Keeping all your eggs in one basket is known to be bad but for some reason so many brands still continue to rely upon a single channel. Entrepreneurship in general is a risk but relying upon a single channel is putting your entire business in jeopardy. Tim and I talk about risky business and how you can improve your chances of success.

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Michael Maher  00:00

Hello everybody, this is The Longer Game where we talk about retail, reimagine, the future of retail, all that kind of junk. With me today is someone that is actually in Cincinnati, the only the first person on our podcast that's also in the same city as me, which we will celebrate now by introducing him. His name is Tim Warren, and he is the CEO of Helium SEO. Thank you for coming on the show. Tim, why don't you just tell people a little bit about who you are? 

Tim Warren  00:26

Yeah, no. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate it. Well, I'm from Cincinnati, not originally, actually. They call it a boomerang town because people you know, they grew up here, they leave, they want to go see the world. And then they,

Michael Maher  00:37

Have come back.

Tim Warren  00:38

And they come back because grandparents live in Cincinnati, and it sucks to raise kids that are grandparents. So I'm actually originally from Virginia, I moved here to go to college. I've got a weird background, man. I went to med school. I was in med school. I want to be a surgeon.

Michael Maher  00:52

Oh, wow. Really? Yeah. Did you go to high school here in Cincinnati? 

Tim Warren  00:55

No, I was at OU down in Athens. 

Michael Maher  00:57

Oh, okay, cool.

Tim Warren  00:58

So how are you, I'm in my first year of med school, and I'm like, I want to be a surgeon. But I also am like starting to cultivate these entrepreneurial desires and like, gosh, it's so cool to be an entrepreneur and start businesses and get to travel and you know, not be stuck in a hospital all day. And so I kind of took this crazy move and quit med school. In my first year my family legit had an intervention for me like, thanksgiving, they all sat me down. 

Michael Maher  01:23

Oh!

Tim Warren  01:24

How semicircle true story like, I swear, 

Michael Maher  01:27

Oh, man.

Tim Warren  01:28

and they're like you're throwing your life away? What are you doing? You work so hard to get to med school? I'm like, Nah, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur. It's gonna be great. Trust me, like, we don't trust you. This is a terrible idea. So I did, I dropped out of med school my first year. And hey, they say all great entrepreneurs are dropouts to something right? So right, sure. I'm just following the trends. So,

Michael Maher  01:46

So what do you guys look like? Are you close with your family now? And do you look back on that? And kind of laugh about like that? That? Because I mean, that's a pretty intense moment to have. But I mean, obviously, from what I know about you, you're doing all right. So probably able to look back and say, okay, like, you know, it just seemed crazy at the time. Yeah. So there's a couple funny stories there. So, yes, at the time, What a great, by the way, what a great little piece of knowledge that you dropped on us about your past. That's like, that's probably you could probably do a whole podcast on that.

Tim Warren  02:19

Totally. Man, that's, uh, I tell people like, you know, hey, if you want to be an SEO expert in digital marketing, the key is become a med school dropout. That,

Michael Maher  02:26

Yeah, just go to your first year want to be a surgeon and then drop out. 

Tim Warren  02:29

That's the key man. That's really where it all came from. 

Michael Maher  02:32

I would not wait. And a serious note, when you said entrepreneurs or dropouts of something. I think part of what does make a good entrepreneur is knowing when to quit certain things. There are aspects of my business that I had to pivot really quickly on. And it meant I basically had to say, Okay, I'm saying no to this thing, because you can't say yes to everything. But I said, No, this is not going to work anymore. I have to change. And so being a good quitter, I think is actually something that helps you as an entrepreneur. Anyway, I want to hear more about your family dynamic. Now.

Tim Warren  03:00

Think it's super true. Yeah. So, I mean, there's, there's kind of, there's a really cool thing about doing something that's that risky, especially if you have my type personality, probably the same as yours, which is, you know, I'm more motivated by people telling me I can't do something then by people telling me I can. Right? I'm gonna run a marathon like, yeah, you could probably do it. You're in good shape. Like, Oh, okay. 

Michael Maher  03:20

Yeah. Okay,

Tim Warren  03:21

I'm gonna go climb Everest like now, you can't do that. And like, let me do it to prove to you right 

Michael Maher  03:24

Now, I'm going to do it. Yeah.

Tim Warren  03:25

Now I'm going to do it. So so there was part of that I had a motivation, like half to succeed, but also, the reason I quit med school I had I had a strong desire to create financial freedom, but also to create time and money, right lifestyle. And being surgeon doesn't do that to create money, but not time. Yeah, so I had a lot of these strong reasons where I pushed through the difficult first years of being an entrepreneur and all the mistakes I made and like my first like, three businesses were pre-tier, like they were all, they weren't successful at all.

Michael Maher  03:29

We honestly probably played into your family like, man, we told you this. We told you this was the bad the, bad thing to do. Totally. And but I mean, look, look, you're a musician, right? Like, you don't just get a guitar and instantly you're Eddie Van Halen, right. Like it takes time. That's a great point. It's it is definitely a skill set that you learn and acquire. Like, I didn't go to school for business. My major in college was Asian Studies. And it was because I had taken us for a long time. I don't say I have a great story now to about college. I did complete it. But I actually dropped out to pursue being a musician full-time with the band I was in.

Tim Warren  04:32

Love it.

Michael Maher  04:32

And my parents said some, somewhat similar. They said, You're making a big mistake, like don't do this. They offered me all these different incentives to stay in school, which I think most people would have taken. And I just said, No, I really feel like I'm supposed to do this. And so I did. I ended up now the fact that my band broke up the quarter at school that I quit, and I went right back the following quarter with some egg on my face. That's one of my favorite foods anyway, so it wasn't that big of a deal. But I went back like, just on my own volition. I was like, Okay, well, I'll go back to school. I mean, but on my own volition, I mean, I talked with my wife who I was dating at the time, she's like, well, what are you gonna do now that your band broke up and you guys aren't pursuing stuff? I was like, I don't know. I'm just gonna kind of figure it out. She's like, I don't think that's a good idea. So I ended up going back to school, and completing the degree that I got. I'm very fortunate that I did. But I was not classically business trained. Yeah. I've never had a official business class in my life. I've, I've sold multi sold companies now. You know, we've won all kinds of awards and Cincinnati. I think through the fat over the fifth fastest-growing company in Cincinnati. Last year, we grew 500% in three years.  Wow. 

Tim Warren  05:44

So, 

Michael Maher  05:44

By the way, when you when it's when you say growth 500%, is that in terms of revenue? Or people? Or is it kind of a mixture of all that stuff? Revenue? Yeah, actual revenue. So, so we went, we started the company, and basically 2018, we officially incorporated in 2017. But I had a non compete from selling my last agency.  Okay,

Tim Warren  05:59

We couldn't, we couldn't launch until basically January of 2018. So we went from zero employees till we're about 60. Today, well, we'll be 75 for the end of the year, full-time employees. So there's a lot of fast growth, right. We never raised any funding, we didn't take outside money, we didn't do any VC. So kind of imagine that that growth just on straight-up organic, starting a company, you know,

Michael Maher  06:19

You and I talked about this, too, that we both bootstrap stuff. I mean, you, you had some investment from the company that you sold in order to start this company. But yeah, no outside investors, which, for anyone who's read the founders dilemma, I've really only read Cliff's Notes. But essentially, you know, you trade-off control for earnings, essentially. And, do you want to be king or you want to be rich, right?  What's that?

Tim Warren  06:44

The primary question they always ask, if you want to raise funding, do you want to be king and have full control? Or do you want to be rich?

Michael Maher  06:51

Rich? Yeah, and honestly, I think for me, I know that as an entrepreneur, I've sacrificed salary a lot. And part of where I'm at, in my journey as entrepreneur, pretty more now is, I want to make more money. And I'm starting to do that and starting to earn closer to what I'm worth, because at a certain point, I don't just want to, you know, be this the starving artist kind of person. And so that means you make different changes in your business and stuff like that. But, you know, having control was important to me, because I was the one that had the vision. And so I wanted to make sure that I was having control over that.

Tim Warren  07:24

Yeah, so it's like, so kind of going back to that, you know, you have to own it, right. So, so when I, when I, you know, told my family, hey, I'm quitting med school, they do this intervention for me, I could have weathered in that moment and said, I'm getting negative feedback. What do I do, you know, these people care about me and love me. But in my mind, what I said is, they haven't seen what I have seen, I have had a vision of where I can go, what this can look like, I've seen successful entrepreneurs, these guys have time, they have money, they have great families, they retired at 40. This is phenomenal. I want that. And I don't think everybody should be an entrepreneur, Michael, like I just don't, I don't think everybody, but I think if you can physically do it, it's the way to go.

Michael Maher  08:04

And, and entrepreneurs need what I've also heard or be called intrapreneurs people that are entrepreneurial inside of a company, they need people that can say, like, I'm definitely more of a visionary type. I'm like, Hey, here's, here's what I see happening. I am totally okay with taking risk and falling on my face. What I'm, but what I'm not incredible at is then taking that process or something that I've created and, and really perfecting it, I have to turn that over to people on my team and say, Okay, here's what I've done. I need you to really work on this and make sure that it's absolutely perfect. I'm going to continue to forge forward. And so you entrepreneurs, and I tell my team this all the time, I'm like, We're successful because of us as a team. It's not because I had a vision, because if I just had a vision that would do absolutely nothing and people just working towards nothing, right? Nothing. So there, it has to be those two things that work together.

Tim Warren  08:56

Totally. So yeah, no, that's exactly right. And, you know, at the end of the day, you have to own it, right. You have to own it, you have to own the vision, and no one can see that except you. But I was definitely motivated by the people who said you can't do that this is a bad idea. So I do remember I'll just to close the loop on a free which is fun. When I turned 30, like the month after I turned 30 I sold my first company. My wife and I owned 100% of it, didn't have any debts. It was very profits. Sales,

Michael Maher  09:23

Here.  Yeah,

Tim Warren  09:23

great win for us. And it was right about the time I would have been like finishing surgical residency and Joe getting done with school, I would have been 400 grand in debt and literally have just finally hitting the workforce. I sold my first company, which is a multi-million dollar agency. And so for me that was the first one of like, kind of like a check of like, okay, I didn't make a terrible decision. This was a good call.

Michael Maher  09:31

I did all right. I sold a company. 

Tim Warren  09:38

Yeah, exactly. And so and then along the way, you know, we had other fun things like my mom who I had always promised all these things. Hey, when I'm a surgeon, we're going to do XYZ. Well, the day I bought the, you know, the really nice sports car. My mom was visiting town I had it delivered that day. It was like, see, like, Let's go for a ride. I told you, 

Michael Maher  10:07

Oh, that's awesome.

Tim Warren  10:08

So I tried to close the loop on some of those promises I had made and things I've wanted to do. And just to help them see, like, Look, if you do have a dream, and you go after it hard, I mean, at that point I had been, I'd been chasing my dream of being a successful entrepreneur for 12 years. Right? You know, pedal to the metal and go in. It doesn't happen overnight. Right? And that's,

Michael Maher  10:27

Not at all.

Tim Warren  10:29

It's one thing entrepreneurs have to understand is: A. It's fraught with peril, right, like, it's risky, which is why it's more rewarding, but it's inherently risky, right, like you are. *inaudible*

Michael Maher  10:37

And I think you have to realize you will experience failure. If you go into something thinking if I'm going to be a success right away, or that that's even going to be the predominant no, I think something that entrepreneurs have to have is something called adversity quotient. Or basically, you just have to be able to deal with a lot of shit that comes your way. I mean, I don't really know any other way to say it. But like you have to have a strong tolerance for adversity. Because the predominant no, I think, and you know, certain entrepreneurs might have experienced success a lot. I don't know many entrepreneurs that experience success right away or constantly and the, I've a friend who actually trademarked the term entrepreneur porn. His name's Ron Richards, really good buddy of mine also helped me develop my sales process. But entrepreneur porn is the, the Lamborghini, you know, big house money everywhere, super successful. 

Tim Warren  11:34

Yeah,

Michael Maher  11:34

Never, never lifted finger lifestyle that people think that entrepreneurs just automatically step into. And most entrepreneurs, I know, you know, you obviously had some success. And so you're able to get the nicer car and things like that. But that was something that came after the work and the time that you put in, in the sacrifices that you made. I mean, I'm sure you could talk about sacrifices that you and your wife made in building that company before selling it. And so entrepreneur porn is basically encouraging people to get into being an entrepreneur because of the affluence, and that's the exact opposite, whatever I've experienced, and so, and so of a lot of other entrepreneurs. And so in order to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be willing to get your teeth kicked in multiple times and say, I am still going to get up and go forward, because I have a vision, doing it aimlessly, I wouldn't recommend but if you've got the vision, the one thing that I think you just can't determine is the timing that it's going to happen. But if you're willing to give up I think even your pride in that I have to be right all the time. Because if you're going to have control over something, you're not always going to be right. And you have to be willing to say I'm not right, I'm gonna do something differently. Because what I'm doing is not working. That's what really ultimately makes an entrepreneur successful. Yeah, so I mean, you dropped a lot of wisdom in that. There's a lot to unpack there. But I'll give my two cents on all that. So the Lamborghini, they're great. They're very fun. I've owned Lamborghinis. The nice house, they're great. They're really nice. Yeah. When you look at the trappings of success of an entrepreneur, right? Use the term like entrepreneur porn, right? It's the Tinder. It's the use of the very end without any relationship, right? That can happen sometimes, right? There are, Sure,

Tim Warren  13:19

Who strike it rich pretty quickly. Right? You know, they, they have a really good idea. They get some funding, it's not that hard for them. The company blows up and they make a ton of money. They're like, Oh, that was sweet, right? Yeah, that's like point 000 1% of this

Michael Maher  13:33

Very, right. Very rare.

Tim Warren  13:35

Yeah. For where, and also people look at the Zuckerberg and the Bs, Oh, so like, Oh, I'm going to start a company. I'm going to take a public and run it like, yeah, do you know how few entrepreneurs are still even in the company when the thing goes to their Series C? Right? Like most entrepreneurs are gone, because they couldn't run a business more than 50 people. Right? 

Michael Maher  13:53

Or, or they just were like, add got it to where it needs to go. 

Tim Warren  13:57

Yeah, 

Michael Maher  13:57

No need to take over. Or I'm no longer passionate about this. I mean, there's so many things that can happen in that cycle.

Tim Warren  14:04

And so a lot of these people start businesses and I'm going to be the next Zuckerberg like, dude, probably not. Okay, like that. 

Michael Maher  14:10

Yeah, 

Tim Warren  14:11

I'm not saying don't dream there. But the guy is wicked smart. He got the right timing, right place all that stuff. The company blew up. And he had to restart over today without that same idea. Would he be as successful? Probably not. 

Michael Maher  14:22

You also have a sell stickers when Facebook was first getting started. I remember my wife, because we were dating in starting in 2004. And she was like, hey, this new thing called Facebook. Shut up. I was like, Cool. So I like you know, open an account and was like, Hey, do you want to send somebody a sticker for $5? I was like, No, I don't want to send a sticker for $5. That's ridiculous. But I mean, he ended up like most businesses finding a way to sell ads. So he, so basically, like, here's my two cents on everything you just said, when you start a business, there, so a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs because to your point, Michael, they see the Lambos, they see the house, they see the trappings and like I want those trappings, but let's just be honest, if you're if you are a robotic heart surgeon, you work in robotics and heart surgery, you're gonna make a million a year, which is most, which is a lot more than most entrepreneurs ever make it out of their companies, right? So there's a lot of ways to make money, my wife and I talk about all the time like, gosh, there are so many freaking ways to make money. It is insane. Like you meet people who are like, how do you make money? Yeah, oh, I arbitrage mattresses, you know, people, you know, they get rid of their Purple Mattress, and this goes into landfill. Now I get an i resell on Facebook marketplace, you know, I made 150 grand last year, like, I that's a business now, like this. So to that point, I always think there's like on this microphone stand. There's someone that makes the plastic component that holds a microphone clip, there's a screw that's in here, someone manufactures the screw that goes in here, and then somebody makes the machine that manufactures the screw. So I've thought about that many, many times that there's so many levels to business, an opportunity that's out there. Yeah. And so at the end of the day, here's how I tell people to think about it, right? Don't become an entrepreneur, just to make money. Because there's a lot of easier ways to make money. There are, there just are, right? It's a lot easier ways to make money. But entrepreneurship is, I believe the best key to lifestyle, which is time and money in which to spend time, I'm sorry, money and time and wish to spend it right? Because entrepreneurship gives you freedom opportunities that a typical career does not, right? So that robotic heart surgeon makes a million a year, but he does not have freedom of time, right? The hospital tells him where to show up what to do and how much to work. And that's what it is, right? When you're an entrepreneur and you build a business that's duplication. And you know, let's say you make the same as that heart surgeon, but you decide, look, I'm going to replace myself in this company with all these people that are better than me at all these jobs, and then want to go travel, you can do that. But you have to be good enough to pull it off. Right? The thing with entrepreneurship, people just miss, there's nothing wrong with the houses and the cars and all that stuff. You don't get there without: A. yes, you could get super lucky. That's very rare, right? Most of the time, you're building a business that adds true value to the people who buy from you, then you're creating systems, you have to be good enough at creating the system, and you have to have product-market fit, your product has to actually really fit with the market once, none of those things are easy. And some people are much better at that than others. Right? There's people who started as entrepreneurs who had these ideas, but they’re not good executed. They're not good visionaries, they, they're not good business people, they're not going to get it. And so the rough, hard truth about entrepreneurship is the world's really competitive, the world doesn't owe you anything, and you have to be better than the other people out there people that buy from their company. That's just what it is. So, I actually would love to have a podcast on entrepreneurship. And one of the cool things about this podcast is there's a lot of elements to retail entrepreneurship, being a big part of that, and you are an entrepreneur that helps other entrepreneurs in your SEO, SEM company, you're helping people to execute. And I think that's something to think about. For anyone that has a, a brand anywhere, you may be the one that comes up with the concept, or you may be good at a certain skill. But as you grow the business, you have to acquire more knowledge to help you to actually grow the business and not so much on the specific thing. And you have to bring people in, who are experts at their given field. So my agency helps brands on Amazon, we are you know, we, I talked about this before we, you know, even started recording. But just you know, being an expert sometimes seems like a relative term, right? Especially when there's there's new technologies coming up all the time. But you've got experience and a good track record and space. So people hire you to, to continue to, you know, perform the services that you perform. But people bring us in, because they're like we have no, we know that we have a product. And we know that there are people that are making money on Amazon, how do we connect those two things. And that's where we come into play. I I don't see us, as I mean, we're service providers, but we're really gatekeepers. I heard this guy named Kenan, I don't know his last name, but he's on LinkedIn and just goes by Kenan and he's really big in the sales world. And he said that, you know, adding the adding value is a it's kind of a buzz term. But there's a little bit of a paradigm shift there at least from a service side of things. So when or even on the tech side of someone to bring on your, you know, your SaaS model or the product that you have. Just when someone hires you or someone hires me or someone hires you, Tim your agency, they don't instantly get like 15 grand or 20 grand in their business. What you do is help them to uncover what's already there via a specific skill set. So when someone comes in, you know, brings us on to come into their business and help them grow an Amazon, we don't just, you know, inject 50 grand in cash, what we're saying is, hey, we see what you're doing right here. And you know, your, your product and your market really really well. We're gonna help you to turn that into something that's successful on Amazon. And that's really where the value is it, saying you have a good product. But in order to get revenue for what you have, you need to bring in someone that's, that's an expert. And so that plays exactly into what you do, which is being you know, your you and your company are experts when it comes to SEO and SEM, and helping people to help other entrepreneurs. And sometimes it's, you know, bigger companies as well. I know, you've got some, you know, more like larger corporate clients, but it's helping those people to uncover the value that's in their business and tap into what we already know, is is working. Yeah. So for our enterprise clients, you know, the pet smarts, the Xavier's, the Honeywell is those guys, they, they typically get it more because they're at a much higher level, right? But yeah, for a midsize business clients, I think you hit the nail on the head, we this the joke we use it helium is, you know, now, computers don't really have CD ROM drives anymore, but people used to believe, right? It's like, Oh, I'm gonna hire this SEO company. And money's just gonna shoot out my computer like this, right? Yeah, I was gonna open so much cash is gonna flow out, I won't know what to do with all of it. Right?  Anyone who doesn't know what a CD ROM drive is, It's essentially at putting a piece of plastic in your computer that would, you know, make games and music and other things like that. If you don't know what it is, then you might be. You might be in under 30. You might be really, *inaudible*

Tim Warren  21:42

*inaudible* myself. Yeah. But like, yeah, I didn't say floppy drive. Right?

Michael Maher  21:45

Right. That could have been way, way worse. So but people

Tim Warren  21:49

just kind of expect that, hey, I'm going to hire this digital marketing company. And money's going to just shoot out of my hard drive, right? Doesn't work that way. In fact, digital marketing is like anything else sales, team building, you have to first invest, understand what you're going after training hard work, figuring out the details, and then it starts to produce a great return. And, *inaudible*

Michael Maher  22:10

That's the same for us, too. We tell people, it's an investment, you're not going to be profitable. Now you can, the first three to six months, I should say. But it's going to take time, it's going to take time, and it's an investment in the future success. And so if people aren't able to frame that way, it's very difficult for us to even start and get into an interaction because a couple months down the road when they haven't become profitable yet. There's often some discord and they're unhappy, and they want to, you know, they want to quit.

Tim Warren  22:41

Yeah, so what I was talking to a business owner a couple days ago, and he came up to me and said, hey, you know, we, we have a business, you know, relatively large, you kind of went through what they do, because it's great. He said, we want to transition online, right? We want to sell our product online in the eCommerce space. Here are some very large companies that are doing that. Great. So take a look at it. So what I did is I walked him through the competitors and how much further ahead they were from an SEO sem perspective, right and looking at social ads, SEO and SEM. And I walked him through the process of just understanding there's two things he needs to know number one, when you do SEO, right, search engine optimization is not an instant result thing, in fact, 

Michael Maher  23:12

Right.

Tim Warren  23:13

very slow. So I always,

Michael Maher  23:14

It's gotten slower over time to hasn't? 

Tim Warren  23:17

Even slower, because if you would, *inaudible*

Michael Maher  23:18

People used to be able to make a change in and then in a week, they see a change in their indexation in Google, right?

Tim Warren  23:24

Yeah. And so Google is called sandboxing so now when you build a new website, Google sandboxes you for 90 days because they want to make sure you're not some spammer who's like trying to sell free Viagra online, right? 

Michael Maher  23:34

Right.

Tim Warren  23:35

Right, so they can't, *inaudible*

Michael Maher  23:36

I don't sell free Viagra anyway. 

Tim Warren  23:38

You don't, you get into your website and then you get them with ads and then you go 

Michael Maher  23:41

Oh, okay, cool. 

Tim Warren  23:42

I can't SEO you make some AdSense money and then your site gets banned, right? But, 

Michael Maher  23:45

Okay

Tim Warren  23:46

That was like a market right

Michael Maher  23:46

you guys want to win a terrible business model? Just gave you the worst one. 

Tim Warren  23:52

To answer man, drop out of med school for that one. 

Michael Maher  23:54

Yeah. And start at blackhat SEO business.

Tim Warren  23:57

So, but SEO so what I tell everybody is is think about SEO and ads this way ads is like renting an apartment. You need a place to live you don't have to put any money down it's just hey here, here's 500 bucks a month here's my apartment boom I'm gonna move in but you can pay your rent for the next 800 years you'll never build a sense of equity you stop paying your rent you get kicked out right, yep. But with, with SEO it's like building a home as a foundation you've got a home you've got to put more money in it takes longer but you get equity in that and after you've done it for a while your SEO is so good. You literally have to do almost nothing in your SEO is that's in continuous right? 

Michael Maher  24:29

That's incredible. I've never been anyone I frame it like that. And that is so smart to put it that way and help people I mean, I think I love analogies. I'm not even a sports person but I love sports analogies. And I've said you know in order to like to be successful on Amazon, you have to own your brand. And to own your to like actually win at something in sports. You have to just be on the roster. That's kind of like the very, very preliminary prerequisite and not selling your product on Amazon or not. Owning your brand on Amazon, you're not even on the roster, so you're guaranteed to not your brand to not be successful. So I think those analogies help people to better understand. Okay, how is this actually applicable to me? And how does this? How can I better frame this because I think a lot of stuff comes back to mindset. I, it sounds very cliche, but I have noticed that, especially as I get older, and realize that I don't have it all together, and I need help, and I need to, you know, make changes, like this year, as an entrepreneur, I've hired more people, I've asked for more help than I ever have in my 11, almost 12 years of being an entrepreneur. And guess what, I've been more successful this year. And I know that more money for things too, because I said, Okay, I don't know how to do this, I need to get help to do this thing so that I can be better. I said, I'd rather you know, lose pride in myself and grow the business or be more successful in that area. And so you have to be able to say, I don't I don't have this all together, you have to be able to, you know, relinquish your control. I mean, an amount of control and bring in someone that can help but yeah, I mean, that's like, that's been helped me to be a lot more successful. Yeah, so we have a really large retail client, they've got, you know, 6000 stores in North America, we actually ran these numbers for them, because a lot of businesses struggle to understand like, well, what, okay, Tim, I get it. It's slow. It's an investment, right? Even Amazon, same way. But yeah, what's the investment look like? How long is this going to take? So here's a couple, just examples. One, cuz I know a lot of people watching are into retail. So this, this company, their return on adspend? Was, was 622%. Right? So they put in $1 into ADS, they get $6.22. Wow, that's good. Right? Yeah. Which is really good, right? Like they're doing a good job on ads. And they spend a lot of money on ads. Well, you want to guess what their SEO return was around the same return on spend on SEO? Probably, I'm gonna go with point 5. Oh, wow, that was the return once they invested in it. Yes. I'm sorry. I thought you meant what were they getting? No, before they invest in it? Okay. 32,000% is crazy, insane. 

Tim Warren  26:56

32,000%. And so for that,

Michael Maher  27:10

Do you even quantify that? By the way? How do you measure that just based on the basically the money, they're paying you for the service, Organic sales coming through the website divided by the cost of paying helium to do the service? Oh, right. So I mean, you guys have had to create that report, essentially, because people want to know, what is the return on, on the investment. And that I think is I mean, that's a that's an incredible case study. Now, to be able to say, for every dollar you spend in us, you, one of our clients get $32,000 back, that's insane. And so, so what we help them walk through, because they're a big company, and they you know, they have big budgets, we had to help them walk through this idea of like, look, when you spend $1, on ads, you get $6.20 back and you get it right away, right? You spend those ads, you get money right away, when you spend $1, on SEO 12 to 24 months later, you get $32,000 back, but it's slower, takes more time to take effect. But look at that goal between those two different $6.20 to 32,000. So what we were helping them with is a SEO is slower. But in a year or two years, if we invest in this, your brand is going to be killing it. But ads today are working and they'll work in the future. But if the minute you turn those off, it's gone. Right? SEO builds long-term value, like buying a home, right? You build an equity in the home. So that's what we explained to our business owners and our marketing teams is you have to look at SEO as a long-term sloper, right? It's not get in, take a bunch of steroids get really buff and then never lift again. It's consistent, go to the gym consistently eat healthy, you'll get long term good results, right,  Which most people don't want to take the time to. Yes, they want that quick result. And so I think at least something that I've learned with my agency is that you have to be able to tell, is this a person that's willing to say, yes, I will eat healthy and go to the gym regularly and change my, my behavior patterns and how I think about something right? Is this someone that just wants to take steroids because hiring a person that just wants to take steroids and by the way, we're not talking about actually taking steroids? So if anybody is thinking that that's valid, I'm sure it could work but you might have, *inaudible*

Tim Warren  29:18

Another good online *inaudible* that's what's med school for.

Michael Maher  29:22

Yeah, is to, is to still sell steroids to people,

Tim Warren  29:26

Online. 

Michael Maher  29:26

I think you online, you, you have to be willing to. I mean, honestly, it is like a lesson in investment. I don't know a ton about finance. I'm trying to raise my acumen there. But it's like, Okay, do you want you know, to get a quick return on something or are you looking to retire with something what and what is it that you're gonna invest in? What's the level of risk and stuff too and honestly, it sounds like investing in SEO is less risky than ads, because you aren't having to put I mean, you're putting money in. But, and there's no guarantee. But you're building a longer term track record. Versus, like you said, the apartment analogy of you, once you stopped paying rent, you know, you don't have a place to live anymore. Yeah, that's right. So, and one thing we've learned is like we actually, so helium has always been working to reduce churn and lower churn and longer client retention. And so we've studied our clients that have been with us, literally, since we started the company four years ago, and we have clients that will start and they'll, they'll quit month nine, and we're like, what's the difference? Right, like, the tech is the same, the service is the same what what happened. And in a lot of cases, what we find, Michael is that the people who are, are with us for four years and going, they have a long term mentality when it comes to digital marketing, right? It's something that they as a company want to invest in, they plan to do it forever, they plan this, this is part of their strategy. And then some companies come in, and they're like, we're gonna try this thing out, right? It's the steroids approach. I'm gonna go to the gym a few times, I'm gonna try some steroids, I don't get super buff, then I'm gonna try something else. Yeah, and I don't want to only say that, you know, that that's the reason that there can be churn. But a lot of times, this is a difficult thing for us is knowing ahead of time, the marketing person, we're going to work with what their mentality is, and what their corporate mentality can be hard to figure out. But that's a key component for us is when we have the most successful relationships, we find that the client on the other side, they're willing to take our advice, they're willing to listen, right? They're willing to actually listen to the expertise on that side and modify plans. If we say, hey, that's really not going to work down that direction, we really need to do it this way. And then they're willing to look at things in terms of a long term plan. It's not, I need SEO results in three months, well, it's not gonna happen. There's no way we can make it happen. Like, you shouldn't even hire us if that's what you're like. 

Tim Warren  31:47

And we tell people that we're like, don't hey, if you're, if you need SEO results in less than six months, we're not your firm, right? We can't do it, we can't make that happen. 

Michael Maher  31:55

And to be clear, is any firm, really their firm? If they're looking for results in less than six months? No, no, other people are willing to tell you that you'll get the results, which is tricky. But we're not going to solely our brand by doing that, because we know it's not right. So we tell people look, we don't think that's possible. But that's our opinion, here's the data behind it. Google doesn't work that way. But we're not going to sell it to you, because we know it's not going to work. And I'm not going to take your money. Well. And that makes, like you said, it's a credibility thing that makes you look worse as an agency. And if anything, it could bring down your results as a company, 

Tim Warren  32:29

Right? 

Michael Maher  32:29

You're not able to create as many case studies because you're like, the minimum, the minimum case study is 12 months, it's almost like a medicine, like, hey, we have this extended trial, or we have this clinical trial, it's going to be 24 months, someone withdraws in six months, because like I didn't see the results. I wanted to like, well, we told you the medicine isn't going to work for you know, 24 months. So you're basically giving up on the time you invested. I'm going to start a podcast that's all about analogies, I think because I love analogies so much.

Tim Warren  32:57

Analogies the key, man. It's the key to selling because people don't know about SEO, they don't go to Amazon to be sure. But you gotta you got to connect the dots for them and help them understand, right, like paid ads are like renting an apartment. Oh, I understand that. So analogies are key.

Michael Maher  33:09

Now, I thought of another good one. So, a good analogy for maybe SEO versus, you know, paid ads is a farming mentality. So if you want to be sustainable and have your own food used, I mean, and this probably isn't true nowadays. But you plant the seeds, you tend to the ground, you do all the work upfront, all the money's up front. And eventually fruit will be born or, or vegetables depending upon what you plant. If you want something to eat, now you just go to the market and you purchase it and you're going to get what you want. And but then when you're done, you're done. You're done with the food, and you have to go back and get more food. So yeah, I told you, we could just keep going, I could come up with a man. Oh, just analogies upon analogy. So, Tim, thank you for being on the show. I think the honestly the analogy of the house versus the apartment, that's something that it says is definitely something I'm going to take away from this. And I know that when it comes to talking to clients about stuff on Amazon, one of the differentiators about Amazon compared to a lot of other places to sell your product is that there is a strong correlation. And sometimes we're able to show from a statistical perspective that there, is there's a strong correlation, but there's a strong correlation between selling a product on an advertisement and that helping your organic visibility on Amazon because it's not just an ad you're creating. It's the product listing that's getting promoted. So it doesn't matter if it's showing up organically or if it's showing up on an ad. If you sell your product that actually helps the listing in general, perform better and that's what Amazon is showing to people because they went from an eBay approach which was you can list whatever you want and then there were like 10 of the same thing listed and you just have to look at the pictures and say, Well which one do I think looks better even though it could be the same item? They unified it to make it more of a consumer focus one, but where can people find you? If they wanted to? Would they be looking, you know, out back of a med school, smoking cigarettes because you're depressed because you left or inside of a Lamborghini? Because you become a successful entrepreneur? Wherever people look, they wanted to find you.

Tim Warren  35:20

Yeah, totally. Well, if you want to first check out our company is just Helium-seo.com or just Google helium SEO,  we'll make sure we pop up at the top. It's what we do. So reach out,

Michael Maher  35:32

I was gonna say if you didn't show up at the top that would be, that would suck  

Tim Warren  35:35

That would be embarrassing. Yeah, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn as well, too. I you know, if you Google Tim Warren, helium SEO on my LinkedIn will pop up. And you can email me at tim@helium-SEO.com. So feel free to reach out. And one last quick tip before we leave, I think would be helpful to listeners on here. I want to say one last thing about Amazon, 

Michael Maher  35:36

Yeah, sure. 

Tim Warren  35:55

How it all connects. Because I want to make sure that the people listening, you know, this is something I get asked all the time. And I wanted to pass along. When you're thinking about your brand and your product. And you know, you guys want to talk to Michael say, hey, I want to start up an Amazon store, I really want to push this forward. My two cents, One thing I'd highly recommend, when you think about owning your brand, I completely agree with that. But also one thing I would encourage them to do is own your customer connection. Right? So if I've seen so many products that they really their whole business is Amazon, right? Yeah, like, like they're doing five 10 million in revenue. And it's just literally all through Amazon. And they're doing well. But then they want to go DTC or direct to consumer. They don't own the email addresses, they don't own the clients, they don't enter the data. And then they don't know where to go. And so what happens if Amazon changes their model and said, taking 15% that take 30%? And bam, you're out of business, right? What if, what if you get a really big competitor comes into Amazon web stuff changes, and Amazon doesn't work as well anymore. We highly recommend that businesses learn all of the channels, they're called Traction channels, figure out what traction channels could really work for you and try to get the direct sale to your consumer as much as you possibly can. Right, don't just go through other distribution channels. So if you don't have an Amazon, set up an Amazon account, get that going sell through Amazon, if you only sell through your website, right? If you only do Amazon, I would highly recommend get your own site with a Shopify back and where you can we can order product and try to get people buying from you directly as well, you'll make more money because you don't have to pay the fees to Amazon. And you can own those clients. And they might still buy from Amazon because it's easy for them. But then you also own the relationship, you own the data, you own the email addresses, so you can market to them more effectively. So that's my two cents is make sure that you're diversified as a business, if you don't have Amazon, get on Amazon. And if you only have Amazon, make sure you get on other platforms. So that you're you're good

Michael Maher  37:46

doing Omni channel is, is ultimately the direction that we tell clients. And it might seem a little counterintuitive to say, Don't rely only on Amazon. But we ultimately and I would actually argue that the cost that you it takes to do business with Amazon because they take more fees up front, I don't know that it ends up costing less to run your own site, because you do have to invest in infrastructure of the site and ads and SEO and all that kind of stuff. So there's a higher price point that you have to say, okay, I'm okay with Amazon taking 15% for referral fee. They also have, you know, traffic that that's built in, that's coming to the site. But we we want to build help build successful brands, we help those brands on Amazon, we highly recommend people to have their own site we're looking at, you know, what other channels, can we help people on Walmart, we also believe that people should be in brick and mortar too, because there are so many different there, there's so many different shelf space, that shelf spaces that consumers are looking at, you need to be in the places where your consumers are. So you said go and look at the tracking channels that that work for you. Maybe, you know, being in a brick and mortar store being in a in a big store like Target or Walmart or something, maybe that's not the best place for you. Maybe being digitally native is what really works for your brand. So have your own Shopify store, right be on Amazon, whatever the case might be. But make sure you're investing in multiple channels. Because there are so many people that are our 90% of their businesses, Amazon, and Amazon shuts them down for whatever reason. It's very common. But if you if you aren't able to get that back up and running right away, and you're relying upon a paycheck, you're going to be screwed. And so you have to make sure that you're investing your brand overall representing your brand well and Amazon should ultimately translate into people I believe, translate into people going and following you on social media going and checking out your site, being able to see that there are exclusives on your site, or that there are other opportunities for them to purchase directly from you so that you can own more of that that customer experience. But I think that's great. Very, very sage advice.

Tim Warren  39:48

Awesome. No, I just wanted to pass along because I think there's people watching who are you know, hey, you know, this is great. We're getting Amazon or we want to get into Amazon. That's a great move. I highly recommend that but don't only rely on on one channel, right, you got to make a channel. And it's the same thing with SEO don't only do SEO, right,

Michael Maher  40:08

right, Invest in advertising,

Tim Warren  40:08

*inaudible* social 

Michael Maher  40:08

Yup, exactly

Tim Warren  40:09

do all like don't do just one thing. It's too risky even if it's SEO, right?

Michael Maher  40:14

Yep, absolutely. So thanks for coming on, Tim. Thank you, everybody for listening. This has been The Longer Game, like I said, where we talk about retail, reimagined. That's the show. That's it. So we're leaving. See ya.