Flat Fees, a 7X ROAS, and No Niche: How Creativo Group Works

Jordan:0:00
Welcome back to the [High Ticket AI Systems] Podcast. Everyone, please welcome the one and only Mr. Tommy Chang. Tommy, how you doing today, my friend?

Tommy Chang:0:08
I am doing good brother, how are you?

Jordan:0:10
Absolutely. Fantastic, man. As you know, I was sick for like two, two and a half weeks. I'm finally back on my feet, ready to get back to business, conduct these podcasts and learn about what you and the creative group, Creativa Group are doing. Perfect. I butcher the name, please. I'm sorry. What is the company name? What do you guys do and who you guys serve?

Tommy Chang:0:25
Yeah.

Tommy Chang:0:34
Creativo group and we are a marketing and creative boutique agency based in Miami, Florida and also in Los Angeles, California where I am.

Jordan:0:45
Cool, to coast. So performance marketing, creative group, for which industry, which niche?

Tommy Chang:0:46
Yeah, because

Tommy Chang:0:52
so we, are more of a generalist agency. we, you know, we, we, we, we re I mean, we talked about like, you know, niching down. We've had other agency, founders that had advised us, you know, that's best to niche down. we did have one founder, that's a personal friend of mine. He actually told me not to niche down. yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

Jordan:0:57
Okay.

Tommy Chang:1:20
So I think the original lead, when we started this, the original intention was do something very specific. And then, you know, like within the span of like a few weeks, that kind of went out the window. And then we started doing, you know, we started doing work for companies across different industries. And then, you know, we were, proud to say that we actually do really, really good work. And now we're like, about, you we're just over three months, sorry, three years in, we celebrate our third year anniversary of the founding of the company just a month ago. So yeah, so it's been good.

Jordan:2:02
That's awesome, brother. I feel like what 80 % of businesses don't make it past two years. You guys are on year three. You guys are crushing the game right now.

Tommy Chang:2:08
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's because like a lot of contracts and stuff like that are signed, you know, like for like a year or two. And then, you know, we, I think what, what, what, what we do that kind of mix us a little bit different. do focus a lot of our efforts on just doing good work, right? Like, you know, like holding up to our promises and, just doing really, really good work for our clients. And our retention rates are super high.

Right. And we focus a lot of our energies on just, like I said, just doing good, good, good, good work, focus on retention. And then with doing good work, right. We are able to get referrals. We're also able to upsell our clients pretty easily. Right. And that's where like, I think the benefit of having like a creative and marketing agency comes in because, you know, we can upsell from one side to the other one in a very seamless way. Yeah.

Jordan:3:02
No, absolutely. I think on our first conversation, we actually talked about that, that if you focus on good work, you will, your clients will refer you business more times than not because they love working with you. You guys are delivering results, et cetera. And the second thing that I want to mention is absolutely then having up sales, cross sales, down sales.

Tommy Chang:3:18
Yes.

Jordan:3:26
a great way to increase LTV 100%. What other services do you guys offer besides like the creative part of.

Tommy Chang:3:35
So was creative and then on the marketing front is PPC is basically managing paid media. And then we do SEO as well. know, SEO, geo and AEO work.

Jordan:3:52
That's the second time today somebody brought that freaking word up. What the hell is AEO?

Tommy Chang:3:58
That's answer engine optimization. This was basically all wrapped up into like essentially LLM AI or some people call it AI search now, but it's basically being found on like ChakGBT, Gemini, Claude, know, stuff like that, right? Yeah, so.

Jordan:4:03
Got it. Answer engine optimization.

Jordan:4:18
For sure. Okay. Yeah. I heard of A-I-S-E-O or G-O, but A-E-O is stuffy. We'd have to start utilizing that in my repertoire of words and vocabulary.

Tommy Chang:4:29
Yeah, so like another acronym.

Jordan:4:32
For sure for sure, let's see What I know you work in many different verticals in sectors But would you say because you guys are creative agency that you guys work with econ brands more times than not or?

Tommy Chang:4:48
We do a lot of work with e-comm brands. We do a lot of work with like B2B, AI Satu. So I think everyone's the gamut, man? I I personally have come from like an e-commerce background. I've done, like I spent most of my career in e-comm. That's what I was born out of. then we have quite a number of...

Jordan:4:54
really?

Tommy Chang:5:17
clients in the e-commerce space. One of our larger clients operates in the e-commerce space. But then we do have a number of other clients, like in the B2B space, in the AI space, in the SaaS space. So I think it kind of, like I said, we haven't really focused, at least not yet, on one particular piece of it.

Jordan:5:43
Who, take a moment to think about this if you need to. We're looking at your best clients, like your absolute best clients, like your favorites to work with, the ones that get the best results, that are with you the longest. Can you pinpoint like the persona of that company? Head count, revenue range, industry.

Tommy Chang:6:03
Yeah, think, mean, you know, again, like it's not like, again, because we're a generous agency, we're ANC agnostic. But in terms of like revenue, usually like, I would say, you know, 10 plus 10 to 50 million plus in annual revenue, you know, headcount anywhere from like 20 to 50 people. I think, I think typically, you know, where we do you know, like in terms of like, in terms of PPC work, let's just take that for you. For example, like where we do the best work there is when, you know, the company actually has some budget to spend, right? cause like, I think that oftentimes like, you know, when we get a company and you know, they don't, they don't, they don't have any money to spend. And they're like, Hey, you only have a budget of like a thousand dollars.

Like you can't like, like, like honestly, like, you know, and I don't want to, you know, I never tried to mislead anyone. I would never lie. We're super honest. Right. And I would just tell him like, like, honestly, like there's nothing we can do for a thousand dollars. Right. Like, like you're just wasting your, your money at that point. Right. and I, and I see a lot of like, I mean, you know, our ICPs are usually like startups, but fund the startups. Right. and, or like.

You know, it could be like, you know, a non-funded startup, but they're like in the process of like in a current round and they're about to hopefully get, you know, funding soon. Right. Or like a mid-size business, right? We actually try to, we don't do a whole lot. I mean, we have a few, but we don't do a whole lot of stuff with smaller businesses, like local businesses and stuff like that.

There's certainly a lot of agencies that focus, I know of a couple of different agencies that just does like one example is like, they do SEO for just plumbers, right? Or there's like another company that I know of like they just do paid media for lawn care guys, right? So we're not like one of those type of companies, right? I think ours, we kind of like, we try to focus more on like,

Tommy Chang:8:26
you know, nationwide companies. Like I said, fund a startup, mid-size companies, you know, with some decent budget to spend, you know, at least like 10,000 a month. our average per paid media client, like, you know, spending wise is about 50 to 60. You know, like our highest, our biggest client, you know, in the past, you know, during like... a holiday during November, December, they're obviously in the econ world. They've spent upwards of half a million a month that we've managed. I think it runs that gamut. But that's the ideal client for us to make things work correctly. Because if not, then with a couple of grand, like, you Like, it's struggling, right? You're really, really struggling, you know.

Jordan:9:23
No, definitely, definitely. I definitely encourage working with already established business owners or, you know, VC backed companies, right? Because they can take the gamble. They can take the risk, you know, and it's just so much easier to work with those companies, different mindset. I can list off all the benefits, but you know, from experience.

Tommy Chang:9:43
yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times, you know, they have, know, internally, you know, like, marketing folks and they, and they, and they get it, right. It's, it's a lot less like hand holding and explaining and stuff like that. Right. So.

Jordan:9:57
For sure, for sure. I will say that the reason why so many gurus or sure mentors out there say, you know, niche down, because I think it just makes everything easier from a scalability standpoint. Just in like marketing terms, right? If I have to create messages for 10 different ICPs, that's a lot of work, right? And when I'm...

Tommy Chang:10:10
for sure. Yeah.

Jordan:10:21
making this ad or making this email or making content, right? Literally any form of marketing material. And I'm trying to blend this content to 10 different personas. It's just, it's not going to resonate with anyone, but generally it might, but it won't like have a visceral impact with someone.

Tommy Chang:10:41
For sure. Right. And I get that. But I think the way that we've overcome it is that at end of the day, all businesses, they're after one same thing, right? It's sales, right? To drive revenue. So I think we focus on, you know, when we talk to people like going into a pitch, we focus on business outcomes, right? Here is what we're going to do for

Jordan:10:53
Sure. Absolutely.

Tommy Chang:11:08
for you and here's what we're going to do to drive to your end goal, which is increasing revenue. Right. So, so I think to us, that's like, I think we figured out that that kind of works and that's pretty agnostic, you know, that kind of goes across, you know, any, any company, any, any industry. Because at the end of the day, like, you know, like for our B2B guys, like oftentimes, you know, they come to us and they're like, no, we want more leads. And I'm like, no, no, no, you want more sales.

Right? Right? You don't want more lead. Like you want more sales. It's not like who like put the lease aside. Like you want, you want lease like, like, like leases to get you to sales. Right. So, so I think, you know, and then they're like, yeah, that's a, that's an interesting way to think about it. Right. So, you know, so that's what we focus on. Right. So I, so I think that's been like, kind of been our thing to, you know, kind of circumvent or like, you know, mitigate.

Jordan:11:38
Yes, there you go.

Tommy Chang:12:06
that issue of like, you don't have that, you know, this, this, you know, experience in this industry or that industry. Like to me, it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, we're focused on the same end goal, which is driving increased revenue, know, your, you know, and, know, your business outcome. Right. So, yeah. Yeah.

Jordan:12:24
Well, 100 % for sure. definitely agree with that. On that note, you brought up like, sales processes, a lot of, know, different companies, individuals have different processes when it comes to conducting a sales consultation. Do you mind giving us like a high level overview of what that looks like for you and the company?

Tommy Chang:12:43
Yeah, so for us, it's most of our sales right now is driven through referrals. You know, like any stage of agency, you know, or any agency at our current stage, I think that's probably, you know, what you're going to hear most. We just started thinking and putting together more of a specific inbound and future outbound strategy. but in terms of like just sales, like, you know, it's, you know, we, you know, we meet a pro we, we, we meet a prospect. We usually get on zoom, you know, do a pitch meeting. Usually I think in the pitch meeting is us kind of going through, you know, what we're all about, you know, some, some, some high level, like, you know, processes and, and, and, and case studies and stuff like that. But I think more so for us, it's important to listen to. the prospect, right? So I think we kind of go in there with the thought of, you know, let's, let's restrain like our own talking and let's listen more. Right. So like usually like, you know, we try to have like a listen to talk ratio of like 70 30. Right. Because we want to, we want to hear like what they're saying and we don't want to make it all about us, but rather make it all about the prospect and listen to what their problems are. They're trying to solve, you know, their goals and stuff like that. And then. think of like, okay, well, how are we going to attack this? Right? Then afterwards, we then quickly, you know, follow up with a second meeting where we're going to present to them, like, here's our solution. Here's a customized plan for you. You know, here's what we're all going to do, X, Y, Z, and, you know, go through that pricing conversation, right? And then your fall goes well, then we ask for the business. So usually it's a two meeting process. kind of keep it relatively short. We don't like to drag things out, but it also depends, right? It also depends on the client, you know, how they got referred to us. You know, one of our best clients actually, like I closed them on the first call within 15 minutes, you know? So yeah, so like, you know, yeah. So it's like, sometimes it's like super quick.

Jordan:15:02
Yeah.

Tommy Chang:15:05
you know, sometimes it takes like, you know, like three or four meetings. Right. So. Yeah.

Jordan:15:09
I feel like with sales, you have to like gauge the energy between the other person. A person you close in 15 minutes, you can just tell from his like energetically, he was liking the vibes, he likes the company, he was already in, like why delay the process? Let's just get you on board. Right? With other guys where it's like a three, four step meeting, you can just tell there might be a little more reserved, a little skeptical, maybe not as trusted initially. Doesn't mean the deal can't get closed. It just means you have to work a little harder for it. Right?

Tommy Chang:15:13
Yeah, yeah, engaged energy,

Tommy Chang:15:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tommy Chang:15:39
Yeah exactly.

Jordan:15:39
And the way, and I think just that picking up on energy and small cues and tonality just comes from like fucking thousands of reps or just experience, right? You did bring up something important though, which is the two, two call close. I, before I learned this strategy, I was all about the one call close. However, it is a bit difficult. I'm not gonna lie. Like it's really, it's really hard to close cold traffic in a fucking one call, 60 minute meeting. It's very difficult.

Tommy Chang:15:48
For sure.

Jordan:16:07
So what like to do is a similar process as you, right? The first call is literally nothing about us, everything about them. We take an information after we diagnose the problem, you know, come up with like some ideas on how to solve it. We craft a customized proposal, right? We take the extra one to two days, personalize everything for them, and then present that on the second call. And because we take that, I don't know, additional 30 minutes, I mean, at least with like AI tools and shit, it's like an additional 30 minutes to... really personalize it, that increases so much like goodwill. Like, damn, this company took the time to really personalize this for me. And because it's personalized, they can like imagine it happening in real life. Like, okay, I can see this Google campaign working for me because of XYZ reason. Or I can see like this creative angle working for me because it's like, it's real, it's happening. Do you kind of see what I'm saying?

Tommy Chang:17:01
Yeah, yeah, for sure. like, it's funny you mentioned that because on the second call, what we typically do is also present some mockups. So like if it's a creative thing, if it's like a website, right, we would, I mean, it's, it's not hard to do, right? We would take their, take their logo, put it into a wire frame. And then, you know, maybe we'd do a little bit of work, like 15, 30 minutes of work and make it into a mockup. So then they can like visualize and put themselves in that.

Jordan:17:08
Yeah, yeah.

Tommy Chang:17:31
in that position, right? And the same thing with like on the PPC side, we mocked up ads, we mocked up like fake Google ads, right? And we presented to them like, this is what it can be, right? So imagine what it can be, right? So, you know, that like usually works like phenomenally. Well, yeah, I mean, we never try to close on the first call, but like, again, like it just depends on the vibes, right?

I think on the, you know, usually on the, on the first call, you know, again, like, yeah, same with you. We're listening, we're taking notes. Second call, we present to them our solution pricing and then ask for the business, right? yeah. So that tends to work well for us.

Jordan:18:10
For sure, for sure. you said something earlier, you brought up, you know, some months, cause I have a couple of clients that work in the e-comm space. They primarily work for like Google ads and meta ads. And like you're saying, bro, like Q4, these e-comm companies are spending half a million dollars a month, a hundred K, 200 K a month. it's nothing. They make like their years profit in Q4. It's absolutely insane. But I want to ask you for like a pricing standpoint when you're managing half a million dollars per month.

Tommy Chang:18:37
Yeah.

Jordan:18:43
Does your pricing adjust because that's a lot of budget to manage.

Tommy Chang:18:47
Of course, yeah. typically on the PPC side, we're all about like, we have a flat fee structure. So unlike a lot of other PPC agencies where they're based on percentages of spend, we have a flat fee, right? So our flat fee, you know, it's like, you know, generally ranges from like, you know, a dollar to 50 grand and then 51 to 100, 101 to 200, you know, stuff like that, right?

So the answer is yes, we do adjust, right? But it just depends, right? If they're just going from like say, you know, typically from 100 to 150, you know, to us it's like, you know, the same amount of work, it's not that much more. So we'll happily adjust that. And typically, you know, there's no extra cost to that extra 50 grand that we're spending. You know, unlike some agencies where it's like a percentage, right?

Yeah. And I actually like doing that because the reason why is that oftentimes when a campaign is working really well, Typically the Google rep will also ask the client to increase spend, right? And so were we, but I want to take out the money component out of it. I don't want the client to think in the back of my mind, they're just asking us to increase spend because they want to get paid more. Right? No, I want to ask you to increase spend so you can get more sales. Right? So.

Jordan:19:47
Yeah

Jordan:20:15
Yeah, you have a 5X roach right now, dude. Like you turned a dollar into $5. You should spend more money.

Tommy Chang:20:20
Oh no, yeah, 5x for us sounds like we average like a 7x. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but we really good work there.

Jordan:20:24
So that's really good. the. No, absolutely. Words, Jesus. Are you the one like behind the computer screen, you know, clicking the buttons in Google or do you have a team that.

Tommy Chang:20:41
Yeah, we have a small team. Our team consists, I mean, our total team size is eight people, including myself and my co-founder, Karina. But we have a small team of designers and marketers and stuff like that. So I think at the end of the day, the answer to your question is yes, but it depends on which account, depends on the day, what we're doing, who's doing what.

Jordan:20:50
so?

Jordan:21:09
I see.

Tommy Chang:21:10
You know, stuff like that, right? So I like kinda also, you know, being in the weeds and not losing touch of what we do, you know, to keep my own, you know, just personal skill, you know, up to par, right? Because at the end of the day, like, you know, we're selling this thing and I need to know, you know, what it does and how to do it. Yeah, so.

Jordan:21:12
Judge.

Jordan:21:21
Yeah.

Jordan:21:37
You got to keep your thumb on the pulse of what's going on, whether it's with your company, with the skillset that you're selling, the services, all that fun stuff. What is your favorite thing to work on? Just from like a personal note, is it like the creative side, the website design, Google PBC?

Tommy Chang:21:43
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tommy Chang:21:53
I think it man, it honestly depends on the day. mean, so Karina, my business partner, she handles and oversees manages the creative part of our business. She's, you know, been a creative director before. And then for me, I've always been a marketer. So, so I think that, you know, I I love design a lot, even though I don't work on it, just because I just like the, like, do really fucking good work on the design side. Like you see some of the sites that we've done, I mean, it's mind blowing. And I just love seeing the output, right? Like, I just love seeing the whole process and the output. Sometimes I'm in these client meetings and I don't even say a word, but I'm just like sitting there. I'm just like amazed by like what we're doing, right? And I'm like, how are we even making this stuff? like work, like I don't know. But so I love that part of it. mean, I think, but for me, I think I really, I mean, I kind of nerd and geek out on like Google ads and I'm kind of a data guy. So I love all the data. You know, I love like seeing a lot of our clients like being successful and seeing like that average 7x role ads that I'm talking about, right.

And like, or like, or like figuring out, know, you know, like this client, you know, their role as isn't as great or their, or their cack, you know, it's a little bit high, you know, what can we do lower that and like make making changes and then seeing like a week later, it's getting better. Like I love stuff like that, you know, so that's, that's kind of, you know, my, in my, in my, in my personal wheelhouse, you know, yeah.

Jordan:23:39
For sure. So it sounds like data driven strategies. So here's the thing about data, bro. Like I've been in business for myself the last six years. I hated going over metrics and data when I first started. Now after six years in, I'm like, dude, data is like the number one fucking thing I look at. Like if you really, if you really zoom out, like really, really zoom out, bro, business is just math. Business really is just, and you like no offense, but like

Tommy Chang:24:06
Yeah exactly.

Jordan:24:09
to anyone out there listening, but you put people in place to execute so they can achieve numbers. Like not again, not to sound like rude or anything, but like that's, that's reality from a business perspective. That's what it is. Right. It's like KPIs it's metrics. should like that. Now what you said, looking at data and you realize, you know, our average ROAS is a seven for whatever reason, this client's achieving a four as an example. What is the strategy we can take to improve this campaign? And it sounds to me like that, that thinking process. is what you freaking love the most. Cause same here. I love the creative process, the strategy process, like just the deep creative thinking. And I think like we, I'm not good at designing websites at all, but like when it comes to messaging, copywriting, turning a stranger into interest into a sale, like that fucking process, dude, like I eat that shit up for breakfast. Like I fucking, you know what I mean?

Tommy Chang:25:04
Yeah.

Jordan:25:08
Going back to your free.

Tommy Chang:25:08
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. And I know where you're talking about because like, you know, I mean, this might sound, this might sound bad, but at the end of the day, like, you know, I also liked the biz dev or the sales process too, you know, cause I don't know a day, like a lot of it, you know, cause I majored in psychology. So a lot of it is like, you know, it's like kind of a game between people, right? Kind of figuring out, you know, what buttons to press, what to say, what not to say, you know, stuff like that. Right. So, yeah. So, so it's like fun. It's fun.

Yeah. Yes.

Jordan:25:38
Absolutely, man. Absolutely. Like human behavior, like kind of off topic, like human behavior to me personally is really, really interesting. So I actually study just for fun, like hypnotherapy, which is basically like behavioral science. if you think about it, it's just like how to get someone to change their behavior instead of using like logic and good, not good, like your willpower. It's like you work with the subconscious mind anyways, but it's just interesting. You know, like two people.

Tommy Chang:25:50
Okay. Great.

Jordan:26:07
can go through very similar lives. Like they can live in the same household, have the same parents and act completely differently, right? Just like, how, why? Like, aren't you guys supposed to be the same? You know, like almost the same experiences, but humans are just vastly different, even though they grew up in the same little tribe, I might say. It's just, it's just interesting to me. Okay, back on topic, You see, you have eight employees, including yourself and the co-founder. How did you manage to find-

Tommy Chang:26:26
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan:26:37
the six remaining staff.

Tommy Chang:26:41
It wasn't hard, man, because the vast majority of them came through our network. both Karina and I have had long careers, each of us 20 years plus before Kreativa Group. So we built up a pretty substantial network that we're able to tap in not only for clients, but also for help.

Right. Um, so when we started the agency, yeah, it was, was like, you know, just literally like looking into our network for, you know, hiring a designer that, you know, we had worked, uh, that had worked for us before hiring a marketer that had worked with us before, you know, stuff like that. Right. So, so it was not really too difficult. Um, I think that, you know, uh, you know, we, do, you know, as we grow, right. That, that obviously, you know, only go so far. So I think. you know, what we're trying to do there is have like, you know, a mentality of, you know, hiring slow and firing fast. Right. So, you know, I mean, unfortunately, sometimes like things don't don't don't don't don't work out. Things like that. Right. But then, you know, we are careful on who we're bringing on. Right. Making sure that there are personality and culture fit for us.

We like them and they like us, stuff like that. So I think it goes beyond just like, are you capable of doing the work? Because a lot of people are these days, but we wanna make sure that they're the right fit for us, they're the right fit for our clients too. They can be client facing, they speak well and they can kind of present themselves. in a matter that we are proud of and stuff like that, right?

Jordan:28:41
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you cannot have one, one person who's a cancer to the organization can destroy the entire organization. You definitely, they have to be amongst anything a culture fit. You know, I'd rather have them be a culture fit and I teach them the competencies or I teach them the skill opposed to vice versa where they have the skill. They're obviously intelligent, but not, not, not a company fit, right? You know what I mean?

Tommy Chang:28:50
yeah, for sure.

Tommy Chang:29:09
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I learned that throughout the course of my career, right? I think here, you know, we've been pretty lucky in that, you know, everyone on the team is great and, you know, we're all, you know, caring and empathetic people and, you know, so, yeah, so it's just all kind of good vibes, you know, all around. Yeah.

Jordan:29:29
Not for sure. I do have a serious question though. What is your, who achieves a 7x horizon Google? I know you said it's average.

Tommy Chang:29:39
Who would use a SIMX for us in Google?

Jordan:29:42
Yeah, for your clients. I know you said it's average, but like, can you give me one example, like one industry, one company?

Tommy Chang:29:48
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, there's a consumer electronics company. That's one of our clients. Yeah, e-commerce company. Yeah, and we've been averaging like looking, I mean, I was just looking at their data. The company is called Monoprice. Looking at their data for the past like two years, we're like at a 6.9x ROAS average for the past two years.

Jordan:29:54
Okay.

Jordan:30:16
That's her.

Tommy Chang:30:16
I think it depends on right on the company. mean, we have other companies that we have a couple of luxury watch clients now, not not, you know, we have two of them. One of them is running paid media. The other one is not they're doing SEO, but the paid media one. mean, obviously like with a a with a luxury watch, especially like a vintage, vintage Rolex, Rolex or vintage like AP or or like a Patek that sells for like 50, 70 grand. mean, you so you can imagine like the ROAS there could be through the roof, right? So, yeah.

Jordan:30:57
Yeah, but I mean at the same time you're selling 50k, 70k watches. You lose out on profitability, I think on higher ticket items and at scale as well. But again, you make up for it in revenue, like total.

Tommy Chang:31:12
Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so there, like, I think, you know, we're more focused on, you know, for that particular client, like looking at overall, you know, cost per lead and cost per sale. but we've been able to get it down to like a phenomenal level, you know, know, phenomenal level, where, you know, like the, you know, it's like a no brainer, right. So.

Jordan:31:35
For sure. And I bring up the Google ads question because I know there's so many things that have to go right. Right. People think that they partnered with an agency and they say, just like run my ads and make me sales. Like, okay, cool. Whatever. But there's so many different components, right? There's how the campaign is structured, how the headlines are presented. What is the, the meta tags or the, the body copy within the PPC campaign. Right. And then that's just a handful, a handful. Then we have the actual fricking website or the funnel itself.

Like the headline has to be on point. The call to action has to be on point. The graph, the UI, you know? So I guess, do you handle the UI and UX whenever you take over PPC accounts? Do you fight those go hand in hand?

Tommy Chang:32:08
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Tommy Chang:32:20
It depends on the client. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. It depends. think, you know, yeah, it all depends on the client. Because like, and I say that because like, we, need be, right? Like once we get in there, if need be, because okay, so let me just take a step back. You know, we do evaluate, you know, prospects based on like, if it's a PPC, prospect, do take a look at their product. We do take a look at their brand, you know, what's out there. We do take a look at their website, right? There have been a few times where we've encountered a prospect where, you know, I don't know, the product wasn't great. The website wasn't that great. They didn't have any brand awareness. It was going to be hard. Even though they had the money to spend, it was going to be really extraordinarily difficult. for us to really do anything. Right. And then I kind of foresaw like, okay, this could be, unhappy client down, down the road in a couple of months thinking that it's not working when, you know, it's more the product because you know, in PVC, there's a lot of other variables besides just the ad. Right. So, you know, we're pretty honest and transparent about that with those clients. And we tell them like, Hey, you know, maybe you need to improve XYZ before, you know, you think about spending money.

Jordan:33:36
Yeah.

Tommy Chang:33:47
Or we tell them like, your website might need a little bit of work. Maybe we can focus there first. So I think it all depends. Sometimes clients have a really, really phenomenal website. And we don't need to do anything. And then we can just jump right in and start spending and taking over the account. Other times, we need to like, you might need to think about a landing page. You might need to fix your UI UX first.

So yeah, so I think it all depends. don't think, we don't go into it with the thinking of it automatically going hand in hand, right? But sometimes, yeah, they have to, right?

Jordan:34:31
Yeah, you have to take like a holistic approach to business. mean, sure marketing, but like in business in general, right? Like if you really want to go from, you know, zero to 100K to 100K to 500K, 500K to a million and beyond, like you need so many different pillars and so many different levers all working in conjunction at a really high level. You know, you can have ads dialed in, but if your funnel is horrible, not going to convert well.

Or if you own a B2B company, you sell like high ticket items over the phone. You know, you can have amazing, amazing ads. know, your cost per lead, your cost per book calls is within KPI, but your close rates, 5%, not going to be a good business. Or let's take it one, one step further, right? KPI for a cost per book call solid closing, you know, 20, 25 % solid. We're profitable there, but my clients leave me every month.

Like my retention, my churn is fucking like 90%. It's horrible, right? Again, this is not going to be profitable. Like, and I know I'm talking about business from a holistic standpoint, but specifically for marketing, like there's so many levers you have to pull, right? So I'm kind of glad that you guys take that approach and you don't just like give somebody a cookie cutter Google ads plan. say like, Hey man, the website needs work. Let's work on this first. Or no, like your website's baller. Like let's actually just scale the hell out of this thing. You know, like kudos to you.

Tommy Chang:35:49
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, we don't take the cookie cutter approach on anything, not even design. None of our websites are template-based. Everything is custom work and stuff like that. Yeah.

Jordan:36:06
Now I do want to ask you one question. How are you guys using AI in the company?

Tommy Chang:36:11
Yeah, so we are supporters and believers of AI. I think there's two schools of thought, Some don't like AI and some do and are doubting it. I think we clearly fall on the second camp. I think we use AI in several ways. I think one way is...

On the design side, we use an AI tool to help us with wireframing and site mapping. That makes things a little bit more efficient for our design team. I think secondly, there is a tool out there. The tool is called Noted, Noted AI. At full disclosure, they're a client of ours where we've helped them make their website. and also running their paid media as well. But with that said, we are also using their tool. And their tool basically is a customer knowledge graph tool. So it essentially ingests all of the transcripts, all of the customer or the client touch points, email, Slack. can read through all of the stuff like in Google Drive. and ingests everything and then it comes up and tells you, you know, what are the, what's the overview, what are, what's the, overall client sent, you know, sentiment. Are they likely to turn? Do you have a problem? You know, what are the challenges? What are the opportunities, sales opportunities, you know, business opportunities, you know, what's going good, what's going bad. It automatically, you know, gives you a to-do list.

And I love using this tool going into before a client meeting, just get an overview of, especially with things that I might not be working on every day, like on the creative side, that I'm less familiar with because my business partner is handling that with her team, just getting an overview of what is happening, what's going on, what are we talking about. And that same thing with her, she's going into this tool using it.

Tommy Chang:38:27
for some of our marketing meetings, just understanding what's going on with this particular client. So that one is really, really useful. For us, I think they built it with trying to sell it to account managers, customer success folks, not really specifically for agency use, but we've adapted it for agency use. And they're really cool. mean, the two guys, they're running it.

Chris and Steve, they're really great, great people and they are open to customizing it to our needs and stuff like that, which they've done many, many times. And then we ourselves, created like an AI proprietary product for programmatic SEO, right? So our tool that we built internally is capable of creating content at scale. So...

Jordan:39:22
Nice.

Tommy Chang:39:24
Even though we have this, you know, even though the tool can create content at scale, we do it in a very thoughtful and restrained way. So our tool is capable of like, you know, some of the other programmatic SEO tools out there creating thousands of pages, you know, on the fly per day. We don't do it that way because, you know, we're not out to try to push like low quality content to Google and to spam the shit out of Google, right?

So we kind of do it in a more thoughtful way, like for the majority of our clients is like, you know, one article, but like very high quality article targeting, you know, all those three things like SEO, geo and, and, and, AEO and one long content piece. And it's been working well. I mean, like, if you look at, you know, client wide, mean, everyone that's been on this has grown in their numbers, both, you know, across the board, both in organic search, like

Jordan:39:51
And.

Tommy Chang:40:21
you know, just regular organic search and also AI search as well.

Jordan:40:27
That's super badass. Tommy, please hold our conversation. I have to pee like a racehorse. Give me one second, my gosh. Sorry.

Tommy Chang:40:33
Thanks

Jordan:41:39
Thank you, brother. Okay.

Tommy Chang:41:40
I assume you're going to edit that out, right?

Jordan:41:44
100%. Yeah, Editors are pretty on point with what you're like that, for sure. But Tommy, getting back to what you said, is it noted.ai?

Tommy Chang:41:55
Noted AI noted AI. Yeah, their website is their website is get noted AI doc. No wait. No, sorry get noted AI. Yeah, that's the website Yeah

Jordan:41:57
Null F-

Jordan:42:05
That is so bad ass. I will probably become a client like right after this conversation. I promise you. I, I use Claude code and I just create projects within like my Claude code account. It definitely keeps, you know, project files separate from all of my other clients. Like it knows their ICP like all about them. But what it does not do is communicate across all channels of communication by email, Slack, Google drive, Google meetings. Like that shit right there is.

Precedent amazing. I can definitely see the value behind that right the other one I Definitely think it's wise not to create AI slop at scale I think it's much much better to create one really good piece of content daily opposed to a thousand a day that are horrible, you know, like this one 10 out of 10 blog posts will outperform all 1000 horrible blog posts seven days at a seven, you know what I mean?

Tommy Chang:42:47
Well, thank you.

Tommy Chang:42:55
Yeah.

Tommy Chang:43:03
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And that's why like, you know, a lot of our those type of blog posts, I mean, they're ranking pretty high. We focus on long tail terms. I mean, we do the research, right? Because, you know, our tools capable of going out, figuring out who the competitors are, the competitor set of this brand. And then the tools capable of then like going out and figuring out through SEM rush.

What are the terms that actual users are searching on to land on the competitor sites? So it's actual real search terms that people are searching for that we're using as keywords to drive the creation of these content pieces. Right? So it's not just like, you know, made up, you know, like you said, not made up AI slop that we throw together. Right. So there's a lot of like work that goes behind it. And then when the articles are done,

Jordan:43:53
No for sure.

Tommy Chang:43:58
There is a person on the team that her job is reviewing the articles, right? So it's not automatically just published onto the internet. She goes in every day and reviews everything, makes edits. She's adding in the images as well, right? We don't use AI for image creation. I think that image creation is not quite there yet.

Because sometimes it could be awesome and it's photorealistic and sometimes it generates like someone with six fingers. So yeah, so it's very inconsistent. So I don't think the consistency is necessarily there yet. Probably give it another like a few months to or maybe a year, then it'll be better, I feel. but you know, but, but her job right now is like, you know, looking at that and then, you know, making the edits, reviewing everything and publishing everything. Right. So, yeah.

Jordan:44:57
For sure. I think that is smart. someone broke down AI to me this way. I mean, I knew this logically. I just had, had someone explain it to me this way, but basically AI is like 80 20 20 % human, 80 % AI. want to split the 20 % on the front end and the backend of AI. This is what I mean. So if we're on the topic of blog posts, right? We want to feed context. into AI upfront, you know, a proper way to write a blog keywords that we're ranking for it. Just us great in competitors websites to see how we can beat them using sem brush, right? Feeding all this data in context into AI initially. And then AI does its magic. It does the 80 % it writes the freaking blog. Right. And then the last 10 % is where you're one of your, what are your staff members comes into play and reviews it. Because if you don't review it and you just release slob or like not slob, but like maybe a mistake or two.

Tommy Chang:45:55
Yeah, it could be.

Jordan:45:55
It's definitely gonna push you in the ass, right? So you want that 10 % context in the front, let AI do the 80 % work, and then human in the loop the last 10%. And that's basically how I've kind of always used it. Not always, but like I use it now. But the way she broke that down, I was like, that kind of makes sense. Like, thank you for sharing that with me.

Tommy Chang:46:14
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And that's that's the way we approach. mean, if you look at, you know, some of the code behind, you know, that behind the toll, mean, like, literally, like, you know, like some of our prompts is longer than the articles themselves. Right. Because we put so much into it. mean, we we also grab like the brands like Tona Voice, all their other brand guides. We we also like, you know, have the ability to upload prior writing into the system. And yeah, I mean, it's like pretty freaking good, you know, so yeah, but it took some time for us to get there. Like, admittedly, like our first try, it was like a fucking disaster. Like, I was like, yeah, this is not, yeah. So I was like kind of questioning like, this is gonna work or not. But it actually took like, actually like it took us several months to kind of hone it down.

Jordan:46:59
Same here, bro. No, for sure.

Tommy Chang:47:12
Um, I think we really like, really started working on, think in like late 2024, think we had like the idea and like the summer of 24, the fall of 24, we started working on it diligently, like, you know, late 2024. I think throughout last year was like us, like we, we, we, we finding it and you know, doing like multiple revisions of this thing and starting to onboard, you know, real clients onto, on, you know, onto it. Right.

So yeah, so it was definitely like fun to like get that all figured out and get it all going.

Jordan:47:51
It's a process for sure. We're running out of time unfortunately, so one more question, maybe two. Looking back over your career as an agency owner, what is one thing you wish you knew before starting the agency?

Tommy Chang:47:52
Yeah.

Tommy Chang:47:56
Okay, cool.

Tommy Chang:48:07
I wish I would have done the agency sooner. Right. I mean, that was like, I mean, I don't, like, you know, cause we, we, we, we, you know, we've already had a lot of business experience. I've never had my own business before this. So I think every day we're learning different things, right? Like, you know, before, when I was an employee for a company, right. Like. you know, HR, accounting, all that was done for me, legal, all that was done for me. I didn't have to worry about all that stuff. And then here, I think it was like, you know, especially in the beginning, like every day was like a new thing that would come up not related to the work itself, right? But related to other things like, you know, like, you know, for example, you know, after we got our first client, you know, we had to send them an invoice. Okay, well, how do we do that?

Jordan:48:44
Right, right.

Tommy Chang:49:06
wait, there's QuickBooks. Okay, so let's subscribe to this thing. So, you know, so it was a lot of like that sort of back office stuff that my business partner and I had to figure out, right? Because like, I think we were more just like business people, you know, doing the marketing work, doing the creative work and not, you know, having to worry about accounts receivable and sending out invoices and legal stuff and SOPs and stuff like that, right?

So there was a lot of that. But just looking back, I wish we would have just started this sooner. I think that if we would have started this sooner, we would have been in a different place right now. But I'm glad that we did and better late than never.

Jordan:49:52
Absolutely. Yeah, you all should be proud of yourselves for one even taking that risk, let alone the success that you guys have. But on that topic of like daunting, you know, like, my gosh, I'm going to jump off the cliff. I'm going to become my own boss. I'm going to start that, you know, path of being an entrepreneur. Like you think of like all these fears, all the things that could go wrong. But and like, my God, I don't know so many things. But like you're describing, you just figure that shit out along the way, man. Like all these what the fuck they were doing, they just figure that shit out. And now it's like, you know.

Tommy Chang:50:22
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Like going into it, I mean, I can only speak for myself because Karina is not present. for me, I never really was looking at it with fear or a daunting thing. I was up for the challenge. But again, I didn't know what I didn't know at the time. I didn't know what we were exactly. I mean, I kind of knew what we were getting into. But I didn't know it had all this other back office stuff.

But like you said, I just learned over time, right? And then now we're at a place where the team is big enough. We have a bookkeeper on the team. She's actually the knife person on the team. But we have a bookkeeper that helps us with the invoicing. We have a legal firm that helps us with a lot of the legal stuff, right? So yeah, so it's all fine now.

Jordan:51:18
Good stuff. No, Tommy, great, great conversation, my man. I had a ton of fun with you. We'll end on this start here. Where can they find you if they wanted to connect and ask you for the questions?

Tommy Chang:51:28
Yeah, for sure. They can find us on our website at creativagroup.com. And then they can also look me up, Tommy Chang on LinkedIn. Yeah, so.

Jordan:51:43
Good stuff. Well, again, brother, we'll have to have you back on in like, you know, six to 12 months to see how business is going for you. again, pleasure, of course. Audience, we'll talk to you all soon.

Tommy Chang:51:50
Yeah, no, no, no, no, no,

Tommy Chang:51:55
All thank you so much.