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Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where we explore the journeys that lead to success.

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I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you

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insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders, and experts who will share not just their expertise

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but the milestone moments that have reshaped their journeys and led to significant achievements.

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So if you're looking for motivation, you're in the right place. Subscribe now and discover the

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milestones that mark the path to success. Thank you for joining us on another episode of

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Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership. And today, my special guest is Logan Hughes,

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CEO of Hype Digital in Manchester, New Hampshire, who transitioned from eight years in medical

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services to successful entrepreneur. His digital marketing side hustle turned into a thriving

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business, leading him to a Dink 5000 recognition twice. As a family man, Logan advocates for work

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life balance, as well as mentors professionals for entrepreneurial and mindset development.

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Welcome to the show, Logan. Sheila, thank you for having me. That's a wonderful intro. I appreciate

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it. So you transitioned from the medical field to entrepreneurship. Can you tell us about that

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pivotal moment that led you to this new path? I will give you the short story on that. So I love

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to speak around mindset. It's been a very important part of my journey here. So there came a point

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where I'm a creative person at heart. I love to create. I love to design. I love to make music.

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This is who I am. So luckily, I got a job with my cousin in medical device sales and was there for

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a while. Money paid well, insurance, everything that you could possibly imagine, allowed me to

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buy my own first place and whatnot and live a really good life. But it came several years into

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this. I always say this, but I kind of felt like my soul was being sucked from my body. I was just

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like, I was just working on Excel sheets all day and I wasn't feeling that fulfillment. And I was

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really depressed. And one thing that I started looking into and started reading some books

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around mindset, I started writing in my journal daily. I will leave my nine to five job and start

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my own job. I didn't know what that job was at the time, but I wrote in that daily for a year.

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Along that journey, I kind of found my way into social media management, which I was like,

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this is pretty cool. I can be creative. I can help business out. It's a win-win. And then I found my

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love, which eventually became website design and doing the whole thing. But every single day,

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I wrote in my journal, I'm going to leave my nine to five job for a full year. Come January,

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I didn't leave. I was scared. And at the time I had my side hustle, which was social media management

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and some website design stuff. I had maybe like a couple thousand dollars coming in. It wasn't

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anything to blink at, but it was something there. And so I didn't make the move. And then a couple

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weeks later, my boss, cousin pulls me into my office and it was like, Logan, unfortunately,

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your job is being phased out. We're going to give you three months to kind of figure things out,

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which is nice, helping family out. To me, that was a pivotal moment. That was my mindset perspective

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being like, I wrote in my journal every single day. I visualized what that would feel like.

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And I didn't make the move. Here's the universe. Here's God, whoever, kick you in the butt,

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say it's time to make that jump. So I went all in. I left my full-time job. I had some money

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coming in. I had to figure things out like insurance and benefits and how it was going to

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be able to support my family at the time. But thank God I did. It's been a wonderful experience. And

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looking back on it, it was definitely the right move. So.

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Well, the next question I have for you is what were some of those challenges you faced

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transitioning from side hustle into a thriving business?

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Some of the challenges were that that I faced, which I found out

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a year into this was you have to pay taxes. I wasn't keeping my books in place. So when I came

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down to the end of the year and I was operating as a freelancer, I didn't have my QuickBooks done.

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I wasn't financially savvy. So that was a major kick in the butt that I was like, okay, if I,

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if I need to do this, I need to act accordingly and actually act like I have a business. So that

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was the biggest thing I think for me during that time was having to dive in and learn the basics of

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putting your books together and, you know, having to pay, pay taxes. Cause you know, at the end of

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that year, I got stuck with a decent amount of money that I had to pay. And I was like,

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I'm never going to do that again. But yeah, that was the biggest challenge that I faced at the time

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was how do I, how do I sort of turn this freelancer mentality into what would actually be,

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you know, a sustainable business.

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So Height Digital Manchester emphasizes creativity in its approach. Can you share

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a strategy that led to a success story for one of your clients?

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There's, there's been a lot of these, I love working with other agencies in itself, right? So

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our height digital, our team consists of around 200 people. It's a really large agency and we have

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a lot of great data that we know works. Cause we have franchises across the country. So

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we know what's working in Oregon with a specific business, you know, Bobby does work in New

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Hampshire, obviously this changes the demographic location. I partnered up with a fabulous woman

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and she works primarily with dentists doing a lot of implants. And when she started with us,

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she was using us as sort of the fulfillment for this client. I think when we started with them,

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they were around $800,000 a year. And this was like a general dentistry type of place within one

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year of working with us with doing both SEO and Google ads. I believe this past year, he

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rose to 5.4 million in the year and moved to, to solely implants. So we've grown their business,

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you know, tenfold and everyone's very, very happy with the results.

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So when they focused just on those implants, was that partly a result of what people were clicking

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on Google or booking services for? Yeah, great question. They always had that as a service,

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but definitely that's, that's the big moneymaker right there. Right. So the more that we were able

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to generate, you know, leads specifically for implants, they not only, you know, grew their

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practice, but hired a couple other dentists underneath them, grew their business to, you

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know, adding additional secretaries. They're now Spanish speaking as well. So that's a little

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great market to kind of tap into, but, but certainly through, through keyword research and,

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you know, working hand in hand with practice and this other agency, cause that's really what

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she's worked like 20 plus years in that industry. She knows exactly what's happening. So

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and that's really a big part of overall marketing, which I love a lot is that it's not just about

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SEO. It's not just about PPC, these things here. It's more so about communication and building

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relationship and partnership. Right. So, you know, I don't want it to seem when I'm working with the

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client that they're just outsourcing it to me and there's nothing there. My, my job is to make sure

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that, you know, I'm a facet into your business. I want to make sure that you can rely on me, like

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you know, like I'm a regular employee, you know, obviously there's some small things there, but,

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you know, I try to build that relationship and partnership as much as I can. So that was a great

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result that we had certainly.

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Well, we make smart decisions when we have that data. Yes. Doing your own Google ads can be quite

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difficult. I always tell people, find an expert in the Google ads. You'll probably get a better

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return on your investment than just winging your own ads. So I'm not going to be doing that. I'm

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not winging it.

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Yes. Yeah. Real quick about that. There's so many times that if you run a business, most likely you

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would get a notification from Google saying, Hey, here's $500 free credit. Right. We've seen that

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time and time again. And what they're actually doing, that dashboard is a little bit different

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than the actual ads account, the ads manager account in the backend. So when we run ads,

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it's not just a simple, you know, here's just one ad, there's multiple levels to that. So certainly

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if you have any questions regarding anything Google related, Google and Facebook really good about

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taking money if you're not sure what you're doing. So just want to make sure that you get to generate

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the most ROI for your business.

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So does a business like you also specialize in Google Analytics?

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Yes. Google Analytics is a extremely important platform to have not only from from PPC, but we

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use it with SEO and Facebook ads as well. There's a lot of tracking that you can find in Google

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Analytics that you just can't find within search console or even Facebook ads manager. There's,

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they do pretty good things in their own, but Google Analytics has a really,

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you can find out really specific information. So we use it quite a bit for obviously everything

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PPC, anything, anything that you're spending ads on, we use it for as well as SEO for sure.

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So is there one specific thing we should look out for in those reports that sticks out more

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than any of the other terms?

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I kind of like to, with the analytic portion, you can dive in and take a look a lot of around

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the pages that are being shown a lot. Pages that are being clicked to and generating the most

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traffic to. I always like to emphasize those, obviously the homepage being one of them for

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service-based businesses, a lot of them. If you don't have this page is an FAQ page,

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right? Especially for trade businesses or service businesses, really FAQ pages, super important,

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right? And testimonial pages. So you're able to see the pages that are generating a lot of traffic.

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You're also able to see the pages that aren't. And when we comb through our actual, say SEO report,

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we can determine and see the actual search queries that people are searching for. And if there's not

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traffic being sent from those keywords, we want to make sure that we're generating content based on

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those keywords, right? So to improve the click-through rate and so forth. So we see

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exterior painting near me is being shown as a keyword that's being searched for. And there's

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no click-through rate, there's no traffic. That's us being like, okay, well, we need to create a

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page, a location page or service page around that search term, as well as create content for that

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as well. That's one way to really take a look at that and really make sure that you're providing

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Google with some great information that's really going to help you out.

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Well, thank you for those insights. I'm going to go do my FAQ. I don't have my frequently asked.

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So let's talk about family balancing family life with the demands of entrepreneurship can be

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challenging. So how do you personally manage and prioritize your work life balance and

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any advice you'd want to share to entrepreneurs striving for the same?

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Yeah. Great question. And it's a work in progress. It always is. There's the other day,

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my son comes home at like, you know, five o'clock in the afternoon. And there's some situations to

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some times where, you know, six o'clock rolls around, I'm checking my phone for emails, right?

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And I'm like, ooh, I need to kind of pull back away from that. I learned a lot and I learned

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really quickly. And the reason why I got into entrepreneurship in the first place,

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starting my own business, because I wanted that freedom. Everyone talks about freedom,

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but you know, I wanted that for my family. I wanted to be able to spend time with my child

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and my wife and just, you know, have that time. Right. So one thing that I learned rather quickly,

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and this came from a really a good mentor of mine was establishing a transition period between

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your work day and personal day. So what that looks like for me is that I, whenever I end the day,

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it's let's say five o'clock and I build in a 30 minute sort of block where I either go for a walk,

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go outside, I read a book, meditate, whatever it may be, just to decompress my work day and

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transition into family time where I can be present. A lot of that helps with when I'm done with the

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day, making sure that I kind of do a brain dump. I kind of jot down things that went well,

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but I also plan my next day. So I'm not waking up in the morning. I'm not thinking later on tonight

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that, oh man, I got to do this. I got to do that. I have it all down. So I know what my tomorrow

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looks like. I'm able to sort of, you know, be clear of that and focus in and be more present.

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So I love to have a transition period between work and your family life, especially when working

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from home. It's one thing if you have a nine to five and you're going into office and you have

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that driving time, right across from me is my son's crib, right? So, you know, I have to be really,

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you know, confident of that and have that transition period. So that's really what's helped me sort of

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have that balance in that.

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Sounds like it clears your minds.

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Yes.

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I do it before I normally do it in the morning. I hadn't thought about doing it as a transition

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between the two. So let's talk about that Inc 5000 recognition. Height Digit Manchester has

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achieved the recognition twice. So what are some of the strategies that contributed to achieving

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this prestigious recognition?

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So I'm just, I'm fairly grateful and blessed to be a part of this company, first and foremost.

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I think a lot of it has to do with the team that you have surrounded with. I had my own previous

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agency before this. It was seventh level media. It was just myself and a couple other people.

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That were, you know, freelancers themselves. And I got in a really good position because I merged my

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existing agency with Tite Digital that, you know, I went from having no systems in place, really no

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manpower to having full blown staff, right? So I just want to first say that I'm just grateful for,

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you know, still having the opportunity to be with these guys. But it's a lot about the team, the

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support system have in place and really networking. I wouldn't have gotten in this position if I

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haven't really connected and networked my ass off to find people out there. And they finally

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approached me to join this agency. But it's a support system and the ability to network,

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I think, is working, is something that attributed to this. I'm just a small component of overall

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agency life in this business. There's a lot of people that just are tremendous at what they do.

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So it's certainly a team effort. To get, I guess, to get to my position, if you want to say that,

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it's really about being open minded and networking and growing a really sustainable team that you

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love and just have the same sort of core values that you have.

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So what's your next milestone?

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Yeah, it's a great question. I hate to put money on this. Like I'm not someone that's like,

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oh, I want to grow my business to this. That would be nice. I just want to be able to do

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that. I do have those tangible goals. I think this kind of follows a little more in line with

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myself personally. I definitely want to have another child on the way and growing my family

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and just spending time with my loved ones and traveling a lot more. Now I know that.

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So in business perspective, always trying to do a million dollars a year in revenue,

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sort of halfway there now and just kind of looking to grow that side of things. But personally,

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it's really my family and just trying to travel a little bit more, spend time with my parents

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and everyone. So that's probably my biggest goal so far.

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So my last question, and as a mentor who guides professionals on entrepreneurial and mindset

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development, what one piece of advice can you share with my audience that you often use with

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your mentees?

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That's a great question. It's funny because I asked that in my podcast quite a bit. That's

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usually the last question that I ask. And it's funny getting put on the other side of this.

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I love to start with the mindset portion of this with anyone who's my way as a mentor. I think

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everything starts from a mindset point of view. So there's different practices that we use to

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find out why you are looking to get into entrepreneurship, why are you looking to start

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the business. And I forgot who came up with the strategy, but there's seven questions. You ask,

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why are you starting a business? And you're like, okay, well, why are you really doing that? And

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why are you doing that? It's a practice I love doing because you get to a point where you should

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get to that why should literally make you cry. It should be something that's so ingrained with you

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that you're like, this is why. And that's something that you can use any time in life when

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things go really bad in business, you can pull that out. Things are not great relationship or

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family, you can pull that out. And you just kind of go back to it. So whenever I'm talking with a

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younger entrepreneur or business owner, they still don't really have that why. And it's my job to

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help them walk them through that to be able to really determine what that is. I think that's

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going to be the ultimate motivator on whether or not they're going to be able to do that.

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And that's going to be the ultimate motivator on whether or not their business will succeed or not

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succeed in the long run. So when I'm talking with young entrepreneurs or being a mentor to,

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you know, the younger generation, I would say it starts a lot with the mindset and working on

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finding out what that what that why is. So you have a podcast, you have a website,

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how can our audience follow your journey? So yeah, you can reach me right on Facebook.

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I love talking on Facebook. That's probably where I'm at most throughout all platforms.

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Logan Hughes, you'll see a bright green background with a goofy looking face on there. That's me.

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My podcast is the Get a Job podcast. That's just the getajobpodcast.com.

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You can find me on heightdigital.com. Manchester, New Hampshire. But yeah, if you have any questions

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or feel free to reach out about anything, you know, marketing related or chatting about mindset,

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whatever I can do to be of service to others on there to help. So yeah, find me on Facebook.

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Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you, Sheila. I appreciate it. Thank you.

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And thank you all for tuning in. If you like these episodes, please follow Five Milestones

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in Business and Leadership. And for more information, visit five milestones.com.