Welcome back. This is an exciting episode. I love entrepreneurship and I've had a goal
of being a 7-figure earner for a long time. So, in this episode,
Devin is going to pick my brain and talk about how I built a 7-figure business.
-So, I'm here with Nate today. Nate and I have been friends for about 12 years or something
like that. And I've kind of watched from afar as he's built this business. And it's been really
exciting to see the growth that's happened and for him to now have a 7-figure business,
I mean, that's a that's a huge achievement and a huge benchmark. So, I just wanted to talk to him
today about, really about how he built this business. So, Nate, just kind of on a from
a bird's eye view, overview; how did you begin building this business? When did you launch? Did
you have help along the way? -So, it all started with an idea. I was doing telemarketing for a
web design company. And I just had an idea like, "You know what?" I think I can do this on my own
and I advertised locally in the classifieds. Found 2 people, designed websites for them it's just a
500 website design. And they were happy. So, I quit my job and decided to go full-time. And
like looking back, I think when I averaged it out in the previous month, I had made like 350 bucks
and somehow I had the confidence that I can quit my job and go full time with this. But I did. And
then you asked did I have help? Like, I had no graphic design training or anything like that. I
figured out photoshop and I had an eye for design. But very quickly knew, "Okay, I need to hire
some help." And so, I had recently learned how to hire people in the Philippines. And so,
right off the bat, I looked for some graphic designers that can design websites. In fact,
somebody that I found within that first month of quitting my job is still with me today.
-Wow, that's incredible. And you... So, that early on you decided, "I'm going to
go ahead and hire somebody." So, you went from an employee to being an employer in the stretch
of about 30 days. -Yeah. Now, I had I had been studying entrepreneurship for probably
8 years at that point, maybe 7 years at that point. I listened to an audiobook that a friend
gave me. It was... I think it was like 2 books in 1, Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cash Flow Quadrant.
And so, I learned that there was a difference between being self-employed and a business owner.
And and I loved that idea. I love that the idea of kind of working on your business instead of
in. And so, you know, by no means was an expert at it. But that's what I was trying to implement.
And I wanted somebody that had more expertise than me. -So, you mentioned earlier that you
put ads out in the classifieds to find your first clients. So, did you continue to do that?
How did you... -I smiled because this was genius. So, I found out that on Craigslist,
you could post a listing every single day or something like that in one local area,
like one county typically. Well, I found out like if I set up 2 Craigslist accounts,
I can post in Utah county and I can post in salt lake county. But then I found like
when you start doing that, Craigslist monitors phone numbers. Like what phone number did you use
to set up your account. You can't use one phone number for multiple counties. And I found out
that it would check your IP address. And if you're logging in to this account from one IP address,
you're logging into another account from a dislike. So, long story short, I hired
somebody in the Philippines to run all this for me but I rented like hundreds of phone numbers
and I paid for all these proxy IP addresses. And so, my assistant in the Philippines would
have a full-time job posting to 400 different locations on Craigslist. Just posting these ads
for websites. And that worked for about a year and a half until Craigslist kind of shut that down.
-So, then, it's back to the drawing board. You got to get you got to get more clients somehow.
So, you get shut down by Craigslist and but prior to that, I mean you mentioned that you've hired
somebody in the Philippines and they're running this whole thing, this whole system behind this
lead generation that you're doing. So, talk about systems. Have you always had a propensity of
creating systems and being able to implement those in your business and then assign those out to your
employees? -Well, I can attribute this to another audiobook as well, Michael Gerber the E-Myth,
the E-Myth Revisited. So, listening to that and I've listened to it many times over the
years. I'm probably due for another listen of that one. I really followed that and tried to follow
it as close as I could. So, when I hired this web designer, I have 4 steps. I have created... Okay,
first, we find examples of websites that we want our website to look like. Then we create
that theme then we apply that theme to either the Wordpress or the Joomla site and then we add all
the content. So, I hired this designer to really take over that design step. All I expected to do
is take the input that I give you and create that template. So, I was still doing a lot of the work
but what was a relief, you know, what I thought maybe would take him several months to be able
to handle all those. Within like a week or a couple weeks, he was able to handle all 4 steps.
And so, a client would just tell this is what I want my website to look like. And everything
happened and I'm just like, "Man, this system, things really worked." Because of that system,
I felt like I could really scale it and so that's what I was able to really expand and felt like I
could advertise to any county that I wanted to on Craigslist. And take at one point, I think
we were taking on about 25 new websites a month. -Wow. So, at what point? Because we're talking
about websites. And you know, everybody knows you today as a YouTube producer. So, at some point,
you obviously... There was a big shift. So, how did you get from "I'm doing websites" to "I'm
doing YouTube"? -So, the websites were beautiful, okay? My clients loved them. They said, "Oh,
my website is so beautiful. I love it when my mom comes and tells me how beautiful my website is."
So, I love results. And so, the first shift I made is, "Okay, now, you have a beautiful website",
how do we get people to visit your website? -Yeah, besides your mom. -Yeah. So,
I created a search engine optimization service. And so, that worked and I systematized that. So,
now we had beautiful websites that were getting views. Now, there are a lot of views but there
weren't a lot of sales happening. So, I started to create promo videos. I would film promo videos for
my clients. So, when people went there, there was actually a compelling sales message there.
And so, these are kind of the evolution of it. But then I noticed something. And let me give you
a little bit more detail about the SEO service. -Yeah. -So, we would take a page on their website
and we'd get it to rank number one on Google. We did a lot of work. First,
we'd create a how-to video and we'd put it on the the page. We would transcribe the video and
put all the text below we'd make it look really nice. We would create infographics about that
topic and put it on Pinterest and link it to the page. We would write articles on the topic and
even spin the articles into different forms and broadcast them out. You know, blog commenting and
link wheels that all linked back to build the authority for this page. We put in the right
keyword tags, lots SEO stuff. And it worked. Okay? So, all this work. And we got the page ranking
number one on Google. Then I noticed something. And this is going back about 7-8 years ago.
I noticed that just one piece of this page that the how-to video over on YouTube, because that's
where we hosted the video, YouTube, that video was getting 50 times more views than this entire
webpage that was ranked number 1 on Google. And that just boggled my mind. I'm like,
"This is ranked number 1 on Google. And I'm getting 50 times more views just on the video
over on YouTube." And so, the light went off in my head. I love efficiency. I love efficiency.
And so, I just kind of shifted my focus. Like, "What if all we did was make YouTube videos
like this?" And so, that's why I teach today that website SEO is dead. I've taught for a long time
that website SEO is dead. I think it's even more true today. But you can create a piece of content
and get way more views on it and build a relationship with it. And then when they're
ready to buy or they want your help or services, that's when they go to their website and sign up.
-What mistakes have you made along the way? -It's interesting. Like, right now, a specific... I'm
sure I could come up with specific mistakes. It's not like I love making mistakes in the moment.
But I'm not afraid of taking a chance knowing that something can fail. Because I've failed at
a lot of things but I learned from it, right? It's like... I mean, it almost sounds kind of cliche.
Like a mistake isn't a mistake unless you don't learn from it. And that,
I feel like I've really applied that over and over and over in the business. And you know,
have I made mistakes? Yeah, that's why for 8 and a half years, I was on a financial roller coaster.
And so, I've made a ton of mistakes. I mean I've offended people. I've had people buy the domain,
natewoodburysucks.com. I like... I just, I offended a client. And you know,
I was just impatient. Like I mean, it's hard for me to point out a mistake because
this is all new territory for me. Everything that I've built in my business, I've never done
before. And I wasn't taught how to do it. So, I kind of made tons of mistakes along the way.
And building a team, I had never been a boss before. And so, I made a lot of mistakes. And
sometimes... Before I met my team in the Philippines for example. I kind of looked
at them as robots until I met them in person. And like, "Oh, these are actually real people."
Like, it's weird that it's... I know I've made tons of mistakes. And I can think of
plenty of like personal flaws that I have. But I look at a business as like
that's what business is, is it's all a whole bunch of mistakes with a little bit of successes.
nd you just build on those successes. And for me, it took 8 and a half years to finally like
get to a point where I could say, "Wow, I've actually got a successful business here."
-What's your favorite thing about what you do now? Like that thing that keeps getting you out
of bed every morning?" Like, "Oh, my gosh, this is why I started this?" -So, my business has evolved
in services as we've talked about. But it's also evolved in the type of clients that I work with.
So, back in my day of web design and SEO, I actually ranked number 1, my website ranked
number 1 on Google for dentist website design as well as accountant website design. And you know,
if you're a dentist, you're an accountant; you're awesome. I love you but I don't like working with
you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I actually just had to delete those pages on my website and take
them down. Dentists, their credit cards don't bounce. Like, they were actually really good
clients. But it just wasn't my... Like I wasn't passionate about helping them grow their business,
about helping them drill more teeth. So, when I discovered this video strategy working better than
the website strategy, I had all these dentists as clients. And so, I went to the dentist and said,
"You should make videos teaching people about you know oral health care and brushing your teeth and
stuff." And you know, I got a few dentists to film some episodes. But never really like
build a whole channel and want to dominate YouTube. Another thing that I discovered is
I would be on the phone with some clients and 5 minutes would pass and I'd be like, "When is this
call going to end? Like, this is dreadful." But then there were other clients I'd be on the phone
an hour would pass and I would just be helping them giving advice and just felt like in the zone.
And I didn't know what the difference was until after thinking about it and realizing
all the clients that I love to work with were were influencers. So, coaches, speakers, mentors. They
wanted to put themselves out there. They're influencing the world for good.
So, kind of a long way of answering your question --what gets me excited? Why do I
love what I do now? It's because I love making an impact in the world. And I love the power of
influence. So, I love influencing others for good so when I can help my clients like really succeed
and see their businesses transform. It lights me up. And the fact that they're doing a lot of good,
they're influencing the world for good, it just it just builds on top of it.
-Has your life changed since you built a figure business? -I think looking back over the years,
even in the beginning, I knew my strategy had had merit. But I couldn't sell it. I couldn't
sell it at cost. And so, I had to take that first step of partnering with Kris Krohn. That was the
first channel that we use this strategy. And the plan was we're going to share future profits, I'm
going to produce this channel for free. And and we did. And it worked. And I got that track record of
success because it worked really well. And I did that a similar way with a second channel. And then
when now I had 2 channels, we followed my exact formula that I've been teaching for years,
"Look at this it worked". Not only could i sell my services at cost but I could make profit. And
really that's been the biggest difference is like, "What? Like breaking even?" I thought that was
profitable. Like, I really thought that as long as my bills are covered then I have a profitable
business. But to to charge more than my costs and to... Like, it was just a whole new experience.
And realizing, "Ah, that's what business is supposed to look like. That's what profit is." And
so, it's taken a big weight off of my shoulders. It allows me to really step back and think, "Okay.
Now, I'm not doing this because I have to. What do I want to continue doing? What roles do I need
to hire people for so I don't have to do these tasks?" And I'm really able to have the freedom to
to keep doing this stuff that I love. -Well, it's a huge accomplishment, Nate. And I mean
this sincerely like it couldn't happen to a better person. And I said this to many people. But the
thing that I respect about you and i think why you've been able to be so successful in business
is that you have integrity and you care so much about your name and about the service. You have
faith in it but you're not willing to compromise that and to just say, "Oh, yeah. I'll produce
anybody's channel. Just sign on the dotted line. Give me the checks." Because you really care about
about that influence like you were saying. About improving the world and getting the message that
that your clients have out there to more people so that they can influence the world for good. So,
I think it's really, really great what's happened and I look forward to seeing what happens in the
next 5 years or so. -Cool in. -If you want to know what it looks like to work with Nate,
I'll put my email below in the description. Feel free reach out. Email me and we'll get
on a call. Get on a three-way call with Nate and see if it makes sense for you to work with us.
-To have the freedom to keep doing this stuff that I love. -Well good for you. I mean for
good for you. We're all over here.