Ryan Stewart: The New SEO Agency Model!

Ryan Stewart, how are you? Good, Julian. Thanks for having me, man. Yeah, sounds good.

So what have you been working on? Some software with Claude? Yeah, so still doing the agency thing. My agency is the foundation for everything that I do.

My agency, Weberis, we are full service, still about 60% SEO, but really waning in favor of a lot of Facebook ads, paid media, which I think we should talk about. And then I have the Blueprint Training, which has always been a training, coaching, consulting community for really SEO agencies. And it's always been focused on processes that we'll literally extract from our agency in terms of what's working, and then just teach, coach, train through there. But with the advent of Claude about four or five months ago, when Claude really hit that next level in February of this year, I saw it and immediately was like, okay, this is different, right?

I've used ChachiBT, I've used some of this other stuff before, and it's okay. But I've been doing this for 15 years. And when I first started playing with it, and I was like, oh, this can build a dashboard that I used to have to build SQL, BigQuery. I can just do it like that with my voice.

I'm like, this is different. And this is where we're going. So immediately, I started restructuring our internal processes at the agency. And then we started feeding those into the Blueprint Training and teaching people really how to leverage Claude.

Not full automation, as we know, but it's more of like, here's how to put Claude in your back pocket to do a lot of the busy work and take the systems and processes that we have and feed them here. But then the more that I started building in here, I was able to actually turn into a full piece of working software that we're ready to take to market starting next month. I'm really excited about it. It's just incredible, man.

What a time to be alive right now that... And I've been doing this for so long. And a lot of people, I think... We were talking before you came on about how some videos started popping off for you about AI.

And that was the same for me a couple of months ago. And then all of a sudden, I saw a massive fall off in interest on my videos. Maybe you didn't because you're more like an AI go-to creator. But I was seeing 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 views.

And then all of a sudden, 200 views. Literally, seemingly overnight. It's actually... It's funny you say that because I was speaking to someone else, Stuart Vickers, earlier today.

And we were both saying SEO videos last year, 15,000, 20,000 views. This year, not so much. Yeah. People...

I do want to talk about SEO and where it's going because I think it's definitely a service and product. And just Google as a product is in flux. And I think on the decline. But yeah, I think what's happening is one, there's just a lot more creators in the field.

Significantly more creators in the field. Two, I think SEO has stagnated in terms of new information. People don't... Unless you're a beginner.

And I think less people are getting into the SEO space because there's just less demand for it. It's just simple supply and demand market. And three, I think that other things have really taken the time and attention away. And I think YouTube is also really pivoted really well for their own product point of view into much more of an entertainment-based product, as opposed to an informational-based product.

I know for me, I don't have Netflix anymore. I just watch YouTube. It's crazy. The content and the creators that are on YouTube now that are putting out really good long-form content instead of going to the travel channel and publishing it there.

It's pretty nuts, right? Yeah. It's crazy. So I just think that YouTube is feeding more people stuff that they know is going to dwell longer than more of a query-based search.

If somebody's searching for SEO... But I'm not going to sit on my couch and watch a video about keyword research. So I think that just the For You page, if you will, has really shifted. Unless you're deep, actively searching for that topic, then for me, anyways, YouTube has really flooded me with a lot more entertainment-based content, sports content, travel content, food content, anything.

It's very hyper-aware in terms of the algorithm and feeding people. And I think that's really taken an impact on what we do. And I've seen the same thing. I don't publish on YouTube near as much.

It's really become much more about vertical short-form video to really get people's attention for stuff. It's funny you say that because if you look at someone, for example, like Hormozy, last year, this time last year, he would have been creating those tutorials and those long-form videos. If you look at what he's creating now, it's like the apprentice-style content, contest-style content. It's interesting to see people like him pivoting.

They must see that future as well. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really hard. I don't want to say I gave up on my YouTube channel, but I gave up on my YouTube channel.

I would say six, seven, eight years ago, I was really getting a lot of traffic, a lot of visibility on my YouTube channel. I would say that was at my height of my SEO awareness in the game. But the level of effort to do that... I remember reaching out to you probably six months ago and I was like, Hey, do you want to come on as an interview?

And you were like, Dude, I just have too much going on. I'm focused on my YouTube channel. And I was like, Dude, I get it. YouTube creating video is a full-time job.

And I'm trying to run and operate two companies with employees. I got my personalized stuff going on. I have a young kid. You know what I mean?

So the video stuff just fell off. And for me, I was still able to maintain and grow my businesses by just running ads to short-form video content, which is significantly easier. But I still think that if you can figure out long-form YouTube, it's still by far the best organic platform for what we do anyways. But it has shifted into much more of an entertainment-based element.

Like Hormozy does a really good job of that. And also the clipping of it, getting other people to clip it. This concept... I don't know if you know the concept of clippers, but you can actually pay people to clip your content and then publish it.

It's a huge, booming industry right now because what it does... There's a study from decades ago that would say, in order for a song to catch on, people would have to hear it three times. So that's why radio play was so important. And now you hear songs coming out of nowhere from TikTok because it just gets looped in the background of someone's video for trending.

And then all of a sudden, it's the biggest song in the world. And it's by some no-name person or some AI creator. So this concept of clippers is basically taking a lot of these streamer kids... I live in Miami.

I walk out my door and I see kids streaming. It's crazy. It's like living in NPC world. But they'll just pay people $100,000 a month to just clip it and put it on random TikTok in shorts accounts, and they'll pick up and go viral because that's the way these algorithms work now.

And then there's that face in recognition of that creator. And then their accounts grow like crazy because then people see their creative, their normal content, and they start following them. It's just like the world we live in is just crazy right now, man, for what it was and how quickly it's changed. From when I first have been doing this until now, I feel like an old man in a lot of ways.

I know what you mean. There's periods where I feel like I'm absolutely giving it with YouTube particularly. And then there's other times, and it can switch in seven days where you're like, oh my goodness, this is bad. This is bad.

So it moves so quickly. It really does. It's interesting with Gary Vee. Gary Vee was so big and now, stop watching his content because he has the same three things to say over and over again.

Respect him. You know what I mean? Massively. But he's not as interesting because he keeps saying the same things over again.

And he's made so many bad predictions to NFTs and stuff like that that he forced on your throat that it's like, I'm not going to listen to everything he's saying or whatever. Now if he's getting 200 views on his shorts, it's like nothing. I just got his content and I was like, this is from Gary Vee's account. He's getting no views on his account anymore.

And it's just the attention and interest graph shifts so much. And again, I'm being here in Miami. I see these kids that are coming up on TikTok and Instagram and what they're doing. And it's such a volume game.

These kids are posting, no joke, 20 shorts a day. 20 short videos a day where it basically becomes a live stream of their day. But you have to flood these platforms with so much content. And when you try and get that to what we do, which is like, you sit down, you script, you plan, you film, it just falls on deaf ears because it's just not enough.

And it's just not entertaining enough in a lot of ways. I don't know Julia McCoy. She's a good person to interview for this too. I just went on her platform last week and talked to her people.

But she's using a true AI avatar and she's pushing it on me hard. And I love Julia and I respect her to her core. But I'm like, I just don't know if this would work for me because what she's doing... If you're going to use AI as a creator, like an avatar of yourself, you have to be honest about it.

She's like, I'm an AI avatar and I'm going to give you AI news. So she's taking information where you don't care who you're getting it from. You just care that you're getting it accurately and engaging in the way that you want. So versus me being like, let me show you how to run Facebook ads.

And it's like an AI avatar. It just comes off as very cheesy and you're trying to trick. And it's almost condescending to the end user. Same thing with our...

Go ahead. Yeah. No, I was going to say the exact same thing. So talking about AI with an AI avatar, very easy.

And that just... It feeds itself. It's like, the audience understands it. But when we've created channels about SEO with an AI avatar, didn't even get 10% reviews.

Yeah. Yeah. So my agency, we only work with law firms. And we've pivoted.

I wouldn't say pivoted. We've really just tacked on to SEO. Traditionally, we've been very search focused. I had this whole blended search concept.

We were doing PPC, LSAs, SEO, local SEO, all in one. But Google as a product has just decayed so much. The share of voice you can actually get in Google right now is so small. Even if you factor in chat GPT that we do, there's not a lot of traffic coming from there or not a lot of measurable things coming from there for lawyers anyways.

So we really started focusing on Facebook ads. But if you've ever run Facebook ads, especially now, you know that you need a lot of video creative. Images can get you so far, but you need consistent video in order to stay ahead of the algorithm. And these attorneys, man, it's like pulling teeth.

It's like trying to get my two year old son dressed. It's like, they just don't do it. They kick and scream. They don't do it.

They'll just pay you to do nothing else. And we've tested out avatars a lot. And I always try and put myself... Whenever I do something as a marketer, I always try and put myself in the shoes of the consumer.

And I feel like there's a place for AI creative, for sure. Every single month, I feel like... there's a new style of AI, like video going viral. Like, I don't know if you saw the UFC fights where it was like Conor McGregor fighting like the Sith.

Lord, did you see those? No, I haven't, but I'm gonna check that out after. Dude, wildly entertaining, right? Like, they'll do like the press conference and they'll like get in the ring and fight.

It's like, you know it's AI, but you don't care because it's wildly entertaining, right? But like, if I try and put a lawyer who's like, here's three things to do after a car accident, people are like, go F yourself, dude. Like, get out of here. Like, it's condescending in a sense to be like, I think I'm smarter than you because I don't want to do the work.

So I'm going to make this so I don't have to do the work and still try and get your business. To me, it's a little bit condescending. For AI to work, you have to address the fact that it's AI and people don't care. And I think that's a very big distinction.

And like, we thought for a while that AI was just going to take over everything and push out all human creators. I don't, I think it's going to keep getting better, but I still think that there's like a line of demarcation. That's like, yes, there's certain things that AI video will watch. If it's entertaining, funny, you know, whatever.

But like, if it needs to come from a human, it still needs to come from a human. In the legal space, you want to hear from a lawyer, dude. You know, like you don't want to hear from a piece of software. I can chat you to these questions if I have them, you know?

Yeah, for sure. I know, I feel like when the stakes are lower, it's not a big deal. So if, you know, you were learning how to put gel in the air or something like that, not a big deal. But if you're learning like serious legal advice, yeah, you want to speak to an expert.

Agreed, agreed. Oh, man. What's your strategy when it comes to Facebook ads then? Because you're talking about driving more traffic with that instead of YouTube, right?

Yeah, so we pivot, so for, again, so for my two businesses, the Blueprint Training, the offers are different. The Blueprint Training, 200 bucks a month for full access to trainings, templates. We're even putting our software in that too. So like, it's just a flat fee, 200 bucks a month for everything that we have.

Community, all that stuff, right? I do coaching in there too. So it is a much more direct response, run ads, educate people through the ads, and then just run them to a, like a checkout page, right? And versus Weber's where we're trying to get monthly retainers, our minimum monthly retainer for Facebook ads is like, we're running a Facebook ads funnel for our Facebook ads service.

It just converts the best. It's like $4,000 a month for us to manage your ads. So that's a sales call. That's a book, that's a call booking funnel, right?

So sometimes, we'll do like a VSL split between like a VSL where I'll educate them on like a six minute video about like why Facebook ads are so good and blah, blah, blah, and all that different stuff. But, so they're two distinctly different funnels, but it's the same process, which is kind of why I love Facebook so much. Like the key to success on Facebook, one is like still offers, right? So what I mean by that is that you're not, it's really hard to run, like if you're an agency to run Facebook ads to an SEO offer.

It's commoditized. It's not in a high demand. People open up their LinkedIn and they got 50 dudes from Paxton pitching them SEO. You know what I mean?

Like no offense, but I love Paxton. People come up disrespectful. It's just like, it's saturated, right? So you have to know how to massage the offer.

Like if you only do SEO, that's fine, but you have to understand how to pick and choose the messaging, the language, meaning like pull out Google Maps from just that, right? Like just talk about Google Maps. I used to talk a lot about the blended search model, right? Like you have to be able to kind of throw stones at the traditional model to be like, you have to understand the market intensely.

Meaning if you're just gonna run ads to be like, hey, I'll do what your SEO, I'll rank you first. You're gonna get beginning businesses with no budget who are like, I have a website, I should want SEO versus as an agency, you always need to be going up market. You always need to be charging more. You need to be able to get mature businesses who can understand like their experience with SEO, which is over-promised, under-delivered, prior to paying for it, no results, you know, like all these different things.

They're probably currently with an agency. The clients that you probably want are probably currently with an agency, right? It's just how it is. So you have to be able to throw stones at that model in a sense and bring them into your unique mechanism and offer, right?

So some ways to do that. The Maps Pack stuff is kind of beaten to death a little bit, but stuff that we use a lot, we used to use a lot, would be like this concept of blended search where we'd be like, hey, it's not just about Google, right? Like there's Chachapiti now, there's local, there's also ads that you need to be buying if you wanna have success in Google. There's just no way around it.

How do I know that? Well, let's take your keywords, let's search for it, and let's just look at what's happening. Two local service ads, four pay-per-click ads, Maps Pack, Reddit results, Quora results. You know what I'm saying?

So the reason why you're not having success with SEO is not because SEO doesn't work, it's because the people that you're working with don't know what they're doing. Here's the better mousetrap, right? So you have to intimately understand, and that's a little bit different for every business model that you're gonna work with. So you have to intimately understand that, but if you can do that, it's shooting fish in a barrel.

So I run ads for our Facebook ad service because I know that no other agency wants to touch Facebook ads for lawyers because they can't get lawyers to make video, but I know how to. I figured that out. I spent the time and resources to build the internal processes to do that. So we book calls off of Facebook for 350 bucks.

Nice. That's a booked Calendly appointment. I would say like 70% of those are qualified. 50% of those get a proposal.

Our cost per acquisition right now is right around $3,000. So we're making a thousand bucks. And I'm even willing to take a loss on that first month. I'm willing to go up to $5,000 to acquire a customer because they're on retainer and our average is six months with a client.

So it'll pay itself back easily. Go ahead. We run Facebook ads ourselves for SEO agency and had exactly the same problem you were talking about where it's like, it's so competitive and it's so hard to cut through the noise. It literally took us years, years of tweaking and testing, loads, like hundreds of creatives to the point where I think, well, actually one thing that works really well for getting our cost down was just like a very, very clear offer in the hook.

Like rank number one or you don't pay. That was literally the hook. Yeah, that'll work. Do you put some fine print on that?

We explain it on the call, but honestly, it's literally, it's one of those where I know SEO agencies will be scared to say that, but it's never backfired on us. Like literally never. You know, it's funny, Julian, because people ask me in the training, because we have a training inside the Blueprint about for faith. Like basically everything that I just told you, I have a training for it inside the Blueprint training program.

Yeah. You know, like Hormozy really, it was a book when it came out like a couple of years ago, that his first book, like it just destroyed, destroyed, like marketers ruin everything, dude. And like that book came out and he was basically like, but he had this like offer equation in there, right? Which was brilliant.

It was a brilliant, brilliant equation. I don't know if you've read the book, but it was basically like all these like meathead grow marketers, no shade, was like, oh, let's put a guarantee on it and it'll be fine. And of course, of course, like if you put a guarantee on something, so it's interesting. People ask about inside the Blueprint all the time.

And I'm like, listen, I will put language on our landing page that one, it like, so to your point, right? Like another piece of it is you have to focus on outcome over income input, right? Meaning nobody wants another SEO service. What they want is what?

They want traffic. They want rankings. They want leads. They want calls.

They want money, right? It's basically what it is. And when somebody is first getting introduced to you, it's really hard to communicate that without smacking, slapping them with some very strong language, right? So we'll put on our landing pages for our Facebook ads, like get more clients from like, we'll help you get more, something like this.

Like we'll help you sign more cases using Facebook ads in 30 days or less, right? Something like that, where it has the same outcome folks with the time on it. But what I tell people all the time is because I secret shop funnels all the time from competitors for the Blueprint for like agency coaching programs. And they all have, there's one dude out there who's like, we'll add $250,000 in top line revenue to your agency or it's free.

And I was like, all right, dude, I gotta see this one because this is pretty impressive. So I secret shop it and their salespeople are trained to just like divert, divert. They'll be like, why are you here? And I'm like, well, I have an agency.

I'm like, dude, you put a $250,000 guarantee on it. Like, why do you think I'm here? And they're like, awesome, great. And then they'll like keep just like beating around the bush and circling around it.

And I think one, most people don't ask about it. They just don't, they get on a call and if you're good at sales and you're really good at solving their problem, they're not gonna ask about it. They forget about it. That's the thing about these funnels too, is that like 30% of the calls show up and they're like, what are we talking about again?

They don't even remember where they put it. So it usually kind of goes away or they'll put, that's why I ask about fine print. I keep pushing on the secret shops because I'm a dick. And I'm like, yo, like, come on.

Like you guaranteed it. Like, why do you think I'm here? Like, okay, here's the guarantee. If you spend a million dollars on ad, you know what I mean?

Like they put like a huge like stipulation on it. So, you know, like I don't have an issue with a guarantee personally. I think that there's so many ways that they can skirt around it that, you know, most people don't ask you about it. Yeah, I mean, the way that I was explained it, I think actually, it was from Cole Gordon.

So I went through Cole Gordon's trainings on like how to, you know, how to grow a sales team and that sort of thing. And this was what he recommended. And then also I read, what's it called now? Something like Great Leads or Amazing Leads, a book.

They talk about six different types of leads. And for example, the ones that are like right at the top, the easiest ones with the cheapest cost of the call are the ones where you go very, very direct because they just get it. So right in the morning, you don't pay. But like you say, no one ever mentions it.

Like very, very rare to see people mention it on the call anyway. Yeah, and I agree like this, you kind of realize like the agency business is really, it's a bit of a numbers game. Meaning, you know, like I've been doing this for so long now, man, that like, number one, clients come and go. They're going to fire you.

They're going to complain. They're going to leave. I've been doing this for 15 years. So like, it's kind of like managing a stock portfolio over a very long period of time, right?

Like you don't just go and buy like one stock, right? You go and you buy like a hundred stocks, right? You have a portfolio, right? And it's about the performance of the portfolio, which is your agency.

It's not about the performance of like 30% of stocks, 30% of your clients are going to be a squeaky wheel, pain in the ass, fire you, complain. That's fine, right? You collect some money off them. You do what you do.

And like, honestly too, especially in SEO, this is why I don't push SEO as much because most clients are never going to get results. I don't care what any SEO person tells you, they're never going to get results because this is me. This is me talking. Every industry is different, but we work with personal injury attorneys in highly competitive markets.

You are not going to move the top five spots in almost every competitive market. I'm in Miami, dude. You have Morgan & Morgan here, Stein Green. We're talking about guys spending $2 million a month on billboards.

The brand search is like you're not... There's nothing you can do to beat them, period. They got 10,000 reviews, all that stuff. So most clients...

That's why, again, it's important to have multiple tools in your box to sell them different things because that's why we sell so much Facebook ads, too, because it's a much more democratized platform. If you make video, I can make you money. It's not based on brand. It's not based on anything else.

It's purely based on creative video. So with clients and just in general, again, it's about managing the portfolio. And some of these clients are just... They're going to go down.

And some of them are just... You're going to... We have some clients where they could... I've told them this before, too.

You don't need to pay us, but they're going to pay you 10 grand a month anyways because they want somebody there to communicate, to help them with their data management. They just want somebody to manage it. But they're going to go up no matter what because they're spending a million dollars on TV ads, on... You know what I'm saying?

We're just riding the wave. So where I've arrived with SEO, just for us, is I would say I would only pitch SEO to 10% of leads that we get now because I don't like setting my team up to be in a position where they're on a weekly call and just getting berated by these law firms. There's always that threat in the back of their mind, too, about like, are they going to sue it? Whatever that is.

So I don't pitch it as much. And the ones that we do pitch it to, there's just a very specific set of criteria that I'm qualifying them for, which is its brand. It's tough to look at, but there's things that I can look at between reviews, between branded search, between PR, between their internal resources, number of attorneys on staff, number of intake people. Those ones we can move the needle with.

But most of these small firms, I'm like, yeah, dude, I can't. It's just not going to happen for you. I'm sorry. I really respect that.

I mean, number one, the way you explained it, very, very good. But number two, you've got a very honest picture of what it is. I think that's more transparent and more clear than I've seen anyone else really explain it. Actually, one thing I was going to ask you is, do you get nervous working with so many lawyers?

No. We go month to month with everything. Look, we've been working with lawyers now for about four years. We've only had one incident where it was a business law firm too.

So we stopped working with business lawyers because they don't have any money, number one. And number two, they're business lawyers. So what they do is... And I know this, I've been through plenty of dustups with partners where, dude, I guess you're not in the States, but you can sue for anything here, dude.

That's what I imagine. Yeah, that's what I imagine. Somebody farts and you can sue them for it. The office thinks they're going to sue you.

It doesn't matter. It's just like this country, and again, working with lawyers too, this country does a very good job of making money out of thin air. Personal injury lawyers, it's like Monopoly money, dude. People get in a car accident and the insurance doesn't want to pay them out for their injuries or for the damage.

And they call a lawyer and the lawyer bitches at them. They take them to court. They never even go to court and they settle for $500,000. The money just comes out of nowhere.

You know what I mean? But I do get worried sometimes. There are definitely red flag clients that we have. But man, just like any relationship...

I'm married, so I can tell you this firsthand. Pretty much every problem can be resolved with communication. Communication and accountability. If you take accountability...

Hold on one second, Julian. Hello? Sorry, I got some people coming to work on it. So communication and accountability, meaning you take responsibility if things go bad.

You say, you're right. We made a mistake. We didn't do this. We were late on this.

And you try and make it right. You give them a free month. You get on as many calls as it takes. Accountability and communication is huge.

And if you can do that, people aren't going to sue you. We also go month to month too. They're not going to sue us to get out of their contract. If they're unhappy, just walk.

So it's really important that you're... Again, you're very type A with your deliverables, your tasks, your communication, that you have a running list of things. So they're not like, what did you do? It's like, well, we did a lot.

It just didn't take. And I'm very honest with people up front so they understand what they're getting into, what they're paying for, what the expected results are. And yeah, we've now shifted. I just had an all-hands meeting this past week with our team, which we don't do a lot.

As we're shifting to this software, we're trying to... I've had this vision in my head for years about running an HCO, what I call on a string. Meaning, when we do a proposal, we do a very in-depth proposal. We're auditing, keyword research.

We're doing everything there in that proposal. It's like an SEO campaign. I'm like, if we can tie this then to onboarding, project planning, we've already got everything done. We just pull that into a project plan.

And then from there, it's like, okay, we're going to run a technical audit, a chopped up technical audit because technical SEO, to me, doesn't need a ton of resource anymore, especially for a 20-page WordPress website. So we can automate that through Cloud. We know what the keywords are. It's not hard.

We'll do a content gap analysis for what they don't have. We can just write all that content through Cloud. And then link building is the big thing and review generation. It's all that stuff.

You see what I'm saying? You can tie it together on a string now, where we're not giving Cloud everything. We're not just pushing a button like, hey, this is a client. Go do everything.

It's like, no. We build stopgaps into it. We have this whole amazing system that we built. We train inside the blueprint where it's like, you can run Cloud on one instance on the side and be like, hey, we just signed this client.

Let's go through onboarding. Cool. Here's a three-step process. Are you good?

Yep. Let's run it. All right. We just sent an invoice.

We're sending the... Cloud will do all that for you now. It's pretty amazing. But basically, long story short is that with all of that, I'm now telling my team, the most important thing you have to do is communicate.

I'm taking crap off your plate. You never have to write content again. You never have to do technical audit again. Awesome.

But that doesn't mean that you just push a button and you go F off on the beach. No, that means that you're reaching out to the client twice a week. That means that you're sending... Cloud can generate all these deliverables for you.

Clients don't look at them. They're never going to look at them. But that's not the point. The point is that if a client's not getting results at the very damn least, they're going to be like, they tried, man.

They did everything. I know they were working because they were sending me stuff every week. I was the one who bottled. That's usually how it ends up with us.

If a client doesn't get results, they'll be the first to be like, hey, look, I get it. You asked for all this stuff. We didn't do it. It just didn't work.

We don't have the time, but we can't keep paying this. We're like, fine. It's totally understandable. Give me one second.

I got people at my door. Sorry, I got cable people coming through. Where do you see the future? Because it seems like you've really switched from selling SEO to more towards selling ads and selling traffic generation around that.

Where do you see the future being for SEO agencies? I see the future being... So I'm not sure. I'm really not sure.

We're like, look, Google is the main driver still of SEO. And it should be. It still has the best business results. We all use ChatGPC a lot.

We all do. But to me, it's much more of an in-platform search. There's very rarely a... And that might change.

We still go to Google and search for conversion-driven stuff. But man, I'm telling you, we've been seeing with our client data, we audit. We're getting a lot of leads right now for SEO because so many law firms are like, yeah, the agency sucks. We lost all our traffic in the last six months.

And I'm like, I'll take your business. But it's not the agency, dude. Have you searched for your keywords? There's just so much noise, man.

And the cost per click on ads is so high that it's just like this country where the top percent of people who can pay for it are just gobbling up so much more market share because they're like, yeah, dude, I'll pay 500 bucks a click. I don't care. I can afford it. But the rest of the market can't.

It's like the housing market in the US, especially here in Miami. It's crazy. It's a very one-to-one analogy. So I think that Google's a product that's in flux.

I have been seeing some things that I do like, but I wouldn't be the... I'm not a Google researcher. I don't even really pay attention that much. I just...

When I'm using Google, I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I now see that there's Maps pack inside the AI overviews. I now see that when somebody searches for personal injury lawyer near me, the AI overview is the top result. And it's got five recommendations in there.

So maybe there's a resurgence in just in terms of Google visibility and traffic, but I'm not bullish on that because Google, I think, is squeezing every last drop out of Google search and they're all in on AI. They're all in on Gemini. They're all in on their AI products. I think they see that as the next big revenue thing for them.

So I'm not bullish on Google as a product. I know a lot of SEOs are, but I'm like, dude, you don't even use it anymore, guys. Like, let's be real here. You don't use Google anymore.

You just don't. Okay, you might use it, but you went from using it 100 times a week to twice a week. Let's just be real. ChachiBT and Claude, Claude from a workflow point of view or whatever it is that you're using, ChachiBT from a search point of view are really gobbling it up.

Let's just call it what it is. And the rest of the stuff inside of Google is just also getting gobbled up by Google's own AI products or ads. So I'm not that bullish on it, like I said, but my focus right now is that we're still able to get results for a select type of clientele. And those clientele we can charge the most for.

It's like a $10,000 a month SEO contract for some of these personal injury lawyers. So the ones that are qualified will definitely take and we're doing a good job of getting those in from referrals, of getting those in from some of our... We have some referral partners that are really good right now. But I am not overly bullish on it personally.

So I do think that SEO will still have a place, but I think the value of what you can sell it for is going to shrink very much. So what I think you should be doing is product... I've been saying this for years, but productizing the hell out of what you're doing. Just like I talked about, putting your service on a string because I think there's downward pressure on pricing.

And I think that businesses are still going to want to pay for SEO, but it's going to become more of a website development, like a management service where it's like, okay, I still need... I think it's going to be less of an acquisition service. I think ranking first will be less of an enticing offer versus like, you need somebody that can just come in, build and manage your website, build and manage your content, build and manage your profiles. That's still an important part of your business.

It's just the value of that went from being everything to... From the acquisition market share of a business, it went from being 70% for a lot of local businesses to maybe 40% or maybe even 20%, maybe even 10%. So, I think that agencies should be looking heavily at productizing their service so they can reduce their internal pricing, so they can reduce their pricing to the market and it won't impact their numbers. I mean, it will impact your revenue, but your profit should basically stay locked.

So, I think that's very important. And I think that you should be heavily looking at becoming much more of an agency of record style business. Meaning, you come to me and we'll take care of everything for you. Everything for you.

And it's not like an a la carte menu. We'll do that. But our best clients right now are the ones that are like, we trust you. You tell me what to do and put together a proposal for us, whether that's you want us to do Facebook, LSA, a little bit of SEO, whatever that looks.

So, I think coming up with more of an agency of record offer where paid has to be a part of it. And I also just think that paid social should be on everyone's forefront of learning how to do it and deliver it. Because if we're talking about acquisition-based services, which ultimately what agencies should be for, that's where you're going to make the most money. If you make businesses money, they're going to pay you whatever you want.

Facebook has the best way to acquire customers, by far and away. And it has been for me for the last 10 years. But I would say over the past two years, especially, Facebook was like, yeah, you can take away targeting. We don't care.

You can take away custom audiences or nothing. We're marketing traffic. It's such a myth that people misunderstand. It's just all about...

Facebook knows everything about everybody on this planet. Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, all interconnected. It knows everything that's in your phone. It's crazy.

My friend, I was at dinner with him last night and he was like, man, my nose has really been bothering me. And I've been searching chats between Google and trying to understand, do I need nasal spray? And yo, he went and he's like, look at this. He showed me his Instagram feed.

Organic content and ads for nasal spray. It was great. Every other video on his feed right now is nasal spray. So, some form of nasal spray or education about it.

So, both organic and paid is being filtered through his Instagram right now. And it's the same thing on TikTok. All these platforms, they're hyper-intelligent with that. So, if you're able and you understand how to put together videos for your clients, they're going to win.

Because media buying is easy now. And Zuckerberg has talked about it a number of times now where he's like, this is going to become a self-service platform from your phone where you've got 10 videos on your phone. Tell us what you want. You want sales?

We'll get you sales. And we'll figure it. Don't worry about targeting. Don't worry about the technical stuff.

Facebook's going to figure it out. They're already on that path. And we see that. When I get these Facebook leads come in, if they're running Facebook ads, they're like, do you want to automate my account?

I'm like, no, I don't. They're like, are you sure? I'm like, yeah. They're like, why?

I'm like, because you just need more creative. That's it. There's no audit. I can go in and be like, oh, this video stinks.

But I'm like, no, it doesn't matter. We're just going to set up new videos. We're going to run them and you're going to make money. That's all Facebook is.

It's just fresh creative, more creative, fresh creative, more creative, changing it. That's all it is. But that's really hard for agencies, especially agencies that don't have a very deeply defined vertical. Because if you're not working with a singular type of client, you can't do that.

We work with a lot of home services agencies inside the blueprint. And dude, it's the easiest thing to run Facebook ads for. You don't need the clients to make videos. You just go.

I would just either have one of your friends just film you, whatever. And you just go. And if you're doing HVAC, just go stand in front of a freaking air conditioning thing outside of a house and get a wrench and act like you're playing with it. And don't even talk, just put B roll on top of it.

And that's a templated video that you can use for any client. So if you can do that, you just build a repository of video creative that you can roll out for multiple clients in different markets. They're going to get leads, dude. I guarantee you they're going to get leads.

Well, actually, I've seen those videos where it's an ad and it's literally a quote of someone just walking around in the background. Those really authentic, basic videos seem to do the best on ads sometimes. Yeah. It's because if it's filmed on a cell phone vertically, that's what people are seeing organically on their feeds.

People don't want to be advertised. I go through this with my lawyer clients all the time, Julian, where there's an agency out there, I won't say their name, that charges $50,000 for three videos that you put on your homepage where it makes them look super cool. It's such an ego thing where it's filming hyper 8K, super wide. They're walking out of a courthouse in slow motion with a suit on.

There's a voiceover like, been in business for 50 years. I'm like, nobody gives a shit, dude. That's not what people are on social media to see, dude. I tell them all the time, get a tripod, put it in your office, and just talk to the camera.

You know what I mean? That's what people are seeing. So the native videos, which is what you just talked about, are the ones that do the best because that's what people are doom scrolling. It's scary raising a child in this world where yo, people are zombies, man.

People use Google, people use ChatTP, don't get me wrong, but for five to 10 minutes a day in total usage time, people are spending eight hours a day on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. That's where people are spending all their time. So when people are spending that much time on a platform, the CPMs are so much lower too, because you have so much more opportunity to get their attention. That's the other thing, is that Facebook, if you do it right, is so much cheaper.

Dude, I'm booking Calendly calls with qualified lawyers for less than 400 bucks. If I try and do that on Google, that's what I'm paying for three clicks. That's what we found as well. On Google Ads, it's a lot more expensive than Facebook.

And people are always like, yeah, but point of interest, point of... SEOs, I talk about this a lot in the blueprint, is that people need to be marketers and not SEOs, because being an SEO, you tend to get pigeonholed in the SEO space and you don't fully... It doesn't allow you to fully open your mind to what marketing is. And the biggest thing is they're like, oh, well, but Google is point of interest.

Somebody's going to Google and typing in agency that works with lawyers. And I'm like, that is so much more of a discovery term than a bottom funnel sign-up term than you think. Yeah, you're going to get people that are looking for an agency that works, but they're not as qualified as you think they are. Versus on Facebook, they're like, but what about Facebook?

People are just scrolling while they're taking a dump. I'm like, yeah, but that person is probably also searching. They're probably... Facebook has access to so much more data.

And that's the difference. Google is just, if they search for it. And yes, there's intent that we can derive from it, but that intent is nowhere near as high as we think it is. It's just not.

For what we do for agencies. For my lawyers, it's different. But on Facebook, it's like, yeah, they've been slacking people. They've been texting people.

They've been asking for referrals. They've been searching for it. They've been searching YouTube for informational content about this stuff. And Facebook's like, oh, okay, you're showing some interest in this?

Let me put this video in front of you. Bang. Now this one. Bang.

Now this one. But you know what I mean? It's much higher intent than people think. And the fact that I'm on camera talking to you, educating you, building a relationship with you, versus a blue link that is completely brandless.

And especially when you see me over and over and over again, and then I show up and I'm on the call with you, the conversion process is just 10 times better. I take 100% of our sales calls at our agency. And everyone that I... Oh, nice.

Yeah, yeah. 100% of them, dude. And the reason being is I've got this platform now. I can show you the platform.

It's pretty awesome. Where I've automated so much of the CRM process, the emailing process. It's incredible. The proposal building process.

It's freaking incredible. Where I'm able to... I have this concept of the one-person agency, but it's starting with the one-person sales team where people are always like, yeah, it's not a waste of your time. Not really.

Because I'll take a discovery call for 30 minutes and then I'll do a proposal call with them for an hour. It's an hour and a half of my time. I close half of those. Maybe a little bit less.

Maybe 30% to 50%, depending on how hot I'm feeling. But that's the highest leverage of my time, in my opinion, because the revenue that it produces is extremely high. And I don't touch the client work. I don't get involved in the client work.

Sometimes clients will text me, but that's about it. And I'm on Zoom calls all day everywhere. Anyway, so for me, it's very high leverage use of my time. And when I show up on the call, my knowledge on this...

Because I've taken now 1000 calls with lawyers. I'm like a freaking database, an encyclopedia. And they're I got to work with these guys. They know my business better than I do.

No, that's amazing. Also, it's really refreshing to hear you say that you want to take a sales course as well. Because I think a lot of agency owners, they try and get out of sales course as soon as they can. They do.

I have a friend who had a whole program about agency sales where... And I get it. Because there's levels to the agency game. There's the Chris Dryers of the world who's doing 15, 20 million.

And it takes significant relationship building to break in with a lot of the clients that he's trying to work with. He can't do it on his own. He'll come in and add color here and there. But he's operating at a level significantly above what I'm operating at.

But for me, in the way that I want to architect my business in my life is, I don't want an office. I'm working at home right now. I don't want to see or talk to people. I know that sounds messed up.

But I just don't. That's not what I want to do. And I've attracted a team full of people that want to live their life the same way. They're comfortable working remote.

Half my team's in Europe. Eastern Europe is a freaking goldmine for amazing talent, by the way. Macedonia, that area, the best people. Macedonia is my favorite place to recruit from.

Fantastic. It is the best, man. We have three girls on our social team that are from there that have... We brought them in almost as VAs.

And now they've architected our entire organic social media crate. It's just amazing. But one of them, she spends her time... Her mom lives in Greece.

Her dad lives in Macedonia. So she goes back and forth. And she rides horses. I'm super excited for you.

So we've... Our culture... And it's funny. I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a company with 4,000 employees.

$250 company. I was in the car with him the other day. And he was like, you have a partner? I was like, yeah, a minority partner.

He's 10%. He's like, he's in Miami. I'm like, yeah, he's in Miami. He's like, do you guys do a lot of meetups?

I'm like, I haven't seen him in three years in person. And he's like, dude, are you nuts? And I'm like, you know, I've never really thought about it. But both of us have young kids.

We like being at home. I don't know if you have kids or not, if you want to have kids. But dude, there's nothing like being with your kid. There's nothing in the world that I want to do more than be with my son.

Period. Full stop. I like doing what I do. But it's different, dude.

I want to be... I want to see him grow up. I saw him take his first step. I saw him say his first words and that's more than my I mean, I love my dad But my dad was out of the house from 6 a.m.

To 8 p.m. Every day working his ass off, you know, like that's how I want to live my life and I Understand that that will probably cap me at a certain revenue, but I'm I don't need like I make plenty of money You know to me like I I don't want to go to conferences. I don't like doing network in person I don't like speaking at conferences anymore. It's exhausting to me I don't like going there and like playing that game where I give up business card like that's not for me What I want to do is I want to turn on my cell phone I want to record a 30-second video and I want to get you on a sales call and then take your money that way That's what I want to do, you know, and that's I'm very fortunate to be to live in a time where that's actually possible So back to your one person salesperson like that's what works for me and I built an entire Ecosystem that supports that now and my job is what I enjoy doing which is marketing and sales.

That's what I can do That's my highest leverage point is Marketing the business bring in leads and closing leads and then I have really good operators behind me that are better with clients that enjoy Speaking to clients that don't mind getting on client calls But for me when my if I log on to my calendar that day and I have six client calls I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no, like no, you know, like I was at the gym before this you know I'm saying like I like to I like to be able to live a life that I enjoy and not be in an Office or you know be constantly just it's not it's for the birds, you know and I understand too that I'm probably leaving money on the table for that but like I don't care because we make our clients money and At the end of the day like that's all I care about because that's that they care about and yes I'm leaving a lot of big law firms on the table that like want to go out for drinks and for dinner But like I don't care like that's not happening here, dude. Like we get in a call. We build a relationship You want to make money? I got you I'm gonna help you do that But aside from that like that's not what we do here, you know So the one person sales like it works better for that for this exact flow that I've architected which is also just very good that the blueprint does very well because we get a lot of beginners and you know people who don't Have support teams and have to do these things by themselves So the process that I built for our team of about 18 people right now It works very very well for small agencies to who just don't have the ability to hire a sales rep Business development reps, you know I've a referral partner who has Who refers us SEO deals with some of the country's biggest law firms like massive law?

I've recalled in 10 minutes with one like they're a 200 million dollar law firm And that dude every time I get in a call with them They got like fucking six business development reps on there and account managers and they're awesome people. I love them They're super good people, but like I don't know what they're talking about You know like they have to bring me on because like they have no subject matter expertise or relationship people now granted they're bringing these clients to the table, but You know Like all I need is a crack door if you get me on a 15 minute call with a client like we're gonna build rapport The way that I want to build rapport We're just talking about them and their business and how we can make the money and all the other stuff like that's just not how I want to live my life, you know, I want to watch my kid grow up That's that's what's important to me and money too. But like, you know Now I respect that so much. I think this There's something I respect really about how you put your opinions out there, man Well, you you you're very very clear in what you want, which is I think I think that's important because I mean one It does take a bit of thick skin because if you go through my Facebook ad comments, my god, dude Like people are just a I get them every day.

Oh People are so angry man, like so angry and the thing is too is like I I don't I just delete them I was Sometimes I like if I'm feeling like real cheeky as y'all say like I'll get in and start going back and forth on comments But like it doesn't lead anywhere positive for me or for them, you know I mean, I'm like, I'm just stooping down to their level. Those comments are never a reflection of you, too It's always a flexion of them internally. Just just projecting something. I get it I get on tick-tock sometimes and not sometimes I don't leave me comment But I never do anymore because I get them all the time and I'm like, what am I doing here, dude?

I would never say this this person's face. I'd probably actually like them if I met them person, you know to me But it definitely you know, like having an opinion I've learned in this space Just in general when it comes to marketing you kind of have to because if you if you don't have opinions Then people won't really find you interesting either positive or negative, right? So like again this has resulted after 10 years of doing this with an agency of staff that I wouldn't say they reflect my Opinions like on politics or anything like that because we don't talk about it. But on on on work on treating clients on Lifestyle with within the framework of work with all that stuff, right?

and then within the blueprint to where like the people that Join in our clients at the agency to like you don't when you have an opinion not everyone's gonna like it, right? And a lot of people are like well I'm not gonna talk about this or talk about that because it's gonna turn people off for sure It's gonna turn some people off and I probably talked my way out of more than a few deals or my made a few videos I like push more leads away, but it's also like yeah But the leads that it did bring in they get on a call and they're like, I really like what you have to say You know, I really appreciate it You know just like you said, you know and that that doesn't happen with everyone But the ones that you do like you you definitely repel some people away But you also attract more people with much stronger desire to actually work with you, you know It's a hard balance to find. I watched this kid Caleb hammer on YouTube. Sometimes I don't have you seen the financial audit clips It's got like four million followers.

I need to know. Yeah Yeah, your phone's gonna start serving it to you now But like I was watching one of them the other day and he's got like very straight He brings a guest on and he'll audit their personal financials And bro, this guy goes in on people just like calling them like effing them and calling them dumb and I'm like, okay This is too much But I also understand why he gets 10 million views on his clips Because you know He takes he takes on guests that are a little bit polarizing in themselves based on like political opinions or their lifestyle Whatever and just tears apart the finances So the audience kind of like either loves it, but whatever the point is that like, you know online Unfortunately, we live in an age where you have to break through the noise in some way shape or form or the other and like Just getting on and being like here's I'm gonna show you how to do like keyword research It's really hard to it's really hard to connect with people that way, you know Yeah, 100% 100% I'm just conscious of your time. So I know you are calling a few minutes, right? Oh, yeah, really appreciate being on Just for anyone watching like I was part of the blueprint I signed up to a fantastic group really good to learn how to grow an SEO agency.

Help me a lot. Yeah Yeah, you can check us out the blueprint our training. I've been running it for 10 years now, man, which is crazy Oh-gee, yeah, I know I know like I said I'm in Miami now and I see all these kids like the new thing now is like day trading courses, you know And I'm like y'all don't even know like I've been doing this for longer than even for longer We were born like og core seller man, my style all started with a link building training Like god, it was 10 years ago now, which is crazy. Maybe even more.

We're doing 2020. Yeah, it's like 2014 2015 But I really enjoy it man Like I I do enjoy the agency business in itself because I built the right Infrastructure around me where if you are too involved with client work, it's just gonna beat you down man because clients Especially the more clients that you get like there has to be filters of the negativity like don't get me wrong if a clients Really mad. I want them to call me I don't want them to call the people doing the work But like I don't need to hear like this guy just texted me right before I was got on this call and he was like Hey, like our leads fell off this past two week and I was like, what's your CPA? He's like 1700 or last month and I'm like, that's half of what you want it to be Like, what are you fucking texting me for dude?

You know what I mean? Like I don't need this level of information like like that type of stuff I don't need because it can get very overwhelmed very very overwhelming and it can really mess with your psyche It leads to burnout. It leads to depression. It leads to not running wanting to run this business But it's why you have to be constantly looking at building infrastructure inside with people, right?

And that doesn't mean just like like you have to obviously you have to do a good job for clients But like if you're too involved in the weeds and like every single email or text or phone calls hitting you with like hey What's going on my rankings? Like hey, why is this like people can handle that? It's fine, you know, like hire people to handle that stuff if somebody's really really mad. Absolutely I'll handle it but you know, I do enjoy running the agency business, but I really love the blueprint like I really love working with marketers and agencies because I feel like I feel like you know agency folks we get it, you know Like I I understand what they're going through I understand like everything that I just talked about right like I lived I had a very difficult lived experience my first go-around with My agency business where I had issues with the business partner.

I got blocked out issues with clients. Like it's very stressful, man Yeah I really do have a good Process and ecosystem now for people who are struggling with like a chaotic agency business or for people who just want to get into The agency business, you know, like I've got a literally a blues Why it's called the blueprint training a blueprint for you that you can follow just bits and pieces to you Don't need the whole thing that just makes life easier because I do believe that like this agency business model has been around for a While and I still think of like all the MMO opportunities This is one of the best ones because you're learning a skill, you know, if my business has failed tomorrow I have 15 years of marketing experience. I can go walk and be a CMO somewhere I can be a consultant I can be a fractional CMO like you are building so much equity in yourself by running an agency versus doing something like day trading Or like e-commerce like sure you might learn some stuff from there But like that lives in a silo of just doing that versus when you become a specialist, you know Like my friends to like my friend who runs this I did consulting for it's a cannabis company Well, it's the largest cannabis company in the country I used to do consulting for them years ago for three years But we just kind of ended up going our separate ways because of time constraints, you know part of that conversation I told you I was having about with my partner in this and that he's like man We really want to bring you back on. We really want to deploy this and that You know, like we'll pay you whatever you want And I'm just like I don't have the bandwidth for but like I I know that those opportunities have only come it's not because I'm a super smart dude, like it's just I chose a path and continued learning that path and The bigger thing about agencies is that like you're kind of using other people's money to learn In a way like clients are paying us to run Facebook ads at some point I had to make a decision to just kind of jump and do it without the experience of doing it for clients But as soon as you start doing it you learn you process you grow and now I would say we're probably the best in the country Maybe the best in the world at running Facebook ads for clients in the in the legal space in just a year's time right, so I just think the agency business model is so good because if your agency business fails or you don't want to do it anymore, you have a skill set that you can go in-house.

If you do home service marketing for five years at the agency level, one, getting paid up front $2,000 to $3,000 a month is pretty awesome. You get a couple of those clients, man, and it's pretty damn good. Hey, Joy, how are you doing? Good.

How are you? Good. I'm actually about to jump off myself. Awesome.

All right. Well, we've got... Next guest. Sorry, Joy.

This is my fault. But yeah, right. No, it's fine. I'm jealous.

I want to talk to Joy. Joy, we need help. I was looking to say, I was like, hey, I didn't know Ryan was going to be here. Is this like a local SEO special?

No. No? We should do that in the future. I would just learn, man.

Honestly, if you ask me about local SEO, I'm like, just get reviews. That's my... To be honest, we've done three on our YouTube channel and I always found three's a crowd. There's always one person that barely talks and then the other two just talk a lot.

So we try to keep it to two now. Absolutely. Yeah. No, but it's...

I do have to jump, but we're constantly sending your stuff inside of our internal Slack team, Joy. You guys do an awesome job with your content. Yeah. It's amazing.

Appreciate it. All right, Julian. It's good to see you, man. All right.

Thanks so much, Ryan. Thank you. Bye, Joy.