Jeremy Weisz 5:49
So someone will come on, you will train them on, you know, like, if Google does go through this, you know, training program that we have is online training program, whatever it is certification, then they may shadow someone and listen in on calls, whether live or recorded. And then they kind of get their feet wet with with clients. Is there any? I’m curious how the mentorship works? Or is there someone over your shoulder width as you’re working with them, or by the time you’re done shadowing, they just kind of release you?
Kevin Miller 6:21
Well, it’s a little bit of both, you know, it depends on the people that we’re connecting our new hires with, I try to foster a culture of, you know, helping people out with the expectation of nothing in return. Just passing on what was given to you, I think that’s the, you know, the best, most altruistic way to be for our employees and try to hire for that quality. Um, I think that experienced hires who are in a great standing with GR0, should want to spend their time, you know, helping other people. And so there isn’t that element. And then there’s a senior manager that manages all of our account managers and our SEO specialists. And they don’t just go off into the wild that those that managers overseeing their calls and making sure their work is satisfactory. And that’s typically how we do it. And then they all have a direct line of communication to me. And I believe it or not, I’m still checking in on all of their work to make sure that it’s done properly. And if I look for areas where I can give constructive feedback,
Jeremy Weisz 7:17
so were you you were at the Mountain View location
Kevin Miller 7:20
for new location commuting from I lived in San Francisco, but I would commute down to Mountain View every day.
Jeremy Weisz 7:26
I feel like Kevin, if I worked at Google, I don’t know if I leave there’s so many perks. And I’m what was that decision to eventually Google?
Kevin Miller 7:38
You know, it was multifaceted. I, I come from an entrepreneurial background. My dad’s an entrepreneur, my brother’s an entrepreneur, and, and what did your dad do? My dad was actually the CEO Budget Rent-a-car, huh. Um, and he started with one location in Ormond Beach, Florida, which is where I grew up, that’s why we live there. And one location rent led to another and he was able to acquire enough franchises to have a majority position in them. And then he took them public in 1997.
Jeremy Weisz 8:10
And pretty amazing.
Kevin Miller 8:12
It is it is. And so I thought that experience that he went through was, of course, very difficult, but also really, really rewarding. And what he’s always tried to teach me was that it’s about the journey of entrepreneurship, not necessarily the end results, not about making millions of dollars and, and all that it’s about enjoying yourself in the process success or fail. And truthfully, for myself, I wanted to see, you know, what am I made of, can I make it on my own I, you know, I, I didn’t want to get into Colorado because that was his thing. And so I thought, let me get into technology and online businesses and and I admire the people who sold companies to Google that I would meet on Google’s campus and play basketball with them. And I thought it was a more intriguing story. Um, and but I you know, it’s funny, I had dinner with a my old teammate at Google last night. And I actually implored him to stay at Google for 30 years, because he’s on a great trajectory there and makes a bunch of money and has found fulfilling things to do. And, you know, just kind of depends on what personality you have. It’s the grass isn’t always greener. You know, the first few years out of Google, we’re not, we’re not pretty no one was asking me to speak on podcast, I can tell you that.
Jeremy Weisz 9:23
I know. I just I visited a friend who worked at LinkedIn in Chicago and they had a full floor they had they had breakfast lunch and dinner available. I would you know, game rooms I was like, I think if I started here, I don’t know if I’d ever leave even though I do have that entrepreneur so
Kevin Miller 9:41
yeah, no want to go back and work their mind with this. You know, if I was to get married and have kids, I want to go work at Google every day and try to you know, get a job but hopefully they’ll accept me back.
Jeremy Weisz 9:52
What other lessons do you learn from your dad growing up so that was one like, I don’t know if you saw him. You know, it. It’s easier said than done sometimes, like, just just enjoy the journey. Like that’s sometimes easy to say, but harder to do, you know,
Kevin Miller 10:08
yeah, you know, and none of its directly verbal, he’s not a great communicator. So he’s not sitting me down saying, Hey, I learned this I want to write, it’s more through talking with his friends, and they tell me what it’s like working with him more. Um, you know, he’ll, I’ll overhear, you overhear him on phone calls all the time. And I saw how he treated people that work with him and how he was very stern, but respectful to everybody. And, you know, always want to make people feel good. And, but when people tried to take advantage of him, or, you know, cut a bad deal with him in business, he would let them know that that’s not acceptable, you know, and I’ve learned how to like flex that muscle, you know, when you become successful with your business, a lot of people want a piece of it or want to slow you down, and I want to distract you. And I’ve started to see that that side of the business world and, and, you know, I’m imploring everyone on our team to just stay focused and not get distracted with any of that, and remember what it was like, in the first few months building, GR0, and, you know, and keep that mentality as long as you can.
Jeremy Weisz 10:09
It’s amazing. Kevin, you probably from an early age, we’re kind of like you said, learn from as Moses was infused these, you know, leadership principles are, you know, and that’s something that, you know, when you run a company, there’s so many different moving pieces. With GR0 then, you know, oftentimes, least the people I’m interviewing start to kind of try and improve their leadership skills later on, because they didn’t go I want to be a leader, I want to start this company. Yeah. What are some things that you remember, either from your dad or learning from people at Google or Aspire open listings, as you know, leadership was?
Kevin Miller 11:54
Well, I think that I’ve really tried to perfect the art of behaving in a way that makes people want to work hard for you. I had a great CEO and Open Listings, his name was Judd Schoenholtz and he was very well liked by the staff. And when we saw him being stressed during fundraising or, you know, just a little bit out of sorts, because he was so much pressure he was carrying on his shoulders, people would go up to him and say, hey, how can I help you? You know, I really care about you, personally. And how can I help you and I’m the CEO current CEO of Opendoor, which is now a public company, his name is Eric Wu, you know, he, he used to before I left, open door, my job was to go to speak to customers in Phoenix, Arizona, every weekend, I went eight straight weekends trying to get customer feedback, you know, and it wasn’t the most fun thing to do. On my weekend. I was working like seven days a week, but he showed up, and he would meet me at 8am at a Random House waiting for people to come view the house and talk to them. And, you know, he might have been worth several 100 million dollars at that time, and you would never know. And he was there with me taking detailed notes acting like he’s an intern. And so I saw that and I said, wow, you know, I respect that a lot. Um, and then just, you know, at home like with my mom, my mom was a homemaker. She never, she knows, she actually was working at Avis and budget in the early days with my dad, she actually is the one who got him his first job at Avis 1990. Wow. Yeah. Which is funny, but she kind of taught me that, um, you know, no matter who you’re meeting with, everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time. And I used to get nervous and make things make it into a big thing. Like, one of the big things that I think has helped me be successful so far is reaching out to people that are in great positions and asking them how they did it. And she kind of taught me not to be afraid to reach out just take your chance. You know, who knows? They might, they might just respond.
Jeremy Weisz 13:57
Worst thing is they don’t say no, right? I
Kevin Miller 14:00
mean, exactly, exactly. And that’s how I got my first internship at Livingsocial when I was in college. That’s how I actually got into Georgetown, I wrote a letter to the dean and said, hey, my LSAT score is 400 points below what it says on your website. here’s, here’s the things I’ll do to make you know, to make you know, my mark and so that type of stuff I think I’ve learned but I just observed great leaders who are respected by their peers and I try to emulate that you know, I don’t I don’t raise my voice to my employees. I don’t bark orders at them. I don’t do anything like that. You know if I want respect I give respect.
Jeremy Weisz 14:43
I love that. Yeah. Um, your copyrighted hurt. You know, getting into college. I guess I’m Living Social. Is that still around?
Kevin Miller 14:53
No, they got acquired by Groupon.
Jeremy Weisz 14:55
Oh, Groupon. Okay. Yeah, it was like being in Chicago at the time. You know, I saw the early days of Groupon, you know, and they were like 10 staff. So you really saw the rise of Groupon.
Kevin Miller 15:09
It was unbelievable. It was really unbelievable. My internship was there, I was a sophomore in college and Living Social was hiring 10 people a day. Um, and I couldn’t believe it, I was, you know, Mind blown, and, and everyone was so young and excited, and they were moving at a breakneck speed, like something I had never seen before. Um, they were launching in new cities every week, I was going, you know, traveling to help with that I, it was the most inspiring experience I had ever had. And then my peers were going to work at, you know, on Wall Street. And I still don’t know how to tie my own tie. So I thought, I thought, I’m probably not suited for that life. You know, let me go try to do something more interesting for me. And that’s, yeah. Oh into it.
Jeremy Weisz 15:57
I’m talking about, you know, keeping we talk about Google and, you know, Open Listings and Opendoor. What do you do at your company that you’ve taken to make sure the staff is happy.
Kevin Miller 16:12
We do an all hands meeting every week, no matter what rain or shine, and I have each member each department head speak, and let everyone know what’s going on at the company. I think like, you know, when I got to Google, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, we’re still doing all hands meetings every Friday in person. And so I would go and watch them speak, you know, 20 yards away from me. And they had 50,000 employees at the time. And that same live broadcast was sent to every single office in the United States, it was fascinating. And everyone watched it. And it was a, it was how long
Jeremy Weisz 16:45
was it usually
Kevin Miller 16:47
was about an hour. Yeah. And they would give updates across the entire company that you know, affected you or didn’t, in fact, affect you directly. And it, it made it feel very inclusive, made it feel like hey, you know, we want to let you know what the self driving unit is doing. Even though you’re selling ads, before it gets printed up anywhere, we want to make sure that you understand that this is a close knit, Google family, and we’re going to share things here that aren’t shared publicly. And when I got to open listings, the same type of thing was done. And same at open door. And so I decided to continue it here. And I think people will appreciate being in the know, and it makes them more bought into the greater mission of what you’re trying to accomplish as organization,
Jeremy Weisz 17:27
beloved, anything else to mention, so all
Kevin Miller 17:30
hands meeting, you know, one of the things that was, was really prevalent, that, unfortunately, is a challenge due to COVID was eating together. Um, you know, and we did that every day at Google, same thing with Opendoor and Open Listings, and company would provide lunch. And if they couldn’t afford it, they, you know, wouldn’t do it every single day. But groupement, team members would still go out and spend time together. And, you know, we’ve struggled to find, you know, a way to run, there’s no real way to, you know, replace that, right. But we tried to do a lot of culture and team building events, and we’re trying to save money right now for the physical team off site as soon as it’s safe. So every month, we’re saving as much as we can to be able to pay for that and pay for people’s flights and get them into one central location. And, um, and if anyone is in the same geographic region, like one of our employees just volunteered to have another one stopped by his house in Boston and meet for the first time and, and it just does so much for camaraderie, and team morale and things like that.
Jeremy Weisz 18:34
There’s nothing like breaking bread together.
Kevin Miller 18:38
Nothing like it, you build what I call personal capital with people. So you know, for example, like I was driving to work today, My car broke down. And my assistant has COVID and so um, you know, one of another other team members reached out to me and said, Hey, I know this week is got to be really tough because Leanne is out with COVID. And, you know, I know you’re late because your car, can I call triple A for you, and see if we can get someone to the office to help your car. And that’s not in her job description. But that’s the type of person she is and we have a strong relationship that she wants to do that for me, because we like each other, and I would do the same for her. And so that’s what I’m trying to foster that I think a lot of companies just miss they think, you know, oh, this person just works for me, you know, that that’s, that’s the antithesis of what I try to instill in our people.
Jeremy Weisz 19:27
You know, Kevin, talk about the hiring process, because that kind of starts with hiring process, you know, yeah, attracting and choosing great people. So, what is the hiring process look like?
Kevin Miller 19:39
Well, it started with, you know, my twin sisters, a recruiter and she’s, you know, really, really great at it. She worked in multiple tech companies. So I really started by picking her brain. But I got very fortunate with a referral from one of our advisors. His name is Carter Reum. He runs M13, which is a venture capital fund in Los Angeles, and he sent Me a guy named Aaron Friedman. And Aaron Friedman is our director or head of people. And he built a an amazing, you know, HR practice and recruiting practice. So we actually use a, a personality test called Accu max. And for every single position that we have, we know what the ideal personality traits are to be successful in that role. And so we have every single person take that we also have five different people that the candidate needs to speak to before they are accepted into GR0. And it has to be unanimous decision, which is what I took from Google as well. Google does not hire anyone, unless everyone on the hiring committee votes. Yes. If there’s one, no, they don’t do it. And they have the they have the ability to be that selective, we’ve chosen to do the same. And actually, one of the questions at Google is, would you want to go out to coffee? Or a meal with this person? Outside of work? The answer is no, they don’t get hired. So we do something similar to that, as well. Um, and then, you know, we have a background check, we have, we have a take home test. And we try to have as many team members speak to, you know, our candidate as possible. And it’s not always just like a grilling of questions trying to understand evaluate them, it’s also us selling them, I feel like it’s a two way street. Um, but our whole process takes about three weeks start to finish, which I think is fast, but not not too fast. And it allows us to check references and really be thorough with what we’re with our hiring process. And we just make sure that we don’t miss any calls, we’re always on time. And we treat every single candidate with a level of respect that as if they already work here. I think that goes a long way.
Jeremy Weisz 21:51
I want to hear Kevin more about GR0 what you do. And and also just to start with how you met your co-founder.
Kevin Miller 21:59
Yeah, so I’m GR0 as an SEO agency, we’re focused exclusively on organic search. And so that means we write blog posts for our clients, helping them rank number one for questions that relate to their products. So for example, we have an amazing client called Kalumi Beauty and they sell marine collagen bars. And I bring that up, because I know you’re, you’re a bar guy, you like Rx and Quest. So, um, we’ll write a 1500 word piece on what is marine collagen? And how to and what are its benefits. And so it sounds
Jeremy Weisz 22:30
it sounds right up my alley.
Kevin Miller 22:33
I’m after this call, tell them that, you know, you’re interested. And so, um, that’s, you know, we have three prongs to what we do. Number one is content writing, we recruit writers from universities. When I was at Georgetown, I would, I needed some a little bit of help with my long form essays. So I went to the writing center. And when I got to the Writing Center, I realized just how smart and amazing those tutors are, who are volunteering their time to help other students. So that’s actually where we recruit from now. Those types of people know regardless of what university they attend, they’re typically amazing storytellers. And we just need to step in and help them format their posts for SEO, and it’s been working well. So that’s a big differentiator for us. Secondly, we act as a mini PR firm, where we get press mentions and press hits for our clients. So those result in backlinks for our clients, which is really important to build trust and authority to your website. And so we get our clients featured in news outlets all over the place. And then lastly, we do on page optimization, which you know, make sure that your website is fast and it you know, it all your web pages are titled, something unique that tells Google what’s being sold on your page. Um, and then my co founder and I, we actually were both sober. We both been sober for five plus years, we had our own independent struggles with drugs and alcohol. And so we met in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I’m not sure how much you know about that. But typically, people go to AA meetings, you know, a few, five, six times a week or something in that neighborhood, to stay sober and be emotionally sober. And so that’s how we met about four and a half years ago. And we both discovered that we have like a unique passion for SEO specifically,
Jeremy Weisz 24:23
which is a very was he doing at the time when you met him?
Kevin Miller 24:26
While he was just leaving rehab?
Jeremy Weisz 24:28
I mean, was he doing stuff in SEO or
Kevin Miller 24:31
Yeah, so he has a much longer career in SEO specifically. So he was doing SEO for, for, you know, jack Dorsey for a period of time at square he was doing it for a guy named Mark Gardner, who ran a cash advance company. So he had done a lot in like the finance space, but he he’s been exclusively focused on SEO for 10 plus years, I was more of a multi. I was focused on Facebook ads, Google ads, and then at open listings, I really fell in love with or Janek search and competing against Zillow. And so he actually taught me a lot of what I know, from an SEO and SEO basis, you know, our first year meeting each other, I would call him every single day, multiple times a day asking questions about SEO. And he was my number one mentor taught me everything I know, along with all the courses I did, and I launched my own sites, though, to learn on my own and, and so we decided together, hey, let’s, you know, let’s let’s make a run at this, we both had four or five consulting clients, while we were working full time jobs. And we thought, you know, we think we’re pretty formidable team together, he’s an amazing salesperson. And I, you know, think I’m good at the people management and, and, and other aspects of the business, and we complement each other well, and that’s what we decided to do.
Jeremy Weisz 25:48
That’s amazing. So, um, it’s interesting, what have you taken from a, and into the business? You know, because there’s a lot of principles that, you know, probably overlay into just life in general.
Kevin Miller 26:04
Yeah, they do. It’s a good rubric for, for life. Um, you know, honesty is a big principle, being honest in all your affairs. We try to deliver bad news fast. If our campaigns are not working for our clients, but let them know ahead of time rather than them letting us know, try to work something out and be forthright and transparent with them. Um, you know, a lot comes down to we were very calm, cool and collected, no work emergency is the same as real emergencies in real life. So, you know, I had a sponsee, I was just talking about it this morning, he overdosed, and he died two years ago. And I was at open listings, when I got the call from his girlfriend at the time. And so that’s a real emergency to me. Um, I don’t puts putting things in perspective that it puts things in perspective. And I know, that could happen to me, that could happen on my partner. And so we’re coming at work, thinking these aren’t hard problems. You know, we’ve been to hell and back, we’ve seen hard problems. We’re grateful for the of the problems we have on the work front. And so I think we come to this with a different perspective. And when anyone on our team has some sort of hardship like that, I mean, we cover for them times 1000. And actually, when I was at Google, my first week, my best friend had cancer. And he ultimately ended up passing away as well. My boss in Google came to me and he said, Take a month off. We don’t care. And I said, but I’m just starting here. You need me to be, you know, selling Google ads. He said, No, we don’t go back to Florida, spend time with him. We’re going to pay you the entire time. Come back when you’re ready. And I thought, wow. You know, I’ll work here forever. I’ll do anything for that manager, you know. And so that’s how I treated here to one of our recent employees. He had his mother struggling with her health. You know, my partner, and I said, he has gone as long as you want. And that’s just how we do it.
Jeremy Weisz 28:06
It’s amazing. Thanks for sharing that. Kevin. And, I don’t know how to follow that. But I want to follow with marine collagen bars. Sure. But um, what’s the site? What’s the website?
Kevin Miller 28:19
KalumiBeauty.com?
Jeremy Weisz 28:21
Got it. Okay. Yeah, I see it right here.
Kevin Miller 28:23
And it’s so many women based on their former models, they realized that their skin, you know, they needed they need something to brighten their skin, and they were having trouble with, you know, keeping their skin clear. And they started the same way that the RX Bar team did and building formulations in their kitchen and, and they brought their product to life.
Jeremy Weisz 28:44
It looks delicious. The almond butter chocolate chip. Yeah,
Kevin Miller 28:47
yeah. And for me, you know, it was to the, you know, these two women, Chrissy and Jayla, they, they were my first actually my first actual, you know, consulting client that helped me on my path to GR0. And so and now they’re GR0 client. And we’ve hired, you know, one of their content writers that worked with gloomy and now she works at GR0. It’s been just amazing experience. And they are really persistent entrepreneurs. And they’re, you know, I hope they really can take over the collagen space.
Jeremy Weisz 29:19
I love it. Yeah, I mean, collagen is really healthy and a lot of collagen and especially if people don’t want to, you know, eat something that comes from like a meat product, because a lot of the collagen comes from cows. I had never heard of marine collagen, actually. So it’s pretty cool.
Kevin Miller 29:37
It’s a unique type of collagen, as I understand it, um, and we’ve been ultra successful with them, you know, they probably get 1000 clicks a day from organic search across, you know, 50 blog posts that we’ve written over the past year. Yeah, and, and they outrank vital proteins for many, many, many queries, which is why I love SEO, the little guy can always keep if you are more Throw in more details in your in your answers Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 30:03
I can watch the mixing this Chuck whatever chocolate chip cookie dough thing all day long exactly want to eat it what’s an example of a popular article? I can I can take a look here. I’m just looking as you look for that, um, I just always love you know this at least in the almond butter chocolate chip one. I love how the first ingredients like almond butter, you know and it exactly like it’s all these ingredients are pretty healthy as far as almond protein goes and almond butter and MCT oil. So I’m down they have a new customer and they’re in Austin, Texas.
Kevin Miller 30:42
I think it’s manufactured. They’re in Yeah, they’re in Marina Del Rey and got it okay. They’ve kind of been fully remote now since I’ve gone on with with COVID. Um, but yeah, I’m still pulling this up here. Let’s take a look at some of their bests.
Jeremy Weisz 30:57
Yeah, I’d love to hear about some exists because I want to talk about them. I’d love to talk about Pumpkin Care a little bit, too. But you had me with bar. So Well, yes, for a second.
Kevin Miller 31:09
If you Google marine collagen versus Bovine Bovine. That’s another type of collagen. Yeah, Bovin e, they ranked number one for that. And the title tag is, is marine collagen better than bovine collagen. And typically, if you’re really into collagen, you’re gonna, you know, you’re going to try to see which type that you know has the benefits that you’re looking for Vital Proteins is ranked number 10 for the same query. So that just kind of shows you again, you know, if you write your articles very thoroughly, you know you can outrank other people, they ranked number one for collagen for acne, um, they rank number five for how long does it take for collagen supplements to work? Which is a longer tail query that people you know, want to know, people want to know, can you take too much collagen, they’re ranked number four for that. And so that, in essence shows you actually their number three for that. So and they’re behind health line, which is, you know, tough to beat. So that kind of shows you how we think about our blog writing and our content marketing is we’re answering questions that consumers have related to college and then we’re positioning Kalumi. And we’re saying, Hey, you know, you’re looking to reduce the acne on your face? Try marine collagen, it has like a specific, you know, ingredients that help with that. me up?
Jeremy Weisz 32:27
Yeah, I was looking at the article here. collagen versus fish oil, how to collagen official work together? And what are the benefits, which is kind of a cool, because we know the, you know, my background is in biochemistry as a chiropractor. So I geek out on this stuff. And there’s a lot of research on on these things. So like healthy, positive research. So that’s really cool. Talk about Pumpkin Care.
Kevin Miller 32:55
Yeah, so Pumpkin Care, they are a pet insurance company, one of the leader leaders in the space. And they have got amazing plans that they offer to to new and existing pet owners. And basically, we did something very similar with them, they started with us, they were getting about 10 or 15,000 unique visitors a month, and now they’re getting close to 400,000. And the whole organization has really rallied around SEO, because they have started to drive a lot of policies directly from organic search. And what we’ve done is we’ve answered all the different questions that people have about preventative care for their for their path, and, and they are top of mind when people are googling literally anything about cats or dogs or any type of pet. Um, and so we are hitting them early in their consideration phase even before they have the pet. So, um, you know, we will write articles about you know, the the best, you know, hypoallergenic dogs, which is like a really topical thing right now. And that’s what we searched for. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, people don’t that’s what that’s what my girlfriend and I searched for too. So, um, we do really extensive keyword research to see what prospective and current pet owners are googling you can hit
Jeremy Weisz 34:13
them in different parts of their cycle by their buying cycle.
Kevin Miller 34:17
Exactly. And we really go deep so for example, we ranked number one for cat years, two human years there’s 52,000 people a month that search for that was it again cat years two human years and we ranked number one for non shedding dogs we ranked number one for can dogs eat watermelon? And so you know there is a what
Jeremy Weisz 34:44
your damn dogs eat Kevin. You know I would you feed your dog people food or what kind of dog you
Kevin Miller 34:50
No, I have a mini golden doodle.
Jeremy Weisz 34:53
Okay.
Kevin Miller 34:53
Mini golden doodle. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 34:54
No people food.
Kevin Miller 34:56
You know, very limited unless I you know, I’m a first time dog owner I didn’t grow up with. My girlfriend did she grew up with a golden retriever and I, I’m scared to give my dog anything that he’s actually sitting right here taking a nap. I’m scared to give him anything that might make him sick. I don’t want to be responsible for that. I’ll do too much. So I try to keep them on a strict. I’m
Jeremy Weisz 35:17
just curious from your research, because you guys probably do a lot of research on this. Oh, so so what does that say about watermelon? to just point people that would read the article. But
Kevin Miller 35:28
yeah, we can point people to read the articles that will be, that’ll be better. Yeah. So yes, you can, but you want to lose this, you don’t want to have them eat the seeds. So that’s the that’s the little nuance, there. Now, the other thing that’s important is the every article that we write, whether it’s in the collagen space, or in, you know, the pet space, it’s authored by an expert in that subject matter. And that’s one really key component that we You can’t miss if you’re trying to be good at SEO and content writing. Google is looking for that trustworthy ness factor. And so you talked about being a chiropractor, and I’ve gone through a lot of stuff with my lower back. I had a herniated disk,
Jeremy Weisz 36:09
too young for that stuff.
Kevin Miller 36:11
I know, it was a lot of basketballs related at a young age. Yeah. And so I would only trust you, you know, I wouldn’t trust my sister who’s or Reno, a tech recruiter to tell me how to fix my back, I would trust someone with your background, you went to school for it. And so the same methodology applies, we make sure that every single article is authored by and reviewed by someone who has credentials in that subject matter. And that goes a long, long way for both the reader and for Google.
Jeremy Weisz 36:37
I’m curious, Kevin, you know, when we’re working with you work with clients, you also have to set expectations, right? It’s like, it’s not going to hit especially with SEO stuff, like it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a lot of work, you can’t just start doing it. And like a week later, you start ranking for things. It’s like a long term strategy for people that they have to commit to. And so for Pumpkin Care, what were the expectations that you set up front? Obviously, you hit it out of the park for them, but what did you tell them upfront of what you should expect? in month 126 12?
Kevin Miller 37:13
Yeah, so typically, what I say is, you won’t see any results for at least five to six months. Um, and I always try to set that expectation, because it’s just the truth. What you typically see in months 234, after you’ve posted blogs, and new pages on the site is an increase in impressions. And that means you’re starting to rank number 30, your number 24, a query, but you don’t rank on page one, and you don’t rank in the top three, so you’re not getting any clicks, you’re not gonna physically feel that as a business. Um, and I tried to be overly transparent about that, so much so that when I was starting GR0, I launched my own blog called the word counter. And it’s a grammar blog. So I explain English grammar concepts, like the difference between there versus there and the different ways to spell it. And I show my own data on our pitches. And I say, look, this is how long it took me to build my own website. And here’s the results now, so that they understand that this is not a sales tactic. It’s just, it’s just the truth of how long it takes to build up a new website. And I always try to almost speak to the point where I turn them away. And then I know that if they still come back, and they really want to work with us that they really get it. They understand the long term investment. And they know that I’m, you know, because I have my own site, you know, I don’t recommend any tactics that I don’t employ on my own website, and I can prove it. And I think that’s why people trust us to do work for them, because they see that I put my own money into this.
Jeremy Weisz 38:44
What about talking about Ritual? And what you do with them?
Kevin Miller 38:47
Yeah, so Ritual, it was my second consulting client ever. I’m still very close with one of their co founders. Her name is Lauren Kleinman. Um, and they really put me and grow on the map, because they were one of the first direct consumer e-commerce companies that raised considerable considerable amount of money. And their branding is incredible. The imagery, the website, everything they’ve done, is really like top tier. And I think they’re well respected in their in their niche. And so once the word got out that we were doing, you know, SEO for Ritual, and it was working really well. It really things started to warm referrals started to come in like crazy. And we started to get them to rank in the top three for prenatal vitamins and women’s multivitamin, and how long does it take for prenatal vitamins to work and things of that nature. And, you know, if you if you do right by that team, they’re really willing to publicly sing your praises. So they’ve given us testimonials and they’ve talked about it in the more in marketing communities with other growth marketers and they will take any reference call that you know, that I might have for a potential client and They’ve been real champions of the work that we’ve done together.
Jeremy Weisz 40:03
Um, so how did you end up meeting meeting them?
Kevin Miller 40:07
You know, I was doing free work for a friend of mine, like, General Growth, marketing, consulting, and, you know, just a friend of mine wanted to help. And he called me after we worked together for a month or two. And he said, Hey, I know a woman named Lauren, she’s looking for SEO. Um, she works at a company called Ritual, which I had never heard of, would you be interested in working with them, they’ll pay you. And I said, of course. And so that’s been working for free like that, you know, I started the call, we’re talking about, you know, doing stuff with no expectation or over something in return. That’s where all the gold is, in my career experience. You know, I did this, I did my friend of solid. I didn’t ask him for $1. And then he came and repaid me by doing that, which then led me do all these other things. And
Jeremy Weisz 40:55
Do any articles stick out? Kevin from Ritual that are popular?
Kevin Miller 41:01
Um, let me take a look.
Jeremy Weisz 41:03
I’m looking at the website. It’s kind of cool. Obviously, the future of health is clear. And you can see the clear pills. So they have some amazing imagery and branding on there, for sure. Right?
Kevin Miller 41:15
They ranked number three for water soluble soluble vitamins. That’s something that’s important to people. They people, they rank number one for prenatal vitamins versus a regular multivitamin. People want to know, what’s the difference? You know, between that they ranked number one for how long to take prenatal vitamins. They ranked number two for prenatal vitamins make you sick? So really, it’s a lot of again, questions related, related to their main products. And that’s really what’s driving, you know, people search that before they even know that Ritual exists. And then ritual has the answer. It’s like, oh, by the way, we sell prenatal vitamins. Would you like to buy it from us?
Jeremy Weisz 42:01
I love it.
Kevin Miller 42:02
That’s the art of content marketing.
Jeremy Weisz 42:05
I love it, Kevin. So I have one last question. Before I ask it. Let’s point people to check out more learn more than go to GR0.calm. That’s GR0.com. And learn more. So last question is well, I’m sorry, I lied. I have to let quick last question. So one last question is I’d love to hear software, software or tools that you love. You know, people out there always geek out on different software and tools, you probably internally or externally use a bunch. I’m curious what you recommend people look at. And maybe it’s an app on your phone productivity wise, but I’d love to hear a few of those.
Kevin Miller 42:48
In the SEO world by far, in a way my number one tool is Ahrefs, that’s the tool that I’ve been using on this call to help determine where different blog posts rank, I can look at any website in the internet and get a general directionally correct view of how much site traffic they get and where it comes from. And then, let me see, um, you know, my friend Aid Burns has a email newsletter. He’s a VC at Ashton Kutcher, his old old fund in Los Angeles and it’s called Headlines and he does a brief synopsis of all the news that transpired in that given day for those people like myself that can’t read super well. And so I love that that’s not really a tech product. But those two I think are great you know, things that I use on a daily basis to keep up to date on things and do research
Jeremy Weisz 43:41
very cool. Um, the domain was that the domain you started with? Or did you have a domain then you found it and got it tell your story behind getting the domain GR0?
Kevin Miller 43:54
Well, first of all, I really appreciate the respect level that you have for that because that’s real marketers and entrepreneurs know how hard it is to get domains like that. But you know, this one was relatively easy on the scale of you know, one to 10 there’s probably a three we were able to negotiate with the buyer I think we bought it for less than $5,000 and my partner and I, we wanted something where I love brands where you hear the name and you understand generally what they do so for example, with Lyft you probably can conceptualize that they take you places you know, can you give me a lift and with this you know, we want to grow people’s brands want to grow their traffic want to grow their revenue by any means necessary and and we thought that the you know, gr o gr o w was was not available. That was like a million bucks. gr o was not available every other manipulation we tried was not available but the zero was, you know, available to be negotiated. And so we just know that we saw it we thought hey, three letter domain was super cool. We both love that radar. See and it generally jives with our overall overarching mission statement. You know, we’re in growth. We want to grow grow companies. I love it. It’s duck.
Jeremy Weisz 45:11
Kevin. Thank you, everyone, check out GR0.com learn more. And just I want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks, everyone.
Kevin Miller 45:21
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be on this here with you. Thank you.
