The Content Capitalists
Is content creation a waste of time and money?
Instead of theorizing, I ask my clients and others like them how they use content in their $1m to $600m /yr businesses.
Skip blogs and "best practices" - Instead, hear it straight from the practitioners of today.
There are as many ways to make a million dollars with content as there are people doing it.
The Content Capitalists
Scale to 7 Figures with SEO | Damon Burton
Most people give up on SEO too soon because they don’t understand why it takes time. But Damon Burton, Founder of SEO National, has a different approach. He knows that SEO is a long-term play that pays off in a big way.
Damon’s helped clients like Tony Robbins and Russell Brunson grow their online presence through strategic SEO, and in this episode, he explains why it’s worth sticking with it.
We talk about:
- Why SEO is a long-term investment that pays dividends, and why shortcuts never work
- How Damon builds trust with clients by being transparent about SEO timelines and strategies
- SEO vs. social media marketing
If you’re tired of chasing quick-fix marketing tactics that don’t deliver, this episode is going to change the way you think about SEO.
Follow Damon Burton at:
https://www.instagram.com/entrepreneurdamon/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/damonburton/
https://www.seonational.com/
https://www.damonburton.com/
https://www.facebook.com/damon.burton
Follow Ken Okazaki at:
https://www.instagram.com/kenokazaki/
https://www.youtube.com/c/KenOkazaki
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-content-capitalists-with-ken-okazaki/id1634328251
https://open.spotify.com/show/09IzKghscecbI7jPDVBJTw
Damon: The main disadvantage with traditional SEO is it takes a long time, but here's where most SEOs fail to communicate this to their customers is why does it take a long time? The Content Capitalist Podcast.
Ken Okazaki: Hey, welcome to another episode of the Content Capitalist Podcast. Today, my guest is somebody who has been in the game for a long time. When I say in the game, it means creating content, but I think way before social media became a big deal for marketers and business owners, uh, Damon, welcome to the show. 10. What's up, man?
Ken Okazaki: Uh, pretty cool chatting with you virtually, kind of funny to meet you across the world in person before we really kind of did this kind of thing. Yeah. You know, it's so funny. I was just in Fiji a week ago and there were people there who I've known for and done business with, worked with, had. Countless hours on zoom and we meet a person and the first reaction is, I didn't know you were so short. And that's the thing about zoom is you can only, you know, you have no idea how tall the person is.
Uh, and for the record, for the listeners, I'm, I think I'm five, five or five, six, I don't know, whatever, 165 centimeters is in feet. So, uh, that was a funny moment. And I guess I, I'm always, you know, when I walk around the world, I, I You know, I'm used to everybody being taller than me, but I guess they were expecting, you know, someone about the same height as them.
So, but we met in person before we met virtually. So that's, uh, it's different.
Damon: Yeah. No, it is cool meeting people, both ways and it's even more enjoyable when they're the same in real life as they are online. And you know, when, you and I met in Japan, I met some of my team leads, who I flew up from the Philippines and two of them I had met. but the other four that I flew up, I'd never met in person.
And so you just kind of hope that they're the same, people. Right. So yeah, that's fun.
Ken Okazaki: Yes, for sure. For sure. And in most cases they are. And, uh, I guess we've seen too many of these, you know, reality TV shows where stuff goes sideways with catfishing and stuff. And that gets pretty weird, but we're way off topic already. Uh, but this is going to be fun.
One thing I, reason I wanted to bring you here is, There are countless agencies and SEO experts. And I think that the difference between the ones that I feel are worth listening to, and the ones that kind of seem to just be repeating the same stuff over and over that other people have already said, the difference is who is delivering it and what experience and authority do they have. It's kind of like, you know, if a teenager says, you know, like, Hey, I, I think that you should probably break up with your girlfriend because whatever, and they've never had a serious relationship.
Or if somebody who's been through five relationships and has finally found, you know, a solid one, they give you that advice. they might be the exact same advice, but one is going to sink in and actually affect my perspective. And the other might kind of bounce off just like, oh, that's interesting information.
In your case, from what I've heard about you, when I've researched about you, you've been around the block a few times. Could you walk us through a bit of your experience? The brands and people you've worked with in And
Damon: I can tie into the topic too.
So I've had the agency for 17 years, and been fortunate to work with a lot of cool people. so we, we got both ends of the spectrum. We have great client retention. And so we still have some of the mom and pops with us 17 years later. Um, And so it's cool working with them.
And then on like the higher profile side, I've worked with Tony Robbins, Russell Brunson, professional sports teams like Utah Jazz, Rail Salt Lake, and then, you know, lots of successful people in between, by their own right and industry. But what's interesting is I actually just had, so we've only had Tony Robbins as a client for about a month.
And I just had a call with their marketing manager just yesterday. And the one thing that he. drilled towards the end was, I just wanted to pass on a compliment and it's, he had his all hands meeting with his marketing team and what, he relayed was exactly what you just pointed out, which is that we focus, you know, there's a difference in marketing, doing content for the sake of content or writing content SEO versus, Writing content with an intent to attract recall, but buyers versus writing content with an intent to monetize it.
And that was what he was pointing out was like, you guys get it. Focus on, we have a certain demographic and audience and product and service we're trying to get to and sell. And so I think that's the biggest difference where I've seen in like those that succeed and sustain over the years is like, Do they actually pause to listen to the customer?
Do they actually pause to listen to the customer's customer and figure out how to align all this bring people in, solve their problems and build authority in the content they produce. So, you know, the short answer is intentionality behind the content.
Ken Okazaki: Absolutely.
Damon: Would you say that that's your core guiding principle and how you look at and operate your agency when you deliver your services? On content. Yeah, I'd say on content it's intentionality. I'd say for the agency as a whole, it's, transparency. because like, you know, there's always a new marketer, especially when there's like a new thing, right? When AI comes out, there's a new AI marketer. And then when, what was the trend before that?
NFTs, when NFTs came out, there's like NFT gurus. And so for me, I've just stayed in my lane and there's a lot of value in getting known for doing the same thing. Yeah. or a long time. And like all these high profile clients I work with come from that. And so for like entrepreneurs, it's really important to pick a path that you can be passionate about staying for a long time.
Because what happens is people no longer go, Oh, Ken is an option in a variety of services that we're, choosing. Ken is. The option in the video services that we need. So when you pick a path and sustain it, then back to your original question about, you know, what's your main guiding principle, if you can be transparent in delivering that service.
For me, I might, dwell on transparency a little bit more than others because of the nature of my product. And the nature of my product is it takes a long time. And so. I always have to be transparent and like, you're not going to get an ROI in three months and probably not in six months, maybe in nine months, but probably closer to 12 months.
And so by always putting that out there and being honest about it, more often than not, that seals the deal, then scares them away. Um, and then at the end of the day, I just. Want to sleep at night, right? Like I don't want to have to keep track of all these lies and things like that.
Ken Okazaki: Yeah.
Speaking of which, I'm going to read you a post that you made and I want to hear more of the backstory on this. All right. So here it goes. Dear internet bros, I'm here to ask for bro giveness. I used to write for Forbes Agency Council. I stopped years ago, but I'd like to cleanse my soul. I did the bragging.
I paid for the plaques and I'm sorry. Amen.
Damon: Yeah. Tell me about that. So my exposure to, so it's kind of a joke, right? Is those of us that are familiar with how Forbes councils work is it's not really Forbes, like it's a separate entity that. basically leases Forbes name for the right to leverage it and monetize it. And so they come up with these quote unquote councils and there's like an agency council and a, I don't remember, there's like five or six councils.
And so they're different verticals. And so when I got exposed to, I didn't know. The depth of what it really was. And so for me, like they caught me at the right time in my career, where it sounded cool. And so basically it's like, you can write for quote unquote Forbes and they publish your content. And there's like an annual fee of something like 2, 500 bucks.
But then the more that I wrote about it, the more that I started writing about it. And then the more that I would see the jokes that I wasn't privy to yet, Then I started going, you know, when I publish this content, it doesn't get very much reach. And so I'd write, I'd spend all this time writing this really in depth article and giving a lot of effort to it.
And it'd get 50 views because it would show you the view count in your, profile. And the ones that I would. put the ones that got views were the ones that I would push. And so I had to do all the efforts. I'm like, something's not right here. And so the more they dug around, the more I started to connect the dots about the jokes about it.
the people that are already done it before me or were more familiar with the structure than I was. And so you find out that you're basically just paying for the rights to say, I write for Forbes, right? And so in my opinion, I didn't get any tangible benefits that's out of it.
It was a great experience to now go, Oh, okay, get it now.
And then now there's other similar platforms that come with a name that has cloud that you can,
Ken Okazaki: I think Entrepreneur Magazine does that too.
Damon: they have something like that. I'm not familiar with theirs, but they, they have something you can submit to it. Yeah. And so. For me, that's where, so I stopped two or three years ago but it's always stuck in the back of my mind because I see the jokes and I've never thrown rocks at Forbes in particular.
Um, but I would make the jokes about those types of things too. And, and so when I wrote that post, there was a lot of truth, a lot of truth behind me wanting to cleanse my soul and just, just put it out there and be like, look, those articles are still out there and they're great articles. and there's this.
Ken Okazaki: Oh, you probably haven't seen them because they're
Damon: Yeah. Well, no, if you search my name, if you search my name, uh, there's a lot of.
Ken Okazaki: as your name, but not the typical person who goes to Forbes is not going to find not gonna see them. They're like buried in a corner of a cave. Yeah, but because the Forbes Publications are tied to a profile and that profile is tied to my name and I've obviously optimized my name It can pick up that I'm Matt Damon pretty easy And so if you search it shows down generally towards the bottom of the first page I have a feeling that this was the brainchild of the CRO and like, how can we make more revenue? And it's like, let's rent out our brand to aspiring entrepreneurs. Right.
Damon: I think it's the other way. I think somebody else went and went, ah, you know, it'd be a great idea. Yeah. Yeah.
Ken Okazaki: Yeah, it could be, could be. There's something else here.
I remember we had a conversation and you said that you're in a surgeon mastermind or circle, and there's a lot of very successful high profile marketers. And they're known for doing multi seven figure launches, having eight figure businesses.
And he said to me, you realize that nobody there was operating their business with SOPs. They were pretty much just a promotion company. And they sustain their growth with promotion after promotion. Could you talk to me a bit about that and how, you operate versus how you're seeing a lot of marketers operating?
Damon: Yeah. it's interesting. And you know, that I see that in a lot of groups and a lot of masterminds and, it's really amazing how successful a lot of these people are. And so it's not a bad thing. It's just it's. Not what I was used to. So going into these groups, my agency has been built on SOPs and I only know reoccurring revenue.
And so getting into a lot of these groups with people that honestly, a lot of them are significantly more financially successful than I am. And get into seeing how they launch and do cool things and how their, mind works. and the first year I was in some of these high ticket masterminds, It was confusing for me because I look around knowing, because to get into a lot of these groups, you have to have certain qualifications.
One is certain amount of revenue. 2
Damon: Two is, you know, they're generally 30 to 50, 000 or more per year. And so if you're in a group where people are willing to put that much money on the table, they have the financial success to do so, but also the confidence. To bet on themselves to get an ROI out of that significant investment.
And so I was in this room or I knew everybody around me was successful. But as they would, talk about certain things, it was. You know, how do I, as you kind of said, repackage this product or relaunch this. and it was interesting to see different ways to have a business. And a lot of people have a business without SOP.
A lot of people have a business without reoccurring revenue. And so there's no right or wrong. And what's interesting is in these groups. They've kind of shifted more towards what I'm more familiar with over the years is like, Oh, we do need reoccurring revenue. And, and I think what happened is a lot of, I know a handful of them went and had a business valuation and then the, whoever does evaluations was like, you know, congrats, you've obviously done a lot, but. Business isn't worth anything because
Ken Okazaki: You
Damon: you can't, you can't sell it. Yeah. Like if, if I were to buy this, this business is, is you, right. I can't take the keys and run. I can't pour more fuel on the fire and accelerate it. And so It's something I still see. It's something that I've seen enough that I'm not surprised by it anymore.
But it is fascinating because like you said, like a lot of these people from a dollar's perspective, just blow me out of the water. And so it's, kind
of, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, what I do, like you said, they'll legitimately have seven figure days. Day, like a day, a single day and do a million dollars.
And they'll do that every two or three months. Right. so it's like, well, for me, it's, so it's slow and steady continually increase over time. not have to go find new customers. Like I haven't had a new customer in like four weeks, you know, and other businesses, they'd be dying if they didn't have a customer every week, if not every day.
So, yeah, it's, it's just an interesting kind of, yeah.
Ken Okazaki: because, uh, you know, just in Fiji, I was, the mastermind I went to there is for coaches and I don't have a coaching offer right now. I'm actually just building one and about to launch it. And a lot of people ask me, cause we're, you know, helping each other and they ask, what's your lead acquisition?
You know, fun will look like. And I don't have one. the best analogy that I can think of is I feel like I'm the guy at McDonald's behind the counter taking an order. Someone comes in. It's like, Hey, I heard you're the guy who makes burgers. Uh, can I get one? Sure. Which one do you want?
Would you like fries with that? Would you like to supersize that? Great. Here's the price and let's go. Because none By the time they get to me, most of the time it's going to be because they talk to one of my other clients and who are at, typically, you know, mid seven figure, eight figure, businesses, and they're going to have said, Hey, uh, who's doing your stuff and would you recommend them?
Yeah. And then they get in touch with me because they have that need and we wouldn't be having the conversation if we didn't. So I don't have that. And I'm not even, I don't think I'm good at sales. I just take orders from customers who are there to buy. And that's how it feels. And I kind of feel like I'm cheating.
and these other coaches, you know, they got, you know, they're running ads and then it's going to this zap and then this automation and then this, you know, VSL and a live webinar and it's all great, but I feel like they're like the rock star who has got to be out stage singing. And if they're not singing, they're not making me money. Totally. You and I are in the exact same boat. I'm digging my toe in the other boat too, though. So we'll see how that goes.
one thing
Damon: that you said about, you know, I'm not good at cells. I don't think it's good. Cause you and I are the same in this. I don't think it's that you and I are not good at cells. We just don't have to progressive in pursuing the cell. And so I'm the same when usually by the time somebody gets to me, they already know what they're walking into and it's basically like, okay, I have a couple of formality questions and then.
Let's go. what I've learned in that, in the people like you and I versus the rockstar people, started to pay attention to this very intentionally in different
ways, ecosystems. One is in sales and then another is just in networking. so I think we're on the same page on networking, but in sales, let me give you a networking example.
I was in Las Vegas for traffic and conversions earlier this year, and I was with, uh, a friend of
Ken Okazaki: Did we meet there? We didn't run into each other, did we?
Damon: Uh, were you there? Yeah.
Ken Okazaki: I spoke there. And I also had a booth there, but, uh, I guess we miss each other.
Damon: we didn't know. I don't think we knew of each other until after. Um, but at Trafficking Inversions, I have this, I was with this friend who's high energy, can walk into any room, way more social. And historically there would be a part of me that's like, gosh, that'd be so cool to do that, to just walk up to anybody.
And it's not like I have reservations about talking to people. It's just not natural to me to just. have some high energy conversation out in nowhere. And so before I was like, uh, you know, is that a handicap of mine? And then where it really started to highlight the difference in the value and maybe the way that you and I do things is that night, him and I got invited to two separate dinners. So one dinner, he got invited to had like 20 people. and it was all, Bubbly high energy people. And then about an hour later, I got invited to a really small end to the dinner with like five or six people. And I only knew one person there. And this person said, Hey, I've gone dinner with so and so and so and so.
And I'd heard a couple of names, but never met him. He says, I got one seat left. You want to come? And so I go to this tiny dinner and it's with. Super successful people, all very humble, all very well accomplished, all very goodwilled, wanting to help each other. And then in retrospect, comparing my dinner to the other dinner, cause I went and tagged along to the other dinner after and both groups were great people, but the second group that was larger and high energy probably wasn't really going anywhere. And so then I started to realize the difference in the energy that you and I have versus the rock stars is I think that The people that I engage with appreciate the calmness and appreciate the transparency and appreciate the lack of hypiness. And there, somewhere in there is an, an inferred added level of trust.
And so through these more private calm conversations come one, just like you said, people trust you and they recommend you. And, and so that's been an interesting observation that I've had, particularly in the last, you know, eight months is there is value in both types of energies,
just.
Ken Okazaki: depends on which one fits you. absolutely. I think that sometimes also when someone is, really good, like they're the networker, they've got their, you know, NFC, you know, uh, business card or QR code, like, and you've seen those, right?
Damon: Yeah.
Ken Okazaki: And not, uh, you know, the ones where you tap it on your phone and boom, you know, like, and then like all these automations set up, that kind of scares me away a little bit.
I'm more cautious. it's like, you know, a phishing lure that is, 2, 000 and like, it's so well engineered that it scares me a little bit. And everything they say, I filter it through, like, what's his real intention. and I think that It does attract a certain kind of person, but for me, it makes me cautious.
So I had never thought of myself as somebody who's an introvert, but I definitely do appreciate the call because I, I don't feel like there's an act going on. I don't feel like it's performative. I feel like it's closer to the person's baseline, which to me is a form of sincerity. So, and these are all just kind of instinctive.
It's not like a calculated decision I made. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I agree. I got something else here. Can I read it to you? Your words. You ready for this?
I'm glad that I'm glad that I'm confident in what I put out online. Here we go.
Damon: Russell Brunson challenged me to finish launching my SEL certification program. He even gave me a deadline. And we talked a bit about this before, setting deadlines. Tell me about this program and what's this deadline done for you and how are we going with that? It's going amazingly well. And the deadline is I've done more in two weeks than I know I would have done in two years. Right.
Ken Okazaki: Walk me through that. like how did he get wind of this idea? Where did this idea come from?
Damon: so Russell, I'm in his mastermind. And, um, I'm going on my fourth year and Russell's also a client. And so him and I have got to, you know, understand each other a little bit. And, what I told him is I was chatting with him and I said, Hey, can you give me your opinion? I have, cause I have my agency and the agency just does its thing because of, like, I've talked about the consistency of staying in my lane and people know me for SEO, I get asked all the time.
All the time, weekly, if not multiple times a week. Like, do you have training? Do you have a course? I have this question. What's the answer? And so
Ken Okazaki: so big because exactly what's happening to me.
Damon: yeah, yeah, yeah. When you were talking about your thing. Yeah. So it's been an untapped opportunity for a long time. And I've been very aware of that. And so much so that like four years ago, I built out a course, put it into a platform, got all the automations ready, and I never sold it. Because I knew I didn't have the time to support it.
And I didn't want people to give me money if I couldn't support them. So it's just been sitting there for years and still people ask and ask and ask. And so now that I hired a COO at the agency about two years ago, and I feel more comfortable. with, the time he's had under his belt to absorb the way I think and SOPs and stuff like that.
Now I can feel more comfortable passing, making that his baby. And so he's had the majority of it for a long time, but you know, now he can pretty much have the entirety of it. And so, because I have that ability to start transitioning my focus, I really want to get back to this course and community and thought leadership kind of thing is in my vertical because it's personally rewarding.
That's been the main driver is I want to spend my time there. And then with that, it's like, well, that's great because that's also a huge opportunity for added revenue, but it's the main driver has just been, I want to spend my time there because I like helping people. It's just more attractive than doing the agency fulfillment these days. And so I was talking to Russell about that and I said, Hey, you know, I got basically four ways I can do this. One is I can do a community around SEO. Two is. I have the course that I just need to polish up and I can sell the course around SEO. and then three is I can do a certification program around the course and I can spend more intimate one on one time and get stamps approval.
And then four is I can do some sort of mastermind or hire ticket. involvement with Damon's time, right? There's people that want my recommendations in an ongoing basis to help them solve their client's problems. And so I basically brought those to him and I said, how do I prioritize this? You know, which one do I give away for free?
For example, do I give away the community for free, but charge for the course or vice versa. Do I give away the course and charge for the community and um, He said, you know, focus on the certification, serve the higher end client that is going to be willing to invest more in valuing your time. And so, you know, there's more details conversation that that's the summary of it.
And so we get to the end and he goes, all right, so when's the date? Like, what do you mean? And he goes, give me a date. And I'm like, I don't know, the end of the year. He's like, end of the year, that's six months. And I'm like, okay. That's not sick. Oh yeah. I guess it is about six months. And so I just kind of threw out Halloween and he goes, perfect, because we have our followup mastermind about a week or two after that.
So I can hold you accountable. And so I went back to my computer and I put in a reoccurring five day reminder that says Russell's 31st. And so part of, the course is I like. There's so many other opportunities here to support other people and figure out how to perfect this. And so like, it's now spun off in a lot of things.
So when I say I've done a lot in, you know,
Damon: a couple of weeks versus two years, I put out a feeler post, asked for people who'd be interested, had a lot of demand, through together an agenda for a two day live event. I got my first ever live event I'm doing here in three weeks. And so like all the things behind booking a venue. Paying for catering, hiring an AV team, building out the curriculum, just like all those things I've done. it's not a question of, could I do them? It's just, I would have deferred them or set priorities in
Ken Okazaki: you were comfortable not doing it, right. Or taking your time.
Damon: For sure. Yeah. So, you know, when he gave me a deadline, But when we kind of threw out the deadline of Halloween, basically the way I reverse engineered it was, crap, what's halfway between now and Halloween, and I need to do a live event by then to get the feedback and dial in the curriculum.
Ken Okazaki: And that gives me the other half of the deadline to actually polish it off and then deliver that as a second product. And, right now is like, how's your day to day life changed? Like the COO is handling the rest of the stuff pretty well. So you can just focus a hundred percent on this.
Damon: he's had the majority of fulfillment and operations for a while. and I think this deadline came at a perfect time. Thank you. Because I knew he had the majority of things for a while, but I think like you said, I was comfortable, or I always had opportunities to make excuses. Like if, if I didn't have a deadline, but I knew I still wanted to do the course, you know, maybe I'd open up what I was working on on the course that day.
But then I'd be like, I wonder how that other project at the agency is going. And so I would always find ways to get back. Into the agency. And so it's really been interesting at the last two weeks, the majority of my time has been on this upcoming event. And so I'm really grateful that of the timing of it all, because I didn't realizeit would have consumed this much time to
Damon: put together this event and the agenda and, and getting all these things dialed in.
I knew it would take, you know, a chunk of my time. I didn't think it would be more than 50 percent of my day on a regular basis.
Ken Okazaki: know, as I'm designing my course, can I just share something that's really related to what you're saying there
Yeah.
Ken Okazaki: is I've put out a couple of coaching courses in the past and I did them for maybe a year at a time and then I closed it down. And the main reason I closed it was because two things, there were some program flaws.
Uh, the design flaws in the program. And then the other one was I didn't see a infinite continuum of progress for my coaching clients. They're like, couldn't figure out how to justify. They keep paying me every single month forever. So they don't feel good about it. Shut it down. And one of the biggest design flaws was some people got stuck on trying to perfect things, trying to get things right before they launch. And one of the core components of this new one I'm doing, is We're making Failure to launch a nonce. non option. And what that means is two weeks after they sign up, we are launching their ads. And what that means is that we'll script it for them. They'll shoot it. And we have what's called a click here call where one of my guys and the client will literally, they'll show the script and call, click here, click here, click here.
Your ad is launched. Congratulations. And that happens On week two, is it going to be amazing? No. Is it going to be functional? Yes. Now we have something to work on and then, you know, improve on, and we're going to do the same with their organic content scripted for them. We'll shoot it. We'll edit it. And we'll have a click here call and that's launch dates.
Damon: And all these days are set in stone from day one. And the reason I'm doing this is because I think like you and me, when something is in motion, then you have something to reference and improve on. Trying to perfect something you've never done before and then launch, there's a high risk of failure to launch and I haven't launched this thing yet. It's in a couple of weeks, but that's the whole tenet, you know, like launch first, learn later and, uh, you'll learn faster. So, what you're just saying has been on my mind for so long as I'm designing my new coaching program and, just trying to tackle it a different way. It's true.
And I've been habitually failing to launch because I didn't need to, right? Like you said, I was comfortable. So I always had reasons to keep working on the agency. It's funny. You talk about, um, I'll summarize basically what you said is, you know, done is better than perfect. And it's, funny because I've been thinking about that.
Today, in a non business perspective. And so, you know, there's always to dos around the house. There's always things you got to fix, things you got to clean. And I've had these to dos, you know, I'll give you a couple little examples. There's a light switch I needed to change because it broke. There's our thermostat started glitching out.
So, you know, most days it would work, some days it wouldn't. Just like little things like that. None of them were terribly complicated, but collectively it would take me all day. And so because in my mind, I knew that, well, that one won't take that long, but if I start, then I got to do all that other stuff and all that other stuff takes a long time. And so I've been outsourcing just local house maintenance things. And so in business and personal, I've been, cause I am the perfectionist. in a lot of ways, I'm proud of it because that's delivered the reputation we've done. And in other ways, I see like, you know, there's a margin in between there.
where your perfection is different than the customer's perceived perfection. They'll probably consider 80 percent or better. Like they're not even going to know the other 20 percent exists and that's perfect. And so I was thinking about this whole concept again today, because I finally, called up this maintenance guy that I've chatted with a time or two and he came out today, he duty knocked out like three things in 90 minutes that would have taken me all day. And he did those to perfection. And then he was on a roll. I was like, this dude's going to knock out this whole list that would have taken me weeks in one day. And so I was super excited. And then he gets to the last thing and he screws it up. And I told him, I was like, ah, you know, that thing was supposed to be over there.
Ken Okazaki: And he's like, oh, I'm sorry. You know, I misinterpreted. And, and I just sat there and the OCD in me so badly wanted me to have him correct it, and I was like, you know what? It doesn't even matter. It doesn't even matter. So I just told them, I was like, just, just leave it, go on to the next thing. The next thing is more important than that tiny imperfection right there. Do you still walk past that thing every day and, you know, does it make you wince or, or is it
Damon: That was four hours ago. Yeah. It's going to definitely make me win in a couple of weeks.
Ken Okazaki: that I would have had him fix it. I would have because it's not your time,
Damon: Here's what's at risk though. It's like, okay, so this thing in particular, we have a, we have
Ken Okazaki: is this something you walk past every day? Like, what do you see every day,
Damon: nearly every day. Yes. So it's, we have, we have, well, here, let me explain this. So it's, we built a pole in our backyard a couple of years ago. It's indoors. And so, When you close all the door in the summer, we keep all the windows and doors open in the winter. We close it to keep it heated. So when it's closed, it's like super echoey.
And so we put these sound panels in there, but I didn't want just a bunch of regular sound panels. So I bought all these cool seascapes, you know, beaches and palm trees, sound panels. And so it's like, you know, like an eight piece set, multiple different eight piece sets that are artwork. but they're functional sound panels.
And he had three different panels. He was doing three different sets. So the first one, I'd already had a set of panels there, but I put the wrong ones there after I got them hung up. I was like, Oh crap. Those ones are supposed to go on the other side. So I told him take one off at a time and replace one at a time because then it'll be already measured.
And you don't have to remeasure everything. You don't have to figure out the symmetry across the vertical and the horizontal. And I go out there and he removed all eight. He just took them all off. And so now he's got to like re measure everything, and as he's re measuring them, he's doing them wrong.
They come back out there in between calls and he's God I'm at the wrong height and this and that. So that one he fixed. Now he goes and does the other two new ones and I put a piece of masking tape, to not go higher than that. He put the bottom of the artwork above
Ken Okazaki: That's a big
Damon: max line on that one, yeah?
feet tall, these panels? Uh, no, they're like 10 inches wide by 12 inches tall, collectively it's probably four feet wide by three feet tall.
Ken Okazaki: Okay. Okay. Okay. So I'm that big.
Damon: so the one that really bothered me was the last one. Because it was on the largest wall in the
is he? He's done really good until today. Yeah. Cause he's come over a couple of times. Um,
Ken Okazaki: uh,
Damon: the last one is on this really large wall and it's still these small 12 inch panels and I said, start the first one here and use that as a baseline to figure out how
Ken Okazaki: you're killing me. This is torture hearing this.
Damon: And so I go out there, I said, hang the first one and then I'll come back out. And then you can hold two and I can hold two and we can kind of based off the one that's mounted, kind of figure out where to do the rest.
And I come out and he mounts all eight, like they're done and they're all way too wide. And they're like, you know, this, this sounds so stupid saying this out loud because it's like, but that's my point.
Ken Okazaki: I'm having a parallel experience. And you finish up, and I want to tell you mine because, oh boy, yes.
The main reason why I didn't have him redo it is because I told him, I said, I had to redo one of these before. And because of the humidity in the whole house, the paint pulls off sometimes. And I was like, if you pull the paint off in my mind, if the paint comes off, that's going to bother me a lot more than the spacing on those panels. You could get another set that goes right below the line. Now you just expanded the thing.
Damon: It wouldn't match then. It wouldn't match. It'd be different scenes.
Ken Okazaki: You know, it can be like, you know, stamps on a sheet, you know, they
Damon: Now I'm going to have to text you this. I'm going to have to text you this when we get off. It's going to drive you crazy. You're going to go, Oh man, you need to turn the whole building down.
Ken Okazaki: Okay. So I don't know.
Have you ever heard of something called the GoBox? Yeah. Okay. So that's my invention. That's my company. And when I was at, uh, TNC, yeah. So, um,
I'm at the stage right now where we're gearing up for mass production. And I'm working with engineers at a design firm. I've never done this before. So I'm coming in saying, Hey guys, teach me what to do. So I hired this, this firm that does the product development and we're going, they're going to get, you know, a go to market prototype, something that they could do like a thousand a week of.
Right. And then, well, we're actually going to be planning a marketing campaign to get pre sales and then, Do the big batch order, kind of like a Kickstarter thing. So this, I'm still working on this and I'm in the middle of it.
Ken Okazaki: I am, I'm working with engineers and they will solve the problem that I say, but they'll always make a new one or they'll do it in a way that does not make sense. And it, like, for example, you know,
the new one's going to be much more customizable. And I don't, if you had to look at it, you know, they've got these arms for there's lights and you can't rise to your left up there. One plug and it's your professional studio on the go. So I said, we need a position so that the arms can, you know, be moved by the customer so that they could change, you know, how they want to configure things.
So maybe they want two cameras and one light or two, uh, three cameras and no lights or two mics and a camera and things like that. And they said, great. So they redesign it. They send me the CAD model and they did the job, but they're like sticking out of the middle of the table where the laptop's supposed to go.
Damon: And I'm like, okay, now we we've, we've created a new problem. And like, but that's not. Like they will do what I asked them to do, but they can't see the big picture. maybe I just need to learn a whole new style of, I mean, engineering is a whole discipline on its own and I'm still, working through learning how to work with these guys, but yes, that kind of stuff is frustrating. but what I've learned is there's always different ways to do that because, you know, you go through that as a business owner, you go through that with your team, like you realize, like, they're really good at their responsibility, but they don't understand how their output ties into the greater picture.
And so they don't maybe understand the before and the after of where the word comes and goes. And so that's, even something that, you know, we continue to have to. speak to our team about. And so one of the greatest things I did on, our SOPs is, you know, we ran into a pain point about a year ago where we were growing.
And so I gave the team autonomy to hire people beneath them. And the safety net that was in my mind was like, our SOPs are amazing. And so as long as they hire somebody that can read and follow directions, like they can't screw this up, which I still believe, but what I didn't realize in between, was people can read the how and still not understand the why. And so we ended up having some failures in quality control and I had to go back and kind of figure this out and go, where did this all happen? Because our processes are perfect. And I realized it was through that delegation when I gave the team autonomy and they hired somebody, they may or may not have.
Follow it up to go, okay, I know you read that and did the thing, but you understand why you did the thing. And so I had my team go back through all of our documentation and add a new block, a new module within all the SOPs that says, why, here's why you're doing this. And so then when I ran into that issue with the maintenance guy today, in my mind, it was as clear as day.
I said, here's a piece of tape on the wall. Don't go above that. And so when, when the baseline. was above that. And I'm like, why is that higher? Actually, I said, Oh man, that's way higher than I wanted. And he, he says, Oh, really? He said, yeah. Remember that piece of tape I put there? And he's like, yeah. And so in his mind, at some point the tape disappeared. And his reasoning was he thought the panels on that wall should have been the same vertical height as the panels on the opposite wall. But those walls are,
different. And like one has a TV.
Ken Okazaki: you for a long time.
Damon: Oh, for sure. So like the one he messed up, like there's a TV above it.
And so that's why it shouldn't be as high. It should be symmetrical between the space of the TV and the floor, not. The ceiling and the floor, the other side doesn't have the TV. So it should be symmetrical between the ceiling and the floor. Right. And so in my mind, it's like, don't go above this tape. I don't know how you can get more clear than that.
Well, apparently there's other ways to interpret it, you know, and he had a fair rationale, but,
Ken Okazaki: Okay. This is so fun talking, but we've got to give our listeners something about, about marketing and SEO, because this is called the content capitalists.
here's the big question that I think people will, will be wondering, like, let's saywant to push organic marketing and they have a budget and they could hire an agency that does SEO marketing and another one that does social media marketing.
Damon: Now, of course, it's not always black and white. There's crossover and we do, you know, the, we represent those two different, uh, services and disciplines. How do you look at the difference between them and what's right for different businesses based on their objectives and, the type of business they're in oh man, they're wildly different. And so the first thing I'd say for somebody shopping around is, what's right for you It might not be the same as what's right for somebody else. So don't feel, you know, you can have somebody else's skill, just like the example of the masterminds, right? Somebody else is killing it and I can't wrap my head around it and vice versa.
they can't wrap their head around reoccurring revenue and not having a daily churn on customers. And so when it comes to like, we'll say SEO versus social media, it depends on your position. If I had to, Be like, here's the very black and white way to consider it. I'd say it's, it's based on your cashflow and patience.
So we could probably lump actually social media and paid ads in one bucket versus organic or traditional SEO, because there's pros and cons to all of these, so it doesn't make them right or wrong. And it doesn't mean you have to choose one or the other. You can. Do all of them as long as they're providing an ROI.
And so the main disadvantage with traditional SEO is it takes a long time, but here's where most SEOs fail to communicate this to their customers is why does it take a long time? And it comes down to progress versus monetization. So when you first start to try to push yourself higher on the top of Google, you're back several pages for easy math.
Let's say you're on page 10. It's going to take you, let's say three months to go from page 10 to page eight. And then another three months to go from page eight to page four. That is amazing progress. You are going to have absolutely zero dollars from it because all the traffic's on page one. And so this is where probably actually take, let me take a step back and say, probably the most important thing is to have realistic expectations. And so that's the main disadvantage to organic. But the advantage is once you're at the top, if you're doing it properly, it's really hard to screw it up. And so it's way more sustainable and it's compounding because it snowballs where you get a handful of positions on page one, and then Google says, ah, Ken's site is the authority.
It's doing really well. And these other queries, let's see how well they perform on similar queries and give them the benefit of the doubt. Oh, he's doing well there too. So this is a more authoritative website. Let's show it more. Now, by contrast, you look at social media or paid ads and, um, you can do things fast.
You can make a post right now. You can get an ad up tomorrow, but it doesn't mean you get an ROI today or tomorrow. And a lot of times people think, Oh, if I can get an ad up tomorrow, I get money tomorrow. You probably still have to burn money for a couple of weeks to get in front of the right audience, find the right ad creative that works. And so. Maybe the
Ken Okazaki: as soon as you stop the ads, the lead flow stops with it. Whereas with SEO, it's like, they'll just keep going quite a while.
Yeah, you have a shelf life to the content and the credibility you built up. And so if you stop, it doesn't just go away, you know, your competition doesn't stop. So eventually they're going to catch up. So it's not that you fall down. It's the other people catch up.
Damon: And so I think, maybe the last thing for people to think about is like, what's your cashflow and patience look like?
Because your cashflow on, you know, paid ads is let's say you do on a SWAN. Let's say you're on a thousand thousand dollars a month campaign and maybe your SEO costs 3000 a month. That's relatively. More expensive. And the 3, 000 a month, let's say you're not going to get a return for 12 months.
So you have to spend 36, 000. you start to make money back. With your, with your paid ads, though. Maybe spend a thousand for 60 days and it starts to get dialed in. So you only spend $2,000, but you have a different in your profit margin a difference because you have, you have your ad costs and then as that scales you have a dilution that starts to happen.
So let's say you get to $10,000 a month and you 10 extra return when you go to $20,000 a month. You're probably not gonna 10 x exit again, you're probably gonna two x that difference. Right? And so the higher you go, the less efficient it becomes unpaid ads. And so what does your cash, when your patients allow you for, do you need some return Faster, but it's gonna be smaller profit margins with kind of
an end to how effectively you can scale it or could you go there? There's a wild card with SEO, so it might be, you know, a dollar and nothing out. A dollar and nothing out. Paid ads is a dollar in $2 out. And then with SEO, when it hits, it hits, it might be a dollar in $5,000 out. And so it's like, do you have to patience to wait for this?
to build up its authority and compound and have the bigger deferred payday later. So I'd say patience and cashflow is, is how you want to look at which one to start sooner versus later That makes sense. So. The way I would look at it is like,if you're starting out and you're not a very big company, like with a lot of cashflow already happening, then ads will get your engine moving. And you keep that burning while you build up SEO to catch up and continue sustaining the growth so that further down the line, you have the option of turning ads off if you wanted to, if SEO is getting a better return. And then they'd just be working parallel. And if you need that boost again, that shot on the arm, then you could turn ads back on, but then you've got the, some kind of baseline of traffic with SEO. Would you kind of look at it like that? How they play and support each other? for sure. Yeah, they can run parallel. the cashflow is going to be the determining factor in how quickly you could start the SEO site. So I do agree, you know, how quickly you run them parallel is still going to be cashflow because not everybody can start both at the same time. And so that's probably the only difference is some people might just have to run paid ads for long enough that they get enough stockpiled revenue that they can then start reinvesting.
Ken Okazaki: So if you do both, yeah, I'd say do both because then they can support each other. But if you have to choose some revenue faster, paid ads is probably a quicker solution. Okay. We've got to wrap this up real soon, but I want to ask you one last question.
Damon: And that is, are there industries that do way better with SEO and industries that do better with, production? You know, in general with social media and ads. I can speak on the SEO side. Um, you know, I don't have enough experience on the paid ad side. You know, I would have said, I would assume yes, but on organic, yeah, I think we usually see works well, or I can even say some things that probably don't work well is, you know, you got to think about the profit margins on the units that you're selling.
So if you sell a widget for 99 cents and you have a cost of goods, that's 50 cents. And so you got this 50 cent profit margin. That's a crap ton of units you got to sell, just break even on a three to 5, 000 a month investment on SEO. So usually on the retail side is where we start to see where opportunity may not be ideal.
And that's, that's not saying a blanket statement of retail in general, but is usually under that umbrella. And so your price points make a difference, your profit margins make a difference. And so high ticket items do well, um, because generally like services and professionals, something like that? Yeah, I
Damon: mean, I'll spitball like some industries that we serve. Um, you know, there's consulting clients that there's other agencies. Like we do SEO for PPC agencies. We do SEO for Amazon consulting agencies. so other marketing agencies and services generally have higher profit margin because there's.
less cost of goods.
Right?
Damon: and then high ticket items like when we're talking retail, like traditional retail, things that get into the hundreds of dollars at a retail price per unit. and then we have doctors and attorneys and, and things like that. So, would just kind of depend on your proper margins and cost of goods and things like that.
Well, thanks for that.
And, for anybody listening, how would you recommend people find you and get in touch with you if they want to find out more about what you do and potentially work with you? yeah, thanks for having me again. It's good catching up. Uh, Damon, Burton. com is probably the easiest on there. You can find social media and there's a lead qualification for it on there too. Okay. Any connection to the snowboard brand? No, um, I like to often make jokes about it. Even yesterday in a post, somebody, you know, did their kids back in school picture and they were in Burton, Burton shirt. And I said, yeah, thanks for putting money in my pocket. That has nothing to do with me.
Ken Okazaki: All right. All right. Okay, guys. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end and Bert. And thanks for having this fun conversation. And I'm really glad that we put some, you know, solid marketing advice toward the end and had that
Damon: Towards the end. Yeah.
Ken Okazaki: Guys, if you're listening all the way till right now, then that tells me that there's something in here about Damon and Brad.
His experience sounds interesting to you. I do recommend look down below. If you're on YouTube at the description, if you're listening to the podcast, go down to the show notes, click the links, check out what Damon's up to. And I think you'll find that he really is who he says he is. And, uh, you don't believe that, then look at all the people who are engaging with him on social media.
And he does run in a very tight circle of high achieving friends. Damon, thank you so much. Thanks for having me again. All right. And everybody else I'll see you next week.
No hassle, worship here, we're a different breed. Action is what we got if action is what you need. Us content capitalists, we're breaking the flow. Cuz the old ways stay, new stories to be told. So content capitalists, get to the press.
