John Caprani: Solopreneur First Six-Figure Year with Zero Marketing

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

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Today’s guest just finished year one as a solo preneur, and is here to share his journey. He’s a direct marketing consultant from Dublin Ireland, helping direct to consumer businesses, create offers and messages that are relevant, timely, and attractive to their ideal customers. He talks about his first client and scaling sales to his first six figure year without doing any more.

Yeah. Please welcome John Caprani, you all ready to grow your business? And I love helping entrepreneurs find success. So let’s do this. I’m Damon Burton, Forbes contributor, author of the search engine optimization book, outrank and president of SEO national. I’ve been featured on Forbes, entrepreneur and hundreds of websites and podcasts for helping big businesses grow bigger and make more money by showing up higher on search engines, including shark tank, featured businesses, NBA teams, and Inc 5,000 company.

I’m bringing my successful network to you here@learningfromothers.com. Whether success to you means financial freedom, freedom of time or freedom of the soul. We’re in this together. Welcome to the learning from others podcast.

Ready to show up higher on search engines for words that you can monetize, but without paying for ads, download your free copy of my SEO book outline. If you visit www.freeseobook.com today, John Caprani. Welcome to learning from others. Thanks, Damon. Nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me on. I’m excited to talk to you because you and I we’ve engaged for a while, but, um, we, uh, this’ll be kind of our first, not our first conversation, but our first more casual, non entirely business talk conversation.

Oh, almost two years, actually. Isn’t it? Is it like you’re you were my first like legit copywriting client. Yeah. I want to talk about that. I think that’s so interesting. Cause at the time I didn’t know that. So, um, before we get into that story though, you just touched on it. That you’re a copywriter. So I like to ask two questions at the beginning of a chat question.

Number one is, uh, what is your area of expertise, John? What are we going to talk about? Okay. Um, my area of expertise in copywriting is long form writing sales letters, VSLs and webinars scripts, primarily for coaching and for biz op offers. And, um, that’s yeah, that’s most of what my time is taken up with these days, I do a little bit of consulting, helping people with other, with putting offers together, but that’s primarily it.

Cool. And before we dig into the whole copywriting background question, number two is what do you suck at John? What do you not so good at? What am I not so good as. Things are not so good as work-wise or just personal life. Yeah. You tell me, do we, should we get your wife on, get your wife on the call? No, it’s going to be too controversial.

I don’t want to get into that conversation when it comes to work. If you look inside the field of copywriting, what, I’m definitely less strong artists, sort of the short form stuff. Like I do a little bit of email work. I do a little bit of Facebook ads, but it’s not much. Favorite type of work and it’s not what I’m best suited to.

I definitely prefer to work on the sort of longer projects where you’re spending a few weeks. You might be writing sort of like eight to 10,000 plus words and really getting into it, the stuff where somebody wants you to do like the real pity, a hundred to 200 words. That’s where I’m definitely not quite sure.

Interesting. Well, why don’t we kind of, why don’t we kind of elaborate on that? Because even though that’s what you’re saying, you suck at, I think it’s a good transition into talking about copywriting. Um, why don’t you explain or, or what’s just go more into exactly what you’re talking about. What is it that you enjoy about the long form process, um, that you don’t enjoy so much about the short form process?

Um, it’s um, the main thing that is the idea, the opportunity to like kind of flesh out and to work through that whole process of, I mean, a lot of the work I do is sort of for offers that are sort of cold or not super warm, where you have to take somebody from a point of view of not really knowing anything about what it is you’re offering to the point of view of kind of understand.

What the, what the problem is, why the problem is relevant to them. Um, establishing that, you know, the reason they still have this problem with the previous efforts they’ve made to try and fix this problem have gone in the wrong way. And they’re blending this alternate solution, which is the new thing.

And then, yeah. But the new thing has to have a new mechanism, a different way. It works for our it’s going to work for them. That’s different to what they’ve tried before. And then actually after that, once you’ve established, this solution is right for the, for the reader and presenting them with the offer, whatever offer is you’re going to make for that client.

Can you give us an example of the type of clients that you work with type of industry? Okay. Um, well, most reasonable I finished up is for a coaching company in Florida and they are a company that’s helping people actually sort of set up coaching businesses, although these are all personal coaching type businesses.

So they could be, you know, people who are, it’s just one person, or maybe they have a team of one or two people helping them. And they are doing personal one-to-one coaching for other business owners. Um, Typically they can be in all kinds of weird and diverse things. Like they’ve got a client who works with, uh, artists.

So she’s an, she is a writing coach. So she’s helping want to be authors, get their books published and, you know, charging them a monthly retainer to, to work with them and help them do that. Somebody like that is probably, you know, they could be making very different examples. This one particular example.

And she went from zero to 250,000 in revenue in our first year of business, helping authors to get their books published. And her coach is my client who actually sort of helped her set up that business, showed her how to go to Marcus, you know, showed her how to go out to her network and fun. You clients for herself and put the whole structure of her business.

Now you had mentioned the, that client, you know, one of the clients you just mentioned was in Florida and you’re in Ireland. How do people connect with you being in such a different location from where your clients are? Most of my clients come to me through Facebook pretty much. I’d say actually like 95% these days.

I, um, I keep on saying, I need to sort of run some traffic and put some Facebook ads and win my own offers. But the reality is there’s no great urgency to do that because I find that. More work than I can usually take on come. Opportunities comes to me just to be on Facebook. Uh, Zuckerberg pays my rent.

And what, where do they come to you on Facebook? Is it through your own personal page or do you go engage in certain pages and groups? Primarily groups have been the avenue for me to like meet, meet people. Um, so in a mix of free public groups, uh, I mean a couple of private paid groups as well. Um, It’s kind of like, it’s not directly the groups that you get to work in.

That means sometimes there are assignments or somebody posts something up and says, look, here’s this opportunity, jump on it and you go grab it. But it’s more about like, you engage with people in the groups, you build friendships, create a network for yourself, and then people start referring stuff to you.

Um, more often than not these days, like new stuff comes to me by. And are the groups that you’re participating in? Are they copywriting groups or are they business groups or are they other sorts of groups? Mostly stuff related to copywriting. And, um, I don’t, I’m maybe a little bit more broadly direct response market.

And you had mentioned that some of them rarely, someone will just come in and post a very specific opportunity. And that was me. That’s what I did. And that’s how you and I met. I came into a copywriting group and I think I just searched in Facebook. I searched for copywriting groups, found one and made posts and a handful.

And you had replied and you had mentioned at the beginning of our discussion that I was your first, uh, Type of client, which was interesting because, um, you know, looking back, it’s a cool story, but at the time, I didn’t know that. And so what, well, maybe let’s share that story for some of the aspiring entrepreneurs and what’s kind of revisit that and go through the process of, uh, I dunno.

I’m, I’m more curious, like what your thought process was or what was going through your mind as a, I imagine there was a moment of, oh, Hey, this is the first client type of opportunity and what you were thinking at the moment. Okay. I mean, when I say you’re my first client, I had done a little bit of work for one or two other people, but they had come to me through personal referrals, family members.

So you were the first time I’d actually gone out. Basically gone out and hustled and got a business relationship with somebody who didn’t know me at all. And that’s why I would say you were my first legit client we’re actually had to, rather than just get handed it by somebody who cared about them.

Yeah. I remember, I remember you shooting a reply and I remember, so what I did is I went into a copywriting group and I said, Hey. I’m looking for some writing on this project, John and messaged me and just like he touched on how he builds relationships and that’s how him and I engaged is honestly, I made the decision based on, can I tolerate a conversation with this person?

And so there’s a big part of personality that comes into play on a lot of these engagements. So, um, why don’t we is, is that kind of how most of your engagements go is you just shoot a message. You have a conversation. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, when I see opportunities posted yeah. In groups that I’m in, I will directly say, Hey, you know, I’m interested.

To do this and I will talk to a person and give them a little bit of background about why working with me might be a good idea, but that’s not more, most of my work comes from these days. Most of my work comes from these days, just reaching out to people and saying hello with your expectation. And then it’s the long game approach, not the short came approach.

So like when somebody connects me on Facebook, I have one message I send to everybody, which is a simple, thank you. And thanking them for connecting. Whether I send them the connection request or they send me the connection request. Beyond that message. If the person replies, then I’m going to engage them in a conversation.

If they don’t reply, I assume they just want to be left alone or they’re not ready for a conversation right now. And I leave them alone. Um, once somebody engages in me, I will chat to them and I’m usually the person lead. I’ll talk to the other person about anything they want to talk. I’ll never try and pitch them.

I’ll never suggest to them that working with me would be a good idea. I’ll never ask them for very much of anything at all. Other than if they know about something. I know they know about something that I’m interested in. I’ll ask them for some, maybe a bit of advice or expertise on their area of interest or their area of expertise.

But I don’t try to lead the conversation. And I have a lot of those conversations to take. I try to have one to two of those conversations a day and yeah. You don’t know, 95% of them lead to nothing, but the 5% that duly did, something really do pay off. I mean, and people come back to me and say, Hey, could you help me with this?

Or I have a friend who needs something or people have just become friends with say, Hey, John, somebody I know needs this. Do you want to jump in? There’s an opportunity there for you. Um, it took a while to get traction. Okay. Like that I didn’t really understand. At first, like everybody, I was more kind of actively trying to pitch.

And it was only when I started to see people who were good at networking, what they do, people like you and Steph and George, you’d be two people in particular I can think of who have a sort of value first approach where they’re, you know, not asking for anything other than, you know, people to engage with them.

And, you know, you have. You have a business, you have a service that you offer to people. Stefan has a service that he offers to people and you both have products to sell, but you’re not. Neither of you are aggressively out pitching your offers in the market. Everything that you do is about sort of building your brand as somebody who’s an expert in your field.

Who’s highly knowledgeable and two has a reputation for integrity. And then I think more, more of what happens then is kind of inbound. Broaden aggressively ed pound. Am I correct? Yeah, exactly. Um, you know, I do the same approach. You and I have joked about Facebook versus LinkedIn and, and I’ve tell, uh, I nudge you to get on LinkedIn as well, because I do the same thing that you just described, but more so on, on LinkedIn, I obviously do on Facebook as well, but you know, what’s interesting is, is I get more engagement on LinkedIn.

And so I kind of focus. They’re on the business side and obviously I’m active on Facebook as well. But what happens for me is all engaged. Same, same, same process that you described. I’ll have one or two messages. It’s never a sales pitch. It’s hello. Thanks for connecting. You know, here’s my quick background.

Um, sometimes I’ll prompt them to say, you know, what’s your background and, and build a conversation. And I do the same thing. If they don’t reply, then, then I don’t bug them. Because what I want to do is, is a lot of these other marketers. Try to live in the private messages and the direct messages and they pitch their services.

And for me, I want to expose them to my content and my area of expertise and building a relationship. And it’s totally a long game, like you said, and. The way I describe it sometimes is when you get into like paid ads or these more aggressive forms, it’s a dollar in $2 out dollar in $2 out. And with this type of process, it’s a dollar in nothing out a dollar and nothing out a dollar in $5,000 out.

And so it’s a little more dynamic, but. It is totally scalable. Um, and I appreciate the kind words about, you know, me and Stephan, which you mentioning Stephan is, is actually an interesting conversation because you introduce Steph and him to him. And I made the introduction based on him making a post. And so for the listeners that aren’t familiar with, who Steph and Georgia is he’s this well-known copywriter and what the way John, Steph and I.

Kind of come full circle is John knew Steph and already I didn’t at the time. And Stephan made a post that said, Hey, my goals for 2021 are focused on SEO. And there was this big thread of people saying I’m the best SEO, my friends, the best desk. And John came in and tagged me kindly and said, Hey, Damon does this, but John’s reply was different than everybody else’s because everybody else’s was a pitch.

Even John on behalf of me didn’t pitch, it was like, Hey, Damon does this. Yes. But that was like the end of the pitch. And after that it was lifetime value, uh, you know, honesty, transparency. And do you remember how you. Well, when I sent you a thank you message. Do you remember how you described it? Because I remember you described it really well.

And how you said you’ll notice that I described you differently than the other people. Do you remember off the top of your head? Yeah, kind of. I mean, essentially what I put up was that you were a high integrity person because I know kind of what Stephen’s taught. About this sort of stuff. And I know that he go for a values fit over a business fit every single time.

So what I put up about you was Damon’s a high integrity person he’s in SEO. I still established your expertise and said, you’ve been, you’ve been running your agency for 14 years. Nobody runs an agency for 14 years without being good at what they do. So that’s a given. Um, but I didn’t, I didn’t dwell on that.

It was more about your high integrity person. And I mentioned that you were all about lifetime value, that you still worked with. The first people that you, your first clients had worked with in your first year of business, you were still working with them today. And that was kind of how I established, you know, both your expertise and your character at the same time, values fit matters more.

I think for, for good people. Yeah. And I appreciate that. And, and to bring this back around to you, is that often how, um, how, how you engage is how is how you get your clients as well, because, you know, if I am kind of. Client number one. And then now you talk about how you have more opportunity than you need.

Um, I think that’s an interesting statement to make, especially for aspiring entrepreneurs where, because nowadays everything’s about paid ads and click funnels and that’s fine, but I think people are overlooking the other opportunities that we’re talking about now. So can you maybe talk to. Um, you know, one comment you made was took a little while to get traction, but can you maybe answer two questions?

One is how long is a while that it took to get traction and two, you don’t have to disclose specific dollar amounts, but can you kind of give the audience a feel of. Your ability to provide for yourself and your family and how sustainable this approaches that you’re tackling. Okay, sure. Yeah. Um, so how long did it take to get traction?

I decided I left my previous career in construction in November 20. 18 and said straight away. Okay. I’m going to get into a marketing business. And I went and took a course called the digital marketing career blueprint by a guy called set times. And it was really good. I’d already had it some preexisting interest in copywriting because I was in a sales job beforehand.

So I used it a little bit. I use some basic copywriting principles in my sales work in by email. But I wasn’t quite sure at that time, what I want to do. So I went to the chorus. Does that, okay, come on. He’s definitely what I enjoy the most. I, I don’t have the analytical type of mind to probably be a good media buyer, but I definitely love language.

I love the concept of persuasion. I love the idea of taking somebody from no knowledge to bought into an idea, just with the power of words. And that’s what I think I can. Put my energy and focus into and develop my skill out. So my first year out was 2019 and. 2019. I just about survived. Just, it was like skin of my teeth, but we did, I had better help.

Uh, we just moved country back from Fiji to Ireland at that time. And we were, we got a bit of help with family, from family for our first year, which I’m eternally grateful for without them. Would it be in the seriously, maybe not possible to do, but I just kept thinking, I just hang on. Things are going to come good.

And then 2020 things really came good. Like. 2020. Yeah. I w we had a comfortable year, you know, we’re happy. We’ve got a place to live in that we like, um, and things have gotten better and better. Uh, now for 2021 having cracked six figures a year yet, but I’m, that’s up on the wall in front of me of something I got to do this year and I’m going to crack six figures.

Good. 20, 21. Good for you. Yeah. So, I mean, in terms of a. Oh, go ahead. I was just gonna say that, you know, relatively speaking, that’s a, that’s a quick turnaround. I mean that’s a year, year and a half. You’re talking about hitting six figures. Yeah, I will. It’s been 18 months. And as I say, I’m not there yet, but this year I’m going to.

It’s the it, the potential is totally there. And the reason I didn’t do it last year was really just kind of my own mindset issues have not just been like taken advantage of opportunities that were in front of me properly and not being consistent enough about my work and how I was delivering it and also taking on client relationships that weren’t a good fit for who I was.

And I’ve now realized that I have to work with people I’m simpatico with. Okay. Just in terms of my personality type, like sort of very empathy driven. Um, if I don’t feel myself simpatico with the client, I find it hard to deliver. What they want, but if I’m simpatico with somebody we get along and we understand each other, then I can really deliver for them much better.

So that’s what I’m focusing on. Are you in, and are you a one man show at this point? Yeah, just me. Um, I occasionally will get for bigger projects where I’ve got to do like a full front end, which is, you know, sales. The opt in some Facebook ads and emails, it’s a bigger package to deliver. I will bring in a second copy of the most part.

It’s just me. Um, when I said to you earlier that I’ve gotten like more opportunity than I can, um, than I need. I think it’s going to be more like more opportunity that I’m actually set up to take advantage of. But I have decided that I prefer to continue as a freedom of the road. Um, but different people have different skills, but I don’t.

I think that it would suit who I am. I know to do that effectively. You have to be a good manager in Dallas. You have to build a team. I don’t really see that’s the direction I want to go in. I definitely enjoy the creative. Hands-on creative work more than managing other people. I’ve done that in preschool.

Well, that, I think that’s admirable for you to realize that in advance because it is a different world. And I think so many people that are, yeah. In the business and entrepreneurial world feel like in their beginning years that they need to take on everything and they have to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

And there becomes a breaking point where your, your revenue may go up, but your satisfaction goes down. And so that’s nice that you can recognize that advance. Yeah. I think somebody exposed me to that book. The E-Myth a couple of years ago, which I think it’s pretty succinctly describes this like, sort of entrepreneur’s dilemma, which is get into business for yourself because you have a scale or you have an interest.

And the thing that you. It’s not going to be the thing that drives your business. If you want to go big thing. And at that point, you have to learn these, all these other skills of management, marketing, accounting, financial planning. And at that point, you really have to step back from the coalface of doing the work and learn a different skillset and manager the people.

If that’s the road you want to go down, but. You know, the way the world is now with digital and online, you don’t necessarily have to go that way. You’re like one person can run a super healthy business. I mean, Stefan’s business partner, just in golf was featured in an article a few years ago, which was also a Tim Ferriss special, which was about one person, $1 million a year businesses.

And there’s quite a lot of them out there these days. Now, you know, his dad is a quite a rare phenomenon. Yes it is. But there’s it, you know, it’s huge, the higher ceiling and upper limit to what one person can do alone these days than there was in the past, the desire long-term plan just to kind of max out as to a satisfactory level and, and remain a woman.

Yeah. Um, I think longer term, you probably want to look into sort of, sort of partnership type of arrangements, where you’re partnering with other people who have complimentary skill sets. I made a promise to myself when I went freelance that I would never have a salary job again, and I intend to keep that promise, but, um, I certainly.

Open to, you know, like when you to partnering with other people, doing collaborative things on a project basis or working with other people’s companies are maybe on a more long-term arrangement that doesn’t, once it doesn’t involve sort of keeping nine to five hours and being on somebody else’s back.

Yeah, I find it interesting that you went from construction to copywriting. That’s a pretty dramatic change. Was there, um, any, any personal moments that really stood out from that type of dramatic transition that you either were wondering what you got yourself into or just anything that stood out as a surprise between such different industries?

Well, the reason I got into copywriting. Actually like I didn’t actually really intend to get into construction. I was originally doing like craft woodworking. So I had sort of that sort of taste for solo craftsmanship beforehand, where I was in cabinet making and making and doing wooden boats and other kinds of crafts, craft, woodworking skills.

But,

um, Especially when I’m my wife and decided to get married, but there was no way that was going to pay. So, um, somebody had offered me a job at a construction company and I went and did it. And I, you know, you start out and very quickly, I find myself I’m managing other people and then. Once you start to manage other people beyond that.

Okay. So you can start to manage the business, the owner sort of steps away to look after another business. And then you start to become responsible for sales. I was doing all these other kinds of things that were really very little to do with what my initial interest was that got me into that area. And, you know, I just came to a point where I realized, Hey, you know what?

I’m just sitting down and working on spreadsheets with a computer. I haven’t picked up a Sabra Chisholm in a couple of years now. And this is not really what I ever intended. I’ve kind of just drifted into this. So it’s time to get back to doing something that has some creativity and craftsmanship too.

But also something where there’s, you know, a higher level of income, potential, and, you know, looking around at what was going on at that time. I also knew that I really wanted to get away from things that tied me to one location. I wanted the opportunity to travel out at the time we wanted to be portrayed from Fiji back to Ireland.

So I wanted to do something that was completely online, which had been a goal of mine for a couple of years. So, you know, even though. Bigger goals. I’ve got tons of stuff. I still want to do the things I set out to do. Two years ago, I have actually achieved them at this point. And this now it’s just a matter of setting new goals and bigger goals and longer term goals as well for the next things I want to do.

You know, maybe one of the last things we can talk about to come back and answer one question of yours. If you don’t mind. You asked me a question about, um, sort of like this sort of, uh, organic approach to getting clients where you’re not running in yards and you’re just sort of basically building out a network and connecting with people as much as you can.

And putting yourself out there with a little bit of content and a lot of personal engagement and about the upper limit of it. I wanted to say, it’s just that I it’s got a much higher ceiling than I initially thought it would. I mean, as I said to you, okay. I refer work to other people. I have to turn down things nowadays.

But, um, the economics of like doing stuff like paid ads, they’re brilliant for people who have a big cashflow to, to run with that. But those economics are not a dollar in $2 out for a lot of the people. Who I know who are doing those kinds of businesses. It’s like a dollar and 50 cents. And then the noodles are $2 in 90 days time.

And so like, yeah, the whole, the big picture is profitable right out the day. You better have a lot of cash in your back pocket to float it until the, the back end pays off. Yeah, you have to burn a lot of money usually for a while before you figure out the right approach. And, you know, what’s really interesting.

Um, and I don’t want to get too far into this because it starts opening up a big SEO conversation on my end, but what’s interesting is SEO has kind of come full circle because. When I first got into it 14 years ago, it was kind of the new thing. And so it was sexy and attractive. And then obviously it never went away, at least for me, but I think in the public’s eye, the public marketers, I.

It kind of fell to the back a little bit because the ClickFunnels and the paid ads came along and everybody became so obsessed with those because they’re the new shiny object. But what’s interesting is it feels like it’s coming back around. And for the reason that you just said, people are saying, well, crap, I have to spend a lot of money on paid ads.

Well, crap. My ad account just got shut down. Well, crap, this, whatever. Disapproved or this thing’s down or whatever. And now people are starting to say, well, wait a second. I want something more stable. I want something that is still, um, consistent, but is not. Dramatic maybe. And so it’s interesting to see people starting to, you know, pay dads is never going to go away, but there’s a different discussion.

That’s starting now about like, Hey, is this really the only way I have to, I really have to always throw money at paid ads every day. Yeah. I mean, I think people, I mean, people I know who are doing very well in email marketing, you are probably the number one person I know who actually is operating in SEO at a high level.

I think maybe in SEO, what happens is that a lot of people out there in the market for SEO are maybe, um, They don’t know how to position it properly. And so they almost commoditize themselves out of ever making a decent living. Whereas you’ve taken the approach that SEO is not about the technical factors.

It’s not about the Google updates. It’s not about the tags or the HTML tags on your website. It’s about getting into the conversation, almost coming at it from the direct marketers perspective. What’s the conversation going on in your customer’s head and then addressing that conversation.

Yeah, that is a big part of it. Yeah. So, um, kind of comes full circle and in a lot of ways back to the whole copy or anything, copywriting is a unique industry because it too is never going to go away. Um, and it’s always going to have a place because you need copywriting and SEO. Even if you’re doing the paid ads, you need copywriting and paid ads.

You need copywriting and the landing pages. So, um, which kind of brings me into. One of the last things we can talk about, uh, about copywriting, never going away. And, and this kind of touches on a lot of things is, you know, the whole COVID thing. And, and I, this may be the first time I’ve really brought up COVID because usually it’s like this big gray cloud.

Um, but you had mentioned something before we hit record that you’re in and you kind of touched on as we’ve been recording that you’re fortunate to be able to provide a living while staying at home. Do you ever. Back like, wow. I’m glad I made that pivot when I did, because nobody could have forced foreshadowed COVID coming.

And so do you ever think like, man, I’m glad I made the commitment to dive into copywriting a year and a half ago, because if I didn’t. I don’t know what would be going on. Um, I haven’t explicitly thought about it in terms of COVID all that much, but yeah, obviously, I mean, I look around and I think there’s been so much unemployment the last year.

This has been so many people who’ve been furloughed stuck at home. Can’t do the jobs and yeah. And I’ve my life. Hasn’t actually changed all that much. You know, I’m pretty much doing what I was doing anyway. So that part is great. But, um, from the day I. You know, from the day I got paid, started to get paid my first couple of dollars copywriting.

It was just like, thank you, Lord,

because yeah, I, I’m no longer, uh, geographically stoke to where my client is and I’m no longer, uh, Required to do my work at hours that are convenient for 50 other people and the opening of retail stores to get materials and all that kinds of stuff. My work happens when and where I wanted to. So that part is beautiful.

And like before I was doing this, I was out of the house most mornings, a quarter to six. Six days a week. Uh, I rarely got home before seven or eight in the evening and you know, nowadays I’m home every day. I’m the one who brings my kids to school in the morning. I, um, you know, I’m with my family, I’m making my living with my family.

So what could be better than that? Yeah, well, I’m super happy for ya. Um, I’m always excited for somebody that’s able to kind of build their life by design and I give you a lot of credit for, um, making a proactive decision that you’ve identified. What makes you happy and that you are willing to define those boundaries and say, no, I don’t want to bring on more people.

No, I don’t. To work with people that don’t make me happy just to get an extra dollar. And I think that’s such a big part that a lot of entrepreneurs overlook or they have to find out the hard way because they, they get to a certain goal and it made them. Less happy. And so I always have a lot of admiration for people that can identify that and commit to it.

Yeah. I mean, if I can just sort of briefly kid drop into that, like last year I was trying to aggressively push for certain financial goals and I did hit them for a little while, but, um, I kind of got like, I wasn’t actually doing work. That was right for me and I wasn’t working. In the client relationships that were right for me.

And so I hit these arbitrary financial goals and then I kind of crashed and I had a period where I really just couldn’t get the motivation to work. Wasn’t able to deliver good quality work and was feeling really miserable and just came to a realization like, know, this is no good. Change things and do what’s going to make me happy because otherwise this is not sustainable for the term.

And the other part about it is like, I chose this, I chose this life, chose this work. If I chose all this stuff, well, then I should definitely set it up and be able to enjoy myself and enjoy my work and the people I work with. Otherwise, what’s the point I might as well go and just get a job again. Yeah.

And that’s instead of changing around them, I’m less focused on the financial goals, more focused on just mean things that I I’m enjoying. I’m working with the people who like to work with and a longer term, it’s going to pay off better financially because I’ll be happier, healthier, and all that stuff attracts positive things back to you.

Yeah, I agree. Well, I appreciate your time, John. Um, I want to give you the last few moments to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you. Oh, okay. Um, well I have a website which, um, needs a bit of updating, so I better get on that before you broadcast the show. It’s inspiredigitalmarketing.com.

And, um, but the best place to catch me is on Facebook because that’s where I do most of my living online and where most of my conversations happen. Right. Put out, whatever good content I do. And that’s facebook.com forward slash J D Caprani. That’s J D C a P R a N. I.

There you go. Very cool. John cranny. I appreciate you sharing your story. I appreciate our relationship. I appreciate the work you’ve done for me. I appreciate the introduction and stuff and, and, uh, I look forward to more conversations in the future with you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on today.

Damon. Thank you so much, really built. It was great Damond Burton here, and thank you so much for listening to the learning from others podcast. I sincerely hope that today’s guest helped you learn something. Since 2007, I’ve generated millions of dollars for businesses like yours. Ready to show up higher on search engines for words that you can monetize, but without paying for ads, download your free copy of my new SEO book outrank.

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