Chris Raulf is the founder of Boulder SEO Marketing, a roughly 20-person agency he built entirely through inbound. He got into SEO about 30 years ago and launched the agency about 15 years ago. About a month before this conversation, he created a dedicated AI department and repositioned the business as an AI company that happens to do SEO, content marketing, and related work.
The conversation covers the real difference between traditional SEO and GEO, generative engine optimization. Raulf explains that GEO shares most of its DNA with classic SEO but adds a content distribution layer: Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, YouTube, and press releases, all feeding large language models that now refer a significant share of his incoming leads. He estimates 30 to 40 percent of those leads now arrive through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, and he says the intent from those visitors is noticeably higher because they have already done their research before reaching out.
Raulf is candid about a painful period several years ago when he and his business partner tried to grow as fast as possible, took on too many clients, and delivered work he is still not proud of. That episode shaped how he runs sales today. He handles every sales call himself, runs a live website audit on the call, and turns away prospects who are not a good fit. He also gives away his full methodology publicly, including at conferences, because he believes that educated prospects become better clients.
Chris Raulf got into SEO about 30 years ago and founded Boulder SEO Marketing roughly 15 years ago. The agency has grown to around 20 people and focuses on local service businesses, combining traditional SEO with GEO and AI-driven content distribution. Raulf also teaches SEO as part of a university master's degree program and speaks at international conferences.
Full transcript of the conversation, published verbatim. Speaker labels come from the recording itself, not from an automated guess.
Jordan:0:00
Welcome back to the High Ticket Sisters podcast. Everyone please welcome the one and only Chris Ralph. Chris, how you doing today, my friend?
Chris Raulf:0:07
Living the dream, every day, every day.
Jordan:0:11
I love that answer. But what does the dream look like? Can you please tell us exactly what you guys do?
Chris Raulf:0:16
Roman, if your dream consists of having meetings with all kinds of departments and people all day long, that's my dream.
Jordan:0:30
Gotcha. So you sound like an orchestrator. kind of put these departments. Is it internal departments or is it other clients' departments or other clients?
Chris Raulf:0:39
Yeah, so it's my company, Bolder SC Marketing, BSM, we're about 20 people. Been growing pretty rapidly because we were an early adapter of AI, artificial intelligence and SEO and then geo geno-definition optimization. So I'm always probably going to talk more about that, right?
We, I've been doing SEO for about 30 years. So I've seen it all been there from the very beginning before Google was called Google and things are changing very rapidly now. So just about a month ago, I think we created an entire AI department for full-time employees now. So we're actually no longer an SEO agency. We're an AI. agency that happens to do SEO, content marketing and all the other things. So things are changing very rapidly. If you are a small business like ours, my belief is that, you know, as the head of the company, you got to keep an eye on what's going on because a lot of people have, you know, a lot of ideas and because I have that knowledge of having done this for 30 years, I can, you know, hopefully give good advice. give people directions. So that's my job now, right? Where I take advantage of what they bring to the table and guide them a little bit on what direction they should go. And obviously, I, at the end of the day, am responsible for how successful or not this operation is. So that's why I meetings with all kinds of people in the departments all day long.
Jordan:2:28
It's interesting that shift from, you know, going to business for yourself, being a solo entrepreneur to doing everything by yourself, right? Sales, marketing, fulfillment, know, client success, all that fun stuff, to removing yourself from that process entirely. And now you just speak to the team and come up with ideas and optimize the current system that you have in place. How has that shift been from first launching roughly 30 years ago to now being a leader? opposed to the worker, one might say.
Chris Raulf:3:00
Yeah. So I didn't launch the company 30 years ago. I think I launched it about 15 years ago, but I got into SEO about 30 years ago. So, you know, did a lot of learning the first 15 years and then all of a I'm like, Hey, why am I not starting my own business? Right. I just, I know a lot.
So actually very good question, right? So at the beginning it was just me and then like two months into starting this business, BSM, BOLT-SE marketing, I had to hire an employee and then another employee, right? And all of a sudden now you need to manage people. Nobody is born, I think as an entrepreneur or a leader. So you learn as you do things and now we're at a different level where, you know, Back in the day, I just had employees and now I have departments and now I talk to the head of the department. I need to make sure that they convey my message, right? Because I can talk to everybody all the time. So now I depend on other people that help me, you know, make sure that we deliver as promised to our clients because I still do all of the sales calls. I think it's very important to be the sales guy until obviously we reach a size where I potentially will hire somebody like me who can do, I don't even do sales. just talk to people and get them excited about what I'm excited about. And then what they care about is leads and sales. That's all that we do. We do organic for us. And I was able to build this company to what it's now. through people finding us, right? So it's an easy sell for me. But yeah, I think it's critically important that as you grow, pay attention to what you do, what's your role in the business. Yeah.
Jordan:5:09
Absolutely. It's interesting. I feel very similar to you when it comes to not giving up sales. I do think I'm decent at it, but more importantly, I love it. Like I really do love the act of selling, having conversations, people paying you, all that stuff is really fun. But with other departments within my base... I have dogs on my...
Jordan:5:43
Okay, we should be good. When it comes to other departments within the business, like client success or fulfillment, one might say, I definitely do outsource those first. Not because I don't want to do those, but I think my time is better well spent on the customer facing marketing and sales side of things. Do you feel, I guess that way with your own organization as well?
Chris Raulf:6:09
Yeah, so obviously everything starts with me, right? And I'm the face of this operation on the website, etc. Again, I think it comes down to potentially size of the business. We'll see how things change. But for now, I'm a bit of a control freak. So I want to do these conversations because this is still my baby, right? I'm selling myself, so to speak.
And then, it starts with me, my vision, you it's like, hey, this is what we're going to do for you. And then the end result, hopefully our leads and sales so that you can grow your business too. But then the, you know, the implementation, I mean, we have everything in house. You know, then it comes down to how well are these people performing that are now supposed to implement my vision, right?
And that's something that is actually sometimes really hard. We messed up a few times as we were growing very rapidly. Right. And that's something that I wouldn't say keeps me up at night, but it's something that I think about all day long. And that's why I have these conversations, you know, with these people at my company so that we can deliver as promised.
Jordan:7:33
What is your recruiting process, if you can explain, maybe at a higher level or really in detail, how you vet true A players or competent people to take over?
Chris Raulf:7:38
Yeah
Chris Raulf:7:45
Yeah, so my business partner, luckily, he does the initial step recruiting. I think we advertise on LinkedIn, indeed, know, traditional places. And then he interviews a pool of probably, you know, I don't know, five to 10 people for a certain position, you know, if they meet what we're looking for. And then at the end, I get to talk to the, you know, maybe top two or three. candidates and I because I've been doing this for so long, right? I can ask them the right questions and I'm a big believer of proof is in the pudding. So I have them show me, know, hey, show me this, how you do this, you know, show me this tool. Anybody can tell you anything. To me, it's just like, show me, right? This is what comes down to. And then I have a very good idea of a, you know, do they know what they're telling me? that they know and B, I get a good feeling of who they are as a person. mean, there's many different things that they need to bring to the table so that they're a good fit for the business. It's not just knowledge, but also are they a good fit for the team? Are we going to get along? mean, there's so many different things. So I need to get a good feeling about the person and they have to show me that they can actually do what we need them to do. So luckily, I'm at the very end, I'm the guy that ultimately meets him and says yes or no.
Jordan:9:22
All right, the yes or no. I think it's very important for not only, like you said, the employee to have competence, but are they a culture fit, right? They can be the most competent person in the company, maybe even smarter than I, you as an example. But if they're a cancer to the organization, they're going to bring the whole company down, right? If they're not coachable, they're stubborn, know it all, et cetera, it's just not going to work out for sure. Getting back to, you know, SEO and now AISCO or GEO, you said a whole department for AI specifically or AI only. Is it only the GEO side of things or have you expanded with more AI services?
Chris Raulf:9:52
Yep.
Chris Raulf:10:02
That's a great question. obviously every day I read, know, probably like an hour to two hours, what has happened the day before because things are changing so fast. it's like every few minutes is like a new model or a new tool popping up, right? So this is impacts my industry, my business. So I got to stay. top of what's going on. So what's the question again? I started thinking about something else.
Jordan:10:35
No, you're totally good. And I might've distracted you as well. But the question was, is you built a whole department dedicated to AI. When you say that, is it primarily just geo services on behalf of your clients or other services? Or I guess what did you mean when you said you built the whole service for AI?
Chris Raulf:10:41
Yes.
Chris Raulf:10:51
Yeah, so we're actually in the process of building a SaaS tool right now because we have built an incredible process that I don't think anybody else has that allows us to do things way faster, more efficiently, better quality. And it's something that I would like to make available to more companies out there.
Right now we're limited by how many clients we can take on and serve. So we're in the process of developing the SaaS tool where it's basically a self-serve. It's like, hey, these are the 10 things that you need to do in order to get the output that hopefully will do what we want it to do so that you get the results that we're both looking for.
So A, that's one thing, right? We're building a SaaS solution. Then we're building a solution for the team internally that does similar things. So they're very much connected. Then there's so much demand out there for businesses want to automate processes, right? Because they know the technology exists now, but they don't know how to do it, right?
And it's so easy with existing tools. Basically, you build a dashboard that you slap on top of whatever platform they prefer, Claw, Gemini, GPT, whatever it is. So that, let's say, invoicing, instead of it taking 20 hours a month, now it's going to take five hours. So there's so much demand for process optimization, automation out there.
This is something that I want to be able to offer at scale later on this year. That's why we made the investment and we hired an entire department because that's where you can make decent money. And we like doing that and we like helping companies with automation. So that's what we're doing with this department.
Jordan:13:12
Gotcha. No, thank you. Makes so much sense. Would you say that AI department, would that be its own front end offer, or do you plan on utilizing the core SEO, geo services as your core front offer? And then once they're a client with those two services, you upsell them across sell them into the automation processing of things.
Chris Raulf:13:35
That's another great question. So I haven't really figured that out yet, but we just launched. So we trademarked the methodology that I developed called Micro SEO strategies. So we launched a website called microseo.ai and I envision that this is going to be the SaaS platform, right? Where people can self serve themselves, get what they need. The Boulder SEO marketing websites.
Jordan:13:39
No worries.
Chris Raulf:14:05
we specifically optimized for local service businesses because there's so many of them and they need more traditional SEO. You don't want to confuse them too much with AI, right? They know about AI and to some extent we have included information about AI on that website so that people know that we do SEO and AI. But that's what I don't want to say struggle. with right now, but this is something that we're trying to figure out, right? What's the balance of how much information can you put on certain websites so that you don't, you're not everything to everybody because I believe you got to swim in your lane, right? So maybe it means that we're going to start a different business or, you know, a DBA, but right now this is, you know, the way we're leaning toward having the micro SEO that AI website and then keep the bold as your marketing website specifically talk to local service businesses.
Jordan:15:10
That makes total sense. And from my understanding, local service businesses care about, like you said, leads and sales. I long, if I own a chiropractor business, okay. A local service business. I don't think my customer is going to AI or going into cloud Gemini, cetera, and looking up best chiropractor near me. They're probably still going to utilize Google, right? So we should probably focus SEO on Google, not geo or AI SEO for this specific service.
However, you want me to say something? If you flip the industry or change the industry, let's imagine a B2B SaaS company or a technology company, which is kind of like SaaS. Like I have bought, I don't know, maybe a dozen softwares because Claude has recommended that I use this software. So it really depends on who your audience is. If they're in the space like you and I, where we utilize AI every day, then if
Chris Raulf:15:42
Go ahead, go ahead.
Jordan:16:09
then we as a business owner, if we're trying to approach customers like you or customers like me, then we should definitely utilize AISCO or GEO, opposed to just normal traditional SEO. So let go where your customers are, if that makes sense. You know what I mean?
Chris Raulf:16:23
Yeah, Google is not going to go away, right? They have caught up. They were caught with their pants down when ChatGPT launched November of 2022. Believe me, they have caught up. I'm actually beta testing a new product right now. I signed a thing that I can't talk about it. But they're doing pretty incredible things with the AI search.
Jordan:16:43
That's cool.
Chris Raulf:16:51
So they're not going to go away. They're going to keep their 90 % market share globally. But search behavior is changing, right? That's why they are updating how people use their tools and technologies to find information. The reality is even with, I'm a local service business, right? If people search for us like SEO agency, Boulder, et cetera, but Over the last two, three months, I would say 30 to 40 % of all the leads that we're getting, they're like, hey, we found you on chat GPT. Hey, perplexity recommended you. Hey, know, chairman, I, hey Claude, right? But it's because we deployed a geo strategy for our own website. These people that are using large language models, they, the intent is so much higher, right? These people are way better informed about what they need.
So they do a lot of the research of the stuff that I will tell somebody they already know, right? Because they're like, hey, I know that you have a methodology called Micro SEO and I know what it does. I'm like, great. Thank you so much for saving me time. So this is the reality, right? People are, they have higher intent when they use these tools. So in my opinion, any business needs to do GEO.
It's as simple as that because you don't want to totally neglect these search engines because that's what they are and just be found in Google. Be in more places where more people can find you that are a good fit for you.
Jordan:18:21
Any of it.
Jordan:18:37
You brought up something that I cannot ignore and you brought up in simple terms, the prospect coming through so much better framed outside of the lead coming through geo or an LLM. Do you have any pre-framing material that gets distributed before like between lead and actual sales consultation, like a pre-framing email or a short video that they consume case studies that they can watch. between becoming a lead in the sales. You do? Okay, cool.
Chris Raulf:19:06
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this, the sales process is very straightforward with us, right? They submit a form, they get to the website, they submit a form or they call me. I'm like, Hey, can you jump on a Google Meet? We use Google workspace. So we do Google Meet. And then I will do a analysis on the fly. I've been doing this for so long, right? I know how to do this stuff.
And then, you know, usually I try to get access to the Google search console. That's the best tool that I can get access to data directly from the search giant, you know, but their website. And I usually, I know exactly what's going on. Right. So it's, it's like an on the fly. Hey, this is what's going on. Let's do research here. Let me show you what's going on. Let's, know, go through your website, do a, you know, man, your website sucks. I think we're to have to redo your website. Otherwise, I'm not going to take your money because it's not going to do anything to you. So we will only take on clients if I believe that we can actually help them because I don't want to get a negative review. We're doing really well because of our own SEO, GEO. So we can sort of select who we work with and they really have to be a good fit for each other.
We're in this amazing situation that we can select who we want to work with or should work with. So it has to be a good fit. As with employees, I got to make sure that employees are a good fit to work within my team. I don't take lines on that I don't have a good feeling about. If somebody is super aggressive and looks down on you, we don't need to work with them.
It's going to be toxic for the team. They're going to be miserable. So I'd rather be honest and say, Hey, you know, unfortunately, I don't think we're a good fit for each other. I don't need to explain why, but it's just like, you know, not a good fit. So, so we do the initial conversation where they get access to me for like an hour. go through everything and then I can come up with a usually a tentative six month plan for, Hey, this is, I think what we need to do.
Chris Raulf:21:27
Obviously, if we end up working together, we'll do a full analysis. Daniel, my business partner, and Bart, our lead strategist, they will do the full analysis research. just confirm that I put together something that makes sense. But it's always the same stuff, right? It's always the same stuff for a local service business. Usually, there's some variations.
Yes, it's pretty straightforward. And then I sent him a sort of like a summary email proposal style with the help of AI. I have a virtual twin, an AI that is way smarter than I am. My wife hates it because I talk more to virtual Chris than to her. Yeah.
So Virtual Chris saves me hours and hours and hours. That's why I can be the sales guy here. So obviously we use, we heavily use AI to do things to be more, more efficient. So I will send a proposal style email and summary that outlines the, you know, six months strategy, pricing, everything. Cause that Virtual Chris has access to all of the information concerning our company. And a lot of people, like simple emails, right? It makes sense. We just discussed this. I'm able to do this an hour later. So it's right there. And I'm like, look, if you like what we discussed, let me know if you want to work with us or if you need another call.
And then usually the sales cycle is very fast. A few days to maybe a week or two. That's basically how it works.
Jordan:23:23
Thank you so much for bringing that up. I have a couple of talking points, at least three. So let me say these few things. One is your sales process is a live audit. I love conducting audits. I don't do them internally, for my clients, tell them to do it because of what you just said. You are showcasing expertise. Like, hey, pull up your website. I'm going to diagnose exactly what's going on and kind of show you. with my 30 years, 15 plus years of experience, kind of what's happening and how we can help. It is so, cause those are facts. You're not really selling. You're demonstrating, you're showcasing. You're not trying to use, you know, selling powers. So I think audits are a great way to sell even, even like not as sophisticated buyers, but definitely sophisticated buyers for sure. Second thing is when people actually realize how much they can automate with, I use cloud code, with cloud code or with any LLM that you really want to utilize, you don't need a larger organization. Like not to get to an integrity for me, I have a really small team, a team of three, and we do, we're not a seven figure per month company, but you know, we do okay for ourselves. And I imagine everyone in your company is utilizing AI to some degree, right? And I'm sure, Before AI, you might have a head count of 25 or 30 or 35, whatever the case is. But because you can automate a lot more and these workflows are more efficient and you save hours, if not days in time, you can keep your head count low, which adds profitability to the overall company. It's not that it's unfortunate, but to someone out there who understands that they want to utilize AI, they don't know how, just dive in head first. whether it's watching YouTube videos, reading articles, purchasing it and just playing around with it. just, just dive in head first.
Chris Raulf:25:27
So this is why you and I exist, right? This is why our businesses exist. The stuff that we do, it's not rocket science. like we give away, like I give away all my knowledge. In fact, Monday, I'm going to speak in Berlin, Germany. Yeah. And for that conference, it's only a very short 30 minute presentation, but I want
Jordan:25:44
yeah.
Chris Raulf:25:54
the audience to walk away from my presentation, feeling like that presentation alone was worth the money they invested to attend. So I put together a blog post, it's on the chrisralph.com website that actually gives away all of the prompting where you can use AI to generate content that has a chance to rank organically in Google. And if you do a search for SEO for builders or home builders that two days ago, I used our AI SEO methodology, page one, right? So this is the kind of stuff that I think a lot of people, they are just not adventurous enough or they're like lazy, they don't want to do it, right? That's why they pay people like us to do this stuff for them because we're so excited about it.
And I think other people are not as excited about it. Yeah, so the goal of my presentation in the conference is called Gala World Ready. Actually, I'm providing them with the entire prompt transcript that took me a long time to create. And then even I include a full example. And I want them to be excited. And ideally, I want them to give it a try. Right. Obviously, there's like like 200 other things that we do in addition to just using AI to create our content. But you know, give it a try. And then, you know, if you need help, I'm here. If you want to give me, you know, your money, I'll take it and then we do more stuff for you. That's going to get you even better results. But I think a lot of people, they just don't understand this technology. That's why people like you and I, you know, have our own companies that help other people with this stuff.
Jordan:27:56
I don't think I could have said that better myself. To add on what you said, when you literally give away the farm, right? You give away the A to Z playbook on how to do X, Y, Z, right? They it's like, okay, this person is obviously the expert. He just gave me all this value for free. mean, quote unquote for free. Like, why would I not pay him? Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna figure this shit out. I'm not gonna do this by myself. Chris is definitely the guy. I'm just gonna pay him the money. And then I, would you say you've utilized that?
Chris Raulf:27:57
Yeah.
Jordan:28:26
Strategy with previous conferences in the past and what was your results from that? Do you thought you generated business because you gave with a farm?
Chris Raulf:28:34
yeah. I I'm an educator. So I actually teach at a university part of a master's degree. Yeah, yeah, online. Exactly what I do here, right? So I'm a teacher first. And I think this is my mindset. Yeah, I'm gonna guess I'm the sales guy, but I educate because the better educated the person on the other side, you know, the better the relationship.
Jordan:28:40
Sorry.
Chris Raulf:29:03
It's like a personal relationship. You can't fake your way into a successful personal relationship. It has to be sincere. You have to be open, be the real you so that they feel good about you. That's what we do. And that's why I'm not afraid to give away a lot of the knowledge that will allow them to do this stuff themselves.
And some clients, you know, it's a better fit for them, you know, take our knowledge. By the way, we have webinars that we do. You know, I'm now hosting a hosting, yeah, hosting an online summit once a quarter where I invite, you know, some of the top experts in the world on this. And we're all excited to give away this knowledge that would actually allow people to do this stuff themselves. Right.
Jordan:29:38
No
Jordan:29:41
Sorry, though.
Chris Raulf:29:59
But local service businesses, they're really good at what they do. They don't need to be the SEO person. And I tell them, look, I'll give you everything you need to do this yourself. But if you want to do it yourself, give it a try. If it gets too much, call me.
Jordan:30:17
Right, right. No, exactly. I'm not sure if you follow Alex Hermosig at all, but he's the author of this purple book. But he owned a consulting and done for you agency for the gym space. He wrote this book, like the seven ways to make money in a gym or something like that. was like his first book. And he gave the entire book away for free to all gym owners. But before he did that, he was really scared. was timid. He's like, this is everything I know.
Chris Raulf:30:19
Yeah.
Jordan:30:45
about the gym space. Like if I just give it away for free, I feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot. Like this is so valuable. He's like, forget it. I'm just going to give it away for free. So he did that. Gave away the farm. And his expectation was actually the opposite of what actually happened. He thought people were going to take the idea and just run. But what actually happened is, is he got more inbound leads than he knew what to do with. He had emails, text messages, know, LinkedIn messages, et cetera, saying, This is exactly like what I needed. Thank you so much. Can you do this for me? Because people you are you're either going to pay for it in time or you're to pay for it in dollars. If you don't have dollars, you pay for it in time. If you have dollars and you're probably strapped on time, you're to pay somebody else who knows what they're doing to execute it on your behalf. So you're not going to not do this, but continue to do that. Brother, like I'm sure it's working out fantastic.
Chris Raulf:31:23
Exactly.
Chris Raulf:31:39
yeah. I mean, it's been doing this for a long time now. I'm not going to change. The way I do things, it seems to be working and we work with really nice clients that are good fit for us. If somebody wants to do this themselves, please give it a try. Right. It's fun. We love doing it. And if people need help with this, like we're here to help. Yeah.
Jordan:31:45
Right, right, right, right, right.
Jordan:32:02
A few, a few more questions for you. One is you brought up the fact that when sometimes a local service business comes to you, you have them pull up their website and you realize this website is just like not the best website. Even if we do all this SEO work, it's just not going to convert. I'm sure you've thought about this, but have you thought about adding a done for you website service so they can at least get the bare bone fundamentals before paying for the higher ticket SEO item or service?
Chris Raulf:32:31
Yeah, so we have a web design team. Locally, they're fully booked with, we built something called micro SEO strategies where we create the ultimate pillar page, right? That's going to rank for the right kind of keywords. So we do fragments of, you know, parts of a website, but we don't have the capacity to do entire websites. So we do have, I have strategic partners, you know, web design agencies that we trust, pay-per-click agencies that we trust, now even like AI development, deployment, because we're at capacity right now for us. So that's how, if somebody needs a website, I'll be honest with them and say, hey, first, you know, let's get that website redone. We'll work with our partner, the web design company, so that the website is ready for SEO.
And then usually, you know, a month before the website launches or a couple of weeks before the website launches, we're actually starting with the SEO work so that, you know, it's terrible if the website is done and then no SEO has been done. So that's a really good process. Are we potentially going to add more web designers? Potentially, we're really good at SEO and geo. So I don't want to dilute myself. For me, it always has worked well, you know. swim in your lane and I think that's what I want to continue to do.
Jordan:33:59
Yeah, a lot of companies I speak with a lot of agency owners I speak with, they like to portray themselves as full service agencies. have a hundred. my God is right. Like, what are you doing? Like, you know, you're only good at one to five things, five things max. You know what I mean? it's just, go for it.
Chris Raulf:34:07
my god,
Chris Raulf:34:14
Yeah. Yeah. No, sorry. I agree. Obviously, I've been doing this for a long time. So know a lot of people in this space, the ones that are really successful, you know, they focus on something that they're really good at. And you know, I got a another agency owner here in, you know, the Denver Boulder area, technical SEO. So He doesn't really do what we do, but he's really good at technical SEO. Focus on that and he's doing really well. So my recommendation is like swim in your lane. That's what we do. That's what we'll continue to do.
Jordan:34:56
Not for sure.
Jordan:35:02
Absolutely. And then this might be a silly question, but can you please explain to me and even the audience, what is the difference between traditional SEO, SEO that you guys do, and then like geo or AI SEO?
Chris Raulf:35:13
Yeah, 20%. About 20%. So GEO, it's 80 % of the old SEO, you know, keyword research, mapping, meta tags, on page, off page, blah, blah, blah. Then GEO is more of a content creation, optimization and distribution. That's the biggest difference where These large language models, feed on content in Gemini, YouTube, massively important. So now you got to do YouTube like this podcast that we're doing. I guarantee you these large language models, they're going to take a look at the content, like the net new content that you and I are discussing. and then Reddit, massively important, Quora, LinkedIn. it's basically that is the biggest difference where you got to get your content in more places that is related to one big pillar page. That means you got to do press releases, you got to do what not. That is the biggest difference. Back in the day, you would put up a blog post That's it. Nowadays, you got to take that piece of content and be in more places that are linking back to that piece of content.
Jordan:36:48
Yeah, I'm familiar with backlinks, when you somewhat you just explained I was not familiar with like the distribution side and like the basically the AISCO geo set of things. Question, now that you are focusing on geo internally, AISCO internally, what are like the company types that are coming through these LLMs? they still local service businesses or are they different industries entirely?
Chris Raulf:37:14
Well, very good question. So not too long ago, our website was not streamlined enough so that we got too many leads, too many industries, too many things. Finally, I started to work on optimizing the website for local service businesses. We're doing really good work with HR companies, dentists, physical therapy, the typical local service business, because they all need the same stuff. So again, swim in your lane. I would prefer that most of our clients are local service businesses that come in through the Boulder Asset Marketing website, because it's way easier for me to show people examples of one of their I don't want to say competitors or another physical therapy place or HVAC or painter, et cetera. It's like, hey, look, this is what we do for this painter in Massachusetts. We can do the same thing for you here in Denver. Right. So I'm trying to get away to get too many leads from like different industries, you know, too many different business types, because we're doing really well with local service businesses.
Jordan:38:43
For sure, for sure. So correct me if I'm wrong, but that does kind of seem like a challenge right now in the business that you are getting leads that don't really fit your criteria. Your ICP, one might say. From GSB, right? Not from the website? Out of curiosity, because you only have inbound leads. I think anyone would be a happy camper. know, 15 plus years in business, head counts 20 plus, probably making pretty good revenue. and you just have SEO inbound leads. Like that's almost heaven. Can you give us like an example of how many leads you guys get on like a weekly basis or a monthly basis?
Chris Raulf:39:20
Yeah, so obviously it's a bit seasonal. So you always get a ton of leads like the second week of January. Yeah, super interesting. And then it starts to slow down just about now into May. So this is going to be, it's going to get slower through I think the end of the summer and then picks up again until about Thanksgiving. So I would say on a weekly basis, I probably get, I would say, four to five leads that are really good fit. I don't even count the others, we get a lot more, but it's not a good fit. And then, if we can take on, I think we take on four to five clients a month, that's a good way to grow this business the way I like it. So I would say, and the closing rate is very high, right? Of the right kind of leads that I want to work with, I'm like, hey, we're a good fit for each other. Let me show you what we're going to do for you. So on a weekly basis, I would say maybe 10 to 15 leads, four are probably a really good fit.
And then ideally if I can close, you know, maybe, you know, one to two clients a week, that is a good number that keeps us moving forward in the right direction.
Jordan:40:57
No, absolutely. And you don't want to scale too quickly because that's how, excuse me, scale too quickly because you could have a miss hire and they aren't maybe a good fit for the company. because you need to onboard fulfillment, help or CSM, client success managers, whatever the case is, because you need to, because you took on too many clients. It's a great way to ruin your reputation and not provide the best results. You know, I definitely do think you have to scale responsibly, you know?
Go for it. Yeah.
Chris Raulf:41:29
Couldn't agree more. we made a mistake about five, six years ago, I teamed up with Daniel, my business partner, and we're like, Hey, let's go. Let's grow this thing as fast as we can. What a nightmare. What a nightmare. Oh my God. We did terrible work. It's, not proud of that moment. We pissed off a few clients where I had to say, you know what, you're right. We did not. do a good job because we just wanted to grow way too fast. So I learned from that mistake. That's why I do all the sales. I decide who we're going to work with and if we're a good fit. And this is a really good way to grow this business the way it works for us. So definitely if you're an owner of a small business out there and you have the opportunity to grow fast, you just need to know there are risks involved. with that, so you better be ready. We were not at that time and I regret that forever. Yeah.
Jordan:42:37
You definitely want to build your house or your business on a solid foundation. You don't want it on sand. know, we're just going to crumble if you put too many things on top of sand. I want to ask you two more questions. One, what is one thing that you would like to tell maybe your younger self 10 or 15 years ago when you got started?
Chris Raulf:42:41
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Raulf:42:58
Oh man, I wish I would have started my own business sooner. That was way too long. know, like a corporate employee. you know, I finally had the courage to do this and I went all in. Like I read my horoscope one morning and I don't believe in horoscopes, but it said, you know, if you don't make a change today, you'll regret it forever. And I've been wanting, you know, to start my own business. like, you know, I took a shower and I'm like, I'm going to do this.
Like I walked out of the shower with my towel around my waist. wrote my letter of resignation. I just bought a house, just got divorced. You know, I like, I think I had money for maybe two months at Mo. I'm like, screw it. You know, if I don't do this now, I'm going to regret it forever. Luckily it worked out. So that's probably the one thing. Like if you start a business, you got to be all in. And from that moment on, I'm like, I work.
12 hour days for like a year and a half. That's it. That's your baby. You got to be all in because then you have a really good chance to make this work. I loved it. So that's a piece of advice that I'd like to share.
Jordan:44:16
You burn the boats, Chris. And that is the number one reason why you were successful. Forget the prior knowledge, forget the corporate life. You burn the boats. You said, I'm going to be successful in this business. Or that's it. Like, I'm done. Like, not literally. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you went all in. And because you're
Chris Raulf:44:22
Yeah, I know.
Chris Raulf:44:30
Yeah, I didn't, to be honest, I didn't care if I was going to fail. It's like, it's more important to do it for my own. Like I just want to do this. I don't care. Like I couldn't have told my parents. They live in Switzerland, right? I would have told them, holy cow, my dad would have freaked out. You know, he's like World War II child. It's a different generation. Security is everything for them. I'm like, I'm just going to do this. I don't care. We'll see what happens. I'll figure it out. Luckily, it worked out.
Jordan:45:06
No, definitely. And congrats on the success, by the way. Last question I have for you, yeah, is what would you say to another SEO company that might be like five, seven and a half years behind you to kind of like help them pick up their game and get to the level that you're at?
Chris Raulf:45:09
Thank you.
Chris Raulf:45:24
Yeah, so I frequently speak at conferences and I always do a poll. It's like oftentimes this agency owners in the audience and like, hey, who's doing this and this, you know, with AI, sadly, you know, luckily for me, it's like one or two out of 10 that are at the level that we're at. There's going to be a massive consolidation in terms of I think agencies, think a lot of agencies will go out of business because they, they or not able to adapt fast enough like you and me, right? I think we get it. What this technology can do. A lot of people don't have that mindset. And now if you haven't started, you know, to be an AI agency that happens to do SEO, like you're way, way, way behind. So it's going to be hard to catch up. It's not impossible. So if you're an agency owner, an SEO agency owner, you got to rethink. and really embrace SEO because this is what clients are asking for.
Jordan:46:29
Absolutely. Great reason to buy this for sure. I want to say that it kind of, doesn't make it easier on us, but I definitely do say that we kind of have an advantage, you know, because we're already in the game. We kind of know some things we're utilizing to our strengths for sure.
Chris Raulf:46:45
Absolutely. Yeah, I'm very happy with where I'm at. was actually, you know, I wasn't sure how much longer I want to do this. I'm turning. Eventually. But now I think that timeframe has been pushed out because it's so interesting. And, you know, I'm 56 now I'm turning 56. Getting to a point where
Jordan:46:54
Would you ever tell it?
Chris Raulf:47:13
You know, I don't mind doing less work, but right now it's so interesting. It's so good for my mind and brain. And I wake up every day excited that when I wake up, I'm like, sweet, I'm alive. You know, I can do stuff that interests me. have an amazing team, amazing business partner. know, life is really good. A great family. It's like, it's a really cool time to be alive. Right. Every time when a new technology
Jordan:47:24
Yeah.
Jordan:47:40
We
Chris Raulf:47:43
emerges like right now. It's exciting time, right? And we're able to take advantage of this new technology and help other people, businesses with it. I mean, how cool is that? So I think I'll do it for a while and then we'll see how it goes.
Jordan:48:01
Right, right, right. No, I put it the same way. Chris, it was such a freaking pleasure to have you on the show, man. I had tons of fun. You're obviously the expert in the space. Where could the people find you?
Chris Raulf:48:11
Just do a search for AI SEO expert. You'll find my personal website, I think organically in the top spot. Just search for Chris Ralph, boulderseomarketing.com, chrisralf.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn if you see this. Yeah. Hey Jordan, I'm so glad you reached out. This was a great interview. Loved every question. Thanks so much for having me.
Jordan:48:37
Absolutely. Thank you again. Audience, until next time.
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