What is going on y'all? Robert Sykes keto Savage.com? And today I've got special guest Jordin Carmen on the podcast. Jordan is The Man Behind modular orange Matchstick Studio. He is the brains behind my website, keto, Savage.com, live savage.com, ketogenic bodybuilding.com. He's built that my website and many of my friends websites, and we just wanted to have a good conversation about business entrepreneurship and where the web is going. So, without further do is sit back, relax.
Enjoy the conversation with my good friend and web man, Jordan Carmen. And we are live. Jordan how are you brother? Good. How are you doing? I'm good, man, I'm good, you were here. What was it like a month or two ago? We were talking shop and we talked for like an hour and a half solved. All the world's problems when I managed to be a podcast. He's so here we are making it a podcast. You are my website guy. You have got three websites
three three now three. Now he knows that he's not calm live savage.com which we have not had any content to and then Keep doing bodybuilding.com, which is the landing page for the book basically. But you have been in the web development space, just got you some backstory on that man. I want to kind of dive into that. Yeah, well my background is in computers, computer science started my career at Walmart and then ventured off on my own.
We've been doing web and modular orange is our product that we market and been doing that. Now, for about seven years and are just hoping to do our best work and do as many Websites, as we can for people in a good way. So, modular orange is like the, the SAS and Matchstick studio is like the company ranked, or that. Can I have it broken down? Yes. So talk to me about my, I guess, before we dive into this stuff, bringing the listeners that are normally listen to Quito nutrition.
We might talk about key to a little bit, but I kind of want to make this like an entrepreneurship business or in a podcast because there's all kinds of good stuff. We can dive into there, but as it pertains to web development and Modular. Orange, as a framework, what kind of sets that apart from all the competition at the? Why would people not want to just jump on WordPress? Yeah, well, don't get me started on WordPress.
Might be here all day, but we are what we're trying to do, is just make it simple for people, that don't know, really anything. And I think a lot of competition out there are a lot of agencies and other companies that offer web services, they like to nickel and And I'm they like to overcomplicate it over explain all these things that customers don't know. If you're a small business owner, you're trying to start a new business or you had a
business for 15 years. You need to be the expert at your business and let someone else handle your utilities. We try to operate module orange as a utility, so just like you would pay for phone service for your business. Electricity. It's 2023 have to have a website. We are going to include everything you need and you're just not going to have to worry about it. So anytime you need support, help whatever, call us and we'll, we'll help you out.
So, just trying to make it easy affordable and not nickel-and-dime people. When I launched my business Kito Savage, I launched it July 1st 2016, and I didn't have a web team. I was broke. I built a website on On WordPress and in hindsight, it would have been well because you charge me 95 bucks a month. I don't know if I should have said that out loud enough. You're gonna like the price. Go to the website.
It's out there. Yeah, so like, in high side, I didn't had 95 bucks a month them, but it would have been worth my while to figure how to make 95 bucks a month. And because I spent so much time watching YouTube tutorials, and how to build something out on WordPress, specifically, one that I remember spending five hours to try and move a red block, like two inches to the right and down an inch.
And I said, I mean, I think I learned my entire, you know, curse word vocabulary during that time, but it was not efficient, use of my time whatsoever. And you've been really good at this whole website and add a thing. So, when we build keto Savage, like I built that back in 2016 and then we built keto Savage out. When was that? That was two years ago, maybe four years ago?
Yeah, but since then, you've been to this whole website and add a thing, which is what you did for live savage.com and then I've had you You you've done several websites for my friends but basically you come out here, you bring a whole team out here. You figure out what their color palette is, what their branding is what they want to accomplish. And you build out the entire website within like an eight-hour window and then you give them all the tools that they need to update.
It keep it up to date and then that's 95 bucks a month. Like there's no like some upfront costs. Like I tell it to people and they're like, wait a minute. What? Well I have a question about that too because we've been hearing that maybe it sounds too good to be true. True. But the but the thing is with a, we like to come out here and because you have a great place and so it's a little selfish on our part. Yeah, I come hang out. You're just slightly too far away for me, not to be here
every day. Well, you haven't come to the gym. Yeah. And I know I'm Jim, you did bring the the weight belt and the you know, all your gym clothes today. Ring. Got it. We can do, okay, cool. Some local after this nice, huh? But so, two things, the speak to the pricing. First of all, you're right. Right. I mean there are tons of DIY options out there that if somebody wants to do that they can do that. You're going to pay you know, somewhere between 20 to 40,
maybe 50 bucks a month. But then you're on the hook for knowing everything or youtubing or trying to figure all that out. And if you're especially if you're a service-based business or you're trying to produce your product, do you have time to spend 10, 20, 30 40 hours,
figuring out your website? The other flip side of that is A lot of times our competitors are going to charge you five ten fifteen thirty thousand dollars as a one lump sum to set it up and then charge every time you need to change your going to charge you for that. So we're trying to meet it in the middle. $95 is our price that's basically saying we're more than DIY. We're doing it all for you but we're going to build and include everything that you absolutely
need. So that you don't have to worry about. Any time you make a change? We're going to yeah you know whatever. But I mean I don't remember what I was paying monthly for WordPress but with all the plugins and upgrades and bells and whistles that I was building out, I don't think it was any less than that and it was just a massive headache, you know, did you ever run into issues with like updating? Oh, I was the worst man. Like I would, I wouldn't see you. Again, it breaks the whole
thing. Yeah, I didn't start plugging the whole thing with crash or it would say, like I need to record, it are doing update, and then I would do an update, then it would like, like the spinning wheel of Death thing, it would never go through. So I would never know halftime if it is working or not and I just didn't have time to be a WordPress expert. But I said, I think was probably around 95 bucks a month for everything and I always have to
do everything. And I tell people like I'm not, you know, y'all didn't pay me saying this stuff and I'm just pretty much talking about your website because I like it. But my friend, Chris has built his website three on the gym, I go to in Fayetteville they've built their website through yum. My brother's probably going to come up here. And do some work on the building for me because he's a welder and he needs a website because he's starting his business.
So he's gonna meet with y'all and I tell them all. It's 95 bucks a month and then yeah. But what's The Upfront? Initial cost and get it built. And I'm like, there is nice, just 95 bucks a month, you know, Dakota, one of my clients built this website through yum. So just make sense, I don't feel like people realize that it's
that low barrier to entry. And when it comes to web sites, I'd love to get your take on this but in business like, for me in my work, In my industry, like having a social following, having a brand having a way to connect with people is very very
important. I'll talk to people that are not really in the business world with in this day and age and they'll be like yeah I'm just gonna get some business cards and I'll be booming which I can I can appreciate the hustle of getting some business cards but like a lot of people don't have a website in 2023 which to me like that's just asking for trouble. Like I mean do you have a lot of people? I mean I'm obviously people coming to you to build a website but a lot of these people.
People, they already have something rather, they just totally bootstrap from the ground up. You'd be surprised and I don't know the stats offhand but I'm I think it's still something like 30 to 40 percent of businesses in the US don't have any website at all that's where I'm it. Yeah, especially as Being in today's day and age everybody checks the website. Yeah even if you've got the best physical location on the planet somebody Drives By they're going
to check you out first. They're going to do a search, they're going to try to figure out who you are before they walk into that store. So it's about I would say most people that come to us have already something established there and maybe it's 10 years old but that's the last time they did anything. Yeah. But we do occasionally run into people that don't have anything startup certain other big things.
So if somebody's starting a new business or starting from scratch and then that's where we can come in and be that affordable option to say, yes, $95, a month and we'll handle everything you concentrate on, getting your business cards and starting a business will handle everything else.
And you do that remotely with people to, I mean, I've had the luxury of being able to interact with you in person every time we built a website, but I'm assuming you're In that V Zoom or something with people in different locations. Yeah. Our normal process you mentioned the website in a day which is kind of new for us. We've been doing that for about a year.
Our normal process is probably a three to four week process and the only reason I say that is just back and forth that it takes to get the assets that we might need from somebody for their business but We go through design design review will put out, put it up on a test link you can see everything that you need to see before it launches and then when you're pleased with it we launched it and that is like people.
It's like a drag-and-drop functionality for people that want to update things after it's built. Like it's pretty simple and straightforward for them to tweak things at blog posts Etc if they want to. Yeah, so yeah. I'd say most of Of our customers. They don't think part of the reason they come to us as I don't want to mess with it. Yeah. They just they want to shoot an email and say hey can you update this or can you change this or add this person? We do that all the time.
But we do have the ability part of what makes part of what makes it. So that we can do things as quickly as we can, is in as affordably as we can. As are we control the platform? So we're not using something like WordPress. It's a completely in-house product, it's not open source, so it's super secure. And we control that software in that environment. So then we can do things super quick. Give people access if they want the access.
It's all from the front end. So you're familiar with WordPress. Like you said, it's WordPress has a back end to it. You know, if you need to move that red block or whatever it is, you're fiddling around with this whole back end framework, that you're Not seeing what's happening on the page, you just have to hit the preview button or hit publish and then flip over to the live site and then it didn't move or it's broken or whatever.
Flip back, try something else, hit save again, you're just doing this constant back and forth. So our system is all front-end based you sign in your on the website. So for those that do want that control to be able to go in and edit things themselves, you just edit it from the website side of things. So, if you change a piece of text updates, it right there, you can see. See that red block move if that's what you're trying to do. So that's what enables us to do
things quickly for people. And what I'll do, y'all do Beyond just the website development itself because I think you'll have like because I'm udl for the website development, but you also do like full-blown branding packages like making logos and everything, right? That's totally separate that right. Yes. So that's not 95 bucks. What is not know? What does that those are? Those are extra options again. Those are great for people who maybe had a brand out there. Or 10 years, they needed
updated. They needed refreshed, maybe they have a start-up, they're starting a brand new business, they need to get everything going. So, we offer logo packages, branding packages. Any design needs that you might want some of the packages. Speaking of the business cards, you know, we would include that in some of the packages that we have, but it's a good way to
either. Refresh what you have or get you something brand-new and if you don't have anything, we will start from scratch and get you a brand that you love. And then tailor that with the Well yeah buddy Chris whom I've known since high school, use the auto bill that his forestry mulching landscaping business and what was his most his requirements. He wanted something look cool. That's pretty much it pretty much.
He's got a super sick logo. We did that pretty quick because I think he kind of added that on. Yeah. And he didn't have any idea what he wanted in the logo, right? He just said he wanted like to Exeter somebody. He was that totally y'all. Well, he gave us the name. Yeah, it had two x's. Senate. So that win. So, Austin came up with this really cool logo, and the color palette and everything, and it turned out really well. Nice, by the way, totally tangent here.
He just got his machine, his big old skid steer. So he's gonna get all kinds of pictures, went out the updated website or something with that. So I'm excited for him. We make it a shirt, put that put that logo on it. I know man, he's been a. We've been putting I went over to his house two days. Putting putting his logo that y'all made on freaking everything like he's got it
plastered on his bath. wall and stuff you know so good branding there I guess but you'll do things like AB development as well which is something that I'm May dip my toe into we kind of talked about this last time you're here but I think having an app for what I'm doing specifically would be an efficient way of going about things apart from using like a Google spreadsheet which is what I've been doing and you're talking about the app structure and framework that y'all use is
totally different than I'm gonna be sound like I'm not a web developer here so just you just Take Mike. Well, so we're towing or it's relatively new ish technology. And I say that to mean the technology is kind of existed for probably 10 years, but it's really picking up steam in the last two or three and I'm going to do you a prototype just so you can see how it works. But it's essentially based on the web typical. If anyone's out there, that's had an app done or had an app priced.
We run into that a lot where somebody will say. I have this idea for an app and then they'll go get it quoted out and that like, it will come back 200 300, 500 thousand dollars for this app that they have. And it's really that can go for things that really aren't that Hardware intensive that you need all the stuff on your phone for. So what we've done is adopted this newer technology. That's essentially it's a progressive. Web app is what it's called and it's all web based.
Taste. So you don't need all of the, like, xcode iPhone stuff. They're like proprietary code base and all that stuff we can do it, web-based, and then package it up, and send it to the app stores. And you can do that with pretty much everything. If you don't need the hardware of the phone say for something like NFC, which is how people pay like tap to pay in stores. You can't access that piece of Hardware with what we use but that's rare that people. I need that most of the time,
it's like an app. Like yours were, let's store. Let's do some calculations store some data, show some charts. We can do all of that with web-based and it also is all mobile responsive are almost responsive every. It'll go to the iPhones, the app store or the Google Play Store, and it's accessible from the web.
So if you are sitting at your computer and don't have your phone on you, For whatever reason, although everybody has their phone out how nowadays, but you can access it from the computer as well, because it's all just web-based. What about like evening with Mighty, networks know. So, mighty networks. It's like a they've done something pretty interesting basically make this social committee. So it's kind of like Facebook or like kajabi for instances, they make like courses online.
Using that framework. That have a community aspect, But Mighty networks is basically trying to get same thing. And a mobile responsive app, you know, that that people have used kind of like a social networking app, but you can also build that course and stuff. But I've never been a fan of my networks. Like it's just clunky it lags really bad. So like with an app like this, could you make it like a social network as well? Or would that be beyond the scope of its functionality?
Know you can essentially do anything you need to again I'll do the only limitations Are the hardware. Yeah, and it's not even all of the hardware. If you if you need the app to access the camera, the web, the progressive web app can do that because that's another thing people might use it for or push notifications. Even I think he can even access like GPS and all the other stuff. It's just there's a few little pieces of Hardware that it can't do.
But anything else the sky's the limit, so making it making a social network peace. To it making, I mean anything anything you can think of it can be done and because it's based on the web and you're not having to use xcode and all that good stuff. We can make it super affordable. Yeah. It doesn't cost. Two hundred thousand the last one we did. I think they had their company had been quoted. I think, right around two hundred thousand dollars for for their app and we did it in for 15.
I think. So, What is it just like what's causing all that markup? Is it just all custom coding? It's part of it is with the to 1000 our version. Yes, part of it is The old model I suppose or the old technology or the, when the App Store was originally invented back in you know, 2008-2009. When all that was coming out, Apple put out their version of like their own code base so you had to use their tools there. I think that's called Swift.
It's like a special version of c and you had to know how to do that. That. So, it was really a very small amount of people could do that and get into it. Now, it's gotten better over the years, but there's still, the traditional model is to open up. Xcode use apples code to create that one app just for the iPhone. And then you got to go repeat that and do do it for Google. And Google Play for Android phones, which is all believe in Java.
So you have to know, you have to have Different developers with different skills using proprietary software and it just takes takes up a lot of time within the App Store does Apple. Like, prioritize the ones that are using that excope because it's using their framework, as a totally unbiased know, as of right now, it's pretty open and iPhone probably Apple probably doesn't Treat Progressive web apps, as far as. Installing it or uploading it to the App Store.
They probably frown on it a little bit, but they don't stop anything. That makes sense. It's like they would prefer to not have the progressive web apps, because they want people to stay in their Walled Garden in their, you know, in their code proprietary code base, but they can't stop it. Yeah. So maybe you turn away too much. Customer clientele business, otherwise everything's headed. It towards the progressive, web app space anyway. Yeah, overtime.
That's where everything is going to be. I think even there's a lot of companies, larger companies that are moving to Progressive web apps because one of the other key features of it is, it's faster. Loads faster, smaller, smaller, file sizes, a typical app produced from xcode for the iPhone is huge. You know, you might download it and it's 60 Meg. Yeah. Progressive web apps are super small because they're loading from the web.
There was a, there was a big case study that I think Starbucks put out because they transfer their entire app system from a native app, which is the X Route to a progressive web app and they saw sales increase something like 40%. Wow, because Starbucks obviously has a lot of stores and they're in a lot of rural areas so the progressive web app made their app load faster which led to an increase in sales because people that are out the data they have a 3g connection or they don't
have a fast internet connection. The progressive web app load super fast. Yeah yeah yeah that makes sense man. Like I've never had an app and I've played around with it a little bit in the past but I've just never really sink my teeth into it. But I feel like it would be way more efficient, just better better look more professional. What I'm currently doing with just Google spreadsheets tracking people's macros and getting things down and that's worked really really well.
But having like a an integrative app, they're able to have on their phone, get things down then and especially there's that able to be some type of community involvement. Ant, which they can interact with other clientele. If I hadn't like a group setting would make a lot of sense. So yeah, we got the we're going to talk shop at some point this year about unveiling that as a possibility, that I think that would be the next step for sure, for sure.
And I have found over the years that the number one thing people want is that icon in the app store. So yeah, when people if they have an app idea and they say how much how much is going to cost, they go get all these quotes and their hundreds of thousands of dollars and to them, it's Well I just I just wanted my icon in the App Store like that's where my head goes. I can't afford to pay three hundred thousand dollars for this app.
So anyway the the progressive route I think is it's up and coming more and more people are jumping on board with it, including large companies. So I think it's the way of the future and it's going to make things more affordable to have that icon in the App Store. May it make sense man my you my little keto Savage logo or something on a totally different direction here. As far as business goes, I just general business. A lot of people in your
industry. They'll charge this premium up front whereas you have gone to lower price point. But a subscription model I've kind of played around the idea of doing like I'm not going to course right now. For instance, just kind of make this real real life here. Tangible to me, I'm building out a course and I've played around with having a higher price point single time cost versus a
subscription model. What have y'all found pros and cons what I mean obviously you've found my prose with the subscription my I've gone that round what's been kind of the reasoning behind that decision? Well there are a lot of reasons from a purely business perspective.
From all from our business perspective, it's a little bit peace of mind for us. It's a lot easier to track and project and make sure our employees are paid and we don't have to when we first started our business it was we were in that model of It's just one cost so it's a few thousand dollars and that's it and that's fine as long as things keep rolling in as long as you can keep getting new projects great. But with the subscription model for us internally we're just
able to project. Month-to-month are gross and net income and then that allows us then to when we need to hire, we know what's coming. Coming in to be able to do that from our customers perspective. We like the subscription model because again, it's like we treat it like a utility and we include support because it's inevitable that something might need to change or be updated. If you are a, an accountant for instance. You may have a few CPAs that your firm and one may decide to leave.
And you need to update that on the website, things like that, come up all the time, or maybe you're going to be closed, and you need to put that on the website. So, as a service, then they have access to us to be able to help them. Do those things versus again, get going into the DIY or they are they on the hook for having to do that, which they probably won't because if Only login, every three months to change something. They forget something. Yeah.
Forget how to login? Forget how to update it. So from our customers perspective, it's just a lot, simpler to shoot us, an email and have one of us. Get you fixed up and you know a couple of days or less and you keep moving. Keep deal. Have many customers May clients that are doing like website with updated blog post is a pretty much just static websites that they're having is like Landing pages. And that's pretty much this. Not right changing week to week.
I'd say it's probably 80% that we call those brochures sites, so they're there for to sell the business. So any service-based business is great for that accountants lawyers, you know, any any service that people just need their brochure online, they need a way for people to check out their business. Get an idea of their services and then contact in some way, whether that's email call or hit the contact form, those are the those are the basics, but then
we do have the other 20% are. I mean, I would say they're pretty heavy into updating blogging doing everything they need to do. And it's it's funny too because it's not, there's not a there, doesn't seem to be a Radiant to it. It's like 80% have their brochure site and hardly ever touch it and in the other 20% touch it all the time so it's kind of classic 80/20 analysis. Yes, it's not. It's not just you know there's some that do a few blog posts a year.
It's it's they're either doing none or they're doing you know, ten posts a month type of thing. And I'm assuming those people that are changing that, much, that frequently. Like, they're doing that right. Yes, those are our power users, for sure. Okay, because I was going to just have jealous. Dart ghostwriting for ketose a.com you know probably dead. Kate, Kate velour, we could all do it. Yeah, there you go. I love it, love it. What do y'all see, like in the
pipeline? What are you excited about? Like, last time, we're talking about all this Doom and Gloom with business and you were talking about hustling and just getting your name, your network, your brand out there more, which I think is what everybody's been doing right now. But where do you see the web online space going like, what is what, y'all call it web 3.0 or something like that. Well, there are a lot of buzzwords. Which we needed to. But who knows?
I mean, I'm sure you've seen all the stuff going on with crypto recently, and it's kind of crashing a little bit, kind of, a lot of it. So a lot of those Buzz words that came from the crypto space and from web 3.0 and decentralized web and all these like I kind of to take a step back because I'm not a buzzword guy at all. In fact, I Despised buzzwords. So to me, when I hear things like that, it's it's always seemed a little scammy to me, which turns out probably was the case.
Yeah, but when I hear something like decentralized web, that's kind of like having your own website. Yeah, we do run into a lot of people still today that their entire online presence is a Facebook page that nobody's seeing or which is scary or yeah, although have an Instagram
page that nobody has seen. And then they wonder why, you know, even if they have a lot of followers, which I want your opinion on this too, even if you have a lot of followers, a lot of times the algorithm may not be showing it to the people that you want. Yeah. Now those like you that have that algorithm figured out, I do not have, it's great for you, have it figured out more than most of our business customers, you know what I mean? Yeah, I don't think I shake my booty enough.
Probably thought that, you know, that that's like the thing on tick, tock tick on the Explore page. Yeah, yeah. So most like, small businesses that we work with, if they're, they struggle to again, I'll go back to like maybe they're a lawyer, they all they have is a Facebook page and they'll post something nobody will see it and they wonder why which there are lots of reasons why that's the case but they're still living in this other controlled environment by one large company.
Yeah, we're as like we tout and support owning your On Space online. So that's what we've been saying for years. Now, you need your web space online that you own. You could control what it says. You can make the updates or have the updates made when somebody searches for you, they're coming to your place, not Facebook, not Instagram, they're seeing you your personality.
That's another thing is huge for businesses, because there are a lot of the same types of services that are offered, but every business is unique to Who they are their employees, their mission, their goals. You can showcase that off by having your own space online. And obviously, I think, at least for our industry, what we're trying to do is wear more where the market is headed. Yeah, especially in the small
business world. We run into people all the time that say they were given a quote to do a website for ten thousand dollars. They can't afford ten thousand dollars we want to make it affordable and less of a headache for those people. So we're just gonna keep pursuing that I liked your, I listened to your Manifesto. Oh yeah, and here which I love we sort of do something so I don't call it a Manifesto necessarily but we do.
Similar every year, we kind of have a theme for the year and this year for us is always our best work. So no matter what it is, if we're doing a branding project, we're doing a website, no matter what it is. We're always going to give every single customer our best work. It may be a logo. That's a very, simple logo and is only two hours of work. That's going to be our best two hours. Yeah, it may be a large, custom-built website, or an app that we're doing, that takes
1000 hours. Well, those are going to be the best thousand hours. We can put into it and best work. Doesn't mean complicated. It doesn't have to mean convoluted. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't best. Doesn't mean. It takes a really long time. It's just when we're working. We're going to work at the best level that we can, and I should say it also doesn't mean perfect. We're not going to get
everything right all the time. But as long as we're Always focused on doing our best work than in the end. It's going to be great. Yeah, feel like when you're pursuing Mastery of anything and you just doubling down on it and you're not cutting Corners, whether or not it works, whether or not your customers happy with it, which hopefully would be. But even if they're not, you don't have to, like, hang your head about anything because you did everything you could.
There's been multiple times with us, in the business, of course. And I've been like, losing sleep and look at yourself each other. Like, I don't know if this thing's gonna Work or not, but we've never half-assed anything and I think never half-ass anything. If for nothing else, it lets
you. You know, be at peace with the outcome and I think there's a lot of value in that because so many people half-ass everything and they're always just filled with this doubts and self regret and remorse about what they would have been. It could have been, it should have been if they had just put forth all the effort and if you never had fast anything, you never have to worry about that. So I agree 100%. I also think patience is is
huge. Especially it will in anything you do whether it's working out or business or anything, fishing fishing. And especially fishing. I do think some people can get caught up in. Not wanting to wait for results. Yeah and sometimes it takes time. You got out. You got to get in the gym every day and it's going to take time to produce the results that you want. You're not going to do one squat session and then give it a
competition, right? Do a lot of people build a website and think like the whole build it and they will come and tell me that they think that's just going to like the whole website, the whole world wide web is going to Knock on their door. That's still exists. I call that the Field of Dreams mentality. Yeah, it's still does exist. It's not real, it comes. It's waned over the years but it, I blame it on the.com, bubble back in the early 2000s because that's kind of what was
happening. And I mean, obviously, the bubble burst people ended up losing a lot of money but there is still some of that mentality where well, I just have to be online and then money is going to start rolling in. Ya know, if you have a business, whatever your business is, you need to be working hard every day in your business. Trying to make the best product for your or service for your customers where we can help is making sure that what you're
doing is elevated on the web. Yeah, so yeah, it's it's like you're saying it comes through with effort. You can't just put something out there and then not do anything about it and then expect somebody to pay you for it. I kind of think of Have a website. Like I do think of having a podcast and having a newsletter like I look at the Instagram profiles that we have the Facebook profiles that you two profiles and we've got a lot of hours and YouTube videos and content online.
But like you said, we don't own any of it but we made it also our content but Instagram has shut me down three times in the past, like I'm kind of disillusioned by Instagram. I don't feel secure with Instagram per se but like with the newsletter and with the Cast. And with the website, like I own those out, right? I can change it. I can do whatever I want, I can say whatever I want. That's always honest. There are no reasons. I've never let people sponsor
the podcast. Like, I am not holding to anybody's requester requirements. Like I can literally do whatever I want to say whatever I want. Obviously, I want to say what is right, what I believe in and you know what? I think would be respectful towards my audience, my listenership.
But having a website is just honestly Insurance towards not letting the other powers that be like the Instagrams, the The world dictate whether or not, I'm able to get in contact with my people because the people are the reason I have any success in life and if I can't get ahold of them, then, you know, fish out of water. So website, just allows me to let me do that. Yeah, what kind of content do you have? You had taken down. So my Instagram, I lost my Instagram profile, three times
the whole thing. Yeah, whole thing I lost it for the first time. I remember how long this the last time I lost I lost for like six to eight months or something. So I lost for so long that I built a new Instagram and just assumed that I would never get it back and then I randomly got it back as their reasoning when
I haven't really no idea man. Like I still don't know because this was during the whole pandemic and there were a lot of people in the keto space, you know, talking all kinds of stuff about the pandemic and there was a lot of a lot of stuff. I mean, that's a whole nother podcast conversation right there but I never post anything political and her post anything.
Controversial, my last picture on Instagram was Fish that I grilled and I guess I guess Instagram didn't like fish or something, I don't know, but they took my profile. Then I had I was gone for like three 6 or 8 months or something, and then I just randomly got it back one day and everything was as good as new so I have no idea. I don't know, I think I was just caught in the crossfire. Maybe a glitch in the system, I'm not sure. But it was weird. Kind of like some sweep and
yeah, just got caught up in her. Yeah. But I don't know, I mean there's a lot of people that think there's a bunch of Shadow Banning. In out there, in which case like people post things and then they algorithms won't Elevate those posts to the to see.
A lot of people won't see them and I have not figured out the algorithm, like I've got a handful of followers but I don't like my following count has not grown drastically and like, I don't know what the algorithm is and I don't post near frequently
as I should. I should probably post a lot more than I do, but honestly, the podcast that newsletter, I put a lot more effort into because it's real like on like where Conversation right now you're sitting right here in front of me. We have it. It's real it's legit and like it's a longer format medium and with Instagram with Tick-Tock Within These short format mediums your real message, can't make it.
Conveyed and people can misconstrue it and people just trying to do those buzzword things to get people's attention. You can't wait to do that with a podcast and with a newsletter, like I've got a Weekly Newsletter that's several paragraphs long, like, people read that whole thing and then they'll respond to me and I'll engage with, and it's just a real. Real conversation, like I love the responses that I get from
that. I don't feel that way towards Instagram. I don't have a tick tock and I don't, I like the YouTube. But, but yeah, like the podcast and the, and the newsletter just feels more natural to me. Organic newsletters are great, and controlling your message, like you're saying with your own space is important. I'm curious to get your thoughts to on, kind of the fracturing of
social media. Obviously, what's going on with Twitter and Everything else, there's more and more social media things that are popping up. That people are kind of jumping to and I guess my question is around like numbers because we will run into folks all the time who want that follower count, the follower count is huge, but when you were eyes, like Paramount to them, but then when you post, how many people are actually seeing it, do you have to give Facebook Instagram, whatever?
Dever money for your actual followers, to see it. If you have 10,000 followers on Instagram, but you have 1,000 newsletter subscribers. My argument is, usually always that thousand newsletter subscribers. That chose to sign up for your newsletter? Say yes, send me emails. I want to read them, is way more valuable to you in your business, then that follower
count on Instagram 1000%. I feel like if I'm obviously don't want to lose my Instagram again, but if I did lose it, I wouldn't really be worried about it. Like, I don't think he would really affect the business at all. I mean, in my newsletter list, like, it has like a 44 percent open rate and I think that, I mean, you probably know more than me. The average is like 20%. I think so, like 44% of my list, opens and reads the news that are like, to me.
I take a lot more pride in than how many followers I have on Instagram, you know. Yeah. And they respond back to the Emos to like I don't like engaging with these people. Like and my my newsletter super laid back like I'll talk Talk about things that I'm doing personally. I'll talk about questions that I have people send me recommendations so yeah it's just it's just fun for me. Yeah.
Way more personal you can get to know your audience a lot better than possibly just posting something on Instagram and walking away. Yeah. 100% I want to talk about Owning a business. You know, how long have you been doing this now? Seven years. Seven and a half years, almost seven half years. So we've been, so I launched. Keto Savage, 2016, launchkey, no brick, March 2018. So, yeah. Pretty good one. For both of us and a lot of people we've different businesses.
Like, you have, you know, a software-as-a-service, you have a website development. You've done on the coding yourself with the keto brick aspect. I've got a ton of Overhead of get, you know, a physical product that we're shipping out and stuff like that. The grass always looks greener on the other side when it comes to business. What do you like about what you do, what drives you crazy about, what you do and where do you see it going? Like what do you want to happen?
Because I've been talking to business owners a lot lately and I think it's therapeutic for people that own businesses to just simply shoot the breeze with one another because sometimes you get so entrenched and You're dark tunnel black abyss of what you're going through. That just assume that the world is out to get you. But sometimes just, you know, bullshit that business owners is therapeutic. So yeah, lay it on me, man.
What you got going on right now? Well, I mean, I obviously love the technology pieces of it. I do love technology. I've always been sort of jealous of business owners that have physical products because it maybe we're having a similar thought, but I always looked at a physical product as something that you could control without having other people give you their input. If that makes sense, obviously you want customers to buy it and you want their feedback and you
want to make the product better. But at the end of the day you're creating a physical product that you like and then you can just sell as many of those as you as you can. Another reason we kind of went to the to the software as a service model and productized it a little bit. Because I would rather. Build something, build a technology one time, and then be able to offer that, and, and improve it over time versus having to do everything custom all the time. So, to me, the thing I love the
most is that is the technology. What goes into it, how we can continue to improve it with new features updates all that good stuff. That's what, that's what drives me with the technology piece of it. The thing that That can sometimes be hard is just people, you know we deal with lots of different people and I love getting to know other people's businesses.
That's one of the things that is super important to to me and my team especially with the website in the days we can sit with you for hours and just get to know, you get to know your business, all that good stuff. But then every once in a while, will come across somebody that's got All these ideas of the way, some things should go and those days can be kind of dancing. Tough. Yeah. But they're few and far between most, I would say, 99.9% of all of our clients are incredible people.
Great to work with just those every once in a while get those few days that's that may be a little irritating, but yeah, technology getting to know, getting to know people. That's what we that's what we strive to do. I would Look like from a just a networking standpoint, you're in a pretty good position because you're having so many different Industries coming to you. And you just meet a lot of
really cool people. I would think we do and a lot of times will become clients of their businesses as well. If somebody's got a cool product and we do website, Forum will become customers ourselves. I like that aspect of it, I don't, you know, Obviously, I want to be, I want us in our team to be super successful. So as many business as much business as we can do as much income as we can bring in, I want to do that. I don't want, I don't know that.
I want to go the route of becoming like some huge business that just sells. And then all these relationships that we've made over the years with people, we just kind of we just sell off those relationships just to make a buck, I don't know what the future holds. But because we like getting to know our clients so so well.
And the camaraderie that we have with everyone, I want I just want to make sure that we're doing the best we can for them and anybody they might refer to us because if we get a referral that's huge that means they thought we did a good job. We feel like we did a good job and they told their friends or family about it. Yeah, that goes honestly, sometimes a lot further than any paid advertising we might do somebody's saying We love what you did. Here's I have a friend with the business.
Yeah. Do it for them to? Yeah. Yeah, angry man. I've been talking a lot of people and I feel like a lot of people me outside looking in, they just assume the goal of any business, just get bigger for the sake of getting bigger, but I find there's definitely a point a tipping point at which simply getting bigger just to get bigger. Diminishes, the Fulfillment that comes from the business in the first place and why you started it.
So like I think about what I've built and If I had to sacrifice relationship with that that I have with my crew or the customers that we have with the clients that I've had over the years, like it wouldn't be fun to me anymore.
Like I wouldn't want to just build it to sell it off at some points because then yeah, may have more money in the bank, but it's like I don't want to hang my hat on that per se, whereas like now I'd like to have more money in the bank but I don't want to sacrifice my Integrity to do so, you know, like that. Just it's not a worthwhile trade-off in my mind. Yeah I agree and You see it happen a lot.
It's unfortunate. We it kind of happened to us this past week, we had we ran into an issue with the company that we have trusted for 10 plus years and I think that's exactly what happened to them. So that it was a smaller company. When we started working with them, they were great. Never had never had any issues.
They did end up selling to a larger company about six or seven years ago, but we stuck with Them at that point, they said they were going to remain independent do their own thing. They were just being acquired by this other company. Okay, cool. And they were right, they did that for four years but then we started getting emails few months ago, saying, hey, we're basically Transferring everything over to this other larger company who obviously didn't care about. You know, I'm sure we were
small-time to them. Yeah. So it was it was like pulling teeth to get any answers out of them. I think I waited on hold for hours and hours and hours, just trying to figure something out. And that's definitely never a place that I want to ever get to with something. If if in the event that We were able to build a business that is sellable. It's it's, it would be really tough.
We did. I want to do a lot of due diligence to make sure that if that's ever the case that they're not going to lose who we are. The soul of kind of what we built. That makes sense. Yeah, makes total sense, man. I feel like there's a, an old Parable. I don't know. I'm going to butcher if I try but there's this. There's some guy that was, like, off the shore of Hawaii fishing or something like that. I'm going back to fishing analogy here.
You're a big fish move with the listeners that, you know, and he was like, he brought a bunch of fish in, and the guy on the shore was like man with that much fish, you can sort of business, you can do all this stuff and he's like why would I want to do all things like you can grow? You can expand. You can you open up multiple ships? You have a fishery. You can just grow and grow and grow and then he's like why
would I want to do that? The guys like well then you could sell it all off and then fish at your leisure and then spend time and have a siesta with your Emily in the evening. She's like, what's, what I do right now, you know? So it's like, I feel like people lose sight of how great they have in the moment, just to always chase the next goal post, but they don't even realize why they're chasing the goal post.
And I've tried to be a lot more present as of late specially that I have a kid and you know, because to help you're gonna go, I have a three and a half year old and a one year old, three and a half in a one-year-old. I feel like, man, haven't haven't kids? Like I didn't know this before I kids and you know, people that have kids tell you what you're going to From you don't have kids. Yeah, you know, you just get tired of hearing it but then you
have a kid. Like I'll have all the stress of owning a business, all the stress of everything that I have to do with the right thing. And then I come home and rigel doesn't care about any of that shit. He just looks up at me and smiles and like it's not worth it for me to place myself under unnecessary stress.
For a reason that isn't truly going to bring me fulfillment, if it means not being present in the moment, and I think if, as long as you have a tight grip on that and you have like like a like a proxy for Progress there and you don't lose sight of that, then you can grow as big as you want to grow, but if you ever have to lose sight of that, just for the sake of growing, it's not worth it anymore. At least not to me. I totally agree. It's a weird equation.
It's like another weird variable in the equation when you have kids because I've always I've told people my whole life, I'm not really motivated by money, like that's not what gets me out of bed in the morning. Just Money to have money but then, you know, you have kids and it's like, yeah, I want them to have a good life now. So, yeah, you have to find this
balance of being present. Also, hustling, when you need to hustle You know, having money in the bank so that you can provide for your children, it's just it's a totally weird equation to have to balance like every day. But if you had all the money in the world and like part of you thought, that would present them
with a lot more opportunity. If you can ask them down the road, they probably would have just said, hey I wanted more time with you, you know I was just like you always have to have that in the back, your mind to that was like time, I mean, doesn't cost anything to spend time with them, you know? Oh, yeah. So yeah, it's yeah, it's a weird balance because they gotta eat too, so, yeah. You know, it's cool that they keep, you honest, they keep me very honest. What's a, what's exciting for
23? You're going to be hustling the websites in a day. More you think or what do you, what do you see the business going on the pipeline? Yeah, we I mean, just do as many as we can. Honestly, we're super motivated by getting people onto a better platform and just helping people understand that it doesn't have
to be difficult. I think that blocks businesses up sometimes is they think, well, I can't change my website because maybe they had a horrible experience or maybe they paid tens of thousands of dollars for it. They don't like it. It's not doing anything for them but they're afraid to make the jump because they don't want to go through that again. Yeah, so I'm here to say it's so we make it super easy. And we just want to see businesses doing the right thing on the web this year's as much
as possible. We're going to keep keep doing as many modular oranges as we can. I like the websites in a day it because again, selfishly we get to sit and get to know the client and their business a lot more intimately. I think that way. And it also selfishly allows us to to get everything done, you know a lot more. Recently I would think a lot more efficiently. That's another way we make it easy because we understand let's say you're a business owner and
you need a new website. But then we need to maybe get some photos or some logo files or something from you. But you're working in your business all day, every day and then you go home and you have kids and you want to spend time with those kids and then it sending the email with those logo files, just keep slipping and slipping and slipping, and that can cause things to take a little bit more time.
But if I can just get a day with you and say, bring your laptop and then when we need that logo file you we can just get it right there. Anything we need to do with domain names or anything just happens all at once. So I love them. Hopefully the team loves them to
sometimes. They can be a little stressful, getting getting everything done all in one day but we've got the team of four people that spins all eight hours or you know, spending the whole day putting the website together as quickly as we can. And then it's kind of fun. Because at the end of the day, we'll do a little celebration, a little launch celebration, take a little video of it. And yeah, try to make it fun. Not, I mean, I think it's great.
I mean that, like I said at the beginning, you'll not pay me say, is that I wanted to get you on a podcast. I vouched for you 100%, I met y'all through my uncle who built his website with you. Um, and then now I've built three and I probably referred not even know how many people to yell, a lot of people and my brother is going to let me know. They're going to keep coming. Appreciate it. Yeah, it just works that. Well y'all Routledge, it the
website looks great. Anybody's listening, should go check out my website, kill Savage.com, see how great it looks. So they can then go to your website, which is modular warns.com. Yeah, that's the best way to get ahold of young, that's the best way. It's got all the, all the features examples, like anything. You could be looking for, and we're super easy to talk to. We don't, you know, again, we don't charge anything up front.
It's we do all the work. Work for you, and make sure you're really happy before you ever get a single invoice. So the site's up and launched. Before we send any invoices out, I always joke Ortiz, people that come in for website in the day because, you know, usually they're Blown Away by us being able to do this. And then by the end of it, they're like, how can I pay you? How can I pay you, what do we
need to do? And my joke is always well, we just wanted to get you in here and butter you up and get you to really like us. And then now you Then we'll send you an invoice. So we would just want to make sure people are super happy with what they have if they're ever not happy. Like let us know because we're going to we're going to make it right. Yeah. Now 100% y'all keep doing what you're doing, keep fighting the good fight.
Thanks for having me on, thanks for ya, come back out here for sure, man, some modules are orange.com it's and y'all have a podcast that's been in hibernation little bit, right? A little bit. We've got something like, 40, something episodes that are out there. A lot of it is pretty Evergreen content that's if you want to search for the Matchstick, a studio podcast we there's a lot of good Evergreen podcasts on there about design or best practices for the web business tips.
There's probably a couple episodes of me ranting about buzzwords that I hate. So yeah, it's in. It is in hibernation at the moment but it will get it fired back up again. And if our backup Up soon. I can't well, link out to the website, the podcast, everything making these people to find you and till next time may be, but I know website, I'm sure here soon. We'll talk about that after this year for sure. Awesome. Can't wait, take care, brother. I thank you.