Scaling to $300K as a Service-Based Solopreneur – Expert Coaching Session with Andy Milligan

[00:00:00] Andy: Hey, I just reached my six figure revenue goal and I was literally like, cool, you know what's next? So I'm less attached to revenue than ever before, but I see it as a tool to be able to like do these things I talked about. So quarter two 50 would be really cool. I know, like I say, it's gonna be really cool, but it's like there's no emotions tied to that number other than the fact that it would be really cool, and I know I need to be increasing year over year.
[00:00:35] Intro: You are listening to the Seven Figure Leap podcast. We're here to leverage rich relationships and smart strategies to take your business to the next level. Here's your host, Dustin Reman.
[00:00:49] Dustin: Welcome back to the seven Figure Leap podcast. We have a very special series that we are starting and kicking off today with a good friend Andy Milligan. So Andy is someone that has been on my radar for a long time.
He is been an active part of my LinkedIn presence and he responds to newsletters and sends me updates and I could tell he's a really relationship driven dude.
[00:01:08] Dustin: And so I thought when I saw his name come in through the application process to have a seat in this coaching series that he'd make the perfect first guest. So the whole idea behind the coaching series is this is the last time I'm gonna kinda like talk to you as an audience member. I'm really gonna fully focus on Andy.
[00:01:25] Dustin: We're gonna learn about his business, his goals, and we're just gonna jump right into strategy. So, unlike most of our interviews, there's not gonna be a bunch of backstory. There's not gonna be a bunch of context. For me, it's really a coaching session as if. Andy paid me and said, look, I need laser coaching to grow my business through partnerships, perhaps podcast guesting.
[00:01:43] Dustin: And that's really the objective today. So Andy, I'm really excited to just be here in a virtual room with you, get to know you a little bit better, and most importantly, hopefully give you some really tactical, practical help for your business. So please, Andy Milligan, take it away. Just give us a little context, quick backstory, but mostly like a snapshot of what your business is today.
[00:02:02] Andy: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I'm like really excited to do this. It's not an opportunity I take lightly. I know we talked a little bit off camera
about mentorship and taking the opportunities to be case studies for the people, and I very much, very much am seizing this, so I wanna thank you just for the opportunity.
[00:02:16] Andy: I'm the founder of MMG Designs, my web design strategy studio that I operate here in Columbus, Ohio, and the short version kind of of my personal story. Is it ranges from golf to personal training, you know, onto this path of eventually marketing and web design. So like I said, the short
version of that is have always kind of been in some kind of a marketing niche.
[00:02:36] Andy: But I grew up playing golf. I built a lot of connections in a network through that industry. I eventually went on to playing college while I was in college. The second university I was at was called the University of Findlay, and they had this program that was called the Oiler 10. So the Findlay mascot is an oiler, which for those of you who dunno, is like a big buff construction dude who works on like oil machines.
[00:02:59] Andy: And they had this group that was called the Oiler 10, and basically it was a marketing program. For athletes because we couldn't go on these and like opportunities and travel trips that a lot of the people that were in the marketing program could go on. And basically we would work for free for local businesses in exchange for donations to the university because we couldn't take money.
[00:03:18] Andy: And so we would meet at five 30 in the mornings on Wednesday, me and a bunch of other athletes throughout the school. And we just got to work for free. And that's was my testing ground into like actually learning what I like to do in marketing. And I got the sort of labeled as the branding designer creative in that group.
[00:03:36] Andy: And when you're doing something for free, you really are just doing it for the love of it. And at the time I was going to school for, you know, a marketing major and I was personal training on the side. That's kind of another chapter of it. But I really learned that, you know, my skillset in design and branding was something that I was infinitely passionate about.
[00:03:54] Andy: So after I graduated school, went on and worked at an agency for a year before transitioning and I had enough runway to go full-time with my own. Strategy studio and doing web design. We started more in traditional graphic design and a lot of the small businesses that I've worked with were like, okay, well I heard this one moment, like on a podcast a while ago who said,
websites are the closest thing to the sale, so they're the most important in terms of branding your messaging.
[00:04:20] Andy: And eventually, like all the businesses I was doing traditional graphic design for, the next question for them was always the website side. Like, okay, we have the branding. Now the next step is, okay, how are we getting online? And that's really kind of how I got started. And since then, two years and building the business and eventually to the point where is now as of last month we're in August of this year, I've been recording and documenting my journey kind of the entire way as I've built the company.
[00:04:48] Andy: Right now I only have one other contractor that I work with. I still do 95% of the fulfillment for myself. And the business model in and of itself that we offer, a lot of it is website strategy consulting, but we do have three offers. One of them is kind of a done with you offer, so it's a basically in self implementation and something that we'll talk about a lot, Dustin is sort of.
[00:05:09] Andy: Meeting your audience where they're at, because especially when you have a high ticket offers like that, like what's kind of the, the funnel foot, the door For me, I like, that's been a lot of the free stuff with the newsletter and content, but I'd love to jam with you on how I can make this kind of mess of things I've got going on a little bit more cohesive.
[00:05:25] Andy: But currently the low ticket offer right now, and I know I said I was gonna give the short version, so I'm kind of trying to transition a little bit, but the low ticket offer is kind of a done with you and it's just a $500 self implementation. So people who want another set of eyes on their website, identify their, offer, their audience, make sure it's branded more towards them, but they don't wanna invest in a full build.
[00:05:45] Andy: I basically do a breakdown of their website. We also do free website audits, so it's just kind of lead magnet put in the door, get someone outta the newsletter and mailing list. But the low ticket offer is just a self implementation. So I basically record a video going over, I export all the pages on their site.
[00:06:02] Andy: I, I do a breakdown and basically give them some design elements to work with and talk through the strategy and the messaging and give them to them, implement themselves. And in terms of like website development, we have two offers. We have a landing page offer, and this was based on a lot of feedback that I've gotten kind of getting started is that a lot of times people don't need SEO marketing strategy.
[00:06:24] Andy: They just need a domain. They can connect basically a landing page, something that's one page responsive online ransom, well highlights their offers is kind of on point with their goals and obviously has like the conversion mechanisms of the contact form, the core pages that all websites need to have.
[00:06:40] Andy: And that's the three K offer that's in the middle there. So sort of the picture, like the popcorn at the movie theaters, that's the big one you want in the middle. That's what one they're trying to get you to buy. 'cause personally
from a business standpoint. Staying lean, sort of my goals is, that's a very profitable one for me because it's the balance of the biggest value add and also time investment on my end.
[00:07:02] Andy: I have a really good process behind the tools and software I used to be able to build that quickly. And then anything above that is our full build offer, and that starts at 10,000. So. That's anything with a bigger marketing engine behind it. You have multiple target personas, audiences, different offers that you have to align with a different website, a bigger picture website strategy.
[00:07:22] Andy: And that's a very much a hands-on approach, usually a a much longer strategy in terms of timeline. And we have. Multiple sessions throughout the phase of that process to be able to serve any type of website needs that they have.
[00:07:35] Dustin: Cool. So free audit, lead magnet, front end offer, $500 website breakdown that they can go implement themselves or hire someone on Fiverr or something if they're just, they don't have money to invest.
[00:07:48] Dustin: Kind of the bread and butter productized service it sounds like is the landing page build out. So a single landing page, high converting, it's got all the, the fundamental things you need for like contact forms, email capture, three k, sounds like that. I'll come back to that. That's the middle tier, but maybe the preferred tier in many cases.
[00:08:07] Dustin: And then the full build out is obviously tin can up custom build that's gonna vary depending on the client's needs. Is that a good capture of the three main offers? You were listening? Indeed. I was. Mm-hmm. So give us a snapshot kind of big picture if you don't mind sharing, like the kind of trailing 12 month revenue, sort of like where you at on an annualized basis.
[00:08:27] Andy: Yeah, so I kind of mentioned in the beginning I started with an income goal. So start of 2025, kind of before that point. It was been in business for about 18 months or so. I was really saying yes to a lot of more custom skilled projects. I've had these more defined offers laid out within the last six months.
[00:08:45] Andy: So we're still in the, in the testing phase and I've gotten some decent feedback to kind of gauge where I think some of the value is and we can sort of expand on that as you make your recommendations too. So in terms of this 2025, I've been documenting my journey to making six figures in revenue as a freelancer basically.
[00:09:04] Andy: And, and the seventh months we actually hit that revenue wise. So now I'm kind of in a point now where I'm transitioning to how do I make. Either this model or something similar to it. Now that I have my needs, my needs checked in terms of income, I'm really focusing on process and like, okay, what's the biggest value add for what?
[00:09:22] Andy: And also, what do I enjoy doing? Because there's a big part of it. I, I really over indexed on like working really hard, especially getting started. I think a lot of people that are probably listening, like high performers, people that listen to the show are, can relate to the animosity of like, I have to make this thing work.
[00:09:40] Andy: And that kind of changes. And like I said, transparently, I was working from a revenue goal. So it kind of muddies up, not muddies up, but it changes the incentives of your decisions when you're based on revenue rather than fulfillment or rather than trying, okay, what's the tooling of this offer that adds the most value and actually builds a business.
[00:09:58] Andy: Like I said, we kind of talked about off camera, my goals were to stay lean and to have no more than a few people. Because I just see what the trends of like where this industry and where a lot of other industries are headed with AI and everything, that staying lean and really learning to be a master of your industry.
[00:10:15] Andy: Being a thought leader, your tool chest, and obviously building a network on the backend with, you know, some fun things like podcasting and stuff like that. And that's what I enjoy doing. So the short version of that was, yes, my biggest priorities now in terms of revenue are to
make this model as efficient as possible and kind of get it out of the more custom scoping.
[00:10:34] Andy: I think what that could look like, and I have my ideas and I'm definitely welcoming your feedback on uh, any of this, 'cause I want you to pick this apart, is I think the next step would either have to be niching more down into a specific industry or deliverable. Right? So we do X, Y, Z software. We currently build on Webflow, Wix studio and Framer.
[00:10:54] Andy: So we could niche down by platform or we could also niche down by audience, right? So we could say like landing pages for specific vertical. We've done a lot in healthcare. I think the needs has to match what the deliverable is. So like a landing page for example, the three K offer that gets a lot of attraction from like solo creators who are doing a book launch or they're launching an event, they have a community offer, something like that.
[00:11:17] Andy: They want to go and see like, okay, one week turnaround, three K website, look at all these good examples, boom. That's what I want. I think to make that offer effective, you really have to dig deep into one industry and kind of plant my flag. And I've had some commitment issues doing that 'cause I have a lot of varying experience.
[00:11:34] Andy: Like I said, when you start from the beginning of saying yes to way too much, you kind of get a jumbled mess of a portfolio and we call that like portfolio creep. So you're just getting more of a less refined deliverable in the end.
[00:11:45] Dustin: I can relate to everything you said. You know, I left engineer like you left school and went straight in.
[00:11:50] Dustin: You know, I know you had that, you're in an agency, but you pretty much went straight into building this business. For me, the 20 year in reverse version of that was I did engineering for almost 20 years. And actually the first year of entrepreneurship of my own was building websites on any platform you wanted for any industry, local, online.
[00:12:07] Dustin: It was like, you got money, I got websites, you know, and so, and then you know that, that also, I started to. Find other services to provide to the same clients. That's, you know, obviously another way to do this is to have a niche front end service. But you know, if you're working with local clients, like in my example, I'd start helping them with their Google My Business profile, and then I would actually go into their shop and help them come up with like better offers and bundles and specials.
[00:12:28] Dustin: And because we were able to like increase the value I was adding to an individual client, and in my case that turned into a partnership and that, like, that's where the whole Fire Creek snacks part of my chapter takes off. So you're 24 years old. I know realistically the crystal ball is extremely murky when life is 34.
[00:12:43] Dustin: You know, for you Andy, but, but you've got a ton of but experience under your belt for, you know, the relative young age and you got. Very articulate, clear language around the evolution of your business today. I think that's probably in part just your personality, but I think it's in part 'cause
you're documenting what you do, which requires you to be reflective, you know, and like kind of think about how things have worked as you're documenting them and building in public.
[00:13:07] Dustin: So the way I like to do this is sort of get different angles on the, the current conditions and we'll start projecting forward, which you started to do a little bit, which is great. So we got three main offers. Those are only six months old. Before that you're kind of doing all the websites for all the people
to get money in the door, which is what you should do.
[00:13:23] Dustin: You know, when you're early on and you're kinda at this early, early scale stage where you've got a proven product market fit, you can obviously deliver. You've earned a hundred K in revenue in the first seven months of this year. That's amazing. Sounds like that was your annual goal and you hit it in seven months, so.
[00:13:38] Dustin: Self-sufficient. You know, that like you could just keep doing what you're doing and you're gonna make enough money, which gives you the freedom now to kinda step back and be like, how could this be more fun, more fulfilling? Who do I really like to work with? Do I want a team? You're gonna start getting into, you have the freedom, I guess, to think about this more strategically.
[00:13:56] Dustin: You know, in the early days you gotta grind through it. You've shortcut that process in a big way. But, so just thinking about what you've done to date, and we're gonna kind of transition into forward thinking and envisioning where you want to go, but based on what you've already experienced, are there certain things that jump out to you on like certain clients you did enjoy or certain types of projects you did enjoy, and then the ones that you're like, hell no, I never wanna see another one of those again, feel free to use names, but you don't need to, especially on the last part, but just a little reflective exercise here.
[00:14:25] Dustin: Is there stuff that jumps out to you that you're like, man, if I could just have 10 of those, life would be good, versus maybe the, the opposite of that.
[00:14:31] Andy: Yeah, absolutely. And this is, and I told you before to very much be critical, like how can we take this objective thing and like we're smiling and we're friendly, but like how can we take what we have and actually make it a business?
[00:14:44] Andy: Right. And that's what I said is that, I mean, very much saying yes to way too much in the beginning, but in terms of past experience terms, a lot of times what I've learned, Dustin, is that the projects I enjoy doing the most also aren't the, I think anyone in business where like you start doing it for like a self-fulfilling reason and you find like, oh man, like it doesn't add a ton of value to the right person.
[00:15:06] Andy: So like the three K landing page offer I've found to get the best response from a certain audience, someone who needs that deliverable right away. And a lot of times it is people who are launching a book, they're establishing a course. Or they just want a one page landing page, say, I need something out quick.
[00:15:22] Andy: And the time to value is a big part in that. And I haven't niched down to a particular industry in that core deliverable. What I found too is that a lot of the client, a lot of my portfolio, you know, is like healthcare and tech, and those are the more custom scope projects, and those do take time. And also a lot of times a lot of the stakeholders in this project, they wanna work with an agency a lot of times.
[00:15:44] Andy: So it's not something that I feel aligned with, like my bigger goals moving forward of staying lean. They want to see that social proof, they want to see. We have eight or nine developers on our team hear their photos on
our website sort of thing. They don't as much value the high touch nature of what I want to be.
[00:16:01] Andy: They more so value the expertise, the proven processes, everything like that. They're paying to have the best high quality, niche service done.
[00:16:08] Dustin: They're kind of old school. They want you to say We not, I, when you're talking about the work, I totally get where you're coming from.
And so it sounds like those kind of big custom projects that have bureaucracy and red tape and multiple decision makers, maybe not.
[00:16:23] Dustin: The thing that that's lights you up so far.
[00:16:25] Andy: That's true. And it's also appealing though, because all you see, and I think we all have experiences with this as business owners or as creators, where all you see in the beginning is like, wow, there's a big budget for this project. And especially in the beginning, man, like you're, like I said, we're, we're saying yes to too much, especially when there's government involved, when there's a lot of, there's a whole marketing team, there's stakeholders, a lot of pressure.
[00:16:48] Andy: And something a mentor told me is like, you wanna have your inbox filled with as many Oh yes. Messages from clients as opposed to, oh shit messages. Like, who are you actually excited to hear from? And to me it's like people who have, you know, a stake in the business always. There's just, it's a very different conversation when people are referencing a marketing budget versus a personal budget.
[00:17:08] Andy: So like a lot of times people and with the higher scope are, they are easier to, to sell to like a lot of times. The conversation's a lot easier and I kind of fall apart sometimes when I view what I'm doing, what I'm talking about as sales. So it has been easier from that standpoint. And like I said, it's kind of like this messy middle of like I'm really creatively fulfilled working with people that you know, they need the landing page offer that are custom skill, like doing the self implementation offer.
[00:17:36] Andy: That's not very profitable for me. It takes about six or seven hours to do that. My hourly rate to keep the lights on right now is 140. So I'm very much drawn by the high touch, adding value, sharing my expertise, and now that sort of factors into podcast guesting and how I could eventually do that at scale.
[00:17:55] Andy: But I really like talking about what I do and that's kind of like why I have that low hanging fruit offer too. So the long story short of it, it's, there's like inclinations and I can't commit to kind of one thing on either side, if that makes sense.
[00:18:07] Dustin: Sounds like you like working with creators. We'll just call 'em creators, entrepreneurs, founders, however you wanna phrase that.
[00:18:12] Dustin: You like the energy of that. You feel like obviously you have something in common with them. They tend to be, at least in the ones that you've worked with so far, they tend to be a little more scarce in their resources. And so they might do a do this done with you thing at most. Maybe they'll spend three grand on a landing page if they really need it, and they're at some level of success.
[00:18:31] Dustin: I hear, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're like, you like the energy of those people. Like you're scrappy, they're scrappy, hustling, you know they're gonna use this right away to get results. And you have this more like we'll call corporate, but you have this like bigger organizational sort of people who come to you or you go to them and write proposals and they do bigger projects and they've got bigger budgets.
[00:18:51] Dustin: It's kind of a pain in the ass to manage. You got multiple people, maybe you don't love to hear from them when, when they have feedback, but they have more money and they're like actively looking to spend it. They have a marketing budget and so you got this kind of tension between people with money who you don't love to work with and people with less money who you actually love to work with because you love their energy and personality.
[00:19:11] Dustin: Is that a fair summary
[00:19:13] Andy: of that? Yeah. To point paint with broad strokes. That is true. And that's why you can see, like you noticed this and you pointed out it was like to people that are at each end of this. The fact that there is the other end is unappealing to the getting more people like that, if that makes sense.
[00:19:28] Andy: So I feel like I'm kind of in this point where I'm at either a switching cost of having to do both and like the entrepreneurial sort of like I want to do everything for everyone sort of feeling. And that's one of the biggest problems I'm trying to solve because I also realize that, that it is probably a big part of what goes into this overwork and all the potentially negative emotions that this, the business could lead to, to keep this engine going long term.
[00:19:52] Andy: I don't think it's sustainable.
[00:19:54] Dustin: Okay, well let's kind of set the offers to the side. That's gonna come back in the sort of the strategy side of where we want to go from here. But if we just think, Andy circa 2028, so like three years out you're full-time running your own shop. You tell me whether it's still in web design.
[00:20:11] Dustin: We can probably assume it is, but most importantly what I want to capture is your vision for three years from now personally. Obviously some, a really important part of this is, is revenue, income team, those sort of
factors. And again, I know this may be unclear or maybe you've got a super written out vivid vision and you could just like tell me in detail, but just gimme a sense for like what winning looks like three years from now when it comes to your, your business and the way I view the world.
[00:20:36] Dustin: The business is tied directly into your personal, so maybe you start with personal and go to business, but I'd just love to hear a two minute summary of like your three year
[00:20:43] Andy: vision. Yeah, absolutely. And this is a question that, I mean for the listeners, I know, I don't think I've talked about this yet, but I actually have a podcast that I've been running for a little over two years.
[00:20:53] Andy: It has 110 episodes and that's a question similar to this is one that I ask and it always makes so much sense to hear someone else how their story than it does to tell your own. You're like, like I listened to you, Dustin, you tell your story about, you know, where you started and then the me sticks transition and how it led you to podcast.
[00:21:10] Andy: Guessing that had the StoryBrand chapters in there. You had just the whole thing seems like, yeah, the natural equation. I think part of that is when you tell it well, it makes more sense, but also it's like when, you know, lights, camera, action on me. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing and I'm just trying to like figure it out in the meantime.
[00:21:27] Andy: Right.
[00:21:28] Dustin: And I
[00:21:28] Andy: feel the same way every day. So, yeah, absolutely. And I, I am someone that has goals, so this is something I can jam on a little bit. I want to transition out of fulfillment a little bit and I was talking with a mentor recently and I said like, man, if I actually look at the podcast and everything, no strategy behind it, right?
[00:21:47] Andy: No guesting strategy. No thought that going, that's going into the people that I'm having on either. Mostly just my network past clients, people that I view as maybe potential really good connections build goodwill with. I want that to be more of a focus in the business. 'cause as I review my calendar, I
record these monthly retros every month and I talk about the business profit loss retro or just everything I enjoy during the month.
[00:22:11] Andy: I'm starting to get more implemented with like putting my time sheets into AI and stuff like that. And it's like, wow, I work too much. But the long story short that as I want conversations to be. The future of it moving forward is like, how can I build a business in a way to where I'm marketing it through stuff that I like doing and I'm getting out of fulfillment a little bit, but it's like I'm a creative at heart man.
[00:22:34] Andy: Like I want to be involved. I'm really big on just, I could sit in Figma, I could sit in frame where I could sit in web flow all day and just say, man, like this CTA, like this pricing section, this hero section. I am jamming on that. And I also, I'm dabbling a little bit in both camps, but in terms of like the ideal vision for three years, I want to buy a duplex.
[00:22:56] Andy: So that's like my next goal in terms of the life front. So like, and as you can tell, like I talked about the six figure revenue goal, like that was, I'm very, for better or worse, I'm very outcome driven. I have a very negative association with anything that I associate with quitting or failing, and that's kind of like how I was raised with sports and stuff.
[00:23:16] Andy: But in terms of like three years in the future, if I'm picturing like I would be really happy, I'd say I'm running a podcast that gets me leads for my business. I'm going to a lot of networking events. That's a big way I've grown the business so far. Columbus is a great place for that. And I also have the freedom to not just invest in property, but to be close to my family, to travel more too.
[00:23:37] Andy: Man, like there's so many, I get a lot of FOMO from my friends on LinkedIn and stuff like that. They're traveling to these events and I get really energized by meeting people, especially with the nature of what I do, being very remote and intimate with my goals of remaining. So I know I'm gonna have to check that box with networking with more exclusive access to a highly curated group of people.
[00:23:59] Andy: I learned so much in an environment like that, and I wanna be able to get into more of those rooms in the future too. But the ideal vision is some combination of living in a bigger place, making more money and talking to more cool people.
[00:24:12] Dustin: I love all that. And so coming back into the business as the generator of the income to do all those things, do you have, I put a gun in your head and said like gimme a number.
[00:24:22] Dustin: Like do you have a revenue number and then sort of an idea, is it still Andy and one contractor or do you have like a small team or how do you see that sounding enjoyable
[00:24:32] Andy: and fun? Yeah, this is where the coaching comes in in terms of the structure. And I'm not gonna pretend to know more than I do, but I think in terms of a team structure, the ideal vision that can make that happen, it's gonna be me, one or two developers in fulfillment, something of a designer.
[00:24:49] Andy: And I know that there's like hybrid overlaps in terms of what hires could do in their skill sets with this model designer, developer, especially with AI and everything, and all the tools that are low dev. The gap kind of between designer and developer can be the same person. Like that's a big part of my, my skillset and also some kind of an account manager slash admin.
[00:25:09] Andy: I do a lot like in my own business in terms of like using AI to help me be as efficient as possible. I use a lot of software, use a lot of tools. So I know that I can remain Marine, but I need help. And also just for like the fulfillment of like showing up for other people and building a team around what you do is a big part of, you know, the impact that I want to have.
[00:25:27] Andy: But in terms of the model, I think it looks like some kind of account manager who's client facing account manager slash project manager who's overseeing one to two to maybe, I don't think in three years it'll get to three fulfillment people or team members. But some combination of an account manager slash fulfillment
[00:25:45] Dustin: on the end.
[00:25:46] Dustin: Okay. What do you think revenue wise.
[00:25:49] Andy: Oh boy. I live very lean, so that's one I know that's gonna change as lifestyle inflation and stuff. And these goalposts always change. I literally have a video of me realizing, Hey, I just reached my six figure revenue goal. And I was literally like, cool, you know what's next?
[00:26:03] Andy: So I'm less attached to revenue than ever before, but I see it as a tool to be able to like do these things I talked about. So quarter two 50
would be really cool. I know, like I say, it's gonna be really cool, but it's like there's no emotions tied to that number. It's other than the fact that it would be really cool, and I know I need to be increasing year over year.
[00:26:25] Dustin: You have a remarkable level of maturity and, and I was always the young engineer who, everyone's like, you're so young. So I don't mean this in a way that sounds like that, but more like for someone who's sitting here, you know, a couple years into your own business, 24 years old, that you've already realized that it's so important that you've hit a number and you're like, that's cool.
[00:26:45] Dustin: But like, I don't feel any more fulfilled or happy or whatever. It is a tool. It is a scorecard. It, you know, if you're running a business, obviously revenue has to be part of the equation. 'cause that's what business, that's, that's how business works. But yeah. Yeah. Had a similar emotion last year I hit, it was like the seven figure run rate and sort of like.
[00:27:02] Dustin: Oh, like this is what I've been running towards for several years now. What? You know, and it's like, in some ways it's jarring, but also it gives you this place that most people never reach where you have this number and you get to look at it and see what it feels like and doesn't feel like, and then,
you know, kind of try on, in my case it was like, now I get to try a new identity.
[00:27:22] Dustin: Let's, for one, you know, kind of gap in the gain, let's say fricking awesome. Like you hit six figures in seven months. You're basically on a run rate right now for 150 to 200,000, you know, this year. So I think 250, I wrote 300 before you said two 50. So I think that's a very, very, very achievable goal. And I really think that number has a lot to do with the team size.
[00:27:41] Dustin: Right, because it sounds like your, if your take home pay was a hundred to $200,000, like. That's meeting a lot of your initial goals, and so you know whether you need a $200,000 business to generate 200,000 for yourself, or you need a $500,000 business has a lot to do with how much work other people on the team are doing, obviously in your margins.
[00:28:00] Dustin: But yeah, and again, it's a crystal ball. What I like to hear is that versus I want. A hundred person, $10 million company in three years or I want to be a completely solo. I never want to have to give any contractor a dollar like those. Give us some guardrails to work within. So what I heard, three year vision, business-wise, small team, Andy plus one to three other people, pm admin, developer, designer type folks.
[00:28:25] Dustin: Just kind of depending on the parts of fulfillment you wanna stay in and the parts that you don't, but it sounds like you're gonna lead sales and marketing. You like that a lot. And then personally, networking events, hosting your podcast and being more strategic around that. Doing more travel, buying a duplex, getting some real estate investing.
[00:28:43] Dustin: One word that I thought was really interesting you said is like conversations. It almost sounded like if you had conversations that could like fuel the business goals, like that would be a pretty, pretty awesome approach to growing your business is that you could, you like interpersonal connection and, and communication.
[00:28:58] Dustin: Is that fair?
[00:28:59] Andy: Yeah, absolutely. And I was going through with my mentor recently and just like looking through episodes of the podcast. With no strategy involved, like how much of my pipeline has come from either referrals from those people or have been those people directly. And it's not even something that I had was consciously thinking about.
[00:29:16] Andy: I was like, okay, it's a marketing show. So a lot of people that hire me, especially for the higher ticket offers have been, you know, marketing staff, potential clients, people that are in the A MA, actually American Marketing Associ, they support the show. So it's a very good lead in to say, Hey, I wanna spotlight you, have a conversation.
[00:29:35] Andy: And I mean, podcasting is a really good way to start those conversations. Also, flatter people, man, like I am a very generally curious person. I try to get the most out of every conversation. Not like in a selfish way, but I very much make it about them. What is their business? What are their goals? Talk through their story, you know?
[00:29:54] Andy: And my connection is like, what's the most, my biggest sticking point is like, what's the most efficient version of that podcast? That is a marketing engine for MMG, which is my business. But also, you know, leans into those conversations as well. I do very much enjoy podcast guesting, and I haven't dabbled into that water.
[00:30:13] Andy: I've been invited on a few just because of, you know, you have one, you kind of get associated with it and people that have come on and offered as well. But at the end of the day, that's you're spot on. Like conversations are the fuel. Although there's a lot of great conversations that go
off camera and I tell you, I mean, you know, this Dustin, but especially starting out and being young people are much more likely to say yes to a podcast rather than, Hey, you wanna get on a call.
[00:30:37] Andy: You know? And that's, like I said, when I view anything as sales, it tends to fall apart sometimes. That's why I prefer to just not view it as that and just, you know, chat on a recorded call,
[00:30:46] Dustin: you know? Obviously, well, maybe not, obviously anyone listening to this podcast, they would know that that's definitely my jam.
[00:30:51] Dustin: Anyone's ever been on a call with me that's a quote unquote sales call. They're like, are you gonna sell me anything? I'm like, not really. I'm like, I wanna help you educate you and I'm gonna tell you what we do and then I'm gonna let you tell me if it's what you wanna do. Right. I'm just not in the
hard closing, and that's because I believe in the power of long form educational content and conversations and actually getting to know people and giving a crap about them as that is my sales approach.
[00:31:15] Dustin: And it sounds like that's your preferred sales approach too. So again, these are very loose numbers. I'll say something here and then I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it in it, kind of set it to the, so my belief is that I'm gonna know Andy in three years and you may have a completely different offer, but everything else that you said is still gonna be true.
[00:31:34] Dustin: Meaning maybe it's not even web design that you ultimately do. Right? Like I started off with web design and I found this physical product partnership, which led me to podcast guessing, which led me to coaching. Who knows? You're very. Ambitious, you're well connected, you're continuing to grow your network and with that opens up lots of opportunities that we just can't see right now.
[00:31:51] Dustin: Right. Like with AI and like who knows, I don't know exactly what the breakdown will be in three years and it very well may not even be in web development. But I think everything else you said will still be true. It's gonna be a small team, travel, networking, podcasting, conversation, field business. So putting that to the side that the reality is it may not even be web, I still want to run with the assumption that it is website design.
[00:32:14] Dustin: It is strategy because it gives us some kind of clay to work with to kind of get a feel for like volume and how many relationships we need
and, and like what kind of marketing would work for the scale of business that you're building. Is that fair?
[00:32:26] Andy: Yes, absolutely.
[00:32:28] Dustin: So I, I was writing down a few things just with your current offers and again, we can dissect those a little bit more, but I really like what the deliverable is.
[00:32:35] Dustin: Next to the number is less important than like the number and the fact that you've got a done with you, a done for you front end, simplified kind of productized service and you've got a done with you. That's sort of the deep dive. Eventually that could be a one-off strategy session. The middle one could be a, you know, sort of a VIP four hour session with Andy on marketing strategy and the 10 K and up could be your full coaching program group coaching program.
[00:33:00] Dustin: So the deliverables are less important, I think, than the value stack that they represent. But I wrote down, let's say you did 10 custom projects a year, so you kinda have one a month and you took off the holidays or whatever like that. And they're at the low end of the range. They were $10,000, so that's a hundred k.
[00:33:18] Dustin: Let's say you did like 24 of the $500 sort of done with you things. You know, it becomes apparent quickly that 24 of those is still only $12,000, right? Like that's definitely not the revenue driver in the business, but we've got a hundred thousand from the big projects, 10 to 15,000 for the little.
[00:33:34] Dustin: Little done with you projects that you're currently doing, and that leaves the middle piece, which you kind of talked about as being, you know, the popcorn and the movie theater you want people to actually buy. Right now that's three K, so if we've even left it at three K, I think it could probably easily be five, but if we left it at three K, we need like 60 of those to get 180 K.
[00:33:54] Dustin: So five a month of those is 180 K. So if we got the a hundred K, the 12 K, or 15 k. And then the 180 K from the kind of middle core offer that's basically 300,000 in revenue. Right. So that seems very, that's kind of my smell test of like with this offer stack and with your goals, are they in the same universe And I think they definitely are.
[00:34:17] Dustin: And I think the levers with the offers are either more custom work, which doesn't sound like you really wanna do, or just more high quality
volume pointed at the middle. Tier three to 5K offer, that's gonna be 40 to 60 projects at that level a year. Someone else can probably do the bulk of the fulfillment.
[00:34:34] Dustin: You're sitting in a strategic seat and pointing them to do the work. So I know I talked through that fast, but I kind of wanna just do some rough math of like, and I wish I had a whiteboard like Nathan Berry, but like we kind of put the numbers on a board. There's 300,000 with your current offer stack and sort of like a reasonable volume of clients past the smell test.
[00:34:54] Dustin: I feel like it does, but what's your feedback to all that math?
[00:34:57] Andy: Yeah, I think, well, the numbers sound good for me. It's about the systems to make that happen too, and what my role would have to be in removing the emotion and the creative part that I need to have in the fulfillment. For me, it's really doubling down on, okay, what's the project management?
[00:35:16] Andy: Who are the people and also. Not losing the creative edge. That I think is the differentiator in terms of, you know, some of the value that I can offer aside from just the client experience itself.
[00:35:27] Dustin: Yeah, I think that's really the key with any, you know, some people love this word and some people cringe. You might be a little more in the cringe bucket, but the idea of a productized service, right, where it's a repeatable
process that you can deliver on that doesn't feel like a repeatable process that you deliver on, right?
[00:35:42] Dustin: And so if we were really focused on like, how can we deliver a lot of this middle tier, really high quality custom landing page that captures the creative energy of the person that is owning it? And with that being true, is it also true that Andy has to click every button to create that page? You know, I think the obvious answer is no.
[00:36:01] Dustin: So where the tension comes up, and I've faced this tension myself and and see it all the time with clients, is like, how do we keep the soul of what makes Andy's work unique and the things that you believe in? And this idea that design should be personal and it should be directly tied to revenue, and it's the closest thing to a sale.
[00:36:20] Dustin: Like all that's true. How do we keep that soul in a product that doesn't require your body to fulfill everyone, right? Because ultimately, if you're gonna build a business, it can't be you. Sitting there opening up three
different types of web designs of software and clicking every button. You know, like that's, and it shouldn't be, right?
[00:36:38] Dustin: The thing is, both those things can be true. Like it can have your spirit, your signature, your energy. And the way that happens is through leadership and culture and hiring the right people, you know, and those sort of things. And I think especially at a, you know, at this three year mark, $300,000, you could certainly just do it all you could.
[00:36:56] Dustin: I think it's gonna conflict with your goals of travel and freedom and maybe be able to like spend some time and real estate investing. So I think the way to make both those things true at the same time is probably like one key implementer who you trust. And I still think you could personally sign off on and direct the creative and strategy behind each of these designs, right?
[00:37:18] Dustin: Like five a month, one a week is basically like, Hey, we have one project a week that's at this tier. I'm Andy, and I'm gonna spend. Two hours on it, I'm gonna be the conduit to the client still and I'm gonna direct the strategy and give my vision to it. But someone else can click all the buttons, gimme a first draft review, and you know, the 10, 80 20 or 10 80 10 is what we're looking for.
[00:37:39] Dustin: Andy's in the first 10%. 'cause you're the vision, you're the strategy. Someone else can do 80% of the actual work and creating the page. And obviously it's not just a rando person. Part of your team who understands your vision and thinks like you do about design and optimization and conversion, and then Andy's involved in the last 10% before it gets delivered to the client.
[00:37:59] Dustin: And you could even still be the client interface at that level, you know, easily at that volume. And so I do think that's very solvable from a team standpoint. And I want you to be a hundred percent excited when you show this to the client that they feel like you did it all because this person's very much an extension of you.
[00:38:16] Dustin: But instead of you spending 80 hours a week working, you know you're spending more like 20 on this part of the business and someone else is taking the bulk. Someone who's probably actually more fast, more efficient, who knows all the tools, tricks, ai, all the stuff to make it as efficient as possible.
[00:38:31] Dustin: Like how does that feel?
[00:38:33] Andy: I would love to have someone better than me, and this is the, like the creative, I think a lot of us get into a lot of head trash kind of around like our own businesses. Like especially when it's creative. It's like I have to, to see, I have to just struggle through the pixels and the flexbox layout to justify the value of this design, and that is something that I am actively working on.
[00:38:53] Andy: From a lifestyle standpoint, from making this sustainable standpoint. I love that 10 80 10 philosophy. I'm a big fan of Dan Martel, and that really resonates with me too.
[00:39:04] Dustin: You know, basically all businesses, sales, marketing, fulfillment, or operations, some people call it admin finance, right? Like you could totally have an administrative assistant handle 10 hours of your week right now, finance could be pretty simply outsourced, you know?
[00:39:17] Dustin: And so the three that remain are fulfillment, sales, and marketing. And so you have an attachment to fulfillment. I still have an attachment to fulfillment. You know, I'm still involved in all of our calls and I have someone who coco with me and can be there when I can and who can offer perspective. I can't.
[00:39:32] Dustin: And you know, the, in the future I'll do less and less fulfillment over time. But the point is fulfillment is. For many people, they would start this conversation, only talk about sales and marketing 'cause they're like, fulfillment's, whatever. It's like it's a commodity, right? You are a craftsman. You care a ton about fulfillment.
[00:39:47] Dustin: That's why I don't wanna just skip over it and go straight to sales and marketing. I just wanted to kind of get to a point where we both agree. There is a version of this business with a very small team that you could feel good putting your name behind that doesn't require all your time and fulfillment because we want to spend your time on sales and marketing because that's also a passion of yours.
[00:40:05] Dustin: And I think what you'll find is. You'll actually get a lot of creative juice when you do more of that better. And the fulfillment will still be important and you wanna believe in it. But you're an entrepreneur and you have creative energy right now. A lot of that gets spoken into the product and we want to continue some of that.
[00:40:22] Dustin: But we also want to have enough bandwidth in your brain and schedule where you can actually spend more time in sales and fulfillment. 'cause you wanna triple your business and have a team to feed
[00:40:31] Andy: music to my ears, dude.
[00:40:32] Dustin: So in that scenario, we need, hmm, let's call it a hundred clients a year. And 25 of those are like one off $500 clients, right?
[00:40:41] Dustin: And some of those are actually the same clients. So there's like. 10, custom, 60 in the middle, and 24 at the very low end. But some of those 24 become the 60 and some of those 60 become the 10. So let's just call it 80 clients a year or something like that, that we have to actually secure to feed this business.
[00:40:58] Dustin: If we increase the price point, which I would probably be a, a big fan of, you know, we could double the price point and get that down sub 50. So I mean, you really probably need 40 to 50 clients a year to have a $300,000 business. The bulk of which, 80% of which is in the three to $6,000 landing page offer.
[00:41:16] Dustin: Right. That's why I like to use numbers because it's like, okay, well 48, that's 40, or you know, that's, yeah. Four a month. Like, okay, that's one a week. So it's like, oh, one new client a week feeds a $300,000 business that supports one full-time designer that allows Andy to just mostly focus on getting the one a week new client.
[00:41:33] Dustin: That's kind of our. Parameters that we're thinking about for volume of business. I do wanna talk real quick before we start talking too much about just marketing specifics. You actually said this earlier, but I think it's really important if we wanna double the price of that offer and that middle tier and we want it to be as repeatable as possible while still feeling very special to the client.
[00:41:54] Dustin: I totally agree with something you said earlier, and that is you will need, it doesn't have to be today, but you will need to get more specific on one or two or both things, and that is identity or intent for your clients. Right? And so you kind of said this earlier with target marketing, there's, you can specialize in identity or you can specialize in intent, or you can specialize in both.
[00:42:17] Dustin: Identity just means who are these people that you work with? Right? Like the founders or solopreneurs or creators, are they in a certain vertical? You mentioned like healthcare tech. There's a lot of different labels that people can wear that we can point to them and market to them. There's also intent, which is like, I need this very specific service, or I need this very specific outcome.
[00:42:35] Dustin: And you just meet them in the spectrum of their life. At the point when they need this very specific thing that you offer. Identity and intent are two separate things. But if we put them at an intersection and we say, I work with this exact person at this exact moment, it becomes super easy to market to them, right?
[00:42:50] Dustin: So as you think about if you can only deliver $6,000 landing pages to someone, is there like identity that you're really big on or is there intent, like what this would do for them and that's how you're gonna meet them at this transition point in their entrepreneurial career where they need this thing.
[00:43:06] Dustin: Like speak to me a little bit about that and maybe we get some more clarity on what this looks like as a productized service that can deliver at scale and still feel awesome.
[00:43:15] Andy: Yeah, that's a really good point. But yeah, like as you talk through that, and there's been so many times where, I mean it's the crux of the implementation done with you offer is that they either don't want to invest in the website itself or their industry just doesn't need it.
[00:43:30] Andy: And a lot of times I refer people to Wix, Squarespace card Co is a really good one, or the native tools that the native marketing tools that they're currently using and just like record walkthroughs on how they can do that stuff. And that sort of, the position seed of like the, the trusted resource for all things websites is kind of where I wanna sit.
[00:43:49] Andy: And then I can more strategically play the chess pieces in terms of offers. Look like it's a gray area because like I said, I'm still on both ends of the spectrum, but in terms of what I have experienced in the landing
page offer for a specific vertical. It's a no-brainer decision for people who are on a time bound thing.
[00:44:06] Andy: Like, okay, I'm launching a book at this time bound event. I'm watching this course event, this time bound event. I see great design and I need it. But then also, you know, marketing managers who, this is where the messy
part comes in is a lot of my network and the people that I've met, either through LinkedIn or through the A MA, all the people that have come through the podcast that I interview and have met are in marketing and they are sort of this higher ticket fulfillment offer.
[00:44:35] Andy: And while those aren't necessarily the most profitable, the most enjoyable, they are easier like we talked about. So like I said, without committing to anything live, those are the fun balls that I am currently juggling.
[00:44:47] Dustin: Yeah, so I heard there the middle offer, we'll just call it, you know, the three to six K landing page oriented offer is much more intent driven, whereas the custom work is much more identity driven.
[00:44:59] Dustin: It's like the custom work, 10,000 up, that's gonna be more associations, agencies, corporations, whether they're two companies or whether they're two divisions within the same company. It doesn't really matter. But in hearing you speak through it, that makes a lot of sense. Where that bigger project, custom project is more of an identity focus on your marketing efforts and the repeatable product ties service has much more intent.
[00:45:23] Dustin: And it sounds like creators with a deadline who just want like. The best version of the landing page without a lot of their personal effort. And so, yeah, books, events. Yeah. Those are two that you mentioned. Are there other sort of intent, like the best way to sell something? The best place to meet someone you, when you have something to sell them is in a period of transition.
[00:45:44] Dustin: Right? And so in this case, the transition of, I'm becoming a published author, or I am speaking at an event, or I'm hosting an event, or I am, you know, I've got a new offer I'm launching and I'm launching a new business
and I, I need the minimum viable representation of my brand and my website by September 15th, 'cause that's what I'm launching.
[00:46:03] Dustin: All of these things seem like time bound, creative events by entrepreneurs. Is that like a fair summary?
[00:46:11] Andy: Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of times like. This was kind of capitalizing on what I viewed as my advantage is my quick working. Like I can fulfill very quick, I can align very quick. I'm very good at sensitizing.
[00:46:21] Andy: Okay. What are the goals of this offer? This course, this speaking event, this book, like this very time bound thing and we can get it solved quickly. And you know, if you go to the portfolio you can see a lot of
examples that are market and it's just. It's a lot. That's the idea kind of moving forwards is what's the productized, like you said, version of that.
[00:46:41] Andy: By the way, I love the term productized service.
[00:46:44] Dustin: This is where I get a lot of creative juice, is like the thing I love to help people with is, is clarity. I feel like clarity is like the greatest gift I can give someone. And podcast guesting is a process of clarity in a lot of ways. And so that's why in our accelerator to share with you, like on day one, a lot of people are like, I need leads.
[00:47:01] Dustin: I wanna do podcast guesting. I'm like, awesome. Like we promised that we have an ROI guarantee. Like you'll definitely get that. And some people are like, Hey, I wanna like be in a group coaching program because I wanna run one. And you do a good one because. But on day 90, when we're done with that accelerator experience, a hundred percent of the people ever who have been through it say some version of clarity and connection as the thing they actually got.
[00:47:21] Dustin: And so I say that because while podcast guessing is the hook and it's like the thing I'm known for and I've had a lot of success with it, and it, it is all of those, it's all true. And but underlying that, the thing people actually need when they come into our world is usually more clarity and more connection, right?
[00:47:36] Dustin: Like how do we find you more clients, but also referral partners and peers and mentors and all that stuff. And so I've realized that after three years in this business, and that's why I kind of opened this whole second chapter of our session here with like, you may not even be doing websites in three years.
[00:47:52] Dustin: Like you're a super smart dude, but you're gonna do something that is in this realm of a service based, entrepreneurial facing, productized service at these kind of price points. Like that's my prediction. You're gonna do something like that. I think with that, like so we can kinda get to an end point and some action items here.
[00:48:09] Dustin: In my prescription here, what I would say is like let's focus our marketing, at least in the near term, on the intent and focus on the people who need the thing that your middle tier provides. And then realize that sort of by doing that actively we will residually get the larger custom clients, right?
[00:48:29] Dustin: Like you're still gonna show up in your local networking groups. There're still gonna be CMOs at large companies who listen to the same, let's call it podcast, but listen to the same place that you may be talking about the fact that websites are the closest thing to the sale and what the elements of a great converting landing page are and why you need this.
[00:48:45] Dustin: If you're launching a book and we're be talking to an in client who maybe is focused on the three to $5,000 landing page, by doing that actively, we will definitely residually pick up the consulting client, the big fish who's needs a custom solution. And you'll also pick up the people who are like, man, I'm gonna need that one day.
[00:49:04] Dustin: I'll spend 500 bucks and go do a strategy session. But I think. You wanna focus your marketing on one of the three tiers and let the other ones come organically versus trying to consciously focus on all three at once. 'cause you'll never get anywhere.
[00:49:16] Andy: That's a really good insight. Yeah, and also, I never thought about it as targeting just one of the offers.
[00:49:22] Andy: I'd always just kind of viewed it as one, an audience level without really relating it back to in terms of like the content I'm putting out and who I'm choosing to interview and stuff like that. That's actually really good insight. I never really thought of like interviewing, so maybe that is more of the pivot of saying, okay, maybe I do interview more people who have the need for the middle offer rather than just people in marketing people.
[00:49:43] Andy: And I've kind of been shooting from the hip with the whole podcast thing, and ever since I've gotten moved into your content, I've been more cognizant of saying, okay, how do I make this a marketing asset for my business? And it's really helped with that clarity. Like what we talked about in the beginning is how much of my pipeline has come from not knowing.
[00:50:00] Andy: And so I can only imagine when you start to apply some of this stuff, how it could lead to real business results, you know?
[00:50:06] Dustin: You've got these signals that say when I have conversations, whether that the A MA in Ohio or they're a little bit guessing that you've done, and especially hosting good things happen, right?
[00:50:17] Dustin: Like I'm not really intentional about it. I don't have a specific strategy, but just by showing up and doing it, I am getting business.
Like that's a super good signal. Now how can we focus that signal to get more from less and to get leverage in the work that we're doing and to be super intentional about it.
[00:50:33] Dustin: So I have one sort of setup question and then we're gonna get into kinda like the final prescriptive strategy on how I would market this. I always like to think in terms, yes, we've got end users and in end clients in this case that we want to talk to and we're gonna do that. But if you know my analogy with the profit cake, there's like, that's the kind of the base of the cake and there's partners in the middle and there's like high ticket prospects at the top.
[00:50:55] Dustin: I wanna focus on that middle tier. So if we think of. Let's call 'em centers of influence, like who serves your ideal client already and has a bunch of them that you could just be a partner to versus trying to go out and get every individual end user yourself. And so some of the things I wrote down as you were talking, I'm gonna suggest these to you and you can add to the list or you can delete, I wrote communities, so I think of like seven figure lead my community.
[00:51:18] Dustin: Everyone in there does podcast guesting. Many of them when they come to us, they don't have a lead magnet or the lead magnet needs major revisions. A lot of 'em don't have landing pages. They're not website designers. They're like a marriage coach who's like, oh, like here's the thing I would love to talk about on the podcast and give people as a free gift.
[00:51:34] Dustin: And then they're like, how do I make that? And of course we give them tutorials on kit and like, but man, if you're in our community as an example, and we did a workshop on what makes a great landing page coming out of a podcast and like, Hey, Andy can just build it for you for four grand. And you know, like I think communities would be.
[00:51:49] Dustin: A center of influence. Another one I wrote would be agencies. There are lots of agents, marketing agencies, and other agencies who serve your ideal client, but they're not looking to pull off a custom landing page in a week. 'cause that doesn't fit their model. Right. And so you could be a specialist referrals from the agency and give them, you know, a little referral fee as a thank you.
[00:52:10] Dustin: I wrote publishers. I mean, if you're thinking like authors need this. If you have a relationship with a publisher with all these authors that they represent, or self-publishing dot com as an example, or Scribe Media,
there's these self-publishing platforms who have tons of authors. Some of them have done free services for like 30 grand.
[00:52:25] Dustin: Well, they'll make the book and stuff, but they're not usually in the business of landing page design. I wrote speaker associations, 'cause you said people have events coming up, you know, so that's where my brain immediately goes is like, Hey, I got this thing I wanna sell. I know who I wanna sell it to, who already has a collection of these people that I can just go talk to them.
[00:52:42] Dustin: And then we'll get a lot of business from that. And again, we'll still talk to the end users, but like who already collects our end users and we can just go borrow the audience that they've already aggregated. So what do you think of those examples? Is there other stuff that comes to mind or some of those that you think are horrible ideas?
[00:52:58] Andy: Wow, you're pretty spot on with that insight. So centers of influence. That is a really good term for this. I've, I've interviewed a lot of agency owners, so one of the examples that you mentioned, I hadn't thought more. And as you talk through it, like the community part of it kind of checks the box of wanting to be.
[00:53:13] Andy: The like trusted resource piece and link into the podcast guesting, et cetera. I'm looking like through the headlights of the car, like I'm only staying that far in front of me of like I navigate the business thing. That insight of the agency owners being a good referral source for me, that's where we like talk through the past podcast guesting, podcast guest list.
[00:53:31] Andy: Three or four of my guests have been agency owners. A lot of them are in WordPress. They have a team of like, they're like that high ticket offer, like we talked about. They have eight or nine developers. They have a team in house. It's unprofitable for them to take on anything lower than 50 K so I can become their web flow framer landing page resource.
[00:53:50] Andy: And that has done me well, especially in the past. Those other insights that you mentioned around publishers and communities and speakers associations, you might have noticed I was taking notes because I didn't apply the middle offer, which what is why I was trying to build a business around. Around reaching those centers of influence.
[00:54:07] Andy: So that is a really good, and also like what's the content engine that fulfills that? Kind of on the fulfillment side too, like what do I have
to be doing to speak to more of those people, whether it's through the podcast or hosting some of them, what I'm doing on LinkedIn too. So that was the biggest lean in moment for me of this, and that was very helpful, so thank you.
[00:54:27] Dustin: Yeah, and so then that's what we were breaking down, which of these offers we wanna focus on because, and then are we going identity or intent, right? And like, hey, we're pretty big on our intent here. Which then opens the door to who the center of influence is, which is gonna get to the closing part here, which is how do we reach them?
[00:54:42] Dustin: And the end clients concurrently. And we'll have some specific ideas on that. But we got these centers of influences. There's lots of more passive ways that you're gonna reach them. You just mentioned it, some content marketing. LinkedIn obviously is a great place for that. People like videos about the before and after of a book launch, landing page design, you know, that you've done.
[00:55:03] Dustin: And it's like, here's why this one sucks, here's why this one's awesome. And here's what the author said about the results. People love the content of like before and after compare and contrast, you know? And so you can do that on LinkedIn, you can do that on your platform of choice. I think you mentioned one of your three year goals is like conference attendance, right?
[00:55:19] Dustin: You like networking, gonna associations, conferences. If you scratch that itch by going to conferences where the speakers are authors, you know, despite all of them, right? And you actually get to, to know the conference organizers and you get to know a few of the speakers and then the speakers are like, oh, I'm speaking to these three events.
[00:55:36] Dustin: You can pretty easily work your way into a network of. Speaking, conference, author, speaker, you know, circles. Those are more lutsy sort of organic relationship strategies that we could spend a whole podcast on. But I wanted to point out a couple, like content marketing on LinkedIn or YouTube being in proximity to people at networking events.
[00:55:56] Dustin: Because if you're known as the guy, when you have a book launch that comes up that needs like the best landing page, you know, you gotta go talk to Andy. He's the guy for that. That word travels super fast. And if you wanna be an agent, a partner to agencies, as you've already started to kind of realize here, the key to that is to not make yourself competitive to them, right?
[00:56:14] Dustin: Like, I'm not trying to take work from you. And in fact, maybe eventually you're. Anything that's over 30,000 I don't wanna do because I'm not equipped for it. And you refer work to them and one 30,000 going their way from a conference feels really good and they send you the next 10, you know, 5,000 landing pages that they wanna do.
[00:56:32] Dustin: And now you've got, you could have your whole pipeline filled with one key partner. So I wanna take a breath and kind like that's sort of the soft way to target these folks. So we'll spend our last four minutes talking about the more direct way to find these people. But what do you think so far?
[00:56:45] Andy: I think that was spot on.
[00:56:46] Andy: I think, and I know I rambled on in terms of like all this kind of BS I dumped on you in terms of where the offers currently are. But we've reached this point now where you've taken what I was kind of working with and then you made it a lot more clear for me and you've also made me a lot more excited to, okay, what are the next steps?
[00:57:02] Andy: Because I was at this place of. A little bit of burnout, confusion, not really knowing where I was gonna take either of these directions and not really seeing a way that I could sit in that kind of trusted web resource sort of seat, and still make all this happen. I think there's a motto of it and some of the stuff we've recently just talked about in terms of finding that intersection with the audience and the offer is really what's gonna make all of that happen.
[00:57:28] Andy: This is my first sort of concession into like making it a reality, so thank you.
[00:57:33] Dustin: Yeah, a lot of times we think we're burnt out and we're really bored as entrepreneurs and as creators. It's like, oh, I solved the problem for the a hundred K year. Now what? You know, and so I think just having something, a new energy to be creative around, like finding this one.
[00:57:48] Dustin: Great team member and signing up for the next two conferences with a lot more intention and the stuff we're gonna talk about next, which is the ongoing strategic marketing work. My encouragement there, my prescription there I guess is just freaking lean into podcasting. Like you already love it, you already do it.
[00:58:06] Dustin: And I would say hosting and guessing in your case, a lot of times people come to me, they're like, I wanna start a podcast. I'm like, I
wouldn't do that yet. I would like go do guessing for a lot of reasons. But you're already doing the hosting, you're already doing it. Well, you've done over a hundred episodes, you're getting business from it.
[00:58:20] Dustin: And I think just being a lot like taking a step back from what you've done with all the signals it's given you with this new lens of what you're really trying to get from it and then have, just have a really specific strategy and that, what I'm not suggesting is that every episode of your own podcast needs to be selling people stuff.
[00:58:36] Dustin: I don't think that's actually good at all. I've got over a hundred right at a hundred episodes of my show and it's been a very intentional mix of solo content or I'm the expert content with people I really want to get. In proximity to and no. Right. So Pamela Slim, pat Flynn, Jay Pap, all these really cool people that the podcast gave me an invitation tool to have a conversation with them.
[00:58:57] Dustin: And then my, my other main content strategy is client success stories. So I, I just interview people I've worked with and they tell people how cool it was, and that generates, you know, a lot of goodwill and leads and then. We are currently adding the fourth type to this podcast, which is some live coaching.
[00:59:14] Dustin: 'cause I love live coaching. I get a lot of energy from it. I think people will hear this and be like, oh man, I wanna be in that seat. And maybe they can't come on the podcast, but they could hire us and come into our program. You know? And I think there'll be some of the people in your seat, Andy, who are like, I actually wanna work with Dustin to build a thing that we talked about.
[00:59:31] Dustin: And so they'll, you know, some of these guests will come into our program. So this is about as close to the sun as I fly, as far as like direct sales from the podcast. And I think you should create your own menu. But I think now with some more intention, you could be very focused on every one of these podcast episodes has some purpose that drives towards this three year vision that you're after.
[00:59:50] Dustin: So we'll talk about guessing to close out, but what do you think on the hosting side, are there some changes that come to mind now with what we've talked about?
[00:59:57] Andy: Yeah, absolutely. And I've kind of checked all of those boxes, but it hasn't been mostly been just by like sniffing my nose around, like hasn't had the, the strategic business intent behind it.
[01:00:08] Andy: I think I need to better beforehand, like a prepare, not shoot from the hip as much and say like, okay, this is a marketing activity and not, okay, we're throwing on Zoom, we're jumping on Riverside, and you know, I'm gonna package up something that makes you look really good and that you wanna share. I think the intention of connecting that with the offers.
[01:00:29] Andy: I'm currently working with and that you've helped me work through today is gonna be a big needle move. Yeah, definitely excited to talk about podcast guests.
[01:00:35] Dustin: One quick example, let's say in the spring 2026, I'm going to this conference and they've announced the first six speakers, probably one of those six speakers, should be invited on your podcast.
[01:00:45] Dustin: And now you've got a relationship with someone who's gonna be speaking on the stage at this event that you're at. And that's one thing that really cranks the flywheel in a big way, right? Because now you've got personal relationship with the speaker. They're gonna introduce you to other speakers. Now you've got an introduction to the conference organizer.
[01:01:00] Dustin: You're not gonna be like a stranger in the audience. And so that's, when I say like a strategic interview, you don't necessarily need to sell that person anything. That's simply a relationship. But it's not just a random relationship. It's one that you know you wanna deepen because of maybe an event you're going to, or you're at an event and you just have a great conversation at lunch and you have this platform to invite people to, which I think is a huge asset.
[01:01:21] Dustin: And I think there's a lot of meat on the bone there with the work that you're doing with your podcast hosting. Yeah, let's talk about guesting real quick to close out. So I think you probably know based now on what we've already talked about, but you tell me a little bit what you think you should do on the guesting side to help further the goals that we've discussed for the last hour and 17 minutes.
[01:01:42] Andy: Yeah, as I'm learning from you. So like I said, I haven't actively done like outreach for the podcast as a marketing activity outside of, Hey, come on mine, and putting on my, you know, my marketing hat. Now
what's a version of, I'm listening to this person on a podcast. I want him to build my landing page, my website.
[01:02:00] Andy: I want to speak to their pain points. A lot of my best clients say things like, I send people to this page that is totally removed from my own branding. A lot of times they say, I don't want to even mess with it. I think this
website looked, there's kind of two approaches that people take as they say, I dive in and I DIYed it, and I spent a ton of creative time on it, and it looks good to me, but it doesn't look good to the buyer of my offer.
[01:02:25] Andy: Or they're someone that have said it's a total black box to them. They removed it. It's the total white label solution, and it's not aligned with their brand. So zooming back on it, that's what my perfect customer says. Where are the places that they're hanging out? What podcasts are they listening to? I think they're listening to a lot of creator podcasts.
[01:02:43] Andy: I think they're listening to a lot of entrepreneurial shows. They're probably builders in their own right, usually, like from my experience in the past, I've always been like the second website sort of solution. Like, okay, what we have had to get started was a good place, but you know, to really make it go into the next level, we need to invest in making this a marketing asset for us.
[01:03:02] Andy: So something along the lines of, you know, entrepreneurial shows. People who, you know, probably like myself, who are growth-minded, wanna invest in their business and are listening to shows that kind of curate that audience. No specific names come to mind, but in terms of what I would talk about, it would be that it would be like, okay, if you want to DIY at yourself, these are the things that you should be doing.
[01:03:22] Andy: And this is the most important part, kind of of our process, that it's a done for you solution to that there's a structure I've made a podcast about before, it's called like the clear landing page formula. So you wanna connect with the audience, you wanna lead with the solution, you wanna add value, and you want to, the RI forget that you, but the R is to remove all doubt.
[01:03:41] Andy: So making sure you have all the checkpoints of your website, like the CTAs, the strong headline, and giving people kind of a framework to where they can do it themselves. And it has like a nice analogy tied to it. Obviously it needs practice as you're seeing, but I know I kind of have an ideal version of what it could look like.
[01:03:58] Andy: I have a lot of imposter syndrome around getting started with it though, to be fully transparent.
[01:04:04] Dustin: Yeah, absolutely. Everyone does. A lot of people, they like look at our program and they're like, oh, it's, you know, finding podcasts and writing a pitch and it is all that. But a lot of it is instilling confidence and I think to make that feel more sincere to a specific audience like and to make you feel more confident in delivering it, you can just be a bit of a chameleon depending on the audience and who you're specifically speaking to.
[01:04:26] Dustin: So in other words, if you're on a show that caters to authors, you're like, why? Authors need the clear landing page formula. Right. And you talk about. The specific pain points of authors, it's the same formula, it's the same framework. You maybe have one specific example that's specific to authors. The same teaching can apply to coaches on a coaching web podcast.
[01:04:44] Dustin: The same one can apply to speakers on a speaking podcast of specific focus for which offer you wanna pull people toward. I think you layer on one podcast interview a week in a targeted way. It will easily. Hit the lead generation goals needed to get you one client a week. That's kind of how I typically think in terms, as long as there are certain types of offers with certain conversion rates, you can kind of think one pi cast a week is sort of equivalent to one ideal client a week from that channel.
[01:05:12] Dustin: And that's exactly what you need to like hit your $300,000 goal. So the key to doing that well is just gonna be the right shows with the right stories and the right call to action that lead to the initial transaction that we are designing people to take in this. So I love this, but yeah, gimme your most useful takeaway and then we'll tell people how to find you and your website and we'll close out from there.
[01:05:34] Andy: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I want to say like I a huge thank you. You've helped me kind of take this mess that I was kind of dealing with you, what I enjoy spending my time on, which is podcasting and how I can make that more of a profitable thing for my business rather than what it currently is. And you've also gimme a lot more excitement in terms of how I can like make that happen.
[01:05:53] Andy: Like what are the next actions. I think a lot of people, especially me, they have like all these messy kind of marketing channels and they're always kind of a fish in the water when it comes to their own business.
And I've had like this self inclination that like, 'cause I'm enjoying this and it's not inherently like productive.
[01:06:09] Andy: You kind of get that. Like, if it's not hard, it's not worth doing. Sort a counterintuitive thing. This can be fun and it can be profitable and it can help me reach, you know, my financial goals and my goals in life too. So dude, I like, I wanna say like, first of all, I would appreciate you going long form with me, man.
[01:06:24] Andy: I know how it is. I know it can be drained to be a podcast host to give you a lot of your energy to other people. And I felt that and, and leaps and bounds today. So I almost, I.
[01:06:32] Dustin: Good. You're welcome. I'm grateful that you stepped up and were the first of these. As you can tell Andy and and anyone listening to this, this is not a paint by numbers approach to building a business.
[01:06:44] Dustin: Like everything we talked about is like a relationship focused marketing That's completely. Intentional and targeted towards an outcome that is personal to you. And so, in a sense, all of these are custom and there's a lot of commonalities among any of these strategy sessions because you know, ultimately we wanna have a very practical solution that you can just go do in many cases.
[01:07:05] Dustin: You know, podcast guessing will be part of that equation. 'cause I'm the one prescribing it and I think it's for most business owners, it's one of the best tools out there. But yeah, I think it just requires some space to
really unpack who you are, your goals, and the things that both intuitively and obviously, you know, jump out to me as like the levers you should pull to meet your own goals with your own God-given talents.
[01:07:26] Dustin: You know, and I think podcasting's it. And so it's like how do we make podcasting super effective for you? And I think we've made a lot of progress towards that. So, Andy, as we close out, yeah. Please tell people how to get ahold of you or where you wanna send them from a website or lead magnet or any of those sort of things.
[01:07:40] Dustin: Maybe they want one of these kickass landing pages that we've been fired up talking about the last
[01:07:45] Andy: hour and a half. So. Yeah, absolutely. If you can follow me over on LinkedIn, my website is MG Design. That's Mary, Mary grape
design.net mmg. And like I said, I do free homepage breakdowns for anyone that's interested in having one or two low hanging fruits that you can walk away with and implement on your own.
[01:08:03] Andy: And follow me on LinkedIn for all. Transactional messy points in the journey that I share too often. But again, like dude, huge thank you to you again.
[01:08:12] Dustin: You're welcome. Yeah, go see what he does with this session. 'cause he is a quick implementer and he documents stuff. So I'm, I'm gonna be following along.
[01:08:18] Dustin: That'll be awesome. Yeah, MMG design.net. I think if I'm listening to this, and even me personally, it's like this stuff's gonna get way more expensive and he's gonna be a lot harder to get on his calendar. He's offering free, you know, website audits right now and you can hear the passion behind what he does and the work that Andy's gonna be doing.
[01:08:34] Dustin: So I'd hop into that now and take advantage of it while it's available, because especially if we get to work together in a deeper way, he probably be given away that sort of thing for free. 'cause he won't be able to, he'll be too busy with all his clients. So anyway, man, I really appreciate you. Thanks for taking the time and I'll catch up with you on the other side.
[01:08:50] Dustin: Thank you for listening to the seven Figure Leap podcast. If you got any value out of this episode, I have three things, but one most important is to simply share this with a friend. Think of someone who could get value from this episode, from this show. All the amazing guests that we have, copy it. Send it in a text message and say, Hey friend, I think you'll get value out of this.
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