Chris Martinez — How To Inexpensively Offload Web Design And Development

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Yo, yo.

Welcome to another podcast episode of the Hustle and Flowchart. This is Joe Fear. I'm with Matt Wolf. That's. That's Matt Wolf over there. And today we have a. An interesting fellow by the name of Chris the Dude Beast Martinez. And Matt, what kind of websites does he host?

Chris runs Dude Pros, a full service company that builds, you know, websites and funnels and all sorts of cool stuff for you on a monthly retainer basis. So it's an interesting business model and it's going to be. We're going to have some interesting discussions about this dude program here.

So, Chris. I mean, sorry, the Dude. The Dude Beast.

Wait, do we refer to you as Chris or Dude Beast?

Wait, what was that question?

Do we refer to you as Chris or Dude Beast?

You know what, it's interchangeable. You can use whatever you feel like.

Oh, thank you very much for that.

It's like a split personality.

It sounds like it. So explain this title and this character you've become since we've met you.

Yeah, so that's actually one of the things that I'm most excited to talk to you guys about because I got the inspiration from it from one of your amazing newsletters, believe it or not.

I've heard this. And I don't know the connection here, by the way.

It's called the EGP letter EGpletter.com.

I can't even remember which one it was.

But there was something in there about, you know, just infusing your personality into your marketing and into your business. And then, you know, and I've heard this stuff before, but it just for that, at that particular moment, it really resonated. And then the other thing that you said was, you don't have to try and be everything. You don't have to be everybody's supplier, you don't have to be everybody's vendor. Pick and choose who you want to work with. And so just to give you a little bit of backstory, I know you guys know this, but the listeners probably don't. I have an agency as well called Website in five days, working with mainly solopreneurs. We were building websites for them and then providing maintenance and everything. And that's still running. I mean, that's great. We got over a couple hundred clients or whatever.

But I started that about five years ago and I kind of felt like I was starting to lose my personality in the business. And I knew that I needed to make some sort of change and I wanted to take it in kind of a different direction. I mean, we have a great team. I know you guys are big on systems. We have great internal systems for completing client work and building websites. Obviously we're really, really good at that. And then we got really good at our, our customer support. So like, we've always done customer updates and stuff for their websites and their funnels and all that good stuff. And so actually, I think in the latest newsletter you were talking about Zendesk. We actually use freshdesk. We like freshdesk a lot better. And so our team has just loved it. And like, when we made the switch from Zendesk to freshdesk, the team really embraced it, which was really cool. So instead of me having to try and like force them to use this ticketing system, they basically wrote the rules for freshdesk, which is like, ultimately what I think you really want is you want your team to be autonomous. So we got really good at the support. And I was like, you know what, what else can I do? And I was kind of having like a meditation moment about what we could do. And I came up with this Dude Program stands for digital updates done by experts. And it's basically unlimited web design and development for now. It's for agencies, funnel consultants and marketing consultants. And so that's kind of where it came from. And then, and this all like, literally like this happened right around the time when I was reading your guys newsletter. So I'm like, okay, so let's create. And I was kind of studying Design Pickle. You guys know Design Pickle, right? They're like over 2 million in two years. And I did a lot of research. I listened to a podcast that the owner did. I think his name is Russ Perry. Is that right?

I'm not sure, but we'll take your word for it.

Sounds familiar.

Okay, let's just call him Russ Perry.

Let's go down.

Well, Design Pickle is basically unlimited designs, right?

Unlimited graphic design. Graphic design, yeah. And they charge 370amonth. Like I said, they've been around for about two years and they say that they're at about $2 million in revenue.

Got it.

So like all this is happening at the same time. I'm getting served a ton of ads by them. I'm doing research about the company. I. I actually talked to the company that funded them and kind of got some inside story about that. And then I was like, dude, we can totally do this unlimited thing.

Where we're essentially giving our clients, a web developer and a designer, unlimited support. And the word dude just came to me and I was like, how can I turn this into some sort of like acronym? So then I came up with is it acronym or anagram?

Acronym.

Acronym, you're right.

Acronym. Okay, that's correct. So digital updates done by experts. It just came and then, so I rolled it out and then we started to get clients like pretty quickly.

And then we started to run some Facebook ads. And my Facebook ads were doing okay. Like we're still tweaking it right now. It's all about the targeting. We were kind of having some trouble with the targeting. But you guys went to traffic and conversion back in. Was it March?

March, yeah.

And I think one of the things that they talked about there was when you're running your ads, like just, you know, getting people to stop scrolling.

Like the priority number one.

I think you nailed that with your ads.

Yeah, so I created, I was like trying to figure out ways like what can I do to frickin break through to people. And I've had this wrestling mask which hopefully when you launch this podcast, you'll show the image.

Oh, we will.

I've had this, this wrestling mask for like literally like nine years. I bought it when I was on a trip with my friends in Ensenada. Yeah, nine years ago.

I was gonna say like were you in Cabo or something or.

Yeah, I was in.

I just, I just assumed you, you're an ex pro wrestler.

Well, that too.

Okay.

Believe it or not, I was actually a wrestler at a costume party once. That's I believe, another story. It was epic. It was epic in the sense because so like I was single back then and I was at this party up into this complete tangent. Yeah, I was at this party and it's called the Elf Party. It's like a huge party up in San Francisco that my friends throw. And so like there was like tons of hot girls there and I was single and I was like, dude, I'm gonna dress up like this wrestler. So I basically made myself the Ulfimate Warrior. So like people like take a play on anything with Christmas. And so I painted my face and I had a wig and the frickin wrestling boots and everything. And I had a belt, dude. Every dude at the party was like Ultimate Warrior, the greatest costume ever. Not a single girl knew who I was.

The biggest backfire ever.

Oh man.

Well, you live and you learn.

Exactly.

Getting back to the dude beast. So I Had this wrestling mask. I was like, dude, I'm just gonna shoot some video with this thing. And I just had fun with it. And like, I was thinking about your newsletters. Like, dude, let's. I just want to have fun. Like I want to inject my personality back into the business. I'm just going to try it. And so I started running the ads, actually retargeting ads with me in the, in the mask. And I was getting 13% click through, like it was ridiculous.

And explain, explain the ad really quick because it's super unique.

Yeah. So the ad is me wearing the mask and then I did kind of like a crazy, like, you know, head move, like something that you would see some crazy wrestler do. And then I would go into getting people to sign up for a 14 day trial because that's what we offer. We offer 14 days. You can try out, dude, absolutely free. And there's no credit card required, which is pretty awesome. And so I started running these ads and.

They started getting a lot of attention. I was like, this is pretty freaking cool. And the other thing that was cool for me is that I was learning that there were some people who loved it and there were some people who frickin hated it.

Love it.

And the people who hated it. I was like, yes, Because I don't have to waste any more money on these people. I don't have to, I don't care about them. Like, I know who they are. They've identified themselves. Get the hell out of my life.

Yeah.

You know, and those aren't the people that I want to work with.

Right.

You know, so I want to be way more strategic about who the people that I, that I let work with our company. Because honestly, like, you know, there are bad clients and then those clients end up annoying the hell out of my staff. So now I'm hearing it on multiple levels. And so my staff's more appreciative. We're bringing on these agencies, funnel consultants. They're really, really good people. And we're providing them a team to help them get more stuff done so they can ultimately bring on more clients. And we provide a service that really nobody in the United States is offering right now. So it's been pretty freaking awesome.

So with your approach, really quick, I have two questions. Well, yeah, first one, let's be very quick on this one because basically I think you're doing push ups during one of these ads, right?

Oh, yes, yes.

That must not be the retargeting ad. But that's like your initial. But you're like, you have no shirt on. You just have this mask that looks like a bowl that's like painted white and black. And you're just doing push ups the entire ad. I'm like, dear God. And I was like, trying to count the amount of pushups, and I was like, no, I cannot do that.

So that was the one where I didn't do as many pushups. I think in that one I maybe did 4:30.

Okay, that's doable.

There's another one, though, that I did at least 50 in one. That one was just. I mean, the whole thing, it was. I don't know, it kind of. It's kind of dumb. But I was like, the whole thing with dude is that, like, you know, it frees up you. It frees up your time to do whatever the hell you want, right? And so I was like, okay, in this ad, I'm gonna show that I can do whatever I want because I have a team just like we want our clients to do, right? And so I'm just gonna do 50 push ups just for fun. And so I busted out 50 push ups in there. I did a bunch of crazy stuff. The other one that worked really well is when I had my dog in the ad. So I have a golden retriever. She's the cutest dog on earth. She is not up for debate.

And so I put her in the ad. You know, that's actually something that I remember from, like, Dan Kennedy, I think you guys know. Oh, yeah, of course. It's like, people care about your kids and your animals more than they do about you.

Probably true.

Oh, yeah. So I brought my dog, and then that one performed really well. So, you know, in terms of, like, ROI, I think we spent about four grand and we generated a. I think 36,000.

Nice. Dude, that's not. That hasn't been that good.

ROI man.

Right? So I guess my second question, because of all these crazy ads, because, I mean, to be very honest, Matt and I saw these ads at first and the name, we're like, what the fuck is he? Like, who is he marketing to? Like, exactly. So who is your best now after all these ads, I guess tell us, who do you start targeting? And then now who's actually buying this stuff?

So initially, I created this dude program, working with entrepreneurs as well. I kind of, like, always in the back of my mind, knew that I wanted to work with marketing consultants and funnel consultants just because they know exactly what they need done. So from an efficiency standpoint, they're able to send over tickets to us, like, requests that are very, very specific. Like, instead of just getting stuff like, you know, hey, be creative, which is like the worst thing that you possibly ever send an.

Yeah.

So it's like, I need you guys to swipe and deploy this. Here's the headline. Here's a sub headline. I need this video to go here. I need to auto play. This is the button. I want the button. Say that, like, those types of instructions are so good for us, and our team loves it, and we knock that shit out of the park. And so initially, when we launched, we were kind of going after all entrepreneurs. Like, I think my targeting was like, people who, like Russell Bronson, all the Internet gurus, digital marketer Ryan Deiss. And then we just kind of whittled it down because I was like, you know what, let's just cut ties with the entrepreneur group for this program, and let's really hone in on the agencies and the funnel consultants and marketing consultants. And so that's basically who we're going after right now. And our clients that we've brought in that fit that category have been awesome. That's really, really good. And they see a lot of value. And then like, they're like, we want to refer you. And then like, of course, we got our affiliate program and all that stuff. So we're really excited about it.

Very cool. Now, I'm actually really super curious about the business model itself. So essentially, somebody signs up with you, It's. It's what, 400 bucks a month or so? I don't remember the exact pricing.

It's four. It's 497amonth.

Okay. So roughly 500 bucks a month to work with you. And then your team will just make unlimited funnel designs and tweaks and edits on a website.

Unlimited, dude. So, like, it's like I tell people, dude, it's like having your own team. So, you know, if you need something done, you just submit a ticket. I mean, they can call too, but most people prefer to send an email. It's got to be typed out anyways just so that there's documentation and like, you know, our clients can follow and get updates on where things are at.

And that's. So you got to have some pretty good systems in place to make sure that you could handle whatever sort of load comes in, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. So, like, from the website in five days stuff, we got really, really good at building websites. We have an amazing process that we follow for that. And then also, once we started focusing more on the support, we got really, really good at that too. And so, you know, I mean, there's no perfect system, but I mean it's pretty good. We have, we, we, Our goal is 48 hour response time depending on how much work somebody sends over to us. We've been really good with same day recently. So most of the stuff that we've been getting, it's been same day. So they send us over something and we turn it around really, really quickly. And that's actually like some of the testimonials that we've gotten is like, I can't believe how quickly this stuff gets done, gets turned around.

That's pretty amazing. Yeah. If you can do that consistently, you win.

So how big of a team?

48 hours is still pretty darn good.

Hell yeah.

So how big of a team do you have that building all this stuff?

So we've got seven people right now full time. And then so like my goal is like for every like five to 10 people, I'm hiring another developer.

Got it.

Or designer.

So do you ever have times where there's 15 requests all in one day and they're sort of big, pretty big projects? I mean, how would you handle like a large load coming into the business?

Well, this actually goes back to that client avatar thing. So the problem if you have 15 requests and seven developers, it's true, not that much work. The problem comes when they say be creative or they don't give you any copy or that we don't have instructions as to what we're swiping and deploying or they don't include their assets. Like they don't include a logo or an image. That's what really, really slows down projects. And trust me, we learned that 50 times over doing websites for solopreneurs. When you have the right client and you have the funnel consultant who knows exactly what they need done. And obviously we also work with their click funnels and leadpages and all that good stuff. Then that makes it really, really easy. So just today I was looking at the queue and there was probably 12 tickets that were in the queue. All of them except for, I think one were getting done today.

So is most of the stuff like build something new from scratch or is most of this stuff like, oh, I just want, I want this text moved from a left aligned, a right aligned. Is it usually like quick tweaks or are you doing mostly building shit?

I'd say it's about 50 50. It's about 50 50. And a lot of the times actually we just had this come through the other day, the guy was like, hey, I want you to create a new webinar funnel for us using clickfunnels. He actually didn't give us much instruction. And then so we did some research. We found out. Here's what we recommend. He gave some tweaks, make the tweaks. So then now he's going to split test his one that he created himself against the one that we created.

Interesting. Okay.

Yeah, so it was a great way for him to get another split test funnel or option. He really didn't have to do any work.

How long did it take for you guys to actually make an entire funnel for this guy?

Yeah, so this is just the landing page. And I think that they. I can't really remember, but I think they all went to the same generic thank you page. I don't even know if there was an upsell, but I just saw, you know, the design work that we did. That whole thing took like a day and a half.

I think that's like. So, listeners, yeah, Stop dicking around with click funnels and lead pages. And it's. It's super easy. But this is what holds probably 80% of the people up who are subscribers of our letter or just in our. On our email list is I gotta learn the tech or I gotta do the design?

Oh, you don't?

Hell no. You don't?

Hell no.

It's funny, our last podcast, the one that came out last week, was with a guy named Brad Costanzo, and that was a big topic of conversation that we had on the podcast was most marketers, most like Internet marketer type people, don't treat their business as a real business. They treat it as like, you know, a hobby. They get in, they do all the stuff. They tweak the web pages themselves, they create the graphics, they do the Facebook ads. They try to do it all themselves. If you look at a real business, you know, a brick and mortar, legit larger company, the owner of the business is never in the trenches. Well, not never, but usually isn't in the trenches. Building the shit out themselves. They hire web designers, they hire customer support people, they hire funnel builders. They don't do that stuff themselves. And that's sort of what separates somebody who's actually got a legit business mindset versus a I'm a marketer mindset.

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, one of our very successful clients, he was out here in San Diego. He's from Texas, and he was just out here hanging out, having fun, because he loved San Diego. He got some of his Employees to fly out here for a few days. They did like a mini conference. And so while he was out here, me and him went and grabbed a beer and he said something that really resonated with me. He's like, he does a lot of Facebook ads and optimization. That's like, optimization is like his specialty. And so he's like, dude, one of the reasons why I got in this business is for the freedom, you know, so that I can travel and go to San Diego. He's like, that's why he loves having our team, because we can implement a lot of this tech stuff so that he can focus on the stuff that he really enjoys, which is traveling and meeting people and obviously, like doing sales. And I talk to people about this all the time. It's like, dude, if you're the owner, like, you need to focus 80% of your time on revenue generation.

Totally.

Or go to the beach. Don't become a sleep slave to the business.

Yeah. Or even a little bit higher level. From mine and Joe's perspective, what we like to focus on now is really just the vision and the roadmap. We like to build the roadmap for where the business goes, and then once we have that roadmap, figure out, okay, who can we plug in to make sure this roadmap gets followed. Yep, right, Exactly. So that's what we spend most of our time doing now is creating the vision and creating the roadmap and tweaking and dialing in that roadmap and then finding who's going to plug those holes for us.

Yeah, perfect. I mean, that's exactly what we want to be or that we are for our clients is we are those technical people that are going to put all this stuff together and make it work.

Right.

And so obviously, we do work for our clients. Clients.

Right, right. So is there anything that you don't do as far as copywriting?

Copywriting. We tried to do copywriting with website in five days. We're bad at copywriting, so we don't know. But so, like, website updates, Obviously we do WordPress. What's the e commerce one that I can't shopify? BigCommerce. We can do all those updates for our clients.

So if I was to give you a concept for, like, a design that we wanted for our business.

Would you go and find, you know, stock photos to put on the sales page and so all the imagery, all that stuff is sorted out for as well?

Yes, yes, we can do it. We prefer that you send us the images, but if you want we can go out and we can find them.

What else do we do? Click funnels, leadpages, like all the funnel programs. We work with those. All the graphics. So like, let's say it's a fitness business and they need some before and after graphics. Like, super important. We'll do those. We had somebody who had some product photos that they needed created, like 3D ebook covers. Like, we do all those. All the Facebook ad images that you need. We do those too. What else do we do? Newsletters. So we'll set up newsletters. Autoresponders will set all those up for you. Installing Pixels. Of course we'll do that.

Now, when you say newsletter, are you talking about like a digital email newsletter?

The email newsletter.

Got it.

We don't do the print stuff.

Got it.

Anything to do with paper, we don't do.

You're scared of paper. Got it.

Scared of paper. I'm terrified of paper, actually. I lose paper like faster than anybody you've ever met on the planet. But you've never lost a letter, a paper receipt. It will somehow magically disappear from my person within 30 seconds.

But you still have every copy of the EGP letter, right?

Oh, yeah, of course. Those never leave my computer bag. Like, I stack them all on my computer bag, I pull them out, I read them, and then I put them right back in there.

We kind of assume everybody does that. They've always got them on them.

Yes, Everywhere they go. Well, we'll have to send you a three ring binder. You have to start doing that. I think that'd be cool. That would be cool. Dude, what, a six ring binder? Yeah, why not? Yeah, five.

Gotta be different.

So you created this business in a. Well, your previous business too. So you are technically right now in Mexico. Correct? Correct. And you've said you were in San Diego, but you're not currently, but.

Well, I live in San Diego.

Yeah. So describe that. That's kind of what I wanted to talk about. And then how you actually built a team and a business in Mexico. So that's like where your office is? More or less.

Yeah.

Describe this whole thing that you're doing, which is like, it's like you're outsourcing, but you're driving there, I think daily.

Yeah, I drive there at least three days a week. Sometimes five days a week, sometimes seven days a week. But yeah, so like I always wanted to start an agency, like replicate website in five days in Mexico. And so I think it was like two years ago we launched in Mexico, discovered it's not really someplace that we want to be working in right now just because of the clients and, like, the technology that just didn't really. It wasn't working. And so. But the staff that we got was amazing. Everybody that's on our team speaks English. So, like, whenever we have a client request come through, they can even. They can pick up the phone and call and, like, walk them through. And, like, they wouldn't even know that anybody's in Mexico.

Yeah, yeah.

And my staff is great. They follow directions really well. They're passionate about their work. We all get along really well. So I was like, you know what? What if we just take these amazing people and then we just reallocate these sources back to these two American companies and then give them the support from the dude program. And so that's really where it came from. Personally, like, I love coming down to Mexico. It's beautiful. Like, right now I'm. I'm in the penthouse, like, at this amazing place, looking at the waves crashing. Do you guys know what K38 is? It's a surf spot.

No. Is that near Rosarito? Are you that far?

Yeah, it's south of Rosarito.

Okay, got it.

So it's a pretty famous surf spot that's down here.

Okay.

And so, like, I was actually here all weekend just hanging out, and, like, me and my dog were just, like, sitting outside on the balcony watching the surfers. Like, I go down. I read the newsletter, actually. Down at the Jacuzzi.

Yes. Nice.

And so, like, I just love. I love coming down here. And so, you know, kind of having the business in Mexico and being able to spend a lot of time here also fulfills, like, a personal dream of mine too. So it's very, very rewarding.

So you've literally used this thing as a tool to create yourself. I mean, a whole new lifestyle down in Mexico. It's like a home away from home.

Well, Dude, I think that's what everybody's business is supposed to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a tool. Your business is supposed to serve your needs. If it's not, then you gotta make a change.

Oh, yeah.

And so, you know, my having the right team and the right systems, and then now that, you know, we've come up with this new program and we've got our great client avatar and our ads are working and everything like that. So it's just, you know.

Yeah, for sure. I actually have more questions about the dude program. And I know this might start to sound like a sales pitch. We're already a commercial, but it's Not a commercial. I legitimately am very curious about this, this, this business model. So if, if I came to you and I said, look, I want to build a funnel, I want an opt in page followed by an upsell page, followed by a thank you page, followed by page, you know, a replay of a video that I've, I've put out. And let's say it's like a four page funnel or something. You, I could send you that and you guys would, would just build all that.

Well, you know, if it was you, obviously we would say no, but if it was Joe, we would say yes.

Oh, everybody likes me.

No, I'm just kidding. So you would just have to provide, you would obviously have to provide us the copy. You'd have to provide us the videos, like all that stuff. Like we can't do the content creation for you, but setting it up, like the nitty gritty of connecting all the pages and setting it up and that sort of thing. Yeah, of course, that's exactly what we do actually.

And so if I was to say, okay, cool, here's a website that I really, really like and let's say it's one of Russell Brunson's websites or something, I would just send you that and say, look, we want it to look similar to this. Obviously don't copy it, but we want it to look similar to this. Here's the content that we want on the page. Make it look similar to this.

That is what we love to do. That is absolutely what we crush it at.

You can sign us up as clients.

All right, let's just give you a credit card number over the air.

All right, so it's five five, five.

Pizza's on Joe and Matt for everybody. Your subscriber base is going to jump through the roof once you give your credit card information.

No, that's awesome. I mean like we're most likely going to be clients, even though this wasn't meant to be a sales pitch. But you know, we love the business model and we think, you know, we definitely see the value in it.

How about campaign building in things like Drip?

Okay, so here's the thing is like, and I tell all of our clients, it's like we don't know everything, but our team can learn.

Nevermind, we're out.

So yeah, I know you don't want people to learn. So like we can, like if you have. We've never worked with Drip. I personally. Well maybe my team has. I have personally worked with Drip. But if you say, hey guys, here's the Program I need you to do this, this, this. Here's some instructions. Like we can figure it out. Like that's the beauty of having unlimited support.

Do you work with Funnel Ninja Pro 3.0?

Oh yeah, totally.

Okay, cool. Okay, cool. Then deals back on.

That's a product I totally work a lot with. Activecampaign. Done some stuff with infusionsoft mailchimp. We know inside and out. Aweber we know inside and out.

Drip would be an easy one for you guys to add in then.

Oh yeah, they're really not that hard.

They're all pretty much the same sort of thing.

Well, Matt's really good at creating these process maps and outline step by step. So here's the thing.

It's like, dude, if we are not getting it or like you're not able to communicate because some stuff you do need to just, you know, it makes it so much easier. We can just get on the phone and talk. Like just pick up the phone and call the team and say, hey, I gotta talk to you for a second about this. And then we just walk through it. You can do a screen share use.

Oh my God, why can't I think of the one that I use every. Zoom you can use. Zoom you can use. Join me and do a screen share and just walk through these people become your team for $497 a month. Unlimited for two people.

What about webinars?

Yeah, we can set up. Well, what do you mean? Like setting up the webinar itself? Setting up the webinar funnel.

So I mean, I'm assuming you build the webinar funnel pages, but let's say we needed somebody. We had the copy, but we need.

Somebody to make slides.

Is that something that's in the.

That's not something that we would do actually.

You got to have a stopping point somewhere.

Hey, you know, I don't know unless I ask. Okay.

Damn right.

Now these are all really, really good questions. They're going to go on my FAQs page.

Yeah, you should just take this podcast and post it up there. There you go.

I will do it.

You have our permission.

It's interesting. I mean, I think the big moral of the story here, at least that I'm getting and that people who's listening, I mean, even if you're not quite ready or if you don't have a product or something to launch, I mean, have this in your mind that the concept is to not have to do all the shit yourself. Like you have not. You don't have the time in the Day, even if you think you do, you don't. You probably don't have the skill sets, nor should you be learning all of these skill sets. I think that's a bigger thing, is like we always want to learn everything. It's like, you know what? If you know everything, you're going to be too damn smart to hire anybody else and you're just going to kind of go in circles, perpetuate that for.

Sure in your own way too. Yeah, I've seen that a lot happen.

So think out of the box. Leverage. That's like one of our favorite words is leverage. So you could build more assets. Like those are the two favorite words of ours. So yeah, man, I think this is a perfect opportunity for people.

Yeah. I appreciate your kind words, sir.

Now go buy his shirt.

Yeah.

What else do you have, man? This is nice. Well, how do you. Okay, how do you outsource or how do you build this team? So you found it because it's like an interesting. Different type of outsourcing than typically someone going to like, the Philippines or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So when we first started website in five days, I had my team completely based in the Philippines. And that worked well until we got, you know, like 50 something clients. And then I was getting all these requests during the day and then I was having to stay up till like one o' clock in the morning. Freaking season.

You were like the service provide, customer service guy or at least.

Well, when we started, I mean, yeah, chief everything officer, but my focus has always been sales and marketing.

But I was having to stay up because a lot of these requests I needed to speak to my team about. And so I was up, I was standing up to like one o' clock in the morning, like almost every single day, communicating with the Philippines for the first year.

I believe it.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then, you know, I was just like, dude, this is, this is terrible. And like, but at the same time, like developers and designers in the US while they are worth it, they are also very expensive.

Right.

And so, I mean, especially when you factor in benefits and.

Payroll taxes and all that stuff, like that stuff adds up.

Right?

So we were. I was looking for another option and I always knew that Mexico was a possibility. Then I came down here, we hired our first designer, we hired our first developer, and then I started. We got a project manager and started getting better and figuring out where these people are. And that was one of the biggest challenges because it's not like, you know, everybody goes to Craigslist or they don't have monster.com that you can go to down here. So we found these super secret websites that I'm never going to tell you guys about where we find all of our people. Now here's the thing is like, I have agency friends like you guys. And then like, you guys know Josh Grillo and like, I'm like, dude, like, you guys have to come into Mexico. I'll show you guys how to do it. Now it is a, it is a pain in the ass to set up a company down here. So I own a Mexican company down here because you have to pay the employees through there using their payroll system and their taxes and Social Security, medical benefits, all that stuff. So that part is a giant pain in the ass. But to me, I mean, I think it's still worth it. So I kept telling all my agency friends, like, dude, you guys got to come down. You got it. Nobody would come down here. So I was like, well, they love the idea, but actually doing it themselves and setting up the business down here and finding the people. I actually offered to help people interview, but nobody was coming down. So I was like, you know what, let's just take our team and let's start to help these people. And it's been really, really good for everybody.

So the guys that you're hiring, are you hiring people that know funnels or are you hiring people that don't quite understand it yet and then getting them and training them how to use all these tools?

Absolutely, we are training them. Nobody knows what that is down here. Nobody. If you ask them what a funnel was, they wouldn't know. But they have the technical skill sets. Like they're going to school to college to, to be a developer or a designer.

They know what it is. They just assume it's the thing you put used to put oil in your car.

Right, exactly. Or drink beer out of.

That's a better thing. I like that more.

Exactly. So, yeah, we train them. We have a whole training, like three months of intense training that we put them through. And then like, you know, they're working on client projects side by side with another person. So that sort of thing.

So, so how do you, how do you do that then? Like, so what's, what's like an easy. So if someone wanted to actually do something like this for themselves, maybe it is hiring someone here in the States or even out in the Philippines. Like what, what are some of the first steps that you would recommend them to take without having to feel like they're overwhelmed or doing it wrong for Outsourcing. Yeah. Just. Even if it's just growing a small team for themselves. So take your head out of dude for a second.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I can just tell you guys about our story, that when we started in the Philippines, I actually had a partner, former partner, who had a team in the Philippines. I also went on, like, onlinejobs.ph and, you know, there's upwork and all those websites. The challenge that we fit, we had great people. We actually still have one of the Philippines. Filipinos. The challenge is that the time. And then just like anybody, like, you're gonna get a lot of misses before you hit a winner. And so you're just gonna have to go through. I don't think that there's any way around that. Now, we do use a tool called Test Dome. I don't know if you guys have heard of that. T Dome.

Okay.

Yeah. It's an awesome tool. We give that. Any prospect that we see who sends a resume over, we absolutely. 100%. We make them take the test on Test Dome, and it'll test their hd, it'll test their HTML and I think some php. Most of our stuff is HTML, so. Or. And css. We do a lot of css.

Right.

So we'll have them take that test. And, you know, they could probably find the answers online, but, like, if they're able to find the answers online, then who cares? That means in the office.

Exactly. It means they're resourceful.

Yep. So they have a time frame to take it. I think it's like they have to finish it within, like, an hour. And there's different variations of the tests. Right. So we send them the test if they score, and we actually have a. Well, if it was like a college course or something like that, everybody would be. You know, the threshold for success is low, but they have to just do at least, like, 60% of the test complete. If they get 60% or better, then we bring them in for an interview. And so anybody that we interview now, I don't care who it is. I don't care what their resume says, they have to take the test.

Yeah.

If they don't take the test and they don't get the minimum score because, you know, 60%, that's somebody that we can absolutely train and take them to 100% easily. But if they can't pass that score, then we have to let them go.

Got it. So. And so this is specifically for coder type of developers. Developers, yeah. Okay.

Now, I think that Test Dome has other tests as well, but I think that it should be a best practice for everybody to have some sort of standardized test where you can gauge the level of competence in the person that you're trying to hire.

Now did you build out some sort of, you know, training program for somebody that comes through the thing or is it, you know, I envision like somebody sitting at a computer and somebody standing over them going, okay, now press this button here and do this and you know, drag this here.

Or we do, we do actually have a training program that we put them through. We also have repurposed lessons that we found on Udemy. So we've purchased a bunch of these lessons on Udemy and then we have our people go through them especially to like learn basics of like WordPress and stuff like that.

Got it.

Because they don't use WordPress a lot in Mexico, it's super easy for them to pick up. Like they pick it up in a few hours.

It's so interesting in Mexico, like how vastly different it is. And like for us in San Diego, it's like a fricking 20 minute drive, 15 minute drive south.

No, it's literally 20 minutes from my house to my office.

That's insane. But like, it's vastly different in terms of like, I know for our newsletter, for instance, when we mail it down there, our customers have a hell of a time getting it in the mail.

So yeah, because the postal service is horrendous down there, they, you have to use dhl, just, you know, okay, raise your prices on them and charge them. Use dhl.

There we go.

But yeah, dude, it's that from a technology standpoint, like Mexico is like 10 to 15 years behind where we are in the states and businesses still don't see the value Internet marketing. Really?

Well, that's what I was gonna ask is about marketing specifically because I know like advertising costs are way lower because no one's really doing it down there.

Oh, dude, we get 2 cent clicks when we were run our ads in Mexico. Two cents.

But do you get any customers out of those two cent clicks?

No.

Well, no, we did for. I can't remember what we ran. We ran campaigns for clients that worked really well. The campaigns that we were running for ourselves to try and get clients to pay us for running online stuff that did not work really well.

You should think of an ad and I'm pretty sure you could come up with something like this that is just outrageous. Where it's a video of you, I don't know, you're targeting whoever in Mexico. It's dirt Cheap. So why not? So they see your face everywhere. You become this local celebrity. Maybe it's in Rosarito or something. It's like, who is this dude guy? He's everywhere. I have an idea.

Why don't we put you in a mask and we'll parade you and you can be like. You know how, like, Dos Equis has the most interesting man in the world? Dude, you can be the white boy Mexico version of that.

Sign me up, man. I have no problem doing that. We just have to actually go down to your villa, your beach in the most.

You're the most interesting gringo alive, silver fox.

I think we'd probably still get sued for being the most interesting gringo. Probably.

It's possible.

All right, that's a thought. We'll run with that. I like this. Very cool. Oh, man. Sorry, my head just went over there. I'm not even thinking about dude or any of this crap anymore.

No, no.

You're thinking about me in the mask with no shirt on, aren't you?

Kind of.

That's what you're thinking.

I mean, we're not video chatting anymore, but.

Yeah, the people. The people listening don't know this video chat.

Like, I was all excited. Like, I worked out extra hard this morning.

Yeah, the people don't know this that are listening, but when we actually started this call, you jumped on. On video and it just looked like you were naked. I mean, you might be wearing pants, but we couldn't tell.

We don't want to know.

I'm going to leave that to your imaginations, folks.

Maybe I am so. Okay, Mr. Beast Dude, Beast Man. What is one thing that you think you are absolutely world class at that you have, like.

What is your superpower?

Yes, personally. Yes.

I am very good at sales. And particularly I'm very good at doing a needs analysis and a presentation with a client. That's something that I don't think anybody does better than me.

So are these people. That would be kind of cold off the street, or are you saying like.

No, no, no. We go through the marketing process. We bring in a qualified client.

Right.

And then.

Have you guys. When you guys are running the shutter company. I don't know. Did you ever.

Go through any, like, formal sales training or anything like that?

Me? No.

Well, you didn't do the sailing.

I didn't do. I didn't do sales. I was. I was the shop manager.

Okay, you had a sales.

Couple sales reps, though.

My very first job out of college was working for this company called Pitney Bows, selling Postage machines. Like, yeah, I think I told you guys the story.

We used to use pitney bows in our shutter company.

It was so damn expensive. And I was like, what the hell?

Why are people buying $4 billion a year company?

So they had an amazing sales training program. And I went through that program. They take you. I think they did like a month of training, and then you go back to Atlanta for a week. Very like, immersive environment, learning about sales. And so that was really where I got a really good sales training.

Okay.

And I was a manager and that sort of thing. And so, you know, there's four steps to the sale. There's the, the introduction, there's the needs analysis, there's the presentation, and there's the close. That's like the old school, like, four steps of the sale. And so I don't ever think that I was the greatest closer, but I did really, really good at doing the needs analysis, which is essentially just figuring out what the clients want.

Well, you're setting them up.

Yeah, exactly. They're giving you every, you know, they're lobbing up freaking mush balls for you to head out of the park. So you just have to know how to ask the right questions, and you have to know how to really pull information out of people.

So. So what, so right there, what are some questions or how would you structure a question to really get like the best hook or whatever you're going for in that?

I like to kind of develop rapport with people. So, like, in our business, you know, I always ask them, you know, just tell me a little bit about your business. Like, how'd you get into this? Because people love to talk about their business story. They love it. And so that automatically puts them in a nice state of mind where they feel comfortable and they're happy and they're remembering about all these happy thoughts and that. And then you can kind of go into a little bit more deep dive questions, you know, so, like.

How many clients are you working with right now? How many do you want to have? Like, you know, you should have a script or a list of questions that you ask, right? Just to kind of help stay on, on track with the conversation, with the sales conversation.

And then you're taking notes the entire time because essentially when you get to the presentation, you're just gonna regurgitate all the pains that they have and how you fix.

Mmm, there we go. Okay.

You don't have to use flowery language or anything. You say, oh, you know, you know, we were talking about this and how you know, like, your developers overseas, they're taking forever to get back to you. Well, we actually have a developer here. You got unlimited support. You can even pick up the phone and call. And the best of all, they work American hours, so, like, you don't have to stay up till two o' clock in the morning anymore. You can spend more time with your kids. Like, have a normal dinner at five o' clock in the afternoon. Like, let us take all that workload off.

You got it. Yeah, that's.

That's the way that you would go through a presentation. And then this is like one of the best questions that I've ever heard. After you go through your presentation and presented pricing and that sort of thing, you ask, like, is there anything else that you were looking for that we didn't yet cover?

Is there anything else that you were looking for that we didn't? And if they say no, then you follow up with, okay, here's what we got to do. Like, I'm gonna send you the enrollment form. Just fill it out, send it back, we can get started.

And then done. They're like, yeah. If they say, actually, do you do this, then you've uncovered another objection.

Yes.

Yeah, subliminally. Because, like, if you say, like, to somebody, well, what do you think? Well, let me talk it over with my wife. You know, that's just kind of like the natural reaction is like, if you hit them, like, blunt, like, do you like it? They're gonna be like, yeah, yeah, kinda, maybe. But if you say, is there anything else that you were looking for that we didn't cover? You're gonna be like, yeah, yeah, you did cover everything. Actually, I don't look. Oh, wait, you know what? There was this one other thing. Like, what's your response time? So. Oh, you know, our typical response time is 48 hours. Really depends on how much stuff you give us lately. You know, a lot of the stuff that's been coming through, we've been turning around in 24 hours. Actually, if you look at one of our testimonials on our website, you can see that Jamie DeBose said, you know, she loves the response time. Like, she sends it over and sometimes it's like within the hour. And that's how you overcome that objection. And then you go, okay, so that's. Where do you think we should go from here?

That sounds just like this. This question I heard, I think it was like mind games or brain games, like back in the day. But it was like, if you're in a. If you're getting a job in a job interview. The very last question is like, okay, well, is there anything, any reason why you wouldn't hire me? And you pose it on them, you give them that, you know, you're just trying to. It's the same exact thing you're saying there. And if you remember, I've told a buddy of mine he was actually getting a job and he got the job because they're like, yeah, there's no other reason why I wouldn't. I don't know.

See, exactly. That's actually, you know, I've never been on an interview that wasn't a sales interview right back when I had my last job. And so you have to close them. You know, that's a great way to close them.

You're turning the tables on them. You're taking the power.

Not to mention you're showing that you've got some selling skills just by asking that question.

Right.

You're kind of putting them back on the spot, putting the ball in their court. Yep.

Sounds cool, man.

Very cool. So we do have a last, a couple little wrap up questions that we like to ask everybody. And if you listen to the podcast, which we know you've listened to, every single podcast we've ever put out, reads everything.

I fall asleep to it, I wake up to it, shower to it, velvety voice. Picture me in the shower with just suds everywhere, listening to the podcast.

Are you wearing the mask in the shower?

No, because then how can I wash my hair? God, Matt, don't be crazy.

I thought, for some reason I just pictured you with the mask on.

You were an actual dude beast. Come on.

It's like Batman. I mean, you know, there's Bruce Wayne and then there's Batman. There's Chris Martinez and then there's the Dude Beast.

So what does the dude Beast read from time to time?

Yeah.

What do you recommend that I read? Was your guys's newsletter.

Good answer, but no.

Yeah.

What's like a book?

Let's see. I just finished a book. I can't remember what it was.

No, no, no, I don't want. I don't want the last one. I want something that's like the most memorable, the go to book that you're like, I can't. I don't know. It brought me here to this point. I reread it all the time.

There's like a handful of books that I have that I try to reread once a year because I know they've had that kind of impact on me. And that when people ask for book recommendations, it's kind of one of my go to book recommendations. I have, I have a handful of books like that. So I'm curious if you have any books like that and if so what are they?

I can't remember. Oh, you know what the one that I. So here's the thing with me is like I don't necessarily have a book that I go to like or that I try and reread every year, but I have books that I will listen to depending on. Depending on my mood or my state or what I feel like I need.

I like that here, you know, so.

Like I have a library like if I need motivation or whatever. And I actually, I do this a lot with YouTube. I have a. I bookmarked a lot of like motivational like videos and presentations. Zig Ziglar. Oh God. What is the name of this? The Art of Closing the Deal or something like that. I've actually, I had that one on CD but I've listened to that one probably like 30 times. Okay, so that's a go to that. I have.

Other ones I have. See I'm not at my library right now, so resource.

That's cool. I actually have another question, a follow up that actually kind of ties back into. To do a little bit when it comes to landing page platforms. You know, you've got Click Funnels, you've got Lead Pages, you've got Instapage, Thrive Builder, Optimized press, all these programs.

Yep.

Which have you found to be your sort of preferred platform and why?

That's a really, really good question. What I actually prefer to do is set it up in Click Funnels, run some traffic and then if we figure out that that's a winner, then we'll just build it on WordPress and I tell of our clients to do that too.

And why, why do you tell them to move it from Click funnels over to WordPress?

We just like WordPress more. It's more flexible. You know there are some limitations in my opinion with clickfunnels especially. I don't know if they fixed this because I haven't actually gone in there. But like opt in form integration, there used to be some hiccups with using certain types of CRMs and autoresponders.

Now when you do build it in WordPress, are you using something like Thrive Theme Builder or OptimizePress or anything like.

That or are you just going, we've been using Divi. We've been using a lot of Divi from Elegant Themes. I think is what it's called. But I mean, our guys can build from scratch too if they want.

Got it. Because I know there's a lot of. That's a question that we get asked often is like, do you prefer Click Funnels or LeadPages or ThriveThemes or OptimizePress? I mean, there's so many page builders now that I think people get overwhelmed and end up not going in any direction because there's so many options.

Oh yeah.

So from somebody who works in all of them all of the time, it's interesting to hear which your preference would.

Be for speed of implementation. Because I'm all about speed of implementation. And if you're listening to this, like, speed of implementation is so unbelievably important. Click Funnels to me is the best. I know that in your newsletter you guys said you like leadpages better.

To me, use them both.

We're like 50, 50 depending on what we're doing.

So I'll give you like our quick answer on that as well. We use Click Funnels and leadpages. The reason we still use leadpages is because Click Funnels does have limits. You know, we're on their 99amonth plan, we're not on their $300 a month plan. And they have limits to how many pages and funnels we can build. And we've gotten close to maxing those out and had to go back and sort of delete funnels and delete pages to sort of free up some room in our Click Funnels accounts. So that's why we like LeadPages. They have unlimited pages. They now have their own page builder that's a drag and drop builder, kind of like clickfunnels. It's not quite as good as clickfunnels yet, but we can get pretty dang close in leadpages with what we've built in Click Funnels. So we've slowly been kind of shifting most of our page building from Click funnels over to LeadPages for that reason.

But when you leave them in LeadPages or click Funnels, do you ever take them out?

We just leave them in. We're not too interested in building stuff on WordPress anymore just for simplicity's sake. We like the simplest possible path. So we like hosted platforms for our membership site. We use teachable for our page builder, Click Funnels and Lead Pages. So we like pre built stuff where somebody else is handling the behind the scenes maintenance, somebody else is handling the hosting, somebody else is handling all the server shit that goes on behind the scenes. And we don't have to deal with that by putting it on our own WordPress and figuring out which plugins are going to be compliant and all that crap. So that's sort of our philosophy on it is that sort of simplest path of least resistance.

Nice. Great answer.

Cool. So very last question. Where can people go learn more about you and Dude? And specifically, where can people go learn more about the Dude Beast himself?

Well, you can always go to our website www. That's on the worldwide interwebs. Www.dude dudepros.com d u d e p r o s dot com.

I'm on the social medias as well.

Facebook, Instagram, under Chris Martinez. Not the dude.

Yeah, actually I think if you type in Chris Martinez on Facebook, I think I still show up.

Number one, you should get a Dude Beast profile.

Actually we are doing that. We are in the process of launching that. Dude. I have so many fricking funny pictures. So I took. I was in Vegas two weeks ago. Speaking of freedom, I'd always wanted to go to Vegas and do like off the strip stuff. Oh yeah. Cause people that I know that live there, they tell me about all these things. So I did an amazing hike. I went and saw Red River Canyon. Like I went to the wetlands, which nobody even knows exists.

I don't even know what that is.

I went to the gun store and fired a fricking machine gun. And it was amazing.

I've wanted to do that.

And I went in there with the mask and they took a picture of me with the fricking machine gun. Like they have the fricking, the bullets around my neck and everything. They loved it. They absolutely loved it. It was nine o' clock in the morning right when they opened. That's why they let me do it.

Yeah.

So I got to do that. And then the other thing I did is I went to Zappos.

Yeah.

I went to the headquarters. I did a tour. Awesome. I highly encourage everybody to go and do that.

We've done that. It's great.

Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. So like, did you guys go to the new headquarters? The one that's like the new. It's where the, like the city hall or whatever used to be. I don't know, circular building.

This has probably been five years ago now, so.

Okay. I think that you guys might not have gone to the new building.

Okay. It was very memorable.

It's, it's. You know how like Apple's building their new like circular building thing? Yeah, it's. It's like the mini, mini, mini version of that. Because the whole thing is one big circle. Like, you stand in the middle and there's offices all around.

Yeah, we didn't see that.

Okay, that's cool. So you have to go back.

We will. Well, I guess that gives us a reason to go back to Vegas.

Hey, I'll go with you.

Yeah, that's fine.

So I went there and so I got all these photos of me in the mask. And so, you know, I want to upload these to the social medias.

No, send it to us.

Send it to us as well. We'll put a couple of them on the show notes page.

Oh, I'll send you guys a slow motion video, too, of me firing the machine gun. The instructor dude is like, just let it all out. I was like, yeah.

Very cool. Very cool. Well, thanks. Thanks so much for joining us. Make sure everybody who's listening goes and checks out dudepros.com not dudebros.com dudepros.com d U-E-P-R-O s.com and follow Chris Martinez on the Social Medias on MySpace and Friendster and Google.

He's really big on LiveJournal.

LiveJournal. Go find Chris Martinez and diary and look at all his funny pictures and you'll see exactly what we're talking about when we talk about the dude beast. Yeah, but start with dudeprose.com because that's where we're going after this episode.

And hey, check out EGP letter.com too, while you're at it. Yeah, yeah.

Thank you, guys. You rock.

I love the newsletter. Thanks for inspiring me to wear the mask and be a moron.

Dude, I love it. All right, buddy.

All right. Thank you.

Take care.

Talk to you soon. Bye.

Hey, thank you, thank you, thank you for listening to this podcast. Now, if you want to learn more and hear from us every single month, which a lot of people do, it's pretty fun. We actually write this thing called the Evergreen profits Letter, and that is a printed newsletter that we actually send to hundreds of people every single month to your doorstep. So you actually get it in the mail. You can read this sucker. You can highlight it, you can dog ear. You can scratch some stuff out. If you don't like that one, you say, no, Joe and Matt, that's not cool for me. But you can take a lot of different strategies, about 15 or so from every single single issue, and it's really cool. So basically, these are actionable strategies that you can use in your business right away. To test out and pretty much build on what you already have going on. So check it out. It's at www.egpletter.com. it's pretty amazing. And go check it out, See what it's all about.

Boom.