Hey everyone, in today’s episode I share the mic with Chase Granberry, co-founder of Authority Labs, which allows you to track rankings on Google and Bing.
Listen as Chase discusses how he built the company by hustling and being the best in the SEO software space, the value of zeroing in on one thing when it comes to growing a company, why it’s so important to track rankings, how he struggled to scale the technical side of the business when he knew nothing, and how positive thinking and reading voraciously are two key factors that have contributed to his own success.
Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: How Chase Granberry Grew Authority Labs to $3M ARR by Being the Best in the SEO Software Space TRANSCRIPT
Time-Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:02 – Eric welcomes Chase Granberry
- 01:25 – Authority Labs helps track your ranking and SEO in Google and Bing
- 02:15 – It is important to track your ranking for your brand name
- 02:56 – For the long term, your Google ranking will help draw organic traffic to your business
- 03:16 – Chase worked for a commercial printing company and he built an e-commerce site for them
- 04:20 – Chase worked for another company doing ad sales
- 04:40 – Chase did “anything internet” and got into consulting, building websites, email campaigns and SEO, and started to look for tools that he could use
- 05:30 – Authority Labs earns 3 million a year and they only have 4 full time employees
- 05:51 – The company grew by hustling, word of mouth, and being the best in the SEO software space
- 06:10 – There are more than 2,000 customers for Authority Labs
- 06:20 – Authority Labs has two different products: the interface product which starts at $99 and the other product which does data feed, it starts at 99 cents per thousand
- 07:48 – Chase wanted to add more products, but their focus is on scaling their service’s ranking for now
- 08:15 – The company is now coming to a point of trying out different products
- 09:15 – Eric likes Authority Labs’ focus on tracking and SEO
- 09:42 – How did you acquire your first 500 paying customers? – For the first six months or year, they were not charging the credit cards automatically
- 10:23 – All deals were straight sales deals and was going through direct messaging on LinkedIn
- 11:23 – Within the first six months, they got large data deals and grew their revenue from that
- 12:03 – Chase didn’t have any money at the time and had to work with what he knew and what could make the biggest impact
- 12:50 – They are now working on building more products and doing more sales
- 13:22 – They are also working on adding more blog posts such as technical articles and guest posts from influencers such as Todd Malicoat
- 14:35 – What’s one big struggle you had in growing the business? – This is the first company Chase has owned and ran
- 15:07 – A lot of the struggle is on scaling and growing the company as well as keeping up with the technical side of things
- 16:15 – Chase learned the technical side through a lot of reading and asking questions
- 16:30 – What was the one thing that was a game changer for you? – Reading about different cases of how people scaled and general concepts of doing work
- 17:33 – Chase read hacker news, Subreddits, Slack communities, the High Scalability blog
- 18:33 – What’s one big change you made in the last year that’s impacted you or the business in a big way? – We intently started focusing on building new stuff
- 19:31 – What’s one new tool that you added in the last year that added a lot of value for you? – Datadog
- 20:20 – What’s one must-read book do you recommend? – The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale
- 21:07 – When Chase focuses on finding a good parking spot, he finds one 80-90% of the time
- 21:25 – In starting anything, nothing happens immediately, but remaining positive will make a difference
- 21:49 – Connect with Chase on Twitter
- 22:01 – End of today’s episode
3 Key Points:
- Find your niche and do it well.
- If you want to learn something, read profusely about it and apply the concepts that you’ve absorbed.
- Success rarely happens overnight—be positive in your thinking and this will carry you through the tough times of your business.
Resources From This Interview:
- Authority Labs
- Authority Labs blog
- Redis
- High Scalability
- Datadog
- Must-read book: The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale
- Chase on Twitter
- Chase on Facebook
Leave Some Feedback:
- What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.
- Did you enjoy this episode? If so, leave a short review here.
- Subscribe to Growth Everywhere on iTunes.
- Get the non-iTunes RSS feed
Connect With Eric Siu: