Why Brands Need Digital Marketing - JC Hite

SPEAKER_01 0:04

This is the Beyond the Story Podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. JC Height, what's happening, man? What's up, my brother? All good. It's great to uh it's great to meet you. I meet a lot of people on these podcast interviews. Imagine that.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Yeah, I'm super super stoked. The world's so small. A mutual friend, Jeff, got us hooked together. I'm pumped, man. Excited.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

I am too. That's uh the world continues to get smaller and smaller. I think the internet makes it uh makes it smaller. So we were chatting for a little bit before we started the interview here uh about how you got started in a very interesting story, and you kind of reached this crossroads of do we lay on a beach or do we uh create jobs and and and build a brand? So I'm curious to know how you know how that entire thing uh came about. I know you said you spent some time in the agency world too. So let's back up, you know, prior to the agency world, how'd you wake up one day and say, you know what, I need to go to work for an agency. This is the type of work that I want to do. And then when did you wake up and go, you know what, uh, I don't like this whole agency world. There's a better way.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

You know, I my uh I was very blessed, was in real estate young financial advisor until I was 24 or so, and uh ended up uh building my real estate portfolio enough where didn't really need the day job anymore. So I left that and uh, you know, grew up in the church, grew up in a family that, you know, you want to do good in the world. So I decided to create this nonprofit, you know, try to make the story as short as possible. Sure. Wanted to create a nonprofit where we taught English because traveling throughout Latam and Africa, the the one of the biggest gaps is if I could teach you English and nothing else, you can go get a decent job. Like it's just, you know, you can work for a call center or whatever and have a little bit of stability. And so I wanted to teach English. And the idea was we were gonna charge really, really little, like a dollar a month to teach you English, but then we were gonna extract data and then sell that to big corporations, right? So I would create a class digitally, create a class on buying a vehicle, right? But then I would ask all these questions, extract that data, and go sell it to Ford, right? That was the idea. And we did well, we did okay, ended up meeting uh a really beautiful Latina through the experience that we I actually went to school with, uh, ended up moving to Latin America this whole time. This agency actually was was really interested in me coming on their team. Actually, they were actually wanting to hire me. And I was like, no, like, no, that's not gonna happen, not gonna happen, not gonna happen. Finally, there's an opportunity to come in uh with some equity. And I was like, all right, let's let's make it happen. And this agency, to be honest with you, I didn't know anything about digital marketing, I didn't know anything about this digital world. I'm an old school real estate guy, right? Like, no, nothing. Right. And jumped in, man. I freaking loved it, dude. Like I loved it so much. And working with small businesses, all this good stuff, it was just uh uh it was an adventure. And so, and uh they were an Inc. 500 company already, so they were growing fast. They were in like year, I think, three or four when I jumped on. I already had a couple hundred employees, and uh man, it was a great journey. I was there for about two years and before I took before I exited, and uh it was great. I mean, it was so much fun. Um, but ultimately, and we can go into this if you want, but ultimately my wife and I had to make the decision to leave. It wasn't wasn't the right fit for us uh long term, right? Why why not? So uh without without going too heavy, have you ever seen Wolf of Wolf of Wall Street? Yes, that was pretty much us. Like the ownership, the core ownership was uh, I mean, the the parties, the I mean, it was crazy. I mean, like drugs, alcohol. We'd bring in partners from like the US, I won't say from where, but they would come in and then we'd be like, okay, what do you want to do? And they would end up flying somewhere else to party for three days. I mean, it was just crazy. It was crazy, it was crazy. Like, I remember on our sales floor, which I was not on, like one year, uh, one year, one month, uh, we had to erase the board because Google was visiting us. We had to erase everything because the prize every week was the guy that sold the most got like strippers and like prostitutes. Like that was the that was the reward. It was it was just crazy, right? And for me, you know, growing up in the south in Arkansas, you know, I was like, okay, well, God hung out with sinners, not you know, not not not believers, so we're good. But I was two months away from having my first baby, and I was like, babe, like I would die if my daughter came into this place, or I ever saw, you know, like it just it came to be a conflict, right? Like, like it was and so my wife and I made the decision to leave. Yeah, yeah. And so we made the decision to leave, and it was the best thing we ever did, you know. And we decided uh shortly after we want to create an agency that was really built on faith and family, uh, which kind of goes along with the Latin culture even a little bit more, which is where we're at. And and we've been we've been super blessed, man. I mean, we are every single family, you know, every single child at height from day one that you start working here is on full scholarship. All of our kids go to private schools where they either normally French schools, German schools, or English, you know, American schools. Um, and we're really focused on how can we as an organization uh not only serve companies, but really like serve serve our people, right? And somebody called me the other day uh a capitalistic socialist, whatever that means, right? Like I want to, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm from you know the South, I want to like do my own thing, but we really care about our people. We want to give them as many benefits and uh opportunities as as humanly possible, right? And uh it's been amazing, dude. It's been freaking incredible.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

That's great. So I guess a great, a great description of what you're doing is is living out your faith through your business.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Very much so. Well, I would like to think I am, right? Like we don't know. And you know, this is I got on my board right here because our commitment, our commitment is to create a thousand jobs. Like that is what we're that is what we're honed in. If we could create a thousand jobs, we believe we can literally change uh the world. And so most of our agency is in Nicaragua. Nicaragua population, six million. If we can create a thousand stable jobs, like we're like, you know, we're we're one of the highest paying, you know, companies in the country, right? So my commitment on my board right here is to become a leader worthy of leading a thousand people, right? So, like, what would it look like if uh the the presidents of our country, today's inauguration day as we're filming this, right? Like, what if like 30 years ago they were like, I want to be someone worthy of actually leading these people? What does that look like? Well, that means that I need to focus on becoming a better dad and becoming a better husband or wife, or you know, just treating people like how do we actually hone and focus in on becoming better examples? And we do this with our kids, right? But we normally don't do it so much for for the rest of the world. Gosh, great concept.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

What if the world did this? It'd be a whole different place. It'd be very different. I think businesses set out to be like, you know, what what's in it for me? And, you know, how can I hire a couple peons to get the job done and uh move on with my day. But when you're actually focused on not being about yourself, about actually serving other people and knowing that based on your level of service, your ability to show up for these people, their life is for the trajectory of the the trajectory, I speak for a living, I promise, of their life is forever altered, which so is is is completely commendable. I I I love this. I love this idea of um you know, actually caring about people. Imagine that, like really caring about people and caring about their life and what not not just what they can contribute, because I think a lot of the hiring processes, you know, are they fit for the culture? Can they get the job done? Versus yours seems to be the you know, obviously those things are important. Are they fit in the culture? Can they get the job done? Can we teach them to get the job done? Can we shape and mold them into getting the job done? But how can we pour into their lives to make sure that they have the best overall experience uh j just by default of having this job? So first time ever hearing something like this, I you know, um Gary Vanderchak's a buddy of mine, I I met him about 11 years ago, and uh I watched him build this entire empire, and he truly is invested in his people. And he always says that you know, your employees don't work for you, you work for them. And uh he was at an event here a couple years ago and we ended up spending the day together, and and he said, you know, I'm I'm at a point, Sebastian, where I'm just I'm hiring people and I don't even know what they're gonna do yet. I just see their potential and I know that you know what? The potential's there, we're gonna freaking figure it all out. Um, and then an extension of that is putting together you know an experimental team to get out there and try things. Should we do events? Should we try this? Should we get this done? And I have a team of 20 that just figure shit out all day long. Like that's just their job. And uh I thought, wow, and like he doesn't have to do this. You don't have to have, you know, pre-COVID, I don't know how many, you know, what the agency world looks like now, but he was up to about a thousand employees, you know, from you know, just being him and his brother in a in a in a in a rented conference room inside another startup, you know, 11 years ago. So, you know, there there is a tremendous amount of uh of of of value in in looking at the micro and the macro of the people that you're bringing on your team and how you're actually pouring to their lives. So I love that, man. So I hats off to you on that. And uh and I encourage you to keep up, uh keep keep keep up the work because it's clear that what you're doing is is making a difference. So let's talk about the business for a second here. So when you decided to start this business, what was it about the agency world that you fell in love with? Was it the fact that people are like, I don't know what to do, I just need to get this done. And if they can get this done, then I'll do anything. And then being able to solve that equation and get people to go, wow, I can actually invest in something, get a return on it, and rinse and repeat that process. Walk me through what that looked like.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

You know, the agency, we uh we have a head of leadership development at height, and uh there's something that he says that I feel like, I mean, every time he says it, it annoys the crap out of me. But then when I look back at things, sometimes I'm like, maybe that's that, right? So he he he likes to look at things and some sometimes it's it's it's not that you chose it, but it chose you. Right. Right. And so, and I'm looking back and I'm like, I don't think I ever made the decision of like, I want to start a marketing agency or this is like where I want to go. It's almost like this like fell into my lap, you know, in some ways, right? Like, even whenever I, you know, joined this first organization, I said no to to joining their team four times before I said yes, right? Like I had no desire to whatsoever. And it I feel like kind of going back that it almost chose me. And it's been an I mean, it's been an incredible experience. We work with hundreds and hundreds of clients throughout the US. And it's so funny just tying those two subjects together, even ironically, that leadership director. I remember when we first hired him, we felt that one of our biggest uh hurdles that we were gonna have to jump over was developing leaders in a third world country, right? Like substantially, you got a thousand people, you get a lot of leadership there. And so we ended up hiring a guy who had a program called Inquebrantable or Unbreakable, and it was all he did was develop leaders, billionaires, presidents, like that's who he worked with, EO, YPO. And I remember we hired I offered him a job. I was like, dude, just come on and we're gonna be your training zone. And he was like, This sounds cool. We both like loved it. And I remember my wife the day before he started, she was like, You're paying him what? And I was like, Yeah, like what is he gonna do? I have no idea. What's his KPIs? I have no idea. What is what what is like what is winning look like? How are you gonna fire this? I have no like we knew nothing, right? Like nothing. Like, in fact, it turns out two months later, he told me that his wife was saying the exact same thing. You know, these my my wife is amazing because she's the opposite. She, you know, she grounds me in these things, and it's worked out beautifully, right? And so sometimes uh it just chooses us. And the marketing world is so incredible. You know, I look at it like I think there's a lot of changes coming, but I look at it like real estate. You know, 25 years ago, real estate, everyone was independent. You know, it's it's very few industries can you come into where uh there's not really any regulations. You don't have to have a specific type of educational background, and you can jump into and you make really good money, like really good money, you know, in it. But it takes a lot of work, takes a lot of effort, and you gotta kind of get through all the BS, you know, of the marketing world. Because anytime there's a low barrier, there's a lot of not fraud, but you know, there's a lot of yeah, marketers ruin everything.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yeah, there's that's no mystery. Yeah, for sure. Yep, that's exactly right. And if you don't believe me, just hop on Clubhouse.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Oh my gosh, yes. Uh Clubhouse is uh it's a it's been an exciting place, right? And you know, theory and actuality is very different, right? Like going, you know, in all these coaches out there teaching you how to grow your agency, right? But uh actually hiring employee number 100 is very it's a very different atmosphere, right? And even even people that are like Gary, you know, Gary, I would imagine has you know the same issues, well, 10x that we have, where it's like he cares a lot about people, right? At a thousand, that looks very different than when they were 10, right? Like because he really knew their kids and their families and all that, right? But you get to a hundred. We had a girl here at the office, the office just yesterday that I honestly had no idea what her name was. Never met her. I've never interviewed her. I didn't even know she worked for us, but I assume she did. I hope she did.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. No, it is very different. It it really is. And uh, and that's a priority for Gary. It always is because I never want to walk through the office and be like, who the hell's that? Yeah. I never want to be that because I'm I work for them. And I don't care if you just started today, you've been with me 10 years, whatever the case, I work for you. And part of that is being able to have that downtime of being able to have 10, 15 minutes with people, at least some point in time, to just get to know them as who they are, as a human being, and find out what the best way to be able to serve them and uh is. And uh and I think a lot of that's changing. And you know, Gary's talked about this for years, but you know, each company having a and and he does. He was the one of the first ones that put this into play, where the the the C level what actually had a caring officer. He calls him the CCO, it's the chief caring officer. And I said, Well, what's their job? Their job is to just their job is solely focused on giving a shit. That's that's it, above and beyond his exact words. That's all that they're focused with. It's not it's not customer service, customer service is defense. This is caring. This is legitimately caring and having that soft spit. Right, right. Uh, and I never stopped thinking about that. Um, um, so great, great, great, great strategy. So when it comes to the go go ahead. Sorry, you said look like you wanted to say something.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

There's an amazing book, I'll I'll point out. I don't know if you've read it. It's a short book. It's called The Dream Manager. And it's a it's around that same concept as well that Gary talks about in caring, just a different angle. But it's uh, this company is a cleaning company, and they went from, you know, this is cleaning toilets, right? Uneducated people, uh, cleaning toilets. Turnover is really high. And they went from like, I think it was 500% turnover, like literally, like job rotates every two months, to like 5% turnover, strictly based on how can I help my team fulfill their dreams. And like the book, like uh it's it's a beautiful book. Highly recommend it uh for anyone that's that's listening in terms of uh creating a better culture for your people for sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Yeah, 100%. If you were uh if you're wondering, holy God, what was that? I'm I'm on a plane or I'm on a train or I'm driving and I want to know what the name of it, not to worry. I'm gonna find a link to that book and I'm gonna include it in the show notes. So just go ahead and don't don't try to find it right now while you're driving. I'm gonna include that uh in the show notes there so you'll be able to check that out. Uh so the primary focus of the agency is all things digital. So we're looking at SEO, Facebook ads. Run me through that real quick.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

So we do pay-per-click, we do SEO uh websites, Facebook ads, CRM management. So the kind of the core top five digital uh marketing platforms, but we typically do it in a white label format. So we do we have really two different functions of our company. One is white labeled. So we work with agencies all throughout the US, Canada, Latin America, um, uh Europe, Australia, and we are their fulfillment, right? So our goal is to make it more affordable, more sustainable for agencies, right? Like hiring a hiring a hella good SEO guy in Miami is really expensive, right? And you got to build that portfolio to even be able to get them. Well, sure, we allow you to get uh hopefully that same level of expertise, but you're paying fractional, right? You're only paying for that specific product. Um and then the other thing we do is we're franchising, we're trying to franchise the digital marketing world. Again, very similar to real estate. 25 years ago, all realtors were independent. When's the last time you saw an independent realtor? It's really hard to compete, right? They started standardizing the process and they started being very aggressive in the market. And now, if you don't work for Keller Williams, if you don't work for you know one of these big fish, it's it's hard to compete, you know, in the market because they have so much leverage, you know, in terms of fighting.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Who's your ideal client?

SPEAKER_00 16:55

So our deal, I ideal client is probably agencies that are already proving themselves, they're already selling, you know, they're already growing a little bit. They're in that 20 to 50 client range, and they're going, okay, how do I now, everything's been more relational and very manual. Now, how do I start to systemize this to actually scale? Right. And that's that's who we uh man, we we crush it for them.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

How long does it take? How long does it take to start getting results when someone says, you know what, I need a digital strategy, I'm gonna hire your firm or I'm gonna hire the agency that utilizes you guys on the back end there. What is it, you know, what what what is a what's a budget a client would be looking at and a time frame to be able to say, okay, well, we've made an investment. We're starting to see um you know a return on that based on our efforts that we've done with this, with these campaigns.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

It's a good question. And it's a question that everyone, you know, everyone asks, you know, anytime you're shooting out some money, you want to know, okay, when am I, when am I gonna get this back, right? And so, you know, a lot of times we look at digital marketing as a if I'm good, I win, right? And if I lost, I wasn't very good or I wasn't good enough, right? The reality is this digital marketing is a competition, it's it's a game, right? And so when Tony Romo or Tom Brady or whoever else goes into a uh football game, it's about competing with that other team. In this moment, am I doing better than anyone else, right? And so, and people, we don't, we don't tend to always realize this. There's only 10 spots. You're doing STL, there's only 10 spots on page one. There's only three or four spots at the top of Google Ads, right? There's only so many impressions Facebook's willing to give, right? And so it's about a bidding strategy and how I'm doing compared to my to my competition, right? Now, my competition may be in a shoot, we got unlimited budget, we're gonna just be at the top. Okay, it's okay, it's more difficult to compete with these people, right? And so when I look at this, I'm I'm I'm really we have to look at the market. Who's our competition in that market? Am I going into a uh CrossFit gym or am I going to a gym where, you know, I don't know, Arnold Schwarzenegger was, and there's I don't know, crazy, right? Like there's definitely different levels of gyms or a planet fitness, right? I could be the strongest guy in a planet fitness, you know, in two weeks, right? But all of these are different, right? So how long does it take? You know, for us, what we like to do is we like to again look at it like a sport. We go in with a here's game plan A, here's what we expect to happen in those first 90, you know, 30, 60, 90 days. If we don't see that it's trending, you know, fairly decently, okay, how are we gonna pivot? All right, we started off with BBC, now we're switching to Facebook. Oh, now we're switching to SEO, so on and so forth. And at the flip side, if we're doing hella good, now we're compounding all of those as well, right? But you always gotta be looking at it as what is game plan A, plan B, and plan C. And you gotta know when to switch. You gotta know that constant optimization. And it's always, yeah, like the competition is always changing, right? New people are entering the market, new people decide to start bidding. Um, and and it gets, you know, it's it's now it's more complex than than than any other time, right? It's it's getting more and more uh competitive for sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

What what sets you aside from the rest of the other million digital agencies on the planet?

SPEAKER_00 19:59

So I think there's two things. Number one is how we treat our team by far, right? Like, like Gary's gonna say the exact same thing. Like, I hope I'm gonna treat my team the exact way I hope that they treat you, right? And so what does that mean? Like, that means that they're gonna freaking care about you. That means that if you want to have extra calls or you have really questions, they're gonna spend as much time as they possibly can to try to help you out. That means that if there's an issue and we effed up, we're gonna try to own it and we're gonna try to overcome it, right? And so I think one thing that really makes us different is this. And then functionally, because we have offices in Central America and we're able to, I mean, we hire the best of the best of the best, uh, we're able to have two or three people on an account versus other agencies can only have one, right? Like it's just it's just the way the world works today, right? And so we're able to have more hands on deck, more manual, you know, input than a lot of other agencies and still keep our costs where you know they feel comfortable, right? Um without having to do, you know, do do too much. And then of course, you know, we do have a big team, right? So we do have operations people and systems people and finance people and all these things that allow our engineers to focus on engineer, right? Our Facebook guys to focus on Facebook and really uh develop out and scale, right? And and yeah, we've we've again we've been very blessed. We've created uh a little over 80 jobs in three years, even through a pandemic. And uh uh and which is which is incredible. We went through 2020. Uh one of the greatest things that I can say we did as a company is that we didn't fire one person, we didn't cut one salary in 2020.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

And we uh which is which is nuts. And um we've done all that through referrals. You've we we we do it all through referrals and building relationships with different people.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Awesome. Yeah, I know that. I know that that seems to be the best way to be able to do business. It's how do you scale that though, is the question. How do you scale the referrals and uh and what's it called? How do you scale no like and trust? I've only found one other subcategory that is that it's people people that know, like, and trust me buy from me, and people that know them know like and trust uh uh uh buy buy from me too. So that's always the the million dollar question as things continue to evolve and unfold. Well, JC man, it's been great to hang out with you for a few minutes. I know you're a busy guy, so be able to carve out some time to chat about what you got going on. I'm so grateful for uh for for Jeff uh connecting us too, and I'm curious to learn more uh about what you got going on there. I love what the idea of this may justify a trip to Nicaragua.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Um there you go. It doesn't take much, though. Let's be honest. Like come on.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. Well, uh thanks thanks again for your time. Everybody listen here. Uh you want to uh connect with uh JC further, his all of his contact information is gonna be in the uh in the show notes. I encourage you to be able to do that. If you're not marketing your business, someone else is marketing their business, and that's your competition. So uh you can avoid it, pretend it doesn't exist and it's not there and that you don't need it, but eventually you'll you know there was a point in time we you know that we you absolutely needed a fax machine to do business. And uh, you know, these days not so much. Well, hey man, we'll have to have you back on the show. Come back soon and look me up if you make it to Miami, huh? All right, brother, we'll do. All right. Thanks, JC. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. I'll talk to you next time.