He Makes $3M/Year Growing Websites (Steal His Playbook)

0:00 I sat down probably the wealthiest people I knew at the time all telling me that they hate their website and I didn't expect that I saw it as an opportunity to say I know nothing about it which is fine you seem to hate it you might have a budget for it what will you do in Revenue this year we'll likely pass 3 million this is David he built a $3 million marketing agency from scratch and the crazy part is he started as a side hustle while working his 9 to-5 without knowing how to build a single website or anything about marketing an SEO I've heard about this WordPress thing found somebody that could do it hired them and then we started building websites I got to $20,000 a month while working at 95 imagine what I could do with a full 24 hours of focus yeah now look at where we're at today David shares not only how he quickly grew his own business but also other business ideas for anyone else to start today I

0:45 think that's a great business if I'm starting from scratch again that might be the one that I would go but are typically one of the quickest ways to get Revenue I flew out to Denver to learn more how he started his agency without knowing how to build a single website his approach to leveraging Partnerships for ongoing referrals and specific business ideas for anyone else to start and grow today let's dive in thanks for having us at your home/office what's your name and how did you quit your job to get into entrepreneurship my name's David quit my job to get into entrepreneurship just by grit putting a number on it working towards it I was a finance guy so I I went straight to numbers and was like here's how much I'm spending here here's how much I'm going to need to run the business and tried to work backwards and give myself a little leeway so I wanted enough money in the bank that gave me 6 months in my head if I had 6 months and couldn't start the business maybe it wouldn't for me but if

1:32 I could do it in 6 months I was confident I could do it after and as you were tinkering what were you trying to do what were you selling somehow or another I ended up in the world of digital marketing and there's a lot to be said about that but I'm a big believer that businesses exist to solve problems and I also knew that people would pay money to solve problems so one of the first things I did I sat down probably the wealthiest people I knew at the time all happened to be business owners I gave them a very vague question of what do you hate they had a lot of responses a lot of good ones the one denominator though and it put me on this path was marketing everybody hated marketing so I said okay tell me more about this marketing thing they're like yeah well you know I I hate our ad strategy you know we're not writing good content I don't like the website but website everybody brought up I was like okay this is interesting I didn't expect

2:18 that what do you hate about your website it's clunky it's slow that's how I got started with websites I saw it as an opportunity to say I know nothing about it which is fine you seem to hate it you might have a budget for it so let's see what I can do so I pitched all of them on a 10 grand website all of them said no one said yes at 5 grand that was our first customer and we were Off to the Races and did you know how to create a custom website not a chance I knew nothing I turned around and put out the bat signal and was like who do I know that builds websites and I had somebody reach out I asked him if he could build websites he said yes so I hired him and we were Off to the Races it was definitely a building a plane while flying it I'm sure it will be a common theme today but I let Revenue drive any and every decision in the business if we're not already getting paid for it or we can't get paid for for it or there's no money to be had we're not going to make the investment on the other side were there any other things on that list

3:05 that stood out to you that oh maybe I would do this everyone had issues with their finances and not business which I always found interesting it was all personal finances you have these really wealthy people that couldn't quite figure out how to convey their business cash flow with their personal cash flow like one of them I remember this day cuz I feel the pain now he was using QuickBooks to track his own personal finances cuz nothing was out there that was better and if anything it reminds me of the fact that you can have these really smart people and the things that you assume they have on lock that they do really really well are actually a huge oversight a huge paino or burden and for me a website I'm like every company has one I'm I'm sure you got it covered turns out it's not like the things that I assumed would be really simple were not and I remembered that with the finance thing of you have these brilliant business owners and they're getting tripped up on Personal Finance

3:51 budgeting about what to spin at the grocery store which I always found interesting but good reminder that anybody anywhere can have any type of problem if somebody watching this is thinking for their themselves well maybe I don't have the network what are there any ideas that are personal problems for you right now in your life one of the biggest things is if I need to drive or I need a car I buy something that's pre-made if I need a website you can come to Numa buy one that's quote unquote pre-made or somebody else is going to make it for you I rarely find Project Management Solutions that are pre-made and what I mean by that oftentimes companies are leading the project management internally they find a software and then they go build it out to their needs often times incorrect I think companies switch project management software specifically agencies like every 18 months so clearly they didn't do it right if they have to keep switching an idea and there's companies out there but it's definitely

4:36 newer the one I think of is a Zen pilot pre-made project man Solutions so you identified this theme you saw the pattern you're like okay websites rather than overanalyze you just Dove right in figured out hired somebody kept on getting more and more clients quit your job can you talk about like scaling that what did that look like did you get 10 more clients just start with one I started with one my goal was to make enough money that I didn't have to go back to a job I just started selling websites one of the habits that I still have today is I start every day 2hour deep work block of the most important thing that I need to need to do in the business and my most important thing then was sales hey I got a guy that can build websites I know how to sell them I'm just going to start selling more and for every let's say $5,000 website I sell I make three grand I'll put that money back into sales and we'll just keep spinning the wheel and see how far

5:21 I can get when I started there to scale it out it wasn't just sell everything that moves it was okay who do we who could we best serve even though we're early who do I think I can the most what's our price point what's our cost model in the funny way I was still working my 9 to5 so my 6 to9 in my 6: to 10 at night that was when I was building the business so if anything I had to make sure not only did I get my work done important in the morning but it's something that I still develop to this day I wake up and kind of give the marching orders out early that way I'm not needed throughout the day for me it was a challenge that other people are can be working when I'm actually working at a different job like make things simple what do we exist to do we exist to build websites and I need to sell as many as I can and you're going to fulfill as many as you can that was definitely at the core of it of I'll do my side you do your side bring the bow tie of Revenue together and we'll see where it goes can you explain like what

6:08 that is if anybody's watching this you could go Google marketing funnel and you're going to get just a one-sided triangle and I think my my hassle with that is that it never talks about what's next and revenue bowai FR us is something that we just I don't think we coined it's out there but the land and expand model I want to not only land a client have a really good marketing funnel to bring them into the business I want to also learn how to expand that as well so sales is important you need sales to grow your agency but sales shouldn't be a function in your business where they're saving the day we're here to solve problems if we can get really close to a client understand their pain think about the conversations that started Numa right what is annoying in your business and how can we solve it and bring that into every interaction not only can we land good clients we can expand them and keep them for years which is a way more predictable way to build a business but a less lot less

6:53 chotic way of building the business as well so what is Numa today and how's that different from how it started Numa back in the day when Numa started I definitely don't apologize for doing it that way it's a good way to do it it's just very productized we can only solve one type of problem for one type of person and it limited us not only on pricing but how quickly we could scale because there was only one type of person that needed a new five-page website that's all we did today we're more like a doctor's office where you go in you say hey Doc my knee hurts say okay why when does it hurt why does it hurt when do you start experiencing this how important is it to get you solved like what is this impacting your life okay great all the info you gave me here's my treatment plan here's how much it's going to cost and here here is how it's going to help you right but we don't do just websites right we have the website we have a full SEO team a full- paid search team as well now it becomes

7:39 as a doctor's office hey business owner what's your pain Point whatever that paino is we'll use the tools that our disposal to try and meet those goals for you it's given us an opportunity to be more strategic with our clients which is good but also control our pricing right if you don't need our Best in Class solution I'm not going to force it down your throat cuz that's what's on the menu we're going to cater to you and figure out what's best for you as well and what will you do in Revenue this year we'll likely pass 3 million I'm hoping to get maybe 3.1 3.2 yeah we'll pass 3 million which I'm excited about did the business immediately take off or what did like the first year look like I don't think any first year entrepreneur really needs to look in the QuickBooks I certainly didn't but the reason I say that I wouldn't focused on where revenue or profit margin so I was worried about I need more customers first year fully was I need more customers I didn't think twice about anything else if I get

8:27 customers I can figure out what to do next and that's what I did for the first year the second third year and kind of where we're at today is how do we optimize the customers that we have and continue to optimize how we deliver our work to them and build profit into that right we're definitely not a nonprofit we're definitely here to make profit but only do so if we can deliver the right work to clients and keep them happy by nature of whenever I started the business it was 2020 it was in the middle of Co every business owner in the world was considering how to make their company more digital friendly a lot of times it started with a website but we got lucky in the sense of if it was in the middle of a pandemic the demand for what we sold was so incredibly High there quite literally I don't think was enough supply of agencies that would do what we do and there's a lot of them mind you but that first year was such a roller coaster cuz I look up and we had ended the year just flirting with like

9:15 75k in like Revenue it wasn't all recurring because it was project but February 2021 I had marginal money maybe 20 grand a month quit went fulltime and we were at 70 flirting with 80 by the end of the year so a lot of growth happened very quickly there's a lot of agency owners out there whether they're solopreneurs or a team of people working together what do you think that most people get wrong running the agency business uh we you know who Alex horos is I'm sure everybody listening to this does as well he has $100 million leads offers and I think that might be it maybe there's another one you don't see anything that's a $100 million client delivery or $100 million fulfillment or $100 million project management it's all about the sales and I think agencies specifically get two things wrong they over index on sales if you do agencies

10:00 right you shouldn't have to be selling just a vast amount of new business every month you should be getting that from your book of business but two in the grand scheme of things what even gives you the opportunity to sell a service it's good brand recognition good results well what gives you the recognition to or the opportunity to that it's project management fulfillment and making sure the work that we sold gets done and we exceed expectations without that a business doesn't have a long time to live we're not going to put something on the front end that we can't deliver on the back end and I think that's one of the biggest things I see with agencies is they might have beautiful Brands beautiful marketing everything looks so exciting on the front end but it falls apart on the back end and there's no worse feeling for a buyer than buyers REM more so you've learned a lot of skills now but when you're just starting out like did you know how to code did you know SEO didn't know how to code didn't how to do SEO yeah I think by

10:46 nature of being a a Management Consultant before I was very comfortable speaking uh if anything I was a public speaking I think minor in college is is kind of the terminology of what it was so I had a lot of comfort in talking to people and and maybe explaining value and I knew I didn't have enough time to catch up on the other stuff there were people far better than me at SEO or web or anything of that sort but speaking I felt pretty good at and that's what I leaned into and and that if anything was the biggest skill set I took into the business outside of finance and as you're looking to grow your own business how do you look at that in terms of vertically growing horizontally growing yeah so as we look at our three key service lines we have SEO paid and website design and development I'll keep them simple with that I don't want to change too much of the tactics I don't want to start building a new type of website I want to continue to build the

11:32 websites that we do best in the customer base we've gone through a few vertical Acquisitions of literally just looking at our p&l finding where we spend money or what we spend money on and asking the question of could we buy a business that does this and if anything can I buy a business that does that have it help Numa but also have a new business that stands up on its own that's still client services that still is in the marketing Arena and that's been a pretty cool way to grow I think we're going to continue doing more of that you definitely have to find the right deal I hunted through 60 70 maybe 80 businesses to find one so it takes a lot of vetting but buying a business that we either use or a business in the area of services that we'll need is a really good way to grow and scale that and you've also grown a lot through I think Partnerships that you've done can you talk about how you look at that we started with websites I would even say like the value chain of

12:19 marketing like I'm thinking all the way to a startup you have an idea okay you need a brand you need a logo and then you need a website then you need some Performance Marketing and then you might need some more mature like life cycle marke Mar and awareness marketing and brand marketing right there there's a chain of like what you need so my thought is if we're building a website what's the people that work with a client before us if they don't do websites it's brand people so the first partnership that I built was with a brand agency and they sent us 50 $60,000 in Revenue because they want to look good they want their clients to have a a full set of deliverables let's say but if you've ever met a branding person they want their work to be seen the worst thing in the world is having a great brand and it not get built correctly on a website so finding opportunities where getting a customer to buy from you is a very hard thing

13:04 getting a customer to buy more from you is a lot easier essentially the quickest path I found is find someone else's customer that bought from them and as long as you can build trust with that partner and you're going to do them well steal some of that trust and use it for your business as well there's a lot of unique ways to build out Partnerships now but I definitely think it's foolish to think that you have to go get all the leads yourself I'd say maybe a quarter of our leads were self- sourced ourselves the other 75% were inbound for marketing or from these Partnerships that we set up so I guess one how quickly have you scaled these these Partnerships very quickly for me it's fun right because I have an audience as well of I'd say other agency owners and and you know I'm Their audience too like I I like being connected to other agency owners but connecting with other agency owners that are also you know trying to solve the same problems I am that's one

13:49 tweet and I can find somebody that has a problem that they've solved or maybe I see somebody that needs a problem solv that I've solved before it's really easy to network with those people and build those relationships so I'd say you can build Partnerships out as quickly as you want to network and meet new people in your space but you can grow them as quickly as you want to go out and meet new people in my opinion and so how would you like structure that I think one thing that stripe does really cool is they have a something called Atlas they'll register your business and then they'll give you referrals to all the things they built Partnerships with QuickBooks and Gusto and different softwares so I'm big on where your service falls in the value chain of whatever Market you're in right so even if it's I don't know you get a new car well after you're going to go find maintenance you might set up car payments you might want to get somebody that can detail your car or clean it I like finding out where I sit in the

14:36 grand scheme of things and partner with the people closest to me the easiest way to do this so you don't take guesses call up your clients ask them where else they spend their marketing dollars and say it's not a quiz I'm not like I don't I'm not trying to steal the business like I want to get to know you better where else do you spend your money because I guarantee you you're not 100% share wallet but two they're going to Rattle off four or five things that they're paying for that could be very easy partnership opportunities for you do you think that there's a business maybe a beginner business to be had of somebody who doesn't fulfill any of these Services themselves and just matches with SEO ads could definitely see that I think the one that I've always toured with a good beginner business that I'd love to go start is building out a Partnerships system for agencies if there was someone out there that you know back in the day whenever I was starting this that said hey for a

15:22 grand a month two grand a month three grand a month I will come in identify your agency and where it sits in the larger market identify priority one two and three lists that I should be reaching out to that are either before or after you in the value chain and I will go in have the call with them set up a partnership get the sign to Doc and manage the referrals back and forth as part of your team I think that's a great business that could be started it's an easier way to sell because sales has this connotation right but Partnerships don't and I think that's a great business and it if I'm starting from scratch again that might be the one that I would go go do because I think it's fun it can be very valuable but Partnerships are typically one of the quickest ways to get Revenue you just need the the right connection and how quickly can you get that is up to you are there any off top of your mind that you um that you value more than than

16:08 others or like some of your favorite tools or how do you approach like your Tex St one that I like a lot and it's it's simple but that's not to downgrade what they do is SEO monitor it monitors the SEO for our client accounts it tells us if things are going good or bad so I don't have to go check Google search console accounts one by one for now over a 100 clients that's going to get pretty timely I'd say the as we approach the teex stack and as we grow the company as well the things that we look for is truly where are we spending inefficient time something like a client let's say a monthly client call I would never replace with a technology or software I don't think you could right now but that will always be done by a person but the research prior all the data Gathering that could be done by a software Tech right it's knowing what to replace and what not to replace and I'd say the thing that we're very cautious about is

16:53 not over technology in which isn't a word but our business right it sounds like you learn a lot from your clients as well as other like business owners is there anyone or any particular books or people that you are learning from I always like a lot of Andrew Wilkinson's content he's definitely become more of a I'd say a household name on the Internet World recently but I remember listening to a lot of his stuff early on one of the favorites I always recommend is do better work by Max Yoder there's another one managing the Professional Services firm I want to say by David Meister there's another one the boutique I forget who wrote that and I'm reading it right now so I should know and I would say similar to software books can help you solve a specific problem in business there's a book that can help me solve a problem I'm buying it no matter what the cost is and I'm going to solve my

17:39 problem and it's nice knowing that someone else has solved it and tells me how to do it I'd say above and beyond all that is is find some type of networking or peer group uh something in that regard because a book is pretty tactical a book is just not it's it's a one r street right like somebody's dumping in knowledge but they don't know much about your business I've loved having different networking groups I'm in one now called Hampton I'm in another one called acuan which is local having people that are in similar shoes similar sizes and I get three to four to five hours a month with them on top of the slack community and things like that is a great value ad for me to know exactly what is going on in the business but I can get very specific with my problem and people can get very specific with their answers because it's a two-way street so above and beyond books having relationships with people in a similar

18:25 boat to you it doesn't always have to be organized but has been a huge help if someone were to approach you and they're wanting to quit their job to let's say use your same number 50k to to to make the leap how would you guide them to do that or what businesses would you be thinking about the Partnerships one let's take that as an example even you have an idea write it on a one page here's what we do why we do it how we'll deliver it the value that you can get from it and how long it's going to take and identify who you think might need that business just ask them if it's a pain point if it's a value what they would pay for it if they would do some Market research understand what you're getting into before you even go build the product but then my challenge would be sell somebody on it before you start to deliver it but truly sell somebody and see if they'll even give you a credit card and pay an invoice because if you can do that if one person buys

19:11 from you then I think you're in a good spot and you can scale that out that would be what I would do first and foremost this might sound odd but if you're going to quit your job to start a business don't quit your job first because if you can manage to build a successful business on the side of a full-time job imagine what that looks like if you have fulltime to do it and I think that was one of the hidden things things in Numa of I got to $20,000 a month while working at 95 imagine what I could do with a full 24 hours of focus yeah now look at where we're at today you've grown this company doing north of 3 million AR you have a team over 20 employees now were their times when you felt like you just didn't know what you're doing I feel like there was times today I didn't feel like I know what I was doing man I think that's the joy of bootstrapping a business from the ground up and I use this example of lack

19:56 quitting quitting wasn't a clear decision I had a job that people I wouldn't say coveted it wasn't that cool but it was cool my own parents thought I was crazy now they maybe think I'm less crazy but they're like let's discern what you're about to do are you sure you have a good job you're making good cash are you sure this is what you want to do and I was like yep doing it I was 22 maybe 23 yeah 23 I didn't have any skills I had eight months in a job couple internships I had some skills but not what other people have and there are certain problems that come across my plate that I just like I have no idea how to do this like if anything I was the Management Consultant putting together slide decks and talking to people and that like I remember a couple years ago we nearly got sued I don't I don't know what to do I don't know where to start I don't know and like it went

20:41 away happily with one phone call it went away so if that's a pro tip always call people but yeah I feel that feeling a lot and it's any problem can be solved but often times it's the the fear I have is this is a real problem and like I said there are real people working for me with real families real Homes real payments right they're relying on me to solve this problem effectively and I have never seen a problem like this in my life so there are moments where I had the real logical conversation with myself of I understand why people start businesses later in life maybe I don't know enough like maybe this is why small businesses started by young people fail because they don't have the skill set that they need and the thing that I would give to anybody in those moments those always felt like my lowest I'm always a conversation or two away

21:29 and I often times noticed any public admittance of like I have a problem help me solve it got an answer really quick something like a hampon something like a LinkedIn you can go back and literally find old posts of like I'm struggling with this who has ideas and I was always one one post away one conversation away and the other thing man patience is key I'd say the biggest thing and you hear this a lot with people is just do WR by people I had the the money coming right be focused on the money but it was to do right by people wasn't to be selfish it wasn't to have an around it wasn't to go drive a Lamborghini I wanted to do right by people and I think that's the biggest thing I have one name it's David rigs that's not going anywhere anytime soon doing right by people even at a young age that's going to pay dividends down the line and do right by my people do right by clients anybody that interacted with numai wanted to have a positive

22:15 experience and even if they didn't have a path to a positive experience right I wanted them to leave better whether an employee or a contractor a vendor or a client I'd say that's the biggest thing is just always do right by people but the other thing maybe a bit more competitive but it's really hard to lose the game if the other person quits before you and I feel like I was at a time where a lot of businesses were started and I would contend that a lot of the businesses that were started in 2020 late 2020 early 2021 probably aren't around anymore that doesn't mean I'm anything special other than maybe I was crazy enough to stick around longer than they did but patience and time are I think the two aspects that me personally being young but the business being young have in our advantage now is that we can stick around and stay in the game a lot longer than everybody else and it's hard to lose if the other teams that you play against keep quitting love

23:01 that do write by people David rigs thanks for uh inviting us into your home office is there any one last final message or challenge to somebody watching this who maybe wants to build their own business I don't remember who says it but it's one of my favorite little sayings hard work is better than no work starting a business is stuff being unemployed is stuff choose your tough right like that's definitely tough love and not everybody loves hearing that but choose your heart everything's going to chucker choose the problems that you want to be dealing with my challenge everybody is figure out the problems that you want and go get into a situation where if anything grateful to have those problems but choose your heart life is never going to be easy you're going to be stressed stress is a good thing it's a reminder that you're up against a worthy Challenge and I see a lot in today's culture we try and

23:47 optimize for being comfortable liking what we're doing man there are days I do not like what I do it's tough It's challenging but it's the right type of hard that I've chose I'd rather do this than anything else choose your heart David thank you so much thanks for having me awesome