Chemistry Agency - F2F

Chris LaFay: It's. Hobby.

Javier Santana: What's up, man?

Chris LaFay: Doing good. It's been a. It's been a good day today. Been busy.

Javier Santana: Your. Your cool ass little music studio.

Chris LaFay: Oh, you know, wait, we. Oh, we've never. We've never done this before.

Javier Santana: No, we have not, man. Huh?

Chris LaFay: Yeah.

Javier Santana: Little space.

Chris LaFay: I. I'm not a handy person at all. So to put all that for like probably about three years, it was just a black background, like that was it. Because I knew that as soon as I put a hole in the wall, I was done. So if you actually notice where the headstock of this guitar is, it's right above the frame, which is highly intentional because if I mess that screw up, I didn't want the hole to be in my frame. So I started a little bit higher to give myself some wiggle room. And I didn't mess up though, so that's nice. So now you can't see the headstock, but that's, you know, it is what it is.

Javier Santana: So how are you, man?

Chris LaFay: Dude, they was. This week has been a. This week's been a busy week. My wife and I are gonna go to Memphis on Friday. We're gonna go see a bananas game up there and hang out with her aunt and uncle and cousin, which we're very excited about. At the beginning of the year, I did the big, like, business shift that we, you and I talked about a little bit, you know, late last year.

Javier Santana: We talked about it. But you didn't, you didn't tell me exactly what you did.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, so basically when we met up in New York, that was basically right after I shot a grenade launcher into my business. So the timing was wonderful. And so I basically realized that the full time folks that I had on my team just weren't. Weren't the right fit. And it. I was basically stressing myself out like crazy to hit this minimum revenue number to keep all their high salaries on board. And I'm like, life's not meant to be lived like this. And so I want to scale it back up. That's my plan. But when you learn a lot of really good things from a lot of other business leaders and you're like, I can't. And you can't implement them because you have this like, boulder of people inside the business. Sometimes to implement all those things, you have to just get rid of them. And so my whole contract team that's been with me for like five, six years, all of them, they're all like, let's freaking go. And so we're. We're sprinting real fast now. So much more nimble. I got, basically I ignited all the entrepreneurship inside of all my contractors that I work with, and they are just dang excited about life right now, needless to say.

Javier Santana: So exciting, man.

Chris LaFay: It's exciting for you, dude. It's been, it's been invigorating. I'm not gonna lie. I haven't been as excited about stuff in a long time. And I now have the crew that's like, ready to freaking go. And so it's been. It's been fun. So January and February, man, all the, the. The floodgates opened and so it's been. It's been a lot, but it's been really, really good. And we're now actually like, set up for like, success to scale. And, and that makes me just so happy. I'm working with, like, really good experts in like every different area now, not having to like, put work on people because they have availability. And so it's like, let's go, man. I was kind of sitting on the bench for a little while, and now I'm not. So it's been, it's been good. So doing that event in New York, doing a agency hangout in New York in April, that's all going through. Hanging out with folks at topgolf in a few weeks. Doing a content day video shoot, which you need to go ahead and sign up for, buddy. So.

Javier Santana: What? Yes. Yes. So I started to. And then you asked some questions and I was like, oh, man, hold on, I gotta, like, really think about this. And I froze. And I said, I'll get back to it. And then I moved on and I gotta get back to it.

Chris LaFay: If you only have two or three to start with, just copy and paste whatever you got in there for now, and then we can circle up early next week and finalize it. So. But we got about. I think we got about five slots left, give or take. So second time, first time, I'm, you

Javier Santana: know, I'm charging my mouse, of course, so I can't use it because, you know, Apple decided, you know, you know, so stupidest thing ever. I mean, there's this whole little area in the back that if you put it back there or if you put it in the front, then one could still use the mouse. But no, let's put it on the belly so you can't use it. So anyways, I'm sitting here, I'm trying to like now write notes, but I'm so accustomed to having a mouse.

Chris LaFay: I mean, as. As one does, I will say The Apple trackpad is one of my favorite things I've ever gotten. So I've had this thing for like six years now and it just, it still works flawlessly. And guess what? It has a plug on the back side of it.

Javier Santana: Yeah, I just can't use the trackpad, man. I can't use the trackpad.

Chris LaFay: Oh, really?

Javier Santana: Yeah, dude, I hate it. Because the thing is, man, is that this is a very weird thing that I, that I used to do before and I can't break out of the habit. You know, I was an illustrator and when, when the wacom first came out, I was using the stylus, but I dragged my fingers over the mat, especially when I'm drawing. So when I do a mat, I do multi touch accidentally all the time.

Chris LaFay: Interesting.

Javier Santana: All the time. So I'll, I'll like start doing something and then my thumb will drag and boom, the screen disappears or some and it drives me absolutely insane.

Chris LaFay: So, yeah, that's annoying. I, I, I get that though. Like I could totally. Yeah, I used a regular mouse for a while with my Mac and I realized how accustomed I had gotten to like the pinch and, and expand to zooming in. And if you use a regular mouse with a scroll wheel, it just doesn't have that preciseness of the pinch and zoom that Apple has. And so yeah, I loved having a mouse with like so many different buttons on it to do like hotkeys and stuff like that. That was great. But I was like, I can't zoom, I can't zoom.

Javier Santana: Soul habits. I mean, it's the same thing with, you know, I've been trying to break this habit for years. So what happens also is that when I type on my, my laptop without, without my, Sorry. When I'm on the laptop, if I don't have a separate keyboard or whatever, I'm literally, my thumbs again will drag on the, on the, on the keyboard and I'm sorry, on the, on the trackpad. And it just pops everything up. So, so I can't type like this. I type like this, which is really bizarre.

Chris LaFay: Interesting.

Javier Santana: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: One of my friends got me into mechanical keyboards last year. Not last year, a few years ago. And I realized with mechanical keyboards, especially ones that are like custom built, the sensitivity of the keys is so high and a lot of them. So like if you just like graze the top of the key, like it presses even if you don't go all the way down.

Javier Santana: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: So I had to learn relearn how to type on a keyboard.

Javier Santana: Right.

Chris LaFay: When your friend gifts you like a 700 keyboard that they hand soldered themselves. You use the thing. And so now I have three of them. And I have now become a mechanical keyboard snob, which was not in the docket of things I would become snobbish about ever. But he got bored during COVID and he was like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'll build keyboards.

Javier Santana: Nice,

Chris LaFay: huh? They sell. They sell for a lot, so. For a lot of money, man. It's nuts. What's up with you, sir?

Javier Santana: So, nothing, man. You know, Sorry, dude. I'm like multitasking now because I'm getting like hit up on slack. Sorry.

Chris LaFay: You're good.

Javier Santana: I hate doing this, but today's just one of those days that all of a sudden just blew up. So. And I'm not a, I'm not a last minute cancellation guy, so. I told you I was gonna do this and definitely want to do it. Everything is good.

Chris LaFay: You can move it if you want, like if it makes life easy.

Javier Santana: No, no, it's totally fine. It's totally fine. You know, I think that it's just been really, really busy and I'm about to leave to Spain. I told you that.

Chris LaFay: Yeah.

Javier Santana: I'll be gone for a month. So I, I, you know, I'll do the one week PTO and then I'll be remote three weeks. And then I come back and I immediately start traveling again. I got to go to a WP Engine thing and then I got to go to Miami for the possible conference and then I got to go to Pittsburgh. So. Yeah. So it's going to be a lot.

Chris LaFay: What's the WP Engine thing?

Javier Santana: So they're one of our partners.

Chris LaFay: Yeah.

Javier Santana: And, and, and they basically are trying to figure out how to do better alignment partnerships. So referral based, both sides. And, and you know, so. Yeah, just a little bit of that

Chris LaFay: because that's where you met David Reese up in New York, my buddy who we. That's how we got. We found each other was at a wp. Right.

Javier Santana: Exactly.

Chris LaFay: That's what I thought. Okay. Nice.

Javier Santana: Yeah. Yeah. So it's. They're a great partner, man.

Chris LaFay: You know, I love WP Engine. WordPress is all. And obviously with all the Matt Mullenweg stuff is all weird. Thankfully that's all died down for a while. I'm very grateful for. Yeah. But WordPress 7 is about to drop here soon. That's going to be, that's going to be interesting. But WP Engine has been great. I love them. I've not dove into their, like Partnership program. And I need to do more of that because you should. Everybody that I know has said like fantastic things about what they do with partnership stuff. So.

Javier Santana: Yeah, and I think that there's a lot of that in Contentful. There is a lot of that in all these platforms which we're having conversations with. And some we're already partners, but there's also the ability to just be featured as a preferred partner on their sites. And I think that that's definitely something we want to start getting attention for. But definitely I wanted to learn more about some of the stuff that you're doing, what you're planning on doing. And, and I'm getting a lot of brand. Every once in a while I'll get like a random request that is like, hey, I'm looking for somebody to help me, you know, do a UX audit and I have a budget of 13k or something like that and I need it done within a short period of time. I'm like, I can't assemble a team that quickly. My people are busy and, and I, and I hate to just throw you back into the ocean. Right. So like how do I find somebody and understand and say, all right, well no problem here, let me do an introduction. And I had people like that when, when I was at launch at three small agencies that I would refer people to. But that's, you know, I don't even talk to those guys anymore.

Chris LaFay: So.

Javier Santana: Yeah, just really understanding. I kind of have an idea of what you do, but I wanted to make sure that, you know, if that has changed, I want to hear from you and if there's anything specific you want to stay away from, maximum minimum budget, you know, know things like that. So just that's what I really wanted to do.

Chris LaFay: Yeah. So what I'll do is I'll actually just like, I'll walk you through my homepage because that's kind of where all the stuff is. I'll be just like a good visual to kind of like walk through some things. So the core of what we build are marketing WordPress, marketing websites. A lot of times it's in the SaaS, the SaaS space. Everything we do is custom. I'm going to dive a little bit technical here. We don't do a lot of the third party page builders. We build natively in Gutenberg, the whole nine yards. We do a lot of business with complex WordPress sites. So things that have hundreds or thousands of pages. Now these price points don't encompass hundreds and thousands of pages that you're looking at Here. But we do a lot of stuff with like we last year we migrated a 4,000 page WordPress site from an old outdated page builder into Gutenberg and into custom post types and wired it up into AI search as well too. So we partnered with WP Engine with their new AI platform that they have and did a lot of that stuff. Now that's not as common on the AI side of things. At the end of the day, we build a lot of marketing sites and we do all that completely custom. And so folks that we typically work out well with are people that have some type of a marketing leader in place. That's typically the minimum. So it doesn't have to be a CMO by default, but it's typically not a founder led company with like, you know, the admin is their marketing person. There typically needs to be a marketing leader. That typically means that they have some ideas to bring to the table. And so I walk through the entire process. The crux of this from a technical standpoint is all of our design and development and how we think about everything is done in kind of like a building block, kind of Lego piece kind of mindset, not in a page by page mindset. Because my thinking is I want retainers as a company, don't get me wrong. But so many people are like, we have a marketing team, we want to manage the site ourselves. So I lead with like we give you building blocks so that you can just do whatever the heck you want to.

Javier Santana: That's table stakes at this point. Like there's nobody that's not requesting that anyway. So yeah, that's a smart thing to put it out there.

Chris LaFay: I showcase my team, the actual humans. There's some handful of design stuff that we've done. The one thing that's not on our website that we do that we started to do more of over the last year and a half or so is Shopify. And so we were able to get Magic Spoon through one of our agency partners and we handle all of their dev work, soup to nuts. And they've been fantastic. And because of that we've been able to land a couple of other ones. I personally don't speak E commerce, but one of my lead devs who I've known for 15 years, Andrew, is my E commerce. Just dude's been in the business for 15 years. And so we're in the process of closing our second fairly sizable account within Shopify probably in the next week or two. So now we'll have. It'll actually be a significant portion of our Revenue here in the next month, which is, which is really cool. That basically is what we do. We build sites. Now, do I have designers and can do just design work? Do I have developers and can just do dev work? 100%, yes. Is that rarer? It is definitely rare because most people come to me saying, chris, I hate my website, please help. So yeah, that's the, that's the five minute version.

Javier Santana: No, no, this is good. This is good to know. This is good to know. So really focused on, you know, full engagement website. Like just not necessarily piecemealing it, saying, I'm gonna go do UX audit, I'm go do some dev work. Just really like I'm here to build websites.

Chris LaFay: If we're on retainer, we do, we do just dev work. We typically just don't do hourly random stuff. Our retainers, I typically try to start them at around 2,500. Average is about 5k. When we're doing just dev, we have reasonable. Yeah. And so we put a, we put a senior dev lead that kind of handles a lot of the conversations and then we have a couple of junior, junior to intermediate devs that fill in most of the actual work.

Javier Santana: Okay.

Chris LaFay: And so that lets us stay a little bit competitive while also kind of building back up. Our minimums for a while were around 7, 500 or 10 grand, but my network doesn't produce those right now, and that's okay. And so I was like, how do we, how do we backfill with, you know, some 2500-5000 retainers? Let's build those up, let's knock them out of the freaking park and then let's, let's grow from there. So.

Javier Santana: Gotcha. And your team is 100% freelance, right?

Chris LaFay: Yes, 100% freelance. Yep. Everybody is, I think everybody's been with me since at least 2019 at this point. So I got, I got dedicated folks and a lot of them are entrepreneurs too.

Javier Santana: So you're not actually going out there and quoting. You're basically saying, this is my package. You know, package one, two and three. Or like if somebody comes at you says, Well, I got 30 some pages I need to migration, will you say, yeah, of course I'll do that.

Chris LaFay: So yeah, so no one. Yeah. So 100. I absolutely custom price everything. The actually I'll show you. I'm in the process right now because there's not a lot of transparency in web. It's like, please give us a call. We don't showcase our pricing. So one of my things is transparency and I'M working on right now an actual like calculator for a marketing website build. And so I have this set up towards like how many. You kind of know the difference with marketing sites. How many pages do you want to think about versus how many? Are we just kind of like migrating in? Kind of as is what types of custom post types do you have? Do you have E commerce? Do you have case studies, testimonials? What do you have to build out and then figure out in general what type of design are they looking for something more standard, out of the box or something a little bit more custom. And that obviously inflates the price. So I have a calculator that's up. It is not fully tested yet. It is something I'm going to launch probably in the next couple of weeks or so. So yes, everything is typically custom. But since I've launched my packages and I talk with folks kind of using those as guideposts, that has helped get to the pricing conversation a lot faster. And I'm like, oh yeah, you're probably somewhere between the 15 and 25k price point. So roughly 20. And that at least weeds people out or gets me a confirmation to move on faster. So I got tired of six month sales cycles, man. Like I'm just like, you get through all these conversations and it's like, oh, we have a $5,000 budget. Even though we have a hundred million dollars in revenue, we're only going to spend 5k on our website. Sorry, we should have told you that ahead of time. I'm like, I'm.

Javier Santana: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I mean I, I have a very specific qualification that I do. So, you know, and I ask a lot of questions like I, you know, but normally I'll, I'll squeeze the budget out of them early on or if they're not willing to give me a budget, I'll say something like, well, is it below or above 100, 200, 300K? And I'm make basically pulling that number from, from what I've seen so far, you know.

Chris LaFay: Exactly.

Javier Santana: So that's, so that's where it gets a little, a little, I don't want to say tricky, but it's just

Chris LaFay: those

Javier Santana: cycles, I try to shrink them as much as possible for that reason, you know.

Chris LaFay: And I know that by having my pricing on the site I probably lose some revenue because I know there have been some conversations that I've had recently where I know they've gone to our website first. I'm like, I know you guys are pulling north of 50 milli years. You guys have more than 25k to build a website. Like I, I know that there's, I know I'm leaving some money on the table, but the last 60 days, which you can't make all business decisions based on a short term thing. My open to close time has been less than 20 days the last two months. So if that means I lose out on a few larger deals that I might have been able to squeak out another 10 grand for, but I don't have to spend six months in a sales cycle. That's my, that's my business decision as of now. Check with me in six months later and we'll see what I say.

Javier Santana: But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I found, I found it. I got to a point where when we started was like that like even like during summer, I would even say like, hey, you know what, summer's gonna be slow. I'm doing a bunch of five thousand dollar five to seven thousand dollar shopify websites. You know, just like knock out, knock them out. And that happened. But what ended up happening is that then we'd get bigger request and because I had like a queue of three of those smaller jobs, you know, then it became problematic because I couldn't do the hundred thousand dollar project because I had three, you know, seven, 500 projects in the queue. And I was like, oh well now I gotta like reprioritize or get somebody in the door. So I ended up stop. I stopped doing it after a little bit and it worked out. But at the same time then you're paying for high dollar folks and it doesn't. The juice isn't worth the squeeze, you know, because it ends up costing you $15,000 to do a 7, 500 website. So now you got to charge 30.

Chris LaFay: So that's where we, we got to the point last year to where my minimums had to be 50 to 60k for a project, which I'm fine, right? There's plenty of that work out there. But my network wasn't producing them. And like I'm this. I was actually talking with Paul Carpenter about a month or so ago and I invited him to go up to the New York City thing or I wanted to know if he knew anybody in New York. And he ended the conversation with like, man, I'm just trying to win Atlanta. I'm not trying to win New York right now. And I'm like son of a.

Javier Santana: Yes, our man. He's.

Chris LaFay: That's, he's hyper, he's hyper targeted, which is genius. And I'm like, you know, I need to win Atlanta right now. And so I do my New York event, it's still going to be a lot of fun. There's gonna be 20, 30 people up there. It's gonna be a blast. Yeah, but I'm gonna. The reason why, you know, we couldn't stick with that middle like you know, kind of solid mid tier price point around 40 to 60 because I didn't know enough people, didn't know enough people in the right rooms. The work is good. The work is worth it.

Javier Santana: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: But I, you know, you adjust based on, you know, the business conditions and then once, once that volume increases and the problem that you stated comes back into play again, which it will. I'm not, I'm not terrified about that. Then we adjust and so.

Javier Santana: Yeah. Are you. Do you know Jeff Corey over at Visual Soldiers?

Chris LaFay: Jeff Cornell, that the company name doesn't sound familiar actually either.

Javier Santana: Yeah, you should look them up. Visual Soldiers, they're a design house and they do really beautiful design work. They started out as a small design house and they're still very. There's, I want to say they're small. They have a couple of full timers, a couple of freelancers. I think Heats are kind of partner. That was a former team member. His. But Jeff had a similar problem that he started just like expanding services. He does a really good job of pushing content. I sign up for his email just so I could see what he's up to and. And then he does a lot of content on LinkedIn that is very relevant. Just that to say that if you get a chance like poke around to see how he's doing it because that might expand your network a little bit. I, I don't remember if I told you this story but you know, I landed IHG because I put an article out on LinkedIn about conversational search. This was like, I mean this was probably like in the year 25, right? What are we in 26 or 27?

Chris LaFay: We're in 26. So like. So like a year ago?

Javier Santana: Yeah. So probably about end of 24. Early 24, sorry, end of 25. About a year plus ago. Yeah, man, I, I wrote this article and it was based on a bunch of research that I was doing and I was like, all right, I feel like I need to share this and I put it out there to the world and somebody that I knew from years ago, like somebody that I worked with like well over 10 years ago, reached out to me and said, hey, you know, I'm over at Ihg now I want to talk to you about this conversational search thing. Can you, you know, you have time? I was like, yeah, let's talk. So we talked about it and she told me about some of the struggles that she was having with, with SEO in general. And I walked her through some of the things that were seen early days of, you know, aeo. Right. And I did some examples and I, and I had a conversation and we ended up doing a trial with them. And the first year, man, we did 900 with them. So yeah, dude, which is wild. But all that to say that the, the outbound article knowledge share strategy does work, man. I'm living proof of it and Jeff is doing a really good job of it. So as you're thinking about that right now, like your, your network is not producing that, then build a new network. Because the more that you post on LinkedIn, the more that the algorithm starts to share your stuff. Every time that I stop posting on LinkedIn and I put an article out, my, my analytics go to. But if I do it like maybe four to six times a month where I'm just either reposting stuff or even like those job alerts that I put out there, then it looks like I'm a very active person and LinkedIn starts pushing my stuff out there based on the engagement. So, yeah, I wrote a, I wrote another article that got some interesting, interesting commentary. It was about purity is not a strategy. Just making sure that people say, you know, if you're really going to stick to your guns and say that AI has no place in my world, then you're going to be out of it. And that got me some attention where we ended up getting interviewed by Ad Age, and they started asking us specifically about how that comes into play when we start, when we start looking at hiring new folks. So if there's, if there's a nugget of anything that I'm going to give you before I leave, is that because you obviously have a system that's working for you and you have a team that you trust. But you said something very important. You know, my network is not producing that. And you need to figure out how to expand that network. And you do that by not reaching out to them, but by having them reach out to you. Do you ever read the Challenger Sale?

Chris LaFay: I did, actually, about a year or two ago. Yes.

Javier Santana: Okay. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, basically leading somebody to your solution is what it is. You're not, you're not selling them anything. You're just like, helping them understand that their Problem can be solved by talking

Chris LaFay: to you, making them think differently about it.

Javier Santana: Yeah, yeah. Very unsolicited advice here, but I think that that's where just thinking about network expansion for yourself, because right now I'm doing a lot of that differently, though. I've joined a couple of organizations and I'm on the, for example, the 4A's AI committee. And every time that I learn something from that committee, I'll hit up my former clients or my prospects or somebody else, say, hey, just be aware. These are some of the regulations that are changing.

Chris LaFay: And.

Javier Santana: And this is how it may or may not affect you. Yeah, let me know if you.

Chris LaFay: Let me know if you.

Javier Santana: If you want me to walk you through it. And for every 20 messages that I send, one response say, oh, yeah, let's get some time on. Let's get some time on the calendar. It's not a sales strategy, really. It's just like, hey, I want. I want to talk to them anyway. I want to have a coffee with them anyway. Yeah, that's just a way to actually set expectations for the conversation that we're going to have rather than just say, hey, let's go have a coffee.

Chris LaFay: That's smart. That's something that I've been. One of the things I've been thinking about is I have a good. I have a good set. I have a good quantity of people that are in my CRM. Some of them are the right types of people. Some of them are not. Obviously that's true with all things. Don't get me wrong. I realize that, but that's the thing I've been trying to figure out for this year is like, how do I. Constant. Constantly provide value? Constantly. I don't mean like daily basis, but like, how am I taking the things that I'm learning about and then can apply to the work that we're doing and then use that as good information to then send out to people to be like, hey, thinking about you. Here's something that I'm learning about. Might be pertinent. Might be not. If you want to chat about it, let's chat about it. But like, that exact. Like, that's. I'm hosting events, getting people together, and I'm trying.

Javier Santana: Yeah, the events thing is really good.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, that's what. Like, I'm actually gonna be hosting more events this year than I attended all of last year. So. Interesting little swap. Need to be attending more to. Because really, if I'm. If I'm. What I've realized is if I'm hosting Too many things. I'm getting a lot of the same people to come because my network's my network at the end of the day. So I need to be going to other events and joining into different groups and different conversations to grow there and then find ways to still provide value. Like kind of akin to what you said as well too where it's informative, it doesn't feel salesy but it's a really easy way to stay in touch without having to have a coffee with 20 people and then you let them self select for the ones that are actually interested. So.

Javier Santana: Right, right.

Chris LaFay: This is the flywheel that I've been very much thinking about. So this is very.

Javier Santana: And we had talked about this. I'm not, I'm not a door banger. Like I don't want to be out there like, like trying to like these people talk to me all day long. Like that's. I know people who do that really well. I don't. So I'm just trying to figure out ways to if even if I'm spraying out there that it's with purpose man. Just like something that's gonna get somebody's attention. But man, it's, it's, it's wild organizations.

Chris LaFay: Did you join? You said, you mentioned you, you mentioned that you joined a few organizations. Oh, is that just the one? Yeah, yeah yeah.

Javier Santana: So four A's and then I'm on some, I'm on some group marketing. Marketing and AI strategy group and then I'm ama of course. Sorry, are you ama?

Chris LaFay: Yeah, I am, yeah yeah.

Javier Santana: And then I'm just like constantly paying attention man to like what other events are happening and seeing just like let's cherry picking some things but, but those two were probably the, the biggest ones. And now I've been spending a lot of time surprisingly probably the last like month on Eventbrite and, and meetup just trying to find, see if there's any little niche groups where I think my prospects or, or even good networking will be and I'll just kind of show up to those. So I did go to Edgar Allen hosted something last week. I don't know if you got a chance to see that. Yeah, Edgar Allen hosted an AEO SEO with webflow. I mean they're a webflow.

Chris LaFay: Oh, I did hear about this actually.

Javier Santana: Yeah, yeah, it was really good. It was really good. It was well done. So I talked to him, to Mason and we're going to try to work on, on doing co hosting an event either here or somewhere else. But we're talking about that but that's another thing, is like you mentioned, you're hosting events like getting a few folks in the room. Right. So do we figure out a way to do a panel with a few agency owners or people that are working in the biz and things that they're looking up or hearing from their clients? Do we bring in some of our clients to speak in a panel, invite them in? Right. So just like I want to, I want to be more intentional about that stuff. Not with the lens of, of, oh, it's all biz dev, but also just like to increase the network. Right. Like you're making a new network.

Chris LaFay: So that's one of the, so one of the things that I'm, I have a buddy of mine, he has, he has a community of probably like 150 agency folks and also just generic marketing type people. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a fine community. I enjoy being a part of it. One of the. But he's been doing this. He's been hosting meetups and events for probably the better part of six or seven years now. And one of the things that he's told me is that all of these events over the last two or three years, it's been the same people coming over and over and over again. Because if you're not out there going out and getting new people, if you're not prompting people to bring their friends and other stuff, like, you get the same folks. And so one of the things I'm realizing, you just mentioned this, and I've been. I'm learning this as well too, is co host the crap out of this stuff. Nobody needs to host stuff by themselves. Like, there's really very little reason unless you have such a large grouping and network of people that you have the ability to do it, partner up with somebody, co host, and then pull multiple networks in together, bring them to the same thing, and then now everybody gets to mix and mingle and meet a lot of new people. And so that's, that's what I'm trying to do as well, is all these different things that I'm doing. I want to be partnering up with somebody else.

Javier Santana: Yeah. Keep me in mind. Let's, let's figure out how to do it and let's, let's think about what the topics are and, and see what we could do. And something else which is really interesting is that Mason told me that he put, he put the invite out there. You know, it's an early morning thing, was like an 8 to 10.

Chris LaFay: Yeah.

Javier Santana: He put the invite out there on LinkedIn, and a lot of people weren't responding. And. And he was talking to Elliot. I don't remember Elliot's last name. You know who he is? Bob.

Chris LaFay: Black guy.

Javier Santana: He's everywhere. He's. Yes, Elliot Brown. It's great. And. And. And Elliot and him were talking. Elliot said, man, you should do, like, food, like, for a breakfast. Why don't you get Waffle House? I knew that's a good idea. So he got a Waffle House breakfast bar. And he said that when he announced it and come have waffles with us, that, like, his. His spike of attendees just went through the roof. And I was like, dude, what we'll. We'll do for a free breakfast. It was hilarious, man. And I. But I thought that. And I thought to myself, you know, when I was doing my. My future of events, what I was doing is that I would. I would do happy hours. Like, it was always a happy hour. I was like, come here. I'm gonna buy cocktails, and we'll have beer, wine, and canned cocktails. And when you say that, you're. It's not just come here and sit down and drink a cup of water. Like, people just show up. I don't know the psychology of it other than you're getting a freebie, but it makes it more. More interesting. But the Waffle House bar was great because they basically had four. Four tins on Sternos. They had waffles. Sorry, not waffles. It was pancakes, cheesy eggs, bacon, and hash browns. That was it. And then coffee. And people were lined up, man. People were lined up, dude. Present company included. And it was hilarious. It was hilarious. I was like, I didn't even know you could do that with Waffle House. I had a little truck outside, and,

Chris LaFay: dude, it's freaking awesome.

Javier Santana: It's incredible.

Chris LaFay: In a couple of weeks, I. One of my buddies was just like, you know what you need to do? You just need a freaking. Go to topgolf is gonna go to top you off.

Javier Santana: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one.

Chris LaFay: People to come and tell them they can bring their friends. And I was like, so somebody would tell me for, like, two years. And so I finally pulled the trigger on it and did it. And so it's actually not for a few weeks. If you want to go to Topgolf on March 31, you can, but I think you're in Spain at that.

Javier Santana: I'll be gone. I'll be gone. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: But. But I invited 24 people, and 24 people are showing up and, like, there you go. I didn't try that hard.

Javier Santana: Case in point, man. It's an activity. I don't feel like it. Like, they're gonna go to an Amway thing, you know?

Chris LaFay: Exactly. And so I asked a couple of people that I knew to. Toward the end of. I mean, I'm still planning on inviting more people, but I started asking more people to come and invite their friends, and they are. So, like, I went from like, two bays and 12 people to, like, I need to go grab, like, four. Four bays for, like, 20 plus. You know what? It's gonna cost me, like, 600 to entertain.

Javier Santana: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: 24 people with food. That's nothing. I'll do that.

Javier Santana: No, and it's memorable, and it's worth it, man. I'm telling you, the Waffle house, it was 500 bucks. Mason told me it was 500 bucks.

Chris LaFay: Yeah.

Javier Santana: And you can get a sponsor to do that. So he said webflow, like, sponsored it with him. I was like, dude, if you want to do something like that, I'll split you. I'll give you 250 bucks out of pocket. Like, that, to me, is, like, worth every penny, man, to, like, get, like, be in the center of that.

Chris LaFay: So 100. Yeah. It's. Which I'm. I'm still excited about doing the New York thing that I'm doing, but it's hecka expensive because it's freaking New York. Like, we're going bowling, and we're covering the tab for, like, bowling and food, which is, like, three grand. I'm splitting it with somebody, so it's only 1500. It's not bad, but I got it.

Javier Santana: Just spend money to make money, man.

Chris LaFay: You do 100. But, like, the. The also, like, the. The. The juxtaposition of going to Topgolf for 600, in comparison to that, it's like going back to what Paul was saying, like, win Atlanta. Like, I could do three topgolfs. Obviously not doing topgolf every time. Like, don't get me wrong that, you know, the repetition gets old and boring. But the idea about doing stuff here locally that doesn't cost as much, like, that's. I was gonna bring freaking people together and ask them to bring their friends. Like, that just sounds. Sounds enjoyable.

Javier Santana: Yeah. Yeah. Just gotta figure that out, man. Figure out. And then. And then do it on a regular cadence. What's a quarter every third month? You know, or something like that. So that way it's expected. They're like, oh, what's gonna happen? You know, with Chris, next month because I, I started trying to pay attention to those AMA around towns to see if I want to like break branch out of like the city proper just because I am, you know, like here. So I tend not to go outside of my bubble. Yeah, but Roswell, Sandy Springs, out Alpharetta, there's a lot of people out there that I don't know then that's a new network. So.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, and there's, there's good businesses up in that side of town like.

Javier Santana: Well, and there's people that, there's people that aren't going to come either a come to the city for an event or that now they work remote so why bother, right?

Chris LaFay: Huh? Yep. It's becoming a little bit more advantageous to go to events outside of cities now because that's there's a reason why these towns like Roswell and Alpharetta are so affluent with money like this, you know, high ticket business folks that are living out there with their families and their bazillion square foot mansions and whatnot. And so money's out there, man. It's, it's out there, it's just not inside the perimeter. So.

Javier Santana: Exactly.

Chris LaFay: Well, it's fun stuff. Cool man.

Javier Santana: Well, listen, I'm gonna hop, I got a bunch of stuff to do. I know you do as well. Appreciate the time and always go catching up with you. I'm gonna go ahead and make sure that I fill out that the questionnaire, man. I'll do it today, man, I promise. I just gotta like dedicate focus time. Like even as we're talking I could just see like Slack is over here, email is over there, man. It's like everything's trying to get your attention but. But yeah, man, I mean I won't, I don't think I'll see you before New York or will I? When is the thing?

Chris LaFay: It's next, it's next Wednesday.

Javier Santana: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: So I'll see you. Yeah.

Javier Santana: All right, so we'll chat by then. But if you have like any type of like pitchy deck or anything like that, like a credibility deck, shoot it my way, man. And what I'll do is when people come my way that are like not a great fit for chemistry, man, I'll just give you the opportunity to talk to them first.

Chris LaFay: Honestly, my homepage is my creds deck. It talks about the whole thing. Like I was trying to keep both of them up to date and I was like, you know what? My homepage is going to be literally everything you need to know.

Javier Santana: That's the best that's the best way to do it. Yep, that's the best way to do it.

Chris LaFay: Like, then it's updated in one spot. All the pricing is there. Everything of what we do is there. The only thing that doesn't. I don't talk about is Shopify. Just because I. I haven't had a need to push it yet. But that's going to change here. Like, if we close the second account and we have two, like, sizable Shopify clients under our belt, I'm gonna start pushing Shopify.

Javier Santana: Gotcha. Okay. Cool, brother. Well, man, thank you. Good seeing you. We'll chat again soon. And I. I'll get those questions done, man, if I come up for it today. For sure.

Chris LaFay: Sounds good, sir. I'll see you next Wednesday.

Javier Santana: All right, buddy. See you soon. Bye.

Chris LaFay: Bye.