Growing Your Business Through Remote Work with Liam Martin

Liam Martin is a serial entrepreneur who runs Time Doctor and Staff.com, a time tracking and productivity software platform. He’s also an avid proponent of remote work and the concept of buying back your time. 

In this episode of The gymOS Podcast, Liam talks about the value of a virtual assistant, marketing techniques, and why you need to pay attention to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Listen in and you’ll walk away with actionable steps to drive traffic directly to your website and your gym.

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Transcript

spk_1:   0:00
Welcome to the Gym OS podcast. Helping fitness professionals become better business owners. One episode at a time. In today's episode of the Gym OS podcast I am in Atlanta. Why am I in Atlanta? I'm actually attending a mastermind for this group of software CEOs that I have referenced in the past. And man in this hotel today, we've got hundreds of CEOs here, all doing exactly what we're all trying to do, and that solved problems in their businesses. That's why this podcast is here. That's why these CEOs are here. So I had this really intelligent idea. Why not bring some of these CEOs into, um, the podcast in person right here in the hotel? And that's what we're doing. Tonight's episode, um, we got Liam Martin from time Doctor. Now Li Liam is a specialist in the remote work field time Doctor helps businesses like mine keep track of remote workers, But Liam's girlfriend of six years also owns a chain of boutique fitness studios. I didn't know that when I booked him to be on this podcast, but it comes out. So not only does Liam have this unique insight on how to manage personnel And this these could be your coaches. Or it could be people that are offshore who are helping you manage your day we will dive into the concept of virtual assistance, which I didn't even think about for Jim's. But now it makes total sense. But he also has this a really unique insight onto how to market and brand a boutique. Jim like yours. Um, Liam actually gets into some really crazy s CEO and local marketing concepts that honestly blew my mind. We're talking about it, so I hope you can make it all the way through this episode when he starts digging into that stuff because there's some really valuable nuggets that he drops here. All right, guys, without further ado, we're gonna let Liam and my podcast take it away. Hey, what's up, guys? Dan here. We're doing some special podcasts. Ah, this this go around. Um, I'm actually in Atlanta right now at a CEO mastermind with the mentor that I have. Like, I preach to all you guys. You should be spending your time and money learning from people who have already done it before. And I I myself have a mentor as well and we're basically in a hotel with a bunch of CEOs and executives from other SAS companies. Um and so I figured, what the hell Let's bring the brightest and best minds right directly to you guys. You know, this podcast is about bringing um, the ideas of methodologies from SAS businesses right into your gym because you're basically running a service. A service business. So everything that I'm learning here applies to you and all these people that I'm talking to here have knowledge that applies to you. So today Ah, we've got Liam here from time doctor, specializing in in the remote work field. And you're probably thinking, as a gym owner, what the fuck does remote work mean for me, it actually could mean a lot. And I've been rapping with Liam here for the last 30 minutes, talking about some of the concepts here and kind of mind blowing What weaken? D'oh! In this space. So with that, let me let Liam kinda introduce himself, um, and to take it away.

spk_0:   3:17
Yeah. Hello. My name is Liam Human being more specifically Canadian human being. I actually am in Atlanta. I've been here for about 30 minutes we're drinking. Can you pronounce it? Glenn Morang Scotch. We're drinking scotch and, um, actually came in on, funnily enough. Ah, crazy trip. I got hit my plane got hit by a de icing machine. Yeah. Yeah, and I had to actually get in a completely new plane. And I I really hate not being on time for things. It's like I try to respect people's time as much as humanly possible. So essential message. And I was like, I don't know, I was on a plane accident. E think I said not plane crash. I realized I needed to choose my words very properly.

spk_1:   4:12
I still read it. I read I've been in a plane accident will be late. And I like How in the hell are you sending me a message after you've been in a plane accident?

spk_0:   4:20
Yeah. No. So you know what? And here's the cool thing, by the way, about remote work and running a distributed team. So time Doctor has about 100 remote employees and 34 countries all over the world. I also have a really good virtual assistant. Um, I've been working with her for the past 10 years, and here was the thing that was super cool. I have my plane accident Within seven minutes. I get a phone call from M. J M J's. Listen to this. Hopefully, she doesn't ask for a race. Uh, so M J. Says, Hey, I just got a push notification saying that your plane is delayed or there's a mechanical failure. Mechanical problem? What's up? I explain the situation. She said, Okay, uh, I'll call United. Seven years later, she calls back. She says, Hey, so you need to go toothy Air Canada desk right now before everyone else and there were literally like your people behind me. You're shitting me. And I ran over the Air Canada desk and they said, um, the customer service desk and they said, Yeah, M. J set you up and boom, I was on like, another flight, and I got here it exactly the same time that I was supposed to come before because she just knows what she's doing right. And we're in sync like she'll do things. Last time I was actually at one of these events, I had not figured out my flight properly. I thought that I was leaving at 10 a.m. when in reality I was leaving at 10 p.m. I was having dinner with a few people and M J calls me again and says, So your phone says you're in San Diego, but you're supposed to be in San Francisco right now. Are you in San Diego? San Francisco? I said, I'm in San Diego and she said, Oh, well, you've missed your flight And I was like, What? And you know, she was obviously realize that I was a complete idiot, basically a 37 year old man child that just kind of knows where I need to be next. And in this case, I did not know where I need to be next. So she said, No problem. Go back to the hotel. I pre booked another place, another night with you, and I got you a flight out for 6 a.m. or 10 AM. Which one do you want? Wow. So, like that for me has actually created a couple interesting by products in my life, which is I can focus, focus only on making money inside of the business like that has just that mental energy of like where do I need to go next. What do I need to book? It all happens through my phone, and it all happens to M. J. That's something that's very powerful. And once you get all of these pieces in place, this is what we do for everything inside of our business. S o. I have people that are responsible for every single component of the business. Everyone is answerable to a particular number, and we've sink all this together with the remote work model which will get into it throat this podcast, but is really in my opinion, the single biggest thing that you can do to be able to number one make your company a lot more profitable whether you're running a jam or anything else and then secondarily allows you to scale at a speed that really other people haven't that run brick and mortar companies, they're just not capable of this level of scale. That's what we're gonna get into.

spk_1:   7:42
Yeah, and I'm pretty excited for that because I I used to own a gym, and I know I know what it's like to be inside these gyms, and I feel like a lot of gym owners feel like they're wearing too many hats. Probably feel like they're wearing dozens of hats, right, And that's probably goes for many small S and B small, small and medium sized businesses. How do you mean? How? Like, Let's say there's a gym owner right now listening to this, and they're thinking to themselves like, Well, how? What can I afford in M. J? Right? How can I? How can I start the process of unwinding all the hats I'm wearing and getting someone else? Helping me to do this stuff sure doesn't make sense financially.

spk_0:   8:21
Yeah, to give you context and M J costs between 250 $1000 a month. Realistically, you can get someone that's brand new like, let's say, in the Philippines for about $250 a month, you'll have to train them to get someone who's pretty good. That has a couple years experience around $1000 U. S. And that's just un compare a ble to what you can get in the United States now. With that said, you can get someone from the Midwest so you can get like a stay at home mom as an example for about $2000 U. S. And that's also a really good option. If you're looking for someone, that is, that's got the understands. US culture understands how to communicate, you know, in that way. But that's still a significant cost savings, tow, anything that you would be doing in Chicago, New York L. A San Francisco. Um, you know, any any city with more than a 1,000,000 people, you're not gonna find that type of talent in that type of price,

spk_1:   9:20
right? So what could an M. J do for a typical gym owner? Like, if they're gonna drop, let's just go big bucks and say, $1000 a month on hiring, hiring a top notch virtual assistant? What could what could m j do for that gym owner right now? How could she earn her money back?

spk_0:   9:37
Sure. So I think the biggest thing that you have to first look at is what does a gym owner do with their time and where is their time most profitably spent? And I'm gonna make an assumption because I'm not directly in the gym world. However, my partner of the last eight years, she runs a chain of mermaids schools which has the same exact kind of process called aka Mermaid, is in the business. She teaches people how to swim in a pool with a mermaid tail, which is kind of weird, but it's making money like stink. And, um and so you break down where she puts her time and in reality, actually, where she can put her time that produces the highest r A. Y is working with customers fundamentally right. Getting someone in the door, giving them a demo of your gym, telling them Hey, here are the things that we're gonna do. We're gonna set up a program running, get you on the right track towards where you want to go. You're currently going in this direction, and that's not a very happy direction. You want to go in this direction up, and so everything else outside of that you can scale. So you have to figure out what you're good at and what you're not good at. This is one of the biggest things with entrepreneurs in general, and I bet you this attaches toe gym owners as well. And this is like something really difficult for entrepreneurs to kind of get their head around. You're not good at everything. And in reality, you're actually probably pretty bad at most things, unfortunately, and that's something that all of your employees will almost never tell you, which is super frustrating for you because you actually need a lot of that feedback to know what you're good at and what you're not good at. I know what I'm good at. And I know what I'm not good at. And that self understanding is really gonna allow you to figure out. Well, where do I delegate? And then where do I not delegate? Where where's that choke point for me? And what a lot of people don't recognize is that you can actually delegate that at a lower cost. Then you would have ever thought,

spk_1:   11:45
Yeah, I'm sure people right now don't think that they can get it. Someone who's gonna re book their flight. I mean that to me. What she did it for your flight today and in San Diego is worth the money alone. I guess I'm a man child, too. I find myself in the same situation all the time. Um and I think I'm an investment via here pretty soon as well

spk_0:   12:05
I can tell you some crazier stuff too. Like once we did this reorganization, she said, Oh, you're gonna be flying through. You're not flying through Washington. You're flying through. But I just come from some other place and, uh, no new work. I came from Newark and she said, Hey, you're going to be getting into a terminal in Newark. You've never been to a terminal in newer. Here is how you get to see Terminal, which is the United Terminal in Newark. That kind of attention to detail, you just can't. Blake. That's a certain type of person that you need to get and someone who has an extreme attention to detail, which is someone like M. J. But it's absolutely possible. And it's so much more cost effective than you would have recognised or understood.

spk_1:   12:49
So So let's dive back into this concept of I'm a gym owner. I'm gonna I'm gonna get an M J on my team. Um, and this this actually ties in right into what I'm I'm preaching in this podcast, which is basically like focus on what you you do best, but try and buy back your time, be a better business person. Buy back your time to focus on what you're good at. And I guess the first step to that, like you mentioned, is trying to having to be being able to recognize what you're not good

spk_0:   13:17
at, Right? Right. Well, one of the biggest assumptions and that, and you hit the nail on the head, buying back your time. No one puts a price on their time. And this is so important. So, like, you're a gym owner, you're like, Oh, well, I don't really cost. I make this problem. I have this problem too. Uh, how much is this podcast costing me to be on? If I were to delegate one of my executives to do this podcast. That's what you need to think about, right? You need to think about. Okay, Well, if my sierra, who's also at this event to comes another does this podcast. I know how much that's hero makes. So if that's hero sits down with you for two hours, what is the r a y on that podcast? And you need to start thinking like that like immediately. You need to stop thinking that anything that you do personally is free because it isn't. It costs you money. It costs you time. Actually, Acosta, which is a lot more things. Yes. So where could you deploy your time and how could you deploy it effectively? And we talked about this before. I could bet you that almost all gym owners, if you were to create, like a Venn diagram of, ah, the top 1% of Facebook marketers in gym owners, those two circles would never meet. So

spk_1:   14:36
yeah, well, right there would be a There's a very, very fine There's three

spk_0:   14:40
guys, right, that I'm pretty good at Facebook ads that are also doing that that have their own Jim's. So then, Okay, you kind of boil that down. You say to yourself Well, and what's the next step? Is it just completely forget about this? Or is it hire an agency or, you know, is it taken internally? What we've done is we've taken it internally. Um, and we recognize that actually having someone who let's say you pay, um uh, cheaper wage, someone that lives in Southeast Asia as an example, or Eastern Europe, and you pay that person less than what you would pay someone in San Francisco or Los Angeles or New York, or you pay them a lot less in that agency because an agency is gonna charge a significant margin or something like that. You say Okay, I'm gonna give you a small salary, and your job is to go through all of these trainings and Towler and Facebook ads. And then within a month, your job is to spend $1000 on Facebook ads and figure out what the r A. Y is. And let's say we've paid this person $1000 a month, so our costs right now are $2000 in. You can't get a good agency, a good Facebook agency for $2000 a month.

spk_1:   15:49
Trust me, I know this one guy's

spk_0:   15:50
right. So you I could guarantee you if you have a $2000. If you have $2000 in cash, it's much better to go Route A, which is training someone and getting someone completely committed to your mission, as opposed to an agency where you are client number 72 on their list.

spk_1:   16:11
So let's let's talk about that then, huh? In order for that to be successful, a gym owner is gonna have to have a process to find, right? That's another recurring theme in this podcast. You have to figure out your process. And not only do I have to have the process to find you can't be on a whiteboard in your gym because this person could be in Croatia or something, right? Right. How would you recommend? So let's say I'm a Facebook. Let's let's say I'm a gym owner and I don't know Jack about Facebook marketing except all the things I see online from the gurus. How do I go from not really knowing much about Facebook marketing to creating a process that is repeatable for somebody who's half the world away? Who can execute that with Excellency?

spk_0:   16:52
Let's actually, um, jump a little bit over to S ee. Oh, because I know that forwards and backwards I've been doing it for the past 10 years. I can get super granular for you until you exactly what you need to do on this podcast. You won't need any other training other than that, but I can point you to some. So, um, if you have, let's say you're you want to start an S e o campaign, which is stands for search engine optimization, which is basically getting people to go to your website. I don't know of a gym right now that doesn't have a website.

spk_1:   17:20
So to back it up for gym owners, what would this might be? If you don't know is like if someone comes into your someone from your region opens up a browser like I want to get in shape, they're gonna type in certain words to find this Atlanta Jim for yet. Oh, are you lose weight and lose the weight. But you're in Atlanta, so it's gonna target that

spk_0:   17:38
if you're in Atlanta and you're a gym owner, you wanna own Atlanta, Jim it land to lose weight. Atlanta workout. You want to own all of those keywords? Whoever does own those keywords owns the market instantly. Right? But how do you get on there? Well, it's actually not too complicated. Google has these variables that it measures, and it actually has a secret algorithm that no one really knows. So it's like there's, like, four guys that know the entire algorithm completely at Google and they're sworn to secrecy. And the reason why actually is there's no patents for any of the Google algorithms because if they gave out the patterns, then someone could backward engineering, right?

spk_1:   18:23
Have to release how they do it

spk_0:   18:24
exactly. So no one knows how fun anything is cooked. Uh, which is very interesting. There's a ton of stories connected to like people trying to figure out how Google works, and a lot of people study it all the time. Right, because there's a trillions of dollars inside of understanding how to basically get your website to the top of Google. But very simplistically, all that you have to do is write out ah website. Put information on your website that's connected to Atlanta Jim as an example, and there's a whole bunch of keywords connect to that. So I would include the word Atlanta and I would include the word Jim. And then once you have all of that content written, the next step is to actually go out and to get what are called back links, which are basically other websites that are linking to your website. Let's call that Atlanta jim dot com. So if you have more back Ling's than anyone else in Atlanta that runs a gym you end up winning the entire gang if you actually want to check out an active example of this. Goto aka mermaid dot com. I've been doing this exact playbook for my girlfriend last eight years, and we've opened up 20 locations. If you type in Mermaid Montreal Mermaid, Toronto Mermaid, Dallas Mermaid, Austin. Her website pops up as the first website. She dominates that particular niche, and that's where she makes all of her money. Now let's get into actually how you do this and I'll tell you the infrastructure of actually the way that AKA Mermaid does it, which is very cost effective. It's not. It's not expensive. It'll probably cost us boy. At this point. It costs us about $3000 a month, but we started with $500 per month, so we hired a search engine optimization manager. So there's like one guy that basically has a couple years experience in how to do back links. And we've been, um, I have one for my own company. And then I went out and I found this person for ACA Mermaid. If you go on to platforms like up work or freelancer dot com, dribble dot com Flex Jobs ra Motive. We work remotely. Type all of these things in these air all job boards, specifically four remote workers, and you can put up a job posting. And you just put up a job posting saying, I'm looking for an S e o manager. Someone has experience linking or building and ranking websites, particularly in the gym industry. Take a look at the people. They'll tell you what they've ranked, and it's It's relatively easy away. To check this all, by the way, is to use a tool called a H refs, and we use it. It's It's pretty expensive, but I think they give you, like, a 14 day trial what you can implement for the actual test. So once you have this person, basically, then what that person does is they optimize your website so they put in the right key words like Atlanta Jim. Some of the other things that you can do is put in stuff like I don't even know of what like Atlanta. Jim CrossFit. Let's say you wanted to run for something like that, are connected keywords. So you could read a block. You could write what's quarter called blogged posts, which is basically a whole bunch of content connected to ah, particular subject. You could write something like how Atlanta's CrossFit craze is blowing up. And then you would rank number one for it Link to CrossFit cause you'd have you'd have that piece of content written that would rank you for that particular keyword. Then all you need to do is this S e o Manager, which we use for aka Mermaid. Uh, she goes out and she links back to those particular pages. That's it

spk_1:   22:14
s So how does she linked to she request other websites to link to it or

spk_0:   22:18
Yes. So what she'll do? Don't you take a drink here, huh? Is she goes out and she says, All right, um, we just recently ranked number 14 giving away all of the insider track on the mermaid game. But we ranked number one for silicone mermaid tails. There, there. There's this weird little niche inside of the mermaid world. Which, by the way, how much do you think the the mermaid space is worth?

spk_1:   22:46
Oh, man, I would have said zero before today.

spk_0:   22:50
I know the exact number.

spk_1:   22:53
Give it to us. three

spk_0:   22:55
150 million in turnover per year.

spk_1:   22:58
Three or $50 million

spk_0:   23:00
for the mermaid tails, which are the vast majority of the industry. The silicone mermaid tails, which are the higher end component of that industry. About 5%. And then, um, my girlfriend's mermaid schools, which are She's the leader in that market, but it's about a 10 to $15 million a year market. It's very interesting to see these little niches,

spk_1:   23:22
so you know you to divert real quick. You know, it's interesting what I immediately thought when you start talking about Mermaid S e o like, uh, that's kind of easy to rank for cause. It's a unique key phrase, right for sure, But there's something to be learning that if you pick, if you pick something that's unique, you automatically kind of stand out right, and it makes it easier for business to be seen as long as you put the market around it. The interest around it, right?

spk_0:   23:44
Let's say you wanted to really, and I wouldn't use something like Zoom Bow because it's already copyrighted and probably they would come after you. But let's say there was some type of term. And let's use Mermaid because it's it's just a good example. But don't steal her key words. Obviously, let's say you wanted to rank for like, Mermaid Atlanta There is not a location in Atlanta right now. You could probably do it right now, very quickly and easily until she moves in and she communities against you. And what we've actually end up ended up seeing is there's a lot of these little like small mermaid kind of schools that are in these different cities, but because they don't have their s e o game on lock, we come in and within a week we've been on eight different local news. You know? Ah ah, six shows and they all have websites. All of those websites link to The Atlanta Mermaid Girl, basically the page for Atlanta Mermaid School's on aka mermaid dot com. This is literally what's building you those links from, By the way, Google sees different websites as a more authoritative store source than other websites. So something like the local news channel is a very authority of source for that local city. So if the Atlanta Six O'clock news links to the Akram ERM a website and the acronym it. And it's like aquaman dot com slash Atlanta. You're gonna rank for Atlanta mermaids instantaneously. So this is what you literally need to do is to God and to get those links. But then it goes down to, Well, you was an individual gym owner. Should you be managing the lead that are coming into your gym, or should you be going out and talking and trying to hustle these back links? And what I'm saying is the back legs could be hustled through someone that's remote through. This s your manager,

spk_1:   25:40
and they're probably better at it than you are. Right Way better. I understand they have a system. Yeah. Okay, cool. So that kind of brings us back full circle to the remote work thing. I think honestly, like I could probably have have you on two or three more podcast to talk about all the stuff, you know? Sure. I think the local marketing angles huge. We've been messing around with it with our we do websites for our clients. We were messing around with local marketing and seo stuff, and we've just been we've been juicing people right to the top because no Jim's know how to do a c e o. Right. Right. Um, let's go back. Let's go back to that. So, I mean, there's a few things you brought up you brought up like writing block content to get this is in the front, right to get clustering keywords you talked about Theis? Yo, back linking work, All this stuff I don't want my gym owners to do right because they're gonna spend 18 times longer than they should know. They're gonna produce none of the results, right? So how can they find, like, you already mentioned bunch of sites to find people like again? The problem point here is we're going to convince Jim owners that is worth investing money, to have someone specialize in doing these things for them. Because because money's tight and a lot of Jim's right, how? How, like I guess. Like like, I'm gonna keep going back to this question. Like, what is the r. O? I like if I hire an S e o person for my gym, can that person really make a dent for a local business? So

spk_0:   27:00
first off, it really also you gotta ask yourself how long you gonna run? This owned this, Jim, because I know there's a lot of acquisitions that end up happening in the germ world. And if you own a gym for more than five years, it actually, if you own any business for more than five years, my general answer to you is S e o is the way to do it. If you're gonna own a gym for a year or two years, you're going to do better on Facebook ATS, right you're gonna do. And there's there's instagram ads and there's sirens in the background and all that kind of stuff that are happening. But generally you're going to get Facebook Instagram, um, S E o. You know, email campaigns reaching out to local people in the city. Uh, all of these different funnels that you can implement, but the end of the day s e o. If you rang for Atlanta, Jim, it's once you're up there, it's super hard for people to knock you out. So if you're gonna own it for more than five years, absolutely go that route. Now this s E. O guy Getting back to the acrimony example. We end up hiring her And then we say, Okay, you need to identify all of the press sources for the city of Atlanta, and you need to identify at minimum 200 different sources before we even actually think about entering the market. And it's not just the six o'clock news. It's the local blogger, right? Local blogger that just blogged about Atlanta. So let's say you're doing a CrossFit gym as an example, and maybe we won't call it that like a, um, a CrossFit. But but by name, type of Jim. What I would do is I would get your S e o person and I would say Reach out to all of the Instagram girls that are currently in the city of Atlanta and give them a free Booty Power course and get them to come to the gym in post on Instagram. And then also, hopefully, if they have blog's brain, a blogger post about it. We do. Mommy Bloggers, Mommy bloggers are nuts for mermaids schools because they get their four year old to jump in the pool with um, and they take photos for Instagram and they do a block post about the actual experience. And then it's a back ling back to our website, which is the long term dividend. And then it's that Instagram post which gives you that quickly, short,

spk_1:   29:33
short. Yeah, so let's actually talk about that because that's a really interesting concept to me. They're in marketing. There's the long play in the short play, and I do think like any Facebook posts you make any instagram post. You make tic tac, blah, blah. Those are all the short plays like You get someone's attention now and it's just off their feet and gone forever. Kind of, um, but there was this concept that I was reading about today. It is. It's about if you set up your marketing to do long term dividends, long term compound ING interests. If you think of it that way, it's actually huge. And for most most, if not all, of the gym's on my own push press are interested in a long game. We're not in this to, like, buy, build and flip necessarily. So how talk to that like, how can you set up some some marketing efforts that will return investment forever? Because in our space, everyone's just focused on, like Facebook ads. You know, like immediate instagram Post.

spk_0:   30:25
So I call that renting. You're renting traffic. You're not buying it right? We're owning it or owning it. Yeah, you're not owning it. So like you spend $5000 a month on Facebook ads, let's say you have ah, profitable funnel. We'll talk about the story that I had before. So we invested 1/4 of a $1,000,000 very early on in time. Doctor's career inside of Facebook likes. So there were these Facebook pages, public Facebook pages. And if you you could buy likes at a fraction of the cost of actually getting someone on your email, I remember those days. Yeah, and it was awesome because you could put up a post in 40% of those 250,000 now we had 100,000 people. Cost is $250,000. Um, 40,000. Those people would see the post, and we actually interact with it and would drive traffic. Amazing, right. And then one day, Facebook decided to make a change. They change their algorithm, and then 10% of our list saw the posts. And then next month it was 2% and in the month. After that, it was 1% and we spent 1/4 of a $1,000,000 on an asset. That's now junk. It sits there. I mean, it looks cool on our website that we have hundreds of thousands of people on our Facebook page, but it's in essence, useless. What? How, however, what has produced a fantastic return in the same amount of time has been our rankings, So we rank for things like time sheet templates. You know, if you're looking for time tracking software, you're probably starting. Your journey with a time shows a spreadsheet. Will we give you the most definitive set of all the spreadsheets, which are branded time doctor in the bottom left hand corner? You can use it. We literally have made it like, super useful and valuable for people to come in and use it. There are people that have been using our time sheets for years and have never moved on to another product. But when you're ready to move on, you always recognize Hey, you've got that brand impression of time, doctor, and you're ready to move on it and buy the product. And again, this connects to long term business versus short term.

spk_1:   32:31
Right, right? Exactly. Fuck. I had something I want to say, but I forgot nothing. The scotch is good.

spk_0:   32:38
I know I have the same problem, but that's okay. I can keep talking. Basically, when you when you look at the fundamentals of how you you effectively execute on this strategy, I can give you just some, like, hard core stats, every back link that we get to our website, on average for our linking team. So we have about 28 people on, like, the S e o team right now. And don't let that number scare. You can start with one person. Um, the average back linc costs us $36 to acquire through that team. If you go to an agency, there are these S E O agencies, and if you're looking at S E. O right now, you've probably dealt with um usually they're like 3 to $500 per back, linc, and that's actually a good price, like that's the market rate, but they need to be able to deploy their margin inside of what they're doing to be able to make money. So we have just taken the process directly and 36 bucks for us. It's like were, in essence, printing money. Right now, if anyone can actually work within our operational procedures for our linking team, we hire them instantly because we know we've got the playbook to have them to execute on this particular strategy,

spk_1:   33:52
right? So let's let's talk about back links real quick because I want to make sure gym owners don't make a mistake. Or or maybe it's okay. Are all back. Ling's created equal?

spk_0:   34:02
No. So there's a there's a ranking system for them. Um, there's two definitions. Domain authority and domain ranking. So if you type those into Google D a checker or D R checker, you'll get the same thing and you can put any website time. Doctor has a domain rating of 78. I believe you beat us. It's out of 100 points. Okay, cool. So are 73 s o I love. Ah, I love competition. Yes. Uh, I love it whenever we beat somebody else way. Probably share no back wings after this call or after this, we should definitely share a couple back wings. But if you are a more powerful website. So like Google would be 100 right? Ah, website that just started is a zero or one or probably realistically, a five, and it goes up exponentially. So it's 10 times harder to get a 70 than it is to get a 60 it's 10 times harder to get an 80 than it is to get a 70. So don't be scared if you start your website and you've checked it on one of these things, you have, like a 28. That's that's totally cool. But then what you're gonna do is you're gonna actually look at all of the back links, and there's a lot of open source tools that you can use to be able to do this. But basically the more back wings you have, the bigger website becomes, the more powerful that domain authority becomes, and then you have a really big advantage for when you post that next article on your website. So right now, aka Mermaid, which is the mermaid um, set of Mermaid School's. If we publish an article on mermaid tails, Google is going to give us the benefit of the doubt, and that's actually like almost like a snowball issue where it's like we've built so many back links connected tumor mating. If we write yet another article on Mermaid ing, Google will be like, Oh, well, we're going to give this this website a little bit of traffic And then what it does is it tests two major factors which are super important. Click through rate in time on site. So the click through rate is how many times people click on your article versus the other 10 articles that are on the first page of Google, which is called the Sir Page. The search engine results page, and then when you click on it, it's then measuring how long you're on that particular website. The longer you're on the website, the higher your rankings. The higher your click through rate, the higher your rank

spk_1:   36:27
because Google's assuming it's relevant you're clicking and that engaging your what you're reading.

spk_0:   36:32
The thing that a lot of people once you get this in your head, it makes perfect sense. Google's customer is the searcher. It's not the person that buys advertising on Google. That's just a result, because what they want is for you as a searcher. Find what, you want to get what you want? Yeah. So that's why you'll see these new things that are horrific for people like me. But it's called the zero spot on Google, which is, if you type in a question, they'll usually just give you the answer as a snippet inside of a website. And that's been really bad for us because people don't even go to our website. They just look at the snip in there, like Okay, that's the answer. How tall is Donald Trump? He is this tall? Yeah. Okay. I don't need to go to the website to actually get you into my funnel. Um, which is which is bad for me, but really good for Google. Because it's good for the searcher, cause they got what they want, and they'll come back to Google constantly. So you need to be able to optimize for all of those things basically, and that means building websites that are valuable to your customer. So, like, if you're a friend of mine that runs something in this niche called nerd fitness. Oh, my buddy Steve. Yeah. Get

spk_1:   37:41
Mia back. Ling from him. Police?

spk_0:   37:42
Yes, Steve seems pretty awesome. Uh, and I've known Steve for 10 years. And the way that and Steve, by the way, this is kind of Ah, another side. But it's definitely cool for gym owners. I'm in Vegas three years ago. Ah, we're in a really expensive, expensive nightclub that Steve got because I don't know why he got this, uh, and then he turns to me and he says So this s e o thing. Um, maybe I should do some of it. And I said, Yeah, well, I think your websites pretty powerful. And then we looked it up on my on my phone, uh, visiting a troughs, and he was ranked number one for paleo diet.

spk_1:   38:27
Wow, More than the system, it was

spk_0:   38:30
insane. And I was like, how much traffic are you getting to this webs, you know, through this key word. And we looked it up and he was getting, like, a couple 100,000 clicks a month for paleo diet. And he said, Yeah, I don't really know one how it goes up and how it goes down, but like, it looks like it's for number one today. And I said, You're not paying attention to this stuff. He said No, I don't Really. That's not my not my job. Um, long story short, I actually ended up getting a man S e o manager and making sure that he was taking care of that side of the business. But the reason why he was so good at ranking for these things, which is an interesting it, which is a useful thing for General Jim, no owners to understand. Steve writes the definitive article on the paleo diet. So he writes really good content.

spk_1:   39:21
So about value

spk_0:   39:22
it's all about Can you? Actually, so Google has a very clear understanding of what it wants. It wants you as of the searcher to have a really good experience. So an example that might be counterintuitive for a lot of Atlanta gym owners but could be super power from an S e o perspective would be to write the most definitive article on the different gyms in Atlanta. And of course, you're gonna put yourself is the 1st 1

spk_1:   39:52
And that's counterintuitive because you're gonna be mentioning all your competition's

spk_0:   39:54
all your competition and you're going to make really you're gonna have photos of the gym's you're going to see what are the advantages of one Jim versus another gym and all these other types of things. But here's what. The cool thing that's gonna happen if you write the most definitive article and you truly believe it's the most definitive article. Google is gonna reward you for that. And you're gonna get a couple back Ling's because we're gonna talk about, you

spk_1:   40:15
know, probably get a lot of back when we're gonna get a

spk_0:   40:17
lot of bad. But hopefully also to you get your S e o manager That's gonna be able to juice it, right? It's gonna be very easier. Easy for your S e o manager to sell to other people because they're gonna email other people and say, Hey, uh, we really we wrote this article. We think it's the definitive article in this space. We know that you wrote this other article on Atlanta gyms, and we'd love to talk to you about how we could collaborate and work together on getting the word out about article. So let's say you end up ranking to the number one of Google for that, and let's say 90% of your traffic ends up going out to one of your competitors. Here's what's cool about multi touch marketing. You just picks Aled their entire Oh, uh, right. So I get 3000 people a month that air checking out Atlanta gyms that have typed in the keyword Atlanta gyms and have clicked on my article.

spk_1:   41:07
And even though they're going your competitors, you have a piece of them.

spk_0:   41:09
You have a piece because here's the beauty of it. You're going to set up a Facebook ads and you're going to specifically set up retargeting inside of Facebook and Instagram, and you're going to communicate to that customer touching on there. I call it their secret fear. So when I think about marketing, um, particularly in something like when I was doing a tutoring company, Jim Industry, Anything like that. It's the secret fear. So it is the It's what you think about it three o'clock in the morning. It's what keeps you up at night. It's usually connects to sex, wait or money. Those are the three major points and gyms. It's waiting, right? Sex or sex, too? Yeah, right. The weight connects to the sex. Uh, no. So much the money. But maybe that's

spk_1:   41:58
the Thea off of, you know, like, if you're you want to

spk_0:   42:02
be the den Bills Arian guy, you don't want to be the guy that's £40 overweight. Uh, you know doesn't really have the stuff together, so you can start re targeting them and you can run ads that are really, you know, getting into that secret fear. Like I know that you're trying to figure out how to get back in shape. Click here, Thio, get a free trial on. You know, get a free plan on how to get back to where you need to go. Something like that. Stop the top. My head. I'm sure the gym owners actually know this. There's probably someone else he could bring on that could really break down. Like the ad copy components of how to write. Really Good copy. You should have someone like that, by the way, On the podcast thing, that would be amazing. You're right. That ad copy. And then you have those people slowly cook over a monk, right? And I don't know the average amount of time that someone takes before they make a decision on which Jim they want to be part of. If they've made that decision. But if they've typed in keywords like Atlanta Jim, they're definitely thinking about it. They're an active lead, right? You want to be ableto interact with toe by that lead from Google probably costs 22 50 x what it is to do it through S e o just to kind of give you context. That's the average industry standards. So if you buy a click what they call it, so someone types in Atlanta jim their ads at the very top. I'm sure if we typed it in right now into Google, there'd be like three or four ads. You click on one of those ads and then you're inside of that person's funnel. But most people now know that those air ads for the key word Atlanta Jim and they immediately go buy those, and they go to the first organic result. And that's the trusted source, which is going to be for you. Here are the top, and don't call it top 10 because everyone doesn't top 10 Atlanta gyms do the top 47 Atlanta gyms, like do the most definitive article, put some real time into it.

spk_1:   44:08
Like every single gym

spk_0:   44:10
every single, Jim, because that's the source that you want, right? Like if I'm a searcher, think of think psychologically, What do I want to actually consume? Well, I'm not. If there's the top 10 gyms and in this top 47 Jims, I'm gonna click on the top 47 dreams. All right? Right. That's the one that I'm gonna check out. You go and consume that content, and then you bring them back through retargeting.

spk_1:   44:28
So I like I like to leave our listeners with, like, something very definitive to do. And this is less actually it to do item as opposed to a mind shift. Um, thing and And to me, this is this is one of the biggest ah, mind shifts I've had when writing content, I used always right content directly for my end users. Right? But what's more powerful for our gyms to do is to write content that is Cheryl by people in your demographic, right? Right. And, for instance, like top. Like the concept of writing top 47 Jims in your city makes no sense because you're thinking like I'm gonna Dr the 98% of the people away from my gym to another, Jim, but you are putting them in your funnel. And guess what else happens. Like all the local people around might be sharing this. Hey, check out this poster. You Are you on Facebook? You might be thinking about joining a gym click here. You know, like, check out this post

spk_0:   45:25
your competitors might actually share your

spk_1:   45:27
betters My chair for you. Yeah, which puts them if your facebook pixel ing and Google pick, You know, if you're using retargeting, which will be another topic for another day, they're putting you're putting them in your funnel. So it's like you could be literally driving traffic to a competitors, Jim, But getting that person into your funnel that you can actually start talking to, which is huge, because you would've missed him otherwise completely.

spk_0:   45:49
Yeah, I think it boils down to like s CEO is really value game as opposed to ah, conversion game. So the way that you get a customer is by who can produce the most value for the searcher, as opposed to who can actually like close the deal. So if I immediately like, I immediately trust people per ticket in the agency world cut a deal with a lot of agencies a lot. That Ah, look at what I'm doing in the leg. I can't help you. Here's someone else that can.

spk_1:   46:21
So we just publish the podcast today from Sales guy and he talks about It's called Staying on the Know Where you're just basically looking for reasons why we can't work together as opposed to selling somebody on why you have to work together.

spk_0:   46:31
I mean, I immediately trust those people because it means they're not desperate, trustworthy, And they're really I just got told No by somebody. Um, we're trying to put together a book and like, this guy is the guy that writes that launches New York Times Bestsellers. And, you know, he looked, he looked at what we're doing and we wanted to do a book on remote work and all this kind of Stephanie kind of came to the collusion. He's like, I don't think we really work well together. I don't think it would be a good fit. You want more than ever so much of my money, right? Like I literally emailed him back, and I'm trying to convince him that he made the wrong decision,

spk_1:   47:09
right? That that is, that is sales tactic, like level 10,000 right? You know,

spk_0:   47:16
it's it's so good Because, like, let's say you have a gym. It's like, this is the definitive Jim for the space, right? If you wanna I have a lot of lower back pain. Um, I actually ended up getting in Austin, Texas. Uh, my friend Stacy is a fantastic power lifter, And she was my squad coach for a while, and I remember she was just too busy to actually keep working with me. And I was like, What can I give you to be able to keep working together? Because you're just You're doing so many fantastic things for my back, right? My back pain is basically gone, you know, thanks to Stacy, those are the types of people that, like she knows what she can do. She knows that she's where she is in the world. Um, I call it the portfolio technique. Like I am good at these things. Here is my portfolio. I'm gonna open it up for you and the things that I'm not good at, I can send you to Seoul. Refer you because I'm not desperate I know what I'm really good at, and I know what I can deliver. And I know that I'm making good money at what I'm doing. If you communicate that through your CEO, Google will reward you because that's what people really want to click on. That's what people want to interact with. They want to interact with people that are actually really that air providing valuable content in the space.

spk_1:   48:31
Right? All right, we will wrap it up with that. Thank you so much for your time and all of the knowledge you've just dropped. Literally. I think we can do a couple more podcast with all the stuff that you've got going on in your head. We didn't even get into the remote work stuff as much as I wanted to do. Honestly, that's fine. So we will. We'll have to reconnect on that. Yeah, given that, given that you've done, like, 400 podcasts in a year or something, I think all you have time in your schedule. Maybe. Or possibly, my dear. So

spk_0:   48:58
let's see how this one goes. If you guys like it, why don't you share this podcast all around the Internet and then dependent upon how that goes. Maybe I come back for another episode.

spk_1:   49:09
You're doing my job for me. I love it. Yeah, Yeah. Alright, guys. Yes. Oh, check it out and end of another episode. Um, Jim Os podcast. Always here to try and deliver high value to our gym owners. Whether you're pushing us Klein or not, um, transitioning this fitness industry, uh, ownership into better business owners. I totally butchered that. But I'm gonna blame the scotch. That's why it happens. All right, So until next time, keep Brian and I'll catch you guys later. Chow. What do you think? Was that good or what? I mean, honestly, I'm so blessed to be you know what? I take that back. I'm not blessed. I made this conscious decision to be in this group, and I made the conscious decision because I realized I needed a tow Learn a lot. And there's a lot of people to learn from. So if you feel like you're in that boat like this, me meeting all of these really smart CEOs of software companies is not by accident. It's by design because I put myself in that situation. And if you feel like you're not around the right people that are gonna help you get to where you want to be, then you need to figure that out and put yourself in that situation. What's cool is like, I think I think the normal path or a lot of gym owners is They just put themselves around other gym owners and a lot of there's a lot of group think What's cool about this group that I'm in is we are all are coming from different industries and backgrounds and experiences, and we all have different ways of doing things and the group think is a lot less here. So there's a lot of collaborative learning, and it's not a bunch of people from the same business channels. I I honestly can't think of another place that that this is replicated. Um, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go to work for you guys and try and figure that out. Like what? What type of groups you guys conjoined, where you can get this type of insight and knowledge from non, not necessarily from gym owners but other service owners. So this would be people like my restauranteur sze Um, maybe people who own different modalities of finished, like gymnastics or rock climbing gyms and trampoline parks, coffee shop owners. Stuff like that would be really good insight for you guys to start to understand how, like customers see businesses and how they get retention and customers and how a coffee shop like something a coffee shop does to get a customer to come back day after day might be something that you could deploy in your gym to make your customers come back day after day. What I'm saying is there's a ton of concepts that are out there that are just waiting for you to pluck them, and we need to put them in front of you. And that's what we're trying to do here. So hopefully enjoy that episode. Liam, I personally was just struck by a lot of the things that he said in that conversation stuff that I think I can use in push press and you can use in your gym. And hopefully we can deploy in, push pressed for our clients to use in their gym, see how that works. So anyway, if you got some value out of this podcast, I would really, really appreciate it if you hit the like button or the follow button or the subscribe button or whatever button you can, because the more people that like these episodes and the more people that are subscribing, you're basically telling all their algorithms out there that this is important to you, which will put it in front of more gym owners and the end of the day. The mission of this podcast in the mission of everything we're doing here is to help Jim owners. So help us in that quest if you think that we're providing some value to you and you think that this is something that will help you in the long run, short term midterm, whatever term, give us a like give us a subscribe, you know, write some feedback and let us know how we're doing. We love it. All right, guys, thank you so much for tuning in and making it all the way to the end. I appreciate it. One of these days I might drop a special offer or give you guys a $5 gift card. I don't know. I got some crazy ideas burning in my head right now, and maybe if you make it this far in every podcast. I'll do that. So thank you. Until next time. Keep grinding. Keep fighting the good fight. Get out there and make your gym kick some ass today and I'll talk to you later. Peace.