← The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner
The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner
The Most Passive $104K/M Online Business You've Never Heard Of - Ep. #296
00:47:37
Loading summary
Transcript167 lines
- [00:00]
A
On this podcast, we only reserve the P word passive for like things that I truly believe can be. And I, I don't like that word usually, but I will use it when I feel like it applies. And it seems like this is one of those exceptions where it does apply.
- [00:14]
B
The best part about this business model, we talk about the money and everything like that, and that's awesome, but genuinely, once you get that client in the door, this becomes 99% passive. Your website does not need to be touched ever again. I have clients that have been with me for five years and I haven't spoken to them or had communication with them since. And they've been paying me every single month and that's my goal. People like to talk about real estate like it's passive, but it's definitely, oh
- [00:41]
A
jeez, don't get me started.
- [00:43]
B
Definitely not. This is a thousand times more passive than real estate because the risk is so much lower. You're not taking out a half million dollar mortgage on some property. And the overhead is so low on this business, if you're using the most drag and drop user friendly tools, you're spending no more than like $25 a month in total overhead. Our company does around hundred thousand dollars a month as a whole and our overheads may be less than $5,000 a month. Yeah, it's crazy. I was so desperate to get out of the situation I was in in my previous career. I just threw up the number. I go $6,000 and within 20 minutes it was wired. And I looked at my wife, I'm like, somebody just wired me $6,000. I'm like, it didn't seem real. I was chasing time freedom and I tried finding it in things like drop shipping, day trading, other business models online. But when I found this business model, I was in it for the time. But the real thing that gets me excited is the unlimited amount of time I get to spend with my kid.
- [01:44]
A
So let me tell you about Kyle. A while back, Kyle texted an old high school friend a screen recording and 20 minutes later had six grand wired into his bank account. And he had never earned a dollar online before that day. Six years later, he runs what he calls a website landlord business, doing about $104,000 a month with almost no overhead. And yes, he works only an hour or two a day. He uses cheap online tools to find supply and demand gaps. Then he builds basic websites within those niches. So today, of course, we're going to talk about how you can copy Kyle, what his script is for closing these deals. And what niches are still untapped. Enjoy. Hey, please just take half a second and hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this right now. It would really mean a lot. All right, well, Kyle, tell me what a website landlord is.
- [02:34]
B
So essentially a website landlord is people who own pieces of Internet real estate. And it's not domain flipping or anything like that. It's you're basically building a website for a certain niche in a certain city and then renting out that lead flow that comes through it to an actual local business owner. So let me give you an example. If I were to build a website right now for junk removal services in Austin, Texas, I don't own a junk removal company. I don't have a client that has a junk removal company. Anybody could build whatever website they want, you know, So I go out and build this website that's all about junk removal services in Austin, Texas. I do what's called SEO on the website to get it ranking. It involves content and something called backlinks we can get into later. But I get that website ranking to page one and once it's on page one of Google so that it shows up anytime somebody searches for for junk removal services in Austin, Texas, obviously people are going to be clicking on it. Obviously, there are hundreds if not thousands of people in Austin, Texas every day going to Google to try and find a junk removal company. So if my website is one of those sites on page one, I'm going to get a percentage of those people searching. And once they come to my site, they're going to see the little phone number that's on my website. Right. It's called a tracking phone number. I can control where all those calls flows to. It's my like dummy number. So when people call that phone number, it automatically forwards to a business owner I've partnered up with. Right. But to backtrack just a hair before I even have a business owner hooked up to them, I'm getting the site to page one. It's getting calls at first. I'm just letting all those calls go to voicemail before I have a client working with me. It's no big deal. I'm going to voicemail. There will be more callers next month. There's never ending.
- [04:18]
A
And you're capturing their info. They're not as likely to convert. You know, if you find a guy to buy your leads and he calls them later, but at least you still have the data and it's proof of concept. So you can say hey Bob, I get three calls a day for people searching for exactly what you're selling.
- [04:33]
B
Exactly, exactly. Well, the best part about this is that the overhead is so low in this business model. Like if you're using the most expensive tools, like the most drag and drop user friendly tools, you're spending no more than like $25 a month in total overhead per site. That's for the hosting, the URL and the phone number. Right. So the benefit of that is that once I do have a website, it's getting like 50 to 100 calls or so a month. I'm calling up that junk removal company in Austin, Texas and I'm like, hey man, I got this website, it's getting like 50 calls a month of people looking for junk removal services in Austin. Can I connect them to you for a week for free? And I'm not going to take a credit card information from you, I'm not going to make you sign anything. It's literally just a free trial and sometimes it sounds too good to be true to them and there's like, it sounds suspicious but usually they're like well whatever, all you need is my email and phone number. So you give them the free trial
- [05:27]
A
and you just want them to start trusting you and to see that your leads are good. So then they'll want to pay for them.
- [05:33]
B
Right, Exactly. So I give them the free trial and by the end of that week, if they've made some money off my calls, that next conversation I have with them is really just about what monthly flat fee we negotiate.
- [05:45]
A
Can I pause you? Because I feel like that's the, that's a big key of this is if they're making any money on, on my calls, how do you know that they're reporting accurately, that they're not lying, that they're following up with the leads, that they're actually answering the phone, et cetera. Or is. Does there just have to be a good bit of trust involved?
- [06:03]
B
Well, I could see if they're answering the calls or not. Sometimes in the call tracking platform I could see the recording stuff. But the thing is, is if they are didn't make any money off of it, then they're probably not going to be a good client for me anyway. So I'm just going to move on to the next person because if they're not making money off of it, why would they pay me? Right?
- [06:23]
A
Sure.
- [06:24]
B
And if they are making money off of it, they're not going to want me to turn the calls off.
- [06:28]
A
So the incentives are aligned exactly so can you see that? The recordings or the call transcripts as well?
- [06:34]
B
Yes.
- [06:35]
A
So they're like, sorry, yeah, I got a few calls but didn't go anywhere. And then you look at the transcript and it's like, all right, $700 invoice sent. You're like, hey, bro. Yes, but you're saying that doesn't even happen that often because they see that the calls are good, and now it's just a matter of not will you pay me, but how much will you pay me?
- [06:50]
B
Yeah, we come up with a flat fee, and I don't do any contracts with them. I'm just like, you know what, Cancel any time because I have the leverage because I'm sending them the calls, and if they cancel, the calls go away. So they're basically, if they cancel, they're agreeing to lose a big portion of their income. Right. So they could cancel whenever they want. Right. So they have that exit. So it's a pretty easy conversation. They saw the calls, they trust me versus a standard marketing company who does, like, sells Google Ads or Facebook ads or something like that. These sales calls for those people, it's. It's a trust game. They're working out like, hey, can I convince this guy to pay me fifteen hundred dollars a month for the next six months? And without any guarantee of results. Right. That's a tough sell. It's like you have to show them testimonials and be like, look, I promise you I'm really, really good at this, but sign this contract and you're going to pay me for the next six months whether I get you results or not. With me, the whole script is flipped because I'm like, hey, I already did the work of building and ranking a website and it's sending you calls and you're making money off of me before we even agree on a deal. And I'm not pressure selling. Yeah, this is more of like a. A landlord and tenant relationship, not like a oh, customer, please work with me.
- [08:04]
A
Right.
- [08:05]
B
Relationship.
- [08:05]
A
This is the rent. Yeah. If you don't like, I've had, I've had rental homes. It's like the rent is not negotiable because I've got 18 people applying for this house.
- [08:13]
B
100%. You don't want these calls. I'm just going to call Joe down the street. And I know it sounds like aggressive, I mean, but like, my service is hugely beneficial to small business owners who can't afford to take that fifteen hundred dollars a month risk on some marketing company with no guarantee of results. These small businesses, most of the guys I work with, they, they only have 1500 bucks to gamble on a marketing company. So with me, there's no gambling day one. They're getting leads to pay for my services. There's never a loss of money. It's. I'm an instant slot machine. You put, you put a thousand dollars into me, I'm sending you $5,000 back. You see? I mean, so it's really a huge benefit to these, like, more mom and pops that can't afford to gamble in a marketing company.
- [09:02]
A
Well, you mentioned, like, I don't have contracts. Like, I don't, I don't negotiate on price. And this is a trust business. And results are the greatest form of trust there is.
- [09:12]
B
Right.
- [09:13]
A
Contracts equal lack of trust in a relationship. You're saying I already brought you results. They were free. I called you and I brought you results. Like, this is the price. I don't need a contract because I got a guy waiting.
- [09:24]
B
Exactly. I'm not afraid of you canceling. I could call the next person I loved.
- [09:28]
A
Like, this is one of my general frameworks for life, is do the hard thing first. So, like, if you start a business and it is just a beast and you're beating your head against the wall and it takes months to get profitable, that means everything after that point is just going to be so much nicer and easier. Every business after that point, every sale after that point in the same business, you're saying, listen, bro, I did the hard part. The hard part is ranking. That's my skill. You're good at junk removal. You keep doing that. I'm really good at being a website landlord. I've already done the hard part. I've proven the results. And then everything after that is just gravy.
- [10:02]
B
Exactly, Exactly. It's, it's just day one results. And that's, that's really the benefit. The only downside for the business owner is that their brand isn't being advertised on my site. Right. But they don't care. Because the only reason you want to be on page one is because you want the customers that come from page one. And it's tons. It's not just any customers. It's high intent customers because no one is typing into Google junk removal services in Austin unless they're looking to purchase junk removal services in Austin. And plus, a lot of these people have had experience with paid ads. And paid ads, you get such low ROI because you pay thousands of dollars for them. And plus, if you're anything like me, which I think Most searchers are. Once you go to search on Google and you see a bunch of ads in this top section of the front page, you. You scroll right past them and go to the results below, which is where we are. Because people have this inclination or what's the word? The belief that if you're in the spots below the ads, that means you're the best in town, when in reality showing up right there has nothing to do with your quality of work. You could be the worst junk removal company in the whole state and you'll still be on page one because you have good SEO.
- [11:18]
A
Well, just like anything, if you're the best at marketing, you win. Yeah, right?
- [11:21]
B
Yeah. And the great part about the best part about this business model, we talk about the money and everything like that, and that's awesome. But genuinely, once you get that client in the door, this becomes 99% passive. All right. As you scale to more. Because once the site is built and ranked majority of the time, your website does not need to be touched ever again. Because we're competing in low competition SEO
- [11:48]
A
spaces like long tail searches.
- [11:50]
B
Not even. Not even. Because Junk Removal Austin might not be a great example because I haven't done my research on an actual low hanging fruit niche in Citi. But SEO is just a game of competition. I don't want to go into a niche where like Personal Injury Lawyer Los Angeles where the competing websites are funded by major marketing companies that these law firms are paying $50,000 a month to. I want to compete against Joe, Bill and Steve in Orem, Utah with the junk removal company where they have websites that I'm competing against. They bought those websites maybe back in 2005 and haven't touched them since. And so I go in there, make a half decent site and do basic SEO and I'm knocking them out of the park really quickly. And I don't have to do ongoing SEO to maintain the site because I'm already so far ahead and they're not even noticing that they're not in the number one spot anymore and they're still getting roughly the same amount of calls because being in spot one, two or three is roughly the same.
- [12:47]
A
Yeah, funny, because Orem, Utah is actually really competitive. Usually return missionaries like myself, I know you just picked that city at random, but super competitive there.
- [12:57]
B
But I want to just mention the passive part one more time because it is genuinely passive. The only time it becomes like maybe an hour or two a day of work is when you scale up to a point where I'm at where I have like over 100 clients and maybe 20% of those clients every month. Credit cards decline and I have to go follow up. Oh, payment. Right. And so I just test involves me shooting out text and emails every day to follow up with them to collect the payment. Maybe by the end of the month, one or two of them don't pay, I have some churn, and then I'm following up, just making phone calls to find a new client to replace them.
- [13:31]
A
Yeah, I mean what we're talking about is basic supply and demand. You're saying you look to the supply and demand first, not necessarily the keyword volume, but the supply and demand. And there are at least a thousand home service niches out there. And I know that sounds like too much, but there's really not more. If I say the word gutters, then it's gutter cleaning, gutter repair, gutter replacement, like just in the gutters, there's at least 10. Right. So let's just say there's a thousand to be conservative. And then let's say there's only a thousand cities worthy of trying to rank. That's a million supply and demand variations that we're talking about. Are you telling me that the market is so perfectly efficient that all million of those combinations are. There's a, there's the right amount of supply and demand in all of them? Absolutely not. And a decade from now, there still won't be. Right. So that's the level of opportunity here. And on this podcast we only reserve the P word passive for like things that I truly believe can be. And I, I don't like that word usually, but, but I will use it when I feel like it applies. And it seems like this is one of those exceptions where it does apply.
- [14:34]
B
So listen, it's not like dividends, right? It's not passive dividends.
- [14:38]
A
Well, it takes activity to get to the passive point.
- [14:42]
B
I'll tell you right now. You know, people like to talk about real estate like it's passive, but it's
- [14:47]
A
definitely, oh gee, don't get me started.
- [14:49]
B
Definitely not. This is a thousand times more passive than real estate because the risk is so much lower. You're not taking out a half a million dollar mortgage on some property and your overhead is maybe 20, $25 a month in total overhead, plus you cash flow way more and the maintenance is so much lower.
- [15:08]
A
So let me ask you about pricing. I'm going to make an assumption here because I'm kind of in this industry and I've been in Legion forever. Different types of Legion Directory sites. To me, there's a lot of overlap here with directory sites. I mean, a directory site could be a website landlord, a rank and rent site, right?
- [15:24]
B
Yes.
- [15:25]
A
So I'm going to make an assumption that you've tested a pay per lead model here as to a flat monthly price model because you thought, man, we could be much more profitable if we charge 30 bucks per call. And 30 bucks per call is very generous because we know that his close rate is 50%. His average job is $800. So 30 bucks per call is cheap form. You tested it and then you saw that it just didn't work as well. Because these business owners want to know what their bill is going to be every month. Even if they net out behind, they would rather pay you a flat fee every month because of the predictability of it. Is that accurate at all?
- [16:01]
B
So what most of these business owners want to do is a commission based and they want to just pay on jobs they close. But obviously I can't do that because that requires me to track all their jobs and track and trust. You know, there's no way for me to know if they actually close the job or not.
- [16:16]
A
And if you could, if you could trust them perfectly, it probably be more profitable for you.
- [16:21]
B
I'm actually, it's funny you bring that up because for the first time ever, my contractor that I use for my house, we've become pretty good friends. And just recently I started generating concrete leads for him. And we're actually doing a 10% commission within. It's turning out to be way more profitable. But that's because I totally trust him and he's a cool guy.
- [16:38]
A
Yeah.
- [16:39]
B
Yep. But the pay per call thing, yes, it's unpredictable for the client. And I've done things in the past where they have fluctuating tiers of rates where it's like, hey, if you get 25 to 50 calls, you're going to pay this much. If you get 50 to 100 calls, you're going to pay this much. I've kind of abandoned that not only for the client's sake, but for my sake. I know I do really well. I make around 35k a month. And it might be sound impressive to some people. And it is, I guess, kind of impressive.
- [17:05]
A
Is that profit?
- [17:07]
B
That's pretty much. The overhead is like so low. Our company does around $100,000 a month as a whole, and our overheads may be less than $5,000 a month. Yeah, it's crazy. But the point I'm trying to make is I am not one of those aggressive entrepreneurs with like SOPs and watching motivation videos and going to the gym every morning. I am at my core a fairly lazy guy. Like, I used to work in television. I worked in television for 10 years and I was working 20 to 24 hour days, some days during show weeks. Like, I worked on award shows like the Oscars, Emmys, big shows like that. And when there's a deadline, there's no avoiding that deadline. I was grinding it out and got burnt out and started looking for business models. I guess the reason that relates to what I'm about to say is because I really wanted. I was chasing time freedom and I tried finding it in things like drop shipping, day trading, other business models of mine. But when I found this business model, I was in it for the time freedom and the easiness of it. And so when I first started, I had this rush of motivation built out really, really big for the first few years because I was just, I had my eye on the prize. But I'm in year six of doing this business model now, right? And at the level I'm making, which some people would assume I should probably be making more after six years. But I'm, I've kind of fallen into the comfort zone. I'm making a number that I'm really comfortable with. But the reason I switched from the tiered pricing to the monthly flat rate pricing is because I wanted simplicity. When you have the tiered pricing, I have clients reaching out to me being like, why did my invoice pop up to 1500 this month? Then they want to go over every single lead with me and determine whether it was actually a legitimate lead or not. Yeah, I don't want that headache. I'd rather make less money and have this be a hundred percent passive than squeak out an extra five to ten grand a month. Because I'm like overanalyzing and auditing all the leads.
- [19:07]
A
Auditing leads?
- [19:08]
B
Yeah, I don't want anything to do that makes a lot of sense. They've been with me for five years and I haven't spoken to them or had any communication with them since. And they've been paying me every single month. And that's my goal.
- [19:19]
A
Listen, I need more people like this to interview on my podcast. So if you know of someone with a side hustle or a business that's unique and cool and super profitable, email Molly M O l l y co founders.com that's one word. Co founders.com mollyofounders.com Tell her your story. And we'll give you a hundred bucks if we end up interviewing them. How long did it take you after starting this six years ago to see your first win?
- [19:42]
B
Three months. I kind of did it a backwards way. I. Since I was really hungry to get money in the door, I didn't do it the classic way of building the sites first, then finding a client. What I did was I went onto my phone, I went into my Facebook, Instagram, I made a list of all the business owners I knew. Right. And I came across this one friend of mine who was an attorney, a worker's comp attorney. He was a friend of mine from high school. I hadn't talked to him in 10 years though. But I reached out to him. I made a screencast video where I recorded my screen and showed him how this business model works and how I could build him a site targeting torrents. I could build him a site targeting Long Beach, Anaheim, Simi Valley, in specific cities targeting where I could generate him leads from. And he loved the idea, he wanted to try it. And he said, what do I have to pay to get this ball rolling? And so I just, I had never, I had never made that single dollar in my life outside of W2 earnings. And. And so I just threw out a number because I always heard in movies and stuff, aim high.
- [20:37]
A
And you know, in your defense, like a personal injury attorney as like an agency owner is like the golden clock.
- [20:43]
B
Well, it was a worker.
- [20:44]
A
They've got budgets.
- [20:45]
B
It was a worker.
- [20:46]
A
Okay, you said that. Okay, so it was still less. Attorneys are great clients.
- [20:49]
B
Yeah.
- [20:49]
A
They've got cash.
- [20:50]
B
Yes, exactly. I just threw up the number. I go, $6,000 and within 20 minutes it was wired. And I looked at my wife, I'm like, somebody just wired me $6,000. I'm like, it didn't seem real. But the thing about that is I still at the time, wasn't like an expert at this. But what was good about that is that this was somebody I knew and I didn't want to burn his trust and burn a relationship. And so by him sending me that money, it lit a fire to get things going. I didn't care.
- [21:18]
A
Deliver.
- [21:19]
B
Yeah. I didn't care if I spent every single dime of that $6,000 in outsourcing or ways to make it happen faster. I just needed to deliver results. Cause I knew if I did, it would be a long term relationship. And he's still my client to this day.
- [21:32]
A
Wow. Now what does he pay on an ongoing basis?
- [21:35]
B
Well, since he was a friend, he did have fluctuating at first, we started out at like 5,000 or so a month. And then we got. Once the lead flow started increasing, I got to like 7,500amonth and stuff. But over time, like, we've restructured deals because he is a friend. We go on hikes and stuff sometimes he started paying me like, 300 bucks per new client he landed, which added a little bit more incentive to me. And then he would also pay a base SEO fee of like 1500 bucks. So he paid me 1500 bucks a month plus 300 per new client he signs up.
- [22:09]
A
Wow. So you spent your first three months just learning. Were you building and publishing anything or just kind of learning tools?
- [22:16]
B
Yeah, I was just building and learning.
- [22:17]
A
Well, I think it's so important that when anyone launches any agency, digital marketing, whatever, start with your network. Like, it all comes down to trust. Don't be afraid to burn your friend. Like, just let it light a fire under you to over deliver and start with your network. Because if you just start cold with people out of insecurity, which I've done that before, it's going to be so much harder to get your first yes. But if you get your first yes from a friend, now you have a case study that you can sell to all the cold leads.
- [22:44]
B
100%. I always tell people, I think a key is digging yourself into a hole, you know, which is what?
- [22:51]
A
It sounds crazy, but I know exactly what you mean.
- [22:54]
B
Yeah. I accepted $6,000 from this guy, and I'm not the type of person that feels comfortable just robbing someone. So I felt this overwhelming pressure to dig myself out of this hole. I'm like, he's expecting something very soon. I got to get into action. It's kind of like a gym membership, you know, if you go sign up at Planet Fitness and you're paying $10 a month, it's very easy for you to be like, I don't feel like going this month. Big deal. 10 bucks, right? But if you're spending like 500 bucks a month on a gym membership, you're like, I better show up because I'm spending this damn money.
- [23:29]
A
Well, didn't you tell me that you first learned how to do this from a course?
- [23:32]
B
I did.
- [23:32]
A
If so, how much did that cost? Did that light a fire under you?
- [23:35]
B
$6,500.
- [23:38]
A
Was it a course and a community or just. Just what we're in?
- [23:41]
B
Community. It was. It was a good one. Right? It doesn't exist anymore. That course doesn't really exist anymore, but it was. I don't Care. It doesn't. I'm so glad I spent that money. Now obviously I did not have a ton of money back then. Like my net worth was probably 20k. But I was so desperate to get out of the situation I was in in my previous career that, you know, I had bought $500 courses in the past. Now my mindset was like, you know, what you get, what you pay for. Why would I spend $500 on something that's not getting me anywhere? Wouldn't I rather spend $6,000 in something that's going to actually get me somewhere? You know, obviously you have to vet that. It's actually going to be worth the money. But like I did and it actually was, you know, this was, there was involvement and everything.
- [24:25]
A
Yeah, I think, I think that's why courses and community get a bad rap because they don't deliver on their promises. They, they sell a crapload of goods and if it, if they do deliver on their promise, they can be life changing.
- [24:37]
B
I know courses, you have bad rep and they probably, some of them deserve it. But, but a course changed my absolute life. I've witnessed it changed so many other people's lives. It's just you're learning new skills and what you really want to find in course is a community that's keeping you engaged. And that's probably the most important part.
- [24:55]
A
How much does your most profitable customer pay for you? So let me ask you two questions. And one, one is how much do you make from your most profitable customer? Two is how much does your most profitable customer make for themselves from your leads? Does that make sense?
- [25:11]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Like how much are we both benefiting from all of this?
- [25:14]
A
Yeah. And maybe it's the same customer, maybe it's not.
- [25:17]
B
I don't really have exact insights onto my customer's revenue.
- [25:23]
A
Like roi.
- [25:24]
B
Yeah, I don't have exact numbers into that, but my metric really is anecdotally
- [25:28]
A
like, do you know of a customer that was like, dude, I'm making 30 grand a month from your leads? You know what I'm saying?
- [25:33]
B
I have been told things like that before. So I do have clients who have told me that like I get holiday cards from some of these guys. They're like telling me how grateful they are that I made their Christmas because I showed up in their lives. I have a guy who told me, we just upgraded our house to a, we moved to a four bedroom house instead of a two bedroom with our kids and everything. And it's all because of your leads. The best feeling ever. And it It. You almost feel guilty accepting that praise because you haven't really done any work for them since you built the website. It's not like I'm grinding it out for them every day, but I'm still benefiting them. But we do have some clients that pay us, you know, like, $5,000 a month. And my metric for assuming why they're paying me is that they're doing really well. You know, if they were only squeaking out an extra thousand dollars off my. The $5,000 are paying me, I don't think they'd be still paying me. Yeah.
- [26:23]
A
How many calls are. Is a client like that getting 5,000?
- [26:27]
B
Well, it depends what niche you're in. And the niches that my partners and I focus on, it's. I mean, that would be maybe like 800 calls a month. So sometimes I'll build out the client. Sometimes so many clients who has, like, multiple cities. Like, you don't really get to 800 calls a month in one city. In most cases, it's usually multiple cities or multiple territories within the state. So what you could do with some of your clients is you could grow them out if they offer services in adjacent cities or adjacent markets. So you'll start with them in, let's say, Dallas, and then you could build them another site in Fort Worth. You could build them another site in, say, they could go all the way to Austin, build them another site in San Antonio, and then all of a sudden, you've built up this client to something like $5,000 a month and getting 800 leads a month, you know, it's well worth it for them. I honestly am okay. Like, there are tons of clients that I should be getting paid more from.100%. I deserve more for some of these sites. But because of the passive nature of this business model, I try not to get too greedy. Because if somebody loves my leads and say I feel like I should be getting a thousand dollars for this site, but they're only paying me like 600, I'm going to be okay with that deal because I know they're going to be comfortable at that rate. They're never going to bother me, and they're going to stick with me for years and years and years. I don't have to hear from them, and it's easy. Versus if I'm charging them too much, then they're going to. They're going to be on top of, like, the quality of my services and be calling me up and questioning every time there's a slow month or something. I Don't want any of that. I want easy.
- [27:59]
A
This is such a hard principle to learn. I'm still trying to learn it because I'm like, I, I still fight a scarcity mindset having grown up poor. But if you think of the most profitable companies on, on the planet and the, the highest value companies on the planet, Apple, $4 trillion company, they are all companies that offer hundreds or thousands of times more value than what they're selling. Amazon. If Amazon prime went from whatever it is 150 to 400 tomorrow, I'm going to pay it. And Amazon knows I'm going to pay it, right? Because I'm buying from Amazon like every single day. If the Apple iPhone went from $1,000 to $2,000, I'm going to buy it. And Apple knows it, right? They know that not everyone will, but their core users will. But my lifetime value with Apple is over $100,000 because of the fact that I think that Even though my MacBook was $3,500, I'm going to spend thousands of hours on it and generate millions of dollars from that MacBook. It's worth hundreds or even thousands of times more than what I paid for it. And because of that, Apple's insanely profitable and they're a $4 trillion company. Rinse and repeat with any mega profitable company. And so it's hard to do that. It's hard to not charge more when you know you can. But if you play the long game and you're relentlessly addicted to, to playing long term games with long term people, then you can do it like you cannot raise your prices just because you can. You can keep buying more and more trust and goodwill and then they'll tell their friends, and then they'll tell their friends and you will make more money while charging less all along. It's a magical thing.
- [29:36]
B
Yeah, it's, it's. You almost want people to forget your bill even exists. That's kind of my goal. You know, I want people to feel it every month and get punched in the gut. You know, I want them to kind of forget about it because then they're just going to leave me alone. Because what we're all doing this for, I mean some people are in entrepreneurship for the love of the game. You know, some things about doing business gets me excited, but the real thing that gets me excited is the unlimited amount of time I get to spend with my kid, my ability to travel whenever I want on my own terms and you know, being able to max out my, you know, Savings accounts and IRAs and everything like that. And so I just create a safe life for my kids. So that's the goal. It's not to necessarily become the richest man in the world. I don't have the Jeff Bezos bug, you know. Yeah, once you hit this level, you kind of just want easy, whatever guru
- [30:25]
A
or marketer try to convince people that a lifestyle business is a pejorative, a bad thing, a negative thing. I hate them because I've done both. I've raised money, venture capital, I've flown to Silicon Valley. I've, like, I've gone like the billion dollar exit path. And oh my gosh, like, you are much more likely to fall on your than you are to ever reach a billion dollars or anywhere close to it. Whereas if you optimize for six figures a year or hundreds, like 2, 3, 4, $500,000 a year, you are more likely to get to 10 million a year or 5 million a year than if you optimize for a billion and land at 10. Like, if you optimize for a billion, it's boom or bust. And it's probably bust. Optimize for 500,000, it's more likely to be boom and. And you're able to take that 500,000 and scale it if you want to, while still having a great lifestyle. Like, I spend hours in the yard every day trimming my fruit trees, planting trees. Like, I love spending time outside with my kids, traveling. We go on like five trips a year. And this is a lifestyle business and it's freaking awesome. Yeah, people should optimize for that.
- [31:32]
B
I don't think people realize that you don't need half a billion dollars to be financially free. You know, you only even need $20 million to be financially free. You just need enough money in your checking account that could keep you floating for a year or two years. It hit the fan. You just need to be able to have enough money in your bank account to be able to tell your employer to screw off if you didn't want to work there anymore. Yeah, because that's the real freedom. If you feel like you're trapped in a job and you can't leave it, that's not freedom. If you have enough money in your bank account and you could walk away from any job, then that's true freedom.
- [32:07]
A
What does your tech stack look like? What tools could you not live without to do with. To do what you do?
- [32:13]
B
So, number one, you know, I started off building sites on Weebly because I didn't know how to build websites. And it's super easy, drag and drop. But since I got partners who were a bit more savvy at things like WordPress, my costs went down. And we use WordPress and things move way faster. The reason I don't encourage people to start with WordPress if they don't already know it is because it takes a long time to learn it. So even though Weebly is more expensive, it's better to get started on that. So first tech stack, WordPress or website building tool. Then you got CallRail, which is the call tracking software. You could use CallRail, you could use Twilio, there are a bunch of other providers out there, but that's where I get the phone numbers from and how I could track all the phone numbers. And it also automates emails to my client with a recording of the call and the phone number of the caller so they can keep track of any call that comes from me and so that there was no question of whether it came from me or not. And then it also does something called a whisper message that whenever my client picks up the phone, the first thing they hear is a little robot voice recording that says call from Kyle's leads and boom, they're talking to the customer. So it's an all in one tool. So CallRail, WordPress and honestly an Excel sheet. I don't use any fancy CRM. I only use go high level, some people do. But all I need is my client's name, business name, phone number, email, and that's all I really need. And obviously we have a Google sheet page for all of our sites and all the domain names and everything. But there's no reason to get to get overly complicated with it.
- [33:43]
A
Now for researching what city, what niche to go after, are we talking Ahrefs, Semrush or are there other tools out there that you use?
- [33:52]
B
So as a beginner I would use Ahrefs because it's very detailed and it'll help you give get really good accurate information to find backlinks to do competition research and niche research, et cetera. But today, these days I use something called Mangles. It's just a really clean, fun, easy interface and I don't need extreme detail anymore because I have a lot of intuition I've built up and so I'll use Mangles. It's really cool. They got a Chrome plugin that's really easy and that's just what I use now. But I would recommend anybody starting out, if you're learning this game, to use a refs.
- [34:27]
A
Okay guys, tkowners.com that's my community where people are building businesses. I do AMAs, Q&As every week live. You can ask me anything you want. You can have accountability partners. It's about a thousand people in there building, starting, growing businesses. Check out TKO, as in the Kerner office. Tkowners.com what did your first, like, six months and 12 months in revenue look like? How long did it take you to get to 10 grand a month, 20 grand a month, et cetera?
- [34:52]
B
I got to $10,000 a month at the end of my first year. I found this business model in August of 2019. And then obviously pandemic hit March 2020 and everything shut down. And so my TV work went away and I was double down on this and give it my full attention during Pandemic. And, you know, I was able to get to $10,000 a month on, you know, I would say 50 to 75% effort. Right. Just because I'm. Yeah, like I said before, I'm not the crazy aggressive person. So there are some people I know who got the 30 or 40 grand a month by the end of their first year. I'm just not one of them.
- [35:25]
A
And then how long until 20, 30, 100 grand a month where you're at now?
- [35:29]
B
We started averaging around 100 grand a month in the company around year four, but we were hovering around 50 to 70 for a while. We were kind of cruising and plateauing for a bit, and then we just got a second wind and built ourselves up to 100 around, you know, year four or five.
- [35:45]
A
Okay. How do you find clients? I guess you told me in the very beginning you built. You proactively build the sites for them based on what your main goals ahrefs show. And then you go find junk removal companies in that whatever it is, whatever site you built, you go find people to sell it to. Is that right?
- [36:02]
B
Yeah. I build a generic site that's all about the niche and city. Generic site, no branding. And then I just literally go to Google, Yelp yellow Pages and make a list on an Excel sheet of all the businesses in town that offer that service. And then I just start calling because it's such an easy phone call. Some people are too afraid to make the phone call, so they do text or email, but I just want to get it over with. And I'm just offering people a free trial. It's a gift.
- [36:27]
A
The difficulty of your phone call is correlated with the. The strength of your offer or not. Right. You're confident in what you're Selling because you're already generating leads for the person who like you're calling them up and, and saying, I have free money for you.
- [36:41]
B
Yes.
- [36:41]
A
Would you like that or not? So I hate cold calling. I'm an introvert. But if I'm calling with that offer, I'm picking up the phone all day.
- [36:48]
B
No brainer, right? It's a no brainer. I have a script I've said over and over again that I've tweaked throughout the years, but it's not.
- [36:53]
A
What's the script? What's the 8020 of it?
- [36:56]
B
I mean, it's really just like I'm really sounding very casual. It's not. I don't call them and say, hey, my name's Kyle from Superstar Leads LLC and I want to know if I can speak with the business owner. No, I'm not doing any of that. I'm calling up and saying, hey, what's up man? I'm almost presenting it like I have a problem I need help with from them. I go, hey, man, I got this website that is getting like 50 calls a month for junk removal services in Austin. I'm not a junk removal company. I don't know what to do with them. Do you think I could send them to you for like a week and you could just see what they're like?
- [37:27]
A
So good.
- [37:28]
B
All I need is a phone number and email to send them to and obviously there's some conversation there. They ask some questions. I tell that I explained to them how they're going to receive the calls and then it's almost like, you know, they're almost like, this is not going to work. This is going to be nothing. This is some schmuck that's just, you know, calling for some random reason and it's really that casual. I almost want to present it like I need their help taking over these calls because I can't handle them. Right. And so I just give them the calls for a week and then it does the selling for me. I just have to almost trick them into accepting this beautiful gift because. Or else sometimes they'll get in their own way and they'll just be like, this is too good to be true. I can't take this.
- [38:09]
A
Right, right, right. Do you have any idea like what your close rate is with this pitch if you actually get them on the phone?
- [38:15]
B
I would say it takes me one to maybe three trials to get a locked in business owner. One to three.
- [38:22]
A
What's your churn once you have them?
- [38:23]
B
Average client lasts from. I mean it's really, if somebody's going to cancel, they usually do it within the first six months. But if you make it past six months, they're sticking around for maybe five years or more. Wow.
- [38:35]
A
I have client.
- [38:35]
B
I still have my first client, like I said. So, you know, it could be forever.
- [38:39]
A
Are you able to share a URL of a site so we can see like what it looks like?
- [38:43]
B
Why don't you just go to Google and type in auto glass repair New Orleans? Okay. You see the second site right below broad glass right here? Yeah. Click that.
- [38:52]
A
Okay.
- [38:52]
B
This is my basic site. And what's. It's very basic and ugly, but I think it's beautiful because you know what, it works. Google is just an algorithm and it's like a baby. And you want to be abundantly clear to Google, this is what I do and this is where I do it. You don't want them to struggle to figure that out. So my website loads really fast, easy for Google's little bot to read. And it clearly conveys that I am the expert on auto glass repair in New Orleans. All right. And so it gets the job done. It communicates properly and I just keep adding content to it until it gets to page one and there it is. And this site generates around 50 calls or so a month for a company I've been working with for five years now. And he pays me around 600 bucks a month for the past five years and I've maybe talked to him five times.
- [39:44]
A
Geez. And like you, they get the form leads for free as well, right?
- [39:49]
B
Yes, he gets the form leads as well. Yeah. And also like, I know this site's ugly and basic, but if you tell me if you're going to hire a tow towing company or an auto glass company, do you care if their site is pretty Pretty or not? No.
- [40:02]
A
My highest converting newsletter, like paid ads site for my newsletter is this one right here. No distractions there. Can't. I'm serious. I've a b tested it. It looks ridiculous. Like, put your picture on there, put a testimonial. No, that's, that's a distraction. That's something else for them to click. I don't want them to be distracted by anything. I don't need their number, their name, anything. Just give me your email.
- [40:25]
B
That's fast.
- [40:26]
A
So it works.
- [40:27]
B
That's awesome. Yeah. I mean when you're looking for these blue collar services, you expect the sites to be. You want your tow truck guy to not really care about his Internet presence. You know,
- [40:39]
A
if I have A contractor roll up to my house with a wrapped truck. I'm saying, bro, turn around. You're too expensive. Yeah, I'm serious. What niches do you target and does it matter? Is there a better niche out there than others, or does it mostly come down to supply and demand?
- [40:56]
B
It mostly comes down to the level of competition. So, I mean, great niches. I know somebody making $50,000 a month strictly doing epoxy flooring leads. Right? I know a guy doing $90,000 a month, and all he does is spray foam insulation leads. Right? So there's a wide variety of niches, and you learn about new ones all the time. Like, I just stumbled across one the other week. Crime scene cleanup. You should look into that industry. It's actually something that you might find interesting for. You have.
- [41:29]
A
Yeah, there's like, I haven't done an episode on it, but I. I'm aware there. There's franchises for it. Like, it's a very profitable business.
- [41:36]
B
They make so much money. It's dark business. I don't know if I'd want to generate leads for that, you know, but it's an industry not a lot of people thought about. And you're going to come across a lot of these types of industries as your eyes are opening to these different spaces, right?
- [41:51]
A
Yeah. Now, this is a loaded question, but, like, what's the 80, 20 of how to get these to actually rank? Like, let's say you look at these, you know, these research sites, lot of search traffic, very low competition. Okay, cool. You buy the domain city name in there, you build it.
- [42:10]
B
What.
- [42:11]
A
What are, like, the most important things you need to do to get it to actually rank for the client to get leads?
- [42:16]
B
I'm going to preface this by saying that too many people follow the SEO blogs and the big Google updates and stuff and get freaked out and take them too literally. It's going to be hard to believe, and people are going to think I'm full of it. But I'm doing the same strategies I was doing back in 2019 to get local sites right at the 80% is content and backlinks. The 20% is maybe citations, heading structure and stuff like that, right? But the 80% is content and backlinks and volume of content, quality of content, and quality of backlinks and volume backlinks. But people have to remember, if they go onto Google and do their own research on SEO and they think that my strategies are outdated, they have to remember I'm doing local, low competition SEO, all right? And I'm not Competing against. I'm not trying to rank for the keyword weight loss where I'm competing against wegovy and Ozempic, I'm competing against the keyword junk removal. Austin, Texas and the other sites there are run by Joe, Bill and Steve.
- [43:24]
A
Yeah, you just got to show up.
- [43:25]
B
Yeah, good.
- [43:26]
A
Best principles, backlinks, content. Sure, of course. But mostly just show up.
- [43:32]
B
Yeah, show up, exactly. And if you're reading online about all this stuff like schema markup and the Google Helpful quality content update, that mostly applies to the major sites that need high level SEO. We're not doing any of that. We don't need to. I probably make more money than a lot of the people trying to do that stuff. Right. You don't have to go after the biggest fish. You just have to make a bunch of salmon and trout.
- [43:57]
A
You're speaking my language. That's a fish analogy. I love fish analogies. I'm going to show you a website here. To your point. I don't know anything about SEO. I'm not technical. I've heard about schema markups. I don't know what it is, don't worry about it. But I was doing research for pet cremation, long story. And I saw, holy crap. A lot of people are searching for pet and horse cremation and euthanasia and no one is providing it.
- [44:21]
B
Wow.
- [44:21]
A
And so I bought the domain. I spent 3,400 on this domain name, which I don't recommend. Animal aftercare.com and, and I've done nothing with it. I set it up and this is my traffic for the last two years.
- [44:34]
B
You've done nothing with it?
- [44:36]
A
Nothing. I've done nothing with it. I'm not selling the leads. I'm not. If anyone's listening to this or watching this and you have a contact at like, so Mars, the big candy company, they own a bunch of vet clinics. If you have anyone at Mars or anyone that has veterinary clinics, I will sell you these leads. Because I'm getting calls and, and in like emails every single day. And I get. I got too much going on.
- [45:00]
B
I could sell that.
- [45:01]
A
Please do. Seriously, if you could, if you're serious,
- [45:03]
B
shoot me an email and then.
- [45:05]
A
No, I am serious.
- [45:06]
B
Like, it's old for you.
- [45:07]
A
I am serious. I'm not just like, this isn't for the content. I. It's been like on my back burner forever. But my point in showing you that is that I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know about SEO, but I knew There was a supply and demand imbalance. So we built a website and it not only does it get leads every single day, but it's growing every single day.
- [45:27]
B
How are you capturing leads? Just like through a form or a
- [45:30]
A
form and then they go to a Google voice number.
- [45:32]
B
Okay. Yeah, we gotta do something with those. That's a really interesting niche.
- [45:37]
A
Yeah, I think it's a valuable site. A horse cremation costs $3,000.
- [45:43]
B
Wow.
- [45:43]
A
In the state of Texas, there's two cremation facilities. Two, Texas.
- [45:47]
B
So that could be a problem because they probably are already overwhelmed with leads and they might not be willing to pay for more if there's only two. Right. So that's two also.
- [45:56]
A
Yeah.
- [45:57]
B
There's some value there to be mined. For sure.
- [45:59]
A
For sure. Let's talk after about that. For sure. All right. So doesn't matter the niche. I think I ran through all my questions, Kyle. Sorry to rush us off, but where can we find you and learn more about you and what you do?
- [46:11]
B
So if you want to learn more about what I do, I did set up a page with a. Not going to grab your email or anything like that. It's a whole page with information on how this business model works in more detail. Rent Local Sites.com Again, it's Rent Local Sites.com can explain to you the, the, the more details about how this business model works with videos. But also if you keep up with me and learn more with little tips and tricks, you could follow me on Tik Tok. I am the handle. Website Landlord. It's all one word. Website Land.
- [46:41]
A
That's such a good name. So that's such a good name.
- [46:44]
B
Rentlocalsites.com and website landlord. Two ways to find me. All right. And you could DM me if you have questions also.
- [46:50]
A
Thank you, Kyle.
- [46:51]
B
Thanks so much, Chris. And yeah, be in touch.
- [46:55]
A
Guys, I meant what I said about playmakersai.com. there's about 300 of us in there and we're all doing the same thing. We're starting AI consulting businesses. We're implementing AI into small and medium sized businesses and we're having a lot of success. So check out playmakersai.com and we've got over a hundred hours of recorded content, including three to seven hours of live content with 25 different paid experts every single week. We'll see you there@playmakersai.com if you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a five star review on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcast. It would mean a lot if you want to go the extra mile. Share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business. It would mean a ton. Hope you have the best day of your life today.