207. Focus on Business Growth, Not Scaling with Liz Cortes

So the hockey stick approach, I like to look at that as scaling. You'll see online, we're going to 10 X your business if you buy my package. We're going to scale. We're going to get you 100 leads and sales calls. Go, go, go. And I'd say for lots of businesses, do you have the team ready to fulfill that massive growth? Do you have the budget to hire the agency to do that? And I'd say for most business owners, the answer is no.

Welcome to the 3 Day Weekend entrepreneur podcast, where we help you create the personal and professional life you most desire. Impact more people and make more money in less time. Do what you do best so you can create the life you want outside of work and better enjoy your family, your friends, and your life. Go to t hreedayweekendclub. Com to join our community for free. Welcome, everybody. I'm excited today to have Liz Cortes with us to talk about focusing on brand growth, not scaling. A lot of people get really excited and they want to scale super, super quick. There's some lessons I've learned the hard way, and she's got some wisdom that's going to help on that as well as some other great insights on SEO and some other very specific things. Thanks so much for joining us today, Liz.

Thanks, Wade, for having me on.

Absolutely. Liz went from a fitness influencer to working full-time with her husband seven years ago. Their company is Rebel Fish Local Marketing in San Diego. They help businesses across the US and English speaking countries get more brand website traffic and local SEO and convert those website visitors to clients using the story, brand, copywriting frameworks. I love what Liz did on my guest thing where I'm guest show up. I'm like, I don't want to go too much into SEO because A, because I guess sometimes it gets too specific in detail. She's like, Wait, I can do this too. I just love the fact that even just like you started with, I'm not not into SEO, but I can do this too. I guess that's the thing is to me, it's always like, Okay, how does this thing relate to what we're doing? So we are going to get to some of the SEO part, but we're going to start with this trend. When she brought it up, I was like, Great, this is perfect. This idea of growth versus scaling, but first, let's start a little bit about how did you even get into this industry?

Again, you started as a fitness influencer. What was that like and what got you here?

Yeah. So I moved to San Diego in 2009, and when I moved here, I was surprised there was so much competition for that world. Really? Oh, man. So I got connected with online marketing, some great coaches, and took my local business online. And that was at the beginning. That was a new thing, especially in fitness. People were not doing that yet. Influencers wasn't even a thing back then. And I learned all the online marketing things and built up that business. And my husband was in the restaurant industry and we were enjoying building businesses and doing that, doing our own things. And we decided that we wanted to work together. I knew that from a young age. I knew I wanted to work with my husband, but he was ready to get out of the restaurant industry. And he's like, I can trust my spouse. I'm married to them. I could trust them. I've had some business partners I could not trust. And he's like, I don't want to work with anyone else as my business partner. I want my wife to be my business partner. And so we opened up our company seven years ago, and we planned on just only working with medical with reputation reviews.

That's what we planned on doing. But our very first client said, Hey, I fired my marketing agency. I know you and your wife are into this stuff. I want you to do everything. So immediately, very first client, we picked up a check for $2,500 a month, and we did literally everything. Seo website, social media, email, all the things, print media. It was a three location business out here, Laundrom ad. And so we jumped full in. And my husband loves SEO, thank goodness, because that's probably the hardest thing to learn. I don't know if there's graphic designers listening or web developers, you may disagree with me, but it's pretty hard to learn that stuff. And so we jumped all in and just said yes, because we needed the income to pay your bills by next month.

Awesome. That's how it usually starts. It doesn't start as deep as most people think. Most people's stories are some I tried A, I tried B, I tried C, and then F worked and F just came from out of nowhere, didn't even know what it was. One of the things that when you and I were talking in the pre interview that I thought was something... A lot of people have learned this and some people still don't believe it or they want to fight it. I can't say it's a truth. I'm not smart enough to say it's a truth, but it seems to be pretty much a truth that the quicker you grow, sometimes the quicker you rise, the quicker you fall. That's why there's that saying, too, I guess. But a lot of people want to make things happen very quickly, and they can. Then things goes down very quickly. In that process, it's very stressful. Relationships get hurt, marriages get broke, families get broken, all those different things. There's the hustle and there's the grind, and there's all these different things that are like, it's this very male energy of it. As opposed to just like, we're just going to plant some stuff and then that stuff is going to grow, like things that will work naturally.

We're going to build some things and they're going to scale. Share a little bit, if you would, just that basic concept of the hockey stick growth and the gradual growth, what that looks like and why it can be better to have that gradual, steady growth rather than that mediocre work, just huge growth in a very short period of time.

So the hockey stick approach, I like to look at that as scaling. You'll see online, we're going to ten X your business if you buy my package. We're going to scale. We're going to get you 100 leads and sales calls. Go, go, go. And I'd say for lots of businesses, do you have the team ready to fulfill that massive growth? Do you have the budget to hire the agency to do that? And I'd say for most business owners, the answer is no. And I think the biggest thing is relationships matter. That is the R in rebel, one of our core values, relationships matter. And if you scale too quickly, you don't have the systems and processes in place. You can get bad reviews. You could get a bad reputation in your industry because if you can't service your clients and they go complain to someone else, that's not good. There's so many things that could happen. And yeah, lots of startups will have this huge capital and they go all huge. But I believe small growth is the best, especially if you're more of a solo entrepreneur or your local business and you have a couple of employees, slow growth is the best way to go.

And it's sustainable. We've been in business seven years and it just was growing one to two clients per month. Now there were those months where there was five or eight we onboarded. Those were crazy. My team hated me. They were like, do not sell anymore these packages. Alert. Stop. And I don't want my team to be mad at me because I had a really great sales month. So I try to space them out, always be aware of the projects that they're working on. And so I think that's important is you need to know what you can handle personally, you as a business owner, but what can your team do? If you don't have a team, I mean, coaching, of course, is like, what you do, Wade, is like, great when you want to scale because you record your course and you can do one on one or group. You can grow quickly. I've seen that. But yeah, that's the difference between the two.

Yeah. I think that holds true to almost any business. I have two primary industries involved in this. One is insurance agencies, which is like 100 plus industry. Definitely in their case, it's sometimes segmented. The insurance agents are usually the sales arm of it. So for them, they can just scale. But then what will happen is sometimes is the parent company, the large corporate entity behind it, that has the operations that really has to then deliver on the promise, they'll say, Okay, well, we couldn't do that. What's interesting is if you look at all that's going on right now with supply chains and things not being delivered, people say, What happened? Well, there weren't raw materials. People seem to think that, Well, if it's a knowledge based business or an information business where you can't run out of materials, well, yeah, you can run out of... Basically a lot of the inputs is intelligent thinking, and you can run out of that very quickly. To your point, the scalable, the being able to enjoy it, and just having to be steady in that whole thing. I remember one of my mentors, Brendan Bichard, saying, A lot of people as authors want to get on, let's say, what used to be, let's say, Oprah Winfrey Show was one of the most popular ones.

Now it would be like the podcast, the Tom Bill U Show or something like that. He said, But if you're not ready, all that skill comes and people assume that if you're up there, that you're ready to handle all those people. Even if you're a course creator, you can duplicate your courses. You can say, have 10,000 people log into my online course, but can you actually provide an experience where they're going to implement? I've been in that field long enough, you can't just sell the course. You've got to support it. It's funny, people talk about this new thing called cohort based courses where you actually help the people learn it. I'm like, no, that's called school. We've had cohort based courses for centuries. You don't just give people books and say, great, that's the whole course. You have to teach people. There's only a certain number of people that can do it. If you know student, faculty ratio, we get that in that model and people don't seem to get that if they're looking to do. Because it sounds sexy to say, Yes, well, I scaled and like you said, I ten X'd and this and that, and some things you can, but a lot of things, it doesn't seem like you can.

When you all were starting your business... Actually, this I think would be very helpful because a lot of people I talked to are not quite as involved with more local businesses, or even though I know you guys are reaching to people, but you're working with local business owners. Share a little bit more, if you would, about that concept of pace, because, again, as the entrepreneur, as the CEO, you'd say, Well, why wouldn't I sell 10 packages a month at 25,000? Because I can just hire the help. There's infinite number of people I can go on to up work or whatever, and I can hire people, but it still takes time. What does it take when somebody says, Okay, I want to scale? What does that look like for them to actually be able to prepare a team? Or just that whole idea of things take longer than people think they are. How can somebody prepare for that if they're thinking that they want to add their first either employee or they want to start using a lot of freelancers? What can that look like in a way that's sane, that maintains a good relationship and reputation and is scalable?

Yes. I think that you need to start documenting what you do. I like Michael Hyatt. He has his focus book and he has his wheel or the Compass. I'm sure you've read that. You do not want to be doing judge re zone activities and just identifying what you do because when you are the main one in charge, you're probably doing so many areas of your business. I love that exercise and it's just you fill up this little chart of what are your daily activities. And you can really see which things you love doing, which things you don't. And I think that's the best place to start. And then of whatever role you plan on hiring, I know most people say, Oh, you should hire an assistant, a VA, virtual assistant. We hired a graphic designer first and then a website coder guy. So that is what we needed. My husband decided to do the local SEO research. Then I could do social media copy, all that stuff because I was doing online marketing, had courses, did all that stuff, so I could do more than digital assets. So we had a team right away of four when we went down our path.

I don't recommend that. That was a lot. Just to say yes, that was really scary. A lot more stress to say yes that we could do everything. And thank goodness I had a background, I don't know how many years was left, 2009 or 2015. I had been doing this stuff and so I could do that. But I'd say you think about like shark tank. I'm sure everyone here listening has watched shark tank. And how many times have you heard of those business owners that go on shark tank? Everyone goes to their website, the website crashes, or you can't buy. Last night I was at the last night of a book club and we were getting ready to split up. It's like a big book club. There's like 30 women there. We're getting ready to split up. And the author of the book has this quiz to learn your superpower. It's like four categories of your superpower. So we all log on to the website to take this quiz, and the text was cut off. You could only see the answers to the questions that you had to pick multiple choice, but there was no question.

There was an issue on her website. So here's 30 women. This lady is a coach and course creator and puts on live events. And I was like, what? Her website is broken. So everyone's frustrated. But to be able to do what the woman putting on the event plan, she's like, We need everyone to divide up into the four categories of whatever your superpower is for the next exercise. So it was a hysterical experience. Everyone was annoyed, and we finally got it done. But it took 45 minutes to take this quiz because the one person's phone worked and then she read the questions. It was crazy. So that's what can happen. If your online stuff is not working well, you're going to frustrate a lot of people, especially in a group that's trying to promote you, or you'll be like the shark tang people. So you need your processes in place. And I think if you're going to go live, say you're doing a launch, let's say you're doing a Facebook live or a webinar or something, and you are relying on a sales page or something digital, I really think you need to have an assistant on that call, someone that can log on your website, make tweaks if anything weird happens, have someone on call if you're going to be sharing something to a big group or if you're speaking somewhere.

I've been to so many events where the speaker go to this page and it's not working. So have someone on call just in case you never know what's going to happen if you're a speaker or author and you're presenting something.

Yeah, absolutely. That's so huge. If your call to action is go to such and such place, it's like giving the wrong number or phone number on a call to action. It's like, Great, you did this whole presentation. You said call this number. It's the wrong number. And literally, it's as if you did nothing. I tell my kids in basketball, it's like running the whole way and then missing the lay up. You did all the work, but the part that got you the points, you either lost focus or had something happen. I love what you said there about the personal assistant. I know I've gone back and forth at times. I have a small business, a software business. I do coaching. There was a time where I had an employee in my software business because this was also I hired her, I think it was 2006, awesome person. And there was really no upwork or those places. So it's either all or nothing. So it was that whole uncomfortable thing of, Okay, I have enough to now feed two mouths, if you will, or two families or whatever it is. And we got working with that and that was great.

And eventually, when that business got to a certain level where it reduced a little bit but still studied, that person, and she got tired of doing tech support after 10 years, which I can't blame her. S he went and did something different. But now when I hire people, I've come to realize, and I got to experience this third, she was, even though she was tech support, by the time she'd been with me so many years, she was high level tech support. I always just think of this analogy of sometimes people in a physical location will say, Well, we need to have a receptionist. I'll say, Okay, why do you need a receptionist? Well, because I need them to answer the phone and manage the phone, V on. They said, Okay, well, how well trained is this person? Oh, no, they're just going to be at the front. Okay, so all you're doing then is having somebody pick up the phone and said, I don't know the answer to this, but I have a really nice, pleasant voice. Now you're frustrated that you've now spoken to me. You almost really feel better. You just left me a message because people are now pretty much over that.

I'm old enough to remember when people didn't even like leaving voicemails. But it's like people like, Okay, I'll leave a voicemail as long as the person gets back to me. I find now I'd rather hire that person, like you said, that is the expert that I can say, Look, an SEO I've stayed away because I know it enough to be dangerous but not enough to be great at it. I'd rather have that person that does it that I can say, whether it's the sales page or whatever, Hey, just fix it. Because a lot of the VA stuff for an administrative assistant, sometimes I'm already done. In the time that I delegated, I could have done in the time that I delegated, I could have done it. Unless it's like this mass project of, Okay, take these 30 things that I did one way and now change this thing on 30 of them. Okay, that's great to assign to a VA. But a lot of the times by the time I'm creating the instructions, if they don't know what they're doing, I'm spending more time training, and I almost could have done it. How then you talk about...

So you mentioned a little bit about standard operating procedures. What's that balance for you then as far as training that person? The people you all started with, were they all full-time? Were they all part time and you skilled as you grew? Were they freelancers and you just got more hours? How did that work out? Because I know a lot of people still get very afraid of hiring a freelancer. They'll almost spend more money on another course than they will to actually get the help and then free up more of their own time to then, in essence, make some more things happen.

Yeah, that's a good question. When we first got started, we hired freelancers, they're contractors. We didn't have the budget to do full-time and we didn't have the work to do full-time. But my husband is great with people. I mean, his last restaurant, he had 150 employees, so he's great at hiring, researching, figuring out who is who's amazing. I'm so thankful that our coders work for us for seven years. And we still use that first graphic designer once in a while, but he wanted a full-time job. And he's amazing. He's the one that made our logo. But we use him once in a while when we need a special project, if he can squeeze us into his full-time job. But now we have a different one that works full-time for us now. But we started out small like that. And it is a lot of times, we hire people, went to the normal places to check out freelancers. And sometimes you have to hire a couple of them because they don't do the job. But you learn by reading their reviews, by testing them out and seeing who do you like to work with. I mean, communication is a really big deal for us.

My husband, last week, we needed a video editor freelancer. We hired a company to do videos. We completed it, showed it to our client. And two weeks later, our client's like, Oh, actually, I have my own logo that flies in thing, whatever that is at the beginning. You probably know the word. And I was like, You never gave this to us. We are going to complete the project. So we're like, I'm not going to go to my video editor that's way more expensive to edit all of these because we already complete this project. So my husband went on up work or something. And yeah, it was crazy. Someones on the charge like $750. And another time, an Excel spreadsheet, they were like, $750 for this? We're like, What? No. So sometimes you have to do your research because you could... A few weeks ago, we needed to clean up 10,000 emails for a client because they had the first and last name in the wrong box and then their last name. So it was a weird thing. So my husband found someone. He's like, Yeah, I'll do that. And then he went on a forum and just asked the question.

He got a free answer. He was like, Oh, just download, export to Excel, and then you can separate and merge them and then you're good to go and delete the column. Like super quick for $5. And they filmed a little video and did it. And so that's where it just takes some time to figure out, you have to try them out. But I'd say get a couple of quotes. If you're going to go on Fiverr, Upwork, get a couple of quotes, try them out, and eventually you're going to find an amazing team on there. And then sometimes you can get them to leave the platform, quit their job if they have a contract. If you go through VA agencies, sometimes you have to buy out their contract if you really like them. But sometimes if you want to move them to full-time, that might be better for your company, and then you can pull them over full-time to work for you.

Awesome. And share a little bit about the cash flow of that. I know one time I got so excited delegating something and I have basically a lot of people talk about a side hustle. Well, entrepreneurs sometimes have side hustles. We have our business that's proven and then we start something new and the new thing by definition is new. It's exciting. It could be awesome, but it makes no money. In my case, I knew the type of freelance help I wanted and I got it. But it was for something that I was not yet monetizing. Then very quickly I was like, Wait, this doesn't make any sense. It can be a tough thing to figure out what I should or shouldn't do. But it's unlike your situation where you said, Hey, we got the $2,500 check and then we started hiring. I went the other order off of the usual entrepreneurial faith, which has served me at times, so I don't want to poohpah it because I wouldn't be an entrepreneur if it wasn't for that. How can a person be smart about it? And do you recommend people ever use debt or credit card debt or stuff to do that?

Or should a person first get that check and make sure that they're in some way cash flowing? I have my thoughts on that, but you seem to have done this and scaled more than I've been doing. What are your thoughts on that?

My fitness business, when I moved to California and I was taking it online, I got invited to a conference, got a ticket. They did the whole run to the back of the room thing. I was one of those people that ran to the back of the room, bought a $5,000 package, then went to that event, bought a $25,000 package, got a loan. So I'm 24 at this time and I'm 35 now. So it's a little over. But I got a loan. I do not recommend that to anyone. It was so stressful to pay off $25,000. I think it was like $15,000, $16,000 a month, plus the interest. That was bad. I had a friend recently who has a podcast that wants to monetize it. She's like, I'm ready. She hates the PA, full-time job. But she's like, I really want to launch a business. And she's like, should I keep buying courses and trying to do this myself, or should I hire someone? And so I referred her to someone who's affordable or not as affordable for a startup. So I have my connections of people that I trust to pass over where people just getting started.

And I passed her over to someone and she spent $300 to create a free offer PDF and just get the email set up, get that little free offer funnel set up. And she actually decided, she's like, okay, I just realized how much I make as a PA, how much time I'm trying to figure out this tech stuff. She's like, I think I need to go full-time as a PA and then hire people. I said, I agree, because I spent $25,000 or $30,000 when I just moved to California. I just met my husband, so he helped me pay some of those bills because I was not making the money because I believe in the coach and the trainer, and not everyone is like that. Not everyone promises you and doesn't deliver. In that case, I did. And I wish I can even imagine if I were to spend that $30,000 and hiring agency, probably could have... I know I would have grown so much quicker, but I didn't have the knowledge and the skills to choose the right path. And I thought I need to learn myself. I kept repeating this over and over. I was hiring an agency to do my Facebook ads last summer for a live launch.

And then this other Facebook ads company was like, Oh, no, you should join my group coaching and learn how to do it yourself. So then I'm like, Okay, it's same price as the agency and learning. Yeah, you're right. So again, six months ads. I was spending $1,800 a month following his system, plus the amount, he was like $10,000 for his package. And then I got zero sales. I'm like, what? I did the mistake again. So I'm not perfect either. I get excited. I love learning. You probably love learning too. That's why you got into this industry and what you're doing. But I just try to remember those. And I like to share my mistakes too, because I still make it recently because I'm like, oh, yeah, I love learning. I love this stuff. And so I say hire them. But yeah, for VAs, you said pricing. There's websites out there. There's other people in other countries. We hire all in the US. So we just decided that as a company because we work with local businesses and we really believe in hiring local in your city if you can. We're in San Diego. We do have some staff that works across the US and other places, but we still pay them the going rate for San Diego.

So they love it. They're in Atlanta or other things, they're like, Whoa, this is awesome. I don't have to work that many hours. So we still take care of them like they're in California, employees.

That's awesome. I learned about freelancing. I know I feel our freelancer is probably about 15 years ago, I think. I took a course with Trey Smith, Frank Kearns cousin, and it was about... Just started doing stuff on Upwork. And over the years, I've hired different people. I've definitely found you don't always get what you pay for, but you almost never get what you don't pay for, if that makes sense. If you go lowball, you're not getting great help, period. I don't care what country it's from. Even there was a while that certain countries, for a while, the Philippines, you're like, Wow, you're going to be... And relatively speaking, maybe it was inexpensive, but the world is becoming more of a world economy. And of course, the smarter people are like, Well, hey, people are getting paid really well. I know at times I found in different parts of the world, you can find people that are awesome, people that are not awesome. But definitely, I agree with you a thousand %. I only have had one coach, and it was a $10,000 program. There was actually a group of coaches that just outright did not deliver what they said.

Basically borderline almost fraudish, if you will. They just didn't fulfill because some of the other things came up and they said, Oh, well, we don't have the money and o ops, sorry. But to your point, I've done that thing where I'm like, Pay for it first. And there's still these fundamentals of... I remember, I think I heard it on the Joe Polish video where he said, Look, if your sales page isn't working, or your sales copy, if you're not gaining the sale, nothing else really matters. And it doesn't mean that sales is more important than the other stuff. It just means that it comes before the other stuff. If you're not doing that, and I know a lot of people don't want to hear that, but the reality is, again, if you can't get people to buy it, why are you having... You'd have the greatest set up community. You could have the greatest... I think people forget this, and I actually love your comments on this, of the times when you've tried something that you knew you put out good work and it still just didn't... The market didn't take to it. Because I think people think, Oh, if I'm a...

It's like as an employee, we're taught, Well, if you do good work, you'll be rewarded, you'll be paid well. Usually, they're going to be like, Yeah, but because they know what you're supposed to be doing, they tell you what to do and you do it. It's like if you work at McDonald's and you follow the framework, they've already tested the framework. Sometimes as entrepreneurs, as you know, we're testing things. But I very much like your wisdom of not investing too much. Some of you couldn't pay off in a couple of months because it's a very frustrating feeling. It almost feels like betrayal. Some people call it life tuition, some people call it earning your MBA, but I've never found that you can buy your way through something. I know there's a lot of people, I know I'm talking a lot on this, I turn out to talk as much as the host, but there's just so much in the coaching industry of this range of some people that are like, Well, you know, it's abundance, and so you might make a million for it, so I'm going to charge you 100,000 for it. And by the way, I'm really clever with my words and really charismatic, so I can get that check, but I can't deliver for squat, which to me is so unfortunate because it hurts the industry.

And then meanwhile, you have other people that they've been burned by that, and then you're like, Well, I'll charge you a hundredth of that for the same thing, but now I don't have enough money to actually pay for a good staff to deliver, and so now I'm overworked. Actually, maybe go to that if you would. Without getting too much in your model, but your details, the $2,500 a month client, that stuff, whatever you find is helpful to share, what should a person be looking for, whether it's either profit margins or how much time they should be doing? I know a lot of times we start out and we're very involved and we're doing... We're keeping 90 % of it, but we're doing 90 % of it. Then I know from most brick and mortar businesses, 30 % profit margin as an owner is a standard. If you read Mike McAllen's profit first, the more you go, the larger you get, of course. I don't know, Jeff Bezos doesn't keep 30 %. I don't know, maybe he does, actually. But most people at some point, if you want that great team, you've got to pay for more.

What have you found as far as as you're scaling and as you focus on what you're going to do, how can you get the team members in place? How can you make sure you're getting quality? When is it that you're maybe, let's say, keeping too much and when is it perhaps that you're paying too much? What are some guidelines, at least, that you found? I know and disclaimer attorneys, this isn't for everybody, but just in general because a lot of people just either think they're supposed to keep 95 % of it or they think that they're supposed to keep 5 % of it. I found that neither of those are accurate.

Yeah. You just remind me of a client. She's referred us people. She's a social media agency in Ocean Beach, just down the street from us. And her and her husband work together. They were doing, back when we first met them seven years ago, they were doing about 100 and 20,000 a year, which is pretty good for husband, wife, team. Living in San Diego back then, now things have changed. Need to make a little more than that now. But they came to us, they were still a sole proprietorship. And she just was just having such a hard time wrapping her head, I can't hire. I don't have enough profit margin. I can't because it's just her and her husband. And we did a call with her and we just forward her over to our CPA. And he was like, Yeah, you need to open up an LLC or an S Corporation. We did the S Corporation route. That worked well for us. So talk to your attorney or CPA, whoever you get your financial wisdom from, go to them. But in her case, it was insane how much she saved on taxes because she finally, in California, the franchise board, you have all these extra fees versus if you file in, I don't know, Florida or Nevada.

That was my first LLC with the Nevada LLC. But we really helped her with that. So because she did that, she was so grateful. I'm talking tens and tens of thousands of dollars she saved in taxes. And then she was able to hire and grow her team. And so I love seeing that. That very first client that paid us 2,500 bucks, that's not the going rate. Not everyone, we don't tell everyone we do everything. We don't take on everyone that wants everything. But for that client, they grew from three locations to now they have 10. So the ROI of three locations at 10, I mean, the very first thing we did for that client was getting them to rank on Google for a specific keyword. Each industry has their money keyword. So restaurants, it's catering. Catering, private dining, that is what you're going to make the most money from. In the laundry mat business, for them, their money keyword is fluff and fold. Doing laundry for you, picking up, delivering it, fluff and fold. So yes, the people washing the clothes every day, that's the base foundation. But where they really make their money, it's insane how much because we were posting out on social media and doing a deal for those keywords, writing blogs, and they just dominated.

And then now, seven years later, they have 10 locations and they keep buying more. Now they've expanded to Orange County and they're moving up to LA and they grew small, steady. But yeah, those are two examples I'd say, depending on where you are, those really made difference, the taxes first and then just partnering. And yeah, you don't always hire. Most of the time I'd say, I want to say 100 %, probably 95 % of the time, people that are coming to us or referred to us, they had a bad experience with another agency. They did not deliver what was promised or sometimes we'll audit other people's work and I'm like, They're doing SEO. They're not doing SEO for you. How much are you paying them? I'm like, What? You're paying this much for Facebook ads? They have not changed an ad in a whole year. I was like, What? Buy your get alert, delete. When's your contract done? Get out of that. And so that's just because you don't have the knowledge. So you really have to trust the company and yeah, I don't believe in contracts either for hiring agency. Lots of agencies will make you sign a contract, and I don't think you just have to sign a contract.

The agency you hire should be proving that and showing you the results that you should keep paying them each month and not just have a contract because that saves their butt so that you're going to keep paying and you're locked in like a gym membership. Oh, that's annoying. You should guarantee your work. And if you don't get results, yeah, they need to move on.

Well, there's a couple of things you mentioned that are so huge is I know, and again, I've grown up in the insurance agency industry, and most of the insurance agents I know have a very skeptical view of the advertising paid ads industry because it's... Well, as ironically as a lot of people do have insurance spending, insurance agents, because you have the whole gamut. You have people that are really willing to do the work, and you have people that will just scare you into thinking something's difficult to do. Kind of like when you get those domain registry renewals for $200, you're going to lose your domain at some random company pretending that you already have it through my place for 15 bucks a year. But if you don't know that, you might freak out and then your domain gets transferred and you're told that you have to. There's that almost abusive or manipulative power play there. But definitely, I think just knowing what you can afford to hire and being able to start somewhere. How does a person decide what they should be focusing on versus delegating? Then when they apply that to a growth strategy, how long should they be able to tell, Hey, I've tried something?

Maybe those are actually two questions. What should a person focus on? Then when you're testing out something, like I know with postcards years ago, you used to be, Well, you got to do the postcards three times over X number of months to even see if it's valid. T here's enough data to say, yes, if you send one postcard, it's not going to do it. And yet, someone would say, Oh, do 20 of them. You're like, No, by number 3 or 4? I know it's different by each case. Let's start with the first one. How do you pick which objectives you would focus on as the CEO, the owner, the entrepreneur, and what should you be delegating? How do you decide those things?

I think it really starts with what do you love doing the best? What lights you up, just gets you excited. That is what you want to be doing. There's also some things that maybe you as an owner, because of your background, your experience, it's hard to teach. So I had someone that applied to work for us this week and they were like, Yeah, I love coaching. I love all this stuff. And then I'm like, Yeah, to do this type of coaching, it's taken many years. I felt that. I was like, Yeah, we're more focused on not the coaching, the digital marketing, SEO, Google ads stuff, because that's so much easier to teach versus coaching. Think about you, how many years you've learned and all the clients you've worked with and you've learned. That's hard to pass on. So if you are a consultant or doing strategy, you can get paid big bucks, but they are paying for your brain and your ideas and all that. That is hard to pass on to someone else. I think it's a lot easier to hire a graphic designer, a web developer, even a copywriter. Copywriter is also very skilled.

You have to make sure they're writing your voice. And that can be scary to hire someone to do that. But you brought up earlier, if your sales page is not bringing in revenue, if your funnel is not working, you have to fix that first. That messaging has to be fixed, the layout, whatever the design is needs to be fixed. And then you need to drive traffic because maybe the traffic you're driving there isn't the right traffic that you want to have there. So you have to look at all those components. It's a lot, but you ask, how do you know... I'd say sometimes it's 90 days, but sometimes you can figure things out quicker. If you're doing advertising, you know within four or five days if this is working or not working. So Facebook ads is four or five days. You can figure out is your campaign working or not pretty quickly? If you do high ticket sales, you're probably doing a sales call to close them. So are you getting the right people booking on your account to do a sales call? And if you're not from that, I turn it off. It's not working.

But Ray Edwards, I worked with him last summer. He's very expensive of a copywriter to work with, but he's amazing. He's the one that he's $150,000 to hire. And he takes a percentage of your launch. But he had this package and I was like, yes, I could finally justify hiring him. I got to work with him for six weeks. He got to review my sales pages. It was so cool of experience. And he shared multiple times for people that were reviewing their sales pages, he's like, have you got at least 100 people to buy from the sales page? And you might be thinking, well, I sell high ticket 100 people. That's a lot. I've never sold that in 10 years. But maybe you could look at your landing page, start there. Your landing page, get 100 people to go there. And have you got 100 people to opt in? I think you have to start with the free offer and then the sales page. And he really says it takes 100 people taking action to get the data. And then it goes into all the emails and then it's more things to tweak. And this is a process.

So just hang in there. Have some small wins every day as you're tweaking your funnels. And if I'm saying funnels and you're confused by that, I'm sure Wade has a ton of resources on funnels and what to do. Go back, listen to the podcast because he shared a lot of really great resources of people to learn about funnels and funnel hacking stuff.

Yeah. And I think definitely to your point, if you've not gotten successes, and it can be very frustrating, whether it's your social media, you say, Okay, I got likes, but did you get opt ins? Because if you got likes, you could have 10 bagillion likes. But if you have no opt ins, what's the goal of what you're looking to do? And now it depends. You might say, Hey, wait, it's my side project. I already make enough money. I'm doing this as a charity or as a hobby. Great, no problem. And even still, I'd say, Well, can you in some way get some What's that ultimate sign of commitment? Even if you're giving a book away, well, did they complete the book? Did they write a book review? Did they tell a friend so that you're spreading your message? Not just, Well, okay, I can afford it. Because I know I've done that at times where I said, Well, I don't need this to make money yet. I think that's one of the biggest lies we tell ourselves. But I'd like it to, even if it's a charity, I want money to come in so I can hire more people and grow the charity.

Whatever it is, I want to see those results. If there's not something that's happening, one of the things I find, and if you'd go a little more deeper on this if you don't mind, I'll often tell people, and I do this in the context of hiring. S o some of the people I work with are hiring people for brick and mortar businesses, and they'll get very concerned about, let's say, paying a higher base out, a higher guaranteed salary. Right now, especially right now, but even the last five, 10 years, salaries are going up. There's just this whole conversation around, what are people worth? And do you want to be like that the stereotypical cheesy cable TV company that gives the best offers to the new people and not be good with the people who've been with you? And when it comes to base salaries, it's basically, okay, do you want to just keep your other people's base salaries low and then quietly pay more on the outside? So there's a lot to it and there's risk. I'll often tell them, say, look, if you hire somebody and you pay them a higher base salary, let's say you pay them $1,000 more per month.

That's $12,000 more a year. But I also remind them to say, look, if you're hiring, which a lot of them are, for a knowledgeable, ready to go plug and play veteran person, it's going to cost you well more than $12,000 in a year to train that person. But even more than that, if they advertise that they're a veteran and in two weeks they prove they're not, you fire their butts. And so you're not paying 12,000 more. You're paying them $500 more A lot of the times, again, to your point, I'd rather have that person where I can give it and not look at it. In that case, when they'd say, Well, then, wait, how do I know how long? I'd say, Okay, well, in three months, if that person hasn't worked out in three months, or here's the milestones, here's what it's supposed to look like in a month, in two months, here's what they should be doing. I know that industry. What should it look like if I'm running a campaign? I know one of the most dangerous things I hear people do, they say, Well, it all depends. Yes, I know it all depends.

But there's certain things where it's like, No, you're just tanking and you're burning money. If a person is doing, let's say, let's start with something basic, an opt in campaign. They have a PDF. They have something simple, some giveaway that's a first level where the person opting in says, I like you enough that I don't mind that you're going to give me emails. Whatever you're giving me is valuable enough that I'll do that. Let's go through a little bit of the funnel, if you would. They should have traffic. What should that look like? What should the conversion rate look like? How long should they test that? How many dollars should they invest before they say, whoops, I either need to change the sales page or what the opt in, excuse me, the giveaway is, whatever it is. What can that look like? Would you break down an example of one of those?

Yes. I'll give an example of Facebook ads. If you're doing Facebook ads because the traffic... Where's the traffic coming from? If it's coming from Google, slow process, to come from a blog, which is great. You can get affiliates, write your blogs, do your podcast, do your YouTube videos, drive traffic to your website. That's one way. If you're doing social media and that's how you're driving traffic for a local business, only 5 % of website traffic comes from social media. If you're an online coach, course creator, you probably get more because you're using hashtags, you got a whole strategy going, you probably get more. But it's still not as much as if you are targeting and doing ads. And so for Facebook ads, for the last funnel that I was working on for Facebook, the goal was to get from a Facebook lead ad. Facebook lead ad, that is when you... It's like an opt in but on Facebook. So you're not moving them off of Facebook because Facebook wants you to stay there. You're staying on there. You can get cheaper leads and you can get better results because they'll show it to you more because you keep them there.

I was doing Facebook lead ads and then they would opt in for a free offer. And the goal was to get less than $5 per lead per opt in. So that's pretty good because the agency I was going to work with before said she was guaranteeing that she could get me $15 per lead. That's a big difference, $5 versus 15. I was able to get leads for $3 opt in. Okay. And then what would happen is then they would go into my email and texting campaign, and I would be doing two way texting with them to qualify them. Just like when you're on LinkedIn or social media, you don't want to do a call with everyone. You don't just give them your free offer if they didn't ask for it or you don't have a relationship. That's bad marketing. That is just sleazy sales. You have to talk to them and qualify them and have like, These are my five qualifiers. They've been a business this long or they make this much money. S ome of these you're not going to ask, how much money do you make? But you could ask questions in a way to get to know them, get a feel of your industry.

And so I would text them back and forth with the ultimate goal that they were qualified. I wanted to work with them. And then they would book a sales call where I could go into what I think would work for them, show the gap and do that. And so that's what I looked for Facebook ads. If you are just driving traffic from your blog, it will look different than that and you won't get results as quick. But I think if you have a new free offer, I say, and you know a little bit about Facebook ads, I say test it out there because you can quickly figure out data within four or five days of if your lead generator is written well, if it's attracting the ideal audience. If you don't do the Facebook ad to your free offer, you just only put it up on your blog. And then you keep, like someone I worked with yesterday, she's created four courses, two coaching programs, has three free offers. And I was like, Well, how many people are buying these? And she's like, Oh, not really. I just have them on my website. And then she's like, I want to create this and this.

And I was like, Wait, hold up, wait a minute. Let's not create anything else. If you love creating, create courses for other people. Do that at your job. But you have nine things that haven't been tested and you're just making more to be busy and feel productive. I was like, no, hold up, wait a minute. Let's test these out and you need to drive traffic and get at least 100 opt ins per thing and get that dialed in. So I gave her the challenge to not create anything new. I get it because I'm like that, too. I like to create a lot of stuff, but you need to be making the money. And so I think the money that comes through your course, if you're higher ticket charging 2,000 or 10,000, if you're selling your book or you're trying to do speaking engagements, you're not going to probably see that money right away until you get out there more. But if you are doing sales calls or you have someone helping you do sales calls, or your husband helps you do sales calls, you could see the results a lot quicker and you could say, Okay, I spent this much in Facebook ads.

I got this many leads, this many book calls, and then this many closed new clients. They paid me because they're not a client till the money's in your bank account. So don't count them. They'd always change their mind even if they signed a contract. So you look at that. And so then when it comes to hiring, you'll know your margins for each phase in the time. And then you could hire someone for different components. So if you're doing that type of model, which I think is pretty typical for online businesses and coaches, that's what you're doing. Probably insurance, too, I would think, or doing some DME, I would think, because I get messages all the time on LinkedIn. But you just have to work backwards and figure out which components you could pass over to someone. And some roles could be minimum wage that you pass over to, especially if it's filling out spreadsheets or it's doing that initial research. That's an easy thing to delegate to someone else. But to qualify, figure out the questions or the emails, whoever the salesperson is figuring that out. So that could be a little bit more bit more advanced, and maybe they have more of a copywriting background to be able to figure out what are those emails text saying.

So with podcasting and getting on podcast, I don't have this outsource. I'm doing the research, I'm doing all of it because first I want to learn what everyone's doing these days. I want to see who does it well and who doesn't. Wade's process, he did a really good job with this whole process. I want to see who does it well. And then I want to make sure I'm going to be on the right podcast that I can really contribute to the audience and all that stuff. So I have not been able to create the SOP, Standard Operating Procedures for podcast guesting. I have not figured that out yet. So I keep doing it until I can see the patterns and create the system and then all delegate different components. But I don't get paid for doing podcasting like this. So it's hard to just... You can't really figure out, well, what is your time in your company? And so if you are just getting started, is that the right person to hire first? I don't know. Maybe if you can get on and that leads to sales. But yeah, hopefully that helps. I went all over the place.

It helps.

A lot. Yeah, no, there's two things. And yeah, podcasting is a longer play. It's a great play from a branding standpoint. But it's not... I mean, if you need to make a sale tomorrow, you're going on a podcast unless it's a ridiculously huge podcast, which is going to cost you to get on in some way, or you're going to already have been at the level where, again, it's the whole, if you need it, you don't, if you have it, you don't need it, and if you need it, you don't have it, a thing. Definitely like the way you broke that down because I think there's so many things people are not realizing they can be doing. You mentioned when we talked in the pre interview that you had a really good increase in your revenue in last year, about a 30 % increase. What was it that you all did that led to that? And how might other people be able to apply similar strategies?

Yes, that was a very big increase. I was so thankful. I mean, the past two years, if you're still in business, pat yourself on your back. You probably have been doing well with your finances and a lot of businesses aren't around. All the time I go to old vendors locally and I'm like, They're gone? I need my bike fixed. I'm like, Oh, no, they're gone too? I have to find a new person. So pat yourself on your back if you're still around and if you are just getting started because you did a career change, keep hanging in there. We grew 30 % last year and that was amazing because the year before was hard and we just were like, we're not letting go of any of our staff. We worked so hard. Many people took breaks, we did not. We worked double because we were like, we need to take care of our staff and our clients. And some clients couldn't pay us but we still kept doing the work for them because with SEO, you can't pause it. It builds up and it compounds. And if you stop it, someone else is going to get your spot and you have to start back over.

Sometimes we're scrapped, depending on the industry. So we decided to do you need to do that? But what really helped us in 2021 that we're continuing to do now is strategic partnerships, referral partners. So I'm in two Slack groups that I have certifications for for $10,000 certifications each. So it's an investment to get in, but everyone in that group has paid that. I'm in other paid Facebook groups that are 500, 1,000 per year, stuff like that. And I really think if you can join those paid communities, I don't think you can do this in the free ones as much, but the paid ones, if you have it and you are a giver, like one of our another core value is L and rebel for lead with value. So I just believe you need a lead with value and you need to help solve problems for people. And so we had, yeah, 2020, I mean, there was a strategic partner that gave us four clients in one month, four SEO clients. They were paying 1,000 of 1,500 a month. Four in one month, that was amazing. That was in May of 2020. Like, what? Who was doing that?

People were scared pulling out and this client's like, Hey, I want to trust you with four of my clients. Here you go. Then we helped them grow during that year and do all their pivoting stuff and helped them. And that was amazing. And so that is what I've been dialing in. Last year was just really helping out. I'll do extra calls where if they're not ready to send their client and refer them over to us, I'll just do a call with the other marketing agency that doesn't do SEO Google ads, and I'll do an audit for their client, present what we would do for their client if they passed it over. And we give referral commissions. That's another thing that helps. And a lot of people did not don't want it, which is so surprising. You don't want the money. They're like, No, I just wanted to be passed over. You just take really good care of them. And so you mentioned earlier, when you hire someone on Fiber Up work, you get what you pay for, you don't get extras. When you hire an agency, a good agency, they're always going to do extras.

Not because we're trying to be more valuable and we don't think we're worthy. It's just we have a staffing team, we can fix something in five minutes. Versus to explain, like you said, it's like, no, okay, yeah, you don't pay us for website development, but okay, I'll go fix that issue that's on your website. Five minutes, your client... I mean, if a business owner texts us, which not many do, if they text us, that's an emergency. Some of our clients, we don't talk more than every 90 days or even six months because we're just doing our job. We're seeing the reports, doing good. But if we get a text after business hours and their email isn't working, we're like, We don't do your email, but sure, fix it. Done. Okay, now, Mr. Dentist, you have your email coming to your cell phone. So I think those make a big difference.

That's awesome. Yeah, I think that's definitely. And you guys are in a business that has a lot of done for you part to it. And I think that's something that people more and more are wanting. I think people are more starting to realize if it's done right, that that's worth something as opposed to just, Well, okay, I'm going to learn this, I'm going to learn that, I'm going to learn the other. Just trying to learn too many things. One other question I talked about was we talked about just the core of a lot of what we focus on this show, which is getting more results in less time. And we were talking about some of the systems and processes that you guys have put in place that have allowed you to work, I think you said it, roughly 10 hours a week or whatever it might be or less and keep growing. So what have you all done and how can people start along that path?

Yeah. So that's what's really exciting to have when you are diligent, you put all the processes in place and you have your funnels built, they're working, they are leading to your ideal clients. You can pull back. You don't have to work as much and you can rely on your staff. So that's what I've been able to do. My husband, he still is working full-time, but I've been able to pull back. And I've been working since I was nine. I was homeschooled and my mom let us work and babysit and do all things. And I started working full-time when I was 14, coaching gymnastics. So I've been working and hustling my whole life. And it was just really cool to take some time off for the month of February and see, hey, what's next? Normally, we do vision planning in November, but February came and I felt like our plan for November was not supposed to be our plan for the rest of the year. I felt like we needed to change some things. And it was crazy when just spending time at the beach and reflecting and seeing, you're supposed to work only five to 10 hours a week.

I'm like, what? No, I'm like, up at five, work out by six, at my desk by eight, work all day and go, go, go. And yeah, it's been a weird season, but I'm very grateful that I did that. And I'm trusting, I trust the business of my husband, and he's done great. And he has grown our company since I pulled back. Which I'm like, what? It's because the systems and processes were put in place. So what really helped us, so four years ago is when we learned about story brand, building a story brand. The book by Donald Miller, they have a podcast. They have a lot of free stuff online that's really awesome. And it talks about your messaging. And then they talk about the funnel. And I've done all the funnels, all the funnel stuff, all the people that you probably know of. I've bought the programs, I've done it or know of it. But this one was different. It's the messaging and the storytelling. And all of our clients that have the story brand messaging and their marketing set up with their funnels, like their website free offer sales page funnel, all that set up, they get way better results when they do Google ads or SEO, way better.

And so I think it was those four years, so it's been four years since we've been doing story brand for ourselves and clients, and that's like copyrighting all that, that it took that whole time to really get everything dialed in really well. And then the strategic partners getting that because that took a while because some people were like, I want to white label. And I was like, white label? You mean you don't want us to talk to your clients? How are you going to explain this to them? And I said at once to try it, mistake. I like white labeling. I was like, no, because we do strategy and consulting and we come up with a creative idea. Every client has a different strategy we're doing for them. And some overlap, but it's different. And so I'm like, we're not white labelers. We don't have a box of a service you can buy. It's unique and individualized. And so we learned very quickly last year, white labeling. No, we do not white label. So some people only want white labels because they think you're going to steal the clients. But we have a very strict policy.

If a client asked us to do work for a referral partner that referred to us, we turn them down. So we've actually lost sales. And they're like, Well, we want someone to do all of this. We're like, no, that is what our referral partner does. And that relationship is more important than the sale. So we did that a few times last year. But yeah, I think, yeah, spend the time to get your funnels or wear the coat, get or hire someone to get it dialed in. And I think that's when it's really solid for us and then our clients because now they're opening more locations. So it's these slow growth hacks make a difference so that you can grow and then do what you really want, spend more time with your family, take more vacations, give more money, volunteer more. So now my time, I'm still doing lots, but now I'm learning more about other hobbies, other investing strategies, like new things that I'm doing now that my time allows. That's awesome.

That's awesome. I definitely think that's something maybe you guys should also even be, if it just is a bonus to some of your clients, sharing or whatnot, because there's a lot of people that talk about it. There's not a lot of people that do it. I've been raised in the insurance agency industry, one of the quintessential residual income business models, like old school 100 year plus business model. And in that model, you can not have a clue and still figure out how to work, let's say, 20, 15 hours a week because the model is so strong and very often you're representing the company and the company brand is so strong so you can do that. But I've met very few. I know a lot of people that talk about working less, making more, and that stuff. I try to be very clear, I'm not making seven figures. I am working four days and I have plenty of time with my wife and my kids. I'm not saying you can't do both. There are people that have done both. There are people that are far more talented this than I am. But there are a lot of people that say they do it, just like there's a lot of people that said, Well, you can 10 X.

And you say, Okay, let's really... It's never 8.6 X. It's never 11.2 X. It's always 10 X. It's like, Well, yeah, that sounds real. They have a place by his mouth called 10 X Apartments. I don't know what it is. Are they 10 times bigger? When you do a re we open? It's like one of those things in Harry Potter where all of a sudden the thing is 10 times like, no, it's 10 X living. I'm like, I don't know, are we eating 10 times more HoHos and Twinkies? I don't get it. And yet if you're actually doing it, which you all are, that's the stuff. I guess maybe I'd ask you to comment on one thing it wasn't on the script or that we'll press talk about is, what it's been like to be in a business model that is a little bit more done for you, a little bit more relationship based. It sounds like you have more relationships with your clients, and no, it doesn't sound like you're selling 1,000 courses a year at 10,000 each, making $10 million because a lot of people have been sold that. I've even had courses at times where people do.

It can be very uncomfortable when somebody gives you money for a big ticket course, a $3,000 course, and they don't implement, and then they're past the refund period. I've had this where I've even reinvited them to come back and they don't, it's still a weird feeling to be like, Okay, so I've got $3,000 of your money, you haven't implemented. S o somewhere in my mind, I know when you get asked, Well, what was Wade's course like? Your answer is going to be, Well, I paid $3,000, I never implemented it. And so you're not calling Wade out. But at the end of the day, you're still saying that on some level, and there's truth to this, Wade wasn't able to engage me. Now, whether it's my job to engage him or not, that's another conversation. But at the end of the day, I'm out $3,000, Wade's got it or his wife's got it, or his kid's got it, and I didn't get what I want. And I think that's why even you see so many... I remember somebody saying recently, I was looking at Google reviews, the Google reviews... Excuse me, podcast reviews of larger brands like Tony Robbins and stuff, usually their podcast ratings are lower because you have enough people that weren't a fit and it's not a slight to them or just you're helping so many people.

Some aren't going to be a fit. What's been the good part or what would you tell that person who's thinking they have to make seven figures selling online courses versus... And they're being told, don't ever work dollars for hours. I'm like, LeBron James, B&L, messy, Sting, they work dollars for hours. They get paid some really nice dollars. So it doesn't really matter. It's not that concept. What would you tell that person that you've learned about, maybe even what you and I have done in all the different courses we've done where sometimes it is overhyped what's possible? Or it's a one percenter thing that, yes, there's one poster child that did it, but most aren't. What have you found? And what can that realistic expectation, even income wise, for somebody that says, I want to be a six figure entrepreneur versus, okay, I can in one year or right away versus, hey, maybe I have a job and maybe in year one, I make 10,000. What have you seen that that can look like? And what would be your commercial deed to that person that says, no, I don't ever want to do done for your services.

I just want to sell courses because that's easier. What would you tell that person?

Yeah. So in our world, so in agency, if your agency does a million dollars, that means you as a business owner are taking home $202.50. So you're spending all of that money. It's all going out. And it's the same thing. So in our world, a lot of agencies are not past a million. And then you buy other agencies, but then that's a lot of work. So a lot of people in our world choose to just be solo, maybe have one assistant because they can make $250,000, $400,000 just like a coach. Think about there's a coach I hired recently. She does eight figures. It's eight figure coach, and this is a health coach, which I mean, her membership is $60 per month, and she has different extra things throughout the year. But I'm like, What? But she has, I think there's 20,000 people in the Facebook group, and not everyone uses Facebook, so I don't know how many clients she has. But she said at her last live launch, she had 50 people helping with her Facebook challenge live launch. 25 of them were full-time employees managing that Facebook group. 25 of them were volunteer coaches, people that have gone through her program.

But 50 people. Do you want to have 50 people you're managing for a live launch to make eight pictures? I don't know. So I'm here in California and the hustle mentality is just, you need more. You need a bigger house. You need more, more, more. Now the average price of homes right now is a million dollars in California. And so I've been just really looking at this. I'm like, Why does the goal have to be to make six figures, make a million, make 10 million, make a billion, whatever the goal is? Why does it have to be like that? You could have an amazing life making six figures or multiple six figures. You don't have to make a million dollars. And you need to, I think, talk to people in your industry. If your goal is to do six figures or a million, talk to someone that's already there and hear what their day or their week is like. You may not want to be doing that. And it's not like for us to get to where we are now. I mean, we used to work on the weekends. Now it's been three years. We have not worked on the weekend.

And that's at least two, sometimes three days we take off depending on the week and we take vacations. Now, we didn't do that at the beginning. It was really hard and sacrifice. We don't have kids right now because we put the business first. You know that is you make sacrifices and now married for 10 years and we don't have kids because we're just working and hustling. And so I think hopefully that encourages whoever's listening to this right now that the ideal in the dream doesn't have to be six figures or a million dollars. That has nothing to do with your worth. You can be loved and respected for making less than that and have a really nice lifestyle. As long as you're not in debt and you're not an overspender, you can have a great lifestyle.

Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, there's so many things that I just think there is because it's funny because I play beach volleyball and I'm at the beach usually every week, the crowd that attracts, we've got the full economic spectrum. We've got people that are making six figures and this and that that come and play. One of the guys has a house right near the beach, so he's making multiples of six figures, I'm imagining. W e've got some of my buddies that they're doing what they can to make ends meet. They're bartending at night or they're doing night jobs or they're hustling or they're shifting, but their priority is to enjoy life. And to your point, they're not overspenders. They learn very quickly because it's like over spending kicks their butt really quickly. I just think it's really important people to realize you can choose the way you want to do this. You can do it at your own pace. You don't always get to choose the income that comes in, but you get to choose the timing. And just thank you for sharing so much. I know there's so much. I mentioned at the beginning why I didn't bring SEO people, and you reminded me because I'm not very good at it.

And there is. It's funny when you said your husband... By the way, your husband is going to be getting a lot of love. If your husband gets a lot of random people texting him, answers to them, it might not all just be stuff you need to get mad at him for because you've described this guy that I don't know. I hope my daughter marries someone like your husband because he's figuring out SEO. Just that alone, I think I've come from a new criteria for my daughter for the boy she dates. Does he know SEO? Because if he knows SEO, because for me, that's hard because like you mentioned, to know that the key word for this industry, this, that is so specific. Just going back full circle, I think that's also why that case for when you do want the talent to help the people that know what they're doing. Thank you so much. There's so many things that we've gotten into today. We'll put the links, and I know you'd mentioned there's a giveaway that you have that you thought would help people. What do you would like to share with people? You mentioned, I think it was a mini course in a PDF about traffic.

Where can people find that and what is that?

Yes, I have a mini course called Five Hacks to Get on Google. We didn't talk much about Google, but this is a mini course and you will learn a lot about what you can do, whether you're local business with a physical location or if you're online and you want to get some local traffic and you want to be seen locally in your city. So that goes into those details and you get a PDF. So people have really appreciated that. I like to share all the things. It doesn't mean that you're going to do all of them, but I hope it could inspire you to do a couple of the five hacks and that you get some more traffic to your sites. You can sell them your really great package. And you go to rebelfishlocal. Com five dash hacks. But yeah, we'll have the links for that.

Awesome. We'll have the links. And where can people find out more about you all? Is it simply the rebelfishlocal. Com or there are there other sites?

Yeah. So yeah, we're rebelfishlocal everywhere. But if you want to connect personally, any ladies, anyone that needs more encouragement, I'm on Instagram mostly. I'm trying to do more on LinkedIn because that's where I should be for B2B sales and business owners. They're on LinkedIn, so you can find me at Liz Cortes with an S, online. So Liz Cortes online. That's where I'm all over the place.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today, Liz. I appreciate it. There's so much show me different things. I definitely feel we might have to have you come back and do some help on SEO because maybe get your husband on here too for the really detailed do on stuff.

We'll see. Leave a review.

That's right. You told me he's hard to get. Even for you to get on his calendar is hard. That's right. Sorry. I'll have.

To see what I can do. Leave a review for Wade, let us know. That's the only way we know if you like this content if you leave a review. Say you want some SEO, maybe I'll come back. We'll see.

You.

Got to get some reviews.

If that hasn't... By that gangster move, in case you thought, just the whole... She doesn't know what she's doing. That move right there, if you don't realize how gangster that move was right there, that's awesome. Thank you so much, Liz. I'm looking forward to sharing this with the audience. I know they're going to get a lot of it. Definitely check her out. Check out her work. As she mentioned, if you feel you're not ready for a big agency, as she mentioned, she has friends she can refer you out to. Thank you all for listening. As always, look forward to helping you impact more people and make more money in less time. Do what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends, and your life. Thanks so much for listening.