April 11, 2025 • 20 mins
Discover the key factors that set successful businesses apart in this engaging conversation with Adam Chronister. With over a decade of experience in digital marketing, Adam reveals his secrets to sustainable business growth. He emphasizes the importance of entrepreneurship, cultivating a meaningful business vision, and building strategies that resonate with your clients. If you’re seeking guidance on how to create a lasting impact through your business, this episode is for you!
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adamchronisterdotcom/
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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@enleafdotcom
Connect with Chris Troka:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-troka-3a093058/
Website: https://focused-biz.com/
Website: https://christroka.com/ #brainwork #framework #business #entrepreneurship #marketing #vision #brands
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You can't just shut off SEO.
(00:01):
And so things like ramping upseasonality campaigns or ramping
them down for businesses thatare affected by seasonality.
Google ads is a great supplement,if not dedicated strategy.
But what we'd like to tell peopleis every business is different.
Every market's different.
And so whether you work with us orsomeone else, ask how they're going to
customize what they do to your business.
You don't want to just off theshelf cookie cutter package
(00:23):
because your business is not thesame as the business next door.
You're listening to Brainwork Framework,a business and marketing podcast
brought to you by focused- biz.
com.
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is the CEO andfounder of Enleaf, Adam Chronister.
He started back in 2009, focusing onhelping businesses grow and thrive through
(00:43):
smart digital marketing strategies likeSEO, lead gen and marketing automation.
So excited to have him on.
Adam, thanks for joining us.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing great.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me on.
I'm looking forward tohaving a conversation.
Absolutely.
We always like to welcomeour entrepreneurs and ask
them about their journey.
What were you kind of doingbefore and how did that bring
you into what you're doing today?
Yeah, so I got my startin software development.
(01:05):
I got a degree in computer science out ofcollege and I tell a lot of people this
like, I got about three fourths of the waythrough my degree and realized I didn't
really want to stare at code all day butI had already got my foot in the water and
kind of invested the time and resources.
Still very much in love with the industry.
Technology, web, web design, all thatstuff but just wasn't sure if I had
(01:28):
what it takes to be necessarily a coder.
Fast forward graduated and got a job asa project manager for a software company
and that was really just a great fit.
I was able to interface with differentweb design and mobile app developers.
Get my feet wet there, kindof learn the ins and outs
essentially of running a business.
(01:49):
All the project managers are kind oflike their own microcosm inside this
business and so that kind of got myfoot my feet wet rather in the day
to day operation side of things.
The agency itself that I was at the timewas a young startup and if you ever worked
at a startup and you raise your hand.
You'll notice that they'llsay, yeah, go have fun.
So there was a particular campaign thatthey were running for a conference,
(02:12):
doing giveaways and whatnot.
And around this time,Twitter was fairly new.
So I kind of volunteered, I'm like,Hey, I'll create a little social
media marketing campaign for you guysand they're like, sure, have fun.
And that kind of really piqued my interestin digital marketing and I've kind of
been doing that in some realm ever since.
I love that.
That is quite the journey.
Having that computer science backgroundwhere you can see more of the data
(02:33):
driven analytical side mixed withmore of the creative side as well.
And we all kind of dabble into marketingby offering our assistance to friends,
families or the companies we work withand say, I can run something for you.
And that opens up this new doorfor us which is really awesome.
So are there specific types ofmarketing that you either specialize
(02:54):
in or you feel really confident inthat businesses should be following
these types of marketing strategies.
I mean, as far as our claim to fame,I think is in the realm of SEO.
That's kind of how a lot of people comethrough the door, I think, technically
can master SEO myself and our team havedone a pretty good job of making that
kind of our ecosphere but it's by nomeans all that we do, what I tell people
(03:15):
we do as in a kind of a nutshell isessentially website design and development
and data driven search marketing.
So that's Google ads SEO.
And a handful of other things.
There's a lot of periphery thingswe do as well, like branding and
graphic design but definitely a lotof people come to us either for web
design or SEO or in a lot of cases, acombination of those 2 factors since.
(03:37):
They are so closely aligned, right?
Absolutely.
It's great to have that full serviceoffering just to really say, Hey,
we can be your one stop shop.
But to have that specialty, I think SEOis by far one of my favorites because
this is where organic leads come from.
This is going to be yourbest nurtured pre warmed.
I'm interested in this product orservice and almost ready to buy.
(03:58):
So that's why SEO is a greatoption for a lot of people.
Have there been changes to SEO?
Now that it's 2025, any changesrecently that people should be
focused on or are a lot of thefundamentals just still the same?
There are a lot of changes.
AI is a big change.
I'm preparing.
It might be a talk.
It might be a blog post or a combinationthereof but I'm preparing some information
(04:22):
on things that I'm Noticing in themarket, trying to get ahead of the curve.
So, for instance, Query based searchis moving a lot to large language
models, ChatGPT, Google Gemini.
I think last I checked, about14 percent of search query
traffic is going to ChatGPT.
So that's going to starteating up a little bit of
(04:42):
what happens in Google, right?
Now the thing that maybe some don'trecognize is that Chat GPT and Google
have a partnership so now that Chat GPTcan query the web, it's using or kind of
sitting as a top layer on top of Google
and for those that have been in theSEO space for a long time, we've kind
of treated being like a redheadedstepchild, myself included but
(05:05):
after kind of uncovering some of theraw data on like where things are
moving, I'm like, now it's probablytime to start focusing on that.
In fact, one of the things that I'vebeen doing here lately is Putting
in search queries into chat gptfor things like local businesses or
products just to start to examine theresults and then starting to ask chat
gpt, how did you get these results?
(05:26):
And the interesting thing I find isthat it will essentially summarize
how it pulls data from being.
One of the things that I saw inthere that was kind of shocking was.
It mentioned that it leveraged beingWebmaster Tools as part of its ranking
factor and I don't know the stats quiteyet but I can imagine that the amount
of sites that have Bing or MicrosoftWebmaster Tools is probably minimal,
(05:51):
especially compared to Google Analytics.
So that's something that we'regoing to be starting to test soon.
Pay more attention to that channelbecause I think we're going to see more
and more of that as time progresses.
Absolutely.
I loved how you expanded into thattopic because that was actually where
I wanted to lead the conversation.
SEO going to change the game withwith AI coming into play where search
(06:14):
queries are now going into the LLMsinstead of search and then just
like you said, being the redheadedstepchild, it was often forgotten
saying, Oh, just focus on Google.
That's where everybody goes anywaysbut see the shifts and changes.
It's important to stay on top of itand actually base it on raw data and
I love that you use chat and say,how did you come to these results?
(06:36):
Have you compared doinglike a SEO keyword analysis?
Have you kind of compared the 2 betweenwhat a chat will pull together versus
your kind of typical SEO data tools?
We've done some stuff inside oflike try to leverage it to use
analytics in that kind of thing.
I think the one area where it fallsshort is the data side of things, right?
(06:59):
It's really good for things likevisual tools, you could take a visual
of a website, a front face website.
And I think it does a prettygood job of giving you some tips
like with CRO, conversion rateoptimization and stuff like that.
I think still the area without some kindof modifications or integrations with
a third party platform to get key APIs,the biggest difference between using chat
(07:22):
gpt natively, say for like analytics.
And something like an SEMrush or an ARefs is those other tools, they have a
certain level of crawl depth and othermetrics that they use in their database.
However, we have built tools,primarily a keyword research tool
that pulls in SEMrush's API data intoa sheet and then leverages ChatGPT
(07:44):
for the keyword ideation, right?
So one of the things that I have onmy large list of pet projects is to
see if there is additional data fromSEMrush or one of these other tools.
From an API perspective thatwe can leverage to then allow
chat GPT to parse that data.
Right.
Cause it does good at parsing data butyou have to have the right data source.
(08:06):
That's absolutely right.
And I love how you're takingreally the best of both worlds.
It's the actual factual information,the data that you can then input
into the LLM to then compute allof that which is just incredible.
Really excited.
And it's not just ask chat GPT aquestion now, it's not creating video.
Songs pictures, and now there's AI agents.
Now there are specific LLMsthat are trained to do a
(08:29):
specific task or an objective.
We can train them.
They can have access to third partytools making payments, calendar bookings.
All these things are now possible.
Do you see this assisting
you and your clients to betterserve them and just how is it going
to change the landscape overall?
Yeah, I can tell you how we're usingthem and it'd probably be a hint on
(08:49):
how other businesses can use them.
For instance, to help withsome of our processes, right?
So, we have a case study processand It's a formulaic process.
The process is somewhatrepeated across clientele.
The data is the only thing that'sdifferent and so we've uploaded a
lot of those case study PDF examplesand then start leveraging that custom
(09:13):
GPT to shortcut the time it takesto make additional case studies.
We've done the same thing with contracts.
Also we've done the same thingwith our contract verbiage
amongst other things, right?
And so any business that has a repeat arepeated process where it's standardized,
(09:33):
they should be thinking and asking, Howcan I use AI to optimize this process
Absolutely.
It is a huge time saver.
Everything you mentioned.
I started to do about six to eightmonths back with the contract creation.
You can create documents, name them, filethem away for you among many other things.
If there's a template or a processsomething that's kind of standard
(09:56):
across the board, you can automate that.
You can use AI to now createthese agents that are doing every
process that you could imagine.
It is pretty incredible.
Are there any really cool AI tools thatyou've seen that you would recommend to
either other business owners or maybepeople who want to kind of dip their feet
into AI, how should they get started?
(10:16):
Do they just open up chat GPT?
Is that the easiest to get started?
There are hundreds, probablythousands of tools now.
I had the opportunity to speak withsomebody who works for Microsoft,
whose entire job is just tracking allof these tools and even he can't keep
up but I would say, depending on whatyou're looking to do, whether it's
visual or textual I think startingout with the native platforms is
(10:39):
probably the best thing to do, right?
So, I would recommend, getting to learnchatGPT and honestly, it's not difficult.
Like a lot of times, you can startout, especially if you're a novice.
How can I use chat gpt?
And it will give you ideas, right?
And so I think the best thing you cando is start asking it to recheck your
work or to give you expanded answers
and it kind of will lead youdown your own little rabbit trail
(11:01):
of learning and understanding.
On the visual side, there's a lot ofthings, stable disfusion, rolled out
some pretty new models as far as images.
So I think if you're getting startedI wouldn't necessarily jump into a
big expensive paid tool before youstart playing with the platforms.
The reality is, I think a lot of thesystems that are going to come out,
(11:23):
these thousands of tools I talkedabout, they're typically tied into
only a handful of systems, you haveGoogle, Gemini, you have OpenAI's,
ChatGPT, you have Twitter's or X's Grokand then a few open source platforms.
So by getting right to the basis ofthose, that's going to be a good start.
From there you can find othertools that maybe have improved user
(11:44):
interface or have a front layer thatis more specific to your own needs.
Absolutely.
And it's really exciting to see whathas come about in the last three years
and where things are going to be headed.
It's been integrated into almost everytool that we even use currently, even if
it wasn't like a new tool that came aboutwith your experience in business, working
(12:04):
with all these clients, what has been themost effective marketing strategy for you?
Are you focused on your own SEO?
Are you doing a lot of social media?
Are you building relationships?
What's working best for you?
Yeah.
So as far as what we do.
In some regards, definitely practicewhat we preach, I would say about a third
of the business we get is from our ownSEO and our own local region, right?
(12:27):
The second third of that kind of leadpipeline comes from personal branding.
This kind of engagement being onpodcast, speaking events, engagements
like that and then the third is,referral business, referrals from
existing or past clients, right?
Absolutely.
That is excellent.
And I think it's a testament to a job.
Well done one that you're ranking for allthose keywords that bring in the organic
(12:50):
traffic that actually brings customers.
Then you have the referral optionand then everything else from the
publicity and speaking engagementsthat you do which is really excellent.
Your message is resonatingwith the audience that they're
captivated enough to take actionwhich is really exciting for you.
Yeah.
I mean, knock on wood, we haven't had torun ads for our own agency for four years.
(13:14):
We're discussing maybe making a shiftthere and obviously we run ads for clients
but we've built such an organic presencethat it hasn't been a huge necessity.
Which is the beauty of SEO.
SEO's it's bittersweet because ittakes a lot longer to work, right?
Having a good foundation is key which iswhy we recommend people come to us with
their web builds because not all webdevelopment companies are created equal.
(13:37):
Many of them might do a great jobwith your web design but may not
have the skills, the data scienceskills necessary to build that
so it's optimized for search.
So I feel very blessed that we'vebeen able to keep things busy
without having to exacerbate.
Google ad spend but this might bethe year that we test some of those
other channels out just to supplementwhat's already working, right?
(13:58):
Absolutely.
And that kind of really is the endgoal is to not have to pay this set
amount into paid advertising whensearch engine optimization is readily
available for capturing that traffic.
Yes, it's more of a medium andlong term strategic approach
to getting organic traffic andleads but at the end of the day.
If you can have a healthy mix, payper click, I think has its instances
(14:21):
where maybe you're scaling a campaignwhere you're bringing something new.
Maybe you need higher visibility.
Those are instances thatare great but I think SEO.
For the long game is really where it's at.
Yeah, that's kind of what we tellpeople like there's there are a
few vehicles or scenarios ratherwhere PPC makes more sense, right?
If you need to start generating leadssooner than later, for instance, early
(14:41):
in a campaign, usually we'll have ajoint SEO and PPC campaign so that.
The Google ads strategy is keepingthings kind of a healthy wall.
Your SEO gets kind of catchesup and then also, I guess one of
the biggest downsides to SEO isthat, it's not as dynamic, right.
It's hard.
Sometimes we have clients are like,Hey, can we're getting too many calls?
(15:03):
Can you shut this off?
Well, you can do that with Google ads.
It's not as easy with SEO.
You can't just shut off SEO.
And so things like ramping upseasonality campaigns or ramping
them down for businesses thatare affected by seasonality.
Google ads is a great supplementif not dedicated strategy
but what we'd like to tell peopleis, every business is different.
Every market's different and whetheryou work with us or someone else,
(15:25):
ask how they're going to customizewhat they do to your business.
You don't want to just off theshelf, cookie cutter package because
your business is not the same asthe business next door, right?
Absolutely.
And that can be tough for tryingto craft our packages and offer
and the pricing structure.
Cause yeah, it's like we want to presentan idea and an offer like this is what
you need but that could change each month.
(15:48):
As new data comes in, as we see whatis getting results or isn't, that's
when we want to change our strategy.
And I think that's the right companyyou want to work with someone like
yours or they're willing to actuallylook at the data, see what's working
and then make that pivot when needed.
Right.
A lot of times people walk awayfrom a prospecting call that the
big elephant in the room is how muchis this going to cost me, right?
(16:11):
So we typically, we have our baselinepackages, like here's the baseline
of what we know is going to work.
So with SEO, that's some form ofcontent creation some form of technical
SEO and then link acquisition, right?
Every SEO campaign from ourperspective should have those
three things but we don't alwaysknow how much or how little right.
So we do print out that, for instance,as part of a proposal process essentially
(16:33):
offer anyone that picks up the phonewith us some free competitive analysis
just so they can get a sense of wherethey sit in the stack and also they
can understand why we might justifychanges to that baseline campaign.
If we see, for instance, your top linecompetitor are more aggressive in content,
well, we might need to do more contentthan that's in our baseline strategy.
(16:55):
Same with links, same with technicalSEO and so that's just one of the
many aspects we bring to the table.
We like the data to dictate the directionand tell the story for our client.
Absolutely.
I love that.
And one of my favorite things about SEOis kind of, it's an all encompassing
thing where in order to do good SEO,you are going to need good content.
(17:16):
You need some blog posts.
You need the contents that are goingto drive some of the keywords and
pictures and all the images, the textthat's going to be in there all kind
of driving towards that search traffic.
So it's important to have that.
Have that balance andknow what actually works.
You guys are data drivenwhich is what I love.
Where are the best places to find youguys online and get connected with you?
(17:37):
Yeah, so people can justcheck out our website.
It's enleaf.
com.
That's E N L E A F dot com.
We got goodies there.
Free website tools.
Some great blog posts.
We just wrote a really interesting pieceon the difference between last click
attribution and data driven attribution.
So for those data geeks out there ormaybe those people that are dealing
(17:59):
with different responses between maybeyour Shopify and your Google analytics,
that will help explain that for you.
You can reach out to us me personally,I'm pretty active both on Facebook
and LinkedIn but I'm on all thechannels, so make sure to hit me
up there as well, if you like.
Fantastic.
And we'll have all of those linksavailable down in the description and show
notes so you can get connected as well.
Adam, any exciting things areyou prepping for for 2025?
(18:22):
Anything new and exciting or are youkind of doing just the same everything
that's working already for you?
Well, I did a lot of talks last year.
I'm slowing it down butI do have a few talks.
One that I kind of hintedthat I'm working on.
We'll see where that kind of lands and soI am excited about the opportunities there
and the things that I'm learning about.
Where the pucks going asfar as the future of SEL.
So more to come on that.
(18:43):
And I'm excited to share that stuffonce it's a little bit more maturated.
Nice.
Absolutely.
Adam, you're a very smart guy.
Is there a place that you go to findyour favorite books or podcasts or
YouTubers to consume some knowledge andlearn everything that you know already?
There's a ton of resources.
I think one of my favorite for those thatare getting started, just because it's
(19:04):
a lot of the people that SEO industryspeaking is a platform called IMG Gold.
That stands for Internet Marketing Gold.
They say it's the Netflix for SEO.
So if you're interested in learningSEO or even taking your skills to the
next level that's a great platform.
I have a course on there relatedto AI and there's many other
(19:24):
courses from people I trust.
Outside of that, I read a lotof books on Audible, if you
call that reading, listening.
And just generally keeping apulse of what's happening in
the larger spaces as well.
Nice.
Absolutely.
And yes, I do technically count thatas reading even our minds are kind
of putting the words together inour brains so that it works for us.
(19:45):
Well, Adam, I just wanted to give youthe opportunity to have the floor.
If there's anything you wanted to sharewith our audience that we haven't covered
yet, feel free to take this opportunityand share anything you'd like with them.
Yeah, I don't have a whole lot more toadd other than just I appreciate the time.
And if anyone does have questions or wouldlike to learn more about me or our team or
what we do, we'd love to speak with them.
(20:05):
We don't charge for consultations.
We love bridging that gapwith that initial conversation
and see where it leads.
I love it.
Adam knows his stuff.
He gets results.
He's very data driven.
His smarts.
Thanks for putting everything together.
Congratulations on everything and thankyou for coming on and sharing your
tips and tricks and wisdom with us.
Thank you so much, Adam.
Absolutely.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Absolutely.
It was a pleasure.
You can't just shut off SEO.
(00:01):
And so things like ramping upseasonality campaigns or ramping
them down for businesses thatare affected by seasonality.
Google ads is a great supplement,if not dedicated strategy.
But what we'd like to tell peopleis every business is different.
Every market's different.
And so whether you work with us orsomeone else, ask how they're going to
customize what they do to your business.
You don't want to just off theshelf cookie cutter package
(00:23):
because your business is not thesame as the business next door.
You're listening to Brainwork Framework,a business and marketing podcast
brought to you by focused- biz.
com.
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is the CEO andfounder of Enleaf, Adam Chronister.
He started back in 2009, focusing onhelping businesses grow and thrive through
(00:43):
smart digital marketing strategies likeSEO, lead gen and marketing automation.
So excited to have him on.
Adam, thanks for joining us.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing great.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me on.
I'm looking forward tohaving a conversation.
Absolutely.
We always like to welcomeour entrepreneurs and ask
them about their journey.
What were you kind of doingbefore and how did that bring
you into what you're doing today?
Yeah, so I got my startin software development.
(01:05):
I got a degree in computer science out ofcollege and I tell a lot of people this
like, I got about three fourths of the waythrough my degree and realized I didn't
really want to stare at code all day butI had already got my foot in the water and
kind of invested the time and resources.
Still very much in love with the industry.
Technology, web, web design, all thatstuff but just wasn't sure if I had
(01:28):
what it takes to be necessarily a coder.
Fast forward graduated and got a job asa project manager for a software company
and that was really just a great fit.
I was able to interface with differentweb design and mobile app developers.
Get my feet wet there, kindof learn the ins and outs
essentially of running a business.
(01:49):
All the project managers are kind oflike their own microcosm inside this
business and so that kind of got myfoot my feet wet rather in the day
to day operation side of things.
The agency itself that I was at the timewas a young startup and if you ever worked
at a startup and you raise your hand.
You'll notice that they'llsay, yeah, go have fun.
So there was a particular campaign thatthey were running for a conference,
(02:12):
doing giveaways and whatnot.
And around this time,Twitter was fairly new.
So I kind of volunteered, I'm like,Hey, I'll create a little social
media marketing campaign for you guysand they're like, sure, have fun.
And that kind of really piqued my interestin digital marketing and I've kind of
been doing that in some realm ever since.
I love that.
That is quite the journey.
Having that computer science backgroundwhere you can see more of the data
(02:33):
driven analytical side mixed withmore of the creative side as well.
And we all kind of dabble into marketingby offering our assistance to friends,
families or the companies we work withand say, I can run something for you.
And that opens up this new doorfor us which is really awesome.
So are there specific types ofmarketing that you either specialize
(02:54):
in or you feel really confident inthat businesses should be following
these types of marketing strategies.
I mean, as far as our claim to fame,I think is in the realm of SEO.
That's kind of how a lot of people comethrough the door, I think, technically
can master SEO myself and our team havedone a pretty good job of making that
kind of our ecosphere but it's by nomeans all that we do, what I tell people
(03:15):
we do as in a kind of a nutshell isessentially website design and development
and data driven search marketing.
So that's Google ads SEO.
And a handful of other things.
There's a lot of periphery thingswe do as well, like branding and
graphic design but definitely a lotof people come to us either for web
design or SEO or in a lot of cases, acombination of those 2 factors since.
(03:37):
They are so closely aligned, right?
Absolutely.
It's great to have that full serviceoffering just to really say, Hey,
we can be your one stop shop.
But to have that specialty, I think SEOis by far one of my favorites because
this is where organic leads come from.
This is going to be yourbest nurtured pre warmed.
I'm interested in this product orservice and almost ready to buy.
(03:58):
So that's why SEO is a greatoption for a lot of people.
Have there been changes to SEO?
Now that it's 2025, any changesrecently that people should be
focused on or are a lot of thefundamentals just still the same?
There are a lot of changes.
AI is a big change.
I'm preparing.
It might be a talk.
It might be a blog post or a combinationthereof but I'm preparing some information
(04:22):
on things that I'm Noticing in themarket, trying to get ahead of the curve.
So, for instance, Query based searchis moving a lot to large language
models, ChatGPT, Google Gemini.
I think last I checked, about14 percent of search query
traffic is going to ChatGPT.
So that's going to starteating up a little bit of
(04:42):
what happens in Google, right?
Now the thing that maybe some don'trecognize is that Chat GPT and Google
have a partnership so now that Chat GPTcan query the web, it's using or kind of
sitting as a top layer on top of Google
and for those that have been in theSEO space for a long time, we've kind
of treated being like a redheadedstepchild, myself included but
(05:05):
after kind of uncovering some of theraw data on like where things are
moving, I'm like, now it's probablytime to start focusing on that.
In fact, one of the things that I'vebeen doing here lately is Putting
in search queries into chat gptfor things like local businesses or
products just to start to examine theresults and then starting to ask chat
gpt, how did you get these results?
(05:26):
And the interesting thing I find isthat it will essentially summarize
how it pulls data from being.
One of the things that I saw inthere that was kind of shocking was.
It mentioned that it leveraged beingWebmaster Tools as part of its ranking
factor and I don't know the stats quiteyet but I can imagine that the amount
of sites that have Bing or MicrosoftWebmaster Tools is probably minimal,
(05:51):
especially compared to Google Analytics.
So that's something that we'regoing to be starting to test soon.
Pay more attention to that channelbecause I think we're going to see more
and more of that as time progresses.
Absolutely.
I loved how you expanded into thattopic because that was actually where
I wanted to lead the conversation.
SEO going to change the game withwith AI coming into play where search
(06:14):
queries are now going into the LLMsinstead of search and then just
like you said, being the redheadedstepchild, it was often forgotten
saying, Oh, just focus on Google.
That's where everybody goes anywaysbut see the shifts and changes.
It's important to stay on top of itand actually base it on raw data and
I love that you use chat and say,how did you come to these results?
(06:36):
Have you compared doinglike a SEO keyword analysis?
Have you kind of compared the 2 betweenwhat a chat will pull together versus
your kind of typical SEO data tools?
We've done some stuff inside oflike try to leverage it to use
analytics in that kind of thing.
I think the one area where it fallsshort is the data side of things, right?
(06:59):
It's really good for things likevisual tools, you could take a visual
of a website, a front face website.
And I think it does a prettygood job of giving you some tips
like with CRO, conversion rateoptimization and stuff like that.
I think still the area without some kindof modifications or integrations with
a third party platform to get key APIs,the biggest difference between using chat
(07:22):
gpt natively, say for like analytics.
And something like an SEMrush or an ARefs is those other tools, they have a
certain level of crawl depth and othermetrics that they use in their database.
However, we have built tools,primarily a keyword research tool
that pulls in SEMrush's API data intoa sheet and then leverages ChatGPT
(07:44):
for the keyword ideation, right?
So one of the things that I have onmy large list of pet projects is to
see if there is additional data fromSEMrush or one of these other tools.
From an API perspective thatwe can leverage to then allow
chat GPT to parse that data.
Right.
Cause it does good at parsing data butyou have to have the right data source.
(08:06):
That's absolutely right.
And I love how you're takingreally the best of both worlds.
It's the actual factual information,the data that you can then input
into the LLM to then compute allof that which is just incredible.
Really excited.
And it's not just ask chat GPT aquestion now, it's not creating video.
Songs pictures, and now there's AI agents.
Now there are specific LLMsthat are trained to do a
(08:29):
specific task or an objective.
We can train them.
They can have access to third partytools making payments, calendar bookings.
All these things are now possible.
Do you see this assisting
you and your clients to betterserve them and just how is it going
to change the landscape overall?
Yeah, I can tell you how we're usingthem and it'd probably be a hint on
(08:49):
how other businesses can use them.
For instance, to help withsome of our processes, right?
So, we have a case study processand It's a formulaic process.
The process is somewhatrepeated across clientele.
The data is the only thing that'sdifferent and so we've uploaded a
lot of those case study PDF examplesand then start leveraging that custom
(09:13):
GPT to shortcut the time it takesto make additional case studies.
We've done the same thing with contracts.
Also we've done the same thingwith our contract verbiage
amongst other things, right?
And so any business that has a repeat arepeated process where it's standardized,
(09:33):
they should be thinking and asking, Howcan I use AI to optimize this process
Absolutely.
It is a huge time saver.
Everything you mentioned.
I started to do about six to eightmonths back with the contract creation.
You can create documents, name them, filethem away for you among many other things.
If there's a template or a processsomething that's kind of standard
(09:56):
across the board, you can automate that.
You can use AI to now createthese agents that are doing every
process that you could imagine.
It is pretty incredible.
Are there any really cool AI tools thatyou've seen that you would recommend to
either other business owners or maybepeople who want to kind of dip their feet
into AI, how should they get started?
(10:16):
Do they just open up chat GPT?
Is that the easiest to get started?
There are hundreds, probablythousands of tools now.
I had the opportunity to speak withsomebody who works for Microsoft,
whose entire job is just tracking allof these tools and even he can't keep
up but I would say, depending on whatyou're looking to do, whether it's
visual or textual I think startingout with the native platforms is
(10:39):
probably the best thing to do, right?
So, I would recommend, getting to learnchatGPT and honestly, it's not difficult.
Like a lot of times, you can startout, especially if you're a novice.
How can I use chat gpt?
And it will give you ideas, right?
And so I think the best thing you cando is start asking it to recheck your
work or to give you expanded answers
and it kind of will lead youdown your own little rabbit trail
(11:01):
of learning and understanding.
On the visual side, there's a lot ofthings, stable disfusion, rolled out
some pretty new models as far as images.
So I think if you're getting startedI wouldn't necessarily jump into a
big expensive paid tool before youstart playing with the platforms.
The reality is, I think a lot of thesystems that are going to come out,
(11:23):
these thousands of tools I talkedabout, they're typically tied into
only a handful of systems, you haveGoogle, Gemini, you have OpenAI's,
ChatGPT, you have Twitter's or X's Grokand then a few open source platforms.
So by getting right to the basis ofthose, that's going to be a good start.
From there you can find othertools that maybe have improved user
(11:44):
interface or have a front layer thatis more specific to your own needs.
Absolutely.
And it's really exciting to see whathas come about in the last three years
and where things are going to be headed.
It's been integrated into almost everytool that we even use currently, even if
it wasn't like a new tool that came aboutwith your experience in business, working
(12:04):
with all these clients, what has been themost effective marketing strategy for you?
Are you focused on your own SEO?
Are you doing a lot of social media?
Are you building relationships?
What's working best for you?
Yeah.
So as far as what we do.
In some regards, definitely practicewhat we preach, I would say about a third
of the business we get is from our ownSEO and our own local region, right?
(12:27):
The second third of that kind of leadpipeline comes from personal branding.
This kind of engagement being onpodcast, speaking events, engagements
like that and then the third is,referral business, referrals from
existing or past clients, right?
Absolutely.
That is excellent.
And I think it's a testament to a job.
Well done one that you're ranking for allthose keywords that bring in the organic
(12:50):
traffic that actually brings customers.
Then you have the referral optionand then everything else from the
publicity and speaking engagementsthat you do which is really excellent.
Your message is resonatingwith the audience that they're
captivated enough to take actionwhich is really exciting for you.
Yeah.
I mean, knock on wood, we haven't had torun ads for our own agency for four years.
(13:14):
We're discussing maybe making a shiftthere and obviously we run ads for clients
but we've built such an organic presencethat it hasn't been a huge necessity.
Which is the beauty of SEO.
SEO's it's bittersweet because ittakes a lot longer to work, right?
Having a good foundation is key which iswhy we recommend people come to us with
their web builds because not all webdevelopment companies are created equal.
(13:37):
Many of them might do a great jobwith your web design but may not
have the skills, the data scienceskills necessary to build that
so it's optimized for search.
So I feel very blessed that we'vebeen able to keep things busy
without having to exacerbate.
Google ad spend but this might bethe year that we test some of those
other channels out just to supplementwhat's already working, right?
(13:58):
Absolutely.
And that kind of really is the endgoal is to not have to pay this set
amount into paid advertising whensearch engine optimization is readily
available for capturing that traffic.
Yes, it's more of a medium andlong term strategic approach
to getting organic traffic andleads but at the end of the day.
If you can have a healthy mix, payper click, I think has its instances
(14:21):
where maybe you're scaling a campaignwhere you're bringing something new.
Maybe you need higher visibility.
Those are instances thatare great but I think SEO.
For the long game is really where it's at.
Yeah, that's kind of what we tellpeople like there's there are a
few vehicles or scenarios ratherwhere PPC makes more sense, right?
If you need to start generating leadssooner than later, for instance, early
(14:41):
in a campaign, usually we'll have ajoint SEO and PPC campaign so that.
The Google ads strategy is keepingthings kind of a healthy wall.
Your SEO gets kind of catchesup and then also, I guess one of
the biggest downsides to SEO isthat, it's not as dynamic, right.
It's hard.
Sometimes we have clients are like,Hey, can we're getting too many calls?
(15:03):
Can you shut this off?
Well, you can do that with Google ads.
It's not as easy with SEO.
You can't just shut off SEO.
And so things like ramping upseasonality campaigns or ramping
them down for businesses thatare affected by seasonality.
Google ads is a great supplementif not dedicated strategy
but what we'd like to tell peopleis, every business is different.
Every market's different and whetheryou work with us or someone else,
(15:25):
ask how they're going to customizewhat they do to your business.
You don't want to just off theshelf, cookie cutter package because
your business is not the same asthe business next door, right?
Absolutely.
And that can be tough for tryingto craft our packages and offer
and the pricing structure.
Cause yeah, it's like we want to presentan idea and an offer like this is what
you need but that could change each month.
(15:48):
As new data comes in, as we see whatis getting results or isn't, that's
when we want to change our strategy.
And I think that's the right companyyou want to work with someone like
yours or they're willing to actuallylook at the data, see what's working
and then make that pivot when needed.
Right.
A lot of times people walk awayfrom a prospecting call that the
big elephant in the room is how muchis this going to cost me, right?
(16:11):
So we typically, we have our baselinepackages, like here's the baseline
of what we know is going to work.
So with SEO, that's some form ofcontent creation some form of technical
SEO and then link acquisition, right?
Every SEO campaign from ourperspective should have those
three things but we don't alwaysknow how much or how little right.
So we do print out that, for instance,as part of a proposal process essentially
(16:33):
offer anyone that picks up the phonewith us some free competitive analysis
just so they can get a sense of wherethey sit in the stack and also they
can understand why we might justifychanges to that baseline campaign.
If we see, for instance, your top linecompetitor are more aggressive in content,
well, we might need to do more contentthan that's in our baseline strategy.
(16:55):
Same with links, same with technicalSEO and so that's just one of the
many aspects we bring to the table.
We like the data to dictate the directionand tell the story for our client.
Absolutely.
I love that.
And one of my favorite things about SEOis kind of, it's an all encompassing
thing where in order to do good SEO,you are going to need good content.
(17:16):
You need some blog posts.
You need the contents that are goingto drive some of the keywords and
pictures and all the images, the textthat's going to be in there all kind
of driving towards that search traffic.
So it's important to have that.
Have that balance andknow what actually works.
You guys are data drivenwhich is what I love.
Where are the best places to find youguys online and get connected with you?
(17:37):
Yeah, so people can justcheck out our website.
It's enleaf.
com.
That's E N L E A F dot com.
We got goodies there.
Free website tools.
Some great blog posts.
We just wrote a really interesting pieceon the difference between last click
attribution and data driven attribution.
So for those data geeks out there ormaybe those people that are dealing
(17:59):
with different responses between maybeyour Shopify and your Google analytics,
that will help explain that for you.
You can reach out to us me personally,I'm pretty active both on Facebook
and LinkedIn but I'm on all thechannels, so make sure to hit me
up there as well, if you like.
Fantastic.
And we'll have all of those linksavailable down in the description and show
notes so you can get connected as well.
Adam, any exciting things areyou prepping for for 2025?
(18:22):
Anything new and exciting or are youkind of doing just the same everything
that's working already for you?
Well, I did a lot of talks last year.
I'm slowing it down butI do have a few talks.
One that I kind of hintedthat I'm working on.
We'll see where that kind of lands and soI am excited about the opportunities there
and the things that I'm learning about.
Where the pucks going asfar as the future of SEL.
So more to come on that.
(18:43):
And I'm excited to share that stuffonce it's a little bit more maturated.
Nice.
Absolutely.
Adam, you're a very smart guy.
Is there a place that you go to findyour favorite books or podcasts or
YouTubers to consume some knowledge andlearn everything that you know already?
There's a ton of resources.
I think one of my favorite for those thatare getting started, just because it's
(19:04):
a lot of the people that SEO industryspeaking is a platform called IMG Gold.
That stands for Internet Marketing Gold.
They say it's the Netflix for SEO.
So if you're interested in learningSEO or even taking your skills to the
next level that's a great platform.
I have a course on there relatedto AI and there's many other
(19:24):
courses from people I trust.
Outside of that, I read a lotof books on Audible, if you
call that reading, listening.
And just generally keeping apulse of what's happening in
the larger spaces as well.
Nice.
Absolutely.
And yes, I do technically count thatas reading even our minds are kind
of putting the words together inour brains so that it works for us.
(19:45):
Well, Adam, I just wanted to give youthe opportunity to have the floor.
If there's anything you wanted to sharewith our audience that we haven't covered
yet, feel free to take this opportunityand share anything you'd like with them.
Yeah, I don't have a whole lot more toadd other than just I appreciate the time.
And if anyone does have questions or wouldlike to learn more about me or our team or
what we do, we'd love to speak with them.
(20:05):
We don't charge for consultations.
We love bridging that gapwith that initial conversation
and see where it leads.
I love it.
Adam knows his stuff.
He gets results.
He's very data driven.
His smarts.
Thanks for putting everything together.
Congratulations on everything and thankyou for coming on and sharing your
tips and tricks and wisdom with us.
Thank you so much, Adam.
Absolutely.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Absolutely.
It was a pleasure.
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