From SEO to Equity Deals: Brian Hong of Infintech Designs on Growth Marketing & AI Disruption

Welcome to Hack to the Future with Kyle Roof, I am Kyle Roof, and today we have Brian Hong, the CEO of Infintech Design. Did I say that correctly?

Infintech Designs, plural. Good enough. They're designs.

There we go. So sorry. Thanks so much for being on, how you doing?

Doing great, doing wonderful. Can't complain, life is good.

I was thinking back, I think you and I, we met, I wanna say 2015. In the bottom of a steamboat. We were in the steerage, we were in the steerage of a steamboat as I recall. Does that sound about right?

Yeah. You had the speech about, you talked about single variant testing and you rocked the world of SEO. That was like a ripple that just spread and spread. Yeah, I absolutely remember that.

That was a moment in time when I gave that talk, I really thought, cause that, that there were only about 40 people or 50 people there at that conference and it was more conversational with the speakers. And I was really anticipating a dialogue. This is what I do, now what do you guys do? And then that's when I realized I was on to something, because nobody was doing it.

I was like, oh. Wait a second, what is this guy doing?

I can make a career out of this. I can do it. Brian, when you when you meet somebody new at a party, and, hi, I'm Brian. Hi, Brian, nice to meet you. What do you do? How do you describe your job?

I'm a growth marketer. I'm a digital solutionist. It started with SEO and I started doing this in late 2000, 2001. That's how the journey began. I did affiliate marketing, but I'd say fast forward to today. I take growth marketing and digital solutions. So it's not, it's way more than SEO. It's really anything that you need to help your company grow from top of the funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of the funnel, AI, automation, the list keeps on going is anything to make your company grow.

You really wouldn't describe yourself as necessarily like an SEO anymore. It's just one part of the whole growth package.

Yeah, I'd say that. Although I'm in a like a SEO mastermind, I still love SEO. It's my origin story of how it began, but it's really evolved from there. I consider myself less and less of an SEO. Although it's something I love and I'm passionate about and I'm continually trying to learn, aligning myself with these masterminds, it's really the smallest part of what we do these days.

When you're, when somebody comes to you then says, it says, Okay, I need digital marketing growth. What do you use for KPIs? Like how do you set markers as to, okay, this will demonstrate the work that we've done for this digital growth?

Pretty simple. It's, it really depends on the brand, but without having that conversation, most, if not all of them, how many times did my phone ring? Conversions, it's all about conversions and then track those conversions to, deals closed. Cause it might be appointment set where things are going great, but I want to go further than that is how many appointments turned into closed deals and what was the value. So really that bottom of the funnel is the KPI. You can give them all the reporting in the world, but if their phone isn't ringing, they don't care. If they're not getting leads, they don't care. If they're getting appointments and not closing deals, then that's another problem we need to fix. So it's really, how do I make the company money?

When you establish a budget for someone, are you given free reign on how you're going to allocate that across different marketing channels? Like, how, how much do you plan that out, or like, How much freedom do clients give you just to go and do what you need to do?

I'd say these days the majority of clients, they just give me a budget and there's enough trust built saying go turn this to more money. It's not every single client, but I'd say, a little bit more than 50 percent of them. If at the end of the conversations, consultations, discovery sessions, and audits, there is enough trust built okay, I got XK per month. I got 10, 000 per month. I'm not the expert. I'm not going to tell you how to go spend it. You tell me how to spend it. Go allocate it for me. That's probably a little bit more than the majority of the clients we take on these days.

Would you say that it's more like a fractional CMO kind of a concept? And then that you're coming in as that role for their company?

In a sense, yes. I'd say there are some elements to that. But I'd say it's not a full fractional. But there is partial fractional CMO, and so I have a partner that I bring in as the fractional CMO because that's going to be the reporting, the weekly meetings, and I'm not as scalable there, right? There's only so many hours in the day, but there is an initial consultation where you may be having those conversations that you'd be having with a CMO or fractional CMO that I'm a part of, but there's not that ongoing where there's that weekly reporting, meetups where some clients there are, they pay me enough money, I'll do it, but it's not super scalable to do that across every single client.

Sure. Then, at the end of the day, or excuse me, at the month, when you are doing reporting, is the reporting just on conversions, or do you show your work, if you will? What is involved in that kind of reporting? What do they want to see so they're feeling good about the spend?

Yep, so we show the work and every client is different. We're pretty boutique and pretty customized. First, we look at their needs analysis. What do they want? And then we combine what they want that keeps them happy, because that helps retention to what we know matters the most, which more often is form submissions, conversions, appointments, if you're a service based business. So we do show the proof of work, so we're not just sitting here and there's a little transparency. So we say, we've done this, we've optimized this number of pages, built this number of links, we did X, Y, and Z. So there's a work log, but ultimately, they look at that and it goes over their head, right? They're not SEOs. Although we give it to them, the thing they look at the most is what we call a performance scorecard. That's how many, and we give the quote unquote vanity metrics, how many impressions, how many clicks, but ultimately it's all that is to the main goal of how many appointments were booked, if you're a service based business, and what keywords, what categories are they in, and conversions, all about the conversions, that's what really, the bottom line, that's what they're most interested in, how much money am I going to make.

Is that scorecard just like a top line, one pager thing that you give them?

Yeah, it's a Google sheet, just a line by line.

Easy to digest. Okay.

Bang. Here's how we did.

Yeah. Very cool. What clients would you reject? If somebody comes to you and says, Okay, I'd like to give you this 10K. Here you go. Who are you saying no to?

The last no I had was an ORM campaign. I don't know if this is appropriate, but It's an ORM campaign of a guy in San Antonio that was having sex with dogs. And he wanted to clean up his name on the internet, and I turned that down, and I'm like, I can't go to bed at night, because you are having sex with dogs, and he killed one from having sex with it, and I'm like I don't think I want this deal, I'm gonna go ahead and pass, and he offered me up to 15k per month, cause when you googled his name, there was all these news articles about what he did, so that was a hard no, I'm like, I'm not gonna do this one.

Alright, so reputation management ORM, reputation management might be out. What about any kind of legitimate businesses? Maybe you should have asked that.

Legitimate, we're pretty, we've done it all. I've worked with adult entertainment. I've worked with e commerce. I can't think of too many no's.

Is anybody, any of the clients like a red flag for you in a way? In like their demands at the beginning or something?

Yeah, there are a few where look, I have 50k left to my name. If this doesn't work, I go out of business. They think I'm gonna save the business but it's way more. I'm just one, one gear in the entire machine and they don't realize that you still need to follow up appointments, scheduling, all the other things. Conversion rates and they're saying if this doesn't work, this is all on you and I'm like, I'm not gonna take that deal and I'm fortunate in a position. It's a it's a luxury to tell people no, all right, is before I was yes, no matter what. But once you get to a certain income level or whatever you want to call it, then you have that luxury to say I'd rather not take on this deal. So there are some no's where people have the 99 per month SEO expectation or five and those are no's obvious. There's not enough budget. The other ones where the expectations are through the roof where they may have health quote unquote healthy budget 10k 15k 20k But they're like six months. This doesn't work You know I'm like, I don't want I want a client for life and I want to be set up for success And you've got so many other problems in your company besides what you're bringing me on for which is mostly top of funnel Introduction brand product or service to create those opportunities and at bats to get your home runs and grand slams.

So I know that you have in terms of taking on clients you've managed to do something that a lot of people want to do. And you can see this in your LinkedIn profile that you're the CMO or partner of eight or nine different companies. And now something that you've gotten into is actually taking a percentage of the company when you come in. Can you give us some of the, give us the rundown on that? How does that work?

Yeah, that kind of began in 2016. That began because I had a client in the landscaping business. And he was going through a divorce and it was a smaller campaign. It was a local campaign, and I saw from my perspective, things were about to quote, unquote take off. Like I, I felt it in my loins that we're about to make first page of Google. And so he gives me a call about three months in and he's yeah, I need to cancel. And I'm like, what? What's going on? We got traction. We're about, things are about to blow up. Long story short, he's going through divorce. Like my wife's about to take everything I own. I'm gonna lose this. I don't have any money. I'm more than flat broke. And so I hang up the phone, and I think about it, and I'm like, man, what a waste of an opportunity. We're almost there. And so I call him back up, because I had a lightbulb moment. I said, hey why are you canceling again? He's because I have no money, I'm going to lose everything, plus way more legal fees, yada yada. I'm like, is that the only reason you can't afford me? He said, yes. And I said, how much revenue are you doing? And he said, 60, 000. And I thought he meant 60, 000 per month. And so I'm like, okay, 60 K. I'm like if I get you to 120 K per month, you're right back where you started. He's if you got me to 120 K, oh my gosh, he's I'm doing 60 K per year. I didn't realize he was a startup. He had saved up a bunch of money. I'm like, oh, 60 K per year. You're a brand new. So I said, give me half your company, give me 50 percent of it and I'll continue doing this work for a 50 percent stake in everything in your company. And he, I'm like, you have nothing to lose at this point. You're about to lose it all. Anyway, you have all the equipment. I'll take on this expense. Long story short, he said yes, and so that went on. We went zero to nine hundred thousand in one year We went about nine hundred thousand to about three million and change in about four or five years, and it took a little bit longer And so that's the beginning of that light bulb moment where it just fell on my lap and I had that moment of clarity of like I should do this because It doesn't matter how to give a good of a job you do sometimes client fire You know, even if your perspective doing a good job you can't fire me if I'm part of the company and I have more control. So it wasn't until 2020 I doubled down on that because I almost went bankrupt because of the pandemic. It was a tough time, stressful, had a kid on the way and I had that voice in my head. If I get out of this situation, I can never let this happen ever again. And I thought about that equity stake and I said, that's what I need to do. I need to own as many brands as possible. So if there's a pandemic event, I still have the company, I'm not losing clients. And so really since 2020. I've been very aggressively gaining equity stakes with about a dozen different brands. And so I get an equal seat at the table. Now I have three construction companies working on a fourth construction company. And if there's two people, I'm the third, if there's four people, I'm the fifth. So equal seat at the table is how the conversation begins. And I'd say 90 ish percent of them, I always have an equal seat at the table, but they still give me, is they, I don't want to be a finance company. I want to be a growth company. So does he still cover the marketing expenses? If I'm covering the marketing expense, it's because I choose to, and there are like one or two deals where I cover the marketing expense, but that's not naturally the default part of the deal, is they still cover the fees.

That's interesting. So you're getting an equity stake as well as getting your fees covered. Essentially, are you taking, are you getting paid, I guess is the idea?

So it's like having a client, because a client pays you, but this time, I'm not making money off what they pay me, I'm making money off the outcome, but you're covering my expenses and fees, so I still get a marketing fee, so if you just say, let's say you pay me 5, 000 per month, as a marketing agency, you'd have your profit bundled in so I might have 2500 spent on cost of goods sold, but in this situation, I'm spending all 5, 000, and then I get a dividend payout on profit share.

Ah, I see. Okay. Okay. Huh. That's an interesting way to do it. So you show them that you're not taking anything out of that 5k so they're getting essentially that full 5k invested But then you're going to take it on the dividend. Whether that's quarterly or yearly or however, they do it.

Yeah every single month and then I have the equity exit part So it's an investment. I have the short game of them covering my expenses This risk isn't all on me right an outcome on the success. I deliver plus when we sell the company I'm gonna get a stake in that.

Very cool Yeah. Perfect. How do you find these clients? How do you find these desperate losers?

Man, it's so many different ways. Some, a lot of them just I don't know, I guess in the small circles I'm in, I've gained this reputation. They just fall out of my lap in many of these instances where they approach me now. So that's really nice. Outside of that, I fit a latest construction company I'm in preparation to acquire equal seat at. It's a company out in Houston called Outreach. It blows my mind how well cold email works. I've gotten some of my biggest clients from cold email, and even some of my acquisitions. Outside of that, networking and relationships.

Oh. And by the way, they're not desperate losers. I don't want to get you. That was a joke. That was a joke. I don't want you to, all of a sudden the board votes you out of half of them. After they see it. Sorry, Brian. Thanks for coming on the show, though.

Damn it! Why'd I do that interview with Kyle? Why?

We had it all. We had it all. When you're doing these partnerships, does your reporting change, or does anything in your approach change, or is it pretty much what you were doing before?

It does change. I'm a little bit more involved because I got skin in the game. So there's more meetings. There's more hands on. There's lots of regular meetings. It it's so contingent on the company. I think about my construction company. It's a little bit more on autopilot because I have my systems built where you know I still attend meetings and we still interact. I think before we used to meet monthly these days the construction company is really busy Which means hopefully I'm contributing to that and they're busy because we're delivering a lot of leads in conjunction with them doing the right thing And building the brand so we don't have time to meet. It's pretty rare And it's my job on my end to make sure that we have a seven person sales team that they always have leads to go to. Then I'm always building systems around that to make sure it can become more and more passive and I can be a thumbs up, thumbs down guy. Just building a machine.

Very cool. Moving into futurism where are you on the AI overlords? Are they going to rule us in six months or do we have a little more time?

I think this year, I'm feeling it. I have an AI company, roboteams. ai. And we are drinking through the fire hose, and it's one of the probably most exciting projects I've ever been a part of. And I'm aligned with all the right people. I have tremendously just, number one partners with integrity and honesty. Because you can teach skills, but you can't teach integrity, honesty, doing the right thing if nobody's looking, and just chemistry. And so we have all that with my partners over there, and that's a great foundation. It's really blow things up and we're doing some mind blowing deals in my head and we're have, we're in rooms and we're in conversations and rubbing people, rubbing shoulders with people that I never thought I'd be rubbing shoulders with but we're cloning humans. We can do anything a human does and we can automate it. Anything that touches, anything where a human touched a keyboard or phone, there's an automation version of that and we're doing it for some very large brands on the enterprise level and we're about to roll out our small business essentials package as well.

What does that entail?

So like on the enterprise side, use case examples maybe you're a salon. So we're working with the salon Multi location 60 locations We can handle all their inbound calls all their outbound calls 4, 000 outbound calls per agent so we can scale up and down by clicking a button instead of hiring people clone their voice if we want to So answering the call not only answering it but answering questions they may have When is my next haircut? I forgot what it was. I want to book an appointment. What are your hours of opera? Anything that a human would do any question along with the actual agentic workflow. So just answering it. Also, let's go book the appointment. Let's take a payment over the phone. Let's have an internal notification from to the hair cutter where maybe they work 30 hours per week and they have a quota to meet is anything a human would do. We can create an automated version of that and that's probably the most popular, but it goes way beyond that. We're talking to a very large size corporate. Enterprise level mortgage companies where they want us to completely underwrite completely automate the underwriting process, which are spending almost a billion dollars per year. And they're like, go automate this for us. Or we're talking to a law firms where they're saying, can you completely automate the signed case retainer, which is the gold standard of what every law firm wants. So there's a, for restaurants, it's Hey take takeout orders, take reservations, answer questions. So they get leveraged. If we're not replacing humans, then we're enhancing humans. To allow them to do, in some cases, what we call the last mile conversion where maybe we do the 0 to 50 And then we hand it off to do a live transfer or we package it up So we don't have to do the repetitive process. What's your name? What's your address? What's your pain point? Then we validate the lead and then we'll pass it to him only if it's validated and they'll do the last mile conversion.

Sure. That's exciting. It's exciting. We'll use it for your own any of your own projects.

Yeah, so we've only focused on enterprise really up until call it now. And so I'm getting ready to roll it out to my agency, to all my various brands, because before it was custom build outs that can be six figures to seven figures for these custom build outs where our engineering team and my partners over there, they've been working on the essential small business package. We're really just covers inbound calls, outbound calls, appointment scheduling. If you missed the appointment, rebook it. Live transfers ask for a review post sale, win back a database reactivation campaign. So if you have a list of a thousand people, reach out to them through voice, SMS, email, it's dynamic omni channel. So if I talk to you on voice, I can talk to you on text and I'm gonna look at what do we talk about on voice? If I email you, what do we talk about on text in voice? And it'll always have an intentional conversation based on that context window.

Very cool. Very cool. Exciting stuff. Exciting times.

Very exciting.

It'll be interesting to see how the public responds to that. Are they going to be chill, they'll like it, they'll understand it, that, yeah, they're talking to an AI, but or will they not know, even, and they're just going to be completely duped by it, or it'll be interesting to see the reaction as that becomes much more common.

I think they're caring less, because it's all over the news. It's everywhere you look, it's AI. And all my no's are becoming maybes, and all my maybes are becoming yeses. And people care less, and I'd say we're moving into a point of they don't care at all, just give me the outcome I want. If it takes AI to give the outcome I want, then so be it, as long as you give me the outcome I want. And we're in programmed to be in that I need it now society. You have Airbnb, let me go book it myself, Netflix, On Demand. You have, everything's like I want it now, AI can help deliver that outcome quicker and more efficiently than a human. And I think people care less. And if anything, they're intrigued. They're like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe this AI is doing this and they're engaged with it. So we're seeing people care less and less or not care at all.

I think that's a very solid point of the whole thing is if it actually does provide the convenience. If it actually does make life easier and isn't like the phone system, you're talking to the bank, speak to an agent, speak to an agent. As long as it's not that, then yeah, I think people would be pretty, pretty jazzed about it. Brian, I want to thank you so much for being on. If people want to get in touch with you how can they do that?

You can shoot me an email. Brian@infintechdesigns.com or, LinkedIn, all the social channels. I'm getting ready to launch my own personal brand, but I'd say email, I'm probably most responsive.

Can you give us a quick preview on what the personal brand is?

So the personal brand is just, I've never done it. The irony in the marketer not marketing themselves.

The cobbler's children have no shoes.

Yeah, exactly. The painter that doesn't paint his own house kind of thing. And so I'm ready to, how many analogies can we come up with?

I have one more, but I'll give it to myself.

So every year it's been a new year's resolution. And this year I've hired an entire social media team and, the, all the short form reels and all that. So we're getting ready to deploy that very soon, probably in the next week or two weeks. So I'm gonna be blanketing the web across TikTok the reels and all that. Just really. Talking about what I do and I don't know, I don't know. I have no expectations, but all my expectations will be set when I launch it. Maybe it generates more business. Maybe I hate it. Maybe I love it. I don't know. I'm just going to go do it and see what happens.

Is it going to be real Brian or AI Brian?

It's going to be real Brian. Although I was looking at AI Brian, you're looking at Haygen. Do you know Haygen? You can know, you can go clone AI Kyle or really any talking head. So there is, I'm looking into that as well to maybe do a mixture of both and compare what gets more engagement. Real Brian or AI Brian?

I'd actually like it where I could just write out a script and have AI Kyle just do it. Cause real Kyle hates doing videos

Yup.

Maybe AI Kyle can't say no. Awesome. Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. Thanks everyone for listening to Hack to the Future and we'll talk to you next time. Thanks so much.

Thank you.