Chris Dreyer - SEO Strategist | How Extreme Specialization Created an 8-Figure Growth Machine

I had a business like I had six doors for renting I had the affiliate stuff and that's really when it started was that first year Teach it honestly part of it was I was miserable Chris dryers the founder and CEO of rankings.io and elite SEO Agency specializing in personal injury law firms under his leadership rankings.io has consistently ranked on the Inker 5000 list for five years I went to college and you I wanted to be an entrepreneur and owned a business ended up with a history education degree my first year I was a detention room teacher I took this job because it was on the same track as teachers it's like what am I doing? I'm gonna do this for 20 years absolutely not and I was trying to find a way out I moved to Tampa and at the time since I was managing the real estate wasn't even aware of like property managers I ended up selling them I was very fortunate it was like the real estate crisis starting his journey from a high school detention supervisor to building a top SEO agency Chris has mastered the art of niching down as a podcast host real estate investor an author of niching up his insights on specialization are sought after by top entrepreneurs this episode is about focus mastery and building dominance through specialization to go to a million to two you 100% gains but when you start hitting 15 20 million you have to think about things differently you have the idea don't think about planning to make it perfect but do it then improve don't accept defeat learn from your failures welcome to success story i'm your host scott clary the success story podcast is part of the have spot podcast network but has bought doesn't just have great podcast if you're an entrepreneur if you're a builder they've got your back now why is that important because if you're building anything you know that marketing in 2025 is absolutely wild now why is that important because you know if you're an entrepreneur if you're building anything marketing in 2025 is wild savvy customer spot fake messaging instantly anything AI generated they sniff it out privacy changes make ad targeting a nightmare and everyone needs more content now than ever and that's why you have to have hub spots new marketing trends report it doesn't just show you what's changing it shows you exactly how to deal with it everything's backed by research but focused on marketing plays that you can use for your business tomorrow if you're ready to turn marketing hurdles into results for your business go to have spot calm slash marketing to download it for free Chris first of all thank you for coming on i'm excited this is going to be fun um so you built rankings dot IO into a powerhouse agency uh and when i say powerhouse you made the ink five thousand list five years running super impressive that's not easy to do for anybody who doesn't realize how much of an accomplishment that is but let's just open it up with the topic that you love to speak about niching and i would i was about to say niching down i was about to because that's what everybody says uh but you speak about niching up and this has sort of been your business mantra this has been what's created so much success for you and and what you do now and past things so what what is so important about niching up not down i think the biggest the biggest thing first of all thank you for having me on the show this is super exciting happy to chat the niching it niching niching it's another example or reframing focus anything that i've done in my life where there was sports uh the collectible card game stuff and we go down that rabble hole poker business has been focused niching my focus in legal is really put me on a path of success you know it's so funny you i guess that's like the elephant in the room we have to address so Canadians say niche and Americans say niche and i and their styles when i go back and forth between the two but regardless it is it is the same concept regardless of however you pronounce it um so i mean when you when you wrote you literally wrote the book on niching up and i think that are niching up excuse me i'm gonna i'm gonna speak i'm gonna speak we're good we're getting either one i'll roll with it when you wrote the book niching up um first describe what niching up means versus niching down which i think is a term that people have always used to try and sort of pinpoint a market they're going to go after or a customer subset that they're going to they want to niche down into a hyper specific group of people they want to you know sell to market to whatever what does niching up mean i think that the it's just reframing it like an opportunity more of a half glass full versus you know an optimistic view more as a pessimistic view and a lot of times when we focus and and we want to move upstream it takes time to build that relationship equity you know in legal the Morgan and Morgan's the sweet James these types of firms like if i was talking to multiple industries i would never ladder up in a quick enough pace to talk to these individuals so it's basically an abundance mindset for focus as opposed to thinking that you're gonna lose something everyone thinks about losing market opportunity and shrinking tan but there's a lot of benefits to come from niching and i think like if you look at sort of what you've built now talk to me about actually i don't even want to know about what you're doing right now i want to know the first time that niching up actually served you and then we'll talk about what is done for for rankings.io but when did this concept of i need to be hyper specific and that's where the opportunity is when did that idea is sort of first work out i think the roots it's from my dad from sports it's got to start there and i play you know it's typical i played all sports i was good at baseball i was good at all these other sports but i was really good at basketball and decided to take all the additional time to focus on basketball so when people are at baseball practice like i'm in the gym working on basketball because i saw that you know i heard that with Nadal and tennis like he was an all sports player and but really i think from there it was and maybe it's just my genetics my chemistry and liking the focus and the organization the ocb component kind of lends itself to that even you know the collectible card game stuff i was a world-ranked player and in the game that i played they had multiple what's called factions that you could be well only played one or two that was it i always just focused on those and i knew the intricacies of playing those really effectively that's so interesting so even from like a young age like with cards with with basketball yeah yeah i think it's in my DNA i find myself now that i'm a father my kids three years old and he's like really into monster jams and will like play monster jams and on the floor he's like organizing the cars into the different like these are all the fish these are all the blue ones these are all the green ones and it's like is this like a nature or nurture like him when i'm doing this am i organizing cars and he's watching me or is he just getting this naturally i don't know but that's that's part of it yeah were you um uh i think that forget i forget about niching for a second just in terms of entrepreneurial were you always entrepreneurial like what what was your um uh your your your childhood uh you're upbringing where your parents entrepreneurial like talk to me just to give a little bit of an origin story where you came from because i've listened to a lot of podcasts that you've been on and and you and you are like a wealth of business knowledge but even before we press record there's a lot of interesting stories and sort of past lives that have sort of shaped you to who you are today so walk me through where you came from yes so i grew up in a super small town school district and in fact you know graduating my high school class i had 28 people in it and but you know even before that my dad's a male carrier um he was a civil engineer but this it was always on the road and traveling and decided to settle down and become a male carrier my mom was a school cook and there were points in our life or in my life and upbringing where we didn't have a ton of money like we didn't even have water like we had to go into town and had one of those big tanks in the back of the truck for water you know well water scenario and my parents worked so hard uh my uncle was a very successful CEO entrepreneur uh exits very wealthy we would have vacations for him so i kind of saw what was possible and so that was always on the top of my mind that there was there was there was this like you could do it like it was possible so that that's really where stem from is at the time i didn't know like we were we were what i would call middle class in the in the terminology it wouldn't say that we were like quote unquote poor even with the water thing it was just based upon where we lived um but it created like some some principles some habits of like work ethic and i would help my mom clean houses on the weekends at uh she worked at a law office we clean clean the house um she used to do these like you know on sundays like the way you call those where you go into town and they have all the groceries and stuff the like the like the like the flea market yeah yeah yeah like little market she would hustle yeah and farmers market stuff and so we were always doing something like that to to make extra money and also on the side i saw like my uncle's success i would talk to him i was envious of that not in like a negative way i love my uncle i'm so curious have you ever thought about i always think about like nature versus nurture you just mentioned that and is entrepreneurship is it something you're born with is something you can learn but even if you look at the example of your parents and your uncle your uncle was entrepreneurial highly successful your parents also were entrepreneurial did not have the same level of wealth what do you think and you've learned from both of them very valuable lessons that served you but what do you think the difference was between their mindset which i'm assuming then resulted in their success or or lack thereof comparatively really a question i got to i got to preface this mom dad if you're listening um i love you guys uh so i let me say my mom was constantly trying to find her passion or her way that he that she could contribute outside of being the absolute best mother and caring mother like everything was about her kids everything every waking moment and i think that she didn't focus honestly like we're hustling doing this thing clean in a house we were we were then selling you know stuff at the farmer's market then we're doing this and she had all these different types of jobs but i think she didn't really pursue it because of like being a mom first it was like first and foremost even to this day i also just think that she the interest she never had an interest to learn like you know just the you know business principles of charging more and repeat customers and all the things that come into running a successful business the my dad my dad is one of the hardest workers have ever met in my life i mean just i just when it comes to grit and work ethic i mean he's just he worked i think every overtime hour they ever offered to him and hardly didn't take any days off i think for him it was like a he was very risk risk um adverse avert yeah yeah adverse yeah he you know very conservative in the stock market very didn't want to go out on his own would would you know prefer the security of working for someone my dad's upbringing i mean i lend itself to a lot of that because his his dad died when he was very young and his mom didn't have a lot of money and this was in high school so he went right to work at a high school for someone else and so he didn't have this like you know these these gap years and this time to reflect he didn't know he didn't have the privilege unfortunately to to take time and to figure out as is right into work and and and sometimes you get stuck and not stuck in a bad way but it's what you know and and it's scary as hell to do shit that you do not know and if you've only known the one thing which is work and safety and security in my dad he is a a leader of the family father first just like my mom and it and like i'm not saying that business like business is like everything outside of the family to me like i don't have we'll go that when i really have a hobby so i'd say business is my hobby but he he was a leader of the family and and i would say like today look he has a government you know pension or retirement uh my mom does too from from being the the cook for those years and their houses paid off and and they live of a good life and it's also like well what's enough and what is there's like why do you continue to strive they they go on vacations they're very happy um i think i had different levels of ambition from a wealth perspective uh but they're very secure they don't have like astronomical debt they're they're they're comfortable and and they do have freedom still i think that i think that a lot of people who listen to this show in particular could understand that pursuit of wealth does not mean that you should sacrifice any of those things that your parents did so well and my parents are very similar to yours by the way my parents are exceptionally similar my dad wrote for the government my mom worked for universities and then she took time off and she had me and my brother then she went back to work after um and they are not hurting by any means but they were not risk takers in an entrepreneurial sense um and they were both like i did not come from a hard you know upbringing like wonderful life upper middle class um very much loved and i'm so grateful for that and i think that i i i think that that's a beautiful thing when when when you care about your family that's what you should that's what you're put on this earth to do it's to care about your family to care about the people that you bring into this world your kids and i think you because of that you know that upbringing i'm pretty sure i know exactly what kind of father you are and you're a great father and even though you're pursuing wealth and success you're not like doing it and sacrificing all the other things in your life but i do see some people that are exceptionally successful from a financial perspective that everything else is sacrificed and i don't i don't think that's success at all i don't either and and and that is me it's like it's like i want to be a good a good dad a good husband and and it's a work in progress right i'm a i'm a early dad you know he's three years old and i'm trying to be the best husband and and we're we're all flawed and i'm doing my best i will say that i think the values that they passed on to me and i i think it was the both of the nature and nurture component it's interesting both myself and my sister are very successful business owners and entrepreneurs like my sister it's wildly successful multiple companies you know eight figure like five eight figure wealth and like we're both you know neither of our parents were like that but i think i think the values contributed to i think the values allowed you to be that successful in the right way i i fully believe that what what prompted you if you didn't come from an entrepreneurial background what prompted you to be more entrepreneur what was the the first thing that you tried to build well i went to college i knew i wanted to be an entrepreneur and owner business but i didn't know what and i i went literally went to college i had no idea what i wanted to do somehow ended up with a history education degree i have no idea i was a big part here i didn't attend class i had great grades um but i was not a good student and i've got some stories about the that if you want to go down that path dude yes okay okay well let's just so a lot of history you learn that throughout your life you learn it in high school so i knew that i could pursue that and and be really effective in not a ten class like we're talking about the civil war we're talking about these different milestones it's like you know how much did you pay attention back then and you know are you an effective writer so it was like the perfect career path for me it's someone that wanted to chase girls and have fun and drink a little bit and i will say this one thing almost got me in trouble in college i i had a this final history education paper and i did not want to do it like i don't want to write this paper it was like a 30 page paper requirement so i hired someone to write it for me and this is pre-chat gbt and all though whatever and she plagiarized she plagiarized and so i get called in to like the dean and and they're like you plagiarize this and i'm like i have no idea i just thought i was quoting the work you know like well like what am i going to say like yeah you didn't know i hired but write it you know it's right the plagiarist right so thankfully uh um i was able they allowed me to retake the class and i put in the work and wrote the paper and stuff but like that was one of the moment or delegation almost did you tell them that you paid someone to write it absolutely not i mean that had been the death meal right and and and thankfully i got that opportunity was lucky to take the class but like i wasn't a good student you know quite frankly even in high school i was like i was in all of the you know whatever you call those uh the top classes uh there's a name for it like oh yeah um yeah i know i took all those classes all of that for English whatever but i was still a b student and when i went to college like i was a b student like like it is what it is like i wasn't shooting for the dean's list i was shooting to get this because i i thought i was going to be a basketball coach and i thought the path was like you know high school coach win a bunch of games go to college you know be a college coach i thought that was the path because at the time that was really my focus was was basketball but you know that's that's kind of the beginning of the journey for me to answer your question like when did that first entrepreneurial thing happen i think my first year i was a detention room teacher i i took this job because it was on the same track as teachers so if i was a two-year detention room teacher and the third year i'm a teacher i'm a three-year teacher towards that that retirement and i typed in how to make money online i found this affiliate marketing course made my first like 20 bucks from it uh that gave me the itch but then somehow i got into real estate and i convinced this guy to sell me this triplex uh you know for my salary barely could get the loan for it and then he owned the next one door the one next door so i convinced him to do it contract for deed so then i had six units and i had this internet marketing thing so like i had a business like i had six doors for renting i had the affiliate stuff and that's really when it started was that first year teaching and honestly part of it was i was miserable i was with the the kids that not all bad kids some of them this is like i'm setting in this detention room it's like it's almost like the the padded walls of white it's like what am i doing am i going to do this for 20 years like absolutely not and i was trying to find a way out and that i mean so now it's ironic because your first version of entrepreneurship is anything but uh niching down or up is almost uh like buckshot like anything you can touch that's not the detention room this is what you're this is what you're going after so uh when was the first version of entrepreneurship that was successful for you like i mean you moved into affiliate marketing real estate uh six doors by the way is very like that's that's impressive for the for the lack of experience in real estate and for how old you were um some of these obviously didn't work out did they i mean uh failures teach us more than uh wins some time so what did this first version of entrepreneurship teach you what did you what did you sort of you know what did you say listen this is not for me because of x y and z and how did this clarify your path into SEO into internet marketing into all the sort of stuff that you do now so my first website was loser double gen.com it was that it was in it was niching it was focused in the weight loss category and essentially i mean there's more to it but but essentially weight loss and health right and it was wildly successful i look i built like 80 sites i didn't i didn't like really believe that i thought i just got lucky i didn't know it was the focus at the beginning and i i built all these other websites staining concrete osse berry i had a portable generator site that took off in the Katrina era i had all these sites but really the one that hit was the loser double chin i ring number one for double chin for like three to five years massive amount of volume uh you know part of why i'm wearing this beard right now because i'm uh you know i got the double chin but the it hit and i was making like sixteen grand a month by my second year but how how how were you making like just like having 80 sites like what made you think oh i want to spin up 80 sites and that's how i'm going to make money i i thought that it would be as easy to get a win in these other niches but i didn't i didn't realize i got like a very lucky on the double chin site for my first site and i should have just focused and you were just you just spun it up and it was just articles and then ad revenue ad sense i had some amazon products um but overall is ads at google ad sense and and it was a big driver i had like let's let's say i had 80 sites i would say four of them produced 90 percent of the revenue in the so that's a signal yeah yeah that actually have a funny story on this without going too off track one of them was uh how to state concrete floors and i ranked number one for stained concrete for a few years and i created this uh so my this fast forward this article is out in the ether that i wrote and my president today steven willey is getting ready to redo his basement he's gonna do the stain concrete floor and we'd work together for two years and he's like following this instructional article and he gets down to the bottom and it's me he sits like that's funny so it's still it's still on the internet in 2025 it's a lot harder to find now because i've taken a lot of that stuff off like the double chin and the best at the best man duties and a pastry chef thing i tried to get rid of as much as that as i can but or i could but yeah there are a few of those out there in the ether how did you get good at as you're so you're OG like internet marketer what yeah okay so eighty sites double chin lose the double chin what year is this this is yeah 2006 ish i was the teacher and doing this on the side yeah that's so that's so old in internet yeah internet time it was so easy back then it was so easy i wish i would have just pedal to the metal and did it more but you know live and learn and you were and you were the business was spin up a website write an article put it on the website basic basic SEO not as it's not as difficult as it is now obviously and were you were you writing articles for eighty websites i was writing articles for a few but i had an affiliate team the Philippines so i would early on upwork used to be called Odess before they got acquired and i had an Odess team of about eight people and so they were writing a content and back then there was this site called easy and articles easy and articles was a very authoritative site and if you got one link from easy and articles it would propel you up in the rankings there there was other success factors but it was heavily weighted there and what's funny is they sent you whenever you became an expert writer at easy and articles they shipped you a coffee mug coffee and like a pin or something why had like 30 of those because i had like different pins so i used to like play with it and hold them up in videos and stuff and like some of the old geez would recognize the easy and articles too but that's kind of how i got started yeah and that was okay so that was that was a signal that i mean you you uploaded you you set up all these sites three or four are killing it the rest not so much okay that's that's a niche uh you shelved real estate and then you just went all in on SEO i kept real estate for now i wish i still have those today because i know yeah you know the appreciation and all that but i was managing those myself so like chris that didn't know anything about renovation and and home maintenance would go over there slinging a hammer around trying to fix stuff moan the grass collect in the money spring in the tenants doing all the things right i was doing that while i was teaching and coaching and doing the affiliate stuff so i was i was after it at the end of when did all yeah at the end of my second year teaching i was making like 16 grand a month and i was gonna get paid the teacher salary the whole summer i got a mentor in florida which i can tell you about how i knew this individual but i moved to Tampa and at the time since i was managing the real estate myself and and didn't even wasn't even aware of like property managers um i ended up selling them but i got it was the timing of when i sold them i was very fortunate because right around there two thousand two thousand eight was like the real estate crisis and i got a decent amount of money not like a huge amount but maybe i netted 20 grand or something 30 grand but it kind of helped me with all of the these things going on fresh books is supporting today's episode and if you've ever wondered how successful entrepreneurs stay on top of their finances while growing their business the answer is fresh books the numbers don't lie over 30 million people have chosen fresh books processing more than 60 billion and invoices and saving an incredible 192 hours every year on accounting tasks think about it that's nearly eight full days you can get back to focus on what really matters growing your business fresh books is more than just accounting software it's your all-in-one financial command center create professional estimates track time automatically bill clients and capture expenses on the go plus it integrates seamlessly with over one hundred business tools you already use all backed by award-winning customer service if you're ready to stop drowning in receipts and you're ready to stop chasing down payments here's what i want you to do head over to freshbooks.com to start your 30 day free trial no credit card required and for all you success story listeners out there i've got something special get an exclusive 60 percent off for six months when you visit freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer transform your business with fresh books today that's fresh books.com slash pricing dash offer for 60 percent off today's episode is brought to you by vanta now listen up this matters for your business and today's digital landscape security isn't optional it's essential without it deal stall sale cycle stretch on and scaling becomes very difficult now why because investors customers and partners all expect businesses to demonstrate strong security practices before they commit if you can't prove trust you lose opportunities so whether you're a startup founder trying to land that first big client or an established company scaling your security program vanta helps businesses of all sizes prove that they're trustworthy by automating compliance across thirty five frameworks like sock two ISO twenty seven oh oh one and hip up the exact certifications your prospects are demanding here's why you need to pay attention vanta gives you back precious time that you're currently wasting on compliance their platform automates up to ninety percent of the tedious compliance work it helps you respond to those endless security questionnaires at the five times faster and it connects you with experts to get your security program running immediately the results speak for themselves a recent idc report found that vanta customers achieve over five hundred and thirty five thousand dollars per year in benefits and the platform pays for itself in just three months so you're going to join over ten thousand global companies like Atlassian Kora and factory who use vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time and don't miss this for a limited time only my listeners can get a thousand dollars off vanta that's real money backing your pocket visit vanta dot com slash scott right now before the software expires that is v-a-n-t-a dot com slash scott this mentor uh who who were they what impact did they have on your life and is this the mentor that sort of pushed you or was the inflection working with this person was an inflection point that eventually led to rankings.io i'm going to say major major contributor to it i was and you're you might you might go into details here but between high school and college i played this collectible car game uh called legend of five rings uh it was same it's very similar like magic the gathering in the pokemon right i know magic i never knew i never knew so this game had a very big following for a time and i was a top player they had these things called kota championships and i won four essentially state championships in a two-year period at the time knowing it ever done that i think a few years after i kind of got out of it people did but one of the other top players was an individual name Ryan Carter Ryan and i and all the top players just like when you really get into a game or something we we had a mastermind all the top players hung out talk cards went on these troops trips because you know there'd be a 200 300 person tournament but like you're up against these top 10 like they're going to be at the end like you know it you all know each other and Ryan was one of those players and we started just chit chat and about internet marketing he was really into it and he started it as a full-time job and so meet as well and we basically lived together we talked about digital marketing every single day uh it was a passion we were both trying to make money and hustling his life kind of pivoted and he went the Chris money maker route uh of poker and pursued it not as a hobby he is a through and through pro poker player that had a mindset coach a a tactical coach was very successful with that direction i continued with the digital marketing now i did have a brief sin and poker or made a decent chunk of money but that that's kind of the the direction that i went versus him between all the different things you've been successful i mean you're you're recounting a lot of wins so i mean i'm assuming you're leaving out some failures or maybe you've just been incredibly successful over your career but what was the through line between um and if you want to talk about failures be my guess but i'm not going to push you on those but what was the through line between being successful at affiliate marketing being you know quasi successful even at real estate and being successful at playing cards and being successful at playing poker is there a personality trait that served you well or practice or some idea that you find has sort of allowed you to be successful across all these it seems like different very different domains apps it's it's core values it is in in a i'll expand on this but like our core values that are company are excellence execution and grit and i am the epitome of a type a driver whenever i take these personality assessments and they're like have these ranges i'm always like falling off the page on the driver and execution um my orientation in terms of thinking about things is shorter term orientation like a years about as far as i can go so i have issues wandering and thinking about three and five and ten years so like a Jeff Bezos has a super long term orientation when like a look back window and you know this orientation of just thinking about the future i would say like an Elon Musk like these people are thinking about change in the world 20 years from now 30 years from now me it is just straight have the idea get it so i'm not making one affiliate side i'm making 80 i'm not doing five articles on the website i'm doing a hundred or a thousand uh playing basketball i'm not i'm playing basketball every single night i had a key from the superintendent work only i had it that that that i could access the gym i went every single day i was before school when every single day um it's a obsession obsession to the point where i cannot play video games not because i don't enjoy them it's because i i take them to the 10th degree and i just i have to win i have to be number one and i remember i'll give you an example what it was like a point where i just had to quit playing video games is there's this final fantasy on PlayStation to there's this one level that you could play in and you can only access it at one point in the game and it gives you like these permanent boosts to your people what played that level for 40 hours to just max out all my guys before movie and it's like what what am i doing like so businesses become this this game it this this you know people joke about the simulation and whatever and you know RPGs when you think about role playing games it's like you get the guy you fight some monsters you level up you know you build bigger cities get bigger swords like that's what i'm doing a bit that's what i've that's what i've always done in business and in affiliate marketing and everything um it's just keep focus keep reputation and execution that execution and consistency is has been the number one driver when does when does obsession in business serve you and when does it hurt you it serves me because i want to be the best and i don't have any shame saying that uh the Timothy Timothy what's what's his last name uh i'm a child right came out and he goes i want to be one of the greats like that fired me up like please i love that type of stuff um some people didn't like it they thought he's brash i loved it i love people saying they want to be the best and having high standards and okay when does it serve me it serves me because i go all in like look i'm not if i take an IQ test look i'm real i'm not going to be like a 160 or whatever i'm not going to be also you know the bottom but i'm going to be like the average guy but the difference is every single day every year for the past 11 years i've read 50 to 100 business books i listen to business podcasts every single morning i talk to i'm in business masterminds like i'm just constantly because i can't be the best at everything but i can be very good at this thing so that's how it's served me is this this relentless focus and passion how it's hurt me is i have extreme difficulty shutting it off like tremendous difficulty sleeping my sleep is horrible i need a sleep coach i need the ordering thing it's i can't shut off my brain i also you know with the wife i have to be very purposeful intentional about being in the moment and listening to what she's saying because i'm also thinking about this deal i'm trying to close with this marketing initiative this employee um i have right now i am in an office i'm the only person in this office i'm paying a pretty high lease for this office i'm the only person here because i cannot work from home because if i'm if i get if i'm at home and i get off work i'm still at work it's i i used to have this house before my wife at this nice house uh in a foul in Illinois had a big master bedroom upstairs but my office was upstairs and after i got off work i had to go downstairs because that was when i was off work so that's that's that's the negative right the negative is health too it's like where you know in these health and relationship and spiritual it's like i had always and i'm getting way better i'm blocking my calendar you know working out i'm eating better but like that took a back seat too like i was putting all of my time into the business it's tough dude i think that sometimes like the dark parts of a personality a person's personality is what allows them to be successful dark in like the way you just described with obsession i mean i've heard this from mr beast who he went on uh Stephen Bartlett's diary of a CEO and his podcast and he said i wouldn't be successful if i cared about my mental health um i i believe that to be true sometimes with with me as well i think that i i also believe that most entrepreneurs are to a degree even a a small bit neurodivergent like i i think that that's reality i don't think that it's normal or rational um to put your life into something but if you're gonna try and build something it's almost required at least for a season the issue is when you can't shut it off and when everything else in your life deteriorates because of it that's when it becomes a problem not if you do it for five years and then you're successful and then you can know you know spend uh your life focusing on your health and your wellness and and ideally you do it simultaneously but i get that sometimes it's hard to balance everything but yeah okay put five years put ten years but then yeah have a have a partner you know have a spouse have kids the present for your kids like there's other things in life that are important too um but it's when they never they never exit that season of building and they just and that then they and they try to have us all the other parts of their life they they lie to themselves saying like well you know i've made a lot of money now um it's time to get married have kids but they really haven't shut off and moved away from entrepreneurship and all the other people suffer suffer excuse me yeah and i i think i think my wife would say i'm a really good dad i get a good husband and i make time for them but but it's it's hard you know it's it's the standards that we set for ourselves i think that's it's like i don't know what it is if it's a nothing is ever good enough and like the you move with a goalpost like like in five thousand we talked earlier like we're actually seven years in a row we're definitely gonna be eight years in a row so it's like what what do you have to do to continue to move you know to continue to achieve these things and and by the way for that it's not based on it's not based on starting from zero you have to you have to show growth based from from last year it's a percentage that list yeah so so it's like the revenue you know when you're and i'm not trying to devalue like like right the the audience listening the solos the startups right when you get that first million to go to a million to two you know you do a hundred percent gains but when you start hitting you know 20 million you know 15 20 million and now it's like another 20 um the you have to think about things differently um but yeah it's it's it's the game when do you when do you when is your like enough enough i've hit i i don't think it's a money thing anymore so what's the what's the milestone that you're trying to achieve i ask myself that a lot i enjoy the game i sound like her mosey right i listen to every all her mosey's podcast a laylist stuff like you name a Bartlett i've listened to the mr. beast thing right because i'm like a student of the game i i had look right now i'm still in the real estate i've got 99 doors i've got you know i'm in a position because i live in the midwest where where i i don't have to work again um i'm good from a financial perspective uh but i just enjoy the game like i'll tell you like right now pe and there's a lot of money for agencies like they're just scooping up these agencies and i had some big big numbers thrown at me but the thing that i couldn't solve was what do i do afterwards like what what do i do like i don't i don't have hobbies and i need to get those i i think having some physical fitness like think would help me my health help me connect with my son and my wife better um but right now i don't have those and so as i i couldn't i couldn't think about what's next so i'll just continue to build that's where i'm at right now yeah it's tough it's it's very tough i i don't have an answer for you i just know that like as a friend i would say that find find something outside of work because i think that this is this is i'm i'm when i'm telling you this i'm also talking to myself yeah it's way easier to give advice until i live it yeah but i also find like my identity is wrapped into my work yeah and i know that it's not good yeah i know that it's not good but it is it definitely is as much as it's you know i i also you know tweet out nice little novel ideas about balance and seasons and don't lay it and and it's ironic because a lot of the things that if you ever read my content most of those lessons are like me telling me like there i should be doing yeah i like that it's like reminders yeah it's great yeah because it's not easy it's not and and once you once you get on this there's a hamster wheel so to speak it's just another hamster wheel just another you know you it's hard to get off and and completely change what your focus is but i've i don't i don't have kids yet but that my my promise to myself was that i would not be working at the level and with the view i would not put as much of myself into my work when i have kids that was really to promise because i and it's not because like my dad was absent it's actually because my dad was very present and that's the exact experience that i want from my kids so yeah i love that at least you're thinking that way that's amazing at least you think that that's great let's talk let's talk we can talk about we can talk about SEO she'd like i mean it is kind of what you do for a living yeah so i think that it's interesting um well we'll tackle SEO and and rankings.io sort of from two perspectives one i think it's just this you are a wealth of knowledge in SEO and business but i think that also we can go back to that very first question i asked about niching uh niching up excuse me and uh when you started rankings uh dot io you already probably understood that niching up and niching in general was like what you wanted to do so from uh advice to a young entrepreneur you niched up into into law and then personal injury law and i've heard you speak with how you could even nich even further but what was your thought process for niching up into law as an SEO firm i think i think there's you might be surprised at this i think i think individuals have to have experiences in a lot of areas to find their purpose and passion and ultimately let's have vindagger and purpose passion and profit it's like you gotta have all three like it can't be just a purpose and passion but you can't make money it you gotta be able to generate money too the all three and well i knew that legal was saturated i knew that it had been around for many years it stood the test of time um that they were you know um willing to spend money on advertising and so all those things lends itself to a good industry but at the end of the day i had worked with many lawyers because before i started my own there was a brief stint of time for about a year and a half where i worked for three agencies and one of them worked with a lot of lawyers um it's kind of how to funny how i landed in that position or kind of that you you talked about wins and losses and setbacks so i had a big setback on the affiliate side and had to get a job temporarily um but it's i think yeah those experiences i just found that they they were a good option for me because i wasn't majorly capitalized i was bootstrapped like what am i so i had to be i had to have all community that i could like throw the pain at as opposed to trying to target everyone and that's and and you just chose legal because they were people that could afford to you know allocate budget you know everything at least when i was in college and hearing on the news more and more attorneys graduating every day and can't find a job and more and more law firms and i'm like okay so a lot of times people say i think there's this really poor advice where there's two different versions of this some people talk about blue ocean and and you know going to and creating something new i i think that's that is the Peter teals year to one but i also think that people have flawed ideas in this and what i mean is if you don't create something absolutely new it's actually better to go where the competition is you want to go where the bloodbath is because of because of competition it demands expertise right i'll take the air i'll take legal right now for example right now there might be a few bankruptcy attorneys in a city right or the one patent attorney or the the couple in immigration lawyers when there's a ton of personal injury attorneys well there's only three spots in the map pack like who's going to win so they want to hire the expert to get them in the top three other if you're just the only one by the nature of of being the only one you don't have any competition you automatically rank right so and because of that that you know and the time people are willing to pay for expertise because of the time saver it provides for them you know i'm more likely because i put in the reps that i i i'm more likely to achieve the objective as opposed to then spending the time to learn the craft it's all centered around time when was the moment when you knew that you're sort of your bet on SEO for for lawyers was like the right bet well but let's just my first year we we gross like 79 grand 79 thousand i'm not a ton but that like the next year it was like 300 right so it's like the amount of money that i was making doing this and helping other individuals was just versus working for someone else it was like i never liked the idea of being a teacher or being working for someone else because of of caps and ceilings that's why if i was going to work for someone i would absolutely be in sales it's like it's on me i would want to sell a good product and i would have no ceilings you know i would hire my own if i was look if i was at all the sales people listening i would hire my own assistance right and i and that's kind of what i did so i'll tell you a brief story because i think this kind of encapsulates a lot of things about my character and just uh things you hear about the maybe in a vacuum so i had a big setback around 2011 or 12 that first algorithm hit my affiliate money went from let's just say 20 grand i don't know exactly what it was to be honest i have no idea down the like two overnight and that's a big good dip and i was a saving money i was still partying i was still doing this you spend the money and i looked at and i like there was nothing no way around it so at the time i got on craigslist i fired off my resume to like so many come i just typed in seo would fire off the resume to so many companies that i hit craigslist filter that i couldn't shoot my resume anymore i don't even know what that is that's like hundreds well from that within a few days i had three interviews for three agencies all remote this was pre zoom this is like go to meeting days this is like operating remote company by phone essentially uh base camp was a project management tool i don't even know if some of the other ones existed i had three interviews and i got three job offers and most people would be like well which one did you take well i took all three and the reason i took all three is because i had my team from the Philippines so i was the best seo specialist at all three jobs because my output was better than any other person at any of those organizations at the end of the day the owners are very happy with my work why could Chris do ten times the amount of this other people because i had eight people working for me um so instead of making you know 40 50 grand a pop you know now i'm making 120 to 100 and whatever and i get this experience of learning what the agencies are doing right and what they're doing wrong so that's that's kind of then the the mindset of hey you're gonna offer me all three well well why can't i accept three wait why do i have to only accept one entrepreneurs just think different they just think different i love it i love this i love this story i'm sure the agencies wouldn't love to know that you did it but at the end of the day it doesn't matter because if you're performing it's all the matters but that's so i can't tell you this even if i think if they knew they were very very disappointed to lose me they were very happy with my output that's why a lot of times you get in these different scenarios where people you know that you talk about in house or outsourcing or whatever at the end of the day it's about results it's about productivity it's about you know they it could be a pricing arbitrage component in there to to make profit but at the end of the day i was a very good employee at all three of those one last question on neat like niching up if somebody if an entrepreneur who is just starting out is sort of listening to this and like oh that's a great idea i'm into it it makes a lot of sense i have a service-based business i want to niche up into something what's your advice to them if they have you know every single type of customer they can sell to in front of them what should they think about the first thing i would do is i'd look at the data are you generating profit from a focused group of clientele you know i would put it in i would put i would draw out those three circles on the venn diagram purpose passion and profit like what where do i generate profit who do i like working with you know because at the end of the day if you don't have the purpose and passion and you're tired or and and and something happens you're not going to have the energy to to overcome that to stick with it so you got to have all three and that's what i would say look at the data look at try to take a either an objective view of the data or a subjective view of of who you enjoy working with if you if you think about some of the the sort of things that have changed with SEO from when you first started to where we're at right now just to give me like an overview of the SEO landscape um what are some like obviously outside of algorithm updates like what works in 2025 that or what doesn't work in 2025 rather that used to work really really well i'm going to answer this a bit different i think that i think by all accounts from Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours or 100,000 hours at this point who knows i you put yourself at the top of blooms taxonomy and i can deconstruct things into a more simplified manner so i think a lot of times people try to over complicate it they they talk about the 200 ranking factors and the and this and that and at the end of the day the first is the opportunity you have to have great content that targets themes topics or keywords we're all the above in order for google to understand that you want to drive traffic around these areas so the content has to be better than the first result and that goes back to that core value and excellence everything right it has to be better if it's not better google's what google is trying to do is trying to organize the web to give the consumer the best experience now there's without going crazy on their financial motivations but at the end of the day they're trying to organize the web right so it starts with the content it has to be the best it has to be the best piece of content out there um the second component is that i that i look at is the links google how they differentiate it from a well yahu as they use links as a as an algorithmic mechanic to sort the web now there's different things that they look at in terms of the quality of the link they've added other things to their algorithm like click through rate and engagement sigils and things like that but at their core it's links today we just analyzed 40 million words of content in the legal vertical 40 million using chat GBT and AI it's all kinds of stuff right crazy stuff we found that 66% of the content that that didn't index didn't have a backlink there's some other signals on this uh i can go into this expansive study that we did but it means that like why would google crawl or index a piece of content that's not in that doesn't have let's let's talk about a link what it is an endorsement if a piece of content is not endorsed via social media even if it's a nofollow link or um a credible website it is not going to wreck it is not field of dreams really not going to wreck it's not field of dreams you know if you build that they will come you have got to promote and get your content at least those initial links maybe not hammer it you know with a thousand links every you know every single month but you at least have to get it recognized for google google's crawl is that something as simple as like posting it on your own social yes posting it on social talking about it's a different communities getting traffic to come to it to to visit it that's the start of it if you don't do that you know you take a look at the internet in my space let's talk about personal injury attorneys that a high volume article is you know what to do after a car accident how many times have been written ten thousand thirty thousand three million why would google index it it's already been indexed a million other times why should they rank your piece of content there's two reasons either your contents better or it has more endorsements or it's a combination of both I think all these people it's it's it's the snaky snaky life right it's the we're going to do this geo stuff we're going to do this oh it's your it's your better description length no it's not is it better is it endorsed that's that's the name of the game and that rules today it ruled 20 years ago it is as simple as that I was going to say people then just overcomplicate the shit out of us here absolutely do they try to pull the the curtain over the eyes and and a lot of these sites your wordpress and setting up a title tag and those types of things it's it's it's like very easy overcomplicated a big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to have to do as an entrepreneur as a founder as somebody who's trying to build a business it's important to hire well and find the right person but it takes so much time and it's so labor intensive because like most entrepreneurs you have a thousand things going on and there's a good chance that you just realized your business need to hire somebody yesterday so how can you find that great amazing right fit candidate fast it's easy just use indeed because you don't have to waste time struggling to get your job posts seen on all these other job sites if you're using indeed you can just use their sponsor jobs to help you stand out and hire fast your post jumps right to the top of the page for relevant candidates so you can reach out to exactly who you're looking for faster and the results really speak for themselves according to indeed data sponsor jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs and you know what I love most about indeed it really just makes hiring so fast because everything is streamlined in one place no more juggling multiple platforms or waiting weeks for the right candidate and how fast is indeed in the minute I've been talking to you 23 hires were made on indeed according to indeed data worldwide there's no need to wait any longer speed up your hiring right now with indeed and listeners of success story will get a 75 dollar sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed dot com slash clary terms conditions do apply just go to indeed dot com slash clary a huge thank you to net suite for supporting today's episode now what does the future hold for business if you ask nine experts you're going to get 10 answers bull market bear market inflation up inflation down honestly at this point you just need a crystal ball but until we get one over 41,000 businesses have found the next best thing they future proof their businesses their operations with net suite by oracle which is the number one cloud ERP imagine having your accounting your financial management your inventory your HR all flowing together in one fluid platform and here's what makes net suite different it gives you one source of truth for your business you get the visibility and control to make quick confident decisions while others are guessing you're working with real time data insights forecasting you're basically looking in the future of your business with actionable data whether your company earns a couple million or even hundreds of millions net suite helps you respond to immediate challenges and helps you grab your biggest opportunities and speaking of opportunities they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning and net suite dot com slash Scott clary this is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business the guide is free that is net suite dot com slash Scott clary so say you can write good content and I'm curious actually what is good mean like good is subjective does it answer the consumer's intent effective that's it so it isn't so subjective well I say that is the direct answer but let me give you some complication here a page can have multiple forms of intent that it needs to address okay so if I had a page on car accidents well do they need a lawyer do they need to know what happens after car accident are they wondering how many car accidents occur in a city do they there may be many questions that consumer asks so that page has to answer all of those but it can't answer just one version because if it only answers the one version and a different consumer comes to the page and it doesn't answer their intent they leave well that's a bad that's a bad signal right bounce rates page on time all those things it's if someone comes to your website and it's not a good piece of content and it doesn't answer intent and then they do another query similar or they go to another website for the same query it means potentially that they that this website this landing page did not help them it wasn't helpful for them and over time if there's enough of that Google will stop serving you in the number one position that's that's scary because if you see a high bounce rate and low time on page then you know that it's not answering all the questions but you don't really know or I guess you could so they grew out what questions it's not answering so there's always the asterisks right and it depends right yeah there are I would say the longer the query to the more specific it is you know what are the steps I need to take after car accident okay here's the article there's no guessing the intense defined in the query uh but there are certain situations where a high bounce rate is absolutely okay because they could come to the page get their intent answered and then leave they don't have to go to other websites they take take something like definitions right nowadays AI overviews even knows up but define this okay well like do I need to write 10,000 words on this definition do I need multiple articles to explain do they do they need to visit other page they don't they need to go there they get the definition they can leave so it it really depends but it depends on on your goals on what you're what you're trying to achieve and a lot but at the end of the day it's great content does it answer that the consumers intent effectively and is it endorsed by other people do other people vote and think it is a good piece of content interesting that you mentioned AI overview so AI overview if you if you google anything it'll give you an AI overview right at the top um I'm assuming tell me if this is a conspiracy theory but I think that google is doing this so that your page isn't ranking as high anymore people aren't going to the pages so that that means that your force to spend more ad dollars to get a sponsored position for your page to show up is that the conspiracy or is that what google is doing absolutely accurate they're for profit business they make the majority of their publicly traded companies revenue from google ads if they can make more money there they're going to do it I will say it's not like to be AI overview zero click scenarios didn't exist we had rich snippets they were zero click scenarios it showed the answer and you didn't have to click through through a website and they have such market share domination I think they're finally below 90% but but still that they can create a less satisfactory user experience to supplement their ad revenue and what does that mean for businesses and SEO what it means I'll tell you this right now I've seen a dramatic shift in the benefit of paper click ads and LSA as opposed to organic and maps even if you look at things like above the fold on a monitor the things that are above the fold are typically local service ads and and google ads after that then you start getting AI overviews you start getting the maps and organic so they have the best positioning from a virtual real estate perspective so what does that mean if you're if you're a firm or business well you need to reconsider google ads if you had tried it in the past or didn't have a lot of success because they're kind of forcing you to use it now you got to get all your economies and metrics right for cost per league cost per acquisition and all those all the things right but it's becoming more effective because of how google's designing google search now the interesting bit about AI is that those those AI overviews or the if you're using chat GPT or perplexity or I guess cloud wouldn't be used as or Gemini I guess as a search tool yeah all grog exactly that is obviously taking some of the traffic away from google because people are using a generative chat as search tools but at the same time the results in some cases are referenced to websites so now you have an SEO game through generative chat how do you play that game really like this question see your dad on so there's two things that you want to do first focus on what I would say bottom of the funnel the your your service pages your sales pages because it lends itself to optionality and choice right back in the day you could write out what do you do after car accident and like maybe you could get a conversion out of that but like that's just like an evergreen topic and like it's going to be in the AI overview but car accident lawyer Chicago they're going to give you some options to review you know the how close is this firm to you you know how what's the review rating they're going to give you optionality first so I would say strategically to kind of counter the AI component the first thing is focus bottom up of the funnel instead of the top of the funnel where you're trying to get awareness I really look at google and search engine marketing all encompassing everything on google as a capture play more so than an awareness play so it is it's capturing demand more so than creating demand uh the the next thing is your question about geo generative engine optimization the LMS they the truth is no one really knows but I will say that schema and some of these highly trusted sites are are cited you go look at perplexity it will definitely tell you where the citations are and chat GPT will will will will give you based upon their analysis you can start to understand where they're pulling that from I'll give you an example for myself right now we rank like third for SEO for lawyers above me is a competitor and then Clio well I get on that and I remember before I was listed on Clio I would say you know who's the best personal injury SEO company and I wouldn't pop up yet I'm on 20 other websites that say we're number one right clutch design rush competitor sites put in this number one the one article we weren't on was Clio's I get on that you go type in the same thing for GPT boom so it's it's the trust signals for certain sites are different Wikipedia is a big one for LMS and so in different categories they're different trusted entities it's an association and entity is an association with something so I go really down the route a whole year without trying to get too nerdy I'm a sound super nerdy no I love it I love it because first of all there is a lot of people that care about this stuff a lot of entrepreneurs are trying to figure out this new game they're smart but also I'm seeing I'll give you another example and I notice now I'm playing around with the deep search tools on perplexity and chat GPT and and they both chat GPT in particular I think they both actually show their workflow as they're going through this chat GPT's deep search for any query eight to 11 minutes so long comparatively but if you open up the the sidebar it shows every question that it has and the source that it's going to for the answer and I'm just so curious like some of these sources like how to pick this source and that source and it'll go through like 20 to 30 different sources to come out with a very complex answer it'll be it'll be cited in the actual output but it'll also be cited in this source column as it's thinking and showing you all the websites that's navigating to yeah it's it's it's unreal it is it's changing the game and you know even in the AI overviews it's it's citing the source right where it's pulling from so it's a combination all that and but I think again typically even when you ask it it's still going to give you multiple answers for like a business like who are the top whatever it typically doesn't give you one even on who's the best car accident lawyer if we type that what was that what was the nerdy rabbit hole that you were hesitant to go down well I'm trying to think where where I was going to go with that you know with your schema and signals and things like that um yeah I'm not sure uh but I think we hit it on the head it's it's schema it is entities so okay so so like on the entities component they're basically entities are associations right and and Google if we go back to the beginning Google's job is to organize the web LLM it's it's to pull accurate sources right kind of combination of both so you take something like St. Louis one of the first things that probably popped in your mind when you're thinking about the city of St. Louis is large right at an entity right if you can become an entity in the city there's an association that will help you contribute to trust and to rank in that respective city is there any way for a business to become an entity in a city I think I think it's reputation it's it's word of mouth it's being listed in other other entities so you take something like a chamber of commerce right in St. Louis you're now listed as a business entity in this chamber it goes back to old school you know SEO things and listings and citations but the quicker you can do that that's why a lot of businesses when they're expanding to their secondary market struggle because a lot of times are getting a satellite office they're not getting they're not doing the full brick and mortar they're not being a part of the community guess what they're not a known entity in that market that's that's the issue last question on this and I'm sure you get it a lot what happens when you use a generative chat tool to write content well it's significantly better there's a lot of tools surfer jasper there's a ton of them and we've used it still ranks it still ranks absolutely but it still needs human oversight it's it's it's like a tool currently it's not a standalone still in my opinion it's a tool to enhance productivity so we see a lot more prompt engineering editors as opposed to you know manually sourcing inciting writers there's a lot a lot of things that you can do here you know there's even other tools to check for AI there's for originality for voice but it also I was having a conversation with a big firm in San Antonio and I use the language like hey we can do this old school because I don't really want to do it old school I want to do cutting edge right I didn't want to be negative and talk down but but it is old school now like I can prompt engineer something to look and evaluate the top ranking pages to determine length things I need to include to make my article better I can take an existing piece of article and I can fill it in and say you know what are the weaknesses what should I consider adding to this so right now it's in a tool and in the hands this productivity and utilization but you have to be careful because sometimes the sources are incorrect and and so it's used with care I want to I want to just pull out some sort of last bits of wisdom from from your entrepreneurial journey and if there's anything else that we didn't go into like feel free but we went through a lot I I'm really happy with you going into the weeds on SEO because that's going to help me too I think that it's moving so fast right it's moving so fast that you just it's just hard to keep up very hard to keep up if you look at you know your career and and we touched on some of your personal growth and your in your entrepreneurial growth just to get people that are just starting out a little bit of hope because it's not going to be all easy tell them a story about one of your harder moments so I don't want to say like darker but something that you you struggled through as an entrepreneur you learned something from it but you maybe wouldn't wish that experience or that lesson on someone else I'm gonna I'm gonna give two stories here uh I have to I'd say that the first story experienced that I had that is not monitoring the numbers closely enough even though you see all the revenue coming in and and you have these cash acceleration formulas and you see it hit the bank account it's for a time I didn't have I have a CFO today right I didn't have the visibility and I overhired I overextended myself and I accrued a lot of debt this was about year five so I went into debt it was very scary a couple of circumstances could have took me out there's no question there it would have I'd like to think in my head that I could have found a solution from someone to borrow or save me and and figure but I was close to the edge right I'm talking just because I overhired overextended I spent too much and didn't have enough coming in and just I was close so the one thing that helped me might McAllen's book at profit first it helped me get through that I think there's a time and place for profit first methodology where I think the overall guiding principle of of allow yourself to take profit is a good principle to have I don't know that you need the the 10 bank accounts and the you know the envelope system of organizing because there's advantages to having one bank account and all the cash set in there from a money market perspective and if you have the visibility from a CFO or a controller or somebody like that so look at the numbers day in day out really understand it if you're running a business you just have to be cognizant of what's going in what's coming what's what's going out what's coming in the other one that everyone is gonna relate to is it's the you know the people that got you here won't get you there it is this is from the in Kennedy it is the employees responsibility to make them indispensable if they're no longer helping your organization if they're not growing at the pace that you're growing you may have to let them free they may bend the greatest greatest employee at one point in time but a growing to grow as an owner if they're not growing and you're giving them all the resources and and ability to do so you have to let them free it just is what it is very painful you have these emotional relationships to these people but if they're hindering your ability to grow into your business you you have to let them free what did you have to sacrifice to get to where you are a lot of times people think that if I'm my own boss have all this freedom I could take time off whenever I would argue the opposite it's it's you always have to be available you got to put in the hours I hear these I'm in a very local you know city area and I see these local businesses complaining about you know the big franchises the Starbucks coming in and then then I go to their business and they're open from nine to four Tuesday through Friday you know and it's like of course you're going to get beat it's not their fault so you got to sacrifice time you got to be willing to to do the hard things and and just keep I think perseverance is a very it's a tremendous quality for top entrepreneurs I think it's required I think it's a required quality yeah I mean it's that's why I always say like why are you getting into entrepreneurship like what what who are you doing it for is that a conversation that you wish you had with yourself when you were first starting in life first starting rankings.io do you wish you told yourself to not do it I love what I do I I love it I look forward to a Monday so there are components of it I don't like right a client gets irrational or employee you know there is employee drama yeah I wouldn't want to piss off your clientele they're all lawyers like that's that's it that is a red flag for legal they're more they're more likely to to to sue right that is that is a weakness and we do have you know we don't have we haven't ever had anything major but but you you had to be prepared for that that's one of the reasons why we have month a month like I look at these legal agencies and they don't have month a month contracts I'm like are you really going to hold the attorneys fee to the fire like you don't have in house council are you going to like what are you doing they went out just let them out um I think yeah I don't know the original question but I enjoy what I do I if I had that oh no it was just it was just a what would you if you were if you were able to go back and tell yourself something before you started would you tell yourself not to do it but you said no I love what I do so I'll change a question what would you tell yourself well it makes me think of like Mario one on Nintendo like speedrunning a level speedrunning a game I would be very intentional I would have paid attention to the classes that need I needed to pay attention to like English and writing and uh some of the entrepreneurial classes I would have had I gone to close because I think it was a good social exercise and it was a lot of fun and I don't regret any of that I probably went to win to law school right now I can't outside of applying to an alternative business structure through Arizona it's the only state that allows this I can't participate in fees right so I I I lose out on the asynchronous you know a billing to to monetize where if I was just a lawyer and with the law school I could have that um so I knowing that I would end up here I would a speedrun the game and and you know been intentional about some of those choices what keeps you up at night 3am you're worried about things what would that be that your your clients your team people to follow you they never see I for the most part I don't we handle issues we're very accountable and we have a plan to address them we're willing to if we're in the wrong give individuals their money back we're very secure from a financial standpoint I think what keeps me up is I'm so impatient so anxious and I just want to do the next thing I think it about like how can I do the next thing that's a good answer dude that's a good answer that's I feel like that's a cop out answer that's like when uh in an interview when they say like what's your worst trait and I'm like I work hard I read so I'll take it I'll take it a negative sign standpoint right it's like I said the positive from myself on an an idea of execution but it's also like if I task someone to do something and they tell me it's two weeks the first thing that I say is okay do it give it to me in seven days like it's half it like why can't it be done today why can't it be done tomorrow like why does it have to take a month how like how long is this task going to take oh it's going to take three hours okay give it to me tomorrow like but that's not all you know you know people don't love that and it's um people don't have I try to hire the people with those values of a sense of urgency people people have mixed feelings about that obviously but you know at the end of the day it's how you operate and I think that I think that the answer is you hire people that are okay with that expectation Neil Patel obviously you know him uh because he's in the same game as you he hires people who are okay with working weekends he says if you are working for me you're working weekends he doesn't give a shit he yeah he has no qualms with saying that because he says it in the first interview the issue is when there's a disconnect and you be asked the person and you try and you know not trick them but like you don't give them the full picture of who you are they come worked for you and then the expectations you laid out in the interview are completely different than what the reality is in the business that's the issue in my opinion at least if people are okay to work hard to make a lot of money doing it and they're happy with what they signed up for no issue with that it's the it's a disconnect I really resonate with that um and you got a measure against your values I'm not going on the EOS and then you know the the the people analyze their plus minus but there's some degree yet they analyze with KPIs and have an objective and subjective viewpoint on who's really performing because you know things like time tracking and utilization like it doesn't paint the picture I don't want to penalize someone that's very effective that just does something more quickly yes exactly exactly no 100% what was whenever whenever you're building anything significant there's stress their anxiety there's hits to your own mental health at points for sure uh what allows you to persevere what's the tool the framework the mental model that allows you to push through the hardest times so that you can continue to show up and not only show up but like you're thriving you love what you do um but I know there's times when it hasn't been so easier or just even events have been stressful so what's the what's the strategy that you deploy to someone else could emulate you know what immediately popped into my brain was like F you like like I'm gonna I'm you're not gonna beat me like it's uh it's the mentality it is it is an issue like um I remember like it's from the play to win mind it's like a mindset thing um there's a commercial with Tiger Woods when he's he's with his dad in the golf cart and it's talking about like his dad keeps trying to distract him when he's hitting and he's like one thing that you will have above everyone else is you'll have mental toughness and and like I think you have to have extreme mental toughness and and and that drive and I remember like my dad was very very hard on me very high standards even to the point of leisurely gains like yachtsy I would roll at the dice and he would tell me when I'm wrong when I don't roll the correct dice or make the correct play even from a pitch or a poker standpoint like mathematically are like are we playing the game to have fun or are you playing to win like this role combination has this percentage and because it's a civil engineer background it's mathematics background just super high standards drive uh mental toughness um all above and I think that you build those at least for me by exposing yourself to hard situations again and again and again and again so true Chris I appreciate you so much man I thank you and I guess I'll I'll give it over to you what do you want to leave the audience with what is uh one last like words of wisdom insight story that you think um somebody listening would benefit from I think the biggest thing that that would benefit them from a an entrepreneur perspective is to it sounds cliche to outwork not my ten times by a hundred times your competition the reality is I look at my legal competitors we're doing significantly more volume and almost everything and just because of that volume some of it's gonna land some I'm gonna I'm gonna create opportunities for myself if you're prospecting on the phone significantly more you're gonna get more leads and appointments I think I think you have to be prepared to focus your time and attention on execution first you have the idea don't think about planning to make it perfect but do it then improve and do it 100x more than anyone else and yes you know two things can be true at the same time there will be a time when you have to build out systems and processes and hire and delegate but especially if you're just starting out you know do it do it 1000x more than anyone else that will be what it takes to get it started and then you'll figure out how to delegate and build systems around your success after um we don't we can't you know you can't jump past the hard work when you're trying to be an entrepreneur you really can uh where could people connect with you I mean so I know that you have one of the largest personal injury um like you have a personal injury podcast you have a personal injury uh conference I mean not everybody in this audience is a personal injury attorney unless they just want to come listen a guy you speak about a lot of other stuff as well a business entrepreneurship life um but tell people where they can go so list out like podcast if people want to actually come in person uh all the socials website all that yeah let's let's start with a couple things uh I'm trying to not give people too many options but first the book we talked about is on amazon niching up so you can check that out if you want to hear my podcast it's the personal injury mastermind I've had Neil Patel on as a guest I've had Seth Godin on as a guest big name entrepreneurs and the biggest of the big personal injury attorneys most of the time we're talking about business that I think would be applicable to any any business owner I have a conference pimp con last year we had David Spade as a comedian uh I interviewed Michael Spelpes we had some heavy hitting personal injury attorneys some of the you know the big of the big uh this year we're gonna have Nikki Glazer as a comedian we're gonna have um a really high in uh top notch coach I can't um say who yet till that's finalized and then if you if you aren't attorney and you need some SEO and digital marketing help it's ranking.io and then lastly if you want to connect with me on social media LinkedIn Chris drier and drier's D-R-E-Y-E-R LinkedIn's the best network to connect with me on awesome yeah I know and if you're if you're listening and you're like I can't remember all those links they'll be in the show now so don't put everything there so pick and choose how you want to connect with Chris um but I just want to reiterate I've listened to a lot of your content obviously even in prepping for this I've watched a few of your podcasts and it's just general good to business info you bring us a really good guess so if you just want another great podcast go listen um last question I like to ask and you've given like so much and it's always unfair to ask for more but I think this is the way that I the way that I frame this is say you had uh you only had one idea one sort of word of advice that you want to pass over to your kids you can't give anything else is the most important idea that you've learned your entire life and you have given quite a few but what what would that last idea be and why I would just say don't accept the feat learn from your failures