In this episode, Matt Medeiros interviews Sara Dunn from the 11Web Agency. Sara is a website maker and SEO Consultant running a remote business based in Battle Creek Michigan. She talks with Matt about her recent use of YouTube and how she is committed to producing regular content along with creating a niche for her freelance business.
Listen to this episode:
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What you will learn from this Episode:
Creating a remote team:
- Sara’s business team was initially started by hiring a local coworker to do web development and support in the business. (3:54)
- Another remote coworker was brought on to help with design. (4:11)
- A Virtual Assistant was added to keep projects and everything organized. (4:22)
Lessons learned:
- When you are looking to hire a remote worker for your business you can give them a test project to evaluate their skills. (6:40)
- A remote worker needs to be able to meet deadlines and communicate well. (6:50)
- You need to find people who are comfortable with the remote working lifestyle and are used to working alone or on the road. (7:15)
Challenges of Growing an Agency:
- There is a challenge of trying to find the “right” customer who is willing to budget and pay for the level of service that you are providing. (8:26)
- Many new customers are found through networking events and referrals. (8:50)
- The pool of people who want to pay for a great website gets smaller as the prices go up. (9:00)
- It is difficult to find clients from a wide geographic area when you are working as a generalist. (9:19)
- It can be very helpful to create an interesting niche for your business where clients take notice. (9:40)
- Making the pivot in your agency to a specific group of businesses can be scary. There is a lot of training, marketing and adjusting of internal processes when you make a change to specialize. (11:22)
- YouTube is a great tool to use for personal branding and to create a niche for another industry. Sara is focusing on wedding professionals and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). (12:26)
Executing a Business Pivot:
- You still need to pay the bills and collect money so launching another business under a new brand and separate website makes sense. (14:29)
- Keeping the original brand and business keeps the risk lower and current customers happy. (14:40)
- There is not a strategy for using YouTube around a personal brand. (16:19)
- The videos are created with a genuine approach with “this is how I feel.” (16:52)
- The feedback from viewers has been very genuine and supportive around the pivot. (18:11)
- Pushing content with a helpful approach can direct the audience to a common thread. (20:06)
- The audience seems to find the videos coming from a place of honesty and originality and is keeping people connected. (21:16)
- The YouTube video creation consists of 1-3 hours a week. (24:36)
- You do not need a lot of equipment to get started with a quality video that is original. (25:01)
Episode Resources:
11web
Sara Dunn
iMovie
Lunch with Brad
To Stay in Touch with Sara:
Sara on YouTube
Sara on Twitter
To stay connected with the Matt Report, head on over to mattreport.com/subscribe.
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Be sure to check out Matt’s new offering at UserFeedbackVideos.com. It is like having a co-founder for $59.00.
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