Building More Than Websites: Designing a Business That Gives You Your Life Back with John Bilicki

Catalyst Conversations, the podcast where we explore what it really means to lead with intention. Build with purpose, and create businesses and lives that leave people better than we found them. I'm so grateful you're here with us. One of the things I've learned over the years is that the most meaningful conversations rarely begin with the topic we think we're going to discuss, right? Sometimes we believe we're going to talk about marketing or leadership or business strategy even. And if we're paying attention, those conversations almost always lead us somewhere deeper. They lead us into our beliefs, our values, our fears, and ultimately our purpose, right? Because behind every successful business is a person with dreams who's made sacrifices, who's questioned whether they were on the right path, a person who's trying to build something that matters not just for themselves but for the people they serve. That's why I love this podcast, right? Catalyst Conversations has never been about collecting business tips or chasing the latest trend. It's about uncovering those deeper principles tools that help us lead with clarity, build structures that actually support our lives, and stay connected to the soul of why we started in the first place. Today's guest has a perspective that immediately caught my attention. On the surface, he builds websites. He works with businesses who want greater visibility, stronger sales, and sustainable growth. That's impressive in itself. And what really made me pause Wasn't his technical expertise. It was one sentence. He said, I build websites and I sell life. Now, I'll admit, when I first read that, I smiled. I smiled. I felt it. And it felt unexpected, right? Maybe even a little provocative, because in a world where everyone is talking about clicks, conversions, algorithms, and AI, here's someone saying the website isn't actually the point. Right? And I found myself thinking, that's exactly it. So often we become consumed by the tools of business that we forget why we wanted those tools in the first place, right? And none of those things are inherently bad. In fact, they're necessary. Businesses need revenue to create impact, right? And the question I always come back to is, what if all of that growth meant to create Because if the answer is simply more work, then we've missed something, right? It's about knowing what kind of life you're actually trying to build. So please join me in welcoming John Belicki. So glad to have you with us.

Thank you for having me, Desi. It's a pleasure to be here.

I'm excited for this conversation, and I'm genuinely looking forward to it because I have a feeling it's going to go in a lot of different directions. And honestly, those are usually my favorite episodes, right? We have fun with these conversations. Before we get into what you do, I'd love for our listeners to get to know you, right? Because titles only tell us so much. They rarely tell us who someone is. So for the person who's meeting you for the very first time, who are you? Not just professionally, who are you as a person?

Well, I think you get more of the good when it contrasts the bad. And when I talk about bad things, it's not to encourage them to happen, but like, why are we aware of what's good? All right. And so, you know, a lot of my life, um, I had been taken advantage of and I says, you know, I, I, that's not what I want. And I realized I don't want to give to others what I don't want to receive. I want to give to others what I would like to receive. So I guess at the core is, you know, I want to help other people and I'd love for them to help me.

I love that. I love that. One thing I really appreciate is when people allow themselves to be seen as the whole person instead of simply business owners. Because I don't think leadership begins when we open our laptops in the morning. Leadership begins in how we live. It's shaped by our relationships, our failures, our curiosity, the books we read, the conversations we have, the moments that stretch us. And those things inevitably influence how we show up in business. And reading through your background, one thing stood out to me almost immediately. You aren't someone who's only interested in technology. You're interested in philosophy, in science, in comedy, in business, in life, right? And that's a fascinating combination because most people tend to stay in one lane. You've chosen to explore several. Where did that curiosity come from?

So I suppose that comes to the design aspect, right? So how many times have you wanted to murder your computer? Or your phone.

Try daily. Right.

Well, that would be very forgiving. So I'm very good at noticing what I don't like. And there's like, well, what do you like? And people, a lot of times, it's like what they don't like. Okay. But that's like 90% of where the energy is. But when you find something that works and it works really well, and it might not be an entire system or entire But it's that one little jewel in the rough. All right. And you start adding all those up and it, you start to realize there's something more and there's always something more to be had. So.

I love that. It resonates with me because I've found that the best leaders are lifelong students, right? Not because they have all the answers, but because they remain curious and curiosity keeps us humble. It reminds us, you know, that there's always another perspective to consider, another lesson to learn, another opportunity to grow. And I think that's especially important right now where we're living in this time where technology is advancing faster than ever. AI is completely changing how we work. Marketing is evolving and consumer behavior is shifting almost daily, right? And I find that the temptation is to think the answer is simply learning another tool. And tools don't create the wisdom. The people do. The experience does, right? The reflection, the character. And that's what allows us to use the tools well instead of becoming dependent on them. Which actually brings me to something you said that I haven't been able to stop thinking about, right? I mentioned at the beginning, you said, I build websites, but I sell life. And I'll be honest, that is not a sentence I expected to hear from from a website developer, right? So help us understand that. What experiences led you to that philosophy? Because I imagine there was a story behind it.

So I've sacrificed pretty much my entire adult life building my business. All right. I don't have a ring on my finger, but I'm definitely married to my business because I love what I do. So in a way, I don't work, right? And so I'm thinking when I see problems like we were discussing, it's like, how do we distill things to the absolute simplest things? Because here's the thing, there are big picture people and details people. And so one of my challenges has been because I'm very, very details heavy. Okay? And I've learned how to take that and make it, distill it down a bit. But at the end of the day, those details, they exist to support the big picture. And you can't have the big picture without the supporting details. You need to have both. And so there's that finite balance. And she says, okay, so why does someone want a website? Right? Well, website's gonna help them get more visibility. Okay, we get that, right? And what, what is that visibility the prerequisite of?

Right.

Sales, right? But why do people want sales, right? Well, the immediate part is obvious— money, right? But why do we want money? Money is a form of energy, okay? And so what money— I'll give you an example. Life is composed of time, okay? And the more you can do with in less time, the more life you have. So I will give you an example. Let's say you're going to go on vacation and you've got 2 options to travel. You can jump on a jet plane or you can jump on a pogo stick. Which do you think will get you more bang for your buck? Probably the jet airplane, right? So you want to get the most of your life and you want to break everything down, look at it in a meaningful way, Because once you have that perspective, and I think perspective is something a lot of people, you know, it's— I talk with friends and I say, look, this thing, it sounds amazing in my head, but it could be totally crazy, right? And so I bounce it off like, hey, Desi, what do you think of this idea? And it's like, I think you need to put on pants before you walk out the door, right? Okay, but I asked you before I walked out the door, right?

Right.

So, but not, not every idea is a bad idea, you know, but you, you, it's no, I'm not God. All right. I might have a godly complex, right? But jokes aside, I don't know everything. You don't know everything. All right. That's why, you know, we specialize in what we do and we work with other people who are also amazing at what they do.

I absolutely love that perspective. And what I'm hearing underneath that is that a website isn't the destination, destination, it's the vehicle, right? Visibility isn't the goal, it's the pathway, right? And sales aren't even the ultimate goal, right? They're simply the resource that allows someone to build the life they're hoping to create. And I think that's such an important distinction. You know, at Here, we often talk about leading from alignment rather than striving from exhaustion. And one of our foundational beliefs is that clarity liberates, right? When you're clear on your purpose, you stop chasing every opportunity and start building intentionally, right? Structure supports. The right systems don't box us in. They create freedom. And, you know, soul sustains. Without a connection to why we started, even success can begin to feel empty. And as I'm listening to you, John, I hear echoes of that same philosophy, right? You're helping businesses grow. Yes, of course. And underneath that, you're helping people reclaim time, create opportunity, reduce unnecessary stress, and build businesses that actually support the lives they want to live. Right? And that's a much bigger mission than simply designing websites and being a web developer, right? And honestly, I think that's where meaningful leadership begins. It's not asking, what do I sell? It's asking, How does my work make someone's life better?

Yes.

Right. And I think that's the question every business owner should wrestle with regularly, regularly, because when we answer it honestly, our messaging changes, right? And our priorities change. Even the way we define success begins to change.

If I may.

Yeah.

My goal is not to make money. My goal is to help people. My business goal is to make money,

right?

So it's kind of like a little philosophy. There's reality and there's my opinion, and they don't always align, right? So, you know, mentioning how we're not so thrilled with the computers and phones sometimes. But if you, you know, I have a program that lets me know, hey, I'm wrong. Right? And I want to know that I'm wrong, right? Why? No one cares about my chest-thumping egotistical mania, okay? They care about the end results.

Yes.

Okay? So if I'm aware, and that's another part of perspective, if I'm aware that I'm wrong, okay, I'm gonna say, look, the end result is what they care about. And I'm gonna fix this if it takes me an hour, a day, a week, whatever. I'm gonna fix this thing. I'm gonna remove this obstacle. Because no one else is doing this. All right? And I'm going to just clear the path so they can do what they need to do. It might only take them 30 seconds to do something, and it takes me a week. But when you compound that with how many people are using the system, how many more people are going to be using the system, that one week looks absolutely insignificant.

Oh, yes. You are so speaking my language. I love it. One of the things that I encourage leaders to do is to continually ask themselves— it's a simple question, and it's oftentimes a challenging question, right? If my business disappeared tomorrow, what transformation would I still want to create in people's lives? Because that's where your purpose lives, right? The business becomes the vehicle. The mission stays the same. Listening to you, that is exactly what I'm hearing, right? The website is simply the driver, and the transformation is helping someone create a better business so they can create a better life. And I think that's a distinction every entrepreneur needs to hear. Um, and I'd love to unpack what that actually looks like.

Absolutely.

So, John, when people hear web developer or SEO specialist or website designer, they often assume anyone with a business could be a client. And I've learned that the most impactful businesses aren't trying to serve everyone. They're very clear about who they're called to help. So tell us, who are the people you serve best? Who walks through your door and you immediately know I can genuinely help this person?

So in general, I'm business agnostic. Okay. Uh, I do B2B, but I, I, I can work with B2B and B2C. There are a few that I won't work with. All right. Lawyers, pseudoscience, like oncologists, anything political. All right. Those jokes belong on a comedy stage, not in business. Okay. But there's a wide range of people I work with. HVAC, coaches, dentists, ranchers, consultants. If you're doing business, you need a website. And I think A lot of people don't realize— I could give you an example of people who, who need a website who you wouldn't imagine would need a website and why. Okay? Imagine you're selling insurance for a big corporation. Alright? You've got a corp— corporate website. Right? But how many times have you heard in the news someone was working 20, 30 years for a corporation and they just got cut? And guess what? They no longer have access to that corporate website, but all their, their focus and energy was putting in all this information and getting it organized into that corporate website. Now, clean slate, and they were going to retire in 5 or 10 years, right? Oh, I'm not allowed. Who said you're not allowed? You can have your own website. It's your business. You're the one doing the, doing the work. You're the one helping people, right? So, you know, it really comes down to Do you want to be in control of your own life? All right. If it means adding another layer in that context, that's fine. But, you know, most people, when you're running a business, a lot, large part of it is what do you hear people talking about? You know, especially smaller businesses that are starting up. You've got to know your numbers. People don't know their numbers. I've talked with 6 dozen marketing firms, individuals and firms. They don't have any idea what the ROI is for the marketing campaigns. Why? Right. And it's like, you know, when we think about something like marketing and in effect what I do has a marketing effect, but that's not, you know, it, you know, usually you have 300% increased visibility. So when you're making an investment in your business, okay, do you want to work with people who are just going to take your money and throw it in a hole, set it on fire, and you have no idea what's working, what's not? Or do you want to work with someone, they have all the numbers, they know the difference between a human being and— I can give you an example. Um, most websites are built with WordPress. Alright. WordPress is literally just a blog. That's it. Okay? It's got 1,000 vulnerabilities, new vulnerabilities a month. Right? Imagine having 100 doors open every night at your business location. Alright? And it's 10 times worse than that. Right? And people say, we're gonna use Google Analytics. How many times have you gone to Google and it says, click on these staircases, these buses, these hills, these motorcycles? these traffic lights, right? Every day. Google doesn't know. So if you're relying on those numbers, Google doesn't know the difference between a spammer and a human. And so you got to distill that information. If you don't have a way to distill that information, then you don't know your numbers. And if you don't, you don't know which marketing campaign's working, and, you know, this was much more effective than that one, but you don't know because you don't have any of those numbers. Yes, you're gonna have a positive effect, but you don't know, hey, put, put your foot on the gas over here and take your foot off the gas on this one. You're just kind of blindly stumbling along. So it's not just who needs a website, which businesses can you work with, it's intention. All right? I don't— most everyone will tell you, oh yeah, I wanna succeed. I don't care about those people. I want people who say, I actually Want to succeed, right? You go to a business networking event, right? And you get all those cards. You're calling those those phone numbers, right? You don't just put them in the corner. All right. Okay. I didn't know that I'm supposed to do that, right? Well, if you don't do anything, if you don't take any action, nothing happens, right? So what happens if you if you take no action for six six months, a year? 2 years. Like, how, how much life do you get? You get one life. This is not Super Mario Brothers where you get a glowing green mushroom, you get an extra life, right? And if you're taking glowing green mushrooms— so that's a whole nother topic, okay? But you get one life, right? Now, I'm not saying jump blindly into opportunities, all right? Take a moment, reflect on, does this make sense? Okay. But at the same time, don't overcompensate. Don't go to the complete opposite. It's like, oh, you know, I'm gonna take no action. I'm gonna take every action, right? You've got to find a balance. All right? And I think one of my favorite quotes, and I love quotes, is the biggest mistake you can make in life is to miss an opportunity because you only get so many opportunities. Take them. If you don't execute perfectly, who cares? People aren't— if people are remembering you for the mistakes you made, who cares? I don't care about those people. You don't care about those people. Those people aren't helping other people, right? You've got— you've built your business, you've made sacrifices, you're busting your butt to get people what they need, and that's why they're paying you. Right? So when you need help with your business, you've got to work with the people who actually have that insight and put those— that work in. You know, anyone can throw together a WordPress website or Wix or whatever, right? But what are the results you're gonna get? You're blind, you don't know, and you're not getting that visibility. When you're working with people, I give you an example. If I want to do marketing, I'm not going to do the marketing. I'm going to find someone who does marketing. What I actually think will happen is I'm going to find someone who's professional and they realize, oh my goodness, we're blind and I have no idea to tell the client what's working, what's not, because we can't measure anything. All right. And that's a responsibility. All right. And responsibility is very important. I'll give you an example. I got a buddy. He's interviewing for a job. And he said, what's your— what would you say is your best qualification? He said, it's— people say I'm very responsible. And they said, could you give us an example? He says, every time something went wrong, they said I was responsible. That was a joke. All right, that's fine. But you get the point. You want to be responsible. You got to be responsible for yourself. And you got to know with delegation, no one can do anything. You're going to walk in the door with like a hat for marketing and sales and accounting and And billing. And no, no one can do everything. I don't want to do everything. You don't want to do everything. So it's about finding the people that we want to work with who are going to complement what we're doing and are going to produce the best possible results.

I so appreciate your perspective on this. Um, and you mentioned marketing a few times, and sometimes we assume growth problems are marketing problems. And what I found is that often they're leadership problems or systems problems or communication problems, right? I've worked with organizations that believed they needed more customers. And once we started looking beneath the surface, the real issue wasn't attracting people. It was what happened after people arrived, right? So adding more customers would simply create more chaos. Have you found something similar, John?

So every business is at— everyone's at their level of development on their personal level, and the same thing with the business. And every business has an evolutionary track. All right, you get the idea, like, this is what I can do to help people and make money. Okay, and you do that and you start getting customers, you start growing the business, and what Most businesses in the early stages realize is that once you get get the sales on track, so organization, okay, and self-awareness. There's a whole bunch of things. All right. When I I've done cold calling in the past, and I would say easily seventy-five percent of what you know, and I haven't done a lot of cold calling, but I've done enough to say seventy-five percent of the cold calls I've made voicemail. What if I was their dream client and it went to voicemail? Because if it goes to voicemail, yeah, I'll leave a message, okay? And but I'm immediately going to call the next person on the list because what I need, I need now. Opportunity doesn't wait, okay? You know, people say, oh, you need to, you need to follow up 20 times like a possessed crazy ex, right? No. I know my value. Okay? If people don't see my value, alright, maybe they will 5, 10 years from now, but how much of the growth of their business are they gonna miss out? Alright. So, okay. So I gave you an example with sales. Alright? One of the things I noticed is I missed an email by a week. Okay? Now I've had to learn sales. If I'd say objectively, 0 to 10 where I'm at sales, I'd say I'm a solid 5. I can see the mistakes other people have made and I could see amazing things that people like do that I don't get in sales. All right. But sales is not my primary specialty. And one of the things they say in sales is the faster you respond to a sales inquiry, all right, the more likely it is to convert. It's not the only thing, of course, but it's one of many things that you've got to do. I says, okay. So I built my system in a way where I'm not even on JohnBilyeu.com. I'm on another website working on the website and I have notifications turned on and my system tells me within 3 seconds that someone's contacted me on which website. And I have a breakdown on a blog entry that I'm basically calling them on the phone within 55 seconds. Forget about 5 minutes. I'm under 1 minute to call them. Okay. Are you returning your phone calls? So even if you, if you don't get that contact information that quickly, are you returning your phone? You've got to have— you've got to be organized. All right? And I think a big part of it, and I go back to that program that's, that's making a sound in the background saying, hey, you're wrong, you're wrong, right? What is your greatest bottleneck? Sometimes it's a system, it's organization. Sometimes it's inexperience. Oh, I didn't know how to close it, or I didn't respond fast enough. Sometimes it's you, sometimes it's me. All right, I, I've looked back on the past, it's like, yeah, oh my goodness, I made some mistakes. All right, but I learned from that. So I've been my own bottleneck. All right, but where is your bottleneck? Focus on that. Make it better. And that's gonna let you get, get to the next bottleneck. If you keep knocking down these bottlenecks one after another, you're, you're— that's where the growth is, doing things that other people won't.

Oh, it makes such complete sense, John. I think we all do these things to some degree, right? One of the things is we diagnose the system or the symptom because it's visible. Right? And lasting transformation really happens when we identify the root cause. That's true in leadership. It's true in culture. It's true in relationships, and it's certainly true in business. I want to talk about visibility for a minute here because it's become one of those buzzwords. We hear it all over the place, right? Everyone wants visibility. Everyone wants to rank on Google. Everyone wants to go viral. I sometimes wonder if we've confused visibility with significance. And there's a difference between being seen and being remembered. And there's a difference between attracting attention and creating trust. How do you think about visibility?

So that is— I'm going to do 2 things, visibility and psychology. Okay. So, how do you get the visibility? Alright, there's two things to that. Your gatekeeper is Google. It's 70% of the market, alright? So, typically, after I launch a new website, 40 days later, Google's like, hey, it's updated, and boom, we can see it's usually about over 300% more increased verified human monthly traffic. Alright? I'm using the words very carefully because that's what it is. Okay? But it's not just getting in front of people on Google. Okay? And so when I, I, I give all my clients homework. I'm gonna do 99% of the heavy lifting, but you're gonna be doing at least 1% of this. It's your business and these designers and this, oh, we're just gonna build you a website. No, because it's not just— it's code, yes, and 99.9% of people who build websites have no idea about code. It's like farmers who don't know about soil or a banker who doesn't know what gold is. All right, so once you get to that point, all right, now does that person build all that stuff and they can get you past Google? All right, but the pay— so once you get all that stuff, now you still have to deal with psychology. All right, how many people— and this is where you can't be a one-trick pony. All right, so you can make dinner, but you don't know how to put on your pants. You don't know how to open the door. You got to do more than one thing in life, right? So when someone goes to your page, okay, your page should say, boom, you're exactly where you belong, right? You found what you're looking for. Okay, give me, give me an example of a business that needs a website. Just any, any business.

Any business coach.

Okay, so let's say I'm looking for coaching services. Okay, the first thing I should see on the page before I scroll on my 32-inch screen or my dinky little 4-inch phone— please stop sending me texts and you can email me, please, uh, okay— is I should see 2 people sitting together having a conversation. One person's a coach, One person is whoever needs the coaching. Okay, and people, if I don't see that, I'm gonna go elsewhere because people have the attention span of a fly, right? Right, and they're gone. Your page has three basic parts. Okay, that that that just like the head, it's the the visual impact. I'm in the right place right now. I'm not a typical consumer. I know that I'm looking for technical details because how many times— I could give an example. How many absolutely attractive people have you ever met in your life that were also total crazy pants?

More than I can count.

Okay, so looks are important because not a lot of people— there's not a lot of market for, for ugly fat people. All right, but the content of your personality is very important too, right? I think that's why I love chatting with you, okay, because we get each other, all right? Not everyone gets it, all right? So that body of that page says, I get your pain point, I get what you need, right? Whatever it is, like you're selling tractors, you're doing web design, you're doing whatever it is, all right? I get it. And this is examples of the results. No one cares about code. If I said we're going to talk about code for the next hour, everyone would flip this thing off like that. No one cares about code except for one guy. But all right, that's the exception. But the code, again, it's the details that support that big picture. Now you've got the body, you've got the verification. We know Because you don't say, hey, you're attractive, let's get married right now. I've got a couple of minutes to spare. Right. So now you verified. All right. This, this looks good. This guy knows how to put his pants on before he walks out the door. OK, so sanity check. Good. Now you get to the bottom of the page. I got all this money in my pocket. If I only had any friggin clue what to do with it. I will give you an example. I built a shopping cart for a lovely lady. Her business— I don't know how this works, all right, but she literally sells 2 pieces of paper, all right? It's a side gig too. She's making $1,000 a month selling 2 pieces of paper. If it works, it works, right? If that makes people happy, go for it, right? And we noticed that people, when they're in the shopping cart, they would add something to the cart and it would sit there. And? And they would just sit there. Okay, so now we— so now here's the thing, we got to get their attention, but you don't want someone slapping you in the face. Kind of rude. People don't like that, right? Um, you know, really, really attractive, but slap me in the face 3 times, 7 out of 10, right? No. So What we did is very simple. We made the checkout button blink 3 times. Okay, not like, yeah, too slow, and not like seizure-inducing, like you're rolling on the floor. Okay, like a fish. Okay, we got the retention. Guess what? Conversions went up, right? Because you get the visibility, you want the end result of sales. Well, what's in between? Conversions. And how do you get the conversions? Psychology, right? So I said, you know what, we're probably gonna need to do this because the shopping cart's got several, several points that we gotta get through. So we applied that and the conversions went up and we can see everything. And the convert— so the visibility has to be— it has to— you have to have the psychology for the— to get the conversions to get to the sales.

Right. I love it. It was such an important distinction to make, right? Um, and I think that that's why websites matter far more than aesthetics, right? They're telling a story before we ever speak. Would you agree?

A story helps. Uh, if you want, I could share a story.

Absolutely. I love your stories.

Thank you. So let's talk about a success story. Okay? So a client of mine, let's start with the the end result. Okay? They're taking two to four vacations a year. They hired three people in the past thirty-six months. Okay? Now there's two types of business owners. There's intentional business, like, I love what I do, right? And once I figured out this was an option, yeah, let's do it. And then you have conveyor belt business owners. Now, what's a conveyor belt business owner? Here's a conveyor belt and you just fall on the conveyor belt and it drags you into success, okay? That wasn't the plan. It never was, all right? And they didn't, like, you know, blow anything up. They didn't make any big mistakes. All right, so this client is a conveyor belt business owner. Nothing wrong with that. Okay. One day, the person they were working for stopped breathing. Just put it very diplomatically. Not gonna go into details. And boom, now they are in the business leader position that they— there was no plan for that. This is completely unexpected. Didn't see it a mile, an inch, whatever. Okay. And this is why it's so important when even in every— oh, man, it's technology at scale. So let me give you numbers, right? Real numbers, okay? And there's 3 things going to your website, alright? There's the human beings that have money in their pocket, alright? There's the search engines like Google that need to— they need to like, hey, what's on— is this, you know, are you doing art? Are you doing Pants? Are you doing psychology? What are you doing? Right? And then you have rejects. Alright. Let's keep it simple. Rejects. Hey, that's a nice email address. So if your email address is on your website and you're getting tons of spam, I wonder what, because your website's not protecting that. Right? Oh, that's some nice content. I'm gonna make a Frankenstein's monster website and get sales and whatnot. There's all these things, hackers and vulnerability scans. I block all that. Zero spam ever since I launched in 2010. No CAPTCHAs. Right? So let's go back. She got over 48 months, 5,000 people compared. So let's look, break the numbers down month by month. Okay? Google takes 40 days before, because it's, it's got how many billions of pages on the, on the internet. Right? All right, and you got— it's about your niche, all right? Because if you're in Florida, you're not advertising to people in Utah, okay? So she was getting about 48 human beings a month based off of WordPress, okay? How many hands can you shake a year? 100, maybe 200? Like, if you're dedicated sales, right, and it's just endless incoming sales, maybe you can shake 300 or 400 hands a year. In person, right? So we got— I got her from $48 to between $140 and $190 a month. All right, that's over $1,200 a year. Okay, that's where you get $5,000. All right. It's not just that, it's about also— and there's a lot of mistakes people make. All right, so I give you an example. Let me give you examples what you should not do so you know what you should do. All right. I have a friend who likes to have 47 conversations in 12 and a half words or less. No, we can have 47 conversations. One at a time, okay? You, you know, put your pants on, then leave to go out to work, right? So when you have multiple services, you want a dedicated page per service.

Mm-hmm.

No one is looking for 6 to 12 different services in one Google query ever, okay? They're not doing that. Let me give you another example, all right? Almost every day that I come, I'm talking to people, hey, I need help with the website. I look at the page title and it says Untitled Page. Desi, when was the last time you went searching Untitled page?

Never.

No, no one is searching for untitled page. Remember that 1% of homework that I'm going to have my clients do? All right, that's because when you show up on Google, that page title is what they're going to click or they're not going to click. And that text that's just below the link is the meta description, and they're going to read that and they're like, oh, this is what I need, or it's not what I need. So that impression has to be converted to visibility, right? So I'll give you another example. I've heard so many times, oh, I don't want to have my face on the website. Desi, you're a beautiful human being. Your website should be on the website, okay? People make excuses like, oh, I'm ugly, right? Okay, people, there's always gonna be people making judgments, all right? I'll give you an example, all right? I put on this hat and be like, hey, that man, I bet he listens to rock music. I take this hat off, nah, he's got a rock collection, right? I put this hat

on,

I put this hat on, you're like, hey man, he looks like he could be the lead singer for the, the, the rock band, uh, Korn. I take this hat off like, nah, he grows corn, right? We don't care about those people. If people are judging you based off what you look like, they're in the hobo category. We don't care, right? We're focused on success. All right? So be out there. And when you put your face, you're human. You're not some facial corp that, you know, you're client number 159,000 for today and we value you and that's why you're on hold for 17 minutes. And you're gonna get an AI to, to answer the phone, right? So remember, answer the phone.

Mm-hmm.

Did I answer your, did I answer your question?

Absolutely. You didn't. Ah, gosh, I knew this was gonna be such a good conversation. Yes, you and I have a lot of synergies that we align on. And you shared something before we recorded that really stayed with me. And you said, if listeners walked away remembering one thing, it would be this. Don't allow fear to prevent you from living your life. And I'd love to spend a couple of minutes here because I think fear is something every leader wrestles with, right? It's the fear of failure. It's fear of rejection. It's the fear of making the wrong decision. All of these different fears that are coming to the forefront. Why was that the message you wanted people to remember?

So someone once said something that really resonated with me. Knowledge tempers fear. Okay? And that's why, like, an example, say, hey, Desi, I have this idea. Is it good? Is it, is it bad? Is it kind of crazy and it needs to be refined? But we bounce it off. We do hot potato. Alright? If we don't know, let's hot potato. Let's get this back and forth. Right? Now, you can, there's tools like you can use, you know, large language models. I'm not gonna call it AI. There's no AI. All right, but we'll say large language models like ChatGPT or the other ones, right? You don't say, give me a page for this product. No, you know your product, you know yourself, you're gonna put it on there and you can say, help me refine this. Desi, help me refine this. John, help me refine this. And so you're gonna make mistakes, I'm gonna make mistakes, but you're not walking out the door with your pants around your ankles. You're not making those kind of mistakes. Okay, so who cares? Like I gave you an example. I used to do computer repair. All right, I fix. I I've had very few people I had to go back to fix computers because when I fix the computers, they stay fixed. Okay, I do something. I do it to last. All right, like you know that 48 months, right? And she's still got 190 people a month, right? And that that's one. Do it once. Right, right, versus ongoing ad and marketing. So the more you know, knowledge is power and wisdom is alignment. All right, wisdom tells you this is good, this is evil, or it's, you know, it's somewhere in between. And I want good people to succeed. I want neutral people to find their way, and I want evil people to get stuck in traffic.

Okay.

So get out there and get a second opinion, get a third, a fourth opinion, and the more opinions— and here's the thing, I'll give you an example. I built in my platform, it's a CMS and a CRM, and I have modules, right? And the module, like the blog is a dedicated blog, it's not kind of a blog, it's a blog. The email is a dedicated email, and I like variety. I like working with clients that have nothing to do with each other. Alright? Because the more variety I have, the more both my mind and my code has to be flexible and dynamic. Alright? And so when I started importing emails, okay, I've literally imported probably about 150,000 to 200,000 emails. Okay? And now there's HTML emails and there's HTML emails. Alright? And you, No, you know the nonsense you got to deal with and you're not really, you know, super technical like I am. You imagine the nightmares of stuff that's working, right? And so you're importing. So I'll give you an example. I have a friend and she's got 80,000 emails in her inbox and she's 70 years old. She doesn't have a chance in hell. Okay. Except here's John. So here's an example where knowledge tempers that fear. I said, look, I got a tool called Clean Inbox. And this is one of— I have treasure chests. All right? And each person, I'm like a treasure chest to each person. What are you looking for? You open that up. What treasure is going to be inside? And so for her, that treasure chest was Clean Inbox. And it's a very simple concept. Who sent you all these emails and who sent you the most and put them at the top? All right, now when you put a check on one email, all right, and for her, the top sender sent her 1,500 emails, all right, out of 80,000. Okay, so we put one checkbox in there, and we put— and we put about 20 checkboxes. She says, oh, it's all promotional garbage. All right, 20 checkboxes, right? It's only gonna select all the emails in the inbox that are not starred, because you might like something and star it for later. And it's gonna delete it all, but it's gonna put in the trash, not in— not delete it outright. And in 5 minutes, we deleted 10,000 emails that were all purely promotional. Now, I know she went from, you know, 80,000 to 70,000. Still got a big problem. But now she has this— there's hope because we only spent 10 minutes at it. Right. Right? What if we spend a half hour, an hour, right? She can get it under control.

Right.

And that's a 70-year-old lady. So I don't imagine, because every time I'm chatting, I do networking, it's like, so we're gonna just presume that you want our marketing emails by default. So that's nice. I gotta deal with that too. So, you know, and it's like, where's the value? So how do we, Take something that is normal. So I'll give you an example. You send me an email. All right? When I send a reply to you, the email I've replied to is automatically archived. It's out of my inbox. I have 40 emails in my inbox. 20 years, I have 40 emails in my inbox.

Mm-hmm.

I am in control. I realize what was the problem. The problem was me, as I didn't know what I needed for these tools. So I took my tools, enhanced them, and I went from thousands and thousands of emails to 40. And right now, 40 is— that's wild out of control. That's Girls Gone Wild. Okay. And, you know, and keep in mind, time passes, things get crazy, right? It's just like Jeff Dunham said, first it's Girls Gone Wild, then it's Girls Gone Saggy, Dennis Gross gone senile, and it's just Gross gone, right? So I— and you've got to laugh at this stuff, and that's why I love comedians. So you've— so when you have this knowledge, it can temper your fears and your anxiety because you got to fall asleep and you got to wake up because a lot of that mundane, you're going to keep that mundane, but you know you found value. And the most important thing, okay? And this is where the marketing people I've talked to fail. When I said, look, you're gonna get 300% more visibility for every single one of these clients, or, or I'm gonna waive the entire fee of all my time for what I'm doing with you. Right? 2 things should have come out of their mouths. Prove it. Show me. And I want you on my calendar. If we disconnect, call me back. I want you on my calendar, right? If they didn't do that, they didn't see the value. What does that tell you? That they don't care about the end result for their clients. So are— and that's something that's ongoing versus set and forget. So when you see an opportunity, yeah, there's gonna be fear, there's gonna be anxiety, but you Where have you gotten— how much work have you already done? Do more, but do the right more, right? So did I answer the question?

Way over and above and beyond, and I love it. And we covered a lot of ground today, John. I know. How did 45 minutes go by already? And we've talked about websites, visibility, systems, leadership, fear, purpose, and you know, truly what it really means to build a business that supports the life you want to live. Now it's time for one of my favorite parts of every episode. It's our leadership lightning round, and these questions are intentionally simple. Okay. There's no right answer. I'm just interested in your perspective. So whatever comes to mind first, short answers. You ready?

All right.

When you hear the word success, what's the very first thing that comes to mind? Self-correction. What's one business myth you wish would disappear tomorrow?

Tomorrow is never.

What's one habit that every entrepreneur should develop?

I already said self-correction. How about pick up your damn phone?

I love it. If you could give every business owner one piece of advice today, Out, away from picking up your damn phone, what would it be?

Find that choke point. And it can be you, but isn't inherently, because I don't— every business is different. But find the choke point, attack it relentlessly, because— and the sooner you do that, the more life, the more compound interest on life that you get. Don't procrastinate.

Okay. Final question. When you're not working, what fills your soul? Cheeseburgers. Yes. All right, John, as we come to the end of today's conversation, um, there are a few ideas that continue to stand out to me. The first is this: business is never just about business. It's about people. It's about solving problems. It's about creating opportunities. And it's about making life better for our clients, our teams, our families, and most importantly, ourselves. I also keep coming back to your statement. I, I build websites and I build life, or I sell life, right? At first it sounds unexpected, and after spending this time together, it makes perfect sense because the website isn't the destination, it's the tool, right? Um, one thing I hope every listener takes away today is this: whether you're leading a company of 2 people or 200, whether you're just starting your business or you've been doing this for decades, It's worth asking yourself a few honest questions. Okay, why am I building this? What kind of life am I trying to create? Do my daily decisions actually support that vision? Am I leading from clarity or reacting to pressure? Right? Am I building structures that create freedom or structures that create more stress? Right? And perhaps the hardest question of all, am I allowing to make— am I allowing fear to make decisions that purpose should be making, right? These aren't questions we answer once. These are questions that we return to again and again because leadership is that continual process of becoming, right? John, before we wrap up, I'd love to leave our listeners with your voice just one more time. If someone is listening today and they're feeling overwhelmed, what's one piece of encouragement you'd want to leave them with?

Persistence. Someone can be better at anything that you do, but a lot of people give up too easily. So I'd say persist to your dying breath, you know. And I, I think you didn't— you don't accomplish what you did by doing your best. You accomplish what you did by exceeding your best.

Thank you, John, not just for sharing your expertise today with us, but for reminding us that meaningful business is about so much more than metrics. It's about creating value, building trust, and serving people well, and ultimately designing that business that supports the life that you're called to live. So thank you for spending time with us

Thank you for having me.

It was, it was a joy. I knew it would be. To everyone listening, thank you for joining us for another episode of Catalyst Conversations. My hope is that today's conversation encouraged you to pause long enough to reflect, not just on where your business is going, where your life is going, right? Because the two are deeply connected. Right? Because no amount of achievement can replace a life that's aligned with your values, right? When our work reflects who we are and why we serve, success becomes more than something we accomplish. It becomes something we experience. So wherever today's conversation finds you, I wanna leave you with this encouragement. Take one intentional step this week. Have the conversation you've been avoiding. Simplify the process that's creating unnecessary stress for you. Reconnect with the purpose that first inspired you to begin, or maybe simply give yourself permission to stop letting fear write your story. Small intentional steps like that have a remarkable way of creating lasting momentum. Okay. And as you've heard throughout today's conversation, momentum isn't built overnight. It's built one faithful decision at a time. So until next time, keep leading with courage, creating with purpose, and becoming the catalyst for positive change in your business, your community, and your life. We'll see you on the next episode of Catalyst Conversations.