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Oct 13, 2024

Success Stories

I Make $5M/Year With 3 Businesses

Summary

Building a Portfolio of Cash-Flowing Assets

Tim Stoddard built a portfolio of self-sustaining assets by reinvesting profits from his SEO lead generation agency into other businesses, allowing them to run independently and generate passive income.

Stazzi Internet Marketing, Tim's agency, generated $2-5 million in revenue in 2023, with the majority reinvested into other ventures to create a network of cash-flowing assets.

SEO-Driven Lead Generation Strategy

The agency focused on generating leads for the treatment industry, starting with the keyword "drug rehab marketing" and expanding to related terms like "drug rehab SEO" and "drug rehab lead generation".

Stazzi's success stems from creating content that best solves problems people are searching for, rather than producing content solely for self-promotion.

Scalable Business Model

By leveraging SEO expertise to generate leads in a specific niche, Tim created a scalable and profitable business model that allows for reinvestment and expansion into other ventures.

Timestamps

00:00 Tim Stoddard shares how he runs multiple businesses, reinvests earnings into cash flowing assets, and offers advice on finding big clients and the best business model for beginners.

03:07 Turned personal struggles into successful blog, then million-dollar business, encourages others to do the same.

05:02 The speaker built successful businesses by leveraging community traffic, generating leads through SEO, and focusing on a specific niche, using Google as a problem-solving machine to generate leads and build a business, and knowing key negotiation tactics to close deals in agencies.

07:14 Ask questions, address price upfront, and close deals effectively to boost sales; speaker discusses building profitable businesses, investing in lead generation and AI content creation tools, and acquiring companies in SEO and email list building industries.

09:21 Running multiple businesses has its pros and cons, with the mental burden of keeping track of everything being a downside, but the excitement of hearing new ideas and investing in cash flowing businesses being a major upside, and using various tools to manage and build self-sustaining businesses with a team.

11:26 Investing in businesses with founders you like and building a portfolio of evergreen assets is key to success in business.

12:52 The speaker's daily routine includes family time, gym, and deal making, while discussing the struggles of being an entrepreneur and coping with worry and fear.

14:57 Follow the advice to have five companies making $5 million a year, and join a free workshop to learn how to validate and build a million-dollar business.

Transcript

00:00 This guy makes over $5 million a year running three different businesses and the crazy part is. He started from nothing I flew out to Denver Colorado to ask him exactly how he got started how he runs all these businesses. At the same time and the marketing strategy he used to go from Zer to 22 million. With his first business. We generated and still generate a lot of our leads to Tim started out as a solopreneur. He was all in on one business but this business had a problem the more it grew the more hours he had to work every day. Then one day he stumbles onto an opportunity that would change everything he decided to become a multipreneur. The big goal is to build a portfolio of assets that essentially do all the hard work for me. In this video Tim will share how he built a team to run his $5 million portfolio of businesses how to find and close big clients and the best best business model to start as a beginner. I still think it's the best business for somebody to start I'm Pat walls and this is starter story all right. Tim what's up buddy thank you for having me sure thanks for being here in your amazing House in Denver Colorado tell me about who you are and everything you built great well.My name is Tim Stoddard I own an SEO lead generation agency called stazzi internet marketing this year uh for stazzy. We'll do probably like 2 and A5 million but uh on the side and more and more throughout the day I I find myself running a personal Holdings company. My guess is it'll be like 5.2 to 5 A5 million for 2024. Amazing can you break down each of the different businesses that you run within your holding company. Sure stazzi internet marketing is the main driver of everything else that generates like the cash and the revenue to make all the other stuff go. Subsequently to stazzi is recovery local that's sort of the parent company that own owns sober.com your first step.com detox.com and medically assistant.com. Then there's copy blogger.com so copy blogger teaches people how to write for the internet how to build newsletters how to do SEO on websites how to write on LinkedIn. So I've I've built up equity in like five or six other companies over the last couple years. But those three are the main ones so you have all these different companies. What's the Big Goal. What's the strategy of running different multiple companies well. The big goal is to build a portfolio of assets that essentially do all the hard work for me.I had a real like click moment like oh wow. I don't have to just work for a paycheck. Every week I can use the money I make through stazzy through. My agency reinvest it into Cash flowing assets and eventually build up a portfolio where the businesses the company themselves just do the hard work for me. I just made up my mind to do it. I've been doing it ever since yeah. Can you give me a timeline of how you got started and how how you got into the business of Entrepreneurship. I grew up a bluecollar kid. I built houses for most of my childhood.

03:07 My dad worked at the airport and my mom was a nurse and so I just thought I'd be working. My whole life got in trouble a lot when I was younger and I had a bit of a drug problem. So the time came when I needed to change my life and I went to rehab and and I got sober about 6 months into that Journey. A friend. Basically a mentor bought me a subscription to Success magazine which had this CD in it and it was this interview and it was guy named Seth Goden. He said start a blog don't tell anybody about it and write in it every day and there was something about that message where I thought like you know what I can do that. I don't know why it felt like it was a good direction for me. But I just I knew I could do that so I I started a blog spot and I would just write random articles about like my day and what I was feeling and experiences I had and there was other people that might have been getting. Sober might have been going through a journey of themselves and they were saying like oh. I really relate to this or like I felt the same way but I was wondering how are these people finding my blog like I didn't tell anybody about it.So I started researching and I discovered SEO I discovered search and then I would read copy blogger every day and just improve my skills of of being an online writer and yeah. Eventually that blog spot account turned into subnation and and that's how I got my start yeah. I love that you found this skill of writing because actually writing was one of my skills that helped me build starter story and what's amazing about starter story is there are thousands of case studies on Founders who had some sort of skill like writing or coding or design. They were able to take that one skill and turn it into a business that changed their lives if you're looking to take your skills and passions and turn it into an online business. You should check out our Workshop that we're running where I share the story about how I turned my skills which was actually writing into a million-dollar business. How I found that business idea how I executed on that and built that business on two hours a day while I had a full-time job if you're curious about learning more about that you can find the first link in the description and uh save a seat for yourself. See you there all right so you got. This blog people are reading your blog.

05:02 They're commenting how do you turn this into a business. All of the sudden with sobern nation treatment centers and Behavioral Healthcare centers were reaching out to me saying like how did you build this community. How did you build this audience and so we took the traffic that was coming from sober nation and almost turned it into like a a lead generation. Media Outlet I remember got my first client. It was 2,000 bucks a month and we just kept doing it and doing it and doing it and it's it's scaled ever since give me a little bit more of a breakdown about how you built it so you had your first client. Then then what did you do from. There we generated and still generate a lot of our leads through SEO. It was one keyword in particular that I ranked for it was just drug rehab marketing and then we started writing for drug rehab SEO drug. Rehab lead generation so if there's like one message that somebody can get from me. It's that you don't have to build this giant media entity like you can tackle it.One keyword. One article at a time the trick is to be methodical about it. That's why I hate the advice like just make great stuff just be yourself. It's just being yourself is like terrible SEO advice. What you want to do is you want to know what people are searching for you can figure that out just by going to trends. Google.com type in a bunch of keywords see what keywords are available and then write an article that best solves the particular problem that that person has I always think of Google as a problem solving machine. You never go to Google for anything else other than to solve a problem and so if you can write an article that best solves that person's problem you can generate leads and then on sudden you can build a business.Yeah. Can you tell me the pros and cons of building and running. This agency. Agencies are great because there's no real upstart. Capital you don't have to build anything you just need to get a client and then all of a sudden. You're a profitable business. They're hard because they're difficult to scale so like every new client you bring in you know you have to do more work. You have to onboard them. You know every like two or three or four clients or however many you got to hire another employee right. But nonetheless I still think it's the best business for somebody to start because you just need a client. Once you get your first client. All of a sudden. You have a profitable business so yeah. Let's talk about sales and closing deals do you have any tips on negotiation and how to close a deal. There's only a couple things you need to know about closing deals.

07:14 One is learn how to ask questions so that the person tells you their pain points. You want the person to tell you their problems. When that's happening I just write down what the person says. I write down the problem and I respond with a a solution to that problem. The second most important thing is is to get like the the price out of the way in the very beginning because what always happens you go through this whole pitch and then people say okay. I'll call you back let me think about it and that's the worst thing that can happen. So I always start a conversation by saying like hey love just do me a favor and let me know. If you're serious about this that way you get like a commitment and you actually get the deal closed and then the last and absolutely most important thing is ask for the deal. Here's my line. For this. It's the best line. It's are you ready to get started. That's all you got to say you say are you ready to get started and the trick is you shut up so what I do is. I say are you ready to get started and then I mute my phone and I put it in front of me and I just sit there and that's where you close the deal.So you build this agency. It's profitable. It's generating cash. Then you start buying businesses. Can you tell me more about what that looked. Like the first one was a company called moving local again like a lead generation site people buy moving leads a lot I built another one called stem cell Authority which was lead generation for the stem cell industry. I've recently invested in a company called Kaa which is an AI content creation tool it's mainly for SEO. It's an SEO tool. I was one of the founding investors in a company called spark loop. It's a a way for people to build their email list. It works with beehive and it works with convertkit. There's a website called your Boulder which I bought which is a newsletter that goes out to the people of of Boulder Colorado. There's another SEO agency called digital Commerce. We saw a big opportunity to do SEO for people that want to build email lists and sell digital products or sell courses or sell ebooks or subscriptions. Whatever the case may be. So we have another agency and then most recently I just invested in a company called Hey Creator. So hey Creator is kind of like a Creator Studio. You could call it of people that are all trying to build these creator-driven businesses and then of course. I bought copy blogger that's going really well.

09:21 But I'm still running recovery local and I'm still running my agency. That's really where I spend most of my time so you're running and have equity in multiple companies. At the same time what are some of the pros and cons of running multiple companies well. The cons is more mental. Sometimes I think about how much more simple my life would be. If I just had one thing to focus on and I didn't have to keep track of so much stuff in my mind. The pros are that I love hearing new ideas I love researching New Opportunities and so that keeps me like really engaged. And I really think that investing in private businesses especially investing in cash flowing businesses. That's just a great way to make sure your money keeps growing on itself and going on itself.All right. Let's talk about tools and software that you run multiple businesses on what are your favorite ones. Well slack is a must. It's just a a great communication tool. Especially now that we're all over the country underutilized is Loom. Like Loom is the best you can just get your idea out. One time and people don't have to stop what they're doing to know what it is that you need to tell them to doist is great. For me is the simplest task management tool. But I write down all the tasks that I need to assign I record Loom videos and then I assign them on todoist and then that's it. The rest of the day takes care of itself. Although it's the most expensive HubSpot in my opinion is definitely the best CRM. It makes it easy to keep track of your leads to keep track of your network and then click up. I think if you're running a real established agency to doist isn't going to be enough. It's just not robust enough and so toist is really where I manage my personal Holdings company. But clickup is where sty runs. That's like our our real task management software so slack todoist Loom HubSpot and clickup and then of course Google Drive. Like sometimes we laugh that basically every tool that anybody makes is just like a modified version of of Google Sheets and Google Docs and so like yeah Google Drive is a must so your goal is to build these self-sustaining businesses and now you have a team how was it going from just a solo preneur to building a team.

11:26 I had access to a lot of young people that were just getting into recovery. I hired them like straight out of halfway houses and we've all built this together over the last 10 years so in terms of managing a team read the e- myth. Revisited that book changed my life. I just realized that I am in the way of everything I am literally the biggest problem in the company and the best thing I can do for. The company is document. Processes be organized about it teach and then get the hell out of the way because I don't do anything except mess things up when I get in the middle of it so read the emth and read it again again and then read it a third time and take notes on it and just do everything that book says and you'll be fine yeah so you've invested in tons of businesses and you built tons of businesses. How do you approach finding great business ideas and knowing when to invest and when to not invest in a company. There's only three things that I really care about one do I like the founder because if I don't like the person it doesn't matter how great the idea is like.Life is too short to deal with people that you don't like two. Is it cash flowing. I personally am not interested in betting on a thousand companies and hoping that like one of them turns the Facebook I want to build a portfolio of assets and then the third one. This is just for me personally is is it like ever green. I want to find something that's going to be around forever right. That's why Healthcare is appealing to me because people are always going to need to take care of themselves. So that's it like is. The founder cool does it cash flow and is it Evergreen and if it meets those criteria I'll take it seriously all right.

12:52 Let's talk about what a day in the life looks like for you what are you doing these days all my days look exactly the same I've always woken up very early so. I'm usually up at like 4:00 chug. Some water I get a cup of coffee. I sit on my computer. I record my assignments for the day. By that time. My kids used to wake up. I play with them. I take them to school around 8:00 and then my wife. I go to the gym. I'm in the gym every day. From 8:30 to 10:00. I come back I eat and uh then I work. The afternoon is usually deal making so the mornings for me is like Logistics and task assignment and the afternoon is is deal making so I follow up with my leads. I make phone calls. I write proposals. I write contracts. If I close a deal I do all the onboard and uh then my kids get home at like 5: we hang out down here and we play and we eat dinner and I watch True Detective like I do the same thing every day. My life is super boring throughout your journey building businesses. You've been doing this for a while.Now what have been some of the struggles or have there anything that's been hard in your journey. The hardest part about being an entrepreneur is that I worry all the time most of my time is just spent like what's about to go wrong. What's a fire that's about to happen like where can I see something coming so that I'm not blindsided and my life doesn't like Fall to Pieces because of some problem that I couldn't control so like yeah. I worry a lot every morning as soon as I wake up I'm thinking like what's wrong. What's wrong what's wrong. It's just it's really difficult to make that go away yeah if you could sit on the shoulder of yourself when you're just getting started just getting started with that blog what would be your advice to Young Tim when I was getting sober. Basically the fear is always how am I ever going to have fun for the rest of my life or like what am I going to do when I'm at a wedding and then somebody told me all you ever have to do is get through the day so you make it till midnight and then what do you do. When midnight comes you just make it to midnight again and like it never ever ends. The solution to every problem in my life is always like. I'm just going to get through the day I'm just going to make it till midnight. So I really really truly live my life like one day at a time I don't think too far into the future. I have no idea what's coming next. I just I I make it till midnight one day at a time.

14:57 That's great advice thanks thank you man thank you for having us of course follow this advice and you will have five companies making $5 million a year. Hey guys I hope you enjoyed the breakdown of all of Tim's businesses. It's amazing story right if you want to do something similar but you're struggling to find the right idea or the time to build it. Well. I have something that might help you I'm hosting a free Workshop. This week to show you exactly how I validated my own million dooll business and then exactly how I built that business on Just 2 hours a day while I had a full-time job because I know from personal experience. There's nothing worse than wanting to start a business but not feeling 100% confident that you're on the right track. So if you're interested click the first link in the description to save your seat and I'll see you in there. Otherwise see you in the next video peace.