“And while I'm flawed and I have my issues and I'm, you know, I wouldn't want me to be any different. ” - Steven Lentz
Steven Lentz grew up in an Air force family, moving every 2 - 4 years across the US. He now lives in the Seattle area with his wife and 2 kids. He loves learning, building businesses, helping others, and being with his family.
Professionally, Steven has been an owner and started numerous businesses, as well as recently ending a +10 year career as a Firefighter/ EMT. Steven is a Platinum Level Business Coach with LPW and has his own digital marketing agency. Steven's coaching helps businesses to stop completing on price, grow their profits, and scale their businesses. His digital marketing agency helps Businesses become omnipresent on the internet and dominate organic rankings and the map pack. Steven also hosts his own podcast “Subject To Change” where he interviews business owners and entrepreneurs.
Click here to subscribe to The Sell My Business Podcast to save time and effort.
SELECTED LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE
https://stevenlentzcoaching.com
The Deep Wealth Sell My Business Podcast
Cockroach Startups: What You Need To Know To Succeed And Prosper
FREE Deep Wealth eBook on Why You Suck At Selling Your Business And What You Can Do About It (Today)
Book Your FREE Deep Wealth Strategy Call
Hey there, did you enjoy the latest episodes of The Deep Wealth Podcast? I have a small favor to ask, and it could mean big things for you.
Subscribe to The Deep Wealth Podcast and join us in changing the game for business owners like yourself. Subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform. By subscribing, you'll be ahead of the curve with insights from industry leaders, innovators, and disruptors shaping the business world. Whether you're commuting, at the gym, or unwinding, the Deep Wealth Podcast is your source for the next big idea that could take your business and health to new heights. Click on that subscribe button, stay inspired, and step into the future with us.
Also, have you considered leaving a review for The Deep Wealth Podcast? Your feedback fuels us to bring you top-notch guests and world-class content. Your insights are invaluable to us.
The Deep Wealth Podcast is proudly presented by our flagship 90-day Deep Wealth Mastery program.
Avoid the fatal mistake of assuming the skills that built your business are the same for your liquidity event. Up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Even worse, "successful" liquidity evens have business owners losing out on 50 to over 100% of the deal value.
Why take that risk?
Deep Wealth Mastery is here to boost your profits, enhance your business value, and arm you with strategies that guided our founders towards a 9-figure deal. From startup entrepreneurs to those edging towards billion-dollar revenue marks, our system is delivering real results.
Deep Wealth Mastery is a game-changer and the only program designed from our founders' 9-figure deal.
Our graduates have had nothing but praise:
"I wish I had access to Deep Wealth Mastery before my liquidity event as it would have been extremely helpful. Deep Wealth Mastery exceeded my expectations in terms of content and quality," shared Stacey C.
"The investment I made in the Deep Wealth program pales in comparison to the value I've created and will receive in the future," said Sanjay S.
"A company that is attractive to sell is also a great one to own. The Deep Wealth Mastery program gives me the best of all worlds," voiced William S.
Subscribe to The Deep Wealth Podcast now and weigh in with your review.
If you're ready to ignite your success journey with Deep Wealth Mastery, click here to email us to take the next step in securing your future.
[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth.
I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.
This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience.
When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life.
But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time and your hard earned money wasted.
Of the quote unquote "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it.
I should know. I said "no" to a seven-figure offer. And "yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event. Two years later, I said "yes" to a different buyer with a nine figure deal.
Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event?
Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing the skills that built your business are the same ones to sell it.
After all, how can you master something you've never done before?
Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and the 9-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the best deal instead of any deal.
At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience.
Steven Lentz grew up in an Air Force, family moving every two to four years across the US. He now lives in the Seattle area with his wife and two kids and loves learning, building businesses, helping others, and being with his family. Professionally Steven has been an owner and started numerous businesses as well as recently ending a 10-plus year career as a firefighter and EMT.
Steven is a Platinum Level Business Coach with the LPW and it has his own digital marketing agency. Steven's coaching helps businesses to stop competing on price, grow their profits and scale their businesses. His digital marketing agency helps businesses become omnipresent on the internet and dominate organic rankings and the map pack. Steven also hosts his own podcast, Subject To Change where he interviews business owners and entrepreneurs.
Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth.
I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.
This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience.
When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life.
But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time and your hard-earned money wasted.
Of the quote-unquote "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it.
I should know. I said "no" to a seven-figure offer. And "yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event. Two years later, I said "yes" to a different buyer with a nine-figure deal.
Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event?
Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing the skills that built your business are the same ones to sell it.
After all, how can you master something you've never done before?
Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and the 9-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the best deal instead of any deal.
At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience.
Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. And as usual, I have an exciting episode lined up for you. I have a rhetorical question for all your business owners out there, but I'm going to ask it anyways. What the heck, when it comes to your business, would you like some insider tips and strategies of how you can grow it, increase your revenues, increase your profits, and just have more of a profitable and thriving business?
And the answer is, of course, we would. Well, that's what we're going to be talking about today, but not from just anyone. We have a thought leader with us. He has experience all different walks of life. And I love that because it just makes the insight that we're going to get today so much better. Steven, welcome to the Deep Wealth Sell My Business Podcast.
It's a pleasure to have you with us. And before we kick things off, there's always a story behind the story. Steven, what's your story? What got you to where you are today?
[00:04:59] Steven Lentz: Oh man. Well, Jeffrey, thanks. First of all, thank you for having on the show and I'm excited to be here. And I mean, I know that we have about an hour. But, that's a big question. So we'll grab our seatbelts. We'll buckle in and I'll try to give you the abridged version. Cause it's, it's a bit quick.
So for everyone listening, story starts over 10 plus years ago, I was a full-time firefighter, and a couple of years into it, I got laid off and just shocked my system and my mentality of a job that I had that would be there for me forever. I had pension security, stability, and I got quickly placed in with another, the fire department was on with them for about a year and a half.
And again, Let go again and again, back on the streets. And I went from being single to being married to now I have a kid and I was like, I need to provide for my family. And so I started doing everything I could, and I realized that again with my psyche being shattered of a job that's going to provide for me, I got into fix and flip real estate with fortune builders and private investor.
I sold Kirby vacuums door to door for a hot minute. So life insurance over the phone, I took every internet course I could think of from every single grew. I did affiliate marketing and Facebook ads with Jerry Kramer. I did email with winter. V to YouTube ads and other marketing was Billie Jean. Like anyone you can think of, I've probably taken a course from them and learn from it.
And I own half a dozen white-label services. And in that period of time, the fire department got money again and said, hey, do you want your job back? I was like, well, of course, like I love scooping up grandma off the floor and putting her back in bed, cutting people out of cars. So, like why not? Like, this is wonderful.
And now I have two kids and I realized that firefighters don't live long after retirement. Like they would look 5, 10 years and then the majority of them are dead, and looking at my family and my values are changing. I said that's not where I want to be. And so, I started seriously looking into helping other people with marketing.
Cause I have now this long background of trying lots of different things and learning lots of knowledge and getting every ounce of education I could and having multiple businesses that didn't work and that experience. And I got into LPW for coaching experience and training for myself and digital marketing for clients, but working two days at a time and having four days off is hard.
Especially with kids and I come home and you know, I'm exhausted day two, getting family time, day three, I'm cleaning up the house, and day four I'm going back to work. So just this year now it's been a couple months now. I finally ended my career as a firefighter after 10 years, and I do digital marketing full-time.
[00:07:28] Jeffrey Feldberg: So it's quite the journey and like I had mentioned earlier at the start, you really have a lot of life experience in terms of just looking and being in different kinds of situations. So what was it about digital marketing? Because Steven, you could have chosen anything outside of the firefighting when you decided to literally hang up your hat or your helmet in this case, you could have chosen everything. So what was it about the whole digital transformation, digital marketing that had you say yes, this is the area that I'm going to go into?
[00:07:56] Steven Lentz: That's a great question. And I think there's two parts to it. One is that I want to help people. that's why I became a firefighter or like I like helping people and digital marketing lets me do that. But the thing that goes beyond that too, is that I had something that I had experienced then right from going back and forth and taking all these courses and doing all this training and having failed businesses.
And some that are now actually working is that all of them need marketing and all of the mistakes that I've made and things like, I can't find people. I can't get people in the door. It's a marketing mistake. And now I'm making money and I'm getting clients and I'm learning things. That's a marketing success.
And so that all just revolved around there and everything I could do. And I realized that marketing is the lifeblood of business. Yeah. If you need cash and you need money to make businesses work and survive and pay your employees and pay yourself and stuff. But when it comes into marketing, because you can have the best part in the world, but if you don't get the invitations out, no, one's going to show up.
[00:08:52] Jeffrey Feldberg: So you jump into marketing and you been really behind the scenes. You've been preparing with this and educating yourself in anything up to speed. And so now you're out there, you're working with business owners but businesses, in general, have the challenge of, hey, how do we get new clients? How do we get the word out there? I am the best-kept secret in the world in my industry. You name it. And I want to change that. And there's difficulties around that. Give us a sense of why do you think that's happening across the board.
Whereas business owners are we missing things that's causing this happen?
[00:09:25] Steven Lentz: Again, great questions. I think there's a lot of different factors that go into that. Marketing has changed. They used to be, you know, you have a billboard and a jingle and there's no one else that sells Coca-Cola. So if someone sees it, they buy it. And now the market is flooded. And people are savvy.
They do the research. Pre-internet I remember my dad would go to buy a car and he'd go to take 12 to 6, 12 months and go to 12 different dealerships and he'd interview them all and look at the cars. And I mean, it was a process and now we have Google, right? And you want to buy something and you go to Google and you look it up.
And then you go to the next website and the next one, and you do your research that way. And the buyer's journey hasn't changed. It's just evolved. And business owners don't understand how the language to use and the way to keep touching these clients to get them to buy from them. And we talked about this before we pushed record, but a huge problem I see is that when you go to a website and it doesn't matter, pick a niche, it doesn't matter.
But majority they're going to say their offer to whoever's on their site is call me. Schedule a consultation, free, whatever contact me. And I don't know about you, but when you see an unknown number, call your phone, do you answer?
[00:10:31] Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, for sure. We're not, I mean, with caller ID and all of that. Yeah. It just It's gets either reported as spam or just goes to voicemail. Yeah.
[00:10:39] Steven Lentz: And that's great. Cause you know that when you do want these free consultations, that's someone saying, hey, let me sell you. And when you get that spam call, that's all there is let me sell you. And we resist that with just about every fiber of our being. And so we need to change how we talk and we need to say, hey, here's information because that's what you want.
You're a child psychologist put out, you know, five things to do to get control of your kid. Or you're a dentist like top five things to take care of your teeth. And the three lookout signs. When you see a dentist who wants to do a root canal, like whatever it is, like offer information and value, get their contact info because when they see your site and they leave it, how do you ever market to them again?
You can't. And then the nurturing aspect of that, alright,. That drip campaign, it can be, postcards could be emailed. It doesn't really matter. But the point is that you touch them multiple times on a regular basis and you provide value because it's all they want. And you build that and be as nice as that. Right know, like, and trust business moves at the speed of relationships.
[00:11:37] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so let me ask you this. So you've put your general thesis out there of things have changed what works today. Isn't working tomorrow. Its expectations and technology is moving faster. All of those things are going on. So when you begin the process of working with a new client, Steven, I'm wondering what you're seeing across the board in terms of where our businesses in general, just missing the boat. And maybe what we can do from that is we can reverse engineer. Well, you know, Jeffrey, 90% of the businesses that I speak to, they're not doing ABC and D. And so we can say, okay, well, if you're not doing ABC and D then do A, B, C, and D, and you'll be better off for that.
What would that be in terms of, generally speaking, some of the things that you see?
[00:12:18] Steven Lentz: Yeah. And the terms of metaphor, I'd say they're either not fishing in the right pond or they're using the wrong bait. And what I say with that is like a health insurance person. Selling life insurance or health insurance, and they're running Facebook ads, that's not your audience, people are on Facebook for entertainment.
That's more of a pay-per-click Google search type of thing. So just even how you market makes a big difference. I'm not saying that Facebook doesn't work or Google pay-per-click or native ads or whatever you want to do doesn't work like they all work, but depending on what your business is, whether you're a B2B or B2C, it's very specific in how you do what you do.
And if you don't do it right, if you don't have the strategy right you're going to fail. But if you don't have the tactics of how you say it, you're also going to fail. And I think stats played a big part. So my focus is organic traffic when it comes to Facebook. And so if you're like me and you're like 97% of the population, you're going to skip the paid ads that are on top.
So you say, you know, Google shows me dog groomers and there'll be, you know, five ads. And then you'll most likely you'll scroll down. You'll pick the first one, two, or three that are organic listings are in the map pack. Because again, that psychology of, hey, we know that. Those ads is just like, hey, Google, I've paid you to put me here.
Google doesn't necessarily know like, or trust you. But they'll put you there because he paid him money. And everyone knows that. But the organic rankings, those Google says, hey, these are the most credible businesses that do what you do. And the location that you're looking for. There's a trust factor because Google, like every other platform, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or anyone else, they want to keep you on their platform.
And if Google gives you bad organic rankings, you're going to go to being or ducked up, go or someone else. right. So Google is incentivized to give you the best information as quickly as they can, aside from the ads, because we all understand, you know, you pay money, you get seen. And so the 97% of traffic, 95 goes to that.
I'm not saying that paid ads don't work because they do three to 5% of millions of traffic is still a large number. But for business owners to be seen and visible and like get that traffic, you want to be in that 97%, that's going there caveat to that, Jeffrey, have you ever heard of zero-click?
[00:14:17] Jeffrey Feldberg: Tell us about that zero click.
[00:14:19] Steven Lentz: So zero click is Google keeping you on Google. So I say, hey, Google, how old's the queen? Google's going to go Queens 98 years old or however old she is. I don't know, but Google's going to tell you. They're not going to make you go to a website to find out, and then they'll say, hey, do you want to know how old prince Harry is?
Do you want to know how old princess, whoever is and Google try to keep you on there? And so 50% roughly of traffic ends in a zero-click in that Google answers the question and you don't proceed any further to someone's website. right. So you're fighting Google because Google doesn't necessarily want to send you to someone else, but you're also finding the other organic traffic to be the most credible and reliable.
And that's where you have to focus.
[00:14:55] Jeffrey Feldberg: So Google is playing to win. They're playing for keeps. And you know, when I speak to business owners who at first when you mentioned SEO and traffic and organic, it was completely foreign, but now they're picking up on that. But one of the things that I often hear is, well, Jeffrey you know, SEO and organic growth, it takes so long and it's so expensive.
What would you say to that Steven? Maybe it is expensive and it does take some time to be able to build up a why is that the better way to go as opposed to, you know, continuing to do these paid ads and just going along that truck?
[00:15:29] Steven Lentz: Yeah. So there's a couple of things that I feel like every time I say it, answer a question like, oh, there was a couple of things thus. And I like pay again, paid ads are good for immediate visibility, 3 to 5% is still viable product. When you have millions of people looking for what you do, and it gets money in the door rapidly and SEO, I have a love, hate relationship with it.
On-site traditional SEO and I'm going to piss off a bunch of people here is expensive and inefficient. It is like there's no two ways about it. Content is king, but traditional SEO is very wasteful because it's you patting yourself on the back, trying to fool the Google algorithm, and then saying you're great.
What I do is I do content and I leverage Yahoo finance and routers and the AP industry insider. And Benzinga to say, hey, check out, Steven. He does this great because Google's like Amazon. Amazon doesn't make the jeans and the shoes, they curate it. And Google's the same. They don't make the content they curate.
So when I leverage other people's trust, I get better rankings and reviews. And I spend way less money doing it. And the results are immediate. It takes my team two to three weeks to make the content. It takes a week to get it distributed and take school 48 to 72 hours to rank it from distribution to ranking it's quick, but traditional SEO is very slow.
And it's a lot of work and it's just inefficient. So, last thing is leverage.
[00:16:52] Jeffrey Feldberg: Now you got us interested, a little bit of your secret sauce here, and you answered one of my questions was okay. If I'm busy as a business owner, everyone is just all full out working. You're saying, okay, no problem. Jeffrey, me, my team will come in. We'll write the content. We'll get it out there for you.
And 24 to 72 hours, you're already starting to rank. So how are you doing that so quickly without maybe disclosing all of your secret sauce or giving us a little bit of that, of what's being done differently than what I can do as a business owner or other kinds of digital marketing solutions that you're seeing out there?
[00:17:24] Steven Lentz: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of good companies that do various types of content and creation and distribution and visibility. And it works. What sets me apart with my company is that we use an AI to write a framework for us, cause that shaves off time. And then we have the team of writers come through and rewrite it for human standards because Google knows if it's written by a human or computer.
So we use the air framework. We use people for the actual content. From there, we buy distribution credits to all the different outlets that we go to. And then that's how we get it published.
[00:17:54] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. So you're using cutting-edge technology with the human touch at the end of that, you're putting it all together and then you're putting that out there. And in this case, we're talking about Google, Google takes that and then runs with that.
[00:18:08] Steven Lentz: Yeah.
[00:18:09] Jeffrey Feldberg: And So what's that landscape like? You know, now we just with Google and all the competition and the SEO, when you get placed, how hard is it to keep that top ranking placement what's going on behind the scenes with that?
[00:18:22] Steven Lentz: So content it's another tricky slope. Good questions. So content, this is the big difference between paid ads and content. Is that when you're done paying for paid ad, it's like, hey, I have this budget of $500 or a $1000 or 10 grand, or however much you spending on advertising when you're done paying it and you stop that ad it disappears.
And it's just as if you've never existed, to begin with, whereas content, even from the very first campaign that content is there forever. It's organic. It's on those websites. It's out there. It's being ranked. It's being looked at by the box and crawled through and it stays. So whether I have a client for one month or I have a client for seven years, every time we do a campaign it's out there and it's spreading that visibility to be, come on the president for all the different, you know, problems, solution, that kind of stuff.
And what we see is that google likes consistency. So it doesn't matter if you want to be super aggressive and do like I'm making content every single week to I'm doing content once a month to once every other month or five weeks, whatever it is, consistency is key because Google looks at it and says, hey, again, going back to, I want to keep you on Google.
Keep that framework in mind of Google, looking out for itself is that I want to send people to websites that are active and will provide credible content. And so Google doesn't want to send someone to a website. That's, you know, hasn't, you have a blog and you put a thousand articles on it and you never touch it again.
It goes and go, they abandoned it, like, why would I send someone to this? Because no, one's there. No one's home. I'm going to send them to this blog has got 50 articles, but they're posting one once every other month because I know that every Tuesday on the 14th, they're going to have content for these people.
So consistency is a huge aspect when it comes to credibility with Google.
[00:20:02] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Steven, what I'm hearing and I'm going to put this into two buckets. So I'm hearing on the one hand. From a technical side, you have consistency, probably the kinds of words that you're using, how it's being said, and how it's being read is really important. And let's put that into the technical bucket, but let's now go to the end user, the customer side of things.
So what's going on there because so much has changed in offline? You and I were talking about the pandemic and changes that's brought so, in the online world with digital transformation, from a consumer side of things. And whether it's B2B or B2C let's just put that all into one group.
And I'm sure some listeners are screaming. You can't do that. There are separate, but for the sake of this conversation, we'll put that under one umbrella. What's been changing now in terms of the buying patterns and the thinking and the end result of the strategies that now we need to incorporate to get the time and the attention of the ultimate client, because I imagine that's changed drastically from last month to last year, to the year before it's always changing. What's your take on that?
[00:21:07] Steven Lentz: I love it. So I'm going to give you and your audience actionable steps here that they can take for their own thing. So if you're doing pay-per-click ads or whatever it is, and you're thinking SEO, and you're saying, hey, you know, I would love to hire someone, but it's too expensive right now. I need to do something myself.
This is how you do it if you go to Google and you're going to buy a pair of jeans. You're not going to type in jeans in the search. You're going to type in size 34 black distressed bootcut jeans, very specific. And what I see most of the time, and if you use online tools for, you know, being like, oh, I need to compare SEO, keywords, and stuff.
They're going to say, hey, you should be best dentist LA. Well, no, right there, it goes on like, yeah, be best dentists. Like it's $7 per click. It's super high. It's really competitive. This is what you want. And the reality is that the amount of traffic searching best dentist LA is minuscule. The competition is huge because that's what everyone has led to believe is important.
But if I have a chipped tooth I'm not searching best dentist LA or best dentist Seattle, I'm searching emergency chip tooth repair in Kirkland, Washington available now. That's what I'm looking for. And I guarantee you that search is very low competition. And when you look at the competition over keywords, 70% of traffic, isn't that long tail, low competition searching.
That's where it's at. That's the money. So when you're making your pay-per-click ads and you're doing your SEO work and all the other stuff that goes into it, think to yourself, what problems do my clients have? What solutions do I offer? What areas can I target? And you mash it all together and you'll be specific.
So if I'm targeting Seattle, sure Seattle is a big city. I'm going to target, you know, Ballard and Magnolia and Fremont and Queen Anne. And I'm going to get super hyper-focused from the geographical location. Now, if you're online, you're doing e-comm or you're nationwide, or you want to do state, you can do that too.
Like environmentally friendly luxury, custom home building in Wisconsin. There's ways to go broader USA, you know, whatever it is, but going long is the sweet sauce. That's where you're gonna find it.
[00:23:16] Jeffrey Feldberg: So, what I'm hearing is we're going for the long tail, these minuscule very detailed, very specific kinds of terms and wording that we're using in whatever we're putting together or whatever we're putting out there. And so I would imagine that because it is long tail, it's going to take a little bit. To get that built up and to start get the traffic, unless we're using someone like yourself with your services, is that correct?
[00:23:40] Steven Lentz: Sure. And even with that it's I likened this type of marketing, like casting the net on the water. Like if you were old school fishermen the hamlets that did toss out to catch fish in each one of those would be a small net on that surface area. And as you continuously layer that visibility, you cover more and more surface area until you're finally catching a whole fish.
If you can, case study. So you look up any sort of variation of Western Canada, soundproofing or Vancouver, soundproofing, or soundproofing services in Canada, Western Canada like you're going to see hush city dominate the entire front page. It's going to be their listing, their listing, their listing, maybe a news article about them.
They're going to be in the map pack. And that is the visibility go for, and it takes time. Everything takes time. But as you continuously layer these types of, hey, I do this service and these areas, these problems solutions. Google's going to say when someone asks, hey, who does soundproofing for rock bands and my mom's garage, it wasn't like, oh, I know exactly what to send you to hush the city.
You've already established your credibility. You've established your trust. You established that you do this product and service.
[00:24:40] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. So it sounds like it's just a whole formulaic approach, at least from the digital transformation side to go from zero to hero, to start getting out there and to start getting the whole organic search. And what I like about this, even you haven't quite said it this way, but to me, it's just screaming off the page and for our listeners, when it's organic, You're not so dependent now on, I'm just going to call it social media.
In general, we've been talking a lot about Google, but it could be any of the social media platforms as well. And we've all heard the horror stories of you've had a thriving business and one of the social media platforms, and for reasons, unbeknownst to you, you get shut down and boom. In that moment there goes your business.
There goes your revenue, everything else, your clients. So when it sounds like when you're doing more of this organic type of growth, you're not a hundred percent protected, but you're more protected than you would be otherwise because you're not in someone's kingdom. So to speak that they can make new rules up, whatever benefits for them at your expense.
[00:25:43] Steven Lentz: That is a great, great observation. And I think is something I want to expand on. I have lost tons of ad accounts and banned from Facebook marketing and stuff like that because you're not in control. And they're like, I would run compliance, you know, solar power, affiliate offer, and their bot would be like, Hmm, I don't like the gray in this picture.
And after you get so many flags and a bands that ad account, and you've just not in control. And so when I see people like coaches or anyone who has a client base and they have groups on Facebook like that's great. Good for you. But you need to make like a mighty networks page. Get your own platform where you can still have all of the same stuff that you'd have in Facebook.
I keep getting people in your Facebook group and then funnel them to your mighty networks page or whatever platform you're using because you're not in control and Facebook and you're at their mercy and they can one day say, you know what, we're all done with us, or they can close their doors.
And finally, you know, still, in the hot water they've been boiling and for a long time with all the Congress stuff and whatever it is, but when you own your list and your viewership you are in control and even the same with Google ads like if you're spending money paying for pay-per-click ads, you were still at the mercy.
And that's the beauty of content is that they just curated. They just say, hey, this is appropriate. You're not paying to be on there. They're saying you have earned your spot.
[00:26:58] Jeffrey Feldberg: And when it comes to search engines, even we've been talking a lot about Google, just to put this into perspective. You have other search engines that are out there even have different browsers that we've seen lately a whole uptake in browsers that are protecting your privacy and a kind of off the beaten path somewhat.
But you get benefits with that. Where is that? Ad? Is it is Google still where, you know, 90 plus percent of searches are being done, or can you give us some stats on that, of what that looks like?
[00:27:27] Steven Lentz: Honestly, I don't know the exact stats for that one, but I do like, I do know Google is still the most used. And it's fine if you're like, you know what? I don't like Google. I don't like their policies. I don't like the practices. I want nothing to do with them. That's fine. You don't have to do anything with Google.
Creating content still works the same, whether you're using DuckDuckGo or Bing or anyone else. Because again, they're not creating content. They're just curating that content is your friend. And in the words of bill gates, content is king. And the buyer's journey of people looking for what you sell or what you do.
It takes 5 to 12 touch points. And the reason it does is because they're looking for information, they're looking for content. And there's, you can't go wrong with conduct.
[00:28:04] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so what I'm hearing you say then Steven is content it's really neutral. It doesn't matter which search engine is crawling it and putting it into its database. When you have consistent content that respects the rules of the game, whatever that is for the individual search engines, you're now organically getting yourself out there and you're not having to pay someone else's tax in terms of the paid advertising to do that.
And although you could be shut down, it's less likely to be shut down. I mean, I hear about these updates that happen from time to time with the different search engines and how they're changing, how they rank things, and that can affect you. But content, what you're saying is king. Content is king because it sounds like it's more of like a Switzerland out there where if you do the content, right, you're just for the most part, going to get the rankings across the different search engines and people are now going to start finding you when they type in their incredibly detailed wacky and weird questions.
If you do it right, you're going to be the one that's coming up there.
[00:29:02] Steven Lentz: Yep. And it's content. That's not just on your site. The updates and stuff, it's all the SEO people screaming in their beds at night because update Panda came through and said, oh, these backlinks don't work because they did all that on your site. It's all on-site stuff. When it comes to content, like sure.
Google says, you know, I don't like fox and stuff anymore. They shut Fox out. Well, I'm still distributing to 400 plus other news places. Like I don't care if Fox losses their site. I, if I lose my site and all I have is on-site stuff. Yeah. That's that really hurts. But when I put stuff on Yahoo, finance and Fox and CNN, and the daily Moss, like, I don't care if why if I was on it.
It's like, if you're a real estate investor and you have a multi-family apartment if you lose one door, one goes vacant, that hurts. You know, it's not pleasant, but I still have 70 other renters that are paying my bill. But if I have a single-family residence and I lose that tenant, that really hurts.
[00:29:53] Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure. And then, so I'm sure their listeners are saying, okay, you know, I came in against this whole organic growth and SEO but you're starting to sell me on the merits of it. And I'm starting to like what I'm hearing when you compare now the cost of doing the organic SEO and the organic growth relative to paid ads.
Can you give us any guidance of what that looks like? Is it the same, more or less? What, where does it coming at?
[00:30:19] Steven Lentz: It's tough because paid ads is a sliding scale. You say this is my budget. I'm going to spend $50 this month and $2,000 next month. And you can just change it up. Whereas content really has kind of a fixed cost. Like you will get X amount of content, just read the X amount places for X amount of dollars.
I'm like and if you don't want that much, you can find smells, who all are part of it. And you can purchase that, whereas ads, you have, and be like, I can spend $75 and 50 cents this month. It's a very fluid and it comes to getting cash back. Ads are definitely quicker. Like if you can make a high-converting ad that generates consistent cash flow for you, you've won.
It's a money printing press machine, and you just put money into it until you reach that level where you top off and you plateau, which is fine, all adds plateau, but it's definitely more maintenance, you're gonna spend time and you have to be on top of it because it's very easy to let ads run away from you as well.
And you can start chasing bad money, for people who do econ and you shouldn't be spending more than doubled the product, double the cost of your product. So if I'm selling someone for $37, I'm not going to spend more than $70 on this ad. I know that if I spend 70 and I'm not getting sales, it's a bad ad and I can just shut it down and just start something different.
But I changed the images where I changed the text, where, you know, whatever it is, you need to start modifying them. And that's one thing that Facebook has done really well. So if you are in a business that Facebook ads work for that business type, Facebook ads have a great thing called dynamic creative. They rolled it out a couple of years ago and you take like 7 or 8 or 10 different photos and you take 5 different headlines and 5 different body tacks and all that stuff.
And Google mixes it all together and sends out all these different various forms of it. And then what happens is you'll see which ones perform better for the clicks and all this other stuff. And then you can weed out the losers, take the winners, redo it, and you just keep refining it that way. And so it really takes the guesswork out of creating and putting that together.
Whereas feeling like Google or something, they don't really have that. And you're making each one individually like it's much more intensive of making sure you do it right. And there's a greater error for failure.
[00:32:21] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so far, this was out there as we're hearing Steven, just talk about his wizardry and what's going on behind the scenes. I think all the more reason I was saying. Probably best to have someone like Steven, do this, than trying to learn this myself. We're trying to do this on my own, where I can have someone who that's all they're going to be focusing on.
They're the subject matter expert. They'll figure this out. Perhaps I can help with the content. Obviously, I'm going to be doing the conversions. I'm going to be doing the service itself by getting some behind-the-scenes help too, to be able to get that out there. And so Steven, so what I heard you say was when it comes to time a paid ad when it's done right. In a shorter period of time, has the potential to earn more revenue for you. But in the long run, there's more risk that's associated with that. And the ad that's working today may not work tomorrow, or the sky is gray instead of blue and you get shut down and now you've lost that.
Whereas, it sounds like the organic growth with the SEO and the other tools that you're talking about. It's slow and steady wins the race and that over time you'll build up that momentum where things just start to come on in. Am I getting that right? Or is there something you'd like to add to that?
[00:33:27] Steven Lentz: Hands down. Absolutely right. Paid ads, quick reward, potentially, and very high risk. You can lose their accounts and get banned. You can lose access. You can lose a lot of money. And if you run losing ads and you turn them off, you're still left with nothing. If you put out content and doesn't convert yet, and it hasn't done much for you, it's still there.
You haven't lost it. And in the case of Hush city, do you think that Hush City needs to run advertisements on pay-per-click, google search or Bing or DuckDuck or any of those other ones for soundproofing services in Canada? No. They've spent all the money they need to spend for ongoing traffic indefinitely at this point.
[00:34:03] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so there's the ROI. They've spent the time they've waited, they've put the money in, and now they're getting their ROI because it's accumulated over time. And it just builds up that momentum and momentum is a very powerful thing. Once you get that going.
[00:34:18] Steven Lentz: Yeah, absolutely. And Google there's, it's kind of like a, like a Whirlpool effect so you have brand visibility at the top. So sites mentioning you places that you show up online. And the more that you have of that, the more Google was going to like, and trust you when you have traffic and Google tracks everything.
So if someone goes to a website, I use I'm an iPhone user. I'm one of the, roughly 30% of the population. You have Google analytics school says, hey, if someone's going here, this is valuable. Google tracks, how long they're on your page? Are they going to various links?
Are they just bouncing straight off? Is it a bot? Is it just like running through the page? Google tracks that if you have a brick-and-mortar store, we all have GPS on our phones, Google tracks that people are going and visiting your place of business, Google logs and says, hey, this is valuable. Do you have a phone number associated with your business?
Obviously, Google's tracking your phone number. It goes to social media. Do you have brand dimensions? Are people talking about you? Do you have a presence? Yes or no? Okay. How much will attract that? And then it goes to online searches, are people comparing, you know, you versus your competition or you in this area or you and your service and products, and the more that you have of any of these Google, it's a self-feeding cycle and Google says, okay, this person's credible. This person is trustworthy. I can send people this for these services. And that's why I focus solely on that very first part of brand visibility and recognition within other platforms mentioning clients products and services because traffic follows visibility.
[00:35:45] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so the zillion dollar question for you, Steven, and a little bit of a crystal ball effect here given where we are today with a whole digital transformation and where things are any insights as to where we're heading in the next one to three years.
[00:36:00] Steven Lentz: Oh, that is the crystal ball question. I don't know if you're big into cryptocurrency and, you know, NFTs and web 3.0, but change is here. And internet is, web three is going to be like the advent of the internet to when there was an about. I think the blockchain and all this stuff, and people are like, oh, you know, NFTs are silly and like, yeah, currently, currently they're very silly.
And 99%, I'm going to be worthless, probably very rapidly, but the utility that comes behind blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens and all this other stuff is going to be revolutionary. And there is definitely no crystal ball of what's going to happen, but that something is going to happen and that everything is going to change.
[00:36:48] Jeffrey Feldberg: There you have it folks hearing it from and his whole magical insight of what's going on and what you should be preparing for. You know, Steven, we can just go down a whole rabbit hole and we have of all these different areas and I'm just bursting with all these questions that I want to go down and ask and get your insights.
We're starting to bump up against some time. So we're going to need to start to wrap this up and it's at this point that let's do a little bit of a thought experiment and it's one of my favorite questions. And I want you to think about the movie Back to the Future and in the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time.
So Steven imagine now it's tomorrow morning, you look outside your window, and there it is. The DeLorean car is there and the door is open waiting for you to hop on in. So you now hop into the car and you can go to any point in your life, Steven, as a young child or a teenager, adult, whatever the case would be.
What are you telling your younger self in terms of life lessons or, hey, do this, or don't do that, or life wisdom? What would that sound like for you?
[00:37:54] Steven Lentz: Buy Bitcoin. I remember when it was 25 cents like just buy it and buy it all. Now it's, you know, it's a great question. And I feel like it's one full of risk and the risk being regret. And that, you know, when I lost my jobs, I had two options and one was to play the victim or one was doing forward.
And I said I'm not going to be a victim. And looking back and being like, oh, could I, you know, what would I tell myself? What would I do? It doesn't really matter because my successes and all of my failures have created who I am today and to avoid loss or pain would make me a different person. And while I'm flawed and I have my issues and I'm, you know, I wouldn't want me to be any different.
[00:38:43] Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that. And you know what? It's interesting Steven you're right in there with some great minds, great minds think alike because one of the two most popular responses I get you've nailed them both, hey, buy Bitcoin back when it was 25 cents. Uh, although you'd have to tell your younger self specifically what year and even a month to do that.
The other response is I don't think I want to change anything because if I change anything, then I wouldn't be where I am today and who I am. And those experiences made me the best of who I am. So if I took that away, then perhaps I wouldn't be as good as a person I am or going through what I'm going through and you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
So I hear you loud and clear, and I think some really powerful takeaways for our audience. Well, Steven, let me ask you this. And we're going to put this in the show notes, for our listeners, what would be the best place if they'd like to reach you online? Where can they go for that?
[00:39:37] Steven Lentz: Yeah, so I'm redoing my site. So I'm going to give you my funnel site. https://ocelottraffic.clientcabin.com.
[00:39:48] Jeffrey Feldberg: And for our listeners, you don't even have to remember that. Just come to the website and in the show notes, it'll be a point and click and we'll take you there.
Well, Steven, as we wrap up this episode, a heartfelt thank you for taking part of your day and spending it with us here on the Deep Wealth Podcast.
And as always, please stay healthy and safe.
[00:40:04] Steven Lentz: Jeffrey, thank you so much for having me and everyone listening thanks for having me. I appreciate it. That was fun.
[00:40:08] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.
[00:40:11] Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions.
[00:40:21] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity
[00:40:26] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.
[00:40:32] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix.
[00:40:48] Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately.
[00:41:10] Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended.
[00:41:21] Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.
[00:41:34] Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even.
[00:41:52] Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.
It's five-star, A-plus.
[00:42:19] Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.
Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever.
[00:42:38] Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?
Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.
If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode of the Sell My Business podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Reviews help me reach new listeners, grow the show and continue to create content that you'll enjoy.
As we close out this episode, a heartfelt thank you for your time. And as always, please stay healthy and safe.
Click here to book your free exploratory strategy session.
Enjoy the interview!