Mike Stohler: Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode
of The Richard Geek Podcast.
Today we have Peter Guirguis, founder of SwiftPress Support, a company
dedicated to creating affordable, engaging websites and apps for small businesses.
He leverages scientific methods, psychological principles.
He creates designs that not only attract customers, but also keeps them engaged.
His works, recognized by the Wells Fargo's Leaders Club, reflects his commitment to
delivering impactful digital solutions.
How are you doing, Peter?
Peter Guirguis: Hey, I'm doing great, Mike.
It's a pleasure to be with you today.
Mike Stohler: Good.
Welcome on The Richer Geek So, tell us who's Peter?
Peter Guirguis: Yeah, sure.
I own a website design and advertising agency, and I'm also married.
I got a couple of kids- my daughter is 13 years old, she just became a teenager,
so pray for me and a 10 year old.
I also have the privilege of serving at my church as a full-time Creative Life
Director, like an IT Support Manager.
I know what it's like to be in full time, having a full-time job and
having also a full-time business.
I'd love to talk today about different things our audience would be interested
from time management to starting your own hustle, as I've been down that road.
I don't know exactly what it takes and the obstacles and
roadblocks that are on the way.
Mike Stohler: Yeah, Let's get into that.
A lot of our listeners are full-time whatever.
A lot of them are in the tech space, but people are getting
so tired of the rat race.
We have the return-to-work mandates, and people are starting to look.
They're saying, "I'd love to start my own thing, but I don't know how. I
can't lose my salary because I make a lot of money." Tell us how that juggle
is and how you were able to do it.
Peter Guirguis: For me it was out of necessity.
And I'd love to share my story because that'll encourage some of the other
folks also, working for a church at that time barely paid the bills.
People who work for church don't usually make a lot of money,
but it was a passion of mine.
When I had my first daughter, I was able to keep things afloat.
But when I had my son, our second child, that's when the bills began to pile up.
I really thought what I need to do is just keep my job at the
church and start working another job and start my own business.
I knew that it was going to be hard to get another a second job, because
that was going to be when am I going to spend time with my family.
Family is really important to me.
Starting a business was the best solution for me.
I started off first creating an online website people could go
to because I was really good at time management and productivity.
I wanted to create like these mini-courses and sell them for
$19.00 a piece and sell them online.
I would wake up every day before I had to go to work.
I had to be at work at 8:30.
I would wake up at 4:00 and I would wake up starting on my side hustle
building a website, creating what am I going to sell my course, recording
my course, all these different things.
The goal was to make $3, 000 a month extra that would cover more than cover
my bills and also put me in a good place where I could put money into my
401(k) and Roth IRA and I'd be good.
After I did that for three months and I launched my website and I was hoping and
praying I hope I can make that $3,000.
And lo and behold, I sold only two of my courses which were $17 a piece.
I made $34 and I refunded one person.
My net gain was $17.
I was like, "Oh my gosh, what happened?"
I found a coach online that helps people to like that gives business coaching.
I hired him and I said, "Dude, here's the situation. Here's what I launched what
did I do wrong?" And he was like, "Aha. I'll tell you what you did wrong," after
he assessed my funnel and everything.
He says, "Your problem is that you went low end."
What you need to do is to go very high end and to give time management
and productivity coaching to CEOs and charge them $5,000 and then
you'll be raking in the money.
I said, "That's it. That's what I'm going to do." I pivoted the business and I went
and I bought a course for $10,000 on how to sell high end courses and coaching.
I didn't have the money at the time so I put it on a credit card.
I got into debt $10,000 in addition to the losses that I got from my first business.
Then after three months of being in that program, I launched and I thought
that I was going to be able to make all that money back but lo and behold I
didn't sell even one coaching session.
That was my second failure.
Two business failures in a row.
I was like, "Oh my gosh.
I'm now about $12,000-$13,000 in debt, things are getting worse." I remember
being in the dining room in my house, looking at the floor thinking, "Oh my
gosh, how am I going to pay the bills?" I got two mouths to feed, my babies.
It seems like it was the bottom of a tunnel that I couldn't get out.
But lo and behold, my wife, I remember her coming by.
She said, "Honey, I believe in you. I know you're going to get us out of this."
And that was really the incredible supportive person that you need
in your life to help you out.
And I think that's really important to also have those kinds of people.
I said, "Okay, I don't know what I'm going to do." Just in the
nick of time, I had a friend of mine who owns a marketing agency.
And he said, "Hey Pete, I know that you're good at building websites.
I have all these clients that want websites.
How about if you build them for me and I'll just pay you and you'll just
be a part of my team?" And I said, "Yeah, that sounds great." That's how
my business started building websites.
It took off from there, and that's been the business that
I've had for the past nine years.
That's my road to success.
Two failures led me to my third business that finally led me to success.
Mike Stohler: Sometimes even with my failures, those are the
ones that you learn from and you keep that scar tissue to keep you
going to keep you from being lazy.
It's like, "Oh, man, if I don't keep doing this and get lazy it
can be taken away like that."
Tell us about designing a landing page.
Everyone says, "Hey, I've got a great website." People go to the website,
there's nothing for people to do, so you need that landing page, right?
What are the key elements that you believe are essential for the conversion rates?
Peter Guirguis: Yeah, 100%.
Landing pages are absolutely critical, Mike.
I think the most important thing is the hero section.
You land on the hero section going to be that very top part of the landing page.
Basically, it's the first thing they gonna to read.
It needs to capture the people's attention and needs to tell the people.
What are they there for?
And it has be to speak to their problem and offer the benefit, or offer something
curiosity something intriguing.
The whole point really a landing page is every single part of the landing page
is meant to take you to the next part.
If any part of your landing page you fail in doing that, either by using
the wrong image or the wrong text, people will stop scrolling and they'll
just close out of their browser.
And you know what?
They got all those notifications on their phone anyway so you're
pretty much dead in the water.
It's really important test your landing pages, test the headlines, test your
offer, and make sure the pages are great and they have great design and great copy
and you're speaking into the problems or the conversation that is already happening
in your prospect's head, and if you can do that, then you'll opening up the door
to be able to make that connection because really people want to feel that like
you understand them and when they can look at your landing page and that's it.
This guy gets me.
This what I need.
That's when the conversions happen.
That's when things skyrocket.
Mike Stohler: How much do you pay attention to the DR ratings and
getting the landing page their website number one on Google?
How do you try to accomplish building up the DR ratings?
Peter Guirguis: Yeah, with the DR ratings, it's so interesting
because now, I don't know your world what you've been seeing with AI.
But people are talking like, "Oh, SEO is dead." And what's happening
to Google and that's a fascinating conversation in by itself.
We are still seeing that Google is still dominating search results.
But it looks like ChatGPT is really giving Google a run their money
and also new tools like Perplexity.
Some people are switching now to Perplexity their search engines.
The way that we're searching is basically changing and now that everybody has the
ability to use AI to create content.
How our website is going to rank for different topics?
What finding important is become an authority in your area?
Doctor, you go to a doctor, you look up that person and, maybe 1 or 2 reviews.
You might be like, "Okay, Is this guy new? What's the deal?" But
if you look at somebody who has 495 reviews and they have a 4.
8 star rating, you're thinking, "Wow, this person is legitimate." It's
the same thing with your website.
How can you get websites to link back to you as an authority in your area?
How can you get people to see you as the expert?
When you do that, you will get higher DR ratings.
It's fantastic.
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Links are so important in the industry.
That gives an appeal as Google goes.
Authority, all these different websites know you and, talk about Google reset.
People websites, they'd start blogging, were 95% AI-generated content.
Finally, Google goes.
"I don't like that." Google did this reset.
DR ratings, that's domain ratings.
It's the rating of how good your website is on their search
engine, 1st page or the 10th page.
Talk about the evolution of AI.
Everyone's need to blog.
Need all this content to shove on my website.
The importance of using AI is a template, but you have to change it.
Because even Google knows when it's AI content.
Peter Guirguis: Absolutely.
There's something to be said, Mike.
If you're new to the game, let's say, we got somebody in the audience
starting a brand new business.
They got a lot more hurdles than somebody that's been around 5 years or 10 or more.
Because Google also looks at how old is your domain?
If you purchased a brand new domain, it never been bought,
deploying a brand new business.
You're not going to have a lot of authority juice.
Are going to be pretty low.
You're going to be starting from scratch.
It's harder to start moving a parked car.
That's what you're doing when you're starting a brand new business.
There is something else that I do recommend instead.
This is fascinating.
Go on YouTube, start building content on YouTube for your ideal
clients, it does two things.
One is that YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine in the world.
Number two, look at how much video is dominating our lives every day.
Some people are watching our podcast today on YouTube or on video,
that's their preferred method.
Video is fantastic and does two things.
One is helps people to find you.
Number two is if you're selling something, which most businesses are,
it helps to warm up the relationship.
You are able to build the connection that you wouldn't be able to build
by creating an article or a blog.
There's something to be said about looking at YouTube and creating a
video strategy for your business.
I've seen a lot of businesses getting great results from that.
Mike Stohler: How about web hosting, does it really matter whether I go
with this company or that company, hosting is just hosting, right?
Or is there some big differences?
Peter Guirguis: There's huge differences.
Oh my gosh, you using the wrong host and picking the cheaper
ones, is huge, is definitely going to be devastating for you.
I think about, cheap web hosting, the stuff you see for $2.99 a month, $3.99
a month, and get for three years, think of it, you are putting your website in
a bad neighborhood infested by gangs.
Whenever there's gang activity, it could dominate your
neighborhood, bring you down.
Cause your living area to go down and have all sorts of problems.
That's what those things are, when you're getting for $2.99-$3.99 web hosting,
you're paying for server space and you have literally hundreds and thousands
of people on the same server and what your neighbors do on that server, they
affect you, including passing on a viruses and passing on a different stuff.
That's detrimental to a business where you can't afford for your website to go down.
Also, for you to have malware on there, you're seeing the best companies, the
biggest companies in the world, get infiltrated with security attacks.
Think about the Target, AT&T, all the different big names out there.
They've all had attacks on a breach of data.
That's why it's important to think wisely about your web hosting.
It costs more money to get good web hosting that's reputable where you're
on your own servers or you're not sharing it with everybody, the way
you are with those cheaper ones.
100%, you need to think twice about which web host you're going to go to
and hopefully it'll be a relationship that lasts you for a long time.
Mike Stohler: I found out is, I went the cheap route 10 years ago
and then I want to switch it over.
It's not that easy to switch over either, it's, oh my God, I'm going to lose my
DRE, I'm going to lose all 10 years worth of content, but I need these plugins and
this thing to be easier and they're, like, "Oh my God, what do I do?" It's not easy.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's worth it to pay attention to Peter and do your research
or have Peter do your research for you.
That'd be the easiest way.
Five years ago, we'd have never thought AI take over.
Now we have VR.
Now we have all this stuff.
What do you see the digital landscape being or changing to in the next
five years with all this technology?
It's coming on us so quickly.
Peter Guirguis: I'd love to speak to our audience today about
what's coming up in the next year.
The next year all the rage in the AI community is AI agents.
AI agents are the next iteration where you would be able to have a digital agent.
That's AI based you would be able to tell them to do certain parts of your job that
are automated that are even multi-step and they would be able to do it.
Let's say, this podcast, maybe next year with AI agents, you'd be, take
this recording of the podcast and put it on my website and think about
all the things that we need to do, audio editing, refining, uploading the
MP4 file or the MP3 file to website.
Maybe you would ask another agent to post it on YouTube.
It would be able to do that for you, AI.
Maybe you would want it to create social media posts for
you on X and Facebook and Insta.
Then it would be able to do that for you also all automated.
AI agents are going to be sweeping and doing a lot of our jobs for us.
A lot of people are panicking like, " What does that mean
for my job?" That's the thing.
You need to pivot or else you're gonna be put on the website and it's going
to be a time where people are going to need to acquire new skills, definitely.
People who use AI in their work are going to be better off than people who
are just stuck in the old school ways.
Mike Stohler: I just had a lady on my podcast and she cloned herself.
She did AI cloning.
At first, I was "Oh, go away. What is this cloning stuff?"
It was funny.
She explained it and she has this, that's part of her website
and part of her teaching.
You can ask the app.
She used 10 years worth of all her articles and all of her experience,
education materials, built up this clone, AI clone, and now, wow, I don't
have to answer any of these questions anymore because the AI does it for her.
I thought that was amazing that AI has been able to do that.
Even her friend said, I asked the AI.
Then asked you and yep, it was the same answer.
That's pretty crazy.
Peter Guirguis: Yeah, it is pretty crazy.
Especially you can do all of your knowledge.
Think about all the podcasts that you've done with your guests including all of
your articles Mike and including any YouTube videos that you've ever done.
They can be all transcribed.
Put into this huge, encyclopedia of sorts given to AI.
It gives you all the answers.
The next iteration of that, I don't know if this lady on your podcast did
the same thing, you can now, before it used to be just typing a chat bot.
You would type on your website, the question, and it would give
you the answer Mike would give you.
The next iteration is creating an AI avatar of you that would
be able to speak the words.
As if you're chatting with Mike, you're not even there.
That is in a league of its own.
Mike Stohler: I don't know if it's scary or fascinating or both.
It's crazy.
How do you learn and keep up with all these trends?
They're happening so fast.
Are we going to have holograms and virtual reality stuff, how do you
stay updated with the latest trends?
Peter Guirguis: For me, something that I'm passionate about.
I really enjoy it.
I subscribe to a lot of newsletters.
I subscribed to a lot of YouTube videos and channels that I follow.
I spent time every day combing through the newsletters and I could even use AI
to learn to stay up to date about AI.
That's a Meta for you.
There's so much content out there, you need tools to show you what are the top
trends, the top things that are happening, the top things that I need to know about.
That way you could stay on top of it.
Definitely it takes some time.
If you find an enjoyable way to do it, like through watching YouTube
videos, or if you find newsletters or anything, then you could stay
on top of any topic that they want.
Mike Stohler: Let's talk about SwiftPress Support.
We go on the website.
What do we find?
How do we navigate through?
And what do you have available on?
SwiftPress Support, everybody.
Peter Guirguis: Mike, the way that we help out our clients and customers
is that usually they're struggling with either one or two things.
One is that their websites usually are not converting.
They're not bringing in sales if they already have an established business and
want to see an increase in conversions.
We take a look at their website and we see there's problems.
We don't just build websites for people.
We build sales machines.
That's the difference for us.
Anybody can build a website.
It's gonna take time.
We had many years experience of building websites that convert,
that help people make sales.
That's the difference of where we come in.
Even if you were to use AI.
AI is only good as the models they're trained upon.
If they're not trained on good websites that convert highly, then the output you
get is also going to be low converting.
That's the thing, the AIs that we have right now, they're all
been trained on all the websites.
You have a small amount of good websites that do convert highly with a large
number of poorly converting websites.
The output isn't really good.
You need somebody with experience that knows how.
That's one area that we help people with, redesigned the websites to increase
the conversions and bring more sales.
A lot of customers that reach out to us are people are entrepreneurs or
people looking to become entrepreneurs and they have a brand new website.
They want to deploy to their brand new business and they don't have the time
because they have a full time job or they don't know how to, or they're already
wearing multiple hats in their business, they need to offload one more thing.
That's what support does, we help build websites for small business
owners that don't break the bank.
We help you with your advertising, if you need to create advertising.
Afterwards, to bring in Google ads and Meta ads, Instagram ads,
to help you to make the sales.
That's also available.
Mike Stohler: It sounds fantastic.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's Peter Guirguis, SwiftPress Support.
How can people find you?
Peter Guirguis: Best way to reach out, Mike, would be to go to my
website, swiftpresssupport.com.
There you can book a calendar time with me.
There'll be links to all my social media, you can find me and
subscribe to my YouTube channel and come check out one of my videos.
Mike Stohler: Sounds great.
Peter, thank you so much for coming on The Richer Geek Podcast.
Have a great day.
Peter Guirguis: Thank you so much, Mike.
A pleasure to be here and I look forward to connecting with you soon.
Mike Stohler: Take care.