Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  0:00  

So welcome to another episode of Virtual Assistants, the agency growth machine. And today, my guest is the amazing sir Ryan Davis in the house from Phoenix, Arizona. And he thinks it's nice and cool. They're just about 100 degrees. Right?

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  0:20  

That's right. It's about 100 today, so it's, you know, it's a cool day.

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  0:24  

That's awesome. Man, I'm so glad I got to start this amazing journey with you here. I think we haven't known each other for that long for about a year now. But I feel like you know, you have one of those personalities that you know, a person gravitates towards, so anytime, you know, I had a question or my team was stuck with anything, you've been there to help us out. So you know, and I'm, I'm excited about this episode. And thanks for doing so. So I'm quickly going to introduce Ryan Davis and what he does. So Ryan Davis is the founder of Davis construction marketing. And he is also the co-founder of Cardinal Floor Coatings. Did I get that name? Right?

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  1:13  

It's Cardinal Concrete Coatings. But, you know, floor coatings are fine. Same thing

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack) 1:18  

So my first question to you is, I know you're working within your digital marketing company, the Davis Construction Market, right? You know, you are targeting a very similar type of companies, like Cardinal Concrete Coatings. So which company did you start first? And, why was that and maybe, talk us through that journey that you took in starting these two different companies out?

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack) 1:46  

Yeah, absolutely. First off, thank you so much for the warm welcome. I appreciate it, man. And so what's funny is I started the marketing company first. And the reason why is really because it was a lot, you know a lower threshold to get into the marketing company. and then to get into the Coating company, is the Coating company had a much higher threshold to get in, it was much more friction because you needed a lot of money to get it going with the equipment and the trucks and all these different things, the marketing company, you know, you can start a marketing agency with next to no money, right? If you can get results for people, you can start a marketing company. So you know, it was that simple. That's why I started the marketing company first. But before that, I was a sales and marketing director for a residential Concrete Coating and a residential painting company. So I was, you know, I was running Facebook ads at that company, I was doing sales at that company. And I got to understand the residential home service industry during that, you know, that time there. And then Previous to that I was, you know, I was a commercial estimator in the coatings industry. And then I, you know, I just, I have a really good understanding of the home service industry, and kind of that aspect, but, um, but yeah, that's what happened, man. So that's how we got started. And, and then, so we've, we've had Cardinal, just over a year now, so

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  3:10  

yeah, okay. Okay, so well, so you're applying, getting a taste of your own medicine, so to speak, on your floor? The concrete company that you have got going on there? And? And is it How is it working, like maybe just, we will, we'll talk more about your Davis construction marketing today. But I just want to get a feel of like, how things are going on the Concrete Coating side because that's like more hands-on and I guess it's an amazing thing that you're doing because if you're working with those types of people, you're running a very similar company, then gives you a huge, huge edge, because you can try things out for your own company, you know, so walk us through that a little bit.

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  3:53  

Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest aspects that's awesome about working with DCM, if you are a Concrete Coating company, is that we own a Concrete Coating company ourselves. And so we're able to do things and learn things and test things out to get the final product together. But, um, the Concrete Coating company is doing awesome. Now, I get to take a lot of credit for the success, but I have my older brother Alex, who is the GM of Cardinal Concrete Coatings, and he is in the day-to-day operations, crushing it. I'm also a co-owner with my older brother, right? And then my mom, my dad, they're in the business, we've got my younger brother who's 22 years old now. He's in the business as a lead installer. So they're running the business day today. And then we also have a lot of other team members there that are crushing it. So everything's going great, we're learning we're hiring. It's a much different business than a marketing agency. So different challenges. But you know, it's a great business and the business is doing fantastic right now. So

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  4:57  

I love the fact that you're working with You know, I think I think it's an opportunity when we get to work with our families together. Uh, you know that it's three brothers on the other side and RepStack we're working together and after a long time because I've been out of the country for 20 years my brother Athar (Founder RepStack) in Delaware has been away and this business kind of brought us together again for the 2020 year break so that's an amazing feeling and it's because not everybody can work with their families in a way that you and I are working so so I'm sure that's a great great feeling for you guys doing crushing it every single day with the family it's amazing. So tell me about Davis construction marketing. How did you decide to start doing digital marketing for you know concrete floor concrete companies or construction companies? I think you're you have a very specific niche right and yeah, yeah yeah, so I'm gonna get to the niche question but just tell me a little bit about how and when did you start Davis construction marketing

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  6:09  

So officially, my wife and I quit my job officially in October of 2019. That's when I quit my job. And you know, we had like two clients you know, at that point and so that's kind of how it started you know, I quit my job and it was 2019 of October so um, it's been almost two years since we officially started but we didn't start landing clients consistently until months after that. So I feel like we've almost been in business about a year and a half versus two years because of that aspect um, but But yeah, so the reason why I started DCMS because I wanted to make more money you know like I was you know, I was a sales and marketing manager or director for a residential home service company that was doing a couple of million dollars a year in revenue so you know, I wasn't living the dream by any means right and so you know, I wanted to make more money I wanted to provide for myself my family and so I saw this avenue of like, wow, as you know, I'm crushing it at Facebook ads for this company, I know what I'm doing. I think I can do this for other people you know, and so I went out and got one client and crushed it for him and I'm like man, I know for sure I can do this for like three companies or four companies and so that's kind of how I got started a Nice job and the company I was working for as a sales and marketing manager ended up hiring me or I'm sorry I ended up making them my first client so it kind of worked out perfectly there and so that's kind of how I got started man and it's been about a year and a half since we been landing kind you know, landing clients consistently kind of building a company versus kind of being like a freelancer so

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  7:54  

That's awesome man. Yeah, um, so I guess it looks like that you just started and launched the company instead of being a freelancer you might do the freelancer thing for a long time right?

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  8:07  

Yeah, I mean it was probably maybe six months where I quit my job and it was my wife and I and before we hired our first employees, maybe six months so but my wife and I really started together so you know I get a lot of credit for what we're doing here but my wife is also really mainly in the business day today as well so she's crushing it as well. And we started from the beginning and I remember when we first started a company when I was doing sales calls is she would call you to know, like the leads that were coming in and she would almost qualify them and then convert them over to like a strategy session with me and I was kind of funny right like my wife for me when we first started so it's kind of funny thing to think about you know,

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  8:53  

That's awesome. Again, you know, you have your family and your wife working with you on a day-to-day basis. So that's very impressive, man. So tell me why Ryan it's so important to pick a niche and I kind of get it why you pick the specific Nisha that you picked out but right, or were you always like, you know, like, did you start with just going with this niche? Like, did you have that epiphany from the get-go, cuz, you know, I've been running my agency for the last 13 years. And you know, just recently I finally decided that you know, I got to focus on a particular niche, but like, I did you just right out the gates. Why did you pick the niche you pick? And why is it so important to pick a niche for an agency owner like yourself?

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  9:43  

Great question, man. It's a great question. So what's funny is when we first started DCM, it was I was serving and marketing to the entire home service industry. So it doesn't matter what you're doing building homes, roofing painting, siding, you name it. Yeah. So, you know, I started serving anyone and everyone in the home service industry, which is like probably 50 different niches within the home service industry. So it was kind of all over the place. And I quickly realized that that was kind of like all over the place. It was kind of confusing to do that. But it wasn't until I joined the Seven-Figure Agency back in May of last year, you know until I niched down. And so I, you know, I spoke with Josh Nelson, and he was like, Look, are you doing a home service, you're doing home improvement, I think you can niche down into, you know, just a painting and just the coatings. And so that's what I did. And, you know it's been, you know, it's been a great decision, you know, to do that. But we do the same thing in the coatings company, as well. So with Cardinal, we only focus on one type of coating, you know, we don't do 10 different coatings, we do one different like one main Coating. And then we have like two or three different other ones that we rarely do maybe once a month or something. But for the most part, we do one type of floor Coating, and it works out well. Because we're able to train people easier, we're able, you know, we're able to build steps and processes easier. All of the team members collectively know exactly what we're doing. It's much easier to understand. And it's the same thing here in the marketing agency. So, um, you know, if you have multiple niches that you're working with, that might be okay, if you have the right processes in place or team members. You know, if I'm not sure, you know, I don't wanna go too far from the question, but I think this is valid. One of the things that I'm looking to do with DCM is to get into more niches. So I've already started kind of a power washing niche within the DCM umbrella. So we have decorative concrete, Concrete Coating, and painting. Now we're going to be adding power washing, Pest Control h fac, and pool cleaning. So we're going to serve like seven niches, right? But what I'm going to design is that there's only going to be a certain amount of people in any given niche. So one team member is only going to serve clients who have two different niches, so they never are going to have to know seven different niches. So yeah, if you're in our Pest Control division, you're only going to have a Facebook ads manager that works with pest control and one other niche. And so I think it's huge that you get your niche down. And a little plug for the seven-figure agency, you might as well just join the seven-figure agency, and they'll show you exactly how to do it. So

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack) 12:31  

That's awesome, man. So I guess it's true that riches are in the niches. So yeah, that's, that's amazing. So I guess you already just kind of touched upon that, tell us that breakthrough moment, for your agency growth. When did that happen again?

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  12:52  

So, you know, our growth started when I joined the seven-figure agency, which was May 2020 of last year. Um, so, you know, I sat down with Josh Nelson, and we got dialed in with, you know, with the niche, and we got dialed in with the course and everything else that had, you know, like the coaching programs, and the weekly coaching all those things, that's where it took off, you know, so

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack) 13:15  

that was the moment of, really when you decided or, you know, you kind of made up your mind that this is a niche I'm going to stick with, and, and right from the get-go? or How long did it take to start seeing substantial results come in, after that moment that you signed up with your, with the coaching program that Josh Nelson offers?

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  13:39  

Well, it was pretty immediate for me, and I'm one of those people that when I get involved with something, I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. So if I'm gonna, you know, I just started working out again. And when I'm there, I am freaking working hard. You know, I'm not taking shortcuts. I'm, you know, I'm busting my butt there. So the same thing with the coaching program, when I joined, I was all in. So that's how it worked for me. So that, you know, the results were pretty immediate, because I was all in from the very beginning. Yeah, but that's where, for me, you know, for sure,

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)14:15  

I would have to agree, man, and Josh Nelson. I think there's a ton of people out there, but Josh Nelson, really, he turned around for me and you know, this whole idea of the company, we're running the game out because Josh trusted us. And you know, he gave us a chance. And it's just an amazing group of people there. And we're so blessed to be and we kind of came together from Josh groups. We've now made an amazing amount of friends over the last year since I've been part of his group. Yeah, so I agree with you there. So my next question for you, Ryan, is to tell me a little bit about your team, how many people you have in your team now and How it is laid out, and maybe just a top-level structure of how your teams kind of spread out in the market.

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  15:06  

So, the agency itself, we are doing websites, SEO, Facebook ads, Google ads, you know, automation through high level, and then we deliver our leads, you know, through High Level (Marketing-Based CRM) to our clients. And so we provide that. So you know, we do a lot of automation there. And so, basically, what we have is we have Facebook team members, you know, that are building ads or, you know, making creatives you know, as, you know, graphic design or whatever, video editing, and we've got a Google Ad specialist, we've got an SEO team, we've got a website designer, you know, developer, we have an automation specialist that does a lot of the automation, my wife and I, who run the company, and yeah, you know, project manager as well, you want to have someone that gets things done. So we got a project manager, but all the basic team members that you would have in a marketing company. And then we do have three VAs through RepStack. So, you know you know, plug on RepStack, if you need a VA, You better be hiring, you know, one through RepStack as soon as possible. But we have three VAs, which has been great. We've got, you know, a fantastic sales assistant, Manan, that does a fantastic job. And then we have two SEO specialists actually that we have through RepStack, that have been fantastic as well.

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  16:27  

So it sounds like you have a team of maybe 15 to 20 people now who are kind of running the show behind the scenes.

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  16:34  

Yeah, we have, we have probably about I think about 13 us employees, and then, you know, we have a ton of VAs that are in the Philippines in Pakistan. And you know, we like to treat them like our own team members, because they are, we do a lot of good work. But I'm about 13 US employees, and you know, then we have the overseas employees for sure.

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  17:00  

Nice, nice. And what percent of your team is remote? So like, Is everybody working out of your office in Phoenix, or especially the USB bowl, or is everybody kind of spread out? Inside us and we know there are people overseas as well. So,

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  17:18  

so everyone is remote. So that's one of the things that we, my wife and I, when we started this company, we were like, Man, this is gonna be awesome. This is before COVID, you know, when you know, so we were excited to be able to find it was fashionable. Yes, before he was fashionable, we were excited about the freedom that working from home would bring. And we were excited about the freedom for our employees to be able to work from home. And so we, you know, we've never really thought about having an in-house team. Although we do have, like in-house team members, we don't have an in-house like an office. And so everyone's virtual, you know the VA is overseas, and then every team member. Now we do have about, you know, of those 13 team members that we have here in the US I would say about I think about nine or 10 of them are here in the Phoenix Valley. Because we will get together you know, every quarter and kind of, you know, do fun things we'll do. You know, we'll go karting and we'll go to dinner, things like that. So it is kind of nice having everyone somewhat local to do that, you know,

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  18:17  

So yeah, no, I agree about that. Because we have our first anniversary coming up and we are having to fly into three different cities to do like, anniversary birthday party for all our employees. And VA is in three different cities. It's a smaller country, Pakistan, but still, it's, you know, you have to be all over the place for that. But yeah, I do agree with you know, some of those things, when people are closer together, you can come together faster and things like that. But in the virtual world, I guess you're using a virtual scenario right now where we're doing some amazing things like karma inside slack and virtual coffee breaks and things like that. So you know, and any chance we get we do try to go for, you know, lunches, dinners, hikes with our team members. So yeah, the importance of coming together for those one-off dinners and fun stuff is extremely important these days. I agree with you. So my next question, I know you're running Europe, killer salesman, you've been a salesman for a good part of your life. And so I know your sales department runs like a well-oiled machine. So I want to maybe kind of take a small dive inside your sales setup and talk to me about how your sales departments are set up and who does what.

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  19:48  

Okay. So, you know, the first thing is, I love sales because, you know, if you've got a business, you've got to sell stuff, right? You know, if you've got a product, you can build an e-commerce Store and run ads, but like, for pretty much everything else that's not, you know, selling products online, you've got to have physical people selling stuff, you know. So if you're in the home service business, you have to have people go sell your services at the homes. And if you're selling marketing or consulting, usually you're going to have a sales process in place. And so, you know, to grow your agency, you have to land clients, so you've got to develop some sort of system to land clients. And so, sales I've always, I've always loved sales, I've always loved talking to people. But you know, it's also fun growing your business. So making sales, as you know, can be fun. And that's kind of what we have as our culture and our team in our sales team. But the structure is we have my salesperson, Danny, and then I have a sales assistant through RepStack, actually Manan. So Manan supports Danny more than me, but, um, so yeah, we do a two-step sales process where we run discovery calls. And then if, if everything makes sense, then we bring them over to a discovery or like a, like a full strategy session where we will audit their website and do all of those things. And then we'll do a full demo with them, you know, on the zoom, call the second call. And so that works fantastic. And my vision is to build a five or six, maybe even like a, like a seven-person sales team, and then have maybe two or three different sales assistants supporting that team, instead of landing for five or six clients a month, and maybe we start landing 20 or 25 clients a month, you know, so that's, that's my next little project. But that's, you know, it's as simple as that, like, you know, we have a salesperson, and then we have a sales assistant, it's, you know, it doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  21:47  

Yeah. And, and you're taking it that you're not having to close deals anymore, your head of sales is doing that now, or you're still closing the deals.

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  21:59  

So I don't do sales anymore. Like for new clients, sometimes I will, um, you know, I'll have conversations with current clients, and I'll upsell them, I'm good at upselling people. And I actually just closed a deal a couple of hours ago, through Facebook Messenger with some guy that found us online, and I just hit me up and I just started messaging him back. And he was signed on for a new website, and then kind of monthly SEO, but I don't like the new business development sales anymore.

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  22:33  

That especially with a guy likes you, I was doing all the sales for the first six months of this company, and now I don't have to, and it's a great feeling to just sit back and because I never thought that I'd be able to get to a point where, especially if through my agency days that were you know, somebody else can come in and sell for me. But now you know, we get to go through that where you know, the Slack channel goes ding ding new sales orders coming in. So that's a kudos to you, man for building out that amazing agency, and in such a short period of time. So we're just getting to the end of this. What is your advice for someone who wants to grow their agency? Like what would your one or two points of advice for that person be like, Who's wanting to grow extremely fast?

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  23:27  

Well, so that's the great point that you made extremely fast, because when you look at the kind of like having a marketing agency, you know, if you're in that 10 to 20 grand a month range, and you're kind of a freelancer that sometimes can be comfortable, you know, so if you want to kind of just provide for yourself, you know, make, you know, maybe your net profit, you take home, you know, 10 grand a month and you're comfortable. Now, this advice wouldn't be for you. But if you're looking to grow and build a multiple, seven-figure company and you know, hire people and just build a, you know, like a cool company, and be an entrepreneur and build other companies. what you've got to do, number one, I think is you've got to invest in yourself. And so what that means is you're gonna buy courses, you're gonna buy coaching, programs, consulting, things like that because what you're going to do is you're going to invest in your skills, and things are going to make you better. So that could be sales in that course, that could be, you know, consulting on project management, whatever it is, you know, a coaching program, like the Seven Figure Agency, something like that, where you're investing in yourself and your company. So you have to do it because you have to stop looking at your agency as an agency, but it's a company, right? And companies invest in their employees. And so if you have a company and you are the only employee, you have to invest in yourself with training, and all that stuff. And so, number one, if you do that, you're probably going to figure out everything else. You don't even need any more advice like once you join that group seven figures To see or another group, what that's going to cause is a domino effect to where you meet other people, you start, you know, developing resources and a network, and you're going to find all the resources you can think about. So that's what, that's the one piece of advice that I would give somebody is to join some sort of program, or invest in yourself from the very beginning, okay? Don't get successful, and then invest, you know, in yourself, because that's not how it works, right? You've got to invest in yourself, and then you grow. So that would be the best advice, I think, for anybody starting out or even doing 1020 grand a month.

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  25:41  

Yeah, cuz we're usually the bottlenecks ourselves, we don't realize that because, you know, we're trying to do everything ourselves. And there are better ways out there for men to do stuff like that and grow. So like you said, if you're building a company, you have to get people you have to step back, and, and learn from other people who've done that better than you or they've gone through similar experiences. Right? So it's so true. So my second last question for you, Ryan? Is, is and this is specifically related to Virtual Assistants in what so in what ways have you used your Virtual Assistants? When you were hiring, you weren't thinking of using them in that way? So. So I hope I made myself clear that Yeah, no,

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  26:31

that makes total sense. Um, so like, the main question is figuring out like, Hey, you know, what other ways are we using our VAs. And I think so, so I'll give you an example. Manan is our sales assistant, we hired Manan, for sales only. So I wanted extremely good support for my salesperson, Danny, because, Danny, I want Danny on as many zoom calls or closing calls as possible. So the more that Manan can do in terms of confirming appointments, calling lead magnets and converting those two strategy calls, and organizing the CRM, doing follow up, things like that, calling old prospects, the more Danny has to, you know, to do zoom calls, right. So that's all we have going on doing. But now what we're having him do is we're also going to have him start doing cold DMing on Instagram and Facebook. And so any downtime that Manan has during the day, whether it's one hour or an hour and a half, he's going to be doing cold outreach through cold DMing on Instagram and Facebook. And so not only is he going to support Danny, through sales assisting, but he's also going to do a marketing assistant type of role, you know, in a task. So, even if you hire somebody for one role through RepStack, or, you know, whatever, you can have this person maximize and their time, you know, to make sure you're growing your agency, so

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  27:57  

excellent, man. Yeah. And we're down to the final question here. Oh, here we go. Question. drumroll here. Yeah, so this one is, like more of a philosophy question for the agency owner that I put in there is, so you're you have a most of your team is virtual, but especially the Virtual Assistants that you're hiring, do you consider them as a part of your internal team? Or do you keep them separate from the internal team?

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  28:29  

That's a great question. And I think this gets talked about actually, but not at a, you know, at a podcast level. Um, but um, I think, like, if you have a VA that you might use for, like the graphic design here and there, that person is not going to be a part of your team, right? Like, if they spend maybe seven hours a month on your, on your company, that's not a team member, okay? If they're spending 40 hours a week on your, on your company, that's a team member. And so even if they're a VA, you want to treat them like they're a team member because they're dedicated to your company, they work 40 hours a week for your company. They're not thinking about really anything else, right, they're not building a company for themselves, they're working for another company, but they're, they're working for your company. So even if they're labeled a VA, or they're overseas, or a different state or whatever, you know, they're 100% team members, you know, we do have, you know, some VAs that we use for different things that don't spend a lot of time per month. So, you know, they're not a part of our team meetings or anything like that. But the views that are with our company full time, 40 hours a week, that are dedicated to our company, we treat them actually like just full team members, you know, like they're here in the US, you know, there's nothing to worry about, you know, in terms of putting them in different slack channels, things like that, you know, we have one like, major DCM Slack channel that we utilize. So, I think That's the best route to go to, you know, to be honest with you so

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  30:03  

awesome. Well, thank you so much Ryan for doing this. And it was a pleasure talking to you today. And just if you are listening to this podcast and you know you are a concrete flooring company, or I know you don't want anybody from outside your niche, but I'll tell you one little secret about Ryan Davis that he is a killer at Facebook ads, even on RepStack, where you were running some amazing Facebook ads. But the basis of all our Facebook ads is from Ryan's training. And we kind of nudge him from time to time anytime we get stuck with it. And we are crushing it for our Facebook ads right now. And that's all thanks to Ryan Davis's training. So you know if you guys ever have a question it doesn't hurt to reach out to him. He's always there for his amazing fellow. He's going to help you out for sure. And thanks again, Ryan. Man. It was a pleasure talking to you. And you have a wonderful day. Well, 

Ryan Davis (Founder - Cardinal Floor Coatings)  31:04  

Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Azhar Siddiqui (CEO & Founder - RepStack)  31:07  

Thanks, buddy. We'll talk soon buddy