The link to the podcast can be accessed at the top of the page. A full transcript of the podcast can be accessed below. Thank you for listening, and happy marketing!
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Jeromy Sonne:
Welcome to The Agency Founder Podcast by Moonshine Marketing. Every single week, we interview successful founders of marketing agencies at different points of their journey to pass on their victories, defeats, challenges, and lessons learned to help you take your agency to new heights.
Jeromy Sonne:
This week we’re speaking with John Vuong, founder of Local SEO Search, an agency that specializes in search engine optimization, and local SEO. John, thanks so much for being on the show.
John Vuong:
I’m excited to be here Jeromy, and hopefully some of your audience members get some great insight from our discussion today.
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah, absolutely. Really excited to talk about this. I don’t know if I’ve actually interviewed an SEO specialist on the show yet. How did you get into SEO?
John Vuong:
So I started this agency back in 2013. The reason I started it was prior to starting, I worked at a fairly large company and you’ve probably heard of it, Yellow Pages, a printed directory. And I was there for over five years. And prior to that, I also dabbled in the affiliate online world digital space and just understanding the importance of how search has transformed every aspect of the buyer journey. So in terms of working at Yellow Pages, there was that transition of everyone moving away from print and spending less money, getting a lot less return on investment. I was in the sales and marketing end of things. So I was front facing, dealing with the business owners themselves. And in the course of five years, I worked with a couple thousand business owners in the local market and from every single vertical industry.
John Vuong:
So transitioning over, a lot of clients who were spending a lot of money, frustrated, not getting the same sort of return on investment that they used to get maybe 10, 15 years back, but they were very loyal to Yellow Pages so they gave them a shot to continue their campaign, they wanted to see a difference. So that’s why I started. I kind of didn’t understand SEO to the same extent that I do now, but I knew there was an opportunity. So where I kind of just left and kind of winged it, I was good in sales so I acquired a lot of new customers and I had to figure out how to now optimize for them. So in the early days it was really just trial, and error, and testing, and then refining the art.
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, SEO kind of in general is a little bit of a black box. There’s no, “You can get ideas from Google.” And things like that. And there’s all these ranking signals and things like that. But one of the things that has always been wild to me is there’s a lot of different sort of SEO methodologies. And it seems like a lot of them kind of work. Do I have the right read on the situation? I mean, I’m coming at this from a paid media perspective having worked with SEOs and stuff. And so that’s interesting. As you kind of got your start and are establishing your agency, how did you kind of find your unique take on SEO, I guess is what I’m asking?
John Vuong:
Yeah. So for me, what I really gravitated towards was the model that Yellow Pages did very well for over 100 years, which was build a strong relationship, run a great business, and people will find you. They will either go through the yellow pages section, which is the vertical categories. And they’re in play. They’re actively looking for you, versus a paid media where you’re pushing ads at people. They’re coming to you on search. So what you have to do is position yourself so that when they’re ready to buy, you’re visible. So what I basically have transformed was people who run a really successful business on a bricks and mortar standpoint, but they don’t have a digital presence or they’ve dabbled on digital, but they don’t have a really strong hold on it. I have to figure out how to position them as leading experts in their domain authoritative figures.
John Vuong:
And yes, there’s tons of signals. There’s over 200 signals and you have to play with foundational. When you build a home, you need those foundations to be built in a structure where then Google will then pick you up properly and index it without errors. And then you build influence with links and authority that way, and then get good reputation. There’s a lot of signals. And that’s the challenge a lot of people have to understand in terms of search. There’s no one size fits all. And with paid, you pay and there’s landing page optimization, you do some budgeting, but it’s a little bit different than SEO.
Jeromy Sonne:
Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, totally, totally different in a lot of aspects. I think that a lot of people think digital marketing and think it’s all sort of the same thing and it couldn’t be more different in some ways like that. And so that’s really interesting. It seems like your approach from an agency standpoint has been that kind of local SEO kind of small, medium sized businesses and stuff like that. I know that you said that your time at Yellow Pages sort of influenced that, but is ultimately that’s the market that you’re after. And what do you like best about that market that made you kind of go all in in that direction?
John Vuong:
Yeah. So over the years I did work for affiliate online marketing companies. I worked for B2B large Fortune 500 companies. And what I found most difficult was the relationship. You don’t really meet and see the true person behind it all. You can’t uncover that. But when you’re dealing with a real business owner on a local level, they’re genuine people. They have families, they have a real desire to really build a community, a tribe, a following with real customers. So that’s what gravitated me to build an agency that really reflects what humans really want, a true relationship with the actual owner. And that’s why I pushed towards small, medium sized businesses because that’s what I believe is the foundation of every single local market and community.
Jeromy Sonne:
No, absolutely. I really tend to agree. That’s one of the better parts of working with kind of small, medium sized teams. You can actually have relationships with the folks behind it. Where, yeah. I’ve also worked with the Fortune 500 set and it’s one manager above another manager above another. It’s kind of depersonalized. You know what I mean? You’re hired very much so to do a job and that’s it. And so there’s pluses and minuses to kind of each.
Jeromy Sonne:
But let’s go back to you kind of started your agency. Obviously you have incredible sales chops and clearly can build relationships and stuff. As you’re kind of getting started and you have your first couple of clients, kind of what does the scaling up look like? You know what I mean? Obviously, I looked at your team. How big is your team now?
John Vuong:
We have about 30 plus.
Jeromy Sonne:
That’s really incredible. Awesome growth, and love seeing that. So as you are going and saying, “Okay, we’ve got our first clients.” How do you scale? And how do you think about kind of team building, I guess is what I’m curious about?
John Vuong:
Yeah. So there’s two fronts to it. Building a successful client base. And then of course supporting that with team members that can fulfill the actual job. So first off, when I first started, I didn’t have a problem getting new clients because I’ve been in sales and marketing all my life. So for me to acquire new customers and front load them with pretty much, “Here. Give me a six month deposit. Let me show you what we can do.” And then it was our job in the backend to really perform and produce. And over the years, we refined that with really narrowing down the buyer persona, understanding who our ideal customer is. Because early on I was taking on any mom and pop shop, early stage business entrepreneurs. Now we’re looking for more mature businesses that understand the importance of SEO and we’re kind of playing on a relationship.
John Vuong:
We’re a partner to them on the back end so that we’re supporting them on the digital landscape end of things and then fulfilling that. So as the team grew, not only did I need one manager and multiple verticals, we need specialists, we need technical web developers, we need link builders, we need just SEO strategy people. We need sales and support. Everything becomes more challenging. And the challenge was to mold everyone with the same core values. The same mindset and really helping people transform that. The most important thing is taking care of our clients for the longterm.
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah. And that’s cool that you kind of break it out by vertical like that. Skillset vertical. I really like that approach. As you go and think about, who are the right people to fulfill and who are the folks that are going to fit in and do that great work for your clients, what sort of values and things like that do you look for in a team member?
John Vuong:
Yeah. So when I was first starting, obviously the first few hires were the most important, because they had to carry a lot of hats because everyone had to pitch in. And later as we expanded, I think what we found was a lot of trial and error. We made a lot of mistakes hiring and firing, but as we continue refining it, it was more about the personality and the work ethic as opposed to the experience. And I found people that were a good fit were the ones that wanted to continually learn, and make mistakes, and always ask questions, and wanting to do better for themselves and the business, the company. So someone that’s motivated, someone that has always desired to move up in life or move up, have a passion for what that is, and just enjoy that positivity.
John Vuong:
And you can tell from either a interview or meeting someone in person. You can tell and you can feel it right. As a salesperson all my life I basically can read people and read business owners that they’re going to be a good fit for our agency or not. So it’s the same thing, reading people as employees.
Jeromy Sonne:
That’s really interesting. I really like that. And I’ve actually come around to kind of the same thought process myself as I’ve been growing my team is, it’s less about the skillset and more about just if you’re a motivated, good person that wants to do great work and is willing to kind of go the extra mile and stuff. And you could teach somebody like that anything. They’ll be good at whatever it is that they do in life because they have that drive and motivation. And so let’s say you’ve got somebody that’s the perfect personality fit. How do you actually go about training that person?
John Vuong:
Yeah. So over the years we refined our SOP. So our intake on everything from employees, to new clients, to everything. It’s a process. And over the years you just need to trial and error it. And have people on board, like the operations manager or HR person that actually understands this role, how important it is to get the right people. Because what they’re going to be doing is supporting all the clients. And they have to mold well with the existing team members. And if they don’t mold well, then you’re going to have a big dilemma because nobody wants to support that person especially early on.
John Vuong:
So what we find is it’s more important for everyone to be on board with a new person. And you feel like you’re doing a good job because they require more support. The reason we scale is because everyone is loaded, and that’s the only reason we need more people. So the challenge is there’s no one size fits all for every employee that’s coming on board. We always have to work together as a team to figure out, “These are things that are challenging right now. If we add this person, we could become way more productive and save time on these redundant tasks, and let this new person much more junior to pick up the slack.”
John Vuong:
And it’s always a revolving door. Someone that’s more senior with X amount more years, they want a more senior role and they want to be challenged in a different way. So it’s more of a leadership role versus someone more junior that’s more hands on to get in the nitty gritty of all of it. So it’s a fine line. Even learning as a business owner myself. I’ve seen it myself grow while working in sales and marketing and then becoming a manager, to becoming a leader, to then becoming a owner. That evolution of humans as a business owner.
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah. No. That’s a great lead into kind of the next question that I had for you, which was what is the experience like of being the owner? And how has your day to day sort of role changed from the early days, which I imagine was more sales and finding clients and stuff like that to what it is today? I’d love to kind of hear kind of how your personal evolution has happened.
John Vuong:
Yeah. So early days I was doing everything. As you know, you would spend-
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah. I know too well.
John Vuong:
You would spend hours on end trying to figure things out and trying to think you need to do everything. And sooner or later, you’re going to realize what’s the value of your time, your opportunity costs. And if you can hire someone to do some of your tasks so you can produce a higher ticket dollar value for yourself and your team or business, that’s what you want to focus on. So sales or marketing has always been my strength and my focus. And really once I hired my VP of sales, he took on that role and I’m more retaining my existing clients, but then I have an account manager now that now takes care of those clients. So as I now move on in my evolution, I’m moving towards other things I am interested in and I wanted to actually improve on.
John Vuong:
So one of the things that I did was started speaking more because that’s something that I’ve never really done before. So these are more of my things that I always wanted to do, but never had a chance to, and wanted to learn. So I put on a ton of these live events and speaking and did a lot of the city speaking, and now associations, and now podcasts. And again, that’s helping me improve on my public speaking as well. And holding more webinars. And now I’m in the process of writing a book. Things that I’ve always enjoyed wanting to do, now I have the ability to do that along with running and managing my team so that they become better people. And evolve everyone. Make sure that they have their own personal goals but helping them achieve those goals more on a personal level, but also on a business level.
Jeromy Sonne:
That’s really cool. And I like that you’re kind of focusing on these different sort of things as your kind of evolution has been going. And it’s interesting because coming from a sales background, it seems like the stuff that you’re doing is less kind of one to one, and more to one to many like speaking or writing a book. Has that been a natural kind of shift? Has it taken more practice than you’ve thought? Tell me about that process.
John Vuong:
Yeah. So again, all this is new. Me being from sales, to business owner, to now trying to do a lot of other things, I’m just very motivated to try new things. My personality is, if you don’t do it, you’ll never know how successful you are or… And really own it. Have fun. This is my motto in life. Just try different things. I’ve done a lot of different things, different jobs over my years, careers, I’ve done a lot of side hustles. And just own it. Be passionate and really try your best at whatever you do.
John Vuong:
So even on speaking, I would train. I would read a lot of TEDx books. [inaudible 00:17:22] watch a lot of YouTube videos. Figure out how to best position yourself. Storytell, personalize, make it your own. So all these things, it’s more if you’re going to do it, do it the best you can, or don’t do it at all.
John Vuong:
It’s the same thing with SEO. If you’re going to run a agency, you might as well figure out how to run the best agency you can so that you can say, “I gave it all.” Versus I did things not to my fullest abilities.
Jeromy Sonne:
Well, I think that that’s a really important thing too because when you give it all, even if it doesn’t necessarily work out this time, you feel confident that you can then go and say, “At least I did it to my best ability.” And you have a deep understanding of it so the next time that you do it, or if you choose to move on and do something else, you at least know. You know what I mean? I think that that’s really, really powerful. And I really like your approach here. Thinking about this very kind of intent focused sort of way of going about things.
Jeromy Sonne:
If you could go kind of back to earlier in your business, what would you say that you would do again? And what sort of things would you avoid? Lessons learned? What things would you wish you had done earlier and what things would you wish you had never done at all?
John Vuong:
I believe this is a huge journey and experience and a life experience of running a business. And if I had a opportunity to live my life again, I would have started my company or did this a lot earlier because I would have enjoyed that whole ride sooner versus later. But I also don’t regret any of the things and mistakes that I’ve done. Once I look back and I’m, “Okay, all the earlier wins that I did, yes. Those were some of the mistakes and life lessons, but they’re also experiences I had to do to get to where I am.” So taking on any client early on, but that was a big mistake because they consumed my time and they weren’t really my type of quality leads that I’m getting now. Once you refine who you really want to work with and really position yourself as the go-to for this type of niche or persona type of client.
John Vuong:
And then running an agency. Spending 14, 16, 18 hour days just going in circles trying to figure things out. And if I had to do it again, I would have hired people earlier to take care of the tasks that were very redundant and didn’t really take a lot of time. But you kind of realize, “I could have saved a year from trying to just hire someone, and have less stress, and make more money.” All these things as a business owner I could have done but I didn’t. But I’m glad I did what I did because I learned and grew in my own way. You know what I mean? And people learn differently.
Jeromy Sonne:
I absolutely know what you mean because it’s something that I have until a couple of months ago I was really struggling with, which I called myself I was a business owner. But really I was a super freelancer. You know what I mean? I had people around me, but I kept taking on every single task. And learning to delegate and focus more kind of the operations and procedures and stuff like that, and trust people to do a great job and stuff has been an interesting personal journey for myself, figuring out that leadership really. So I definitely deeply know what you’re talking about. It’s just something I’ve been struggling with myself.
John Vuong:
I think letting go is one of the hardest things to do as a business owner, and giving other people leadership roles. Giving them responsibility and holding them accountable. And that’s challenging because as a owner, you want to dabble into everything and ensure that everything gets done the right way, your way.
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s something that I’ve had a hard time with. And I tell myself, it’s, “I want to get the best possible…” And I’m sure like you, “I want to get the best possible outcome for the people that I’m doing work for that have trusted me with their marketing budget and as a partner in their business and what have you.” And it’s just, yeah. It’s really hard to let go.
Jeromy Sonne:
But the thing that I’ve learned is it’s finding those people, finding those people that you can really trust and then trusting them to do the right thing. And that’s why I loved kind of earlier on when you were talking about the skill set you can figure out. It’s about somebody that has a lot of energy, and optimism, and is just really working hard. So I appreciate you bringing all that up. That was a really interesting to hear your perspective on it.
John Vuong:
And I do want to mention, taking care of your team, your staff, your people. They’re the ones that are the backbone of your business. And I would not have a problem firing customers first, as opposed to… If they’re the ones that are draining our team, frustrating everyone, and really wanting things done their way. No, that doesn’t work in this agency. We need to ensure we take care of our own people first.
Jeromy Sonne:
No, I love that. I love hearing that. And that’s awesome. It’s obviously why you’ve been able to build such a successful agency and a great team. John, well I really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us today. I always give my guests the chance to pitch whatever they want at the end of the episode. And so I’m going to give you one or two minutes to do that right now.
John Vuong:
Yeah. Honestly, I believe SEO is a great way to build a great funnel for your business. Organic search is great. So if you do have a interest in learning a little bit more about search engine optimization, take a look at our website. It’s www.localseosearch.ca. And you can reach out to me personally if you have any questions. And you can find me on the team page. Look for John Vuong and connect with me on LinkedIn.
Jeromy Sonne:
Well John, thank you so much again for being here. Everybody out there that’s listening love hearing John’s thoughts on building team and growing a business and being just a leader and understanding, and trusting, and building the right sort of team to deliver a great, great outcome for your clients. Take all of this to heart. And happy marketing everybody.
