Cari Schmoock

I think just being really honest with my clients and being very transparent. If I think they could find success better somewhere else, or they're not ready, I tell them. Sometimes people will come to me for SEO, but they have other issues they need to get in line before they even focus on SEO, or their budget might not be big enough to even make an impact with SEO, so I'll suggest alternatives until they get to a better point. Or they may already have good SEO - sometimes I get people calling me saying they don't know if they're happy with their current marketing company, and I'll take a look and tell them it looks good. I never pressure someone to leave where they are or what they're already doing to come to me if I don't think that's gonna benefit them. I'm very honest about it. We also give really good personal service because we're very small. We only have 13 SEO clients, and I'm not planning to go over 25 clients. I really don't want to grow my team anymore because I'm not in the game to have a giant corporate company. I really just want to help those that I can while still maintaining a good balance for myself and staying in a place where I feel good about what I'm doing. I really honestly care. I see every single one of my clients and all of their analytics multiple times a month, so I know what's going on.

I say just find something that you have some interest in, or have some knowledge in already. I didn't have that much knowledge of roofing and siding to be honest - I knew the basics, but I didn't know that much about it. Just figure out what it is you want to do. What do you have to offer? What do you want to offer? What do you want your business to look like? What do you feel comfortable with? What would bring you joy? And then build off of that. I've built my business in a way that I felt very comfortable in. I'm not saying I didn't do some scary things, I definitely did, but I did it in a way that felt the most comfortable for me. Just really look at everything and take your time to make the right choices that are right for you. I don't think there's any reason why this can't have more women. I haven't hit any barriers where anybody said, well you're a woman, why would I - whatever. I haven't found any of those barriers. I think it's mostly just knowing that you can do it, knowing that it's even an option, or that it's such a lucrative position. If a woman wants to do it, just do what they love to do. I think if you love what you're doing and you feel confident in what you're doing, you're gonna find success. Being confident in what you have to offer, and what you want your relationship with your clients to be, and what you want your relationship with your employees to be - those are all really the biggest part of being a business owner, just figuring out what is it that you want and then going for that and being confident in your choices. And being ready to shift when you need to, because things happen, things change, and then you have to re-evaluate and you might have to make shifts, and just being comfortable with that.

I know there's a lot of scare tactics going around right now, with people saying SEO is dead, it's the age of AI. Well, AI and SEO are merged, they're together. There is no end to SEO, it's just a change in how we're approaching it. There have been a lot of changes in the last year to searches, and what websites need to be - how they need to be formatted, and what needs to be on the pages, and what we're communicating to the search engines. We need to make sure we're not losing ground and we're staying - our clients are staying at the top of their industry. When you go to Google and you do a search, you're not just using the search engine, you're using the AI. You really need to be talking to both. You need to be talking to the search engines as well as to the AI, and making sure our clients' websites and social presence are doing both at the same time really well. I think there's tons of opportunity. I don't think this needs to be a male-dominated field at all. It's not being confident that there's a place for them still, but finding what they want that place to be.

Being honest and transparent with my clients is huge for me. I really honestly care about every single one of my clients and their businesses. I want to help while still maintaining a good balance for myself and staying in a place where I feel good about what I'm doing. I think a genuine human connection goes so far in this industry compared to these big corporate companies where clients may just be one of 2,000 clients one project manager has. Building a really personal company like this is such a breath of fresh air to a lot of business owners. I've become - I've developed really good relationships with all of my clients. I love that my clients really trust me and enjoy talking to me, and I enjoy talking to them. Being a safe space for them has been awesome. I never come off as some sleazy, salesy person that's trying to just sell them on the next big thing. I'm honest with them, I let them know I care about them, I care about their business. That is a breath of fresh air for a lot of people. It's scary for business owners to trust in another company with all of their digital presence - this is millions and millions of dollars for these companies.