Hey everyone. I’ve got Brendan Lewis here today from search box, and he’s going to be sharing a little bit more about his experience working together with us and telling us a bit more about what he does as well. Welcome Brendan. Thanks for having me, Ryan. No worries. Always a pleasure. It was a while ago when we first started working together and yeah, it’s, it’s great that we still like in contact and, and doing work together here and there as well.

And I just wanted to. Obviously get you on this interview to share your experience and some insights from our work together. Yeah, I’d love to. Maybe I’ll start with a little bit about yourself. Please, tell me a bit more about yourself and, and what you guys do. Yeah, yeah. So just, I guess for context for those listening I’m Brendan Lewis.

I’m the co founder and head of growth at Searchbox. We’re really fortunate, I guess if I, if I step back about five, five and a half years ago, my wife and I co founded this business together and we’re fortunate to be I guess, blessed to be working with some of our best clients and in some very specific niches around Australia and the UK specifically in dental practices working with property developers and wealth creators.

We also help larger companies like ASX listed companies to, to solve their recruitment problems using our strategies. And I guess a little bit about what we do we use paid advertising online To, I guess attract ideal customers for the brands we work with through lead generation.

And, I guess, another part of our business supports those clients with regards to their sales process and helping give them the systems, the tools, and the resources to be able to take the leads that they generate and actually convert them into booked appointments, presentation sessions, and, and paying customers.

That’s my side. It’s a, it’s a beautiful, it’s a beautiful journey we’ve been on over the years some of our clients we’ve, we’ve had for, for two, three, even four years that have worked with us and I guess my story in terms of partnering with you, Ryan, I was really glad that, that we met because I guess at the time I I was looking to diversify our own business development strategies.

We’d, we’d relied on word of mouth, I guess, as most businesses do as they, as they start, and we’ve been using our own online lead generation to, to attract clients, but. What you had was something very compelling in the sense of being able to use LinkedIn as a, as a diversification strategy to help us to build, as I would say, B2B relationships through, through LinkedIn and I’m, I’m so glad we, we decided to work with you because I think over, over time if I, if I think about the, the return we’ve seen versus Kind of what we’ve invested with you.

I mean the numbers, it’s a, you know, seven, $7.50 to every $1 we’ve invested. So that’s a, a seven to seven and a half x return, and it’s growing also. Didn hear us. The reason I like hearing that, it’s not just because obviously the return, but so many people just don’t know the numbers and it’s really refreshing just here, $7.50 for everything invested.

It just shows that good maturity around understanding like the return. And things like that. And it wasn’t necessarily in the beginning. We can dive into this a little bit as well. There wasn’t necessarily a return in the beginning. And I think your story is a good case of the importance of understanding your customer lifetime value and what you can afford to, I guess, spend to acquire a client.

And and we did a lot of testing on your account as well, and, and to try and find that sweet spot and I mean, we can talk a little, I know you, you specialize in targeting dentists more so now than originally, but we did try that on LinkedIn and you want to share that, how that went? Yeah, absolutely.

Like, like I said earlier, I mean, there, there are two or three very specific nations we work in. And dental practice owners is one that, you know, we, we’ve been fortunate to grow with and We, we did try that together on LinkedIn and we had some really poor reply rates, so people weren’t even connecting with us, right?

Like, dentists, clinicians, practice owners, they don’t seem to use LinkedIn the way they maybe you know, use other, other platforms. And I think, you know, as a business owner who works with other business owners, and you know, one thing that I’ve learned over time is you, you have to try and you have to optimize based on what you learn.

If there is never going to be that golden bullet and the expectation, I think you said something earlier just then was understanding what your client’s worth and understanding what you’re prepared to spend to acquire your favorite clients or your ideal clients. You know, we work with business owners as well.

So if, if I was to share a little bit of the experience that I’ve had with you, it’d be the exact same as the experience that business owners have with us. They, they want to see results straight away and that would be lovely, but sometimes it takes a little bit of trial and optimization to really hone in on the exact niche and the exact message and the results will come.

I think staying with the process was probably something we did in the first two or three months. We probably didn’t have an ROI. We probably didn’t have a break even. But, the minute we started to catch our ideal clients, we started to realize that our ideal clients, and we know our number in terms of what our ideal clients were to us 7.5x return at the moment is only going to grow. Because the more work we do with the clients we’ve picked up through working with you, the larger that number grows in terms of a return on investment. And that’s the same that our clients see with us. So definitely a lesson learned with, with the dentist.

It didn’t work, but you know what? That’s what I think you did well is, is you were willing to test and try different messaging, different markets. And that’s what we love doing more and more of these days is, like, in order to find the best, you have to find who’s the worst as well, like, you need to test different things.

What was really surprising, I think it’s just an interesting insight is, Like sometimes targeting markets that are thriving aren’t, isn’t always the best as well because we were targeting home builders through COVID and they were just too busy to even care about lead generation, well at least on LinkedIn anyway.

Because when we had the best offer, like it really, you really got to find that market with the right need as well. Even if you have the best service, if they’re not doing that at this point in time, yeah, it’s just not gonna, it’s just not gonna work from a lead gen and marketing perspective. I, I agree. I think, I think the, the need has to be there.

And sometimes it’s a timing thing. The need is always there, but sometimes the need is satiated because there’s a supply and demand issue. And as we found with. Homebuilders that, that, that supplied was I guess just on them. They, they had more work than they can handle. Margins were tight. I think it’s a really difficult time if I was to do the same campaign with you, let’s say in two or three years time.

We’re probably going to get amazing results. So I think timing is an important thing as well. Yeah, absolutely. One final question is what would you say to anyone who’s thinking about working with us? It’s a great question. I think your services have evolved as well over time, Ryan. So that first and foremost, if I was to give anyone my experience, it would be invest with someone who’s willing to grow and modify their business proposition as a service.

To meet the needs better of the clients they work with and one thing that you’ve done is, and I, and I can see it is when we signed up with you and the service that you provided us compared to the service that you offer now, I can see the improvement and I can see the evolution on how much better your, I guess your services for us as, as clients of yours and, and, and having that feedback is super valuable as well.

Sorry, I spoke over you, but That feedback is invaluable as well. So I think that’s a lesson to anyone is to take that feedback on board because Ultimately the customer is always right if they’re not happy There’s there’s a message in that Yeah, yeah, so in as part of the I guess the decision making process of anyone who may be wanting to work with you, Ryan, I think first and foremost is, is choose a service provider who is committed to delivering the best or even improving their service capability to meet your needs better.

And I love that That on the journey we’ve been on, I think your communication is, is amazing. We have systems and processes in place to be able to communicate with each other. We can, I mean, through dashboards, we can see exactly what’s going on. There’s never a time where I felt or my team felt like we don’t know what Ryan’s up to.

We don’t know what, what the team’s doing. We always had up to the minute kind of dashboards and, and, and the communication was always very strong. You were always available through being able to book in and have a chat. And, and I think the turnaround times were really quick. Like, you, you hear horror stories in these industries of, you know, people making a sign up and go through, like, waiting for onboarding and they never hear anything.

And then they wait for their campaigns and they never hear anything. But I think we were in and out with your process, like, within a couple of weeks or even less. Which was, which was amazing. So, you know, results aside and I’m, yeah, yeah, look, I, I hate saying this, but like results aside, the results have been amazing, but the decision around working with you, we didn’t know the results were going to be like this at the time.

So I think the real decision was around. Picking someone who actually cared about us and our outcomes. And I think that’s, that’s what you do in your business. Amazing. Thanks so much, Brendan. I really appreciate it. Obviously, kind words are nice to hear and, and while we’re working together, obviously all the feedback that helped improve the product, very valuable.

And it’s just your time today. I know you’re a busy business owner. I know you’ve got a lot of really exciting things on at the moment as well. So very much appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks Ryan. That’s awesome. And all the best for business in the future.