Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their success, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you'll be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and excited to have with us today Finn Dollimore, an entrepreneur in the startup ecosystem creating captivating websites on the Webflow platform for startups. Finn, welcome to the show.
Finn Dollimore: Thank you Jake, really great to be here. Been excited about this for a while now.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. So before we dive in here, love to learn a little bit more about you, Finn. Talk to us about where you're originally from and where are you today?
Finn Dollimore: Yeah, so literally I'm on the exact opposite side of the world than where I was born currently. Um from New Zealand originally uh, so basically the middle of nowhere. And I mean getting into business you want to have more opportunities based on your location. And of course even though we can use the internet these days, it helps to be in places like the US or Europe where there's a lot of startup culture, there's a lot of movement in the business world happening. And so now I'm in Portugal, and yeah like I said it's literally the opposite side of the world to New Zealand. So very far from home but also very happy here at the moment um. So yeah that, that's a bit about where I am geographically, but in terms of my work and my clients I work globally with people from Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada. So a bit all over the place, but apparently in Portugal.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great, I love it. Yeah, I spent a little time in New Zealand. I was with Oracle for a while and ended up spending my last really couple weeks uh with our founder and CEO who's I think like the fourth richest man in the world today, Larry Ellison uh, watching him race for America's Cup in Auckland and it was an incredible experience. Loved the country and it actually looks like California in some ways but maybe much earlier, not a lot of traffic as much as there is here. So a great country, and going from there to now Europe um seems like a great move. There's this trend of bringing um your skills abroad and being a digital nomad or traveling and building a company. What made you choose Portugal?
Finn Dollimore: So in terms of places to live uh I liked Portugal because I, I speak Portuguese. I went to university in Brazil for one year, so I, I can speak Portuguese. And when I was looking at places to live um Europe was the first on my list. So I was kind of weighing up options like could be Spain um (I love Spain, I went to high school in Chile so I've had quite an international childhood, so I can speak Spanish, English and Portuguese). So I was between Spain and Portugal. And one of my best friends, I used to go to that university with him in Brazil, he actually lives in Porto, Portugal. So that's where I am right now, in Porto. Beautiful city. It's actually, I was in Barcelona before and I wanted to focus a bit more on work because Barcelona is amazing for digital nomads, for anyone who's remote, Barcelona is one of the best cities in Europe, but it can be a bit distracting sometimes. And I wanted to focus on business growth and obviously my work and career. So I found Porto is a nice mix where the city is a bit more I guess relaxing you would say. Um it still has everything you need but just a little bit less chaotic than Barcelona.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it. That's great. Now with all that international travel, it seems like you would be a perfect diplomat or someone who is able to go across borders and communicate at different languages at different times for different purposes. Um just a side note, has that been anything you've ever thought about?
Finn Dollimore: Yeah so that was actually plan, plan A was to become a diplomat. Um my background is actually in international relations.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Oh wow.
Finn Dollimore: That's my overseas experiences. So I've always had a lot of I guess experience on the international uh I guess world um in terms of my studying. And I switched to go into business actually because the thing with being a diplomat is you don't have much control over your lifestyle and where you go. You might want to go live in Spain but they want you to be in, I mean it literally could be anywhere. It could be East Timor, could be anywhere in Asia. Like there's a lot of kind of countries you wouldn't know much about, they could send me to I don't know, Angola and I wouldn't really get much of a say in there a lot of the time.
Whereas what entrepreneurship really brings to my life, what my job allows me to do, is choose the places where I want to be and also pick the people that I really want to do business with. So my languages, instead of helping me become a diplomat, their international experience helped me work with clients and collaborate with other companies um across borders, across languages. And yeah, it's a real pleasure that I actually have those tools in my back pocket. So if say a client from Spain pops up, then I was actually recently in Spain and one of my clients was hosting a like an event in Barcelona completely in Spanish, but I was able to attend and understand because of my languages, but it was actually a business trip. So yeah, that's kind of how it all turned out. Um and I'm really glad it did turn out that way.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great, yeah you never know where life is going to take you. So you, you're in design today, you're helping companies build out websites and create content that hopefully will help them. What inspired you to get, get into design?
Finn Dollimore: Yeah, so before I was inspired by design I was inspired by business, and I wanted to find out where would I fit in this whole ecosystem because obviously business is a huge, it's not a niche, it's like it's so many ways you could take business. And for me, I haven't always been a creative person. I've been creative in terms of music and bands, but I was never really an artist. And so I never thought I would go into design. But what I found out is that design is actually more like a science than art. It's, it does create uh, contain creative aspects to it, but actually design is more like a formula. That if you follow these design principles and also principles of business applied to design (what I would call "marketing design"), uh then that's actually something that anyone can learn. It's just a matter of learning obviously about business first. For example, yourself Jake, someone that's been in business for a long time, you're in a great position to learn about design because design is actually business. We're trying to get someone to take an action, to reach out and book a call. It's about to get that person to do something and be persuasive, and the design is sort of like the the bridge that gets them from A to B. It's that website or it's that, that app or you know, their advertisement.
And so that's really how I view design, and I view myself as a marketing designer as opposed to a product designer who is more like building an app or building a tool which is meant to be used. A marketing designer is someone like me, and someone that understands business and the business goals, and then we're able to design a, a website or some sort of advertisement, whatever you'd be working on. The marketing designer can actually help that business plan uh come into reality through whatever it is we're building. And so that is what I'm really passionate about, is taking, meeting with other entrepreneurs, hearing ideas, new new trends and then empowering that entrepreneur, that founder to, to really put their vision onto the web. Which of course is what I specialize in is website[s] for startups and agencies. And so I just want to touch on like yeah, that's why I've done this, because it's actually business in, in a very applied form, if that makes sense.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, great. So you're taking it from a different viewpoint, not necessarily you were schooled as a designer to create beautiful colors and pictures. It's really looking at the business itself and understanding what are the outcomes a business might want, and then designing a website that's going to help derive traffic to that site ultimately with some sort of outcome. Whether it's a lead or going to a webinar, whatever it happens to be, whatever the call to action is, you're able to help generate that sort of action.
Finn Dollimore: For sure. Um there are two aspects to every website that you really should have covered. The first aspect comes even before it looks beautiful. It's actually the planning and the messaging. We talked a lot about this when we were doing the Match Relevant website, where we were looking at how can we explain why people should care about Match Relevant and should engage with the services here. And the reason that comes before design is because the design and making things look visually appealing, I would say that's sort of a secondary priority in actually getting the messaging and the marketing uh basically in a clear way. So if the website isn't clear, people aren't going to read the content. And so it doesn't matter if it's beautiful, if it's not clear, if it's not compelling, people aren't going to engage with it. So we've really written deep on that planning phase so that we were just set up in the right way to make it look great at the end. So that's kind of the design process, there's the planning and the marketing side.
Obviously if you're building an app you're not really going to go so much into the marketing or the messaging because you're trying to get someone to use a tool. But something like a website is built, looked [at] for communication, it's built to sell something. And you ideally want to know what that sales process is, that sales messaging is, before you get into the visual stuff. Now the visual stuff is still important because if your website design isn't clean, if it's not beautiful, then people won't really trust you as much because it erodes at your credibility not having a good design. And when you do have a good design and the good messaging, marketing, it just creates an awesome website and awesome experience for your users and that's going to show itself in the results that the website gets for your business.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. And in, in full transparency Finn did design our website. We wanted to modernize it and we wanted to look at ways that we can help generate more lead opportunities. So we look at our website, which I think a lot of companies should, as your sales team. A lot of solopreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs might have a company idea, they want to build a website, but ultimately they don't have funds to you know hire 100 sales reps or to build out a team as they grow their business. So this is um I think the best way to look at a website from our view, is that it should be looked at as a salesperson for your company and help really drive not just awareness what you do, but also lead opportunities as people come to your website. So we've been really happy with what you've created. But talk to me about the type of clients that are good for you. What's your ideal client?
Finn Dollimore: Great. So in terms of my favorite clients, basically the reason why I like working [with] startups is because they bring a lot of new ideas to market and a lot of innovation opportunities. So it's an exciting field to be, to be a part of. And so I'd say startups can be quite a big niche there, but technology, software... if you have something unique to offer, I'm very keen to hear more about that and show, see how we can, we can spread that message to the world in a creative way, in a way that also generates results. And so I would say technology startups, if you're an agency and you offer creative services, I I've also done a bunch of work for real estate companies. So I've had that foundation in trying a lot of different types of clients, and obvious[ly] client type has a different website that they need, a different solution. So I have a broad range of skills that I can basically help most people that want a web design, but I would say I'm especially positioned to help companies that create content.
The reason that is, is because the platform I develop with is Webflow. And we can talk a bit about Webflow either now or a little bit after this. But basically what I'm really passionate about is empowering companies to use content for, for growth and use their website as a content hub. One of my recent clients, they not only do webinars, they do resources like blog posts. They produce content and case studies on their website. So we were able to create a content hub for them where they can basically share things on LinkedIn, on YouTube, and everything that they share is linked back to their website. And this is a really great opportunity for any founder, any founder listening right now: if you're in the content game, your website should reflect your content. Now what does that mean? It means that if you're making videos, you should be building the video hub on your website that has all your videos, all your case studies, every piece of content that you're writing should be stored on your website.
And I've got to really stress videos here because we all know video is the future with TikTok, Instagram. If people like to consume things through video, and so on the Match Relevant website you know podcasts, we have a podcast CMS where the podcast can be shown on the website. One of the big benefits of this is it increases time on site. This is really important for Google because it actually tracks if people are staying longer on the website, their content must be good. So if you're a founder thinking "well how can I increase the performance of my website?" what I would recommend looking at is how can you get video content on your website? If you can have a podcast, put [it] on your website. If you make YouTube videos too that can help you get leads, I would be putting those on the website to increase their time on site and increase traffic to the website. So I know that was kind of a long answer to your question, but I can really help with that as well because I'm also a content creator so I like to have my videos on my website. Because yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: We've got clients that are in the content marketing space and also content creators or helping support content creators and their life cycle of building their business, and when it comes to collecting payments, sending out invoices, a lot goes into building your own company as a solopreneur. But then also what's the content look like once you create it and where do you store it. So I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier. You talked about the difference or the thoughts about what are the differences between product design and marketing design. Walk us through what that is so that really the audience that's listening is clear about that.
Finn Dollimore: Yeah. So I would say product design is, it's a term that's used, it's most widely known more than marketing design. And marketing design is I guess it's, it's a less common word used for web design or potentially the design of social media content. The difference is, is that with product design it's more focused around usability. In the sense that we're building a tool here. So if you're a product designer you're building Photoshop, you're building um something that is meant to be used as a tool. And one of the main differences between a tool and something like a website is that a tool is less about communication, it's more about functionality. Like, is it intuitive to use the visual canvas? You know, Webflow itself is a tool. Whereas a website, this is, this is a platform that's meant for communication and it's meant for marketing. Like when you're using Photoshop, Adobe isn't trying to sell you anything while you're using it, right? It's just a tool that you use.
And so the product design is really great for usability and of course it's also important on a website, but actually the, the biggest priority on the website is communication, especially clarity. So we want things to be said in a very crisp, clear way so that our users understand that. And the marketing designer knows how to design content in a way that the human eye appreciates uh the, the... Marketing designer also knows how to use animation and movement because we know that as humans we've evolved to basically perceive movement with our eyes for survival purposes. If you're in the jungle and you see something move, that could be danger, could be a tiger coming to kill you. So we've evolved, our, our eyes have evolved to perceive movement. So the marketing designer uses that in the website to have movement and animation draw the user's attention to buttons, headlines, the text that really is the most important for the user to see.
So it's a lot of subtle things as well like that, that go into the design. And the marketing designer, if I were to sum it up very briefly, it says the marketing designer is a designer that understands business and they're working on a project that has business goals and it's not just "it looks pretty", it's there to actually function uh and be a part of a business, be an integral part of how a business grows. So hopefully I explained that right, there are two different types of, of design. And I'm definitely a marketing designer because I love business and I'm a entrepreneur myself, so yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's really good, thanks for sharing that. You know for people that have not built a website before, you don't really think of design as being so critical to your company. You're just trying to get a product in the market, maybe a service in the market. You mentioned that design was really important. Talk a little bit more about specifics of just holistically the view of design itself and why it really matters to a company.
Finn Dollimore: Great question. So I would compare design to trust. So we know how important trust is in the sales process, not just with a salesperson. And you mentioned that the website acts as a salesperson. So just like you would want your salesperson to have a confident voice, to be dressed well, to present themselves in a way that will create trust in the prospect, it's exactly the same way with your website. Would you send your salesman dressed in like a singlet and shorts to go for you know an interview that they could potentially sell a product for 50k? Of course not! They'll probably wear a suit, they would have their hair done. This is like an analogy, but why would you have a terrible website if you're selling a high value product? If you're trying to get an investment, if you're trying to convince people to work with you, to buy your product, you know it's really important to have a website that invokes trust in your site visitors.
And so what I do is basically work with companies that have a website designed. They're, they're not happy with, maybe does the design could be okay, maybe they want some more functionality. But I'm always there to improve the design so that the visual part of it looks better and it promotes more trust. And so if you have a website which looks like it's from 2010 or 2004, then it's actually being more of a liability than a growth asset to your company. So that's why you want to work with a web designer who can redesign that. Or if you don't have the budget or you're just going to do it yourself, you can actually get a template. And there's a lot of really good website templates that you can customize that already have the design taken care of, they look great, and so that you just have to put in your content. And so I recommend choosing one of those paths. A web designer of course can make something completely custom. So if you have specific branding, you want it to look a certain way, the web designer can basically be uh you know, you tell them what to do and how you want it and they can create it. So I would say the visual design is a very important part of your website, it's what creates trust, and trust is so important to get someone to sign up or to work with you, so if you don't cut corners on your website design.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, you know we spent a lot of time assessing what was the right platform to use, what's going to be best for changing little minor content pieces to our website as we go forward. And you know, we standardized on Webflow really from the beginning. And the reason was is we just felt it was more of a modern platform, it also provided a lot of integrations. And ultimately it was just easy to uh, and giving really control to the founders to actually make the little subtle changes that you want, rather than having to go back to a designer, going back to a developer to have them make every little change. If you go to market with a new product or a service, you don't have to you know have others be the bottleneck of your progress. And so we've really liked it. For those that don't know, Webflow's raised 334 million dollars in funding, it's a big amount of money to, to, to, to generate uh for building a company. Or I should say rather, bring in to invest and to build a company. But it's a great platform. What was it that made you decide to standardize on Webflow? And is there certain levels of expertise you gain the more you're on it? And are you categorized in a different bucket because of that?
Finn Dollimore: Great question. So I exclusively develop with Webflow and there's a reason why. It's because in my opinion it's the best website platform for marketing websites. So if you're looking for e-commerce, you know, you're a huge enterprise company that has a team of developers, you might not need Webflow. But if you're a startup, if you're that mid small to medium-sized business, to even bigger SaaS companies are now coming over to Webflow, it's a really great option. Because first of all, you can have any design you want. So Webflow is a huge uh potential to customize things at HTML and in a very bespoke way. So if you want your website to look like this, there's no "or it has to fit into a template, oh it has to you know, we can't really do that." With Webflow we can make things look basically exactly how you want to. And so you can also plug a lot of custom code into Webflow to really push it to its boundaries to get the exact functionality you want. But for most websites, Webflow has everything you need.
The second thing is that the client is able to... I could say your marketing team can really jump into Webflow and manage the site themselves. You don't have to be calling up a developer like Jake said every day because you want to change the button text or update some color on the website. It's actually very, very simple and user friendly to do this yourselves. So often when I hand off a website to a client, you know I'm, I'm there for support if needed. But actually the client's able to handle most of the updates themselves. And they only need to come to me to make more structural and more advanced changes. So Webflow I would say is an excellent choice if your website is for marketing, for bringing in leads, if you want to be sharing video content, building what we call CMSs (Content Management Systems). Basically if you want to have YouTube on your website, this is something that I recently did for myself that Webflow allowed me to do, is on my portfolio website I basically built YouTube... a page that has all of my YouTube videos that have been dragged in from YouTube, but it's on my own website. And they click on the video and I can customize the UI. Because Webflow gives me complete design freedom, I can put a "become a client" button underneath the video (which YouTube doesn't let you do that).
But if you're a company that wants to build uh you know, have video on your website and use those videos as a way to generate clients and generate leads, you can actually design in Webflow the CMS that allows you to optimize things for lead generation. And, and that's what I'm super interested in is how we can increase lead generation, optimize for lead generation on any kind of content system. So maybe we could overlay some, some screen shares of what it looks like on my website. Basically it's a really good way to increase time on site, increase engagement and use your content to grow. And Webflow allows you to do that because you can build these CMSs. You can build a podcast CMS, you can build a blog system, you can even get it to recommend next videos or next blog posts based on certain parameters. You can actually boost and feature certain blog posts or videos that you know are really good and you want those to be seen first. So there's a lot of possibility with Webflow in terms of using your website as a growth platform. And for my clients that's what they want. They want more leads, they want to grow, they want to use... so if you're interested in those things, I would recommend looking into Webflow.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love it, yeah. We spent a lot of time looking for it, we felt like we've chosen the right platform and the right designer. Um where do you go from here? You, you lead the design process, you work with a lot of clients. Are you building a team, what's the future look like for Finn?
Finn Dollimore: Cool. So I'm at a very pivotal stage in my career right now where I have too much work to service myself. And so I've been talking with some other designers who are very talented that are also fantastic marketing designers who want to collaborate. And basically join, I wouldn't say "my agency team," this is... I have an idea for a way that I can collaborate as a freelancer with other designers under an agency name. So you know, "Finn Dollimore Agency", I'm actually, to be completely honest, I'm still coming up with the right name so I'm still figuring things out because it is early stages. The idea is you connect with the best designers. And so any client that comes through me, if I'm unable to take that project, then we can collaborate with a designer who is you know, got a fantastic design portfolio, who can really deliver something amazing for the client.
And I'm also looking to really double down on the content game. Start you know, continue researching more about marketing design and making more YouTube videos, creating more content. So I can help more startups, more founders and more entrepreneurs build better websites. Websites that create and drive better results. And because at the end of the day, the more we understand our websites, the more we understand how we can use them as a growth strategy. And so a big part of my future is going to be getting more into the YouTube game, doing more podcasts like this, sharing my ideas more. And of course that's going to create more knowledge around my name, who I am, more clients. And again I'll be connecting people not just with my own services, but collaborating with other freelancers under an agency that I build. So that we can basically share amazing work and help amazing companies grow.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great, you're doing it, and you're doing I think the right way. Also doing it globally, which it doesn't really matter where you're at, if you need a website you can be anywhere. What's the main problem for anyone listening that you help them solve today?
Finn Dollimore: Great. So I would say there are two key problems that I see across most of the client websites I come into contact with. And I've already mentioned both of them. But starting off, it's clarity. Most people's websites aren't clear. The, the words, the copy, the copywriting doesn't clearly communicate the value and what the company is offering. They often talk too much about themselves, about their own history, about their team, about things that the customer that doesn't really care about at the end of the day. Um maybe further down the track they might share about that, but at the start it's actually about showing the customer what it is that you can do to help them.
And I love the, the main headline on the Match Relevant website which Jake actually wrote, which was "Hire anyone anywhere" I forgot what the exact, let me just see. I just love the, the clarity book is amazing. "Hire anyone anywhere with certainty." I mean I think that's fantastic, so props to you Jake. And that's exactly why we need to have clear website content is because we could say a number of things there. But if we're not telling people what we do and what the value in that is, then we're not going to have an effective website no matter how beautiful it is. So that's the first way I can help someone is help you clarify your message, and help you understand that this is really important, to clarify your message.
Just a quick side note is when Jake and I actually connected on, when we were first talking about this website, is the StoryWork where there's a framework you can use called StoryBrand that allows you to tell a story on your website. And it's a story that, well a marketing story where you're clarifying your content into um like a series of steps. Where the person reads this first, and they hear about the next thing, and it's actually the perfect messaging structure to convince someone to buy or try a product. And so that was actually a part of the design process on this project, was finding the StoryBrand for Match Relevant. And just in general using story to tell, to communicate on a website is a really good idea. And so we can talk about StoryBrand in a second.
But just to finish this question and the other side of that, you know that, that was the messaging. The other side of it is the design. And that's where we already upgrade, we modernize your design to create that trust. Because we have the good marketing, we have the clear, concise and effective marketing, we just need a framework, we need a design to hold that, to deliver the message in a way that builds trust. And so I can also deliver that high quality design that is you know, designed for the human eye, designed to look aesthetically pleasing, and to create interest in the user. They want to find out more, they want to click what this pop-up does. So those are the two key ways that I can help, and the result of that is that you will experience higher quality leads, you'll experience more leads, and people will just complement you more on your website. People will have a better user experience and it's great for your growth.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, well I'm going to be ultra transparent. We spent a lot of time looking for the right platform, I think we found it with Webflow. And then spent a lot of time looking for the right designer and we interviewed a lot of people. And one of the main reasons that I decided to utilize your services was the fact that you knew about StoryBrand. Because StoryBrand was something I actually knew about as well, in fact I'd seen the, the author that speak at an event. And so I was already pretty deep into StoryBrand. Our business is all about telling a story. Understanding a problem a company is solving, understand the founder's journey, why it'd be compelling to join that company. We really evangelize the message of a founder. We emulate the founder's voice where they don't have all the time to, to tell their story to get out to people that might want to join their company. We recruit for them. And so that StoryBrand really helps put a framework around not just how we present who we are and what we do, but also when we're talking about our clients and being able to message their story to candidates. So it's been really a great tool, but it's also a great framework.
And that's the main reason when we started talking was that you understood that the story was so important to the website. That if it didn't build trust, if it wasn't solving a problem, if it didn't understand the, the issues that potential clients were facing, you're really not helping solve a problem for them. And so to be able to share that story in an easy format on a website I think it's made all the difference in the world. And by the way, it has generated leads. We're always getting compliments now on the website which we never did before. We did use a template before, to your point earlier, where it was not something we went out for a designer to create. We took a template [that] was created, we modified it and brought it to the market, which is a totally different experience than what we have today. So really, really cool to, to see what you've done for our site. And just to be very open about it, we really interview uh founders of funded startups. And I know you're not in that position, but the tool and the service you're creating is so needed that I just wanted to get it out there. Because it's, it's uh, I think it can make a major difference and, and help a lot of companies. I guess in terms of Webflow, you did mention that you want to I think talk a little bit more about that or any other areas you want to cover, you know feel free to jump in and, and let's, let's get into that.
Finn Dollimore: Yeah, so if you're looking at getting into Webflow like I said, highly recommend it. It's a platform that is going to allow you to scale your content. And I think we can maybe talk a little bit about content creation here in terms of you know, whether you're a YouTuber yourself or every business now really needs to be creating content like in some form. Whether it's a podcast, could be... for example, I create YouTube videos, tutorials about how to improve your website, how to improve conversions. That helps me build trust because you want to be building a community, you want to be building a following online somewhere. And so obviously the best way to do this and the most scalable way to do this is through your content. And so if you're a founder listening to this, I would say to you: first of all, get into the content game. That could be like I said, starting a podcast, but I really recommend video content. And whether you go onto YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, it's really the most effective and one of the most scalable forms of content. Because that one video could be viewed by millions of people. And once you start scaling, then you've made 100 videos, each video is like having a salesperson there on YouTube, there on Instagram. And you can actually link back from that video. You know you might have a video that's doing really well, you want to put a link to your website in that piece of content.
And what they can do is they can actually go from your other platforms like your, your Instagram... these are like the spokes and the hub is your website. Because this is actually a really interesting concept, is that all these other social media platforms, you can't customize them, you don't own them. Instagram can kick you off, uh YouTube can you know ban you. Uh not that that would happen to any one of you, but it just goes to say that like you can actually customize the UI. So it's not your platform, however your website you own that. You can redesign it, you can optimize it. And so you want to be getting people to watch your YouTube videos not on YouTube, but on your website. And so if I was building a startup right now (tech startup, um e-commerce whatever) I'll be making YouTube videos, social media videos, and then linking back from those onto the website.
Now here's where Webflow comes in. Webflow, like I mentioned before, is, it's the system that allows you to have the custom design, but also make the content management system. The YouTube video system, the blog post system, the podcast library. You can build whatever you want with Webflow. And so rather than having it everything on YouTube, you have YouTube there as one of the spokes, but you're really trying to get people to come to your website. And the reason why is because your website is where people will, they will fill out your contact form, they'll book a call. This is what the leads are going to convert. So get into the content game and start creating content that your audience likes. And once you've got that sorted, get your website and actually build a content system that is on your platform. And that turns your website from a normal website to a marketing platform. It's a content hub.
And you can start doing cool things. Like a really cool workflow that I'm using is, I make a YouTube video and then I put it into my YouTube CMS on my website. Now that won't rank on Google because there's actually no, there's no text to that. There's no keyword to watch, a rank on Google. So what I do is I get an AI that generates text from a video, and I get a transcript from my video, and then I put that into ChatGPT to get it to write a 600 to 800 word blog post about that topic. And so in about three minutes I can just take my video and then have a whole blog post written about it. And I put in my CMS a rich text element underneath the video which has all that text, all that HTML, that allows that video to start ranking on Google. So there are endless possibilities with Webflow, with AI now, that you can get into the video content game, and you're automatically part of the blog game now because it takes three minutes to convert that video into a blog post. And now your video blogs are ranking on Google, which is increased SEO, better traffic. And it's something that I don't think a lot of companies are already leveraging as much as they could be right now.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I know AI is becoming a major uh force for good in a lot of ways. And also there's some other opinions about it, but yeah, I really appreciate you bringing that up. Um Finn, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to share before we uh move on from here?
Finn Dollimore: Well the one thing that we didn't talk about yet was actually Match Relevant helping me interview and find some excellent candidates, excellent designers that I'd be looking for. And so Jake didn't mention this, but you know I would like to, to say you know thanks to Match Relevant and Jake and Jake's team who have been fantastic by the way in finding really high quality candidates for designers that I'm looking for. So if you're looking to hire great designers and developers, just go to the Match Relevant website and see the amount of testimonials there. I was really really like taken aback when I was you know working with Jake because often I have to ask my clients for testimonials, they're like "oh we gotta you know go out and get them." But Jake was like "just check my LinkedIn" and it was like literally like I don't know 100 testimonials that were like really positive. As that was a really good you know blue flag when I was you know, before I was working with Jake I knew that I was working with someone with integrity, that was you know that I could trust as well as a designer. And so just wanted to mention a big thanks to Jake for not just working with me but also helping me find two really great designers that I'm looking to be working with now. The interviews were set up within two days, so 48 hours. And like I said, found two great star designers that I'm excited to be working with uh. So yeah, big thanks again Jake for that and also the collaboration on the podcast.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, great. Well wasn't expecting to say that, I thought maybe you had another question that you wanted us to address. But I really appreciate that. And you know I guess before we wrap up here I just want to give a big shout out to you uh Finn for really helping us with the website, just the collaboration which I know is not going to stop now, there's going to be other things we're going to need in the future. And you know, just having as a trusted partner to support us there is going to be great. I also want to thank our listeners for listening. It means the world to me and to hopefully give you some inspiration, some education, hopefully some entertainment along the way. So I look forward to uh our next episode as we keep plugging away here in the podcast world. And Finn again, thanks for joining and we'll uh catch up in the future, look to hear your updates on how things are going with your potential new company and agency, and just in general the trends and the growth that you hear about in design as you continue to build your career.
Finn Dollimore: Thanks Jake, it's been a pleasure to be here and I will see you very soon.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that are joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.
This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.
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