Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:11
So on the front end, are you it sounds like you may be mapping out the consumer, the customer journey a little bit so that you know what’s important to them.
Tyler Lane: 14:19
Yeah, customer journey is massive within our discovery process. And then how things evolve as their website evolves as their ICP changes. So we need to be adaptable and make sure that we are Yard hearing and customize their customizing their instance as needed. I think that’s the big thing with analytics, is that we’ve evolved significantly at Session, from being just implementers to being more strategists, and on the analytics side, being more strategists and providing insights and analysis that can empower channels that we don’t necessarily manage. It’s just ultimately, how can we provide better unique value to the client?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:00
I’m curious, you know, you mentioned AI. I mean, that’s such a hot topic obviously, and no one knows. But I’m curious, like, how do you see AI changing SEO?
Tyler Lane: 15:12
Sure. Yeah. That’s a big one. I, you know, shout-out to Will Reynolds, Jeff Haas at Seer Interactive. These are individuals that we really look up to.
Session Interactive is really changing the game and being a really a steward for how AI is changing certain things. A lot of people are mentioning the acronym generative engine optimization. And, you know, ultimately things are changing.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:40
Is that what that is? Right. Do you think that’s going to catch on? I don’t know.
Tyler Lane: 15:45
I kind of hope geo generative.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:46
You know, I want to get back to another. Maybe we should create one on this call that’s like coined by Tyler, whatever that is, I don’t know. We’ll have to think about that. Yeah.
Tyler Lane: 15:58
Eli Schwartz, I think his last name is. He wrote a book called Product LED SEO. He had a great post the other day at LinkedIn that I definitely agreed to. It’s like geo SEO, whatever acronym you want to pick, it’s ultimately it’s we’re catering to the audience. We’re catering to the user.
So call it whatever you want. The foundational elements aren’t necessarily changing there. You know, we’re just trying to benefit the audience in a new platform. form. And how do we structure that accordingly?
It’s always been the user that’s not going to change. I mean it may change until we’re marketing to chatbots or marketing AI bots eventually, but really is for now is really fixating as much as possible on the user. And that’s really just been our focus always. Things change, algorithms are introduced and things are people are sweating the nuance around that. But ultimately we’re trying to stay true to what the user wants.
And that really becomes outside of just the tactics with SEO. It’s like, how do we immerse ourselves deeper in these client relationships to provide insights on the analytics level? Insights on search. Reddit is making a push, obviously. LLMs from deep sea to GPT ChatGPT to Grok to cloud.
You know, there’s so many now and it’s becoming like, you know, there’s definitely.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:26
Changing every week.
Tyler Lane: 17:27
It is impossible to keep up, but you know you need to get in the game.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:32
You know, I love how you think about that because it comes from a fundamental strategy piece, right? Because the tactics will change and it goes into what won’t change. And I’ve heard, you know, Jeff Bezos talk about that, which is and that’s kind of some of the things he was thinking about with Amazon is like, what won’t change? People will never go, I want to pay more for this. They’ll want to be less expensive.
And they’ll never say, I hope it takes longer to get to me. Right. They want it faster, as fast as possible. So I love that thought process when it comes to SEO or any business for that matter.
Tyler Lane: 18:12
Yeah. It’s just it’s leading with intentionality. It’s leading with just value. You know, there’s definitely a lot of words to say, but like trust and transparency, that’s how we’ve been able to build great relationships. And it’s not arbitrary upselling.
Its value-based strategies to help adhere to your goals. Right. And that’s really where we want to come into play. And if we’re not a fit in terms of our model or our structure around SEO, we’ll refer you out. Right.
I think that’s the big thing is we want to make sure you’re getting as much value as possible with your strategic relationship with us.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:49
I’m going to we’ll get into some other examples. I know credit unions, there’s e-commerce companies, there’s a variety of companies. But what I think about is you have an interesting trajectory in your career. And we’re talking SEO paid search. And from the agency side, I’m wondering kind of the evolution of the services.
But even before that, I just want to give a quick overview of your we could we could speed through it. Right. But you just I mean, at one point you worked at IBM. Right? And a fun fact I didn’t realize, you know, from my research that you actually played rugby in college, but walk just fast forward me through your career a little bit like IBM.
What were you doing there and what was after that?
Tyler Lane: 19:43
Yeah, let’s be clear. Like I was working for IBM, but I just graduated, and I felt I was like, oh, okay, I’m gonna get a job. And I got a job. And it was obviously, you know, at IBM in Essex, Vermont, Essex Junction, Vermont. And I literally was pushing a cart of pens and pencils to different areas across this massive plant.
And, you know, I slowly got into some graphic design and I got into, you know, offering some other skill sets around marketing. But yeah, that was an interesting place to be, but a great perspective and showed me where I don’t want to be. But it also really.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:22
Why is that? Just because the corporate world, more like.
Tyler Lane: 20:27
Yeah, it was a wafer manufacturing plant, a really interesting place at the time. That plant was responsible for like any chip that was in a cell phone was coming out of that plant. So I got to go into the wafer, the clean rooms, and got to go take a look at all these different cool things about what was happening, which was which. Again, unique perspective. It said cool.
That’s awesome. People had been there for 30, 40 years, which was really impressive, some really brilliant minds. That’s when Watson was coming about too. So but that really allowed me to say like, this is not what I want. I’m not an engineer either.
So I wanted to be more creative and, and a little bit more a little more flexible than, than that was offering there.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:14
So fast forward me through so IBM then what after that.
Tyler Lane: 21:19
IBM and then And I, I knew I needed to move to mountains, so I, I was in Vermont at the time from Maine originally, and I, my sister was living in Colorado and I she, she would invite me out periodically. I’d scrounge up what money I had and go visit her. And, you know, you go from skiing at Stowe, Vermont to Vail, Colorado. It’s a difference. And so initially I wanted to be a ski bum.
I’m like, I’m going to go out there and be a ski bum. And I just and I quickly found out Ski Bum doesn’t really pay that well. So I continued.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:52
Going to teach classes or what were you going to do?
Tyler Lane: 21:54
Yeah. You know, I mean, I was thinking about being an instructor or things like that, but I didn’t really interest me. So I decided to reach out and kind of move. I moved into my sister’s for a couple of months and found a job and started consulting a little bit on the marketing side and then and then ultimately got a job client-side doing marketing for a health and wellness company.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:18
So talk about the evolution of your services. When you first started, what did you decide to do and then how did that evolve?
Tyler Lane: 22:27
Yeah, I love that, Jeremy. I mean, I think I’ll back up even more a little bit, just like my the health and wellness company that I started out, they allowed me to get a ton of exposure to different things through PR, through SEO, paid media, traditional media, you name it. Because we were contracting with a lot of different agencies at the time. So that exposure was incredibly attractive to me. And I was like, whoa.
I immediately gravitated to analytics and SEO and other things. Fast forward after I went through a number of agencies, I realized that, you know, I’m going to test my I’m going to test this out and see if I can consult. And to be totally honest, I got let go. I got fired from three different agencies here in Denver. And it’s and it’s a story I don’t really tell very often, but it’s something I, I’m, I’m actually proud of.
I have great relationships with them still some more than others, but I learn different things from different agencies. And then ultimately the last agency location three, which I was at, let me go. And they, you know, they gave me a month or so and they were really kind to me and they’re good people over there. But then I was like, all right, I’m going to test my network out and see what happens. I’m going to test I’m going to do some consulting here and there, some analytics work, some SEO, CRO and it took, it got some traction.
And within the first year it was going really well. I got really lucky.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:48
I don’t know about lucky but you know when hard work meets opportunity or create the luck. Yeah. Yeah. You know and if it’s personal, you don’t have to share. But I’m curious, like, you’re an upstanding guy.
I know you, you’re detail-oriented, you’re smart, you’re hardworking. Why were you fired?
Tyler Lane: 24:05
Yeah. No, I think so. The first one was Intelligent Demand. I was there for about eight months. John Common runs that.
He’s a prolific individual, a really compelling guy did a lot with marketing automation. I was just, you know, didn’t have a lot of experience. I was trying to cut my teeth in certain things around SEO, and they didn’t have any SEO specific clients. Right.
So we were actively selling them when I got on board. So the need for my services really dried up. So that was a short stint there. The second one was Burns Marketing, and I helped create their digital departments, and I really enjoyed building that CRO analytics, SEO offerings. And we were building clients as well.
And they took a pivot, right? They wanted to revert back to more traditional avenues around marketing, and essentially eliminated my position. And then lastly was location three account director there. And I really, really was fixated more on the strategy side versus what they needed, which is really more project management. And I think everyone on my team and people that interact with me in my skill sets are definitely not around project management.
So yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:17
That kind of thing. Well, thanks for sure. I mean, it’s like finding the right fit of someone what they like to do, the skill set and what the company needs. And then that path is, is key. I want to talk about culture.
And we were talking before we hit record about teams and staff. And how do you keep especially staff as people who have been on your team for a long time, how do you keep them engaged and excited over the work?
Tyler Lane: 25:46
Yeah, this is a great topic. And I think, you know, as entrepreneurs and starting businesses from scratch, we’ve all made mistakes across the board. And I you know, and then it also brings up a timely topic. I was just at a local agency meetup here or conference or other agency con here in Denver, Kent Louis spoke there. Natalie Henley, who runs volume nine.
Those are two individuals that we’re talking a lot about retention and culture and what that means. And Natalie had some really good points around, you know, culture is not the happy hour or the pizza party that you’re having, right? It’s about making sure that you are establishing clear goals, and you have open communication and you’re really incentivizing and incorporate collaboration with people. And I think, you know, we’re evolving and we’ve definitely made some mistakes. And we want to make sure that we’re ensuring that people that come on board at Session have their own personal goals.
And then we also, of course, have their goals in their job description. And we want to make sure they’re actively growing at Session. And I’ll say this to my team and I’ll say this to anyone that we, we, we potentially interview is that we want to make sure you adhere to those goals and you’re actively growing. And the second you’re not growing, we like — let’s figure out why. And if it’s outside of Session you.
There’s a title that you want and we don’t offer that at Session. Well, we how can we get you there at a different company. You know, and that’s just the rapport that we take with our employees. And the same thing that we take the same stance we take with our clients too. If it’s not with us, let’s make sure you’re successful with another agency.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:32
Yeah. Shout out to Kent. Yeah, he’s a great speaker. And I think a couple people gave me this advice. Jason Swenk did too, about doing a quarterly meeting with all the staff.
And I may not do it with each of the staff, but it’s reported back to us on what do you want to keep doing? Stop doing, you know, and or do more of, you know. And so the start doing is an interesting one where we found that we didn’t know, oh, I want to do more video editing or oh, we didn’t even know you wanted to do that? So it was like about keeping people engaged and like, hey, let’s throw them a project so they can do something they want to like, really start doing and they’re passionate about, even though maybe they’re doing something totally different. So obviously if they have the, the, you know, the acumen to do that, but sometimes we just find skills that we didn’t realize they even had because that’s not what we hired them.
Tyler Lane: 28:32
Yeah. And I think the traditional is like, oh, we’ll do an annual review. And that’s not beneficial to anyone. And so it’s like twice a year. And it’s and it’s more, you know, Ken and Natalie are really advocates of more quarterly those stay interviews or you know, how often are you having those.
So we’re actively revamping a lot of that here. But I’d love to hear that you’re doing that. Arise.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:54
Talk about you know, we talked about the credit union. But I’m always curious. And it kind of shows that these the strategy and everything kind of goes across different genres and channels here, but. Skullcandy.
Tyler Lane: 29:12
Yeah. Skullcandy. I should probably be wearing the headphones right now, but what a cool, brand fun one. That resonated with me personally because I’m a snowboarder and I would wear their headphones in college and you know, I love the brand. Travis Rice was a part of that.
He’s a pro snowboarder. Tony Hawk is still a part of it. It’s really cool what they’re doing and the products. It changed a lot. It’s evolved a lot.
It’s some really, really cool stuff. So we got an opportunity to run their SEO and still do, and really being able to showcase and flex our skill set around e-commerce, which is a target vertical of ours, and helping them launch new products, helping them revolutionize, helping them just establish better credibility with their collaborations. They do a ton of collabs with, you know, influencers and athletes and things like that. So there’s so much opportunity there and there. There’s such a fun brand to work with and incredibly passionate people about the outdoor industry.
So it’s all a lot of success. They’re actually putting together our formalized case study for them now and a lot, a lot of big plans with them moving forward.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:19
First of all, tell her it’s always great chatting with you. I have one last question before I ask it. I want to point people to check out sessioninteractive.com to learn more. And this kind of parlays into this question which is some of your favorite resources right.
It could be podcasts. It could be software. It could be books. But start with your podcast and a couple favorite guests that you’ve had on. And then, you know, just rattle off some of your favorite software, podcasts or books.
Tyler Lane: 30:54
Yeah, I appreciate that, Jeremy. And again, you’re an inspiration to me in a lot of ways, not just on the podcast front, but on a lot of other things, just with your knack for being inquisitive and really developing relationships. So I really appreciate that. So our podcast is being launched here soon. It’s called Built to Convert.
And we’ve had a number of guests already. We’ve had some great exciting conversations, some really cool people from exciting industries that were really, really pumped to share a couple of guests there. Mark Minton, he’s here based in Colorado. He runs Gravity Global, their mid-market division, which is a global agency specializing in a lot of different things, from search to website generation to all sorts of other creative, etc. he’s been a mentor of mine and he gives me a lot of inspiration. He leads the AI Council over there too, so we collaborate a lot there.
Ryan Levander, he runs Red Navel Consulting. They do some pretty cool stuff on analytics and CRO. Technically, they’re a competitor. Competitor of ours. But hey, there’s enough business out there.
And he does some just great progressive stuff with analytics and CRO and just immersing himself in the data. As far as some tools that I’m really excited about right now, you know that we are bullish on AI. We’re but we’re really important that there’s an essential component around making sure humans involved using tools like Super Whisperer are really cool. We love that. I’ll be honest.
I’m not really typing as much these days. I’m using Super Whisperer to dictate.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:34
I’ve never heard of that one.
Tyler Lane: 32:35
Yeah, it’s great, it integrates with pretty much everything and it customizes everything. It links to OpenAI and other AI tools, and then you’re essentially just speaking to it, and it customizes email responses and things, things for whatever you need in terms of long-form, long-form content. It’s really helpful. We’re also, you know, we’re using a variety of AI tools that we really gravitate towards, and creating customGPTs for clients and building those out. So those have been really exciting and fun to work with.
And then we’re also really excited about the Google Sheets integration with GPT. That’s not new, but we’re really taking that a lot further with Make.com and creating automations, which has been a game changer for a lot of ways. Again, not to replace anyone just to essentially make them more efficient at what they do on a daily basis.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:27
What about podcasts? Any podcasts or audiobooks or?
Tyler Lane: 33:31
Yeah. So I really love you know, we’re you know Audible I’m constantly on there looking for, you know, business books and then you know how to guides and things like that. One of the brands that I follow closely is Sparktoro Rand Fishkin. I think you’ve interviewed Rand.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:49
Yeah, he’s been on the podcast.
Tyler Lane: 33:51
Yeah, yeah. And Amanda over there are amazing people. And just like subscribing to what they’re doing. Cyrus Shepard is on the SEO community. He’s always influential in terms of his perspective.
There’s probably another ten plus people that I really love and follow and really respect their outlooks. Will Reynolds absolutely. Again, I already mentioned him, but Seer Interactive is just intentionality. Is value. Their culture has been able to establish and his just overall mindset and vibe is awesome.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:22
So I have a couple audible credits. Any recommendations?
Tyler Lane: 34:26
Your favorites put me on the spot. Yeah, two books right away. I think Dan Martel’s book Buy Back Your Time is an essential read for any entrepreneur. The other one is Die With Zero by Bill Perkins, one of the best books I’ve read in the last couple of years.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:42
And I think I actually have the physical version because someone sent it to me. But I do not read, I only listen, so I think I have to get that on Audible.
Tyler Lane: 34:50
Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s those two in particular are awesome.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:57
Tyler, first of all, I wanted people to check out Session Interactive. I typically don’t do this on camera. Okay. But I have a let’s say a special self-proclaimed talent. Okay.
And self-proclaimed that I could spot celebrity look-alikes. Sometimes it just jumps out at me. Okay. And when I tell people to check out Tyler what he’s doing. And so you’ll show this to your wife and see if she agrees or not.
But typically I just do this off camera, but I just figured it’d be fun. Yeah. I think Tyler has a doppelganger. It may be, I don’t know, like, 85%. Okay.
So whoever’s listening could tell me I’m totally off or I’m not okay with this, but this is. This is my.
Tyler Lane: 35:56
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:57
Doppelganger for Tyler. Okay. Yeah. Colin Farrell. So I’m like, oh, you’ll meet Tyler.
He looks like Colin Farrell. So someone could disagree or agree with me. That’s fine. But really, what matters if Tyler’s wife agrees with me or not? So.
Tyler Lane: 36:13
But buddy buddies will likely joke that I’m more the penguin. He’s.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:20
I didn’t see that character, so I don’t know, but no thank you everyone. Check out Session Interactive and more episodes of the podcast and we’ll see everyone next time. Tyler, thanks so much.
Tyler Lane: 36:32
Thanks, Jeremy. Appreciate your time.
