DeepSpecialization_EP 103_Travis Weathers_Video_Edited_V1
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[00:00:00] Travis Weathers: A great salesperson can learn agency life. They can learn SEO, they can learn how to talk SEO really quickly. You cannot spend your time training them how to do sales. And when you, when they, when they have to be trained on how to do sales, you slow down everything else. So if they know how to sell, a good person can take anything within 14 days, be ready to go.
[00:00:19] Travis Weathers: And that's been my experience with every good salesperson we've ever hired, 14 days or less than making their first sale. And it's seamless.
[00:00:26] Corey Quinn: Welcome to the Deep Specialization Podcast, the show where we blend focus, strategy, and client intimacy in order to scale and simplify our businesses and our lives.
[00:00:36] Corey Quinn: I'm your host, Cory Quinn. Let's jump into the show. Welcome back to the Deep Specialization Podcast Today my guest is Travis Weathers. He is the founder and CEO of Rotate Digital, an agency specializing in helping moving companies through strategic SE. Today we're gonna talk about his deep specialization journey, how he grew his agency to over $3 million in revenue.
[00:01:03] Corey Quinn: And we're gonna get into a ton of tactics around selling, building a sales team, and more as it relates to agencies and a vertical market. Looking forward to diving in. Travis, welcome to specialization Show.
[00:01:17] Travis Weathers: Man. I appreciate it, Corey. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to talk dialogue and uh, and dive in and be vulnerable and transparent because I think we, we were just talking about how it's just such a, it's a f fugazi out there in agency space, so I'd love to be able to be little bit of a light of transparency.
[00:01:32] Corey Quinn: I think that would be a breath of fresh air, I should say, for the audience. So before we do, if you're tuning in on YouTube, I have to comment on this killer backdrop. What is that behind you?
[00:01:44] Travis Weathers: Uh, it's a beautiful airplane, so I. I started this agency to pay for flight school because I wanted to be a pilot.
[00:01:52] Travis Weathers: And so long story short, we won't go into too much of it, but I started, I started flying, started this agency to pay for it, and as I grew in this agency, my love for flying grew and eventually I chose a, instead of going, becoming a commercial pilot. Although I am a commercial pilot, I'm a flight instructor, like I could go work at the airlines.
[00:02:10] Travis Weathers: I could work as a mechanic as a. Pilot, although I, I could do that and that's what the original dream was. I fell in love with business while I did this. So my friend one time told me, dude, stop doing that. Be home with your family and buy a plane. And so this is, you know, seven years in the making. And so I've got a, a plane behind me.
[00:02:28] Travis Weathers: I'm in my hangar. Yeah. In, uh, queen Creek. So,
[00:02:31] Corey Quinn: so I'd love to dig, dig in a little bit about that, that origin story. So what was happening in your life seven years ago? You. Interested in becoming a pilot? You started the agency to, to fund the, the pilot, uh, I'm sure the flight school and whatnot. What was happening in your life at that time and what led you to, to doing this?
[00:02:49] Travis Weathers: So I was, I was going to school to be a mechanic for aviation. Uh, I at one point wanted to go overseas and do humanitarian flying, so you had to learn how to fix airplanes and stuff. And so I had a kid, I think I had a second one on the way. And basically what happened was I saw a sample like this is back in the day, Facebook ads, right?
[00:03:09] Travis Weathers: I saw Sam Ovens Facebook ad, and oh my goodness that it hit me right to the spot. I had a, I had a marketing, I was doing like. 12 different people, 12 different industries doing marketing, making like client and, uh, yeah. And so the Sam Ovens, uh, a got me and bought the course like 75 and it was. A pretty good portion of everything I had in the bank account.
[00:03:35] Travis Weathers: Probably I probably had 15 grand left and I called my wife. I was like, so I just bought this course so I had to make it happen. And so that's kind of how I got, uh, got started. I had, I had one kid, now I have three kids and we were just going, I was going to school full time doing this at night and just doing that day by day by day all the way through.
[00:03:53] Travis Weathers: And then to a point where when I was a fight instructor. I would take sales calls on my lunch break, right before I would get onto a plane, I would take a sales call. I remember closing a guy on a sales call and I was getting my credit card payment and I was running late. So I told the guy, I was like, I'll just pay for your pay, pay for your flight.
[00:04:08] Travis Weathers: Like I'm going to be late. And I got my credit card collected and then got to the, got to the airplane and we took off and went flying. So that was kind of a little bit of what was going on and kind of how we got there.
[00:04:18] Corey Quinn: So I actually went through Sam's program as well. I thought it was great. I thought it was really, really powerful.
[00:04:24] Corey Quinn: Yeah, I did that after I left Scorpion. I was looking for a lot of different, going through a lot of different trainings. That was one of the ones that I went through. It was really good.
[00:04:32] Travis Weathers: So Good. So yeah, through so much BS and it was just, it was a lot there though, but it was great. Yeah,
[00:04:38] Corey Quinn: a lot content.
[00:04:46] Corey Quinn: A flight mechanic as well as a flight instructor at this time.
[00:04:50] Travis Weathers: I was going to school for flight mechanic while I was flying and getting my commercial certificate, getting my flight instructor rating. Yeah.
[00:04:58] Corey Quinn: And you were, and you were running this agency, the fledgling agency, but you were, you were starting to do that.
[00:05:02] Travis Weathers: Yeah, and then I was ru running the agency during all that. I mean, I'd be in, I remember being in school, being in like my, you know, power plant engine, you know, school, you know, and trying to type up an email to a client and, you know, I, I probably shouldn't say that.
[00:05:16] Corey Quinn: And so you would manage. So you had managed that sort of moonlight, like you, was it, was it you who was doing the work or did you outsource it to a consultant or,
[00:05:24] Travis Weathers: you know, so it's, it's funny and I actually think it's what has made it helpful for me today and, and where I was at.
[00:05:29] Travis Weathers: I really, I came from a sales background. So I used to sell software, viable software specifically. And so I knew sales and when I bought Sam Ovens course, it combined when I knew sales, it combined with like business marketing. And then I was like, what do I, what do I sell? And someone told me about SEO because it was a recurring thing.
[00:05:48] Travis Weathers: I remember selling and going, like, if I sell, I wanna sell a recurring product or service. And so what ended up happening is I learned enough about SEO to be, uh, dangerous. I would say more importantly, dangerous when it comes to selling on the phone. And. Ever since my very first SEO sale, I outsourced it for the first 10 clients, and then I realized a lot of people just checked the box on SEO.
[00:06:13] Travis Weathers: So I ended up hiring somebody, bringing 'em into house. And my only goal was no matter what we do, make sure we make an impact on the client's business. Like we win an SEO and they went in sales. And so that's. Kind of, basically, I never, you know, I'm not, um, I'm not a Damon Burton. I, I, I'm not the expert in SEO.
[00:06:31] Travis Weathers: Yeah. I know how to sell SEO really well, and I built my team around it. So I think it allowed me to go faster in some sense, because I didn't know SEO to be able to execute on it. Sure. I had to trust people through that process.
[00:06:43] Corey Quinn: You knew enough to be dangerous, to be able to talk shop. Most buyers back then, certainly still true today, but.
[00:06:49] Corey Quinn: Probably not, did not understand SEO at a, at a level of depth that required you to have to go toe to toe type of thing.
[00:06:56] Travis Weathers: No. I would argue even now, at least with my clients, you don't, but there's a lot more education around it than there was seven years ago.
[00:07:04] Corey Quinn: So when did you shift from kind of moonlighting to, to full-time?
[00:07:07] Corey Quinn: Like what was happening in the agency that that told you like Yes. Okay. This is actually something that's gonna be more significant for
[00:07:13] Travis Weathers: my life. Yeah, it's a question I think. I think slow transition there. It was always like, it's gonna make me money and then I'm gonna continue growing that money making business.
[00:07:24] Travis Weathers: And so I continued growing it and I think ultimately it was the conversation with my friend where he was like, Hey, you're either gonna go down the track of being a commercial pilot, you'll make 200 grand in seven years, you know, a year. Which again, great money. I'm not. Poo-pooing that. But he said, but also, you're gonna miss your family.
[00:07:43] Travis Weathers: You're gonna be gone a lot. He's like, but your business is doing so well. What if you just went all in there? Yeah. Bought your own plane and went all in. You don't know where it could go. And so that conversation was probably the one of the things that kind of tipped the domino to go, you know what, I'm gonna just go all in on this business.
[00:08:00] Travis Weathers: And at this point I probably had maybe 20 clients or so, and so I just, I. Four months of that decision, quit as a flight instructor and then win all in on the business. Yeah.
[00:08:13] Corey Quinn: And were the 20 clients all paying you $200 a month?
[00:08:16] Travis Weathers: No. At this, at this point, I had, I had gotten a little smarter. I had moved to like a thousand dollars a month.
[00:08:21] Travis Weathers: Okay. So I had been, I'd been moving the right direction. Every, every call, it was upping the price. Every call I was, you know, making a little bit more expensive, so, you know. By this time, I had basically focused on one niche, followed the Sam Ovens course, followed the program, said, let's focus on one niche.
[00:08:39] Travis Weathers: I randomly chose the moving industry 'cause I had a buddy who I did really well with. He's like, you've done so, so well with me. Randomly chose that industry and just blindly went all in on it. I mean, there was no, I didn't do any analysis or market research. I just went and went and just did it.
[00:08:56] Corey Quinn: And 300 clients now later, I think it was probably a good choice.
[00:09:01] Corey Quinn: Looking back, would you say
[00:09:02] Travis Weathers: I think it was a great choice. Covid really helped. Yeah. And uh, you could say I got lucky in the sense that Covid kind of expedited the home service niche, but, but I loved it because we are the biggest now in the, in the niche. And so when I started, we were not the biggest. And so I like it because.
[00:09:18] Travis Weathers: It was, it was cool to look back like current Travis looks back and goes, I remember sitting down there was a guy named Louis Massaro. He was like the guru speaking about the moving industry. And Sam Ovens course said you have to be the person that knows the industry the most. And I remember sitting there going, I will never be the guy that like knows moving so well where I can speak.
[00:09:36] Travis Weathers: And you look back and it's like, just. By focusing on being SEO, not even focusing on being the, the guy just focusing on delivering a good SEO product. I eventually, you know, last year I spoke at like 15 moving conferences. So it's, it's kind of cool to look back and see that challenge your beliefs I guess you could say.
[00:09:52] Corey Quinn: Yeah, I love that. And having, having clarity on what success looks like also, I think it's really smart. What would you say so. You went from being more of a generalist, let's call it, to being a specialist in the moving industry. And what was that like, transitioning like, was it, did you rebrand the website?
[00:10:13] Corey Quinn: Did you fire all your non-moving clients? Like how did that exactly work?
[00:10:17] Travis Weathers: Yeah, all eight of my non-moving clients, I eventually did let go except for two. There was a Italian restaurant, which I still have today. Um, shout out to Flo Dinos. And then there was a, a sandwich shop that I kept as well because it was the same owner.
[00:10:33] Travis Weathers: And that was really it. I eventually transitioned to all of eight or 10 clients that were with me at that point. And then, yeah, I remember sitting, I remember it was December of. And I was trying to sell a course because Sam Ovens was like, sell the course, right? I was trying to sell the course, couldn't sell it, and everybody was asking, you know, did, do you do SEO?
[00:10:54] Travis Weathers: Do you do digital marketing? Do you do SEO? No, no, no. I got a course on how to do it and I remember one day just going, yeah, we do SEO. And I remember him going, how much is it? And I was like, it's thousand dollars a month. How can I sign up?
[00:11:17] Corey Quinn: So that interestingly reminds me of a time at Scorpion where we were, for a period of time, we got this fever in the company, which was all about building SaaS, building software. We just raised a bunch of money and, uh, it was a season. But, uh, there, there, the, the fevers passed. But during that time it was very clear that, hey, one way we're gonna scale this business is by building do it yourself software for.
[00:11:44] Corey Quinn: Movers that maybe could not, wouldn't be movers, but let's, uh, let's call 'em attorneys or plumbers or whatnot. Yeah. That couldn't afford to hire us one-to-one our, our traditional service, but they could also, but they can get the benefit of working with us by using our software. And so without really doing a lot of market research, a lot of software was written
[00:12:06] Travis Weathers: under the assumption.
[00:12:12] Corey Quinn: Plumbers would love to log into our little interface and manage their PPC campaigns and their website and so on and so forth, and
[00:12:22] Travis Weathers: we laugh. How did that end? Because we know Yeah. How did that end? Yeah, we know, because
[00:12:25] Corey Quinn: exactly. The, the, the fact that they did, they, they didn't sign into our, our free analytics tool that our paid clients, you know, had, had as a, as a benefit.
[00:12:37] Corey Quinn: Like no one logged into that. That should been a signal that. It wasn't something that they were particularly interested in. So, yeah. So I know the, the do it yourself versus done for you type of dynamic, especially in the blue collar world. Yeah.
[00:12:50] Travis Weathers: Yeah. And, and, uh, I didn't realize that, but yeah, when it, when it hit and I kept hearing that, it was like, alright, follow where they're talking about.
[00:12:58] Corey Quinn: Right. Follow the dollars, follow the demand, follow the dollars, it's.
[00:13:02] Travis Weathers: Yeah, exactly.
[00:13:03] Corey Quinn: And going forward, once you sort of began to get that sort of feedback from the market and that there was an opportunity to help them out and in within the vertical of the moving vertical, did you just start saying no to any non vertical clients or how did that evolve?
[00:13:19] Corey Quinn: Like, you know, at what point did you become really focused from a sales perspective?
[00:13:24] Travis Weathers: I would say transparently, it probably took me like 12 months to like, yeah. Really start saying no. I mean, I re I, I recall taking on a cabinet client within a few months. From that time. I remember taking on, it was another industry, I can't remember what it was, but it, and what ended up happening is I took them on and it was just a realization of.
[00:13:45] Travis Weathers: This is, it's completely different. Like I knew how to talk to the moving companies on the sales calls. I knew, I knew their industry again enough, right? I had a journal that I would have of every single sales call, how I felt emotionally afterwards, how it ended up. And I, you can look at that and I, you can see a little like cabinet call, you know?
[00:14:03] Travis Weathers: And so we ended up selling them and it, it didn't end well, obviously. Yes. And it just felt like it was wasted, you know, at the time I, the money, right. I don't wanna. Yeah. Thousand dollars was so worth it. Right. Right. But you know, in one sense, smart Travis now would look back and be like, don't take the call.
[00:14:19] Travis Weathers: Keep focusing. You know, but don't get distracted. But we, we do it. I mean, even today I keep playing with the idea of going into another industry and I think there's something just human nature. We want something new and I have to constantly fight it of like, I just created a, an ad for. Two months ago, and yet I sit here and somebody would ask me, where's the greatest amount of money that you can get in your business?
[00:14:43] Travis Weathers: Like, where can you get it? What's the lowest link hanging fruit? And it's like, I have more things I can do for the moving industry. That's right. And yet I still record the video about, you know, roofing marketing.
[00:14:53] Corey Quinn: Yeah. And that is usually the case. I just from my own experience, once you have a certain.
[00:15:00] Corey Quinn: Market penetration, let's say out of the, let's say there's 10,000 movers in the us. Once you get to 3% or 5% of that market, that's when you probably have enough momentum that you, as the founder can say, oh, let's start building a second vertical. The trick is, this is where people get caught is they take the current resources, managing the, the moving clients, and they have them also manage the roofing clients or whomever, and that's where you fall down.
[00:15:26] Corey Quinn: You actually have to start a separate business unit, separate resources. It's expensive.
[00:15:31] Travis Weathers: Expensive.
[00:15:32] Corey Quinn: Yeah. But you got, you get, you build up the same expertise and really the positioning around the, the vertical, you know, specialization when you do it that way.
[00:15:42] Travis Weathers: Yeah. I unfortunately you could have told me that like three months ago you would saved me a little bit more money.
[00:15:48] Travis Weathers: Where were you? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:52] Corey Quinn: Yeah, let's talk about that, the, the impact of the specialization as it relates to being able to be more of a consultant, kind of an expert. Like what impact does that have in a sales context?
[00:16:02] Travis Weathers: I feel like it's a B question because it's like I, it's everything. Like it's the friends that they hang out with who work with me, who end up like referring me.
[00:16:12] Travis Weathers: Like it's just, yeah. There's so many benefits. I, I tell people all the time. I would argue, take any one of your agencies. That you have, get on a sales call with a moving company owner. I'll walk circles around you on the sales call because I know the people to bring up, I know the CRMs, I know the integrations with the CRMs.
[00:16:28] Travis Weathers: I know the owners of the CRMs. I know the owners of the people that are in your group. I know the owners of the people in your, in your state association. I know when your state association will be. I know when I'm gonna go to that. I, I was there last year. I'll be there this year. I know Tom, you know, I know Ryan.
[00:16:42] Travis Weathers: I know. And it just, it endlessly goes and. And I just, it's, it's, it's, it's really beautiful. I'm so grateful I was shared on this idea because it, it really does go with the only good, bad fallback is that you have to then do a good job because the moment your reputation gets ruined, it starts. Oh, it's horrible.
[00:17:03] Travis Weathers: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:04] Corey Quinn: What, what are some other negatives that exist as a result of running this play
[00:17:09] Travis Weathers: in the moving industry? They're one of the lowest profitable home service businesses, and so that makes it challenging for us. They're very seasonal. Winter time is winter time. It's. Bad summertime. It's amazing. So you've got, and you've got no, at least in the moving industry, and I know you were talking about just specialization in general, but in the moving industry, there is no requirement license, certification to get into it.
[00:17:32] Travis Weathers: And so it opens the market to just a different realm where like. Plumbers, you have to have some certification. And so it's harder to get into it. You're gonna have a different kind of group of people. So some of the negatives, right? Your reputation is probably one of the biggest negatives. The other negative is your team.
[00:17:46] Travis Weathers: In my, my experience, at least my team, they desire for another, another niche. Yeah. They're They're writing the same website. They're doing the same thing. They're, yeah. And they just, they ask for it. And it's so hard because. I want them to love rotate digital, and they do. But that's that thing that they're like, again, another moving industry.
[00:18:03] Travis Weathers: Another thing, you know, it's the same stuff.
[00:18:07] Corey Quinn: Do you, do you give them like pet projects or how do you satiate that, that, uh,
[00:18:11] Travis Weathers: that,
[00:18:12] Corey Quinn: that need?
[00:18:12] Travis Weathers: Give them a little money. Say sh sh No. Uh, it's all good. Yeah. Yes. Quiet. I think I just, I think there's two things I have to keep reminding them the vision. I have to keep reminding them that for six years we've grown year over year, we've gone into two years of massive recession in the moving industry, and yet rotate.
[00:18:30] Travis Weathers: Digital continues to grow profit and revenue. Don't get that in general agencies. And so I, I have to remind them the benefits that come with specialization of one niche is like, our job is a lot more secure. We make a bigger impact, we make a bigger impact, which means we can create more dollars, which means we create more talk, which means we make more money.
[00:18:50] Travis Weathers: And so I think that is one of the big things is just reminding them about the value of like, yeah, there's some downsides. And yeah, you may get. Board, but here is that value compared if you were to go to another industry that has multitude of, of industries. And then I would say the second thing is, every once in a while now that we're kind of a little bit more established, we will take on a, a random client every here and there.
[00:19:11] Travis Weathers: And so we just took on like a, a lawyer probably two months ago. And honestly, it's been so difficult. But the, the, the people that are working on it, they're like, honestly, it's kind of a brush of fresh air. Fresh. Right. It's new, fresh, fresh air.
[00:19:23] Corey Quinn: Yeah. Yeah. It's new problems, right? Yeah. They're, they're solving new problems, new
[00:19:26] Travis Weathers: problems.
[00:19:27] Travis Weathers: They get excited about it, you know, so.
[00:19:29] Corey Quinn: Right. Yeah. So you mentioned the vision and you're, you're, you're helping them to stay aligned and seeing the vision of how you're making big impact. Do, do they get to participate in that sort of, that growth of rotate? Like how do they, how does that show up for them?
[00:19:43] Travis Weathers: That's great question. So in terms of our team members, every team member gets depending, I think it's a 6% annual raise every year. Nice to be a part of Rotate digital, and we have a, I think we're a little bit more of a. We have stricter, we have higher level of excellence than I say the general. And I'm not saying like, look at us, it's just we, we really try to push that.
[00:20:04] Travis Weathers: So to be around for multiple years is a win, right? And so we like to incentivize them on that. Additionally, we give unlimited PTO, which ultimately we all know means. Just take time off and be respectful of time off. It doesn't mean you could have unlimited. And then the final thing is they do get to participate in it.
[00:20:21] Travis Weathers: We, we just launched in January, uh, profit sharing for the entire teaming. And so that Interesting. Has been some interesting. Yeah, so it's been something that's been in the making for like six months of conversations, studying, talking to different people. January we launched it and uh, we've got a kind of a whole standard of like minimum targets, how we share, and I, you know, we can share that, but one of the things that it's.
[00:20:41] Travis Weathers: Done is is as we grow, as we win, when it comes to profit, they get to experience part of those wins. And so right now looking at where we're going and how well we're doing it, it roughly adds another 10 to 12% to their salary this year. If we continue hitting where we're going, which is a great win, because now when we get to celebrate as a company, they get to celebrate.
[00:21:00] Travis Weathers: So they do participate in it. That's,
[00:21:02] Corey Quinn: that's great. Incentives are aligned. I love that. So you're in a competitive space. There's no, there's vertical or niche or any industry that hasn't been thoroughly exploited by upstarts and and whatnot. How do you differentiate and position yourself in this crowded market?
[00:21:19] Travis Weathers: Great question. I would say because. Anytime we're, you're a marketing agency, you're in a crowded niche. Anytime you're a marketing state agency, you sound the same as every single other agency out there. Ultimately to the eyes of the, the, the people that are buying. So one way to stand out is we specialize.
[00:21:38] Travis Weathers: We are only in the moving industry. The other way is, I think we really are pushing, in the last year and a half, we've really pushed on staying ahead of the market. What do people need? Where are we going with this? We, we provide SEO, but we're now doing. Apparently, I should have done it beforehand is we're now doing call tracking, where now we're doing call tracking, where we can align.
[00:21:58] Travis Weathers: We meet, we, we basically do a lot of their CRM work. We analyze every call, we go look into their crm. Yeah, so it's these small things that, that we're ahead of the game. We're doing ubiquitous UPMs where we push the UPMs throughout the pages, no matter where they go and how many pages they click on. We were the first in our industry to do that, and so we're, we're always setting the standard.
[00:22:16] Travis Weathers: Now the companies are following us on what we do, but we're always setting the kind of the next thing. And so I think that really does set us apart is we are, we are pushing the limit of what an agency can provide, at least in the moving industry. We're pushing that limit in, in this space.
[00:22:30] Corey Quinn: That's awesome.
[00:22:31] Corey Quinn: You mentioned you, you go to a, of the events, you're, you're kind of visible in.
[00:22:37] Corey Quinn: How do you, where, where do new clients come from? Like where, how do they find you and where do you attract them from?
[00:22:44] Travis Weathers: I wish I could tell you it's because we have this phenomenal outbound cold calling traffic campaign. I wish I could tell you, man, our Facebook ads, they just rock it, you know? And we just we're so good at Facebook ads.
[00:22:57] Travis Weathers: Unfortunately, it, it feels like it's the boring stuff. Where do they come from? They come from other referrals. A lot of people are coming from. Uh, conferences. Yeah. I didn't go to conferences for a few reasons. One of them is I was too busy and I had excuses for it. Started going to conferences massively, at least in our industry.
[00:23:16] Travis Weathers: Massive game changer because now you're a fa you're a real human behind the calling and the emailing and everything. So conferences and then speaking at conferences is like that next lever point of like, Hey, you can go to conferences, but then you wanna get more leverage outta that and speak at them.
[00:23:31] Travis Weathers: So that's been where a lot of 'em are coming from. And then finally, outside of referrals of, of partners, the other place that they come from is a Facebook group. And, uh, the Facebook group refers us a lot of people, and it's a small group. It's like 1500 people, but it's enough consistency where that carries us and keeps us going.
[00:23:51] Travis Weathers: Is that your Facebook group or are you just joined one that. No, I just joined one. It was That's awesome. It was the same one that I joined when I started this business. It's the same one I leveraged where I added them as friends and I contacted them by direct message, which I know everyone talks about how stupid that is.
[00:24:06] Travis Weathers: It still works for us today. Sure. We just be real. I think the key is like being real, being a real person, not being like, Hey, how are you? Like you don't know this person. Don't ask. Right. Just tell 'em why you just jumped in their inbox. So, so yeah, that, that has helped us a lot and no, we don't own it.
[00:24:19] Travis Weathers: Ultimately we don't own it. We started one and that one sucks compared to the real one.
[00:24:25] Corey Quinn: It's hard. It's, yeah, it's like, uh, it's like having a fish or a plant. You continually have to feed it and invest in it. It's like, oh yeah. It's, it's a lot of work. So,
[00:24:33] Travis Weathers: yeah. Or I pay four a month and I get access to this one, so I'll take it.
[00:24:36] Travis Weathers: Yeah.
[00:24:37] Corey Quinn: All day. Right.
[00:24:38] Travis Weathers: All day.
[00:24:39] Corey Quinn: Curious about your, your sales team. So you were the first salesperson in the company, but when did you hire your first salesperson? At what point in the, did that,
[00:24:47] Travis Weathers: uh, happen? I was doing, I was, I, I believe I was two years in 2019, 2020, I'd have to double check, but I believe I was, two years in, I was about a million dollars in revenue, and that is when I hired my first salesperson.
[00:25:04] Travis Weathers: And, uh. That first salesperson started in November. Now I kind of wanna find out when it actually, when it actually happened, but yeah, so I hired that person. We were doing, you know, we were consistently doing sales, hired them, and out of the gate they did really well, but I think we were about a million dollars in revenue 2021, November of 2021 is when we hired them.
[00:25:26] Travis Weathers: So we were doing about a million dollars that year, and then in 2022, we doubled the business from that first hire.
[00:25:32] Corey Quinn: Wow. What about that first hire made it such a, a good outcome?
[00:25:39] Travis Weathers: Good question. So that person that I hired, I had already known them 'cause they were like a friend of a friend, which worked well in my opinion.
[00:25:49] Travis Weathers: Why it worked well is I got them around the. We can sell the dream. It'll be easy to sell marketing if we sell the dream, but if we really care about how to do, you don't need to be an SEO expert, but if you know how to really talk about SEO, if you know how to really go, Hey, this may not be for you right now because you're not in a good spot, and really have a much more deeper conversation about business cash flow, when, how do, how to track the return on investment.
[00:26:12] Travis Weathers: I got this person to really align with that and they out of the gate aligned with that. Plus they had a ton of experience. They, like their whole career was in sales. He was a little bit older, whole career was in sales. And so that, I think together he knew how to sell and he knew, and then he cared about the clients he was selling and, and trying not to sell the dream.
[00:26:31] Travis Weathers: You combine those together and, and it did great.
[00:26:34] Corey Quinn: I love that. So in, in your mind, what is more, more important of the three of these three different types of attributes for hiring a salesperson? They come with sales experience, they come with product experience, I-E-S-E-O, or they come with vertical experience, which is movers.
[00:26:52] Corey Quinn: In your case, which one's the most important?
[00:26:57] Travis Weathers: I, I think it's got, in my opinion, I think it's gotta be sales experience. I'm talking out of an agency life, right? We have so many things we've gotta do. It's so critical that your agency continues to sell. They have to know how to sell. A great salesperson can learn.
[00:27:12] Travis Weathers: Yeah. Agency life, they can learn SEO, they can learn how to talk SEO really quickly. Yeah. You cannot spend your time training them how to do sales. Yeah. And when you, when they, when they have to be trained on how to do sales, you slow down everything else. So if they know how to sell, a good person can take anything within 14 days, be ready to go.
[00:27:29] Travis Weathers: And that's been my experience with every good salesperson we've ever hired. 14 days or less, they're making their first sale and it's seamless. Yeah. So that's my opinion. They have to know sales. I've seen. What would, what do you find? You answered what? Yeah, no, I've seen,
[00:27:42] Corey Quinn: well, so I've, I've seen in, in the, in the real world agencies who are trying to get out of founder-led sales, they'll take an account manager who was very successful in that role, was kind of getting bored, elevate them to sales.
[00:27:56] Corey Quinn: The good, the good thing is that they know a lot about the product. The bad thing is they never asked for the sale.
[00:28:01] Travis Weathers: Yeah. They never asked for, and they almost know too much about the product.
[00:28:05] Corey Quinn: Right? Right. Yeah. They go deep into product land and they, they overcomplicate the sale.
[00:28:09] Travis Weathers: In fact, it's funny because we just had an all, all, all, anyone in the United States and Canada that's part of our team, we flew 'em all in and Nice.
[00:28:17] Travis Weathers: We got into a one hour session of like. Where do we need to get better? What are, what are we struggling with? And my salesperson was like, full transparency. I'm walking out of this because I know that we do a good job. I know that we, but I cannot know the details of the process, down to the details because I need to focus on outcomes.
[00:28:35] Travis Weathers: I need to focus on what they need as business owners. Yeah. And I was like, honestly, seems like a cop out. But have fun. Enjoy your hour. I'll take it.
[00:28:43] Corey Quinn: Typical sales guy,
[00:28:44] Travis Weathers: a hundred percent typical sales guy. But, but ultimately I do think that's true. I think we can get, even for me, like I'll, I'll jump on a sales call every once in a while and my sales guy will listen to it.
[00:28:54] Travis Weathers: He's like, honestly, you shoulda have had me sell it. Because I just, I get, I care so much about it. I get too deep. Yeah. And now I'm missing what the owner really wants to talk about. Right, right,
[00:29:02] Corey Quinn: right. How many salespeople do you have on the group now?
[00:29:06] Travis Weathers: So now we have two people, one setter, and then we have one closer.
[00:29:11] Travis Weathers: Okay. We just let go of a setter a couple weeks ago and this new closer that we had, he's been working with us since basically November 1st of last year. Okay. Before then we had two salespeople, two basically like a lead salesperson on a closer, and it ended up being too much and they were kind of missing, and so I fired all of 'em and started over with this person.
[00:29:35] Travis Weathers: So, but currently one setter, one closer.
[00:29:37] Corey Quinn: And where's the setter getting their list from?
[00:29:41] Travis Weathers: Currently the, when we were doing well, like, like the things that, that, that seem to like work. They're from our CM right now. Yeah. They're easier sets in a sense that they don't have to go and get a lead and then figure out the contact information.
[00:29:55] Travis Weathers: They're kind of already in there and they're just working the different leads. Right? So one place, one like goldmine if you're not doing this already, is you go look at all your lost, your closed, lost deals that you've had over the last three years. I mean, that is just if you, if you have not done it, it's goldmine.
[00:30:09] Travis Weathers: And so they'll start there. We're always working that, always working that in every way. And then we'll go to our CM because they already know system. We invites, we. To different things that we are doing in the industry. And so it's already a warmer relationship, although it's still cold 'cause they're not asking for SEL right now.
[00:30:28] Corey Quinn: Sure. And your, your closer exclusively just focused on appointments and closing.
[00:30:35] Travis Weathers: They're exclusively focused on making money and closing money. And we're doing, yeah. And when we're doing well, they're focusing on just looking at their calendar, doing prep work and then closing, and then having the call and closing.
[00:30:47] Travis Weathers: Sometimes we get slow and that person is also doing outbound work and calling and working the leads and stuff. Yeah,
[00:30:52] Corey Quinn: and I ask that kind of, kind of knowing that I was kind of tongue in cheek. So the what? What are. And I've heard you speak from stage and when you share about sales, you light up. You love, you love the world of sales.
[00:31:05] Corey Quinn: I think it's 'cause you have a background and that's, it's an area where you have a strong feel. So what are some metrics that you focus the, the sales team on, recommend other agencies focus on as it relates to sort of performance and sales?
[00:31:19] Travis Weathers: Yeah, great. Great question. So few, few things that we focus on.
[00:31:23] Travis Weathers: Number one. Closed deals, closed monthly, reoccurring revenue. It's I, that's almost all I care about is how much you can do with that. Then you go backwards a little bit. The next KPI we focus on is our close rate, and with that we have a KP. That's like how. ICPs, we define the icp, but how many ICPs are we talking to?
[00:31:42] Travis Weathers: Because you may jump on, because we care about the industry. One of another downside about being in the one industry, you can't blow people off because they don't make enough money. I mean, you could, but it doesn't sit well all the time. You still have to have that 10 minute call, 15 minute call. So I, I don't care about those.
[00:31:58] Travis Weathers: I wanna go, if they were qualified to buy from us and they're kind of roughly ready, what's our close rate? And I, I want, I want about 40% to 50%. Per per. Personally, for me, it means we're bringing in the right people. We're talking to the right people. I don't want too much higher. 'cause then it's like maybe we should raise our prices a little bit more.
[00:32:16] Travis Weathers: And I don't want too much lower because we're in one niche. We are the go-to company. So like if we're lower, we're missing something. So I like 40 to 50% as a close ratio. And then I focus on Zoom. Zoom calls or sales pitches. How many did right? A salesperson will always figure out a way to say, oh, this person wasn't qualified.
[00:32:38] Travis Weathers: And it's like, well, you pitched man. So if you pitched, I want to know about it. 'cause we're counting it. If they weren't qualified, you shouldn't have pitched, you know? Right. And so will I will work them on like, Hey, who did you, how many did you pitch? And then how many did you close? How much curring revenue?
[00:32:53] Travis Weathers: That's like the core three that I focus on right now. It's not, it's complicated. I, I'm not as good bepi even though I know there's good.
[00:33:06] Corey Quinn: Very easy. No, I think, well, from, from a sales perspective, no. I love close rate. I love obviously new MRR and, and love new pitches. Like those are, those are foundational, fundamental, like you, as long as you have your finger on the pulse of what's happening there.
[00:33:23] Corey Quinn: There are other metrics that one should look at, like a founder should look at that fall outside of sales, like new leads or kind. Content strategy. Like what, how are we measuring success against that IE podcast or newsletters or things like that?
[00:33:41] Travis Weathers: I would love to kind of hear you on that because one of the things for marketing, because marketing is a fug.
[00:33:46] Travis Weathers: A Fugazi, every time I hire a marketer, they're always trying to blend everything. But one of the things we're trying to do is basically go how many core interactions with our company, whether they open an email, respond to an email. Join a webinar, download a lead list, like how many of those people are in this kind of cesspool in the last 60 days?
[00:34:04] Travis Weathers: And then to grow that number. Yeah. But how would you look at it? Because that's, I agree. That's super core. Yeah. But it's very, I feel like I, I was always taught marketing to sales is very linear and it feels less linear today. Or maybe that's just me.
[00:34:16] Corey Quinn: No, there's, it would be great if someone came in from a Facebook ad, filled out a form, got a sales call, and then bought, right?
[00:34:22] Corey Quinn: Wouldn't that be nice? Oh
[00:34:23] Travis Weathers: yeah. It'd be beautiful. Would tribute? Love it. Facebook
[00:34:24] Corey Quinn: is the, is the source, got the salesperson, gets the commission. The reality is, is that the way people shop today is, let's say in your, in your industry, they may have never heard of you for whatever reason. They go to their conference, they see you on stage, and they probably go to their laptop if they're in market and they say, well, who are these rotate digital guys?
[00:34:43] Corey Quinn: Like, what are these guys about? They may go to your website. And what they're doing is they're, they wanna get to know you. They wanna kind of get, get to understand like, what are you about, what problems do you solve? Who do, who do I know that you've worked with before? And that's usually a good time for them to start binging on your content.
[00:35:02] Corey Quinn: So when you have a webinar or a webinar series, or you have a YouTube channel or a TikTok feed or a newsletter, that's usually where they go, okay, I know I'm gonna be making a change with my agency in the next. 20 to 30 days, or you know, 30 to 60 days. Let me check out, lemme binge some of this, this, this guy's content.
[00:35:22] Corey Quinn: See if I like what he's saying. And if you do the right content, which means that it's a blend between SEO and digital strategy and moving, in your case, you have a nice blend of really relevant high value content where they're learning from you. Maybe they're laughing from the, some of the stuff you put out right.
[00:35:38] Corey Quinn: They enjoy it. Basically at that point, they're gonna become a sales opportunity, whether or not they choose up to.
[00:35:46] Travis Weathers: Yeah. Cool. Yeah, it's, it's, it's very difficult for us now, but one of the things we do is when they hit our website, we do a retargeting ad. Nice. But what's funny is we run the same ad.
[00:35:55] Travis Weathers: Everyone's like, you don't want that to hit more than twice. We have the same ad running for the last year and a half. But what's funny about it is it's become this little thing that everyone talks about now when they, the fire, it's the
[00:36:05] Corey Quinn: fireplace one, right? It's
[00:36:06] Travis Weathers: the fireplace one. Yeah. You even know it.
[00:36:08] Travis Weathers: Honestly. I love it. And, and it's so annoying. I get it. It's annoying, especially if you've seen it 12 times in the last month. But every time I talk to someone, they're like, dude, I always see your fireplace ad I always see you talking about the bad SEO O versus good SEO O. And I was like, honestly, I'll take the win.
[00:36:24] Travis Weathers: Like you're, you're telling me that every time you Yeah, absolutely. I'll take the win. So we'd run that same thing over and over and over again. Yeah.
[00:36:30] Corey Quinn: Yeah. We, we would get a scorpion is if they came to our website, we'd retarget them and of course they. They would be on the New York Times reading an article, or they'd be on their local, you know, Yahoo page and then all, all over our ad would follow them around and they, and they would get on a call with us eventually and they'd say, gosh, you guys are everywhere.
[00:36:49] Corey Quinn: Like you guys are New York Times it. Well, yeah, we have to just remarket. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So remarketing is very important. It's surprising that more agencies don't, don't do that because it is, it's an easy win, I think. But I think, to answer your question, I'm not sure if I answered your question about like attribution and, and the reality is, is that.
[00:37:08] Corey Quinn: Buyers go through multiple touchpoint. It's not linear. It's the opposite of linear. If there was an opposite, right, it's not, it's just, it's just all over the map.
[00:37:16] Travis Weathers: So, which makes it hard to a good marketing person because then they're like, oh, it's, it's.
[00:37:25] Corey Quinn: Well, the way I think about it is as it relates to that comment, is there should be some way for people to get to meet you anonymously IE newsletter or webinar where they could just kind of get a sense for you.
[00:37:36] Corey Quinn: You don't have to do everything, in my opinion. Like you could do a couple things really well. For example, newsletter. Newsletter may be your jam, and that means that you really pour in some good resources into creating a newsletter that's extremely valuable where they're like, I cannot wait till Wednesdays 'cause I'm gonna get their newsletter.
[00:37:52] Corey Quinn: I'm gonna, I'm gonna open it and I'm gonna get some value out of it. Or it's a webinar series, or it is a podcast. The challenge that people get into, and you know this happens a lot, is they try and do a little bit of everything. They have a podcast newsletter, YouTube channel, so on and so forth. And all of it is kind of good, not great.
[00:38:10] Corey Quinn: And that's where, that's where it's easy to ignore and that's where you struggle a little bit.
[00:38:14] Travis Weathers: Yeah. And, and you've got a great podcast and you pour obviously your heart and soul into it. So then it's like, I bet you you've got people coming to you being like, Hey, I wanna work with you. And it's because your podcast.
[00:38:25] Travis Weathers: Yes. Yes. 'cause you're caring so much about it.
[00:38:28] Corey Quinn: What I find is people, well, this is a podcast, and they read the book, right? So they, they do both and on sales calls the best. When they get on, when they get on sales calls, they, they pull up, they, they bring up the book in the camera. They say, I read this book, and it was awesome.
[00:38:40] Corey Quinn: That's usually a big buying signal. So I'm a fan of, that's amazing. Agencies writing books. Have you written a book yet?
[00:38:46] Travis Weathers: No, I we're about to launch one though, so it's Okay. Good. It's, it's not gonna be as great is it about
[00:38:51] Corey Quinn: SEO and movers?
[00:38:52] Travis Weathers: Yeah. It's gonna be somewhere close to that. That's right. Okay, good.
[00:38:56] Travis Weathers: You know, it's, it's more about the, the prettiness and the fake authority, although I do have real authority, I, I, I downplay, I do, I do have real authority in the sense of like, I do know SEO well, I know how to balance it well as an owner and I know in the industry, so I downplay.
[00:39:11] Corey Quinn: Can't wait to get a copy of the book, by the way.
[00:39:13] Travis Weathers: Yeah, I'll, I'll, you know what, just for you, I will sign the copy as well.
[00:39:17] Corey Quinn: Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. I'll put that up here on my bookshelf. How do you approach sales commission? I
[00:39:23] Travis Weathers: feel like how you approach piece, pat, you know, my spot here. So I, generally speaking, pay more to salespeople than I think the average or what, like we were talking about.
[00:39:36] Travis Weathers: I would say that there, there's a, there's a motive going around, at least in the agency space of. Find overseas salespeople, find salespeople that work for free and then get paid commission. I tend to go really, honestly, the way, opposite direction. I find really good people that care, those people who have experience, who have care and wanna like get behind.
[00:39:55] Travis Weathers: Something I have found are people that need a good salary. They need to be like, I need to make this worth my while. And then on top of that, I, I. Pay good commissions off of it. And so I pay a good base salary. That's kind of our structure. Pay a good base salary because it's so critical to the business.
[00:40:10] Travis Weathers: It's such a critical role. And then for our sales commission, we do it like the tax bracket. So if you sell a certain amount of, of monthly reoccurring revenue, you're gonna get a smaller portion of commission on that. And so as you grow that commission, uh, as you grow that monthly sale, and that incentivizes it, urgency.
[00:40:28] Travis Weathers: Then what we basically do is basically say, Hey, as you get into this bracket, now you're getting 50%. And so we incentivize to get good sales in the in the month, but we don't deincentivize a slower month sale. And because we're paying a good salary, they can get through a bad month or two. Because the reality is, again, for at least my type of people, right, your.
[00:40:49] Travis Weathers: 10 million or less, maybe even 5 million or less. You probably don't have so much sales coming in where it's just like you have such a good brand, you have so many sales opportunities, you can kind of play the game. You're kind of sitting here going, man, I live off of reoccurring revenue. My business model is reoccurring, and so when they come in, I need to close it so I pay.
[00:41:07] Travis Weathers: Well, roughly speaking, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's, that's kind the general idea
[00:41:12] Corey Quinn: and what happens if the client churns in three months.
[00:41:15] Travis Weathers: We, so we have a clawback clause, and so I've done it before without it, and it doesn't work as well. And so if they leave within three months, I attribute that to a poor sales engagement.
[00:41:25] Travis Weathers: So my sales person is very clear that the right type of people need to be sold. Well, it's easy to tell a sales person that, right. Sell the right people. Oh, of course, Travis. I'll sell the right people. Yeah. Their paycheck is affected by it. Now they really sell the right people. So within three months, 90 days, if that person has a battle onboarding experience, if they're the wrong person, if they stop paying because they don't have the cash flow, all these things, whatever the reason is, if they don't become a client or, or leave us within 90 days, even if we deem it as like this is a bad client, like they're just horrible to work with, right?
[00:41:59] Travis Weathers: They lose that commission. So a 90 day clawback is what we, what we do for our sales team. We track that and, and just
[00:42:05] Corey Quinn: to, yeah. And just to be clear, is the commission structured that they get a hundred percent of their commission upon sale, or is there some kind of tail where they're earning commission over time or how does that work?
[00:42:16] Travis Weathers: Yeah, good question. So we don't do overtime commissions mainly 'cause it's not their job to keep a client. Their job is to bring in new clients. And so we wanna incentivize on bringing in new clients and the right clients. So we look at that three month window. We don't do recurring. Also, it's a nightmare to track that every single month.
[00:42:32] Travis Weathers: I can't imagine doing that, but yeah, we, we do not do that. It is, it is basically when they sell, they get it the next month. So if they sell on the very last day of the month, they're getting that paycheck of that commission within like. 15 or 20 days where if they sell at the beginning of the month, it's taking like 40, 45 days to get it.
[00:42:48] Travis Weathers: But no matter what, it's the next month that they get paid on that and that's it. It's one time, depending on how much they sold that month, it's a certain portion of that very first month. And then they're done and then they, they walk away, they make their money, they're happy, and they go on to the next group of people.
[00:43:02] Corey Quinn: Got it. And do you guys include setup fees in your pricing? I,
[00:43:08] Travis Weathers: I don't know if you specifically are like pulling this, I don't know if you talked to somebody, but we actually don't include setup fees, but just like a month ago we included it because the salesperson was like, look, I'm in sales and I'm selling a setup fee, and sometimes they don't want to pay it and it's really hard to try to sell it if I don't get a commission off of it.
[00:43:27] Travis Weathers: So now we include set of fees on the commission, and so we include basically everything they sell. Now they get some kind of incentive on it, and. We roll with it.
[00:43:36] Corey Quinn: Yeah. My approach is always you wanna incentivize the behaviors you want. So if you want them to sell the setup fee, give 'em a commission on the I do.
[00:43:44] Travis Weathers: I do. Yeah. Yeah. Hundred percent. I don't want them to sell really small one-off projects, so we give like very little commission for that.
[00:43:52] Corey Quinn: Good. Exactly. Yeah. That's just,
[00:43:54] Travis Weathers: yeah.
[00:43:54] Corey Quinn: Hit 'em in the, in the wallet. They'll pay attention.
[00:43:56] Travis Weathers: Yeah. The paying the salespeople is, is a big portion of our commissions and our salary, but I find it so worth it.
[00:44:02] Travis Weathers: I find it so worth to have a really good person in there than be churning salespeople because that's miserable.
[00:44:08] Corey Quinn: It is miserable. And interestingly, the, the best agencies recognize and sounds, it sounds like you know this as well, that the sales experience of the prospect is part of the product that you're selling.
[00:44:19] Corey Quinn: That's great. They have a wonderful sales. Yeah. If they have a wonderful sales experience, that's gonna give them an idea of how they're gonna be treated as a client. If it's a churn and burn sales experience with someone who is only got the commission breath, right, that's gonna leave a very negative impression on the, on your business ultimately.
[00:44:38] Travis Weathers: Well in, in fact, it kind of bites you both ways because you can have a good salesperson that is, is talking to them all the time, really gets to know their business does so well, and you have to match that with onboarding and as they become a client, because sometimes we've had clients be like, man, and, and right now our salesperson's, Joey does a great job.
[00:44:54] Travis Weathers: Joey's so good. He was asking all these questions. Then they get onboarding. It's like, here's a form, fill out the form. You know, Hey, here's this. Can you call me a couple times? Yeah. Can you, you know what happened to Joey and they're like, what happened to Joey? You know, and so we're really working on our onboarding to be like, how do we meet them right after that?
[00:45:11] Travis Weathers: Call 'em a couple times. Call 'em right after they buy. Text them. Tell 'em congrats. Send them some cookies. Someone told me that cookies really works well in the agency space. We send cookies now for everything. Hi guys. Yeah, you, you, you have increased my marketing budget with purely crumble cookies all, all over the.
[00:45:31] Corey Quinn: Do you productize your services? Like do you have like a, like a good, better, best in the sales process, or is it more of a consultative kind of based on what you told us, this is what the plan is, or somewhere in the middle.
[00:45:43] Travis Weathers: I would argue now it's probably a little bit more in the middle than it used to be.
[00:45:47] Travis Weathers: Um, the last three, four years, basically we've had like bronze, silver, gold, right? Right. Yeah. Diamond, platinum, you know, the whole thing. And what we, at least in our industry, for us personally, what we have found is it became restrictive. And so what we ended up doing was we broke down what we actually do with the client.
[00:46:06] Travis Weathers: Right? We have a focus on, on Google business profiles, right. A company can come to us with 10 different Google business profiles, four of 'em needing a ton of work, five of 'em needing like no work right? Or whatever. And so, and then their SERP results are really good, but, or whatever the re And so what we've done is instead of saying Go, you know, here's your one productized service, you pick and choose, we've actually broken it out and said, alright, what's your budget?
[00:46:31] Travis Weathers: What is the need? We have a baseline and we have let's included in the baseline. And then it's like, do we want to be aggressive SEO on this? Local Google business profile? No, not so much because it's got good results. Let's go moderate or none. Right. Okay. What about this one? And then based off that, a pricing comes out of it, and so we have found two things to come really nicely from that.
[00:46:49] Travis Weathers: Number one, people actually spend more money with us. Our average ticket has gone through the roof, not through the roof. Beautiful. It's gone up. Because we're giving them the freedom to spend what they wanna spend, which has been amazing. Yes. And two, we ultimately can do more with their money. Where beforehand we were taking their money restricting the productized, productized service to Right.
[00:47:09] Travis Weathers: These
[00:47:09] Corey Quinn: pre prefab buckets that, yeah.
[00:47:11] Travis Weathers: Yeah. And then we, and then we almost wasteful, I wouldn't call it wasteful, especially if a client's listening, but, but we can do more now. So, yeah, so it's kind of in the middle where we, where we don't productize to the extreme, but we, we don't just be like, every business is custom, even though the execution is custom.
[00:47:27] Travis Weathers: So we, we customize the execution. You're like, Travis, that's so cool. I love that. That's a long story for not that much information here.
[00:47:34] Corey Quinn: No, no, I, I, I think that's great. I think the default in the industry that we live in is good, better, best. And then the challenge of course,
[00:47:44] Corey Quinn: business. Is in a position where they have to make a, a, an important decision about their business without understanding the nuances between the bronze, silver, and gold. So yeah, I always recommend doing a single solution that's based on what they told you, like the outcomes that they want. You want these outcomes, it's gonna be this price, and this is the, the scope.
[00:48:05] Corey Quinn: I
[00:48:07] Travis Weathers: again, wish I would've talked to you two years ago because I wish we did this sooner. I know. Where was I? Yeah, where, where have you been man?
[00:48:14] Corey Quinn: We're we're together now. So it's all,
[00:48:16] Travis Weathers: yeah, exactly. Well, and, and the other thing I would say too, something like if you're listening, you're trying to get this implemented, you're doing sales.
[00:48:23] Travis Weathers: One of the things that we've really actually worked on communicating is cash flow. So we really like talk to them more than we ever have before. What are you willing to spend? And everyone always answers the question by going, well, as long as I get a return, I'll spend whatever. Right? And you really have to, yeah, endless amounts.
[00:48:39] Travis Weathers: It's like, so we actually fight that in the sales call now and we go, great. Well, here's how SEO works. What can you afford right now? You can always spend more with us. We're always gonna be here. What can you afford now? Can you afford spending for nine months without getting a return? Not saying you won't get a return, but you need to go into this relationship where you can afford this.
[00:49:00] Travis Weathers: Able to get a range of what they can do and then we start there and then we can always upsell later and do the whole thing. That's so good. So talking about business cash flow is so good in our sales process now.
[00:49:09] Corey Quinn: Yeah. That also, that also prevents or limits buyer's remorse where they were like, ah, that Joey guy got me, got me signed up for this thing, I can't even afford it.
[00:49:18] Corey Quinn: How did that happen?
[00:49:19] Travis Weathers: Exactly Right. And that is where you have nightmare of an agency to fulfill.
[00:49:29] Corey Quinn: We are running short on time, Travis, and this is a great conversation. We could probably have, uh, part two, maybe in a part three. Maybe. We'll, we'll do a little, a popup session in San Diego.
[00:49:39] Travis Weathers: Yeah. Inside the airplane.
[00:49:41] Corey Quinn: Yes, in the air.
[00:49:43] Travis Weathers: Let's go. Yes, we should too. Good.
[00:49:46] Corey Quinn: How long would it take to fly from where you are in Arizona to Los Angeles?
[00:49:51] Travis Weathers: Angeles, two hours to Los Angeles, san and a half. So when we're in San Diego in a month and a half, no. Yeah. And half.
[00:50:05] Corey Quinn: Awesome. So couple final questions as we wrap up here. So what would be your partying advice to either the, the younger version of you that was just starting out? Who's looking to scale or, you know, the, the, the agency founder who has been struggling with scaling and they, they just need some good advice.
[00:50:21] Corey Quinn: Like, what, where, where should they, where should they go? What should they
[00:50:23] Travis Weathers: do? I don't know how tactical or inspirational, but I would, I would say one thing I would say to my old self that I wish I knew a little sooner is. Think through how to stop checking boxes. For agencies, again, you're an agency owner, how to really start thinking about how to stop checking boxes and how to create value for your customer and your client.
[00:50:47] Travis Weathers: And I, and that's, and I get that. That is so like, oh yeah, you know, you, you say that, but really sitting down and be like, what does the customer need? Talking to the customer and be like, yes, you need SEO. Yes, we're gonna, we're gonna do that, but what do you need specifically? That opens up a much more intimate conversation.
[00:51:02] Travis Weathers: You start learning what they need and you start becoming more valuable. We, we are, we launch things now, not even to add to our monthly reoccurring revenue, but just to add, so we just have a little bit more value to them. We have a little bit more grasp on them working with us. So really, really sitting down and be like, what are we doing that's just checking the boxes and how do we actually move forward from that?
[00:51:22] Travis Weathers: Because we've drastically changed in the last year how we do SEO by thinking how do we not just check the box of. On page work and how do we really execute real value and measure that value for our client? So I would, I would argue that high level, that would be a great way that I wish somebody told me three years ago.
[00:51:40] Corey Quinn: I love that and, and I would encourage folks to apply that to their own sales and marketing as well. Don't just have a blog or have a podcast and check the box. Like, what, what are we doing to actually provide value in the market?
[00:51:50] Travis Weathers: Exactly. Yeah. Again, how do we, you could argue because we are limited, how do you do less better?
[00:51:57] Travis Weathers: Right? As one, my mentor says this, how can you do less but do it better and get better results and better outcomes? Yeah.
[00:52:03] Corey Quinn: Final question, what's your motivation?
[00:52:10] Travis Weathers: A lot of motivations. I don't like working for people. I like being the boss, so that's motivating. I like flying airplanes. They're expensive. That's motivating. And I really do like what I do. And so to be able to create a life, to, to be able to go, I wanna do something. I want to be home with my family. I want to fly airplanes, I want own a hanger, I want to, you know, whatever the case may be, to be able to just kind of pick and choose and go.
[00:52:37] Travis Weathers: Leveraging the value of business. I love that. So that really does motivate me, is that freedom to be with my family if I choose, go focus on something else. I love business. And so business is part of my motivation. I love helping people. So I think a real, a real honest answer is the freedom to kind of do what I want, whether it's buying something, whether it's being with my family, whether it's being more involved in something, or the freedom of just being the boss and not having to, you know.
[00:53:02] Travis Weathers: Tell somebody when I'm gonna come to work or whatever, so
[00:53:04] Corey Quinn: that's awesome. Well, I wanna congratulate you on all the success in building up a business that has created that freedom that you're looking for, obviously and, and continues to do so. Where can people reach out to you and find out more about you, maybe connect.
[00:53:18] Travis Weathers: I'd say two places. Instagram at Travis Weathers would be a great place to find me. And then Travis weathers.com. I'm trying to start posting more valuable, very tactical. I'm not very inspirational. I'm very tactical. Tactical, like things that you can do and growing a group of community, of of agency owners that want to kind of cut through the noise and the BS of agency space and really sit down, be better business owners, be make better foundational business decisions.
[00:53:45] Travis Weathers: So beautiful. That's
[00:53:47] Corey Quinn: thanks for joining.
[00:53:48] Travis Weathers: I appreciate you having me. It means a lot. You're doing such good impact in this community and I appreciate,
[00:53:54] Corey Quinn: appreciate you as well. Thanks.
[00:53:56] Travis Weathers: Thank you. Bye.
[00:53:57] Corey Quinn: Thanks for tuning in to the Deep Specialization Podcast. If you haven't checked out my bestselling book, anyone, not everyone, you can download the audiobook for free right now by going to anyone, not everyone.com.
[00:54:10] Corey Quinn: That's anyone, not everyone.com. And finally, a special thank you to our sponsor, E two M. We'll see you in the next episode.
