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Category: Business Insights
Tags: AIDirectoriesEntrepreneurshipMarketingSEO
Entities: Seth GodinSober NationStem Cell AuthorityStudzyTim Stoddard
00:00
Today's a real full circle moment for me because I got to speak to Tim Stoddard. And if you don't know who that is, he in my opinion is one of the OG directory builders.
He's been building them for over 10 years. And he's famously known for Sober Nation, which was his first online company that was a wild success.
00:16
He took that, turned it into a marketing agency that was doing $2 million a year, which was recently acquired. Today, he's still building directories.
So, we get to talk about his projects that are ongoing. We talk about Sober Nation and how that website performed, the peak revenue that it was at, and some of the intricacies that exist with a mid6
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figures lead genen directory. We talk about his approach to building his directories, how he vets ideas, how he gets back links for tough niches like healthcare because that's kind of his thing.
He tends to build in the health and wellness space. And of course, I had to ask him about AI and SEO and what he
00:49
thinks the impact will be for directory websites. So really cool conversation with a lead genen directory expert.
Really hard to find these kinds of people and really talk to them and pick their brain. So hopefully you enjoy this casual conversation with Tim Stoddard.
I'm kind of curious like going back. We
01:05
both worked a sales job while working on a directory like outside of that. Did you always know it was going to be an SEO play?
Like you're going to learn how to distribute Sober Nation directory through SEO and then like did you know it was always going to be lead genen? I'm just curious about that early mindset because for me it was all about
01:21
skill development. I was like, "All right, I'm just going to learn SEO on YouTube and I'm going to treat it as a playground to learn SEO." And if it works, then great.
If it earns money, great. But that's not really my expectation.
I'll give you the whole rundown, the whole evolution. Sober Nation started for two reasons.
I had a friend, a lot of people know my story. I
01:38
grew up in Philly. I had like a terrible, really awful drug problem.
I had a cousin in South Florida who I just like crashed on his couch and basically detoxed for like 3 months. And after having like 6 months sober or something like that, I started to make some friends and gained a little weight and
01:54
life was better. I discovered this guy named Seth Goden who had this advice to start a blog.
And so I started a blog. It was on Blogspot and I wasn't really blogging about anything in particular.
I was just writing every day because I didn't know what else to do. At the same time, I had a friend who was working at
02:11
a sales room and he was selling advertising to local businesses. And the deal was that they would make these little magazines and then they would ship them to the country clubs.
And basically, it was like the ad magazine that the members of the country club
02:27
would like pick up. I think I don't know much about it.
They would just like display them on a table or something like that. this friend came to me that they would find the businesses to pitch by looking up the country clubs and then looking for the local businesses surrounding that country club.
And I think it was like golf.com or some
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something crazy like that. And uh that's how it started.
That was the whole idea like who wa what if we just built a treatment center uh or excuse me a directory of of treatment centers. We didn't really think about it too much.
And when I really started running with it, I thought it was a content play and
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still did. Like you got to remember this was almost 15 years ago.
Facebook looked a lot different than it does now and it was like a blast. So, at first it was advertising because what else did you do on websites at the time other than sell advertising and then it was like licensing deals and then being like
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featured facilities in the directory. I was really just making it up as I went along and I landed on the spot of lead genen.
I'm not going to say by accident because I was intentionally trying to find the best way to do it but it wasn't expected. Like I didn't go into that whole project thinking I'm going to
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build a lead genen directory. But what So Nation did really is in a lot of ways it's like my least successful thing that I've ever created because it was just so much bashing my head against the wall and so much frustration.
But what it did is it was kind of like you said it was
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it was like a sandbox for me to learn how to do SEO and especially local SEO. And so from there once we had a proof of concept we spun off a ton of directories in the lead genen space.
a lot of them in behavioral health, but some in other industries as well. And I'm still doing it.
I'm I'm spinning up a stem cell
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clinic directory right now. There's been some laws that changed recently about stem cell clinics, and I think that's really exciting.
I'm doing one about autism uh treatment agencies. You call them agencies because autism is kind of like it's hard to generalize.
You know, there's like speech therapists and behavioral therapists and all different
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types of therapists that act within like the neurode divergent space. Um and so you just call them agencies.
And yeah, I love it. Like it's changed a lot over the last 15 years and I've I've learned a lot and I've had to make a lot of pivots and adjustments, right?
But I still think that directories are killer
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businesses and are how do I say this? It's like it's a really really simple and streamlined model that has a ton of upside in exchange for not a ton of risk, right?
And if you're looking to get started, it's a really really great
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place to go. I'm just going to share my screen because I like to look up the uh the keywords sometimes.
But that sounds really interesting. Stem cells.
I feel like didn't you have to like fly to South America for the longest time just to get stem cell treatment or something like that? >> Yep.
Stem cells. Um in Panama, I think
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Costa Rica was another one. In Europe as well, a lot of people would fly to um the Netherlands and I think Germany as well.
So if you go on Wayback Machine, you can actually find the original directory. It's it's Stem Cell Authority.
And I feel kind of stupid now because I shut it down because I I was
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just having such a hard time. Um and so the actual domain isn't going to be live.
But that is the domain I own and that's what I'm building the directory on again. Um cuz I had a directory and it was getting traffic but there was just nothing I could do because I I would have to like find lead buyers in
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Panama and in Europe and it was just it was just too hard. It just wasn't worth it.
And so you know the expression like you make plans and God laughs. And as soon as I decided like this is a waste of my time.
and I'm just going to shut it down. The legislation in America with like FDA and the kind of a treatment and
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the types of treatments that you're allowed to administer all changed. I was like that's funny, right?
Like figures, but [ __ ] it. I'll just I'll just go again.
>> I feel like the healthcare space is always filled with those kind of traps where it's like either regulations change or Google's like whatever your money y so it's like kind of a touchy
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subject with Sober Nation. Like what was the headaches that you mentioned?
Was it like actually the technical knowledge to go and build out the website or was it like trying to get healthcare leads? Like what what was the biggest pain point there?
>> No, with So Nation, the headache was not understanding what I was. I didn't know
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if I was just a technical SEO directory or if I was a media company that kind of had a directory attached to it. And as I've gotten more sophisticated or it's kind of the opposite, like as I've just embraced the simplicity in a lot of ways, like the simplicity is what the
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sophistication is because you have to learn what not to do in order to get simple, right? And so I mean, we were getting so much traffic at one point, but a vast majority of that traffic was sort of like blog traffic, almost like Huffington Post type stuff, but just about sobriety.
Um, and then you know,
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as as you can see, I made the terrible terrible mistake of rebuilding the site. And when I rebuilt the site, it kind of crashed crushed everything.
It I was a rock in a hard place, you know, because we were losing a ton of SEO and um other competitors were coming in. So, I had to do something.
But it's also another one
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of those things where funnily enough, the revenue didn't really get crushed that much because with with helpful content and with a lot of the local stuff and now with AI stuff as well, it's just the directory is still so valuable that when people come to the site, they still get the answers that
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they're looking for. And so it's still a pretty healthy business.
It's definitely not what it was in its heyday. And I don't know, truth be told, I've made some investments over the last 5 years that sort of makeation seem like not the best use of my time.
It's still going. You know, there's a team that that rocks
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it and they're crushing it. So, I'm I'm still super super proud of it.
It's it's really like one of my proudest accomplishments in my life. >> And it's the it's the first one that you created, which is kind of insane when you think about that.
My first directory ever was successful. But when I say success, like at the time I was working
08:03
a full-time job and I was just trying to optimize for lifestyle businesses and you know just what can I spend a lot of time upfront with and then it slowly kind of becomes more easy to maintain and you know it's like a $2,000 a month passive website that's been there for three year three years or so. But
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>> yeah, but that's great. You kidding me?
That's like 30 grand a month or 30 grand a year. >> Oh yeah.
Yeah. No, it's awesome.
And honestly that's that was a big part of like leveraging that to go into freelance SEO consulting. That's really what made me or allowed me to quit my job, which was really really sweet.
I guess I should really remind myself
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comparison is the thief of joy, but this is so sick. Like these are all these are all paying rehab centers, right?
Like all the sponsored ones, >> all the sponsored ones are paying. Um, but as you said before, the the real revenue comes from the sponsored hotline.
So, if anybody's watching the
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the video, there's a phone number at the top of the site that, you know, I will also say one of the reasons why all of my lead genen directories were successful is because I had some really, really good relationships with lead buyers. The hardest part of the lead genen business by far, especially if
09:08
it's a national lead genen business, is finding different buyers to buy calls in different parts of the country. Because if somebody's in Pennsylvania, a rehab in California doesn't really want that phone call.
Well, in California, they probably do. That's a bad example, but let's say, you know, like Missouri or something like that.
Most of these
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places are very local. I I built some relationships with other marketing companies that were that I've just worked with for years, like more than 10 years.
I've only ever had one one buyer. So, I will say that if there's something I can really hang my hat on, it's that I did a good job in the very beginning
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seeing that like that's going to be a problem. there's no way I'm just spending all of my days 24/7 finding new places to try to buy these leads local.
Like, I need to find a relationship. >> And I did.
And it's made all of the rest such a well, not a breeze. It's been hard work, but it's it's allowed me to
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focus on the thing that actually matters, which is building the website and just getting more traffic, more relevant traffic to the website. And so, that was huge.
>> When you say buyer, I'm kind of curious like how does this work with the offer? And then when you say media buyer, are you talking about someone who takes any
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interest or inbound and then connects them with a location-based rehab near them? Like how does that even work?
>> Yeah, it's people come to the website because they are most likely looking for treatment. They need help.
And so when
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they call that number, that phone call goes to a network of facilities that are all serving rehab. They're all rehabs.
Um, so you have to be really careful. I mean, you you pulled up the disclosure.
It's really important that you do things
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right because, you know, you can't you can't put a phone number on a website pretending like you are an actual facility. You have to say like, if this is the facility that you're looking for, call this number.
Don't call the number on the top of the website, which is like a national hotline basically. Um, and yeah, so it's it's just worked really
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well. It's it's been it's been great.
>> Awesome. So this company is the one who picks up the phone.
>> Correct. >> Gotcha.
I was always curious about that cuz I feel like this is such just from a user experience angle like this is so nice to have and in my mind I was like are you hiring people to basically route
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them to resources and over the phone like of course helping them but also capturing the lead information and then selling the lead. So this makes a lot more sense that you're just doing that >> and that's what I would have had to do for stem cell authority.
You see what I mean? like there's no centralized place that I can sell the phone calls to.
And
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I've had to have all of these different relationships and like swap out the phone number dynamically depending on where they get to the website, like what location the the searcher, the user is actually at and making sure that they're calling a person or a clinic that they can like drive to basically. So yeah, I
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mean I I've I've learned a lot of skills that I didn't ever think I would need to know like call tracking and just ways that the lead genen industry runs itself. I've become basically an expert on all of these weird like idiosyncratic skills that only exist in lead genen.
12:11
>> I'm curious how much cuz you you took the directory and then you kind of ended up turning that into the agency which is Studzy which you recently uh got acquired. So congrats on that by the way.
Um, I do. >> How much was this portfolio of
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directories a portion of like lead genen? Cuz I see this and I'm like that's so smart.
You have these directories that are dominating the space or like at least all trying to solve this problem of helping people overcome like addiction or just like get healthier in general. Was this a massive
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role in Stddy being like I don't want to say easier to run but getting leads for Stzi and then turning that into like website building clients etc etc whatever um all the offers that Stzzi was doing. >> That's the only reason why I started Stzi in the first place because people
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were reaching out to me through Sober Nation and you know I was just getting started at that point. I didn't have that many leads.
I was like look I I don't know what to do. I don't have any phone calls for you.
Um, that last one, medically assisted, by the way, that link's going to be broken because I got to I just kind of gave up on this one,
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too, for that same exact reason that we talked about about that local um conundrum. Basically, when I use the word racket, it sounds like it's being manipulative.
It's it's not that at all. We just had a good leverage play because in the beginning, we would only sell phone calls to our clients, our Stazzy
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clients. So, it' be like, uh, well, we don't have any phone calls.
We only work with our clients. It's in network.
If you want to become a client of Stazzi, we'll build your internal lead genen for you and then you can also get the phone calls that we provide. But the other was true as well where we would get people
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looking for phone calls. We would get people looking for marketing services and then we could say, "Hey, just so you know, we can sweeten the pot a little bit.
You can join our lead genen network." Right? So they would really work hand inand with each other.
Um, it's kind of painful right now to look at all the AHS just because of how much
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SEO has changed over the last three years and like the dive that all of our sites have taken with traffic. But, you know, like I said, it's still all pretty good because local hasn't really changed that much and you can see it on the
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SERs. Like if you Google something like plumber near me, you don't really get the Gemini AI thing in the same way that you do if you search for like what's the best way to fix a pipe under a sink, you know what I mean?
And so yeah, so like the the revenue has it's definitely
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dropped as the traffic has dropped and I think that's pretty obvious why. But yeah, the business has has created like a little bit of a a moat around it just because it's so localized that um you know, we've been able to kind of maintain.
But this is also, man, I've been working on this stuff for 15 years.
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Sometimes it's weird talking about it because I feel like such a, you know, like I'm such a lame directory builder entrepreneur when like all the cool [ __ ] now is AI and social media and Instagram and I'm just like I don't know. I made all my money doing really boring stuff.
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>> 100% man. I mean like I feel like I'm playing catchup.
I spent 10 hours yesterday just sitting here understanding um cloud code and creating stuff and it's it's like a foreign language but it's so I feel like I need to learn it so I feel like right there with you minus the made all my money
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with directories but uh what >> you're on your way. >> I appreciate it.
Yeah, it's been it's been a cool year for sure with Sober Nation. I like I feel like with healthcare directories, you don't need a lot of traffic to to monetize like pretty well because it's a high average order value I'm sure with the leads.
If
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you get one client or they they get one client, it it makes it all worth it. Are you willing to share like how much Sober Nation is bringing in and these other healthcare directories are and like what was the peak of Sober Nation?
Well, the peak of Recovery Local as a whole, Recovery Local is sort of the network of
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directories that we built. Um, I mean, it's a different model because there's no there's like no employees.
There's no overhead, you know, for like an agency. We're we're doing easily a couple million a year, but then you need employees to do all that stuff.
So, we we would work really hard to keep our
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margins high, but nonetheless, like it's just a different model. with the directories there's only three of us >> and so you know it's it's high margin very high margin and I I felt pretty good about that you know I think I made personally like after taxes probably
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like 350 a year from the recovery local sites and um yeah I mean it was it was a great business though considering that like some of these other websites that had real solid SEO teams would just rake in millions and millions and you said
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something interesting like compared Harrison is the thief of joy and I I totally totally relate to that. But I I I would really compare myself to them.
But there'd be other times where I saw like the huge operation that they had to keep this whole thing going. And I'm like, man, I'm just hanging with my wife and I'm fighting Muay Thai whenever I
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want to and doing whatever I want, whenever I want. Like I don't want to be in some office building all the time.
And um yeah, so it's really just about like what you want in life, you know? Because I could easily look at this and say like we were such a small fish.
The whole thing wasn't really that successful. like we left so much on the table, but then I could just as easily
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look at it from the other perspective and just be like, man, like this was the best thing that ever could have happened. I got to live life the way I want to.
And I mean, I'm not a billionaire, but I don't I don't have money problems at all. And yeah, I'm really grateful really.
I just every time I talk about this and like relive
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these moments, I just get filled with gratitude. >> Yeah, I mean, it's a very interesting business.
And yeah, for whatever reason, directories are kind of having its moment uh this last I feel like 6 months, especially for the beginner directory builder who wants to get to like a 350k a year portfolio. Do you
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think the plan is still to build a portfolio within a specific niche and then kind of dominate that space or do you think the beginning is just all about skill development? You know, hop around if you will, maybe try to find and land on one really profitable
18:06
directory. I think care.com is doing like 500 mill in revenue a year or something.
Um like what's your what's your take on that and like what would you recommend for someone who's like really trying to take this seriously build out a really profitable portfolio of directories? >> Yeah, it's a great question.
I have two takes on it and I'm sorry that I'm not
18:23
looking at you when you're talking to me. I actually have like a cool little video that I'm going to send to you so that you can play.
I just have to like send it to myself and then send it to myself again. So I'll get that in a second.
But here's what I think. I think you just want to embrace local.
Um, the best way to monetize a directory in my
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opinion right now is actually a hybrid of the two things that I've spoken about. It is a media company and it is local SEO.
I think it's kind of dangerous. Like I I see local doing really well over the next 10 years for a
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lot of the reasons I' I've talked about it in my YouTube videos and stuff like that. And so I'm not worried about that going away, but you just never know.
>> And so life can change in an instant. I mean, if you want to see something really, really funny, I'll give you a great example.
Pull up hrefs again and go to yourfirststep.org
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and you can see what it looks like to make and lose, you know, $50,000 a month within a day and then make it again. So, here there's that first all the way over there in 2018, right?
Ploop. Went from
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20 grand a month to zero. And 2018, 20 grand a month was like insane money for me, you know, like I'm I'm like a poor kid from Philly.
And then we worked and worked and worked and worked. That was helpful content.
Built it back up and then bloop. And then, you know, we've been working our asses off for 4 years.
19:41
And then same thing, bloop. So, like, it's a dirty game out there.
You know, there's nobody owes you anything. It can change in an instant.
And so, do I think local is here to stay? I do.
But I think that media and like a brand, especially a newsletter, is the most defensible
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thing that you can possibly have. And so if I'm if I'm telling people where to start, I'm saying combine like a local newsletter because they're strong businesses within themselves.
I mean, Facebook kind of killed newspapers, but people are thirsty for what's going on in their events or excuse me, like
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events in their neighborhood, you know? Like I live in Denver.
Um there's always cool [ __ ] going on and like you got to really search to find it. all of these new cities like the second tier cities.
I don't know, like the Nashvilles and like Minneapolis and Boise, you know, like there's just cool [ __ ] going on in
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the world right now. And so just because Facebook is here and like newspapers are destroyed, doesn't mean that people don't want local news.
You just have to modernize it a little bit. So, I would combine a local newsletter with a local business directory and then play the two off of each other.
So, you're not
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totally dependent on local search traffic to generate revenue for your directory, whether you're selling feature listings or selling leads or however you want to do it. But then you're not totally dependent on like selling newsletter ads on your newsletter as well because that within itself sucks, you know?
So, like you
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have a product sort of baked in to your local media site. Um, I think you can't go wrong there.
Really, you you you can't go wrong. You're probably not going to be making millions, but you can absolutely be like a oneperson army making 200 grand a year after taxes and
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profit. I mean, probably more really.
>> Damn. I mean, that's I feel like a lot of people who are in my community and and just like start directories, I would say the number one reason is just to make enough to quit their job.
Like people are >> exactly >> in crappy jobs. It makes sense.
like I
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was drained after yeah 6 p.m. It's just it's not fun.
It's not fun. But um what's like the onetwo punch with like uh newsletters and uh monetizing them?
Because I totally agree. I've kind of accidentally combined newsletters with some directories.
I have a plasma
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donation one and at one point it was like organically getting >> like 500 to 600 people coming through my lead form and there's thousands of people every month typing in how much does CSL plasma pay and I was like oh wow. like there's no information on Reddit.
It's very difficult information
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to get. I'm just going to make a lead magnet where the ent entry fee to join the newsletter is a survey where you tell me what your local plasma donations pay and then I'm just going to put that in the newsletter.
So, I didn't even have content for the newsletter. I just used the information that was the the
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the ticket in uh which is kind of funny, but I never monetized it very well. Is it really just selling ads like cold outreach saying, "Hey, I have a newsletter.
It gets XYZ monthly readers." and then just going going that way. Is there a way to like do it smarter?
>> Yeah, selling ads sucks. It just sucks.
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My personal newsletter that I send out every morning, timods.com, I sell a personal product from that and I've done I think at this point like 86 grand in the last 5 months and that's with 15,000 subscribers. So, I have a little bit of
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an advantage just because I'm sort of well established, but I don't know, not really. Like, nobody really knows who I am.
I'm just a guy, you know, like I don't have a giant podcast or nothing like that. So, I think that what I'm doing is not like an anomaly at all.
It's just it's just a tactic. It's it's
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like a it's a more direct path to monetization as opposed to Yeah. trying to sling ads every day.
It's exhausting and it sucks and it's never going to be good enough. And so, sell your own stuff even if it's services.
You know what? I'll give you a really great example and it sounds like you watch my YouTube videos, so you might have seen this
23:27
before. So, go to plant retreats.com.
This is a directory that I finished building. I'm actually um working on it right now.
But this is like all of the plant medicine like psychedelic retreats in the country. I'm really really excited about this thing.
But the one
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thing that I don't have is what this kid named Henry did which is so cool. So if you pull up another website, go to tricycleday.com.
Just like it sounds, tricycle.com. And this kid has a newsletter all about the psychedelics industry.
Um, so my
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wife is in this space. She's like a psychedelic guide.
She had an experience with psychedelics. I really helped her with like some healing stuff and it it changed her life.
And so I've just become kind of fascinated with this industry. And what he does is he has sponsorships on his newsletter, of course.
But if if you click back, um,
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the thing that he really does, which I think is most exciting, is find a professional. And so like as soon as I saw this, I was like, "Oh my god, this kid gets it." like this is exactly what I do and this is exactly what I've done over and over and over again.
The only difference is like he doesn't even SEO his directory. It's basically just like
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a JavaScript popup on the listing. So, you know, like this this record doesn't necessarily have like a unique URL that would be indexed by Google.
Great. He doesn't give a [ __ ] It's still like whatever.
I have a newsletter and of course I'm going to accept sponsorships. I'm not going to pound the pavement
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every day like cold calling people. But I mean, look at this thing.
He's filling up this directory all through his newsletter and I think it's so cool. Like I've had a couple conversations with this kid as usual.
I tried to I tried to convince him to accept money from me because I just know that the
25:05
industry he's in right now uh and his execution like he's just crushing it. This business is going to [ __ ] take off.
>> But this is just the most perfect example I've seen. You know, like another example that I think is um people really leaving money on the table.
If you go to from Boise, you
25:20
mentioned ConvertKit, right? This is Nathan's newsletter.
It's a local newsletter. He runs the whole thing through ConvertKit.
And they're doing great. Like they have a huge following, 23,000 subscribers, all in Boise, but they are spending so much time and energy selling these ads.
And I'm always telling him, I'm like, if you just put a
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directory on this thing, then this is what's cool about directories. It is marketing and revenue at the same time, right?
Like when the directory gets big, other people want to join it. So it's sort of like a self-marketing mechanism, but the marketing sells the product which is the directory in the first
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place. So it's not like other products where you have to create content to sell the the product.
Like the directory itself is the content which sells the directory itself. And so I I keep telling him I'm like, man, if you just put a directory on this thing, like you'll you'll crush it and it'll it'll reduce the workload.
And so if anybody I
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went on this whole rant because you asked me like, what's the best place to get started with a newsletter? So, if there's one really great example that I see, it's what Henry is doing with Tricycle Day.
And then if you just I mean, you know, it doesn't have to be local. Like I mentioned stem cells before.
You could easily create a stem cell newsletter or I'm just into
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healthcare. That's kind of my thing.
It's like you said, it's there's a lot of money in it, but doesn't have to be, you know, do an esports newsletter. You can easily create a directory of all like the esports teams.
Um, anything really. It's just a really simple model that kicks ass.
>> Yeah. I mean, this reminds me of a
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directory I saw recently. Um, you probably heard of it.
It's pretty big, I think, but Retreat Guru. This does three.
>> Yeah, these are the people that I'm trying to like kill. I'm >> I'm trying to take these people out with my directory.
>> Yeah. This is when I realized Yeah.
Iaska retreats. Um, any kind of like
26:59
stress or anxiety retreat to like help overcome that. It It is massive and I totally see how this is just going to grow.
Also, any in real life event, full stop there. Like that as a category is probably gonna be explosive.
I look forward to seeing you
27:17
like completely wipe these guys out. >> Yeah, I'm going to get them.
>> I think what they do is they collect their whole monetization is they collect I want to say 10 or 14% of the price that people book through the marketplace. Really smart.
>> Oh, you watched my YouTube video on it. You might not realize that that's where you got it from, but I I did their whole
27:35
model. >> Oh, okay.
>> I broke it down. I do these videos where I like basically also break down directories.
So I I I recently went on a deep dive. >> That's so cool.
>> Their software that they sell is pretty smart, too. But >> yeah, I agree.
They're a cool business for sure. >> What's your take on how SEO is changing?
27:51
I've covered this topic a lot because I get a a lot of questions here, but what's your take on GEO, all these kind of different versions of SEO and how it affects building directories? >> Well, I kind of touched on it a little bit.
local is here to say if for no other reason that Google owns the local
28:07
index. It's it's literally like a separate product.
They own Google My Business and so there's no reason why they're going to that's not like a thing that can get cannibalized. Yeah, you I just built it.
I literally launched it like 2 weeks ago and so I think that's fine. AI is a real thing at the same
28:22
time, which is why I would say to combine media with the directory the same way that I just talked about. But I'm also excited about what AI can do.
So if if you would allow me um this is something that I'm I'm working on. So
28:38
this is what I'm building. And honestly, I'm only building it because in my membership community, as I was creating my course about teaching people how to build directories, I got to this section about populating listings.
And then I was like, man, am I really going to teach people how to scrape like Google and scrape all these other sites and use
28:54
Python and how annoying it is to organize all the data in spreadsheets and upload it? I was like, there's got to be a better way.
And so I reached out to my friend Chase. I was like, man, what do you think about this?
Like, do you think this is something we can do? And so then I don't know if the sound is going to be weird because of how Riverside goes, but if you play that
29:11
video I just sent you, this is uh what we're building with it. So it's to the left a little.
Second one to the left. Yeah.
So watch this [ __ ] Look how cool this is. >> By the way, can you hear the audio?
>> No, I can't. It's okay.
I don't know how to do it either, but you don't really have to listen to the audio. I'll just show you.
So, basically, it's a tool.
29:27
It's a tool where you can create a directory and then you name the directory and you just use the LLM like you just use AI to say this is the directory I want to build. What do you think I should use for categories?
Basically, and then probably skip to
29:43
like a minute or so, maybe a little bit. Yeah.
Okay. So, he's still building it.
Skip a little more. You'll you'll know it when you see it.
>> Like literally just built this entire directory within 2 minutes. >> Damn.
>> And so what does that say? It says that, you know, the act of building directories isn't going to have as much
30:00
value as it used to because this is so easily replicated. And you know, we're seeing this with AI everywhere.
But there is still such a thing as doing it well. And I think a great example of that is with like social media.
you know, like if if AI were so great, then
30:15
how come everybody doesn't have a million followers on social media? Like people still do have a thing where they can recognize it.
And so organizing it properly, but then also like we talked about before, you you now have a real easy product to attach to your newsletter or to attach to your media.
30:31
And if you're just promoting other people's businesses through the directory through your newsletter, it's almost like you have an automated product machine that like monetizes itself, you know? So, I think this is pretty [ __ ] cool >> and I'm really excited about it.
It's going to be like another month or so, I
30:46
think, before it's done. But, you know, we're working on it.
>> I'm I'm not surprised you're jumping into something else after selling your company, which is like I think actually the sane thing to do. It's like losing a relationship.
I'm sure once you once you sell a company that you've been working on forever, when you do create a
31:02
directory, let's say like you populate the the listings, uh let's just say it's the IASA one. When do you reach out to Iawaska retreat companies?
Um, do you populate the listings first, make it as valuable as possible, and then go reach
31:17
out to them and say, "Hey, I built you a listing." Um, do you want to claim it or make any changes and kind of offer that value first approach? And then that kind of segus into a relationship with them or do you just go straight for the ask where it's like, "Hey, we built this.
You can pay X amount to have a feature
31:34
listing, premium visibility." What's the flow there? And I guess what's the plan with something like this?
>> Well, it's a great question because here's one of the things that AI isn't good at and it's been like a real tool in our toolbox. Every single listing that you see on the plant retreats
31:49
directory, we reached out to individually and got all their information. And not only did we get their information, like, okay, I shouldn't say we reached out to, not everybody sent us the information.
like some of the information we just found the majority of it we just found and populated the listings with. But once we
32:06
created it, we emailed all of the people that we could find. And now, you know, I have an email list of I don't know how many, probably, 1700 professionals in the retreat space that I can turn into something if I want.
So, it seems like a
32:22
lot of work. You know, I I have like a pretty well established team at this point.
So, I'll say it was three weeks worth of work for somebody to do like two hours a day. You know, that 3 weeks goes by a lot faster than you think it's going to, right?
It's not actually that bad. And so, now, yeah, I have like a fully populated directory, which still
32:39
has a lot of bugs. You know, I'm still working on it, but at the same time, I have all of the contact info with all of the professionals in the space.
So, that that's always been the flow. You populate the listings however you can because if you don't populate the listings, you don't have a directory.
Well, I I have always taken the the hard
32:57
road in terms of using the information to build a relationship as opposed to doing what like Yelp or Yex or all of those other [ __ ] spammers do where it's like, "We made you a free listing. Click this button to upgrade now and to get access." I don't know.
I just never
33:12
found that to be that useful. Like, the amount of money you can make from just dominating the space is way more than if you're nickel and diamond yourself for upselles and feature listings and stuff.
100%. I just want to show you this because I found this the other day.
It's a funeral home directory and dude, the
33:30
the amount of effort they put in to have this level of uh price transparency. They did the same thing.
They emailed and called other people u all of these funeral homes and then itemized the actual service, which is kind of unheard of for a directory, but just just that like I feel like that could be applied
33:46
to so many things. um like if you're renovating your kitchen and you're finding contractors or landscaping companies around you, you get like 10 different quotes all varying in like thousands of dollars.
But just this concept of really unscalable tasks that are extremely valuable, I'm a huge fan
34:03
of and um I think that like maybe one day we'll be able to use AI and then say, "Hey, call this number and just go through this flow." But even then, I mean, I I used to work in tech sales. I seriously doubt it.
like the level of like I don't know even the tone that you
34:18
speak and everything that you do over the phone is part of the strategy to get this in the first place. So um I think like specialized information like this which I define as information that's either available but in very low quality or that just isn't available unless you
34:35
go and like do unscalable tasks is the way that you hedge against AI to some extent. Um, and you can even like maybe hide this behind some kind of lead gen uh lead magnet where it's like, hey, you can access all these all the prices for these cremation services, but just sign
34:50
up via this email and then it unlocks it. It's like blurred out and then that way LLM can't really crawl the page and get it.
So, I've been thinking about different ideas and yeah, right now I'm looking at luxury portaotties as my next bigger lead genen project cuz I created a really crappy one. It still has Lauram
35:06
Ipsum. It's so ugly.
But this got a $20,000 lead last week from the New Mexico State Fair. And they hit me up and they were like, "Hey, we need 109 portaotties, like three luxury restroom trailers." I'm like, "Dude, you know, this has Laura my like this is so bad."
35:22
And it still came through somehow. >> Um, so that was incentive for me to be like, "Okay, I'm going to I'm going to actually build this out uh properly." But um, >> but this is the stuff like I'm sorry if I cut you off.
No, I'm so inspired to see this because this is the kind of [ __ ] that I always felt like am I crazy
35:39
or is everybody else crazy where do you know how big of a business portaotties are, right? Like I remember going to Bonnaroo and it's music festivals.
There's hundreds and hundreds of them and the infrastructure and the trucks like I know it's kind of weird to talk
35:56
about, right? But the trucks were just constantly coming through to make sure that everything was sanitized and so that people could like pee at a music festival.
Everyone's shitfaced, right? >> Oh, yeah.
>> And I'm just looking at it like, who's the person that had the balls to go like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to build a portaotty business and I'm going to make buku money because
36:13
nobody else wants to do it. I see that stuff everywhere.
Like portaotti is a great example like stem cells and those kind of things. That's why I like healthcare just because it's really boring and it's not that exciting and and nobody likes it.
Tires are another one. Like name somebody that doesn't
36:30
need a tire. >> It's impossible.
Everybody needs tires. And so I'm so inspired to see you doing it the way that I've always envisioned.
There's just money everywhere. It's everywhere.
Every single thing that exists in our world needs to have some
36:45
kind of market behind it. And so yeah, you you keep going, man.
You're going to crush it for sure. Portaottymatch.com.
I love it. You could do this in Denver alone.
And so I know I'm really getting into the weeds here, but Denver has like kind of a homeless population problem. Not as bad as San Francisco.
We're probably in some either, but totally.
37:01
They're around, but Denver is sort of like a purplish city where they just do a good job with this kind of stuff, I think. And so instead of like hooting and hollering in San Diego where people are like [ __ ] on the street, they're just like, "We're just going to put portaotties everywhere." Like, who cares?
We're just going to put portaotties everywhere. And that's not a
37:17
problem here. And so in Denver alone, you could create like a portaotti directory and make at least 100 grand a year.
>> I think the market is 2.4 billion last time I checked. And it's the year-over-year growth is like insane for all sorts of reasons.
Uh, you know,
37:33
festivals exponential desire to go out, be like not in front of a screen all the time. My plan for this is I'm going to rebuild this under a new domain and just narrow in on luxury restroom trailers cuz apparently they rent out for $2,000
37:49
a day low-end. And so weddings, outdoor festivals, all that kind of stuff.
Um, totally. So, we'll see because I have gotten some other leads from this website, which is so funny, but they're just individuals looking for like one or two and in that case, it's like a I
38:05
mean, it's still good. I I don't want to complain, but it's like a $200 lead versus something like a luxury portaotty lead, you know?
I feel like with any lead genen, and I'm sure you think about this a lot, but you know, when you're vetting a niche in healthcare, at least I'm thinking about what's the ticket on
38:21
this, the average ticket. I'm looking into a lot of keyword research, uh, looking at competitors because I always want to find a bounty directory that's like, okay, clearly Google prefers the directory structure.
How do you vet an idea? Like, is it passion based?
Is it something where you said, hey, my wife's
38:38
in this space, like we have an unfair advantage in terms of knowledge in this space, and then I'm just going to go build it. Or do you do a ton of research and like SEO, keyword research, backlink research, that kind of stuff?
No, I only care about one thing and it's do rich
38:53
people do it and that's really it. >> Like I don't know that might sound like overly capitalist of me but >> not at all.
>> The conversation that you're having in your head is really worth it because like the road to hell is through volume for sure. If you want to be wealthy and
39:09
not be working 90 hours a day, then you just need to find some kind of up market or like you got to go one or the other. But if you're going to go volume, you need to have an infrastructure to support volume, which means you just have to have a bigger team.
And I just don't that's that's not the way that I
39:24
chose not to live my life. It's not to say that the other way is the other way has a lot of advantages, frankly.
But for me, it was always just like what do what do rich people spend money on? And that's it.
>> I love it. >> And that's it.
Yeah. >> What's your take on AI coding?
Are you
39:40
learning it? Are you obsessed with it?
Are you kind of going head deep into that? or do you feel like WordPress is still more or less king?
Because it's like sometimes it's just working with what you're familiar with is the fastest route in my opinion. >> That that's exactly it.
Yeah. Um I don't need to be great at everything.
I know
39:56
what my skill set is and I just already have a team that can build sites in WordPress. Real like it it'll take me just as long cuz the other problem with like Vibe coding is the file structure.
Like it it's FTP, you know, like it doesn't make sense to code a CMS on top
40:11
of a website. If you're coding with AI, then you're just uploading code onto a server.
And that's really cool. I mean, I think it's so cool.
WordPress is like one of the greatest products ever created in like history. And I know that might sound sensationalist, but it's
40:27
it's really not intended to be. It's so brilliant.
And so, you can build WordPress sites not as fast as AI, but I don't know. Sometimes I think you can because one of the things that AI hasn't quite done for me is when something isn't going right, it's still really
40:42
really difficult to say like no no no this one thing isn't right because then you you make a change but then a whole bunch of other [ __ ] changes, you know? So look, I'm sure there's people that are really really skilled at AI coding and they might hear me say that and say like, "Oh no, like you got it all wrong and cool." But um no, I I like I like
41:01
WordPress. I'm probably going to stay on it until because you know what I mean like eventually WordPress will just have its own AI coders on top of it.
So the the platform I think is a little bit irrelevant. It doesn't take that long to build a site.
So who cares? >> I agree.
I feel like you can easily I
41:17
call it engineer brain because I used to like work back when I had a job with a lot of engineers and um they'll spend like all this time automating something and then forget the entire picture which is dude just create the thing. you you went off this tangent on automating something and you don't even have listings on your directory or like you
41:32
don't even have like an offer or or a simple distribution strategy. So >> yeah, I'll give you a really great example about that.
And this might sound a little bit out in the weeds, but it's a lesson I never ever forgot. I I grew up like a bluecollar kid.
I built houses for my early 20s and my teens. Like I
41:48
worked for this contractor for years. His name was Mike, and he's exactly what you think a contractor in the Northeast looks like.
you know, he was like huge, a giant bare hands and like flannel shirt and um we were building a roof and he left to go get supplies and me and this kid Antonio, it was the three of
42:05
us, we built this whole like pulley rig system because carrying shingles up a ladder is heavy and it sucks and it's like kind of scary, you know? And we got back and he was like, "What what are you guys doing?" I was like, "Oh, isn't this so cool?
Like, it's going to make life so much easier for us." And then he just picked these damn shingles up and he
42:21
walked up the ladders with them and he was like, "Get these shingles up the ladder right now." And so like I'll never forget it. I know that's sort of like a little bit of an out there example, but I really just never forgot exactly what you're talking about.
It's you just get the shingles up the ladder. You know what I mean?
You just pick up the shingles and put them on the damn
42:37
roof. Like all the engineering doesn't really matter.
You can just pick the thing up and walk it up a ladder. >> And it's less consequential with directories.
It's like, okay, you wasted time on a bad niche that never ranks or, I don't know, looks ugly. like, okay, you lost a few bucks.
Probably not life-changing. If it's life-changing to lose like 200 bucks, probably just get a
42:55
job first. Like, there's other priorities that you should probably uh focus on.
Anyways, that is a good example. I did want to ask about like backlinks, too.
Healthcare backlinks. Dude, the plasma donation directory, it's like so hard to get back links for that.
Is there like something that you
43:11
figured out? Like for me, it's really just finding a competitor on hrefs.
I will look at the smaller publishers, the mom and pop publishers where it looks like I can actually get a response if I do cold outreach and then I'll just pay them like 50 bucks to do a link swap and then I remove a link from my competitor
43:28
and also gain a hyper niche relevant link for myself. And that's kind of how I've done it.
It's really manual. AI sucks at finding and identifying these mom and pop publishers because I'm not going to get like a a large healthcare backlink.
It's just not going to happen. How are you getting back links in a
43:44
really tough niche like healthcare? >> There was two things we did that really allowed us to excel.
One was we reached out to colleges. Um I recognized at the time that universities were actually losing a lot of money because people kids were dropping out cuz you know they
43:59
were drinking and basically getting hooked on aderall. And so we created an entire directory all for collegiate recovery programs.
And so Nation actually has two directories on it. there's like the rehabs directory, but then there's a collegiate recovery directory and I would reach out to all
44:15
these universities. It was super successful.
Um, another way was through sober stories, and that was by far one of the growth hacks that we had because like every time somebody would publish a story about themselves and their sobriety, it would kind of go semi viral
44:31
just because people love the attention. But really, the move was local municipalities like absolutely on all the.gov gov and.org sites.
Um, we would just reach out to them manually and say like, "Hey, we're putting these resources together." I'm sure that the
44:48
people who live in your uh what's it called? Like jurisdiction would appreciate this and you know it worked most of the time.
>> That's really smart. Um, damn a.gov backlink is so crazy and I didn't even
45:04
think about that but that's so smart. you know, the local municipalities were were good and they were like pretty easy to get in touch with, you know, that wasn't that hard.
Like you can call them and they're busy. It was kind of like a sales system, but I don't know.
I would just do it on my on my spare time. I'd
45:19
spend like an hour a day just putting that stuff together. >> I was just curious if there's any like cold outreach hacks that you've done that you feel like is like common knowledge for you now that you always do.
For me, it's um I always try to find some kind of leverage. And leverage can be literally anything.
It could be the
45:36
amount of monthly visitors you get that you reference. It could be to swap out or put something on their website for money.
But is there something that you include in cold outreach to improve your response rate? >> Not really.
The truth is I was just willing to do it. And I don't know.
I think that's kind of been my answer
45:51
almost all the time is just do the thing that everybody hates doing and you'll you'll get an advantage. Yeah.
No, I don't I didn't have any hacks. I mean, we had a really large Facebook following.
Still do. I mean, so Nation has like a million followers, right?
So, I would always throw that in like, "Yeah, just just give me a link and then
46:06
I'll publish it on my all my socials and send it out in the newsletter and stuff like that." But no, man, honestly, it all just kind of happened through effort. >> You kind of mentioned AI, SEO.
I think those were like the main concerns. People were like wanting to ask you about what's going to happen in the
46:22
future. It's like no one's going to know what's going to happen in the future.
Just look at the SERs in my opinion. Look at what's changing.
Um, if you look up Fisker Review, you see the MKBHD video where he completely destroyed that company and it's a bunch of like forums and videos. That's what dominates the
46:37
SERs. But if you look up any local stuff, it's the same.
It's the same stuff. So, I guess I'll just ask a personal question, which is like after you sold your business, what's life like?
Are you kind of like, okay, what whatever like money is fine. Like we solved the money issue a while ago.
Is this just building whatever you want at
46:53
this point and waking up and just learning what you want? And is that basically your definition of the ideal life that 90-year-old Tim would look back on and be like, "Yeah, that's that was that was dope." >> Well, you know, it has been challenging and I don't ever like to talk about it
47:09
as though it's wrong because I'm blessed in many ways, but I did spend I live in a neighborhood in Denver right next to a lake basically and I spent 3 months just walking around the lake really not knowing what to do with myself. Um, you
47:25
know, I've I've always been pretty into fitness, but I just worked out all the time. And yeah, it was it was challenging not knowing where to go.
Um, I'm 39, you know, my son's four and a half, my daughter's almost three, so I I did have my hands full with that, but
47:41
also it was really hard, man. Like, for real, it was very hard.
I do not subscribe to the fact that like money doesn't solve problems or like it's not as good as you say it is. I've been on both sides of
47:57
the poverty line a thousand% it's better to have money than not to have money and anybody that like puts up a fight with that is I don't know what they are like virtue signaling or maybe they just feel guilty and I didn't have that. I have no guilt about it.
Like the reason why I work is to make money. I'm not trying to
48:12
save any whales. I want to do great and like I want the whales to be happy and healthy, you know, but like I work to make money.
It's it's the reason that I do it and I love it also. Like it's a really fun game and the game is just so fun.
Like I really really love it and
48:28
I'm so grateful that I came across something that challenges me in the way that it does. And so where did that bring me?
Well, that kind of brought me all the way back to the beginning where it's like how did I get started? I got started as a writer.
That's how it all started for me really. I was four months sober.
I had quite literally just thrown
48:45
up and like sweated through my sheets every night for the last three months cuz I had such bad withdrawals and sitting down and writing and just expressing myself into the internet. It saved my life in a lot of ways and it got me a lot of the things that I have.
I was like, what do I want to do? Well,
49:01
I love investing. you know, I have a lot of investments that I still actively work on and so it's a blessing to be able to work on my own companies as opposed to just doing only client services work, you know, and so all of that is like pretty much solved for.
But to answer your question, it all came
49:16
back to writing and I'm really loving waking up in the morning, getting my cup of coffee, and writing my daily newsletter and just seeing where it goes. You know, I don't really have any plans for it.
I'm not trying to build a media empire, but like
49:33
>> as Yeah, exactly. Thanks.
But as is always the case, like the best things have come to me from just writing and I don't know where it's going, but it's definitely going somewhere because there's real traction behind my newsletter right now. You know, people
49:48
like you are reaching out to me again and I'm getting asked to be on podcasts again. So, we'll see where it goes.
But, you know, for the first time in my life, I feel this sense of like um surrender, you know, like I don't have to have it all figured out. I'm just going to keep putting stuff out there, keep doing the stuff I love, and see what happens.
50:03
>> Dude, you have one of the best rise to the occasion stories I think ever. And um I appreciate you just being vulnerable about it, man.
I think most people uh are restarting their lives at 30, mid30s, 40s, whatever it might be.
50:19
So just the fact that you are a role model in that sense um that's amazing and I don't think any of us have it figured out to be frank. Um >> absolutely not.
Yeah. No one has a clue what they're doing.
>> Where do you want people to find you? What are you working on?
What should people be paying attention to uh and
50:35
look forward to? >> Yeah.
Timotss.com. I'm trying to get to 100,000 subscribers.
That's it. Read my newsletter.
Give me compliments to make me feel good about myself. >> Me too.
Please. I we we need >> Thank you so much,