Turning Passion Into Leads: Ethical SEO, AI Visibility, and the Power of Drive with Jeremy Ashburn

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it. Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae filling in for Bill Gilliland with your local business training and coaching firm, Action Coach Business Growth Partners.

0:45I'm really excited to have Jeremy Ashburn with Push Leads as the focus for our Epic Entrepreneurs podcast episode today. So Jeremy, can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and your company and what primary products or services you offer our community? Sure. I'm Jeremy Ashburn with Push Leads. And what we do is help small business owners get more leads without struggle or frustration. And what we primarily do is get you visible, get your business visible at the top of Google and also recommended by AIs such as ChatGPT or anyone using any of the other AIs out there.

1:23And essentially there's a lot of frustration these days because a lot of times business owners really want to get at the top of Google. They They want to be recommended by AIs, but they don't really know what to do. They have no idea what it takes to get up there, to get recommended. And we make that our expertise to do that. So we've been doing this for about 15 years full time. We've got about 45 clients that we do it for on an ongoing basis. And it's just been a lot of fun. I've been doing this, you know, just really, I'm kind of living the dream, doing what I love and helping businesses grow at the same time.

2:03Okay, perfect. Perfect. So how long have you been in business thus far? So it's been about 15 years. I really started around 2012 when I went full time. And I can tell you that whole long story. But I had a lot of things that kind of led up to the point where I decided, you know what, I love doing this, and I want to go full time. So. So, okay. So, you know, obviously with the business 15 years, I'm sure you've got some things you can say here on this next question. If you had to start from square one in your business, what would you do differently? Yeah, let me think about that for a second. Wow.

2:43Let's see if I had to start. If I had to start from the beginning, what I would do would be to go out there and hire one or two sales reps to go out there and beat the streets and pay them a really nice commission for going out there to generate leads. And if I would have done that from the beginning, I probably would have been growing more exponentially like I am now. I have a really, really amazing outside sales rep who also doubles up as my social media queen. And she's actually here in the office with me today. Her name is Andrea. And she has been going out there and, you know, meeting with potential new clients and bringing them different reports of what they can do to get higher in Google.

3:30And if I could go back, I would have really hired an Andrea, you know, like an outside sales rep like 15 years ago. But I did not. I just started on my own and I started doing networking groups and growing on my own. And I grew slow and steady. But if I could go back, I would redo it and try to bring on people like her from the beginning. Yeah, yeah. So basically you were juggling everything by yourself, right? Is that what I'm understanding? Yeah. And that's the mistake a lot of times entrepreneurs make is they think, hey, I'm going to do everything on my own. and when you're dealing with cash flow issues and you're starting a business, it can be difficult to do everything.

4:09But what I've found is that if you can create a structure that rewards, you know, people for doing the work they're doing and they're motivated to work, then they'll keep producing for you because they're motivated. They're doing work that's producing income and that income is also helping your business. So that's kind of what I've, that's kind of the arrangement I've come up with, um, with, um, with my current outside sales rep is that she, um, will get like a 20 % commission, um, of any kind of business that she brings in. And she also handles social media. So she gets a hundred percent commission on all that work because she's doing all that work herself.

4:49So I found that the people need to have motivation to work. Have you noticed? And, and if they don't have the motivation, they're just, well, they don't have the drive, then they won't really do a lot. But if you find somebody that is like young or even not young and, but they're, they have a drive and they're showing up and they're doing the work and you give them tasks and they're doing it and they're grateful for the, you know, the money, the revenue you're paying them and they're just consistent, then that, that kind of person is like a superpower for your business. And it's hard to find that person because there's so many people that just don't actually have drive.

5:31They don't have the motivation. And, but when you can find someone like that and test them on a small little project and see how they do on a small little project and, and then they consistently do that and you give them more work, then, you know, I found that that's a really recipe for success. Because one thing I've figured out is that how you do one thing is how you do everything. And so if you're the kind of person that is going to just lay around and sort of let life happen, happen to you and just sort of, you know, do your best, then life will always happen that way. But if you're the kind of person that gets out there and is like a go-getter and has drive and is, you know, in the community and is making connections and doing the work, then I've noticed then it's like that whole aspect of getting out there and just taking more of an active approach to life, it really rewards you.

6:25So that's a little bit about my philosophy, but I just found that that really does make a difference. It seems like you either have drive or you don't, you know, from my take. No, you're definitely right. And that's something that cannot be taught at all. You just, like you said, you either have it or you don't. So, and that's why I, that's why I've found that like, if you take somebody and just give them one little task, like with Andrea, I said, hey, you know, here's one of my clients. It's a hair salon. Excuse me. It's a wax salon in Los Angeles. And they've been my client for a couple of years.

7:01And I said, hey, you know, let's meet with the business owner and let's show them where they are in Google. And let's talk to them about doing social media and see if they're interested. And she said she was. And I said, okay, well, let's, let's come in at a lower than the market price around three or$400 a month and see if we can produce results. Cause you don't have a lot of experience doing this, but if you can be consistent and you can be posting on their social media, on their Instagram, on their Tik TOK, and you can be consistent, then that, then that will mean the client will keep working with you.

7:34And so she did, she took that client on and she started posting for them on Tik TOK and Instagram. and that was three or four months ago. And now we have, now she has 10 clients and I'm paying her roughly a$500 to$1 ,000 commission a week because she is killing it. So it's like, I need about five more Andreas, you know? Yeah, it sounds like, and then shouts out to Andrea. It sounds like you got a really good one there. So yeah, she's in the background saying, thank you. I don't know if you can hear this. Yeah, no problem at all. What have your biggest learnings been as an owner since you started your business?

8:09I think the biggest thing I've learned is that it's really important that you understand something intimately as a business owner before you delegate. But once you do, delegate as soon as possible so that you can free yourself up to go out and do more things. Um, so, so for example, um, you know, one of the things that we do is we publish inner hidden pages on a website for our clients around different subjects. So one of our clients is, um, a roofing company. And so we publish a lot of inner hidden pages around roofing costs, around roofing maintenance, around different aspects, around roofing, even DIY guides and things like that.

9:04And what I found is that I like to enjoy doing this process initially, coming up with a strategy and then documenting the strategy. and then once I have that done and once I test it and I know it's consistent and it's producing results for my clients I then pass that off to one of my virtual assistants one of my team members and they start doing it consistently so that's one of the things that when I first got started I was doing all that myself and it's one thing if you have five or ten clients you can do that But you can't really scale into 10 and 20 and 30 clients or more if you're doing everything yourself.

9:48So that's one of the things I've really loved doing is understanding the process myself and then documenting the process. We're a huge fan of using Loom to record the screen. Loom is a screen recording tool that has a little bubble of your video in the lower left-hand corner. And then you're doing the recording on the screen. And so I can essentially take any of my tasks that I do and record it. And then I can get that transcription and make a step-by-step SOP, standard operating procedure. And then from there, I can then create that as a training for any one of my team members to go there and start doing.

10:31And so that's kind of what I really done in the last actually six months or so is documenting a lot of my process out and then hiring different people to begin to do that for my clients so that I'm freed up to go out there and go after more clients or meet with my clients or do whatever I want to do. Okay, I love it. Love it. So what would you say are some common misconceptions about running a business? This is always a good one. Let me ask an AI to answer that question for me. I'm kidding. Let's see. What are some common misconceptions?

11:08You know, let me think about that. Let's see. I think one of the common misconceptions is that you need to go out there and get a huge loan to be successful. It's not always the case where you need a lot of initial capital to be successful. especially if you are considering going off on your own. So if you're considering going off on your own, what I ended up doing when I first kind of discovered that I really wanted to do this full time was I had a client that was paying me about$5 ,000 a month. And I only had one client. And I was like, man, what happens if I lose this client? Because I'm just month to month.

11:54I don't have an annual contract. And so I was like, all right, well, I need to start getting clients so I can build up my client base. So I went out to the bank and got a$12 ,000 loan. And I said, okay, this will maybe, I could last maybe three or four months if I could make this stretch. And then at the same time, I lost this client because I finished the work that he wanted me to do. And he didn't want to keep paying the money. So at that point, I literally had three months to make this work. It was a total sink or swim moment. And I was like, you know what? I did not give myself the option of failing.

12:37And so I literally had three months to make this thing work. And I did it. After about three months, I was making about maybe three or 4K worth of income. Not enough to totally survive, but enough to rob Peter to pay Paul and then keep going in over and over again. And eventually I got to the point where I was like, all right, make enough income to survive. So you don't need necessarily$50 ,000 or$100 ,000 to start a business, especially if you are working full-time and you're doing what you love on the side. And it's a side gig that could become a full-time gig. You could start slowly moving into that.

13:14Or you could be in a situation like myself where you're like, all right, well, I have some amount of money to make this work. But I need to produce in this time frame to make this thing work. And I think that having that drive to produce and having a time limit and having a goal, those are all things that I found are super important because I'm really big in manifesting and believing something and then bringing that into reality. and I could talk to you for hours about that, but it really comes down to coming up with a goal, coming up with a goal of what do you want to accomplish and then doing actions towards that goal and then saying different things, different affirmations that begin to make that goal a reality.

14:01And, and then sometimes also just letting it go and just merit, letting it marinate, you know, cause you can work too hard, right? So it's a balance there, but getting back to the story, I was able to make it work because I had a goal. I had three months to make it work. And I had a, I had a strategy in place. I joined two different networking groups. I would go every week to these groups and let them know what I do. And I started getting, I would meet with clients face-to-face because everything was more face-to-face back then. And then I started getting clients. And so looking back on it, it was kind of crazy to do.

14:37But it was a sink or swim moment for me. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because a lot of people in that situation, they would actually crumble. Right. But you actually took that on and took that 90 day period. It was like, Hey, I'm going to make this work sink or swim, like you said. And I love that says a lot about you and your character, because a lot of people, you give them a timeline and they're just, it's not going to happen. That, that actually puts more pressure on them to actually fail. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And you know, there's this whole thing that we really talk a lot about in our culture, resilience, you know, resilience is when the going gets tough.

15:10How tough are you? You know, are you going to work late? Are you going to work weekends? Are you going to take personal time to recharge so that when you are working, you're working as super productive. So those are all things that I've learned. And I think, sorry, sorry about that. I think that resilience is super important. And it was, it really surprised myself. I really discovered that I love what I do. And I was really influenced years ago. You're probably going to ask the question about, you know, why I started, you know, why I wanted to get into what I do now. But I will just share that story.

15:52Years ago, before I went full-time into what I do now, I saw Steve Jobs did a speech to the graduates of Stanford in 2005. And I watched this speech on YouTube probably in 08 or 09. And you should totally go to YouTube and look it up if you've never seen it before. But it just blew my mind. I literally almost started crying when I saw this. And I'm not a fan of Apple or the company as a whole, but I found this speech to be so inspiring to me. And basically what Steve Jobs says in the speech is if you can find what you love and you can find a way to make money doing what you love, you'll never work another day in your life.

16:47It will still be work. You're still showing up and getting the task and doing the things and meeting with clients, but it won't feel like work because it is your passion. And I was like, it just hit me at that point. I was like, wow, my passion is helping small businesses grow. And what if I could make this into a career? What if I could make money doing this? I know other people are making money doing this. How do I get there? And it just became like the impetus for this drive to be successful. and it's like, I guess that would be a piece of advice I would give aspiring entrepreneurs is find what your passion is and find if you can find a way to make money with that passion.

17:31And if you can, if you can make money doing what you love, it really won't be work because you're doing what you love. Oh man, I love that. That's super inspirational. Love that, love that. So do you think you are a better entrepreneur or employee? Why? I think I'm a better entrepreneur than employee because I really enjoy the whole idea of learning something new. I'm always learning, always growing. It used to be where I read books all the time. Now I really talk to AIs all the time, which I know sounds crazy. But AIs can just teach you a lot more in a lot shorter amount of time. But I do still find the importance of reading books and being offline and taking long hikes in the woods and, you know, listening to the trees and the wind blow through the trees.

18:21So I'm a huge fan of being offline, but also reading books, you know, old fashioned turn the pages books, but also using the technology we have now to do that. So what I found, though, is learning, continuing to learn and grow keeps you mentally fresh. and to me that is really what being an entrepreneur is is being mentally fresh is is um meeting your meeting with your clients and showing the progress you're making as well as um doing things to expand your own horizon so i find that as an entrepreneur that's kind of what my focus is and i like learning things and then i like testing things out to figure out is this thing i'm learning is just going to help my business and then testing to find out that makes us that if it works.

19:11And if it doesn't, I start documenting that process and then have my team implement that. So as an employee, you're going to be the person that takes these sort of implementations, takes these standard operating procedures, and then does that. That kind of wears me out, honestly, consistently doing something and posting on social media or posting blogs. Have I done it? Do I do it? Yes. But I'd rather have people do that for me because I get wore out from consistent things like that, if that makes sense. I've just learned that's how I sort of am hardwired. So what I do is I document a process and then I have my team implement it.

19:54And then I come in as needed as there's extra, extra high quality touch on top of the process they're already doing. Okay. So how do you handle taking vacations while running your business? So one of the things I've found is that I can tend to be somewhat of a workaholic. I love what I do so much that I kind of tend to work a lot. And my partner has really and I've been working on the balance of work-life balance and having a time where you stop responding to emails, stop responding to text, and you are just completely offline. You're present with your partner or yourself. If you're single and you're solo, you're dating yourself, so to speak.

20:47but the importance is that you're not working. And so I'm at the point where this year, my goal is to do one sort of either weekend or week-long vacation once a quarter. Maybe it's just a weekend once a quarter. Maybe it's a week-long vacation since I'm in the summer. But really what I find is that if at all possible, at least on a weekend, like a Friday to Tuesday for Valentine's Day, We're going to go to one of my clients has cabins and we have this really great cabin that we love to go to. And I'm going to we're going to try to be offline the entire weekend. Maybe maybe use the phone to turn on some music, things like that.

21:31But just try to be offline the entire time and just be present with my partner. Her love language is quality time. And so quality time is quality time when you are focused and you're attending with your partner. You're with them. You're doing tasks with them. You're just being with them. And so that's something I'm working on is the importance of just getting offline. So what I typically do on a weekend is I'll get offline and just stay off the entire weekend and then slowly get back on as I'm ending a weekend vacation. If it's during a week-long trip, what I try to do is let my clients know I'm unavailable for that time.

22:12I'm on vacation, send them an email or a group text, let them know I'm unavailable for that week, and then have someone to take over tasks if something comes up during that week. So that's kind of my goal for this upcoming year is on the week-long vacation to have someone handling the business if anything comes up, anything urgent that comes up. Um, and so that's kind of my philosophy. And what I found is that the more you can disconnect from your business, the more you can be offline, the more you can have quality time with yourself or with your partner or with family and friends, the more productive you are when you are in, when you're in productive mode, when you're at work.

22:58And years ago, um, I had a, um, an ex-wife tell me when we were together, she said, you no, you're a Cadillac. And I said, what? She said, you're a Cadillac, you know, do you know much about cars? And I grew up, you know, drawing. So I grew up like an art class where everyone else was playing sports. I was drawing and reading books. I was so artsy. And, and I was like, all right, so what do you mean? You know? And she's like, well, Cadillacs, you know, the thing about the car. And I was like, kind of, she said, well, Cadillacs are like a high-end brand that requires a lot of maintenance. But if you maintain the car and you get regular oil changes and you are doing all your permitted maintenance on time and you're just consistent with it and you're not driving it too hard, but you are, you know, tender with it and you are with it and you're consistent with all those things and it will reward you with a long life where it takes you to and from work and it's there.

24:00She said, that's what you are. You are a Cadillac. And your tendency is to burn the candle at both ends and go hard, go hard in the paint, so to speak. But reality is the harder you push yourself, the more exhausted you are when you are working. So if you could learn to disconnect and be with me and be with your kids and blah, blah, blah, and be with your family, then you'll be a better productive worker. And ever since then, even though that marriage didn't work out, I took that advice and I was like, yeah, I am a Cadillac. And so it's okay to not work. I need to set aside time to just be present, to be offline, to be in the woods, to be sitting with my partner, watching a show or reading books.

24:54And so it's a still, it's a work in progress, but that's kind of what I've been learning. Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. And then being called a Cadillac, hey, there are worse things to be called, right? I actually love Cadillacs. So that's actually a compliment if I was, you know, somebody was calling me one of those. But yeah, no, I love that. Great story. So what have you, let's see how I can frame this kind of to fit what you do. What have you attributed to the grocery push lead so far? What would you say has led up to that other than your work ethic and obviously your drive? I think a lot of times, you know, when I first started, I guess this is a question between you and I real quick.

25:40Are you going to ask sort of why I decided to start my company or is that one of the questions or not, Cliff? No, I'm not actually going to ask that. No, I actually have that one. So ask that question again and I'll kind of go into. Okay. I will start again. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I typically don't ask that question, but all right, let me see. So what have you attributed to the growth of Push Leads so far? So I think the growth really has, first of all, come down to understanding what my passion is, which is helping businesses grow. And then secondly, taking action items to connect that passion to something that can produce something that our clients can see results of.

26:24They're getting higher in Google. And so what I really did was I completely self-taught. I taught myself how to do, how to show, how to make businesses show at the top of Google. It's called search engine optimization or SEO. and now I'm teaching myself how to show up for the AIs, how to be recommended by the AIs, whether we call it generative engine optimization or SEO or whatever we call it, AI, SEO. There's so many words they're thrown around. But this whole idea of learning the industry on your own, I'm a kinetic learner. I learn by watching people do things and then doing them and imitating them and then doing them on my own.

27:04And that whole kinetic learner of doing things, of testing things, of seeing the results of the testing, and then implementing that has really been probably the foundation for my success. But also meeting with potential clients and showing them my work and then working with them and then getting them, bringing them on as clients is also super important. And so when I first got started doing what I do is it was way back in 2003, I read a book about how to show up in Google. And it was really back then about writing a blog and creating a blog and writing a blog and just do this, just blog, write blog posts about your passion and then share that with people.

27:54And eventually that will turn into income. And I was like, I don't know how that's going to happen, but okay, I'm going to do this. So around 2002, I created a blog. It was called buyapc.org. It was literally a.org domain. And it was the whole idea. If someone's looking to buy a computer, maybe they'll do some research and they'll read my reviews about computers and see and potentially buy a computer from reading my review. So I created this blog and I started posting on it on a weekly basis. And I would just talk about the most popular laptops and desktops. This is before smartphones were out, before all the modern technology.

28:37And for years, I just would write about, I always loved hardware. I'm a total geek. So I would write about computer hardware and I would then share what I loved about this particular piece of hardware. and then I would publish that as a blog post. And then two or three years later, I discovered that, wait a minute, I can write about hardware that's on Amazon. I could write about the most popular gaming desktops, the most popular office desktops for office use, et cetera. So I started doing that, and then I realized that I could basically from there put a link. So somebody clicked that link, and they went to Amazon, and they bought that computer within 24 hours, I would make some money.