What are some of those shifts that have to happen in the business owner as they become the person they need to be in order to scale their business?

So it's really about reallocation and redeployment of their team and the tools.

Really that mindset shift of you are the architect, you are no longer the doer.

Your job is to lead and to build self-managers.

So they've gotta put themselves up at the top.

They've gotta rebuild and really strengthen up that next layer of self-managers, and really help instill the confidence and the competence of their team of, "Great, this is what perfect looks like.

This is how to do it.

What's your take on the rise of AI search? Where do you see that going from a macro perspective?

You know, when it first started to kind of enter the market, I think everybody was scared, at least in our industry.

It's like, whoa, what is this? As I just mastered the Google algorithm, what the heck is this thing now? And so you now have like ChatGPT and Perplexity and Cloud, and there's like so many of them.

And everybody was just scratching their head, just trying to figure it out.

So I think now that it's been a couple of years, we've all come to the same consensus that CEO still and will always remain the foundation for GEO.

Because at the end of the day, it's a matter of optimizing content.

So the content that you optimize, that you publish on a website, whether it's a site that you own or a site that you contribute to, is influencing the large language models, but it's also still impacting Google.

Has it gotten to the point with AI search where you need to stop doing things that people used to do on Google? Or is it more one of those things where AI search is actually in large part leveraging Google search results? How do you see that? To put it into perspective, our strategy for the most part has not really changed a whole lot.

we have always been in the camp of if you want to start to generate more cases online whether it's through google or chat gpt or wherever else you need content on your website you need to you need to feed you know the algorithms with information and connecting the dots of who you are as an attorney and you want to build out your topical authority right and so that's no different if i went back 15 years ago and I was just optimizing for Google versus today as we're optimizing for Google and all the large language models.

So what do I mean by that? When we pick on a client, usually the budgets will consist of a couple of things.

A, account management, technical SEO, adding in some creative for conversion rate optimization.

But heavy amount of the budget goes towards content and links.

And that's no different now than it was, again, like 15 years ago.

at the wheel? Well, then maybe we need a drowsy driving page, right?

And then from there, if anybody on ChatGPT ever does a search saying, hey, my husband was in a accident with an Amazon truck driver where the truck driver fell asleep at the wheel.

So Jason, can we talk for just a couple of minutes about your approach to leadership? Like, do you guys have a formal leadership team? What does that look like?

Yeah, we do.

So we are about 140 full-time employees now.

We probably have a team of maybe 15 leaders in the company.

We have C-suite employees.

I'm the CEO, right? We've got a CEO, we've got a CTO and a CFO, right? So that's the C-suite.

And underneath that, we have like a senior director of client services, a senior director of content, a senior director of outreach, analytics, et cetera, et cetera.

No matter how great marketing is dialed in, if the intake system isn't working the way it should, you're missing out on opportunity.

So what are the things that really successful intake teams do that unsuccessful firms don't do? Like what makes effective law firm intake? Yeah, I think what gets measured gets improved, the old saying.

So I think some of the most successful law firms that we work with, they are, for the most part, the brand.

They're the face of the firm.

A lot of times they'll put either a CEO in place or a COO.

And these are people that, it's not like they're specialized in running law firms.

What makes effective law firm intake? I think what gets measured gets improved.

So some of the most successful law firms that we work with are, for the most part, the brand.

They're the face of the firm.

They'll put CEO or COO, and it's not like they're specialized in running law firms.

They're just specialized in running businesses.

So they bring a COO, and from there they put all of these different KPIs and metrics, and they start measuring things.

SEO still and will always remain the foundation for GEO because at the end of the day, it's a matter of optimizing content.

So the content that you optimize that you publish on a website is influencing, you know, the large language models, but it's also still impacting Google.

So a lot of the principles that we have been applying for two decades are still applicable today when you're trying to optimize for a prompt on ChatGPT.

The one thing that's a little different is for years and years and years, the SEO could put bad law firms at the top of Google.

With the right strategy, you could force Google to ranking a bad law firm at the top of the search engines just through links and content and technical SEO.

Whereas ChatGPT, it's much harder to get a bad law firm because when you do a prompt on ChatGPT, it's like, okay, great.

So if this client is big in trucking accidents and

they are in Atlanta, Georgia, where most SEO agencies will just put up one page of content optimized for Atlanta truck accident lawyer and kind of be done with it.

We might publish a whole content site with 75 pages all around every little thing that could happen involving a truck.

So could it be a FedEx truck, an Amazon truck? Could it be that the truck driver fell asleep

at the wheel? Well, then maybe we need a drowsy driving page, right?

And then from there, if anybody on ChatGPT ever does a search saying, hey, my husband was in a accident with an Amazon truck driver where the truck driver fell asleep at the wheel.

Now we are in the best position because the topical authority is feeding the large language model saying that, hey, we're a personal injury law firm.

We're in Atlanta.

The other side of this is you become a danger to yourself, right? Because entrepreneurs show up in the world ready to solve problems, right? And it's really hard for entrepreneurs to kind of say no to opportunities.

And so the good thing about bringing in a COO is that I don't my COO is essentially my no person so he keeps me out of harm's way from myself right because it's so easy to go out and start another business and start another business and next year you get all these distractions where the main mothership is not getting any of your attention but to answer your question I mean it's all a matter of choice like it's not a right or wrong answer some people People would prefer to scale.

I'm like just a scratch in the surface when I look at like an entrepreneur like Elon Musk.

You know what I mean? It's like, whoa, like, man, that guy is building spaceships and self-driving cars.

And I'm over here just trying to figure out how ChatGPT works.

You know what I mean? It's like everything kind of comes into perspective when you look at it like that.

And so really tell us a little bit about Hennessy Digital and the types of clients you work with.

Yeah.

So Hennessy Digital is my second agency that caters to law firms.

The first agency that I started back in 2008.

Very similar probably to your agency.

I worked a lot with like solo practitioners and DUI attorneys.

And that was all great and built up that agency.

Like, how do you see that? Um, so like,