93% of AI Searches Never Click a Website: Dave Wade on What That Means for SEO

Jordan:0:01
Welcome back to the High Ticket AI Systems Podcast. Everyone, please welcome the winner and only Mr. Dave Wade. Dave, you doing today, my friend?

Dave Wade:0:08
Really good, really good.

Jordan:0:10
Absolutely. We're happy to have you on. But first and foremost, we're all curious, what's your offer and who is it for?

Dave Wade:0:17
What's my offer? that's different. Depending on what industry I'm talking with. Our offer is just real results. Kind of our niche that people like about us and people stay with us is because we're not just looking at clicks. We don't care about clicks. If you have 10,000 clicks, you're not getting a damn phone call. Who cares? So we track calls, we track conversions. We're saying, okay, hey, yeah, you got clicks, but hey, what's your phone calls at? And then we can turn back on the client. I actually did that today. It was really funny.

Jordan:0:36
Right.

Dave Wade:0:46
One of my clients, had 97 calls and he only answered 46 of them. And I said, Hey, you've been busy, but you're not answering. He's like, well, I answer him. said, no, here's the 40th. You know, you only answered this many. so now I got him a call, a calling service here locally that he has to use so he can answer those calls because he's just too busy and he's doing the right thing. You can't answer a call in front of a client, right? But get someone to answer the damn phone. I'm bringing people to the door and you're just not open the damn door. So that's our thing is it's,

Jordan:1:09
mandatory. and

Dave Wade:1:15
Halls not clicks is kind of our thing.

Jordan:1:18
I like that. So it sounds like you predominantly do LSA ads or you create funnels for home service businesses and the funnel is a call funnel.

Dave Wade:1:28
We do a little bit of everything, right? So we do organic SEO and local SEO is our prime. Then we do Google Ads, LSA Ads, we do meta ads. We do go high level as well. So depending on what the client wants is what we'll do. Some people just want the phone ring. And so when somebody starts out saying it's their first time doing marketing, they want, we just want phone ring, right? We'll still put a tracking number so we can track it. And then we get to the part of, hey, Now the phone's ringing and I'm not answering it. I'll say, well, hey, let's hook up, go high level. So when that phone rings, you're getting a text to you that says, hey, this phone called, you call this person that's their name. Okay, now let's hook up, go high level to when they got the phone call, it texts that person back, say, we're on the other one, call you right back. And let's lead capture their information and put them down on the phone. So we can do all sorts of different levels. Our bread and butter is when someone's searching for you, you get found. Like I am an SEO guy. I am a local SEO guy.

It's on different levels, right? Because I work with B2B, B2C, and B2G, which is government. I've been dealing with a lot of that recently, which is interesting too.

Jordan:2:30
yeah, we need to talk about that. Talk to us about how you first got started on an agency. I guess what prompted that?

Dave Wade:2:38
Okay, you know what's funny in my degree I went to school for athletic training Yeah, and so I'm a big guy lift like I do a lot of things right so I went to school for athletic training what And my minor nutrition so I'm in school and I need to make money cuz I get married I need to make money so my buddy's working for a yellow page company so I go start selling yellow pages Never sold anything. I didn't think I could sell anything. I I'm sorry. I win the

Jordan:2:43
no way, nice.

Jordan:2:47
So yeah. We can tell you left, you're definitely jacked up.

Dave Wade:3:07
Presidents Club multiple years in a row, I'm getting all these trips and I'm liking it. I'm doing really good. I'm like, okay, I guess I can sell shit. But the nice thing is I'm going back and it's self-serving because I start these clients are growing, you know, and it's just YellowPage ads. This was back in 2004 to 2008 because we started this company in 2008. So back in 2004, YellowPage were already starting to die off, but they're still having great results. And so these, companies that are growing and they're saying, Dave, I've increase revenue this much. Like, thank you so much. Let's do a bigger ad. Let's do things. And it wasn't the bigger ad. I mean, obviously I wanted the money, but it was they were growing and they became this relationship that you're part of their team. And that's something I kind of craved. And so got into SEO. My dad is a doctor and he had this big family practice, right? His huge fan practice. And he started doing aesthetics on the side. And he's like, Hey, let's market this as aesthetics. Let's do this med spa. And I said, okay, well, let's look at it. And That wasn't working yellow pages. knew which categories working old page, which one didn't that definitely did not work in yellow pages. So, so let's let's look at SEO. And I knew some of the companies that did SEO and I didn't and we're looking at this a $4,000 a month, $5,000 a month. Like, holy shit, that's too pricey. And he's like, yeah, I'm just starting this. Like, and so we found training. I got some training in Bruce Clay internationals, which is SMX, which I was just talking about, right? Bruce Clay is the place to go to, went through the training, started applying it to his stuff, built the site.

And he exploded. He grew really fast. And with the work that was coming into him, other people started seeing that work that was his friends from the city area. They're saying, hey, I want you to do what you're doing. So they started canceling my Yellow Pages ads. So forced me to do kind of force my hand in that. And it's bigger growth. And you see the companies grow even more and more and more. And I've had companies sell out to bigger companies right in front of us. So that's the part I got into it for is, yes, there's money.

Yes, there's it changed all the time and I have an ADD mind. So I want to change all the time, which is what search does. But the biggest thing is I really like to see those clients grow. I really like to see their companies grow and their families grow. I have clients I've gone to Alaska deep sea fishing with. You become part of their not necessarily family, but part of their team. And so that's one of the reasons why our business model too is we're exclusive. So if I'm working with

Dave Wade:5:33
say a chiropractor in this area and he only pulls from like a 10 mile radius, I'm not gonna talk to another chiropractor, he's usually like 15. I'm not gonna talk to another chiropractor in that 15 mile radius because he's my guy. Like he's my team, I'm not gonna let anybody else infiltrate our thing, right? So that's been our business model because of that same thing.

Jordan:5:50
So many keynotes, Thank you for the context here. First and foremost, what happened with the dad's family practice after you blew it up? Did he sell?

Dave Wade:5:58
So his family practice was already huge. He had the biggest building family practice in Utah when he bought out his contract from the big companies. But yeah, he grew up, he blew up his med spa, he ended up having three full-time estheticians, then he started doing implants and lipo and a bunch of other stuff. And yeah, it was a busy practice, it was awesome.

Jordan:6:01
Okay.

Jordan:6:18
Yeah, I think it's super cool how you helped your pops because like funny story, I actually help my pops with like outbound with which is what we do. He's an insurance agent, but he sells B2B not B2C. So I help him with his business. And it's actually kind of fun giving back to your parents because like they helped you for so long. You know what I mean?

Dave Wade:6:28
Mm-hmm.

Dave Wade:6:34
Well, and there's the other side of it too, right? So I, you know, I was a little, I wasn't great in high school and you know, and so it was him taking a chance on me to help me out also. So it kind of went both ways and then his business grew and then I grew. And so I owe everything I've learned to him. And you know, the, the, I am now where I'm always trying to grow something, always trying to do something is because I witnessed him, you know, he was in the army first blew up two legs and went blew out his knee and had the surgeries and then went to med school with five kids and then went to med school residency with five kids. So I've seen it all. I've seen work his ass off and then become this huge family practice doctor with multiple doctors underneath him. So I've had somebody to give me a roadmap, if you will. And then I just followed that roadmap and he just was in at that point when we were looking for something to do for him, he just happened to that conduit for me to do that, more things. So it was actually really cool.

Jordan:7:32
That's really inspiring, Yeah. Definitely instilled hard work in you. Let's see. Towards the end there, you said you don't want to partner with any other companies in a certain mile radius. And I think that's pretty fair to your client, right? Because it's kind of messed up to take on clients in the exact same area.

Dave Wade:7:34
Yeah.

Jordan:7:53
because they're not competing and you could realistically probably only deliver great results for one of those two clients. And one of them eventually is going to churn, so why even take them on to begin with?

Dave Wade:7:59
Right.

Dave Wade:8:04
And that's why we're not a niche market, right? There's companies that say, we only do dental marketing. Well, why? There's only companies that do law marketing. And I get that, you know, they think they're following the same thing, but every market's different. The keyword search is different. The modeling is different. The fan out is different. Everything's different. And so you can't just follow a cookie cutter approach. And so that's kind of one of the things like if I have that company, they're my team. I'm not going let anybody else in. And I'm competitive too, right? From sports and things like that.

Jordan:8:33
Definitely. Right.

Dave Wade:8:34
Like nobody's infiltrating our company. This is us. Like let's fight. Let's go. So.

Jordan:8:38
And you and I definitely sound very similar. I'm sure you played sports in high school. You went to school for athletic training, performance training. I thought about that. Didn't go down that route, but played elite level baseball for like 15 years. So definitely have that sports background in us. And one thing that you said that I definitely resonate with is like seeing results. Like if you compete at an elite level, whether it's in the gym, lifting, sports, business, you want to be the best. You want to see obviously your team win and your clients win. in the way you phrase it, they are part of the team. We are part of that company's team. So that definitely gets me fired up every single time. I'm helping not only, of course, my company grow, but like a whole nother companies, them grow, their business grow, their family. I think it's super cool. On that note, how do you typically, let's about client acquisition for a second for internal. How do you guys typically find your clients?

Dave Wade:9:33
You know what's funny is they typically find us. Which is it's it's awesome though people get referred. I mean we do go to some because we have clients that we've gotten that want us to go to different trade shows that they're at. We went and then people asked us to speak at those trade shows so it's kind of grown and grown and then we speak people come to us from trade shows. But yeah typically they call us. A perfect example is I'm not going to say the company yet because we haven't landed them but we probably will.

Jordan:9:36
Okay.

Dave Wade:10:03
I was at a lighting expo in Orlando and there's this big business, a lighting coach, business, landscape lighting coach here in Utah. name is Ryan Lee and he's people follow him and he does a lot of stuff and he was, it's his conference. He invited us out. And so we were there. We did some breakout sessions and we were just giving people free advice, right? Hey, your, company does this. Like you really need to change this on your website. Just free. I don't care. Like take it as you will. Like you're going come back to me if you find out I'm right. So we gave people all this free advice and this one guy was taking Drastic notes, drastic notes, right? So he went back to his franchise and said, I need this change, change, this change. And then we just said, we heard nothing from him. Well, last week I get all these emails from all these people saying, Hey, I talked to this guy. talked to this guy, I talked to this guy. Everybody from that franchise is starting to call me. And it's like hundreds of locations. But it's because I gave him the information. And so they found me because I talked to somebody and I was real with somebody. Because that's thing. If you give people all the information, because there's no secret sauce. to internet marketing. There's no guru. Anybody calls themselves a guru is an idiot. Right. There's no secret sauce. You just follow the things that you're told to do and it works. And so if you just if you're honest with people and you share the information and help them build their business, they're to come back to you anyway. So that's how people find.

Jordan:11:17
Very interesting that the purple book behind me here talks about that exactly where you give away all the knowledge for free. You sell the implementation. There's two types of people. Person A is gonna take the knowledge that you just shared and try to do it themselves. I'm not that guy. I'm gonna take the knowledge you gave me and say, you're definitely the expert and then pay the money that you deserve to execute on my behalf.

Dave Wade:11:39
Well, I'd actually say there's three, right? There's one that's gonna do it and just run with it. Then there are ones that can do it run with it and realize, hey, I'm spending too much money on this, too much time on this, so now that I've seen it and I know how it is, I trust him, right? And then there's one that says, hey, he knows everything, I'm just gonna give it to him. So that's my idea is there's three, but yeah, I think I know what book you're talking about.

Jordan:12:01
Yeah, the offers look back there, but yeah. No, exactly. And I think a lot of people, these online gurus, they try to withhold information and it's actually shooting themselves in the foot because how you build trust in the marketplace is by showcasing your expertise, is by giving free game out there, you know? So kudos to you.

Dave Wade:12:17
Right.

Dave Wade:12:21
Well, because if a business is busy enough, know, take any any business, right? If the HVAC contractor is busy enough, he's not going to have time to do the work anyway. And so he wants somebody who can trust to do it. Now I've already talked to him, so now he knows where to go.

Jordan:12:34
Right. And then in regards to other forms of acquisition, do you have any systems for outbound or for inbound like Google or Med ads?

Dave Wade:12:42
every once in a we will, when we're going to one certain area to target that area or to target that industry. But other than that, we don't because we've done them and we have to turn away a lot of clients. Right. So, cause we've, we've done, like AI models to where we've done calls, where we've done email nurturing, where we've done drip campaigns, we bought lists, we've tried them, but literally we have to turn away a lot of people because of that model of ours. Hey, we only do one person per industry per area. And so.

Jordan:13:11
Gotcha.

Dave Wade:13:12
It kind of gets frustrating and then they get frustrated too. You'd be surprised like you give somebody information they want to work with you and then you say, ah, now I can't work with

Jordan:13:19
No, for sure. But even more so on the prospect side, it's like, whoa, I'm offering to give you money and a business is turning me down. I never turned down a client, but it's like, well, for one, we want to make sure you're the right fit and we can actually deliver results on your behalf. If you're not ready for us to work with you, we're not going to waste even our time on that matter. And then number two, the...

Dave Wade:13:21
It's kind of frustrating both sides.

Jordan:13:45
exclusion that you have with one client per city makes total sense. Were you finding that a lot of the channels you did utilize brought in unqualified leads, they simply weren't ready? Or was it more so they were already in your service area that you already had?

Dave Wade:13:58
It was a little bit of both, right? Because the lists and however, whichever model you're using, right? And we tried a couple of different ones. They're not exactly when they're ready, but you kind of hitting them. They're not ready by, or you're kind of giving information. And then there are ones that are ready by, but they have no funds. And then there's the group that are ready by have the funds ready rock. I can't help you. So it's kind of a little bit of everything, but that's why I have account managers. We actually have another branch in another state up in Idaho now.

We see clients nationwide and they literally just refer first We'll go to certain trade shows that our clients are at and mainly it's to go be with our clients, right? But we'll speak or we'll have a booth and we'll just talk to people there and our clients will bring people over you gotta meet this guy. you gotta meet this guy And so we're like, okay, and then they're happy not being an area and so we do that and then First I have one one client that he was introduced by somebody else and then he has four companies in four different verticals and now each of those verticals are referring to us.

Jordan:15:00
Do you know makes total sense? It's like if I'm already busy as hell, if I have to hire more staff strictly based off of a fricking referrals, why pay for ads or pay for it makes total sense. That said, how many account managers like do you have both split up between Idaho and here?

Dave Wade:15:03
Ahem.

Dave Wade:15:10
Yeah.

Dave Wade:15:20
Well, see, we manage some accounts, me and my business partner manage some accounts. And then we also have four account managers here and then Idaho has the two. So each one can manage about 30 accounts. Our big things we want you to either meet with them in person or via like this every single month to find out what's going on, to show them what's happening. And we'd like to be in love with them. Hey, your traffic dropped and but not on the homepage homepage. Let's look what's going on. And if you don't have that month of meeting.

Jordan:15:28
Okay.

Dave Wade:15:47
and letting them know what's going on that you actually see what's going on. Three months down the road, they're like, hey, I don't think they care. And I'm not seeing my phone ring. I'm just going to cancel. And so we're there monthly with them saying, here's the highs, here's the lows. Here's what we think. What do you think? So.

Jordan:16:02
I think when it comes to having an amazing client success team, number one priority is results. If they pay me 3K a month, my job is to deliver more than 3K worth of monetary value.

Dave Wade:16:09
Mm-hmm.

Dave Wade:16:14
Right.

Jordan:16:15
The second priority that I think a lot of companies forget is what you just touched on is showing our client that we care outside of just revenue, having that weekly or monthly cadence up for one on ones, giving them, I don't know, gifts on their company anniversary or birthday, just letting them know that we were thinking of you guys, you guys obviously matter to us. And it's the small things, right? It can be like a freaking $10 gift that you actually thought of them. Not like an Amazon gift card, not gift card, like a little small gift, know? Like that shit right there goes such a long way to their memory, to like the care that they have for you as a vendor. So that's something that I had to learn the hard way. Because I would deliver results for clients, but they were still like, thank you. I feel like we maxed out everything we could. like, we're actually growing. Like we're actually still doing results. You know, like why would you want to leave? But what I found out is it's that part. I did not show that I cared about them. So lesson learned.

I do have a quick question again, why two offices if you do work work nationally?

Dave Wade:17:20
It just happened to work out. one of our guys that was with us and it's really funny because it's funny story. He was actually my boss at yellow pages. And so now we're his boss.

Jordan:17:28
Okay, cool. Right, right, right. That was a third.

Dave Wade:17:33
But he's a good guy and you know, he started selling for us and we did commission bases and we started working for him selling and account managing and his father passed and his land was available up in Idaho and he said, hey, I want to move up to Idaho. And we said, OK, let's do this. Let's let's work it to where you can almost like a partnership model. This is how you can earn partnership. Like, let's get to this level. Let's do some things. And so now he's grown up there to where he has a writer in house up there. He has a. a data entry SEO specialist up there. Now he has, he's got another writer. He's hiring a second writer now. He also has one camp manager on him up there. So that's the other thing. We don't outsource anything. I could save a ton of money. If my payroll wasn't as high as it was, I can make a lot more money, but we don't outsource anything. So if someone wants to talk to their developer, someone wants to talk to one of our copywriters that's working for them or they're anybody, they can literally call here and talk to them.

And that goes a long way, right? So it's not, hey, can you tell your guy to fix this? I'm like, actually, just bring Max in here. Let's have him talk to you.

Jordan:18:38
I that it's so, so important to have all of the customer facing people on your staff to be in-house where if someone wants to speak with them, they can speak with them. Don't get me wrong, I definitely have VAs that do little shit that never have to speak with the client just because they just don't need to, it's cheaper, it's faster, whatever. But for the client success team, the copywriter, the developer, the actual account manager have to be in-house.

Dave Wade:18:50
Mm-hmm.

Jordan:19:06
They obviously haven't know what the hell they're talking about. That's vitally important. Thanks to the context there on the two offices. When it comes to working with beta G, we have to have anybody on the pod that works with beta G. So how the hell did you manage to get into this? What are you even doing with the government? That's...

Dave Wade:19:23
so this is the other company, right? This and it feeds us like we'll do some websites like we did a website for US and Djibouti, which is off the Horn of Africa. We did a website for them. Right. I'm actually fly fishing with 18 delegates from Kazakhstan this Sunday, so that'll be fun too. But I got in. There's a guy that I networked with before and I'm ex military myself. The guy networked with before.

Jordan:19:35
That's so cool.

Jordan:19:44
yeah.

Dave Wade:19:53
He had he reached out to me and said, Hey, Dave, I'm going to DC with this group. And we're going to talk about internet laws. And I think you'd know I think you'd be better at this than any of us. We're all business owners, but you actually do it and talk about taxing Google ads and things like that. Right. And the American bill and a bunch of other stuff. And so he brought me to DC just so I went with him and I talked to all these congressmen. I talked to all these senators and it actually went really well. And then I got back and And it's funny because in these in these military and these government things, people talk kind of bigger than they are. And so we went on this new we went on this new show and after and kind of talk about things there. And then he started introducing me to people with other big groups. Hey, this is my mentor and he's a nationally recognized speaker. I'm like, what the hell? I'm not a nice speaker. I've spoken. So he got me in with another group with another guy we have now with this group called Black Star Syndicate.

We went to the Zero Gravity Summit and then a bunch of guys from SpaceX were in town. We actually were in a VIP tent with one of them from the guy who does... It's a big show here in Utah. It's actually funny. They talk about the waves. What is it called? I suck at this.

It's a part where the energy waves are different on Eastern Utah. And so it's kind of like skinwalk around. they say there's like alien activity, some of that stuff, and it's actually out in Utah. And so these guys were there that night too. And we met with a bunch of other guys and then, so they started getting this group and say, okay, hey, what we need is a group that can have go to market strategies for aerospace. Well, aerospace plays right into defense. And so we have this company, we help with go to market strategies for aerospace and defense.

We have cyber security. have a bunch of things like that. We have another guy on our membership board now. John, was a ex-Recon door kicker. His website's War Ink. And he works with armaments and warheads and things like that. And so just because of these networking and getting together and doing things, we built this team. So one person can do government procurements. One person can do international contracts. We have an SEC attorney. We have a CFO.

Dave Wade:22:10
And we have the marketing arm, is me. And so that's how this all came about. And it's just kind of blown up ever since. And so I don't try to take from, because this is my, this is my baby. This is my, my, my company, right? Me and Victor started this company as ours. And so I tried to feed here. And so we've done some crazy websites, like the war ink website. If you ever go look at war.ink, that's a crazy website. us Jubuti, like I said, that one, we do stuff for like terrorist, so there's a, these other, other entity companies that we'd never talked to that don't work B2C.

They're more B2G. And so that's because of these relationships I built and giving them free, and back to free knowledge, right? Elijah was in a networking thing with me. talked to him. I was helping him with this other, with actually a law firm. was consulting at the time. He Hey, let's do this, do this, do this. They just did it. And he followed suit with everything. told him I didn't charge him. And that cut that, a state planning attorney blew up and that state planning attorney just happened to be a Congressman's son. And so everything just kind of went crazy from there. So.

Jordan:23:08
As long as you, like you said, give free value, you know, deliver results, do things that you said you're going to do, you know, good things happen to you. I, I'm not going to lie. I'm not the biggest networker. It's not that I'm anti-social. I'm going to have a freaking podcast, but I have to speak. just look, I don't make the time for it. So when it proposed a question is, do you, do you like actively set out time throughout the month to go out to networking events or conferences, et cetera? Okay.

Dave Wade:23:21
I'm not either.

Dave Wade:23:33
I don't. I'm getting better at it. I've been to some cool like warrior, I've been to some cool events. The other guy that does the Black Star is gonna go with me. And now he, he's a reseller for us. He's a business growth development person for us. Cause I brought him in house here too. He is the networking nut. Like he knows everybody. You want something done. This guy knows everybody. He has a Rolodex. Like he knows people in DC, he knows people in Nashville. He knows people all over the world. And that's who I'm on this Black Star with. And so He does this stuff. And so he'll like, Hey, we're, we're having this conference and AI. I'm like, Hi, you know, I, that's not going to relay into things. I got a coach that doesn't help my business. Like I'm going to die on this cross. You're going to be here, Dave. You're going be here tonight with me. I'm, I'm, you're not, you're not get out of it. I'm like, shit. Okay. Fine. So I go with them and it's always a good experience. Elijah is like one of the greatest guys. It's just like, it's out of my wheelhouse, right? Just kind of like you said. And so I'm getting better at it.

Jordan:24:13
Hahaha

Dave Wade:24:30
But in fact, the reason I started doing podcasts is because him like I and also ended for selling like I'm a big real AF listener, right? And so one of things he said one day is, hey, put yourself out of your comfort zone. I hate talking in front of people. And I said, OK, you know, I'm going to start saying yes to talk in front of people. So I went to D.C. and because of D.C. that I went and spoke in Nashville and because I was spoke here and then I started doing all this other stuff. And I went and so it's kind of opened me up. I now say yes and things open up because of it. So there you go.

Jordan:24:59
This is not trying to get philosophical but the one thing about I don't want to say confidence But public speaking is you have to use the skill that you currently have in order to grow that specific skill So public speaking for me, I freaking suck at it I definitely try to get better at with it with podcasts But getting back to the only way I can actively get become better is by actively speaking in public, know So kudos to you for getting outside your comfort zone. This is a personal question But how much do you bench, bro?

Dave Wade:25:31
You know, haven't maxed for I just recently maxed because my son, who's a big wrestler, football player, blew out his ACL and they just let him start max start lifting again with me. And so we went up to the gym and I did three 80. And so I'm not as much as I used to be. I was at four 50 probably about five years ago.

Jordan:25:47
Is that like four plates? Four and a half plates? The bar is bended and shit.

Dave Wade:25:50
It's. the bar bends at 405, which is four plates each side. That's when the bar naturally bends, just so you know. But it's funny because it's all relative, right? Because when I played, before I had kids, played adult Little League football. They call it semi-pro. I just call it Little League, whatever, for adults. And I was with all these guys and these guys were massive. There's this one guy named Tractor. If you ever look up Tractor Baptist online, he played with us and the guy squats, I think, 1,300 pounds.

Jordan:25:56
it Okay, okay, go on.

Jordan:26:09
Alright.

Dave Wade:26:20
He has one of the world, he's in the dirty dozen, the strongest squats in the world. And the guy's a monster. Like he's a monster. He played line. There's another guy named Nate Wilkins that he played. He played for, he played for Ricks and then Weber state. He played line and he'd go, we'd go lift in the sewer up at Weber state at the time and he'd get skull crushers. know, everybody gets the a hundred pound dumbbells and they bench press and everything. And nope, he skull crushes the damn things and people leave.

Jordan:26:48
You're right.

Dave Wade:26:49
And then my other friend, Zach, that we used to live with, he is the head strength condition cook for one of the CrossFit things here. He still posts videos of him doing these crazy Olympic lifts and we're older dudes and he's still doing it. I mean, I just turned 50 and I'm still benching 380, so I guess that's okay. like these guys are, these guys make me look like a pansy ass. These guys are massive, strong individuals that somebody says I'm strong. Like, no, I'm not strong. You you haven't seen it strong.

Jordan:27:15
Right, right. And another personal question, if you don't mind. So I, I battle with that, you know, we already covered this, but love sports. I love working out. I feel like I get so caught up in business and working and delivering on, you know, said things, whether it's just business activities. Okay. And I kind of neglect working out. Did you ever go through that when you were in the earlier stages within your business? Yeah. Talk to us.

Dave Wade:27:42
Yes, yes, I got to over 300 pounds. And so, yeah, and I was so unhealthy. had cancer once, like I had to fight cancer back in the day. So yeah, there's there, you get really busy and you neglect yourself because you're grinding, especially when we first started this company. But yeah, now you can actually be more successful if you do plan out prior to these things.

Jordan:28:06
Dude. Dad? Go for it, go for it.

Dave Wade:28:08
And so go read. once again, Andy, and I'm like, you all my books are over here. Like if I turn, I have books over here and books over here. I read physical books. but there's a power list done by Andy for Sella and, who's the other guy that was with him? I went and saw him at Limeless. They spoke. There's another guy that I can't think of the name off the of my head, but they, so they did this, they did this, MF CEO project thing that was at back in the day. Now he does really often.

There's a power list and what it does is you pick five tasks every day and you have to cross all those tasks and you can pick the same task every day until you've it for like three, four weeks. Then it's a habit. So then you add another task, right? And it can be something dumb is waking up on the first alarm at 5 a.m. or whatever, 6 a.m. But that powerless, you start doing that checklist and I'm an ADD guy. So I need a checklist anyway. So I've always had a loose checklist, but now I have this five things I have to get done every day. And so I put that list and if I don't get them done, they're tasking my phone. I have to.

Jordan:28:41
No, no, no.

Dave Wade:29:05
I have to stay up late and get it. So my wife's gonna get in front of me sometimes because I'll have to go, that's midnight, I gotta go get on the elliptical, sorry.

Jordan:29:07
Right.

Jordan:29:12
Right, right. No, but those are the non-negotiables. Like those actually do so much more than just benefit you physically. It's like, no, I'm adding discipline to my repertoire. I'm keeping the discipline I currently have and I'm growing that skill. And you also gain a fuckload of self-respect for yourself. Like it was midnight and I'm fucking on the elliptical, know?

Dave Wade:29:28
You do.

And as a father, like so now my son, now he's a freak athlete anyway, but he's now he goes and lives with me now. He's eating better. And so other people start seeing stuff. And then my oldest son, who's like the brainiac that doesn't do stuff all seven, he's having me wake him up at six thirty in the morning to go running. It's like so they see things. So you're kind of setting examples as well because and that's that's one of the biggest things I have a buddy running for Weaver County Commissioner and he's he's the same as me. And he says, you don't realize who's watching.

Jordan:29:48
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Dave Wade:30:02
Like do your shit and other people. That's how you build a better world is you control your world and the worlds around you will start getting better. So.

Jordan:30:09
Oof. When you raise, I don't know, your awareness, your vibration, the people around you naturally raise theirs. I'm a firm believer. yeah. Give me, one sec.

Dave Wade:30:16
Exactly.

Jordan:30:28
I'll it for a second, love what we're talking about. Good conversation here. Um, your son, not the eldest, but the one that's a freak athlete, high school or college?

Dave Wade:30:37
Yeah. So he's high school. so he's a 10th grader this year. So he's a sophomore. His last year he was wrestling. He lost in the blood round to place for 6A State as a ninth grader. So he's good. He's 165 pounds last year. This year he's 175 pounds. He broke his elbow so he had to work his way back up to football like to where he was.

Jordan:30:55
Thank

Dave Wade:31:06
in the set. He's like he's back up. So he's the slated start starting running back for the next two years for the high school. He's also a linebacker and he's also one of the top two wrestlers in the school. We have another really good wrestler who moved in. So him and him and Kayla top two. But this year because he blew his ACL, he couldn't wrestle in state. was like four weeks away from state and in the state championships, the top four kids that were in the semi finals, he had already beaten three of them. I was like son of a but he's only a sophomore. So it's okay. He's got two more years. but it was worth it.

Jordan:31:36
Yeah, definitely has time to grow. Do you know which one he likes more? Wrestling or... Yeah.

Dave Wade:31:39
100 % football. Literally, he's told me many times, and the wrestling coach hates it because the wrestling coach loves Ryder, but he's told me many times, and because we've seen it, I wrestle to get better for football. Yeah, your body control. So, and here's a funny story, right? So I coach the league and my oldest son, that's one, because I'm a football guy.

Jordan:31:52
really? What's the correlation? Footwork? Mmm, okay.

Dave Wade:32:04
I coach the youth and my son, I'm coaching with him and all the studs at the high school now are kids that played football with my oldest son at time. And he was awkward. He's very smart, but he'd go, he could read it. He could read an offense and get in the right spot. And they were like, Hudson's there. Watch him get killed. But he could see he just had the physical capabilities. Right. So I wanted to make him better. And we were doing stats every game and every game and every week and every season, the best tacklers are my wrestlers, kids that wrestle. So like, Hudson, let's go get you in wrestling. Right.

Jordan:32:20
Right.

There's a version.

Dave Wade:32:34
So I get my sons in wrestling and my middle son falls and just kind of follows. So they're doing practice and stuff. I throw them their first term out. Okay, here we go. He gets the shit kicked out of We're talking bloody nose. Like he tries, he just loses everything. And he's like, I don't like that. like, you know what, buddy, give your best. You don't have to wrestle. Well, meanwhile, my other son's kicking the shit out of everybody else. And so he has a win. So he has this natural ability to wrestle. And he's built and he's like five, nine, a hundred and. what he 175 pounds and just jacked as a ninth as a 10th grader and he's fast. That's the other thing. So he's a good running back. So because of wrestling and the hip control and the movement and your awareness in space, he's really hard to tackle and it freaks people out. You see this kid coming out and you think you can tackle them. All of a you're on your back and like, what the hell just happened? Or he planted a foot. You went one way and he went the other way. It's fun to watch.

Jordan:33:07
stocky.

Jordan:33:30
Does he has does he have aspirations to play the league one day?

Dave Wade:33:35
His aspirations are college first, but yeah, obviously we all dream of being in league, any league, right? And you with baseball at the time, right? And so yeah, he does dream of that, but he's realistic. He knows, hey, what, and that's the other thing, cause people look at him for wrestling too, is like, what will get me into college? And if I can play sports in college, even better.

Jordan:33:54
That's the thing, man. fucking wasn't, excuse my language. I wasn't realistic, dude. Like I was really talented. Like definitely other people told me I was talented. I'm like, I'm going to the league. Like I'm playing baseball. That's, what I'm going to do. You know, injuries happen. Little did I know injuries are fucking probable and just kind of suffered a long, long ego death. And obviously we're back now, but I wish I had that growing up. I guess back to business. Where do you see the future of business with AI?

I know you just got back from a teaching engagement and you learned a lot. from Anthropic was there. So I guess how does that correlate into agencies like us? Should we be scared? Should we utilize it? What's your feedback and thoughts for us there, my man?

Dave Wade:34:37
It's just like everything else. mean, how many times I've been an SEO since 2008. And it's really funny. I was at MozCon couple of years ago and this guy got this guy named Will got up on the stage. He's like, he played all those all these news reports, SEO is dead, SEO is dead, know, predictive search, SEO is dead, ad extensions, long tail keywords, SEO is dead, rich snippets, SEO is dead, all this thing. And he gets up, guess what motherfuckers, I'm still here. And it's right because it's the next thing.

You just have to read that next thing and embrace it, not go all in on it. This is where people go and it's really funny because the guys that I was on the training with who, like I said, and I'm not going to say on here because I don't know if I'm supposed to, which group he was with, right? He said flat out all the AI SEO software that say they can tell you where you're ranking, they're all bullshit. He's like, they're all waste of money. Don't use them. I'm like, oh, this is so nice to hear. But he said the same thing. He's like, we, AI is not ready to be all in. but people trust it too much, And we test this, I was at a networking event and I said, hey, and it's actually my business partner asked this, how many people trust ChatGPT, which is one the worst AIs, over Google and everybody raised their hand. It was like 90 % trusted it more than Google itself. And it's a training model. It gives you wrong stuff all the time. It won't even admit it's wrong. I've sat in front of a person said, hey, what's the fifth president? And it said this, and I said, no, I'm pretty sure it was Andrew Jackson. yeah, you're right.

I'm not. Because it wants to make it fulfill the gaps, right? At least Claude and some of these others will tell you they don't have an answer. Right? And so and people just trust it too much. But the nice thing is it does expedite things like you can gather keyword lists and refine keyword list as long as you're still checking them. And so the guys that I talked to and in marketing that are doing things right way, they realize it's a great tool that still needs human interaction. people who are rushing just to use the tool without human interaction. And there's a company I was doing pricing for when we're looking at reporting software. He flat out told me it's this much a month. I'm like, why are you charging that much a month? Because you fire your employees. Bullshit. Like, no, I don't trust AI that much yet. It's getting it. And actually, so I mean, if you look at it, you look at different cases where people are having their injured because they researched something wrong on chat and they figured then they thought it was right. Like there's one case where

Dave Wade:37:03
The guy was trying to do a salt cleanse and he went down the chain and started using, have you heard about this? He started using sodium bromide instead of sodium chloride and then put them in the hospital. Right? Yeah. So I have cases after cases, but anyway, but it is a really good tool. You just have to have human intervention. And so that's what the SEO too is like. We can use it and plug it to different things. You can, know, can pledge Gemini to search console and analytics and you can bring in your ranking reports and you build agents and

Jordan:37:12
No, I was about to damn dude.

Dave Wade:37:32
characterize them just on one client and then get insights for the client because then it can say, based on, and this actually happens based on search console, you're getting visits for this page or queries for this page that are coming to your website and you don't have this page. Why don't you write this page since people are coming for it? And it's that stuff you wouldn't see, right? And so it gives you some insights that are quicker. So it speeds up the human, but it doesn't replace the human.

Jordan:38:00
Amen. think that is the most important thing that you can probably say. AI gets us to like 80 % completion, maybe 90 % if it's really trained. It's not 100%. We still have to, like you said, put the human in the loop. The human can actually fix the errors because there might be one or two, whatever. And then we can upload it or execute whatever the mission is. But that right there, that single piece of speed is why AI is so powerful.

Dave Wade:38:10
Mm-hmm. Correct.

Jordan:38:29
It might take a human, I don't know, five days to one shot something, right? Like from start to finish, it can execute whatever the mission is. It might take five days in this generalized example. But with AI, it can get you 80 to 95 % there in a matter of an hour. And then the human can then execute the rest of the 5%. That's really what makes it so powerful. You need to have to...

Dave Wade:38:29
Mm-hmm.

Dave Wade:38:38
Mm-hmm. yeah.

Jordan:38:59
So for my own SEO purposes, because I actually do a little bit for my own, would you recommend connecting that with Gemini? Connecting Gemini with Search Console and having those talk to each other?

Dave Wade:39:12
I just, you know, and it's because I'm an SEO guy and I'm a Google guy, Google is the god of search, right? And we talked about this earlier, Claude does really well as well. I just, and because Claude can connect as well. I just figured Google properties work better with Google properties, so that's why I do it.

Jordan:39:29
No, they do. They 100 % would, right?

Dave Wade:39:34
So I was pulling something up on here intentionally. Neil Patel, you follow him at all?

Jordan:39:41
I feel like know the name. I feel like I know the...

Dave Wade:39:42
So he does, you he's a blog guy and he works on SEO things. He spoke to it, actually did reports on exactly what we're talking about, 100%. Can I share it on here?

Jordan:39:56
You can share a screen. that's so funny. You're the... Anyways, I'll say it off camera. Yeah, if you hit share at the bottom, you should be able to share a screen.

Dave Wade:40:03
Yep, so I'm gonna share this, right? So this is, so he, in this whole article, if you go read the whole article, but this is the biggest part I wanted to say, AI content can be generated so much faster, right? You can get so much more content out, so much better content, not better content out, you can just go so much quicker. But look at this, this is actually human content versus AI content, and how long it gets traffic over time. Look at the blue, that's AI. Look at the orange. human content still works better than AI content. And people are doing AI content left and right. And so it's really funny, my developer and I were talking about this one time, he's like, you know what's really crazy Dave? He's like, AI content's not all there. We see mistakes, but people still put it out there. And all they're doing is giving, remember the old adage garbage in garbage out, right? If we're using garbage AI content and giving AI more garbage content to pick up, we're actually making AI worse. And so that.

I want to show that Neil Patel thing with you because it's exactly what we just talked about. The speed is there, but without human intervention, you don't get the results.

Jordan:41:09
Thank you so much for showing that. That gives us and the viewers amazing context there. So how would you, how do you guys, if you don't mind sharing insights here, how do you guys utilize AI for content and then with the copywriter in place that you guys have?

Dave Wade:41:10
Mm-hmm.

Dave Wade:41:24
So without giving away everything, we write original content for every page, for every blog, for every city page. But if we're doing like projects, we do a lot of project pages, kind of different models where we build this interface where clients can upload their pictures and give two sentences about what they did, square footage, white vinyl fence, whatever. And then it'll build and then put the address of this project they did. And then it'll automatically feed that project into a widget and a map inside those city pages that we created.

Jordan:41:26
And you're a man for sure.

Dave Wade:41:53
I let that be written by AI because those will never be indexed. We've tried and those will never be indexed. It's such a, you know, it's here's the URL, here's the service, here's the location and here's these things within location. But it makes the location page rank higher because of all this information with geospecific coordinates, right? Those we let write with AI because they can write better than us and it interlinks and it silos. does everything for you automatically with our different parameters we give it for SEO with rank map and things like that, right?

We'll also use AI and long tail. We'll figure out which question being asked on AI models the most. And that's what we use for our FAQs as well. So we're embracing both sides. We're wanting traffic from both sides, or at least to be indexed from both sides, because AI doesn't bring traffic yet. And that's one of the things. This is a crazy one. 93 % of all AI sessions across every platform combined results in zero clicks to a website.

Jordan:42:30
Mm.

Jordan:42:48
Really? Wow.

Dave Wade:42:49
Yep. 93 % so mean 7 % of all AI queries whatsoever will ever go to a website. But the caveat to that is they convert four times higher than Google search. Because. Yes, it's now the research model. Remember Google used to be the research and the conversion model. Well now AI and that's why Google's embrace it too. AI is the research model with Google search still being the conversion model. So you have to embrace both sides. And that's how we.

Jordan:43:00
Yes, because they're in end market. for it.

Jordan:43:14
I think we have time for two more questions, Dave. It's been an amazing conversation. Looking back over your career, what is one thing you wish you knew when you first got started?

Dave Wade:43:29
Huh? I don't think I probably when we talked about balance a little bit more and doing some other things, not just grinding work, work, work, and not looking at anything else. That's probably it. Because with every how everything's changed so often, if I would have known something then they would have changed anyway. So it wouldn't have done me any good. If you can look at things, maybe I would have invested in different stocks or something like that. But I there's not one thing that would have made me take a different path or expedite how I got to something right. Because things kept changing anyway.

We started this company in 2008 when everybody was folding. know, like it was a recession. People didn't have money and those companies that advertise with us that grew during that time, some have sold to bigger companies. And so yeah, I don't think there's one thing. It's just maybe the not focusing on work and doing some of the outside stuff that I'm doing now would have been better than.

Jordan:44:02
Right.

Jordan:44:23
Yeah, that's something that I have to do as well. And then do you have any aspiration to sell the company one day?

Dave Wade:44:30
if the right price comes. you know, I'm and it's funny because this is where me and my business partner are different. And it's really funny because I see it with my dad now too, because my dad's retired and now he's bored as hell.

Jordan:44:39
There's no such thing as retirement, brother. Never had people like us.

Dave Wade:44:43
And I love it because he wants to more time with me and the kids. It's awesome, right? But I'm of the philosophy when you're not progressing, you're dying. You're either growing or dying at all times, right? And so I'm the type of person, if someone wants to buy this, kind of maybe hopefully they'll keep me around. If not, I'll start something different because I need to do something. And we were in networking group and somebody said, what's your model of success? And I was joking, but kind of serious time. said, hey, I'm successful when I'm greeting people at Walmart. They're like, what the hell?

Jordan:44:53
Yes.

Dave Wade:45:13
I said, well, I don't have to work, but I want to work. I want to get out there. That's a model of success, right? And my model here is since I have a business partner, I can go do things and he can go do things. I coach high school wrestling now because I can go do things and he can do things because of our balance of things. So yeah, I hope that answered it.

Jordan:45:35
That's awesome, Dan. And then last but not least, where can they find you if they want to ask you more questions about SEO or geo or anything like that?

Dave Wade:45:41
You can reach out to me right through our website, performaturemarketing.com or pdmutah.com. It's just forged to it. Email me at Dave at pdmutah.com. I'm always open. I love to chat. I love to talk strategy. Like you see me get on tangents. I'll say, but there's this, this, this. And that's what people like. And that helps people, right? Because at end of the day, I help somebody grow. They're going come back to me because they're growing too. They're growing beyond where they can't do it themselves.

Jordan:46:08
Absolutely. Dave again, it was a pleasure having you on man. Thanks for all the insights, all the laughs. Truly it was fun man. Thank you. Audience, we'll talk to you all soon.

Dave Wade:46:14
Ain't no problem. Appreciate it.