April 29, 2025 • 37 mins
Matt Diamante, founder of HeyTony digital marketing agency, shares how he transformed business failures into a multi-million dollar success story by creating affordable digital products for small businesses. He reveals his philosophy of making SEO tools accessible to help as many entrepreneurs as possible, believing small businesses are the backbone of every economy.
• Failed ventures including a Lightroom preset company and a cologne business taught Matt valuable lessons about when to walk away
• Created digital products priced at $10/month when competitors charge $30-$150 for similar functionality
• His website audit tool helps identify SEO issues while including video tutorials on how to fix them
• Watchdog tool tracks competitors' website changes for just $10/month, giving small businesses enterprise-level intelligence
• Content creation strategy involves recording answers to common questions and repurposing across multiple platforms
• Use ChatGPT to turn video transcripts into blog posts and social media scripts
• When content performs well organically, turn it into targeted local ads
• Experiment with posting on multiple platforms as content that fails on one might thrive on another
Explore HeyTony’s products
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Episode Transcript
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Matt (00:00):
I want to help as many small businesses as possible
because I truly believe and knowthat small businesses are the
backbone of literally everyeconomy.
Alyssa (00:11):
Welcome to Brilliant Ideas, the podcast that takes
you behind the scenes of some ofthe most inspiring digital
products created by solopreneursjust like you.
I'm your host, alyssa, adigital product strategist who
helps subject matter expertsgrow their business with online
courses, memberships, coachingprograms and eBooks.
If you're a solopreneur withdreams of packaging your
expertise into a profitabledigital product, then this is
(00:33):
the podcast for you.
Expect honest conversations ofhow they started, the obstacles
they overcame, lessons learnedthe hard way and who face the
same fears, doubts andchallenges you're experiencing,
from unexpected surprises tobreakthrough moments and
everything in between.
Tune in, get inspired and let'sspark your next big, brilliant
idea.
Welcome back to the BrilliantIdeas podcast so happy you're
(00:55):
here.
Joining me today is MattDeMonte, the founder of hey Tony
, a digital marketing agency whohelps small businesses master
SEO to achieve results.
He's built an impressive suiteof digital products, from a
best-selling SEO course, theworld's cheapest website audit
tool, a hey Tony's Insiderscommunity to a competitor
tracker called Watchdog.
(01:15):
Join me as we dive into Matt'sstory and learn how he turned
his business setbacks into amulti-million dollar success
story.
Let's dive in.
Welcome to the show, matt.
I'm so happy you're here.
Matt (01:29):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
This is gonna be fun.
Alyssa (01:31):
I know I'm glad to have you as well and I've been
following you on Instagram for awhile and I've seen your growth
over time.
But what's interesting is thatbefore you built hey Tony, you
also experienced your fair shareof business setbacks, which I
know for so many people it'shard to believe because they see
how successful you are onInstagram and how you've become
this like go-to, like SEOinfluencer, and so hearing about
(01:53):
those not so perfect moments iswhat my listeners can really
relate to.
And for someone who's listeningand might be in that weird
space in business where they'vehad it for a while, they you
know they're aren't growing, butthey're just not sure what
their next direction is, can youshed some perspective on when
you knew it was time to give upon a business or an idea and
then how did you know it wasjust time to just move on?
Matt (02:16):
Okay, that's, that's a very good question.
So I've had a lot of failedbusinesses, startups, ventures,
whatever you want to call them,um, and oftentimes they involved
multiple other people.
So for me that was.
It's always a red flag whensomebody's like, well, do you
want to partner with me?
I'm like no, I want to make allthe decisions.
I don't want to do everythingfor myself, um, which you know
(02:38):
has its pros and cons to it.
But, uh, one of the businessesthat I started was a Lightroom
preset company, right, I don'tthink I mentioned that to you
before, but so it was sellingLightroom presets and it was
this website where you just gobuy Lightroom presets.
I think it was like 12 bucks orsomething for a pack of like 10
(03:01):
presets and we had tutorialsand all this kind of stuff
showing people how to installthem in Lightroom.
And I partnered with this guy,uh, out in the States and he's a
photographer, so he was makingall these presets and he was
also a client of mine.
So we were I was doing, I wasrunning ads for him and stuff
like that while we were doingthis other business on the side.
(03:21):
Um, and this is like very earlydays, hey, tony like me and I
have one other person on theteam and he stopped paying me as
a client.
We were still doing work.
They stopped paying me.
And this other website it wascalled Hue and Hatch it's still
live, people still buy andpeople still do randomly buy
Lightroom presets, even thoughwe don't do anything on that
(03:43):
site.
He yeah, he really stoppedpaying and that the other
website was making money.
So I was like listen, like I'mjust going to take this website
and kind of shut down thebusiness, like roll up the
business, whatever, because youhaven't paid.
And he was like, okay, itsounds good.
I was like sweet.
So after that, like we were,we're getting all of our revenue
(04:06):
from running ads.
So as running ads, you know,you have to spend your own money
to make the ads back.
And I was spending like, let'ssay, a hundred bucks a day to
make 150 bucks a day, which wasreally great.
But I was like if this startsgoing the opposite way, then I'm
spending a hundred bucks andI'm not getting my money back
and I didn't have that muchmoney at the time to you know
(04:29):
kind of risk to gamble with.
So for me I was just like youknow what, I'm going to shut
this business down.
I have other stuff that I'mdoing as well, and I think
that's really common for a lotof entrepreneurs.
It's like you can't focus onall these different things at
the same time, like you can'tfocus on all these different
things at the same time, yeah.
Alyssa (04:51):
And like when do you close something down?
Yeah, no, that makes sense,yeah.
Matt (04:57):
And so when do you, when would you close?
When it isn't profitableanymore?
And you just kind of figurethat out.
It was still, it was stillprofitable, but I was like it's
not worth the risk to me to doRight, especially if I didn't
have somebody else who was likefronting the money, a risk to me
to do right, especially if Ididn't have somebody else who
was like fronting the money.
Now I'll spend, you know, 50 toa hundred $200 a day on ads
just as a trial to see if anidea is viable before I do it.
And when I say idea, I meanlike, am I selling a course?
Am I selling a tool?
Am I selling?
You know people would sign upto my email list.
(05:18):
I'll spend that money just tosee if it actually makes sense.
But speaking of not having timeto do a business, I actually had
a cologne company and I wish Ihad one around here.
I have a couple left.
So I started a cologne companyLike do you know the wax
colognes?
Yeah, so a friend who he at thetime was running like a
(05:41):
branding kind of design agencyand I was doing ads and SEO and
all this other stuff.
And again, this is pre-anythingbig with hey Tony, nobody knows
about us, no kind of thing.
So we started this company.
We each invested close to$10,000 in getting this cologne
developed and we got it made inFrance, all this stuff, and we
(06:05):
got like a drop shipper in thestates uh, who could you know
ship it out that, integratedwith our shopify store, all this
kind of stuff?
So we spent months trying tofigure out what scent we wanted,
right like what's that we likebest, all this kind of stuff.
We did the branding.
Um well, he did the brandingand I did the marketing side of
things.
And we eventually got all thecologne.
(06:28):
It was made and we didn't know.
We don't know anything aboutimporting and exporting.
So we got it sent to um, this,this drop shipping warehouse in
uh, oh my god, illinois, likejust outside chicago.
So this I don't know pallet orseveral pallets I've never
actually seen what it lookedlike.
But it got delivered to theChicago.
(06:51):
It was the O'Hare airport inChicago and they were like,
where are the import papers?
And we're just like what do youmean?
I thought you could just bringstuff here and sell it.
And we were talking to ouraccountant because we had the
same accountant and he's likeyou guys are fucking idiots.
You have $20,000 of colognessitting at the airport.
(07:12):
They're just going to destroyit or return it.
You need to have those papers.
And anyways, long story short,we eventually got somebody at
the dropshipping warehouse.
They knew import, exportsomething and they were able to
get it at the dropshippingwarehouse.
They knew import exportsomething and they were able to
get it to the dropshippingwarehouse.
And then we realized we justspent all our money getting this
thing made and we ran some ads.
(07:35):
You know, probably spent like acouple grand on ads and it was
so expensive for us to make.
I think it was costing us likealmost like 50 or 60 bucks per
unit or something like it wassomething crazy that we had to
sell for 80 bucks to really makeany profit and like that's a
more luxury item.
We didn't think about doinginfluencer marketing.
That was an expensive avenue aswell.
(07:56):
So we were running ads andnobody knew about the brand, so
nobody was really buying it andso we just kind of let it sit
there and we're like, yeah,we'll come back to this Like
it's at the drop shipping center, like it's totally fine, they
charge us like 20, 30 bucks amonth just to store it there.
And if we do get orders, they'llship it out.
(08:17):
So a couple of months go by andmy accountant's like what are
you doing with all that stuff,like all that inventory you guys
have?
I'm like, oh, it's like justsitting there right now, we're
going to come back to it.
He's like you guys made amistake.
And I'm like, no, no, it'stotally fine.
Like we're like we got busywith other stuff.
We're going to come back to itwhen things slow down.
He's like how are you expectingthings to slow down?
And and a half of it sittingthere.
(08:41):
I just called the drop shippingcenter.
I was like destroy it, get ridof it.
And again we had to pay a feefor that.
So for me in that situation, orfor me and my friend, we're
just like we had to have aconversation like how much money
do we have to spend topotentially get our money back?
And you know a lot of peoplehave this sunk cost fallacy.
It's like I spent I have havetwenty thousand dollars of
(09:03):
inventory at this warehouse likeI gotta, I gotta sell it right,
and we just we're like we don'twant to spend another 10 grand
or 15 grand, 20 grand, whatever,in order to sell this product
that is just sitting there, whenwe could get a couple clients
you know that we're working withand just make all that money
back yeah, that's reallycomplicated.
Alyssa (09:22):
I could never do something like that.
It would require so much timeand so much energy and like so
much too much.
And that's why I think you'veyou know you've done so well
with digital products anddigital marketing, things like
that because you're just likejust so much easier than having
to run like a physical productbusiness.
Physical product business, youknow, I've experienced my own
(09:43):
setback, my own business setbackbefore the business I have now.
I was like in my early 20s,like fresh out of university, I
ran a bath bomb business back in2015.
Like, yeah, like when they itwas, I like ran it on Etsy.
It was like a bath bombbusiness.
You know something, just like Ijust thought, I just thought,
oh, I could, I could do this,Because that's when, back when,
(10:03):
Etsy was actually doable.
Now it's a really competitivemarket, but I was doing weekends
at markets.
I was selling on Etsy and doingall my ads.
It was so you know what, by theend of it I was so out of
breath, you know what.
And then it came to a pointwhere it wasn't so much that I
(10:25):
didn't have any orders, it wasthat I didn't have the inventory
Like I had to make all that.
Everything was handmade, and soI was like trying to fulfill
the orders and I just couldn'tkeep up.
And you know, my mom was sayingto me well, you know, you just
need to open up a kitchen.
And I was like I don't have thefunds for that, like I'm just,
(10:47):
you know, in my early twenties,trying to just make it through.
I don't have the funds to openup a kitchen.
So I had no other choice but toclose it.
And I just thought, you knowwhat, there's an easier way to
do this.
Um, but then, you know also, butthen back in my early twenties,
when I was just starting to getthe idea of an entrepreneurship
, when that had to close, I feltmyself like I, my self esteem,
(11:08):
or like I don't know an ego.
It kind of took a bit of a hit,because I thought to myself,
well, I, I'm just not cut outfor it.
You know, like I come from afamily of entrepreneurs.
Everybody I know isentrepreneur.
Matt (11:18):
I come from.
Alyssa (11:19):
Italian family, you know , and so everybody just has done
really well for themselves andtheir own business and I just
thought like, okay, clearly I'mnot cut out for this, but I just
think it just takes time tofigure out what you're great at,
what skills you have, and theoh my God, what's it called?
Got through the process.
Matt (11:46):
Um and like for me, like I do come from an Italian family
as well, but nobody's anentrepreneur, literally
everybody.
Like you know, my dad worked atChrysler for 30 years, my mom's
a nurse, like that kind ofthing.
Everybody had jobs and that waslike the safe, secure thing to
do.
And I don't know.
I think I just have a problemwith people telling me what to
do, or authority, and I'm justlike I'm going to do the
(12:07):
opposite.
Alyssa (12:11):
I'm going to start a business or I'm going to do my
own thing.
It is true, yeah, no, no, it'strue, and that's probably why I
really struggle with nine tofive, you're right, and you just
want to be in charge, and so sowhen I work with my one-to-one
clients, I'm just going toswitch gears here a little bit.
They know what they want to do,they have a business, and
they're kind of just trying tofigure out now what their
product ladder is and whatproducts kind of would benefit
(12:34):
their clients.
You're really good at this, soyou're going to have some good
advice to give, and so I helpthem build their product ladder
in their business, but I can'tanswer what their clients need,
because their clients are not mytarget market.
So how did you come up withyour ideas for your digital
products, and do you have somekind of process or any tools
(12:57):
that you use currently to makebrainstorming a little bit
easier to do that?
Matt (13:02):
So brainstorming, chat GPTs you're going to be your
best friend, especially forbrainstorming.
It's not really that good atcoming up with original ideas,
but it gives you back what youput into it.
Basically.
So if you can get really goodat prompts and you know, I guess
, use the right prompts, put theright information in, you will
(13:22):
get back more useful, moreuseful information, right?
So for me, for my digitalproducts, my whole goal has
always been I want to help asmany small businesses as
possible.
Not necessarily have them payme, but I mean, yes, getting
paid is great and that's how yourun a business, but I want to
(13:42):
help as many small businesses aspossible because I truly
believe and know that smallbusinesses are the backbone of
literally every economy of everycountry.
All this kind of stuff.
It really makes the world goround.
So if I can help a smallbusiness get more traffic to
their website, get morecustomers, they can hire more
(14:04):
people locally, they can paymore taxes locally, put money,
more money, back into the localcommunities, create jobs, all
that kind of stuff.
People can go to college orsend their kids to college, you
know, put food on the table, allthis kind of stuff.
So I'm like how can I help themost amount of people?
And for me, like I just did aquick Google search, I was like
how many businesses or smallbusinesses are there in the US?
(14:26):
In the United States, it cameback with something like 31
million small businesses in theUS.
I was like that's a lot, likethat's a lot of people, and each
one of those people is apotential customer, right,
whether they want to work withme and my agency or they want to
to learn SEO or some kind ofother digital marketing, whether
it's meta ads or Google ads orwhatever.
(14:48):
So for me, I was like I justneed like 0.00001% of those
people to buy my thing and Iwill be very rich, right?
So, and that's just in the U S,that's not including literally
the rest of the world, like theyou know what is it?
Seven and a half billion otherpeople.
Um, so I was just like I want to.
(15:11):
I want to be the guitarmanufacturer, basically, who
builds guitars for beginners,because they sell the most
guitars, right, they're not themost expensive guitars, but they
sell the most of them.
And for me, I was like I wantto have low, uh, low priced
products, digital products thathave so much value that people
(15:31):
would pay a thousand dollars forit Right.
But I don't want to charge thema thousand dollars.
I'll charge them like 150 bucks, right.
And the next cheapest productis like 300 bucks a month,
reoccurring Right.
So for me I'm like I know smallbusiness owners, I know they
don't have money.
I'm a small business owner.
You know, when times are tight,you're like I'll buy a course
(15:53):
for you know 150 bucks and likethat's promising to show me how
to do all of this stuff, right,I'm not going to spend 300 bucks
a month, especially when it'sin a foreign currency and that
300 bucks is actually like 450or 500 bucks.
Alyssa (16:07):
Yep, yeah, exactly.
Matt (16:11):
So that, yeah, exactly.
So that's my my course is like157 bucks.
I have a free course as wellthat shows people all the
fundamentals of SEO and thatgets them into the funnel all
this kind of other stuff.
And then on top of that freecourse, I have like a bunch of
free mini courses and freeresources and stuff that people
can consume and learn, even thecontent I post on social media,
(16:32):
like that's all free, right.
And some people are like, well,you didn't tell them the entire
process and I'm like, if you gowatch all my videos and string
them together, that is theentire process.
Just today I was reading acomment.
Somebody's like this is likethe very first thing like this
is you know that people do withmeta ads and it doesn't talk
about targeting, doesn't talkabout this and this and this,
(16:53):
and I'm like how long do youwant this video to be?
Alyssa (16:55):
yeah, like do, how long do you want this video to be?
Yeah, do you want to attend?
Matt (16:58):
a masterclass?
Like I would love for you topay me money to attend some kind
of masterclass, but like Ican't fit it all into one video,
so just go look through theother videos and you will find
your answers, um, but then I.
So, with all that in mind, Iwas like SEO tools are very
expensive, right?
Audit tools, um, you know,keyword research tools?
(17:19):
Like it's going to cost you atleast a hundred dollars a month
in software to do any kind ofSEO, which is very unfortunate,
um, but like I looked into doinglike a keyword research tool,
um, getting one of thosedeveloped and it's so costly
because there's so much data,there's so much information, um,
and I'm I'm like Irealistically can't do that.
(17:41):
There are cheaper solutions outthere.
I don't know how they're socheap, um, but so I I kind of
axed that idea once I found outhow much it would cost not to
build but to actually serviceeach individual user, um, so I
had two other tools developedand I made them 10 bucks a month
.
So one is an audit tool thatyou just type in your website
(18:03):
and then it'll tell you here'sall the things that you need to
fix on your website in order toincrease your chances of ranking
higher on Google.
Alyssa (18:11):
I'm sorry, hold on, so it's $10.
You said $10 a month A month?
Yeah, because right now I pay$30 for Actually maybe I think
more for Ubersuggest, and itdoes the exact same thing.
Matt (18:24):
Well, ubersuggest also does keyword research, so that's
where it's a little bitdifferent.
And Ubersuggest is the cheapestkeyword research tool I found.
I will say the search volumedata so how many people are
searching for that keyword permonth isn't quite accurate
compared to the other tools.
But all the tools are justestimates anyways.
So if you rank number one for akeyword that gets a thousand
(18:47):
searches a month, you'reprobably not going to see in
your Google search console thatthat's accurate.
Alyssa (18:53):
Right.
Matt (18:54):
So the audit tool just says, like okay, you're missing
tags on these pages or you haveduplicate tags on these pages or
these tags are too long.
You know that kind of thing.
So it's very like go fix thisstuff.
Technically, it doesn't tellyou how to do keyword research.
So I launched that and then Iwas like what do other keyword
research tools not have?
Other keyword research toolsnot have?
(19:15):
People keep asking me a lot ofquestions about like how do I do
this and this and this oncethey've purchased the tool.
And I was like you know what?
I'm going to make tutorials,how to fix all of these things
and what it actually means.
So when you go into my audittool you can actually see me
doing tutorials Like here's howto fix broken links.
Here's what a broken link isright Go fix that.
(19:36):
Or here's what a 404 error islinks.
Here's what a broken link isright, go fix that.
Or here's what a 404 error is.
Here's how to set up a redirect, all that kind of stuff.
And I was like nobody else ischarging only 10 bucks a month.
It's all like 30 or 50 orwhatever dollars per month to do
that.
Or it's part of like a packagewith like SEMrush or something,
where it's like, yeah, we'llaudit your website or Ahrefs,
(20:01):
but you have to buy all of ourtools.
It's like one big suite andit's $150 a month or whatever it
is, and I'm like, well, smallbusiness owners can't afford
that.
They could buy just Ubersuggest.
Or if they want to use my audittool, they can do that as well,
and it's $10 a month.
So they're coming in at under$50 a month.
Alyssa (20:14):
Yeah, I like that Right Instead of $ 150.
Matt (20:17):
And then I had another tool developed as well.
I'll just tell you about thisvery quickly.
I call it the Watchdog tool andbasically what it does is you
put in three competitors intothere and it tracks all the
changes that they make on theirsite.
So if they add new pages, ifthey remove pages, if they
change their title tags or theirmeta descriptions or their
(20:37):
heading tags or even anything inthe content like links, it
sends you a report every weeksaying here's all the changes
that were made, so you can seeif they're changing their
pricing strategy, if they arecreating landing pages to run
ads to.
You can see what those pagesare and, like, most of the time,
they're not linking to thosepages from anywhere that a
person is going to find on theirwebsite.
(20:58):
Um, and then it also like if,if you're doing seo or if
they're doing seo, it will showyou like hey, they changed all
these tags from this to this, soit's like okay, well, that's
the keyword that they're goingafter.
Should I be concerned?
Should I not be concerned?
um, yeah, it's, that's 10 bucksa month too.
So like I've made these ascheap as I put here, like I see
(21:20):
the way you're looking at me,you're just like no, there's no
way.
But like my goal really is tohelp small business owners, like
let's do it.
Alyssa (21:29):
Yeah, you know it's funny because, you know, for a
long time, for many years in mybusiness, I always, you know, I
was working with many clientswho are very like high ticket,
like we would be sellingthousands per like program or
per course, and and it was okay,I think, back in 2020, 2021.
But I think the landscape haschanged in terms of, like, what
(21:52):
people are spending.
They're more cautious whatthey're spending, where they're
spending their money, and highticket is not so much, um, even
just affordable anymore.
Um, and even from even formyself, like what I choose to
invest in, whether it's coachingor, you know, a course, if the
course has exactly because I'm avery practical person, just
tell me exactly what I need todo and I will pay, pay you for
(22:15):
it.
You know, um, I just found itactually more helpful to just do
something like you know, topurchase, like UberSuggest or
something just to do it for me,to do it myself, not to pay
someone to do it for me.
I just want to learn how to doit for myself and I just thought
that was like and it was, youknow, it's a good, affordable
price.
But now that you're telling methat, you know this is $10 a
(22:36):
month and I'm just like, um,this is worth it and this is
something that I would want todo in my business and even for,
like the competition.
Like I don't I I know I don'tdo enough of that because I'm
just, you know, for me, I'm, Iam a one man show, I have a, you
know, a VA, but I don't havelike a team of people.
So, um, something like thatwould be so helpful because I
(22:58):
don't, it's tracking onautopilot, like you don't need
to go, you don't ever need to goto their website, yeah, and I
don't need to pay someone to doit for me.
So, you know, that makes it somuch easier.
Um, and so I think also two bigconsiderations that I've
noticed in your products is thatyou have a lot.
(23:19):
It's so accessible and soaffordable, which I'm like
success in their business whenthey're not putting like two,
three grand for, like a course,and it's like you know, I agree,
like you know, you want to helpas many small businesses as you
(23:48):
can, and so I kind of want toswitch gears a little bit to
talking about.
So I have something reallygreat in my podcast called the
brilliant bite of the week, andI think this is really good.
This is a quick, actionable tipthat you can give my listeners
who want to start taking actiontoday, or what can they do to
get closer to their next step.
(24:09):
And so do you have like astrategy or like an insight tip,
mantra that you can share, thatcan really give them something
to go off of?
Matt (24:17):
Okay.
So there's so many things thatI could say, but just in general
, if you and I did a video aboutthis, I think yesterday, or was
it today, a couple days ago?
Anyways, the last couple days Idid a video about omni-channel
marketing and if you don't knowwhat that is, it's basically
just being on as many platformsas you can showing up in video,
(24:38):
showing up, you know, in SEO,doing ads, all this kind of
stuff.
And you know, as you, if you'rea one man show or you know one
person, show up every day invideos and social media, run ads
and know what you're doing andall this kind of stuff.
And for me, I'm like just openup a Zoom call and then just
(25:10):
record it.
Start answering questions thatyou've heard your customers ask
or you've written blog postsabout, or even just go to
something like answer the publicand type in your industry or
niche, and it'll give you abunch of questions people are
asking about it.
If you are truly an expert, youwill be able to answer those
questions.
Open a Zoom call, record it.
(25:31):
It can just be you on the calland answer those questions.
That's step one.
Step two take that transcript.
If you need to get a transcript.
You can upload it to YouTubefor free and they'll transcribe
the video, right?
You just have to go intosubtitles and click edit and
then grab whatever they havethere, or there's a lot of AI
(25:54):
systems that'll do this for you.
I see there's an AI companionon my Zoom here.
It'll send you a transcriptafter the call.
So take that transcript, put itinto ChatGPT and say write me a
blog post answering thesequestions and make sure that to
use, like my personal stories,expertise and experience right,
because that's what Google wantsto see.
(26:14):
They want not regurgitatedcontent, because anybody can do
that with AI now.
They want to see unique stories.
They want to see uniqueperspectives.
So get ChatGPT to do that.
And there's a ton of promptsyou can use.
We have a ton that we use in myagency to write really great
content for our clients.
But just as simple as write mea blog post answering this
(26:36):
question and then, if there'srelated questions, you can put
them in there as well.
Then, in that same chat GPDconversation, say okay, using
this question, write me 10 viralscripts, or write me a viral
script that I can use to recorda video and post it on Instagram
or TikTok or whatever.
So once you do that, it'll giveyou those scripts.
(26:58):
Pull out your phone and this iswhat I do and this is how I get
4 million people seeing mycontent every single month and
that's like a bad month.
Pull out your front facingcamera on your phone, right, and
record yourself reading thosescripts, and you don't have to
memorize the entire script.
Don't feel bad if you'restumbling through things, and
you don't have to memorize theentire script.
(27:18):
Don't feel bad if it's ifyou're stumbling through things
and you need to do multipletakes.
I've been doing.
I've done like 1200 videos or1500 videos something, and I
still I'm like what was thatline?
I've said it a hundred times, Ican't remember it.
So do that.
Don't feel daunted ordiscouraged.
If you can't get through it thefirst time, nobody can.
(27:39):
Then open up like Instagram'seditor, put in all your clips
and then delete the pauses,delete the ums, delete the ahs,
all that kind of stuff, and thenyou can put on captions right
on Instagram.
You can put on graphics, youcan put on like.
Basically, you could useInstagram to edit your entire
thing and it's free.
By the way, everything thatI've told you so far is free to
(28:01):
do, right?
Wow, so take that.
I mean you don't have to payfor answer to the public, but
they do have a paid one if youwant to do more than three
searches a day.
So I've never hit the limit.
Just do a couple searches andyou're good to go.
Gives you a lot of questions,anyways.
(28:21):
So do that, record it, edit itand, before you're about to post
it on instagram, you canactually download the video from
the instagram editor and thenyou're going to post that same
video on tiktok, on youtubeshorts, on linkedin, on blue sky
, on x, on whatever platformsyou are on.
I post exact, exact samecontent on all these different
networks.
They have varying degrees ofsuccess, um, like Instagram.
(28:47):
Instagram is the biggest for me, and then it's Tik, tok, uh,
and then YouTube, and you know,so on and so forth.
So and that might change thisyear as well, anyways, so you
have that video, post them onsocial media and just keep track
, look like every week, andyou'll know this because you get
obsessed with the numbers.
As you start doing this, you'llnotice if a video pops off, it
gets like a thousand views, whennormally your videos get 200
(29:08):
views or 300 views.
If it gets a thousand views or2000 views or even more.
Take that video, turn it into anad and carpet your local area,
especially for your localbusiness.
Just literally don't do anytargeting, except here's the pin
in my postal code or in my city, and just spend your money on
doing that ad.
(29:29):
Because that piece of contentis like people are going to
watch it.
So it's going to go furtherwith the ads, like you're going
to get more than you're payingfor, basically.
And then what you can do islike also add a call to action.
So in that video you can eitherre-edit it or just add
something at the end or add texton top that just says you know,
(29:50):
text us now or you know, callfor a free quote or click for a
free quote, whatever it is, andthen use that good piece of
creative as an ad.
So you're doing SEO, you'redoing organic social, and then
you can also flip that into paidsocial as well.
So you're covering a lot ofbases doing that.
Alyssa (30:09):
I wrote this all down.
I mean you go back and watchthe video.
Matt (30:12):
I posted like a couple of days ago breaking literally all
this stuff down, and I'mactually I'm doing a webinar
this week with SEMrush, so I'mhosting a webinar with them and
this is the exact topic of theconversation.
Alyssa (30:27):
Yeah, you know, and I know that's where people get
stuck is like, how do I exactly,as you said, like, how do I
just post on my like postcontent without being
overwhelmed and burnt outbecause I'm just the only person
doing it?
But that makes so much senseand I'm going to try it out
myself, because that's where Ialso get stuck too.
It's like what content do Icreate today?
(30:49):
It's like because you just kindof get inside your own head,
Whereas, like, if you know, if Ihad, you know, if I did have a
person who was giving me thecontent, that I feel like I
would be a little bit easier.
But I'm the one just kind ofthinking and sometimes like,
because I specialize in funnelsand so I sometimes I get too
like inside my head.
I'm just like, but people don'tcare about funnels.
(31:11):
Funnels are not sexy, they'renot cool, they're not trendy.
But it's like, but they need,but people, businesses need to
have them.
So it's like it's somethingthat needs to be said and needs
to be talked about.
Matt (31:23):
And same with SEO right, Like it's something that needs
to be said and needs to betalked about.
And same with SEO.
Right, I was going to say SEOis the farthest thing from sexy
you can possibly get Right, it'slike who's going to watch, like
.
And when I started posting Iwas like who's going to watch a
video about keywords andinternal linking, like what the
hell?
But I've had people email meand comment be like, dude, you
(31:44):
make SEO so easy and fun.
And I'm like I made SEO fun foryou, like I love that for you.
That's amazing.
But, like, my intent wasn't tomake it fun, it's like to make
it like relatable and easy toeasy to do so you can grow your
business, right?
Um, and I like I would say likeanother big tip is a lot of
people will batch their content,right, they'll spend like a day
(32:05):
or two out of the month and sayI'm going to make a piece of
content, so 30 pieces of content, so one for every day.
I do all that in two days filmit, edit it, whatever.
And for me, I'm like if you dothat, you are not flexing that
creative muscle enough andyou're going to feel discouraged
that you have to do all this.
(32:25):
It might not go well, you mightnot be feeling well that day,
so you'll push it to the nextday and it's.
You're just going to keeppushing it.
But for me I'm like, if you canshow up every single day,
multiple times a day cause Ipost two to three times a day um
, you're flexing that muscleconstantly so I can see an
opportunity for a piece ofcontent that could potentially
(32:46):
go viral.
While I'm on a call with aclient or while I'm on, you know
, just browsing the internet,I'm like, and then and then
expand, you know, once you'vemastered one, and so then I'm
like okay, maybe I should stickto just Instagram then.
Alyssa (32:58):
But then other people say no, you have to spread out,
(33:26):
you got to diversify.
So what are your thoughts onthat?
Matt (33:31):
So what if the content that you're posting on Instagram
that's not doing very wellpotentially is TikTok content
and it could do very well onTikTok, right?
Like?
I have a couple of friends.
They have huge profiles onTikTok and you know they're in
like the marketing SEO space.
They have more followers thanme on that platform.
(33:51):
But as soon as they come overto Instagram with that content
does not perform, falls flat.
Nobody watches it, nobody givesa shit, right?
So it's like that content.
We know it performs.
It gets like tens of thousandsof views or even more on TikTok,
but on Instagram, 200, 300views.
So who's to say that you'recreating the content for the
(34:11):
right platform, even If you'relike?
Instagram is my platform.
How do you know that?
How did you determine that?
Do you like it?
Because you scroll on it more,right?
So true Same thing like TikTok,youtube, blue Sky or even Red
Note, the Chinese app.
That's like the TikTokcompetitor, but it's all in
Chinese.
A lot of people went to thatone, like the TikTok one.
(34:32):
Tiktok was banned for like whatwas it Like 15 hours or
something?
Alyssa (34:37):
There was like a lemonade.
What about lemonade?
Matt (34:40):
I've heard about that one .
It's not available in Canada,so I haven't been able to use it
.
Yeah.
Alyssa (34:44):
Yeah, yeah, not really familiar with that either, but
yeah.
So I mean that's why I'mthinking just like, cause I have
my TikTok account set up.
I'm just like I'm just do Idon't I?
And it's like you give me theconfidence I'm going to do it.
Matt (35:00):
I'm going to try and just like you know business failures
, when do you know to close downa business?
It's like everything is anexperiment, like I have another,
maybe two businesses that Ididn't even talk about.
That it's they were justexperiments.
Like looking back, if you lookat it like we're just going to
try to prove a hypothesis here,can we do it, can't we do it.
(35:22):
It's like, okay, well, we didit, but then it didn't work out
the way that we wanted it toexactly.
Alyssa (35:27):
So we're going to close this down, but we're going to
take the learnings from that andwe're going to carry that
forward into the next thing.
Yeah, well, that's great.
That's great advice, matt, andI really appreciate it.
So, matt, I just want to thankyou, and you know, for joining
me today and sharing yourincredible journey and, you know
, your insight into thesedigital products and everything
that we've talked about todaywas just so.
(35:48):
I've learned so much, and so Iknow my listeners are going to
walk away with some fresh ideas,some strategies they can use
for their own business.
So I just want to thank you,matt.
Matt (35:57):
Oh, my God, thank you for having me.
This was really great.
Alyssa (36:00):
Yeah, of course, and before we wrap up, if you do
want to connect with Mattdirectly, just you know check
out his digital marketing agency, hatetonyca, instagram, tiktok,
and get his free course onunderstanding SEO.
I have actually taken thatmyself, by the way, and I
absolutely love it.
I love it.
I reference back to it, sothat's amazing.
(36:21):
Yeah, I do, and because, for me, I do need training in SEO, and
so I like things that are justeasy.
You break them down reallyeasily, and so I find it very,
very helpful.
I love that.
Yeah, I love that, and so it'sin the show notes.
It's in the show notes, so makesure to grab it when you have a
chance.
I hope you all found thisconversation inspiring and
(36:42):
insightful as much as I did, andI will catch you next time on
another brilliant idea.
So thank you for hanging outwith us today.
Thanks for tuning into thisepisode of Brilliant Ideas.
If you love the show, be sureto leave a review and follow me
on Instagram for even moreinsider tips and inspiration.
Ready to bring your next big,brilliant idea to life?
Visit AlyssaVelsercom forresources, guidance and
(37:05):
everything you need to startcreating something amazing.
I want to help as many small businesses as possible
because I truly believe and knowthat small businesses are the
backbone of literally everyeconomy.
Alyssa (00:11):
Welcome to Brilliant Ideas, the podcast that takes
you behind the scenes of some ofthe most inspiring digital
products created by solopreneursjust like you.
I'm your host, alyssa, adigital product strategist who
helps subject matter expertsgrow their business with online
courses, memberships, coachingprograms and eBooks.
If you're a solopreneur withdreams of packaging your
expertise into a profitabledigital product, then this is
(00:33):
the podcast for you.
Expect honest conversations ofhow they started, the obstacles
they overcame, lessons learnedthe hard way and who face the
same fears, doubts andchallenges you're experiencing,
from unexpected surprises tobreakthrough moments and
everything in between.
Tune in, get inspired and let'sspark your next big, brilliant
idea.
Welcome back to the BrilliantIdeas podcast so happy you're
(00:55):
here.
Joining me today is MattDeMonte, the founder of hey Tony
, a digital marketing agency whohelps small businesses master
SEO to achieve results.
He's built an impressive suiteof digital products, from a
best-selling SEO course, theworld's cheapest website audit
tool, a hey Tony's Insiderscommunity to a competitor
tracker called Watchdog.
(01:15):
Join me as we dive into Matt'sstory and learn how he turned
his business setbacks into amulti-million dollar success
story.
Let's dive in.
Welcome to the show, matt.
I'm so happy you're here.
Matt (01:29):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
This is gonna be fun.
Alyssa (01:31):
I know I'm glad to have you as well and I've been
following you on Instagram for awhile and I've seen your growth
over time.
But what's interesting is thatbefore you built hey Tony, you
also experienced your fair shareof business setbacks, which I
know for so many people it'shard to believe because they see
how successful you are onInstagram and how you've become
this like go-to, like SEOinfluencer, and so hearing about
(01:53):
those not so perfect moments iswhat my listeners can really
relate to.
And for someone who's listeningand might be in that weird
space in business where they'vehad it for a while, they you
know they're aren't growing, butthey're just not sure what
their next direction is, can youshed some perspective on when
you knew it was time to give upon a business or an idea and
then how did you know it wasjust time to just move on?
Matt (02:16):
Okay, that's, that's a very good question.
So I've had a lot of failedbusinesses, startups, ventures,
whatever you want to call them,um, and oftentimes they involved
multiple other people.
So for me that was.
It's always a red flag whensomebody's like, well, do you
want to partner with me?
I'm like no, I want to make allthe decisions.
I don't want to do everythingfor myself, um, which you know
(02:38):
has its pros and cons to it.
But, uh, one of the businessesthat I started was a Lightroom
preset company, right, I don'tthink I mentioned that to you
before, but so it was sellingLightroom presets and it was
this website where you just gobuy Lightroom presets.
I think it was like 12 bucks orsomething for a pack of like 10
(03:01):
presets and we had tutorialsand all this kind of stuff
showing people how to installthem in Lightroom.
And I partnered with this guy,uh, out in the States and he's a
photographer, so he was makingall these presets and he was
also a client of mine.
So we were I was doing, I wasrunning ads for him and stuff
like that while we were doingthis other business on the side.
(03:21):
Um, and this is like very earlydays, hey, tony like me and I
have one other person on theteam and he stopped paying me as
a client.
We were still doing work.
They stopped paying me.
And this other website it wascalled Hue and Hatch it's still
live, people still buy andpeople still do randomly buy
Lightroom presets, even thoughwe don't do anything on that
(03:43):
site.
He yeah, he really stoppedpaying and that the other
website was making money.
So I was like listen, like I'mjust going to take this website
and kind of shut down thebusiness, like roll up the
business, whatever, because youhaven't paid.
And he was like, okay, itsounds good.
I was like sweet.
So after that, like we were,we're getting all of our revenue
(04:06):
from running ads.
So as running ads, you know,you have to spend your own money
to make the ads back.
And I was spending like, let'ssay, a hundred bucks a day to
make 150 bucks a day, which wasreally great.
But I was like if this startsgoing the opposite way, then I'm
spending a hundred bucks andI'm not getting my money back
and I didn't have that muchmoney at the time to you know
(04:29):
kind of risk to gamble with.
So for me I was just like youknow what, I'm going to shut
this business down.
I have other stuff that I'mdoing as well, and I think
that's really common for a lotof entrepreneurs.
It's like you can't focus onall these different things at
the same time, like you can'tfocus on all these different
things at the same time, yeah.
Alyssa (04:51):
And like when do you close something down?
Yeah, no, that makes sense,yeah.
Matt (04:57):
And so when do you, when would you close?
When it isn't profitableanymore?
And you just kind of figurethat out.
It was still, it was stillprofitable, but I was like it's
not worth the risk to me to doRight, especially if I didn't
have somebody else who was likefronting the money, a risk to me
to do right, especially if Ididn't have somebody else who
was like fronting the money.
Now I'll spend, you know, 50 toa hundred $200 a day on ads
just as a trial to see if anidea is viable before I do it.
And when I say idea, I meanlike, am I selling a course?
Am I selling a tool?
Am I selling?
You know people would sign upto my email list.
(05:18):
I'll spend that money just tosee if it actually makes sense.
But speaking of not having timeto do a business, I actually had
a cologne company and I wish Ihad one around here.
I have a couple left.
So I started a cologne companyLike do you know the wax
colognes?
Yeah, so a friend who he at thetime was running like a
(05:41):
branding kind of design agencyand I was doing ads and SEO and
all this other stuff.
And again, this is pre-anythingbig with hey Tony, nobody knows
about us, no kind of thing.
So we started this company.
We each invested close to$10,000 in getting this cologne
developed and we got it made inFrance, all this stuff, and we
(06:05):
got like a drop shipper in thestates uh, who could you know
ship it out that, integratedwith our shopify store, all this
kind of stuff?
So we spent months trying tofigure out what scent we wanted,
right like what's that we likebest, all this kind of stuff.
We did the branding.
Um well, he did the brandingand I did the marketing side of
things.
And we eventually got all thecologne.
(06:28):
It was made and we didn't know.
We don't know anything aboutimporting and exporting.
So we got it sent to um, this,this drop shipping warehouse in
uh, oh my god, illinois, likejust outside chicago.
So this I don't know pallet orseveral pallets I've never
actually seen what it lookedlike.
But it got delivered to theChicago.
(06:51):
It was the O'Hare airport inChicago and they were like,
where are the import papers?
And we're just like what do youmean?
I thought you could just bringstuff here and sell it.
And we were talking to ouraccountant because we had the
same accountant and he's likeyou guys are fucking idiots.
You have $20,000 of colognessitting at the airport.
(07:12):
They're just going to destroyit or return it.
You need to have those papers.
And anyways, long story short,we eventually got somebody at
the dropshipping warehouse.
They knew import, exportsomething and they were able to
get it at the dropshippingwarehouse.
They knew import exportsomething and they were able to
get it to the dropshippingwarehouse.
And then we realized we justspent all our money getting this
thing made and we ran some ads.
(07:35):
You know, probably spent like acouple grand on ads and it was
so expensive for us to make.
I think it was costing us likealmost like 50 or 60 bucks per
unit or something like it wassomething crazy that we had to
sell for 80 bucks to really makeany profit and like that's a
more luxury item.
We didn't think about doinginfluencer marketing.
That was an expensive avenue aswell.
(07:56):
So we were running ads andnobody knew about the brand, so
nobody was really buying it andso we just kind of let it sit
there and we're like, yeah,we'll come back to this Like
it's at the drop shipping center, like it's totally fine, they
charge us like 20, 30 bucks amonth just to store it there.
And if we do get orders, they'llship it out.
(08:17):
So a couple of months go by andmy accountant's like what are
you doing with all that stuff,like all that inventory you guys
have?
I'm like, oh, it's like justsitting there right now, we're
going to come back to it.
He's like you guys made amistake.
And I'm like, no, no, it'stotally fine.
Like we're like we got busywith other stuff.
We're going to come back to itwhen things slow down.
He's like how are you expectingthings to slow down?
And and a half of it sittingthere.
(08:41):
I just called the drop shippingcenter.
I was like destroy it, get ridof it.
And again we had to pay a feefor that.
So for me in that situation, orfor me and my friend, we're
just like we had to have aconversation like how much money
do we have to spend topotentially get our money back?
And you know a lot of peoplehave this sunk cost fallacy.
It's like I spent I have havetwenty thousand dollars of
(09:03):
inventory at this warehouse likeI gotta, I gotta sell it right,
and we just we're like we don'twant to spend another 10 grand
or 15 grand, 20 grand, whatever,in order to sell this product
that is just sitting there, whenwe could get a couple clients
you know that we're working withand just make all that money
back yeah, that's reallycomplicated.
Alyssa (09:22):
I could never do something like that.
It would require so much timeand so much energy and like so
much too much.
And that's why I think you'veyou know you've done so well
with digital products anddigital marketing, things like
that because you're just likejust so much easier than having
to run like a physical productbusiness.
Physical product business, youknow, I've experienced my own
(09:43):
setback, my own business setbackbefore the business I have now.
I was like in my early 20s,like fresh out of university, I
ran a bath bomb business back in2015.
Like, yeah, like when they itwas, I like ran it on Etsy.
It was like a bath bombbusiness.
You know something, just like Ijust thought, I just thought,
oh, I could, I could do this,Because that's when, back when,
(10:03):
Etsy was actually doable.
Now it's a really competitivemarket, but I was doing weekends
at markets.
I was selling on Etsy and doingall my ads.
It was so you know what, by theend of it I was so out of
breath, you know what.
And then it came to a pointwhere it wasn't so much that I
(10:25):
didn't have any orders, it wasthat I didn't have the inventory
Like I had to make all that.
Everything was handmade, and soI was like trying to fulfill
the orders and I just couldn'tkeep up.
And you know, my mom was sayingto me well, you know, you just
need to open up a kitchen.
And I was like I don't have thefunds for that, like I'm just,
(10:47):
you know, in my early twenties,trying to just make it through.
I don't have the funds to openup a kitchen.
So I had no other choice but toclose it.
And I just thought, you knowwhat, there's an easier way to
do this.
Um, but then, you know also, butthen back in my early twenties,
when I was just starting to getthe idea of an entrepreneurship
, when that had to close, I feltmyself like I, my self esteem,
(11:08):
or like I don't know an ego.
It kind of took a bit of a hit,because I thought to myself,
well, I, I'm just not cut outfor it.
You know, like I come from afamily of entrepreneurs.
Everybody I know isentrepreneur.
Matt (11:18):
I come from.
Alyssa (11:19):
Italian family, you know , and so everybody just has done
really well for themselves andtheir own business and I just
thought like, okay, clearly I'mnot cut out for this, but I just
think it just takes time tofigure out what you're great at,
what skills you have, and theoh my God, what's it called?
Got through the process.
Matt (11:46):
Um and like for me, like I do come from an Italian family
as well, but nobody's anentrepreneur, literally
everybody.
Like you know, my dad worked atChrysler for 30 years, my mom's
a nurse, like that kind ofthing.
Everybody had jobs and that waslike the safe, secure thing to
do.
And I don't know.
I think I just have a problemwith people telling me what to
do, or authority, and I'm justlike I'm going to do the
(12:07):
opposite.
Alyssa (12:11):
I'm going to start a business or I'm going to do my
own thing.
It is true, yeah, no, no, it'strue, and that's probably why I
really struggle with nine tofive, you're right, and you just
want to be in charge, and so sowhen I work with my one-to-one
clients, I'm just going toswitch gears here a little bit.
They know what they want to do,they have a business, and
they're kind of just trying tofigure out now what their
product ladder is and whatproducts kind of would benefit
(12:34):
their clients.
You're really good at this, soyou're going to have some good
advice to give, and so I helpthem build their product ladder
in their business, but I can'tanswer what their clients need,
because their clients are not mytarget market.
So how did you come up withyour ideas for your digital
products, and do you have somekind of process or any tools
(12:57):
that you use currently to makebrainstorming a little bit
easier to do that?
Matt (13:02):
So brainstorming, chat GPTs you're going to be your
best friend, especially forbrainstorming.
It's not really that good atcoming up with original ideas,
but it gives you back what youput into it.
Basically.
So if you can get really goodat prompts and you know, I guess
, use the right prompts, put theright information in, you will
(13:22):
get back more useful, moreuseful information, right?
So for me, for my digitalproducts, my whole goal has
always been I want to help asmany small businesses as
possible.
Not necessarily have them payme, but I mean, yes, getting
paid is great and that's how yourun a business, but I want to
(13:42):
help as many small businesses aspossible because I truly
believe and know that smallbusinesses are the backbone of
literally every economy of everycountry.
All this kind of stuff.
It really makes the world goround.
So if I can help a smallbusiness get more traffic to
their website, get morecustomers, they can hire more
(14:04):
people locally, they can paymore taxes locally, put money,
more money, back into the localcommunities, create jobs, all
that kind of stuff.
People can go to college orsend their kids to college, you
know, put food on the table, allthis kind of stuff.
So I'm like how can I help themost amount of people?
And for me, like I just did aquick Google search, I was like
how many businesses or smallbusinesses are there in the US?
(14:26):
In the United States, it cameback with something like 31
million small businesses in theUS.
I was like that's a lot, likethat's a lot of people, and each
one of those people is apotential customer, right,
whether they want to work withme and my agency or they want to
to learn SEO or some kind ofother digital marketing, whether
it's meta ads or Google ads orwhatever.
(14:48):
So for me, I was like I justneed like 0.00001% of those
people to buy my thing and Iwill be very rich, right?
So, and that's just in the U S,that's not including literally
the rest of the world, like theyou know what is it?
Seven and a half billion otherpeople.
Um, so I was just like I want to.
(15:11):
I want to be the guitarmanufacturer, basically, who
builds guitars for beginners,because they sell the most
guitars, right, they're not themost expensive guitars, but they
sell the most of them.
And for me, I was like I wantto have low, uh, low priced
products, digital products thathave so much value that people
(15:31):
would pay a thousand dollars forit Right.
But I don't want to charge thema thousand dollars.
I'll charge them like 150 bucks, right.
And the next cheapest productis like 300 bucks a month,
reoccurring Right.
So for me I'm like I know smallbusiness owners, I know they
don't have money.
I'm a small business owner.
You know, when times are tight,you're like I'll buy a course
(15:53):
for you know 150 bucks and likethat's promising to show me how
to do all of this stuff, right,I'm not going to spend 300 bucks
a month, especially when it'sin a foreign currency and that
300 bucks is actually like 450or 500 bucks.
Alyssa (16:07):
Yep, yeah, exactly.
Matt (16:11):
So that, yeah, exactly.
So that's my my course is like157 bucks.
I have a free course as wellthat shows people all the
fundamentals of SEO and thatgets them into the funnel all
this kind of other stuff.
And then on top of that freecourse, I have like a bunch of
free mini courses and freeresources and stuff that people
can consume and learn, even thecontent I post on social media,
(16:32):
like that's all free, right.
And some people are like, well,you didn't tell them the entire
process and I'm like, if you gowatch all my videos and string
them together, that is theentire process.
Just today I was reading acomment.
Somebody's like this is likethe very first thing like this
is you know that people do withmeta ads and it doesn't talk
about targeting, doesn't talkabout this and this and this,
(16:53):
and I'm like how long do youwant this video to be?
Alyssa (16:55):
yeah, like do, how long do you want this video to be?
Yeah, do you want to attend?
Matt (16:58):
a masterclass?
Like I would love for you topay me money to attend some kind
of masterclass, but like Ican't fit it all into one video,
so just go look through theother videos and you will find
your answers, um, but then I.
So, with all that in mind, Iwas like SEO tools are very
expensive, right?
Audit tools, um, you know,keyword research tools?
(17:19):
Like it's going to cost you atleast a hundred dollars a month
in software to do any kind ofSEO, which is very unfortunate,
um, but like I looked into doinglike a keyword research tool,
um, getting one of thosedeveloped and it's so costly
because there's so much data,there's so much information, um,
and I'm I'm like Irealistically can't do that.
(17:41):
There are cheaper solutions outthere.
I don't know how they're socheap, um, but so I I kind of
axed that idea once I found outhow much it would cost not to
build but to actually serviceeach individual user, um, so I
had two other tools developedand I made them 10 bucks a month
.
So one is an audit tool thatyou just type in your website
(18:03):
and then it'll tell you here'sall the things that you need to
fix on your website in order toincrease your chances of ranking
higher on Google.
Alyssa (18:11):
I'm sorry, hold on, so it's $10.
You said $10 a month A month?
Yeah, because right now I pay$30 for Actually maybe I think
more for Ubersuggest, and itdoes the exact same thing.
Matt (18:24):
Well, ubersuggest also does keyword research, so that's
where it's a little bitdifferent.
And Ubersuggest is the cheapestkeyword research tool I found.
I will say the search volumedata so how many people are
searching for that keyword permonth isn't quite accurate
compared to the other tools.
But all the tools are justestimates anyways.
So if you rank number one for akeyword that gets a thousand
(18:47):
searches a month, you'reprobably not going to see in
your Google search console thatthat's accurate.
Alyssa (18:53):
Right.
Matt (18:54):
So the audit tool just says, like okay, you're missing
tags on these pages or you haveduplicate tags on these pages or
these tags are too long.
You know that kind of thing.
So it's very like go fix thisstuff.
Technically, it doesn't tellyou how to do keyword research.
So I launched that and then Iwas like what do other keyword
research tools not have?
Other keyword research toolsnot have?
(19:15):
People keep asking me a lot ofquestions about like how do I do
this and this and this oncethey've purchased the tool.
And I was like you know what?
I'm going to make tutorials,how to fix all of these things
and what it actually means.
So when you go into my audittool you can actually see me
doing tutorials Like here's howto fix broken links.
Here's what a broken link isright Go fix that.
(19:36):
Or here's what a 404 error islinks.
Here's what a broken link isright, go fix that.
Or here's what a 404 error is.
Here's how to set up a redirect, all that kind of stuff.
And I was like nobody else ischarging only 10 bucks a month.
It's all like 30 or 50 orwhatever dollars per month to do
that.
Or it's part of like a packagewith like SEMrush or something,
where it's like, yeah, we'llaudit your website or Ahrefs,
(20:01):
but you have to buy all of ourtools.
It's like one big suite andit's $150 a month or whatever it
is, and I'm like, well, smallbusiness owners can't afford
that.
They could buy just Ubersuggest.
Or if they want to use my audittool, they can do that as well,
and it's $10 a month.
So they're coming in at under$50 a month.
Alyssa (20:14):
Yeah, I like that Right Instead of $ 150.
Matt (20:17):
And then I had another tool developed as well.
I'll just tell you about thisvery quickly.
I call it the Watchdog tool andbasically what it does is you
put in three competitors intothere and it tracks all the
changes that they make on theirsite.
So if they add new pages, ifthey remove pages, if they
change their title tags or theirmeta descriptions or their
(20:37):
heading tags or even anything inthe content like links, it
sends you a report every weeksaying here's all the changes
that were made, so you can seeif they're changing their
pricing strategy, if they arecreating landing pages to run
ads to.
You can see what those pagesare and, like, most of the time,
they're not linking to thosepages from anywhere that a
person is going to find on theirwebsite.
(20:58):
Um, and then it also like if,if you're doing seo or if
they're doing seo, it will showyou like hey, they changed all
these tags from this to this, soit's like okay, well, that's
the keyword that they're goingafter.
Should I be concerned?
Should I not be concerned?
um, yeah, it's, that's 10 bucksa month too.
So like I've made these ascheap as I put here, like I see
(21:20):
the way you're looking at me,you're just like no, there's no
way.
But like my goal really is tohelp small business owners, like
let's do it.
Alyssa (21:29):
Yeah, you know it's funny because, you know, for a
long time, for many years in mybusiness, I always, you know, I
was working with many clientswho are very like high ticket,
like we would be sellingthousands per like program or
per course, and and it was okay,I think, back in 2020, 2021.
But I think the landscape haschanged in terms of, like, what
(21:52):
people are spending.
They're more cautious whatthey're spending, where they're
spending their money, and highticket is not so much, um, even
just affordable anymore.
Um, and even from even formyself, like what I choose to
invest in, whether it's coachingor, you know, a course, if the
course has exactly because I'm avery practical person, just
tell me exactly what I need todo and I will pay, pay you for
(22:15):
it.
You know, um, I just found itactually more helpful to just do
something like you know, topurchase, like UberSuggest or
something just to do it for me,to do it myself, not to pay
someone to do it for me.
I just want to learn how to doit for myself and I just thought
that was like and it was, youknow, it's a good, affordable
price.
But now that you're telling methat, you know this is $10 a
(22:36):
month and I'm just like, um,this is worth it and this is
something that I would want todo in my business and even for,
like the competition.
Like I don't I I know I don'tdo enough of that because I'm
just, you know, for me, I'm, Iam a one man show, I have a, you
know, a VA, but I don't havelike a team of people.
So, um, something like thatwould be so helpful because I
(22:58):
don't, it's tracking onautopilot, like you don't need
to go, you don't ever need to goto their website, yeah, and I
don't need to pay someone to doit for me.
So, you know, that makes it somuch easier.
Um, and so I think also two bigconsiderations that I've
noticed in your products is thatyou have a lot.
(23:19):
It's so accessible and soaffordable, which I'm like
success in their business whenthey're not putting like two,
three grand for, like a course,and it's like you know, I agree,
like you know, you want to helpas many small businesses as you
(23:48):
can, and so I kind of want toswitch gears a little bit to
talking about.
So I have something reallygreat in my podcast called the
brilliant bite of the week, andI think this is really good.
This is a quick, actionable tipthat you can give my listeners
who want to start taking actiontoday, or what can they do to
get closer to their next step.
(24:09):
And so do you have like astrategy or like an insight tip,
mantra that you can share, thatcan really give them something
to go off of?
Matt (24:17):
Okay.
So there's so many things thatI could say, but just in general
, if you and I did a video aboutthis, I think yesterday, or was
it today, a couple days ago?
Anyways, the last couple days Idid a video about omni-channel
marketing and if you don't knowwhat that is, it's basically
just being on as many platformsas you can showing up in video,
(24:38):
showing up, you know, in SEO,doing ads, all this kind of
stuff.
And you know, as you, if you'rea one man show or you know one
person, show up every day invideos and social media, run ads
and know what you're doing andall this kind of stuff.
And for me, I'm like just openup a Zoom call and then just
(25:10):
record it.
Start answering questions thatyou've heard your customers ask
or you've written blog postsabout, or even just go to
something like answer the publicand type in your industry or
niche, and it'll give you abunch of questions people are
asking about it.
If you are truly an expert, youwill be able to answer those
questions.
Open a Zoom call, record it.
(25:31):
It can just be you on the calland answer those questions.
That's step one.
Step two take that transcript.
If you need to get a transcript.
You can upload it to YouTubefor free and they'll transcribe
the video, right?
You just have to go intosubtitles and click edit and
then grab whatever they havethere, or there's a lot of AI
(25:54):
systems that'll do this for you.
I see there's an AI companionon my Zoom here.
It'll send you a transcriptafter the call.
So take that transcript, put itinto ChatGPT and say write me a
blog post answering thesequestions and make sure that to
use, like my personal stories,expertise and experience right,
because that's what Google wantsto see.
(26:14):
They want not regurgitatedcontent, because anybody can do
that with AI now.
They want to see unique stories.
They want to see uniqueperspectives.
So get ChatGPT to do that.
And there's a ton of promptsyou can use.
We have a ton that we use in myagency to write really great
content for our clients.
But just as simple as write mea blog post answering this
(26:36):
question and then, if there'srelated questions, you can put
them in there as well.
Then, in that same chat GPDconversation, say okay, using
this question, write me 10 viralscripts, or write me a viral
script that I can use to recorda video and post it on Instagram
or TikTok or whatever.
So once you do that, it'll giveyou those scripts.
(26:58):
Pull out your phone and this iswhat I do and this is how I get
4 million people seeing mycontent every single month and
that's like a bad month.
Pull out your front facingcamera on your phone, right, and
record yourself reading thosescripts, and you don't have to
memorize the entire script.
Don't feel bad if you'restumbling through things, and
you don't have to memorize theentire script.
(27:18):
Don't feel bad if it's ifyou're stumbling through things
and you need to do multipletakes.
I've been doing.
I've done like 1200 videos or1500 videos something, and I
still I'm like what was thatline?
I've said it a hundred times, Ican't remember it.
So do that.
Don't feel daunted ordiscouraged.
If you can't get through it thefirst time, nobody can.
(27:39):
Then open up like Instagram'seditor, put in all your clips
and then delete the pauses,delete the ums, delete the ahs,
all that kind of stuff, and thenyou can put on captions right
on Instagram.
You can put on graphics, youcan put on like.
Basically, you could useInstagram to edit your entire
thing and it's free.
By the way, everything thatI've told you so far is free to
(28:01):
do, right?
Wow, so take that.
I mean you don't have to payfor answer to the public, but
they do have a paid one if youwant to do more than three
searches a day.
So I've never hit the limit.
Just do a couple searches andyou're good to go.
Gives you a lot of questions,anyways.
(28:21):
So do that, record it, edit itand, before you're about to post
it on instagram, you canactually download the video from
the instagram editor and thenyou're going to post that same
video on tiktok, on youtubeshorts, on linkedin, on blue sky
, on x, on whatever platformsyou are on.
I post exact, exact samecontent on all these different
networks.
They have varying degrees ofsuccess, um, like Instagram.
(28:47):
Instagram is the biggest for me, and then it's Tik, tok, uh,
and then YouTube, and you know,so on and so forth.
So and that might change thisyear as well, anyways, so you
have that video, post them onsocial media and just keep track
, look like every week, andyou'll know this because you get
obsessed with the numbers.
As you start doing this, you'llnotice if a video pops off, it
gets like a thousand views, whennormally your videos get 200
(29:08):
views or 300 views.
If it gets a thousand views or2000 views or even more.
Take that video, turn it into anad and carpet your local area,
especially for your localbusiness.
Just literally don't do anytargeting, except here's the pin
in my postal code or in my city, and just spend your money on
doing that ad.
(29:29):
Because that piece of contentis like people are going to
watch it.
So it's going to go furtherwith the ads, like you're going
to get more than you're payingfor, basically.
And then what you can do islike also add a call to action.
So in that video you can eitherre-edit it or just add
something at the end or add texton top that just says you know,
(29:50):
text us now or you know, callfor a free quote or click for a
free quote, whatever it is, andthen use that good piece of
creative as an ad.
So you're doing SEO, you'redoing organic social, and then
you can also flip that into paidsocial as well.
So you're covering a lot ofbases doing that.
Alyssa (30:09):
I wrote this all down.
I mean you go back and watchthe video.
Matt (30:12):
I posted like a couple of days ago breaking literally all
this stuff down, and I'mactually I'm doing a webinar
this week with SEMrush, so I'mhosting a webinar with them and
this is the exact topic of theconversation.
Alyssa (30:27):
Yeah, you know, and I know that's where people get
stuck is like, how do I exactly,as you said, like, how do I
just post on my like postcontent without being
overwhelmed and burnt outbecause I'm just the only person
doing it?
But that makes so much senseand I'm going to try it out
myself, because that's where Ialso get stuck too.
It's like what content do Icreate today?
(30:49):
It's like because you just kindof get inside your own head,
Whereas, like, if you know, if Ihad, you know, if I did have a
person who was giving me thecontent, that I feel like I
would be a little bit easier.
But I'm the one just kind ofthinking and sometimes like,
because I specialize in funnelsand so I sometimes I get too
like inside my head.
I'm just like, but people don'tcare about funnels.
(31:11):
Funnels are not sexy, they'renot cool, they're not trendy.
But it's like, but they need,but people, businesses need to
have them.
So it's like it's somethingthat needs to be said and needs
to be talked about.
Matt (31:23):
And same with SEO right, Like it's something that needs
to be said and needs to betalked about.
And same with SEO.
Right, I was going to say SEOis the farthest thing from sexy
you can possibly get Right, it'slike who's going to watch, like
.
And when I started posting Iwas like who's going to watch a
video about keywords andinternal linking, like what the
hell?
But I've had people email meand comment be like, dude, you
(31:44):
make SEO so easy and fun.
And I'm like I made SEO fun foryou, like I love that for you.
That's amazing.
But, like, my intent wasn't tomake it fun, it's like to make
it like relatable and easy toeasy to do so you can grow your
business, right?
Um, and I like I would say likeanother big tip is a lot of
people will batch their content,right, they'll spend like a day
(32:05):
or two out of the month and sayI'm going to make a piece of
content, so 30 pieces of content, so one for every day.
I do all that in two days filmit, edit it, whatever.
And for me, I'm like if you dothat, you are not flexing that
creative muscle enough andyou're going to feel discouraged
that you have to do all this.
(32:25):
It might not go well, you mightnot be feeling well that day,
so you'll push it to the nextday and it's.
You're just going to keeppushing it.
But for me I'm like, if you canshow up every single day,
multiple times a day cause Ipost two to three times a day um
, you're flexing that muscleconstantly so I can see an
opportunity for a piece ofcontent that could potentially
(32:46):
go viral.
While I'm on a call with aclient or while I'm on, you know
, just browsing the internet,I'm like, and then and then
expand, you know, once you'vemastered one, and so then I'm
like okay, maybe I should stickto just Instagram then.
Alyssa (32:58):
But then other people say no, you have to spread out,
(33:26):
you got to diversify.
So what are your thoughts onthat?
Matt (33:31):
So what if the content that you're posting on Instagram
that's not doing very wellpotentially is TikTok content
and it could do very well onTikTok, right?
Like?
I have a couple of friends.
They have huge profiles onTikTok and you know they're in
like the marketing SEO space.
They have more followers thanme on that platform.
(33:51):
But as soon as they come overto Instagram with that content
does not perform, falls flat.
Nobody watches it, nobody givesa shit, right?
So it's like that content.
We know it performs.
It gets like tens of thousandsof views or even more on TikTok,
but on Instagram, 200, 300views.
So who's to say that you'recreating the content for the
(34:11):
right platform, even If you'relike?
Instagram is my platform.
How do you know that?
How did you determine that?
Do you like it?
Because you scroll on it more,right?
So true Same thing like TikTok,youtube, blue Sky or even Red
Note, the Chinese app.
That's like the TikTokcompetitor, but it's all in
Chinese.
A lot of people went to thatone, like the TikTok one.
(34:32):
Tiktok was banned for like whatwas it Like 15 hours or
something?
Alyssa (34:37):
There was like a lemonade.
What about lemonade?
Matt (34:40):
I've heard about that one .
It's not available in Canada,so I haven't been able to use it
.
Yeah.
Alyssa (34:44):
Yeah, yeah, not really familiar with that either, but
yeah.
So I mean that's why I'mthinking just like, cause I have
my TikTok account set up.
I'm just like I'm just do Idon't I?
And it's like you give me theconfidence I'm going to do it.
Matt (35:00):
I'm going to try and just like you know business failures
, when do you know to close downa business?
It's like everything is anexperiment, like I have another,
maybe two businesses that Ididn't even talk about.
That it's they were justexperiments.
Like looking back, if you lookat it like we're just going to
try to prove a hypothesis here,can we do it, can't we do it.
(35:22):
It's like, okay, well, we didit, but then it didn't work out
the way that we wanted it toexactly.
Alyssa (35:27):
So we're going to close this down, but we're going to
take the learnings from that andwe're going to carry that
forward into the next thing.
Yeah, well, that's great.
That's great advice, matt, andI really appreciate it.
So, matt, I just want to thankyou, and you know, for joining
me today and sharing yourincredible journey and, you know
, your insight into thesedigital products and everything
that we've talked about todaywas just so.
(35:48):
I've learned so much, and so Iknow my listeners are going to
walk away with some fresh ideas,some strategies they can use
for their own business.
So I just want to thank you,matt.
Matt (35:57):
Oh, my God, thank you for having me.
This was really great.
Alyssa (36:00):
Yeah, of course, and before we wrap up, if you do
want to connect with Mattdirectly, just you know check
out his digital marketing agency, hatetonyca, instagram, tiktok,
and get his free course onunderstanding SEO.
I have actually taken thatmyself, by the way, and I
absolutely love it.
I love it.
I reference back to it, sothat's amazing.
(36:21):
Yeah, I do, and because, for me, I do need training in SEO, and
so I like things that are justeasy.
You break them down reallyeasily, and so I find it very,
very helpful.
I love that.
Yeah, I love that, and so it'sin the show notes.
It's in the show notes, so makesure to grab it when you have a
chance.
I hope you all found thisconversation inspiring and
(36:42):
insightful as much as I did, andI will catch you next time on
another brilliant idea.
So thank you for hanging outwith us today.
Thanks for tuning into thisepisode of Brilliant Ideas.
If you love the show, be sureto leave a review and follow me
on Instagram for even moreinsider tips and inspiration.
Ready to bring your next big,brilliant idea to life?
Visit AlyssaVelsercom forresources, guidance and
(37:05):
everything you need to startcreating something amazing.
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