eso I have been an agency owner for 14 years, and what contributed to my success is, um, you know, I tell a lot of early entrepreneurs that Teoh get more comfortable with the unknown. And what I mean by that is don't feel like you have to pick a path in a career. Now I think it's better to experiment and find what you like later than to pick a path too early and end up not liking that path. So I was okay experimenting. And so I kind of took from I like to say I dated my jobs so I would take from one experience, just like when you date in a relationship, you realize what you like about yourself on the other partner. And then if that relationship ends, you take what you learned into the next relationship. And so I did that with my jobs, and so I would take little things that I would learn and apply them to the next job. And slowly, um, better identify what type of career that I liked until I found the career that I could marry, you know, And so I I went from just kind of computer stuff in the Web design into marketing and just slowly evolved that into something that I knew I would like. Um, you know, and probably some of that drive that some of that fire came from when I was younger, when I was younger. I grew up with our middle class, and so I wanted to experience more stability in life. I I knew that I'd be a family man one day, and so I wanted, um, you know, stable income and a stable home. I used to move a lot when I was little. And so there was a lot of Dr Teoh. Um, I was okay with delayed gratification. And so I wanted to make sure I did things right. Even if it took longer so that I would have a solid foundation for not only myself, but the people that relied on me, my team, my wife, my kids, and so I think being comfortable with experimenting and delayed gratification help out a lot

um, I I don't think I've probably have a little bit of a different answer than a lot of other people. The the evolution of how I've worked with clients hasn't changed too much, and I think that's because I've always been morally driven. And so I always wanted to make sure that I provided a product that I felt I could justify. So maybe if I share a story that will give a better illustration of the approach that I've had to dealing with clients and and how I've been able to take that from kind of, ah one man company into 20 employees now. So when I first started the company, it was, you know, a one man show. I was an entrepreneur like many of the listeners will be. And so, um, I I started in Web design. Now I'm in S e o. There's some overlap in between. But the way that I got to running an agency is I had a design client that said, What do you know about search engine marketing? And I said, I know enough that I would like to experiment with you if you want to experiment with me. But I don't know enough. I don't feel comfortable charging you for it. But I also don't want to work for free. So what I did is I made out an arrangement where I said I will work for free until we hit these goals. And then if we hit these goals that we agree on, then you owe me retroactively and then we start a retainer. And so I've always taken that approach to clients is don't take a payment unless you're confident that you can deliver. And the how that applies to the beginning of my career to now is in the beginning of the career. That's what really helped me get new clients because I was willing to be flexible with them. And I think a lot of that will help, especially nowadays with Kobe, because people want to stretch their dollar further. And so they're looking for somebody that doesn't just want to take their dollar, but has confidence that they can deliver and also really cares about what happens with that dollar. And so I think you know, looking back, I didn't realize that before, but looking back relationships I built and the trust I Bill are by far the biggest thing that's contributed to the long lasting relationships I still have. I still have that client from 14 years ago. I still have the second client from 14 years ago, and most agencies nowadays they don't even like it's hard for them to keep client for a year. I have clients for over a decade long, so I take the same approach now where when we have bigger clients, then I still treat them the same I did when it was a one man show and I tell them I say, Look, I think that we can help you this way and we can't help you that way or if it's not a match, I tell him it's not a match because if you educate your clients and build their trust, you may not. You may lose a sale today, but they'll come back next year or even if they don't come back, they'll send their five friends so you can't lose by just building trust with the people that you are or may do business with.

So I document everything. Um, we are very process driven, so we use a CRM called unsightly on Ben. We also use Dropbox. So we've come up with, you know, very simple tools that we use. We've come up with really specific processes and how we use them. So we have what's called pipelines or activity sets and unsightly. Another crm will have. Excuse me. We'll have similar types of structures where you can template out your process is so you can, you know, have project A and it's got 10 tests and Project B, and it's got five tests, and then you can connect them in certain ways. So I spent, um, a lot of time a couple years ago, probably about eight years ago, going through every single one of our processes. Um, we had processes before, but somewhere on a piece of paper and somewhere in a spreadsheet somewhere in my head. And so I really took the time. It took about a year to document everything, and it sucked. But now it's the best thing ever because when we get a new client, I could just push a button and then everybody gets assigned everything and it's in perfect detail, so now it helps with other things, too. If I hire a new employee, then all I have to do is make sure that they could read. They follow directions and I trust them. And then as long as I have those things, I just send them to unsightly and then they're done. I don't want to micromanage. I don't wanna have to waste my time paying attention to everything everybody does. So it's very easy for me to ensure quality control without having to micromanage. So I still get the best balance of the team being productive without me having to waste my time, making sure they're productive, so very simple tools.