Daniel Magazu from Ride the Wave

Business Brain, episode 581 for Wednesday, September 11, National make youe Bed Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take an idea or three, we dissect it, we analyze it, we use it to help tune our business brains to each and every time we get together. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I am Dave Hamilton.

And out here still in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. And it's make youe Bed Day. Huh.

Bold of anyone to create a holiday on September 11th. But, you know.

Yeah, true, true. Yep.

But, but it is. It's national make your Bed Day. And I, I think that.

And I've read a few business or kind of life coaching books or whatever that talk about the number one thing you should do is make your bed in the morning every day.

Yeah.

And. And so we have a guy here that we've invited to tell us about that.

So you're your local bed expert.

Yeah, exactly. We're going to talk about that. But if you're watching the live stream, but if you're listening at home, we're. We're happy to have Dan or Daniel Magazoo with us. Dan is running a. It's an advertising agency. Right, Dan? Is that kind of more.

More like organic content?

Organic content. Okay, great. So I don't know obviously anything about Dan's business, but I, I have, I'm in a group, a kind of a business support group with Dan and have been fascinated to learn a little bit about it. And so he's here today to talk about his company, Ride the Wave. And thanks for hanging out with us, man.

Yeah, I'm curious about this, Dan.

Yeah, cool. Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

What does ride. What does Ride the Wave do?

Perfect.

That's. That's where I want to start here.

All right, cool. So Ride the Wave is a organic content agency for home service businesses. And we specialize in Facebook. So.

Okay.

Our home service business will come to us and ask us to handle their Facebook. What we're best at is utilizing Facebook groups to target the local communities within their service area. And that's sort of the unfair advantage is that most of these companies aren't utilizing the local Facebook groups. And that's something you really need to do to get engagement on Facebook because if you're posting from just the business page, you're not going to be getting any engagement at all. So Facebook Groups is sort of the hacky way to get engagement and reach. And sort of reach your target customer. Because in. Within these Facebook groups are Just a bunch of moms who are the ones who buy home service.

Yeah.

All right, so I'm curious about this because, I mean, we all have businesses that help other businesses. One of my businesses does advertising for folks, and then we also do promotion and Facebook groups. That's a delicate path to walk when you're marketing, right, Daniel? Because if you overdo it, if you overstep, these groups are community groups for a reason. And when you're marketing in there, you sometimes you get thrown out.

So how do you add value? Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a good question.

So that is definitely a good question. And so when we're looking for community groups, we're only joining groups that allow businesses to post. So we're not going to be joining every single community group. So.

Got it.

It's actually probably only around 30 or 40% allow businesses to post. So there's about 60% of groups we're not even targeting. And there's different strategies if you still want to target those groups, but we're focusing on the ones primarily that are, are allowing our, our clients to advertise in.

That makes sense. And is it. I mean, are they just posting, you know, buy our stuff, or do you. Are you mixing, like, hey, here's how you can fix this issue and if you need more help and do you add value posts as well as advertising type posts? How does it work?

Yep. So we're actually working on a much more detailed strategy that's going to be being rolled out in the coming months that are going to have a lot more of these value posts. But are certain sort of current strategy right now is that people within Facebook groups, they want the post to be authentic and they want to be coming from the business owner. So we really make it a focus that the posts are giving a nice introduction about the owner of the business so that people in the groups can get to know them, how their business helps the community, maybe outside of their normal services, and then adding some sort of promo to sort of getting people interested. So we don't really go with the full on spam of the business. Give an introduction, say how they're helping out, and then also just like the pictures are super important too. When you're posting in the Facebook groups, you always want that personal picture so people can match a name to the business. And, um, always include the best pictures possible of your work to get people like, ooh, like that looks good. That looks cool. So that's all very important.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And are you. Are you just going in and promoting as like a new post or are you also engaging in the conversation where you can to kind of help people with advice and things like that?

So good question. So not something we do for all of our clients. For some of our roofing clients, we're scanning the Facebook groups for certain keywords and we'll screenshot the post and send it to them like, hey, do you want to respond to this? I see we have just almost finished building out our tool that sort of does that for us. That's been allowing us to do that. So that's something we've just sort of started. But definitely a way you can gain trust within these communities is by providing answers to the questions that are people asking. 100% makes sense.

And. And are you. So they're posting stuff and then are you trying to get them to the business's Facebook page or outside on their website or both?

So the way we like to do it is we create a small landing page for them that is built on Jotform. And the reason why we do this is because we want to track our leads for our clients so they know what's coming out of Facebook. Now, if I was doing this for my own company, I probably wouldn't use that link as much because sometimes people don't like clicking links on Facebook. So I would either use a professional website or phone number or tell the people to PM them. There's a bunch of different things you can do. But for our purposes, our clients like to know what ROI they're getting. So we create a landing page that just for their stuff gets all the leads.

Yeah, that's cool. So how did. If you're. If you're listening to this and not watching, Dan, you're in your 20s. Tell us, tell me how you. Where'd the idea for the business come up? How did you start it and what got you thinking about, hey, I'm going to take a different path. I'm not going to go work for someone, get a paycheck, and I'm going to build something on my own. How did you get there?

Totally. So five years ago now, I was a freshman in college, Covid began and we got sent home. We were sitting at my house board. My parents wouldn't let me hang out with my friends indoors, but for some reason they would let us hang out outdoors. And that's when the three of us decided to start a landscaping business. We had all worked in the industry the year prior, and we thought it'd be a fun way to make money because there wasn't really jobs available and to spend time together. We didn't really know how to get started. So I had known that all the girls in our grade, they would post to local Facebook groups to get babysitting jobs. So I posted something super simple. I was like in our my local town community, I was like, hey, I'm Dan. We just got sent home from college for the summer. Would love to help anyone out with their landscaping. And I think like 10 people had reached out and that's where we got like our first five customers. And that was sort of the, the start of the landscaping business.

That's.

Yeah. So that's how that landscaping business started. And I ended up running it the following years. But not my friends ended up doing other things. But I took over and did it by myself my sophomore, junior and senior year of college. So In May of 2023 I graduated school. I had a job offer from Amazon because I did a co op there in the fall and I was thinking to myself, do I want to work or do I want to continue the landscaping business? And I ultimately chose to continue pursuing the landscaping business. And I thought that my next sort of five years would be growing that. So May of 2023, I hired six full time employees. I think we had four part time employees. And really scaled up the Facebook approach. So instead of just posting in Franklin, my hometown, we were, I was posting in any town I was willing to travel to. And it filled up my summer. And just a little background on the landscaping business. It's mostly mulching. So we mulch people's yards, which happens primarily from May through the July and it starts slowing down in August. So in September I no longer had school to go back to and I needed to make money. Still is when I was like, why don't I try to help other people out with this Facebook group stuff? So I reached out to a home improvement company in my hometown. We met and he said, go for it, try it out for us. And at the same time I reached out to a guy on X who owns a custom built pergola company and said, hey, I want to try this out for you. And he also agreed. So I had those two original clients and I did it sort of as a test run for them.

Were you doing it for free for them just to see if it would work and learn how to do it or did you charge them?

So the those two original people were on a commission based deal.

Okay. So it had to it performed or they didn't have to pay.

Yeah, essentially. So that's. That. That was. That was the easy pitch for them. And they're like, all right. They were like, let's try it out. And that's actually how I got started. And then in January, it was going super well for the both of them. I asked them for referrals, they sent them my way. February, I started writing more Twitter content or X content, writing case studies. And that's how I got my next batch of sort of clients. And I moved away from the commission structure into a more, like, reliable monthly retainer structure and continued posting on X. And I haven't been posting on X as much recently. But a lot of my clients now just come in naturally through referrals. I have my foot in the door with a couple franchises, and they just know about me and email me when I need work, when they need work done, so works nicely. And now I actively work with over 50. 50 plus clients.

And these story.

These 50 clients aren't just in your local area, Right? You're doing this nationwide across the U.S. right?

Yeah, it's across the. Across the United States.

Yeah.

That's. Dude, you're gonna tell this story so many times. I'm telling you right now, when you have gray hair like me, you. This will be just. Yeah. And. And this could probably one of the, you know, crucial decisions of your life that you made, that, hey, I can do this on my own. I don't need to go work for somebody. I can build something like that. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to have you. Have you on the show, is to just to share that, you know, concept of, like, I really believe it's just riskier to go work for other people when you could come up with something you learned, push it out there. It's super impressive.

I love it.

What I. What I. There's two things that I kind of want to highlight here. Number one is the point at which you pivoted from running your own landscaping business because you couldn't run a landscaping business in the winter here in New England. It doesn't work that way. You'd have to become a snowplower. That's what everybody does.

Right?

Right.

But taking this lesson and this skill that you had developed and spinning that off into a business to help others that, like, people always often say, gosh, you know, I don't have great ideas for businesses. Think about what you're doing for yourself and how can it be put out there? And then I think that's an important lesson equally as Important is your idea about getting referrals from the clients with which you had success with and you didn't wait very long. Right. You got referrals from them in January after starting in September. That's the key thing is capture clients are going to be most impressed if you have quick success with them and you might have them for long term and have long term success and that's great. But it's that early success that gets you the best referrals that then gets you more business and kudos to you for doing that. I think that's great. Yeah.

Yeah. And totally. Referrals are also awesome. Are also better than someone reaching out. Sort of cold too is like they're someone recommended you which means they are a lot more likely to sign up. It's less convincing and more of an easier sell. So it's. That's why I've sort of tried to pivot away from Twitter a little more and focus on building more like sort of relationships so that I don't have to rely on content to get clients. I'd rather it just sort of grow naturally. Important lesson I learned it's much easier to convince someone to, to pay if they. If someone they know and trust likes what you're doing.

Yeah. You're just. It. It adds so much credibility to, to you. Right. And, and even like your content on X most of it is you're celebrating the success of your clients and talking about these case studies and that. And the other thing I, I want to point out is in the beginning doing something either like you did it like hey, if it works you can pay me X the amount if it works on a commission thing where there's no risk or doing it for free. So to learn that, you know, you're probably not going to make a ton of money right away, but you're just going to get that that led you down the path to get those referrals and to understand how the system worked. Yeah. That's terrific man. That's really cool.

I have a question for you Daniel. And it's probably not one that you're going to like, but it's hopefully one that you'll appreciate if not now down the road. What's the marketing path when Facebook shuts you shuts the door that is currently open for marketing way.

Man. This is a question I've been pondering.

Good.

And something I'm very scared about, honestly.

Good.

Whether they either restrict businesses from promoting in groups altogether or admin just get sick of it. Whatever it may be. There's a. Or even on the other end, everyone starts doing this and it becomes almost useless. Like, yeah, I haven't. That's why I'm not in. Totally in love with the business.

There you go.

Yeah.

Well, you're smart to have identified the weakness. Like, it's a strength right now. And this strength can earn you fuel, AKA cash, to help develop the next layer that you can add to things. Yeah.

Yeah. So. And I have a couple. Couple ideas in the mix, but just one is offering new verticals, new services to our current clients, whether that be Facebook ads or cold calling, I haven't really decided, but that's in the mix, and we're looking to add a new service. We also are finishing up on our keyword tool that alerts businesses of certain keywords being mentioned in Facebook groups and next door. So that's a software that we plan on offering to our clients and probably the public as well. So definitely looking for ways to mitigate that risk, because I do know it's risky if tomorrow Facebook shut this down, the business is over, and I'm sad.

But.

Yeah, but you know how to make money. You'll figure out something else, but better to figure it out before you have to. And it sounds like you're already working on that, which is amazing given, you know, quite candidly, given your age and your level, your years of experience, like, that's awesome that you're. I know so many people that see success and think, oh, this is the formula. It'll last me until I'm ready to retire. And it's like, oh, no. Success should scare the crap out of you, because if you can do it, somebody else can too. Right. And so what do you do next? Yeah.

Yep. Every and everything changes. Right. There's business is very cyclical and ideas and, you know, the public's finicky. Things change. So that what you're doing now is putting all these systems in place that allow you to pivot to new things. And the fact that you're thinking of it while things are going well, that's the important part. Not waiting until. Oh, no, what do we do? Dave and I have owned a business like that, and to where you kind of lose. You know, you got to get out ahead of it.

Right.

That's the thing. Just keep thinking like, this is awesome. What other services can we. Yeah, what else can we do? How do we get these people here? How do we do this? Because they. Those people trust you. Right. And that's hugely, hugely valuable. That, that. That trust you have. And Your. Your client base is. It's very, very important.

Success can breed complacency if you're not careful.

Yeah, you're talking to a couple of old guys here, dude. That's just what happens, you know? Yeah. It takes a few times where you're like, wait, I made it. I got this business figured out. I owned a company in my 20s, too. We were killing it, dude. I mean, I was blown away how quickly we found success, and then I was blown away how quickly we screwed it up. You know, it kind of comes both ways.

Oh, yeah? Yeah. Even when you know it success, you're like, okay, great, because you work really hard to get somewhere.

And.

And then it's like, oh, it's working. Nope, don't do that for very long. Like, as soon as I do that now, it's like, that's the warning sign. I'm like, oh, I got to figure out what's next.

Yep. Yeah. So let me ask you, how many people do you have helping you run the business now?

We got, I think, 20 people now. Wow.

So there's a lot of. Because it's this organic, non automated kind of business. Right. You've got to have a lot of people involved.

Right, Right. So Facebook is very, very against automation. And, yeah, they'll suspend counts if they think it's the case. So it has to be done manually and within their sort of spam, automated spam checkers. So you have to, like, wait a minute before joining a new group or wait a minute before posting in a new group. So there's like this built in, like, waiting. So it does require a lot of manual labor to join groups or, sorry, find groups, join groups, posting groups, and then also just we track the data very intensely, so they have to sort of input that data pretty. Pretty sophisticatedly and just requires a lot of labor and so have a lot of. Lot of help.

Yeah, that's great. And are those people here in the States you work with locally, are you using an agency to help, you find, you know, the global talent, if you will? How does it. How does it work?

So. So I do all my recruiting myself. Nice. We use offshore labor because ultimately we're posting and joining into groups, and it's not overly complicated, so it's not something that necessarily needs someone on shore to be doing. Now, we did have a copywriter that was in the US and our copywriters, we definitely splurge a little bit more money on because you want to have good content, for sure, for these groups. But for the most part, hiring Mostly offshore labor. And we have a bunch of tactics to try to get the most like motivated and like hard working people in the door so that we know that we're getting good labor. We recently spent a lot of time on upgrading our sort of application process.

Dude, that's, that stuff's priceless, man, because, you know, you understanding how to source that and how to, you know, what kind of questions to ask, how do we get good quality talent? You know, you can use that for any business that you're working on. So you're, you know, those are, you're kind of stacking up your unfair advantages. So that's killer.

It's great. Totally.

I love the concept, man. I think it's great. And I appreciate you coming on telling us about it. What Dave, you have any more questions for Dan?

I probably have a ton more questions, but I like where we are here. This is. Yeah, no, this is good. You've got me thinking and you've got an amazing business like this is, you know that. And it's robust. You've really fleshed it out, which I appreciate. No, it's good stuff. Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, we appreciate it. What's the best way for people to get a hold of you, Dan, and to learn about your business?

Yeah, totally. There's three ways. I mean, one, just the typical reach me on social media. So I'm Danny Magazoo on Twitter. Magazoo spelled M A G a Z U. And then my email, if you want to shoot me an email is dmagazooridethewave.info and the business website is ridethewave.info ridethewave.info.

It'S a good way to find.

We'll link these two. Yeah, we'll link these in up at BusinessBrain show if you want to learn more. It's great. It's a unique business. I'm like I said, I always learn the most on these shows. So I appreciate you coming up and educating us about how this stuff works. It's killer.

Thanks for making sure having me on, guys. Yeah, thanks watching for making sure I learned the most this week. Of course. Because that's the most important thing. Thanks for coming, Daniel. Thanks for listening everybody. If you have questions for us, feedback at businessbrain show and keep living that Tron life. We'll see you on Friday.