Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to Founder 2 Founder, the ultimate podcast for entrepreneurs who refuse to settle for ordinary. Hosted by Sardor Umrdinov, founder and CEO of Home Alliance - a $100+ million tech-enabled home services platform operating nationwide.
From bootstrapping his first business to building a horizontally and vertically integrated empire, Sardor brings you raw, unfiltered conversations with successful entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and game-changers who've turned their visions into multi-million dollar realities.
Each episode dives deep into the real stories behind business success - the failures, pivots, breakthroughs, and strategies that actually work. Whether you're scaling your first startup, planning an exit, or looking to acquire your next business, you'll get actionable insights from founders who've been there and done that.
What You'll Learn:
- How to scale from startup to 8-figure valuations
- M&A strategies and exit planning
- Home services industry insights and opportunities
- Investment and business acquisition tactics
- Leadership, team building, and operational excellence
- Fundraising, private equity, and wealth building strategies
Connect with Sardor:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sardorum/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sardorum/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sardorum
Subscribe now and join thousands of entrepreneurs building their path to financial freedom!
"Partnerships are everything. Success is not a solo journey." - Sardor Umrdinov
So that's definitely something I really don't ever talk about cuz I don't like to kind of reveal my strategies. When I start try to get away, then we got to fight. This is the worst that we will ever see in terms of AI. Whatever tools you did yesterday, we don't use a memo. No. So I'm already in breach before I start. Just lying for the company and just trying to take the checks from different places. I'm glad we both got the memo to wear black shirts today. This the best life hack actually. [Music] Hello everyone. Today we have our guest Jason. Jason Jason Hennessy. Uh he's a founder and owner of one of the top marketing SEO agencies in the law firm industry. We're going to be talking about how he he built the the agency, how he was able to scale it so big, and how what it take him to build it. I'm honored to be here. I'm glad we both got the memo to wear black shirts today. Sordor and I kind of go way back. It's funny. We first met kind of in a uh executive uh coaching group called Vistage years and years ago and we kind of remained friends uh this whole way and so our stories have continued to evolve since then and uh just an honor to be here. Um I have an agency it's called Hennessy Digital Build It Up. We just celebrated 10 years last month and literally on the anniversary of uh of us kind of building that agency 10 years later we also exited. Um and so uh we're going to get into that story about you know um some of the failures, some of the setbacks, some of the lessons that I've learned. And so I'm excited to share this story with everyone. Thank you guys. Please keep watching it. We're going to be diving deep on every single step of how he have started the business and what lessons he have learned, what kind of wins he got and what actually help him to really scale this business. Right? And please uh subscribe and continue watching it. [Music] Jason, everyone is saying that AI will kill SEO. I think, you know, AI is constantly um like I think we're kind of in the first inning of of AI. I think it's evolving. I think AI this is the worst that we will ever see. In terms of AI, I think it's just going to get better. Um uh in terms of like SEO, same thing. You know, I think the uh core principles kind of have stayed the same. You know, SEO is all about, you know, creating content that satisfies the intent of what people are searching for. And then the Google algorithm is based upon the amount of links that you get that help boost the credibility uh and the trustworthiness of your asset which is your website. Um and so I think there's certain aspects of uh SEO that um you know you can certainly be using more AI you know in terms of like content creation or optimizing or you know even some of the developmental tasks you know a lot of that can be used now with AI if you kind of know how to do it right. Um, but I want the one thing that I think um, you know, you can't necessarily do with AI is build all of those different trust components, right? AI is not going to be able to go out and join the Better Business Bureau. AI is not going to go out and, you know, get a listing on six legal directories, you know, that, you know, so like, you know, and that's really what it takes to rank on Google. I'd say that's kind of like 70% of the equation is getting those strong back links coming back to your website. So I don't ever see a world where AI is kind of doing that. Um but at the same time I But do you think the traffic is going to move from Google Google to that was that's where I was going to go next. Um and so uh yeah we're doing a lot of reverse engineering. We're studying that now. Um, and it's really interesting, um, when I when I start to look at like what does it take to rank on, you know, uh, ChatGpt, like if you type in I do a lot of work with attorneys, right? Like who is the best personal injury lawyer in Los Angeles, right? You know, nowadays like chat GPT is showing you the sources that they're using, right? And it's no different than reverse engineering the Google algorithm, right? And so a lot of the sources sometimes are like with chatbt if you have it on your website that says we are the best, right? Then they're using your website as one of the sources, right? You know, but then they'll also show that you're listed in Yelp and you've got so many fivestar reviews and you're listed in Super Lawyers and all these other places. So it's it's no different. I mean, everybody's kind of pulling the data, right, from the greater web, right? And so SEO whether you call it SEO or whatever term you want to give it well probably it's going to be like AI search optimization like right like search is now going to the AI like ship or whatever this like AI is out there like you can do the same thing like whatever you did on as for the Google search now you're doing it for the AI. That's exactly right. Yeah. As long as you feed the proper content it will rank you like it will show you. Yep. And so those that are actually getting ahead of the curve now, um, you know, you're going to have a big advantage, you know. So you don't think the SEO specialists will lose their job within three years? I don't I don't think so. I mean, you might, you know, you might have to develop new skills advanced. Yeah. Like you might need to develop like prompting skills, right? Advanced prompting skills. You know, AI is just the tool, you know, I mean, you still need, you know, the human that is actually kind of like that's controlling the tool, you know? Yeah. As a white hat SEO guy, what do you think about black hat and gray hat SEO? So, I I live in a uh in in the world of legal, right? So, when I work with my clients, everything is all above board, all white hat. We don't push the needle at all. Um, you know, and and that's because, you know, I could potentially get my clients disbarred where they lose their law license. And so, I don't ever want to be in a position like that, right? Um, however, you know, if I was an affiliate marketer on the side, um, you know, I can certainly push the needle. I mean, like it's not illegal to be a gray hat SEO or black hat SEO. It might be against the Google guidelines, right? But as an affiliate marketer, if you can figure out some type of exploit where you know like a lot of people um were exploiting like major websites like Forbes, right, or USA Today where you basically pay money to basically publish an article on USA Today about the 50 best vacuum cleaners for 2025 and then you put your affiliate link there and you know, Google trusts that website very much. Now it's ranking when people type in best vacuum cleaners kind of is that black hat potentially right you know but now you're making a lot of money until Google like realizes wait a second people are exploiting the algorithm and if you can move the high GR like 90 GR within one week right exactly like I hey I applaud that stuff I'm like that's savvy you know and and that's just scratching the surface you know it can get really dark dark dark you know um and uh and I I love that stuff I go to masterminds. I'm going to a mastermind in Manchester, you know, with some really dark black hat people. Um, and I just love learning like their whole world, you know, because it's not really the world I live in, but I have got a lot of respect for those folks. Sardor and I were in a Vistage group uh together, so that you guys kind of understand the history. And, uh, in our Vistage group is, you know, a lot of traditional businesses, you know, people that run, you know, manufacturing plants and stuff like that. And here's Sardoor and I that are like in this whole world of like internet marketing. He and I spoke like a different language than the most. And uh and Sardoor is like as savvy as they come and not not so much like exploiting the Google algorithm, but man, he figures out ways to do things to get rankings that I've never seen in my life, man. And so hats off to to S. At that time, we had 10,000 domains, right? for each city and each key. Oh my god. Yeah, it's it's and it's it's legal to have it. Like it's not like illegal to have so many domains. You just pick and and you're master at delegating too. I mean that's like your key as well. Like you figure out a process and then you you get 16 and then you go big. You have 50 people doing that one thing. And I mean it's it's it's I've got but the only thing is you have to always advance because people copy. So you have to always have whatever tools you did yesterday. We don't use them now. Oh, we're always like advancing whatever we're using now probably other people going to start using it in few years like we have to always like come up with new ideas. Yeah, there's the pioneers that develop the strategies and then there's those that actually like just follow the strategies of those that have pioneered it, you know? Yeah. What do you think? Like if the company has $5,000 for the marketing budget, do you think they should spend on SEO or not? It depends on like where you are, right? Um, you know, if you need to turn your lights on, like if this is just an extra $5,000 per month, right? Um, you know, that's a much different equation than if you have to feed your family on 5,000, right? So, if if you have to feed your family on $5,000 and you need to make your phone ring, um, you know, I would probably say, um, you know, start, you know, you have to start with a website and you have to start publishing content. You probably can't take that $5,000 to hire an agency to do everything for you. You might have to start writing your content, right? You might have to start building your link. You might have to start taking like YouTube courses to learn about this stuff, which is not a bad thing, right? So, I would bestly in invest that in my education in something. Um, and then I'd probably would use maybe some paid marketing as well um to at least start driving some results so that you can sell widgets or get leads or whatever your business is. Um, and then once you start making money, then you just figure out where should I now I've got 7,000. Okay, great. I'm going to put more money in SEO. SEO is definitely one of those things that you're at least eight months, nine months away from like getting any leads if you're just starting with a brand new domain. Um, you know, whereas, you know, paid social and everything else is just quicker. Like that's the game, you know, like Google, Facebook, they all want you to pay to play. You know what I mean? I normally use rule of 10. Okay. So the company uh can spend 10% of the revenue for marketing. Okay. And they can spend 10% of that marketing budget for the SEO. H that's good. Yeah. And later when that market SEO traffic builds up, you can start moving that 90% another 10 like 80 20 then 37 like start moving the budget towards that SEO direction. That's what I would do. I like that. I think that's a good formula. Like in the beginning, I would not spend more than 10% of the marketing budget for SEO. Now, was it always 10%? Like cuz when SEO is really easy, I would say you probably would have allocated more money in the beginning. If it was predictable, yes. Now, it's a little bit kind of predictable. Yes. If if it's not like if I don't have the benchmark or trend, how I can like clearly calculate repeat, I won't until I crack the code. I like that. I think that's a that's a good strategy. You've heard it here. I mean like follow that say the same thing. You want to raise capital you don't want to take someone's more than 10% of their liquid capital. So from that 5,000 you're taking 500 only 500. Yes. Like the rest of 4,500 let them actually like distribute like other other like so they can keep the lights on and actually put that on as an investment in 6 months 9 months. Yeah. That is going to start giving you like 5 10 whatever the ros. Then you start actually investing more. Yeah. To that. I think that that makes a lot of sense to me. [Music] Jess, let's talk about your your company. Um, I believe you were able to build virtual teams, virtual companies before it was even trendy. How you did that? So, it's interesting. So, that was all by design. Um, it's through trial and error, I would say. Um, my old agency was not set up like that. Um, I had a different agency that was in Atlanta, Georgia, and we had a nice office, you know, on the 18th floor, right? Beautiful. But the problem was that I had to recruit from a five mile radius of that office. And so, the talent pool wasn't as big as I would have liked. And in the world of digital marketing, right, you know, you got to get a strong talent pool. And sometimes that talent pool is going to come from the Ukraine or Bulgaria or wherever else, right? And so when I set up my second agency, this is well before CO, this was 2015. Um I'm like, I want my company to be virtual. Um and so that was all by design. And so when CO happened, business as usual, you know. Yeah. It doesn't it didn't really affect, right? What was your like best hire and what was your worst hire? Best hire is when you can start to replace yourself in the more higher tier functions of the business. Yeah. You know, when you really actually make an investment and you bring somebody that's like highly capable. Um, so I would say, you know, when we started to bring in like my COO, my CFO, you know, my VP of uh people success, you know, those type of people were basically, I would say, my best people. Those are the people that were uncomfortable because they were not cheap, right? But um but those are also the same people that will give you, you know, a 10 time return on your investment. So it's a risky move. Um, but when how do you determine like if you're ready for that kind of person and how uh like when you are kind of growing entrepreneur maybe you don't know how to read people yet like you just know how to you read the resume but you don't know if they're going to deliver or not because people might have a lot of experience or whatever but can you really uh read the the candidates properly or somebody helped you to actually hire that like what was the process look like or did you just to make some mistakes because I did the mistake like one first time when I hired VP I was not ready myself not the VP was not like was bad I was not ready for the VP at that time oh sure yeah yeah um so for me the story goes like this um you know I was making a lot of money my first couple years of business um it was a lifestyle business right it wasn't really kind of like an enterprise business um and so you know when you make a lot of money you also pay a lot of taxes if you live in California or you know even just you know anywhere I guess. Um and so at the end of the year I had to write a large check to the government. Um and so don't get me wrong like I pay my share of taxes. I know where it all kind of goes but when you're kind of in hyperrowth mode um I didn't want to spend so much of my time being pulled away from vacations and you know and stuff to take calls. And so I said why did I work so hard? you know, I'd much rather take that money and reinvest it into really high capable people that will allow me to get more of my time back to do other things that I feel like I'm better at. Um, and so that it was the initiative of why I decided to hire, you know, you know, higher tier people. Now, the higher tier people are not just on LinkedIn, you know what I mean? Like they're not like if you've got a players, they're not just openly available looking for work, you know? you know, those those are the people that you kind of have to go out and head hunt, right? Because they're probably gainfully employed somewhere else. Um, and so when you're looking for, you know, somebody that's very specific that's going to do something, um, you know, uh, you have to reach out to your network, right? Um, and so when we were looking for somebody that was like a higher up to to help out with SEO strategy, where did I go within my own network? And I went to my friend that worked for Disney and he ran SEO for Disney. and I was able to kind of pull him in to come work at Hennessy Digital, right? But he wasn't just on the market looking for a job. Yeah. You know, yeah, they're not really on market. You have to just head hunt them and you have to have a better comp plan basically, right? Like and you have to kind of have a vision probably so they want to follow you instead of dropping like huge company and going smaller agency why why they're going after like they have to have a purpose and a reason. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. because those people are, you know, I always like to say this. Um, you know, I remember one time I I was like I I thought I landed this perfect person that was going to like take, you know, this role and and be amazing at it. And then, um, you know, after kind of going through everything and giving this person exactly what they were asking for, at the end of the day, he sent me a notice saying, "Thank you so much for the opportunity, but I decided to kind of go elsewhere." And so, I remember like reaching out to my my coach. I got a business coach and I was like, "Why do you think this happened?" He's like, I'm like, "I gave this person everything that they wanted, right?" And I thought it was like a done deal. And he's like, "Your talent pool just wasn't, you know, your magnet." He said, "Your magnet just wasn't strong enough, right? There was another company that just had a stronger magnet." I'm like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Well, let's look at everything. Let's look at your benefits. Let's look at this. Let's look at the PTO time. let's you know and at the time like it wasn't you know an attractive place to work when you looked at all of the benefits and everything and I can see why the the magnet of another company was stronger and so over the next five years like I always thought of that how can I make my magnet stronger so that people not only want to come but once they hear you know like a magnet it's really hard to pull it off right you know and so that was just um something that I looked at interesting interesting uh tell me about your like bad experience on the hire like and like why it was bad and what kind of lessons probably you learned from it. So I think early on I think a lot of entrepreneurs make this mistake um when you're just starting out um you know you you get your first business card and you're the CEO of the company, right? You're the only employee of the company, right? But you are the CEO and you're the founder, right? And it feels real good when you kind of give out your card, right? Yeah. I saw the Mark Zuckerberg's like the CEO. See? Yeah. Um, and so, uh, you know, but and then you just like start recruiting people and immediately, right, you're like, "All right, I'm going to recruit this person." And like now you've got three employees and then you have this person that your chief marketing officer, right? I'm the CEO, you're the chief marketing officer, and and you are the chief technology officer, right? Meanwhile, these people are like fresh out of college. They've never been a chief marketing officer, right? They're not capable. kind of, you know, so you already gave out the titles to them, right? Yeah. So now you're already like, you know, and so like, you know, it's great if you're just going to remain a threeperson company forever, right? You know, but if you have, you know, goals and ambitions of kind of really building a business, you know, when you start growing, you know, you're going to read need a real chief marketing officer, right? And the chief marketing officer of a $1 million company is a lot different of a chief marketing officer of a $50 million company, right? And so when you start just kind of giving away those titles early, I think that's a big mistake. Um, and I'm sure there's people that might be watching this episode that have done that, right? And you're going to have to roll that back at some point. And it's very uncomfortable to do that. And so I remember one time, um, I brought in somebody and, um, she was she was hired almost like, um, like a personal assistant, I guess, if you will. Um, but I gave her a chief of staff title. Okay. Right. Um, and so, you know, because you know, the president of the United States has a chief of staff and that's just a glorified way of saying personal assistant. Um, but you know, then we started hiring people and she took it upon herself that she thought she was the chief of all the staff, you know what I mean? And so, like that just was awkward and it was weird and I had to kind of dial that back down, you know? So, anyway, I think um titles are important. I've definitely have made my mistakes with just kind of giving out titles like that. Yeah. Once actually uh when I had my personal assistant who was doing the role of CMO as well at the same time and I gave a percentage of the topline revenue and when I start hiring more people under her my pie start getting less. Sure. And when I start tried to get away then we got the fight like I lost two people at the same time. I got my personal assistant and the CMO because it was in not correct construct what the structure of it right like it it was impossible to negotiate but after that I no longer put like really like infinite structures anymore we have a quarterly review like always company has right review the structure and but never we're going to go back and change the back words we can only can be able tell you up front what is going to happen in the future of course yeah you you live and you learn. I mean, like, you know, you just kind of we've had to do that, too. You know, like we we we hold the right to make adjustments as necessary. You know what I mean? That's just kind of how it works. So, Mhm. What about the the processes like uh on your highest uh like when you had a lot of employees, what was the number count? We're probably like about 130 full-time employees now. Yeah. Like how how do you manage that so many people? like do you use kind of some tools like how do you know that employees are not just watching YouTube or Tik Tok or Instagram whatever they're not work they're not actually working they're just tracking time you know it really it comes down to uh accountability and actually you know um you know performance right I'd say you know you give people duties you give people task right and if they actually accomplish you know the task then you certainly don't have to micromanage um people. I consider myself not the best manager, you know, I'm more of like a visionary, you know, high start kind of person. Um, and so, uh, I I am good at delegating probably like you. Um, and so I only have two direct reports, me personally. So, my two direct reports is my personal assistant and then my COO and president, right? The same person. So, those are the only two people that report to me. Everything up kind of rolls up to them. In fact, my assistant has three people that report to her, right? Like she has three assistants, I guess, if you will. Um, and so, uh, you know, I just know that that's not my strength. And so, you know, the architecture of the business or the org tribe is set up where there's, you know, there's top level management, mid-level management, you know, managers, and then, you know, everybody else that kind of reports up. Um, and so we use tools like Slack. Um, we use Aauna. Um that's the project management clear. Yep. We use that. Um and so we have point systems like they developed a way so that you know we we do like our weekly meetings and everybody says all right I'm going to accomplish so many points this week. And so um and there's a way to kind of track it but it's not always perfect. Like you know just yesterday I'll be vulnerable here. Um just yesterday there was a call that was happening. It was like a like a a call where like somebody was going to talk to our company about like health, you know, I lost a lot of weight and so that's a big part of our culture. And so they were kind of giving this little presentation about health and wellness. And so one of our team members that was only been with us for maybe about six months forgot to mute himself and he was sitting on this call and he was basically speaking about a project that had nothing to do with Hennessy Digital. Turns out that this guy had a second job, you know what I mean? And so, you know, my um uh senior director or senior VP of people's success is like, and it's interesting because they couldn't get him to mute himself, right? And now it's like interrupting everything and so they just kind of terminated him right away. This just happened yesterday, right? So, like even with the perfect systems, you know, sometimes, you know, you you you have uh you have things that kind of slip through the cracks, you know. Yeah. I recently uh was reading a Reddit and someone was like saying like I was I quit 6 months ago but I was keep getting checks nobody noticed. Yeah. And and other people in Reddit is saying like I do the same thing but they not really understand by doing that you actually stop growing in the company. Like of course you do what is the purpose of actually being like just lying for for the company and just trying to take the checks from different places. I don't know man. It's a it's a whole new world. That's not how we grew up. You know what I mean? Like I I want to advance. I want to kind of accelerate. Yeah. I don't want to just I think there's a they call that silent quitting. I think silent quitting. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the best way of growth is like growing is uh taking more responsibility, ownership, right? Like by doing that you can actually kind of be respectful, trusted and that's how actually you get higher position, higher pay. That's how I mean my CTO became CTO like it didn't start at the CTO like he just earned the respect you know he just took the responsibility upon himself to be a leader right and and that's the stuff that kind of surfaces right yeah do you guys like have a lot of processes like SOPs probably like for every single job right like how long it takes to onboard people yeah we we do um so the onboarding process uh you know I would say it's probably like a whole, you know, it's probably like two weeks like really like getting really familiarized with the curriculum and doing this and the sexual training orientation and all the stuff that you kind of have to do sometimes by law. Um, so there's a lot of that. Um, and then you know getting that but then there's a virtual it's all virtual. No, but but I mean it's still like sexual harassment is still there. It's it's a mandatory thing like you know like you have to do it right. Um and so there's like a video that hasn't changed in seven years that you have to watch and you can't like skip through it, right? And so so there is um you know there is that um and you know but I our team you know does a really good job. Uh we've got we actually have somebody that um is in uh our learning and development. So we have somebody that actually builds out the curriculum and works with our team members um so that there's courses uh that they can take and tests that they can take. And so we definitely made a big investment into learning and development for sure. What percentage of your uh people are US and what percentage overseas? That's a good good question. Um I'd like to say that we're probably like 65% US and the remaining overseas, you know, all over all over the world, literally. Yeah. And what would be your like uh revenue per employee is like what 160,000 a year? you are perfect. Like, you know, that's probably $156,000 uh is is what that number is. And it's something that we obviously look at, you know, more so my finance team than than me. Yeah. Probably because of the global team, right? Like the the like because of virtual maybe it's a little bit less efficient, but because of global you get efficiency. Yeah. Uh of that. So, it kind of evens. Totally. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Because normally you cannot really compare the SAS companies when you can actually do the same amount of revenue with 20 people or like it's completely different. Yeah. Yeah. It was really interesting. So I just got back I did an executive MBA over at Stanford and so I was in Palo Alto last week where How do you like how it work? So awesome. You know I mean like you I go to college not because like I have to go to college or I'm going to get an advancement or a bonus. You know what I mean? Like when you're an entrepreneur I think we just like love knowledge. Um, and so it's great to kind of be surrounded by, you know, an international group. I was the only one in my study group from the United States. And you're now in rooms with professors that like have taught, you know, the founders of Door Dash and, you know, Google and um, you know, OpenAI. I mean, literally like these people were in some of these classrooms taught by the same professors. Um, and so uh, it was it was awesome. Um uh but um you know everything there is like you know talking about like the whole world of of AI and you know and how that's all kind of changing. So it was great. That's cool. I heard har uh Harvard has OPM. I think they do president. Yeah. You get alumni status. Um you have to go for three years in a row and you spend three weeks on campus living in the dorm. So it's a commitment. Um but uh but definitely uh I hear so many great things. Yeah. A few from my friends went there and they they were telling really good good stories about it. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. We we as entrepreneurs we never stop learning, right? We always No, I mean you just you just you you love it. Um and you just want to kind of grow and uh you know if if you're the smartest person in the room, you need to go to a different room and sometimes you know you got to go to these universities to get taught by some people that are smarter than you, you know. So you said you have only two direct reports uh your COO and your personal or business assistant right you know there is a couple leaders that's change meeting right then I guess that would probably be a different name for it yeah yeah it's like you discuss that about not the KPIs not scorecards not the run just discuss about ideas how you can improve and get better that's right yeah and that's a hour and a half 90 minutes we do that a 90-minute call once a Yeah, once we in How many people is there? There's probably like seven or eight people on that call. Um, what functions and roles? So, our CTO, our president, um, uh, uh, our director of our outbound like link building, um, we have uh, one of our BPs of SEO who's doing a lot of like testing with AI. Um, our uh, senior director of of content. Um so basically most of the leaders of the respective departments um that all kind of funnel up in terms of developing in the overall strategy that we deploy for our clients. You got it. And who runs that meeting? Uh our CTO Blind. [Music] Can you tell me three AI tools? What is working currently for SEO? Okay. Um, one of the things that we uh are doing now is we're just using Open AI, ChatGpt to uh take websites and translate them into multiple languages. Um, so that's something that's working very well. You have a website that might have 2,000 pages of content and we're just kind of automatically kind of like translating it into uh into multiple languages and building the architecture. And so all the same links in the English strategy are all kind of getting applied and it's using the same anchor text in just multiple languages. So you might have a website that's not getting any traffic at all in Spanish and then you build that. Subfolder and now you've got 2,000 pages in Spanish and now you're basically starting to get Oh, so you're basically doing SEO for a different language as well. Oh, interesting. Yep. That I think that one is a uh a golden nugget. I think you know if uh if you've got a big website you know that's something that you can think about. Um what else? Uh you know um my team is using it more to develop uh content strategies as well. Um you know you know looking at gaps and putting in different competitors and you know now we're actually writing a lot of content. So we're looking at um like stores where people might get injured. Uh, and so, uh, when you work with lawyers, everybody's trying to go after Los Angeles personal injury lawyer, Los Angeles car accident lawyer, but you know, there's also did you get injured at Home Depot in Los Angeles, you know, did you get injured at Trader Joe's in Los Angeles, right? Um, you know, there's a lot of longtail keywords. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity where we're leveraging AI to not only help write the content for that, but to develop the strategy as well. Um, so I'd say that one is something that's uh very effective. That's the stuff that is very there's no search volume for that, so it's never going to show up in any keyword research tool and there's not a lot of competition for that, right? So if you just write a page that satisfies the intent of that, you'd be surprised at how often the phone will ring, you know, for some of our clients for um stuff like that. So that's definitely something I really don't ever talk about, you know, because I don't like to kind of reveal my strategies. Um but uh you know that's I think a good one. Um and then there's just there's so many other tools um that we use like we use a tool called phrase.io. Um and that's basically a tool that will look at the top three websites that are already ranking for a term and it'll tell you you know you've got 4,000 page of pages you know words. You know the average is 1,700 and you know we want you to put this keyword in a little bit more and you kind of improve the score a little bit. So, that's a tool that's been around a while. Um, but now they're getting a little bit more advanced with AI. Um, and so that's something that's also working very well in the world of uh in the world of u SEO. What about what tools? Probably you don't use them yourself. Probably your team does it. Like what tools you would recommend? Uh, so we use we use uh Grock, we use uh chat GPT. All the usual stuff. Um, there's another one I can't remember the name of. It starts with an M. Uh, Mantis, I think. Are you familiar with that one? Um, I think it's might be Mantis. Um, but, uh, a lot of a lot of the innovation, um, is really happening in from a, um, one of our team members that really kind of owns the whole world of AI in our company. What about SEO tools like let's say HRS versus Seamrush or other tools? Which one do you prefer the most? So, for years and years and years, I was a a fan of Semrush. Um, I thought they had the best tool set. Um, and they're still amazing. Um, but then they went public. Um, and you know, when you go public, right, you know, they need to make money and, uh, and so the prices went up for that. Um, and then I felt that the innovation wasn't as strong as it used to be because there's a lot of, uh, regulation and, you know, bureaucracy and red tape. you got to go through and you want to feature have a team of lawyers that looks at everything whereas uh HRES is still a private company um and they are very innovative um and they um you know they'll come out with a new function on their website like every week um and I'm friends with the the chief marketing officer there and so if there's even things that I have ideas like I've got you know a voice to maybe um to bring that to the table and so nowadays I'm actually a bigger fan of hrefs actually. Got it. Let's say if business owner wants to hire an SEO agency. Yep. Uh how to interview them? What things to look up? Uh pay attention when you're hiring an SEO agency. So because a lot of people think like SEO agencies, they would promise you fair tales, but they don't deliver. like like how you can actually find out from the beginning during the interview that actually you're not going to burn a lot of cash and plus time and you're going to be back to zero in whatever the period of time like. Yeah, that's a that's a good question. I I would definitely start off by educating yourself. You don't have to be an expert in the world of SEO. Um in fact, I wrote a book um it's called Honest SEO here. Um you know, you can get a copy of this book. gets like 20 bucks on Amazon. I'm not looking to to get rich from selling books. The reason why I wrote the book was to educate and empower people to make the best decision. Is going to be writing a lot of comments. We're going to choose we're going to send this book to you guys. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Absolutely. Right. It's the best life hack actually for like how much that book cost? 20 bucks on Amazon. So look for $20 you can actually buy the book pick his brain actually know whatever he knows actually like then start investing like uh like thousands of dollars in SEO before why not to just read it. How long is it going to take to read the book? Couple hours you know you might maybe from a plane ride from Los Angeles to New York. Do you have an audio version on there is? Yeah. Yeah, there is. You just listen to it, right? Like Yeah. So like how long? Like two hours probably or three hours something like that to listen. Yeah. Like before to invest in search engine optimization and SEO and budget like listen the book or read the book then actually look for the agency and and make sure that agency actually already does so SEO for that trade for that industry. Yes. Otherwise it's going to be harder to actually get results. and then talk to basically the clients of that SEO agency to to then see the results like what they did. Ex. Exactly. Right. Yeah. It's one of the the secrets because if you don't do that and you go in this like not knowing, you're going to get taken advantage of. Like there's a lot of bad actors in this space and it's unfortunate. They're going to take your money. It's going to sound very affordable. It's like, "All right, 1,500 bucks a month. Great." And then you find yourself like, you know, 12 months later and you're like, "What the heck, bud?" you know, they're like, "Oh, it's, you know, there was a Google algorithm update and you like there's always an excuse, you know, so educate yourself. Educate yourself." You know, that book is written for like a layman that is not looking to be an advanced SEO expert. It's really written to know who to hire and how to hold them accountable to make sure that people don't, you know, get taken advantage of because it's very easy to get taken advantage of. So, start off by educating yourself. Um, and then once you're educated, then do your research. you know, if you are a plastic surgeon, you know, maybe find an agency that has a bunch of plastic surgeon clients um and has gotten amazing results and talk to some of their clients and and just truly, you know, make sure that it's going to be a right fit and you know, when you're interviewing them, like you're probably going to talk to the owner of the agency, but I imagine that the owner of the agency isn't the person that's going to be managing your campaign. you know, maybe ask, can you speak to the account manager that you'll be working with to understand their level of knowledge, right? You know, just start asking the right questions and find the right agency that that fits. Um, and just make sure you get a realistic budget. Um, you know, we get clients all the time that reach out to us and they've got a $5,000 budget, but they want to be number one for Los Angeles personal injury lawyer, right? You know, unfortunately, I I'm not a magician. like you know you're competing with big big budgets and $5,000 isn't going to stretch very far. What kind of budget you need for for that kind of in Los Angeles? You're probably like, you know, north of 20 grand a month, you know, you know, 50. We've had a client that, you know, was do you have the clients who ask you like uh to give you exclusivity on the region or not? We used to have that um and then we stopped giving exclusivity um for two reasons. Uh one is I am not Google and so I don't control where Google is going to place content. Yeah, I might be working with a lawyer in Atlanta and I might be working with a lawyer in Los Angeles and I might write a question on the Atlanta website that says, "What should you do if you're in a car accident and that might rank nationally, right?" And now I've got one of my clients. So, I'm already in breach before I start. So, I don't like that. Um, and then the second thing is if my lawyer in Los Angeles wants to open up an office in Atlanta, right? If I've got exclusivity with this person, then you know, now I'm like, I can only work on your Los Angeles stuff. I can't work, right? And so we just we don't we don't do that. Oftent times, uh, if clients want to work with us and they don't want us to work with a with some of their competitors, we'll put together an exhibit list, um, where, you know, for the right amount of money, like you can actually include three law firms or competitors that you don't want us to work with and then we'll basically agree to that. So that's one of the things that we do. [Music] Jason tell me the uh about the the time when you start thinking you are ready to sell the company like why and what how how that feeling came in any decision. Yeah. Uh because a lot of people especially home services they think they build their companies like they're going to live it for their kids right like a family business like lifetime business like when is actually came to your mind or make that decision or feeling that you decided to actually sell the company? Yeah. So um so when you sell a company it's definitely a strategy right it doesn't just kind of happen. Um, and so for us, you know, we we've been kind of like it started out as a lifestyle business, right? And then from there you hire people and you end up kind of building something, you start replacing yourself uh in all regards of the business and then the business starts growing without you. Um, and usually when you're in that period of you're in the growth mode, your margins are kind of going down because you're hiring a lot of people to kind of grow. Um, and so, uh, for years and years and years, you know, we were at like, you know, very low margins, like 9% margin, uncomfortable margins, you know, but I just knew that we were doing it to grow. And then last year, which was 2024, we were focused on let's just grow our profitability in 2024. So maybe we don't go to so many conferences, maybe we don't spend so much money on marketing, right? Just to kind of get your IBIDA up. Um, and we were going to do that over the course of three years. And then in 2027, then we were going to look at potentially maybe exiting, right? So, it was definitely like a three-year journey. Um, during that process, you're supposed to start to take meetings um so that you start building relationships with private equity folks and stuff like that, you know. And I would say probably like maybe a year or a year and a half out if you're really serious, you might want to engage an investment banker. Y who's going to help you uh you know bring different parties to the table to potentially like bid on you, right? Um but for us it kind of came early. Um we started to take some calls. A couple were not the right fits. We didn't hire an investment banker. somebody introduced us to the private equity group that we actually are partnered with now. Um, and we really like the conversation. We like the thesis that they were building. We were bought into them as a as a team. We were bought into their vision. And so the conversation started to get more serious. Um, and then we actually, you know, exited um, after that one year instead of the three years. Instead of waiting three years. Got it. because financially it kind of made more sense to do that. It had to be a perfect fit. Like I had to hit that trifecta. It had to be good for my clients, had to be good for my staff, and then selfishly third, it had to be good for me too and my family. Yeah. And so this particular deal, you know, checked all three of those boxes. Um I am uh on the board of this uh this um new holding company, I guess, if you will. Um, and uh, and I'm still the CEO of the company and now I just have a lot more capital behind me to bring some of my ideas to life. And so I think my clients are going to benefit from this. That's cool. What is the strategy behind behind the private equity firm? They're actually doing the only SEO firms or marketing agencies or it's a holding who does like managed service. I don't know like what is the strategy behind the private equity? Yeah. So uh so this is a a private equity group that has like $2 billion under you know management with different um portfolios. Um so for this specific uh thesis or portfolio they wanted to go out and find like the best in class for very niche agencies um or industries um I should say. Um and so they found an agency that's in dental that's kind of like a counterpart of Hennessy Digital. It's called TNT Dental. Um, and so they acquired them. That was the first agency that they brought on. Um, they've got all these relationships with thousands of dentists. Then they found us again, another best-in-class in the legal vertical. And so now we're looking into home services. We're looking into medical um, like plastic surgeons and stuff. And so we'll be kind of growing by way of acquisition. Got it. But then we're also then bolting on other services that you know we can um you know sell to that clientele. So maybe we buy a media agency that does more of the TV advertising in legal. Maybe we buy a call center that has a bunch of relationships. Maybe we buy a couple other agencies that we can upsell or downell to. Right? So that's kind of the thesis of what we're building um with Herringbone Digital. That's the uh the the parent company of that owns Hennessy Digital now and I'm a large shareholder in Herringbo Digital and and uh basically they are looking to buy what kind of revenue on eBizes at the moment like probably they're looking for platform and tuck in right correct yeah I'd say like sweet spot is like 5 to 7 million IBIDA but it's a platform but we're looking at you know smaller deals bills uh if we can find it. Um you know the goal we've got audacious goals you know we want to try to get you know 200 million you know in IBIDA in the pipeline you know before the end of the year um and so uh um and so we're we're we brought in an amazing merger and acquisition team um and and they're staying very busy um so they're very aggressive. Got it. Mhm. So basically uh the sizes you are looking for an agency wise 5 to 10 you said or five to six uh five to seven let's just say that's kind of like the sweet right? Yeah, multiplier probably is going to be right around 10ish. It depends, you know, it it kind of um it can be like depending on the market. It can be like how what the company does, right? Could be three time it could be 10 time. I mean it's somewhere in that range just depending on you know on how profitable the company is whether or not the founders you know this this particular thesis they really like to kind of keep the founders on and then they roll over some of the equity so that because they're not looking to kind of replace the management team like they just want to buy successful businesses that can kind of continue to run and grow you know. Yeah. So basically they they want to keep the founder on like 10 20% 20% probably right. Mhm. Roughly. Yeah, roughly right. Like normally private equity companies are doing that on the home service as well. Yeah. They basically buy the 80% and let you roll in 20% to the holding company. That's kind of like the uh how how most private equity deals work. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. If you have an agency uh doing 5 to7 million IBITA and you would love to join the group and holding company, write in the comment or write you can send a message to Jason. We're going to be leaving his uh contact information in the YouTube link itself. So you can reach out directly or leave your comment. We're going to reach out to you. Even if it's smaller company, right? It can be tuck in. So let us know exactly when you get the number you want. Yeah. And the offer was expected mutually from both sides. Like how did you feel? You know, it's it's certainly a great feeling, you know, when you when you start to build a business. Um and you know, you're it's like buying a home, you know what I mean? Like you buy a house and you sit on it and you're building equity, right? And the only time you ever cash out on the equity is when you sell your home, right? You know, and that's the very same thing with a business. You're building it. For 10 years, I've been building it. Just kind of sitting on the equity and eventually you kind of cash it out. Um, so it's it's a great feeling, you know. I mean, it's uh definitely something that, you know, you know, I've worked very hard for. you create, you know, generational wealth, you know, um, you know, making sure that, you know, my family's obviously taken care of. Um, and so, but truthfully, like when I woke up that next morning, um, you know, I was ready to get back to work and, you know, and that's a feeling that shows that I wasn't necessarily doing it for the money, right? You know, I'm doing it for the pure love of this is something that kind of gives me energy. Um, and so I was right back into business and you know, and then at the end of the day, my wife's like, "Hey, I need you to go to Costco to get toilet paper." You know, same thing. It doesn't matter, right? You know what I mean? Okay, now I'm driving to Costco. So, my life doesn't necessarily change much. I'm a jeans guy with a t-shirt, you know what I mean? It doesn't matter. Um, and so, uh, um, you know, now I'm excited for the next chapter. Um, and you know, I've always built my business on that bootstrap mentality. And so now I'm playing a different game where there's like big capital behind me to make bigger and bolder moves. Um, and so, uh, it's going to be an exciting journey. I'm still young. I'm only 47 at the date of this recording. And, uh, you know, I'm I don't know. I'm just excited for the next chapter. Yeah. Probably it's kind of getting like confirmation of that checkbox like you did it right. like it doesn't last long but kind of getting that confirmation because when we are building a company we doubt a lot we have a lot of doubts maybe surrounding some other people like doubt like if you're going to be able to do it or not because as I said only 17,000 people or companies make to that size for 28 million companies in US is that right yeah yeah it's it's a testament prob probability is really low if you just divide it 28 million by 17,000. What is that? Like the 1% or the 1% of the 1%, right? I mean, yeah, it's it's definitely it's definitely that, you know, and I I a lot of that is like driven from uh not having much as a kid, you know? I mean, that's where I get all my drive from, you know, like growing up I didn't have a car, you know? My mom cleaned houses to make a living, you know what I mean? And so, like I always knew that money was my motivator, right? growing up that was like it you know and so you I believe you at school you were selling chewing gums. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I was because like most you know I didn't come from a very you know rich neighborhood and so a lot of kids were hustlers you know where I grew up and so my hustle was you know like you know getting blow pops from Costco and selling them for 25 cents each and you know getting enough money to kind of buy a video game that I wanted right you know so I didn't have to burden my mom you know I joined the Air Force out of high school. Yeah, cuz I didn't want to burden my mom to have to worry about paying for college if I wanted to accelerate in life. Like I I I'm very independent. Like I take all the responsibility and I put it on myself. And so I've always been that way. And so uh you know and so you you always want that financial goal, that financial goal, right? And you know, eventually you hit it, you know, and so uh you know, I I hit that. Um, and so now, uh, now it's just more of it's not the financial goal anymore. Now I just want to build something big. Um, and I really want to change the world. I want to change my industry. I want to innovate. I want to bring some of my ideas to life. I mean, like I'm super excited about like what what I'm going to be building. Yeah. But but during the process of building, did you have any doubts like when you wake up in the morning, are you doing it correctly or not? Should you take more money instead of hiring more people? Like, yeah. No, there's there's uh there's two schools of thought there, I would say. Um I could have been taking out a lot more money out of my business um as I was building it, but I like investing in real estate or or whatever. You know what I mean? Like you could have been doing that, but then you're not really building an asset that you could eventually like exit with. Um, and so like I just knew that I had a comfortable amount of money that I can actually take as a distribution and live off of and family can live off of, reinvest most of it, most of it, most of it into building out the bigger asset so that hopefully at some point, you know, you get to a place where you can actually look at exiting. Um, and so that was always my mentality. Like was it the perfect formula? Um, probably not. I think I learned uh you know from you know past companies that I've you know uh built and either liquidated or sold to partners you know never like life-changing kind of money or anything but like I've learned a lot over the years and you really earn your your stripes in terms of gray hair. [Music] Tell me about your most expensive screw up you did in your company and how much it cost you and how long it took you to notice. I think you know prior to this agency um I would say uh it was me tinkering around with paperclick myself um thinking like I kind of could do that um when I was more of an SEO student. Um, and so I probably wasted, I don't know, tens and thousands of dollars, you know, just kind of like thinking I could actually like do my own PPC. Um, whereas that's like a unique skill set, you know, where there's people that are way smarter than I am at that. Um, and so, you know, you hire the professionals and they actually make it work. So, I probably wasted a lot of money on just kind of paid marketing thinking I could probably do it myself. Now, I'm sure I could have if I really would have studied it more, but I was so laser focused on SEO um that I probably wasted a lot of money that way. Got it. Got it. So, got it. Then how much money? Oh, you say just tens of thousands. Tens of thousands. Yeah. I don't think I don't think I've made a million dollar mistake. We live and we learn. I I'm always um you know, I'm I'm I'm a big risk taker. Uh I when you don't really come for much, you know, you you're are bold with some of the risk that you take. Um and uh you know, but it's all it's all collective. It's you know, I I kind of understand the um the ROI and the risk there and I try to balance it out when I make my decisions. And I've definitely made my share of mistakes, but I always knew that even if I like failed miserably, like I know what it takes to build it back up again. And I think that's kind of made me um a stronger entrepreneur. What was the decision was almost right, but almost killed the business. So, we we had a a technical SEO person that was like a genius, super smart, um, and he worked for the agency for, I don't know, call it a couple years. Um, but he wasn't necessarily a cultural fit within the organization. um you know was a different type of a leader that you know some other people might not have had respect for. Um but the guy was so brilliant that it was hard to like separate from him and so we operated like that for a couple years and I think that kind of made the culture a little bit toxic. Yeah. Um and so uh so I would say you know you call that the brilliant jerk right? um you know where you know sometimes like it makes more sense of kind of cutting ties with that. You don't know that when you hire them but eventually you learn about that. So I have to say that was probably like don't get me wrong we got amazing results because he was doing it but he just wasn't a cultural fit and so we probably should have parted ways with that individual sooner. I think I know the guy like because you introduced me and you you introduced me you you even referred me to work with him but It didn't work out. Yeah, it didn't work out because his IQ, as you said, like he was smart, but EQ like That's right. It was didn't work out this way, right? That's right. Yeah. We're talking about the same person. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like actually I had a similar situation like every time I choose the IQ or expertise over culture, it doesn't work out. No, it doesn't work out. Like it's because it's the building a company is not about a person, it's about the team, right? The culture like has worked out. Yeah. It's the same with fruit. You know what I mean? You get like bunch of fruit in a bowl and there's one apple that's bad. You look around, all the apples start getting bad, right? Probably that person would be okay in different culture, right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. What is the point of actually like torturing them in this culture when it's not fit? They can accelerate somewhere else, right? Yeah. And I always I always wish the best on everybody, you know what I mean? like you know I I you know just for whatever reason it just didn't work out here. Um and uh you know I just hope the best for everybody. Yeah. And and and also I used to not having those tough qu tough conversations. Mhm. Now I kind of do that like Sure. Earlier earlier yeah because you live and you learn, right? Correct. Yeah. Because if you don't you keep thinking and trying to secure that expertise and you don't have those tough conversation. You're actually stopping the person's actually yours as well from accelerating in their own career because they might not be happy in their place working too. Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah, I agree with that. [Music] Many says agency business doesn't scale and you have proven it's wrong. What was your secret sauce? Like what was your secret? You know, it is hard, right? I I always like to say in my business like SEO is the easy part. Like whereas a lot of people think SEO is the hard part, scaling SEO is the hard part, right? Um and I think uh part of the reason why, you know, some will say that it's not scalable is you're either a control freak, right? You need to kind of be doing everything or you don't build the right curriculum. Um you know, and so for us it was very easy to scale because we're in a very specific niche like we work with lawyers, right? Do you think could you do the same thing? think it if it was a different niche? I think if it was a different niche, we could probably do the same thing. Um, but if it was six different niches, I don't think I would have gotten to the place of Do you believe in going niche or you going you believe in going broad? Um, niche niche. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Cuz trying to build an a that's why I think agencies can't scale. Um, is because a lot of times agencies will just say yes to anybody that will pay them money. So it's like, oh, you're plastic surgeon. That's what I'm saying. You're a plastic surgeon. Okay, great. We'll do it. You know, oh wait, you sell like uh you know, parts for a machine that goes in like dental like equipment. Sure, we'll take you on. Right. Like good luck trying to get like somebody to do keyword research for like a law firm and next thing you know you're like looking at research for like a very specific piece of equipment that goes in a dental machine. You know what I mean? Like it's like two different worlds and it's not as easy to scale that. Even even my internal SEO team I have internal SEO team been working for 10 years they can do one vertical that's it like if they do appliance appliance but if you move them to electrical plumbing even the home service they fail it's so different it's so different so what does that tell you about agencies that try to do everything that's why people say that agencies can't scale and it's partially true correct niching down is so important because the strategy keyword like niching down is really important I agree with you and the other thing too is because we're just like entrenched in one vertical. Well, guess what? You know, we start going to those conferences, we start meeting people, we start having partners that refer us business. Next thing you know, like I'm being asked to speak at those conferences. I'm writing books on that. You know what I mean? Like you're starting to build a personal brand, you know, in one market where it's really hard to do that if it's like segmented into 15 different markets, you know? Tell me about three decisions without which this deal will not happen with this private equity company. Um for one uh having an amazing CFO. Okay. Um because without CFO this deal will not happen, right? No. Yeah. Just because like our books would have been really sloppy. Um we would have never had targets. Uh we would have never like I'm the person that just like spend money. we'll make it we'll make more spend money we'll make more so like actually having budgets but I think once I remember your screenshot on Facebook that you had a target 90day whatever quarterly and you almost like hit it was like pinpoint to that target and budget wise we do yeah know so like we're very precise so we come up with forecasts and that's all on her right and so we know exactly where we need to be and where we're going and realistic and building out like 12 month and 24-month forecast and so if we didn't have that level of uh accountability at the top in the CFO role. You know, a lot of times when you do deals with private equity, like the first thing that they do is quality of earnings, right? They want to like look at your books and make sure that it actually aligns with what you said it is. Um and so the number that they gave us never changed, right? A lot of times that kind of goes down down because the quality of earnings aren't there. So, and we never had quality of earnings audits or anything like that. So like she's just like I said I put Michelle as like CFO level to be running Facebook or Google. I mean she's just great. Um and so I'm very blessed. So I'd say that was definitely one decision. I already talked about some of my other team members um as well. But CFO was very important. Um let's see here. Investing in uh technology. Uh that's another decision that we made. We didn't have to reinvest a lot of money into building out like our own dashboard and our own platform and creating efficiencies with the way in which we do business, but we really built out an engineering team that you know um that really made the lives of our team members uh you know more efficient but also providing transparency to our clients. Um I think that was a a big investment that we made that kind of helped us get here. And then the third one would definitely be uh building out my personal brand. Um I think that was key. Um having high integrity, never screwing any clients over. Um keeping a really great reputation in the market. Um you know, that was a big piece of um of you know, being able to kind of get where we are. Yeah. [Music] What is the most expensive marketing mistake everyone makes? I would say two things. Um, I would say not having the proper data to show you what the return on investment is from your marketing. Um, I think all too often people just continue to invest in marketing and not realize like what's working. Yeah. So, I think it's very important to make sure that you actually are tracking things the right way so that you know what's working, what's not, where you should reallocate more budget, where you should take away budget. Um, I just think people just just throw money out and it makes the phone ring and that's that. And I think the other mistake that a lot of people make is um is not actually answering the phone or not getting back to uh some of the leads as quickly as possible. Um and I feel people are just kind of leaving a lot of money on the table because they don't have um you know the proper call center or you know things like that. So I think those are probably the two biggest mistakes that I see a lot of businesses make. Yeah. Do you think AI call center centers is going to help a little bit on that consumer services? Maybe I think I think in home services I think that's a good solution, right? Where you call up and it's like an AI that says, "Hi, welcome." And they sound almost like a human and it walks them through. Um in legal I have a different stance. Um only because like in legal personal injury like usually if somebody's calling a personal injury lawyer it's not a good moment in their life. um you know, maybe they lost a loved one, you know, uh as a result of a car accident or, you know, a wrongful death claim. And so this is probably the darkest moment in somebody's life. Uh most human beings probably might only call a personal injury lawyer maybe once in their lifetime, twice maybe. And so the last thing that you want is, you know, somebody in their darkest, most vulnerable moment to pick up the phone and call a personal injury lawyer and then be dealt a robot. Correct? You know what I mean? I think in personal injury or legal, you know, you should have a human being that has more empathy, more compassion, um, answering that phone call and being a good representative of of your business. I I think the same for the home service as well. Good. Okay. I'm happy to hear you say. Yeah. Because whenever the emergency situations like you don't want to call 911 and instead of human you have a robot right like same thing people want to actually be feel like they've been taken care of they want to have assurance you can put them on support system like yeah in the bank I don't know something else but not in the home services like people will hang up or call somebody else or kind of do a combination of both right where maybe the initial person is like okay great it sounds like we can help you I'm very sorry to hear about you know boom boom boom Sign your case up. Perfect. Boom. By the way, in about 20 minutes, you're going to get a call from our automated system that's going to ask you a series of questions. Please go through that, right? So maybe you're kind of doing a combination of both, right? Or you can put maybe after hours, right? Like y for that instead of voicemail probably that would be the doing things. Sure. Agree. On the marketing, uh what do you calculate? Do you calculate ROAS ROI or spend to revenue ratio? Like what is the main top metrics you would think? What percentage of people or business owners calculate that or know that? Not a lot. You know what I mean? Like in the legal world where I work with personal injury lawyers, um the biggest thing in in the world of personal injury is the uh the a the average cost per signed case, right? That's kind of like what we're aiming for. So, when somebody calls a personal injury lawyer, um, you know, uh, you know, you are paying a cost per click, right? You're paying a cost per lead and then you're paying for cost per signed case, right? So, that's kind of the the goal. What is it approximately cost per case? Yep. Uh, it's different in in different cities. So, like Los Angeles, I mean, if you can get a signed case for like 3,500 bucks, that's pretty good. um you know in maybe Wyoming you know maybe under 2,000 is good right so it just kind of depends on on that particular market yeah how many leads converts to sign case 20% 20% closing bas something like that yeah so then basically $700 per lead in LA y and what is a cost per click or call cost per click cost per call um could be under 200 bucks you know something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Probably cost per callers every two calls maybe converts kind of a lead. Yep. And the clicks. Yeah. It's really expensive. No, it's very expensive, but there's high margin. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then the average fee in the legal um per signed case, call it 12 to $15,000 is what they make on that. Um and that's not all profit. You know what I mean? um you know and but then you get you know every 2% of the cases come in could be million dollars right so those are the big ones that kind of come what is the one underused SEO techniques that can immediately improve the website metrics this one's easy um you know I think uh the the internal linking um all too often people will just hire somebody to write a lot of content on their website and there's no strategy at all. Um, and so when people write content and they publish it, they just randomly like pick keywords and link to different things internally on the website. Um, you're creating like a mess. Um, because the internal links are really what's telling Google what you should be ranking these pages for, right? And so if you've got one link on one page that says personal injury lawyer, that's going to this page and then you got another link on another page that says personal injury lawyer that's going to some FAQ, right? Right. You're really cannibalizing your whole website. Um, so that's one of the first things that we do when we come in and we try to clean up a website is we look at all the internal links and we fix that. It's the same thing as like if you look at Wikipedia, I think Wikipedia is like best practice SEO. You know, if you click baseball on any page on Wikipedia, it's going to take you to the baseball page, right? You know, I mean, you're not going to go click baseball and it's going to take you to the infielder page. It's going to take you to the baseball page. When you get to that page, it's going to take you to a link that says infielder, outfielder, catcher, pitcher, right? And there's pages for all of that. So, when you're building out your website, you want to kind of follow that same protocol that like a Wikipedia would follow. What What about external links? External links are just as important as well. Um, you want to make sure that you are citing some of your sources. Same thing if you look at Wikipedia, right? You know, there's an article about baseball and when you go down, there's all the different sources that it's referencing, right? And so those are trust signals to Google, right? And so you want to be citing. I think one of the life hacks I just saw when I was looking at your LinkedIn and I saw your uh Stanford uh certificate y and that's a backlink going to Stanford. Correct. That's right. Yeah. Like we are basically generating backlink split but that's proof that actually I did it right you know otherwise anybody can say that they did it right but it's actually has website is actually gaining weight out of that backling. It's so smart. It's so smart. Whoever is doing SEO Stanford, I don't even know if they know what they're doing, but they're doing a good job. It's a good job, right? That's like the same thing what we do, too. So, like when we work with certain clients, um, like we'll put our logo at the bottom right hand side. Normally, I I never really did that when I was like the speak easy and I didn't have a website. I really didn't want to know who I was working with because I didn't want people to like reverse engineer my strategies knowing that it was me working on it. I was like um uh that artist, right, that nobody knows who he exists. Um uh starts with a B. What's his name? Um anyway, he's like a famous uh artist. But uh but then I realized that I was losing a lot of business because people would see our websites ranking high on Google and they want to know who's doing the SEO and then they go to the bottom righthand corner. And so we get business as a result of that because they see it. But then we're also getting strong backlinks as well from all of our clients too. Similar thing we did actually in home alliance. All our technician students who got a certificate, we are actually creating a certificate page. So smart. And giving them digital version of certificate and directory. Yeah. So they can use it on their website or elsewhere. So it creates backlinks. Yeah. No, no, no. That's so smart. Yeah. We of course we don't have so many students at Stanford but whatever students we are having they have a like private page uh private personalized page on our website. so smart. I mean, there's so many different strategies like advance, like we can get into advanced SEO. Like I built a whole website called I love SEO.com where we wrote about a lot of news in the world of SEO. Um, and so because I had this website, you know, we have all SEO people linking to this website because they reference the just naturally, right? Like I'm not going trying to build links to i loveseo.com. people see it, they link to it, and then at the bottom of that website, there's only one link at the bottom of it that goes out, and it says law firm SEO, which then goes to my law firm SEO page. So, I'm taking all that link equity and I'm rerouting it just to one page. And so, now I dominate that space when you type in law firm SEO. Yeah. So, cool. [Music] If you like the uh the video or you don't, comment below. Uh, whoever is going to be putting a best comment, we're going to be sending a free copy of this book. Jason, thanks for the honest conversation. Uh, I believe uh, whoever watch this video till the end, they learn a lot of uh, valuable information what they can implement to their businesses. And I wish I would watch these kind of videos like 10 years ago, right? Like someone is starting a business, I'm sure they they kind of have a kind of a road map of building multi-million dollar business. Like it's really scalable business. Like I'm sure like if you would watch and have this kind of mentor a lot, it's really valuable. I think guys if you like this video, please subscribe, share it, and leave your comments. It will be really valuable for us. Thank you. Thank you so much. [Music] Heat. Heat. N.