Andy Milligan - F2F

Andy Milligan: Yo.

Chris LaFay: Morning. Say again.

Andy Milligan: How you doing?

Chris LaFay: Doing well. Plug my AirPods in because I didn't realize. I didn't do that. There we go. Was a. Was it, Was it a relaxing weekend this weekend? Relaxing? We went to a banana ball game. We played. DND had to organize all my, like, churches worship stuff for Sunday, which was a lot. And then we did Mother's Day with my wife's family. And the little kids. There are hellions, to say the least.

Andy Milligan: What age are they singing? What age are they?

Chris LaFay: One is. One is about to go into first grade. The other is about to be four, about to go to, like, I think, about to go to pre K. They're only like a year and a half apart now. Take that back. They're two years apart, so it actually makes sense. First grade and pre K. So they, they don't know how. They don't know what the word no means. And so when they get told, they lose it. And I. I cannot describe to you how much they lose it. It's not just a wah, wah, I'm sad. It's go to your room and don't come out for five hours. Not literally, but you know what I mean. So it's exhausting.

Andy Milligan: I. Having kids is going to be a learning experience for me for sure. I don't have, like, in my current. I do not have the patience for that. Like, I'm really. I'm not bad with kids, but I'm just like, I treat them like I treat adults. And obviously that doesn't work. So I tend to lose patience quite quickly. So.

Chris LaFay: I don't deal with stupid very well. And I'm not saying kids are stupid. I'm just saying that they don't have the mental processing power that an adult has. And like, they will of course do the same wrong thing over and over and over and over and over again because their kids, they can't retain it well. And I understand all of that, but again, I don't handle stupid well. Like, let me give you an example. This is what happened to church on Sunday. I'm organizing. I'm not leading anything. I'm just like, I'm organizing, putting everything together, kind of directing things. And we have in ears so that we can hear all the other instruments, like, in our, like, headphones. And I got there and they weren't working. And I'm like, hey, sound guy, nothing is working on stage. And he was like, I don't know. And so we started playing and so we all played without being able to hear each other. And we went through the whole practice, like a whole set list, all five songs. And at the end of it, he comes and we also have like a click that like keeps us in beat.

Andy Milligan: Uhhuh.

Chris LaFay: At the end of it, he comes up on the stage, he's like, hey. So I decided. I realized somebody else used the soundboard and changed all the settings. I reset it and I think it's working now. And I'm like, dude, why didn't you push. Why didn't you turn it off and on? Why did you know? Why, why. Why was this not an option before? I wanted to strangle that, man. So anyway, it was not a restful weekend. How are you?

Andy Milligan: I'm hanging in there. You know, it was actually a pretty. Actually got a lot done this weekend. I'm trying to further solidify. The. I learned. Well, I learned I did a. Sorry, I did a lot of internal stuff on the site. I added 12 pages, just like specific service pages kind of for the SEO efforts.

Chris LaFay: Shoot.

Andy Milligan: Yeah, it's.

Chris LaFay: Dude, nice work, man.

Andy Milligan: But yeah, thanks. I'm learning a lot about Google Tag Manager. I think here's a really big. Which makes me realize it's a really. There's a really big kind of market for it because I'm trying to set up custom events and it is just. You probably know this. This is a huge pain in the ass to do. There's so many variables and even using AI for step by step is remarkably like. There's so many variables. Like, like Chromium browsers, for instance. Like 40% of people use Chromium browsers and it can't even track events on like Perplexity comment or ChatGPT Atlas or ARC browser or anything like that. So I was testing it in that environment. Couldn't get it to work.

Chris LaFay: Chromium browsers can't track events.

Andy Milligan: Correct? Perplexity. Comment. Because I literally ran in isolation on multiple browsers and it didn't. It could just be a one thing. I don't think it is. But yeah, so I set up all those. And like it's. There's so much like opportunity and flexibility then I was really trying, starting to enjoy it once I got the testing to work. But there has to be like. Like with AI, there has to be a better use case for setting all that up. Like. Or someone needs to make one some more technically savvy than I because it's literally like you have to go through every page except the tag environment. And Google just. They own everything. So it's like you kind of have to do it that way from my understanding. But yeah, I set up a bunch of thank you pages. Um, and I started do. Once I started to get into that, like, I want to start doing that more on client sites is getting that infrastructure set up and like tracking custom events and being able to like, show that on calls. But it's like, it's so technical. Like, everything in Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager is really technical. So.

Chris LaFay: And it's all duplicative work. Like, once you have the flow down, it's like copy and paste. It's like, okay, they have seven forms on seven pages, but to track it, I need unique thank you pages to track that final hit. It's copy, paste, copy paste, copy paste. But there's like just enough in browser work to make it a pain in the butt.

Andy Milligan: Yeah, it just takes so like, it literally takes like between the testing, the setup, the testing and everything for a new site, it takes like several hours. And there's really no way to like speed it up because you have to put in the URL, you have to set like open a bunch of tabs and set page view, set a trigger, set a tag, make sure it's on the right page. The script and every trigger has to have a tag that fires and you have to use the browser extension to test it. And it's actually. It's really cool, but it's just. It's so frustrating when you're testing it and nothing's working, which is like half the time.

Chris LaFay: Welcome to development, sir.

Andy Milligan: Yeah, it's. But that was fun to learn. I did a little research on. I recorded like a vlog day in the life. I'm gonna send that footage to the editor today. Recorded a YouTube video yesterday. I found I scheduled meetings with three Webflow developers for today just to do like hourly contract stuff. Because it's really hurting Clark to. When he's doing a project, it's becoming. It's a really huge tax to just have him say like, hey, suit him a slack and jump on like a client thing. So I need another developer that I can just send hourly stuff to.

Chris LaFay: Are they going to be overseas or are they going to be here overseas?

Andy Milligan: Philippines. I did that. I also. I set up a welcome email for Columbus marketing jobs which like, here's everything. It's kind of like the first one that I. The first sequence I put out where it's just like, here's everything about a little bit about me. Here's what to expect and getting that workflow together. I also built another outreach list for Rhoda to get on today. I finished Peter Guba's podcast, which coming out tomorrow. I also studied for Ryan Hawkes. That interview is tomorrow morning. So.

Chris LaFay: You studied for an interview?

Andy Milligan: Yeah, he's. Well, I always studied for. I listened to the galley copy of his book and because he's interviewed like so many killers. Dude. Like, it's unlike Morgan Housel, Tony Robbins, James Clear twice. Like everybody.

Chris LaFay: Dude. Dude. Holy crap.

Andy Milligan: I know. Dude. Like, He's. He has 700. His. His podcast is top 10 on Apple. It's called the Learning Leader Show.

Chris LaFay: Whoa. Okay. Oh, okay, okay, okay. That makes more sense now. Yeah, I'm talking about recorded. Are you going to go into your studio to record your side of it?

Andy Milligan: I could. It's just like, it's. That would be a long drive in the morning. I don't know if I want to, like, drive all. I could just call and reserve it, but I don't want to. That would be cool, but I think I'm just going to do it. But he lives in Dayton, so he lives like an hour from the studio. I guess he didn't want to make the drive, so.

Chris LaFay: Oh, did you offer to host him?

Andy Milligan: I did.

Chris LaFay: That have been sick.

Andy Milligan: And he said, do you guys do Riverside? I was like, oh, well, yeah, we do virtual too, but yeah, man, it's a good weekend, dude.

Chris LaFay: That's a lot, bro. That's a lot.

Andy Milligan: Yeah, I'm starting to get like, I'm not as burnt out as I used to be. Also. We. It's gonna sound like a lot happened and I know I listen to a lot of things, but we closed on a house. I closed on a house.

Chris LaFay: Oh, wait, you. You actually closed on it? Like, did you like, is do. Is diligence done?

Andy Milligan: It is in contract and a high high likelihood where we still have to do the inspection. High likelihood it'll pass the inspection. But this is like very, very close to being done.

Chris LaFay: What's the address? I want to look it up.

Andy Milligan: I'll shoot. You have this link right here, actually. Yes, Dresden Street. But it's a four bed, two bath. I got it for two of seven, which is cheaper than the one four bed. For four bed, two bath, I needed a little bit of condition. All the changes are cosmetic that are within it. So I am pretty excited and happy.

Chris LaFay: There it is. They're being direct redirected to the mobile site. Dude, if we did that, that's nuts. It literally popped up with a like a splash page. Said, you're being redirected to the mobile optimized version of this website. I'm like, no, Mos.

Andy Milligan: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: It's not how that works.

Andy Milligan: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Okay. Are the appliances all Stan?

Andy Milligan: Am I what?

Chris LaFay: The appliances. The like, like the stove, the fridge.

Andy Milligan: Yep. They come with this. I'll probably get a new one.

Chris LaFay: So that's why that has a basement. Dog. Holy crap.

Andy Milligan: Dude. It's. It's. It's not a huge square footage, but if you look at. Look at it from a retail value or a resale value, just appreciation wise, four bed, two bath with a garage and a basement. Not on slab. Is. There's like under 250k. It's just. And that condition is really good. So I like, I can confidently say because I've unfortunately become an expert at this the past six months. That's a good area too. It's like it's 10 minutes from the podcast studio. It's up in northern Columbus. So. Good area. No, you know, freaking hooligans like the other one. Dude, if you get on the wrong. There's a lot of bad areas in Columbus.

Chris LaFay: I have no doubt about that. I mean, you can say the same thing about pretty much anywhere. That's dope. Is the basement. Is a. The basement able to have like plumbing and all that jazz down there too, so you could turn into its own, like living space?

Andy Milligan: Yep. I'm thinking yes, it's contingent now. Especially I look for the listings. It's contingent because it's in contact with me. So yeah, the. And he was. I was. I was talking to the realtor about this. He said for the upstairs floors, they would really just need a stainless steel or you can put carpet in downstairs. I have a lot of interesting. I thought about making. It's. It's a really big downstairs area. Like it looks like. Kind of looks like a cafeteria with the. The floor that's on there now.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, it does. I see that.

Andy Milligan: What you. What I could do is like there's a whole area like behind the stairs, behind the wall, behind the stairs. There's like an equally as big area, like square footage. Something about making half of it, like. Like a gym sort of area that has like dumbbells and stuff like that. And the other one I can use for like really anything. I thought about putting maybe putting like Astro Turf or something like that on half of it. I don't know.

Chris LaFay: Be able to practice your golf swing.

Andy Milligan: That's actually a good idea. It's pretty high ceiling. We do have a net too. So the, the thing, like, I love the There. There's two rooms upstairs. You kind of, you see them in the list and they're like. When you go upstairs, there's like both of those rooms are like the same size. It's like one on each side and the bathroom's like right in the middle. Yeah. So I could pretty easily the full bath upstairs. I could either rent out both of those and just use one of the bat one of the rooms downstairs or use one of those as an office. Or use the downstairs and office. I haven't really thought through but I love the, I love like the upstairs rooms. Using one of those as an office like right in front of the window. It's a high ceiling. So I don't know, I'm like, I'm really excited to get the hell out of here.

Chris LaFay: And how are you going to. Are people gonna want to rent just a room and a 1200 square foot house?

Andy Milligan: They. It's pretty, it's pretty common now. Like a lot of times people don't. The moment you get into like a apartment complex, that's when they start charging like in the commissary charging like 1500amonth. So it's pretty common to rent a single room with a full bath for in this area. Comps are around 700amonth. But that's where I lived when I was in Springfield. That's where I lived for just a room and a multi family or a room upstairs in a single family house. And it significantly cuts rent cost. Rather than moving in a complex where you have all the amenities and stuff,.

Chris LaFay: Where you go, how much are you going to charge per month to rent a room?

Andy Milligan: Comps in the area are 700, so probably like 600 or so.

Chris LaFay: Not bad. The problem if you rent both the rooms upstairs, you'll have to figure out the bathroom situation. Honestly, my opinion, looking at this is purely an opinion is. And I have no idea how much this stuff costs. So keep that in mind. Like I, I have zero knowledge of this. I would almost turn the downstairs into your, I'm sorry the basement into your own area to where you have like as long as you can get a bathroom down there. That's the, that's the thing. Like if you can put a bathroom down there, there's enough space in that from what I can tell for a bed, a bathroom in an office.

Andy Milligan: Okay.

Chris LaFay: And if you're just gonna have like dumbbells and stuff like that, you could also just put the, you know, store those under the bed basically so you could live entirely in the basement. And the only thing you'd really need the upstairs for is the kitchen. So.

Andy Milligan: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Or the middle ground floor and then that way you could rent out basically both rooms and you're just the live in tenant downstairs if you wanted to. So that's my opinion.

Andy Milligan: On the main floor too. So there's a, there's a two bedrooms on the main floor too with a.

Chris LaFay: How are there so many bedrooms in a 1200 square foot house like there.

Andy Milligan: What it always looks, I'm telling you, it always looks bigger.

Chris LaFay: Hold on, hold on, hold on a second. Hold on a second.

Andy Milligan: There you go.

Chris LaFay: What time is this? Sorry, I did not mean to cut you off.

Andy Milligan: You're good.

Chris LaFay: Interesting.

Andy Milligan: Wow.

Chris LaFay: Okay. I need to go to that meeting.

Andy Milligan: Okay.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, yeah. Hold on. I'm making this sound worse than it is. Hold on one second. This event share I think saved problem my calendar. You know Magic Spoon, right? You for me talk about them. Our main point of contact is I think from the tone of her message lost her job. And the person right above her who we don't really interface with very much, he just recently left Magic Spoon.

Andy Milligan: On.

Chris LaFay: His own volition I'm pretty sure. So. I reading her, I was reading her message, I needed to attach myself to the meeting today. And then she said she's going to tell us more on the meeting today. Okay. This is one reason why a business. I'm going to use my own relative financial numbers for simplicity. Having a business that basically just has a lot of two to five thousand dollar a month contracts versus a handful of ten to fifteen thousand dollar contracts is so much better. Yeah, like I don't, I don't. I do. In her message she sent us, she was like they're making everything more leaner. But that means Magic Spoon's going to have to rely more on their agency teams more so than ever before. So like she's like I really don't think anything is going to happen and I want to walk you through some of the stuff that needs to happen over the next few months so that you guys are aware of it all. But yeah, that would suck if we lost them the next few months.

Andy Milligan: So I don't think that'll happen. Usually when they're. It's kind of, and this is my understanding and it could be wrong. Usually when companies are downsizing, they're either downsizing internally or they're downsizing externally. They don't usually do the same at the same time.

Chris LaFay: That's true. That. Yeah, that is true. That is true.

Andy Milligan: But at the same time if you lose a Point of contact. It's never an easy thing. So.

Chris LaFay: And the pro of losing a contact is that they go on to somewhere else and then they hopefully bring you along with them for the ride. So hopefully also drop one more. Okay, Joink, I'm back. Sorry about that, but I think, I think I left off saying live down in the basement so that you can more because if you were. If there was a person who you're renting out a room and the bathroom upstairs is kind of connected to the other bedroom upstairs, that might be a little bit weird for a tenant that doesn't know you. So if you were gonna rent it out, if you could stay separated and not get all up in the business, that might, that might help your cause. That's all I'm saying. And I don't really know. I've never rented anything. I never have. I've only ever rented an apartment during college and that was 10, 15 years ago. So I don't really know what the market is right now, but that would be my suggestion. So tis what it is. Excuse me. How soon are you going to like, let's say that everything goes smoothly and you get the keys of this place in the next 30 or 45 days. When are you wanting to start the. When are you going to try to rent it out by.

Andy Milligan: So technically after it closes, it should close by the end of the week. I can technically put a listing up on Zillow or wherever. Platform pricing is tough because the quality of the. I might there. There could be a situation where I wait like a month just to get settled in. But the pricing of what, what you price it at largely attracts like the. Right. It's like with anything, pricing attracts a type of buyer. So it's a really good area. Like it's near Worthington. It's like suburb, like a high quality suburb. It's not in the. The boonies which is what a lot of people who are renting properties are looking for. It's like the biggest variable. So I might start high, I might list it instantly start high and if I don't get any traction and then drop it to like 650 or 600 after that. But it does need a little bit of cosmetic work on the like the kitchen stuff. I don't plan to do a ton on it because I don't have the highest standards for my own living conditions. Basically just there to work. So all in all I'm just glad to be in the area, glad to be closer to Columbus. I'm glad that this you know, I can, I can retire from one of my jobs as a. A real estate investor for now.

Chris LaFay: You also need to. Do you have it in the budget to get like, sofa, loveseat, chairs, table, all that kind of fun stuff?

Andy Milligan: Budget, Yeah, I do need to do that.

Chris LaFay: Just because if you're renting a room out and the photos look like.

Andy Milligan: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: An empty house that you literally just bought. Just saying. So you need to take. Take that into consideration. IKEA has great stuff.

Andy Milligan: Yeah, I do. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Ikea's got some really like. And you don't need to put stuff in the room. Like, they, they can bring in their own stuff for the room. Like, that's all fine. But in terms of just things in that downstairs area, you could have the basement be like, if you decided to live in the basement, the basement could look like whatever, doesn't matter. That's off limits to them anyway. That's your living space. But the main floor needs to look like you give a crap.

Andy Milligan: Yeah, I can say too, like, I could probably do some pretty crazy things with AI and make it look a lot nicer than it is.

Chris LaFay: Oh, yeah, yeah. Bull bait and switch action over here.

Andy Milligan: I'm telling you, dude, half the stuff on Zillow is. It's only gonna come a bigger and bigger problem. But yeah, like, there's. I could literally take like, the photos you see now are real. Like on that listing, you could easily drop that into, you know, Nano Banana and say, make this look 25 newer and it will do a perfect job. And I would have no idea 100 years before we're doing so, like, just good enough to where there's no suspicion, you know, just good enough.

Chris LaFay: Because that's what you want you. That's exactly what you're going for.

Andy Milligan: Yeah. All right. What are the biggest priorities, work wise for today?

Chris LaFay: This morning, I need to get a contract out and an NDA signed. By the way, if anybody ever sends you an NDA to sign, read it. Do not blindly sign an NDA. I. I haven't done it in a. In a long time, but I almost signed away 10 years recently, which is a ridiculous amount of time. Yeah. So read NDAs. They're not all mutually beneficial. So there's just a note with that. Those are the two things I should probably be able to get done the next 30 minutes. I gotta. I closed a guy verbally on Friday. I was gonna send him a contract, so that's. And then I have work for Chris Dubois that I need to do, meaning that he gave me to do to help with my marketing. So once I get those things done, I need to get some of the Chris Dubois to do's off my plate.

Andy Milligan: I got Logan Lyles. Dude connected me with a guy. I think, I think it's in that community. You want to do a podcast, Bill? I wonder how I lost it. Will rico.

Chris LaFay: Okay.

Andy Milligan: Agency called. Common Mind.

Chris LaFay: Never heard of it before.

Andy Milligan: Okay. He said he's buddies with Dubois. I don't know if he was a mutual. But I don't.

Chris LaFay: I. I do not. I don't know his name.

Andy Milligan: He could be. He could be referred on. Everybody's coming on the podcast sometimes. Sweet. Almost a drive to see me. But.

Chris LaFay: Where's he from?

Andy Milligan: Boston.

Chris LaFay: Ah, okay. I got you. Very nice. What is. How does that, how does that fit with what you're doing today?

Andy Milligan: I have to schedule that I have to do. I want to be consistent on outreach, getting to my 100. I need to look at the portfolios of the designers today. I that I have three follow ups to send on pipeline projects that should be decided this week and yeah, that and outreach for everything. I'm getting better at querying my schedule for just business development and it tentatively is starting because I feel like these efforts manifest themselves like there's a lagging measure. I think we talked about it before. Yeah, I will thank myself for this in the future when things get busy because I'll have done the work in advance, so. Dude, by the way, you are. You're crushing it. Seriously. Like, what do you mean?

Chris LaFay: Or how so?

Andy Milligan: I. I mean just like the pipeline that you've had and just like your general excitement like this time last year. It's crazy to think we've known each other for over a year now almost. But just like the ability. I feel like you feel a lot more in control of pipeline and projects and just like the general energy that you bring to work. And it's really impressive to see how not how fast things can change because it obviously wasn't quick, but how much you can't control them when you, you know, bring a good mindset to it. So a lot has.

Chris LaFay: A lot has changed. A lot, a lot, a lot of changed. And it goes to show that if you just I increase the surface area and what you're doing, stuff happens. Now, obviously there's been a couple of like, easy wins, like Mickey Melon deciding not to build websites anymore. That was huge. He's going to get leads coming in logically and honestly probably will for the next year and a half or so. So I Kind of figured he would be sending over at least a hundred thousand dollars of business this year, if not more, which he's already checked the box of. He has sent over $100,000 of business, but we've only closed one of them. And then one of the projects fell off the wayside, and they didn't want to do anything. But, yeah, it's been my. I. I crushed my budget because I definitely spent more money in New York and on the top golf thing than I had budgeted, but we're still good. So I think that minimum number of 400, 000 is actually probably a little bit low. I probably need to get it up to, like, 420 or 430 to do break even, only because of a handful of the events that I've hosted that cost money, but I'm still in a really good spot, so.

Andy Milligan: Yeah, it's a lot easier to come to work without feeling like you're in a hole, so.

Chris LaFay: Yes, exactly. Yes. All right, we got 26 minutes. I'm gonna get a contract out and an NDA signed.

Andy Milligan: You better get it done.

Chris LaFay: All right, let's go.

Andy Milligan: Rock and roll.

Chris LaFay: Yo, I need to. So you're muted, by the way. I need to run to the restroom. And we're about four minutes out. Anyway, did you finish what you were hoping to finish?

Andy Milligan: Yes, I did.

Chris LaFay: Nice. I am realizing that my basic scope of work that my robot friend likes to use in my contracts does not work anymore for these fast turn websites. So I'm excited about that. Which means that we're changing our processes enough to where our contracts need to change some. But also, that means I've been talking with my robot a lot longer than I expected. So I am almost there. I'm almost there, but. But here we are, so.

Andy Milligan: Well, take the. Go with the bad, I guess. You know how it is.

Chris LaFay: Exactly, man.

Andy Milligan: All right, we'll talk soon. Okay.

Chris LaFay: You too, man. Catch you later, man. Bye.