Chris Troka (00:46)
Welcome back to another episode with us today is the founder and author of Hey Tony, Matt Diamante. Hey Tony is an SEO agency. scaled from a solo venture into a 15 plus person team serving brands like RBC, Labot, Nivea and Coppertone. He's the author of Get Found where he shares a system for building predictable demand through search. Matt, so excited to have you on today. How are you doing?
Matt Diamante (01:07)
I'm fantastic, how are you doing?
Chris Troka (01:08)
I'm
doing wonderful, so excited to have you on. A fellow SEO connoisseur, someone who really dives deep into all things visibility, getting found, getting clients. So we're super excited to hear about you and your journey as well.
Matt Diamante (01:21)
Yeah, I'm an open book. Ask me anything you
Chris Troka (01:24)
That is wonderful. Our first question is always tell
us about your journey. Tell us about the solo venture or what you were doing before that kind of led you into where you are now.
Matt Diamante (01:32)
I think I probably have a similar story to a lot of people where at the start of my career, I was kind of jumping around. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I second guess things. I exited the industry, came back in, exited the industry again, and then came back in a way where I was like, I had a couple of clients that I was freelancing, ⁓ doing freelance for, and this goes all the way back to 2012. I always had clients kind of in my back pocket. Well, I was either working a job or trying something else or whatever it was.
And in 2017, 2018, I had too many clients to manage myself. And I was like, I want to make more money. So I'm just going to hire somebody and then do less work. And hopefully they can help me bring on more clients or do more client work. And it wasn't less work. It was actually way more work to train somebody and going through that the first time. But yeah, it was a great learning lesson and
After that first person, it's still not great at like hiring and training somebody, but the more you do it, the more you get better at it. Like with anything. Right. And that's how I.
Chris Troka (02:33)
Right, right. Those are things
we learn and figure out along the way.
Matt Diamante (02:37)
I really accidentally started my agency just because I had too much work, which is good, right? It's a good testament to that. do. Yeah, we do good work.
Chris Troka (02:41)
A good problem,
Right, absolutely, yeah, people are referring, you're getting found, you feel like you, okay, I've dialed in this system to a point. And now you're, after that first hurdle and obstacle with training the first person, you finally got your own system right, and this is how I really train people. And now once they're set up, now you have a fully operational system and blueprint kind of running for you.
Matt Diamante (03:06)
that I kind of got a lot better at I guess, just creating training. When I started posting on social media, this is back in 2023, and I was like, I know I'm going to blow up. I don't know when. Well, I didn't know I was going to blow up. I was really hoping so. I was like, I need to start making training because as soon as clients start coming in, I need to hire people and I need them to get up to speed as quick as possible.
So I made a bunch of courses, tutorials, all this kind of stuff, which I ended up selling to people on the internet who wanted to learn how to do SEO. But that was, those were like training manuals that I created for my team to train people. And we still use some of those today. Obviously SEO has changed a lot since 2023. But now I have the team who is making tutorials, right? So I don't have to update everything myself every time and they're learning from other people on the team.
Chris Troka (03:52)
And that has to be a struggle going from, being solopreneur, you kind of have your hands and approval on everything now it's transitioning into a team and they need some autonomy as well. What is that process like and what, what helped you get over that, that obstacle?
Matt Diamante (04:07)
It's very tough at the beginning to give up the reins and be like you're gonna do this all this work now and I can't I don't have time to look at it and you want to look at every piece of content everything that goes out and every client email which I did at the start and I drove myself crazy I was working 10 12 hours a day doing that even with the team of several people I was still making sure I was looking at every single thing and the hardest thing for any entrepreneur is like
letting go of the reins and let somebody just do the job. It's not going to be a hundred percent the way you would do it, but just because you're doing it, doesn't mean that is the right way or the only way to do it. And in fact, there's people who are better than you at doing certain things. Like I'm not a great content writer necessarily, although I did write a book, but like when we're talking about blog posts and working for clients and doing all this stuff, like that is not my forte, but people on my team,
That is their forte. They are great at writing. They are great at making connections. They are great at doing all the stuff that I'm like, this is better than anything that I would put out. That's great. So just the first time you kind of experienced that, you're like, I'm to take a step back and just let them do their thing. And it's scary, but it works.
Chris Troka (05:18)
Absolutely, and anything in entrepreneurship is scary. We're kind a making assumptions, taking calculated risks, just kind a figuring things out as we go. But those lessons, the fact that you're sharing them with us in our audience, that's gonna help them possibly miss all those mistakes or try to get a little bit further ahead and just do things in the quote unquote right way.
I think everything is a little bit different for everyone. Like your version of success or blowing up, know, what looks like for you might look different for other people.
Matt Diamante (05:46)
Yeah. I mean, for certain people it might be, okay, well I want to get to, 5,000 visitors to my site a month and that's success. Or I want to have 5,000 or 10,000 followers or a hundred thousand or a million followers. And like success looks different to everybody. But then it's also, and I've gone through this so many times while running my business where you're frustrated and you're like, I'm making a good amount of money. I don't need to keep growing. Like there's all these Alex Hermosy guys saying scale, scale, scale.
And it makes you feel like shit because you're like, well, what if I don't want to scale? What if I'm okay with where I'm at right now? And that actually led me down a whole other road, which was there's a book called Big Enough. It's not about what you think. It's a couple who grew a business to a certain size. They had freelancers, they had employees, they had all the stuff and they're like, we're just working all the time. And like now we don't have time.
in the middle of the day, if we want to go for go out for lunch, or if we want to take the dogs for a walk, or if we have an appointment, we were on client calls, we're doing all this stuff. So they actually scaled back their business to a place where it's just like, maybe they had one employee and they only took on certain clients or whatever it was. And I was like, that sounds really nice. But then, you bounce back and forth and I'm like, I could do that, but then also scale the business at the same time, which again, puts you into doing a lot of work, but there's no rule book. You can really do whatever you want.
Chris Troka (07:06)
Right, absolutely. And you can change your mind at any point if you want it to even like scale or grow even more or like pull back. Like that's the beauty of it. You can always change your mind.
Matt Diamante (07:12)
Yeah.
Yeah. And your mind's going to change so much. Like I used to offer so many different services because I'm like, I want anybody who like is looking for a website or SEO or Facebook ads or organic posts. Like I want them to come to me and pay me money because we can do all of it. And if you can do all of it, you can make more money per client. But one day I was like, you know what? I don't want to do all this shit because it's really hard to make
SOPs and or anybody who's listening SOPs or standard operating procedures or like a workflow. It's really hard to make that for all of these different things and also hire for those rules and make sure you have enough work coming into all those different buckets. So I changed it. I was like, we're only doing SEO. This is what I like. This is what I'm good at. This is what we can scale. Let's just do this.
Chris Troka (07:50)
Right.
And then what happened from that mindset shift? It seemed like you became more clear, like you had clarity from it. And then what was able to grow from it? Did you like distill down what you were doing in services and that helped propel it?
Matt Diamante (08:11)
Well, I've always loved doing SEO. Like ever say, like I went to school for advertising and marketing, communications management, which is a long way of saying account manager. That's what they train you to be. But one of the courses we had was SEO. And at that point I was like, this just kind of makes sense to me. And I got my first client while I was still in school, only cold call I've ever done. And they said no, but then they called me back like three weeks later and they said, yes. ⁓ Yeah, it worked out. But from that point,
Chris Troka (08:33)
Hey, nice.
Matt Diamante (08:38)
I just kept doing SEO, even if I was doing some kind of other job, like I was running a publication for a couple of years, which is a whole other story we can get into at a different time. But even at that time, like I saw a client or two on the side that I was doing SEO for. And I'm like, the one thing that really bothered me though, was when we were doing website design or, website hosting or whatever it was for clients.
emergencies happen all the time. My website is down. It's 3 a.m. I got hacked. Something happened like whatever. I remember one time I got off a flight and I turned my phone back on and all of a sudden I started getting all these messages and emails from this one client saying we got hacked, our site's down. It's like it's gone. All this kind of stuff. So instead of me like at the airport, like once you land, pick up your bags. I got to sit down, figure out what was wrong, hotspot or connect to the Wi-Fi at the airport. And like it's just a whole panic. And I'm like with SEO.
There's literally nothing urgent. Everything takes time. The client's approving everything anyways. Like what's the urgent thing that's going to happen if your website goes down? We're not hosting it. That's on you.
Chris Troka (09:38)
Right, Take that responsibility at least. Like it's not as urgent. Like you said, things take time.
Matt Diamante (09:44)
And I don't want to have the keys to the castle. Let me do one piece of the pie and help that piece of pie get bigger for you.
Chris Troka (09:50)
Right, absolutely. And now what was the shift in, when you decided, okay, I really have like this handful of clients, we're building the team a little bit, and then you wanted to take it further and you said you started doing content and you just had this feeling you might blow up or you hoping you were, what was that process like? And then what did it look like when you started actually gaining traction?
Matt Diamante (10:11)
So this is something I think all business owners go through where you are maybe not all, but a lot of us are like, okay, we're comfortable right now. We get a lot of referrals. That's how people know us. Our advertising budget's almost zero or it's very negligible, but it's not consistent, right? Some months we might make $50,000 other months we might lose $10,000, right? You can't hire because you don't know if you're going to even have a job for that person in three months or six months because the projects you're like,
Am I getting another referral? I don't know. So it was this like inconsistency and lack of predictability that I was like, I'm going to start, I need to change this. So I tried a couple of things. I was like, I'm going to hire this person to help me with Facebook ads and hopefully I can attract people that way. And I went through this whole system with that person and it didn't work. I was like, okay, well I need to something else. I tried, first of all, I tried everything besides actually SEO, which is crazy to me that that's what the service that I'm selling. It's like the shoemaker's kids.
don't have shoes or whatever it is. Which is just absolutely crazy to me that I didn't, I didn't start doing my own SEO until I think it was 2022 when a friend of mine was working at another company, like an agency. And I'm like, how do they get all their business? Like, I'm trying to figure this out. And he's like, they get it all through organic SEO. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm such an idiot. What am I doing? that day I was like, I'm just going to do my own SEO.
Chris Troka (11:09)
Right.
Matt Diamante (11:30)
But in 2023 I was like, I don't want this, the high highs, low lows. I want like an even keel. Let's like slowly grow, get more clients, all this kind of stuff. And I had read two books. One was called The One Thing and the other one was Right Hook by Gary V. And with both of those books, like the core message is like, what's one thing you can do every single day that will help you achieve your goal in one years, five years, 10 years, whatever, 20 years.
That could be health, could be business, could be wealth, relationship, whatever it is. And one thing I can do every single day is post videos on social media, educating people that I want to work with. I committed to doing that for a year, six months in, I'm giving up. I went from zero to 1500 followers, which some people were like, that's crazy. That's like, that's great. But I was like, that's not enough. That's not the scale that I want to be at. I want to be the biggest agency, at least in the city that I'm living in.
And I think I needed like 7,000 followers to do that. Like it's not anything too crazy. And, six months in, I'm like having this conversation with myself, like, Oh, nothing's working. I'm going to give up. And then I'm going to keep going. I committed to doing this for a year. I'm halfway through it. Let's just keep pushing. So about a week after that, I had my first video hit a million views. And then another week after that, I had another video hit a million views. And I was all of sudden I had 15,000 followers.
I was like, holy shit, like this stuff, like it works. Like Gary Vee is right. He wasn't bullshitting. and by the end of the year, I had like 100k followers on Instagram alone and people were contacting me so much that I'd hire somebody to like field the calls and the emails and do all of this stuff. I also, I think I hired like three or four people between June and December and got them caught up and got the new clients on board and started getting all these results and, trying out this new system.
Chris Troka (13:13)
That's incredible. How long after all that chaos started happening, like after that six month mark, how long after the chaos could you finally step back and take a moment to breathe and be like, wow, okay, cool. That was awesome. I can appreciate this now.
Matt Diamante (13:28)
I still don't think I have because
been like three years, but like things change so much. so, drastically sometimes, especially in the SEO space. And now we have AI and we can use these tools and we can build tools and we have Claude code and we have all this kind of stuff that I'm like, ⁓ like this is as much as it is a job for me, this is where I have fun. Like if my wife goes to bed at eight o'clock, what she does like every night,
if I don't have something to do, which most of the time I don't come to my office, opening up my laptop, watching TV, but also like on cloud code or looking at websites or looking at stats or whatever it is or doing like quote unquote work. But to me, I'm like, this is fun. I get to build this thing. I get to do this thing. And I think that's something that a lot of business owners don't really take the time to do is like look back. And my wife makes me do it. She's like, you're freaking out right now. Everything's fine.
You're doing better than you ever have. You have more time. Let's take a look back to where you were a year ago when you were having anxiety, panic attacks, and we had to get all this stuff done and you wanted to start on YouTube. You wanted to do all this. And it's good to have that perspective.
Chris Troka (14:29)
It's nice to have someone to ground us sometimes and give us that perspective. Because sometimes we're lost, we're just in it. Especially when we're enjoying the work.
Matt Diamante (14:32)
Mm-hmm.
Well, it's like, yeah,
like I put out this book this year, get found, which you mentioned earlier, but I put this out this year and people were like, dude, congratulations. That's amazing. And they're like, don't you feel good? And I did the work. spent like two years on and off writing this thing, putting it together. this is the next step in the process. you should be proud of yourself. And I'm like, well, now I just need, I now I need to sell it.
And then like the next step I sell like a couple thousand copies, whatever it is, hit Amazon's best seller list, all this stuff. And they're like, you must be proud. You must be happy. Like you must be excited about that. like it makes sense that I got those sales because I put in the work and you kind of always forget because you're working on the thing and then you go into the next thing and you don't really take a moment to pause.
Chris Troka (15:20)
It almost makes me wonder, it an addiction or a disease that we always feel like it's never enough? Like not in a greedy way, but it's like what's next for us?
Matt Diamante (15:31)
I think it's like almost I don't want to say a healthy paranoia or a paranoid optimism or something like that. But for years and even now I'm like, all of this is going to go away. I started a business. All of it relies on me. If I don't wake up tomorrow and make that video or send that email or do the thing or whatever it is or keep moving forward, the floor is going to follow underneath me. And that's it. I I'm unemployable.
Chris Troka (15:58)
100 % yeah that that fear kind of drives us and I don't know ⁓ just like you said when you're when you're just focused on the work you're in the thing that's your zone of genius I'm sure a lot of these books mention that but it's that work that you love to do that
really fulfilling, you're just lost in it. It feels like a fun hobby for you. So I love those late night jam sessions, pulling up the charts, the analytics, having some fun with Cloud Code and the other coding apps, just seeing, okay, what problems can I solve? What friction can I remove? How can I better my business, other businesses? It's just, it's fun.
Matt Diamante (16:23)
yeah.
It's so fun. the prize, the fun thing is the prize is money, right? Like if you do, if you do everything right, not even everything right, if you just hit like the right vein, you're like, well, okay, like that's the prize is money. People like this. People are buying this thing. People are giving me money. Um, and like, that's not why I'm doing all of it. I'm doing all of this stuff because I truly believe, uh, in helping people rank higher on Google and not all the spam that's out there.
I want legit businesses ranking on Google because then they make more money that creates jobs. Then those people can buy a home or pay their rent or send their kids to college or whatever it is, pour more money back into their local communities. So I'm like, if I can help one person do that, that changes the lives of everybody that that business touches.
Chris Troka (17:13)
Right. Absolutely. And can you tell me more about the content journey? over the first six months that you started, you kind of taking a look back every month or quarter to say, okay, what content was performing the best or what topics and try to improve along the way? Or were you just kind of, I'm just sticking with my own education sort of thing.
Matt Diamante (17:29)
month or quarter.
⁓ dude, I like, that is a crazy timeline. Like waiting three months to analyze your content or even a month. I was, I was posting every single day for the first three months and I kept looking like every day I'm like, is anything popping off? Anything doing well? What's doing better than the other thing? Let me do more of that. And then, three months and I was like, I don't have enough data. I'm not getting it fast enough. So I started publishing three pieces of content a day, like three videos a day. And coming up with that amount of content is
Chris Troka (17:38)
Right.
Matt Diamante (17:58)
so hard to do at the beginning because I was like one a day is going to be tough. What am going to talk about today? And now like I could publish 10 pieces of content every day if I wanted to. Like you find a way to come up with different content ideas. But my God, what the hell was I saying? Publishing content. yeah. So I was publishing three pieces every single day. But even after I release a video, even to this day, I am looking at the analytics for the first hour and I'm like,
Chris Troka (18:06)
home.
Matt Diamante (18:21)
Is this like, know pretty well, like if this is going to pop off or not within the first 10 minutes, because I've, I've looked at the analytics so much and I can see what's coming in, how many likes, how many views, how many saves, what's the average view time, all this kind of stuff. so I can kind of tell right away, but I always scroll back like the last like week, every day I scroll back the last week and I'm like, did anything pop off? Is anything doing better than the, you know, the day before?
And if something pops off, like, I'm to make three more videos about that. I was just going to reframe it or talk about it outside or talk about it from my car or talk about it in a drive-through. I don't know.
Chris Troka (18:56)
That's brilliant. So a lot of different ways to ⁓ film different content. Hey, you could have the same framework and storyline. Just change the location, change your shirt, try something different.
Matt Diamante (19:04)
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Troka (19:07)
That is brilliant. Now I'm going to have quite a few more questions for you, but in the middle of the segment, always ask where can people find you and connect with you online?
Matt Diamante (19:14)
just Google my name. You'll find me everywhere on every social media platform, on my website, on Reddit. I started a Reddit community recently, which is very fun. ⁓ But yeah, there's like, just Google my name. You'll find me or Google. Hey, Tony.
Chris Troka (19:23)
congratulations.
I love it. And we'll have that Google search link available down in the show notes and description so everyone can have a direct connection here to Matt. This journey, it's fulfilling, it's crazy. A lot of winding roads to it. What are you looking forward to most, I think, for the next one, three, five years, since you've built to where you are today?
Matt Diamante (19:49)
I think it's just I'm looking forward to the change. Does that make sense? Like, I don't know what the next one, five, 10 years or whatever, three, five, 10 years are going to be because all this stuff changes all the time. And that's what keeps me excited. Excited like the lot of people are like, yeah, like, you know, bricks are the same size. We put them in the same way. We know how to do the job. Not much is going to change in the next five years. Right. We run wires through the walls. Not much is going to change. But for us, I'm like, things change so fast.
There's always something new. and for some people that might be exhausting. I don't want to keep up. I just want to show up to work and I want to get this thing done and go home and not think about work. I'm like, let me think about work. Let me, let me solve this problem. Nobody like not nobody else, but if you can do that, you're going to outlast everybody else who's still doing last year's plan that isn't working anymore.
Chris Troka (20:35)
100%, yeah, a lot of the gurus and videos with advice and education, they're following practices that worked really well three to five years ago, and they're not sharing what's working for them today. They're keeping that hidden until they've run it dry and then they're gonna sell that as a course a little bit later. And hey, kudos to them, I get it.
Matt Diamante (20:53)
No, not kudos. That's shit.
Like literally, if I find something like I was just on, um, I don't know if you know Edward Stern, but I did his podcast, uh, on Sunday this week, like three days ago, four days ago. Um, and it's, I was texting with him I was like, Hey dude, I have this website that's ranking. I didn't connect it to Google. I didn't, I built one backlink to it. There's 35 words on the page. Nothing is done properly. All this kind of stuff. And he's like, let's talk about it on the show.
And I'm like, okay, let's share what is actually working or our hypothesis on why it's working. And I do that shit every single day on social media. like, here's what's working right now. Not six months ago, not a year ago, right now. And you can't sell bullshit. Like if you're selling bullshit and people don't get results, then they're just going to stop buying from you or trusting you or recommending you.
Chris Troka (21:41)
100%. And, you know, specifically with SEO, I love it because it's people who are basically educating themselves and they have, they have a need and they need a problem to be solved. And you become that logical solution for them and you're not chasing these leads. They're coming to you and they're already like pre-qualified, pre-warmed in a sense.
Matt Diamante (22:00)
Yeah. And whether they want to work with me or give me money or pay me or whatever way, if they learn from me how to do it properly and it's not complicated, I'm just going to say that right now, it's very much not complicated. If they learn how to do that and that impacts their business in a positive way, they grow, they make more money, they hire more staff. Like I was saying before, that is a positive influence on so many people's lives. And I'm not taking credit for that.
That's why I'm doing it. want people to have these positive impacts because the world is built on small business, right? And if I can impact as many of them as I can, I can change the world truly to make it a better place.
Chris Troka (22:37)
I love that. And I think that's what makes our work so fulfilling is that we're able to give the entrepreneurs who are at their work, maybe not great at marketing, just that opportunity to have some visibility and get more clients. That way, that money's going back to the local communities as you kind of shared before.
Matt Diamante (22:52)
Yeah, 100%.
Chris Troka (22:54)
Now my final question for you Matt is if you actually had to start over again, you had to start your agency over today because you know what's working today, would you go again for the posting one video daily? Would you go for the SEO push? What would be your focus?
Matt Diamante (23:07)
My focus would be spending half of my day creating content and promoting the business. That's one thing. I keep saying that's one thing, but that is a thing that business owners don't realize you need to do. It's not just working in your business. It's working on your business. I would be posting, if I was starting from scratch today, I'd be posting two blog posts a week. I'd be publishing three pieces of video content on Instagram every single day. Every single day.
and taking those same pieces of content and publishing them on TikTok, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on threads, on Snapchat, on Blue Sky, on X, like every single platform, you just post the same videos there and some of them will resonate, some of them won't, but you will grow following and reach more people every single day.
Chris Troka (23:47)
And I think just to a testament to the results, are, ⁓ you know, live an example of this. you put in that effort, you, they literally, just shared the framework, the exact framework. Like this is exactly what I would do. Go do that. You have the answers. You just need to go take action now.
Matt Diamante (24:02)
Well, so the thing is like I have friends, I have family who have started posting on social media and then three months in or like a month in, like I posted every single day and I didn't get any results and I'm not making any more money. I need to make money because I need to feed people or I need to pay rent or I need to do this. And I'm like, it's going to take you a lot longer than that. And you can't bullshit and you have to find your voice and your audience and all this kind of stuff. And when I say find your voice, it's like, just get comfortable talking in front of the camera.
Editing on your phone. Like I don't do anything crazy. I literally film and edit on my phone using the front facing camera I don't turn it around the other way to get better. Whatever like I just film where I'm at and do my thing That's all you have to do and give it time like everything marketing give it time six months minimum year minimum
Chris Troka (24:46)
It's good to hear that I know that I tell people that but sometimes it doesn't feel like that, especially when you're even yourself six months in and you almost wonder should I stop and literally just that week later, you're so close to it already.
Matt Diamante (24:58)
Yeah, somebody told me it's like, if you would have stopped, it's like year. What is it? Like three feet from gold or something. Six feet from gold. There's like some kind of term, but yeah, it's crazy.
Chris Troka (25:03)
Yeah, yeah.
It is incredible. Matt, ⁓ we only have a couple more minutes. Just wanted to allow you an opportunity, if you want to speak directly to our audience about anything that's on your mind, the floor is yours. Feel free.
Matt Diamante (25:17)
I mean, like if you're listening to this podcast, you are obviously interested in growing your business. You should not only listen to podcasts or audio books or read books or find information. You should just go and do the thing, right? Take one thing that somebody is saying that you're like, that's a good idea and go implement that in your business and give it time and keep working on that. If, if, it's what I said today, posting three times a day, start doing that and don't stop until it works. That's it.
Chris Troka (25:44)
I love it. seems easy on the surface like, yeah, just take action. But a lot of people struggle with that. It's unfortunate. But you have to stick with it. Stay dedicated because, the time and effort you put in, it will pay dividends down the road for you if you stick with it.
Matt Diamante (25:59)
Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Troka (26:00)
Matt, thank you again for coming on the show and sharing your journey, your tips, tricks, and wisdom with us. I'm excited to go ahead and take action on some of these list items you had. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. And so excited for your future as well. Thank you and congratulations to you.
Matt Diamante (26:08)
⁓ Hell yeah.
Thank you for having me. This is fantastic.
Chris Troka (26:17)
I appreciate it. Thank you, Matt. You're awesome and appreciate it.
Matt Diamante (26:20)
Cheers.
Welcome back to another episode with us today is the founder and author of Hey Tony, Matt Diamante. Hey Tony is an SEO agency. scaled from a solo venture into a 15 plus person team serving brands like RBC, Labot, Nivea and Coppertone. He's the author of Get Found where he shares a system for building predictable demand through search. Matt, so excited to have you on today. How are you doing?
Matt Diamante (01:07)
I'm fantastic, how are you doing?
Chris Troka (01:08)
I'm
doing wonderful, so excited to have you on. A fellow SEO connoisseur, someone who really dives deep into all things visibility, getting found, getting clients. So we're super excited to hear about you and your journey as well.
Matt Diamante (01:21)
Yeah, I'm an open book. Ask me anything you
Chris Troka (01:24)
That is wonderful. Our first question is always tell
us about your journey. Tell us about the solo venture or what you were doing before that kind of led you into where you are now.
Matt Diamante (01:32)
I think I probably have a similar story to a lot of people where at the start of my career, I was kind of jumping around. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I second guess things. I exited the industry, came back in, exited the industry again, and then came back in a way where I was like, I had a couple of clients that I was freelancing, ⁓ doing freelance for, and this goes all the way back to 2012. I always had clients kind of in my back pocket. Well, I was either working a job or trying something else or whatever it was.
And in 2017, 2018, I had too many clients to manage myself. And I was like, I want to make more money. So I'm just going to hire somebody and then do less work. And hopefully they can help me bring on more clients or do more client work. And it wasn't less work. It was actually way more work to train somebody and going through that the first time. But yeah, it was a great learning lesson and
After that first person, it's still not great at like hiring and training somebody, but the more you do it, the more you get better at it. Like with anything. Right. And that's how I.
Chris Troka (02:33)
Right, right. Those are things
we learn and figure out along the way.
Matt Diamante (02:37)
I really accidentally started my agency just because I had too much work, which is good, right? It's a good testament to that. do. Yeah, we do good work.
Chris Troka (02:41)
A good problem,
Right, absolutely, yeah, people are referring, you're getting found, you feel like you, okay, I've dialed in this system to a point. And now you're, after that first hurdle and obstacle with training the first person, you finally got your own system right, and this is how I really train people. And now once they're set up, now you have a fully operational system and blueprint kind of running for you.
Matt Diamante (03:06)
that I kind of got a lot better at I guess, just creating training. When I started posting on social media, this is back in 2023, and I was like, I know I'm going to blow up. I don't know when. Well, I didn't know I was going to blow up. I was really hoping so. I was like, I need to start making training because as soon as clients start coming in, I need to hire people and I need them to get up to speed as quick as possible.
So I made a bunch of courses, tutorials, all this kind of stuff, which I ended up selling to people on the internet who wanted to learn how to do SEO. But that was, those were like training manuals that I created for my team to train people. And we still use some of those today. Obviously SEO has changed a lot since 2023. But now I have the team who is making tutorials, right? So I don't have to update everything myself every time and they're learning from other people on the team.
Chris Troka (03:52)
And that has to be a struggle going from, being solopreneur, you kind of have your hands and approval on everything now it's transitioning into a team and they need some autonomy as well. What is that process like and what, what helped you get over that, that obstacle?
Matt Diamante (04:07)
It's very tough at the beginning to give up the reins and be like you're gonna do this all this work now and I can't I don't have time to look at it and you want to look at every piece of content everything that goes out and every client email which I did at the start and I drove myself crazy I was working 10 12 hours a day doing that even with the team of several people I was still making sure I was looking at every single thing and the hardest thing for any entrepreneur is like
letting go of the reins and let somebody just do the job. It's not going to be a hundred percent the way you would do it, but just because you're doing it, doesn't mean that is the right way or the only way to do it. And in fact, there's people who are better than you at doing certain things. Like I'm not a great content writer necessarily, although I did write a book, but like when we're talking about blog posts and working for clients and doing all this stuff, like that is not my forte, but people on my team,
That is their forte. They are great at writing. They are great at making connections. They are great at doing all the stuff that I'm like, this is better than anything that I would put out. That's great. So just the first time you kind of experienced that, you're like, I'm to take a step back and just let them do their thing. And it's scary, but it works.
Chris Troka (05:18)
Absolutely, and anything in entrepreneurship is scary. We're kind a making assumptions, taking calculated risks, just kind a figuring things out as we go. But those lessons, the fact that you're sharing them with us in our audience, that's gonna help them possibly miss all those mistakes or try to get a little bit further ahead and just do things in the quote unquote right way.
I think everything is a little bit different for everyone. Like your version of success or blowing up, know, what looks like for you might look different for other people.
Matt Diamante (05:46)
Yeah. I mean, for certain people it might be, okay, well I want to get to, 5,000 visitors to my site a month and that's success. Or I want to have 5,000 or 10,000 followers or a hundred thousand or a million followers. And like success looks different to everybody. But then it's also, and I've gone through this so many times while running my business where you're frustrated and you're like, I'm making a good amount of money. I don't need to keep growing. Like there's all these Alex Hermosy guys saying scale, scale, scale.
And it makes you feel like shit because you're like, well, what if I don't want to scale? What if I'm okay with where I'm at right now? And that actually led me down a whole other road, which was there's a book called Big Enough. It's not about what you think. It's a couple who grew a business to a certain size. They had freelancers, they had employees, they had all the stuff and they're like, we're just working all the time. And like now we don't have time.
in the middle of the day, if we want to go for go out for lunch, or if we want to take the dogs for a walk, or if we have an appointment, we were on client calls, we're doing all this stuff. So they actually scaled back their business to a place where it's just like, maybe they had one employee and they only took on certain clients or whatever it was. And I was like, that sounds really nice. But then, you bounce back and forth and I'm like, I could do that, but then also scale the business at the same time, which again, puts you into doing a lot of work, but there's no rule book. You can really do whatever you want.
Chris Troka (07:06)
Right, absolutely. And you can change your mind at any point if you want it to even like scale or grow even more or like pull back. Like that's the beauty of it. You can always change your mind.
Matt Diamante (07:12)
Yeah.
Yeah. And your mind's going to change so much. Like I used to offer so many different services because I'm like, I want anybody who like is looking for a website or SEO or Facebook ads or organic posts. Like I want them to come to me and pay me money because we can do all of it. And if you can do all of it, you can make more money per client. But one day I was like, you know what? I don't want to do all this shit because it's really hard to make
SOPs and or anybody who's listening SOPs or standard operating procedures or like a workflow. It's really hard to make that for all of these different things and also hire for those rules and make sure you have enough work coming into all those different buckets. So I changed it. I was like, we're only doing SEO. This is what I like. This is what I'm good at. This is what we can scale. Let's just do this.
Chris Troka (07:50)
Right.
And then what happened from that mindset shift? It seemed like you became more clear, like you had clarity from it. And then what was able to grow from it? Did you like distill down what you were doing in services and that helped propel it?
Matt Diamante (08:11)
Well, I've always loved doing SEO. Like ever say, like I went to school for advertising and marketing, communications management, which is a long way of saying account manager. That's what they train you to be. But one of the courses we had was SEO. And at that point I was like, this just kind of makes sense to me. And I got my first client while I was still in school, only cold call I've ever done. And they said no, but then they called me back like three weeks later and they said, yes. ⁓ Yeah, it worked out. But from that point,
Chris Troka (08:33)
Hey, nice.
Matt Diamante (08:38)
I just kept doing SEO, even if I was doing some kind of other job, like I was running a publication for a couple of years, which is a whole other story we can get into at a different time. But even at that time, like I saw a client or two on the side that I was doing SEO for. And I'm like, the one thing that really bothered me though, was when we were doing website design or, website hosting or whatever it was for clients.
emergencies happen all the time. My website is down. It's 3 a.m. I got hacked. Something happened like whatever. I remember one time I got off a flight and I turned my phone back on and all of a sudden I started getting all these messages and emails from this one client saying we got hacked, our site's down. It's like it's gone. All this kind of stuff. So instead of me like at the airport, like once you land, pick up your bags. I got to sit down, figure out what was wrong, hotspot or connect to the Wi-Fi at the airport. And like it's just a whole panic. And I'm like with SEO.
There's literally nothing urgent. Everything takes time. The client's approving everything anyways. Like what's the urgent thing that's going to happen if your website goes down? We're not hosting it. That's on you.
Chris Troka (09:38)
Right, Take that responsibility at least. Like it's not as urgent. Like you said, things take time.
Matt Diamante (09:44)
And I don't want to have the keys to the castle. Let me do one piece of the pie and help that piece of pie get bigger for you.
Chris Troka (09:50)
Right, absolutely. And now what was the shift in, when you decided, okay, I really have like this handful of clients, we're building the team a little bit, and then you wanted to take it further and you said you started doing content and you just had this feeling you might blow up or you hoping you were, what was that process like? And then what did it look like when you started actually gaining traction?
Matt Diamante (10:11)
So this is something I think all business owners go through where you are maybe not all, but a lot of us are like, okay, we're comfortable right now. We get a lot of referrals. That's how people know us. Our advertising budget's almost zero or it's very negligible, but it's not consistent, right? Some months we might make $50,000 other months we might lose $10,000, right? You can't hire because you don't know if you're going to even have a job for that person in three months or six months because the projects you're like,
Am I getting another referral? I don't know. So it was this like inconsistency and lack of predictability that I was like, I'm going to start, I need to change this. So I tried a couple of things. I was like, I'm going to hire this person to help me with Facebook ads and hopefully I can attract people that way. And I went through this whole system with that person and it didn't work. I was like, okay, well I need to something else. I tried, first of all, I tried everything besides actually SEO, which is crazy to me that that's what the service that I'm selling. It's like the shoemaker's kids.
don't have shoes or whatever it is. Which is just absolutely crazy to me that I didn't, I didn't start doing my own SEO until I think it was 2022 when a friend of mine was working at another company, like an agency. And I'm like, how do they get all their business? Like, I'm trying to figure this out. And he's like, they get it all through organic SEO. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm such an idiot. What am I doing? that day I was like, I'm just going to do my own SEO.
Chris Troka (11:09)
Right.
Matt Diamante (11:30)
But in 2023 I was like, I don't want this, the high highs, low lows. I want like an even keel. Let's like slowly grow, get more clients, all this kind of stuff. And I had read two books. One was called The One Thing and the other one was Right Hook by Gary V. And with both of those books, like the core message is like, what's one thing you can do every single day that will help you achieve your goal in one years, five years, 10 years, whatever, 20 years.
That could be health, could be business, could be wealth, relationship, whatever it is. And one thing I can do every single day is post videos on social media, educating people that I want to work with. I committed to doing that for a year, six months in, I'm giving up. I went from zero to 1500 followers, which some people were like, that's crazy. That's like, that's great. But I was like, that's not enough. That's not the scale that I want to be at. I want to be the biggest agency, at least in the city that I'm living in.
And I think I needed like 7,000 followers to do that. Like it's not anything too crazy. And, six months in, I'm like having this conversation with myself, like, Oh, nothing's working. I'm going to give up. And then I'm going to keep going. I committed to doing this for a year. I'm halfway through it. Let's just keep pushing. So about a week after that, I had my first video hit a million views. And then another week after that, I had another video hit a million views. And I was all of sudden I had 15,000 followers.
I was like, holy shit, like this stuff, like it works. Like Gary Vee is right. He wasn't bullshitting. and by the end of the year, I had like 100k followers on Instagram alone and people were contacting me so much that I'd hire somebody to like field the calls and the emails and do all of this stuff. I also, I think I hired like three or four people between June and December and got them caught up and got the new clients on board and started getting all these results and, trying out this new system.
Chris Troka (13:13)
That's incredible. How long after all that chaos started happening, like after that six month mark, how long after the chaos could you finally step back and take a moment to breathe and be like, wow, okay, cool. That was awesome. I can appreciate this now.
Matt Diamante (13:28)
I still don't think I have because
been like three years, but like things change so much. so, drastically sometimes, especially in the SEO space. And now we have AI and we can use these tools and we can build tools and we have Claude code and we have all this kind of stuff that I'm like, ⁓ like this is as much as it is a job for me, this is where I have fun. Like if my wife goes to bed at eight o'clock, what she does like every night,
if I don't have something to do, which most of the time I don't come to my office, opening up my laptop, watching TV, but also like on cloud code or looking at websites or looking at stats or whatever it is or doing like quote unquote work. But to me, I'm like, this is fun. I get to build this thing. I get to do this thing. And I think that's something that a lot of business owners don't really take the time to do is like look back. And my wife makes me do it. She's like, you're freaking out right now. Everything's fine.
You're doing better than you ever have. You have more time. Let's take a look back to where you were a year ago when you were having anxiety, panic attacks, and we had to get all this stuff done and you wanted to start on YouTube. You wanted to do all this. And it's good to have that perspective.
Chris Troka (14:29)
It's nice to have someone to ground us sometimes and give us that perspective. Because sometimes we're lost, we're just in it. Especially when we're enjoying the work.
Matt Diamante (14:32)
Mm-hmm.
Well, it's like, yeah,
like I put out this book this year, get found, which you mentioned earlier, but I put this out this year and people were like, dude, congratulations. That's amazing. And they're like, don't you feel good? And I did the work. spent like two years on and off writing this thing, putting it together. this is the next step in the process. you should be proud of yourself. And I'm like, well, now I just need, I now I need to sell it.
And then like the next step I sell like a couple thousand copies, whatever it is, hit Amazon's best seller list, all this stuff. And they're like, you must be proud. You must be happy. Like you must be excited about that. like it makes sense that I got those sales because I put in the work and you kind of always forget because you're working on the thing and then you go into the next thing and you don't really take a moment to pause.
Chris Troka (15:20)
It almost makes me wonder, it an addiction or a disease that we always feel like it's never enough? Like not in a greedy way, but it's like what's next for us?
Matt Diamante (15:31)
I think it's like almost I don't want to say a healthy paranoia or a paranoid optimism or something like that. But for years and even now I'm like, all of this is going to go away. I started a business. All of it relies on me. If I don't wake up tomorrow and make that video or send that email or do the thing or whatever it is or keep moving forward, the floor is going to follow underneath me. And that's it. I I'm unemployable.
Chris Troka (15:58)
100 % yeah that that fear kind of drives us and I don't know ⁓ just like you said when you're when you're just focused on the work you're in the thing that's your zone of genius I'm sure a lot of these books mention that but it's that work that you love to do that
really fulfilling, you're just lost in it. It feels like a fun hobby for you. So I love those late night jam sessions, pulling up the charts, the analytics, having some fun with Cloud Code and the other coding apps, just seeing, okay, what problems can I solve? What friction can I remove? How can I better my business, other businesses? It's just, it's fun.
Matt Diamante (16:23)
yeah.
It's so fun. the prize, the fun thing is the prize is money, right? Like if you do, if you do everything right, not even everything right, if you just hit like the right vein, you're like, well, okay, like that's the prize is money. People like this. People are buying this thing. People are giving me money. Um, and like, that's not why I'm doing all of it. I'm doing all of this stuff because I truly believe, uh, in helping people rank higher on Google and not all the spam that's out there.
I want legit businesses ranking on Google because then they make more money that creates jobs. Then those people can buy a home or pay their rent or send their kids to college or whatever it is, pour more money back into their local communities. So I'm like, if I can help one person do that, that changes the lives of everybody that that business touches.
Chris Troka (17:13)
Right. Absolutely. And can you tell me more about the content journey? over the first six months that you started, you kind of taking a look back every month or quarter to say, okay, what content was performing the best or what topics and try to improve along the way? Or were you just kind of, I'm just sticking with my own education sort of thing.
Matt Diamante (17:29)
month or quarter.
⁓ dude, I like, that is a crazy timeline. Like waiting three months to analyze your content or even a month. I was, I was posting every single day for the first three months and I kept looking like every day I'm like, is anything popping off? Anything doing well? What's doing better than the other thing? Let me do more of that. And then, three months and I was like, I don't have enough data. I'm not getting it fast enough. So I started publishing three pieces of content a day, like three videos a day. And coming up with that amount of content is
Chris Troka (17:38)
Right.
Matt Diamante (17:58)
so hard to do at the beginning because I was like one a day is going to be tough. What am going to talk about today? And now like I could publish 10 pieces of content every day if I wanted to. Like you find a way to come up with different content ideas. But my God, what the hell was I saying? Publishing content. yeah. So I was publishing three pieces every single day. But even after I release a video, even to this day, I am looking at the analytics for the first hour and I'm like,
Chris Troka (18:06)
home.
Matt Diamante (18:21)
Is this like, know pretty well, like if this is going to pop off or not within the first 10 minutes, because I've, I've looked at the analytics so much and I can see what's coming in, how many likes, how many views, how many saves, what's the average view time, all this kind of stuff. so I can kind of tell right away, but I always scroll back like the last like week, every day I scroll back the last week and I'm like, did anything pop off? Is anything doing better than the, you know, the day before?
And if something pops off, like, I'm to make three more videos about that. I was just going to reframe it or talk about it outside or talk about it from my car or talk about it in a drive-through. I don't know.
Chris Troka (18:56)
That's brilliant. So a lot of different ways to ⁓ film different content. Hey, you could have the same framework and storyline. Just change the location, change your shirt, try something different.
Matt Diamante (19:04)
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Troka (19:07)
That is brilliant. Now I'm going to have quite a few more questions for you, but in the middle of the segment, always ask where can people find you and connect with you online?
Matt Diamante (19:14)
just Google my name. You'll find me everywhere on every social media platform, on my website, on Reddit. I started a Reddit community recently, which is very fun. ⁓ But yeah, there's like, just Google my name. You'll find me or Google. Hey, Tony.
Chris Troka (19:23)
congratulations.
I love it. And we'll have that Google search link available down in the show notes and description so everyone can have a direct connection here to Matt. This journey, it's fulfilling, it's crazy. A lot of winding roads to it. What are you looking forward to most, I think, for the next one, three, five years, since you've built to where you are today?
Matt Diamante (19:49)
I think it's just I'm looking forward to the change. Does that make sense? Like, I don't know what the next one, five, 10 years or whatever, three, five, 10 years are going to be because all this stuff changes all the time. And that's what keeps me excited. Excited like the lot of people are like, yeah, like, you know, bricks are the same size. We put them in the same way. We know how to do the job. Not much is going to change in the next five years. Right. We run wires through the walls. Not much is going to change. But for us, I'm like, things change so fast.
There's always something new. and for some people that might be exhausting. I don't want to keep up. I just want to show up to work and I want to get this thing done and go home and not think about work. I'm like, let me think about work. Let me, let me solve this problem. Nobody like not nobody else, but if you can do that, you're going to outlast everybody else who's still doing last year's plan that isn't working anymore.
Chris Troka (20:35)
100%, yeah, a lot of the gurus and videos with advice and education, they're following practices that worked really well three to five years ago, and they're not sharing what's working for them today. They're keeping that hidden until they've run it dry and then they're gonna sell that as a course a little bit later. And hey, kudos to them, I get it.
Matt Diamante (20:53)
No, not kudos. That's shit.
Like literally, if I find something like I was just on, um, I don't know if you know Edward Stern, but I did his podcast, uh, on Sunday this week, like three days ago, four days ago. Um, and it's, I was texting with him I was like, Hey dude, I have this website that's ranking. I didn't connect it to Google. I didn't, I built one backlink to it. There's 35 words on the page. Nothing is done properly. All this kind of stuff. And he's like, let's talk about it on the show.
And I'm like, okay, let's share what is actually working or our hypothesis on why it's working. And I do that shit every single day on social media. like, here's what's working right now. Not six months ago, not a year ago, right now. And you can't sell bullshit. Like if you're selling bullshit and people don't get results, then they're just going to stop buying from you or trusting you or recommending you.
Chris Troka (21:41)
100%. And, you know, specifically with SEO, I love it because it's people who are basically educating themselves and they have, they have a need and they need a problem to be solved. And you become that logical solution for them and you're not chasing these leads. They're coming to you and they're already like pre-qualified, pre-warmed in a sense.
Matt Diamante (22:00)
Yeah. And whether they want to work with me or give me money or pay me or whatever way, if they learn from me how to do it properly and it's not complicated, I'm just going to say that right now, it's very much not complicated. If they learn how to do that and that impacts their business in a positive way, they grow, they make more money, they hire more staff. Like I was saying before, that is a positive influence on so many people's lives. And I'm not taking credit for that.
That's why I'm doing it. want people to have these positive impacts because the world is built on small business, right? And if I can impact as many of them as I can, I can change the world truly to make it a better place.
Chris Troka (22:37)
I love that. And I think that's what makes our work so fulfilling is that we're able to give the entrepreneurs who are at their work, maybe not great at marketing, just that opportunity to have some visibility and get more clients. That way, that money's going back to the local communities as you kind of shared before.
Matt Diamante (22:52)
Yeah, 100%.
Chris Troka (22:54)
Now my final question for you Matt is if you actually had to start over again, you had to start your agency over today because you know what's working today, would you go again for the posting one video daily? Would you go for the SEO push? What would be your focus?
Matt Diamante (23:07)
My focus would be spending half of my day creating content and promoting the business. That's one thing. I keep saying that's one thing, but that is a thing that business owners don't realize you need to do. It's not just working in your business. It's working on your business. I would be posting, if I was starting from scratch today, I'd be posting two blog posts a week. I'd be publishing three pieces of video content on Instagram every single day. Every single day.
and taking those same pieces of content and publishing them on TikTok, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on threads, on Snapchat, on Blue Sky, on X, like every single platform, you just post the same videos there and some of them will resonate, some of them won't, but you will grow following and reach more people every single day.
Chris Troka (23:47)
And I think just to a testament to the results, are, ⁓ you know, live an example of this. you put in that effort, you, they literally, just shared the framework, the exact framework. Like this is exactly what I would do. Go do that. You have the answers. You just need to go take action now.
Matt Diamante (24:02)
Well, so the thing is like I have friends, I have family who have started posting on social media and then three months in or like a month in, like I posted every single day and I didn't get any results and I'm not making any more money. I need to make money because I need to feed people or I need to pay rent or I need to do this. And I'm like, it's going to take you a lot longer than that. And you can't bullshit and you have to find your voice and your audience and all this kind of stuff. And when I say find your voice, it's like, just get comfortable talking in front of the camera.
Editing on your phone. Like I don't do anything crazy. I literally film and edit on my phone using the front facing camera I don't turn it around the other way to get better. Whatever like I just film where I'm at and do my thing That's all you have to do and give it time like everything marketing give it time six months minimum year minimum
Chris Troka (24:46)
It's good to hear that I know that I tell people that but sometimes it doesn't feel like that, especially when you're even yourself six months in and you almost wonder should I stop and literally just that week later, you're so close to it already.
Matt Diamante (24:58)
Yeah, somebody told me it's like, if you would have stopped, it's like year. What is it? Like three feet from gold or something. Six feet from gold. There's like some kind of term, but yeah, it's crazy.
Chris Troka (25:03)
Yeah, yeah.
It is incredible. Matt, ⁓ we only have a couple more minutes. Just wanted to allow you an opportunity, if you want to speak directly to our audience about anything that's on your mind, the floor is yours. Feel free.
Matt Diamante (25:17)
I mean, like if you're listening to this podcast, you are obviously interested in growing your business. You should not only listen to podcasts or audio books or read books or find information. You should just go and do the thing, right? Take one thing that somebody is saying that you're like, that's a good idea and go implement that in your business and give it time and keep working on that. If, if, it's what I said today, posting three times a day, start doing that and don't stop until it works. That's it.
Chris Troka (25:44)
I love it. seems easy on the surface like, yeah, just take action. But a lot of people struggle with that. It's unfortunate. But you have to stick with it. Stay dedicated because, the time and effort you put in, it will pay dividends down the road for you if you stick with it.
Matt Diamante (25:59)
Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Troka (26:00)
Matt, thank you again for coming on the show and sharing your journey, your tips, tricks, and wisdom with us. I'm excited to go ahead and take action on some of these list items you had. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. And so excited for your future as well. Thank you and congratulations to you.
Matt Diamante (26:08)
⁓ Hell yeah.
Thank you for having me. This is fantastic.
Chris Troka (26:17)
I appreciate it. Thank you, Matt. You're awesome and appreciate it.
Matt Diamante (26:20)
Cheers.
