494 – Can driving a forklift help your web design?: Tom interviews Jared Ledbetter

Episode 494 – Jared Ledbetter
[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 ninety four. Screw the Commute podcast. We're here at part of Vetrepreneur Month with Jared Ledbetter. He's the founder and owner of Carbon Digital U.S., and he's a proud United States Marine Corps veteran, and he's worked supply and logistics for over 15 years during the Marine Corps and as a government contractor and as a federal employee. But he started his own business, and we're going to hear about that today. So do you like me to send you big affiliate commissions? Well, if you're in my affiliate program, I can send you anywhere from eight dollars and fifty cents that you can blow at Starbucks to anywhere upwards of $5000 for speaking engagements and everything in between. If you're interested in that. Email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com and we'll give you the details on that. Now, pick up a copy of our automation e-book. This e-book is allowed me to handle up to one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and sixty five thousand customers without pulling my hair out. It's all the tips and tricks I use to automate my business so I can take care of customers faster. And and just one of the tips in the book we actually estimated it a couple of years ago saved me seven and a half million keystrokes.

[00:01:42] Just one of the tips in this book. So and almost everything is super cheap or free, so it's just right in front of your face. I don't want you fighting with your computer when you should be selling stuff. All right, so pick that up at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And while you're at it, 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. All right. In my school, the Internet Marketing Training Center in Virginia, it's a distance learning school, so you don't have to be in Virginia, but we're doing a pilot program to help persons with physical disabilities get trained in a highly in-demand skill, which is internet and digital marketing. And then I'm going to get them legitimately hired and good jobs and or start their own business. And it's a pilot program because we're going to put five people through it and then I'm going to prove the concept. And then I took a grant writing course. I'm going to go for big money to help loads and loads of people with disabilities, so. So that's what we're working on now, and we'd love to have your help. We've got to go fund me campaign going. You go to IMTCVA.org/disabilities, then go to the top of the page.

[00:03:01] Click on the Go Fund Me campaign. You'll see some of the people in the program. Two of them are blind. So if you want to get inspired or depressed, depending on how you look at it, these people are accomplishing things that I don't know how they're doing it. Tell you the truth. They're just very inspiring. And any little bit you can kick in on the Go Fund Me campaign is appreciated. We're going to use some of the money to hire persons with disabilities to help run the program. So check it out.

[00:03:29] All right, let's bring on the main event. Jared Ledbetter is here. He started out with WordPress after WooCommerce came on the scene and he eventually migrated to Shopify. And, you know, back in the early days, there weren't any easy web builder options for WordPress like there are today. So, he had to learn HTML, which I want nothing to do with. I probably know just a tiny little fraction. Once in a blue moon, I need to know something about it. But guys like him have minds like steel traps and then he got hooked on the whole concept and he went into search engine optimization and conversion rate optimization and web development, testing and all kinds of stuff. So let's bring him on. Jared, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:04:21] Can you do this? Yeah.

[00:04:23] All right, man. So how did you come up with the name carbon digital?

[00:04:29] Honestly, I was just looking for a way to sound awesome, and Brandon has see right through like technology, they use a lot of science or astronomical type of terms. So I just basically looked up. An entire list of all words that fell under that bracket was like, Hmm, how do I make this work?

[00:04:48] Well, yeah, it sounds. Definitely sounds cool. But it's funny as you have this cute caricature of yourself, which I have one, too. I don't use it all the time, but it's really it's really fun looking thing. Now I got a really critical deep question to ask you. How has your forklift operator licensed skills helped you in web development?

[00:05:14] You see when you code on the actual steering wheel? No, not with.

[00:05:22] Yeah. So I saw that. Do you actually have to have a license to drive a forklift because you says your license to drive a forklift forklift?

[00:05:32] Yeah, you actually have to have a license, depending on the organization, sometimes the organization can certify you, and sometimes it has to be something more like social level. But yeah, I've been certified by multiple organizations, including some from the DOD and some private sector as well.

[00:05:50] I'll bet you, there's a lot of little companies that just say, Screw that, just drive the thing and hurry up.

[00:05:56] Yeah. No, you didn't hit nobody.

[00:05:58] You're good. Yeah. And I also understand you speak Japanese.

[00:06:05] I do, yeah, my wife's Japanese and I spent five years over there, and so, yeah, I'm not fluent. I'm more like an advanced tourist, right? Like, I know where the best. I know how to order my food. I know how to navigate the landscape and whatnot. But outside of that, you know, drinking talk, as is my my forte, really?

[00:06:30] Well, if she gets mad at you, does she cuss you out in Japanese or anything?

[00:06:35] Yeah, no, no. There's Japanese happening in my house every day throughout the night. Yeah. And it's not just the cussing. Like, my kids also speak Japanese, too. So, oh, I am not getting away from it,

[00:06:48] That's for sure. Well, you got a colorful past there and and we always as part of entrepreneurs and thank you for your service, and we just couldn't be doing the things we could do. And I was supposed to do an interview with a veteran the day that those 13 people got killed in Afghanistan. And both of us said, Man, we just can't do it today. Just cannot get all upbeat and all happy and just yuck it around on that day. So we postponed it. But yeah, that craziness going over there, I'll tell you. So anyway, let's get back to your main expertise with Carbon Digital. So what would you say? The biggest mistakes are that people make when they're thinking about getting into a website?

[00:07:33] Paul, how much time do we have? You know, the biggest the single biggest mistake that people make is they make decisions based on money, you know, like, oh, you know, hosting is $5 a month. I'll do that. You know, oh, this guy says he'll build my entire website from the ground up for five hundred dollars. I'll do that. And so it's one of those things, you know, there's a mantra that's pretty common, you know, you get what you pay for. And in the entire, you know, digital space in general and websites specifically, people don't know enough to be able to make good decisions, right? Like that checks the box. Let's roll out.

[00:08:21] Yeah. So one of the the things that I harp on all the time is that they have no idea what keywords or what they want the site to accomplish. They just want a site. You know, the reason we don't get into web design, we only train because I just can't stand like you probably have to deal with. So somebody in a hurry. And then three weeks later, they haven't gotten you the content or something. And then they're mad. They're mad at you.

[00:08:50] You were you were super eager to have this done in 48 hours, but I haven't heard from you in three weeks. What happened to that energy?

[00:08:59] Yeah, yeah. So now, um, besides that. You you I saw a bunch of stuff on your site about accessibility and do you actually do accessibility audits? Or do you farm that out?

[00:09:16] Yeah, we do those. The audit is just half the battle. The other half is actually getting the corrections made

[00:09:24] Right, and it's a kind of a moving target in some fashions, with the requirements changing and stuff. So what's a range of prices that would cost to have the audit done? Just so somebody to really look at it and say these are the things that need fixed?

[00:09:43] Yeah. So I mean, we have some some automated tools that will run an audit for you. And we don't actually. Charge for that right now. That's something we're considering in the future, but we don't charge for them right now. And so. If you want to get an audit, you know, we've got a link on our website, it's pretty easy to get one set up. The thing that's going to be the problem and the problem child, and all of that is actually fixing those problems because. There has to be a certain level of technical understanding just to be able to understand what the problem is. Right. If you don't have that, it's going to be hard to explain what the problem is. Some things are simple like, you know, this is white and it's on a black background. That's a good percentage of contrast. You know, you don't want to put like a a light gray and a light gray right into place because you can. It's hard. It's barely readable, you know? So some of them are kind of simple, stupid things like that. Some of them are highly technical, and some of them are kind of off the deep end. But collectively, they are what they are.

[00:11:00] Well, yeah, and I'm getting a real education in that myself because of that program for disabilities that I just mentioned, because I in my mind when I started the program, I thought, OK, these are for people that lost their leg or they're on crutches or their hands are messed up. Yeah. And the first two people that applied were blind. I'm like, Oh man, does that change things? Yeah. So yeah, so we're learning how to make our word documents accessible and then then converting them to PDF and making that accessible. And then and then the blind people are kind of giving me feedback because the the learning platform that we're using claims to be accessible. And she said, Well, yeah, it's accessible, but your content isn't so, so. So boy, it's quite a thing. And it's big in the forefront. Nowadays, people are getting sued and stuff over this now innocent, you know, people good people that are trying to do a good job or still getting sued. There's some law firms that that's kind of their business model is to sue people. It's kind of like the image companies that find you use an image and then threaten the federal lawsuit against you for copyright infringement. So.

[00:12:17] So yeah, but I mean, some some of those people are also asking to be sued.

[00:12:22] Well, yeah, if they're ignoring things that are that are obvious, and then I think the government requires you to be ADA compliant, which ADA isn't even the whole thing, though you got that WC what is it? What's it called?

[00:12:38] WCAG 2.0.

[00:12:41] Yeah. Yeah, tell everybody what that is and what that kind of means to you.

[00:12:46] So the short version is, is that's the, you know, global standards for web accessibility. Mm hmm. There's highly specific situations on there that go through when to do what. There's contrast checker tools. There's code checker tools. But basically, this is the international global specification for accessibility. And then for the U.S. government, they got kind of lazy. They just said, Yeah, follow what they said.

[00:13:19] Right.

[00:13:20] That's kind of what they did because, you know, why rewrite all of that if it's already there? But the thing that I was talking about earlier was where people are kind of asking to be sued is because they use an overlay widget on their website. Any time I see that, that's that's a flag for me to go pitch my services. Mm hmm. Because overlay widgets are not accessible, right?

[00:13:45] Exactly right.

[00:13:46] Right. A lot of people don't know that. And it's a scary thing when I see other agencies promoting those as well.

[00:13:54] Yeah. And and like I said, I mean this, these are so exact thing that very few websites in the world probably could just pass like instantly, you know, and then and they could pass and then they throw up another piece of content and didn't, you know, clear at first and now they're not complying again.

[00:14:17] So, you know, SEO conversion rate optimization and accessibility run in the same bracket of every single change can affect a different outcome, right? So that stuff that has to be constantly monitored to make sure that you're constantly getting the results that you're looking for.

[00:14:39] Yeah, let's see how little companies could possibly keep up with it. I mean, they you could have a two or three people in big companies easily watching just for this stuff, I imagine, but little companies that know how they could afford it.

[00:14:54] Um, it depends on what level of little you're going for, but yeah, it's near impossible for a small business making less than ten thousand a month to be able to, you know, have that check in the box saying, I'm accessible.

[00:15:09] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Is there some kind of, you know, like they have the better business bureau logos? Is there some kind of logos that for the accessibility world? To claim that you're, you know, the trust, trust certificates and BBB Better Business Bureau certificates.

[00:15:30] No, there's nothing that's globally recognized like that. There are some companies that produce, you know, if if we say that you're accessible at this date time stamp. We will certify that time we could provide you a certificate at that time. There's companies that do that, but there's nothing that's a global or national standard.

[00:15:54] Yeah, because ten seconds later, it could be doubled down the tubes.

[00:15:58] Right? No. You just had to go look at the website from a different browser, and it's a different result, too. There's 100000 variables and all of this. So it's just a matter of, you know, chunking them out when you're able to and making sure that happens before you get sued, because once that happens, you're screwed no matter what.

[00:16:23] Yeah. And I'm not complaining about it because when I compare it to what it must be like to be a blind person to try or with some other, you know, disability to try to access the world, I say, you know, I'll thank my lucky charms, you know, because what they must go through. So what are some of the the other outside the accessibility? What are some of the other things that drive you crazy with clients?

[00:16:55] Cool. People thinking that they know more than I do is that they won.

[00:17:02] Yeah, I've been there.

[00:17:04] I've been at this for a while. You know, I believe it's ten thousand hours that it takes to become an expert, and I've pretty much exceeded that since I've hit 10 years of just doing websites and stuff. So I find it very, very interesting whenever people. Who clearly and it's obvious you can really tell that they don't have the expertise that they're speaking on. But you still intend to dictate what type of psychological elements I'm putting into their design of their website or why they decide to structure something some way. They always have an answer, and it's never a good one.

[00:17:54] I got my hard lesson for that years and years ago because I'm a professional speaker, and so we all needed demo videos to show how we could speak, right? And so I created all these different ones over many years and and not one of them ever got me hired to speak. I got hired from referrals and other things, but the videos never. So I ran into this guy that was retired from Hollywood, actually worked on Star Wars, had an Emmy nomination for his editing skills, and I said, You know what? I should do an experiment here. Just let him take all the video crap footage I have. Let him put it together. I'm not going to say a word. He did it the first time it was seen I got a $100000 contract with CBS as a spokesperson. So that was my two by four to the head that say, Yeah, you're too close to it, you don't know what you're doing. Let somebody that really knows what they're doing. Take care of it, and you'll be much better off in the long run.

[00:19:00] Yeah. And and I think a lot of times people have, they're at a crossroads because a lot of times, you know, even though we're talking about hiring an expert to do that video editing, right, that normally comes with some sort of consideration, right? You've got to pay them for the work, right? And that's usually where people decide. I know what I'm doing. I can figure it out, I'm just going to wing it. So that's that's where a lot of bad decisions come out of from that not saying everyone is going to have and make bad decisions. That's how I started and websites, I'm like, You know what? I don't have money to hire somebody. I need a website for my business. I'm going to build it myself. The difference, though, is that I stuck with it. I enjoyed it and I kept progressing.

[00:19:53] Kept learning.

[00:19:53] That's right. Yeah, I even even today, I'm still learning. You know,

[00:19:58] It's never going to stop with this field.

[00:20:00] That's correct. It's never going to stop. Google makes a change every year just to make sure that you have something new to learn. So, yeah, so that's kind of who people draw the line is, you know, they don't. Pursue it as a passion and a career, and that's where a lot of bad decisions or bad decisions are born out of that.

[00:20:24] Yeah, and the people, you know, what gets me is the people wanting to start an online business, which is what I've been helping people for twenty three years to do. And and they they like you mentioned, oh, five dollars for hosting. Oh, it's one hundred and thirty dollars a month for the shopping cart. Oh my god. And I'm thinking, You know what? Go talk to our friend Joel Stewart. I don't know if you know him from the tribe and he's a franchise guy and ask him how much it cost to start a McDonald's. It's anywhere from like two million to four million dollars with eight hundred thousand in cash or something like that. And somebody? Yeah, they want it. They want to get rich online. But no, no, I can't pay that shopping cart. I'm going to get just use PayPal, you know? Yeah. So now I see you have an interest in jujitsu, and I really am interested in that because I well, I had some run ins with some really big name jujitsu people because I have a website called Brutal Self Defense based on the fact that I had a nightclub for six years in a really rough area and and I was in gunfights and knife fights and bikers trying to kill me.

[00:21:47] Yeah, exactly. No. Since I've been selling online, not one person has hit me with a beer bottle, but but it's how I got in with these Jiu-Jitsu guys. They're supposed to be teaching what's called combatives. You know, this is real life stuff, not sport. And so and I hear this guy telling this on video No, I bought this video course from him because I said, You know, I need to know more about this as a defensive thing to, you know, if you run into a jiu jitsu guy. And so he's telling the jiu jitsu guy, Oh yeah, you just lay here on top of him like this and tire him out and I'm thinking crazy. And while you're trying to tire me out, I just pulled my folder knife out of my right hand pocket and disemboweled you. You tried tire me out. In the meantime, my buddy's kicking your brains while you're laying there on the ground.

[00:22:41] So, yeah,

[00:22:44] So I got my money back from that course.

[00:22:48] Yeah, they're not wrong. Like, that's technically the way you want to do it. But. And like not a weapon based fight or there's more than one people. That's definitely

[00:22:58] Not exactly. Yeah, he's got to tire me out. Yeah, I'm tired of your blood getting all over my pants, but

[00:23:05] Technically that is the way you would do it because you don't actually have to do any work, just like you just have to keep your position over the person to make them expend all of their

[00:23:17] Energy. Exactly. If they don't have a knife that's going to disemboweling and their friends is not going to kick your brains like you're divorced. Yeah, but that's what that's what my complaint was. Not that their techniques were bad is that they're saying this is a combative, you should do this. No, you're going to get your ass killed.

[00:23:36] If you know, that sounds like the Army Combatives, which is basically the same thing as Gracy Jiu Jitsu Blue Belt Course, I see. Yeah, and it's it's not really. I wouldn't say it's I mean, foundational wise, it's good, but you know, you have to get past that foundation to really get into the good stuff.

[00:23:59] Yeah, yeah. There's a lot, a lot of nuance and a lot of stuff. But I mean, there's a big difference when there's no rules.

[00:24:05] So that's yeah, that's where like, I had a buddy who mixed jiu jitsu with Krav Maga like that seems like that seems like a good, you know, clash of skills to stay alive.

[00:24:17] Well, yeah, I mean, I don't have any. I started out and sure Andrew Karate when I was in high school where we were breaking bricks and walking barefoot and dead, a winter down in water and streams and stuff and all that kind of stuff. And then I when I got my nightclub, I started studying aikido and like Jiu Jitsu, because if you hit somebody, I'm going to be in court all the time, you know? So I wanted to create maximum amounts of pain and control with no bruising. So, yeah, so that and then I had special forces guys working out with me. But the bikers, you know, my stupidity was as a young guy taking over a biker bar and cleaning it up, deciding that I'm going to clean it up into a real nice family place. They didn't. They just didn't like that that much. One time I kicked this guy, so many times I broke my toenail. So, so, yeah, it was it was quite a quite a quite a deal there, but yeah, I like, uh, I like jujitsu, but that know everything has its place in real life or sport, you know, so. So back to your your business now. So how do you actually work with someone? Somebody comes with you, comes to you and says, Hey, I need a website. What's the first thing you do? How do you lead them down the path to make these decisions?

[00:25:45] Yeah, so I mean. In general, people come from a lot of different places. And, you know, I know people from throughout time for different levels of experience, so. Depending on what that looks like, it's going to look a little differently, but overall, it's going to include us having a conversation about what you want. And it's going to include some type of questionnaire to really get down into the details. Because if I ask you, what do you want, you're not necessarily going to have an answer. So being able to actually write that down and spend some time doing it is definitely a good thing. But then once that questionnaire is done, we'll follow up with a call to go over the results of what you've entered and make sure that there is 100 percent no disconnect between what you want and what I'm going to provide. And then, once we're there, will apply a price. And if you agree to that price during that call, then we'll send out a proposal for us to get started. If if that price is too much or needs to be readjusted or restructure whatnot, we can try to work some of that out. But we're not going to send out a proposal unless we actually have to.

[00:27:09] And what if they really want something? How do you talk to them if they want things that are just ridiculous because you get that all the time? It's like when somebody goes into the hair salon and takes a picture of Angelina Jolie says, I want my hair to look like this, and there's no way, you know, what do you say to them?

[00:27:33] Yeah. Well, my face look like that. No, you know, there are a lot of people who have unrealistic expectations of reality. And so more than not, I have to. I plan for 15 minute calls sometimes, but I end up taking an hour or more because. I have to educate people to be able to understand how to hire me. And I don't want to do that. It's a requirement.

[00:28:05] Yeah, exactly.

[00:28:07] Our expectations are unrealistic. You know, people think. You know, left when it should be right, people think right, when it should be left, regardless of the situation. I have to educate people and that's going to include, you know, someone's like, Hey, you know. I want to hire you for SEO like, oh, OK, well, that's a that's a big bracket. Let's unpack that a little bit. You know, and then, you know, I'll get stories of will I hire this one guy or I hired this one girl? Ok, well, that's irrelevant for me. No, but the point of that story is, is that they got screwed over or, you know, that person didn't. You know, didn't manage their expectations as well as they should have, or they didn't educate them on the topic.

[00:28:56] So are they so or are they sucked?

[00:28:59] Or are they sucked? Yes, that has to be a possibility. But yeah, there's so many variables and situations and it always comes down to education.

[00:29:09] Now, is there something in your agreements that has requirements for them to get you content?

[00:29:16] Most definitely, yeah. Yeah, I don't. We can create content, but we charge extra for.

[00:29:23] Of course, yeah, yeah, but a lot of people like I said earlier. Yeah, they're in a hurry. And then three weeks later, they haven't gotten you the content.

[00:29:32] Yeah. So it's actually been easier to just bring on a copywriter. Mm hmm. To bring people who write into the project and just make that part of the project standard process that's made everything so much easier because before I would put in just dummy text like, Hey, I made you a kickass website with dummy text like you're going to have to write that stuff out. And people, I've had people not use an entire website because they didn't want to go right up

[00:30:04] Like you're supposed to like, just extract it from their head. What's supposed to be?

[00:30:09] Yeah. They're like, OK, well, our services are. You know, we work with money and

[00:30:20] Work with people. Exactly, exactly why I don't want to be a web designer, that's for sure. Oh, yeah. You couldn't pay me enough, so you earn your fees just for the frustration, because probably you can put together a high quality website pretty quick. It's just that all the other stuff that's involved.

[00:30:41] Yeah, there's a lot of things that have to be integrated. There's a lot of client expectations that have to be managed. There's a lot of content and back and forth that has to happen. So I've tried to re-engineer the process so that people are more engaged. And since we rebuilt the process, it's been a lot better. Mm hmm. We've had less issues, well, significantly less issues since the last rebuild that we did, which was about four months ago. Yeah, that's definitely a good thing.

[00:31:14] Yeah, you got to teach people how to work with you, that's for sure. So tell people, how do they get a hold of you?

[00:31:21] Sure, so all of our social media handles are CarbonDigitalUS. You can reach us by email at Hello@CarbonDigitalUS. If you want to call, our number's on our website, CarbonDigital.US, you can check out the contact us page and submit a form there. Pretty much anything goes in that realm.

[00:31:46] Perfect. Perfect. So everybody will have all that stuff in the show notes for you so you can check out Jared. We always support our veterans and especially ones that do things correctly.

[00:32:01] So thank you.

[00:32:03] All right. So thanks a lot for coming on, man.

[00:32:06] Definitely. Thanks for having me.

[00:32:09] We'll catch you later.

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