already asked me who shouldn't have a website. But maybe a the better question that should be asking is why do I need a $6,000 website?
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Right? The difference between, let's say, a throw up for something, throw it up in the wall kind of thing versus a more professional one.
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Correct. And that, I think, is an important question to answer because if you are treating your business as something that you want to grow, you have to invest in it and give it proper tools. Right? If you're a lawns a landscaper, you're not gonna buy a plastic rake. You're gonna go buy one that's gonna last a while. You're not gonna buy if you buy the budget lawnmower, it's gonna break in a couple weeks. But if you pay a little bit more, you get the good quality is gonna last. Same thing with a website. If you invest in a little bit to get the messaging right, it's gonna convert better for you when people visit it. Right? It's gonna look better. It's gonna make a better first impression. It's gonna work for you for a lot longer and actually give you a positive ROI compared to one of these ones that you just throw up as a placeholder. So it's definitely worth it, especially if you have any sort of high ticket services or reasonable margin on, you know, project based things. You do a roof and you make 6, $8,000. You can pay for that website with 1 It's a lot more. Additional job. Be be clear here. It is way more than 6 to $8,000 roofers make. It's unbelievable how much they make. Anyway, keep going. Yeah. So so the point is, you know, the ROI is there. And if you're trying to pinch pennies, you're just hurting yourself in the long run because these days, everything's digital. The first place people go is check your website, and they judge you instantly within a few seconds, and they decide if they're gonna contact you or just keep looking. So You're a 100% right on that. So people
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that find you through social media always check out your website just to get a feel, and then be like, oh, they look legit. And if they land and say, hey, this looks good or the landing page seems to. All right. They're a real company and they may do more information. Depends on what your what the services are, what the company is. If they find your website initially, it's the same thing. They don't typically go find you on social media after, actually. It's usually that's where they go. So, it's it is table stakes, and then have to be great. It just has to be there and be commutative. So, how who should get ahold of you, and how do they do that?
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Well, I work, mostly with service based companies, and, you can go to my website, FroBro.com. You can search for Jeff Roe on LinkedIn. And if you go to FroBro.com/meeting, you can set up a quick call with me. And or if you want a free evaluation of your website, frober.com/dominate, and I'll, take a look at your site, give you some feedback, tell you things you can, fix. I also have my own podcast called Digital Dominance where we talk about digital marketing and websites and all this stuff. So that's all the ways.
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How do you keep on your webs on your podcast? How do you keep the conversation going on digital marketing? I feel like at some point, you're like, I've said everything I need to say. The podcast is over. Like, how do you keep it going? I'm I have I have to ask that last kind of question. Well, we there's so many facets of digital marketing.
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We can go deep on any one particular avenue or any one particular tool. Right? So we talk about Google Analytics, or we can talk about analytics in general and why it's important to track and what sort of things you should be tracking and what you can do with the stuff once you've tracked it. Right? Or you can talk about customer centric marketing, how your messaging needs to be focused on them. We can talk about website tools, or we can talk about how often you should be updating your website. We can talk about integrations. We talk about SEO. Does it matter if you're a national brand versus a local company? Like, there there are infinite topics. And if you've ever feel like you're running out of topics, go to chat g p t and say, hey. What else can I talk about in digital marketing? I'm I've never had to do that, by the way. Like, I feel like there's so much to say. Like, even when I just meet new people that are in the space, like, we there's always something unique that we can talk about. So
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See see, I I give you an easy layup of the just to promote that podcast. It's a great podcast, by the way. I don't listen to a whole lot of podcasts. I have listened to yours on a couple episodes, and, it's thoughtful, and you really do know your space. It's like it's not there's there's there's others out there that, they're not as not as good. But yours yours is actually clearly you you have knowledge in the space way beyond what you're doing. And I get and I think I'll leave you with that. As as an entrepreneur, you you will niche down to something. It's almost like it's almost like a musician. You hear them, you know, play and then you occasionally hear them do a cover or do something else. You're like, wow, they're really talented. They just that's their brand. That's what they sell. Right? And so a lot of times people who are really good at what they do, you could do lots of things well, and you discover that later. But, you know, you're you're you're staying in so much your swim lanes, you could be successful and race the race that you can win. So thank you, by the way, so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Definitely. And thank you for having me. This was fun. Yep. So at frobro.com, that's the one. Nice URL, by the way. A little 6 digitor. That's pretty good. F r o b r o dot com. That's right. If this was your first time here, thank you for coming. I hope you come back and listen to some more of these, you know, wonderful entrepreneurs and their stories. And if you've been here before, you rock. Listen to our mission. Right? Unleash the entrepreneur. Get out there. Do it. Do the follows. Do the 5 stars on the reviews if you can. It's it's really important for the guests and the community to kind of grow awareness. And until we meet again, get out there and go unleash your entrepreneur. Thanks for listening.