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Too Stupid to Quit: From College Dropout to $300K/Month Law Firm Marketing Agency · Agency Advantage

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, welcome to the first episode that I've had back since relaunching our podcast, The Unfucked Agency.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Brad, and today I have a guest who began the same business three times before he finally made something happen out of it.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: He dropped out of college at the age of 21, got robbed by a franchise that went bankrupt, was valeting cars and waiting tables, broke at 23, then got sued by the AG along the way, and then watched COVID wipe out every client he had except one.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: That one client is a personal injury attorney, and that's the entire reason that his company exists today.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Kyle Patnote is the founder of Case Engine, which is helping elite law firms win the age of AI search.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Kyle, welcome on.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Brad.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's hilarious.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when you say it like that, that's funny.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, it's one of those things, uh, you know, uh those who are listening go back to like some of our past episodes for the rebrand.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I always tell people like, they're like, Man, these questions are badass.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I got prompts.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: We take your guest form, you fill out, throw it in chat GPT, and it like generates this great intro and uh all the different questions and everything like that.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, so obviously I kind of did your high-level intro of like what you've been through and everything like that.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: Before we get into that, why don't you kind of give me like a little bit more in depth, 60 second version or so, like what case engine is today, who you serve, what you actually do for them, and like how big you guys are as an agency.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So case engine, uh, we do law firm marketing.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's full service with we we started out with just SEO.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we kind of got known for the Google Map results, and and now it's kind of transformed as we've grown as an agency and and gotten you know a little bit more experience.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: We've offered um social media, paid advertising, uh, PPC, streaming TV, but also a heavy focus on optimizing for AI search.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So GEO, AEO, whatever you want to call it now, and expanding our our service offering from just kind of web content to also launching podcasts and video content and helping them with like Reddit and Core and those other platforms.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: So awesome, awesome.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I noticed in your background you got like the plaque with Josh Nelson, seven figure agency and that program, everything.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: So like Josh says, like, you know, I think of like a lot of companies go into like the home service contractor niche, right?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like home service is not niche enough.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like you got to go down to like roofing uh or HVAC, right?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you guys do uh your first client after you lost everything with the pandemic, uh, which looking back was probably like the silver lining in the pandemic for you, right?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: Is is that whole transition.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: But do you guys just service personal injury attorneys?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Or are you now like to the point where you've grown to the point where it's like, yeah, we focus on personal injury attorneys, but also these other like niches in the in the law firm world?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So for the first um until about a year ago, we we were only doing personal injury.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, yeah, so so the 80, 90% of our client base is personal injury.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're getting more criminal family, you know, estate planners and and you know, we've grown the team to over 30 people.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we're able to kind of take on uh more of that work and expand kind of our our SLPs in a way to to accommodate, you know, the different niches in our writing and our content abilities.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: So um, you know, it's crazy.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people like I talk to, you know, with my company, Talent Fuse, it's like I talk with a lot of agencies.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's like some people niche down, some people don't niche down.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Looking back, like, do you think, and I'm kind of going through my notes here, like, you know, your first company, 21, dropping out of college, was what St.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Cloud SEO.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so like I imagine back then you weren't niche down.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like looking back, do you wish you just would have niche down into a certain niche from the beginning here?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, I think once you get big enough, you know, you get into maybe five, 10 plus million, probably 10 plus million, even 20, depending on which niche you started with.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, then I think it's not a big deal.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, right away, you know, especially, you know, coming from me to understanding the uh business owner and their actual problems and what kind of clientele they want, what's the value per client.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I think it's just better.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then two, you don't have to reinvent your marketing um over and over, which is what I was doing as a dentist, real estate, roofer.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like, it was it's harder, I think, to repeat success in that.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So like you you commented on Josh Nelson.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it, it's it's when you're building a traditional agency like this with full service, it's like it you want to be niche, and then two, you get the trust from the clients.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it's one of those things like you know, I went through so with my marketing agency, like we just did home service companies.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: It was like, as you said, recreating the wheel, you know, a roofer, an HVAC company, a lawn landscape company, whatever it may be.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so every time I was having to learn a new client in a new industry and everything like that.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so when I launched talent fees, I was like, I'm doing this differently.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna focus on marketing agencies and just niche down on there.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it took me, I'd say, I think almost nine and a half months to get to the monthly recurring revenue that I had in my agency when I sold the agency, like just by niching down, right?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that's all organic personal branding, content, like those types of things.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: But like at first, I was very hesitant of like, I'm just gonna limit myself to just marketing agencies and not work with anybody else.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it's kind of, you know, I'm sure you probably went through this too at the beginning.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's very like scary in the sense because you're like, but I could go take this other revenue, right?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, looking back, like one of the best choices that I've made.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's funny you say that it's like the same thing when it was basically before COVID hit.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I had another friend that used to teach agency owners.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's my good friend, Joel Kaplan.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he was more in the social media marketing, but you know, he is kind of telling me that, and once COVID hit, I was forced to do it.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, basically, like right, because a lot of the traditional budget, even even law firms still, you know, I think struggled obviously during that period, but yeah, I think a little bit less than than obviously a dentist shot not not being able to open up, um, right, etc.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: But but yeah, it was it was basically like I think it was six to eight months, or it could have even been faster than that.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a while now since, but it grew more than the agency before that, which was generalist.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it's more fun to run too.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah, absolutely, because it's like it's the same process, it's the same thing every single time.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: You just gotta change things based off the clientele on there.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's go back to you know, you being 21, dropping out of college, you began St.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Cloud SEO.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, I look back at right now, I am paying those loans back from my degree, right?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I went through, I finished the undergrad uh and I went off to college, like freelancing build websites, you know, prior to me going off to college, did that all throughout, you know, my undergrad.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then I went and did my MBA too.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh because I thought, like, okay, I'll I'll I'll do the MBA to have that like extra piece of paper and that plan B in case entrepreneurship never works out, blah, blah, blah.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and looking back, I'm like, I shish, I should have just been done after my first year, right?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so it's always like hindsight's 2020.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: But looking back, like what were you thinking at the time?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like, hey, I'm gonna go all in on this, I'm gonna drop out of college, and like this is it.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Did you have any like, is this gonna work out?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Is it not gonna work out?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what was going on then?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh at the time, you know, it and it was like more sudden.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't um, it was uh I went to like an email marketing um basically like seminar, yeah, and they were teaching.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was like through, I think like Bob Proctor, he's like a self-development guy.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was learning in college.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And anyways, I went to this, I I had like almost no money.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think I had I I have it in like a journal.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was like 300 bucks or something that I went to this, I went to this conference, it was a hundred bucks, and they were actually gonna give you your money back.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I even requested that I was just so broke that I was like, oh, you know, which which yeah, I paid a ton for learning, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: But at the time I was just so broke.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: But but yeah, I went to that and I got back, you know, and learned basically what SEO and and kind of just online marketing was.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And strangely enough, it was actually like a really peaceful time in my mind when I was like, oh, I'm gonna do this, like ultra confident.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had all the enthusiasm, zero skills, you know, to execute.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but while everybody kind of close to me was like losing their minds in a in the rightful, rightful, rightfully so, you know.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, it was like I was so excited.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I was so excited, I was so relieved that I could like find something that I was like, wow, I can like really like focus for a long period and enjoy doing this.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I and I was one track minded.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I actually haven't been off of that train since.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like I've been just trying to learn originally just SEO to a very deep knowledge.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah, it was a great time, actually.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, and I'm sure like people at the time was probably like, you know, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, whatever, like, dude, you're crazy.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like you you have to go down this path.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And and what was it that you were even going to college for?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: I hope it wasn't some like high uh income earning degree.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was just it was just uh business management.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I was in the business school, yeah.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so just a generalist, I actually had no idea.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, like I I was I didn't really feel like my my parents have a small trucking company, so I kind of grew up around that type of, you know, just a business owner um household.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I just knew that I didn't want to, I wasn't that great of an employee, I thought, of like in the corporate world.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like I saw that and I was just like, you know what?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think like I didn't I wasn't drawn to it.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't think I was gonna perform that well into that role.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, let's just try to to go this other route while I have no responsibilities, essentially.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then you uh and then you blink, you got all the responsibilities in the world, right?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so you know, you you you go through St.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Cloud SEO, and then uh I'm gonna kind of jump forward a little bit.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like you you you kind of moved to Colorado, you could go through this franchise, right?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: So, like walk me through this franchise.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Was it I'm looking at my notes, like your online advisors, right?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so was it a franchise marketing agency?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of walk me through all this.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the the franchise, um your online advisors was St.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Cloud SEO rebranded in when I moved to Colorado.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um because yeah, I got a client and then I just you know it didn't make sense.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh St.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Cloud's a town in Minnesota.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I rebranded it and then I bought into this franchise because I was terrible at website uh design and development.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to do SEO.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it was like a newer franchise, but they had all the templates built, you know, the business could just select like one of the 15 templates, and yeah, you know, it did all the stuff that I didn't want to do.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, and again, I I still I had a couple of clients with the St.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cloud SEO, enough to like quit my job, and then I didn't know how to sell or market.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: So then I, you know, ended up churning those and had to go back to surveying tables and valeting cars when I moved to to Colorado.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and so then I had to take out this loan to buy the franchise.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And long story short, it wasn't that many months after where it was just crickets, and I was basically left holding the bag on that.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then you're having to, you know, for months or years later, you're then like trying to pay off that loan, right?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like this is from something that didn't work out.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I I know that very well, right?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: So was uh just just so I know, was that franchise, was that like a franchise marketing agency or was the franchise a whole different thing?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was a franchise marketing agency.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay, yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've heard uh all the good, the bad, and the ugly about going the franchise marketing agency route um and all those things.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: So you're you're now 23, you know, broke new city, serving tables, balleting cars.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh most people quit there.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you kind of kept in it.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like what what kept you in it and kind of kept you in the mindset of like, hey, yeah, this hasn't worked out twice now, but I'm gonna give it a shot a third time.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it was one of my good friends, uh, they started a catering company in in Colorado, and they basically had me do their SEO and and I did a great job within like the first 30 or 60 days.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's still a client today, actually.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this was in, I think, so 23 is 2016.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so then I moved to Colorado in 2017.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I had them for just a few months before I moved.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they were so ecstatic with my service, and they were just getting tons of leads, they were getting booked out, and they, you know, they just launched this catering company.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's called uh shout out mountain crust.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, great, okay, you know, they've grown so much since, but it's it gave me kind of like hope.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then he referred me into um a charity there in the city, and the owner just happened to be a billionaire, and and she was connected to um another great uh marketer that sold their business kind of like yourself.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um her name was Lisa, and they brought me into an agency that worked with you know, like NetApp and Microsoft, and I was kind of like the contracted SEO guy.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So so I got a lot of agency experience that I never got working for a company, you know.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: If I would have gone back, like uh if you know Josh Nelson's story, you went and worked for an agency first, you know.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I probably should have done that.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: It would probably cut some time off.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: But this was in some sense that for me.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I was I was just the SEO guy for them.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when my career kind of like actually took off and started to make make some money and quit my my serving and bartending jobs.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I even think like, you know, you mentioned like Josh going back and working for an agency, right?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, in between his agency had and then the agency has now.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, I think back on my journey, like I had a fintech company that didn't work, and I had a uh staffing company that worked just with startups that basically offered me a job to go work for them.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I like told my wife, like, I should go take this job because I can learn how to hire offshore, and then I can like help marketing agencies do that, right?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then she's like, No, like you've always been freelancing and doing your own agency, like you just need to go all in on this agency.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: So the agency route is the one I went.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like looking back, I probably should have gone to work for that guy because I could have learned the ins and outs and everything that way.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I then went down the route of just doing it myself through my agency, and then we're kind of like full circle back to where we're at, right?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's always funny looking back and seeing kind of how those things play out and all that.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, one way or another, you're gonna learn.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's yeah.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, you will.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, you you have this client that you know brings you into this charity that kind of cracks the the door open in a way.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Some people would call that luck.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you are probably like, no, like that's not luck, that's hustle.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: That is years and years of basically like having my head shoved into the ground before I finally got that like one client that like really opened things up um for you.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so you're going down that path.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: You you kind of get this momentum under you, and then you start launching your own Legion sites.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: And somewhere in that roller coaster, you get sued by DAG.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what what all happened, like what all went into that?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: Because like I I have as an example, I have like a roofing Legion site here in Missouri, right?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: But like in Missouri, you don't have to have a roofing license to own a roofing company, which is actually kind of scary in a sense, right?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um but like I should be fine, right?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: But you probably thought you were fine then, and then and then what happened?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like years to like later after I launched that site.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so what happened was is yeah, we were having success with the agency, and and it wasn't like anything big, it was like me, some VAs, and and and a couple people, but it we had a bright idea of basically, yeah, we want our own sites.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: We don't, you know, we're not gonna deal with clients, we're just gonna get leads and and sell them.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we went into, in my opinion, what it was kind of like a shady niche, I didn't really realize at the time, but it was like car title loans.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, people taking loans against their car, and it has a high search volume, like big SEO kind of lead gen niche.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and yeah, I mean, we were ripping it, and basically what happened was is this was in the days of I I don't remember exactly the year, but it was when you could create Google listings, um Google My Business listings, and and uh what we did was is I created like 2,000 of them or something like that across the United States, and and I was ranking the website and and we were making pretty decent money.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think it was maybe like 50, 60k at the time, and I was, you know, I was pretty young, so it was nice.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and so what happened though was is all of them got suspended, you know, of course, with the updates.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then shortly after that, we didn't know this, but um in Pennsylvania it's illegal to do card title loans, but we were just the lead provider, we didn't, you know, do anything with the leads other than just give them to the broker, but they were doing some shady stuff and like having them go go to like Delaware or something.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like so we got hit by the AG of Pennsylvania to being like, hey, you guys owe us tens and tens of thousands of dollars, and I'm like, oh man, like this sucks.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we had to go back and forth with him and and pay a pretty good lump sum, and and you know, that ended up completely not working, essentially, because of all of that, and then just we had like 20 VAs helping us.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was kind of a mess, to be honest.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was a huge lesson learned on, you know, trying to, I was trying to take some shortcuts, I think, yeah, in that sense.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's uh it's crazy.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: And like you you didn't even think at the time, like, hey, like it's it's illegal to do it here, and I could get sued for that, and uh and all those different things, and then you have this, you know, this huge bill, and it's like it's not like it's a uh medical debt in a way that you could just kind of like run for, like it's the AG of Pennsylvania.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it means like you need to pay us by this game.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: You don't you don't get to choose uh any terms, basically.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, that is crazy.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: So so this happens, and so then you're hit in the gut with this, and then the pandemic happens, and every client but one quits paying their invoices.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like how close in a time period was this, like from you paying the AG to then the pandemic happening, like you going from all these clients to none.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, with with when we got served to when COVID happened, that was pretty tight.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um then we basically were, you know, we were fighting it for a little bit.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that it was probably, I'm not sure the exact timeline, but maybe like a year or so after um after the fact.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it was it was like we knew we were gonna have to pay it.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was just we had to, you know, give all the evidence and you know, we subpoenaed everything that we had.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it's like in your mind, this you get this, right?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: This happens, and then you you know in your mind you you owe all this money, and then the pandemic happens and you lose all your clients, and you're like, I don't know how I'm gonna pay this.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, it was it was terrible.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: I like I I lost a bunch of hair and got really stressed out during that period of time because I didn't know, yeah, what what what was, you know, I didn't know what to do, essentially.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: So and this something like, you know, obviously as I mentioned, this is the first episode back having, you know, with our rebrand of the podcast and everything, like this kind of the segment of the of the podcast where I call like the the fucked era in a way, right?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is everything you went through.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so like now it's kind of pivot into like what kind of going from fuck to unfucked, like what got you?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: You you you now have this client that's a personal injury attorney.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: I imagine like you just come to that client and say, Hey, everybody has canceled, but you why haven't you canceled?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: Can you make introductions?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what went into that that then kind of like uh snowballed this effect, I'd say, of you guys seeing this for this rapid growth after that?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was definitely like, hey, this niche uh isn't at Affected by you know COVID or economic downturns.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I was basically, you know, with my buddy Joel at the time and uh the one that was teaching agencies, and we were just looking at, hey, what which niche should I go into?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, I'm already winning at this one.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a you know, it's a high competition.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: They they they pay if you can get the results, they pay well.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I just worked on 2,000 GMBs, so I was pretty good at ranking GMBs.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, you know what?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds pretty good.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't we just go into this?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and to get kind of, I guess, like the unfucked, it was like, let's rebrand again.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: So the third time for the agency, you know, we'll go to case engine.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And for the first time, I actually advertised my services.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first week I advertised, I used that client, I got his permission and everything to use it as a case study.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: I advertised a case study and I signed up.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was like a 5k a month client within the first week.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that didn't continue to that, you know.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: I still had, but it was like, wow, okay, like that gave me so like some um, you know, hope that I I I got I'm gonna get through this just fine.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's it it's crazy.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: You're like in that moment, you're like, oh wow, like I just had to run this ad and just talk about this one client's like results and brand as you know, case engine, and like boom, it, you know, I wouldn't say boom overnight it happened, right?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: You you you get that one big hitter at the beginning, and I'm sure the ads began to kind of like you know flatten out a little bit, and you had to figure out how to increase the ad budget and change you know the approach and everything like that.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: But it was like wow, like this is actually gonna begin doing something.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so now you know, you you have these all these law firms, and and I want to kind of add in here, you dropped out of college in what 2014?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: So you guys are now doing 300k a month in monthly recurring revenue.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and you and I talked before we hopped on it.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: Give some months that are a lot more, some you know, but 300 is a good average for right now.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: And you began this back in 2014, right?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like, and so for for those who are listening, like Kyle didn't just launch an agency last year and hit 300k months overnight.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, like this was years and years of pain and suffering and and being sued and all that stuff, like to be able to get to this point.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so, like, right now you guys are even going through somewhat of a pivot of like, hey, we're focusing a lot on like AI search, right?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, SEO, you see all these people, SEO's dead, this and that.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and everybody's worried, like, our agency is gonna be around anymore, and everything like that.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure you're sitting here like, no, like we're leaning the hell into it, and our our clients are probably your clients are probably paying top dollar to be able to get ranked inside of Chat GPT, Claw, Gemini, all that stuff.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just you know, I think everybody should be a little bit of like that nervous excitement on on what's happening.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a big change in search, but at the end of the day, it's it's like it's a great opportunity.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's I'm I'm I'm happy that I actually have resources to pivot properly and clients that trust us that are like, hey, I actually love these ideas because we were pitching these clients.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, way back, I mean, probably quarter two of last year.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, hey, you know, I'm talking to a uh my other industry expert friends in search, and I'm like, hey, you know, what what what exactly is happening?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is going to happen?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Chat GPT is the leader, but we're long on Gemini and Google.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, so I so we basically went through and and I I pitched some of the clients on it, kind of got some feedback.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Some of my clients are like my actual friends too.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I could get some honest feedback um with what we're trying to do, which is basically just expand the service offering and do it at a at a level, right, where they're paying top dollar and there's great outcomes, their signing cases, you know, it's not a ton of time from them, but you know, I mentioned, yeah, before we hopped on, it's like, you know, we're launching just like this podcasts for them and doing all the production, all the uh editing, posting, social media, clipping, um, you know, creating their creating their voice, um, creating ebooks, and it yeah, it and really just doing a lot more for the clients because the traffic has diversified, you know, across all these channels.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it you if you can be one of those first movers, it does feel like SEO in the early days, and even when I got in in 2014, that was still pretty early for SEO.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Where a lot of the spam tactics worked, and and oh yeah.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it it kind of feels like that, even but now I'm actually ready um for it versus before I didn't know what was going on.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: So well, and and you you have those resources, you know, team-wise, bandwidth wise, and like financially also to like take risk, right?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: And like figure out what works and what doesn't, and and everything along those lines too.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like it's not like what it's been of like this huge um algorithm shift you see in Google, and it's like you you take a risk of like going down the certain SEO tactic, and then like that gets blacklisted, right?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: And everybody's ranks drop.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like this was at the beginning, like a whole new era.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's like, well, what do I have to lose?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, we keep doing what we're doing for our clients, and then let's try to also do this for them too, um, which obviously has been uh has been amazing for you guys.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: And like consumers are are getting to this.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like, even just today, like I mentioned before we hopped on here.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like, my wife, we have two under two.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: She's at home with the kids, and like she's wanting to get back.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: She's nine weeks postpar, I want to get back into working out and everything like that.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I don't want to take time away from the business to be able to go and you know watch the kids so you can go work out during the day type thing.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I want, you know, our evenings and weekends protected for us as a family.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like using Chat GPT to like find places that shouldn't go work out that have a daycare.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's this burn boot camps.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, ChatGPT, do deep research and find all the reviews on Reddit and consumer forums about this place and like come back and tell me about like how good or crappy this place is.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: And like I was doing something else, and I came back to push notification on my phone with the report of like, hey, this is a great place for your wife to go, type thing.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so I I imagine like people are doing that from a personal injury aspect too, of like, hey, I I got in a car accident and you know, the person didn't have insurance or they had, you know, very minimal insurance.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: My neck hurts.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how how much can I get paid off this case, right?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it's for you guys to get your clients ranked for that.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's exactly.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the way that basically the user has adopted the the the new technologies of yeah, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, whichever one they use, it's it's it's it's a much more personalized, you know, feedback loop where they're kind of rambling.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I want this, this, this, and this, this is what happened, you know.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if, you know, if you're not going really deep with, you know, for for a personal injury law firm on, you know, these are the types of cases we've done, these are the types of um, you know, settlements we got, and you know, answering basically all of those questions, organizing it and having like a holistic plan versus like four different vendors, one's doing their own thing, one's doing their own thing.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not like a holistic strategy because they're pulling from YouTube, Reddit, you know, social media outside of just your website.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, for for us, our thought process is creating that library of expertise that all it's congruent and it's the same message, it's the same voice, you know, and put in the on and then same thing with the press and and pushing that all out, you know, basically as as aggressively as we can.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so they get seated, you know, in these LLMs and and get shows, and at least you know, they find them there, and then they can go to Google and check out the reviews and different things, but it's doing a lot of the legwork now, even yeah, and then everything else kick kicks back in and making sure you're running Google ads and meta-ads, so you're doing the retargeting off of ChatGPT and all that stuff.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, so it's this kind of like omnipresence, full cycle engine in a way.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: So if there is like a uh, you know, happens to be like a firm owner that's listening to this podcast, or even obviously like another agency owner that's listening and they're wanting to begin or like really get into this process of getting cited by AI and present in these apps, you know, this month, next month.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: What are like the first three moves that you would recommend them to make?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the first three in no particular order.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would say that you got to do the stuff that matters and get cited that you're not doing right now.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I could tell you what law firm owners are not doing.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're not getting on YouTube regularly and basically answering that.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: So Gemini, I just looked this up like yesterday, and it was 29.2%.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: YouTube gets cited for Gemini.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's the number one.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and Reddit is either, I think it's like number three.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's basically putting out content that is, you know, answering and being actually helpful to the user to build that trust with the LLMs and everything, and the user on those two platforms.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one is get on YouTube, the second one's get on Reddit.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: We do that for them as a service because let's get real, most people are just aren't gonna do it.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: You have some top hustlers that are gonna do it, otherwise, nobody's gonna do it consistently month after month, year after year.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, number three, um, I would say is getting this is kind of like a combination because you only gave me three, but it's like reviews across platforms and then basically case results uh and getting those pushed out in the press.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, uh those two things kind of go together for me because it's like you're serving your clients, you're showing your expertise and get it out and push it out to the world.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think those three things, because a lot of people are doing website content, they're getting on listicles, they're doing, you know, this other stuff, um, which originally or you know, originally was always SEO and still will be SEO.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah the technical, there they should be, if you're hiring somebody, they should be doing that.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it's these other elements that I don't think the I don't think the agency has evolved yet, or at least that's what you know our competitive advantage is um moving forward with law firms and and doing that for them.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: So then, you know, as we're wrapping up here, I got I think two last questions here.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what is a piece of advice that you used to give clients that you would never give clients today?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, that's hilarious.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um which which would I give?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um man, probably back in the day, um, it was just go get on as many high domain authoritative websites you could.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: You pay top dollar and yeah, and you know, I I just I wouldn't I wouldn't give that a blanket statement anymore, you know.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um you'd you'd want to do more of like a sniper rifle approach um for the links and have certain criteria and then same thing for the brand mentions um for LLMs.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and then you you know, as as you were building your team, one of the notes I have is here is like you you spent years at that like 20 to 30k a month mark with like no real team at all.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: What would you say looking back like what waiting to grow your team cost you?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I mean it's still costing me money right now.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, it's like over like the last year or two, and and you know, I need to shout out uh some of my partners, uh Gabe and Jake.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jake, um, you know, just to backtrack a little bit, you know, when I when I started uh getting more clients through the ads for the personal injury attorneys, he was like one of the top sales reps over at Find Law Super Lawyers, and my one of my great friends from college, and he jumped ship over um to me, and and that's really what you know propelled us as well.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and then my friend Gabe came over and helped with operations.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: But but yeah, um, I would say that it it literally is the bottleneck in the agency space to get top talent.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can get to certain levels with yourself or some BAs and and and whatnot, but to really unlock, I think, ultimate growth um and results is the team still in the AI era of automations and automating SEO, it's still team.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: You need the top talent.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it's one of those things like you you always have to balance this of like, you know, do I have the money to hire this person?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: And if I hire this person, you know, what if I have a couple clients cancel, you know, all these different things.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like sometimes you just have to do it.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: And like we're in that mode right now.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I I had mentioned our fractional CEO.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, look, dude, I don't care if I have to go in the red for a couple months.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, I I need to get these team members on board because we have to be able to like, I'm already seeing this growth, and it's like we we have to just keep going, and I can't worry about all the other noise that's going on.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you just have to grow and keep adding people on, you gotta hire the right people too.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, sometimes somebody who you think is a great hire isn't gonna work out right.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, how can you get them off the bus as fast as possible so you can get the right person on the bus too?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and we all go through that where we hire the right people, the wrong people, everything like that.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Brad, I couldn't I couldn't agree more with that.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: It it's been basically been the journey for for me as well.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I'll get a give a shout-out to one of your team members.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it was your admin Selena.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I've had so much going on, and like she followed up with me like four times to like make sure that we got this.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like she was like on on top of it.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then like she messaged me earlier this week as we as I mentioned, we're going through relaunch.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I didn't have our new guest form you know created or anything like that, and my team's busy.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so she's like, Hey, like, can I have Kyle prep for anything?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like, ask me all this question.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I'm gonna get you this form, I promise.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like, thank you for being so patient.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yes, like having a rockstar team, and like I imagine had you not had Selena on your team doing outreach to get you on podcast, like you probably would never be on podcast, right?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because you're so busy focused on other things, and you shouldn't have you shouldn't have to be doing like the like admin work to get you onto the podcast.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you should just be able to show up and record and hop off and and move on to the next thing, right?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a great example of finding great talent and you know, holding on to them and recruiting great talent.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, that's one of the reasons too.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: I love being on, you know, shows like this with you, Brad, is just getting our message out, what we're doing.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, you know, we always will interview top talent and and hear you out and try to find a place, you know, for you on the team.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, absolutely.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, as we as we close here, last question for you.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: For anybody who's listening and has gone through like in some way what you've gone through, like try to launch an agency three times or you know, went through something where all their clients canceled overnight or whatever it may be, like, what's one piece of advice that you would give to them?
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think you have to be too stupid to quit.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, you I think there's a lot of overthinking and you know, you can pivot a little bit, but I mean, if you're truly dedicated to making it work, then you need to put your head down and and make it work.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, absolutely well.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: Kyle, thanks again for for hopping in.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, three businesses to get you to the one that worked.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, that's the whole show right there.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: If you got something out of this, please share this episode so we can get what Kyle and his team are doing at Case Engine out to the different attorneys out there in the world.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Brad, again, your host.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: This was the Unfucked Agency.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: See you again next week.