The dream is simple - have a job you enjoy doing - meaning it plays to your strengths, have the lifestyle you want, have a perfect work-life balance, and provide as much value to others.
Easier said than done...
Adam Torkildson was able to achieve all of that which is truly rare. How did he do that? by following some fundamental business rules:
- Be willing to take risks - you need to take a leap of faith and trust your skills
- You must put in place the right systems and processes in your business, that reduce the daily effort while increasing throughput.
- Surround yourself with people who are the right fit for you culturally, and that are better than you in at least one aspect of the business, and who complement your skills.
- Create a business that provides immense value to a specific sector/niche.
Adam manages 175 high authority websites (adding one per month), which total 100M visitors per month. He has a fully automated platform that allows his clients to publish content on his website, while still having all the relevant guardrails in place.
In this episode, he shares how he grew his business to such a scale while working less and less, and while providing more value to his clients.
Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Adam T (00:00):
if I'm gonna make a prediction in marketing and
advertising and thoughtleadership and seo, it's gonna
be that video content is gonnabecome more and more important
video and audio.
They kind of go together, Ithink, and it's not gonna slow
down.
And anybody who's doing just SEOor just pr, they're gonna have
(00:21):
to start getting into helpingpromote their clients' videos.
Isar Meitis (00:24):
Hello and welcome to the Business Growth
Accelerator.
This is Isar Meitis, your host,and the person you're listening
to is Adam Torkildson.
Adam offers a very uniqueservice.
He owns 175 high authority hightraffic websites which together
bring over a hundred millionvisitors per month.
This is insane.
(00:45):
And he was able to grow it fromone single website that he
started into 175 while actuallyworking less.
How did he do that?
By developing the right systemsand processes and having the
right partners.
This episode is jam-packed withinvaluable business tips that.
Literally every business leaderwho wants to grow a business,
(01:07):
whether it's a solopreneur smallbusiness, or a large business,
CEO it's just core things thatcan help every business and
every individual that aspires tobe a business leader Hello and
(02:20):
welcome to the Business GrowthAccelerator.
This is Isar Matis, your host,and I'm really excited today,
and I'm excited because I have avery unique situation that I'm
gonna share with you.
Not very often that you actuallymeet someone that was able to
set up a personal goal forthemselves, the lifestyle that
(02:40):
you want, and be able to clearlycarve a path and how to get
there.
And then figure out a way of abusiness that you can create
that can lead you to have thatlifestyle that you want.
And in addition, build abusiness that really provides a
very unique service to a verywide audience in a way that
(03:03):
serves them in an optimal waywhile aligned with your personal
lifestyle.
So it's more of or less of adream that a lot of people have.
And I haven't met a lot ofpeople who actually were able to
do it in a effective andsuccessful way until I was
introduced to Adam Torkildson,who is our guest today.
(03:24):
And so first of all, I'mgrateful for the person who
connected us together, but alsoafter speaking with him for a
relatively short conversation, Iknew I wanted to have him for
the show exactly for thesepurposes.
So we're gonna talk about thingslike how can you plan your
personal life and how can youbuild a business to support it,
and how can you service multipleclients in the best way possible
(03:46):
while reducing friction, whilebecoming a slave to servicing
all these clients?
These things are critical toprobably anybody who has any
aspiration to be an entrepreneurin any level of company.
And hence, I'm really excited tohave Adam as a guest today.
Adam, welcome to the Business
Adam T (04:03):
Growth Accelerator.
Thank you so much.
I'm really happy to be here.
I love talking about how to setup these kind of things and the
mindset and the ideas, andyou're awesome for having me on.
So thank you so much.
Isar Meitis (04:17):
Thank you.
I wanna really jump back alittle bit because I'm sure
that's n not the first thingyou've done in your career.
What was the aha moment in yourpersonal life, in your
professional life in which youunderstood that you wanna do
something different and startedthinking about that direction
and how it started evolving inyour mind?
Adam T (04:42):
If I'm completely honest, it was while I was
working at my very first job outof college, which was@seo.com.
So my background is in, in SEOcompletely.
That's all I've really been thebest at for as long as I've ever
been working professionally, andI worked there for two years.
(05:06):
And you kind of learn on the jobat a place like that.
So when I started working there,there, there was no such thing
as a course in seo.
It didn't exist in college.
In high school there's no,nothing, no way to get educated.
Yeah.
So you had to learn on the job,which I loved.
(05:28):
And at the time I didn'tunderstand how important that
was to me to to, to kind ofself-teach and self-educate.
Yep.
But I had a background in doingthat actually because I was
homeschooled up until ninthgrade and I have seven siblings
and we were all homeschooled andmy mom was by herself.
(05:50):
My dad left the picture when Iwas 12 or 13.
So it was just us and my mom andshe homeschooled us and she set
that mindset for us.
Really young that we could teachourselves a lot, if given the
right opportunity and the rightresources.
(06:12):
So I, I learned how to learn ata young age.
But that, that never reallyclicked in my mind.
I just took, took it forgranted, used it in college to
graduate with my bachelor'sdegree in three years, no debt,
just plowed through everything.
And just was like, oh, yeah,this is how everybody is.
(06:34):
This is how life works.
This is how you do it.
Yeah.
And so I took that same mindsetto my first job, seo.com.
I was the third employee theyever hired, and I was there when
they hired their 200th employee.
Two years later, we were growingcrazy.
Isar Meitis (06:53):
Wow.
What, what year are we
Adam T (06:54):
talking about?
Roughly 2007 to 2009.
And I met someone in late 2009who opened my eyes to the
possibility that I could do alot more with the knowledge that
I'd gained and the skills thatI'd learned.
And he sort of lured me awayinto a startup that he had
(07:17):
founded.
And he kind of brought me on asa quote unquote partner.
I was never a partner on paper,but we did profit sharing.
I was able to just structure myday however I wanted.
I had no boss.
So I got my taste of being anentrepreneur in a fairly
regulated safe environment, youcould say.
(07:40):
And I, I loved that.
I love being able to control myown schedule, work as hard or
not as I wanted to.
And I credit that gentleman toopening my eyes to the
possibility of
Isar Meitis (07:55):
entrepreneurship.
Awesome.
So, so what was the next thing?
So, so now you un that, like yousaid, that opens, you know, you
can't unsee once you see it.
Right.
What was the next thing that youdid that led you to what you're
doing today?
And then we can talk a littlebit about what you're doing
today.
Adam T (08:14):
Well, after running a bunch of campaigns for a lot of
clients in SEO still, that wasall I knew how to do.
Unfortunately I did a couple ofstupid things and that
partnership dissolved and it wasreally bad.
And it took years for us to healthat relationship and I had to
(08:35):
go through addiction recoveryand a lot of mental health work
to get past that breakup.
Is really difficult.
But it, it really, it, it againopened my eyes to the fact that
being an entrepreneur is not asfun or as easy as some people
(08:57):
make it look.
Yeah.
But as long as you keeppersevering and you're willing
to learn and do work andanything is possible, I, I truly
believe that.
And, you know, I believe God hasbeen looking out for me the
whole time and he, I have atrust and belief in the, in a
(09:17):
higher power.
And that definitely helped staystrong even with a young family.
I had two kids by that point andwas completely out of a job and
had a mortgage and my wifewasn't working.
And it was one of the scariesttimes of my life, but I, I was
(09:40):
willing to do anything for work.
So I went and started workingfreelance at a PR agency, and
that's where I learned about thepower of publishing content on
fairly authoritative magazinesand, and what that does for
people's brand and reputation.
(10:00):
And it also helps their SEO.
They, they kind of intersectwith each other.
They help each other, theycompliment each other.
Yep.
So that's where I learned thepower of publishing in
authoritative outlets.
And then I took my background inSEO and why I'd learned from the
PR world and thought I wonder ifI could create my own
(10:25):
authoritative outlet and justcontrol it all the way through
where I could create thecontent, I could publish it
without waiting for a journalistto accept my pitch.
And so I pushed forward on thatidea.
And I bought my firstauthoritative website and what I
call authoritative means it hastraffic.
(10:45):
It has, back then we called itpage rank, that that's not a
metric that even exists anymore.
Correct.
But that's what I was looking atat the time.
Those, at the tool with thetools available.
And I, I bought my first sitefor$3,000, all of which I
borrowed from a friend.
Cause I had, I did not have thatkind of money laying around to
(11:07):
do anything.
And that was my leap into whatI'd currently do for work, which
is I have a huge network now of175 plus authoritative online
content magazines, all of whichget traffic.
I control the editorial and thepublication and it's all done
(11:32):
remotely.
I don't have any staff that hasto control any of that because I
figured out how to use AI andplug-ins.
To manage 90% of that.
Isar Meitis (11:44):
This is nothing short of incredible and
brilliant.
And I wanna, I wanna dissectsome of the things that you
said, to what I said in thebeginning of, of finding a path.
And I truly believe that peopleare best serving the world and
themselves and their family whenthey're happy.
And people are happy when theybest use the skills that they
(12:08):
have in the capacity thatmaximizes those skills, right?
So if you can find a place, anyperson is listening to this,
where you can take the stuffthat you like to do and that you
know how to do, and you find away to maximize it, meaning
serve as many people as possiblewhile doing the stuff that
(12:28):
you're really good at, whilereally being able to provide
value while not working yourselfto death, doing that.
It's the ultimate setup, whichin addition to, like I said,
helping a lot of other peoplewill make you happy.
So it's not an easy thing to do.
And I think the interestingthing here, and, and I love the
(12:51):
way you framed it,entrepreneurship is hard.
You, I, I don't know a singleentrepreneur that hasn't banged
his head against the wallmultiple times.
I know more than a few, myselfincluded, that found themselves
at the bottom of the hole.
So very similar to you.
In 2007, I found myself with awife, a planned family.
(13:12):
I didn't have kids yet, but itwas definitely coming.
And$270,000 in debt and$6,000 inthe bank, including everything
401k savings, account check,what I had in the world as far
as assets.
Was$6,000.
(13:34):
and I think you and I are notthe only people who have taken
the entrepreneurship journey andfind themselves in that spot,
and it's terrifying, but itforces you to figure shit out.
And I think the beauty aboutwhat you did is, again, you
(13:54):
leaned forward to the things youknew and you found a very, very
interesting combination of thesethings of how to control both
the SEO side and the publicationside within one universe.
I wanna take it to the nextstep, because now people kind of
understand what you do.
What were the steps, again, froma business growth perspective,
(14:18):
the big milestones that wentfrom, okay, I just bought a
website that has some kind of aof a score and some kind of
traffic and can be used as anauthority that I can publish
stuff.
And again, to connect one moredot for people who don't know, a
big part of seo, especiallytoday, has to do with backlinks.
So people who are authoritativewebsites who will point back to
(14:39):
your website, gives Google orany other search engine, the
idea that this site probably hasgood content and that it
provides value because all theseimportant other websites thinks
because they're pointing back toit.
So that's the general premisebehind this thing.
How'd you go from the onewebsite to 175?
(15:00):
Where were the big milestonesthat you took both from a
strategic planning perspectiveas well as from an execution
perspective that enabled thisgrowth?
Adam T (15:09):
Well, the, the first part of my growth, I really just
stumbled into that.
Okay.
Because of a frustration I keptrunning into, like you said,
butting your head against thewall.
That is how you innovate.
When you're an entreentrepreneur by yourself, you
just run into the problem andthen try and figure out a way
(15:30):
through it.
And I had no, preconceivedprinciples that I was living by
that guided me to the first bigstep.
But whatever the case may be, Iended up having this huge
frustration that was, I spent somuch time interacting with every
(15:50):
single one of these people whocome to me and want to publish
an article on my sites, and Ihave to email them back and
forth, and I have to send theman invoice and I have to publish
it, and I'm doing all thesedifferent things for them.
And half the time the contentthat they were providing me
sucked in the first place.
Nobody could figure out how toactually write a well-crafted
(16:14):
article unless they were awriter by background or they
were paying somebody to write itfor them.
Yeah.
And not a lot of people could doeither one of those things.
So I also spent a lot of timecopy editing and just rewriting
people's stuff, because that wasmy degree.
I have a communications degree.
I can't read a piece of contentand not start to pick it apart.
(16:37):
It's just the way that mybrain's wired.
So just by pure frustration, Iwas scrambling for a way to
reduce the time I spent onadministrative things and spend
more time just earning the moneythat would come from it.
(16:59):
So, because I've built all mysites in WordPress, Thankfully
that community has been a hugeblessing because of all the, the
open source plug-ins that havebeen created and just the ease
with which I found creatingsites was.
So I found some plug-ins thatsolved a lot of my frustrations.
(17:25):
One of them, I'm not gonnamention it by name, but there,
cuz there's a few that existthat do the same thing, which is
they allow you to let usersregister on your site.
You assign them specific rolesthat don't allow them to do
anything besides publish, andthen you can set a checklist of
(17:46):
items that they're forced toabide by before they can
actually publish content.
So I started implementing thatacross all my sites and that one
thing.
Freed up 80% of my time rightthere.
So I went from spending 80% ofmy time managing to now 20% of
(18:09):
my time managing, and then Icould start expanding my sites a
lot quicker.
And that was the first biginnovation that took my business
to its first six figure year.
Isar Meitis (18:22):
Amazing.
I wanna touch on three verycritical points that are the
subtext of, of what Adam justsaid.
Number one is as anentrepreneur, and literally
every entrepreneur falls intothat pitfall, and then not
enough get out, which is youwanna work.
On your business and not in yourbusiness.
Because when you work in yourbusiness, first you're gonna be
(18:44):
a slave for the business versusthe business working for you.
And second, you'll never be ableto sell it because you are the
business, you're the one that'smaking it work.
You're the machine, which meansthere's no exit strategy.
You've gotta work, work, workvery hard, make not enough
money.
And then once you stop working,there's, that's it.
Versus if you figure out ways tohave other people, other
(19:09):
systems, other processes, dothat day-to-day tedious stuff
for you.
Now you can figure out how togrow, how to get more clients,
what other technology can helpme, and start looking at growth
and strategy versus fighting andyou know, grinding your teeth on
the day-to-day.
So that's a huge critical pointthat again, Adam was able to do
(19:31):
and not enough people are ableto do because they're so busy in
the day-to-day.
And yes, it's very, very hardbecause you always feel that you
gotta do all these little thingsfor the clients or the whole
thing will fall apart.
But if you keep on doing onlythat versus spending three more
hours a night not sleeping andfinding another solution, you
will do that forever becausethere's no way out.
So that's number one.
(19:51):
Number two is community.
Finding a community that cansupport you.
In Adam's case, the people thatare the WordPress community,
which is huge, but finding acommunity of people like you who
work on the same things, whostruggle with the same topics,
and approaching them in a veryvulnerable way and saying, Hey,
(20:11):
I'm looking for a solution forthis.
Can somebody help me?
If you find the right community,you will get incredible help and
in most cases for free.
But even if it does cost you alittle bit of money, it will
help you go from working in thebusiness to working on the
business or solving whateverother obstacle you have.
And the third thing is choosingthe right tools, which is a huge
thing for companies.
(20:32):
And there's.
I see a lot of two extremes ofthis mistake.
One is companies do not haveenough tools, and the other is
companies who jump on the firstthing that they see everybody
using that may or may not be theright thing for them.
So you gotta find the tools thatwill best serve what you are
trying to do in your business,which will allow you to navigate
(20:54):
it in the direction and in thestrategy to try to navigate it.
So, all exceptionally criticalpoints.
What happened then?
So now you had the right tools,the right mindset, the right, a
few websites.
What was the next big milestonethat allow you to grow to from,
you know, six figures andwhatever, six websites to
(21:16):
hundreds of websites that arerunning like clockwork?
Adam T (21:19):
Well, first of all, I love how you made me sound so
smart by summing up all thosepoints, it, it truly was not
intentional on my part, gettingto that point.
I was just trying to get past myfrustration.
Yeah.
That's, that's what I'd spentall my life trying to do.
(21:41):
And it was around that time thatI started addiction recovery,
which is what, what made me moveinto the next phase really.
Okay.
Because I, I started to becomeintentional about everything and
every one, and every idea thatcame across my mind.
(22:03):
So I, I, I looked at my life, myfamily, I, I just bought another
house we'd moved out of ourprevious property was, we're
renting it out and my, myrelationship with my wife was
deteriorating.
And with my kids, I was gettingangry a lot.
(22:24):
And I could see thesepersonality traits and
weaknesses in myself, but Ididn't know what to do about it.
and I didn't want to admit thatI had a problem cuz that means I
must be bad or yeah, not a goodprovider.
Like it really hits at the coreof being a husband and a father
(22:45):
and a provider.
So, I finally admitted I had aproblem and got into addiction
recovery, and that is actuallywhere I met my first business
partner was in an addictionrecovery meeting.
This guy was a manager at aJiffy Lube.
(23:07):
He had a high school diploma,but he was a hustler and he
reminded me of myself from aseveral years ago.
So I taught him, I offloadedeverything that I knew to him
and started paying him a salary.
And eventually I just broughthim in as a partner to my
(23:30):
company, and now he does 90% ofall the work.
He fulfills it, he handles it,and it'll, it, that freed up so
much more of my time to reallydig in and get even more
intentional about the principlebehind what I was trying to do,
(23:51):
which was partnering.
That, that is the, the back,the, the principle I guess, of
what I was trying to accomplishwas partnerships.
During the course of Addictionrecovery, I started to learn the
value of connecting deeply withpeople, because prior to.
(24:12):
that All my relationships werebasically one way, what can I
get out of this relationship?
And it's something I stillstruggle with to this day, but I
know at least enough that I dohave that weakness.
And so that's what I am nowintentional about with my
partnership marketing isdeveloping deep two-way
(24:40):
relationships with all the, theconnections that I can, that are
complimentary to my business.
And so that, that fulfills twothings for me.
One, it allows me to practicebeing a really good human and a
good friend, and also has theimpact of increasing my business
(25:04):
at the same time.
So that's how I can be happy andmake more money.
And have a lot of time on myhands all at the same time.
Isar Meitis (25:16):
Brilliant.
Again, I want to touch on threedifferent quick points.
One, it's, there's really veryfew things more important to the
success of a business than thepartners you choose, which is
could be a huge success or couldbe the worst thing that ever
happened to you if you pick thewrong person.
(25:36):
The problem is sometimes in thebeginning it's very hard to
know, but it's still a verycritical aspect.
the second thing I want to talkabout is, is relationships and
one of the core values of mybusiness is relationships over
transactions And I truly believein that.
I truly believe that if you lookto build relationships, if you
look to provide value to otherpeople, you will gain more
(26:01):
business than if you just to tryto make more business.
And the reason for that is thosepeople will value you more,
which means they will want tohelp you back, which means they
will either do business with youthemselves or will refer you
other people, or will become ahelping audience, a supportive
crowd, a social proof, call it,whatever you want to call it,
(26:24):
when other people want to dobusiness with you and they will
need references.
So building strong relationshipsis maybe one of the most
critical things you can do foryour business and for your
personal life, obviously.
And then the last thing ispicking the right people to
surround yourself with.
(26:45):
And that's true again.
Initially on your inner circle,personal life, family and
friends, family, you can pick,but the friends you surround
yourself with.
And then the second circle andthen the business circle.
And if you surround yourselfwith the right people and build
the right relationships withthem, everything becomes a lot
easier, literally everything.
(27:06):
So again, very, very importantpoints and great tips for
anybody who's trying to workthat path of I wanna do
something myself versus I wannado a 9 to 5 job, which is, by
the way, perfectly fine.
I have nothing against peoplemaking that choice.
I made it more than once in mycareer.
Let's continue.
So, so you're doing these thingsnow.
I want to take it to thebusiness itself and how does it
(27:31):
work, because I find it reallyfascinating.
What exactly is the service thatyou provide now with all these
websites and how are peopleusing it?
And I'm sure there's differentuse cases that people are using
it.
Adam T (27:45):
Yeah, that's the one thing that I still don't know
fully is how people utilize allmy sites or, or even why I have
some very good ideas on why thatis because my, my clients tend
to be either PR agencies, SEOagencies, or digital marketing
(28:09):
agencies that do a lot of thosesimilar job functions.
And so I, knowing that I canmake really educated guests on
how people use my sites, but I,I don't spend a lot of time
tracking the content that theypublish because my AI and
(28:29):
plug-ins really manage all thatfor me.
And so I don't really worryabout it.
I, I will say that there arecertain industries that I don't
allow to publish in any of mysites, which are.
Things like vaping and, vices,things of that nature.
I I, I made a decision a longtime ago, I would never try and
(28:51):
make money from those industriesjust for purely moral reasons,
but it's turned out that I'vesaved myself a lot of headache
as well.
Looking at some of my colleagueswho do try and make money there,
it's usually not worth it in thelong run.
And, the, the way that mynetwork is structured right now,
(29:12):
it operates a, a lot like how apress release service operates,
where users come in and they,they select where they want
their distribution to be.
They upload their content andtheir images and their media or
whatever, and then they publishit.
Now, the difference between apress release service and my
(29:35):
sites is that one, I requireevery single piece of content to
be completely unique when itgoes on one of my sites.
I will not allow copied content,plagiarized content, mult, mass
syndication.
That's not what we're doing overhere.
I'm trying to operate thesesites as if they were
(29:58):
legitimate, newsworthy contentinformational sites.
That's really their intentionand, and so that's, I force my
users to go through that processof writing unique content.
They're gonna put links inthere, they're gonna put videos,
they're gonna put whatevercontent they want.
(30:18):
That's entirely up to them.
And so that's the part I don'treally have a lot of oversight
into other than making them stayaway from certain topics.
And then, I have twomonetization models with them.
Either people can pay per postthey publish, which is a lot
more expensive, I'll be honest.
(30:38):
or I can allow them to haveaccess to all my sites for a
flat monthly subscription fee.
And I have about half of myincome coming from both of those
subscription types.
Now, at the same time, I wouldbe an idiot if I didn't also try
and monetize my sites in otherways.
(31:01):
And so I use a model calledArbitrage.
That's where you buy lessexpensive traffic from content
sites like Tabula and andOutbrain and those things, and
you push that traffic towardsarticles or videos on your own
sites and and where you havePageview ads, banner ads.
(31:26):
and then you make a smallpercentage of income on the
difference between what youspent and what you make.
Yep.
It is not a complicated model,and you can only do it if
you're, you can only beprofitable at it if you do it at
scale.
And I'm talking about a hundredmillion plus views a month
across a bunch of differentsites.
(31:48):
So I didn't realize I could dothat until just a few years ago
because I got a new partner whojust, that's all they do.
And they saw how many sites Ihave that they're all set up as
new sites.
They're, they're legitimatesites.
They have logos, they haveprivacy policies, we have strict
content controls in place.
(32:10):
And so all the ad networks lovedmy sites, and they all
immediately got approved.
So I'd already jumped throughthe hoops without even knowing
that I'd done so.
And I was able to instantly geta lot of arbitrage traffic going
very quickly, and that increasedmy revenue by 10% in the first
(32:34):
year that I was using it.
Isar Meitis (32:36):
Amazing.
Okay.
I, I wanna, I wanna summarizeagain a few things that are
very, very unique about what youdo as a service.
First of all, the fact that youcan, through a flat fee, have
access to hundreds of websites.
Adam T (32:57):
Oh, I did forget to mention anybody who's
subscribing for that flat fee.
I acquire a new site everymonth, so Wow.
Anybody who's subscribing getsaccess to that new site and
their subscription never changesprice.
Quick
Isar Meitis (33:14):
question.
Are they bundled into topicslike are there different areas
of interest?
Adam T (33:19):
That, that you, A lot of my sites, I buy them in
particular niches.
So yeah, there, there's gonna behealth sites, finance sites,
small business sites.
So they, they fall within fairlygeneric categories, but they,
they are all categorizedspecifically that way.
(33:41):
When I get them, I have very fewgeneric sites that anything goes
on.
Isar Meitis (33:47):
Yeah.
I, I kind of assume that's thecase.
So, so really when peoplesubscribe to the 175 websites,
or again, the growing numberthat it is, they don't subscribe
to all of them.
They really care about the fivebig ones in the industry and the
10 additional that are kind oflike touching and have some
parallel lines to their industryto attract the right audience.
Right.
That's a fair
Adam T (34:07):
assumption.
Well, that, that would be if auser was just publishing content
about themselves.
But if an agency.
Services, dozens of clients anddozens of industries, they'll
probably use every single one ofmy sites for at least one of
their
Isar Meitis (34:23):
clients.
Understood.
Yeah, it makes sense becausethey themselves serve multiple
clients in multiple industries.
Right.
Interesting.
I think one of the unique thingsabout it is the fact that I, you
know, your clients have fullcontrol.
They decide what they publish,when they publish, where they
(34:43):
publish it at what frequency itgoes out, which content it has
inside, and at a very highvolume of traffic that comes to
these websites fully under, thencontrol under a flat fee.
I don't know, literally nobodythat does anything like this.
And I found this a extremelyvaluable service and b, really
(35:07):
unique.
I'll mention one book that is.
Very relevant to this topic, andyou may know others, but
there's, there's a reallyphenomenal book that's called,
trust Me, I'm Lying, thatliterally talks about a person
that figure out how the wholebig media websites work.
So the big, big ones, includingnational television.
(35:29):
And he found that there's a wayto game the industry once you
understand how it's played.
And it's a, it's a bookdefinitely worth reading.
If you want a very quicksummary, all these websites are
built on ads.
That's how they make money.
So from CNN down to, you know,the Motley Full and below that,
they make money through sellingads to sell ads.
(35:51):
They need traffic to havetraffic.
They need new content all thetime.
It's all a contest on who hasmore content and there's not
enough people.
The world to serve enoughresearch to build that content.
So what they do, they screensthe level of websites below
them.
(36:11):
So the CNNs and the BBCs of theworld, wherever they are in the
world, they look at a hundreddifferent newsworthy websites to
see what news come out.
And if there's something thatshows up in 20 of these sites,
it's probably newsworthy.
And then they pick it and theymake it into national media
story.
The people below them look at ahundred websites on the level
(36:33):
before, and if something showsup on 20 of them, it's probably
relevant and me, and they willcreate an item on that and so on
and so forth.
And if you understand whichpeople, which editors look at
which websites to get thecontent they're gonna publish on
Topic X.
Again, finance, sports, whateverthe case may be.
(36:54):
And you can send content tothose websites, it will get
picked up, up the chain.
And if you know how to play thegame, it will make it to
national television without youhaving to spend a cent.
Other than creating the contentand having the right
relationships with the people onthe bottom of the totem pole,
just the right people.
And the service you're providingis literally the only service
(37:18):
that I know that gets you a bigchunk of the way forward.
By being able to publish a lotof content in a lot of
respectable websites very, veryquickly without spending a huge
amount of money and a hugeamount of time doing that, which
by itself makes it very, veryinteresting.
all of this was reallybrilliant.
I mean, both from your personaljourney as well as the business
(37:39):
you developed.
If people wanna work with you,if people wanna follow you, if
people wanna do business withyou, what's the best way to
connect
Adam T (37:46):
with you?
I, I really like working withpeople who connect with me on
LinkedIn.
Okay.
Because that, that's sort of myway of screening people that I
want to work with.
If I can check out theirLinkedIn profile and we can have
a good connection andconversation, then I, I will,
I'm very fast to respond onLinkedIn and then I'll, I'll
(38:10):
usually take the conversationonto a phone call and either a
relationship where they'repaying or, you know, some way in
which we can help each other.
But I, I always like to start iton LinkedIn and I can guarantee
I am the only Adam Torkelsonthat exists on LinkedIn and on
Google.
So you can Google me or justsearch on LinkedIn.
(38:31):
One way or the other, you'llfind my LinkedIn profile.
Isar Meitis (38:35):
Awesome.
Any final words?
Anything you wanna add before wewrap this up?
Adam T (38:41):
Well, one of the things the.
The side effects, I guess, ofhaving websites with so much
traffic.
this was an unintentional sideeffect that I didn't know
existed until last year, butwhen I embed a YouTube video in
a couple of my sites that getthe most traffic, those videos
(39:03):
get about 5,000 views per sitethat they're embedded in.
Wow.
And I don't know why it is 5,000and then I don't know why it's
just those sites versus others.
I haven't figured that out yet,but it works every single time.
And so I tell my subscribersthat, Hey, that this is what
(39:24):
happens.
And that's sort of like a freeextra benefit of doing this.
But not a lot of'em have takenadvantage of that.
And I'm, if I'm gonna make aprediction in marketing and
advertising and thoughtleadership and seo, it's gonna
be that video content is gonnabecome more.
And more important video andaudio.
(39:45):
They kind of go together, Ithink, and it's not gonna slow
down.
And anybody who's doing just SEOor just pr, they're gonna have
to start getting into helpingpromote their clients' videos.
Isar Meitis (39:58):
agreed.
Adam, this was phenomenal.
I really, really enjoyed talkingwith you.
I learned a lot.
I'm sure other people who'vebeen listening or will listen to
this learned a lot.
Thank you so much for taking thetime and sharing your, your
personal story and your businessstory as well.
Adam T (40:14):
Oh, my pleasure.
Thank you so much.
You're the man.
Isar Meitis (40:16):
What a fascinating conversation with Adam.
He was able to really createmagic of being able to work
less, have the lifestyle that hewants, spend more time with his
family while growing a very.
Business that provides value toso many other businesses.
Really remarkable.
If you're looking for anothergreat entrepreneurial story with
lots of ups and downs andamazing business tips, I suggest
(40:39):
to check out episode 101.
It's called How I Made$1 millionin my first year of e-commerce
with no experience, and it'swith Serial Entrepreneur Max
Martini.
It's a crazy roller coaster ofentrepreneurship with really
great business ideas andbusiness takes.
So check it out and until nexttime, have an amazing week.
if I'm gonna make a prediction in marketing and
advertising and thoughtleadership and seo, it's gonna
be that video content is gonnabecome more and more important
video and audio.
They kind of go together, Ithink, and it's not gonna slow
down.
And anybody who's doing just SEOor just pr, they're gonna have
(00:21):
to start getting into helpingpromote their clients' videos.
Isar Meitis (00:24):
Hello and welcome to the Business Growth
Accelerator.
This is Isar Meitis, your host,and the person you're listening
to is Adam Torkildson.
Adam offers a very uniqueservice.
He owns 175 high authority hightraffic websites which together
bring over a hundred millionvisitors per month.
This is insane.
(00:45):
And he was able to grow it fromone single website that he
started into 175 while actuallyworking less.
How did he do that?
By developing the right systemsand processes and having the
right partners.
This episode is jam-packed withinvaluable business tips that.
Literally every business leaderwho wants to grow a business,
(01:07):
whether it's a solopreneur smallbusiness, or a large business,
CEO it's just core things thatcan help every business and
every individual that aspires tobe a business leader Hello and
(02:20):
welcome to the Business GrowthAccelerator.
This is Isar Matis, your host,and I'm really excited today,
and I'm excited because I have avery unique situation that I'm
gonna share with you.
Not very often that you actuallymeet someone that was able to
set up a personal goal forthemselves, the lifestyle that
(02:40):
you want, and be able to clearlycarve a path and how to get
there.
And then figure out a way of abusiness that you can create
that can lead you to have thatlifestyle that you want.
And in addition, build abusiness that really provides a
very unique service to a verywide audience in a way that
(03:03):
serves them in an optimal waywhile aligned with your personal
lifestyle.
So it's more of or less of adream that a lot of people have.
And I haven't met a lot ofpeople who actually were able to
do it in a effective andsuccessful way until I was
introduced to Adam Torkildson,who is our guest today.
(03:24):
And so first of all, I'mgrateful for the person who
connected us together, but alsoafter speaking with him for a
relatively short conversation, Iknew I wanted to have him for
the show exactly for thesepurposes.
So we're gonna talk about thingslike how can you plan your
personal life and how can youbuild a business to support it,
and how can you service multipleclients in the best way possible
(03:46):
while reducing friction, whilebecoming a slave to servicing
all these clients?
These things are critical toprobably anybody who has any
aspiration to be an entrepreneurin any level of company.
And hence, I'm really excited tohave Adam as a guest today.
Adam, welcome to the Business
Adam T (04:03):
Growth Accelerator.
Thank you so much.
I'm really happy to be here.
I love talking about how to setup these kind of things and the
mindset and the ideas, andyou're awesome for having me on.
So thank you so much.
Isar Meitis (04:17):
Thank you.
I wanna really jump back alittle bit because I'm sure
that's n not the first thingyou've done in your career.
What was the aha moment in yourpersonal life, in your
professional life in which youunderstood that you wanna do
something different and startedthinking about that direction
and how it started evolving inyour mind?
Adam T (04:42):
If I'm completely honest, it was while I was
working at my very first job outof college, which was@seo.com.
So my background is in, in SEOcompletely.
That's all I've really been thebest at for as long as I've ever
been working professionally, andI worked there for two years.
(05:06):
And you kind of learn on the jobat a place like that.
So when I started working there,there, there was no such thing
as a course in seo.
It didn't exist in college.
In high school there's no,nothing, no way to get educated.
Yeah.
So you had to learn on the job,which I loved.
(05:28):
And at the time I didn'tunderstand how important that
was to me to to, to kind ofself-teach and self-educate.
Yep.
But I had a background in doingthat actually because I was
homeschooled up until ninthgrade and I have seven siblings
and we were all homeschooled andmy mom was by herself.
(05:50):
My dad left the picture when Iwas 12 or 13.
So it was just us and my mom andshe homeschooled us and she set
that mindset for us.
Really young that we could teachourselves a lot, if given the
right opportunity and the rightresources.
(06:12):
So I, I learned how to learn ata young age.
But that, that never reallyclicked in my mind.
I just took, took it forgranted, used it in college to
graduate with my bachelor'sdegree in three years, no debt,
just plowed through everything.
And just was like, oh, yeah,this is how everybody is.
(06:34):
This is how life works.
This is how you do it.
Yeah.
And so I took that same mindsetto my first job, seo.com.
I was the third employee theyever hired, and I was there when
they hired their 200th employee.
Two years later, we were growingcrazy.
Isar Meitis (06:53):
Wow.
What, what year are we
Adam T (06:54):
talking about?
Roughly 2007 to 2009.
And I met someone in late 2009who opened my eyes to the
possibility that I could do alot more with the knowledge that
I'd gained and the skills thatI'd learned.
And he sort of lured me awayinto a startup that he had
(07:17):
founded.
And he kind of brought me on asa quote unquote partner.
I was never a partner on paper,but we did profit sharing.
I was able to just structure myday however I wanted.
I had no boss.
So I got my taste of being anentrepreneur in a fairly
regulated safe environment, youcould say.
(07:40):
And I, I loved that.
I love being able to control myown schedule, work as hard or
not as I wanted to.
And I credit that gentleman toopening my eyes to the
possibility of
Isar Meitis (07:55):
entrepreneurship.
Awesome.
So, so what was the next thing?
So, so now you un that, like yousaid, that opens, you know, you
can't unsee once you see it.
Right.
What was the next thing that youdid that led you to what you're
doing today?
And then we can talk a littlebit about what you're doing
today.
Adam T (08:14):
Well, after running a bunch of campaigns for a lot of
clients in SEO still, that wasall I knew how to do.
Unfortunately I did a couple ofstupid things and that
partnership dissolved and it wasreally bad.
And it took years for us to healthat relationship and I had to
(08:35):
go through addiction recoveryand a lot of mental health work
to get past that breakup.
Is really difficult.
But it, it really, it, it againopened my eyes to the fact that
being an entrepreneur is not asfun or as easy as some people
(08:57):
make it look.
Yeah.
But as long as you keeppersevering and you're willing
to learn and do work andanything is possible, I, I truly
believe that.
And, you know, I believe God hasbeen looking out for me the
whole time and he, I have atrust and belief in the, in a
(09:17):
higher power.
And that definitely helped staystrong even with a young family.
I had two kids by that point andwas completely out of a job and
had a mortgage and my wifewasn't working.
And it was one of the scariesttimes of my life, but I, I was
(09:40):
willing to do anything for work.
So I went and started workingfreelance at a PR agency, and
that's where I learned about thepower of publishing content on
fairly authoritative magazinesand, and what that does for
people's brand and reputation.
(10:00):
And it also helps their SEO.
They, they kind of intersectwith each other.
They help each other, theycompliment each other.
Yep.
So that's where I learned thepower of publishing in
authoritative outlets.
And then I took my background inSEO and why I'd learned from the
PR world and thought I wonder ifI could create my own
(10:25):
authoritative outlet and justcontrol it all the way through
where I could create thecontent, I could publish it
without waiting for a journalistto accept my pitch.
And so I pushed forward on thatidea.
And I bought my firstauthoritative website and what I
call authoritative means it hastraffic.
(10:45):
It has, back then we called itpage rank, that that's not a
metric that even exists anymore.
Correct.
But that's what I was looking atat the time.
Those, at the tool with thetools available.
And I, I bought my first sitefor$3,000, all of which I
borrowed from a friend.
Cause I had, I did not have thatkind of money laying around to
(11:07):
do anything.
And that was my leap into whatI'd currently do for work, which
is I have a huge network now of175 plus authoritative online
content magazines, all of whichget traffic.
I control the editorial and thepublication and it's all done
(11:32):
remotely.
I don't have any staff that hasto control any of that because I
figured out how to use AI andplug-ins.
To manage 90% of that.
Isar Meitis (11:44):
This is nothing short of incredible and
brilliant.
And I wanna, I wanna dissectsome of the things that you
said, to what I said in thebeginning of, of finding a path.
And I truly believe that peopleare best serving the world and
themselves and their family whenthey're happy.
And people are happy when theybest use the skills that they
(12:08):
have in the capacity thatmaximizes those skills, right?
So if you can find a place, anyperson is listening to this,
where you can take the stuffthat you like to do and that you
know how to do, and you find away to maximize it, meaning
serve as many people as possiblewhile doing the stuff that
(12:28):
you're really good at, whilereally being able to provide
value while not working yourselfto death, doing that.
It's the ultimate setup, whichin addition to, like I said,
helping a lot of other peoplewill make you happy.
So it's not an easy thing to do.
And I think the interestingthing here, and, and I love the
(12:51):
way you framed it,entrepreneurship is hard.
You, I, I don't know a singleentrepreneur that hasn't banged
his head against the wallmultiple times.
I know more than a few, myselfincluded, that found themselves
at the bottom of the hole.
So very similar to you.
In 2007, I found myself with awife, a planned family.
(13:12):
I didn't have kids yet, but itwas definitely coming.
And$270,000 in debt and$6,000 inthe bank, including everything
401k savings, account check,what I had in the world as far
as assets.
Was$6,000.
(13:34):
and I think you and I are notthe only people who have taken
the entrepreneurship journey andfind themselves in that spot,
and it's terrifying, but itforces you to figure shit out.
And I think the beauty aboutwhat you did is, again, you
(13:54):
leaned forward to the things youknew and you found a very, very
interesting combination of thesethings of how to control both
the SEO side and the publicationside within one universe.
I wanna take it to the nextstep, because now people kind of
understand what you do.
What were the steps, again, froma business growth perspective,
(14:18):
the big milestones that wentfrom, okay, I just bought a
website that has some kind of aof a score and some kind of
traffic and can be used as anauthority that I can publish
stuff.
And again, to connect one moredot for people who don't know, a
big part of seo, especiallytoday, has to do with backlinks.
So people who are authoritativewebsites who will point back to
(14:39):
your website, gives Google orany other search engine, the
idea that this site probably hasgood content and that it
provides value because all theseimportant other websites thinks
because they're pointing back toit.
So that's the general premisebehind this thing.
How'd you go from the onewebsite to 175?
(15:00):
Where were the big milestonesthat you took both from a
strategic planning perspectiveas well as from an execution
perspective that enabled thisgrowth?
Adam T (15:09):
Well, the, the first part of my growth, I really just
stumbled into that.
Okay.
Because of a frustration I keptrunning into, like you said,
butting your head against thewall.
That is how you innovate.
When you're an entreentrepreneur by yourself, you
just run into the problem andthen try and figure out a way
(15:30):
through it.
And I had no, preconceivedprinciples that I was living by
that guided me to the first bigstep.
But whatever the case may be, Iended up having this huge
frustration that was, I spent somuch time interacting with every
(15:50):
single one of these people whocome to me and want to publish
an article on my sites, and Ihave to email them back and
forth, and I have to send theman invoice and I have to publish
it, and I'm doing all thesedifferent things for them.
And half the time the contentthat they were providing me
sucked in the first place.
Nobody could figure out how toactually write a well-crafted
(16:14):
article unless they were awriter by background or they
were paying somebody to write itfor them.
Yeah.
And not a lot of people could doeither one of those things.
So I also spent a lot of timecopy editing and just rewriting
people's stuff, because that wasmy degree.
I have a communications degree.
I can't read a piece of contentand not start to pick it apart.
(16:37):
It's just the way that mybrain's wired.
So just by pure frustration, Iwas scrambling for a way to
reduce the time I spent onadministrative things and spend
more time just earning the moneythat would come from it.
(16:59):
So, because I've built all mysites in WordPress, Thankfully
that community has been a hugeblessing because of all the, the
open source plug-ins that havebeen created and just the ease
with which I found creatingsites was.
So I found some plug-ins thatsolved a lot of my frustrations.
(17:25):
One of them, I'm not gonnamention it by name, but there,
cuz there's a few that existthat do the same thing, which is
they allow you to let usersregister on your site.
You assign them specific rolesthat don't allow them to do
anything besides publish, andthen you can set a checklist of
(17:46):
items that they're forced toabide by before they can
actually publish content.
So I started implementing thatacross all my sites and that one
thing.
Freed up 80% of my time rightthere.
So I went from spending 80% ofmy time managing to now 20% of
(18:09):
my time managing, and then Icould start expanding my sites a
lot quicker.
And that was the first biginnovation that took my business
to its first six figure year.
Isar Meitis (18:22):
Amazing.
I wanna touch on three verycritical points that are the
subtext of, of what Adam justsaid.
Number one is as anentrepreneur, and literally
every entrepreneur falls intothat pitfall, and then not
enough get out, which is youwanna work.
On your business and not in yourbusiness.
Because when you work in yourbusiness, first you're gonna be
(18:44):
a slave for the business versusthe business working for you.
And second, you'll never be ableto sell it because you are the
business, you're the one that'smaking it work.
You're the machine, which meansthere's no exit strategy.
You've gotta work, work, workvery hard, make not enough
money.
And then once you stop working,there's, that's it.
Versus if you figure out ways tohave other people, other
(19:09):
systems, other processes, dothat day-to-day tedious stuff
for you.
Now you can figure out how togrow, how to get more clients,
what other technology can helpme, and start looking at growth
and strategy versus fighting andyou know, grinding your teeth on
the day-to-day.
So that's a huge critical pointthat again, Adam was able to do
(19:31):
and not enough people are ableto do because they're so busy in
the day-to-day.
And yes, it's very, very hardbecause you always feel that you
gotta do all these little thingsfor the clients or the whole
thing will fall apart.
But if you keep on doing onlythat versus spending three more
hours a night not sleeping andfinding another solution, you
will do that forever becausethere's no way out.
So that's number one.
(19:51):
Number two is community.
Finding a community that cansupport you.
In Adam's case, the people thatare the WordPress community,
which is huge, but finding acommunity of people like you who
work on the same things, whostruggle with the same topics,
and approaching them in a veryvulnerable way and saying, Hey,
(20:11):
I'm looking for a solution forthis.
Can somebody help me?
If you find the right community,you will get incredible help and
in most cases for free.
But even if it does cost you alittle bit of money, it will
help you go from working in thebusiness to working on the
business or solving whateverother obstacle you have.
And the third thing is choosingthe right tools, which is a huge
thing for companies.
(20:32):
And there's.
I see a lot of two extremes ofthis mistake.
One is companies do not haveenough tools, and the other is
companies who jump on the firstthing that they see everybody
using that may or may not be theright thing for them.
So you gotta find the tools thatwill best serve what you are
trying to do in your business,which will allow you to navigate
(20:54):
it in the direction and in thestrategy to try to navigate it.
So, all exceptionally criticalpoints.
What happened then?
So now you had the right tools,the right mindset, the right, a
few websites.
What was the next big milestonethat allow you to grow to from,
you know, six figures andwhatever, six websites to
(21:16):
hundreds of websites that arerunning like clockwork?
Adam T (21:19):
Well, first of all, I love how you made me sound so
smart by summing up all thosepoints, it, it truly was not
intentional on my part, gettingto that point.
I was just trying to get past myfrustration.
Yeah.
That's, that's what I'd spentall my life trying to do.
(21:41):
And it was around that time thatI started addiction recovery,
which is what, what made me moveinto the next phase really.
Okay.
Because I, I started to becomeintentional about everything and
every one, and every idea thatcame across my mind.
(22:03):
So I, I, I looked at my life, myfamily, I, I just bought another
house we'd moved out of ourprevious property was, we're
renting it out and my, myrelationship with my wife was
deteriorating.
And with my kids, I was gettingangry a lot.
(22:24):
And I could see thesepersonality traits and
weaknesses in myself, but Ididn't know what to do about it.
and I didn't want to admit thatI had a problem cuz that means I
must be bad or yeah, not a goodprovider.
Like it really hits at the coreof being a husband and a father
(22:45):
and a provider.
So, I finally admitted I had aproblem and got into addiction
recovery, and that is actuallywhere I met my first business
partner was in an addictionrecovery meeting.
This guy was a manager at aJiffy Lube.
(23:07):
He had a high school diploma,but he was a hustler and he
reminded me of myself from aseveral years ago.
So I taught him, I offloadedeverything that I knew to him
and started paying him a salary.
And eventually I just broughthim in as a partner to my
(23:30):
company, and now he does 90% ofall the work.
He fulfills it, he handles it,and it'll, it, that freed up so
much more of my time to reallydig in and get even more
intentional about the principlebehind what I was trying to do,
(23:51):
which was partnering.
That, that is the, the back,the, the principle I guess, of
what I was trying to accomplishwas partnerships.
During the course of Addictionrecovery, I started to learn the
value of connecting deeply withpeople, because prior to.
(24:12):
that All my relationships werebasically one way, what can I
get out of this relationship?
And it's something I stillstruggle with to this day, but I
know at least enough that I dohave that weakness.
And so that's what I am nowintentional about with my
partnership marketing isdeveloping deep two-way
(24:40):
relationships with all the, theconnections that I can, that are
complimentary to my business.
And so that, that fulfills twothings for me.
One, it allows me to practicebeing a really good human and a
good friend, and also has theimpact of increasing my business
(25:04):
at the same time.
So that's how I can be happy andmake more money.
And have a lot of time on myhands all at the same time.
Isar Meitis (25:16):
Brilliant.
Again, I want to touch on threedifferent quick points.
One, it's, there's really veryfew things more important to the
success of a business than thepartners you choose, which is
could be a huge success or couldbe the worst thing that ever
happened to you if you pick thewrong person.
(25:36):
The problem is sometimes in thebeginning it's very hard to
know, but it's still a verycritical aspect.
the second thing I want to talkabout is, is relationships and
one of the core values of mybusiness is relationships over
transactions And I truly believein that.
I truly believe that if you lookto build relationships, if you
look to provide value to otherpeople, you will gain more
(26:01):
business than if you just to tryto make more business.
And the reason for that is thosepeople will value you more,
which means they will want tohelp you back, which means they
will either do business with youthemselves or will refer you
other people, or will become ahelping audience, a supportive
crowd, a social proof, call it,whatever you want to call it,
(26:24):
when other people want to dobusiness with you and they will
need references.
So building strong relationshipsis maybe one of the most
critical things you can do foryour business and for your
personal life, obviously.
And then the last thing ispicking the right people to
surround yourself with.
(26:45):
And that's true again.
Initially on your inner circle,personal life, family and
friends, family, you can pick,but the friends you surround
yourself with.
And then the second circle andthen the business circle.
And if you surround yourselfwith the right people and build
the right relationships withthem, everything becomes a lot
easier, literally everything.
(27:06):
So again, very, very importantpoints and great tips for
anybody who's trying to workthat path of I wanna do
something myself versus I wannado a 9 to 5 job, which is, by
the way, perfectly fine.
I have nothing against peoplemaking that choice.
I made it more than once in mycareer.
Let's continue.
So, so you're doing these thingsnow.
I want to take it to thebusiness itself and how does it
(27:31):
work, because I find it reallyfascinating.
What exactly is the service thatyou provide now with all these
websites and how are peopleusing it?
And I'm sure there's differentuse cases that people are using
it.
Adam T (27:45):
Yeah, that's the one thing that I still don't know
fully is how people utilize allmy sites or, or even why I have
some very good ideas on why thatis because my, my clients tend
to be either PR agencies, SEOagencies, or digital marketing
(28:09):
agencies that do a lot of thosesimilar job functions.
And so I, knowing that I canmake really educated guests on
how people use my sites, but I,I don't spend a lot of time
tracking the content that theypublish because my AI and
(28:29):
plug-ins really manage all thatfor me.
And so I don't really worryabout it.
I, I will say that there arecertain industries that I don't
allow to publish in any of mysites, which are.
Things like vaping and, vices,things of that nature.
I I, I made a decision a longtime ago, I would never try and
(28:51):
make money from those industriesjust for purely moral reasons,
but it's turned out that I'vesaved myself a lot of headache
as well.
Looking at some of my colleagueswho do try and make money there,
it's usually not worth it in thelong run.
And, the, the way that mynetwork is structured right now,
(29:12):
it operates a, a lot like how apress release service operates,
where users come in and they,they select where they want
their distribution to be.
They upload their content andtheir images and their media or
whatever, and then they publishit.
Now, the difference between apress release service and my
(29:35):
sites is that one, I requireevery single piece of content to
be completely unique when itgoes on one of my sites.
I will not allow copied content,plagiarized content, mult, mass
syndication.
That's not what we're doing overhere.
I'm trying to operate thesesites as if they were
(29:58):
legitimate, newsworthy contentinformational sites.
That's really their intentionand, and so that's, I force my
users to go through that processof writing unique content.
They're gonna put links inthere, they're gonna put videos,
they're gonna put whatevercontent they want.
(30:18):
That's entirely up to them.
And so that's the part I don'treally have a lot of oversight
into other than making them stayaway from certain topics.
And then, I have twomonetization models with them.
Either people can pay per postthey publish, which is a lot
more expensive, I'll be honest.
(30:38):
or I can allow them to haveaccess to all my sites for a
flat monthly subscription fee.
And I have about half of myincome coming from both of those
subscription types.
Now, at the same time, I wouldbe an idiot if I didn't also try
and monetize my sites in otherways.
(31:01):
And so I use a model calledArbitrage.
That's where you buy lessexpensive traffic from content
sites like Tabula and andOutbrain and those things, and
you push that traffic towardsarticles or videos on your own
sites and and where you havePageview ads, banner ads.
(31:26):
and then you make a smallpercentage of income on the
difference between what youspent and what you make.
Yep.
It is not a complicated model,and you can only do it if
you're, you can only beprofitable at it if you do it at
scale.
And I'm talking about a hundredmillion plus views a month
across a bunch of differentsites.
(31:48):
So I didn't realize I could dothat until just a few years ago
because I got a new partner whojust, that's all they do.
And they saw how many sites Ihave that they're all set up as
new sites.
They're, they're legitimatesites.
They have logos, they haveprivacy policies, we have strict
content controls in place.
(32:10):
And so all the ad networks lovedmy sites, and they all
immediately got approved.
So I'd already jumped throughthe hoops without even knowing
that I'd done so.
And I was able to instantly geta lot of arbitrage traffic going
very quickly, and that increasedmy revenue by 10% in the first
(32:34):
year that I was using it.
Isar Meitis (32:36):
Amazing.
Okay.
I, I wanna, I wanna summarizeagain a few things that are
very, very unique about what youdo as a service.
First of all, the fact that youcan, through a flat fee, have
access to hundreds of websites.
Adam T (32:57):
Oh, I did forget to mention anybody who's
subscribing for that flat fee.
I acquire a new site everymonth, so Wow.
Anybody who's subscribing getsaccess to that new site and
their subscription never changesprice.
Quick
Isar Meitis (33:14):
question.
Are they bundled into topicslike are there different areas
of interest?
Adam T (33:19):
That, that you, A lot of my sites, I buy them in
particular niches.
So yeah, there, there's gonna behealth sites, finance sites,
small business sites.
So they, they fall within fairlygeneric categories, but they,
they are all categorizedspecifically that way.
(33:41):
When I get them, I have very fewgeneric sites that anything goes
on.
Isar Meitis (33:47):
Yeah.
I, I kind of assume that's thecase.
So, so really when peoplesubscribe to the 175 websites,
or again, the growing numberthat it is, they don't subscribe
to all of them.
They really care about the fivebig ones in the industry and the
10 additional that are kind oflike touching and have some
parallel lines to their industryto attract the right audience.
Right.
That's a fair
Adam T (34:07):
assumption.
Well, that, that would be if auser was just publishing content
about themselves.
But if an agency.
Services, dozens of clients anddozens of industries, they'll
probably use every single one ofmy sites for at least one of
their
Isar Meitis (34:23):
clients.
Understood.
Yeah, it makes sense becausethey themselves serve multiple
clients in multiple industries.
Right.
Interesting.
I think one of the unique thingsabout it is the fact that I, you
know, your clients have fullcontrol.
They decide what they publish,when they publish, where they
(34:43):
publish it at what frequency itgoes out, which content it has
inside, and at a very highvolume of traffic that comes to
these websites fully under, thencontrol under a flat fee.
I don't know, literally nobodythat does anything like this.
And I found this a extremelyvaluable service and b, really
(35:07):
unique.
I'll mention one book that is.
Very relevant to this topic, andyou may know others, but
there's, there's a reallyphenomenal book that's called,
trust Me, I'm Lying, thatliterally talks about a person
that figure out how the wholebig media websites work.
So the big, big ones, includingnational television.
(35:29):
And he found that there's a wayto game the industry once you
understand how it's played.
And it's a, it's a bookdefinitely worth reading.
If you want a very quicksummary, all these websites are
built on ads.
That's how they make money.
So from CNN down to, you know,the Motley Full and below that,
they make money through sellingads to sell ads.
(35:51):
They need traffic to havetraffic.
They need new content all thetime.
It's all a contest on who hasmore content and there's not
enough people.
The world to serve enoughresearch to build that content.
So what they do, they screensthe level of websites below
them.
(36:11):
So the CNNs and the BBCs of theworld, wherever they are in the
world, they look at a hundreddifferent newsworthy websites to
see what news come out.
And if there's something thatshows up in 20 of these sites,
it's probably newsworthy.
And then they pick it and theymake it into national media
story.
The people below them look at ahundred websites on the level
(36:33):
before, and if something showsup on 20 of them, it's probably
relevant and me, and they willcreate an item on that and so on
and so forth.
And if you understand whichpeople, which editors look at
which websites to get thecontent they're gonna publish on
Topic X.
Again, finance, sports, whateverthe case may be.
(36:54):
And you can send content tothose websites, it will get
picked up, up the chain.
And if you know how to play thegame, it will make it to
national television without youhaving to spend a cent.
Other than creating the contentand having the right
relationships with the people onthe bottom of the totem pole,
just the right people.
And the service you're providingis literally the only service
(37:18):
that I know that gets you a bigchunk of the way forward.
By being able to publish a lotof content in a lot of
respectable websites very, veryquickly without spending a huge
amount of money and a hugeamount of time doing that, which
by itself makes it very, veryinteresting.
all of this was reallybrilliant.
I mean, both from your personaljourney as well as the business
(37:39):
you developed.
If people wanna work with you,if people wanna follow you, if
people wanna do business withyou, what's the best way to
connect
Adam T (37:46):
with you?
I, I really like working withpeople who connect with me on
LinkedIn.
Okay.
Because that, that's sort of myway of screening people that I
want to work with.
If I can check out theirLinkedIn profile and we can have
a good connection andconversation, then I, I will,
I'm very fast to respond onLinkedIn and then I'll, I'll
(38:10):
usually take the conversationonto a phone call and either a
relationship where they'repaying or, you know, some way in
which we can help each other.
But I, I always like to start iton LinkedIn and I can guarantee
I am the only Adam Torkelsonthat exists on LinkedIn and on
Google.
So you can Google me or justsearch on LinkedIn.
(38:31):
One way or the other, you'llfind my LinkedIn profile.
Isar Meitis (38:35):
Awesome.
Any final words?
Anything you wanna add before wewrap this up?
Adam T (38:41):
Well, one of the things the.
The side effects, I guess, ofhaving websites with so much
traffic.
this was an unintentional sideeffect that I didn't know
existed until last year, butwhen I embed a YouTube video in
a couple of my sites that getthe most traffic, those videos
(39:03):
get about 5,000 views per sitethat they're embedded in.
Wow.
And I don't know why it is 5,000and then I don't know why it's
just those sites versus others.
I haven't figured that out yet,but it works every single time.
And so I tell my subscribersthat, Hey, that this is what
(39:24):
happens.
And that's sort of like a freeextra benefit of doing this.
But not a lot of'em have takenadvantage of that.
And I'm, if I'm gonna make aprediction in marketing and
advertising and thoughtleadership and seo, it's gonna
be that video content is gonnabecome more.
And more important video andaudio.
(39:45):
They kind of go together, Ithink, and it's not gonna slow
down.
And anybody who's doing just SEOor just pr, they're gonna have
to start getting into helpingpromote their clients' videos.
Isar Meitis (39:58):
agreed.
Adam, this was phenomenal.
I really, really enjoyed talkingwith you.
I learned a lot.
I'm sure other people who'vebeen listening or will listen to
this learned a lot.
Thank you so much for taking thetime and sharing your, your
personal story and your businessstory as well.
Adam T (40:14):
Oh, my pleasure.
Thank you so much.
You're the man.
Isar Meitis (40:16):
What a fascinating conversation with Adam.
He was able to really createmagic of being able to work
less, have the lifestyle that hewants, spend more time with his
family while growing a very.
Business that provides value toso many other businesses.
Really remarkable.
If you're looking for anothergreat entrepreneurial story with
lots of ups and downs andamazing business tips, I suggest
(40:39):
to check out episode 101.
It's called How I Made$1 millionin my first year of e-commerce
with no experience, and it'swith Serial Entrepreneur Max
Martini.
It's a crazy roller coaster ofentrepreneurship with really
great business ideas andbusiness takes.
So check it out and until nexttime, have an amazing week.
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