Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi

Linkifi
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Welcome to the Market Movers: Building Brands and Links with Linkifi podcast, the go-to spot for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand. Dive into the world where branding meets SEO and link-building, and unlock the secrets to becoming more visible, credible, and downright irresistible to your audience. Ready to rise above the noise and make your mark?

  1. 3d ago

    $100K/Month Agency, AI Agents & SEO Experiments: SEO Jesus on What’s Working Now

    Welcome to Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi! Your go-to podcast for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand, where branding meets SEO and link-building. I’m Chris Panteli, Co-Founder and CEO of Linkifi, and I’m joined by my co-host and Co-Founder, Nick Biggs. In this episode, we’re joined by Stewart Vickers, better known as SEO Jesus, an SEO entrepreneur, agency owner, author and investor. Stewart breaks down what still works in SEO, how AI search is changing brand visibility, why YouTube and on-page fundamentals matter more than many marketers realize, and how he is using Claude Code, agentic workflows, Facebook Ads and automated content systems to push his agency and experiments forward.   Key Talking Points ✅ How SEO Jesus Was Born. Stewart never planned the nickname. After years of strangers comparing his long-haired look to Jesus, the SEO community started calling him SEO Jesus, and eventually he leaned into it and secured the domain. ✅ Discovering SEO Through Affiliate Marketing. Stewart began as a writer before building niche affiliate sites and realizing that fulfilling existing search demand was far more powerful than trying to manufacture attention. ✅ Generating £50K a Month From a Few Articles. While working at an insurance company, Stewart used highly targeted content to rank for underserved insurance terms, eventually generating around £50,000 per month in revenue from roughly three articles. ✅ SEO Has Changed, but Search Demand Hasn’t. Whether users discover a business through Google, ChatGPT or another platform, Stewart says the core opportunity remains the same: understand what people want and get your product or service in front of them. ✅ AI Search Is Bringing SEO Back to Fundamentals. Stewart’s testing suggests some of the biggest wins come from classic on-page optimization, clearly stating services, locations, credentials, reviews, awards and other information that AI systems actively search for. ✅ YouTube Is a Major AI Visibility Opportunity. Stewart says his testing has shown YouTube to be particularly influential for Google AI Overviews, creating another route for brands to occupy search results beyond traditional web pages. ✅ Personal Branding Is Easy Mode. Stewart originally believed businesses should avoid being too dependent on a founder’s personal brand. After launching his YouTube presence, he changed his mind after seeing how much easier recognition, authority and opportunities became. ✅ Facebook Ads Still Work, but the Game Has Changed. After experimenting heavily with AI-generated creative, Stewart damaged a previously effective ad account. His best-performing campaigns have since returned to simpler messaging focused directly on business outcomes. ✅ Protect What Is Already Working. Stewart recommends separating experimental creatives from winning campaigns. With Meta’s newer systems, a poor test can negatively affect performance far beyond that individual ad. ✅ Build Systems Around the Entire Customer Journey. Stewart combines Facebook Ads, email and SMS follow-ups, sales calls, recorded transcripts and client data to create a more connected acquisition and onboarding system. ✅ Agentic Workflows Are Transforming His Agency. Using Claude Code, virtual servers, Cloudflare and custom databases, Stewart is building systems that capture client requirements, automate reporting, manage approvals and feed information across marketing and delivery workflows. ✅ Experimentation Is Part of the Strategy. From fully automated YouTube channels to AI influencers and e-commerce projects, Stewart deliberately tests new ideas because even failed experiments can create workflows, content and lessons that strengthen the core agency.   Notable Quotes & Moments 📌 “You’ve got to find what people already want, what they’re already buying and searching for, and rank for that.” 📌 “Don’t try and create demand. You want to fulfill existing demand.” 📌 “As soon as I did YouTube, it was just easy mode.” 📌 “Whatever you think your best ad is, you’re probably right.” 📌 “It’s amazing how many marketers hate marketing.”   About Stewart Vickers Stewart Vickers, also known as SEO Jesus, is an SEO entrepreneur, agency owner, author and investor who has built agencies, affiliate properties and digital assets across search and performance marketing. After beginning his career as a writer, Stewart moved into affiliate SEO, insurance marketing and eventually entrepreneurship. Today, he combines traditional SEO fundamentals with AI search optimization, paid acquisition, personal branding, automation and increasingly sophisticated agentic workflows. 🔗 LInkedIn: linkedin.com/in/🙏stewart-vickers-6068a4b5  🔗 SEO Jesus: https://seojesus.com 🔗 LLM Jesus: https://llmjesus.com   🚀 Build Your Brand with Real Links At Linkifi, we help ambitious brands scale organic visibility through digital PR, brand storytelling, and SEO strategy. Book your FREE strategy session today: 🔗 https://book.linkifi.io/widget/bookings/pr-discovery-call 👋 Connect with your hosts: 👉 Chris Panteli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-panteli/ 👉 Nick Biggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick--biggs/ 🎧 Listen to more Market Movers episodes: 🌍 https://marketmoverspod.com

  2. Sep 24

    From 10–15 Cases a Month to 2 a Day: Lee Rudin’s Get Rude Growth Playbook

    Welcome to Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi! Your go-to podcast for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand, where branding meets SEO and link-building. I’m Chris Panteli, Co-Founder and CEO of Linkifi, and I’m joined by my co-host and Co-Founder, Nick Biggs. In this episode, we’re joined by Lee Rudin, founder of Rudin Law and the force behind the Get Rude brand, to explore how bold positioning can turn a local personal injury firm into something people actually remember. Lee shares how he moved from defense litigation into plaintiff injury law, developed the Stop Being Polite, Get Rude identity, and used podcasts, conferences, referrals, digital marketing, community relationships, AI, and offline visibility to grow from roughly 10–15 cases a month to as many as two cases a day.   Key Talking Points ✅ From Defense Lawyer to Firm Founder. Lee began as a defense litigator before gradually building a plaintiff injury practice inside an existing firm. When the economics and direction of that work no longer aligned with his firm, he decided to launch Rudin Law. ✅ Why Plaintiff Work Changed the Equation. Lee saw how successful cases generated referrals from clients, their families, friends, and communities. That created an organic growth engine while allowing him to work directly with people during difficult moments in their lives. ✅ How Get Rude Was Born. Rudin Law initially used the phrase Put the Work In, but once Lee stopped representing insurance companies, he developed the much stronger Stop Being Polite, Get Rude positioning. ✅ A Brand That Captures the Client’s Emotion. Personal injury clients often arrive angry and frustrated with insurers. Get Rude communicates that the firm understands that frustration and is willing to push back on the client’s behalf without simply building a brand around being obnoxious. ✅ Podcasts Became a Content and Authority Engine. One podcast appearance can generate 10, 15, or 20 clips for social media while simultaneously building Lee’s reputation as an expert. ✅ How One Podcast Created a Butterfly Effect. A podcast placement led Lee to the Personal Injury Mastermind Podcast, which led to a speaking opportunity, which then generated more conferences, relationships, referrals, and a broader national reputation. ✅ Relationships Helped Accelerate Case Growth. Alongside organic referrals and digital advertising, Lee credits relationships built through conferences, LinkedIn, podcasts, and the wider legal community as a major contributor to the firm’s growth. ✅ From 10–15 Cases a Month to Two a Day. Lee says Rudin Law moved from roughly 10 to 15 new cases per month to around one per day, before reaching approximately two cases per day during one recent month. ✅ Win Both the Digital and Analog Worlds. Lee likes the idea of a marketing barbell: build a powerful online presence while also showing up physically through events, community involvement, coffees, sponsorships, and real-world relationships. ✅ Run the Firm Like Someone Might Buy It. With private equity and larger national firms moving into the legal industry, Lee believes firms should understand their numbers, document processes, create repeatable training, and operate as though acquisition could eventually be an option. ✅ AI Should Be Treated Like an Employee. Lee uses AI across areas such as medical chronologies, billing summaries, docket analysis, and workflow efficiency, but argues that it needs clear instructions, supervision, and human judgment. ✅ Systems Make Scale Possible. Rudin Law is building documented training and processes inside tools such as Notion so new employees can understand how the firm works and become productive without everything depending on Lee personally.   Notable Quotes & Moments 📌 “Stop being polite. Get rude.” 📌 “It’s not be rude, it’s get rude. But if we have to be rude, we can and we will.” 📌 “I can really draw a direct line to podcasting, to speaking opportunities, to the national reputation.” 📌 “You can move like a speedboat and not like a Titanic.” 📌 “Pay it forward. You do things without the expectation that you’re going to get anything back, and you’ll probably get something back.” 📌 “We were on a case-a-day pace, and then we had two a day last month.” 📌 “Build your business as if someone would want to acquire it.” 📌 “You have to treat AI like you would treat any new employee.”   About Lee Rudin Lee Rudin is the founder of Rudin Law, a New Orleans-based personal injury firm built around the memorable Get Rude brand. After beginning his career in defense litigation, Lee developed a growing plaintiff injury practice before launching his own firm in 2023. Since then, he has combined referrals, digital advertising, community involvement, podcasts, speaking engagements, personal branding, relationships, and operational systems to rapidly expand the firm's reach and caseload. 🔗 Lee Rudin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leerudin/ 🔗 Rudin Law / Get Rude: https://getrude.com   🚀 Build Your Brand with Real Links At Linkifi, we help ambitious brands scale organic visibility through digital PR, brand storytelling, and SEO strategy. Book your FREE strategy session today: 🔗 https://book.linkifi.io/widget/bookings/pr-discovery-call 👋 Connect with your hosts: 👉 Chris Panteli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-panteli/ 👉 Nick Biggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick--biggs/ 🎧 Listen to more Market Movers episodes: 🌍 https://marketmoverspod.com

  3. Sep 17

    Employee #16 to $100M+ ARR: Tim Soulo on How Ahrefs Scaled Without Funding

    Welcome to Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi! Your go-to podcast for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand, where branding meets SEO and link-building. I’m Chris Panteli, Co-Founder and CEO of Linkifi, and I’m joined by my co-host and Co-Founder, Nick Biggs. In this episode, we’re joined by Tim Soulo, CMO at Ahrefs, who joined the company as employee number 16 in 2015 and helped grow it beyond $100 million ARR without outside funding. Tim breaks down what AI search actually changes about SEO, why the fundamentals still matter, how Ahrefs approached AI visibility differently from the flood of new AEO tools, and why building a real brand still comes down to creating things people genuinely want to recommend.   Key Talking Points ✅ Joining Ahrefs as Employee Number 16. Tim was running his own WordPress projects and digital marketing blog when Ahrefs founder Dmitry noticed his work and invited him to lead marketing. In 2015, Tim moved from Ukraine to Singapore to join the company. ✅ AI Search Is Still Built on Search. Tim argues that beneath ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and other AI systems sits familiar web search infrastructure. AI may perform more searches and synthesize the results differently, but many traditional SEO fundamentals remain critical. ✅ Google Traffic Is Down, but It Is Far From Dead. Ahrefs data across roughly 70,000 websites shows Google’s share of website traffic has declined over the past couple of years, while paid and social traffic have increased. Tim does not expect Google search traffic to disappear. ✅ Why Ahrefs Took the Harder Route With AI Visibility. Rather than simply asking users to upload prompts and repeatedly checking them, Ahrefs built its own large index of millions of prompts across different AI platforms through Brand Radar. ✅ Simple Tracking Beats Overengineering. Tim believes straightforward prompts such as best noise-canceling headphones can provide a useful benchmark for AI visibility. Trying to model every personalized conversation creates complexity without necessarily producing more actionable data. ✅ The Problem With Custom Prompt Lists. Marketers can accidentally bias their own AI visibility reporting by tracking branded or overly favorable prompts. If the brand is already included in the question, its appearance in the answer tells you very little. ✅ Mentions Are Becoming the New Links. Traditional SEO depended heavily on links from other sites. For AI visibility, Tim sees a similar dynamic around brand mentions, recommendations and third-party validation, whether or not those mentions include a hyperlink. ✅ YouTube Stands Out as an AI Visibility Signal. One finding Tim remembers particularly clearly from Ahrefs’ research is the correlation between YouTube mentions and AI visibility, giving brands a strong reason to invest in video. ✅ Brand Building Was Always the Real Game. Speaking at conferences, appearing on podcasts, publishing content, earning awards and developing an industry reputation have always increased authority. Search engines and AI systems are simply getting better at recognizing those signals. ✅ AI Search Favors Companies That Actually Build Reputation. A company that only publishes SEO content may struggle against a competitor that also appears in the media, speaks at events, publishes on social platforms and becomes genuinely recognized within its industry. ✅ Tim Is Unsure Whether Vibe Coding Will Replace SaaS. AI makes it easier than ever to create small internal applications, but Tim questions whether most people actually want to maintain their own software rather than pay specialists to build and support a polished product. ✅ The Future Is Still Uncertain. Rather than claiming to know exactly where AI, software and search are heading, Tim says the next couple of years will reveal which behaviors stick and which new business models actually make sense.   Notable Quotes & Moments 📌 “A lot of the things are changing, but at the same time all the fundamentals stay the same.” 📌 “Long story short, it’s all good old SEO, essentially.” 📌 “Simple tracking is the most useful, the most straightforward and the most bulletproof.” 📌 “They don’t necessarily need to link to you, but they need to talk about you.” 📌 “You create a cool thing that people would want to talk about and recommend.” 📌 “This is not old-school marketing. This is forever marketing.” 📌 “It took us 11 years to get to where we are right now.” 📌 “I can tell you what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of changes.”   About Tim Soulo Tim Soulo is the CMO of Ahrefs, where he joined as employee number 16 in 2015 after building his own WordPress projects and digital marketing blog. Since then, Tim has become one of the company’s most visible representatives while helping Ahrefs grow beyond $100 million in annual recurring revenue without outside funding. His work spans marketing strategy, SEO education, product positioning, content, brand building and, increasingly, the evolving world of AI search. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/    🚀 Build Your Brand with Real Links At Linkifi, we help ambitious brands scale organic visibility through digital PR, brand storytelling, and SEO strategy. Book your FREE strategy session today: 🔗 https://book.linkifi.io/widget/bookings/pr-discovery-call 👋 Connect with your hosts: 👉 Chris Panteli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-panteli/ 👉 Nick Biggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick--biggs/ 🎧 Listen to more Market Movers episodes: 🌍 https://marketmoverspod.com

  4. Sep 10

    From $120K to $750K With Local SEO: Bodhi Gallo Reveals the Playbook

    Welcome to Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi! Your go-to podcast for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand, where branding meets SEO and link-building. I’m Chris Panteli, Co-Founder and CEO of Linkifi, and I’m joined by my co-host and Co-Founder, Nick Biggs.   In this episode, we’re joined by Bodhi Gallo, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Stryker Digital, to break down the local SEO playbook behind scaling home service businesses. Bodhi shares how he grew a dumpster rental company from roughly $120,000 to $750,000 a year through organic search, how Stryker Digital now manages around 850 SEO clients, and what local businesses should be doing across Google Business Profiles, reviews, websites, backlinks, content, personal branding, and AI search.   Key Talking Points ✅ From a $20K Blog Post to Local SEO. Bodhi started experimenting with SEO while still young, including earning roughly $20,000 from a personal finance blog post, before working on major brands such as Kroger, Firehouse Subs, and Benjamin Moore. ✅ Growing a Dumpster Business From $120K to $750K. Bodhi bought a dumpster rental company with virtually no digital footprint and used Google Business Profiles, service pages, reviews, links, citations, and local content to grow annual revenue from around $120,000 to $750,000. ✅ Scaling Stryker Digital to 850 SEO Clients. The agency now works predominantly with local businesses, especially home service companies, giving the team access to huge amounts of cross-market performance data. ✅ Start With the Google Business Profile. For a local plumbing or home service business, Bodhi says the first priority should be creating and fully optimizing the Google Business Profile around the core service and market. ✅ Keep Every Location on One Domain. Multi-location companies should generally keep one main domain and build strong location-specific pages rather than creating separate websites for each city. Each Google Business Profile can then point to its relevant location page. ✅ Fill Out Everything Google Gives You. Services, products, descriptions, posts, website links, and other profile fields should all be completed. Bodhi also highlights Google Business Profile posts as an increasingly useful ranking signal. ✅ Reviews Need a Repeatable System. Bodhi recommends asking happy customers immediately after a job, incentivizing technicians to collect genuine reviews, and building review requests directly into the CRM. He believes review velocity can matter more than simply having the largest total number. ✅ Track Local Intent, Not Vanity Traffic. Service pages and localized content should be prioritized over generic informational blogs. A plumbing company does not benefit much from attracting thousands of visitors searching how to fix a leaking tap if none of them live in its service area. ✅ Digital PR Comes Before Most Link Building. Bodhi puts high-quality digital PR near the top of his off-page strategy, followed by relevant local links, Chamber of Commerce citations, guest posts, and links from complementary businesses in the same market. ✅ AI Search Rewards Omnipresence. For ChatGPT and other AI platforms, Bodhi recommends being visible across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Reddit, Yelp, and other sources rather than relying solely on a website and Google rankings. ✅ Personal Brands Are Becoming Local Search Assets. Owners and employees can create videos discussing specific services in specific locations, helping search engines and AI systems connect real people with the businesses and expertise they represent. ✅ SEO Is Not Dead. It Is Expanding. Bodhi sees the current AI shift as similar to the early search-engine era, when businesses had to understand multiple discovery platforms at once. The opportunity is bigger, but the playbook is constantly changing.   Notable Quotes & Moments 📌 “I made about $20,000 off that blog post and was like, wow, I’m doing something here.” 📌 “We’ve got 850 SEO clients.” 📌 “Those smaller suburban markets that are outside a big metro area is where the most juicy squeeze is in local SEO.” 📌 “Review velocity over quantity all day nowadays.” 📌 “First thing I like to do though is digital PR.” 📌 “Personal brand is huge.” 📌 “SEO has never been more alive.”   About Bodhi Gallo Bodhi Gallo is the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Stryker Digital, an agency focused on helping home service and local businesses generate predictable growth through SEO, Google Business Profile optimization, content, paid acquisition, and search strategy. Before scaling the agency, Bodhi applied his local SEO knowledge to a dumpster rental company, helping grow it from approximately $120,000 to $750,000 in annual revenue largely through organic online acquisition. Today, Stryker Digital works with around 850 SEO clients, giving Bodhi and his team deep visibility into local search performance across numerous industries and markets. 🔗 Stryker Digital: https://stryker-digital.com/  🔗 Bodhi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bodhigallo/    🚀 Build Your Brand with Real Links At Linkifi, we help ambitious brands scale organic visibility through digital PR, brand storytelling, and SEO strategy. Book your FREE strategy session today: 🔗 https://book.linkifi.io/widget/bookings/pr-discovery-call 👋 Connect with your hosts: 👉 Chris Panteli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-panteli/ 👉 Nick Biggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick--biggs/ 🎧 Listen to more Market Movers episodes: 🌍 https://marketmoverspod.com

  5. Sep 3

    From Selling Affiliate World to Building ZeroRank AI: Besmir Bregasi’s Next Move

    Welcome to Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi! Your go-to podcast for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand, where branding meets SEO and link-building. I’m Chris Panteli, Co-Founder and CEO of Linkifi, and I’m joined by my co-host and Co-Founder, Nick Biggs. In this episode, we’re joined by Besmir Bregasi, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of ZeroRank AI, to explore his journey from affiliate marketing to SaaS, paid acquisition, and AI search. Besmir shares how he made around $17,000 in his first month of affiliate marketing, why he believes huge opportunities still exist in paid lead generation, and how ZeroRank AI is helping brands understand and improve their visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, AI Overviews, and other answer engines.   Key Talking Points ✅ Making $17,000 in His First Month Online. Besmir discovered affiliate marketing at 21 while studying at university. After realizing he could spend roughly $1 on Google Ads and generate $3 or $4 back, his first successful month produced around $17,000. ✅ Why Affiliate Marketing Is Still Thriving. Despite constant predictions that the industry is dying, Besmir says small teams are still spending enormous amounts on paid acquisition and generating serious revenue across Meta and other platforms. ✅ Lead Generation Is a Huge Opportunity. Besmir sees particularly strong opportunities in areas such as finance, home improvement, solar, and other categories where qualified leads can be sold to brokers or directly to service providers. ✅ Look at What Is Working in the U.S. First. Many successful funnels and offers begin in the U.S. before spreading to Europe and Asia. Besmir believes entrepreneurs can often adapt proven models to less competitive markets rather than invent something entirely new. ✅ You Still Need an Edge. AI makes it easier than ever to create landing pages, ads, and funnels, but everyone has access to the same tools. Success still requires better creatives, stronger offers, improved margins, sharper hooks, or some other competitive advantage. ✅ Start With What Is Already Working. Besmir recommends studying successful competitors rather than beginning with a blank page. Tools such as AdPlexity can reveal long-running ads and proven strategies that marketers can then improve upon. ✅ ZeroRank AI Started as an Internal Problem. Besmir noticed more customers saying they had discovered his SaaS businesses through ChatGPT, while existing SEO tools were not accurately showing what was happening inside AI search. ✅ SEO Traffic Fell but Signups Stayed Strong. Some of Besmir’s SaaS businesses saw organic Google traffic drop significantly without a corresponding drop in signups, suggesting that customer discovery was shifting toward AI platforms. ✅ Building ZeroRank Around Real AI Visibility. ZeroRank was designed to track how brands actually appear across LLMs rather than relying only on API-generated responses that may not match what real users see. ✅ From 11% to 45% AI Visibility. Besmir says one of his own SaaS brands increased its visibility score from around 11% to 45% within one or two months after implementing recommendations from ZeroRank. ✅ AI Search Requires More Than Traditional SEO. Besmir believes visibility now depends increasingly on fresh content and signals from platforms such as Reddit, Quora, YouTube, and social channels, alongside websites and backlinks. ✅ The Future Is AI Agents. Besmir expects users to move beyond asking AI which product is best. Agents will increasingly choose tools, connect to services, and complete tasks on the user’s behalf, making brand visibility within AI systems even more valuable.   Notable Quotes & Moments 📌 “On my first month, I think I did like 17,000.” 📌 “This was my first and only job I ever did in my life.” 📌 “The easier it is, the more competition.” 📌 “You need to have an edge.” 📌 “You never start from a blank slate.” 📌 “We were hearing all these people that were finding us through ChatGPT.” 📌 “That somewhere now is the LLMs.” 📌 “I think AI is the future. I think agents are going to be the future.”   About Besmir Bregasi Besmir Bregasi is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of ZeroRank AI, an AI visibility platform designed to help brands understand and improve how they appear across answer engines and large language models. He began his career in affiliate marketing at age 21 and has spent nearly two decades building businesses across digital marketing, paid acquisition, conferences, SaaS, and marketing technology. After helping build Affiliate World into a global event attracting thousands of marketers, Besmir moved into new ventures while remaining deeply involved in digital marketing. Today, ZeroRank AI helps businesses monitor AI visibility, identify opportunities to improve recommendations and citations, and create content designed for the emerging search landscape. 🔗 Besmir Bregasi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/besmirbregasi  🔗 ZeroRank AI: https://zerorank.ai   🚀 Build Your Brand with Real Links At Linkifi, we help ambitious brands scale organic visibility through digital PR, brand storytelling, and SEO strategy. Book your FREE strategy session today: 🔗 https://book.linkifi.io/widget/bookings/pr-discovery-call 👋 Connect with your hosts: 👉 Chris Panteli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-panteli/ 👉 Nick Biggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick--biggs/ 🎧 Listen to more Market Movers episodes: 🌍 https://marketmoverspod.com

  6. Aug 26

    $750K to $2M in 6 Years: Brianna Rhue Explains the Power of Personal Brand

    Welcome to Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi! Your go-to podcast for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand, where branding meets SEO and link-building. I’m Chris Panteli, Co-Founder and CEO of Linkifi, and I’m joined by my co-host and Co-Founder, Nick Biggs. In this episode, we’re joined by Brianna Rhue, founder of Dr. Contact Lens, to explore how she grew her own optometry practice from $750,000 to more than $2 million in six years while simultaneously building healthcare technology companies and raising two children. Brianna shares how Dr. Contact Lens was born from a real problem inside her own practice, why doctors need to think more like CEOs, and how consistent founder-led content, personal branding, technology, and patient retention can drive growth.   Key Talking Points ✅ Growing a Practice From $750K to More Than $2 Million. Brianna explains how she grew her own optometry practice over six years while simultaneously developing healthcare technology companies and continuing to see patients. ✅ Why Doctors Need to Think Like CEOs. Brianna believes many healthcare professionals operate like employees inside businesses they actually own. Her mission is to help doctors take ownership of their data, operations, technology, and long-term future. ✅ Building Dr. Contact Lens Out of Necessity. The idea began while Brianna was nine months pregnant, when a regulatory change meant patients needed easier access to their prescriptions. What started as a simple website idea eventually became a SaaS platform. ✅ Becoming a Tech Founder Without Knowing the Language. Brianna entered SaaS without knowing terms such as CAC, LTV, GUI, API, or EDI. She and her co-founder learned through execution, setbacks, expensive mistakes, and persistence. ✅ Losing Hundreds of Thousands While Learning. Brianna openly discusses spending and losing significant money during the early development process because she did not yet understand how to build a technology company. ✅ Making the Practice More Convenient Than Online Retailers. Patients receive a text message, can access their prescription, see available benefits and rebates, and order through the same practice that already manages their eye health. ✅ Why Patient Data Matters. Brianna emphasizes that patients own their healthcare data while entrusting it to their providers. Practices need to understand the value of that data and use it responsibly to improve care and the patient relationship. ✅ Being a Doctor Helped Sell to Other Doctors. Brianna moved from one side of the conference table to the other, using her own experience as an optometrist and practice owner to explain the business problem Dr. Contact Lens solves. ✅ Changing an Industry From Blue to Purple. Brianna deliberately used purple branding to stand apart in an eye care industry dominated by blue logos. That eventually became part of her own recognizable identity as the Doctor in Purple. ✅ Using Conferences to Build the Business. Speaking opportunities gave Brianna access to audiences of optometrists who already needed continuing education. She combined speaking with booths and direct conversations to educate doctors about technology and business leverage. ✅ Turning a Practice Into an Incubator. Brianna uses her own clinic to experiment with technology and understand how new tools can improve operations and patient care before applying those lessons more broadly. ✅ Why Personal Branding Became a Growth Engine. Brianna did not initially think about building a personal brand. Over time, her recognizable identity, speaking, educational content, and consistent presence became central to her authority. ✅ Posting on LinkedIn Every Day for 18 Months. Brianna says she has not missed a day of posting on LinkedIn in a year and a half, turning consistency into one of her non-negotiables. ✅ People Are Watching Even When They Do Not Engage. At conferences, people regularly tell Brianna that they constantly see her LinkedIn posts. The lesson is that visible engagement metrics do not capture everyone consuming the content. ✅ Treating LinkedIn Like a Journal. Brianna does not focus only on business wins. She draws inspiration from books, yoga, conversations, personal experiences, entrepreneurship, family life, and the broader themes she is thinking about. ✅ Your Calendar Should Reflect What Energizes You. Brianna argues that people need to deliberately create space for the activities, conversations, and opportunities that give them energy rather than simply reacting to whatever fills their calendar. ✅ You Have to Care Before Anyone Else Will. For people nervous about sharing online, Brianna says the first step is believing that your own experiences and ideas are worth sharing. ✅ Do Not Try to Be the Smartest Person in the Room. Brianna deliberately seeks environments where she can learn from people ahead of her rather than trying to prove that she knows the most. ✅ AI Should Help With Content, Not Replace Your Voice. Brianna uses tools such as Claude and ChatGPT for ideation but strongly rejects publishing generic AI-generated content that no longer sounds human. ✅ Healthcare Brands Need to Know Who They Want to Serve. Brianna recommends beginning with a clear understanding of the patients a clinic actually wants to attract rather than attempting to market equally to everyone. ✅ Customer Experience Starts Inside the Practice. Brianna’s own clinic focuses on a family atmosphere and builds its patient experience around the community it wants to serve. ✅ Obsess Over the Customer Journey. Practices should continually evaluate how patients move through every touchpoint and use technology to remove unnecessary friction and duplication. ✅ The Future Is Fewer Disconnected Systems. Brianna questions why healthcare practices should need 15 different portals and expects integrations and AI to increasingly simplify practice operations. ✅ Technology Should Support Healthcare Staff. Brianna emphasizes that technology should not ignore the people answering phones, checking patients in and out, fitting glasses, performing exams, and managing countless other responsibilities. ✅ Take Care of the People Taking Care of Patients. Running a healthcare practice means staff are constantly serving others. Brianna argues that owners and managers need to support those employees as carefully as they support patients.   Notable Quotes & Moments 📌 “I grew my own practice from 750,000 to over 2 million in six years.” 📌 “I became a tech founder not even really knowing I had become a tech founder.” 📌 “Necessity was the mother of invention.” 📌 “We got thrown back multiple times, hundreds of thousands of dollars literally just taken from us.” 📌 “I have not missed a day posting in a year and a half.” 📌 “You should not be the smartest person in any of the rooms that you’re in.” 📌 “Your calendar really should be full of more of what you want it to have on it.” 📌 “I invest in new patients, but I also invest more heavily into established patients.”   About Brianna Rhue Brianna Rhue is an optometrist, speaker, practice owner, healthcare technology founder, and founder of Dr. Contact Lens. She grew her own optometry practice from $750,000 to more than $2 million in six years while building healthcare technology companies alongside it. Dr. Contact Lens helps eye care practices reduce prescription and patient leakage by making it easier for patients to access their prescriptions and purchase contact lenses through the practice that already manages their eye health. Brianna has also built a highly visible personal brand around healthcare entrepreneurship, technology, eye care, leadership, and her identity as the Doctor in Purple, with consistent founder-led content playing a major role in that growth. 🔗 Dr. Contact Lens: https://drcontactlens.com 🔗 Brianna Rhue on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briannarhue/    🚀 Build Your Brand with Real Links At Linkifi, we help ambitious brands scale organic visibility through digital PR, brand storytelling, and SEO strategy. Book your FREE strategy session today: 🔗 https://book.linkifi.io/widget/bookings/pr-discovery-call 👋 Connect with your hosts: 👉 Chris Panteli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-panteli/ 👉 Nick Biggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick--biggs/ 🎧 Listen to more Market Movers episodes: 🌍 https://marketmoverspod.com

  7. Aug 20

    550,000 Patients Later: Jared Aron Explains Where Healthcare Clinics Are Losing Revenue

    Welcome to Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi! Your go-to podcast for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand, where branding meets SEO and link-building. I’m Chris Panteli, Co-Founder and CEO of Linkifi, and I’m joined by my co-host and Co-Founder, Nick Biggs. In this episode, we’re joined by Jared Aron, co-founder of Coherent Healthcare, to explore why private healthcare providers often lose patients after they have already spent time and money acquiring them. Jared explains how clinics can reduce patient leakage, improve follow-up, track outcomes rather than activity, and combine automation with human support to build a smoother patient journey from first inquiry through treatment and retention.   Key Talking Points ✅ From Pokémon Cards to Healthcare Entrepreneurship. Jared says he caught the entrepreneurial bug early, selling Pokémon cards at school before eventually moving into early-stage businesses and healthcare. ✅ Building Medical Hardware Before Running a Clinic. Jared spent around six to seven years working with a team developing a cutting-edge medical laser for skin treatment before transitioning into operating a clinic himself. ✅ Opening a Clinic in the Middle of COVID. Jared’s team opened their clinic in July 2020, an extremely difficult time to launch a face-to-face elective healthcare business. ✅ The Problem Coherent Was Built to Solve. Jared repeatedly saw front-desk teams firefighting patient communications, follow-ups, cancellations, and inquiries. Coherent grew out of the belief that clinics needed a better way to manage patient operations at scale. ✅ Supporting Around 250 Healthcare Providers. Coherent works with approximately 250 healthcare providers across the UK, US, and Canada, primarily in private elective healthcare. ✅ Why Patient Relationships Break as Clinics Scale. A small clinic may know every patient personally, but as the patient base grows into the thousands, the same front-office team cannot maintain every relationship manually. ✅ Technology Has Increased Efficiency but Reduced Personalization. Healthcare systems have become better at storing records and appointment histories, but Jared argues that much of the actual relational intelligence still exists only in staff members’ heads. ✅ The Patient Base Scales Faster Than the Team. Each week adds new patients while previous patients still need support, follow-up, recall, and rebooking. Eventually, staff cannot keep up and patients begin falling through the cracks. ✅ Why Patient Portals Often Miss the Point. Jared argues that many providers invest heavily in portals that patients simply do not want to use. Patients would rather communicate through the channels they already use every day. ✅ Healthcare Is Competing With Netflix and Meta. Clinics are competing for attention against platforms specifically designed to capture it. That means healthcare communication needs to be simple, familiar, and convenient. ✅ Meet Patients Where They Already Are. Jared says patients are already using SMS, WhatsApp, email, and mobile messaging, and clinics should make communication as easy as possible within those environments. ✅ Why Phone Calls Are Becoming a Legacy Channel. Younger patients in particular may ignore calls, especially during the working day. Jared says SMS and WhatsApp can produce dramatically higher response rates. ✅ 5X to 9X Higher Response Rates. Across the practices Coherent supports, Jared says SMS and WhatsApp engagement can generate five, six, seven, and sometimes eight or nine times the response rate of legacy channels. ✅ Why Calling Leads at Lunchtime Fails. Clinics often make follow-up calls when practitioners happen to have time, which may be exactly when the patient is busiest and least likely to answer. ✅ Make Responding Easier Than Ignoring You. Jared’s guiding principle is to reduce friction until engaging with the clinic feels almost easier than not engaging. ✅ Some Patients Need 20+ Touchpoints. Coherent sees examples where patients receive a near-instant initial response yet still require more than 20 points of engagement before moving forward. ✅ Follow Up Without Becoming Salesy. Healthcare should not feel like aggressive sales. Jared describes the process as consultation, discovery, support, and consistently being available when the patient is ready. ✅ Many Clinics Do Not Know Their Conversion Numbers. Jared regularly asks providers how many inquiries they received and how many became new patients. Many can provide the second number but not the first. ✅ Seven Minutes Can Be Enough to Lose the Patient. A clinic may invest heavily to get someone onto the website, only to lose them because the initial patient experience is too slow or impersonal. ✅ 165 Emails Illustrate the Scale Problem. Chris shares that his own IVF journey involved approximately 165 emails with the clinic, demonstrating how much communication a single high-intent healthcare journey can require. ✅ You Cannot Solve This by Hiring More People. Multiply that level of communication across hundreds or thousands of patients and the workload quickly becomes impossible to handle purely with additional staff. ✅ Technology and Humans Have to Work Together. Jared strongly believes that automation is necessary, but sensitive healthcare interactions still require human judgment and empathy. ✅ Stop Tracking Inputs. Track Outcomes. Clinics often measure how many calls, emails, SMS messages, or tasks staff completed. Jared says the only meaningful question is whether the patient actually rebooked, converted, or completed the next step. ✅ The Job Is Not Done When the Message Is Sent. If a patient cancels an appointment, the task is not simply to call or text them. The desired outcome is to get that patient booked back in. ✅ Agentic Workflows and A/B Testing. Chris and Jared discuss how automated workflows can continuously test different follow-up methods and identify which channels and sequences actually get patients back into the journey. ✅ Healthcare Can Learn From E-Commerce. E-commerce companies dedicate entire teams to testing subject lines, engagement rates, and conversion. Jared believes healthcare should bring similar operational discipline to patient communications without turning medical care into retail marketing. ✅ Do Not Send Black Friday-Style Healthcare Offers. Jared repeatedly stresses that healthcare should not become overly sales-driven or promotional simply because the technology exists to automate marketing. ✅ A Sales Desk Is Not a Reception Desk. Jared sees an important distinction between administrative staff and commercially minded patient operations staff. Someone focused only on administration may not naturally respond to an empty calendar by trying to fill it. ✅ Automation Should Feel Invisible. Chris describes the ideal experience as one where confirmations, logins, follow-ups, and systems work seamlessly, while a real person remains accessible whenever the customer needs human help. ✅ The Risk of Going Too Far With AI. Jared warns that an AI-only patient experience could alienate people, especially if patients know they are dealing entirely with automation. ✅ Would You Put Your Family Through It? Jared suggests clinic owners ask whether they would be comfortable putting their own spouse or child through an AI-only patient journey. If they hesitate, that hesitation exposes the weakness in the model. ✅ Human Support Can Protect Lifetime Value. In private dentistry, Jared points out that a single household can potentially represent £100,000 in lifetime value across generations, making poor patient experience incredibly expensive.   Notable Quotes & Moments 📌 “Patients scale and your team does not scale with it.” 📌 “You lose a lot of the patient relationship.” 📌 “Nobody cares about patient portals.” 📌 “Your competition is not other providers, it’s Netflix.” 📌 “Email is a dead channel.” 📌 “How do we make this so easy that it’s almost easier to respond than to not respond?” 📌 “The thing you need to track is the outcome of the event.” 📌 “A sales desk is not a reception desk.”   About Jared Aron Jared Aron is the co-founder of Coherent Healthcare, a patient operations company helping private healthcare providers improve how patients move from initial inquiry through booking, treatment, follow-up, recall, and discharge. Before launching Coherent, Jared spent several years developing medical technology and later helped operate and grow a private clinic after opening its doors during COVID. Today, Coherent works with around 250 healthcare providers across the UK, US, and Canada, with a focus on areas including MSK, dentistry, medical aesthetics, and dermatology. 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredae/  🔗 Coherent Healthcare: https://coherenthq.com   🚀 Build Your Brand with Real Links At Linkifi, we help ambitious brands scale organic visibility through digital PR, brand storytelling, and SEO strategy. Book your FREE strategy session today: 🔗 https://book.linkifi.io/widget/bookings/pr-discovery-call 👋 Connect with your hosts: 👉 Chris Panteli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-panteli/ 👉 Nick Biggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick--biggs/ 🎧 Listen to more Market Movers episodes: 🌍 https://marketmoverspod.com

  8. Aug 13

    11,000 Med Spas vs 11,500 McDonald’s: Gina Graziano Explains How to Actually Stand Out

    Welcome to Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi! Your go-to podcast for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand, where branding meets SEO and link-building. I’m Chris Panteli, Co-Founder and CEO of Linkifi, and I’m joined by my co-host and Co-Founder, Nick Biggs. In this episode, we’re joined by Gina Graziano, founder of MedSpa Matchmaker, to explore how med spas can differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded market. Gina shares lessons from 16 years in aesthetics and sales, explains why branding and consultation processes matter more than competing on price, and breaks down what is working in 2026 across customer acquisition, referrals, Google, social media, AI, reviews, and local partnerships.   Key Talking Points ✅ Why MedSpa Matchmaker Was Created. Even with deep industry knowledge and vendor relationships, Gina found opening her own med spa complicated. Compliance, state regulations, memberships, hiring, legal requirements, operations, and marketing all created challenges that were difficult to navigate from one source. ✅ Why Branding Should Start Months Before Opening. Gina recommends beginning with branding and marketing because a website alone can take three to four months. The name, social handles, visual identity, ideal patient, services, menus, and memberships should all work together before launch. ✅ Building Around the Ideal Patient. Practices need to understand exactly who they want to serve, what problems that patient is experiencing, and how the med spa’s services and positioning can speak directly to them. ✅ The Work Starts Before the Doors Open. Finding a location, completing the buildout, hiring, setting up an EMR, handling OSHA compliance, preparing consent forms, purchasing equipment, practicing procedures, organizing a soft launch, and collecting before-and-after photos all need to happen before seeing regular patients. ✅ The Med Spa Market Is Becoming Commoditized. Gina says there are more than 11,000 med spas in the United States, compared with roughly 11,500 McDonald’s locations, illustrating how crowded the category has become. ✅ Why Competing on Price Is Dangerous. Large chains and multi-location practices can often secure better pricing because of their purchasing power. Smaller operators that continuously discount treatments risk entering a race to the bottom. ✅ Brand Is the Real Differentiator. When many practices offer the same treatments, Gina believes a strong brand, clear ethos, compelling patient experience, and defined positioning are what allow a med spa to stand out. ✅ Clinical Quality Is Only the Baseline. Patients expect competent clinicians. What often creates loyalty is the consultation process, trust in the provider, long-term planning, communication, and the feeling that the recommended treatment is genuinely right for them. ✅ Why Consultations Win or Lose Patients. Gina says providers who can present several treatment options and clearly explain why one is best for that individual patient can dramatically improve conversion. ✅ Being First With New Technology Can Pay Off. Early adopters of treatments such as CoolSculpting were able to generate significant revenue, but Gina warns that new technology only makes sense when it matches the practice’s existing patient demographic and service mix. ✅ Know Your Audience Before Buying Equipment. A cutting-edge device may be exciting, but it can be the wrong investment if it does not fit the age, skin type, treatment goals, or expectations of the current patient population. ✅ Start Customer Acquisition With Existing Patients. Gina says one of the cheapest and strongest acquisition channels is referrals from happy patients who already trust the practice. ✅ Using Referral Credits to Generate New Patients. Instead of paying $100 to $150 or more per lead through Google, practices can reward existing patients with smaller credits when they successfully refer someone new. ✅ Why Google Ads Need Strong Economics. Gina generally sees practices advertise services that generate more than $400 because acquisition costs, provider compensation, consumables, and treatment-room costs can quickly make lower-priced procedures unprofitable. ✅ Social Media Still Matters. Instagram and Facebook remain important because aesthetic medicine is highly visual, with before-and-after photos giving potential patients an immediate understanding of possible results. ✅ Creative Local Partnerships. Hair salons, boutiques, private fitness practices, hotels, luxury car dealerships, and large local employers can all provide opportunities to introduce a med spa to relevant new audiences. ✅ What Helps Med Spas Surface in AI Search. Detailed websites with before-and-after photos, recovery information, procedure details, named clinicians, staff credentials, and useful patient education give search engines and AI platforms more evidence that the practice is trustworthy. ✅ Keep the Website Fresh. Gina recommends reviewing the site at least quarterly to update services, memberships, team members, and other changes while continuing to publish fresh content. ✅ Photos and Videos Can Pre-Sell the Consultation. When patients already understand the provider, treatment, environment, and expected experience from the website, much of the trust-building work has been completed before they walk through the door. ✅ Where AI Works Inside a Med Spa. Gina sees value in AI for scheduling, email and text automation, lead follow-up, purchasing insights, EMR recommendations, social media copy, and helping teams develop ideas more quickly. ✅ Where AI Should Not Replace Human Expertise. Pricing, strategy, consultation processes, compliance-sensitive marketing, and anything materially affecting EBITDA require deeper judgment and industry knowledge. ✅ Aim for 30 to 50 Reviews Early. For a new practice, Gina views 30 to 50 reviews as an important first credibility threshold and recommends actively building toward it as quickly as possible. ✅ How to Get Permission for Before-and-After Photos. Rather than simply asking to publish a patient’s photo, Gina reframes the conversation around how seeing a similar before-and-after image could have helped that patient feel more comfortable before their own treatment.   Notable Quotes & Moments 📌 “I’ve actually been in sales and aesthetics for about 16 years.” 📌 “I still just felt a little bit lost.” 📌 “Do things once, do it right, save money, save time.” 📌 “The branding really dictates everything we do in a practice.” 📌 “The real work begins when we start seeing patients and getting data.” 📌 “We can only rush to the bottom on things like toxin for so long.” 📌 “We have over 11,000 med spas in the United States right now.” 📌 “There are 11,500 McDonald’s in the United States.” 📌 “The differentiator is branding for sure.” 📌 “It’s not enough to be a great provider.” 📌 “No risk, no reward.” 📌 “The easiest way for customer acquisition is working your current pool of clients and getting referrals.” 📌 “It’s not as easy as just putting up an ad anymore and patients flowing in.” 📌 “That good marketing can do a lot of the work for you.” 📌 “Where you can’t lean on AI is for the strategy.” 📌 “If you have someone who’s super happy, ask them for a review.” 📌 “Thirty to 50 reviews is that first threshold that we want to get to as soon as possible.”   About Gina Graziano Gina Graziano is the founder of MedSpa Matchmaker and an aesthetics consultant with experience spanning sales, marketing, devices, injectables, practice operations, and med spa ownership. After spending 16 years in the aesthetics industry, Gina launched MedSpa Matchmaker to help med spa owners navigate branding, marketing, compliance, staffing, operations, customer acquisition, retention, and the specialist resources needed to build and grow a successful practice. She also holds a master’s degree in marketing from Fordham. 🔗 MedSpa Matchmaker: https://www.themedspamatchmaker.com 🔗 Gina’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gina-graziano-mba-0a33a612/   🚀 Build Your Brand with Real Links At Linkifi, we help ambitious brands scale organic visibility through digital PR, brand storytelling, and SEO strategy. Book your FREE strategy session today: 🔗 https://book.linkifi.io/widget/bookings/pr-discovery-call 👋 Connect with your hosts: 👉 Chris Panteli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-panteli/ 👉 Nick Biggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick--biggs/ 🎧 Listen to more Market Movers episodes: 🌍 https://marketmoverspod.com

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Welcome to the Market Movers: Building Brands and Links with Linkifi podcast, the go-to spot for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand. Dive into the world where branding meets SEO and link-building, and unlock the secrets to becoming more visible, credible, and downright irresistible to your audience. Ready to rise above the noise and make your mark?

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