Balancing Careers and a Ecommerce Agency Evolution

Here’s the transcript with corrections:

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Robbie:
Hello and welcome to Do the Woo. I’m here today, Robbie Adair, to do an episode of the Woo Agency Chat. I’ve got Robert here with me, my fellow co-host. Robert, how are things going on your side of the world?

Robert:
It’s August, and it should be so nice and quiet and peaceful, but I think everyone is still running around at a thousand miles an hour. We’ve got WordCamp US coming up, just in about four weeks. I know plenty of folks are busy with that.

Robbie:
Oh my goodness, I didn’t realize how close it is. Yes, I think I’ve got like four trips before that, but yay, WordCamp US!

Robert:
Maybe you can get out to Scranton.

Robbie:
That’s right. So yeah, today we have Zen Agency with us, Joe Riviello. See, I told you I was going to mess it up, Joe. I knew it.

Joe:
Joe Riviello.

Robbie:
Yeah, so we were actually chatting with Joe before we started our show today, and we’ve got an interesting one here for you guys because Joe works on people’s hearts in the morning and then their websites in the afternoon. I love it. Joe, tell us about Zen Agency and how you got started in this when you were a heart surgeon.

Joe:
Yep. So it actually started back in the nineties. I was in cardiovascular perfusion school at Hahnemann University, which is in Philadelphia, and my background is in cardiovascular perfusion. What that means is we operate the heart-lung machine during open heart surgery. I still do that today. I run the agency, and I’m in surgery in the mornings. By the afternoon, I’m running my agency. So anyway, the way it all came about, my grandfather, back in the nineties, had open heart surgery, and we were in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Back then, if you needed open heart surgery, you didn’t get it in Scranton, Pennsylvania; you went to Philadelphia for surgery. So he was in Philadelphia at Hahnemann, and I went to visit him. I was really undecided about what I wanted to do with my life at that time. So I visited him, and I was sitting bedside with him, and this was about 1993-ish.

There was a catalog sitting next to him, and it was a catalog from the school, open to the cardiovascular perfusion technology program at Hahnemann University. So I looked into it and thought, “Well, this looks really interesting.” I was kind of techy back then, as techy as you could be because we weren’t really in a technological revolution yet. But anyway, I got into perfusion school, and during that time, one of my classmates had a Jeep, and he was selling it. This was when Amazon and E-Trade were just starting because we were looking at penny stocks and stuff with those. But anyway, he wanted to sell his Jeep, and I said, “You know what? Let’s try to build a website and raffle the Jeep off.” Well, little did I realize back then that raffling a Jeep off online is essentially gambling, which is illegal.

So we nixed that idea when we found out the legalities of it. But that kind of got me digging into the whole web design thing because we were trying to make a webpage back then. This was towards the late nineties when I was in school. So anyway, I graduated from perfusion school and took my first job in Las Vegas. I drove out to Las Vegas and got hired by a great company back then, and they were building an intranet and were looking for volunteers to help build it. I could not build an intranet; I was more like a static webpage Dreamweaver type of guy back then. So I raised my hand and said, “Yeah, I can do that.” So I got involved in that, and I was part of that process. Then that led to some of my friends forming a company because one of my friends was a casino host in Las Vegas, and I started a company called OwnYourOwnCasino.com, and we linked up with another company that was basically an affiliate type of thing.

Anyway, that went nowhere. A few years later, I moved back to Scranton, Pennsylvania. There was an opening at the local hospital here, which I took, and I wanted something more. I wanted to be more of an entrepreneur than an employee, so I was kind of using that as my stepping stone. I got involved with one of my good friends who’s a real estate developer and owns several businesses in our area. He said, “You’re really into this whole tech thing with the web design and everything. Why don’t you just get that started, and I’ll give you a couple of my companies to build websites for?” So I did that, and it was kind of like a hobby back then, and it remained a hobby for several years. Then I opened a cafe, and maybe a year went by after the cafe failed miserably, and I thought, “I have to do something else. I want to do something else other than just cardiovascular perfusion.” Not that it’s not a really gratifying job because it is, but I just had this entrepreneurial spirit from when I was a kid selling produce. I had a produce stand back then, which is a whole other story, but it goes back that far. So I started this company, Zen Agency, and I think back then it was called “For the Zen of It.” I’m not sure what that meant, but that’s what it was. It was just basically static webpages for local businesses. It wasn’t really an official company because it was just myself doing the actual work, and I was doing it from my home. After my job, I’d come home and work on my friend’s projects, who was the real estate developer.

One thing led to another. I made some money from that. I didn’t need that money because I had the hospital work, so I just rolled it into my first hire, who’s still with us to this day: Samantha Irving. She’s a great employee, and she pretty much handles all our support. So anyway, I started the company with one employee, along with my wife. I’ve got to mention my wife, Tina. She started the company with me, and we were just working out of our house. Then we moved into an office, got a few more projects under our belt, and that snowballed into more projects. We hired a few more people, and all the while, I’ve not taken a paycheck because I have my pay coming in from the hospital. So I really wasn’t concerned about taking a paycheck from Zen. Instead, I found myself putting money into Zen.

Anyway, years later, we’re talking 2000-teens, we have a vibrant company. We were just dabbling into e-commerce. We weren’t in WooCommerce at first; our first framework was OS Commerce, which was a complete nightmare, and that kind of drove us into the whole WooCommerce realm. But anyway, along the way, I’ve really never taken a paycheck. I’ve always just put the money back into the agency and kept growing it that way. We went from static website design to static website design and marketing. Then we really got into the e-commerce component of it, and now we’re getting into the whole AI component. Now I’m finally taking—not a paycheck, but I’ll call them bonuses—but I’m still keeping my job in cardiovascular perfusion at the hospital. I do surgery in the morning, usually at seven o’clock. If I’m on call, you’re called in, and it could happen anytime. That’s usually one week out of every five weeks. But other than that, it’s usually a morning gig, and I work at Zen in the afternoons. Even after all these years— I think it’s our 15th year in business—I’ve really pulled myself out of the agency because my end goal is to sell the agency. I have a wife and two kids. I love what I’m doing right now, which is seeing things at a higher level and only cherry-picking the projects I want to work on, which really aren’t the whole web development or web design aspect. My forte, I’ll say, is more in the hosting and maintenance area. For some reason, I just gravitated toward that end of it because I love the challenge. We have a team that handles the support, but when I see support, I get CC’d on all the support tickets when I probably shouldn’t because they just inundate my inbox. I’ll pick the ones I want to work on because I actually enjoy working on those, and that’s what I do in the afternoons. I hope that answered your question.

Robert:
And then some! Does everyone’s resume look as extensive as yours, or do you occasionally get someone who might have two resumes—two different people?

Joe:
Well, first let me just tell you about my staff. The majority of my staff, our leadership, is very experienced. I try to vet everyone who comes through the door, all of our staff, and I try to hire people who have many years of experience. Sometimes that can bite you because they’re not up on the new technology. And I’m up on the new technology. In fact, I’m up on it at 4:30 or 5 o’clock in the morning, just buying SaaS products that I’m wasting money on just to see what those SaaS products are like and how we can utilize them in the agency, only to find out a few months later that they’re not worth it. It’s like, “Teens years of experience.” You just mentioned one: a double resume. About two weeks ago, we hired a gentleman—I won’t say any names—who was really an experienced SEO. He wasn

’t really in the whole e-commerce realm but was an experienced SEO. That’s a portion that we’re really trying to build out in our agency. We see good opportunities there, especially utilizing AI in that space. So anyway, we hired this guy. I vetted him, I hired him, and he started last week. Everything seemed to be going great. I was on vacation last week, so I didn’t really get any face-to-face time with him, but this week I did. I had face-to-face time with him yesterday, along with the rest of my marketing team. We had a group meeting, and his face wasn’t on the Google Meet, though it normally was when I was interviewing him and discussing the role. Anyway, I could tell something was not right; I could just tell. As we were in the meeting, I went into my G Suite, and I looked up his IP address and saw an IP address from the Philippines.

So that raised a red flag. I asked him to show his face, and he wouldn’t show his face. He said he had to restart his computer. So I said, “Well, you know what? Instead of showing your face, just tell me your birthday,” because I knew his birthday from a background check that we ran on him. He couldn’t say his birthday. He just dropped off. So immediately at that moment, I picked up my phone and called this guy, and he answered the phone while he was in the meeting with me. “Hey Joe, how’s it going?” So I knew something was up, and I would not stop, man. I just kept grinding, trying to get it out of him. It turns out he was working a couple of different jobs in the same role, but who knows if it was even him doing the work or not. I know one of his previous employers— it definitely wasn’t him doing the work because I phoned them, and now apparently he no longer has a job there either. So again, I’m not going to mention any names, but that was an interesting day yesterday and part of my morning today.

Robbie:
Yeah, I’m glad that you shared that story because there are a lot of agency owners out there that hire remote workers. We have to. You need workers, and just like you said, you want people who are experienced and know their craft, and it may mean you have to hire them from somewhere else remotely. This could happen to anyone as an agency owner, so knowing to check…

Joe:
Yeah, especially in the WooCommerce space. Companies, especially now, are remote. From 2010 to 2019, we were renting a place, and then we bought our own. When COVID came, we all went remote, as everyone did. But then when COVID went away, we all came back to work. Last December, I said, “You know what? The majority of our staff isn’t even in our area, and some of our staff here is kind of hybrid anyway, so let’s just rent out the Zen building, and everybody’s remote.” So we all went remote in January. I’m in the office today; I actually came here for the meeting because I have a 7-year-old and a 9-year-old, and they’re not back in school yet, obviously. I didn’t want to have them screaming in the background, so I came to the office. It’s pretty desolate here; it’s not rented out yet, and it’s pretty desolate. But you run into that— you have remote employees, and you really don’t know what you’re getting. You really do have to vet them. I thought I did vet this guy.

Robert:
Especially in the WordPress space, so much is remote. I mean, Automattic being a remote-first company in general, you look at that. So obviously, folks associated with WooCommerce are more likely to be remote, and let’s even ignore the COVID office killer part of the equation.

Robbie:
Well, and there were a lot of people during the pandemic that you heard about who did the very exact thing that guy did to you, where they were taking on multiple jobs. There was one person I know who had three full-time jobs. Three full-time jobs! And yeah, there’s no way you’re doing that. “Oh, well, it’s just balance.” I was like, “No, it’s not just balance. There’s no way you can truly work three full-time jobs.”

Joe:
No, I’m the only one who could do that for real. I’m doing it.

Robbie:
Well, that’s true, that’s true. I guess if we count your fatherhood, you definitely have three full-time jobs going there.

Robert:
I remember seeing articles in all the papers about that, in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and they’re still talking about it—where folks are… There’s got to be a fun little word for it… Well, just multi-jobbing, double-dipping, triple-dipping…

Joe:
I’ll tell you, it’s got to be a lot easier now with ChatGPT and all the other AI tools out there. I mean, it just makes it super easy for them to do it.

Robbie:
So now Joe, do you and/or any of your staff attend the WordPress events out there?

Joe:
We did a local event; there was one a few years ago. Sean and I—Sean is our solution specialist—went to WooConf in Austin back in 2016, and that was an amazing time. WooCommerce stopped doing those for a bit, and that was the last one we went to. We also went to WordCamp Maryland, but we were only there for one day. We drove out and drove back that day. It’s kind of tough; you have to do a lot online.

Robbie:
So you were mentioning earlier when we were talking about some of the types of work that Zen does that you have a WooCommerce project that you have put in a case study to Woo about. Tell us about that project.

Joe:
The case study is nearing completion, and we just reached out because all the Woo experts are in this… Can we still call ourselves Woo experts? I know we switched over to an Automattic thing just recently. We’re still the Woo experts. So we reached out, and we’re submitting this week—tomorrow, in fact. It’s a very interesting project that we worked on. Have you guys ever heard of Algolia? It’s a search and discovery platform. Oh yeah, the ability to build a site on WooCommerce is excellent for customizing. I mean, you can do anything with it, and you can’t do that with Shopify, not like you can with WooCommerce. So we built a jeweler’s site. This guy approached us at the end of last year. He had a ring builder, so basically you pick your setting, then you pick your stone, and then you go through a whole checkout process.

We built out this site for him to create that with WooCommerce, and it essentially gives you the ability to have a site with a million products on it, and they all get indexed on the Algolia search and discovery platform so that when someone is searching or filtering for those products, it’s not just a second, but it is literally like microseconds. It’s instant. I mean, you can click and filter, and it’s completely instant. But it’s one where it walks you through a process of building a ring and then going into a checkout with the whole Algolia tab panel type of thing. So you’re going through the step process. We scoped it out; we built it out. But I didn’t realize how great of an idea this thing was, and there are competitors in the space doing this, but this thing increased revenues by hundreds of thousands instantly because people really wanted this—people who wanted to build their own engagement ring. So it was a really interesting project for us to work on. This case study should be finished by tomorrow and submitted so that other folks can see this project and what it took to actually build it out.

Robert:
So Joe, is this a plugin available on the WordPress plugin directory?

Joe:
Soon it will be. It’s not a plug-and-play type of plugin, and that’s the problem with it. I have probably $120,000 to $150,000 invested in this thing, and it’s not a plugin that we could actually just sell to you, and you just add it to your site because it’s more complicated than that. So there will be a free version—you’ll be able to download that plugin and use it—but all the goodies that come with it are premium, and that’s when you need the premium version of the plugin. But then you also need the development because there are customizations that could be done to it. Like I said, you can’t just simply buy that plugin. I wish that you could, but the support would be crazy.

Robert:
It sounds like it’s almost like an enterprise plugin, so you’d need enterprise-focused agencies to really take advantage of it.

Joe:
You need enterprise. It’s not for a mom-and-pop shop. But also, a mom-and-pop shop’s not going to have a million products on their site. This is for a type of site that’s going to sell engine parts for all different vehicles because it’s based on year, make, and model, and those are nested. So you have year, make, model, engine size, and that’s all a whole nesting taxonomy that goes into your database. It could be quite a mess if you don’t do some custom work on the back end. That’s why it’s more for enterprise, which is good for us because then you kind of dig your hooks into a client. You need this for your

enterprise website, and you need us now for your enterprise website as well, which is always a good thing.

Robbie:
So Joe, does Zen Agency work with any other agencies out there? Do you find any cross-projects?

Joe:
That’s something that’s always been in the back of my mind, especially with the other WooCommerce experts. I’ve thought about that in the past in our Slack channel. As a matter of fact, a few of us have reached out to each other, but nothing has ever really come to fruition there. But I kind of wish it did because each of us has our own strengths. Like ours, we’re a full-service agency, but where’s our strength? It’s more in putting out fires. I hate to say that, but a lot of the work we get is fixing what another agency may have messed up or what a solo entrepreneur messed up.

Robbie:
So what’s your future plan there, Joe?

Joe:
My end goal really is to continue to build Zen for a few more years. That may be through M&A. That’s definitely on the table. I’ve looked at other agencies; there hasn’t been something there that really whet my appetite enough to take that leap. I came really close a couple of times, but that still isn’t where I want it. We’ve been in this business for a long time, and I think some other agencies look at us and see that we’re really fine-tuned. But we’re not fine-tuned yet because it’s ever-changing. I’m trying to build an operating system—my agency’s operating system—so that when a sale comes in from a WooCommerce lead online form, then what happens? I actually had this conversation with our solution specialist and two of our other sales guys. I said, “Well, then what happens? The form gets answered, and if we get the response, then what happens? Or what if we don’t get a response? If we don’t get a response, they go over here, and that ends with the contract being signed. And if the contract is signed, then if it’s development or marketing—let’s say it’s development—then that part of the operating system flowchart kicks in, and then what happens? Then we have a client meeting, and there’s always stuff that happens in between.” So at the end of the day, we have this big giant flowchart of the processes of the agency, and I am still working on the operating system. It’s been two years, and it kills me because I know I can get there. I have my whole team working on their components of it, and it’s a lot more difficult being a WooCommerce agency doing this when you’re a full-service agency because a lot of the other WooCommerce agencies, and I think this is one of the things that separates us from a lot of the other WooCommerce or even development agencies, that’s not just what we are.

Do you know what I mean? We’re into hosting, maintenance, WooCommerce development, all forms of marketing. So there are a lot of moving parts that make it a lot more complicated to pull this off. But once I pull this off—the operating system—then I know I can get a high multiple on my agency and sell it because right now it’s not like I’m starving to sell the agency. I’m starving to build it. I really enjoy building it. So I’m probably about five years out. In five years, I’d like to sell it to someone who can just take it, turn the key, and run with it—someone who’s really passionate about it—because our whole team is passionate. We’re totally transparent, unlike that employee that I hired. So when I hand the keys over, I want to make sure they’re able to run it because I didn’t build this to where it is today after all these years for nothing, and I would not want to see it flop in anyone else’s hands.

Robbie:
Great. I think a lot of agency owners have the same mission as you— to figure out your templates and your processes so that it is something that is a sellable product. Because some agencies, as we know, become—especially when the owners work the agency as well and do the production—they’re so tied. They’re so tied to the person, not the agency, that the clients are. I’m saying that it’s hard to sell an agency. But doing it the way you’re doing it, where you are basically just building and overseeing this agency, you’re not getting yourself personally tied to those clients. And so I think that’s a very smart way of doing an agency if someone can afford to build their agency that way.

Joe:
Well, if I can give any bit of advice to anyone— a lot of WooCommerce agencies are joining the platform— my advice to them would be to hustle. I’ve had two jobs for many, many years, and my wife’s not here, but she would attest to this, and my whole staff would too. I’ve worked these two jobs, and there have been many times where I worked until one o’clock, two o’clock in the morning—straight through the night—never mind that, straight through the night to have to go to work the next day because you’re putting out a fire, right? A server’s down right before Black Friday. We had a complete mess many years ago with a very big client in the gift basket industry, and that could have sunk our ship if I didn’t really get all hands on deck on it. But to any of the newer agencies that are coming up, my advice would be to try to do it the way I did it because you do it debt-free, right? That’s another thing I pride myself on with this agency.

I started a cafe in Scranton, and I didn’t do my due diligence on it, and I took a loan out for it. The cafe went belly up because the university directly across the street—now, I was selling paninis and espressos and lattes, like Starbucks-type stuff—had I done my due diligence, I would’ve known that less than a year later they were breaking ground directly across the street to build a full food court in the University of Scranton with a Starbucks and everything else. They erected a fence that spanned two blocks, and it blocked all the students from coming over while they were doing this build-out. So I completely lost all of my customers overnight, and that went belly up. I was in a rough spot back then. That was about the mid-2000s, like 2005-ish. Learning from that, I would say try to build something like this without pulling outside capital. I don’t know if that works for everyone, but it worked for me because I built a company that has no debt. Not many companies can do that. Not many companies can say that they did that, and it makes it a lot easier to build because there’s a lot less stress in your life—not like, “How am I going to pay these bills?” Right.

Robbie:
Yeah. I do think that web agencies are one of the types of companies that do… It’s easier to do. It’s not like a restaurant where you have to have a physical space. You have to have certain equipment. Yeah. I mean, you could have a laptop and get an agency up and off the ground. So I think it does mean you can do those without debt if you want to. You can start an agency. So we are getting close to our time here. Robert, did you have any other final questions or comments?

Robert:
I’ve got so many. I want to really dive into this magical agency operating system you’re building. I think we’re going to have to save that for another time. I want to see how AI has blown that up or maybe optimized it.

Joe:
So we’re just now getting into the AI agent space and really trying to utilize the agents to perform a lot of this work. Especially with agencies, like you guys said, hiring remotely that may not necessarily even be closely remote—they could be far remote. And so when there’s an actual language barrier and stuff, that makes it a lot more difficult to run your agency. But when you employ AI agents and it’s done effectively, it can really streamline your operation to the point where you have lead people running things and the agents being your busy workers doing the actual work.

Robert:
Very cool stuff.

Robbie:
Yeah, absolutely.

Joe:
That’s part of the operating system. But do invite me back sometime in the future; I’ll show you the operating system. In fact, I’ll even notify you once it’s complete.

Robbie:
There we go. There we go. You’ll have a book out; you’ll be on a public speaking circuit, and then we’ll have you back on the show. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Joe, for coming and visiting with us today. We loved learning about Zen Agency and your plans for the future. How can people reach you? Let’s let them know.

Joe:
They can visit our site, Zen Agency, or they can call our number: (800) 775-9610.

Robert:
Phone number. Magical.

Robbie:
Right? I know. I think that’s the first time we’ve had someone give a phone number on here. Interesting. I like it. An 800 number to boot.

Joe:
There you go.

Robbie:
Cool. All right, well, that’s all we’ve got for today, so thanks for listening to this episode of Do the Woo Agency Chat, and catch the next episode coming up. Thanks.

Robert:
Thanks, Robbie. Thanks, Joe.

Joe:
Awesome. I enjoyed being here. Thank you very much.