Simon White - Local Blitz Marketing

Running the Bases today with Simon White, Co-Founder at Local Blitz Marketing in San Diego, California. Simon is an international marketing expert, national speaker, author, real estate investor, and Founder/CEO of Local Blitz Marketing. He has spoken nationally at real estate conferences. His articles can be found regularly in a national real estate magazine.

What do you call a British Engineer who crosses the pond to find his way in the tech industry, but realizes his fortune and entrepreneurial spirit really lie in the WIld, Wild West of the California Real Estate Market….. ?  Well we call that Today’s Guest.

When he is not investing in homes in Southern California he might also be found at Local Blitz Marketing - a digital marketing company he co-founded, or you might find him out hiking with his wife and their furry children.

It’s a great show as we learn about Simon and his trek to the US and a fabulous story on how he met his wife!

To learn more about Simon and Local Blitz visit: https://localblitz.com/

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Transcript

Randy: 0:02

I'm Randy roady and I'm fascinated with entrepreneurs and small business owners. Plus I love baseball. Every show I sit down with a small business owner and we discuss there running the bases of entrepreneurship. We throw the ball around on strategy management, execution and innovation. Plus a little fun baseball tug. Hey, thanks for joining us today. Settle in, grab your cracker jacks and you know what they say, play ball. And it's a great day for a ball game. This is Randy Roddy. Got a question for you folks. What do you call a British engineer? Who crosses the pond to find his way in the tech industry, but realizes his fortune and entrepreneurial spirit really lie in the wild, wild west of the California real estate market. While we call that today's guest, when he is not investing in homes in Southern California might also be found at local blitz marketing, a digital marketing company. He co-founded in, uh, 2009 or. You might find him out hiking with his wife and their furry children. I probably, I didn't write this intro. Uh, we are pleased to welcome, uh, to running the bases with small businesses podcast, Simon white Simon. Good to have you on the show.

Simon: 1:27

Hi there, Randy. Yeah. Thanks for having me on . I'm

Randy: 1:30

you got it right there. I I'm assuming the, uh, furry children are yeah. Are not offspring, but more like pets of some sort

Simon: 1:39

yeah, we, we, we adopt dogs. All our dogs are from the rescue, so yeah, we have, uh, we've had a blind dog, a deaf dog in the past the dog at the moment that we're fostering, that only has two legs. Oh, my, she does exceptionally well. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She she's from Mexico. She got hit by a car we think down there and they, uh, actually amputated the back two legs so she can get around really well. On, on two, two front legs. No kidding. Have wheels for her. Yeah, but she can, she can do really. She can actually run faster on two legs than she came with the wheels. Cuz she. She's got really strong front legs.

Randy: 2:15

So that is amazing. Wow. uh, I will tell a quick story around that. We had a neighbor who had a three-legged cat and was missing a rear leg and that cat was the best would come over and just pounce on ground hogs or ground squirrels or what are. Things critters and she'd leave them out there. It was, this cat was amazing. I was always amazed at it, but anyway, so let's jump in. I've got a fun story that, you know, my research team, I was telling you before we hit the record button here, that she is so great finds all kinds of fun stuff. She dug up. A fun story about how you met your wife.

Simon: 2:58

Wow. Okay. I was wonder wondering if you would find that that's buried in the internet. Most people dunno

Randy: 3:03

about it, but it's interesting. You found it . So I'm wondering if you would care to, to share with the audience a little bit, a little bit of a story of Simon white and your wife. Well, when I, yeah,

Simon: 3:14

I came, I came here in 97. I think it was anyway, whatever year it was. I, I went. You know, I was single for the first few months, but then, um, me and. English friends. We were all from England. We all came over pretty much the same time we went to a concert Alanis Mo set. Yeah.. And, uh, before the concert, I sat next to a few, few girls, local girls, and we just got chatting and staff, you know, nothing major. And then the, the, she started Alanis Mo set, the concert started and never really saw her again. And then, uh, a few days later I got a phone call and it was a radio station. And, uh, they introduced Amanda on the phone, me and Amanda over the phone. And she asked me out to go for a date on that Saturday and, uh, the rest is history. A couple of years later, we got married. No kidding. Then there is a big, long elaborate version of that. My wife tells, but I just give you the the shorten and quit version. But yeah, I met my wife at Alanis. Morrisette. And at the Del off, uh, a couple of years later we got married and we actually had the DJ from the radio station, be our DJ at our wedding.

Randy: 4:29

ah, that's nice. Yes. So I think your wife is the great romantic then must be because yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's that's very good. Well, congrat, how long have you been married?

Simon: 4:41

24 year? Uh, no. 23 years. Yeah. 99. Yeah. Yeah. It was just, it was just a few days ago, actually.

Randy: 4:48

Ah, very good. Congratulations. Congratulations. Well, there you go. So growing up in England, you attended the university of Bradford, have your engineering degree. Here in the states, as you know, so we just passed May 1st, uh, which is the typical us college commitment day, which is the crazy college acceptance, all of the applicants, they okay. Essentially commit to university and all of that stuff. Curious, what are some of the differences between college life in England versus. Here in this states. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Simon: 5:27

Well, you know, in the college I went to was specific to the type of engineering I went to, that I wanted to do, which was radio engineering. I, I don't, we did a lot of drinking and it, the drinking age in England is 18 here. It's 21. Yeah, but I guess so it's legal to start drinking at 18 in England here. It's 21 back then all my college was paid for. I didn't didn't really leave college with any big debts or anything. A few thousand pounds top, you know? Nice. So, but now. I think it's changed. I think England is a lot more like the us now. Oh, you know, the, the, the, you have to, um, tuition is a lot more expensive and stuff. It's such a long time ago that college now and college a few years ago when I was there., it's a bit different. So, Randy: yes. The world is different as well in so many different ways. So you got your engineering degree, you came here to the states. Did you. Come to the states directly to Southern California from England? Or did you go well, uh, I worked, I worked in England in, in, at NOK in Erickson for a few years. Okay. About four or five years. And then I came for a vacation. For three weeks and a big tour around California and Nevada, you know, San Francisco came down the coast, LA San Diego, Las Vegas Yosem did a big loop. And then I said, oh, I really like San Diego. So I applied for a few jobs and within a couple of weeks, I flew over here for an interview. Up in orange county. And I had an interview for a company in San Diego, actually in London, got offered those two jobs and decided to come to San Diego. Nice. Yeah. And so six months after I'd been here for a three week holiday, I was living here. cause I had to wait for a visa and

Randy: 7:15

all the rest. Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, well, San Diego, you could have picked some place a lot worse than San Diego. Yeah.

Simon: 7:22

I, well, you know, I did the big loop thing. Yeah. I like San Diego the best yeah.

Randy: 7:26

Yeah. So you came over working as an engineer. Yeah.

Simon: 7:30

Yeah. And then it, well, for three weeks was a vacation, but then six months later I came over as an electrical engineer. There's okay. It was during, uh, the big boom in mobile phones. Right. I designed mobile phones in England and I came over to work for Hughes network systems was the first company I worked for where we designed big Mo big. I started out when mobile phones were the size of a brick.

Randy: 7:52

I had one of those. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, at some point then you got the entrepreneurial bug and you started pursuing California real estate, I think back in what oh seven is what my notes said.

Simon: 8:07

Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I, um, I bought, we flipped some homes in California, but I bought some homes out of state. which I still have some of those. So we, we, we kind of got into buying and selling homes in San Diego and it was hot back in 2000 6, 7, 8. Yeah. As it is now. And then I bought some rentals in a few different parts of the country in South Carolina and Mississippi and Phoenix and stuff. I sold some of those, but I've still got quite a few.

Randy: 8:36

You started in that industry when it was pretty hot. And

Simon: 8:41

then yeah, I kind of started right at the top. Yeah. Two. And it was like, but you know, I I've managed to keep hold of some of those. They actually still, yeah. Some of 'em I had to sell cuz it was in the big downturn things were got real Nesty. So I just got rid of them. Well, that's what I was wondering. I was able to hold onto quite a few of them. So yeah,

Randy: 9:01

during the, uh, the oh eight through oh 10 or so. Yeah, that was pretty difficult

Simon: 9:06

time. So that's when we were doing short sales were basically in San Diego where you were buying houses in pre foreclosure, and then selling them again quickly. And

Randy: 9:15

you're able to make for a couple of years, you could make money at that fairly well.

Simon: 9:19

Yeah, our best one, we did 110,000 in a flip, so it was not too bad back then. God.

Randy: 9:26

No kidding. Wow. That's amazing. So are you still active

Simon: 9:30

in no, not so much in real estate. I've still got rentals, right? And I do a little bit of work in real estate notes, which is I generate some leads and I broker them, or I also have some notes. Notes are the, you know, the, the deaths, the mortgage. Okay. You can sell a house without a bank. If I, if I wanted to buy a house from you, Randy, and we didn't wanna go to the bank, you could just, uh, Agree to carry the paper mm-hmm so if I bought you had a hundred thousand dollars house to sell, I might give you $10,000 down and you would finance that 90,000 to me. Right? So, but then if later on you said, I want to sell that, that$90,000 note to someone else. Right. And invest, it might come in there and buy it from you. He might discount it a little bit. So he gets a better interest rate. Sure. Better yield. But there's a whole industry around buying private notes like that. Okay. So I have some of those notes and I also do lead generation online to generate some of those types of leads to give to other people I, to broker them to, or sell a leads to other people,

Randy: 10:35

ah, had no idea that that even was. Is that, is that a, that seems like such a small sliver, is it?

Simon: 10:42

It is, it is a very small sliver, but, but on that same ilk, you can do the same thing with people do it with structured settlements, you know, JG with mm-hmm all over the place. That's how it works. Lottery winnings. Right. Can be. Can be created into notes like that. There's lots of things, uh, even royalty fees and all sorts of things can be create a cashflow can be created from things like that. There's a whole sub-industry of financial instruments that most people have never heard of. Yeah.

Randy: 11:11

Curious through your. Kind of investments and, uh, purchases made any, any bad purchases in any of them. Oh yeah, yeah,

Simon: 11:21

yeah. real estate or otherwise, otherwise, whatever, I've had some bad real estate deals for sure. But I loaned money that never got paid back and, uh, Yeah. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. I've learned you learn a lot from that lost a good chunk of money in various bad deals. Yes . Yeah.

Randy: 11:40

Well, yeah. So your 110,000 flip, uh, you know, could evaporate. I've lost more than that. Yeah, well that's so you were kind of involved and heavy into that stuff. Um, kind of before that house and garden TV craze, you know, where they're, uh, flipping houses and were you doing stuff for,

Simon: 12:01

yeah, I think it kind of came out of the, the big. 2010, 11. Did it start off? I don't know. There's always been something, but now there's a lot of them. Yeah. Even ice. Is it vanilla ice and various people do flipping on TV and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of them now. Yeah.

Randy: 12:17

So would you do this, uh, the house flip and I think I'm more familiar with where you, uh, go and you grab the house by it and then renovate, uh, completely got it. That's a lot of

Simon: 12:28

work. All I did was I. Bought the house and sold it onto someone

Randy: 12:33

else. So you were almost just a owner on paper quick and then, well, yeah,

Simon: 12:38

that that's called wholesaling. When you buy a, a house or you get it under contract and you sell a contract right. To someone else who wants to renovate it and sell it. So I've done a little bit of that. And, uh, the other thing was we did short sales, so we helped owners sell our house. Right. That we're in good Condit. So we kind of bought it on paper and then sold it immediately. There's special technique for doing it with double ended clothes.

Randy: 13:01

Got it. Got it. Crazy market today in the housing industry. What do you think about that? Would you, yeah,

Simon: 13:09

I'm not an expert in it anymore, cause I don't follow it quite as much, but yeah, certainly San Diego's gonna like 22% in the last year. I think. I think, I think we're starting to see some cooling in many areas cuz the interest rates have gone up and uh, our, our house has doubled in price in the last six or seven years. I think it's crazy.

Randy: 13:29

Yeah, it is crazy. So you, you came here as an electrical engineer. What was it that kind of tripped your interest and, and, uh, really got you into the real estate pursuit. How did you even, well, I was

Simon: 13:46

just, you know, I was, I worked in a corporate wealth a, well probably. Total of 15 years, but I first got interested in real estate. When someone at one of the companies I was working with talked, talked to me about rentals, real real estate rentals. And I kind of got interested and says, oh, that's kind of interesting. So that's how I got into that. I, so I went to a few seminars and stuff and started buying a few rentals. And it just kind of grew outta that. I started to do, and I started to think about how I can generate extra income from that. I thought it was gonna do it with rentals. Right. But, uh, rentals is not big enough an income for me to live off it yet. yeah. Yeah.

Randy: 14:26

That's incredible. So, and then at some point, Kind of brought you into the world that you do today. And this is the, I think the venue that you and I, we belong to a couple of, uh, different professional groups. And I don't know, I think we met online a couple years ago or so we've gone to a couple of different, uh, conferences together. And, uh, you are now co-leading, I don't know what to call you, I guess, but you've got a co-founder whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got a digital agency, uh, there in San Diego. Tell us a little

Simon: 14:58

bit about that. I kind of got into that because of the real estate thing, cuz I was building my own websites, you know, mm-hmm I was just, it, it, you know, I built my first website out of HTML and, and then I think I built a couple of WordPress sites to try and generate leads for my real estate business. Right. And then I. Did a little bit of stuff for other people. Then I did a bit of marketing online for websites and stuff, and it just kind of grew out of that. You know, I kind of, I kind of like this more than the real estate yeah. Cause it's a little bit closer to what I was in college for, you know, computer, stuff like that, where real estate was, you have to talk to people and stuff, you know,

Randy: 15:40

well, you still have to talk to people occasionally.

Simon: 15:43

Yeah. Yeah. But luckily my business partner does more of that. I just talk to, uh, I just talk to a computer and people that talk the same language as me, like yourself, people. Yeah. I do talk to some of our clients, but my business partner does. Probably he's more on the sales side. I'm a bit more on the marketing and technical side. All right. All right. Kinda works out well for us,

Randy: 16:04

cause yeah, well, you've been doing it for a while, so

Simon: 16:07

yeah. Yeah. I think 2008, 2009, somewhere around there. I can't really pin down exactly when I started it, cuz it kind of, I transitioned into it from doing it for myself to a few other people. So it's like it's a bit hazy to me where it was 2008, 2009, I think. Yeah. I started doing it for other clients and. I was on my own for many years. And then, then in 2016, I found a business partner that I tried working with a few people in the past as a business partner, but it didn't work out two or three times just, you gotta find the right person to be a business partner with right. 2016, I found a guy that, you know, similar ideas to me, but he was good at one thing and I was better at another thing. So it really worked out. So we've been together now for six years and finding a business partner was a. Big help for me as a business owner to, to, uh, to grow the business since then we've grown quite a lot. Cause he had his strengths. I had my strengths, you know, and I wasn't particularly good at some of the things. He, he was good at more. He was better at he'd actually been in sales. So he was better at that anyway.

Randy: 17:13

Yeah. Is he as interested? I'll I'll say in the

Simon: 17:18

technic side, he, yeah, he likes, he, he was doing social media and reputation management. Okay. So he, he had that side of it, but he was, and I was doing more of the SEO and PPC, you know, setting and optimization and that type of stuff. So it was a good marriage of the two.

Randy: 17:33

So that's pretty interesting. I'm gonna ask you here now. We're we're gonna move into what we like to call the seventh inning stretch. Simon. I know baseball is not. Widely popular, we'll say in England, but do you like baseball? You got the Padres down there. I've been to games

Simon: 17:54

in San Diego. I've been to the Padres a couple of times. Yeah. It's it's fun, you know? Yeah. There you go. It's not too bad. It's not my thing, but you know, it's okay. Yeah.

Randy: 18:04

Well, alright. Well we are, and it's time for the seventh inning stretch. It is time for the seventh inning stretch. So I know that baseball is not horribly popular there in England, but it does have some history really in, in England. Yeah. You're like really? I had no idea yes. And, and actually it goes, there's some, I'm not gonna go into the deep, deep history, but, uh, back in the, uh, about 120 years ago, It started with a gentleman. Uh, sir, Francis Le uh, started a team there in around 1889, 1890s, something like that. And then we'll kinda move forward into that. But probably Britain's greatest moment of in baseball was back in 1938, when the us had a national baseball team, they were preparing for the 1940 Olympics. England had an all star team. And so they played the America's all star team and actually England won that series four games to one. So, which is, what is that? The last

Simon: 19:17

game they ever won?

Randy: 19:19

yes. So pretty, pretty exciting. It seemed to be the. Maybe British baseball was heading in the right direction. And then world Wari breaks out and the popularity of the sport never returned, uh, to England. It's just, obviously now it's just not that popular, but here's your question coming and being from England. Do you have any idea how many major league baseball players were born in England?

Simon: 19:50

have zero idea. I'll take a complete guess seven, no idea whatsoever.

Randy: 19:57

uh, well, while I'll you're close. At at, in a certain, certain regard 32 in total. Okay. That were born in England. Okay. But only six of them have played since world Wari, so. Oh, really? Wow. Yes. So, so your seven was close kind of post world war II. So not too. I think there's

Simon: 20:21

probably more NFL players from England. Cause I think rugby people can sometimes transition into NFL.

Randy: 20:29

Yeah, well that could be. Yeah. I don't know those guys playing cricket, you know, they'd swing as

Simon: 20:34

cricket. Yeah. But cricket, they swing the back differently. It's not sort of up here. It's

Randy: 20:39

from the floor. It's different shade, shade down. Yeah. It's crazy. Uh, well, not too bad Simon. You did. All right.

Simon: 20:47

my, my knowledge of, of baseball is

Randy: 20:49

practically zero All right, well, let's get back into it. Play ball. All right. So I, I find it interesting. Uh, it with you is that you do have this entrepreneurial spirit where instead of this highly technical, where I would think that you're an electrical engineer and I, you know, at first glance you would think you might not be like, Hey, I wanna take a risk. I wanna go, you know, make some investments, go pursue, start my own business kind of thing. But you really kind of moved in that direction is. Anything was your family, did you have, oh, well, my,

Simon: 21:25

my brother and father had a, I have a, um, a small business. They have a car garage in England. Mm. Yeah. And I actually, when I was younger, I actually did dabble in, in, um, entrepreneurship. When I was 16. I wrote a computer program that I sold . Oh, wow. Look at you. So I was involved in computers in the early days. I, you know, it was on a cassette tape. Yeah. And I sold it through a magazine and yeah. So that was one of the things I did. And I think where that I was probably 15, 16, when I did that. Then when I was 17, one summer, we started a car wash business that we drove around and washed people's cars. So , I dabbled with it before I was in electrical engineering, being a sort. Small, small business

Randy: 22:12

owner. Yeah. Yeah. you know, that's so funny. The, the mobile carwash or car detailing is what you call it here. Yeah. Yeah. That still people still make very business doing that still. Yeah. You were on the cutting edge probably back then. So now at some point you came to the states, you're doing the electrical engineering. You were doing real estate investment, and then you're like, you're not satisfied. You're still doing some business pursuits. You opened a hair salon franchise.

Simon: 22:41

Oh yeah. Yeah. That was cause I wanted to get out, uh, out of engineering just cuz you know, I liked engineering, but I was in it for long enough that I wanted to do something different. Be my own boss, you know? So we, we went to a business bro and we went to a franchise. Broker and they, you know, they do an interview with you and they figure out what, what you interested in and your goals and stuff. And they came up with a few different things. One of them was a her salon, great clips. Another one was a mobile pets. Grooming it was Aussie pet mobile. Okay. And they're the two we kind of looked at pretty closely. I'm not sure why we chose great clips in the end, but that's the one we chose because we believed it could be scalable Uhhuh. And, you know, the, the successful franchisees had like five or 10 salons. So we chose that one. So. Yeah, I, we did that for about three years. I, I, I kind of figured out pretty quick that I didn't really like that business. you know, I was dealing with, we had 14 employees, most of them females. So for the first year or so, I was at the salon every day. And then I realized I can't handle this. So I just said, um, my wife can, can handle it now. I'm I'm going home and staying home. then I went back into the high tech space for, for a few years. Her salon was not me.

Randy: 24:10

well, I saw this in the notes now, you know, uh, for what I know of you and hanging out with you, that would've been probably the last thing that I would've ever have coupled with you is like a, her salon. Simon: Oh, it was, it was fun for yeah. Listening to. 18 19 20 year olds with all their problems. We came, come across. Every thing you can think of, you know, problems, drug addiction, unfortunately, and pregnancies, and just a lot of young female problems, you know? Oh yeah, I'm outta this.

Simon: 24:48

I don't think I'm the right

Randy: 24:48

person for this. Yeah. I don't know. Well, and, uh, you know, and hair is, for me is just, you know, just something I can't relate with. Yeah. Doesn't it doesn't cost you too much. Does it? doesn't so that is, uh, crazy. So at, at some point you said, okay, this isn't for me. How did you go about kinda undoing.

Simon: 25:11

So, so it was a franchise, there was a support, there was like 20 different salons in San Diego county and okay. I knew all the other franchise owners. So. I approached one or two of them to see if they wanted to buy it. So I sold it for pennies on the dollar mm-hmm yeah. So the numbers work out is I put about 300 K into it and sold it for 30 K. That was a. Randy: Ouch. Ouch. Yeah. You needed to start flipping some houses or something. Yeah. In order to, to come back from that one. It is interesting though. And I'm sure that you're sitting back now. I mean, the I'm sure that was years ago, but looking back at it now, What, uh, maybe a life lesson that you probably have picked up out of that? Well, franchises are good because they do have a, an established system and that's what we wanted. You know, they have you do it this way and this way and this way, right. You know, everything is set out. You buy your, these. You know, you buy your equipment from here, you buy your, your supplies here. Here's the ATM system, you know, and there's a training system. Everything was set up for you. You're paying it. So you pay a fee for that. So everything's set up, you just should be just plug and play and. For a lot of people. It is, but for us it just didn't work out. We just weren't the right people for that type

Randy: 26:32

of business. Yeah. Yeah. That's gotta be, uh, there

Simon: 26:35

are lots of people. I mean, I wouldn't say it's a bad business. It's just, um, you know, some people have done really well from it. Some people have 10, 20, 30 salons and then you're making pretty decent money from each one.

Randy: 26:47

Sure, sure. Well, I would think it is an industry that probably will just continue to go on, regardless of I

Simon: 26:55

think so. Yeah, because I don't. Robots are gonna replace hair dresses anytime soon. I, I doubt it. And, and, and her seems to grow. Yeah. Except during the pandemic, when everyone had YouTube haircuts and stuff for a while

Randy: 27:10

or just let it grow and, you know, yeah. I, I tried that run and it didn't really change anything for me, but, uh, So in thinking, you know, over the course of the years that you've been in business and had different business pursuits and, and experiences, when you came across something maybe like, uh, the hair salon, or maybe in one of your real estate ventures, when you came across or were faced with obstacles, um, some challenges, what was your approach to overcome?

Simon: 27:50

Challenges sometimes, you know, being an engineer, try and solve it myself first. Sometimes sometimes that isn't the best approach. So certainly in some of my current, in the past, maybe I just try and solve it myself and just mut through. That's generally not the best approach. What I do now is that I have a problem. I'll I, I have a lot of, you know, I'm. Digital marketing space. If I have a problem, I know lots of people. I know lots of people that are, have more experience in certain things than me. So I will seek out someone that can help me with a specific problem. So having a big network of people that understand the same industry as you is very useful. When you're a business owner and I think I'm in a networking group and a lot of people, you know, I, I have industries totally unrelated to mine. And so now there's a CPA and things like that, that networking group is good for me, cuz I can go to people within that group and ask them specific questions that are totally outside. Scope of my work.

Randy: 28:48

Right, right. That actually is some great advice. I have been, uh, active in, in a number of different networking groups. I've met some great people. Um, there's a great group, uh, organization called BNI. I don't know if you, yeah. Yeah.

Simon: 29:04

I, I was in that for, I was in B and I for five years. That's very good. Yeah. When you, certainly, when you getting started. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of, now I'm in. It's called the executives association of San Diego. It's slightly bigger businesses. Mm-hmm and, uh, that's been very good for my business actually, cuz I got quite a few clients from there as well. Oh good, good, good. It's a good way to grow your business no matter what type of business you're in. Yeah. So there's roofing guys in, you know, networking group. There's window guys, all sorts of different industries. Well, I

Randy: 29:33

think it's a great approach. And I, I was gonna say, and now I'm heavily involved in our, um, local chamber of commerce. And I, I think it's good as a business owner, as we both are now to. Engage outside. And is what you mentioned to engage with owners, um, outside of your specific niche, because, you know, as you rattled off, whether it's CPAs or lawyers or roofers or whatever that business is, Or those businesses are that are part of that group. You really can learn still from anybody. Yeah. In any business, because they may not have your very specific niche specific challenge that you're trying to figure out. But they're business owners. They're still trying to figure out how do we get new customers? How do we, yeah. How do we get more efficient in delivering our services? How do we scale? How do we save money and operations? And so kind of having that network and sounding boards, and as you're exploring topics like that, amongst a group of people, you get a completely different perspective. I

Simon: 30:43

think it's very useful for any business owner to, to be in a group like that. Yeah, because. Some of our members have been in business 50 years. Yeah. And some of them are multi-generational. Some of them have been in the company, in the organization for over 70 years, their grandfather, the father and the father. So they have lots of business experience. They, you know, so you can go to them with questions or they can even connect you with people that they know, you know, they, they, they don't know someone, they know someone who does know someone, you know? Yeah. So it's, it's, it's very powerful, I think for a small

Randy: 31:16

business, So Simon what's around the corner. What's the next big step or big, uh, pursuit.

Simon: 31:23

Well, I just continue to grow. We don't grow our agency fast, where everyone wants to grow scale, scale, scale, scale, scale. We're more of a grow slowly and high retention is our model for our current clients. And also we're trying to do things slightly outside of client work, you know, building our own websites and stuff to generate income and stuff. So I'm just slowly doing that and I'll probably buy another couple of real. Houses and stuff and just, you know, just, I, I don't have these big dreams of being a hundred million dollar company anymore. It's just, I just want a comfortable, easy life where , I can do what I do wherever I want to do it. So, you know, cuz I'm a, I digital, I, most of my stuff is digital. I can do my job anywhere in the world. Yeah. And that's, you know, December we took off, well, we went somewhere up, you know, we went up the coast of California and I ran my business from a Airbnb

Randy: 32:21

for a month, so. Oh, nice. Do you have any of those, uh, fancy thoughts of, I don't know, um, at some point in your life. Just going off, uh, to some other country. There's a lot of guys that do what we do that go off to, I could. Yeah. Or, or maybe Taiwan or it's more difficult

Simon: 32:43

cause we have animals. So yeah. You know, it's difficult cuz we like to have dogs around. So that makes it a bit more challenging. I might be able to do it for a couple of weeks, but I couldn't do it for six months or a year. Like some people do like being a digital nomad. Yeah. I'll probably not do. But, you know, I might do it for a few weeks. Yeah, yeah. Maybe a month, but not any longer than that. Yeah. Maybe in the future, maybe in 10 years in the future, I might change

Randy: 33:06

my mind maybe at a point when you don't, when you don't have a, a furry animal that you're. Yeah. Unfortunately they do come and go.

Simon: 33:13

Yeah. Yeah. But I keep replacing them. So. Randy: All right. So Simon, here we are. We're at the bottom of the ninth and this is where we typically ask our guests. What advice do you have for rookies in the game? So those folks starting out in business, or maybe who already have a business, and they're looking for some guidance, uh, from an old Sage, uh, veterans, like you been around on the bus for a. Well, I think we just, we, we, we talked about it just a minute ago. I think if you're starting out, it it'd be good to get into some sort of BNI LA tip or some other organization where other small businesses gather, because one, they can help you with, you know, often it'll be a CPA and a lawyer and all those types of people, professional services that you need for your business. But also the, the goal of those types of organizations is. Refer business to you. So, you know, if you refer business to them, they, the idea is that they refer business to you. So that's actually one way you can really build your business quickly. And I know quite a few one, man bands have turned into bigger companies by just going to the right type of networking group B and I LA tip chamber of commerce, whatever it is. There's, there's, there's, there's a lot in San Diego. There's lots of them, right. Um, I think that would be very beneficial starting out. Right. Also read lots of Amazon books, but

Randy: 34:40

there you go. I, I tell my kids this all the time. I think, Hey, you can go on YouTube and learn about anything in 30 minutes. Yeah. And be proficient at least. So, yeah. Uh, I'm like, don't ask me, go ask YouTube. You can find it there. Yeah. You can get the,

Simon: 34:55

you can get the theory and some of the ideas from there. Sure. But go into these networking groups, you get to interact. Real businesses. And how did it really work? You know, what did you do and stuff. So I think that's, if you're really just starting out, that's probably one of the top things to do is go and join summit like

Randy: 35:10

that. Yeah. I think that's some great advice. Well, listen, Simon, thanks for hanging out with us a bit here today. We can get in touch with you@localblitz.com. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. Local click.com. I'll have that link, uh, and other social networks and things. If people could reach out to you via, uh, the internet, um, we'll have those in our show notes. And, uh, I appreciate you hanging out with us on a, um, beautiful, uh, Friday, hopefully in San Diego. It's gorgeous there. It's gorgeous here in, in Cleveland today. Great. Thanks for having me, Randy. All right. I appreciate it. And that's the ballgame folks. Thanks for joining us today. And if you like our show, please tell your friends, subscribe and review, and we'll see around the ballpark. Running the bases with small businesses is brought to you by 38 digital market, a digital marketing agency, committed to client growth. With lead generation higher conversions and increased sales connect with us today at 38 digital market.com.