How Chris Daley Turned Curiosity Into a Business with Smart CRO

All of that started from something that I thought was a waste of
time because I was looking I was I was measuring the wrong things. >>
Welcome to the Know Your Ship podcast presented by E-Hub. I’m your host,
Frank Dolce. >> You do a lot of this stuff. >> Yeah. >> So,
is this is it because you like doing it or is it because you’re good at it?
Is it because people tell you you should do it? You mean speaking or or what?
>> Yeah, like speaking. There’s there’s good clips of you doing stuff.
I mean, you seem like you put yourself or is it just cuz you’re in the
marketing industry? >> So, some of it I don’t know how long of a story.
You’re a public speaker, too. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So, I do
like it. I I like speaking. I don’t like creating presentations, but I love
speak and I actually prefer a a conversation over so much better. Yeah. I
mean, just creating a slide deck is probably my least favorite thing of
anything to do. Um, but getting on stage and presenting it, I love. So, I do
love the speaking piece. Um, I actually for a while I was doing like a
gauntlet of podcast because I met a guy who runs the Social Media Marketing
World um, conference, Mike Stnner, >> and he kind of took me under his
wing. This is like nine years ago. Um, and he was like, “So, first of
all, if you want to get more clients, you should speak more. If you want to
speak more, you need to get on people’s podcasts and practice >> uh,
you know, answering questions.” Cuz that was my biggest social fear was
the Q&A sessions at the end of a presentation. I was like, “What if
somebody asked a question I don’t know the answer to?” Um, and so the
pod, so I I signed up for some service and did, I don’t know, 60 podcast
episode or something like that. And and he was right. Right. I mean, it did
loosen me up quite a bit and it and it made it so it was like >> I can
handle probably any question people throw at me. >> Did you learn the
trick? >> Uh, well, >> did you learn the trick to answering
questions? >> Because >> I learned some tricks >> because
someone is always going to ask you. There’s always going to be a question
where you don’t know the exact answer. >> Yeah. You can either answer
the question you wish they would have asked. >> Exactly. >> Or
you just say, “I don’t know.” >> I never say that. I just
answer a different question. >> Yeah. And it seems to plate. I mean,
that seems to be the answer, the solution. >> Just throw out a word
salad and then it’s like, well, this guy said a bunch of stuff. I hope it’s
not a worse. >> Yeah. >> A lot of acronyms and cliches and then
just move on. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Well, it’s great
to have you here. Thanks for coming in. >> Yeah. >> This is the
one and only. I’m going to ask you a question actually before we even get
started. We’ve kind of started, but when you what feels more comfortable for
you as an introduction, I’ll give you a couple examples. Would you like me to
say, “Thank you so much for being here. This is Chris Dailyaly, smart
CRO.” Or would you like, “We have been trying to get this guy. I
can’t tell you how meaningful it is to have him here on the set with us. The
one, the only Chris Dailyaly. >> You don’t need you don’t need the
fireworks. No, you can just you can do whatever you want to do. But but I’m
>> I keep I I struggle with that >> when we have guests come on
about how to introduce them appropriately. >> Yeah. >> And maybe
just this more subdued >> I’m good with a with a chill intro. Yeah, I
think that fits you >> cuz I’m not I’m not a name that people like are
like hanging on every word of. So, so if we had someone Do do you do you
remember Well, I don’t know. Did you follow Do you follow the Utah Jazz at
all? >> Yeah, there was a great great Utah Jazz player named Thor Bailey.
>> Okay. I know. Yeah. >> You know Thor Bailey? He still does
stuff with the broadcast. Okay. So, he was on the >> he was on the
podcast by the way. He’s like 69. >> I’ve met him before. >> 611.
69. >> That’s huge. >> He like I didn’t have enough space to sit.
His his whole body went across the whole studio here. >> Call it a
studio. >> Yeah. >> So you’re saying like maybe someone like him
the introduction? Sure. Oh yeah. >> Yeah. >> But just for Chris
Dailyaly. Chris Dailyaly. Smart CRO. Okay. When I was telling people prior to
doing any real research about Smart CRO, I kept telling people like,
“Hey, I think he does like like a fractional chief revenue
officer.” >> Yeah. Do you run into that occasionally? >>
Yeah. Not not um not a ton cuz my business is almost primarily done through
referrals. And so when I get a referral, it’s like, “Let me introduce
you to a guy that can help with conversion rates.” And then as soon as
you say conversion rates, then the CR O piece makes sense. >> Uh it’s
usually from cold contacts that are reaching out that are like, >> you
know, searching for job title CRO for finance on LinkedIn and they’re like,
“Oh, sweet. Let’s hit this guy up.” So >> yes. Well, and the
uh the the genesis behind the opportunity to visit with you here today is the
upcoming commerce catalyst 2025 September 4th and 5th this year. Uh September
4th uh Thursday evening is a pitch competition. Uh I think it’s female
founder pinch comp pitch competition and like 100 different organizations
have applied. It’s been very popular. And then Friday on the 5th at the Lelay
Meridian Hotel here in Salt Lake, there’s going to be a bunch of workshops
and breakout sessions and uh we have a a panel discussion to end the evening
that is hosted by E-Hub. And you’re actually going to lead one of the not a
breakout, you’re going to you’re going to host a workshop with one of your
customers with with one of your clients. Yeah. And and what is the do you
have a topic that you’re going to discuss? >> So the topic is it’s
still a work in progress, but the topic right now is going to be um how to
how to improve conversion rates on your website. I mean, so what we’re going
to do is we’re going to talk through this is a client that I’ve been working
with for >> about a year and a half and we’ve done a lot of things that
have worked really well, a lot of things that haven’t worked very well. And
so I kind of want to just go through the story of how do you come up with
ideas, you know, of what to improve on your website? How do you execute, you
know, a testing strategy? Like how do you build these tests? What does a test
look like? And then what do you do in these different scenarios? Cuz there’s
really three outcomes when you run an AB test on a website. There’s three
outcomes. One outcome is you find a winner that improves conversion rates and
that’s great, right? And then it’s like, sweet. Okay, I know what to do. If I
find a winner, I put it on my website. >> The second outcome is nothing
happens. You test a bunch of different things and all of them perform the
same. That’s that’s a real head scratcher for most businesses where they go,
“Okay, well, if they all perform the same, does that mean that I already
have the best conversion rate I can have? Does it mean I have an apathetic
audience? Like, what does that mean?” And then, of course, the third
outcome is all of your test variations lose. They all perform worse. And
that’s a situation I actually view it as a huge a huge opportunity and a huge
win, but most businesses view it as crap, we failed. Back to the drawing
board. >> Close the doors. >> Yeah. So, we’re going to kind of go
through those three different scenarios and go, okay, let’s let’s go through
a test where the first scenario happened and then what we did. Let’s go
through the second scenario and what we did and the third and and kind of
talk about how you can capitalize on these different results. When you say AB
testing, does everybody know what you mean? >> No. No. And in fact, the
the way that I usually describe it to my clients, cuz most of my clients have
never done this before, is I actually will use like the the medical industry
where it’s like, hey, you know how they run clinical trials for like whether
or not ibuprofen helps with headaches? You know, you’ll give one person
ibuprofen and you give the other person a sugar pill, right? And then you
measure the results. That’s what we’re doing. but just on your website.
>> Gotcha. That’s a great way to explain it. >> Or immediately
catch on. >> Yeah. And you know, or I’ll use cuz you know, in-person
physical stores like Walmart, Target, all those, they’ve been playing around
with their store layouts for decades, right? And you know, where they’ll
test, let’s take all the Midwest locations and let’s put the soda up by the
entrance and let’s put the whatever the candy bars by the cash register. or
let’s put the milk in the back corner, whatever. You know, they’ll they’ll
play around with where they place different items and see what generates the
most revenue. Same thing again, but just in this case, we’re doing it
digitally. >> Isn’t it just for for a grocery store? I mean, isn’t it
like the Disneyland model? Disneyland has it in mostly amusement parks, I
guess. Like you get off a ride or you’re getting onto a ride, but you have to
go through some opportunity to spend a lot of money. Yeah. >> As you’re
coming off of the ride or as you’re getting onto the ride. Isn’t that the
same? Wouldn’t that be the same for a grocery store? Like you put all of the
stuff that people want where they have to track through the store and then Oh
god, I need some beef jerky also and I need this other >> Exactly. Yep.
Which IKEA is famous for. They’ve done it the best. Right. >> Where you
Yeah. You can’t you can’t check out without looking at all of their products.
>> Everything. I don’t know how many and and now as I’m thinking about
it there I there’s countless items from IKEA that I didn’t need that I
purchased. >> Yes. >> Oh yeah. >> All the way through the
line. Okay. That’s a good start on smart CRO and we’ll we’ll get back to that
and I want to dig into your business a little bit more as we as we go along.
By the way, again just a quick plug commerce catalyst September 5th lay
meridian. go to the website and uh you can get involved in the in what should
be a really fascinating workshop. I’ll I’ll participate as well. That should
be fun. Um you started doing this. I I love your I love the backstory. So,
can we let’s just talk about let’s just talk about the backstory. You already
mentioned uh you you were at UVU. You were working in marketing and doing a
bunch of SEO stuff. And I I’m going to leave it there. you were working a
bunch of SEO stuff. You you were getting a lot of people to come visit, but
it wasn’t turning into additional revenue. Yeah. So, in fact, um I had a an
experience. This was like the light bulb moment for me. So, I had a a board
presentation. So, I I went in and had this great presentation prepared. You
know, I was sure I was going to get a raise or promotion or something. So, I
go in, I have all these charts going up and to the right. you know, we had
tripled our organic traffic over about a 6-month time period, which was a lot
easier to do, you know, 14 years ago than it is now. But so we had, you know,
we had tripled our traffic and so I’m showing all these great metrics and
then the CEO stops me and he’s like, “Okay, so we’ve tripled our
traffic. What did that do for our revenue?” And I was like, “I don’t
know. I I mean, my job up until that point in my mind was get more
traffic.” M. And so I’m like, I don’t know. Um, so he said, well, let’s
let’s look into that. So I went back afterwards, started digging in and
realized all of this traffic we were getting wasn’t converting. You know, we
had tripled our traffic, but our conversions were flat. What could you tell?
I don’t mean to interrupt you, but what could you tell about the traffic at
that time? This is like how many years ago? 14 >> 14 15 years ago.
>> Yeah. So what could you tell about the traffic at that moment in
time? So I mean basically what we were looking at at that point in time is
what was the source of the traffic. So you know this traffic came from Google
or whatever you know and we could tell you know geoloccation type of things
but but the most relevant thing was the source of the traffic right and so
these people are all coming from Google. we had some we had a pretty good
idea of what keywords they had searched for, right? I mean, and so there was
there was some intent data that we had. >> Um, and that’s about it. And
so the the other challenge that we had is then we ask ourselves, well, why
are they not converting? >> And so in our minds, there was really just
one of three reasons. First reason is these people suck, right? Like it’s the
wrong person to send to the site. The second reason is our site’s broken,
right? Like it just doesn’t work and something’s wrong with our site. And
then the third reason that nobody really wanted to acknowledge is we’re doing
a bad job on the website, right? So, you know, of course, me as the traffic
guy, I can’t accept reason number one. Like the I think these people
qualified. They’re all the right Yeah. It’s got to be the right people. So,
okay, it’s got to be one of the other two reasons. >> So, you know, I
go and I ask our development team, “Is the site broken?” And
they’re like, “Oh, no. No, we’ve, you know, we thoroughly QA everything.
99.9% uptime. Like everything’s working great. >> This is the design,
>> the website. That’s the development team. Yeah. The actual website.
Is it broken? It’s not broken. >> No, it’s not broken. They That’s the
baby. >> Yep. >> And it’s they built it perfectly. Okay. >>
That’s right. >> So then I go to the design team and it’s like,
>> hey, is do you think there’s anything with our design that’s not
convert? And it’s like, no way. You know, we have we have all these great
designers. you know, they went to the best design schools. Our designs are
cutting edge. They look amazing, you know, etc. And so, um, that was it. That
was that was the only those were the only questions I could ask at that
point. And so, I started researching a little bit more and found that you
could run an AB test on a page and say, “Okay, let’s create a copy of
one of our landing pages.” >> Mhm. >> And let’s make some
changes and let’s just see let’s see if if we make some changes, can we move
the needle? So, I took one of our landing pages. I I copied it. I actually um
plugged it into a a tool at the time that where you could build, you know,
like it was super bootstrapped. You could just build a uh a landing page
using a template. And so, I plugged it into this template. I removed a bunch
of our content. I changed a bunch of stuff. And then it got around to our
design team that I was messing with one of their pages. So, they looked at it
and they said, “You can’t put that up on our website. Like, it looks
terrible. you can’t run that. And so, uh, and I was like, I’m I’m I’m not
going to launch it on the website. I’m just going to test it. And they’re
like, no, you can’t test it. So, I anyways, I went ahead and tested it
>> and it converted. I think it improved conversion rates by like 16%.
And so, right there, there was two major aha moments for me. The first major
aha moment was um, we can move the needle here by making some changes. And not
only that, we can move the needle. And nobody here knows what we need to do
to move the needle, right? Like there’s not anyone here that’s been focused
on improving the conversion rate. Everyone’s just been focused on building
something that they like looking at. Mhm. >> Um, and the second thing
that I realized was, uh, this is way more fun than all the SEO stuff that
I’ve been doing because I just generated way more of a business impact in 2
weeks than I had in 6 months of SEO. >> And that’s a much better report
to hand to the CEO. >> Oh, for sure. So, I fell in love and I I
switched and pivoted in my career to conversion rate optimization >> at
that point in in your career. Uh, who else was doing that? >> There
weren’t that many people. So, I mean, you know, we’re we’re here in Utah and
we have Adobe here. Um, that was around the time that Adobe acquired
Omnature. And so, Omnature had a testing tool called Test and Target. And so,
there was a a small group of people here in Utah that were, >> you
know, they had come from that background of helping build that tool and then
went out to other companies and started spreading the word. Oh, you need to
do, you know, testing. But there were not very many companies that that did
conversion rate optimization. Um, and in fact, so the the company the next
couple of jobs that I had, I had to convince them that what I was doing was
was necessary. Um, and uh and so when I was considering breaking off and
starting a company, it was actually so one of the company the the last job
that I worked at um was at a company called One-on-One Marketing here in
Utah. And it was a lead generation company for for uh for-profit universities
>> and it was owned by you know an investment group that owned a
portfolio of I can’t remember like 12 companies. And so uh as we saw we we
were able to like triple conversion rates on some of our um landing pages in
a in a pretty quick time frame just implementing some of the strategies that I
had created. And so they were like, “Hey, let’s have you train all of
our companies on how to do what you’re doing.” So, I did that. Did a
training, showed them what we did, kind of walked them through how to do it.
And several of the portfolio companies just said, “That’s awesome. I
want to do that. I don’t have anyone here that can do it. Can you just do it
for us?” Um, and so I went back and talked to and told that to my wife.
And my wife comes from an entrepreneurial family. I come from a very
traditional my dad worked at the same job for 35 years. And, you know, he was
a company man. And so I grew up thinking that’s what you do. You you know,
but my wife was like, “Well, let’s start a company. Let’s do it.”
Um, and so I I did. >> How much convincing did it take or were you like
of me? >> Yeah. As soon as she said that, were you like, “Yeah,
let’s do this.” >> No, I was I was pretty against it. And just
because I was I was like, “Well, what if it doesn’t work?” And you
know, and the good thing about consulting and and doing agency work is you
can you can try it and if it doesn’t go well, you haven’t invested a ton into
like developing a product, right? And so it’s a pretty easy thing to go,
“Oh, let’s try it for 6 months and if it” and that was my wife’s
pitch. She was like, “Just try it for 6 months and if it doesn’t work,
just go back and get a job.” >> Lucky you. >> And so you
ever think that? >> Oh, for sure. Yes, for sure. >> Nailed it. So
at at at that point um I I want to talk about kind of this risk averse maybe
mentality for for people who are there’s a lot of people listening who are in
the same position like should I start my own what like how did you measure
and overcome this fear of taking that next step? Well, so I’ll say the first
thing that I did is I met with um somebody that I would consider a mentor and
who’s kind of a serial entrepreneur and I and I asked him just first of all
is this a good idea and second of all like what like what do I even do? And
so I mean he walked me through cuz it’s funny even the idea of starting a
company is very scary if you’ve never done it. Um, it’s like people don’t
even know what does that even mean? Like do I have to get a building and like
put my logo on? Do I need a logo? Like what do I need in order to start a
company? And so you know what the first thing he did is he talked me through
some of the tactics of it’s actually super easy. You register the business
name, you know, online and it’s like 30 bucks and maybe you need a domain,
maybe you don’t. Like but that’s all you really need is you need to legally
register the thing and then you probably need a bank account so that people
can pay you. M that’s like really that those are the two essential P. And so
that was like oh okay yeah that’s not too bad. >> So you had all these
overwhelming thoughts of and he was like no let’s just let’s start here.
>> Yeah like start with the >> baby steps. >> Exactly.
Yeah. And and and the the steps of like creating actually having a company
that I can say hey my company is smart CRO. I mean my my first company is
called uh Daily Conversion. Um but uh it’s clever. >> Yeah. And it was
funny because I well I won’t go through the whole story but somebody ended up
buying I I let the domain lapse and somebody some Korean company bought my
domain and is selling lipstick on there or something. I guess there was some
good SEO value there. But um anyways so uh so that was the first piece is
it’s not as scary as you think. The second piece, and this I think is
probably the most helpful feedback that he gave was he said you need to
create a a financial um rip cord, like not not rip cord, like a a walk away
point. So, set a six-month goal and a 12-month goal for yourself, a revenue
goal. Again, with my business, it’s a little easier than if you’re starting
a, you know, a brand new product that you have to go through R&D for or
whatever. But but for my for my company, he’s like, “Okay, set a
six-month goal, a 12-month goal.” >> Uhhuh. >> And if you’re
not at that goal by 6 months, then you pivot and like figure out what you
need to do differently. And if you’re not at that goal by 12 months, you walk
away. You go get a job because entrepreneurs are famous for just like it’s
their baby and you just believe in it no matter what. You won’t ever give it
up. And so >> that was really helpful for me to go, okay, all right.
And you know, and and then the goals were easy because I’m like, okay, by six
months I want to be at least covering all of our expenses that we have in our
life. By 12 months, I want to like actually be making some money. And so I
just set some financial goals for those. Um and uh >> built a really
really basic landing page for my for my website. Again, as a consultant, you
don’t need a whole lot. And uh and then the other piece of feedback that he
gave me as well was he said we’ll start working on um reach out to your
network. And I was like what network? >> And he’s like well you have a
network right >> and I didn’t. So you know I had attended conferences
for some of the companies I had worked at but I never went to networking
night because it’s like in my mind the only purpose of networking was to find
a better job. And I was like, I’m happy with my job, so why do I need to
network? >> Yes. >> And so he encouraged me to start going out
and attending networking events and just meeting people. >> Yeah.
>> And that was a whole thing in and of itself, too. You know, I went
to my first few networking events and printed off a stack of business cards
and essentially just went around dealing out my card to every person that I,
you know, could meet eyes with, like, “Hey, my name’s Chris Daily. I do
conversion rate optimization.” you know, and the next person I no
meaningful conversations and of course nobody reached out. Nothing came of
those, right? And so that was another piece of feedback that I eventually got
from someone which was, hey, instead of trying to meet every person here and
give them your business card, try to have one meaningful conversation at this
event. >> Um, and that honestly changed everything for me. Um because I
was viewing it as I go to a networking event to get a client and instead it
was okay go to a networking event to make a meaningful have a meaningful
interaction. Maybe it’s with someone that could become a client. Maybe it’s
somebody that could that could send me clients. Maybe it’s with somebody that
could become a really great friend for me. M and I and I did, you know, I met
a lot of really great friends and uh you know, and people that now um have
generated business for me, but they didn’t for a long time. >> Um and
so that that was great, too. It it also took some of the pressure off of the
whole like sales thing for me where it was like, okay, I’m not going to
networking events to sell. I’m going to meet meet people. And yeah, >>
so I think a lot of people get held up in networking events because of that.
you put that pressure on yourself about >> I have to get a client, I
have to I have to convert something or it’s not worth my time and it’s not
worth the company’s time. >> But uh your experience is uh building
meaningful relationships when those opportunities arise was significant in
the growth of your business. >> Yeah. Yes. Very significant. And in
fact, so I’ll tell you a funny story. I I you know you brought up how I you
know I I speak at conferences and the way I actually got into that. So when I
first started my business I was like how can I get clients? >> One of
course was networking and and people referring business to me. >> The
other path was I could go speak at conferences, right? Like I could get in
front of a ton of people all at once and and essentially show off what I do.
And so, um, I submitted a bunch of pitches to a bunch of conferences and I
mean, I I think only one of them bit, um, two, so I got I got two responses
out of probably 50 that I submitted. And one of them I immediately got in and
spoke at. And the other one was a guy named Rich Brooks um, who has a
conference up in Maine called Agents of Change. And I had never heard of it.
I had never heard of Rich Brooks. I didn’t know anything about any of this.
It was just it was just a conference that I could speak at. And so I
submitted this pitch to him and he and he responded and said, “Hey, um
before I have people speak at my conference, I like to interview them on my
podcast just to get a feel for the material and make sure it’s a good
fit.” >> And and I mean this is 2014 when podcasting was still
like and so I was like, “Okay, whatever. Fine. I’ll do your stupid
podcast.” But and so I I go on the podcast, he interviews me, we talk.
And then after the after the podcast, he’s like, “I actually don’t think
you’re a good fit for the conference.” And so I thought it was a giant
waste of time, right? I was like, “Whatever, you know, and and I wasn’t
rude to him, fortunately, cuz he ended up having me back on his show.”
And and he actually just emailed me just uh this week. Um awesome. >>
But uh >> but but what did happen is so that podcast went out. I
thought it was a huge waste of time. And then out of the blue, um, this guy
named Mike Stner, who runs Social Media Examiner and the Social Media
Marketing World, marketing conference, he’s a very big name in the marketing
world. >> Um, he reached out and he’s like, “Hey, I heard you on
the Agents of Change podcast. I love your material. Um, I’d love to have you
on my podcast and if that goes well, I’d love to have you speak at my
conference.” And so, um, here was this thing that I thought was, again,
I’m thinking about it as, okay, A plus B has to equal C. Like, I I’ve got to
get on this guy’s podcast so that I can speak at his conference so I can get
clients. >> And rather than that, it was, hey, go have a meaningful
conversation on the podcast >> and then eventually maybe somebody will
hear, you know, what what you did. So, he ended up having me on his podcast.
He loved the material. He had me then I spoke at his conference for six years
in a row. Wow. And every time I spoke at that conference, I got I got
clients. I mean, it was it was a great and I did this 90minute workshop. I
mean, it was an intense long workshop. Um, and uh, but like I said, I mean,
all of that started from something that I thought was a waste of time because
I was looking I was I was measuring the wrong things. >> Yeah,
absolutely. Well, it’s funny that you say that because I think in your
business you are able to determine that people are maybe measuring the the
wrong things. >> Yeah. >> Uh and so let let’s let’s dive back
into that. By the way, that’s that’s fascinating background. And speaking of
the workshop once again, you’ll be at Commerce Catalyst September 5th uh
doing a workshop and so people should attend. Come on down lay meridian hotel
and and uh get to see the man in in person. Okay. So, uh when you started
now, let’s get back to you. You now you’re doing your own kind of consulting
gig. At that point, did you ever go back inhouse with somebody or have you
been a consultant or running your own agency ever since? >> So, I’ve
been a consultant ever since. Now, so what I did is from 2016, sorry, 2014 to
2016, I was running my own agency. Um, and then in 2016, I merged my agency
with another agency here in Utah called Disruptive Advertising. So, I wanted
to at the beginning of this whole process, I wanted to like build this huge
agency. You know, I had stars in my eyes and I was like, I want to have tons
of employees reporting to me and, you know, I want to I want to whatever. I
want to be making $10 million a year and just, you know, I had all these
things in my mind, right? And so, this opportunity came up to merge with a
big bigger agency. My biggest problem initially was uh I I wasn’t getting
very many leads and very many clients. You know, I would I would maybe get
like a lead a month. And so, you know, as a as a consultant, it’s like enough
to keep you fed, but like you can never grow a business there. >> And
so, um when I met, you know, disruptive advertising, it was like, hey, we
have 600 clients that are doing advertising with us. You know, they’re
they’re doing ads. We’re sending traffic to their website. it would make so
much sense to just like say, “Hey, we’re sending all this traffic. Let’s
make sure that we’re converting it.” >> So, you just come over
here, keep running your business, and just pitch all of our clients. >>
And so, I was like, “Sweet. Yeah, let’s do that.” And so, um, I
went over there. So, from 2016, 2019, I was over at Disruptive Advertising
the, you know, basically just running my conversion rate optimization agency
as part of their agency. >> Um, and we did grow it quite a bit. um we
grew it to several million dollars a year in revenue and you know and we had
I don’t know 25 employees doing commercials optimization and I hated it
>> and the bigger the team grew the more I hated what I was doing um
what but wait you were doing I mean there there had to be some alignment you
were doing what you love to do or what you were passionate about doing so
what was the source of this >> so there was there was a couple of big
uh challenges Mhm. >> The first was um as we grew so I mean by
necessity we had to hire people >> and conversion rate optimization
unfortunately is not a field that that very many people work in and so it was
impossible to find qualified people that knew what they were doing. So what
that meant was we were hiring a bunch of people that we were either
crossraining from other disciplines or like taking some college student and
teaching them fresh from the ground up. But but the bottom line was all of
our employees were very new to the industry. And so you know what you do is I
I go and I sell these clients. I talk to these clients. I sell them. They
know that I know what I’m talking about. I know what I’m talking about. the
strategy that I’m that I’m describing to them sounds amazing. And then you
hand it off to somebody that has no clue what they’re doing. And it’s like,
so I had to just hold every single hand, right? And as we got more clients
and as we got more employees, it was more hands that I had to hold
simultaneously. And it’s almost like like a mom that’s like trying to get the
house clean with five kids. If that mom was to run around and go and go,
“No, no, no. You got to scrub the corner right there. Oh, no, no, no. You
have to scrub the dishes. Put them in the dishwasher this way. No, no, like
you know whatever like trying to trying to micro like I don’t want to
micromanage but I had to because so the first thing that happened is that I
had to hold a lot of hands cuz we had new people and because we had so many
new people our clients would quickly lose faith that these employees knew
what they were doing because the truth of the matter is they kind of didn’t
>> and so we had a lot of uh client churn and so I was constantly
jumping on these you know, fire calls where I’m putting out fires. I’m I’m
trying to course correct and pivot on a strategy and doing all these things.
And so, it went from, well, I love talking with businesses and creating
strategies for improving conversion rates and then I love seeing those
results. I love working with my clients and seeing conversion rates go up and
seeing revenue improve. Mhm. >> Um