Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Thanks for being here, Jason.
Grateful you've taken the time out of your day to have a conversation.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Thank you, Travis. An honor to be here.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: So, first off, I just want to acknowledge you are a veteran. You did some time in the military. So I want to say thanks for your service. And what I love about your work and your brand is that you were actually in the service when you started your journey into online marketing. So let's bring people up to you. So you served some time in the Air Force?
[00:00:44] Speaker B: I did, yeah. Right in your neck of the woods, too. I was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Vegas for about four years. I joined right out of high school to help pay for college.
I did some time in Italy, and then I came back and I had about a year left in the Air Force, and I started my side hustle business, which was DJing, weddings and parties, while I was still in the Air Force. And so that's kind of how I came across this topic of SEO is I needed a way for brides that were getting married in Las Vegas to know who I was. And so SEO started out as a need, then it became an interest, and it became a passion, and then it became more of an obsession over the years. Right. And so here we are, I don't even know, 26 years later, right. And I'm still kind of doing this stuff, so.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: So you were. You were in the. In the throes of Google when it was like a baby, maybe had like five employees and nobody really even knew.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I was. Yeah, I was early. You know, I think, like, Google came around in what, 97 was kind of when I think Google officially launched.
But, yeah, these were the days where there wasn't really pay per click. There was a company called Overture that was like the first beta of what we know as pay per click today. And so when I started to see that you can actually bid for keyword positioning using Overture, I'm like, wow, this is like the future of marketing as we know it, right? And so I was like, I'm going all in on this. And so, you know, I made the right bets and, you know, built couple agencies later. You know, here we are.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: So that's what I love about it is you, you know, you had your own business and you were learning this skill because you had a need for it, and that then became, you know, more important than the business that you had because it taught you a brand new skill set. So. And also, you've. There's a lot of misperceptions about SEO. Which is why I'm so glad you decided to take time for our call today, because, you know, people call what, 2001 to 2009 like the golden era of Se SEO, right. It was like the wild west. It was craziness. And then we had the, you know, the. The dreaded Google. The first Google slap.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: So. Yeah.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: So let's talk about. At what point for you, with your business did you realize that going all in on SEO was more important than, you know, continuing your side hustle?
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Yeah, good point. So I. I kind of made that decision. Like, I always knew I was more of an entrepreneur. And so I was going to unlv, going to college. I was looking at taking the LSAT to maybe going to the William Boyd School of Law there. And so before I made a big financial investment into law school, I've. I said, let me just, like, make sure that this is the right path for me. And so I shadowed an attorney for about 30 days and only to realize that that wasn't really what I wanted to do with my life. And so smart.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: And it was. That's great that you found somebody who allowed you to do that.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Huh. And so I, you know, I kind of said, you know, I'm making pretty good money doing this DJ stuff here. I just gotten out of the Air Force.
I was, you know, growing. Growing that business. And then I started a directory. This is when the directories were big in the. In the 90s. And it was a. It was called Vegas Wedding Mall dot com. And it was a place where brides can go and plan their wedding. And that's really where I cut my teeth most on SEO. And so. So, you know, I got that website ranking, and then I built Los Angeles Wedding Mall and Seattle Wedding Mall and Phoenix Wedding Mall. Right. And so then we had, like, a call center with salespeople. And so that was kind of like growing into a separate business, if you will. And so I was just like, I'm onto something here. And I had no intention of starting an agency, but I just basically, you know, taught myself this skill by building a business in the directory, in the wedding directory field. And then I ended up kind of selling that and then moving to Atlanta. And in. In Atlanta, I gave a presentation to about 50 lawyers and didn't know anything about law firm marketing or anything. And so I got, like, five clients as a result of me giving a presentation to a group of lawyers. And next thing you know, this is 2008. Now my journey begins where I'm now working with Lawyers doing SEO. And so built up one agency, I sold it, then I started another agency. And so this agency is about 10 years old. And so that's kind of like my. My, who I'm known as is like the law firm SEO guy. Right.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: So you were working full time in the military. How did you. How did you juggle the side hustle doing that? Because you were doing DJing, and then the marketing was the side of it. So how did you fit all of that into a day?
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Yeah, so, you know, the military is, for the most part, you know, kind of. It was kind of like a 9 to 5 kind of a thing for the most part, unless I, you know, got called to kind of go serve in overseas or something. But I had pretty good flexibility in my schedule. And most of this stuff would happen on the weekends. Right. So it'd be like a Friday night wedding or Saturday, you know, birthday party or something. And so that was usually when I had time. And, you know, I would schedule things in advance. I'd know my schedule. And if for any reason. Any reason, like, I had, like, you know, a conflict because of the military, like, that obviously took first precedent, then I had like a backup person that, you know, could fill in for me. So that's kind of. But I was making more money with my side hustle than I was, like, being active duty military. Right. And I was.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Made it easy when your contract came up as to what the next steps were?
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I was, I was. I didn't come from a lot of money, and so money was always my primary driver. That's the stuff that motivated me. I wanted to get what I never had. And so, you know, I. I knew that, you know, four years was going to be my expiration date on my military service, you know, so.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: So what were some of the challenges you faced then? Like, because you just sort of fell into this. So you started it for your own native, and then you eventually had an agency. So what were some of the hurdles that you. You had and what was your growth like those first years? Obviously you grew it up and you sold it. Like, how many employees did you have at the point when you. When you were able to exit?
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah, so the first agency, we grew it to about maybe like three and a half million dollars.
And, you know, originally there was three partners, then we bought out one of the partners, then there was two partners, and then my partner ultimately ended up buying me out in 2015.
And it was. It was a very cordial kind of buyout.
And, you know, I think at the end of the day, we just had different appetites for growth. Right. You know, and so he wanted to have, you know, more control. My at the time, my wife wanted to move to the west coast anyway, and so the timing was perfect. And so I sold my interest to my partner with an exhibit that says I couldn't take any of their clients and I couldn't take any of their staff.
But if I wanted to start another agency, that was perfectly fine. That was all part of the terms. And so he took over that agency and. And then I took a sabbatical leave. We moved out west. I played a lot of tennis every day for about a good eight months. And then I got bored and I started another agency. And so that was 2015. And the beautiful thing about starting another agency when you've already built and sold one agency is you've got all the cliff notes on what the mistakes that you shouldn't make again. Right. So, you know, that was an advantage. And so when I started this agency, the one was going to do is I was going to be a fully remote company right from the start. Right. I didn't want to have a lot of overhead, you know, where you're trying to recruit talent from a 5 mile radius of an office building in Atlanta. Right. So I wanted to build a bigger company. I wanted to hire the best people regardless of where they lived. And so that was all by design. Even before COVID you know, where companies started transitioning to the online zoom world. Y and plus, I didn't have that much overhead too, you know, so I could actually hire better people because I didn't have to pay, you know, thousands of dollars in rent and all these coffee bills or whatever else, you know, that you have there. So.
And you know, first year we did about, I think we started the company in May and it was mostly me and an assistant. I think we did like 300,000 in revenue. And then the next year I think we did like 800. And the next year we did like 1.8 and. And progressively just kind of grew, grew, grew, you know, all the way. Ten years later, we're now north of 20 million in revenue.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: So how did your approach building it the second time around change from the first time and building it? What were the mistakes that you were glad to not make the second go around?
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, everything from just the strategy, you know, like, I think the first agency, we're still trying to kind of pioneer and develop a strategy that works. Right. We're doing a lot of testing. So just in terms of the SEO strategy. So now I had all of that experience, like, you know, if I'm starting another agency, I already know, like, the strategy that will actually work instead of kind of like testing out different theories, you know, just account management. You know, I had a lot of experience with how to manage accounts.
You know, I kind of knew a little bit more about the art of delegation, you know, that I, I was probably the biggest constraint. And that was something that I'm still learning more about, you know, I mean, like, the more, the less I do, the more I make, right? You know, like, that's kind of the beautiful thing about paradox, right? Paradox, huh? And I think a lot of times that's where businesses kind of get stuck is, you know, it, it starts out as, like I said, like, it's a need, it turns into a passion, but then it turns into a business. And most people aren't really in the world of being a business owner, right? Like any business, like if you're a plumber and you love plumbing, right? You know, it's like, okay, great, you get a side job and now next thing you know, you own a plumbing company and you got to hire plumbers, right? And you got to train plumbers and you got to deal with customer service and accounting and you got to deal with all kinds of, you know, dealing with lawyers and this and filing, the.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Whole skill set that you didn't think, oh my God.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah, right. And so I just want to be a plumber. Like, that's not how it works, right?
[00:11:42] Speaker A: One of my, one of my friends had a very successful construction business and sold it and started an online company. And it's doing pretty well. We had a conversation one time and he said, travis, entrepreneurs are the only people dumb enough to work 60 or 70 hours a week at their own business so they can avoid going to a 40 hour a week job.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: And it is so true, right? And you know, granted, like, there's, you know, there's the positive side, but there is, you know, there's definitely, you know, the negative side of being an entrepreneur too. You know, we, we, we earn these gray stripes that you see here.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: So how have you managed then the leadership of your company from going from you and a VA to, you know, 10 employees, to 20 to 50 to. You have what, 130 employees now? Like, let's talk about those, because most, most businesses never get to the 10 employee mark. So let's talk about what it takes to get there. And then I'd love to talk about what are the shifts that have to happen from you to go, to go from, you know, 10 to 50 and then from 50 to 100. And what are the different challenges that kind of show up as you're hitting those numbers?
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think the biggest lesson, you know, when you're growing a business from like 0 to 10 employees is in, in most cases it's more of a lifestyle business. Right. You know, you are the business. You're kind of doing everything. You're, you're, you're making, you know, good decisions, but you're also making bad decisions at that stage. And, and the, the beautiful thing is that you're probably making a lot of profit, right? You know, usually when you have 10 employees, you know, a lot of times you're doing a lot of the task and so that means you're making a lot of profit. But you are working a lot of hours probably, right. You know, you're probably working in the field and then at night you're doing payroll, whatever else, right.
But you know, where you, you know, pivot and need to kind of get to the next level is you need to defer a lot of that profit into hiring more people and, you know, competent and qualified people.
And so I think when, you know, one year, one of the first, I think it was like three years into the business, like I want to say we did like 3 million in revenue and like I made like 1 million in profit, right?
I was, you know, I owned like, I was owned to my business. Like I non stop 80 hours. I would go on vacations, have to take calls, you know, and miss dinners and stuff just because like I was like glued to my phone.
And so at the end of the year, I had to write a large check to the, to the government, you know, because I made a lot of profit. And so that was year I said, screw this. Like I'm just gonna like hire somebody that's like, that can run operations.
And so I got introduced to somebody and, and Scott Str became my coo. And so he then helped me take it from a lifestyle business and convert the business more into like an enterprise, right. You know, running it like a real business, right. Something that could eventually be like a sellable asset.
But in order to do that A, I had to pay him, right? Who he wasn't cheap. Then we had to bring in a cfo and then we had to bring in this director and that director and this director, right. And so there was a time where we were making a lot more money because we were like kind of building, treating it as a real business, but our margins were only like 7%, you know, and that was like that for a couple years. So it's uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable. And so I think that's why a lot of businesses never really kind of get to that level is because there's a lot of stress.
In order to get to the next level, you got to defer profit for today into people. You need to put systems and processes in place, you need to put training in place. You have to take yourself out of the equation.
And then finally you get to a place where it's like, okay, great, we've got all of our leadership now, we got all of our managers, our mid level managers. We've got systems and processes, we've got accountability.
Boom. Now the business is growing even without you, right. Where you can actually go take 30 day vacations. And the business is growing even when you're not there. Right. So that's, that's where you want to get to in business. But it's, it's very challenging.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: It's interesting, right, because a lot of people start their own business because they want the lifestyle and they'll have it for a little bit. But then you sort of have to give up the lifestyle for a while to actually get to a better lifestyle.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: You do.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: You know, a lot of people have the lifestyle business. It's like, it's lifestyle because I can work wherever I want to, when I want to. But like you said, sometimes still working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. So it's like, yes, I can go to Hawaii, but I'm still working the time I'm working in Hawaii. But the idea of being able to take 30 days off from business and most of the people I work with, they panic. Everything would just like fall off a cliff. Right.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: If that happened. Yeah.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: So again, it's very interesting, the paradox, life, you give up the lifestyle to have a better lifestyle.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: So yeah, I gave a presentation recently in Thailand, you know, and my whole presentation was, you know, early on you're trading your, your time to make, to make money and eventually you want to trade your money to buy back your time. You know, I mean like, and that's kind of like where you want to get, get to in, in business and in life, you know, I love it.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: So what are some of the big so again coming from my experience and people I'm talking to, we're to an era where at least a lot of the smaller entrepreneurs, you know, half a million million dollars, couple of employees, you talk to them about SEO, and their eyes kind of glaze over.
There's, there's sort of the perception that it doesn't work anymore. The golden era of SEO is over, or it's going to take a really long time or really expensive. So what are some of the biggest myths that business owners have about SEO that you know are just simply not true?
[00:17:40] Speaker B: Yeah, well, for one, you know that SEO doesn't work. I think it, it doesn't work if, if you're working with the wrong partner that is executing the wrong strategy or doesn't have the right budget, you know, to execute the right strategy. And so that's why, you know, SEO people have like a bad name and a bad rep. And so that was one of the reasons why I wanted to write my book.
I wrote a book called Law Firm SEO and then I wrote a book called Honest SEO. And I wanted to write that book so that I could actually educate and empower business owners not only to, you know, to make the best decisions with their, with their companies, but, you know, but also being able to hold their partners accountable to getting the results that they're paying them for. Right? And so regardless of if they hire me or not, like, I just want to basically kind of set the record straight. Here's the main things that you should be holding your agencies accountable for, right? And here's the vernacular, right? And so as a result of me kind of writing that book and educating people, you know, that helped grow my agency, right? Because a lot of people read the book and they're like, screw it, like, I just want to hire this guy. Right? You know, but then there's a lot of people that can't afford to hire us, you know, and so we're very honest and transparent about that. And you know, we, we tell people, hey, listen, like, if you're trying to be like a personal injury lawyer in Los Angeles and you've got a two thousand dollar per month budget, like that's not realistic, you know, I mean, it's not realistic, right? And so like, I would much rather tell you to take that 2000 and take your family to Disney than, you know, to give it to some SEO person that's going to false promises. And then now you've got a bad, you know, taste in your mouth because you've been paying this company 2,000amonth for two years and you're not getting any results, right? So, so anyway, that's one thing, it does work, but I would encourage you to at least educate yourself on it. And you know, my book might be A good place to start, I guess.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Sure. So what are some of the foundational elements of SEO that business owners should be aware of?
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah, there's really, I mean SEO, like as complex as it, it might sound, you know, there's really three main pieces of SEO, like in the most simplest of terms, you know, the first is a having a website that Google can crawl. So you have a website that looks good, you know, you know, there's not a lot of errors, you know, there's not a lot of issues. It loads fast. Right now you and I could do a three day bootcamp talking about technical SEO. So I'm really oversimplifying this. Right. So, but hey, having having a website, you know, that is really, you know, crawlable by Google and it doesn't have a lot of issues. Right. So that's the first piece. The second piece is publishing content that satisfies the intent of what your customers are searching for. Right. So that's the second pie. And you could do that in the form of writing content, creating videos, creating infographics. Right. So there's different ways that you can kind of create content to help satisfy the intent of what people are searching for. And the third and most important piece of SEO is boosting the popularity of your domain. And you do that by getting other websites to link back to you. And those are basically considered like votes of trust in the eyes of Google. And so if you get a news story like CNN covering a topic and they mention you and they link back to you, because CNN is such a trusted source and it has such a strong, they call domain authority, that link is so much more valuable than if your friend just linked back to you. Right. So that's the biggest piece and that's the stuff that you really can't fake. Right. These, the popularity signals. And so the best, usually if you see a website ranking in the top three on Google for any type of keyword, in most cases, generally speaking, they have good technical SEO. They have content that satisfies the intent of what people are searching for. And their website has a lot of authority because other websites are linking to it.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: I love that phrase. Boats of trust. That should be the title of your next book.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: There you go. Yep.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: So what are some of the, what are some of the big mistakes? You then see that, that and I, you know, instead let me back up and state it this way. What are the different strategies of SEO for the different levels of business? So let's say your business is making under a million a year. What SEO strategy would you recommend versus a company that's doing 10 million a year.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think if you're, if you're making under a million dollars a year, you know, that's probably the time where you are spending more of your time. You know, maybe writing some, your website or you're reading a book, you know, maybe you're reading my book and it tells you the top 50 foundational links that every small business should have. Right. And then you're going out and like reaching out to the Chamber of Commerce and the Better Business Bureau and, and getting listed there so that you can boost the authority of your domain. Right. A lot of times you're doing a lot of the work in that stage, right. And then maybe you have like a freelance person that knows the technical SEO and they're basically helping you.
So that's usually like the, you know, when you're kind of under a million dollars, once you start making more than a million dollars, then, then you know, your time might be better utilized somewhere else. Right? So maybe now, because you went through the experience and you know what it takes to kind of get some results and it's working because now you're making more than a million dollars. Right. So maybe things are starting to kick in. Well, now you can maybe either look at hiring an agency or bring an in house team in place to start taking over those, those, those tasks. Right? So maybe you have a full time writer now that's writing content and maybe you have somebody that is focused on boosting the popularity of the website by pitching you to, you know, to different trade journals and whatnot or you know, and then from there then, then it's just about scaling it. You know, now if you're at 5 million now you have three writers that are writing content or you're paying an agency $10,000 a month and you're getting five time return on that or ten time return. Right. You know, it just comes down to just measuring and tracking the results and then, you know, continuing to invest in those channels that are actually producing.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: You know, you say something I think is really interesting to, really important to kind of take note of. So I had a conversation with a client earlier today and she was mentioning somebody in her space of like, you know, well, I'm trying to be this, I want to get to this person, right? And right now they're a solopreneur and I know, and I, and I said, well right now I'm like, you're having an unreasonable expectation because you're going, I'm frustrated because I want to get to that person. I'm like, but that person has a team of like 15 full time people just doing this one thing.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Like you and a va. You can't compete with that right now. So you can't look at that going, why am I not there yet? Right. So I think, I think it's important to note that a lot of, again, I think people doing half a million, million, two million, it's easy to look at the big guys in the space going like, what are they doing? How do I get there? And they're not realizing that behind the scenes there's a whole infrastructure to support that.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah, there is. I mean, but still, you know, I think, you know, there's that old saying, right? You know, when's the best time to plant a tree? Right. It was like 20 years ago or today. Right. You know, so, you know, you just, you just need to wake up and educate yourself and just take action, you know, just take a little bit more action. Just be 1% better than you were yesterday.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: So what kind of big changes do you see ahead for SEO this next five years or so especially, you know, obviously AI is the big buzzy. Is that going to maybe level the playing field for a lot of smaller companies or how is that shifting the sort of the SEO space right now?
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Yeah, so AI is definitely, you know, you could look at AI as either an opportunity or a threat.
Right. And so we like to look at it as an opportunity.
We are certainly leveraging AI to become more efficient and effective within our agency. You know, whereas, you know, one person might have been able to write, I don't know, maybe like three articles in a day and now they're able to write seven articles because they're leveraging AI, you know, not, you know, I would argue that it's probably not wise to just take a piece of content directly from ChatGPT and publish it on your website.
You know, there's actually AI detection tools that can track how much of the content is AI.
And so that's why the popularity signals of a website are really important. Right. Because if you have a strong website that has a lot of trust in the eyes of Google, then Google's going to be a little bit more favorable to that website even if they are using AI. Right. Whereas if you have a website that you just bought from GoDaddy that you know nobody knows about, nobody's linking to, and you just start publishing 100 pages of AI content every single day, that's not going to go anywhere. Right. So, so I think, you know, you want to continue to strengthen your. Your authority, like me as a person, you as a person. Like, we wrote books, right? You wrote a lot more books than I wrote, you know, but. But in the eyes of Google, right, it's very apparent, like, that I am a trusted source. Right. They call that your E is your area of expertise, authority, and trust. Right. So Google is also picking up on a lot of other signals that are outside your website to determine whether or not you are a trusted entity in your space. Right. And you really can't fake that.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Love it.
Somebody's listening in our conversation and they're loving what you're saying. Like, so, first off, they've got your book, Honest SEO. But if they want to maybe explore bringing somebody like you or your team on board, where do they go to find more information about you? Yeah.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Thanks, Travis. So. So our agency is just Hennessy Digital, and you just go to hennessy h E-N-N-E-S-S-E-Y.com. you can fill out a form and somebody would do a call with you. You could also follow me on. I'm very active on LinkedIn, on Instagram. I publish video content just about every single day on both of those platforms. And so one of my passions in life is just continuing to educate people about a subject that I'm still passionate. Yeah.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: Well, thank you so much for your time. It's been fantastic. It's been super usable.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me, Travis. I appreciate it.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Cheers.
