Bryan McAnulty: Welcome to the creator's adventure, where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. My name is Bryan McNulty. I'm the founder of Heights platform. And today I'm talking with Barb McGrath about her transition from the corporate world into building a business of her own SEO strategy and online courses.

Hey everyone. We're here today with Barb McGrath, a Canadian entrepreneur SEO and digital marketing expert who helps other businesses grow their online visibility and increase their sales through online marketing and SEO. She is known as the hashtag Google girl and Barb is the founder of online school.

Get found academy and digital marketing agency above the. With 20 plus years of experience, Barb has worked with Western Canada's most well known brands and local businesses to help them succeed online with marketing and SEO, Barb. Welcome to the show.

Barb McGrath: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm super excited about our chat today.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, it's great to talk with you again. It's always nice when we get to talk with some of our customers. And with you in particular, we've talked before, so it's nice. We've kind of got to meet before here, so. My first question for you is you started your online business by opening a digital marketing agency above the fold.

And then mm-hmm, transitioned into online courses by creating get found academy where you're helping local business owners improve their online visibility with SEO and digital marketing. So tell us a little bit about how you got started and what made you decide to start your own online.

Barb McGrath: Yeah, absolutely.

Bryan. So, you know, I always like to say that above the fold got started in the front seat of a hot car in the summer and a few months later it was born. And there's actually a lot more truth to that story than it probably sounds like there would be. But at the time I was the vice president of marketing for a Canadian optical company.

And my husband and I were on summer holidays driving, who knows where. And I like, I really got noodling, you know, what was possible? What could I do? I was ready for my next challenge. I was actually kind of bored in that role. And that's why I was starting to think like, what was next? What could I do? And I was super comfortable in that Google space, SEO, what did we need to do with Google listings and Google maps?

And we were seeing just amazing success. So as we drove down the highway, you know, in this 40 degree Canadian heat, The idea was born. And at the time, interestingly, the technology didn't exist to support the idea. It would've still been, you know, a lot of manual sort of work to be able to make it happen.

But within a couple of years, it was a possibility and believe it or not above the fold. In the very beginning, which is kind of a part-time thing. I was gonna be on the side of my desk. My husband was looking at, progressing his career. He was in a senior management role. And so, you know, we kinda looked it above the fold and said, well, you know, it'll keep me going for a couple years and maybe we're gonna land in a bigger center or, you know, maybe we're even us born or something like that, bound.

And yeah, now it's actually. Full time thing for us, plus a few other folks and it's really grown and taken off. So what started in the front seat of a hot car became our livelihood. That's

Bryan McAnulty: awesome. So, yeah. You mentioned that you had this corporate job, beforehand. So was it difficult for you to leave the security of that full-time job?

And what would you say to others who are going through that same transition right now? And thinking about starting a.

Barb McGrath: Yeah. You know, that's a really good question. And so, so there's a, there's a couple of different ways that I can answer that. Was it hard to leave that steady paycheck? Yeah, it was, it was hard to leave that behind, but, but I'm a risk taker.

And so everything I've done, job transition wise, business transition wise, there's always been that, that new and that exciting. And so I was excited. I, I really wasn't thinking about, you know, The paycheck. I was convinced 110% that, you know, if I went all out that it was totally gonna work and I didn't grow up in an entrepreneurial, an entrepreneurial family.

I grew up, my dad worked in a potash mine. My mom was a school administrator and I was 100% expected to go to university, get a good job, stay at that job for 40 years. And then, you know, retire with comfort. And I quickly figured out that, you know, I didn't fit the mold. I didn't fit in that square, hole.

I was a round peg, and so there was constant friction for me. What I discovered I was really good at was building and fixing and building and fixing and growing organizations. And that's, that was the initial conversation we had around, above the. Was, I was really good at helping businesses grow. And so how could I turn that into, you know, a business that would be profitable for me?

Keep me challenged because when you're working for a whole bunch of different folks, it's a lot more challenging this than just, you know, one client or one employer. And so was it. Yeah. Okay. I thought about the paycheck the odd time. But I never looked back and full disclosure. Dion doesn't even know this, my husband, this one of the months, one of my very early months that I was in business.

I mean, $150 that month, not after expenses before expenses, I made $150 and I remember thinking, holy crap, like that, can't continue. But I think I needed that realization cuz my first couple of months had been really good and I actually made a profit in those first few months. It was like, wow, this is I'm living the dream.

And then reality hit. So that motivated me to be like, holy crap, get your butt in gear and like get moving. And, and I did, and I've never had that month again. Thank goodness. And yeah, I work my tail off, but it has

Bryan McAnulty: paid. that's great. Yeah. Well, that kind of helped you see, I guess that like, once something like that happens, you thought to yourself, I, I guess how can I make sure that this won't happen again?

What, what can I do to avoid that situation or get more clients or, or customers

Barb McGrath: mm-hmm exactly. And, you know, we have two young kids, so the hockey fees, we're gonna come do the swimming fees we're gonna come do. So, you know, you can kinda get away with 150. Once or twice, but more than that, I wasn't gonna get away with it.

And Dion was gonna be K bar starting to go back to work and find real

Bryan McAnulty: job well, I think that in a way though, also that pressure is something that for, for some, it may feel so risky to have, it's also helpful to have, because it really forces you to make decisions and figure things out that you might otherwise say.

I'll figure that out in a couple months, or I'm gonna just focus on building this. It, it forces you to figure out, well, how can I make sure my business does something that's going to make me actual money, right.

Barb McGrath: mm-hmm exactly. And, and you have to balance that because you don't wanna get so focused on the dollars that you forget about, you know, growth and reputation and customer service.

And so, you know, I, it, it was a really good lesson for me to say, okay, I've gotta find a balance. I need to constantly be looking forward, but also supporting the base that I was building.

Bryan McAnulty: Great. So you're an expert in SEO and Google rankings. So much that, like so much so that you're now known as hashtag Google girl.

So there we go. You believe with good SEO, local businesses can beat online shopping giants and marketplaces like Amazon. So tell us about how important is SEO for a business. And can you share an example of the impact that SEO had in either a business that you helped, or with your online course or your.

Barb McGrath: Absolutely. And you know what, let's start with the example, because I think the example speaks for itself. So if I look at one of the cleaning services that took our course, she wanted to understand what do I need to do to fix my website? Why can't people find me on Google when they search, you know, cleaning service in her city.

And so we helped her in the course through all of those. We told her, or we taught. How to get found in those searches. We told her what she needed to do with her Google listing. We talked about Google's matchmaking service, and you have to come up in those match matches because Google's just a big old calculator.

So if you don't come up in the match, someone else is going to, so we walked her through all of those processes and she actually had one goal when she started the course, in her cleaning business, she had two crews. And so if you think about a cleaning. You know, one crew will do four houses in a day.

That means two crews do eight houses in a day. Okay. So her goal was to add one more crew to that, to her, to her business. Mm-hmm . She took the course. She did the ads, she did the work, and that's a really important distinction. She did the work just because you learn something and put it on a to-do list.

Doesn't make it happen. It's not a wishlist. It has to be your to-do list and you have to work your way through. But Christie did all of the work. And in the end, at the end of a three month period, she hired two full new crews. So when you start to look at the dollars that come from. We're talking $60,000 of new revenue in her business in that next calendar year, because a cleaning service for somebody's house, they keep you long term.

They come back on a biweekly or a monthly basis. Right. And so it absolutely, paid off for her because she did the work. And if there was one piece of advice that I would share with anybody who takes an online course, if you're taking the course just to understand that's awesome. But if you're taking the course to do and create change, then dig in, get in there, roll up your sleeves and actually do the work.

Take it advantage of the supports that you have in whatever course you're taking and move your business forward. Move your relationship forward. Move your I don't. family forward, whatever it is that you're learning, but make the change that these experts can provide. Yeah. And I forget the first half of your question now there's

Bryan McAnulty: more to that.

That's great advice though. I think, yeah. Take, take that as an opportunity. If you're going to take the action to say I'm gonna join this course, then I. Make sure that you actually take the opportunity for really what it is and put everything that you can into it so that you can really get that result.

And, and if they have an option, like with maybe like your course, for example, that they can actually talk with that expert or get some feedback from that expert, who's teaching it like you should utilize that. Not only going through like a lesson or, or trying to research something, that's, that's definitely really important.

Barb McGrath: One of the things that I see and you guys probably see this too, is cohort style learning has really, started to take a, a resurgence, like it's really coming back. So it's not just by a course log in and work through on your own. Because from an accountability standpoint, I think we, as humans, we are so much more successful and product.

When we work with someone. And so if you've got somebody who's, you know, working alongside you, if you've got somebody who's, who's there to answer those questions. I think we all tend to, you know, be more likely to engage, and do the work and be held accountable. We use these external factors to hold us accountable.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, definitely. I think, and more and more, it's only gonna continue like that because like even what we try to do in supporting the creators that we have is figuring out, okay, well, where is each creator in their journey? Like, are we gonna help the creators who haven't launched their course versus the creators who just launched it and are getting their first couple customers versus creators who have launched it and, and are now really successful, but want to keep growing.

Mm-hmm so, yeah, it's the same thing in the course. How can you offer something either within your course itself or as a separate like group coaching program where you can have your members all being taught the right things at the right times and interacting with the right people at the right times?

Barb McGrath: Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the, one of the things that's interesting to me, when I think about the, the Google space is. There are an entire industry is wrapped around keeping Google a my. And that digital marketing industry, and I'm a part of it, but there are so many folks in that industry who want to keep it a mystery because their livelihoods depend on it.

And I'm a huge believer that, you know, every small and medium sized business, every large business that can hire. You know, afford to hire an employee, you can do it on your own. It's just a matter of taking the time to learn it, to understand it and to feel confident. And if you can find, you know, a place to get that expertise, whether it's our course or someone else's, or just, you know, Google, finding that a source that you trust, it can make a world of difference for a business when that happens.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you mentioned before how it it's really an investment in creating this content that the revenue that it can bring you in the long term is just so exponential from doing that. Mm-hmm the way I like to think about it is that if you don't really understand SEO, if you don't understand content creation, What I personally think is Google is one of the most fair like algorithms out of everything out there.

So if you post on Facebook, like there's a chance that Facebook just decides I'm not gonna show this to really anybody, because I think that if we show them this other funny video, they're gonna stay on Facebook longer. So you, you don't really have too much control over that as a creator. Whereas Google is actually pretty fair in how it works, that if you're not on the first page of whatever it is that you wanna show up for.

But if you go and look at the first page for whatever that particular topic is, if you look at those sites, chances are that you can identify something yourself that would be reasonable, that they show up above you. And so if you can't confidently say to yourself, I am the definitive source of this. Like I should be on the first page right now, then it kind of makes sense.

Why you aren't and Google is really fair with that. I feel like it's rare to see a situation where at least from what I've seen, where there is something that's on the very top of the first page that is completely irrelevant compared to something your own business that's maybe on page 10 or

Barb McGrath: something.

Yeah, exactly. In fact, you hit the nail on the head there. Every platform, whether it's a social media platform or it's a search engine like Google and bang, their goal is to keep you on their platform as long as possible. So Facebook wants you scrolling through the feed. They want you flipping through stories.

TikTok wants to do the same. Every platform wants to keep you there. And it's one of the reasons that when you search on Google, you have options. You have the ads, you have listings, you have websites that pop up because Google's goal is to keep you tied to their search engine, finding the information that you want.

And I often ask my students this question. And so I'm gonna ask you this. Can you remember the last three business posts or business ads that you saw on any of your social channels that you use?

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, probably not.

Barb McGrath: Exactly. And so social media has become this time in all of our lives that we kind of tune out.

And so, yeah, you might see a cute dog video or maybe you catch something on a reel that, you know, it's, it's entertaining. It's engag. But it doesn't create action. It doesn't move you forward. And you know, so many of us, and especially what I see in the small and medium sized businesses, the local businesses, they spend all this time, on social media and they're posting and they're doing what they think they need to do to drive more sales, to get more customers.

And I always like to think to people, you know, If you, if you wanna get found, look to the big guys, cuz what are they doing? There's not too often that you're gonna see an Amazon or a Walmart, you know, counting the number of posts that they had on Instagram. Cuz that's not what drives traffic for them.

Right. So that's always my spiel customers. Aren't going there to be sold. They're not going. To do research, they're going there to social media to be educated or to be entertained, but when they wanna buy something, they go to Google and it's your job to be there as a business. Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty: That's great point now.

Yeah, no, that's such a great point because yeah, with Google, like the buyer has the intent of making a purchase or researching up to the point of making a purchase. And when you're on social media, you just wanna be entertained about something. Like maybe if your ad is compelling enough, you can get somebody to provide their email and eventually purchase from you.

But if you can have a blog post or a webpage that shows up in Google, that's something where people, your, your potential buyers are actively looking for that. And the point that you made about every platform wants to keep, keep people on their platform. I would just like to kind of expand on that and say, What is basically the difference is Google is really aligned with the consumer, whereas like Facebook is kind of aligned against the consumer.

So Facebook wants to keep you on there and keep you entertained, but it might not be like for the good of yourself, you know, because. There's too many times I'm on Facebook to check something for business or something like that. And then a couple minutes later I realized, why am I here? and they catch you and get you scrolling through stuff on Google.

Exactly. It's Google's incentive in order to keep you on the platform, Google has to provide you the best quality results. So if you are the best quality content, then it's Google's job and goal to have you. As that first result.

Barb McGrath: Yeah, exactly. And that's why I always call Google a matchmaking service. The customer is looking for something, you offer something and Google wants to make that match.

They actually want to send traffic to you, but if they don't understand who you are or what you do. Then they're not gonna send any traffic. And that's one of the biggest mistakes that I see businesses make is they might wanna come up for, you know, best digital marketing course. And yet when you Google it, you know, they don't come up anywhere simply because.

Their whole website talks about their credentials and, you know, their associations, whatever, like the there's no match between what they want to rank for and what they are going to rank for, because they don't tell Google who they are and what they do. And that Google makes it easy for us nowadays, we just have to, you know, build the, build the skillset, build the knowledge to be able to do.

Bryan McAnulty: Great. So let's say then, for example, if somebody's recently started their business and they want to improve their ranking. What would you say is a good first step for them to increase their visibility online?

Barb McGrath: Okay. So, three things that I would look at if it's a, a service based or a local business, so you might need product or service, but your local, the absolute number one tool for you right now is called your Google business profile.

And lots of folks will know that as your Google business listing, they change their name here at the end of the. Just to keep all of us, guessing, but that is the absolute number one tool to drive traffic at a, at a local level. When you need that foot traffic, if your business on the other hand is online and you serve, you know, let's say an entire country like Canada or the us, then you need to focus first on your website, SEO, which is making a.

Between those keywords. And so your very first step then is to look at what are the exact words that my customers use when they do business with me and customers only do business with us for one of two reasons, one to solve a problem. I need groceries. Right? You've got hungry teenagers. Okay. The problem is my fridge is empty.

I need to solve that problem. Or we do business with someone to receive a reward. Oh, it's been such an exhausting month. I'm gonna go and get a massage. It's gonna feel delightful. Right? That's a reward. Those are the only two reasons that people actually spend money. And so as a business owner, you need to understand either the problem you solve or the reward you provide to your customers.

In their words, listen to your customers. What do they say when they call, when they email, when they message. And from that, that's how we start to build website SEO. Because I searched for, you know, get a massage near me, best massage near me and boom, Kim pops up because she's the best massage near me. And she really is a very good masseuse point liker

And in fact, I. Laid on her table for hours giving her this whole spiel, cuz she just did a new website. that's great.

Bryan McAnulty: So over the years you've worked with many different local businesses and well known brands. Would you say that like what you're touching on here with the idea of the language that is used on the page, is that what you would consider the most common mistake that people make in, in what their, their approach to their site or their SEO?

Or is there something else.

Barb McGrath: It's probably, yeah, it would probably be right at the top of that pile because in so many cases, we used to look at SEO as a nice to do. bucket of work. It, it was something that, you know, you could get to it later, but because of the number of websites, and the number of businesses that are much more technically competent now than, you know, even a year ago or three years ago, SEO has become a need to do service.

You have to focus on your SEO. You have to start to understand what's happening on your website. What's happening with your data. You need to start to understand your costume. Path to purchase. So are they even seeing you on social media? Do they do research before they, before they purchase from your business?

And what is the tipping point for them? If we use the example of a coffee shop, chances are, I don't do a whole heck of a lot of research on their website, but I'm absolutely gonna look at their listing cuz I wanna know their hours. I wanna make sure I understand their location. If I don't know it.

Right. And so understanding what gets a customer to actually spend money with you is huge. It's absolutely huge. And that's where SEO comes in.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, that's a great point. So looking at that, from the perspective of an online business, then would you like dissect those different points and then say like you wanna create content around those different area?

Barb McGrath: So content creation is a big part of it, but when I think content creation, or when I, even, when I hear students ask the question, I'm often thinking, you know, what do you wanna do with the content? So we have the purpose between behind your content creation is, oh, well, I wanna share more reals and more stories and more posts.

Then I would say, we need less social media and we need more time and effort focused on. Actual digital assets. So one of the soap boxes that I often, find myself on is business owners will give away their digital assets incredibly easily. They'll sign over their domain to whoever's developing their website.

They'll give away control of their Facebook page to the social media agency that they've hired. And I always like to say, you need to retain ownership of your digital assets because just like any other asset, there's huge value in them. So keep them share them as you need to let people support you and help you, but never give away those digital assets and sorry, Bryan, I just went down the rabbit hole.

What was your question again?

Bryan McAnulty: That let's see. I don't even remember. good. It's not just me, but I, I think you kind of touched on it a little bit though. Content that's what you said, content with the content are, like, would you build content around those different points of like, if the customer's gonna research, like addressing part of that research and then versus another page that's addressing how they wanna buy or things like.

Barb McGrath: Yes. So from a content creation perspective, if we're talking about your website, the more, the more content you can build on your website to answer your customer's questions, the better. And it's one of the reasons that so many folks do exactly that on social media, cuz you can answer a ton of questions on social media, but if your website can answer the return policy.

The, how do I add titles and descriptions question for SEO? How do I build a Google map listing? How do I, this, how do I, that if your website can start to answer those questions, you will absolutely see that return tenfold from traffic, from your website. The absolute key is understanding the question that customers are asking so that you can answer it.

If you don't know the question, then you can't answer it for your customer.

Bryan McAnulty: Got it. All right. That's great. So let's talk a little bit about your online course now. We did a case study with you before. So we know some about this already, but, for, I guess, more of our guests, within, within your first year of starting this course, you reached six figures in revenue and that's something that's really impressive.

So my question is, can you think of something in particular that you did, which helped you reach that level of.

Barb McGrath: I think what differentiated us from some of the other online courses out there is the level of service that we provide every student before they ever get into the course. Because when a student thinks about learning this Google stuff, it's intimidating and our absolute number one goal is to make it simple, right?

From the very first conversation with us, whether they chat with us on our website. Send us an email, whatever that is. Our goal is always to make it as easy as possible. And even in the course, I talk about, reducing friction. And so if you can reduce friction for your customers, I, most businesses are gonna see way more customers.

And, and that's what happened with us. We went from the traditional classroom, style course to the virtual course, and it absolutely exploded for us. It's been a wild, wild ride

Bryan McAnulty: and, well, that's a good point. So I wanna interject quick. So before yeah, you started your online course, you were doing trainings, but you were doing them all in person, so yes.

Then you made the jump to say, well, now we're gonna do.

Barb McGrath: mm-hmm yes, we did. And in fact, my in person course started because when I first started the agency, I was having the exact same conversation with so many business owners over and over and over again. And just like I said, I, I love change and I love challenge having the same conversation day in and day out.

Got really boring for. So I was like, Hey, I'm gonna put everybody in a room charge. 'em a couple of hundred bucks and, you know, voila, I'll teach them all the same stuff at the same time. So we actually had an in-person. Planned and on the calendar. And we were ready to make a deposit on a hotel conference room when COVID hit in Canada.

And so had it happened 24 hours later that the first case, you know, came up where I live, we would've already put the deposit down and who knows what would've happened then crazy, but we didn't. And so yeah, the rest is history.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I think that it is actually such a natural. Transition for, an entrepreneur or a business owner to move into an online course when you're already training customers or helping them in some way with your service.

Because, as you said, there's these questions that you answer over and over and over again. And as a service provider, like you enjoy what you do, but it can get boring if you're doing the same thing all the time. So being able to use the online course as a tool to get everybody up to speed, where now they can ask you questions that are the kind of questions that you wanna answer that are a little bit more difficult, a little bit more tailored specifically to their unique problems.

Then it actually, it helps you enjoy what you're doing more as a business. and it kind of gets your customers prepared to allow you to serve them even better, I

Barb McGrath: guess. Yes, absolutely. One of the things that we did in our course, and we still do is we do that open mic session. And so whether we've got 10 people or a hundred people in the course, we do.

What six nine open mic sessions. So you can ask any question, doesn't matter. As long as it pertains to Google or something online, mm-hmm we will answer that question and hearing what other business owners are asking or other, employees are asking. Often tweak something for someone else. And so we end up having this really rich discussion at the end of our presentations, where, where everybody, you know, kind of starts to get involved.

And it doesn't feel so virtual when you start to talk to other people who are facing the exact same challenges, trying to figure out how to make this whole online world work so that their business can still thrive. .

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, that's great. That's, that's definitely a great example of how powerful it can be to kind of get people who are in a similar position to be able to all interact and engage with each other.

Mm-hmm so I wanna shift a little bit though into the. You've got this online course and it's directed mainly towards local business owners that they wanna get found by their customers. Yeah. So how do businesses tend to find your course and in terms of the marketing and promotion? What do you think is really the difference between like promoting business to business or business to customers?

Barb McGrath: What's the difference? So there's, there's less businesses than there would be customers. So if you're in a B2C, you know, Well, let's say in a city where I live, there's 250,000 customers, but there's not 250,000 businesses. So we've had to be much more pointed, in all of our messaging. And, you know, if I was to look at my own marketing strategy, we do a ton of email.

We do, a number of ads, you know, across Canada. And in fact, we're just heading into the us right now. So when we look at how we start to reach customers, it's, it's much more, I'll say it's much more personal we're we're tapping somebody on the shoulder and say, Hey, did you know we're over here? And we can help you solve problem X for your business.

And like I say, once they contact us, then we actually get to know these people and we tend to keep our cohorts pretty small because we wanna know them. I wanna be able to get to the end of a cohort and identify Bryan by, you know, his business, what he does, what his challenges are, because if you go and post in the discussion board, after the course is done, I wanna be able to have some context for how I can actually support you.

If I don't, if I ended up with thousands of people in the course, I wouldn't have a clue who people were, and that's not the course that we wanna be. At least at this point in time, I love the personal relationships that come out of it. And yeah. So, so we really see some businesses start to make a difference because of those relationships that we.

Bryan McAnulty: so in your case, then you would say that you prefer the smaller amount of customers with the higher price course, rather than the lower price course with the thousands of customers.

Barb McGrath: Yes, absolutely.

Bryan McAnulty: Cool. So one of the things that we'd like to do in this show is have each of our guests ask our audience a question.

So I'm curious if you could ask anything from our audience, what would you ask.

Barb McGrath: You know, I think if I had to ask a question, I would say something like, you know, the Amazons and Walmarts of the world, don't rely on social media to sell more stuff. So why are you, I don't think. And, and you guys tell me, do you think that they worry about going live, adding stickers and counting the number of views on a.

I don't think they do. You guys tell me

Bryan McAnulty: that's great. That's a great thing to think about. Definitely. And, and I think that's a great point to, for anyone out there, if you are focusing maybe too much on social media or only on social media, maybe it makes sense to look more directly at your website itself.

Barb McGrath: Absolutely.

Bryan McAnulty: Yes. Great. Well, Barb, that's all the questions I have for you. But before we get going, where can people find you online?

Barb McGrath: They can find us [email protected], and they can also find us on social media, pretty much all of the channels and our social media handle is above the fold CA

Bryan McAnulty: right.

Great. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Barb McGrath: Yep, absolutely. Thank you for having.

Bryan McAnulty: If you enjoyed this interview and won the chance to ask questions to our guests live tune in on Tuesdays when new episodes premiere on the Heiss platform, Facebook page, to learn more about the show and get notified when new episodes release, check out the creators, adventure.com until then keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.