Nick Fraunfelder on Why AI Citations Punish Shortcut Content

Robby Bryant:0:01
Nick Fraunfelder, for a second, let me bring you back one year. It's now mid twenty twenty five, and all of a sudden every single agency has branded themselves as an AI expert. What are your immediate thoughts and hot takes on what this is actually doing to businesses and the consumers alike?

Nick:0:21
that's a good question. So yeah, it it was well one when I when I bought Sherroke three years ago, my friend, you know, he he told me, he goes, You bought an SEO agency. You realize that's like nine percent of marketing spend. And then like You know, fast forward a couple of years ago, now it's like now we're the tip of the spear of marketing. Now like everything getting an AI mention and marketing is like like the tip of the spear. And so what that brought was a lot of lookalikes, right? so e even like my my paid media specialists, they're awesome. But you know, to compete in this market, everyone's really understood that the trust transference to AI for buying decisions has never been more important. I would love to talk a little bit more about that. So I think all of us as marketers, we understand the power of this tool. I think it gives the buyer, though, the experience they've always wanted. Right. You know, I can do all my research. I don't have to I don't have to talk to sales right away. I can like do I can take the research about as far as I really want to without having an uncomfortable conversation with a vendor who's always gonna be bothering me. you know, there's always this like push marketing happening. Now it's really, it's all about pull marketing.

It's all about like, hey, let me invite you into the conversation with the expertise of the brand. So I think the consumer's a lot happier about it. but for me as marketing, it's it's been I don't know, I wake up every morning, I wonder what's changed changed today. So yeah, I don't know if that like answers your question, but that's a little bit where I'm at. Like, don't really know what today's gonna hold. But yeah, there's a lot of competition.

Robby Bryant:1:54
Yeah, I appreciate your perspective. for everyone listening, this is the High Ticket AI Systems podcast where we talk with real coaches, consultants, and agency owners about what is really working for them to scale their businesses today. I'm here with Nick Fraunfelder, current CEO of SureOak. Nick, would you mind just giving us a quick introduction, who you are and you know, what does Sure Oak do exactly and and who does it help?

Nick:2:20
Yeah, I'll tell you a little bit about SherOak and then I'll give you my little background, how I got into this. so Sure Oak, we're a digital marketing agency. We only have one trick. and it's brand authority on SEO and GEO. And why we call it brand authority is because it's your earned mentions on the internet. So it used to be: hey, I want to get the top five links on search engines, and now I want to be mentioned by the AI. So we help our clients do that. So we we work mostly with Fortune 500, private equity-backed or VC-backed companies, a lot in the financial services, insurance, highly regulated areas where they're a little bit more worried about content. you know staying up to date within compliance. So that's a little bit about our business. I got into the I became the CEO three years ago. I was a chief revenue officer for gosh, 15 years dating myself here in the Atlanta area. So we had a we had some a lot of startups. So we had a lot of wins and we had a had a lot of losses too. So but there's a lot of fun experience around that. But what I noticed and why I got into this you know, when I started, gosh, this is back like 2013, digital marketing meant email. You know, there was the rise of like Pardot. what were some of the other tools for like HubSpot was was like an email you know, enrichment, you know, platform. And that that was a lot of what digital marketing meant. And then it really started to evolve into PPC. but like the best leads.

The best leads we got at all my startups were the organic ones. They had the most highly engaged leads. They were shopping. They knew what they wanted. We had a little bit more brand awareness, but like they were the most, we had like an 80% close rate with those organic leads. I started to double down on that. And so when I bought Sure Oak, I really felt like, hey, this is, this is, this is great. I get to talk to CEOs and CMOs every day about how to like increase their brand authority and get more leads and drive more revenue. So that's a little bit about us.

Robby Bryant:4:14
Amazing. And and for everyone listening, I think everyone knows what SEO is at this point. and I've been talking with a lot of business owners who are bringing up AEO. I don't think many people know what GEO is yet. Can you kind of give me the version that you tell to a client?

Nick:4:29
Yeah, AEO, AIO, AEO, GEO, they're mostly the same thing. Like I don't I don't and even SEO, they're they're largely based on the same strategy with tactical cousins as I like to call it. So there's some different tactics or some things that are people are doing. but what a lot of people in the market, which which I would call close to misinformation, is like they're treating them like totally two separate things. At the end of the day, it's about your content and your authority to say what you say. and so like there's some different things we could talk about, how PPC is being affected by GEO and all of that. But generative engine optimization would be more of a catch-all term for all of it. You know, the goal is to get one, when I say, hey, I want best widget company to solve problem X. the goal is to get AI, generative engine, to recommend your brand. The other goal would be to get a citation. A citation would be, well, how did you like what sources did you pull to tell me that widget maker is the best one? And that would be, well, I pulled these pages. And if your pages are one of those like source of truth, well, that's a that's a big win. So a lot of like our new dashboard moving from, hey, I wanna I want to be top five for a search term on the search engine results page has moved to, well, I want as many AI citations and AI brand mentions as possible for very specific terms. And they used to be called keywords. Now they're more like key conversations, right? So I don't know. Is that is that that can answer the question? I'm sure there's a lot to unpack there.

Robby Bryant:6:01
Yeah, I think briefly it does and we can get into it more. it seems like every day there's a new someone starting an SEO company or maybe trying to get into the AEO for you know and capitalize more on that branch. But what's your offer specifically and and how is it positioned for the people that you sell that makes it different and more powerful than the next SEO agency on the block?

Nick:6:25
Yeah. well, one, we've been doing this for 10 years. And so what I think people are doing right now that wake up today and say, I'm an SEO, you know, I'm I'm I'm a GEO, you know, practitioner. Well, one of the things that they don't have that they need to learn really quickly is that they're falling into a lot of stuff that will work now. So what we're finding what work now, but eventually will be what we call like penalized or nerfed or taken out of of the ecosystem.

So what they don't what they didn't live through, like what Sherroke lived through over a decade of experience was like the penguin update or the helpful content update of as you know as recent as 2025, where spammy content, keyword stuffing, Pages that were very thin in content, looked like it was derivative content, you know, boilerplate, service pages, by location, things like that started to get really punished on the search engine results page. We saw a lot of, and this is how we got a lot of business, you know, back in the early, I don't know, 2010s, was we we'd get business from companies that were punished by these these updates. That would be a Google algorithm update every six months. What's happened with AI right now is that these updates are happening.

Every six weeks, sometimes every two weeks, right? And so we're seeing a lot of variability on how our clients are getting are getting mentions. So what we like to think, you know, we take a long-term view, we don't risk your brand. we are gonna put we're we're really we're worried about your brand. So everything around your brand is your reputation. And what what we're doing now is we're being walked into a lot of boardrooms explaining. just like you asked before, what is GEO and what is this new mindset and what is this new paradigm that we have to accept. And so what people got to really understand is you have your topical pillar. This is what you want to be known for. This is what you want your your brand to be and you have this reputation. So what you got to understand is versus like PPC versus this is well you have your website, you say what you do.

Nick:8:32
And then you have what the internet says about you. So call that review sites. It could be blogs that mention you. It could be all these third-party validation points. And then you have AI happening in the in the in the middle of the triangle. So you have this whole triangulation happening of whether or not your brand can be trusted. And I think when clients understand that, hey, this is what we're about, we're about solidifying and accelerating your brand authority. That's really where we differentiate. Yes, we're good technically. Yes, we're good at writing all of those things.

But that doesn't protect a brand and the authority that you're trying to create. So that's where we really come along and that's where I think we differentiate. I think a lot of people, they're just really good at a couple of those tricks. you know, they might be really good at schema and you know, they understand architecture. they may not be good at the off-page stuff, you know, getting the brand mentions off-page, getting the PR going, the digital PR. They might be missing, they might not be good writers. It's really good to have an agency that does all of that.

Now we lose business because we don't do PBC, we don't do design, we don't do all that stuff. But like this is a trick that we really want to do. What is the Bruce Lee said? I don't fear the man that knows twenty different kicks. I I fear the man that knows as practiced one kick a thousand times. That's what we wanna be. So

Robby Bryant:9:44
Yeah, and and do you feel like that has been a key for you to gain clients over the years? And could you also kind of explain like how has your the way you've attracted clients, how has that changed over the last decade?

Nick:9:57
the way that we have attracted clients has been the exact same thing for 10 years. Organic search. And so whether it was through a search engine or now AI overviews, the only thing has changed is the type of customer that we go after. And this is probably a a a good thing, but we really try, you know, and I'm in a very, very competitive space. I have probably 20,000 different competitors in some shape or form, whether it's big agencies, other digital agents that do SEO. But for us, It's always been about our own authority to do this one trick. So we write about everything related to SEO and GEO. What what's what CMOs need to worry about, how we technically work. So everything is like SEO GEO is the pillar. Like like I wanna like compare that to a car. I want I want to be known for cars or just a muffler. But I write about all different things about the car, like, hey, this is the maintenance when it's cold weather. This is when you should change your oil. That's exactly what we do with the SEO GEO space. We just try to we don't do again, we don't do a post every day, like a blog every day using derivative AI content. We try to do two really well-research authority pieces that really helps our client, the CMO, the best we can. So we, you know, we we name that person, you know, we call her Rachel.

And so, what would Rachel think about this piece? Does it actually help her life? Because she's sitting there in a boardroom trying to explain GEO to her board. And now she's trying to get AI and Martech tools implemented on her team. Does this help her? And so we try to write things that help her as much as possible because that's our buyer and that's who we're actually writing for. And so the idea is again that poll. We're trying to be a member of Rachel's tribe. You know, we're trying to be value added to her. We want to be a partner. Our average life of a client.

And this is way higher than the rest of the market is two and a half years. So the idea is we enter a partnership. If you're a good fit for us, you know, we call it the AWAF call. Are we a fit? if you have budget, you have need, and you have patience with this, then we're gonna be a good fit. If not, then you know, I've said no to more business than I ever have. so that was the second point I wanted to mention on.

Nick:12:06
We used to take a lot of SMB business on. they were great, they were awesome, but we decided like, hey, this is we want to go more enterprise. You know, they have to have at least a marketing director. They must have at least two two people. They have to have like some kind of insight about their business. they have to have some track record of success. We love private equity backed, you know, because they have the budget to go the long haul. We like public companies. That's really where we started focusing. Leads went down, but close rate went up. so that was still fine for us and you know, our average. our average deal size, you know, ACV was all also went up. So that was a that was a scary thing for us to do, but it pay it has been awesome for us.

Robby Bryant:12:45
Nice. So the exact same way that you're helping your clients gain business is the exact same way that you're gaining business. I think that probably helps you, you know, when it comes to the point where you're on you're you're in front of a prospect and they're asking, hey, is this really gonna work? And you probably just say, You tell me.

Nick:12:53
Exactly.

Nick:13:03
Yeah, right. Yeah. I said, Well, how'd you find us? I said, Well, I did a I did a Google search or I asked Gemini or ChatGPT and I found you. I was like, perfect. I don't spend anything on ads. I kind of do that as a moral high ground because a lot of my competitors do pay for ads.

Robby Bryant:13:17
Yeah, and again, I think it shows a lot of the strength of what you're doing. You've been talking a lot about what does work in you know search engine optimization. What are the you you mentioned something you don't want to put somebody's brand at risk. What's something an SEO company could do that would put somebody's company at risk?

Nick:13:39
here's a good one. so comparison pages work really, really well with with AI or or or generate engines. so when you have and and so like hey, Sure Oak versus SEO competitor a A, B, and C. So we put a a page together, it's like, well, you get this, this, you get content writing, you get this, and it's this price, and you know, those check boxes. And we have a whole page dedicated to that because that's a common search. You know, why should I pick Sure Oak over you know, SEO.com or whatever, right? And so you have that comparison page. Well a lot of people like, well, if one page works, well, I got 80 competitors. Why don't I do 80 pages? Okay. That actually may work in the short term, but what happens over time, we talked about those lessons learned from the good old, you know, search engine Google algorithm update days, that will fall off. And we've already seen some of those fall off. there's another one that people are doing right now called Listicles.

I even have competitors that are calling listicles. So listicle is I make a list of the top 10 SEO agencies out there. And lo and behold, I'm number one on all these lists. So best SEO for SaaS companies, best SEO for enterprise, best SEO for dogs and cats. You know, we start having these listicles and we make a bunch of those pages. The idea, remember we talked about the triangulation of trust, right? So AI is gonna say, well, that's your list, and there's no real validation saying that you're number one, other than your own site saying that you're number one. Those pages absolutely work right now. when I say best SEO agency in New York, I mean you know, Sheroak actually may come up, but it's not because we put it on our website, it's because we got an award from somebody you know, on that topic. So it's way better to have a third party that's actually legitimate saying that you're a top 10. than like making a fabricated top ten for yourself. I think that's just so self-serving. I think eventually, while it's already happening that these are getting starting to s drop off in terms of, you know, AI brand mentions, w we're actually gonna see more of that, I think, coming in the future. So I think a lot of that, that is happening.

Robby Bryant:15:48
So what you're saying is that a company could effectively create pages, so it would be Sure Oak comparing with you know SEO company A. And they could go and do that for every single one of their competitors. And then that way when somebody went and searched on Chat GBT or Claude, they type up how does Sure Oak compare to competitor A? And they the MLM will

Nick:16:11
Mm-hmm.

Robby Bryant:16:15
effectively take what they find online, publish on those pages, and spit it back to them. But AI is getting too advanced and it's going to start realizing, okay, who published that page? Do we have a enough variety of sources to for us to be able to put our backing behind this?

Nick:16:34
Yeah, and I think one or two pages, comparison pages are great, right? Like if you're Salesforce, you want to compare yourself to HubSpot, you should do that. Right. Like that is an absolute common query and you want to talk about that. But if you do it like if you spam it, anything like let's put it in the category of spam. Anything anything overdone will just look like a template to the algorithm. Cause remember, it can read your whole website in milliseconds, right?

Robby Bryant:17:00
Right.

Nick:17:01
And so it's like, okay, well, they've done this trick 80 times. It seems like it's a little bit of a ploy, therefore I'm gonna start ignoring it. And so you have this thing on a lot of tools like SEMrush or Hrefs called it, they're all some form of domain rating, domain authority. It's basically how trustworthy is your site? How trustworthy is your site? Well, things like that drop your DA, your domain authority, and you don't want that.

So you gotta be really protective of your brand because what you actually do do, you work so hard for your customers, you wanna do things right, you don't want to be mistrusted by the greatest gatekeeper we've ever seen in marketing history called ChatGPT.

Robby Bryant:17:44
Is there a way you could effectively rig the whole system even farther by, you know, maybe creating one of those checkers that you were just talking about? So now you own the checker, and maybe you have a bunch of like maybe fake company pages from other brands that so it's not coming from just Sheroke, but it's coming from other people saying, Sheroke is better than competitor A, Sherok com better than competitor B. And now you're the one checking it and you're also you know, you have all these pages that aren't you, but they are you. Is that something that anyone tries to do or like how far can you rig it?

Nick:18:24
So that was that was part of the twenty twenty five Helpful Content Update where it was like the affiliate affiliate marketers. So to get leads, they would put up all these other pages, you know, talking about these brands and they would send the leads to the company and they would get like, I don't know, a dollar lead, fifty dollars a lead or something, because there was like it was like a review site saying, Okay, you're this like these list goals that they were rampant. those got taken out of the Google algorithm.

And remember, AI is trained on the whole internet and Gemini is trained on Google search engine. So that that I would say categorically, no, that won't work. So so that'd be that'd be very harmful to your brand, especially, you know, as these things get tracked back to you. I mean, custom customers aren't stupid, right? They they're they're tired of that. So I I think you know, saying something good about your brand, like a solid, you know. a content piece that draws the internet, gets it talking about. Like if you do like one of the things that we talk about at Sherroak, you know, we call it the authority tri authority diamond. And so you have a pillar concept that you want to be known for. I, you know, I fix mufflers, right? So I wanna be known for for for that concept. And so I had I think about all these journalistic angles to write about for that.

Now, to way to amplify your expertise in your brand, we focus on very fundamental things. First, first part, I think. So the top of the the diamond, I would put your subject matter experts. So any company, whether you're a founder with just two or three people, or if you have 50, at least one or two people in there has some passion for this problem and they're a subject matter expert, and you have a unique insight. So for a lot of our clients, we have people that have been in construction for 20 years.

And they have all kinds of insights how to solve really unique problems that the reader wants to know. If the reader wants to know it, then AI wants to know because it's got to fill demand. Remember, we're not we're not in a paid, Google's not making all its money anymore on paid ads. It's making its money on subscriptions. And you can't buy your way into the subscription you know conversation. Yes, you know, ChatGPT is is is selling ads now.

Nick:20:31
But it's earned on your authority to be in that conversation. So the top, like, hey, if we have good conversations from our subject matters, giving unique insights to our readers, that is what ChatGPT wants to give to sell more subscriptions. The right side of the diamond, I would put original data. So what we're finding with a lot of clients, like you're sitting on a treasure trove of information where you can give insights, correlations about what's happening.

In a world of derivative content where everyone's just writing blogs just written by AI, you're saying something original with data that you own. And so if you own that, you will earn the AI mention because you said, well, 80% of all mufflers fail after so much mileage for this model car. Well, if you're able to say that, okay, so original data makes you stand out in this world of AI. So do more studies, you know, give back to your community. on the bottom of it, I would put your customer stories. What is your track record? So if I have a problem, I want to know first thing is like I want to buy a widget. I'm in mid I'm in the Midwest. I have a very specific plant and I have very specific compliance I have to follow. If I choose you widget maker, are you going to be able to solve this problem? Prove to me that you've done it. And so what we always encourage our clients to do, make sure your about us page is really good, like because you have the track record.

But show your customer stories. Really focus on case studies. Show where you got the ROI up, you know, two and a half X. So those customer stories are massively important. And on the left side of the diamond, to my left, I would put third-party validation. If you're in software, you better be on Captera or G4, right? Like you better go, or is it G2? I'm already blanking on it. You know, for me, I have to be on clutch. Those review sites are massively important. There are probably 50 influencers that post regularly on social media, who you should be talking to about getting them on your podcast. You should be interviewing them. You should be asking about your wrong. Your brand should be associated with those influencers. The other one, there are blogs where you can get expert quotes in there. You get your brand in those blogs, you know, earning a backlink with an actual blue link or actually getting a brand mention on those. Those are massively important.

Nick:22:51
When I think about the authority diamond, that is really where I would would take people to go. If you really want to stand out in a world where AI's got derivative content, it's been said. If it's already been said, you won't get the credit. You want to get the credit. So say something original and say something that you have the right to say that no one else can say. I hope that's helpful.

Robby Bryant:23:11
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. that that kinda gives me a a question.

I think AI we already know is very good at recognizing AI. So if another page has been written by AI, is that something that comes into play with SEO? If does the the AI checker care if a page that they're reviewing is written by AI or if they can tell that it's written purely by a human?

Nick:23:38
It's not so much that so good content's good content, right? And so if you're using AI, it just needs to have a perspective, right? So let's say you're a terrible writer, but you have this unique insight and you want AI to help you write it. I still think that works. I still think that works. I don't, you know, most studies I've seen, I haven't looked at it in a while, but like Google really doesn't care if it was written by AI or not. What it does care is like, is this helpful?

This is just derivative. I mean, so like have I seen this a million times? HubSpot had this amazing thing where they lost so much traffic, they lost so many citations for all this content that they wrote. And they had to change their strategy. And the reason they lost so much is because they were writing about things that people already knew that they weren't the original source for. So they did a lot of stuff on challenger sale. Well, there's already a book, you know, there's already a book, the challenger sale sale book. Well, that's the original source. HubSpot's not going to get that credit.

Robby Bryant:24:05
Yeah.

Nick:24:33
You know, another thing people do is they copy and paste their blog into LinkedIn articles. So they have the same blog on their website and they have the same blog on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a 99 domain authority. It's got a near perfect rating. And so like LinkedIn gets the gets them gets the mention and the citation over the website. So those sort of things you gotta really be aware of. Like what is your brand authority? So if you're if you're

Robby Bryant:24:40
Mm.

Nick:24:56
If your domain authority is very low, you gotta work extra harder to stand out and say something original. And I really think like original data, surveys, saying something that's unique that causes like good old marketing tactics. You have a little tension in the conversation, say something different. You know, AI is trying to serve up human content to a human, even though it's a robot. So we gotta really start thinking about those basic marketing differentiators. I think people are taking way too many shortcuts right now, to your point. So I don't so to answer your question.

I don't really care if it's AI written or not. It's just better be good. Be good. Like does does Robbie and Nick enjoy reading this or does it smell like something I've seen a million times?

Robby Bryant:25:29
Okay.

Robby Bryant:25:35
Yeah. Yeah, no, I had to ask because I talk with business owners every day and one of the common things that comes up is the not necessarily a debate. It seems like everyone's in agreement, but it's still quite shocking how many businesses and how many influencers, how many people are have AI as their crutch so heavily and it's almost like there's an arbitrary line of how much do you use AI?

Nick:25:57
Yeah.

Robby Bryant:26:01
where you're putting your own spin on it and it's a tool that's aiding you versus, you know, who's just using it. They're putting in a prompt and they're copy and pasting it for their their LinkedIn post or their their social media posts. and I think in like twenty twenty six people are really craving that actual personal connection. do the detectors that you're talking about, do they have a good way well, so I guess good content is just means that it's been responded well to already comments, likes, shares, And that's probably what these detectors are looking for, I would assume.

Nick:26:35
Yeah, so an SEO, it's like, you know, my blog doesn't have likes, comments, and shares, right? But it does have a gravitational pull based on its authority. if Sheroke writes something in our market, in our world, it gets picked up. You know, it gets picked up. We we have enough credibility. I mean, our webpage is a thousand pages and it's been around 10 years. So it's got enough authority to say the things that we do. So we wouldn't risk that by saying something that's not helpful, you know, to our ideal customer profile, our our Rachel. but what I would say, I've I've never gotten more business from big companies using these tools where it writes them a blog a day. There's like, hey, I just it's these keywords and write me a blog on something like this once a day and get me, you know, backlinks, you know, what five a week.

Because it has like a way to get backlinks and you know it'll actually literally go out and pay webmasters to put you know brand mentions and and backlinks on these other sites. That has not worked. It is not worked. And so it was like this, you know, SEO's been I guess SEO was dead at the advent of LLMs and has been apparently been dying for two or three years. But you know, you look at Claude, you look at you know ChatGP, they all have openings for SEOs.

Right. Like this is not this is absolutely something. Earning your right as a brand to be mentioned by an LLM is really where it's at. And you cannot do that with, you know, stuff that you know, if you're asking AI to write something for you, that means AI is just writing on stuff that's already on the internet and you're not ever saying anything new. and it's probably gonna say it in a way that's I don't know, you can make it your voice or whatever, but it's gonna be watered down and diluted and sterilized. It's it's just not gonna be that interesting.

Robby Bryant:28:28
Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. I feel like I'm gaining enough insight from you I'd be able to go start my own SEO business now and and and be able to jump ahead of so many other people who are doing all the same stuff because I'm getting the nuggets from you. I I I wanna go back to what were you doing before you got into SEO, before you bought Sur Oak and and what made you want to make the purchase?

Nick:28:34
Yeah, go for it. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, go start an SEO agency. Jump jump in the one. There's a million of us.

Nick:28:54
Yeah, so my story was so in I I s you know, I I was very lucky to be the first employee of a company called Clockwise. And so that that was in 2013. and again, that was that that was like it was really we were in we were completely outbound. It was all email and and what I what I noticed about that, like we could reach all 10,000 of our ideal clients every quarter. And and the big guys, they ignored us, but the little ones we noticed were like this was su it was a virtual waiting room. This is pre-COVID, right? So this is like a big deal in 2013. But you know, they had this incredible like customer, you know, customer service problem within urgent cares. And they were like they would have bought anything from anybody. So when you know we'd make that phone call or send them that cold email, like they were responsive. But the big ones didn't. And then what we noticed was, you know, as we grew, we had more case studies.

We were still doing a lot of cold email, but they knew us because they had seen it at their competitors. And like it was like, okay, then the late adopters started hopping on board and they are more friendly to us. And then we started getting a lot of inbound, like, wow, okay, that never happens to a startup after two years, right? Like we've always, we're always like pushing a string. always, but like most of our business, the last two years of our business, and we went from zero to two thousand installs.

Was like just all inbound. And so we we went from BDRs to SDRs. You know, we went from cold callers to order takers. And that was like, that is brilliant. That is beautiful. And that was my big lesson learned. And so I went on, you know, I would take this playbook to other startups. But getting that brand, getting off the dime for a startup is so hard. It is so hard. and so when the time came, I had some money in my pocket and I was starting like I really I want to buy a business, but I don't want to start at zero, but I wanna talk to CEOs about revenue. When I met Tom and Kim at Sure Oak, it was like it's like the heavens opened up, man. I was just like, this is exactly the kind of conversations about brand and accelerating their conversations on digital channels about how great their business is.

Nick:31:06
So for me, that that's that was the real transition going from software into this. Because, you know, I always love sales. I've always, you know, I'm more of a sales guy with a marketing, you know, heartbeat. But, you know, th that was that was the cool part for me. you know, walking into a company like this. And so Shurik, you we got like 35 team team members now, we probably have about 40 something clients. really, you know, top-tier companies like SoFi are our clients. and so like being able to work with those people to help accelerate their business has been like one of the more impactful things for me.

Robby Bryant:31:40
Amazing. that's the story I guess of how you got into the the SEO business. I I guess you started, you weren't interested in SEO at all and it ended up working for your business and and then you got to a point where like, I have these skills and I have this, you know, alignment and this business opportunity I could take and it all just kinda worked out for ya. What's

Nick:32:01
Yeah, I I was a CRO, so I always had sales and marketing under me. You know, we had some some, you know, fairly large size companies. I had teams of, you know, you know, I had teams of over fifty, you know. And so for me, it was like I get the marketing, I get I get how leads, I I get how sales like I was just looking for a really good product and service. And I thought, you know, SEO at the time, this was what, you know, over three years ago. SEO at the time.

It it wasn't like the most glamorous part of marketing, but it was like such a solid relationship with these customers because they they understand like building your brand authority online takes at least six months. You know, we gotta start with some good blogs, we gotta make our service pages tightened up. We we gotta think about how we communicate on the internet. And then when LLMs happened, it was like, all the b buyer behavior has shifted. They're not just the they're not just looking on my website anymore. I have this robot.

Who's advocating for my brand or ignoring my brand or hallucinating about my brand? So, how do I make sure that I'm on the first one? I want to be recommended in that. And so like that became, yeah. So my skill set translated into like, okay, well, let's let's figure out like that's a good problem to solve. How do we accelerate that? How do we help the clients? You know, I don't think anything I did in my career was magical, other than the fact that like, Like work on hard problems. That's exciting. And and then and that will be something that we can build a company around. And that that's really where we've been this year.

Robby Bryant:33:29
Yeah. So you started with SEO in your own business and you figured out how to make it work. What's like the thing about running Sher Oak that you completely didn't expect? that you know, it was different your expectations before you bought it versus now running it. What's been the biggest thing that's kinda shocked you or been completely different about trying to run SEO for other companies?

Nick:33:53
Yeah, so I'm 51. So those like I'd seen a few companies, right? Like every, you know, running a company is always you gotta be resilient, man. So like you I I I kind of knew that, that, that going in. So I'd never been the number one, but I've always been a you know a solid number two for multiple startups where you're doing you're wearing lots and lots of hats. So I was pretty like seasoned going into it. I guess what I was like 49 when when I bought Sheroke, and no, I was 48 and that you know, now I'm 51.

But like what has surprised me was how powerful culture can be. Right. And so when and and I say this because I gave up a lot of responsibility for myself. So when I started seeing like, hey, I'm actually really bad at doing one-on-ones. I'm actually really bad at managing people. And so when I stepped back, I was like, Well, I'm just gonna give that to Lauren because she loves that. And and then and Lauren cared about culture and Lauren cared about task management. And Lauren was okay with all that. And so there's this great book called Rocket Fuel. We both read it together. It's by Geno Wickman, the same guy that that wrote traction. And it was like this weight lifted off my shoulder, right? It was like, my pain is her joy.

And her pain is my joy. So my my job turned into just I I call it the three S's. It was sales, strategy, and soul. I you know, soul would be just like the raw, raw, like let's like we're going to the moon. Isn't everyone excited? You know, and and Lauren's job is like, yes, we're going to the moon, but we're gonna do it in stages and this is how everyone's gonna be assigned the task of going to the moon. so like that that's been good. So so I would say, you know, giving up,

Robby Bryant:35:15
Streams and visions, yeah.

Nick:35:30
Well, one, a good VP changes your life. That would that was one. But like giving up responsibly, giving up more as a CEO to empower people and to maximize people around you. that that again, it was the rocket fuel. Because like I'm not saying like we haven't had our struggles. I mean, yeah, dude, you never know. Client gets mad and you know, there's a lawsuit here, stuff happens. But like that's to be expected. Your resilience as a CEO just is is to is to blow through that and you know. work through it, do as best you can, but assume that not everything's gonna be rosy. But the culture and the people and make sure that they have what they need, that they feel safe, that they feel like they have something interesting to work on, that they feel supported by their teammates, and that they in turn do that. And that people aren't a part of that culture. Well they need to go. They need to go. And so like yeah, we had some yeah, we had some really hard conversations with people after I bought the company about like Well, this is kind of what the culture's framing out to be. You don't really know when you buy it, but you have an idea where you like to go and you just kinda let the people organically start building the culture with you and people self-select out of that journey and that's okay.

Robby Bryant:36:35
Yeah, that that's something I'm hearing a lot when I talk to more and more successful business owners about culture and team mattering so much more than a lot of the things that you think would matter. so it's been quite a revelation for me o over the past you know, several months to hear that over and over and over again and and to be reiterated by all these people who have never had a conversation with each other, but they're just out doing their own thing and they realize that that's what works. I like your analogy.

Like you're in the rocket. You're you're saying all right, we're we're blasting off, we're going right now and Lauren, her name is, she's like, hold on, let's make sure everyone's got their seat belt on. Everyone's in their in the signed seat, okay.

Nick:37:16
Yeah, right. Yeah. Hey There is there are no seats in this rocket. I'm like, that's a good point. We should probably get some seats. Okay, let's stop. Everyone's everyone off the rocket. Everyone on everyone getting seats. Yeah, she's great with that.

Robby Bryant:37:29
awesome, awesome. Nick, I w I wanna touch on I heard you host two shows yourself.

Nick:37:36
No, just one. Yeah, just one. I can't do two. Yeah. Yeah.

Robby Bryant:37:38
Just one. Okay. Okay. W what's that look like? Is that part of the business? Is that your own thing?

Nick:37:44
Yep. So it's a Sure Oak podcast. It's got a really great marketing name. it's branded for us. So, but yeah, we talk, I mean, you know, it's mostly about organic search, other marketing, but you know, a lot of it's just like this. We just get into a lot of we've had coaches on. I've had JD Piquel, who's a you know, he's I guess he's a college football analyst with On Three Sports. And, you he's blown up. He's we've had a lot of Carrie Cunningham, who's a researcher in B2B.

So like yeah, we've had a lot of really great guests. So that yeah, that's something I would love people to check out on our YouTube channel or Spotify. But yeah, the Sherroke podcast has been really great. Met I'm sure like you, Robbie, you've probably met some great people. So it's it's fun to get people's insight and you know, you know, not have to be on this side of the mic too. Just ask questions. That's that's really that's a lot better.

Robby Bryant:38:24
Absolutely.

Robby Bryant:38:30
Well, this is the next question I was gonna ask you. What's a question that you ask your guests that you've never been asked back to you?

Nick:38:39
Well, I you know, I always ask you know, their their favorite books. So and I already gave you mine, so that's that's pretty easy. So

Robby Bryant:38:45
Rocket fuel and then what was the other one?

Nick:38:48
I don't know there's another one. I mean, but there's a lot of great ones out there. I mean, I love I love Seth Godin's This Is Marketing or Tribes. yeah, he's really good. I mean, he kind of gets I don't know I'm I won't I won't do anything, but like yeah, he he likes to create tension sometimes. Sometimes I don't agree with all the stuff. I think that's a great one. I I love anything Jason Lempkin does.

Robby Bryant:38:50
So that was by the same author.

Robby Bryant:38:55
I love Seth Godin, yeah.

Nick:39:09
you know, impossible to inevitable. That was a great book. Predictable revenue was great in the day, but l obviously the the market's changed a lot since then. But a lot of those things are timeless, you know, great product, great marketing, good people. Yeah, just putting those things together is is is really what a lot of these books come down to. So I don't know, maybe Robbie, you and I will write a book one day.

Robby Bryant:39:28
I'm with it. I actually I I keep one part of my notes here is is just ongoing book list because every time I talk to a new business owner there there's a mention of a book or two every single time. And I'm like, okay, I gotta check that one out. I gotta check that one out. like if it comes to business books, I love Seth Godin. I I I I don't think I have all of his books, but I have a huge stack of Seth Godin books.

Nick:39:39
Yes. Yeah. What's your favorite?

Robby Bryant:39:57
it's it's it's been a while since I've read a a book front to back, to be honest, with the with new AI. I have a pile of of business books at my my parents' house. but I'm not sure if I believe it's called the it's called the personal MBA. It's yep, that's a good one that pretty much goes through everything. there's a a really good one that helped me with my sales. It's called spin selling, and it's kind of just like

Nick:40:03
Yeah.

Nick:40:15
yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that.

Nick:40:25
yeah. Yeah, that's a good one too. I like that one.

Robby Bryant:40:26
the the origins of the the the discovery method. and then I also like some fiction. I like like Jack Kerouac, on the road, you know yeah, yeah, fun fun books like that. Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Building in Las Vegas, way better than the movie. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Hells Hells Angels is awesome. yeah, I I don't I don't read as much as I should anymore because anytime

Nick:40:35
wow. On the road, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick:40:42
I liked his Hells Angel book. That was pretty crazy. That was really

Robby Bryant:40:53
I'm a very I like to get information efficiently. So at once upon a time I could pick up a very pointed book and get that information very quickly. Now anything I wanna know, straight to Claude, straight to Chat GBT. And if I don't like the answer it gives me, then I'll, you know, dive in after that. But I I I do have to get into a a good book and I I got this list here, so I gotta start somewhere.

Nick:40:56
Yes.

Nick:41:12
Yeah.

Nick:41:18
I love it. I love I also love Sam Walton's biography. You know, he started Walmart. That was a crazy story. Howard Schultz, pour your heart into it. How he started Starbucks. I mean, it's like these are big mega brands. And they started from nothing. They started from nothing. Like they're not even software companies, right? So, like, yes, you know, I don't know, whatever. Like, you know, anthropics worth a trillion dollars started like it, but that was software. Like

Robby Bryant:41:28
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Robby Bryant:41:34
Yeah.

Robby Bryant:41:42
Yeah.

Nick:41:43
This was a brick and mortar people business with coffee. I mean, like I love those stories. Those are fun. So.

Robby Bryant:41:47
Yep. Th there there's a good one. I'm pretty sure it's called The Big Four. I think it's called the Big Four. And it's essentially that's the origin story of Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and I just had it. But yeah, talking, you know, back to bootstrap businesses. you know, kinda at the very beginning of of software at a time I couldn't possibly comprehend. But it's it's fun to learn about.

Nick:41:58
wow.

Nick:42:12
Yeah, that's fun. That's fine. I mean, those guys I mean everyone every time you're having a bad day is like, Yeah, I think Sam Walton went through this too. It's okay. So

Robby Bryant:42:20
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it helps put a lot into perspective. Nick, I I wanna end on a positive note looking forward. Over the next twelve months, and for you in terms of goals, visions, numbers, dreams, what are you most excited about? What's the the number one thing you're trying to accomplish?

Nick:42:25
Yeah.

Nick:42:39
Yeah. yeah, I mean, I love growing. So, you know, we we always, you know, we always think about big goals and and things like that. I I stopped putting numbers on it and I tried to live more in the moment. And so, you know, Sheroke, you know, we we focus on on on three things. and we and we call them our three peaks. And so this will be a little a little behind the tent. Like this is our tenure vision, you know, we want to see winners everywhere.

So like that'd be our first peak. And so that would just be our culture. Like everyone around here, and not just is growing professionally, but like they're buying houses, they're getting married, they're having kids, like, you know, this is a place where they can be their best self. the other one we call it our customer success flywheel, would be this the second peak. You know, it would just be like, you know, basically a lot of just business or customer referral. We want to be known for being great in SEO. you know, and and the and the last one, you know, would just be more like, you know, reputation, you know, peak and be like, hey, we just really like, yes, the customers are they're they're staying with us, they're they're with us for over two years, they're referring to a business. But the other one is like, that's because we're an SEO company, like, you know, we want the best brand authority around GEO possible. We made it, we don't care about being the biggest, but like if you're looking for banking SEO, GEO.

I I I wanna be at the top of that list. I wanna be in that conversation. So that that would be the other one would be just be the brand authority peak. So you we don't we don't really focus on the big numbers because we think if we do the work and we do those things well, like it's gonna come. We're gonna come because we're just gonna keep growing.

Robby Bryant:44:15
Amazing. this has been an awesome conversation, truly. I I speak with like I said, a lot of business owners. I've had a couple of big SEO guys on the show as well, and you

Nick:44:26
Yeah, you have the I'm not the guy with a billion views on click up or whatever that was. That was crazy.

Robby Bryant:44:31
Yeah, yeah. but you you've gone into more weeds than anyone has, so I I truly appreciate that when I was saying I think I could probably start my SEO agency right now. I meant to just by based on what you've gone into. I I'll leave that to you. I'm not I'm not gonna branch off too far right now.

Nick:44:41
Yeah, get after it, man. That'll be fun.

Nick:44:46
Hey, you know, I'm I'm I'm a believer in infinite multitude. There's enough business for all of us. I don't care. I talk to my competitors all the time. I help them if I can. It doesn't matter to me. So.

Robby Bryant:44:54
All right, maybe maybe when I do that I'll come for you to some consulting. Nick, where can people find you if they want to know more about you or Sir Oak?

Nick:45:03
Yep, Nick Fraunfelder. I'm sure he'll keep it on the show notes. LinkedIn, I'm pretty active there. love it if you went to our YouTube channel. It's at Sherroke. And then I'm I'm at Nick Shiroke on Twitter. Well I guess now X. So that's where you can find me.

Robby Bryant:45:19
Amazing. Nick, thanks again for coming onto the show and you know answering all my my interrogative questions. it's been great talking to you.

Nick:45:26
Yeah, man, it was I was in the hot seat. I made it. So that's good. Hey, Robbie, God bless. Thanks, man. I really appreciate you having me on.

Robby Bryant:45:30
Hopefully we Absolutely, sir. To everyone watching, that's the episode. We'll see you on the next one.