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A Website Copy Case Study with Client Tony Howell: Part One · Talk Copy to Me | Content + Copywriting Podcast

• 0:00
  Erin Ollila: For a long time now I've wanted to have a case study on the podcast. I mean, I should actually back up for a long time now I've wanted to refocus some of my own marketing efforts on creating case studies. They are some of my favorite forms of long form content. But it hasn't been something I've prioritized in my own business. And then I met Tony Howell. Tony is a personal branding, strategist and website designer who leads a team over at Tony Howell, and Co. Tony contacted me at the end of 2023, because he was considering completely rebranding his website, he was just entering his 11th year in business. And while we obviously know a website designer can create a beautiful website for his own company, he realized that at this juncture of his business, it was really time to bring in a consultant who could help him with the messaging and the copy of his new website rebrand. So Tony and I started working together in early 2024.
• 1:00
  Erin Ollila: And we actually just launched his website this week, I am so proud of the end result. And I think that there are so many very specific things about our working relationship, and the project itself that can be useful to you that I invited him on the podcast to do a case study meats project examination, so that you could see one behind the scenes of my own business and what it's like to work with me into how decisions are made.
• 1:28
  Erin Ollila: In a project like this. We talk for far too long. In all honesty, Tony and I had a conversation of probably an hour and a half, which I was able to cut down to about one hour. And I just decided that all of it was so valuable that in order to hold your attention, I would break that our conversation into two different episodes. Today, you'll hear the beginning of our conversation, which is about 35 minutes, I hope you'll stay for the entire conversation and come back tomorrow where we talk more about process what we'll both change in our businesses, what we learned from working together and what you can take away from this experience. Hey, friends, welcome to the Top coffee to me podcast. Here. We empower small business owners to step into the spotlight with their marketing and messaging. I'm your host, Erin Ollila. Let's get started and talk coffee. Let's jump to the very last minute of this entire podcast episode. What is your recommendation for the listeners work with me or run screaming Oh, as far away as they can?
• 2:37
  Tony Howell: No, absolutely.
• 2:37
  Tony Howell: They need to work with you. And I will tell anyone listening you know, I binge the podcast before during and we'll continue after our time together. Then when it's the right time for you get onboard that bandwagon and go make magic.
• 2:53
  Erin Ollila: All right, perfect.
• 2:53
  Erin Ollila: The episodes over now you can go about your merry way soundbite all jokes aside, I'm really excited to have you on the show today, Tony, I've never done an actual client case study on the podcast. I've rarely done behind the scenes things yet. The behind the scenes episodes that I have are literally in our top five most listened to podcast.
• 3:15
  Erin Ollila: So I think that this conversation we're about to have has the potential of being really interesting for people according to what the data says.
• 3:20
  Erin Ollila: Thank
• 3:22
  Tony Howell: you for having me.
• 3:22
  Tony Howell: I'm excited as well. I'm know that there's a lot that we can chat about in terms of building your online presence. Yes.
• 3:31
  Erin Ollila: And Tony is a professional at that. So you'll hear bits and pieces about how he works with clients as part of our conversation. The one thing I want to say in the beginning is that Tony actually has a tour coming up. Tony lives in Bali right now. And he is coming back to the big ol USA and touring and doing speaking events in May. My right I'm totally forgetting the dates off the top of my head. It's
• 3:54
  Tony Howell: April 24 in Los Angeles, may the fourth in Chicago and may 18. In New York City.
• 4:01
  Erin Ollila: I mean, I knew there was one in April, I should have just said that right from the get go. We will put all the details for that in the show notes and the podcast description. And we will talk more about it later. Because I think the one thing a lot of people don't think about and they worry about when it's over is the what's next. Like oh my gosh, the website's up. Why am I not suddenly famous with clients like flocking to my door. And I think you're going about this really well and actually planning the launch planning a way to be more visible and drive more traffic and really kind of go with the momentum that you have. But let's start with just setting the stage. Tony had a wonderful website, he actually reached out to me and in his like form that he completed on the free discovery call. I actually like looked at it and I was like, why is this guy contacting me? Like is he trying to sell me something? Because you had done a great job with your old messaging. I think it's important for everyone to understand that you had done it.
• 4:58
  Erin Ollila: yourself. So part of this process was also just kind of having someone finally step into your business and work with you.
• 5:04
  Erin Ollila: So maybe we could jump in and and hear from you as to why this was the right time for you and what kind of like initiated the idea of wanting to work with a copywriter.
• 5:17
  Tony Howell: So I am happy to celebrate that this is our 11th year. And I just said, you know, it's a new era, let's bring on a consultant, I did my research.
• 5:26
  Tony Howell: And Aaron, you might be happy to know that I found you because I was working on a client's website. And I searched in the podcast app sales pages for courses, and I found one of your episodes. And I was like, This is great. And I just kept listening. So after falling in love with you, I was like, alright, well, I'll at least examine a few other choices. But I pretty much already had my mind made up.
• 5:53
  Erin Ollila: And I think that's such a good and important point, too. Because a lot of the times when I talk to leads on Discovery calls, I encourage them to talk to competitors.
• 6:02
  Erin Ollila: Because I think we all bring different things to the table.
• 6:04
  Erin Ollila: And what I may bring is, it could be one strand, but what someone else could bring could be another strength. And just because I have my own strength, that doesn't mean that I'm the best choice. And I also think the reason why I continue to do that in the past eight years, is because I think when people can do the research and weigh, you know, oh, I really like this person for this reason, or that person. For this reason. They go into the working relationships, so much more comfortable. Right?
• 6:33
  Erin Ollila: So, you know, part of the reason I started this podcast, and I've said it in a few different episodes was because I interviewed my own clients for voice of customer research. And I was honestly shocked to hear that of all the people I interviewed. And these were from my highest priced services, they decided to work with me because they on our discovery call, they felt like they trusted me. So their thing was you had such great personality, you showed your expertise, you you felt approachable. And I mean, I'd like to think those things about myself. Sure. But I would have never thought of that as like the selling point. So that made me sit and look at my own business and think, Well, I'm not doing anything to really attract people or give them the opportunity to know that right?
• 7:18
  Erin Ollila: It Yes, sure. If you get on a call with me, you might figure that out. But for everyone else who's not like completing that form, they have no clue how wonderful I am. So that's why I started the podcast because I won the I had little babies at home, I looked like a frazzled hot mess all the time. And I just knew that I didn't have the bandwidth or energy to like film on myself or a YouTube channel.
• 7:39
  Erin Ollila: And I also knew that I was doing an extensive amount of writing for my clients. And as easy as it would have been for me to write for my business like case studies and blog post. It was, it's 10 times easier to say, well, I'll get to that tomorrow because of the amount of writing I was already doing. So I thought, well, I'll just pull up a microphone and start talking like this will be fine. And I think that I'm using my own personal story as the example.
• 8:07
  Erin Ollila: But I think the listeners can understand that the content we create really can work wonders for us, right? Like Tony just searched for a term which I'm going to be like, you know, hands up, whoo, SEO like big went on that one. But he searched for a term because he was trying to help his own client. And he found me but he was then able to listen to more than one episode, which builds that like one approachable illness, trust fullness, so that when he talked to me, he already felt confident in general. And then he did his research by talking to other writers. So once he made his decision, you probably felt so much more secure in knowing that you were you had a partnership with the right person, even though you felt comfortable hiring me Did you worry like, what did I do?
• 8:53
  Erin Ollila: Like, is this the right decision? How are we going to accomplish this in my voice and all of those things that I normally hear?
• 9:01
  Tony Howell: Yeah, I think it was a little fear inducing. It was maybe the most I invested in my business beyond a you know, a couple of courses, but to hire a consultant. But I've been thinking about this a lot.
• 9:14
  Tony Howell: Because you know, I'm reading the new testimonials on my website. And other people kind of have said the same thing.
• 9:21
  Tony Howell: I've been doing it my own way for 10 years. And then I hired Tony, I think that it helps at some point to bring in an outside eye. And as I was kind of thinking about, you know what I could pass on to the listener.
• 9:34
  Tony Howell: It's like, the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest athletes all have coaches and trainers and, you know, watching videos of themselves so you always need that outside person to kind of give that opinion, that expert opinion. And then yeah, fear wise, it was fun to be in the client's shoes and to actually take that customer journey and say like, oh, this is how they feel when they say here's my name and my career. or make me beautiful make me smart and sexy. And yeah, it was, it was super fun.
• 10:06
  Erin Ollila: I want to talk about your coach thing very quickly, just really to echo what you're saying the idea of bringing on a consultant or a coach can look like many different things, too. So Tony has done this for a while Tony was very secure in his business and secure in his own effort of doing the marketing and messaging, but he just knew that it was time to onboard someone else, because there is a different step of up leveling at many different phases. That being said, if you are day one, and you're listening to this podcast, and you are DIY, hang it, you can still work with a coach or consultant. You know, most often for both Tony and I that would look for something like a strategy call. That's something I do very often with clients where we will like outline the pages of their sites, and then they're on their own, and they go do the writing.
• 10:49
  Erin Ollila: And they just feel like they can actually do it. Or they've done a full draft and they'll hire me to review it for them. And, you know, maybe copy edit a few things. So working with a coach, I think is a key element that any business owner should plan for throughout their business journey. One thing you mentioned about you being the client and stepping into the role of a client that I find interesting is, and I'm sure you do this with your clients, but there's always this heavy lifting of homework before I can take over someone's project. You are very prepared like everyone listening right now if you don't know Tony, and you're considering doing a Squarespace website, let me tell you, Tony is prepared and a half. I sent him like last night I sent him a just a handful of questions of things.
• 11:38
  Erin Ollila: Maybe we could talk about some of this. And I made a point to be like, dude, let's just have a conversation like we can talk about anything you want. And Tony supplied me this morning with his full college thesis of answers of how we could go about doing, which I will say as the consultant in this case was how we work together. And I've seen that to tease Tony, because we have a great relationship, and I really enjoy working with you.
• 12:03
  Erin Ollila: But I think if you're looking for a service provider, that's a status super thing to like add to the pros list, just knowing that the person that you're going to work with is a step ahead, like at all times and always prepared. But you'd have to do the client work of filling out like the copy questionnaire, looking at brand messaging, serving clients, and you have a couple of different types of clients. So how did you feel coming into this process? And then doing the amount of pre work that you did? Well, I
• 12:38
  Tony Howell: think one of the reasons why I was so extra is because I know what it's like to be waiting for someone to respond to something or they give like very bland, unclear answers. So I really wanted to try to deliver as much as possible so that things could be as clear as possible. What I liked about the process was and we were very fluid, like we jumped around and it was like this is part this discovery call this part SEO. What I liked was a that how flexible you were, but I could see your mind working in different arenas.
• 13:13
  Tony Howell: What I loved about the survey was how responsive my audience was like, I might even get emotional. It's such an honor to serve these humans, and but then to feel that love coming back to you. And that support that was really wonderful. And I'll be a little self promotional because we all know that's hard to do.
• 13:33
  Tony Howell: But like, please do. My favorite responses were like the words integrity that like the process has a lot of integrity. And the word that really pops to me at the end is that people felt pride and as like a gay man. I'm like, Yes, honey, live your best life. So that was rewarding. But I also feel like yeah, it was, it was a lot of steps, which is why it is an investment to hire someone who not only does copywriting but also SEO so that you get get the full kit and caboodle.
• 14:07
  Erin Ollila: And I think that's a huge thing I'd like to point out is that research is just so much more of the heavy lifting, you know, because we probably spent a couple of weeks on the the client surveys on distilling all of the information that I had already from your brand messaging, because being in this personal branding and website development space, you did have a lot that you could share with me, which I will say it's kind of rare for me and it was very helpful. So it was being able to look at all of the old brand messaging, you have all of the notes that you and your team have kind of created, and you were serving your audience, then we're reviewing those surveys, then we're designing the pages.
• 14:46
  Erin Ollila: You know, one thing we'll talk about in a couple minutes is the fact that you know we started with a four page website and now we're up to like, what do we have like 804 pages on your website which is ugly.
• 15:00
  Tony Howell: as Asian, but I can tell you it's like 331, because I've been using all these like SEO tools and with all the sub pages that's so you open Pandora's box, but you didn't run away. So thank you.
• 15:14
  Erin Ollila: But I think it's so important because the most difficult thing for me, and I'll be honest, I've tried many different things. I'm going to keep trying many different things. But the most difficult thing as a website copywriter, especially when he truly cares about this end result is, how do I quote the price of my projects? Or because no one knows what the pages are going into the project? No one knows.
• 15:40
  Erin Ollila: Everyone thinks like, Okay, well, I'm going to do the standard, like four page website. But I'm also going to do speaking page, great, wonderful. But then when we're doing the speaking page, we realize the site's going to be at a complete loss, if we don't also do a media page, or in the instance of you one of the like, heavy lifts that you did on your own was creating, like individual client pages for your website, for SEO, and not just for SEO, but also for like social proof and all these different reasons why it was really smart for you to develop that. But But during discovery calls, or even that initial project kickoff, that doesn't always come to light. Do you notice the same thing when you're working with clients that like as you work together the project, like the scope of the project expands or adjust when you're working with them?
• 16:24
  Tony Howell: Yeah, and you know, here in year 11, I'm like, kind of way you started this, I'm always questioning and examining and re examining. But I think one of the things that I do is, have a blueprint call. And I always tell people, we're not building your website, we're building your business and your brand. So I try to get as specific and clear. And listen as much as possible so that we can get all of the details, right. And so for example, I'm getting ready to design a theaters website. And I said, I'm going to do my research. And I'm going to kind of outline the way that I understand every educational program, all these things that you have going on.
• 17:05
  Tony Howell: And then I want your team to show up to that call and make sure that I'm accurate, but also come come in and say wouldn't it be cool if that could do this on the new website? So, you know, there's multiple different approaches for how to scope out something. But yeah, it is, as I said to them, I'm like, I don't want to open the attic. And then you're like, oh, yeah, we forgot about that. We want to add these 800 photos. Yeah.
• 17:31
  Erin Ollila: Which I will say though, that isn't very like opening the attic is a very common occurrence. There are so many times once I start digging and digging and digging with my clients that like you find that juicy bit of information that does kind of adjust maybe the messaging or it does adjust the flow of the site. Alright, so I want to kind of jump in talk about something that we did together, that you just mentioned lightly. And it's the idea of how we decided to approach your services page.
• 17:58
  Erin Ollila: Because there was a lot of discussion and a lot of opportunity. And I think it's really good to talk about it and show it like how decision making happened. What I love about your business is that you have a few buckets of things that you do with your clients. And I say that in the sense of a deliverable. So for example, Tony works with clients on personal brands on websites, but he's not just a Lecrae. Well, you're done, I'm going to drop you off. Now. He also helps his clients on other things like communications, such as email or social media, because he sees the entire package have all of this coming together. So could we have broken the service down services page down by buckets, like those categories? Yes, that was one option. The other option is that we could talk about the process of working with you. So knowing that you have these buckets, there is an actual process of like start to, quote unquote, finish of what needs to happen before the next thing happens. And before the next thing can happen. And I think, you know, knowing that we kind of had a lot of discussions about this, I think it's interesting to talk about how decisions are made. So did you come into this project with an idea of what you wanted your services page to look like? or No, and that's saying no, it was totally fine.
• 19:21
  Tony Howell: I sort of took a backseat and said, like, I want someone else to examine everything. But it's interesting because I've learned to trust my own voice more and be myself and whatnot. But I've really also in the recent years, found new meaning and depth to being like, you know, speak to the customer in their words, meaning I'm happy to share my color coded methodology and like talk about it, but that's not what people are coming to me for. So I'm realizing Okay, hold on, before you open up that crayon box like you need to kind of explain it to them in And in the way that it's gonna resonate with them.
• 20:03
  Tony Howell: And so I really liked the choice that we settled on, I'll say here on the record, like our proposals are probably even going to look different because you know, everything is still custom. So even though the process is outlined as ABC on the website, I still make adjustments like you did with me to say, Okay, well, we need to kind of do photos first, or whatever it might be, depending on the client.
• 20:26
  Erin Ollila: Yeah, and I think you answered that perfectly.
• 20:28
  Erin Ollila: Obviously, I didn't know what you say when we when you mentioned that. But I think that sometimes, which is going to sound scary to some people, especially if they're actually considering hiring a copywriter.
• 20:37
  Erin Ollila: Sometimes a lot of what I do is guessing, right? So I sit down, I've done the research, I have data from that research, even if it's not actual research, but it's our conversations, right?
• 20:49
  Erin Ollila: Like the strategy elements, I might sit down and look at those three options that I have and say, like, I don't really know which one's gonna look best.
• 20:58
  Erin Ollila: Once I start writing. I definitely wrote more than what ended up on the page. Meaning I wrote, I think we had, I think what we ended up doing was, there was a section that I gave you, and it was like, here's what it could look like if we show the process. And here's what it would look like if we show like those major buckets.
• 21:15
  Erin Ollila: But here's my guess, right? And now let's see what happens when we need again, to talk about this. Because I think part of it, sometimes it's like you see the draft, and then you get the feelings, the feelings could be like, Oh, no, thank you. Like, I don't think I like this at all.
• 21:36
  Erin Ollila: Or the feelings could be like 10 times more of this, right. And you don't know that though, until you sit down and do the work and then absorb that work, right, like sit with it for a minute, and then make decisions on whether it's working. So I want to share another piece of the pre stuff that we talked about so that people can understand this better. But while you're listening or after the call, go check out Tony services page, because I think it is a really good example of how you can set up a services page. Because, you know, most often when people come to me, or they're DIY doing it, they just have this like, like an everything page, where it's like, Okay, let me just throw that kitchen drawer at it and be like, I can do this, I can do that I can do this, I can do that. Click these buttons to learn more, you know, or not, like booked me right now. And it can be very overwhelming for that user to say, I don't know, what I need, like, how do I know I'm making the right choice? And I know actually, we talked about that on your site because you do offer some things to your existing clients that are not necessarily what your new clients need. So we had to have the conversation of like, well, where do we put this so check out Tony services page, I think that it's very clear for Tony's potential clients to see how they can work together, meaning the options they have and the process of what it would be like to be with you so I think it's a really good example of me saying I'm going to jump back though is because I want to talk about at the beginning so not now that we finished at the beginning we had a conversation about what would be a successful site for you and what you would like to see as your end result. Hope you're okay with me talking about this but we talked about the idea that you are hoping for more of like a SAS like site. So is this okay to jump into this part?
• 23:34
  Erin Ollila: Yeah,
• 23:34
  Tony Howell: except I like to call it sassy now I'm like, Oh, let me sassy please do.
• 23:40
  Erin Ollila: But you know, it's I guess this is why I haven't had case studies that because I'm always like, is this something they'd rather talk about not talk about but I think the behind the scenes stuff is really like the key to what the projects like and and and why things happened. So Tony's hat again, a web design company working with true artists and creatives and I think that's a very important thing to point out so often especially in this you know online business podcast world we talk about what small businesses that are in this world want need and think but if you are a ballerina and you are getting a website to kind of like build this like resume legacy of your work, you don't give a shit about so many of these marketing techniques and ploys that people make of like, let me drag you through this pain point and that pain point and I'm gonna have all of these words on a page you just really want to know what it's like to work with Tony and get that website right like you don't need to like mentally manipulate your clients so you had said to me like hey like I don't even remember the correct name I always mess this up but like Apple for creators website Apple for artists, yeah, Apple Apple artists, right?
• 24:53
  Tony Howell: But this is the thing it's like there's actually now so many platforms there Spotify for artists, Apple for artists. There's like really cool resources for everyone.
• 25:03
  Tony Howell: Yeah,
• 25:04
  Erin Ollila: and you had used that as an example of sites that you liked. And what you had said was, I appreciate that it's giving them details when they need it, it is sparse, you can go to the site, see what they offer, and then move on. And that's so refreshing to me.
• 25:18
  Erin Ollila: Because I have to often educate my clients on why we need less words that are more effective than more words that force people to pay attention when they when you've lost them.
• 25:32
  Erin Ollila: Right. So I was excited to work on your site, because I knew that was a priority for you. But I say that now, though, because that all also made a lot of choices as we had to decide things during this creative process. Like, do we include that? Do we remove that? So I think we used that those examples as kind of like guiding lights of is this sassy? Right?
• 25:52
  Erin Ollila: Like, is this sassy? Or am I doing the same trick of like having a long form sales page on my website? So I say that I set the stage of like, that's what you wanted in the beginning? How do you feel that knowing that you wanted that really kind of played out during the process of writing together?
• 26:14
  Tony Howell: Yeah, I want to connect it back to something that you started earlier, you had said something about, you'll know when you see the draft, and you know, I will say here, I got the first draft. And I was like, okay, and then, and I was like, I don't know. But to me, I had to connect it back. And I was like, this is the way your clients look at like logo design. And then you have to wait for them to kind of have all those feelings. And then they're like, Okay, I really like option one. I'm
• 26:41
  Erin Ollila: so glad you said that, though. Thank you so much.
• 26:44
  Erin Ollila: Because I always I mean, obviously, I think anyone could, this is common sense. But like, sometimes I turn over a draft and my clients like, I want to marry you, this is perfect. And other times I turn over a draft and my clients like, I don't know what to do now. And that doesn't mean either the draft is bad, or we can adjust. And I am comfortable with that. Because it doesn't make my ego feel like I've like I just failed. I think it's actually really important.
• 27:13
  Erin Ollila: One, if you're spending the money in hiring a service provider to walk into this, knowing that that is a possibility. But it doesn't mean that like the ship has sunk, right? I do think it's really important to go into a project being okay, with the first draft not being perfect, because you have the time to adjust and edit and in truth. Sometimes I actually am very wary of perfect first drafts because it makes me think that like we're missing something. And I think that that it's better for my clients to kind of dive a little deeper to be like, how can we adjust to really make this like, extra awesome. So thank you. I'm interrupting you again. But thank you for saying that.
• 27:58
  Erin Ollila: Because I think that's a key thing to say like Tony was a little unsure. And here he is on the podcast. And we started that first second with Tony being like, yeah, okay, you can hire and everyone, right? So
• 28:11
  Tony Howell: it's that thing that I'll also say is, you know, like I learned a lot from you.
• 28:14
  Tony Howell: And I'll just relate back to acting rules, like you learned growing up that like, oh, you would never turn your back upstage on the audience, and then you learn when to break the rule. And that's like, oh, no, actually, it can be a very, very powerful thing to do. And, you know, I, I feel like I have new expansion in different areas, whether it's making things more minimal, making things a little bit more, more breathing wise.
• 28:40
  Tony Howell: And even in this last couple of days, as we're adding the SEO polish, you know, I have released my firm fist on having like three words like Apple for artists and saying no, actually, it's okay to have seven because a it's going to rank for Google and be it's going to connect with your audience that don't understand how those three words go together.
• 29:07
  Erin Ollila: Yeah, that is I'm so glad you said that. It's super vital. And I loved the acting example. Because this is something that I just don't think is easy to teach. And I have taught strategy before to other copywriters, I think that there is a learned element to strategy. So using SEO is the best way to showcase this. SEO has very clear rules. And 30% of the time, you have to break those rules in order to be effective. But knowing when that 30% of the time is and how to do it is very difficult if you're not an expert in it right. So Tony and I have had we mentioned that our project developed into something more than that four page website, and we can talk details about that in a second.
• 29:54
  Erin Ollila: But Tony did a lot of DIY work himself on writing drafts for a lot other pages, and I did a lot of like editing and checking.
• 30:01
  Erin Ollila: And when we get to the SEO element, which I've done the research for in the beginning of the project, but I implement it once the messaging is completed at the end, we were co creating a lot of SEO. Now Tony has a lot of best practices, and he understands them. But then there was this element where I had to work with you to both educate.
• 30:23
  Erin Ollila: Yet what I found is I'm giving you two sets of different advice. Like one thing we talked about was like not wanting to put a lot of descriptive words on those main pages like your homepage, your about page, specifically, like the SEO slug, like you wouldn't put like Tony howell.co/home of Tony Hallo, duck ko website as the slug, you would just have that slash with no slug afterward, however, and here I am being like, no, Tony, we need to just do one word or whatever it is, however, other pages I was like, well, Tony, let's have a lot of words in the slug, because we want to now target multiple keywords. So I think it can be very difficult to know when to make these strategic decisions if your DIY ng things, and it can be uncomfortable or confusing for the client. Because, you know, my clients don't need to have a full on. I mean, you're a little different as a website designer, but my other clients don't need the full understanding of SEO to know that I've done a good job.
• 31:27
  Erin Ollila: But they still have questions, you know, so like, why did we use this phrase here, like I, I thought this phrase would work better on the about page. And sometimes it's just like, we little concessions have to happen or you know, over explaining needs to happen and changes to the to the approach of SEO need to happen. So I think that that acting example was so on point, right? Like learn the best practice, learn the rule, have that like set in stone, but it'll be the Mason and chip away at it when it is like when you can when it's actually effective. And I think it's hard to know when it is effective if it's not something that you're really like a professional in.
• 32:10
  Tony Howell: And I want to just put it in a pen here to say that SEO people can be some of the worst humans in the world. But you know, you are the brightest.
• 32:22
  Erin Ollila: It's an interesting situation of an SEO person.
• 32:27
  Erin Ollila: Because I've done SEO for over a decade like true SEO, I will always tell people, I'm not so much of a tech SEO person, but like content, SEO, I have an immense amount of experience.
• 32:38
  Erin Ollila: But so often, especially in the online business world, people profess themselves to be SEOs because they've taken like an Uber Suggest course. And they don't understand how much nuance goes into SEO, especially with that, like the future of SEO is drastically changing. And I will be the first person to say I don't know what the future looks like. And when people tell you they do just run like they don't even listen to them. Like just put your fingers in your ears and go on with your day because they don't know what it looks like. I'll get off that high horse. Yeah, but thank you for that example, because I think that's really helpful for people to see like, sometimes there are there is rule breaking. And I think it goes to show that that's why trust in the service provider that you're working with is really important.
• 33:22
  Erin Ollila: Because you as the client may think like, Well, why would we do this like or? I don't know if Aaron's making the best decision and I think sometimes you just have to kind of put your faith in and say, Well, I'm gonna let them make the decision. All right, friends. That's it for today. We will be back tomorrow where I asked Tony about how he felt about what I just said. Do you think that it was hard for him to put his faith in me easy?
• 33:47
  Erin Ollila: Well, you'll find out tomorrow that I can promise you, I hope you enjoyed this episode. And I really think that there's a lot of great stuff tomorrow. So I'll see you there. And until then, have a great evening. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Top copy to me. If you enjoyed spending your time with me today. I would be so honored if you could subscribe to the show and leave a review.
• 34:16
  Erin Ollila: Want to continue the conversation. Head on over to Instagram and follow me at Erin Ollila. Until next time friends