Over the last 2 decades, web development businesses pop up and die off faster than you can say “HTML”. But, building and growing a development company that stands the test of time is much harder to do than start one.
In this episode you’ll hear how Adrian Rodriguez from Anchored Web Solutions (https://www.anchoredweb.com/) has been able to not only sustain his web development business over the long haul but grow it into a company that serves private and government customers in one of the biggest counties in the United States.
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Automated Transcript Below
Dean Soto 0:00
Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedominfiveminutes.com. And we’re here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today’s topic is this perfecting, scaling, a web development business, that and more coming up. All right, well, welcome, welcome. Welcome, everybody to this episode, really cool episode super excited about this one we get to be, we get to talk about something that’s near and dear to my heart, because I used to have one of these, but it was not nearly as good as, as this gentleman who we’re going to be interviewing. So I get the pleasure of having Adrian Rodriguez, on this podcast episode. He is the founder of anchored web, anchored web.com. And he has he can’t wait to talk about what he does that what he’s been doing. But he has a really cool Web Development Agency. That’s that’s very, very, very, I want to say that it’s, he’s able to create these very simple but but powerful websites that have been in the commercial, as well as the government side of things. And so I just want to say a warm welcome to Adrian Adrian, how’s it going, my man,
Adrian Rodriguez 1:26
very good. Dean, thank you for having me. And it’s pleasure to be here. And
Dean Soto 1:30
so let’s talk about this. So I found you and reached out to you to be on this podcast, mainly because you you know Juma and Ed, which is always near and dear to my heart, I used to use Juma a lot. And on top of that your sites are, they have a they have a very beautiful yet very simple look to them. And, and so I just wanted to to reach out to you and have you come on to talk about how you got started, how you’re able to do what you do, and and you’ve made some very, very big impacts, even on the government side of things, which is very, very hard to do, which we’ll talk about in just a little bit have a cool little surprise for everyone to hear. It just it’s it’s something that was that blew me away. So how in the heck did you get started with web development in the first place?
Adrian Rodriguez 2:27
Well, I mean, if you know, there’s, there’s a few different timeframes in my life that I could go into that kind of explain how I got into web development. I guess the first proper website that I ever worked on was in about 1996, or 1997. I probably aging myself, but I was at the time. And my friend had a band called 41 height. And he had just started it in high school. But we were best friends at the time. We still are moving to France now. And so I just put together some HTML code that I had taught myself over the summer previously, and show him something that not really in a way of trying to get him to have this as his website. It was just something I thought this could be an interesting direction for your site. He took a look at that. So yeah, let’s I want that. Can that be my website? Wow. So I said, Oh, I guess yeah, I mean, it does work. And so that was his website. And it was, at the time, there wasn’t many websites in general. I mean, there were a lot, but there weren’t a lot of people doing it. And so when we put it up online, we had things like samples of his music on there. And of course, at the time, there’s this thing called frames that nobody does now in HTML, but it was all about frames. So you’d have like a frame was like a little mini window within a window on your website, we have all these frames worked out. It was like the big, you know, trend at the time. It was fun. And I wish I wish I wish I had some sort of a screenshot of that website back then. Because all the way those are from those years ago till today, I still maintain that website. And it’s obviously got a lot of changes since then.
Been what I did back then, or at least show other people look, I was doing this Netscape.
Dean Soto 4:20
Oh, my gosh, that’s awesome. That’s crazy. That’d be I was gonna say we do you still have just frames for that website?
Adrian Rodriguez 4:28
I know, well, I just I feel like somewhere, maybe there’s a fight because they tend to keep things you know, organized even 20 years ago. So I feel like maybe there was something I, I have somewhere that on a disk or maybe a floppy drive, maybe in the garage, but I don’t know. But I will say that it was funny, because that was not something I was trying to do at the time I get into web development. And I really just did it for fun. And then about 2007 2000, an eight, I started doing website for myself. Because I was a journalist before that before I before today’s business, which is a good web, I was a journalist. And so I sort of saw the way journalism was moving, which was it away from print journalism into the digital age, I didn’t think the industry was moving fast enough. So I had all these great ideas about putting embedded maps in in articles or crowdsourcing, journalism and things like that. So I put together this website, while these cool tools and things that I just thought were really neat. And so what happened was, even though I really felt like that was a passion project, for me, it wasn’t making a lot of money, partly because I didn’t think journalism should make money, in a sense. So there’s the whole discussion there. But I wasn’t really trying to make money advertising way. So I had to make money. Somehow, since I was doing this, I just decided to take the leap and start my own business. Well, I wasn’t really paying much attention, but people would say, Hey, I like your website. But you know, that piece there that you have on there where the event calendar automatically adds to a dynamic nap and and already changes colors and things like that. I wonder if you could do that for me? And I would say well, I guess I mean, what do you want me to build you some sort of a program for money or something where you get a money for it or something? And then it started just kind of like, I at one point, it was like six months or nine months into these calls. I said, Wow, I really obviously have missing the boat on something that’s happening. I started leaning into that. And I found Yeah, that was very much needed service that people would call me for. So. Yeah. So yeah, then I started kind of evolving. And eventually, I found it a third web solutions in 2009 2010, somewhere in there. And so we’re coming up to the 10 year anniversary of my business. So I’m really proud of that. And I’m really excited about how things have evolved since those early days of not even realizing this was a business.
Dean Soto 7:11
Great. That is awesome, man. Well, congratulations. That’s awesome. Yeah, I love that. I love that story, especially when it’s like, you have all these people who are kind of slapping you upside the head saying saying, Hey, can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? You’re like, yeah, maybe there’s a market here. I’m not sure I’ve only been asked by 20 people.
Adrian Rodriguez 7:33
Right, and I, you know, I do feel like a lot of the care that type of that start was interesting. Because even today, you know, I don’t see myself as a hard sell hard salesman, you know, the type of person who’s really going to push for you to sign on the dotted line or anything, I tend more to be more of a consultant or a collaborator with people. So if somebody calls me and they are interested in my services, that’s great. And I really appreciate that tone. So but I also don’t take that call with some sort of agenda. Well, this person’s calling me, so therefore I need to make money off of them. Said, I just sort of give them the time that they have to tell me about what they have going on. Usually, it’s a problem. And I’m sure usually I can solve it somehow, with what I do. But sometimes it doesn’t make sense for me to help. I mean, you know, I could, I could do a lot of things. But I sometimes I find myself asking people will call me if they’ve tried just doing the Facebook page or just trying an Instagram account. So sometimes, you know, and I can help them set those things up. But they’re really easy to do for a lot of people. So I mean, most people have that stuff these days anyway. Yeah. So that’s kind of like, an interesting characteristic of my businesses. I’m sort of like, the soft sale, I guess. Yeah.
Dean Soto 8:57
Which is cool. We got to talk about that prior to to get in on the podcast and how important that is. And I love that because, yeah, you get you, you know, right, when right away when someone’s trying to sell you something like, That happens a lot.
Adrian Rodriguez 9:14
Well, I do understand that people do not like to be sold anything, but they do love to shop. So you know, if you can change the dynamic with people to where they feel like they are having a shopping experience, that is a lot different than if they’re being sold something No, yeah, there’s some subtleties in there. But I definitely don’t want I want to present the menu and give them the chance to kind of run the show. Because I’ll be doing enough running of the show. Once we get started, I’ll be doing the project, I’ll be building all the technical stuff, you know, putting it all together for them. So love that. I love that.
Dean Soto 9:50
So I’m so encouraged web, you’d mentioned on the when we were talking prior to this, that there’s a there’s a reason for the name?
Adrian Rodriguez 10:01
Yes.
Dean Soto 10:02
So what is why Why did you call it anchored web?
Adrian Rodriguez 10:07
Well, you know, when I started my business, the first thing, you know, I know the very first thing but one of the things I was interested in was making sure I created a brand that reflected the kind of business I was going to do also gave some people, people who saw a reason to think about it beyond just glancing at it and moving on. And I wanted it to also be available as a domain name online and as a property on Facebook, Instagram. So I mean, one of the things I do when I help new businesses that are starting out is I tell them, we need to come up with a good name, right? But it needs to not only be a good name, but it also needs to be available on Facebook and Twitter’s when you see things like Twilio, or you know Asana, all these different web apps, Google even, you know, maybe not that so much. But a lot of these names are kind of weird. A lot of it has to do with the fact that there’s just not that many names that are out there. And yeah, so incurred web came along. Because first of all, my I’ve been programming since I taught myself the program when I was seven. And the internet came along. In the mid 90s. And I, I saw that there was a huge power of the internet. And so I was already learning about the internet from a philosophical standpoint. And one of the things that I learned about the internet early on, and it’s kind of stuck with me is that the internet is very powerful. Because it it does something that books can do for instance, which is you can link from one page to another. And even though that sounds like a very simple concept that hyper linking from one area of knowledge to another area is very powerful. And you can do so many things with them, it’s actually built the internet. So in web code that is called an anchor tag, and it’s represented with a little brackets and there’s a in there, that means I’m going to give you a link or it tells a browser show this link here. So the anchor tag is really the essence of the internet, in my you know view of it. So anchored web is a double entendre that not only speaks to the fact that I understand that the essence of the internet is the linking between different pages, but also that one thing that I found is that a lot of web developers, at least at the time when I started and it probably still the case, to some extent, they kind of would be a younger person who would be really excited about putting together websites, but then would maybe next year, they’re excited about being in a band or maybe then they’re getting started college or
getting out of college. So I found that a lot
of times I would be approached by people who say I had a web web person and that person, I can’t even call them anymore, I don’t know where they are or they’re not interested anymore. And so anchored web solutions is meant to also speak to the fact that I’m a reliable, steady, responsible and knowledgeable expert for clients. And so anchor web solutions, it speaks for both. So, you know, again, if you can come up with a name for your business, and it can kind of have multiple meanings that are wrapped up in one, it’s great because somebody ever asked you like you do a whole spiel that sounds impressive. And when they talk about
Dean Soto 13:33
No, it’s, that’s actually really cool. I get because, um, because so for a so with my business, I had the name pro sulim, which was and it literally for years, almost a decade, I had personal them, and I still use it for my kind of b2b business to business side of things. However, nobody knows what that is. It was it was I picked it because I couldn’t think of anything else that didn’t have that that that had a that did have a domain and that it basically no one was going to ever think of at all, but it did not. Nobody knows what that is. And that was a huge mistake. And it it it literally cost me now thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Because because they don’t even know what it what you have to sit there explaining it. So it’s not going to just grab someone’s attention or anything like that. And so, so yeah, it’s just that alone. Having that, that having that good brand name like you like you have, you know, what it what you already get these images of what it’s supposed to be? Right?
Adrian Rodriguez 14:50
Right. Exactly. To me, I believe, you know, before I was a programmer, in my current career, I was a journalist. And I was a writer. So words and how how words fit together was really important to me and still is. So I do feel like, yes, you the words you use the name of your company will imprint something in somebody’s mind, you know, even if it’s unintentional. So it could be that it’s confusing could be that it’s hard to spell. It could be that it sounds like another word or maybe start with something that another word and all those things to me, they kind of, you know, I’m not going to say that any business name is not potentially good. After all, we have things like eBay, as I said, all these crazy names for for businesses, and they, they some of them do break through and become mainstream known entities.
Yeah. So
I wouldn’t ever say that, you know, anything you pick is not worth trying, if you will love it. But, you know, for me, I was really interested in making sure people understood what they were reading and kind of could derive some sense of an understanding of it.
Dean Soto 16:00
Yeah. Oh, no, I love love. I just, yeah, I love that. Because because there’s someone like me, I’m more of a systems like behind the scenes guy. And I never really put an importance on that at all up front. And if I flipped it around, it would have been, there would have been, it would have been a lot easier. Right. And so so it just cool. It’s, it’s just neat seeing that, that was so important to you. Because literally, I had to I had, I had not only did I have the opportunity cost, but I ended up having to have someone help me do that and pay them to to help me to brand and help me to do all that stuff. Because I didn’t put an importance on it up front. And so that’s it just is really cool that that that you did that. So with. So with Ingrid web right now. So what walk me through the process of how how you actually run your business, when it comes to you, I’m a new prospect, I just came to you, I need help with a website. In fact, let’s just do the the common, I had this guy over here. And he wasn’t very good. And he wasn’t dependable yada, yada, yada. I need I need help. What do I do?
Adrian Rodriguez 17:27
Well, you know, the first thing I want to do is understand a little bit about the
person that I’m talking to and a business or organization that that they’re representing. So it’s not, to me, it’s not a small part of the process to kind of get a sense a little bit about, about the background. So it could be that they are, they’re in need of something that day, because something fell through and they just look me up and they follow me and they’re saying it’s an emergency, I need to something on my website, or else I’m in trouble for something. Well, that’s fine. And I can try to get those things done. But usually I can take a few minutes to say okay, so tell me about your business. How did you sort of like what we’re doing right now you’re telling me you’re asking me about my business? It’s kind of what I do. Because I think businesses about relationships. And if I don’t understand where they’re coming from, or if I don’t think that they are interested in where I’m coming from, but I’m not sure that we’re going to be a good fit. That’s, I get along well, with a lot of people like
Dean Soto 18:32
just with just like with that, for example, like with that process are you? A lot of because a lot of I know a lot of web companies, I know a lot of companies in general, myself included. So back in the day, and I’m getting gotten a lot better at this is that what happens if it’s not a good fit? If you feel like you know, this person is just not going to be like, what do you do? What do you do in that particular situation?
Adrian Rodriguez 18:57
Well, you know, it’s, it’s hard for me to hell, if somebody is, I mean, it’s, I’m not going to take your call, and then I don’t see myself concluding during the middle of that call that this is not a fit. There have been times where I have told people, you know, I appreciate that you’re calling me and stuff or that we’re talking about it, but I think it’s a good fit. And so usually what I would do is I would try to figure out so safe, where the reason why we would not be a good fit would be because they have a different idea about how much it should cost or what the value is what I do, or their timeline is different than what I can manage things like that, where it’s more of an incompatibilities for practical reasons. If it was just a personal way compatibility, I don’t I get along with people pretty well that I even you know, I’m actually good with working with people were very challenging personalities.
So I don’t think it would be that but yeah, so usually,
that’s what I’m trying to suss out as well. What are you looking for? Well, I need a website. Okay, when you need it right now? And how much are you willing to pay? $20? Well, let’s see, you know, I still wouldn’t you know, if somebody said to me, I need a website, and I only have 20 bucks, what do you got for me? I’m not I don’t need the $20 per se. But I would probably say, well, that’s interesting, I think you could do these things. Maybe you shouldn’t pay me. But if you’re really at that level, you should probably you could do this that.
But um, so what i what i what I’m looking for, though, is
there’s and this is where again, I say it’s about relationships, because even though I’m a very skilled and experienced web developer, one of the things about me is, as you can kind of hear from my background, I didn’t work, maybe it’s not obvious, I didn’t go to school, formerly to learn programming, a lot of what I know, and everything I do, which is for June was sites and WordPress, and HTML, and all these other I can be Davis, database management, and SEO and all that good stuff. But I picked all the stuff up on my own over the years. And I feel like I probably could say that I have some level of education about it at this point, but certainly experience. But I do want my clients to understand that I, I am a unique, at least
Unknown Speaker 21:35
I have my
Adrian Rodriguez 21:36
own, I created my own path to where I am today. So if if there’s something that pops out that maybe a educated, formerly educated programmer should know, I may not know that thing. But it’s not because I can’t understand it. It may be that I just haven’t encountered in the last 10 or 20 years, I’ve probably encountered it all. Yeah, or most things. But that’s one of those things where I kind of want to tell people, hey, so what I do is I solve problems for you. And I usually I learned to do it in the most efficient and, and proper way as possible. But it isn’t 100% because I can’t go back to a textbook that I read in college about how to do that. So. So that’s what I want them to understand about me. And as long as they’re like, hey, well, that’s great. I mean, you seem like you know what you’re talking about, and we’re putting our trust into you. Yeah, great. And then then I can start looking at whether they’re trustworthy, and whether I can put trust in them to pay the bills and stuff like that, or keep up with me, things like that. So, so the things that I’m really looking for, you know, actually, this morning was doing a bunch of the cold calling,
as well. That was really interesting. Let’s talk about that.
Dean Soto 22:55
Because, okay, everyone, obviously, every single business needs that as so need you to do some kind of sales, marketing, things like that. What’s your what’s your what’s your sales and marketing strategy? So it sounds like you do some some cold calling, like, give me an idea of how that goes?
Adrian Rodriguez 23:14
Yes, well, okay, so cold calling is one of those things that you have to go in with the right mindset. Otherwise, you can feel really bad after a short amount of time. So the idea that I started with is that the rate of success, I mean, depending on how you define success, but the rate of success is generally, and this is not a hard number, this is like in my head so that I can approach it of a mental state that works is like 3% or 123 percent out of what I call 100 people, maybe three of them will become a website, me maybe just one or not even that. So yeah, what I do is I have all I have my sources going to get it business listings from and then I call them one after the other and I, I, I, I have a certain pitch. But the first and foremost thing I’m trying to do is find out if they have a website, or are looking for a website, what value do they put on a website in their mind at least and then if they are interested in getting into a conversation about it.
And so for me, at least with
my approach is not to go from never talk to this person report to the selling, or to signing on the dotted line. It’s having that conversation, getting to know all of these people out here. And if they’re interested in will have further conversations, and I’ll plug them into my customer relationship management system that lets me follow up in a week or two weeks or six months, or whatever it is. So if I talk to somebody, they say, you know, I am interested in just getting off the ground. And I really don’t need a website. I might need one in six months, but I’m not worried about it right now. Yeah. Again, I’m a I’m an easygoing guy. So I feel great. All right, well, just remember these things about me that you can remember, hopefully you take my info down, I will call you back anymore. If that works for you, or I will call you back in August. And like I like it that you
Dean Soto 25:25
frame that that way too. Because I’ve been guilty of it with my with my my cold calling, warm calling in and so on of just saying Okay, no problem. Thanks. And yeah, it’s not framed as in, I am going to call you march, or I’m going to call you in April, and see how things are going. Because now you’re not really a bother, you’re, you’re literally and if they say okay, they’ve given you permission. And it’s a much different frame, obviously, they can completely ignore you. But at the same time, you’re going to have a much higher success rate. I would imagine doing that.
Adrian Rodriguez 26:02
Yeah, a little bit more, because I look at it as planting seeds, more so than you know, making sales or making a touchdown. So the metaphor I use is planting seeds. So if I let somebody know about me, and they seem receptive to the idea, even if you’re just being nice, at least they got it, they gave me a chance and see where I am. And then I always plan for that at the end where I say, you know, we’re going to have a follow up with not whether you like it or not, but we’re going to, I’m going to talk with you, if that’s okay with you at x point in the future. Yeah, so even if I like this morning, I one of the people I football, it just so happened that she knew one of my clients. And so there was a folly in between us or in common with us. And so that totally greases the wheels or whatever, it totally helps when they go oh.
Now I know you’re somebody.
But she was I feel very interested by the end of that call. She had some other things that she had to, you know, think about or whatever, which is fine. But she said, I’ll give you a call in like a week. Right? She said that to me. So I you know, I said to me, but what I told her, and this was somebody who already is interested, already committed to call me back. I said, if I don’t hear back from you, in a week, I’ll maybe I’ll follow up. If you don’t mind on Thursday, or something like that. She said, Oh, yeah, great. And so again, we’re sort of already in that collaborative mode that we need to be in, if I’m going to work on her website anyway. Yeah. Like, Hey, I’m not trying to tell you what to do. You’re your own person. And you know, after all, I’m I’m hoping to help you out. But I have my end of the bargain, of course, I want to selling a website, or I want to be able to make money. So if I don’t hear back from you, you can expect that and if you don’t ask me, then maybe at least at that point, you kind of have the idea that i’m i’m not just calling and seeing if you’re interested, I’m also working with you, and then going with you to that, so you can take it. And anytime you want to work with with me, then our I appreciate that, you know, I never want to sit there and think well, I’m such an established successful business, that people are knocking down my door, and I don’t have to do anything, I just wait for them to come in. And it kind of happens a lot. When you you become successful, you have a lot of referrals, but I never let that tell. That’s why I do cold calls, I have plenty of business. But I like to always have more and more of these little seeds that go out and get planted so that they can come to fruition. And in three months, six months, two years,
I had I had a client emailed me this morning,
who is a local politician here. asked me if we could get started on on a new website. And this was somebody that I hadn’t talked to in four years, I think maybe three or four year yeah. And so it was just one of those things where I always six months or a year at a time, I would kind of know her just letting her know. I still around, I’m still doing things. And I here’s
the latest and I still think about you not like
that. But I mean, I still, you know you’re not you’re not forgotten. And I just think it helps
a lot because there she is calling me
up or emailing me and asking me, how’s it been going? Okay, so you’re looking for a new website.
Community. love that. I love that. So,
Dean Soto 29:43
so kind of going into this one particular case that I wanted to I wanted to share. Yeah. I want to make sure Okay, cool. I have this so you share it an audio from from within me from actually my Fresno County Sheriff. Who the person who was interviewing her was it was it was really surprising to hear what they said about the Fresno County, the sheriff’s a website. So two things real, real quick, I’m going to ask you the first and then I’m going to ask you the second and I’m going to play this thing. One, how in the heck did you even have the opportunity to build the Fresno kids to Fresno County Sheriff’s that I mean that that’s a pretty big area, and it’s government to very big thing like difficult things to get? How in the heck did you do that? So that’s, that’s question number one, ask question number two right after that.
Adrian Rodriguez 30:49
Sure. Well, okay, so that was
Yes, that was a, that was one of the that is one of my biggest clients. Now you can answer the sheriff’s office came about, interestingly, an interesting story. So my, my first connection to the sheriff’s office was
that I wasn’t the newspaper journalist. Before I was a, I was a programmer and I had been reading a story about a company that was a tech company, a satellite internet technology company here in the valley. And so I kind of find these interesting technology companies that that were under the radar, I guess, and I would bring them to light in my in my reporting. And so that was really fun. And I would, I would make a good impression for some reason or another. So one of the companies for this company, was a husband and wife and the wife was the sister of the public information officer.
So the reason why this is it took about a year of toss with you over there just to for him to understand and what I could do, how I could do it with Alan might be able to structure a deal.
And so what they needed and what I ended up being able, the reason why it ended up happening was what they decided they needed was they wanted a website that was not only fully secure and
ready at that level, but they also needed they were they were interested in doing was having a media outlet
that was not didn’t necessarily compete in the market. The first will be or was the local newspaper, but they didn’t want their clothes to only be found in a newspaper
reporter Oh, yeah. So if they wanted to talk about
crime that happened, and they wanted to talk about whatever they wanted to say they wanted to have
a platform online, that could serve as a media outlet from their from their agency. So my background in journalism came to me in a huge
advantage for me, because I could,
I could describe to them and I could write out a proposal like like, technically create kind of website that would produce the media outlet impact on our community. So I created a site. On top of that they had a lot of other requirements, because that was one of the big ones that made them sort of say, Okay, if we work with you, we’re going to get
anywhere else.
Dean Soto 33:33
Yeah. That’s cool. I mean, and I also like a year for, for a government organization. That is that is pretty quick, if you think Yeah.
Adrian Rodriguez 33:49
Well, you know, and then the guy who hired me, he’s, he’s retired in the last four years or so three or four years. So I think he was wanting to create a legacy for his time. At Yeah, sheriff’s office, at least in terms of that department. So there was some urgency there a little bit. But, you know, yes, it’s a short amount of time. And it’s a long amount of time, from different perspective. But definitely,
I also had to qualify to actually work there. I mean, I was hired as an independent contractor, but I have taken a lie detector tests,
and background checks and things like that. So there’s a lot of security there. So that also helps with your if I don’t have a record, I guess.
You could find you to be trustworthy, we can work with like big agencies. But you know, I know much of my like, like that, too. So much of what I do has to do with the fact that I have a writing background that explains all these things. And it becomes not just me personally convincing people but what a document I created. Also some convincing people and I don’t have either you
Dean Soto 35:00
Yeah. And then on top of that, is you know how from that, from that experience, you know, how people digest information visually. And that’s a that’s a huge thing. And in fact, in this particular thing that I’m going to play that was that was a big that was totally, totally unsolicited. So where is this? This quote front? Like, where’s this, where’s the,
Adrian Rodriguez 35:27
that’s a radio show. It’s called Chris Daniel in the morning.
And it’s just a, it’s a regular show for a long time. And so they’ll interview the sheriff once in a while, and it just was funny because somebody was listening to it. And then we know that it was on the air. So I went really quickly to the, to the web, and I went with
an archive of that.
That clip
and I cut it out audacity, maybe
Dean Soto 36:03
I can tell that audio is like, awesome. So so I’m gonna I’m gonna play this real quick. Now keep in mind you listening to the context that this is a radio show host. And this is a government website. And if you put those two things together one no radio show hosts is good a good a good at literally drool over a government website, because government websites tend to be really, really just absolutely horrid. horrendously bad, and nobody likes them. And there, there’s a ton of money spent on these websites. And they end up being really crappy. So take a listen at this, and it just tells you tells you how good not just the the builders of the of the actual sites, but also how the information is digested, check this out.
Unknown Speaker 36:54
And by the way, where we at
Unknown Speaker 36:57
backlog these days on CCW, we’re doing much better. And in fact, an update on that Christmas is the latest, we the process is actually even easier, because now you can actually apply on line, you don’t have to print out the forms and bring them in and it actually eliminate one of the interviews, you can apply online, I get your appointment automatically when you do that on our website, it Fresno share.org o RG and you click on the second amendment icon and the application process will walk you
Unknown Speaker 37:33
right through it online. And
Unknown Speaker 37:35
speaking of that website, I’ve got to throw this out before we get to our next call sugar.
Unknown Speaker 37:42
Perhaps honestly got it, you know, I love you. But this is this is like you have a government website like I have ever seen in terms of the ease of access. And Holy cow, you start doing some of those pull downs, how many things are out there to keep you safer to get people behind bars, behind bars and so many other thing. It’s just it’s everything house watches. I don’t know what the reading posse console the questions for CCW, the Explorer program. I mean, it just goes on and on. I don’t know
Unknown Speaker 38:17
who the people are that are involved in keeping this thing up to speed. But it’s got to be a lot because
Unknown Speaker 38:23
for as much as you have on there. It’s not.
Unknown Speaker 38:26
It will. Thank you, Chris, we have a great website. And again, it’s all one word.org o RG and there’s so many resources and kudos to Chris Curtis who really started the process he worked with
Unknown Speaker 38:41
a doing as our consultant and he’s still with us and Tony body is keeping it going. And it really is a great website. I’m really proud of that app.
Dean Soto 38:50
That’s crazy. So absolutely crazy. Just thinking of that radio show hosts, these are just in general. Why are they you never hear that first government site. So yeah, it was really cool to hear that like, like, what what am I like? Next question with that is is what is that? How is that like helped your business in general? Working with government agencies? How did you do? So I, we talked about that. But do you? Do you see yourself doing more for local government agencies like that?
Adrian Rodriguez 39:29
Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, I I pitched a few ideas. I was sort of in the running for a little bit of time with the the Fresno Police Department on the basis of the fact that every sheriff’s officers Yeah. So there’s there’s that I can’t say that I’ve done a lot of political some websites I’ve done politician in this area. totally open to it. But I am, I’m talking to the city of focus about a project right now that might be doing it up for their official. But there’s a couple things there in I’m also working right now currently with Travis County, on a overhaul. And that should be launching. And so yeah, you know, it’s helped so much, because there’s just so much that is said by by telling the people that I work with the sheriff says that I, at least to a law enforcement agencies, work with large government. And it isn’t untrue. It’s totally true that working with law enforcement officials is not as easy to work with them, because they’re used
to tackling people on the street.
But they tend to, if they want something, they don’t mind being loud about it or being forced, you know, it’s part of their job description. So for me, to be able to be diplomatic with them is something that I find something I’m good at. And I think that all those things are wrapped up in saying, Hey, I work with this shirt on their website, and I kept it up all these years.
So yeah, that’s, that’s how it’s helping me.
And in terms of doing government jobs, yeah, it is monumentally harder, because you have, there’s so much ready to deal with. And, you know, there’s bidding and things like that to do. But if you understand it, to me, it’s just a scaling. Same thing I do. When I bring my phone calls, I do a call to discuss private business and sort of like, let me understand their situation and what you guys are trying to do. And if there’s a way I can solve it, I will let you know. And so for the sheriff’s office, or any agency that I work with small businesses, small business, it might be like, hey, you give me this content. And I’ll be done with the website, and in a week or two, maybe every week, and then we’re launching the website, you know, it’s not that hard, right. But you know, it’s the same approach was taken for a large agency this week, it can be nine months or something, you know, totally. But I just lay it out. And I say, Hey, this is what would it take, and this is what I’ll have to end with, he’s going to be our challenges. And these are things I’m not good at that I might, you know, I might not be good enough to do these things. And then just by laying it all out there in a very precise way, gives them the champion for finding out in their head. And like I said, there’s a lot of environments that government agencies have, but it’s not impossible to get into those actually, really, stay authentic to the goal. I love it. I love that.
Dean Soto 42:37
So always ask this question. It is the the anchor question to the podcast, no pun intended, no pun intended. So what is one five minute mindset shift or decision or something that really was it didn’t take much time for you to actually say, Hey, I’m doing this, and that has delivered just a massive amount of results for you?
Adrian Rodriguez 43:06
Well, there’s a lot of things like that, you know, and but I think something that I look at is, when I decided some years ago to change my
just my businesses
made a huge difference. It only took me a few minutes to kind of realize I need to do things differently. And then I started putting those in action. And it made such a difference. And that is that I used to say me, when I first started business, I was very as I was described to me, I got into it for journalism reasons. When people asked me to do websites, I was sort of sort of used by the idea that, like software, I was just doing it for fun. So for me, it was about when I first started my web development business, the first thing I was trying to you were saying, Hey, I don’t like to nickel and dime, people, I only want to sell a website people at a, at a railing at a price to simply see that we’re at a high price tag, you know, I’m just I was very,
just very against
business, the type stuff that I just wanted to do my cleaning. And yes, money was important. And we all know that. So I knew that hadn’t been part of it. But I was really trying to avoid money. Yeah. But at some point, again, all these things are coming along. For me, I realized some years ago that I needed to change my thought process about what it would what I was calling legally and diamond people was not necessarily the only way to look at it. And and so now I look back and with my current businesses, what I do now is I don’t focus so much on the website, project rice, as much of what I do on the ongoing continue continuing services. what that translates into from a top down more residual income more passive than
Unknown Speaker 45:14
having to work work, right.
Adrian Rodriguez 45:15
So I enjoy working for the money and going out finding getting incompatibility, Vincent, get a website, things like that. That’s all enjoyable. But when I decided to change my attitude about small amounts of money, it it really opened a lot of things up. Because really, I work with customers that are nickel and dimed. It’s that conversation.
Hey, you built my website. And Something’s Weird About it now.
Unknown Speaker 45:48
And then I’d have to say,
Adrian Rodriguez 45:51
we’re Who are you again?
Dean Soto 45:56
awkward conversation. I totally I used to do web development. I only know that like I’ve had people where, where it’s been like two or three years. They do they do that? And I’m like, sometimes they’re just like, okay, I’ll fix it if it’s really quick.
Adrian Rodriguez 46:12
Right? Yes. Because sometimes I’ve had that moment where they say, this is how the conversation went. Now, I don’t know if this was one of the conversations, I haven’t maybe realized I hadn’t changed my mind. But the conversation you’re having is like, Hi, Adrian, Adrian, you build my website. I really liked what you did. And now it’s doing something weird. And I’d say, well, what’s happening is I’m looking at your website, anger, your SSL, your beard and your your database storage is the I say all these things.
Yeah, I don’t know anything, what you’re saying? Are you saying that?
You gave me this thing called the website?
No, well, you know, the world changes, and Google changes their
algorithm. And so then they would say, Well, I, how do I lead me? You just always know how to make my sights better Enter.
And I go, Well, I always make it better, I guess.
And then I just realized, okay, that’s not they don’t want that.
And I didn’t want that they didn’t want their websites, they go down. And
I want to have a weird conversation, right? Explain to them a bunch of stuff about why their website changing first.
It’s just the nature of websites, right? So it was just a paradigm shift for me to say, No, this is a living, breathing thing. And, and realistically, we need to work on this. The work start with you.
And it didn’t just change in the sense that I changed the business model when I was under. And actually I am.
I also, it also forced me to get into all the web services that are that are very important, like SEO and Google AdWords, things like that. So I kind of knew that stuff before and a half no one global competition for AdWords. But But I was it was really trying to push that end of the deal. I was really happy to be able to make make cool websites. I love it. I love it, man.
Dean Soto 48:14
So how so how can people reach out to you if they need to get a site if they need to? Do any update their site? If they’re, if their last web developer was suddenly left? And they need something? How can people get ahold of you? And so that they can work with you?
Adrian Rodriguez 48:31
Yeah, and all the ways they usually would that mean, my website is
at he or he web.com, my phone numbers 559-372-6887,
which you can text me as well probably want to email me first,
go to my website, just so that I
can call me again. And yeah, I’m on Facebook and Twitter and,
and all that good stuff right now on Google, I have a, an offer available to people that last till middle of July, that gives
them a free month of service, if they sign up in the way that you sign up there. So I’m really really right now what I’m wanting to do is is get some more, what I’m what I’m looking to do right now is offer my like world class, enterprise level services verse really small companies as well. And I really want to try to get that level of professionalism and be able to package it and make it a smaller price. That small businesses can also use it because I would I have these great services that are larger scale, and I have have my basic services that are for the small scale, I’m trying to breed skills, so that way I can offer good value to businesses. So right now I’m doing doing included is with hosting and domain names or hosting service or domain name, SSL, SEO, things like that. So if you if you need anything with the web, even if you just have, if you call me and you get me into a conversation, I really, really do my best to try to give you as much information as I can and teach you about what you need to do. For me, my business philosophy in terms
of technology and kind of things that I built or, or any any
new innovative system that let people have had more information available
then so they can make better decisions on a daily basis with the right way.
So I’ve worked with nonprofits a lot on like things like click to share, which would help help people finding food opportunities, like maybe
at the end of the day, Starbucks has to throw away all your bakery products,
those sorts of things being listed on the website in a lane.
by foot, he said help help feed the homeless for experts. So those kinds of projects are ones that I really like lab dashboards, because I care a lot about our community as well. So but in general, if you call me about anything, I’m going to do my best to help you try to help you understand and what I understand about the internet, internet, to me, this is all real funding. And I really just appreciate the fact that I get to give a living. And so I like I enjoy it.
Unknown Speaker 51:30
That is awesome.
Dean Soto 51:33
I love it, man. And it’s true. With with us being on the phone, I could tell how sincere you are I We’ve been in business for I’ve been as almost a decade as well. And you very quickly tell when somebody is is the type where they’re just, they’re good. They want to give value. And so when you were on the phone with me, when we were just talking back and forth, you can tell when someone wants to make a possibly make that sale, and so on. And so for you is like, if it happens, it happens. We’re just gonna talk because we talked to we were talking for like 45 minutes or something like that. Yeah. And so it’s really, really cool what you’re what you do and how you do it. Because you can tell that you really care about the other person’s well being. And it’s it’s pretty awesome. So So yeah, guys, don’t first off. Thank you so much for being on. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Adrian Rodriguez 52:28
Yeah, really appreciate you holding me down and asked me to be on that. You know, it’s really great. I
love loving what you’re doing.
Dean Soto 52:36
Thanks, man. Yeah, it’s It was my pleasure, for sure. And so if you want to just definitely seriously massively increase your web presence, go check out a good web.com anchored web.com You can also give Adrian a call. And that is the end of our show. It was awesome. It was just I love the tip that Adrian shared the especially when it comes to the cold calling that was kind of an unexpected little treat. So I appreciate you sharing that because because that’s that’s something that every business has to do at some point in time, whether it’s now or in the future, and nobody likes doing it. Yes. Just having that little reframe, so I appreciate that. But But yes, this is the end of the podcast episode. If you want more of these episodes episodes, definitely go to Google type in freedom in five minutes podcast, or you can go to freedom in five minutes. com You can also if you want a virtual systems architect that will take what you’re doing right now. document everything step by step, go check out freedom in five minutes calm but for now. We will see you on the next freedom in five minutes episode.