WEBVTT
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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and I've been very excited for a long time about today's guest.
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This is someone who I connected with feels like a few months ago.
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It's someone who, essentially, is my neighbor we live in the same area here in Florida and it's someone who, just like myself, I can relate to so many parts of his entrepreneurial journey because he started out in the early 2010s developing things on the internet.
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As our generation, we just played around with things and we have that real understanding of the ways that things work so that all of these modern tools that we all get to use in our modern day businesses, we get to layer really cool solutions onto that.
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Today's entrepreneur is so dedicated to bringing those types of awesome web development and important things that we can implement on our websites to create experiences, showcase our brands and really connect with the people who come across our company.
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So let me tell you all about today's guest.
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His name is Kevin Gileard.
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Kevin got started as a web developer in 2010, hand coding his first landing pages in Notepad yes, that default Windows app that we all had on our computers back then, and probably still to this day, that nobody uses.
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Since then, he has worked on the full stack, from systems administrations to software engineering, copywriting, user experience or UX, e-commerce and everything in between.
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He started his own web development and branding business with a friend in 2023, and together they're ready to take over the world with some really cool solutions.
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Kevin combines the really technical knowledge of what it takes to create these things on the internet, but also a real passion for making them come to life for businesses and for brands, so I'm really excited about this one.
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I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with Kevin Gilliard.
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All right, kevin, I'm so excited to have you here with us today.
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First things first.
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Welcome to the show.
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Thank you, brian.
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Happy to be here.
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Heck, yes, we're going to talk about some fun stuff.
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Yeah, that was a pretty high energy, excellent intro, I must say.
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Heck.
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Yes.
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Well, kevin, you and I both secretly know that it really started in our initial phone conversation when we came across each other, and so much of it is.
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We could geek out about all these things.
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So you've got to take us beyond the bio first.
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Who's Kevin?
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How'd you start doing all these awesome things?
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Yeah.
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So actually it started in 2009 and I wasn't doing much in my early 20s and my parents said, what are you going to do?
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And I said, well, you know, I don't know.
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She had a marketing company herself and she had an eye.
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She says that I have the, the, the design eye, and so she booked some some college classes for me in Fullerton junior college in Orange County, where I was.
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I was living around there at the time and she she just sent me, so I started and I decided, yeah, you know I could do this.
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And very shortly thereafter, actually, a job opportunity opened up.
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Where I was, I was offered a position that I didn't really know quite anything about in a big publishing company in LA, and it turns out it was the web development and internet marketing area.
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And I, they, they said, well, you know, do you?
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And internet marketing area?
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And they said, well, do you know anything about this?
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And I said, yeah, of course.
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And so I spent a lot of very late nights going through the headache phase of figuring out how internet works, what it all means, how to do copywriting, how to do what marketing is.
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It was a crash course that turned into a very, very long lesson over the course of about 13 years of basically just building my skills.
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So at first it was fake it till you make it.
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Then it became actually a real professional skill that I had developed.
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And I realized it was fake it till you make it.
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Then it became actually, uh, you know, a real professional skill that I had developed and I realized it was quite marketable and so I decided to go off on my own and do my own venture, which is kind of an interesting story in itself.
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But, um, yeah, so we've come a long way and, uh, I hope to keep doing this for a lot longer.
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You know I can't say that this is like always.
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You know the thing that I energetically explode out of bed every day ready to take on, you know, the IT world or whatever.
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But you know, it gives me like a deeper satisfaction when I can create something for somebody, especially a small business like myself, because I know that they're struggling and they have their own troubles.
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I don't, yeah, I really actually prefer to go along with the small business building because it's something that actually, like, I really care about and that's something, as an entrepreneur you really is really important.
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You have to actually really care about what you're doing and the product that you're producing and bringing to the world.
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So, anyways, I don't know if that probably doesn't cover really even half of it, but there you go.
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That's a small, that's a small bit.
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Yeah, I appreciate that overview, kevin, especially because I get to supplement today's conversation with so much of the things that you and I had talked about previously off the air, and part of it is even in that overview.
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We heard that for much of our generation, we kind of fell into the internet and all the things that come around the internet, and when I think about you hand coding things in notepad all the way back in 2010, obviously today we have all of these tools.
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We have Squarespace, which did not exist back then.
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We have the modern day WordPress, which that's what I was playing around with starting in 2008, where I had to custom code things in PHP and CSS, and that's where I learned all of those things, which it's funny, kevin, because part of me looks at the skills you and I developed back then and I think, man, why are we doing all the architecture and understanding how to make custom solutions and make different?
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things possible.
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Talk to me about how those skills that you developed back then have translated even to these modern day tools, because when you're doing web development for your clients, you're using modern tools.
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But talk to us about how that really foundational understanding of it plays into today's world.
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Yeah, brian, that's actually a really good point.
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So, yeah, so when we started we didn't have these amazing, like fantastic tools that we have today, like Squarespace, modern WordPress, as you say, and so many other tools too, like I mean the Ghost for blogging.
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Like the blogosphere has completely changed.
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It's gone on to proprietary platforms like Medium and Substack, but at the same time, you have companies like Ghost who are making that self-hosted.
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Companies like Ghost who are making that self-hosted and you know, like the underlying technologies have changed to such a degree that, like CSS, for example, I have seen the development where we had so many hacks that we had to do, like remember floats and all these other crazy things that you had to do with table layouts and stuff on websites.
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And then the fundamental underlying technology of CSS has developed and matured in such a way that these modern tools utilize the underlying technology.
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So, understanding the underlying technology, you can see through the tool that you're using and see what it's doing, and then you can spot inefficiencies.
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You can also spot business solutions that you would miss if you didn't know what was happening under the hood.
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Fundamentally, how HTML works.
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I have a strong background in PHP.
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I'm a PHP developer, don't hate.
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I know that PHP gets a lot of hate, but it also is the most popular scripting language on the internet period, so I mean it can't be that bad.
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Plus, it's matured quite a bit over the years and understanding how programming works honestly, I think has given me the biggest advantage, because I can think like a program, I can think logically how data moves and changes and evolves through a system.
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And remember, I mean websites today.
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Today they are sophisticated software, um, a lot of times when I'm talking to clients I have to remember that they're not thinking about it like that.
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They think you know, you look at a website, you think it's more like a magazine.
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You know what you see is what you get, but what's happening under the hood?
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It's just it gets so complex.
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Uh, these the tools like tools like Squarespace, for example.
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Man, that is, um, there's a lot of opinion that has gone into it.
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There's a lot of things you can't change about it.
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Uh, and it's also proprietary.
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I mean, if they go out of business tomorrow, you're out of business.
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Um, if you're on Squarespace, same with Shopify, same with, uh, with Wix and these other builders.
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I think that being able to directly own your piece of the internet, understand how to create a domain name, maintain domains, maintain your own web server, host your own websites.
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And if you have to build your own web pages by hand, you're never going to be without a fish, you're never going to go hungry.
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So that's helped me quite a bit.
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It definitely helps me plan things for my clients because I'm not boxed in into a certain ecosystem or walled garden.
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I can choose from any number of solutions for them.
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I hand coded a straight landing page just with HTML and CSS, because that was going to be the fastest thing for this client.
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He just wanted a quick page to promote his book and that's it.
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So an afternoon just banged it out and it's the fastest.
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It has the fastest uh, google, uh lighthouse score I have ever seen on any website, ever anywhere, because it's just, you know, 15 kilobytes in an image, so you can't beat that anyways.
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Um, yeah, I would say that the that those are the things that really like provide an advantage, uh, for having so much knowledge and skill in the underlying fundamental technologies.
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Right, it takes you from you know well, I guess it's just turtles all the way down to like really actually just understanding the basic foundation.
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And if you're going to be a web developer, if you're going to be a good web developer, you have to go through the headache stage, what I call the headache stage.
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Some people call it the 10,000 hours or whatever.
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It is right.
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You know, anything worth doing on planet earth, anything worth doing in any economy, is going to be difficult to do.
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So if you push through that constant desire and nagging like a feeling that you have to give up, that you want to stop, that you want to quit or whatever, double down on it right, figure out.
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What is it about this that I'm looking at that I actually don't understand.
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I'm pretending I understand it, but I actually don't understand it.
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Get honest with yourself and look it up, watch YouTube videos about it, even go on ChatDVT and ask about the etymology, or where did this word come from, or where did this term or technology come from?
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You know honestly and, brian, I know I'm rambling here, but this is one thing, honestly, that was like a shocker to me that really helped me so much in actually just making sense of any of this much, in actually just making sense of any of this uh, the, the whole ecosystem of web technology and marketing was actually an internet history course that was put on for free by the university of michigan.
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That I did and it really opened my eyes quite a lot because we really explored what the problems these early, early tech pioneers from the 80s and 90s and the 70s, what the problems that they were like, what problems were they solving, and understanding that just gives you a whole like really great understanding of just the whole, the whole industry.
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So yeah, kevin, I'll tell you what you call it rambling.
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But here's the cool thing about all these stories and insights that you're sharing is we're talking about web development right now, but you're also lacing it with real entrepreneurial lessons, and I think that when we all apply this to our own industries not just the solutions that your company, for example, brings to the world it's it's those real life insights.
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So I appreciate hearing not just the things you have to say, but the way that you think.
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Insight.
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So I appreciate hearing not just the things you have to say, but the way that you think.
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And I want to extrapolate that a little bit and talk about your clients, because actually I want to read for listeners who can't see your website just yet and see your company in action, but your company Gilly Tech.
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I love what you wrote to articulate what it is that you guys do.
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You wrote we provide agency level web development and design services to small businesses at rates that they can actually afford.
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Kevin, that seems to be so ingrained that language and messaging is so prevalent in all the places that you show up.
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Talk to me about that, because agency level scares a lot of people away.
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Actually, I would argue, most people never even reach out to specialists and people who can provide solutions because they just assume it's outside of their scope and budget.
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But it seems so ingrained in the way that you operate that you love this stuff and you want to bring it to even more people.
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Talk to us about Gilly Tech's approach.
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Yeah.
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So obviously any company needs to have a purpose and it actually needs to offer something that other companies aren't offering, right, I mean, I guess you could as a plumber, right, you're offering the same service.
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But even then, there was a great marketing campaign in la when I was living there.
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Um, it was about the smell good plumbers of mike diamond, and anybody that ever listened to the radio knew that Mike Diamond sends plumbers that smell good and I guess that's a button for people.
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So even then you can find a unique selling proposition.
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So when I started Gilly Tech, I was thinking why do I care?
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You know, what do I really want to do?
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What do I actually care about?
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And I thought, you know, I was talking to clients, potential clients of mine.
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One was a bodybuilder who wanted to up his game on getting clients for training you know, weight training and so I was talking to him and he's like, yeah, I just want a real simple page.
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I talked to a guy.
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He wanted $3,000 for a website.
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I'm thinking $3,000 for a website is not that much, but you know, we're talking about a little guy.
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A little guy who is like he just he just does this stuff on the weekends, right, um, and he knew nothing.
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So I was like, okay, I actually have, I need to help him, cause he's my friend, you know.
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And I said, okay, you know, for this specific case I decided, okay, let's just do Squarespace, because it's pretty, pretty simple and he can manage it himself.
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I said, okay, send me pictures of yourself and then send me.
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You know your purpose, what you do, what you want to do.
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It came up with a good tagline for him.
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I made a logo for him on a mid-journey and made his site, and then I just thought about like I wanted to create a persona for him.
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So I put some nice big, flashy colors on there and I put them on the front page with his muscles exploding, and he says that he gets tons of clients from that and he's really upped his game quite a bit.
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And I realized like, oh man, yeah, this is totally accessible to him.
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I did it for like 300 or 400 bucks or something like that in a day.
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So it was fine.
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It was no skin off off on my back, but it really helped him quite a bit and I thought, okay, I think I have something here because I know enough about this industry that I can cut a lot of the fat out of things and cut a lot of the overheads out of the product so that I can actually provide it for this.
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The same kind of profit margin but with way less overhead so ends up being much cheaper for the client.
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So I win and my clients win.
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And you know, I'm going to give away a marketing secret which has really helped me.
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I mean so much actually just making landing pages, making offers and whatever.
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And this is a formula for coming up with a tagline or a headline for your website.
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And listen closely because it works.
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And I didn't make this up, I got it from a guy, a marketing guy, called Flint McLaughlin, who nobody's ever heard of, but he is probably one of the most knowledgeable internet marketing minds, period.
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So here goes when you're thinking about your headline, you have to ask the question about your headline.
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You have to ask the question if I am your ideal prospect, why should I buy your service rather than your competitors?
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And the answer is because.
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And then whatever comes after the word, because that's your headline.
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So because we provide agency-level web solutions at prices that small businesses can actually afford.
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Okay, that is going to get you in your headline isn't.
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You know, welcome to my website, which I see on.
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Almost every client that comes to me with an existing website has something like that right, because most people that make websites today just aren't good.
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I mean, there's a lot of really great website web developers out there and if you're listening to this podcast you're probably not one of them but the bargain basement sort of like web, kind of agency type, like places that really don't do design very well, they really don't do.
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You know.
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They just have stock pages, stock templates.
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You know chat, gpt copy, you know the typical trite sort of like marketing ease that goes into all websites or all you know business.
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It's like I just see that and I'm like man, these guys are just being bent over a barrel like and there's no reason, and it's like they're being taken advantage of other small business owners.
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I think it's.
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I think it's a Travis, I mean, I think it's horrible.
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So I wanted to jump into this space, I wanted to provide a helping hand to my fellow entrepreneurs and small businesses and try, I mean it's challenging because I'm not getting those big corporate contracts that, like you know, real cushy, don't really have to do much, can hire a bunch of guys in India and just get stuff done.
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That's definitely not the operation that we're doing here and, anyways, that's kind of like why I came up with this.
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I admonish everybody to take a good look at their company that they want to start, or that they have started, and figure out what their purpose is.
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What do they deliver, what sort of products do you deliver, what do you want to be known for?
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And what's going to like make you feel good?
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I mean, every time I finish a website, every time I deliver something for a client, like I finished a contract, or I just say I say you know, give them the last email, say it's done here, it is right, I feel so good.
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I actually want to throw a party every time because I know that I've actually helped somebody and I've helped myself in the process and I mean, the more I can get that done, the more it happens, the bigger and more expansive I become.
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So you know, it's definitely a big part of the game and I would say you know, I want this to be like good advice for your listeners, brian.
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So there you go.
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That's what I got to say about it.
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Yeah, I appreciate that so much because here's the thing, kevin it's easy to kind of label this episode as web development, design services, like what you offer with Gilly tech, but you're showcasing, as you did in our initial conversation, you're showcasing your love for you reference.
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You know internet marketing, founding fathers and all the advice that they give us.
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You know I'm a big fan of that as well.
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John carlton is a name that I've listened to for a long time, and most of his stuff it's in like old school bound books, like the spiral bound books that you have to buy, and it's it's that type of advice.
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You love business as well, and so that's why I love even that real life example that you gave us about the fitness guy, the personal trainer.
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Thinking about that, a lot of people think, oh, if I have the best template on Squarespace or WordPress or Wix or whatever website builder people use, they think that it's the template that matters, whereas it's this real stuff.
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You walked us through a headline approach, for example, and so you also know because you're equally as geeky as I am in this regard about that age-old argument of design versus just functionality and conversion.
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Talk to me about your attitude there, because, as someone who has skill sets in both of those arenas, it's obviously a balance on your behalf as well, to make sure that this stuff converts and make sure that it, from a business perspective, does what we're looking for it to do.
00:22:17.180 --> 00:22:19.406
How do you weigh design versus functionality?
00:22:23.694 --> 00:22:24.376
Yeah, so it depends on the industry.
00:22:24.376 --> 00:22:25.819
It depends on who you're making the site for.
00:22:25.819 --> 00:22:33.965
Obviously, a lawyer is going to have a different kind of design than, let's say, I don't know, a kid's fun house rental company, right?
00:22:33.965 --> 00:22:42.125
Those are obviously two massive extremes and you're going to have major design differences Depending on your audience.
00:22:42.125 --> 00:22:45.490
You also really have to think about.
00:22:46.895 --> 00:22:51.880
I see a lot of, especially today, because animation tools are everywhere and they're very easily accessible.
00:22:51.880 --> 00:22:56.217
Back in the early days we didn't have animation at all, and if you did, it was Flash.
00:22:56.217 --> 00:23:08.086
And after Flash we got JavaScript libraries that came out that you had to be a freaking rocket scientist, triple PhD graduate student to figure out how to use them.
00:23:08.086 --> 00:23:19.855
And then, as things got easier to use and we started seeing WordPress templates that had these animation libraries built in, people started taking massive liberties.
00:23:19.855 --> 00:23:26.324
I got to say I'm not a fan of the gratuitous animations at all.
00:23:26.324 --> 00:23:28.500
We've all seen it.
00:23:28.500 --> 00:23:38.018
You're scrolling down a website and then the paragraphs are scrolling in from one side and then the pictures are coming in from the top and then everything's fading and moving around.
00:23:38.018 --> 00:23:47.595
No, just stop it, Like.
00:23:47.635 --> 00:23:49.541
Basically, the rule for this applies to like, let's say, copy or anything.
00:23:49.541 --> 00:23:57.843
Honestly, any design and the main rule is how much can you cut out while retaining the message that you want to deliver?
00:23:57.843 --> 00:24:08.262
And I'm not saying like no animation, I use animation in my designs, I have it on my homepage, but it's with a purpose.
00:24:08.262 --> 00:24:23.056
I mean every single element, every single word, every color, every font has to have a very specific purpose and it has to support the message that you're, overall, trying to convey for every single page.
00:24:23.056 --> 00:24:38.170
You also want to stay consistent and actually, now that you mentioned it, there's actually an old book by a woman named Robin Williams called the Non-Designer's Design Book.
00:24:38.170 --> 00:24:51.204
Designer's design book uh, fourth edition, and that book taught me more about design than anything that I've read or watched in the last 15 years.
00:24:51.204 --> 00:24:57.199
Um, because it teaches the very core pillars of design in a way that you can actually understand it right.
00:24:57.199 --> 00:25:20.459
You've got, uh, let's see if I can remember what they all are Contrast, alignment, proximity and consistency, and there's one other, I don't know, but anyways, you get those down and you look at what you've designed and what you've made and cut out as much as you can While supporting your message.
00:25:20.459 --> 00:25:24.307
You're going to get really, really far and your clients are going to really like it.
00:25:28.836 --> 00:25:48.185
And one thing that I tell my clients when I'm talking to them all the time is this you know you would think that good design looks good and you're going for something that looks good, but really great design is what feels good, like when you look at something and you have an emotional response.
00:25:48.185 --> 00:25:49.009
That is that's.
00:25:49.009 --> 00:25:54.653
That's deeper than your analytical response, uh, to something that you're that you're looking at.
00:25:54.653 --> 00:25:59.598
And I know this is getting kind of philosophical, but I mean I think that's the path to greatness.
00:25:59.707 --> 00:26:02.068
Um, I mean, I think that's the path to greatness.
00:26:02.068 --> 00:26:16.835
So you know, like getting really serious about it, I think that's really the attitude you have to take when you're designing something, and it really depends.
00:26:16.835 --> 00:26:31.505
I mean, I spend a lot of time just interviewing my clients, trying to understand them and their company as much as I possibly can, so I can envision something for them that they're really going to like and it's worked out really well, because I have not had a single client say well, I hate, that, that's horrible.
00:26:31.505 --> 00:26:32.867
Usually it's the opposite.
00:26:32.867 --> 00:26:38.403
So I like to keep that system in as much as I can.
00:26:39.163 --> 00:26:43.509
Yeah, kevinvin gosh, the fact that you're doing this all here freestyle.
00:26:43.509 --> 00:26:54.236
You know, and listeners know, that there are no pre-plan questions and here you are dropping advice from impactful books in your journey from robin williams for basic design principles, the one that you left out.
00:26:54.236 --> 00:26:55.420
I had to google this, I did not know.
00:26:55.460 --> 00:27:00.259
This, off the cuff, is okay yeah, ironically enough, kevin, you missed out on repetition.
00:27:00.259 --> 00:27:10.298
So important principles for us Proximity, alignment, repetition and contrast.
00:27:10.298 --> 00:27:15.169
I love how much you reference those, because those are the things that stick with you, and the fact that you incorporate them and your client projects and the way that you operate is really cool to see here in real time.
00:27:15.169 --> 00:27:20.541
And, kevin, I'm excited to ask you this last question because I personally have no idea which direction you're going to take it in.
00:27:20.541 --> 00:27:22.345
And that is your one piece of advice.
00:27:22.345 --> 00:27:31.336
And you've talked to us today not just with your web development and design hat on, but I love how much you also equally enjoy wearing your entrepreneurial hat.
00:27:31.336 --> 00:27:33.622
So that question is what's that one takeaway?
00:27:33.622 --> 00:27:44.150
Knowing that listeners are tuning in at all different stages of their entrepreneurial or yes, wantrepreneurial journeys, at all different growth phases what's that one thing that you want to impart on them here today?
00:27:45.914 --> 00:27:46.275
Okay.
00:27:46.275 --> 00:27:52.558
So I hope this is one thing, and I think about this a lot actually.
00:27:52.558 --> 00:28:03.555
So I, I started this company, gilly Tech, just by myself, actually out of necessity.
00:28:03.555 --> 00:28:05.646
I had a job.
00:28:05.646 --> 00:28:18.294
I had left the job in LA, I had taken another job in a different marketing company and they said, well, we don't really have anything left for you to do.
00:28:18.294 --> 00:28:22.009
There was a campaign that they were running and we finished it and it was done.
00:28:22.009 --> 00:28:35.194
So I said, okay, well, you know, one day I was in my underwear, in my apartment, you know, one morning, not going to my job because I didn't have one, and I was sitting at my computer, you know, and I was.
00:28:35.194 --> 00:28:37.444
It was in the morning, I was drinking my coffee.
00:28:37.444 --> 00:28:44.028
I do get dressed, I, you dressed, I am married and I said that's it.
