Switching from Low Cost, High Volume to High Cost, Boutique Agency (ft. Cesar Gil w/ Symphony Advertising) | Episode 190

Caesar, back by popular demand literally. Last time we talked, you were pushing 30 or 40k per month. Quote on quote, "Everything was breaking." Hello pricing. A lot of interest. Try to close as many as possible. Couldn't keep up with demand. Many high maintenance clients hired a bunch of people. Keb breaking didn't know what was going on. Super chaos. Race prices, still chaos. Race prices again, still chaos, still kept hiring. And I was like, okay, this is kind of ridiculous. It's like we're freaking selling hamburgers instead of an agency. I'm not a process guy. Like I just suck. The team, where are they? Where they look at it at? But we started in Houston. Then I was like, screw it. Let me try a remote. I hired somebody like, in Ohio, with somebody in Chicago, somebody in like Minneapolis, somebody in Miami. And they actually quit on me. They're like, you screw this. This is way too much work. The pool is small. It's like, who can you hire if you don't know what you can afford? I literally don't look at expenses. I keep zero dollars in the business vent cap. Every Friday, I take all that money and move it. Eventually over time, we got to like 136 customers, but it was very affordable, high-paced, high-volume, high-turn. People literally would quit two weeks. And I added three month minimums to the existing packages. People kept booking. Why did you add three month minimums? I'm bad at saying no. So if they say no, with a three month thing, I don't have to really do it. It's there. It's implied. We're doing marketing. These guys need help not with marketing. They need help with what happens after the marketing. The whole automation, then you can avoid. I hate that the genre or the category that it's all getting under this label is like AI automation. That's not what we're doing. Right? I mean, we are playing with AI. We are automating. We are not doing AI automation. I think a lot of this is going to be like foundational for agencies in the future, even if that's not your core service. Like even automation agencies, or they're just focusing on setting up automated workflows for clients, I think they're going to have to get into marketing and the marketers are going to have to get into automation. You've become the thing you don't want to be. You just walked away. It's like, wow, great. It's a great thing you guys buy. I can't say that stuff because people all want to hear it. So I'm going to say it again. Congrats, Dad. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. It's daddy to you. The pop-up. The pop-up sees. I've been at Dan now for a week. So, how's the. And Jake said that you rearranged it. You're like your due day. It was going to be a certain time. Oh really? I got a podcast. It was supposed to be the two-week second. So we really appreciate that you were here. Yeah, yeah. I had to do that. I have to move things around. You got to have parties. I'm glad. Caesar, number one fan. Appreciate it. How's the week of dad life in treating you? I have a summary for it. It's very engaging. So I feel like you know how you can go doom scrolling and you're just stuck in a loop. I feel like it's that but positive. Like it's just constant. What do I do now? It's like very like almost like. I don't. it's like very fragile, you know? So you're like super careful and you don't know anything. So it's actually pretty uh. It's free entertaining if I have to kind of summarize it. So it's like there's always something to do. Yeah, and then you get a brief pause and then there's more to do. And then you fit in work and then you fit in like eating and then you fit in trying to jam and you fit in regular and you know, life stuff. So it's an engaging, very engaging for sure. No only thing I guess I would say I'd like give it up is like leaving my house. So I've just been at home and um my playing Xbox. So it's not too bad in terms of like what I feel I've exchanged it for. I'm sure it's fun for now. And then we'll see. We'll see. Short sample size. Yeah. Cody jumped out real quick and then because I think he's had my. He might be doing internet stuff. So we'll cut this part off though. But uh I was just on a call with um Marcus who's something I've been who some I've been coaching for like three years. But um Marcus I was going through he was like he's looking at how to get like lawn care clients in Scotland. And as I do just put a list together of ones that are on like the third page of Google. Figure out what's wrong with their website and then call them and give them that free advice. Don't even ask for anything in exchange. And so I just listened to like four of his calls. It was great. Nice. I don't know if it was illegal for me too, but I did. I.O.A. It's in the. Not there's no there's no hippo. Yeah, there's something probably stronger there though. Don't worry I'll just be cut out anyways. Um Cody had a quick cold open and I wanted to hear it and then I got a quick one too. I did. Yeah, you're talking about gift cards. Oh yeah, I remember that now. I totally forgot. Caesar. Actually this is this is a trap too. Don't take this the wrong way. This isn't we're not going to get you anything. You know, we're we're gravely we're here, but we're not shipping anything. Okay, but top three gift cards that you'd like to receive. What are they in order and why? Top three gift cards? I don't like like this is in general or in a like as if it were for me. No, for you. Yeah, I wouldn't accept any gift cards. You want to accept any gift? What would you accept? Nothing. Would I give it? What's actually I could do it in that route. Game stop. Cinemark and like eight Gicks sporting goods. I would give cards you would give. Yeah, top three. How many so everybody in your life is a gamer then? Game stock because it's kind of funny. Do they exist? We better as a blockbuster gift card. Wait, hold on. So if if we got you a gift card, if someone if your mom gets you a gift card, right? I give it away. What? Not even the like Texas Roadhouse. I like the food. Okay. That's okay. That's what we're talking about. Okay, restaurant. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll do like a restaurant. Chili's subway and Apple V's. Perfect. That's it easy, painless. Yeah, okay. Jake. I'm all food as well. Okay. Yeah, I'm all for experiences and food and consumables, even if it's gift cards. I don't want to like like Amazon gift cards are great because everyone's like you can do Amazon or prepaid gift card, but then I'm like, yeah, but there's still like that's still getting me like a material thing without the material thing. And then like I, you know, I don't know, it. Or rather just not get it. For sure though. Yeah, that makes it. I got codeys. Number one, Panda Express. Yes. It's no question. I could have guessed that. Have I told I told listeners everything that I send them like a follow-up letter to? Did it was that all stuff that I shared on the cloud? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, maybe. Just making sure. Panda Express. What do they get? Three times the maximum points. I'm going to follow up again. What are the, uh, what are the other two gift cards? Amazon probably is safe, right? Like it's, it's the equivalent of cash basically at this point. Bitcoin gift card. How's that? Sure. But that's number three actually. I'll take, I'll take, uh, what probably top two safe, safe crypto investments are going to be Bitcoin in what Ethereum most likely. I'm down, I'm down for either. It feels a little bit like, uh, like monopoly money to me, but I would still gladly accept. Uh, wait, so Bitcoin is literally your third one? Sure. I'll go ahead. You just like, I don't have, I don't have a third one, so that's the one. I can do it. You want me to, okay, I'll come up with something. Okay, you're going to judge me. You always judge me for this one, but I will say I'll do Google Play. That's why I'll run movies really easily. It's just like a really convenient movie place for me to do it. So I don't know. Are movies on Google Play? Yeah. Is that stupid YouTube? Because I get all my YouTube, uh, all my movie rentals and purchases through YouTube. Yeah, it's connected so you can, you can pay for it through there. I, yeah, which sucks because it's just licensing. You never own it. And then they give you like the updated version. So it's not actually the one you used to remember. Why do I do Amazon and you can, you can buy it there. But again, it's like the updated version. Did either of you guys watch scrubs growing up? Yeah, yeah, I did. You watch scrubs. These are you watch scrubs? I did it. Okay, so there's, um, I can't, I think you can watch it on Hulu now or something, but interesting point about what you're saying. It's like, there's apparently this music in there that they had in the original show that the licenses expired for and then they had to go back and then like make new music background tracks to retroactively like fix it or something. I don't know. I haven't listened to it. Did the opening change? No, no, no, like not that open. I think it's actually in the episodes. Which is why there's so many Frankenstein's? Because it's on the public domain so anybody can make anything with it. Yeah, same with the, uh, same with, uh, same with, Winnie the Pooh and the original Mickey Mouse. Yeah, it's like 120 years or something before it does that. So 120 years after the original creator dies. That's crazy. Or I don't know if it's a hundred, I think it's seven years after the original, I don't know, it's whatever. All right, about that though. I thought about the, but like, I think about it and then I'm like, what movies do I really like enough to actually care enough, like if this were to get nuked and I couldn't access it somewhere that I actually want to hold on to. It wouldn't be that many. So, you know, if I did, I, I guess I go blue ray or something. All right. Okay. I have a, I have something that's like agency related. That's good. This is, this actually came from Marcus. My, uh, my mentee. Do you think ad blocker is a form, especially on YouTube is a form of piracy? No, I don't know. That's a deep cut. Caesar doesn't thought about it, but then he's like, I don't know. It's crazy. I don't even know that many people use ad blocker. How many people use ad blocker? A lot. I know a lot. A lot. I don't know if I'm any people using ad blocker. Well, if you use browser, like some browsers have it just built in. Right. I was going to say university is a lot of them will have it installed by default. Like so there's, there's a big, like almost institutional approach to it. He was like breaking like from mine or standing like it breaks like, if you're looking at certain things, you can't see them. Like if you're running Google ads, it'll mess up some of the like, like, if you want to see the ad preview, sometimes the best is that up within the platform. So I always had it all or I never add it on. I just want to see ads. I want to see YouTube ads because I want to know like creatively what people are doing. I think it's important for me. And that's why I don't have YouTube read yet. But premium, you got to get the premium. You know why? Because you can go above the 2x. You can watch videos in 2.5. Nobody is watching videos that that's. I watch all of it. You're okay. Yeah, but you're like, this is, you're like, this is my four time running through attack on Titan. I was like, yeah, but I bet if you watch it at one time speed, you want to have to watch it four times. I think I've covered YouTube music. So there's some benefits, but let me test you. Sorry a lot. I've never tried to, I don't, like, I can even process things that fast. I don't think, but I want to know if I, if I could, could I do that? There's a couple of books, audio books. I tend to listen to 1.5. 1.7 is like the highest I go. When I listen to my, um, the company I keep, I learn her louder. I listen to that at 2x because that guy talks slow. Oh, yeah, yeah, super. That's where you really eat it. Yeah. Uh, okay. Well, I think it's, I think it's piracy. However, it's not one of those things where I'm like, you know, like, somebody's like, I don't know. It's not on the same level as like, the wire, or torrent or things like that. But it is, I think it is. Uh, cool. All right. Caesar. Back by popular demand, literally. Um, last time we talked, you were pushing, I think like 30 or 40k per month. And yeah, yeah, yeah. And quote unquote, everything was breaking. And I think the things that were breaking for you were mostly like processes and you had some employee churn going on. I think you're bigger than that now. Uh, tell us, okay, it sends then. How is, how is symphony advertising? Was that this year? Do you know who? Remember was it this year? Is it early? They might think it might have been early this year. Because I think I was at, uh, oh, sorry. I know the first one I was at my apartment. And then the second one, I can't remember where I, like, where was I sitting? Was it in this room? I think it was. Uh, I don't actually know. I think you were still in your part. You're your, your, your house hunting. Damn. That's crazy. I can't believe it. It's been a nice thing here. Yeah. Let's see. It's got it. I got to have it somewhere. I should just look at the ugly archive on the website. But I could just do a general general update. I mean, it's all the same stuff. Yes, it was a general update. Yeah, so, uh, low pricing, a lot of interest, try to close as many as possible, did it close as possible? Couldn't keep up with demand, which is probably fake anyways. Um, many high maintenance clients still pushed on higher to a bunch of people. I think we got up to like 11 people at one point. Uh, cab breaking. Didn't know what was going on. Super chaos. Uh, did it like it? Boat was making money. So I was like making money or chaos. I'll take both. Um, race prices, still chaos, race prices again, still chaos, still cab hiring. Eventually, too much churn. I think I shared that one with you. It was like 20 people canceled, but we closed 24. So then over the last three months, so I'm kind of like slowly like, okay, let's experiment more. I know it's, I know it's boutique, but I say boutique. Let's experiment more boutique style. And that's really the, the, I don't want to say it's like the, the plan. That's just kind of what seems to be the right fit. For the company size, the type of work we want to do. And what actually kind of sticks. Because if it were to work, like if I were to hire and it actually would work, I would just keep going down that route. It just didn't. And so that's pretty much where we're at. Uh, Jake, um, Jake mentioned some of this stuff. I'm getting this second hand a little bit, but I wanted to ask too, because I think what you're saying there about going more of the boutique or out, as opposed to continuing to go down more cost-effective pricing. Where? Okay, so you hired a lot. How big is the team right now? Six. And I'm not looking to hire anymore. Like this team, I know they're good. I know they're, uh, like they're interested. They're committed. They're all hired this year, by the way, minus one person myself. Uh, so I think it's a good batch. And I don't like, my goal is to not hire unless, you know, unless it goes so well that it's like, oh my god. Uh, how big was the team? Okay, so I found the episode is no air November last year. Oh, that's crazy. How big was the team over a year ago at this point? How big was the team in November of last year? It was basically three. It was me. One guy that's still here and then another dude. Oh, but he's no longer here. And the opening teaser of that, of that episode, you yelled, if you have hands and a computer, you have a job. Yeah, pretty much because it's hard to find people. I know it's crazy to about that is that, uh, you also don't know how much revenue you're going to make. So like, I couldn't, I wasn't feeling comfortable hiring a little bit more experience. Like, I don't know, whatever, 50, 60, 18. Uh, so I felt, well, so you don't, like the, the pool is small. So all that stuff, I mean, it actually went okay, but it was pretty, um, it was pretty chaotic for sure. Are they, are they all with you? So damn, that's a big update. So, uh, yes, so we started in Houston. So me, three dudes in Houston, then I was like, screw it. Let me try remote, which actually wasn't bad, but I'm not a process guy. Like I just suck. So, um, I heard somebody like in Ohio, with somebody in Chicago, um, somebody like Minneapolis, somebody in Miami. And this was early in the, in the quarter of last of this year. They actually like, they're like, you screw this. It was way too much work. I'd rather not. Um, so they quit. Um, and then I still try like hiring a remote. Eventually, it was like, okay, I could just do a better job training people kind of in person. Because I don't, okay, like I said, I don't have like documentation. I have like a process, but it's not whatever JTOMI in our little meeting. Like, I have a process. I don't have procedure. I think it was. And I still have like it's just like, I, I, I, you vomit. Yeah, you have things written down. You're like, this is, this is what we do next, but not how it should do it. And so I'm like, well, everyone's going to do this differently than. Yes. And, and, and, and, that it's, it's kind of stuck there. So, um, it is what it is for now. Um, and so eventually, just moved everything to Houston. Even though we're not, we don't necessarily, we have an office, but we're still remote. And I, I don't plan on renewing it. I think it was just for the sake of like, all right, let's see what the team is about. Let's hear the conversations. Let's train in person. But like at this point, I'm, I'm fairly confident. We don't need a, we don't need to have it. We can be remote. But I do like the fact that we're all in Houston. Mainly because like I can see them. We can say hello. We can, we can, I don't know. It's something about like the actual inter, um, interaction is, um, great for me. And we do have one person that's offshore that they're still like, they've been building websites for symphony for the last like five years. And I keep trying to get rid of them, which is a great point, by the way. I keep trying to get rid of them bringing, bringing it in house. Uh, hey, we'll do it ourselves. But somebody that's so freaking consistent. Like if you, if you tell them, if you ask, hey, can you take this on? And they always take it on and they always deliver on time. And they always give you a bit price. It's like screw it. Like, so a lot of our website builds are going back to him. We used to have an in house web designer, which is super cool, by the way. Um, but they kind of tried her to their own business while we're in here. So it got weird. Um, so yeah, so six here in Houston, we do have one person offshore. And then like, I mean, like most places, we have some contractors. Like when it comes to graphic design, when it comes to, um, videographers photographers, like we have a little roller dex. But I would say on a month to month basis, it's six of us plus that one, um, offshore person that makes the, the makes the, the, the core team. I would say. Okay. Yeah. Um, just when he was describing some of it, you know, I, we both kind of spend some time processing what that looks like. And it's the bigger we get, the more some of our beliefs get challenged with pricing, pay, teams, all that sort of stuff. And I think, let's say the best way that I could, um, say it is like, if you're being cost effective, no, let me flip it. If you're doing boutique, you can do boutique in person. You can do boutique remotely distributed, right? And I guess when I say remotely distributed too, I also mean not just like nationally distributed but globally. So you're taking advantage of labor arbitrage and that sort of stuff. If you're going to be cost effective, at this point, I'm not sure that you can do it without doing some form of labor arbitrage, right? It just doesn't, like, it, it's not working anymore. And I don't know if you can change it. I don't know if you can fix it. I think, um, especially starting small, if you have backing, if you already have all the stuff that got you there, right? I'm talking about like really large manufacturers and stuff like that who already, like, they've got decades of build up. But if you're starting from, you know, nothing, you're bootstrapping whatever. And you're trying to win on price with an all US team. You can't. That's how it feels. Yeah. Or like a mix of volume and, you know, there's a way, but it does get harder. Yeah. It's more shallow. Well, speaking of that, just as a recap for some newer audience members, because I mean, this is a year ago and we've grown quite a bit. And so some people might be new to you. So without like having them go with us into the first two episodes with you on there, could you give us a quick recap of like what your business model was a year ago? And then tell us how it's changed to this. So a year. Okay. So we're about to answer six years of business. Primarily, I'll just try to go a whole recap in two minutes. Primarily, it was me and some help for like the first two years. I think we stayed relatively small. Then I hired our first person, went pretty well, make marketing packages. And I made a 25550. This was when I had a bunch of 250 packages. We had a bunch though. I think that's like 30, 40, 50. A lot of me hire a couple people, raise the prices to 570,000. But then I kept taking on smaller clients. So I made this 350 thing. We did that for a couple of years. So we had a mix between like 350 and people paying 350 and 500 really. And I mean, now we raise our prices to 1,000 and 750. And we've only been running it for a month. And the interest is like, you know, when you have enough clues or enough evidence that it's going to work? Like it's that. Like I have enough. We had three people sign up, two for the to the 1,000, one for the 750. We have one starting in January already like committed. And just the amount of people are then like, okay, cool, cool, cool. Like it's not scaring anybody. If anything, I was a scary one. It's more like, okay, cool, yeah, understand. And just you always see you have to change your positioning. Like you're not like, hey, can't do any time. Try it out. If you're like, you don't like it. It's hey, we're super committed. But you have to be committed. It takes time, you know, the whole, the whole different, different, it is just a different style of communication, I guess, to the customers. And so that's the biggest difference. The difference even just last year was speed. Everything was speed. Like I think it was spoke, Jake where it was like, we get the ads up in like two, three days, which is the ridiculous. But there's so much. It's because the expectation is get leads as fast as possible or the client cancels, which is a different operation versus like, hey, let's build an actual, not on the channel, but we're not relying just on Google ads. We're not relying just on SEO. We're not relying just on whatever or meta ad. Yeah, building a strategy. We're building an overall strategy. You know, and the part of the problem too is like, it's the type of customer. It's almost unfair because our customer now, which I didn't even know what an ICP was, until like two weeks ago. In St. Clown, Posse. And yes, our whatever customer profile is, it's essentially, it's like you're trying to skip all the, I'm gonna say it, even though it's kind of rude. All the unattractive people. Like you're just trying to go to the, to like where the, you know, the cool people are. You're like, hey, I don't want to deal with growing a business. I'm gonna deal with the business that's doing good. Later nerd. Later group like peace out. Too bad. But in, in, in like a good way, like now we've become that. So like it's, I guess it's like a dance partner. We used to not be able to know how to dance. So we dance with people who didn't know how to dance. Now we know a little bit about dancing. And we're dancing with people who know how to dance. What is you change? How did you change? Like I changed. So I, I'm no longer Aaron Yeager. I used to say so like, I was just attacked. I was just attacked. I don't care the outcome. I knew what was going to happen. I was going to destroy everything. I didn't, are you spoiling? Are you spoiling the thing that you're holding off? For every moment. I finished. It's too, it's too good and not understand. To understand what he's talking about. So I'm not doing that anymore. I'm not like blindly. Just go, go, go, go, go. I guess I'm literally taking, like it's, I'm honestly more boring. It's like slow down. Acabre either. Say more to more people. But wait, so was that just forced upon you? What was the logical progression that made you get to this point? Was it like, man, this sucks? I don't want to do it like this anymore. Or were you just thinking like, because people kind of, they change in a few different ways when they kind of get to the point that you're saying. You can fight your way and. I'm going to get to that club show because now I, you know, I figured out more stuff about myself. I was getting tired of the conversations that are crappy. Like with, with business owners that are like, all this like whining and like, why not me? What's the issue? How come mine competitor who's been around for 20 years and has $10,000 a month versus like some guy with nothing online? I was just getting sick of those conversations where it's like, I want to help, but you're not like, I don't want to help that anymore. It's just like, you know, you grow. And then, and then our team, like it changes the perspective. Like if our team, every account has six people tied to it, like I don't want to work on a problem. That is not worth working on, you know? So just that, like, I just kind of got sick of damn. I just got kind of tired of working with like a beginner, frantic, non, you know, they don't have necessarily the, the gumsher quite yet to, you know, ready for agency. I think that's, it's a good way of putting it. Like they're just not ready for our agency. And there's, I'm not saying, you know, there's other clients that we're too small, but we're just looking for a good fit. Like here's where we are, we're fine. We're trying to find companies that could benefit from where we are and what we do. Gump, sure. Could you hear that? That was a good word. Keen Peele. I never heard that. Yeah, it's going to be a, uh, the, where he's doing the, the, uh, uh, what's it called? Honor or present when you raise your hand. Like I'm here. No, child is a trivish. I'll send a video. All right. I don't know. We got to lead this morning where the, how would you hear about us? Was from GROC and, um, yeah, I was crazy. It's crazy, but the, uh, the category is, it's looking like startup category too. Right? I don't think that. Maybe I'm reading around. Um, I think you're reading around. How do you see startup category? Oh, okay. No, I heard, I saw star, I read this really quickly. I'm reading it really again. And it's, they're starting marketing, but not starting in business. But we do get, we get those leads too, right? Where we just, we just got one. Um, I, I talked to them and like we just started a business this year. And I was like, eee, uh, right. Yeah. Yeah, those are very, very tough. Um, speaking of which, so in the process of seeing if this would work, I did the whole, um, so raise the prices, ran that, well, sorry, I added three minimums to the existing packages. People kept bookie. Perfect. That works. So I raised. Why? Huh? Because then I figured at least give us enough time. Like if you're going to sign up, like just, just give us enough time because people literally would quit two weeks in three weeks in five weeks in. And then, like, is this something that you can sus out though? Like in the, like, the discovery call, which they're like, hey, we're not going to give us three months. Or if you're like, you know, I don't think we're good to fit for you. Yeah. I think so. But I just, but I also think that, um, the three month thing just eliminates that conversation. Like they kind of, I'm just both, you know, I'll hell and I'm not doing that. Like it's, it, to me, is just a little bit easier. I think, uh, and also, I'll take that back. So if they say no with a three month thing, I don't have to really do it. It's there. It's implied versus that they're like, because people, and then people would are like, negotiate with you like, okay, well, what if we did six months, but we did a lower price? And I'm like, what does that make sense? Like you want a better, you might have a better rate for a longer time? Yeah, it's, it's a business thing. It makes sense. I'm not a fan of it. I don't, I don't care. I, I think Cody and I have fallen to the category of it's like, we don't, we just want to provide a good service. And if you don't think that service is good on its own, then there's no point in locking you into a contract because you had no intentions of actually forming a long term partnership in the first place. And I don't want to be in a contractual relationship where you're not happy, but you only stay because of a contract. But yeah, and, and so I've already done that. We're like, if somebody signed up for that, and we see too much in like, okay, this dude is like not ready for this. We just, we just released it. Like we just said, like, hey, it's fine. But don't even literally, can I tell you, this dude tried to sell like 18 furnaces by the end of the year because he bought so many. And if you don't sell them by the end of the year, the warranty like goes out. So like we had all this talk and all these conversations. And he had like, he had like 800 bucks once it came down to it. He's like, okay, I'm ready. I was like, we can't do that. Like we can't sell a 24 furnaces in in in a month and a half with 800 bucks. This is my nightmare. So, so yeah, that was like, okay, just we can, we can, we don't have to like, I'm not going to hold anybody to something that is not. This makes sense. I don't have money. So the three month contracting. So that that worked at the $560 price. From there, raise the price to, well, sorry, raise the $660, people kept closing. And then finally, I raised it to the $1,017.50. And then I just started tracking it. So I started, I got the what converts, the software. And I literally just tracked the sources. I tracked the, the quotable value. And which by the way, I thought TikTok was the main platform. It's not. TikTok is the highest churn, the highest volume. But organic, organically, just is literally where the most value is at. I was like, really? And we don't even know how. It's Cody shocked Pikachu face. This is crazy. Who did that? Wait, are you talking about for yourself with the agency too? Like your own acquisition? For yeah, this is for, yeah. Yeah. And we also added in for our clients because it's more, you know, I don't want actually this. It's more of the high end stuff I feel. Gasps were not that. And so, I've been running the analytics tracking. Like what converts? You're adding that in. Okay. Yeah, for other customers. Well, at the right. Because we don't change anything in the past. But the past clients stay the same. All the way, I'm back in the lower or high maintenance ones. Those do get a little message. Say something nice about what converts. So I can tag them. What converts? What converts? It's good. It tracks well. It has call tracking. It has form tracking. How's that different? I didn't just see it. I didn't see it. You're seeing it all in one place. And seeing the actual, like have you ever thought about what your marketing generates in value? Like I've never looked at that. Does it connect to their CRM or something? No, I mean, it can. But we're not there yet. This is like, you Cooper. How do you judge the value, though? I'm so long for your own agency. Yes. So it's super simple. We have two clients. You know, I mean, two packages. So I can see the number leads that the marketing has generated. What if everybody closed? What that looks like? And then how much actually closed? And that's where I was like, okay, cool. If I'm able to, like I feel confident, raising the prices, having the three months to six month agreement. And then what I did too is I also went back and I restructured the compensation for our entire team. Because I was like, you can't have a boutique agency, boutique, and then pay like high volume prices. So like, I don't want to lose any of our employees. Like they're all good. They've all showed dedication. They're all growing, which is crazy because like none of them knew anything. And they're all willing. So like, I want to say double down, because I didn't double down. But double downing at least in theory with who we have, matches like boutique, boutique pricing. Like you're not leaving. Even if this is a good place to stay here, don't leave. And then I made some internal adjustments too. So it's actually a lot. Like, I'm definitely more of like the architect right now than I am like. So I do sales and I do like the business. Chess moves, but I really like on the support side. Like our team has been really, really, really well. And that's just because I've been sending responsibility after responsibility or responsibility. And did they just step up for it? Or what did that look like? Did you have a talk with them? Or you're like, hey, you got to use these things. Like applaud to them for like dealing with my like, hey, we're changing this. Now we're changing that. Like I literally have taken people who was like, the project manager. Now you're the SEO guy. Now you're the, the digital marketing manager for the team. And then never mind, you're back to SEO. I got done that with everybody. So like shout out to them for dealing with that. So there was like that process. And it was like super painful because it's like, well, what do I do here? What's my whole, when they have doing this, what day I'm doing that? Am I getting compensated enough or not enough? Because some of those are a little bit more important than others. But luckily, as people, either quit or got fired, you really don't have that many, it becomes a little bit more simpler. Like, okay, we have five people and myself. How do we make this work? Which I learned is building clarity into the role is like super important. What do you do? What do you not do? And a lot of that came from the trying to make the processes. And so like we had a CSM. I think I mentioned this, the customer success manager. Did you know in a boot TADC, you don't eat one? There's not a CSM. There's no need. There's not that many, it's not that. It's not supposed to be that. Which is supposed to have is like someone like, like who kind of who? I was trying to just. Yes, who kind of knows everything we talk to talk. What'd it be nice to walk the web? But like I said, everybody that we have is fairly new. But you know, we've had this freaking guy for like nine months, who has just always been really like, client facing first. Always like, we're worried about the customer. Always asking questions. Always like, what can we do here? What can we do there? And it's like, wait a minute. You know, maybe this guy, you know, maybe this guy could be the guy. And so I mean, it's still in formal training. So like, there's always the situations where like the customer is like, Hey, why am I not a puny number one for the most broadest term in in a organically? And you know, it's like, okay, well, you really want that. It doesn't be sense. So here's how to go about that. So it's still, you know, on the job training. But, you know, you throw a, you kind of just, what is it? You give it a shot, you know, and so far, so far. It is slower, right? Like this season right now is like not as, not as high pay. So we'll see. But so far, been going to the services themselves change it. All the G-MIG changes to what you're delivering and what is outlined, I guess. And that's a particular thing. That's what's really cool is that I feel that our service was already high quality. Like we are already doing all these things. Like I feel like for sure we were, like if you were to ask how much would you charge for the things we were doing, it's actually, yes, it's actually the same exact service. It's not any different. Wait, did you put, did you put guardrails on the things you won't do now? Because I think glass and I talked to you, there's a lot of scope creep. Yeah, we do have guardrails, but it's pretty, it's pretty broad. Like it's all the major platforms. Outside of like graphic design, video editing, like we don't do any of that. But everything else that you can kind of think of like Google ads, meta ads, SEO, web design, Google profile management, like I don't really know anything outside of that. And we do like social media scheduling. We don't make the content, but we'll schedule it out. So like outside of that, we're not, I feel like we cover a lot, at least for the size type of clients we're getting. So hopefully there's not too much scope creep. But you know, well, that remains the BC. That's cool. So you didn't add in new services at all? If anything, we consolidate them. So we have the first package, which is either paid ads or Google ads, or SEO. So they're both a thousand bucks, just choose one. And then the 7050 one is basically both plus weekly scheduling on social media. So that's it. Everything else is pretty much the same. Interesting. That's cool. That's cool to see that you're able to do that without really, I mean, you aren't adding in new things. You're just restructuring to make the, I don't know, getting in front of that. Yeah, and I think we're willing to pay for it. And I think the only kind of change internally, and external, I guess, is we want to do more of the whole if they client would like to like monthly meetings. Like we will do that if a client wants to. Most of the time they actually don't want to. But for a couple customers, they're like, yeah, we would, you know, we would want to do that, or at least the loom, because we stopped doing that altogether. And so just a little bit more high level, like reviews for them, I think is the only thing we're kind of adding back in. But we were already doing that. I was doing that with $250 packages. Wait, why aren't you doing the looms anymore? So explain what the looms were, and then why aren't you doing them anymore? So whenever they pay, call it the 19th of the month, when that pops up, I would go and I would look at the Google ads or meta ads, anything that we were doing for them. And I would just do a review like, hey, customer, here's the last three days, here's what you, here's the least that you guys, here's the, here's what I suggest, here's what looks, you know, just a review. Sometimes five minutes, sometimes 15, depending on when I find. And the reason I stopped doing them, which is because of, you know, 10 minutes times 100 is whatever amount of time. So that isn't really work. So I kind of just let that fade away. But in trying to be more premium, I think that's needed. And I actually don't think it's every month. I think it's as, I think it's in the beginning, yes, a lot. And then as it works, like once a quarter, once, once, I think it has just have to make sense because some people don't want it and some people need it, you know. And so it's still to me in the case by case basis, depending, again, depending on is it working, is it now working? Does the client know it's working or do we, you know, you know how something you could get 20 leads a month, they all look quality. And then you talk to them, they're like, this sucks. It's like, okay, well, obviously that's, I don't know. We're not matching that. We have that on our site, which is basically like, you know, hey, this is the monthly service. We don't do monthly calls if the leads suck. And you don't tell us about it. That's actually, it's partially on you for not letting us know. Yeah. So we, we, we, uh, we asked them, we're like, hey, I do leads good or not good. Because it seems like they are, but we want to know. So we do a little bit of that. What would you call it? Quality. The sure yeah, like just, yeah, like lead qualification is looking at them. And like, as soon as they say no, the leads are bad. And like, we'll like take a deeper dive into their form of submissions. But if we can't like, glean anything from that, like, no, no, it's like the phone calls. And it's like, okay, well, we're going to put call tracking up. And, and we're going to lose any calls and double check. Because sometimes like, they don't know. Organically, it's going to be bad. They're going to get bad organically. It's for sure. But we need to know for sure if it's the ones that are paying money towards. But they're, yeah. It, man, and that's why the whole look conversing is so good. Because we had a customer that was upset about bad organic leads. And he was thinking they were, uh, uh, Google ads. And there was like, I know you're upset, but you're only on our Google ads. Like, if you want to hop on SEO, come on with it. But like, you're getting mad at the wrong thing. We have it here. Like, well, they were, look, it's right here. Yeah, someone in the, uh, I think it was in the discord. They might have been in the discord. I think they were talking about how they don't track and I've been, I haven't read the subreddit. I can't remember how they're like, well, we don't use like Google tag manager going analytics. Does anybody install this on their clients website? And then they did marketing for them. I'm like, if you're not tracking your marketing, like you, you can not illustrate your value. Again, which is why what converts is so cool. Like, I'm super excited. We don't have any clients on there yet, by the way. It's all internal, uh, but that would be super sick. And I don't know if they'll actually do it because it allows you to put like, what the quote value is per lead if it was quote, but not quoteable. So I don't know. It's kind of, you know, that a lot of work, even me. I'm like, yeah, I take like once a week. I have to sit there and like, filters. I mean, how this part has this like natively built in like, because like, hub's not a calculator too. Based on like the deals and the dealer properties that you have in there. So, um, but it's not great at tracking source. I've always wondered how you end up making this really cost effective if you're, because a lot of agencies do this, right? But I think if they're going that deep, where they're willing to play with any CRM, help with any sort of tracking, right? Like in all these different places, you got to really smart people who are willing to go and figure it out for all those things. And then how do you charge for that in a scalable way? I have no clue. Like, oh, T. It's, yeah. I mean, yeah, you think still seems, it seems very tough. Probably, but you would also cool. Side note is the whole SMTP issue. I think it gets solved with something like what converts, because what converts notify is the client with, with the, you know, the lead, the, the, what was said, the form. So right now, we're using zaps like a foot to crack, but it's a gravity form. We're using zaps if it doesn't work. We were doing SMTP, but the guy that used to set them up is no longer here. Oh, and so it's been well technically zaps would also solve the SMTP issue as well. If you can connect it directly to your website form. This is the move, man. Like this, I, I'm betting on this. I'm betting big on this. Like if I could put money on this, I would that over like the next five years, this is how things are going to go is everything is going to start shifting to pick your poison. NHN make the zapier, right? And then all the automations you're, you're going to send them through one and then they're going to control all that stuff. Even like Wix Studio, um, does a pretty good job. You can do it all in there. But if you want to have it integrate with these other things, I have, um, I set it up to go through make for that. And it's super reliable, super predictable. It's awesome. Like I love it. And that's also like, we don't have to deal with this anymore, but we used to always have a SMTP issue. Like every single game. The last, the last time we talked, uh, I think you were talking about, I don't know if it was the first time or the last time we talked, but you're, we were, you were like, are you guys having this issue with like your forms where they're like not getting delivered to your clients? And I was like, excuse your, we have the perfect episode for you to listen to. And I remember you just being like, I don't want to learn any of that. Milgan's good. It's good for it, right? But I do think like even. Okay. So half the audience who would hear this, if they're not using Milgan, they should use Milgan, right? Or a Milgan. I don't care if it's Milgan, do it, do do something else. But like what you're saying with what converts too? I mean, if what converts is the thing that's also doing the sending, which is cool. Like if you can, I, it's hard not to see a future and which people start to go, Hey, you know, this is really clunky in a real pain. And I wish I just didn't have to do it. Like you can send me more with WordPress. And I'm not trying to dump on them constantly. But like this is a pain point. And as email keeps getting harder, it's so annoying. It's so annoying. It's like you said too. Like you, it's one person's job almost to just go and figure that out. Like just integrations and zaps and support. It's, yeah. Oh, I wouldn't say it's annoying. It's needed this point. Because. Honestly, it's a lot of fun. Like I, I'm having a blast. Every minute that I spend doing it. Seas just like, do you want a job? We're doing that. It's really rewarding. Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's a. It's an issue. Which in a way, I guess it kind of makes you a little bit stronger. Like the agencies that can figure this out, even though it has nothing to do with marketing in a way. It's like every agency has to come with their own little tech stack in order to make this crap work. So I'm glad you said that. Because like I've said it a couple of times on the on the podcast and that's like, I think a lot of this automation stuff and like CRM and gradations and email automation and stuff. I think, I think a lot of this is going to be like foundational for agencies in the future. Even if you don't, even if that's not your core service. Like even auto, quote unquote automation agencies where they're just focusing, focusing on setting up automated workflows for clients. I think they're going to have to get into marketing and the marketers are going to have to get into automation. And there's going to be like this. Like because like if all they're doing is automation and then the marketers for them, like in order for the marketing to even work, the automation is in the flows that to be set up. Yeah, like the ones that are just doing automation, like they're going to have to level up because all their competitors are also doing marketing. We kind of created a package because of this. So if a client wanted to cancel, we would ask them like, Hey, it's website name is 75 bucks a month because we have your hosting and your website and it's on our stuff. And if they didn't want to, we would migrate it out. But now with all these new freaking connections, it's more than that. It's the zaps. It's maintaining them. It's and then everything else we never kind of put the hosting, the licenses. And so now we charge 300 bucks. If you want to, if you want to stay on and mainly because people kept coming to us and saying like, Hey, this is broken or I updated a form. It's not coming through anymore. It's like, Hey, that's not as your problem. But if you want to solve the problem, here's how much we could solve the for. And oddly enough, it's been actually somewhat, I don't want to say successful. But like once we explain like all the things that goes into it because the clients, I tell them, Hey, you just go to Zapier making account, connect everything. Do go try and they'll be like, just send me the invoice, dude. Like I literally just had this and I sent Cody a message about this too. Because like we have our own Zapier account that we're like connecting lead ads from other platforms to send the email notifications to clients. And but but we can do it with the free with the free version of it because it's not a multi-step zap. And I, I want to do more, more multi-step zaps for clients. And he's got jobber and he wants to connect his website form to jobber the CRM. And that is a multi-step zap. So I told him, I was like, Hey, if you just go to Zapier, you need to type your own account, 20 bucks a month to do it. And he's like, can I just have you do it? And then you do it in your own account. And I sent Cody a message. I'm like, Oh, good news. This client's paying for our Zapier account. Yeah. And it's pretty cool because that's essentially the the tier down. It's like you're in marketing package. Then it gets cold or whatever reason you want to give me. So if you want to stay as a customer or sorry, this is I don't this is kind of related but not related. So if a client stays with their website maintenance or the I call it a seasonal hold, we will honor their previous price. So if they were paying 500 bucks, 650 bucks and then they go down and keep paying the 75 or 300 depending on when they got on, they can go back to their previous pricing. But then I tell him, Hey, if you don't do it and you decide to come back, we're going to charge you whatever the new rate is. I don't know if it's going to change. I don't know if it's going to stay the same. But just so you know, you can we can hold that pricing for you or you can just not. And I feel like it's been pretty good with some customers that are like, you know what? Let me just let me just keep that old pricing because I mean, it's a big difference. 650 in a thousand or 650 in sensing 50. You might want to pay for that. That hold because it makes up the difference pretty easily. And it lets you know if someone's actually coming back or not. Like a lot of times people are like, I'm going to come back in January. Sure you are. How do I know? But if an active plan, it's super easy. Like, okay, cool. We are in Coots for at least a minimal amount. But I can expect them to come back or not come back. So all that stuff is part of this whole like trying to be a little bit more clean, a little bit more premium. And it's been going well. Like all this stuff is like bizarre because it's like, wow, you don't have to kill yourself. You can. I want to ask about because automation is like prime example of this. I think and especially for us too, I think it's timely. I think a lot of agencies, I hate that the genre or the category that it's all getting under this label is like AI automation. Right. I mean, we we are playing with AI. We are automating. Right. Like. So, but we're exploring it. We're growing it and we would love if it becomes a product that a service that we can offer. Are there other things that you're just playing with or looking at or like because your core is really similar to our core for the services that we offer. But are there ones that you're looking at and going, this is looking good. This might work, you know, in the next couple of years or so that we can really use it as a strong upsell. I would say that's as far as I've gotten and more out of necessity. Like the whole automation, then you can't avoid. Like you kind of have to play with. And that's like saying, like I want to do, you know, Pinterest ads. Well, I'm not really in a really in. So Google ads and SEO and all that. It's just men ads. It's just what's working. But one thing I did see that I thought was super interesting that I just learned about, which I'm not saying we would do is the whole PWA stuff. I don't know if you saw that. So Facebook Messenger, their desktop, they shut it down because it was a desktop app. And so what companies are doing now is they're making basically what they call progressive web apps. And essentially it's just tab that looks like it looks like an app, like a desktop app, but it's not. And the reason I do that is because it's the same code base. It's easier to manage. It's all, you don't need as many people. And essentially, it's only because Messenger, or do you not use the desktop app Jake? No, not for Facebook Messenger. I just use, I just open a Facebook. But it's just a desktop app because business, you can still access business messages via Facebook directly. Yeah. So anyways, it looks an acts like an app, but it's not an act. It's literally just a browser. And it's also like it could work offline. So it's kind of new. Twitter does it, Messenger does it, I think LinkedIn does it. There's a couple that do it. But that's like, or reach. But you would do that if we had our own custom dashboard that people can just download on their phone or download on their desktop. But so these are less marketing explorations is more like operational help. Right? I mean, you're looking at ways. Mostly, I'm imagining, tell me if we're on. I'm guessing the flow is, we're doing marketing. And we're going to help them come up solutions because that's actually the bigger need. Yeah, I actually think that's another thing that what converts plays a big role in. I mean, I could say what converts, but whatever does what convert does. It's okay. It's now sponsored by what converts. No, exactly. Um, which is so funny. I kept getting pulled by this guy about what converts. I was like, dude, he alone. Yeah, I was, uh, I, I still don't like the fact that he kept cold call it me. I want to cancel what converts right now for that reason. Was it? Even though it's working and it has a lot of value, I don't want it because he was still not. I think it was. Shout out to them. I'm being a little, well, we should send this to them and let them know like, Hey, your best marketing strategy is, uh, get people to use it, but then go away. Like, yeah, stop. Um, I independently gave came to this conclusion. Um, so, uh, attribution. Is that the right word? Like, essentially, if a company is doing well or somewhat well, it's more figuring out what is doing well and what do we put more in? What do we remove more out of it? And so I think that's, um, like a big, it's invisible. It's like, you're not trying to make the marketing work. You're trying to make the marketing work better. Um, so that's, I don't know. As a, that's not like a marketing service. It's more like, I don't know resource allocation. I don't know. Um, but that's where I see kind of like the next steps to like, because I don't know if you have had this where it's like, Hey, my Google ads are doing great. It turns out it's all organic or reverse. Hey, my organic is doing great. It's all good ads. So like kind of putting the lanes a little bit more clearly. Um, I mean, we started at, we started at attribution. Like when we started our, our marketing services, like we made sure like attribution was as, as good as it possibly could without investing in software. So really utilizing Google tag manager and having a, a lead flow that was trackable. Yeah. Um, and again, this step matters more if you actually have, well, the way I see it. Uh, if we actually have the time, like I'm not going to spend all this time setting all this stuff up, but they're going to quit or give up or cancel whatever. And even two months, you know, like that's still, that's why we put onboarding coffees in. Because like I remember we had this conversation and you were talking about like, well, like, I can't say no. I have tough times saying no to clients that are bad fits. And then so now I'm going to put that three month contract in place. What we found was when we increased our on our minimum onboarding fee from like $500 to $1,300. Like immediately cut out all the people that were just going to stick around for like, you know, a month or so and like just wanted to, just to pay to get ads running. But it's like, no, like you get to pay this just for us to set it up. Yeah. I think it serves a similar function for sure. Um, I don't know. I just don't want to do on. I might try it in the future. But who knows? Maybe it goes so well that we have a contract and an onboarding, you know, you become the thing you don't want to be. You know, I always have. Which stuff you don't get to keep your account. We take everything down. We leave the call back to Aaron Yeager right there becoming the thing you don't want to be. Um, I want to ask this just because it's been coming up a lot for me recently. Let me start with the story for us. I want to ask about how you're doing it handling of your team. So I've had a lot of people ask recently about getting good with ads. And not like, made good, like really good. Top 10 percent, you know, like actually understanding things. And, um, I was explaining to one person. I was like, look, I subscribe to click the rates everything. Click the rate is absolutely everything. If you, I, not to clients, but we're talking about you want to get good platforms, then focus on that and everything else will take care of itself. And yesterday I was going through with some of the team who were exploiting some new ad platforms. Like, show me the trend here, right? We have clicked the rate going from high to low and what's happening with costs, right? It's doing the exact same thing. Um, are you, you know, that's regards to platform, literally every single platform you can, you can test and do the same thing. Are you hiring people who just know this stuff now or are you help because you're, you're an ad's pro too, right? Like you've spent a lot of time within that and that's kind of year round. Are you training these people? Are you spending time with them on that sort of stuff? Are you just getting the ones that are already good now that you're better positioned to do that? It's, it's still home grown talent, you know, it's just, it was off the street who were like, yeah, I need a job. With the right personality traits, obviously like that stuff matters. I think a lot. Um, and then just training them up. So like, and then part of the problem too is like, uh, what's a good metaphor? Like a boat can only go as fast as the wind is blowing it, you know, like a sailboat. So like, you can, um, like the, the ceiling of a lot of ad accounts are only how good the market is. Like what is the demand in that market? Um, more to Google and SEO, but meta ad is a little bit different because it's like, well, how good is your creator? So it's pretty mixed. I don't know, I don't really think we go for like a top 10% Google ads or whatever. We don't really go for like, it's more like, is there opportunity here and how can we improve on it? I don't really, I don't really look at it as to how like, uh, how to be like even me, like as, as I, I thought I was like good and stuff, but I'm like, it's not even me. It's just like the, it's a good placement. Like it's just, there's not that much competition. The cost per click is good. And you, is there a big difference between someone who knows what they're doing and someone that doesn't? Yes, because they're just going to do like a smart campaign. For sure, that's not going to work. But if you do like the proper best practices, I would say search ads, raise match, landing pages, tracking, uh, quick, quick, quick, uh, quick pickups, appropriate headlines, um, obviously look at search terms, adjust bids if needed. It's going to do a lot better than, all right, let me just look at it once a month. Sure. Uh, but competitive, I wish that was like an Olympics or something, you know, like let's get all the people in a freaking room, same budget, same business. Let's see who doesn't. I'd be kind of cool, but to, uh, I would say it's a little bit, um, I think it's over dramatized. Like it's more, I think it's more just like, just do the thing, like do the right thing. And I think in our position, right? I mean, because I, I agree. Like we're not doing hard stuff. I mean, I'm a nice, as to ways to anybody who is doing what we're doing. Like there's really competitive places that you can go and play if you want to get really good at ads and that sort of thing. And like local small market SEO and ads is not hit. Like this is, this is cake. Just follow the general guidelines. And once you get to that spot, you'll be doing fine and well. Um, but, uh, other places and I, I want to, chicken, I just met up this week and I was telling I was like, I want to get back into, especially SEO because I've been out of SEO for so long. Like, I know basics and people ask me questions. I'm like, honestly, I'm not the guy anymore. Like don't ask me because I've been out of it so long, but I want to get back into some of that because I was just having so much fun with it. And I think it'd be fun to go and explore too with some of the team too and just explain to them because like you were saying, if, if they are people who come from zero, they don't know what that top looks like. And I want to go and explain to them too, like everything we've been doing up until this point has not been hard. I want to go show you hard, right? I want to show you the actual hardcore competition. Like, this is what Casino spam looks like and how it's working, right? Like I want to go over there and play with it and then show them so they know too, just almost like a teaching experience. Yeah. And then some of that stuff too is like, if you're a new business with no marketing with a small budget, that's, that's like, level hard. Like, okay, I have 500 bucks and I'm going to HVAC company. How can I sell one freaking unit, you know? That's hard. But that's also unreasonable. Like, it's hard because it's unreasonable versus if you have a budget, whatever, 10,000 bucks, they're well known in the area, they've been doing business for a while. It's hard, but they're in a better position. So it's like, it's still not that hard, not as hard of like, okay, taking something from zero. So even that is like, and then what's the expectation of the client? Like, some people are just happy that they have somebody they can call to make edits, you know, like, hey, change the promotion this month. They're happy. Then there's another guy, just like my HVAC guy, I was like, dude, you know, I thought I was going to sell 18 furnaces and half a month. And I'm like, what? So that's why it's like, it's hard to kind of, which goes back to like, it's more aligning your, the agency's, uh, capac, capabilities with the right belief or the right business. It's not necessarily positioning. Right. Thank you. Um, it's not necessarily being the best. It's just being good for that particular, um, business. I've been hitting up positioning crazy hard in the discord in the subreddit right now, because like, right now, the how to get clients question keeps popping off. And it's like every time somebody asks it, they leave out their positioning. I think everyone will stop. Yeah, I, well, you know, we have, we have, we have a lot of people who are, like, we have our slash agency newbies where they can ask that question really long how they want, but I'm thinking about putting in the, in the auto mod of our slash agency of being like, if this, like a reg X expression that says like, how and then clients, then it's like post auto denied. And then, uh, but it always comes down to positioning. It's like, what is your positioning? Like, what, like, where are you at? Uh, and then once you define that, the clients usually come relatively easy. Um, and I, and like, it's still hard. Like, it's not easy, but it's like, I was, I was talking about this, this call started like Marcus, uh, I meant he, um, he was, uh, he's, he's looking at like getting, uh, landscaping and longcare clients in Scotland through cold calling. And so I, I, I've never called called in my life. But if I were to, this is how I would do it. And so basically what I did was just basically just give him like, look, you're starting out, um, you, you, what you need to do is you need to go after the businesses that are like on page three of Google. And because he's offering SEO and like, just like, find 20 of them and then give him free advice and like point out what that is, find a decision maker, call them. If you get a voicemail, this is what you do. If you, like, call, uh, if you get a live message with a receptionist is what you do. If you get them on the phone, this is what you do. And then, um, he called, I was on my phone with them with like four calls before this podcast recording. Um, three of, uh, two of them were voicemails. One was a live message. And then the third one was an actual talk to the person. And then on the fifth one right after joining this, he just message me and he goes, I actually got one that wants a pricing proposal. Nice. And I was like, dude, you called five people and you are like, that's a 20%, that's like a 20% conversion rate on like actually getting an appointment or a horrible estimate. Yeah. That's crazy. So, um, which makes me want to like go to like our I will quote, unquote office and just start recording his calls and posting them on YouTube and just being like, it's, it's, it's literally can be this easy as long as you have the right positioning and you know how you're going into these. Um, and that's, too. Like, you, you don't need to do like that crazy numbers. Yeah. Well, this is the AJ method. But when AJ was on our podcast and this is how he does it in Detroit because he just serves the Detroit market and he's like, I literally stalk my prospects. Like, where they go, uh, who their names are, like what they, what they're into and then like, and then I make very targeted calls and he'll call like, like, he'll get an appointment out of like one out of eight calls. I think and it's like, super, it's super good for him. I posted on Reddit and no one believed it. And I'm like, yeah, well, you're, you're just doing like this, Bami, like 100 calls a day thing. Um, but I wanted to go back way, like way back to when we first started talking about you and, and um, you're earlier pricing, which is now pricing between November and now, I think you've increased your prices like two or three times. Uh, how many was it two or three? Do you remember? For 500 to 650. Uh, that's it. And then 2000, 1000, which, but it had a change. So like the, no, yeah, 500 is, the 500 is now the 1751 and the 650 and not the 1000 one, just like reverse. 10,000. Yeah. Those are like 25% increases every time. How we did, we just said our very first price increase in May. And that was, and we gave it two month like ramp up period almost. So like, I think we announced it in February and we're like, it takes, it takes effect, uh, on, I think it was May first. Uh, and, uh, we did a whole episode on that. I think we, we, it was like a 30 to 40% total, like total increase over everything that we're doing. And then we lost, I think 20% of our clients, but then we gained a 30% in revenue or something. And that still required the ramp up period. Yet you're over here, increasing your prices two times in a single year. Like, what was that like? And then why did you do it so frequently? To put the brakes on people, uh, because I mean, I would say like part of the, I think a really good strategy to just go for everything, be cheap and go for everything. Like, I do it for 300 bucks and whoever signs up great, because what ends up happening is there's just so much like inquiry is coming in. And so if I raise the price and like 50 people are like, I don't want that, but 10 are, I'm like, cool. It doesn't hurt. Like I'm not. They're still enough interest. But if you're talking about internally, like our existing customers, I don't change that. I believe that as it is, I do go to them and say like, Hey, here's an pricing. If you'd like to upgrade, uh, I did go back and kind of kick out some that weren't good fits, but as far as changing the, you know, legacy pricing, I don't really do that because most of the, most of the heavy lifting is already done. People, why don't, why don't you do that though? Like what's, what's your, so much work? It's too much effort. I'm just working on email. Hey, we're increasing prices. Yeah, but then let's get on a call. Let's get a recall is discussed. And then they might not want to, which is fine. Like that's okay. But like, we didn't do calls. We just blast out an email and say, I've gone. It's funny because you, you'll do that when you won't do the pricing part, but I'm the reverse. I'll do the pricing, but I won't do the email. Um, I did go through them like any high maintenance client or any like, this is not going to work. I did go to them specifically. And outside of that, like I would say our client roster right now is super solid. It's actually crazy. Um, it was super cool too. It's like there's actually nothing wrong. This is just like steps to steps in progression. Like just to try to do better, try to do better quality work. The past model, there's not, there wasn't really actually a thing wrong as I try to, um, you know, the churn and stuff, but as far as like, is it a profitable business on paper? Yeah. So I guess in the way too, like we can operate with a little bit more gun owners, like if nobody wants to, I mean, we'll just reverse back, we'll just go back to the old pricing. It should be fine. Um, I don't know. I think it's going to be a nuts, a nuts year, even just like the first six months. I'm just scared. Like my stomach hurts sometimes. Digging about it because it's all good though. So, do we ask at any point, what's your current MRGP? What do you, what's your, I mean, so, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your current MRR? It's, yeah, sorry. I like 60 with, uh, yeah, what's that? Okay. Yeah. Well, this is a good, okay. So you said last year you had a hundred and some clients. Uh, what was that number then versus what is that number at now? It's the same. It's been, it was like 60 the fur. I don't know. Uh, it's roughly the same, but you're 50% higher in revenue. I don't know to be honest with you. So, all I know this year we should hit like 750 ish cave for the year, which is up like literally double from the previous year. And with these new changes, I'm pretty sure we're going to hit like like a hundred. I'm pretty sure we're going to have a hundred MRR. Like there's, there's actually, it would be surprising if it doesn't get there. Just based off past that and based off 2026. Yeah. And so, and then I have like I went back and did all my expenses. Like I literally don't look at expenses. I was just like, I know there's enough money. I'm care. I did it this time. I got, I even did the like a cancel stuff. We don't need for example, use front. You know what that is front? No. It's like an email platform where everyone can see the same inbox. But apparently you could use Google groups. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but they're not, it's not the same inbox. There's no inbox in the Google groups. It's just a forward. They're going to learn. Yeah. I don't know. It'll save me 250 bucks. So I think I'm a month. So I got rid of some stuff. I paid for some stuff a year in advance. So like, I know what our expenses are. And then I know anything. Oh, and then I give myself a raise. Have you done that? I gave myself a raise. No, we took money away from us. This is, dude. I think, I think in April, like we had like a 10K month. And we're like, yeah, then we're like, let's put limitations on this. And now we're making absolutely nothing. And it's awful. Yeah. So, I mean, I wouldn't say it was awful. I was paying myself. But it was, we're paying, but it's in the form of profit and distribution. So now like the reoccurring payments to us is not what, you know, but it's great in the winter. Because in the winter, like we'd be getting like a thousand bucks each if we didn't do this. Yeah. So, but, but why I'm bringing this up is from a, from a like operating standpoint. It's, I used to, like this whole year. I remember there was access in the bank. I basically took everything. Just personally, I would just, I would just take it. And I paid like business, expensive, private, private stuff like that. But this year, because I raised my own salary, and it's like much more lippable to my lifestyle, my whole goal is to not do that. Like, sure, I'll take small percentages on a monthly basis, but I just want to stack it. Like I just want like, if everything went to hell, we'd be good for who knows. Maybe not that long, but we'd be more bulletproof. So so many things that have to go wrong in order for us to have that, you know, fire anybody or, you know, lay off anybody. And there's so many, like, there's so many things that would, like I could lower my own salary. I could take on older clients. I could, but although that is part of this, like strengthening the business overall, like as a whole, it's not just the pricing. It's not just the hiring. It's like from a business standpoint, it's going to be really, really, really difficult to suffer to be honest. So so yeah, that stuff is, it's kind of what's on the horizon, because I kept zero dollars. I keep zero dollars in the business bank account. Wait, what, what are you moving? You did or you are, you're saying what you used to do? Yeah, yeah, I got four years straight. Yeah. I mean, everybody goes past that point. That's cool. I wanted to ask, this is the last one I had actually, and I just want to know, because you said this early on and I want to know what changed. You got what converts. You learn where you're getting clients from. You learn the kind of clients that you're getting, where the high turn is, where the quality is. You learn TikTok kind of sucks. You learned SEO rocks. Did you do anything with that info? Or you just like, this is cool. Yeah. So you started blogging more. Did you like what changed? Yeah, I did. So to talk about this, it's still good. It's just the barrier has to be higher for everything with TikTok. Leave. It's still probably the, we get good customers from it. There's just a lot more not good customers from it, or not good fit customers with the SEO part. I mean, I would argue we do pretty decent SEO like our SEO person or manager, what are you going to call them? And so I just have them working from, I just have them working on the site. So that's a thing. I mean, I've been running Meta ads and Google ads. Meta ads is actually not bad to get interest in and leads in, but I haven't updated the ad since I've updated the pricing. So I need to do that. And then Google ads, I don't know, man, I've been running them for like three months. I've had like one really, really, really good lead outside of that. It's not really like it's, it's pretty. I'm not spending a whole lot. I'm spending like 30 bucks a day or something like that, but it's not a lot. That's a thousand bucks a month. Yeah, it's not a, maybe I think I spend more, maybe a, I think it's too broad. Like we're going after like Houston marketing agency and things that nature were maybe it needs to be more like marketing agency for concrete companies or something like that. But it really hasn't produced, um, yeah, I do like different, different ad groups, um, for like your sector. But then you need landing pages for those two. I know. And I suck. That's going in the opening teaser right there. I'm a, that's something else I'm working on is like, which I don't even know. Sometimes I think I just turn them off like it's fine without it, but I don't want to like, I don't want to like not be aggressive. Even if it's more like, um, like, if it goes well, we would simply have to overrate our prices again. I don't know if that's needed, but I don't know. Yeah. I'm going to keep it. It's, um, it's interesting to hear the way that you've kind of approached this and then even your recommendation to, so you were saying how, you know, starting out, it's not the worst thing to have low pricing, get a bunch of data from what you can, right? It's, it's a giant learning experience where you get to learn very quickly. And then you move fast, you break things, you fix it, you go to the next level, brands for Pete, you go from there. Um, I think that's a great recommendation for people who handle stress well. I think if you don't, don't do that, right? Like it's, I don't handle that well at all. I really don't, it freaks me out, stresses me out. And I know like the, it's not that we do it that differently. When I look at like, I will always position our business to look like it's doing worse than it actually is, right? Just as the operations guy, that's how I like to look at it. The, like I can go look at the PNLs right now. I know that we're up double digits a year every year. We're doing well on paper. Everything looks good. But what I see is all the other things that like you're describing similar stuff that we're getting ourselves into a bind form. We're preparing to work through. And we just still don't have, um, how I see it as the operations guy, right? The high confidence to go and make that next jump in a way that if we did it, the way that I would like to be prepared to do it, we would 3x any year, right? There's no other way. Like, because I think, um, we've been trying to nickel and dime above, like you were talking about like 650 and stuff right there. Um, the client fit for people once you go above that amount. I think there's like above a thousand dollars, people start getting more, a lot, they pay a lot more attention to how that money's being spent. And then there's this very weird awkward spot between 1000 and 2000. And then once people aren't flipping out about 2000 dollars a month, anything above that point really, you're now talking to the same crowd. It's like a people who are not the undesirables that you were talking about before, right? Even though the undesirables are a great baseline. Um, but I, I think about that stuff and how like we keep ramping up to really be well positioned to do it in a less stressful way, because that's really what I want. Like I really don't want to deal with we could. And yeah, I mean, we, I think like the guide rails that Jake and I have put in place allow us to continue growing with a reasonable amount of stress without having that stuff figured out. We still grow. We're just not growing double, right? You're over here because I'm, I'm not the right personality fit for it. How are you? Did that's what do they call that? You yourself for what you guys are stuff to work. First, I'm that stuff for where it's definitely a weird place to be because like it's, it's hard because there's a lot of agencies and even we can grow way faster than what we are doing and we recognize that. And it's like, well, we could, we could have been a million dollar agency last year. But it's like, but how many more years are we going to be able to sustain that at the crumbling infrastructure? That is what it was. Or that is what it could have been. And we're rather just grow, you know, 20 to 30% year over year and sustain that until we get to a point where our agency is growing. We're like 5% growth is considered good, you know. But I was going to ask you if you know what your lifetime value is on a client. It's, I mean, if we're going past, with past data, it's like sure. I think it was like a thousand bucks. But it should, this is very cute, by the way. This is like literally a month, maybe. So hopefully in like three months, it'll be, I have, the better number I have is like, what are average cost or average revenues? It was like 400 and 480 and 580. And I think right now with the newest customers, it's like 800 something. So that number is probably going to rise. Does that factor in like churn? So it's like, okay, so it's like 800, that means like your average retention rate is like a month. Yes, because that's what it is. This is so recent, like literally this is because you're fact, okay, it's so recent because you're factoring people who are on board, but they haven't even left yet. Correct. Okay. So even since I added the contract stuff, that would be ending in January. And then you get some funny stuff too, like some people pay you a head of time. I was like, what the hell? Which was cool, but also weird because like, how do you do that mathematically? Is it, is it unearned revenue? Like month one, you know, like do you count in month one? Do you count in month one, two, three? And the money is the thing, which, yeah, no, me. Yeah, well, if it's contract, I mean, the government's going to take, I mean, the government's going to take their cut if you receive it all at once, no matter what. So what I would do as an agency on it would be, I would, I would put it in savings. So if case there's anything bad, or you could so refund them, or at least make sure you have the savings to do that. But yeah, somebody paid a year in advance. They just, I don't know if I would do that. They're like, you know, for tax purposes, can I pay all of next year? Yeah, I can see them. I can see them. Sure. If you want to. That's some farm stuff, man. That's, that's what people do here in Iowa when they're like, oh no, the tax man, I got to buy this tractor this year, you know, like you can do some serious, serious tax stuff. Yeah, we have, we have an email out to an agreement out to us right now from our insurance agent for the podcast. And I was like, hey, we really great if we can pay this before the end of the year. But I just asked a question this morning, I'm like, come on, get this back to me and get this agreement back to me. I really want to, because we're paying for all the next year insurance, like right up front. I'm like, we're getting close to being to a spot where you're probably going to be out of the office for the rest of the year. So, oh yeah, yeah. But I think, I think that's all the questions I had. Oh, you, so last time we talked, just a recap, you said, 30 to 40 K per month, MRR, everything's breaking. How are things now? Do you feel like things are, are cleaned up? I know our audience just wants to get this seizure low down. Do you, are you more stressed? Are you less stressed? What's it do? I'm not going to call him, you know, saying, it's actually, but see, part of the biggest difference. It's too calm. He figured it out. He solved the equation. He's doing it. Part of the, part of the reason I feel this way though is because a lot of my responsibilities, I'm not awful at it, but they're two, the new role we made with the guy that was doing med ads, by the way, he was doing med ads, look, what the hell. He now is the digital marketing manager, but from just managing the account standpoint. So he handles all the strategy calls. He literally, by the way, shout out this guy because he just got off a call with a client and took him from the 650 packages they were paying. So the $1,000 package that, and he just did it. I didn't, I didn't know. So I said, amazing, because I would be doing that call. Do you have a commission structure? I usually just pay money. So like if somebody, if somebody like, so that's a $350 difference, like normally I'll just send the difference, like the first payment. So if somebody closes the deal, like I'll just send the first payments to them and then just leave it at that, but not really. So there's no like actual structure, I just, I just sent something. Which is great. Please close as many deals as you can. Go crazy. Better a good fit. Anyways, he is been handling a lot of the calls, a lot of the reviews, a lot of the, so in that regard, a lot of that's been taken on my play. We have like, it's just, it's just most of the stuff is not, it's just not on my play. So it's just, it's a lot more, like I wake up and have like four things to do. And I'm like, cool. Which is weird, because it's almost like, what the hell am I supposed to do? What am I doing? Am I working? I don't know. Am I, I think I am, but it doesn't feel like I am. Marketing. Never stop marketing. We just talked to Darren Shaw, a local SEO guy at Wixpark. This episode just came out today actually as we're recording this. And that's literally his job. It's just wake up, market for Wixpark. Go to bed. Yeah, I agree with that too, but I don't know. That's a lot of marketing. One of the, yeah, it's, it's that. And then I wonder to sometimes like, would I, the main other thing that I don't, I still do is like the sales part, which I still see myself doing. But I would say that's the last part that's like really in the business. Yeah, I said this is a career all the time. I'm going to be the last person we replace. And it's going to be into like 1.5 or 2 million in revenue before I actually get out. Oh, last last thing. Do, how do you feel about like a partner like partnerships? Like do you feel like you could have gone further faster or further better? Now, have you had a partner in Delinon? You mean like a partner like a, like a, like a, like a CEO. Yeah, it's almost like saying, yeah, like magically if that person existed, of course, yes. If who is that person? But then again, with my personality, I don't know because I'm very go, go, go. And I absolutely hate being told no. Like I absolutely, like I'd rather like that guy than what converts guy. Like I want to cancel what converges because he was like bothering me. Like I would, I would probably like force somebody. Was the name, was the name tray? Yeah. Cause that's the guy that, that's the guy that I know from what he never, he never called call me though. Yeah. I mean, it's fine. I don't mind getting called call him. It's just one time he like tricked me. He like called from a different number and then called back and he's like, I got you. And I was like, oh, no. Well, something like that. It wasn't exactly that. But I remember I was like, I got you. It's a self-aware answer. You're saying we're self-aware, but knowing that about yourself with partnerships too. I mean, that's, that's a lot to know. And to think that, you know, if you had one, maybe, I mean, I think a lot of conversations that I've been having recently too about people who are, they wish they had a partner because they want somebody to hold them accountable sort of thing, right? No, no, they suck them. Where's the way? Where's the way you somebody to be as a business owner if you need help being accountable? Right. I think, but I don't know. The way they answered at the beginning where you're just saying, like, you know, you still did it. And I hope that people who are in that place of thinking, like, oh, I need a partner in order to do this, get started. Get started. Maybe you'll need a partner, maybe you won't, right? Like, but you're going to have to, if the accountability thing is the limiter, then you have to figure that out anyway. Just the void. The, I need a partner. I need to hire this person or I need to hire that person. It's just like, I don't know how to do the thing. So like, I'll do the thing. That's how you find that solution. We actually talked about this recently with somebody, Cody. I can't remember who it was. I don't even know if it was on the podcast or not, but it was like the accountability thing with the partner thing. No, like, okay, think about it this way. When I, when I first started ever grow, and this might have been like, this might be like a partnership, like, I can't ability to think when you first start your agency versus like getting one to where you're at now. So like when you first started it, it's like, it's so easy to just like, lazily build an agency and, you know, just do things in your own time. And, and I'll get clients when I get clients because I still have like, you know, like day job. But in the minute you partner up with somebody in those early stages, it's like, and you're the sales guy. Like this has happened exactly with me and Cody, which is like, I was like, oh, I am like super accountable now to actually getting clients because somebody else is dependent upon me getting sales. And so like that kind of lit a fire under me for actually doing impactful work versus just busy work. Yeah, I guess the only caveat is you guys are actually like legit, you know, how many non-many business partners. I want one point we weren't like, because Jake, Jake says this and I'm just hanging out, right? Like there's, there's not real pressure. There's just perceived pressure because if Jake didn't get business, I'm just like, I guess I'll spend more time at the gym, right? Like it's not, it's fine. Yeah, that's fair too. But maybe that's good. That's good perceived pressure, right? I mean, and maybe that's what people are asking for too. But I still think like he said, it's not an excuse. It's not a reason. Like you can't, there's all sorts of things that would go better in ideal conditions that you don't get. And if you just let yourself not, if you, if you hold yourself back by saying like once I have this, my favorite clip of this actually, it's Mark Cuban, just railing a guy on the short tank, right? Like what? Praising. Oh, sorry. Sometimes I say things I don't even know what they actually mean. I'm just like somebody said that. I'm going to say the same thing too. But sorry. But he's, he's grilling them basically like you've done everything. You did all the homework and you're just not pulling the trigger. Like you've done everything you possibly can do except for, except for the actual business part, right? You, you just can't do that. I have to start asking Jake to when I hear things that they're safe for me to say again. I still, I'm still laughing about the Mark Cuban railing someone railing. There's so many words that I just hear. I'm like, oh yeah, I could say that because somebody else said that and I don't, because if it's not like a clear swear word to me, I'm just like, yeah, it's fine. You could say that. I don't know what that means, but it's not, it's not a bad word. So you're fine. Rails or rowroads, right? That's. I, I just wanted to say to you that like, um, Caesar, I wonder if like you're like the biggest empath in the world because you hate being told no, but at the same time, like you tell us that you can't say no to people. I think the reason why you probably hate being told no is just because you, you know what it feels like to be told no and you're like, absolutely not. I want to decide, you know? Yeah, yeah, you want to be the decider of the note, you know, which is always super funny to me because whenever you post on LinkedIn or like TikTok or Reddit and you're talking about a problem that you're solving and then people coming with like advice that like doesn't totally jive with you or even the advice isn't that great. You're just like, thanks for the comment. And I know in your head, you're like, shut up. I'll do it my way. And I'm like, like Caesar, why are you even posting this? Like you hate advice. Like why are you asking for it? There's actually people get kind of upset. There's actually, um, it's to, it's to know what people think. It's to do like, if a lot of people say to do that, to me, it's like, I should do that. Like, that's the wrong way. It's the wrong. Um, but sometimes they just, you're, the crowd points itself out. It's like, okay. I don't know, but a lot of times I'll ask questions just to see what other people think. And then it kind of like solidifies my own like, okay, I must be right because they're wrong. I don't know. But yeah, I do you know, do you see valid, centrarian, you see validation in your posts, not guidance. I'm just a contrarian. You could say whatever you say, I'm going to say that. Like that's it. There's no, there's no, I actually have no moral fortitude. You should not develop procedures in your business. But I'll stay away from it. Don't do it. All right. Well, we took like an hour and a half away from, you know, today. And I'm sure this one is going to be happy that you jumped on again. No, thanks. I appreciate you guys having me back on. Awesome. Yeah. You thought I was going to be like, I was like, hey, you should come back on and you're like, I'm scared. I feel like this is going to turn into some kind of intervention. What? What? What was the month that happened? Or a month ago? I had more clarity. So like, you know, I'm in a much more calm place versus, a month and a half ago, two months ago, I actually all this year, I was more, you should have got me then. It was more spazzy. It would have been more entertaining. Yeah, it would have been more entertaining for sure. I would try to put everybody wrong, you know, I could do this. Is your third time, but still plug yourself. People want to know more about you. They want to follow you. Sure they do it. So, you know, symphony, I would tell you that calm. Slide. That's my company. Just go to the bottom, click the buttons, the social media icons. You'll find on my stuff. Cool. Awesome, Caesar. Well, thanks for joining. As always, just always reach out. If you see, there's this thing where you just kind of ping as being just as high. I'm like, what's up? Got a question. But yeah, thanks for joining. Just stick on for a couple of minutes. Let your audio tracks load. And then you can go be a dad. I think it's there. I hear a crying stuff. What a guy. I have a confession to make. I didn't know what that meant. Railing a guy. No, I legit. You learned what that meant like right now. What? Yeah, basically, I like to do it together. This is good. I know I know we all know what you meant, but it was a double on Tondra. Okay. Okay, let me say words that like, let me say a few words that I don't know entirely what they mean just contextually what they mean. Like, reaming. That's the same category, right? Like if you're reaming someone who's chewing the mouth or something. That would have been, if you would have said that instead of railing, it would have like, nobody would have laughed. Okay. Okay. Yeah. But this is the problem of Cody in that I entirely live in my own little world where if there's just something I don't like, right? I don't like something about something. I completely block it out as if it's not reality and it doesn't actually exist. And then these things can happen to me. But anyway, that's side quest over. Let's talk about it's easier. I'm glad things are working out for him. I'm glad he's got to a much better position. I still wish he would develop some procedures in his business. He's like, I don't wake up and I just don't know what to do. I'm like, you could start with procedures. Just do that all day long. Maybe, but he maybe he's figured out and he knows that he's got the people to do it. I'll be honest, this, I feel jealous a little bit about a lot of people we've talked to recently just because like we. We have the roadmap, but to me, how I feel, looking at all the operational stuff, I'm just looking and going, man, I wish we were actually structurally closer to that place where we can go and go up to that next year, right? And part of it is me just literally not spending time there and I just don't feel as close to it because you've been doing it. Is there an objective next year in your brain or is it subject our own next year, like subjective our own? A little bit of half and half, you know? There's some productized services that I would like to, because we have a lot of like piece together things that might be more successful in my brain. If we repurpose them, put them into a package designed for the 2K per month plus client, right? And we just haven't actually done that yet. Yeah, because it's like, it's like the next year for us would be like deploying those packages or deploying those services and then having it be successful and repeatable. But there's no like revenue or number of clients attached to that that equals the next year. It's just having that. Because I think when I, well, when I think of that, when I see that, I think this is where people get to 2 mil annually, right? And that's what I see. Like, I don't know why. I think looking at the PNL is this year and just seeing how things have gone up and I'm like, yeah, we did it. It's up good, all good things. It made it seem like the steps between there weren't as big of a deal just because we kind of accidentally did some of them. You know, like it wasn't even really intentional. We just kind of blew past them. And now it just seems like that, you know, 1.5 to 2 mil mark is the next thing to build for. And I don't think structurally, it's almost purely just business plan. Like if there were the business plan to do the same exact thing as business plan, the original business plan did, I think mentally I'd be like, yeah, cool. I don't feel jelly anymore. But I do. I'll say I feel a little jelly. I think if you like spent a week in their business, I don't think you'd feel as jealous. I agree. Because no, it's nothing bad about like Seasers business or any other business model that we've talked about, but it's just going to be vastly different than the business you want to build and are currently building. And it does not suit your lifestyle or how your brain works. 100%. I don't normally feel this way at all either too, because this happens a lot. I think of the discord too when I see young people especially that are like, you know, I'm a loser. I'm not a millionaire and I'm 15. You know, I was just born and I'm negative dollars. Like, there's two 16 year olds that I know of in the discord right now. One of my know is doing really well. That's great. Yeah. Like, when I see those things though, I think it's all the comparison as the thief of joy. Like you, you give a really good response one of those times where you're just saying, like, hey, you can't think this way. And honestly, like I just say, hey, you can't think this way because giving anything more beyond that is just not very like. It's so situational, but what I do usually, because I don't think it's, it's not always bad to feel jealous, right? Sometimes like it's like a good, it can be a good motivator or something. Yeah. Exactly. So, but like the bad, unproductive kind is when you're not factoring in all the variables, just like you said, like if you, what I will do, what I need, if I need to ground myself, is I will go back to when I think about these people that I admire something about what they've achieved. And I think about their entire life, the whole thing, the other things that were impacted by their ability to achieve that thing. Celebrities are the best example of this. They're like exceptionally successful business people that, for example, Bezos and Gates, right? Both divorced, right? And this, this, like that by itself means nothing, right? Because people get divorced for all sorts of reasons. But if we want to say, for example, for example, their divorce was a consequence of working too much or something like that, right? In order to achieve that exceptional success, that's the sort of thing I start thinking about when I need to ground myself and go, I want that one thing that they have, but I don't want the rest of what they have, right? Yeah, you're on must as a good example of that. His divorce was a consequence of his, of his not success, but of the work that went into it. Yeah. There we go. So that's what I do to ground myself and go, okay, I like a lot of these other things about my life. And I think I'm feeling it recently in the jelly thing too because I've been putting it more time. I've just put, I've been putting in more hours and it's all, it's all R&D hours, basically, which means no dollars. So you do all this stuff and then all the stressors go with extra hours, but not the money yet. So you just, you keep holding out. I've been noticing that a lot lately too because like we got a lot of R&D stuff in the pipeline and we were like coming over that hill, both for the podcast and for the agency. And December 13th was my wife's birthday. December 25th is Christmas. Then you have New Year's and then January 31st is our anniversary. So like this whole time window right here. And like I've been putting so much work on a R&D and the business that I, I like, I'm almost like neglecting my relationship at the same time. She's also really busy too with her Etsy business and with her actual career. Just fortunate timing. Yeah, it's really bad timing, but it's like, like this this morning I had a call with Marcus. Oh, saying it was fortunate though. Like it's because it's great when you're both unfortunately busy at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, if she wasn't busy, like it would be tough because like I work, I wake up and instead of wanting to go work out or hit the gym, like I want to sit down and work on the business. And it like the last time I felt this way was when I was in high school. And the first thing I wanted to do when I woke up at 6 a.m. was play video games. Like it's all I could think about. There's dishes I need to wash right now. But I'm like, all I can think about when I woke up at 6 a.m. this morning was like get to my desk. I didn't even want to shower. I just wanted to like step into my desk and start working. It just and it's been like this for like the last six months. That's cool. It's fun. Right. Until you like sort of sort it right. Yeah. So you're like, wow, that's kind of suck. Like I just like I live to work. But like at the same time while you're doing it, you enjoy it. But then you reflect on it and you're like, but the most important thing in my life is my wife, you know, and like my relationship. And it's just like a weird. And that sees there's going to be double, doubly challenged with that. Now that he's got a newborn. I forgot to say I originally wanted to say the same thing that I said to you when you told me you're like, hey, see, you're has a kid, which is there's two things I tell people. It's one is I'm sorry to hear that. And to thank you for your contribution. I have started to say that to you. I say thank you for your service. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your contribution to the population crisis. I'm sorry to hear that the next, you know, 18 or so years of your life will be more demanding. But I hope they're rewarding because that's what they are. That's why you have the kid. You know, I'm just, it's not for me. Yeah. Me neither. At least not right now. I do like the idea of having a kid, but I'm like right in my current life moment right now. Not like I, it's great other people having kids. I love it. You just like come in around you and the make you sick. Yeah. Okay. No, that's the worst part. They're just little germs. That sucks. I'm going to cut that opening. You're like, see, there's a guy's having a kid and then it cuts right to you saying they're just little germs. Ever, ever since I think the, the fiasco at the cabin where everybody got no revirus, that was like an awakening and there's like everybody is sick and there's not enough toilets. You know, it's not right, man. It's not right. My God. There's so many questions about being in a cabin with your family. Have kids. They said have kids. We went to a hotel right away. That's all you need to know. We're like, we're out here. We're getting a hotel. Sorry. I need you a picture for me. I did. I drew a picture. A diagram of what that, what that in to you. I have that saved. I know. We should use that as a, as a podcast. You send it to the team chat. You know, like just me right now. As a feature image or something. It's, I want to, I want to frame it. People should be like, Cody, that's what I get a lot of time. They're like, Cody do this. They're like, look, sometimes I'm really bad at jokes. Cody doesn't do it. I'm not good at jokes at all. So I, I do them for myself in the best of ways. And then they, they go, well, but a lot of times they fall flat and I deserve that. So I'm just not good at it. You're better at that. Anyway, if someone doesn't laugh at my joke, I just, I'm, I'm, well, you're weird for not laughing at that because I was funny. All right. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. We'll see you. See you.