399 - Getting to 200k/yr in 3 Years through Local SEO with Sam Sarsten - Web Design Business with Josh Hall

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sam Sarsten (00:00):
you know, if you're doing $1,000 per month, the you
know if you think about like toget to 100,000, you know it
doesn't take that much, right?
It was 8,300, right?
So you're looking at like eightor nine clients.
Realistically you're probablynot going to charge $1,000 out
the gate.
So I'd always try to liketemper people's expectations
there.
It's like okay, you're probablygoing to have, like you know,
one that's around 500 and maybea couple that are at 700.

(00:22):
But you could get to sixfigures pretty easily.

Josh Hall (00:29):
Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast, with
your host, josh Hall, helpingyou build a web design business
that gives you freedom and alifestyle you love.
Hello, my friend, it's great tohave you here and we're going
to have some fun in this onebecause I am pleased to present
to you a recent conversationthat I had with Web Designer Pro

(00:50):
member who is one of ourshining stars in Web Designer
Pro, one of our biggest successstories, the king of local SEO,
sam Sarsden.
Now Sam was back on the podcastin episode 342, where we talked
about kind of part one of his,the first phase of his success
story, where we dug into how hebrought his business to nearly

(01:12):
7K MRR.
I'm very happy to report thatexactly a year later, his
business is now at over $200,000per year, with most of that
being MRR monthly recurringrevenue through local SEO.
So we're going to unpackexactly what he has done over
the last couple of years in hisbusiness to get to this point,

(01:33):
how it's structured, what he'soffering, how much he's charging
and a whole lot more.
Before we dive into this one, acouple of links that are
important.
The show notes for this will beat joshhallco, slash 399.
So head there for all the linkswe mentioned.
Sam is the owner of an agencycalled Then Can Design.
That will be linked over there.
He's also the founder of WebDesigner Pro's sister community,

(01:53):
local SEO Academy, and he's gota special offer for you as a
podcast listener.
He's actually gonna give youthe same deal he gives Web
Designer Pro members to jumpinto Local SEO Academy If
interested.
That link will be found atlocalseoacademyco slash Josh2.
That will, of course, be linkedbelow and before we dive in
disclaimer, we had a trifecta oftechnical issues on here.

(02:16):
We had Wi-Fi issues on Sam'send, we had some video issues
and Peaches.
We have a guest appearance fromSam Sam's dog, peaches, who, uh
, messed with the cords midaction, but there were so much
good stuff that I want to makesure you hear that.
I didn't want to rerecord thewhole conversation, so this one
is a little more edited than itnormally would be.
So just a heads up, you'll see.

(02:37):
You'll hear some more breaks,but that's not typical on this
podcast of your first timelistener.
All right, here's Sam.
Let's talk local SEO and 200Kbaby.
All right, all right, sam, herefor round two.
I just said before I hit recordhow does it feel to be one of

(02:57):
my like lead success stories ofall Web Designer.
Pro members Enter, sam, becauseyou were getting going.
I was like I got to record this.

Yeah, I hadn't put a lot of thought into this
episode.
I wanted it to be prettynatural.
I was just thinking of somethings this morning so I was
driving back and forth to mykind of referral networking
group.
I know you had yours and I gotmine and uh, I was like you know
what?
Yeah, like just thinking of thewhole journey and you know, go
back to the last episode,whatever the episode number is.
Hopefully we have it memorizedby the end of this so we can
keep referring back to it.

Josh Hall (03:26):
But it's like you know I won't rehash, yeah 342.

I won't rehash the whole thing, but it's like you
know, those drives back andforth to like my folks' place
around Christmas time and comingback and just like not having
enough time and some.
You know your tagline used tobe you probably know it better
than me is, you know, build theweb design business.
Finish the line for me.
So you have freedom and alifestyle you love.
Yeah, freedom and lifestylethat you love, right, and it's

(03:51):
like that's all I ever reallywanted, you know, like being
Josh's biggest success orwhatever, making a ton of money
which I haven't quite gottenthere yet, but we're getting
there.
None of that stuff is reallythat important.
It was more of like thelifestyle, right, and so, like
you know, like we were talkingabout before we got on, I just
took my first week off inbusiness for the last three
years and everything was fine.

(04:12):
You know, the team did theirjob, projects move forward and I
was able to relax and think andnot think and and, yeah, and.
So I guess, like I don't know,like it's cool, it's cool to be
definitely one of the biggersuccess stories and I'll always
say, you know, like I said onthe last episode, all glory to
Josh, because you know I Isubmitted right.

(04:32):
I got to this point where I waslike I just want to live life a
different way and I said, well,I don't know how to do this, so
I'm just going to trust thisperson and you know who to thunk
that that this guy that sayshot dog would pack so much value
into these courses when itfirst started.
And then that commitment tojump into the community so early
when I really couldn't affordit, and then to just stick with

(04:53):
it and who knew how much value Iwould get out of that and then
to get the opportunity to get tomeet you in real life this past
year has been really awesome.
So yeah, I don't know, prettyincoherent answer to your
question there, but the goalwasn't to be Josh's biggest
success story.
The goal was to get the freedomand lifestyle that I love and
you know I feel like we're rightin the middle of that right now

(05:15):
, so it's pretty cool.

Josh Hall (05:16):
Yeah, it is pretty cool, Sam.
It's freaking awesome dude.
I mean, what's reallyincredible about from what I've
seen with you and I know we'llget to kind of like part two
with this kind of success story?
Part one in episode 342 wasabout how you literally went
from zero to about 7K monthlyrecurring revenue.
But at that time of us talkinglast year you had a lot of

(05:38):
positive momentum and like ahuge boost.
But then you had the all toocommon dry spell and in those
challenges that happen and likethe dip, it's like a roller
coaster.
There's like a bunch ofmomentum, you have some huge
wins and then there's alwayslike some dip of some magnitude.
But you weathered the stormthrough that and then now I mean
I'm seeing you become very,very quickly a multi six figure

(06:03):
web design business owner,scaler you know, studio owner.
So what's interesting about thatis you went from successful
solopreneur really quickly toand maybe this is a part of your
model with doing local SEO anda lot of growth plans to where
you you just literally can't doeverything yourself.

(06:23):
So I imagine like your modelprobably forced you to scale
pretty quickly.
But it is really cool to seeyou fast track the Web Designer
Pro journey.
I mean, for those who don'tknow, we have three categories
of members builders, growers andscalers.
Builders are folks who areearly stage, getting the
business going, getting clientsfiguring everything out, making

(06:50):
up to 25 to 50K.
50k growers are making aroundsix figures and going past six
figures.
Scalers are doing multi-sixfigures, having a small team.
So you did what I would thinkwould be a five to seven year
journey into like two years.
So I love seeing that you'rehappy and free on the other side
of that man.

Yeah, I mean, it's not easy either.
You know, I think it's.
You know, as somebody thatstarted to get into this space.
You know, with Local SEOAcademy turning over a year, you
know learning what it's like totry to teach and coach people
of how to do the same thing.
It's hard because I want totell people the truth and tell
them, like this is this might bethe hardest thing you've done
up to this point in your life,but that turns people off, that

(07:26):
scares them.
So, like I don't want to dohard stuff, right, I'm going to
go to the other channel thatsays you know, that has the get
rich quick scheme and says, oh,I'm going to tell you how to
make six figures in three months, or you know whatever the
latest you know buzz thing is.
But you know, at one point inlife I had this really good
friend and we were working outtogether which I think is like a

(07:49):
good analogy for discipline andwe were doing these really
difficult workouts and I waslike this sucks man.
And he's like, hey, it was easy, everyone would do it.
And I remember blowing that offat the time because I was like
whatever man, but for somereason that stuck with me
forever.
And it's like, if it ain't, ifit was easy no-transcript.

(08:26):
Or do you want to be brave?
Do you want to take these leaps?
Do you want to?
You know, and I think that'sthe thing Like, it's like, from
going from here to there, it'staken a lot of growth and a lot
of mistakes and a lot of not soeasy times, but on the other
side of it it can be all worthit.
So, yeah, I'm not really surewhat the original question was,

(08:47):
but that's something I feltimportant to say.

Josh Hall (08:48):
Tell me about that, because I I couldn't have asked
you this last year when we, whenwe had our first, like you know
, success story, unpack.
But I can ask you this now,being that your business is more
stable and you've been doingthis for how long you've been
doing it?

technically, two and a half years it started at
the start of 2023, so we'recoming up on three years so,
almost three years into it, iswas the hard worth it three
years into it well, I feel likewe're still in the middle yet,
like I said, there's no yachtsor ferraris or, uh, you know
mcmansions in bend, oregon,where I live, so, um, but again,

(09:24):
you know, like I was sayingearlier, that's not what it's
really about.
Right, there's different typesof freedom.
Right, there's freedom of time,there's freedom of money and
things like that, and I feellike you know, just the ability
every week to sit down and belike what am I going to do this
week?
Like that's not what it's likewhen you have a job.
Right, and there's stillobligations I have to do.
Right, and I'm a big, I'm a veryavid fan of like seven habits

(09:46):
of highly effective people,creating like a hierarchy of
concerns, starting with Sam,working my way down to like the
personal connections and theother things that are important
to me and getting way down thelist to the things that actually
make me money, before I startputting that into the roster for
the week.
But I don't know, like, yeah, Iwould say, just because of that
, it's worth it.

(10:06):
Like you know, we use money asa shorthand in this society
because, typically speaking, ifyou have more money, you tend to
have more freedom, and that'sfine.
And you know I definitely don'tnot seek money.
But yeah, I think the moreimportant thing is that like
time freedom, that freedom to beable to kind of set your
schedule and kind of do what youwant, that's something.

Josh Hall (10:24):
I heard recently I forget who I heard this from,
but the new.
It's an idea that the new truecurrency of like wealth is
complete and utter calendarcontrol.
Like no one can put anything onyour calendar except for you.
Work wise, of course, I know Ihave three kids, so everything
kind of revolves around them now.

(10:44):
Work-wise, of course, I know Ihave three kids, so everything
kind of revolves around them now.
But I do like that idea becauseit is kind of a metric of
freedom, which is if you cancontrol what calls you do, when
you do them, who you havemeetings with, where you're
obliged to show up.
If you control all those things, I mean, yeah, you may want to
get financially more free withinthose constraints, but you've

(11:05):
kind of made it like that.
That's what freedom is, that'sthe best, that is the absolute
best.

Yeah, I mean one of my biggest things I mean I
don't like sharing about this alot, but I'll share about it
here because I think it'simportant is, you know, back in
August my family, they had ahouse fire and you know it was
sudden it.
They had a house fire and youknow it was sudden, it was
electrical and it wasdevastating, right, they lost

(11:32):
everything.
And so, you know, within a dayI was packed up and moved out
there, or didn't move out there,but I grabbed all my stuff and
didn't know when I was going tocome back.
You know they luckily insurancedid their job and put them up
in a hotel.
But you know that was a lot oftrouble with a puppy and a and a
lot of other stuff, like tojust stay in that hotel for a
month straight, um, and theneventually to get new rental and
all those things, um, and Iremember like the one of the

(11:53):
first things I did before I leftis I just sent a loom to all my
clients and I also sent a loomto all my the members of my team
and I said I don't really knowhow we're going to get through
this month, but I'm going toneed your help.
And it was like by the end ofthe day, they were already like
messaging back and forth of likeyou know, why don't we have a
Slack?
You know why don't we, whyaren't we doing these things?
And it was almost like itforced us to kind of get

(12:19):
together and build this intosomething more cohesive.
And obviously a lot of theclients you know we're like you
know, take your time, take yourtime, do what you got to do.
And I feel like you know itjust reminds me of your story in
the NICU.
Right Of like you got to thislike tipping point where you had
to do something differentlybecause your life was changing
for whatever reason, right, and.
And so I made that decision tolike kind of make the team more
cohesive and all that stuff.

(12:39):
And then that made it so weneeded to add more help and then
eventually we realized that oursystems weren't that dialed in.
So we ended up getting help forthat as time went on.
But it's like that was reallywhere the growth started to
happen.
And you know it's like obviouslyyou don't ever wish these
things, but you know theuniverse has a funny way of
presenting you with thesesituations that feel impossible
in the moment and then somehowyou get through them.

(13:01):
You know, a couple of weeks ago, for the 4th of July, they
moved back into their house.
You know they have a fullyrebuilt home.
It was covered by insurance.
You know they're back in theiryou know safe space and
everything, and you know theymade it and it's nice to be on
the other side.
But you know, throughout thislast year there's been so many
times where I'm like I'm sograteful, just go be there and
be with them.

(13:22):
And you know, like I, if youwould have, you know,
interviewed me on a podcastepisode, day one going into pro,
you'd be like, what are thethings you want?
Like, well, when a terribletragedy strikes my family, I
really hope I'm going to havethe time to be able to show up
exactly how.
I hope that's just doesn't showup on our list.
But then real life just doesits thing and you know, either
get to show up or you don't,right, and so, yeah, like that's

(13:44):
an intangible.
That has just been incrediblethat I think I would have been
able to do the same thing.
I would have figured it out,but it would have been a lot
harder and it was nice to nothave to.
It was one less worry whenthere were a lot of worries
going on.

Josh Hall (13:55):
As beautifully said, man, those intangible results
that you know may not look sexyon a sales page.
That's truly.
What we want is just ultimatefreedom, which is what we have
available to us, and you're ashining example, man.
I mean the first.
So let's dive into, kind of,where the business is now and
then specifically, what you'vedone over the past year, because

(14:15):
you, you went to six figures inwhat, about 18 months?
If I recall, it's about a yearand a half that you kind of got
your.
Let's do some real math here.

Yeah, yeah, I think .
Yeah, when we had met yeah, Ithink I talked about this at wdp
con, which is web designer prosyearly conference, which is
going to start being hosted inhawaii, according to joshua no,
I'm just kidding, that's thegoal, baby.
Um, but, yeah, I got to sub inat the last second as a speaker
and after our podcast interview,I did my math and I was in this

(14:49):
like state of like, uh, Ishared in this talk, which maybe
enough time's gone where wecould post this on YouTube, so I
think it was good talk, butanyway, um, but I shared in the
talk where, right before we hadthat interview last time, uh, I
had my first loss in business,you know, and I was like, oh my
gosh, how am I supposed to dothis success story interview
with Josh when I'm losing moneyover here?

(15:11):
But when I actually sat downafter the interview because Josh
, of course, got into coach modeand told me to stop, because I
said, oh, I got so many things Ineed to think about and he said
why don't you slow down andthink about what you've
accomplished over the last yearand a half?
Because I was like almostsquarely a year and a half into
business at this point and I didthere's a little hill over here
, it's like 500 feet elevation,and I just would go up it.

(15:33):
I wrote some stuff down, youknow, went down, went back up to
the top, wrote some stuff downand I was like holy smokes, like
I've really done a lot in thelast year and a half.
When I got home I actually satdown and made a better
spreadsheet that kept track ofthe MRR better and it had been
going up and to the right.
You know, people listening athome, trust me, my hand is going
up and to the right and thatwas good.
You know, it's hard to say likewhen you hit six figures, right

(15:55):
, people know like when you'rebuilding MRR, it doesn't hit
right away.
And so, yeah, I guess when Ihit, you know, seven or eight,
you know, I guess it'd be $8,000per month, was probably around
that 18 month mark, butdefinitely within the first year
.
You know, one thing I've beenthinking a lot about lately is
that first year was under$25,000, right, a lot of feast

(16:16):
or famine, um.
And then the second year wasabout 125,000.
And this third year iseverything's good, knock on wood
, knocking on the desk should be$250,000.
And so you know to think goingfrom that first year of $25,000

(16:37):
to the third year of $250,000,like that's a 10x jump in 24
months, like that's a pretty bigjump and so, and so I think
that is probably the title ofthe episode and people might be
wondering how the heck do you dothat?
And the very first thing thatyou got to do, I think if you're
a web designer, you're hopingto start a web design business,

(16:58):
is you need to commit to havingan MRR service which stands for
monthly recurring revenue.
And you know Josh calls thesegrowth plans.
Obviously, I like local SEO.
That's the one I ended upchoosing, but having that
consistent income changes thegame.
You know we have over 50 peoplenow in the community local SEO
Academy where we all are tryingto learn how to do local SEO

(17:20):
better together.
And the number one thing I hearthere in our weekly Q&As is you
know they're afraid to take theleap because they don't want to
lose that financial securitythat they have from the nine to
five.
And that makes sense, right.
And the problem with like webdesign which I think you'll
agree, josh is like you reallydon't get that security when

(17:40):
you're just doing websites andyou know, josh, you know, over
time, was able to build hisbusiness through MRR, through
maintenance plans, and I thinkthe big difference between doing
the maintenance plan routebecause I actually just saw Cami
at WordCamp, us and she's got,you know, I think, 10,000
websites on maintenance plansright now.
So she's crushing it.

Josh Hall (18:00):
But that took a long time.

Right, well over 200.
Yeah, well over 200, that's thereal number.
Yeah, but I mean, think aboutit.
If you have well over 200people on a plan that's between
$50 and $100 a month, you'regoing to be doing all right,
right, but that takes time.
You can't build 200 websitesovernight, and so it's like how
do you shortcut the process?
That's where the MRR, thegrowth plan, comes in to social
media, email marketing.

(18:23):
I think there's going to be alot of opportunities with AI as
time goes on.
But yeah, I mean, the biggestthing that I want people to know
is like, do you need to buildwebsites?
Yes, and you need to also,because that's the hub of the
digital marketing.
It's still so important.
And you need to build websitesthat actually convert, because
otherwise, what's the point?
Where are you sending people to?

(18:43):
But then the other piece islike something that gets people
a return on their investment.
Um, I think that's reallyimportant so sam is back.

Josh Hall (18:52):
We had a uh, we had a puppy.
We had a puppy technicalproblem.
I think sam's pup was rubbingup against the cord, something
like that yeah, peach is hereand she is causing chaos.

Peach is peaches yeah she's not a peach.
What a silly girl.
That's all right at the timeit's all good.

Josh Hall (19:12):
We love pups on the web center, what was on our pro
calls or the podcast.
Pups are always good.
So, sam, you had mentioned thefirst 18 months was up and downs
, with fixed one-off projectsand slowly building that.
Mrr.
You're at a place now where,like you mentioned the, the true
way to like fast track, mrr, isto have higher paying growth

(19:33):
plans.
You had mentioned cammy meetingup at word camp and a few other
.
What is on our pro members whoare doing multi-six figures, who
have just support maintenanceplans?
It's very possible, but it's atscale and they're generally
building that slowly over time.
So, to fast track it, yeah,it's either either local SEO or
some growth plan.
So, specifically this last year, sam, what have you done with

(19:57):
your growth plans?
You committed to local SEO butin order to get to a quarter
million range ARR, basicallyannual recurring revenue what
does that look like?
Like, how are those breakingdown to what your plans and what
you're offering?

What does that look like?
Like, how are those breakingdown to what your plans and what
you're offering?
Yeah, the vast majorityprobably like 60 to 70% of that,
when everything is said anddone is going to be just our SEO
.
I call them TLC plans fortraffic, leads and clients,
because that's what people want.
They want more of that and so,yeah, that's like that's our
bread and butter bread andbutter.

(20:32):
So, you know, around a year ago,right before we had our last
podcast interview, I finallycommitted to just doing yearly
contracts, yearly commitments,because there's a lot of reasons
for it.
You know it's a it's a goodbusiness practice from my
perspective.
But also, you know there's alot of people that are switching
between agencies all the time.
You don't really want to dothat.
You want to commit to somebody.
So it's actually kind of atwo-sided.
It's like a win-win because itmakes it so we're both

(20:55):
committing to doing this for ayear and it's worked out pretty
good.
We just had our first twoclients get to the end of their
contract that were on a contractand they've stuck around, so
that's been great to see.
You know Eric talks about wecelebrate the 13th month, right,
not the first month, and so youknow, we're seeing them stick
around the 13th month.
So that's good, I mean, so wemust be doing all right.
And so when I made that switch,you know, I tried a couple

(21:17):
different pricing strategies outand when I made that switch I
said, okay, you know, a lot ofpeople know the big secret of
local SEO is that there's a lotof front end work in the
strategy side and then there's alot of building and stuff there
and then you're kind of gettingthis like maintenance mode.
Sometimes there's some spikeshere and there where you might
find some new opportunities, oryou know the honeydew list from
the client increases or whatever, but for the most part it's

(21:38):
front loaded work.
But there's, you know.
And so I was like, okay, whatcan I smooth the cost out to be?
And so what I ended up landingon was $1,000 per month for 12
months, which was the most I'dever charged.
I remember being so scared to dothat, like literally so scared
to do that, and I don't know how.
Like I just look back at allthe little blips of luck that
the universe has blessed me withalong the way.

(21:59):
But I had changed the price andthen I had I didn't get any
sales for a little while.
And then Michelle Bourbonierdid a copy boost on my sales
page and I think we published iton Monday.
And one of the things she toldme to do is like hey, if your
number is going to be on thepage, you should just tell
people that they can text you.
And I was like okay, and so,literally so Monday we published

(22:22):
it.
Tuesday I get a text.
Hey, it says I can text you.
So here's me texting you.
None of the times on yourcalendar work, can we get a call
this week?
And I'm like and that ended upbeing our first contract to
client.
And so it's like I wish italways worked out like that.
Right, but it does not alwayswork out like that.
But that was the proof that likepeople are willing to pay that
much.

(22:42):
Because this is the other thingI hear in local SEO Academy all
the time is I tell people like,hey, like you got to start at a
higher price, because if youend up with four $300 per month
local SEO clients, you're notgoing to have the capacity to
grow a team and start chargingmore.
Like you've got to startcharging as quickly.
You got to start charging moreas quickly as possible.
Sure, you probably do it forfree for one of your web design

(23:03):
clients that you already have orfor yourself, so that way you
can build those skills right.
You don't really deserve tocharge any money until you know
you can sort of kind of do itright, but then you got to do it
at half off and then you got todo it at a quarter off and then
you got to do it a full price.
You got to get yourself to fullprice as quickly as possible,

(23:24):
and so that was kind of you know, the part we're skipping is the
part where Iote to not having astable income is growing, that
MRR.
And so now each time I added aclient, it's $1,000 per month
increase.
And so it's like, oh, now I canafford another person, now I
can afford that extra license ofSEMrush, which is freaking
expensive, and it helps makethose decisions more confidently

(23:47):
.
It helps make those decisionsmore confidently and sometimes
it doesn't feel as secure asgetting a good old-fashioned
paycheck from a nine-to-five job.
But it's like now I canconsistently say we're going to
make this much money this monthand that's amazing.
And the biggest switch in thelast six months is getting to

(24:10):
the point where it's like, okay,maybe we can charge more than
$1,000 per month.
You know, I got comfy, justlike everybody does.
People get comfy charging$2,500 for a website when they
should be charging $5,000, whenreally they should be charging
$7,500 or $10,000, right.
And so that was somethingthat's happened, you know, more

(24:31):
recently, actually at WDPCon,made it worth my plane ticket
and everything else.
Because you know, more recently, actually at WDP con, made it
worth my plane ticket andeverything else.
Because, uh, you know, shannonMatters uh little training that
she did.
Uh, I shouldn't say littletraining, because it was
massively helpful but like I wasable to close two deals using
her uh like pricing structureand so I mean the total of those
deals is nearly 30,000 and thedifference, the difference per
project, is 2,400.
So we're looking at like fivethousand dollars extra from just

(24:53):
those two you know year longprojects, just from like a small
shift, you know, and we areproviding great value.
And so it's like, why aren't weasking for a little bit more?
Right, and you know, likeShannon says, get out of your
client's pockets.
And so, yeah, I think, knowingthat every time we close a deal,
that would that helped likebuild confidence as we went
along, and so the vast majorityis still those SEO plans.

(25:15):
We still build websites.
Sometimes we build websitesfirst, sometimes we build
websites after we start a clientand then technically, the local
SEO Academy money is includedin that.
I'm just thinking about thewhole business as a whole, then
CanDesigns LLC, and so you know,if you strip that away, you
know we're looking, probably itmight be closer to 200,000 just
from the agency.
But because local SEO Academyis growing, which is good, josh

(25:36):
appreciates that as one of ourstrongest affiliate partners.
But but yeah, I mean it'sdefinitely mostly the SEO plans
and a little bit for maintenanceplans still.

Josh Hall (25:46):
K is a sweet spot $12,000 annually, of course.
And then are you locking in 12months for every client.

Yeah, I've tried a bunch of different little things
.
I have some experiments thatI'm kind of working on right now
.
I've done, you know, I used tocall them SEO six packs, where
we do like six hours for adiscounted price.
That was okay, but it was hardto show the return and really
the goal, what's the goal?
The goal is to get them to workwith us long term, and so I
just didn't like that.
So now what we've been rollingout and we have our first client

(26:20):
on this right now, so I'mexcited to keep exploring this
more is called SEO Roadmap.
In case you're a random localbusiness owner, especially a
contractor or a holisticmedicine provider that's
listening to this episode forsome reason, you should check
out our SEO roadmap.
It's really cool For all theweb designers.
It's basically paid discoveryand so we charge it's going to
be around $1,200.
And we basically do 75% of whatwe would normally do in the

(26:43):
first month of working with aclient and we basically write
the strategy out, hand it to theperson and then basically tell
them like you want to keepworking with us.
That was your first month bill.
Let's keep going.
If you don't, here's this Go toFiverr, go to your local agency,
we don't care, but here's yourplan.
So I think that's a better toolto have is paid discovery,
which a lot of people have beenlearning this past year, last

(27:05):
couple of years really.
Then I know Eric recentlytalked about local SEO boost and
I think that works for peoplethat have never had marketing
done before for their businesses.
I think that's a good tool forthose businesses.
It's something I might explore,but I'm really trying to work
with more like bigger companiesmoving forward, so they there
might not be the best fit forthat, so we'll see, but it's

(27:25):
almost always a year contract.

Josh Hall (27:27):
So minus paid discovery.
But it's almost always a yearcontract, so minus paid
discovery.
What's worked for you with a$200,000 plus annual business is
a $1,000 sweet spot SEO packageand then using Shannon's
pricing matrix to have a morehigher value offer.
Is that right?
That might be.

Yeah, I mean it's really just allowed us to charge
more.
Now it's $1,200 a month for ourlast two clients.

Josh Hall (27:52):
Okay, so what's the additional suite of services for
you?
Right now, sam, your sweet spotis the $1,000 a month SEO plan.
That's 12-month commitment.
Websites you're doing as a partof that, or separate, depending
on the situation.

Depends, yeah, but yes.

Josh Hall (28:12):
So do you know your average customer?
Like is your average customer?
12 to 18 000 per year.
Is that fair to say?
Because if you break that downby a couple hundred, that's
actually not that many.
I mean, you know there's adecent amount of customers, but
not that many.
So even if we did 200 dividedby, let's say, 15 000 on average

(28:34):
, that's only 13 customers.
That's what's wild about thisand that's one reason I love the
new revenue calculator we putout is if you have twelve
thousand dollars, or let's sayfifteen thousand dollars, of an
average customer annual value,13 of them will get you a two
hundred thousand dollar business.

Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at this right now.
Yeah, I would say most of them,yeah, because we have a couple
of websites, you know.
So those are like six thousandonce they're fully paid or
something like that.
So, yeah, I mean, just, youknow, snapshot right now, live,
we have 17 ongoing clients thatare paying us like the main
price and so, yeah, there's acouple, there's a couple OGs in
there that are on slightly lowerpricing, but for the most part,

(29:16):
everybody's on that.
So, yeah, I mean it doesn'ttake that much.
That's what I try to tellpeople in local SEO Academy.
Right, it's like, you know, ifyou're doing a thousand dollars
per month, no-transcript, temperpeople's expectations there

(29:39):
it's like, okay, you're probablygoing to have, like you know,
one that's around 500 and maybea couple that are at 700, but
you know you could get to sixfigures, you know, pretty easily
.
And then it's just a matter oflike, okay, how do we get to
that next level?

Josh Hall (29:54):
so your suite of services.
Currently, if we were to listthis out on your revenue
calculator, you've got websitedesigns that you will do one off
still.
Is that right, sam, will you?
Will you just do a websitedesign, or do you?
Yeah, yeah, we still dowebsites so what's the price
points for those?
On average, are you at likefive, six K range or less?

Roughly.
Yeah, we've been doing I'vebeen doing more of getting
people on monthly payments, justto get them used to paying
monthly.
So that way if we want toupsell them to a SEO package
down the road, so, um, or youknow, just keep them on a
maintenance plan.
They're just used to paying usevery month.
Um, and I think that's a luxuryof having cashflow and being
established.
That's harder to do.
You know, eric, eric Schrammwill tell you that.

(30:35):
Right, I received Schramm.
Steve Schramm, we'll tell you.
Tell you that, right, um, I'mmixing up Eric Dingler and Steve
Schramm.
Uh, steve Schramm doessubscription web design and he,
you know he talks a lot in hispodcast and his about how that's
hard to do in the early daysbecause you want some cash to to
get running, um, so so, yeah,we usually do.
I think it's 500 a month, sothat's 6 000 over the year okay,
so you basically do a paymentplan over over a year?

Josh Hall (30:58):
what about maintenance and support?
No, so, no, no seo plans.
But what's?
What's that looking like inyour suite of services?

yeah, I have like a hundred dollar a month plan
which includes like lightupdates, plug plugins, security,
all that good stuff.

Josh Hall (31:09):
I think we have like five or six clients on that very
few, okay so again, youcommitted to local seo, found
your sweet spot with a thousanddollar price point and now
that's giving you the leverageto to be able to boost up, have
some more custom projects andhave your one-off web design

(31:29):
services and then slowly growyour support.
It sounds like do you use yoursupport plan as a fallback at
all?
Like if somebody of the 17clients who are paying you at
least a grand a month, if one ofthose says listen, sam, you're
so handsome, this has been great, but we're going to, we're
going to back off the SEO.
Do you upsell a support plan?

(31:51):
Or has that not been an issue?
What's that look like?
So I'm going to say downsells.
Do you downsell that?

Yeah, we have kind of a fallback plan.
It really only works forclients we've worked with for a
long period of time.
So this is usually like kind ofthe back pocket for if an
emergency comes up and they'renot able to continue at that
rate and I don't want to takethem to court.
But I mean, you know, it's likeI'm a human and it's like you
know, sometimes things happenright and so it's like, okay,

(32:15):
where can we take people to?
And so you know, themaintenance would be the bare
minimum.
And so we try to figure outlike what's something that can
kind of keep the SEO momentumgoing without us putting too
much work in, you know, because,say, they need to jump down to
like a 350 or 250 price rangeper month, because that's pretty
doable for most people, even ifthey're going through a rough
patch.
And so we have kind of a youknow hidden package that we use.

(32:37):
Sometimes that's mostly justauthority building, because once
you've done the heavy lifting,that's the most important thing
is getting those locallyrelevant, industry relevant
backlinks.
And so we keep that momentumgoing and then occasionally we
might look back at the content.
But I try to not build anythingon that plan.
So we have a couple of clientsthat are on that plan right now.
We're hoping to ramp those backup and so I would say that's
our first place we go to.

(32:57):
And like we have one guy thatbasically shot to the top and
he's like I think I'm good, he'slike I'm going to, went to a
maintenance plan to keep hissite updated and so, yeah, that
was like the fallback for himand so I mean that works.
You know, it's super easy to domaintenance.

Josh Hall (33:18):
We all know that how, how, how um high will you go
with like a custom plan?
You mentioned shannon'spresentation with the pricing
which is basically just priceanchoring and you give folks an
option for a really high deal orthe mid tier or a lower tier.
But with that, like, what aresome of your high end, the

(33:41):
couple that you've sold?
What do those look like?
How drastic of a difference isthat monthly recurring revenue
for that type of plan?

Yeah.
So I mean at this point I don'twant to give away all the
Shannon's secret sauce here butyou have three different tiers
right, where the deliverablesare essentially the same right,
except for the level of care,and so that's basically the way
I pitch it.
I'm like, hey, if you want VIPservice, you get direct access
to us, less than 24 hourturnaround on all client

(34:09):
communication.
That's what this plan is.
But it's X thousand dollars peryear.
Most people say, well, I don'tnecessarily need all that.
I'm like, oh, okay, well,here's the plan most people sign
up for.
So that's the way I've beenpresenting it lately.
And most people like that plan.
And it's just now.
It's positioned at a higherprice point.
And so the thing is like and Italk this a lot in Local SEO

(34:30):
Academy is, if you go out andyou look at most local SEO
agencies, they're going to havetiers, and on those different
tiers sometimes you seedifferent things.
Maybe they're building acertain number of citations
based on the tiers.
Maybe they're doing a certainnumber of GBP posts per tier.
Maybe they're doing a certainnumber of blog posts per tier.
They're doing that.
Don't work with that company,because blog posts aren't that

(34:53):
important for local SEO.
But I really teach that there isone plan that you need to do
for local SEO, one plan only.
And it's like you need to workon the GBP, you need to work on
their website, it needs to bewell-structured, have pages for
all their services and all theirservice areas, and you need to
build authority.
And you know the way we teachthat.
The structure behind that isyou start with an SEO strategy
sprint, so that way you haveyour plan and you have

(35:14):
everything set in stone andeverybody's kind of agreed on it
.
You know, maybe it's your teamand maybe it's the client,
definitely.
Then from there, you go to thebuild phase, where you're either
re-optimizing the contentalready exists, because a lot of
what they already have, oryou're kind of, you know,
building new pages and all thatstuff, or building location
pages.
A lot of times that needs to bedone, and then from there you

(35:35):
start building authority.
Now you don't want to sleep onit, you want to check back in on
the strategy over time and youmight find opportunities where
you can, you know, revamp acertain location pages.
Or they say oh, you know what Iactually want to target this
service and we have a companythat does blinds and they're
like you know we need anaudience page and so you know
people just think about stuffdown the road and we can do that
.
But that's the flow, that's thestructure.

(35:57):
With every single client itworks for.
You know, every contractorbusiness we've worked with it
works with holistic medicine.
You know we've had small lawfirm, property management,
mortgage broker, we had astorage unit, you know, and so
it's like it keeps working overand over again and so like
that's it.
You know there is no highticket, low ticket, middle.
You know it's like this is theplan, this is what actually

(36:18):
works for local SEO, and sothat's what we sell, you know.
And you know the rest of it isjust kind of like customer
service levels and you know likethe bottom tier would be like a
done with you solution.

Josh Hall (36:29):
But we haven't really even got into that yet mostly I
think it's going to be morework, so I'm kind of scared
about that plan.
Yeah, I probably.
So you started off with justbasically an add-on of vip
support to take it up a thousandto twelve hundred no, so that's
?

that would be like a seventeen hundred dollar a
month plan.
That's never been sold before.
Yeah, yeah, so Okay, gotcha,it's just charging more, just
charging more, simply sayingit's not $1,000 anymore, it's
$1,200.

Josh Hall (36:55):
And you got a well over $200,000 business with that
.
I mean, yeah, I think you couldtake that to a quarter mil for
sure.
So profitability, that's thebig thing, though, and you
rightly said, if you charge lowfor especially local SEO plans,
you're going to have zero marginto be able to hire out.
So what's the latest on yourteam, sam?

(37:16):
How many little then cans doyou have out there in the world
now?

Yeah, so on a weekly basis we have a newer VA
we're still working onintegrating her fully, which is
mostly been my fault but we havesix subcontractors that work
with us on a weekly basis and so, you know, we have basically
like a full web team.
We have the designer and thedeveloper.
On the SEO side, you know, wehave our SEO strategist and we
also have he's kind of evolvedinto this new role called client

(37:41):
success manager, because werealized we kind of need
somebody that's in charge ofthat at this point with this
many clients.
And then we brought in Eleanorfrom Web Designer Pro as kind of
our.
You know, if anybody's familiarwith the visionary integrator
role, she's definitely theintegrator, and so she's been
kind of in charge of operations.
We moved from Notion to ClickUpas a project management system.
We have all our SOPs writtenout in there.

(38:01):
It's been really good.
We're, like I said, workingkind of the optimization phase
for SOPs.
Yeah, I'm trying to think whatelse other people do ops.

Josh Hall (38:13):
Um, yeah, I'm trying to think what else other people
do, why?
Yeah, I was gonna say I've gota, uh, I got a little to-do item
for you.
Why aren't these folks on yoursite?
I'm not seeing anything aboutthe team behind me that's
literally.

Yeah, that's literally.
The next thing on our list is,uh, I just hit the microphone,
I'll put it in, unplug it, butuh, yeah, the next thing on the
list is redesigning the website.
Yeah, I think, I think that'sbeen a limiting factors.
You know, you're looking atbasically last year's version of
Vencan, not this year's, and soI appreciate the coaching call.
Yeah, and because that is thenext thing we need to do, and I
want to highlight a lot of thecase studies.

(38:40):
We've had a lot of success andI think we have a lot of clients
that'd be willing to either geton camera, at least write some
stuff down for us, and that'swhat really matters, right, and
so, yeah, my goal is to get thatdone end of the year for sure,
but hopefully faster, and I wantto do it in Divi 5.

Josh Hall (38:53):
So that's another beast, but we'll see you could
do it in Divi 5 right now, forsure.
It's very, very close toofficial beta launch.
But, yeah, if you're not doinglike WooCommerce or have any
other wild plugins, you could doDivi 5.
Yeah, pro, you can do db5.
Yeah, pros and db5.
I had it for db5 for a year now.

(39:14):
So, yeah, yeah, you're ready togo.
Man, I totally agree.
Yeah, I, I can kind of tell thesite is a little, it feels a
little jumbled.
It doesn't feel like itrepresents.
It does feel like it represents2024 than can, but not 2025.

Yeah, that's yeah for sure, yeah, and we're
getting ready to be in 2026, so,yeah, so I mean, you asked
about profitability.
So you know all those people,uh, they got to eat Right and we
got expensive tools likeSEMrush.
Dang you SEMrush and yourexpensive prices Interesting and

(39:46):
I try to share this, you know,pretty candidly, in Local SEO
Academy, it's like you know, asyou start to ramp up these
expenses, you know start to pileup in this like middle phase
between like 10 and 20 clients,but once you get past that, your
tools are almost maxed out andyou might be adding, you know,
maybe like a couple of doubledigit dollars per month per tool
, but you're really not addingto it.

(40:08):
So it's like for me, when Ilook ahead at our vision we've
been talking a lot about this,we've started a weekly manager
meeting, which has been kind offun the last couple of weeks and
as we look ahead at vision,kind of our goal for the next,
by end of Q2, I would like to bearound 25 clients, because I
think that's gonna be a sweetspot.

(40:29):
As far as profitability goes,where we're starting to get to
more of that number of, like youknow, 35 to 40% profitability.
Everybody's getting paid alittle bit more Um and we're
just providing better service toour clients.
Um so, um.
So yeah, that's kind of thetrack that we're headed towards,
um, and we're still makingmoney.
So it's really cool to see thatwe're know we're profitable.
I'm paying myself more um andyou know we're you know making

(40:51):
progress so 25 clients with thatby q2 26 that's the goal yeah,
sweet.

Josh Hall (40:58):
What so profitability wise now, are you at like 30
ish after expenses and team, oris that included?

just I'm just kind of curious, just rough wise,
because yeah, I know you say Ijust want rough, and then I pull
up quickbooks well, I, it'slike everyone's interested in
growth plans.

Josh Hall (41:15):
But then it can get dangerous when you do have to up
all your subscriptions and dohave to pay more because you
can't do the fulfillment.
So that that is the true beauty.
Heads up for everybody aboutlarger one-off projects in a
scaled maintenance plan is theexpenses are so unreasonably low
.
It's like it's ridiculous.
So I was like just highly,highly profitable because I was

(41:41):
managing 75 client.
I think I was paying 124 bucksa month with man's wp, no other,
no other seo tools.
A few subscriptions that I had,but lifetime access to divi
gravity forums was like 100bucks a year, a few others.
So it's like it's stupid.
But seo is a different worldwith expenses yeah which is also

(42:03):
why a thousand dollar plans.
Highly recommend it at least.

Yeah thousand dollar.
Yeah, so I'm looking at aballpark number right now, just
looking at QuickBooks, and Ifeel like it's hard to calculate
because now, as an S-corp, mypayroll is an expense, you know?
Yeah, now I got you yeah soit's like maybe that should be
in the calculation but includingthat as an expense.
Right now we're at like a 20%profitability.

(42:28):
I don't know.
That's great, great.

Josh Hall (42:31):
We can ask ai to figure that out if you're paying
, if you're paying all yoursubscriptions, all your expenses
and your team and you and youhave 20 profitability,
especially three years into thebusiness.
That's incredible, sam, that's.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I mean I know quote, unquotethe experts say an ideal range
is 30, to have like 30 pureprofit left over in your

(42:52):
business after paying you, afterpaying team, after paying
expenses and taxes of course.
So 30% is the goal.
That's kind of what I'm headingtowards.
It's my personal goal as well,but that's great, yeah, that's
freaking awesome.

Who knows where it ends up at the end of the year.
And it's definitely a number Iwant to play with and I think
we'll be better as we get moreclients.
And so 2026 is definitely ayear where I'm like, okay, it'd
be good to hit this number andthis profitability, Like I think
that's going to be kind of abig pivoting point for us.
But I don't know, I've beenkind of playing around with the
idea of 10X, you know it's likeover the last two years being

(43:35):
able to 10, 10x look like, youknow, going from 250 to 2.5, who
knows?

Josh Hall (43:37):
yeah sounds crazy, but I mean it's.
I mean obviously it's doable,it's just I think the question
is, at what cost?
Like what?
What is 10x going to cost?
Basically, like, um would thatbe?
It would probably have to be amix of higher, much higher
packages.
Yeah, certain level of volume.
Your team would be at capacity.
You'd probably have a lot moreexpenses, a lot more taxes.

(44:00):
So, yeah, it is kind of like ayeah, I don't want to hold you
back from 10X by any means no,no, no, yeah, it's just.

Yeah, it's just a funny thought, cause I've been
reading a book that's talkingabout you know, the 10 X is
easier than two.

Josh Hall (44:13):
X.
Have you done the revenuecalculator?
Have you uh make a 10 X?

version with a revenue calculator?
Yeah, what's the link for that?
Just so everybody knows.

Josh Hall (44:24):
Just go in revenue calculator or you can ask Brock.
Brock will, but yeah.
Brock's a man.
We love Brock.
We love Brock.
He's our AI assistant and proshout out to my daughter naming
him broccoli.
So yeah, just search revenuecalculator and it's a google or
I can share it to you as well.
You should find it quick.

But there is Brock you just do the main search yeah
, you can.

Josh Hall (44:47):
I've got it all over.
It's in web designer HQ, whichhas all the links to everything
there's.
It's in the business course, oryou just search revenue
calculator, it should come up.
There's a little graph in frontof it.
But what I would do, sam, isyeah, map out you can have fun
with it what's the 10x version,yeah, what would be, what would

(45:10):
be the 10x or what would be the10x version of that, and you can
just map out how many units youneed to sell, at what price
points, factoring everything inall right, making a copy right
now it's actually happeningpeople.
Okay, subscription model it's aGoogle Doc and, by the way, I
will I will well, as of rightnow, whoever doesn't have this

(45:31):
can get it for completely forfree.
Just need to jump on my emaillist.
First thing you'll get isrevenue calculator, so I'll put
a link to that below.
But yeah, man, I would map thatout.
Map out, yeah.

I was playing around with it and I think it's
definitely a lot bigger plan.
You know, like, for instance,one number is like if somehow
you were able to go to 5,000 permonth, you know that's 41
clients.
So I mean, yeah, it's not.
It's not a huge agency.

Josh Hall (46:01):
It may depend on the your clientele too.
I imagine a lot of localbusinesses.
1,000 is probably like ahealthy sweet spot.
I feel like two.
You could probably push it totwo, but I feel like I mean
3,000.
Itself is a $36,000 investmentannually, so that's like they

(46:23):
probably need to be hitting.

They'd probably need to be like at least three
million dollar businessesprobably to hit that range so
you know like just realisticallyyeah, and the other thing I
keep telling myself too is, youknow, like kind of going back to
the chasing wealth, not money,right, it's like, and you said
at what cost?
Right, it's like, you go tothis 10 X, you try to do this

(46:46):
and you're burning the candle atboth ends again, that's really
hard.
And you know, we all know, thatthere's probably a business
down the street in all of ourcities that's making 20 million
a year gross revenue but it'sactually not profitable.
And then you know you look atlittle then can making.
It's two, 50, but maybe end ofthe year with 50,000
profitability, like, like that'swhich business would you rather

(47:09):
have?
I feel like it would be a loteasier to run, right, and so, um
, doesn't necessarily need to bemore complicated.
So, yeah, we're definitelylooking at how do we get to hire
ticket stuff, not necessarily5,000, but, uh, you know, just
kind of working with the rightbusinesses.
Um, that you know, because Ithink you know more higher

(47:29):
ticket clients tend to be easierto work with.
Right, they kind of signed thecheck and they say, okay, that's
our marketing expense, we'regoing to trust these guys to do
their thing where the otherpeople might be looking over
your shoulder the whole timebeing like so how are things
going, you know?

Josh Hall (47:44):
two quick, two quick thoughts.
Do so definitely, sam.
Do the do the 10 X on thespreadsheet and just see what
that would look like.
I do think that would be a nicelittle guiding light, even if
you don't want to go for itinitially in the next couple of
years.
But that's still in the back ofyour mind of like.
Maybe the first stepping stoneis you, but that's still in the
back of your mind of like.
Maybe the first stepping stoneis you know what's a, what's a

(48:05):
one or two X over the nextcouple years, based off of your
model, because a two X at 250 is500.
So that's a whole differentballgame than 250 as well.
So you're right there.
I think it's a great start, agreat spot.
The other thing I was thinkingwhen it comes to any amount of
investment whether it's athousand or two or three or

(48:27):
5,000, the only metric thatmatters is ROI.
So that would be like from amarketing perspective for you it
would just be of like there's,whether someone's paying you 500
a month or 5,000, if there's anet positive and ROI for them,

(48:48):
it doesn't.
That's it Like.
It's just a matter of theircapital, really Like some
clients only have 500 a month.
So it's like, well, let's seewhat we can do to get you an ROI
.
If a client can do 5,000 amonth, you could probably do a
lot more to get those results.
So that's something to consideras well.
So wrapping this up, bringingthis home here Sam yeah, that's

(49:11):
the big thing with those biggerinvestments is like it's all
about ROI.
Like that really is everything.
And then the question is likehow much do you want to invest
in the ROI?
500 a month or 5,000 a month?

So yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I was
talking about.
Wgp con ranks.
Everybody's so scared to chargemore, me included.
Right At the time I was talkingabout how I was stuck in a
thousand.
Right Now we're charging 1200.
So it's like incrementalprogress, but it's like you're
not selling the thing, you'reselling the difference Right,
this opportunity for them tomake more money, and so that's

(49:43):
the important thing tounderstand.
So, yeah, so at this, oh, goahead guys.
I was going to say and it'scrazy to think this all started
from filling in Yoast pluginsfrom Josh Hall tutorials.

Josh Hall (49:54):
Yeah, because I do remember you saying, when you
went through my SEO course, itwas like once you got Yoast
green and it was just thrillingand it is thrilling, it really
is, it's very satisfying.
Are you using Yoast as yourmain tool for all those?

I did get SEO Press on a lower price.
I use Yoast whenever I need touse the free version and I do
think that they're kind ofsticking ahead of the curve.
So we might make a switch toYoast.
We'll see.
So I definitely love Yoast.
I think they're a great productand, like I said, we might
switch to use him as an agency.

Josh Hall (50:26):
the only reason I use him is they got in at a
slightly cheaper price for seopress, but are you still using
that, that framework though, oflike title, metadata, content to
, to try to match everything upin green for all location pages,
service pages, etc well, um.

No, there's a couple of reasons for that.
One is, once, you kind of knowwhat, okay.
So here's the thing.
If you're, if you've never doneSEO before, welcome.
This is Sam.
In 2023, right, Literally likeless than two years ago.
I'm in the exact same boat asyou those little green lights
and those SEO tools which youshould.
If you're using a free one, youshould definitely be using
Yoast, because it's the best oneout there.
For sure, those green lightswill teach you how to do it, how

(51:05):
to optimize all those thingsyou know.
And if you get into blogwriting and stuff like that,
it's still very helpful, buteventually you're going to cross
a threshold where you don'tneed that anymore.
Um, and what you're actuallydoing, um, is you're putting
information in um.
It's called the, it's likekeyword in the meta, Uh, and so

(51:25):
if people want to, they canactually steal your keywords by
looking at that, and Googlehasn't looked at that for since
2008.
So when you put thatinformation there, it does.
I mean, most people probablyaren't looking for that, but
that's just something to thinkabout, and so we don't use that
anymore.
I actually had a client recentlythat uses Yoast.
They're like wait a minute.
Why aren't, why don't we havegreen lights?
How do we know this isoptimized, and I was like, well,

(51:46):
because you know, optimizedmeans this, right, what the
green lights are looking foralgorithmically is that we're
using the keywords in the SEOtitle, the H1, the H2s
throughout the body and all thatstuff.
Once you do it enough, you haveyour own green light system
internally.
But I think it's so helpfulwhen you have no idea what
you're doing, no frame ofreference, Like it's so good to

(52:06):
have something like that in theearly days, and so, yeah, highly
highly recommend starting there.

Josh Hall (52:11):
And it is, it can be vanity metrics, because you're
essentially optimizing for theplugin versus optimizing for the
page.

it sounds like it's kind of like page speed score
and all that other stuff.
Right, you know what, if wereally, you know, eventually
just got to throw in the towel,like all right, it's as
optimized as possible.

Josh Hall (52:29):
Right yeah, right yeah, that's good man.
Well, I'm really excited.
We're kind of recording this atthe time where we're really
about to like talk SEO a lot inpro.
Michelle's going to be comingback on the podcast and going to
be talking about AI and SEO.
Obviously, what you're doingwith ThenCan and then your local
SEO Academy is huge.
I mean, you're on the leadingedge and the front edge of that.

(52:50):
I'm about to revamp my SEOcourse for a new version and
it's going to be a lot aboutsharing what you're doing with
local SEO and then just kind ofwhat I've learned over the past
since I launched the initialversion of the SEO course.
So we're in interesting timeswith SEO.
But I want to wrap up realquick with that thought when do
you feel SEO is with AI?

(53:11):
Real quick, like you know, yourbusiness is built on SEO.
When I see like SEO is deadmemes, I'm like I'm going to
call bullshit on that and,interestingly enough, I'm
actually personally doublingdown on SEO.
I think it's more importantthan ever in the age of AI, to

(53:31):
own digital real estate.
So, personally, that's whereI'm at.
Where are you at?

Well, I think we should take a big step back to
what the heck are we actuallydoing?
Right, because we all kind ofhave fake jobs.
Right, we sell these serviceson the internet.
So what are we doing right?
And what we're really doing isthere's small local business
owners and there's people intheir area and the people in the
area want to work with them.
Maybe it's not just localbusinesses but, in my example,
right, and for these people tofind them, they need to use a

(54:05):
tool to find these people.
Right, because nobody talks totheir neighbors anymore.
And for these local businesses,they need to show up in that
place where people are looking,and that usually means that
these people need help becausethey're busy.
You know doing garage floorsand you know performing
acupuncture and stuff like that.
They don't want to go on theinternet and figure this out.
And so you know, even if in thenext couple of years we switch
to a complete metaverse, we'reall wearing VR goggles and you

(54:26):
know not going outside anymoreLike somebody is going to be
helping businesses show up inthe metaverse.
You know over the other one,and you know that's probably not
going to happen anytime soon.
Spoiler alert over 92% of localsearches still go through
Google, which is only like 1%lower than it was the last

(54:48):
couple of years.
So don't panic, seo is not dead.
I was just at WordCamp US lastweek in Portland and Danny
Sullivan who coined the termsearch engine marketing.
He was like one of the goodSEOs back in the day, one of the
OGs, and went to retire andthen got scooped up by Google as
a VP, as a new venture, andhe's always like, tried to give
information back to thecommunity from the inside.

(55:08):
He was one of the kickoffspeakers the very first day and
he had a slide that said, likeyou know, good GEO, aeo,
elemento, peo is just good SEO.
And you know some people willargue against that.
You know it's Google.
Of course they're giving us thisinformation, but the stuff we
found that might be a littlehelpful for AI search it's

(55:29):
pretty much the stuff you wouldhave been doing anyway, like.
The end result is still thesame thing and so I really think
, especially in the short term,people are going to continue to
use Google and if they start touse other tools like AI search
or AI assistance, like chat, gpt, to do more research which I
have to admit I've been doingmyself, the stuff that's been

(55:50):
working for SEO, you know,showing up in the local
directories, having awell-structured website that's
targeting all of your servicesand all of your locations and
building authority by gettinglisted on locally and industry
relevant websites.
It's still probably going to behelpful, especially in the
short term the next two to threeyears and as things change,
hopefully the agencies you'reworking with and the talking
heads on YouTube that you'relistening to keep changing too,
but not too drastically, becauseit's not changing that fast.

(56:12):
So I mean, that's kind of mytake.

Josh Hall (56:14):
That's great.
That's a great way to cap thisone off.
Man Sam, appreciate it.
Love hearing about the successover the past year since our
last kind of success catch up.
So again, man, you're like justa shining example of how to
take advantage of WebCenter Pro.
Like you, just jump ahead firstcommitted, you got to six

(56:36):
figures in the 18-month rangewhile building your MRR, became
a stable soloprenereneur andthen truly built a business and
you had to scale quickly becauseof your model, because you went
MRR focused local SEO with alot of different.
You know fulfillment behindthat, but you can do it.
So I love seeing you do it.
Dude, it's freaking awesome, uhlike I'll, probably have to

(56:59):
reel you back a little bit.
Just, I want you to have those10 X goals, but I also want you
to continue to love what you doas well.
But you love work.
Like if you love your work andit's fun to build and you have
fun creating, there's also noshame in that.
As much as I'm an anti hustler,it's like sometimes I do want
to work.
Sometimes this is what I wantto do.
I want to do this, I want towork on that sales page.
That's more than anything Iwant to do.

So, yeah, yeah, and it's about balance, right, it's
like finding the time to go skigo, yeah, I climbed a mountain
the other day, uh, two timesthis summer, you know, it's like
you.
Just you got to do the thingsyou love, and sometimes the
thing I love is working, but youknow, I'm just trying to, you
know, work a little less tilltwo in the morning, uh, which I
have been, and uh, and you know,just enjoy life a little bit

(57:42):
more, right, I think that's whatwe're all trying to do.

Josh Hall (57:44):
Um, yeah, your next season here is probably focusing
on what profitability and justbigger swings maybe.

Yeah, I think it's probably marketing really.
It's something I haven't focusedon that much, but yeah, just
bigger swings like marketing tokind of a slightly different
audience and still probablycapturing some of those other
leads along the way.
Not the 5,000 per month, but Idon't know, we'll see but just
trying to really identify like,hmm, luxury home builders, they

(58:18):
make a really good margin, sothey only need a few luxury
homes per year more than the guynext to them, right, it's like
kind of identifying those thingsand talking directly to those
people.
So, yeah, I'm excited to seewhat that looks like and dig
into it with my team, who Itotally trust.

Josh Hall (58:31):
So I mean, there wouldn't be any shame in having
a 5k option and then yourprimary one is the 2000 or
whatever it is.
Yeah.
So, or, you know I like the 2xmodel with pricing.
Maybe maybe 5k per month isyour your top plan, which you
know is maybe very limited.
Maybe you can only account forlike one or two of those a month

(58:52):
with your team and then youhave a $2,500 plan which is your
average, and then your $1,000is your backup.
Like that's your low plan.
That's your low plan.

Yeah, I mean, when I look at like through your
vision that was the thing thatwe talked about we're like you
know, if we had 50 clients, youknow how do we get to 1.2,?
Right, how do we get to 100,000a month?
And that was one of the thingswe were looking at.
I was like, well, we could have100 clients at $1,200 a month,
or we could have 50 clients a$2,500 a month.
How do we start inching towardsthat?

Josh Hall (59:21):
So yeah, I think that would be an interesting yeah,
5k, $2,500,000 if you were toturn on threes with a different
level of Something like that.
Yeah, because essentially yourmain plan right now could be the
baseline.
You know it works, it's provenalready.
So what would that look likewith a $2,500 option and then a

(59:47):
very select VIP $5,000 option?

Yeah, it's fun times.
I got things to think aboutInteresting, interesting
interesting.

Josh Hall (59:58):
What if $5,000 is like a six-month commitment and
then the other two are annual?
You know like what if there's aI don't know, just thinking out
loud, alright, that's for thenext one we'll check in next
year and we'll see where we'reat.

Sam Sarsten (01:00:13):
Yeah well, I know we're getting to the end, so I
just want to say, you know I ama big believer in the C1 do one
teach one philosophy.
And so a little over a year agoI was encouraged, mostly by
people in pro, to just put somestuff out there, and so I've
started to, you know.
So I put some courses out therelast year.
Josh's advice in the DMS was donot do this, focus on your

(01:00:34):
agency.
And I said no, josh, I will, Iwill do as I please.
And it was a terrible decision.
It totally distracted me, butI'm glad I did it because it
really forced me to refine whatI was doing.
And you know we're goingthrough right now.
We're actually revamping thosecourses.
So the 2025, 2026 versions areactually coming out right now.
The GBP expert course and thelocal SEO masterclass should be

(01:00:54):
revamped by then and I'm kind ofredoing the delivery course and
the selling course right now.
I'm pretty excited about whatthose are going to look like
when things are said and done.
And you know we're talkingabout local SEO Academy right
now and the community is over 50people at this point, which is
crazy at the year mark and so,like, we have weekly Q and A
calls, we've been having monthlyexpert training.
Josh was one of them, shannonwas on last month, which is

(01:01:17):
really cool, and we got somecool people coming up talking
about, you know, podcasting,talking about, uh, linkedin,
short video growth and thingslike that.
So, um, it's really exciting.
I think, like a lot of peopleask me, like how the heck did
you do this so quickly?
Uh, and you know, in a tongue,in cheek way, at WTP con, I
joked about how it's like, well,don't have a partner, don't
have kids, um, but really, it'sactually like leaning on people

(01:01:40):
for support.
You know, I took a leap back inthe start of 2023 and I joined
pro at the community tier and Isaid, you know, I can't really
afford this right now, but Ialso can't afford to not to and
like, if you like, think aboutthis.
You know, like I'm not going tosay prices out loud because I
know they're probably gonnachange throughout the year, but
like go look right now what thefull price is for local SEO

(01:02:01):
Academy and for web designer pro, like at the coaching tiers,
and add that up for the year.
You know it's, it's probablyless than you would charge for
one website.
And like you're going to gettapped into two communities that
are both like super active,super fun and everybody's trying
to do the same thing, and youdon't get that anywhere else.
You know, this is not somerandom ass Facebook group where

(01:02:23):
people are trying to sell toeach other right?
These are people that areactually supporting each other.
Like I've been building likereal freaking relationships
inside of Web Designer Pro overthe last two years and that's
been awesome.

Josh Hall (01:02:31):
Yeah, one of them's on your team now.

Yeah, one of them was on my team.
I pay her too much, no, I'mjust kidding Freaking awesome, I
know she's worth a lot more.
Trust me.

Josh Hall (01:02:41):
She's probably a dream to work with too.
It's just good to work withgood people Like Eleanor is
someone you get a message or anemail from and you're like that
feels good to get a note fromher.
You know, rather than like yeah, what does she want now?
Nope, that's not the case.

No, yeah, eleanor, she else pitch.
You know, go go check it out,go get support, go get the help
that you need, because you knowyou need help to do this, and
that's exactly what you get inthese communities.
And and yeah, if you want toget a deal on local SEO Academy,
go to local SEO academyco.
Slash Josh two.

(01:03:15):
That's the link.
I'm going to make work afterthis because it's our second
episode together, so we're goingto make it an even cooler
discount.
So check it out.

Josh Hall (01:03:22):
Awesome, sam.
Well, I appreciate it, man.
We'll have that linked in theshow notes.
Obviously, you know, if anyonecomes to me and wants to go
further into the SEO worldthat's not something I cover in
my course, which is more of afoundational course I know where
to go.
I say I know where to go.
It's local SEO baby.
So, yeah, that's myrecommendation and I'm sticking
to it.
It is an honor to be a part ofyour journey, man, to be able to

(01:03:45):
say, like I've had a hand andyou know, seeing you get to this
point, I'm pumped and look,we're just, we're still at the
beginning of all this.
So how exciting is that we'regoing to continue to take this
thing to the next level.

Yeah, yeah, if you don't have the foundation like I
rave about Josh's SEO courseall the time because it's like
it you need that foundation.
And I don't exactly rememberwhat Josh said at WDPCon, the
first in-person meeting for theWeb Designer Pro community in
Columbus last couple months agotangibly right In person, you
shared something where, likethis is what I always wanted to

(01:04:17):
build.
You know, you have this likevision of helping other people
grow business, like you wereable to do back in the day, and
you get to like you're seeing itcome to fruition, like in real
life.
And you know, just, I can'tspeak for all the hundreds of
other lives that you've touched,from the people in Web Designer

(01:04:39):
Pro to the people that justwatch the YouTube channel or
just listen to the podcast,cause we know there's thousands
of people that listen to thisand get a ton of value and then
just go forth and do the thingsthat you'll never get to meet.
But it's just like thank you,thank you for everything you've
done, josh, cause it's yeah, Iknow I wouldn't be here without
you and uh, yeah, can't sayenough, I appreciate you.

Josh Hall (01:04:57):
There's no better way to end than that one man.
Thank you, sam.
I appreciate it, dude, and yeah, you're freaking awesome.
Love coaching Eagles.
I love coaching Eagle and Sam.
Thanks, dude, till the next one.
What a shining example ofwhat's possible when you commit,
when you're hungry and when youjust get down, put your work
boots on and do the work.

(01:05:18):
Sam is again one of the biggestsuccess stories and highlights
of of web Web Designer Pro, asfar as somebody who went into
this industry didn't know barelyanything and utilize the
resources.
So I want to say right up frontif you want to be the next Sam,
what are you waiting for?
Web Designer Pro is here foryou.
We have different tiersavailable now.

(01:05:39):
So if you need time to gothrough the courses, if maybe
you're working a nine to fiveand you don't have time to
commit to the community orcoaching, you can go through the
courses and the courses tier.
If you want to do what Sam didand just jump on in headfirst to
the deep end and jump into thecommunity, you can have both.
You can go to all the coursesand you can get the community
aspects with our extra trainingsand the actual community itself

(01:06:01):
, and then we do open upcoaching spots often now, when
available, so you can get directcoaching me with me when you're
ready.
You can find all thatinformation at webdesignaprocom.
Again, head to the show notesfor this one at joshhallco,
slash 399.
There you will find the linksfor everything we mentioned,
including Sam's agency website,his special offer for you as a

(01:06:23):
listener of this podcast, forhis local SEO Academy and
everything else that we talkedabout.
Thank you so much, friend, forjoining.
Make sure you subscribe so youget notified on the next ones
that are coming out.
We've got some doozies aheadand again I just want to
publicly say way to go, sam.
What an honor to be a part ofhis journey.
Thanks for joining, friend.
If you want to be the next, sam, I hope to see you.

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399 - Getting to 200k/yr in 3 Years through Local SEO with Sam Sarsten

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}399 - Getting to 200k/yr in 3 Years through Local SEO with Sam Sarsten