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Ep. 17 — Noah Britton, Founder and CEO of Thrive on how to make the right decisions for your business, and more

Digital Agency Owners Podcast
Digital Agency Owners Podcast
Ep. 17 — Noah Britton, Founder and CEO of Thrive on how to make the right decisions for your business, and more
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On our latest episode of the GoWP Digital Agency Owners Podcast, we welcome Noah Britton, founder, and CEO of Thrive. We talk about how he achieved success for his company, his many endeavours while helping others to find success, what agency owners must accomplish to make the best decision for their agency, and much more. 

Read the transcript:

Morayo: [00:00:00] Welcome to the GoWP digital agency podcast. I’m Morayo director of creative services.

Joanne: [00:00:09] And I am Joanne. Before we welcome our guests, I would like to say a few words about GoWP. In case anyone listening is not familiar with us just yet in our WordPress services. So at GoWP we create happiness for digital agencies and help them become more profitable, whether it’s joining in our incredible, valuable weekly happiness hours. Or if they’re looking to grow their development team, their copywriters, their designers, or project manager, whatever it is that you guys need, we got you covered. So we also have services like case studies, blogging, website maintenance, content edits, and page builds. So you can completely outsource your team to us.

And yeah, that’s, GoWP in a nutshell.

Morayo: [00:00:58] Give us your team.

Joanne: [00:00:59] Give us your team.

Morayo: [00:01:01] Kind of threatening.

So Hey, Joanne. So you did such a great job explaining what we do. So how would you recommend that someone who’s listening, who’s still curious about us, how would you recommend they find out a little bit more if they wanted to go a little deeper with their understanding of GoWP?

Joanne: [00:01:17] Of course. Yeah. So everyone can go to gowp.com or any of our social media channels. So that’s GoWP support on Twitter, GoWP everywhere else. So Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, soon to be TikTok. No, just kidding. But everywhere on social media, anywhere you want to receive your updates, that’s where we are. So without further ado, I think we should welcome our guests for today.

Morayo: [00:01:46] Yeah, let’s, let’s welcome our guest. I’ll start with a, you know, often in life, we get caught up wanting an idea or a plan to play out in a certain way. And if things don’t go as planned, we can either adjust or stand still. Our guest today, Noah Britain has had a career path that has brought him to a very healthy pinnacle today, but there were plenty of turns in realizations and adjustments along the way.

I think you’d agree, I think I see him nodding in agreement. He’s the founder and CEO of Thrive, which is a Seattle-based web design company. He founded it in 2002. He’s tried and tested so many different tools and systems that he feels competent in sharing his knowledge of those systems and processes that worked so well for him and giving that info to others who are on that same path that he was on.

He does that through a course that he developed under Agency X-ray. And so today, during the podcast, we’ll explore how Noah achieved success for his company and his many endeavours while helping others to find success too. Welcome, Noah Britton, how are you?

Noah: [00:02:53] Wow. Doing so good. Thank you for having me on here. Yeah. Geez. I’m gonna share knowledge now I’m on the spot. Like, do I have knowledge? Is that something I can give to other people?

Morayo: [00:03:01] That’s what they say.

Noah: [00:03:02] It’s been a journey, you know, it’s been a journey. Definitely. I’ve been in business for 19 years. I’ve rebranded my agency three times. The current iteration is Thrive. Yeah. I’m an agency owner in Seattle, and I don’t do any of the work anymore. Like I have a design team and development team and I handle mostly business development and sales and just keeping track of things and looking at our data and seeing what is, and isn’t working. And I’m a super data nerd and I’m happy to talk about anything, data or agency related.

Morayo: [00:03:31] Heard that about you, I’ve seen your webinars, you love the data.

Joanne: [00:03:35] Love’s an air table

Noah: [00:03:36] Mm-hmm

Joanne: [00:03:37] Love’s an air table. We will not be talking about air table today.

Morayo: [00:03:41] Oh, I forgot, we will be doing air table instructional, Joanne. You’ll be leading that segment.

Joanne: [00:03:46]  I’ll describe for our audience, everything, how they can listen to an air table podcast. That would be delightful.

Morayo: [00:03:54] And, you know, Noah, you, you joked about the question, do you have knowledge? I, again, I’ve seen your webinars, you absolutely have knowledge and you revealed a lot of things that I took for granted thinking that most agency owners knew certain things that they didn’t. And that’s totally fine, but they don’t know certain things about their systems and processes, but one of the things that you said really struck a chord with me, and I took that quote, and I’m gonna throw it back in your face because it was so rich.

You said that a key to success is the willingness to take imperfect actions. And that just really resounds with me. I think that applies to so many areas in business and personal life. Can you expound on that? What that quote, what that idea should mean to the agency owner who’s trying to keep afloat or the freelancer who’s just starting out, or even the veteran who thinks they’ve seen it all.

Noah: [00:04:44] Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So taking imperfect action. I don’t know about y’all but imposter syndrome or the idea that I don’t know enough. I mean, I was joking about it right there. I don’t do I really have the knowledge to share that mindset or sort of imposter syndrome issue causes people myself included to not take action because, oh, I’m just not good enough.

It’s not perfect enough or I’ll start along a track of doing an action and I won’t follow through because it just isn’t good enough. This could be writing a blog post or following up on a sales call or creating any kind of content. It could be development, it could be designing, it could be anything where we as individuals can get stuck in not taking action because we think we’re not good enough or the results aren’t gonna be good enough. So we just don’t do it.

I’ve done a lot of personal work in getting around my mindset like I’m not good enough, and so I just erase it. I use taking perfect action as a way, one of my three keys to success so that it, I can just remind myself, taking an action is better than the better than not.

I mean, I’d rather just do something and if I get stuck, I ask for help, either ask for help directly from someone or through joining a mastermind or a community. But yeah, taking a perfect action. I just have to be in motion and it’s just, yeah, it’s one of my keys.

Morayo: [00:06:00] I really love that and for me in my life, how I relate to that is there are so many times that, especially in my role at GoWP like I’ve been given a chance to speak out or present. And most of the time, the voice in my head is like, but you’re not accomplished enough on this topic who the heck cares what you have to say.

How can you talk to these agency owners? Like Noah Britain who’s been in this business for 19 years. The man knows this stuff. What knowledge do you have to impact to him? And I’ll never forget something that Chris Lema said about who’s a friend of yours and a friend of GoWP for sure.

You know

Joanne: [00:06:38] A friend of the show

Morayo: [00:06:40] A friend of the show friend of the Pod

Noah: [00:06:42] We love you Chris

Morayo: [00:06:43] The crowd gets wild for Chris Lema, he has a following. I won’t go through his story, but essentially, you know, if you are speaking to a room of people, there are individuals in that room who don’t know what you know.

Yeah. You’re gonna have the Noah Britton in there who have 19 plus years of experience, or like the Brad Morrisons who’ve been around for a while, but there are people who can still benefit from whatever knowledge you have to share. So show up and do it. And I like what you said, stay in motion.

That’s super cool.

Noah: [00:07:12] And there’s gold everywhere right? There’s gold in anyone’s experience, and like, but also taking perfect action. I’ll just think about Nike. Nike’s like, just do it. I mean, part of this is when there’s a task to be done, there’s a resistance. Like if it’s a big task, there’s gonna be as much resistance to not do it.

I know it’s easy to say, just do it, but there’s something about something to do and not letting the obstacles get in my way and asking for help when I need it. And it’s a muscle that we build, a tolerance, like everything we have are muscles and there’s a tolerance towards, can I deal with the anxiety of this task? Can I deal with the pressure of this task? And if the more that we actually exercise that muscle, the stronger it gets and the better we get it following through on items.

Morayo: [00:07:57] Absolutely

Joanne: [00:07:57] Yeah. And we were recently having a similar conversation and it’s, I think it’s so much more powerful than get something done versus waiting to make something perfect to put it out there. So something that’s done and executed, it’s much more powerful than you working on that perfect task forever and ever, and ever, cause nothing is ever gonna fully be done. Just get it out there and get the ball rolling. I think that’s what’s really powerful, and kind of like to sum up what y’all have been saying.

Morayo: [00:08:32] Kind of like this podcast, Joanne right?

Joanne: [00:08:36] Yeah

Noah: [00:08:37] Get it out there.

Joanne: [00:08:38] Get it out there.

Noah: [00:08:39] I mean, everything is iterating and improving. Like everything we do, our sales process or the way we develop our websites, the way we handle support requests. We’re gonna have to just take action and realize we’re gonna sometimes feel a little awkward and anxious in what we do.

Joanne: [00:08:54] Yeah, and I mean, I think yeah, that’s always gonna be the case. Even you know, it doesn’t matter how seasoned you are. There’s always gonna be room for growth and room for improvement. And I think that’s why we use the tools that we use, it’s to better inform our decisions, whether people are more like data-driven or data-informed, they’re using some kind of support to inform their decisions. And that kind of brings me to our next question is, are you more of a data-driven person or data-informed person? How did, and how did that love for data like start, where did that come from?

Noah: [00:09:32] Yeah. I mean, I.

Joanne: [00:09:33] It’s a loaded question.

Noah: [00:09:35] I am by nature an anxious person and some of the people that are anxious, they look out for the future. And so they write lists of things that need to happen, things that could go wrong, they maybe they have a spreadsheet of their finances. I mean, that’s me, right? Like age 15, I had my to-do list when I got up and things I had to take care of.

I was managing my own budget before I left high school. Like on a piece of paper.

Joanne: [00:09:57]  Oh my God, wow

Noah: [00:09:59] And eventually in 2002 is when I know at least in 2002 is the first time I found an Excel file where I was managing my budget, my personal budget, and my business budget. So for me, like, I mean, I don’t know, actually, I can’t remember what the question was, but basically, it’s like data, it started with finance.

A lot of people are like how they manage their like cash flow is just through, is through managing their money data. But for now, I use data all the time for my sales, for my clients, understanding my ROI on projects, and my ROI on lead generation. I do all that based on collecting and, and mining that data.

As you all know, I do this through air table to manage this content and it informs my decision. It’s not the only thing, I mean, the data is just part of it, right? Look at the data, see what’s working, what isn’t. But we also need to look at like our own morals, like just cuz data says I can make the most money by doing this one thing doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it. It has to fit within my values, my morals, and the rest of my company.

Joanne: [00:10:56] So when do you know how to follow also this is just to give a little bit more context to the next question. I know you’re a person who’s very into, you know, spirituality and all of these like holistic practices. So coming to following your gut and you’re following your intuition, when do you know how to follow the data versus following your intuition and experience?

Noah: [00:11:22] Oh, wow. That’s a good question. Okay, well, it’s definitely gonna be both, right? It’s definitely gonna be intuition and data. Most people, they start with the intuition either they think something’s going to work a certain process or they’ve learned it from somebody else and they’re trusting it so it’s their intuition or they’ve learned from somebody else. Where the data really comes in is then say we have a sales process and we think that if we review our proposals with a lead over zoom versus just sending it off, we have the intuition that it’s going to work better for a higher conversion if we do those proposal reviews over zoom, then we’ll do that. But we have to actually record those two variances. We have to actually say, these are the leads, did I review it over zoom? Yes, or phone or whatever it is. And then you can then measure with the data. So people just start with the intuition and when I’m coming up with new ideas, it’s always intuition or knowledge from somebody else. And then I just track it. Yeah. Does that answer it?

Joanne: [00:12:19] Yeah. Yeah. I think I’ve always been curious because although that thing where you’re like, oh, I think this is gonna be really good because you know maybe it worked for XYZ who has a similar business as I do or their agency of similar as ours, but I need that data to support.

So just following up on that, Speaking of data supporting, like, has there been any kind of case where you’ve had to pivot your business and example?

Noah: [00:12:50] I mean, I’ve certainly pivoted how I do my lead generation, how I do my marketing just based on cost per lead and cost per sale. Like when I run the numbers and see, okay, well, my leads from this particular, so, you know, my, my cost per leads, $85 from this particular source and it’s $30 and $1 from this one.

 I mean, I have changed the way I do my lead generation just based on data, on what’s actually working. My sales process too like I’ve realized that I used to do an initial call that I’d send a form and I’d have a second call cause I learned that from a mastermind that I was in, but I looked at the data and I said, you know, for me and my personality, that actually doesn’t work as well for me, what works best is I do a first call and then I do a zoom call and I just, I’ve learned that based on the data. Now sometimes so I have a business coach too. Y’all probably know Nick Gullick.

Joanne: [00:13:38] Yeah, of course.

Noah: [00:13:39] Nick’s on my team at thrive for projects, but he’s also my business coach. And so sometimes I have an intuition about something, but you know what? Nick like looks like my business guy so I ask him, Hey, what do you think about this idea?

And sometimes it’s such a bad idea. He’s like, dude, don’t, don’t do it. And so I actually trust his intuition over mine because in some areas like Nick is way more experienced and knowledgeable than I am. So, but I have that you know, I’m hiring him as a coach. And I think, you know, I, have three keys to my success.

One was taking imperfect action, and another one is having a community. So having some sort of a, either formal mastermind or even doing weekly calls, like with the happiness hour, GoWP, I love that, right? That’s where you get community and knowledge tab has another one. Sorry. The admin bar has another kind of a call. It’s, you know, having some sort of a community either paid or non is I think real, it’s been crucial for my own growth. Like my I’ve been doing it continuously for four years and like, it’s completely transformed the way I do my business.

So having a community, taking a perfect action, and the third one is actually being coachable. That one to me, if you aren’t coachable, then having a community really isn’t gonna do very, very good. And you’re gonna be stuck in your own little world, which I was.

Joanne: [00:14:56] Yeah.

Noah: [00:14:57] Like the first 14 years of my business. I was the lone Wolf stuck in my business. Didn’t have a community, didn’t have really anybody to lean on because I was afraid of being found out as a fraud, which is hilarious because like I was, it just hilarious. You want to be involved in another group because I felt like I wasn’t good enough to be in the group.

Morayo: [00:15:17] I love that being coachable. As a key to success as you define it, I recall also you demonstrating that you score your leads based on their coachability and their openness to your process. That was not a planned question, but do you mind? I thought it was a really.

Joanne: [00:15:35] That’s fascinating and I just to kind of like support Morayo with the being coachable. I think that’s so important because if someone comes to your business and they don’t wanna listen to anything of the things you’re suggesting, you’re coaching them through, like, then what’s the point? Like, what are we doing here?

Noah: [00:15:50] What do you need me for? I think Chris Lema said it once. Like, what do you need me for? Why are you calling me? So the scoring mechanism, that’s actually something I learned from WP Elevation through their blueprint, and it’s a score of one through 15 broken up into five, three categories.

Excuse me. It’s and I’ve talked to Troy about this, troy has found me sharing this. Thank you, Troy. So it’s like it’s three main scores, scores of one through five, and three things. The first thing is how much do they respect my process? That’s also like how much are they like coachable? And like, you know are open to ideas. Two is how good is this project for me? Like either for my portfolio or for my business, is for my niche, can I knock this one out of the park? And then three, which is the one most people focus on as the only thing that’s important is budget. I’m not saying everybody does this, but most projects, the budget’s gonna make or break the project. But you score each one of those one through five and it totals anywhere between 0 and 15, I guess, or maybe three and 15. And so I work with people that are at 12 or above. That’s my, my internal compass for who I wanna work with.

Joanne: [00:16:56] Yeah, because you gotta get those, it’s kind of like getting a net promoter score, right? You wanna get those endorsers there, the people who are into it, because if not again, you know, what are we doing? And people aren’t like, I understand the whole sharing away from the budget part, but at the end of the day, even if it makes you uncomfortable, we are running businesses here. We’re in it for a reason.

Morayo: [00:17:21] Where do you think that I’m gonna ask you to, again, this was not a prepared question,

Noah: [00:17:25] Give me what you got. Maybe I could do it.

Morayo: [00:17:27] I find it fascinating. Where do you think that resistance to your process comes from? Is it always just resistance I know what’s best? Or do you find it’s fear, fear for the agency owner to try something different or to be vulnerable and to trust you?

Noah: [00:17:42] Okay. So, and in this context, right, we’re talking about clients who’re coming in for a website, are they respecting my process? So why would a client not respect my process for here’s how we do our deposits and here’s how we do our discovery, and here’s how we run our projects, et cetera. So I can answer the question from a standpoint of a client wanting a website or an agency, wanting coaching, which one do you want?

Morayo: [00:18:03] I’d like, for me, I’d like the agency wanting coaching. That’s my vote.

Noah: [00:18:07] Okay. Great.

Joanne: [00:18:08] Yeah. I’m cool with that.

Noah: [00:18:10] Yeah, this is a harder one for me to answer, right? Cause I’m not a business coach, right? I don’t do coaching for agencies, I have a training on a very specific niche topic of sales process and tracking data, et cetera. But what I would say in that regard then is why would an agency owner not be coachable? That’s a question. What’s their resistance to it? Either they don’t trust the coach and then you have to exit the coaching agreement or they just aren’t coachable as a human being. I mean, some people, regardless of its business or not, they’re afraid of being contributed to, they want to do it on their own. Either’s an idea of I’m self-sufficient, which is kind of weird then to get into a coaching arrangement if you aren’t open to kind of that. I’ve actually had a video around this where people have asked me, you know, Hey, should I join this one program? Should I sign up for this course? Cause I’ve gone through a lot of them. And my answer is always well, make sure you trust the coach and the style that you are into, right? Like you really trust them are gonna follow their instructions and make sure you have actual time to do it.

So unless you have, unless I have, I’ll just talk, speak for myself, unless I really have the time and the trust to go through somebody else’s process and take it on as my own, I shouldn’t do it. Like I shouldn’t take half steps in somebody else’s process. I shouldn’t hire one coach, but then ask the advice of three other coaches over here. Like I have to be all in. And the thing is I can take on their process and if it doesn’t work for me, okay, then I’ll make some adjustments.

But that’s what I handled when I went through WP elevation Mavericks, I went full in, I, I went full in on how they did their training and I’ve modified the hell out of it. But I started with doing exactly the way they did it and that’s cuz I trusted them. I trusted their process and I had fantastic results. I mean, my numbers are crazy the before and after. Yeah.

Morayo: [00:20:02] It’s a lot of self-assessment and honesty. Yeah.

Joanne: [00:20:05] Yeah, and I also think it’s very important to also note that sure, frameworks and processes, I consider them to be a foundation for you to build on your own. You can’t just like nothing is a one size fits all, especially in this industry because we all serve different niches and we all serve different audiences.

So. Yeah, I think it’s very valuable how you frame the iterations and how you take that framework and that those processes and build on that. So just circling back on that everything is a continuous work in progress for me to paraphrase what you just said a few minutes ago.

Noah: [00:20:47] In measuring it right, measuring what isn’t working, right, like going full in. And then just measuring what isn’t, isn’t working. A lot of people don’t have that measuring. They go just by their intuition. But like literally I want to see like a list of 120 leads and their conversion rates and like the things that I did and be able to par it down and see what actually made a difference.

Joanne: [00:21:07] So, yeah, I’m gonna sit with that for a moment.

Morayo: [00:21:10] I’m nodding, I’m getting like, my neck is getting sore nodding to you so much in another career. I guess you could be like a preacher or something. I’m like, amen, amen, brother, Noah. Yeah, there are so many things that we could talk about. So you’ve been an agency owner for many years, who are sharing gold nuggets everywhere. Who along that path in addition to your current coach, like Nick and others, you’ve worked with more regularly, who else has been impactful in your development? Who’s been your greatest teacher? What are the greatest lessons even maybe outside of the digital field?

Noah: [00:21:48] Okay. That’s that is a great question because when you, we were thinking of in the digital field, it’s Troy Dean, right? Troy Dean, I went into his WP elevation like four years ago. I did that for two years and then Mavericks for a year. I’m not in any programs with Troy’s right now because I have everything I need. Like I’m, self-sufficient like I’ve graduated and Troy’s been great.

But there’s been some things in my personal life as well that helped me get outside of my limitations and help me see the blind spots that were pretty much ruling my life. Things that I couldn’t see that were ruling my life. And so there were some personal programs, Mankind project is one of ’em. It’s a program that helps men develop a healthy masculine and help heal the world with healthy masculine traits. And then a landmark, which is a personal development program as well that just helps people figure out what’s in their way to being successful and happy in their relationships. But then on the professional level though, absolutely WP elevation and Mavericks, and yeah.

Joanne: [00:22:46] Yeah. Could you share a little bit? It’s so fascinating by this mankind. Can you tell, tell us a little bit about it? If you’re comfortable sharing.

Noah: [00:22:54] No, totally.

Joanne: [00:22:54] I think that’s so important and so interesting. I’ve never heard about it before. I’ve like, you know, you hear all these things, but you never really like dig into them. So if you could care to share a little bit.

Noah: [00:23:04] Yeah. I mean, the idea of men going off and doing work, like sounds almost kind of weird, like almost cultish, even though like people do personal development all the time, but men doing it by themselves, like seems like, oh my goodness, what do they do out there?

Morayo: [00:23:17] They’re partying.

Noah: [00:23:18] Like, oh my gosh. You know, it is actually, so the Mankind project is the largest men’s organization in the world in 22 countries. They have a big presence here in the Northwest, and the general idea is creating an environment where men can actually be vulnerable with each other instead of competing, and where men can be just really vulnerable and open and actually work on themselves and work on integrating the feminine and work on, you know, developing the more healthy aspects of masculinity.

So I can’t actually say what they go off and do, but I will say that, that we gather and go through workshops, just like you would think in any kind of other personal development programs. And it’s like mankindproject.org is the website. So it’s all up there, but it starts with a weekend.

Basically, they take men that their lives are not working for them and who want to change their lives and they go off and do, there’s no, like, you know, there’s no blood magic or, you know, there’s some funky stuff that happens, but I don’t wanna ruin any other man’s experience in that. So we don’t share that information.

Joanne: [00:24:19] No. Yeah. That’s amazing. And I’m, I’m sure there’s a lot of, you know, there’s also the vow of not vow of secrecy, but the vow of honoring people’s stories and that’s very special. And so it’s thank you for sharing that.

Noah: [00:24:34] Yeah. And so if you are anyone who identifies as a man who wants to do work with other people, identify as a man, then go check out mankindproject.org.

Morayo: [00:24:42] Did mankind have anything to do with the development of gold man?

Noah: [00:24:48] No, no, no, no. Gold man. Do I have a sticker?

Morayo: [00:24:53] That might be the promo image for this episode.

Joanne: [00:24:55] For those who are listening. So Noah’s just holding up a sticker of a man pointing up to the sky’s dressing gold tippy, oh, basketball.

[00:25:04] Noah: Gold T. He kind of looks like me. Huh?

Morayo: [00:25:08] Kind of like, yeah.

Joanne: [00:25:10] Yeah, just good energy overall in that sticker.

Noah: [00:25:13]  I’ll tell you the story gold man. So four years ago my wife, who’s a house music DJ was playing at a festival called Cascadia. So I’ve been an old-school raver for many years, my wife is too and she was playing and I happened to be in an all-gold outfit because whatever. It was an outdoor rave and a festival, and I was Gogo dancing and I was just doing my finger and doing my dance and stuff or whatever and someone took a video. And then someone else created a little avatar image of that. And then couple of years went by and I was like, well, I got some sticker mule deal in the, and I was like, why don’t I just make some gold band stickers?

And then I went to a party in another gold outfit and started handing them out. People were eating up like hot cakes. so there it was. So then it was like the gold man or the gold father and you know, I’m one of the older cats, you know, I’m 40, I’ll be 47 this year. So I’m an older generation, you know, raver at these festivals, but I still got the moves. 

Joanne: [00:26:08] Now more of a Sherpa now teaching the new generation, how it’s actually done.

Morayo: [00:26:13] Yeah.

Noah: [00:26:13] I threw a festival this summer here in Washington, a smaller festival, about 170 people but it’s really just about going out and having a good time and being in nature and dancing and being crazy and wearing funny outfits.

Joanne: [00:26:26] Good vibes all around, by the way, your festival you mentioned it in, at a webinar a couple of weeks ago and I, I wanna go next year. Cause it sounds so interesting. You told me about there was like singing balls. There’s a lot of like yoga happening. There are a lot of like holistic, therapeutic sessions going on.

Noah: [00:26:46] Look at PNW which stands for pacific northwest pnwfestivals.com that it’ll actually show you event recap and it’ll show some of the workshops we had and some of the DJs we had, we got some some really good DJs up here, too.

Joanne: [00:27:00] Hey, the pacific northwest is.

Noah: [00:27:04] pnwfestivals.com but I just do it for fun, right? Like, you know, there’s no money in throwing festivals.

I’ll tell you that right now there’s no real money in DJing either. Unless you’re like a touring DJ,

Morayo: [00:27:13] Can one request gold man stickers online?

Noah: [00:27:16] You know, here’s the thing I’ve had about 20 people ask me over messenger for gold stickers and I’ve mailed out 20 people, gold man stickers. You put in a request. gold man sticker. I will mail you a card handwritten with two gold man stickers on it.

Morayo: [00:27:31] Oh,

Noah: [00:27:32] Stickers

Morayo: [00:27:33] Well, count on it. It’s

Noah: [00:27:34] Forget about it. You know.

Morayo: [00:27:35] Forget about it.

Noah: [00:27:36] Like that.

Joanne: [00:27:38] There’s gonna be some kind of press and gold man exchange

Noah: [00:27:41] I have a gold t-shirt. I mean, I don’t know, I’m just having fun with it right now, but it’s, you know, I guess I could be pretty serious at business. So when I go out and use festivals, I’m a total wild man. So it’s, it’s, it’s my alter ego. Gold man’s my alter ego.

Morayo: [00:27:54] That’s alright.

Joanne: [00:27:55] That’s awesome. And so healthy, cuz like usually you’re teaching and being an agency owner. So just pivoting a little bit from that alter ego to more of your teacher personality. Why do you feel called to establish the agency x-ray course and teach like, who is your ideal student? So like this kind of where, where’s all that coming from.

Noah: [00:28:18] Yeah. You know, it’s funny. It came out of really nowhere. I mean, I was already tracking a lot of this information from my own agency and I spoke at Troy Jean Mavericks conference in February 2021, because I had shown a couple of people this just like on random calls and there’s a lot of interest on like, wow. Okay. You can actually see all this information about your agency that frankly, nobody else was seeing. And so I spoke at that event, I showed it and they, everybody was like, dude, you gotta teach this, make, create a course. And I said, all right. So I decided to do a course and do a presale for it.

I made my presale numbers, created it. It’s been actually way more successful than I could ever have hoped. And it’s really a course for agency owners who wants to see what is, and isn’t working in their agency either through their sales process or with their clients themselves or their projects or their lead generation, their marketing.

And it’s an air table base and training that teaches them here are all the things you should track and why, and here’s how to do the reporting. And here’s how to make the different decisions based on the data you get. So some of it’s really simple, like some of it’s like, okay, you list how all the people found me. And then you calculate how much it’s costing to do that type of lead generation. And they do a bunch of calculations around, which are cost for lead and cost for sale. That in itself, I don’t think a lot of agencies are doing like, I don’t think if I said to, Hey, agency X, can you tell me the top five ways people find you and your cost per lead and cost per sale for each of those five lead generation techniques?

I don’t think they could tell me that and actually, I say that with confidence because I do these webinars and talk to people and people like what percentage of business do you get from, you know, top five percentage of business and they actually don’t know. They actually couldn’t say, well, 68% of my business comes from Google and 82% of those people get on a first call with me and I write 47% of those people, a proposal and I close 23% of those. I wanna know that number explicitly, I wanna know exactly what I’m converting per lead generation source. That’s just one tiny little piece of what I like to see in my data.

Joanne: [00:30:27] Yeah. And I saw that live when we did our webinar and I saw how long it took for people to, and people were engaged in that webinar. It was a highly engaging webinar. Everyone was talking, but when it came to that question, people had to look that up. It’s not like they had it on their, their top of mind, which says a lot about you know, their lead generation tactics and information to this context, you know, not everyone has lead generation as their top metric, but it, I find it very interesting how it took a while for me, so.

Noah: [00:31:01] I mean, unless you’re storing it, like, unless you’re storing that data, I mean, you’re not gonna be able to look through emails and figure it out. It would take forever. But I just, I always ask. For a client, how’d you found me? And if they say the internet or Google, I’ll say, well, did you type something to Google went directly to my website?

Or did you type something in, went to an UpCity profile? I have to get very, very granular so I can know what I’m spending my money on marketing, is it actually making me money back?

Morayo: [00:31:26] Just information that helps agency owners make better business decisions. And, and that’s one of the, I guess this is the Penn ultimate question that I have for you, Mr. Noah Briton. Someone somewhere is not making the best decision for their business today. So what would you tell them to do before they go to bed tonight? What must they accomplish?

Noah: [00:31:49] All right. So they are making the best decisions for their business, what do they need to do? Okay. Well, they can ask for help, they can figure out where in their business, they’re not making the best decisions, and then find an expert to help them with that one little piece. So that’s why they have programs like WP elevation, right. Is to take people through and have ’em learn certain things. Maybe they’re designing websites that are not a very good designer. Okay. Well, outsource your design. Maybe hire GoWP and outsource your design to someone who actually can do this for a living. Maybe they’re trying to do everything like they’re just stretched completely thin and they just need to, again, outsource a part of their business to someone else. But I would say like focus on one thing at a time. I’ve literally seen hundreds and hundreds of agencies go through these various programs and get stuck and not have very good results. And it, a lot of times boils down to them.

Like them trying to do too much, them not following the coaching. Almost all these coaching problems will tell you, just do a couple of things at a time and they ignore that coaching and do a bunch of things, get overloaded and never actually finish anything.

So do a program the way it’s designed. That’s one of my mantras too, for either any kind of personal development I’ve done or any kind of masterminds or systems, do the process the way it was designed. You’re hiring them and paying them money for a reason, so you better freaking follow their process if you haphazard it, be like, why didn’t it work is cuz you’re being an asshole.

You know, you’re not doing what you should be doing. As far as these programs go. So yeah.

Morayo: [00:33:22] Great.

Joanne: [00:33:22] Putting your ego in front of the process,

Noah: [00:33:25] Yeah, ego, or it could be excuses. It could be excuses too. Like we, as humans have so many reasons for not doing things. One of my personal development programs, I went through talked about being unreasonable, meaning not having reasons. And I know it’s easy to say that, cause there are so many things that can cause us to not take action, but that’s why having a mentor, having a coach can be very helpful. They can see things you can’t see. They can see the ways you’re being stuck. That’s why we have counselors too. Right.

Joanne: [00:33:55] Yeah. That’s why we go to therapy.

Noah: [00:33:57] That’s why I go to therapy. Linda can see the things that I can’t see and the way I am mucking up my own system for my cuz of my own hangups or whatever.

Joanne: [00:34:06]  Yeah. And you also want to have a person who is unbiased. Doesn’t have a stake and honestly has your best interest in mind without caring to hurt you. And I say hurt you in air quotes as in, they will call you out if you are being unreasonable or if you’re being inconsistent, or if you’re being if you’re making all of these excuses to rationalize your way out of making the right decision for your business.

Noah: [00:34:39] That’s the best. I mean, you pay good money for that kind of stuff hopefully. Pay good money for somebody to tell you what you need to hear without fear of how it’s gonna land. Right. We gotta do that as best friends, as partners in our marriages. We sometimes, we really have to just say how we feel and say what’s going on without that fear of, oh, are they gonna reject me cuz I told them the truth.

Morayo: [00:34:59] Right. Question, Joanne, would you like to pose?

Joanne: [00:35:03] Yeah. I mean, that was also good. I would just, let’s just edit that note. Just our last question, and how are you creating happiness this week? And what is something that’s creating happiness for you?

Noah: [00:35:14] Oh, this is easy actually, you got me on the perfect week because next week I’m leaving for Disney World. We’re going to Disney World taking my daughter and my wife. We’re doing Disney world for the first time. So

Joanne: [00:35:24] Oh, my goodness.

Noah: [00:35:25] I’m planning all the excursions this week. So I’m creating happiness by showing videos to my nine-year-old and having her freak out about all the things we’re gonna do. And what’s creating happiness for me, that’s really rejuvenating too. I’m so looking forward to going to Disney World. And then right after that, we’re going right up to the recurring revenue retreat event in San Piper bay, the business retreat. So that’s gonna be great too. And I think I’m seeing Emily at that one.

Joanne: [00:35:51] Yeah, Emily, our COO will be there. So you guys are gonna have so much fun up there and both down there.

Noah: [00:35:59] Yeah. I don’t it’s Florida. I don’t know anything about Florida.

Joanne: [00:36:03] Florida has beautiful beaches. The weather is nice. Yeah.

Noah: [00:36:08] Got lots of COVID. It’s got a good bunch of good things.

Morayo: [00:36:10] It’s got a lot of crazy.

Noah: [00:36:12] Yeah. I mean, you talk about floor demand. I mean, it’s like floor demand is in Florida, so,

Morayo: [00:36:16] No relations to gold man. Can we just make sure we confirm that?

Noah: [00:36:20] Opposite.

Joanne: [00:36:21] I’m sure R 3 is gonna be super wonderful and it’s gonna be all great fives all around and I’m super, super happy, and excited for you guys to go to Disney. Are you gonna go, I really wanna go to the new star wars

Noah: [00:36:36] Yeah. I think you have to do a lotto for that one. Like you have to like, yeah, you get it up in the morning and then you have to put it in the phone and it like says, oh, you can go today or whatever. Anyway.

Joanne: [00:36:45] Well,

Noah: [00:36:46] We do it as much as we can. We’re planning on watching all the videos. So that’s definitely rejuvenating for me this week.

Joanne: [00:36:51] Wow. That’s wonderful. So happy to hear that.

Morayo: [00:36:54] Yeah, Noah, this has been an awesome conversation. And like, I didn’t even ask some of the questions just because we were going deeper in so many other areas and it was very instructional for me and super cool to have this time with you. Thank you.

Noah: [00:37:09] Sweet. I’m glad, I’m happy to chat anytime.

Morayo: [00:37:13] Don’t tell me that. I’ll call you all the time.

Joanne: [00:37:15] Yeah.

Morayo: [00:37:16] I know what you’re doing.

Noah: [00:37:18] So tell me more about this mankind project thing.

Joanne: [00:37:23] Oh, goodness. Yeah, it was wonderful having you on and having all of this conversation about data and how that, you know, connects to people’s morals and ethics. That was very interesting. I would love to maybe have a deeper conversation on that at another episode, but yeah, so, so grateful to have you join us today, and thank you so much to everyone who listened or watch.

If you saw us on YouTube, wherever you saw us, don’t forget to like and subscribe, and you can get this podcast and other episodes of the GoWP digital agency podcast, wherever you get your podcast. And just a quick reminder. This podcast was sponsored by GoWP and we want to help you become more profitable, whether it’s by listening to our podcast or joining in our weekly happiness hours, viewing informative webinars, hosted by our friends like Noah Britain and other members of the WordPress community.

And of course, by growing your team with our super-skilled developers, copywriters, designers, or project managers, so go to gowp.com and read and learn more about our services and schedule a call. So thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time.