[00:00:00] Corey: Today I'm joined by Ryan GSKi. Welcome, Ryan.
[00:00:20] Ryan: Hey, Corey. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:22] Corey: I am super excited that you're here.
I can't wait to share your, or give you, you know, give you a platform to share your story [00:00:30] with the audience here. I think you have a super interesting, background in business. but to kick things off, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work you do?
[00:00:37] Ryan: Yeah, I'm the founder of 180 Sitesthat is a productize web design service.
And so we take web design and package it up into predefined, predefined scopes with predefined prices and, sell it as is. and our goal is to provide high quality agency level work, but not the. Super high price tag. So targeting like [00:01:00] lower end to middle of the market, for those guys that would like a really high quality site, but can't afford that 20, price tag.
[00:01:08] Corey: Sure. And just for the context of the listeners, what could you share about the, maybe the of clients or the revenue, the size
[00:01:15] Ryan: of your business? Yeah, so we're, around. Active clients right now is about five 20 ish. everything is, a monthly recurring.
And so, right now we're at about like one 15, a month in monthly revenue, and over a hundred [00:01:30] of that is just recurring revenue from the contracts of our website
services.
[00:01:35] Corey: Got it. So 115,000 in monthly recurring.
[00:01:38] Ryan: Yes. we did one 15 last month and, some of that, you know, is from like, add-on services, but over a hundred K of it is just from the website subscriptions.
That's
[00:01:48] Corey: beautiful. And, tell us about your role there as the founder. What is your, what's your
[00:01:52] Ryan: day-to-day like? right now my, my day-to-day is a little hectic. My, manager is out on, paternity leave right now. So [00:02:00] manning the ship by myself, in general, just overseeing, the business from a higher level, and just making sure everything's operating smoothly.
My, operations manager, my project managers, my support team, they all do a great job and for the most part, I'm hands off and just, making sure fires are being put out, making sure clients are staying happy.
Awesome.
[00:02:20] Corey: Awesome. that's the right place for the founder to be.
what's the origin story of 180 sites? Like how did you get started?
[00:02:26] Ryan: What's the background there?
Yeah, so 180 [00:02:30] Sites was born out of kind of a crappy situation. got into this out of necessity. So I used to run an exterior cleaning company about six years ago, and I also used to teach juujitsu.
that was my day-to-day life. Go to the gym, teach juujitsu, then clean windows or gutters or, solar panels during the day. Then go back to the gym at night and teach jitsu again. And, it was an awesome life. but I had multiple back and neck surgeries and so both of those things I [00:03:00] could not do any longer.
And so while I was trying to figure out what to do, with the, cleaning company and keep that running, I on the side started helping out some other, peers, other colleagues, companies that had cleaning companies, helping them with their marketing. Their website, anything that I could do just on the side while I was pretty much, bedridden for like six months.
and that started to take off and I just started getting a lot of referrals from that and saw, hey, this is[00:03:30] a better, you know, industry, better service for me to be doing. Then this local, cleaning company that's limited in scale. I could serve people all around the world. and I, don't have to do.
you know, laborious work. This sounds great. So I just started to shift more into 180 sites and, exited out of the cleaning company and went full-time about five years ago with it.
That's awesome.
[00:03:52] Corey: And I want to kind of unpack a little bit about the journey from helpingother, exterior [00:04:00] cleaning businesses and pressure washing businesses with their marketing and how that evolved into a productized service.
But before we get there, do you focus your business today on a vertical, on a segment, an industry, or do you, do you work with businesses of any shapes and
[00:04:15] Ryan: size?
Yeah, so we definitely have some core niches. in general, our messaging and our product is geared toward the home service industry as a whole.
Mm-hmm. And within the home service industry, we, we [00:04:30] do work with tons of different, Industries, but mostly exterior cleaning, so pressure washing, window cleaners, and lighting companies. So Christmas lighting, landscape lighting, and house cleaning. Those are probably the main three categories, but anything, home service, roofing, electrician, you name it, it has to do with the home service.
We are probably building sites for those industries.
[00:04:53] Corey: Were you always focused on those industries or did that evolve over time?
[00:04:57] Ryan: it just naturally developed, from my [00:05:00] connections and in history with the, the cleaning industry and then, from referrals, and other people that were targeting that industry that I became close with.
it just started to expand in, in, into that niche and that just kind of happened organically there.
[00:05:16] Corey: And so at that time, were you servicing people inside that niche as well as outside that niche? Or was it just kind of more, like you said organically those people had the need and you were just focused on them
[00:05:26] Ryan: from the start?
so definitely [00:05:30] in the beginning was taking any kind of work I possibly could. So. Yeah, it was all over the place. but yeah, just over time, focusing our efforts on these core niches, that's pretty much all we do now is like 99% of the work is, is within the home service industry.
What
[00:05:46] Corey: about at that time when you were starting to move into home services?
what was going on in the business that it made sense for you to focus on, let's say the home service industry in general versus just continue to work with various different types of [00:06:00] companies, regardless of their industry.
[00:06:01] Ryan: it became a lot easier just organically, targeting that, industry.
I came from that industry so I can. Kind of speak the lingo, with, with customers and build rapport there. as it, started to snowball, it just exponentially became more and more, attraction in that niche. So, you know, people would hear about us, a lot on Facebook or from trade shows or industry groups.
we're, our name's getting thrown around a lot. They're seeing all these, sites that they [00:06:30] like within their industry. They're seeing all these video reviews from people within their industry. And so it just kind of organically happened to where we became somewhat of a, of an authority in that space and that lended itself toward attracting those types of people.
Sure.
[00:06:45] Corey: that makes a lot of sense. And how important is it that, is coming from the industry? How has that had an impact on your ability to sell into this, the home services
[00:06:54] Ryan: industry?
It, it definitely made things easier for me. I. It, it just helps build [00:07:00] rapport. but even if you're not, like, say I was targeting lawyers or I was targeting dentists, I would just try to engulf myself as much as possible into that niche.
Learn about what they do, like become an expert in that space, whether you have any history in it or not. and, and that will definitely position you as an authority and people know, like, and trust you in that industry. So, Yeah, it just came organically and easily for me. but no matter what you're targeting, you can [00:07:30] develop that, and be able to speak their language.
Yeah. And,
[00:07:34] Corey: so to kind of feed that back so you don't, it sounds like you're, from your perspective, you don't need to have a background in an industry to become a, sort of an authority or an expert as long as you spend enough time in that industry learning about them and caring, about their, solving their problems, those type of things.
[00:07:50] Ryan: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. there's an agency, and the founder, he primarily targets roof, roofing contractors, and he holds like seminars [00:08:00] at his office, all about roofing. He's going to all the, the roofing, the shingle suppliers. Like he's totally engrossed in, in this roofing industry, but he has no history at all, in, in the roofing industry.
That's just the niche that he fell into and. He's gone a hundred percent into educating himself and, getting engrossed in, the roofing industry.
Super interesting.
[00:08:22] Corey: and so in the early days you were building this, business, you got some traction in the home services industry.
[00:08:27] Ryan: You had your relationships in the, home [00:08:30] cleaning sort of segment. what did you do to build as you realized like, Hey, I wanna, I wanna grow this, and this is, you know, you, you went full-time five years ago, like. What, what did you do at that point to kind of build the business and, and build So, from my perspective, what it seemed like was people weren't really searching for this type of, product and service that I offer. It seemed more so that they would upon our services from either a referral or looking at other people in their industry. And so from early on, [00:09:00] I saw that it would be difficult for me to leverage outbound.
although I, I think that would be, it's, it's still a fantastic way to attract customers, but I just saw that's probably gonna be a little bit more difficult. So how can I facilitate my customers to be raving fans for me and get me tons of referrals? And so from the very beginning, I was really obsessive about, my customers and just getting to be [00:09:30] friends with all of them, sending them gifts for no reason at all, like going on their Facebook page, seeing what they're interested in, and getting them a hundred dollars gift that's, you know, related to their hobby or something in their life and just, That would freak them out.
just, you know, unprompted getting this gift in the mail. And the way I saw it was one, I just wanna do this in general, but two, most likely they're going to reciprocate and the referrals that I will get are worth way more than the a hundred dollars gift that I sent this [00:10:00] person. So, that's something that I've always focused on and, you know, we do a lot of touch points like, Every single customer gets a gift.
they get, when they sign up, they get a box full of treats, and that's all automated periodically throughout the year. They might get handwritten cards or other sort of things, just, really making them feel loved and, and valued. So that's one way was, getting started was really just focusing on customer referrals and doing everything I possibly could to incentivize and, and [00:10:30] make people want to, to help me out.
They're saying
[00:10:33] Corey: I love, which is go, you gotta go slow to go fast. Right? at, at my last agency I was a chief marketing officer at a company called Scorpion, and we would do gifting as well. Similar in, in that, we were targeting attorneys, let's say at the time. but, For attorneys, we would get lists of attorneys and ones that we believed were the good fit for Scorpion, and we would send them out of the blue.
they wouldn't hear from us. They just kinda outta the blue. We'd send them a gift, and in [00:11:00] many cases it was a box of gourmet cookies. Mm-hmm. And what we found was by, sending the cookies into the law firm, the cookies would arrive in a, in a FedEx box and a beautiful presentation, the, the cookies would arrive and.
Ultimately end up in the, in the break room where the, the gatekeeper who were trying to influence, at the law firm, the secretary or whomever, would be in the break room with the attorney. And everybody would be talking about like, who brought these cookies? Like, where did these cookies come from?
Mm-hmm. Cause everyone was talking about Scorpion. Right. [00:11:30] And then the next time the sales team would call, the whole tone and the energy of the gatekeeper completely changed from resistance. Like, you know, being a true gatekeeper to, oh, you're calling from Scorpion. You guys are the ones who attempted cookies.
Hold on, let me get the attorney on the phone. Yeah.
[00:11:50] Ryan: I'm
[00:11:50] Corey: a big fan of that approach. Yeah, it's an easy hack. It's kind of a little bit counterintuitive, but, I love that you're doing that. And so as a result of this, This amazing sort of [00:12:00] personalized approach and, and very centered. you seem to be a very nice, friendly person, caring person.
So all of that ultimately translated into, hey, you're solving our problems, you and your client's from a client's perspective. You're solving our problems. You're creating a great effortless website that looks great, and by the way, you're showering us with gifts. you know, let me, let me do my part and let me help spread the good word
[00:12:20] Ryan: type of thing.
Is that fair?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, for those listening, it doesn't even have to be something expensive or any research done. [00:12:30] You could just make like some nice wooden coasters with their logo on it, or a Yeti mug with their logo on it. you know, 30, 50 bucks. and that's gonna make them feel amazing, and that's something they're gonna use every day.
So don't send them, you know, crap with your logo on it. I, I guess you could. It's not. You're sending 'em free stuff. But if you're gonna take the time to send 'em something that they're gonna use every day, put their logo on it. And they're always gonna be thinking about you. Even though they're seeing their logo, they know who gave it to 'em.
[00:12:58] Corey: That's right. And chances are, if [00:13:00] it's, if your logo is on it, they're probably not gonna be using it every day. Exactly. Even if it is a Yeti. Yes. Totally. Totally on the same page as you as when it comes to that. What, what would you say, sort of looking back now, you built this business.
you're doing great, you're providing great value. what would you say, you know, what impact has? Specializing in home services in general, but let's say pressure washing, home cleaning, and the other sort of segments you mentioned, how is that like being a specialist in [00:13:30] these areas impacted your ability to attract more of those type of businesses?
In other words, does being a specialist help you to grow your business in your
[00:13:38] Ryan: opinion?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, you think about it, you're on sales call with somebody and they're asking, you know, what can you do for me? You're like, not only do I specifically work for your industry, but I've done exactly what you need.
I've solved your problem for 500 other people just like you. Yes. And so whether you're probably gonna be [00:14:00] better at solving that problem because you are specialized in it. But let's say that's not even the case. Maybe you're just like kind of okay at what you do, and there's another company that's way better at Whatever you're offering, but you are telling the market you solve this problem just for these people, the perceived value of you solving that problem is infinitely higher than the other guy who may be better than you. But he's just not telling people that he solves that problem for those people. He's, you know, a generalist.[00:14:30]
so it just makes it a no-brainer for people to work with you because you are one, you're connecting with them. You're, proving that you've had success in this industry, and the biggest thing is just giving them peace of mind. It's a no-brainer for them to work with you because you solve their specific problem for people just like them.
that can help you charge higher prices, that can help you increase your, close rate, everything. And fulfilling that work is gonna be immensely easier too, because you're not reinventing the wheel over and over. you're just working for these types of [00:15:00] people all the time. Yeah. So you know them very well.
Your team knows them very well. They all have the same five or six problems that happen and you know how to solve those very easily.
[00:15:08] Corey: So, you're, preaching to the choir right here. we'll get into the productization of the delivery and, and, and your entire go-to market here. I, I think that that's super, compelling for the listeners.
but first I wanted to, I noticed on your website, so 180 sites.com,on the homepage above the fold, the sort of the, the headline is that you, you signal that you work with service companies. And, [00:15:30] but you have a concentration in a couple different segments within, the service-based businesses, which is the, the three that you mentioned earlier.
how do you know, like how niche to get on your materials in order to convey that specialization, that, and that, hey, we truly understand your unique problems. Like at what altitude do you, you know, have you taken as it relates to messaging and, and how have you navigated that over time?
[00:15:52] Ryan: Yeah, we probably should push a little bit harder into driving, the visitor onto the site, into a specific landing page [00:16:00] that's just speaking about their industry. We do have a lot of those pages just on the back end of our site for seo, but that is something I need to work on and do a better job at.
for us, particularly though, since we're only offering web design, I think, for us, I do wanna work with a, a lot more people. I want to have more scale, and the only way I'm gonna do that is if I get into more industries or within still the service based industry types or offer more services.
And so [00:16:30] I'm kind of at a crossroads here and that. Mm-hmm. Do I wanna go. more narrow and just go up the, you know, up the vertical upstream to, you know, bigger businesses and offer more services to them. Or do I want to keep this just our core competency just doing web design, but get into more, more industries that we're gonna serve?
I think. For an agency similar to ours, but they, maybe they do seo, Facebook ads, Google Ads. If you're offering a lot of different services, I think you need to go even [00:17:00] further narrow in your niche, because you're dealing with now many different problems. You're dealing with problems in different channels of marketing and, and web design, and so, By focusing on just a smaller area, in the market, you can solve those problems better.
For me, I'm only solving the problem of websites, the user experience, conversion optimization. And with websites it's fundamentally the same thing, whether it's a, a plumber or a pressure washer or a roofer, [00:17:30] or an electrician. and so I think with what I do, because what I do is limited, I'm only offering one service.
I can. Provide a good service to more people. But if I was doing more marketing services, I would go further inward and, and go, you know, niche down further into one specific, one specific area. Yeah. So for home service, probably still stick with pressure washing and maybe one or two other, two other services and just hone in on that.
but [00:18:00] for now we're, we are targeting a lot of different service based businesses. I kind went on a spiel there, so if you wanna Yeah. You know, make it more nuanced, let me know.
Yeah,
[00:18:10] Corey: no. So I think it's exactly the right, conversation, which is, That as you begin to, let's say, saturate a niche, you have to decide, as you said, you know, do we, continue selling more services to our current client base, or do we find another sort of vertical to apply that, you know, our core product.
do you have a sense for how big of a [00:18:30] market the, let's say pressure washing as an example, do you know how many pressure washing businesses are out there in the US today? Have
[00:18:37] Ryan: sense of it?
I knew this number a while ago, but it's lost on me. there's a lot. because the barrier to entry is really low to start that, that type of company, you don't have to have specialized knowledge.
You don't have to have certifications. you do need some equipment, but you can get started pretty minimally with that. And so, for us, because The way our, our services are priced, we [00:19:00] are targeting kind of the low to the middle of the market. And so pressure washing's a great industry for us because there's tons of them.
They're popping up new businesses all the time. especially during C O I D, a lot of new pressure washing companies popped up and, um, they can get started working with us even if they don't have a, you know, a lot of revenue yet, because we do price it in an affordable and easy way for them.
I don't know the exact number, but it's, it's a pretty large market. I'm gonna look into that after, after this call.
[00:19:29] Corey: you know, [00:19:30] great resource for that. It's a free resources company. It, it's a website called Ibis World, I b i s world I use that all the time, as well as I share that with my clients and, and guests of the podcast and the listeners here.
It's a great free resource to give you a, at least a thumbnail sketch of how big. a vertical is, and you know, that will also help you to, potentially understand like how saturated or you know, how much of the market you have. Mm-hmm. So if you have 500 clients, but the, the total adjustable market is 10,000, well you've got, a fairly [00:20:00] large size of that market.
And, that could be a signal to your earlier point, to, do we diversify at this point or do we, stay the course, so, [00:20:30] [00:21:00]
let's shift a little bit to marketing. you mentioned outbound that it's not been something you've truly focused on, but inbound through, it sounds like a lot of word of mouth, has been really important.
what role does sort of referrals play in your overall
[00:21:21] Ryan: go-to market?
Yeah, so referrals do make up the majority of our leads. really, customer referral and agency referral. So our [00:21:30] customers do refer us, a whole lot, and very, very grateful for that. We're really lucky and blessed. and I've also spent a lot of time fostering relationships with other companies that do something related to, a website.
Maybe it's a marketing company that offers seo. They offer Google ads or Facebook ads. Maybe they even offer web design, but it's not their forte. I've made a lot of relationships with those types of agencies. a lot of them are, just in informal, like. Reciprocal. I help them out. They help me out.
There's not really an [00:22:00] official affiliate partnership with them. And then there are some that I do have, official affiliate partnership with. So, that's, that makes up a lot of our, leads that we get. and so agency partners, other software companies, CRM or booking softwares, logo designers,
print shops, all kinds of different, companies that are serving businesses and they see a need that their customer needs a website, and I get a lot of referrals from those types of vendors.
So
[00:22:26] Corey: let's say an agency is listening right now. what problem does partnering with you [00:22:30] solve for them?
[00:22:31] Ryan: yeah, if you're an agency and you either don't offer web design or. web design's just not your primary product that you're selling. or it is just maybe you're priced, you know, at a, luxury end of the market and, somebody can't afford your services. I think, you know, I could be helpful to you, to your customers.
you could just send an email to me, introduce me, to, your customer or to this prospect, and I could pay you for sending me an email.
[00:22:58] Corey: Beautiful. I love [00:23:00] that. What about conferences? Do you get involved in any home services conferences? I think you mentioned something about that earlier. Do you do any, do you attend, do you speak or how does that play a
[00:23:07] Ryan: part?
Yeah, so it's not as big of a focus as it, it probably should be, that moving forward, I just got a new manager running the company for me, so freed up a lot of my time. Probably gonna focus nice more on, on doing more conventions, but we do anywhere from like two or three a year. and sometimes they're extremely successful, sometimes not so much.
I [00:23:30] think speaking at the event is, a pretty big deal as far as the potential for success at, at these events. So not all the time do I get to, but if I, if I am able to speak, it does, it does help a lot. And people will just flock over to your booth if, if you're speaking at any event.
[00:23:46] Corey: How do you know which conferences are the right ones to go
[00:23:48] Ryan: to?
So I've only gone to ones in our main niche for pressure washing. Mm-hmm. And so the ones that have stuck around, been around for years that have pretty large attendance. [00:24:00] And I'm also seeing other little businesses like mine going to, those are typically the ones I, I like to go after. as far as doing just cold research,
I'd probably just look at their website, see their track record, see what names are going to these events, who the speakers are, who the vendors are, how large the attendance is. you definitely don't wanna, take three, four or five days outta your week, go to a show and there's, not many people there or those people there don't have money to spend.
so you definitely [00:24:30] should do, do some research before going to any. Convention and, and making that investment.
So,
[00:24:35] Corey: one more thing on sales and marketing, what role does sort of word of mouth play in your, marketing? You said, referrals and incentivized and un incentivized referrals as well as your clients, How important is word of mouth for your business, number one. Number two is, when did that become a meaningful part of your business? And at what point in your journey in, let's say the last five years, did word of mouth really, help the company to
[00:24:56] Ryan: accelerate growth?
I think from the beginning it has [00:25:00] been, the core methodology of, of customer acquisition for us.
I think at least in An agency perspective, once you hit the hundred client threshold, I think that's where it starts to really take off. Your clients are gonna refer you. the relationships you've made with everyone in this industry that you've accumulated a hundred customers in are gonna refer you.
And for us particularly as well, we have a hundred sites out there with a tiny little, Mention of web design by 180 sites [00:25:30] in the footer. And so that helps get a lot of customers as well. And the more and more customers you have, if you are a web design agency, you know, having that web designed by your name will help attract a lot of people to you.
Because especially if you're working with people that are, role models in an industry, like people look up to them, they, they're very successful, they want to emulate their success and. Obviously their hard work and determination is what got them there, but a lot of people looking at them just want to figure out what are you doing?
[00:26:00] What marketing are you doing? Who's doing your website? I just want to emulate everything you're doing and hopefully that will help me get to where you are. And so yeah, those, those footer links, definitely help attract a lot of people to us as well. Which they're not referrals, but they, they kind of are.
Yeah,
[00:26:15] Corey: no, they're, they're soft referrals for sure. I experienced that as well. At Scorpion, we would design, every new client had a website. We had at the end of the day when I left the company, 14,000 clients, those a 14,000 websites with our logo at the bottom of them. And I can, [00:26:30] uh, test that. They are a fantastic, source of inbounds.
yes. When it comes to hiring for your team, I know you have, a relatively light team in terms of numbers, which I think is fantastic. Do you find that you have to hire people with a home services sort of background? Or does that not really play a part in, your hiring
[00:26:46] Ryan: process? Yeah, I don't think it plays a part.
if I were hiring a salesperson, I think it would definitely be a plus to have that. I don't think you as the owner need to have any sort of background or your team, just be focused [00:27:00] on educating yourself and. engrossing yourself in your customer's world. Yeah.
[00:27:05] Corey: Let's jump into the productized aspect of your product.
So, share with us a little bit about what, what is included in a typical sort of, you know, product for your clients.
What does that include?
[00:27:15] Ryan: So kind of give you a little background as well of. What's included and then how it's being sold to them. It's, it's a lot different than, what you would normally see.
So, as you know, coming from Scorpion, probably nine outta 10 times. a company that's selling websites, they're gonna [00:27:30] sell the website to them upfront. And so you're gonna spend on the low end, probably a few thousand dollars on the high end, you know, multiple tens of thousands of dollars to get a website.
And then they're gonna hand that off to you and you go your separate ways, and hopefully you love it. Hopefully it does a good job for you. or maybe they will host and manage the website for you, but, Then you're gonna pay an additional monthly cost on top of that really large investment you just made.
and then on the other end of the spectrum, it's pretty rare, but there are some companies that will [00:28:00] sell web design, as a service, and there's no signup fees. There's just a low cost monthly payment. But typically those are. Built on proprietary platforms, and they never have ownership of it. They never have full access to it.
It's just basically a website rental, almost like you're paying for software every month and you stop paying. Then there goes your website. And so what we try to do is give, the best of both of these worlds and that we'll build a site for them on WordPress. they get that website up front, it's theirs and they can slowly pay it [00:28:30] off over time.
And so all of our packages are based on a 24 month payment plan. And so rather than forking up all that cash upfront, they can get this asset that's gonna help their business, help them get more leads. And our goal is to just give you this asset that really pays for itself each month. and during those 24 months, they're gonna get hosting maintenance, unlimited updates, support.
You know, the whole shebang, all that's included for free in that package. After 24 months, their contract's paid off. and they can take their site and leave if they want [00:29:00] to, or if they wanna stay with us for all the same benefits and services, they'll just be month to month at that point and it automatically drops their price down.
[00:29:08] Corey: Did you, have you always taken sort of this productized. 24 month, approach to selling websites or did that evolve over time?
[00:29:18] Ryan: Yeah, so really early on I did start with selling the websites on a monthly plan. I started at 12 months, and then just one day switched it to 24 and nobody batted an eye.
[00:29:30] and so it's, it's stayed at 24 since then. I did go through a little bit of a season of changing. I didn't have a ton of progression with it. And also starting out, if you don't have capital, that's a really hard model to work with in the beginning because you're gonna service all these, these customers and you're not getting much money at all in the beginning.
I switched over to doing an upfront model. I saw, I'm. Really the odd one out here doing this monthly model, maybe I'm an idiot. so I switched over to [00:30:00] doing the regular agency model for a little bit of a time, and then, I noticed it was much harder to sell the sites that way, and I got all these leads, but not closing a ton of 'em.
So I switched back to the, the monthly model. And those are extremely easy to sell. most of the time me or my team don't even have a sales call. people just reach out and they tell us which package they want, and they sign up.
[00:30:22] Corey: What does
productizing this service and, and, and making it sort of more of a what, maybe a subscription basis, what does that make easier [00:30:30] for a business owner
[00:30:31] Ryan: like yourself?
Well, once you've got the ball rolling, you've got your recurring revenue built up. it is amazing as a small business owner, to just have that peace of mind knowing. No matter what, at the end of the day, I've got this guaranteed amount of income and that can help you,
be more predictable with what you're gonna, the moves you're gonna make moving forward.
So, you know, you have this amount, of capital to spend. you're gonna be bringing on team members or, reinvesting more into marketing. You have a better understanding. [00:31:00] You're not dependent on the future jobs coming in to pay for those things. For me, I just love
the peace of mind that I could,
not sell another website, for quite a while.
I just wanna take the next month off, not sell anything, and I'm still gonna make six figures in revenue with, with everything that we've just built up every month.
Is
[00:31:19] Corey: there anything that productizing a service like the one you have? is there anything that makes it harder by doing that?
Like what, becomes harder?
[00:31:26] Ryan:
I think, as long as you do it correctly, I don't [00:31:30] think really anything becomes harder. You might potentially, like for example, with ours, our packages, if there's a really, really big customer with custom needs, we can make a proposal for them, do something outside the norm of these predefined packages.
But maybe they come to our site and that's all they see and they think. We're not a fit, they're not gonna serve me. And so potentially I'm excluding one or 2% of people that might wanna work with me. But the other 98% makes it [00:32:00] incredibly easier to do. It's easier to sell, it's easier to fulfill, it's easier to retain clients.
Everything just becomes easier with a productized model.
[00:32:10] Corey: And you mentioned there's a, some percentage of the, new clients come directly through the website and then some they want to talk to you. how does that breakdown between the two?
[00:32:19] Ryan: so on our site, we just direct everybody to a really short form, to start the conversation and we'll typically send, a video to them with some [00:32:30] information.
most of the time we, we'll try to, if we have the time, To make a custom little two, three minute video for every new lead. If that's not the case, maybe it's really late at night or something, and we just wanna respond. We have some pre-made videos and we'll just put their name on there and make it look like this was made for them.
and just start the conversation and ask them which package they want. and most of the time they will say, this is the package I want. And we send them a signup link and they onboard themselves. every once in a while. There are people that [00:33:00] just say, Hey, I wanna get on the phone with you. So we just schedule a sales call then.
But if they're just going through our process, we're not encouraging a sales call per se. Sure.
[00:33:11] Corey: It's one of the benefits I would argue of, of having a prioritized service and having pricing and the ability to sign up. when they do hop on a call with you or, or is it yourself who's primarily hopping on those calls?
Or do you have another, resource for that?
[00:33:24] Ryan: Yeah, it's, it's either myself or, my operations manager. That's awesome. And [00:33:30] then
[00:33:30] Corey: what's your success rate when it relates to those calls? Are they fairly sold, they just wanna talk to a human? Or is there more, sort of bigger objections that you have to handle?
[00:33:38] Ryan: Yeah, I, I would say the majority of them are. In their mind, they've already made the decision, this is what I want to do. but I just want a little bit of extra peace of mind about some details or, just want to build a relationship with me. They, they don't want to have like just a, a faceless interaction.
Sometimes that's the case. and then sometimes in the rare circumstance,[00:34:00] There's people that ask a million questions and they have no interest in working with you, and they just wanna waste your time and and their own time. Right,
[00:34:09] Corey: right. And of course, if they do that in the sales process, that's definitely what they're gonna do as a client.
So, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Two, more questions to wrap up here. first off, let's say someone's listening to this podcast
and, they're, they're learning from this sort of perspective of taking more of a verticalized approach as well as a productized approach. but they're not there yet. In fact, they're probably taking a [00:34:30] generalist approach.
Maybe they're building custom websites and they're doing that for anyone. regardless of their vertical, what advice would you have for that agency owner, that entrepreneur who's thinking about verticalizing their business or productizing, in this moment? what would you say to them?
[00:34:43] Ryan: for somebody who is still figuring things out in terms of, where in the market should I focus my efforts? I would say just keep shooting your shotgun. and, you know, spreading your, seeds everywhere and see what grows.
and then whatever grows, start spending more time in that [00:35:00] area. I think it'll happen naturally. that's kind of the case for everybody. you know, some people niche down right from the beginning, but most people. They're trying to be all things to all people. They're trying to offer a hundred different services and figure out really what they're best at and what their customers needs are.
So just keep doing that and you'll see trends and start honing more into those trends, and become the authority in that space as you figure those things out and craft your messaging, to those people and focus on [00:35:30] solving those problems. That's gonna be, The way to, you know, easily scale your business, is figuring those things out.
but in the beginning, you kind of have to be a generalist to figure out where your skills are best suited, and you know, what opportunity is the greatest for you in the market.
[00:35:46] Corey: Reminds me of a quote, I think it was Paul Graham, who's a, sort of a venture capitalist and a startup guy, and he said, in the early days of a startup, this is like more of a SaaS model.
But in the early days, you wanna do things that don't scale, wanna do a little bit of [00:36:00] everything and figure it out based on the feedback that you get from the market. I'm aligned with that, that quote as well as what you're saying there. last question for you. What's your motivation?
[00:36:09] Ryan: I would say in life, would be to, as a Christian, glorify God and enjoy him forever. as the ethos of just life in general. in obviously my wife, and we have a, a newborn coming our first child. So that's probably gonna be my biggest motivation ever. It just hasn't, felt that yet as, as [00:36:30] she'll be here in a few months. wow. And in business, I think what motivates me is just to be excellent at something. like if you're gonna do something, do it with excellence. one. You're gonna feel better about yourself, and you're gonna provide value to the world doing that.
So whatever you do, whatever your hand finds itself to do, be the best at it and do it with excellence. I, I think that's kind of cliche. but really that is, is something I think about. and for [00:37:00] whatever reason, it, does give me motivation.
That's
[00:37:02] Corey: beautiful. Thank you. Where can people reach out to you if they have a follow-up question?
if they wanna connect, what's the best place for them to do
[00:37:09] Ryan: that? Yeah, so if you, wanna learn more about our company, our services, you can go to 180 sites.com. That's 1 8 0 sites.com. if you wanna just message me, you can look me up on Facebook, just Ryan Goki. that's about it.
I don't use any other social media, unfortunately, and then if you are, [00:37:30] like I was saying earlier, an agency or some sort of company that might be able to, you have customers that need web design help, if you'd like send me an email to [email protected]. Would love to chat with you and, see how we can help each other.
Beautiful.
[00:37:44] Corey: Thank you so much
[00:37:45] Ryan: Ryan. Thank you, Cory. This has been a blast.
