A Conversation with Christopher Carr of Farotech
Chris — or Christopher — Carr knows a LOT about helping businesses grow. His fast-growing agency Farotech takes an incredibly methodical, long-term approach to helping clients grow through inbound marketing. Chris shared a bunch of insights about starting a business, growing a team, & handling clients. His description of the investment Farotech makes in each new client is particularly inspiring!
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Dunn
This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email marketing. And my guest this morning. We're just talking about looking in the mirror here is Christopher Chris or Christopher Carr. Well, I
Christopher Carr
mean, it's Chris. Christopher is cuz everyone calls me by my first name and last name at the same time. I seem everyone's just like, yeah, it was like, Hey, Chris Carr, like, just Chris. So when I made it, Christopher, I got a little bit.
Matthew Dunn
So Chris is the president of Pharaoh tech. We'll come back to that in just a second. But I had the same problem with Matt Dunn, Yankee. And then yeah, and I was like, okay, we're going with Matthew and now I have to be kind of ruthless about No, it's not Matt and my mom calls me that. In a case number one, I'm Christopher Carter, president of Pharaoh tech, Philadelphia based on would you describe yourself as a marketing agency as well? Yes, we are. So yeah. talk a bit about Pharaoh tech what, what customers use serve and what you do for them? Sure, sure.
Christopher Carr
So we are. We're an inbound marketing agency located just outside the city, Philadelphia, started it when I was 21 years old. So this year actually marks our 20th anniversary. I'm 43. And so I, I followed around for two years and then started to get serious, you know, about 20 years ago. And
yeah,
and so, you know, we have about 20 full time employees and then with subcontractors about about 50 of us, you know, working on a daily basis.
Unknown Speaker
Wow. Yeah, yeah.
Christopher Carr
We are a platinum partner with HubSpot. HubSpot. Yeah. And so we, we really believe in the power of automation, marketing automation, you know, the ability to develop what we call like systems, as opposed to solutions, because a lot of people will come to us and they, they basically put all their eggs in one basket, you know, they want to be good at SEO, and then an algorithm changes and they could lose everything or, you know, what, I want to be good at Facebook marketing, and then something like Apple comes along and says, Hey, right, we're gonna we're gonna change the knob, you know, we're gonna turn the knobs on privacy. And now Facebook marketing doesn't work nearly as good. Right? So what happens here is that, you know, we've helped companies develop a whole comprehensive system. And so we're able to do is we're able to throttle certain dials and double down on on sort of what matters most.
Matthew Dunn
Gotcha, gotcha. Much more. sort of looking well. So use the word system already systematic, but systematic for marketing across the company as a whole, not just this channel that channel automated. How long with HubSpot or ces 2012. Okay, quite a relatively relatively long time. I've watched I've watched HubSpot grow with a with a good deal of interest over the last what decade? Yeah, it's unbelievable.
Christopher Carr
Yeah, I mean, they did you ever heard of the TV show? Silicon Valley? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, they're making fun of Salesforce and HubSpot and HubSpot. Okay.
Matthew Dunn
Wasn't there. There was a book and then a film about a guy who went to work there. Yeah, it was closer to my age. Not Yeah.
Christopher Carr
You know what, you know, what's weird, though, is and this is the only problem I have with with with that is, is that like, as a guy who's built this company, of just only a meager 20 people, like it is so easy for someone to come in there. And then write a tell all book and I'm just like, what have you ever built? Like, building a business is so hard? You don't? I mean, like, the easy thing to do is to write a book on everything that you don't I mean, I don't know your fault. But you know what I mean? Like, dude, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. Yeah. But then I got thinking, I'm, like, kind of hate for someone to be analyzing every detail of what I do is just the ship got so big, it's just hard to? I don't know. Well, it's hard to pitch a perfect game.
Matthew Dunn
Talk about that. I mean, if there's some if there's some, you know, future 20 year old Christopher, you're 21. Now Christopher car, listening to this thing? Yeah, maybe I'll start my own thing. Um, yeah. And and do you have a smile? When you say, when you talk about building business? And congratulations, 20 years is like, that's a big deal. But it is hard. I agree. It's hard. What's hard about it?
Christopher Carr
Well, you know, I mean, I think what happens is that scaling your growth is probably the is probably one of the biggest challenges that you have. And so what I, what I mean by that is, is that, that I don't, so one of the analogies that I kind of use a lot is is that, you know, in chick fil a is a really big company. And the problem that people don't know, is, is that for like 20 years, they were just in malls, and they were not, maybe maybe the shorter amount of time that nobody knew about them. But all they did was they just kept making the chicken better and better and better, then once the product was really good, then they figured out how to scale. What happens here, I think in entrepreneurship, is is that we hear that these technology companies are overnight successes and stuff like that. And if you don't have your people in place, and if you're not constantly refining your product, and you don't have a developed significant process internally and externally, like, I don't know how to describe it, you bleed, you don't know you're gonna bleed. You think you got it all covered, but you bleed. Right. Right. So one of the things I would tell my younger self is like, you know what, it's going to be all right. Like, you're gonna want, he always want to be at another level. Yeah. But at the same time, like, I don't know, I I've got a five year old and a two year old if I was awesome. If I was, you know, $3 million richer, I might not see them as much. You know what I mean? And it's just, it's just one of those things is just, you'll get there. You know what I mean? I mean, I didn't think I would, if I was to say, when I first started, here's where you'd be in 20 years, huh? I wouldn't believe that either. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, yeah. And you you started Pharaoh tech as as web web design and development correct web on him. Yeah. And then and then at was it was it an A hard right turn pivot to marketing? Or was it gradual Biggles sweeping curve?
Christopher Carr
Now you know, we create great websites and then they say well you create a really great website but nobody can find it. Yeah, so then we pivoted from developing websites to SEO. Okay, and then people were saying, Hey, you know what, great website. Now I'm on first page of Google. But for some reason, our phone still isn't ringing enough. Yeah. So then I got into conversion science, and was something I call CRM, which is just conversion rate optimization.
Matthew Dunn
Okay.
Christopher Carr
And so now we sort of have the complete system. So the other thing is, is that I failed a lot. And what I mean by that is, is that I'm, I, I know that from an SEO perspective on one algorithm change away from losing, you know, could lose everything, you know, or one, Facebook algorithm change, like, even what Apple's doing. You don't I mean, yeah, so when I, when I help companies build comprehensive systems, if one part of the system, you know, not falls apart, but I have to make a serious pivot on, I can just rely on the other parts of the system.
Matthew Dunn
Sounds like you've also thought the system through into, you know, in terms of in terms of maintenance, tuning, you know, being able to adjust to those external changes, rather than having it's so tightly bound to help company x is running that, you know, that particular piece of it?
Christopher Carr
Well, the challenge I have is I work with a number of companies that have a marketing guy or gal, which is great. The problem is, is that marketing is moving so fast, that I don't believe it's a one man job anymore. So that person is either gonna have to hire internally, or they're gonna have to outsource, which is fine. But the problem is, is that then you're outsourcing for SEO. And then you got to outsource maybe social media, you're outsourcing for content. And then all of a sudden, you got to make a change. And I'm calling three different vendors. And right even, you don't I mean, it's, there's inefficiency with all of that stuff. And so we worked really hard to have a lot of different companies all in one company. So we are a design and development from web. We do the web development, the SEO, and all of the, you know, the marketing automation all under one roof.
Matthew Dunn
Right, right. Is that is that specifically do are all of your customers running running that set of functions on HubSpot as an engine?
Christopher Carr
Most of them are most of them, most of them. Okay. Yeah. I mean, there are certain things that HubSpot isn't. If they come to me, and they already have Salesforce and pardot than I then I play in what they're already using. Yeah, right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Um, but there's just certain clients that, you know, our, our average retainer is around between, you know, 8000, and maybe 15,000 a month. And so there's a level of sophistication that we, our clients sort of have to have. Yeah, you don't I mean, but we do run into situations where there's other platforms we can use for certain campaigns or certain initiatives or something like that. Or if I find a client that has tremendous growth potential, and HubSpot, that pain, the HubSpot fee is the barrier to us.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, okay. Is that happens too? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did. It definitely could be a daunting bite. I haven't looked at their pricing structure. And in a couple of years, but it was like, the lowest is 1000 a month. So yeah, yeah. For a lot of startups, that would be a byte they wouldn't they wouldn't necessarily make, you know, you touched on it. And I'm curious your thoughts about it. You touched on on on the shift that Apple made recently with rs 14 five and and the app privacy policy and the effect that the knock on effect that that's had on on Facebook's kind of the marquee? What do you what are your thoughts on it? Where do we go from here?
Christopher Carr
You know, um, they will, Facebook will figure something out. The hard part, I'm not a Google says they're going to go towards this this approach eventually to a year. Yeah. I, I just, I see so much upside from for companies to do marketing, to be able to engage with people to know their buying habits and to do all this stuff. I think it'll be called something different. And it might not be one to one what we see right now, but I think that some sort of technology curve will happen, where we're still doing those things. And I just don't think these companies are like, okay, I've seen the light. I'm gonna stop doing those. I don't I mean, like, I think that they'll just find another way. Yeah. And it's kind of like the Like the cartels, like, if you put up a wall, they're gonna like drill under it and go into like a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Texas. Yeah, get it
Matthew Dunn
in a submarine and bring it bring stuff through the ocean. And for sure, we're starting to grapple with, you know, with with them privacy consequences of a networked world. But both at a policy level, at a brand level, Apple certainly is flying that flag for themselves. But it's it's even a fairly normal conversation with just about anybody. Now you've got a you got the spectrum of I don't care, too. I really don't want anyone knowing anything about me. And and Apple is said, Well, you know, push push the button you prefer?
Christopher Carr
Yeah, yes. I guess for them. I just don't like the language that they do. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, literally, they make it sound like do you want to be tracked?
Unknown Speaker
You don't I mean, it's
Christopher Carr
just like, you. I mean, like, the same question is said, Hey, you know what, when you're looking for a washing machine, yeah. Do you want us to give you other washing machine options? Do we want to make your buying experience better? You know what I mean? Like, there's, there's value. There's value on the other side, if I'm trying to align myself to find the best products and services? Yeah, and I don't have the time to do the research. I like being spoon fed. Yeah. So like, for example, like when I was asked that question, I said, track me. Because I want to, I want to know about things that I don't know about, you know,
Matthew Dunn
there's an efficiency to it. Right?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
Christopher Carr
Yeah. You know, I mean, it's the same reason why I believe in. Please don't, not going out of this conspiracy theory. But I think it's a matter of time before people have chips in their body. Because whatever that shit will be, will make life more efficient. I don't know what where they're going with that. But you're not going to just be like, I don't want to have a chip in my body. But if I don't know, maybe it starts my car and and opens my front door. And it does all that stuff. Well, until eventually.
Matthew Dunn
How often is this? How often is this chip and I'm holding up my phone? If you're listening to this on pocket? How is that chip more than three feet from my body? was never set of chips.
Christopher Carr
Yep. And then if I said if they were never tracked, so what if this thing could predict your actions before you do it? That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. You wanna you want to track you? Oh, my gosh, that sounds terrible. Yeah. Well, it matters. I mean, I'm, I'm a content marketer. So it literally, yeah, it's whatever side of the coin you're on. I yeah, yeah, I ride, I ride a bike, like I do cycling in Philadelphia. Yeah. And when I'm driving a car, these cyclists, they really got to figure something out, because I'm driving a car and they're totally in my lane, I got to drive 15 miles per hour behind them. They are such a nuisance. But when I'm on a bike, and the cars behind me like these people want to kill me, literally just depends on which perspective you're looking. If you're looking, and that's the same argument here, right? It's like, I don't want to be tracked. But at the same time, I would like to be able to know about things without with thinking less. Yeah, the the
Matthew Dunn
the set of knobs and gears that are tougher for what for the individual making that decision looking at that dialogue in an app? Are the the knock on complexities that come with a yes or no. And by that, I mean poorly articulated by that. I mean, I might want Yes, I'm hunting for a washing machine. So I'd like washing machine ads for now. But then, I don't know how to say, Alright, I bought one so shut up. Right.
Christopher Carr
I always thought that they should just have a drop down menu. Like got one. You don't I mean? Yeah. Same shoes, your marketing? Yeah. Yep. Running Shoes. I'm wearing them. Right. Right. Only something else.
Matthew Dunn
Right? Or, you know, like, I just bought that from you. So you just wasted some of your ad spend on me, cuz I already bought that from
Christopher Carr
pretty confident. I think I've seen a drop down menu that says Don't show me this ad. And I think one of the options actually is like, you know, I mean, like, no longer has value to me or something, whatever
Matthew Dunn
that is. Yeah, something like that. There was an announcement yesterday. I don't know if you caught this because this will give us a little segue to conversation. Apple is Apple announced yesterday at their developer conference that they're going to do somewhat the same thing with email and pixels that they've done with apps. Hmm. Yeah, that same reaction, quite a quite a bit of discussion in the email marketing world, in the forums and so on, like, so on the net of it, you know, quick digest of email threads from last night, as Google does in Gmail. It looks like Apple may be putting In a proxy in between email clients and image requests, which is, which is how most things are tracked, which means we'll get no location information, more arm's length information doesn't mean you can't send a unique pixel to me unique pixel to you. So it doesn't doesn't rule out all of that data entirely. But here's the here's the one that I found interesting. Some parts, the language, the announcement, and it sound like they said, what we're going to do is load all that stuff immediately, like, so if you send email to me, and I'm on an Apple device, it's gonna show that I read it whether or not I ever opened it. Wow.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
Christopher Carr
Yeah, that's, that's, that's not good. I mean, I, one of the things that I don't know the numbers on, but I know a lot of entrepreneurs that are just like me, and the fact that our email list outgrew gmail dot app anyway. And so what I'm hoping is that a lot of the people that I'm trying to do are using the native, if they're doing Google for business that I'm hoping that they're using, like Google for business, or they're using something that is built from their company. That's a little bit more enterprise. I think, I don't know where that proxy would come from. Is it just on mail dot app? Or is
Unknown Speaker
it right, right? You don't? I
Christopher Carr
mean, yeah, because I feel like that mail, that app has some serious growing pains to do to catch up with Gmail that it's like, I don't know how to describe it. Like for the richest companies in the world, they neglect some basic things in in mail that, I don't know, maybe I'm just a sophisticated user. And I don't think I am
Matthew Dunn
I actually I am not, you are a sophisticated user. But yeah, I agree with you, actually. And I sat in front of you. I'm sitting in front of a Mac, I've got an iPhone there. I lived in Apple's mail clients up until a couple of years ago. And it's like, yeah, like, to me, it feels like it's 10 years old, and it probably is more than 10 years old. Their search, their search functionality is horrible. Yeah, it's like just this,
Christopher Carr
right? Yeah. Like Gmail. Like, I don't even know how to describe it. It's almost like to fine tune, like, I go into Gmail. And I just like, type in the word like, not, and all of a sudden, like, every time I've said not in the last 15 years, yeah,
Matthew Dunn
it's right there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And at the same time, there's the power of the default, right? Because of Apple's vertical stack, you know, hard hardware all the way through to lunch chips all the way through to whatever or vice versa. A lot of Gmail customers. Oh, sorry, a lot of Gmail accounts are using the default mail client on their iPhone to get to that Gmail, and maybe that's where you were going was saying, How are they gonna proxy? It's not necessarily going to be an apple address? Only that the proxy? Yeah, I know. I know. That's, it's going to be a challenge. It's gonna be a challenge.
Christopher Carr
I mean, we've been here before, like no one else saying, like building your house on sand. I remember when Google made the promotions tab. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. on Gmail, like, yeah, it's like, oh, email marketing is dead. Like, no, it's not
Unknown Speaker
find a way
Christopher Carr
water. You don't I mean, like, we're gonna find, we're gonna find a way where we
Matthew Dunn
can we kind of have to write not, and that's not just, you know, survival of an agency or a business or something like that. But, you know, marketing is that joint point between a business, it's got products that ultimately products and services, ultimately someone wants to buy them. Right. You're trying to help make the connection between people. So yes, there's a there's an interest on the consumer. The customer side, as well, for sure.
Christopher Carr
Yeah, I mean, do you know Neil Patel is? Sure. Yeah. I mean, so I'm looking up on his own app.
Give me one second here. I'm looking up his traffic report. Because I don't want to guess but it's, yeah. Seven, looking at 7 million, close to 8 million visits to his website every single month. Right. That's a lot. Right. He's, he's the king of data. Right? Yeah. You know, what his number one thing that he says drives traffic, email, right. Email.
Matthew Dunn
And I've been on I've been on a couple of his lists, and he emails a lot. And he puts out an amazing amount of content.
Christopher Carr
Yeah. Yeah. I I just find it very hard to believe. Right. That that all of the businesses all you know, I mean, like all of us are just now doomed. Yeah, we're not. We're not gonna take time to figure it out. Yes, we are. But you know what? The good part is, is we're all drinking for the same well.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. What? Sorry, go ahead. No, I
Christopher Carr
mean, we're all drinking from the same Well, in other words, is it just Challenge. Yes, while we figure it out? Yes. But it's not like Apple says, Only only 50% of America has to deal with this. You don't I mean, like we all companies everywhere have to deal with it. So it's a little bit of a level playing field. The question and this is, this is the same thing with COVID. This is the same thing with all the stuff, this is why Toys R Us doesn't exist anymore. If you as a business can't pivot, if you as a business can't try to solve these systemic these problems, right? Like, you can cry as much as you want, but it's not going to solve this thing for you. And so what you're gonna have to do is you're going to have to rely on specialists that have the firepower that that access to technology, all this stuff that are that solve these things, for real. You know what I mean? Like, if my if my toilet broke, and my only answer was my Uncle Joe, right. And Uncle Joe can't fix it. I'm like, Jim, I'm not gonna have a toilet in my house. We know you keep going up higher and higher and higher until you solve it. Right.
Matthew Dunn
Right. It's worth paying for the specialist. Absolutely. Who can fix it? Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that that's just a business decision. go out of business or, you know, engage expertise X to fix problem why?
Christopher Carr
And people way smarter than you that think of email every single day. are thinking at it at like, a at a 401 like a NASA level. Yeah. You're thinking about you're probably thinking about it at a one on one level. Yeah, guys, way smarter than you that have already. Like, we're, we're not being like, okay, maybe we should
we should just
throw in the towel because
Matthew Dunn
there's, there's a there's a recurrent thread with these many conversations I've had with podcast guests about email. And you know, maybe it's biased because we're picking folks who work in that media to at least some extent, but I've had nobody go emails dead nobody. like nobody said that. They almost always are in you know, your camp in my camp, which is like, you know, believe it or not like that's, that's the most valuable link, you've got to your customer base. You may not be using it particularly well. Yeah. But but that list the list is, you know, goldmine is your asset and Neil Patel, right. That's his number one way to drive traffic. Yeah, I mean,
Christopher Carr
up a carpenter makes $15 an hour uses a hammer, and so did Michelangelo.
Matthew Dunn
PowerPoint, SharePoint 23, when he carved the PA still makes my jaw drop. Yeah. That that if Apple's tracking change, which we're only speculating about this point, if Apple's tracking change goes into effect on all I see that all I see that changing in terms of conventional email marketing, is is the veracity of some of the measures. It's still on you to provide interesting content and apples not saying we're not going to show your content.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And then more and more narrow cast, you know, our particular company, campaign genius, real time content, same delivery mechanism. And I read that announcement. I was like, yeah, our stuff will still work. Right, I'll still be able to change what's in the inbox, you know, sale this this week sale. You know, it may bounce to a proxy to get there. But so what? It's more interesting, if it's more relevant, people will read it.
Christopher Carr
A lot of a lot of it'll, it'll impact retargeting for a while. Mm hmm. You know, it'll impact things related to like, where Facebook was complaining about just pixel? Yeah. You don't mean like, it'll relate to what you do after the email? Do you mean? Yes, yes. Because we we developed these three prong email approaches where we will send the same email three different times into three different days. Right. But if you open it, you get off of that list. Okay, change the subject line and to change the time of day. You know what I mean? And I'm really like, just going to the people that just have never opened it in any way, shape, or form. But the ones who do open it, we put into a very sophisticated marketing automation list. Mm hmm. You don't I mean, so we're going to be segmenting. Before we even did that we segmented and then we blasted on day one. The people that opened one into a drip marketing list that people didn't open, we get the same email again, because it doesn't matter how it could be Shakespeare but if nobody opened it, right. Like they don't know what's inside. And so what we're doing is we're measuring the the click through rate, but we're also measuring the subject line and then the subject line. Did the email get into my website? And if they got to my website, did they get a retargeting cookie? And then ultimately, in the ideal sense, did they get a HubSpot tracking code? Yeah, yeah. So you know, we're, we're really hoping to do that. But I also think that one of the critical things in email is if you have a lead score, then this is what we help clients do. If we have lead scored them prior to this Or there's a level of ways of segmentation based upon knowing if they're in the awareness stage, consideration stage or decision on the stage. If I can marry really great content to where we believe you are in the buyers journey, right? I'm going to get considerably higher engagement rates. You don't I mean, yeah, if I'm, if I'm trying to buy a car, and literally, I'm getting prices from a dealership, the email that says, hey, do you want to try the Hyundai Sonata? Doesn't matter to me anymore. Right, right. You're not I mean, yeah. But if I am in the awareness stage, and I'm like, you know what? My car broke down. I want something new. Maybe the Hyundai Sonata might be a good fit for me. Yeah, they still make Hyundai Sonata as a literally a first car. I don't even know guys happy. Long story short is is that where they stack up in the buyers journey? Hmm. It's like, the more you know about them, if you can get really creative about how you segment and getting the right message to the right client at the right time. Yeah, um, you know, that's where we feel like it really, it really,
Matthew Dunn
I was gonna ask you about that. Because it's kind of it's, it's, it's implicit in what you just said, like, the job of understanding the customer journey, and not just understanding it systematizing it well enough to define those stages to look for the signals? That that's not trivial. That's not easy. Now it's not? Yes. And you've helped a range of industries. Yep. Do do do that job on even though their customers are not the same. their journeys are not the same.
Christopher Carr
Yeah, yeah. Wow. Well, you know, I mean, is it still a numbers game? Yes. But what if I could increase your conversion rate or your engagement rate by 15? To 18%? Right? Would that be of interest to you? You don't I mean, because just bringing a little bit of knowledge into who you're talking to matters, what you say to them matters. Like, for example, we work very heavily in in the orthopedic marketing space. Okay. Um, CMOS won't pick up the phone for me, and they won't open my emails. I'm a marketing company that helps. Yeah, orthopedics, you know, orthopedic practices. But if I go and I email, the surgeons, the surgeons, it's their practice, they own it. And then they go, and they email the CMO, and then the CMO has to come to me. It's not, it's not like, it's one of those things where it's just like, they all have a boss, you know what I mean? Like, you know what I mean? And so my point is, is, is that if I hedge the language towards we got really great results. Talk to your cmo about how we can augment your team. Yeah, that's very different than going to CMOS saying, I can make the job better. I can do all this the same marketing is that everyone's saying? You don't know.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, I gotcha. I gotcha. And, and, and the, the work of understanding that industry, and yet probable structure, ownership structure. Yep. It didn't happen overnight. At that time conversations, really learning the market. Right.
Christopher Carr
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's one of the other things too is is that, um, we develop these. Like, this is a gap assessment right here. Wow.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. bp document he's holding up document.
Christopher Carr
Yeah, yeah. Anyhow, is this on video or just audio? Because I want to make sure. Okay, great. So yeah, so this thing looks like a phone book. So what happens here is that the job we say is, is that if you went to your routine physical January one, and he said, you know, hey, Dr. Chris, just here for routine physical, and I said to you, you'd be an excellent candidate for open heart surgery. You'd be like, What are you talking about? I'm here for the fiscal month. Yes. But you'd be an excellent candidate for open heart surgery. You're like, Dude, are you gonna run any tests? Are you gonna do anything? I didn't come here for that. Right? Yeah, that happens in my space all the time. Interesting. You got to be in you've got a problem. Right? And I'm like, Oh, so you're not getting enough clients, you're not going to reach your goals. Let me open up my $100 a month software. I agree, you're not getting those results. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to listen to this audio thing and I got 20 minutes to your problems. And we're going to do is I'm going to write you a proposal for 100 grant. And based upon that 100 grand is going to decide whether you're going to succeed or not for the next year. All of that is totally valid. If you are in one. Let's say hypothetically, one part of marketing, right? If you say it's social media, or maybe SEO, sometimes that it has complete validity, but what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to basically develop the entire solution of the entire system. So someone like me can't do that. So what I Do is for two months, I say I can't give you a quote, I can't overhaul your marketing, right. Unless I know every piece of data about your business. What I do is I put it on a scorecard. It's your three to five year roadmap. To help you reach your goals, we figure out what your goals are. And we work backwards from five years to say, hey, if you say, hey, I want to be a $20 million company, I'm like, Well, how many sales do you need to do to get $20 million? How many salespeople do you need? How many leads do each one of these salespeople need to get? What percent market share? Do you need to do? Is there enough search volume to do that? And I basically look at every single thing, and then we use this book as a scorecard and a Bible for the next five years. You know what I mean? Right? 70% structured 30% nimble, because we don't know what we don't know. But it's it's the most scientific way of doing marketing. Know, in a very weird way. I said, email marketing is, it's a numbers game. You don't want to do that. Well, I'm sort of lying. Meaning it's still. You don't want it to just be a numbers game. You want to bring sophistication to it. But ultimately, I don't like marketing companies that just I don't know how to they sell the dream without quantification.
Matthew Dunn
Right. Right. Right. Or they sell their cell results. Somebody else happened to get? Yeah, without necessarily being methodological about getting there. Correct. Oh, yeah. And this is 20 years of work. Yep. into this process? Yeah. Yeah. How different different sort of different direction for a question. You've grown into the 50 people or so you mentioned before? How do you go about bringing someone new into the company and getting them to learn and understand what they need to learn and understand? Yep, to do that job?
Christopher Carr
Yeah. Well, from an HR perspective, we make them do a try out, which is very interesting, because I get fooled, smart resumes all the time. Yeah, smart. And so what happens is, I give them my sales deck. And then they have to come and present to me and my directors. And so if they can, if they can survive the gauntlet, then I at least know that they have some general room control, and they want to know, this stuff. Like, the biggest thing I'm looking for is the hunger or people that love marketing. You don't I mean, a lot of the stuff is teaching. And so what happens is they'll come in as a project manager, and they'll be assigned to an account manager, the account manager could have one or two project managers under them. And it's almost like they're becoming an apprentice of an account manager until they're ready to take on accounts for themselves.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, I gotcha. I gotcha. Give him a chance to learn working with someone else. Yep. Applying, applying your systematic approach.
Christopher Carr
And we spend between eight and $10,000 a month just on software alone. Right. So I know it sounds really weird. But a lot of it is like getting the data, putting it in the oven, which is the software programs, taking it out of the oven, and be smart enough to decipher what you just saw, huh. And then giving all the options to the client. And then we choose together. Which direction we want to go.
Matthew Dunn
Right. Right. Like? Yeah, that's it. That's, that's a wide range of data. In a couple of sentences there.
Christopher Carr
Yeah. Yeah, it is. We have a 93% retention rate, not because we come and say, Hey, we're gonna solve all your problems and listen to everything I say, my job is to say, you we have access to data and methodologies and techniques that you don't have. You don't even have the time or the expertise to have. Let's solve it together. I have what you don't have. I have the manpower you don't have. But you probably have the subject matter expertise that we don't have. Right. So what if I could amplify you would that be valued?
Matthew Dunn
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, that makes makes makes a ton of sense on without without delving into the brands too much. The software engines that run your business on I mean, HubSpot, we touched on already, are there any? Are there any platforms that are particularly critical? You're like we go, we really use x.
Christopher Carr
Yeah, we use sem rush a lot. That's from the SEO perspective. Yep. Um, we use Word stream for paid ads. And then a lot of like, smaller ones that I would never have thought would be critical. There's one called phrase FR a SE, very interesting program that basically just looks at your content and analyzes it based upon the people who are already winning on page one of Google or something like that, then, I mean, I know that a lot of these programs have analysis tools like that, but not like this. It's pretty good. Wow, very cool.
Matthew Dunn
Hopefully they picked it up to be happy period, because there's like someone somewhere script struggle to make phrase.
Christopher Carr
That's right. That's right. I mean, I think so many of the programs if they're good, solid pizza software. And realize you know what? It's close, but didn't solve the problem fully. So I, when I couldn't do it anymore. I you know, when I couldn't stand not having any more, I just built it myself. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's how a lot of this stuff sort of happens. You know what I mean? Because these, these software programs are getting hyper niche. They're solving like one problem.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Yeah. And, and then it puts the challenge, you know, puts the challenge on you and your team as customers for that software of, of finding where it fits. And hopefully, it's, you can make it fit, and it's worth the time and effort and learning, record, put it to use.
Christopher Carr
Did you know that um, if I were to send you a YouTube clip, and I sent it from my desktop, and I said, Hey, this YouTube clip, it's a 10 minute video, there's a button I said, when I share it, I can share it from the 10 minute mark, you would right click on the link and share some 10 minute mark. Right? You can't do that on an iPhone. And you can't do that even on any Google phone either. You can only share the link and then write in the comment. Hey, fast forward to the 10 minute mark.
Matthew Dunn
Oh, cuz getting that right, getting that it's called timestamp means Yeah, whatever. Yeah.
Christopher Carr
So we got so tired of that, that my guys just build it. And fair tech.com slash yt. Right. I get no money for this. Yeah, 20,000 people a month, use that little one page thing on my website. Because it's just a hole in the in the market. And I get so tired of telling people to fast forward that I was just like I just built.
Matthew Dunn
We, whatever the company's handles a ton of video, and we went to the work of captioning in multiple languages. So we were dealing with caption files, which are pain, it's like it's it's crude artifacts. So I actually have a bit of an Excel junkie, because I started an Excel 30 years ago, Microsoft version one, seriously. So I built a sort of caption handler in Excel to help me do that job. And I thought how to heck with it, right? I just posted it on a page and said, Hey, if you're trying to wrestle with captions, especially if you're trying to line up, you know, the English and the Spanish captions here, here's this, here's a spreadsheet that'll do a lot of work for you. Regular not not your numbers, but regular downloads all the time. Because it's niche, but it's it's a problem. Someone's got somewhere out in the world. Yeah. And if they find it great, it's it's bizarre, right?
Christopher Carr
You're gonna mean like, it's like, I don't know how to describe like, you get mad at these like, trillion dollar companies? Like, you didn't think to do just the small little family? Yeah, timestamp. Yeah, yeah. Do you have like, 1000 employees that are all just playing volleyball? You don't? I mean? Like, they didn't think maybe I should just take an hour out of the volleyball game to Yeah, I'm joking around because you know that Google has this flex time? Yeah. But they're like, literally like trying to figure out like, the Continental drifts of planets in our galactic planets. And they don't think, Hey, you know what, maybe I should add a timestamp.
Matthew Dunn
Stamp? Well, to be and, and to be slightly sympathetic to them. Frequently, those code bases get to the size where the number of meetings that would take I know, right, or like, so it actually constantly creates niches for the smaller, for the nimble to go, I can help you with that. I mean, I'm in some ways, that's the game we're playing. Like, we we built real time that goes in the email editor, and in conversations with email companies, like you guys could build this yourselves. got five years in a really smart team, you could build it yourselves. Or we can help you solve the problem now.
Christopher Carr
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, and that's, that's, it's interesting, cuz I get to talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, and they see this wide net approach that I've done. And I was like, don't do what I'm doing. Like get hyper. Personalized? on exactly, exactly, like, find a problem and solve that problem, and then solve it for the world.
Matthew Dunn
Right. So preferably, solve it really well.
Christopher Carr
Yeah. Because you wake up in my shoes one day, and you're just like, you know what, I'm trying to be all things to all people all the time. And it's, it's expensive, and it's exhausting. Hmm.
Matthew Dunn
So here's a wrap up to trajectory for the conversation, which has been fantastic. Where do you want to take Ferro tech from here?
Christopher Carr
Well, ironically, so we have a VP of partner growth. And so the VP of partner growth is essentially he's in charge of sales and stuff like that, and we get a lot of leads that come to us that are not exactly in our wheelhouse. All right, meaning they're not in our wheelhouse, but they're not in these certain verticals that I want to be in. The problem is Is that the verticals I want to be in the sales cycle is so long that while I can try to get as many, you know, irons in the fire and eventually pans out, we can't turn away that revenue. And so what we did was we hired him to go after the leads that are that come in and they they pay the bills really well. And in the meantime, I'm able to go after the very specific clients, we want to scale and grow our business.
Matthew Dunn
Okay, so you're gonna focus more on those niches strategically, that sounds like yeah,
Christopher Carr
and until this happened, I was never able to do that. Because I was like, Hey, mister ideal client. I gotta take a non ideal client that's willing to pay the bills now they become ideal in year two, right, right. But in year one, they're not nearly as profitable for them. Because we got to literally, we're building books like this like this, you
Matthew Dunn
got to learn their industry build a book like that for them. Yeah. Oh, that's, that's an interesting dilemma. It's an interesting solution. I mean, it's kind of the bit the, you know, the Clayton Christensen, if disruption is you need a separate division, working on the thing that's gonna put you out of business, it can't be part of the same company, or it'll get sucked back into serving your current client base. It sounds like that's what you're doing.
Christopher Carr
Yeah. Yeah. So we're, we're, we're, um, we're growing as a company, but then we're also monitoring how much we're growing. To get the ideal clients of what we're looking for.
Matthew Dunn
You don't I mean, right. And so want to grow, but you also want to improve?
Christopher Carr
Correct? Yeah. So the most that if I could look at my portfolio, and right now, I probably have 30% ideal clients and 70% of the other clients that Okay, yeah. are in the process of of getting there. Right. What we're always looking at is like, how much revenue Can I get from ideal clients?
Matthew Dunn
Hmm, yeah, yeah. How can you raise percentage? Correct.
Christopher Carr
ideal clients when very, very strong, very, very well, for us, and they're very profitable for us, is the ultimate Win win? No. Other clients need what we have. Yeah. And so it's very hard to turn away revenue. And it's, it's also very hard in our space, to walk away from someone that has a problem that we know we can solve, even if it's expensive,
Matthew Dunn
right?
Christopher Carr
Yeah. Very weird thing. Like, it's just how I'm wired. Yeah, like, I want to help I hear their problem. And I'm like, Yeah, I can help with that.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. But you're you have to learn an entirely new sector, over x number of years to really do that. Well, happens all the time. Hmm. Hmm. I think I think it's admirable discipline, to focus your, you know, your vision on the strategic niche, and try to grow that percentage of it. But that takes some rigor. Yeah.
Christopher Carr
Because you know, you need the revenue to go. We all goals. You don't I mean, yeah. And if I just focus on what I'm trying to build, yeah, like, there's no guarantees in this, especially, one of our niches is healthcare. And these health care companies keep gobbling each other up. So yeah, even if I do a great job, I can, a client can put me on the streets just because they got acquired.
Matthew Dunn
Right, right. or, or, in some way, shape or form their industry got. Yeah, that's a tough niche to work in or touch, base to work in. highly regulated. convoluted, not very well structured, all that other stuff. Correct. red tape all over the place. red tape all over the place. Well, guy, Christopher, when someone says, Oh, I really want to talk with these guys, whether or not they're in your niche. How do you how do they How do they hunt down for a tech and have that conversation?
Christopher Carr
So our website is ferritic fA r o te ch Comm. And you could also email us at info at fair tech comm as
Matthew Dunn
well.com Yeah, well, terrific. My guest this morning has been Christopher Carr, founder and president of fair tech, Chris great conversation.
Christopher Carr
Yes, it's great. It was it was it was fun to speak. Yeah, it's super easy to talk to. So this is good. I hope you're, I hope your guests really enjoyed it.