[Top Agency Series & EO Chicago] Driving Digital Dominance With Mark Bealin of SearchLab Digital

Mark Bealin is the Founder and CEO of SearchLab, a digital marketing agency specializing in local SEO and PPC. Starting as a side project in 2017, he grew SearchLab into an award-winning agency recognized on the Inc. 5000 list three times. With a rich history in digital marketing and a former career in football coaching, Mark applies his passion for mentoring to grow Entrepreneur Organization Chicago’s accelerator program. He takes pride in coaching young entrepreneurs through EO to help them grow their businesses efficiently.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:33] Mark Bealin discusses EO Accelerator’s value for growth-stage businesses
• [5:20] How Mark leveraged his coaching passion to elevate emerging entrepreneurs
• [10:23] The pivotal lessons Mark learned that propelled SearchLab’s success
• [12:07] The strategies that drove SearchLab’s rapid growth and market recognition
• [17:01] The importance of hiring key personalities and thought leaders in the digital marketing space
• [22:51] How SearchLab niched down to become a powerhouse in local SEO for car dealerships
• [28:46] The principles behind the innovative Ignition Automotive Conference created by SearchLab
• [33:08] Mark discusses handling a complex rebranding project for an auto dealership post-acquisition
• [38:20] The massive success story of how SearchLab increased ROI for a bank through targeted paid campaigns
• [40:23] The common pitfalls to avoid in paid search campaigns and how to safeguard your marketing dollars
• [50:03] The legacy of Mark Irvine and how SearchLab maintains his influence

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered what drives a simple side project to become an award-winning agency? How does one shift from a full-time job and family responsibilities to a thriving digital marketing presence? What strategies fuel explosive growth — and can specialization make a difference?

Marketing professional Mark Bealin delves into the backstory of SearchLab, discussing the key components that propelled its success, from nurturing partnerships and leveraging speaking engagements to the pivotal moment of hiring industry experts. He emphasizes the power of finding a niche, sharing how focusing on car dealerships led to unparalleled growth and the development of their conference. Mark also opens up about his experiences in Entrepreneur Organization Chicago’s Accelerator Program, highlighting the transformative power of accountability in scaling businesses quickly.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Mark Bealin, Founder and CEO of SearchLab, about cultivating long-term relationships and mastering local SEO. Mark talks about the EO Accelerator program and its transformational value for growth-stage businesses, the strategies that drove SearchLab’s rapid growth and market recognition, and the common pitfalls to avoid in paid search campaigns.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Mark Bealin on LinkedIn
• SearchLab Digital

Special Mention(s):

• EO Chicago
• Ignition Automotive Conference
• Mark Irvine on LinkedIn

Related episode(s):

• “EO Chicago | How To Start a Beauty Brand From Scratch With Anthony Standifer, Co-Founder of mSEED Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Delegate, Elevate, Transform: Unlocking EOS® With Kevin Hundal” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Chicago Business Series] Giving to Your Best Business Relationships with Andrea Herrera of Boxperience” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Leveraging Local Expertise for Worldwide Business Growth With Cameron Heffernan” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Agency Series] How to Make Your Website Awesome and Avoid the Report of Broken Dreams With Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder of Orbit Media Studios” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “How to Craft a Compensation Plan that Attracts and Motivates the Right People For Your Company With Verne Harnish, Owner Scaling Up” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “EO became a transformative experience; it’s where I learned the importance of accountability.”
• “Focusing on a niche was the rocket fuel that propelled our agency’s growth.”
• “Conferences became our laboratory for success; it’s where we connected and flourished.”
• “Our core values are more than just words; they are commitments we honor through action.”
• “My biggest flaw was that I loved freedom, and I loved not having a boss — but there was no accountability.”

Action Steps:

1. Participate in programs that provide accountability and mentorship to accelerate business growth — it can significantly shorten the journey to success.
2. Concentrate on a specialized niche and become an expert to differentiate and grow rapidly in your market.
3. Build mutually beneficial relationships with clients by solving problems beyond your service’s scope to become indispensable.
4. Leverage the power of hiring well-respected personalities within the industry to boost your company’s authority and expertise.
5. Create ways to honor and remember influential individuals within your organization to maintain their legacy and inspire your team.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz  0:22 

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today, is no different. I have Mark Bealin of SearchLab. You can check them out at searchlabdigital.com. Mark, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since this is part of kind of the EO series, slash agency series, I had Anthony Standifer, how to start a beauty brand from scratch. That was a really good one. I had Kevin Hundal, delegate, elevate, transform, unlocking EOS. That was a good one. You’re smiling because I know you know these guys.

We had giving to your best relationships with Andrea Herrera and also leveraging local expertise for worldwide business growth with Cameron Heffernan. And I want to give a shout out to Bo Patel, both Patel’s good friend, colleague, and I know you know Bo really well, Mark. And he said, you must, must, must have mark on. I’ve thought about having on for a number of years, I just never reached out. So thank you, Bo, he runs Xtechenergy.com they’re an energy efficiency company specializing in LED lighting, EV charger installation, solar installation, and much, much more. And this episode’s brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that?

We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. So Mark, we call ourselves kind of the magic elves that run all over the place to make it happen so the host and the company can develop amazing relationships and create amazing content and do just that and show up for the interview. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on.

So if you thought about podcasting, you definitely should. Mark is a podcast we’ll talk about, and if you have questions, go to rise25.com to learn more, or email [email protected]. And I’m excited to introduce Mark Bealin. He’s the founder and CEO of SearchLab. SearchLab is a digital marketing agency focused on local SEO and PPC. He actually started it back in 2017 as a side gig, right? So picture full time job, working nights and weekends in addition to all those hours, in addition to a growing young family, and it grew. And SearchLabs won numerous awards. They’ve been on the Inc. 5000 list three times. He’s also active in a few boards, including EO Chicago, where one of his goals is to grow the accelerator program. So Mark, thanks for joining me.

Mark Bealin  3:16 

I’m really happy to be on. Thank you for that kind introduction.

Jeremy Weisz  3:20 

We’ll get to SearchLab and what you do, but EOA has a special place in your heart, and it relates to SearchLab. So talk about that on your journey.

Mark Bealin  3:33 

Yeah. So I think what I would say, is I was part of this group EO for I started in 2019 and I really loved it. One of my favorite things I ever did was I volunteered to be an EO accelerator coach. So to give people a sense of I should back up and explain what the program is. So to be a member of EO, you have to have a business that has a revenue over a million dollars. And so there’s some businesses that’s more than they have. They have between. So what we did is we created a program for businesses with 250,000 you have to have some revenue, $250,000 of revenue up to 999,999 with a fierce desire to scale like, that’s really all we’re looking for.

I get questions a lot of people like, is it for service based businesses? Is it for manufacturers, products, businesses, whatever, it really doesn’t matter, as long as you have a fierce desire to grow. The whole program is designed to help people like double and triple their business, because it’s not so if you’re just sort of in a lifestyle business, or you want to incrementally grow, it wouldn’t make sense. Like the whole program would make sense. So I started coaching. I have a background, I don’t know, like, if you even know this, but I have a background in football.

Jeremy Weisz  4:47 

I do, football for many years. Actually, I was surprised when I saw that, yeah, I think it was like, I don’t know it was 10 years, but it was a long time.

Mark Bealin  4:55 

I think in total, it was 10 years, yeah, so eight years at Ignatius, and then one year in. U of D, and then I was back last year a little bit.

Jeremy Weisz  5:04 

Yeah, you did a talk, actually, Mark, I did, I did my research. But how you talked about in the championship, how you discovered if the running back was in a certain position, the quarterback, if they were running or passing. So you did your homework when you were later coaching.

Mark Bealin  5:20 

Yeah. So we would do a million tricks like that, yeah? Like, I have stories of galore. So I have this real passion for coaching that’s like, what I love. And so this just was like putting two passions together. You have the entrepreneurs who I tell people, I can have a conversation with an entrepreneur all the time. It ruins conversations with my friends and neighbors, because I find entrepreneurs a lot more interesting than everyone else. And I’m always like, the first one who wants to leave the I used to be. I’m super extroverted, but I used to be, I’ll stay and talk to anybody for now.

I’m like, let’s get over. Let’s get home, I want to be down talking to the whatever, the friends and so anyway, I loved it, and I watched these really gutsy early stage growth, stage professionals, languish and struggle, and then they’d get a little momentum going. And I’ve had two people who graduated into EO, and so that was, like, doing backflips, I was so happy, and I just got so much energy out of this program. And I then got approached to run it. So I was, now, I’m on the board, and my job is to grow the accelerator program, and we’ve been able to triple the size of it. So it helps anytime. This is a good marketing lesson. It helps to start with a small number anytime you want to triple things.

Jeremy Weisz  6:44 

So people now we have three.

Mark Bealin  6:48 

Yeah, we had seven, and then we had 21 by the end of the year. So it was great. And I just get so much value out of working with this cohort. And the thing that you realize, at a certain point, my business is really pretty established. There’s a decent rainy day fund. There’s the sort of normal business things that you have, operating expenses out certain period of time, access to capital if we need it. These are people who are very much hanging on, like they’re doing all the jobs they’re trying to get. And I loved it. I love that phase of the business, just the grit that they get, the people have, they screw up a lot of things, and you’re pulling for them. And then to see some success stories out of it, has been super, super rewarding for me. And I love being around entrepreneurs.

And so if I can help people, for me, to make a short story long, I started my I had partners in my first agency in 2009, it was a moonlighting gig, but it was technically, I had a company as well, so, but I started in 2009 I didn’t really cross the million dollar mark till 2018 says nine years. And I just tell people, this is a lot of this is a story of suffering. Just when you order to blow a million dollars, it’s just like you have no real employees. You’re doing everything. You kind of have to no processes or anything like that. I really could have shortened that considerably had I known about a program like EOA?

Jeremy Weisz  8:22 

What would you at the time knowing what you know now, back to that first one.

Mark Bealin  8:27 

Well, here’s the biggest thing. So they call it an accountability group for a reason. I would say my biggest flaw was that I love the freedom, and I loved not having a boss and all that stuff. What I wasn’t thriving at, was I could say I was going to do something, and then didn’t do it. Nobody really caught me right, like it was no boss. And so when you get into EOA, you get into an accountability group, and you say, the coach is going to encourage you to share some challenge you have in your business. At the end of the meeting, he’s going to make you make a commitment to the group that you’re going to do in the next month. And that could be as wide as your imagination, right?

Read this book. Or, hey, you’ve been talking about your director robs for the last three meetings. You got to take an action here, either put them on an improvement plan or fire them. There was one somebody they needed to start paying themselves because they were not paying themselves. You need to put yourself on payroll by the next month to have a paycheck. All of it is really rewarding, because what would have happened to me was I would have actually felt peer pressure to do the things that I said, and instead, I could just, there were things that I knew the right thing to do, and not a month went by, not a few weeks went by. Like years would go by, where I would just, I’m a compulsive people pleaser. I would just like, I like, eight years in a business with business partners.

I had three good years. That means there. Five, not so good years, and so I knew what was going to happen, like I think they knew it was going to happen, but we liked each other, friends or whatever, and it just there was no accountability.

Jeremy Weisz  10:09 

What were some of the lessons you learned at that agency that you then brought to SearchLab Digital? Because obviously you grew very quickly at SearchLab Digital.

Mark Bealin  10:23 

Yeah, a few things. I learned a lot of really dumb lessons. I learned a lot of things not to do, like, finance 101 things. Learn lessons the hard way. Don’t actually take money in, don’t pull all of it out every month. Like, I learned a lot about just like, hard lessons about finances, making sure that you had money, stayed away, stay stashed away.

Jeremy Weisz  10:50 

What do you when, for an agency or for the EOA, what kind of reserves do you recommend someone have in like, as far as months go?

Mark Bealin  11:03 

For me, this is what I would recommend as a coach. I think, I call it core capital, I think you should have two months of expenses saved and no debt. And if you have no debt and two months of expenses, you’re in pretty good shape. And you probably should have access to a line of credit if you’re able to, and particularly that applies to agencies like mine. I think it’s more valuable advice people who are in different kinds of businesses that may not work. I see people who sell products, they need to juice their line of credit all the time, but for people who are in professional services agency, I think two months of expenses and no debt is a good rule of thumb. And I think at that point you can become more opportunistic.

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