Who is David Judge
Hello and welcome David Judge here!
I have put together a short Bio to introduce myself and to let you know what I am all about.
My Goal from this is to tell you a little bit about me, to impart a few of the experiences of my journey and to show you why I am here today.
In my many years of business experience I have gained pretty straight forward view on the world.
The world is all about relationships!
If I were to sum up how I see the world, it would come down to a single word…
Every new interaction you engage in the offline or online world is the creation of a new relationship. At times this may be a brief relationship, never to be visited again, but this starts a relationship which initiates a change.
What I’ve also found about relationships is they can either help you to raise to great heights, or if managed poorly, can end up with you hating your own existence.
If you’re going to grow as a person or in business success you simply have to continue to not only foster new relationships, but to also develop your existing relationships.
Hey, I have to admit I’m not perfect and I’ve had my fair share of burnt relationships in my time. But I’ve definitely fostered 100 times the relationships than I have damaged and understand relationships reflect your success and business acumen.
Conquering Fear
Among many other fears, I have a fear of heights. I’ve actually been working on it for years and let me tell you it’s an ongoing project. I’ve jumped out of planes, gone up in air balloons, climbed mountains and am learning how to fly a helicopter. This is all with the objective of conquering that fear.
I understand that my fear will never really go away, but if I don’t keep plugging away at it then it will grow into something illogical and greater than me affecting my lifestyle. I refuse to allow illogical fears to conquer my lifestyle!
Lifestyle
Once I realised I could overcome my fears I understood I could control my lifestyle and made the decision to become a business owner. My first venture many years ago was a restaurant owner. For all of you out there that have worked in hospitality, you’ll understand what sort of a slog it is to have your own restaurant.
It didn’t take too long for reality to kick in over 100 hours a week arriving at 6:00am every morning, mopping and cleaning the toilets, doing the prep work and then serving customers all day. I was dragging my feet into bed each night just to wake up the next day and start it all again.
When I look back this was a dark hour, but also one of the greatest moments of clarity as I came to realise I couldn’t do everything myself.
The System To Freeing Up Your Time
Once I had figured out this little puzzle everything changed. I was able to systematize important parts of my business, which would in turn allow me to continue to develop relationships with my suppliers and customers. The labour intensive tasks were running themselves and I started to develop a lifestyle and more importantly a relationship with those around me.
This eventually presented an opportunity for me to sell my business for a healthy profit and tackle a new fun and exciting task… Cold Calling!
I learned if I were to write down the method and systemize how to perform a task, I could actually get someone else to do it!
Doing the numbers
I honestly had never heard of cold calling before, and found the whole concept interesting. I thought it strange they you would call a person up out of the blue and try to sell them something.It turns out when I first started cold calling that I actually really sucked.
I plugged away at it day after day, with no result. I actually worked this way for 10 months and ended up asking my wife to come in and work nights and weekends with me to help out. I (in my own stubborn way) refused to allow this fear of being abused on the phone allow it to control me.
Over this time I ate away all the profits I’d taken from my restaurant (I was spending up large and had the lifestyle to match) and lived on rice, egg and soy sauce. It was again in this desperate hour that I learned I could systematize the whole process and started doing the numbers.
It was essentially calling as many people as I could, asking if they were interested and then moving on if they weren’t. I came to realise there were a massive number of people out there and it was impossible to run out of potential prospects.
This led me to setting up a successful team based on this principle where they would literally just do the numbers. If they happened to get John Smith at the right time he was ready to buy, then you were in!
Entry into the online world
My entry into the online world came through a relationship I’d formed with a client. They were working with a number of people and realised many of them didn’t have websites. He contacted me and asked if I wanted to talk to these people about it.
I had never built a website in my life and said, no way!
Before I knew it they started calling me and asking for me to come and see them as they had spoken to my client and had heard I was a reputable person to talk to.
I didn’t have a website, no clue on how to build a website or even how to sell it.
I went out and saw the client and simply listened to what they wanted. I realised that most of the things they were asking for I had seen somewhere on another website so I told them, ‘sure’, I can do that! I left that meeting with a $1500 cheque (30% upfront) and raced to the bookstore to buy as many books as I could on web design.
I gave myself a crash course on web design and started to build (really poorly designed) websites for clients.
During this time I never actually had my own website, and rarely had anyone ask.
My first dabbling into SEO and Online Marketing
Once I’d finished building a website for a client, they would then ask how they could get their website found and get clients from it. So again I hit the books and found a number of different ways to promote websites, including organic ranking and email marketing.
This was really the early days and SEO wasn’t really big yet.
I focussed on and found a number of online methods I could use to get clients found on the internet, but at the time another opportunity presented itself and I moved into another industry.
A brief Sidestep
Over the next few years I dabbled in a number of different projects, finding ways to systematise processes and remove the unnecessary human element.
I designed a finite scheduling process for a manufacturing business that turned over a billion dollars a year. I designed a program that would create raw material requirements based on demand and moving trends and created other processes to streamline business operations.
The second journey into SEO
The second time I entered into SEO was similar to my first web deal. I had been working with a friend on the side, helping him get his book found on the search engines. Once we had started getting results for him, he tweaked that he had a number of clients that would benefit from this service.
He asked me to talk to a few of them and I refused. I didn’t feel confident enough to do this stuff and get paid for it.
I had a message left on my phone one day letting me know I had to call this guy to talk to him about SEO. I thought here I go again and after talking to him about getting to the top of the search engines, I charged a really small sum and earned around $2 and hour based on the amount of work did.
Over about a year I eventually got my first 20 clients.
At the time I was still completing the project work during the day, so I essentially had a day job and was working SEO weeknights and weekends. I again was stuck in a situation where I was working a crazy number of hours, trying to sustain a job and running SEO after hours.
I realised there had to be another way and stumbled upon an outsourcing service, where I made a lot of mistakes and lost a lot of money. But something started to change as I was employing resources; I came to understand what to ask and how to find a good resource. I started to understand where you could find the best resources, how much to pay, how to interview and how to gain the best result.
Over time I systematised this business allowing me time to focus on getting more clients. As my project came to a close (my day job) I had to make the decision to either get another job, or jump into SEO full time. Not only did I have my business to the stage where my SEO was running on autopilot, I was getting good results for clients and had structured a solid referral based business, where I was getting a good number of leads coming through.
Now life started to get REALLY interesting
I made the decision and took the plunge and which grew to an local Online Marketing business where I oversee people that manage clients as well as managing a few of my own Blue Chip clients.
I also develop software and educate people on how to do what I do.
My latest passion is Out Sourcing and I love the idea of helping business owners grow their profits and as a result more skilled people within their business.
I have watched business owners for the first time in years be able to compete on a level playing field with the big guys. As a business owner I know how tough it can be sometimes so any leg up is always welcome.
I have the freedom to decide what I will do everyday. If I want to spend the day with my daughter or go to a movie with my wife, I can. I have to tell you it’s pretty quiet on Wednesday morning at the movies… and I love it!
I can do volunteer and charity work and I’m growing an awesome lifestyle.
This is a good point. I am in this for a good time and a long time.
