Create The Movement Podcast

A new Create the Movement Podcast episode is live: Leveraging Your Existing Assets for New Ventures! In this episode, Adam Colbert and Brad Post share incredible insight on using your current business, or assets, to give you a headstart on new ventures. 

In this episode of Create The Movement podcast, Brad Post and Adam Colbert discuss hiring processes and best practices.

Join Brad Post and Adam Colbert, the partners behind the renowned digital marketing agency Create the Movement, as they share insights into their career paths and field experiences. Create the Movement Podcast has been recently revived; don't miss out on the first episode of the second season!

In this episode of Create The Movement podcast we speak to Jon Grogan about building brands.

In this Podcast we speak to Cody Jefferson of Embrace The Lion.  Listen to this podcast for motivation, leadership and inspiration.

In this episode of Create The Movement Podcast we discuss Video Production and hear the story of Gregory Kuhn of Aksala Productions. 

In this episode of Create The Movement Podcast we speak with Connor Gillivan CMO of FreeeUp where they have a platform to Hire Top Freelancers To Grow Your Business

In this episode of Create The Movement Podcast we discuss how to get clients for your small business and importance of local search

In this episode of Create The Movement Podcast we discuss email marketing with Adam Colbert of Rocket 31

Create The Movement podcast with Taylor Toce President of Velo Group

Leadership with David Groves

Create The Movement Podcast with Brad Post as he interviews Steve Currington about Business Development.

Email Marketing with Dominick

Love Leads Book with Dr. Steve Greene

CEO Brad Post and Barron Ryan discuss Barrons career as a musician.

CEO Brad Post talks with Rena Cook about her life, career, and more!

CEO Brad Post sits down with Isabella Johnston to discover a little bit about the world of business consultation.

Discussing Social Media Strategy with Lollie Moore

CEO Brad Post sits down with CMO Dominick Montgomery to discuss all the trials, tribulations, and successes Create the Movement has faced in the last year.

SEO strategies with Dani Thompson

App development for businesses

Text campaigns for small businesses

Social Media Tulsa with Cheryl Lawson

Social media strategies with Amanda Woods

Discussing content marketing with Ryan Daly

Website strategies with James Bullis

CTM Rebrands and the reasons behind why we rebranded.

Snapchat strategies with Jon Corra

Dominick gives a quick rundown on the CTM Linking Strategy

Brad discusses The Philosophy Tree with owner Johnny Price

#marketing #business #entrepreneurship #creative #agency #creativeagency #marketingagency #oklahomamarketing #oklahoma #oklahomacity #tulsa

Brad Post, Create the Movement, host Crystal McFerran, Creative Strategy Partners, guest Brad Post, Create the Movement, host: Welcome back to Create the Movement podcast. This is Brad Post, and I’m very excited today to be speaking to my new friend, if we can be new friends Crystal, Crystal McFerran. Crystal how are you doing today? Crystal McFerran, Creative Strategy Partners: I’m doing great. Thank you. BP: Good. Good. I think we connected through social media. You’re down in Dallas, correct? CM: That is correct. BP: And we’re very much in the similar industries and we connected earlier this week. And I boldly asked you to be on my podcast, and you boldly said, “Yes.” That was last week. Wasn’t it? CM: That was last week. Background BP: You have a very interesting story that I wanted to get – as far as marketing. The things that you’re doing, the things that you have done. Just very impressed. And if you want to just start out by telling your story. Or, how did you get into marketing? CM: Okay. I knew from a pretty young age that I wanted to pursue a career in marketing or advertising. I think it was initially driven by a creative urge. But, more and more over the years, I became passionate about marketing because it’s all about relationships. I’ve always been interested, and intrigued by, psychology and relationships. And what it boils down to in marketing is knowing who you need to connect with and then building a relationship by providing value. And I think that it’s really evolved over the years. Particularly through social media. Marketing’s still creating and engaging, of course. But it’s deeper than that. And it’s become a way for companies to communicate with vast amounts of people in a personal way. BP: Perfect. Perfect. So, tell us about your career within marketing. CM: Okay. I started out in a traditional corporate marketing area working for Hewlett Packard and Accor. And I did that for about thirteen years. And then a few years ago I really felt the urge to start my own company. And it was something that I’d always wanted to do, and I didn’t ever feel like there was a right time. I was doing some consulting on the side. And I just decided, “Okay. I’m going to do this full time. I’m going to dive in, and see what happens.” BP: And you said you started about three years ago? CM: I did. It was about three years ago. And then then my second year into the business I was approached by another, a little bit larger, digital marketing company here in Dallas. And they were interested in acquiring the company. And so, it wasn’t something that I was really actively seeking. Or, that I even expected. And I felt like it was a great opportunity, and so I did it. And I stayed on for about a year with them. And I recently started another company on my own. BP: Was that emotional? I know you said you spent two years growing the business, putting your heart and soul into it. Was it hard emotionally? CM: To start over? BP: No. Just to sell it. Or, to be able CM: You know, it wasn’t. It was a really positive experience. I was excited about having more resources and working with a larger company that I felt shared a vision. And so I was really excited about the opportunity. BP: That’s awesome. And so you stayed on for a year. And during that time did you take any time off between starting the new company? Travelled I think? CM: Travel is my passion and so I did do some travelling to other countries. I’ve currently been five continents, 27 countries, and so, obviously, it’s something that I get really excited about. I try not take extended time periods off. The great thing about technology today is that you can work from anywhere in the world. And so, even when I was in Thailand, for example, it’s a thirteen-hour time difference, I was still able to keep things going. BP: That’s awesome. I totally agree with technology. So, out of the 27 countries, do you have a favorite place besides Dallas, Texas? CM: That is such a hard question. And probably what I get asked most when I talk about travel. I would have to say that Thailand was one of my favorite. I also recently went to Peru and Machu Picchu and that was amazing. BP: I saw you hiked up to the top of it? CM: I did. I feel like the more of the world you see the more you learn about the world. The more you learn about yourself. And often, the more you want to see. BP: So do you speak other languages? CM: A little bit of Spanish. Enough to get by. BP: I speak Google Translate. CM: [Laughter] I love Google Translate. That is so helpful when travelling. I have no idea what I did before. BP: Do you have some goals, as far as your travel? CM: I would like to visit every continent, to start with. I think Australia is up next. Beside from that, the list of countries I would like to visit is endless. Video Marketing and Entrepreneurship BP: That’s awesome. Let’s talk about your new business. What’s one thing that’s really exciting to you right now? CM: I’m really excited about a few things. But if I had to pinpoint one I would have to say video marketing. Video has really exploded in both popularity and effectiveness in the past few years. I feel like it’s no longer an “up and coming” marketing tactic. It’s here and it’s such a powerful way to share your grand story. To explain your value proposition. And to build relationships with your customers and prospects. By 2017, I expect the exponential growth of video to continue. So, I’m really excited to work with companies to break through all of the clutter. And to stay ahead of the competition using video. BP: That’s awesome. Do you work mainly with companies in Dallas? Or, are you national, or international? CM: International. I get asked that question a lot, too. Primarily here her in Dallas. Although, I have a few clients that are across the country. BP: Were you born and raised in Dallas? CM: I was born in Florida. I grew up in West Texas, a small town, Midland. I’ve been in Dallas for about 16 years now. BP: Where in Florida? CM: Winter Park. BP: Great. What would say is the best business advice that you’ve ever received? CM: I would say don’t make decisions based on fear. You really have to push through the discomfort and deal with that. It’s impermanent. And I think through that process you learn and you grow. And that’s not to say that you won’t fall. I’ve learned that falling is part of the process. But every time you fall you get back up stronger than before. Contrary to the delusion that so many people buy into, success just doesn’t just happen. People who are successful go through a process. They put in massive amounts of work and creative energy, and they fall over and over before they make it. BP: So, when you when you were at Hewlett Packard for 13 years CM: Not the entire time. I worked at a few different companies. BP: Okay, sorry. In the corporate world prior to starting your new business. Was there anything holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur? CM: There was. I would say readiness. And I finally realized that you’ll never be a 100% ready. And it’s never going to be just the right time. If you want to do it, you just have to do it. I tell people all the time don’t wait until you think you’re ready. Don’t wait until everything’s in place. Because there’s always going to be loose ends and you’ll never be ready, ever. Not in a million years. And you’ll never feel that everything is lined up perfectly. Or, be a 100% certain that when we leap we’ll land on our feet. If I’d waited for everything to fall into place, I’d still be waiting. BP: Yeah. I think that’s what a lot of entrepreneurs would say for sure. Don’t wait for the perfect time because it’ll never be perfect. Recommended Books Are there any books that you recommend? CM: There are a few. One of my favorites is ‘Mastery’ by George Leonard. And it’s one that I strongly recommend for both personal and professional development. It’s all about learning to be okay with, and to really embrace the plateaus. Realizing that the ultimate goal is not the peak, but the path itself. And I think having a conscious awareness of the process of mastery has really helped me in every area of life. Did you know society tends to seek quick fixes and instant gratification? And it communicates that learning is linear and instantaneous. And that’s just not reality. I’m currently reading ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle. And that’s made me more conscious of how thoughts and emotions get in the way of your ability to live in genuine peace and happiness. So, that’s a good one. And then for companies who are just developing a value proposition, I cannot recommend ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ highly enough. BP: ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’? That’s on my list of books to read. CM: I had a boss, years ago, that gave that to me and it really stuck with me. And I reread it a couple of times. If I had to add one more I would probably say ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell. That’s one of those books that really changes how you think about the way you think. And how you make decisions. BP: So, ‘Mastery’ by George Leonard, ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle, ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’, and then ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell. Good. How can our listeners connect with you, Crystal? CM: I would invite anyone to connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find me by searching for Crystal McFerran. And also on my company website mycreativestrategypartners.com. BP: Awesome. I’ll put the link in the show notes as well. The company’s got all their social media handles on the website as well? CM: Yes. BP: Is there anything else that I’m missing? CM: I don’t think so. BP: I’m sure there’s a lot more we could talk about. But that concludes our podcast. Thank you, Crystal, so much for being on. CM: Thank you so much, Brad. BP: Join us for our next podcast.

#marketing #contentmarketing #onlinemarketing

#seo #onlinemarketing #marketing #searchengine

#marketingreviews #reviews #localreviews

Online marketing strategies

#socialmedia #onlinemarketing #marketing

Brad Post: Welcome back to this edition of Create the Movement podcast. Josh Rich joins us. Josh Rich: Hello everyone. BP: How are you? JR: Doing good Brad. How are you? BP: Good. Josh is our Online Marketing Specialist, and has been on several podcasts with us. JR: Talking about when to trust Google, and when to not trust Google. It’s a pretty interesting topic in the SEO-world, whenever Google puts out a public statement – what to with that? BP: Got it JR: These public statements come in lots of different forms. Sometimes it will be like a ‘Help’ document. They put one out a couple of weeks ago to just clarify on like what a bounce rate is. Or, what an impression is. Or, just different things like that. And so, obviously it’s very handy to have this official definition according to Google, so that way, you know what you’re doing. But other times, it’ll come, you know, like in some sort of like an interview, or like an SEO-roundtable discussion with other people. And it will, just kind of like, not necessarily be this planned thing, but something where they’re like, I don’t want to say it slips out by accident. But they’ll just kind of, like allude to something and everyone freaks out, “Oh, my gosh! They finally said this, or that!”  Obliviously, other times, it’ll be like in that vein. When it’s like this really big long process, and they like, know what they’re doing. And it’s very organized, sometimes it is at least. So, but either way, whatever form it comes in there’s always a lot of discussion whether it’s valid or not. For example, something that recently happened is that they basically said, and I forget who said it or how they said it, but someone from Google said that whatever kind of 3.0-blank re-direct you do, whether it’s 3.01, 3.02, 3.07 or whatever, it all passes page rank. So, we were like, “Oh, that’s kind of cool.” But the funny thing is, anytime Google says something like that, people immediately start doing experiments. And so people start testing that. And they basically found that 3.01s pass page rank way, way better than anything else. So, it’s kind of this little bit of confusion. Like, when you say it passes page rank, do you mean it passes page rank equally, or is there some sort of scale of how well it passes it? Or, are there other ranking factors we don’t know about? So, there’s always this kind of weird confusion in a lot of the discussion that spawns after Google puts out these statements. So, what we do, is we have 4-step system here whenever something like that happens to kind of check them and see if they’re really telling the truth. Or, if they’re lying, or if they don’t know what they’re talking about, or what happened. Look At the Data It’s like I said, anytime that Google puts out a public statement, that is half-way controversial or revolutionary, someone, somewhere will do an experiment to test to see if it’s true. And so, BP: Usually multiple places. JR: Multiple places. Yeah. People like MOZ does a lot. SEMrush. And then like everyone, all the big boys will do something, typically, to test how well that’s working. Like I said, in the case of 3.01 redirect, that was proven false. That’s happened multiple times. So, like I said, the first step: look at the data, look around, see if someone does an experiment, and then base your plan of action off that data. Remember Google Is A Massive Company With A Massive Algorithm. Second thing to remember is that Google is a massive company with a massive algorithm. And so, a lot of times, especially if it is someone that’s just doing an interview, or like a podcast, or like a roundtable discussion, they might get asked a question that they’re not necessarily qualified to answer. And so, they’ll just kind of say something, “Oh yeah, this is what it is.” It might be someone in like search quality department is answering a question about AdWords, or something like that. So, they don’t really know what they’re talking about, but they just try to save face, or they just want to look like they know what they’re doing. So, just always keep that in mind - that sometimes the right hand doesn’t what the left hand is doing. I don’t think that there’s a single person within Google that really understands the full depth and width of the algorithm. And so, I think that we have to keep that in mind in whenever we get these little tidbits of information that might not be. Well, this one person thinks in this in one department, but in reality, in the other department that’s not how it works. So let’s always keep that in mind. Wait And See . And a lot of times they will amend what they say. They’re like, “Oh, actually, it’s not true.” Or, like I said, someone will do a data. Or, like, if it is somebody that’s like, they’re saying this “” “This is how we’re doing this now.” Sometimes, it doesn’t necessarily manifest itself in the same way they say it does. So, don’t necessarily change your strategy until you’re actually seeing some fruit of that announcement of that public statement. BP: Or, negative fruit. JR: Fruit either way. Whether that’s rotten or fresh. They Have A Vested Interest In Having Information Out There This is kind of a cynical view to take. But, in reality, Google doesn’t necessarily want us to know all the tricks in the bag. Look at like --- and stuff like that. They don’t want us to know everything because they want their search results to be quality. But they also want it to be un-manipulated as possible. So, it’s kind of this weird balancing act where yes they people to do SEO so that way they can improve the quality of search results that their users have. But, they don’t want it to be so easy to manipulate so that they don’t want us to know how to it. Not to say that Google hates SEO. But they do have a vested interest in keeping us in the dark to some extent. JR: So, if it sounds like this information, like, is totally plausible that it could be misinformation on purpose. And so, obviously, if there’s an improvement that’s blatantly a lie for the purpose of confusing people, but they have been definitely caught in various fibs. I feel comfortable in saying that. But, I mean, I guess an unofficial fib. Everyone starts taking about it every time it happens. So, always look at the data. Remember that Google is a big company. Don’t jump to any conclusions. And remember that misinformation is entirely possible BP: I remember there was a question on the URL. There was a Florida attorney that had, and they had one of the Google people in a forum, or discussion, I guess said it has no ranking. JR: So, basically, this attorney in Florida whenever those new URLs came out, he got BP: .attorney JR: Yeah, it was like personalinjury.attorney or ciminaldefense.attorney, whatever. And started crushing it. Like first page search result for every keyword he wanted. And from all indications he wasn’t really like doing a whole lot of aggressive backlinking compared to what he was doing before he got that new URL. And so, everyone was like asking him about it and some sort of video conference with a bunch of people. And the guy was like, “The guy from Google said, ‘No, that doesn’t influence. We won’t index.’” BP: No ranking factor. JR: Yeah, no ranking factor in the URL. Clearly it does. And so, again, whether that he was intentionally lying to try to keep us in the dark. Or, it might not be his department. I don’t know what he did. BP: Or he was told by his boss, or something like that. JR: Yeah, exactly. Great example of like when to not listen to Google. BP: Right. And it’s neat because in those forums you’ll see a lot of comments below, and they’ll put links on, “Hey, here’s a study we did.” Or, “Here’s a case study that we did.” BP: There’s a lot of information out there. Awesome. Well, thanks Josh. And join us for our next edition of Create the Movement podcast.

(CTM#30)_(Email Marketing with Joseph Bojang)   Brad Post, Create the Movement, host Joseph Bojang, Web Champs Email Marketing Course   Brad Post, Create the Movement, host: Welcome back to this edition of our podcast. I’m excited to be sitting with a good friend of mine, Joseph Bojang. How are you Joseph? Joseph Bojang: I’m good. Thank you for having me, Brad. BP: Joseph is, like I said, a long-time friend. We meet regularly. Hold each other accountable to goals. Kind of, you mentor me. I don’t know if I mentor you or not? JB: You do. BP: But just been a good friend for a long time. We met at another company that we worked at. And Joseph has got some really neat things that he’s been doing with email marketing – webchamps.net. Correct? JB: That’s correct. Yeah. BP: So, I wanted bring Joseph in and kind of have him share a little bit about email marketing. But first, just before we get into that, just if you could, kind of share your story. You can condense it, short version, long version. You know? Just however you feel led to share. JB: Yeah. So, I would say it started probably in 2011. I had several years of actually working in nonprofit where I was helping people in many different ways. And learning how to do all type of resourcing, asset mapping for communities, while at the same time doing freelance web design work. And for a short period doing some remote work for design agencies. But in 2011 I actually decided to give this whole entrepreneurial thing a go. And in doing that quickly found one client which was how I met you on my first day of doing some work for that client. It turned into something to where it’s like, “Hey, why don’t you come in and do more work for us?” And in that process I actually started getting more, this is around 2012, I started getting more into marketing. And a lot of that experience that I had from working in the non-profit really transitioned well into working in a marketing environment where a lot of the times you’re doing these tasks that are manual, and you’re trying to find a good way to scale a business while also working for clients. So, I think that really opened my eyes to a lot of things that other entrepreneurs were doing. And from that point I left there after some time and started working on my own work. And I’m currently doing software development with a small team. We do Scrum development and also doing a lot of email marketing and marketing automation. BP: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. I think when you and I first started working together, and I don’t know if our numbers are correct, but we had maybe five people working for us. You’re kind of the saving grace. And we grew it to about 18 or 20 before I left. And then you left shortly after that. JB: Yeah. Yeah. BP: Yeah, I remember just kind of running the projects myself. And when you came in you took it all over which helped me a lot. So, you’ve kind of been on a journey, kind of like I have. JB: Yeah. BP: As far as learning marketing, being able to implement marketing. Share a little bit about Web Champs. When did you launch this? JB: Yeah. So, and a little bit into that backstory, when I started doing web development around 2008, we would do these large web sites for some nonprofits that wanted to be like someone that was larger than them. So, they would want a $40,000 website because of all the work and customization that would go into it. And we would always miss steps because they wouldn’t communicate something to us, or we didn’t’ really get all the information we needed up front. And what we would do is create a lot of bad-website stories is what I would call it. Where the client really wasn’t happy with the finished product and we felt that there was a lot places that we dropped the ball. But, the company I worked with at the time was okay with that. So, the idea of Web Champs was actually not that ‘I’m a champ.” Or, you know, this is something I started with my wife. Not that we are the best, but that we have a lot of experience and I’ve seen a lot of bad website stories. And the idea started to help people get their business idea, get their, you know, mission in life, whatever they wanted – online. And doing it in a way to where they were successful. And that was the original thing: was that I’m committed to helping people succeed online. In that process I found that a lot of people get a website going, they’d spend, you know, $3500 to $15000 to get their website going. But then, they’d say, “Well, what do I do know? There’s a billion websites out there, and I can’t get traffic. Or, people come to my website and they leave immediately.” So, the idea of actually getting into email marketing and marketing automation was a way to not so much help people get traffic to their website, but for the people who were already getting website traffic. Helping them understand the user experience. Helping them understand what customers are really wanting once they come there. So, that was probably the really condensed version. But now, it’s really about helping small businesses – primarily insurance agents and financial advisors find a way to really connect with their customer on a one-to-one relationship through email marketing and other ways. BP: Okay. That’s great. In kind of more, so you said it’s more of a relationship and I think what I really like too, about you, is setting up automated processes. So that you can kind of develop that relationship through email marketing. Right? Just through they sign up for an email – correct me if I’m wrong. They get an email a few days later. JB: Yeah. BP: A few days later they get another email. Gives them actionable steps of, you know, what kind of information that they want, or what kind. Tells a little bit about the history. JB: And actually, Brad, a little bit with that, so, a lot of the times a lot of business we work with really don’t know what they want people to do when they get to their website. So, in what you we’re just saying, whenever someone comes to me and they say, “I want start email marketing.” The first question is, “Well, why? What do you want to do?” And then, it’s, “Well, I want to sell more of what I – sell more services. Sell more products.” Okay, well let’s actually start with one product. Let’s start with one service. Because we’re really thinking about a person that might want to buy a couch from you, might not want to buy a computer. BP: Okay. JB: So, the idea is actually coming up with a goal in mind. So, when someone does come to the website we’re really thinking about what are we trying to sell primarily and finding a way to capture that user. So, yeah, it really does begin, like you were saying, you’re capturing that user based on a goal that we have. And then informing and educating them. Sometimes it’s developing them into a customer, or nurturing someone that’s actually ready, but not yet. And that’s a big thing in any industry. Most people that come to a website aren’t ready to buy when they come. Sometimes it’s three months later. Sometimes it’s six months later. So, getting them to come to website, getting them to download this offer that you have, some people call that a ‘lead magnet.’ But the idea is that it’s a really good, compelling offer. And then, having them read that, and then over time, we had these drip programs whether it’s to educate, or to tell about a business or service. BP: Okay. So, when a client comes to you, you don’t just throw them a package out. “Hey, here’s the pricing.” You take them through a series of discovery questions based on what they want. JB: Yeah. So, I actually don’t have packages they I sell. It’s more of an interview. It’s more of a, “Well, this is the framework that I work with of how we go about whether it’s marketing automation or email marketing. To put it in four different ways: I start with we plan, the play (which is actually building up everything we planned), and when, and after when we improve. So, that looks different for each business, but since I mostly work with insurance agents I have an idea of the type of campaigns that work. But then, sometimes when you talk to an insurance agent, yesterday it was actually a captive agent, and their issues are different because I can’t necessarily build a landing page for them. Because they have to use their agency’s landing, or it’s not even really a landing page, the website. BP: Okay. JB: So, they have different issues. So that’s the thing. It’s more so an interview to see if I’m a good fit for them, and I can actually get them a result. BP: Find the win. JB: Yeah. And if I can’t really get them a result, they’re probably not a good customer for me. If they just want someone to do just general marketing, they just want someone to get things done, I’m probably not the person for them. But if they know that they’re trying to understand their business a little more, and what their customers really want from them. And they’re willing to spend a little bit of time in helping me to understand they biggest pain point, then we usually start the discussion from there. BP: Okay. Good. What’s the one thing that’s really exciting to you in your business right now? JB: That I’m not as good as I thought I was. [laughter] And I’m learning so much. For a while, I mean, I say I really was just freelancing and most freelancers you charge and hourly rate. You work, you get paid. You don’t work, you don’t get paid. It’s not a good way have any type of security. You might as well just work for a company at that point. The only thing you’re losing, is maybe, where you work from. So, when I really tried to start growing a business I started understanding that there’s just a lot I don’t know. And that there’s fundamentals of growing a business, and having someone like you, or even a business coach, that I’m accountable to. And I have these goals and I’m trying to reach them. So, it’s exciting that there’s actually a way to build predictable habits to grow business. And there’s different parts of a business that I know I’m trying to get better in. Sales is one that I’m horrible. Where you’re great. So, it’s nice to learn that. So, I just think learning, and knowing that actually you can create a business. And if you work on things, you know, within a certain amount of time, you keep going. BP: That’s good. JB: You can get there. It’s hard. BP: Keep getting better. What’s the best business advice that you’ve ever received? JB: Aside from the things you told me before we started this? BP: That’s right. JB: Fail fast. BP: Fail fast? JB: Fail fast. And the whole idea about that is that a lot of people have tactics and theories and all these ideas but they never actually do them. So, when you actually start trying something you’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. And I think that’s actually what makes you an expert at something is when you’ve made the mistakes and you can say, “Hey, don’t make this mistake.” Or, hire me and I can do it for you and actually get you results. I would say that. I’m going to give another one if that’s okay? BP: Yeah, absolutely. JB: So, really trying stuff. But then once you’re trying stuff it’s important, this is from a guy named Casey Graham, and other people. He has a podcast called 7-figure CEO, something like that. So where he talks about, everyone that he’s interviewed, they really got to a 7-figure company by hiring a coach. Someone that had gone through their process, knows where all the boulders are, and stumbling blocks. And really having advice. So, you can go out and do a lot, but that gets you so far. But having someone telling you the right things to do. Or, when you feel that you want to stop, having someone to say, “Actually, that’s common. It’s going to happen. Being an entrepreneur is emotional and it’s going to turn around.” BP: Okay. JB: Finding a coach as well. BP: That’s good. Well, you mentioned, this is the last question, but podcast, you know, are there some other podcasts besides ours that you listen to? JB: Yeah. Besides Create the Movement, maybe. But I wouldn’t know. BP: Right. JB: So I just listen to yours on repeat. BP: Casey Graham, you mentioned 7-figure CEO. JB: Yeah, there’s one by Phillip Morgan. I think it’s called ‘The Consulting Pipeline.’ BP: Okay. JB: I would say right now, it’s my favorite podcast because he talks about positioning. BP: Okay. JB: And that’s something I’m interested in learning a lot about. Of course, Casey Graham’s, and there’s one by, I think it’s Dan Miller. And it’s called the ‘Multiplier Mindset.’ BP: Okay. JB: They’re really short podcasts – around four to ten minutes depending. BP: Okay. JB: And it’s just he finds every word – it’s just amazing. I guess I could say that. But every word that he says he’s really using it and it’s very powerful. And I think it can help anyone. BP: Awesome. What about books? Any specific books? JB: Books. Wow. I thought about this, but now it’s hard to say. I’m reading one. I just started one called ‘Lean Customer Development.’ And a lot of what I do is really understanding the customers. The main question of ‘Lean Customer Development’ it’s not what or when you’re sell someone a product or service. But actually will they buy it? BP: Okay. JB: So, it’s about creating some hypothesizes about your customer. Interviewing them. And trying to prove them wrong. So that’s one. The other book I recently read was called ‘Crucial Conversations.’ And that was a really good book whenever you’re working in any environment where there’s, how they call it is ‘high stakes, high emotion.’ And there’s one third one I can’t remember right now. But there’s times when we don’t want to have certain conversations because we think someone’s going to not want to engage with us. Or, it’s going impact the relationship. So, they have like some really good case studies and advice on how to get past that so that both sides win. ...

Ep.29 Interview With Aaron Janx   Brad Post, Create the Movement, Host Aaron Janx, Straight Up Entrepreneurs Facebook Group Brad Post, Create the Movement, Host: Welcome to this edition of Create the Movement podcast. This is Brad Post and I’m very excited today to be speaking to a new friend, I guess I could say, that Aaron. Aaron Aaron Janx: New friends. BP: Aaron Janx, right? Did I say it correct? AJ: That’s correct. BP: All right. Just got connected with Aaron through, basically, an email registry. Was moved by what you’re doing. We somewhat have similar backgrounds. Similar geographical areas, too, that we’ve lived in. Just excited to talk to you, Aaron. So welcome. AJ: Happy to be here man. BP: Well, just kind of the first question, you know? Tell us your story. I’d like for you tell our listeners about your story. It’s extremely inspiring. AJ: So, when I was in high school I was a horrible student because I was the kind of kid, and still am the kind of man, that I don’t like people telling me what to do. So, when I was in school I was thinking, “Well, what am I going this for? I don’t want to learn this. I don’t want to do this.” I’d just keep my book shut and not even do anything. And I ended up graduating. I did graduate. But I graduated with a 1.999. Like I just made it by the skin of my teeth. BP: That’s passing, right? AJ: So, I got to walk. A pass is passing. So, then I enrolled in community college, but I dropped out of that. Because, what in the hell am I going to go into another stint of learning things I don’t care about. So, I got an errand-boy position with the Fortune 500 company, but it was a division of them that sold local advertising and marketing to small businesses. At that time, all’s I did was drop off invoices, give them copies of their ad. I would just, you know, go and pick up checks – stuff like that. Until, I had the opportunity to go and do a re-sign. So, I went to do a resign. They said, “That was a pretty good job.” Because I sold the guy more than he had originally had in his marketing. And then they said, “Well, give it a shot. See what happens. Try to sell for a week.” So I did. And I broke all kinds of, you know, company records for new client acquisition. And did really well. And they promoted me to sales manager, and regional sales manager, and sales trainer. And I did that for a while. Got into, on my side hustle, because I was making a lot of money there, my side hustle was real estate investing. So, I started that when I was 19. And I started flipping houses making big money. Quit the Fortune 500 company. And was living like a rock star. Market crashes. And the way that I got houses did too. So, I, you know, wouldn’t go back to work. And I said, “Well, it’s hard when you make a lot of money to imagine yourself going back to work and make some little salary. You know?” $50,000. $100,000. I couldn’t imagine myself doing that. So, I burned through that savings. Went broke. Went on food stamps because we couldn’t afford food anymore. And I said, “You know? I can’t live like this.” I got to go back, figure it out in real estate, figure it out in sales. So, I did. And I was fortunate enough to figure it all out. Got to the space where I didn’t need to work anymore. And got into doing which I’m doing now which is teaching sales and client acquisition. Primarily to coaches all over the world. BP: Okay. So, man, that’s extremely humbling to go from probably making as much money as you were to on food stamps? AJ: Aw, man. BP: You had a wife and kids to take care of, right? AJ: Three kids. BP: So that’s a big, humbling experience. AJ: I’ve been so broke and poor where I’ve put like 50 cents of gas in – multiple times I’ve done that. BP: Wow. And it didn’t get you too far, did it Aaron? AJ: No. It got me home though. BP: Right. Right. Well, just, you know, kind of – that’s awesome man. Just kind of recapping the story. I guess, you know, you did really well with the Fortune 500 company. When did you really, kind of, have the ‘Ah-ha’ moment of the vision or the calling to really be a salesman and do your own thing. AJ: Well, from the very beginning. Because I sold so much they always let me do what I wanted to do. And they left me alone. And when they started to change their deal I started, they started to change things. You know? From the top down that really had nothing to do with me. You know? Their packages. The different services that they offered. To me it got convoluted. So, I was like, “Hey, I’m making a bunch of money over here in real estate, anyways.” You know? I’d get checks that were as much as a lot of people’s annual salary all the time. BP: Right. AJ: And I said, “Well, I don’t need this.” Because by then company was kind of like a side hustle for me because my real estate was the big thing. And I didn’t have to spend much time doing it because we produced so much. So, I didn’t have an office to go to or anything like that. So, I would say at 19 I knew that I was going to be an entrepreneur, but I was milking them for the money because they kept paying me. And I was doing well so that I kept that on for a few more years but, simultaneously while doing real estate. BP: Right. Right. AJ: So I’ve always been an entrepreneur though. From the time I was I a kid I was selling stuff. BP: Yeah, I kind of had the same story. I sold gum in 7th grade. I’d buy it for a dollar and sell it for, you know the Big Red gum and whatnot. What was your first, I guess, entrepreneurial? AJ: CDs. BP: Was it? Okay. AJ: Burned cds with music on it. Bootlegs. BP: Okay. Off of Napster, or something like that? AJ: Yeah, Napster. BP: Exactly. Right. AJ: So we’d sell cds and kids would add requests. So I’d go and put together their mix and come back and sell it to them. BP: That’s a great idea. That’s good. Yeah, go ahead. AJ: But, you know, the deal is that I wasn’t, I didn’t start off a salesperson. I was introverted and I had bad people skills. But when I, you know, got into selling when I was 18 I became obsessed with it. And I realized that if I learned how to sell, I could basically do anything with my life I wanted. Because, really, I learned that selling was influencing. BP: Right. AJ: And if I could influence somebody I could get investors; I could get people to buy into my ideas. I could sell them a product or service, so I would always be able to make money. BP: Good. That’s good stuff. Tell us a little bit about your sales mentoring. You said you basically mentor coaches and consultants around the world. AJ: Right. So, what I do there is about, over a year ago, I didn’t really know what to do to be candid with you because I didn’t need to work. And I thought well, I could either go be a beach bum and piss the rest of my life away. I’m still a relatively young man. And I’m not that kind of person, so I said I’m going to start a podcast. Kind of like how you thought. BP: Right. AJ: And so, I started a podcast and I interviewed over 300 online entrepreneurs. And I only aired about 60 of them though. BP: Really. AJ: Yeah. Because I’m the, I’m an intense person. So, when I do something I go intense. And I was doing it and I said, “Well, you know, these people to me, like I’m making more money than most – all these people. They should be interviewing me.” BP: Right. AJ: So, I’m always interjecting sales stuff with them. So I had coaches start to reach out to me. Very slowly at the beginning. And they said, “Hey, you’re a sales guy can you help me learn how to get clients?” I said, “Well, yeah. But I’m not going to do it for free.” BP: Right. AJ: And they said, “Well, okay.” And I did that. And fast-forward a year later and I have the Six-Figure Coaches Club. And we grow about a new person every day, every other day. And it’s doing great man. I never dreamed that it would do so well. I didn’t plan it, but I discovered that it was an area that needed a lot of help. There’s a lot of coaches out there and some consultants, too. But I mainly deal with coaches. But they don’t know how the hell to sell. They’re good at what they do. They’re a good business strategist. They’re a good business coach – whatever you want to call themselves. But they don’t know how to sell. They do not know how to get clients. So, that was a void – it’s a void that I fill. I make more money just on that then, just that puts me in the one-percent. BP: Right. AJ: Just this thing. BP: Right. Right. AJ: So it’s beautiful. BP: That’s great. That is great. Well, also there’s just, in checking your website, you had an equity participation in consulting. That’s another kind of area that you work with? AJ: Yeah. So, that’s a very unique deal where if a person comes in and they want my sales expertise, and they want to give me, you know, equity in the company for my expertise, then I’ll work out a deal like that. But I really don’t want to that because it’s too harry. It’s too much details. But I just had that up there in case somebody wants to do it. BP: Okay. Okay. And tell us a little bit about your Facebook group. It’s called Straight Up Entrepreneurs. One thing I really liked about it, too, and you’ll probably touch on this, is just the rules. As soon as you open it up there’s the rules – here’s what you can and can’t do. Which I think is great. But go ahead. AJ: So, Straight Up Entrepreneurs is a place where I can be straight up. And you can already tell, and your listeners can tell, that I’m a ‘shoot-from-the-hip’ kind of guy. I don’t have a lot of filter – for better, or worse. And I used to be involved in a lot of online entrepreneur groups, entrepreneur groups in general. And I found that people in there to be very flowery. To be puffy. Everybody’s great, and we’re all great, and you can do it, and it’s ‘Ra Ra.’ And we’re all special and let’s give each other hugs and trophies. But, that’s not reality. That’s not life. Life is: you win or you lose. You know? Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t. BP: Right. AJ: And most people don’t make it. And most businesses do go out of business. You know that in what you do. If somebody opens up. A year later, two years, they’re not in business. So, it’s the harsh reality out there. So I wanted a place that I could go and dish it out, where other people could, too. And just be blunt without having to worry about the PC-police, or the sensitivity committee, come on and, you know, chastise them on posting the truth in a blunt way. So I did. So I opened up Straight Up Entrepreneurs. BP: Great. Great. Love it. Love it. This is kind of a little off topic, or off subject, but are there books that you recommend. I don’t know, I’m sure there’s a lot of different sales books or leadership books, or podcasts that you listen to, or whatnot? AJ: I recommend a book, it’s not really a sales book, it’s more of a pitch book by Oren Klaff. It’s called ‘Pitch Anything.’ It’s all about framing. And he didn’t invent framing because I’ve been doing it since I’m 18, but I love the way he explains it. Because this is what I’ve doing and this is what I’ve been teaching people. He just put in a more scientific way that explains the neural economics behind it. So I love that book, and I always tell all my mentees to go read it. BP: Absolutely. I’ve read it. I like the ‘power frame’ and just the way he takes ownership of meetings. It’s a good book. AJ: Right. BP: What about podcasts? Is there any specific, I saw on LinkedIn that you’re a Gary Vaynerchuk fan. Is that correct? AJ: I don’t know if I’m a Gary V. fan. BP: Okay. AJ: Because I don’t really follow him that much but I like what he says and a lot of things because he is like me in that he doesn’t have a lot of filter. BP: Right. AJ: So, I like people like that and there’s not many. So he’s one of them. He has a podcast, so, he’d be a podcast for people to listen to. BP: What about your podcast. You said you interviewed, you published 60 of them? AJ: And then now we’re up to 80 something. BP: Okay. AJ: But I changed the format several times when I was doing it because I really didn’t know where I belonged in the space until the market let me know. So, I’m just, to me it’s, I go by the market. I don’t have an emotional attachment to what it is. As long as it’s moral, ethical, and legal, and I’m okay with it. So, I learned that the market wanted sales training from me. I didn’t go to give it to them. I actually resisted it because I’ve been doing this for a long time already. You know? But they wanted it from me, and it became a great passion for me. So, I changed the podcast to where now, and it’s been like this for several months now, it’s only sales mentoring. So, I bring somebody on, like you, and I bring them in the hot seat, they tell me all about their business. I try to explain to them in 30 minutes how they could sell more of whatever it is they sell. BP: Okay. And that’s the Aaron Janx Show, correct? AJ: Right. BP: And that’s for Winning the War in Success? AJ: Well that’s the old, it’s changed names Brad, many times. But just for everybody if you want to learn about sales, if you want learn how to sell more. If Brad would to come on we’d say, “Hey, we’ve got a marketing company. We want to learn how to get more clients.” BP: Right. AJ: So, then, I’d walk them through, you know, some ways to do that. BP: Okay. Great. Good deal. This is kind of a weird question, but I always like to ask it, would you mind sharing what your daily routine is? AJ: Yeah, I work about 85 hours a week. BP: Okay. AJ: Always, at least. So, I stay up pretty late. I go to the gym probably about at midnight. BP: Okay. AJ: There’s not a lot of people in there. And I get to do my own thing and zone out. So, that means for me, I usually wake up at 10. Because I get home and I go to sleep around 2 or 3. So I wake up around 10. And then I go and just go full petal-to-the-metal. I have virtual assistants, ...

(CTM #27)(ZacLindsey)(7%2F21)   Brad Post, Create the Movement Zac Lindsey, Attorney, Lindsey Firm   Brad Post, Create the Movement: Welcome back to this addition of our podcast. This is Brad Post and I am sitting with a friend, also one of our attorneys, Zac Lindsey. Zac, how are you doing today? Zac Lindsey, Attorney: Doing fine, Brad. Thanks for having me. BP: Good. Zac’s with the Lindsey Firm out of Tulsa. We’ve been friends, or acquaintances, for several years now. ZL: Yeah. BP: And you’ve been doing a lot of neat things in Tulsa with, you know, what you’re doing with, you’ve got your own podcast called Fore Founders. F-O-R-E, right? ZL: Right, F-O-R-E. It’s a made up word. BP: Okay. ZL: I made it up. It’s F-O-R-E F-O-U-N-D-E-R-S. BP: Okay. ZL: So, Fore Founders. It’s hosted through my law firm website. BP: Right. ZL: So, it’s just straight lindseyfirm.net/podcast. That’s where you can find that. BP: Can you tell me a little bit about the vision of that? ZL: Sure. The idea kind of came about when I was being an irresponsible business owner and not blogging, and not really promoting myself, or doing anything. And I was chatting with your friend, and she kind of brought up this point that I liked to have conversations. I like to ask people hard questions. And, you know, attend these entrepreneur events. And she said, “Why don’t you do a podcast?” And I thought, that’s kind of interesting. And I had not thought about that before. I’d actually done a podcast before through a friend of mine – a comedy podcast. BP: Okay. ZL: That was not successful [laughter] because we were not very funny. But he had a great laugh, so I thought that could kind of carry it. So, I kind of looked into it, and I thought it would be really neat since I represent small businesses. I represent startups. It would be cool to have, kind of, a local vision, a local spotlight. And allow local companies: give them an opportunity, give them a platform to tell people what they do. I’ve always thought, I’m constantly curious about why people decide to get into business. You know? A lot of people will be in a job for a while and then they leave to start a business. And that’s a big leap. To get out of a secure paying job. You have a paycheck every two weeks, or every month. To go start a business where there’s no guarantee of success. BP: Right. ZL: And I have some ideas about why I think people do that. But I’m really curious to figure out what motivates people to make that leap. And so, that’s kind of the basis of it. I sit down with the business owner. We get their story. Understand where they’re coming from. Why they made the decisions they did. A lot of times we find interesting things about their background – maybe how they were raised. Or, where they’re from. And the situations that led them to start their own business. BP: Awesome. We’ll speaking of background and how they were raised, can you tell us a little bit about your story? And you can back as far as you want. ZL: Sure. Well, I’m from here. I’m from Oklahoma. I’m from a small town. And I grew up a rather normal life, you know? Two parents that worked. I have a sister. And then went to college at Arkansas. And then went to law school at Michigan. So, I thought I would never be in Oklahoma. BP: Oh, really? You moved to Michigan. ZL: Oh, yeah. I was never, never thought I would come back. But, along the way I found out that I liked to do some things, like some litigation work. I liked representing clients directly. And there’s a lot of opportunity for that here, with some connections that I had here. So, I ended up back in Oklahoma. BP: Okay. ZL: And I worked for the DA’s Office for a while. And then I worked for a couple of law firms that did mostly insurance-defense work. Which is, you know, if you’re a physician you buy a medical malpractice policy. And then if you happen to get sued you report to the insurance company, who then hires a law firm to represent the doctor. BP: Right, okay. ZL: We did that. Then also municipal work. So, small towns will buy a policy, and kind of go through the same process. So, if they get sued for anything, from maybe police issues, employment issues, even land disputes. It’s really a wide range that the firm handled for that stuff. And, so, I worked them for a while. And then, through that process I started really finding the kinds of clients that I enjoyed representing. Which are small business owners. And I really wanted to pursue that. And so, in 2012 I went out on my own and started my practice. BP: All right. Was that a big step of faith? ZL: Huge. Yeah. Because for one it was, I was in a good firm. It was a good job. And then my wife was also pregnant. BP: Oh really, okay. Assuming you had a salary, or whatnot? ZL: Right, yeah, your regular paycheck, insurance, the whole thing. You know? And she was working at a firm at the time as well. She’s also a lawyer. And things were getting stressful. And so, I thought, “Okay, this is a great opportunity.” Well then, I decided to start a business, start my practice. And she’s starting her family. BP: Right. ZL: So, while she was growing a baby, I was growing a business. BP: Yup, yeah. ZL: So, it was scary at first. But, and the fear doesn’t leave, really. I don’t think, but it does even out if you keep at it. And it’s been the best decision. BP: Good. Good. Another thing I wanted to talk about, too. You’re doing another company. ZL: Right. BP: Called Firm Forms, correct? ZL: Right. Firmforms.com. BP: And I think it’s a really neat idea. Tell us a little bit about that. ZL: Sure. So, you’ve probably heard of Legal Zoom? I don’t know if you have. They’re all over the radio and everywhere else making millions of dollars a year. In essences, what Legal Zoom allows people to accomplish is self-service legal forms. As they will say, they’re not a lawyer, but their forms are drafted by lawyers. And so, you go and fill out information you get documents back. Well, I had, it was last summer. So, we’re now in July of 2016. So, it was actually a year ago in July of ’15. People were calling me saying, “I would like to start a company. I want to start an LLC.” And I would quote them a price, and they would respond with, “That’s a lot more than Legal Zoom. That’s a lot more expensive.” BP: I know, really. Yeah. ZL: And I would try to explain that, well, some differences are that I’m personally responsible for my work. You can actually come and talk to me if you have questions. I’m a real lawyer. I have a license. BP: Right. ZL: And, no matter how much I tried to explain the value I could provide as a professional, their perspective was simply cost. It was, “Okay, that’s all great, but I just need this little small thing here that will get me past the hump of being able to register with the Secretary of State’s Office, get a tax id number, and a bank account.” That’s all they really wanted to do. So, I thought, “The only way Legal Zoom can make the money they make, and do the volume they do, is if it’s automated in some way.” There’s no way that an individual, or a lawyer, is sitting there reviewing, or even in filling out these documents. It’s not happening. So, I was curious if there was a way that I could build something for my firm. Is there a way that I could kind of automate that process as well? So, that’s what I did. On my website you can actually go the LLC page, and you can choose a package that fits your needs. And go through the process of filling out a form. And that’s kind of the prototype for Firm Forms. In essence, what we allow attorneys, now our product is directed to attorneys, we will take the attorney’s drafted Word document. So, this is their document that they created. It’s not a form bank. We’re not forcing you to use somebody else’s documents that you’ve never seen. They’re actually your documents. We take those documents, and using those documents we create a web form that you can deliver to your client. So, the roundtrip for the client looks like this. They go to your website. They fill out the form online. And they submit. Maybe you take payment, maybe you don’t. That’s up to you. But when they hit submit we take the information from that form and automatically draft out the pleading, or the document, that’s associated with that and deliver it to the lawyer. So, the lawyer gets an email with a fully-drafted document. Whatever they’ve chosen it to be. Without having to do anything. So, then the attorney can read over it and make sure everything is right before delivering it to the client. So, that’s the basic idea. We enable attorneys to have a mini-version of Legal Zoom within their practice. BP: So, it cuts down a lot of their time from having to fill out the forms? All they have to, is rather than say three hours, it’s an hour for them to review? ZL: And this works really real as you can imagine for flat-fee services. So, if you are accustomed to doing an estate plan. So, you’ll have wills. You’ll have the trust. You’ll have guardianship papers, power of attorney, health care, advance directives for health care. Things like that. So, it might be a suite of say 10 documents. BP: Okay. ZL: Most of estate planning attorneys will charge a flat fee for that. They’ll say $2000 for this whole plan. If we can use Firm Forms to automatically draft all of those for you; your total time, and I can tell you now from one of our clients. We took their 13 documents that they do for an estate plan for married people with kids, and it can be completed in less than four minutes. BP: Wow. ZL: So, if they charge $2000 for that, they’ve spent maybe a total of an hour by time they review all of it, compare their notes, and also meet with client to explain everything. They’re making $2000 an hour on that. BP: Right. ZL: So, it’s a pretty big increase for most attorneys who have a flat-fee model. BP: It’s a lot less pain and headache for having to fill out ZL: Right. BP: Because a lot of the forms are just copy and pasting, right? ZL: Exactly. Otherwise, you’re paying somebody to do it. You’re doing it yourself. This way, as we like to say, this is your paralegal who never gets sick, never goes on break, never sues you for employment issues. BP: Right. ZL: This is just software that you can use to make it happen. It’s all web-based and responsive. It’s all in the cloud. So, you don’t have to have a specific kind of computer to run it. BP: Okay. Good. Well, one question I have is, you know, what’s one thing that’s really exciting for you in your business right now. ZL: Well, it’s kind of the thing that’s always exciting, and that is seeing people figure out what they believe their meant to do and killing it. BP: Okay. ZL: I love that. That’s the thing that really gives me the most excitement is when I see somebody create something, usually it’s a business, they create a product, they create a service, they build this business, and they just destroy it – in a good way. They’re really doing a good job because they’ve found the thing that really motivates them and gives them passion. And it really, it enriches their lives. And then usually will enrich other people’s lives. Whether that’s through employment, through direct contribution to society, whatever that is. So, I really enjoy helping people do whatever they can’t do – which is the legal side, usually in my instance. Helping them accomplish that thing they’ve set out to do. BP: Good. Good. When you went from insurance defense into your own thing was there anything holding you back? I mean, was there a big risk? ZL: Yeah, but there’s a lot actually. In addition, the financial risk, there’s, I think, for me when I started my business I actually started it for other attorneys. I didn’t realize that. But if I look back now, I’m almost, it’s July of ’16 so we’re coming up on four years. If I looked back now I see that I did was actually built around impressing other lawyers. It wasn’t for the client directly. BP: Okay. ZL: That’s how I started out. And that’s how, I think, a lot of the traditional law firm, ‘How to Start a Law Firm’-type books would tell you is your best referrals come from other lawyers. And you need to build a business where other lawyers feel comfortable referring work to you. BP: Okay. ZL: I agree that the best referrals do come from other lawyer, and current clients. But, the best work that comes off the street comes from people who are looking for exactly what you serve. BP: Okay. ZL: Right? So, if somebody is looking for a lawyer who does LLCs, or looking for a startup attorney, that’s what they’re going to search. That’s what they’re going to hope to get when they hope to get when they come to your website, or engage with you, is that they hope to get an understanding that you are there for them. BP: Right. ZL: You’re going to provide the service that they’re looking for, and it’s going to work. Whether that works from a price prospective, or expertise, or whatever. There’s no attorney who is going to come there and get that impression, then send you work. They’re going to know you through other ways. BP: Right. ZL: So, that was one of the biggest things for me to kind of understand. I need to make sure that the client come first period. Even from a marketing and referral perspective. And not build things around what other attorneys are going to think of me. BP: Right. Right. That’s good. That’s good. This might be a two-part question, but what is the best business advice you’ve ever received, or maybe ever given? If you’ve given, then you’re like, “Man, I just impressed myself with that.” ZL: Yeah. I don’t know about that. BP: Okay. ZL: But my father-in-law gave me some really good advice when I was starting out. He is a retired marketing director for a bank. And he’s been in ad agencies and done marketing, copywriting. And we were kind of talking about some marke...

(CTM#26)_(GregConder)   Brad Post, Create the Movement Greg Conder, Conder Business Solutions   Brad Post, Create the Movement: Welcome to the next edition of our podcast. I am very excited today to be with a friend, Greg Conder. Greg, how are you today? Greg Conder, Conder Business Solutions: I’m doing well, Brad. BP: Good. Good. GC: Thank you. BP: Greg is with Conder Business Solutions. GC: Yes. BP: And had a vision to launch your business about six-seven months ago? Right? GC: Yeah, we’re almost to six months. BP: Okay. But you had the vision, you know, way before? GC: Sure. BP: Can you tell us a little bit about your story, and how you came to start Conder Business Solutions? GC: Oh, sure. Well, my background is that of industrial engineering, and in previous times I actually owned a manufacturing company. So, this business start isn’t my first time. Throughout my career, in addition to owning a manufacturing company, I taught business classes. And kind of got to know small business - the world of small business and their owners. That way. And I just saw an opportunity to start a little consulting business that could help small business owners. BP: Good. Good. So, you said owned a manufacturing company. And then, also, into education, came out into this as well. GC: Right. Yes, so, business ownership from manufacturing standpoint. Sometime in the education system. Actually teaching business and entrepreneur concepts. And, now, I’m basically back out in the private industry. BP: Right. We’ve know each other for what, about a couple of years now? Right? GC: Yeah, I think so. At least a couple. BP: Been meeting and I consider Greg, again, just a close friend a good solid mentor to me. But, let’s share a little bit more specifically about Conder Business Solutions and what type of clients you look for. And then, also, what kind of things you do for them. GC: Okay. Well, client-wise, typically it’s going to be a small business owner. And definition of small business owner is pretty, has lots of variety out there. The one that I use is going to be a company with anywhere from say one to 30-40 employees. BP: Okay. GC: So, business size, that is sort of what I’m looking at. And then, you know, you also look for quality clients – people that are truly trying to achieve something and trying to grow their business. Or, make it more profitable. Or, even, to trying to do good things for the community or others with their profits. So, you know, I look for quality business owners that way. And I honestly just want to help them achieve their goals. BP: Okay. GC: I have a couple of ways that I do that. A couple of unique processes that I developed. One of them is called the Optimum Solution. And, what I do there, over my experience I’ve kind of determined that business really has three main parts. There’s kind of a science part to it, a people part, and an art part. So, when we think of the science part of business we might be thinking of data, statistics, trends, financial statements like balance sheets, income statements, cash flow - hose types of things. Science parts are generally going have numbers associated with it. BP: Okay. GC: The people part, if you think when you’re in business, all the people you deal with. Certainly, we think about customers, employees, team members, vendors, and honestly, for small business, kind of unique to small business is family. So, that kind of makes up that people part. And then, the art part is where we find that marketing, and that image, and that branding, and sometimes in that artful part is where we call on our ‘gut feel’ or intuition - when the science part isn’t really clear to us. BP: Right. GC: And so, we look at all three of those pieces. And that’s going to be my starting point with business. See if one of those pieces has a weakness, or needs to be strengthened, or something like that. And when we’re pretty well set there, I have this other process called the System of PI. BP: The system of eating pie? GC: Yeah. Yes. The System of PI – P-I for Profitable Ideas. BP: Okay. Okay. [Laughter] GC: The System of Profitable Ideas. And what that System is going to do, again, we’re going to sit down and kind of get the current state of the business. Who’s are customers? What’s are products and services? Maybe a SWAT Analysis that tells strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. And what we’re looking for is what area of our business do we need new, fresh, creative ideas for? Is it new products? New services? I worked with one company to come up with ideas for workplace-culture change, even. It could be ideas for new marketing tactics, methods, things like that. So, once we know what we need ideas for, then I’m going to build us some tools and do some research for some thought-provoking information. And with the business owner, and some other team, we’re going to sit down and have a session where we actually create, generate out-of-the-box, fresh ideas. So, when we’re finished with that point, you know, we have a stack of new ideas. We’re going prioritize them. Now we’re kind of getting into a process that needs to be a little bit more logical and have some flow. And we’re going to take them one, or two, at a time, and vett them out. You know? For example, on a case of a new product or service, we certainly want some good feeling, right, that the market, or customers out there, would see some value in our offering. We want to make sure we’re not breaking any laws or regulations. And then there’s plenty of those nowadays. BP: Yes. GC: So, we will to get to that vetting process, and if we make it through then we set a plan and actually implement the idea so we can reap the benefits of the idea. BP: Okay. Good. What are some exciting things that are happening within, inside your business right now? GC: Well, right now, being just at the, you know, five or six-month mark, it’s exciting to meet new people. It’s exciting to engage new clients. And for me, it’s a thrill when somebody lets you know how you’ve helped them reach their goals and be successful. So, that’s kind of the general excitement that most new businesses probably feel. Specifically, something pretty cool that happened is just a couple of weeks ago I actually had an article BP: That’s right. GC: published in the Tulsa World. And talked about how small businesses can go about diversifying their customer base to grow their business, or reduce some of their risk associated with having your customer base so concentrated in just one or two customer, or, even in specific industries. BP: And you also, you post regularly on your blog, correct? And then, you also post on LinkedIn as well, right? GC: Right, yeah. Yeah, I post on my websites, blog, and then I have done some posting LinkedIn as well. BP: Okay. Good. Good. We’ll put those links with the content, or where to find you, if that’s okay with you. GC: All right. That would be the artful part of the optimum solution. BP: Right, right. Greg, just really coming, you know, from the business realm for a while, not that you’re old or anything GC: Right, right. Thank you Brad. BP: You’re experienced wisdom, right? What would you say is the best business advice that you’ve ever received? GC: Let’s see. Boy. I actually read a lot and talk to a lot of people. I would say probably something that is helped me the most is be patient. You know? Our world gets more and more instant gratification-oriented, and we have to understand that new businesses, new products, new service – it takes some time for those ideas to develop and be successful in marketplace. You know? In fact, if you go read a story about Sam Walton and Walmart, well how long did he go with just one little store? Or, two little stores? Versus what we see today? Most stories of successful business, if you’ll have a look at some of the background, you’ll see that there is pretty long incubation period. BP: Yup. GC: And even with ‘smalls.’ If you look at small business with 10 or 15 employees, chances are, maybe that first one, two, or three years was just the owner, or maybe the owner and one employee – something like that. BP: Yup. GC: So, patience. BP: Yes. Or, a volunteer. I had my wife volunteer for GC: Yeah! That’s it. BP: as we started. A friend of mine and I are actually going through ‘Think and Grow Rich’ and they talk about, you know, a lot of the successful people didn’t really reach their success until after the age of 40. GC: Right. BP: So, I’m hoping to be successful here pretty soon. [Laughter] GC: I think you are. BP: Thank you. So, and it was kind of neat, you mentioned being patient, instant gratification, last Thursday we had a big storm roll through. And so, we got home, and no electricity. No internet. No phone service. You know? GC: Right. BP: The kids, and all of us, were like, “Well, what do we do?” You know? GC: Yeah. Right. BP: They’re like, “Are you getting internet, dad?” “No, are you getting internet?” It was just like, you know, we’re just so used to that. The same with fast food. GC: Need some stimulation, yeah. BP: Yeah, so, I like that – being patient. Well, you mentioned reading books. You read often. What are some of the books that you would want to recommend to our listeners? GC: I don’t know that I can come up with just one or two. Part of it gets back to, you know, like a small business owner, if they do a personal assessment. Then I just encourage them to read something that is either going to leverage one of their strengths, or try to strengthen a weakness. You know? For example, if you’re a little weak on marketing and understanding marketing, I really like the Guerilla Marketing series. BP: Yeah. You saw that out there, right? GC: If you’re weak on understanding finances, read a small business bookkeeping or accounting book. Something like that. Relationships, you know? We talked about employees and customers and vendors. Myers Briggs has some pretty stuff. I read a book once called ‘The Color Code’ that talks about different personalities and how they can blend together. Honestly, for the small business owner, sometimes it’s good to read a little bit about time management. There’s a lot to do, you know? We wear many hats. BP: Well, Greg, as we kind of close this out, is there else you’d like to share with our listeners today? GC: I just encourage people to, you know, to keep striving. And again, for me personally this is not my first go-around with entrepreneurism or small business ownership. And, you know, it’s easy to feel alone as a small business owner. You think, “Nobody understands.” You know? “Employees don’t understand.” Pulling your hair out trying to figure out how you’re going to meet payroll next week. All those different hats we talked about that small business owners have to wear. Maybe that’s my final comment. Don’t feel alone. There’s people out there that can help. BP: Right. Good. Good. All right. Thank you for listening to Create the Movement podcast.

Liz Montgomery, Create the Movement Terry Brown, Create the Movement   Liz Montgomery, Create the Movement: Welcome to the Create the Movement Podcast. Today I’m here with Terry Brown. And this is Liz Montgomery of Create the Movement. And Terry Brown is our Director of Sales. Say, “Hello,” Terry. Terry Brown, Create the Movement: Hi. Hello. LM: Today we’re going to be talking about frequently asked questions. So, there’s questions that we get asked practically every time we’re bring on a new client, and we thought we’d put those into a recorded podcast so folks can have an answer to those – easily accessible to them. So, our first question is, that we get asked often, is “Do I own my website?” So, when someone does business with us, Terry, do they get to own the website? TB: Absolutely. And that’s not common across the board for SEO and marketing companies, but with Create the Movement we feel that when you’re creating something for your business you should definitely own it. A lot of things go into the decision of why we do it this way. But the short and simple answer is yes, absolutely, you own your website. You own the content. You own the aesthetics of it. We know that it’s very important, both in keeping ourselves accountable moving forward in the relationship, but to you making the investment. That when you spend your money you’re actually getting something tangible. LM: Another question we get asked, we have a large part our clientele is attorneys, and question they often ask is, “Do you have a website that you’ve done for my specific practice area?” So, depending on what practice area an attorney is in, their website and marketing can look different from other attorneys, right?TB: It absolutely can. It can look different from one practice area to the other. We do have a majority of the practice areas currently covered now in our client base. And have done just about every practice area there is. As well, I find that even outside of practice areas, other businesses want to know have you done a website for our business? And the answer again, is yes. We’ve done website for businesses for almost every industry up to this point. LM: Pretty broad scope. TB: Yeah. We’re very versed. LM: Even a goat-farm raiser. Goat farmers! [Laughter] We’ve had all kinds of really fun actually, to kind of learn the different industries, and customize the online presence for them. TB: And you touched a moment for the marketing of the different practice areas. It does a make a difference. There’s a different approach for personal injury versus intellectual property. So, it’s very good for us to know those differences and to have experienced that. So, another question that’s brought up often is, “Where are you located?” LM: We are located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Is where we are based. We serve clients nationwide, though. We have clients all over the country, and we’re expanding very quickly. I think we’re in 30-something states not. We haven’t quite hit all 50 states. But, yes, we’re based out of Tulsa. So, which leads to the next question, “Can the client be found, or ranked, in multiple locations, or nationally? Can they do both? Do they have to just one? And what’s that? Maybe a little bit about what that process looks like? TB: Sure. Ranking nationally, you could assume, is going to be a little more difficult. Multiple locations is going to depend on whether you have a physical presence, or address, to contribute to a Google’s Map listing. Ultimately, the answer is yes, to both. But it is a more aggressive campaign. It’s definitely do-able. And it’s going to depend largely on the competition for your practice area, or specific business. And how much budget you have to put towards that campaign. LM: Right. Our next one, “If I decide to go with our company, what would the process look like?” So, and for that, our process, we are very strict about timeline. We found in our industry that with folks who build websites, or marketing companies, that if it’s a smaller firm, or maybe a cousin who just got out of college and said, “Hey, yeah. I’ll build a website for your business.” We found a lot of lack in customer service, and consistency with those businesses. So, when we set up our firm, we intentionally said timeframe is important to us. So, as far as what the process looks like, once you sign on with us you’ll start with a kick-off call from our development team. They’ll get an idea of what it is you’re looking for in your online presence. What your goals are. And then they’ll start custom designing your site – depending on what package you have with us, of course. They’ll start custom designing a marketing strategy and a website for you. They’ll then send over a mockup of the home page of the site. You’ll take a look at it. You’ll make changes that you want to make. Typically, we a lot for up to three revisions, or three rounds of revisions on that design. We want to find something that suits you perfectly. And we’ll also serve the marketing campaign in the future, once the site is launched. So, that’s typically our process. You sign on with us. You work with development. We get the website marketing strategy in place. And then, once everything is said and done on the website, the site launches. And from there we begin the marketing strategy that we’ve customized and put in place specifically for you. So, that tends to be adaptable because we want to do what works. Again, we’re really familiar with all the different practice areas of attorneys. So, we know personal injury we have to this. For probate attorney we have to do this. You know? We know specific strategies for those different practice areas. But also in the different industries that we’ve worked in for the other businesses that we manage. We’ve learned a lot in terms of what goes into marketing strategy for them. They tend to be more customized to the exact goals of the business owner, or of the company overall. TB: So, just a follow-up question, with that entire process being customized, and unique to each practice area, or business, what would you say the timeframe is from the day somebody signs on with your relationship specialist, to the day the website launches? LM: So, when they sign on with us we aim for, depending on how complex their marketing strategy is, and all the services that they’re going to be, that we’re going to be handling for them, we get the website up within 30 days of the initial development call, so that kick-off call. We aim for 30 days. Sometimes there are things that get in the way. I mean, even the client themselves doesn’t get back to us. Or, they want to change, or we want to do something different. So, that can expand up to 60 days. But our goal is 30 days from that kick-off call. To have the site up and launched and gaining business. TB: Excellent. LM: What is, what’s the cost for all of this, Terry Brown Director of Sales? TB: What an open-ended question. The cost. Just like the subject before, because the marketing strategy from one business to the next, or from one practice to the next, is going to be different, the cost is going to change based on somebody’s needs. I always like to, just, give a range. The cost for your website bill, depending upon the features, how absolutely awesome we get with it, will range anywhere from $3600 on up to $15,000. The $15,000 website being the ‘Cadillac’ of websites with tons of video and tons of optimization, just lots and lots of work from the really smart guys that build these things. You know? That one is kind of the top end. And at $3600 I think is more than reasonable because the websites we produce for our base cost really competes with just about every other website out there. And defeats a lot of the current websites we look at on a daily basis. LM: And what about monthly? TB: And so monthly, again, is going to range about how aggressive you want to get with your search engine optimization. How quickly you want climb through the ranks and be that number one spot. Our packages range, and are adaptable based on needs, anywhere from $500 a month to $5000 a month. So, that just gives you a general idea of the cost. But, again, there are so many different things and needs that any particular individual might have, that it’ll range in between those two areas. LM: Good. TB: So, I often hear, “Why do I need a website in the first place?” LM: Yes! Very good question. And in our industry some folks are surprised that folks ask. That that gets asked of us. But it does get asked. You know, nowadays everybody is looking online. The common phrase is “Google it.” So, even if you, like, we have attorneys that have been in practice for 40 years, and they’re saying, “Why do I need a website? You know? I shake someone’s hand I get their business.” “A friend of mine refers them to me; I get their business. What’s a website – how’s it going to serve me?” It’s going to do several things. One of the first things – it’s going to establish your credibility. So, if somebody doesn’t know you in your community, and they do get referred to you, the first they’re going to do is pull you up on the internet. They’re going to say, “Who is Paul Smith? And has he really been an attorney for 40 years? And what kind of cases has he closed?” Or, if they, you know, they’ve heard about this restaurant. This is a wonderful restaurant. You know? I’ve heard their food is incredible, and the service is amazing over there. Well, let me look them up online. Let me see what their menu is. Let me see the different things that they do, and promotions, and the community. Is this a place I want to give my business to? So, it establishes credibility for you as a viable business. And it also just provides information so folks know where to find you. What’s your phone number? What’s your address? You want to make sure all of that is accurate across your online presence. What are some other elements Terry? TB: Well, I feel like this is one of those questions you could actually spend an hour talking about because there’s so many different elements to a website that gives it the purpose. So, some of our clients have come to us and said, “You know what? I get leads, but I’m getting the wrong kind of leads from my website.” So, your website can literally educate a person to the point that they say, “You know what? This isn’t the right attorney for me.” So, now I’m saving my client time from wading through these wrong clients – the bad fit. So, that’s another reason to have a website. On top of that, convenience has been such a part of the culture that the number one thing that is searched is ‘attorney near me.’ Or, ‘restaurant near me.’ Or, you name it, ‘the business near me.’ They want to know what’s directly what’s around them. They found themselves out and about and it just dawned on them they need to do such-and-such. What’s closest to them? So, the first thing that their phone, or mobile device, or whatever their working on, is going to pick up is a map listing. Now, that maps listing is going to have reviews attached to that. And those reviews will have a link next to it – same website. So, this person’s on the go and can find out more about you by knowing that you’re nearby at that moment through your website. Versus someone that doesn’t have a website. Okay, there’s a couple of good reviews, but there’s also a couple of good reviews right below this person and they’ve got a website. So, now back to credibility. You’re already seeing this person make a decision process based on someone having one and someone not having one. LM: Right. And, again we could talk about this for hours, but I’ll through one more in there that talks about bring leads to your business. Right? Bringing new business, new customers to your website, to you company. But there’s also online, like, e-commerce sites for online shopping. You know? If you have a product that they can come to your website and purchase one of your products. Well, again, if they’re looking, you know, “I need...” We have a client that does car lifts. Home car lifts. And here they are, fixing up their dad’s muscle car, and they’re like, “I need a car lift that I can safely work under.” So, if they’re going to Google that in their area, and then come up, all the pricing and everything is on there. That’s going to bring online business. As opposed to not having a shopping cart on their site. They could have a website that establishes credibility, but then they have to call them. Maybe there’s not enough information there to have it sent to them. But if they set up an online store they can make a purchase right there and boom, that company has their business. TB: Convenience once again. LB: Convenience. Yup. Back to convenience. Okay, and finally, one of our top questions that we get asked, “Why do I need monthly SEO? And what is SEO?” TB: Search engine optimization. I was talking to somebody about this just the other day. There was a day in my time that I searched something and it never once dawned on me how they came up with the results. And, now that I’m in the industry and know how much is necessary to be on that first page I recognize, and respect, that it is a big job for Google, or any other search engine, to determine what is the best result to this specific keyword that somebody has just punched in. And that search engine optimization, that effort that we put forward on a monthly basis for our clients, is what is going to get you to that first page. LM: Right. TB: So that you’re the most prominent thing. You’re found quickly and you’re getting more business. You’re building your income because of our efforts. So, search engine optimization is the reason people are listed for any specific keyword term on that first page. Or, the lack of search engine optimization is the reason you’re on the tenth page. LM: Right. TB: And nobody finds you through that av...

Brad Post, Create the Movement: Welcome to Create the podcast. My name is Brad Post. I’m sitting here with Josh Rich. Josh Rich, Create the Movement: Hello, everyone. BP: How are you doing Josh? JR: Doing well Brad. How are you? BP: Good. It’s been a little while. JR: It has been. BP: But, Josh, you wrote this amazing blog post. And I’ll put the link in the show notes. But it’s basically talking, kind of, about the difference between local and organic results. Right? You wrote that post? That was your good stuff right there? JR: Yes. Yeah, that was me. That was me. Yeah. So, this is like one of the more confusing topics that we kind of have to deal with a lot of times with our SEO campaigns. So, when we say local results, we’re talking about, I think it’s three, or is it four results? BP: The ‘three pack.’ JR: The three. Yes. It was four, now it’s three. BP: Right. JR: It was four, now it’s three. The three results that pop up in the map when you do Google search. And it won’t always pop up. But if you search, especially if you search, you know, like a service, or an industry in your town, then you’re almost always going to get it. So, if search for like, you know, like an oil change place in your town, or an upholstery cleaner, or something like that, you’re going to some local listings there. BP: As long as you have your Google My Business listing JR: Right, right, yeah. The search something’s going to pop up there. So, then the organic results are just like your regular run-of-the-mill results that pretty much, you know, the local results only on the front page. And then everything else past that it’s going to be organic results. Typically, 10 per page. Again, we’re not including the ads in this either. This is just purely unpaid search results here. And so, something that’s really confusing about this is that a lot of times you’ll have a different order. So, say that we’ve Company A, B, and C. Right? And so, say in a local result they pop up in that order: A, B, C. But in the organic results sometimes they’ll pop up like: B, C, A. So it’s confusing. Why is A showing up first in the local results, but then third in the organic? So then, it’s very confusing to think that they’d correlate. But the reason that they don’t is because they’re pulling different information. So, the Google algorithm sophisticated enough to just scan different information. So, it’s almost like two different search results. There’s definitely a lot of cross-over there. I’d probably say it’s about 60% cross-over, then 40% is independent. Which is where that variation comes in. Right? And so, there’s three things really affect this disparity between the two results. The first one is going to be the difference between the citations and links. So, citations those are anywhere on the web where like your name, address, and phone number are, and your url, are listed. So, a lot of times that’s going to be different directories like Yellow Pages, or Foursquare, or Brownbook, Angie’s List, whole, long slew of these. Right? Where the backlink is just a link to your website on someone else’s website. And so, the backlinks are what you want for organic results. That’s going to get your domain authority. It’s going to make you look like a credible website through Google. Whereas citations are what you want for your local listings. BP: Okay. JR: And you want to make sure that whenever you have your name, your address, your phone number, and your website, that it is all identical. So, if you put, like, if you spell out ‘avenue’, but then you put ‘ave’ in another one. BP: a-v-e JR: That’s going to hurt you. So, make sure that like, find one way to do it, and then just run with it. And makes sure that it’s unanimous across the board. So, that’s one difference there. The citation for local, backlinks for organic. The second thing that’s going to influence that is just the way your Google Maps listing is configured. The best advice here is just to fill out everything. First of all, it will, first you want make sure what you want to claim it. The way that works is you’ll, if it’s not claimed you’ll just type in your company name. And it will say ‘claim on business.’ And then it will send you a postcard in the mail with like a five digit, four or five-digit number. And you’ve just got to get the postcard, go on there, then claim your business, type in your code, and you’ll get it. Once you’ve claimed it you’ll have ownership of it. Then it’s filled out. And then put pictures, put descriptions, choose a category, put phone numbers, hours, I mean everything that you can you can possibly do. I think it might even give you a like a little completion bar. You know? For where your progress is. And try to get that as close to a 100% as possible. Google always likes that. It helps make their services better, and as a reward you’ll bump up in the search rankings. And then, the third factor that will influence this is just other directories. Since directories aren’t listed in local results, but they have a lot of traffic, therefore they’re going to have pretty domain authority. So, they’re going to pop up really well in the organics. And that just kind of jumbles up the whole mess of the organic results there. That’s basically it. As far as the differences, there’s more to it than that. But that’s a really succinct way to it. So, just remember if you want to go up in the local result find citations. And we’ve got a list of like, I think it’s over 200, just general business citations that we fill out for all of our clients. Just to help them get up in that in that local search results. Whereas, if you want to get up in the organic, you need more backlinks. BP: Right. JR: Those are two different things. And then fill out your Google Maps listing to the best of your ability. And then, I guess you really can’t do anything about the directories or articles that pop up. You’re just kind of out luck there. BP: Yeah. JR: So, that’s the basic difference there. BP: Sometimes Yelp is a little hard to compete with. JR: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. A lot of those directories the Yelps, or the Thumbtacks, or the Angie’s Lists are crazy hard site to beat. You’re just not going to do it. BP: Right. JR: So, just try to make sure to try to beat your competitors there, and then you’ll be fine. BP: So, you did a search here: ‘Tulsa coffee shops.’ Local results: Topeca, Foolish Things, and Double Shot. JR: Yeah, in that order. BP: Basically in that order. And then the top organic results were: tulsafood.com, Yelp, JR: Exactly. Yeah. Just directory listings. Yeah. BP: But you looked also at their backlinks as to where they showed up? JR: Yeah. BP: And it looks like Topeca had the most citations. So, that’s why they showed up first. JR: Yeah. BP: Foolish Things had the next close. And they had, it looks like Topeca had more reviews than JR: Yeah, that’s another thing I forgot mention there on the Google listing. If you can get reviews that will help a ton, too. So, reach out to your freaking customers, or your employees, or yourself, and just get a good review off Google. And, obviously, it doesn’t have to be five stars. Even just a three-star review will help. Just make sure people are inter

Linked In Marketing For Lawyers Brad Post Create the Movement: The way that we do business is, you know, we don’t hold any of our clients to long term contracts. We’re very responsive. I’m very customer-service driven. In doing that, and then also being effective online, has really helped grow our company. Today, we’re going to be talking about LinkedIn. Raise your hands if you are on LinkedIn? Perfect. Raise your hands if you’re paying for a premium LinkedIn. Okay. That’s totally fine. Raise your hands if you’re on Snapchat? Ohhh! BP: All right. Well we’re just kind of go through some of the basics. So, some of this stuff might be a little too basic for you guys since you’re already on LinkedIn. But I’m going to go through 10 important tips to help you to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile. So, LinkedIn can help you rekindle old relationships. Strengthen current relationships. Build new relationships. Increase your visibility. And enhance your brand, your company’s brand, and even, also you could have a personal brand, as well. And then keep your ear to the ground in certain segments. And then, you know, it helps lead to new inquiries, in-person meetings, and then new business. So, number one is just signing up and completing a profile. You guys already have done that. So, I’m not going to go through what step one is. If that’s okay with you guys. One thing that’s very important is to make sure you use a photo. You don’t want to be the faceless persona out there. If you have anyone that ever wants to connect with you that doesn’t have a photo, do you accept it? Maybe, maybe not. If you know them personally you might. But make sure you load a photo. On that, it shows the basic parameters of what your photo should be. But, so, don’t be that faceless persona. I just kind of took a quick screenshot. The next page show, just don’t that person. If you’re on Twitter. Don’t be that egg. And I encourage you to, and I don’t know who those other two people. You guys might. Hope you don’t. That’s just a screenshot I took from my local people. But just make sure, yeah, it’s, you know, professional. The way I looked at LinkedIn, the way I’ve always looked at LinkedIn, to me, like Facebook, I do a little bit of business, a little bit of personal. I’ll post pictures of my family and my kids – that kind of stuff. LinkedIn is professional. You’ve got your resume on there. You’ve got your accolades – that type of stuff. So, you want to try to mirror that profile picture with a professional photo. So, the next thing is just making sure that you edit your headline. It’s a description that directly below your name on your profile page. So, when you first start an account you’re asked for your title and position. When LinkedIn creates your profile page, it uses the headline. So, for many attorneys, their headline is ‘Partner at X, Y, Z Law Firm’, or ‘Shareholder’, of ‘Director.’ Just make sure that you’re being very descriptive, and it’s somewhat compelling. So, that way when people see you it’s, they know exactly what you do. So, the next page, just kind of took a screenshot – who’s that good-looking guy right there? Sorry. [Laughter] So, I just took a screenshot of mine. I didn’t want to pick on anyone I didn’t know. So, you can see I put ‘President and CEO of Create the Movement.’ And then I put what Create the Movement is. Some people are like, “What’s Create the Movement?” So, I just put, ‘It’s an innovative online marketing company.’ But, yeah, for you guys you might put, you know, your status, and what company you work for, and then, I don’t know if you guys have a tag line, or something like that? Okay. They’re going to revamp and technically challenged. No, I’m just kidding. I’m giving them a hard time. But But that’s kind of what your headline is. Next thing is another power tip on number four – is sharing an update. This is really where the social power of LinkedIn kicks in. Because, just giving an update, or sharing something menial, whether it’s something that you read and you want to share. Or, you have an opinion on a specific article. I try to be motivational. So, I try to find business quotes. And I quote Steve Jobs, or Jim Stovall, or Zig Zigler. Just trying to, just really, I’m probably that annoying person on LinkedIn. I’m not annoying. I maybe post once a day sometimes if I’m able to. But I’m not that person that is always posting five or six times a day. But, what that does too, is I’ll kind of share a success story, is it kind of keeps you at the top of mind, from your network. I had a friend that I was connected with on LinkedIn. And he was, you know, he’d pulled up his feed and they can see I updated. And he’ll like it, or whatnot. And the next post down was another one in his network that was looking for a website to build. And they’re like, “Hey, do you guys know any local Tulsa companies that build websites?” And so, my friend Carl said, “Connect with @bradpost.” Well, it came up as a notification. He was a second-degree connection. Meaning I was connected to Carl, which was a first, we accepted. Carl was connected to Devin, was his name. And so, he was a second connection. So, I saw that, I connected with Devin. I inboxed him, “Hey, let me know if I can (I wasn’t the typical salesman. I’m not a snake-oil salesman.) I was just like, hey, let me know if you want to connect. I’d love to help you out.” And literally, probably within 15 minutes, he gives me a call. And he’s like, “Hey, can you come in and meet with us?” And it was just really just sharing updates. I kind of came to the top. Carl knows what I do. He saw right below him, you know? Well, that client, actually turned into another client. Because, come to find the person that owns this business owns seven other businesses. Some other totally different kinds of businesses. So, I went and took care of them. Not me, but our team took care of them. Built them an amazing-looking website. And then, come to find out, two months later, another one of their companies wanted to update. Well, guess who they called? They called us. And we presented to them. And then, another one of their companies. So, there’s kind of just a success story in sharing updates and connecting with people. You know? Having the right approach. But it keeps people at the top of your mind. And that’s really the reason I do it. I don’t do it to annoy my connections. However, sometimes they might get annoyed. With you guys, and your business, of course being professional on LinkedIn’s really important. I think people can share their opinions on, or funny jokes and whatnot, on Twitter and maybe Facebook and Snapchat. And selfies. But on LinkedIn I see that it’s pretty much most professional updates. I just going to kind of open this up. Raise your hands if you open up LinkedIn at least once a day. Once a week? Okay. Once a month? Okay. No, I mean you guys are busy people. Right? So you don’t really, I don’t know, but I guess you guys probably open it up only once a month just to see who’s connected with you, or what not. Or, see if you need to accept. What about you guys who use it a week? Kind of the same thing? Or, Audience member: When you get a notification. BP: You have it hooked up to an email that’s not your work email, right? So that you don’t get all the spam stuff. So, do you ever look at updates at all? Do you ever scroll through it? Probably don’t have time to. Audience member: Actually, I’m connected to the American Bar Association, and the American Health Lawyers Association. BP: Okay. Audience member: So, they post their articles up there. BP: Does that pop up on the notification for you? And you can see that? Yeah. Absolutely. There’s other ways that you can use it. The next screen is just basically showing how to share an update. You know? You just pulled your main screen. Click on the status button. And the cool thing about LinkedIn is if you do have a Twitter, you can connect it up to Twitter as well, and just post on LinkedIn. And it will automatically go to Twitter as well. As long as you have them connected. But another good thing to do is edit your website links. Just making sure that you have your company website on there. Because that links it back to the company website. And that way people, if they’re like, “Hey, I wonder what so-and-so is up to? I wonder what Meredith is up to?” They can go and look. “Okay, she’s an attorney. I’m going through a divorce. Should I call Meredith?” You know? And they look, and they see Audience member: Please don’t! [laughter] BP: She’s not a divorce attorney. Audience member: I’m not a divorce attorney. BP: You’re a litigation attorney, right? Audience member: I can refer you out. BP: Right. Exactly. Audience member: I don’t do criminal law either. BP: Right. But it also, you know, that might also be, you know, something you put in your headline, is what kind of areas of practice that you focus on. I’m assuming that you guys focus on different areas of practice, or does it just depend? Audience member: It just, the way we’re structured is the associates in the frim work for all the partners. BP: Okay. Audience member: You could find yourself working for one partner that does mainly medical malpractice. You could find yourself working for somebody else who does auto negligence. We also, we have a research department. And they the ‘brains.’ Yes. BP: Cool. Okay. Audience member: [Inaudible] the brains of everything. BP: When you’re putting your site links, you can also put it to, let’s say you have a bio on the website. Do most of them have bios? Not yet? Okay. Audience member: We don’t’ have bios on the website. Audience member: Yeah we do. Audience member: I’m the only one who doesn’t. Audience: [Audience chatter] BP: You went to OSU and the TU, right? But you can put a link to your actual website. You know, the hn-law.com. Or, you also put, you know, to your personal bio hn-law.com/Meredith, or whatever that link is. You’d have to go to your bio and see what the link is, and copy and paste that within the LinkedIn. You guys follow me? Okay. Cool. Let’s go on to the next one. You can also, I didn’t know if you knew this, but you can also have a specific LinkedIn. One thing too, I was going to mention this. On your website bio, there’s a lot of like different tags that you can get to where they can connect with you on LinkedIn. I don’t know what your firm thinks about that. But that might be a good idea if they want to know more you, or whatnot. They can go to your LinkedIn. Audience member: What’s that mean? BP: Meaning if they go to hn, your website, your profile, on your website bio. Audience member: Did it have a tab, a hyperlink to the LinkedIn? BP: Right. Yes. And then they can go to your LinkedIn bio. If they want to connect with you. Audience member: Which then links you back to your page bio? BP: Yes! It just a circle that you just keep going in. [laughter] Audience member: Except if you like me and you went to JC Penny’s and had your LinkedIn picture taken because you didn’t like your firm picture. Then you could make sure people know what you really look like. BP: But you can actually have a specific LinkedIn url. So they give you, it automatically defaults. You can see here on this page, number six, power tip. My first one was a linkedin.com/bub-brad-post and all these weird numbers. But you can actually customize your url to it being your specific name. Has anyone done that? Okay. Let’s turn to the next page and I’ll show you kind of really how to do that. On your actual profile page. If you go to your profile page. You see that little ‘Settings’ button? It’s a little gear item. Right there. You click on that. This is on your actual profile. So, you’d have to go to your profile. Click on that button. It takes you to the next page – ‘Pubic Profile.’ And then, see over to the right, it says your ‘Public Profile,’ and it says ‘Create Your Own Custom Profile.’ You click on that button. Go to the next thing, and it’ll would automatically have your old, or what it is right now. You can change that. Here where it says the ‘Brad Post CTM.’ That’s where you can change yours. The only thing is, if your name is like somebody else on LinkedIn, or if your name is already been taken. ‘Brad Post’ had already been taken. There’s an attorney out in California that’s taken my name. Yeah. It’s terrible.  And so, I had to go with Brad Post CTM. CTM – Create the Movement. Couldn’t think of anything more creative than that. Right. But you could try to put your name in there. Or, if not, you can, you know, put your name, or add something to it, or whatnot. You can actually have your own specific URL. And why I encourage you to do that, even if you log in once a month, is that way somebody wont take it. You know, if they do have a similar name, or the same name. It’s really the same name. You can go ahead and grab you own url. Make sense? Like when Twitter first came out. Everyone was getting on there so they could reserve their name. So, luckily I got on at an early time and I was able to grab Brad Post. Before the attorney out in California took it. Okay. Number seven is just really making connections. I’ve talked a little bit about first and second, and then there’s third. So, basically, one thing you want to make sure that you can do is just connect with people. My goal was to just get over 500 connections. Because then it will just say 500+ connections on your profile. So, I started, when I first opened up, I just started connecting with anyone. If they, you know, if they had a picture, and somewhat might be in realm of business I would go and connect. Well, apparently LinkedIn actually gives you a limit of how many people you can connect. So, I couldn’t, I tried to connect to too many people that it wouldn’t allow me to connect with other people. And there’s probably somebody reporting me, ...

Create The Movement Podcast-Dana Frisbie Speaks to The Poteau Chamber of Commerce in Oklahoma Dana Frisbie, Create the Movement Brad Post, Create the Movement   Dana Frisbie, Create the Movement: Local Website. All right. We’re going to talk about a local website. A website is an investment. When a small business writes a check; it’s near and dear to your hearts. To get started whenever you’re just, your idea or your dream is just kind of a concept. Or, maybe you just have a handful of clients. You know? Every penny counts. So, we know that. But the cool thing about a website is that it works 24-7. And so, your website can actually be much more cost effective than hiring a staff to work 24-7. So, the cool thing about a website is that it does work for you around the clock. Everything on your website is trackable. And it’s so important to track all of your traffic. You need to know who is coming your way, and who’s interested. A lot of times people are interested in your product and service, but they’re afraid to approach you. So, this kind of takes that away. It takes that intimidation factor away. And all of this is trackable. And then Google Analytics allows us to track so many more analytics, than say print ads will. A website serves as central online destination for the whole brand. So, whatever brand that you have, it totally expands your reach. And it takes your brand beyond the Le Flore County-area. And you get what you pay for. Bottom line: you get what you pay for. So, why not just go online, get a free WordPress site, just kind of get something up to get something up there? Google’s tricky. Google’s constantly changing its algorithms. It’s constantly changing the criteria. One month something may be acceptable, but as Google is constantly researching and scouring the internet, you know, links that are on your site that maybe they were good links at one point, become bad links. And it’s very important to find professionals to handle this for you. You know? Clients should trust the experts to perform the services that they’re good at. You can get the free website online, but it’s kind of like using duct tape to fix a broken window. It might work, but it isn’t very energy efficient, and it certainly isn’t very pretty. So, we’re finding now, too, that Google is ranking your website according to user engagement. So, whenever you go online, you look at a person’s website, you click. That gives that site more credibility. The longer that the person spends on the on the website, and the more pages that that person clicks on, that gives you more weight with Google. Google tracks that. So, it’s important to get professional people behind your website that can help you with all of that. People that - that’s what we do all the time.   Branding and image. Having no website, or a poorly designed website stretches as far as Google reviews and Better Business Bureau. So, if you get a website up, or you don’t have a website, you know, you have a whole world out there. Whatever you decide to put, or don’t put up there, it matters. That’s how people are judging your business. So, if you’ve got a brand of, and you’re very proud of that brand, it makes sense to have a website, and to have a brand, and to have a logo that appropriately reflects the image that you’re trying to present to your potential client. A business wants a potential customer to have enough information for them to pick up the phone. Especially, if one of your competitors is dominating the search. So, you know, if you’ve got a product and service and you don’t have a website, or you have a poorly designed website, and Joe Smith down the street is marketing the same product or service. But he has an amazing website down the street. Chances are, he’s going to get the business that you could be competing for.   Design. Even in a smaller community where everything is word-of-mouth. I mean, as we sit here and we introduced ourselves, and we spoke to one another. And I saw Mitchie, because I know Mitchie. And I’ve spoken to Karen. And Karen and I, we know some of the same people. And I spoke with Betty, and she knows my sisters. And so, you know everything’s word-of-mouth. But still, in a community where everything is word-of-mouth, having a professional image is critical to your success.   Advertising Okay, let’s talk about advertising. Money spent on online advertising is much more trackable than money spent on traditional advertising like newspaper ads, flyers, and phone books.   Online ads and listings, SEO and web content. You know if you’ve got an online ad, and say you’re not getting the traffic that you want, it’s not etched in stone. It’s not permanent. Change your content and experiment. Move things around. You have that option to do that. If you’re not on the first page of Google – optimize. Re-write the content on your website. Change your keywords.   Branding Image Statistics. Now this is interesting. According to our findings, 65% of consumers report that a digital brand experience has changed their opinion either positively, or negatively, about a brand or the products and services a brand offers. For those brand marketers still neglecting or under-estimating digital, it’s as if they showed up at a cocktail party in sweatpants. And we all know that’s not okay. Ninety-four per cent of the consumers surveyed have gone online for local shopping purposes within the last 6 months. Among those surveyed, 59.5% have completed a local purchase of merchandise or services online within the last six months. Eighty-three per cent of surveyed US consumers reported that having a website and using social media was a factor considered of ‘high importance’ when choosing small businesses. Eighty per cent of small business owners consider the design of their logos, websites, marketing materials, and other branding tools either ‘very important’, or ‘important’ to the success of their companies. Spending your money online versus offline is a no-brainer. It’s measurable. You don’t like the metrics -you have the flexibility to change things. In traditional advertising, once it’s printed, that’s it. There’s no changing. Traditional marketing is typically more expensive. And after you consider the costs of printing it, then the cost to distribute it. So, you know, you have flyers. It takes, somebody’s got to go hand those flyers out. I was working with one of our attorneys, and I was looking at what he was spending on yellow book. And it was amazing to me the amount of money he was spending on Yellowbook. For the amount of money he was spending with Yellowbook, and after we looked at it, I was able to save him $400. And so he could take that $400 towards his online marketing. But, you know, it’s crazy to me. Or, billboards, you know, there up there, and they’re there. There’s no changing it. It’s there, and it’s there for a period of time. And the amount of money that’s spent on that, I mean, you can get so much more bang-for-your-buck by, you know, getting a great, great quality website. A well-designed website. Putting that up, and then, you know, your SEO. And just really giving it some juice. I mean, you could sell outside of Le Flore County. And really, our ultimate goal is to bring money into Le Flore County. Not go and spend money outside of Le Flore County.   Enhances Productivity. If properly thought out, a website can enhance your productivity. More people are willing to submit a form online, than to pick up the phone. So, you know, it’s much easier. You’re sitting on your computer, you’re researching things, “Well, I’ll go ahead and shoot over an email and see what I can find out.” So, on your website, you can have a form, a ‘Contact Us’ form, where people can give you their email address, or phone number. They can ask a question. Then you can, you know, for you, you get that email, you can think about the answer that you want to give that person. So, you know, while you’ll get more leads, you have more time to research the thoughtful answers. Than what you would if you were on the phone. Because, sometimes people ask you questions, and you’re thinking, “I don’t know the answer to that question.” And you’re kind of making stuff up, and you’re stumbling. Cause I’ve been there. It’s a lot easier. You know? You get something online, you can schedule time in your day, you can look at those questions, you can research them if necessary. And then you can respond appropriately. Your chances of getting the business that way is much greater than if you’re on the phone just going, you know, “I don’t know about. Uh…let me ask. I got a buddy…” You know? You don’t have to do that. You can give them a great answer that meets their need and that’s well thought out.   Possibilities. There’re so things that you can do with your website. Again, you can do it from home. You don’t have to leave this area. And you totally reach the country, the world. You can reach, you know, the edges of this earth. You can schedule bill payments. You can make sales from, you know, in your pajamas.   Content Management. So you can change the information that you’re putting out there. You can have a customer portal. Email-direct campaigns is really cool because you can set up a campaign to where that you’re sending information to your potential clients. And then, maybe you send an email with certain information that piques interest in different people. So you can collect these emails, and you can send out these campaigns.   Subscriptions. You can get people to sign up for subscriptions.   Newsletter Registration. Each of these are ways to reach out to people, or to serve your potential client or customer.   Let a Professional Handle It. So, you know, as far as this website stuff is concerned, you know, we’ve talked about, I’ve talked to different people about their websites. There’s a place in Tulsa. I’m actually speaking with a lady. She has a company. And they actually, what they do is, and they specialize in after-market parts for Mustangs. So, like, superchargers, or, you know, wheels, rims, you know, anything that you might put on that car to kind of ramp it up. And her, and her mom, they run the company. And they’re just like, “You know? Business is bad.” And it’s really, just, you know, “a sinking ship” is what they’re telling me. And so, I’m trying to work with them. Because this is a family company that they’ve poured their heart and soul. They’ve poured all of these years into this company. And I asked her, “What’s going wrong with the company? Why is it sinking?” Because I always hate to hear of something dying, and not having life in it. I don’t care what it is. And she said, “Well, you know, it’s just online. Everybody can get everything online.” And my thought is, you know, inside I’m screaming, “You can do this too! You can compete with people online. Don’t think of it as a sinking ship. Think of this as just a little bump in the road.” You know? But to try to communicate that to her, you know? And I said, “Have you ever had a website?” And she goes, “Yeah, I tried to have a website. And I did it myself. And then I took it down because it wasn’t really that effective.” And, you know, for me, it’s heart-breaking. Because I’m looking at them, I’m thinking, “Gosh, you know, your family have invested so much of themselves in this company. And I think that there’s a way out. I think that there’s an answer.” And so, you know, you want more than a website company. You need somebody that’s more of a marketing arm, you know, that’s going to be here to consult with you about your marketing needs. You know? We want to partner with our clients. You want somebody that gets that. That understands that. That’s not going to just gouge you, and doesn’t want to have a personal relationship with you. That just wants to build a website and then leave you alone, and say, “Good luck, buddy!” Because that’s not how it works. Google’s constantly changing. You need a marketing arm. You know? If there’re other marketing ideas that you’re bringing to the table, or you’re considering, wouldn’t it be nice to reach out to somebody that has some sort of experience in that area? That can really kind of coach you along, and say, “Hey, that’s a great idea! Or, you know what? I think that over here this company that we have, they’re marketing in this way, and it’s really been effective.” So, you want somebody that’s going to have a professional relationship with you and help you grow your company. And that’s going to get excited about your successes, and has a vested interest in you being successful.   Brad Post, Create the Movement: We’ll talk about social media real quick. One thing we always make sure of is that you have a central hub of marketing to your business. And we always encourage that to be your website. A lot of people work Facebook, and all of the other things, but we always try to, and we run social media campaigns. But try to always push them back to the website. That way you can kind of track what people are looking at. But, you know, there’s Facebook, there’s Twitter. Can I do a quick poll? Raise your hand if you’re on Facebook? Everyone. Everyone. Man, that’s awesome! Okay. Raise your hand if you’re on Twitter? Okay, that still counts. You have an egg up there? What about LinkedIn? Good. Google Plus? Is it still around? What about Instagram? Okay. A little bit more. What about Snapchat? Dang! Okay, wow! That’s surprising. Good. And then there’s other ones like YouTube and Vine and whatnot. But one thing we try to do when marketing a business is we try to point everything back to the website. So, you know, we try to have a call to action. But when we’re running social media for a business they’ve changed a lot of things. We actually think, I mean everyone raise their hand. I mean, everyone’s on Facebook. We encourage Facebook. Like a lot. That’s how, it’s a ...

INTRO: Thanks for listening to our podcast today. In this podcast you’re going to hear from our CEO and President Brad Post who is speaking to a group of college students.   Brad Post, Create the Movement: My name’s Brad Post. I’m the President and CEO of Create the Movement. And my story starts out, I ended up getting my degree, but I turned a four-year degree into 14 years. So, it took me a little bit longer than most people. I got a degree, or a bachelor in ministry. So, my background is ministry. But I started at a young age. Probably, I got married at 21, had kids at 22. So, I had to quickly get into – quickly start working to supply for my family. So, I got into the corporate world. I worked at a place called Citi, if anyone can recognize the umbrella. And my goal was to be the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company. So, I was very driven. I wanted to move up. I started at the bottom in Tulsa. Worked at an office in Tulsa. Moved to Broken Arrow. Then I moved to Tampa, and then to Atlanta. And when I was in Atlanta, actually when I was in Tampa – just kind of my testimony, I grew up in church. I had values of church. I could quote scripture. But I didn’t have a relationship with Jesus. So, when I started down in Tampa, I started going to church, and I played the guitar. So, I got into the Praise Team. Was saved. Moved up to Atlanta. Was working in the corporate world. My pastor started mentoring me in leadership. And I took a 75% pay cut, and a giant step of faith, and went from the corporate world into full-time ministry. And we were the fast-growing church. Grew from probably 50 members to a 1000 members over about a year, year and a half. And I started out as an assimilation pastor, connections pastor, just trying to set up systems and structures for people to connect to the church: small groups, Church 101, 201, 301, the membership classes, that type of stuff. And I also, about a year after that, felt led to go into student ministry. So, I went into student ministry and grew the student ministry. We were going to a lot of church conferences, fastest-growing church conferences, and I felt led to start a church. But my heart was in Tulsa. Born and raised here. Our vacations, we didn’t go to the beach or to the mountains, we came back to Tulsa to visit family. So, my heart was here. So, we moved back here. And moved back, no job, no place to live – just on a step of faith. And it ended up we had a place to live. I lived with my father-in-law and mother-in-law, so we stayed there. And I knew that I was going to have to be bi-vocational as I planted a church, and also needed to work to supply for my family. So, I got a job at another company, a marketing company here in Tulsa. And started working sales for them. I was selling them websites, and search engine optimization, and social media packages. So, I had to learn really quickly. So, I was working there selling products that I didn’t know what they were, so I had to learn. Planting a church. I’ve got three kids. You know? Active in the community. I was burning the candle at both ends. We were doing quite a bit. I shared a little bit last week. We started our church, and had a friend of mine help me build a website. So, I wanted to learn how to show up in the search engines. And so, I started blog posting. Started researching, and seeing how we could show up well in the search engines. We did. We planted the church. Worked it for about a year and a half. And then just felt, my wife and I, just felt like God wasn’t calling us to create a movement within a church. I felt Him saying it was going to be more in business. So, stepped out of the company that I was working at. Helped grow it from three employees up to 18 employees in about a year and a half. And we just had some substantial growth. There was just kind of difference in vision on where the company was going in leadership. So, I went and started my own company. And that’s where Create the Movement came in. So, Create the Movement, we started in a barn. Which, you know, if you look at it Apple started in a garage, the Wright Brothers started in a garage or barn, you know, The Ramones started in a garage. I don’t know if you’ve seen that commercial. But anyway, we started in a barn, and then moved downtown to an office. And it was a 10’ by 10’ room. No outside windows. There were three desks in there. We were, you know, really crowded. But, it was an office, and it was in downtown. And, you know, we started, kind of growing our business. And then we moved about 7 months ago to an office across the hall that actually had, you know, their own private offices. And a bigger office with outside windows so we could see if it was raining or whatnot outside. And, just really kind of had explosive growth. We’re now at 14 employees. And now, we’re kind of in part of creating a culture for our business. We’re a small business, so, you know, we don’t have insurance, we don’t have 401k, so we’ve got to create a positive culture. So, we’ve kind of developed that culture. But that’s kind of my story, but I want to kind of get into some basics, and some in-depth stuff on search engine optimization. So, do you guys all know what search engine optimization is? Or, do you want me to give you a brief explanation? Basically, what it is, and I joke around, but I didn’t know how to spell SEO when I started. You know? So, I had to learn really quickly. So, search engine optimization is basically when you build a website Google, which 80% of the world uses Google. So, you’re not going to hear me referring to Bing, or Yahoo!, or anything like that. We always talk about Google. Because the majority of the people are there. So, search engine optimization’s basically building your website. There’s internal, and then there’s external search engine optimization. Internal’s when you built the website. You know? You have your home page, your ‘About’ page, all the different types of pages. So, you’re looking at content on each one of those pages. And when I say content it’s usually written content that Google can come in and index and see. But you also want to make sure that you’re using Google Keyword Planner. And I’ll get into that a little bit more in presentation. What Google Keyword Planner is it’s basically letting you know what people are searching for, and how many searches those people are searching for so that you can write your content based on what people are searching for. And when you’re building a site there’s some basics on each page that you want to make sure of. And that you have title tags, meta descriptions, h1, h2 tags, are kind of the same. Title tags, I was going over with Matthew here, is basically, it’s kind of at the top of your website. You’ll see, you’ll usually see it at the top here what a title tag is. Google Best Practices basically says that they recommend that that is no longer than 70 characters. So, you can have up to two or three keywords, as long as they’re within those 70 characters. Tulsa Photography/Photographers in Tulsa. That type of stuff. And then in meta description, you don’t necessarily see the meta description on the website. But when you do a Google search, normally the thing that comes up is right down here, is your meta description. And so, you want to make sure that your meta description and your title tag have the same keyword in it. So, it makes sense? And then you also want to make sure that you have, you know, either h1 or h2 tags that have that same keyword. So, Tulsa Photographers would be a title tag. In your meta description you’d want to write a brief sentence, it’s usually a 165 characters, in the meta description. But you’d want to make sure that it includes the exact keyword. Anytime you put images on your website, you want to make sure that they have alt-text. So, there’s a little alt-text. And it doesn’t have to be the exact keyword, but you want to make sure that it has something in there relevant to the photo. And then, as far as search engine optimization, there’s link building. There’s internal and external link building. Internal’s pretty self-explanatory. Meaning on a page you have content, and then you have a keyword, or word, that you can click to that goes to another page within your site. Or, if you have a blog post, it’s a three-part blog post, there’s three different blogs you want to link back blog #2, or #1, in your blog #3. So, you want to make sure that you have internal links, but you don’t want to overdo internal links. You want to probably have two, three internal links. I’m kind of giving you updated search engine optimization because there’s, because Dominick kind of talked a little bit about black-hat SEO last week. And just about some of the things that people were doing. Some people were doing internal links – like over doing it. And so, Google Best Practices – you don’t need to have this many internal links. External links, we talked a little bit about, are when you are going to like a yellopages.com and submitting your business information. And then you put your link to your website, or, if somehow, you get Tulsa World to write an article on what you’re doing and you get a link on the Tulsa World website. Social media, different directories, different blogs. You know, if you want to write, we we’re talking, you know, if you want to go to a photography, I’m going to pick on photography, but, if you want to go to another photographer’s blog, or if their highlighting different photographers and write a brief blog about, you know, a wedding that you shot. Put a picture on there. Put a link back to your website. They approve it. You get an external link. So, Google basically looks at, it’s all about relevance. They’re trying to find what’s the most relevant search. If you to go and search for ‘Mexican restaurant in Tulsa’ and ‘Tulsa photographers’ came up, you would probably get frustrated with Google and go use Bing, or DuckDuckGo, or some other search engine. So, their whole thing is just relevance. And they look at external links as relevance. If you have 396 external links compared to another site that has zero, then they’re going to say, “Hey, they’re more relevant because they have more links.” Now, when we talk about links this is important because there was an update, a Google algorithm update, that hurt a lot of websites. Dominick shared a little bit about this. It was all black hat, well, it wasn’t necessarily black hat, it worked at the time. But now Google is basically giving domain authorities to each site. So, if you outsourced work to India and they went and built a bunch of different directory sites, with all it was was a ‘link farm,’ is what they called it. Then Google will look at that and go, “This is not a good site. Domain authority is low.” It would penalize your website. So, you want to make sure that the links that you’re linking your website to have good domain authority. So, does that make sense? So, we’re going to go through some Google tools that they really like – Google’s goal is somewhat to put SEO companies out of business. But Google is so complicated, they have so many different things that you can use, that, you know, we’ve gone through what, years and years of training and watching videos. Right Matt? So far as learning the different tools that they use, and sometimes people are just like, “You do it for us. We don’t want to learn.” So, Google Analytics – and I’ll go over that here in a minute. There’s also Google My Business, or Google Maps. There’s Google Webmaster Tools, Google Keyword Planner, and then this links, and I’ll – I think I got everyone’s email – is a link to a search engine optimization starter guide. It’s about a 50-page document. It’s somewhat technical, but it will kind of give you an idea of what, you know, Google’s looking at. And kind of goes over a lot of this. So, Google Analytics. It basically shows people coming to your website. You know? How many people came to your website. How many of those were, you know, users, new users. How many pages they visited while they were on your website. I mean it shows so much information. Google Analytics has got a ton of different information. It shows what a bounce rate is. Meaning, when people come to your website and they jump off - it’s a bounce rate, which isn’t good. You want to have that percentage lower. You know? Low is - probably lower than 40% is good. Just because Google will look at the average duration on your site, how many pages they visited on your site, just to see if their search gave what you we’re looking for. If you went to multiple pages. If that’s what you were looking for. You know? If you were, again, searching for a Mexican restaurant and you just pulled up a, you know, a photography site. Jump off of it because that’s not what you’re looking for. And Google Analytics, it’s basically free, you just have to have a Gmail account and you can set it up. They give you what they call a UA code. And you set that up on your website – on the backend of your website. And Google will start tracking, basically everything that’s done. It’ll also show where your traffic is coming from. So, you have four different one: referral, direct, social, and organic. Organic is people just searching relevant terms and then yours shows up in the search engine; and that’s how they found you. Social is just social media. You know? If people found you through Facebook, or Twitter, or whatnot. Direct is if they literally just typed in the URL itself – .com and then went to it. Referral, I want to go into this real quick. This kind of helps to look at where people are coming from. So, this site, we’ve got some rank checker online with a high bounce rate. So, 222 visits. That’s not good. So, we’ll want to add a filter to filter that out. But I won’t get too detailed on filters. But it will kind of show you like where all of the different referral...

Brad Post, Create the MovementDominick Montgomery, Create the Movement Brad Post, Create the Movement: Welcome to our podcast. Today, we are going to be hearing from Dominick Montgomery, our Chief Marketing Officer of Create the Movement, as he shares with a group of college students about online marketing.Dominick Montgomery, Create the Movement: Hey guys. Again, my name’s Dominick Montgomery. Just a brief history on me, and then we’ll get into some, like, nitty-gritty. But, my background’s in music and video actually. Did music in L.A. Came out here, got with Brad, worked at firm with him, and we kind of blew that up. Then we both kind of struck out on our own. We both had our own companies, and then recently we just partnered.I am one of the worship leaders at Guts Church. Did music over there, and I help with their media as well. We have grown Create the Movement from about four employees to about 14 in the past few months. So, we’re doing really well. We’ve got a lot of clients from small, like I said, small shops, to, you know, we deal with Messianic synagogues, we deal with roofers, we deal with law firms. So, we’ve kind of got to see a lot of different markets and realize their goals, and try to, maybe, intertwine them.I say that I’m a digital marketer first. I’m not a video guy. I’m not a SEO. I’m not a web designer. I say I’m a digital marketer. Because, what I’ve found out over the years is that all of this stuff has to tie into together. And I’ll go into kind of how we’ve come to that point, and how we’ve tied it all together with our clients. And how well that’s doing for them.So, I guess in order to start off with, in order for you to understand why we’re at the place where we’re are, and why are clients pay us monthly, and why we get really good checks, I guess, or really good payouts, is because we focus first on the client’s goals. And nine times out of ten, if you’re dealing with a client, or anybody, the goal is to have a reaction from somebody visiting their site. Or, seeing their brand. Right? Normally, that reaction is signing up to their website, or paying them for a service.So, the main thing is, how do you get to that goal? What we focus on first is getting people to their main hub, and their main hub being their web presence, so their website. Kind of to backtrack, we really tout our ability to have our client’s websites show up first for a certain search results. Okay? We, don’t by any means say we guarantee they’ll show up first. And if you hear anybody say, “We guarantee that we’ll get a website to show up first in Google search results.” – probably lying. Or, they’re just trying to get your money. But we work really hard to get our clients there.And we do that through SEO – search engine optimization. We do that through social media. Do that through video. We do that through Google AdWords. Do you guys know the history of SEO? You know how all that got started?  Cool. So, you know, the whole, like black hat SEO? And you’ve learned all that good stuff? Okay. Awesome.Okay. So, back in the day, it used to be, in order for a site to show up, Google has an algorithm that kind of searches the internet and finds relevant websites according to a search. Well, in the early 2000s, a lot of companies did what’s called black hat SEO. And they did a lot of tactics to trick Google into having their site show up first. One of the main cases being JC Penny running a Black Friday sale campaign. And they made all these websites. Pointed all these links to all these websites they created that had to do with JC Penny Black Friday sale. So, when anybody search ‘Black Friday sale’ JC Penny showed up.Well, Google saw what they were doing and they penalized them. Took them off search results for, I think, over a year. And it cost them billions of dollars. So, that just goes to show you how much money can be made from showing up, you know, for relevant searches.From then, til now, we’ve kind of had to follow Google standards, and do the right things with our websites so they show up first. Right? And it’s kind of evolved now. So, it used to be you write good content, you have the right keywords in that content, and hopefully people will find you.But now, it’s more about user experience. Which is where video comes into play, which is where social media comes into play. So, we really focus on once somebody lands on a website, how do we keep them engaged? How do we keep their interest? And how do we get them to convert? Right?If I’m moving too fast, and anybody has any questions let me know. Okay? Cool. So, a lot of our clients have kind of falsified expectations. They think, “You’ll make me a website. People will come to the website and sign up.” Well, it gets really technical. Which is why we have to charge a monthly retainer because we do a lot of work monthly on each of the sites.There are some clients that we have even, that we have to turn away because we say, “We can’t really do much for you.” And a good example of that is we had an estate planning attorney who does like wills, and living wills, and all that good stuff. Estate planning. And she was with us for a while, and we had her showing up first result for all of her keywords. She was getting good traffic, but no conversions. And we realized it’s because half of her visitors are about to pass away. And they’re probably not going to be online looking for something like that. Right? So, digital marketing doesn’t really work in every market. You know? And with them what probably, we could have done, was go to their hometown, go to the funeral homes, go the nursing homes, you know? Go to the hospitals, and see what kind of, maybe, print ads we could do for them. Put them on the backs of phonebooks. Because their target audience is still probably looking at phonebooks and that whole thing.But we do get a lot of cool cases, cool clients, that allow us to be super creative and just do what we know works best. We had a client in Brownsville, Texas. A young attorney, I think he’s like 27. Worked in a small office. It was like, man, like maybe 50 by 50 feet. A real small box. And he said, “You know, I know, everybody’s moving towards video. I want to do video somehow. And I just want to get my name out there. So, we flew out. We filmed about 30 videos for him. All off the cuff – nothing scripted. That might go against what they teach you here. We did everything off the cuff. We just kind of tried to be real personable with him. Reason being is, attorneys are not trustworthy in a general sense. Right? When you think attorney, you think like ‘Better Caul Saul.’ And you know, they’re kind of slimy.So, how do we convey to our audience, or to the people that are visiting the site, that you can trust this guy. Well, the best way thought would be through video. He’s a young guy, a handsome guy, thankfully. Really nice. And so, we stayed down there with him for two days. We filmed like 30 videos. And they weren’t, he didn’t just talk about law. He didn’t just talk about cases that he’d dealt with. He talked about his belief in the law. And he talked about what led him to law. And how his family’s been in law. And he talks his cases home with him, and it burdens him. You know? This kind of stuff that left him kind of vulnerable, and it was kind of edgy. You know? It’s on the line for an attorney to actually put himself out there.So, we did that. We built them an amazing site. It’s totally video-centric, and it went against everything that typical SEO should be. A typical SEO is, you know, a home page needs to have at least 500 words on it. It need to have these keywords in it. Each page needs to have, you know, this amount of words. If you have more content, text content, than your competitor, you’ll show up first. Well, some page maybe had 20 words on it. Interior pages were just transcriptions of his videos. And within 60 days he showed up first for every keyword he wanted to show up for.So, what’s that tell us? It tells us the whole medium’s changed. Right? It tells us about user experience. It’s about time on-site. So, somebody’s come, they’re actually watching his videos. They’re actually reading along, engaging with the material. Yeah.His site got shared all over Reddit. It got shared on design forums. It got shared from attorney to attorney. We were asked to write for the Texas Law Board, Technology Magazine, all this huge crap that just came from being real. You know?So, we’ve kind of applied that concept with our marketing now, and with our clients now. And it’s kind of hard, and you’ll see that it’s hard – oh, yeah?What matters to the client is sharing their story. What matters is converting people that they actually want to convert. You know? A lot of times we get a lot of leads for clients, and we think we’re killing it. And we send them the report at the end of the month. And we say, “We got you 45 leads.” And they say, “That’s great, but only two converted.” You know? And we’re like, “What the heck? Why?”Well, it’s because we have to align ourselves with the client’s goals – every time. And, sometimes, we can’t really achieve that through just a website. Sometimes we need to be on Instagram like posting pictures. Maybe that’s where their core audience is? You know?But, we try to take what we know and apply it to each market. And it gets kind of tough. So, what I always encourage is, don’t get caught up on the technicalities of things because the client’s eyes will glaze over. And they’ll say, “Well, you’re talking about getting us links. We just care about clients. We need money You know? We hired you to bring us business.”So, that’s one of our main things, is to align with the client’s goals. We do that through video. We try to push video a lot – even with attorneys. Especially with cool industries. Like, we have a sign-making facility that makes cools signs. So, we want to shoot videos of them welding, and apply a storyline to it. We’ve got roofers, and we get a drone and fly over them, you know, while they’re roofing. Just cool aesthetics that keep people on a website.It’s cool that you’re bringing in people that know this day and age. Because that’s how the culture’s going to change - just newer things. And as you guys come up, and you’re telling these things to the client, it makes it easier for everyone who’s in this generation to actually sell.Right now, there’s kind of a 50/50 balance. We have older business that are stuck in their ways, and who will not listen to you when you’re saying, “You’ve got to do video. You know? People will watch you.” And they’re like, “We’ve never done video. We’re a million-dollar company. We don’t need video.” And then we’re saying, “Well, to help tell your story.” You know? We’re going for the whole marketing and story-telling aspect. They don’t want to hear it.But I think right now, and with the years to come, that’s really going to change. It’s really going to shift because people want what they see. So, the more we can get on the web: storylines, and videos, and that sort of thing, the more people will want it. You know? It’s kind of – it will become industry standard really.So, as far as digital marketing we do that with websites, video. We do social media. So, social media is huge for us. And Google, a lot of times, Google puts out alerts saying, “This is how we rank websites. And these are the standards that you have to follow.” We follow those standards. But sometimes Google doesn’t tell the truth. Because their main goal is to put people who do SEO out of business, and I’m convinced of that. They want to provide the perfect search. You know? They’ve shown that with Google Glass – you know, that thing where you can look at an album cover and say, “What album is this?” and they find it and play the music for you. So, Google wants to provide a perfect search.So, in that sense, if we’re building websites that have keywords stuffed in it, and the sentences don’t really make sense, and we’re just saying, “Tulsa Personal Injury Attorney is the Best Personal Injury Attorney in Tulsa.” Like, nobody wants to read it. And I think Google’s getting to – their algorithm is so advanced now that it will see that these sentences aren’t making sense. This isn’t unique content. Nobody’s really going to want to read it. You know? And it does through: one, being crazy awesome and technical. But also, two, tracking data, tracking users on sites, looking at sentence structures, seeing if sentences have been written this way in other websites across the web.I think with Michael Gonzalez one of the ways we were able to shoot past the competitors was because we transcribed everything he said in his videos the exact way that he said them. And I think that was one of the huge points as to why his content performed better. I think it’s because Google sees this is a topic that this guy’s talking about in sentence structures that have never been written before. You know? It’s really unique content. It’s like absolute unique content.So, I think in the future Google’s going to provide people with those results, instead of, you know, educational resources, or articles, or stuff like that. It wants stuff that people are interested in.A good example is if you search ‘best Seattle coffee shop’ there’s going to be three results. The first result doesn’t have that structure – ‘best Seattle coffee shop.’ The second and third results do. But the first result says ‘coffee shops in Seattle’, or something like that. So, if you look at those websites that first result is a cool map. It’s interactive. It lets you scroll through and look at the coffee shops. It gives you a glimpse into the coffee shops. It tells you the price points of that coffee shop, and how atmosphere in them is. The other two kind of provide like a list, but those, the second and third results have ‘best Seattle coffee shop’ written all through them. So, it tells us user experience is what matters to Google. And that was a big change in the SEO community, and it kind of screwed up a lot of strategy. Like a lot of strategy.

Brad Post, Create the Movement: Welcome to the next edition of our podcast. My name is Brad Post. I’m sitting here with Josh Rich.Josh Rich, Create the Movement: Hello, hello everyone.B: Josh, how are you, sir?J: Doing well Brad. How are you?B: Good, good. So, today we are going to be talking about…J: AdWords.B: AdWords.J: Google AdWords.B: Google AdWords, okay.J: Google AdWords are those, like, I guess now it’s four, used to be three. But nowadays it’s the top four results anytime you do a Google search that people are paying for. They’re typically yellow, I think, kind of a yellow-highlighted box around themB: Says ‘Ad’?J: Yeah, says ‘Ad’. There used to be three and some on the side. And now they got rid of the sidebar. Now it’s only four. That happened, like what, two, three months ago?B: Three months ago. Yeah.J: So, that’s kind of fun. But, it’s a really great way if you have a new site that doesn’t have a whole lot of like SEO behind you.B: Okay.J: It’s a great way to get traffic especially if it’s not a super-competitive keyword. I will say AdWords is definitely not for everyone - depending on the market that you’re in. You know we have an insurance company, as a client right now, we don’t do AdWords for them because they’re competing with like Allstate and Geico. So, it’s like $50 a click, something like that? Something ridiculous.B: Yeah, they have crazy budgets.J: And so, if you’re competing on that level and just a local company it’s not for you. Because you’re not going to be able to compete. You’re going to be able to afford like two clicks a month. It’s just not worth it. Not worth it.B: Right.J: But, if you do have, if the clicks are affordable, if the keywords aren’t super competitive, then it really is a good way to get an influx. Especially, like I said, if you are launching a new campaign, or a new product, or new service or something like that, and you want to get some traffic to your site. That’s something that we recommend a lot if people are like adding a new service, is to do, kind of like, an AdWords blitz. Just because, you know, if you wrote content that’s pretty fresh, you know, Google may have indexed that, but they don’t trust it too much yet. But if you get a lot of traffic to it, and people are actually spending good time on-site, that will kind of increase your SEO efforts. And that way you can, kind of, start out with AdWords pretty heavy, and then as time goes on kind of ween off that. And then kind of increase your SEO efforts. It’s an easy way to get started.B: You mentioned a new site in the very beginning, kind of rewinding a little bit.J: Yeah.B: So, basically somebody that’s starting out with a brand-new URL?J: Yeah. No domain authority, no domain juice, anything like that.B: Google doesn’t see it asJ: Trustworthy.B: Right, because it’s a brand-new site.J: Exactly. So, they don’t really know what to think of it yet. But it’s a good way to establish yourself as credible, and get some authority with Google.B: Okay.J: All right. So, AdWords is pretty tricky if you’ve never done it before. It can be somewhat overwhelming. So, we just kind of want to give everyone kind of a really broad overview of like how to get started in it. And some step-by-step stuff that you can take just to get your feet wet. And that way, you can kind of know a little bit about AdWords, and what to do.So, the first thing you want to do is set very specific goals. You don’t want to say, “I just want to drive more traffic.” Or, “I want to sell more widgets.” You want to say, “Hey, I want more people to go to this landing page. I want more people to fill out this contact form. I want more people to do this, or that.” Because that’s really going to dictate how you do everything else, and how you arrange your keywords and everything like that. So, make sure that you set a very specific goal and it can be more than one. As we’ll get into it, you know, you can have these things called ad groups, and each one of those can have different goals. But like I said, we’ll kind of touch on that more here in a second.But set goals and know what they are so that you can accomplish them.B: Okay.J: The second step, and I would argue probably the most important step, would be to research. And so, the first thing that you would want to research is your keyword. The keyword is what people search for whenever they’re, you know, trying to find what they need. And so you’re going to tag that, “I want to show up for this widget or this service in my area.”And so, you want to see, first of all, how competitive it is. How much it costs. There’s different tools you can use to get the forecast on that. And so, that way you know how much you’re, roughly how much you’re going to be paying per click. And so, that way you can kind of set your budget and everything like that.The next thing you’re going to want to do is look at your competition. Also, some tools called SpyFu that you can use to see how much your competition is paying. And that will also give you a gauge on how much you’re going to be paying.Like I said, you know, going back to our insurance client, we saw that there’s no way we can compete with that. So, let’s not even try.B: Right.J: But if you see that your competition is just paying, you know, a couple of bucks a click, then yeah, sure you can do it. But you want to make sure that you’re setting that budget to where you’d be competitive. That way you’re not just wasting your money.B: Right.J: The third thing you want to research is your audience. And that’s kind of a combination of your keywords and your competition. But you want to know how they search, what the search for, kind of what volumes they search for. So, that way, you know where to allocate your money.B: Okay.J: Like I said, all three of those things will help you set your budget. And that’s something that’s super important is to make sure that you have a rock-solid budget that’s both competitive and allocated to the right spots, the right keywords, and the right places.The next step you want to do after you do your research and set your budget, is you want to make sure your site is built in a very conversion-focused way. And what I mean that is that once they get to your site you need to make sure that it’s very clear to the viewer what the next step is and what you want them to do. If you just have like a home page, that’s not necessarily, they don’t know what to do with that. But if they Google a service like car detailing, you know? You need to direct them, I would recommend to like a landing page not necessarily the home page, that will say like, ‘Free Estimate Here’ or ‘Contact Us Here.’ You know? Gives them a price, or something like that. Something that there’s not a lot of steps to get to the conversion. You know? Remove as many barriers as possible and take them directly to where they need to be can convert and become a customer.B: A lot of people will just put it to their homepage and then assume that they’ll filter through the site. And know how to filter through the site.J: Exactly.B: But you would say more go into a car-detailing page.J: Yeah, landing page.B: And here’s what we do when we detail your car.J: Yeah, exactly. And so, another thing be very conversion focused. And so, once you’ve kind of set that up, and we can do a whole podcast on how to have conversion-focus a site. I think we could do a whole podcast on researching keywords, competition, not/ands. So, we’re giving a very broad overview, but it is still helpful to have this information.So, once you have done all of that you’ll need to start picking your keywords. And I would recommend, especially if this is your first time getting into AdWords, to not have this, like, really exhaustive list of keywords. I would recommend starting small – maybe five or ten. Just so that way you can get a gauge on what works and what doesn’t. And kind of weed out the process like that.And then, once you kind of figure out, let’s say you have like seven keywords, and three of them work; four of them don’t. So you get rid of the ones that don’t work and keep the ones that do. Once you have the three that do start making variations off that. So, do plural forms, or do, kind of, synonyms or just common variations of that. Or, use instead of ‘for sale’ do ‘for hire’, or, something like that. You can kind of play with the words and re-arrange them and see if those variations work.And that’s a good way to expand your keyword list and see what people are searching for and what’s the cheapest. And whenever you’re picking your keyword you kind of want to find the sweet spot of the highest search volume, but the cheapest keyword. Typically, the highest, most competitive keywords are going to be the most searched keywords. But, you know, a lot times people don’t have the budget for that so you kind of want to find that middle ground.B: Okay.J: That’s a good way to get to that number one spot in the page, and that’s the one people are going to click the most.So, once you’ve kind of narrowed down your keywords, and you have a good list of them, start arranging them into what’s called ad groups. And that’s just basically a way to group them into, like, different categories that mean they’re all the same thing. So, like, car detailing is what we talked about earlier. So, it could be like a group of like exterior car wash keywords versus interior car wash keywords.And then the advantage of doing that is that you can set different landing pages for those ad groups, and kind of, it’s easier that way. You don’t have to, like, manipulate each keyword. If you do have a list of a 100, you can just tweak five groups versus a 100 words. You could also set different goals for those individual ad groups. And that kind of helps you be more strategic with that.Once you’ve got all that up and running it’s basically just kind of tweak and track is what I would say. The first three to six months are going to be the more labor intensive months. You’re trying to figure it out and see what people are doing. But I think once you get past the six-month mark, hopefully, you should have that figured out, and you can kind of set it on auto-pilot. You still need to check in on it every now and then. But for sure, the first three-months you should be checking it almost daily to see, kind of, how things are going. Otherwise, you’re going to end up wasting some money.B: Right.J: And one trick that we use a lot is negative keywords. And so as you’re going through you’ll see that people will, like, search things then click on your site that have nothing to do with your site. We just ran an AdWords campaign for a roofing company after a big storm came through and damaged a bunch of roofs. And so, we noticed that someone searched ‘News Channel 6 pictures of storm damage’.B: Right.J: And somehow we showed up and they clicked on it. And that cost our client, you know, three bucks a click, I think it was probably more than that. So, then we saw that and went into the negative keyword section and said okay, if anyone searches ‘news’ don’t show us. We don’t want that. So that will save your budget for people that are actually looking for your business.B: That’s why going through your ad groups you really want to look and see what they’re suggesting, correct?J: Yes.B: And deselect or select which ones.J: Absolutely, because sometimes Google will, it’s an automated system whenever they do that, sometimes they’ll throw in some random keyword that you definitely don’t belong in or definitely don’t’ want. So, again why would someone click on a roofing company when they’re searching for news pictures is beyond me, but it happens.B: Right.J: The final stuff I would say, if you can, if you have the time, is to get certified. Google AdWords does have a certification program. I’m not certified, but I sit next to a guy who is, and he knows a lot more than I do. So, it is a good process, a good thing to have. Just so you know what you’re doing, and if you’re doing this for your clients, for sure, they know that you know what you’re doing too. And it gives you some extra confidence.B: Or, if you’re a business looking at running AdWords, it’s good to go with a company that’s certified in AdWords.J: Absolutely, yeah.B: Because, I think, Google AdWords, their team is very helpful, and they can help you run through it, but you know, they won’t tell you, I mean they might not tell you about the ad extensions having a tracking Google voice number. How to set goals in Google Analytics.J: Yeah. This was a very broad overview of AdWords. This is kind of more theoretical steps to take versus tangible steps.B: So, either get certified, or hire a company that does do that.J: Yeah, absolutely.B: Good. Anything else, Josh?J: I think that’s it.B: Well, join us for our next edition of Create the Movement podcast.

Brad Post, Create the Movement: Welcome to the next edition of our podcast.Josh Rich, Create the Movement: Yes, yes.B: My name is Brad Post. I’m sitting here with Josh Rich.J: Hello, hello.B: Josh, how are you?J: Doing well. How are you?B: I’m doing great. We are going to be talking about semantics?J: Semantics. And how it impacts overall SEO efforts.B: I don’t even know if I know how to spell semantics.J: I probably don’t either.B: That’s a big word.J: That’s why we do podcasts. We don’t know about spelling things. We just talk.B: Okay.J: So, semantics are kind of, you know, the devil’s in the details basically. And so, semantics, by definition, are just like those little details that typically people don’t care about.B: Okay.J: But, Google is starting to care more, and more, about these little details.B: Okay.J: So, we all know, like, keywords are important to have on the page. So, if you want to rank well for Christmas decorations, then you have the word ‘Christmas decorations’ on your page. But it’s also important to have other common keywords that are associated with Christmas decorations.B: Okay.J: So, you want to have this, kind of, like web of keywords, if you will. And Google is getting more, and more sophisticated, and they’re, kind of, starting to weigh the semantic keywords more and more. And so, what that means is that basically it’s just an effort to make the page ranking more natural. So, that way people can’t just stuff the keywords in there as much as they want. They need to be talking about things that are related to that keyword.B: Okay.J: So, take the example of Christmas decorations. You probably want to have ‘ornaments’, ‘hooks’, ‘tinsel’, ‘Christmas trees’, even ‘Santa’, or just different things like that. You know, like I said, this is just more, and more sophisticated, that way people can’t fake it. B: Right.J: It has to be, you need to have good content on your site that’s not just about one word that you use over, and over, and over, and over, and over again to be repetitive.B: Exactly.J: So, that’s kind of why Google’s doing this. And we’ve kind of seen this shift in placing a bigger priority on that. And I think that will continue as the search algorithms become more sophisticated. And the bots become more sophisticated. And we kind of see a push to, kind of, eliminate these old, black-hat tactics. So, the big question then, is how do you know if your semantics are correct?B: Okay.J: So, one thing you can do, you can check pages that well for the keywords you want to rank for. B: Okay.J: And just read it and see what else they’re including in there. And that’s what Google will do, too. They will look at the pages that have all the traffic for that keyword, and say, “Well, all right. What do they have?” Obviously, this is what people like. This is what people are going to. So, what are they talking about the other pages need to be talking about too? So, go to your competitors’ websites if you’re trying to write for a new keyword, or just improve your ranking for an existing keyword. And see what else they’re talking about. And, you know, it might even be worth your while to take one of those semantic keywords and maybe write a blog post on it. Or, even, just devote a whole page of content on there. B: Okay. J: Because that might, you know, it might help depending on the situation. It’s hard to make a blanket statement about that.  The other thing you want to do is just get some actual hard data and some numbers, and there are some tools, as there always are, for this sort of thing. You know, our favorite is always Raven Tools. It doesn’t give you a ton of data, but it will let you know if you have, you know, any blatant problems. B: Okay. J: Moz has this as well. I can’t speak to that. And there are just a couple of SEO tools that are completely devoted just to semantics. I’ve never used any of them, but I think some of them got some good reviews. But it will just help you, again, just make sure that you have content saying the right things and not just keyword stuff. B: Would the Google Keyword Planner help give you some ideas? J: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. If you go to the forecaster, or, I forget what it’s called, just the Keyword Generator. B: Yup, it’ll give you ideas.  J: Yeah. It helps give you different ideas of what else people are searching for. And that’s one thing that you want to do, you know. If people search for Christmas decorations and they also search for  B: Christmas ornaments. J: Christmas ornaments. Yeah, exactly. Then you need to make sure you have those as well.  B: Okay. J: So, there’s not like an exact science to it, per se, of how many related keywords you need to have. Or which related keywords you need to have.  B: Or, how many semantic keywords you need to have? J: Yeah. Well, there isn’t yet, at least.  B: Okay. J: Maybe someone will think of that up. But for now it’s just, kind of, a general, make sure that you have semantic keywords on your page, on all your content. And that will help your rankings. B: Okay. J: Because otherwise people will just think your keywords [] and then you’ll get penalized for it. B: Right. J: So, that’s really the biggest thing that you need to watch out for. B: Okay. And I think it’s good because it’s a lot more readable.  J: Exactly. B: If you see ‘Christmas decorations’ in one sentence, and then two sentences later ‘Christmas decorations’ it’s frustrating to read.  J: Yeah. Exactly. It’s not only to add relevant content, but again it’s almost forcing the content writers to be good at their jobs. B: Right. J: To write about things people want to read – that’s the biggest issue. B: Exactly. And then, like you said, also maybe adding more pages of content, or adding blog posts on those other semantic keywords. J: Yeah, absolutely. B: And then linking back  J: Yeah, using internal linking never hurts anything. B: Good. Good. So, do you see this just being a big deal as far as Google in the future? J: Absolutely. Yeah, I think that as their tactics become more sophisticated that it will kind of force out a lot of the black-hat tactics that SEO people have been using for a long time.  B: Yup, perfect. All right. Anything else, Josh? J: That should do it. It’s a quick one, but it’s important. B: Semantics. J: Semantics is quick, but it’s also very important.  B: It’s in the details. Thank you, sir.