How Clearvoice CEO Joe Griffin grew Clearvoice to $51.7M revenue and 150 customers in 2024.

hello everybody my guest today is Joe Griffin he's the CEO of a company called clearvoice which is a Content marketing platform and talent Network that he co-founded in 2013 he served in executive roles at web.com and I Crossing and has founded multiple companies he's employed more than 500 SEO social media and content marketing experts over his career and actively speaks and writes for major media Outlets Joe are you ready to take us to the top yes sir good what' you do at web what' you do at web.com real quick yeah so I uh actually sold web.com come a um SEO agency back in 2007 okay were you there with herun from um oh shoot what was his company uh do you know harun when he he started he he sold his company to uh to to those guys for like 167 million is it Network Solutions or was it register.com oh gosh I don't oh uh This is Gonna bug me it was a website builder a dragon drop website I can't remember anyways you don't know him obviously but so you you sold your agency to them and then did you stay with him at all or went on your next thing yeah did the did the kind of earnout thing with them um was a great experience and those guys are you know worldclass guys love them to death did you get the full earnout I got about 90% of it yep why did the 10% not happen tell us where earn outs go down the tubes yeah because you know you're got to typically do two three years and so I was supposed to do two years I got about 18 months of the way in and I gotta go and I had the performance the performance was there like I was I was way over performance which is how W how was able to kind of negotiate to to get more than 75% so they were really gracious and and taking care of me in that way but yeah that entrepreneurial Spirit man I just I couldn't I couldn't do it man I love those guys to death but it was hard for me all right clear voice what's it do and how you make money yeah so clear voice is a is a talent network uh and a Content workflow platform for Brands and agencies so we're basically powering you know blogs and um lead lead lead generation content marketing automation content so like white papers and emails really the content behind marketing it's you know content marketing uh um and so a lot of direct to Brand work but agencies are a very big segment for us and so a lot of times we're the back office the content and creative back office for agencies and it's because a lot of this is you know going freelance freelance economy we're trying to be there Joe so sorry I don't understand how does content tie into talent management I don't understand that right so when we think about so our definition of talent is writers editors designers right so kind of a and and the reason why I don't use the word Marketplace it is a Marketplace but it's not an Open Marketplace like upwork or something like that you compete with scripted scripted is a Project based Marketplace designed for small businesses so they're really good at turning out high quality $100 articles things like that um we are more of a talent partner so while our our um our Freelancers are going to be still creating articles and white papers ebooks a lot of the same stuff it's a little bit more of an extension of your brand type approach um so a lot more in-depth workflow uh letting the brands upload their brand guidelines you know their their values the mission statement there's a lot it's a much tighter workflow yep the talent the talent in your Marketplace are they staying as when a company starts working with them do they stay as contractors or they actually go on the Bal the p&l of the company that's hiring them they as contractors but that's exactly right there this is these are more long-term engagements okay I see got it so I should think of I should of scripted as a um lower price sry sorry a lower priced less integrated version of clear voice correct okay interesting um and the market it's good for both of us right it's the market needs both of those Solutions yeah why didn't you buy them they just sold um that's a good question I don't know if we're ready for that type of activity yet I think we're get I think we're we're working on it but I don't know if we ready for that one so I want to get more of the backstory here but let me just hone in real quick to understand price differences because it'll basically reflect on the kinds of customers you're serving I mean are we talking on average 20 bucks a month 20 grand a month 2 million a year average contract value for you is what yeah so we're going to be you know 20 plus thousand a year type contract value uh obviously it ranges could be could be smaller than that could be a lot bigger than that yep but 20 plus a year in terms of the any kind of software fees plus any kind of content fees I was gonna say so let's say I pay you 20 grand a year you basically saying you're going to get three 1500w articles per month from these two writers and that's going to go for the next 12 months yeah exactly interesting ex yeah and you have a lot of flexibility you're not stuck to that so you but that we would call that a Content plan but that's exactly right interesting okay take me back uh when did you launch well you launched in 2013 right yeah 2013 and where was your head at that point was that right after you negotiated the earn out at web yeah this was a few years later so uh my business partner Jay Swanson and I we started a company called I acquire digital marketing agency in 2009 and had a lot of fun doing that did a lot of Professional Services work um but obviously you know at the same time we had a really high quality team of Engineers that we were we had inside the agency and a lot of the technology we were building was to be used just for our agency and we kind of got to a place where we felt like we were just dumping money down the drain so we made a really big decision to stop being an agency and really move more into a platform business interesting okay so when you say okay so you move to a platform business then what do you do with that did you sell that company did it shut down yeah so we we were able to Leverage The assets of iire to help fuel the development of clear voice we were able to oh yeah we were able to sell some so we basically sold some it was really an asset kind of play where some assets were sold some assets were retained yeah but you morphed in terms of your team at the agency you morphed that into what is today clear voice correct okay clean cap table or have you raised a bunch of capital uh we we yeah we have some investors got a couple institutional investors ra a raised a seed round uh and then also raised a kind of a small series EG okay so total in the company is how much to date so far we've raised about four million okay and and any lessons you've kind of kind of taken from that so far I mean is this your first company raising Capital do you regret it is it panning out how you expected I think it's good I think um I've learned I learned a lot about raising capital I had I had experience in overall m&a activity mostly with like selling companies or with debt so raising through Venture Capital was a newer experience for me no personal guarantees that's nice right yeah that's a that's a positive yeah yeah I mean I learned a lot about just telling the story um the things that are important obviously to the Venture community and you know that's a I guess the only downside to that is that's another job you know there's a lot of things you have to do as an entrepreneur build a business that's another job you're going to take on so if you make that decision you just have to be prepared to make that happen what's your team look like today how many people yes so we've got about 25 people uh headquartered in Phoenix is everyone there Mo mostly yeah we've got some people in uh California Minnesota Michigan um but primarily Phoenix and then we also heavily take advantage of our freelance Network so a lot of our marketing is powered by our freelance writers our freelance editors strategist designers we really heavily utilize that team how many Freelancers in the past 12 months have made at least 100 bucks from you oh I would say a thousand plus okay is that that like I'm I'm trying to get at is that one of the key metrics you look at what are like the two key metrics you look at yeah we look at um we do care obviously we care a lot about how much our Freelancers are making and we have to be careful not to over have an over Supply because we end up with a case where people aren't getting work so what we care about is making sure we're matching the right Talent with the right customer uh making sure that we we like to set that stage for ongoing work when we talk about like a Content plan we want them to work together you know all the time that's what differentiates us from a Project based Marketplace so that's probably the biggest measurement of success is are these people working together they working together consistently are they happy uh and obviously we're going to be able to support both sides of that process just as things change as things evolve make sure we continue to serve both parties so thousands of Freelancers take me to the other side of the marketplace how...