Welcome & Introduction
Shannon Donnelly (SD): Alrighty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast, a podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s Partnership Coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Rafael Ramos from Weberus. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Rafael Ramos (RR): Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. Appreciate it.
SD: Well, could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, maybe introducing yourself differently than I would and everything that you think would be relevant on your business journey up to this point?
RR: Sure. So I got into this world, the agency world, first by buying some domains where I would basically buy domains and try to sell them. I soon realized that I bought a lot of really bad domains that I’d never be able to sell, and I had to figure out a way to cut my losses. That’s how I learned about SEO. I started building super simple websites and then doing some search engine optimization to get them to rank on Google. I would put ads and make a little bit of money. That’s how I saved some of my losses.
Through that, I got into SEO and that’s how I started in this industry. I was offering SEO services and that went well until Google decided to just change how they were doing things. I had started building way too many websites. It started with domains but ended up being my main business. I ended up with somewhere like two or three hundred websites in all sorts of different industries and fields. Google didn’t like that. Overnight, they de-indexed pretty much everything I had. I got down to zero.
That’s how Weberus was born. After doing SEO for my own websites, I had a lot of blogs about various topics with ads. When that went away, I started offering web design and web development services to other people. It started slow. A lot of our business originally came through white labeling, where we would work with other agencies and help them out. Eventually, we managed to stand on our own two feet. We started working with some bigger clients.
Fast forward to now, twelve or thirteen years later, it came full circle. We were predominantly a design development agency, but now we’ve started doing a lot of SEO. It’s interesting to see how the lessons from back then have changed our strategy now. It’s all about building, designing, and creating content based on users rather than search engines. It’s a big topic to unpack, but we figured that if you do that, then it doesn’t matter if Google updates their algorithms. You’ll always be ahead.
The Early Mistakes That Led to Growth
SD: That’s very interesting to have that kind of evolution. It’s funny because I have heard from someone on the podcast before who started with domain names, which I think is really interesting. That’s why I kind of laughed a little when I heard that because I was like, wow, I’ve definitely… But it’s interesting because I think that that was definitely something that was worthwhile at the time and maybe still is. But it’s interesting that you created something out of that. Did you ever think of creating a business under one of these domain names?
RR: I thought of a lot of things. The thing about it is, like many things in life and industries, you see something and in theory, it looks very easy. You think, “You can buy a domain for ten bucks or fifty bucks or a hundred bucks and then resell it for three hundred bucks.” Until you don’t. And then you end up buying and buying and buying, but you’re not reselling. And it stops being cool.
So when that happens, you ask, “Why did I buy that name in the first place?” You think, “It could be a cool business.” So I thought about starting businesses. But I never got to it because it’s difficult. I find whenever you start a new business, it will take some time until you’re able to see profit. You have to either be doing something else to live from while you’re building the other business, or you need to somehow make ends meet. At the time, there was just no time. I had to choose either to focus on building websites to pay the bills or start another business, like an e-commerce site, which I didn’t have a passion for. It was more about how can I lose the least amount of money after making my mistakes with domains.
SD: That makes a lot of sense. I think that’s very funny because I do think that, oddly enough, a lot of businesses start with a “mistake,” quote unquote. I actually really like to hear that because I think that some extraordinary things can come out of failure, for lack of better phrasing. Not to say that you ethically failed by buying these domains.
RR: Oh, I did. I surely did. And I agree with you. In fact, it’s something that I truly believe in, even though I don’t actually do it myself. I believe that the key to success is trying a lot of things quickly and failing quickly. I tend to be super picky about pretty much everything I do, so it tends to take way too long. But sometimes failure is almost as important as success. If you take way too long to test your theory, you could just be wasting a ton of time. Whereas if you fail quickly, you’re on to the next one, and eventually you’ll succeed. I wish I followed that advice, which I believe is accurate, but sometimes it’s hard. We always want to overanalyze and perfect and put our best foot forward. We don’t realize how much missed opportunity there is in spending all the time to do that.
SD: I definitely agree. I think more people regret not trying something than failing at something. And I don’t think they have the foresight to compare the two. Once you miss an opportunity to try something, you have no idea whether it would fail or not. You could have been successful, but you’ll never know.
RR: Exactly, exactly. It’s just so hard. I wish there was a way to mute our feelings and push through and just do it.
SD: It would be a really nice off switch to have every once in a while. The “turn off fear” switch.
RR: Absolutely. The “That was easy” button, the equivalent of that.
Learning Design, Delegation, and Strategy
SD: You were experienced in SEO when you started. Did you have to learn design in order to incorporate that? Or was that a skill you already had that you weren’t utilizing?
RR: No, I actually sucked at design back then. What happened was I built all these websites and got to a point where I had a big team of writers. SEO back then—and still to this day—is a lot about content. I had this big team of writers constantly creating new articles and I’d keep publishing them. Then Google penalized us.
I have a good eye for design and I can tell you what will work, but I cannot actually do it. I brought in a designer back then who is still with us twelve years later. Soon after that, I brought in a developer because I also suck at development. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I could learn design and development, but my time was much better spent strategizing and directing what the site should ultimately be like, rather than actually making it. That’s still what I do to this day. I’m mainly on the strategy side, working hand-in-hand with designers and developers to make sure things come together the way they should.
SD: It’s important to know your strengths and weaknesses. I think a lot of people try to do it all and do it all poorly because you can’t do everything. There are people who are very good at picking up things. I’m not one of them. I’m a “practice makes perfect” person. I’m never good at anything immediately. Delegation is important, and with agency work, especially starting out, people wear many hats. So it’s admirable to be able to delineate different positions that aren’t your strong suit.
RR: It’s difficult, but important. One of the most difficult things is when you can do something yourself. If you can’t, then you hire someone. But if you can, it’s very hard to bring someone else on because now you’re thinking, “Could I have done it better? Could I have saved money?” So in scaling an agency, that’s always tricky. But trying to do everything yourself is almost always a losing battle. You can save dollars but not time. You end up bottlenecking your business.
SD: I think you can’t do something as well as someone else who’s good and passionate about it. Passion drives people to be better, which is so important. You’re only the best if you’re constantly striving to be better. Especially in marketing—it’s constantly changing. You have to adapt and want to improve constantly. If you’re not passionate, you won’t push to be better.
RR: Absolutely. There’s truth in the “do what you love” cliché, even though it’s difficult. I love watching movies, but I’m not watching movies—I’m making websites. But it’s true. If you enjoy what you’re doing, you’re more likely to stay up to date and improve. Identifying that can be a game changer.
