Jason Lavin - Make Your Website Work for You (I1417)

It's true that some things change as we get older, but if you're a woman over 40 and you're dealing with insomnia, brain fog, moodiness, and weight gain, you don't have to accept it as just another part of aging. And with Miti Health, you can get help and stop pushing through it alone. The experts at Mitty understand that all these symptoms can be connected to the hormonal changes that happen around menopause, and Mitie can help you feel more like yourself again. Many healthcare providers aren't trained to treat or even recognize menopause symptoms. MIDI clinicians are menopause experts. They're dedicated to providing safe, effective, FDA approved solutions for dozens of hormonal symptoms, not just hot flashes. Most Importantly, they're covered by insurance. 91% of MIDI patients get relief from symptoms within just two months. You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's join MIDI.com. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and Precautions so you can be well planned and don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach, Bill Black. Welcome back. Thanks so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you with us, and you know, we, we get so many great guests and we record all of them. We put them all onto our website and our audio archive. We call it our audio library at exacoachradio.com. You can find it. 35 different topic file folders and hundreds and hundreds of episodes that you can listen to whenever and wherever you want. Of course you can listen to us on your mobile phone and download our app just by putting in ECRmo.com. My next guest is Jason Levin. He's with Golden Communications. Locally in Newport Beach, and he teaches a series called Master Your Webmaster, and it's around internet marketing and making sure that your website is working hard for you. It's something we all need to know about. Um, Jason, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. My pleasure, Bill, thanks for having me. Hey Jason, uh, tell us about Golden communications. How did you get started and what do you, what do you do for folks? Well, uh, ironically, uh, today or, or this week, it's hard to tell the exact date because I can't find it in my notes, but it's our 20th year anniversary. So we're gonna celebrate uh 20 years this this month and started like a lot of companies I started in my parents' house, uh moonlighting doing graphic design work and websites for people at night after my day job got got finished. Congratulations. Congratulations on the anniversary. That's a, that's a good, a good long part-time job there. Yeah, yeah, it's turned into more than I bargained for, but it's, it's, uh, it's gone well. Now at what point did you, did you, or have you said, I mean, is this, this is your full-time gig now I take it, right? For the last 15 years or so, the last, so about 5 years into it you realized, OK, this thing has got legs and, and it's this is my new what I do now, right? uh full time. That's right. There is a need for uh technical savvy, uh, programming that is attached to sound business reason for, for the Internet. I think that need still exists, particularly for businesses that. Uh, want to think of their business first and how technology can support it more so than technology first and figuring out how to jam their business into it. So, at the moment, we've got 70 employees. Uh, we have about 45 here in Orange County, Newport Beach, California. We have another 22 or 23 in Pune, India, which is a couple hours south drive of Mumbai, and we've got about a half dozen folks in Poland. It kind of makes up our team. Well, that's fascinating. You know, I think part of that's relevant of the, the beginning of your company because a lot of our listeners are saying, you know, I've been doing what I do for a long time. I think I want to try to start something else and you just never know where that something else is going to go, and I think that's fascinating that that it's uh you've grown so much and it's turned into a great career for you. What is the concept of mastering your webmaster all about? Well, that concept is, is, um, it's a pretty simple concept which is most websites, let's say a long time ago when you were small and you were just starting out. Good chance that your website was developed by the cousin with the design skills, so you kind of called him and you said, hey, I'm starting a business. I need a website and your cousin was nice enough to do that for you and you know, probably didn't even charge you, um, but then like all successful businesses that you, you get your your first set of blessings or your first set of problems or blessings or or whatever you wanna call it um you sell more than you can execute against. So you, you know, kind of get rid of your cousin because he isn't calling you back and you hired the um marketing firm and it's set up by the web designer and then you get your next set of blessings, which is you need operations and, and you need a brand and a voice and so you hire the agency and it's and it's headed up by the creative director. So all of these uh website decisions that people have made, they've put that in the hands of the creative people. Which is nice except for the creative part and the way a website looks makes up what I think about 10% of what makes it effective. And the master, your webmaster, it's really it's a business course that teaches business owners how to best manage their creative and technical resources. Their creative and technical resources, meaning it might be within their company, it might be people that they employ as consultants, but the the real problem for a lot of business owners, it sounds like what I'm hearing you say is they don't know how to correctly manage those resources to get the most out of them, and that's where you come in. That's right. So you've got creative people doing your website, you've got technical people doing your website. Um, frankly, a lot of times those people aren't good business people and the business owner is usually the business person, so my course really teaches, uh, the business owner, the non-technical business owner, how to best manage their technical resources. Um, so their website works harder for them because, you know, what a lot of business owners, I don't think how they look at their website is they should really look at their website. Hands down, Bill, their website should be their best employee and a matter of fact, if you stacked up, let's say your 5 best employees. OK, and you put them all together and you stack them all up. Um, depending on how you measure your website, let's say it's lead generation, uh, there is no way your 5 best sales people should be able to generate as many leads as your website, just no way. Mhm. Makes it makes sense. It makes a ton of ton of sense, yeah, so because the website never sleeps and depending on your market in your marketplace, you know, it can be reaching out all over the world and most people I think most people what you said earlier was they you get the cousin to set it up it's kind of like their, their broch their online brochure as opposed to their online sales generator and marketer um. So you come in and you know, and I know a lot of business owners too have put duct tape and baling wire around a bunch of things and pulled it together and called it a system, and they really need somebody to come in and peel off the peel off the duct tape and say no let's create a real system that integrates and that that works together. So what sizes and types of companies do you find yourself working with? Well, all shapes and sizes, you know, when we started out, of course we were doing work for the neighbor and and the florist down the street, um, but we have 500 clients and, and we probably have maybe 6 or 7 fortune,000 in that list where we do projects for, um, but our sweet spot are are usually that mid-market companies that are probably revenue of 10 million to 200 million in size I would say about 70% of our business comes through that market. OK, so a substantial marketplace and you are a member and a speaker for a group that very near and dear to my heart, Visage International, which is a tremendous CEO peer group, largest of its kind. And you were the fast track Speaker of the year for Visage, which is an impressive credential because they have hundreds and hundreds of very, very well and renowned speakers, well vetted and renowned speakers, I should say. Why do you think you won that award for the fast track Speaker of the Year? Um, well, thank you very much. The, the first reason I, I think I might have won it is because I'm such a believer like you, Bill, in that peer group. I've been a member of Visage for, um, maybe 4 going on 5 years now, so I'm a believer in that peer advisory group and so emotionally I'm very attached to making sure that the people that are in my seminars get a lot out of it. Um, but I also think that, you know, this, this whole world of website and particularly SEO, which people hear all about every day and and internet marketing, which they hear about every day, and marketing automation, uh, what they hear about every day. Um, I think it's a black box to a lot of business owners that are particularly my age and older. I'm, I'm 45, so the folks that are my age and a little bit older, we didn't grow up with this stuff. Um, and I think that it's sometimes just more complicated than it has to be. So my approach is taking a non-technical view, again on how to manage these technical resources within your organization or the people that are, are servicing you. And yeah, I got the award, I think, because a lot of light bulbs go on during the during the day. I think you're on to something there, and that is you're, you're probably a hero to a lot of people, a lot of very confused people who are substantial business owners, but really want someone to help them break down all of the lingo, all of the uh the acronyms that float around, uh, just tell us in plain English how we're going to make this work and Because you know, you're right, the age 50 plus has evolved from not having the internet, not having computers into now it's so important. It's, I think the, the tipping point has occurred. Would you agree with that, that the tipping point for internet, uh, need for having a productive website has has long since now tipped, and but for a long time, these, this group was saying, ah, that internet, that'll never catch on. Yeah, I think those days are are behind us for sure, and the, you know, the danger is, is putting your, your website in the hands of and I mean this respectfully because I employ. I employ 30 people under 30, but the danger is putting the strategy and the overall business acumen in the hands of these 20 year olds who are so wildly and technically talented, but left to their own. Decision making on on what this thing's supposed to do, you end up not getting the results that you desire from a business standpoint. You know, it often helps to illustrate for our listeners how um how you've come a situation that you might have started with, uh, what, what their situation was before you came in, Jason, and then what you're able to do for them in the end result. Can you illustrate a story like that for our listeners? Uh, sure, I, you know, I've got lots of them that I'll use one of my good friends over at Raymond Material Handling. They, they're a very large organization and, and they do, um, they're the material handling business. And one of the many things that they do is, uh, they rent forklifts, they sell forklifts, uh, they make all of their money inside the warehouse. So if a company has a warehouse, Raymond material handling, they want inside that warehouse. And so James Wil Wilcox, the, the CEO there, he says, you know, we'd love to get more leads. And I said, Well, I can help you with that. Um, he says, great, I'll get you my webmaster's name and number, and you can work with with him on it. And I said, Well, I don't, I don't need to touch your website, James, to get you a lot of leads. Um, why don't I just build you a website that just generates leads all day long? He says, uh, well, it sounds really good. Why don't you give it a shot. So I'm a very trusting man. Uh, we opened up a new website and the website we call it, we call it a Trojan horse or a hedgehog site. Uh, it's made for a sole purpose of driving leads into a company. Uh, the website's called forklift Frank.com. And if you are anywhere in Southern California and you type in rent a forklift. Uh, you will see forklift Frank.com is the first listing, and then when of course people click on that listing, we have a very simple local phone number, local contact form, uh, and then, and then Bill, it becomes a math equation. So this whole advertising and internet marketing and lead generation. Really just comes down to math. It's um how much does it cost to get someone to my website that needs what I serve in this case a forklift. And then of those people that come to my website, how many are gonna contact me and that's what we call cost per lead. And then those people who contact me, how many is my sales team gonna close and that's what we call our cost per acquisition. And then when we do close a new piece of business, what's our lifetime value of that business? Like what and what is lifetime value look over uh 12 months, 24 months, 36 months and so once you can get that model figured out, the whole Internet marketing business becomes. It becomes math and you just start looking at which areas you can acquire the best leads at the most reasonable cost to make sure that your sales team executes against it. That's, that's really makes so much sense, um. And so forklift Frank will will come up first and so we all know that you know if you're on the first page you're gonna get the most number of hits and then from there it it creates it pulls everybody into a database that then creates a a follow up routine and just a lead generation system. Uh yes sir, that's what it does. And so it makes too much it makes too much darn sense it it it just makes too much sense, right? And, and we do all this without touching his main site, yeah, right, and, and that's one thing that a business owner, you know, in what we call these hedgehog sites or these, these charn horse sites, one thing the business owner kind of has to get over is. If, if they don't know who you are, but they're looking for your product or service, but they don't know who you are, you know, they don't care about you. Um, so this is a good example of someone who wants to rent a forklift, and they go to Raymond's website. Well, Raymond does a million things, and they've been in business 100 years. A person who the person wants to rent a forklift, they just don't care. They want to rent a forklift. So this, this hedgehog site, which is taken out of Jim Collins's book Good to Great, Chapter 5, where he talks about the, the hedgehog and the fox. I don't know if you know that story, it's a great story. This hedgehog site just religiously focuses on one activity that makes the company money and in this case it's renting forklifts because, you know, that's what they do. And forklift Frank frankly just converts at a much higher level than Raymond does when a person is looking for a forklift. Brilliant, brilliant. Makes makes total sense. The the people aren't looking for a million different things. They're looking for a forklift, and so forklift Frank is their becomes their persona that is going to get them that. Um, now tell us the difference between this. So we talked about the hedgehog site. What's a Trojan horse site? What's the difference between those two and the purpose of each of those? Well, that's great. So the hedgehog is, is, uh, you know, particular a lot of people that listen to your show. I'm sure they've read the Good to Great book by Jim Collins. That's that hedgehog where you're passionate about what you're doing. Uh, you're the best in the world at it, uh, which means, you know, somebody might be able to do it as good as you, but no one can do it better, uh, and you can make a lot of money. Jim Collins says it drives your economic engine. So once you've identified your hedgehog. Uh, we'd like to take that hedgehog, which is usually somebody else's problem. Whatever your business's hedgehog is, is usually someone else's problem or need, and we build a website around that problem and need, and the company's name actually takes the back seat for the moment. When visitors come to this website to search, so that's what we call, that's what we call hedgehog sites. Uh, Trojan Horse sight is taken from Homer's poem. I don't know if you remember that from school. It was called the, um, The Odyssey. Ulysses wants to get into the, the walls of Troy to get, I think Helen is the princess back, uh, and he can't get in. So you remember Bill what he built, he built an 80 ft, uh, horse, Trojan horse. And, and then what happened was that horse got brought into the walls and they went to bed and they came out of the horse and they got their, their princess back. That's a Trojan horse sight, which means Hey, what are the activities that maybe we don't make a lot of money? Maybe it's not our hedgehog, but it will lead to our hedgehog if we can get inside, uh, example, Forklift Frank inside the warehouse, because once I get inside there, uh, I can start selling and going deeper with different products and services that I have now I can make them care about me. I get it I get it. So you're the Trojan horse idea is to get inside the minds of of maybe different, different issues that they may have and then build a relationship and lead them back to solutions that you offer, uh, kind of the side door of the marketing approach. It is side door of the marketing approach. That's a perfect way to explain it, Bill. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense and of course these days we hear that, you know, it's, it's not the yellow pages anymore. You need to figure out how to get in front of someone at their time of need and be that be that solution that somebody's going to click on and go that's what I want. I really don't, I really don't care so much who the. Who the vendors going to be yet? I want to know, can they solve a problem that I have and I really like um your, your approach to things and I'd love to talk to you more about this. We're running a little bit short of time today, but I want to ask you, Jason, how do our listeners get in touch with you? I know you'd be a fascinating speaker at any vestige or business owner group out there. How do they get in touch with you and talk to you more about what you do for them and as a speaker? Sure, or you can go to goldencom.com and all that information on our our our site is there. And of course from a learning and seminar and speaking, we have our own hedgehog site. It's called Excelourbusiness.com. Uh, just go to Google and type in Excel Your Business. Uh, seminars throughout the country, uh, do a lot in Southern California because it's our, our home turf and um if you want to register for that seminar. Uh, there's a, there's a field there that says how did you hear about this seminar. If you put an exit coach in that field, it'll give you 50% off to come to the seminar. Well, thank you very much. Our listeners appreciate that and I've really enjoyed having you on the show. And like I said, we've just laid some groundwork here for future conversations, so I hope you'll come back and join us again often because this is fascinating information and I think you're, you're bringing clarity like we said earlier, to a confused marketplace. Our age 50 plus listeners, I think they learned something today from from this brief interview, and I really appreciate you helping us out. Bill, it's been my pleasure. Have a great 4th of July, OK, God bless America. God bless America. Uh, we'll take a short break. We'll be right back after this. Please stay with us. Hi everybody, this is Spike Riel with the Exit coach. Business owners, can you name the 8 key value drivers that you and your manager should be focusing on to increase the value of your business? Introducing the Sellability score Index. Visit our website and answer 25 questions about your business, and you will instantly receive your sellability score, showing you how well you stack up in the 8 value driver areas. It's a great management tool. It's absolutely free for our listeners. Just visit exitcoachradio.com and click Get My Sellability score. Just thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit Planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted advisor to create a BEI plan for you, or visit us at exitplanning.com. That's exitplanning.com. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. It's true that some things change as we get older, but if you're a woman over 40 and you're dealing with insomnia, brain fog, moodiness, and weight gain, you don't have to accept it as just another part of aging. And with Mitty Health, you can get help and stop pushing through it alone. The experts at Mitty understand that all these symptoms can be connected to the hormonal changes that happen around menopause, and Mittie can help you feel more like yourself again. Many healthcare providers aren't trained to treat or even recognize menopause symptoms. MIDI clinicians are menopause experts. They're dedicated to providing safe, effective, FDA approved solutions for dozens of hormonal symptoms, not just hot flashes. Most Importantly, they're covered by insurance. 91% of MIDI patients get relief from symptoms within just two months. You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's join MIDI.com.