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- [00:01]
Daniel Budai
So you want to make sure that people, they trust your site and they are okay to spend money with you online. I would say social proof is the major thing. Number one thing below seven figure. Almost everyone has this issue regarding social proof. You cannot overdo this. You cannot have too many reviews or too much social proof. It's just not a thing. So just add as many as possible, basically.
- [00:25]
Cody McGuffey
Welcome to Built online. I'm Cody McGuffey and this podcast is all about one thing. Building the business of your your dreams. Selling art, teaching classes, starting a blog, launching a brand. Whatever your passion is, we show you how to turn it into real income. I created everbee to help anyone with a dream start and scale business. Ever be, ever be, ever be, ever be, ever be, ever be. We now serve over 800,000 creators all across the globe. On this show, we bring on real entrepreneurs who've done done it. They share their secrets, they share their failures. The exact steps that you can take to get started. What if you can get one golden nugget out of today's episode? And it's the breakthrough that takes you from just dreaming to actually living a life on your terms. At Ever Be, we believe that every human is a creator and every creator should own a business.
- [01:16]
Daniel, what's up man? How are you?
- [01:19]
Daniel Budai
Hey, Cody, thanks for the invite. I'm doing great. How about you? How is everyone?
- [01:24]
Cody McGuffey
Great, man. I'm very happy to have a conversation today. Super excited to have you on. Tell me, kind of give everybody a backstory of you, if you don't mind, like the short story of where you started and how you got to where you are today.
- [01:41]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, sure. So I will start it a bit far, but I think you will like that. So I started as a geologist and I studied that for six years at the university and I wanted to work in the petroleum industry. And I know you are in Austin, Texas. Actually, my thesis was about the oil fields of Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. And then after finishing this, you know, six year journey at the university that I really enjoyed, I didn't find a job with this and I just tried other jobs and pretty soon I ended up on the Internet just looking for opportunities. And I found a website called Upwork. It's a freelancing platform. Probably many of you know this platform. And I registered and I tried a couple things, video editing and then design. I'm a terrible designer. So I just ended up as a copywriter. Writing is something that I really like. I always loved writing and I just became an ad copywriter. Email Copywriter and somehow I just stuck to it and it went pretty well. And after one year I quit my job. I became independent from, you know, any other companies and we just became an agency. After a while I started hiring.
- [03:07]
Cody McGuffey
You were like on upwork, were like businesses or were they solo people? Like well, we were hiring.
- [03:13]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, exactly. Businesses, entrepreneurs. I remember my first project was probably 30 or 40 bucks. Somebody from LA, which is really funny to think about now. That's where I started. And it went well. Clients were happy and after a while I hired other copywriters and then we actually turned into an email marketing agency for E commerce companies. We were one of the first users of cloud Klaviyo and by 2018 we became around 20 people company basically. And yeah, it was now it's seven years ago, which is crazy to think about. But later on we added more services, more types of clients and really by now we became an E commerce growth agency. We try to help E commerce companies across all different marketing channels and really grow them. Not just using email, but ads, their website and you know, everything marketing related basically.
- [04:21]
Cody McGuffey
Beautiful. And by the way, this is called, how do I pronounce your last name? Is it Budai?
- [04:27]
Daniel Budai
It's like Dubai but Budai. So very similar. Yeah.
- [04:32]
Cody McGuffey
So Budai Media is your agency and it's the E Commerce growth agency. And I want to talk a little bit about because I think it's cool to have you on here because a lot of our listeners as we've talked about are chapter one, chapter two of their E commerce journey. Some of them are, most of them are E commerce, I would say product focused. There's some service focused people on here too for sure and some startups and tech, but a majority are product I would say and they're chapter one, chapter two meaning like they're finding product market fit, they're launching products, maybe they're just starting their Facebook ads and they're trying to understand SEO and Google and, and all this stuff. So it's, it's cool to have you come on here and share experience of like probably chapter three of like okay, now we're scaling. What point do clients come to you guys and say okay, I want to hire Buddha Media revenue size years in business. Like what does that typically look like for you?
- [05:32]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, sure. I would say most of the clients they are in the seven figure annual revenue range and eight figures. So typically these, sometimes we have smaller clients or even bigger clients like in the nine figure range. I would say for larger clients it's typically more like A consultation or mentoring their teams. And for smaller clients we have a minimum monthly fee and they cannot always jump that number. So that's why it's typically seven eight figure companies. And 70% of our clients they are in the US or Canada. So we are US heavy. We have the rest of them Most in the UK so definitely English speaking market, physical e commerce products, D2C and typically industries where the product is very visual. So supplement products, apparel and fashion products. Yeah. Home decor, furniture companies. Mostly these because we, I think we are really good at design and that's something important for them.
- [06:45]
Cody McGuffey
And when you say design like design of copy like or I'm sorry design of like ads, ad design or are you talking about like design of like product packaging, all this stuff? Like what are we talking about? Design?
- [06:55]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, sure. Ultimately email creatives and ad creatives and also landing pages, product pages. So everything that is visual. We are really good at the visuals. We have great designers.
- [07:07]
Cody McGuffey
I have so many questions because I love this stuff. So primarily you guys, you guys are the E commerce growth agency but your, your specialty up to this point has been email. The email retention, marketing or email marketing side of things, it sounds like.
- [07:22]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That was our first service when I launched the company. That's something I did myself alone when I started as a freelancer is still our core service and we turned into an E commerce growth agency. But I think most agencies who focus on growth and growth hacking, they came from the media buying from a media buying background. They know Facebook ads, Google Ads and they add more services. We actually did the opposite direction. We started with email. We understand retention lifetime value of the customers really well and, and then we added extra services like ads or website management. So that's, that that's been our journey basically.
- [08:07]
Cody McGuffey
I, I, I could see that. What to set some context for everybody too. You already talked about the industry. So you mentioned supplements. All the way from supplements to fashion. Clothing probably. Right. Clothing and hats and things like this. And even to you know, you mentioned the other one. What was the. Oh, fashion. Like home decor. So these are like three different.
- [08:27]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:27]
Cody McGuffey
Three different worlds and it seems like. So you guys can serve all these? Including others probably.
- [08:34]
Daniel Budai
Yeah. So we actually have a database. I even share this with potential clients so they can take a look at it. We've had 200, around 200 clients up to date and I think 40% of them, they are in apparel and fashion. That's the biggest one. And then you mentioned home decor supplement. Sometimes you have very exotic industries as well. Like cbd. I think we had one THC company as well. Yeah, like really wild industries. Sometimes we even sold animal figures in Japan. So you know, we, we don't have limits. But I think these three that you mentioned, that's where our specialty lies like apparel supplements at home decor, furniture.
- [09:24]
Cody McGuffey
It seems to me that just high level perspective would be like supplements would be like probably the best business to be in there. Just because of the recurring aspect of like repeat buying of the supplements. It runs out. It's consumable versus fashion. You buy the shirt or the buy the very nice pants or the hat like one time, maybe a couple times a year and then you have the home decor kind of the same thing. But, but it sounds like that's not a requirement for you guys to be successful with these brands. The recurring aspect. Is that true?
- [09:55]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, that's a great question because I thought about this a lot as well that consumable products, you know, could be also petroleum, baby products, everything that is consumable. And actually that's not always the case. So we can see there is a company in Canada, they sell chandeliers for 500 bucks or even 1 or 2K. Or we have a sauna brand, they sell luxury saunas for five up to $20,000. And you would think that email is not important there or retention. And actually half of their revenue comes from email marketing. And it's not because of the retention piece but because of their long funnel that people, they see an ad, they see a retargeting ad, they Google your, you know, the brand, they receive an email and the funnel is very long. It can be even six months, you know, by the time they buy this expensive product. And that's why email marketing is so important. So there are many different factors. Or we can see stores where there is a winning product and people buy very often. Even if you wouldn't expect this, like yeah, we have this company, they sell dog harnesses and they buy it regularly, not for themselves but to their friends who also have pets. And the return in customer rate is really high. So I always try to niche down on this or you know, only consumers, only supplements. But somehow in practice we always find those brands and we take on them and we are successful with them where it's not very consumable or you wouldn't think like that. But it still works out very well. So that's why at this point we don't limit the clientele based on, on this.
- [11:50]
Cody McGuffey
Can, can we go through that for, for just a minute? The dog harness as an example, just like to get tactical for a minute. Cause it sounds fun to me to kind of nerd out on it. So let's say the Dog Harness brand and let's say it's my brand and I want to, to grow this brand. I want to scale it right through with retention marketing and then just growth, growth marketing in general. What are some of the things that you would ask me that I can, I could just hammer out to you? Like almost treat me as if I'm a potential client, if you wouldn't mind.
- [12:21]
Daniel Budai
Yeah. So how to scale this brand ultimately? Right, that's the question. Or what should focus on?
- [12:28]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, what do I need to know? I need to have my numbers in place. Right. Like what's my ltv or what's my average order value? Things like this.
- [12:35]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, sure. So there are some elements which depend on us less. I would say product market fit. We typically work with clients where it already exists. So there is some product market fit. And as a business owner you have to find that, I think. And then yeah, when a client comes to us, we typically focus on I would say four main levers. So one is how much people they spend on the average on the website. So this is typically the average order value and the conversion value. Or actually the two numbers can be merged into one which is revenue per visitor on your website. If you think about AOV and the conversion rate of the site really ends up with revenue per website visitor. That's one important metric.
- [13:27]
Cody McGuffey
What's, what's a good number there? That should shoot for, for dog harnesses.
- [13:32]
Daniel Budai
I don't remember on the top of my head. I always say if you want to use ads in the US shoot for a minimum 50$aov.
- [13:41]
Cody McGuffey
50Aov and then per click. My CAC would probably be. My customer acquisition cost would be hopefully less than 50. Right. Much less than 50. $20 probably. Right. Considering. Considering profit. So that means my per click would be maybe a dollar per revenue per click. I mean would I shoot for a dollar, maybe two dollars? Is that too high?
- [14:04]
Daniel Budai
I mean typically it's three to one. The CAC and LTV ratio. Now actually I mentioned another acronym which is ltv. Right. So we can come back to this. But if your acquisition like CAC AOVA ratio is 3. Sorry. 1, 2, 3. That's, that's great. So if the AOV is 50 and your CAC is like 15 or 20 bucks, I think that's, that's good.
- [14:28]
Cody McGuffey
Beautiful. And for coming back to that, for anyone listening to this, like where Did. Where did Daniel and Cody go? If you're brand new, LTV is lifetime, lifetime value and AOV is average order value. It's just amount of what on average, what do people spend on your. On when they order?
- [14:46]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So now we can jump to the next one, which is ltv. So basically lifetime value of a customer, which is a very figurative or, you know, very abstract thing to say. Nobody wants to wait a lifetime, you know, of their customers. So typically for a new business we use LTV 90 days. For a larger business, LTV one year. But basically you want to have a timeline, a time horizon for this LTV metric. You can see it in a tool like triple well or you know, different software tools and you can compare it to your acquisition cost, the LTV metric. And typically if it's 1-23-124-125 is already really good. I would say I have a client in Europe where it's 1 to 8. So their acquisition is very cheap compared to the lifetime value of customers. It's a hair care product and the people, they buy it every month, the relatively high price. So it's, it's a really good business model.
- [15:56]
Cody McGuffey
So lt, what are typical profit margins for, for, for your clients? I would say across all of them, profit margin.
- [16:05]
Daniel Budai
So yeah, that's one thing which is everyone defines a profit margin differently. Like what this really means. If you ask me. I would say there is revenue and then minus cost of goods, then you end up with the gross margin and then minus ad spend and your marketing spend, you end up with your contribution margin after those and then you have your fixed cost, which can be your accountant, your office, whatever. It's not related to the unit cost that you have. So it doesn't matter how many products you sell, you still pay your accountant, you still pay your office, all of those. So once.
- [16:54]
Cody McGuffey
Sorry, keeping the lights on.
- [16:57]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, exactly. So once you deduct those and you will get your net profit margin. I just want to clarify these terms, but probably you ask about the gross margin. I assume so minus cost of goods, then it really varies. So it can be 90, 95%. Like there was this skincare brand where they manufacture the product in house, you know, like almost at home, and it's 95%. While others, they sell, extreme example, they sell hardware in Australia and it's like 30%. So there we really need a seven 10x ROAS on their ads to see a good return. So it can vary a lot. I would say you want to shoot for 70, 80%. So your cost of goods should be 20%, 25. Personally, I wouldn't start a business where it's more than that. I really like selling air, you know, high margins because you can spend on marketing. And I know my strength is marketing. That's the other thing. If you feel your strength is more the product, maybe you could be more okay to have a lower margin and really have a good product. Spend less on marketing. So depends on what you want. Yeah, it's a consideration.
- [18:27]
Cody McGuffey
I agree with it. I like that we're having the conversation, because many teams, many times people aren't thinking about these things when they start the business. I know I wasn't. I was just like, I want to sell this. And you figure out the margins later on, and you realize that a year later, oh, wow. This is actually a really hard business just by. Just by default, because the numbers just don't make sense. And. And that's an. It's better to catch this on the front end of things rather than like, you're five years in and you're like, oh, wow, no wonder it's so hard, because I can't spend any money to get the customers, you know, because I run out of money.
- [19:03]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super important. And this is still my first business, by the way. But I'm. I'm in an agency, so I can see a lot of businesses. Probably at some point, I will start another business. At that point, I will be so much more educated on these numbers. Just so different, you know, like, it was almost like a random decision when I started this agency, like, what to do. It was very random what I started doing. So, yeah, I think by time you get smarter and you know these numbers and you start being less emotional about these decisions. You know the numbers and what truly makes sense for you, which is just super important.
- [19:45]
Cody McGuffey
I agree. What. What do you think are the things that when a client comes to you, let's say I'm doing a million dollars a year in annual revenue and I'm selling dog leashes, for example. What are some things that you guys would do almost like, right away? Like, first 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. What. What would you guys have me do?
- [20:07]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, Great question. First of all, we would ask a lot of questions. All you know about these metrics and all of that, but also about your audience. And one unique thing we do is we check your reviews. And actually we use AI to summarize your reviews to see what your customers say, how your product is different, how it works, because it's one thing what the Business owner says, but another what the customer says. And you know, many times we find unique angles using this approach. And the next would be to audit the main marketing channels. So meta ads, Google Ads, email reviewing the website, typically these four things, auditing them and then we decide what's the lowest hanging fruit. Is it meta ads or Google Ads or email marketing? Maybe your website, which is probably the most undervalued by business owners, they forget that the purchase happens on the website. They usually focus on the ads acquisition side or email marketing. But they really miss on the website and you know, you know how it could be improved a lot.
- [21:18]
Cody McGuffey
So what are some things on the website that they could improve? Like what's some of the low hanging fruit on the website?
- [21:23]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, sure. So I would say typically for a smaller business, number one thing, believe it or not, it's social proof. So I go to your website and it seems like not a real business or, or even if I believe that, okay, this is a legit business, legit product. But I cannot see any testimonials, press coverage, what your benefits are. But I would say social proof and really building trust in the eyes of people. You know, nowadays we have so many scams and so many just e commerce businesses out there and products. Right. Like there is a huge choice out there. So and then Amazon as well. So you want to make sure that people, they trust your site and they are okay to spend money with you online. So I would say social proof is the major thing, number one thing below seven figure. Almost everyone has this issue. And regarding social proof, you cannot overdo this. You cannot have too many reviews or too much social proof. It's just not a thing. So just add as many as possible, basically.
- [22:31]
Cody McGuffey
So like 10 to start with and then plus 100 is totally okay. And just having it almost like in a carousel or just kind of scattered throughout the site is important.
- [22:41]
Daniel Budai
I like making this overwhelming, you know, like people look at it and they are like, oh my God, wow, so many reviews, it's crazy. So I would just, you know, add them there close to the footer. The reviews, you can use different apps, but actually I would use these for example, customer reviews in multiple sections. So not just once, you know, at the bottom with an app, but also you can add this next to your add to cart some highlighted review, somebody talking about the main benefit of the product and then add the press coverage, for example. Works out really well. Add a photo to your product images where you just take a photo of great customer reviews, add before and afters. So There are multiple angles how you can really use social proof for your website.
- [23:35]
Cody McGuffey
What's another one? Social proof? How about like load speed? Any of that? How often are you seeing load speed being an issue?
- [23:42]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, sure. So I can see this as an issue. But to be honest, nowadays most E comm stores, they are built on Shopify and I just shot a video about this the other day that I think 5, 10 years ago the speed was a huge issue and UX. But nowadays Shopify just so good and you know, it's standardized that I don't think it's the main problem anymore. So of course you can improve it. And there are many slow sites, but it's not that terrible. So I can see sites with terrible ratings, but the conversion rate is still there because people, they trust the site they want to buy. So it's fine.
- [24:24]
Cody McGuffey
Beautiful, man. I think it's a good time to transition into rapid fire. You ready for rapid fire questions? Let's do that. What is your favorite business book?
- [24:37]
Daniel Budai
Oh, wow. I have some books in front. I really like one book, it's called Creativity Inc. And it's written by Ed Catmull.
- [24:51]
Cody McGuffey
I've never heard of the book.
- [24:52]
Daniel Budai
Okay, Ed Catmull and I think he's one of the founders of Pixar. And yeah, he talks about principles in business, but also there is a lot of storytelling. That's why I like it. You know, it's not too dry, not too hardcore. There are stories probably five, six principles broken down in the book. It also talks about Steve Jobs because they were friends and I think he acquired Pixar or he got some equity or something like that. So it's a cool book. And the last couple pages there, he summarizes all his principles, is really useful.
- [25:33]
Cody McGuffey
What's one thing that you wish that you knew before starting your business?
- [25:40]
Daniel Budai
That's a great question. So I think that is this phrase that focus is so important in business and yeah, it's just crucial. But I think I took it too seriously too early. So I focused on one thing, email marketing, which helped me to a certain extent, but also for like six, seven years, I didn't experiment with other things, other services. And just recently I started and it benefited us so well, the company and me as well. And I would, yeah, I think if I started experimenting with more services earlier, more things that would have been even better.
- [26:24]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, that's awesome. What's the worst advice that you've ever received about business?
- [26:31]
Daniel Budai
Wow, I never thought about this, actually. Worst advice.
- [26:37]
Cody McGuffey
It's supposed to be Challenging. We'll come back to that. We'll come back to that one.
- [26:41]
Daniel Budai
Let's do that. Yeah.
- [26:43]
Cody McGuffey
How many hours do you think do you work in your business per week on average?
- [26:49]
Daniel Budai
I would say around 50, 60 hours at the moment.
- [26:54]
Cody McGuffey
You're sprinting, you're going after it still.
- [26:57]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, still. Actually I doubled down this year. I watched too much Hormozy, I guess last year it was less.
- [27:05]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, nice. If your family and your friends and your customers had to get together without you and you're not allowed to be there and they had to write an honest article or, or book about you and they're characterizing your traits, the good stuff and also maybe the not so good stuff. What are some things that they would say?
- [27:32]
Daniel Budai
Oh, I really like this one. So I would say they, yeah, they would tell that I'm reliable and kind of a loyal person. If you know our employee churn, you can see that as well. Very loyal team. And I think I tried to set an example there too. So reliable as well. Very data driven. Kind of a nerd for sure. And where we don't excel, I think we could improve in creativity actually. So we have a lot of introverted, data driven people, but sometimes we don't have enough, you know, just being a bit silly, funny and, and you know, have having this highly energetic, extroverted energy basically. So that's something that we could improve on. And, and I could also improve for sure.
- [28:34]
Cody McGuffey
How would you define a creator? Who is a creator to you? In the business world, you meet with a lot of entrepreneurs. Are they all creators or is it only content creators? How would you define creator?
- [28:46]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, that's, that's a good one. So yeah, I used to think about creating stuff like, you know, building a startup, like coming up with a super original idea. Nobody ever seen this before. And that person is a creator, especially if he can build it big. And you know, but now I can see that it's usually just copying or stealing from others or just putting small pieces into one thing and you know, just selling it to people. Yeah, so I think it changed a lot, this definition. To me, a creator, I think a creator is really just repackages something old or just collects the pieces that already exists and sells it to people. And actually a creator is a good salesman as well because there are so many innovators, creators, but they cannot sell it. So sales is a huge part as well.
- [29:42]
Cody McGuffey
I like that. Who do you think should be a business owner?
- [29:50]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, so I think, yeah, those people should become a business owner first. Of all have this creator mentality. That's for sure. Have want to learn sales. I think that's super important. Sales and marketing and you are good with stress, especially in the early days. You are okay to work hard and really just finding opportunities and leverages. And in the early days it will be your work and your time. That's the only leverage most beginners they have. But over time you will have more. So you are good at finding these leverages, the 8020 of things and really implement it in your business.
- [30:42]
Cody McGuffey
Love it. Thank you. Daniel, where can people find you and follow you and get connected with you? What can people do?
- [30:52]
Daniel Budai
Sure. So you can go to YouTube. I have a very active YouTube channel and type in Daniel Budai my name. You can also find me on other platforms, Instagram, LinkedIn, even Twitter. And also check out our site thebudaimedia.com if you want to work with us or download our resources. Now we have a lot of cheat sheets. We just uploaded our top 100 email templates. They made more than $5 million these hundred emails. So check those out on the site and yeah, let's talk.
- [31:31]
Cody McGuffey
Amazing, man. And by the way, for anybody listening or watching this, we will link to all those links in the show notes or in the YouTube description below. Daniel, man, thank you very much for coming on and sharing your value. I really appreciate it.
- [31:44]
Daniel Budai
Yeah, thank you.
- [31:46]
Cody McGuffey
Awesome. Talk to you soon.