Chris Martinez 4:49
Yeah, well, I’ve actually been broke a couple times. So the first time you know, my dad died of cancer, he had pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed he’s dead in a month. 30 days before my 27th birthday, and you know, for me, maybe we can talk about the childhood stuff, you know, in a second. But for me, I never really had that traditional father son relationship, at least that I saw on TV. So, it when I was when he got sick, it was right around the time when I was started when we started to connect on a deeper level, you know, like, he was seeing me as a man and he started to comment on, you know, the work that I was doing, and I started to feel admiration, and I could relate to the things that he had done throughout his working career and then, you know, within a month, it’s gone. Wow, it’s just gonna happen that quickly. Yeah, he was diagnosed on I read it, I think was December 9, and he died on January 10. And so, you know, that just rocked me, and it’s shocking. Being a guy. And I’m speaking to all the other guys out there who were always taught you know, guys Don’t cry and just suck it up. You know, like, that was the mentality that I had. And I took all these emotions and I just shoved them down. And what happens? Maybe not for everybody, but it happened for me is that that stuff is not you know, it’s still there, and it bubbles up to the surface. And oftentimes, it would come out in ways that I didn’t like. And so, you know, after my dad died, I decided, you know what, I’m going to start this soccer magazine. I’ve always been a soccer player, and I love the game. And so I said, you know, I’m going to start this print magazine at like, the worst time in history. I didn’t know anything about running a business. And so I started this, this magazine, and I it just completely flopped, you know, if I failed miserably and all due to me, you know, like looking back at all the stupid mistakes that I made. I was like, well, number No wonder why it failed. What would you do differently?
Unknown Speaker 6:49
No.
Chris Martinez 6:50
Oh, man. Well, when I needed more capital, more Welcome to man. I shouldn’t have done a magazine. Right? It was right. 2007 is right at that period. where things are starting to move to digital,
Jeremy Weisz 7:03
she was a print magazine,
Chris Martinez 7:04
it was a print local magazine, regional magazine. So I would have done a blog, you know, I would have invested in learning more about digital marketing and creating content and you know, like sourcing other writers because one of the other big thing is I try to do everything myself. And, and so, you know, there’s all these little mistakes, not understanding the actual business side of it thinking that, you know, if I build it, then people will like it, not really listening to what the market wanted. All these mistakes that I made, and so, you know, within 18 months, I’d lost everything. And emotionally like I was just in a very, very bad place. You know, like my, my response to emotional and physical pain is anger. Right. And I like boys been kind of like a fight like a brawler. So, I would lash out at everybody and I hurt everybody and You know, alienated myself, from everybody. I was not a pleasure to be around during that time period. So I don’t blame anybody for like, creating distance. Because I was a nightmare. But um, you know, from a financial standpoint, I had to get a job, right. And so I had two interviews, I had always done sales, so I knew that I could get into their sales job. So I got a sales job basically working for this charter bus company that was based in Seattle. And they gave me a decent salary plus commission. So I was like, okay, you know, like, this is going to be good. I’m going to be able to turn this around. So the first week that they trained me, I went up to Seattle, and they put me up in a hotel, and they paid for all my meals. And you know, so they took care of me, so I didn’t have to worry about money. But then, you know, come that Friday, I was scheduled scheduled to fly home back to LA. And I’m like, freaking out in the morning. Of course, nobody knew. But I’m freaking out because I had no idea how I was going to get home from the airport. Because I didn’t have any money, you know, the airport ride from LA x to her, most of each where I was living was about 36 bucks. And I didn’t have $36 and this is before Uber, you know, like, so I didn’t know how it’s gonna make it back. So fortunately, that morning, somehow I fell into a pay period. And they gave me a check for like 300 or 350 bucks. And I was like, Oh my god, this is the most amazing paycheck that I’ve ever had. Because if you’ve ever been that broke, and then by some miraculous, you know, whatever, you wind up getting some extra money. It is like, like a meal. It was like a million dollars. It was like yeah, it gives you the breathing room to know that you can survive and I had figured out how to survive, you know, like 99 cent store spaghetti. You know,
Jeremy Weisz 9:50
life look like man. I’m just surviving.
Chris Martinez 9:54
You know, um, it’s it’s hard to describe it because
My mental state at the time was that I really enjoy. Like, it’s hard to say it and make it sound like me. Maybe like people won’t relate to it or it doesn’t sound right. But I embraced that pain. I needed that pain, because that was the connection that I had to my dad. Hmm.
Unknown Speaker 10:21
See, now you’re gonna make me cry. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 10:25
Yeah, it’s, um,
Jeremy Weisz 10:28
you felt that connection your dad because of that.
Unknown Speaker 10:31
That’s all I had left.
Chris Martinez 10:34
That’s all I had left at the time. You know,
the life insurance money that he left me gone. And actually, I was relieved when it was gone. Because I felt like that was blood money. Hmm. I had a lot of I had a lot of fields around it. Yeah. So, you know, like, I would go to the cemetery like every single week and just sit at his side, you know, and so like the pain and the anguish was my connection to that experience because I wasn’t ready to move on.
Jeremy Weisz 11:11
I appreciate your perspective on this, Chris because you know, some people may be listening they’ve lost someone, some people may listening they haven’t and hopefully provide some perspective because I’ve heard you say this in other content that like you would pay every cent you have to you know, which I thought was pretty I was still surprised by the statement, right? You like I would give all the money everything I have right now just to say I love you to him and like, holy cow, like that’s, that’s a serious statement. Right? And so not just rebuild lost people, but people who you have them. You know, it’s like, life is short, like that was that was like a month period that transpire that like it’s a blink of an eye, you know, everything changed. Just so you just never know, you know?
Chris Martinez 12:02
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, him being sick, there was just so much uncertainty as that we didn’t know what was going on. You know, like one doctor said that he had three months. Another doctor said he’s got some, you know, years.
The oncologist that was supposed to treat him in the hospital said that he had three months, and he died a week later. You know, and so like, I just didn’t know what was going on. I mean,
Jeremy Weisz 12:28
I think you know, and I want to talk about the lessons you learned from him. But I think in my mind, you’re passionate about your business, just from an outside perspective. And what you do is because really, with what you do with dude, is you give people time back, you give people time back to do what they want to do, right? Whether it’s working harder on the business, or whether it’s, I know you’ve had people call you and they’re on the beach somewhere and they could do that because they have your team working in the background to fulfill and stuff that they would have to be staying up till two in the morning.
Chris Martinez 13:00
Yeah, and then, you know, there’s another side of it too, that I really, really enjoy. And it’s creating opportunities, right? Because nobody ever thinks that anything positive comes out of Mexico, let alone to one in Mexico. Like you see it on the news, and it’s all bad. And I was blessed. I was blessed by being able to find this little niche, and being able to coach all these team members that we have here. And, you know, we’re giving him an opportunity that they wouldn’t necessarily had, or have had, they not have found us. And so it’s really enjoyable to see them not only make more money, but learn new skills. And like, you know, just this past weekend, we had our quarterly meeting. It’s like, are we we used to do monthly but now we’re doing quarterly like kickoff meetings, and we reviewed all of the last year and then our plans for the coming year and plus break it down by month. It was a four and a half hour meeting, we spent three and a half hours on personal development, goal setting, showing them how to, you know, create a plan. literally walking them through, you know, like visualization. What do you picture your life like, you know, in 12 months? What do you picture your life? Like, in 12 weeks, let’s do an assessment of what’s going on right now. You know, three and a half hours of that. And it’s because I’ve been blessed in so many ways by learning a lot of these techniques been blessed by people that I’ve known, and that have helped help me and, you know, I feel a sense of duty to be able to pass that on to these people in Mexico.
Jeremy Weisz 14:43
What’s been impactful for them as far as what do you go over as far as goals and personal development or certain books that you recommend and I want to recommend if you could you don’t answer me now but I had david long on David long is a book and about culture and companies. And he may be a great guest for your podcast. Oh, yeah, I’ll It’s awesome. I’ll send you his info but everyone should check out we did you know, I did an episode with David long who we talked about this and as well, but um, what kind of things did you do recommend? Um,
Chris Martinez 15:16
you know, so this it’s mainly a thing that I learned from Russ Perry who started design pickle. And they call it like the core for it, he didn’t create it, somebody else created it, but it it first, it’s an A call it like a framework for building good habits. And that is the focus for us this year as a company because we know exactly what we need to do to make our clients happy to keep them happy, and to grow. And so it’s just a matter of creating amazing daily habits and executing on those every single day. So, you know, we talked about creating good habits in four different areas of your life. So the first one being your body, so your physical being, you know, this shell that houses us that we have have to take care of because we only have one. You know, making sure that that is okay your mental state is, is the second one, and then your relationships with other people and then ultimately your business. And as entrepreneurs, we always tend to focus on the business side and say, Okay, if I just make more money, then I’ll be able to, you know, take my kids on a vacation, and then they’re like the result, right. And then if I, and then if I do that, then I’ll feel happier. And then I’ll finally have, you know, have some money and some time to be able to invest in that personal trainer. The reality is, it doesn’t work like that you have to start at the top of the body and then get everything else in alignment, and then your business will fall into order. And it’s something that I’ve been doing personally for over a year and I’ve seen, you know, I can attribute You know, a lot of my success over the past year to that specifically. So we taught them that in the meeting, and then it just wears down
Jeremy Weisz 16:49
real quick, Chris on that. I want to pause on that for a second. What are your personal habits as far as health goes? I know you like to stay fit what like I don’t know if there’s certain things yeah, so supplements. You do anything. routine you do as far as your health goes,
Chris Martinez 17:02
No, man, I’m not really like a biohacker. To me, I think that’s kind of bullshit. It’s very simple. Like, it’s not rocket science, you just gotta exercise and you got to eat healthy. And you got to do it consistently. So part of this core four is every day you got to exercise seven days a week, and then every day you do a green smoothie that includes veggies, not necessarily all the fruits because, you know, fruits are good. veggies are probably what most people are lacking. So that’s it, you know, so like, personally, I go to the gym. I also do our walk. I’m back to training Jiu Jitsu, because I got hurt. I tore my meniscus and so took three months off for that. But go to the gym, I started doing yoga, it’s been unbelievably helpful because the years of wear and tear are definitely wreaking havoc on my body. And so I need that for recovery. So those are those are the main things that I do. You know, I’m actually doing my first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament this weekend, so I’m pretty Wow,
Jeremy Weisz 17:57
really? Yeah. Just a gun. punishment. How do they match you up with? I’m the Punisher. Yeah, that’s true. I mean, I don’t see a way to escape that lets you knock someone out quickly. But how do they match you up? What do you mean? Is it certain like,
Chris Martinez 18:15
you’re still a beginner, I’m still, I’m still a white belt, and then I’m I just turned 40. So I’m in the, they call the executive category at this tournament, but it’s the Masters three. Okay, so I go with guys who are in between 40 and 49. And I’m in the white belt division in my weight class. So I’m going to be competing at the 207 to seven and a half, like 195 to seven and a half somewhere
Jeremy Weisz 18:39
in there. Yeah, that’s I know, you know, Chris, you have a lot of thoughts and experience as far as hiring culture. And I want you just to comment on, you always talk about talented, unpopular places. Yeah, so what does that mean?
Chris Martinez 18:56
Well, first of all, I’m a firm believer now. I was Always, I didn’t always believe this, that your people are your most important asset of your company, like your product can change the market can be like, Hey, we don’t like this thing anymore, you know. But if you have amazing people, I 100% believe that you guys will figure out another way to be successful. So when it comes to hiring talent, I think that a lot of people are trying to solve the same problem using the same people in the same areas. And, you know, I never thought about this way, but you’ve probably read that book, Blue Ocean Strategy. Yeah, right. I think a lot of us are trying to find talent in a red ocean of people. And one of the things that we’re doing in Tijuana is finding talent in a place that nobody ever thought you could find good people. Right. And there’s so many other pockets for talented hard working. You know, Driven individuals that want to contribute and that want to be a part of your organization and will do whatever it takes to help you be successful. And so, you know, this kind of goes back to me always feeling like an underdog myself, you know, I’ve never really felt like I was sitting at the cool kids table or that, you know, opportunities were, were not given to me or didn’t present themselves. That’s just this is just my personal belief might be a limiting belief. But I just don’t think that uh, you know, it just wasn’t there the way that I’ve seen it for other people. And so, you know, I’ve always kind of felt like the underdog perfect example, you know, when I was kid, a lot of things go back to your childhood, your doctor, maybe you know, so when I was a kid, and I played Little League, and you know, I was a pretty good athlete when I was a kid, and they’re picking the teams for the all stars I was always be on the All Stars. But when I got to about 12 years old, and the Politics. And I think anybody who’s ever played Little League Baseball can attest, the politics of Little League Baseball really started to factor in because now you were playing, you know, all stars, it was a travel team that go to the World Series. And so, you know, my dad wasn’t a part of this cool click of kids, and that filter down to me. You know, even though I was athletically, you know, as talented, if not more talented, I was just kind of like, pushed off to the side. Right. And so I think that’s probably where this kind of like underdog feeling kind of happened from and then other like childhood shit, too, but
Jeremy Weisz 21:39
what I’m, you know, yeah. So you’re the underdog mentality. And so you go in and how did you even discover Yeah, I’m going to look at talent in Mexico.
Chris Martinez 21:50
And going back to my dad, yeah, so my dad always said that he wanted to be able to do something back in Mexico. So my grandfather immigrated here, from a little it’s like a city, a little town in Mexico called Encarnacion, it’s in the middle of Mexico. And he walked across the border, the early 1900s. He was 13 years old. He was born in 1896, or 1897. Birth Certificate says his two verses, I guess they both say the same different years. So he walks across the border eventually makes its way into Kansas. And other Yeah, well, at that time, American factories were recruiting people from Mexico to come work in the factories because they didn’t have enough labor. You know, so, grandfather took the, you know, 13 years old, it’s like, All right, I’ll go, you know, and so, eventually meets my grandmother, they have kids. And so that’s kind of like my Mexican heritage. So my, my grandfather could speak English could not read. My grandmother could not speak English also could not read. My dad was the youngest of eight. So he grew up in a very Mexican culture, you know, in in his In his household, and then he always wanted to go back and do something in Mexico. So I had started a digital agency in 2012. Like many people, I went to the Philippines had all my staff there. I moved from LA down to San Diego. And I’m like, I gotta find other people, you know, the timezone thing. And communication, staying up to one o’clock in the morning, like you mentioned earlier was just killing me. So I’m like, Okay, I gotta find new talent. I remember in the back of my head, my dad says, I want to do something in Mexico. I’m like, Okay, well, let me see if I can find people in Mexico, some designers and developers. And I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t know the laws. I didn’t know I don’t speak Spanish, right. And basically just took the leap of faith and ended up going down there and started a company figure that whole mess out, went through the, you know, hired people figured out the culture and hiring and like, things are, there’s a lot of little things that are very different that can make make your life not very pleasant if you don’t know them, which I didn’t. And so we figured that but we figured it all out eventually and then just you know, grew My agency had over 220 clients on retainer, five people managing the whole thing. And it was great. You know, so that was my my desire to go down to Mexico was just kind of like my dad talking to me in the back of my head.
Jeremy Weisz 24:16
We’re Are there other unpopular places that come to mind? Either you use them or don’t use them for finding talent?
Chris Martinez 24:23
Are you talking about in Mexico? Are
Jeremy Weisz 24:24
you out anywhere? It could be online, US Mexico?
Chris Martinez 24:29
Well, here’s the big shift that I hope that if there’s anything that anybody gets from this interview, it’s stop hiring for technical skills, hire for soft skills, hire the person, you need to look at their values. You need to look at what’s inside. Because you can always teach somebody how to do things, right. There’s certain Yes, there are certain skills people are, you know, more naturally gravitate towards certain areas, right? But it really just comes down to the person You can have the most amazing developer on Earth, if they’re an asshole. And they only care about themselves. And they’re never going to, you know, care about the clients and you can when it’s crunch time and you need them, they’re like, peace out, it’s five o’clock, that person is never going to help you succeed. So you, whatever it is, I don’t care where they are on Earth, you need to look at the person first. And I think that in our industry, people aren’t doing that. And that’s why they’re having all these problems. You know, like, everybody always complains about millennials in their entitlement, right? Stop hiring people who had that entitlement mentality like entitlement. Growing up, you know, like, those people were raised by a certain demographic of parents, that were all giving the participation trophy and telling you that you’re a special little snowflake, right? But not everybody had that same upbringing and not everybody is being indoctrinated with those times. values. So just get out of that little pool of people and move into a different pool. It doesn’t matter if they didn’t go to Stanford, it doesn’t matter. They even went to college, it didn’t matter. You know, like, if they had that economic background, and they don’t know how to use credit, right, that stuff doesn’t matter. What comes to what it comes down to, is the person that’s inside. And there are ways that you can get in there and you can figure out what’s going on. That’s some of the things that I think that we’ve done really well, in our hiring practices is being able to find find out who these amazing people are. Hire the technical skill second, and then give them the opportunities to do the amazing stuff that we know that they’re capable of.
Jeremy Weisz 26:42
Yeah, yeah, Chris, thank you. I love that. How do you put into practice? What are some of the processes? I know you’re big on a specific hiring process? And yeah, the one thing you say is like you close the door behind you, situation in the same room. So talk a little about your hiring process.
Chris Martinez 27:00
Yeah, for sure. You know, this is something that anybody can replicate. So I’m just going to talk about like developers, because that’s the most, you know, common thing that we hire for. So the first thing that we do, you know, the hiring process starts with the the job post. So we put a job post out, we in the job post, specifically, we say, you know, send us your resume in Mexico, they call it a CV, then it’s your resume, right? And we’re looking at how they do these things. You do have some people that apply and not attach your resume, which is shocking. Or you need these requirements, right. And so, you know, if they don’t have those minimum requirements are they don’t at least acknowledge those minimum requirements, then you just kick those people out. You know, when we’ve hired people in the States, the it’s what this is, like, the most kind of shocking thing is that if you put in there like, attach your resume as a PDF, one page and in the title of the of the subject and the email that you’re going to send me make sure that you put the And then you put the title that you’re applying for 80% of people will fail that.
Unknown Speaker 28:08
It’s amazing.
Chris Martinez 28:10
So yeah, so the interview starts with the job post. So then once they submit their resume, you’re going through it, you know, making sure that everything looks okay. And then we will send out a, an email, which is kind of like a survey. Tell me three websites that you’ve built. You know, do you have these skills? What are you looking to do with your career? What interested you in the company? kind of generic types of questions. We’re looking at the answers, but we’re also looking at how they respond. Right? So if they say something like, well, this happened very recently, we had a person who was applying for a leadership, team leader position, and they’re like, I’m great at speaking English. I’m worried about writing English. I just have I’m very intimidated by speaking to other people in English. And I’m like, Okay, well, that’s kind of a deal breaker. So you know, those sorts of things. Or if they take forever to reply, you know, so that they send their CV, we reply to them, hey, here’s your email, and then we don’t hear from them for three weeks. It’s not really somebody that we want to consider. It’s just us, right? So after they do that, then we’ll send everything looks good. We’ll schedule a quick 15 minute phone interview. And that’s really just a look at how they sound and you know, are they rude? Are they nice? You know, are they personable? Just communication skills, really not many deep questions there. After that, if they pass that test, then we’ll go into a online test to look at their HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, all the technical skills that we need. We use the service called test dome TST. Do me. So we send them that test. It’s timed. You know, that’s really just the standard that we use to evaluate all of our candidates. And so then we give them that they have to finish it in certain amount of time. If they do that and they pass it. Then we’ll bring them in for an in person interview. In that in person interview, we interview we have an interview with at least four people. Usually it’s the team leaders. And everybody’s interviewing on a different aspects of some persons about the culture or some person about values. Some person about technical and then like, I’ll usually interview them and just ask them crazy questions. Um, and then after that, we all dismissed the candidate. We all get together, the people that interview them, we asked them, Hey, you know, what do you think about this candidate? Did you have any red flags? What did you like? How did you think that they would fit in with our team? And it just becomes, you know, like a discussion and in, you know, at the end of that all of us have to agree on two things that this is one this is somebody that we would want on our team and to that this is somebody that we could see ourselves working for one day, if any one person says no, we exclude that candidate. So what if they pass then we give them two more tests, one for developer when we have to see them build out a website. And then the other thing that we do which has also been Game Changers we do what’s called a psychometric psychometric exam. And this looks at specific to the position. Are there any red flags, you know what’s like, kind of like aptitude type of thing, but more so about values and behaviors. It’s an online test. Ray Dalio just learned Ray Dalio does it uses this for his hiring process process. And so we use that and that gives us a better than even deeper snapshot as to how they would perform in the environment, in the work environment. So if they pass all those, then we make that offer and so a lot of people might be thinking that that’s a very long drawn out process, and I need somebody now and I can’t do it. First of all, like never make the wrong hire. I’ve done it before. It’s gonna bite you in the butt. It’s gonna be way more painful. Don’t make hires out of desperation. But you know, the cool thing about this is that after the candidate has gone through all these steps, they’re very, very invested in getting this job and you get somebody who’s super excited to work for your company. And so you don’t have to worry about this, you know, they’re not going to leave, because they’ve already spent hours and hours and hours trying to get this job. And they learned so much. And they’ll also respect you. They’re going to be like, Wow, man, everybody passed this test. Like, we have some great people here. And so, you know, those are the steps that we take to ensure that we have amazing people at our company. Do we get it right every time? Of course not. No systems perfect. But we get it right, a lot more than we used to.
Jeremy Weisz 32:31
Run and, you know, thanks for, for walking through this. So detail, just the front end of it will eliminate 80%. And then you can imagine who ends up on the other side and actually completes this process and then gets approved by you and the team. So
Chris Martinez 32:43
yeah, so for developers, it’s about the ratio is about one out of 40 out of every 40 people that apply and get into the process. We hire about one person.
Jeremy Weisz 32:54
I’m Chris, the pricing and services. I want to get into that and how that’s a evolve. So talk about today as far as because I know, you know, by doing research, the services have evolved a bit and the pricing has evolved a bit. Yeah. So presently, I know I mentioned unlimited talk about how the services work and what people get for that.
Chris Martinez 33:18
Yeah, so we have two packages. And you know, I kind of gathered, I got the idea for dude by listening to a podcast of Russ Perry, who started design pickle, and I was like, I can totally do this using development and my team in Mexico. And so we’ve emulated a lot of the things that they do. And Russ is actually my coach now. So that’s kind of nice to have access to him. And so like our packages, we have two packages. We have the basic unlimited and we have the elite unlimited. The basic unlimited as kind of remained the same for the past couple years. Basically, you get access to a team of six to eight people. You share that team, with anyone Where from 10 to 15. Other agencies, turnaround times are still really, really fast. You have a team leader who’s your direct point of contact, you have daily communication with that person, you do weekly calls. We’re huge on open lines of communication, because that’s really where a lot of the challenges come with remote employees and outsourcing.
Jeremy Weisz 34:21
I manage the clients in that in that in different channels, they use slack or how do you? Yeah,
Chris Martinez 34:28
so we have our own ticketing portal. So we developed this ticketing portal inside the portal, basically, you know, if you need a mock up done for a website, you list out, we list out all the things that we need to be able to get that done. Most of those things are exactly what you’re already sending it over. But what’s what’s, what’s kind of neat is that we’ve standardized it. So you know every single time we’re going to do this, this, this and this and you know Bill outsourcing everything that we do, we’ve standardized that. So we have a ticketing portal, and then for a little daily communication, we do connect with our clients on slack and then in the weekly call
You know, that’s really, really important. So,
you know, on the weekly calls, we cover three main things, basically, we said, we talked about any open projects. We talked about what’s going well, and what you want us to improve. And then finally, what’s the goal for the week. So everybody’s on the same page as to what we need to accomplish to make it a great week for you. Again, you
Jeremy Weisz 35:20
provide a lot of support, like when I when I looked through your website, and I see Yeah, they do unlimited webs, websites, design funnels, landing pages, it’s way more than that. Because of the the calls you provide, and even training related materials.
Chris Martinez 35:35
We invest a lot of time and resources at the beginning. Because if we do that, everything is going to flow so much more smoothly, you know, because it’s kind of like hiring a new employee. Right, that first couple months, they’re learning your processes are you guys communicate all those things, your styles, you know? So we kind of are way more proactive on that and we just schedule everything out. So That we can learn from our clients as fast as humanly possible. And then, you know, after the two month period, they can continue to do the weekly calls and the daily status updates. The most of them we like add, just let me know when it’s ready. Yeah. Or let me know if you have a problem, because we’ve laid the foundation of building all that trust and really getting ingrained in that agency and how they operate. Hmm. So
Jeremy Weisz 36:24
who’s an ideal client for that particular
Chris Martinez 36:28
package? So an agency digital marketing agency, specifically doing websites specifically doing WordPress websites, we typically work Beth’s best with agencies that have been doing this for a little while, you know, because at the beginning, you’re just trying to get clients right you’re just trying to get I say, your your your niches CCNP anybody with a credit card and, and so But eventually, you know, you figure this thing out and figure out who your clients are, and you really don’t have any problems getting the clients The problem comes with getting the work done. That’s really where we come in. So, you know, typically clients there about, you know, at least two years in business. And we typically work with agencies that are in the 250 to a million million plus we do have a couple agencies that are multi million dollar agencies. But for the most part, our sweet spot is kind of like 250,000 a year in revenue up to that one 1.2.
Jeremy Weisz 37:24
Do you find Chris that agencies that come to you are doing the WordPress they just want to offload the work or other more percentage of they’re doing maybe Facebook ads or something, something maybe not related to websites and they want to add a revenue stream on or
Chris Martinez 37:41
almost everybody is doing a marketing program. And that’s why it’s so important to have the systems and processes which we provide to help you get these websites done quickly. Because for a lot of agencies, the wet in the margins on the websites are not that great, you know, it’s almost at some, I hope it’s not a loss leader for everybody, but in many cases, the loss leader Right just to get these marketing programs going, and it’s also the hook. So, you know, XYZ doctor will come to me like, I really need to redo my website, and then the savvy digital agency owner will be like, Okay, cool. Let’s talk about that. What do you want the website to do for you? Okay. And have you ever tried this then? So they’ll do a very thorough needs allowance analysis. And the website is just one part of a program that they’re selling to help solve this client’s problems. Yeah. But the website always, always needs to get done. And so, you know, they come to us, and we do that. And then there’s maintenance, right? So like, if you’re running a management, or a marketing program, who’s going to install the pixel, who’s going to build these landing pages, who’s going to create this unique graphic that you need for the ad? Right? Those are all the other things that we’re doing for the agency. So really anything that they would send over to a front end design and development team, that’s what we do.
Jeremy Weisz 38:55
So then you said there’s another package.
Chris Martinez 38:58
The other package that we have, I actually Taking that we have three. The other package is the elite Unlimited, which is actually kind of a new package, we tweaked it a little bit. So with that one, instead of the shared team, you get a dedicated designer and developer. They work for you full time, you can communicate with them directly. And turnaround times are obviously super, super fast, real time. So we have that package. And then we do have another program called our dedicated employee. So if you need somebody who’s super specialized, and from a video director, video editor, to a full stack developer to whoever This is like our staffing agency, we find that person in Mexico, we do our whole interview process. Once we find a good candidate, we send them to you, you go you put them through your interview process, and then they’re technically employed by our Mexican Corporation, but they’re dedicated to you for you know, 40 hours a week. That’s pretty cool.
Jeremy Weisz 39:51
Yeah, it’s great a demand for that. How did that come about?
Chris Martinez 39:55
Yes. People started saying, Hey, I really need this person. Can you find that person For me, and I was like, I think I can write. So we that’s that’s basically how it evolved.
Jeremy Weisz 40:05
How was the How was the service and pricing evolved? You know, I know from doing research, the pricing is evolved? I don’t know within that, oh,
Chris Martinez 40:14
yeah, when we started out, we were charging 497, which was like, you know, that was like test the waters, we didn’t have a lot of overhead. I just wanted to get clients and kind of prove the concept. And quickly, it’s grown to, you know, 997. And then I think it was 197, and then 1497 and 1997. And now it’s 2497. You know, so I’m a big believer to that as your skills increase, your pricing should increase as well. Right? You know, our turnaround times are way faster, all these processes that we created for communication, the trainings that we’ve created for our clients, not just on operations, but also on sales. Like we have gotten so much better. Who wouldn’t raise your price like a guy, you know, if you’re a baseball guy, I’m not really but if you’re a guy who’s batting You know, 150, you’re not going to double the rate of the guy that you’re paying who’s batting 300? Right? It’s an exponentially better, better, better performance. And so we basically just do the same thing. And really, the thing that it comes down to is the ROI, right? We always want to help our clients get a five to 10 x ROI. So they’ve got to be you know, selling, they’ve also got to be pricing appropriately. But if I can help you make another 20 525,000 bucks a month, which is our target, like why wouldn’t you invest 2497 to get that team to nowhere?
Jeremy Weisz 41:36
Yeah, it’s a no brainer, everybody I saw for because I saw 497 my I think he left off a two because when I see your page now, but it was just like some old posts from from the old days. Yeah, those old days posts are out there. What? What do you tell clients from a client management perspective you when you’re raising your fees, you
Chris Martinez 42:00
All of our, our old clients, our old clients get grandfathered in. Wow, we definitely think
Jeremy Weisz 42:07
that Yeah, pays it. You know, they think you from you know, they support you early on, but you think them in the end because oh yeah, steal the deal?
Chris Martinez 42:16
Well, I’m gonna Wistia program that you cannot get on with the
Jeremy Weisz 42:21
show why I’m on that same program.
Chris Martinez 42:24
So everybody does it in our industry, you do want to reward your old clients. So, um,
Jeremy Weisz 42:29
so, yes, thanks for shedding the light on X. It’s really interesting. What what type of projects or what do you tell people you don’t do? What do you pack
Chris Martinez 42:37
in the back end development? Yeah. You know, we certain platforms if we’re not familiar with them, and it’s a one time thing. And, you know, we just basically just do a call with your team leader and just say, Hey, can you guys handle this and be like, are you gonna do it like all the time, we’re just like a one off project. I guess just as one time, it’s like, it’s probably going to take us way too long. Just to learn this coming. Not working find somebody to do this one little thing. Yeah, but you know, mainly just back in development. We don’t do like Magento certain levels of Shopify. You know, if it’s a custom theme, fully, you know, custom developed inside of liquid, that’s just not really our wheelhouse. But the best part about us is that you have that relationship with your team leader. So just ask, you know, yesterday that came across one of our team leaders desks. And what’s really cool is because that shows that the client like trust us and values our opinion. So she’s like, hey, I’ve got this project, and when they want to do this, this and this, and I’m like, Can you guys do it then? Or she was like, Can you guys do it? And I was just kind of like looking at the conversation because she cc me. And so you know, that team leader will now talk to them and be like, okay, so like, what’s the end goal and what’s your budget and what’s the turnaround time? You know, it’s a big one. And they can basically just talk it out and she can determine what’s the best course of action.
Jeremy Weisz 43:58
What’s been some of the most popular services are requested. I know, for web flow going, Yeah,
Chris Martinez 44:03
four main things that we do is very, very clear. building out WordPress websites, so doing the mock ups and then doing the development, we don’t always do the mock ups, but majority of agencies will have our design team mock it up, send it over to the development team would build those out. Most of them are using a theme. And usually it’s like the same couple of themes. They can use whatever theme that they want. Yeah, but that’s what you know, the majority of what we do is that and then second would be updates and changes to existing sites. So stuff breaks, stuff needs to be added stuff needs to be taken off, Johnny got fired, whatever, you know, so we do all that stuff, plugin updates, backing up the site, site speed optimization, all those little, those little things we do that. So that’s the second thing. Third thing is landing pages and funnels, whether that be in Click Funnels, lead pages or WordPress. Even We do those. And then the fourth thing is design work. So digital design, we do everything digital banners, add graphics, whatever. The only thing that we don’t do our logos, big, big ebooks and print.
Jeremy Weisz 45:16
You Chris, someone’s listening right now, they’re not an agency, but they’re like, I want to use Chris’s services. And maybe like, I need a ton of landing pages, Click Funnels websites, what is how do you handle those people?
Chris Martinez 45:29
I get their information. And then I figure out one of my clients who would be the best fit. Okay, we’re super deep into our lane, like we stay in our lane. And I just know from running an agency, that I don’t have the time to be able to dedicate to these people to help them be successful. I’m a huge lover of the small business owner because I’m a small business owner. I know how hard it is. And I wouldn’t shortchange them by private trying to take on a project just because they threw a bunch of money at
Jeremy Weisz 45:54
me. Yeah. So you’d be like, Hey, I know you want this done. I have an agency that we work with. And we help them with doing all this stuff. Here’s, you know, talk to them. And they’ll kind of, you know big The reason you do that, it seems like is it just streamline your process you’re working with people who know what they’re doing, they know what to ask for. And if you’re dealing with kind of clients who aren’t agencies, they may make requests or not may not doing it in a manner that is it’s going to take more of your team’s time is that
Chris Martinez 46:23
yeah, it just comes down to the communication really, you know, so most agencies are great at strategy, and they’re great at selling, and they struggle with the operations, right? We’re like the opposite. Like, we’re amazing at the operations and my staff, I love to sell Personally, I love to do the strategy, but I can’t do everything. My staff are not great at the sales and the strategy part. So we just we love to implement. So let’s just put everybody in the right seat. Right, you know, so, you know, that’s why we stick to the operations. Yeah, I agree. That’s kind of how we are with the podcasting
Jeremy Weisz 46:55
too. Yeah. Um, so you know, for you, I always And Chris, first of all thank you for your time and knowledge and sharing this is you learn from a podcast you know with Ross’s and now he’s coaching you and it’s helped your business I’ve had people listen to and they may listen to you like who have become, you know, board members of that person’s company or they become friends or clients or whatever it is. So I’m sure people get a lot out of this. I always ask two things one, since inspired Insider, what’s been the one of the lowest moments and how you push through and then on the other side of things, what’s been a really proud moment for you and what that looks like.
Chris Martinez 47:41
Two very, very good questions. Yes, a lowest moment.
Jeremy Weisz 47:46
And it could be business related like I know we talked about a lot of tough childhood stuff and your your dad which is you know, in comparable to like, you know what in business but you know, it could be just a big, big low moment or challenge?
Chris Martinez 48:02
Well, this is the thing, you know, like, I feel like, I’m a pretty tough guy, right? And I can get through pretty much anything. And the reason that I’ve been able to develop this toughness is because of all the challenges that I had when I was a kid and well and a young adult to, you know, so like, going through those things shaped me and gave me the strength to persevere through a lot of the crap that we had to deal with, you know, growing a business. any entrepreneur will tell you is always something some, something’s broken, something needs to be fixed some challenge, unforeseen challenge. There’s always something that we have to overcome. And so you know, when it comes to some of my biggest or my one biggest obstacle, I would have to go back to, you know, a couple years after my dad died I was broke, no money. You know, I was just on the verge of getting a job. And I just had a breakdown, you know, like, I was just so angry inside and I was just a moment something super stupid set me off. And I would just, I was just so furious that I was walking around the neighborhood chain smoking, trying to get out, get rid of this anger. And I just couldn’t see straight I was so angry, I couldn’t see straight. And, and then I realized, you know, like, I don’t want to live like this, like I don’t like this person that I am. And I need to figure out a way of how to deal with this. And so I reached out to a therapist. And while I made the decision at that time to reach out to a therapist, that was the big thing is just admitting yourself. I need help. Because I think a lot of guys try and fix everything on their own because we’re stupid and pigheaded. And this is one area that I did not have a clue about. I needed help. So the first step was just admitting that I needed somebody to help me. Because I wasn’t going to live like this. I don’t think that I would live much I wouldn’t be able to live much longer. Had I not gotten some help. And so I made the decision that I was going to find a therapist. And back in the day, you know, I went on Google and I just started dialing, you know, because I didn’t know who to look for. Just started dialing, you know. And then the first person to call me back was this woman named Susan. She’s based out of Manhattan Beach. She was an amazing, she is an amazing human being. I’m still in contact with her. We talked at least like once a year, or message. And so, you know, I went to that appointment for therapy and didn’t know what to expect. It was an intro appointment, so you don’t really get into much deep stuff. And at first, I didn’t really like her. But then as I saw, I think about it more because she’s a ballbuster man. Yeah. You know, like I can be fairly stubborn in at that time. I was Like that, exactly. Like in the moment that I realized how much I needed her. We were talking about, I was talking about something I was, you know, blaming everybody for my problems or whatever that what ever in that moment was bothering me. And she’s listening, you know, being very just just listening, right? Which is rare. How many people don’t have anybody to listen? So she’s just listening. And then at the end, she’s like, Well, you know, how’s that working out for you? I said, Miss the way that it is or something like that, and I can’t change that. And she’s like, how’s that working out for you? And I was like, You fucking bitch. How dare
Jeremy Weisz 51:37
you say that to me? It’s amazing. I one sentence.
Chris Martinez 51:40
Yes. Yeah, I’ll never forget it. And then I walked away from that, and I was like, she is 100%. Right.
You know, like, I’m doing it so wrong.
Jeremy Weisz 51:53
Yeah, it’s funny. You know, Chris, you know, that’s what my wife does. She’s a child psychologist. So she She works with kids who are going through divorce, separation, you know, death, illness, anxiety, depression. So, I’ve gone through all those. Yeah, so, um, you know, she never shares names or identities but I hear smatterings of that stuff and it’s, it’s like, the it’s so it’s, it’s life-changing someone to
Chris Martinez 52:25
say my life and he saved my life. My therapist saved my life. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Susan.
Jeremy Weisz 52:30
Yeah. So I’m glad you decided to it. Most people. I think a lot of people maybe not most people don’t have the courage to actually just, you know, admit they need help and get it, you know, to varying degrees. Like we all have different degrees of that.
Chris Martinez 52:46
So all the you know, the the reality that I was facing at that time is like I get help or I die. What’s it that’s what does your choices right now? What do you want to do? Yeah, and I don’t think my dad would be very proud of me if I killed myself. So No,
Jeremy Weisz 53:02
thanks for sharing that it’s really, you know, really touching and is the courage to share this stuff, you know, so other people can learn from it. And what about on the flip side? Yeah. This moment? Yeah.
Chris Martinez 53:19
Ah, I don’t know, I’m proudest moments probably also not necessarily business related. There’s so many little things that we’re doing at our company every day. You know, we’re celebrating some, some win. But I think probably one of the proudest things that I’ve ever done on the personal side, too, is uh, you know, I was a mentor to a kid named Patrick. His mom died of cancer in 2012, December 8 2012. And Patrick was 13 at the time, and basically, you know, like, I was just there for him. And I saw him through a charity. There’s a charity in Los Angeles called walk with Sally and the founder, Nick. He had lost his mom to cancer when he was 13. And he’s like, I was I just had somebody. So I heard about this charity. I was like, I gotta do this, right? My dad had been dead for five years. I was like, I gotta do this. get matched up with Patrick, you know, it was like, instantly we became buddies. And then his mom died. And then I was like, you know, I gotta gotta help this kid. I gotta be there for him. wasn’t always easy. You know, he went through some really, really dark times as well. But he graduated high school and then, you know, in next month in February, I don’t know when this podcast is gonna air but, and the February he turns 21, I just turned 40. And we’ve been talking about celebrating our his 21st and my 40 years together, since he was 13 years old. So you know, we’re finally going to be able to do that. That’s awesome. Yeah. And then he’s a great guy, great, great human being. I’m inspired by him constantly.
Jeremy Weisz 54:50
What about from the team? I know you’re probably a lot, very proud about as far as the culture and hiring and the team. Is there something you can talk about? about as far as a celebration you did with the team or a milestone with the team as far as culture goes, oh man
Chris Martinez 55:08
it’s hard to say cuz there’s so many little things that they do that always like what
Jeremy Weisz 55:12
do you do to celebrate honor like with the team and it could be maybe a monthly or quarterly or yearly basis what? What things you know, you always hear that some companies they’ll ring a bell if something happens or whatever I don’t know if there’s a internal celebration or Slack channel or something you do to celebrate certain wins internally. Um, it’s usually revolves
Chris Martinez 55:33
around food. We do like a lunch cakes like they always go out for beers. The culture is way different here in Mexico. So like going out for beers with your boss is like unheard of. But I love it when they get together. When they go have fun together, you know, because they’re so tight. It’s rare, you know that you have any organization of 30 plus people and every Nobody gets along. If there’s not clicks, right? Everybody in our office gets along. And while I might not always be invited to go to the celebrations, it does make me really happy when it’s Friday. And you know, all the the ladies are getting ready to go out. And the guys are like, planning the bar that they’re gonna all go to. And they all go together. You know, like to me like you built like a family. Exactly. And I’ve said that, you know, in our meetings in the past, it’s like, we are the band of Misfit Toys. Like we are if you always felt like you’re an outsider that things don’t have to be the way that everybody else in society tells you it has to be if you’re looking for that place to call home like this is it this is your family.
Unknown Speaker 56:45
And we’ve created that
Jeremy Weisz 56:46
Chris, I want to be the first one to thank you everyone should check out dude agency.io anywhere else we should point people towards online.
Chris Martinez 56:54
Dude agency that I mean, our Facebook page and our Instagram page. Always have fun videos too. So, you know, we have a full time video marketing team, so they’re always coming up with some cool stuff. Like, for example, one of my favorite videos we ever did was real Mexicans eat fake tacos, so they eat Taco Bell for the first time.
Unknown Speaker 57:14
was a really fun one.
Jeremy Weisz 57:16
Okay, well check that out. link up that that video somewhere. Oh yeah, for sure. Everyone check out dude agency.io Thanks again.
Chris Martinez 57:25
Thank you, Dr. Jeremy.
