SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
He Gave Up 30% Equity, Launched Own Gig, Winning with $800k/yr+ In Revenue. EP 289: Guillermo Ortiz
15 Jun 2016
Chapter 1: What inspired Guillermo Ortiz to start Geek Powered Studios?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this episode is brought to you by FreshBooks, the invoicing tool that I use to make sure I collect all my money in an efficient manner.
Chapter 2: How did Guillermo achieve $800k in revenue in 2015?
To claim your free month, go to nathanlatka.com forward slash FreshBooks and enter the top in the How Did You Hear About Us section. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the 100 bucks is none other than Derek Rodenbeck. He is an artist and he's looking to increase his revenue.
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Chapter 3: What unique approach does Geek Powered Studios take in digital marketing?
And coming up bright and early tomorrow morning, you're going to hear from Jill Stanton. She quit podcasting and now does 30 grand per month in a weird membership site. Watch how she's built it. Good morning, Top Tribe. You're going to enjoy our guest this morning. His name is Guillermo Ortiz, and he's the founder of Geek Powered Studios.
He's addicted to data and taking campaigns from good to great.
Chapter 4: How does Guillermo prioritize client requests and manage resources?
Now, his history as a competitive gamer makes him no stranger to digital street fights or standing up to the Google gods. All right, Guillermo, are you ready to take us to the top? Yes. All right, let's do this. So real quick, first things first, what's your favorite online game? Counter-Strike, Global Offensive, by far. Nice, nice, nice, nice. Do you do Euro board games or just online games?
Chapter 5: What are the biggest expenses for Geek Powered Studios?
Pretty much just online games, usually with a social aspect to it. So I like the competitiveness of Counter-Strike for sure. And you like to be able to smack talk via, you know, chatting back and forth, right, if you need to? Yeah, from time to time I try not to, you know, because I have my profile and everything on there.
So if anything, it kind of gives me a little humility to not say anything and just kind of be quiet, you know. But are you really competitive? Oh, yeah. So you're a bad loser? Yeah. Really bad.
Chapter 6: How does data play a role in Guillermo's marketing strategies?
I used to play SOCOM 2 when I was 14 years old and I was ranked sixth in the world and I would play all day, every day. And that was just like my claim to fame. And that kind of instilled a competitiveness in me. Yeah, dude, I got the same thing. I think I used to play addictively Age of Empires, a Conqueror's Edition. Yeah. Have you heard of that? I'm familiar with the game. Yeah. Yeah.
Chapter 7: What goals does Guillermo have for his business in 2016?
Yeah. Anyway, so you're now running appropriately geek powered studios. So tell us what the business does and how you make money. Yeah, so we're just a full service digital marketing company. And we're very unique in that we only work with one client per industry per area. And that allows us to really develop that relationship and position ourselves as more of a strategic partner with businesses.
Because there's a lot of companies out there that will just oversell small businesses and, you know, sell them stuff that they don't really need or over promise things. And we like to, from the get go, just sober up small businesses and let them know that SEO is an investment, it's going to It's gonna be a battle.
Try and position it as a war and they need a strategic partner on their side and just a holistic approach to everything and we try and do everything correctly rather than just one thing really well.
Chapter 8: What advice does Guillermo have for aspiring entrepreneurs?
So how do you make money? So we basically just sell a retainer package of like anywhere from 2000 to upwards of 5,000 plus. And literally it's an agreement per month. Yes. And we're going to do everything in our power as long as we have the resources to help that business.
So we'll build landing pages, the website, do the ongoing SEO, PPC campaigns, Facebook ad campaigns, just anything to help that business. A lot of times we'll request from service based companies that, hey, I got a home and garden show coming up and I need a booth designed and I don't have graphic designers. Can you guys help me with that? And we're like, sure, of course.
It's like, why would you not help the client and do something like that? What do you say no to, though? Isn't that dangerous being able to do anything? It is. It's just kind of finding that balance and knowing, hey, there's too many requests at this time or what's the priority? What are we really focusing on?
And that's where the communication comes into play and making sure that we're spending our time on things that are actually going to move the needle. And if they ask for things that are kind of outside the normal scope, that they understand that it's kind of a favor and that we're going to take it upon us to, you know, to really help them and make sure they can get it done.
Maybe maybe a different way to ask this question is what are you guys bad at? I mean, what do you or what are you best in the world at? Why would you say no to something that that even if the client asks for it? Typically, we would say no for something if we're swamped. And I just like having that honest communication with that client. And they know kind of when a request is just too outlandish.
And really what it comes down to is if we have the resources and the time to make that request happen. And that's where just having that honest relationship with them. And most of our clients are with us for more than three, four years at a time. So over time, you kind of develop that rapport with them and they know kind of what's in the scope of the services and what's not.
How many team members do you have there? So right now we're about between 15 and 20 geeks. Okay, 15 and 20. And where are you based? We're based out of Austin, Texas. Oh, dude, I'm in Austin too. Very cool. Awesome. I'm down at the wheelie right now. Cool. Which part of the city are you in? So, we're located off of South Congress in Riverside. Oh, nice. Okay, cool. Very good.
So, a lot of these, and that would explain why you have a bunch of Texas companies. Yeah. You know, washing equipment of Texas, Critter Ritter of Texas. So, you said $2,000 to $5,000 per year to 15 to 20 people. Help us understand kind of size of the business. In 2015, what was total revenue? So in 2015, the total revenue was around $800,000. And what do you typically spend? So that was top line.
What are your biggest costs? biggest cost is a subscription services. Uh, what's funny is I've seen in, uh, in why you see some articles posted about kind of expenses that creep up and, and, you know, subscription as a service stuff is, is really notorious how $20 here, $15 there.
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