 We see a reality that's not here today. We see it so vividly in our minds and we almost see it so vividly as if it's already happened and I was running fast to make that happen All right guys welcome back to another episode of Amir approved now today's guest is a good friend of mine Dev Basu now before we begin today's show a little bit house cleaning notes for everyone out there now if you Haven't already make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel because every single week I'm picking two lucky people to earn $20 in Bitcoin. So make sure to subscribe and If you're listening to this on iTunes if you leave a review I will also be looking for one to two lucky people so I can get them 20 bucks in Bitcoin now without further ado Our special guest today Our guest is Dev Basu He's a founder of Power by Search a performance media and digital marketing agency that helps B2B software technology companies such as ClickFunnels and Shutterstock in 2018 Power by Search work has driven over 2.4 billion in annual sales directly From the intent engine mythology apply successfully to SEO and direct response paid search. That's impressive brother Well, you like it's all it's all downhill from here. Oh my god. Oh my god It's all good, man. I have to have you on the show man. Thanks for having me Yeah, man. So the reason I want to have you on the show is like first of all Kudos and round of applause for building Power by Search. Thank you. It's impressive and you know, you and I know each other for a while and I would love to know The ins and the outs the ups and the downs the smiles and the frowns of what it took to build power by search And maybe if you can kind of rewind and tell us a little bit history of the process And what it actually took to create this amazing business that you built. Yeah, for sure, man It's what a trip. We're celebrating our our 10th anniversary this October so I I could take you down memory lane to do it. So 2009 is when I started the business You can recall it wasn't the best time to start a business right after the fucking crash right after the crash to start working in technology and marketing But honestly it was a boon because what I realized is money flows from less effective Channels to more effective channels So one of the things a win that was at our back back then was a fact that Businesses that we used to work with and we didn't work with software businesses when we started It was you know, small businesses local businesses. They were pulling money out of this thing I don't know if you even remember it's called the yellow pages. Yeah, what is that thing good for a doorstopper these days? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so they were pulling money out of there and they needed somewhere to put it So most of the time advertising and marketing goes down in a recession But the part that remains what what actually ends up happening for growth businesses is they go We need to cut but we're not going to cut everywhere Let's cut down the channels that are the worst performers now that we have some savings There's no point just putting it under a pillow They're a business you want to grow you realize that a recession is actually a really good time to grow your business Be able to get more market share So you got to put it somewhere and the thing that Most of our clients wanted was they wanted to figure out how to get Google to love on them How to get Google to love their websites how to get you know visibility how to get clicks how to get you know phone calls and leads and that was kind of the wall well less back then and so that's what we help them do and It started off real small so the business It started when I was I was I was probably 21. Yeah, 21 at that point You know starting to finish up my university career I did an undergrad at U of T my BBA program to live in Scarborough, which is on the east end of Toronto small 50s could 50s sort of square foot condo solarium is where I started this business and the way it came around actually was I was working at a job, you know, which was interesting I was a director of marketing at a an agency that was affiliated with the yellow pages So I actually got to see the inside track on how the yellow pages was sold What kind of business has used it how they tracked and measured success and I was also able to see what was going to happen to It next and you know, I think it panned out in a way Which wasn't exactly Accurative or are my positive for for them over the last decade and and that's why they're door stoppers, right? And so I looked at that There's a point where my boss at that time She calls me to my aunt and to her office and sits me down and says that you know, you're you're graduating soon What do you want to do? I said, I don't know, you know, I'm having a fun time working over here I'm learning lots. I just want to contribute and continue working in this field And she says, you know, I think you should never start your own business Really? Yeah. Wow. I said, what why what why do you say that and she said I think you'd be a terrible manager I'm going now. I'm curious, right. I'm not I'm not even mad. I'm curious. I'm like, what makes you say that? She said, well, even a split that aside, you know for you know, just a minute a hot minute Do you know how expensive fax machines are? I go fax machines. It's 2009 I haven't used a fax machine since 2007 That was still, you know, because the company used fax machines at that point She said, you know, how many file which phone lines cost? I'm like, I use Skype This is 2009, right? And I think just the that nature of the argument I think reflecting on it, you know hindsight's always 2020 She was worried that I go on my own and she predicted that correctly But that was also the tipping point for me at a spike. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was so whoever this person is Yeah. Oh, I thank her. Thank you so much, right? So that was like on a Friday. I was in Montreal. I flew back to Toronto I went and registered an incorporation I was like, you know, just basically playing around with names like what can I call this company and The Genesis behind the name powered by search actually comes from me being a nerd. Remember V bulletin the forum So at the bottom of every V bulletin forum was powered by V bulletin And so I kind of kind of did some soul searching over that weekend and it's not What do I call this company? What's my what's on my DNA? And it was just this fact that I had learned so much about how Google and other search engines worked over the last, you know, five years before I started in 2005 and I said, it's got to be powered by search. That's what we're powered by if I if there were no search engines I wouldn't know what to do in this business. There'd be nothing to optimize. There'd be no, you know, advertising to run So it's going to be powered by search and that's that's that weekend was magical because I went from Incorporating the company online not knowing anything about how to incorporate a company at all to starting to put down the site map And then just updating my LinkedIn profile on that Monday and just saying, hey, you know what? I've gone out of my own. I'm an independent consultant at this point in time and That was it. It was interesting that there was this an outpour of people who are in my network reaching out and saying, hey Can you help me and would you have a look at my website? And then before I knew it that first I think two months it was already at 30 to 50 K MRR And then just kept growing from over there and it was too much work to handle and you know It goes when there's too much work to handle and you're a technician you hire another technician and that kept snowballing into This this agency that in this consultancy that we've built now 10 years later And so You mentioned 20 K 50 K MRR. Yeah, was that just through word of mouth completely through word of mouth Okay, yeah, it just came in and you know, I one of the things that I really learned about Pricing in the early days was never to charge by the hour. Mm-hmm. I made that mistake 2000 probably eight I'd say I'll tell you the story actually I I designed a website was for a florist in 2008 and I didn't know a lick of HTML or coding and I thought this is a really get good way to get you know to get paid to learn So let me take this on and this is back like I was using notepad Notepad to design these websites and the guy gives me an excel spreadsheet with you know All the different types of flowers and whatnot. He has and he's got some images He just gives me a USB key no drop box at that point not not that I can recall at least He says design me a website. It's a simple directory style site You just keep clicking clicking clicking until you get to a point where you find a flower you like and there's a phone number You can call super simple. So it was a hundred maybe pages that I need to design. I charge him five hundred dollars for this website And then a hundred hours later, I calculated my per dollar per hour Yeah, yeah, I effective. I really rate and I was like, oh boy. This was an expensive lesson. Yeah Yeah, and so I think what helped in those early days was just using value pricing understanding What expensive problem I was being hard to solve? and then Really helping the business of the owners I was working with and as a simple right now It's like what two people three people in the company. Yeah, it was two people Okay, it was two people at that point in time and then it grew to three by the end of the first year It was four and and then it just kept growing. I'm over there So you're hiring people like developers designers. Yeah. Yeah, and in the beginning there were like, you know Swiss army knives, right? So people who were generalists that complete generalists and you know They could talk to clients that could build decks and they could write copy and they could build ad campaigns They knew how to do outreach things like that And then as we started honing I learned about you know a t-shaped talent basically looks like where you can go deep in one area and That's how we started building our functional practice areas. And so when did you what when you exhausted your word of mouth and referrals? What was your next strategy to take growth to the next level? We decided to practice what we preached. So that meant publishing speaking You know getting leads by our own SEO our own ad words the one thing that you might see is like Digital agencies don't advertise, you know, the good ones don't and it's all referral referral and frankly I think that's a little daisy because you should be getting better at your own craft Not just getting better at it based off your client's time. And so If you aren't walking the walk then your believability goes down Mm-hmm. And so as a result of that we really practice that and you know, whatever our focus was over the years We got really good at it and then we just started sharing freely So the idea was that you know, our best thinking was either going to be really expensive Or it was going to be free and it's ping-pong go over the years as to what that is And currently our best thinking is free You know, but we know that it's going to be one of those situations where no one's going to Come in lift it and just do it on their own. So what was it the? So I really want to dissect this so, you know 20 to 50k, you know people can kind of Understand that right? Yeah, a couple of leads in, you know, the retainer, you know, okay, you don't team a four What between like what would you say the jump was a gradual jump or did you go from 50k to like 300k a month? Like how did that process look like doubling every year doubling every year doubling every year So first year I think our revenue was 480. Okay, then it was like 960. Okay. I recall correctly went to 1.7 The then it was 2.5 and it was there was a year where we're at 3 and it just kept growing basically over there And so this is all paid like majority of the new all SEO and paid. Yeah SEO and paid, you know, that's 90% of it and then 10% was other things that clients needed whether that was You got into some really cool projects by the way, you know building voice of customer research or analytics and attribution Projects, but largely I think the big thing that businesses wanted to work with us in higher S4 was Getting traffic and converting it. Okay, and so the two ways you do that are you know, you can you can pay for it You can earn it or you can collaborate with somebody else to get it And so we didn't do referrals or influencer type programs We just did, you know, you can pay for it PPC and you can earn it and that was SEO Yeah, so you're putting in the money in the vending machine So people wondering like how would that campaign look like so for a winding back couple of years, you know Yeah, a couple of million dollar revenue say 1.9 million. Yeah, what did that funnel look like? So you're bidding on what kind of keywords were you bidding on like I mean for other agency owners or other people who might be in Similar situations is that what was the strategy back then? Oh just for like getting Yeah, I mean sorry start at the bottom of the funnel, right? So if somebody if you're trying to get local clients What we would do is look at all the variations of Toronto plus, you know, digital agency Web design agency marketing agency SEO agency and so on then you want coverage over there And then you build up and you go, okay So that's like somebody who thinks a small percentage of market who are already looking for an agency There's so many more people who are in the market looking for help They just don't know that they want an agency ad so then you start looking at all the different use cases So an example of you know, huge growth periods for us was when Google would come in and penalize a bunch of different websites And so they'd drop in their rankings they'd reach out because what we had optimized for was Google penalty recovery Okay, or AdWords suspension recovery and That's smart. This is like early early days Right like so if you end up seeing that like, you know an advertising program is feeding someone's business Let's it's an e-commerce business and they get banned or suspended They want to come out and go how do I quickly get back up and running and so we bit for those terms We would you know optimize and have landing pages for those terms. It was really scrappy really really scrappy stuff And so yeah, we didn't want to go 50,000 foot high level Talking about a lot of ideas, but not doing stuff CPC landing page fill out the form get on a call easy peasy, right? And then One thing that we did that was kind of interesting was sequential remarketing So one of the big problems we saw early when remarketing came out Which is just you know for the ads that follow you around if you don't do the thing that the website What's your name? I just retargeting the problem with those ads is that most marketers think of the audience the person They do humanize the person say this is a lead is a lead is a lead Mm-hmm. And so if you're a hammer everything looks like a nail and so you just keep Seeing the same ad again and again and again and eventually you get sick of the brand, right? Like you hit like that out of fatigue at fatigue and you might hit like don't show this to me again You know, I've done that on Facebook and other networks where you see ads hitting you again and again again So what we did was we wanted to be sequential So if somebody came to a page where we wanted to fill out a form and they didn't do it Well, what are some possible reasons why they didn't do it? Maybe they weren't ready. Maybe they needed to see more proof Maybe they wanted to see some case studies. Maybe they wanted to understand what the process was, right? Maybe they didn't know if they could afford it and so each one of those deserves a different message So we'd start with the most probable one and then if that didn't work and not three to five day type of period We'd switch it up. We'd show them a different message at that point in time And so that just kind of like we saw that everybody's got a different track in their customer journey But you got to meet the customer where they are. Yes, not where you want them to be And so at this point are you still the only person who's trying to close the deals like all these deals are coming in the top of the funnel? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all coming in through we had a very structured sales process for you know Engaging and enrolling and basically getting started with clients And I mean I recommend this there's a specific process for almost any type of consulting which is you start off Without trying to prescribe a solution to your your prospect because that's what the number one rookie mistake is You tell me what your problem is and I already am going to say I've got a solution for that So instead what you do is you diagnose before you prescribe Right, just like a doctor you think about all the experts that you trust in like implicitly trust you trust your Doctors your lawyers your surgeon you don't ever question any of the recommendations But each one of them will ask you a few questions and then give you a course of you know a way to go basically With Digital the problem is that every everybody thinks they can do it everybody thinks they can write copy Everybody thinks it they've got an opinion and design And so instead of just coming out of the game and saying We can take you on it's gonna cost X and you know work with us a better way to say hey I don't know if they can help you or not But if we did a discovery where we diagnose what the gaps are We have an idea of where you want to go where you are and let's figure out what's the blocker, you know the the things that are Roadblocks in the middle then we come up with the right strategy and road map and then from there We help you execute it does that make sense and for most people who are rational logical They're like that makes complete sense. I wish somebody would actually spend the time To articulate what the problem actually is rather than guessing or feeling that away through a problem wasting a bunch of time And then saying oh, yeah, I didn't work six months later except now I've been paid and you know the clients pissed off Which is the the majority of incoming clients that we were seeing had that frustration They left another agency they left another agency We were very rarely where we the first agency that anybody worked with they had done a different budget of things They'd work with individuals consultants or freelancers. They'd hire other agencies and in the beginning I don't blame it's not their fault because they just simply know one thing which is what it costs What the you know the monetary funding basically is required They don't know how to tell good from bad and so they go through a couple of experiences which lead them You know leave them underwhelmed and then they go I think I need someone better because that tier of Investment didn't get me a bespoke or tailored solution. I got a cheap solution instead and so That's kind of like this philosophy of you know, you either are very You're a premium or you give away your best ideas for free But nothing in the middle basically So when would you say the The pain points started happening in the company where you're like shit like now what? Oh, yeah, so because right now like you're growing you're doubling year by year So that's you know compound growth when in that process like what year was it like Yeah, like things are I don't want to say falling apart, but things are fucking kind of hectic. They're hectic. Yeah Um, I think that came around year three for sure I realized that we were having a hub and spoke model where we didn't have any systems. We didn't document anything We were flying by the seat of our pants. Of course, man It's it's really just getting a bunch of smart people together and hoping and praying that big things just work Sure, so we didn't have we had no one-on-ones. We didn't have a weekly stand-up structure We didn't have properly tracked goals. We didn't have objectives and key results It was literally just do what you feel is best for the client in their best interest And so that was our core kind of thing was, you know, we have a fiduciary duty to win for our clients Do what it takes to make that happen, right? But when you start scaling your company and you get to the point where you're anywhere above 10 people things start to fall apart And it's just there's a simple equation for the nodes of communication Developers would know this very easily. It's actually one of the first things in the early days linkedin Used to test engineers with this question saying, you know, linkedin's got this One-to-one and then you know second degree third degree fourth degree and it starts becoming geometric, right? The number of nodes of connection So can you calculate what the most efficient way to get two people who are not connected with each other and three Degrees apart to talk to each other So I saw that and I said, okay This is where it falls apart people don't talk to other people and information gets lost in the ether And they assume that communication has happened and as a result of it They are operating in silos and that can happen in a company as little as 10 people so That was her third year where I reckon that, you know, we couldn't have a A command and control type of structure. We couldn't operate without having meetings We needed some structure in place and the funny thing I think is, you know, when you start a company you Most people have worked at other companies and they hate the hate structure. They want freedom Right And then you start your own company and you realize that oh man, like people say they don't structure They don't want structure, but they actually crave it because it gives you Gives you lines to color within the other thing as well as and I think in the beginning you start hiring people Who are like you it's just a common human condition No one tells you that you should hire compliments of yourself You know the things that you are Not the greatest at you hire for that rather than people who are likable and are easy to hang out with and exactly thinking the same way you are um Which I did, you know, so I hired for for skills over um Sort of fact the the dna the drive nature and acumen of what these people would bring to the company And that was a mistake, you know, obviously in in hindsight So around year three is when we really started sort of playing with what would it mean to put some structure in and creating SOPs and looking at what were what things we were doing that was repeated as well That's when we started putting in kind of the The codification of who we were What we stood for how we worked We created something called a playbook and the playbook was the first thing that an onboarding hire It would see the fact we started showing little bits of it Even in the interview process as a means to actually show them that look we've thought this stuff through we've spent the time and I think that was a big game changer because one of the things that I I discovered was different about the way that we built the company was All of the smartest people and the best people from a culture fit that we hired had one thing in common They were typically a lone wolf wherever they worked before They were the experts expert everybody used to come to them and say what do you think we should do? But as a result of that they didn't have a feedback loop. They didn't have people to talk to and bounce ideas off of um And they crave that and so when they came to us they found that they were like, okay These are just you know a group of people who are really passionate about what they do Interesting there pause for a second. You said something that struck me Lone wolves worked by themselves. Yes rock stars self-motivated How the fuck were you attracting these people? it was a couple of different things So you do the basics right like if you think about a a mastos pyramid of hierarchy, you know You you have to realize that the best people are not looking for jobs. Of course They're not getting head-hunted. They're getting head-hunted. So We wanted to build community around What these people Were not only involved in but the next level up as well So some a couple of things that we did that were offbeat Um, and seemingly, you know, somebody would look at us at that point in our journey and said that this was a A waste of time you should be going out and building a sales team or You know doing something of that nature Or maybe hiring a headhunter since that what we did was we created a meetup series and then in toronto is called you know inbound to Which grew quite large and every month what we would do is just host a free meetup Different digital marketing topics have a guest speaker come out. We would speak as well And the idea wasn't to get a single client out of it. The idea was to assemble people and give them To be the connector really in the room Who would say, you know what? We're going to take we're going to put this investment in of Time and money and effort. It would always be after hours, by the way That was it was never during work hours would be like between 7 to 9 p.m. Or 6 to 8 and You know different people's offices when we didn't have the space We work with friends who had bigger offices and could loan us a room and whatnot. These are like the early years, right? And that thing grew and grew and grew and then we created a conference called inbound con Um Which grew and you know, it started, you know, fairly small 100 people and then at a tight It was like 450 people coming out to a conference. We took over the cbc You know their whole hall basically over there And production cost of $300,000 for for that conference, right? And so just by being this hub I think it really helped with that very hard to track word of mouth Which then attracted these people to us became the epicenter. Yeah. Yeah Hard to connect the dots kind of as you do it and you just have a a good feeling about it But it's easy to look back at it and go, okay. I see how that all figured itself out And so how the you know now we have Thanks for sharing in that it's really good strategy, you know creating community, right building the tribe You know letting people know that you know like that you Not just respect them, but this is more than just business. This is about making friendships, you know building a local community Um funny thing like, you know for toronto being such a big city always get you probably get this question a lot too Let me or do you know any growth hackers? I'm like For a big city. We don't have that many like it kind of feels disconnected at times, you know, yeah for sure. Um So that's fascinating. Um, so with the with the new introductions of Okay, our escapee eyes and systems. How do that transition look like to adopt these new Systems rough. Yeah, I bet rough, yeah You know what I didn't realize I think was I was running a mile a minute as a founder and then I think the the key thing that Entrepreneurs do differently and maybe we're configured a bit differently than than other people is that We see a reality that's not here today We see it so vividly in our minds And we almost see it so vividly as if it's already happening and I was running fast to make that happen and some mentors basically said hey It's a bit like you're the bus driver and you've got everybody on the bus But you start taking a 90 degree turn on this bus and you're going 60, you know kilometers an hour everybody's gonna fall out of the bus. Yep And that's that it was the risk that we really ran when all of this happened. So I really had to teach myself to go Slow enough to have one major change at a time and That's still a work in progress, you know 10 years later and having this business where I want to continue pushing My nature is driving. It's impatient. It's why can't this happen any sooner? What do we need to do to cut through the noise? Did you have any employees or team members that Could not Accept the adoption of these new systems. Yeah, for sure and they left. Oh, yeah, yeah I think that and I think that's good for both them and for us right so And there's no judgment in that as well as I think it's just always about fit and I always thought about this as a like fit should exist between your team members And it should also exist in the client agency relationship as well And so if you have great fit like You've been there a mirror like where you work with people and some people are such a joy to work with Yeah, now this people you want to pull out your teeth Yeah, it's so it just you know when you find the right person when you find the right who yeah Life is such a joy They can almost They can pick up exactly where you're leaving it things off and then they can run with it. They're You know, they're alert. They're they're resourceful. They're you know, they're easy to work with And so when we and we realize that that like You know, you want to take a mirror up and look at yourself as well So there was every year, you know, I would do that as a year came to a close and say say what Who do we need to become? Who do I need to become personally to attract that kind of person into my life? Whether that was a key hire Key client that I wanted um Even a reputation I'd like who do you need to go? What contribution do you need to make for that to be true? And so how did that process look like? Was it just you Looking off three hours of time just thinking that pen and paper or yeah, I just basically go um, I've got I I follow right now what I do is I follow a process called your compass okay, and um every year it's this you can download this Questionnaire essentially and it helps you reflect you slow down You're just going to go what work well what didn't work so well What goals did I set that I hit that I should say for this your compass? Yeah, it's called your compass.co. I think you're like why oh no year your your compass. Yeah Um, and it's made by some guys in europe And it's really nice that they just kind of did this as a service to the world where you don't charge anything for it You can print it out You can do gatherings or parties of people where everybody does it together as a group I do I do it's introspective kind of on my own And so that was one of the key processes that I used, you know, there's um There's that and uh And then just asking questions a bit like, you know, how like how might I type questions? How might I? Improve our client service. How might it how might I be of higher service to my team? How might I push my team in kind of a gentle ways? Right and just like doing that and also getting feedback as well. So we we put in a feedback loop At first we use a system called tiny pulse Oh tiny pulse. Yeah. Yeah, and then uh, and now we use something called office vibe And the idea is fairly simple. It's like, you know work happens on a day-to-day basis You can typically look back on a on a week on a friday and go. How do I feel about my week? What were highlights? What were the lowlights? And you should capture that and do it in a way where Psychological safety is really important in teams. Like if teams trust each other Trust is the basis upon which everything else happens, you know performance doesn't come without trust And so yeah, we put this in and we started measuring Um, how happy and how engaged our teams are And that what had to happen every every week, right? It would just ask you different questions about engagement And uh, and then we were on custom pulls as well. So just to ask like, okay How are we doing about topic x or how am I doing as a ceo? What else should I be doing? If you were a ceo, what would you do instead? I love that question And it's great like you just start seeing all these different Things that people see from their own lens that they were in the seo department They would say something different than if they were in design or if they were working with clients They would say abc things and would just like create ideas for where to go next And so at this point year three growing implement system some people leave some people like it It's part of the process Are you hiring more sales reps now because it can't just be you closing the deals Right. So what's that next stage like what was that next pivotal stage to build your company? Maybe two three x from there on it. Yeah. Yeah um So what we found was here's our characteristic. We're we're solving a complex problem We're going up and to the right in terms of the clients we worked with So higher ticket in terms of what they would invest annually with us more complexity in terms of seo and ppc We moved beyond local businesses moved to national businesses franchises e-commerce businesses and then technology businesses where we really found our strike, you know software and technology businesses and what I found with that was they wanted a An agency that had a codified way of thinking so not just smart people But a smart smart people with a way of doing things that would get them to the result that they wanted um The second thing was they they wanted transparency as well. That was something that really locked in this this industry where um You know agencies would do this thing where they're cobbling together A deck five minutes before the client walks in the door and they're like hey look over here Okay, yeah, and then they would just make stuff up and so we saw all of that and As we were rolling it out the key thing that we wanted to really emphasize on was That we will be In it to win it Both for ourselves and for our clients is one of our core values in situation Yeah, I'll win for you as a win for us. Exactly and then you're aligned, right? I think you're you figure that would be like basic business practice. Yeah, it's hard though. It's I think it's ingrained you start seeing it in in interesting ways, you know I'll give you an example of where I found that incentives mean everything So the way people behave is highly predicated on what their incentives are always men, right We're creatures of habits, right? So if you create good incentives, you get good behaviors Basically that right So I'll get to your point about like whether we hired salespeople or not in a second What we found is with clients who were bigger and we started working with, you know, national global brands like FedEx BMO remax, etc Their procurement departments would start getting involved. You know the buying department Now procurement departments You know, I love them, you know, god bless them, but they start thinking of every single Thing that they buy as a blue widget So if you're trying to buy expertise if you treat that the same way as you're buying computers Doesn't quite work. You know, it doesn't give you the end result But the incentive is always we need all of our terms to get accepted on our you know terms that protect us against risk um making sure that we get the best possible price And we need to negotiate down the price as low as possible essentially And so we started looking at that going oh, this is really interesting that their incentives are set up this way How might we? You know win in that situation And it was not to battle procurement It was the best way to win in that situation was to have an internal champion To whom the cost of not hiring us was larger than the cost of doing so and so we recently did this with a large brand, um and You know procurement was was giving us a hard time and just saying hey, you know what like we can't do this And that you got to accept our terms We'll pay you in 180 days net. I'm like, no, that's not gonna happen. 180 days 180 days Um, and so we just got a simple conversation with our internal champion or stakeholder and just said hey look We're for you if you want to buy the expertise We're really not for you if you're trying to essentially get a Six months loan For zero percent interest and she said yeah, I totally understand. I'm let me take this back You should not be dealing with this which was a very refreshing change 10 years into the business Compared to what what it looked like in year three So to to answer your question. We didn't hire salespeople. What we did instead was we got our operations team involved as part of the sale Okay So how how does that look like so what I find is that um in my experience working with salespeople And being someone who sells you know day-to-day myself You have to qualify you need to make sure that there's good fit Then you need to figure out what you need to work on together You need to write up a proposal or a discussion document then you get it across the line This is like the standard consultant. Yeah simple stuff. Yeah simple stuff, right? The part where I think most salespeople if you're not in the delivery of the result where they miss it because they're not Part of that process is they make promises that the delivery team can't keep of course because they're just trying to sell it Yes, exactly. So again, it's a commission base. Whatever, you know, and it's that's where the incentives start falling They're very different right salespeople are incentivized to sell and to close Operations teams are incentivized to retain right and to grow and to delight I said this doesn't make any sense. We're a small company like what We should be doing the client should have a joint unified experience from the get-go And so what we would do is I'd come in Vet the deal and say hey, is there something for us to work on over here? Then I'd have Strategically people from my team come on board number one problem that agency owners often face in their early years is They're the face of the company And so everybody just wants to work with them as they're notoriety grows politics, man Yeah, there's like we want to work with you. We don't know your team And so what we did instead was we're like, how do we change this so that They're seeing the team from the get-go not when they close the deal And that the the simple answer was only talk to people who are Fits from a of values thinking budget goals perspective And then introduce them to the team as soon as you know that to be true Get the team involved so that you can shape the deliverable together So would that mean every time a new potential client came through this team would be a combination of people From your whole company like it wouldn't be the same team from no no no different people interesting different people So if we identified that If you think about a triangle, you've got like acquisition up top Got engagement on one side and conversion. Which one hurts the most? Which one are they weakest at if it was conversion We'd pull in designers and developers ux people Right because that's what they needed help with sure and those people being in the day to day Would know about what to do to fix or diagnose that situation way better than Anyone in sales could in their limited capacity of dealing with the client And if it was somebody and you know, they didn't have any traffic This makes sense pull in an seo or a ppc consultant and they'd be able to go Let me have a look at your problem and that it was it was a dual-sided thing too. It wasn't just It made sales easier It you know boosted retention, but it also didn't make the Delivery team grown when a new client comes on board Because they're part of the process. It was like the Ikea effect. They're co-creating what to work on together Now you were though One of the keys here and that's a brilliant start. It's the first time I actually heard that The Ikea strategy. No, no this kind of this kind of integration those processes. Yeah, because everything is kind of subtle before that so You the the the beginning part though is you were still triaging or deading at the beginning, right? So you were doing the filtration to kind of weed out the potential Yeah, yeah that fit at the beginning. Yeah. Well, so there's two things like so even in operations We think about it as when you're starting to work with collaborating. So if you're a senior Uh consultant and you want to work with your team to deliver You're not involved in a day-to-day delivery. It's like the 80. Sorry 10 80 10 rule You set you shape the project in the first 10 percent of it The team carries it 80 of the way and you polish at the other 10 percent Right as you're influencing the work on both ends of it But the largest part of it is the expectations or the outcomes are set Team knows exactly what they need to do and then you help you bring in people to help you with that 10 percent as well To help them grow. So let's fast forward like let's say a contract comes in. It's a 100k contract. Yeah, whatever Maybe takes eight months. Oh as long as it takes. Oh god. I hope not. Yeah, we close that a lot faster than that three-month contract, right? Yeah who How do you have the system set up for at the end of the line to kind of continue this relationship with that company? Yeah, great. Okay, so I'll give you a more recent example So went on honeymoon recently. Portugal right away. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you And we actually had a deal worth 150k close without any of my involvement whatsoever Didn't even open the deal, right? and so all I knew in terms of updates was deal came in I had a director of strategy come in and vet the deal He created a project task team to come in and say what would the you know the diagnostic stage discovery stage look like the road mapping the execution stage Now that that's closed What we also have is we you know unlike a lot of agencies that have like account managers or account directors um We tried that for a couple of years didn't work for us at all And I think the the key thing over here is that this whole idea of the division of labor like that goes back to the industrial revolution Where you know, let's make this look like an assembly line where each person does a different kind of work And what we do it just doesn't work and not in our experience at least and so The best consultants are the ones who can understand the client Understand their business needs translate those business needs into what they what needs to be done in terms of the work They don't necessarily need to do all of the work But they can work with a team of people to do the work And then once you've got the data you need to be able to tell a story with it So turning the data into insights Um, and so they so the entire team is actually maintaining a relationship with the client We're very upfront with our clients and saying look if you if you're hiring us because You know, you have the desire of only working with one person We're probably not the right fit for you because you're primarily trying to hire someone to manage a relationship And a relationship essentially implies that you are you're buying a commodity think about it this way You have an account manager for a commodity like maybe your Bank, right? So you might have somebody who manages your mortgage for example All mortgages are essentially the same Right different interest rates and whatnot essentially the same product underlying So you don't buy a mortgage because of its expertise It's a commodity it's a commodity. Yeah, so you're buying the relationship And that's why most people stay with their bank because they have a relationship Now that's going away. By the way, right? Like that's really going away. The sum cost bias is leaving. Yeah, that's that's leaving But most people they'll continue working with wherever the professional is in their life because of the relationship And relationships are a really good reason to stay but not a really good reason to attract a client And there's a very key distinction between that what you should do to attract a client is to have demonstrable meaningfully different Expertise right and so now the the client's got A relationship with everybody on the team And we have structured intentional interactions And so if you're on the senior leadership team once a quarter we're dropping in and just saying Hey, how's it going? So we've got the standard, you know net promoter score every month asking them a scale of 1 to 10 How likely would you to be to refer powered by search to a colleague of similar caliber? Um We've got the quarterly drop in that happens with the senior leadership team We've got people who are directors are paid and of seo Looking at quarterly business review reports that make sure that the qa on that's done properly Where you know, there's high throughput in terms of what we're What we're delivering to a client But there's no one person that owns that client relationship, which is also kind of different. It's contrarian a little bit because Intuitively it makes sense that you would want a high, you know A person who's got high relationship bias like they're just good at connecting with people and building. It's an interesting strategy though. It's like Point of failure is kind of The biggest point of failure is for anybody with relationships that person leaves and takes those relationships 100% Yeah, yeah, so it's strategic as well, right? Because the idea is you get everybody to shine where they're meant to shine So instead of this having this old school to you know, thinking that like if you're running if I was running a web development agency What I've heard in the industry is you want to have your front-facing kind of sales relationship people Who don't know anything about the code and then you've got people in the back room coding And that just doesn't work. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So why would you do that with marketing? you want the In the copywriter the designer the ppc consultant right there in the room all three of them Working with the client and we asked for the client to not just be Having one person but having their product people their salespeople so we can ask questions that are more dynamic It's not just about getting the lead or the marketing qualified lead. Hey, how did that demo go? What questions are you asking on the demo? Where are you finding friction? and it's just beautiful like um There's a book that came out recently. It's called trillion dollar coach. You heard of that. Oh, I've been meaning to read it It's a great. I actually download an audible. It's still sitting there. It's a great book. So one of the The the quotes in this book Uh, it's from that the specific coach is work the team then the problem Don't work the the problem first and then the team So the idea is if you just pair up people And you point them in the set in the right direction and say go figure this out I don't care how you figure it out, but work together to figure it out Don't just say okay. I got the problem and you go off in your own silos And we do that on our team, but we also do it with a client And we say look let's start from the same side of the table And approach this problem together and we're just going to be a better together approach wonderful and so That's around year three or four. Yeah, and that that's ideology has existed all the way through. Yeah When would you say the next hurdle or roadblock kind of came in after like year three or four? Yeah, so year four I was in a place in the hub and spoke model going I don't have enough time to spend with You know a team of 14 or 15 at that point in time That with to spend with each and every one of these people developing You know their their competencies capabilities or growth maps all this type of stuff and I thought I couldn't hire at that point and I was naive enough to think that I couldn't hire anyone to help me with that So what I did was I said, okay, you know the only way to go about this is potentially to Find someone to partner with give away equity in my company and get a few partners on board and maybe we could delight and conquer and so I went and Found a few people who were running their own agencies Ended up partnering with them and then stayed partnered with them for the next four years And that process was very interesting interesting, you know going through the process of merging together and How's the process of working together? Oh, that's I'm actually interested I was more interested in the fact that you were able to sell them the story because You had your company doing Or you know two million dollars plus. Yeah, you have these two other individuals But I'm assuming they're doing okay. Yeah, you're right And so to meet up with two other parties. Yeah, and then sell the dream and story to come together. That's a That's fascinating well, it was kind of interesting because um what I figured was that Pretty much everybody at that size was having the same growth challenges. Okay, right the lack of systems a lack of Focus in the specific area of the business whether it was operations or a new business marketing Finance right and running a really tight ship over there and I didn't go into it with a plan of like, hey, I'm going to sell these people on the dream I went in and hey, what are you doing? What are you finding? Are you running the same problems? I'm running into And we just got to talking And they were like, yeah, we're running into the same problems And I think we sold ourselves on the fact that if we put our heads together We would be able to focus and have our own lanes essentially So everybody brought in something different Yeah, yeah, uh, at least on the surface level it felt that way Um, that we would be focusing in different areas and it'd be a better together approach, you know, three heads are better than one Hmm, how did that merger look like? Well, it was you know, it took Probably six months to put it all together and figure out the the logistics of it and I think the biggest thing was In the first year of that merger It's a little bit like when two families like you've got a stepmom stepdad basically come together and you're bringing in Kids into the picture and that was exactly what it was like And so you guys all went to like same building like same same they were remote You know, I had an office and they came together and we were 60 people overnight Wow, so you went from like 15 to 60. Oh, yeah huge growth huge. So did that new team then or The new merger that they started adopting the system you built before Yeah, and and part of it was also the the chief operating officer that we took on at that point One of my partners at that that point um had his own systems and he you know, he was heavy into automation and process optimization and My talents always been in visualizing and architecting but my follow-through is crap So, you know, I've I've always been the ideas guy and I needed somebody to Work the system again and again and that was what I wanted This partnership to look like um So the bottom line is yeah, they came in with their own systems and we had a mishmash essentially until we found our Footing it took like a whole year to be able to get to that point. Yeah. Yeah Wow, that's crazy, man. Yeah Okay, so the merger happens 60 people overnight same office In different systems all trying to kind of find equilibrium among each other What then the hardest part about Any kind of partnership is understanding who's taking lead in a specific area and Not succumbing to decision by committee And I'm the type of guy who Is very open-minded. I want to listen to everybody else's ideas And I started really seeing like hey, they've had their own success that got them up to here Let's start this better together three heads, you know, put together type of approach And what I realized was that We ended up actually You know Neapolitan ice cream dance solvent says this all the time where it's like strawberry You've got your chocolate and vanilla and there are nice, you know There's three very distinct ones, but if you put them in a bowl and it's out in the sun, you end up getting mush. Yeah Um, so in hindsight, that's that's kind of what happened like we were watering down each other's ideas as opposed to reinforcing them We had growth, you know, I we had a couple years of solid getting new clients on board new team members on board but if I were to look at hindsight of Core values and mission and why we were doing what we were doing each party brought a different vision to it and that's that was Both a source of growth, but also a source of of healthy conflict sometimes unhealthy conflict as well in the business at this point When do you start realizing like things have to change then? Yeah, it's I've always just been a proponent of You know, if i'm feeling a certain way Are other people feeling that way too. Let me start polling And I started polling, you know incoming team members, you know, they're first two weeks. They're still fresh What are they seeing that's different about how we're doing things versus wherever they came from? And I over-indexed on exiting team members as well in the exit interview Hey, what are you seeing? Why did you know why didn't this work out for you? And the thing that came kept coming up is Without, you know, trying to code it in any sort of fancy paint it was, you know, one partner says one thing The other partner says something else that where there's some level of conflict We don't know what to do And so I think that created confusion And to me, I looked at that. I said, okay, what needs to change over here is there's no judgment on good or bad it's simply There are many different ways of running a company and what a team needs is clarity on what is the one way that we're going to run this company And that's the clarity. I think the team deserved And so I looked at that and I really went, hmm I think we need to change the way that we're Approaching this and the way that the business is being run and that led to a conversation in in 2018 where um, we decided that well one of us is going to kick buy out buy out the others and That process culminated, you know last year in june where I bought them out of their shares And that's a whole circle, isn't it like from 2014 going from running a business as a sole founder How did that conversation go like originally was like random like hey guys You know, I think that the key thing I found about it is that people don't like being surprised and so What I really focused on was How do I deliver a firm? But kind message as well. I don't think they were surprised by it I don't think any of us were surprised by the conversation. It was a right thing to do and then as is probably true for anyone going through An acquisition or through an m&a type of process It kicks off all sorts of dirt into The air right and it's a whole thing. Oh, yeah. It's a whole thing Oh, yeah Because each side is trying to figure out how I get back bigger piece of the pie. I brought this isn't that Well, it just goes back to incentives, you know, you have opposing incentives at that point in time And so It's hard work. It is it is very hard How long did the Negotiation or process take to Yeah Well, I mean I'm exceptionally fortunate that it closed in three months. Really? Yeah 90 days 90 days everything 90 days bring it up talking. Yeah, and I I thought about this for a long time though I was thinking about it towards the end of 2018 talking to some mentors trying to figure out what the right because I wanted to really like when I'm set on a direction I really go for it and I take I'm a high fact finder on the Colby. So Just means that I'm gathering a lot of data. I'm playing it through all the angles And then I commit right And so I knew what different directions it could go down and I had lots of great people in my, you know support network helping me Both as a great ear to kind of listen to what was going on to mentor me through the process as well Um, and so that's one of the reasons why I was most, you know, it went as a sort of efficiently as it did Um It kind of like, you know, I know a lot of entrepreneurs were like my friends are entrepreneurs So I there's someone else who I know in our community who closed their deal recently And that deal took a a year and eight months Which is a long time a long time if you think about the the opportunity cost, right? Hmm and the negotiations that ever bring up that They maybe wanted to buy you out. Oh, yeah. Yeah that that was like the there's a dance that happens, right? So the dance is About it's like playing poker. You don't want to show all your cards. You don't see everyone else's cards and so it's a It's a back and forth where you have to Strategically kind of think about like what's right for the company. What do you want personally? Um What does the other side want? And I learned a lot of a negotiation last year masterclass man Oh, it was I felt like I I could talk about that for hours Looking back in hindsight anything that you would have done differently with the negotiation Uh, no, I mean we I think it went Well, I think that every we never resorted to never any sort of yelling shouting matches that kind of thing. It was just cool and collected and I'm patient like that's one thing like I have an impate and I heard this from neval and it kind of summarizes me well Very impatient with actions but patient with results So if that thing had gone on for another two months, so we didn't find with it And so where are you at right now with power by search? So The buyout went through that was last year. Luckily it went quick and easy. You know Um, what's the major focus now? What's the because now you're in charge, you know It's one single minded or one cook the kitchen. Yep Um, what's happening with power by search? We started at the ground level, which is Any consulting business is ultimately a people business You can have all the greatest systems and thinking and everything else, but I'm those sort of people to execute on that Uh, it's difficult to scale So we went back looked at every one of our people We looked at what do we need to do to support them and their growth What's their growth map basically look like was the last time that you know, there's chaos It happens when you have this type of partnership turmoil where um, you start ball dropping some balls Like, you know, when was the last time we did a quarterly bonus? Oh, oh crap. Now that didn't happen. So let's start going back and keeping Every single promise that wasn't kept and make good on it. Like that was just super important to me So we did write better people first recognize people who are high performers um Coached the ones that needed some more help Um offered, you know a path up. So, you know coach up or coach out. So we had to do that the next thing we did was I brought in a VP of operations Because I knew exactly where I wasn't going to excel in the company needed somebody with high systems follow through and looked at you know through my network and talked to people and found this person and um hired hired her and Then went to clients and said hey, what you know, what could we be doing differently for you than we're doing today? Had honest great conversations got their net promoter scores worked on stuff Just being like a huge amount of growth along that path um, and then we were very flexible throughout the The journey like a couple of things. I don't know if you know, but we offer Five weeks of paid time off to everybody at powered by search. It doesn't matter what their seniority is uh, the agency business is one where People work long hours. They burned the midnight hole from both ends of you know of the candle And we didn't want I never wanted a company that was unsustainable like that Said if you don't have time to enjoy life, like what's the point of like saving up for this retirement thing? So five weeks of vacation it works out to roughly about 10 of pay if you look at it for the entire year Uh, so we give that then we were offering people Two days of work from home as well So 40 of your work week if you really wanted to you could work from home And there are people who loved it and are heavy, you know great contributors and other people who kind of bent the roles a little bit You know, they took advantage of that privilege They saw it as a right. Yeah. And so we looked at that and said, hey, look you got this great office Uh in downtown, Toronto, you've been there. We've done an episode. It's a nice office. Yeah, it's a good office um But there's a conversation we had with the a mutual friend of ours jason gainard And jason and I were having lunch And after lunch he said hey, what do you what are you thinking of doing with the office and the team and everything? And i'm like, um, you know, I want to grow it So putting in all the right lego blocks to be able to do that And he goes Dev, um, do you realize that you could be buying a Toyota Corolla every single month with what you pay in rent? I don't know that was like a The straw that broke the camel's back for me And i'd been kind of toying with the idea of what would it look like to work with the best in the world and You know, would I be thinking It was my head That screwed on the right way to think that the best people in the world are going to be an hours commute from this office And I realized the answer was no Because I looked at all the people that I admired And they were all around the world. They were in they were in australia and the uk and the us, you know In south america I'm going, how do I how do I tap that? How do I make sure that I can get these people to To connect and become part of of powered by search and that's when this idea of going fully distributed remote first Came up. I guess like in hindsight, like I've always been Thinking about like how do I do it differently than it's done today? And that's one thing that you don't see with too many agencies, especially like That's probably an interesting kind of Transition. Oh, yeah, totally. And we we again it was well planned. We did surveys. We asked everybody in our team What do you think about this? What do you think our clients will think about it? How will it impact you? um, and then we quantified and said look Most of you are spending two weeks of your entire life commuting every single day. Yes two weeks What would it look like to have two weeks back? And then we actually got, you know type form survey responses of Oh, what would you do and said I would walk my dog. I'd spend more time with my parents, you know I'd go to I'd play with my little brother things like that, right? Play with my kid Like that's priceless right there. You cannot put a price tag on that And so that was also a very motivational push towards going remote And so we made that change and man, it's been a world of difference That's amazing. Yeah, but the systems have to be there. Oh, yeah, the processes Okay, rs kpi scoreboards Tracking weekly reviews. Yeah everything So how frequently do you guys physically meet up for some type of generally speaking like once a month Is when we meet up and that's still because a large portion of the team is in Toronto. Oh, yeah We're still figuring it out in terms of what we do. We hired our first full-time guy in Cape Town, South Africa Oh, cool earlier this year. He's working out. Fantastic. He's fantastic at what he does um And so the next step is really to go to an annual retreat that where we fly everybody down And use the budget that we would have used for on-premise, you know in office um And that's just a great way of like incentivizing people towards an end of year like, you know, here's where we're gonna go. Mm-hmm It's amazing man. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing the story. Yeah, thank you. Like wow, that's how virtual man That's crazy. Yeah Yeah, especially it's not for everybody. No, no, especially for that team. I'm I'm totally in favor of virtual if you can do it Yeah You know overhead costs you save save time, especially Toronto. I'm in the traffic is brutal I think I've become especially sensitive now to getting stuck in traffic. Yeah Because I just look at it and go there's all the other ways I could be spending this time like, yeah, like the funny thing is that Remote doesn't mean you're working at home and not stepping out like I am very happy to jump on a flight to go see a client Because that's quality In-person time, you know what I mean? Like the difference I think is when you are putting in that time in the commute But it's low quality. That's right That's a waste. Yeah And I think remote work is a is the future. Cool, man. Well dev. Thanks for sharing Dude, thanks for having me on if the people want to get in touch with you learn more about power by search or what you're doing on the side What's the best resources? Hit me up on linkedin Just search dev basu And then our site powered by search comm When we publish we're on a publishing roll actually right now Publishing methodology around how to grow software as a service businesses and b2b technology businesses as well Cool guys go check out dev and I'll see you guys next week. Peace