In this episode, Matt Medeiros interviews Sara Dunn from the 11Web Agency. Sara is a website maker and SEO Consultant running a remote business based in Battle Creek Michigan. She talks with Matt about her recent use of YouTube and how she is committed to producing regular content along with creating a niche for her freelance business.

Listen to this episode:

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What you will learn from this Episode:

Creating a remote team:

• Sara’s business team was initially started by hiring a local coworker to do web development and support in the business. (3:54 )


• Another remote coworker was brought on to help with design. (4:11 )


• A Virtual Assistant was added to keep projects and everything organized. (4:22 )

Lessons learned:

• When you are looking to hire a remote worker for your business you can give them a test project to evaluate their skills. (6:40 )


• A remote worker needs to be able to meet deadlines and communicate well. (6:50 )


• You need to find people who are comfortable with the remote working lifestyle and are used to working alone or on the road. (7:15 )

Challenges of Growing an Agency:

• There is a challenge of trying to find the “right” customer who is willing to budget and pay for the level of service that you are providing. (8:26 )


• Many new customers are found through networking events and referrals.  (8:50 )


• The pool of people who want to pay for a great website gets smaller as the prices go up. (9:00 )


• It is difficult to find clients from a wide geographic area when you are working as a generalist. (9:19 )


• It can be very helpful to create an interesting niche for your business where clients take notice. (9:40 )


• Making the pivot in your agency to a specific group of businesses can be scary. There is a lot of training, marketing and adjusting of internal processes when you make a change to specialize. (11:22 )


• YouTube is a great tool to use for personal branding and to create a niche for another industry.  Sara is focusing on wedding professionals and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). (12:26 )

Executing a Business Pivot:

• You still need to pay the bills and collect money so launching another business under a new brand and separate website makes sense. (14:29 )


• Keeping the original brand and business keeps the risk lower and current customers happy. (14:40 )


• There is not a strategy for using YouTube around a personal brand. (16:19 )


• The videos are created with a genuine approach with “this is how I feel.” (16:52 )


• The feedback from viewers has been very genuine and supportive around the pivot. (18:11 )


• Pushing content with a helpful approach can direct the audience to a common thread. (20:06 )


• The audience seems to find the videos coming from a place of honesty and originality and is keeping people connected. (21:16 )


• The YouTube video creation consists of 1-3 hours a week. (24:36 )


• You do not need a lot of equipment to get started with a quality video that is original. (25:01 )

Episode Resources:

11web

Sara Dunn

iMovie

Lunch with Brad

To Stay in Touch with Sara:

Sara on YouTube

Sara on Twitter

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