Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder Mixergy where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses. And there’s this interview, Chris, you’ll probably know this guy, this interview that’s stuck in my head for a long time now. It hasn’t been that long since I did the interview but it feels like it just keeps reverberating. It’s with this guy, Neil Patel. He started a software company and another software company. And then he got a funding for a big software company. And he got shares, kind of advisor shares and other software companies. So he was in the space, he always in my mind wanted to build a successful huge software company.
And then what happened was the software company that he got funding for Kissmetrics didn’t do so well. The other software companies did well, but he found that they weren’t growing dramatically because software was actually becoming too competitive. It was too easy for anyone to create it. And so there was a race to the bottom he told me on pricing. I said, you know, “The thing that actually has worked out really well for me is building an ad.” And so now he’s got the Neil Patel Agency where he does digital services. And the reason that that’s stuck with me is because he’s a smart guy. If anyone can figure out software from scratch, it’s him. And he has, and still he’s going to services. The other thing that stuck with me is my friend, Will Schroeder, who said, “Andrew, I love your interviews, but you should consider doing something in addition.” I said, “No, no, we’re in the education space.”
He said, “No, no, Andrew.” He says, “Look, I run startups.co. We’ve got all these different properties. And the thing that’s going to be our biggest revenue, profit driver is going to be this service called Zirtual where we offer virtual assistants.” And I said, “Why do you think I should do that? I’m not in that space.” He said, “Andrew, you’re not in the advertising space either but you accept ads.” I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “Well, the thing to do now is to find something that will be better than ads. The future is not an ad, and it’s probably not in software. Look for that thing.” And he recommended I look at something like what he did with virtual which is services as a service.”
What Will has in common with Neil Patel which we have in common with Chris, who you guys will meet in a moment is they all have services a service. You pay a monthly fee, and you get services done for you. No longer trying to figure out how the software works. No longer trying to figure out which is the right software. You just send your request off to human being, the human being does it and the company that that employs that human being gets paid a monthly fee regardless of whether you send anything that month or not. And so there’s an incentive for you guys to continue to work together.
So my thing that I was super excited about is chatbots. I said, “Well, do I get into software and chatbots? No, let’s learn from what these guys are saying.” And I thought, “You know what I should do? Let’s create services. There are a lot of people who just want chatbots built, especially agencies.” And so what I did was I partnered up with these two guys and I created Chat Blender where people, agency specifically, but anyone pays us a monthly fee and we build their chatbots their messenger marketing experiences for them. Anyway, that’s what I’ve done as an experiment based on what I’ve learned. Joining me today is an entrepreneur who’s further ahead than me down the same road, same realization, and he is here to tell his story. I am here to learn from him so that I can bring back some of what’s worked for him to our company, to Chat Blender.
So Chris is the guy who I kind of mentioned earlier, his name is Chris Martinez. He is the founder of DUDE. You guys can see it at DUDEAgency.io. What they do is they work with digital agencies to give them the people and processes that will help them make take on more projects and scale profitably. I’m obviously reading directly from what I took down his notes from him here. Here’s what he does. Look, if you’ve got an agency and you want somebody to actually do the work for you because you can scale up yourself, you pay a monthly fee or you hire one of his people and they will do the work for you. Just keep sending the tasks over and they will keep knocking them out for you and specifically, Chris, correct me if I’m wrong, you do this with digital marketing agencies, right?
Chris: Yes, 100% digital marketing agencies.
Andrew: Yeah. So you work with one of my sponsors for today, brand new sponsor. We should have like a . . . I don’t know what the sound is . . . or something. ClickFunnels is our freaking sponsor. ClickFunnels for years, the founder sent me a note saying, “Hey, Andrew, I love this interview. Here’s feedback on that interview.” He flew me out to . . . anyway, he’s now our freaking sponsor. I’m so excited. I’ll talk about ClickFunnels in a moment and I’ll talk about a sponsor who’s been supportive for so long called . . . ClickFunnels great for landing page. I should say what they do. Landing page creation. Your business was founded on ClickFunnels. I’ll talk about them in a moment. And then I’ll also talk about later on about HostGator the company that will host your website right. But first, Chris, good to have you here.
Chris: Thank you so much for that introduction and for having me on the show. It’s great to be here.
Andrew: Give me a sense of size. I know that this is a fairly new project for you and it’s one of two businesses that you’re running now. DUDE is doing how much and revenue right now?
Chris: This one will do about between 70,000 and 71,000.
Andrew: 70,000 and 71,000. So you’re getting close to that million dollar year . . .
Chris: I smell it. I dream about it.
Andrew: You do, huh?
Chris: Actually, here’s the funny thing is I have a journal and every single day I write in that journal I am a million dollar CEO and work very close.
Andrew: How do you do that?
Chris: It’s something that I actually learned from Russ Perry. So there’s four areas of my life that I am trying to really excel and one of that being my physical side, the second one being my mental states, the third being my relationships with people, and then the fourth one, which is always the easiest one, which is my business. I’ve always excelled in the body and the business part. And I’ve learned that the other two things are holding me back. And I’m a big believer that, you know, I’m always the bottleneck in the business. And so part of what I do is I do a daily journal and I also meditate to help me with those aspects of my mental state.
Andrew: Chris, I thought about doing that basically having a . . . what is it call? It’s not a mantra. It’s an affirmation.
Chris: Affirmation. Yeah.
Andrew: Right? I’ve thought about it. One of the things that I experience when I go through those affirmations is at some point it becomes so stale, I stop paying attention to it. Or I don’t hit the mark on it and I feel like, “Oh, this thing is not working.” And so I give up on the affirmation. You just winced as I said it. Why? What’s your experience with these mantras?
Chris: I mean, I have the same thing. And this is just something that I pushed aside because it was uncomfortable. And when suddenly I’m not hitting targets, it’s not because the journaling and the meditation wasn’t working, it’s because I wasn’t making it work.
Andrew: And so when it’s not feeling right, you instead of saying, “This is silly. I’m not going to do it,” you say, “I’m not actually acting on this. I’m not working this . . .” Got it. Okay. And I should say what I do is I do mantras that I change up from time to time or I keep them fresh. It’s interesting actually, to sit down and repeat the same thing for . . . how long would you say you’ve done it? How many months?
Chris: Actually I don’t write the same thing every single time. It is kind of based on my mood. So there’s this thing called “The Five-Minute Journal,” and it basically gives you prompts and it’s the same prompts every day and they start off with gratitude. “What are the three things that you’re grateful for?” You know, and then actually like, “What are three things that were amazing that happened yesterday? What are your goals for the day?” And then there’s two affirmations. And based on my mood, I’ll write in the affirmations. Now, the most common ones are, “I am strong and confident.” And then the other one is “I’m a million dollar CEO.” But I don’t write those every single day. I would say 90% of the time.
Andrew: Yeah, I know “The Five-Minute Journal.” UJ Ramdas came on to Mixergy and he taught a course on how to journal. He’s the creator of “The Five-Minute Journal.” And so . . .
Chris: He needs to do that thing in Spanish because if he doesn’t do it I’m going to do it because we desperately need that down here in Tijuana.
Andrew: The book in Spanish?
Chris: Yeah.
Andrew: Well, the actual . . .
Chris: Yeah, we need “The Five-Minute Journal” here in Mexico. So I’m going to make it if I can’t find one in Spanish in the next . . .”
Andrew: I can intro you to him. I’m sure he’d be happy to talk. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d want to partner up with you on this. Financially, where were you when you started doing the journaling? I want to get a sense of how much it helped you.
Chris: So let’s see, three months ago, we were in the 50,000 to 60,000. So we’ve grown now let’s just say 15,000 to 20,000 in the past.
Andrew: In three months. And you credit that to journaling like this?
Chris: You know, it’s hard to pinpoint it on one thing. I’d say that it’s all tied together, you know, me focusing on those four areas has definitely . . . I feel like especially the mental part of it has opened up my ability to see some of the things that we were doing wrong and to come up with those solutions. I think that most people already have the answers. They just need to be able to find the pathway to get there. And now this interview is turning into like a whole Jedi mind thing. But yeah, part of what I believe. So I think . . .
Andrew: It’d be interesting to see it. Let’s get that into the business. By the way, you mentioned that you were in Mexico now. You didn’t grow up in Mexico. Where did you grow up?
Chris: I am 100% American citizen up in L.A. in the suburb of L.A. called Torrance, California. So if you know the area, it’s about 10 minutes south of the airport and . . .
Andrew: It’s pretty out there.
Chris: No, it’s considered the South Bay. So the airport is in El Segundo and then right below that you basically have Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach. And then my high school was like a five-minute walk.
Andrew: Oh, got it. And then a little bit north is Venice and Santa Monica and . . .
Chris: Correct. Yeah. And it goes Playa Del Rey, Marina Del Rey, Venice.
Andrew: You told our producer based on where you were you could have grown up to be a gangbanger. And it’s partly because of where you were personally.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. This is a part of my story that I’ve really just started to talk about very recently. So I had a very, very physically and emotionally abusive childhood. Basically, you know, my mom would beat the crap out of me, like very, very bad. Very bad.
Andrew: Really? What would set her off that would make her do that?
Chris: So a lot of it was her relationship with my father. She has never been diagnosed, but I believe she had some form of mental illness. And so at one point, I learned this after my dad died, she had told my dad that if he left her that she would beat me and my brother. So she trapped him . . .
Andrew: Punishment to him?
Chris: Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, he was very unhappy in this relationship. And so when they were having issues, she would take it out on me. And basically, that was the environment that I grew up in, As long as I can remember, that’s what I . . .
Andrew: What was the most humiliating, the most painful of these incidents?
Chris: Oh, man. Now you’re going to give me all emotional.
Andrew: Go there with me. Don’t be the type of person who has to always be surface. Go where you go.
Chris: Let’s see. I was about . . . God damn. It was about nine years old. No, I’m sorry. Yeah, I was about nine. And my mom had gotten some huge fight with my dad. And she was upstairs in our house just crying, howling. Like I can’t even imagine and I had a younger brother. He was like five or six. And I was trying to comfort him. And so I did that. I started to make fun of her for that. I mean, I was dying. I didn’t know what was going on. And so basically, she heard me and she started just beating on me. So my dad came home in the middle of it and I thought . . . I was like, “Oh, man, he saved me.”
So it stopped. And then she put us in the car to go to dinner and drove around the corner. And I was in the backseat of this two-seat Camaro. She stops the car around the corner from the house, goes in the back and pulls out this big stick. And I was pinned in the back. And she just started beating on me. And I was screaming because I didn’t have anywhere to go. I couldn’t run away. And then finally I saw the lights of the houses because it was starting to get dark and the light started to come on. And I could see the outlets, the silhouettes of the people sitting on the porch. And when she realized that there were people watching, she stopped and just drove off. And we went to dinner at Red Lobster like nothing had ever happened. And she never talked about it, never apologized, anything. And that was it.
Andrew: And that’s the way that she was with you. Why didn’t you lash out and do some of the things that you saw other people do near you?
Chris: What do you mean?
Andrew: Gangs, become [inaudible 00:13:20].
Chris: Yeah. So basically, when I grew up as a young teenager, that was what we gravitated to, you know, because this is the time of gangster rap and blah, blah, blah. And so, after going through therapy many years later that my therapist was like, “Well, those kids were probably experiencing a lot of the same things that you were.” And, you know, so we wanted to be really bad. And so, you know, the only thing that saved me from going down a really bad path was that I played soccer and I played very competitive soccer. So I tell people that while everybody else was getting in trouble seven days a week, I was only able to do it for three days a week because I was playing soccer.
My best friend from middle school . . . when I got to high school, I got very much involved in sports in soccer specifically. And so my best friends from those times kind of all disappeared. One was had to move away because he was accused of rape. The other ones all of them got thrown in jail or got kicked out of school and to go to juvie. My best friend from middle school, his parents were immigrants from Vietnam and they were dealers at a card casino. So they were gone every single night. And he had this older sister that ended up dating all these gang bangers.
So my best friend got involved in the gangs. And then he ended up getting shot and killed after high school. But by that time, he and I hadn’t really become friends and he hadn’t moved schools. And he was a very, very smart and capable kid. He just didn’t have any shot. He had very, very few opportunities. So I always look back at that and I’m like I easily could have wound up in that same environment. And when we were 14 years old, 14 years old, we were stealing his parents’ car and going, joyriding in the neighborhood. And then nighttime he was going and doing drive bys with his friends.
Andrew: Whoa, drive by shootings.
Chris: Drive by shootings. Yeah. And he would come to school with pictures of him and all his friends. I mean, he was a blood. So he would come back with all his friends and like, you know, they’re posing with their guns and shooting.
Andrew: You were 14, 14 years old?
Chris: Yeah. So, yeah, soccer. Soccer is really the only thing I think. Soccer and luck I think that’s the only thing that kept me safe.
Andrew: You started a soccer magazine at what age?
Chris: 2007. So December 2006, my dad got diagnosed with cancer. He died a month later, three days before my 27th birthday. So about April of 2007, I decided that I wanted to start this soccer magazine. It was my first business and it failed miserably and I lost everything. But that was my first real, you know, entrepreneurial endeavor. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything, you know, all the pain that I went through with losing that business taught me a lot. And I don’t think that I would have what we have now had not been for those failures.
Andrew: Before that you had a couple of jobs as sales manager, you worked at Pitney Bowes, at AVAcore. I don’t know what they are, but you were doing sales. You built up a nest egg and then you lost it all. When you analyzed it, why do you think it went down?
Chris: Well, I mean, there’s so many things that I did wrong and I made so many mistakes. So this is 2007, which really wasn’t that long ago, but the internet wasn’t as powerful as it is today. And there were still a lot of print magazines around during that time. What I should have done is started a blog, you know, because that would have been the perfect time to start driving online traffic to a media site. And then trying to do way too much on my own and dramatically underestimating or overestimating, I should say, the amount of ad revenue that could generate through the magazine. I mean, basically, there were three main advertising clients that I could go after and everybody else, you didn’t really have the money to support a print magazine. So [inaudible 00:17:08].
Andrew: When did you decide to start your own agency, which is what kicked off this journey that we’re talking about today?
Chris: Yeah, so 2012, basically . . . so I had lost everything. By the end of 2008 or early 2009, I was down to my last pennies. End of 2008 actually. And so I had gotten a job . . . and I want to tell the story really quickly because it’s one of my favorites. I had gotten a job doing sales for a charter bus company. And I had no money left. Like this charter bus company was based in Seattle but the office that I was opening was in L.A. They wanted to open new office so like I basically sold them on how I was an entrepreneur and I could do this for them. I had zero experience in the charter bus industry.
But my training was in Seattle. So for the week that I was in Seattle, they paid for my hotel, they paid for my meals while I was there. I didn’t have any expenses. I mean, I had less than $20 in the bank. And so I go to fly home on Friday afternoon having doing training on Monday and I was freaking out because I didn’t know how I was going to get back to the airport because I didn’t have enough money for a cab. It was a $36 cab ride. This is before Uber. And I didn’t have anybody to pick me up. I didn’t have any friends because I basically pushed away everybody in my life after my dad died. And I got a paycheck that Friday. They surprised me and it was a paycheck for like 300 bucks. And I was like the greatest paycheck I’ve ever received because by then I knew how to stretch $1 very, very far.
I mean, like meat, spaghetti, and like the 99 Cents Store were best friends. And so it was one of the single greatest . . . it is the single greatest paycheck that I’ve ever received in my life. But is one of the most rewarding like experiences overall that I think that I’ve ever had. So eventually, I get myself back on my feet, I have a lot of debt that I had to pay off and I started learning about digital marketing. Actually, I wanted to build a website because I had this crazy idea. And I was like, “Okay, so I need to learn how to build a website.” I asked my friend, he’s like, “Go learn how to do WordPress.” I’m like, “What the heck is that?”
So I learned how to build my first website by listening or watching an online video. It wasn’t even YouTube about how to build a WordPress website. And so I do that. I learned how to build my first website in a weekend. And I’m like super proud of myself. I use the theme. I like customized the header and everything. I put in the video, I think. And then eventually I wanted to learn about marketing and how to drive traffic. And you were talking about ClickFunnels earlier. So Russell Brunson had a coaching program back in the day called DotCom Secrets. And I signed up and I was investing $500 a month to have a coach who was under Russell Brunson company. What was his name? He had a very, very Italian sounding name but I can’t think of it right now.
But every week, we would jump on a call and he would talk to me about driving traffic. And at this time, it was all about like affiliate traffic. And so that’s really how I got started in online marketing. And then 2012, I end up getting a job for ReachLocal who did . . . you know, they were one of the first people to create a platform that did automatic bidding for Google AdWords, Bing, all those ones, PPC management. So I was selling those services. Those people didn’t have websites and ReachLocal than offer websites. I ended up partnering with a guy that I met through BNI, if you know that referral organization . . .
Andrew: Oh, yeah, it’s a local set of meetings where real estate broker, mortgage broker, web designer all meet and they agreed that they’re going to introduce each other to potential clients. Okay.
Chris: Exactly. So I partnered with a guy who had a web design company. He had a staff in the Philippines. I had heard another podcast about outsourcing stuff to the Philippines and I had an assistant in the Philippines. So I knew the power of outsourcing. And we just launched and we started building websites. And what was our . . .
Andrew: For local businesses?
Chris: Local businesses.
Andrew: That at first were referred to you by BNI?
Chris: So it was clients that I was trying to get through ReachLocal because I started working at ReachLocal.
Andrew: And ReachLocal was willing to make referrals to you?
Chris: No, absolutely not. I was doing . . .
Andrew: You were talking to a client through ReachLocal, you say, “Hey, by the way, I could build this website for you. You don’t have a site, right?”
Chris: Well, here’s the thing is we were driving traffic and the websites that they had were so unbelievably bad, I was referring the business out. And I was like, “Well, instead of me referring this out, why don’t I just start a website company? It doesn’t directly compare with ReachLocal. If anything, it compliments ReachLocal because we’re going to have a site that’s going to convert better and then that clients going to end up staying for the PPC services longer.” And that’s basically how we got started. And our team was in the Philippines and we ended up growing that to a team of nine people. And then I just could not deal with staying up to 1:00 in the morning and the time zone and the power going out. And by this time I had moved down to San Diego. I was like, “You know, let’s just see if we can find a team in Tijuana, Mexico.” And went across the border.
Andrew: In Tijuana because?
Chris: Well, Tijuana is a very, very interesting place because of its connection to the States. Everybody here speaks English. Everybody has family on the other side in the States. And I just had a hunch. I just had an instinct that we would be able to go down there and we could find designers and developers that we needed for the agency. And basically after some trial and error, we were able to find some people, great people and built the team up. We had a team of five here in Mexico. Got rid of almost everybody in the Philippines and grew the agency to over, you know, couple 100 clients on retainer.
Andrew: You know what? Let me come back and ask you in a moment about how you got a team in the Philippines. Everyone interview seems to have a team or had at some point a team in the Philippines. It seems so easy but to me it feels difficult. But let’s come back to that in a moment. First, I want to tell everyone my brand new sponsor, it’s ClickFunnels. Chris, I was turned on to ClickFunnels as a company because I love Russell Brunson’s books. I always kind of made fun of him because I thought that the titles of his books were just not great. Like “DotCom Secrets” is one of the names of the books. It sounds so generic, like a lead magnet. But, man, this guy’s good. And so I thought great company. I really like Russell, I really like Dave worked with them. Great company but I never used it.
And then I hired this guy . . . I’m blanking on his first name. Hodges is his last name. I can’t remember the first name for some reason. I’m feeling a little on the spot with it but I got to come back to it. And he says, “Andrew, we’re going to set you up with a ClickFunnels page for this chatbot thing that you’re so excited about.” I said, “No, I don’t need it. I know how to create a thing in WordPress. I can create Intel.” He goes, “No, Andrew, we’ll set it up.” And for me, if I’m working with someone and they feel strongly, I let them go. He created this landing page. We used it. It worked really well. We kept improving and kept improving our funnel and it was all built on ClickFunnels. And it just worked really well. And I thought at first, “This is a come down. I’m someone who could create a landing page from scratch. Give me HTML I’ll create it. But why am I using this tool?” But the tool is great. It just kept improving. Like one of the things that I love is . . . what is it called? Bump sale? Is what it’s called?
Chris: Oh, I have no idea I haven’t been inside personally as I ClickFunnels. But, yeah, they have a lot of upsell and down-sells.
Andrew: When someone finishes putting their credit card in the form, you can actually have a little checkbox underneath it that says, “For $5 more, you get this other thing.” It actually increases sales because if they spend so much money already, why not $5 more? It’s so good. Even though we created our own sales process for Mixergy Premium, our whole pages, we’re now creating it all in ClickFunnels because just so much easier and we don’t have to go back to our developer. Rebecca who is managing it could just sit and do it on her own. Anyway, this thing just kept growing and growing and growing and then look at what I got. I’m going to show these right here. You know what I’m about to show, right? You know this. Look at this.
Chris: There you go.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s the 2 Comma Club, the gold record that they send to people. 2 Comma Club meaning they’re two commas in a million dollars. One of our funnels that we created with ClickFunnels did over a million dollars, which one freaking thing. Anyway. So this thing that I underestimated is now basically taking over our business. I have to be open. I let go of our designer because of this. I backed out of a relationship. I disconnected from our developer because it is. I don’t need any of it. It just worked with ClickFunnels. This thing that I totally underestimated.
Anyway, so here’s what we’re going to do. They’re a new sponsor. They’re going to let anyone who’s listening to the sound of my voice who goes over to clickfunnels.com/mixergy get a couple of things that I’m excited about. Number one, they’re going to give you a free trial with their software. So you get to go in and actually try it and basically use it. But what I’m going to recommend you do is try the bump sale or whatever these little things that are upsell things that feel a little too gimmicky, try them. Don’t be like I was. Try them and see how much you liked them, number one, because it’s done really elegantly. Number two, I’m going to give you the funnels that we’ve created to build our business. You can get a copy of it. Use it as a template. God knows I didn’t start from scratch. I use the template. I want you to start off with a template and then improve it improve it. Chris, you guys who are listening can see is nodding throughout this whole thing. I’m going to say Click . . . why are you nodding? What is it about ClickFunnels that you love?
Chris: I mean, we use ClickFunnels all the time for our agency clients as well. And it’s just such an easy tool. If nothing else, you know, you can do your minimum viable product basically to test out an offer. You can ClickFunnels, and then if you really like it, you can go back into WordPress or custom code it to do all these cool things. But for getting up a landing page very quickly, it’s the number one tool in my opinion. And we’ve done hundreds if not thousands of them.
Andrew: It’s such a good tool and I only started liking it because I was pushed to use it. All right. So it’s Clickfunnels.com/mixergy. Go check them out right now. They didn’t buy a lot of ads from us. They bought a few. So you’re not going to hear me talk about it much. But you should use it right now before you forget. Clickfunnels.com/mixergy. So how did you get a team in the Philippines? How are people going to the Philippines and ending up with teams of people?
Chris: Well, so there is a site that I was . . . I’m sure the interview that I was listening to about outsourcing, the site that was mentioned was OnlineJobs.ph. And . . .
Andrew: I’m sure we got that a lot too.
Chris: . . . I think the guy that was giving the interview owned the OnlineJobs.ph. I can’t remember because it was so long ago. But now, you know, through Upwork and then . . . you know, I think the thing that really put the Philippines on the map, as ironic as it sounds, is “The 4-Hour Workweek,” you know, because he talked about outsourcing in the Philippines in that book. And so it just, you know, became a great place to outsource. The rates are unbelievably cheap.
Andrew: So, wait. What you did was you just went to basic freelance websites and hire that way and it was individuals in the Philippines? It wasn’t like you had an office or anything?
Chris: So my partner that I had started the agency with was actually Filipino and in fact he had been to Philippines already. So, you know, I basically . . . and I’m not the first person to say this is, you know, you might not have the resources, but you can always be resourceful. I didn’t have the resources because I was still broke from my magazine business. This guy already had the team. And that’s why I basically talked to him and partnered with him. And I was like, “Hey, I have this idea. You know, let’s see if we can roll with it.” And we made it happen.
Andrew: Got it. Okay. All right. Actually, where did he have his team from? What was he doing?
Chris: He was also doing websites, but he was doing the traditional like one-time fee model and I wanted the subscription model.
Andrew: Got it. Okay.
Chris: [inaudible 00:28:50] entry, offer more services.
Andrew: Okay, brilliant. How did you get clients for the agency before we get into DUDE?
Chris: Just grinding. You know, so like actually our very first client that we ever got, there was a Women in Business Conference in Torrance and . . . obviously, I’m not a woman. But I wanted to go to that conference. And I couldn’t afford a ticket because I think the ticket was like $500. So I reached out. I had been going to all these networking events. Basically any networking event that happened in the South Bay, I was going to. And so I reached out to the woman who was one of the organizers of this conference, and I said, “Hey, I’m not doing anything tomorrow. Do you need a volunteer for anything?” And she’s like, “Yeah.” She’s like, “When the speakers go up, we need somebody to stand in the back of the room basically hold up a sign that says ‘You have five minutes left. Three minutes left.”
Andrew: Okay. Oh, no. Did I just lose him? Let’s see. Okay, cool. I think we’re back.
Chris: Yeah. So basically, I said, “I can do that. Do you need anything else?” And she was like, “Well, do you have any like silent auction items?” I was like, “Well, actually, you know, we launched this website company. I’ll put in a website.” And so our first client we didn’t make any money off of but she won the silent auction for a website for her law firm. And then we used that as our example and I would just go out to through BNI, you know, networking, getting referrals, building websites for people, and it just started to grow and grow and grow from there.
Andrew: And you didn’t like it at some point. At some point, you said, “You know what? This is not for me.” Because?
Chris: Honestly, it was just the clients. So we had over 220 people on retainer and there was just a handful of clients that were just driving me insane. And looking back on it, it was definitely like I wasn’t looking at the big picture. Those negative people who I should have just cut were really just consuming more time and space in my life than I should have given them credit for. But I was feeling a little bit burned out on that agency. But we have these amazing people here in Tijuana and so I was listening to the podcast of Russ Perry, who started Design Pickle, about how he did this unlimited design service. And I was like, “Man, we could totally do that for agencies using our team here in TJ.”
Andrew: Because before what you were doing was just charging people to build their sites. Did you have a maintenance plan too?
Chris: Absolutely. So we had developed all these processes because we were doing ongoing support. So we were already doing unlimited support for our agents for our small business clients. And so we developed a ticketing system. We had developed processes for actually building out new sites. Once the site was launched, you know, we were doing content creation. So we had a whole process for that. We had the ticketing system for all the requests that . . .
Andrew: Ticketing system came from your team, right? They said, “Hey, look, Chris, this is getting out of control.” And so what did they suggest?
Chris: Initially, so this is a thing that I learned. Initially, I was like, I found Zendesk, and I thought Zendesk was awesome. And then they’ve been referred to me and they had a free plan that was great. But my team hated it. And I said, “Guys, all right, fine, I’m tired of hearing about how much you hate the ticketing system, you go out and find a ticketing system that you think is going to work.” They went out and they found Freshdesk. And a lot of the things that Freshdesk does is similar to Zendesk, but I think one of the reasons why it was adopted so easily because they found it. You know, it’s not this top-down forced thing on them. And that was a big learning thing for me is that when you’re managing people, empower them to be able to make these decisions. And so they implemented it and it has been fantastic. So we had all these systems and processes from the website agency, which we actually translated over to DUDE or transferred over to DUDE when we decided to launch DUDE, and it made things a whole heck of a lot easier.
Andrew: What’s a difference? I thought that since you had an agency with real clients who were paying your monthly fee that you were basically on this service as a service business, as I like to call it. What’s the difference between that and DUDE?
Chris: Well, you know, one of the biggest challenges that agencies face is inefficiency. And, you know, most agencies are really, really good at selling, they’re really, really good at strategy. And they struggle when it comes to the opposite in the implementation. And just the way that my brain works, I’m just more naturally inclined towards to fixing inefficiencies. Like it drives me insane when I see things that can be improved from an efficiency standpoint. And so when we were working with the small business clients, there’s a lot of inefficiency in the communication. A small business client will say, “Hey, build me a landing page . . . ”
This is a request that we legitimately got one time. “Build me a landing page that will convert everybody no matter what the product.” We’re like, “It doesn’t really work like that.” And so there’s all this back and forth in the communication with the small businesses. The agencies know what needs to happen. Like they have a process for the most part. They just need the team of people to be able to implement. And that’s what our team really specializes in was the implementation. So it was just such an easier fit for us to go with other agencies and do the fulfillment for them.
Andrew: Because what they’re asking for is more reasonable. It’s clear. It’s more consistent. Got it. You know what? I have a hard time too with people who need websites today. At this point, if you don’t have a website build and you’re hiring somebody, you’re a laggard, or it’s just taking it too long. Actually, that’s the basic thing where you can’t figure it out for yourself, you know, using basic WordPress technology. You should be able to do it. Or if you do need someone to do it, the kinds of clients I would want are the ones who would pay $20,000, $30,000 to have a website built minimum, right? The ones who are like the $5,000 I don’t want because it’s a lot of money for them.
Chris: Right. And I and actually the agencies that we work with today, you know, like, for the most part, if they’re under $5,000, a website, if they’re selling just a website and not a full solution, it’s usually not a very good client for us. But even the website components, you know, most of them are selling it, if they were to do like an ala carte website, it’s 7500 or above. Just because it’s so much work.
Andrew: That’s what you did. You went after the people who didn’t have much money, didn’t have much experience online. And so their demands are really big because the amount of money they were putting in with you was so significant to them. And they were so inexperienced that they had to demand that. Got it. And so that’s i. It’s the type of customer that you’re building and then also the model that you’re going after. You were going after people who didn’t have that much needs. So when you switch to DUDE, you were switching towards going to agencies and having them as clients. How did you know they were going to be the ones you’re going to go after?
Chris: Well, you know, running an agency, I understand all of the challenges of getting all the projects done. You know, there’s literally not a challenge out there that I have not personally experienced from staff, clients, operations, technology, whatever it is, I’ve gone through it all. So I speak the language. And I just trusted my gut that there were other people that needed this type of service. So we started actually running Facebook ads about DUDE before DUDE was even really a thing. And that’s how we got our first client. So that kind of proved the concept. We were talking about ClickFunnels earlier. And so, you know, I created a landing page for DUDE and I just started driving traffic. You know, there was like, very little . . .
Andrew: That was a launch. Just a quick ClickFunnels page.
Chris: “Hey, this is the idea. Let’s see if it works.” Facebook ads started getting leads, started getting clients. And so I was like, “Okay, that this is starting to prove the concept of this going to work.” And then in end of 2017, digital marketer through a one-time event called Digital Agency Growth Summit, and it was just for agents. So I bought a ticket out to Austin. I think I ended up staying with the friend. No, I think I got a hotel actually that time. But anyways, so went to this conference, started talking to agency owners, started getting a lot of interest. And then I’m was like, “Man.” And people were excited. I didn’t get any clients out of it but they were excited about it.
And so I was like, “You know what? Let’s take faith. Let’s get a booth at Traffic & Conversion in San Diego. Two months later, it was about a total investment with the booth plus the stand and all the things that we had to get all the materials was about 10,000 bucks. So that was a huge investment for us and a big risk because we hadn’t been doing 10,000 in revenue from DUDE. And so we go there and it was just a massive success. And that’s when it kind of like started to take off.
Andrew: One of the things that came to my mind when I heard that you were in Tijuana is Tijuana, that’s where I went down for drinks. And when I ordered a whiskey, they gave me a watered down fake whiskey. That’s where it was like strip clubs and bachelor parties and all that. And you recognized that people had that thought in their heads. How did you notice that was what people thought about when they heard you Tijuana?
Chris: Well, I mean, it’s pretty obvious that Mexico in general, especially in today’s political climate does not have a very good reputation with a lot of people. And even if you go to Netflix and you type in the word Mexico, the only shows you’re going to see . . . well, actually there is one good show about tacos. But it’s, for the most part, it’s drugs and violence. And Tijuana specifically, it’s the prostitution and the drinking, which is all here. Don’t get me wrong, that stuff exists. There is drug violence here in Mexico and specifically in Tijuana and there’s hookers and there’s drinking and it’s an amazing city if you want to party. But there’s just so much more to the stake. And what I did is I when I first started to pitch DUDE, I kind of shied away from the fact that we were in Mexico because I was worried about it.
And then I just said, “Screw it. You know, if they hate us because of Mexico they’re going to hate us no matter what.” And I embraced it. And I said, “Screw it. I’m going all in and Mexico and everybody that we’re in Tijuana, and we’re going to position it as the hidden gem of web design and development.” And when I made that decision, that conscious decision, that was a big, big turning point for our business because I personally I didn’t feel scared or timid saying things about Mexico. And I was like, “Let’s just hit these stereotypes head on. Screw it.” And I was able to use it to my advantage.
Andrew: I’ve got photos that you gave our producer of you there. There, you’re holding it up right now. Can you hold that up again just so I could see it?
Chris: Absolutely. This is the famous DUDE Beast wrestling mask.
Andrew: Yeah. So when you are at Traffic & Conversion at your booth, you were actually wearing wrestling tights and the mask. So is it called luchador? Am I pronouncing it right?
Chris: Well, the wrestler is the luchador. The actual activity is called lucha libre.
Andrew: Lucha libre. And so you said, “Look, this is what people know. It’s one of the things that people know about Mexico. I’m going to lean into that.” You were the full wrestling outfit, cape, tights, mask, not just like un-understated mask, one that has two horns on it and like wacky hair on top of it. And you stood there with all these people. No embarrassment?
Chris: Oh, there was a lot of embarrassment. Don’t get me wrong, especially when I’m wearing, you know, basically bikini briefs in front of 6,000 people. Yeah, trust me. There’s a lot of embarrassment there.
Andrew: Did you actually bring like a fake wrestling ring with you with the ropes and everything?
Chris: Yeah, this past one, we actually bought . . . we found these guys out of like Kentucky and they build backyard wrestling rings. And so it was only like 1,000 bucks in a six wrestling ring that we had taken to another events. And so this past year when we did TMC again, we brought that ring. But the first time, the only thing that we had was our banner stand thing, the backdrop. And then we brought a bunch of Mexican candy. We brought bottles of tequila that we gave away the clients that signed up. And then I wore the mask. And that year, we were right off the stage and there were a lot of really good speakers. So I would time it so that I would be in my costume when people were coming to and leaving the speakers on that stage. And everybody would see me there. And obviously like I’m a pretty big dude. I’m six-foot about 210 pounds. And so it’s hard to miss me, especially when I’m wearing that costume and they would come and talk to us and . . .
Andrew: If I knew you, right, Chris, you closed sales there?
Chris: Yeah. Oh, yeah, we were closing deals at the show. I think we closed about 60 grand at the show.
Andrew: So what does it mean 60 grand. That means how many customers were paying you for what?
Chris: So we ran a special. It was 900 bucks a month and it was a 12-month contract for the unlimited web design and development team. It was an insane deal. And we closed I think it was eight people at this show. So eight times nine. So I guess it was 7,200 times 12.
Andrew: And I was thinking wouldn’t people want to go home and think about it? But I guess if it’s 900 bucks a month, they’re really just risking $900 because if you sting they’re canceling with you, regardless, right?
Chris: Yeah, I’ll offer a 30-day money back guarantee.
Andrew: Okay, all right. And so what was it that helped you close the sale beyond the fact that they came over to you? What did you do?
Chris: I had kind of perfected my pitch up to that point. You know, talking about . .. just in my natural or my sales training, you know, I use that while I was there. But just figuring out what the problems that they were having and showing them that I understood their challenges and then how we could fix all of their problems basic like sales, you know, 101. And just everything that we were saying resonated with the audience that was there. You know, they’re like, “Oh, man, yeah, I’m so tired of, you know, dealing with the Philippines and the power goes out.” And then, like you said, really leaning into Mexico and I had to have my staff there with me. And so I would like, “Oh, yeah, you know, this is one of our pod leaders here, Arturo.” And so they would actually have a conversation with Arturo just about, you know, web development or just anything.
Andrew: The person who’s actually going to develop before them?
Chris: Yeah. It was a team leader, basically.
Andrew: What’s the pod situation? You told our producer, the pod thing was a big change for us. What is that?
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when we first started out, a project would come in and we would just assign it to whoever. And then we realized as we started to grow, we needed to have teams that were going to basically work with one agency. And we call that a pod. And so within that pod, now we have a pod leader who typically is a developer, so they understand the technical aspect, but that person is like the quarterback for all the projects that come in. So a new client gets signed up, they get assigned to the wizards team and their wizards pod leader is named Jose. And so Jose is the quarterback for all the projects. A project comes in, Jose looks at it, assigns it to one of the team members, gives the ETA, sends it back to the client.
You know, Jose is the one giving the daily status updates to the agency. Jose is the one who’s doing the weekly calls with the clients going over the projects and our goals for the week and that sort of thing. And so that pod system talking about efficiency earlier has really made it more efficient because you have people who really get to understand the uniqueness of each agency’s operations and what they expect. And so we’re able to turn stuff around a lot quicker.
Andrew: This kind of random, but I was just in Mexico for . . . I’m running marathons all over the world and doing interviews with entrepreneurs in different countries. I was in Mexico and I happen to fly through Monterey and it looked beautiful and then Mexico City and it was amazing. I’m wondering why not those cities versus Tijuana? Is it just that you happen to have some . . . no, you didn’t have much of a connection to it. Why not Monterey? Why not Mexico City?
Chris: Monterey is actually a decent option. One, for starters, just the proximity of San Diego because I was in San Diego, you know, and I was driving across the border down here to TJ and so it just made it very easy logistically.
Andrew: Got it.
Chris: Culture of Tijuana is unlike any other place in the world. And just to give you a history lesson, Tijuana really got put on the map because of prohibition in the United States. So before Tijuana was just a territory. It wasn’t even necessarily a state. Baja California is the state that Tijuana is in. And when we had prohibition in the United States, people were looking for a place to drink. And so they came down here to Tijuana, Mexico. And actually the Italian Mafia came down here and they set up casinos. And one of the casinos that is still here, it’s now called the . . . well, it’s called Caliente. But originally it was the [inaudible 00:45:39] Casino.
The Italian Mafia setup that’s that casino. It’s still in existence today. And so that’s what really brought a lot of Americans down here. And that’s the foundation of this party atmosphere down here in TJ. And so the city itself was founded with a connection to the States. And that’s why it’s so unique. And then, of course, with immigration, you know, you have a lot of people in the states that have family down here in Mexico, vice versa. So for me, just that cultural connection, we were talking about efficiency, it’s much more efficient, because you don’t have to explain certain things. I’ll give you a perfect example, if you send a design over to the Philippines, a lot of the times it comes back and it doesn’t necessarily feel American. You can’t pinpoint what it is but there’s just certain aspects of that.
Andrew: I’ll give you an example of one aspect of it. I sent a note to the founder of Producton. I said, “Your landing page is a little off because it’s 65 and then the dollar sign instead of dollar sign 65.” Logically makes sense. $65, it should be the number first and then the dollar sign. That’s not how we do it. And he said essentially that he was working with people outside U.S.
Chris: There’s little things like that that happen. And all of those little mistakes add up over time and cost you a lot of time and money. And so here in Tijuana we can avoid all of those setbacks because everybody understands the culture. Everybody speaks English. Everybody knows digital marketing. Like these are things that is unique to Tijuana that help us to create such an effective machine.
Andrew: That makes sense. I do find I hadn’t spent much time in border cities, but I was in Laredo, Texas, and then Waco Laredo, Mexico. And the similarity is insane to the point where it feels like Laredo, Texas is just . . . I had to speak Spanish in order to get by there, even though it was in the U.S. By the way, do you have a little more time with us? I know we’re running a little over.
Chris: I can go about 10 more minutes and then I actually have to do a podcast interview with . . .
Andrew: Okay, great. I like that everyone now is using podcast as a way of promoting their businesses. Let me do this. I’ll tell everyone about my second sponsor. It’s a company called HostGator. I noticed, by the way, that Chris is not using Host Gator. He is using a company called WP Engine. I’m going to talk about the competition. WP Engine what they do is manage WordPress hosting. Meaning they make sure that his plugins are up to date, WordPress is up to date, and so on. So what’s the difference between them and HostGator? Well, if you have the basic HostGator solution which is what I’m recommending people start with, go to hostgator.com/mixergy. They give you the lowest price possible. You get up and running and you get to run your agency or you get to run your service business through them.
When you want that type of experience at WP Engine frankly and many other companies offer, they haven it at HostGator. So you can call up hostgator.com and say, “Listen, I’m ready to scale up. I don’t want to hit the update my plugin button anymore. I don’t want to hit the backup my side button anymore. I want you guys to do it for me.” You call them up. They give you a super low rate. Very competitive. I don’t want to put down WP Engine. I think they’re a company but they will beat the price of WP Engine and they’ll still give you that managed WordPress hosting. So what I’m trying to say is when you’re ready to get started understand Chris and many other people I’ve interviewed run their business on WordPress and you could do one click install a WordPress on hostgator.com/mixergy.
And when you’re ready to scale up, they may not happen advertise it but they are a huge company at HostGator. They’ll offer all these other services and the thing that they’re known for is great uptime, super low prices. What they’re not known for is having all these other services there and so they will scale up with you and they’ll give you all that. If you want to get the lowest price possible and support mixergy and have Mixergy backing you as a customer we will stand behind all of our listeners, go to hostgator.com. Okay, let me ask you this. Now let’s come back into . . . I think this is a good model for us with Chat Blender, the service that I was talking about. I think it’s a good model for people who are listening to us are thinking, “You know what? I should not try software because I’m not a software developer. I should try services because I could do a lot of things.” What advice do you have for somebody who’s looking to get started with this?
Chris: Wow, lots of advice. This is going to turn into a philosophical talking point.
Andrew: Do it.
Chris: You know, a lot of us start a business as a one person company, you know, solo printers. And over time, you can get to a certain level of success on your own but eventually you’re going to need to hire people. And that is uncomfortable and it can be scary. And you can possibly . . . and I thought play at first is that, you know, you look at your staff as a necessary evil. And that’s absolutely the opposite of the mentality that you need to have.
Andrew: Because what you do is you say, “I am offering a service. I have to hire these people. It sucks that I’ve got to deal with people not software. Fine. But that’s the only way that I can do services customized like that.” Okay, I get that feeling.
Chris: You hit it on the head right there when you said, “I have to hire these people,” right? It’s like, “Oh, man, it pains me to have to hire people.” But if you want to make this business work, the service business work is you have to really embrace the fact that these people are amazing and that they’re a part of your family and that, you know, your job is hire and find and hire amazing people and then empower them to do all the amazing things that you know that they’re capable of and just get out of their way. And really serving your staff is a mentality and a philosophy that will help you succeed in the service type of business.
Andrew: Give me an example of like what . . . I guess the one example that I can think of this come from having people instead of directing people, having them help direct the business, you mentioned earlier, they decided to switch away from Zendesk to Fresdesk, right?
Chris: Freshdesk, yeah.
Andrew: What’s another example of by embracing this approach, growing your business?
Chris: Okay, so, you know, just showing that you care for one thing. So like one of the things that we do here that I think is unique at least in Mexico is we do a quarterly goal setting meeting. And, you know, here in Mexico, the culture is different, the way that people are raised is much different. And so they’re not raised with a mentality of setting goals. They don’t know how to set goals. And so we taught them how to do this. And we have them basically map out their plans for their life for the course of the year. And not just professional. So it’s like we cover, “Hey, where do you want to be professionally? How much money do you want to be making? Do you want to take a vacation? Is there something that you want to do?”
And then we break it down by quarter, and we say, “Okay, so these are the things that you need to do to be able to get closer to the annual goal.” And then we talk to them about that. And we start to educate them about ways to accomplish these things both inside the office and outside the office. For example, next Wednesday, this is a thing that’s very prevalent in Latino culture, Hispanic culture, and it carries over into the States is that Hispanics typically get zero financial education. We have absolutely no idea how to use credit. We have no idea how to buy a home. And we have no idea how to build wealth. And so here in Mexico, they have no idea how the credit system works. And a lot of the times they dig themselves into very, very holes because they don’t know how to use credit.
So it’s very common that people will get a credit card. Although they’ll take out a loan at like [inaudible 00:53:05] it’s a company called Carpel but it’s the equivalent of like Kmart in the States. And they’ll buy a couch on credit with an insanely high interest rate, that’s illegal in the States, and they don’t pay it and it just destroy their credit. And then they can’t buy a car. Everybody here pays cash because they don’t have a credit line. So next Wednesday, we have somebody from a local car dealer coming in to talk about how to build credit and how to buy a car on credit. Now, if you have good credit, you can get an auto loan here for as low as 3%. The average is around 8%. So it’s much higher than the states.
But if you manage your credit and you’re responsible, and you know how to do these things, then you can actually absolutely succeed using credit in your favor. And so those are the little things that we’re doing to show our staff that we care. Now, if I didn’t care about them, I would just care about, you know, let’s bring in a web developer to teach him something, you know, or here’s a course on Udemy, go learn web development. It’s about analyzing what they are looking to accomplish and then understanding that I need to help them get to where they want to be in order for our company to succeed.
Andrew: By the way, that’s really helpful. And I didn’t realize about the issue with credit until I went to Mexico City. I interviewed the founder of Connect. He realized people don’t have credit cards. How they going to buy anything online? So what he discovered was, “All right, they’re going with cash into local stores. I’ll let them buy online and then pay in cash and local stores,” which is crazy. And I get that you’re going in and helping them develop credit so that they have access to more things. And by the way, if you can’t buy online, you’re buying locally the stuff that’s not nearly as good and it cost much more because it’s not as competitive as going online and finding the lowest price among companies that all competing for your business. But what about finding clients? So what would you advise someone who’s listening to us about how to get customers? Is it go to go to events? Be outrageous the way that you are?
Chris: You know, like when you’re starting out with any business, it’s identify the big problem that you solve and then figure out where those people are. And one of the big things that we did that was good in the beginning was working with the agencies. It has not been easy to find agencies online, like Facebook targeting, trying to find agencies is very, very challenging. And I know how to get in front of those people. So once you identify the problem and who is going to benefit from your service, then just get in front of them. I think the old fashioned way is the best way to do it, you know, like . . .
Andrew: In person.
Chris: In person. Absolutely.
Andrew: And many people as possible. Is that the thing? So if I’m going to conference in two weeks, I’m going to go speak at the mini-chat conference. They’ve got a lot of people who are building chatbots. Many of them are agencies. In fact, I’m leading a panel at their agency day. Should I then try to take as many people out who run agencies for dinner, for drinks? Is it something else that I should be doing? What do you recommend?
Chris: I think, and I just did a training on this, I think at the beginning, when you’re starting your agency because everybody always says you got to find a niche, you got to find a niche. And my advice is that when you’re starting out your niche is CC&P. Everybody with a credit card in the polls. And over time, you will figure out who you really, really work best with. And kind of like the analogy that I use is I just started doing jujitsu about nine months ago. And it’s a completely new sport for me. I’m like a fish out of water. I didn’t know what’s going on. I mean, I’m getting better over time. But if I were to walk into a jujitsu class the first day and I was going to say, “I want to be this type of fighter. I want to use this type of style. This is going to be, you know, my go-to move.” It’s unrealistic. You don’t know what you do well yet. And so I tell people just take everybody, you know, obviously like, if you know that somebody is not going to be a good fit, then you shouldn’t do that.
Andrew: But you’re saying at first take everyone, try it all, and then discover what type you like best and what work? Got it. And then that’s actually counterintuitive, especially with everyone, like you said, beating in the niche into us. All right.
Chris: If you know that it’s going to work like what I did with the digital agencies and you already have that, then obviously, you know, save yourself the time and trouble and go with that.
Andrew: So you know that now I’ve got a partnership with Ahrefs. So I use them for research. I’ve been looking to see what you do for marketing online because we talked a lot about your offline. So I think I figured out a couple of things that are working for you. Number one, again, on Ahrefs, you are really big on when you do an interview with someone and that’s why you have to rush, you interview people who run agencies like Robbie [inaudible 00:57:32], Boland Beard, he then links back to you, which then gives you more credibility and gives you more link juice. And I’ve seen that happen with other places. You do summits which are basically the same as podcasts, like ugurus.com did a USUMMIT. Were you part of that? Because they linked over to . . .
Chris: I’m going to be in the upcoming one. Yeah.
Andrew: Got it. So that helps you too. Am I right that this is part of your strategy?
Chris: A hundred percent.
Andrew: Okay, here’s another one. So I then go into Ahrefs and I look at the top pages. And what I see is dudeagency.io /ugurus, dudeagency.io /partners/leaguegolf/partners/vincereed/partners/jasonswank, and it just goes on. So it seems like Jason Swank, he teaches people that create agencies. He’s referring people back to you. So having a referral from people like him and Vince and Lee seems like a big part of your business too.
Chris: Absolutely. Yeah, those affiliate partners that we have are very, very good traffic sources for us. And those do take time. You know, we didn’t start to really get into those relationships until after about close to a year. But you know, as of now, that’s our number one source for new clients,
Andrew: Partnerships like that, like people like Jason Swank, you create a separate page and then what do you use to keep track of the orders for them?
Chris: So it’s pretty old school. All of our conversions happen offline. Because right now our price point we’re charging $19.97 a month and nobody is just going to go and say, “Okay, put in their credit card and buy.” It just doesn’t work like that. So we have a conversation and then we track it all through our CRM and then we just pay them out. We affiliate out manually.
Andrew: I’m seeing so much from them. There’s so much more that I could bring up I’ll save it. Like I’m looking at keywords that you guys rank for and it seems like Rico Swabe was really big. If you’re real Mexican listening to Rico swabbing for the first time and that sends you traffic because people are . . . anyway, I can go into the whole thing. Anyway. Why don’t I end it by having you just give out the URL. Where do people come to you guys?
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. DUDEAgency.io is the websites and then we’re on the Facebook, so it’s like DUDE Agency again and then it’s DUDEAgency.io. We’ve got a lot of fun content out there as well. And so, you know, if you’re just bored and you want to watch funny videos of a guy in a wrestling mask, then you can go there and check it all out.
Andrew: Where is that? That’s on your Facebook or YouTube?
Chris: Well, YouTube as well. So YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. We’re a little bit behind on Instagram with our videos but Facebook and YouTube have all of our latest . . .
Andrew: I want to see you in the freaking wrestling outfit. All right. And, by the way, DUDE means, it stands for Digital Updates Done by Experts.
Chris: Yeah. It’s funny because I started it and I had DUDE as . . . I wanted it to mean something. And then everybody was just like, “DUDE.” And I was like, “Okay, well, let’s just go by DUDE.”
Andrew: My two sponsors who make this interview happen, hostgator.com/mixergy. When you need a website hosted right. And then the second one is Click Funnels, brand new sponsor. Go get my pages, the ones that have done so well for me at clickfunnels.com/mixergy. Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone for listening and bye.
Chris: Thank you so much for having me on.
