How a Teacher/DJ Built a $100K SEO Agency (in 12 Months)

[Music] that a kick-ass SEO strategy has. I mean, it is only one piece of the puzzle, but it's a very powerful piece and it's something that um I love that you can make something great without investing a lot of money and it's really the backbone and it's almost like a safety net if anything. I always look at SEO as as the safety net and then the paid advertising is the jet fuel which is just going to let you take off. But um if that runs out or the tap gets turned off, you're going to fall back on a pretty beautiful cloud, an SEO cloud of just ongoing leads. Welcome to the SEO Agency Roller Coaster Podcast, your go-to show for candid conversations with agency leaders that supercharge the ambitions of up and cominging SEO entrepreneurs. Here we break down the strategies, stumbles, and success stories you need to start, grow, and scale a thriving SEO agency. Consider this your road map to real world agency wins. My name is Andrew Zerudi and I'm part of the content marketing team at Is Ranking and I'm joined by my co-host and

fellow is ranking success team member Maximl Nuke. Today we're thrilled to welcome a guest all the way from Australia's capital. Say hello to Caleum Gracie of Auto Media Group and Gia AI. Caleum has been at the forefront of integrating AI into SEO and web design, helping Australian service businesses transform their websites into 247 lead generating machines. We'll be diving deep into his entrepreneurial journey, agency evolution, and his vision for the future of AI and digital marketing. Buckle up. It's going to be an insightful ride. All right, giving the word to you guys. Let's take it away. >> My goodness. >> Okay, awesome. Kay, thanks so much for joining us today. So, just to get started, I have a question about your background in general. So, as far as we're concerned before diving into digital marketing and in the SEO world, you were quite deeply immersed with music and even had a side hustle as a DJ and maybe you still do. So, I just wonder like why the change? Why do you decide to go for the digital SEO world and do you believe that on that shift

and your background in music has actually affected the way you work within your agency at this time? >> Fantastic question, Maxim. Thank you for asking that. So, well, it's a quite an interesting story. I'll keep it very brief. I started out as a teacher. It was that was interesting. And then I ended up having the opportunity to perform music with a with a band called the Baker Boys Band. So, I played the trumpet and saxophone, which is always fun. Now, this the fun the cool thing about this band is it's actually part of a much bigger operation and it's actually part of a marketing company called the International Artist League, which is based in New York, and they have a band in each state, in each city. And I was actually given the opportunity. I started doing some consulting and some management for that. And then I was able to build the Camber team to about 30 creatives which was which was fun. And then I was given the opportunity to launch the the Queensland um branch and I was able to get that up to over another over 100 creatives um and build it up to be yeah to to a point where we were doing 8 n 10 events in one night. So we're managing a lot a lot there. And I was able to to work closely with the marketing team to truly

understand how they can make a collective of people of individual artists come together to be an amazing band. Um even though it's different each um each time well not each time but um it's yeah it can be the Baker Boy band can be one of one of many. So from there life was fantastic. I was working closely with the marketing team in New York. I was managing so many amazing musicians and artists and photographers and videographers and then I was doing lots of gigs. I was doing I was performing full-time with a lot of weddings and then I was co hit. This was in 2020 and then that's where everything just lost. I lost everything. All of my gigs got cancelled. There was just a massive shutdown in Australia. It was absolutely chaotic and naturally being a trumpet player I was the first to be let go of in the band when they had the massive reduction of who can be at events. I think it got down to about 40. So I was left with yeah no money. I was it was a commission based job. And then I thought man what what do I do? And then that's when luckily I had teaching you in my back pockets. I was able to jump into relief teaching um which was really good. Got me over the line but I needed to make money. So I thought well what can I do to make people need me? So

I became a DJ. I said I'm going to be a DJ now. So the DJ didn't start until co hit which made me realize that that's the thing that I needed to do to be able to yeah make it so that I can I can grow it. And knowing how successful the Baker Boys band was with their digital marketing. I was able to deep dive into into SEO and I got absolutely obsessed with it. So much so that I was able to turn it into a a big money maker for me. And yeah, in the space of just 12 months, I had a side hustle of over $100,000, which was just insane for for me. And then I thought, well, if I've done it for me, it's definitely a repeatable process. So, I I did it for my siblings and uh two other Yeah. who are now amazing DJ and artists in uh Melbourne, and they're killing it. And again, they're making fantastic money as well. Um and they're loving it. I thought, all right, Auto Media is a thing. Um it wasn't official, but I thought I needed to jump on the bandwagon and go all in. So, I ended up taking a job. Well, I I end up taking a job for a digital marketing agency here in CRA and yeah, I was lucky enough for them to to give me the opportunity without a background of digital marketing. I didn't have any degrees and so I was extremely grateful for that

opportunity and that that was for about 12 months. So, this was about 14 months ago now. And then the time came I knew it was time for me to to give it a crack myself and I did. I dived straight in into it. I took part in an amazing academy which I'm still very much involved in. Uh the Nathan Gotch SEO Academy which is an unbelievable training platform and Nathan Gotch is one of one of my extremely inspired by him and I think he's just such a wonderful asset to the SEO community and just learning everything from him as a mentor and as a trainer he's just been wonderful. So that has sort of set the road map for me to say, okay, everything that I knew from what I've learned from changing things, tweaking things to then actually putting in a process that's proven to work and then put the two together to combine an ultimate SEO sort of powerhouse system that I've been able to to build my client base. Yeah. And I've now got 42 clients. Yeah. In the space of Yeah. 14 months. So I'm very lucky, but it's very chaotic as well. And it's all about systems now. It's just that's all I do every day. It's just systems and processes because I think it's just a little bit bigger than me now which is cool. That's my story.

Take it away Maxim. >> Thank you. That's a lot of context. That's quite a switch. That's really impressive. You've made so many changes there. Just fascinating. Andrew, would you like to follow up with a different question? >> I'm wondering what is specifically within you? What was that moment that pushed you to become your own man? Especially when you have a lot of well, you have a family, you have responsibilities, you're moving from a stable job. What does that conversation within you sound like? How did you how did you push yourself to to just having so much responsibility from going yeah to from a regular job to just being your own man working you know if you work for yourself you're working 24/7 basically. So what was that push for you specifically? How did you mot motivate yourself? >> Yeah that was a that's a really really good question. So for me I mean I am extremely driven. I mean I've always always been like that. I needed to prove to myself that I have what it takes to be successful. So I did it for myself first. I then did it for people in my close circle. of smashing it. Then moved to a great agency here in Canberra and I was able to yeah even just in the first month of of working for an agency was

able to to get over $18,000 in monthly revenue for the company which is amazing which just showed that my true passion for SEO and for digital marketing and how it can actually help businesses. I guess yeah they took my call they met with me and they got they got on board with um with my vision of of the true power that a kick-ass SEO strategy has. I mean it is only one piece of the puzzle but it's a very powerful piece and it's something that um I love that you can make something great without investing a lot of money and it's really the backbone and it's almost like a safety net if anything I always look at SEO as as the safety net and then the paid advertising is the jet fuel which is just going to let you take off but um if that if that runs out or the tap gets turned off you're going to fall back on a pretty beautiful cloud an SEO cloud of just ongoing leads. So that's that's where I think that yeah we can help so many business owners. So for me at the at the agency, the the hardest part for me is I was I was all in to be there, but the fact they gave me the opportunity to be there was absolutely incredible. For me, it was a personal decision. My terms of the contract with remuneration got cut um and and the

goalpost had been moved a few times and I just got to this point where I thought, okay, I was doing the sales as BDM. I was also pushing for the systems of SEO to be implemented as they were very different to what I've sort of known and been taught through through the Gotch Academy. Yeah. So that was it sort of got to this point where I thought, okay, it's time to go and it was not good timing. I we just had our son was about to be born a week later and so I thought, well, let's just call it Otto Media. And so my son's name's Otto and I feel bad for Gia, who's our daughter, our first daughter. So I thought, well, I better sign something up for her. I don't want to have that awkward conversation later in life. So we registered um an AI company called GAO. Uh which really is just a more a passion, a love for me. and and I'll be the first to put my hands up to say that I wish I was the guy that has all the brains in that space, but I'm very uh grateful and lucky to have a partner based in the US who is absolutely obsessed with AI and I guess it's more like I know what I want. >> Segue that you mentioned your children's names and I wanted to specifically ask you your were your goals basically when

you started auto media. Was there a vision for like did you have a vision for the first year at least? Was there a game plan or did you just have a desire to do something and you found the right right people? And the same question for GI AI if you could just tell us what are the goals of both of these companies that you're involved in >> you know even understanding your background even yeah with with SE ranking it's and your the motivation behind a AI processes even just on that platform is is just incredible yeah credit to you and and what you guys are doing you're far more ahead of anything that we're planning but what we're most excited about is utilizing and harnessing AI it's not to do SEO it's to fast track and speed up SEO efforts so that we can do more. But you've always got to have that human element and and it's more of a safety net of not knowing exactly how dangerous AI is. But using it to speed up the processes, fasttrack the processes, but ultimately we've still got to lay down those those true foundations through yeah just through our systems and and a human team. >> And what about Auto Media Group? Was

there like a vision that you wanted just to work on web design? Did you want to work on SEO? Did you want to work on video or social media? Is there like a certain vision that you have for auto media and where does it where is it where's the scope? >> So I started out just thinking I'm doing SEO and that's all I want to be is the best SEO company that people can trust and it's grown naturally and it's completely changed direction of where I expected it to go. So what sort of happened is we sort of found now it's it although SEO when even when we started and with AI it's changed so much that now it's a lot more about brand awareness and and content and now with with AI overviews and and yeah all those LLM coming to play it's more important than ever that you focus on getting people talking about you and it's not just your website that you focus on. So, we're doing a big push and a big move into something quite new here in Australia, digital PR, which I'm not sure what how is that that's probably quite a big thing. So, you guys were a bit slow in Australia, but pretty much getting publications to talk about you to get those really strong backlinks uh to really help push your SEO, but more

important getting more importantly getting you featured in those AI overviews and um yeah, AI search results. >> You're like living a personification of somebody who like was when you were a teacher. Thank you for for doing that, for being a teacher. I feel they're always underappreciated, but I'm just blown away by your transition and how quickly you're just switching gears. So, I really I'm really excited to to even have this conversation in a year's time to see where you are. Maybe you'll even outpaces your ranking at that point with all the things that you have planned. So, let's make a transition present, >> right? Yeah. I just love what you mentioned about brand awareness in general, and this is specifically the question that I had for you. So what would you say were the things and the most specifically the values that make you stand out in the Australian market compared to some other agencies? Do you think that there are any specific branding principles that you bring into the company that make you special? Yeah. A bit of context. >> Yeah. I'm in this to serve. That's that's my mantra. That's my model. I'm here to help people. It's it's okay. So going back a step, the first year is all

about learning for me. It's not about prospecting and going out and making all of those calls. Whilst I had to do a bit of it in the beginning, it's now for me the first year, even the first two years is about just getting the systems right and through I don't know through the content gods um and posting lots of content and people talk, people hear what we're doing. I love sharing my clients wins. Every win they have is my win, which I just love. Um a lot of agencies want to hide that. They don't want to sort of tell people, whereas I sort of thought, well, if I'm doing the best job I can, what have I got to hide? So, I might as well just, you know, shout shout out all the wins that my clients are having. And I think the values for us is we're just doing the best we can. We want to innovate always. We want to try and push the boundaries and and challenge ourselves and be on the forefront of again technology and what's available to us. And yeah, in terms of how we like to view our view our clients, it's a partnership long-term allin to make their business and help them succeed. And that's sort of how we kind of naturally moved into a different direction because I could just see through my own studies that SEO is changing significantly even just in the

last 12 months. and we're moving with them to more brand awareness again. Yeah, content is massive where we've now got I've got full-time content managers and and our uh social media managers based in Brazil and so she's just working fulltime. So, credit to Sarah. She's amazing. um by the way. Um yeah, so she's working really hard in pushing content and just naturally people are just coming over and and we're sort of at that point now where kind of ready to just like it's it's gone way bigger than I expected, a lot faster than I expected. And I think it's more important now to I want to educate people but not jump to sort of save them now. It's more about guiding them to say look this is this is where you're at. this is this is what's realistic and this is what you can do yourself that's very easy to do and and that's going to give you the the macro. Um don't worry about the macro just for now. Um because at some point that's when they'll come knocking where we'll be ready to take them on. Um and they'll be ready to scale. But I think they love the fact that we share everything. I love it. I absolutely love it. We got to preach it um until they grow.

>> And a follow-up question here before we go to the next one about your team's composition. So, do you try to build an in-house team or do you try to build good freelance connections or do you have maybe like a partners that sort of take care of something or maybe you have even have like an agency that takes care of content for you for example just whatever the situation is and what is your ideal situation for you? What would you want it to be? >> 100% in-house that we cannot align or calibrate ourselves to our mission if we are going to outsource anything. Nothing is outsourced. Now, in terms of building the team, this is a really interesting one because I've always thought, oh, it's we're going to have our team here. Everyone's going to be able to to talk amongst ourselves, but we've found ourselves, this is got to be careful how I say this, the talent that we have purchased, I bank it based on the value of what we can bring into the company to what we can deliver out to our clients. So, for example, whilst I would love to spend $130,000 in an SEO manager, that talent, I'm just not in that position yet to be able to have that luxury here,

but I know the talents out there. And so, we have an incredible technical SEO specialist who I can actually afford that's based in India and he is all in and he is so grateful because we are paying him so well, but it's so affordable for us and it actually allows us to focus on the quality of what we can deliver to our clients. So it's actually I guess the way I'm looking at it now for the value I would much rather get someone who is so talented, so experienced and way better than me that can actually help get us to where we need to be rather than saying okay well I can afford a junior here in Australia. So that's sort of where I'm at and I've been able to sort of keep that open mind and through that I've been able to build this based on a remote first platform or or service. So we don't have an office. We do have team members, one here in here in CRA, another one in Melbourne. We've got India, Pakistan, Brazil, and our content writer is based in Japan. So, shout out to Charat. He's a legend. Yeah. So, we are all over and again even that has its challenges. So, that's

another story that that'll be our next episode, I think. >> Yeah. Fascinating. So, considering like all of those people being all over the globe. But since you're just trying you're trying to build an in-house team, but all those people building all over the place. I'm just wondering how do you work with your teammates? How do you work with well your employees just to foster that ability for creativity, consistency, and transparency? Like is there a specific way you pick people that have the same values or is this something you just try to nurture when they're already hired on for your company? >> Yeah, that's a really good question. So, I was so lucky that part of the Gotch Academy, there was an incredible talent. Her name is Zia and she's been with me from the very beginning and she's still with me today and bless her, she is one of the most talented, most driven, hardworking individuals who I just absolutely adore. And so, I've I was able to partner with her from the beginning and get this up. And then she had other friends. So, she was she's based in the Philippines. And then she introduced me to um a a content writer who was able to help with our script

writing which helped with all of my content, my socials, all my videos. Shout out to Chloe. And the challenge that we have working remotely, I have learned that very quickly. So one big difficulty is time zones and understanding the importance of alignment in time. So we do have a crossover time period. We do try to be working in c in Australian hours. So 9 to5 business hours. We do align that where we can. For example, Harsh who's who's based in India and Medi who's our designer who's based in Pakistan. There's a massive difference in time but there's a 3 and a 4hour window where there's an overlap. So that's the overlap period where we all come together and that's where we're it's it's game on. We have all of our meetings discuss everything. We realign we talk about the processes on on how can things be improved? Where did you get stuck? Where's the bottlenecks? Look at the results that we're getting for our clients. And the other big one, which is a hidden gem that no one talks about, but I think is just amazing, is time tracking through a software and a platform called Time Doctor. So, we're able to have our team track their time

and track their work. And what I love the most is we can see how they how our team are working through the systems that we are implementing. We can see in real time just where they're getting stuck or where they're taking quite a lot of time. And then from that we're able to calculate the time on each task. So we know that when a task comes in for X, we know it's going to take this long to get it get it done. And you can sort of track it throughout the time and it just allows you to say, "Okay, we can fast track this here. We're spending a lot of time here. How can we fix that?" Another big one that I found working with this team remotely is they have trouble speaking up. And that's a really big thing that we want to talk about um and that we do. We're very open at at Auto Media is the importance of people feeling valued and to speak up if they are feeling overwhelmed or the workload is too much. You know, we did have one of our team members who didn't speak up or we could just see so many things were waiting on on this person and then yet we had our other SEO expert that we could see because we track how much time the the things the um the things take.

We we knew that they were um under like they were they had time. So, we're able to take that and put that over there because he was drowning in work and it was hard for us to see. So that's a really cool thing. So Time Doctor is a great one. And then leveraging other fantastic software is really important too. So we use ClickUp as our CRM which I love. That's a really really cool tool. We've sort of tried all of them. Monday.com started there. We've done Pipe Drive. We've done HubSpot. We've done and we've landed on ClickUp and and I absolutely love it. But the best thing we ever did was hired a full-time operations manager. She's has just she's fantastic. and she's one that that is in charge of the deliverables, in charge of always improving the systems and challenging the systems. And I just love our weekly catch up where we all get to just pull things apart and just have some fun and it gets heated, but we love it. >> Yeah. I want to talk a bit more about AI in the general sense, but specifically maybe G AI is somehow integrated into auto media. Maybe you can talk about that. Maybe you know about your stance on the use of AI among other team members, among other departments. Do you have maybe did you have like a meeting

corporate meeting saying like okay this is what we're going to do cuz for example at ranking we're thinking of how to optimize our processes and leave that human expertise in but just still every day we're talking about okay maybe somebody can record their voice and the AI can just use that voice and we'll no longer need to just waste spend 4 hours recording something. So just like addressing these small issues and I wanted you to talk about what the current situation is at auto media. Yeah. So just if you could address that'd be great. I'm working with Ashkit now who's my AI dream partner and one thing that we've had this conversation the importance of being able to leverage content to push it into so many different formats with the use of AI and re re um repurposing all of our content. So for example, this podcast, the key things that we've spoken about can then be transferred from the transcript, pushed into a blog post that's really interesting, targeting certain areas. You can then attach the video which then can be cut up to shorts. Then we can use that information as thought leadership to then post to your LinkedIn. And so it's this endless cycle and being able to figure out how to leverage AI to do that is so important. where we're at now is trying to well with the launch of V3

with through Google the important just the fact that that AI can produce the most amazing most real looking avatars which is me which is hilarious and and I had some fun with it just last night with my wife I mean it can only be 8 seconds so we're not quite there yet where we can have AI unless there's something you know that I don't please tell me offline that would be great but being able to replicate yourself as AI to then produce the content to say we we will have we'll be able to scrape uh we certain I mean I won't go into the the specifics but we're able to stay on top of trends of what's happening what research is being done and how uh SEO is moving forward uh and then take that information sit with it with it work with AI to think how can this impact where we're currently at today and then we write about it and talk about it and that's going to allow you to to really stand out in the community as quite a leader so some really cool stuff there as well so how we blend for us right now we're working on building a a SAS platform that's helping service-based businesses utilize and harness the power of AI to help generate more leads.

That's the biggest pain point that I'm seeing with so many service businesses that I speak to is that they they don't there are so many things and opportunities missed. For example, got my car serviced just the other week only to to realize that we every year in in New South Wales just you need to get a pink slip. Um and we know every year what date that's going to be because it's in the system of the mechanic. when I asked him and he was talking to me about about it's getting tough out there and times are getting yet slowing down as it's harder than ever to get our books filled that he's got this amazing bank of contacts phone numbers emails that haven't been leveraged when you know exactly when they have that card due for that pink slip and automate that get that so so that's one amazing thing we're going to be sorting out as part of AI and I want it to be affordable that's going to truly help them because there's just so much cool stuff a cake shop doing a commerce website for a cake shop only to realize that they've got over a thousand people that they know when their birthday is but there's nothing automated or put in there to then get that sale every year there's an extra

thousand cakes at a minimum that so yeah there's so many opportunities where you can help people there and pushing for Google reviews I mean service based businesses are too busy to learn SEO or to understand it so we try to make it simple but there are a few things that will really help get their phone ring and big ones for that is like local SEO and Google business profile and even just just pushing out using AI to leverage that to get reviews um and having them responded to. Um, and it's all content rich, so Google's always watching even through your responses. It's going to really take on board what what you're saying to to help leverage where you found and what you found for. So, yeah, that's how we're using GI AI. It's more of a fun thing through just my passion of trying to push the limits. >> That's fascinating. There are so many lowhanging fruits, especially with the discovery of AI and its everyday use in SEO. So apart from that AI lead generation project that you're working on right now, are there any other special initiatives not so much for a GI only but maybe for auto media group as well and that you really hope to implement maybe the next 5 years? Maybe

it's like a very far-fetched plan but you got the plan already. >> You're asking really interesting questions. Um >> I really hope so. >> Yeah. It's it's funny. The first thing I thought of which like the iPad was designed before the iPhone but the iPad came out after the iPhone which means that the iPad was parked because Steve Jobs found there was a better way and a better solution that people the customers need this because it's going to change the world. The reason I started AI was not to build this software. However, what we are working towards is using AI to really help digital PR and being able to know what's happening in the world, know what's what's going on, being able to pitch out to to the journalists and tell them the stories and be able to give have have an amazing bank of awesome comments from your clients that you can leverage as experts in that field. Yeah, I'm pouring out a lot of amazing info here. It's all available. It's all there. You can take it. You can take that information and automate it. You know, just through the trend of let's say through our supermarket there was a a massive

outbreak of E.coli which is yeah people got sick with the salads. Food safety searches skyrocketed over 500% and straight away we knew about it as soon as that spike happened. We knew that straight away that trend was linked to that topic in Australia that we knew that we were going to write about food safety in the industry of cafes and restaurants. And as that you're able to pitch these amazing stories. These journalists were able to cover these stories from local business owners who are our clients and they get mentioned and they get free PR and it was an amazing outcome and from there it's growing. So we are building something amazing there. So watch that space. I reckon it's about 12 months away. >> All right, Caleum, we're going to take it to the quick fire round. We have a couple of questions. Don't think too much on them. What's one lesson from your DJ days that still influences your business decisions today? >> Be real. Be authentic. It's amazing that I get booked. I'm this sort of fat balding DJ that's getting up there in age as well. But yet, I'm still being booked out at twice the cost of the nearest DJ closest to me that's way younger, way better looking, and probably a better DJ than me, too. But I am authentic. I am real. I'm doing it to

give a show and a performance. But, um, what you see is what you get. And I really I don't hide online with Yeah, you'll know exactly what you're hiring when you get DJ Ken Gracie. That's for sure. >> If Auto Media Group were a superhero, what would it superpower be and why? understanding true pain points and not needing to figure it out because right now we need to ask the deep questions. >> Nice. You have that in the p in the pocket ready to go. Awesome. Max, want to more? >> Yes, I have two more for you, Callum. So, what's one skill you believe every digital marketer should actually have or home to stay relevant in the industry? >> Try and break it. As a worker, try and push the systems and innovate. I will reward my team for any time that they can save in the funnels in the in the journey for our clients. If they can save us 10 hours, then I'm going to be rewarding them for that. And I encourage that. And we sometimes fall flat on our face, too. And it was a massive disaster. Everyone lost, but we can just we love that we did it and I just cherish them for that. And it's just the

learning experience. So I just say as a worker follow your heart and always learn and be in a team environment that cherish that and cherish you as a person and who you are and what you stand for and what you value. I think you need to everyone's individual. You need to love them for who they are and ask them the questions to know exactly truly what they they value and what they want for a long-term relationship. >> It's a good one. And what's the most memor memorable piece of advice you've ever received and how do you believe it has affected your life or your career? Let's be more specific. That was Gary Vee, mate. We're all going to die, so it. Do it anyway and go for it and give it your all. Yeah. And so, yeah, you're going to die. So, what the heck? >> Yeah. >> Ending it on ending it on a lighter note. Yeah. Hopefully, it's not a surprise for anybody out there. Yeah. We're We're just here to make an impact. Leave our footprint. Yeah. Um All right. >> That's going to be the opening of this podcast. You're all going to die. >> Yeah. Great sound bite. >> We should definitely title it. hook people in from the from the get-go.

Great, Caleum, this has been excellent, a great talk. We're going to do the outro here and saying that's a wrap for this episode of the SEO Agency roller coaster podcast. A huge thank you to Autodia Group's very own Caleum Gracie for letting us pick his brain. This podcast is brought to you by SEO Ranking, the SEO tool set that helps agencies scale smarter and achieve lasting success. Don't forget to follow us for more expert talks, actionable tactics, and inspiration to navigate the agency roller coaster. Keep innovating. Stay ahead of the curve. And remember, your next big agency milestone starts with taking action. [Music]