Ep 174: Earning $40K-$50K P/mth From Ad Revenue Content Websites with Nick Eubanks

Jaryd Krause (0:00)

Nick owns 17 businesses and only works 25 hours per week. Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause, host of the Buying Online Businesses podcast and today I'm speaking with Nick Eubanks, serial entrepreneur, digital strategist, consultants, mentor and speaker and he's founded a number of companies and has been a C-level executive for companies like From The Future, Traffic Think Tank, Atomni, Factor Media, NK Tech LLC and a bunch of others. And he's known for building Japan's largest review website as a product of Factor Media.

Now, Nick currently leads Traffic Think Tank, which is a private SEO community, which he co-founded, and it is one of the largest premium private communities for SEOs. In this podcast episode, Nick, and I talk about how many businesses he's actually bought, how many he's currently owning it, why he actually has decided to buy businesses, instead of just starting them from scratch. we'll also talk about what he's learned through his due diligence for different types of businesses, buying an E commerce business versus buying an agency versus buying a content site.

And we also talk about what SEO due diligence he does when he is buying a content site, what are some of the things that he checks for? And why? What are some of the risks that happened with people that may sell a site using age domains that are linking to sites and how to detect some of the fraudulent things they actually do.

We also talk about buying content sites, and why he would never buy an Amazon affiliate business and what he likes to do instead? We talk about ad networks as well. And he loves using ad networks and can have a couple of sites making 40 to 50k per month from a couple 100,000 users, by using different ad networks that, we also speak about in the podcast episode was talking about an example of an E commerce business that Nick bought and how it went quite well. But why he would never own e commerce business again, which I sit in the same boat as well in terms of how many hats you're wearing when owning an E commerce business.

And then Nick and I have a really refreshing conversation around mindset in business, and why you can actually or how you can actually work less and why it works, working less works for you, and allows you to earn more just by working less. I also recommend a book that can help you think about business differently. And it's a book by the mentor of Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad Poor Dad. So really great book also talks about with Nick how to put out fires in business and in life without being stressed and coming from a place of fear. And then teaching your team leadership and becoming empowered in their role which helps them become better workers and better employees.

We also talked about the traffic think tank for SEOs and SEO agency employees that Nick co-founded and what actually happens within that think tank as well. There's such a valuable episode, you're absolutely going to love it. If you are looking to buy an online business or interested in mindset to be able to achieve your results. And all good things about entrepreneurship. This is such a valuable episode, you're absolutely going to love it. Before we get stuck into this episode, I do want to tell you that this podcast is not the only way I can help you for free.

We talked about buying businesses in this episode. So, make sure you get my doodles framework which a lot of people have been raving about. So many people in the industry are actually using this framework to buy businesses. So, go away and get that by going to buying online businesses.com forward slash free resources. Let's dive into the episode.

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Nick, welcome to the Buying Online Businesses podcast.

Nick Eubanks (4:14)

Thank you very much for having me.

Jaryd Krause (4:15)

I am excited for this chat because there's so much more to your story than I realized when I was looking at my notes. So, I got some pretty, pretty exciting things that I want to dive into first and foremost, when you say you told me you've got 17 operating companies and like wow, that's not only impressive, but I wonder how you spend your time. And I'm sure we're going to dive into that.

And what sort of mindset has allowed you to have that much capacity in terms of a portfolio of businesses that that size. But you also mentioned you bought a handful, maybe a dozen half a dozen or so of online businesses. So why buy them instead of starting them? What's your take on that?

Nick Eubanks (4:52)

The most recent businesses I've purchased have been agencies in particular. So, agencies with a specific skill We'll set that we didn't have. Most recent one was last July, we bought plush digital, located in Los Angeles, they are paid media and analytics company, we FTF didn't have a paid media department. And we were having a hell of a time trying to make senior analytics hire.

So, after 12 months of frustration, Aqua hire became a much smarter approach. And the pieces sort of all lined up for that one. Prior to that in 2018, we bought webOS, which is out of Miami and true voice media was a social media focused agency here in Philadelphia, again, focused more on productized SEO and social media stuff that we didn't have, instead of spending all the time to build a new capability, build a new practice area, and, favorite make the numbers work, or buy one and bolted on instead?

Jaryd Krause (5:48)

A of IT acquisition for growth.

Nick Eubanks (5:51)

Yeah, where to get growth in the team and specific talent or growth in the capability set. I mean, the revenue bolt on it's always nice, but it's rarely the reason that I've done it. I mean, I know the conglomeration model is very popular right now, among a lot of agency owners, which is, they've got somebody who has a lot of relationships, and they have the Rolodex, and they'll put everybody's companies together for no cash out of pocket, they're just, slicing up equity from the founder pool and they get a piece themselves or putting the deal together, put five agencies together, that are each doing three to $5 million a year in revenue, now, you've got a 20 plus million dollar agency should be able to carve out a bunch of additional profit margins from redundancies and tools and staffing, and then, turn that around and sell it for, a 3x to 5x, the multiplier and call it a day. So there's, I think it's a lot of reasons that people buy agencies. Yeah, mine was definitely more like strategic growth of the team or of services.

Jaryd Krause (6:48)

Yeah. And have you put a bunch of these agencies into like a roll up and sold them? Or is that something you may think about in the future?

Nick Eubanks (6:57)

No, that's not in the plan. I mean, the plan has been to build, I look at an agency, we're a little bit differently. Actually, I get to speak to a bunch of agency owners every week. Now, there's a couple 100 in traffic think tank, but I also work one on one with 10 different agency owners right now, all various stages. And there's no hard and fast rule, there tends to be roughly like three approaches, I think that people want to build agencies for three reasons.

People want to build agencies, they don't want to build it, and run it and work in the business and work like a madman and just make a ton of money and, hopefully retire early, or build them specifically to sell some people want are like, I want to do this for five years. And so, I don't care where I'm at. So, people are like, I want to do this until I can sell for 10 million, or 20 million to $40 million, they've got some specific number in mind. And then there's the approach that I took, which I'm finding more and more common these days, which is I want to use the agency profits to build tools and other productized services, hopefully grow those into companies have their own products of their own.

And then when the agency talent that is trained according to my processes, and has a culture fit with me and my team, when they get burned out roughly around the five-year mark, instead of going in house and some cushy job that for a stranger, they can just move into one of our other companies.

So it becomes a nice sort of on ramp in terms of to get trained senior talent to come through the agency and the cash flywheel is certainly pretty nice to anybody who's running an efficient agency, okay, that the cash, you begin to actually kick off and year three, for, if you're going to maintain, sort of a minimum acceptable margin of call it 25, or 30% is actually pretty nice.

Jaryd Krause (8:32)

Yeah, as I think about this, as you speak, what I really like is how to grow a business, it's good to work out what our clients want in our agency, and that we may not be able to provide or we need to build that tool or that mechanism or that part of the business to do so.

And just buying something plug that in so you can service that part and increase ROI by giving people a better service and more of what they're actually after. I think that's just that's a beautiful, beautiful thing to be able to do. So. You bought a few agencies, have you bought other types of businesses as well? Or is it more so, purchase?

Nick Eubanks (9:06)

Yeah, a couple of years ago, I bought an E commerce company that I just exited a couple months ago, was called under fit and it was men's undershirts and underwear. I found out about it because I spoke to the previous owner on that consulting call forever ago. He had relaunched his website, tanked his SEO, we talked strategy, kept in contact and sent me some of the undershirts. I'm not really an undershirt guy, but the underwear I became extremely like a very big fan of and it was all over where and at some point, the conversation got the place where he's like, Hey, like what to do with this more than I do, would you want to buy this? And I was like, I love the product.

And then the kicker for me with them was when I found out that under fit actually has the trademark both the word mark and the logo mark trademarks globally for the word under fit. And I spoke to when we were initially talking about the DLs Go to a trademark attorney and was like, hey, if I want to create a line of grey undershirts couple different colors, because we have the trademark on the word under fit. Is there anything stopping me from calling them the under fit armour line? They said no, not at all. I was like, Okay, that's a good enough reason.

So, I just the plan was originally just to create enough brand confusion ranking for Under Armour that I became such a thorn and Under Armour side that they'd be forced to be forced to buy me a strategic bio, but I never had the attention or conviction to care enough about that. I've learned that physical ecommerce which I cut my teeth on, from 2012 to 2017, at a goofy company called Traffic Safety store, I thought I wanted to do physical product and commerce. And then actually owning one and running one and dealing with inventory, especially on COVID and supply chain issues and fulfilment. And it's just the bane of my existence. So, I'm very happy to be here.

Jaryd Krause (10:50)

I'm so glad that you said that. Because there's people that come to me that say, Hey, Jaryd, want to buy a business, and they have the knowledge of audiology, that owning and online businesses owning an E commerce business. And they have zero experience and zero skills in running an E commerce business, let alone paid ads, let alone SEO, let alone all the other things in terms of logistics.

Nick Eubanks (11:11)

Yeah, email, like really understanding like how wildly important email is and how much of like, like, how big of an investment is to do email, right? And then personalization and customer data management and product information management.

Jaryd Krause (11:25)

I agree. I'm spot on split up this second. So, my second business I bought and then my third business level, where ecommerce businesses because I thought if I just keep buying more businesses, it's going to be making more money. And then I learned the hard way, that ecommerce is just a really tough thing to have and coming from, you buying other businesses, and then coming in and having a lot of experience in business, saying the same thing. And I'm very grateful that you brought that up.

And when it comes to buying these businesses, you mentioned, you did a bit of due diligence, you check with, a trademark attorney and some things that you're thinking about doing in terms of growth of the business. And sure, there's a lot, there's obviously a lot more that went into the due diligence of buying an E commerce business, but what did you learn about the due diligence phase between seeing e commerce business and buying an agency the differences?

Nick Eubanks (12:15)

I mean, like they're night and day, I get the thing about the agency that transfers well to, like, it's just a professional services business candidate day, right. And you can you can compare it, one to one with pretty much any business where you're selling human time for money. So, it doesn't matter if you're a lawyer, or a landscaper, or an accountant or, marketing agency Development Agency, it's all the same business model. Yeah. And the biggest thing there was, all the things that I did horribly wrong in 2018.

So, I bought two agencies that closed six days apart from each other. So worst professional decision I've ever made, was pure, like, like, I bought, like the deal closed, like, we closed the deal to finish like to complete the acquisition of one and then six days later, the other one that I want, and like, I was like, I had never bought an agency before. So, thinking that I can do two simultaneously, one, one in Philadelphia, and one in Miami was an ego trip that like I don't ever need to be on again. And so, we ended up, churning roughly 30, maybe even 40% of the total revenue that we've captured from those acquisitions and the team and just wasn't prepared for it.

So like learning that the hard way, that there's a lot more due diligence that goes into buying a professional services company, not only understanding all the personalities, and the individual understanding and perceptions of the culture from the teams themselves, but then also understanding not just what is in the SF W but speaking to every single client and understanding like, what is their expectation? What is it that they were sold, and what are they expecting? How are they expected to be serviced? Because we didn't do that we just built like, laid out the whole client list, read divided, the teams restructured the org chart, me intro calls with all the clients and just, did everything that I thought I felt, right.

But there was a lot of unknown unknowns, that cost a fuck tone of money. Whereas doing the due diligence on an ad revenue site, or an affiliate site, or a lead gen site is much, much easier. If you're not doing lead gen, you still have the customer component. But based on volume receipts and frequency, there's ways to sort of uncover any mysteries there. And then, any decent SEO is going to understand, how to do a link audit and look for Easter eggs. Usually the one that the most common ones, especially on ad revenue sites are you've got a site that, has been building traffic that had a couple of big pops in traffic and you look at the link profile, and they've got two or three super strong domains that they're redirecting in and you ask the owner who's selling it and like, hey, these domains that are accounting for 80% of your link profile via these redirects to these come with the sale and they go no, that that has saved me and some of my clients a shit tone of money because there's a lot of these Fucking hucksters out there that are becoming notorious for taking these domains pointing them selling them soon as the sale was done, because it wasn't in the terms of agreement, they removed the redirects that site tax to point them somewhere else and just do it over and over again.

Jaryd Krause (15:13)

It's a disgusting thing to do to somebody. Isn't it absolutely putrid? I want to talk about that in let's dive into SEO due diligence for, say content sites, ad revenue, affiliate sites, the link audit is paramount. What are some of the other SEO things that you'd be checking when doing due diligence on these types of businesses?

Nick Eubanks (15:34)

Yeah, the I mean, content depth keyword spread, how difficult are the terms that the ranking for and I mean, what I'm really looking for when, when I'm auditing a lot of these things, because that the financials tell you most of what you need to outside of, some basic like Link auditing and crawler type stuff, it really comes down to how, how big is the upside? So similar with like that idea behind underfunded and Under Armour going up to Under Armour, like, are there are there cannibalization issues present? What is does it look it was the site was penalised? Are there obvious issues with authorship and authority? Like looking for how fast can we potentially, increase the net traffic net revenue of this site, by at least 20 30%, it definitely helps them prioritise.

Because there's, there's any given moment, there's a crap tonne of businesses for sale, all kinds of, the market sets the valuations and for the right sites, or you're not going to save much money if, if you're in your budget, you're in your budget. So, I think it's really about looking into like, the total addressable markets for some of those verticals and getting a sense for like, how big is the current penetrated keyword spread? How much bigger? Like where is there room for me to pick up? Because one of the other things that is, I think, really frustrating for somebody who wants to buy a business, like an online business for the first time is the get the idea in their head, they come they speak to somebody like you, and you go out and you look at the opportunity, and you're like, like this is this is a safe business, if you want to run a business, you're gonna be an operator. But there's, there's not really any upside, this business did everything, right. And they're operating as good as they can.

So, unless you want to expand the product catalogue, develop new services by competitors, increase your media channels, like, there's not much you can do. I'm not against paid media by any sense of the word, but I am, I am extremely biassed toward free traffic. So, like, most of the content sites, affiliate sites that we own and operate now, were tests, it was like, Hey, here's a pocket of traffic, let's throw a site up and throw a couple 100,000 words at it and some links and see what happens after six months. And it's been a low cost relatively low risk a certain level way to find new opportunities. One of the questions I get constantly, every week is, hey, how do you identify new, how do you find new niches for SEO traffic like to go after? From an SEO traffic perspective? How are you finding these kinds of sites? And the answers like there is no processes? You start down a rabbit hole, and sometimes you stumble across a piece of gold? And most of the time you don't? And I wish there was some more scientific or fancy or strategic answer to that just but it's been yeah.

Jaryd Krause (18:14)

Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't, but you just need to, if you do want it, you need to do is put in the work and the time, right. So with these affiliate sites and content sites that you found a pocket of keywords and just go, let's get this domain and build, a couple 100 ks words, what happens then do you sort of see that AKA, we can get some traffic for that. And then you go, let's keep building out more categories with more keywords.

Nick Eubanks (18:39)

I mean, aside from some of the affiliate verticals, which are like a lot more direct response, direct to consumer stuff, I really have a pension for directories. So, opportunities to take publicly available data, ideally, that's disparate, where you can take data from multiple sources and sort of just curate a better experience, but where you're not really doing much content creation, it's like the newest one that I'm working on right now is talking about a funnier one.

Got a post office site that's in development, and people are like, why would you have built post office site? Like, why wouldn't you just go to USPS and say, well, there's, 24 million searches a month for all of these post office terms. And guess what, the USPS site definitely gets the most clicks for most of those keywords, but a they don't get all the clicks and be there's keywords and they don't rank at all for and those are going to other third-party sites. And when you look at volume of that size, and it only takes a couple 100 people out I think also it really only takes a couple 100 pageviews, depending on the RPM like depending on the keywords depending on the niche, well it takes a couple 100,000-page views to make 4050 grand a month in ad revenue.

Once you've had once you've gotten a taste of ad revenue. I don't think there's really any going back and you're like, Wait, I don't have clients or customers are deadlines. Money just shows up every month.

Jaryd Krause (19:52)

Coming back someone was saying about ecommerce businesses versus content sites.

Nick Eubanks (19:57)

The exact opposite like yeah, you're still at the mercy of updates. Like if you build shit, right, that there'll be two people, I was like, Oh, how like, when are you going to sell? It's like, why would I sell these things?

Like, I mean, unless, unless the verdict is, yeah, like, unless the vertical is at risk of like going out of style, or you're in a you're overlapping with the government sector that's likely to eventually pick up the sophistication to overtake government websites. Outside of those, though, like, there's not much of a risk.

Jaryd Krause (20:23)

You talked about, you get a couple of 100k views a month, and you can get, four to five grand in ad revenue 40 to 50 grand in ad revenue 40 to 50 grand in ad revenue from what a couple 100k With a couple 100,000 pregnant and you're looking at an ad partners.

Nick Eubanks (20:41)

RPM is between 70 and 130 bucks. Awesome.

Jaryd Krause (20:44)

And What Ad partners are you using for these?

Nick Eubanks (20:50)

To start, we use ezoic a lot and pay for the premium partner placements, you make you make twice what the cost is every time as soon as you're over 50,000 pageviews media vine is another great one. But again, like those, like ad placement partnerships as ad placement platforms, there really isn't a blanket answer because some are much better for some verticals and others like both of the ones I just mentioned that you can't use in like the four Ps porn pills, poker payday, like those super high, eCPM.

So, you have to find different ad partners for those versus like jobs market where you've got like carbon and like, so I think it definitely comes down to the niche that you're playing in which ad partners potentially going to be the best from scalability and like a revenue perspective, but the other day, there's also just not that many. I mean, there might be 15 ad networks.

Jaryd Krause (21:37)

He's always he's like premium is I'm on his own premium with one of my sites and they're just so great. They give you so much advice.

Nick Eubanks (21:46)

That's the best 2200 bucks to spend.

Jaryd Krause (21:49)

And they the guarantee of them always earning you more money from the premium.

Nick Eubanks (21:54)

What is your understanding? It's always at least double like just like Justin those placements, sometimes it's, three, four, depending on the site and the niche, but yeah, and so yes. Yeah, man, there's a big part of me that just wants to only build directory sites. Yeah. From now on, and never speak to humans.

Jaryd Krause (22:10)

It's good that you said that. Because there's so many people that come to this show, I'm like, I'm gonna buy an E commerce business and make a bunch of money and sell these products like everybody does online. Yeah, you can do that.

But just,ecommerce is booming. We went, we went 10 years inside 10 months, there's so much money being spent on?

Nick Eubanks (22:27)

Like, yes, there is 74% of that money is being spent on Amazon. But yeah, if you want to go fight the other, 28,000 ecommerce stores in your vertical for the remaining 30%.

Jaryd Krause (22:40)

And have fun rice in the bottom?

Nick Eubanks (22:46)

Yeah, I mean, there is enough, like, I do have some friends that make a really nice living with drop shipping. But it only makes sense. In my, in my very humble opinion, if you're doing like really high dollar items. So, like, if you're selling stuff that's like over $2,000 to sale, like the Commission's that because you're not seeing much of it. So, like, but like, the actual slice you'll get from drop shipping begins to make sense. But people doing drop shipping and like commodities markets, like that blows my mind.

Jaryd Krause (23:12)

I used to do I just have a business drop shipping in furniture. And went quite well. But just on the same as you I just couldn't be happier now that I don't have to deal with customer service stuff and management.

Nick Eubanks (23:26)

They don't think so there's still somebody, I'm still really big, like the companies I'm buying more than anything else these days are our existing affiliates, sites, usually in niches that I'm already in just sort of stacking the deck, whether that's, additional impressions, spreading risk across multiple sites, or, in some cases, just, sort of pushing them all together. So, like, one plus one makes three, but the, I think one of the things I wish somebody had told me when I first started in affiliate was that, depending on your level of traffic and commission, you can go negotiate those actions.

Nobody tells him Yeah, yeah, you can go back and be like, Hey, you're paying me 15% I sent you 15 grand last month. I don't know if any how anybody else is doing how much any of the other parts just ending but I want 25% more. I'm going to go every point you're like, I'm going to change the top position in that page to this company. Yeah. I've negotiated is 40%. But I know people who've like negotiated 60. They're just there. There's so much control determines.

Jaryd Krause (24:30)

So, I'm curious when you're buying an affiliate site, you buying something that's just mostly Amazon affiliate, then changing it over.

Nick Eubanks (24:38)

No, I don't know. I don't want a single Amazon affiliate site, and I will not do.

Jaryd Krause (24:42)

Good. And tell us tell us why.

Nick Eubanks (24:49)

I don't the idea of getting four cents on the dollar that's just not very appealing.

Jaryd Krause (24:53)

So, there's so much to so much people that come and listen to this podcast and go on Just gonna, it's just the norm in our space, just go and buy a site that's heavily monetized by affiliate.

Nick Eubanks (25:06)

Amazon affiliate 26 times monthly earnings.

Jaryd Krause (25:09)

Well, they're thrilled until they realize that they don't own the business, Amazon owns the business until they can remove themselves from amazon affiliate.

Nick Eubanks (25:19)

I have friends that bought an Amazon store over COVID. And they were super excited. And after six months and essentially gone to zero, because they just didn't really know what they were doing. And then they got a tax bill for like 150 grand from the IRS. So, like you made all this money you didn't claim they were like, no, like, just because of the way it was being reported.

It looked like on paper, they made a shit tone of money but ended up losing. Yeah, I don't know, 2030 grammes. And I hear that more and more man I have like, I'm like, I'm starting to like, I think we were over the entrepreneur hump that led into COVID. And then we got into COVID. And people were like, Oh, I'm gonna buy like, I'm not gonna start a business, I'm gonna buy a business. And a lot of those people don't own those businesses anymore.

Jaryd Krause (25:58)

Yeah, I think that's a good point. It's sort of weeded out the people that are like, I come in with a lot of energy. But the energy it's only quick lasting energy, not long-lasting energy, for entrepreneurialism.

Nick Eubanks (26:12)

I think it's just generally misdirected to it. It's like, you think you're going to figure the gap. Again, entrepreneurship, I think on the outside looks very easy. You get a lot you get a lot of the must be nice. Yeah.

Jaryd Krause (26:26)

I want to ask you, because, having seven operating companies, let's talk a bit about mindset within entrepreneurship. And I'm fascinated about this, because I think your portfolio and your business and your income is only as good as your mindset and your ability to get through situations and tackle obstacles.

So, what goes through your head when something bad happens in business, do go into a mode where you just have to fix it all. And then give us an example of one experience you had that was not quite nice, with an online business or a business that you own, and then how you handled it and how you better or differently or how you headed why you believe you handled it well, at that time?

Nick Eubanks (27:10)

Well, so I've got an unfair advantage. So, I work with a mindset coach every week.

Jaryd Krause (27:16)

That's an unfair advantage. Having a mindset coach, it's the best thing.

Nick Eubanks (27:20)

He's pretty well recognized as probably he's among the top, but you might be the number one mindset coach in the world. Elliott row, I found him through a network I'm in but like, he also has an app for anybody that wants to get to know him. So, it's funny to see my phone, the only icon on there that says app, it's free.

And it's called prime mind. It's a mindset meditation app, great for sleep, just how I started using it, but also like just, a two, three-minute reset in the middle of the day, clear your mind to be able to, whether you're between cycles, or you just need to get focused before you're about to start, a deep work session. But taking, taking it very serious thinking mindset and biological primetime, which I'm happy to come back to like taking those very seriously and like sort of engineering my entire life to fit around when my biological primetime is and when my like when I'm able to leverage that. And to drive a positive mindset to actually get production done, like has been the biggest impact of everything.

Jaryd Krause (28:20)

Yeah, let's talk about what is it? And how does it is biological?

Nick Eubanks (28:24)

Oh, yeah, bios and biological primetime is when your individual body performs best during the day, because like, we're not all robots, we're not all designed to be nine to five, some of us work better from 5am to 1pm, or nine to two, or I've got friends that like, they'll, they'll take their whole morning and they won't sit down at their desk till 1pm And they'll work 1pm until 8pm or 9pm.

I've got other friends that will do four or five hours in the middle of the day. So like Donald Glover nice long morning, they'll spend them most of their afternoon with their kids like during, like the ideal time to hang out with their kids and their and their significant others. And then they'll go back to work like seven, eight o'clock at night for four or five hours like, and it seems crazy to me, but that's just me like so. I work best from 8am to 3pm. I'm hyper focused, but like my ADHD falls off a cliff at 3pm I get tired, I get brain fog, I can't focus and I kept trying to push through that and have coffees at 3pm and I'd stay here till 630 And I'd be miserable and as soon as I recognized like I need to only do productive work from eight to three.

And I re designed my entire schedule in like November of last year so I only work Tuesday through Thursday. 8am To 3pm Mondays are deep workdays; Fridays I only work till noon if there is like production work that needs to be done. Bonus there is from Friday at noon till Tuesday morning at 8am at any weekend, I can fuck off and do whatever I want.

Which is great for travelling because I don't have kids but the amount of work I still get like that's the funny thing is right is minds like you hit the nail on the head with mindset like I think the funny thing is people are like Jesus, like 17 companies in Like I've got the girl they'll have any of them that need oversight or have operational management requirements that they have management teams like, the funny thing I think about it is when I talk to people about it, and I'm like, Man, you must wake up work 70 hours a week and like, no, we're still 25 Yeah, and like, sometimes not even like, I don't work that hard. And I think the key like that like it hustle culture that's like, like Gary Vee would be like, throwing up in his mouth.

Jaryd Krause (30:24)

Yeah, I do of 20 to 25 hours. I take half day, Thursday, full day Friday off and I'm more about like I've got on my right next to me here a little note sticky note that says, less action more thinking. There's a really good book by Keith Cunningham called the road less stupid. Talks about never heard, you'll enjoy it. Really on the mindset thing. I believe that Keith Cunningham was rich dad poor dad's mentor at one stage.

So as Robert Kiyosaki his mentor, and he made a bunch of money in real estate, lost it and then came back a couple 100 million or something like that was is something crazy, don't quote me on that amount. But really good book that one of my previous business partners brought me on to about how to think about your business. And I realized at a time in my business, and I got forced into this because I worked so much through that hustle culture of doing too much.

I got glandular fever, and I didn't even know it. I just worked through it found out it turned into Epstein Barr Virus, a time that I went to the doctor when the doctor said, you're coming for this one thing, but did you realize that you've got Epstein Barr Virus stage three, which is like stage four is the worst you can get. And I was as a zombie had no idea and forced myself to change my business model, forced myself to change my habits around work, and realize that, wow, the less I work, and the more I think, and put the right people in the right place and have them focus on the right things, the more money I make.

And it's a crazy thing to think that you can work less and by working less, you have more energy to put towards just the important things are the big rocks that you should be putting in that allows you to earn more money with less work. So, I'm a big fan of that.

Nick Eubanks (32:12)

I love it. He says big rocks though, because the I mean, I'm a big Stephen Covey fan, and I set my rocks every quarter, I have all my clients that have three big rocks every quarter. And like, in my opinion, like that's the basis for block scheduling, right? Like if you're going to actually adapt block scheduling, you've got what your big priorities are for the month of the week, the month, the quarter, the year, whatever your rock term is, being able to put those in first in your in your schedule, and then fit everything else around them.

And I think that's one of the things like I, I encountered people in business, from time to time that find my use of my calendar rigid, and they're like, scheduled like you put your doctor's appointments and your haircuts and time with your dogs and time with your wife like you put like dinner with your wife and your calendar. Yeah, every fucking thing goes in there. If it's important, it's in the calendar and you don't want it in the calendar. Because you can't get well there's two things.

One is if it's in there, and you've got the conviction to make it happen, you're going to do everything you want to do every week, every single thing you set out to do that week, if it's in your calendar, and you have the conviction to see it through, you're going to do it you will, you won't be like man, I didn't get this thing done. The other thing that I didn't realize, which was an incredibly positive byproduct, was I got my Sundays back. Like before I really embraced using my calendar as a weapon to protect my time and my priorities. I would get anxiety on Sunday, just like most people do. But tomorrow's Monday like started another week.

And like now everything that needs to happen like everything in its place, there's a place for everything and everything in its place like I don't have anxiety about how we're going to get all this work done because they know what it's going to get all done because it's all like there's time allotted and accounted for all of it. But also Mondays are completely quitting on Mondays are my favorite day of the week now.

So, like what was the amazing part about Monday being like my deep work day is I now get Sunday back like I didn't realize I was living a bestrides version of my sons because of the anxiety the subconscious anxiety was creating around one day and that's all.

Jaryd Krause (34:10)

It's crazy, I'm so glad you said if it's important to get scheduled in so I got friends that won't schedule or confirm a time to catch up and just like Mordor one weekend I might well like I value hanging out with you enough to schedule the end. Maybe you don't value enough value. I wouldn't say they don't value hanging out with myself but it's more so that were their perception position, not understanding what they value at all.

Really that's so good to hear about the about the calendar and when shit hits the fan for you, Nick, because it does in business and life. What do you do? Do you like my typical have an archetype or an essence where I'm a rescuer and trying to get things Taste and stuff like that? And I'm really working on not just putting out the fire understanding how to do it in the best possible way that's going to be best for everybody. And that's involved. What are some of the things that you do to process what has happened and how to tackle it and handle it without it without it coming from a fear?

Nick Eubanks (35:20)

First of all is it's rare that stuff catches on fire. Now that hasn't already been on fire before. So, I think there's just some muscle memory that comes with doing this for 20 years. And I'm sure like, I'm sure I just jinxed myself, and like, my hair is going to catch on, or something, it goes on, but I think part of it is just being like, like, it's never going to be as bad as it seems even if it seems like it's, the worst thing that's ever happened. The other thing is, is I also used to be a firefighter like that was how I saw my role. That's how I saw I was most effective.

It was fuck, here's a fire, let me get the hose. But let me just go make it better. And a lot of times it didn't. And the other thing that was pointed out to me because I think I was too close to it to see it was that by fighting the fires myself, I was creating a perpetual future where I was going to have to always be the person fighting the fires, do you see that? As opposed to delegates being like, Alright, hey, here's a problem. Here's how I would approach this, but you go fix that. You make the decisions you don't like don't ask permission, like everybody that, on all my teams, everybody I work with now, like, the guiding principle is like, if you don't have to ask me like, unless you really feel you have to absolutely have my opinion, make the decision yourself and just do it.

My favorite thing is for my employees just don't ask me and just make decisions, like on their end, because it's always okay. Always, like there's never like it has literally never been an issue. Has it always been as good as it could have been? No, but it's always totally fine. And the better. It's like, the less decisions I have to make every day, the more energy I have to put into thinking.

Jaryd Krause (37:09)

The less flyers that you need to put out that the team can put out and also, it's so empowering right for to give your team members the responsibility to go up.

Nick Eubanks (37:21)

Teaching leadership. Yes. Like, it's I mean, how late that's I want I want my folks to have driven and conviction.

Jaryd Krause (37:29)

Yeah, I love it. I want to bring up think traffic. Tell me a bit more about this. Who's it for? And why did you start this?

Nick Eubanks (37:39)

So, traffic Think Tank is a private, private SEO community and Academy. So, there's 400 hours of video content, texts, lessons templates, like lots of fucking tools and templates in the academy version. And then there's like, like, if you want to ask for help generate a lot of business gets done, a lot of people use, like, generate a shit tone of leads all in the slack group. So, there's the mastermind, which is a Slack group. And there's the Academy, which is all like in the backend of the website.

It's positioned to be specifically for SEOs. But the fact of the matter is we've got about 450 agencies in there have been a lot of freelance consoles, and we've got a lot of like pretty senior in house people. And people use it as a career guide. I think in a lot of ways, like our career growth channel is becoming one of our most active so people are like, Hey, I'm an entry level, how do I want to get to a director? What's the path that I need to take? Or I'm a mid-level manager? I don't want to be like I'm an IC right now. But I want to make more money and what do I do and like, talking people through the well if you want to be an individual I see like there's this pathway if you want to make more money faster, there's the money there's like the people management path here the like, here's the way to think about this.

Here's the conversations to have with your direct reports or your secure like your boss, here's how to approach them. Here's the language to use. Here's what you should ask for here's how you should present it like there's like a lot of it has become this career thing like career peace thing. And it's also not just SEO focus, like there's channels in there that are about affiliate and analytics and paid media and email and ecommerce like it's become this whole big thing, my favorite way I've ever heard it described. And I can't take any credit for this.

I just really like it was I once heard somebody talking about it at one of our events, and they were describing it to somebody who wasn't meant that they could come to the event back when we did live events, but wasn't a member. And they referred to it as their SEO insurance might have. I always thought that was pretty cool. Because like I mean, I still like I learned new stuff every week, I haven't done SEO in a long time. But like I'm still fascinated by it. And I love seeing the cool stuff that people are doing.

Jaryd Krause (39:45)

Yeah, I mean, having that insurance policy for SEO is valuable because SEO is ever evolving. It's just this organism that's ever evolving, ever changing. So, there's never going to be like once you've got these things in place, your good forever.

Nick Eubanks (40:01)

And the funny thing is you've got SEOs that will complain about Google though. They're like, god dammit, Google made this algorithm change. And we lost all this traffic or this happened. This happens, like, do they just like they're just giving you job security?

Jaryd Krause (40:13)

Yeah. And I think some people are in online business and forget that Google literally gives you the traffic, which allows you to get the money. And it's an amazing tool. It's kind of like blaming the knife that you cut yourself, when it's a tool that you can use to cook like, but and that's why we try to not have too much single source dependency. When we're looking at doing due diligence on businesses in terms of all organic search traffic from Google.

It's good, highest intent traffic, the best type of traffic better than most socials and stuff like that. But it comes with the risk of Google can do what they want. And just understand that it's going to change, like the one thing that is going to happen is inevitable in this world, and in your life is change. And it's just expected, right? I think that I mean, you can have a different mindset around it, but expect that it's going to change and be okay with it and be prepared for it and have that insurance plan, right?

Nick Eubanks (41:13)

Yeah, totally.

Jaryd Krause (41:15)

Where can we send people Nick to check out more about what you're up to some of your favorite sites.

Nick Eubanks (41:21)

nickeubanks.com is an outdated site but I tried to keep the there's a now page like what I'm working on now. Try to keep that reasonably up to date. Other than that, I mean, if anybody wants to chat I'm in Traffic Think Tank all day every day. And a lot of the conversations about like it less and less about SEO way more about like buying and building businesses growing agencies like it's funny how much the nature of the conversations has shifted.

Jaryd Krause (41:48)

Yeah, It's cool. It sounds like you're putting yourself more in alignment with a business investor and buying assets rather than just being in the in the thick of team and growth.

Nick Eubanks (42:00)

We haven't, it's way more fun. I mean, it's way more fun when you can have silly ideas and throw some money off them and hope 1 out of 10 work.

Jaryd Krause (42:08)

Cool. Well, we might have to get you back on and talk about some more businesses that you purchase in the future and stuff. Sounds good. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, everybody, for listening. There'll be links to Nick's site in the show notes. If you are listening to this, and somebody that's wanting to get into business, Nick and I covered some seriously deep things that we may have not given as much attention or light to as we maybe should have in terms of mindset, due diligence, buying businesses and strategy.

So, share this podcast episode with entrepreneurs that is going to be so incredibly valuable for them to comprehend and understand consciously what we talked about. And then if you did listen to this and you liked it, listen to it again, because there may be some golden nuggets that you missed out on. Just like reading a book for a second time. You can be very enlightened with some of the things that you pick up on. So, thanks again, and I'll speak to you guys soon.