Felix Bustabad - Director of DIS-SAL Party Planning

Hi everyone, this is a new segment of Interviews with WebfindU. Today I have the honor of being with Félix Bustamante. He is a small business here in Miami for 30 years. He is in the party rental business. Félix, welcome to Interviews with WebfindU. How you doing today?

Thank you, Robert. How are you doing?

Doing really well, thank you.

I'm really honored to be here with you today.

Oh, thank you so much. So, um, in, in these segments of interviews with WebFindYou, our whole objective is to essentially share your story, let other people see what your experiences have been with being able to provide more leads, uh, for your business, to of course turn them into sales. And so we'd like you to share with the audience, uh, today what— tell us, first tell us a little bit about your business, and then tell us what your experience has been in the management of your website and doing digital marketing. To then find out what kind of brought you to WebfindU.

Right, Robert, what, uh, since 1993 I created DeSal Party Planning, which is a party rental business and party planning. And right after Andrew, we lost our home, so we decided to find another home for the kids, 1993. And what we found was a good neighborhood, and with the people that actually were in the block, they wanted to create the— bring the neighbors together, but nobody wanted to put the information to put on the party, to put the party together, right? So I said, okay, I'll take care of that, and and I created the party. 3 months later, somebody came with an idea to do a Halloween party the same way, and I said, okay, here, there's something wrong here. I got a phone call, I got on the phone, I got a credit card, I called a company, I ordered my first 10 tables and my first 100 chairs. And right now I got a good inventory right now with everything that, that I have. And little by little, this business started as a part-time.

So interesting, kind of how like something negative, an event, you know, as you mentioned with Andrew, such destruction then turned into a business idea. And, you know, there's a lot of businesses that we see that come across that where that happens. It's— you never thought you were actually— you started doing something actually to help others and then it kind of turned into a business. So very interesting.

Correct. So what I did was I created the, the, the business, and once I, I created as a part-time basis in 2014, I told my wife, okay, we already have a business going, let's make it completely public. So I said, okay, this is time for me to start researching the internet and start working on some type of website And little by little, I got my business going through Google Business for free. And anything that I could find my business to put it for free, I put my information in there.

Okay, which a lot of businesses do. And just to be clear, he said public, he didn't mean publicly traded, right? Uh, he meant actually just sort of putting it out there to the public, right? Correct.

So then, uh, I decided, I said, it's time to create a website. So I got a hold of GoDaddy.

Which, that's a lot of people use GoDaddy because they're very, very well known out there in the market, right?

Correct. But I already have my business name on it already when Microsoft actually started giving the free websites a long time ago. That's how I created it. But it actually, I didn't see any movement on the leads or people actually contacting me.

From the website that you had?

From the website that we created. And then Through GoDaddy, we started doing a whole bunch of different programs that they have.

Like what?

Okay, first of all, I did the SEO for— I tried it for 1 year, which they—

which was an option that they have that says, you know, SEO management. I think it's like, what, $50? Oh my God.

No, no, that one was a little bit more. That one was a 1-year contract, which I think was like about $130 or something like that.

—And then later— Was there anybody within that $130? Was it a month or $130 a year?

—No, a year.

Okay, but did you actually have an account manager with that $130 a year? —No. Okay. Something I want to be clear is because I mentioned this in our True Digital Marketing Masterclass and I actually show a piece of GoDaddy at that moment because people will see, small businesses will see, you know, these advertisements of, you know, cheap SEO. And unfortunately it's not true SEO. It's not actually providing you SEO, but, but the business owners that don't know the difference, they just think, hey, you know, $130 for SEO when I'm hearing these other companies talk about $2,000 a month, $3,000 a month, $10,000 a month for SEO. Why not just pay GoDaddy a few hundred bucks, right?

Correct. So then they have a way that they can do using WordPress and everything is, is just put it in. It's very simple, but then you put everything together, and once everything is done, everything starts running. But then you have to constantly be on top of it to keep it going with the SEO and make sure it's running, and, and the plugins, and make sure you have updates, everything else. So then, uh, little by little, I started looking at how much money I was spending Happens to be I got 2 emails from you guys one time, and normally I just research a little bit, but I just let it go. Another one came in, MasterClass, and I said, okay, I don't lose anything by trying. Sure. So I got in, I started looking everything that you guys do. I like the presentation. You were talking about GoDaddy, you were talking about the different digital marketing things that I was doing. I also had Mailchimp, which didn't do much either. And then I saw that you have it on the program. So everything else that you had there, I said, okay, this is the time to do it. So I call you guys and we set up an interview. To see everything, how it's going to work, and you gave me all the different options to make it work. Sure. Right now, at this moment, I'm very happy for what I'm seeing. Everything has been completely professional, and right now, at this time, I think we're going to be working a lot and they're going to make it better. And now, so far, we have it live. That's another thing.

Which I'll get here in just a second, but before we get into that, if you don't mind, I want to focus a little bit more for the audience on like what you were doing though before us. So as you mentioned, you were using, for example, GoDaddy. They provide, you know, these cheap SEO options, but were you actually getting any traffic from it? Not too much.

The only thing good about it was I got myself involved in Google Analytics.

So you were actually doing some Google pay-per-click as well? Correct.

Yeah, and I did it through actually the ads, regular ads, which to me did not function that much because a lot of people just using my money. They were clicking but nothing was coming up.

That's correct. And that's one of the things that I really like about Felix is that he's an extremely hard worker. He's one of those people, I mean, you know, some of the stories he's told me where he literally has these events where there's hundreds to 200 chairs plus, I think you told me about. And he's the one loading them onto the truck, offloading them onto the truck, setting them up all by himself. I mean, it's pretty amazing. So again, you guys need party rental here in Miami, they are the people to go to. But so he not only works hard and actually for his business, but he's also on the marketing side, and he spent a lot of time in like researching the internet and the things that GoDaddy has mentioned and researching the internet to be able to kind of do digital marketing on his own. And he represents a lot of small businesses that kind of do the same thing, right? So he's very hands-on, and that, that's, that's absolutely amazing. But because the digital marketing and the SEO is so fast-moving and because it's so, um, there's so much to it, and it's what we call— he was dealing within the model of what we call traditional digital marketing. And in traditional digital marketing, there's so much you have to be thinking about. And so, um, as he was mentioning, he saw something about WebfindU. I think what you told me is you found us online, then you, you filled out a form, and then when we talked about the launch of our True Digital Marketing Masterclass, that's what actually caused you to get the email, right? And so he then was able— he took the actual masterclass and then saw that the True Digital Marketing model was a superior digital strategy. It's one of the things I share in our True Digital Marketing Masterclass. And so it's from that that he said, you know what, I think I'm actually doing something wrong here. So what I want to point out is he's like a lot of you guys out there, that you're trying to do all of this on your own and you're going with the information that you're finding out there. But unfortunately, everybody, what I want you to know is a lot of the information out there unfortunately is misguided, or it's easy to misunderstand, and so you go down these incorrect paths. You've got GoDaddy, you've got the will to sort of take your business to the next level, but you're spinning your wheels. He set up pay-per-click, and as he was just specifying, the pay-per-click was actually set up incorrectly. Again, at no fault of his own, it was essentially— Google, for example, will provide you these, uh, the Google, um, the, the Google pay-per-click environment, they, they, they provide options that simplify it. Because as you say, I think you were— it provided some simple options for you, but what you ended up setting up was something that was again inefficient. And again, this is at no fault to him. This is just what happens to a lot of businesses. And so, um, so he essentially came to— saw our master class, and then that's where we got into started having the conversation. I invited you here. I loved your story. I said, I want to share this with the audience. And so that's, that's why we're here today. So now tell me kind of some of the things that, that kind of made you, after seeing the masterclass, that said, you know what, I got to get WebfindU a shot. What was some of the things you heard?

The thing that I heard was especially the SEO. That's one thing. You can create more leads the clarity of the product, the way the product is set up.

Which we mentioned in the class, properly defining who you are.

Correct. And then the cost. And the other things that I saw was the way that it was actually set up. That's why I asked you guys later What was the best way for me to create my website? And you said, well, the best way we do it is try to do it e-commerce. And I said, yeah, but I don't do anything through the internet that people pay. I'd rather do it like a quote type of thing so I can get back to the customer and make sure that I have the right products and I can explain more to them exactly what was going on.

Craig, so I want to be clear for the audience why we told him to actually use set his website up via our eCommerce technology is because what happens, and again, in step 2 of SEO is you need to properly define who you are, okay? And that might, for some people listening right now, sounds very generalized, but it's, you know, it's spot on. I would, again, I would invite you to take our True Digital Marketing Masterclass to understand a little bit better about it. But when you have eCommerce or you have websites that are set up using our eCommerce technology, they have kind of a, an easier way to be able to talk about each of these products. And what, you know, I haven't really kind of pointed out yet, but you can see here in the background you've got his van, and then off to the right, or right behind me, we've got his website where we've actually already gone live with. It's not 100% done, but we'll get into that in a second. But we've, we're showing the chairs that he rents, the tables that he rents, the way that the chairs can be customized. And so it just simplifies it a little bit through our technology if you're actually using the e-commerce. Because again, at the end of the day, he's got products that he's renting. He's not have products that he's purchasing. He wants actually people to fill out the quotes because he wants to be able to provide a little bit more of that service side to kind of personalize what they need for their event. So that's the main— that was the main reason why. One thing you mentioned, uh, mentioned now, personalized.

My 3 things are low prices, personalized service, and professional.

Right, that's key, you know, 3 key things, you know, to any business. So, um, I'm going to show you here, uh, in this video, uh, I want to be able to— we're going to bring up in a screenshot so we can do that now. I want to show, for example, um, what his website used to look like. And again, um, uh, to everybody listening here and watching this video, again, it's at no fault of his own. I've seen so many people and what they think they're creating is actually something amazing. And hey, it's, it's, it's their baby because it's what, what they're— but they're also doing with what they understand, right? And they're doing with the tools that they're given. And so one of the things with WebFindU is that we provide optimized, um, what we call our kit designs. They're preset structures that are taken into consideration. Google Core Web Vitals has all optimized code, and then all you need to do is essentially sort of paint that as we like to call it here internally, sort of paint the design over that structure, and then you're able to come back with something that's extremely professional. So, you know, I want to show right now what his website looks like currently, so we can get that up on screen. And then, you know, the pictures that you're seeing on here are all supplied by Felix. These are his own pictures. Again, we set the preset structures. What the design ends up coming out to look like are going to be, of course, based off of the pictures that are inserted into the design. So this is what we have now. He actually needed to get away from GoDaddy auto-renewing, the hosting of GoDaddy, and some of the other things that he didn't need. So he was looking to actually save those costs. And with WebFindU, you only paid— because you're on the e-commerce, I believe you paid only $5.99, paid once, and then he pays $59 a month. Now, we have a video that we just launched in Spanish and English. It's our, you know, we call it our sort of our internally our NASCAR video, but it shows you how you need to have a high-performance vehicle to be competitive in the online world. Business as it is is difficult enough, right? Correct. And then you add on that layer of needing to be able to promote yourself, and then you're dealing with the fact that everything is moving to digital. And so if you don't have a cost-effective means, a simplified means to be able to promote yourself online, I'm sorry everybody, but you're going to be dead in the water. And that's just the hard reality that needs to sink in, because 97% of the businesses out there are failing— sorry, 92% of the, of the business out there are failing in their digital marketing, one. 2, only 97% of the businesses out there aren't capable of implementing the most successful form of digital marketing there is, which is called true digital marketing. Only 3% of the market is capable of doing that. But now with the WebfindU technology, which is true digital marketing technology, any business is able to do it. And because Felix is hands-on, he's able to, through what our NASCAR video explains, He's able to— he's going to be the driver of that technology. What we're doing for him though is we're actually being able to— we're guiding him a little bit more and doing some additional consulting with him to ensure that he's using the technology properly, right? But our technology provides videos step by step that provides you the formula, right? And you've done this already, right?

Oh yeah, you told me stop. Yeah.

Stop it. Yeah. So you've gone through the steps and was it easy? Yeah. Okay. So it was easy. Was it easier than GoDaddy? Correct. So, you know, folks, here you go. He's telling you that GoDaddy, which a lot of people hear, you know, it's kind of a popular option out there. And I kind of relate GoDaddy very similar to like a Wix or a Web.com.

Well, actually I started with Wix.

Oh, that's right. I remember you telling me that.

I started with Wix and then, uh, did not do anything at all.

And why not? What was the issues with Wix?

Nothing. I could not get anything, not even a phone call or SEOs or anything like that. Just— and I said, no, no, no, no, let me, let me try something else. That's when I went back to, uh, started going with through GoDaddy. And, uh, but actually, he's, uh, well, there's a lot, a lot of changes, uh, that I've gone through, you know, try to make this thing happen. And for everything that I have done through Google and everything else so far, you know, it's been moving a lot, but it— as you saw, everything that had all the information already out there. So I've been recognized little by little. That's correct. And then it's easier, uh, to pick up the— where I left off.

So now what we have, as I explained, we've already launched his website, but he— we still are doing some of the additional steps. We had to launch this quickly so that way he could, um, again, as I stated, get out of the GoDaddy auto-renewal. But you were telling me, what were some of your customers already telling you now with the new website? What's some of the feedback? Oh, now it's completely, completely different.

They really loved it. And when they do the quotes now, they say it's very easy, very simple to do, and they see the information. And when I start talking to them, they'll ask me another question, or, "Do you have this extra product?" And I say, "Well, if it's not on the website," it's not there, probably I'll consider it. Depends on, on the, on the volume that I've been getting little by little, and then it goes in. That's how I actually created my, my business. I went through, through the channels, everything where people were looking at. Okay, great.

So, so again, so we hope you've enjoyed this video. As, um, again, because I know a lot of you out there are very similar to Felix, right? Um, So, and I don't want you guys continuing with the same mistakes that he's done, again, at no fault of his own, and that I know you're still doing. You hear— so with WebFindU, as simple as $500 paid once, $49 a month, that's for a non-e-commerce website. E-commerce websites start at $599 paid once and $59 a month. And then you If you're like Felix, that more hands-on, you're able to just follow the formula. Follow the formula. It's greatly simplified, more simplified than he was telling you with GoDaddy or Wix and others. And you're going to get all of the— he doesn't pay for MailChimp anymore that he was doing. Why? Because we have our own email marketing technology built right into the technology. We were just talking about how he's got other friends of his that are in other types of business that is related to what he does. So for example, a DJ, you know, he's not a DJ, but he has friends that are, and he'd like to be able to sort of track how much business he sends to that DJ. We have internalized tracking technology, we have a built-in social media manager. So everything that he was always wanted to do in the most professional way possible is greatly simplified through the technology. So this is the first video. We're going to be doing a follow-up video here in the next couple months where we're going to be then showing you how now, because of the technology of which he is actually driving himself, the, the, the, the car, the high-performance vehicle— see our NASCAR video as I mentioned— um, uh, we're going to start seeing how his business has taken off more because of implementing the most successful digital strategy there is, which is true digital marketing. So Felix, again, I greatly appreciate your time. I know everybody here—

thank you to WebfindU, they actually found me.

So we appreciate it, and we look forward to, uh, the follow-up story here. Guys, go check him out, uh, Dessal Party Planning. Look them up on Google. If you guys need chair rental, any kind of party rental, that's the company to be at. All right, everybody have a great day.

Thank you, Robert. Thank you.