Joe Benson of Eversite

Business brain, episode 573 for Wednesday, August 14th, National Financial Awareness Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a few ideas from, we crunch them, we dissect them, we use them to help tune each of our business brains every single time we get together so that we can keep living those charmed lives. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And out here in Northern California, I'm Shannon Jean. I'm excited about this show, Dave, you know why?

Tell me why, Shannon.

Because I don't have to talk as much because we have a guest.

We do, we do, we do.

We do. So it's always good to have someone and one of my, you know, good friends who I've met via X on the X platform. I feel like I know Joe Benson, who's joining us today from Eversight. I feel like I've known Joe forever, but we connected earlier this year, right in January or something like that. So, Joe, yeah, thank you so much for joining us today and coming on the live stream and the podcast.

Awesome, man. Thanks for having me. Been watching the podcast for a while now. Big fan. So it's nice to join you guys live.

Yeah. So tell our listeners what? Okay. I asked you before we recorded. So you own a company called Legend, which I really like, but the main services that I see you promoting on X and stuff we talk about is Eversight. And tell us how this all works in the structure and how you got into the business.

Yeah, happy to. So to talk about how we got into the business, you have to go way back. I'll keep the story pretty quick. But I was 12 years old. We were in New Zealand, my family was in New Zealand. And my dad was selling his practice. He's a dermatologist. And the Internet was fairly new at the time. This is 1997, roughly. And the guy that he had build his website actually built it in our living room on our computer. And dad asked if I was interested in kind of sitting behind him and watching him make some changes. And I was. And so he showed me how to make the most basic website you could ever imagine and change colors and fonts and that sort of thing. And I was instantly hooked. So fast forward what, you know, was a hobby for a long time became something that I actually made 400 bucks on building a website for my high school teacher's dance studio. And then my older brother, when I graduated high school, was finishing college. We kicked off kind of this side project at the time named Benson Technology. Real unique, powerful. Yeah, let's go. And that kind of, you know, over time, turned into Legend. Legend is a full service digital marketing agency we've been around for just over 20 years. About three and a half years ago, roughly, we decided to push this new service, a branded service of ours that we called Eversight. So Eversight is a website as a service, rather than, you know, spending all of your big, big bucks up front on a, you know, a website, 12, 15 grand, whatever it may be, for a nice custom site, it's a monthly service, so you're only a few bucks in early on and you spend the rest of that money on marketing, which hopefully makes you more money. And so we launched this again about three and a half years ago and we've had so much success with it and a lot of hype and it's been a lot of fun that we are actually in the process of rebranding Legend to Eversight. We're going to go all in on Eversight as the brand moving forward. So that's kind of how it all works together.

No, that's. I mean, it's really smart. And I love that you had this hobby and then suddenly 400 bucks was like, wait, this can be a business? Because we say that all the time. You don't need.

It's a brain switch.

Yeah, it's the switch. You don't need to earn a lot of money to realize that you have something that can earn a lot of money if you apply yourself to it. So, yeah, love that.

Yep. That's absolutely.

That's great. And so tell me, I want to ask you, you're on X a lot. That's. I said, that's how we met and everything. How has that changed your business? Has it driven more traffic? Is it, you know, more eyeballs coming in? I. One of the things that if you. If you should go follow Joe Benson X up on X, and they do these great roasts of websites. They did mine and they go through and talk about, here's what we would do. Here's this. It's just a really clever concept. Tell us about, you know, that exposure on X and how it's helped your business.

Sure. So it's been great and, you know, in a word, but I actually had a friend shout out to Patrick Dichter, who has been on X quite a bit longer than I have in terms of trying to push his brand and his name. And he, you know, told me a few times over the course of probably six months, he's like, Joe, you know, Marketing, you can post content. Just post about what you're doing on a daily basis. Get on X. And so I ignored him at first. Like, you know, I got 100 followers. It's not going to go anywhere. Eventually, I gave in when this kind of peer group, Shannon that I met you through came along and I started posting regularly and found out quickly that, you know, one of the best ways to grab a following is to find a way to create value for the community. And so the idea of the roasts came up where ask anybody on X to give me their URL for their business website. And we give a free, you know, usually five minute roughly roast, giving them ideas on how they can improve their conversion rate ultimately, you know, improve their website to get more leads. So we've been doing that for a while. Happy to do that for anybody that's listening now, you can go to eversight.com roast uh, and there's a form there you can submit and, and we'll get your roast. Otherwise, you connect with me on X directly.

That's cool. I think it's brilliant. I love. I was a little worried when you did mine, but it also worked. So. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's. It's good. I've been. I was a WordPress guy forever because I like how easy it is to get in, get my hands dirty, but I don't know why. Maybe it's. I got more exposure this year or whatever, but I just can't keep the dirt bags away from trying to break into it. And I've had to add some different levels of protection and word fence and all this kind of stuff. And so Joe, his team is in the process of redesigning my website. And just a great experience that I've been impressed by how the process goes because it's like, step. Okay, great. Step. Next. Step. Next. They're kind of leading you down the path to build something that I'm pretty excited about. I think it's great.

Like, when you say it's a website as a service, Joe, you're taking care of all the hosting, you're taking care of everything, including the design of it. Is that right?

Yeah. So it's the design, but in addition to the design, you know, a custom design that's specifically for your brand, not a template that we're just throwing some colors on top of. Beyond that, any updates indefinitely thereafter, once the website launches, we handle it. Doesn't cost you anything extra than the monthly service. So if you have a new blog post, you have a new staff member, a New service, a new landing page, you give us the content. And our team is trained in sales psychology and marketing psychology. And we put this thing together to really try to make your website stand out, you know, make a difference. It's kind of how it works. But we're actually. One of the things. I know you were going to talk about challenges. I don't know if this is a good time to segue into next question.

It's always a good time for a segue.

Yeah. So, you know, one of the challenges, this is not just for our company, but in our space. Digital marketing is the idea of perceived value for customers. So you can provide tons of value, but you're going to run into customers that just think, hey, websites are easy, marketing is easy. And even if they're getting results, a lot of people want to know what they're getting. Right. They want to see every action item that you've done. Whether or not it really adds a ton of value at the end of the day, turns into more leads or not. Doesn't really matter to them as much as they want to see, hey, I'm paying for something. And so one of the challenges we experienced, you know, as we were growing over the course of the past 20 years is we can't just have results. They don't speak for themselves as much as you'd like them to. So we've actively put things in place where we're now communicating with client. The process that you referred to. Right. Where it's next step is this next step is this. The next call is already scheduled and then once you're launched, it's, hey, we did XYZ for you and now we've got this new ROI report to show you exactly what you're getting. That's probably our biggest challenge as a business is just making sure that we are effectively communicating all the value that we are providing and that people feel the value and, you know, don't have to go looking for it, if that makes sense.

It totally makes sense. We say on this show all the time, every business is the customer service business, right? And yes, and. And it's often not enough to just do what the, what, you know, the customer needs. You have to tell them what you did. And I remember Shannon, when you and I met, you were, we had, we were, we were. Shannon was buying banner ads on our websites from us. This is 100 years ago. And, and he was like, I love working with you guys because every week you send me a report that tells me what was served and how it Was served in a breakdown of, you know, how each of my creatives performed and was like, well it's just an automated report, man.

Like of course didn't matter.

Right, but it didn't matter. But no, that. And that stuck with me. It's like, right, this is valuable to them. We look at it and we're like, of course they served. Like we know they served like we're not cheating people here, you know, so no, spot on. Yeah, yeah.

So how do you. Okay, so like one of the things I was impressed with is you've got all these calls and they're designing stuff in Figma and giving me access so I could go in and do things and make changes. How do you get that idea across to your team? How to, you know, present that value?

Right.

I mean is it, are you just constantly training this, these people from. And is it everybody that you're doing it with? The customer service people or the, you know, these. Because like I imagine once my site's up and running, I won't interact with the front team anymore. I'll be dealing with some other group. Right, right. How do you, how do you constantly. Because that seems difficult to me that how do you get it across to your group over and over again like hey, you got to show this and this is important.

Yeah, now that, that's a great question. So you know, of course we've gone through the exercises of creating core values and ours, you know, spells care. And so we go through a lot of trouble. Weekly meetings on regular check ins to let customers know that. I mean so our client, our team know that clients need to feel the value over. Communicate. Right?

Yep.

We tell every single week. It's a conversation. What can we do differently to make sure that they feel the value? We have Carrie's who you'll probably work with next. Shannon. And one of her jobs is she has a set number of clients and she calls them twice a quarter. Right. She's going to call and check in. Hey, what are you guys doing? Can we add a promo to your site or you know, are you looking to do any marketing? So it's really more communication. I think that's it. Expectation, setting and over communicating are really the biggest things that you have to do.

And it sounds like you've systematized these things. Like it's not we know we should reach out to the customer, it's we know we should and therefore we have a schedule on which we are going to reach out to the customer. And I think that's something everybody can Learn from. Yeah, Love that.

Yep. Absolutely. Yep.

That's cool. So, okay, we know about your business. I want to talk about entrepreneurship a little bit. One of my favorite subjects. What. What's the toughest thing that you go through just as an individual to, you know, because it's. People always say, you know, entrepreneurship can be incredibly lonely, you know, and all this kind of stuff and grinding it out. What do you. What are the challenges of. Let's say somebody wanted to get into, hey, I want to be in a digital space and I want to start this business. And, you know, what are they going to. That you've overcome to succeed? You know, with. With eversight. Does that make sense?

Great question. Yeah. So one of the most difficult things in digital marketing. Well, there are two things that come to mind immediately. One, it's ultra competitive, Right. So a digital agency anywhere can be the marketing agency for anybody anywhere. And so it's highly competitive. There's a lot of people in the space. So differentiating yourself, getting yourself in front of people is incredibly important and also difficult. And oddly enough, doing digital marketing campaigns for digital marketing agencies is a really, really difficult thing to do because they're so prevalent and people know we're online. And if you run a Google Ads campaign. Right. So typically, if you run a Google Ads campaign for a local service business, you're going to get a large majority of those 60, 70% of people that click are potential customers.

Okay.

For digital marketing, I'd say it's 70, 80% are spam people, people trying to sell you something. Right. So it's almost useless in a lot of cases unless you get really niche and get really creative. You know, it can be a big expense and not so much of a return. So those are kind of two challenges that really come to mind immediately when it comes to digital marketing.

Makes sense. How about how do you manage your time? I know you have a big family. This is always a challenge, especially for me. I have more time on my hands now because I got more gray hair than everybody. But when my kids were growing up, I mean, it's always, you know, and I talk about time shifting and stuff. How do you manage. I don't know how you manage having five kids, but dude, all boys, right?

Yeah. A superhero wife is part of the equation.

That's awesome.

Well, it is, right? You're having your partner on board with what you're doing and helping you build it in whatever way that makes sense for your scenario.

Exactly. Right.

You need. If you have somebody that's pulling you back because either because they don't understand or they're not comfortable with the lifestyle that comes along with entrepreneurship. Talk about adding to the challenge. It might be a non starter at that point.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Okay, so you got incredible wife. The spouse is a, the right spouse is a force multiplier. One of my favorite sayings, how else do you manage it? What do you, what's your days look like?

Yeah, so I think, you know, key for me is being intentional about a cutoff. Right. So there was a long time, especially when my kids were younger, early in my marriage, when we're really trying to get things going and growing, where I'd pull all nighters on a regular basis, you know, wife would go to bed at 10 o' clock and I'm up till 3 in the morning working. And you can do that for a season. And I think anybody going into entrepreneurship, you know, should keep that in mind, that sometimes that's necessary. But then as the kids get older and you know, your priorities shift a little bit and things are running a little bit more smoothly, you have a bigger team. I think it's key to be intentional about when it's time for your kids and your family, you know, put a cut off. And for about a decade we had a nice office space here in town and it was easy to cut things off at that point. You know, somewhere between five and six, cut it off, head home, and we were in good shape. But now that I work from home, we're fully remote at this point. We got employees in seven different states and a few countries. It's even more intentionality required. Right. So in my case I make it easy on myself because I coach three of my son's soccer teams. And so I gotta be done by 5:30 or I won't make practice in time. But yeah, it's, it's. I think it's, you know, my day is pretty full of being on Zoom, like this kind of meeting with the team and then in front of the keyboard and then at 6 o' clock I'll cut it off. Of course in the evening I'll check email occasionally, that sort of thing, like most entrepreneurs do. But for the most part it's nice.

Yeah, that's good. I think that's great. No, so even though I see you answering my DMS on X in the middle of the night, you're not working. Right?

I know how this is, dude. Yes, you do.

Not quite.

There's work, they're working and then there's working.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I have a hard time because I enjoy it so much. I have a hard time stopping, you know, and I have a hard time turning it off, but. And disconnecting. Like I was up at our river place for a few days and man, I'm out. I'm doing all this physical stuff, working outside on the land and all this and I love that too. But part of me in the back of my head is kind of anxious. Like I'm not up on X today. You know, I didn't have much activity today. I'm not this. And.

It'S.

The time is, I guess it's just a forever challenge at different stages of your life.

Yeah, I was going to say. I mean I definitely experienced exactly what you're talking about. As my kids started to become that priority for me and then therefore the business wasn't, I spent more time with them and I carved out more time. And certainly to use the term suffer well might be correct. Like the business suffered. It did not thrive as much as it could have because of that. But I don't regret any of it. And as the kids start to move on and get less and less time consuming with what they're doing and, and especially once they leave the house, then it's like, well, I could just kind of expand back into doing the thing again. And those 3am nights and all those things come right back and that it's not, it's not necessarily a younger man's game.

Yeah, no, I would agree. I would agree. That's a good point. So I talk about mistakes all the time. Maybe it's because I've made so many. Is there some mistake that you can share? You know, we've got 105 people on the live stream and then we'll have thousands of people listening to the podcast. Think about a mistake that you made and something that taught you a lesson and also how you overcame it, how you powered through, you know, something like that.

Yeah, I appreciate the question. So I think that the, the biggest mistake that we made early on was actually starting our company in a small town. So I love, in my small town, you know, small town in Louisiana, but there are only so many businesses within a, an hour's drive from here. And we have New Orleans, it's within 45 minutes. Baton Rouge is about 45 minutes. But even those are, you know, small to mid sized cities, relatively speaking. And had I, if I could go back and do it again, we would have started in Houston or Dallas or some other larger metro area. I think would have been something that helped us grow much faster. We grew and we did well, but the rate of growth was limited to some extent because at the time, you know, geography was a big deal. People wanted to work with a local agency. They didn't want to work with somebody that's four hours away. And so over time, as ZOOM meetings became more of a thing, that really helped us. And oddly, you know, Covid, although we certainly had a lot of challenges for our business through the COVID time frame, one thing that really made a big impact in a positive way for us was the kind of general acceptance of meeting over Zoom. Right. We eventually did expand to Houston and Dallas, but my brother and business partner would drive every two weeks to Houston and then over to Dallas to meet with potential clients because they still wanted to meet in person. Right. And so once we were able to remove that geographical barrier and do this with those potential clients, it made a huge difference. One other thing to mention there, although we have a great team of locals, I think we've scooped all of the great local team members up. When you're in a small town, the pool of talent you have, right? Yeah, it's small. And so since we've gone fully remote, this was probably four or five years ago, we've got the entire world, certainly the whole country to pull from, and, man, that's made a huge impact on our team.

So, yeah, talk about working with family members. I see people posting online about it all the time. I've worked with my wife. Dave's worked with his wife for a long time. How is it, you know, working with your brother? Are there different considerations or agreements or rules or, you know, how is. I see you smiling there. I know it's. It can be a little tricky. It can also, you know, it can be wonderful. And. But how have you, or have you addressed that in a different way versus just, you know, working with a non related partner?

Yeah, good question. So I have five brothers and one sister, and I'm not sure, I mean, I love them all, but I don't think there's another one that I could last 20 years in business with. Right, I hear you.

I hear you.

It just so happens that Rob, he's my oldest brother and I really, from when we were younger, we had a buddy system growing up, and he was my buddy, my older sibling that I stuck with when we went to places. He was responsible for looking after me. And we just kind of always got along and were interested in the same things. And so, you know, for us, it's Been pretty smooth, I would say. The key to that has been making sure to not make business related things personal because they're not. And he and I are both very good at that. And then the other piece of the puzzle is communication, right. I think that's with any partner, but in particular, if it's family, you just have to be open. And we call, we call it healthy conflict. If you got a problem, let's talk about it, let's talk through it and make it, you know, make it better.

Yeah, that's really cool.

I think that concept of healthy conflict is one of the most important things to have in a business partnership. You don't necessarily need it with your employees, although if it works out, sure. But it, when you've got a business partner, especially if it's an equal partnership, but even if there's a, you know, if it's a, if it's a working partnership, I think embracing that healthy conflict. Not that you want to have problems, but you want to have an open venue where problems can be addressed easily without it having to like fester up into something where you're like, all right, we gotta have a come to Jesus moment. It's like, no, there don't need to be any come to Jesus moments if you address it early.

Like, yes, yes. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, probably life in general, man, you know, your relationships and being. Because it is, you know, not that this is a relationship show, but I, I mean, most of the time when I wind up in some kind of argument, we often are wind up arguing about how I'm arguing.

Right?

Yes.

At very common. I'm always like, wait a minute, what if we start.

We've lost the point here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at this point I'm just like, oh, okay. So I think that healthy conflict, I, I, I love that concept. I think it's terrific. Well, Joe, you know, thanks for coming on. Anything else you'd like to leave with us before you go? And also, what's the best way for people to learn more about Eversight and to connect with you?

Yeah, appreciate it, man. The easiest way to, to connect this would be to go to eversight.com you can call us, you can, you know, schedule a call to jump on kind of a quick demo. We'll show you what we can do. Or you can find me on X. As you pointed out at Joe Benson X, we're a full service digital marketing company. We have a few special things up our sleeves. So we'd love to talk to you if you're looking to grow online. But otherwise, thanks for having me, guys. A lot of fun.

Oh, it's been a pleasure meeting you. I love some of these ideas that, that healthy conflict thing. Like Shannon, I feel like that T shirt. Well, yeah, a T shirt, yes. Also, it might need to go into the default working agreement too. Like, oh, that's paving the path for that relationship. So everybody knows we, we, we are planning to have healthy conflict, not unhealthy conflict. Yeah, I like that.

That's a, that, as we say in the content cowboys group, that's a post. And if you don't post it, Joe, I'm going to post it.

So, yeah, fair enough.

Thanks again. Appreciate it. Stick around here as we roll out and do that, but appreciate you listening, everybody.

Yeah, thanks for hanging out with us, everybody. Come check us out. BusinessBrain Show. Send in your notes feedback at BusinessBrain Show. Sign up for the mailing list and keep living that charmed life. We'll see you on Friday.