Jeremy Weisz 11:54
You mentioned two mistakes, but I know you did a lot of things for growth. What helped move the needle from a growth standpoint with SearchLab?
Mark Bealin 12:07
So there’s multiple stories here. I think there’s like three phases at the beginning, stages we were, and this is what I did in my first agency, evolving. So we just kind of continued the same blueprint. I started doing this in 2007 and so there was this thing that was happening where people were leaving print media and finding digital media, and it was such an easy sell, right? You would go spend a third of what you’re spending with the freaking yellow pages with me, and I’ll give you a much better return. And we could really, there was it too. There were few enough people in here where you could really make that kind of a promise, like it was working very well.
Jeremy Weisz 12:52
I knew someone mark that would take the yellow pages, they’d rip out the page. Or the person with the full page direct mail the person and write the offer on there, right?
Mark Bealin 13:06
I mean, that’s a more sophisticated playbook, but we were doing the same thing, right? So we would do, though, my hack was, I would go to the person who was selling for the Yellow Pages, right? And I would say, look, you got relationships, but you don’t get a product anymore. I’ve got a product. I could use a few more relationships. So we paid a lot of commission to print Yellow Page in particular, but print media folks to convert them over. So that was really great. That worked. That worked really well. At the same time, I was doing an amazing amount of like just hustling. I would just go to networking things. I would go to every cocktail hour I could. I tried to make friends.
I tried to establish a reputation in Chicago, mainly. And with that allowed me to do, I had set up like a pretty sophisticated referral program with IT companies and web developers and design folks, and it was a lot of striking out, but then if you hit it was all upside. So it was great. And it was kind of a fun way to grow too. I liked it. You got to talk to people a lot and learn from them. So I kind of got some free advice along the way, while I was also growing my business, which was really cool and helpful. So those were kind of the first two things we did. And I kind of equate it to, if you ever see, like a rocket go off, and then they have to jettison the thing at a certain point, like, just drops off.
Well, at a certain point, we became a real company. We had employees, and we had rules and stuff like that, and core values and purpose, cause and passion for doing what we did. And these yellow page sales reps were not like exactly, ideal fits. They weren’t part of the company, right? They were not rubbing elbows with my teammate. We’re in the trenches doing all this stuff. And at a certain point, what we realized is we were just we bought this book of business, and that was it. It was over. So now we’re still paying the commission, but my people kind of own the relationship. There’s a cultural divide between the rank and file and those people. And so it really became okay, it’s time to pivot and become a real business. At that point, we got scary.
We went and really, what I started to do was attend conferences, speak at conferences, and then hire people who were really good at conferences. And so once we did that, it went crazy, like, really, as soon as we hired Greg Gifford.
Jeremy Weisz 15:36
I was gonna say Greg Gifford’s everywhere.
Mark Bealin 15:44
Yeah, as soon as we hired Greg, and in December 2019, it went crazy. And then we ran we were growing really fast, and then boom, Covid hits. There were no conferences. So that stuck. But hired Greg, hired Mark, who was a PBC Heroes. We hired Mark in 2020. In 2019 he was number one on PBC Heroes list of the most influential people in PBC and Microsoft’s North American Personality of the Year. So there’s one more you could win. He said he was one shy of the Triple Crown, or something like that. But he died in May, but he had been on the PBC hero list every year since 2015 so he was a rock star, too. So we, I just, like, got really lucky with two hires, basically, and then the speaking started to take care of itself. And we’ve grown like, eight times since the Iran Greg, pretty much.
Jeremy Weisz 16:38
Yeah, I’m so sorry to hear about Mark, and we will touch on that. But talk about recruiting for a second. Because you said, oh, we got lucky, but I just doubting that statement. What did you do to recruit over what both dynamic, really smart individuals over to SearchLab?
Mark Bealin 17:01
It’s funny, there’s — this will be a plug for you at some point. So Greg truly was a struggle block. Greg’s in one category, and then tell you why it’s a plug for you and for the other two. In the middle of the night, I had my third baby. So it’s just one of those times. Was my turn to get up and feed the crying child. So I was doing that, and I was scrolling through Twitter, and Brittany Muller, who’s very well-known SEO, said, if anybody’s looking for a local SEO Greg Gifford’s on the market, here’s his email address. And I was the right amount drowsy and the right amount courageous, and I just said, hey, we do local SEO. You want to talk. And I knew how good he was and everything like that.
So we talked, and it was sort of a ho hum conversation. And then the only thing that was interesting was I was speaking at a conference called state of search, and he was keynoting that same conference. So I said, when I’m in town, will you get lunch with me? And so we, we got a burger, and legitimately, I don’t know what his exact start date is, but it felt like, from that point on, we’ve just been working together ever since, it was, like, it just clicked, like, immediately where, what he was really excited about, I was really excited about. He has this, like, attention to detail and anal retentiveness, where I’m really like, whatever the opposite of attention to detail is, and laid backness that gelled well, so it just clicks really, really fast. Mark was interesting. And my director of SEO now it was interesting. Both of them I met on my podcast. So you had them on, correct? Yeah, so I had them on my podcast, so it was interesting. I had Mark on and the day he got fired. So word stream is this huge company, and PBC, they got acquired by Gannett. It was a horrible acquisition.
Then they run into COVID, did a big layoff, and so I got, like, an hour before I was supposed to talk to Mark. And this is like one where I can tell you did some you did a lot of research, whatever. I had done a ton of research on Mark, because it was a big interview. He just come off this huge year. I loved how he blog, too. I thought he was really smart, and he had access to huge data sets, so he had interesting case studies. So about an hour before, Greg messaged me and said, heads up, Mark got laid off, and he may not show. So I was like, All right, well, that’s fine. And it was like five minutes past the time, and I was like, I guess. And he came on and I thought he was hilariously funny, and it was the same kind of thing. We just gel.
And so I’ve had two leaders on my team who I met on my podcast, which is fine, and it worked out well. So I mean, you think about podcasts for a number of reasons. Yeah. Name of the game for me is get talented people.
Jeremy Weisz 19:59
We have a number people, yeah, use it for, I mean, obviously building amazing relationships, but that can span with partnerships, clients and hiring totally and additional professional development, but, yeah. I mean, I kind of joke around, but I’m not really joking, Mark, when I say, like, every great relationship for me tracks back to a podcast episode. And except for my wife, I did not meet her on a podcast. But like John, my business partner, through a podcast. You know some of my mentors through a podcast, indirectly or directly, so I’m with you. I love it. You talked about, there’s a couple of things you said, I want to unpack. You talked about a referral program that worked really well. I’m curious now, you still have a referral program in place, and how do you run it?
Mark Bealin 20:52
We do. It’s less of an emphasis now. And so my opinion, especially in the early stages, was always, I don’t care if I make any money from sending you business. And I don’t care, so I was always comfortable with the other person leading the dance, right? If they wanted 10% kickback, or if they wanted some edible arrangement. I don’t care. Like, I was covered with them leading the dance what they wanted. And for me, I was totally fine with, if you sent me business, I was gonna make my license mission to send you something back, right? Like anything. It was an opportunity. So we diligently kept track of it, just like your we had a you have, like, a HubSpot or CRM for prospective new sales, we would have a visual where you could see my referral partners and if they were helping me out, it was like, my life’s mission to make sure that I got something back for them and so it was really this virtuous cycle that worked really well. Ultimately, what we found was just like, there was a lot of work in terms of getting the right kinds of partners right. So we would have people who, you have a lot of conversations without a lot of actually it happening. And we fell in love with conferences in the rest of history like it was kind of it became, focus is really important. And our focus went to conferences and trade shows.
Jeremy Weisz 22:20
Relating to the conference, you have your own conference. And the other thing I want to talk about was niche. Right in the beginning, you’re networking. You’re probably talking to everyone. Talk about how you came to your niche. We haven’t talked about your niche yet, but this relates to your conference. People can check out the conference. It’s ignitionautomotiveconference.com. How did you eventually come to your niche of car dealerships?
Mark Bealin 22:51
We’re almost like a niche within a niche, right? So it’s really, really specific. So there’s something called Local SEO, which is different than traditional SEO. Basically, we look at this algorithm that anytime you have local intent in your search, Google uses this local algorithm, boring, boring, boring. Anyway, we became really nerded out on that algorithm, and so we found that you said it so well the backup. We would do web development for clients. We did social media marketing for clients. We would do design work for clients. I had a client. He’s still my client, so I can tell this story. But he said, you know, Mark, if I asked you to retell my roof, we did everything, right? So, I would say yes, and then figure out how to do it, afterwards.
Jeremy Weisz 23:40
We have a telling company, honey.
Mark Bealin 23:42
Yeah, exactly no problem. Like, we can do it, yes. And then we figured out how to do it later. And it was some des like, I’ll tell you, that’s all well and good with, like, certain things, but like, one time we knocked out a client’s emails, right? Because I didn’t really know how to do it. I kind of thought I knew how to do it and I could figure it out, this is not something to play with. So there were some bad stories, too. What we figured out, eventually, I started to work with coaches, and coaches do a really good job of, like, kind of getting you, hey, let’s figure out who your most profitable clients, and kind of you’re, you can miss a forest from the trees sometimes. So you’re having this, this really smart person who gave me some perspective, and we just kind of looked at he said, what are our favorite clients? Oh, they’re all in local SEO. What are our most profitable clients?
Oh, they’re all in local SEO. I think we should just be a local SEO and then it gives you an expertise, right? You’re not everything, everybody. You’re an expert in something. And so you can now make case studies about your local SEO work. You can speak at conferences about your local SEO work. You’re more interesting as a personal brand because you have this niche expertise. So we started to do that. That got me starting to speak at conferences. And then I met Greg, the real way, with automotive Greg had already been in. It is a fact of the matter. And so once Greg got on board, we are still a totally, you know, if you’re a local SEO type, client, doctor, lawyer, trades people, we’d love to work with you, but it just exploded. I mean, it went crazy with cardio and he could tell you some things, like he was kind of unshackled from things that are, this is really inside baseball stuff. But like, there’s something called, like, you’re in the OEM programs where he was before we are not and so we can really do it whatever we want.
Jeremy Weisz 25:35
Those are some of, like, the manufacturing companies.
Mark Bealin 25:38
Yeah. So if you’re in their programs, there’s certain rules you have to follow. You kind of have to take the client. You can’t be like, I already have your competitor. I can’t work with you. And so as soon as he got in there, automotive took off. And then we have just really talented salespeople who’ve been in there, it just starts to take on a life of its own. What I would say is the focus allowed us to go very fast, and it’s very valuable all it is for your clients, they don’t want it’s annoying to be like, there’s a lingo to everything. So when they say, how’s my fix ops doing? You got to know what they’re talking about. Or they say, like, you know, is a buy here, pay here store.
I got to know what they’re talking about. And there’s a whole, you got to know the models. You got to know what they’re selling. You got to get used to, is this going to sell a bunch of trucks? Is this going to sell a bunch of sedans, whatever it is, and what differentiates the brands. And so we have this expertise. It’s really valuable. You mentioned before and touching this with Greg’s coming out with a study. We’re partners with a company called places scout. I think it’s gonna be the largest local SEO study of its kind ever. It’s gonna have like, 19,000 dealerships involved, because places scout can do that kind of data set at work. And so we’ll be able to tell car dealers, here’s what the best websites that are all ranking in the top 10 are doing. Are you doing that? And so, it takes on a life of its own, Jeremy’s like, you’re, one minute, you’re like, oh so happy. We got some cardio clients.
The next, now you’re an expert. If you, if you do it. The other thing that we did that was really big, it was a really big deal, is we won a US search award for a car dealer. So in 2021 I think we won for Tom kettle, Kia and Best Local SEO campaign. There’s a bunch of awards that you can just like, pay for the one that you want in my business as us search awards. So it was a big deal when we got that.
Jeremy Weisz 27:44
It reminds me of a story Mark I had Dan Zawaki, the lobster lobster, and he wanted one of these dealerships as a client, and he walked away with a lexus I think it was the Lexus, because he’s like, I’ll send these to all of your clients, or whatever, he said, all of your best clients, and you just give me the brand new Lexus. So I think he did a deal there that was interesting. But I love what you said about thinking through the most profitable clients. And not only did you niche in like a service with local SEO, but niching in an industry with the car dealerships, what made you decide to start your own conference? I know that’s been a great channel and avenue from authority expertise, and you and Greg have spoken at a lot of conferences, so it’s a big undertaking. Why start Ignition Automotive Conference?
Mark Bealin 28:46
Yeah. So you’ve mentioned some US folks, so I know Dan, Kevin Handul is another one. So part of doing your EOS work is you, you come with your purpose, cause or passion. And so our purpose, cause and passion, is to cultivate long term mutually beneficial relationships. So it’s not to do well for car dealerships. It’s not to do well with but we want to cultivate long term mutually beneficial relationships that. So that’s how we view things for our clients, our employees, our vendors, everything else. And so when you think about your purpose, cause and passion, how can you use that? How do you actually use that as a tactic in your business? You say, is this viable?
Like, could I go be a debt collector with cultivate long term, mutually beneficial relationships? I don’t think so, but I could start a conference, because what that is these are all our friends. Like the people who are speaking here are buddies of ours. We vet them. We know them. They’re definitely friends with Greg. The attendees are going to be mostly my clients and prospective clients, and we’re either friends with them or hoping to become friends with them, and so if I look at it through a purpose, cause and passion lens, this isn’t such a dramatic shift. It would be to go, hey, you’re a digital marketer now you’re going to be an event coordinator. That’s pretty wild. But what we care about most is long term mutually beneficial relationships.
We can serve people with this conference the same way we can with an agency that purpose calls and passion. And so we’ve been to a bunch, one of the things that happens is, you can see we put a bunch of things we hated conferences.
Jeremy Weisz 30:35
So if you’re listening to the audio only. We’re looking at the Ignition Automotive Conference, and you can see no vendors or booths, our speakers were invited who didn’t pay us to speak, and no pointless hype.
Mark Bealin 30:49
Yeah, so we really don’t want it to be pushy thing. We don’t want it to be where anybody has to pay to get on the stage, which is fairly common, especially in automotive and we don’t want to be super promotional. Come here and actually, like, learn something about what we do. And so it’s a really push for education. And what I think was really great, was we went to all these shows. We go, “isn’t it tacky? How they have, you have to, like, the people run after you with a business card. Isn’t it tacky how this, this presenter is always, isn’t it lame how you have to pay to be at this show, or whatever?” And so he said, the working title for this when we were trying to come up with a name, was the unconference like it was the opposite of what everything else was. But that’s a bridge too far. It’s still, we still love conferences. So we want to keep what we love, but it’s about doing everything different than the ones we really dislike.
Jeremy Weisz 31:48
Who’s a fit to come to this conference?
Mark Bealin 31:51
So I think it is designed for automobile dealer, you know, marketing managers, general managers and dealer principals, but we have a huge intention of just digital marketers who want to come and learn. So there’s a group in Dallas called DFW SEM, which is a very vibrant network, so we usually will get a big contingent out of that. So if you’re an up and coming Digital Marketer and you want a really cheap, inexpensive conference that’s just full of information. It’s not about trying to make a ton of money or anything like that. This is a really good place to start, and you’ll have exposure, probably, to the speakers and to the guests that you wouldn’t have at a larger event.
Jeremy Weisz 32:35
So I encourage whenever you’re listening to this, there’ll probably will be a next conference so you can check out ignitionautomotiveconference.com I want people to get a sense Mark of what you do as a company. And I know you do a lot of things, but there’s specifically you did a rebrand for an auto dealership which was acquired, which seems like a pretty complex project. And again, if you’re listening the audio, I’m gonna as Mark as you talk. I wanna kind of poke around SearchLab Digital here.
Mark Bealin 33:08
Yeah. So we have, they’ve been a long term client of ours. They have three stores in Northeast Ohio. Put it that way. And so we great results for them. Things were going swimmingly. And then I got a call from the dealer principal. He said, listen, keep this quiet, but we’re going to sell. We’re about to sell, we’re about to have somebody else. I want you to be aware of it and start laying the groundwork before it happens, because I know an SEO that can be helped, and it is. It’s brutal. Like, when you hear that it’s and you have a lot of success, you’re like, oh, man.
Jeremy Weisz 33:48
Is it kind of like starting from scratch?
Mark Bealin 33:51
It’s not like starting from scratch, but typically we’re like, you expect best case scenario, you’re going to lose 10% of your traffic, and that’s best. That’s if we do well, if we screw up, and there’s a decent chance you could screw up, then you could lose more than that, or you could see, if you leave this to just your web developers, like they, one of the things we really did for them was they, they’re with a web developer that we recommend. And I like these guys a lot, but they’re just not SEOs, and they were going to wipe out, tons of content that we want to transfer it over, or they’re going to charge them an arm and a leg. And we said, like, no, it’s just a, we understand the expertise of it, so save them some money as well.
And, yeah, that was the beginning of 2023, and rather than, and it was starting from a pretty high point, rather than that, going backwards. I just check with my team to make sure, before I say this with that the traffic to that website is up 86% since the conversion. So instead of going down even 10% we’ve been able to manage it and really lift their organic traffic, their leads and everything else. And we have, more importantly, I think, numbers are numbers, but we have expanded our relationship with that dealership group, so we have more of their stores. We have more service offerings for them, and they’re spending more money with us, which is, when I talk about mutually beneficial long term relationships, that’s it, right? Like we want to make more money, but we want to do it because we’ve done good job for your clients.
Jeremy Weisz 35:22
Talk about the transition for a second and how you handle that transition with the new owner. Because I have seen the opposite happen, where a company gets acquired and they bring in all their people and then fire whoever agencies they’re working with. So talk about managing that relationship, the new relationship with acquisition.
Mark Bealin 35:45
Yeah, we have the same situation, right? So, like anybody else, when we hear our point of contact is leaving, that’s like, danger Will Robinson, like, oh, red flags go up. A bunch of people get involved, and everything like that. I think it’s really hard if you only have a relationship with one person, the point of contact, that point of contact leaves, you’re in a lot of trouble. You’re hoping. Hope is not a good strategy. What can be really helpful is, if you have worked your way up the food chain, you have three, four people in the organization, the odds of all of them leaving are slim. And if you can make all three or four of them say the same thing, SearchLab is awesome, your chances are much better.
That doesn’t mean it’s always going to happen, but I think when one of the things I challenge my team to do a lot is move up the food chain. So if we get a marketing manager, sometimes a digital marketing manager in a dealership, that’s great. We need to make sure that they’re extremely happy and treat them like this is the Ritz Carlton, right? But starts to try and get to know the general manager. Try to get to know the dealer principal, see if you can get solve problems beyond just our little silo. And even if it doesn’t make me money, if it solves a problem for the dealership, we’re stickier. And so I think that has been one piece of advice I would give you.
The other thing is to have this sort of mechanisms where you go, this is a problem, we better not just leave it to Stephanie Patrick on that kind of they’re great, but they need some help right now, because this just got really, really tricky. And there’s a reason I have a job and I need to be involved in these kinds of things. And so it’s about running to that problem and recognizing that it is a challenge. So when we see that happen, it’s like, put your boots and hard hat on. Let’s get to work, because this could be trouble.
Jeremy Weisz 37:57
Now, I know you help a lot of dealerships. There was a case where you helped a bank in the Northeast. And I know there’s companies listening that, I may not be a dealership, but I know a lot of these principles and things that you did to help grow, whether it’s the dealership of the bank, transcend other businesses. So what were some of the things you did with the bank?
Mark Bealin 38:20
Yeah. So there was, this was a huge one. I think we’re gonna win the US search, where I shouldn’t be so presumptuous, we don’t win, I’m gonna be mad though. In total for 2020, 13. What’s cool about this account is there was, it was only online, and so the only way you can make a deposit was online. So we ran paid search and paid social ads for it. And I’m trying to remember how much they spent. Basically, it was like a, the row went from $27 to $38. We tracked $89 million of deposits into this account from a bank, from my agency, just doing directly from our work. So not just, hey, you got a qualified lead, or you got a contact form, straight money, 89 million bucks and maybe $100,000 of ads better. So maybe a couple $100,000 of ad spend.
Jeremy Weisz 39:20
Loving you.
Mark Bealin 39:20
Yeah, it’s pretty cool. So now you have a new niche banks. I know, so let’s see how it goes. So we loved, it’s so fun. Been doing this since 2007 when you have a story like that, and then we’re on a zoom, kind of like I am now, and there’s like, 10 people from the bank, I don’t even, can’t remember everybody’s name, and I’m like, this is a huge deal. And I’m just there, like a chief High Five officer, and somebody else is presenting this data, and I’m just going, this doesn’t get old. Like, it’s really fun when you have those moments where you’re just really proud of your team, the accomplishments of what we’ve done.
Jeremy Weisz 40:04
I love that. What were some of the, are there any, I don’t know, tactical things that you can share for people out there who are looking to it sounds like there’s a lot of paid related stuff with it. I don’t know if you see some big mistakes on what people do when they’re running paid traffic.
Mark Bealin 40:23
Oh, yeah, yeah. Today I don’t like what I’m saying. This is going to make it sound like I’m being mean to Google. Who is my, I have a business because of this company, but today, what they’re doing is, why you would hire somebody like me a lot is to make sure that Google doesn’t just spend all your money. And so what we see ourselves as being good stewards of people’s marketing dollars. And if you don’t have somebody who’s watching out for this stuff, Google will spend your money, and they will spend your money on nonsense keywords that are never going to give you business, and they’ll do it. And if you have a problem, they won’t be very helpful.
There’s not a customer service who’s going to and so one of the things I think, in 2024 as we’re filming this, one of our most important jobs is to make sure that we’re not sending good money after bad. And it’s a strange thing to be so focused on, but I really feel like I’m consumer advocate for my clients, I do not show their ad and charge them 20 bucks for somebody’s looking for a job, at a car dealership, or somebody who’s looking for, what was the car in this movie? I don’t need that. I want to get customers. And so I would say, Google left to their own devices will A, though, the biggest thing they do is if you’re searching for your brand. So if you had ads for Rise25 you know you’re probably going to get that click whether you pay for it or not.
So maybe you don’t pay for it, or maybe pay a little bit for it, but not a lot. They will charge you every time, if they can, they’ll charge you for keywords. So a lot of it is about going through is there used to be these match types that were really, they really meant something if I say this exact term, I mean, don’t deviate this exact term. Now it’s that term or close variant. And so they’ve given themselves license to spend your money. And that’s what I really would say, is psychologically, I think of it as, how do we protect our clients money and just be good stewards of that money as best we can? Don’t let Google run wild with their budget.
Jeremy Weisz 40:24
Yeah, so maybe not having the correct targeting or the correct keyword, real specific keywords, and people are making mistakes. Yeah, go ahead.
Mark Bealin 43:03
Making negatives. So what will happen? Legitimately, people will have a search term. They’ll say, hey, I want auto mechanic like so there’s auto mechanics in every single one of these things. Auto mechanic is the search term. But if somebody looks for auto mechanic school, we don’t want our ad showing so you need to make that a negative, or you need to do something to modify the keyword so it’s not showing up, because people will click on every time they click on it. It costs you money, and you’re not an auto mechanic school, you’re a cardio so making sure that you’re looking through for negatives is really important as well.
Jeremy Weisz 43:42
I want to talk, Mark, about mentors, and some of your mentors throughout the years that have been influential, because obviously we talked about EOA, Entrepreneurs’ Organization Accelerator Program, it’s a great place to get mentorship, to get to the next level. And it’s accountability and mentorship. It’s based off of they want to check out Vern Harris’s book, Scaling Up. I actually did an episode with Vern Harnish. That’s a good episode to check out, too. But the book Scaling Up, and then obviously being a part of entrepreneur organization, mentorship is important to you, who are some of the mentors for you that have been influential?
Mark Bealin 44:25
Yeah, I mean, in my first company, I got pretty lucky. And so local launch was this company that got acquired by dexamethaelpages, and our CEO was a guy named Justin Sanger in the director of searches, a guy my name Brad Gettys. So Brad Gettys is still among the most famous people on PBC. So I got really good training in how to do this very quickly, from Brad and his disciples at local launch. And so I knew how to do this well early Justin was one of the great, like you get in a room, he’d have everybody in the company, and he’d give a speech about what we were doing, he just would present a vision for what we were doing that would get you really excited. I mean, you run to your desk and start doing things.
So I really began to learn from Justin the power of a leader telling everybody where we’re going. And so that was really helpful. I developed in my career as a guy named Andy Crestodina, who owns Orbit Media, who’s yeah and so, Andy’s just so generous to me, and not just to me, to everybody else. My favorite story about Andy, guy named Chris Madden was quoting Andy, so this is like a third, fourth person, or something like that. But he said, going around Orbit Media, he’d be like, Yeah, everybody here is just so nice, like, everyone’s so nice. And Andy stopped and said, yeah, well, it’s good business, and it’s true. People like to they don’t like to be around jerks, and so it’s good business. It was like, I was like, yeah, that is true. It’s not just like, you don’t have to be a tyrant.
It’s good business to be kind to people and to ask them how they’re doing, and to actually give a crap about your employees. So I really learned a lot from Andy, but that was one of the main things, was like, you don’t have to be, the picture of that CEO pounding their table in a movie or something like that. It was never going to be me. And so it gave me a little bit of a confidence that this is a company really to admire. And then I really would say two people, Taylor Small and George Lawton, own a company called Digital Third Coast when I first started SearchLab. So I worked with them at Local Launch million years ago. And when I started SearchLab, I asked them to have, you know, drinks and dinner and stuff like that. And we went out and hit it off.
And they were just like, dying to help me, when really, we’re friendly competitors still to this day, but I owe them a lot because they were like, first people to say, hey, you should join EO. And I didn’t even know what it was. And really, after it got explained to me, I definitely didn’t know when I was signing up for I could tell. And it was just kind of like, you need friends. Sometimes you just go, like, just, trust me, just do it. And you’re gonna, you’re gonna love it. You’re gonna take, yeah, take to like a duck to water, just go do it. And I did it, and I’ve, like, drank the Kool Aid hard, and I loved every bit of it. But I owe those guys a lot for number one, you can have competitors that you don’t have to be like, at each other’s throat all the time. And really, it’s been a great relationship.
I mean, we till this day, I don’t think we’ve ever had an argument or a bad word for each other. It’s all helpful. It’s all supportive. When they do well, I’m really happy for them. And we don’t compete like they’re not really an autonomous, we only compete on, like, a little bit of stuff now. But they didn’t have to do that. Yeah, it could have been like, hell with you. You’re coming from my market share, or whatever, like they were really cool. And it made it really big. Again, back to me too.
Jeremy Weisz 48:07
What I have found with quote, unquote, competitors is, when I’ve dug deeper, we’re actually not competitors. Like, there’s certain services that we do different or there’s certain niches that we really focus in on. It sounds like the same. It’s like, okay, you’re going off and doing cart more car dealerships, they’re maybe going off and doing something else. So at first glance, I found it seems like a competitor, but maybe not as much when we’ve dug below the surface.
Mark Bealin 48:35
That’s so true. Yeah. So I love those guys. It’s been really fun. Like, I feel badly for people who are in agency life post Covid, because there was this period of time it was very social, right? Like you would go to work, and then my office, we’ve talked about my office in Ravenswood. To the north of me was dovetail brewery. To the south of me was Big Al brewery. And if you walked into one of those after work hours, you were going to run into somebody who owned an agency, and it was just an awesome time to be like. So there were social things that would go on.
And, yeah, I loved that period of time, because we just had so much. I feel like I learned how to be kind of a T shaped marketer in that year, where I knew a lot about SEO, but then I learned a little bit about content marketing, a little bit about web development, a little bit about copywriting, a little bit about digital PR and all this other stuff. So it was really a fun time to be coming up. Now you have to be much more intentional about making those relationships. It just happened organically back in the day.
Jeremy Weisz 49:42
So Mark, I have a last, I’m not gonna say last question, but last series of questions. And I really want to talk about you, talk about purpose, cause, passion, and about Mark Irvine in and honoring his legacy. See and talk about Mark for a second.
Mark Bealin 50:03
Yeah. So Mark, he his professional accolades are unbelievable. So he’s 35 when he died, he turned 35 March, 2024 and so. And most of the stuff happened before his 30th birthday was just crazy. And he was just a rock star of a personality, and he was hilariously funny. So we had so much fun working together. We worked really long hours and laughed a lot. He had his really goofball relationship with our VP of sales, Don Ramsey, and they would just make fun of each other all time. It was really funny, and we had a great time. In his time as our director of PBC or vice president search, our PBC division grew 610% so he was a absolutely sensational, like, made my life a lot better. So when he died, it was devastating.
And I still have a hard time talking about it, but we talked to the team, and one of the things I’ve really focused on is, how do I give him a legacy moving forward? So there’s a few things we’re doing so far, the first is Mark started a program at our company for a core values award winner. So each quarter, a member of the team would be it’s an employee led effort. So you have to be nominated by another teammate, somebody who really exemplified the core values of the company would win an award and be acknowledged on our state of the company address. And so Mark led that whole effort, selected the winners, read through all the submissions, and it was everyone’s favorite part of the state of the company address every time.
And just really good stuff for morale in the company. So what we decided to do is each person who wins that core values award will be able to go to Boston, where Mark is from, and we’ll go and we’ll have kind of a Mark Urban day. Mark was a famously like, he was a night owl. So he will start the day at like, 10am it won’t be early. We like Dunkin Donuts, coffee. We’ll do some service work. Mark was very interested in animals, and in particular penguins, so we’ll do some service work related around that. We’ll have lunch at Chili’s because he loved terrible food.
Jeremy Weisz 52:32
I don’t mind Chili’s.
Mark Bealin 52:36
A huge fan. And then at night, we’ll get together with his hopefully they’ll agree to this, but we would like to get together with his late husband, or his husband and his mom, and just tell stories about Mark. And so if you’re a new employee, to SearchLab, part of your onboarding is to learn about this honor. And of the four people who’ve won that core values award, each one will be nominated, will be eligible to win the Irvine Award, which will be the highest honor in our company. So that will become a way to really stand out at SearchLab. You’re an urban award winner that really matters. Like we want that to be something you take with you, and we don’t have any award like that right now. So this would be new, and it’d be a way to keep them going.
The other thing that we did is, I’m such a big fan of EO, but Mark helped, not just me, but many entrepreneurs really live our dreams. So when there was an opportunity to name a conference room, like, what you could do is, like, donate to money, and you could get the name of a conference room. So I said, I’ll pay that if you name it mark, urban conference room, and where someone’s taking that. Insignia that says, you know, for a man who helped entrepreneurs live out their dreams, because he really did that for me and for other people as well. So, we’re going to continue to do things for him. It was really important, at his celebration of life, I talked to his mom, and his mom was worried that, no one remember him like he was he was gone. So it’s, like, really important in my life that I make sure that he is remembered. So he did. He did of lot for me, and we miss him a lot.
Jeremy Weisz 54:15
Mark, I want to be the first. Thanks for sharing that. I know it’s difficult, and it’s pretty fresh, actually, but thank you for sharing that, and hopefully this piece helps him live on a little bit longer too. And that’s what I love about this, is it helps leave a legacy beyond ourselves. So I just want to thank you for sharing your story. SearchLab, everyone can check out Searchlabdigital.com to learn more and Mark, thanks for joining me.
Mark Bealin 54:43
Thank you, Jeremy, this was great. I really enjoyed it.
Jeremy Weisz 54:46
Thanks everyone.
