Freedom in Five Minutes

Every now and again, you might get lucky and land a big fish with little effort. But remember, there's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

In this interview, you'll hear from Adam King, "The Captain" at Think Like A Fish, and creator of The Client Catching Ecosystem, how thinking like a fish is going to help you attract more clients, communicate with them, and solve their problems.

Whether you are struggling in getting more leads and clients or are just curious about how the whole fishing analogy applies to your business, this is the podcast for you.

Find out more about Adam here: http://www.thinklikeafish.co.uk/freedom5 ----------

Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again, with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this think like a fish with Adam, King, that and more coming up. Cool. So so good to be here again with the freedom in five minutes podcast and this guest that we have right now I'm actually a client of this guest and you're probably thinking like with with the title think like a fish What is that? Why would I want to think like a fish that's kind of that's a it's a weird way of putting it but this guy has been absolutely tremendously, tremendously impactful in my business. In fact, the reason why if you go to freedominfiveminutes.com you see, everything thing is based around freedom in five minutes, everything it has a singular purpose, it has a purpose of adding tremendous value and, and it's just my business went from being all over the place to very, very, very focused because of this person. So I'd like to welcome Mr. Adam King. How's it going, man?

Adam King 1:20 Dane, thank you so much. I'm humbled by that introduction. I appreciate it.

Dean Soto 1:25 Yeah, man, you you, you change the trajectory of my business massively. And we'll talk about that later. But first and foremost, what the heck do you mean by think like a fish? And what is the whole idea about about that kind of concept?

Adam King 1:45 Well, before I dive into that, I'll just sort of point out that you're only as good as the subject you're working with Dean. So you know, it's you've got to take that, you know, an awful lot of credit for the for what you've done and achieved. So kudos there. But when it comes to the whole thing, like a fish thing,

essentially, it's

I've been trying to explain marketing to people for years. And time and time again, I came back to using this whole fishing analogy. And back when I first started this whole thing, my business actually started as a bit of a hobby blog. And I call it things like a fish. And that's how it started. And the whole metaphor is, it's really a, the most successful fisherman in the world. They're not successful, because they've got the best equipment, they're not the best, you know that they're not successful, because they can afford all this fancy gear. They're successful, because they know what the fish want. They studied the fish, they know exactly what type of fish they're going for. So they can use the right bait. They can go where they are, they know where they're hungry, and therefore they know when they're most likely to buy it. Whereas every other fisherman spends most of their time reading magazines and trying to sort of pick out the, you know, the latest shiny object that is going to magically create the ability to to catch all these fish. They're thinking like the fish. And I kind of turn that around and talk about marketing is it's a similar thing, when it comes to attracting clients for your business. Your clients don't care about you or your business, they care about themselves, and they care about the problems that they're facing that has manifested itself to the degree where they're looking for a solution. And your marketing is there to communicate that you understand what their problem is, you understand what they're going through, it's okay that they're going through it because you've seen it before you've developed a solution. And you're, you're able to use your marketing to sort of guide them on that journey, almost of self discovery, to the point where they're either realize you are the best solution. Or maybe they realize that you're not the best solution. But that's okay. It just means that they're not, not the right kind of client for you in your business. And so that's really what where the whole fishing thing come from, and some people find it endearing, some people find it a little bit weird. But I think by the end of the explanation, a lot of the time people understand it, even if they don't like it, but they understand the thinking behind it and why it matters when it comes to marketing.

Dean Soto 4:19 I love that man. And it's it's it is what literally drew me to you. I still remember to this day, why why even came to your site. And I was like, you know, I want to kind of work with this guy was because I was looking on the Click Funnels. The Click Funnels marketplace for consultants, and a lot of the other consultants were, you know, they'd say, oh, we're two comma club, this, this and that. And we did all this. And we did all that. But when you go to your site, it's all about that whole concept of thinking like a fish. And so I went to your site, and I'm, and I'm looking at it going, Yeah, that'd be kind of cool. If I knew exactly what where to find my clients, how to communicate with them, and, and deliver, deliver what, for my business at least requires a lot of conversion of mindset. Because it's something that's brand new out there that there's literally just developed, and these other guys didn't give me the confidence. They did, they did great things. But when I went to your site, and saw what you were doing, it really helped. And then one of the things that I noticed, which I love for you to touch on a little bit is that it's these little baby steps. I think this guy's the right guy, I think Adam King, is the right guy. And so when I actually schedule a discovery call, when I had this, when I reached out, there were these little baby steps. And why do you have those kind of little baby steps, such as a master class, different little things that helped convert my mindset along the way?

Adam King 6:01 Well, if I sort of gave you the 30,000 foot view,

what I do and what I have in my own business, and what I help people create is something I call again, using the fishing metaphor, I call it the client catching ecosystem. And essentially, what that is, is it's, you know, this in your world, you're you're a systems geek like me, but it's, it's a system that essentially brings people into your world in a systematic way, built around trust. And it takes it doesn't, it doesn't insult anyone that comes into it by ramming a list of services down somebody's throat before you've even been on a first date. It simply guides them step by step. And each part of that system, that process is simply designed to take them to the next point, it's answering questions that people have in their mind as they go through that process. So you say, unusually, not a lot of people come to me via the Click Funnels marketplace, randomly. But that is just one of the sort of rods that I've got out there, as you know, as where I'm where I'm sort of fishing and a little bit of that bait, but essentially, each part of that the first piece is the it's the description, it's sort of telling people what it is that I understand them, etc. And then it's inviting them to a call. But each step of that way I am educating them on really, that I understand their problem and that I've got a solution, but at the same time and disqualifying people along the way, as well, because the whole thing this is set up to do is it's it's not just to attract and catch clients, it's to save time for the person who's operating that system, or has it within their business. Because we've all been there, we've got excited by somebody made an appointment scheduled a call something like that, we pick up the phone, we have a chat with them, and we realized they ain't right for me, yeah, I haven't got the budget. It's, it's totally, I know, they don't fit with me as a as an individual, that kind of thing. And you've got that awkward thing there where you don't know whether you know, you should actually make the offer or that kind of thing, especially if you're in a situation where you haven't had this sort of system working in the background to generate you that, that that flow, and effectively you're lacking demand. So you kind of have that moral quandary, you know, do I do I try and work this person, why not, you know, I need the money, that kind of thing. It's like, it takes away a lot of that because essentially, you're you're you're pre qualifying all the way all the way through. Somebody showed us a call, first of all, that's, that's via an automated thing, you don't have the email tennis back and forth, you know, wasting time trying to find it, you know, something that works. And then you have a series of questions, which are designed for the first thing is designed to do, if somebody is not willing to fill out that application, brilliant, it means that they're not willing to follow instructions of the process that you require a client to go through that you know, they need to do in order to be successful with whatever it is that you do. That's brilliant, you lose people, you don't have to sit on an hour long phone call to find that out. But second of all, you're then finding out about the business, you're finding out so much information that most people spent the first half hour of a phone call pulling out somebody. So you don't have to do that. And you get to then research and rethink about how can I help this person, by the time you've got onto the call. So you've wasted, you know, you haven't wasted all of that time. And second of all, you're then able to use things like videos, and really prepare them to show up for the call and educate them about what you do, how you do it, what to expect, what's it going to cost. So by the time they've actually gone through that entire process, and you're talking to them on the on the phone, I find that this 180 to 90% rate, decide whether they want to work with you or not. And they just really there to to see if they click and what the finer points of the dealer.

Dean Soto 10:10 Yeah, that was the thing that with my at least for me, I spent so much time with people who were not the right person. And which meant that it's two things. One, they're taking up that mental real estate of, of Gosh, I really don't even like this guy, you have that moral, you said that moral quandary of, should I pitch him Should I not? You run into the, to the the, the what, what I've had happened in the past was I pitch him they say yes, and it just is a terrible, terrible relationship and ends up being cancellation refund, which then is super motivating and so on with your business. However, like with this, with this way of going about it, the scariness is that you're not reaching, you're not talking to as many people so there's a little bit of a psychological barrier of, well, if I'm not talking to as many people then it's it's, it's, I'm losing people or I'm losing money or, or things like that. Whereas what I once you get past that, what I found is I could literally just send the link, whereas send a link and say, Oh, if someone introduces themselves to me via referral or whatever, I can just say, Hey, here's where you can sign up for a discovery call, check out the video there. If it resonates with you fill out the application, and we'll set up a call. And that's it, I don't have to do anything else. If they is if they fill out that application. You're right, I have all of this information on them. If they don't, then it wasn't a good fit, it's not that big of a deal. And you can I can have that space focus on people who are who actually are my customers, which is something that I never had before, which is really cool. seems counterintuitive, but it's it's helped out a lot in my business.

Adam King 12:13 And it also means that the people you do talk to you actually get to focus on them. And and actually give them value. Because you're not really selling when you get them get on the phone because they know everything that you do. You've educate them about the problem they're experiencing, they understand that they've got that problem, otherwise they wouldn't have shared with that call. Yeah, you've taken them through the solution that you offer, you've made it clear how it works, the reason why it works, you've given an example of what the pricing is, and all that kind of thing. So you don't have to go through that you've handled a lot of the objections up front. And so as the person taking the call, you're not sat there thinking right? What's he going to say next? Is he going to sort of bring up anytime? And yes, you get the odd objection and stuff. But you know, it's not like it was before where you have to suddenly know, go to a list of right. Okay. They said they've got to speak to their spouse. So this is the objection that I have to you know, it's none of that. It's literally you're focused on that person, you're finding out about their business, their situation, what they want to achieve, what they you know, where they're trying to go, what they've done, that doesn't work, and, and really, why, why they are at the point now, why they why they think that the solution that they've been presented is the right thing for them.

Dean Soto 13:24 Yeah. The I love that. And the thing that I noticed too, is that it gives me a lot to sound weird, but gives me a lot of power. Because with so I've had, I've had a number of clients who have filled out the questionnaire. And they say, so in my copy, I always say, Hey, if you're working 40 hours or more a week, then we should talk. That's that's kind of the thing. If not, then then it's probably not right for you. So in the questionnaire, I've had two people, right, that they've only they only work 10 hours a week. And one of those people, we got on a call. And it was almost immediately that was my first question. I said, Well, you're working 10 hours a week. That's pretty awesome. Oh, why are we on this call. And it did it a little nicer than that. But it put them in a place where they would say, Oh, well, it's 10 hours a week on this stuff. But I have 4050 hours a week over here. So now we're like the pain is coming out. And so it starts off the call, either either, where I'm calling them out on what they put in, because it's way less than 40 hours a week, or if they are 40 hours a week or more I can say hey, you're working 40 hours a week, let's talk about that, in what's you know, really, really good position for sales. And I don't know if that was done on purpose. But it definitely I would say copy copy covered everything on your roadmap that you gave me.

Adam King 14:59 Absolutely. But

I think it's an important thing to sort of understand as well. Because when you when you work in the sort of industries that we we typically work in and the kind of industries that my clients work in their service professionals, they provide a service based on their their their expertise, their skills, their knowledge, and along the time, that's not cheap. So there's a lot of trust involved. And you're trying to, you're almost, you're having to fill a dual role, when you're also the one doing the selling and the pitching. And there's a very different perception from someone who is a salesperson to Who's that fabled trusted advisor. And so what this allows you to actually do is never be the salesperson but always show up in the trusted advisor because as soon as that really you know, they become a quite a client, and that relationship shifts, all of a sudden, they need to trust the advice that you've given that person to make the decision to become a client. And that doesn't always work because they think that they especially if you've applied some of these Wolf of Wall Street, ABC always be closing sort of tactics on somewhere, and he's got them over the line. But I feel a little bit icky afterwards. I always felt icky doing it if I had to, you know, and, you know, you read books, and you think that's the thing to do. But hey, you know, human. But this then allows you to be that trust you showing up as a leader as somebody that is there to really tell them what they need to know, sometimes, I sort of joke in my, in my industry, sometimes my biggest role is to actually save my clients from themselves. And that's the same with a lot of service providers, because they have the knowledge, the expertise, and you're not there to prescribe the thing that you do, because ironically, that's that's, that's what I call a lot of people. The work in marketing in my industry, I kind of refer to them as marketing hammers, that they're very specialized, they're very good in a particular area. And I include myself in this. So it's not like I'm immune or anything different or special. But because they're very skilled in a particular area, they view every single marketing problem as a nail. And so therefore, that problem is solved with a hammer, which is what they sell. That's, that's what it is. And I think that can be the case for a lot of a lot of industries out there. But now you have something like this, you don't have that pressure to try and hammer everything that you think is a now you actually have the ability to really find out if the person in front of you is a nail, you know, to use a another metaphor that I'm really fond of using, but it just allows you to show up differently to be that leader to really actually do what I think selling is actually there to do it serve someone and actually tell them if it's not right.

Dean Soto 18:02 Yeah, yeah.

Adam King 18:04 But you can only do that.

When you've created enough demand to have the confidence to do it.

Dean Soto 18:10 Yeah.

Adam King 18:11 And that's what something like a system can do. You know, it's what I know you help a lot of people with do it's it's sort of filling that pipeline. And making sure that you're not in that situation where you've got one appointment on your calendar for the month, and you're thinking, Oh,

Dean Soto 18:28 crappy. Yeah.

Adam King 18:33 And and, and that's what he's there to do. And and a lot of it all comes down, you say you sort of say the word power, I like to use the word, influence or authority. And that's what you're ultimately always trying to create within this ecosystem, the whole ecosystem, it's not, it's not necessarily the tools or the things that go into it. It's everything that you touch. So it's all the people that are a part of it. Now, that is your clients, your prospects is your leads, your opt ins, whatever you want to call, but it's also partners, potential referral sources, people that are have an influential impact on the kind of people that you want to work with. And everything that you put out there, that is your ecosystem. And each one is an opportunity to bring someone into that, where you have created it, and you're positioned as the right person to solve a particular problem, but for the right type of person. And that's why we use what I call an authority bridge. I use a podcast, you have a podcast, I think it was, it was by luck that you had yours previously, but we had that conversation. And you've you've changed the format. And now you're using it in this way. And it's working pretty well for you, you've, you know, you've done a lot of them. And it's, it's, you know, I know you've you've switched a lot of systems that will feed that the asset that you've created for your business, and it just opens up it, it opens a ton of doors, it makes it effortless to actually reach out for a raging introvert like I am here. I find this fun having a one on one, intimate conversation with someone. Although it's in interviews, why I'm talking a lot more than I normally do. But you know what I mean? It's, it's just totally different. Because you're not showing up. I used to think that if I was prospecting or anything like that, I was literally turning up and saying to someone, hey, I don't know if you need this, but I want to try and sell you something today. So do you mind if I waste your time while I figure that out? It was horrible. For me, I hated it. Whereas now I can identify the type of client because I know the type of people that have a specific problem that I can help solve. And I can specifically target them and now simply reach out with a question that's around something like hey, I have a podcast. And I think that your insight and your expertise would be massively beneficial to my listeners, I'd love to have you on to tell your story and to share your message. Would you mind? Would you fancy being a guest? Yeah, totally, totally different response. And it opens the door to two potential clients that you could never have before. But it also opens the door to you know the term influencer, influencer marketing or that kind of thing. Many, many of them that can either become referral sources, you can you can you can, you can end up doing things like join webinars or that sort of thing that can get you in front of their audience, which starts the whole process. There's just so many benefits to it. Because ultimately, the whole thing I say, it's, it's a strategy that I've turned conversational relationship marketing.

Dean Soto 22:00 I love that.

Adam King 22:02 And really, I say it's based on ethics, professionalism, and just bloody good manners. That's all it is. Because it's relationships.

Dean Soto 22:14 Yep.

Adam King 22:15 And in this mad, over connected world of people that love taking pictures of the dinners, and selfies and passing them all over the social media, just the highlight reels that quite frankly, sometimes make people feel like crap about my life. It's, it's, it's a different way of showing up.

Dean Soto 22:35 Yeah, I love I love that. Because from the very onset, it was that feeling throughout the entire process. Because I think even even when I was on the Discovery call, you didn't even pitch me at all. To the point where I was like, yeah, just take my money. Like, because it was it had gotten to that point where I think the last thing in discovery call all that you have, which is actually the cool thing was it is actually was a discovery call the you get on, you get on these quote unquote, discovery calls, and it's sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, let me see how I can sell you. Whereas you were, it was more of talking about my business, talking about where I'm at? Here's some solutions, things like that into the later on. At the very end, it was something like Yeah, well, you know, maybe later on we'll, we'll we can schedule another call. And maybe we'll work together or somebody that was more of just kind of, there was no, okay, well, here's what it costs us go, boom, boom, boom, like it was it was more of me having to say, yeah, you know what, let's just move this, do this. And,

Adam King 23:44 and the sales people listen to this are probably just been a bit sick. And I'm out here.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's the way I operate.

And I usually start everything by saying, look, this is an exploratory conversation. Yeah, there's nothing to buy on this call. It'll only be it is funny, because I didn't make the offer to you or remember this. But you asked, you wanted to get going. So it's like, well, I'm not gonna waste your time by saying no, no, no. Like, I generally mean that. There is nothing to buy on the call. Somebody wants to go, then obviously,

I'm going to do it. But

the majority of the time, I will sort of, you know, the only thing I will say is right, I think that this could be a good fit for you. But I want you to think about it.

Dean Soto 24:31 Yep. Yep.

Adam King 24:33 Let's set up another call now. When can you do? And, and we'll walk through the, you know, the options how that works. And the fine details?

Dean Soto 24:42 Yeah. I've actually

Adam King 24:44 found much more success doing it that way, than trying to be a one call closer that you hear bandied around and that sort of stuff, because I don't believe that anyone should be forced into a decision or feel pressured? Because it's, it's totally Well, it's in congruent to how I would want to be sold to.

Dean Soto 25:02 Yeah, exactly. So

Adam King 25:04 I don't wish to do it to anybody else. And I use the system and the process to really nurture that process so that people feel that they actually want to buy, they don't want to be sold to but they love to buy it because it's something that they feel is right for them. Yeah. Because this isn't right for everyone. You know, what I do isn't right, for everyone. I know that not everybody I talked to is a nail for my hammer.

And that's okay.

Dean Soto 25:33 It's cool. Because Yeah, because the system is set up to discover that automatically, for the most part in 80 90%. So So if you could really quickly walk through the that, that they go, a total overview of the systems that your system, you have the authority bridge, and then why so the bridge consists.

Adam King 25:57 So the 30,000 foot view is, it's it also starts with a roadmap, which is a really, really deep dive into who your ideal client is, you know, there's, there's the typical sort of demographics sort of things, you know, male, female age, income, job, that kind of thing. But then it's about going really, really deep, uncovering

Dean Soto 26:18 before we go deep into that I like when you say, the like, there, when when Adam says, deep, it is like I got, I don't want to say how many pages It was a lot of pages, because I don't know if you're going to go more or less or anything like that. But it was, this was something that one of my business colleagues literally had to read two or three pages a day, for for a couple for a couple of weeks, just to get through it all. And it's in it is all good content. It's and it's all tailored toward my business, I all of it. And so it wasn't just like, Hey, here's some food and Senate, like, I'm still going through just so you know, every week I have targets, I'm still going through and setting up all of the systems. And it's been a while since we've worked together. And each system that I set up, is bringing me some kind of revenue or some kind of qualification, things like that. So yeah, when he Adam says it's deep. It is really, really, really good. And I've been I've had other consultants where they just give you two or three pages and say, here's your demographic, here you go. And you're off to the races. It's not like that.

Adam King 27:40 Yeah, it's it's really trying to understand the narrative. And as we create with you, you create the story of your ideal client, what is their ideal day look like? How do they get started, all that kind of things, so that you can then piece that together, and put it within your marketing and your message so that when you put that out there, it's like they're ready reading something about themselves, they could literally be reading their average day. And so that is why that is the most critical component of anything that I do. It is the bit that nobody wants to do. But it doesn't work unless you do it is it is absolutely vital. It's it's not something you know, it's not like a throw something on Facebook and retire next year. It's nothing like that it takes work. And you actually have to research and find where people are congregating and listen out for the kind of the language that they use to describe their situation, their problem, all that kind of thing. We even interview specific clients and use things like Socratic questioning to really uncover what it is that they're saying not just at the surface level. But really deep down, how does it feel? What are the what is the language that they use, and then you get to, I don't write copy. I'm not a copywriter, but I can literally extract something from somebody's brain and repeat it back through to them. That's, that's what effectively we do. And then it's all about. So that's your ideal client, or your client persona, or whatever it is. And then you really get into the route after you've done that. What's the real problem that you need to solve? Well, you can solve that they really want solved. What's the solution? And how do you? How do you package or position that solution that's easy to understand, has steps to it that somebody can follow and actually understand what happens at each point, we create one for you. And the name escapes me right now, the scalable business or something like that. And it's just got three parts. And it's sort of step by step so that you can literally present a graphic to someone and say, that's what we do. That's how we do it.

Dean Soto 29:54 Yeah, even that's why I call it I've been on my homepage. Yeah,

yes, it's awesome. And you can do utilize that in your sales process of its absolutely

Adam King 30:02 do. So you can identify where where on this process. Are you having the most trouble? Yeah, yeah. And you can have that conversation it is it's there for a reason it's been strategically created. And then it's all about creating the assets that take someone on that journey from point A to point B, from pain to profit from struggle to success for whatever it is that you you want to call it. And those assets that we create, is your authority bridge, we do it as a podcast, you can do it as a YouTube channel, you can have an online group, LinkedIn, Facebook, something like that, if that's what you want to do, you could have it as an in person meetup, or mastermind or something like that. There are so many ways or things that you could do with it, we just do the podcast because I'm not massively comfortable on video, I don't like doing that. And as much and I just find that podcasting for me. And for a lot of the people I work with, it's the most comfortable way for them to create the content, because that's one of the challenges that we also saw content creation, you're always told, you've got to create content and publish constantly and all the rest of it. Most people think, well, I gotta write, I've got to do a blog, I've got do this, and they sit in front of a screen and go, you know, they hate doing it. So we take away that pain by saying, you don't actually need to create content in a way that you need, you think you do, because the majority of the content will come from your guests, you know, I do the solo here and there. But actually, a lot of the time I repurpose a lot of the other assets. So it's it's like a constant stream of content that's coming out. So we have that. And then we use that, as I say, the door opener, you go and find people to bring onto your podcast, and then you can have conversations afterwards. Whether or not, it's something that could be good for them to do business will become a partner of some description. But I always say you don't approach this, it doesn't work. If you approach this with the expectation that that's going to happen. Yeah, you have to go in thinking and expecting, you're getting nothing from that other person in return for having him on as a guest. Because that's a bit of a shitty thing to do. If that's that's Trojan horse, and that's not what this is, it's, you know, you're not sneaking into the gates while everyone's asleep. And then coming out fighting, you know, or in this case, pitching the hell out of someone because that is wrong. You know, this is just a way of opening a conversation, because that's what it's all about. I think marketing is it's good marketing, starts a conversation. And good marketing, keeps that conversation going. So that's how it starts. And then we have a piece of bait, which is your trip, traditional lead magnet, then we have and that can be any sort of thing that you have that you've created and figured out what that is in your roadmap. And then the line, as I call it, the content that run through your system, it's the emails that follow up, it's it's really the style that you use to communicate. Yeah. And we do a 10 part, automated, sort of follow up sequence that goes out. But then you end up using your authority bridges that never ending content. Yeah, because every time you have an episode is a template structure, essentially, that has, hey, this just went up on the client catching podcast is a great interview with, you know, Fred, and this is what's in it. Or you can take a look. And even if somebody doesn't listen to every single episode by going, you know, seeing it in email, it's just that constant drip and reassurance and reminder that you're there.

Dean Soto 33:40 I love that. Yeah.

Adam King 33:42 And then the other big piece is that masterclass, which is, as I call the real, and that is, that is where you ask someone to make a more considerable investment in time to really be educated about the challenge and the problem, your solution, and then you invite them to have a conversation with you. And then the last piece is it's kind of we operate a catch and release policy or think like a fish we don't, we don't eat what we catch. And it's and you are, you are then essentially just using all of those assets that you have in your system, as a way to generate referrals. So you can interview clients, on your podcast, shine a light on their, on them, what they do, the success that they've had with you, and you, everyone's had trouble getting referrals from clients. But if you use this as a way to interview them, they will know people like them. And you've shown off as a much more trusted way, then you know what, what happens with a lot of referrals in that there's a hell of a lot of social capital invested in giving a referral for certainly for high ticket sort of services. It takes away that completely because you're simply asking somebody to share podcast episode. Yeah, yeah. Or the bait that you've created or saying, Oh, yeah, you should go and have a look at this masterclass the answers a lot of the stuff that you've just told me, you've got problem with? Totally different to saying, Oh, you should talk to, you know, my financial advisor. Here's his phone number, or I'll give him your number. And you know, that he's just going to be a sales call. Yeah, yeah, totally, totally different approach.

Dean Soto 35:18 I love that. I love this. The, the, it's interesting, because it one thing I noticed on your sites with all of this is that. And I think it's done on purpose, I would imagine everything you do is on purpose. But with the traditional sales funnel, traditional landing page, you want them to do one thing, right? That's the preach preach thing, you want them to opt in for the lead magnet. And then from there, you take them down a journey or whatever for you. You have the lead magnet that's up up there, you have your master class. So you lead magnet magnet mean a book, you have your master class, and you have scheduling a discovery call on the same page, what do you do that?

Adam King 36:15 Because I want to meet people where they're at,

not everybody is going to be at the same stage of their journey, some people are going to be ready to go. So I want to make sure that I have the ability to catch those people. But some people aren't, they're going to need to sort of back off and be given a bit of time to be nurtured, and all that kind of stuff. So it's from an understanding what is the demand pyramid, or whoever it was, it said that that 3% ready to buy, right? Now there's a certain percentage that you know, are going to be ready in the next 90 days. And you know, the rest are either not going to be ready for 90 days, or a never going to be ready, you know, never going to be right at all. So you're simply trying to meet people where they're at. And each time you you simply give them those options. Because you have some people you know, and it's all about different personality types as well. Some people, Taipei they're like, decisive, right? Yes, I'm ready to go. Now. Make sense? I don't need to think anymore. Right? Other people are a little bit more analytical, they need to sit back, they need to think that it so it just helps every single stage along the way. I'm always asking them to do one thing. Yeah. And that's to take the next step. But it's the next step. That's right for them.

Dean Soto 37:25 Yeah, because I've noticed on mine, I'll have people come into the to the master class, and I'll have people come into my lead magnet. And and, and it's interesting, because I would have never done that before, I would have only had one thing quote unquote. And I actually had a prospect, I had a prospect that came from a referral, that, that so the referral, there were the referral was the boss of this prospect. It was basically his design director or whatever. And she came into the master class and watch the whole thing. And was like, Wow, this is amazing, went back to her boss and said, Yeah, we got to use this this guy. And it was through that, that, that the boss got excited. And had I only had a scorecard up there, that person wouldn't even have cared about, like my lead magnet, which was more of like a business process scorecard type thing, whereas a business owner might care about that. Absolutely. And so, so does Do you find that that happens a lot is just there certain, like you said, there's certain people who want to discovery call certain people want masterclass and, and just what's kind of been your observation with with that, compared to the traditional way of doing it.

Adam King 38:56 It's very similar to what you say, and that, actually, it depends hands on the person, their personality type, it also depends on their sort of level, if it's a hierarchy of business or anything like that. Because, yeah, I sort of think if somebody is ready to go, they don't want to get your lead magnet, and then wait for you to nurture them over two weeks, while you're gradually building that relationship with them. And they can feel safe enough to book a call with you and all that kind of thing. No, they want to go now. So let them have that opportunity. But there are some people that want that. Yeah, so let them have that opportunity to. And it's, it's, it's interesting, because what I sort of find is that the people that will come in and and what I've got is I've got a lead magnet, which is a blueprint, and then I have a video directly on that page, which I don't tell people about before they opt in, which is a mini masterclass. And it just takes them through that and then offers have that call. The people I find that should you to call from then compared with the people that go through more of the system more of the process. They are the Taipei ready to go decisive guys. Whereas the ones that have been through it a little bit more, and I can see because it's all trackable in the system, what they've done, how they've got there, and all the rest of it. They're not the eight Taipei, they've they can sometimes literally recite things back that they've seen through everything. Oh, when you said this, like it spoke to me. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, you know, that they have literally been through the whole thing. They needed that they needed that to feel safe enough to have a conversation with a

with a pesky marketer, who's just going to try and sell them stuff.

Dean Soto 40:50 Yeah, that that is great, man. That is that is great. And I love it, because it's it's kind of counter intuitive. Again, just like with everything that you're doing, however, it's the way it should actually be. But we've been so it's like the microwave, we're so used to the microwave way of marketing and selling. And this is where it's just meeting people where they are at all times. And, and I love that. So this all brings me to what I like to call the five minutes mindset shift question, the one thing that you were like, you know, what I'm, I'm, I am going to do this. And it took you maybe five minutes to just to make the decision. And and from that you've been able to it's been something that's massively growing your business. So what's that five minute thing, that if with you, if somebody else were to implement it, it could massively transform how they're doing business.

Adam King 41:55 What is something that Yeah, probably took maybe a little bit less than five minutes to make a decision that this is what I was going to do. But it took a heck of a lot longer for it to kind of form in my head. And that is relationships are the most important thing around anything that I'm ever going to do. Life, business, anything. And the way that we as people interact, online is the same as offline. And that all of the things that I see are not all of the things, but a lot of the things I say is out there, it's like, it's about getting people into the funnel, it's numbers, it's metrics, it's clicks, it's all those sorts of thing leads, blah, blah, blah. It's as soon as I recognize that every single one of those is a human being. And that my sole aim is to create a conversation with another human being that I can have a relationship with, whether it ends up being by business, or whether it just ends up being a relationship that they consume my content and get benefit from it. That's my focus. And it is totally, totally changed everything I do. I don't now worry about, as I say, having to sell to someone and worry about where's my next client coming from, I don't have to worry about what am I going to do this week, this month to fill my funnel. I know the only thing I have to concentrate on week in week out day in day out is starting conversations with cool and interesting people that I might be able to help. And that might one day lead to a mutually beneficial arrangement that could involve some money changing hands at some point, but it might not. That's it and I built a system around myself to help with that. And as someone who is fully diagnosed ADHD, the system part has had to I've had to do it. Because it is literally set me free, saved my life in a way, but maybe I another conversation for another day.

Dean Soto 44:02 I love that man. I love it. And it shows throughout all the stuff that you do. And it's cool because I get a benefit from that. Because I'm even thinking of 111. So there there, there are folks who kind of will come through my funnel. And super night. I mean, we already have a relationship and so on and I don't want to sell to them. They in the sense of like this one guy, he my guys are asking them, Hey, are you ready to move forward and ready to move forward and it's already been twice. And I don't like being salesy. So what it allows me to do, because of this relationship, the whole model of of what you've created, it allows me to to say, Hey, you know, it sounds like this is not the right time, no worries here, what I'm going to do is I'm like here's a podcast, I think that would be helpful podcast episode, I think would be helpful for you. And I'm just going to every every week or so I'm going to send you some podcast episode, so that I think will be helpful for you. And now they're in my long term sequence, constantly being followed up on adding value, adding value, adding value. So maybe at some point in time, we do something together. And it's not this just drop off of, okay, you didn't want to do work together, we're done. You know,

Adam King 45:20 yeah. And you can use a lot of this stuff to do the same sort of thing just in slightly different ways. Because you're not going to have time to interview everyone, you come into contact and invite the one to your podcast. So you just flip it around, you can reach out to people on you know, email, LinkedIn, that sort of thing. And if you're not sure, you can simply say, Hey, I'm not sure if you struggle with this sort of problem. But if you do, I have a really great podcast interview that my guest Yeah, and I discuss if you'd like, I can send you a link to it. And it's again, it's just being polite and asking, you know, asking questions. I don't know, if you have this problem, if you you know, and you can build up relationships in that way. You know, some will say, No, some will ignore you. But a lot of people will say, Oh, yeah, cool. Yeah, let me have a look. And then it opens up, and then they're in your ecosystem.

Dean Soto 46:10 Yeah.

Adam King 46:11 And then it's up to them at what pace that they go. And it's just about starting a conversation because unless you can start a conversation. Nobody knows you there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, it's hard to get attention but everyone's desperate for it. But attention is fleeting interest last but a relationship that's what keeps you enduring.

Dean Soto 46:36 Love it, man. Love it. So how can people work with you? How can they find you? How can they get all of this stuff that you that you in start building a relationship with Mr. Adam King?

Adam King 46:49 Well, the easiest thing to do, I practice what I preach when it comes to systems and doing things and that is, I encourage everyone to go to I've set up a page on my website specifically for your listeners, it's think like a fish co.uk slash freedom five, and that's the number five. And what you will see there is it's a range I know as you say, everyone says that you should have one call to action on a page and all the rest of it, that's not my style, I want people to see what is on that page and make a decision of what they think is going to be the biggest benefit you can get a copy of my book that I have there you can register for the master class or there's just some free training there that you don't have to opt in for you don't have to do anything you can just watch it and see how I operate how my mind works, the kind of things that I help people do. And then it's it's up to you to take the next step you can listen to the podcast you can join the Facebook group all that sort of stuff but really it's there to give a little bit see people like me and what I do and go for me I love it I love it.

Dean Soto 47:57 So go check out think like a fish.co.uk forward slash freedom five sets that's freedom just freedom five like no dashes or anything like that right sweet freedom and the number five freedom in the number five go check that out you'll love this stuff. I mean I guess the cool thing is that this is this is every literally you could take all of his training and do it yourself do it yourself that's how much like he gives and the cool thing is that he actually cares like this. He is truly one of the only I have I have had business relationships with people who have hired as consultants for marketing and he is literally the only one who has for what what we the money that changed hands I I made out like 10 times what he actually had me a chart edit it he actually charged me like I I can't tell you enough how much he massively massively changed my business and put me on a trajectory where we're going to have some massive gains in this next next year or two so so go check that out. Think Like a fish.co.uk forward slash freedom and the number five so thanks so much for being on Adam. I appreciate it man.

Adam King 49:25 I appreciate it and nice kind words it's a shame that there's an entire ocean between us It gives you a big man out for that so I do appreciate it.

Dean Soto 49:31 No worries man No worries. But yeah guys go check go check him out a big like a fish co.uk is just all of his stuff is awesome. And so that's the end of the freedom in five minutes podcast and hopefully we'll have Adam on again when he's not so busy. I know you're building out new systems and things like that and I'd love to catch up in the next few months and share any new things that you that you have. So all that being said said guys, I will see you guys on the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode is your host Dean Soto with the freedom in five minutes podcast.

Every now and again, you might get lucky and land a big fish with little effort. But remember, there's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

In this interview, you'll hear from Adam King, "The Captain" at Think Like A Fish, and creator of The Client Catching Ecosystem, how thinking like a fish is going to help you attract more clients, communicate with them, and solve their problems.

Whether you are struggling in getting more leads and clients or are just curious about how the whole fishing analogy applies to your business, this is the podcast for you.

Find out more about Adam here: http://www.thinklikeafish.co.uk/freedom5

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00
Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again, with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this think like a fish with Adam, King, that and more coming up. Cool. So so good to be here again with the freedom in five minutes podcast and this guest that we have right now I'm actually a client of this guest and you're probably thinking like with with the title think like a fish What is that? Why would I want to think like a fish that's kind of that's a it's a weird way of putting it but this guy has been absolutely tremendously, tremendously impactful in my business. In fact, the reason why if you go to freedominfiveminutes.com you see, everything thing is based around freedom in five minutes, everything it has a singular purpose, it has a purpose of adding tremendous value and, and it's just my business went from being all over the place to very, very, very focused because of this person. So I'd like to welcome Mr. Adam King. How's it going, man?

Adam King 1:20
Dane, thank you so much. I'm humbled by that introduction. I appreciate it.

Dean Soto 1:25
Yeah, man, you you, you change the trajectory of my business massively. And we'll talk about that later. But first and foremost, what the heck do you mean by think like a fish? And what is the whole idea about about that kind of concept?

Adam King 1:45
Well, before I dive into that, I'll just sort of point out that you're only as good as the subject you're working with Dean. So you know, it's you've got to take that, you know, an awful lot of credit for the for what you've done and achieved. So kudos there. But when it comes to the whole thing, like a fish thing,

essentially, it's

I've been trying to explain marketing to people for years. And time and time again, I came back to using this whole fishing analogy. And back when I first started this whole thing, my business actually started as a bit of a hobby blog. And I call it things like a fish. And that's how it started. And the whole metaphor is, it's really a, the most successful fisherman in the world. They're not successful, because they've got the best equipment, they're not the best, you know that they're not successful, because they can afford all this fancy gear. They're successful, because they know what the fish want. They studied the fish, they know exactly what type of fish they're going for. So they can use the right bait. They can go where they are, they know where they're hungry, and therefore they know when they're most likely to buy it. Whereas every other fisherman spends most of their time reading magazines and trying to sort of pick out the, you know, the latest shiny object that is going to magically create the ability to to catch all these fish. They're thinking like the fish. And I kind of turn that around and talk about marketing is it's a similar thing, when it comes to attracting clients for your business. Your clients don't care about you or your business, they care about themselves, and they care about the problems that they're facing that has manifested itself to the degree where they're looking for a solution. And your marketing is there to communicate that you understand what their problem is, you understand what they're going through, it's okay that they're going through it because you've seen it before you've developed a solution. And you're, you're able to use your marketing to sort of guide them on that journey, almost of self discovery, to the point where they're either realize you are the best solution. Or maybe they realize that you're not the best solution. But that's okay. It just means that they're not, not the right kind of client for you in your business. And so that's really what where the whole fishing thing come from, and some people find it endearing, some people find it a little bit weird. But I think by the end of the explanation, a lot of the time people understand it, even if they don't like it, but they understand the thinking behind it and why it matters when it comes to marketing.

Dean Soto 4:19
I love that man. And it's it's it is what literally drew me to you. I still remember to this day, why why even came to your site. And I was like, you know, I want to kind of work with this guy was because I was looking on the Click Funnels. The Click Funnels marketplace for consultants, and a lot of the other consultants were, you know, they'd say, oh, we're two comma club, this, this and that. And we did all this. And we did all that. But when you go to your site, it's all about that whole concept of thinking like a fish. And so I went to your site, and I'm, and I'm looking at it going, Yeah, that'd be kind of cool. If I knew exactly what where to find my clients, how to communicate with them, and, and deliver, deliver what, for my business at least requires a lot of conversion of mindset. Because it's something that's brand new out there that there's literally just developed, and these other guys didn't give me the confidence. They did, they did great things. But when I went to your site, and saw what you were doing, it really helped. And then one of the things that I noticed, which I love for you to touch on a little bit is that it's these little baby steps. I think this guy's the right guy, I think Adam King, is the right guy. And so when I actually schedule a discovery call, when I had this, when I reached out, there were these little baby steps. And why do you have those kind of little baby steps, such as a master class, different little things that helped convert my mindset along the way?

Adam King 6:01
Well, if I sort of gave you the 30,000 foot view,

what I do and what I have in my own business, and what I help people create is something I call again, using the fishing metaphor, I call it the client catching ecosystem. And essentially, what that is, is it's, you know, this in your world, you're you're a systems geek like me, but it's, it's a system that essentially brings people into your world in a systematic way, built around trust. And it takes it doesn't, it doesn't insult anyone that comes into it by ramming a list of services down somebody's throat before you've even been on a first date. It simply guides them step by step. And each part of that system, that process is simply designed to take them to the next point, it's answering questions that people have in their mind as they go through that process. So you say, unusually, not a lot of people come to me via the Click Funnels marketplace, randomly. But that is just one of the sort of rods that I've got out there, as you know, as where I'm where I'm sort of fishing and a little bit of that bait, but essentially, each part of that the first piece is the it's the description, it's sort of telling people what it is that I understand them, etc. And then it's inviting them to a call. But each step of that way I am educating them on really, that I understand their problem and that I've got a solution, but at the same time and disqualifying people along the way, as well, because the whole thing this is set up to do is it's it's not just to attract and catch clients, it's to save time for the person who's operating that system, or has it within their business. Because we've all been there, we've got excited by somebody made an appointment scheduled a call something like that, we pick up the phone, we have a chat with them, and we realized they ain't right for me, yeah, I haven't got the budget. It's, it's totally, I know, they don't fit with me as a as an individual, that kind of thing. And you've got that awkward thing there where you don't know whether you know, you should actually make the offer or that kind of thing, especially if you're in a situation where you haven't had this sort of system working in the background to generate you that, that that flow, and effectively you're lacking demand. So you kind of have that moral quandary, you know, do I do I try and work this person, why not, you know, I need the money, that kind of thing. It's like, it takes away a lot of that because essentially, you're you're you're pre qualifying all the way all the way through. Somebody showed us a call, first of all, that's, that's via an automated thing, you don't have the email tennis back and forth, you know, wasting time trying to find it, you know, something that works. And then you have a series of questions, which are designed for the first thing is designed to do, if somebody is not willing to fill out that application, brilliant, it means that they're not willing to follow instructions of the process that you require a client to go through that you know, they need to do in order to be successful with whatever it is that you do. That's brilliant, you lose people, you don't have to sit on an hour long phone call to find that out. But second of all, you're then finding out about the business, you're finding out so much information that most people spent the first half hour of a phone call pulling out somebody. So you don't have to do that. And you get to then research and rethink about how can I help this person, by the time you've got onto the call. So you've wasted, you know, you haven't wasted all of that time. And second of all, you're then able to use things like videos, and really prepare them to show up for the call and educate them about what you do, how you do it, what to expect, what's it going to cost. So by the time they've actually gone through that entire process, and you're talking to them on the on the phone, I find that this 180 to 90% rate, decide whether they want to work with you or not. And they just really there to to see if they click and what the finer points of the dealer.

Dean Soto 10:10
Yeah, that was the thing that with my at least for me, I spent so much time with people who were not the right person. And which meant that it's two things. One, they're taking up that mental real estate of, of Gosh, I really don't even like this guy, you have that moral, you said that moral quandary of, should I pitch him Should I not? You run into the, to the the, the what, what I've had happened in the past was I pitch him they say yes, and it just is a terrible, terrible relationship and ends up being cancellation refund, which then is super motivating and so on with your business. However, like with this, with this way of going about it, the scariness is that you're not reaching, you're not talking to as many people so there's a little bit of a psychological barrier of, well, if I'm not talking to as many people then it's it's, it's, I'm losing people or I'm losing money or, or things like that. Whereas what I once you get past that, what I found is I could literally just send the link, whereas send a link and say, Oh, if someone introduces themselves to me via referral or whatever, I can just say, Hey, here's where you can sign up for a discovery call, check out the video there. If it resonates with you fill out the application, and we'll set up a call. And that's it, I don't have to do anything else. If they is if they fill out that application. You're right, I have all of this information on them. If they don't, then it wasn't a good fit, it's not that big of a deal. And you can I can have that space focus on people who are who actually are my customers, which is something that I never had before, which is really cool. seems counterintuitive, but it's it's helped out a lot in my business.

Adam King 12:13
And it also means that the people you do talk to you actually get to focus on them. And and actually give them value. Because you're not really selling when you get them get on the phone because they know everything that you do. You've educate them about the problem they're experiencing, they understand that they've got that problem, otherwise they wouldn't have shared with that call. Yeah, you've taken them through the solution that you offer, you've made it clear how it works, the reason why it works, you've given an example of what the pricing is, and all that kind of thing. So you don't have to go through that you've handled a lot of the objections up front. And so as the person taking the call, you're not sat there thinking right? What's he going to say next? Is he going to sort of bring up anytime? And yes, you get the odd objection and stuff. But you know, it's not like it was before where you have to suddenly know, go to a list of right. Okay. They said they've got to speak to their spouse. So this is the objection that I have to you know, it's none of that. It's literally you're focused on that person, you're finding out about their business, their situation, what they want to achieve, what they you know, where they're trying to go, what they've done, that doesn't work, and, and really, why, why they are at the point now, why they why they think that the solution that they've been presented is the right thing for them.

Dean Soto 13:24
Yeah. The I love that. And the thing that I noticed too, is that it gives me a lot to sound weird, but gives me a lot of power. Because with so I've had, I've had a number of clients who have filled out the questionnaire. And they say, so in my copy, I always say, Hey, if you're working 40 hours or more a week, then we should talk. That's that's kind of the thing. If not, then then it's probably not right for you. So in the questionnaire, I've had two people, right, that they've only they only work 10 hours a week. And one of those people, we got on a call. And it was almost immediately that was my first question. I said, Well, you're working 10 hours a week. That's pretty awesome. Oh, why are we on this call. And it did it a little nicer than that. But it put them in a place where they would say, Oh, well, it's 10 hours a week on this stuff. But I have 4050 hours a week over here. So now we're like the pain is coming out. And so it starts off the call, either either, where I'm calling them out on what they put in, because it's way less than 40 hours a week, or if they are 40 hours a week or more I can say hey, you're working 40 hours a week, let's talk about that, in what's you know, really, really good position for sales. And I don't know if that was done on purpose. But it definitely I would say copy copy covered everything on your roadmap that you gave me.

Adam King 14:59
Absolutely. But

I think it's an important thing to sort of understand as well. Because when you when you work in the sort of industries that we we typically work in and the kind of industries that my clients work in their service professionals, they provide a service based on their their their expertise, their skills, their knowledge, and along the time, that's not cheap. So there's a lot of trust involved. And you're trying to, you're almost, you're having to fill a dual role, when you're also the one doing the selling and the pitching. And there's a very different perception from someone who is a salesperson to Who's that fabled trusted advisor. And so what this allows you to actually do is never be the salesperson but always show up in the trusted advisor because as soon as that really you know, they become a quite a client, and that relationship shifts, all of a sudden, they need to trust the advice that you've given that person to make the decision to become a client. And that doesn't always work because they think that they especially if you've applied some of these Wolf of Wall Street, ABC always be closing sort of tactics on somewhere, and he's got them over the line. But I feel a little bit icky afterwards. I always felt icky doing it if I had to, you know, and, you know, you read books, and you think that's the thing to do. But hey, you know, human. But this then allows you to be that trust you showing up as a leader as somebody that is there to really tell them what they need to know, sometimes, I sort of joke in my, in my industry, sometimes my biggest role is to actually save my clients from themselves. And that's the same with a lot of service providers, because they have the knowledge, the expertise, and you're not there to prescribe the thing that you do, because ironically, that's that's, that's what I call a lot of people. The work in marketing in my industry, I kind of refer to them as marketing hammers, that they're very specialized, they're very good in a particular area. And I include myself in this. So it's not like I'm immune or anything different or special. But because they're very skilled in a particular area, they view every single marketing problem as a nail. And so therefore, that problem is solved with a hammer, which is what they sell. That's, that's what it is. And I think that can be the case for a lot of a lot of industries out there. But now you have something like this, you don't have that pressure to try and hammer everything that you think is a now you actually have the ability to really find out if the person in front of you is a nail, you know, to use a another metaphor that I'm really fond of using, but it just allows you to show up differently to be that leader to really actually do what I think selling is actually there to do it serve someone and actually tell them if it's not right.

Dean Soto 18:02
Yeah, yeah.

Adam King 18:04
But you can only do that.

When you've created enough demand to have the confidence to do it.

Dean Soto 18:10
Yeah.

Adam King 18:11
And that's what something like a system can do. You know, it's what I know you help a lot of people with do it's it's sort of filling that pipeline. And making sure that you're not in that situation where you've got one appointment on your calendar for the month, and you're thinking, Oh,

Dean Soto 18:28
crappy. Yeah.

Adam King 18:33
And and, and that's what he's there to do. And and a lot of it all comes down, you say you sort of say the word power, I like to use the word, influence or authority. And that's what you're ultimately always trying to create within this ecosystem, the whole ecosystem, it's not, it's not necessarily the tools or the things that go into it. It's everything that you touch. So it's all the people that are a part of it. Now, that is your clients, your prospects is your leads, your opt ins, whatever you want to call, but it's also partners, potential referral sources, people that are have an influential impact on the kind of people that you want to work with. And everything that you put out there, that is your ecosystem. And each one is an opportunity to bring someone into that, where you have created it, and you're positioned as the right person to solve a particular problem, but for the right type of person. And that's why we use what I call an authority bridge. I use a podcast, you have a podcast, I think it was, it was by luck that you had yours previously, but we had that conversation. And you've you've changed the format. And now you're using it in this way. And it's working pretty well for you, you've, you know, you've done a lot of them. And it's, it's, you know, I know you've you've switched a lot of systems that will feed that the asset that you've created for your business, and it just opens up it, it opens a ton of doors, it makes it effortless to actually reach out for a raging introvert like I am here. I find this fun having a one on one, intimate conversation with someone. Although it's in interviews, why I'm talking a lot more than I normally do. But you know what I mean? It's, it's just totally different. Because you're not showing up. I used to think that if I was prospecting or anything like that, I was literally turning up and saying to someone, hey, I don't know if you need this, but I want to try and sell you something today. So do you mind if I waste your time while I figure that out? It was horrible. For me, I hated it. Whereas now I can identify the type of client because I know the type of people that have a specific problem that I can help solve. And I can specifically target them and now simply reach out with a question that's around something like hey, I have a podcast. And I think that your insight and your expertise would be massively beneficial to my listeners, I'd love to have you on to tell your story and to share your message. Would you mind? Would you fancy being a guest? Yeah, totally, totally different response. And it opens the door to two potential clients that you could never have before. But it also opens the door to you know the term influencer, influencer marketing or that kind of thing. Many, many of them that can either become referral sources, you can you can you can, you can end up doing things like join webinars or that sort of thing that can get you in front of their audience, which starts the whole process. There's just so many benefits to it. Because ultimately, the whole thing I say, it's, it's a strategy that I've turned conversational relationship marketing.

Dean Soto 22:00
I love that.

Adam King 22:02
And really, I say it's based on ethics, professionalism, and just bloody good manners. That's all it is. Because it's relationships.

Dean Soto 22:14
Yep.

Adam King 22:15
And in this mad, over connected world of people that love taking pictures of the dinners, and selfies and passing them all over the social media, just the highlight reels that quite frankly, sometimes make people feel like crap about my life. It's, it's, it's a different way of showing up.

Dean Soto 22:35
Yeah, I love I love that. Because from the very onset, it was that feeling throughout the entire process. Because I think even even when I was on the Discovery call, you didn't even pitch me at all. To the point where I was like, yeah, just take my money. Like, because it was it had gotten to that point where I think the last thing in discovery call all that you have, which is actually the cool thing was it is actually was a discovery call the you get on, you get on these quote unquote, discovery calls, and it's sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, let me see how I can sell you. Whereas you were, it was more of talking about my business, talking about where I'm at? Here's some solutions, things like that into the later on. At the very end, it was something like Yeah, well, you know, maybe later on we'll, we'll we can schedule another call. And maybe we'll work together or somebody that was more of just kind of, there was no, okay, well, here's what it costs us go, boom, boom, boom, like it was it was more of me having to say, yeah, you know what, let's just move this, do this. And,

Adam King 23:44
and the sales people listen to this are probably just been a bit sick. And I'm out here.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's the way I operate.

And I usually start everything by saying, look, this is an exploratory conversation. Yeah, there's nothing to buy on this call. It'll only be it is funny, because I didn't make the offer to you or remember this. But you asked, you wanted to get going. So it's like, well, I'm not gonna waste your time by saying no, no, no. Like, I generally mean that. There is nothing to buy on the call. Somebody wants to go, then obviously,

I'm going to do it. But

the majority of the time, I will sort of, you know, the only thing I will say is right, I think that this could be a good fit for you. But I want you to think about it.

Dean Soto 24:31
Yep. Yep.

Adam King 24:33
Let's set up another call now. When can you do? And, and we'll walk through the, you know, the options how that works. And the fine details?

Dean Soto 24:42
Yeah. I've actually

Adam King 24:44
found much more success doing it that way, than trying to be a one call closer that you hear bandied around and that sort of stuff, because I don't believe that anyone should be forced into a decision or feel pressured? Because it's, it's totally Well, it's in congruent to how I would want to be sold to.

Dean Soto 25:02
Yeah, exactly. So

Adam King 25:04
I don't wish to do it to anybody else. And I use the system and the process to really nurture that process so that people feel that they actually want to buy, they don't want to be sold to but they love to buy it because it's something that they feel is right for them. Yeah. Because this isn't right for everyone. You know, what I do isn't right, for everyone. I know that not everybody I talked to is a nail for my hammer.

And that's okay.

Dean Soto 25:33
It's cool. Because Yeah, because the system is set up to discover that automatically, for the most part in 80 90%. So So if you could really quickly walk through the that, that they go, a total overview of the systems that your system, you have the authority bridge, and then why so the bridge consists.

Adam King 25:57
So the 30,000 foot view is, it's it also starts with a roadmap, which is a really, really deep dive into who your ideal client is, you know, there's, there's the typical sort of demographics sort of things, you know, male, female age, income, job, that kind of thing. But then it's about going really, really deep, uncovering

Dean Soto 26:18
before we go deep into that I like when you say, the like, there, when when Adam says, deep, it is like I got, I don't want to say how many pages It was a lot of pages, because I don't know if you're going to go more or less or anything like that. But it was, this was something that one of my business colleagues literally had to read two or three pages a day, for for a couple for a couple of weeks, just to get through it all. And it's in it is all good content. It's and it's all tailored toward my business, I all of it. And so it wasn't just like, Hey, here's some food and Senate, like, I'm still going through just so you know, every week I have targets, I'm still going through and setting up all of the systems. And it's been a while since we've worked together. And each system that I set up, is bringing me some kind of revenue or some kind of qualification, things like that. So yeah, when he Adam says it's deep. It is really, really, really good. And I've been I've had other consultants where they just give you two or three pages and say, here's your demographic, here you go. And you're off to the races. It's not like that.

Adam King 27:40
Yeah, it's it's really trying to understand the narrative. And as we create with you, you create the story of your ideal client, what is their ideal day look like? How do they get started, all that kind of things, so that you can then piece that together, and put it within your marketing and your message so that when you put that out there, it's like they're ready reading something about themselves, they could literally be reading their average day. And so that is why that is the most critical component of anything that I do. It is the bit that nobody wants to do. But it doesn't work unless you do it is it is absolutely vital. It's it's not something you know, it's not like a throw something on Facebook and retire next year. It's nothing like that it takes work. And you actually have to research and find where people are congregating and listen out for the kind of the language that they use to describe their situation, their problem, all that kind of thing. We even interview specific clients and use things like Socratic questioning to really uncover what it is that they're saying not just at the surface level. But really deep down, how does it feel? What are the what is the language that they use, and then you get to, I don't write copy. I'm not a copywriter, but I can literally extract something from somebody's brain and repeat it back through to them. That's, that's what effectively we do. And then it's all about. So that's your ideal client, or your client persona, or whatever it is. And then you really get into the route after you've done that. What's the real problem that you need to solve? Well, you can solve that they really want solved. What's the solution? And how do you? How do you package or position that solution that's easy to understand, has steps to it that somebody can follow and actually understand what happens at each point, we create one for you. And the name escapes me right now, the scalable business or something like that. And it's just got three parts. And it's sort of step by step so that you can literally present a graphic to someone and say, that's what we do. That's how we do it.

Dean Soto 29:54
Yeah, even that's why I call it I've been on my homepage. Yeah,

yes, it's awesome. And you can do utilize that in your sales process of its absolutely

Adam King 30:02
do. So you can identify where where on this process. Are you having the most trouble? Yeah, yeah. And you can have that conversation it is it's there for a reason it's been strategically created. And then it's all about creating the assets that take someone on that journey from point A to point B, from pain to profit from struggle to success for whatever it is that you you want to call it. And those assets that we create, is your authority bridge, we do it as a podcast, you can do it as a YouTube channel, you can have an online group, LinkedIn, Facebook, something like that, if that's what you want to do, you could have it as an in person meetup, or mastermind or something like that. There are so many ways or things that you could do with it, we just do the podcast because I'm not massively comfortable on video, I don't like doing that. And as much and I just find that podcasting for me. And for a lot of the people I work with, it's the most comfortable way for them to create the content, because that's one of the challenges that we also saw content creation, you're always told, you've got to create content and publish constantly and all the rest of it. Most people think, well, I gotta write, I've got to do a blog, I've got do this, and they sit in front of a screen and go, you know, they hate doing it. So we take away that pain by saying, you don't actually need to create content in a way that you need, you think you do, because the majority of the content will come from your guests, you know, I do the solo here and there. But actually, a lot of the time I repurpose a lot of the other assets. So it's it's like a constant stream of content that's coming out. So we have that. And then we use that, as I say, the door opener, you go and find people to bring onto your podcast, and then you can have conversations afterwards. Whether or not, it's something that could be good for them to do business will become a partner of some description. But I always say you don't approach this, it doesn't work. If you approach this with the expectation that that's going to happen. Yeah, you have to go in thinking and expecting, you're getting nothing from that other person in return for having him on as a guest. Because that's a bit of a shitty thing to do. If that's that's Trojan horse, and that's not what this is, it's, you know, you're not sneaking into the gates while everyone's asleep. And then coming out fighting, you know, or in this case, pitching the hell out of someone because that is wrong. You know, this is just a way of opening a conversation, because that's what it's all about. I think marketing is it's good marketing, starts a conversation. And good marketing, keeps that conversation going. So that's how it starts. And then we have a piece of bait, which is your trip, traditional lead magnet, then we have and that can be any sort of thing that you have that you've created and figured out what that is in your roadmap. And then the line, as I call it, the content that run through your system, it's the emails that follow up, it's it's really the style that you use to communicate. Yeah. And we do a 10 part, automated, sort of follow up sequence that goes out. But then you end up using your authority bridges that never ending content. Yeah, because every time you have an episode is a template structure, essentially, that has, hey, this just went up on the client catching podcast is a great interview with, you know, Fred, and this is what's in it. Or you can take a look. And even if somebody doesn't listen to every single episode by going, you know, seeing it in email, it's just that constant drip and reassurance and reminder that you're there.

Dean Soto 33:40
I love that. Yeah.

Adam King 33:42
And then the other big piece is that masterclass, which is, as I call the real, and that is, that is where you ask someone to make a more considerable investment in time to really be educated about the challenge and the problem, your solution, and then you invite them to have a conversation with you. And then the last piece is it's kind of we operate a catch and release policy or think like a fish we don't, we don't eat what we catch. And it's and you are, you are then essentially just using all of those assets that you have in your system, as a way to generate referrals. So you can interview clients, on your podcast, shine a light on their, on them, what they do, the success that they've had with you, and you, everyone's had trouble getting referrals from clients. But if you use this as a way to interview them, they will know people like them. And you've shown off as a much more trusted way, then you know what, what happens with a lot of referrals in that there's a hell of a lot of social capital invested in giving a referral for certainly for high ticket sort of services. It takes away that completely because you're simply asking somebody to share podcast episode. Yeah, yeah. Or the bait that you've created or saying, Oh, yeah, you should go and have a look at this masterclass the answers a lot of the stuff that you've just told me, you've got problem with? Totally different to saying, Oh, you should talk to, you know, my financial advisor. Here's his phone number, or I'll give him your number. And you know, that he's just going to be a sales call. Yeah, yeah, totally, totally different approach.

Dean Soto 35:18
I love that. I love this. The, the, it's interesting, because it one thing I noticed on your sites with all of this is that. And I think it's done on purpose, I would imagine everything you do is on purpose. But with the traditional sales funnel, traditional landing page, you want them to do one thing, right? That's the preach preach thing, you want them to opt in for the lead magnet. And then from there, you take them down a journey or whatever for you. You have the lead magnet that's up up there, you have your master class. So you lead magnet magnet mean a book, you have your master class, and you have scheduling a discovery call on the same page, what do you do that?

Adam King 36:15
Because I want to meet people where they're at,

not everybody is going to be at the same stage of their journey, some people are going to be ready to go. So I want to make sure that I have the ability to catch those people. But some people aren't, they're going to need to sort of back off and be given a bit of time to be nurtured, and all that kind of stuff. So it's from an understanding what is the demand pyramid, or whoever it was, it said that that 3% ready to buy, right? Now there's a certain percentage that you know, are going to be ready in the next 90 days. And you know, the rest are either not going to be ready for 90 days, or a never going to be ready, you know, never going to be right at all. So you're simply trying to meet people where they're at. And each time you you simply give them those options. Because you have some people you know, and it's all about different personality types as well. Some people, Taipei they're like, decisive, right? Yes, I'm ready to go. Now. Make sense? I don't need to think anymore. Right? Other people are a little bit more analytical, they need to sit back, they need to think that it so it just helps every single stage along the way. I'm always asking them to do one thing. Yeah. And that's to take the next step. But it's the next step. That's right for them.

Dean Soto 37:25
Yeah, because I've noticed on mine, I'll have people come into the to the master class, and I'll have people come into my lead magnet. And and, and it's interesting, because I would have never done that before, I would have only had one thing quote unquote. And I actually had a prospect, I had a prospect that came from a referral, that, that so the referral, there were the referral was the boss of this prospect. It was basically his design director or whatever. And she came into the master class and watch the whole thing. And was like, Wow, this is amazing, went back to her boss and said, Yeah, we got to use this this guy. And it was through that, that, that the boss got excited. And had I only had a scorecard up there, that person wouldn't even have cared about, like my lead magnet, which was more of like a business process scorecard type thing, whereas a business owner might care about that. Absolutely. And so, so does Do you find that that happens a lot is just there certain, like you said, there's certain people who want to discovery call certain people want masterclass and, and just what's kind of been your observation with with that, compared to the traditional way of doing it.

Adam King 38:56
It's very similar to what you say, and that, actually, it depends hands on the person, their personality type, it also depends on their sort of level, if it's a hierarchy of business or anything like that. Because, yeah, I sort of think if somebody is ready to go, they don't want to get your lead magnet, and then wait for you to nurture them over two weeks, while you're gradually building that relationship with them. And they can feel safe enough to book a call with you and all that kind of thing. No, they want to go now. So let them have that opportunity. But there are some people that want that. Yeah, so let them have that opportunity to. And it's, it's, it's interesting, because what I sort of find is that the people that will come in and and what I've got is I've got a lead magnet, which is a blueprint, and then I have a video directly on that page, which I don't tell people about before they opt in, which is a mini masterclass. And it just takes them through that and then offers have that call. The people I find that should you to call from then compared with the people that go through more of the system more of the process. They are the Taipei ready to go decisive guys. Whereas the ones that have been through it a little bit more, and I can see because it's all trackable in the system, what they've done, how they've got there, and all the rest of it. They're not the eight Taipei, they've they can sometimes literally recite things back that they've seen through everything. Oh, when you said this, like it spoke to me. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, you know, that they have literally been through the whole thing. They needed that they needed that to feel safe enough to have a conversation with a

with a pesky marketer, who's just going to try and sell them stuff.

Dean Soto 40:50
Yeah, that that is great, man. That is that is great. And I love it, because it's it's kind of counter intuitive. Again, just like with everything that you're doing, however, it's the way it should actually be. But we've been so it's like the microwave, we're so used to the microwave way of marketing and selling. And this is where it's just meeting people where they are at all times. And, and I love that. So this all brings me to what I like to call the five minutes mindset shift question, the one thing that you were like, you know, what I'm, I'm, I am going to do this. And it took you maybe five minutes to just to make the decision. And and from that you've been able to it's been something that's massively growing your business. So what's that five minute thing, that if with you, if somebody else were to implement it, it could massively transform how they're doing business.

Adam King 41:55
What is something that Yeah, probably took maybe a little bit less than five minutes to make a decision that this is what I was going to do. But it took a heck of a lot longer for it to kind of form in my head. And that is relationships are the most important thing around anything that I'm ever going to do. Life, business, anything. And the way that we as people interact, online is the same as offline. And that all of the things that I see are not all of the things, but a lot of the things I say is out there, it's like, it's about getting people into the funnel, it's numbers, it's metrics, it's clicks, it's all those sorts of thing leads, blah, blah, blah. It's as soon as I recognize that every single one of those is a human being. And that my sole aim is to create a conversation with another human being that I can have a relationship with, whether it ends up being by business, or whether it just ends up being a relationship that they consume my content and get benefit from it. That's my focus. And it is totally, totally changed everything I do. I don't now worry about, as I say, having to sell to someone and worry about where's my next client coming from, I don't have to worry about what am I going to do this week, this month to fill my funnel. I know the only thing I have to concentrate on week in week out day in day out is starting conversations with cool and interesting people that I might be able to help. And that might one day lead to a mutually beneficial arrangement that could involve some money changing hands at some point, but it might not. That's it and I built a system around myself to help with that. And as someone who is fully diagnosed ADHD, the system part has had to I've had to do it. Because it is literally set me free, saved my life in a way, but maybe I another conversation for another day.

Dean Soto 44:02
I love that man. I love it. And it shows throughout all the stuff that you do. And it's cool because I get a benefit from that. Because I'm even thinking of 111. So there there, there are folks who kind of will come through my funnel. And super night. I mean, we already have a relationship and so on and I don't want to sell to them. They in the sense of like this one guy, he my guys are asking them, Hey, are you ready to move forward and ready to move forward and it's already been twice. And I don't like being salesy. So what it allows me to do, because of this relationship, the whole model of of what you've created, it allows me to to say, Hey, you know, it sounds like this is not the right time, no worries here, what I'm going to do is I'm like here's a podcast, I think that would be helpful podcast episode, I think would be helpful for you. And I'm just going to every every week or so I'm going to send you some podcast episode, so that I think will be helpful for you. And now they're in my long term sequence, constantly being followed up on adding value, adding value, adding value. So maybe at some point in time, we do something together. And it's not this just drop off of, okay, you didn't want to do work together, we're done. You know,

Adam King 45:20
yeah. And you can use a lot of this stuff to do the same sort of thing just in slightly different ways. Because you're not going to have time to interview everyone, you come into contact and invite the one to your podcast. So you just flip it around, you can reach out to people on you know, email, LinkedIn, that sort of thing. And if you're not sure, you can simply say, Hey, I'm not sure if you struggle with this sort of problem. But if you do, I have a really great podcast interview that my guest Yeah, and I discuss if you'd like, I can send you a link to it. And it's again, it's just being polite and asking, you know, asking questions. I don't know, if you have this problem, if you you know, and you can build up relationships in that way. You know, some will say, No, some will ignore you. But a lot of people will say, Oh, yeah, cool. Yeah, let me have a look. And then it opens up, and then they're in your ecosystem.

Dean Soto 46:10
Yeah.

Adam King 46:11
And then it's up to them at what pace that they go. And it's just about starting a conversation because unless you can start a conversation. Nobody knows you there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, it's hard to get attention but everyone's desperate for it. But attention is fleeting interest last but a relationship that's what keeps you enduring.

Dean Soto 46:36
Love it, man. Love it. So how can people work with you? How can they find you? How can they get all of this stuff that you that you in start building a relationship with Mr. Adam King?

Adam King 46:49
Well, the easiest thing to do, I practice what I preach when it comes to systems and doing things and that is, I encourage everyone to go to I've set up a page on my website specifically for your listeners, it's think like a fish co.uk slash freedom five, and that's the number five. And what you will see there is it's a range I know as you say, everyone says that you should have one call to action on a page and all the rest of it, that's not my style, I want people to see what is on that page and make a decision of what they think is going to be the biggest benefit you can get a copy of my book that I have there you can register for the master class or there's just some free training there that you don't have to opt in for you don't have to do anything you can just watch it and see how I operate how my mind works, the kind of things that I help people do. And then it's it's up to you to take the next step you can listen to the podcast you can join the Facebook group all that sort of stuff but really it's there to give a little bit see people like me and what I do and go for me I love it I love it.

Dean Soto 47:57
So go check out think like a fish.co.uk forward slash freedom five sets that's freedom just freedom five like no dashes or anything like that right sweet freedom and the number five freedom in the number five go check that out you'll love this stuff. I mean I guess the cool thing is that this is this is every literally you could take all of his training and do it yourself do it yourself that's how much like he gives and the cool thing is that he actually cares like this. He is truly one of the only I have I have had business relationships with people who have hired as consultants for marketing and he is literally the only one who has for what what we the money that changed hands I I made out like 10 times what he actually had me a chart edit it he actually charged me like I I can't tell you enough how much he massively massively changed my business and put me on a trajectory where we're going to have some massive gains in this next next year or two so so go check that out. Think Like a fish.co.uk forward slash freedom and the number five so thanks so much for being on Adam. I appreciate it man.

Adam King 49:25
I appreciate it and nice kind words it's a shame that there's an entire ocean between us It gives you a big man out for that so I do appreciate it.

Dean Soto 49:31
No worries man No worries. But yeah guys go check go check him out a big like a fish co.uk is just all of his stuff is awesome. And so that's the end of the freedom in five minutes podcast and hopefully we'll have Adam on again when he's not so busy. I know you're building out new systems and things like that and I'd love to catch up in the next few months and share any new things that you that you have. So all that being said said guys, I will see you guys on the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode is your host Dean Soto with the freedom in five minutes podcast.

It is better to give than to receive. We've all heard that often overused saying from the Bible, but in this interview you'll hear how Beau Miracle, from http://miracle-realty.com/ has a business model that is based on giving back to his community as much as possible. His amazing story is one of near bankruptcy to victory in business. You are going to love this episode.

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes.com and we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this home and community miracles that and more coming up

All right, cool. We got another podcast episode just one is going to be literally miraculous. And there's a reason why we're using the word miracle. And that's because I am joined with Mr. Bo miracle from from miracle real it real team. He's actually from a lot of different things which we'll talk and talk and touch on in just a little bit. But I'm excited for this show. Because there's going to be a lot of amazing content of a lot of amazing stuff. And yeah, I'm just decided to get into it. So So

Bo was actually born near where I live. I live up in prey there opposite of Barry area. He's in Madeira was born there, join the Marine Corps

actually had a tour in Iraq in 2003 made his way back to Madera and took over in that. I believe it's a family business right?

Beau Miracle 1:25 Yep. Yeah. 41 years.

Unknown Speaker 1:27 Wow. 41 years that is crazy. So took over the family business, and has just done a whole lot of stuff including owning a CrossFit gym. And he has, he has a son who is at St. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and it's just all over with a bunch of different groups and, and so on in the local in the local area. Absolutely love what he is doing and how to get them on. So boat. Thank you so much for being on.

Beau Miracle 1:57 Well, thank you for having me. I super appreciate it.

Dean Soto 2:00 So, so yeah. So when I was looking at some of the interviews that you had done, one of the things that struck me as I started doing more and more research about what you do is just how, how, how all over you are in the community. And that's a really big thing that I'd love to love to hear your story about how you got here, and then kind of go into I want to go into

the fact that you're really out there building and helping the community as well as all of your other businesses which we're going to talk on. So how did you how did you get from, you know, born in Madeira, go into the Marine Corps and to where you are at now as the owner of miracle Realty.

Beau Miracle 2:51 Well, it wasn't an easy road, but I definitely needed some change. So I moved to Michigan and shortly after that, I had joined more

Court. I couldn't keep a job. I wasn't good employee, I guess. And so I definitely needed some structure. And so my cousin, actually, Richie, he was actually going to go into the Marines already. And he was already basically enlisted at that point to go. And it convinced me to go in. And so I wasn't trying to be GI Joe or anything, but he definitely had to go talk to the recruiter. And they kind of motivated me a little bit. I know, I was signing the papers and going to boot camp within three months, and then did a little tour in Iraq in 2003. When it first kicked off. It was a hell of an experience. Thank you for people to have made it back. And thank you, and then. So anyhow, then I started selling cars in Michigan, and I was doing pretty good at it. And the market kind of changed for the worst. And I was in need of some change again, so I decided to move back to my good old hometown, Madeira.

And I got back here in 2009.

I had to go through some learning curves when I first got back. And, you know, I was kind of dabbling in some things I shouldn't have been doing, decided to change again. So I started going back to school to get my real estate license and get my degree.

That's taking advantage of the GI Bill. And I got my real estate license February 9, no February 11 2011. And my clan at that time was to go and work for my father who was the broker at the time of miracle realty here in Madeira. Originally founded through my uncle, who started in Clovis, actually, but narrow realty here in Madeira was the only one still around my other uncle retired. And anyways,

short story long. Nine days later, my dad passed away Oh geez, and so trying to kind of

My my plan of attack, I guess you can say. And I was put in a position to where

I wasn't really sure what to do, who's kind of like my main mentor. And so I was kind of confused. And so I reached out to a few people that I knew that that he had known and that well, they said, you have any money? I said, No. They said, You got any experience? I said, No. They said, Well, I suggest you go and work for another company until you get that experience and build some capital, and then maybe come back and entertain the fact of taking over America realty again, or restarting it rather. And so I just didn't sit well with me it was a family legacy that that my song is created. And so I said f it. And that's what I did. I decided to just kind of, you know, go after it. I didn't know what I was doing. We were in the middle of a recession. Short Sale Foreclosure boom. And so

Unknown Speaker 6:00 That's kind of what started it. And then, you know, I wasn't a broker at the time, so I had to have a broker. He was retired guy to do my dad. And he decided to partner up with me and so I can get my broker's license which I did two years later. And that's kind of what what got me into it. Wow, that is awesome. That's that's that is a crazy crazy story. I love that I'm sorry for your loss man. With your with your dad. Especially right after whenever you done that that's that's crazy. But the fact that you just you just went went for went for it and and are now doing what you what you did like that's, that's that is awesome.

Unknown Speaker 6:42 What so when you first when you first got into the to the position you are now then what were some of the things that were that kind of oh crap. I didn't expect this type stuff when it came to actually owning the business outright.

Unknown Speaker 7:02 Well, I would say probably a oh crap moment every day for like two for like two years. It was crazy. I mean, you know, when when you take over a business or you had to restart the business because it was basically it was a sole proprietorship. So when I read took it over and had to reestablish it that, you know, you don't have inventory, you don't have money. And if you're not selling anything, you don't get commissions. And this is a commission only type of business. So, for me, it was every day. I mean, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't know who to ask. I was I was a little scorned by the fact of those people that I had reached out to they've been in the industry for a long time. So I felt like that was going to be the answer to all my questions was just like, you shouldn't be doing it. You know, blah, blah, blah. So, anyhow, every day, I mean, turn the lights on keeping the lights on, getting a business license, having to go through the big process.

Unknown Speaker 8:00 Success and always being an employee versus an employer. And then I didn't really have employees. And I mean, I don't want to take up too much of your show my drama, but there's this drama after drama with me taking over whether it was family drama, or just the fact that we were in what was my first experience in real estate was the recession. So, you know, a transaction will take six months to close, if not longer. That was just me and a few others. I tend to kept it real intimate and small, because I really didn't have confidence. And so

Unknown Speaker 8:37 at that point, it just kind of really made me question what I was doing and if I should have listened to those those voices that that I spoke to, asking me to not go through the business, but

Unknown Speaker 8:50 it was a struggle every day for sure. Wow. Yeah, that

Unknown Speaker 8:54 that's, that's really honest, though. A lot of people would be like, Oh, yeah, there was like some It was hot. It was hot.

Unknown Speaker 9:01 At some points or whatever, but the fact that you're like, holy crap, like, right, there's pretty much every single day. There were something. That's, uh, that's pretty rare to actually have someone say that So, I mean, kudos to you. That's, that's awesome.

Unknown Speaker 9:18 Yeah, I mean, I want I want to know more about this. So, so when you started gaining confidence because one thing that I noticed about your business in particular, is that right now there is from from the stuff that you put out, on on, on your Facebook page and, and, and so on.

Unknown Speaker 9:42 There's a lot of confidence there. Now, you have your brand, you have your shirt, your your branded shirts, hats,

Unknown Speaker 9:50 you're in the community, you're doing that stuff. When did it start to click like that? Where you were starting to

Unknown Speaker 10:00 Be able to start building your building your team as well. When did it start to kind of click and not be kind of the, the Holy crap, you know, things are on fire all the time.

Unknown Speaker 10:12 Well, I'm gonna give you another honest an aha moment. So probably about a year and a half into me taking over. I had went through a series of series of things that just were just crazy, but then I got sued, and I got sued for a number that I couldn't even write an IOU about. And so it was like $5 million, or something crazy like that. And so

Unknown Speaker 10:39 I'm grateful that I had to go through the experience. I just wish it would have been different. But I was faced with the with the with the thing in front of me that was about to take everything away that I had just started and tried to really start creating. And I was already scared. I was scared. From the moment that I started. I dared me

Unknown Speaker 11:00 For the lawsuit, and then when I was going through the lawsuit, I was really humbled. And that's kind of where the CrossFit came into play because I was teaching classes at the local CrossFit gym for free because I knew the owner of the gyms that he has your locally and he let me kind of coach for free and it just gave me kind of like that good feel that I wanted by doing that. So anyways, after after going through that lawsuit, I at that point realized, what's the worst that can happen. And so a wise man once told me that someone might be able to to take everything that I that I have away from me, but they can never take my ability to do it all over again. So so that's that's kind of what just resonated with me at that point. As I was like, You know what, you know, we live in California, we're going to be facing things. And you know, for a guy that didn't have 20 bucks in his back pocket that was getting sued for five

Unknown Speaker 12:00 million dollars. I couldn't afford an attorney representing myself and having to take all the people that were close to me into the lawsuit as well, because we were all kind of participating in that, whether we liked it or not. And so

Unknown Speaker 12:14 it was just a real humbling humbling thing. And I mean, when you're faced with losing everything that you don't have, you kind of realize it doesn't really matter, right? Because there's so much more out there for us that we can be grateful for. And so that's what blew my confidence that at that point, I kind of made a like the personal goal, I guess you can say that. I'm going to expose myself to my community. I'm going to put myself out there, I'm going to overcome adversity and I'm going to I'm going to do what I needed to do. And at that point, I was like, you know, I need to brand myself that's what I need to do. I need to be miracle Realty. So every time you see Bo miracle, like you don't question that I'm part of miracle realty or I'm the real estate guy in Madeira. And so with with with that,

Unknown Speaker 13:00 branding, I kind of got some really, really good people to buy into that. And we created a culture from that. And, you know, we went from one or two agents and maybe an office manager, property manager to, you know, almost 12 real estate agents. Not all full time, but I got 12 realtors, and then I got a property manager who's awesome. And then I got an office assistant. So we've just really grown and not and not just the fact that we've grown but what we do in return for our community is I mean, it's just amazing and we just so much for the community and, and I and I spend my wheels trying to dedicate my time as much as possible to, to 10 what you were saying like whether it's their Chamber of Commerce and being on the board of directors or Madeira Association of Realtors or participating in the Fresno Association of Realtors or running our own personal community events like the disabled veterans golf tournament that we just got done. And we're super successful with I mean, just just being out there and you know,

Unknown Speaker 14:00 You can't keep anything unless you give it away and that's like my philosophy. I mean, I don't try to make more money I try to do more so I can give more back man i

Unknown Speaker 14:11 that is awesome that is absolutely awesome because one thanks for being so real and upfront on that because that is that's actually something that I struggle with just personally with my business I always I'm always had for years and it wasn't only till recently that I've that it's gotten better as I always think, Oh crap, everything's going to come crashing down I'm gonna lose all my money I'm going to lose whatever but to have it where were you were literally faced with that like, I'm not I'm not even faced with that. And I'm and I'm worried about Oh, am I going to be able to feed my family or whatever. You are literally faced with someone trying to take it all from you. And came to the realization that you know what, I'm just you know, I there's so much to be grateful for and

Unknown Speaker 15:00 I'm going to just start giving, giving, giving, giving. And that's that's that is one of the things that really struck me with your business. I mean, there's I mean, that in reality, real real estate brokers realtors are theirs they're everywhere right and

Unknown Speaker 15:20 one of the but but but to see your golf tournament to see when you're doing stuff with the the Grizzlies over here you're doing all like just a whole bunch of different things that you're doing for the community that is that is that totally struck me and that's it. That's actually amazing how how that cut that culture is formed off of that potential loss of everything.

Unknown Speaker 15:44 It just truly did and I mean, you know, they say like law of attraction if you're into that or whatever. I'm a big universe and energy guy but you know, for me, you know, I struggled through through a lot of things through my little journey and

Unknown Speaker 16:00 And now where I'm at today, I'm just surrounded by such amazing people that, you know, I don't know why they believe in me and so much that they, they do. But my point is, as I'm as successful as I am, because of the people that are part of my team, I mean, I just have great people. I mean, they just, they bought in, you know, every time someone tries to come to my office, I always tell them, you know, go talk to other offices, and then come back to me, you know, because I really just want to not be by it. You know, I don't want to be that person. That's miracle realty is the best company, even though I love miracle Realty. And to me, it is the best company, but I want them to learn that to themselves. And, and because of what we do. I don't recruit. And I mean, I've been told by people that I should, but you know, I don't want to I don't want to overly saturate our culture because I think that if you get the wrong people, and they don't vibe, you kind of lose that family oriented aspect to what we do, because let's face it, I mean, we're, we're we're with our people.

Unknown Speaker 17:00 More than one with our family. Yep. Right so so these are our families so I mean if we're not vitamin I mean it's okay to agree to disagree and sometimes you know just like any dysfunctional family we have our we have our disagreements and whatnot and maybe even our little stats but the reality of it is is is I'm just truly blessed with the people that are in my life and not just in my businesses but you know just all around I just the the people that support miracle Realty and cross it Madeira and other various things I'm part of, I mean, just awesome. And Madeira is one of those towns that kind of like, like cheers, where everybody knows your name. If you really, if you really make a positive impact in this town, this town will will will pay you back threefold. Wow, that's I love that. I love that my aunt my aunt is she lives in Madeira. And I love I love that area. Like it's it's always been really really, really nice.

Unknown Speaker 17:56 But yeah, like that. That's definitely a thing. That is it.

Unknown Speaker 18:00 characteristic is, is you're giving back to the town because in

Unknown Speaker 18:06 to me a lot of people could say, well it's just a small town like what is that going to? Was that you know really going to do for your business or whatever but you can you can tell like you actually care about everyone in the community and that it's it's it's awesome.

Unknown Speaker 18:23 How does help so how did so you have miracle Realty and you have other things going on such as cross the CrossFit thing the so let me so that is CrossFit Madeira? How did that come about? I know you that you do CrossFit, but how did that come about? And how does that play into everything else that you're doing as well?

Unknown Speaker 18:48 So I've always kind of been into fitness and that was my like, my thing, right? That was my outlet. I had a really good friend that I've known since second grade. She actually just got his PhD.

Unknown Speaker 19:00 But he kind of started me on my little fitness journey when I first started kind of redirecting my life a little bit. And so point being is I lost about 60 pounds. And I didn't just lose 60 pounds a month from a certain weight, certain body fat percentage. And so anyways, I was really on this mission statement of just like really aging, who I was because there's three things I wanted to do right before my dad passed, and because I didn't know he's going to pass but I wanted to get my personal training certificate, which I did. I wanted to get my bail bond license, which I did and then I got my real estate license. Well,

Unknown Speaker 19:34 of course, being kind of a fitness enthusiast. Everybody always wants to own their own gym. But at the time, what would happen what happened was the gym owner that owned the what's called a Globo gym, like your traditional gyms here in Madeira. He actually he was a very successful entrepreneur here, and he had several gyms and then he ventured into the CrossFit. And so, anyhow, I became good friends with him.

Unknown Speaker 20:00 Because I trained at his gym and, and different relationships that were established there.

Unknown Speaker 20:05 He started CrossFit at his actual main location in Madeira. And then

Unknown Speaker 20:13 I, I was kind of getting complacent in my own fitness. And then one day I did CrossFit and it sucked so bad, because it was so hard, just me off. And that competitive edge and me just kept going back and, and really what was pushing me was just certain things about my body that, you know, my shoulder was kind of giving me a hard time and I wasn't able to do certain list but I was doing because I was a wannabe bodybuilder. Yeah, and so I just started doing the CrossFit thing. And then because of who I am, in my nature, I was like, You know what, I'm gonna get certified also in CrossFit and, and so I did.

Unknown Speaker 20:50 And so that was right around the time, and I was actually going to that lawsuit. And so an opportunity had arose because there's some falling out because he had opened up

Unknown Speaker 21:00 Another location, which eventually took over, but anyways, I was I was going to the gym or about 530 I was I was teaching classes because they needed someone to fill in and I just gotten certified. So I voluntarily started teaching classes for free. And it was it was because I just loved it. I loved I loved helping people change their lives. I mean, there's, there's always a gratifying feeling when you give someone the keys to their home that they're going to make memories in. But another feeling that when you take somebody that's actually spiritually emotionally and physically broken, and you take do this little fitness journey,

Unknown Speaker 21:38 I mean, I've seen relationships restored, I've seen you know, people, their mental strength, their physical strength and their spiritual strength, come back to light. And so, my point was, was I wanted that lawsuit. That was my outlet. That was really what I just that that social element of what most people would go to the bar or do whatever

Unknown Speaker 22:00 That was my bar literally, you know, and, and I had people that I talked to. And so long story short

Unknown Speaker 22:09 Two years later, the my friend decided to start liquidating his gyms because he was going to sell all five of his gyms and so he he asked me if I wanted to buy their from him. And, you know, I already had a business and I was already pretty busy with that. But, you know, I was like, I looked at the gym and I was like, well, I just don't see myself not doing it. Even though I know it's going to be hard to it's a completely different industry. I wasn't educated on it again. I mean, yeah, I taught some classes, but we're talking about running a business here. And so it wasn't making money.

Unknown Speaker 22:50 And there was some things that I needed to overcome within the city to fulfill some conditional use permit. And so it was just a big, it was a big burden at first

Unknown Speaker 23:00 Be honest, because it just on paper, it didn't make sense. Even my accountant was like a stupid like, you know, like, Why would you do this? And I said, You know, I said it'll, it'll work. it'll eventually work. I'll make it work. Yeah, I've been in this position before. And so

Unknown Speaker 23:19 we're not we're not making it rich or anything. But I will tell you that we've, we've stayed so consistent ever since I took over about now it's been about almost three and a half years.

Unknown Speaker 23:30 And since doing that, it's actually shown promise because I'm in real estate, and I'm involved in the community. So usually, if your trainer is your real estate guy, you're going to have automatic instill trust in that person because you already know him. So that became a social network. For me that just skyrocketed my business. I have a lot of people that I actually do train at my gym and then also, that they've either having to manage their property or help them sell or buy homes. So

Unknown Speaker 24:01 I kind of just made that work for me. And so now I just kind of cross reference industry and kind of brought real estate to CrossFit. And now you know, phone miracle is miracle Realty and CrossFit Madeira. I love it, man. What? Okay, so one thing I definitely noticed about you, one thing that I definitely noticed about you is that, you know, I'm always reaching out to people who I find interesting to come on to the podcast, and and who I think would would provide a lot of value. A lot of people in fact, I would right before this recording this podcast, I was talking with somebody who, you know, they wanted to have a pre phone interview, they wanted to find out a lot more about what was going on and a lot of people are hesitant to, to say yes to things and when you when when I reached out to you, it was like, bam, you just you were you you you you

Unknown Speaker 25:00 You said you would be on the podcast I gave you the the the, the the page to schedule on the podcast and literally within less than an hour, we were already scheduled for you to come on. And most people don't take action like that. And you did you It seems to me like you are that that's a big part of who you are. And maybe I'm wrong of just doing stuff just doing it, you're going to figure it out. Is that has that always been the case? with with with how you kind of like how you're kind of mode of operation?

Unknown Speaker 25:39 Um, well, that's a good question. I would definitely say I haven't always been that way. No, not at all. You know, in the first two, two or so years of my business when I first started, I was scared of everything. And I would say no to me. I didn't I didn't even know how to tell people I owned. Miracle real jack almost felt bad or guilty.

Unknown Speaker 26:00 I felt like I was doing my dad in service because she was so great at it and I here I was sucking, you know, so

Unknown Speaker 26:08 and so, I again, when I, when I kind of had that aha moment, to the lawsuit and whatnot, I kind of I kind of again, made it like a personal thing, like, you know, life's too short to not just take on opportunities, right? Like, they may not all be the things that I want to do, but some way or somehow it's always going to be if I have a good feeling about it, it'll just work out. Yeah. Right. And then I mean, that's when when you reached out I was like, How the hell did this guy even like search do that make sure you weren't Spam

Unknown Speaker 26:43 is like legitimate? You know, I didn't know anybody watched that one so that I that I do, but I go on there about twice or three times a year that they're pretty persistent on getting me on there. But yeah,

Unknown Speaker 26:54 you know, I researched I saw that, you know, you were pretty reputable and I liked that.

Unknown Speaker 27:00 And so I again, I mean, that's that's all I had to do just to make sure that I have a good feeling because I know it would work that it would work out.

Unknown Speaker 27:07 I love that man. That is so cool. I'm glad. I'm glad. Glad that you saw that was reputable.

Unknown Speaker 27:13 No, it's totally understandable, though. I mean, if someone's reaching out, he's like, hey, couldn't be on my show that you've never heard of.

Unknown Speaker 27:23 Tell me a little bit about about your show. If you don't mind. I know it's a spotlight on me. But just

Unknown Speaker 27:29 Oh man, this is this is actually the first time that's ever happened, by the way. So So yeah, that says freedom in five minutes show. So I own a company. And its brand is freedom in five minutes. And we have what are called Virtual systems architects. And they are people who can show a video how to do something in five minutes and they document everything step by step by step into a standard operating procedure

Unknown Speaker 27:58 and the

Unknown Speaker 28:00 That's the business The show is based around but it's really based around even though right now we're talking right now getting the story and everything like that it's really based around the idea which is what I'm going to ask you in just in just a minute it have a five minute things I've noticed that just like with you what you were talking about with the lawsuit and the the decision that you made to just that like that, that there's there's so much more important much more important things in life things to be grateful for that there's always I've noticed that whenever I've had something really big happen, it's been that five minute or less decision where I'm like, no, it's going to be this way. The and so, so I try and get people who come on the show to share their the thing, the one thing or one or it could be the more but one thing that

Unknown Speaker 29:00 Took them really, you know, five minutes, like five minutes or less to make this powerful mindset shift that has affected them for the rest of their lives. So that's what the show is about. And it's also to, to hear from other business owners how they've scaled, and then how people can actually reach out to you and to do business with you and so on. So that's, that's the gist of the show.

Unknown Speaker 29:25 Awesome. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 29:28 But thanks for asking, man, that was the first time I've ever had a guest to do that. And I appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 29:32 The usually it's before or it's after, you know, so that's cool.

Unknown Speaker 29:39 So, so yeah. So the going to what the kind of the foundation of the show is, you know, what's that one thing where it could be with any of your businesses but something where you know, I you just made a decision, what could be something with your staff, it could be something where you decided to delegate something that

Unknown Speaker 30:00 You that or whatever but something that you, you're like, I'm, I'm just going to do this and you It didn't really take that long to to make the decision about you just said I'm just going to do this and it ended up being being something that has transformed your business transform your life What would you say that one thing would be?

Unknown Speaker 30:23 I think that just deciding to, to say yeah, I mean to get out there I mean, I get I stopped so reserved for so long. When I first started, I was just like, what am I gonna catch my next break? You know, I just felt like I was I was an employee of the business and and a wise person once told me, you'll never be rich when you own business, but you should be able to comfortably pay your bills. And I wasn't comfortably paying my bills either. So.

Unknown Speaker 30:54 So, I mean, I was just full of stress. And I mean, I was dealing with problems and

Unknown Speaker 31:00 I just was like, you know, in order to do this, I need to get people to buy into what I believe in. And I think that if I can, if I can stay consistent because to me, everything is consistency. Like no matter what, just as long as you show up every day, you put one foot in front of the other. That's the first freaking step, you know. And so with my businesses is when I, when I made the shift was when I was like, You know what, like, I'm ready to grow this thing. And when I when I meant grow it, it wasn't so I could be rich. It was so that way I can get a team to get a team of people that believed in the vision and the culture that I created, that I wanted to be so impactful in our community, just like when people think of miracle Realty. I don't even know what they know what we sell real estate, you know, like that, because we're just out there. You know, we're all the community events and that's like a prerequisite of being at miracle Realty.

Unknown Speaker 32:00 At CrossFit, for that matters, like if you're going to be part of my team, you have to dedicate and volunteer time to go to these events. Because we do a lot of events and to me that that's, that's where it's at is just being involved. And, and when you're when you're fortunate enough to be in a town like Madeira, where, you know, it's just under 70,000 population, and it's a one of those small niche town. It's not quite like a Hanford or, you know, not big, but it's just big enough to again, that you if you just stay involved, whether it's sponsoring the local baseball, soccer, schools, you know, the athletes, you know, when my son was wrestling for Maduro, South, just whatever I could do to participate. I mean that that, honestly, just like what you asked earlier, like, like, why did I say yes, well, because, I mean, again, every opportunity is going to be an opportunity if it's in alignment with my assignment. Yeah, right. And then

Unknown Speaker 33:00 And I learned, I learned that I learned that little, quote or verbiage motivational seminar I went to not too long ago. And that really clicked with me. Because if it's in alignment with my assignment, I don't ever want to say what is, yeah, or don't want to be sort of could have or would have, right. So again, if I if I, if I find balance with it, as long as it meets in with my alignment to my assignment, then everything else will work out.

Unknown Speaker 33:28 Everything will work out, you know, and again, to me, with businesses, anybody can go look on paper and see if the numbers make sense. But I never have taken a business over and looked at it like that. Yeah, I just look at it as Okay, this is my opportunity. And I'm, I'm one person and I can I can spread the word and I can get people to buy into the product or the culture. And again, you know, for me in America

Unknown Speaker 34:00 has been around for 41 years but I guarantee you in the last five years miracle realty has put itself back on the map here in Missouri. Or you can you can tell man you can tell by just how all your literally all over Madeira.

Unknown Speaker 34:17 It's, it's it's awesome. Like you can tell just from the community building that you've that you've done that that's that is definitely a case and I think it's absolutely amazing man.

Unknown Speaker 34:30 So how can people so what are the things you're doing now? And how can people reach out to you? If they're in the Madeira area they want they want to buy a home or if they want to do CrossFit or how can they just reach out to you in general and what are you up to?

Unknown Speaker 34:47 Okay, that's good question. So

Unknown Speaker 34:50 I'm pretty easy to get ahold of like you said you know, social media, whatever. The biggest thing about what we do is we don't just service Madeira we do service potential Valley awesome.

Unknown Speaker 35:00 We do property. We do property management also for investment homes and whatnot. So we have about 100 doors where we maintain and manage from about the upwards of Clovis down to chuck Schiller.

Unknown Speaker 35:12 But you know, whether it's for the real estate aspect, you know, miracle realty or miracle hyphen, realty.com, or cross it madeira.com or any of my new ventures, which I just started a new ventures called miracle meals. And it's kind of like those healthy fit meals. So my brother's a chef by trade. And so we partnered up with a local restaurant here in Madeira. And we we cook those meals and those those meals are 600 calories or less with all the right

Unknown Speaker 35:43 ingredients, I guess you can say for all those paleo keto,

Unknown Speaker 35:47 healthy, juiciest, and then I have another joint venture with a friend of mine, and we do investment homes so we buy the flip houses. That's great. Dan Yeah, so But I mean, they can either get a hold of me through the

Unknown Speaker 36:00 website social media you know Bo miracles pretty easy to find or my office number is 559-674-0091. But yeah, typically a social media on on either IG or Facebook, it's pretty easy to get ahold of me someone's trying to reach out. I love it. I love it so so miracle dash realty.com CrossFit madeira.com Miracle meals madeira.com as well. I love I love the miracle meals idea, man. that's a that's a that's a really cool little gig going on.

Unknown Speaker 36:39 Makes it easy, especially when I was doing Quito, actually, not too long ago for a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament that I was that I was going to be doing. And I'm like that would that would have been super helpful.

Unknown Speaker 36:52 Yeah, so but I'm going to be doing it again. So I'll probably end up reaching out to you. So you do you did

Unknown Speaker 37:00 Yeah, yeah, I just been I've only been doing it so I'm, I'm a, I'm a member of a business organization called warrior, wake up warrior. And, and so you set these 90 day targets. And my 90 day target was to do to do a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament because I hadn't done other than combatants in in the army. I didn't do really any type of jujitsu at all, but I had always wanted to. And so I'm like, I'm just gonna do a tournament and we'll see what happens and it ended up being pretty cool. Well, I won third place by default, because someone didn't show

Unknown Speaker 37:38 what it was

Unknown Speaker 37:40 that goes back to my theory about all you gotta do so. Yeah, exactly. You

Unknown Speaker 37:47 know, cuz it's funny. Because my, my coach, he's like, Oh, you know, cuz they move the upper bracket. I was supposed to be 180 to 200 bracket and they put me in 200 and above. So that

Unknown Speaker 38:00 I was going against four to 50. And I was like 197. And he's like, you know, we can go get a refund, we can go, we can go and you know, just let him know not to you know that we didn't want to move up or bracket and stuff and I'm like now let's do it. Let's see what happens is not going to do this I'll spend all this time and not do it and ended up winning, winning getting third place because of just showing up in the bracket where in the in that in that bracket where I was supposed to just get completely hammered, which I did, but it was awesome.

Unknown Speaker 38:35 It's all about it's all about the experience. And I was gonna say because at my CrossFit gym, he's a partner of mine. He he does when they're mixed martial arts out across it but they're a little just class and stuff so it's pretty cool dang see I'm gonna have to get them to stop by then guys. It's not it's not in Madeira is not too far from from where I'm at. So I'm gonna have to stop by and, and see because that's that's that's great man. That's all

Unknown Speaker 39:00 Good, that's always great

Unknown Speaker 39:03 to know because I actually want to get into probably one of my probably not this next 90 days, but 90 days after that I want to actually do a mixed martial arts match. So we'll see what happens with that so but

Unknown Speaker 39:19 it's awesome so well thanks so much for being being on the show man. I appreciate you appreciate your time. I know you're all over the place doing some amazing stuff. But But I just wanted I wanted you to be on because I thought you know, you do you have just some really amazing stuff going on. Especially the giving side of things which we don't really get to talk about and something that personally I've been lacking and I've been feeling like called to be more out there. So you're, you're kind of like

Unknown Speaker 39:50 an archetype for me when I when I see you out there like that. So it's just really cool. I'm glad that you were able to be on the show, man.

Unknown Speaker 39:59 I appreciate you having

Unknown Speaker 40:00 And how do we advertise your show or or the broadcast that we did today? Oh, just let people know about freedom in five minutes. Austin I end up showing you a

Unknown Speaker 40:14 I'll sharing a link to your actual episode so you can share that around or whatever but but yeah, man

Unknown Speaker 40:20 just yeah, I appreciate and appreciate you and you're going to give other guests a run for their money with how how giving, giving your arm because it's it's really cool. It's it's a really different feel man so I appreciate it. So. So that is the end of the episode guys. If you want to reach out to Bo he is obviously I mean literally one of the I mean, we only live we've only talked for the last 40 minutes, which even on the show, normally we go about 25 minutes. So that's how interesting you are man.

Unknown Speaker 41:00 If you want to get in touch with Bo he's super super nice if you can't tell, I've only known him this this long and I'm like, Oh man, I like this guy so much.

Unknown Speaker 41:09 So if you want to check him out, go to miracle dash Realty. com CrossFit madeira.com and miracle meals madeira.com You can also check them out on Instagram and Facebook, just search for miracle realty in Madeira, miracle miracle realty Madeira and Google and he'll pop right up. So all that being said, Guys, it was great being on this episode and we will see you on the next freedom in five minutes episode.

It is better to give than to receive.  We've all heard that often overused saying from the Bible, but in this interview you'll hear how Beau Miracle, from http://miracle-realty.com/ has a business model that is based on giving back to his community as much as possible.  His amazing story is one of near bankruptcy to victory in business.  You are going to love this episode.

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00
Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes.com and we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this home and community miracles that and more coming up

All right, cool. We got another podcast episode just one is going to be literally miraculous. And there's a reason why we're using the word miracle. And that's because I am joined with Mr. Bo miracle from from miracle real it real team. He's actually from a lot of different things which we'll talk and talk and touch on in just a little bit. But I'm excited for this show. Because there's going to be a lot of amazing content of a lot of amazing stuff. And yeah, I'm just decided to get into it. So So

Bo was actually born near where I live. I live up in prey there opposite of Barry area. He's in Madeira was born there, join the Marine Corps

actually had a tour in Iraq in 2003 made his way back to Madera and took over in that. I believe it's a family business right?

Beau Miracle 1:25
Yep. Yeah. 41 years.

Unknown Speaker 1:27
Wow. 41 years that is crazy. So took over the family business, and has just done a whole lot of stuff including owning a CrossFit gym. And he has, he has a son who is at St. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and it's just all over with a bunch of different groups and, and so on in the local in the local area. Absolutely love what he is doing and how to get them on. So boat. Thank you so much for being on.

Beau Miracle 1:57
Well, thank you for having me. I super appreciate it.

Dean Soto 2:00
So, so yeah. So when I was looking at some of the interviews that you had done, one of the things that struck me as I started doing more and more research about what you do is just how, how, how all over you are in the community. And that's a really big thing that I'd love to love to hear your story about how you got here, and then kind of go into I want to go into

the fact that you're really out there building and helping the community as well as all of your other businesses which we're going to talk on. So how did you how did you get from, you know, born in Madeira, go into the Marine Corps and to where you are at now as the owner of miracle Realty.

Beau Miracle 2:51
Well, it wasn't an easy road, but I definitely needed some change. So I moved to Michigan and shortly after that, I had joined more

Court. I couldn't keep a job. I wasn't good employee, I guess. And so I definitely needed some structure. And so my cousin, actually, Richie, he was actually going to go into the Marines already. And he was already basically enlisted at that point to go. And it convinced me to go in. And so I wasn't trying to be GI Joe or anything, but he definitely had to go talk to the recruiter. And they kind of motivated me a little bit. I know, I was signing the papers and going to boot camp within three months, and then did a little tour in Iraq in 2003. When it first kicked off. It was a hell of an experience. Thank you for people to have made it back. And thank you, and then. So anyhow, then I started selling cars in Michigan, and I was doing pretty good at it. And the market kind of changed for the worst. And I was in need of some change again, so I decided to move back to my good old hometown, Madeira.

And I got back here in 2009.

I had to go through some learning curves when I first got back. And, you know, I was kind of dabbling in some things I shouldn't have been doing, decided to change again. So I started going back to school to get my real estate license and get my degree.

That's taking advantage of the GI Bill. And I got my real estate license February 9, no February 11 2011. And my clan at that time was to go and work for my father who was the broker at the time of miracle realty here in Madeira. Originally founded through my uncle, who started in Clovis, actually, but narrow realty here in Madeira was the only one still around my other uncle retired. And anyways,

short story long. Nine days later, my dad passed away Oh geez, and so trying to kind of

My my plan of attack, I guess you can say. And I was put in a position to where

I wasn't really sure what to do, who's kind of like my main mentor. And so I was kind of confused. And so I reached out to a few people that I knew that that he had known and that well, they said, you have any money? I said, No. They said, You got any experience? I said, No. They said, Well, I suggest you go and work for another company until you get that experience and build some capital, and then maybe come back and entertain the fact of taking over America realty again, or restarting it rather. And so I just didn't sit well with me it was a family legacy that that my song is created. And so I said f it. And that's what I did. I decided to just kind of, you know, go after it. I didn't know what I was doing. We were in the middle of a recession. Short Sale Foreclosure boom. And so

Unknown Speaker 6:00
That's kind of what started it. And then, you know, I wasn't a broker at the time, so I had to have a broker. He was retired guy to do my dad. And he decided to partner up with me and so I can get my broker's license which I did two years later. And that's kind of what what got me into it. Wow, that is awesome. That's that's that is a crazy crazy story. I love that I'm sorry for your loss man. With your with your dad. Especially right after whenever you done that that's that's crazy. But the fact that you just you just went went for went for it and and are now doing what you what you did like that's, that's that is awesome.

Unknown Speaker 6:42
What so when you first when you first got into the to the position you are now then what were some of the things that were that kind of oh crap. I didn't expect this type stuff when it came to actually owning the business outright.

Unknown Speaker 7:02
Well, I would say probably a oh crap moment every day for like two for like two years. It was crazy. I mean, you know, when when you take over a business or you had to restart the business because it was basically it was a sole proprietorship. So when I read took it over and had to reestablish it that, you know, you don't have inventory, you don't have money. And if you're not selling anything, you don't get commissions. And this is a commission only type of business. So, for me, it was every day. I mean, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't know who to ask. I was I was a little scorned by the fact of those people that I had reached out to they've been in the industry for a long time. So I felt like that was going to be the answer to all my questions was just like, you shouldn't be doing it. You know, blah, blah, blah. So, anyhow, every day, I mean, turn the lights on keeping the lights on, getting a business license, having to go through the big process.

Unknown Speaker 8:00
Success and always being an employee versus an employer. And then I didn't really have employees. And I mean, I don't want to take up too much of your show my drama, but there's this drama after drama with me taking over whether it was family drama, or just the fact that we were in what was my first experience in real estate was the recession. So, you know, a transaction will take six months to close, if not longer. That was just me and a few others. I tend to kept it real intimate and small, because I really didn't have confidence. And so

Unknown Speaker 8:37
at that point, it just kind of really made me question what I was doing and if I should have listened to those those voices that that I spoke to, asking me to not go through the business, but

Unknown Speaker 8:50
it was a struggle every day for sure. Wow. Yeah, that

Unknown Speaker 8:54
that's, that's really honest, though. A lot of people would be like, Oh, yeah, there was like some It was hot. It was hot.

Unknown Speaker 9:01
At some points or whatever, but the fact that you're like, holy crap, like, right, there's pretty much every single day. There were something. That's, uh, that's pretty rare to actually have someone say that So, I mean, kudos to you. That's, that's awesome.

Unknown Speaker 9:18
Yeah, I mean, I want I want to know more about this. So, so when you started gaining confidence because one thing that I noticed about your business in particular, is that right now there is from from the stuff that you put out, on on, on your Facebook page and, and, and so on.

Unknown Speaker 9:42
There's a lot of confidence there. Now, you have your brand, you have your shirt, your your branded shirts, hats,

Unknown Speaker 9:50
you're in the community, you're doing that stuff. When did it start to click like that? Where you were starting to

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Be able to start building your building your team as well. When did it start to kind of click and not be kind of the, the Holy crap, you know, things are on fire all the time.

Unknown Speaker 10:12
Well, I'm gonna give you another honest an aha moment. So probably about a year and a half into me taking over. I had went through a series of series of things that just were just crazy, but then I got sued, and I got sued for a number that I couldn't even write an IOU about. And so it was like $5 million, or something crazy like that. And so

Unknown Speaker 10:39
I'm grateful that I had to go through the experience. I just wish it would have been different. But I was faced with the with the with the thing in front of me that was about to take everything away that I had just started and tried to really start creating. And I was already scared. I was scared. From the moment that I started. I dared me

Unknown Speaker 11:00
For the lawsuit, and then when I was going through the lawsuit, I was really humbled. And that's kind of where the CrossFit came into play because I was teaching classes at the local CrossFit gym for free because I knew the owner of the gyms that he has your locally and he let me kind of coach for free and it just gave me kind of like that good feel that I wanted by doing that. So anyways, after after going through that lawsuit, I at that point realized, what's the worst that can happen. And so a wise man once told me that someone might be able to to take everything that I that I have away from me, but they can never take my ability to do it all over again. So so that's that's kind of what just resonated with me at that point. As I was like, You know what, you know, we live in California, we're going to be facing things. And you know, for a guy that didn't have 20 bucks in his back pocket that was getting sued for five

Unknown Speaker 12:00
million dollars. I couldn't afford an attorney representing myself and having to take all the people that were close to me into the lawsuit as well, because we were all kind of participating in that, whether we liked it or not. And so

Unknown Speaker 12:14
it was just a real humbling humbling thing. And I mean, when you're faced with losing everything that you don't have, you kind of realize it doesn't really matter, right? Because there's so much more out there for us that we can be grateful for. And so that's what blew my confidence that at that point, I kind of made a like the personal goal, I guess you can say that. I'm going to expose myself to my community. I'm going to put myself out there, I'm going to overcome adversity and I'm going to I'm going to do what I needed to do. And at that point, I was like, you know, I need to brand myself that's what I need to do. I need to be miracle Realty. So every time you see Bo miracle, like you don't question that I'm part of miracle realty or I'm the real estate guy in Madeira. And so with with with that,

Unknown Speaker 13:00
branding, I kind of got some really, really good people to buy into that. And we created a culture from that. And, you know, we went from one or two agents and maybe an office manager, property manager to, you know, almost 12 real estate agents. Not all full time, but I got 12 realtors, and then I got a property manager who's awesome. And then I got an office assistant. So we've just really grown and not and not just the fact that we've grown but what we do in return for our community is I mean, it's just amazing and we just so much for the community and, and I and I spend my wheels trying to dedicate my time as much as possible to, to 10 what you were saying like whether it's their Chamber of Commerce and being on the board of directors or Madeira Association of Realtors or participating in the Fresno Association of Realtors or running our own personal community events like the disabled veterans golf tournament that we just got done. And we're super successful with I mean, just just being out there and you know,

Unknown Speaker 14:00
You can't keep anything unless you give it away and that's like my philosophy. I mean, I don't try to make more money I try to do more so I can give more back man i

Unknown Speaker 14:11
that is awesome that is absolutely awesome because one thanks for being so real and upfront on that because that is that's actually something that I struggle with just personally with my business I always I'm always had for years and it wasn't only till recently that I've that it's gotten better as I always think, Oh crap, everything's going to come crashing down I'm gonna lose all my money I'm going to lose whatever but to have it where were you were literally faced with that like, I'm not I'm not even faced with that. And I'm and I'm worried about Oh, am I going to be able to feed my family or whatever. You are literally faced with someone trying to take it all from you. And came to the realization that you know what, I'm just you know, I there's so much to be grateful for and

Unknown Speaker 15:00
I'm going to just start giving, giving, giving, giving. And that's that's that is one of the things that really struck me with your business. I mean, there's I mean, that in reality, real real estate brokers realtors are theirs they're everywhere right and

Unknown Speaker 15:20
one of the but but but to see your golf tournament to see when you're doing stuff with the the Grizzlies over here you're doing all like just a whole bunch of different things that you're doing for the community that is that is that totally struck me and that's it. That's actually amazing how how that cut that culture is formed off of that potential loss of everything.

Unknown Speaker 15:44
It just truly did and I mean, you know, they say like law of attraction if you're into that or whatever. I'm a big universe and energy guy but you know, for me, you know, I struggled through through a lot of things through my little journey and

Unknown Speaker 16:00
And now where I'm at today, I'm just surrounded by such amazing people that, you know, I don't know why they believe in me and so much that they, they do. But my point is, as I'm as successful as I am, because of the people that are part of my team, I mean, I just have great people. I mean, they just, they bought in, you know, every time someone tries to come to my office, I always tell them, you know, go talk to other offices, and then come back to me, you know, because I really just want to not be by it. You know, I don't want to be that person. That's miracle realty is the best company, even though I love miracle Realty. And to me, it is the best company, but I want them to learn that to themselves. And, and because of what we do. I don't recruit. And I mean, I've been told by people that I should, but you know, I don't want to I don't want to overly saturate our culture because I think that if you get the wrong people, and they don't vibe, you kind of lose that family oriented aspect to what we do, because let's face it, I mean, we're, we're we're with our people.

Unknown Speaker 17:00
More than one with our family. Yep. Right so so these are our families so I mean if we're not vitamin I mean it's okay to agree to disagree and sometimes you know just like any dysfunctional family we have our we have our disagreements and whatnot and maybe even our little stats but the reality of it is is is I'm just truly blessed with the people that are in my life and not just in my businesses but you know just all around I just the the people that support miracle Realty and cross it Madeira and other various things I'm part of, I mean, just awesome. And Madeira is one of those towns that kind of like, like cheers, where everybody knows your name. If you really, if you really make a positive impact in this town, this town will will will pay you back threefold. Wow, that's I love that. I love that my aunt my aunt is she lives in Madeira. And I love I love that area. Like it's it's always been really really, really nice.

Unknown Speaker 17:56
But yeah, like that. That's definitely a thing. That is it.

Unknown Speaker 18:00
characteristic is, is you're giving back to the town because in

Unknown Speaker 18:06
to me a lot of people could say, well it's just a small town like what is that going to? Was that you know really going to do for your business or whatever but you can you can tell like you actually care about everyone in the community and that it's it's it's awesome.

Unknown Speaker 18:23
How does help so how did so you have miracle Realty and you have other things going on such as cross the CrossFit thing the so let me so that is CrossFit Madeira? How did that come about? I know you that you do CrossFit, but how did that come about? And how does that play into everything else that you're doing as well?

Unknown Speaker 18:48
So I've always kind of been into fitness and that was my like, my thing, right? That was my outlet. I had a really good friend that I've known since second grade. She actually just got his PhD.

Unknown Speaker 19:00
But he kind of started me on my little fitness journey when I first started kind of redirecting my life a little bit. And so point being is I lost about 60 pounds. And I didn't just lose 60 pounds a month from a certain weight, certain body fat percentage. And so anyways, I was really on this mission statement of just like really aging, who I was because there's three things I wanted to do right before my dad passed, and because I didn't know he's going to pass but I wanted to get my personal training certificate, which I did. I wanted to get my bail bond license, which I did and then I got my real estate license. Well,

Unknown Speaker 19:34
of course, being kind of a fitness enthusiast. Everybody always wants to own their own gym. But at the time, what would happen what happened was the gym owner that owned the what's called a Globo gym, like your traditional gyms here in Madeira. He actually he was a very successful entrepreneur here, and he had several gyms and then he ventured into the CrossFit. And so, anyhow, I became good friends with him.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Because I trained at his gym and, and different relationships that were established there.

Unknown Speaker 20:05
He started CrossFit at his actual main location in Madeira. And then

Unknown Speaker 20:13
I, I was kind of getting complacent in my own fitness. And then one day I did CrossFit and it sucked so bad, because it was so hard, just me off. And that competitive edge and me just kept going back and, and really what was pushing me was just certain things about my body that, you know, my shoulder was kind of giving me a hard time and I wasn't able to do certain list but I was doing because I was a wannabe bodybuilder. Yeah, and so I just started doing the CrossFit thing. And then because of who I am, in my nature, I was like, You know what, I'm gonna get certified also in CrossFit and, and so I did.

Unknown Speaker 20:50
And so that was right around the time, and I was actually going to that lawsuit. And so an opportunity had arose because there's some falling out because he had opened up

Unknown Speaker 21:00
Another location, which eventually took over, but anyways, I was I was going to the gym or about 530 I was I was teaching classes because they needed someone to fill in and I just gotten certified. So I voluntarily started teaching classes for free. And it was it was because I just loved it. I loved I loved helping people change their lives. I mean, there's, there's always a gratifying feeling when you give someone the keys to their home that they're going to make memories in. But another feeling that when you take somebody that's actually spiritually emotionally and physically broken, and you take do this little fitness journey,

Unknown Speaker 21:38
I mean, I've seen relationships restored, I've seen you know, people, their mental strength, their physical strength and their spiritual strength, come back to light. And so, my point was, was I wanted that lawsuit. That was my outlet. That was really what I just that that social element of what most people would go to the bar or do whatever

Unknown Speaker 22:00
That was my bar literally, you know, and, and I had people that I talked to. And so long story short

Unknown Speaker 22:09
Two years later, the my friend decided to start liquidating his gyms because he was going to sell all five of his gyms and so he he asked me if I wanted to buy their from him. And, you know, I already had a business and I was already pretty busy with that. But, you know, I was like, I looked at the gym and I was like, well, I just don't see myself not doing it. Even though I know it's going to be hard to it's a completely different industry. I wasn't educated on it again. I mean, yeah, I taught some classes, but we're talking about running a business here. And so it wasn't making money.

Unknown Speaker 22:50
And there was some things that I needed to overcome within the city to fulfill some conditional use permit. And so it was just a big, it was a big burden at first

Unknown Speaker 23:00
Be honest, because it just on paper, it didn't make sense. Even my accountant was like a stupid like, you know, like, Why would you do this? And I said, You know, I said it'll, it'll work. it'll eventually work. I'll make it work. Yeah, I've been in this position before. And so

Unknown Speaker 23:19
we're not we're not making it rich or anything. But I will tell you that we've, we've stayed so consistent ever since I took over about now it's been about almost three and a half years.

Unknown Speaker 23:30
And since doing that, it's actually shown promise because I'm in real estate, and I'm involved in the community. So usually, if your trainer is your real estate guy, you're going to have automatic instill trust in that person because you already know him. So that became a social network. For me that just skyrocketed my business. I have a lot of people that I actually do train at my gym and then also, that they've either having to manage their property or help them sell or buy homes. So

Unknown Speaker 24:01
I kind of just made that work for me. And so now I just kind of cross reference industry and kind of brought real estate to CrossFit. And now you know, phone miracle is miracle Realty and CrossFit Madeira. I love it, man. What? Okay, so one thing I definitely noticed about you, one thing that I definitely noticed about you is that, you know, I'm always reaching out to people who I find interesting to come on to the podcast, and and who I think would would provide a lot of value. A lot of people in fact, I would right before this recording this podcast, I was talking with somebody who, you know, they wanted to have a pre phone interview, they wanted to find out a lot more about what was going on and a lot of people are hesitant to, to say yes to things and when you when when I reached out to you, it was like, bam, you just you were you you you you

Unknown Speaker 25:00
You said you would be on the podcast I gave you the the the, the the page to schedule on the podcast and literally within less than an hour, we were already scheduled for you to come on. And most people don't take action like that. And you did you It seems to me like you are that that's a big part of who you are. And maybe I'm wrong of just doing stuff just doing it, you're going to figure it out. Is that has that always been the case? with with with how you kind of like how you're kind of mode of operation?

Unknown Speaker 25:39
Um, well, that's a good question. I would definitely say I haven't always been that way. No, not at all. You know, in the first two, two or so years of my business when I first started, I was scared of everything. And I would say no to me. I didn't I didn't even know how to tell people I owned. Miracle real jack almost felt bad or guilty.

Unknown Speaker 26:00
I felt like I was doing my dad in service because she was so great at it and I here I was sucking, you know, so

Unknown Speaker 26:08
and so, I again, when I, when I kind of had that aha moment, to the lawsuit and whatnot, I kind of I kind of again, made it like a personal thing, like, you know, life's too short to not just take on opportunities, right? Like, they may not all be the things that I want to do, but some way or somehow it's always going to be if I have a good feeling about it, it'll just work out. Yeah. Right. And then I mean, that's when when you reached out I was like, How the hell did this guy even like search do that make sure you weren't Spam

Unknown Speaker 26:43
is like legitimate? You know, I didn't know anybody watched that one so that I that I do, but I go on there about twice or three times a year that they're pretty persistent on getting me on there. But yeah,

Unknown Speaker 26:54
you know, I researched I saw that, you know, you were pretty reputable and I liked that.

Unknown Speaker 27:00
And so I again, I mean, that's that's all I had to do just to make sure that I have a good feeling because I know it would work that it would work out.

Unknown Speaker 27:07
I love that man. That is so cool. I'm glad. I'm glad. Glad that you saw that was reputable.

Unknown Speaker 27:13
No, it's totally understandable, though. I mean, if someone's reaching out, he's like, hey, couldn't be on my show that you've never heard of.

Unknown Speaker 27:23
Tell me a little bit about about your show. If you don't mind. I know it's a spotlight on me. But just

Unknown Speaker 27:29
Oh man, this is this is actually the first time that's ever happened, by the way. So So yeah, that says freedom in five minutes show. So I own a company. And its brand is freedom in five minutes. And we have what are called Virtual systems architects. And they are people who can show a video how to do something in five minutes and they document everything step by step by step into a standard operating procedure

Unknown Speaker 27:58
and the

Unknown Speaker 28:00
That's the business The show is based around but it's really based around even though right now we're talking right now getting the story and everything like that it's really based around the idea which is what I'm going to ask you in just in just a minute it have a five minute things I've noticed that just like with you what you were talking about with the lawsuit and the the decision that you made to just that like that, that there's there's so much more important much more important things in life things to be grateful for that there's always I've noticed that whenever I've had something really big happen, it's been that five minute or less decision where I'm like, no, it's going to be this way. The and so, so I try and get people who come on the show to share their the thing, the one thing or one or it could be the more but one thing that

Unknown Speaker 29:00
Took them really, you know, five minutes, like five minutes or less to make this powerful mindset shift that has affected them for the rest of their lives. So that's what the show is about. And it's also to, to hear from other business owners how they've scaled, and then how people can actually reach out to you and to do business with you and so on. So that's, that's the gist of the show.

Unknown Speaker 29:25
Awesome. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 29:28
But thanks for asking, man, that was the first time I've ever had a guest to do that. And I appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 29:32
The usually it's before or it's after, you know, so that's cool.

Unknown Speaker 29:39
So, so yeah. So the going to what the kind of the foundation of the show is, you know, what's that one thing where it could be with any of your businesses but something where you know, I you just made a decision, what could be something with your staff, it could be something where you decided to delegate something that

Unknown Speaker 30:00
You that or whatever but something that you, you're like, I'm, I'm just going to do this and you It didn't really take that long to to make the decision about you just said I'm just going to do this and it ended up being being something that has transformed your business transform your life What would you say that one thing would be?

Unknown Speaker 30:23
I think that just deciding to, to say yeah, I mean to get out there I mean, I get I stopped so reserved for so long. When I first started, I was just like, what am I gonna catch my next break? You know, I just felt like I was I was an employee of the business and and a wise person once told me, you'll never be rich when you own business, but you should be able to comfortably pay your bills. And I wasn't comfortably paying my bills either. So.

Unknown Speaker 30:54
So, I mean, I was just full of stress. And I mean, I was dealing with problems and

Unknown Speaker 31:00
I just was like, you know, in order to do this, I need to get people to buy into what I believe in. And I think that if I can, if I can stay consistent because to me, everything is consistency. Like no matter what, just as long as you show up every day, you put one foot in front of the other. That's the first freaking step, you know. And so with my businesses is when I, when I made the shift was when I was like, You know what, like, I'm ready to grow this thing. And when I when I meant grow it, it wasn't so I could be rich. It was so that way I can get a team to get a team of people that believed in the vision and the culture that I created, that I wanted to be so impactful in our community, just like when people think of miracle Realty. I don't even know what they know what we sell real estate, you know, like that, because we're just out there. You know, we're all the community events and that's like a prerequisite of being at miracle Realty.

Unknown Speaker 32:00
At CrossFit, for that matters, like if you're going to be part of my team, you have to dedicate and volunteer time to go to these events. Because we do a lot of events and to me that that's, that's where it's at is just being involved. And, and when you're when you're fortunate enough to be in a town like Madeira, where, you know, it's just under 70,000 population, and it's a one of those small niche town. It's not quite like a Hanford or, you know, not big, but it's just big enough to again, that you if you just stay involved, whether it's sponsoring the local baseball, soccer, schools, you know, the athletes, you know, when my son was wrestling for Maduro, South, just whatever I could do to participate. I mean that that, honestly, just like what you asked earlier, like, like, why did I say yes, well, because, I mean, again, every opportunity is going to be an opportunity if it's in alignment with my assignment. Yeah, right. And then

Unknown Speaker 33:00
And I learned, I learned that I learned that little, quote or verbiage motivational seminar I went to not too long ago. And that really clicked with me. Because if it's in alignment with my assignment, I don't ever want to say what is, yeah, or don't want to be sort of could have or would have, right. So again, if I if I, if I find balance with it, as long as it meets in with my alignment to my assignment, then everything else will work out.

Unknown Speaker 33:28
Everything will work out, you know, and again, to me, with businesses, anybody can go look on paper and see if the numbers make sense. But I never have taken a business over and looked at it like that. Yeah, I just look at it as Okay, this is my opportunity. And I'm, I'm one person and I can I can spread the word and I can get people to buy into the product or the culture. And again, you know, for me in America

Unknown Speaker 34:00
has been around for 41 years but I guarantee you in the last five years miracle realty has put itself back on the map here in Missouri. Or you can you can tell man you can tell by just how all your literally all over Madeira.

Unknown Speaker 34:17
It's, it's it's awesome. Like you can tell just from the community building that you've that you've done that that's that is definitely a case and I think it's absolutely amazing man.

Unknown Speaker 34:30
So how can people so what are the things you're doing now? And how can people reach out to you? If they're in the Madeira area they want they want to buy a home or if they want to do CrossFit or how can they just reach out to you in general and what are you up to?

Unknown Speaker 34:47
Okay, that's good question. So

Unknown Speaker 34:50
I'm pretty easy to get ahold of like you said you know, social media, whatever. The biggest thing about what we do is we don't just service Madeira we do service potential Valley awesome.

Unknown Speaker 35:00
We do property. We do property management also for investment homes and whatnot. So we have about 100 doors where we maintain and manage from about the upwards of Clovis down to chuck Schiller.

Unknown Speaker 35:12
But you know, whether it's for the real estate aspect, you know, miracle realty or miracle hyphen, realty.com, or cross it madeira.com or any of my new ventures, which I just started a new ventures called miracle meals. And it's kind of like those healthy fit meals. So my brother's a chef by trade. And so we partnered up with a local restaurant here in Madeira. And we we cook those meals and those those meals are 600 calories or less with all the right

Unknown Speaker 35:43
ingredients, I guess you can say for all those paleo keto,

Unknown Speaker 35:47
healthy, juiciest, and then I have another joint venture with a friend of mine, and we do investment homes so we buy the flip houses. That's great. Dan Yeah, so But I mean, they can either get a hold of me through the

Unknown Speaker 36:00
website social media you know Bo miracles pretty easy to find or my office number is 559-674-0091. But yeah, typically a social media on on either IG or Facebook, it's pretty easy to get ahold of me someone's trying to reach out. I love it. I love it so so miracle dash realty.com CrossFit madeira.com Miracle meals madeira.com as well. I love I love the miracle meals idea, man. that's a that's a that's a really cool little gig going on.

Unknown Speaker 36:39
Makes it easy, especially when I was doing Quito, actually, not too long ago for a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament that I was that I was going to be doing. And I'm like that would that would have been super helpful.

Unknown Speaker 36:52
Yeah, so but I'm going to be doing it again. So I'll probably end up reaching out to you. So you do you did

Unknown Speaker 37:00
Yeah, yeah, I just been I've only been doing it so I'm, I'm a, I'm a member of a business organization called warrior, wake up warrior. And, and so you set these 90 day targets. And my 90 day target was to do to do a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament because I hadn't done other than combatants in in the army. I didn't do really any type of jujitsu at all, but I had always wanted to. And so I'm like, I'm just gonna do a tournament and we'll see what happens and it ended up being pretty cool. Well, I won third place by default, because someone didn't show

Unknown Speaker 37:38
what it was

Unknown Speaker 37:40
that goes back to my theory about all you gotta do so. Yeah, exactly. You

Unknown Speaker 37:47
know, cuz it's funny. Because my, my coach, he's like, Oh, you know, cuz they move the upper bracket. I was supposed to be 180 to 200 bracket and they put me in 200 and above. So that

Unknown Speaker 38:00
I was going against four to 50. And I was like 197. And he's like, you know, we can go get a refund, we can go, we can go and you know, just let him know not to you know that we didn't want to move up or bracket and stuff and I'm like now let's do it. Let's see what happens is not going to do this I'll spend all this time and not do it and ended up winning, winning getting third place because of just showing up in the bracket where in the in that in that bracket where I was supposed to just get completely hammered, which I did, but it was awesome.

Unknown Speaker 38:35
It's all about it's all about the experience. And I was gonna say because at my CrossFit gym, he's a partner of mine. He he does when they're mixed martial arts out across it but they're a little just class and stuff so it's pretty cool dang see I'm gonna have to get them to stop by then guys. It's not it's not in Madeira is not too far from from where I'm at. So I'm gonna have to stop by and, and see because that's that's that's great man. That's all

Unknown Speaker 39:00
Good, that's always great

Unknown Speaker 39:03
to know because I actually want to get into probably one of my probably not this next 90 days, but 90 days after that I want to actually do a mixed martial arts match. So we'll see what happens with that so but

Unknown Speaker 39:19
it's awesome so well thanks so much for being being on the show man. I appreciate you appreciate your time. I know you're all over the place doing some amazing stuff. But But I just wanted I wanted you to be on because I thought you know, you do you have just some really amazing stuff going on. Especially the giving side of things which we don't really get to talk about and something that personally I've been lacking and I've been feeling like called to be more out there. So you're, you're kind of like

Unknown Speaker 39:50
an archetype for me when I when I see you out there like that. So it's just really cool. I'm glad that you were able to be on the show, man.

Unknown Speaker 39:59
I appreciate you having

Unknown Speaker 40:00
And how do we advertise your show or or the broadcast that we did today? Oh, just let people know about freedom in five minutes. Austin I end up showing you a

Unknown Speaker 40:14
I'll sharing a link to your actual episode so you can share that around or whatever but but yeah, man

Unknown Speaker 40:20
just yeah, I appreciate and appreciate you and you're going to give other guests a run for their money with how how giving, giving your arm because it's it's really cool. It's it's a really different feel man so I appreciate it. So. So that is the end of the episode guys. If you want to reach out to Bo he is obviously I mean literally one of the I mean, we only live we've only talked for the last 40 minutes, which even on the show, normally we go about 25 minutes. So that's how interesting you are man.

Unknown Speaker 41:00
If you want to get in touch with Bo he's super super nice if you can't tell, I've only known him this this long and I'm like, Oh man, I like this guy so much.

Unknown Speaker 41:09
So if you want to check him out, go to miracle dash Realty. com CrossFit madeira.com and miracle meals madeira.com You can also check them out on Instagram and Facebook, just search for miracle realty in Madeira, miracle miracle realty Madeira and Google and he'll pop right up. So all that being said, Guys, it was great being on this episode and we will see you on the next freedom in five minutes episode.

We are trying something new on the podcast. One of my clients, Paul Tran, had a great idea to create what is called "The Blueprint". A lot of businesses struggle with efficiency and increasing their margins. That's where The Blueprint comes in. Every week we'll talk about the best ways to be as efficient and profitable as possible.

We are trying something new on the podcast.  One of my clients, Paul Tran, had a great idea to create what is called “The Blueprint”.  A lot of businesses struggle with efficiency and increasing their margins.  That’s where The Blueprint comes in.  Every week we’ll talk about the best ways to be as efficient and profitable as possible.

Have you ever thought about the power of video for your business? I'm not just talking about doing a simple vlog, but a high-end professional creative video that pushes your message beautifully to the masses? In this episode, you'll hear how Alex Ramirez takes creative marketing to a whole new level and helps his clients to reach the markets of their dreams.

------

Resources from the interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP6xSaNEetY

This is the company that this podcast is about: https://phanta.com/

The Future Youtube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-b3c7kxa5vU-bnmaROgvog

Amazing videos on how to run a creative business, how to price, how to make clients love you, etc.

Our Creative Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/votostudios

Our Behind The Scenes Youtube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheVotoBlog

Our Website:

http://www.votostudios.com/

My Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/thealexrmz/

Full show notes at

https://www.freedominfiveminutes.com/blog

Have you ever thought about the power of video for your business?  I'm not just talking about doing a simple vlog, but a high-end professional creative video that pushes your message beautifully to the masses?  In this episode, you'll hear how Alex Ramirez takes creative marketing to a whole new level and helps his clients to reach the markets of their dreams.

------

Resources from the interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP6xSaNEetY

This is the company that this podcast is about: https://phanta.com/

The Future Youtube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-b3c7kxa5vU-bnmaROgvog

Amazing videos on how to run a creative business, how to price, how to make clients love you, etc. 

Our Creative Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/votostudios

Our Behind The Scenes Youtube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheVotoBlog

Our Website:

http://www.votostudios.com/

My Instagram: 

https://www.instagram.com/thealexrmz/

Full show notes at

https://www.freedominfiveminutes.com/blog

Over the last 2 decades, web development businesses pop up and die off faster than you can say "HTML". But, building and growing a development company that stands the test of time is much harder to do than start one.

In this episode you'll hear how Adrian Rodriguez from Anchored Web Solutions (https://www.anchoredweb.com/) has been able to not only sustain his web development business over the long haul but grow it into a company that serves private and government customers in one of the biggest counties in the United States.

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Automated Transcript Below

Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedominfiveminutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this perfecting, scaling, a web development business, that and more coming up. All right, well, welcome, welcome. Welcome, everybody to this episode, really cool episode super excited about this one we get to be, we get to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart, because I used to have one of these, but it was not nearly as good as, as this gentleman who we're going to be interviewing. So I get the pleasure of having Adrian Rodriguez, on this podcast episode. He is the founder of anchored web, anchored web.com. And he has he can't wait to talk about what he does that what he's been doing. But he has a really cool Web Development Agency. That's that's very, very, very, I want to say that it's, he's able to create these very simple but but powerful websites that have been in the commercial, as well as the government side of things. And so I just want to say a warm welcome to Adrian Adrian, how's it going, my man,

Adrian Rodriguez 1:26 very good. Dean, thank you for having me. And it's pleasure to be here. And

Dean Soto 1:30 so let's talk about this. So I found you and reached out to you to be on this podcast, mainly because you you know Juma and Ed, which is always near and dear to my heart, I used to use Juma a lot. And on top of that your sites are, they have a they have a very beautiful yet very simple look to them. And, and so I just wanted to to reach out to you and have you come on to talk about how you got started, how you're able to do what you do, and and you've made some very, very big impacts, even on the government side of things, which is very, very hard to do, which we'll talk about in just a little bit have a cool little surprise for everyone to hear. It just it's it's something that was that blew me away. So how in the heck did you get started with web development in the first place?

Adrian Rodriguez 2:27 Well, I mean, if you know, there's, there's a few different timeframes in my life that I could go into that kind of explain how I got into web development. I guess the first proper website that I ever worked on was in about 1996, or 1997. I probably aging myself, but I was at the time. And my friend had a band called 41 height. And he had just started it in high school. But we were best friends at the time. We still are moving to France now. And so I just put together some HTML code that I had taught myself over the summer previously, and show him something that not really in a way of trying to get him to have this as his website. It was just something I thought this could be an interesting direction for your site. He took a look at that. So yeah, let's I want that. Can that be my website? Wow. So I said, Oh, I guess yeah, I mean, it does work. And so that was his website. And it was, at the time, there wasn't many websites in general. I mean, there were a lot, but there weren't a lot of people doing it. And so when we put it up online, we had things like samples of his music on there. And of course, at the time, there's this thing called frames that nobody does now in HTML, but it was all about frames. So you'd have like a frame was like a little mini window within a window on your website, we have all these frames worked out. It was like the big, you know, trend at the time. It was fun. And I wish I wish I wish I had some sort of a screenshot of that website back then. Because all the way those are from those years ago till today, I still maintain that website. And it's obviously got a lot of changes since then.

Been what I did back then, or at least show other people look, I was doing this Netscape.

Dean Soto 4:20 Oh, my gosh, that's awesome. That's crazy. That'd be I was gonna say we do you still have just frames for that website?

Adrian Rodriguez 4:28 I know, well, I just I feel like somewhere, maybe there's a fight because they tend to keep things you know, organized even 20 years ago. So I feel like maybe there was something I, I have somewhere that on a disk or maybe a floppy drive, maybe in the garage, but I don't know. But I will say that it was funny, because that was not something I was trying to do at the time I get into web development. And I really just did it for fun. And then about 2007 2000, an eight, I started doing website for myself. Because I was a journalist before that before I before today's business, which is a good web, I was a journalist. And so I sort of saw the way journalism was moving, which was it away from print journalism into the digital age, I didn't think the industry was moving fast enough. So I had all these great ideas about putting embedded maps in in articles or crowdsourcing, journalism and things like that. So I put together this website, while these cool tools and things that I just thought were really neat. And so what happened was, even though I really felt like that was a passion project, for me, it wasn't making a lot of money, partly because I didn't think journalism should make money, in a sense. So there's the whole discussion there. But I wasn't really trying to make money advertising way. So I had to make money. Somehow, since I was doing this, I just decided to take the leap and start my own business. Well, I wasn't really paying much attention, but people would say, Hey, I like your website. But you know, that piece there that you have on there where the event calendar automatically adds to a dynamic nap and and already changes colors and things like that. I wonder if you could do that for me? And I would say well, I guess I mean, what do you want me to build you some sort of a program for money or something where you get a money for it or something? And then it started just kind of like, I at one point, it was like six months or nine months into these calls. I said, Wow, I really obviously have missing the boat on something that's happening. I started leaning into that. And I found Yeah, that was very much needed service that people would call me for. So. Yeah. So yeah, then I started kind of evolving. And eventually, I found it a third web solutions in 2009 2010, somewhere in there. And so we're coming up to the 10 year anniversary of my business. So I'm really proud of that. And I'm really excited about how things have evolved since those early days of not even realizing this was a business.

Dean Soto 7:11 Great. That is awesome, man. Well, congratulations. That's awesome. Yeah, I love that. I love that story, especially when it's like, you have all these people who are kind of slapping you upside the head saying saying, Hey, can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? You're like, yeah, maybe there's a market here. I'm not sure I've only been asked by 20 people.

Adrian Rodriguez 7:33 Right, and I, you know, I do feel like a lot of the care that type of that start was interesting. Because even today, you know, I don't see myself as a hard sell hard salesman, you know, the type of person who's really going to push for you to sign on the dotted line or anything, I tend more to be more of a consultant or a collaborator with people. So if somebody calls me and they are interested in my services, that's great. And I really appreciate that tone. So but I also don't take that call with some sort of agenda. Well, this person's calling me, so therefore I need to make money off of them. Said, I just sort of give them the time that they have to tell me about what they have going on. Usually, it's a problem. And I'm sure usually I can solve it somehow, with what I do. But sometimes it doesn't make sense for me to help. I mean, you know, I could, I could do a lot of things. But I sometimes I find myself asking people will call me if they've tried just doing the Facebook page or just trying an Instagram account. So sometimes, you know, and I can help them set those things up. But they're really easy to do for a lot of people. So I mean, most people have that stuff these days anyway. Yeah. So that's kind of like, an interesting characteristic of my businesses. I'm sort of like, the soft sale, I guess. Yeah.

Dean Soto 8:57 Which is cool. We got to talk about that prior to to get in on the podcast and how important that is. And I love that because, yeah, you get you, you know, right, when right away when someone's trying to sell you something like, That happens a lot.

Adrian Rodriguez 9:14 Well, I do understand that people do not like to be sold anything, but they do love to shop. So you know, if you can change the dynamic with people to where they feel like they are having a shopping experience, that is a lot different than if they're being sold something No, yeah, there's some subtleties in there. But I definitely don't want I want to present the menu and give them the chance to kind of run the show. Because I'll be doing enough running of the show. Once we get started, I'll be doing the project, I'll be building all the technical stuff, you know, putting it all together for them. So love that. I love that.

Dean Soto 9:50 So I'm so encouraged web, you'd mentioned on the when we were talking prior to this, that there's a there's a reason for the name?

Adrian Rodriguez 10:01 Yes.

Dean Soto 10:02 So what is why Why did you call it anchored web?

Adrian Rodriguez 10:07 Well, you know, when I started my business, the first thing, you know, I know the very first thing but one of the things I was interested in was making sure I created a brand that reflected the kind of business I was going to do also gave some people, people who saw a reason to think about it beyond just glancing at it and moving on. And I wanted it to also be available as a domain name online and as a property on Facebook, Instagram. So I mean, one of the things I do when I help new businesses that are starting out is I tell them, we need to come up with a good name, right? But it needs to not only be a good name, but it also needs to be available on Facebook and Twitter's when you see things like Twilio, or you know Asana, all these different web apps, Google even, you know, maybe not that so much. But a lot of these names are kind of weird. A lot of it has to do with the fact that there's just not that many names that are out there. And yeah, so incurred web came along. Because first of all, my I've been programming since I taught myself the program when I was seven. And the internet came along. In the mid 90s. And I, I saw that there was a huge power of the internet. And so I was already learning about the internet from a philosophical standpoint. And one of the things that I learned about the internet early on, and it's kind of stuck with me is that the internet is very powerful. Because it it does something that books can do for instance, which is you can link from one page to another. And even though that sounds like a very simple concept that hyper linking from one area of knowledge to another area is very powerful. And you can do so many things with them, it's actually built the internet. So in web code that is called an anchor tag, and it's represented with a little brackets and there's a in there, that means I'm going to give you a link or it tells a browser show this link here. So the anchor tag is really the essence of the internet, in my you know view of it. So anchored web is a double entendre that not only speaks to the fact that I understand that the essence of the internet is the linking between different pages, but also that one thing that I found is that a lot of web developers, at least at the time when I started and it probably still the case, to some extent, they kind of would be a younger person who would be really excited about putting together websites, but then would maybe next year, they're excited about being in a band or maybe then they're getting started college or

getting out of college. So I found that a lot

of times I would be approached by people who say I had a web web person and that person, I can't even call them anymore, I don't know where they are or they're not interested anymore. And so anchored web solutions is meant to also speak to the fact that I'm a reliable, steady, responsible and knowledgeable expert for clients. And so anchor web solutions, it speaks for both. So, you know, again, if you can come up with a name for your business, and it can kind of have multiple meanings that are wrapped up in one, it's great because somebody ever asked you like you do a whole spiel that sounds impressive. And when they talk about

Dean Soto 13:33 No, it's, that's actually really cool. I get because, um, because so for a so with my business, I had the name pro sulim, which was and it literally for years, almost a decade, I had personal them, and I still use it for my kind of b2b business to business side of things. However, nobody knows what that is. It was it was I picked it because I couldn't think of anything else that didn't have that that that had a that did have a domain and that it basically no one was going to ever think of at all, but it did not. Nobody knows what that is. And that was a huge mistake. And it it it literally cost me now thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Because because they don't even know what it what you have to sit there explaining it. So it's not going to just grab someone's attention or anything like that. And so, so yeah, it's just that alone. Having that, that having that good brand name like you like you have, you know, what it what you already get these images of what it's supposed to be? Right?

Adrian Rodriguez 14:50 Right. Exactly. To me, I believe, you know, before I was a programmer, in my current career, I was a journalist. And I was a writer. So words and how how words fit together was really important to me and still is. So I do feel like, yes, you the words you use the name of your company will imprint something in somebody's mind, you know, even if it's unintentional. So it could be that it's confusing could be that it's hard to spell. It could be that it sounds like another word or maybe start with something that another word and all those things to me, they kind of, you know, I'm not going to say that any business name is not potentially good. After all, we have things like eBay, as I said, all these crazy names for for businesses, and they, they some of them do break through and become mainstream known entities.

Yeah. So

I wouldn't ever say that, you know, anything you pick is not worth trying, if you will love it. But, you know, for me, I was really interested in making sure people understood what they were reading and kind of could derive some sense of an understanding of it.

Dean Soto 16:00 Yeah. Oh, no, I love love. I just, yeah, I love that. Because because there's someone like me, I'm more of a systems like behind the scenes guy. And I never really put an importance on that at all up front. And if I flipped it around, it would have been, there would have been, it would have been a lot easier. Right. And so so it just cool. It's, it's just neat seeing that, that was so important to you. Because literally, I had to I had, I had not only did I have the opportunity cost, but I ended up having to have someone help me do that and pay them to to help me to brand and help me to do all that stuff. Because I didn't put an importance on it up front. And so that's it just is really cool that that that you did that. So with. So with Ingrid web right now. So what walk me through the process of how how you actually run your business, when it comes to you, I'm a new prospect, I just came to you, I need help with a website. In fact, let's just do the the common, I had this guy over here. And he wasn't very good. And he wasn't dependable yada, yada, yada. I need I need help. What do I do?

Adrian Rodriguez 17:27 Well, you know, the first thing I want to do is understand a little bit about the

person that I'm talking to and a business or organization that that they're representing. So it's not, to me, it's not a small part of the process to kind of get a sense a little bit about, about the background. So it could be that they are, they're in need of something that day, because something fell through and they just look me up and they follow me and they're saying it's an emergency, I need to something on my website, or else I'm in trouble for something. Well, that's fine. And I can try to get those things done. But usually I can take a few minutes to say okay, so tell me about your business. How did you sort of like what we're doing right now you're telling me you're asking me about my business? It's kind of what I do. Because I think businesses about relationships. And if I don't understand where they're coming from, or if I don't think that they are interested in where I'm coming from, but I'm not sure that we're going to be a good fit. That's, I get along well, with a lot of people like

Dean Soto 18:32 just with just like with that, for example, like with that process are you? A lot of because a lot of I know a lot of web companies, I know a lot of companies in general, myself included. So back in the day, and I'm getting gotten a lot better at this is that what happens if it's not a good fit? If you feel like you know, this person is just not going to be like, what do you do? What do you do in that particular situation?

Adrian Rodriguez 18:57 Well, you know, it's, it's hard for me to hell, if somebody is, I mean, it's, I'm not going to take your call, and then I don't see myself concluding during the middle of that call that this is not a fit. There have been times where I have told people, you know, I appreciate that you're calling me and stuff or that we're talking about it, but I think it's a good fit. And so usually what I would do is I would try to figure out so safe, where the reason why we would not be a good fit would be because they have a different idea about how much it should cost or what the value is what I do, or their timeline is different than what I can manage things like that, where it's more of an incompatibilities for practical reasons. If it was just a personal way compatibility, I don't I get along with people pretty well that I even you know, I'm actually good with working with people were very challenging personalities.

So I don't think it would be that but yeah, so usually,

that's what I'm trying to suss out as well. What are you looking for? Well, I need a website. Okay, when you need it right now? And how much are you willing to pay? $20? Well, let's see, you know, I still wouldn't you know, if somebody said to me, I need a website, and I only have 20 bucks, what do you got for me? I'm not I don't need the $20 per se. But I would probably say, well, that's interesting, I think you could do these things. Maybe you shouldn't pay me. But if you're really at that level, you should probably you could do this that.

But um, so what i what i what I'm looking for, though, is

there's and this is where again, I say it's about relationships, because even though I'm a very skilled and experienced web developer, one of the things about me is, as you can kind of hear from my background, I didn't work, maybe it's not obvious, I didn't go to school, formerly to learn programming, a lot of what I know, and everything I do, which is for June was sites and WordPress, and HTML, and all these other I can be Davis, database management, and SEO and all that good stuff. But I picked all the stuff up on my own over the years. And I feel like I probably could say that I have some level of education about it at this point, but certainly experience. But I do want my clients to understand that I, I am a unique, at least

Unknown Speaker 21:35 I have my

Adrian Rodriguez 21:36 own, I created my own path to where I am today. So if if there's something that pops out that maybe a educated, formerly educated programmer should know, I may not know that thing. But it's not because I can't understand it. It may be that I just haven't encountered in the last 10 or 20 years, I've probably encountered it all. Yeah, or most things. But that's one of those things where I kind of want to tell people, hey, so what I do is I solve problems for you. And I usually I learned to do it in the most efficient and, and proper way as possible. But it isn't 100% because I can't go back to a textbook that I read in college about how to do that. So. So that's what I want them to understand about me. And as long as they're like, hey, well, that's great. I mean, you seem like you know what you're talking about, and we're putting our trust into you. Yeah, great. And then then I can start looking at whether they're trustworthy, and whether I can put trust in them to pay the bills and stuff like that, or keep up with me, things like that. So, so the things that I'm really looking for, you know, actually, this morning was doing a bunch of the cold calling,

as well. That was really interesting. Let's talk about that.

Dean Soto 22:55 Because, okay, everyone, obviously, every single business needs that as so need you to do some kind of sales, marketing, things like that. What's your what's your what's your sales and marketing strategy? So it sounds like you do some some cold calling, like, give me an idea of how that goes?

Adrian Rodriguez 23:14 Yes, well, okay, so cold calling is one of those things that you have to go in with the right mindset. Otherwise, you can feel really bad after a short amount of time. So the idea that I started with is that the rate of success, I mean, depending on how you define success, but the rate of success is generally, and this is not a hard number, this is like in my head so that I can approach it of a mental state that works is like 3% or 123 percent out of what I call 100 people, maybe three of them will become a website, me maybe just one or not even that. So yeah, what I do is I have all I have my sources going to get it business listings from and then I call them one after the other and I, I, I, I have a certain pitch. But the first and foremost thing I'm trying to do is find out if they have a website, or are looking for a website, what value do they put on a website in their mind at least and then if they are interested in getting into a conversation about it.

And so for me, at least with

my approach is not to go from never talk to this person report to the selling, or to signing on the dotted line. It's having that conversation, getting to know all of these people out here. And if they're interested in will have further conversations, and I'll plug them into my customer relationship management system that lets me follow up in a week or two weeks or six months, or whatever it is. So if I talk to somebody, they say, you know, I am interested in just getting off the ground. And I really don't need a website. I might need one in six months, but I'm not worried about it right now. Yeah. Again, I'm a I'm an easygoing guy. So I feel great. All right, well, just remember these things about me that you can remember, hopefully you take my info down, I will call you back anymore. If that works for you, or I will call you back in August. And like I like it that you

Dean Soto 25:25 frame that that way too. Because I've been guilty of it with my with my my cold calling, warm calling in and so on of just saying Okay, no problem. Thanks. And yeah, it's not framed as in, I am going to call you march, or I'm going to call you in April, and see how things are going. Because now you're not really a bother, you're, you're literally and if they say okay, they've given you permission. And it's a much different frame, obviously, they can completely ignore you. But at the same time, you're going to have a much higher success rate. I would imagine doing that.

Adrian Rodriguez 26:02 Yeah, a little bit more, because I look at it as planting seeds, more so than you know, making sales or making a touchdown. So the metaphor I use is planting seeds. So if I let somebody know about me, and they seem receptive to the idea, even if you're just being nice, at least they got it, they gave me a chance and see where I am. And then I always plan for that at the end where I say, you know, we're going to have a follow up with not whether you like it or not, but we're going to, I'm going to talk with you, if that's okay with you at x point in the future. Yeah, so even if I like this morning, I one of the people I football, it just so happened that she knew one of my clients. And so there was a folly in between us or in common with us. And so that totally greases the wheels or whatever, it totally helps when they go oh.

Now I know you're somebody.

But she was I feel very interested by the end of that call. She had some other things that she had to, you know, think about or whatever, which is fine. But she said, I'll give you a call in like a week. Right? She said that to me. So I you know, I said to me, but what I told her, and this was somebody who already is interested, already committed to call me back. I said, if I don't hear back from you, in a week, I'll maybe I'll follow up. If you don't mind on Thursday, or something like that. She said, Oh, yeah, great. And so again, we're sort of already in that collaborative mode that we need to be in, if I'm going to work on her website anyway. Yeah. Like, Hey, I'm not trying to tell you what to do. You're your own person. And you know, after all, I'm I'm hoping to help you out. But I have my end of the bargain, of course, I want to selling a website, or I want to be able to make money. So if I don't hear back from you, you can expect that and if you don't ask me, then maybe at least at that point, you kind of have the idea that i'm i'm not just calling and seeing if you're interested, I'm also working with you, and then going with you to that, so you can take it. And anytime you want to work with with me, then our I appreciate that, you know, I never want to sit there and think well, I'm such an established successful business, that people are knocking down my door, and I don't have to do anything, I just wait for them to come in. And it kind of happens a lot. When you you become successful, you have a lot of referrals, but I never let that tell. That's why I do cold calls, I have plenty of business. But I like to always have more and more of these little seeds that go out and get planted so that they can come to fruition. And in three months, six months, two years,

I had I had a client emailed me this morning,

who is a local politician here. asked me if we could get started on on a new website. And this was somebody that I hadn't talked to in four years, I think maybe three or four year yeah. And so it was just one of those things where I always six months or a year at a time, I would kind of know her just letting her know. I still around, I'm still doing things. And I here's

the latest and I still think about you not like

that. But I mean, I still, you know you're not you're not forgotten. And I just think it helps

a lot because there she is calling me

up or emailing me and asking me, how's it been going? Okay, so you're looking for a new website.

Community. love that. I love that. So,

Dean Soto 29:43 so kind of going into this one particular case that I wanted to I wanted to share. Yeah. I want to make sure Okay, cool. I have this so you share it an audio from from within me from actually my Fresno County Sheriff. Who the person who was interviewing her was it was it was really surprising to hear what they said about the Fresno County, the sheriff's a website. So two things real, real quick, I'm going to ask you the first and then I'm going to ask you the second and I'm going to play this thing. One, how in the heck did you even have the opportunity to build the Fresno kids to Fresno County Sheriff's that I mean that that's a pretty big area, and it's government to very big thing like difficult things to get? How in the heck did you do that? So that's, that's question number one, ask question number two right after that.

Adrian Rodriguez 30:49 Sure. Well, okay, so that was

Yes, that was a, that was one of the that is one of my biggest clients. Now you can answer the sheriff's office came about, interestingly, an interesting story. So my, my first connection to the sheriff's office was

that I wasn't the newspaper journalist. Before I was a, I was a programmer and I had been reading a story about a company that was a tech company, a satellite internet technology company here in the valley. And so I kind of find these interesting technology companies that that were under the radar, I guess, and I would bring them to light in my in my reporting. And so that was really fun. And I would, I would make a good impression for some reason or another. So one of the companies for this company, was a husband and wife and the wife was the sister of the public information officer.

So the reason why this is it took about a year of toss with you over there just to for him to understand and what I could do, how I could do it with Alan might be able to structure a deal.

And so what they needed and what I ended up being able, the reason why it ended up happening was what they decided they needed was they wanted a website that was not only fully secure and

ready at that level, but they also needed they were they were interested in doing was having a media outlet

that was not didn't necessarily compete in the market. The first will be or was the local newspaper, but they didn't want their clothes to only be found in a newspaper

reporter Oh, yeah. So if they wanted to talk about

crime that happened, and they wanted to talk about whatever they wanted to say they wanted to have

a platform online, that could serve as a media outlet from their from their agency. So my background in journalism came to me in a huge

advantage for me, because I could,

I could describe to them and I could write out a proposal like like, technically create kind of website that would produce the media outlet impact on our community. So I created a site. On top of that they had a lot of other requirements, because that was one of the big ones that made them sort of say, Okay, if we work with you, we're going to get

anywhere else.

Dean Soto 33:33 Yeah. That's cool. I mean, and I also like a year for, for a government organization. That is that is pretty quick, if you think Yeah.

Adrian Rodriguez 33:49 Well, you know, and then the guy who hired me, he's, he's retired in the last four years or so three or four years. So I think he was wanting to create a legacy for his time. At Yeah, sheriff's office, at least in terms of that department. So there was some urgency there a little bit. But, you know, yes, it's a short amount of time. And it's a long amount of time, from different perspective. But definitely,

I also had to qualify to actually work there. I mean, I was hired as an independent contractor, but I have taken a lie detector tests,

and background checks and things like that. So there's a lot of security there. So that also helps with your if I don't have a record, I guess.

You could find you to be trustworthy, we can work with like big agencies. But you know, I know much of my like, like that, too. So much of what I do has to do with the fact that I have a writing background that explains all these things. And it becomes not just me personally convincing people but what a document I created. Also some convincing people and I don't have either you

Dean Soto 35:00 Yeah. And then on top of that, is you know how from that, from that experience, you know, how people digest information visually. And that's a that's a huge thing. And in fact, in this particular thing that I'm going to play that was that was a big that was totally, totally unsolicited. So where is this? This quote front? Like, where's this, where's the,

Adrian Rodriguez 35:27 that's a radio show. It's called Chris Daniel in the morning.

And it's just a, it's a regular show for a long time. And so they'll interview the sheriff once in a while, and it just was funny because somebody was listening to it. And then we know that it was on the air. So I went really quickly to the, to the web, and I went with

an archive of that.

That clip

and I cut it out audacity, maybe

Dean Soto 36:03 I can tell that audio is like, awesome. So so I'm gonna I'm gonna play this real quick. Now keep in mind you listening to the context that this is a radio show host. And this is a government website. And if you put those two things together one no radio show hosts is good a good a good at literally drool over a government website, because government websites tend to be really, really just absolutely horrid. horrendously bad, and nobody likes them. And there, there's a ton of money spent on these websites. And they end up being really crappy. So take a listen at this, and it just tells you tells you how good not just the the builders of the of the actual sites, but also how the information is digested, check this out.

Unknown Speaker 36:54 And by the way, where we at

Unknown Speaker 36:57 backlog these days on CCW, we're doing much better. And in fact, an update on that Christmas is the latest, we the process is actually even easier, because now you can actually apply on line, you don't have to print out the forms and bring them in and it actually eliminate one of the interviews, you can apply online, I get your appointment automatically when you do that on our website, it Fresno share.org o RG and you click on the second amendment icon and the application process will walk you

Unknown Speaker 37:33 right through it online. And

Unknown Speaker 37:35 speaking of that website, I've got to throw this out before we get to our next call sugar.

Unknown Speaker 37:42 Perhaps honestly got it, you know, I love you. But this is this is like you have a government website like I have ever seen in terms of the ease of access. And Holy cow, you start doing some of those pull downs, how many things are out there to keep you safer to get people behind bars, behind bars and so many other thing. It's just it's everything house watches. I don't know what the reading posse console the questions for CCW, the Explorer program. I mean, it just goes on and on. I don't know

Unknown Speaker 38:17 who the people are that are involved in keeping this thing up to speed. But it's got to be a lot because

Unknown Speaker 38:23 for as much as you have on there. It's not.

Unknown Speaker 38:26 It will. Thank you, Chris, we have a great website. And again, it's all one word.org o RG and there's so many resources and kudos to Chris Curtis who really started the process he worked with

Unknown Speaker 38:41 a doing as our consultant and he's still with us and Tony body is keeping it going. And it really is a great website. I'm really proud of that app.

Dean Soto 38:50 That's crazy. So absolutely crazy. Just thinking of that radio show hosts, these are just in general. Why are they you never hear that first government site. So yeah, it was really cool to hear that like, like, what what am I like? Next question with that is is what is that? How is that like helped your business in general? Working with government agencies? How did you do? So I, we talked about that. But do you? Do you see yourself doing more for local government agencies like that?

Adrian Rodriguez 39:29 Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, I I pitched a few ideas. I was sort of in the running for a little bit of time with the the Fresno Police Department on the basis of the fact that every sheriff's officers Yeah. So there's there's that I can't say that I've done a lot of political some websites I've done politician in this area. totally open to it. But I am, I'm talking to the city of focus about a project right now that might be doing it up for their official. But there's a couple things there in I'm also working right now currently with Travis County, on a overhaul. And that should be launching. And so yeah, you know, it's helped so much, because there's just so much that is said by by telling the people that I work with the sheriff says that I, at least to a law enforcement agencies, work with large government. And it isn't untrue. It's totally true that working with law enforcement officials is not as easy to work with them, because they're used

to tackling people on the street.

But they tend to, if they want something, they don't mind being loud about it or being forced, you know, it's part of their job description. So for me, to be able to be diplomatic with them is something that I find something I'm good at. And I think that all those things are wrapped up in saying, Hey, I work with this shirt on their website, and I kept it up all these years.

So yeah, that's, that's how it's helping me.

And in terms of doing government jobs, yeah, it is monumentally harder, because you have, there's so much ready to deal with. And, you know, there's bidding and things like that to do. But if you understand it, to me, it's just a scaling. Same thing I do. When I bring my phone calls, I do a call to discuss private business and sort of like, let me understand their situation and what you guys are trying to do. And if there's a way I can solve it, I will let you know. And so for the sheriff's office, or any agency that I work with small businesses, small business, it might be like, hey, you give me this content. And I'll be done with the website, and in a week or two, maybe every week, and then we're launching the website, you know, it's not that hard, right. But you know, it's the same approach was taken for a large agency this week, it can be nine months or something, you know, totally. But I just lay it out. And I say, Hey, this is what would it take, and this is what I'll have to end with, he's going to be our challenges. And these are things I'm not good at that I might, you know, I might not be good enough to do these things. And then just by laying it all out there in a very precise way, gives them the champion for finding out in their head. And like I said, there's a lot of environments that government agencies have, but it's not impossible to get into those actually, really, stay authentic to the goal. I love it. I love that.

Dean Soto 42:37 So always ask this question. It is the the anchor question to the podcast, no pun intended, no pun intended. So what is one five minute mindset shift or decision or something that really was it didn't take much time for you to actually say, Hey, I'm doing this, and that has delivered just a massive amount of results for you?

Adrian Rodriguez 43:06 Well, there's a lot of things like that, you know, and but I think something that I look at is, when I decided some years ago to change my

just my businesses

made a huge difference. It only took me a few minutes to kind of realize I need to do things differently. And then I started putting those in action. And it made such a difference. And that is that I used to say me, when I first started business, I was very as I was described to me, I got into it for journalism reasons. When people asked me to do websites, I was sort of sort of used by the idea that, like software, I was just doing it for fun. So for me, it was about when I first started my web development business, the first thing I was trying to you were saying, Hey, I don't like to nickel and dime, people, I only want to sell a website people at a, at a railing at a price to simply see that we're at a high price tag, you know, I'm just I was very,

just very against

business, the type stuff that I just wanted to do my cleaning. And yes, money was important. And we all know that. So I knew that hadn't been part of it. But I was really trying to avoid money. Yeah. But at some point, again, all these things are coming along. For me, I realized some years ago that I needed to change my thought process about what it would what I was calling legally and diamond people was not necessarily the only way to look at it. And and so now I look back and with my current businesses, what I do now is I don't focus so much on the website, project rice, as much of what I do on the ongoing continue continuing services. what that translates into from a top down more residual income more passive than

Unknown Speaker 45:14 having to work work, right.

Adrian Rodriguez 45:15 So I enjoy working for the money and going out finding getting incompatibility, Vincent, get a website, things like that. That's all enjoyable. But when I decided to change my attitude about small amounts of money, it it really opened a lot of things up. Because really, I work with customers that are nickel and dimed. It's that conversation.

Hey, you built my website. And Something's Weird About it now.

Unknown Speaker 45:48 And then I'd have to say,

Adrian Rodriguez 45:51 we're Who are you again?

Dean Soto 45:56 awkward conversation. I totally I used to do web development. I only know that like I've had people where, where it's been like two or three years. They do they do that? And I'm like, sometimes they're just like, okay, I'll fix it if it's really quick.

Adrian Rodriguez 46:12 Right? Yes. Because sometimes I've had that moment where they say, this is how the conversation went. Now, I don't know if this was one of the conversations, I haven't maybe realized I hadn't changed my mind. But the conversation you're having is like, Hi, Adrian, Adrian, you build my website. I really liked what you did. And now it's doing something weird. And I'd say, well, what's happening is I'm looking at your website, anger, your SSL, your beard and your your database storage is the I say all these things.

Yeah, I don't know anything, what you're saying? Are you saying that?

You gave me this thing called the website?

No, well, you know, the world changes, and Google changes their

algorithm. And so then they would say, Well, I, how do I lead me? You just always know how to make my sights better Enter.

And I go, Well, I always make it better, I guess.

And then I just realized, okay, that's not they don't want that.

And I didn't want that they didn't want their websites, they go down. And

I want to have a weird conversation, right? Explain to them a bunch of stuff about why their website changing first.

It's just the nature of websites, right? So it was just a paradigm shift for me to say, No, this is a living, breathing thing. And, and realistically, we need to work on this. The work start with you.

And it didn't just change in the sense that I changed the business model when I was under. And actually I am.

I also, it also forced me to get into all the web services that are that are very important, like SEO and Google AdWords, things like that. So I kind of knew that stuff before and a half no one global competition for AdWords. But But I was it was really trying to push that end of the deal. I was really happy to be able to make make cool websites. I love it. I love it, man.

Dean Soto 48:14 So how so how can people reach out to you if they need to get a site if they need to? Do any update their site? If they're, if their last web developer was suddenly left? And they need something? How can people get ahold of you? And so that they can work with you?

Adrian Rodriguez 48:31 Yeah, and all the ways they usually would that mean, my website is

at he or he web.com, my phone numbers 559-372-6887,

which you can text me as well probably want to email me first,

go to my website, just so that I

can call me again. And yeah, I'm on Facebook and Twitter and,

and all that good stuff right now on Google, I have a, an offer available to people that last till middle of July, that gives

them a free month of service, if they sign up in the way that you sign up there. So I'm really really right now what I'm wanting to do is is get some more, what I'm what I'm looking to do right now is offer my like world class, enterprise level services verse really small companies as well. And I really want to try to get that level of professionalism and be able to package it and make it a smaller price. That small businesses can also use it because I would I have these great services that are larger scale, and I have have my basic services that are for the small scale, I'm trying to breed skills, so that way I can offer good value to businesses. So right now I'm doing doing included is with hosting and domain names or hosting service or domain name, SSL, SEO, things like that. So if you if you need anything with the web, even if you just have, if you call me and you get me into a conversation, I really, really do my best to try to give you as much information as I can and teach you about what you need to do. For me, my business philosophy in terms

of technology and kind of things that I built or, or any any

new innovative system that let people have had more information available

then so they can make better decisions on a daily basis with the right way.

So I've worked with nonprofits a lot on like things like click to share, which would help help people finding food opportunities, like maybe

at the end of the day, Starbucks has to throw away all your bakery products,

those sorts of things being listed on the website in a lane.

by foot, he said help help feed the homeless for experts. So those kinds of projects are ones that I really like lab dashboards, because I care a lot about our community as well. So but in general, if you call me about anything, I'm going to do my best to help you try to help you understand and what I understand about the internet, internet, to me, this is all real funding. And I really just appreciate the fact that I get to give a living. And so I like I enjoy it.

Unknown Speaker 51:30 That is awesome.

Dean Soto 51:33 I love it, man. And it's true. With with us being on the phone, I could tell how sincere you are I We've been in business for I've been as almost a decade as well. And you very quickly tell when somebody is is the type where they're just, they're good. They want to give value. And so when you were on the phone with me, when we were just talking back and forth, you can tell when someone wants to make a possibly make that sale, and so on. And so for you is like, if it happens, it happens. We're just gonna talk because we talked to we were talking for like 45 minutes or something like that. Yeah. And so it's really, really cool what you're what you do and how you do it. Because you can tell that you really care about the other person's well being. And it's it's pretty awesome. So So yeah, guys, don't first off. Thank you so much for being on. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Adrian Rodriguez 52:28 Yeah, really appreciate you holding me down and asked me to be on that. You know, it's really great. I

love loving what you're doing.

Dean Soto 52:36 Thanks, man. Yeah, it's It was my pleasure, for sure. And so if you want to just definitely seriously massively increase your web presence, go check out a good web.com anchored web.com You can also give Adrian a call. And that is the end of our show. It was awesome. It was just I love the tip that Adrian shared the especially when it comes to the cold calling that was kind of an unexpected little treat. So I appreciate you sharing that because because that's that's something that every business has to do at some point in time, whether it's now or in the future, and nobody likes doing it. Yes. Just having that little reframe, so I appreciate that. But But yes, this is the end of the podcast episode. If you want more of these episodes episodes, definitely go to Google type in freedom in five minutes podcast, or you can go to freedom in five minutes. com You can also if you want a virtual systems architect that will take what you're doing right now. document everything step by step, go check out freedom in five minutes calm but for now. We will see you on the next freedom in five minutes episode.

Over the last 2 decades, web development businesses pop up and die off faster than you can say "HTML".  But, building and growing a development company that stands the test of time is much harder to do than start one.

In this episode you'll hear how Adrian Rodriguez from Anchored Web Solutions (https://www.anchoredweb.com/) has been able to not only sustain his web development business over the long haul but grow it into a company that serves private and government customers in one of the biggest counties in the United States.

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Automated Transcript Below

Dean Soto 0:00
Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedominfiveminutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this perfecting, scaling, a web development business, that and more coming up. All right, well, welcome, welcome. Welcome, everybody to this episode, really cool episode super excited about this one we get to be, we get to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart, because I used to have one of these, but it was not nearly as good as, as this gentleman who we're going to be interviewing. So I get the pleasure of having Adrian Rodriguez, on this podcast episode. He is the founder of anchored web, anchored web.com. And he has he can't wait to talk about what he does that what he's been doing. But he has a really cool Web Development Agency. That's that's very, very, very, I want to say that it's, he's able to create these very simple but but powerful websites that have been in the commercial, as well as the government side of things. And so I just want to say a warm welcome to Adrian Adrian, how's it going, my man,

Adrian Rodriguez 1:26
very good. Dean, thank you for having me. And it's pleasure to be here. And

Dean Soto 1:30
so let's talk about this. So I found you and reached out to you to be on this podcast, mainly because you you know Juma and Ed, which is always near and dear to my heart, I used to use Juma a lot. And on top of that your sites are, they have a they have a very beautiful yet very simple look to them. And, and so I just wanted to to reach out to you and have you come on to talk about how you got started, how you're able to do what you do, and and you've made some very, very big impacts, even on the government side of things, which is very, very hard to do, which we'll talk about in just a little bit have a cool little surprise for everyone to hear. It just it's it's something that was that blew me away. So how in the heck did you get started with web development in the first place?

Adrian Rodriguez 2:27
Well, I mean, if you know, there's, there's a few different timeframes in my life that I could go into that kind of explain how I got into web development. I guess the first proper website that I ever worked on was in about 1996, or 1997. I probably aging myself, but I was at the time. And my friend had a band called 41 height. And he had just started it in high school. But we were best friends at the time. We still are moving to France now. And so I just put together some HTML code that I had taught myself over the summer previously, and show him something that not really in a way of trying to get him to have this as his website. It was just something I thought this could be an interesting direction for your site. He took a look at that. So yeah, let's I want that. Can that be my website? Wow. So I said, Oh, I guess yeah, I mean, it does work. And so that was his website. And it was, at the time, there wasn't many websites in general. I mean, there were a lot, but there weren't a lot of people doing it. And so when we put it up online, we had things like samples of his music on there. And of course, at the time, there's this thing called frames that nobody does now in HTML, but it was all about frames. So you'd have like a frame was like a little mini window within a window on your website, we have all these frames worked out. It was like the big, you know, trend at the time. It was fun. And I wish I wish I wish I had some sort of a screenshot of that website back then. Because all the way those are from those years ago till today, I still maintain that website. And it's obviously got a lot of changes since then.

Been what I did back then, or at least show other people look, I was doing this Netscape.

Dean Soto 4:20
Oh, my gosh, that's awesome. That's crazy. That'd be I was gonna say we do you still have just frames for that website?

Adrian Rodriguez 4:28
I know, well, I just I feel like somewhere, maybe there's a fight because they tend to keep things you know, organized even 20 years ago. So I feel like maybe there was something I, I have somewhere that on a disk or maybe a floppy drive, maybe in the garage, but I don't know. But I will say that it was funny, because that was not something I was trying to do at the time I get into web development. And I really just did it for fun. And then about 2007 2000, an eight, I started doing website for myself. Because I was a journalist before that before I before today's business, which is a good web, I was a journalist. And so I sort of saw the way journalism was moving, which was it away from print journalism into the digital age, I didn't think the industry was moving fast enough. So I had all these great ideas about putting embedded maps in in articles or crowdsourcing, journalism and things like that. So I put together this website, while these cool tools and things that I just thought were really neat. And so what happened was, even though I really felt like that was a passion project, for me, it wasn't making a lot of money, partly because I didn't think journalism should make money, in a sense. So there's the whole discussion there. But I wasn't really trying to make money advertising way. So I had to make money. Somehow, since I was doing this, I just decided to take the leap and start my own business. Well, I wasn't really paying much attention, but people would say, Hey, I like your website. But you know, that piece there that you have on there where the event calendar automatically adds to a dynamic nap and and already changes colors and things like that. I wonder if you could do that for me? And I would say well, I guess I mean, what do you want me to build you some sort of a program for money or something where you get a money for it or something? And then it started just kind of like, I at one point, it was like six months or nine months into these calls. I said, Wow, I really obviously have missing the boat on something that's happening. I started leaning into that. And I found Yeah, that was very much needed service that people would call me for. So. Yeah. So yeah, then I started kind of evolving. And eventually, I found it a third web solutions in 2009 2010, somewhere in there. And so we're coming up to the 10 year anniversary of my business. So I'm really proud of that. And I'm really excited about how things have evolved since those early days of not even realizing this was a business.

Dean Soto 7:11
Great. That is awesome, man. Well, congratulations. That's awesome. Yeah, I love that. I love that story, especially when it's like, you have all these people who are kind of slapping you upside the head saying saying, Hey, can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? You're like, yeah, maybe there's a market here. I'm not sure I've only been asked by 20 people.

Adrian Rodriguez 7:33
Right, and I, you know, I do feel like a lot of the care that type of that start was interesting. Because even today, you know, I don't see myself as a hard sell hard salesman, you know, the type of person who's really going to push for you to sign on the dotted line or anything, I tend more to be more of a consultant or a collaborator with people. So if somebody calls me and they are interested in my services, that's great. And I really appreciate that tone. So but I also don't take that call with some sort of agenda. Well, this person's calling me, so therefore I need to make money off of them. Said, I just sort of give them the time that they have to tell me about what they have going on. Usually, it's a problem. And I'm sure usually I can solve it somehow, with what I do. But sometimes it doesn't make sense for me to help. I mean, you know, I could, I could do a lot of things. But I sometimes I find myself asking people will call me if they've tried just doing the Facebook page or just trying an Instagram account. So sometimes, you know, and I can help them set those things up. But they're really easy to do for a lot of people. So I mean, most people have that stuff these days anyway. Yeah. So that's kind of like, an interesting characteristic of my businesses. I'm sort of like, the soft sale, I guess. Yeah.

Dean Soto 8:57
Which is cool. We got to talk about that prior to to get in on the podcast and how important that is. And I love that because, yeah, you get you, you know, right, when right away when someone's trying to sell you something like, That happens a lot.

Adrian Rodriguez 9:14
Well, I do understand that people do not like to be sold anything, but they do love to shop. So you know, if you can change the dynamic with people to where they feel like they are having a shopping experience, that is a lot different than if they're being sold something No, yeah, there's some subtleties in there. But I definitely don't want I want to present the menu and give them the chance to kind of run the show. Because I'll be doing enough running of the show. Once we get started, I'll be doing the project, I'll be building all the technical stuff, you know, putting it all together for them. So love that. I love that.

Dean Soto 9:50
So I'm so encouraged web, you'd mentioned on the when we were talking prior to this, that there's a there's a reason for the name?

Adrian Rodriguez 10:01
Yes.

Dean Soto 10:02
So what is why Why did you call it anchored web?

Adrian Rodriguez 10:07
Well, you know, when I started my business, the first thing, you know, I know the very first thing but one of the things I was interested in was making sure I created a brand that reflected the kind of business I was going to do also gave some people, people who saw a reason to think about it beyond just glancing at it and moving on. And I wanted it to also be available as a domain name online and as a property on Facebook, Instagram. So I mean, one of the things I do when I help new businesses that are starting out is I tell them, we need to come up with a good name, right? But it needs to not only be a good name, but it also needs to be available on Facebook and Twitter's when you see things like Twilio, or you know Asana, all these different web apps, Google even, you know, maybe not that so much. But a lot of these names are kind of weird. A lot of it has to do with the fact that there's just not that many names that are out there. And yeah, so incurred web came along. Because first of all, my I've been programming since I taught myself the program when I was seven. And the internet came along. In the mid 90s. And I, I saw that there was a huge power of the internet. And so I was already learning about the internet from a philosophical standpoint. And one of the things that I learned about the internet early on, and it's kind of stuck with me is that the internet is very powerful. Because it it does something that books can do for instance, which is you can link from one page to another. And even though that sounds like a very simple concept that hyper linking from one area of knowledge to another area is very powerful. And you can do so many things with them, it's actually built the internet. So in web code that is called an anchor tag, and it's represented with a little brackets and there's a in there, that means I'm going to give you a link or it tells a browser show this link here. So the anchor tag is really the essence of the internet, in my you know view of it. So anchored web is a double entendre that not only speaks to the fact that I understand that the essence of the internet is the linking between different pages, but also that one thing that I found is that a lot of web developers, at least at the time when I started and it probably still the case, to some extent, they kind of would be a younger person who would be really excited about putting together websites, but then would maybe next year, they're excited about being in a band or maybe then they're getting started college or

getting out of college. So I found that a lot

of times I would be approached by people who say I had a web web person and that person, I can't even call them anymore, I don't know where they are or they're not interested anymore. And so anchored web solutions is meant to also speak to the fact that I'm a reliable, steady, responsible and knowledgeable expert for clients. And so anchor web solutions, it speaks for both. So, you know, again, if you can come up with a name for your business, and it can kind of have multiple meanings that are wrapped up in one, it's great because somebody ever asked you like you do a whole spiel that sounds impressive. And when they talk about

Dean Soto 13:33
No, it's, that's actually really cool. I get because, um, because so for a so with my business, I had the name pro sulim, which was and it literally for years, almost a decade, I had personal them, and I still use it for my kind of b2b business to business side of things. However, nobody knows what that is. It was it was I picked it because I couldn't think of anything else that didn't have that that that had a that did have a domain and that it basically no one was going to ever think of at all, but it did not. Nobody knows what that is. And that was a huge mistake. And it it it literally cost me now thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Because because they don't even know what it what you have to sit there explaining it. So it's not going to just grab someone's attention or anything like that. And so, so yeah, it's just that alone. Having that, that having that good brand name like you like you have, you know, what it what you already get these images of what it's supposed to be? Right?

Adrian Rodriguez 14:50
Right. Exactly. To me, I believe, you know, before I was a programmer, in my current career, I was a journalist. And I was a writer. So words and how how words fit together was really important to me and still is. So I do feel like, yes, you the words you use the name of your company will imprint something in somebody's mind, you know, even if it's unintentional. So it could be that it's confusing could be that it's hard to spell. It could be that it sounds like another word or maybe start with something that another word and all those things to me, they kind of, you know, I'm not going to say that any business name is not potentially good. After all, we have things like eBay, as I said, all these crazy names for for businesses, and they, they some of them do break through and become mainstream known entities.

Yeah. So

I wouldn't ever say that, you know, anything you pick is not worth trying, if you will love it. But, you know, for me, I was really interested in making sure people understood what they were reading and kind of could derive some sense of an understanding of it.

Dean Soto 16:00
Yeah. Oh, no, I love love. I just, yeah, I love that. Because because there's someone like me, I'm more of a systems like behind the scenes guy. And I never really put an importance on that at all up front. And if I flipped it around, it would have been, there would have been, it would have been a lot easier. Right. And so so it just cool. It's, it's just neat seeing that, that was so important to you. Because literally, I had to I had, I had not only did I have the opportunity cost, but I ended up having to have someone help me do that and pay them to to help me to brand and help me to do all that stuff. Because I didn't put an importance on it up front. And so that's it just is really cool that that that you did that. So with. So with Ingrid web right now. So what walk me through the process of how how you actually run your business, when it comes to you, I'm a new prospect, I just came to you, I need help with a website. In fact, let's just do the the common, I had this guy over here. And he wasn't very good. And he wasn't dependable yada, yada, yada. I need I need help. What do I do?

Adrian Rodriguez 17:27
Well, you know, the first thing I want to do is understand a little bit about the

person that I'm talking to and a business or organization that that they're representing. So it's not, to me, it's not a small part of the process to kind of get a sense a little bit about, about the background. So it could be that they are, they're in need of something that day, because something fell through and they just look me up and they follow me and they're saying it's an emergency, I need to something on my website, or else I'm in trouble for something. Well, that's fine. And I can try to get those things done. But usually I can take a few minutes to say okay, so tell me about your business. How did you sort of like what we're doing right now you're telling me you're asking me about my business? It's kind of what I do. Because I think businesses about relationships. And if I don't understand where they're coming from, or if I don't think that they are interested in where I'm coming from, but I'm not sure that we're going to be a good fit. That's, I get along well, with a lot of people like

Dean Soto 18:32
just with just like with that, for example, like with that process are you? A lot of because a lot of I know a lot of web companies, I know a lot of companies in general, myself included. So back in the day, and I'm getting gotten a lot better at this is that what happens if it's not a good fit? If you feel like you know, this person is just not going to be like, what do you do? What do you do in that particular situation?

Adrian Rodriguez 18:57
Well, you know, it's, it's hard for me to hell, if somebody is, I mean, it's, I'm not going to take your call, and then I don't see myself concluding during the middle of that call that this is not a fit. There have been times where I have told people, you know, I appreciate that you're calling me and stuff or that we're talking about it, but I think it's a good fit. And so usually what I would do is I would try to figure out so safe, where the reason why we would not be a good fit would be because they have a different idea about how much it should cost or what the value is what I do, or their timeline is different than what I can manage things like that, where it's more of an incompatibilities for practical reasons. If it was just a personal way compatibility, I don't I get along with people pretty well that I even you know, I'm actually good with working with people were very challenging personalities.

So I don't think it would be that but yeah, so usually,

that's what I'm trying to suss out as well. What are you looking for? Well, I need a website. Okay, when you need it right now? And how much are you willing to pay? $20? Well, let's see, you know, I still wouldn't you know, if somebody said to me, I need a website, and I only have 20 bucks, what do you got for me? I'm not I don't need the $20 per se. But I would probably say, well, that's interesting, I think you could do these things. Maybe you shouldn't pay me. But if you're really at that level, you should probably you could do this that.

But um, so what i what i what I'm looking for, though, is

there's and this is where again, I say it's about relationships, because even though I'm a very skilled and experienced web developer, one of the things about me is, as you can kind of hear from my background, I didn't work, maybe it's not obvious, I didn't go to school, formerly to learn programming, a lot of what I know, and everything I do, which is for June was sites and WordPress, and HTML, and all these other I can be Davis, database management, and SEO and all that good stuff. But I picked all the stuff up on my own over the years. And I feel like I probably could say that I have some level of education about it at this point, but certainly experience. But I do want my clients to understand that I, I am a unique, at least

Unknown Speaker 21:35
I have my

Adrian Rodriguez 21:36
own, I created my own path to where I am today. So if if there's something that pops out that maybe a educated, formerly educated programmer should know, I may not know that thing. But it's not because I can't understand it. It may be that I just haven't encountered in the last 10 or 20 years, I've probably encountered it all. Yeah, or most things. But that's one of those things where I kind of want to tell people, hey, so what I do is I solve problems for you. And I usually I learned to do it in the most efficient and, and proper way as possible. But it isn't 100% because I can't go back to a textbook that I read in college about how to do that. So. So that's what I want them to understand about me. And as long as they're like, hey, well, that's great. I mean, you seem like you know what you're talking about, and we're putting our trust into you. Yeah, great. And then then I can start looking at whether they're trustworthy, and whether I can put trust in them to pay the bills and stuff like that, or keep up with me, things like that. So, so the things that I'm really looking for, you know, actually, this morning was doing a bunch of the cold calling,

as well. That was really interesting. Let's talk about that.

Dean Soto 22:55
Because, okay, everyone, obviously, every single business needs that as so need you to do some kind of sales, marketing, things like that. What's your what's your what's your sales and marketing strategy? So it sounds like you do some some cold calling, like, give me an idea of how that goes?

Adrian Rodriguez 23:14
Yes, well, okay, so cold calling is one of those things that you have to go in with the right mindset. Otherwise, you can feel really bad after a short amount of time. So the idea that I started with is that the rate of success, I mean, depending on how you define success, but the rate of success is generally, and this is not a hard number, this is like in my head so that I can approach it of a mental state that works is like 3% or 123 percent out of what I call 100 people, maybe three of them will become a website, me maybe just one or not even that. So yeah, what I do is I have all I have my sources going to get it business listings from and then I call them one after the other and I, I, I, I have a certain pitch. But the first and foremost thing I'm trying to do is find out if they have a website, or are looking for a website, what value do they put on a website in their mind at least and then if they are interested in getting into a conversation about it.

And so for me, at least with

my approach is not to go from never talk to this person report to the selling, or to signing on the dotted line. It's having that conversation, getting to know all of these people out here. And if they're interested in will have further conversations, and I'll plug them into my customer relationship management system that lets me follow up in a week or two weeks or six months, or whatever it is. So if I talk to somebody, they say, you know, I am interested in just getting off the ground. And I really don't need a website. I might need one in six months, but I'm not worried about it right now. Yeah. Again, I'm a I'm an easygoing guy. So I feel great. All right, well, just remember these things about me that you can remember, hopefully you take my info down, I will call you back anymore. If that works for you, or I will call you back in August. And like I like it that you

Dean Soto 25:25
frame that that way too. Because I've been guilty of it with my with my my cold calling, warm calling in and so on of just saying Okay, no problem. Thanks. And yeah, it's not framed as in, I am going to call you march, or I'm going to call you in April, and see how things are going. Because now you're not really a bother, you're, you're literally and if they say okay, they've given you permission. And it's a much different frame, obviously, they can completely ignore you. But at the same time, you're going to have a much higher success rate. I would imagine doing that.

Adrian Rodriguez 26:02
Yeah, a little bit more, because I look at it as planting seeds, more so than you know, making sales or making a touchdown. So the metaphor I use is planting seeds. So if I let somebody know about me, and they seem receptive to the idea, even if you're just being nice, at least they got it, they gave me a chance and see where I am. And then I always plan for that at the end where I say, you know, we're going to have a follow up with not whether you like it or not, but we're going to, I'm going to talk with you, if that's okay with you at x point in the future. Yeah, so even if I like this morning, I one of the people I football, it just so happened that she knew one of my clients. And so there was a folly in between us or in common with us. And so that totally greases the wheels or whatever, it totally helps when they go oh.

Now I know you're somebody.

But she was I feel very interested by the end of that call. She had some other things that she had to, you know, think about or whatever, which is fine. But she said, I'll give you a call in like a week. Right? She said that to me. So I you know, I said to me, but what I told her, and this was somebody who already is interested, already committed to call me back. I said, if I don't hear back from you, in a week, I'll maybe I'll follow up. If you don't mind on Thursday, or something like that. She said, Oh, yeah, great. And so again, we're sort of already in that collaborative mode that we need to be in, if I'm going to work on her website anyway. Yeah. Like, Hey, I'm not trying to tell you what to do. You're your own person. And you know, after all, I'm I'm hoping to help you out. But I have my end of the bargain, of course, I want to selling a website, or I want to be able to make money. So if I don't hear back from you, you can expect that and if you don't ask me, then maybe at least at that point, you kind of have the idea that i'm i'm not just calling and seeing if you're interested, I'm also working with you, and then going with you to that, so you can take it. And anytime you want to work with with me, then our I appreciate that, you know, I never want to sit there and think well, I'm such an established successful business, that people are knocking down my door, and I don't have to do anything, I just wait for them to come in. And it kind of happens a lot. When you you become successful, you have a lot of referrals, but I never let that tell. That's why I do cold calls, I have plenty of business. But I like to always have more and more of these little seeds that go out and get planted so that they can come to fruition. And in three months, six months, two years,

I had I had a client emailed me this morning,

who is a local politician here. asked me if we could get started on on a new website. And this was somebody that I hadn't talked to in four years, I think maybe three or four year yeah. And so it was just one of those things where I always six months or a year at a time, I would kind of know her just letting her know. I still around, I'm still doing things. And I here's

the latest and I still think about you not like

that. But I mean, I still, you know you're not you're not forgotten. And I just think it helps

a lot because there she is calling me

up or emailing me and asking me, how's it been going? Okay, so you're looking for a new website.

Community. love that. I love that. So,

Dean Soto 29:43
so kind of going into this one particular case that I wanted to I wanted to share. Yeah. I want to make sure Okay, cool. I have this so you share it an audio from from within me from actually my Fresno County Sheriff. Who the person who was interviewing her was it was it was really surprising to hear what they said about the Fresno County, the sheriff's a website. So two things real, real quick, I'm going to ask you the first and then I'm going to ask you the second and I'm going to play this thing. One, how in the heck did you even have the opportunity to build the Fresno kids to Fresno County Sheriff's that I mean that that's a pretty big area, and it's government to very big thing like difficult things to get? How in the heck did you do that? So that's, that's question number one, ask question number two right after that.

Adrian Rodriguez 30:49
Sure. Well, okay, so that was

Yes, that was a, that was one of the that is one of my biggest clients. Now you can answer the sheriff's office came about, interestingly, an interesting story. So my, my first connection to the sheriff's office was

that I wasn't the newspaper journalist. Before I was a, I was a programmer and I had been reading a story about a company that was a tech company, a satellite internet technology company here in the valley. And so I kind of find these interesting technology companies that that were under the radar, I guess, and I would bring them to light in my in my reporting. And so that was really fun. And I would, I would make a good impression for some reason or another. So one of the companies for this company, was a husband and wife and the wife was the sister of the public information officer.

So the reason why this is it took about a year of toss with you over there just to for him to understand and what I could do, how I could do it with Alan might be able to structure a deal.

And so what they needed and what I ended up being able, the reason why it ended up happening was what they decided they needed was they wanted a website that was not only fully secure and

ready at that level, but they also needed they were they were interested in doing was having a media outlet

that was not didn't necessarily compete in the market. The first will be or was the local newspaper, but they didn't want their clothes to only be found in a newspaper

reporter Oh, yeah. So if they wanted to talk about

crime that happened, and they wanted to talk about whatever they wanted to say they wanted to have

a platform online, that could serve as a media outlet from their from their agency. So my background in journalism came to me in a huge

advantage for me, because I could,

I could describe to them and I could write out a proposal like like, technically create kind of website that would produce the media outlet impact on our community. So I created a site. On top of that they had a lot of other requirements, because that was one of the big ones that made them sort of say, Okay, if we work with you, we're going to get

anywhere else.

Dean Soto 33:33
Yeah. That's cool. I mean, and I also like a year for, for a government organization. That is that is pretty quick, if you think Yeah.

Adrian Rodriguez 33:49
Well, you know, and then the guy who hired me, he's, he's retired in the last four years or so three or four years. So I think he was wanting to create a legacy for his time. At Yeah, sheriff's office, at least in terms of that department. So there was some urgency there a little bit. But, you know, yes, it's a short amount of time. And it's a long amount of time, from different perspective. But definitely,

I also had to qualify to actually work there. I mean, I was hired as an independent contractor, but I have taken a lie detector tests,

and background checks and things like that. So there's a lot of security there. So that also helps with your if I don't have a record, I guess.

You could find you to be trustworthy, we can work with like big agencies. But you know, I know much of my like, like that, too. So much of what I do has to do with the fact that I have a writing background that explains all these things. And it becomes not just me personally convincing people but what a document I created. Also some convincing people and I don't have either you

Dean Soto 35:00
Yeah. And then on top of that, is you know how from that, from that experience, you know, how people digest information visually. And that's a that's a huge thing. And in fact, in this particular thing that I'm going to play that was that was a big that was totally, totally unsolicited. So where is this? This quote front? Like, where's this, where's the,

Adrian Rodriguez 35:27
that's a radio show. It's called Chris Daniel in the morning.

And it's just a, it's a regular show for a long time. And so they'll interview the sheriff once in a while, and it just was funny because somebody was listening to it. And then we know that it was on the air. So I went really quickly to the, to the web, and I went with

an archive of that.

That clip

and I cut it out audacity, maybe

Dean Soto 36:03
I can tell that audio is like, awesome. So so I'm gonna I'm gonna play this real quick. Now keep in mind you listening to the context that this is a radio show host. And this is a government website. And if you put those two things together one no radio show hosts is good a good a good at literally drool over a government website, because government websites tend to be really, really just absolutely horrid. horrendously bad, and nobody likes them. And there, there's a ton of money spent on these websites. And they end up being really crappy. So take a listen at this, and it just tells you tells you how good not just the the builders of the of the actual sites, but also how the information is digested, check this out.

Unknown Speaker 36:54
And by the way, where we at

Unknown Speaker 36:57
backlog these days on CCW, we're doing much better. And in fact, an update on that Christmas is the latest, we the process is actually even easier, because now you can actually apply on line, you don't have to print out the forms and bring them in and it actually eliminate one of the interviews, you can apply online, I get your appointment automatically when you do that on our website, it Fresno share.org o RG and you click on the second amendment icon and the application process will walk you

Unknown Speaker 37:33
right through it online. And

Unknown Speaker 37:35
speaking of that website, I've got to throw this out before we get to our next call sugar.

Unknown Speaker 37:42
Perhaps honestly got it, you know, I love you. But this is this is like you have a government website like I have ever seen in terms of the ease of access. And Holy cow, you start doing some of those pull downs, how many things are out there to keep you safer to get people behind bars, behind bars and so many other thing. It's just it's everything house watches. I don't know what the reading posse console the questions for CCW, the Explorer program. I mean, it just goes on and on. I don't know

Unknown Speaker 38:17
who the people are that are involved in keeping this thing up to speed. But it's got to be a lot because

Unknown Speaker 38:23
for as much as you have on there. It's not.

Unknown Speaker 38:26
It will. Thank you, Chris, we have a great website. And again, it's all one word.org o RG and there's so many resources and kudos to Chris Curtis who really started the process he worked with

Unknown Speaker 38:41
a doing as our consultant and he's still with us and Tony body is keeping it going. And it really is a great website. I'm really proud of that app.

Dean Soto 38:50
That's crazy. So absolutely crazy. Just thinking of that radio show hosts, these are just in general. Why are they you never hear that first government site. So yeah, it was really cool to hear that like, like, what what am I like? Next question with that is is what is that? How is that like helped your business in general? Working with government agencies? How did you do? So I, we talked about that. But do you? Do you see yourself doing more for local government agencies like that?

Adrian Rodriguez 39:29
Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, I I pitched a few ideas. I was sort of in the running for a little bit of time with the the Fresno Police Department on the basis of the fact that every sheriff's officers Yeah. So there's there's that I can't say that I've done a lot of political some websites I've done politician in this area. totally open to it. But I am, I'm talking to the city of focus about a project right now that might be doing it up for their official. But there's a couple things there in I'm also working right now currently with Travis County, on a overhaul. And that should be launching. And so yeah, you know, it's helped so much, because there's just so much that is said by by telling the people that I work with the sheriff says that I, at least to a law enforcement agencies, work with large government. And it isn't untrue. It's totally true that working with law enforcement officials is not as easy to work with them, because they're used

to tackling people on the street.

But they tend to, if they want something, they don't mind being loud about it or being forced, you know, it's part of their job description. So for me, to be able to be diplomatic with them is something that I find something I'm good at. And I think that all those things are wrapped up in saying, Hey, I work with this shirt on their website, and I kept it up all these years.

So yeah, that's, that's how it's helping me.

And in terms of doing government jobs, yeah, it is monumentally harder, because you have, there's so much ready to deal with. And, you know, there's bidding and things like that to do. But if you understand it, to me, it's just a scaling. Same thing I do. When I bring my phone calls, I do a call to discuss private business and sort of like, let me understand their situation and what you guys are trying to do. And if there's a way I can solve it, I will let you know. And so for the sheriff's office, or any agency that I work with small businesses, small business, it might be like, hey, you give me this content. And I'll be done with the website, and in a week or two, maybe every week, and then we're launching the website, you know, it's not that hard, right. But you know, it's the same approach was taken for a large agency this week, it can be nine months or something, you know, totally. But I just lay it out. And I say, Hey, this is what would it take, and this is what I'll have to end with, he's going to be our challenges. And these are things I'm not good at that I might, you know, I might not be good enough to do these things. And then just by laying it all out there in a very precise way, gives them the champion for finding out in their head. And like I said, there's a lot of environments that government agencies have, but it's not impossible to get into those actually, really, stay authentic to the goal. I love it. I love that.

Dean Soto 42:37
So always ask this question. It is the the anchor question to the podcast, no pun intended, no pun intended. So what is one five minute mindset shift or decision or something that really was it didn't take much time for you to actually say, Hey, I'm doing this, and that has delivered just a massive amount of results for you?

Adrian Rodriguez 43:06
Well, there's a lot of things like that, you know, and but I think something that I look at is, when I decided some years ago to change my

just my businesses

made a huge difference. It only took me a few minutes to kind of realize I need to do things differently. And then I started putting those in action. And it made such a difference. And that is that I used to say me, when I first started business, I was very as I was described to me, I got into it for journalism reasons. When people asked me to do websites, I was sort of sort of used by the idea that, like software, I was just doing it for fun. So for me, it was about when I first started my web development business, the first thing I was trying to you were saying, Hey, I don't like to nickel and dime, people, I only want to sell a website people at a, at a railing at a price to simply see that we're at a high price tag, you know, I'm just I was very,

just very against

business, the type stuff that I just wanted to do my cleaning. And yes, money was important. And we all know that. So I knew that hadn't been part of it. But I was really trying to avoid money. Yeah. But at some point, again, all these things are coming along. For me, I realized some years ago that I needed to change my thought process about what it would what I was calling legally and diamond people was not necessarily the only way to look at it. And and so now I look back and with my current businesses, what I do now is I don't focus so much on the website, project rice, as much of what I do on the ongoing continue continuing services. what that translates into from a top down more residual income more passive than

Unknown Speaker 45:14
having to work work, right.

Adrian Rodriguez 45:15
So I enjoy working for the money and going out finding getting incompatibility, Vincent, get a website, things like that. That's all enjoyable. But when I decided to change my attitude about small amounts of money, it it really opened a lot of things up. Because really, I work with customers that are nickel and dimed. It's that conversation.

Hey, you built my website. And Something's Weird About it now.

Unknown Speaker 45:48
And then I'd have to say,

Adrian Rodriguez 45:51
we're Who are you again?

Dean Soto 45:56
awkward conversation. I totally I used to do web development. I only know that like I've had people where, where it's been like two or three years. They do they do that? And I'm like, sometimes they're just like, okay, I'll fix it if it's really quick.

Adrian Rodriguez 46:12
Right? Yes. Because sometimes I've had that moment where they say, this is how the conversation went. Now, I don't know if this was one of the conversations, I haven't maybe realized I hadn't changed my mind. But the conversation you're having is like, Hi, Adrian, Adrian, you build my website. I really liked what you did. And now it's doing something weird. And I'd say, well, what's happening is I'm looking at your website, anger, your SSL, your beard and your your database storage is the I say all these things.

Yeah, I don't know anything, what you're saying? Are you saying that?

You gave me this thing called the website?

No, well, you know, the world changes, and Google changes their

algorithm. And so then they would say, Well, I, how do I lead me? You just always know how to make my sights better Enter.

And I go, Well, I always make it better, I guess.

And then I just realized, okay, that's not they don't want that.

And I didn't want that they didn't want their websites, they go down. And

I want to have a weird conversation, right? Explain to them a bunch of stuff about why their website changing first.

It's just the nature of websites, right? So it was just a paradigm shift for me to say, No, this is a living, breathing thing. And, and realistically, we need to work on this. The work start with you.

And it didn't just change in the sense that I changed the business model when I was under. And actually I am.

I also, it also forced me to get into all the web services that are that are very important, like SEO and Google AdWords, things like that. So I kind of knew that stuff before and a half no one global competition for AdWords. But But I was it was really trying to push that end of the deal. I was really happy to be able to make make cool websites. I love it. I love it, man.

Dean Soto 48:14
So how so how can people reach out to you if they need to get a site if they need to? Do any update their site? If they're, if their last web developer was suddenly left? And they need something? How can people get ahold of you? And so that they can work with you?

Adrian Rodriguez 48:31
Yeah, and all the ways they usually would that mean, my website is

at he or he web.com, my phone numbers 559-372-6887,

which you can text me as well probably want to email me first,

go to my website, just so that I

can call me again. And yeah, I'm on Facebook and Twitter and,

and all that good stuff right now on Google, I have a, an offer available to people that last till middle of July, that gives

them a free month of service, if they sign up in the way that you sign up there. So I'm really really right now what I'm wanting to do is is get some more, what I'm what I'm looking to do right now is offer my like world class, enterprise level services verse really small companies as well. And I really want to try to get that level of professionalism and be able to package it and make it a smaller price. That small businesses can also use it because I would I have these great services that are larger scale, and I have have my basic services that are for the small scale, I'm trying to breed skills, so that way I can offer good value to businesses. So right now I'm doing doing included is with hosting and domain names or hosting service or domain name, SSL, SEO, things like that. So if you if you need anything with the web, even if you just have, if you call me and you get me into a conversation, I really, really do my best to try to give you as much information as I can and teach you about what you need to do. For me, my business philosophy in terms

of technology and kind of things that I built or, or any any

new innovative system that let people have had more information available

then so they can make better decisions on a daily basis with the right way.

So I've worked with nonprofits a lot on like things like click to share, which would help help people finding food opportunities, like maybe

at the end of the day, Starbucks has to throw away all your bakery products,

those sorts of things being listed on the website in a lane.

by foot, he said help help feed the homeless for experts. So those kinds of projects are ones that I really like lab dashboards, because I care a lot about our community as well. So but in general, if you call me about anything, I'm going to do my best to help you try to help you understand and what I understand about the internet, internet, to me, this is all real funding. And I really just appreciate the fact that I get to give a living. And so I like I enjoy it.

Unknown Speaker 51:30
That is awesome.

Dean Soto 51:33
I love it, man. And it's true. With with us being on the phone, I could tell how sincere you are I We've been in business for I've been as almost a decade as well. And you very quickly tell when somebody is is the type where they're just, they're good. They want to give value. And so when you were on the phone with me, when we were just talking back and forth, you can tell when someone wants to make a possibly make that sale, and so on. And so for you is like, if it happens, it happens. We're just gonna talk because we talked to we were talking for like 45 minutes or something like that. Yeah. And so it's really, really cool what you're what you do and how you do it. Because you can tell that you really care about the other person's well being. And it's it's pretty awesome. So So yeah, guys, don't first off. Thank you so much for being on. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Adrian Rodriguez 52:28
Yeah, really appreciate you holding me down and asked me to be on that. You know, it's really great. I

love loving what you're doing.

Dean Soto 52:36
Thanks, man. Yeah, it's It was my pleasure, for sure. And so if you want to just definitely seriously massively increase your web presence, go check out a good web.com anchored web.com You can also give Adrian a call. And that is the end of our show. It was awesome. It was just I love the tip that Adrian shared the especially when it comes to the cold calling that was kind of an unexpected little treat. So I appreciate you sharing that because because that's that's something that every business has to do at some point in time, whether it's now or in the future, and nobody likes doing it. Yes. Just having that little reframe, so I appreciate that. But But yes, this is the end of the podcast episode. If you want more of these episodes episodes, definitely go to Google type in freedom in five minutes podcast, or you can go to freedom in five minutes. com You can also if you want a virtual systems architect that will take what you're doing right now. document everything step by step, go check out freedom in five minutes calm but for now. We will see you on the next freedom in five minutes episode.