Chris Dreyer 4:23
So I actually have a history, education degree, and
Jeremy Weisz 4:27
more you think you were gonna do in high
Chris Dreyer 4:29
school, I was gonna coach sports, I was gonna coach college sports you were I was kind of, I was really into basketball and just had a passion for it. And to be honest, when I student taught at a high school, I ended up hiring me and I was there I rose from their freshman to sophomore, JV coach really quickly. So it’s kind of next and last was basketball. Yep. And basically how I got started was I was in the Detention Room the room that they sent, the kids got into trouble. They had to stay an extra hour after school. And I there was nothing to do. It was just kind of like you know, just taking care of these kids and I googled how to make money online as cliche as that is and I took Ed Dale’s 30 day challenge to make your first 20 bucks I think I made you know 10 bucks and but it gave me the basis of knowledge to go from there and by the end of my second year teaching I was making more affiliate marketing than I was teaching so I pursued it full time What were you selling What were you an affiliate for? That’s so funny. That’s so funny I rarely get asked that so so had a stain concrete floors I still have an Amazon I thought you’re gonna say like erectile dysfunction
Jeremy Weisz 5:47
pills or something. Because that is actually a that’s actually a popular what people know that’s a very popular affiliate offer. But anyways, keep going.
Chris Dreyer 5:55
Yeah, stained concrete floors. So it’s actually there’s an Amazon book still for sale. I also did the essay for I did. Let’s see, I sold generators I sold. I had a site that ranked number one for double chin, so I sold really tough to lose weight. Yeah. alcohol withdrawal. So I had a site they’re ranked number one for alcohol withdrawal alcohol is a name that was like more Google AdSense but So were you building
Jeremy Weisz 6:25
the site’s getting the right What was your methodology at the time?
Chris Dreyer 6:30
So at the time if you have your you know, your, your white hat, good guy, you know, your middle gray hat, or your black hat tactics, I was more on the black hat side. So it was more buying.
Jeremy Weisz 6:43
It was gonna get in trouble do not
Chris Dreyer 6:45
Oh, no, no. So I kind of learned what not to do. So, so But back in the day, I was taking the shortcuts I was buying links buying content, and and I got penalized for that around 2011 my ankle Time went from, you know, 15 k a month and affiliate down to two K, just overnight. So I learned the hard way. So I’ve really been walking the line ever since.
Jeremy Weisz 7:11
But at the time it was that really something that was you. You said you should not be doing because a lot of people were doing that at the time. Right, right. And then Google just decided that’s not quality content, slap people, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily blackhat like, yeah, illegal. I mean, people were doing and it was totally legal to do. It just it was a short term fix.
Chris Dreyer 7:34
You’re dead on. It wasn’t an evergreen strategy. That’s probably a better name for it. I was generating low quality content, just a targeted keyword. No, it’s acquiring any backlink I could as opposed to really concentrating on quality.
Jeremy Weisz 7:49
What was the site affiliate product you were most proud of? That was like tough to rank but you were you know, turning away.
Chris Dreyer 7:58
ranking number one for Doubletree. It was pretty pretty. That’s amazing. Yeah. I it was your URL that you buy like a specific URL for this product. What was it and it’s it’s down, you could probably see some horrible version of it on archive. But it was Luiza double chin calm.
Jeremy Weisz 8:16
That’s, you don’t still own it. You should have kept on
Chris Dreyer 8:18
now. I’ll actually yeah, I let all of the focus thing that you mentioned earlier, actually made a decent amount of money and I just let those kind of go away just so that I wouldn’t spend any time on them because my other opportunities was much better. And that’s, that’s honestly, I probably could have that revenue still, but I just turned it all the way directly.
Jeremy Weisz 8:40
Yeah, loose, double chin. I’m totally you’re hitting on a huge pain point there. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 8:46
Yeah. I mean, I could tell you everything because I wrote a lot of content about what was the product was it a digital, it was like an information product.
Chris Dreyer 8:55
There were several so there was you know, there was diet and exercise type advice. There. With stuff for chin wraps, like sculpting there, there was a lot of stuff.
Jeremy Weisz 9:06
Yeah. So you cut your teeth on that. So how do you decide to transition to not just law firms By the way, personal injury law, it’s a niche within a niche. I mean, you you’ve really, you know, focused.
Chris Dreyer 9:22
I so when my income declined, and I was at like two or $3,000 a month I’m like, I knew that I had a specialty. Oh, really
Jeremy Weisz 9:33
quickly, cuz did you quit your job at the time? At what point did you decide to quit and do full time?
Chris Dreyer 9:39
Yeah, that’s kind of funny. I quit my second year of teaching, and then I got paid that whole summer. So I had my affiliate income plus my teachers or income. I even took that that teacher’s retirement money through a big party that’s been people that I was getting in toward. Bye.
Party. Yeah, it was really fun to two years.
Jeremy Weisz 10:04
people hated you, because
Unknown Speaker 10:07
it was a lot of fun.
Jeremy Weisz 10:09
And it was a scary, it’s a scary thing to do. Right. I mean, so at that point, you were still kind of on the up and up, it hadn’t dropped at that point.
Chris Dreyer 10:19
Right. I was still on the major upward trend. And I even had, I had several freelancers, you know, I was really prophesizing. My, my affiliate marketing strategies for scale. And, you know, when that declined, because I wasn’t doing the Evergreen tactics, I still had a really strong knowledge of digital marketing. So that’s why I looked at the agency space. And I work for a law firm marketing agency. I rose to the top of their company, I was their top guy and I got really comfortable in the middle. I had a great relationship with them personally, I didn’t think that they are running the business correctly.
Jeremy Weisz 11:08
So like what I mean, we won’t mention names or the things that you knew when you were a year you would do differently.
Chris Dreyer 11:14
They weren’t managing money for production properly. So there just wasn’t enough resources applied to labor to generate the results. So they would sell out enough resources to give the best chance to succeed.
Jeremy Weisz 11:33
What else did you see that they were doing what you need to do differently?
Chris Dreyer 11:39
They weren’t focused on reinvesting in operations and training. So just a lot of basic business principles, you know, operations, processes, training, you know, continuous improvement, they weren’t focused on that it was more of a sales or sales focused organization bringing in the revenue, not taking care The existing clients, and I just saw when I started rankings and still today, you have one sales guy, we have one marketing guy, everything else is applied to generating the best results we can for our clients and losing those results as momentum for referrals.
Jeremy Weisz 12:20
What do people say? What are your clients that they like about you in the business? I one, watch one video and they one person said I love they just call me back immediately, you know, within a few hours, what are some other things that you you know, because that will kind of put a light on what you feel is important probably because it’s showing up on what they like.
Chris Dreyer 12:45
Yeah, so you hit one of the first significant differences in our organization versus others, is a lot of times, communication and production are all in under one function. I separated account management and I operations. So it’s clearly defined that these are your communicators. This is these are the individuals that do production that didn’t want the people that were talking to the individual clients to also do production because they have their head down, so to speak, only concentrating on doing the work and not necessarily up looking for opportunities in a strategic manner. Hmm, oh, and then also allows us to better serve the client with faster response times because that’s that person’s sole job is to keep the client informed and to lead them in the project.
Jeremy Weisz 13:34
How do you manage client communication? Because I imagined clients communicate via email, phone text, and now like, other means, how do you know I won’t say train the client but how do you want them to communicate with your with your team so you can do a better job and serve them?
Chris Dreyer 13:55
So it’s funny internally we say and I think our clients would laugh at this, but we have our teach our clients not to be crazy. And what we mean by that? Is this really setting expectations early. This is how long it’s going to take to generate results. This is what we need. This is this is how you can help us and we set all of these expectations up front in a 100 day experience. Hmm, you got this from Joey Coleman never lose a customer again. And in terms of our communication preferences, you know, a lot of it’s still driven by email, but we also incorporate video, incorporate text messaging, in some cases, slack or Google Chat. And then we do regular cadences for consults. So early on or trying to set expectations. We will establish a regular meeting cadence so they know when they’re going to talk to us.
Jeremy Weisz 14:53
What about internally? What would you prefer? I know you mentioned Slack, are there any others that you like to use?
Chris Dreyer 15:00
Yeah, so slack is our main communication portal since we run a remote team. We also also use zoom for our video conferencing. And then our main task based or project management tool, we use Trello. We really like the workflow can band style of process, you know, completing tasks. And in terms of just communication in general tying things into a larger picture, we are fully integrated into the entrepreneurial operating system and traction. Hmm,
Jeremy Weisz 15:34
nice. Yeah, I’ve had Gino wickman. So why how did you come to personal me You could have been like, yeah, we’re gonna specialize in law firms, but you decided to niche down even more to personal injury law firms.
Chris Dreyer 15:50
So, one of the main reasons is, I like the challenge. So when when you’re dealing with you know, trademark attorneys and these very low Competitive types of niches. A lot of times, all they need is a website and a landing page and they can practically rank. Personal injury is highly saturated. It’s very rewarding if you can get those guys results. And I really liked the competitive aspect of it. And I saw that they really needed a specialist in that that area of the law.
Jeremy Weisz 16:21
Mm hmm. And we’ll talk about some of the like, how you you have some tools to use to kind of audit someone to really see how much work is it gonna take to get them to where you need. But first, you mentioned something you like this, most people will be the opposite, right? I want to go into something that’s, you know, needed but not as competitive and you go right head on with the most competitive and, and I, you know, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I want to hear some of the lessons you learn from your dad, because you quoted him saying, always play the game to win. Right.
Chris Dreyer 17:00
Yeah, it’s it sounds kind of like Ricky Bobby. But losing is not fun winning is Yeah, winning is rewarded. So when we encounter a challenge we go all in that’s how I was brought up even simple games like Yahtzee. It’s it’s it gets almost annoying when we’re doing the math and which properties to buy a monopoly on properties in very math based but that’s how we’ve approached that’s how I approach sports that’s I was a collectible card game player similar to magic, one of the top players same in poker. It’s just just focus and I like to I think it’s rewarding when you get to that those top levels. What other lessons Do you take from your dad? lesson so consistency compound and consistency. I mean, you can’t just show up and expect it to be good. I mean, it takes a lot of work.
Jeremy Weisz 18:05
What did he do?
Chris Dreyer 18:07
windows? Oh, just just things. So he was a male care for the US post office, he’s retired now. very excellent sports. And just just very organized and systematic. So just things like basketball. You know, a lot of times when individuals join a basketball team, the only time they’re going to practice is when the coach is telling them to, whereas we would practice every day. Yeah. Every day, Saturday, Sunday, maybe not along that time, but it just took the work to get to those higher levels.
Jeremy Weisz 18:48
Um, I want to talk a little about the mentors. You’ve had coaches, just in general, who, who is maybe even a distant mentor who are some of your favorite coaches of all time.
Chris Dreyer 19:00
Coaches of all time. So Cliff Davis, my junior high basketball coach, huh, just very process oriented. So his practices are structured very well. He was definitely a leader. And he took that consistent approach. You know, and it was very rewarding. We were actually we had some great teams because of how he he led he’s one that definitely stands out. I had a great high school basketball coach that had a very good physical fitness type of off you know, program. Yeah, I’m like
Jeremy Weisz 19:40
an arm’s reach like one of my favorite books of all time. If anyone’s watching this video is wouldn’t a lifetime observations reflection on and off the court? I mean, this is this is one of my favorite you could see those like notes coming out of it like released once a year.
Chris Dreyer 19:56
Practice the fundamentals.
Jeremy Weisz 19:57
Yeah. Um, What about mentors or coaches in business? I know that you take you know, you take this very seriously and you have mentors in that too.
Chris Dreyer 20:10
So my uncle was a CEO of multiple major corporations and he was one that I always like looked up to and aspired terms. You know, originally when I got started, I talked to him but I would say my first mentor was actually my sister. My sister and my brother in law they run a 3040 person plumbing company generating seven $8 million a year on can’t quite see it but up here. I was a Vistage member for three years. I have in Jason’s swings mastermind so I have like minded peers, digital marketing peers. also have an executive coach Carl saygus is amazing. It holds me again Because once you’re the owner, you’re the you’re the main person that holds you accountable. So I have someone else now. And then this cancer another sounds kind of cliche or cheesy, but I really enjoy getting a lot of knowledge from business books. And I know you read a ton yourself. And, you know, I read 5060 minimum books a year about business only not, you know, not fiction, just just all business books.
Jeremy Weisz 21:27
What are some of your favorites? Um, I need four credits for my audible cue, so yeah, what are your fourth
Chris Dreyer 21:36
one? I find myself reading multiple times. Ready fire aim.
Jeremy Weisz 21:39
Michael Masterson. Yeah,
Chris Dreyer 21:41
yeah, I love that book. I love I just want to read one recently, atomic habits was excellent. I the ultimate sales machine. I know it’s an older book. Chet Holmes. Oh, yeah,
totally. Great One pricing creativity. Blair Ian’s business of expertise. I probably printed out the ultimate sales machine. I bought it TDF and I printed it out and put it in a binder.
Yeah. So every time I read it, I find one, just a little nugget that’s that says excellent. And you know David C, Baker and Blair and so I really like their stuff.
Jeremy Weisz 22:20
What What is their book? I don’t know, I heard them.
Chris Dreyer 22:23
So Blair instead pricing creativity. He also did one without pitching Manifesto. And then David’s main book was the business of expertise, which really talks a lot about the advantages of niching.
Jeremy Weisz 22:37
Okay, nice. What about industry wise, um, conferences in the industry could be in the you know, personal injury law firm or, or whatever, you know, to stay on top of the trade.
Chris Dreyer 22:52
So the one that I’ve been to the last few years is the game changers summit. That is Michael moguls conference, crisp video. It’s an excellent conference. They do a lot of team building but they also do a marketing. I’ll have a lot of great speakers Chris Voss You know, a lot of the big players and Gary Vee, they’re in terms of personal injury attorneys I the other conferences that I hear good, but I don’t go to a lot of conferences are mass torts made perfect and national Trial Lawyers Association.
Jeremy Weisz 23:23
Hmm. That’s a must for personal injury law firms.
Chris Dreyer 23:28
Yeah. Nasty towards made perfect is one utterly incredible in Vegas. They hear a lot of good things about too.
Jeremy Weisz 23:36
Nice. Now from the, you know, the auditing standpoint, I like, you know, you have a very systematic approach is like, Okay, you’ve as law firm, here’s what we charge. You don’t necessarily do that you actually have this process where you walk through and so you give them a real specific, kind of detailed approach. Talk a little bit about what you do there.
Chris Dreyer 23:59
Yeah. So I mean, it’s kind of nearing an attorney, right and attorney doesn’t go to trial without doing a discovery and getting all the information about the case. Like, a lot of times these SEO agencies will just one call close. And so you want a two or $3,000 contract without knowing anything about what it’s going to take to get results. So we do what I call a full SEO discovery, where we are going to diagnose everything in regards to SEO. So it’s not just an SEO audit, where you’re auditing a website, we do competitive backlink analysis, we review content, we review their assets for social proof and, and we look at their top rank competitors and what they’re doing well and what, you know, any opportunity that we can use leverage we try to discover in this diagnosis.
Jeremy Weisz 24:50
Yeah, that’s super valuable for a company for you to go through that. How do you decide to charge for that?
Chris Dreyer 24:59
So that’s the tricky part. with SEO right, you know, PPC and these others are very it’s very data driven. You can spend x get this amount of cases,
Jeremy Weisz 25:08
way. I just mean even the front end one, like actually you presenting that to them.
Chris Dreyer 25:13
Yeah, I mean, we charge $5,000 for this diagnosis, this SEO discovery, and I can tell you that, that we’re not making any money. We’re losing money on this initiative. It’s a lot of our client didn’t proceed further. You know, it’s a loss leader by all definitions. Yeah. But to me, it’s important that we understand the ins and outs of what this client has, you know, and it lets us set realistic expectations. You know, if you’re in a major Metro, and you’re, you’re so low in Los Angeles and you want to rank on the first page for Car Accident Lawyer, it’s going to take a heavy investment because you have no brand you have no prominence. You know, no mentions that we can use as leverage but If you’re an established brand established firm, maybe you have some assets that we can use quicker.
Jeremy Weisz 26:06
Do you find that lawyers or law firms are some are sophisticated enough to use some of those tools? Not necessarily to execute on what you do, but just to see what’s going on? Or do they? Did they not even realize are some of these tools out there?
Chris Dreyer 26:20
Oh, yeah. So the larger firms, a lot of times what we’ve encountered is the owners are more that, you know, in the disc personality assessment, they would be more than vi drivers. A lot of times they hire that internal process analytical person to strategically communicate with the vendors that they hire. And many times those individuals as directors of marketing, those CMOS, those are all different types of titles, technology directors, those individuals are familiar with those tools.
Jeremy Weisz 26:54
You know, Chris, as you get more and more specific and niche, you can produce better results, which means you can change More. Tell me about the pricing evolution you’ve gone through, you know, in the very beginning to to Now, obviously, it’s probably changed a little bit.
Chris Dreyer 27:12
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, there are three basic models that you’ll see. So that the first one will be your in inputs. So a, an agency will charge you per hour, you’ll have a per hour rate. So it’s like a capacity type setup. The second would be output. So that would be like units like, X amount of content, X amount of articles. And then the last is more results or value. Okay, so you want to get that first page result, what are you willing to pay? What’s it worth that with that model? It’s a little bit harder to sell. You have to do these diagnosis you have to unveil your expertise, but it allows the agency on to iterate, and do whatever is possible to get results, because you’re not tied into a unit thing that you need to change in the future roads change order, so we do more results or value based pricing. And so you won’t see an itemized, we’re going to do X amount of content X amount of links, we’re going to do whatever it takes, and we expect the client to fire us if we don’t. So there’s that expectation of you have to generate results or you’re going to leave, it’s not we’re gonna put you on this low retainer and keep you forever.
Jeremy Weisz 28:37
on that. Let’s just say in a personal injury law firm, I don’t know what the average client cases or something, but let’s just make it up and, you know, let’s say it’s $100,000 or something. Let’s say the first month they work with the first few months, they get like 30 cases, okay? And it’s like great, we just pay for these people. For a long time, right? Do you find that? Is it uh, you know, what have you done for me lately type of scenario? So like in month eight, they’re like, okay, you haven’t done anything like wait a couple months ago, we got you like 30 cases, or do they do they tend to remember that and like, give you a little slack. As far as building that out?
Chris Dreyer 29:21
I’d say that accounts department, that person that’s in charge of communication, that’s a really important component because it’s natural for individuals to forget when they had a big, so they need that reminding they need to we do a baseline report, every engagement sure rankings and traffic when you started. And we reminded like here’s the percentage growth in six months, like, look at the increase, like that’s where we started. Here’s where we’re at now. So those retrospectives, and yeah, it goes it so bring up something else. So that’s kind of interesting is the value of a case is different. So it depends on if they’re going to I try the case and go to the court and litigate. Those that and most of the time, those are serious injuries and can be, those are the ones you want to litigate. And those case values are extremely high versus I don’t want to say settlement bill, but where you’re settling with the insurance companies before going to court. those cases typically are a lot less. And there’s a whole different situations for staffing. There’s advantages and disadvantages when it comes to SEO. You know, for example, one of the big driving factors for local SEO is reviews. Well, if your case selection is so tight, where you only work with these major injuries, the amount of cases you’re closing is low. So you have less chance to get reviews versus someone that’s taking minor injuries and really settling a lot of cases they can get a lot of local reviews to help their SEO,
Jeremy Weisz 30:49
huh. What are you speaking on that for a second, I do want you to tell them a story about your biggest client a couple years in I’ll tell that in a second, but I’m four Any local business now like plumbing company, your sister brother in law, right? I always knew plumbing. There’s, I mean, like, if your toilet doesn’t work, you’ll pay whatever amount of money to a plumber to fix that thing. You know, so, but um, what are some, you know, tips that other local businesses could be using, that you use, obviously, in the most competitive one of the most competitive niches?
Chris Dreyer 31:25
I mean, I would highly recommend anyone looking for an SEO agency to do some form of diagnosis or audit before any engagement is pursued. You know, it’s, it’s essential to have the strategy first, you know, Pareto principle, you know, the 8020. You know, strategy is one of the most important components, and that’s what I would say wouldn’t matter if it was plumbing Home Services physicians, it would be to do a full discovery and analysis first
Jeremy Weisz 31:57
and any particular tools sheet People should look at that you like.
Chris Dreyer 32:07
So my favorite SEO tool is a traps calm. I also liked sem rush. I think those have they’re pretty versatile. They do a lot of things I think air air EFS is a little bit more intuitive a little bit easier to use. And but both of those tools are phenomenal. They can give you a lot of competitor insights to help you make decisions with your SEO strategy.
Jeremy Weisz 32:33
I’m biggest client a couple years in
Chris Dreyer 32:37
what else? That’s funny. So I remember I was working from home but you know, my biggest client It was like the end of year one and you gotta you gotta you know, I know I hear a lot of stories where people sign hundred dollar and $500 clients or were they traded coffee subscriptions and things. My my biggest was 3500 a month and I remember that he wanted to meet in person before he did it so he said hey let’s meet at a halfway point we’ll just you know hit up a restaurant well the town that he picked there was literally nothing there was a gas station and it was had one of those gas stations connected to like a Hardee’s so I went ahead and it there was like stuff all over the floor and I’m just like, what am I going to do? Instead of meeting in there actually got in my SUV in my car with me and we signed the deal in in the parking lot in my car. Just wanted to be have that last reassure reassuring moment. And that’s what happened. I mean,
Jeremy Weisz 33:46
so I wanted to real human being he just wanted to
Chris Dreyer 33:49
have absolutely yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 33:52
What about now what does that look like now? Because obviously you pro you have clients all over the country. Is there is it less than Frequent that people don’t care about that as much because of like technology of just doing video chat or do you find people still want that you to show up in person at some point.
Chris Dreyer 34:10
It’s very rare that they want to need to show up in person. I can’t recall situation last two years that was the case. But I think our reputation and cloud and has grown to where it’s not some unknown person doing the marketing, they already actually know me from some from some aspect and most of our leads are referrals. So it has an extra, you know, when of trust because of the person referring to us.
Jeremy Weisz 34:43
Yeah, it seems important for you to have the team in places system in place. Um, what’s important to you as far as hiring in culture, how do you maintain a culture in hire properly?
Chris Dreyer 34:58
That’s a good question. So One of the advantages of owning a remote company is when we want to hire talent, we can open it up to the entire United States. So there’s a lot more applicants. So we have a very tedious hiring process. We’ll start with an initial posting, whether it’s on indeed or other sites to get the resumes or the applicants, I just like saying resume because I haven’t looked at a resume in two years. We then do an initial proof of knowledge, whether it’s a quiz or some type of test or assessment. We then use spark hire, which is a video platform it’s based in Chicago actually believe Yeah, it’s it’s phenomenal. So I remember when I started, I would interview someone, but I couldn’t even if I took great notes. I couldn’t remember the individual because we would go through a lot of interviews. And so spark hire during that initial recording it used as a reminder, and and also as a A future recruiting tool. You know, if the person wasn’t a right fit where I was hiring currently, they may be one for different position in the future. So we spark hire, and then we do Gen after that we do a, you know, a higher end on the phone type of interview, but there’s a lot of steps to it, you know, that it’s like called crawling through grab glass, so to speak. It’s not just, you know, looking at the resume and having some conversations, there’s more to it.
Jeremy Weisz 36:28
Yeah. Oh, yeah. You What are some ways you weed people out?
Chris Dreyer 36:34
And I was talking to someone the other day, and they’ll put something in the description, like, include a PDF attachment of your resume, and they don’t do that. And this person is saying, you know, 70% of people don’t even do that step. So I don’t know if you have any of those without tricks. Our biggest one for SEO specialist is a quiz. Only three to 4% Pass the quiz. How many? Three 4% Wow, it’s timed. And it is difficult. So that weeds out a ton. You know, other positions, we’ll do a, you know, attach a cover letter, specifically say attach a cover letter and multiple locations and they don’t we just fast fail them even though I mean 80 grand, but we fast fail them. Yeah. That quiz is the number one thing that we use.
Jeremy Weisz 37:26
Yeah. What about no daily routine or weekly routine? What’s important to you? And I because I bring that up because you are doing this crazy challenge right now, which I’ll have you talk about.
Chris Dreyer 37:41
Yeah, so I got this from atomic habits. That book I mentioned. It’s, if you want to achieve a goal, it’s best to change your process, your daily habits in order to hit that goal and really reward yourself for the journey. And so it’s just these minor changes you One of the biggest ones for me is, is self improvement self learning. So I have a morning routine where, you know, after I get my cup of coffee, I am listening to an audio book or reading. And I have a certain amount of time set there. And then on my commute to work, which is not very far and I we’re a remote company, but I do have a headquarters headquarters but so I listen to the audiobook on the way to work and the way home so I’m fitting in time to continually improve and learn.
Jeremy Weisz 38:37
So what are you doing with this challenge? Do you want to know if you want
Chris Dreyer 38:39
to Oh, yeah. So
Unknown Speaker 38:42
handy for the video. Do you have it handy that uh,
Chris Dreyer 38:46
I yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 38:48
So um, okay, so what is this exactly,
Chris Dreyer 38:55
this is golden. It’s a flag. Basically, you know, Seth, as for his consistency has been, he’s been writing a daily blog and hasn’t missed for like, years. So he writes 365 blogs a year. And I like to set these like, extreme challenges these 10 x Grant cardones style challenges to really push myself. And so I’m doing 365 blogs and in February in among. So there’s a lot of process changes, tactical things that go into that in order to have the ability to even fulfill that. And that’s just kind of like a personal challenge I’m doing.
Jeremy Weisz 39:40
Does this count as one of them? Oh, no, it does not
Chris Dreyer 39:44
even though even Yeah, it doesn’t count.
Jeremy Weisz 39:48
You mentioned reward. I find that a lot of hard charging entrepreneurs I know are really bad with rewarding themselves. They just kind of push the goalposts
Unknown Speaker 39:57
further.
Jeremy Weisz 39:58
Oh, we hit that. Oh, But we could be doing this so how what do you do to reward yourself?
Chris Dreyer 40:04
I’m not the best at that. I will say this. My my coach I mentioned earlier Carl Sagan is we have a reward and consequence. And the reward I set every, every month. So sometimes it’s a massage and it forces me to schedule that massage. We’re gonna get a new pair of shoes. In the office, I really wanted a cool piece of art. So after we hit a certain size retainer we bought then there’s the consequence. So the thing it’s the painful things that I don’t want to do or one of my I’m not going to say because there’s there’s things you don’t talk about political whatever, but
Jeremy Weisz 40:50
one of the Quinn’s meaning, Chris, if you don’t hit the goal, I don’t hit the girl. You don’t give yourself a reward.
Chris Dreyer 40:56
Now if I don’t hit the goal, got it. Okay. So I’ve had one where I send cash to a an ex party political party. I don’t want to do that
Jeremy Weisz 41:08
there’s a there’s apps for that right that you can you can actually go on and they have those things that whatever like a white supremacist like site or something like that if you don’t
Unknown Speaker 41:20
have to go or I forgot what not does that extreme
Jeremy Weisz 41:22
No, but there’s there’s a bunch of ones that people make a bet but it forces you it creates enough pain that you’re you know, you’re you’re gonna like okay, there’s an extra pain driver there, right?
Chris Dreyer 41:32
Yeah, I mean, one of my I’ve always done really well in business goals like health and exercise. I’m struggling at sometimes my rewards or my consequence, which Healthy People wouldn’t think it’s a consequence would be like, Okay, I have to sign up for a five game. I do not want to run this five. Run. That might be so
Jeremy Weisz 41:55
is it a I hope it’s not a health goal that the punishment is actually getting healthier.
Chris Dreyer 42:02
No, but it’s sometimes it’s stuff like that. I mean, I try to get a I’m trying to improve my healthy habits. But there’s some things like it may even be you know I had a personal trainer and you know it worked out three or four times a week but there are certain exercises that are good for you is don’t want to do like deadlifts. Right so it’d be like okay, it’s it’s a negative it’s a consequence, but it’s still good.
Jeremy Weisz 42:30
Yeah, yeah. There’s a funny comedian bit about two people. I won’t go into it about one, you know, was exercising you Why don’t you just run you get this runner’s high and the guy was like, No, I’ve done drugs. It’s nowhere near what you know, but a high actually for which talk show was I know it was hard for someone but, um, Chris that’s that’s super valuable too. Because, you know, we’re you’re not only rewarding, but it you sometimes were driven more by pain than pleasure. Right? Yep. So putting that in place. You mentioned referrals referrals are big for you, what are some good ways for people to think about referrals and to, you know, give to their their current customers or advocates?
Chris Dreyer 43:20
It’s a great question. So our number one source of lead gen is referrals. And it’s not client referrals, it’s non client referrals. What I mean by that is one of the hugest the best advantages of niching down into a narrow focus, we have to say no to a lot of other individuals that come to us. So if a bankruptcy attorney comes to us, we don’t do that. We only work with personal injury lawyers. So we can refer out strategic partners. And it sets up a seal, Donnie reciprocity. You know, we send so many leads, people want to continue to get those so when a personal injury attorney comes to them, they may send that
Jeremy Weisz 44:00
You know, I always tell people, the best way to get referrals is to give a referral is very simple.
Chris Dreyer 44:08
It’s the best.
Jeremy Weisz 44:10
Yeah. You know, Chris, first I wanna say thank you. I have two last questions everyone should check out rankings.io but I always ask since Inspired Insider, what’s been a challenging moment, low moment, and what’s been a proud moment on the other end?
Chris Dreyer 44:28
Good question, a challenging moment, which would be probably, I think, over three years ago over hiring, think every business owner experiences that and weren’t tracking our we’re using leading lagging indicators well enough, and over hired forecast properly. So that kind of cash flow and that was a learning experience for sure.
Unknown Speaker 44:56
How do you navigate that?
Chris Dreyer 44:59
You know, ls and traction really help profit first Mike McLeod Callaway it’s really helped. So we are looking at the numbers on a weekly basis as well as leading indicators so things like accounts receivable money out on the street, so to speak. We know who owes us money and we’re not letting them go too long you know, we have an AR 30 plus so accounts receivable 30 plus out on the street that we know that we need to keep hitting them to get the money or we shut down the service. Our lessons learned like that, you know, great people, but they don’t pay a you know, candy money for free. So those those are those are some difficult ones. Some exciting ones, I would say, you know, in 5000 back to back last two years. Um, those are probably some really some really good accomplishments. For our clients. We’ve got you know, I like I think the rewards are clients. We’ve got a client ranking number one nationwide I have a car accident lawyer we got number one in Chicago, Philadelphia Houston for Car Accident Lawyer, you know major metros, so those are some really exciting.
Unknown Speaker 46:10
Let’s do what about, um, you know, like you mentioned is rewarding when you get your clients
Jeremy Weisz 46:19
results. Do you remember a specific company or case when they were extremely appreciative above and beyond Missouri or anything like that that was especially rewarding?
Chris Dreyer 46:33
Oh, yeah. So I we’ve been flown out to Clearwater and put up in the nicest resort we had. We’ve got some tremendous gifts. And yeah, so I would say flying out to location flying they sent us on trips and things like that. I’ve been really cool. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 46:57
People should check out rankings.io anywhere else. We should point people towards online
Chris Dreyer 47:03
rankings that is the main but if you guys want to connect I accept all connections.
Jeremy Weisz 47:10
So more time it faded out for a second Chris Dreyer and LinkedIn. Yeah, Chris Dreyer LinkedIn. I accept all connection requests. So I expect nothing less from you to be focused on rankings.io. We should not send anyone else to anywhere else except for rankings.io. Chris, thank you so much. Absolute pleasure. Really appreciate it. Jeremy, thank you so much for having me.
