Digital Social Hour - Making $30M, Cold Emails & Biggest Failures | James Bonadies DSH #309

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

James Bonadies comes on the podcast to talk about how he scaled his business to $30M, which CRM he uses and what he thinks about AI. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly Factor: Use code "DSH50" for 50% off your order at https://www.factormeals.com/dsh50 Digital Social Hour works with participants in sponsored media and stays compliant with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations regarding sponsored media. #ad LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Like I'd rather make 100K less a year, but be happy. Oh, and free. Yeah. Yeah. The freedom is the best part. When I resigned, that was actually the hardest part because I was so used to, you know, going to work. Like it was not easy.

Yeah. One of the most difficult things was the transition from job to, you know, entrepreneurship. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it. If you follow or subscribe, it helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting. And here's the episode.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. We got another fellow Jersey in here today. James Bonadiz. How's it going? Awesome, man. Appreciate you having me.

Yeah. Fellow Rutgers alum. That's right. Just, I did it many years ago. What did you major me. Yeah, fellow Rutgers alum. That's right. I did it many years ago. What did you major in there? Economics. Okay.

Did you find that was useful in your entrepreneurship journey? No. No, definitely not. What I found was, you know, just like supply and demand. That's always like just in knowing how the economy works was really, you know, money in, money out. Right. That's about it. But you ended up becoming a teacher for a bit, right?

Yep. Was that a high school level, college level? High school. Okay. Yeah. Public school? Public school, Patterson. Okay.

How long did you do that? I was there for seven years, I think, teaching business. I did like international business, computers. I started like the, it was a very small school, so I started like the computers in that time because it was so long ago it was like 2002 i think those were the big box ones right yeah i remember those and then we got new ones where they were like thinner yeah i remember the box ones those those were slow man yeah very slow but it was fast like at the time yeah because you're comparing it to to what it was But yeah, so I did that for about seven years. And then I left.

In about 2008, I bought, my best friend's father owned a sporting goods store. Okay. And he wanted to retire. So I bought into the sporting goods store, ran that for two years. And it was the most miserable. Like it was seven days a week, 18 hours a day. Plus it's during a recession. Oh, wait, you said?

Yes, I got in at the worst possible time. Yeah, worst time. But the interesting thing is that that business was, most of that money came in from uniforms. So it doesn't matter what the economy is. Parents are going to put their kids in sports. They're not going to take them out. So sports are kind of recession proof.

A hundred percent. Right. Now, why did you leave teaching to do that? Money. I wanted not going to take them out. So sports are kind of recession proof. A hundred percent. Right. Yeah. Now why did you leave teaching to do that? Uh, money. I wanted to make more money. Okay. So teaching wasn't paying enough. No, I think I started at 33,000. That's it? Yeah. Dude, that's rough for teaching. I thought they made more than that. That's weird. Well, I mean like now it's higher. I think they started like 55, but still's i don't know how they survive no because that's not no you need you need to live with someone at that salary yeah even i mean think about even uh husband and wife make you know teachers was it 100 grand yeah and your taxes are 20

yeah in jersey right jersey has high property tax high state income tax just high everything you're getting wrecked over there you're're still there though, right? Yeah, I'm still there. Same town. Jersey's got, so after the sporting thing for two years, what was the next move? So my wife was pregnant. So she got pregnant when I was running that business and I felt really stuck. Like I'm working so much. What am I going to do?

Like she's going to be, her parents, she's Eastern European, so her parents don't live here. And I was like, how am I going to, she's going to have the baby at home. I'm never going to be home. This is going to be like a disaster. So, God's grace or, you know, whoever pulls the trigger up there, I had an old colleague that walked into the store. It was August of 2010, maybe, or 11. And I heard his voice like,nett is she here and I was like oh my god like I know that person mr. mr. Moody and he begged me to come back and so what they wanted me to do

was instead of teach they wanted me to do student schedules like build all the schedules with the software and all that stuff teacher schedules they had it was like august they had no student schedules because the scheduler quit wow so i uh convinced my buddy i said listen buy uh buy buy it back whatever i you know i paid uh into it just pay me back over the next three or four years and i was like convincing him i'm like look think about it the money we made that's all gonna go to you And I was like convincing him, I'm like, look, think about it, the money we made, that's all gonna go to you. Like I'm like convincing him. He's like, you know what, sounds good, do it. So I went back until, that was 2011, I think, until 2018.

So now I was a vice principal at that time. So that's what I was doing. So I went from teacher, so I got my master's degree early on, and then I became a vice president. Shout out to the Science of Scaling podcast hosted by Mark Roberge. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Mark, founding CRO at HubSpot CRO and senior lecturer at Harvard Business School,

interviews some of the most successful sales leaders in tech to learn the secrets, strategies, and tactics to scaling company growth he recently had on the head of sales from open ai and that was a very interesting episode on the future of ai listen to the science of scaling wherever you get your podcast today vice principal but i wasn't really doing vice principal stuff they just hired me as a vice principal interesting principals used to scare me man was that principals used to scare me as a kid of course i never knew what they did scare me, man. Was that? Principals used to scare me as a kid. Of course. I never knew what they did, but I would end up in the office and it was a traumatic time. That's right. I think it's the fact that it's the principal that leads to the parents, right? So

it's like the principal, you just know they're going to call your parents and you're just like, oh God. Yeah. Were you like that growing up too, a little troublemaker? No, actually. Okay. Not okay not really well i should say just never got caught okay there we go yeah i just like i i have an older sister she would get caught with everything yeah and i think i just like learned how like not to do things like do them but just don't do it like that see i didn't have a mentor in that regard i was an only child yeah so i had to figure everything out through trial and error right it's pretty rough yeah but um so you went back there and then from there is that when you got into the sort of the online So I had to figure everything out through trial and error. It's pretty rough.

So you went back there, and then from there, is that when you got into sort of the online marketing space? Yeah. So funny enough, I was already trying. In 2007 is when I really first tried to do this online thing. And if you could imagine, 2007 was like Google AdSense. So it was like ranking sites and spamming them and stuff like that. So I did start to try to do that. And that was one of the trigger points for me to get back out of that sporting good business. Cause I'm like, you know what? I don't have time to do that. So I was like, if I can get out of that, you know, I'll have more time at home, but I also could put

more time and effort into this digital, you know, laptop millionaire thing that I keep hearing everybody doing that I can't figure out how to do. And so I started dabbling back into that. And I in 2014 is when I finally it was like an aha. I shouldn't say aha moment. It was like an ad that like slapped me in the face basically saying make money by helping local businesses make money and i'm like well that's a lot better than a push button software millions right and it just made sense and that's when i started rank and rent sites and uh ranking sites for businesses pool installation and all that stuff all right so seo seo basically right so

these business owners have no idea how to rank and you would step in, charge them a retainer and get them on higher pages of Google, right? Yep. That's exactly how it worked. And does that model still work in 2024? So the way we were doing that was we would create our own site and rank that site in local area, right? So it would be like pool installation Wayne, New Jersey. But we would own the site, and then we would rent it to like a pool installation because we would be getting leads, and then when the leads would come in,

we would just forward it to them. So they would rent it for 1,000 a month, 1,500 a month. You can't really do that nowadays. And that model kind of really didn't do too good even back in like 15, 16 because you would spend all this money and time building the site, ranking it, and you may not get any leads. Right? Like pool installation in Wayne, you get leads for maybe a month or two.

Yeah, just the summer. Yeah. And so like you kind of really, you're guessing. And so we transitioned from, I say we because I have a partner, but he joined later on. But in 2016 is when I transitioned from rank and rent to, you know what, we're just going to go pay-per-click advertising, SEO on the back end, but with their site.

So I stopped the whole rank and rent thing because it just became too difficult, a lot of crackdowns on the Google business profiles. Couldn't get away with easily ranking those anymore. So PPC, that worked for a bit, and then it got expensive, right? Yeah, it still works. Oh, it still works? profiles. Couldn't get away with easily ranking those anymore. So we moved away from that. So PPC, that worked for a bit, and then it got expensive, right? Yeah, it still works. Oh, it still works? Oh, yeah. Pay-per-click ads are one of the fastest ways to get leads for businesses.

Okay. Because I hear guys like Gary Vee say it was super cheap, and then for the wine business, he got it got too expensive or something. Yeah. I mean, listen, ads are always going to go up, right. It's just always going to be exponential. It's never going to be, it's like, it's guaranteed inflation. Yeah. Pretty much with that. Yeah. Facebook ads used to be super cheap too. Yeah. Facebook was great. I mean, they were all great, but you know, you just charge accordingly. Yeah. You know, you just, as your price goes up, you charge more.

And when was that year where you could be like, wow, I could leave my job right now? Yeah. So, and this goes kind of into the story of in my space, a lot of people, their goal is to like get out of the job. Right. And I'm always harping because I have a coaching business, as you know. Yeah. And I'm always harping to like treat your job as an asset because your job is enabling you to create the side hustle. It's funding your side hustle in your life. And so I held onto that job way longer than I needed to, like way longer. I was probably making, I think it was 2000. I was actually going through this today because I knew we were probably going to get into this. 2016, I was making about 8080,000, $67,000 that year in my job. And then I made

about $300,000 on the side. Holy crap. So 5x. Yeah. And I think it was at the end of 17, I'm like, what am I doing? This is crazy. And then January of 17, now we started our coaching business. We pulled in January of 18. I think my business partner and I pulled in like $140,000 each. Wow. And I'm like, now this is ridiculous. I'm like, this has got to stop.

Yeah. Is that profit or – That was all profit, yeah. Wow. Yeah, because coaching is high margin. It is high margin, yeah. If you do it right, you could also burn all your money through ads. Yeah.

The one good thing is the health benefits from having a job and stuff. So even to this day, I'm like, man, you know, I probably could have stayed. I'm paying $3,000 a month for health insurers. Dude, it's so much as an entrepreneur. People don't talk about it. They don't talk about it. Yeah. At all.

I pay $3,000 a month. I'm about the same. And it's like, dude. And you're a single guy, right? Yeah. And I'm not even using it yet. Hopefully, I won't ever need to. But it's still a lot. I'm about the same. And it's like, dude. And you're a single guy, right? Yeah. And I'm not even using it yet. Hopefully I won't ever need to, but it's still a lot. Wow.

That's crazy. That's how much you. Well, me and my fiance. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's so crazy. Yeah.

My guy in my office, he, uh, he's got four kids and he pays, he ended up doing like a charity one where he was like, he went to like a Catholic, like they have like the old there's a lot of different avenues you can go but i like my father used to always harp on don't worry about if you never use it because you're not going to need it until you need it and so i just just pay yeah you never know yeah because it's one of those things where if it does happen you're kind of screwed yeah yeah those hospital bills he says. Now, your parents' support, were they supporting you in the entrepreneurship side, or did they want you to have a job? My father's an old school Italian.

Came here with nothing. Was a teacher. His first salary was eight grand a year. He was a football coach, a high school head football coach. And it was school, college, job, pension, retirement, be done. Yeah, that was it. But while he was preaching that, he was also purchasing real

estate on the side. Okay. So in my mind, I was like, you know, it was like, if he was always doing something on the side, I should be doing something on the side. So I got into real estate. I'm in real estate a lot more now. Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest? Well, click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life. Click the application link below. And here's the episode, guys.

But my real estate originally was the side hustle, was digital. But he, yeah, they, when I went to quit, my father was like beside himself. Huge argument. You're not my son. Like jokingly, right? He's like, this can't be my son. Dang. Yeah, no.

And my father, even to this day, he'll every so often tell his business. Yeah. You doing okay? I'm like, I think I'm doing pretty good. All right. Just make sure like you're saving your money. Yeah. Different generation, man.

Oh, yeah. That was normal for his. And now with your kids, I'm sure you're going to even promote entrepreneurship. Oh, 100%. Yeah. I'm already thinking of how big of a waste college is going to be. Because, you know, and listen, unless you're going to, you know, like a lawyer or a doctor, like, but just to go for like, like even economics. I mean,

I guess you could go work on Wall Street. I mean, I have friends that went and got great jobs and they're crushing it now, but they put in 20 years before they, you know, 15 years. Yeah. And I just say like this, if you're passionate about it, do it, but don't do it for the money. You're going to be miserable. A hundred percent. Like I'd rather make a hundred K less a year, but be happy. Oh, and free. Yeah. Yeah. The freedom is the best part. Yeah. We have travel freedom. We have time freedom. We have location freedom, right? There's three freedoms. We can travel whenever we want. We can work whenever we want. And not many people have that. It's the greatest thing. Yeah. Yeah. When I yeah when i when i resigned um that was actually the hardest part because i was so used to you know going to

work and then it was like i don't even know what to do you know my wife was like oh my god you're home you want to go have lunch i'm like yeah let's go have lunch and all of a sudden you have a couple martinis you're like it's like two o'clock. And then the next day is like, you want to go to breakfast? It was like, it was not easy. Yeah. One of the most difficult things was the transition from job to, you know, entrepreneur. Even if, even though you're right, you've been running the business for a while, it's the schedule change and you really need to like create, I think I did a video about this.

You need to create your, your business as a job job as much as you don't want to admit that. Because if you don't, it gets away from you. And then you all of a sudden, you don't even know what's going on in your business anymore because you haven't been there in weeks. Absolutely, yeah. You still got to be a little hands-on as an entrepreneurship no matter how many employees you have. 100%. Do you use any AI in your business yet? So, yeah.

So, AI is, you know, you see a lot of now the YouTubers, like AI this, AI that. I mean, I'm not going to say that I don't think it's going to play a big part. I don't think it's anywhere near what people are saying it's going to be. But I do use chat GPD all the time. I use it at least once a week. Yeah. Matter of fact, I was at the R. I use it at least once a week. Yeah. Yeah. Matter of fact,

I was at the Ritz-Carlton in Aruba last week. We had a little bit of an incident and I wanted to write like a professional email to the manager. And I wrote mine and I just copied and pasted it into ChatGPT and it was like, oh my, that's unbelievable.

It made it better? Better. Wow. Now I want to know what happened. What went down in Aruba? Nothing that involved me. Okay. I was there with a lot of friends and, you know, just little –

Little drunk shenanigans? Yeah. I wouldn't say they were really drunk. Like just weird – people are weird. Like people are just weird. You could interpret that in so many ways. I know. I'm trying to –

Listen, they were playing loud music and and some guy like drunk guy came over and somehow somehow my name kept getting brought up and i have no idea why that was what what like pissed me off about it oh they banned you they didn't ban me but like i almost felt embarrassed to like give my name because there was an incident on one day and uh the host from the casino was looking for me. Oh. And I'm like, yeah, you know, what happened? Well, you tell me what happened on the beach. I'm like, I wasn't even there.

I was on ATVs. And they're like, oh, well, you know, it was your crew. I go, my crew? Like, I'm me. Forget my crew because I didn't know. It has nothing to do with me. So I didn't really appreciate that. So I sent an email.

I feel that. I don't like being dragged into situations I'm not me. So I didn't really appreciate that. So I sent an email. I feel that. I don't like being dragged into situations I'm not part of. I can only control myself. That's it. Yeah. Do you travel a lot? I do. I mean, a lot.

I don't know what's a lot. My wife likes to travel with our kids and stuff. So, you know, the kids got school. Yeah. So every once in a while, we'll take them out. But usually when they have vacation, we'll go somewhere. Yeah. I find traveling is a great way to kind of reset things.

Oh, absolutely. Mentally, at least. Because you get so locked in sometimes. You do. I get my best ideas when I'm not even thinking about what idea I need. Same. It just comes. No, same.

Because I used to just work nonstop and never leave. But once I left, you get good perspective. You get great perspective. And then even things that have nothing to do with business, give you an idea for your business. Exactly. Yeah. Why did you decide to stay in Jersey this whole time? My parents, my family's there. Okay. So that's very important to you. Yeah. I think that, you know, I put myself in my parents' shoes and if my kids left, it would crush me. Yeah. Even though I would encourage them to. Yeah. That is a tough thing, right? Yeah. It's tough. And my sister's there and she has three kids and my brother-in-law. So we're

all in the same town. I mean, it would, like my parents would be devastated. Actually, my mom, my mom's a free spirit. Okay. She would just be like, go fly. Like my father, old school Italian. Father. Yeah. It's the family nucleus. Right. So he grew up in Italy? Yeah, he came here when he was like 12 or 13. Wow. Have you been out there? Yeah, we went there when I was younger. I haven't been back since then.

Nice. My wife is Russian, so we would travel or rush a lot. Now you can't go there. Did your parents support dating her? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah? Yeah, matter of fact, my father, this is a funny story. My father said, I think it was when I first started dating her,

he said, very nice girl, beautiful girl. You know she's Russian, right? Yeah? You're not going to be able to afford her. That was the first thing he said. She likes nice things. Yeah. I go, so then I got to step my game up so I can afford her.

I have heard that about russians actually you're not the first yeah listen they they you're gonna get one or two sides you get it because they all you know grew up in the soviet union era ussr and uh you're gonna get the side where they're they hold on to every penny or you're gonna get the side of where they had to hold on to every penny so now they want to get the side of where they had to hold on to every penny so now they want to like live freely yeah you just it's one or the other so which side did you get you can take a guess but she listen my wife if my wife i never probably would have done a lot of this if it wasn't for her she pushed me yeah that's cool yeah she used to always say to me

i respect that you're a teacher but you have so much more to give. And, uh, and I used to say like, really like, like what? She's like, you don't even see it. Like go find, like start a business, do something because you're like a zombie going to teach these kids. You come home at three 30 all this time. Yeah. Do something. I'm like, you know what? Maybe I will. That's awesome, man. A good woman by your side can really elevate you, man. No, no, no. It's going to either elevate you or it's going to tear you down there's no there's no in between yeah there's no in between luckily we got elevated yes i know certain individuals that yeah didn't go that well oh yeah they will you know they will pull you down or lift you up yeah when you were teaching were you really passionate about it or oh you weren't at all? No, I wasn't. I was, you know, I taught in a very rough school.

Okay. And I was very young. You know, can you imagine you have like these 18-year-old girls and I'm 22. Oh, wow. And it just became like very like. They were hitting on you. It was just not pleasant. Yeah.

Not pleasant at all. Being around. Plus, probably a lot of the students didn't even care, to be honest. They didn't care. They didn't listen. It was like, and I don't have that kind of personality. To yell at people. No. Yeah. We all know those teachers. Yeah. Man, I

got some wild, you know, I failed marketing class in high school. Oh, really? And now I have the number one marketing podcast in the country. Listen, we were going to talk about education, right? And you said everybody has a negative thing. I think about education as more about you're learning as a person to be organized. And it's not what you're learning.

It's that you're showing up to class. You're doing the things necessary to live life after this Mm-hmm what you learn you learn in the field. Yeah. No, absolutely. You're not learning anything that you're gonna know Yeah, even my son says that to me. Yeah, well man My teachers hated me because they would always say like show your work, right? Right, and I just do stuff in my head and I get the right answer, right? Oh the show your work thing is ridiculous. It pissed me off so much.

And then when they tell you to show it, you don't even know how. Right. You're just doing it in your head. Yeah. And you get deducted points for that. It's the worst. Yeah, it's the worst. Yeah.

But what are you working on now? What's coming up next? So now, you know, running the coaching program, we've got about 7,200 students in there now. Wow. Yeah, it's big. And COVID was a, we didn't get into that story, but that was, if you can imagine when local businesses are closed and you're teaching people how to help local businesses that are not open. It was one of the toughest times. Yeah. I mean, it was ridiculous. Did you have to pivot the model

a little bit? I had to, not really, because there was really nothing to pivot the model a little bit? Uh, I had to not really because there was really nothing to pivot to. Like, this is just what we know. It was more about just like everybody lower your costs and, you know, just start to explain to your clients that this is going to be over. And everybody, the good thing is that after now everybody's like, I need to be online. I need to like do media. I need to do video and so that way it went from like you know top to bottom back to the top yeah yeah so it was just weathering the storm unless you were in Florida where nothing shut down unless you're in Florida but it was like the sentiment right around what the heck was going on so yeah well where can people find out

more about you your coaching and your pro I mean if you could just google James Bonadice I got tons of stuff. The coaching program is Local Marketing Vault, so you can go to localmarketingvault.com, but my YouTube channel is probably the best way. Yeah, your YouTube's great, man. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta be more consistent with it.

Yeah, but you get good views, and you're teaching very valuable stuff, so. Yeah, so that's what I'm really working on now. Awesome, well thanks for coming on, James. Appreciate it, man. Yeah, thanks for watching, guys. Thank you. As always, and I'll see you tomorrow.