Home Remodeling

Most recently I worked for a local home remodeling company. I was hired by the then VP of marketing to bring their entire digital presence in-house. For many years they used one of the most well known digital marketing companies in the country. To say the results they got were anemic is a complement. 

The first thing I did was build a small clone of their existing site to show that I was capable of executing the build by myself. When that was completed they then wanted a new site for their new remodeling division. I built a site for that before embarking on a complete rebuild of their flagship website. 

But this wasn’t just any build. I had to build it very much like the big company did so that when we switched from their service to our hosting company there was as little disruption as possible. So I made as close to a clone as possible, warts and all, to mitigate the negative effects of the switch. 

We made the switch, the disruption was only about a 20% dip in traffic for less than 30 days and the site is now performing better than it ever did under the hand of the big company. 

The VP that hired me decided to leave the company and ownership took over much of their responsibility. To help them manage things they decided to go back to a large marketing company. 

Online Education

Previous to that I worked for several years for one of Tampa’s top programming companies. They do shopping carts for a couple of local Fortune 100 businesses. I was responsible for their digital online marketing for all of their in-house projects that mainly center around online education and certifications. 

We had incredible success using one of my tried and true strategies where I get a company to dominate the front page. Not just get the one return at the #1 position, but 3, 4 and 5 returns for a primary keyword. 

I was with this business when the pandemic hit. You would think an online business would explode with people trapped at home and able to focus on online education. But because of the specific nature of the business it dried up. At the same time, the state where the main money making course was designed for had shut down in-person businesses. So they were dead in the water too. But because of their community ties many people were reaching out to these local businesses for guidance. I came up with a B2B affiliate program so that the brick-n-mortar schools could offer our online course. It was so successful revenues rose 50% over the previous year for the business I worked for. Not only did it save that business, but several of the schools in the other state were allowed to keep themselves afloat until the public gathering bans were lifted. 

Business Creation

My previous gig to that was with one of the companies where Google requested access to the Adwords account (Now Google Ads) to monitor how I managed it because I completely reworked it and they improved over 500% in conversions. In just 120 days…

This is a business that, simply put, sells businesses in a niche field. If you wanted to have a business in this industry for $30,000.00 you write this company a check and they deliver you a completely legal and legitimate business in that industry. All you needed to do was rent your building for your home office, hire some staff and open your doors. 

We were so successful in the online campaign that they were able to take that business model to the next level by offering a franchise model. As many of you may know, making a major move like that requires a lot of capital. They were able to do that after about 14 months of successful online marketing. 

They decided since the new venture was so complex in going with a franchise model that they needed a bigger more experienced marketing company and hired a nationally known marketing company. 

Herbal Remedies

This position was definitely one of the most interesting in my career. I had left my previous employer under, strained circumstances. I came home and immediately did a nationwide search. 

I found this opportunity on the west coast in Carlsbad, CA working for a company that imported a product called Kratom into the US. They had a shopping cart that was run by a company that had shut down 4 years prior. The cart had over 25,000 active customers and 150 products. The thing is, no one wanted to touch it. 

I completely rebuilt the site and had it functioning beautifully. The launch of the new site saw a bounce rate of 0.24% for the first 90 days and increased sales 48%.  

Small Part Manufacturer

This employment was interesting. Most of the products I market are for large ticket items. This is a small parts manufacturer that uses Magento as their cart. That meant a new platform needed to be learned. 

Things were going great. I had spent a couple weeks working side by side with the owner of the company creating “how to” videos for their products that turned out great. They still use them on their website. But not long after the SEO work I completed weeks earlier had kicked in. The number of leads coming through the website and the number of calls was overwhelming the business. 

Finally the owner of the company decided to upgrade their servers. He decided for him self-hosting was the way to go. His site was down for a day or so that was very stressful for him. When he finally got the site back up the calls and orders overwhelmed his business within a few hours. He was so stressed out that he started yelling at people. Me being one of them. That was enough to me to decide that was not the employer for me. 

Decorative Stone Importer

I completely developed an entire IT department and web presence for one of Tampa’s biggest independent companies.  When I was brought on the former webmaster had passed away and all of his work had been lost.  I had to completely rebuild an IT department, by myself, from the ground up while simultaneously running the day to day business coupled with the regular webmaster duties. 

In the past year and a half I not only set up their IT department I renegotiated their email contracts saving them thousands annually, renegotiated their web hosting giving them far superior service at a price less than what they were paying saving hundreds of dollars and improving service.  I also launched their first complete E-commerce site www.travertinelocator.com as well as taking their old HTML sites such as their flagship sites into the 21st century with CMS based websites that have nearly 300 products.  When I left both of these sites appeared in the #1 Position on Google for several of their keywords.  If they are not now it is out of my control. 

While there I also managed their over $120,0000.00 a year Adwords campaign so successfully that Google wanted to use it for their research earlier this year.  I also installed a wireless system that sends the Internet to 2 buildings on campus that used to require their own Verizon accounts.  This saves them over $3,000.00 a year!  The list is long and at some point I will make a comprehensive one but for now let me tell you what else I’ve done.

Home Mortgage

Previous to that I worked with Andy and Holly Wood of Titan Home Lending.  Andy is a very highly respected instructor for the FHA 203K mortgage program.  I met Andy through Ronald McDonald while I was his webmaster managing over 500 domains.  Andy just had a one page HTML site that had a picture, one paragraph and his contact info.  He was no where to be found on the Internet if you didn’t have his URL.  Well, 2 years since then Andy and Holly are in the #1 position for 203K mortgages.  Search it for yourself.  Remember, this is the #1 position in Google.  Not just the first page, the #1 position on organic rankings.

Editing

But besides the awards I’ve won for video production I’m most proud of the fact that Mike L. Murphy chose me to work with when he was doing a project in the area.  Mike worked in Hollywood for years on such block busters as “Iron Man” and “Lord of The Rings” just to mention a couple.  We developed a motivational program that included Olympic Gold Medalist Steven Bradbury of Australia.

Let me give you some more background.

I pioneered viral video marketing and NEW MEDIA VIDEO MARKETING for business: internet, cell phone and iPod marketing long before anyone else.

Are you in need of  professional photography services for your event, product or publication?  I’ve shot everything from professional sports to fine art and most everything in between I  have the experience you need to get the images you want.

And no New Media company is complete without offering Internet services including web design with SEO.  Why waste extra money hiring a web designer AND an SEO company when if your website is designed properly from the start you only need one?  I use the latest technologies in content management systems that give your website power like never before.  Decide you need a new functionality added to your site?  It takes hours not days to add features like newsletter signups and photo galleries.  And the really great part is that if you have someone on your staff that is well versed in a word processing application they can update your website from anywhere there is Internet access and they have a computer!  You are not at the mercy of the developer.  We treat our clients the way we want to be treated.

And if  you need video production for you site or professional photos it is what we do.  From television to published photos, we got you covered.

How about e-commerce?  Need an online store?  We’ve set up dozens of carts.

As an example of just how cutting edge we are check out a project with Second Chance Life Skills, Inc.  It is a program to reduce recidivism in the US correctional system using 21St. century technology.  We had the idea for the very first MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) database back in 2007.  Unfortunately we couldn’t raise the $4.5 Million needed to develop it.  It took MIT and Stanford to do that.  Once developed it also could have applied to any under served population by providing FREE EDUCATION.  Just another example of how we stay ahead of the curve.   We are currently helping them with their project of assisting disabled veterans repair their existing homes to make life more manageable.