EFP 165: Why Did The Co-Founder Of Leadpages Walk Away?

It’s an entrepreneur’s dream scenario.

One day you’re couch surfing at a buddy’s apartment in the Philippines and a few years later you’ve co-founded one of the fastest growing startups in the world. It’s an amazing story and I was more than a little excited to sit down with Simon Payne, co-founder of Leadpages.

Simon and his co-founders (Clay Collins and Tracy Simmons) built an incredible company. All together, they’ve signed up more than 120K recurring customers, raised more than $38M, and have put together a team of more than 160 employees.

With all that – why in the hell was Simon walking away?

I had to get to the bottom of this, so I got Simon on the phone to discuss how LeadPages came to be, their process for scaling the company, and why he thought it was the best move to leave.

This is an amazing interview and I’m very thankful to Simon for sharing his story with us.

Check Out This Week’s Episode:

Direct Download – Right Click, Save As

Topics Discussed This Week:

• How do you go from traveling SE Asia to getting serious about your startup?
• How can non-techies hire and work with developers. (and designers)
• Hustle mode early on can be fun…but isn’t what Leadpages doing now MORE fun? Why walk away?
• How do you leave a startup you founded (and what do you do next)

Mentions:

• Listing # 40520 an Adsense and Affiliate Site In The Shopping Niche
• Simon Payne @ Leadpages
• Simon Payne @ Convert Player
• Simon Payne @ Goat in the Boat
• Clay Collins @ Leadpages
• Tracy Simmons @ Leadpages
• Dan Andrews and Ian Schoen @ Tropical MBA
• Dynamite Circle
• Tropical MBA Podcast with Simon Payne
• Dan Norris @ WP Curve
• The Marketing Show with Clay Collins
• Clarity Calls
• Matt Newton @ Job Rack
• Rob Walling @ Drip
• Pat Flynn @ Smart Passive Income
• Mark Manson
• Gabby Wallace
• Simon Payne Twitter – @simonprague
• Doug Cunnington @ Niche Site Project Blog on Building Your Own Sites From Scratch vs. Buying The Done For You Sites
• Dominic Wells @ Human Proof Design

Spread the Love:

“Each programming language is something that you use to solve a problem, so you really just need a problem solver.” – Simon – Tweet This!

“You develop people into those positions and that’s how they get really good.” – Justin – Tweet This!

So glad Simon was willing to share his story with us. Dig this episode? Let us know in the comments!

 

–TRANSCRIPT–

Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Empire podcast episode 165. Most people only dream about co-founding and building up a hundred million dollar startup, so why and the how would someone with that level of success walk away? That’s exactly what we’re going to cover in today’s episode. We sit down with the co-founder of lead pages to look at how we do lead pages, his reason for leaving and what he’s doing next. You can find the show notes with all each discussing this episode of empire flippers.com/lead pages. All right, let’s do this.

Speaker 2:
Sick of listening to entrepreneurial advice from guys with day jobs? Wants to hear about the real successes and failures that come with building an online empire? You are not alone from San Diego to Tokyo, New York to Bangkok, join thousands of entrepreneurs and investors who are prioritizing wealth and personal freedom over the oppression of an office cubicle. Check out the empire podcast and now your house. Justin and Joe.

Justin:
All right, Joe, do you think there’s a point at which a business is too big for you? Where you’re not just not really interested running anymore. You don’t feel like you’re adding value or you just don’t feel like it’s the right fit?

Joe:
It’s tough because I look at it a little bit like a video game. Right? You know when you’re leveling up in the video game, it’s a lot of fun. But then the video game naturally comes to an end and I don’t understand how a business would come to a natural end like that. I guess it could level off at some plane, but in that case it would be so big that it would just be, I think in a new realm of possibilities. If you were interested in running a big business, maybe, I mean the other thing would be is that if it was on the decline or it just never was able to attain the kind of greatness that you thought it would be.

Justin:
Yeah, but that’s not the case with lead paste man. It is done super well. It’s been on the incline year over year. I mean they’ve done phenomenally well and I was thinking about this related to our business, right? With Empire Flippers, like your role right now is different than it was when we started writing. The things you’re doing are different. The things you are responsible for different, your goals are different. So like your work, your job changes quite a bit. And I could see, I think a point at which you get to where you’re like, I just don’t like my job anymore. I’m just not comfortable with my position and what I’m doing. And I think when we talk about it in the interview a little bit, but I think that’s a little bit what Simon’s talking about here, what he’s getting to do you think that would happen with you? Could you see that where your role is just not something you enjoy anymore?

Joe:
Of course, but I think it’d be better to try and reinvent yourself in the company that you built rather than try to start from scratch. That’s me.

Justin:
Yeah. I do feel like ebbs and flows in terms of not just kind of my connection to the business but also like kind of my value, right? So there are times where I’m super valuable to the business and adding just a ton of value to the company. And there are other times where I’m just not run flailing a little bad or whatever. And I think, you know, I hope I wouldn’t get caught in like one of those downturns and then kind of like throw away and one out when it’s really just a downturn. And I’ve been through enough to where I think I can tell the difference, but I dunno what, what do you think about hustling early on Joe? I used to say that and when people would ask, I was like, Oh, I love the hustle of kind of like being able to build a business from scratch, like early, early stage, right?

Justin:
You maybe a VA or a partner, but you’re just, I mean, you can turn on a dime, you can make change in the business right away. That’s kind of nice. It’s kind of fun, right? Be able to just, hey, let’s just do it this way instead, boom, it’s done. Now it takes us weeks or months to make changes. Right? Just takes longer. But I used to say I enjoyed that, but I don’t know if I do anymore, man. I mean the situation we’re in now and definitely we’re lead pages was when he left. I mean they’ve got a ton of people. They’ve got money, they’ve got like bigger projects they can take on, they’ve got bigger problems they can solve and is not more fun for you ultimately, I mean would you rather go back to just kind of the hustle, like doing the early stage hustle or do you prefer a rat now?

Joe:
No, I prefer where we’re at now for sure. I mean having money in teams available to you and resources available to you I think makes for a much more interesting plan. Plus like you can take small projects within the business and they can fail and it doesn’t stop disastrous. Right? I think this kind of elbow room within the businesses makes it very interesting.

Justin:
Yeah, and don’t get me wrong, but we’re not Microsoft or anything, right? Like you would have this huge conglomerate, but like, I mean it does get, we are slower to react to things. We do have to take a little more time because there are teams of people and levels and layers and software involved that we have to change and make changes to and understand how this reacts with that. So you know, you do lose a bit of kind of that early level hustle, the turn on a dime thing. But yeah, I think it’s important to have resources and resources gives you opportunity to solve bigger problems or tackle the bigger issues that come up, which I think is interesting. We end this interview, we’ll also get into some of our problems and I think some of the general problems with working with designers or developers, if you’re an entrepreneur, there are funky bunch.

Justin:
And so Simon is definitely one of those guys, but he’s also an entrepreneur so he kind of can see both sides. So it’s fun to talk to him about that and dealing with designers and developers and finding the right developers and building our development team. I think you’ll appreciate some of those conversations too. I think it’s also interesting to talk about how you exit a startup you founded, right? Like what’s the process for that? How do you bring that up? How do you bring it up to your co-founders? How do you walk? What does that look like? And I want to talk to Simon about that too. You and I I’ve talked about that in terms of like, you know, creating our operating agreement and what it looks like if we walk, who gets what and how. It’s kind of like, you know, who has responsibility for what? And that’s been an interesting process for us and I think it’d be interesting to talk to him about on the show.

Joe:
Yeah, no, I think that both of those points are absolutely interesting and something I’m eager to hear straight from Simon.

Justin:
All right but We’re going to get into that. Before we do that, let’s talk about the featured listing the week. What you got for us, buddy?

Joe:
We’re talking about listing 40520 it’s an AdSense and affiliate site created back in October of 2014 in the shopping niche. It’s got a wide variety of items that it gives the customers. The good thing is the majority of the work is outsourced and all those costs are labeled clearly in a P and L so there’s very little work for the new owner to have to do. It makes just over $32,000 a month net profit and we have it listed at just shy of $929,000

Justin:
yeah, the growth curve on this is phenomenal too. I’m looking at it like it was kind of cruising along from like January to like April, 2016 I then really one on a tear started growing, doubled I think from that through the end of 2016 so definitely making quite a bit of money. One of the other interesting assets of this business is it has a 202,000 person email list. So I think if you’re good at email marketing, there’s a real opportunity to expand that, are very interested in listening to the seller talk about it. There’s actually a seller interview on this as well, so you can go over to listing 40520 and listen to [inaudible 00:07:08] talk about how he built the business, how we got started. I mean in only two years. He’s built a just shy of $1,000,000 business. So I think it’s pretty, it’s pretty fantastic and pretty awesome interview as well.

Joe:
Yeah, I really think that this is a kind of site that a one man band widths with some contractors could very easily run from anywhere in the world. And it definitely makes enough money to keep you going no matter where you’re located.

Justin:
All right, but enough paying the bills. Let’s dig into the heart of this week’s episode.

Speaker 2:
Now for the heart of this weeks episode.

Justin:
I’m really excited today to be talking to Simon Payne, who was one of three founders of lead pages. If you’ve never heard of lead pages, I don’t know where you’ve been, but lead pages has been a very large company. They acquired over 120,000 paying customers all time, maybe 40 to 50,000 active customers today raise more than $38 million. A team of 160 plus people, and the three original founders were Clay, Simon and Tracy. We’re going to talk about how Simon got started, how they scale the business, and then how we actually got out of the business and how that all went down. But first round, look, let’s talk about this. I actually, her first heard about you Simon, by the way. Welcome to the show man.

Simon:
Yeah, glad to be here.

Justin:
I first heard of you from a couple of Ozzy buddies that we were in Devour and they kept talking about their crazy buddy Simon, and they were telling me about how Simon was hanging out with them. You went down to them, you’re crashing on their couch, couple of Ozzy guys with an apartment in Devour and they kept talking about you. And then I follow your journey, obviously in the dynamite circle, which are both a part of, and then you know, when you ended up co-founding lead pages, you wouldn’t dark for a while and then you emerge with this ridiculous, I’d say probably $100,000,000 plus online business. That is just a ridiculous story man.

Simon:
Yeah, it was [inaudible 00:08:59], right?

Justin:
Yeah, from crashing on a couch in devour, which is like a small city in the Philippines to you building this like massive online business, it sounds fantastical maybe to someone and, but we’re, I want to really step through it to like really discuss how it happened. So the first thing is, you were a developer, you were traveling around the Philippines and then you went to go meet Dan and Ian who eventually formed the dynamite circle and there were a bunch of other people that met in the Philippines and you were part of that early group, right?

Simon:
Yeah.

Justin:
So you met up with them in a place called Badlads in Mindoro I think and then a few months later you’re bopping around. How did you originally connect with Clay and Tracy? How did that go down? Did you saw a job ad right?

Simon:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:09:41] job posting board and I was just looking for a project to help me with my cash flow because my own start up, accessing global money that’s how I found them.

Justin:
So you’ve applied for a WordPress developer position, you found them on Dan Ian’s job board and I was listening to another podcast and we’ll link to it in the show nuts with the tropical MBA podcast. You said you were a little cocky, you came across a little cocky in the job ad, right?

Simon:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:10:11] that I actually need to take a side project, so I was thinking if I take a side project, it has to be good in terms of I need to learn something. I was willing to do shitty work which for me was development but it has to be something for me in terms of like learning something. That’s why the marketing part was like a feeling for me. And yeah, I was cocky because I felt like, well I know I am good for the job, but I’d say good enough for me as well.

Justin:
Yeah, I think that’s been a common thing and we run into this developers and designers to where we originally tell him, look, we’ve got some WordPress stuff and these are work on and I can either see or at least feel them like rolling their eyes, right? They’re like, oh, WordPress, simple boring WordPress project and not interested. And then we’ve got to get into the object and there a little more interested. One thing that kind of blows me away is the cockiness can sometimes come across as confidence, but more often than not when dealing with developers or hiring developers, it’s kind of a turnoff. Like they’re trying really hard to show how great they are, but it kind of like, you know, gives me an icky feeling like how can guys like me marketers and don’t really understand development, don’t run development teams. How can we get past that cockiness and see like their real skills?

Simon:
Well good sign is if they ask to interview you. If they have good questions. I was asking them, grilling them like if they’re good enough for me. So that was one sign and they felt like, oh you said good question. And I even like it was a famous like three feet that is that clear asking question? I said no [inaudible 00:11:43]. It’s not the question you’re asking me as a developer then you hire me. So there was 16 other questions kind of like make sure they understand like you know how to evaluate me and how to kind of like get to know my skills. So I think the question was what kind of languages do you know like do you know ruby and stuff like that because they felt like that’s what you need to ask developer.

Justin:
Yeah.

Simon:
I don’t think it’s important and you need to ask him like what problems he solved like how would you solve this? And it doesn’t matter. I will learn a new language and in the afternoon if I need to and once I had to learn some scripting in Visual Basic in Excel over a weekend to close the deal and I was headed to do that. I wouldn’t be I’m a ruby developer, I’ll never do that. So it just, each language or technology is something that just you use to solve a problem. So you need somebody who’s like a problem solver.

Justin:
So it’s more about their thought process and less about the particular language.

Simon:
Yeah.

Justin:
All right. Another thing I heard was that you weren’t really a fan of lead pages or the concept of these pages of stars. Is that right?

Simon:
Yeah, like for me, like in my head it’s like a website builder. It’s 2011 and why would I build a website?

Justin:
Yeah, yeah. Let’s just another website where you have all these pages or whatever and it kind of like, you know, funnels you’d do, the pages are like, yeah, anyone can do that. Those website builders all over the place. It’s funny that you were kind of not hot on the idea. I did something similar and this just goes to show you like you can’t take everyone’s opinion on what’s going to work, but I was on Dan Norris bout how WP curve, I didn’t think that would work and how I’d never be able to deliver operationally for the customers he was selling and I was obviously way off base with that. It’s funny though, right?

Simon:
Yeah. One thing I learned if you can cause some people teasing a great idea while I learned the hard way that you can take like a mediocre idea and make it good business, although vape much they good chance of success. Then if you take just the, it’s any great idea and he put media effort in it.

Justin:
Yeah. What do you think you had with lead pages? Is it a medium idea that you guys were super successful with was a great idea that you had moderate success with? Where’s that?

Simon:
It was a bunch of stuff and just signing the equation has like 15 different Minneapolis and they all actually, right. It was good timing. Quite understand. The market and I think that this uncle Ben is kind of like a without context because the inequality, August argued about the hell marketing and the best results came from this class. So he had to convince me it’s a good idea and he did and I had to convince him we need to do this technically like in this way or that way. It’s almost like an argument or many calls. It was very healthy and it was really productive and people vote rolling the eyes like you know what discussions we had and it was really … We both loved it and it always produced like liquid results for this like clash of technology and marketing. They’re going to both like equal partners really like productive centuries.

Justin:
I love that partnership and I want to talk about that podcast called the marketing show is actually videos and he was speaking to other marketers and an online business entrepreneurs and and he’s fairly well known in this space. So you know, a marketer that’s had some success and can actually, you know, I think train or educate other marketers matching up with a kick ass developer seems like a really sharp team. I mean, and this is just what I experienced, but most developers, you know, they can, you know, write some amazing code and create beautiful things, but they can’t market very well and marketers have no idea how things are necessarily built. So pairing the two of you together, both, it’s a huge opportunity for success but also clash. Right. And one of the things I think is really interesting, and we were talking about this before the show a little bit, is everyone talks about you and clay. Those are the third founder for the pages named Tracy. So there was this clash between you and clay, between a developer and marketer. How did Tracy fit in the mix? What was her role exactly?

Simon:
Anything that doing with lawyers, all the stuff that you know, you can imagine that you have to do in your business and you didn’t want to do. And it’s just, that was the magic. Like, you know, secret that’s fruit or hence I can under person focused on technology and clay, I’m not good thing if you don’t have to worry about anything else, I will sit there. They’re like, Hey, they saying the developer and she was like, Hey, he got like, you know, dirty interviews. 10, maybe 20 is good. And that’s how it’s hard.

Justin:
What did she do for you too? When you class, when you came, you know, like there’s a marketing versus development kind of issue. How would she kind of step in or how did she kind of balance the two of you out?

Simon:
She was just brother like a silent because she can see, you know, that the, the uh, like, you know, having a productive conversation. So then via to sell something, it was like a domain that then she was like loud and clear. So,

Justin:
so when did they originally, are you like, what month, what year? What are we, what are we looking at here?

Simon:
April, 2012

Justin:
okay. So you started, you build a few things from them over the first few months you were there. When did the idea for lead pages come on in and why were you a cofounder? Why didn’t they like how did that work? Did you argue to be a cofounder or was it just kind of agreed initially from the start? What was the deal there?

Simon:
I think most people like the Lents have built something great if they think it would be like sense it from the beginning. Like if he asked me how to build a company, like the beginnings of very like not nice. So first thing I had to do and it’s like what this plugin and it was like glorious like and like salsa. Like I’ll write it down date. It was, hey this is going to work. And the guy was like, I can solve this.

Justin:
Yeah. It wasn’t like this big company that you’re going to be a co-founder of. It’s like a silly little plug in from your perspective, classes I saw it. Oh you’re like, great, we’ll make a little bit of money. Sounds cool.

Simon:
So people like to say no small roles for actors. So if you are a developer that’s the time that needs to shine. The first thing I did, I over delivered the whole blogging. I think it gets, what you should do. And you’re bouncing on some other frames and I felt like this is dragging. I got pissed and I wrote the whole blog in over the weekend and on Monday he had a call to discuss how it should even look. I was like, Hey, I have the plugin ready. Most of the questions you had, I kind of decided and solve them for you because I felt like I would just present you the like the questions and you have to give me yes or no. I felt like I can make those decisions for you so I made the whole plugin, over the weekend and the next week we just shipped it and it was a big success and that’s how it works. In the first few months, I had no idea that would be profound. That I had no intentions and the motivations would be one.

Simon:
At the time I was just looking crazy heart and telling them how they should be doing that work as well and eventually after a few months they are like, hey Simon, you realize you’re a co-founder, right? Because he just thought it behave like one, for a month and I didn’t even realize that that was still passionate about what they’re doing.

Justin:
So you built this small plugin, you built it over the weekend. They were shocked because they didn’t really kind of go over everything with you guys want to discuss it, but they’re like, oh that’s awesome. Let’s ship this. I think we can sell it started something yet. Was there a point at which like as soon as you launch, as soon as the launch happened and it sold like hotcakes, did you realize you were on to something great? At what point did you realize, wow, I think we’re really building something big here.

Simon:
Yeah, it was at the beginning the next [inaudible 00:19:10] in a way that, I can sell this. It’s just a really big, and he’d get statements and hearing is actually beneath him, what you saying? I want to see proof and then like very clearly like the next week after I develop that, it exploded on the Internet as they were downloading it and I can see the back end how many thousands of like what precise are using it as like, wow, people are using my software. And for technic guy and developer, that’s awesome because you want people to use this software. So I was like, let’s do this more, like let’s do more of the software that I can build, deliver and sell.

Justin:
That’s gotta be a great feeling because I know a lot of developers that build a really cool stuff. They just don’t get the traction or they don’t have kind of that initial launch to get it out there. Right? And it’s cool. And they were so badly that people were using this software. So it must have been amazing for you to be like, yes, I got it out there. I’d beat the Hump and people are using my stuff.

Simon:
As one heck people can use in partnership and that it’s so cool then the marketer or something and the [inaudible 00:20:11] delivers it but then the marketer has this obligation so I can show up to work in a really know shiny way. So I knew all of a said every single button like every single like toggle and everything I developed, there’ll be video about every single thing. There have been no single feature I made with no video about it. Explaining it nice way, not just like here’s how it works. Even the marketing implications and why people should be using it and for developers is awesome feeling because you know like you’re a horrible shine.

Simon:
People would know it and people will like use it. It sounds to me like buried somewhere deep down in a setting and everything I was working on had some marketing like meaning and sense it was useful if it wasn’t, she can’t make a video about like every button like nobody would use it properly and biotech spend time on is a developer. So this kind of obligation was something that’d be always like on there and it was three great feeling for every developer we had like in the future, like blue thing on a color picker, any pages, you know this culprit because we’ll be on a video and it will be recorded like explained well and will shine.

Justin:
I’m thinking about this as like a marketer as an entrepreneur and I’m thinking to myself like I am going to approach a developer chip built whatever. It’s a lot more helpful if I have some sort of track record, if I can show, here’s other things I’ve launched, here’s how they got out into the world, here’s how many people are using them. So if in any way you can show that you’ve launched products that you’ve got sales, you’ve got some traction that’s got to be a little more attractive to a developer. Let me ask you Simon, if Clay and Tracy would have said to you, they said, hey, got this great idea, we want to launch it. We want you to be a co-founder though and we don’t want to pay you to do it. Let’s just pay you based on sales. Would you have done it or were you just kind of excited? ‘Cause Yeah, you were taking the, the pay rate to initially it was like, look, I’ll take an hourly pay or I’ll take hour they pay and just kind of like work with you guys on these small things and that’s it.

Simon:
Yeah. And you need to be going to like, I was cooking but that was humbled because I took the deal and it was a good deal for me at the time. It wasn’t like fancy money on anything. So if you’re trying to get like [inaudible 00:22:13] money and titles and big projects maybe I like missing the point and also may be I was school kid and I didn’t have like that’s big experience that I can show of it.

Simon:
I only had like 10 days of development that like experience but I didn’t, I feel like sell myself the hot, then you have something to show and as a developer I said, hey, I made this project for Starbucks. It was 10 users. It was a great experience. It really work well. And I even showed them how it look like and they’re like, okay, we believe you if you love it, you know this is great. You don’t have to show that much. You don’t have to be like active startup community. You don’t have to be recognized by other developers. Nobody knew me like at the time almost nobody like lifted on the like in my CV, like on paper it would look it probably but they can show like one project that I did literally well, from top to bottom myself and there was all enough to get hired for plugins.

Justin:
[inaudible 00:23:08] perspective. They can look at your previous work and then kind of judge how you solve problems. That’s probably more important than languages. We talked about that. And for you, you’re paying you straight up as better than an approach of hey, why don’t you build this with us? I promise we can saw it even though we don’t have a track record, we’re not gonna pay you. We’ll pay you based on the success of the sales or whatever. You would have been like, hell no, I’m not interested in that.

Justin:
So I think, I think those are interesting points for entrepreneurs or marketers. Let’s talk a little bit about, we talked about kind of how you got started, kind of when you realized you were honest on, because talking about scaling lead pages, I mean going from a few of you kind of building a silly plugin to raising $38 million, having a team 160 plus people is quite a journey. Right? So let’s talk a little bit about scaling. Why did you guys raise money versus bootstrapped? I mean you and I are both in communities and connections with people that are bootstrappers. I’m a bootstrapper. I know a lot of other bootstrapped entrepreneurs. Not everyone, but a lot. Why’d you guys decide to raise money for this project was a competition? Was it like poor cashflow? What was the reason?

Simon:
I think you know the new bootstrappers they can pint all the money you have from the beginning just putting whatever you can into the business and it’s not, that’s crazy high risk because it’s not that high numbers, but when you get to really high numbers and suddenly you have like 50 people already, like one best month can kill the company. So if you think about … It’s kind of just my opinion, I kind of felt like some private like numbers company pages right now. But if you think about it, like if the company’s making enough money, you can print the money every month for people and for growth. But once it gets to like really like high numbers, maybe you won’t work as a backup. It means that if you have best one month and if he never had it, like he would survive it.

Justin:
Yeah. If you’re constantly dumping cash back into growth or whatever, then you’re not, you don’t have much runway or you don’t have much wiggle room if you make any mistakes or whatever the business go out of business. And it’d be such a shame because it’s getting the point in the growth and the businesses at the point where you know a lot of people relying on it, it’s very valuable to people.

Simon:
And luckily like you never had to use this money for daily expenses, he always get profit from before day zero.

Justin:
Did you guys use a money raiser? Like how do you even do that? I mean, I don’t think you’d ever done that before. I don’t think Clay or Tracy had done that before. So how did you, did you bring someone in?

Simon:
No we hadn’t done it before. I think Clay [inaudible 00:25:38] had done this service.

Justin:
Clarity calls. Yeah.

Simon:
Yeah. So he had a call with the investor and he just needed advice like, hey, this is us. You have these numbers and he gets on the device. You make the same call in like few months. Hey, this is us get your numbers and hey, well wait a second, I remember you, that’s like three months ago and your numbers are here and now they are here. Can you fly here? He can talk.

Justin:
I want to end my buddies.

Simon:
Yeah, Something we show like numbers and even if a nobody and nobody heard your name before people will stop listening and he has really good numbers because we’re focused on growing the business yet.

Justin:
So as you know, I’ll lead pages grew you ultimately, but kind of filled in the CTO role. Right? Tell me a little bit about kind of your approach to hiring, training and managing a development of design team. How does that work for you? And had you ever done that before?

Simon:
No, I didn’t do that before actually it was the first time I was doing it. Just very focused on the results. That’s the most important thing. If you want to sell something and it just has to be good product in place that like the best marketing is a great product. So you have to focus on the results. And solving the problems. Some simple, but it’s very hard.

Justin:
Where did you find some of the best developers and designers and are those still the best place to find those people?

Simon:
I guess it depends on your annual budget. Obviously in the beginning we found the best ones in central and eastern Europe. In Romania it was like one of the best talent we found.

Justin:
We have a mutual friend, I think Matt Newton. Right now that has a company that helps you find developers in eastern Europe. Right? What’s the name of this company? Do you remember?

Simon:
[inaudible 00:27:19]

Justin:
Yeah, I don’t know. I’ll look it up. I’ll put a link in the show notes, give him a little bit of love. It basically helps you find a developers in eastern Europe and he was trying to to solve that problem basically. So when you’re hiring your development team, I mean your main goal is to make a product great. How do you determine whether those developers are going to help you do that?

Simon:
Well, a little bit of trying to hire developers which might actually be good I had to come up with my own technics and ideas and it’s what we did in LIS, because they had no idea what they were doing. So I was just thinking they should be kind of like me and my friend. You’re the first technical people in the company, they have to do everything. They just need to be like us. Like backend or frontend developer. I’m like why don’t you do the other half are like can you do some icons and just I like people that are like full stack that just really like you know can solve the problems in their whole spectrum. If they send me like oh I didn’t do that, I don’t do this language. I need problem solvers that can like take the whole like project and deliver it. The first developer that we hired was a guy from Romania Bogdan and we just told him make analytics, you need these two metrics and he came back to me in a week, hey can we deployed to production. I was like sure.

Justin:
Yeah. So guys that are go getters, right? Just like you bought the plug in over the weekend. Someone that can just go and figure it out and get it done even if it’s slightly wrong or you want changes to or it’s not quite as good like they are go getters and those are the people you’re looking for.

Simon:
And it seems like overkill at the beginning. I remember hiring one of those guys, it wasn’t like a rock star like shine developer from LA. It was like a very solid like roasted yellow proof from Romania and he was like, well and at the time like you have to pay him more than me and click together and like fun and it was like Kinda like, you have to put your ego down because like this guy who’s going to make money more than two of us and yeah, we need him and it was completely the right decision at the beginning. But if you think about it, don’t hire like confrontative but in quality, the beginning, like first year and a half of the pages he had like three developers probably because he didn’t need that much. If they get awesome people, they can take the whole project they can do to save you lots of time. The more people you have more communication channels, you have the need to like always kind of like keep open. So it’s really hard to communicate with everybody and it’s like holding you down, explain everything to everybody.

Justin:
Highest quality people, I’m going to get the best. I don’t need that many people. Even if I’m paying them and paying them more than I make, I’m paying them more. The claim makes but that’s fine because the reservoir thing like long ball, right. You were thinking of the long term and where you want the company to be and having a high quality product with super important not, I gotta ask you this, Simon, like you and you’d never run development team before. I’m guessing because you’re pretty young. You hadn’t managed, at least you had managed large teams before. Everyone, all entrepreneurs deal with that kind of the imposter syndrome like I’m sure you must have dealt with that to some degree. Even with your cockiness, he must’ve been like, what the hell am I doing? At times and how did I find myself in this position and really, am I the right guy to do this? How did you, tell me about what your battle was like with imposter syndrome, how you kind of worked through it and did it ever go away?

Simon:
All three of us we’d be like, what the fuck are we doing? Who are we to do with this and this start like tell us the magic secret, you know how its done and they’re like, do it like this or like that. Yeah, and the very time they found out the common sense, their own thinking was the best solution. So it’s very overrated. If you ever need to have that much experience to share, like laser focused and like the goal or the end stage, you can do whatever you want. If you have to stretch yourself. Like it’s my sponsor to solve this problem, I’m going to solve it the best I can. And that’s usually the best solution. It’s not that hard.

Justin:
I had a mentor who’d tell me, when I was sitting with imposter syndrome and that company, I work for artists as managing people. And I told him, I was like, you know, I don’t know if I’m really the best person to do this. I mean, could they hire someone better than me? And he’s like, look, it’s not always about maybe somewhere out there somewhere there’s someone that they could potentially find that’s better, but you’re here. You’re now, there’s trust and a lot of businesses, right? They trust you. They know that you’re doing the best that you can. They want to work with you. They’re happy to let you grow and learn and do even better. So that’s most important, right? And you don’t get to have this magical mythical team of people that would be perfect for the position. You take the people you got and you make them as good or as perfect as you can get them, right? Like that’s what you do. And, and it’s not that this perfect, magical person out there, this unicorn you’re looking for. You develop people into those positions and that’s how they get really good.

Simon:
Yeah.

Justin:
All right man. Let’s talk about, scaling up lead pages a bit. You’ve made this large company, you’ve got resources at the fingertips, you’ve got a war chest. I mean it’s such a war chest that eventually lead pages in a buying a drip, which is a rob walling company, email company. So not only do they have reserves for those rainy days, but they have enough reserves to where they’re acquiring other larger companies, which is amazing. But you know, you help build this company as a co-founder and some point you decided you wanted to walk, you want to walk away from lead pages. Was there a specific time or was there an event or something that kind of led you to kind of get that bug or was it just a thing over time it grew and grew.

Simon:
It was time it grew and grew you really learn a lot regarding situations and like having so many problems and you don’t have so much time to think but then they just become a corporation because that’s what it is right now. It was much more time to think like everybody, like you know, few months I was thinking like how can I be useful to this company? Because of the time it felt like five different companies. I change roles, change positions to defense stuff from one lake, development of more managing for like nudging technology, managing people. So I was thinking, I just need to conclusion like suddenly, Hey, I’m actually not that useful anymore.

Simon:
They’re like, we had other smart people. My skills are not as useful as it used to be. Beginning I said actually I analyze, I’m really good at starting companies and building things from scratch. Then like taking them to the next level. And I think this is something that both discussed before the show, even somebody who’s buying company because somebody can’t build company, but somebody else can take the company, just build the next level. I realized That’s me. I just like learning stuff from scratch and as I’m going to do again. So that was the reason.

Justin:
Yeah, it’s interesting. So in our audience and our customer base, I should, we have people that are in that space, right? So they’re better at starting websites are better at starting businesses when it comes to like really growing it out and with employees and stuff, they get kind of antsy. They want to go back to starting from scratch and I’m not, you know, I used to feel that way. I thought I was that way and I’m realizing now I have not, I’m not sure that I am. It’s not all sunshine and puppy dog tails when you start over. So I mean you had resources, you have all these things you could use to start new ventures inside of lead pages. Why did you want to go back to doing it? Just by yourself. I mean there’s, it’s difficult. There are challenges in doing that, right?

Simon:
Well, I like this idea, like I had my idea, it’s from last medicine, but the you have to kind of like be curious and that’s going to like what defines you and defines your, like your happiness. And I know that the struggles and the housing easily declared for success. If there was no stairs, I would be just lazy. I wouldn’t be working as hard. This is, I decided to start about a player from scratch on my own because I knew it was going to be thankful. Really thankful and it’s hard but I’m learning a lot like crazy. Like never before I officiated my partners like Glen Three feel like never before because now I know what they are roles there, which I didn’t know before. I just, you know full of glad that they get off this stuff. I don’t even know what this, now I know what this is exactly cause I’m doing everything by my own though.

Justin:
Yeah. Well Joan, I just recently updated our operating agreement talks about, you know, how we would buy each other out if one of us wanted to go. And so when we had to update our agreements on that, how we would sell equity, what the requirements are for someone to buy in, like all these different things. You had to go through it. And so some of them are icky conversations, but we had to do with the lawyer and we updated everything and it set us up. And so you’ve got both of us thinking like what if two years from now I wanted out. Like how would that go down? And so we had to have those conversations. And I’m thinking about you having that conversation with your partners. Like how did that go down? Like did you say, hey guys, let’s do a steak dinner and let’s talk about it. Or was it like a phone call? How did you tell him you wanted out?

Simon:
It was a long conversation and I didn’t want to make sure like everything handed over, somebody else and it was a low process. And even in my head you know it good idea like you know, slowly. So first of all I aimed the direction already because I sit down from some managing positions. I was more like technical oriented. I’ve been back to the development team to work on the product. And also the book is huge. Like going to in Minneapolis in the office that we have like most of the people now. So, and it wasn’t that I was living in Prague, so that decision to live in Prague also affected that because I couldn’t be like that every day-

Justin:
Did you cut your salary down at that point.

Simon:
I think I picked it up.

Justin:
Okay. So you bought your salary up and then we originally, so you got to the point where you had to have a long conversation with Clay and Tracy. How did that go? Were they, did they try and change your mind were they excited for you? How did that work out?

Simon:
I think you have, and we had this conversation then I was actually leaving and We didn’t actually talk on the phone for a year because the company is so big we are also busy.

Justin:
Yeah.

Simon:
Wow. You have no idea how big the company grew and then what kind of stuff you’re dealing with. So they’re like, [inaudible 00:37:29] And he completely understand, and we always had a great relationship with both of them. So I have the like full support. And I still come to them for advice and it was not painful at all. Like if to be able to be honest and we learned that over the years. It just has to be super honest about you know, your feelings and you’re like, what do you want and what doesn’t work? What do you don’t like and stuff like that.

Justin:
Yeah. I think a part of the trust thing is being very just straight up. Right. You can’t muck around with like the try and get them to like the sauce out your feelings or where you really want no, no. I got to say very plainly, here’s what I want so that you can have a real open, honest conversations about shit. That’s tough, right? Like hey Joe, if you got incapacitated, right. My business partner, if you got any capacitated what would I do? What would be the next step? How the business continue because there are people that are like living like they are making their living with our business. We don’t want to go out of business just because you’re in capacity. As shitty as that sounds, it’s horrible. That is to talk about, right, you the equity in this company. Did you sell it all? I mean did you find it? Did you keep it? How did that work?

Simon:
I just bought them. So that’s all.

Justin:
That’s it. So you brought your options. Did you sell any of them or do you keep them all?

Simon:
No, just keep them.

Justin:
Gotcha. Cause the businesses so growing. I still want a part of that long term upside. I’m going to just hang onto them for now.

Simon:
Yes.

Justin:
Gotcha. All right man. So let’s talk about you starting over with convert player. This sounds, by the way, freaky to me, man. I can’t believe you did this. You went from a developer saying and they’re running a large development team saying, Hey, I’m going to be the marketer, I’m going to be the developer. I’m going to be the front guy. I’m going to be the customer server. I’m gonna do, I’m gonna do it all now this is, I remember this tool. There was something about like you guys were working on this tool with lead pages or something, right?

Simon:
Yeah, it was lead-

Justin:
It was with like Pat Flynn and Clay or something like that.

Simon:
Yeah.

Justin:
But and nothing came of it.

Simon:
No, it was a great product it was just a Plugin. It had some limited potential, but it was doing really great. I actually loved it. So much fun. We had visit, I kind of miss that. We had to like, stuff it is those just because feel well get to focus on-

Justin:
okay.

Simon:
And people kept asking me what to use. Like, Hey Simon was such a great tool. Like you know, I ain’t going to do something, next and after while at the shooting DCBKK people like asking me what this several times, like four years in a row like fuck it, I’m going to like develop it. But I did it now. But it’s such as sort of plugin. It’s like a full of sauce, a bunch of features. Like what advanced analytics,

Justin:
Where is it? They basically will capture emails from people on Youtube videos and other types of videos as well.

Simon:
Yes.

Justin:
All right, so you’re doing this on your own. Would you partner on this business with marketing person with someone else at all or do you want to do this one solo?

Simon:
Depends on what you define by partnering or more of promotion partnership, definitely, but I just doing it because we’re going to suffer them I think baseline myself.

Justin:
Cool. I’m sure the product will be fantastic and wants to take a look at gocovertoconvertplayer.com you’ve got it up right now is your marketing approach is interesting. I’m looking at, you have goat in a boat by the way, goinaboat.com that’s kind of your blogging, marketing arm for convert player. Is that right?

Simon:
Yeah.

Justin:
Okay, so you’re talking about like conversions and video conversions and that kind of thing over there with the idea to drive traffic, to convert player to get you sales. What else are you doing? Obviously you’re doing podcasts. Interview. I was like, what other things you’re doing your marketing tragedy.

Simon:
I realized I’m not a marketer I’m just trying to do marketing so my audience is not big and I love you to reach so many people, so I have to bump that up with other people and their audiences. So I’m looking for people that are the audience and they’re doing something just like video marketing, like Aria and I want to just deliver them like this really high quality professional tools that would give them more power. And if they like it, they would be happy to promote it to their audience.

Justin:
What do you charge? What’s your monthly fee?

Simon:
I trust a neuro. There’s the basic plan is four 97 the professional version is 179

Justin:
So 97, 179 annual fee, give her new whatever annually. My work really well for this product. Webinars, webinars are people that are in the video space would be fantastic marketing or sales tool for you.

Simon:
Yeah, I would love to do that. I just need to do one thing at a time. Like now I get my hands like so busy development and making videos on my own. But yeah, this is something I’m going to be doing sampling.

Justin:
How do you stay motivated? So I gotta ask this spending. You guys have built this very large company. I don’t know exactly what the Pez worth. I mean I guess it’s $100 billion plus, right? So you guys have built this company, it’s massive. You could sell out your potentially, this is if you money for your out, right? I mean this is fucking money. You can be done if you want it to be. How do you stay motivated in that scenario? What is it about this that you love that you really want to crush it? I mean how was this, cause I know and other people in this position where they get fuck you money and they kind of start projects as hard for them to stay. You know the parsley do it Kinda sorta. But you seem pretty motivated with this is you actually want to crush it with a product and that’s crazy to me.

Simon:
No, I’m almost like a phrase of obviously fuck you money. If I get it I would be so lazy because I would have known what they can do anything. So I was thinking one of the struggle because the best days, I remember in my like last year so they have and I was struggling like lead pages and they look like good hours and looking back at it was actually a great time and anytime that looks like speculating and doing something hard, I remember it as a go to that and so, and that was 16 some other people like kind of like demotivated after they get success and they are like, “Oh I don’t want to build that out the company I didn’t know what to do now.” And like maybe something and he’s investing in it and I realize like the kind of magic secret is to find something that you have until like boy that scares you, something that’s like hot to do and do it.

Justin:
You don’t want to be in that position to where you get lazy and that sounds scary to you where you don’t have the next project. I know people that have that sophomore slump and that sophomore slump scares me. She’d rather be actively involved in other projects so you can avoid it. You said, you mentioned Mark Manson, who, I love his writing by the way. Was there anything in particular from him that motivates you or scared you?

Simon:
[inaudible 00:44:06] Like him and his writing ideas and vote. The like suffering and struggles. It makes me a better person. Makes you like one month of age. And in this project I picked like Maca thing and doing videos and putting my faith there as something that would be like very like vulnerable thing for me to do because I knew the development part was easy, quick to develop that and that and after that that would be like, “Okay so sound the problem” But this is a problem I didn’t sell before and it’s literally like it’s painful.

Justin:
I saw your video so I got to tell you [inaudible 00:44:40] and you do the video or whatever. We were talking about it and I wince a little bit cause I hate that shit. I hate doing video. I hate that. I don’t know how many times you recording that taking me 20 times record that one simple video, but I just hate it. It’s funny that you’re mentioning it. That’s good of you to do it though, right? I mean, you’re doing the things that are scary.

Simon:
[inaudible 00:45:01] And the hair, like videos and she said like the first videos you make, they will suck and they have to suck. And I didn’t have a label saying like if this landing page I will suck and they have to suck because that’s the way how you learn it. You know, you have to start somewhere, you have to kill the perfectionist in you. My first video it will stay and my next one is still the best. But this isn’t the first one.

Justin:
Well think the marketing show with clay, I mean he did so many of those. I mean eventually you just kind of get better and better. I remember when we were going to start our podcast, that was scary to me. And then I went back and listened to podcasts that were pretty cool and that had gotten really good. Like yeah. Tropical MBA and others. Pat Flynn and, well, no, he had to start at the time, some of their guys and listen to their original episode. And I was like, “oh well that kind of sucks too.” Like they’re not, they weren’t that good but they got good over time. And so that made me feel a little more confident about doing a podcast. Right.

Simon:
Yeah. I don’t mind. He’s an awesome illustrator and he was studying me since he said that learning 3D and he does me like it is because then use ago, he was thinking about starting learning 3D and he saw other, some other people and they will all be good. It’s like, oh, it’s too late. You know, I’m audit. Like I will never learn it. It’s too late. And now he’s like, and he’s like, “Fuck, I didn’t expect that 10 years ago because-

Justin:
Yeah, he could had years experience there.

Simon:
[inaudible 00:46:29] So it’s never late to start. I’m doing the videos now. I hope in a year it’ll be like much better.

Justin:
Yeah, I’m not to talk to our marketing guys. They’ve been kind of pushing for a suit of the more video. I’m gonna have to talk to him about that. Greg and swag, if they’re listening to this, we’ll be in touch buddy. Anyway, Simon, thank you so much for coming on man. I really appreciate it. And hearing this story about lead pages and kind of your experiences and the business has been fantastic. I know you’re an a kick ass developer. I know that you’ve got marketing shops from one of the best out there with clay and just sound like Tracy was kind of the glue that held you guys together. So you built an amazing business. Emily, we’ll watch your journey in marketing and videos and it’d be interesting to see kind of how that goes. If you need to think from us, definitely reach out for our listeners if they want to take a look, it’s convertplayer.com also they can check out goinaboat.com. Is there anywhere else people can reach out to you on Twitter or Facebook or anything like that?

Simon:
Yeah. I’m on Twitter.

Justin:
Cool man. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. What is it? What’s your Twitter?

Simon:
Simon Brag.

Justin:
Awesome man. I’ll put that up. Thanks Simon, so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

Simon:
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:
You’ve been listening to the empire podcast now some news and updates.

Justin:
All Right Joe, let’s talk some news and updates buddy. First off, we wrapped up 2016 so happy new year to all of our listeners, customers, subscribers, everyone was checking out this podcast today. We had a fantastic 2016 but he’d be more than doubled our sales from 2015 and 2016 like 4.7 million to …. What are we Joe? What’s the number right now and what are we looking at for 2016?

Joe:
Yeah, I don’t have the exact number in front of me, but it’s so close to 10 million that I have to say it’s a little bit annoying. I feel like that wolf of Wall Street line where he’s like, I made 47 million and I was just so mad cause it was 3 million away from 50 million.

Justin:
I don’t know. We’re closer than that. Do. We’re like a but heroin, the numbers we’re looking at, it looks like 9.98 or 9.9 9 million in sales, which is ridiculous. I know you were hustling array at the end of the year, like right before New Year’s Eve. Like you’re trying to get someone to buy, whether it’s just please, you’re like, just buy it or just try to hit our 10 but I think you actually said that.

Joe:
Yeah, I did. I asked one of our customers I said, “Hey, can you just buy this sites? We could book it.” It looks like we came up 22,000 short on 10 million. So yeah, $9,978,558 and 24 cents but who’s counting? So yeah, just 20 (520) 100-0450 before Ted.

Justin:
I can’t be too bummed, man. I mean, we did really well in 2016 our team did a phenomenal job. We’ve been hiring like crazy. Those guys are turned out into a great work. So really, really happy with where we’re going. Our goal again is to double in 2017 so we’re looking at 20 million and sales for the year. I think that would be fantastic. Our business be in great shape and I’m really looking forward to doing that. Speaking of new guys, the sales guys, man, you’re with the sales guys. Do sales guys in Manila right now? You’ve got three of them. So the training’s going really well. They’re getting up to speed, Huh?

Joe:
If you’re a buyer or a seller, you’ve probably spoken to one of the new guys, that’s for sure. I definitely cracking the whip and having them on the phone every day. So we’re making calls and reaching out to old customers, new customers, and everyone in between.

Justin:
Trying to introduce them and have them get a feel for like what people were looking for and try to help them find sites that are a good fit. There’s two Americans and one Kiwi on the team. So you got to Americans and one key there. You got an office there in Manila, I think you locked him up in an office and have him banging it out, right?

Joe:
Yeah. It’s two blocks away from my house, so I can’t complain.

Justin:
You got to get an office either Merrill, we’re supposed to be the, you know, digital nomads, the travelers, and you’re getting all old school business. All right man. So another thing, we’re looking to hire some customer service people and Q1 probably a couple of people. It’d be similar I think to the sales position where we hire a possibly and maybe looking for one of them to turn into like a customer service manager. We’d like these people to join us in April and Saigon. So we’ll probably have something out about that middle to late January, maybe early February. So if you’re interested in potentially working with us someone who’d be a great fit, but look for that to become an out in the blog. The last thing I’m going to mention for news and updates is we’re looking at some really creative ways to market listings.

Justin:
So we get questions like, well, what do you do? Do you send an email out and you put it on social media? What else do you do? Well, you know, one thing that some people don’t know us, we have a really large email list so we don’t just send out the email. We also do a lot of kind of follow ups so that people visit the listing a certain number of times. If they go to other parts of our site, if they fill out certain bits of information, there are segmented really well. So because of that segmentation, we can send people listings that are in the right kind of fit and the right price range for them that are very specific and targeted. So we’ve been doing a lot of that and doing it through social media, doing some retargeting and remarketing on Facebook as well. We’ve been doing a lot of that to try to get listings, I think a bit more visibility. We’ve had some sellers acids about that. What we do and we’re not only have we done a lot of these things over the last few months, but we’re expanding that in 2017 this administrative wise.

Joe:
Yeah. I think we have some other ideas for 2017 to grow the business, which we’ll probably be talking about in later episodes, but you know, it’s always interesting when I talked to a prospective seller and he says, “Well, what do you do besides just email your list and I have to like count the off the things.” Oh well we do seller interviews, we promote the listing we get up [crosstalk 00:51:57]

Justin:
our follow ups. Yeah, all that stuff. There’s a lot that goes into it and we should do I think a podcast about that because the process changed so much over the last hell even six, nine months, so we should talk about that in a future podcast. All right buddy. Let’s do the list. Shout section also knows the indulgent ego boosting social proof segment. First up, we’ve got an iTunes review. Fivestars is a no bullshit podcast. Love this podcast. We’re not glamor sing online business and for showing what it really is like. Keep going guys, appreciate that review. If you want to get a shout on our podcasts, go over to iTunes, leave us a review and we’ll give you a shout on the show. You’ve got a couple of Twitter mentions, Joe. Jeremy mentioned listing 40520 the feature listing of the week this week said [inaudible 00:52:41]

Justin:
Wow, that’s impressive for an early hands free two year old site, so just a little over two years making more than $30,000 a month as an adsense and affiliate site and the shopping nets with 32,000 a month. I agree. I mean in two years to build a million or just shy of $1 million business is pretty phenomenal. And again, if you want to check that out and that’s listening, 40520 and there is a seller interview there. Kevin asked the question, “I’m new to buying online business and interested in several of years, would you help represent me on a purchase from one of your competitors for $50,000?” Unfortunately, Kevin, we don’t do any buy side consulting. We just don’t do that. Like we’ve looked at it and we don’t really have a process for it. Like it’s not really something we do. And to be honest with you, Kevin and everyone else was saying, “I don’t really like consulting. I just don’t like it. I don’t like it would be we’re paying for my time and when I have these set calls with people and I have to like, I just, I don’t know Joe, Joe, you do calls, you do lots of calls with people, but you don’t like consulting either. You don’t like like selling your time, right?

Joe:
Yeah. We tried the consulting Gig and we kept upping the price thinking that people wouldn’t buy it and they kept buying it. So, and we kept, you know, no matter how much they paid, we just kept really hating the calls. But I did a call today actually with a buy side broker who’s just getting started in the game. He used to be kind of a buy sell broker for one of the big places, broke away and started his own business. And there are plenty of good guys out there that we can recommend. So I encourage Kevin to reach out to us, set up a call and if he’s really shitting in a buy side broker, I can recommend one to him.

Justin:
Cool man. All right. And then Ben said going to building a flip and it’s site with empire flippers and the next six months just for fun. Well I hope you do it for more than fun Ben. I love you. You’re a buddy but I like to make you some money as well so hopefully we can help you sell that site. Blanca asked a question, “Do you guys work with or sell Spanish sites on Twitter?”” Unfortunately America we do not. If we don’t do any foreign language sites for a couple of reasons, it’s hard for us to vet them. We don’t have any Spanish speakers on the team. And if we did get into a non English language, like Spanish would be the first one. Who do, cause we do get quite a few across for it. I think there is a market there. Honestly, if you were a one or two broker Spanish sites in particular, I think there’s probably enough to kick some business here round.

Justin:
I think there’s something we should go for it. Just that there’s some lower hanging fruit in our business right now that we’re targeting. But there’s a market I’d like to get to it at some point today. We don’t. Jason said, “Thanks so much. Have the great bonus gift, the USB stick. You guys made a scary first step, way better for this noob entrepreneur. Thank you Jason for doing business with us.” And he’s referencing, I think that the kind of thank you gifts that we send out to our customers after they become customers. So thank you Jason for [crosstalk 00:55:22]

Joe:
Thank you Jason. Glad to see that people are enjoying those little gift boxes.

Justin:
Yeah. And then we’ve got, Nelly said, “Credit Card or bit coin. Is there any other way to deposit money to see the details of a website?” No. Unfortunately those are the only two ways we take deposits. So credit card or bitcoin you can do either or. I think ATM cards work as well. As long as they have the visa or MasterCard logo, it will put a hold on the money in the meantime, but that will work and you know if you just got to have access to one of those to the pay the deposit with us. Unfortunate.

Joe:
Yes. Yeah. And the only other thing we can do is you could wire us a good deal of money. We can list that as credit on file and use that for future purchases. If you do that, then we can set you up with a code that will enable you to bypass the deposit.

Justin:
Yeah, we have some customers that have done that. We hold in a separate account and keep all of them will get together and then give it back to you if you don’t use it or just apply it toward a purchase if you do. All right, we’ve got to mention agreements and actually, and I don’t want to link to this in the show notes, Doug, over at niche site, project.com did a great debate posts on building your own sites from scratch versus buying the done for you sites. So not like established earning sites making thousand 2000 bucks a month. No, nothing like that. Just straight building sites from scratch or buying sites that are kind of already pre template it. Right. This is a really interesting debate. It was in the debate style of the blog posts we used to do back in the day on the debate posts.

Justin:
So I thought that was pretty cool. There’s some interesting points on there by Dominic over human proof designs and some of the other guys. I don’t know. What do you think Joe? I’m a fan for. There’s my important on that. I’d say if you’re brand new, if you’re a total Newbie, I think building your own sites from scratch is helpful. Right? Especially if you have no money. I’m just assuming that both sides have no money. I think that’s helpful because you have to learn all the basics. If you’re a little pass, maybe like early intermediate, let’s say, I’d say buying done for you sites is reasonable. You will, it takes very little cash, just a little bit of cash and you can just save yourself the hassle. It’s like, I mean you’d probably pay for a VA to do all the setup and pay for some of the content anyway. Why not pay a premium on that and just have it done for you?

Joe:
Yeah, it’s hard for me disagree with that logic Justin. All the time, every day I speak to newbies on the phone and that’s the first thing I tell them and it’s like he got to build a site first and have some basic fundamental understanding about how this technology works and how these sites are built and that makes it just so much easier when they come back in a few months and say, “Okay, I built the site. It’s making $20 a month, I’m ready to step in and play the big boy game. I understand what I’m getting myself into.”

Justin:
Have you already at this job because you run into people that have never built a site before but they’ve got the skill sets, they’ve got kind of the knowledge and understanding enough, they’re savvy enough to where they could run a business. Right? They have some problems and they take a little bit of coaching from a seller. They have to walk them through a bit more. But it’s doable. But it’s really to people, and I’ve talked to some people too that just, I mean just there and just not there. They should not buy a business. One of our businesses, they shouldn’t buy a done for you side. They just don’t have the skillsets and the need to learn it. I don’t have anywhere to send those people to. I, I talked to a guy recently and I forget, I did an interview for his podcast and he focuses on seniors on like the baby boomers is talk to them about how to do online businesses and kind of like talk about the process and what all our businesses look like and investment opportunities.

Justin:
And I was thinking myself was like I told them actually all fair off the recording. So if you did a course like that for seniors bit he’s a senior himself. If you did that and walk them through the process of how to run and manage online business, that would be super valuable. It’d be supervised us be super valuable to them. I don’t have a place to send them to. I think it’d be fantastic. So I think more courses like that, both in the kind of like baby boomer age range, but also I think for just for anyone would be fantastic resources for us to share to people that aren’t quite ready to buy a business, but that with some training and with a course might be in a better position to do it.

Joe:
Yeah, agreed. I think we’re seeing more and more baby boomers, younger baby boomers come on to the scene though with some skill sets. They can do some things and they can run basic content and affiliate based sites.

Speaker 1:
All right, man. That’s it for episode one 65 of the empire podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. We’re back next week with another show. You can find the show notes for this episode of more@empireflippers.com/lead pages and make sure to follow us on Twitter at empire flippers. See you next week. Bye Bye everybody.

Speaker 2:
Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Empire podcast with Justin and Joe. Hit up the empire flippers.com for more. That’s empireflippers.com. Thanks for listening.