Show Notes
In this week’s episode we talk about the origin of our company and the steps we took to continue to grow and evolve as our vision grew. This podcast episode is for you if you’re growing a company, starting a company, or just love origin stories.
We’re talking about:
- Our early ‘processes’
- How we grew from working in a bedroom to multiple offices
- How to grow a team
- And the the future of BitBranding and the impact we will make on the world
Connect with us
Transcript
Christian [00:00:00] On today's episode, we are giving you a behind the scenes, something that we've never done before, telling you the story of the beginning from the beginning of BitBranding before it was even BitBranding. We're actually talking about even previous to any of that, we're talking about the friendship that Aaron and I had that actually made all this possible. And beyond that, we're actually talking about the future. We're talking about things that we've actually never talked out loud before, even each other. So this is a very exciting episode. And you need to watch this. Check it out.
[00:00:35] This is the Marketing Natives providing actual ways to grow, improve, and succeed in your business.
[00:00:43] And now your hosts Christian and Aaron.
Aaron [00:00:49] OK.This is an interesting topic for us because I don't think we've ever told it. And when we started to write this out, it reminded me of what our coaches told me, which told me told us which is what your deeper purpose and what are your goals? What are your aspirations for the future? So we talk about the future, but more importantly, we're going to talk about the past because the past is what started the company and where we want to get to. So I feel like we're kind of like in the middle of the road right now of like, you know, we're on our trek down to this direction. For sure. But all right. So are we starting from like the beginning? The beginning. So I started, what, 1990, February, no before that? Oh, yeah. Well, like in 1989. No. In the beginning, there was darkness. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then God said, let there be light. Okay. All right. And then right after that. Boom. Yeah. All the way to nineteen eighty nine. Everything else before that it was just kind of like whatever. Yeah. Nineteen eighty nine. You were born. Now let's skip to twenty, 1989? huh.
Aaron [00:01:57] Yeah. Because technically we're born in nineteen ninety but everything kind of happened in eighty nine. You know I'm saying very well conceived conception. Yes. Yeah. Because everything happened in eighty nine.
Aaron [00:02:10] Now you're just like oh boom boom. Here comes a baby. This has the most different in weird origin story for two minutes of this episode. So let's, let's get started. So we can start. I think it was he was just on Christian's bad with dates. There's a couple of days are very specific and we can just talk about topics. But I think that it was. Like January, it could be November to January of 2014 to 2015, whenever we first first started talking about something like this or start about the company. So to back up even a little bit more than that.
Aaron [00:02:48] The only reason this came up was I needed to make some extra money for myself and started doing social media management and offered that is like a service and, you know, was having some success there. But then they wanted design work, which was not my forte.
Christian [00:03:05] And my goal was that time I was in Oklahoma and I was doing some design work, actually.
Aaron [00:03:11] Yeah. I had no idea who was doing some design work.
Christian [00:03:15] I was kind of like a freelancer. And I was like, oh, for long time I had this like, weird name like combat designs like is like in Puerto Rico called Who would gumba by design. I don't know really what it's like a like one of those just sounds cool words. Yeah. But yeah I was doing design work throughout like high school and all that stuff. But like recently while you were doing that stuff, I was working with two artists.
Aaron [00:03:45] I remember that. Yeah. In Puerto Rico and I. Well her you're talking about. I'm sorry. Go. I was great fliers cover single cover C.D. covers.
Christian [00:03:55] I mean, I can't see the covers but you know, they're like the album track. OK.
Aaron [00:03:59] OK. Gotcha. Where image gets it on all the platforms and stuff.
Aaron [00:04:04] Did you work at the grassroots or wasn't grassroots. There was a.
Christian [00:04:08] Yeah. I did some internship for a venture. Signs.
Aaron [00:04:11] Yes. That's who I was thinking of. That's who I was.
Christian [00:04:15] And there I did some. Yes. Strictly design work. So it was nothing with websites. It was more Photoshop illustrator and design.
Christian [00:04:26] I actually designed some billboards for Claremore. Nice. So like physical ones. And I also design some digital ones too. Nice. Yeah. That's pretty cool experience.
Aaron [00:04:37] Yeah. So I remember you talking. So it's a step back even farther. We had known each other for probably five years or six years at this point anyway. So I went to college and met each other that way. So it wasn't like we just randomly met each other. I think we should explain that. So we knew each other previously through college and had become friends. And then I moved to Texas and I. You said you were up in clear more like in Tulsa area of Oklahoma. And I was here in the Dallas area, but I started doing social media management and they need to design work, which Christian was already doing, which is how I knew that he could help me. He's done some fliers for like birthdays and stuff like that. So I knew he could he could help and he's done some work, but then they needed Web sites and to be like, oh, okay, well, maybe we could think about this, but I would say that beginning of 2015, I literally woke up in the middle and I was like, wow, we can actually turn this into something because I was like, okay, I'm making a decent amount.
Aaron [00:05:34] It's not a lot of money I was making, you know, maybe a thousand bucks a month or something. So not a lot. But like I met my goal of meeting a thousand dollars per month. I'm like, wait, if we make if we charge this much for a Web site, I'm like, wow, this could turn into something like a real business. So I just remember waking up like in the middle the nine Texan Christian like, well, we should start a business. And I don't think I said anything else other than that. I want to go back and check. I'm sure Christian has the message because he has like that I club backup. But I just remember waking up the next morning, he was like, yeah, dude, let's do it. Like, I mean, I mean, you know, like whatever.
Christian [00:06:05] Yeah. I didn't take it seriously. Or at the same time, I don't know, we I mean we did the Lamon thing that one summer and we had kept two videos for all of it, which wasn't a company per say, but it was something structure. We were like making Vegas for fun. Right. So yeah, I think in the same in a delay, things like I was in Oklahoma, I didn't have any family. I was doing some design work. I was still going to cause it was just kind of like a weird time for me. And I was like, Yeah, let's do something.
Aaron [00:06:38] Yeah, well, I know it was, like I said, just a couple weeks before your birthday. So I actually grow up there. We're gonna celebrate your birthday and really. Well, let's let's just talk about it. You know, let's let's sit there. And it was at the place you're staying. And I remember going upstairs and I remember sitting there and we're just like, so how would we do this? And I really wish we would have recorded that conversation. I one of the biggest regrets that I have is not recording that conversation because I have no idea what we did. And I just remember sitting there for like five or six hours and just talking like theory. I don't think you had your laptop. I didn't even have a good laptop at the time. Like mine would probably die. So I don't know if we did, like, research or, like, picked out a name. I don't know what we were doing.
Christian [00:07:20] The name came way after yo. Yeah, I have no idea.
Aaron [00:07:24] Maybe we were doing a Google search. Like, how many people need a marketing company? Like, oh, or whatever. Like. Is this a viable business? How much can you make per hour. Or like.
Christian [00:07:35] I don't thinking that we even knew that it was an agency or like Net Mart. I think we were more focused on the social media cause we were doing the social media management. Right. And then the website stuff. So I think that was I don't know. We're still trying to figure out, OK, what do we offer? Like what? Yeah. What is it that we're going to do?
Aaron [00:07:53] I think our focus was like, let's make enough money. We want to like pick our own hours. We want to be our own bosses, which we've kind of talked about before. We wanted to. Yeah. Pick our own hours, be our bureau bosses, do our own thing, create our own stuff and like call something our own. Like, that was the whole point around this. But the idea that, like, we were already making some money and we were going to be, you know, potentially do a Web site or something like that, it was like, OK, well, this is viable, I guess, as me, you know, actually come to fruition or something like that. But I really wish we would have figured out or remembered what we did. And like I have pictures from Monday is numb. We went on a run that morning. I remember specifically doing that. I'm going on a run that morning. That area is so cool to yell like a little lake or something that was close by, which was awesome.
Christian [00:08:39] It was more like kind of like a lake house almost. Yeah. Because it was literally a road then the lake was like right there.
Aaron [00:08:46] Yeah. So I remember going on a run and those are the only pictures I have from that day even. Well and that night we met up with some friends by happenstance whenever we were going out in downtown Tulsa, but I had pictures from that. But like everything in between that, which I think we ran, I think we did some stuff downstairs for a couple minutes. I grab breakfast and then we were literally upstairs the whole time, just literally talking about the business. But anything. I mean, obviously, it came. It came. And we're like, yeah, let's do this. And I think we left saying, like, all right, is something we're gonna do. Let's try to figure out a way to make it work. And we started doing with Google Docs and remotely and a ridiculous amount of time on face times, which. Oh my gosh.
Christian [00:09:30] I think we the first thing we did, it was probably do the the Gmail account, the big branding at Gmail dot com. Well, we did have a bit burning then. I think we use our own personal. Yeah, these are personal. That's true.
Aaron [00:09:43] We did use our personal because even right now, like some stuff is still under, like Aaron and Christian. Our personal e-mail.
Christian [00:09:49] Yeah, it is very sure. So after we figure out our name that we are, one of the first things you do is get that Gmail account. Yeah.
Christian [00:09:58] Well, yeah, we were doing. Yeah, so we were using Google Drive with our personal emails and then we had Google Docs horrible organization and sort of Google Drive. Yeah. It was until later, maybe a year later or something. Or maybe two years later because the whole thing was called startup. Mm hmm. Where we yeah. It was like one or two years later where we actually said, did we have so many documents, so many stuff in here, we need to organize this. And we organized the crap out of Google Drive. And like even right today, like, we still use the organization. And I think we need to sort of revamp that sometime soon. Yeah. Just because there are so many things that been added, employees, H.R. like it's insane. Like them out of self that we have in the bill today. Yeah. So I think we need to reorganize that. But yeah, we started. Yeah. Just don't Google Drive and I stayed in Oklahoma for a whole year.
Aaron [00:10:48] Oh yes. Yeah. Let's do a year. Yeah. Doing the company which wasn't a company we rated anyway.
Aaron [00:10:55] We were making money. Glorified freelancers, right. Yeah. Yeah. But I do remember. You would come up I would say like every three to five weeks or so, like we would work remotely and then you'd come up, come down rather. I mean I would go up there every once in a while. But your Internet was horrible. I remember.
Christian [00:11:11] I think at the beginning I didn't. You didn't come up with a lot of deals because we. Yeah. I remember coming up for you had to actually get our first deal. Well, yeah. Was two and one day. Yes. And we thought it was like the best thing ever. And that was probably a month or two. Right. And it was in March and RMI. So is a month after we said, hey, let's try this out. Yeah. Yeah. But I think the whole year from March alwa to that, like, I feel like it was closer to the end of the year though. I was actually making regular trips down here. Yeah.
Aaron [00:11:42] Because we'd finally. Well you started making more regular trips when we quit our jobs because I think you came that summer because I remember summer 2013 like me, you and Brina did like a race or whatever, and we would like do some fun stuff, but then we would like work on the business, too. Yeah. And I think it was that summer and we also decided, like, OK, if we get like a bigger website, if we like, you know, get a couple more clients, like we can't keep working this many hours because we were working in the beginning or in the morning. Then we go to our regular jobs. We both had regular jobs. I was working at a health care place. And you were working as a manager. Like I needed a Pizza Hut and. When we come back that night and we'd work a couple more hours, which was just exhausting. So I think that summer we're like, OK, if we get of a couple of clients, you know, you know, a big Web site, which a big Web site for us. I mean, oh, my gosh, this felt like a couple thousand or three thousand dollars or something like that would have been a big winner or something. I don't know yet. But anyway, we got that. And then we're like, OK, well, let's obviously start saving. Let's figure out when we're going to quit our jobs. And I think it was like 60 days later because I remember the days we quit. I will forever remember those days. But September 3rd and September 10th and we quit our jobs. And I remember like telling our parents. So he did that. I remember walking out of my job. I remembered I actually still have the picture of me leaving my job. It was like like me waving at this office and as I was so dumb, but it was like, wow, I have a picture.
Christian [00:13:17] You know, I don't remember when I told my parents I want to ask them to save that because they probably do remember think the most stressful day.
Aaron [00:13:27] By the way, I don't have health insurance. I am leaving my job of all the security. I'm moving at the same time. Yes. Yeah.
Aaron [00:13:37] Yeah. Because it was September and we were like, okay, we'll have you know, eventually you're going to like it doesn't make sense for us to move the company to Oklahoma. Like, there's not enough much business there. Yeah. And so. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's like September 10th and then. Yeah. You started coming like once a month or whatever. And we had saved up at that point and tried to have a little bit of income to bite us through what's going on. But then you moved in like January, like it was like the first day of January 2nd day of January or something, right?
Christian [00:14:08] Yeah. I want to say I went to Florida. Yeah. I think I went to Florida with my parents celebrate New Year's. And after I came back, what did they say to you over that trip? Well, I had really long hair, remember?
Aaron [00:14:22] Oh, yeah. They cared more about that. Yeah. That's why I was like, you look like a hippie and like quitting your like it was. Yeah. Interesting time. Yeah. They're like, what have we done wrong? Is like he's kind of there. He's quitting his job. Like is he mad at us.
Christian [00:14:43] Dang. I think something that very early on I think we're were both passionate about. Obviously, like doing this this work, right, but at the same time, we're also passionate about making this a real company, right. So I think from the very beginning, we had that Google drive. Right. And we I mean, I said it wouldn't have organization, but we really did organize ourselves in the sense that you were trying to figure out a bunch of things at once, right? Yeah. Was our content strategy going to be like, how are we going to run this part of the business? Like, what do we do with finances? Do we pay taxes? Like there was like so many questions and so many things that we were trying to, like, really make this like very a legitimate business run. I don't think the idea was ever to be freelancers forever. I think from the very get go, we always wanted sort of this bigger than life that, I don't know, dream and goal. Right. Yeah. I don't think of it like we never really said, like, oh yeah, let's just do just us two forever. Yeah. It was always big picture. Yeah, we always had. Yeah. From the very beginning we had a kind of like this big picture of like yeah we're gonna have an office, we can have employees. We can have this. We have that. And I think. That's something that has helped us throughout the whole process. It's been sort of have that sense of clarity maybe on the things that we want to do. Right. And these are the type of people that we want to help. And that's I mean, it's been really great, and I think that's what one of the things that has made us really successful is having that like very early on instead of like, I don't know, we could have focused on just like the product Tagus.
Aaron [00:16:35] Yeah. Or just, hey, we want to make some money and let's just get enough money to, like, quit our jobs or whatever, because that wasn't necessarily the case. If you looked at our bank, I think we had enough money in our bank account to to purchase in an ESQ, an LLC. So we got an LLC in February. I remember Groundhog's Day that I only remember the days are like specific, like holidays. But I remember getting like filing in our date anyways for Groundhog's Day in 2016. So we had enough money for that. But then after that, I think we opened up our first bank account as a company in Legacy, Texas, here. And Alan, which was so crazy because at the time we were running the company in Rowlett, Texas, and like we didn't know we were gonna come up to Allen, like, I don't I don't even know really what the pathways for that. I think you and I went out looking for apartments and we were like, well, these are some good ones. These just different ones. Like there wasn't any rhyme or reason for going to Allen. I don't think of it.
Christian [00:17:32] Did you work around here?
Aaron [00:17:33] I did work in Allen. Yeah. Previously. And it's a great community. Yes. And we love Allen. But at the same time, there wasn't like we could have went to McKinney. We looked at apartments and stuff in McKinney. I don't remember that or not. You probably don't remember that location because you're like I remember that, too. You come down from Oklahoma yelling, all of these streets are different. I don't know anything. But yeah, we went and looked at McKinney. We went to Plano off a legacy during my one because I drove by every day. Yeah. So we were gonna go to I mean, we were we could have intentionally started the company in one of those places, but we did it. So you went to Allen and we pretty much were like, well, if we're gonna be an Allen, we wanted to be close to her where we're at, which is our apartment, which is funny because our first apartment is like, what, maybe three miles away from our office now? Yeah. And then the bank is like another mile or two away, but we end anyway. We open up a bank account and it was like couple of thousand dollars in there. So it was not necessarily smart for us. And I can see now why. Like, people would be like, what the heck are you doing or why are you crazy and why are you quitting your jobs? And you literally have to that like if coronavirus would have happened in March of the year that we started the company. No way. We would've been so screwed. So screwed. Like, can you imagine the like? I think we would actually we would have been OK. We would have been decent because we are both. We were living together. And my wife was a nurse. So at least like she keeps the lights on and you and I wouldn't have had to have too much like we would have been eating like beans and rice and it wouldn't have been good. But people were stony to marking, like, as we see now. But it will be harder. It would've been so much harder.
Christian [00:19:20] Yeah. I think we would have had some kind of side job or something. Yeah, yeah, they wouldn't have been members of this mob. Yeah.
Aaron [00:19:30] It would have been so much harder. I mean, luckily not likely. I'm glad it happened later. I'm not glad it happened at all. But, yeah, it could have absolutely crushed us. So anyway, we started that. And besides, it just was us from the very beginning. Working inside of a solarium, which was like our second office. First office was like a small bedroom. That was an abandoned bedroom, one one desk that we shared. And I don't even know what we use for chairs, really.
Christian [00:20:00] But they just old naturally. Probably our old college. Yeah. Was our old college computer to get a chair. Yeah.
Aaron [00:20:08] And we went to work in a solarium and I in the training that we have for our lead accelerator, I pull up a picture of our old like studio and it's like a bunch of our college lamps, the microphones from my iPhone headphones, our we were using my new iPhone seven, I think at that time were like, yes, the quality is amazing.
Christian [00:20:28] Yeah, I think I had an iPad just like, look cool.
Aaron [00:20:31] Yeah, exactly. While we're in the video, it's I say pad.
Aaron [00:20:36] Yeah. I think that the only thing that kept us going because we worked way too much was like the excitement I guess, of serving local business. I guess from for me it was like serving them and seeing them be happy because I could see that part of it, like I could talk to them. But then, you know, building them a website and having to make money or using social media to have them grow like that's just I mean, that's been at the core, I guess, from the very beginning. And now we are starting to get into like we joined the chamber and we were able to get involved in that. And we can see our work. I don't know. I think that just took us on a different trajectory, too.
Christian [00:21:10] Yeah, I think I mean, even for like, if I go to like a designer perspective, it's always cool to see, you know, your product printed. Like, if you make a flier, like a computer and you actually get it printed, like that's like something tangible they can actually touch and feel. That's always cool. But I think on the on the flipside to seeing something you create and giving it to a client. Mm hmm. Right. And then the client just like loves it. Absolutely loves it. Like, that's like one of the best fields in the world where you can create something that, you know, you kind of read their mind and you figure out exactly what they wanted. You make that happen and you kind of deliver that product. And it's like. Holy smokes. And I even like websites like also like there's tangible stuff like me would design hundreds of hundreds, tens of 20s and 30s maybe of business cards. Logo and things like that. We're like. That stuff gets printed. Yeah, that too. Yeah. Like, there's the the logo for fipronil for example. Like that. She got print on the car. Yeah. Like on the on the hood of the car. Yeah. Which is crazy but it looks frigging cool. And it's like I make that right.
Aaron [00:22:21] It's like give me your car. I don't know. But yeah. So I think that's the what's it's been the driving factor because obviously there's ups and downs and everything. And as we mentioned in a previous podcast episode, we were still trying to figure out our system and processes and everything like that. So there's always that part of it. But really, we didn't move into our office. Do we have now for two years? I mean, that was a solid a little over two years, actually, that we worked in the solarium, which is for those who don't owe us Lariam. I had no clue what it was before either. But it's just a room with a bunch of windows. So if you like plants, that's your room. But we worked in that thing for two years and then finally moved to an office over here at your office suites, which we're at now, where we're recording in our first office over here, Eger Office Suite. But it took us two years to finally get like enough capital to feel comfortable enough to, like, building on until, like, yeah, Neinas. So I built an office but have an office and then now we have it built out. And it's funny, I think it was I posted a story of us planed on Gametime Friday yesterday, and somebody was like, oh my gosh, you guys off is so cool. It's just like super chill. It looks like a really fun environment. Like you guys just look like go now. It's just fun to play. Entered it like, you know, like that would be so cool to be my office. I like that. I guess we take it for advantage now or bring it granted now because before we had no decoration there was like why would we put that up on like this layer and why would we put something up on the wall there? Like it's just like we put a book or a bulletin board and some stuff like that. But it's like this is where we live and work. So it's like it's kind of different. Weird.
Christian [00:24:06] Yeah. We didn't have a real. Board either. We got those. Yeah, like those lows or whatever. Go home. Went to that Home Depot down the street. Yeah. And got those cheap boards that they do have, like a board or anything. Mm hmm. And then I think we just bought some like nails or something to like, hang it up.
Aaron [00:24:30] Dang, yes, we did. I was wondering how we. Yeah. We hung that up like those hooks, those clear hooks kind of hold it together. Yeah. I would just use that and some make sure that we wiped it off a lot. Because it's not a good whiteboard. Yeah. Yeah. Got stain pretty easily.
Christian [00:24:47] And that's where we kept all of our client's armor like. Yeah.
Christian [00:24:52] All our to do list. Our client list is our Luas do. Yeah. Web site.
Aaron [00:24:56] So we had like what we're gonna do this week.
Christian [00:25:00] That was like our CRM like everything though that we had everything on that.
Aaron [00:25:04] It was a kind of a nice visual honestly to kind of see what's going on. But at the same time, it's like it's not a scalable model.
Christian [00:25:10] Right? Like, yeah, there's no way we can fit all our stuff, like what we have now with Click Up.
Aaron [00:25:17] It's almost like a shoutout to to click up project management system or more like check out click up. I think there's like it's still do show free options, so check it out. But really I think that it's we had this, like you said, this dream of like getting our own building. We're not in our own building now, but we wanted to have our own building. And I guess from the beginning it was always like we're not the beginning, but pretty early on we wanted to like. Okay, great. What's the smartest way for us to get a building and then also continue to, like, serve people and like our mission and, you know, to help local businesses. And I think that that's what we've figured out early on, was like with social media and with like really good design and like our advantage, like what we thought was what we know is our advantage. Like, if we do really good stuff, they can compete with big companies, like they can run ads just like Amazon or Coca-Cola or Kroger's or anybody like that. They can run those types of ads. And if we have good ads, it can help them compete with bigger companies. But we want to get a space or our own spot, our own building north of here, mainly because there's not much land here in Allen or McKinney that you got to go a little bit farther north. But we wanted a location where we could have our rent and focus on the agency side, but then also supply a space for people who are doing much bigger things that we can't get involved in, which at least for me, was like what I'm super excited about is like we don't do like you do do design, do marketing, but we don't have anything to do with, like, you know, new apps or like virtual reality or augmented reality. Like we could help market those things and design stuff. But like the technology behind it, like that's a I don't know, we we don't have access to those things. So creating an environment where people feel like they can go in there and create things and we could be part of that as well. And just helping our local community and hopefully figuring out things that could help the, you know, the whole country, whatever that may be. But I think what's inspiring and what I go back to is like the app words with friends or whatever. You remember that?
Christian [00:27:28] Oh, yeah. I actually read it pretty recently.
Aaron [00:27:30] Nice. Well, did you know it started in McKinney in the library. Yeah. So to me that and that's something that goes all over the world. So like how I can we have a place that fosters like whether it's biomedical or whether it's like, you know, A.R., VR or some kind of voice recognition, like how can people who are doing like futuristic type things that are going to help and basically have a touch on the community, how can we, you know, help them or how can we be part of something like that? It's like touches the whole world. So I think that's what's also super exciting is like getting our own building, but then providing the atmosphere for for other people to be successful, that we wouldn't necessarily be able to, like, rub shoulders with or build to help before.
Christian [00:28:15] Yeah. And I think it goes beyond what I think was a word that gets thrown around. Whenever we talk about that, it's more like a incubator. Right. So like we would have always seen this building our own offices and we would have a space it. And I guarantee you in this atmosphere where businesses can. I don't. We don't know the exact you know, what is it is like, but it's you know, it's just a place for them to be able to build their businesses and grow them and for us to support them, whether it's marketing or design or websites or whatever, maybe just help them in that way. But I was also thinking, like, you know, this space would also be a and just a general educational space as well. Right. I think we'll have our offices. We'll have, you know, sort of this incubator place. But then we'll also have, like, this sort of big education space, maybe auditorium. I don't know where. I mean, we're doing it right now. We're we're doing a local marketing academy. Yeah. So we'll be something like that where we're all still beyond, you know, sort of putting all these companies under a wing. Right. To help them grow. We're also educating all the ones that maybe can't access this part of the business or necessarily, you know, afford our services or whatever. They could still get a lot of really good insight into, you know, good marketing, good social media, good design through, you know, that's educational series, which is something that. We haven't really talked about out loud, but obviously it makes sense, right?
Aaron [00:29:54] Like, I went there to be some kind of food. The more that you're saying that, like, I was thinking big and then you're saying, like, bigger. It was like it's not like necessarily the buildings bigger, but like the idea is bigger, which I like. Because that's one thing I've learned from Mike, our coaches and stuff like what? What if or something I've learned. I think it was Tony Robbins or something. It's like it's like we all completely underestimate, like what it will take to like live the type of lifestyle or to grow that type of business that you want. It's like, oh, you want the type of business it's you need to make five million dollars a year. Or if you want this type of lifestyle, it's like make one hundred fifty, tell it like it's not as out of grasp I guess, as we think. But like when you'd said that, I'm like, why can't we have like a cafeteria or a restaurant or something like that where there's food there. Because a few things that we know is that we definitely love dinosaurs, we love Ninja Turtles, we love food. Like how can we incorporate this into a unique, really cool, fun building that has, like, our fingertips, like, you know, all over the place. Whereas, like, again, you go to the bathroom or whatever else, and it's like, you know, there's scenes from dressing park or whatever, you know, like that's just that allows it to kind of come to life and be cool. You're shaking your head. I mean, self.
Christian [00:31:08] No. Yeah. I was thinking prehistoric cafe as the name of the place. Right. Right. Yeah.
Aaron [00:31:13] Yeah. And it's like it serves things that are like, you know, it looks like what it would be from like the Flintstones, like that kind of like style of food or whatever. Yeah. You can't get like a like a ham sandwich. You have to get like a whole ham leg. Yes. Yeah. Not I mean maybe not this big but like yeah. It's like a ham leg in like the brontosaurs burger is like, you know, just a cool names or something like that. But yeah, there has to be food there. So it's like food. And then also things we love. There has to be a basketball court. Like activities. Yeah. There has to be like a gym. I think that's one thing that we miss here, as if there was a gym and a shower. So it's like our gym showers, basketball court and laundering. Huh. Let's get in on Tantallon. As a Jersey Shore reference. Yeah, I my brain I'm actually a little bit smarter now. I know that. You know what scares me, Stuart. Oh, yes. I know you're talking about ising this year like June 10 last year. Helen. Yeah. I thought you were saying like tan laundry. I was like, I don't even know what tan laundry means. But guess what. Side note, you remember we're at South Padre. It was South Padre I think, or whatever South Padre Island when that was really big and like Snooki was like, you know, in the distance or whatever, just like out there partying normally. It's like that. Does the occasional trip that we took down there. Yeah. Was it education? What we were doing research on the biological animals and what happens whenever teenagers get presented with substances. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Excellent paper turn out. Yeah. Just nothing we can do. We both passed. Yeah. Yeah. I think we had a lot of pictures too to display the results. So I think some videos too. Yeah. Yeah definitely. Off-line have to show that. Yeah.
Aaron [00:33:06] Morepullings like this location is not just to foster the business grows and to foster like the incubator style, but like also more of the community of people is like who do you want to like interact with. Like this place should be a mecca for business owners and creatives and people to not only get their work done, but like to take that freedom to zone out a little bit or to focus on other things, play basketball together, like to really create a community. So it's like it's not just a a working environment, but it's like a lifestyle environment. And that's where the best ideas come is, oh, I was doing something else. And then I came up with this idea to help with the project. And if you could do it all at one place and it's just a close knit group of people, I don't think that we could have it to where there's like fifty companies. They're like, I don't think that's, you know, that just gets too much. But maybe ten people. And it's like a rotation between. Okay, great. You've already graduated. You taking your company public or you've done, you know, whatever. And you going to get your own office now, like, awesome, you graduated. And then let's have a new person who applied and you come in. Now, it's just like on a rotation of like really core group of people that obviously we would stay.
Christian [00:34:20] Right. Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, think just think of all that. It kind of brings us back to the beginning. We're also. We we have general knowledge in general, we have expert knowledge and marketing, all the things that, you know, we're gonna cater to. But at the same time, we have zero knowledge on the. Incubator process or how home-building process? You know, like that's the song I like that we call go on back to square one to grow on. Right. To some extent, obviously, we're more experienced in the business world now. But still, it's like a brand new door that we're opening.
Aaron [00:35:05] Yeah, I think it'll be easier, but it's not going to necessarily easy. Like we have connections now. Who can help us get there faster.
Christian [00:35:13] Yeah. I think faster is the keyword. Yeah.
Aaron [00:35:16] Before we didn't know anybody like I move I. I mean just Texas. I knew nobody. And Christian is a Texan and he sure as heck didn't nobody in know anybody. So we started this company knowing, moving to Texas, knowing, having no connections. Like I was like wait. If we would have grown up and Alan had grown up in Plano, like how fast could have the company grown? We would have just been like, oh yeah, your dad does this and your dad does this. Like, let's have interviews. We literally didn't know anybody. I mean, anybody who's in our circle right now. As far as business owners, I'm trying to think like Franklin or Benny or, you know, Joe Boggs or the chamber and you think, look, we know nobody.
Aaron [00:35:53] Right, which is even crazier. I think that you don't think. Yeah. Yeah. There's really no one. Nobody. Yeah. There is like. I'm like. Oh yeah. Marie Paul. We know her cause she's our neighbor Donahoe's. I know we didn't know her from for any of this.
Aaron [00:36:08] And I guess the other problem was that we were also inside of our own office or our solarium, so we never really got out too. I mean I went to networking, stuff like that, and we went to meetings, but like those were very far and few between because we were the ones who are owner operators. We were working in the company, too. And know if you'd listen to our our last episode, we talked about like that process that we created. And I think that it allows us to tell the story and to look at the future and the vision, because we created this process that our lead accelerator process, which has the Step-By-Step instructions on what to do to attract our audience, qualify them, convert leads. And because of that, we don't waste the brainpower on that. And eventually and then we're in the process of it now is like it allows us to work more on the business. And when we can work more on the business, we can think about the big picture stuff, what we're talking about. And I think last week or the week or so. Yeah, was last Saturday was the first time in a long time that we actually contacted somebody outside of doing some research, our own of what it would look like to purchase land. And I think if we wouldn't have set up that process, we would have been too focused on it. We need to get this work done for this client. We can't think about the big picture because we have to focus on the project and we can't think about what's going to happen later.
Christian [00:37:30] I think I mean, it's weird, but yeah, I mean, all these things we've sort of learned from. All right. This failure again. Yeah. Cause I and also I mean, I think the coaches also help us. Sort of direct ourselves to the bigger picture, right?
Aaron [00:37:48] Right. And then there the compass we're running with directions North Lake, which the north is here. This what you told us? Go this way. Yeah.
Christian [00:37:56] Because like even recently, they've been telling us about writing down all the things that we don't want to do. Right. It's like literally just write down all the things they don't want to do that you shouldn't be doing. So that we can do these bigger and greater. Yes, I'm doing Tendler tasks. Yeah.
Aaron [00:38:12] Which seems so simple. Like I think this does are they tell us is profound but it's not like it's rocket science. Like hey, if you're not the best website. They're like if you don't enjoy like designing this type of website, like don't do it because you're not going to enjoy it. Like find somebody else who loves this part and let them do it. Or like, oh, you're doing the same task over and over again. And it's like this is a ten dollar an hour task. Like you can relinquish this, like you can let somebody else do it. And it's like, why wouldn't we do that? Like, I think maybe we do it because we're like, we oh, we own the company and we're like we want to make sure that, you know, we're still doing a lot of things because we don't want people to think like Auldridge, don't do anything or they just you know, that's not the case, I think. I don't know. Yeah, I don't think that's the case at all. But I think that's at least in my head, I like if I let go of these the advertising clients are I let go of this, then I'm not going to have anything to do. And I'm like, oh, yeah, well, now I can actually create this training program with what we talked about. We can finally get it online like so we can move big boulders forward instead of like little, you know, little things.
Aaron [00:39:20] Yeah. Interesting. I mean, I didn't know where this came into this conversation. Well, you're gonna say no than that. I was. I didn't know what the conversation was going to go, but I think it will be interesting in the future. And hopefully it's the bare minimum. You guys got something out of it?
Aaron [00:39:36] I think there's a couple of things from this, which is you should have a deeper purpose or find your deeper purpose, whatever that is. For us, it's it's helping local businesses and helping them find a way to to grow and scale and compete with bigger companies. But it's also that bigger purpose of eventually owning our own building and using that to help even more people. And the ability within the business to, like, I guess at the very beginning was like, we want to create our own schedules. Our schedules are harder now than ever before of it, like credeur and schedules. How much money we want to make in, you know, be have the freedom to choose things like, okay, well, we were talking yesterday like, okay, what do we change our hours a little bit like, OK, who who. Who's gonna tell us what to do. It's like we can make that decision like. Right. Like it's not like we had to go to a board or anything like that. So that freedoms that was important. But I think it was interesting because we never really talked out a lot about we know we went this building. We haven't really talked about like, okay, what would the walls look like or what kind of things would we have in there, which I think has been really eye opening and probably helpful for you guys, too, which is maybe you're not to that next step of defining it yet. But like, if you're able to set up the right processes and systems in place, you can grow your business. And that free time that you have, you can start thinking about the big picture things and telling more people about the big picture and rallying people behind, hey, I want to see these people win or I want to help this person out. I want to help this company. And they just I don't know. It's a lot easier. Like, why are we doing things the hard way?
Christian [00:41:18] I think you have back to the deeper purpose. I think like beyond like helping local business owners feel like we keep trying to find different avenues right. Where we can get help. More people. Right. Whether it's like through this online training, rather, is through educational series in person, whether is through like just or plant services that we've reorganized. Right. To make it easier for people where there's going to be through this incubator process, like in the future, there's probably gonna be some R version, a high version of Christian and Aaron help in helping you build your business from scratch. Yeah, you can put some glasses on and a nine to ten virtual versions of us come up like, hey, how's it gone?
Aaron [00:42:07] Right. It's like an online course, but in AR. Right. How cool would it be? I mean, you know, we're talking the possibilities are endless.
Aaron [00:42:14] It's retitle. We're talking like it's futuristic. But I mean, really, ten years from now, that's ridiculously possible. Yeah.
Aaron [00:42:22] All right. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got a ton of value out of this. It was really cool for at least us Christian and I walks through our journey. I hope you realized that you've got to have a system in place, but really starting and talking about your journey from the beginning, all the way to your bigger vision and your deeper purpose. That's what's going to drive you. And I think that what we realized here is that the reason that we were able to continue to keep our company alive is because we had that deeper purpose and we finally figured out how to set up the process to make that happen. If you're interested in figuring out our exact process that we use with our clients, we have a free training. It's about 40 minutes long and it walks through the exact three things, the exact three steps that we take our clients through on how to attract, qualify and convert more leads online for their service based business. So that's you. If you're trying to figure out how to grow your business online, make sure to click the show notes or the description wherever you're watching this video at or listening to this and make sure that you give us some feedback on that.
Aaron [00:43:28] You literally haven't laid out to you exactly what you need to do in that training.
Christian [00:43:33] And if you're on YouTube, make sure that you hit that like button. I think is down here and subscribe so you can watch more of our videos. And we also do a bunch of different videos. So you definitely want to check those out, too. And if you're listening on our podcast, via your cellular device or computer actually, make sure you subscribe and also leave us cool comments. You can do that on Apple podcast. And I think Google podcasts maybe I think is what it's called. Not entirely sure, but if you don't know where to leave us a cool comment saying like, hey, man, I really appreciate this podcast or I really enjoy this Podcast episode, you can hit us up on Instagram at BitBranding and tell us there, via DM. We'll appreciate that.
[00:44:13] The Marketing Native's podcast is a production of BitBranding.
