About Our Guest
Lane Houk – Quantum Agency / Signal Genesys
(833) 501-3535
https://quantumagency.io
Transcript:
[00:00:00] That’s the premise of how I’m approaching whether or not I personally, would install TikTok, because TikTok is, we own no owned by Chi Chinese investors. It’s I don’t even have to go through. You could just do TikTok what was the search I did? TikTok. Ccp? Just do a Google search. TikTok, ccp, and just start reading even in Google, which we know is a censor. Search result anyway. Correct. We know it’s a lot leaning, it’s gonna be right. So Absolutely. If I’m a parent, do I want not only the data and all of that, all of the information about my kids and their, what’s on their phone being shared openly with a Chinese own company that we know has direct ties to the Chinese Communist.
Okay. I believe we are in an All Out. I believe we’re already in World War iii. We’re in a cultural war, a Social War, an information war a Hearts and Minds war, and it is literally communism versus freedom.[00:01:00]
Hi, and welcome to the 91 Day Success Podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan, and I’m thrilled today to have Lane with us from Signal Genesis. And I’m looking forward to this conversation because not only are we gonna talk about SEO and the areas that lane’s just an absolute master in there, but I’m gonna pick Lane’s Brain a little bit on a topic that I know he is very passionate about.
And that topic is TikTok and I want to chat with Lane a little bit. His thoughts on TikTok where that fits in, and what we as business leaders should be thinking about as we choose to use or not use TikTok in our business. Celine, welcome and thank you so much for your time today. Hey, Jonathan, great to be with you.
I really appreciate it. Thanks for the invite. Great to be here with you and your audience. Hopefully. . Absolutely. Let’s start by just a little bit of background and let people know who you are. I know a lot of the audience already knows you, but some may not. Talk to us just a little bit, if you could give us that elevator pitch on Signal Genesis and how [00:02:00] you work with agencies to help their clients with search engine optimization.
Yeah. Oh, sure. Awesome. Thanks for that intro. A little bit about Signal Genesis. It we’ve got about eight, eight real programming years of research and development combined with my previous 13 years in the SEO industry, really digital marketing branding. And about five years ago, we embarked on creating a platform for agencies.
Would help solve? We really built it to solve our problems internally at our own agency with With SEO challenges the economics of it getting consistent, predictable results. And that’s, there’s a lot as, there’s a lot of moving parts when it comes to SEO and getting those predictable results for your clients.
And we were, doing guest post blogging, manual link building citation building and all of these things that, went into trying to do a SEO and move the needle. Our clients and but it was a lot of manual work and it was also I’d say pricey. It was expensive.
[00:03:00] Sure. Anyway, guest post blogging, as is it just our manual link? But buying one one link sometimes was, just incredibly cost-prohibitive. So trying to scale seo, trying to eliminate a lot of the manual processes. We just got to work on bringing. A solution to market that solved all our problems.
But early on to your point, we decided to develop the platform for agencies exclusively. We know the agency world. I’ve lived in it for 13 years. So you know, as a software developer, you have unique advantages when you know the industry, you’re not just coming in externally. . Solve a problem potentially with money.
We have that inside our knowledge. And then having done SEO myself for 13 years, along with my partner Matt, who’s really brilliant as well Lee’s our dev team. We decided to build this for other agencies as well, cuz we knew we would solve an industry problem when we solved our own problem.
And I can certainly attest as, as a user, you guys have an amazing system and it works really well and it’s really well set up for agencies so that we can help our clients do [00:04:00] well. And I really appreciate what you’ve done there. Thank you. Appreciate that. If somebody that’s Watching’s not an agency owner, but they’re a business person and they’re wondering what should they be looking for when they’re looking to have somebody help them with seo?
what type of questions might you recommend that the average business leader ask of their SEO provider or. related so that they can find an expert to help them that really is gonna do a good job. Versus the smoke and mirrors. That, of course, sometimes fits into that part of the world as well. Boy, that’s a a question with an answer that’s like an onion.
It’s got many layers. Fair enough. . But For the business owner asking that question, look, trying to look for a quality, like provider that can really solve the problem and get the results. The first thing I’d say is stay away from the really big companies where you’re dealing with a sales rep.
There’s have you ever seen that mar that MarTech la mark marketing landscape? Mind map before? There’s Yeah, absolutely. Providers, right? So you’ve got, [00:05:00] you’ve got tens of thousands of providers. Unique things like Yelp or directory listings, like Yellow Pages in Merchant Circle, and you’ve got the, huge agencies that have, sales forces of anywhere from dozens to hundreds of people.
I say stay away from all those big players because you’re gonna be getting, you’re not gonna be getting an expert talking to you. as the business owner. You’re getting a sales rep who’s there making commission on whatever they can sell you. That is a hugely different relationship. When you’re dealing with a sales rep versus when you’re dealing with an agency owner who who has a real grasp on the industry and what’s going on.
So that’s the first thing I’d say because good you have to strip away. That’s a lot of noise. Business owners are bombarded every single day. Phone calls and email. Absolutely. Marketing messages from offshore, from onshore, from all of these different players. And then you have, a real agency owner of whatever size they might be, but they’ve got their fingers on the pulse, their boots are on the ground, so to speak, and they [00:06:00] really know what’s going on.
And there, you’re gonna have a low, they’re gonna be smaller. , but you’re gonna get better attention typically, as long as you can then find the quality providers there, because there’s, that’s still the wild West in many ways. Absolutely just the agency world of, who everyone, the people that hold themselves out to be some, at some level or another, a marketing agency or an SEO company or a.
An advertising company. So within that wild west of agencies, real marketing agencies, if I’m a business owner, I’m now looking for expertise. Just I look at it like, , if I were looking for a doctor, if I had a foot problem, or if I, had a legal problem or I had a tax problem, I’m.
There’s a lot of choices, but sure. I’m gonna really start to, filter through the noise to find an expert because I don’t wanna waste my time. I don’t wanna waste my money. And in my, if it’s my business and my, look at, it’s my business health. I don’t want to go to, just any old marketing doctor.
I want to go to an expert marketing doctor who [00:07:00] really can. So I’m looking for expertise and I can ask very simple questions and I can gauge expertise based on the answers. There you can really understand, does this person have a grasp of what’s really happening here? Or do they fumble with the question beat around the bush and get back to their sales pitch?
And great advice, sometimes reviews will ferret that out. Not always though. So I, but I would definitely wanna cross reference that with, do they have any reviews? Not to be a volume of reviews, because again, you’re looking with working probably with a little bit of a smaller company.
I’m looking for insight into what are those reviews actually saying? Cause I’m looking for an expert. And that’s ultimately, I think if a business goes at it, if they were looking for an expert doctor or expert lawyer, expert, tax, accountant, whatever it might be you’ll get the idea.
Makes perfect sense. I know just the other day I was talking to a prospect about working with our agency and one of the questions that they raised, because they’re with a large national agency right now, is that national company’s telling ’em, look, [00:08:00] nobody can do the same things that we can do.
We’ve got better relationships, we’ve got better knowledge, we’ve got better everything. And I gotta admit, I looked at him and said, SEO is a skill set and it is an art, and there’s definitely a skill associated with it, but I don’t believe in, and I’d love your opinion on this, that just because you’re a big guy in the industry so to speak, or a big player, that you have any more advantage in ranking your customer sites than what a smaller agency, again, with the same skills and the same expertise can have.
What are your thoughts about, I just, I think it’s just the opposite. It’s a really good point, Jonathan. I think it’s just the opposite. I think the larger they are, the more the disadvantage they are because you just lose control of quality and quality matters even more now today in SEO than it did five years ago or 10 years ago.
It’s been a gradual slope towards Sure. Quality and I’m, and it’s not that there’s ever been a, there’s, I don’t, I wouldn’t even say there’s a different standard for quality [00:09:00] within the search. algorithms or the search companies, whether it’s Google or Yahoo or Big , they’re all looking for quality.
I don’t think there’s ever really a different standard. We all, even 10 years ago, still want a good quality content, not spammy content, it’s just that the algorithm, the technology the patents. have gotten way more sophisticated and better at detecting quality in an automated way at scale because the size of the web has also, mushroomed.
Absolutely. So getting back to the point of the question is, is a larger company at a greater advantage or disadvantage as the case may be over a smaller agency and getting SEO outcomes? positive for the client, and the answer is no. Size has nothing to do with the algorithm.
They’re not looking at the size of the agency. If you’re doing SEO for a plumber and the agency, whether it’s small or large over here is doing the the seo. They’re not their size has nothing, no weight or influence on that [00:10:00] company. And what the algorithm is detecting about that company online.
You’re doing the work for them. So the size has really, is irrelevant. In that respect. The way I, the reason I say it’s at disadvantage is because I have continuously experienced, not just in my marketing year years of experience in marketing, but really throughout all experiences in life. The larger the company, almost generally speaking, the lower the quality, at least predictably and consistently it is.
. Cause it’s just quality control. Unless you are insane about it as a. The larger you get the less quality you have. And you can look at that in many applications. Matter, no matter what it’s. . No, I was gonna say, I think that’s across the board, like so many things.
It’s when you get to be large, your accounts becomes one of many numbers, one of many small fish in a pool, not somebody that’s getting that personalized attention. And candidly, probably not getting the attention of the most talented people on the team because they’re busy focusing on other accounts, not on your stuff.
[00:11:00] So that makes perfect sense. , which was why I said in the shopping experience, are you dealing with a sales rep or are you dealing with , an owner or a key partner in, in the agency. Because the difference will be dramatic. Like you said, there’re gonna be a number and that sales rep, those guys, C and gals come in and out.
So sales rep you have today is probably gonna change within the next three to six months. , there’s a high likelihood, and so you’re gonna be constantly getting a new sales rep that’s your account manager. I’ve had that at, I won’t mention the names. I use some of the larger software companies, sure. For our research, and I’ve, I can’t tell you how many times I get a new email about the new account manager that’s now taken over our account. It’s four or five times a year. Like literally. Yeah. Yeah, that’s, if you don’t want to go through that, then find a quality, a lower or a smaller a smaller agency and smaller agency can still be in the many millions a year.
But, you’re talking, these bigger companies are doing, 50 to hundred, 200 million a year in gross revenues. It’s, they’re [00:12:00] huge. Oh, absolutely. And I think that’s great advice and I think that’s helpful cause it’s one of the questions I know I hear a lot. One of the other really common questions I hear, and again, as an agency, I know, we generally know the answers to this, but do I have to be creating different content for Bing in Yahoo?
Than what I’m creating for Google A As somebody who spent far more time in this than I have Lane, what’s your perspective on how to handle the differences in ranking algorithms and that between the different platforms? I think that’s there’s a couple layers of that question. The first layer I’d say is I don’t e we don’t, we wouldn’t even advise a client to pay attention to Bing in Yahoo until they’re absolutely optimized for Google, because Google search consumes 90 to 95.
Of the entire search market yep. I’m not gonna optimize for the people or platforms or search engines that are fighting for the scraps at the, of the five to 10% that’s there, that they’re all fighting for a share of. I’m optimizing for Google, which has [00:13:00] 90%, all right, so now let’s say we’ve optimized from Google.
We’re just killing it in Google. We’ve, we feel like, Hey, we’ve really maximized what we can do here. All right let’s go and see if we can’t do anything different I would, recommend that even on a setup of even an SEO campaign that you do build out some of the assets in Bing in Yahoo.
Build out a local Yahoo Sure. Listing build out of being business listing. There’s value in those authority of the, of those assets for your brand as well. And beyond optimization? No, we don’t really have to do much to worry about Yahoo and Goo and Bing because if we do a good job for Google the rankings are almost mirrored in the other search engines.
And I gotta say Lane, it’s one of the things I’ve always appreciated about you is you’ve got a very pragmatic perspective in taking a look at SEO and focusing on the results as opposed to what feels good or what’s flashy. And I know as an agency owner that is just got so much value in our ability to deliver good results to our clients is having partners like you.
That are focused on the details in the [00:14:00] backend, but not getting caught up in the latest and greatest and fanciest unless it delivers good results. So thank you for that. Yeah, you’re welcome. I’ll give you a quick, the reason why behind that I have that perspective, Jonathan, is I sat, I was an agency owner, before I, we shifted into dealing with exclusively with agencies and, as a white label agency in both of our software as a white label software.
I sat for nine years in your shoes and sold to other businesses and businesses are always unless you’re, they’re all, I don’t care how, at what level. In fact, sometimes it’s even worse. The bigger the business gets. Every business is money conscious. Absolutely.
They don’t, they, no, I’ve never met anybody who’s said, yeah, we have an unlimited budget. Let’s just. , right? There’s always apprehension or friction around how much they’re gonna spend. What are they gonna get for it? Is there value there? How is it gonna be, tangible results?
How’s it gonna be reported? So going through nine years of that, you just become, you become in, you get in tune with your your clients and you [00:15:00] understand, hey, these are business owners. They’re, a lot of ’em are, were my friends. Cause I built my agency on referrals largely. Absolutely. And so a lot of ’em were right.
My, were neighbors or friends, or referred by friends or neighbors, and so you care about their business because they’re a small business owner in your backyard, and they’re, there’s they’re money conscious. They’re on budgets, and so they’re looking for value.
And so why waste time on when, on all the Yelp calls for a, a Yelp platform that’s trying to charge me three or $500 a month and promising all these things and really, They’re a minor player in the overall market. There’s fighting for seven or 8% of the overall market. And sure, but they want three or $500 of year money and that money re reallocated towards.
A place where it’s gonna drive in 90% of the market is going to just it’ll fundamentally transform a business. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that’s a good segue laying into the other topic I wanted to talk to you about. And as we talk about market share and we think over on the platforms and where we’re [00:16:00] sharing data, obviously the major platforms that business owners are hearing about nowadays are Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and LinkedIn.
And let us not forget, TikTok. Yeah. You and I have had a couple conversations about this, and I know where you stand, and I agree with you on a lot of that. And I wanted to share with me, if you would, why do you think that TikTok, I, if I can blow the secret, but why is there more danger with TikTok than there is benefit to a business?
Okay, so the underlying premise that I approached with is one of, I understand what’s happening when I install. an app on my phone. Okay. Yep. I understand. Facebook’s following me. I understand Facebook’s probably listening right now, on the phone. But think about what I just said, right?
Okay. . , we know that’s happening. We joke about it, at parties or with the friends of, I’ll say this and then, I’ll see an ad that either the same day or the next day in my, Facebook timeline or whatever. Absolutely. That is in fact a [00:17:00] reality with the minute you install an app on your phone.
Okay? Whether you like it or not you can agree to the terms and conditions. And I challenged anyone listening of when’s the last time you read all of. And really deciphered what you were actually consenting to. I don’t even do it because I know what I’m gonna do, never. I’m consenting to basically full control of my phone, and that’s what you’re doing.
Now, they may say, in their PR world, in their marketing world, oh, we would never listen to your conversations , or We would never share your data with anyone or sell your data to anyone. But that’s just what they say. How are you or I, or ever, anyone else ever going to prove that of what they’re doing with our data.
Now, when exactly when you call an app on your phone, that app is getting root access to everything on your phone. Okay. Whether they disclose what their app is actually accessing is a different story. . And then that now you have to, really evaluate the trustworthiness of. [00:18:00] The company, the developer.
and any associations, they may have another third party dependencies that their app may have integrated into their app to provide the functionality that you’re using on your phone. And no one that I know of, none of my friends go through even this much thought into whether they install it or not.
It’s just ab Absolutely. We don’t Yep. So agree terms, let’s. What you’re doing is you’re giving that app developer and their app full control over your phone. They can listen. They get, they can see everything you type. They meaning the app, the, they’re gonna get every single piece of data on your phone, your location, the mi, they have access to your microphone, access to your camera.
They can turn the camera on without you knowing. All of that happens when you install an app on your phone. Apple and Google say that they do all the due diligence on whether or not these apps are actually fo fulfilling within their, [00:19:00] what they say they’re doing and and all that.
But I, I can assure you that there are people circumventing those and hiding what they’re doing and getting their apps approved in the app store for download. Okay. So that’s the premise of how I’m approaching whether or not I personally, would install TikTok because TikTok is, we own no own owned by Chi Chinese investors.
It’s I don’t even have to go through, you could just do TikTok what was the search I did? TikTok? Ccp. Just do a Google search. TikTok, ccp, and just start reading even in Google, which we know is a censored search result anyway. Correct. We know it’s a leaning, it’s gonna be Right. So Absolut.
If I’m a parent, do I want not only the data and all of that, all of the information about my kids and their what’s on their phone being shared openly with a Chinese owned company that we know has direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party? [00:20:00] Okay. I believe we are in an all, I believe we’re already in World War iii.
We’re in a cultural war, a social war, an information war. Hearts and minds war and it is literally communism versus freedom. And I don’t know how we can’t see that after experiencing what we’ve all gone through the last two to three years. . I believe we’re in a big war around this issue.
I’m not going to support anything that is going to support or has direct ties to the ccp. I’m definitely not gonna let them have access to my phone. And we, you can go to Google search and you can look at all of the issues that even senators, presidents. High ranking officials, secur, national security officials within our own government as even as odd as it is right now within our own government are even crying, Wolf with what’s going on there.
So that’s a five minute explanation, but I know what ha what these apps have access to and there’s no app that has that I can understand has ties to China and [00:21:00] the CCP is gonna get on my. The, from a parent standpoint, not only the access to the data, but then there’s the brainwashing the the the information that we, that they see, we know that’s being manipulated. It’s being manipulated by algorithms. We saw it being manipulated in Facebook and Twitter. Even by American companies. Exactly. So if you have American companies manipulating what kids see and the advertising they see and all.
How much more do you want your kids, li you’re giving your kids literally, or the Chinese Communist Party, a direct access to your kids, their brains, their information. And we know kids are extremely, I was a psychology tutor in college. br kids brains in that age group before they’re fully formed are incredibly impressionable.
We know that we see the result positive and negative because of that, do we want to give the Chinese Communist Party direct access to our kids and their brains in an incredibly [00:22:00] impressionable time and their life? The answer is clearly no for me. Oh, and I’m on the same page with you, Elaine, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to, to sh have you talk about that a little bit.
You’re one of the people that encouraged me to actually think that through. I hadn’t necessarily thought some of that through. And you’re right. If you think Lane and I are crazy, by the way, I got a challenge for you. Take your phone, leave it sitting on the table, and tonight over dinner, talk about the fact that you want to buy a.
or that you want to go fishing in Idaho or Montana or wherever and have a conversation about that with your phone on sitting on your on the table. If you don’t see ads in the next 48 hours for canoes and fishing equipment, I will be absolutely. Shocked because Facebook’s actively listening. We know others are as well.
I don’t know exactly who listens, but Lane, like you said, I know if I talk about something like that, in fact, possibly even just by talking it on the podcast here, I’m gonna start [00:23:00] seeing ads showing up for Phish equipment. For canoes, for trips to Montana to go trout fishing, anything like that. Because they’ve heard that in the conversation and in theory, that’s okay cuz I want them to market to me and make my life better.
The problem is, I think you’ve pointed out, do we really want to trust that data is always going to be taken care of properly. We’ve seen our own US based companies screw that up. I certainly don’t want to trust a foreign national company to. No, especially one that’s in China, right? We ab we have a unique global threat in our adversaries in China.
These are our enemies, not the people of China. The Chinese Communist Party. We see the people of China being victimized by the Chinese Communist Party, but that is a dictatorial regime, firm authoritarian control over the pe, the billions of people that live in. No, absolutely. It’s not the Chinese people.
It’s, be clear. They’re great people. Some of them [00:24:00] live here. I have neighbors that are Chinese. They’re great people. It’s the Chinese Communist Party. And what they are trying to do to, they’re trying to impose their ideology, their authoritarian control over the entire globe. And we saw what they’re willing to do in the lead up and release of the bio weapon called covid 19 on the world.
And in just in the reality of things. I’ve seen it recently. If you are not familiar with TikTok, Terms of service, look up and Google Joe Rogan and TikTok, and you’ll find an episode where he read through the terms of service. You’ll be amazed at the stuff that’s in there. I hadn’t read it.
I’ll readily admit it, but you’ll be amazed. The other thing that really surprised me and maybe not surprised me, but I found interesting the other day is I love watching Patrick Beck, David, and I think he’s a great business guy with tremendous ideas, and he had actually done a test on his channel.
If you don’t know Patrick Beck, David. He talks largely about business and entrepreneurs, capitalism, things like that. But he [00:25:00] ventures into some other side topics and he had been posting content on both Instagram and the exact same to content on TikTok. And he was getting more views on TikTok. He then, I believe it was on August 5th or eighth, did a podcast where he talked negatively about China.
Again, not the Chinese people, but the Chinese Communist government. And literally the following day, his views went from hundreds of thousands of views per video on TikTok to hundreds of views. Wow. Those same views are still getting hundreds of thousands of views on Instagram, just as they were before that.
But on TikTok, he and he just, wow. , I got throttling the way back. So while I know it’s so easy because we enjoy these apps and we enjoy all that and go, they’re never gonna do that. They are, and the more information they have, regardless the more tools they have to influence us in positive and or negative ways.
And I think Lane, when you talk about our kids in particular, it’s so [00:26:00] important for us as parents to. Hey, this is not something worth playing around with. It’s not worth the risk. Maybe you’re right, maybe they’re not gonna do it, but do you really wanna risk your child’s thoughts process? They’re maturing.
The thoughts that are planted in their brain to grow. Do you wanna risk that? Is it really it? They, let’s be clear they are doing it. Look at the degradation of our society and our culture in the last 10 years. No doubt it is extreme. Oh, I agree. We’re dealing with drag shows and our kids are being invited to drag shows to put money in the pants of grown men dressed as women.
And that’s being and these children are being pushed this ideology, this lifestyle, this. Wicked wickedness is being pushed into them through social media. That’s where they’re getting it from. They’re not getting it. Yes. They’re even starting to get at school now, which is how bad it is because [00:27:00] now you’ve got an entire generation of kids who were pushed as ideology through social media.
They went through school and college and they are now teachers in the classroom. Exactly. And we reporting what they were taught for the last 10 years. Facebook, Instagram, the TOS of the world, all of these other people. Precisely. So it’s, and it’s ha been happening through American companies. Yeah.
So it’s not just China, but I, but it’s an ex extreme risk with TikTok. Now I, we can keep going. This is a rabbit hole for sure. , I will you this. We as a company, I, as the CEO of the company, have made a decision and we, this is not a new one. We’ve made this, years ago and have just followed through on it.
Still to this day, we will not do any marketing for our clients with TikTok. We just, we don’t offer that as a service. We are not going to, we’re not going to go into that platform. I know it means we lose some business and some opportunities. [00:28:00] That we would otherwise have if we did provide that as a solution.
I’m okay with. . And I think that’s important that, at no time, maybe in history or not, I don’t know, but it’s always been important that we stand on our values and we stand up for what we believe in. We don’t all have to agree on everything, but one of the things that I’m so thankful for is that we do have that opportunity to make those decisions and to act appropriately.
And if that, if you disagree, that’s okay. There’s no problem with that. I think that’s one of the awesome things about the country we live in is we still, as of the moment, have the opportunity to make those decisions and stand on our values. But the, what we’re on is that we’re even having to qualify right now, at least as of today, we still have the right, no, we’re actually already being censored and we’ve really lost a lot of freedom here in America because, We’ve been in bed with China and their ideology for decades, and we’ve let them just continuously [00:29:00] erode our culture and our freedoms through their ideology.
And it’s slipped into every area of our culture and our government and our educational system. And people are okay with being censored. They’re now crying for censorship. They’re, so yeah, it’s a dangerous world we live in. I, it’s just like you said, we gotta take stands where we need to, and it’s okay to.
Differing in opinions. I respect your opinion if you differ from mine. And that’s the great thing about Absolutely. And again I think this is a rabbit hole we could spend a lot of time in because there’s a lot of items we agree on here, lane. But yeah, I wanna respect your time and I do have one other question I’d like to ask and we call this the 91 Day Success podcast for a reason, and that’s it.
I love asking the guests that we have on here, all successful businessmen like yourself or businesswomen. If you had to start over lane and I gave you a thousand dollars and said, Hey, how can you grow a business that can generate $10,000 or more a month in 91 days? What [00:30:00] couple things would you focus on for the first 91 days?
That’s three months. By the way, for everybody wondering you, we get just over 30.3 days per month, so 91 days is three months. What would you do in the first three? To, if you had to start over to create a business that would again, Hit that target at $10,000 a month in revenue, three months down the road.
Is this a business that I have experience in already or anything? Anything you want. Just a couple simple rules. You can’t borrow any money and you can’t necessarily say, okay, I’m gonna reach out to my existing clients and build it. You’d be starting over, but imagine I, I picked you up and said, all right, lane we’re gonna, we’re gonna go ahead and we’re gonna put you in the middle of.
Topeka, Kansas, and you’ve got a thousand bucks. You’ve got food, you’ve got shelter, you’ve got a vehicle. Your basic needs are met, but you’ve got a thousand dollars and 91 days to build a business. What would you do first? I guess it would depend on the [00:31:00] business. But the, I the first Whatever you want.
Yeah. The first thing I would do is make sure I have the knowledge of the business. I’m gonna get. . So if I take the premise that I’m a, I’ll just take the, I’m a marketing agency, right? Sure. I gotta start over. I have some marketing experience from other jobs I’ve had or whatever.
But I’ve gotta start my own business now. I, maybe I just got fired or I lost my job, or I got laid off or whatever. And I’m gonna start a marketing agency. I would invest that thousand dollars. The seven figure agency group, to be honest with you, , I’m with you there, excuse me.
Some level of knowledge to help in, that’s my insurance policy to be successful. The rest of it, a thousand dollars is not a lot of money, so no, really to get the knowledge and maybe some people on my team to help me or surround myself with, which is what you get when you join a mastermind of something like that.
So I’d find. A group of people or a mastermind, I’d advanced the money there so that I had some success coaches and some resources and support there. And [00:32:00] then the rest of it’s just pure hard work, right? You’re gonna have to work absolutely hard. And persist. I was thinking about this morning I walk my dog twice a day, every morning, every evening.
And so I pray and I think, and I, just reflect on those walks. Great time. And I just was thinking back about my entire life and how it’s really just persistence, like success. Absolutely. My success. Whatever I level I’ve had has never. When I planned it, I was always, I always planned it a lot sooner.
Yep. I always planned my my success to be a lot greater, but I know that I’ve achieved certain levels of success because I’ve just persisted and I still have more to go. And so if I only had a thousand dollars 91 days, you’re just gonna have to really work hard. But I would invest a thousand dollars in my own knowledge, education, and a support system to be success.
I think it’s great advice. I think one of the best investments any entrepreneur can make is investing in themselves. Yep. And that’s exactly what you’re talking about. [00:33:00] And there’s no doubt for everyone we know. Tons of businesses through both seven figure agency and others that have become, I will say, quote unquote overnight successes after a decade of hard work.
, and, sleepless nights and things like that don’t come easy. Success takes time and takes a lot of hard work. But I appreciate you sharing that, and I really appreciate your perspective on that. One of the things we’d love to do, lane, is to, and we’ll include your information on Signal, Genesis and how to get in touch with you.
If an agency owner is watching this and they wanna learn more what’s the best way for them to reach out and learn more about how you can help them, help their clients lane? Is it just to reach out and schedule a call or what’s the best step they should take to do that? Yeah, I’m really accessible.
In the world that we are in, we. Be an omnichannel type of communicator. So I’m on Facebook and Twitter and Skype and all those channels, but signal genesis.com I’m sure you’ll provide that cuz we have a, I will, we have a unique spelling on Genesis. It’s s y s on the end, not ssis s but yeah, on our website we have a live chat, [00:34:00] you can get there as well.
Or [email protected]. It also will get right to me as well. But appreciate you, introducing our company and our our software platform and solution for agencies. And really great time just talking with you and talking a little bit about TikTok and other things as well.
I appreciate your time and I really appreciate you responding to the video. It was great to meet you in person in Miami recently. We were down there for the seven figure agency. But if you are an agency owner and you’re wondering, I want to give a personal just testimony to Lane and the credibility that he brings to things.
Lane is the real deal and his team does an amazing job. There’s a lot of solutions that you can take a look at, but you owe it to your clients even more than you owe it to you to do a great job. And I believe that means having a conversation with Lane, just as our agency has done to learn what he can do to help you, help your clients.
So if you need it, talk to him. I really appreciate that. It means a lot. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. We may have to have another one of these conversations on [00:35:00] things. I think it would be fun to actually do a test and I’ll follow up, we’ll see if I get any fishing gear , ads in the next day or two.
And we’ll we’ll post some, maybe a follow up on the podcast cuz I’m betting I’ll see those ads probably before tomorrow. Morning’s over. I have mine here too. We’ll see. All right, lane, thanks so much. Have a wonderful day and if I don’t talk to you, have a very blessed Christmas my friend. Thank you.
You too buddy. Thank you. I appreciate John and take care. Thanks.
