Ryan is joined in this episode by co-founder and president of Happy Cog, Matt Weinberg. Matt founded his company in high school alongside a friend and they ‘bootstrapped’ their way to huge profitability. They now serve a variety of high value clients and are also one of the fastest growing private companies in the US.
Matt talks to Ryan all about what it took to build the company, what they do there and why their ethos of simply keeping their clients happy is how they have achieved their extraordinarily high referral rate!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Happy Cog’s go-to-market strategy is heavily weighted to referrals. They have lots of happy clients and they are happy to recommend them time and time again.
Happy Cog are full service interactive agency, they help companies solve all their digital needs. Their core services are web development, native app development, software integration, design, content strategy and marketing including seo, paid media and everything that goes along with it. Sometimes clients hire them for just one thing but many times they hire for a multitude of solutions.
Matt and his friend started their first business in high school, it developed into them going into offices and helping them set up hardware and software and offering business solutions. They quickly realised that the internet was growing like crazy, that this would be the future and so started helping small businesses with the online world. They both went to college and got ‘normal’ full time jobs but they would work on their business on the side, as the business got bigger they quit their day jobs and the rest is history!
Part of dealing with the growth Matt has seen in the business is having to do continual process changes. As the company and operations have got bigger, things have had to change to keep the clients happy. Constantly re-evaluating how good a job they are doing to keep the clients happy is why they have such a high referral rate.
Happy Cog are in the clients service business. Their job is to help their clients achieve their business goal. They need to help their clients create more value than what they are paying them otherwise there is little point in hiring them. They align themselves alongside their clients’ business goals to create ultimate success and client satisfaction.
When you are talking about creative work, it’s hard to separate emotion from logic. It’s important to understand your clients emotions towards things especially surrounding decisions. Listen to your clients and be transparent about what you believe will and won’t work for them and then show them why.
Happy Cog’s goals for the future is to stay sustainable, by doing great things for their clients, for their employees and remaining cash flow positive so they can continue to grow and do great things.
BEST MOMENTS
“Our development department is about 65% of our revenue”
“If we make our clients happy, I strongly believe they will tell their friends about us and we’ll get more business”
“What’s valuable for them [the clients], what makes it a success?”
“if we do great things for our clients, for our employees and we’re cash flow positive then we can have a sustainable business”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?” Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewweinberg/
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How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
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