John Doherty
Yeah, yeah, I’d love to talk about follow up. So I follow ups are a part of the sales process that too many people don’t do too many people are scared. They’re scared to follow up. Honestly, too many people are scared to be told no. Right. So they don’t actually take swings. I have a draft sitting in my on the the Credo blog that hasn’t been published yet. But basically, my The title is the agency growth manifesto take more swings. because too many people qualify out too many clients that they could serve and deliver great value for, but they’re afraid they’re afraid to sign them. They’re afraid to try to sign them because they’re afraid to be being told no. They’re afraid to raise their prices, because they’re afraid of being told no. I’m tired of it. But my thing with follow ups is too many people don’t do it. They toss they take a proposal, right? And they don’t even do the process leading up to the proposal. Right. But then they put together this proposal they spend all this time. You know, I have some agency I’ve had some agencies be like, we can’t take any more leads right now. Because we have two big proposals we have to get out in the two weeks. I’m like, how much time have you spent saying to me, that you can’t talk to new prospects, like what, but they’ll you know, they’ll send us proposal through an email and end it with like, let me know what you think. And then never follow up. Again. If you want to win in sales, like the money is made in the follow ups, have a consistent follow up cadence and follow up until you’re told no or until you put them into a longer sequence and then keep on following up. I say follow up every two days for the first week, then go to every three days for another week. And then ask them if they’re still interested in looking it’s called a spear email. If they say no, then take them out. If they don’t respond and follow up monthly just to check in. If you’re not doing follow ups, you’re losing it. I was that stat that I saw recently. If you’re not doing follow ups, it’s like you’re leaving it was something like set I think the study said like 70 to 87 zero to eight percent of revenue on the table. Oh God, I totally believe that
Jeremy Weisz
I would be like, I would think it’s like 95%. It’s like who? Yeah, yeah, on the first swing. It’s like, Oh, yeah, sure, let me sign me up. But it’s like, no. 12 calls later. 17 emails later through text message later. Yeah. Okay.
John Doherty
I mean, it is easier to it, there are ways to get to a quicker close where when you send to a proposal, you’re like, super, super confident that they’re going to close. But you still have to follow up. Sometimes I follow up with people right before you hopped on here, I was sending a follow up email because someone is new agency, excuse me is coming on to Credo. And I have to send them a follow up to give them the information that they need to get going and introduce them to our you know, our success person on the pro side. If I didn’t do that, then like, we wouldn’t make that, you know, that revenue, you know, every month until you know, we upgrade them and start making more or, you know, are they determine it’s not working for you.
Jeremy Weisz
And those follow up when they buy right, it’s like so they don’t buyer’s remorse. It’s like the onboarding process. But you know, one thing you said that stuck out to me in that video that I love is, you’re like, you should be following up in less than five minutes.
John Doherty
Right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. So if we’re talking on the front end, so you’re talking like initial lead fault?
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s also up there whole for the whole way. But yeah, I love what you said
John Doherty
there. Right. Yeah. I mean, with on the lead follow up side, too many people don’t that they don’t respond. They don’t respond like at all. I mean, first of all, what everyone listening to this should go into their website, right? If you’re generating leads to your website, and things have been slow, go into your website and make sure notification emails are being sent to you. You would not believe I have I have one friend that was struggling. They were sure they’re like, Where’s all my lead volume go. And they looked in their website, and they had two months worth of lead sitting in there that they’re noticing their email notifications had stopped firing got turned off somehow. Wow, unbelievable. They said they’re going to go get a full time job. Like it’s unbelievable. I mean, obviously, that’s an extreme case. But like that happens.
Jeremy Weisz
Oh, it totally. Or it could be going to spam. It could be coming from a contact form and going into a spam box.
John Doherty
Exactly, exactly. So what I do is a couple things. Number one, I get alerted, we get to learn about leads all over the place. We I get an email, my client success person gets an email, it goes into our into our CRM automatically using Zapier, I used to get text messages about all of them. Now we have too many that my phone was just blowing up all day and was like I gotta move to I got to move to like, qualified projects put in by my client success person, right? Which I did, but like I get notifications, you know, all over the place. And that’s all powered almost all powered by Zapier, or like initial email notifications or through Gravity Forms natively, because they’re built on WordPress. But other than that, I get those notifications and my client success person gets those notifications. One Pro tip, if you’re just getting them, like you know someone’s reaching out by email, you know, respond that same day like 100% respond that same day, don’t be sitting in your inbox just like refreshing all the time, using G Suite obviously, like it’ll show up in the up in the tab, you know, if you got a new email, so you can go take a look at that. But this is exactly why I started getting notified like other notifications, you know, SMS basically push notifications through Zapier again. For free, you can have like 10 zaps for free or something like that, right? Yeah, yeah, Zapier is amazing. So I set that up. So I didn’t have to be in my inbox. But as soon as a lead came in, I could go in and, you know, respond to them. But one thing I love telling agencies or service businesses, or businesses doing, you know, lead generation all doing demos, is why make them submit, they’re like, this flow doesn’t make sense to me, Jeremy, someone submits an inquiry, and they’re put on to a confirmation page that will reach out, there’s no, there’s no setting of like, when you’ll reach out or what you’re looking at or anything like that. What we do is we have on our front form, some of what my coach Dan Martell calls a funnel filter, where basically we have, I have a budget drop down that’s required, and I have a location drop down that’s required, because we only help we can only help companies in certain countries. And if they fill those out, right, I mean, it keeps people with like, no budget from filling it out. So we don’t waste our time on calls with them. And then if they fill that out, then they’re actually dropped directly onto a page to schedule a call with my with my betting team. So we don’t have to like go and look and are they qualified or not? We’re qualifying them up front. You know, too many people are afraid to add in things like that. Because like, oh, what if we lose out on a good lead, what you’re actually going to find is you’re gonna have probably just as many leads, maybe a few, a few fewer, you know, quote unquote, leads, like form submits aren’t qualified anyways. But the qualified ones are still gonna come through. Yeah, so it’s not
Jeremy Weisz
gonna be like, oh, they’re making me close to making these questions. Forget it. I’ll probably just
John Doherty
fill them out. It is possible to get too long if they’re like, why does this matter? Right. We’re not asking you how many people are at your company. Right? We’re asking monthly marketing budget and location, and then like regular contact information. Yep. You know, that’s it.
Jeremy Weisz
I’m wondering so from the software tool side of things we mentioned sem rush from SC for SEO. You mentioned Zapier, I interviewed Wade of Zapier could check out that interview.
John Doherty
Yeah. years ago.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. And CRM. So I love some of the tools. And you don’t have to say like, there’s probably numerous tools, you’ve heard our goods. So, but any CRM recommendations, you probably get these questions all the time, like tools, software. Yeah. What are some of the ones that are your go to?
John Doherty
Well, so and we’d use a lot of different you know, CRMs and espys, you know, email, email, software providers, email service providers. Forget what stands for email service email,
Jeremy Weisz
yeah, email.
John Doherty
Yeah. You know, started off on MailChimp went to drip, you know, CRM, we first it was a spreadsheet. And then we went to HubSpot free CRM. And then actually a year or so ago, we year and a half ago, we basically simplified all of our tools. We’ve done an Active Campaign for four and a half. I love them. They’re there, they makes it makes so much sense from a pricing perspective. And, you know, you it’s CRM and marketing automation all in one. And you can have different automations based off behavioral clicks, all that sort of stuff. I tried to rig that up with drip and HubSpot, CRM and Zapier and it just never worked. Like I like I needed it to so went to active to Active Campaign. And it’s been phenomenal. I sound like a, you know, advertising. But no, I mean, they’re a great tool. I mean, yeah, a little bit of like, legacy code and such. And there’s some, like quirks and some bugs with like, adding links and emails and that kind of thing. But like, it gets the job done really, really well. It’s easy for my team to use, you know, it’s, I love it.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, I mean, they’re Chicago based company. I had the founder on the podcast. Also, he’s like a ninja in software, you know, and that’s what they do. doesn’t surprise me. Yeah. And they’ve been growing like crazy here in Chicago. You know, thanks for sharing that. And so, you know, the other thing is, you mentioned qualify out and in the blog post, and that you, you’re going to hit send on during this interview, or, or publish, but um, qualify out? Are they qualifying out? Because they’re scared of wasting time? or Why do you feel and I say this from, from my experience, too, like, I probably do the exact same mistake you’re about to talk about. So why do people qualify out? Or what should they be looking at when they’re qualifying?
John Doherty
Yeah, so there’s a few attitudes that I see when it comes to, to qualifying it. And let me also caveat this with I do very much believe that you should that the riches are in the niches and that you should focus your you know, your offerings, right, like rise. 25 does, you know, you do podcasts for people, right? You’re not writing blog posts and white papers and that sort of thing. You’re focusing on podcasts. So if someone comes to you, and they say, like we need, you know, we need a white paper written, we should partner with this company and get this white paper written, you’re gonna be like, no, you’re not a fit, right? But if someone comes to you, and they say, Hey, you know, we’ve like, Well, let me turn around the questions on you, Jeremy, who’s your ideal, like podcasting client?
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, actually, I have that written down for you to so many here. I’m asking you, but um, you know, it’s, it’s a business that has a higher client lifetime value, more b2b type of company. You know, that is focused on relationships.
John Doherty
Yep. Yeah. What about what about, like, do you have like, a certain number of episodes or downloads, like, like that sort of thing that you look at for your ideal, like, you know, client,
Jeremy Weisz
I mean, someone who wants to actually, you know, publish, and we talk about this on a, you know, a regular cadence. So it’s not like, Hey, I’m gonna do like three episodes this year, right? It’s like, okay, I want to do one a week. ish. And there’s, there’s a way to do it, but they really want to, you know, it’s more based on relationships, and giving the relationship so why would you not want to get on the phone with 50 people this year that you should be anyways collaborating with? Right? Sure.
John Doherty
Sure. Yeah, totally. Totally. So so those are like, that’s your kind of qualification criteria, right? And they have to be ready to invest in it monetarily. And, you know, and those sorts of things, you know, and see it as like, a clear path to being an acquisition channel, you know, for their business. You know, probably unless they’re just like doing it for fun.
Jeremy Weisz
You You talk about this actually, in the SEO realm, which I love what you talk about is, listen, if you’re a startup, you should not start doing it. Maybe it’s controversial, right? And maybe you disagree with you. Maybe I’m this may be from five years ago, or seven years ago whenever I listened to it. But um, like, if you’re a startup, like, do you really want to be spending your time on content writing and blog posting, and it’s a really long term play when you need money. Now, I don’t know if you would agree with that statement from your past self or not.
John Doherty
I mean, I, it all depends on who the founder is. Like, I am a I’m a writer. I’m a writer of ours. Anything else? And so like blogging is how I built my career. It’s how I built my company. And so it still you know, brings us a lot of traffic brings a lot of qualified leads, like like you do
Jeremy Weisz
what you love doing. You love doing. Yeah,
John Doherty
it’s what I love doing. But there are a lot of people that don’t write. I hate doing it. Yeah, exactly. It’s like pulling teeth. But you can do podcasts all day, you know. And, you know, but like, I have moved over the last few months to from blogging because I just wasn’t doing much of it to doing videos, right? Because I can record it. I can write the script, I can record a two minute video, I can edit it myself, quickly, right? I do the video in one taking other’s arms and ahhs and that sort of stuff. But like, Who cares? Exactly. I publish the script along with it, I publish it on YouTube, I publish it on my blog, and I distribute it around the internet. Right. And that’s content right there. So I just think a lot of people waste a lot of time doing, you know, a lot of content or just like, quote unquote, SEO content, right? Like, yeah, we’re writing 500 word blog posts. who only wants to read a 500 word. Right? Like, yeah, it’s SEO content. So I mean, for the search engines, not for users, then why the heck are you publishing it? Right, like, cuz usually gonna land there. So anyways, that like that rant aside, the reason I see a lot of agencies kind of qualifying out people so like, say they do SEO, right. Or say like, you have someone that say your offering is like, we’re gonna do a blog post every week, right? It’s or a podcast episode every week, it’s four episodes a month, and that is your offering, right? someone comes to you, and they’re like, you know, and say, let’s say it’s a $4,000 a month, right? thousand dollars in episodes, someone comes to you, and they’re like, we really want to hire you. But we only have $2,000, you have two choices there. Jeremy, you can either say week that you’re not ready to work with us, this is our offering, right? You need to double your budget. Or you can say, let’s just do two, right? And maybe you negotiate a little bit back, because there’s so some like, you know, specific, like costume such that don’t change. And you say, Okay, well for two is 2500. And they’re like, okay, we can do that, right? But you so you could have just told them no, or you can trim back your offering. And you know, and they can still afford it. Right. So having these these different levels, is really is really key. You know, I see too many agencies that they’re like, if you’re hiring us to me marketing agency, if you’re hiring us to do, you know, SEO, this is the way that we work, this is the only way that we will work. And these are the only prices that we will work with it, right. But like say someone comes to you for an SEO audit, and your usual SEO audit is five grand right for a certain kind of company. But you know, they don’t have five grand, they have 2500. But for five grand, you get you know, X, Y and Z and the whole kitchen sink, can they just get X, Y and Z for 2500? Right, you can do it, you can make basically a higher per hour, you can rock it out, they’re not getting all those extras, they shouldn’t get $5,000 of value for 20 $500
Jeremy Weisz
You don’t have to discount your services. Just trim the offering negotiate on
John Doherty
scope, not on price, Jeremy that’s what I’ve been, I’ve been beating that drum for years, you have to show them this is what you’re getting for the price that you’re paying. Because if you’re not telling them, you know, if you’re saying $5,000 for SEO services, and they’re like, well, we need it for 3500 and all you’ve told them is SEO Services. You can’t take anything out your only choice there’s reduce your price or not sign them right versus if you told them all the things they’re getting, they’re going to get eight blog posts a month and they can’t pay for a blog posts a month trim it back to five and you can get to their budget right they’re not getting the results as fast and they know that but they also have the budget to get the results as fast as you know you could get it get it for them
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, I love that advice negotiate and scope not on price that’s scope not on price golden nugget. Tell people listen to you on that. John I hope
John Doherty
- I hope so.
Jeremy Weisz
Let’s talk levels for a second. Okay, you mentioned different levels let’s talk about the levels because you released a different level of get Credo mm hmm the digital core So talk about the different levels we’ll get Credo
John Doherty
Yeah, so on Credo what we did is
John Doherty
I we’ve been we’ve had like our we call it our pipeline as a service offering It’s what we call it now. We’re basically agencies pay us per month and we every lead that comes in that we qualify we assign a certain pipeline value to it based off of the budget they told us that they have this is all based off of our historical data. So we have basically monthly subscription levels for certain amounts of pipeline and we do messages like number of leads and pipeline because you know a lead What the heck is a lead it can be 20 bucks a month it can be $20,000 a month those two should not be valued the same but so we’ve had but we can’t serve everybody on that right everybody that wants to be on that we don’t have the the lead volume for all of them right? So we can’t so we had so many people that were just turning away and like sorry, we can’t help so agencies are
Jeremy Weisz
like John I want to be on your platform I want to pay you and of course they want leads but right just the way to certain maybe type of agency or type of lead for you may be like we’re booked we’re workout got it. Yeah, yeah,
John Doherty
yeah, exactly. We’re capped. We literally can’t we can’t bring you on. But so what I realized was that I was doing some like with our pros kind of on those levels. I was doing some like basically private sales coaching. We do a monthly call and I would help I mean like that agency. I told you about the start. And you know how all these people coming to us. And over the years, I’ve kind of realized who our ideal customer is on those, like on those levels, but there are a lot that they’re like they’re just getting started or they have some leads, but they don’t, but their, their sales rates are abysmal, that sort of thing. I basically realized that, like, you know, for someone that’s brand new getting started, even if they can afford what we do, and we have openings for them, they’re not going to see success, because they don’t know how to close like, you know, one on one referrals from their best friend, not to mention, like a cold intro, you know, a warm is qualified intro from a service like Credo. So what we did, so what I did was a year ago, I started running a live accelerator. So I built out the like, training modules, had a week for implementation had a q&a week at the end. But basically, I taught them, you know, going from zero to hero, building out your site, marketing, you know, positioning and, and messaging, lead generation sales process, and then proposals. So I ran that live a couple times, it was, you know, time intensive and energy intensive and all of that, I’ll think about running it again. And I was like, man, why don’t we just like make this into an on demand course? My business partner also owns a WordPress membership, membership site development company. So like, heck, yeah. Well, you’ve been telling me it for a while. And then finally, I just like took the time and recorded all of it also created a new module. And we launched it two weeks ago, you know, and it’s done, you know, mid four figures in revenue in, you know, in under two weeks. You know, I was like, why didn’t we do this sooner. But basically, what the thinking was, Jeremy is like, what other needs do people have? Do people coming to us have, right? If they’re not ready to be on this level? How can we still serve them? Yeah, how can
John Doherty
this doesn’t it’s
John Doherty
not as a customer, and also serve them and give them the value that they need for where they are?
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. And it coaches them up to use your other services?
John Doherty
Awesome. Exactly, exactly. Well, of course, what we did is we also gave our existing pros access. So I’ve talked about a lot of it with a lot of them, but now they can go back and they can access that, you know, that advice it at any time.
Jeremy Weisz
So the first level, then what’s the next level?
John Doherty
Yes, sir, we have a level that we are that we’ve been trialing where basically, we have, so that the companies that we work with best data that we send to kind of our, you know, pipeline pros is what we call them, our top best agencies that we work with really closely, they those come to companies looking to hire basically have to be spending at least 2500 a month in Mark and in marketing, right. And if they’re doing paid advertising, they need to have basically, they need to be doing spending at least like five grand a month total in marketing, to make sense working with a bigger agency, but there are a lot of companies that don’t have that. And so what we’ve done is we basically worked out where we have a lower tier of vetted professionals that had agencies and such that, that basically on the agency side, they can, they can basically like, you know, pay by the lead and say like, you know, I’m interested in this one, but it’s so going to a list of like pre vetted pros, the person isn’t having to go the you know, that the client is having to go and kind of sort through them all, and, you know, all of that they’re contacted by, you know, three to four, usually, I think five is the most that we’ve had. So they’re still getting like vetted pros that are, you know, part of a part of a network, but you know, once again, like they’re not, you know, they’re not spending, you know, 20 503 grand plus a month, you know, like, top, you can’t afford a top agency, you know, like, like a big, you know, full service agency that’s worked with the Adobe’s in New York Times of the world. So, you know, you you, you get what you pay for. So that’s not saying they don’t do great work, but like, you’re not going to get that prestige, you know, so basically, what I what we really been thinking is like, how can we, you know, serve all the different levels, while still staying true to what we are, which is a, you know, vetted that ad network, and helping, you know, agencies helping both sides grow, but also, you know, really serving the kind of the digital marketing industry.
Jeremy Weisz
So then the top tier is, do they pay like a monthly fee? And then they get more direct access, or?
John Doherty
Yeah, exactly, it’s what we’re doing there is they pay a monthly fee. And there’s, you know, there’s three different levels on that. And it’s her amount of pipeline that we that we schedule with them every month. So basically, lead comes in my team qualifies them, gets them into the system, and then actually schedules that, that prospect with with the agencies that are the right fit for them. So we find out times the prospect has available, and then we schedule them onto the agency’s calendar on behalf of the client. That’s what we’re getting. We’re getting these queued up. Yeah, we just started doing that. This is another interesting story. Jeremy. We started doing that back in. We started testing it back in June. And because we’ve been having issues with like on a Pass model, which is like a true marketplace slash escrow model of, you know, we prospect would come in, we talk with them, we qualify them, and we match them up with agencies and they wouldn’t schedule calls. And why is multi multiple reasons, some of which we could affect and some of which we couldn’t lack of case studies, that sort of thing, we can encourage it, but like requiring it, you know, we can’t require it, or they’ll go into a look at it, say it’s an e commerce company, and we national, this agency that has done a ton of e commerce work, but they don’t have an e commerce case study, you know, some people will be able to do an e commerce case study. So like, I don’t trust you. And I’m like, Okay, so what we’ve done now, what we’ve done now is we try to keep them on Credo as much as possible. But we, we actually go ahead and we, and we schedule them and show them that the agency has marked that, like they do e commerce work, and we do have a place on their profile for like better, you know, case studies and such. But we, that’s why we we shipped it because we could like, but basically, Jeremy my thinking was like we could eke out some marginal gains, right? We could do a bunch of work, put a bunch of customer research and time into figuring out how do we move the like the scheduled, you know, scheduled calls from like, let’s say, 70%? of, you know, client scheduling calls to 75%. But is that gonna make a meaningful like difference in our business? No, I don’t. And so basically, what I thought was, well, how do we make this not an issue of having to follow up with these people and like bug them to, to schedule calls? Let’s just do it for them. So I just tested it, when on one call, I was I was on a call. I just thought about that literally that morning in the shower, and was like, cool. Sounds good. Like sounds like it’s a great fit, you know, I can definitely get you connected up with some people, you know, through creator that are qualified for you the total spend how we do the matching was like, great. Can you give me a two, three? Can you give me a block of time, over each of the next three business days when you’re free to have calls with agencies, and I’ll get you scheduled with them? And they’re like, Oh, yeah, sure. tomorrow, Wednesday, I have 123. And Thursday, I have 11 to one and Friday, I have 11 to one also. And they can do after three. Great, sounds good. And I went unscheduled, and was like, Oh, that was way too easy. So we’re getting the friction up to go. And exactly. And honestly, agencies have been closing a lot more work, because they’re getting more at bats. And so people that I know, would have ghosted or signing with agencies and actually getting moving on their marketing, because they got it because we got them out of their own way.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, I mean, again, like people get busy, you’re on the phone with them, you schedule it, and it’s in their calendar. And it’s not like they didn’t mean follow up sometimes just like, people get busy with their normal life.
John Doherty
Exactly.
Jeremy Weisz
So what are you looking for in the age? I’m gonna, we’ll go to the company side in a second. But what are you looking for in the agency side and the tiers? Because obviously, there’s certain ones that are already blocked, you know, and, you know, people can’t get in? What are what are you looking for types of agencies a good fit for the middle tier and the top tier right now. And this may change whenever you’re listening to it, like five years from now, you can still contact him, because maybe there’s openings, but right now in time.
John Doherty
Yeah. So actually, the way we do it, Jeremy is is all based off of whether we have the pipeline for that. So we obviously have like a specific profile. And I’ll explain that here in a second. But the level that they’re on is all dependent on how much pipeline they want, but also that they’re seeing success. So any new agency that comes in, we start them on the bottom level, I have a new agent, a couple new agencies coming in soon, that I’ve started them on the bottom 1300 dollars a month 75 K, they were like, how can we start on the top level, which is 375. I was like, No, and here’s why. Because I want us to understand what it is that you’re looking for, I want you to understand the leads that are coming through. And honestly, I don’t want the stress of like, you know, you like being all of our backs about it’s like, you know, one of the first you know, that we scheduled with you ghosts on you, right? Like you need to kind of understand how the system works, works for the right people. And so, so basically what we look for is like, it doesn’t really make sense for solo consultants, because they can’t take on, you know, two, three new clients a month. It makes sense for agencies. So we focus on agencies, make sense for agencies that have, we do have a couple agencies that are like three, four people, but our sweet spot is really agencies that are like eight plus people. Our biggest agencies, our most successful agencies sign the most work are like 30 to 40 people, and they’ve learned how to scale but they’re also like that because they offer multiple services. But I love working with agencies that are like 810 12 1416 people, because tential people is about when the agency owner stops doing all the sales themselves hires and sales development rep to qualify and all those sorts of things. And that’s really the fun part of like, a business growth, you know, for me, and then we can, you know, we can see them grow to like 2025 30 people, and they kind of grow up, you know, through the ranks and we all you know, kind of grow
Jeremy Weisz
up together. Cool. And I will talk on the company side of people if there’s agencies listening and they’re interested. Sure. Just to GetCredo.com a certain page they should check
John Doherty
out go to GetCredo.com/pros, P-R-O-S, it is linked up in the top right of the site and kind of a sub now, we’re hopefully going to be making more obvious soon cuz I’m tired of getting emails from people asking, How do I join Credo?
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, that’s a good good message to get though. On the company side, John. So it’s tough like a dual marketplace is not easy, right? You have to get the companies and then are the agencies and then the companies coming in who are looking for work. So on the company side? Um, I don’t if we talk about the the hired dribble example, and in relationships in general.
John Doherty
Uh, yeah, I mean, we can definitely talk about that. I mean, though, you’re absolutely right, that I mean, a two sided business is so hard. People, when I was starting off, be a mentor gave me one piece of advice. And he said, he said, there are two things that you should not do, you should not start a marketplace and you should not start a marketplace alone. Jesse did both. I’m slow learner. But you know, we’re not we’re not a marketplace. We’re a product I service. But we are two sided business. And I was fortunate because I started this business in a space that I’ve been in for a while that I have a good name. And so and I already had people coming to me wanting me to consult with them. So I actually started Credo, its first iteration was called hire gun, HR eg when I rebranded January 2016. So like three or four months after I started working on a full time
Jeremy Weisz
why’d you rebrand?
John Doherty
I got a cease and desist letter, okay, I’m like I like hired. I know, hired gun was hired gun CEO, it was it was, you know, it made sense for what we’re doing. But there’s, there’s a marketing agency in new york city that has a similar name that have had the trademark. So I didn’t realize, you know, that I was doing it, you know, it’s completely, like naive of me, but rebranded and kept on going, you know, it’s early enough that like, it was pretty easy, you know, kind of like, buy a new domain through and redirect everything, search and replace in the database, and you’re good to go, you know, get new get new social media handles. But so it wasn’t that it was just fine. Finding the name was the hardest part. But I, I, I was fortunate to, I was able to hack. So two sided businesses that succeed, have an unfair advantage on one side or the other. So I had an unfair advantage, honestly, on both sides. Because I was already known as an SEO as a digital marketing leader. So I people wanting to work with me, I was not able to take them on as clients, I was like, but I can find you someone who’s good, right. And so I started doing it that way and make just slinging introductions by email. And then I also was well known in the space race was well known on that side and had agencies that were looking for clients as well. So I was really able to kind of hack the supply and the demand side, people always ask me like, which one is more important at the start on demand, honestly, to start because you’re literally selling like on the supply side, you’re literally selling the money. But then eventually, you do have to have enough supply and in a very supply to satisfy all the demand coming in. So it really is a balancing act. But now let in at the end of the day, it’s all about the demand side, right? If we get more people coming in, that are looking to hire and looking to hire for the kinds of things that our network does, we’re going we’re going to win.
Jeremy Weisz
So talk about a hired a comeback, or I don’t know if you start with hired or dribble or
John Doherty
Yeah, yeah. So um, I mean, yeah, although all the companies are, you know, they’re, they’re important and not important at the same time. So, yeah, we have some logos, you know, on our site talking about, you know, the different companies that, you know, our network has worked with, and, you know, hired is one of them that came through, you know, years ago, that, you know, they are a they’re a service for helping companies hire vetted full time people, right. I think they’re focused on like, development and design something like yeah,
Jeremy Weisz
a lot of device I looked a while ago is a lot of development people. Yeah,
John Doherty
yeah. Yeah. And I haven’t heard much from them recently. But there’s like marketing on the internet. But basically, at the time, their, their head of growth, has now gone on to be CEO of Dribbble, Zack. He’s a phenomenal guy. He worked. He had also been at creative market, which is like a design assets marketplace. And so basically, I worked with follow me here. And this is all about how relationships can drive can drive business, right. So I was contacted by hired that they were looking for an SEO agency. They contacted me looking to work with me, I wasn’t the right fix, they needed services done. So I connected them up with with an agency right, that agency did phenomenal work for them, then Zack, uh, no, actually, so I started work with creative market as an SEO consultant 2016. Zack had been there head of growth when he left there. His second command became the head of growth. So Paul, Paul, I worked with them. And then I met Zack in person in San Francisco right before I moved from there in 2016. And then Zack was at hired And he and then they hired an agency hired an agency through Credo. And then Zack moved on to Dribbble. And then I worked with dribble as an SEO consultant in 2018. And then now the head of growth of creative market lives in Denver. And I just got text message from him today about a position that they’re hiring. And he’s become a friend of mine, we go mountain biking together. So like, you know, investing in these relationships, and being like, you know, being being good to good people is what I is what I like to say, I’ve been reading some really interesting, like, you know, things about, you know, growth and success in business and life and that sort of thing. And read an interesting one recently, which is all referring to paradas principle, which is you get 80% of the results from 20% of the input, right? I like to look at what’s the 20% of relationships that I’m getting the most from, right, and not in like a taker, selfish way. But just like, you know, fun and learning and inspiration and all of those things. Right. And hopefully, they consider, you know, me part of their 20% as well. But like, those are the relationships that I’m going to invest, you know, in on right there.
Jeremy Weisz
100% Yeah, I mean, I love I try and think about that on a daily basis, maybe even every couple hour basis of 80/20. Everything’s 80/20. John, you know, like everything. And, and, like, I love what you said, like, with the 20 percents, like a it’s not like a taking mentality, it’s, it could be the opposite, like, who are the biggest givers in my network that I want to give to? Right, because it’s just reciprocity, like just circles around like, I give to them, they give back. And those are the type of people I want in my universe, who are the biggest givers heartfelt, you know, they’re just, you know, heart centered people, you know? Exactly,
John Doherty
exactly. And it’s funny to me how when you look at paradise principle, and once you know it, that you get 80% of the results from 20% of the input, then you start looking at your business and your personal life and your finances and all those things. And it’s just a whole sure across the board, man, it’s insane. Do
Jeremy Weisz
you get John companies because they’re bigger companies? They can be, um, the in house argument versus hire an agency argument, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, you? I mean, obviously, I know, your stance on this, you know, you know, in most cases, not all cases. But when you’re when someone’s like, Hey, you know, John, we’re just we’re thinking about bringing this in house. Mm hmm. What? And again, there’s varying, you know, things that could happen here. But let’s say it’s one light, you say? It’s something you’d recommend them not doing? How do you explain to them why they do making a mistake, or they shouldn’t do it?
John Doherty
Well, this is why I have a video about in house force agents to jail, I recorded that a few weeks ago, it was super popular. Yeah. But, you know, it is it is something that we hear quite a bit people, you know, they’re thinking through which one they do. So I created that resource for them. But basically, what I tell people is, I mean, there’s a few things to think about. But also, and I’ll get into those in a second. But also, what I’ve learned is, it’s not my job to convince them one way or another. Because they’re going to do what they’re going to do. And if they’re looking at, they’re ready, they’ve determined that they need to hire an agency, and that is the right fit, then we’re gonna connect them, right. But if they’re like, they’re looking to be convinced one way or another, at 20, you know, that’s not like, that’s not where, you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna live, I will consult with them, we have some paid consultations, I’ll hop on a call with them and talk with them one on one about it, right, like, that’s fine, but you’re not gonna get that, you know, that advice, you know, one on one live advice for free. But I, there are companies that they need to hire agencies, there’s companies that need to hire full time. And there are companies that need to do both. And the most successful companies end up doing both, because you have to have a leader internally. So you need to think about who is going to be managing the agency. So the guy today that was considered hiring, like four different agencies, and I was like, tell me about your team is like, I don’t have any marketing support. I was like, hey, but I also want to pay for account manager. So I was like, so you’re the account manager. Right? Like, you have to recognize that, like, someone’s gonna be the account manager that you pay for it, or you are it. So there needs to be a leader, you know, internally, someone directing the strategy. So if you don’t have that, then either hire a consultant to be directing that strategy. But also recognize that consultants are not doing all the services, they’re not going to run all your SEO, they’re not gonna write the content and do the technical SEO and do the PPC and the Facebook ads and all that stuff. They might do a little bit audit one of them but otherwise, they’re going to need help from your own internal team or you know, outside teams. But so so usually it comes down to do they have a strategy set? Do they have someone internally that’s going to be leading it? Or like a founder that knows marketing? Do they have someone that that knows it? You know, internally and if they do then even if it’s the founder like an agency can absolutely be the right you know, be the right need otherwise like, it is you do need to have someone kind of steering the ship captaining the ship for on the on the marketing side. The other thing that I will say is that
John Doherty
There are if the kind of
John Doherty
the higher that you need also depends on whether you need strategy or services or both. Right? I just released a video yesterday. So October 20. What’s today the 27th. That’s on the 26th, I released a video talking about the differences between freelancers, consultants, and agency and agencies. I see I get people that they’re like we’re looking to hire in house, and we need them to do all of these channels, and we don’t have budget to work with agencies. I’m like, wow, you know, good luck, like that’s a unicorn, that also you can’t afford. So, you know, if you need services, either hire a bunch of freelancers, or hire an agency, right, and all depends on how centralized you want need the strategy to be. And often people hire a bunch of freelancers, then eventually graduate to an agency, if you need strategy, and maybe one channel like focused on but then also to direct like the rest of the strategy and work with internal teams and such a consultant can be a good fit. But once again, they’re not doing full services like an agency is doing. So each one is better, depending on what your need is. I can’t give a blanket like you know, iron house first and then hire an agent to
Jeremy Weisz
clean it so many nuances. But it’s some of the question mean that the value is in the questions you need to be asking yourself to come to an answer. Right. And so I have one last question, John, first of all, thank you everyone can check out GetCredo.com and before I ask, I want to know if we left anything out from the get Credo story, your story I mean, there’s so much I mean, you have such a breadth of experience that I didn’t get to ask like SEO you were in book publishing, you worked at distilled, Zillow, Trulia, all these experiences lead to what you do now. Um, but um, I want I have a T shirt idea for you. I think in book titles in T shirt. Yeah, some reason? Okay, I’m like, you need to start sending people you are the account manager t shirt or something like that. Like
John Doherty
I love it. I love it or like not the account manager right exactly.
Jeremy Weisz
Depending on where the conversation goes, but um check out GetCredo.com check out other episodes. What have we left out there’ll be important you know, maybe it was a lesson you learned it is still there book publishing or from the get Credo story. Um, that will be the good to kind of bring the conversation together at the end. Man, you’re putting me put me on the spot here.
John Doherty
So I mean, one it’s all good. I think one of the things that I’ve like that’s kind of been a theme through my life is and we’ve already mentioned already is 100% relationships and just keeping in touch with good people that have you know, added a lot of value to to your life. You know, I still email so I lived when I was working in book publishing, I was living in a commune in Switzerland, in a tiny little dairy village. I had hair down below my shoulder, you hippy link that the the co founder or the founder of the the publishing company, I was working alongside and met his wife there in the 70s she’s American she’s French and Shelley they’re in the village but my my mentor when I was there in Switzerland, he was the director of the community at the time. I emailed with him yesterday. I haven’t lived there since 2010. It’s been 10 years I’ve gone back and visited four or five times but like and you know, I always like meet up with him when he’s there we always you know, like meet up and catch up and turns into like a two three hour catch up. But you know, I keep good people in my orbit. I purposefully like you know, I communicate with them you know, wherever Instagram or Facebook or SMS or email or whatever, just keeping those you know, keeping those people in your orbit I really believe that you know, your network is your net worth like who you know is going to drive is going to drive things right. So yeah, I don’t I don’t know I it’s not like a you know, a specific story but like, you know, relationships that I’ve gained through living in Switzerland through you know, working at distilled and I met phenomenal people like, I mean, the best of the best in the digital marketing industry, a lot of whom I still consider friends right, kept in touch with them from those days and I left there in 2013. Same with Zillow, right I’m still in contact with you know, the law the execs that were there when I was there, you know, like founding team members. You know, just keeping these good people you know, in your in your orbit is one of the best things you can do for yourself, career wise and for your business. If you’re an entrepreneur.
Jeremy Weisz
Check it out. Go to GetCredo.com John. Thank you,
John Doherty
Jeremy. My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me. Thanks, everyone.
