434 – Holistic websites?: Tom interviews Joey Donovan Guido

Episode 434 – Joey Donovan Guido
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode four hundred and thirty four of Screw the commute podcast. I'm here with Joey Donovan Guido. And I can assure you I can just triple check without even looking that this guy's got some coffee with him. He is a coffee nut and and the lady here is website and all the things about him and he's going to help us learn about website. And he's got a very interesting concept of holistic website design. And I've never called it that, but I'm a big proponent of what he's preaching there. So we'll bring him on in a minute. I hope he didn't miss Episode 433. Is there how websites get hacked and what to do about it? And it's going to be anonymous. It was a non technical discussion. So you, as the principal or website owner, need to know about this stuff. Even if you can't implement the solutions, at least you're not in the dark, which most website owners are. So I don't want you to be that way. All right. So how would you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute? Well, if the shows helped you out at all in your business or given your ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Visit screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says send voicemail, click on it, talk into your phone or computer and tell me how the shows helped you. And hey, put your website in there, too, so you can get a big shout out in your own voice on a future episode of Screw the Commute.

[00:01:55] And while you're over there, you want to pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app. And you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road because you're going to have a lot of extra time on your hands because you're going to download my Free Automation eBook. Just one of the tips in this book has saved me. And this is not hype. We estimated at about seven and a half million keystrokes definitely saved me from getting carpal tunnel. And it has all kinds of automation tips on how I've handled up to one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and 40000 customers without pulling my hair out. So check that out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Now I know everybody's freaking out because of the pandemic, but I'm not and my students aren't because we know how to sell from home. I've been preaching this for ages. I've been selling on the commercial internet for twenty seven years since it started in 1994. I've been preaching and teaching for 23 years this stuff. But nowadays everybody's saying, oh, I guess you can work from home now. Yeah, I think I think you finally got it because of a worldwide pandemic, but you can sell from home. So twenty three years ago I've been teaching this, but thirteen years ago I.

[00:03:15] I started the only licensed dedicated Internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world it's certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia. If you can hear my voice and you can speak English, you can attend this school because it's good quality distance learning, unlike the four year traditional colleges now that just teach you how to protest and then you get out and you're competing for a job at Starbucks. So so, no, these are the hard core skills that have created my lifestyle business and for many, many of my students around the world. So check that out at IMTCVA.org. And a little later, I'll tell you how you can get a full scholarship to the school. If you're in my high end mentor program, which you can gift to somebody and I'll tell you what, it'd be the best legacy gift you could ever give to your kids, your nephews, nieces, grandchildren, because then just just a selfish thing about it. They won't they'll have their own money and they won't be coming living in your basement. So check that out.

[00:04:19] Let's get to the main event. Joey Donovan Guido is the owner of Cuppa SEO Web Design and the author of the book A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing. So in addition to running his web design firm, he offers consulting and speaking services based on the principles found in his book. Joey, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:04:43] I am ready for the commute. Yes, sir.

[00:04:46] Put your coffee down and talk to us. How'd you get so crazy about coffee, man?

[00:04:52] Oh, man, that started. You know, I was never a coffee drinker. My parents drank Maxwell House, which when I had it once or twice, literally just tasted like dirt to me. And then when we were pregnant with our first kid, Max, we. Of business in New York, which I can tell you about a little bit, we would go to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast every day and I started drinking coffee and now I won't drink Dunkin Donuts. I'm really a coffee snob, but that kind of put me on my way. And now it's just like a daily habit.

[00:05:25] And I love it. And I say, I never drank coffee till I was, I don't know, 63 years old. And I did like coffee, ice cream. And then I made the mistake one time, you know, I'm a do it yourself or not tinker with all kinds of stuff. So somebody said, oh, you can make your own coffee, ice cream. So they said, you know, you put coffee and the vanilla ice cream, mix it up and there's coffee, ice cream. Well, what they neglected to tell me was that you're supposed to use instant coffee. So. So McStuffins messed. My mouth is all black. It tastes like crap. So. So now if you plaster it full of sugar and cream and everything else so it doesn't resemble coffee anymore, I still drink it. And you even name your company over this, right?

[00:06:15] Cuppa SEO.

[00:06:27] Instead of cup. It could have been a cup of Joe as you know, with your name.

[00:06:31] Yeah, well a cup of Joe was taken and I'm really glad it was because cuppa seo web design obviously makes a lot more sense. Exactly. And it's got some keywords in it which is helpful as well, where a cup of Joe I think would have confused people.

[00:06:44] Well, a lot of people know on here Joey, that I own the domain name killyourwebdesigner.com. You know, the Web people I have on here are reputable, but there's there's way more that aren't that are tell people what they should watch for if they are. I mean, I preach, you know, do it yourself. But but if they are going to hire somebody, what should they be looking for?

[00:07:10] Yeah, that's a wonderful question. And I would agree with you, I've had probably eight or nine out of ten clients that to me, they're kind of licking their wounds when they when they show up. And what often happens is that they've paid a lot of money, ten thousand plus dollars for a website and are not seeing results and are not seeing their expectations met. So a couple of things to look out for. One is, if somebody starts giving you some baloney about, hey, we're going to put you on retainer, like for instance, to help keep your SEO fresh. And, you know, and they don't really give you any details. And you're paying five hundred one thousand fifteen hundred dollars a month and you're not seeing any more traffic, you're not seeing any more conversion, any more leads come through, that that can be a real red flag. And what I usually recommend to people who just, you know, who are considering. Upping their website, freshening their website or doing a new website, it's really asking certain questions like, OK, are you doing so? What are you doing for me? What are you optimizing? And if they just kind of go, that's trouble. You know, there are I can tell you quickly, if you like, the six areas that you want to look out for.

[00:08:26] Yeah, absolutely. I want to get into it. But when I get calls like that, too, all the time, I want to Tom. I want to redo my website. So that's what they say. But what I and probably you hear is that, OK, you're going to take a crappy non-performing websites with no visitors and no sales and turn it into another crappy non-performing website with no visitors and no sales. That just looks different.

[00:08:51] Right. And I really don't think that's the client's motives. No, they just they don't know any better. People repeating the same, banging their head against the Wall Syndrome, right? Yeah. So I agree with you. So that's what

[00:09:06] Happens. So tell us about this holistic approach you have.

[00:09:10] Yes. So the holistic approach and I'll kind of wrap the the portion into it. A holistic approach to online marketing is really gaining an understanding not just of your website, but of your website, your blog and your social media and how to integrate what's called search engine optimization, user experience and something called conversion or website conversion, kind of into each of those three areas, your website, your blog and your social. Too often people look at their online marketing kind of like in a silo or a padded room.

[00:09:43] You know, they belong after they're done.

[00:09:46] Yeah. And there's really not a not an understanding of how these things work all all together. And I liken it to like when you go to the doctor for your annual physical and if you went to the doctor and said, hey, doc, I'm ready for my physical. And he said, OK, let's check your left ear and your right foot. And you're like, Huh? You know, you might be like, man, I'm feeling depressed, I got back pain. Can we talk about the rest of me? And this is often what happens in online marketing. Like people say, I need help with social media. And they don't realize their website is their hub for their social media and they're not blogging, they're not producing fresh content, they're sharing other people's content, and then they're wondering, well, why isn't anybody going to my Web site?

[00:10:31] Yeah, yeah, they yeah, I won't even take a client anymore that comes in, tells me that they want a certain thing fixed, like one thing that is stuck in their mind that they think is wrong. And then I look at their stuff and there's like forty four things wrong. So I won't do it because they're going to be upset. I'm going to take their money for nothing. I don't believe in that. And you don't either. So yeah, you got to look at the whole picture.

[00:10:59] Yeah. Heck you want to win an extra job. You've got some time.

[00:11:02] No.

[00:11:03] And you hit the nail on the head. Brother, let me tell you, because it's exactly you know, what we do is when someone comes and says, I need social media or whatever they say, I'm like, you know, let's take a step back. And we take that holistic view. We look at what's going on, the website, what's going on. Do you have a blog now? I don't have a blog. What are you doing on social? Well, nothing. And it's really trying to get an understanding of really what what's wrong, what's lacking and what are your goals and what's the best way to sustainably fix things.

[00:11:38] Well, you know, it's not really true. They're doing nothing on social media because they they probably got a Facebook business page seven years ago and made one post, though that's technically not nothing.

[00:11:54] True. True. And then there's the flip side, where people are sharing too much or or non relevant information.

[00:12:02] They've had one, like in the past millennia.

[00:12:05] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:07] So so you said there was six steps that you go through.

[00:12:11] Yeah. So there's six steps to optimizing a website. What we can do a real high level. And what I what I love about this. We've been doing this for four years. My business is almost 10 years old now. We've got a team of 10 that used to be just me. And I'll tell you more about that when we talk about the journey. You know, but really the goal here is to make it holistic and to make it sustainable and really as hands off as possible. You don't want to have to finagle every other day with your website, and you shouldn't have to pay somebody else to do that as either. I've developed a process where you don't have to do that, where you'll still see good consistent results with your website. And what that really means is we want to optimize six major areas of your website. The first thing we do is we create a custom keyword report based on input from you. So we really understand who you are, what you do, what your goals are and what keywords that you think people use. And then we do research and some clients, you know, they really have no idea what keywords are needed and some really have a good bead on it. But once we have that keyword report, we optimize something called your title tag, which is that grey bar right at the very top of Chrome or Safari or heavens. If you use a Microsoft product like Bing, it's still up at the top. So there's a

[00:13:33] Title beginners are out there. What are they laughing? Don't worry about it. Just don't do

[00:13:40] Well. It's it's yeah. It's a step above the old Internet Explorer, which was a disaster zone. So you want to optimize those title tags. And then the next thing you don't want to optimize every single image logo on your website with good keywords, your headlines. You're on page copy or also referred to as your content. Then you've also got your any text links that you've got, like, hey, contact us now. Mm hmm. Could easily turn into a little bit of an optimization phraseology like, hey, contact Capezio Webdesign now. Right. We've got we've got webdesign in there and it doesn't look spammy. Right. And then the sixth area is what's called your meadow description, which is basically 160 characters or less, not more, you get dinged for that sometimes, and that's when you do a search query and you'll look for ice cream, you know, in New Jersey or whatever. And you get those results with, like one sentence under the business name. And that's your description.

[00:14:52] Yeah, so those are all basic things that everybody should be doing, but, you know, that's one of the first things. Well, the first episode of this podcast is all by keyword research, because it's like I said, people get what I call the CSI crappy, stupid idea, and then they get all the domain names and they get, you know, GoDaddy talks have been to get in every domain name that never was invented and their bills. Six hundred dollars before they get out of there. And then and then they hear crickets chirping because they didn't do all this other stuff you tell them about. Yeah.

[00:15:28] Yeah. And this is where that red flag comes up that you mentioned earlier is that a lot of web design firms say they do SEO and they don't. They do. They do a plugin, you know, the Yoast SEO plugin. And they're like, there you go. Go ahead and optimize your website, buddy.

[00:15:43] Yeah. And they don't even even if they put the plug in in which I'm not against, but they don't even use it because the first thing I look at when somebody says, hey, check out my website, I go up and hover over the the title tag and it's got the same exact thing in every page. And so that's like the kiss of death right there. Google says, why should we give you a high ranking if every page is identical?

[00:16:06] Right. Or it says home.

[00:16:08] Oh, yeah. About right. Right. Yeah, people are searching. Yeah. I think I'll sit down and search her home page today. Yeah. So now I know you've cut your teeth with copywriting, which listeners here have heard me many times say that's the number one skill in my entire 44 years in business. So tell us about that.

[00:16:32] Yeah. So back in the day when when I still lived in New York, it's very interesting how it happened. I was working in corporate America,

[00:16:43] The dreaded jobs.

[00:16:45] Yeah. And one day my wife said to me, and this was my wife's idea, I think you need to do something different. And you're a really good writer. I was a screenwriter, actually. Almost got my the last screenplay I wrote almost got picked up by United Artists back in 2004.

[00:17:04] Oh, good. I want to tell you my idea for a show and you can steal it if you want because I'll never do it, but OK. Yeah, here it is. So I'm going to be like a Batman type. I'm going to have gotten rich on the Internet, but I'm going to be a rich Batman type and and then I'm going to throw a big contests for virus writers and hackers with a million dollar prize. And then I'm going to get them all in one place and then kill them all. That's the basic idea. Can you run with that?

[00:17:36] Yeah. Should be a hit with everybody.

[00:17:39] Be so happy. Except for all the virus maker, the virus.

[00:17:47] That's funny.

[00:17:47] All right. So all right.

[00:17:50] Yeah. So so you know, so if my wife presents me, she shows me this this this kind of mailer. This is back in the day when people actually looked at their mailings, you know. Yeah. And it was this, it was for books. And there was this book called The Well Said Writer. And I think it's still around. I'm blanking on the gentleman's name, but the name of the book is The Well-fed Writer. And it told you step by step how to become a freelance writer. And I hemmed and hawed and I resisted and I didn't buy the book. And one night we were on a date down the village in New York and my wife grabbed my arm and said, we're going into Barnes and Noble right now. She bought me the book and the rest is history. Within four weeks, I had my first client. Within a year I had a thriving freelance business where I was making 80 grand a year. This is back in 2004. That was pretty good for me and had two great clients and when they went away. Things got scary, and so that's kind of what led me to move to Wisconsin and take another corporate job. But it really, you know, writing that content, it was a blast. Yeah.

[00:19:05] Yeah, I mean, I kind of like the I'm not a fanatic about it and, you know, I kind of write like I talk. But the copywriting is a different skill, though. I mean, there's certain psychological things you you put into it, but if you're smooth with it, people just flock to you.

[00:19:23] Yeah. Yeah. And that's a really great point because it is a different animal, I think. I think those who can write content as if they were speaking to somebody but write it in a way so it doesn't sound right. Bad so to

[00:19:37] Speak. Well, yeah. I mean, it depends on your market too. Right. Right. I've had people in busy markets that you can just abuse the heck out of everybody and they buy everything you got as long as it's super cheap. But yeah. But more sophisticated markets, you can still use the psychological triggers. In fact, that's one of the most famous books ever is Triggers by Joe Sugarman. It's like a thousand dollars to find a used copy nowadays. Wow. Yeah. Gosh. But yeah, it's it's an important skill and it works in the stuff you're talking about on your website about your content.

[00:20:09] Yeah. Yeah. Really. You bring up a good point depending on who you market is and that's understanding who your clientele is. And I've developed these things. I call them three magic questions and it sounds a little a little that geeky. But it's true there there are three questions you can ask yourself no matter who your market is, no matter whether you're writing a blog post, a scientific white paper or just talking to a customer about buying an iPhone or a pair of shoes. And the three questions are, what is it? What is it do? And how does it help me? Mm hmm. And if you frame. If you frame your content around those questions, you're always making it about the reader, not about you. And hey, I won an award for this this this design on this product or this website, because, you know, it really nobody cares. People want to know, can you fix my pain? You go to a dental site and the first thing you see is a pop up, which that's a whole conversation, pop ups and why they're bad. But you see a pop up hey down there, top 10 tips on how to brush your teeth. No, I'm in pain. My mouth hurts. I want to make an appointment. I don't want to know how to brush my teeth.

[00:21:27] Well, a couple of things here. So you said it's a little dead geeky, but it seems to me I read something about daddy brain or something. You heard something? What is that?

[00:21:37] Yes. Or Daddy Brain is is a blog. I started when I moved out here. I taken a job at Land's End. This is after the penguin scribe, which was my content writing my copywriting business started to tank. And we moved out here 800 miles away from everybody. And I was isolated. I was depressed. I was way guilt ridden by leaving my then two year old and one month old home with my wife every day. I was a very involved dad in New York when I had my first business. And one day this guy, Jeff Sawyer, he was my leader. He said, Why don't you write a blog about this stuff? So I started Daddy brain really to kind of just talk about what was going on for me. And as you probably know, you know, guys are supposed to like, you know, football, football, sex and, you know, punching people out and being angry. Right. It's like, hey, we have actual other emotions. Yeah, we do. So this kind of dived into that. And all of a sudden I wound up with listeners and guests from all around the world, which was like mind boggling to me. And I was one of the top dad bloggers for quite a long time.

[00:22:48] Wow, that's really impressive. Yeah, because I've never put enough effort into the blogs because they came around, I think in 2004 or something like that when they first started. And I was, you know, like I said, I was doing very well with search engine optimization at that point, but I just couldn't stand the routine of cranking out content all the time. And then, of course, they had ridiculous things. Back in the day. The content spinners would take an article and make it a stupid look at Article Times 100 of those things. But but I started transitioning to page traffic rather than really hitting the blog real hard. But but you mentioned something, right? A minute ago. You said pop ups are bad, you know, so so this might be a place where we can banter a little bit because I had great luck with pop up boxes. I mean, enormous amounts of money and subscribers from pop up boxes. So, for instance, I had a pop up box on the homepage of Antion.com, which is old enough that it precedes the Wayback Machine. That's how long I've been around. And and before I put the pop up on, I was doing a hundred and seventy five, one hundred and seventy five subscribers a week.

[00:24:09] And as soon as I put the pop up box on, I went to four hundred subscribers a week. So, so that made me very happy. And then before the browsers started stopping them, I was using an exit pop up on a it's kind of a little bit funny in that I was using I forget what they were called in the day, the type of X that pop up. But but I was selling wedding books and eulogy books, ebooks. And so if they would leave without buying, I'd say, hey, I don't know how much it should cost. I'm not even married. Pick your price. So whatever I got out of it was better than nothing because it was you know, I paid, you know, with Google AdWords at the time to get them there. So if they gave me ten bucks instead of 17, great, I'm ahead of the game. So so I've had great luck with them. So what's your take on them? You sounded like you didn't like them.

[00:25:08] Yeah, well, it's I don't have a personal vendetta against pop ups. It's it's something and this is a really good, good thing to bring up because there's exceptions to every rule. And really, when you're building a website, when you're working on your website and thinking about your conversion methodology, the biggest question is not not as not as what the Tom or Joey say. The question is what works for us?

[00:25:31] Yeah, and it's like said, market dependent, too, like for that particular market, for people desperate to get a wedding speech book or to do the eulogy. It worked for years beautifully, you know, but in certain markets, I wouldn't do it, you know, so but but they're not all bad, in other words.

[00:25:49] Oh, yeah. They're not all bad. It's really there's more of misuse than anything else. So so and the reason why I usually have a discussion, I don't want to say challenge clients because clients have real reasons for wanting things. And so the question is, well, why do you want that? Is this the best way to accomplish it? Now, if you were my client, you said, hey, I more than doubled my subscriptions with this. I don't want to get rid of it. I'd say. All right. Well, let's talk about methodology. How long does it take before that pop up shows up? Where does it show up? Is it pop is is it sliding out from the side or is it popping up in the middle? Is it interrupting the flow of what somebody might be in? Do we make it pop up when somebody goes past the first page or past the first 30 seconds or so? But to answer your question, why pop ups don't always work is because you get to a website there for five seconds. You've probably got sliders going on if somebody has done a bad job with the website, they've got all this information, multiple calls to action or just you're just trying to get the lay of the land and all of a sudden a pop up comes up and interrupts you. And the reason why I refrain from doing pop ups, unless they're necessary, like in your case, is because from a user experience standpoint, they can become noise. And in the in the effort to try and convert somebody, you could also turn them off. And really what we're looking at here is that user experience, right. And if something pops up and it's got value. And it's spot on what your visitors are going to want anyway. Well, one, you're going to have more success with it. To my first question is, well, why isn't that a static call to action on the home page? Why does it have to pop up? Why can't that be a button with a sentence?

[00:27:40] Right, when it all boils down to testing it right, test what works best for your market. That's that's basically because people ask me all the time, Tom is this headline better than this other one? And my my smart aleck answer is, you may rub me if you like, but I am not a genie in a lamp. So. So, yeah. I don't know. Your market is going to tell you what worked as long as you put the tools in that you can legitimately test it. And most people with regard to copywriting, they, they, you know, get get half a half bake sales process done and then pat themselves on the back and never look at it again and decide, oh, it didn't work or it worked because they didn't test it. And the guy that taught me this from his beginning sales letter, the best effort he had ever had from his beginning sales letter to his final version after testing sold 19 times as much. You know, and people just don't want to take the time to do that. But that's critical to find out what works in your market.

[00:28:44] That is a wonderful point. And it's, you know, just talking with you a little bit like I'm more of a big believer for the pop up in your case, because, again, I would want to talk about is that the best solution? Is there a way to test it, like you said, to see if we get even more conversion out of it?

[00:29:01] Yeah, right. Yeah. If you got something work and you try to beat that right. It's called the control. And then if if what you do and some of the you can't trust what you think you cannot trust like another guy I knew he had this wonderful testimonial that was down near the bottom of his sales letter. Really nice results based testimonial, not over the top, but really nice. So he thought, you know, if I move this to the top near the top of the sales ladder, I'll probably do better. Results went down by thirty five percent. Yet he comes back and who knows why? Nobody knows why for sure, but that's what it was. And so he moved it back and the results went back up. Thirty five percent.

[00:29:44] That's amazing. Well, I'm glad they only went down 35 percent. To me, that breaks that rule about making it about them, not you. Right. And really like my thinking, again, this is just my speculation, because if nuts were talking to the actual users, when it's at the bottom of the page, I've already seen what you had to offer. I've already decided. Yeah, this is probably something that can ease my pain, but I might be that kind of connoisseur of a Web page where I've got to read everything right. So I keep going and now I get to the bottom and I see. Oh yeah. And you've already shown me they can help me. They haven't made it all about them, oh, look at this, just look at somebody's happy with them and hopefully he's got a call to action, right. Right, right. With that testimonial. And then that's that last selling piece or that last relationship building. Right. Because we don't look at it as sales. That's at least how I look at it. If we can build the relationship, someone's going to hire us. Yeah.

[00:30:38] And kind of a spin off. I'm not sure if you mean this or not, but from the holistic approach, you know, how did they get to the Web page in the first place? Right. So many of mine come from they've been on a webinar with me for two hours here and all about the thing. So so they're ready to check out by the time they hit the right the page. So this is what to me, what holistic is. You've got to look at everything around the situation. Yes. Pick it apart one piece at a time.

[00:31:08] Right. Because then you're in a void. And if you're in a void, it's like. It's like it's like saying your back hurts. Right. And then. Well, is it your mattress? Is that what you're doing with your exercise or lack of exercise? You buy your shoes. Did you did you slip a disk? I mean, really trying to determine something by just looking at one slice is impossible, you might guess. Right. But I guess right. When you can do some testing, do some some global view of something and really start to understand it more.

[00:31:39] Yeah. Back to your doctors. Examples like when you walk in, they said, here, take this pill and see. I got a you know, they're reading Ink magazine and they just leave the room and say, take this. I don't care what's wrong with you. So so, you know, is Olivia still is Olivia there? Could she come on on?

[00:31:58] Who, my cat?

[00:31:59] Yeah, I had a cat named Olivia, but I wasn't sure if she's still alive.

[00:32:04] Yeah, no, she actually she passed a couple of years ago. She's funny. She's with us in spirit a couple

[00:32:11] Of weeks ago

[00:32:13] Now. A couple of years ago.

[00:32:14] Ok, is she still on your website? I know it's I have actually had a funeral for my one of my German shepherds and has been seeing like fourteen thousand times. Oh, that's where I built his casket and everything. But yeah, it's hard to even think about it without getting choked up.

[00:32:34] Yeah. Yeah. That, that's I'm not a pet person and we got we got to live here for my wife, but she wound up being more for me I think in the long run.

[00:32:44] I love the bumper sticker says who rescued who.

[00:32:47] I know. But and by the way, thank you for pointing out that I do need to update that website. And that's that's one of the one of the the upsides of being busy.

[00:32:56] Yes, exactly right. Oh, yeah. It's the cobbler. Yeah, there's yeah. I pick my stuff apart all the time. I must have 70 different websites call and say, oh wow, what's going on here. Tom. This is looks like your baby picture here. Oh yeah.

[00:33:12] But you know something, something you brought up earlier when you were talking about blogging, when we were talking about daddy brain. Something important to share I think, is that blogging is a really great way to get fresh content onto your site. If you have the time and this is something I talk about in the book, something I used to do a lot of workshops on, because people get intimidated by blogging. But if, you know, if you can get yourself to blog once a week, set aside an hour of time, just like you would to listen to a podcast, to talk with a client and write something relevant for your audience. That can do wonders in upping what's called your authority on Google and other search engines like Bing, which we don't talk about. And what that means is when you appear, when you up your authority, you're basically upping your visibility. You're upping your search engine optimization prowess for lack of a better word. But what we're saying in layman's terms is that you will show up higher in search results just because you're blogging.

[00:34:16] Yeah, and there's a thing called blocking which blog to book. So they write their book in the form of individual blog posts and then put them together and edit it later. So it doesn't seem so daunting to sit down and write a book.

[00:34:30] Man, did you read my book because that's I talk about that and

[00:34:35] I'm glad it will, of course. But but and I was just thinking about Bing to being the one good thing about Bing is if you're you're trying to learn paid traffic, it's cheaper and you can mess up more. And if somebody does it, still people that will see your ads. So. Right. So it's be worthwhile to practice on because if you jump into Google ads, it's more complicated every day. Seems like.

[00:35:03] Yeah. So it can be.

[00:35:05] So tell us about your book.

[00:35:08] Yeah, so that's what I did, but you just mentioned I knew I wanted to write a book and I was overwhelmed by the thought of sitting down and writing it from page one to page 400, which is how long it is. So I did exactly what you mentioned. I started blogging on different topics, and over time I had accrued quite a lot of blog posts, which I took and I pulled into a Google doc. Organize them and started to say, you're kind of aware of my holes that I need to fill, what needs to be expounded upon to give really good details. And early on, I decided with the book to kind of demystify. SEO user experience and conversion and share with people how to do it yourself, right? And when I did that, I realized, you know, I might be helping my competition be better. I might be improving their their ability. And, you know, I was like, you know what, that's OK, because if I improve on a competitors ability to help a client. I helped that client get better service and I realized, like, you know what? Who do you really want to hire? The guy that wrote the book or the guy that read the book? Right. So I kind of let go of worrying about kind of giving away the secrets, because you know what? There are people out there who have a budget of 25 bucks. They're just getting started. And I wanted them to be able to take the book and really be able to dive in and do it if they needed to. So please interrupt me if you've got questions as we go along.

[00:36:43] No, I'm just saying, yeah, that's the way I think so many people are short sighted. They want to guard everything they got with machine guns and then, you know, but having it in a book, you know, shows your depth of knowledge way more than just an advertisement on your Web site or being listed. Even if you do show up high, it's still not is the depth of knowledge and credibility, isn't there, if you had a book. So, yeah. So we we love books. I've got I think 25 books and and I had one that was a thousand and forty two pages. Wow. Yeah. It was that it dominated the industry for ten years and then it got so big. By the time I try to edit one part, the other part would be obsolete. Oh my gosh. So I started breaking it down into smaller ebooks. Now I'm in fact I do e-book mastermind's all the time teaching people how to create quality books really fast. But what I don't want them to think when I use that term blocking, there's software that will do well, do this. But trust me, folks, you can't just take a piece of software and suck in 50 or 100 blog posts. And I think it's going to look like a book. I'm sure you spent an inordinate amount of time organizing all the stuff you had written and getting rid of duplicates. Oh, man.

[00:38:06] Oh, yeah, yeah, yes. So so I want to actually touch upon that how long it took. But I do want to answer your question. But what about what the book is about. Yeah, that's OK. So the book, you know, was really, you know, holistic guide to online marketing. Really the idea behind the book was to answer the questions, what is SEO, what is user experience? What is conversion? Really give people a good understanding of what it is and why it's important, and then how do I apply these methodologies to my website, my blog and my social media? So people aren't wasting money and time and spinning their wheels year after year if their business stays afloat, wondering what the hell am I doing wrong? Mm hmm. So kind of back to how long it took to do. I was kind of chugging along pretty good. And then my wife got sick. Yeah. With fibromyalgia. And she really had diabetes. Pretty bad struggles with blood sugar. And I almost I almost just tossed working on the book. And a buddy of mine, John Wubin, who is in the content marketing arena, he said, don't you dare quit on your book. You finish that book. But it was hard trying to restructure my entire business so I could take care of my two boys, my wife, my clients and myself, right, because if I fall apart, who the hell is going to take care of anything and then kind of get that book done as well?

[00:39:47] Well, let me take a sidebar here and say, I thought I heard that you almost died yet from a disease,

[00:39:56] Yet Crohn's disease back in 1998.

[00:39:59] It was pretty hard after you got married. Yup. Oh, wow.

[00:40:04] Yeah, I was scary. I went from one hundred and sixty pounds, which I've been since I was like 14 down to like 115, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't work. And it was in the end it almost killed me. But it was one of the greatest gifts the universe ever gave me.

[00:40:21] And why do you say that?

[00:40:23] Well, it woke me up. They woke me up to realizing what I was doing wrong and what paths I could have been on that I was resisting. And I really, truly feel like the universe and my body said no more. You got to wake up and get on your path.

[00:40:43] So how long did that go on?

[00:40:47] I was really sick probably for about six months. Wow. Wow. Quit quit a job. I had a business with my dad and a partner was a wholesale clothing business which far removed from content writing, right? Yeah. Or in this case, webdesign. What I do now, quit that job, started meditating, going to acupuncture and just really doing a lot of self care. I think that's really underrated as business owners, where there's this push right to work more, get more clients, grow your business. And that's what I love about what you do, what you teach, because it's saying, hey, there is another way guys and girls that, you know have to kill yourself to do this.

[00:41:32] Yeah, I mean, I got the two German shepherds looking at me, said, hey, get ready. Let's go play ball. Jesus, we've already played twice today. Oh, goodness. So, well, we got to take a brief sponsor break. When we come back, we're going to ask Joey. Well, I'd like to know about his name because his last name is Guido. And it seems to me there's some negative connotation to that. People use that as a bad thing sometimes. I don't want to hear the derivation of that because, of course, my name is a mistake with my dad coming from Antion Syria. So they couldn't read it at Ellis Island. So I ended up, you know, Antion instead of Antion folks. About twenty three years ago, I kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head and that guys like me were charging 50 or 100 grand up front to teach you what they knew. And then I knew a lot of these people. You give them that money upfront, they you'd never see him again. So I said, yeah, it's not fair. It's too risky for small business. So I, I just charged an entry fee and then I tied my success to your success. So for me to get my fifty thousand you have to net two hundred thousand. Well people really love this. And seventeen hundred students in twenty five years later it's still going strong. It's the longest running, most unique, most successful Internet and digital marketing mentor program ever. And I have no trouble saying that because I beg people to put their program up against my line for line and the too chicken to do it. Because I'm a fanatic. I work evenings, weekends, holidays that take care of customers. And I just love every second I could to quit years ago. Some of the ways that unique is the is the financial aspect of it.

[00:43:12] I don't get big money unless you make big money and then you're not stuck with me forever. Then you have an immersion weekend. And this is state of mind where you actually live in the house with me. And we have a TV studio and the other building and we shoot marketing videos for you and nothing we do is group what's all one on one, because if I put you in with an advance person, you're lost. And if I put if you're advance and I put you in a beginner, then you're bored. So no, that's not efficient and doesn't doesn't help anybody out. So myself and my entire staff work with you one on one will take over your your screen, show you where to click. And it's extremely comprehensive on actual skills that you need to have email marketing, shopping carts, blogging, chat boards. I mean, every other thing they invent, all the social media stuff. And then you also get a scholarship to my school that you can either use yourself or gift to somebody else. We have had people gifted to their their relatives that are then making money within a few months, even before graduating. So very powerful stuff. And you can check out the mentor program at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. Get in touch with me. I was glad to tell you about what I feel that your future could be on line.

[00:44:34] All right. Let's get back to Joey. Joey Guido's here with us and he's got Cuppa SEO Web Design Company, and he's the author of the book The Holistic Guide to Online Marketing. So what's a typical day look like for you, Joey? And tell us about your last name.

[00:44:50] Yeah, so we'll start with the last name. So so when my great grandparents came over from Italy, I think it was back in the late 20s, they decided to Americanize the name. So it was was Guido. That is the correct pronunciation, which is a derivative of Gwadar, which is to drive. So I've never found out for sure. But I assume that back in the day somebody in my lineage was a horse and buggy driver. Oh, I can hardly say either that or, you know, sometimes my wife might say that maybe it's was driving somebody crazy because I tend to do that once in a while, usually talking about marketing and SEO. So it got changed to GUYTO way back in the day. And what's really funny is I had an Uncle Steve and Uncle Steve loved Guido and he would take a petition to us like family gatherings, like, look, we got to go back to. We know what is this whole Guiteau thing, and it was just his past, but I still think about him and he was just a real character, but all my love to him. But I still say guyto. Oh, because,

[00:45:54] Oh, I didn't know that I was. Yeah I do. Is pronouncing it OK. But isn't calling somebody a Guido a negative thing.

[00:46:03] Yes. Yes. Yeah. But it all started way back in the day with Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta. Right. Right, right. So I'm from New York even though I live in Madison, Wisconsin now. And there was a thing, you know, the guys, it's kind of like the change in the slicked back hair and kind of the, you know, the Adidas jumpsuits and whatever. And they would they were called Guido's.

[00:46:27] So I know if somebody would call him a guider, they wouldn't know.

[00:46:31] Right. But I kind of grew up during the heyday of this era in, you know, in Ozone Park, Queens. So calling me a Guido kind of just. Yeah, it was yeah. It was not the best.

[00:46:44] It was a typical day look like for you.

[00:46:46] So a typical day. It's very interesting. I think the universe every day for my business, I get up. I usually I worked from home for years. And actually have a space now, which is like five, ten minutes from my house, and I did that mostly because I started working with million, a couple of billion dollar clients, and it just kind of felt weird meeting in coffee shops. So that's kind of an important note to make. You know, sometimes, you know, working from home was great, but that transition to a space worked for me because of that. And look at that like a year and a half later, there's a pandemic. It's like, oh, my God, I had no clue kids at home doing virtual school. So I usually get in around 10:00. I have the the pleasure of working with a team of ten talented people who do most of the work. I kind of oversee everything. I am here to field questions or if there's an issue or something that needs, you know,

[00:47:50] So they're all working locally. It's not remote.

[00:47:54] They are they are all local. But they're working remotely. They're all contract. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. But they don't they don't come into the office. It's just me here. And so I work typically for about four or five hours. And then I'm home by usually around three o'clock Central Standard Time for a late lunch and for me, you know, part of my daily grind, so to speak, is more of the cooking and the cleaning and stuff because my wife is not well. So I really had to kind of balance my day. But I'll go home, I'll eat, I'll take a walk with my boys or we'll go shoot some hoops or something, and then I'll try and transition into into cooking. So kind of a caveat to this also, as every Monday is work on my business days and I've got two businesses because I've got Cuppa SEO and then I've got JoeyDonovanGuido.com, which is the speaking and consulting. And those are days I'll take to kind of, you know, work on becoming a guest on a podcast. I'm working. Maybe I need to go update my biography

[00:49:01] Or something like that. Yeah. The memory of Olivia. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on and telling everybody how they can get hold of you.

[00:49:09] Oh, absolutely. So if you want to get in touch, just go to JoeyDonovanGuido.com. That's whether you want to get in touch about webdesign speaking, engagement consulting or you just want to buy a book.

[00:49:25] They can buy that at your site, OK?

[00:49:27] Yeah. Yeah. Lead them to the Amazon link to buy it right from there.

[00:49:30] Ok, great. Well, thanks so much for coming on and telling us about your holistic approach. And we had a good discussion about pop ups and not pop ups. And you can't you can't say yes or no to anything. You really need to test for your market and think it through. And I think this episode has really hit them with that, that you can't just pick one thing and try to fix it and expect success.

[00:49:55] Yeah. Hey, man, thanks for having me on the show. I had a blast and I had a lot of laughs the most. I've laughed in a really long time, so. Oh, good.

[00:50:03] Appreciate it. Good. I stimulated your daddy brain.

[00:50:07] You did.

[00:50:09] All right, everybody. We'll catch you on the next episode. See ya later.

Join my distance learning school: https://www.IMTCVA.org
Or join the mentor program PLUS get a FREE Scholarship to the School: https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com