[00:00:00] Speaker A: Today on the Unscripted Small Business Podcast, we have Drew Carmichael. Drew, welcome.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Hello. Thank you for having me, Daniel. It's a pleasure to be on here and I'm super excited to share my story.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Drew, for people who might not be familiar with you, can you tell us who you are and what it is that you do?
[00:00:16] Speaker B: I'm Drew Carmichael. I'm currently 19 years old and I run a marketing agency where we work with businesses across Australia and also internationally. Coming up from I started my first business when I was actually in school and got a little bit frustrated with just, you know, messing around during school. And I wanted to expand and learn a little bit outside the box. And from there everything's just taken off. And honestly, being open to opportunities is the biggest thing that I can really attribute to my success.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: That's great. I'm really looking forward to digging into your story, hearing a little bit more about how you approached what you do to start a marketing agency, what mindset you need and so forth. We'll get into all of those, but. But first let's talk about what the business actually is. When you say marketing agency, I understand it's called the cultivator. What does that mean? What is a marketing agency for somebody who might work in a completely different kind of small business?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Look, well, look when you first think of a marketing agency personally, since I've, since I've run small businesses, before starting it, I hadn't, I didn't really like marketing agencies personally because I've had so many experiences that were. That was sort of negative and I thought there was so much opportunity to sort of really be down to earth with individuals. And the market agency that we run essentially helps. We have two wings and we first of all help econ businesses scale through paid ads, through branding, and also SEO. And then we also help service based business scale their leads. So whether or not you're a appointment based business like a clinic or a business that sort of provides home services like pressure washing, car cleaning or something like that, we scale their leads and we have a podcast system where we only give our team members a certain amount of clients to work with to really provide that niche sort of focus and assist the business itself in scaling. And I'm here today to sort of share how I set that up and also to share some sort of secrets that we've learned over the fair few years. Doing this for clients.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Let's definitely get into the secrets. I'm looking forward to hearing that. Can you tell us a little bit about what made you want to start a marketing agency in the first place?
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Yeah, look. So I, I was in school and I started up a little. I was selling on ebay first and from there we, I was selling these little collectible things that we had, the sort of Australian equivalent of Walmart. And they were incentives for kids to sort of buy, get their parents to buy more. So every $30 you got a little collectible I sold, I was sort of reselling them on ebay, a little, little me reselling them on ebay for a bit of a profit. And from that I made a couple grand. And from there I was like, okay, well I can't be going to our post office every single day to ship these little tiny things out in envelopes. So I started up an Amazon FBA business and that was a really big shock because I had to learn marketing how to run those Amazon PPC ads and also fulfill, fulfill those as well from Amazon.
And then I did a bit of looking around and the first guy that I came across was actually Davey Fogarty. He's an awesome guy, awesome Australian. And spent, spent a long time learning that. And then when I got to sort of grade 10, I noticed that the Amazon overheads were fairly large and it was sort of hard to compete with the Amazon, you know, the Amazon competition that was shipping in the products. And actually really funny story, I don't want to take too long, but I actually had 100 massage guns rock up at my house because I had the wrong labels on them. Which we were shipping container loads of massage guns to Amazon FBA. And I was in grade 10 at the time and I had 100 massage guns show up at my house because they had the wrong labels on them. And mum and dad weren't too happy with the extra decorations in the hallway. Just like a container load of massage guns. So that was sort of my sort of realization that, yeah, Amazon's great. It really taught me some fundamental stuff. And then I moved on to Shopify and we scaled an, actually an interior design Shopify store that was providing really boutique furniture, but also those trendy items. It was a fair few years ago during COVID those trendy universe projectors that a bunch of young girls had in their bedrooms and also those sunset lamps. So that really went well. And we partnered with some interior design companies in Australia to actually provide furniture for their, for their designs.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: What a great way to capitalize on a moment. I really like that.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. And it was, it was quite good to partner with interior design businesses. Because they deal fairly high ticket, at least with the products that we were producing. And we were able to create a really awesome brand around our products.
From there, I had a few people notice what we were doing. And then having that experience with running the ads myself and understanding what really means a lot for small businesses, we were able to start a marketing agency that essentially just focused on the needs of a small business. Like, they don't really. A lot of people that I find don't really mind with all that funky jargon as long as they're making money. That's the biggest thing that matters. Right. And I tried contacting a bunch of marketing when I was in that phase of running those businesses, and they just weren't really thinking the way that I was hoping to think. You know, those businesses were my baby. And I expect the marketing agency to treat those. Treat my business like a baby as well. And that's exactly what we do at the cultivator.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. I think one of the things that's really important for small businesses, whether you're a physical brick and mortar store, is to keep people coming in the door or if you're some kind of digital platform, to keep those sales flowing. And so even though there's so much that you could do with social media marketing, you could have an email newsletter, you could do all the things, but that might not necessarily translate to either people walking in the door or customers buying the products. And I think to a certain extent, small business owners need to know about their business. They need to know what they do every day and do it better, faster, whatever, to make themselves stand out, to be able to do that and understand social media marketing or email marketing or whatever you have to do to get people in the door, like that's a whole separate kind of thing. So it makes a lot of sense, your approach. If I can, I want to ask you this. Have you gone to uni? Did you think about going to uni? Or you just said, you know what? I, I don't think I need it. I think I know what I need to start where I want to go already. Because from you telling that story, it seems like you were the kind of person to let me choose myself, let me pick my own path, let me get started, and then I'll figure out as I go, as opposed to somebody giving me a piece of paper that says, all right, Drew, you know what, you need to now get started.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: That is a fantastic question, Daniel. Actually, that's the age old question, really. All of I did fairly well at school. And all of my mates that were doing well as well have gone to uni. And my entire family, we're very. We're in the car industry, right? And my grandfather had a few car dealerships. Dad was a car dealer. And all of them obviously went to business school to learn how to be a salesman and focus in the car dealership, which was great, right? And in Australia, car dealerships are pretty. Pretty good. But when I was graduating school, that was the point at which I had. I literally had two people turn up in my messages, in my emails while I was running these e Comm stores saying, hey, Drew, I want to pay you to do my marketing. I want to pay you to build my website just like you've done for yours. And that's sitting on my foot, my doorstep. And also the. The debt for uni sitting on my doorstep as well. I was sitting there going, well, you know, do I follow the path of going to uni being a car dealer, or do I follow the path of creating my own business? And I was like, look, I can probably be a car dealer down the line if I wanted to, like, you know, but I haven't gone to uni, and I've accepted the fact that I have to double down and lock in. Into this. This agency. And I feel as though if I was going to uni and running the agency, it would give me a fallback, it would give me a, you know, a backup that my brain isn't 100% convinced in the marketing agency. And right now, I'm 100% dedicated to the marketing agency and our awesome clients. Like, every client we have, we only sign clients on if we're 100% convinced that they have a solid business. And we treat them. We treat them as a friend. Like, last weekend, one of my clients invited us out to play poker on their superyacht. And we went around and it was a fantastic Saturday night.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: But that sounds very fun.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Oh, it was. It was awesome. But, you know, those are the clients that we really, really value. I mean, if you work with us, you know how to have a super yacht, but, you know, the clients that we have, we really build an awesome relationship with. And, yeah, I haven't gone to uni to answer your question, you know, and.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: I'm not surprised at all. And I think you looked at the approaches, the cost benefit analysis, right? And if somebody had gone to uni and not taking that away from anybody, if you have the money to afford it or you're willing to take on that debt, okay, that's fine, that's fair. But you might come out with that piece of paper that says, okay, you now know what you need for marketing. Number one, it's changed, right. In that time that you've been at uni. But also if you were going to get a job, what might they say? You don't have the experience. Right. But you, day one were like, let me start with experience and use that to get clients to satisfy the problems that I see potential clients having. So I think that is just such a brilliant approach and I think it shows people it's a good reminder you don't necessarily have to take on debt or come up with a huge business plan in order to start solving problems of the people around you. And people will notice that you're doing that. So I think your story is fantastic for that.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: No, I appreciate that, Daniel. Yeah. Look, almost all my clients have gone to uni and they all run their own business as well. So it doesn't mean when you go to uni, you can't run your own business. You know what I mean? Of course, of course. One of my clients actually said something very interesting to me and he said he didn't have his business idea when he graduated school. He used uni to remain productive across those early years and still build sort of foundation. I think he went to do a, like a health and, or like a sports education degree or something that's totally unrelated to his business. But it allowed him to remain productive across those initial years of his life rather than sitting around waiting for an idea to come to him. You know what I mean?
So, yeah, that's, that's definitely a benefit of uni itself that, that they, that he's taken advantage of.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'd like to dig into some of the things that you mentioned earlier that your agency does. And one of the topics that you had mentioned has to do with SEO. I'm not a person who knows a lot about SEO. If you could just give us a little bit on what it means, how you do it, how you help your clients with it. If you don't mind.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Look, SEO is really a long term strategy. When we start working with clients, we do pitch them the idea of SEO, but we also get them started on paid ads. Because if we're looking at ranking on Google, which is SEO is search engine optimization, we find that to get the instant satisfaction of a client working with us, we do have to start with giving Google a little bit of money to put us in the sponsored window. And especially with Running an E commerce strategy and a leads based SEO strategy, My bad is a little bit different simply because E Comm, you're obviously selling the product and leads, you're selling the service. In terms of an E Comm SEO strategy, we always have all of our products listed in a merchant center and something that really, really helps. And is it right if I drop some sort of secret sauce? Daniel, right now, if you're comfortable, I would appreciate it.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: And you may get some clients out of it. Who knows? Please, by all means.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: So there's this one software that we use for Ecom and it's called simprosis and it essentially allows really, really sophisticated product feeds to be filtered through to Google. And in any recommendation, if you want to have a real effective SEO ranked ecom site, I would always go with Shopify. Shopify is a little bit more expensive than Woocomm or anything like that. But Shopify allows you to integrate apps such as the Google and YouTube app and Symprosis that get your products ranked better in the shopping tab because of those really effective Google Merchant center feeds. So if you're ever a little bit concerned, the first thing that I would do is make sure you have Google Merchant center set up and then have a look at Google Search Console. Because Google Search Console allows you to essentially index all of your pages into Google. Same with the leads based or service based business. Always make sure your pages are indexed into Google using the Google Search Console. Then I would recommend you having a look. Maybe Semrush, maybe Ubersuggest, they're two or Ahrefs. Those are the two best SEO softwares. I personally use ubersuggest because, well, it's created by a guy called Neil Patel. He's apparently called the SEO God for lack of a better word.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: It's a famous name for sure.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And he has a system called ubersuggest. And it essentially allows you to scope out how you are ranking in Google and how your competitors are ranking, how your backlinks are performing and how your keywords are performing. And for someone who doesn't know what backlinks are, essentially backlinks are other websites that link to your website. That counts as one backlink or a link on another website. And the way that that assists is Google. When Google indexes your website through Google Search Console, it actually finds, you know, it finds your website and then when it indexes other websites, it finds their website linking to yours. So then it goes, oh, well, this website obviously has a bit of trust associated with it and you hire. The reason why it takes a little longer than ads is because obviously you can launch an ad straight away, but you can't get other websites to backlink you. You can't improve your keywords in one day. So it's a longer term strategy for Google to not only index, but for you to also input all the details required and the keywords required onto your website. So I would highly recommend for anyone who wants to or is interested in SEO to look into Semrush, Ahrefs or ubersuggest. Maybe ubersuggest first because I believe on the top of my head it could be a little cheaper starting out than the other two.
There are obviously a few keyword tools online, but also Chat GPT can do fairly well. I just don't recommend chatgpt to write all of your content because Google does have some GPT proofing systems, so it actually pushes GPT written content a little in its search.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: I didn't know that. I'm actually surprised to hear that. I wonder, do they push Gemini content in their search lower as well or do you think they give that one a little bit more of a pass?
[00:14:46] Speaker B: That's a good question because that is obviously the Google GPT equivalent, right? Yeah, that's a fantastic question.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: I'm always trying to think how to game the system. You know, one thing I wanted to ask, when it comes to SEO, I think a lot of people oftentimes feel that their website is more of a static thing, but they spend more time on the day to day kind of creating content for social media platforms. How does that get indexed by Google or does it at all? I mean, how do they know what the content is in the videos of the TikToks and the reels? Right. So to a certain extent I kind of view those as two separate things. Right. Is that how small businesses should think about it?
[00:15:23] Speaker B: Look, that's a great question, Daniel. Realistically, when it comes to, when we work with the business, the first thing we do is collecting as much data as possible because there are so many different platforms that quite frankly it can get overwhelming to try and conquer all of them at once. You know, there's Google as Bing, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, X, Blue sky, you know, know, and then all the ad systems behind them, LinkedIn, Pinterest, everything. And really big businesses, yes, they're all across them, but that's because I have like 50 people working on it at any one given time. Right. So if, if I was a small business right now and listening to this I would try and start collecting as much data as possible to work out where our can our customers that are coming from, are converting from. And then I would focus on that one platform to improve that and then move on to the second most popular referral or source that they're coming from. To do so, I would highly recommend to get Google Analytics installed. And that's very, very simple. You can put an analytics like a GA4 Plus, I think that's called now tag into your website, into the header. There's 101 tutorials online about that and it's really, really simple. And then after a week or so you can check back and, and then have a look at where your most popular referrals are coming from and optimize that platform to work out who's actually converting. That's another interesting question because you might have a in person pos and then you might have an online website and you might want to evaluate, well, where are they actually coming from? That's a little bit more tough. So I would recommend a software called Clarity. Just like Google Analytics, clarity is 100% free and I'm genuinely surprised that not more business owners know of it because it's built by Microsoft and it essentially records every single person that visits your website. This has been one of the most valuable things that we've installed for clients over the past few months because one, it's free, so they don't go oh, how much am I paying for it? But it also creates heat maps and records any glitches, any conversions. You don't even need to set up any conversion tracking. You put one line of code into the header for this and if inputting lines of code, there's a hundred tutorials for it. It's super simple anyway. We just do it in the team so clients don't need to worry about it. But. And then it records every single person that's visited your website. So we can then make justified decisions within the next few days. Once it records some data on what we need to change, you know, where they're converting from. It also records the referrals. So if they've come from google.com, you know, we've actually found one of our clients has made two conversions in one week from referrers from ChatGPT. And we wouldn't have known this without clarity because it was such a weird referral structure that it might look like a direct visit. But because of the UTM tags, the referral was actually.com, which is such an odd location. To buy a newcomer product from.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: But it's working, right? So it's good that you can track that. Right. So you could say here, this is an unusual thing, but it is working. Let's use that as leverage. Or look at why that's happening. I think that's a fantastic way to approach it. Drew, this has been great chatting with you. Do you mind telling us where we can find you online and any upcoming or future things that you want to tell us about that you're working on?
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. Well, look, we're always onboarding teams and our agency is expanding and we're really, really working on our client strategies to provide the best portal, the best communication strategies, and 100% transparency with our clients all the time. You can find
[email protected] we just reach out. You can even find me on my Instagram by Drew C. And that's by Drew C. And I'd love to jump On a quick 15 minute call, you know, no cost at all, just have a chat. I'm a really down to earth guy. In fact, all of our team is. And you know, we just love having a genuine conversation with genuine business owners all the time. So I appreciate it. Daniel, thank you so much.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Drew, thank you so much for your time. Find links for everything Drew mentioned in the show notes and thank you again for coming on.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Thank you for having me, Daniel. I hope you have a great rest of your day.
