[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today, I'm lucky enough to be joined by, I was going to almost mess it up to begin with Scott Daigger like tiger. Nice to meet you, brother. Nice to see you again. How are you?
[00:00:40] Scott: Good. Thank you for having me, Jay.
[00:00:42] Jay: See, I think you messed me up. I think you had me worried.
I was going to mess up and we're gonna have to cut and start over again, but we're not, this is live. We're just going to keep rolling. So, founder and owner of buddy web design development. they create beautiful and functional websites that help drive results. I can attest, they do build beautiful websites. nice and clean, nice and crisp. I'm a happy customer of Scott's, so. Scott, thank you for joining me today, brother.
[00:01:03] Scott: Absolutely. Happy to be here.
[00:01:05] Jay: Alright, so you are in Michigan, I believe. Tell me a little bit where you grew up, and did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur later in life?
[00:01:12] Scott: Yeah. So I actually, I live in Michigan now and grand Rapids and the West part of the state. I grew up in Wisconsin on a dairy farm in the Southern part of the state. So I kind of joked that I'm pretty much the most stereotypical Wisconsin kid. You can find a group on a farm. my hometown Monroe is America's Swiss cheese capital, or our, Masco has cheese makers.
So like, it's pretty as Wisconsin stereotypical as you can be. Right. So, so background wise and like how that influenced me getting into entrepreneurship, I think a big part actually, because I think my parents were farmers and, you know, went to business school, got my MBA and did the kind of traditional route through different parts of my career.
But I think one thing that's really stuck with me, especially with my folks being farmers is just the independence of it. And, you know, once you kind of get used to being your own boss and that sort of thing, I mean, you, especially with farming, you see how hard that is and how hard, you know, my parents worked and business owners in general, but I think that's one of those things that there really did influence me a lot as far as like, you know, want to just have that flexibility to make the calls and that sort of thing.
[00:02:16] Jay: Right, that makes a lot of sense. so, Was Buddy the first business you actually tried to start?
[00:02:23] Scott: No, I had lots of different ideas over the years. It's funny and kind of thinking through things for our conversation. I was thinking my first kind of real attempt was in my early twenties. But then I thought back actually, when I was in grade school, I remember I wanted to be a cartoonist and a friend of mine and I made a comic strip book.
And our intent was that we're like, we're going to sell this and make a lot of money by selling our comic book to our classmates, but our teacher overheard said, no, you can't do that. So we were shut down before we even got out of the gates is like second or third graders. But, no, my first business, I was probably 24, I guess, had gotten out of college, got a really good job.
but I don't know, it was just found myself not fully satisfied, despite like on paper, having all the things I wanted. so I, I left that job and, moved to Florida actually, just because I always wanted to get out of the Midwest and attempted to start, well, I did start, attempted to be successful with an e commerce website, selling books and resources that are kind of personal development oriented, that sort of thing also.
And, you know, that was back in the days. I didn't even know if WordPress was around. I used like Yahoo sites to build that. It was complete garbage, but it was the best I could do. It like. You know, had some revenue, but not a lot of profits and just didn't work out and, you know, I've done several other things since then as well.
Happy to dive into you as well. But buddy, you know, I think is an accumulation of a lot of learnings and a lot of doing things both the right and the wrong way before, you know, getting a business that has got some substantial traction and, you know, longevity and that kind of thing. Yeah.
[00:03:55] Jay: come from? I'm dying to know.
[00:03:57] Scott: So if you've been to the website or anyone, you know, listening has been to the websites, we've got a black lab, in the hero section right up front.
And my thought process between buddy and the black lab branding was I wanted to create a brand that, was friendly, kind of timeless, iconic. And for me, like, I love brands like Eddie Bauer, LL Bean as well. I love black labs. We've got a black lab. I had one as a kid. so for me, you know, buddy and the black lab imagery.
Yeah. The intent was kind of to create that, you know, friendly persona, reliability, that kind of thing. and of course, you know, there was a little bit of strategery around the buddy web design development. I wanted to have that latter part in for SEO purposes, of course. So when people search for web design, we would pop up a little higher as well,
[00:04:40] Jay: Right,
[00:04:40] Scott: That's kind of the story behind it.
[00:04:42] Jay: No, I like that. so who was your first customer? Hey, buddy.
[00:04:46] Scott: Yeah. So the first customer, I got rolling doing this. I'll give a little backstory too. So I might say go out. So apologize, Jay, you know, I had a corporate job for about eight years. we can talk more about that's of interest as well, but I started learning web development on the side, just had gotten to a point career wise, where I was kind of ready for something else to kind of learning about, you know, I want to get some more it cred actually, not with the intent to per se, to become a developer, but more so just to advance an IT career track.
But, yeah. started learning code and building a portfolio. And I can't remember if I found Upwork prior, but started using Upwork actually. And, I think the first job I got was less than 500 bucks for helping somebody with a Weebly website, Weebly is the, you know, a content management system. And, she basically had a website, got stuck, couldn't quite style it the way she had to just.
Applied and, you know, ended up, she was happy. It turned out to be a decent site, especially for my skill level at the time. But it's funny thinking back though, I think, for me having more of a business background, more so than tech, you know, being in the weeds developing. You know, I think my sales skills probably were better than my tech skills, but it worked out just fine, but I think, it was funny, thinking back how a lot of feedback I got from that person.
And a lot of my first customers too, as they had said. You know, I'll get on these, what we'll call sales calls, you know, with folks, they were trying to vet out different developers and feedback I'd hear a lot was so quickly, these other folks would get into the weeds on this tech specs and what stack they're going to use and that kind of stuff.
And customers assured me, they're like, I don't care. I don't know what you're talking about. They felt like they could at least trust me, be able to speak the same language, getting what it's like as an owner, that kind of stuff. So I think those are some of the first things, you know, that really helped, you know, break in from the start as well.
[00:06:32] Jay: No, I like that. And did the It's an interesting point about being more proficient at sales than you were about the tech side, and I'm assuming as you kind of hired out, and you started to bring on people that could bridge that gap for you technically, did that kind of become then an advantage that you had that sales base kind of baked in because that's eventually what you had to do anyway?
[00:06:54] Scott: For sure. Yeah. And I think, you know, as buddies evolved, we were almost about at the four year mark since I started buddy and left my prior job and started doing this full time. And yeah, like you mentioned, the team has grown over time. We brought on more developers and designers who are way more talented than I am, although I've gotten better too.
But, but yeah, having that business background, I think sales wise, marketing wise, operationally, HR just kind of tied all together has been. Super helpful of knowing now understanding more in depth, like in the weeds of how the tech works, what we're building, why it's built certain ways I can answer a lot more of those in depth questions.
But I mean, honestly, you know, sales and not to get too philosophical about sales strategy and things like that. Like, I don't necessarily see myself as a traditional salesperson, like with a high pressure. I'm pretty opposite. I think what works well for me is. Trying to be as normal, conversational, no pressure as possible.
And honestly, like there are some client opportunities where I'll just pass on. It's like not a good fit, not our strength. And I think just having that be able to build rapport, excuse me, and trust and just being really straightforward of like, yep, we can crush this and we can do a good job and here's what it looks like, or nope, this isn't a fit.
Just having that sort of honesty and candor, I think has gone a really long way also. but I think. You know, it's funny. I'm in my early forties now, so there's a lot of years of experience kind of backing those and trying to pinpoint what exactly are those secrets to success might be a little bit of, you know, difficult task.
I think it's a lot of little things you kind of learn over time as well. but to your point, yeah, the business background definitely helps just having those conversations with owners and clients and things like that.
[00:08:29] Jay: And you, again, you keyed on something I think is very important. The sales guy is always the flashy, you know, pushy, used car, you know, furniture salesman type, thought when you think of a salesman. But I sell the same way you do. And I think a lot of people that are successful do sell that way. I don't come in guns blazing with conversation.
I try to make people feel comfortable. I try to
It's, you know, make them trust you and, you know, provide value for their time, even in a initial discovery call. Right? Like, like you said, if you're not the right fit, if there's advice you can give people, if there's any, the traditional sales moniker of being the, you know, sharp dressed, pushy guy, is not the only type of sales that you can do and be successful at.
[00:09:18] Scott: no, looking back probably. You know, thinking about influential points of our careers and that kind of stuff. I'm curious kind of how you learned sales to Jay. But for me, I think my first formal sales training was that my first job out of college. We had a sales part of our orientation program and we used a book and guide called integrity selling.
It was by Ron Willingham. And it's funny when these sort of conversations come up, I always think back to that and say, is that still for sale on Amazon? People find that because I always want to recommend it so highly and it might have, you know, been out outdated now, but it's really about. You know, selling with integrity, you know, per the moniker and, building rapport and, you know, earning the right to ask questions and things like that.
And, you know, only presenting a solution if you feel like you really get what the problem is for trying to solve. And, you know, if you do those right things, the close, you don't need to have sales tricks to close. You don't need to put high pressure on those sort of things. It's just a natural, normal thing to talk about.
[00:10:13] Jay: Well, here's the next step, you know, let's do that. Or what else do you need? Those sort of things too. So, totally agree. I totally agree. And I hone my skills by just doing it over time as a freelancer and just having to do the interview over and over and over again. And then you start to pull out common threads of, you know, what are the pain points of these people? And that's what you kind of, and I shied away from things forever that I just, you know, people would say. we don't want a QA person. We want a W2 person, not an agency. And I would go, okay, thanks a lot. Have a nice day. And I'd walk away. But now I'm like, hold the phone. I know the answer to that pain point you have. You don't want a W2 person. You want a scalable agency like mine. And I kind of go into the counterpoints for it and it kind of becomes fun after you understand what the right answer should be to some of these things that you hear over and over again.
So I love that. So, how do you keep your sales pipeline full? I think
[00:11:15] Scott: right? And there's always this leap of faith, especially when you do low pressure, no pressure sales. Cause you're like, you just gotta kind of have this confidence and faith that if you do things the right way and treat people the right way and are patient, things will eventually pan out.
But it could be scary at times, right? Because, you know, you want to get those immediate sales and drive revenue. But for us, pipeline wise, it's just been interesting how. like I mentioned, we're about the four year mark and for whatever reason, this calendar year, like gotten so many referrals and repeat customers, like literally just yesterday.
I got in there. It's just funny how the vast majority of our work. This calendar year has been folks. We've already worked before or folks are referring somebody else. So it's just really makes me feel really good that we're doing the right thing that we've done a good job. We treat people the right way that, They come back and trust us, you know, and probably there are folks where maybe it wasn't the right fit and we won't work together again, but, it's makes me really grateful at a deep level, but also excited because like, wow, we haven't able to just keep things rolling with such a big proportion of our work being done.
Repeat customers and that kind of stuff. Gosh, as we keep adding more folks to that funnel to that mix to like that really puts us on a good growth trajectory. So, I mean, it doesn't happen overnight. you know, that J, one of my favorite quotes from an entrepreneur was like, it only took me seven years to become an overnight success.
You know, the same sort of thing too. It takes a long time before you get that, you know, upward tick and people take notice as well too. But, beyond that though, honestly, for the sales pipeline, I've kind of weaned myself off upward. I focus a lot more on the long game of SEO that kind of stuff. And I'm actually, a big initiative of mine is, has been building out kind of a sales funnel or a kind of lead magnet strategy.
This year, you have creating kind of free guides, get people onto an email list, upsell, that kind of stuff. actually I wrote a book that in the last year, right away developments that's on Amazon now too. So I'll be another kind of. You know, I don't think I'll get rich off the book, but it's more of a positioning piece to kind of show our expertise and that kind of stuff and draw folks in.
So that's kind of what our, that's a long winded answer about our sales mix right now and what's going on.
[00:13:20] Jay: that's great. I think those are all awesome things and I have a love hate relationship with referrals. I love referrals and I think to your point, we've gotten a ton this year more than we've ever gotten and I think part of that is being good but I also think maybe It's a sign of the times a little bit where people are leaning on people they know for, you know, trusted resources because, you know, there's all this recession talk and then it goes away and then it comes back and again, but if there's
uncertainty, who are you going to go with?
You're going to go with somebody that your friend has used that they trust and they want to go with. So maybe it has, you know, some balance of mix in there, but
I love referrals, but it's just scary because they're not scalable. They're not repeatable. They're not, like you said, they're kind of a layer on top of your.
Existing sales pipeline. I love that you pivoted out of Upwork. We kind of had to do the same thing. A lot of the same parallels, you know, I'm on my way, hopefully to writing a book. So I'll definitely link yours in the bio and, we'll check your book out. I think that's a great strategy. and I guess kind of the last, you know, positioning piece there, how do you guys differentiate yourselves?
I mean, there's a million website building companies out there. there's a ton that kind of preach, you know, have been very. Clear and concise and driving results and a lot of the same kind of elements. I've seen the results of your work So I think I can pick at it a little bit because I'm wondering how do you guys?
Differentiate yourselves from all the people that are saying similar things
[00:14:46] Scott: Yeah. So, so my take on that and from a business owner too, and of course, you know, part of this trick is translating that to the audience and saying, yep, what you're saying either resonates or is total garbage. Right? So my, my intent on that is to really focus on quality. And I know, especially with Upwork, it's kind of a race to the bottom where people are competing on price, churn, how fast Kleenex about that sort of thing.
So getting out of that ecosystem was kind of key strategically. I just, I don't want to be pricing our services at astronomical rates, but I also don't want to, you know, compete on the lowest price as well too. And I know. Just kind of knowing in my area what the big agencies charge and we're nowhere, you know, near where the companies that work with fortune 500s are our customer base right now is more kind of the medium sized company.
It's been around for a while, but the owner founders usually still involved. That's who I usually work with directly or a direct designee, like their assistant or marketing person or that kind of stuff, you know, but in any case, I lost my train of thought there. Jake, can you remind me where we're going with that one?
[00:15:45] Jay: How do you differentiate
[00:15:47] Scott: Differentiation. Thanks. Yeah. So in the quality aspect for me, I usually kind of think about three pillars. So one's aesthetic design, you know what I mean? Making sure sites look really nice. second, technically want to make sure things are built really well. And then third is just the customer experience.
And what I find is that, it's hard for customers to really know, like, is it really built well behind the scenes or not? Because it's kind of a black box. We're talking about websites. Like, you know, if, Things aren't working right. That's kind of a sign that no, it wasn't built well, but if all things are, you know, you measure speed of the website and that kind of stuff.
So, for us, where I've really tried to differentiate is from that first sales call, hopefully giving folks an impression that we're easy to work with. We're nice, hopefully likable. We've got our act together. We're really organized. and we try to have that shine through operationally through the entire experience of working together.
And then aesthetically to, more so than customers be able to latch on to how well technically built websites are, it's very easy to say, wow, that website looks nice.
And that's one of those things where I try to really emphasize of, we've got to have stuff that people look at and say, wow, that is a fricking nice website.
You know what I mean? So there's still tons of other developers out there who probably do the same sort of thing, have a similar strategy also, but that's my thought process behind it at least.
[00:17:05] Jay: I love it And I also really like that you guys Continually showcase Your recent Work. I think that's a great strategy. I think it's, you know, obviously for the company that you put it out for, they love it, you know, I liked it when you put our stuff out there, but I have seen you guys stuff on my feed, and it's like, oh, there's another nice website, there's another nice website.
So I think that strategy shows the continued, kind of, great aesthetic you guys have. and, so one more question, we'll wrap it up with this. Non business related, if there was anything you could do on earth and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?
[00:17:54] Scott: Huh. You know, it's funny you mentioned that because I've been a big goal setter my whole life and I've got, I think it's in the form of a Google spreadsheet right now, like a list and kind of chart of goals and that kind of stuff. And I feel like I'm on track for those right now. And kind of what I've been working to create with Buddy has been that big, hairy, audacious goal of having a business that I can kind of run and grow and enjoy doing.
So, like, check, I'm really grateful right now. And, you know, I've got the flexibility where our whole team is remote. So, you know, it's funny. we were chatting before we started recording about summer trips and those sorts of things. And, during the summer trip, I have met with my family. I still check the email and that kind of stuff.
that's okay though. That's fine with me as well. But I think as far as, you know, bigger things like, you know, sharing with a book, for me, it's just, I'd love to grow buddy into something that's recognized on some sort of national scale of just like, wow, this team does a freaking great job, you know, and it's not necessarily for my ego per se, but more just.
Building something with our team, that feels pretty substantial beyond just myself, that kind of thing. But other than that, selfishly, travel the world. That's my really big goal.
[00:18:59] Jay: a good one, I'll let you, that's a good answer. You brought it back together at the end, non business, great answer, travel the world, me too buddy. Maybe we'll take a trip together sometime. Alright, if you want to find Buddy, if they want to find Scott, what's the best way to do that?
[00:19:15] Scott: Yep. So our website is BuddyWDD. com, which is short for Buddy Web Design and Development. we're also on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn as well. we've got a blog. Those are probably the best places to start to just kind of keep posted on what we're all about, see our portfolio, that kind of stuff.
[00:19:31] Jay: Okay. Awesome. I'll link your stuff in the, the show notes. And, I hope you enjoy the rest of the summer. I hope you get out and do a couple more things this summer. I'm dying to go do something. but, you know, school is coming. not too far away. It comes too quickly. But, Scott, it was awesome talking to you, brother. Always nice seeing your face. And, I'll talk to you again soon, alright?
[00:19:49] Scott: Likewise. Thanks, Jay.
[00:19:50] Jay: Thanks, Scott. See ya.