"Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Collective Clicks podcast. This is your host Brandon Bateman, and today I'm going to be joined by Brady Stoltzing. Brady is our head of operations at Bateman Collective and has a ton of experience that has helped him to understand what operations level you need for what point you're in in your business. We're going to talk about different softwares and tools, we're going to talk about ways to implement systems and processes within your company, and we're going to talk about the kind of relationship we have, which is something we call a Visionary Integrator relationship. We'll discuss how that works and how you can both grow the company and maintain efficiency at the same time. How are you doing today, Brady?"
"Doing good, I'm just happy to be here in person," Brady replied.
"Happy to have you out here in person as well. Tell everybody where you live usually," Brandon prompted.
"I live in Oregon," Brady answered.
"So, uh, I lived in Utah up until last summer, and my wife and I have been in Oregon for the last, uh, almost a year now," Brady explained.
"And Southern Oregon, right? By the coast?" Brandon asked.
"Southern Oregon, yeah. It's beautiful," Brady confirmed.
"Super beautiful. I know you have some land right near the coast there," Brandon commented.
"A little tiny house on it, that's right. It's a lot of fun," Brady added.
"So Brady's our unusual person on the team that doesn't actually live here and, uh, you know, lives in his sandals on the southern American Coast," Brandon joked.
"Most people just see me on the screen," Brady laughed.
"Yeah, fair enough. So that's why I'm super excited to have you here today. We were, uh, just doing some quarterly planning over the last couple days," Brandon mentioned.
"That's right, we had Sharper come out and help us. It was pretty awesome," Brady agreed.
"So yeah, um, you are... see, how do I describe this? If I died tomorrow, then I don't think anything around here would skip a beat, and you're the reason that that would be true," Brandon said.
"Of course, everybody's the reason that would be true because they have to all do their jobs," Brady interjected.
"You're the thing that holds it all together, and I'm really grateful that it's just not me that holds it together. So I'm excited to talk about that relationship and everything," Brandon continued. "The uh, the interesting thing is I don't know if any of our clients know you. I don't know if any of our partners know you. You're kind of the behind-the-scenes guy. That's what has happened, um, and really the, uh, you know, the better side of the partnership that you and I have together. So, um, for everybody listening, Brady is an operations genius, understands systems, understands people, accountability, all those things that kind of make a business work, and I'm super excited to dive into all that stuff today. Any comments before we jump into it?"
"Yeah, I mean, you're giving me tons of credit," Brady responded, "and uh, not giving yourself any. Uh, I mean, you're the mastermind behind all of this and the reason why I'm, you know, able to be working here. But uh, yeah, the relationship between us has been really interesting as it's developed over, you know, the year and a half that I've been here. Starting with getting systems in place and getting some efficiency and management in place for, you know, the different type of work and starting to scale that, and then moving into management of people and that kind of stuff, and taking more and more off your plate so you can not work until 10 pm every night. So I'm happy that you're able to have more of a family life, which is uh, definitely a good thing."
"I don't know if you could do it better. Then I'd say go ahead," Brandon joked. "So let's talk a little bit about your background because I think that'll set the stage for some of the value that you're going to add today. So tell me, uh, you know, how'd you get here and what were you doing before this?"
"Yeah, sure. So um, I started out... so, went to BYU, studied advertising, was working in digital marketing at the same time for an agency here in Utah as well, and um, they were starting a sister company which was... it was like a link building company, and it was, you know, just barely starting when I got in there," Brady explained.
"Yeah, and if I could have had some context because we talked about this before, but just to, you know, add some color to um, color to this," Brandon interjected. "Uh, you know, there's there's a few marketing channels that we focus on as a company. It's gonna be SEO, PPC, Facebook ads, correct?"
"Um, SEO, one discipline," Brady confirmed.
"Arguably one of the most important disciplines within it is something called link building, right?" Brandon added.
"It's how do you... how do you get links from other websites to yours? Google wants it to happen naturally. It doesn't in this industry, right?" Brady explained.
"Industries, it does a little bit more than others, sure. Sometimes you need a little bit of help, but you got to keep it within their policy exactly," Brandon noted.
"You got to keep it on budget, et cetera. So that's that's kind of what you're talking about. Your job was creating these backlinks?" Brandon asked.
"Yeah, so and backlinks essentially, it's um, it's like a credibility score from another site. It's somebody saying, 'Hey, I endorse this website. You should go check them out. They have good content. Here's, you know, why I think they have good content,' and you have a keyword that's linked within that. And so that's where keyword research comes into play, making sure that you're targeting the right thing so that, you know, when you start to search on Google, you show up for the right things," Brady elaborated.
The conversation continued in this manner, with Brandon and Brady discussing Brady's background in SEO and link building, his experience in developing operational systems, and how he came to work with Brandon at Bateman Collective. They delved into topics such as the importance of operational efficiency, the right time to invest in operations, and the challenges of balancing growth and efficiency in a business.
Throughout the discussion, they touched on various software tools and systems they use, including Monday for task management, Notion for company wikis, Tango for creating step-by-step guides, Loom for video recordings, and HubSpot for CRM.
The conversation concluded with an in-depth look at their Visionary-Integrator relationship, based on the concept from the book "Traction." They explained how this structure allows Brandon to focus on growth and vision while Brady manages the day-to-day operations and efficiency of the company.
The podcast ended with both expressing gratitude for their partnership and the benefits it has brought to their business.
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