What I’m building
A lawyer by training, a business owner by trade. Here is how the pieces fit together.
Everything I do now runs under one name, and the name is a small joke I have decided to take seriously. My initials are JD. My law degree is a J.D. So the agency is JDJD Search, the series about going back to school is JDJDMBA, and the person behind both is me, John (JD) Donboli. Cabo360 is the one venture that predates the pattern, and it stays Cabo360 because the people it serves know it by that name.
JDJD Search
A local search and conversion agency that works only with San Diego County businesses. The job is to get a business found on Google Maps, in search results, and in the answer ChatGPT or Gemini gives when someone asks for a plumber, a dentist, or a body shop nearby, and then to make sure that attention turns into calls and bookings. What makes it different is the part that cannot be done from three time zones away: we meet every client in person, at their business, and we visit the competitors they lose to before we touch their account. Flat monthly fees, no percentage of ad spend, and the client owns everything we build.
This is my primary work. It is where the things I write about here, such as positioning, pricing, and reading a market, get tested against real revenue every month.
Cabo360
A small advisory for American entrepreneurs who want to open a company in Los Cabos or elsewhere in Mexico and do not know where to begin. I am not their lawyer and I am not their agent. I explain the process in plain English, from entity choice to bank account, and then put them in the hands of independent, licensed Mexican professionals who do the formal work. It grew out of years spent in Cabo San Lucas building relationships before I ever thought about building a business on them.
JDJDMBA
Notes from a JD going back to business school. I was accepted to the MBA program at the University of San Diego and deferred enrollment for family reasons; the series follows the path there and what I learn on the way, with a practical bent toward evaluating ventures, structuring deals, and building a brand from nothing. Alongside it sits The First Raise Series, a free six-part course for first-time founders on whether to raise money and how a first raise works.
What comes next
A second agency is in development, built for small plaintiffs’ law firms that larger marketing shops will not take on. It will have its own name and its own site, and I will add it here when it is ready. I am not currently licensed to practice law, and that business, like this page, will be about marketing and not legal services.
Why one umbrella
Each of these could be a separate identity, and for a while they were. Putting them under one name is partly for the reader, who should be able to find everything I do from any one of them, and partly for me: it keeps me honest about the fact that it is one person doing the work, in person, in San Diego. If you want to talk about any of it, the contact page is the place.