Derek leads the sales and account management team at Seoplus+. He helped grow Seoplus+ from 4 employees to over 30. Derek is never satisfied and has plans to continue to aggressively grow. Derek's approach to business focuses on mindset, work ethic, and process.

• CEO Hack: The Daily Gameplan, Timer, and Task List
• CEO Nugget: Find a business coach who will walk with you and hold you accountable
• CEO Defined: Thinking of how best to serve your employees

Website: https://seoplus.ca/

Full Interview

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Transcription

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[00:00:02.20] – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

[00:00:30.30] – Gresham Harkles

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Derek Cosgrove of SEO Plus. Derek, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:39.20] – Derek Cosgrove

Thanks, Gresh. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:42.00] – Gresham Harkles

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Derek so you can hear a little bit more about all the awesome things that he's doing. Derek leads the sales and account management team at SEO Plus. He helped grow SEO Plus from four employees to over thirty. Derek is never satisfied and has plans to continue to aggressively grow. Derek's approach to business is to focus on mindset, work ethic, and the process. Derek, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:08.79] – Derek Cosgrove

Yes. I am.

[00:01:09.90] – Gresham Harkles

Awesome. Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I want to hear a little bit more about what I call, like, your CEO story. I wanna let you get started with all the awesome things you've been doing.

[00:01:17.90] – Derek Cosgrove

Okay. So I'll tell you I'll focus on my work at SEO Plus. I've been in SEO Plus for about six years. SEO Plus is a digital marketing agency. When I started, there were four employees we've grown to thirty. So I've been there from, you know, from day one, and I've been a big part of growing the company. I've learned a lot, a lot on the way. And, we're primarily an SEO agency primarily SEO, but we also do, Google Ads, websites pretty much full-service, digital marketing. So that's that's a little bit, very high level about me. And, yeah, I mean, we've it's been, doubled in size or more pretty much every year since I've been there. So it's been, a very, you know, fast-growing, constantly changing environment. And, yeah, I've learned,  quite a bit. Hopefully, I have some things I can share with your audience today.

[00:02:11.59] – Gresham Harkles

Yeah. Absolutely. I can imagine just being able to, as you say, you know, double in growth and over and every year has definitely probably have you've probably seen and worn and probably been around so many different hats and different things that have changed over time.

[00:02:26.69] – Derek Cosgrove

Yeah. Definitely. So when we started, we had, maybe ten, ten clients and, a lot of small businesses were based in Ottawa, Canada. Same same time as Shopify just down the road from them. So, we were very much figuring things out and just kinda making it up as we went along. And now, we've built out, pages and pages of process and,  now it's all about, building processes and systems and doing the same things over and over again instead of just kind of figuring it out. And now we're working with a lot of different types of businesses. We're working with a lot of, large international companies instead of just those smaller companies that were just kinda referred to us when you're just getting started.

[00:03:16.40] – Gresham Harkles

That makes so much sense. And so I know you touched on, exactly how you serve your clients. Could you tell us a little bit more about that, how exactly that process works, and what it's like to be a client in SEO Plus?

[00:03:27.30] – Derek Cosgrove

Yeah. So clients come to us almost exclusively through, digital marketing. So leads come directly to us. We do very little outbound marketing, and very little prospecting, which is great as an account manager, and as a salesperson. So, you know, clients come to us and we go through our discovery process where we figure out what their goals are, what they're trying to accomplish, what their budget is, what their preferences are, what their goals are. And then based on that, we put together a customized recommendation on, you know, it's their digital marketing plan. And then it includes typically, like, ninety-five per cent of our clients are on SEO. Google Ads, a significant amount of our clients as well. We're a Google Premier Partner and Facebook Ads as well. We also do organic social media. We do, web design, and content writing. So we have we have about seven or eight different departments, teams within the company that allow us to find different pieces, to put that plan together for our clients.

[00:04:33.39] – Gresham Harkles

Yeah. That makes so much sense, and I imagine having those different kinds of tools, kind of in your arsenal allow you to kinda serve and can help the clients to connect with their clients in probably the best way possible.

[00:04:44.00] – Derek Cosgrove

Yeah. I mean, it's good to have options because if someone comes to me and says, you know, here's our goal. Here's what we're trying to accomplish. I don't have to say, okay. Well, I can sell you one thing. I can put together a package with some different services customized for them. And the team from SEO Plus, we all work together. I mean, we work remotely right now, but we have an office right downtown Ottawa where everyone works together, so it's very collaborative. Where a lot of digital marketing agencies are, you know, outsourcing, working with, you know, multiple agencies. So people like that everyone working together kind of in one place. Things happen a lot faster that way, and we're able to manage the quality of the work a lot better.

[00:05:27.50] – Gresham Harkles

So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:05:38.60] – Derek Cosgrove

I would say that the best tool that I have and that our company has, one of the best, is we call it the daily game plan. And it's basically every day. So my, you know, my plan is mapped out every day, and I'll walk through what's on mine. People can you know, people I work with customize theirs. But, basically, you have your top priorities for the week. So every week, we have our kickoff meeting on Monday morning, and we say, okay. What are your top priorities for the week? And then from there, we go to monthly goals. So what are your goals for the month? And for me, it's I wanna submit a certain amount of proposals, and I wanna complete my campaign review.

So that's to help a campaign review as I review the reporting for my clients and give them an update. And then I next thing on my daily game plan is on meetings. I have a list of all my meetings, so I kinda have a visual of what my day looks like. And then I have a list of tasks. So I have tasks broken into my tasks for the day, and my chat I call them proactive tasks. So those are more like the planning, and prospecting if I'm doing any training. We call it our clarity compass, which is basically a list of projects that aren't urgent, but they're really important for the business. So I have the proactive tasks and then my daily tasks.

And then basically, my day starts, and I'm between meetings and working on tasks. So when I, you know, I go through my list and as I as you finish things, you cross it off and then kind of bouncing between tasks and meetings. But a really important part of the tasks so in a typical day, I'll have, like, 10:10 to fifteen what I call tasks that I'm doing. And it's very easy in any business to start focusing on a task and get distracted, and maybe you get stuck on something. And next thing you know, you've spent three hours on one task. So for our task list, we set a limit. So if I have fifteen tasks, I know, okay. This is thirty minutes. This is twenty minutes. And if I don't finish it in twenty minutes, I bump it to the next day, and then I move to the next task.

If you because people we found a big problem with our company as people were getting stuck on one task. You know, maybe they couldn't figure it out, and then they reach out to support, and they're on hold for twenty minutes. Next thing you know, they spent four hours trying to do something that they didn't get done, and all those other tasks fell behind. So the task list on the daily game plan and the timer to go with that is if you work in a busy job, and I'm sure most of your viewers do, you can't waste your time on just doing one thing. You need to do a lot of different things and you need to be you know, time is money. You need to be really careful about wasting time.

[00:08:21.80] – Gresham Harkles

Yeah. I absolutely love that. Yeah. And the daily game plan, that's a huge thing, and I and I love, obviously, that kind of a hack within a hack because, as you said, like, I think so many times when you get stuck on a task and you continue to wanna figure it out, not only does I mean, it feels good, of course, to get it done, but if you don't get it done, it takes four hours instead of the thirty minutes you kinda delegate it for that. It creates that domino effect that affects all the other tasks, all the other things you're gonna do, and you're always kinda playing catch up after that. Right. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice, could be around SEO, or it might be something if you were to hop into a time machine tell your younger business self.

[00:09:00.79] – Derek Cosgrove

So I would say the CEO's nugget is to find a coach. Find a business coach. We've been working with me the the two founders of the company and the manager of the production team. We've been working with a business coach for a couple of years. And so the first three, four years of the business, we were doing it, you know, on our own, and then we brought in a coach. And from, like, three to six months after we hired and started working with a business coach, we saw significant growth in the company. And, now he's coaching every manager within the company, every month, and it's been a game changer. So definitely I mean, training and reading and, you know, listening to podcasts, it's huge.

Like, you need to invest in, in education. But I find the coach is, like his name's Rob from Rhapsody, a company here in Ottawa, and he not only does he teach us, but he there's kind of that built-in accountability. Because you can read a hundred audiobooks, but if you don't do anything about it, it's not gonna help. Whereas with our coach, Rob, it's we have the training that he provides, and then there's the accountability of, hey. We're gonna meet with Rob. We need to, you know, we need to have these, you know, this work done. So, yeah, get a business coach, get someone who's gonna hold you accountable, and, and also educate you and help you run your business. And that is my CEO nugget.

[00:10:32.39] – Gresham Harkles
Yeah. Love that. And, as you said, I mean, I think so many times, you know you wanna make those investments and, books and podcasts and things like that. But like you said the execution of what it is that you've learned or what you're doing is just as important, if not more important, than sometimes the things that we're taking in. So to be able to have somebody, to be able to hold you accountable, but also to be able to create those training, and learning experiences is huge. Do you feel like it helped as well too that sometimes the coaches I don't wanna say detached, but not necessarily in the business are able to kinda provide those perspectives?

[00:11:07.39] – Derek Cosgrove

Yep. Totally. Yeah. I mean, you get wrapped up in your own business and you see things from, a very, certain way. And, the management team is all, you know, altogether all the time. You know, group things can happen. So definitely pulling someone in who has a different perspective, is helpful.

[00:11:27.29] – Gresham Harkles

Yeah. That makes so much sense. And so, now I wanna ask you one of my absolute favorite questions, which is the definition of what it means to be a quote-unquote CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. And I know as an early employee, you have a very unique perspective. So, Derek, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:11:43.00] – Derek Cosgrove

So to me, a CEO is someone who serves the the employees. So, think of it as if you have a CEO, right, they're leading your company, and the CEO's kind of mindset is I work for my employees. Like, my job is to serve gonna totally change the way the CEO operates, and it's gonna change the way the employees feel because they're being served by the CEO. The CEO is thinking about about that. I'm not talking, like, being soft and letting them do whatever they want. That is not good leadership. But thinking, you know, how can I help my employees? How can I help them reach their goals? How can I help them improve?

And if you do if you have that mindset as a CEO of, like, I'm here to serve my employees and you take really good care of your employees, they're going to, in turn, take really good care of your clients and ultimately get you better results. There's a book called What's It Called? Dare to Serve Mhmm. I think. It's about the CEO of Popeye's Chicken, and it's just it's an incredible turnaround story of their business. And their whole culture when she stepped in as the CEO was all built around serving the franchisees or, you know, in a way their employees. And that mindset just, like, totally changed their business, and, like, the company's been extremely successful since they adopted that mindset. So, yeah, I think, like, the best CEOs are a really good CEO should have that mindset of I'm here to serve my employees.

[00:13:20.29] – Gresham Harkles

Yeah. That makes so much sense, and I love that you used the word culture because that's what I was thinking of when you were explaining it kinda creates that infectious environment where, obviously, you know, the CEO is helping to serve the clients. But as you said, it creates that triple down or domino effect where then it gets to the clients, and then all of a sudden everybody's kinda serving each other and it creates a really incredible place to, to be and work. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Derek, truly appreciate that. Appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and the team are working on.

[00:13:58.70] – Derek Cosgrove

Alright. Well, thanks for having me. I that's my wife, walking back and forth. She's she's very used to me having, conference calls. She's not used to me being on the podcast, so she just knows this is a podcast. So, I guess she had a little bit of a guest, cameo. But, yeah, I don't have anything else that's kinda jumping to mind that I wanna share, the kind of main things that we talked about is ultimately, everyone, I think if you have that mindset of I'm here to serve, I'm here to help people, it's going to go a long way in kinda pushing you to do your best work and kinda get through the difficult times. And, you know, the daily game plan, basically putting together that checklist and being hard on yourself in terms of your time management. Don't let yourself, you know, waste hours on work that you're not going to get done is important.

Working with a business coach and, continuing to improve and work on your processes is important, especially as your business starts to grow. So those are kind of the main takeaways, a lot of the main things that I focus on, on a day-to-day basis. And then I have to say, I appreciate you, taking the time to to chat with me. And if people wanna find me, probably the best way to find me is, through email. So, Derek, it's derek@seoplus.ca. So you can email me. That's probably the best way to reach me. Our website is SEO plus, dot c a. And, we're based in Ottawa, Canada. We're one of the leading, SEO digital agencies in Canada.

[00:15:36.10] – Gresham Harkles

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Derek. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well. And I truly appreciate those reminders as well too. I think so many times when you think of success or how to be successful, you sometimes it's grand things. But as you said, if you have that discipline, you have that environment that's around you, you continue to kinda take those steps on a regular and daily basis to reach our goals. That's how you kinda set yourself up for success. So I appreciate you for reminding us of that, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

[00:16:04.39] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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