December 12, 2022 • 65 mins
Running the Bases today with Ted Kubaitis, Founder and CEO of SEO Tool Lab. Ted has innovated software solutions that drive results for over 20 years for companies spanning the globe.
Our guest today is quite a rockstar in the Digital Marketing industry. A native of Illinois, he attended the flagship university - the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign. While there, he studied Computer Science and had the opportunity to research at The National Center for Super Computing Applications housed on the Campus. After graduation in 1996, he relocated to Seattle to begin his career with Microsoft.
Several years later, he pioneered the market for competitive intelligence analysis and founded QL2 Software. Over 20 years later, his WebQL tool continues to be internationally recognized for data queries. More recently, he has been impacting the SEO world. He is the Creator of the SEO Software Cora. In addition, he travels the world speaking at SEO conferences and on podcasts dispelling numerous SEO myths and educating about scientific, data-driven SEO solutions.
To learn more about Ted and Cora Software visit: https://seotoollab.com/cora.html
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Randy (00:01):
I'm Randy Rohde and I'm fascinated with entrepreneurs
and small business owners.
Plus, I love baseball.
Every show I sit down with a smallbusiness owner and we discuss their
running the bases of entrepreneurship.
We throw the ball around on strategymanagement, execution, and innovation.
(00:24):
Plus a little fun baseball talk.
Hey, thanks for joining us today.
Settle in, grab your cracker jacks,and you know what they say, play ball.
All right.
It's a great day for a ball game.
This is Randy Rohde on runningthe bases with small businesses.
Hey, thanks for hanging out with us today.
Our guest today is quite a rock starin the digital marketing industry.
(00:47):
He's a native of Illinois.
He attended the flagshipuniversity, the University of
Illinois or Banish or Champagne.
While there, he studied computerscience and had the opportunity to
do research in the National Centerfor Super Computing applications that
is housed right there on the campus.
After graduation in 96, helocated to Seattle to begin
(01:09):
his career with Microsoft.
Several years later, he pioneered themarket for competitive intelligence
analysis and founded QL two software.
And over 20 years later, his web QLtool continues to be internationally
recognized for data queries.
More recently.
He's been impacting the SEO world.
(01:31):
He is the creator of the SEO softwareQuora, and in addition, he travels
the world speaking at SEO conferenceswhere I actually, in the last few
months, I've been able to joinup with Ted at a couple of those.
He's a leader in SEO education throughhis IMG website, and you can listen to
(01:51):
him weekly on his podcast, SEO FightClub, dispelling SEO Myths and Educating
about data driven SEO solutions.
So please welcome to the show, the founderand CEO of SEO Tool Labs, Ted Kubaitis.
Ted.
Ted (02:11):
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's, uh, uh, an impressive amountof research you've done into my past.
Uh, one, one small correction.
I'm, uh, not with IMG anymore.
I sold that venture.
Uh, well, good for you.
Yeah.
Yep.
So that's, that's one that's,uh, I'm no longer running.
Randy (02:29):
I'll, I'll note that with my researcher.
Was that, because I know that you, nowwe're gonna get into weeds a little
bit for her audience, but was that theventure you were doing with Kyle Roof?
Ted (02:40):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It, you know, a lot of peoplethink there's a lot of drama
and stuff about that, but there,there's really not basically, uh,
long story short, uh, Pandemic.
Uh, my father died and I was sufferingfrom a spinal injury, so I could
barely sit for 15 minutes at a time.
(03:02):
And, uh, I wasn't pulling my weight.
And so they bought me out cuz they neededto move faster than I was able to do.
So it is, uh, no, no hardfeelings or anything.
It's just a case of it wasn'tgonna work out at the time.
And, and in those cases, you know, a lotof people, they get all angry and bitter
(03:23):
and fight and everything, but, but reallywhat you gotta do in those moments is
just, you know, kind, kind of make itright for all sides and, and move on.
And so that's what I did.
Randy (03:35):
All right.
Well, good to know.
That's a.
Program I've been a part of and Ilove, uh, listening to SEO Fight Club.
So I'm glad that still lives on.
Uh, that's very fun.
So before we get started, as Imentioned in the intro, and by the
way, so I have this research team andthey do a great job in like digging
up all kinds of stuff, uh, on people.
(03:55):
So I'll pass along your congratsto them for another job well done.
I've heard you say this story a coupleof times and I think it's really, is
quite, quite humorous and kind offascinating being in our industry.
But I would love it if you couldmaybe share the story as you say that
you've been fired four times from thesame job for being too successful.
Ted (04:21):
Yeah.
You know, as a commission based SEO foran online retailer and what I've learned.
Uh, commission based seo is that it?
Once you become one of thehighest paid employees at the
company, uh, they resent you.
Um, so it's the nature of the beastand, uh, they always wonder because for
(04:48):
a search engine optimizer, they think,well, you've already tuned the pages.
How much more value can you bring?
So we already got the value, andas an online retailer, they do
80% of their sales in q4, and so,Why wouldn't they think that they
should just let you go before q4?
(05:10):
Not pay out the big commissions.
I mean, what more can you offer?
A big mistake on their partthough, because when I left, uh,
their revenue fell by millionsand so they wanted me back.
Of course my rates went up at that point.
Cause I can't trust them anymore.
My contract terms changeand uh, then I do it again.
(05:32):
And then they hate me cuz I'm themost expensive person in the company.
And so what more can I do for them?
So they fire me and theirorganic revenue falls through the
floor and so they want me back.
And so you did
Randy (05:48):
that dance, like you did this dance like four.
Ted (05:52):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's, that's, uh, lifeis a commission based employee.
If you're good at what you do,um, I bet if it was commission,
sales, commission, whatever.
Sure, sure.
Um, the second you become themost expensive is the second
everybody hates you and shootshigh daggers in your back and.
And it's tough.
(06:12):
And being an seo, like if you're asmall business person and you worked
with an seo, you probably have alot of complaints about the seo.
Well, it's, it's kind of a,a two way street, you know?
But being an SEO is a thankless jobbecause half of what we're doing is
an SEO is, uh, preventing the customerfrom shooting themselves in the foot.
(06:36):
And so SEOs commonly tell, you know,engineering teams and businesses, no,
you can't do your redesign that way.
No, you can't just point anyold domain at the money site.
No, you can't just.
And very quickly it becomespolitical and people hate us.
(06:57):
We're the people saying, no, no, no,but we're not the business owner.
Right?
And all of a sudden, anyonewho, you know, has a plan to the
contrary, wants to see you die amiserable death business speaking.
But you know, you haveto, you have to push back.
And like, you know, businessesso often don't recognize the
(07:18):
thankless value of saying no tothings that will hurt the business.
And so many SEOs get sacrificed forkind of doing the right thing and
saying no when it needs to be said.
Uh, that
Randy (07:33):
is, uh, yeah, I, I think that's a funny story.
And you're probably right in the senseof probably could be anything if you
were a sales commission person sellingcars or mattresses, probably doesn't
matter if you were the top gun, they,uh, you're, you got a big target on you.
Yeah.
Ted (07:51):
Yeah.
And, and you know, there's a lotof businesses out there that would
love the idea of hiring an SEOon a commission basis, but just
remember you can lose that bet.
And what are you gonna do whenthat SEO knocks it out of the park?
Yeah.
Like some of, some of the SEOs Iwork with, their data driven and
(08:12):
they've tested their methods so theyknow what they're gonna bring in.
I know one guy he tookon an online retailer.
He just knocked it out of the park Thatretailer was, was selling, you know, those
collections of, uh, of elements that arein acrylic plastic that look so cool,
(08:33):
like if you are into chemistry and like,oh, I want to collect all the elements.
Sure.
It was that type of product.
He sold them out of inventoryin like three weeks.
Oh my.
And he ended up getting himself firedbecause the reorder time on getting
more inventory was six months out.
So what do you need an SEOfor if you have no inventory?
(08:55):
. And so a lot of businesses, uh, they don'tunderstand that, you know, you have to
have the whole, you know, pipeline setup for scale if you're planning to grow.
And people don't thinkabout that when they.
You know, a top of the line seo.
Randy (09:11):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So let's, uh, walk back a littlebit in early in your career.
So, and this is early, early . Haveyou always had a passion for computers?
I know growing up, you know, in theshadows of the University of Illinois.
I mean, I think, if I'm notmistaken, I think that is the, the
(09:32):
laboratory for the personal computer.
Well,
Ted (09:35):
to, to understand my origin story, you need to know
a tiny amount about my dad.
Ah,
Randy (09:42):
alright, here we go.
So family secrets here.
Ted (09:45):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Going, going back to the latesixties, early seventies, you
know, big room size mainframes.
He was hired to kinda watch the door ofthe lab and, and, uh, check, uh, IDs and
stuff for controlled data corporation.
(10:06):
And, uh, uh, he was oftenin the, the night shift and
there was nobody ever there.
So it was him, these giant rooms ofservers and all of the technical manuals.
So he read all the technical manualson all of the mainframes and servers
and everything while he was there.
(10:29):
And, uh, at some point, you know,one of the, the main scientists
is having issues and, you know,things aren't working right.
And there are problems.
And so my dad, who, you know, RTFM,you know, he, he read the FN manual.
Sure.
, uh, you know, he, hegoes in and fixes the.
(10:52):
And the scientist gets all up inarms that the guy watching the door
dared even touch these mainframes.
So he goes, uh, to the CEO of the company,starts demanding that my dad be fired.
Oh.
And the CEO looked at the problem,looked at what my dad did, and, uh,
(11:13):
gave him a job as a system administratorfor the systems . All right.
So that's, that's kindof his origin story.
And so he makes all these contactsat control data and eventually
ends up and Avia, Illinois.
Oh, yeah.
At the Firmi Lab Article Accelerator.
(11:35):
So he's there doing, uh, systemsand engineering for Firmi Lab.
Right.
And I, at that time,I'm a little tiny kid.
I'm just, you know, running around,uh, you know, fishing in the cooling
ponds outside of Firmi Lab, , and,uh, Saw, uh, Stephen Hawking there
(11:56):
once, didn't, didn't even recognize itwouldn't be later until later in life
that I learned how special that was.
Yeah.
To just run across Stephen Hawking.
That doesn't normally happen.
And so, uh, saw James Randy there too.
Wow.
He was there for a little bit.
And, uh, yeah.
Number, number of, you know, famouspeople in that crowd were there.
(12:19):
And, uh, at that timeI was in grade school.
My dad hands me a, uh, TRS 80 Uhhuh,you know, they called it the Trash 80
from Radio Shack, little Computer.
You connect it to your tv Sure.
And type in some basic programs, drawrandom circles, that type of thing.
Right.
So I, I kinda learn the basics ofprogramming and stuff at that point.
(12:43):
Later on I get to high school.
I don't take any computer stuff in highschool cuz I'm way more advanced by
that point than what they're teaching.
I get to college and I can't reallyhandle the college curriculum
for computer science cuz it'sboring the shit out of me.
And this is at
Randy (13:02):
University of Illinois?
Yeah.
Ted (13:04):
Yeah.
So you have to remember that thecurriculum at that time was very basic.
Like most universitiesdidn't have computer science.
It was all part of the math program.
Right, right.
And so, yeah, and like one of thethings that happened, uh, at that
point in time is they had, uh, theycame around with a NDA saying, Hey, we
(13:26):
have something we wanna show you, butit requires a signed NDA to use it.
And so I signed it and I installedthis new thing that nobody's
ever seen before called MosaicAnd uh, what it was was the
first graphical web browser.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember.
I'm looking at this thing, it has oneweb page on it, uh, Usenet News and a
(13:50):
couple FDP sites, and that's all it was.
There's nothing else on theweb and uh, so I was like, okay,
this is never gonna catch on.
But it was pretty cool.
And, uh, but it did catchon like very quickly.
Once it was out of the, the closedNDA thing, I had all my friends
(14:10):
making websites about their bandsand, and doing all that stuff.
And it was, it was a lot of fun.
I had the, uh, office across thehall from Mark Riesen for a while who
would later go on and make Netscapes.
Sure.
And.
I eventually, uh, made my way outto Microsoft and Seattle where I
(14:31):
was working for a marketer, a rocketscientist who was part of the team that
engineered the Boeing Delta two rocket.
And Microsoft had this idea oflet's get a rocket scientist
and throw marketing problems.
Adam.
So, uh, uh, I was his engineer andI was learning from him about his
concepts of payload in the marketing.
(14:54):
And so I learned a ton there.
And did it work?
Rand (14:57):
Was that a good connector?
Oh
Ted (15:00):
yeah.
We knocked his approach left and right,like it was, it was every two weeks.
Somebody was bringing a bottleof champagne to me, . Um,
so it was really cool.
That's great.
And yeah, that was amazing.
And then in April of 2000, Iwent to start a, uh, a startup.
I raised two and a half million dollarsin angel funding for the startup.
(15:23):
I fought with the VCs all the time.
We, we opted to go without VCsbecause they were all ridiculous.
Yeah.
You know, when, when you starttalking with the VCs, they think
you should revalue your companybecause they brought a box lunch.
You know, it's like, no way.
And they're arguing the valuation.
(15:44):
It's like, well, we've alreadysold shares and we can get.
Any number of shares soldagain at the same valuation.
Why would we give you 10 cents onthe dollar for a box lunch Uhhuh?
Like what?
What possible reason would gothrough your head for us to revalue?
Yeah.
And so, yeah.
After arguing with a number ofventure capital companies, we
(16:07):
realized we just didn't meet 'em.
Right.
You know, that is the problem.
The thing that they couldn't understandis why we didn't need 'em . And so
we made this awesome technology.
Is is incredible.
Working with all the major airlines.
We're working with, uh,government agencies.
We're working with massivecorporations in the area of business
(16:30):
intelligence and nine 11 hits andall the airlines left the table.
We weren't gonna make profit foranother 10 months after that,
had a staff of, uh, 25 engineers.
I had to let 'em go cuz I knew it would be10 months before we could really pay 'em.
And man, that was rough.
(16:50):
That reduced me to tears.
But, uh, stuck with it.
We clawed our way out of that hole.
Nice.
Um, were, uh, partially credited withhelping the airlines, uh, rebound
at that time cuz there are laws thatthe airlines couldn't communicate
to, uh, adjust their pricing.
(17:10):
So we were the end round aroundthat, where they could monitor
each other's pricing and adjustaccordingly without coordinating it.
And, uh, so yeah.
Part of the reason airfares gotexpensive again after nine 11
was the stuff we were doing.
Mm-hmm.
, thank you.
Well, thanks for doing that, . Yeah.
(17:31):
I, I sold that in April of2000 and, uh, went into online
retail where it was an engineer.
An SEO fell into my lap.
Right.
And eventually I, I, you know,invented my own way of doing seo
and I was working in isolation.
Nobody knew about it.
And I showed some people on Black HatWorld, some of the things I was doing, and
(17:54):
they were like, Oh my God, what made thatdata ? And then I kinda realized I had an
opportunity and so I struck out on my own.
Nice.
And so I've been doing SEO softwareever since and I've been loving it.
It's my happy place.
I get to invent, uh,technology and help people.
(18:15):
Yeah.
My two favorite things in the world.
Yeah.
Randy (18:18):
Well that is, that is a great story.
So that's, yeah.
Long sliver.
I love this story about your dad andkind of going from the security guard.
I don't know what his title was tobeing, you know, a systems analyst
Yeah, exactly.
And it's man's amazing man.
Uh, it, it's just crazy how theworld works and it, you know, it shows
(18:41):
you the value of reading the manual.
Yeah.
So you have this, you know, PhD computerscience guy that's screaming at you
that didn't even read the manual.
And you have an untrainedperson who read the manual.
Well sometimes whoever read themanuals and the right, you know?
Yeah.
That, that guy's thesmartest guy in the room.
(19:03):
Well, I always tell, and your dadwas, was doing the thing physically.
It's like what I tell my kids all thetime is like, listen, you were living
in such a great world right now.
You could spend 30 minutes on YouTubeand learn how to do anything, and
your dad, you know, is like, wow,I got all this resource right here.
I'm gonna go put it touse and just did his.
(19:24):
Could you imagine it like back then,like that documentation was in three
ring binders of black and white paper.
Oh yeah.
You know, you, you dream aboutit being on YouTube back then to
have that type of initiative, man,you really had to invest a lot.
Yeah.
Personally.
(19:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and so, and then walking througha little bit, and I'm just kind
of putting the timelines together.
So you were at Microsoftand I should say, uh,
Ted (19:53):
yeah, that was in 97 when I went there.
You
know, you and I actually, I used tolive in is Aqua and I moved there in 90.
95, I believe it was.
Uh, and I was there for five years.
So we were, you know,who knows, maybe we were
neighbors.
We probably pe each other on the five 20.
Randy (20:16):
But I just know, because was, uh, um, um, VP of operations
for a company called Egghead.
Do you remember Egghead?
Vaguely.
Were they, uh, they were, werethey a software vendor or, well, we
were, we were a retailer that had that you could go and
buy any piece of software, right?
(20:38):
Or, or, and then we began to expand.
We were selling hardware, uh, as wellin the final days, but, I remember in,
uh, and this was kind of interesting,in 96 that December the board of
directors had a meeting, they said,Hey, you know, this is after we had
spent a, a ton of money in opening likethree big, big box, uh, footprints.
(21:00):
Typically, that typical egghead storeat that time was about 2000 square
feet, we'll say, packed with software.
And then because competitors and bigbox, you know, was the, was the, was the
standard that was where retail was going.
So we put investment into, and weopened three big boxes around the
(21:20):
country and uh, and they were goingwell, but the board of directors came
and met December, I remember this.
It was like, wow.
December of 96 they met and decidedthey had a question, do we continue to
invest in the big box retailing or do wejust go all in and bank everything on.
(21:43):
This thing called the internetand do internet sales.
And they decided, and, and at thistime when I joined, I grew the company.
We went from 75 stores to, we wereup just under 300 at the time and
they decided that they were gonnaroll the dice and go all internet
And so, so, and that was in 96.
(22:04):
So in 97 I just spent thatwhole year shutting stores down.
That was crazy.
I'm like, this is gonna be a lot of fun.
And uh, and that's what, and nowtoday they are called New Egg.
Uh, and so you probably seethem online doing retailing.
So we were probably there, butthat get away from my history.
You were there at Microsoft though,during like some really cool times, right?
(22:27):
I mean, you were there like Windows98 launched, man, and that like, wow,
that would changed the world, right?
You were there with Bill himself andwhen he stepped down, so man, it.
Ted (22:41):
Yeah.
Uh, when, when I was there, I waspart of the Look Smart acquisition.
I, uh, had written some of the,the materials on the I E A K, the
Internet Explorer administrationkit, you know, all those CDs they
sent out to sign up with ISPs.
(23:01):
Yeah, I helped author that a numberof my, uh, projects appeared in
the Barksdale antitrust testimonybetween Netscape and Microsoft.
So I have a couple bulletitems on that laundry list.
good for you.
Um, Yeah, it, it was aninteresting time to say the least.
(23:22):
Yeah, the
mid nineties right in there inthe tech world was uh, just crazy cuz it
just seemed like every other, every othermonth it was like something revolutionary
coming and you know, and then for a periodof time, you know, Microsoft and other
developers at Barlin at that time as well,I mean they were just like buying, trying
to acquire different, smaller softwarecompanies to embed whether into Windows
(23:47):
or Microsoft, into office, you know?
Um, yeah, it was, uh, that wasa crazy time period back then.
Was that tough steppingaway from Microsoft?
It
was, but uh, there came a point where, where Microsoft was,
uh, leaning heavily into changeafter like, the perma temp lawsuit.
And, and so, you know, the culturechanged significantly then.
(24:11):
And I remember that was the time I leftto create my, uh, first startup venture.
And, uh, eventually, eventually duringthe course of like the four years of
that startup venture, we were nominatedfor Best New Technology by PC Magazine.
And I ended up at the awardceremony in, uh, Vegas at Comdex.
(24:37):
Oh geez.
Uh, being cod for a category with BillGates and the Windows operating system.
So I'm, I'm up there for a technologyno one has ever heard of and is brand
new technology is amazing technology,but nobody knew about what it was.
And there I am.
You know, up against likeWindows 98 or Windows Vista or
(25:00):
something like that at the time.
And, uh, yeah, it was, it was incredible.
I was, you know, right.
Sitting next to, I was sitting nextto the security detail that was next
to Bill Gates, so I was within 12 feetof Bill Gates at this award ceremony.
Yeah, yeah.
And,
Ran (25:19):
uh, who won the award that.
It
Ted (25:22):
wasn't me.
I was happy to be nominated, but ofcourse, the technology that nobody
knows is not gonna take the practice.
Randy (25:29):
Probably not.
But anyway, you were at the tablethough, so that was kinda fun.
Yes.
Uh, good for you.
All right, so I wanna getback, we're gonna get into it.
I want talk about your currentVenture SEO tool lab and, and folks,
I will tell you this is as an SEOmyself, this is like, uh, the mad
scientist kind of stuff, right?
(25:50):
And this is not a tool for the meek here.
This is a lot of data, lot of info.
So this is probably, and unlessyou are into seo, this is
probably not the tool for you.
But I love Ted's background and I lovehis tool and how he's grown his company.
And so I thought he wouldbe a great guest for us.
So we're gonna talk more aboutyour, your latest, uh, endeavor.
(26:14):
And I want to point out that, uh,what Randy just said is, is not a dig.
He says that with, with my approval,my software is for professional SEOs.
So if you're a mom and pop business, youkind of have no business, uh, getting it.
But if, if you're, if you're aprofessional seo, then I can help you.
(26:37):
So if, if you're interested in the kindof advantage like my technology can
bring, what I recommend to you is youfind an SEO that uses my software Right.
And go with them.
Yeah.
But maybe, maybe if you're amom and pop shop, don't buy it.
It's probably gonna bemore than you can handle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(26:58):
, I just wanted to set that tablethere a little bit before.
Yeah, yeah.
Before we dig into that, I don'twant people getting into, into
trouble maybe doing something.
But before we get there, Ted,I I, do you like baseball?
Ted (27:11):
I, I do, I'm not, I'm not the biggest expert, but I can tell
you the first game I ever saw.
Oh, well, let's hold on a second.
Let's get it.
It's that time and
it's time for the seventh inning stretch.
Randy (27:24):
All right.
It is Ted, this is that time of the showthat we call the Seventh Inning Stretch.
And, uh, yeah, it gives me anopportunity to ask our guests a
little baseball trivia question.
But before we get into that though,you, you kinda teased us with the
Remembering your first baseball game.
Ted (27:44):
Yep.
Yep.
I, uh, uh, went with my dad to Chicagoand we saw a Cubs versus Pirates game.
There we go.
And in true fashion, the Cubslost miserably, and I loved it.
And I was a Cubs fan.
Forever.
R (28:03):
I, you know, I was wondering, I can see you're, you're, it's
not quite covey blue, but you, Ican see you're wearing some blue.
It must be covey blue.
I know.
Ted (28:11):
Yeah.
I mean, how can you not like an underdog?
It's a fun game to watch, even though theydidn't win, they played their hearts out.
Yes.
And you know, that's,that's always respectable.
And I always got teased for beinga Cubs fan, but, you know, uh, you
know, in for a penny, in, for a,
Randy (28:30):
there you go.
All right.
Well, Ted, I am a lifelong Cubsfan, so you and I have got,
uh, something to share there.
So here we go.
So here's the, here, here'sthe, the background for it here.
Our seventh inning stretch.
You're a native Illinois.
Did you, well, your dad took youto baseball, so this is good.
You're a Cubs fan.
So experts we're, we're kinda going herewith this, the, the Fight Club theme,
(28:54):
kinda like with your current podcast thatyou've got going and so, We're gonna talk
about the intense rivals in mlb, right?
Kind of the fight club of MLB expertshave been talking and have had opinions
about what makes the great rivalry,what are some of those crosstown
(29:15):
classics and that kind of stuff.
Um, men's Journal recently ranked theirmost intense rivalries, kind of listing
their own fight clubs, so to speak.
So here's, here's your question.
What do you believe that they ranked thenumber one rivalry in all of baseball?
(29:37):
Number
Ted (29:38):
one rivalry.
Well, it has to include theYankees, I bet . Um, who would
be on the other side of that?
I'm listening for keyboard click.
So no, no, no.
No,
no.
And, and the, the problem is, I'm, I'mnot a, a huge, uh, baseball trivia person.
(30:00):
So right now I bet people arepulling their hair out saying,
why on earth don't you know this?
It's because I, I like playing the game.
I like watching thegame, but I don't study.
There you go.
The
Randy (30:12):
stab hooks.
Well, you're, you're, I, I will say this.
You are halfway there.
Let's walk it down from topfive down to number one first.
Uh, in the number fifth spot isthe Rangers versus the Blue Jays.
All right.
I'm not exactly sure how that got to bea big rivalry, but that's number five.
(30:34):
Number four are theGiants and the Dodgers.
Ted (30:40):
Ooh, yeah.
That, that should have been more obvious
Randy (30:43):
to, yeah.
Yeah.
So there we got theGiants and the Dodgers.
Then number three, Are theYankees versus the Mets.
And that makes sense, right?
Ted (30:54):
You got two?
Yeah, I, I was thinking that, but I waslike, that's kinda a little too close.
Randy (30:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Too, too.
Uh, metros number two.
No, this one I know becauseI live it on every season.
Cardinals versus the Cubs.
Yeah.
Ted (31:11):
Yeah.
That was big in Illinois, but I didn'tknow if that would Oh yeah, yeah.
Be meaningful nationwide.
Oh yes, it
Randy (31:16):
is.
The, uh, the Route 66 rivalry, right?
Yeah.
And those, and just a little,those two teams have been
playing each other since 1892.
So think about, you know, all ofthe history that's, uh, rounded
the bases with those two guys.
But the number one rivalry in all ofbaseball Yankees versus the Red Sox.
Ted (31:38):
Yeah, there you go.
Yes.
Randy (31:40):
Yeah.
They have played eachother over 2000 times.
Uh, that's a lot
Ted (31:46):
of baseball.
Yeah.
That makes a lot of sense.
Yes.
That should have been more obvious to me.
Oh
Randy (31:52):
man.
So you think about all of the history,you know, you had Babe Ruth that was sold
from Boston to New York back in 1916.
We've had a ton of fights between thoseteams, you know, bench clearing brawls,
and then, you know, the, the Red Sox,uh, kind of when they launched their
wave of winning, when they won gameseven of the, uh, 2003 A L C S and then
(32:16):
went on in 2004 to beat the Yankees.
So swept the Yankees actually there.
So yeah.
Yeah, there it is.
Yankees versus Red Sox number one rivalry.
It, it seems like television isalways looking for things to reboot.
I think if they did dramatic, uh,recreations of famous big rivalry games.
(32:39):
That would be like winning content.
Yeah.
That
could be good stuff.
All right.
Right.
Well good.
Well, thanks for, uh, playingour seventh inning start.
So let's get back into it.
Play ball.
So I do wanna hearabout, um, SEO Tool Lab.
And so give you a chance to talk a littlebit about that and, um, and really about
(33:00):
Quora so you can tell folks what thisgreat tool is that you have out there.
And I think if I recall, you've just, or,or either it has been released or it's
on the horizon here of a new version of
Ted (33:12):
Quora.
Yeah, yeah.
Cos seven is out and it does localand it has tons of new features and,
uh, people are wildly crazy about it.
So I, I kinda, uh, hit agrand slam with cos seven.
Nice.
So it's, it's doing very well.
Nice.
You know, the interesting thing about mycurrent business is kind of my mentality.
(33:37):
So you, you heard in my story that I dida big angel fund adventure and, and sold
it in 2004, and I kinda went completelythe opposite direction on SEO tool Lab.
So on on, on my, uh, first startup,I was, you know, thinking big and,
you know, let's change the waybusinesses do business and, you know,
(34:01):
giant ventures and, and huge ideas,you know, million dollar ideas.
And, and I kinda backed way off of that.
For my second business, I waslike thinking much smaller.
It's like, you know, there's, there'sprobably a much more comfortable
way to go about making money.
(34:22):
You know, if you can solve a, a$200 problem really, really well
and you can sell that solution overand over and over again, you don't
need to have million dollar ideas.
You can, you can have a $200idea that makes you millions
Randy (34:40):
there.
I like that.
That's a great, that's agreat analogy right there.
Ted (34:44):
Yeah.
And, and so I, I started thinkingmore lean and, you know, let's
find a good idea, solve it.
Well take it to market.
And race to the first dollar anddo incremental improvement and,
and I've come to learn that what Ireally love in business more than
(35:06):
anything else is small business.
Like it is so cool when you find asuccessful recipe and small business and
you don't have to play the big wheel anddealer type, you know, ventures like, you
know, that doesn't have to be what you do.
You can find tremendoussuccess thinking small.
(35:29):
Do you want to, I, I don't wannaconfuse people and I'm wondering, do
you wanna, or do, do you have a, um,kind of a summary description of Cora?
Yeah.
Cora is a, uh, it's anSEO measurement tool.
So you type in a, a keyword in a url, andCora will tell you exactly what factors
(35:53):
you need to tune for that url, for thatkeyword, and exactly how much of each one.
And so there's several ways that,uh, marketing agencies use Cora.
Uh, for one, it's very detailed data oncosting out the work so you can get the
right cost for the work you need to do.
(36:13):
Cora tells you when to stop, which.
Most SEOs don't know when to do.
They'll keep tuning the same thingendlessly, and Carl will say,
no, you're number one for that.
Stop doing it.
Move on to something else.
It tells you exactly how you'redifferent than higher ranking websites.
And so most people think that Googleis out there reading your page and
(36:37):
going, aha, you made a better pointin sentence three of paragraph
two, therefore you go up two spots.
But that's not how it works at all,It's just kinda understanding.
How do you speak to algorithms torank well versus how do you speak to
visitors so they convert into sales.
(36:58):
You need to do both intheir different processes.
And so Cora is very good atspeaking to algorithms to rank well,
that's a, a great point cuz I havethis conversation not in those exact same
terms, but with clients and I try to tell'em, listen, I I try to have two mindsets.
(37:20):
One which is SEO based,so I wanna get you ranked.
But on the other side we alsohave to look at your content.
Look at the way your site isstructured so that we are converting.
It doesn't matter if you get, I coulddrive a million people to your site
if they're not gonna buy anythingfrom you or convert or become a lead,
what value does that have for you?
(37:40):
I guess you could, you know, run ads onyour site and then that becomes a value.
But otherwise, you know,it's gotta convert.
Yeah, exactly.
And, and the SEO side of itdoesn't get all of the credit.
You know, you, you hear people talk andthey tell you that, you know, they, they,
they're almost predatory on SEOs becauseSEOs walk the traffic, you know, right.
(38:05):
Within a, a yard or two of, of the.
Of the touchdown and then leave itthere, and then the CROs come in and
complete the sale and get all the credit.
And, uh, the SEO is thehard, expensive part.
And so, yeah, my tool set makesthe hard, expensive part a lot more
simple and easy to do, uh, so thatyou can focus more on the conversions
(38:29):
and making the customer happy andgetting the credit for the sales.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, people have have founda lot of success in streamlining their
workflows with Cora to get good results.
And they've found that when they useCora, As part of the sales process,
they blow their prospects away cuz we'reusing data and most SEOs don't do that.
(38:55):
And when you demonstrate that we areworking with measurement data and
we base our recommendations based onmeasurements, it's a game changer.
Yeah.
Randy (39:05):
Yeah.
So you mentioned, so you'vegot a new version of Cora.
You've started SEO Tool Lab about fiveyears ago, six years ago, roughly.
Um, what's the team like?
Is it just you being madscientist and doing everything?
Or you have a team, you havean office dispersed workforce?
(39:26):
What do you got going for you?
It's, it's, right now it's me and mywife and I'm gonna expand to a little bit
of help in the area of support, but I'mstill gonna be doing the main development.
You know, the thing that I found isthat, uh, I have a weird blend of
exacting standards for how softwareis coded for performance and for the,
(39:51):
the business problem being solved.
And I'm also very artful and figuringout which corners we need to cut as a
business to get the software deployedand rolled out efficiently and on time.
And so one of the things I'm known foris very aggressive updates and feature
(40:12):
enhancements and listening to my customersand doing customer requested changes.
And, uh, I find that a lot ofsoftware engineers aren't up to
working to those kinds of standards.
And, uh, so I, I like tomaintain tight control on that.
So that's probably the last thing I'llgive up is, is that engineering control.
(40:38):
But I do, I do need to grow in terms ofhandling scale and supporting customers.
And so that's what I'm gonnabuild out first, uh, in this
next phase of my business.
All right.
So you mentioned you work with your wife.
How is that, how, how does that work?
Nice situation.
I don't know.
(40:59):
Well, I've tried it a few times withmy wife and it doesn't work real well.
Yeah.
Most, most people don't do it Right.
So you, you have tostay in your lane Yeah.
So to speak.
And so you have to come to termsabout, What lanes are what?
And so, uh, my, my wife is very smart.
Uh, she, uh, was a Georgetown undergradand a, uh, UDub MBA in finance.
(41:25):
And, uh, she knows her stuff.
She, uh, worked in, uh, financewith Starbucks when they did their
big, uh, growth and development.
She worked in marketing at Microsoft.
And so she's, she's very goodat her job and she knows how to
take money and put it to work.
And so that's a good part to have . Yeah.
(41:47):
Yeah.
And so the fact that, you know,she can easily handle doing the,
the business accounting and thefinance, she can take the money and
make sure that it's in a place whereit's doing more work as it grows.
And, you know, It's really awesomecuz then I can focus on bringing the
money in that she can then put to work.
(42:08):
Yeah.
And so, you know, if we stay in ourlanes and, and we, uh, cooperate
towards goals, it works great.
But when you, when I see a lotof other husband and wife teams
work and they often collide like.
We're both working on a websitedevelopment and we're arguing
about what, what it should be.
(42:29):
Well, you got two people in the sameswim lane, you got a problem there.
And so of course that'snot gonna end well.
One of you's gonna have to climb outof the pool in order for that to work.
And so I see lots of people attemptingto work with their spouse and they,
they don't make the separation of roles.
That
is great advice.
(42:50):
And I'm sure some of our listeners arelike, ah, take that to heart, hopefully.
So I find your story very interesting.
So, because I mean, when you say likeyou, you're really are going small.
I mean, and, and to put this into.
Perspective.
I'm, I'm not even sure that Ican, I mean, you are, in my world,
(43:10):
in digital marketing SEO worlds,you are really on the pedestal.
I mean, people just have the greatestadmiration, respect, uh, for your, uh,
talent, for your software, for uh, what itis that you do, your ideas and directions.
And so, you know, and this piece ofsoftware that you have, Cora is fabulous.
(43:31):
I mean, if, if I had 10 SEOs in aroom and I said, what do you think
is the most valuable tool thatyou can think of in our industry?
Nine outta 10 of those guys wouldrank Quora, certainly in the
top three, if not number one.
I mean, that's, that's the, certainlythe mind share, at least I think
of SEOs in the, in the world here.
(43:54):
And you know, so it, there'sa few of us out there.
I'm amazed to hear it's justyou and your wife, right?
So you, you're like, Hey, we are stayingsmall from that standpoint, but yet
you've got this incredible piece ofsoftware and tool that does, uh, so much.
I'm like, wow.
I would think, yeah, to a degree.
Was that a little bit ofdiscipline to do that as.
(44:17):
Uh,
it actually is, uh, a lot of lickingmy wounds from the previous startup.
Okay.
You know, I, I kinda learned that,you know, when you have, uh, you
take on investors, you're basicallytaking on a large roster of bosses.
So, you know, there's that, uh, whenyou have, uh, millions of dollars
(44:40):
of investment in your company, uh,it kind of closes the door on a lot
of common sense decision making.
Like you could make a lotof quick wins and bring.
Income into the business.
But if it's not steered towards a10 x ROI for the investors, then
(45:01):
the board is saying no to, topeople who wanna steer that way.
And, and the, the, so you endup saying no to a lot of things
you ought to be saying yes to.
And if I had better control of thebusiness, then I could do things that make
sense for revenue and making the businessstable and for making customers happy.
(45:25):
And so when I was being pushed fora 10 x ROI all the time, a lot of, a
lot of good decisions didn't happenand a lot of bad decisions did happen.
And I didn't like the fact that I wasconstantly, you know, having to just,
you know, eliminate the, the war chestof the company for hiring staff that.
(45:48):
We weren't efficiently puttingto work and you know, there
are so many things I disagreed.
And ultimately, ultimately I sawa vision, like for that first
startup that I wanted to go down.
I had the contacts.
I was like, you know what?
We could be the, the bot creatingsolution and visual studio with Microsoft.
(46:09):
I come out of Microsoft, I haveall the contacts, I have leads
into the CTO at Microsoft.
We can home run this strategy.
But the rest of the board ofdirectors and management wanted
to go down the service path.
So it's like, I could have had mytechnology in Visual Studio, and they're
trying to keep it secret and it's like,oh my God, you know, what am I doing here?
(46:33):
So, you know, I ended up talking withthe investors and I talked with the
employees and everybody disagreed with me.
So I was in the wrong, everybodythought I was the crazy one.
And so it's like, all right, Iguess I'll just sell my shares.
And, and so, you know, I, yeah, I,I left and I went on and I started.
(46:56):
I started SEO Tool Lab and Iwas like, you know, I, I still
don't feel right about that.
I think I was conceptually right inthat you can make good software and
take it good places and I just wannamake a small business this time around.
I want to keep it small and keepit all and kind of embraced that.
(47:17):
Yeah.
And my startup costs on thecompany was under $5,000.
. And, and yeah.
I mean the ROI on that's through the roof.
My revenue per square foot formy office space through the roof
.
I would love to have it, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm, I'm, I'm always in a situation whereI don't have enough business expense.
(47:41):
Yeah.
And, and so like, theseare great problems.
Like when I look at like VC fundedventure capitalists and I see how
they spend money at Crunch at cr, youknow, I see the things that they do.
Like they make these, you know, videogame rec rooms and the startup, and
I'm looking at this going, there's ahundred thousand dollars of like foosball
(48:05):
here, , you know, that, what are you doing
Rand (48:10):
Maybe that's what you need for your office, put in a, uh,
foosball room and you know, yeah.
You know, it's employeeexpense incentives.
Te (48:19):
So, yeah, I guess, I guess I just have very different ideas about
business than like what a lot of the VCfunded startups have done in the past.
And, and I don't agree with it.
And I thought it was terribly wastefuland I thought there were better
directions that would be longer lasting.
And that past venture,it's still alive today.
(48:42):
Yeah, it's, it's been going since 2000.
So, you know, here we are 22 yearslater and the company's still alive, so,
but I think it could have been bigger.
Yeah.
Randy (48:52):
Well, let me, and I don't wanna dig into old wounds cuz as you
said, you know, you're kinda lickingyour wounds, so I don't, but I think
you've got a great lesson, uh, thatyou can provide to our audience in
that, you know, as you described, kindof that post nine 11 crisis, right?
So, you know, the, the world kindacame crashing down for you in that
(49:14):
particular industry and then you saidit took about 10 months or so for you to
kind of claw your way back out of that.
I am curious cuz we're always, you know,trying to uncover how do people approach
challenges and, you know, big obstacles.
Obviously we just came through.
The pandemic, and as people preppedfor that and, you know, survived
(49:37):
that hopefully in more ways than one.
But in that particular instance,for you, for that nine 11 issue and
your crawl back, uh, to survival,I guess, with your company at that
time, how, how did you approach it?
What were, you know, if there's oneor two, I don't know, key points
maybe that you could share that said,well, this is what we did and what
(49:57):
we had to, the steps we had to take?
Ted (49:59):
Well, that's, that's kind of the, uh, the consequence of
taking on investment dollars.
Like, if you spend your own money,you can pull the plug when you want.
But when you go to your family, whenyou go to your friends, when you go
to your past employers and tell 'emyou have a venture and you're taking
(50:20):
their money to start your venture,uh, you, you can't quit easily.
You can't just let it die.
Right?
And so I, I needed, at thattime, when nine 11 happened, I
knew that I needed to just, I, Ineeded to get through the event.
So whatever it took to survive,keep the company alive and
(50:45):
don't let those investments die.
And so, you know, that was my mentality.
So we had to downsize.
We obviously couldn't keep the head countand we just had to keep the doors open
and we had to keep the product alive.
And eventually we did bring it back.
We resurrected what out of oughtto have been a failed business.
(51:10):
We resurrected and there'sthese concepts with startups.
You know, people tell you thatnine out of 10 startups fail.
But I hear that differently.
Like the, the reason like, I hear thatdifferently is because, you know, when I
hear that it's not nine outta 10 startupsfail, it's that in the course of your
(51:33):
startup there will be nine times wherenobody would blame you for quitting.
Where everybody would understandand they'd say the correct
thing to do is to pull the plug.
Mm-hmm.
. And you need to not do it 10 times. And that's how you get to be the one
in 10 that didn't close the door.
(51:54):
Yeah.
Because I guarantee in all your startups,there will be nine times where you're
like, damn it, we just went negative.
We're less than zero.
I'd be happy to be at a zero.
You know, I need to pullthe plug and, and end it.
And if you wanna be that onein 10, that makes it, you
can't, you can't give up easy.
Yeah.
(52:14):
And so some, sometimesthat's terrible advice.
Sometimes you gotta closethe door, you don't wanna.
. You don't want to keep doubling downon something that's never gonna work,
but if you know it could work and itjust takes grit and determination,
I've always had that in space.
Yeah.
You know, if I can reduce it to anequation of effort, like, you know, some
(52:36):
amount of effort equals a win, then I'vealready won because there's no amount
of effort I won't put in to succeed.
But the hard part is getting it downto an equation where effort equals
Randy (52:49):
victory.
I would like to know thatequation that would be
Well, it's different for everybusiness and, and interestingly enough,
for most businesses, the, the problem isin sales, you know, you make a a solution
and you're like, well, geez, if I couldsell one copy in every town in the United
(53:09):
States, that would be 25,000 units sold.
Obviously we can sell one copy per town.
Why not?
That's totally reasonable.
I could sell a copy in Chicago.
At least I hope I could, butit's still a sales problem.
Right.
And most people don't comeprepared for the sales
problem.
Right, right.
(53:29):
Well, that's some good advice, justin thinking about, uh, that I love
the issue about the effort though.
That's good.
So today, so you've got SEO tool labs.
Uh, what, what's yourapproach to marketing?
I have an idea, but, uh, what Ithink that you're probably doing,
but I want to hear, I guess, what,what you're doing for marketing.
Ted (53:49):
I'm, I'm kind of in a state of identity crisis about that.
So it's, it's a loaded question,but, you know, here's the truth.
Okay.
The truth is, uh, I'm anengineer and techie people.
Hate email.
We hate it with a passion . Andso all of a sudden that makes me a
marketer who's self hating, right.
(54:11):
Self hating marketer.
Cuz I hate email with a passion.
But I have a very real problem in that asa software company, every service provider
company on earth wants to sell to me.
I'm like the low hangingfruit of everyone.
And so my inbox grows byabout 30,000 emails daily.
It takes about three tofour hours to process.
(54:33):
So on a normal work day, if I were toprocess my inbox daily, I'm spending
half my day trying to sort it out.
Yeah.
And my customers were falling intothat inbox and I, I can't have that.
Yeah.
So I'm having to reinvent mybusiness to get my customers
out of that horrible inbox.
(54:54):
And so I'm making changes to do that.
And uh, I also come from,you know, online retail and.
I've witnessed everythingthere is to witness in seo.
I've lived through every major event andat one point, during the caffeine made
a instant Google updates, uh, long taildied and SEO's everywhere took a big hit.
(55:18):
Like it was the doom stay of SEObecause all that long tail traffic
dried up and wasn't easy to get anymore.
And at that point I realized yougotta diversify cuz if you are
over invested in Google for yourorganic revenue, you're, you're
giving Google too much power, right?
(55:38):
And so I wanted to make sure that Googlecould never pull the plug on me again.
And so my business islargely built on the unthink.
Word of mouth.
I, I, I
don't, because in my mind, when Ithink about your tool, I don't know, I've
never received an email from you . Yes.
(56:01):
From I've been onto yoursite multiple times.
I don't recall, uh, anyway, everseen any kind of an ad pop up
anywhere about your software?
And the only way that I've knownabout it and learned about it, um, I
guess, or where I see it, is only invarious groups that I navigate in.
(56:23):
Absolutely.
Word of mouth.
Now, the other thing that Iwould say is, you know, you do.
Travel around.
You talk to people, you know, you goto conferences, you make presentations.
So that's part of that, I guesskind of word of mouth delivery.
Um, but yeah, you're, you're verylowkey, but yet you've got this
incredible, this is where I thinkyou've got such a great story.
(56:44):
You're very low key in, inregarding your marketing efforts.
Um, but yet you've, from a mind sharestandpoint in our industry, you own it.
I mean, you are the gun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have the best tool in the, in theindustry and it's the least known.
(57:04):
I don't have the most market share.
I have quite possibly the leastamount of market share, but
Randy (57:10):
it's different market share from mine.
Share is different though.
Yeah.
Almost anybody, as I said, if I put10 SEOs in the room, absolutely.
Everybody has heard andis familiar with Cora.
Ted (57:22):
Yep.
And, uh, yeah, you know,I've, I've focused my business
on, on making the advantage.
I deliver very real, improving itand helping my customers realize it.
And, and so it's to a pointwhere, yeah, I don't have to do
heavy lifting to spread the word.
I'm, I'm a viral phenomenon causeof word of mouth evangelism,
(57:48):
and that's where I wanna be.
You know, I, I love it when othertool vendors, when their customers get
nervous because one of my customers movedin on their space, , like that fear.
Lets me know I'm doingmy job right, ? Yeah.
Randy (58:06):
That's great.
All right, so now in one of the ways thatI think it probably helps you as well
in that kind of viral evangelism, I lovethat term, is this thing that you do.
What's a friend of the show?
He's been on the show, uh, once before.
Actually we're gonna, we're sittingdown at the end of the month,
we're doing another recording.
We're gonna do one of ourrandom shows with Kyle Roof.
(58:29):
Uh, Kyle is great.
Love the guy.
You guys do this thing, this SEOfight club, which I think, um,
you know, you guys kinda have somefun with it and, uh, make it fun.
Um, but yet it's still very.
Data driven kinda SEO mindset andconversation sometimes for people.
I think we were at a, at a conference justlast week, and I remember somebody was
(58:52):
talking about watching, you know, theywere getting into the industry and they
were watching the SEO Fight Club videos,you know, on YouTube and like, listen, I
listen to the first, you know, like 10 or15 episodes or whatever the number was.
She goes, I have no cluewhat they were even saying.
I couldn't, I didn't know the language.
I didn't These guys.
Yeah, I mean, you and Kyle arelike, I can, you know, you're like
(59:14):
a couple of mad scientists out therekind of trying to explain a formula.
How did that come about,the, the two of you?
Ted (59:20):
You know, we, uh, we were appearing at all the same conferences
and so we, we'd talk shop, you know,I, I have a background in SEO testing
and he has a patent in SEO testing.
And so we were kind of, uh, youknow, doing, doing similar things,
but from different origins.
Yeah.
And, um, uh, so yeah, it is a natural fit.
(59:43):
Uh, he's, he's not on the showcurrently cuz he lives on the
opposite side of the planet andthe hours were too rough for him.
Uh, but who knows whatthe, the future may bring.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, it, it just madea lot of sense to, you know, get
like-minded people who are tryingto put scientific method into seo.
(01:00:04):
Uh, get 'em into a roomand to discuss things.
Randy (01:00:08):
Well, I'll just tell people want to go check that out?
Go jump onto YouTube.
Go look for SEO five Club.
It's a lot of fun.
So what's around thecorner for TED and SEO Tool
Ted (01:00:21):
Lab?
Well, um, my, my happy place is inventing,so I do need to grow the business so
that I can stay in my happy place.
So I want to invent, uh, moretechnologies to put into Cora.
I want to deliver betteradvantage over time.
I wanna make sure we're preparedto adapt to any curve balls.
(01:00:45):
The industry throws our way.
I'm pretty good at, uh, anticipatingthose and being ready for them.
And so, yeah, you know, I, I want to,uh, continue to do the core of what
I started, which is to invent coolstuff and to help people succeed.
And so anything that furthers me on,on those two agendas is what I want to.
(01:01:10):
I love it.
All
right, well, here we are, Ted.
We're at, we're at the point in the show,we'll call it the bottom of the nights.
Okay.
So this is where I gotta askyou if you have some advice.
What, for the rookies in the game.
So those folks just kinda starting out,uh, maybe they already have their business
looking for some guidance from a guywho's been around the bases a few times.
(01:01:32):
Uh, what kind of advice doyou have for those folks?
T (01:01:35):
It's gonna be unusual advice, but here goes, like, if you're,
if you're making a, an onlinestore and you're trying to figure
out, you know, what can you do?
Here's what I recommend you do.
Don't make one online store, make two.
You know it's gonna cost you aboutthe same amount of money to operate
(01:01:55):
both of 'em as it does to do one.
Just just make two, makebrand A and brand B.
Put 'em out there.
Now, after a while, one will takethe lead, one will be your primary
one that's pulling the best numbers.
And great.
So when you recognize that,that's, that's your big brand.
When you get a little brand, thelittle store you have going, well now,
(01:02:17):
now you have a safe place to fail.
All right?
And that's what people don't givethemselves is a safe place to fail.
So a lot of SEOs out there, they'll,they'll take on a big client and they're
putting themselves in a situation wherethe next mistake they make gets them.
And I want you to think, how fastis that SEO gonna master his trade?
(01:02:40):
It's like he's, he's not going to, ifhis next mistake gets him fired, right?
He's gonna always play it safeand he's never gonna learn.
So when you make that safe place tofail, you have a store that you can
hire an SEO and give them a shot.
What can they do?
You know, make backups.
So if they tank your site,you just restore from back,
(01:03:01):
uh, backup to undo it, right?
You have a place to test people youhire before you put 'em on the big.
You have a place where you can learnwhat works and what doesn't works
before you move it to the big store.
And so I made a 17 year career outof testing on the little store and
migrating the successes to the big store.
(01:03:22):
And that produced that strategyfor me as an in-house SEO produced
double digit growth quarterafter quarter, year after year.
I went from the new guy on the devteam all the way to the director
of bi, uh, at the executive.
And so it didn't take rocket science, itdidn't take degrees and this and that.
(01:03:44):
It didn't take engineering chops.
It just took having a safe place to fail.
Randy (01:03:50):
Nice.
I love that advice.
That is perfect.
Uh, Give yourself asafe place to fail that.
And I love you.
Were going on, you know, I like,but you read the manual, right?
? Yep.
That is, that is great.
Well, listen, Ted, thanks somuch, man, for being on the show.
I've thank you.
I've really enjoyed getting to knowyou a little bit more, and, uh, hearing
(01:04:13):
all the great background on you.
Um, it's terrific.
People can get in touch with you, godirectly to, uh, seo tool lab.com.
We'll have a link in the show notes tothat as well as, uh, Ted's, uh, online
vitals, I guess his social accounts,so you can go tap into him directly.
Find him every week onSEO Fight Club as well.
(01:04:36):
Always kind of fun.
All right, well, listen,Ted, thanks so much, man.
It's been a lot of fun.
Thank you.
And, uh, I, I've really enjoyed it.
And listen, folks, that's a ballgame, so thanks for joining us today,
and if you like her, Please tellyour friends, subscribe and review.
And as we like to say, we'llsee around the ballpark.
Running the bases with small businessesis brought to you by 38 Digital Market.
(01:05:01):
A digital marketing agency committedto client growth with lead generation,
higher conversions, and increased sales.
Connect with us todayat 38digitalmarket.com.
I'm Randy Rohde and I'm fascinated with entrepreneurs
and small business owners.
Plus, I love baseball.
Every show I sit down with a smallbusiness owner and we discuss their
running the bases of entrepreneurship.
We throw the ball around on strategymanagement, execution, and innovation.
(00:24):
Plus a little fun baseball talk.
Hey, thanks for joining us today.
Settle in, grab your cracker jacks,and you know what they say, play ball.
All right.
It's a great day for a ball game.
This is Randy Rohde on runningthe bases with small businesses.
Hey, thanks for hanging out with us today.
Our guest today is quite a rock starin the digital marketing industry.
(00:47):
He's a native of Illinois.
He attended the flagshipuniversity, the University of
Illinois or Banish or Champagne.
While there, he studied computerscience and had the opportunity to
do research in the National Centerfor Super Computing applications that
is housed right there on the campus.
After graduation in 96, helocated to Seattle to begin
(01:09):
his career with Microsoft.
Several years later, he pioneered themarket for competitive intelligence
analysis and founded QL two software.
And over 20 years later, his web QLtool continues to be internationally
recognized for data queries.
More recently.
He's been impacting the SEO world.
(01:31):
He is the creator of the SEO softwareQuora, and in addition, he travels
the world speaking at SEO conferenceswhere I actually, in the last few
months, I've been able to joinup with Ted at a couple of those.
He's a leader in SEO education throughhis IMG website, and you can listen to
(01:51):
him weekly on his podcast, SEO FightClub, dispelling SEO Myths and Educating
about data driven SEO solutions.
So please welcome to the show, the founderand CEO of SEO Tool Labs, Ted Kubaitis.
Ted.
Ted (02:11):
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's, uh, uh, an impressive amountof research you've done into my past.
Uh, one, one small correction.
I'm, uh, not with IMG anymore.
I sold that venture.
Uh, well, good for you.
Yeah.
Yep.
So that's, that's one that's,uh, I'm no longer running.
Randy (02:29):
I'll, I'll note that with my researcher.
Was that, because I know that you, nowwe're gonna get into weeds a little
bit for her audience, but was that theventure you were doing with Kyle Roof?
Ted (02:40):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It, you know, a lot of peoplethink there's a lot of drama
and stuff about that, but there,there's really not basically, uh,
long story short, uh, Pandemic.
Uh, my father died and I was sufferingfrom a spinal injury, so I could
barely sit for 15 minutes at a time.
(03:02):
And, uh, I wasn't pulling my weight.
And so they bought me out cuz they neededto move faster than I was able to do.
So it is, uh, no, no hardfeelings or anything.
It's just a case of it wasn'tgonna work out at the time.
And, and in those cases, you know, a lotof people, they get all angry and bitter
(03:23):
and fight and everything, but, but reallywhat you gotta do in those moments is
just, you know, kind, kind of make itright for all sides and, and move on.
And so that's what I did.
Randy (03:35):
All right.
Well, good to know.
That's a.
Program I've been a part of and Ilove, uh, listening to SEO Fight Club.
So I'm glad that still lives on.
Uh, that's very fun.
So before we get started, as Imentioned in the intro, and by the
way, so I have this research team andthey do a great job in like digging
up all kinds of stuff, uh, on people.
(03:55):
So I'll pass along your congratsto them for another job well done.
I've heard you say this story a coupleof times and I think it's really, is
quite, quite humorous and kind offascinating being in our industry.
But I would love it if you couldmaybe share the story as you say that
you've been fired four times from thesame job for being too successful.
Ted (04:21):
Yeah.
You know, as a commission based SEO foran online retailer and what I've learned.
Uh, commission based seo is that it?
Once you become one of thehighest paid employees at the
company, uh, they resent you.
Um, so it's the nature of the beastand, uh, they always wonder because for
(04:48):
a search engine optimizer, they think,well, you've already tuned the pages.
How much more value can you bring?
So we already got the value, andas an online retailer, they do
80% of their sales in q4, and so,Why wouldn't they think that they
should just let you go before q4?
(05:10):
Not pay out the big commissions.
I mean, what more can you offer?
A big mistake on their partthough, because when I left, uh,
their revenue fell by millionsand so they wanted me back.
Of course my rates went up at that point.
Cause I can't trust them anymore.
My contract terms changeand uh, then I do it again.
(05:32):
And then they hate me cuz I'm themost expensive person in the company.
And so what more can I do for them?
So they fire me and theirorganic revenue falls through the
floor and so they want me back.
And so you did
Randy (05:48):
that dance, like you did this dance like four.
Ted (05:52):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's, that's, uh, lifeis a commission based employee.
If you're good at what you do,um, I bet if it was commission,
sales, commission, whatever.
Sure, sure.
Um, the second you become themost expensive is the second
everybody hates you and shootshigh daggers in your back and.
And it's tough.
(06:12):
And being an seo, like if you're asmall business person and you worked
with an seo, you probably have alot of complaints about the seo.
Well, it's, it's kind of a,a two way street, you know?
But being an SEO is a thankless jobbecause half of what we're doing is
an SEO is, uh, preventing the customerfrom shooting themselves in the foot.
(06:36):
And so SEOs commonly tell, you know,engineering teams and businesses, no,
you can't do your redesign that way.
No, you can't just point anyold domain at the money site.
No, you can't just.
And very quickly it becomespolitical and people hate us.
(06:57):
We're the people saying, no, no, no,but we're not the business owner.
Right?
And all of a sudden, anyonewho, you know, has a plan to the
contrary, wants to see you die amiserable death business speaking.
But you know, you haveto, you have to push back.
And like, you know, businessesso often don't recognize the
(07:18):
thankless value of saying no tothings that will hurt the business.
And so many SEOs get sacrificed forkind of doing the right thing and
saying no when it needs to be said.
Uh, that
Randy (07:33):
is, uh, yeah, I, I think that's a funny story.
And you're probably right in the senseof probably could be anything if you
were a sales commission person sellingcars or mattresses, probably doesn't
matter if you were the top gun, they,uh, you're, you got a big target on you.
Yeah.
Ted (07:51):
Yeah.
And, and you know, there's a lotof businesses out there that would
love the idea of hiring an SEOon a commission basis, but just
remember you can lose that bet.
And what are you gonna do whenthat SEO knocks it out of the park?
Yeah.
Like some of, some of the SEOs Iwork with, their data driven and
(08:12):
they've tested their methods so theyknow what they're gonna bring in.
I know one guy he tookon an online retailer.
He just knocked it out of the park Thatretailer was, was selling, you know, those
collections of, uh, of elements that arein acrylic plastic that look so cool,
(08:33):
like if you are into chemistry and like,oh, I want to collect all the elements.
Sure.
It was that type of product.
He sold them out of inventoryin like three weeks.
Oh my.
And he ended up getting himself firedbecause the reorder time on getting
more inventory was six months out.
So what do you need an SEOfor if you have no inventory?
(08:55):
. And so a lot of businesses, uh, they don'tunderstand that, you know, you have to
have the whole, you know, pipeline setup for scale if you're planning to grow.
And people don't thinkabout that when they.
You know, a top of the line seo.
Randy (09:11):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So let's, uh, walk back a littlebit in early in your career.
So, and this is early, early . Haveyou always had a passion for computers?
I know growing up, you know, in theshadows of the University of Illinois.
I mean, I think, if I'm notmistaken, I think that is the, the
(09:32):
laboratory for the personal computer.
Well,
Ted (09:35):
to, to understand my origin story, you need to know
a tiny amount about my dad.
Ah,
Randy (09:42):
alright, here we go.
So family secrets here.
Ted (09:45):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Going, going back to the latesixties, early seventies, you
know, big room size mainframes.
He was hired to kinda watch the door ofthe lab and, and, uh, check, uh, IDs and
stuff for controlled data corporation.
(10:06):
And, uh, uh, he was oftenin the, the night shift and
there was nobody ever there.
So it was him, these giant rooms ofservers and all of the technical manuals.
So he read all the technical manualson all of the mainframes and servers
and everything while he was there.
(10:29):
And, uh, at some point, you know,one of the, the main scientists
is having issues and, you know,things aren't working right.
And there are problems.
And so my dad, who, you know, RTFM,you know, he, he read the FN manual.
Sure.
, uh, you know, he, hegoes in and fixes the.
(10:52):
And the scientist gets all up inarms that the guy watching the door
dared even touch these mainframes.
So he goes, uh, to the CEO of the company,starts demanding that my dad be fired.
Oh.
And the CEO looked at the problem,looked at what my dad did, and, uh,
(11:13):
gave him a job as a system administratorfor the systems . All right.
So that's, that's kindof his origin story.
And so he makes all these contactsat control data and eventually
ends up and Avia, Illinois.
Oh, yeah.
At the Firmi Lab Article Accelerator.
(11:35):
So he's there doing, uh, systemsand engineering for Firmi Lab.
Right.
And I, at that time,I'm a little tiny kid.
I'm just, you know, running around,uh, you know, fishing in the cooling
ponds outside of Firmi Lab, , and,uh, Saw, uh, Stephen Hawking there
(11:56):
once, didn't, didn't even recognize itwouldn't be later until later in life
that I learned how special that was.
Yeah.
To just run across Stephen Hawking.
That doesn't normally happen.
And so, uh, saw James Randy there too.
Wow.
He was there for a little bit.
And, uh, yeah.
Number, number of, you know, famouspeople in that crowd were there.
(12:19):
And, uh, at that timeI was in grade school.
My dad hands me a, uh, TRS 80 Uhhuh,you know, they called it the Trash 80
from Radio Shack, little Computer.
You connect it to your tv Sure.
And type in some basic programs, drawrandom circles, that type of thing.
Right.
So I, I kinda learn the basics ofprogramming and stuff at that point.
(12:43):
Later on I get to high school.
I don't take any computer stuff in highschool cuz I'm way more advanced by
that point than what they're teaching.
I get to college and I can't reallyhandle the college curriculum
for computer science cuz it'sboring the shit out of me.
And this is at
Randy (13:02):
University of Illinois?
Yeah.
Ted (13:04):
Yeah.
So you have to remember that thecurriculum at that time was very basic.
Like most universitiesdidn't have computer science.
It was all part of the math program.
Right, right.
And so, yeah, and like one of thethings that happened, uh, at that
point in time is they had, uh, theycame around with a NDA saying, Hey, we
(13:26):
have something we wanna show you, butit requires a signed NDA to use it.
And so I signed it and I installedthis new thing that nobody's
ever seen before called MosaicAnd uh, what it was was the
first graphical web browser.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember.
I'm looking at this thing, it has oneweb page on it, uh, Usenet News and a
(13:50):
couple FDP sites, and that's all it was.
There's nothing else on theweb and uh, so I was like, okay,
this is never gonna catch on.
But it was pretty cool.
And, uh, but it did catchon like very quickly.
Once it was out of the, the closedNDA thing, I had all my friends
(14:10):
making websites about their bandsand, and doing all that stuff.
And it was, it was a lot of fun.
I had the, uh, office across thehall from Mark Riesen for a while who
would later go on and make Netscapes.
Sure.
And.
I eventually, uh, made my way outto Microsoft and Seattle where I
(14:31):
was working for a marketer, a rocketscientist who was part of the team that
engineered the Boeing Delta two rocket.
And Microsoft had this idea oflet's get a rocket scientist
and throw marketing problems.
Adam.
So, uh, uh, I was his engineer andI was learning from him about his
concepts of payload in the marketing.
(14:54):
And so I learned a ton there.
And did it work?
Rand (14:57):
Was that a good connector?
Oh
Ted (15:00):
yeah.
We knocked his approach left and right,like it was, it was every two weeks.
Somebody was bringing a bottleof champagne to me, . Um,
so it was really cool.
That's great.
And yeah, that was amazing.
And then in April of 2000, Iwent to start a, uh, a startup.
I raised two and a half million dollarsin angel funding for the startup.
(15:23):
I fought with the VCs all the time.
We, we opted to go without VCsbecause they were all ridiculous.
Yeah.
You know, when, when you starttalking with the VCs, they think
you should revalue your companybecause they brought a box lunch.
You know, it's like, no way.
And they're arguing the valuation.
(15:44):
It's like, well, we've alreadysold shares and we can get.
Any number of shares soldagain at the same valuation.
Why would we give you 10 cents onthe dollar for a box lunch Uhhuh?
Like what?
What possible reason would gothrough your head for us to revalue?
Yeah.
And so, yeah.
After arguing with a number ofventure capital companies, we
(16:07):
realized we just didn't meet 'em.
Right.
You know, that is the problem.
The thing that they couldn't understandis why we didn't need 'em . And so
we made this awesome technology.
Is is incredible.
Working with all the major airlines.
We're working with, uh,government agencies.
We're working with massivecorporations in the area of business
(16:30):
intelligence and nine 11 hits andall the airlines left the table.
We weren't gonna make profit foranother 10 months after that,
had a staff of, uh, 25 engineers.
I had to let 'em go cuz I knew it would be10 months before we could really pay 'em.
And man, that was rough.
(16:50):
That reduced me to tears.
But, uh, stuck with it.
We clawed our way out of that hole.
Nice.
Um, were, uh, partially credited withhelping the airlines, uh, rebound
at that time cuz there are laws thatthe airlines couldn't communicate
to, uh, adjust their pricing.
(17:10):
So we were the end round aroundthat, where they could monitor
each other's pricing and adjustaccordingly without coordinating it.
And, uh, so yeah.
Part of the reason airfares gotexpensive again after nine 11
was the stuff we were doing.
Mm-hmm.
, thank you.
Well, thanks for doing that, . Yeah.
(17:31):
I, I sold that in April of2000 and, uh, went into online
retail where it was an engineer.
An SEO fell into my lap.
Right.
And eventually I, I, you know,invented my own way of doing seo
and I was working in isolation.
Nobody knew about it.
And I showed some people on Black HatWorld, some of the things I was doing, and
(17:54):
they were like, Oh my God, what made thatdata ? And then I kinda realized I had an
opportunity and so I struck out on my own.
Nice.
And so I've been doing SEO softwareever since and I've been loving it.
It's my happy place.
I get to invent, uh,technology and help people.
(18:15):
Yeah.
My two favorite things in the world.
Yeah.
Randy (18:18):
Well that is, that is a great story.
So that's, yeah.
Long sliver.
I love this story about your dad andkind of going from the security guard.
I don't know what his title was tobeing, you know, a systems analyst
Yeah, exactly.
And it's man's amazing man.
Uh, it, it's just crazy how theworld works and it, you know, it shows
(18:41):
you the value of reading the manual.
Yeah.
So you have this, you know, PhD computerscience guy that's screaming at you
that didn't even read the manual.
And you have an untrainedperson who read the manual.
Well sometimes whoever read themanuals and the right, you know?
Yeah.
That, that guy's thesmartest guy in the room.
(19:03):
Well, I always tell, and your dadwas, was doing the thing physically.
It's like what I tell my kids all thetime is like, listen, you were living
in such a great world right now.
You could spend 30 minutes on YouTubeand learn how to do anything, and
your dad, you know, is like, wow,I got all this resource right here.
I'm gonna go put it touse and just did his.
(19:24):
Could you imagine it like back then,like that documentation was in three
ring binders of black and white paper.
Oh yeah.
You know, you, you dream aboutit being on YouTube back then to
have that type of initiative, man,you really had to invest a lot.
Yeah.
Personally.
(19:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and so, and then walking througha little bit, and I'm just kind
of putting the timelines together.
So you were at Microsoftand I should say, uh,
Ted (19:53):
yeah, that was in 97 when I went there.
You
know, you and I actually, I used tolive in is Aqua and I moved there in 90.
95, I believe it was.
Uh, and I was there for five years.
So we were, you know,who knows, maybe we were
neighbors.
We probably pe each other on the five 20.
Randy (20:16):
But I just know, because was, uh, um, um, VP of operations
for a company called Egghead.
Do you remember Egghead?
Vaguely.
Were they, uh, they were, werethey a software vendor or, well, we
were, we were a retailer that had that you could go and
buy any piece of software, right?
(20:38):
Or, or, and then we began to expand.
We were selling hardware, uh, as wellin the final days, but, I remember in,
uh, and this was kind of interesting,in 96 that December the board of
directors had a meeting, they said,Hey, you know, this is after we had
spent a, a ton of money in opening likethree big, big box, uh, footprints.
(21:00):
Typically, that typical egghead storeat that time was about 2000 square
feet, we'll say, packed with software.
And then because competitors and bigbox, you know, was the, was the, was the
standard that was where retail was going.
So we put investment into, and weopened three big boxes around the
(21:20):
country and uh, and they were goingwell, but the board of directors came
and met December, I remember this.
It was like, wow.
December of 96 they met and decidedthey had a question, do we continue to
invest in the big box retailing or do wejust go all in and bank everything on.
(21:43):
This thing called the internetand do internet sales.
And they decided, and, and at thistime when I joined, I grew the company.
We went from 75 stores to, we wereup just under 300 at the time and
they decided that they were gonnaroll the dice and go all internet
And so, so, and that was in 96.
(22:04):
So in 97 I just spent thatwhole year shutting stores down.
That was crazy.
I'm like, this is gonna be a lot of fun.
And uh, and that's what, and nowtoday they are called New Egg.
Uh, and so you probably seethem online doing retailing.
So we were probably there, butthat get away from my history.
You were there at Microsoft though,during like some really cool times, right?
(22:27):
I mean, you were there like Windows98 launched, man, and that like, wow,
that would changed the world, right?
You were there with Bill himself andwhen he stepped down, so man, it.
Ted (22:41):
Yeah.
Uh, when, when I was there, I waspart of the Look Smart acquisition.
I, uh, had written some of the,the materials on the I E A K, the
Internet Explorer administrationkit, you know, all those CDs they
sent out to sign up with ISPs.
(23:01):
Yeah, I helped author that a numberof my, uh, projects appeared in
the Barksdale antitrust testimonybetween Netscape and Microsoft.
So I have a couple bulletitems on that laundry list.
good for you.
Um, Yeah, it, it was aninteresting time to say the least.
(23:22):
Yeah, the
mid nineties right in there inthe tech world was uh, just crazy cuz it
just seemed like every other, every othermonth it was like something revolutionary
coming and you know, and then for a periodof time, you know, Microsoft and other
developers at Barlin at that time as well,I mean they were just like buying, trying
to acquire different, smaller softwarecompanies to embed whether into Windows
(23:47):
or Microsoft, into office, you know?
Um, yeah, it was, uh, that wasa crazy time period back then.
Was that tough steppingaway from Microsoft?
It
was, but uh, there came a point where, where Microsoft was,
uh, leaning heavily into changeafter like, the perma temp lawsuit.
And, and so, you know, the culturechanged significantly then.
(24:11):
And I remember that was the time I leftto create my, uh, first startup venture.
And, uh, eventually, eventually duringthe course of like the four years of
that startup venture, we were nominatedfor Best New Technology by PC Magazine.
And I ended up at the awardceremony in, uh, Vegas at Comdex.
(24:37):
Oh geez.
Uh, being cod for a category with BillGates and the Windows operating system.
So I'm, I'm up there for a technologyno one has ever heard of and is brand
new technology is amazing technology,but nobody knew about what it was.
And there I am.
You know, up against likeWindows 98 or Windows Vista or
(25:00):
something like that at the time.
And, uh, yeah, it was, it was incredible.
I was, you know, right.
Sitting next to, I was sitting nextto the security detail that was next
to Bill Gates, so I was within 12 feetof Bill Gates at this award ceremony.
Yeah, yeah.
And,
Ran (25:19):
uh, who won the award that.
It
Ted (25:22):
wasn't me.
I was happy to be nominated, but ofcourse, the technology that nobody
knows is not gonna take the practice.
Randy (25:29):
Probably not.
But anyway, you were at the tablethough, so that was kinda fun.
Yes.
Uh, good for you.
All right, so I wanna getback, we're gonna get into it.
I want talk about your currentVenture SEO tool lab and, and folks,
I will tell you this is as an SEOmyself, this is like, uh, the mad
scientist kind of stuff, right?
(25:50):
And this is not a tool for the meek here.
This is a lot of data, lot of info.
So this is probably, and unlessyou are into seo, this is
probably not the tool for you.
But I love Ted's background and I lovehis tool and how he's grown his company.
And so I thought he wouldbe a great guest for us.
So we're gonna talk more aboutyour, your latest, uh, endeavor.
(26:14):
And I want to point out that, uh,what Randy just said is, is not a dig.
He says that with, with my approval,my software is for professional SEOs.
So if you're a mom and pop business, youkind of have no business, uh, getting it.
But if, if you're, if you're aprofessional seo, then I can help you.
(26:37):
So if, if you're interested in the kindof advantage like my technology can
bring, what I recommend to you is youfind an SEO that uses my software Right.
And go with them.
Yeah.
But maybe, maybe if you're amom and pop shop, don't buy it.
It's probably gonna bemore than you can handle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(26:58):
, I just wanted to set that tablethere a little bit before.
Yeah, yeah.
Before we dig into that, I don'twant people getting into, into
trouble maybe doing something.
But before we get there, Ted,I I, do you like baseball?
Ted (27:11):
I, I do, I'm not, I'm not the biggest expert, but I can tell
you the first game I ever saw.
Oh, well, let's hold on a second.
Let's get it.
It's that time and
it's time for the seventh inning stretch.
Randy (27:24):
All right.
It is Ted, this is that time of the showthat we call the Seventh Inning Stretch.
And, uh, yeah, it gives me anopportunity to ask our guests a
little baseball trivia question.
But before we get into that though,you, you kinda teased us with the
Remembering your first baseball game.
Ted (27:44):
Yep.
Yep.
I, uh, uh, went with my dad to Chicagoand we saw a Cubs versus Pirates game.
There we go.
And in true fashion, the Cubslost miserably, and I loved it.
And I was a Cubs fan.
Forever.
R (28:03):
I, you know, I was wondering, I can see you're, you're, it's
not quite covey blue, but you, Ican see you're wearing some blue.
It must be covey blue.
I know.
Ted (28:11):
Yeah.
I mean, how can you not like an underdog?
It's a fun game to watch, even though theydidn't win, they played their hearts out.
Yes.
And you know, that's,that's always respectable.
And I always got teased for beinga Cubs fan, but, you know, uh, you
know, in for a penny, in, for a,
Randy (28:30):
there you go.
All right.
Well, Ted, I am a lifelong Cubsfan, so you and I have got,
uh, something to share there.
So here we go.
So here's the, here, here'sthe, the background for it here.
Our seventh inning stretch.
You're a native Illinois.
Did you, well, your dad took youto baseball, so this is good.
You're a Cubs fan.
So experts we're, we're kinda going herewith this, the, the Fight Club theme,
(28:54):
kinda like with your current podcast thatyou've got going and so, We're gonna talk
about the intense rivals in mlb, right?
Kind of the fight club of MLB expertshave been talking and have had opinions
about what makes the great rivalry,what are some of those crosstown
(29:15):
classics and that kind of stuff.
Um, men's Journal recently ranked theirmost intense rivalries, kind of listing
their own fight clubs, so to speak.
So here's, here's your question.
What do you believe that they ranked thenumber one rivalry in all of baseball?
(29:37):
Number
Ted (29:38):
one rivalry.
Well, it has to include theYankees, I bet . Um, who would
be on the other side of that?
I'm listening for keyboard click.
So no, no, no.
No,
no.
And, and the, the problem is, I'm, I'mnot a, a huge, uh, baseball trivia person.
(30:00):
So right now I bet people arepulling their hair out saying,
why on earth don't you know this?
It's because I, I like playing the game.
I like watching thegame, but I don't study.
There you go.
The
Randy (30:12):
stab hooks.
Well, you're, you're, I, I will say this.
You are halfway there.
Let's walk it down from topfive down to number one first.
Uh, in the number fifth spot isthe Rangers versus the Blue Jays.
All right.
I'm not exactly sure how that got to bea big rivalry, but that's number five.
(30:34):
Number four are theGiants and the Dodgers.
Ted (30:40):
Ooh, yeah.
That, that should have been more obvious
Randy (30:43):
to, yeah.
Yeah.
So there we got theGiants and the Dodgers.
Then number three, Are theYankees versus the Mets.
And that makes sense, right?
Ted (30:54):
You got two?
Yeah, I, I was thinking that, but I waslike, that's kinda a little too close.
Randy (30:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Too, too.
Uh, metros number two.
No, this one I know becauseI live it on every season.
Cardinals versus the Cubs.
Yeah.
Ted (31:11):
Yeah.
That was big in Illinois, but I didn'tknow if that would Oh yeah, yeah.
Be meaningful nationwide.
Oh yes, it
Randy (31:16):
is.
The, uh, the Route 66 rivalry, right?
Yeah.
And those, and just a little,those two teams have been
playing each other since 1892.
So think about, you know, all ofthe history that's, uh, rounded
the bases with those two guys.
But the number one rivalry in all ofbaseball Yankees versus the Red Sox.
Ted (31:38):
Yeah, there you go.
Yes.
Randy (31:40):
Yeah.
They have played eachother over 2000 times.
Uh, that's a lot
Ted (31:46):
of baseball.
Yeah.
That makes a lot of sense.
Yes.
That should have been more obvious to me.
Oh
Randy (31:52):
man.
So you think about all of the history,you know, you had Babe Ruth that was sold
from Boston to New York back in 1916.
We've had a ton of fights between thoseteams, you know, bench clearing brawls,
and then, you know, the, the Red Sox,uh, kind of when they launched their
wave of winning, when they won gameseven of the, uh, 2003 A L C S and then
(32:16):
went on in 2004 to beat the Yankees.
So swept the Yankees actually there.
So yeah.
Yeah, there it is.
Yankees versus Red Sox number one rivalry.
It, it seems like television isalways looking for things to reboot.
I think if they did dramatic, uh,recreations of famous big rivalry games.
(32:39):
That would be like winning content.
Yeah.
That
could be good stuff.
All right.
Right.
Well good.
Well, thanks for, uh, playingour seventh inning start.
So let's get back into it.
Play ball.
So I do wanna hearabout, um, SEO Tool Lab.
And so give you a chance to talk a littlebit about that and, um, and really about
(33:00):
Quora so you can tell folks what thisgreat tool is that you have out there.
And I think if I recall, you've just, or,or either it has been released or it's
on the horizon here of a new version of
Ted (33:12):
Quora.
Yeah, yeah.
Cos seven is out and it does localand it has tons of new features and,
uh, people are wildly crazy about it.
So I, I kinda, uh, hit agrand slam with cos seven.
Nice.
So it's, it's doing very well.
Nice.
You know, the interesting thing about mycurrent business is kind of my mentality.
(33:37):
So you, you heard in my story that I dida big angel fund adventure and, and sold
it in 2004, and I kinda went completelythe opposite direction on SEO tool Lab.
So on on, on my, uh, first startup,I was, you know, thinking big and,
you know, let's change the waybusinesses do business and, you know,
(34:01):
giant ventures and, and huge ideas,you know, million dollar ideas.
And, and I kinda backed way off of that.
For my second business, I waslike thinking much smaller.
It's like, you know, there's, there'sprobably a much more comfortable
way to go about making money.
(34:22):
You know, if you can solve a, a$200 problem really, really well
and you can sell that solution overand over and over again, you don't
need to have million dollar ideas.
You can, you can have a $200idea that makes you millions
Randy (34:40):
there.
I like that.
That's a great, that's agreat analogy right there.
Ted (34:44):
Yeah.
And, and so I, I started thinkingmore lean and, you know, let's
find a good idea, solve it.
Well take it to market.
And race to the first dollar anddo incremental improvement and,
and I've come to learn that what Ireally love in business more than
(35:06):
anything else is small business.
Like it is so cool when you find asuccessful recipe and small business and
you don't have to play the big wheel anddealer type, you know, ventures like, you
know, that doesn't have to be what you do.
You can find tremendoussuccess thinking small.
(35:29):
Do you want to, I, I don't wannaconfuse people and I'm wondering, do
you wanna, or do, do you have a, um,kind of a summary description of Cora?
Yeah.
Cora is a, uh, it's anSEO measurement tool.
So you type in a, a keyword in a url, andCora will tell you exactly what factors
(35:53):
you need to tune for that url, for thatkeyword, and exactly how much of each one.
And so there's several ways that,uh, marketing agencies use Cora.
Uh, for one, it's very detailed data oncosting out the work so you can get the
right cost for the work you need to do.
(36:13):
Cora tells you when to stop, which.
Most SEOs don't know when to do.
They'll keep tuning the same thingendlessly, and Carl will say,
no, you're number one for that.
Stop doing it.
Move on to something else.
It tells you exactly how you'redifferent than higher ranking websites.
And so most people think that Googleis out there reading your page and
(36:37):
going, aha, you made a better pointin sentence three of paragraph
two, therefore you go up two spots.
But that's not how it works at all,It's just kinda understanding.
How do you speak to algorithms torank well versus how do you speak to
visitors so they convert into sales.
(36:58):
You need to do both intheir different processes.
And so Cora is very good atspeaking to algorithms to rank well,
that's a, a great point cuz I havethis conversation not in those exact same
terms, but with clients and I try to tell'em, listen, I I try to have two mindsets.
(37:20):
One which is SEO based,so I wanna get you ranked.
But on the other side we alsohave to look at your content.
Look at the way your site isstructured so that we are converting.
It doesn't matter if you get, I coulddrive a million people to your site
if they're not gonna buy anythingfrom you or convert or become a lead,
what value does that have for you?
(37:40):
I guess you could, you know, run ads onyour site and then that becomes a value.
But otherwise, you know,it's gotta convert.
Yeah, exactly.
And, and the SEO side of itdoesn't get all of the credit.
You know, you, you hear people talk andthey tell you that, you know, they, they,
they're almost predatory on SEOs becauseSEOs walk the traffic, you know, right.
(38:05):
Within a, a yard or two of, of the.
Of the touchdown and then leave itthere, and then the CROs come in and
complete the sale and get all the credit.
And, uh, the SEO is thehard, expensive part.
And so, yeah, my tool set makesthe hard, expensive part a lot more
simple and easy to do, uh, so thatyou can focus more on the conversions
(38:29):
and making the customer happy andgetting the credit for the sales.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, people have have founda lot of success in streamlining their
workflows with Cora to get good results.
And they've found that when they useCora, As part of the sales process,
they blow their prospects away cuz we'reusing data and most SEOs don't do that.
(38:55):
And when you demonstrate that we areworking with measurement data and
we base our recommendations based onmeasurements, it's a game changer.
Yeah.
Randy (39:05):
Yeah.
So you mentioned, so you'vegot a new version of Cora.
You've started SEO Tool Lab about fiveyears ago, six years ago, roughly.
Um, what's the team like?
Is it just you being madscientist and doing everything?
Or you have a team, you havean office dispersed workforce?
(39:26):
What do you got going for you?
It's, it's, right now it's me and mywife and I'm gonna expand to a little bit
of help in the area of support, but I'mstill gonna be doing the main development.
You know, the thing that I found isthat, uh, I have a weird blend of
exacting standards for how softwareis coded for performance and for the,
(39:51):
the business problem being solved.
And I'm also very artful and figuringout which corners we need to cut as a
business to get the software deployedand rolled out efficiently and on time.
And so one of the things I'm known foris very aggressive updates and feature
(40:12):
enhancements and listening to my customersand doing customer requested changes.
And, uh, I find that a lot ofsoftware engineers aren't up to
working to those kinds of standards.
And, uh, so I, I like tomaintain tight control on that.
So that's probably the last thing I'llgive up is, is that engineering control.
(40:38):
But I do, I do need to grow in terms ofhandling scale and supporting customers.
And so that's what I'm gonnabuild out first, uh, in this
next phase of my business.
All right.
So you mentioned you work with your wife.
How is that, how, how does that work?
Nice situation.
I don't know.
(40:59):
Well, I've tried it a few times withmy wife and it doesn't work real well.
Yeah.
Most, most people don't do it Right.
So you, you have tostay in your lane Yeah.
So to speak.
And so you have to come to termsabout, What lanes are what?
And so, uh, my, my wife is very smart.
Uh, she, uh, was a Georgetown undergradand a, uh, UDub MBA in finance.
(41:25):
And, uh, she knows her stuff.
She, uh, worked in, uh, financewith Starbucks when they did their
big, uh, growth and development.
She worked in marketing at Microsoft.
And so she's, she's very goodat her job and she knows how to
take money and put it to work.
And so that's a good part to have . Yeah.
(41:47):
Yeah.
And so the fact that, you know,she can easily handle doing the,
the business accounting and thefinance, she can take the money and
make sure that it's in a place whereit's doing more work as it grows.
And, you know, It's really awesomecuz then I can focus on bringing the
money in that she can then put to work.
(42:08):
Yeah.
And so, you know, if we stay in ourlanes and, and we, uh, cooperate
towards goals, it works great.
But when you, when I see a lotof other husband and wife teams
work and they often collide like.
We're both working on a websitedevelopment and we're arguing
about what, what it should be.
(42:29):
Well, you got two people in the sameswim lane, you got a problem there.
And so of course that'snot gonna end well.
One of you's gonna have to climb outof the pool in order for that to work.
And so I see lots of people attemptingto work with their spouse and they,
they don't make the separation of roles.
That
is great advice.
(42:50):
And I'm sure some of our listeners arelike, ah, take that to heart, hopefully.
So I find your story very interesting.
So, because I mean, when you say likeyou, you're really are going small.
I mean, and, and to put this into.
Perspective.
I'm, I'm not even sure that Ican, I mean, you are, in my world,
(43:10):
in digital marketing SEO worlds,you are really on the pedestal.
I mean, people just have the greatestadmiration, respect, uh, for your, uh,
talent, for your software, for uh, what itis that you do, your ideas and directions.
And so, you know, and this piece ofsoftware that you have, Cora is fabulous.
(43:31):
I mean, if, if I had 10 SEOs in aroom and I said, what do you think
is the most valuable tool thatyou can think of in our industry?
Nine outta 10 of those guys wouldrank Quora, certainly in the
top three, if not number one.
I mean, that's, that's the, certainlythe mind share, at least I think
of SEOs in the, in the world here.
(43:54):
And you know, so it, there'sa few of us out there.
I'm amazed to hear it's justyou and your wife, right?
So you, you're like, Hey, we are stayingsmall from that standpoint, but yet
you've got this incredible piece ofsoftware and tool that does, uh, so much.
I'm like, wow.
I would think, yeah, to a degree.
Was that a little bit ofdiscipline to do that as.
(44:17):
Uh,
it actually is, uh, a lot of lickingmy wounds from the previous startup.
Okay.
You know, I, I kinda learned that,you know, when you have, uh, you
take on investors, you're basicallytaking on a large roster of bosses.
So, you know, there's that, uh, whenyou have, uh, millions of dollars
(44:40):
of investment in your company, uh,it kind of closes the door on a lot
of common sense decision making.
Like you could make a lotof quick wins and bring.
Income into the business.
But if it's not steered towards a10 x ROI for the investors, then
(45:01):
the board is saying no to, topeople who wanna steer that way.
And, and the, the, so you endup saying no to a lot of things
you ought to be saying yes to.
And if I had better control of thebusiness, then I could do things that make
sense for revenue and making the businessstable and for making customers happy.
(45:25):
And so when I was being pushed fora 10 x ROI all the time, a lot of, a
lot of good decisions didn't happenand a lot of bad decisions did happen.
And I didn't like the fact that I wasconstantly, you know, having to just,
you know, eliminate the, the war chestof the company for hiring staff that.
(45:48):
We weren't efficiently puttingto work and you know, there
are so many things I disagreed.
And ultimately, ultimately I sawa vision, like for that first
startup that I wanted to go down.
I had the contacts.
I was like, you know what?
We could be the, the bot creatingsolution and visual studio with Microsoft.
(46:09):
I come out of Microsoft, I haveall the contacts, I have leads
into the CTO at Microsoft.
We can home run this strategy.
But the rest of the board ofdirectors and management wanted
to go down the service path.
So it's like, I could have had mytechnology in Visual Studio, and they're
trying to keep it secret and it's like,oh my God, you know, what am I doing here?
(46:33):
So, you know, I ended up talking withthe investors and I talked with the
employees and everybody disagreed with me.
So I was in the wrong, everybodythought I was the crazy one.
And so it's like, all right, Iguess I'll just sell my shares.
And, and so, you know, I, yeah, I,I left and I went on and I started.
(46:56):
I started SEO Tool Lab and Iwas like, you know, I, I still
don't feel right about that.
I think I was conceptually right inthat you can make good software and
take it good places and I just wannamake a small business this time around.
I want to keep it small and keepit all and kind of embraced that.
(47:17):
Yeah.
And my startup costs on thecompany was under $5,000.
. And, and yeah.
I mean the ROI on that's through the roof.
My revenue per square foot formy office space through the roof
.
I would love to have it, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm, I'm, I'm always in a situation whereI don't have enough business expense.
(47:41):
Yeah.
And, and so like, theseare great problems.
Like when I look at like VC fundedventure capitalists and I see how
they spend money at Crunch at cr, youknow, I see the things that they do.
Like they make these, you know, videogame rec rooms and the startup, and
I'm looking at this going, there's ahundred thousand dollars of like foosball
(48:05):
here, , you know, that, what are you doing
Rand (48:10):
Maybe that's what you need for your office, put in a, uh,
foosball room and you know, yeah.
You know, it's employeeexpense incentives.
Te (48:19):
So, yeah, I guess, I guess I just have very different ideas about
business than like what a lot of the VCfunded startups have done in the past.
And, and I don't agree with it.
And I thought it was terribly wastefuland I thought there were better
directions that would be longer lasting.
And that past venture,it's still alive today.
(48:42):
Yeah, it's, it's been going since 2000.
So, you know, here we are 22 yearslater and the company's still alive, so,
but I think it could have been bigger.
Yeah.
Randy (48:52):
Well, let me, and I don't wanna dig into old wounds cuz as you
said, you know, you're kinda lickingyour wounds, so I don't, but I think
you've got a great lesson, uh, thatyou can provide to our audience in
that, you know, as you described, kindof that post nine 11 crisis, right?
So, you know, the, the world kindacame crashing down for you in that
(49:14):
particular industry and then you saidit took about 10 months or so for you to
kind of claw your way back out of that.
I am curious cuz we're always, you know,trying to uncover how do people approach
challenges and, you know, big obstacles.
Obviously we just came through.
The pandemic, and as people preppedfor that and, you know, survived
(49:37):
that hopefully in more ways than one.
But in that particular instance,for you, for that nine 11 issue and
your crawl back, uh, to survival,I guess, with your company at that
time, how, how did you approach it?
What were, you know, if there's oneor two, I don't know, key points
maybe that you could share that said,well, this is what we did and what
(49:57):
we had to, the steps we had to take?
Ted (49:59):
Well, that's, that's kind of the, uh, the consequence of
taking on investment dollars.
Like, if you spend your own money,you can pull the plug when you want.
But when you go to your family, whenyou go to your friends, when you go
to your past employers and tell 'emyou have a venture and you're taking
(50:20):
their money to start your venture,uh, you, you can't quit easily.
You can't just let it die.
Right?
And so I, I needed, at thattime, when nine 11 happened, I
knew that I needed to just, I, Ineeded to get through the event.
So whatever it took to survive,keep the company alive and
(50:45):
don't let those investments die.
And so, you know, that was my mentality.
So we had to downsize.
We obviously couldn't keep the head countand we just had to keep the doors open
and we had to keep the product alive.
And eventually we did bring it back.
We resurrected what out of oughtto have been a failed business.
(51:10):
We resurrected and there'sthese concepts with startups.
You know, people tell you thatnine out of 10 startups fail.
But I hear that differently.
Like the, the reason like, I hear thatdifferently is because, you know, when I
hear that it's not nine outta 10 startupsfail, it's that in the course of your
(51:33):
startup there will be nine times wherenobody would blame you for quitting.
Where everybody would understandand they'd say the correct
thing to do is to pull the plug.
Mm-hmm.
. And you need to not do it 10 times. And that's how you get to be the one
in 10 that didn't close the door.
(51:54):
Yeah.
Because I guarantee in all your startups,there will be nine times where you're
like, damn it, we just went negative.
We're less than zero.
I'd be happy to be at a zero.
You know, I need to pullthe plug and, and end it.
And if you wanna be that onein 10, that makes it, you
can't, you can't give up easy.
Yeah.
(52:14):
And so some, sometimesthat's terrible advice.
Sometimes you gotta closethe door, you don't wanna.
. You don't want to keep doubling downon something that's never gonna work,
but if you know it could work and itjust takes grit and determination,
I've always had that in space.
Yeah.
You know, if I can reduce it to anequation of effort, like, you know, some
(52:36):
amount of effort equals a win, then I'vealready won because there's no amount
of effort I won't put in to succeed.
But the hard part is getting it downto an equation where effort equals
Randy (52:49):
victory.
I would like to know thatequation that would be
Well, it's different for everybusiness and, and interestingly enough,
for most businesses, the, the problem isin sales, you know, you make a a solution
and you're like, well, geez, if I couldsell one copy in every town in the United
(53:09):
States, that would be 25,000 units sold.
Obviously we can sell one copy per town.
Why not?
That's totally reasonable.
I could sell a copy in Chicago.
At least I hope I could, butit's still a sales problem.
Right.
And most people don't comeprepared for the sales
problem.
Right, right.
(53:29):
Well, that's some good advice, justin thinking about, uh, that I love
the issue about the effort though.
That's good.
So today, so you've got SEO tool labs.
Uh, what, what's yourapproach to marketing?
I have an idea, but, uh, what Ithink that you're probably doing,
but I want to hear, I guess, what,what you're doing for marketing.
Ted (53:49):
I'm, I'm kind of in a state of identity crisis about that.
So it's, it's a loaded question,but, you know, here's the truth.
Okay.
The truth is, uh, I'm anengineer and techie people.
Hate email.
We hate it with a passion . Andso all of a sudden that makes me a
marketer who's self hating, right.
(54:11):
Self hating marketer.
Cuz I hate email with a passion.
But I have a very real problem in that asa software company, every service provider
company on earth wants to sell to me.
I'm like the low hangingfruit of everyone.
And so my inbox grows byabout 30,000 emails daily.
It takes about three tofour hours to process.
(54:33):
So on a normal work day, if I were toprocess my inbox daily, I'm spending
half my day trying to sort it out.
Yeah.
And my customers were falling intothat inbox and I, I can't have that.
Yeah.
So I'm having to reinvent mybusiness to get my customers
out of that horrible inbox.
(54:54):
And so I'm making changes to do that.
And uh, I also come from,you know, online retail and.
I've witnessed everythingthere is to witness in seo.
I've lived through every major event andat one point, during the caffeine made
a instant Google updates, uh, long taildied and SEO's everywhere took a big hit.
(55:18):
Like it was the doom stay of SEObecause all that long tail traffic
dried up and wasn't easy to get anymore.
And at that point I realized yougotta diversify cuz if you are
over invested in Google for yourorganic revenue, you're, you're
giving Google too much power, right?
(55:38):
And so I wanted to make sure that Googlecould never pull the plug on me again.
And so my business islargely built on the unthink.
Word of mouth.
I, I, I
don't, because in my mind, when Ithink about your tool, I don't know, I've
never received an email from you . Yes.
(56:01):
From I've been onto yoursite multiple times.
I don't recall, uh, anyway, everseen any kind of an ad pop up
anywhere about your software?
And the only way that I've knownabout it and learned about it, um, I
guess, or where I see it, is only invarious groups that I navigate in.
(56:23):
Absolutely.
Word of mouth.
Now, the other thing that Iwould say is, you know, you do.
Travel around.
You talk to people, you know, you goto conferences, you make presentations.
So that's part of that, I guesskind of word of mouth delivery.
Um, but yeah, you're, you're verylowkey, but yet you've got this
incredible, this is where I thinkyou've got such a great story.
(56:44):
You're very low key in, inregarding your marketing efforts.
Um, but yet you've, from a mind sharestandpoint in our industry, you own it.
I mean, you are the gun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have the best tool in the, in theindustry and it's the least known.
(57:04):
I don't have the most market share.
I have quite possibly the leastamount of market share, but
Randy (57:10):
it's different market share from mine.
Share is different though.
Yeah.
Almost anybody, as I said, if I put10 SEOs in the room, absolutely.
Everybody has heard andis familiar with Cora.
Ted (57:22):
Yep.
And, uh, yeah, you know,I've, I've focused my business
on, on making the advantage.
I deliver very real, improving itand helping my customers realize it.
And, and so it's to a pointwhere, yeah, I don't have to do
heavy lifting to spread the word.
I'm, I'm a viral phenomenon causeof word of mouth evangelism,
(57:48):
and that's where I wanna be.
You know, I, I love it when othertool vendors, when their customers get
nervous because one of my customers movedin on their space, , like that fear.
Lets me know I'm doingmy job right, ? Yeah.
Randy (58:06):
That's great.
All right, so now in one of the ways thatI think it probably helps you as well
in that kind of viral evangelism, I lovethat term, is this thing that you do.
What's a friend of the show?
He's been on the show, uh, once before.
Actually we're gonna, we're sittingdown at the end of the month,
we're doing another recording.
We're gonna do one of ourrandom shows with Kyle Roof.
(58:29):
Uh, Kyle is great.
Love the guy.
You guys do this thing, this SEOfight club, which I think, um,
you know, you guys kinda have somefun with it and, uh, make it fun.
Um, but yet it's still very.
Data driven kinda SEO mindset andconversation sometimes for people.
I think we were at a, at a conference justlast week, and I remember somebody was
(58:52):
talking about watching, you know, theywere getting into the industry and they
were watching the SEO Fight Club videos,you know, on YouTube and like, listen, I
listen to the first, you know, like 10 or15 episodes or whatever the number was.
She goes, I have no cluewhat they were even saying.
I couldn't, I didn't know the language.
I didn't These guys.
Yeah, I mean, you and Kyle arelike, I can, you know, you're like
(59:14):
a couple of mad scientists out therekind of trying to explain a formula.
How did that come about,the, the two of you?
Ted (59:20):
You know, we, uh, we were appearing at all the same conferences
and so we, we'd talk shop, you know,I, I have a background in SEO testing
and he has a patent in SEO testing.
And so we were kind of, uh, youknow, doing, doing similar things,
but from different origins.
Yeah.
And, um, uh, so yeah, it is a natural fit.
(59:43):
Uh, he's, he's not on the showcurrently cuz he lives on the
opposite side of the planet andthe hours were too rough for him.
Uh, but who knows whatthe, the future may bring.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, it, it just madea lot of sense to, you know, get
like-minded people who are tryingto put scientific method into seo.
(01:00:04):
Uh, get 'em into a roomand to discuss things.
Randy (01:00:08):
Well, I'll just tell people want to go check that out?
Go jump onto YouTube.
Go look for SEO five Club.
It's a lot of fun.
So what's around thecorner for TED and SEO Tool
Ted (01:00:21):
Lab?
Well, um, my, my happy place is inventing,so I do need to grow the business so
that I can stay in my happy place.
So I want to invent, uh, moretechnologies to put into Cora.
I want to deliver betteradvantage over time.
I wanna make sure we're preparedto adapt to any curve balls.
(01:00:45):
The industry throws our way.
I'm pretty good at, uh, anticipatingthose and being ready for them.
And so, yeah, you know, I, I want to,uh, continue to do the core of what
I started, which is to invent coolstuff and to help people succeed.
And so anything that furthers me on,on those two agendas is what I want to.
(01:01:10):
I love it.
All
right, well, here we are, Ted.
We're at, we're at the point in the show,we'll call it the bottom of the nights.
Okay.
So this is where I gotta askyou if you have some advice.
What, for the rookies in the game.
So those folks just kinda starting out,uh, maybe they already have their business
looking for some guidance from a guywho's been around the bases a few times.
(01:01:32):
Uh, what kind of advice doyou have for those folks?
T (01:01:35):
It's gonna be unusual advice, but here goes, like, if you're,
if you're making a, an onlinestore and you're trying to figure
out, you know, what can you do?
Here's what I recommend you do.
Don't make one online store, make two.
You know it's gonna cost you aboutthe same amount of money to operate
(01:01:55):
both of 'em as it does to do one.
Just just make two, makebrand A and brand B.
Put 'em out there.
Now, after a while, one will takethe lead, one will be your primary
one that's pulling the best numbers.
And great.
So when you recognize that,that's, that's your big brand.
When you get a little brand, thelittle store you have going, well now,
(01:02:17):
now you have a safe place to fail.
All right?
And that's what people don't givethemselves is a safe place to fail.
So a lot of SEOs out there, they'll,they'll take on a big client and they're
putting themselves in a situation wherethe next mistake they make gets them.
And I want you to think, how fastis that SEO gonna master his trade?
(01:02:40):
It's like he's, he's not going to, ifhis next mistake gets him fired, right?
He's gonna always play it safeand he's never gonna learn.
So when you make that safe place tofail, you have a store that you can
hire an SEO and give them a shot.
What can they do?
You know, make backups.
So if they tank your site,you just restore from back,
(01:03:01):
uh, backup to undo it, right?
You have a place to test people youhire before you put 'em on the big.
You have a place where you can learnwhat works and what doesn't works
before you move it to the big store.
And so I made a 17 year career outof testing on the little store and
migrating the successes to the big store.
(01:03:22):
And that produced that strategyfor me as an in-house SEO produced
double digit growth quarterafter quarter, year after year.
I went from the new guy on the devteam all the way to the director
of bi, uh, at the executive.
And so it didn't take rocket science, itdidn't take degrees and this and that.
(01:03:44):
It didn't take engineering chops.
It just took having a safe place to fail.
Randy (01:03:50):
Nice.
I love that advice.
That is perfect.
Uh, Give yourself asafe place to fail that.
And I love you.
Were going on, you know, I like,but you read the manual, right?
? Yep.
That is, that is great.
Well, listen, Ted, thanks somuch, man, for being on the show.
I've thank you.
I've really enjoyed getting to knowyou a little bit more, and, uh, hearing
(01:04:13):
all the great background on you.
Um, it's terrific.
People can get in touch with you, godirectly to, uh, seo tool lab.com.
We'll have a link in the show notes tothat as well as, uh, Ted's, uh, online
vitals, I guess his social accounts,so you can go tap into him directly.
Find him every week onSEO Fight Club as well.
(01:04:36):
Always kind of fun.
All right, well, listen,Ted, thanks so much, man.
It's been a lot of fun.
Thank you.
And, uh, I, I've really enjoyed it.
And listen, folks, that's a ballgame, so thanks for joining us today,
and if you like her, Please tellyour friends, subscribe and review.
And as we like to say, we'llsee around the ballpark.
Running the bases with small businessesis brought to you by 38 Digital Market.
(01:05:01):
A digital marketing agency committedto client growth with lead generation,
higher conversions, and increased sales.
Connect with us todayat 38digitalmarket.com.
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