Welcome to the H. Vac financial freedom podcast. A show where we talk about business ownership and financial freedom by sharing stories and advice of experts who can help you get there now your host john victoria. Hello and welcome to the H. Vac Financial freedom podcast. I'm your host john victoria. And today we have a fun episode for you. We are talking why digital marketing sucks and this is a tough one because you know a lot of contractors you've worked with a digital marketing company in the past, you might have been burned and so you might relate to a number of things that are said here.
But also as you guys probably know, I also run a digital marketing company. So this should be a fun conversation to have. Um So before we jump into things, just a quick intro to our guest uh jake is the owner of Height Digital Eugene, a digital marketing agency that protects owners from themselves by ensuring they don't screw up their online presence. But seriously Digital Eugene has helped hundreds of businesses and companies clarify their message, choose their marketing methods, create their materials and control their momentum, specializing in S. C. O. Google services, social media marketing, web design and branding.
High Digital is one of the fastest growing companies are private companies in the U. S. 868 on the inc 5000 Congrats by the way and the book which is coming out in less than 30 days. It's called digital marketing sucks. It'll be available for pre sale december 12th on amazon jake. Welcome to the show john thanks for having me man. I am so excited to be here and digital marketing does suck. It's, I'm just calling out the elephant in the room man. Yes. And it's, it's, it sucks. Yeah, it's, it's like, you know, google is always changing, facebook is always changing and and also just taking the side of the business owner who's hiring, you just don't know what to how to inspect what to expect.
One of the big phrases they shared with us in the navy. So you know, I'm excited to break down some of those things that do suck and also some solutions for some people, but before we hop in, I, you know, I want everyone to get to know you a bit better. Um, you know where you are today is not where you started, you started as a uh, I started working at a skateboard shop at 15 man. I mean it, it goes, it goes back. No, I mean my heart beat for, not just for business owners, but, but for people in general, right is I want to help them find freedom inside and outside of whatever it is that is there like chosen employment.
That's really what I want is I really want people to be there. And so I have an incredibly diverse backgrounds, born and raised in Alaska, I worked at skateboard shops. I've worked at lawyers offices. I've worked at restaurants. I've, I've been maintenance in, in, you know, public schools. I I've done coffee shop, that was my favorite job, You know, working as a barista, all of that informed leading up to where I entered into the full time employment, which was as you know, I've talked about before, I'd spent 10 years in pastoral ministry working at the church and I wasn't a very good pastor.
I just like Jesus enough that they kept me around and so I have far too many tattoos and was playing in bar bands and now it was all good. But uh, you know, I worked with middle school and high school kids for years, then I got demoted to work with adults. So that was fun. But I played music in bands. I've done all kinds of stuff and, and uh, lots of work with nonprofit organizations and community and so that all informs the reason and the way that I do marketing.
It's all of those experiences, wow, I love that. And yeah, I would not have guessed. Yeah, like it's, you know, not have guessed very confusing resume. I'll put it that way. So it's a lot of fun. And so to do that for a bit and then you transitioned at a, at a time into digital marketing. So what I guess why why did you make that leap specifically into digital marketing? Like of all things. Right, is a very, you know, a very diverse background, but why specifically digital marketing?
Yeah, I found, I said I found a need, right? I found a need and my background, my my undergrad is an english communications. Um you know, I've I've done a lot of writing. I used to I used to literally edit like masters and doctoral thesis for people, right? Like I've just been a communicator for a very long time. Um I'm also pretty technical and automation was a big part of what I did when I was working with organizations, was just streamlining their system. And the deeper I got into that with them, the deeper I got into this with businesses.
So whether they were businesses that we were working with with nonprofits, whether they were organizations and started finding out that the complexity of their online presence was getting worse. It was getting more complicated and I saw this need to be able to go and serve the business owners and in turn serve the consumer who was frankly was me. Right? So as I'm going on and trying to whatever book events from my family is, I'm going getting quotes from h fat companies for new A C. I started realizing this is just getting more complicated for them.
And so literally started my business from my dining room table on a laptop with when my my third kid was born and I have a picture of her on my shoulder and me like nine o'clock at night building my marketing agency and we did it on on this single phrase, we call it marketing for humans. And the idea was simple, it was the business owner as a human being working with us, the marketing agency who are human beings looking for human beings to do business with. And so we were going to business owners and we were hearing just these nightmare stories of of their previous experience with marketing agencies and I mean I couldn't argue with it because it was exactly what I was seeing across the marketing world on social media, on different networking platforms.
I was seeing these just like terrible statements from marketing agency owners that would say things like, do you run advertisements from the clients at account or from your ad account? Because if I run it from there out account, I don't have leverage anymore for if the company leaves me. And I was going, oh I couldn't, I couldn't believe that. I was even being said, I'm going, you're having a conversation about leverage here. What if you had a conversation about humanity? Like what if you had a conversation about like what's best for that business owner?
And so, you know, long story short, uh was working in that and then I came across a network called master hackers where I found a number of marketing agencies that shared the same values I did, which was honesty, transparency and caring for people, thus I met john victoria. So no, it's I resonate so much with what you said. I mean I just had a story come up today. Um So one of our clients, you know they work with another agency as well in concurrence with us and the agency was telling them hey you don't need all these tracking numbers, you just need one number to send everything to like your direct visits, your webs, you know your your ads visits your S. C. O. Visits.
And they were vehemently saying like hey you should really do this. And I'm thinking what I am so confused because for me like very similar to my core values it's around transparency and accountability right? And so tracking numbers are so key to properly know where things are coming from and you know if this company they have one number, there's no tracking on it, how can we possibly show like you know things are happening the way that need to be happening, complete, you know someone's blinded. And so so yeah it's it's it's happening up until this day, you know end of 103 and recording this.
Um I'm always just flabbergasted and these are big companies that are not smoking flabbergasted and this is why I'm so excited about to talk to everyone about today's because it's it's not just something that you're frustrated with as you know, h vac business owner or if you're in the trades like it's something that we as digital marketers are also frustrated about what what should concern what should concern the business owner is, I had shirts made, I chose not to wear it today, but I have shirts made that say digital marketing sucks on them with my, with my logo on the shoulder and when I released the first image of me wearing that shirt, my D. M. S blew up with other marketers that wanted the shirt that should concern you.
Business owner, the people that do this full time for a living that that funds their livelihood and funds the livelihood of all of their team members and employees agree that digital marketing is pretty miserable. So the idea that that you know the business owner can take that on. Um I mean I'll just tell you right now, I know a lot about digital marketing. I would never take the job as a director of marketing for a business that didn't have a substantial team behind it. I would not be a one man show for an organization because it has gotten so complex and so messy.
I mean for example, meta just laid off 11,000 employees last week, we spent over a million dollars a month in advertisements with them. We can't get a hold of anybody there, wow. And we have, we have direct lines, direct lines into meta into Facebook and they just laid off 11,227 employees. I mean it's something to say that their commute like that, their customer service has gotten worse. Like you didn't think that was possible. You didn't find out that it was right. And so if something happens to your facebook page, if someone happens to your instagram account, what do you do as a business owner?
That's, that's scary thing, right? Those are lead generating assets for you. And so, and so I'd say for most companies, they are not spending anywhere close to a million dollars a month. And so if the million dollar a month, company is not getting any response, we can only imagine what's happening for the smaller business accounts that are spending $212 a month, maybe 299 299, which is, which is a large chunk of small business owners out there. You know, we don't have the budget to do. So I think probably most of their monthly marketing budget. Right?
Yes. So what happens when that gets gets compromised? Absolutely. Exactly. So, and so I guess with that, um it sounds like these experiences, right? We as digital marketers as well as small business letters. This is what led you to want to, to write this book. Um Is there other things, other experiences that that was the inspiration for the book? Or I mean, I, I often tell my team like operate on like the negative side of optimism. I just like, I just is humanly impossible for me to sugarcoat things.
And so digital marketing sucks really comes out of just the way that I talk about business, right? But it also came out of a number of requests from clients is I had a number of clients come to me and say, hey, you're the fourth marketing agency that I've worked with. And finally we're getting answers. Okay, notice what I said, there were getting answers. This wasn't even about getting results yet. This was just about getting answers that were right. Like to your point, like other marketing agencies saying like one phone number, you shouldn't have tracking numbers.
They were just literally like stumped on what the foundation should be and how do they educate themselves? So that when they engage in the conversation about marketing, they're able to hold their own because I found business owners having to get defensive for themselves and for their team against the agency which showed me that there wasn't a partnership that wasn't someone working on their behalf, that was legitimately like a conflict of interest. And so the number of clients come to me and say, hey jake, you're the first person, you're the first team that we've worked with that we feel like we can trust, would you be willing to like document this, Can you write this down?
What do we as business owners need to know before we even dive into this space? And so I put this off for a little while because I, I really had a bit of an imposter syndrome if I'm totally honest of going like, man, I know people have been in the, in the, in the marketing world longer than I have. I know people that have, you know, done this much in revenue and helped other, but it just kept coming back like a boomerang and hitting me in the face and finally I said, okay, let's do this.
And so that that's a lot of where it came down to. I also pride myself on being able to take really complex things and and just simplify them. That's something I've worked very, very hard at um over the last 228 years in in in businesses and organizations and things like that, of just being able to take a room of people that are all throwing out ideas and brainstorming, just taking it and simplifying it and moving it forward. So this felt like a topic that I had passion experience and then the push to finally tackle what I came down to that.
And and so let's let's dig in. So let's let's talk about some of these things that that make digital marketing suck. Um Yeah, where do I start? I mean, we we go all day, we will reveal everything right. You know, I want to save some stuff. I have no problem with giving away as much information as needed because at the end of the day, this is about being helpful, right? Um The least sexy topic in all of digital marketing and I'm working on my graphic designer being like how do we make this topic more sexy is login management, john it's login management if you want to lay the foundation for your digital marketing and make sure.
And this came out of a conversation with a prospect that blew my mind. They called me because most prospects call and say, hey we want to grow our business, hey, we want to make sure that our website, that our social media, that everything that it's moving forward at a prospect call me and they said We would like to grow it would be great. But more than anything, we don't want our online presence to be a liability. We don't want it to be losing us business. And I went holy smokes like that's not what I was expecting from that conversation.
So as we onboard new client and to be clear we have at height, I have to get the number accurately. But we have something like 211 locations. So I'm here in Oregon and one of the Oregon locations but we have something like over 5003 clients. Okay. It's, it's a, it's a really diverse client base. We specialize really in booking based companies and weird stuff like what niche or you take it at at high digital Eugene it's like booking based companies and weird stuff. So give an example. There was one point where we were doing marketing for a midwife and we were doing marketing for really high end cemetery in florida.
So we just told everybody like we cover businesses from birth to death, we just go the full spectrum. We also work with a lot of like really unique like software projects or with escape room companies. We also have more typical like property management. Um, you know, some, some home service and things like that. So we've seen the full gamut, the one thing that holds up everything is account access. It's the one thing that holds up everything when we're trying to get moving forward is user name and password management.
Okay, how serious is this? And why would I dedicate an entire chapter in the book to login management. And why the hell would anybody read something as boring as that? It's for this reason access equals ownership. Access equals ownership. If somebody has access to your account at an administrative level or at the ability to make changes whether that's to ownership or to management or whatever it is, they pretty much have ownership. And you can argue this all day. You can say no, no, no, no, no. I'm the one that opened the account legally.
The business in mind. Always kind of things. As soon as you lose access to a social media account, to a google ads, account to your google my business profile to your domain. Good luck proving ownership. And I say this because we've watched $2500 million a year. Companies almost lose their business because they didn't have access to their website. Domain and some of you might be hearing that being like I still don't get it jake understand this If I have access to your domain, I now have access to your email, which means I can send emails as you requesting financial information, requesting all kinds of different access.
And I've seen some crazy stuff here and you might be like, well I have access to that right? I've got the logins for it. Real life scenario. We were on boarding a new client. We went to get access to their domain, couldn't get it. They had an email listed but it didn't have the full name. It just had like first letter bunch of astronauts last letter. And then we knew what the domain was. We said, who's who's emails that? And they said, well, it's nobody in our office.
I'm like, well somebody and whoever it is that's where the password reset is going to come to find out. It was one of their employees that they had let go four years ago that was still listed as the account recovery and what had happened to her email address had been dissolved, which means there was no inbox for that email address. And we went to. And and we completely petitioned the domain registrar. The whole nine yards could not get access to it. This has, this is literally putting at risk $220 million dollar a year company.
Why one singular account access told you not a sexy topic. Right? But it is the thing and like a bunch of the business networks I'm in, they joke like jake's the login guy. Like I just obsess over this kind of stuff because also go watch, go try to watch netflix at your house if you don't have the logins for it. What do you end up spending the entire evening doing rather than watching a movie reset your password? So what this comes down to at the end of the day is freedom for you and freeing up your time right?
The benefits of having all of your access, your account access ready to go is it actually gives you freedom to do the things you want to do. That's why hard on this so bad. Right? You could free up an extra hour of your day if you just had all of your passwords managed in a correct way. So there's my biggest built box john no and I think there's two threads on and pull on. So you, you mentioned, you know, I think one potential solution is redundancy. So it's like we've had this happen where it's like there's like one employee who's gone and like there needs to be some form of redundancy.
Like it can't be a a single point of failure but then second um you need to have your access is, but I think of logins like a door, you know wanted to be able to open up smoothly, but also it needs to protect, you know, from getting from breaking in. I've had so many business owners. I asked, hey sheriff, please send me with your password so we can get to the accounts. It is like password or it's like one 227. I'm like guys know so many out there.
There's so many tools out there. There's one past, there's last past. I'm working with a new software. Um that's going to be released here uh beginning of the year that came out of this is crazy. It came out of the funeral home industry, you're like why the hell did that happen? Right? Because guess what happens when someone passes away? You need records, documents, account access and then come to find out no one had it. So they develop or to help with that. That's how far this goes.
Like I can't stress this enough if someone passes away and you don't have account access, they're at risk of losing funds. Like this is such a just crazy topic to me that, of all the fun things we can talk about in marketing, like graphic design and media and stuff like that. I think this is the biggest issue. It's crazy, wow. It's nuts because it's more fun stuff, but it's like it's the starting point. So it's the front door for everyone. Like redundancy, you know, make sure have some redundancy, make sure you use some like for us we use last pass, there's another one pass and it's great.
So what's next after that? Right? So because you get into so if if you have all your access digital marketing is going to suck less. It's still gonna suck. But it's gonna suck less. So now what now what do we do? And I would say that the the biggest question I get asked all the time from business owners is what's the biggest bang for my buck in marketing because we have marketing packages that go into the multiple thousands and people are scared to touch that right? Why?
Well, cost liability and certainty, right, Am I going to get the money back here? Here's what I think. Way too many businesses ignore and that is leveraging your existing database, your existing clientele. What do I mean by that? Okay. We work a lot of booking based companies, tour companies, beachfront resorts, escape rooms. Like we've got some really ax throwing coming, we got some really weird unique stuff right? Shout out to Eugene Oregon. Okay. Um Your database, I can almost guarantee you 20% of the people in your database are ready to pay you today.
But what happens is people just end up keeping it there and just storing it and it's just their book of business that someday I see this all the time with with H Vac with uh home services, they always want to sell their book of business when they sell the company and they look at that as being a big profitable thing. The problem is they don't view it that way while they're running the business, they look at it as their client base going like man I can sell you all my equipment, I can sell you all my assets and my book of business that's gonna be worth this many millions of dollars.
But on a day to day basis there are people in there that are either willing to pay you money or know people that are going to pay you money. So when you leverage your database and if you are a business owner today and you are not texting as a business and there are tons of platforms out there. Um I was talking to someone who's one of the largest insurance marketing agencies in in literally Canada in the U. S. They said they ran a survey, 98% of the people that they surveyed said texting was a preferred method of communication, 90% jeez so we get so stuck on email which I'm a huge fan of.
We get so stuck on phone calls if you're not texting and leveraging that and you're just sending out a single text message and then creating the follow up to that to make sure that you've got an office staff or whoever it is, a sales team that's ready to take advantage of that response. You're you're literally watching money just fall through the cracks. So you want to make digital marketing suck less leverage what you already have. You don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars developing this whole new, you know, channel use what you already have. Yeah.
And it's it's like the best business comes from people who already know I can trust you. And so you have this database and also just thinking in terms of timing, so it's currently november 15th 2022. Um you know, H VAC units were slow shoulder season, it's a little bit slower this time of year. And you know, if you're gonna try to start something like S Ceo, like it's gonna take 3 to 203 months at least if not longer. And so if you're looking to pick up business during this time, to jake's point, you know, you have everything you need, right?
You already, as long as you're getting the customer information, you got potentially a number, potentially address and phone number or email, send something out to them. Um Whether that's calling them up and offer or tune up something. Something just in front of mine awareness right now, you might be hearing these two things like anyone's listening right now, it's like this book sounds miserable, you might be talking about management and you're talking about email marketing. Like for the love of God that I want to be clear the books.
Actually pretty funny. So there's that also here's what I guarantee to everyone that reads the book is, you're gonna be getting a whole bunch of checklists and guides that you can knock this stuff out immediately. So if you're an owner that's listening to this going like, Good Lord, this guy just sounds like nerdy as can be and this is gonna be a nightmare. My hope for you is that you're able to look at this and there are just like nine practical things that you could do very quickly or you can handle an administrator handle an office staff hand to a marketing director and say, can you make sure that all of these things are taken care of?
Right? So we're actively working on a checklist and frankly it's growing and it's growing categorically saying, hey, here's the things you need, here's the things you need. What's really fun is we're convinced it's gonna work for any business. So we actually, when we initially started this checklist, we started it with a tap house with a brewery and we said, hey, we have a checklist, we're putting together, this has been months, months, months in, in the works, there's a tap house, we want to make sure that you guys have all this stuff taken care of and we think you're gonna make more money right away and they said, great.
And so frankly they started giving us free beer and we were trading them for that and it seems like a pretty good deal. So what a deal, right? We literally, they give us drinks, like it works out this month. Um but now I want to make sure everyone knows that and we've I've got to sign up for you. If you're interested in learning more about the book, I'm gonna send you a bunch of resources, I wanna make sure again, this book is not about me making a whole bunch of money and getting famous here.
This book is about making sure that you, as a business owner have what you need to be successful. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart, that's what I want this to be about. So I love that. Um and yeah, maybe we can hit one more from the list and maybe a fun one could be around uh either clarifying your message or knowing your audience. So I feel like that is is that's a key foundation. So what do you feel like what will be more fun to talk about between those two?
Oh man, I love both of them. Um let's talk about knowing your audience. I think that this has become an overused term or that phrase knowing your audience, Right? So, you know, people talk about client avatar and I was like, what does that even mean? Right, here's how you simplify this, especially if you're in the home services, are you more likely to interrupt somebody's day and get them to do business with you? Or are you more likely to be someone that someone is gonna go looking for?
That's really the difference in marketing? That's all it is. Are you someone that's gonna be searched for or scroll upon? And so I've seen people that are like in the chiropractic, you know industry they're like investing heavily in their like social media content. They're hiring somebody and stuff like that. You know who looks for Kyra practice people that are in physical pain. And so as simple as it is just pick which one you're gonna put the most focused on. Now. There's different ways of hitting both of those, right?
But focus people are not following cemeteries and social media for fun. I can tell you that because we work with the cemetery right? Unless you are a hilarious H. Vac owner chances are people are following you either unless they're your friends or they are your relatives. Okay. That's pretty much what it is. So if you're not doing S. C. O. As an H. Phat company you're missing out on a huge opportunity. That is as much what I mean about. And I know a really good H. VAC S. C. O. Team by the way.
Um I might be talking to them right now and uh it's sometimes it's as simple as that. So we talk all the time about creating these avatars of like you know, are they are they men or they women? Are they this age are they that they're gonna stuff? Sometimes your client, your audience comes down to what they're like tendency is to go and find you. And I think we missed out on that opportunity is it's the action that's involved to get to you now. We also want to speak to for sure.
The type of person give you an example, okay, escape rooms john who do you think the target audiences for escape rooms just by what you know about them? Who's gonna go play them? I'm imagining, I don't know, teenagers. Absolutely right. Do we advertise to teenagers? I'm putting you on the spot. Here's what we found. Here's what we found, you know, who knocks it out of the park and escape room advertising moms of teenagers mm ages 35 to 55 nationwide. Are the number one targeting for immersive experience companies? Because you gotta think about this logically and realize number one teenagers don't have money.
Number two, they have a super short attention span, right? So if I go target them and I've watched this happen with people that like they send us their out account. We look into it and realize like it's just totally mis targeted um who are the people that are willing to actually spend the money. So as you as an H back cos you as a as a home service provider, you have to think about who it is. It's actually spending the money, Who's the decision maker in households?
Most of the time it's the mom when it comes to family events, when it comes to corporate events, most of the like uh administration in the office or most of like the event planner for a corporate is is a woman. Statistically, that's the case, right? So when I say know your audience, it's twofold. It's how are they gonna find you and then who's most likely to be the one that makes the decision? That's the biggest thing that I see. So you want to make your digital marketing suck less stop committing random acts of marketing.
They should be a findable offense. If you feel like you should be doing something that should be a red flag to you. You need to stop and do a full assessment. So this is where I see people do some all the time where they sponsor literally like something that's attached to shopping carts or they slap up a billboard on some edge of town, right? Because they feel better about making progress in their marketing. You want to make digital marketing suck less. You have to understand logically who is the decision maker that's gonna give your company money and then focus completely on them.
It's gonna save you a ton of money. Mm I love that. And and I love that. You're also, yeah, it's not just that avatar of that person. But it's it's like the life circumstances. So for example, in a track, you know, depending on the time of year that that can impact things pretty heavily like your heater goes out during the summer. Whoop de doo goes out in the winter. Okay. Well, you know, someone's life could be at risk there, especially if there's elderly in Children. So the context of someone's life could be a life event.
Maybe someone just moved to a new location. Maybe it's an investor who's fixing something up. You know, just like thinking through the different life situations that would trigger someone to to search for you and they're not all gonna be the same. But it's it's like thinking through those things um that that can help to to carve out your marketing and eventually you'll you'll end up spending less because you are speaking to that life situation and that person versus uh you know, just shotgunning um your marketing and just trying to get in front of everybody.
Oh yeah, no, we put in, I'm live in Oregon, right? It's not super super hot where we are, we put in an A. C. Unit in our house. I mean like a full heat pump and everything else. Our life is so much better than it used to be. And it was one of the things where we only need it for like a short season every year. But why did we do it? Because we have little kids. Mm hmm. Right. And so I'm the perfect avatar for companies, right?
As it's like you just again, I love a life circumstances that should be. This is marketing for humans. This is marketing for humans at its core. What is the life circumstances your clients are going to? And how can you care for them not? How do you make more money? Making more money is just a lag measure. It's something that happens naturally as a result of you taking care of people. So what is your litmus test as a business owner to take care of people? That's gonna make your digital marketing suck a whole lot less if you start thinking about it in that terms.
And I love it. I love it. Um And so in terms of like the book, so we talked about three. I don't I don't think we have time to go over everything. But what are the So how many total are there that people can look forward to reading about? There's nine. And it's I've given this talk on podcasts seminars. I've tested this theory. Um And I've done just recently, last two weeks, I've done 15 interviews of business owners. I wanted to test this in every different industry. And I've been super super encouraged by the response from people that have said, this is some of those practical advice I've seen in a long time because in digital marketing it's really split into two different categories.
There's creative and there's technical and everything that you've been taught historically about marketing is about creativity. It's how do you have good graphics or good images and how do you speak in such a way that's creative and we miss the technical side, what's happening? And I'm seeing a lot of the um just industry information from marketing agencies is they talk to business owners about the technical side and it is super overwhelming. It's super overwhelming all the technical side. So if you are a business owner who says man, I don't get the technical side, find a good agency and have them take care of that stuff.
Just plain and simple. You want to save yourself a massive headache do that. Okay, so I wanna be able to take holistically both sides of that and have a really down to earth conversation street level communication, how do you as a business owner know what you should do lay that foundation. So there's nine things that I believe are central to that conversation of that and 27 days until book launch and how can people sign up for notifications so that they can buy it um for the pre sale, like how how can they find the book?
Absolutely, yeah, so I've got kind of a sign up page, it's launch dot jake Zoo felt dot com and here's what that is. So number one, you're going to get information about that coming up also. Um if you're willing to join my launch team, here's what that means. Um the day that the book is going live for pre sale on amazon december 12th happens to also be my birthday. So I'm I'm gonna become an amazon bestseller around my birthday, That's my birthday present. Um And what that's also going to become, I want to make sure people know like you're not signing up for me to like spam you, that's not at all what this is.
And I always want to clarify that um I want to be able to offer you resources moving forward. So if you sign up on that, all I'm asking you to do is the day that the book goes live. If you go buy a copy, we're gonna pre sell the book were pre selling the e book, I should clarify that were pre selling the book on amazon for 99 cents. Um If you're willing to buy a copy for 99 cents and help me hit that best seller, I would be forever grateful for you.
Um Also I'll be reaching out later with resources and making sure that people have what they need to move forward. That's gonna be a separate list at another time. So it's not like you're signing up for emails and text messages from jake for the rest of your life. Um I don't even want those. So you know, I don't I don't want you to get stuck in that, but if you're willing to do that, you're gonna get a bunch of information about the books and resources we are putting a course together as well, which I'm excited about.
It's gonna be a very affordable way for you. And if you have a marketing director or a social media manager, whatever to take that course, it's gonna walk you through in a very practical level how to exercise all nine of these things. I think it's just gonna be immense value for a lot of business owners that want to make sure that they've firmed up that foundation for their online presence. So launch dot jake Zoo felt dot com and sign up for that. You'll get a welcome text message from me joining the team and uh yeah, that would be amazing.
Okay, let's let's let's call the shot. Now, Jake is a best selling author. That's let's just call it. That sounds pretty good. Yeah. 28 days before that goes live on Amazon. I'll ask you to share it on your social media too. If you sign up on the launch team, obviously that's up to you is whether you do that or not. But just as a way of getting the word out again, I just really want to help business owners, I want to make sure that they have clarity and confidence um, in their online presence.
I love it. So yes, I guess we're closing up on, on the show, but there's a few questions I wanna ask that are aside from digital marketing, uh 11 sure that I noticed in your life is that you're just a person that is able to reinvent themselves and I think that requires a certain mindset to do that. So I was wondering you could speak to your philosophy on doing that because right, your pastor at one point digital marketing and, and you know, it's just like, and you're all all these different roles, could you speak to that that flexibility in reinventing yourself, wow, that's a that's an amazing question, john um man, my I mean mindset, I feel like it's such an overused term right now.
Um always been very upfront with you and like I said, I'm about a sugar coating. I went through years of counseling to different counselors, um working through stuff that happened for me growing up, working through transitions like that, you know, as a pastor, I was working in very difficult situations for a very long time. Um the greatest thing that ever happened was getting to the point where I couldn't fix something in my life, I had to call somebody else for help. It was the hardest and the best day of my life.
And so I went to the counselor for years and and and as a business owner, one of the things I think we neglect a ton is our own emotions. So we hear a lot about work, you know, work life balance. We hear a lot about time management, about freeing up yourself about learning to delegate about having like a growth mindset and you know, 10 x everything, all that kind of stuff, right, That's all well and good if the motives are where they need to be, but what I found to be very interesting as I left the pastoral world and as I entered the business world is I was seeing the exact same mindset in both of them and that was this, you can do the exact same thing as somebody else and both of you have completely different motives for it and one of them is healthier than the other and when I mean that I say is one of those feeling avoidant or is one of those based on things like um intentional, just direction and motivation and so literally like my wife and I had this like this sounds might sound crazy a lot of people and you might be like, I'm turning this podcast off now, um we had this chart on our refrigerator that our counselor gave us that had the eight core feelings that everybody feels all the time and then we had on one side of that chart, negative versions of those feelings and on the other side we had repaired versions of those feelings.
Okay, give you an example, one of the feelings we feel all the time is fear, fear a good thing or a bad thing, john yes, depends on the context, you know, so we look at fear as a negative thing and so when as I was going and kind of making this transition and sort of like, I think reinventing myself is an interesting way to put it. I never put it that way, but I connect with that. There's a ton of fear there. Okay now here's what's interesting what we think of oftentimes when we think of impaired fear is like just, you know, debilitating stuff.
Fear negative can be two things. It can be anxiety, which to be clear, I deal with anxiety on like a very like physiological level. So I know the difference between like just having, I live in Oregon like seasonal depression is a thing. Right? So I'm aware of that when it's just that, but I'm aware when it's anxiety where it's, I'm literally ignoring my feeling of fear and so what happens is my body just takes on all of that. So rather than being at peace with my fear, I would do that everything people don't realize and this is gonna hit home for, for a lot of dudes, um rage is impaired fear.
We often think of someone being very angry. It's actually rage and rage is when you are so like you are so upset, like you would do things you typically wouldn't do and I'm not talking about like physically hurting somebody, I'm talking about like saying things or doing things that are completely illogical, right? What's the opposite side? What's the repaired version of fear, It's courage encouraged to do the things even though you're still afraid. So the biggest thing I had to come to peace with as a business owner as an entrepreneur was fear and I had to understand that I am still going to do things for example, like writing and publishing a book.
Believe me when I say I had fear because it's a decent financial commitment to doing what I'm doing right? So I, I'm willing to tell you that I borrowed from my retirement to do this book. That's how much I believe in making a difference in people's lives is I wanted to literally take this out of my own, not my business finances, my own personal finances to make this happen. Okay. So that was the biggest thing I had to learn is I had to come to peace with feelings and really strong feelings so much that I went and got help and I talked to a counselor in order to make this happen.
That's, and that's one of the greatest acts of courage. I could say it's, it's, it's admitting like, hey, I need help. Um, because we all want to, you know, appear a certain way. Um, you know, we want to feel like we got it all down and we want to look strong for all of our friends and our family and our mentors and all the people who believe in us, but it's, it's such an act of courage to, to be so vulnerable and say, hey, I need some help and I feel like that's where the best version of yourself gets unlocked because you can actually get help on the thing that you need help with rather than covering it up.
It's a, it's a vicious cycle never saying like I need help or being open to that. I think posturing in business is one of the most nauseating things when I see people just like putting just all that, all of their just accolades and posturing, just like up front man, you know who I want to hang out with. I wanna hang out with people that are transparent. I don't care about your success level, right? I wanna hang out with people that are the the rise version of themselves.
Yeah, it's really hard. But it's man one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. Was that yeah, it's something we're all working through at all points. I've not arrived. Yeah, same. Same, definitely. Very, very far off from that. I guess the last thing I'd love to talk about it. I remember you mentioning earlier and also in our past conversations like feeling that impostor syndrome. I think that's something that's very common with. I mean I feel that all the time like you step into a new room do.
I actually know the things that I'm talking about, especially if we've done different things in the past. Um how how have you found? You know, it's, it's, it's it's it's stuff like fully dissolved like, what are some of the things that you do to help work through that emotion? Because, you know, for the person who is looking to become a business owner who's like, right now they're a technician, but they're like, hey, I want to, I want to start my own age, HVAC company or the one that's there at the 500 K. Mark.
And they're looking to get to the million mark. You know, there's just like, sometimes I just noticed there's like an identity thing, There's like some imposter syndrome of like, I don't belong here. That stops people from, you know, being okay with being at that next level. Like what are, what are some of the things that you might might have worked on to help process that field? I was given this advice. This is really funny advice. I gosh, I've been married for three years I think and I was asked to officiate at my first wedding as a pastor.
I was young. I was young. We got married young and I was, I was really young. The couple that I was doing the ceremony before was older than me. And I was like, I remember sitting down with my boss and just saying like, I don't feel like I should be officiating this wedding? And he goes, how long you've been married for three years, How long have they been married? And I go there not yet. And he goes great, you know more about marriage than they do. And it was such a funny example, but he was like, you don't have to know everything, you just have to have walked a little bit of the journey, that's all this comes down to.
And so as business owners, it's not that you have to have hit all of your goals and marks and then in the marketing world, just like in the pac world, there's definitely categories of like from here to here in revenue are really hard to get over and once you crack that you're able to get to the next one right? All you need to do is look at where you've been and if there's anybody that's on that journey that's a little bit behind you, you have an authority in their life to speak into that.
And so, you know, I've been in in marketing a lot less than, you know, less time than some of my business partners have. But they've been incredibly affirming to me of saying jake, look at the journey you went on all of it is valuable for someone else that's going to go on the same journey. So speak to that, right, talk about what, you know, that's a simple, that's just, that's communication, one on one. Talk about what you know, right? And so if you're a technician looking to be an owner someday, understand that everything you're doing right now is valuable toward that day that you become an owner.
And then when you hire technicians understand that you've walked that journey before and you can help them in that that's been the biggest thing for me. So when I get into this point where I'm, I'm in that imposter syndrome mindset, I just have to take a second and just remember where I've been all the way back and I have the picture that I mentioned at the beginning of our interview of my youngest kid on my shoulder asleep and me sitting at the dining room table on a laptop and building my business as a reminder that there's been a lot of steps in between here and all of it is valuable both for me and for anybody that I get to mentor coach or bring along on that journey, amen to that.
Remember the path you've walked? I think that's what we tend to forget. Like all the great things that we've been able to do and see. And, and always this, it's this comparison game, which I think leads to this impostor system. There's always gonna be someone who's more experience. There's, you know, it's all, there's always gonna be that. And so just being comfortable with the path you've walked and being able to speak and like we said like what, you know, celebrating small wins, that's I'm a, I'm a big wins guy.
I like, I like the big wins, like the milestones. Small wins man I had employed the other day, um coincidentally her husband starting a company, okay. And she's going to help him with it. And she, she said something to him while I was on the call and he's, he's been, they don't live in the same state. He's a friend of mine from years ago, I used to play punk rock music together, you know, 20 years ago. And uh, she looked at him and said, Hey, you know, I'm gonna help you with this, but I'm not going to quit my job working with jake and the team because I enjoy it too much.
Okay, that is a win, that's a win right there. And I celebrate that, that's huge. You know, and so you know, whether it's just accomplishing a job in an efficient amount of time or whatever it is, like celebrate the winds as much as you possibly can and then all of a sudden when you get to that point where you find out like, oh my gosh, I'm actually where I was hoping I was gonna be, I think it's gonna feel less foreign to people when they celebrated the winds along the way.
It's gonna feel less like imposter syndrome when you realized you had a lot of wins on your way to that point. I love that, that's, I think that's something everyone needs to hear even myself. So I'm talking about that. The former pastor is preaching to the choir. Yeah. Alright. Any any last parting words for everybody on digital marketing or just wanna, I just wanna encourage everybody like you're not alone, like you're just not alone on this journey. Um Like I said, the best thing I ever do is ask for help.
I hired someone, I wasn't bad at my books, I wasn't bad at finances, but I hired someone who's better at it than me. Um And when it comes to your website, to your digital marketing to S. C. O. Um to automation, there's better ways of doing business. There are so many people out there that are so willing to give you their time and their advice for free. The the best thing you can do is just ask for help and so I just want every entrepreneur to know.
It is such a lonely journey to be an entrepreneur but it doesn't have to be, you know, john and I are in similar networks which is how, you know, how we connected and you know, it's it's it's invaluable to have those networks and to be able to find find help so you're not alone, you're not alone and and just let go what you just said, jake. You know, digital marketing sucks but it doesn't have to doesn't doesn't have to be perfect. Well cool so I think we'll close it out, jake.
Think thanks so much. I you know I loved you know digital marketing tidbits as well as just just like how to ask for help and and become a better person. It's it's like I think the stuff that a lot of people don't talk about and I think it's the stuff that people really need to hear and it really is is healing in a way. So thank you for being open thank you for being here. I'm so excited for your book coming out and man it's 27 that's like a milestone thing in people's lives.
So excited for you. We're calling it out bestseller bestseller by your birthday by the end of this year and everyone like please definitely definitely buy the book, share it and make sure that jake hits that goal. I appreciate that. Thank you. Cool. So um good seeing everybody will catch you the next one. Oh and also last thing as always this podcast is sponsored by Pollyanna Digital marketing Agency focusing on HVAC contractors. If you need any assistance with your S. C. O. Your website, feel free to let us know we're doing free audits.
So um yeah definitely if you're listening take advantage of that. Those audits are no joke. Oh no there there are no joke man. A lot of thinking and a lot of steam coming up and down on that you need to you need to take john up. Cool thank you jake. See everyone and we'll catch you on the next one. Take care everyone. Thank you for joining us for the H VAC Financial Freedom podcast. Follow us on Stream Yard Apple podcast, Spotify, amazon music and check out our main website, www.
Dot h. Vac financial freedom dot com, to find out how you can also achieve financial freedom.
