[EO Colorado] Data-Driven Digital Marketing Strategies That Actually Convert With Tyler Lane

Rise25
40 min read

Noah RosenfarbTyler Lane is the Founder and CEO of Session Interactive, a Denver-based digital marketing consultancy specializing in SEO, analytics, paid search, and content strategy for mid-market and enterprise brands. With over 11 years of experience in digital marketing, Tyler leads a team of seasoned professionals who deliver data-driven solutions to help clients achieve measurable growth. Under his leadership, Session Interactive has become a trusted partner across industries such as finance, healthcare, technology, and travel and is known for its strategic thinking and flawless execution.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [3:46] Tyler Lane talks about Session Interactive’s focus on SEO, paid media, and analytics
  • [5:02] Common mistakes companies make with analytics and attribution
  • [7:12] Tyler explains how Session helped Canvas Credit Union 5x their conversion traffic
  • [9:12] Strategies for improving local visibility using SEO and paid search
  • [14:10] How Tyler maps customer journeys and adapts analytics to shifting business goals
  • [15:03] The impact of generative engine optimization and AI on search strategy
  • [25:36] Approaches to building a strong agency culture and retaining top talent
  • [30:45] Recommended tools, podcasts, and books for digital marketers and entrepreneurs

In this episode…

Digital marketing efforts often fall flat — not because the tactics are wrong, but because the data behind them is unclear or ignored. How do high-performing brands use analytics to not only understand their audience but convert them more effectively?

According to Tyler Lane, a data-focused marketing strategist, successful campaigns begin with fixing analytics infrastructure and gaining true visibility into performance. He highlights that most companies operate with flawed attribution models and missing conversion tracking, which leads to misguided decisions. Clean data fuels smarter strategies, like reallocating budgets to high-performing channels and customizing dashboards for each stakeholder. When marketing teams can trust their data, they make faster, more confident decisions that drive measurable growth.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Tyler Lane, Founder and CEO of Session Interactive, to talk about building data-driven digital marketing strategies that actually convert. They discuss how clean analytics can transform campaigns, the role of SEO and paid media in boosting visibility, and why understanding the customer journey is critical. Tyler also shares how AI is reshaping the future of SEO.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

  • “It really is around trust. It starts with the conversion values to make sure people are understanding.”
  • “We’re catering to the audience. We’re catering to the user. So call it whatever you want.”
  • “We want to make sure you’re getting as much value as possible with your strategic relationship with us.”
  • “Customer journey is massive within our discovery process and how things evolve as their website evolves.”
  • “The second you’re not growing, let’s figure out why. And if it’s outside of Session, great.”

Action Steps

  1. Audit your analytics setup regularly: Ensuring clean, accurate data helps eliminate misattribution and supports smarter marketing decisions.
  2. Map your customer journey end-to-end: Understanding how users engage across touchpoints reveals key opportunities to improve conversion and retention.
  3. Integrate SEO, paid media, and analytics: A unified strategy across these channels drives greater efficiency and amplifies your campaign results.
  4. Customize data dashboards for decision-makers: Tailored views empower stakeholders to act quickly and confidently without digging into complex analytics platforms.
  5. Stay user-focused in evolving SEO landscapes: Prioritizing audience needs over algorithm changes ensures lasting relevance and long-term search visibility.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:03

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:13

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Tyler Lane of Session Interactive and Tyler, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out, since this is part of the top agency series. I have some cool agency ones. Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey helps pair agencies with private equity.

Okay. He has a Second Bite Podcast because he finds that sometimes when people sell to private equity and then private equity sells again, they make more sometimes on the second bite than they do on the first. And so we talked about the M&A space the agency space, valuation space. Great episode, great podcast. He’s become a good friend as well.

Jason Swenk, we have to mention Jason Swenk. I mean, Tyler and I dominated people in in bags. We’re very competitive and we met it through Jason Swenk and his group. He’s got two episodes. One of them is like how he built his agency up to eight figures and sold it.

And it was really interesting episode again, just like some of the growth things that he did and some of his recommendations, which was great. There was another one, Tyler, Kevin Hourigan, he’s been had an agency since 1995. So it was really interesting to hear the landscape of the internet and agency and everything in between with the.com bust and how that affected him. And so he’s a good guy and just really experienced. That was a great episode.

So check me out on InspiredInsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to your dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that?

We do that in two ways. One, we help companies launch and run a podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to do that. We do the strategy, accountability and the full execution and production. And number two, we’re an easy button for companies gifting.

So we make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients and partners and prospects easy and even staff Tyler. So like people will send us their address list. We will literally curate the gifts. We’ll put their branding on the box, we’ll send it to them in a campaign over sometimes years. So we call ourselves kind of the magic elves that run in the background to make it easy for a company to build amazing relationships.

You know? Because for me, the number one thing is in my life is relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people I admire and the companies on the podcast and send them sweet treats in the mail. So, Tyler, I don’t know if you’ve gotten any, but you probably will.

Tyler Lane: 02:56

So yeah, but I’m looking forward to it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:57

Okay, cool. I am excited to introduce Tyler Lane. He’s the Founder and CEO of Session Interactive. Session Interactive is a results driven digital marketing agency which transforms how brands grow online, and he has over 15 years of success in SEO marketing automation. I mean, you name it.

When I look at his website and what he’s done, he helps companies do this and he builds really a data driven campaign to outperform the industry benchmarks. He’s all about data, right. And so we’re going to get into that. Tyler thanks for joining me.

Tyler Lane: 03:34

Thanks, Jeremy. Good to see you. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:36

Yeah. So just start off and talk about Session Interactive and what you do. And while you do that I’m going to pull up the website. We’re going to poke around.

Tyler Lane: 03:46

Let’s do it. Yeah. So Session is a search forward agency fixating on three main departments, primarily SEO and which is a broad acronym. It’s changing rapidly in the space with AI and a number of other things getting into generative engine optimization, technical optimization, off page work, content marketing, you name it. Then we have our paid media department, which is primarily paid search, paid social with a bit of programmatic.

And then lastly, which is definitely our core differentiator amongst our our experience, but is around analytics. That’s primarily web analytics, immersion across Google, Google products, Adobe products, you name it. We’re we’re immersed in there providing value and attribution based insights.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:39

Talk about the analytics for a second. I know that you geek out on analytics and everything goes back to really analytics. And when we talk about truly running data driven campaigns, it’s all about the analytics. What have you seen. Because you look under the hood right.

You go in there, you look under the hood. What are the mistakes people are making with. In the analytics realm?

Tyler Lane: 05:02

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think, you know, I’ll just start off first is we recognize that as just a massive differentiator in the space where there’s a lot of paid media agencies and SEO, but their competency around analytics was was pretty limited, and it wasn’t really coming full circle at all. So, you know, to really answer your question around some of the mistakes that we see, clients, every single instance of analytics, Google Analytics or Adobe that we’ve encountered has massive gaps, massive discrepancies of issues in terms of cleanliness, attribution problems, you name it. I think there’s probably a maybe a handful that have been in like a really good place, but still has opportunities. And, you know, it really is around trust.

It starts with the the conversion values to make sure people are understanding and attributing success to their campaigns correctly. And oftentimes some of those elements are maybe configured correctly, but they’re really not understanding the the full funnel as people walk through and digest content and go through specific items within the website. So making sure events are configured correctly so you can kind of understand people’s user behavior and make strategic business decisions around how you allocate money across channels. And we want to simplify it for our clients. I think there’s a big intimidation gap to people are not in the platforms as much.

So we really want to utilize data lakes and backup things and then pipe everything into custom data visualization platforms. So they don’t have to go into analytics necessarily. They can see what they need to make the decisions that they need to within a a real time dashboard.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:47

You can customize the dashboard for them so they can just see it.

Tyler Lane: 06:50

Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:51

Well maybe we’ll talk about an example. And I was looking at your website and I found canvas Credit Union and multiplies conversion traffic five times. Can you walk us through what happened there? Because I’m sure everyone’s like, I want to multiply my conversion traffic.

Tyler Lane: 07:12

Yeah, the credit union space has just been it’s been thrilling, to be honest. I I’ll say this, I said this on a podcast a number of months ago about just the passion that these individuals have. It’s it’s unmatched in terms of their, their particular.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:27

Why do you think because it’s more community based or.

Tyler Lane: 07:30

Yeah, it’s community based. It’s it’s really it’s you’re you’re impacting people at these pivotal decisions in their lives right around, you know, buying their first vehicle or buying their first home or buying their second home or vacation properties, you name it. And they’re they’re trying to really establish great relationships. They’re trying to, of course, give them the best rates that they can possible and make sure they have this, this fluid, Transparent integration with their financial institution and which is which is awesome. And you can the passion with these, with these individuals is really, really impressive to see.

So when we first got in with canvas, it was evident that they had no real core SEO strategy. They had no real what.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:14

Were they coming to you with? Like what was the issue? Were they saying, I just want more clients or customers or what.

Tyler Lane: 08:20

They had recognized that they they needed SEO help. They realized they didn’t have a comprehensive strategy. They they realized they didn’t really have a pulse on their organic search program. And organic search with with these brands is is should be dominant, right? It should be a really top channel.

And it it was but they weren’t fully optimizing it. No pun intended there. But they really weren’t harnessing the true power of a content strategy of a technical infrastructure that adheres to to users first. So those are things that we you know, we started off with an audit and then really a sound strategy from there and a comprehensive roadmap. They’ve been a long, long standing client client of ours.

And it’s been it’s been an awesome fruit, fruit, fruit fruitful relationship.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:07

What kind of things like SEO. Are there anything else you do with them?

Tyler Lane: 09:12

Yeah. So they’re a multi-service client. They initially started with SEO fixating on on local SEO. So building those local platforms and making sure individuals in the local designated marketing area can find a location. Right.

And then we we help supplement organic growth with paid media and primarily paid search, which is perform incredibly well for again, their local designated market area, which is all of Colorado. They’re they’re about 30 plus locations now and really need to differentiate themselves and make sure that, you know, they’re they’re a they’re the go to brand when people are looking for a financial institution.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:49

When you go into a company like that or any company, what’s you know, when you say technical infrastructure. I imagine there’s a lot of stuff maybe they’re not doing on the page. What’s one example of like a low hanging fruit opportunity that people should maybe go check because maybe they’re not doing it and it’s so obvious to you, but not to others?

Tyler Lane: 10:10

Yeah, I think, you know, it’s kind of a it’s a good question. It’s a loaded question too, because I think we we want to ensure there’s a custom strategy. I think oftentimes SEOs will go into a website and judge things very quickly to say like, oh, x, y, z needs to be fixed. And we don’t understand the history. You don’t understand why that hasn’t been fixed.

Maybe it was an oversight, or maybe it was has been planned as a release, but there’s been some limitations. So it’s it takes, you know, it takes a thoughtful response to tread lightly. There’s people that have been building website infrastructure or a custom CMS, certain things like that. So you need to, you know, try to tread lightly there. I will say, you know, certain things around usability, speed to a certain extent, making sure that, you know, those core aspects are are tenants within your strategy.

Back to the analytics. Really quick outside of SEO. Well, it it it integrates with SEO but is really around conversion tracking correctly and making sure that’s set up and integrated. When we had first onboarded canvas and a number of clients like them too, they their attribution from an application, that’s really what what’s their goal right is to ensure.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:27

They want someone coming on. They want applying for a loan or something like that.

Tyler Lane: 11:32

Yep. Yeah. And they want to then nurture those individuals, get them in to establish the rapport. And the attribution was not set up at the channel level. So they would just they were getting click data like someone clicked on this button.

Right. They weren’t getting full funnel, okay. They they converted on this particular application. And they ultimately came through and became a customer. And it was attributed to XYZ channel or a group, a group of those channels.

So that’s what we really helped do for them to make sure that was streamlined and and reallocate marketing funds to more efficient channels and more efficient multi-channel activities.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:09

I’m curious, what’s an example of something you changed based on what you saw with the analytics or something else with with? I mean, it could be with them or anyone because I’m thinking, well, oh yeah, maybe through the analytics you saw this is in the wrong place. Like people are looking over here. I don’t know, what are some of the things that you had to change to help them optimize?

Tyler Lane: 12:35

Yeah, I love that. I think that that’s applicable to pretty much every client we work with. I mentioned that word intimidation. Google analytics has gone through a variety of changes. The most recent change or update is Google Analytics four.

And it’s become you know, it’s very people are very frustrated in the community because it got away from the old instance, which is a lot more simplistic, a lot more user friendly. And so now with analytics, we are experiencing again, people are being are becoming a lot more intimidated by going into the infrastructure. It’s not as intuitive. So really wanting to educate clients in how to utilize the data more effectively. We want to make ensure it’s simplistic and we want to help them analyze.

And ultimately it’s the questions that we we ask them like how is you know, what’s going to be beneficial to your day to day in your your particular job? These are individual questions. And how can we make it easier for you to make make those decisions faster? And that’s how we want to customize the instance. So we get away from some of that fluff that is just, you know, you can pull the same report a few different times or a few different ways.

Excuse me. And and it gets incredibly confusing. So one team member is doing the same thing perceivably as another, but they’re pulling different things. So it gets immensely confusing. So a little bit of governance, a governance.

A little bit of strategic planning and making sure they’re able to assess and analyze data correctly on the reports that that make the most sense for them.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:01

So on the front end, are you it sounds like you may be mapping out the consumer, the customer journey a little bit so that you know what’s important to them.

Tyler Lane: 14:10

Yeah. Customer journey is is massive within our discovery process. And then how things evolve as their website evolves as their ICP changes. So we need to be adaptable and make sure that we are hearing and customize their customizing their instance as needed. I think that’s the big thing with analytics, is that we’ve evolved significantly at session, from being just implementers to being more strategist, and on the analytics side, being more strategists and and providing insights and analysis that can empower channels that we don’t necessarily manage.

It’s just ultimately, how can we provide better unique value to the client?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:51

I’m curious. You know, you mentioned AI. I mean, that’s such a hot topic, obviously. And no one knows. But I’m curious, like, how do you see AI changing SEO?

Tyler Lane: 15:03

Sure. Yeah. That’s a that’s a big one. I, you know, shout out to Will Reynolds, Jeff Haas at Seer Interactive. These are individuals that we really look up to.

Seer Interactive’s is a is really changing the game and and and being a really a steward for how AI is changing certain things. A lot of people are mentioning the acronym generative engine optimization. And, you know, ultimately things are changing.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:31

Is that what is.

That what it is? Right. Do you think that’s going to catch on?

Tyler Lane: 15:35

I, I kind of hope geo generative. You know, I want to get back to another.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:41

Maybe we should. Create one on this call that’s like coined by by Tyler.

Whatever that is, I don’t know. We’ll have to think about that. Yeah.

Tyler Lane: 15:49

Eli Schwartz I think his last name is. He wrote a book called Product-Led SEO. He had a great post the other day at LinkedIn that I definitely agreed to. It’s like SEO, whatever acronym you want to pick, it’s ultimately it’s it’s we’re catering to the audience. We’re catering to the user.

So what? Call it whatever you want. The foundational elements aren’t necessarily changing there. You know, we’re just trying to benefit the audience in a new platform. And, you know, how do we structure that accordingly?

It’s it’s always been the user that’s not going to change. I mean, it may change until we’re marketing to chatbots or marketing AI bots eventually, but really is for now is really fixating as much as possible on on the user. And that’s really just been our focus always. Things change, algorithms are introduced and things are people are sweating the nuance around that. But ultimately we’re trying to stay true to what the user wants.

And that really becomes outside of just the tactics with SEO. It’s like, how do we immerse ourselves deeper in these client relationships to provide insights on the analytics level? Insights on search. Reddit is making a push, obviously, LMS from from deep sea to ChatGPT to to grok to cloud. You know, there’s so many now and it’s it’s becoming like, you know, there’s definitely.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:17

Changing every week.

Tyler Lane: 17:18

It is, it is. It’s impossible to keep up. But you know, you need to get in the game.

[Continue to Page 2]

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:23

You know, I love how you think about that because it comes from a fundamental strategy piece, right? Because the tactics will change and it goes into what won’t change. And I’ve heard, you know, Jeff Bezos talk about that, which is and that’s kind of some of the things he was thinking about with Amazon is like, what won’t change? People will never go, I want to pay more for this. They’ll want to less expensive and they’ll never say, I hope it takes longer to get to me, right?

They want it faster, as fast as possible. So I love that thought process when it comes to SEO or or any business for that matter.

Tyler Lane: 18:03

Yeah, it’s just it’s leading with intentionality. It’s leading with just value. You know, there’s definitely a lot of words to say, but like trust and transparency, that’s how we’ve been able to build great relationships. And it’s not arbitrary upselling. It’s it’s value based strategies to help adhere to your goals.

Right. And that’s that’s really where we want to come into play. And and if we’re not a fit in terms of our model or our structure around SEO, we’ll refer you out. Right? I think that’s the big thing is we want to make sure you’re getting as much value as possible with your strategic relationship with us.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:40

I’m going to we’ll get into some other examples. I know credit unions, there’s e-commerce companies, there’s a variety of companies. But what I think about is you have an interesting trajectory in your career. And and we were talking SEO paid search. And from the agency side, I’m wondering kind of the evolution of the services.

But even before that, I just want to give a quick overview of your we could we could speed through it. Right. But you just I mean, at one point you worked at IBM, right? And a fun fact, I didn’t realize, you know, from my research that you actually played rugby in college, but walk just fast forward me through your career a little bit like IBM. What were you doing there and what was after that?

Tyler Lane: 19:34

Yeah, let’s let’s be clear. Like I was working for IBM, but I was I just graduated and I, I felt I was like, oh, okay, I’m gonna get a job. And I got a job. And it was obviously, you know, at IBM in Essex, Vermont, Essex Junction, Vermont. And I literally was pushing a cart of pens and pencils to different areas across this massive plant.

And, you know, I slowly got into some graphic design and I got into, you know, offering some other skill sets around marketing. But yeah, that was a interesting place to be. But a great perspective and showed me where I don’t want to be. But it also really why is that?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:14

Just because the corporate world.

Tyler Lane: 20:17

More like yeah, it was a wafer manufacturing plant. Really interesting place at the time. That plant was responsible for like any chip that was in a cell phone was coming out of that plant. So I got to go into the wafer, the clean rooms, and got to go take a look at all these different cool things about what was happening. Which was which again, unique perspective.

It said cool. That’s awesome. People were had been there for 30, 40 years, which was really impressive, some really brilliant minds. That’s when Watson was coming about too. So.

But that really allowed me to to say like, this is not what I want. I’m not an engineer either. So I wanted to be more creative and and a little bit more, a little more flexible than, than that was offering there.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:05

So fast forward me through. So IBM then what what after that.

Tyler Lane: 21:10

IBM and then I, I knew I needed I had a desire to move to mountains. So I, I was in Vermont at the time. I’m from Maine originally and I, my sister was living in Colorado and I she she would invite me out periodically. I’d scrounge up what money I had and go visit her. And, you know, you go you go from skiing at Stowe, Vermont to Vail, Colorado.

It’s it’s a difference. And so initially, I wanted to be a ski bum. I’m like, I’m going to go out there and and be a ski bum. And I just and I quickly found out Ski Bum doesn’t really pay that well. So I continued.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:43

Going to teach classes or what were you going to do?

Tyler Lane: 21:45

Yeah. You know, I mean, I was thinking about being an instructor or things like that, but that didn’t really interest me. So I decided to reach out and kind of move. I moved into my sister’s for a couple of months and found a job and started consulting a little bit on the marketing side and then and then ultimately got a job client side doing doing marketing for health and wellness company.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:09

So talk about the evolution of your services. When you first started, what did you decide to do and then how did that evolve?

Tyler Lane: 22:18

Yeah, I love that journey. I mean, I think I’ll back up even more a little bit, just like my the health and wellness company that I started out, they allowed me to get a ton of exposure to different things through PR, through SEO, paid media, traditional media, you name it. Because we we were contracting with a lot of different agencies at the time. So that exposure was was incredibly attractive to me. And I was like, whoa.

I immediately gravitated to analytics and SEO and other things. Fast forward after I went through a number of agencies, I, I realized that, you know, I’m going to test my I’m going to test this out and see if I can consult. And to be totally honest, I got let go. I got fired from three different agencies here in Denver. And it’s and it’s a story I don’t really tell very often, but it’s something I, I’m, I’m actually proud of.

I have great relationships with them still some more than others, but I learn different things from different agencies. And then ultimately the last agency location three, which I was at, let me go. And they, you know, they gave me a month or so and they were really kind to me. And they’re good people over there. But and then I was like, all right, I’m going to test my network out and see what happens.

I’m going to test I’m going to do some consulting here and there, some analytics work, some SEO, CRO and it, it it took, it got I got some traction. And within the first year it was it was going really well. I got I got really lucky.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:38

I don’t know about lucky but yeah when hard work meets opportunity. Sure. Yeah. Yeah yeah. You know, and if it’s personal, you don’t have to share it.

But I’m curious, like, you’re an upstanding guy. I know you, you’re detail oriented, you’re smart, you’re hardworking. Why were you fired?

Tyler Lane: 23:56

Yeah, no, I think so. The first one was Intelligent Demand. I was there for about eight months. John Common runs that. He’s.

He’s a prolific individual, really compelling guy. Did a lot with marketing automation. I was just, you know, didn’t have a lot of experience. I was trying to cut my teeth in certain things around SEO, and they didn’t have any SEO specific clients. Right.

So we were actively selling them when I got on board. So the need for, for my services really dried up. So that was a short stint there. The second one was Burns Marketing, and I helped help create their digital departments, and I really enjoyed building that CRO analytics, SEO offerings. And we were building clients as well.

And they took a pivot, right? They wanted to revert back back to more traditional avenues around marketing Kidding. And and and essentially eliminated my position. And then lastly was location three account director there. And I really, really was fixated more on the strategy side versus what they needed, which is really more project management.

And, and I think everyone on my team and people that interact with me and my skill sets are definitely not around project management. So.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:07

Yeah, that kind of thing. Well, thanks for sharing that. I mean, it’s like finding the right fit of someone what they like to do, the skill set and what the company needs. And then that path is, is key. I want to talk about culture.

And we were talking before we hit record about teams and staff. And how do you keep especially staff as people who have been on your team for a long time, how do you keep them engaged and excited over the work?

Tyler Lane: 25:36

Yeah, this is a great topic. And I think, you know, as entrepreneurs and starting businesses from scratch, we’ve we’ve all made mistakes across the board and I. you know. And then it also brings up a timely topic. I was just at a local agency meetup here or conference or other agency con here in Denver.

Kent Lewis spoke there. Natalie Henley, who runs volume nine. Those are two individuals that we’re talking a lot about retention and culture and what that means. And Natalie had some really good points around, you know, culture is not the the happy hour or the the pizza party that you’re having. Right.

It’s it’s about making sure that you are establishing clear goals, and you have open communication and you’re really incentivizing and incorporate collaboration with people. And I think, you know, we’re evolving and we’ve we’ve definitely made some mistakes. And we want to make sure that we’re ensuring that people that come on board at session have their own personal goals. And then we also, of course, their have their their goals in their job description. And we want to make sure they’re actively growing at session.

And I’ll say this to my team and I’ll say this to, to anyone that we, we, we potentially interview is that we want to make sure you adhere to those goals and you’re actively growing. And the second you’re not growing, we like let’s let’s figure out why. And if it’s outside of session you, there’s a title that you want and we don’t offer that at session. Well we how can we get you there at a different company. You know, and that’s just the rapport that we take with our with our employees.

And the same thing that we take, the same stance we take with our clients to if it’s not with us, let’s let’s make sure you’re successful with another agency.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:23

Yeah. Shout out to Kent. Yeah, he’s a great speaker. And I got I think a couple people gave me this advice. Jason Swenk did too, about doing a quarterly meeting with all the staff.

And I may not do it with each of the staff, but it’s reported back to us on what do you want to keep doing? Stop doing, you know, and or do more of, you know. And so the start doing is an interesting one where we found that we didn’t know, oh, I want to do more video editing or oh, we didn’t even know you wanted to do that. So it was like about keeping people engaged and like, hey, let’s throw them a project so they can do something they want to, like, really start doing. And they’re passionate about, even though maybe they’re doing something totally different.

So obviously if they have the, the, you know, the acumen to do that, but sometimes we just find skills that we didn’t realize they even had because that’s not what we hired them.

Tyler Lane: 28:23

Yeah. And I think the traditional is like, oh, we’ll do an annual review. And that’s not beneficial to anyone. And so it’s like twice a year. And it’s and it’s more, you know, Ken and Natalie are really advocates of more quarterly those stay interviews or you know, how often are you having those.

So we’re we’re actively revamping a lot of that here. But I’d love to hear that you’re doing that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:43

Arise talk about you know, we talked about the credit union. But I’m always curious. And it kind of shows that these the strategy and everything kind of goes across different genres and channels here. But Skullcandy.

Tyler Lane: 29:02

Yeah, Skullcandy I should probably should be wearing headphones right now. But what a cool, brand fun one. That resonated with me personally because I’m a snowboarder and I would wear their headphones in college. And you know, I love the brand. Travis Rice was a part of that.

He was a pro snowboarder. Tony Hawk is still a part of it. It’s really cool what they’re doing and the products. It changed a lot. It’s evolved a lot.

It’s a really, really cool stuff. So we got an opportunity to run their SEO and still do, and really being able to showcase and flex our skill set around e-commerce, which is a target vertical of ours, and helping them launch new products, helping them revolutionize, helping them just establish better credibility with their collaborations. They do a ton of collabs with, you know, influencers and athletes and things like that. So there’s so much opportunity there. And they’re there’s such a fun brand to work with and incredibly passionate people about their outdoor industry.

So it’s all a lot of success. They’re actually putting together a formalized case study for them now and and a lot, a lot of big plans with them moving forward.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:10

First of all, tell her it’s always great chatting with you. I have one last question before I ask it. I want to point people to check out SessionInteractive.Com to learn more. And this kind of parlays into this question which is some of your favorite resources.

Right. It could be podcasts, it could be software, it could be books. But start with your podcast and a couple favorite guests that you’ve had on and then, you know, just rattle off some of your favorite software, podcasts or books.

Tyler Lane: 30:45

Yeah, I appreciate that, Jeremy. And again, you’re you’ve been an inspiration to me in a lot of ways, not just on the podcast front, but on a lot of other things. Just with your, your, your knack for for being inquisitive and and really developing relationships. So I really appreciate that. So our podcast is is being launched here soon.

It’s called Built to Convert. And we’ve had a number of guests already. We’ve had some great, exciting conversations, some really cool people from exciting industries that were that were really, really pumped to share a couple of guests there. Mark Minton, he’s here based in Colorado. He runs Gravity Global, their mid-market division, which is a global agency specializing in a lot of different things, from search to website generation to all sorts of other creative, etc. he’s been he’s a mentor of mine, and he he gives me a lot of inspiration.

He leads the AI Council over there too, so we collaborate a lot there. Ryan Levander, he’s he runs Red Navel Consulting. They do some pretty cool stuff on analytics and CRO. Technically they’re a competitor competitor of ours. But hey, there’s there’s enough business out there and he does some just great progressive stuff with analytics and CRO and just immersing himself in the data.

As far as some tools that I’m really excited about right now, you know that we are bullish on AI. We’re but we’re we’re really important that there’s an essential component around making sure humans involved using tools like SuperWhisperer are really cool. We love that. I’ll be honest, I’m not really typing as much these days. I’m using SuperWhisperer to dictate.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:25

I’ve never heard of that one.

Tyler Lane: 32:26

Yeah, it’s a great it integrates with pretty much everything and it customizes everything. It links to OpenAI and other AI tools, and then you’re essentially just speaking to it, and it customizes email responses and things, things for whatever you need in terms of long form, long form content, it’s really helpful. We’re also, you know, we’re using a variety of AI tools that we really gravitate towards and creating custom gpts for clients and building those out. So those have been really exciting and fun to work with. And then we’re also really excited about the Google Sheets integration with with GPT.

That’s that’s not new, but we’re really taking that a lot further with Make.com and creating automations, which has been a game changer for a lot of ways. Again, not to replace anyone to to essentially make them more efficient at what they do on a daily basis.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:18

What about podcasts? Any podcasts or audiobooks or.

Tyler Lane: 33:21

Yeah. So I really I love you know, we’re we’re, you know audible I’m constantly on there looking for, you know, business books and then you know how to guides and things like that. One of the brands that I follow closely is Sparktoro Rand Fishkin. I think you’ve interviewed Rand.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:40

Yeah, he’s been on the podcast. Yeah.

Tyler Lane: 33:42

Yeah. And Amanda over there are amazing people. And just, like, subscribing to what they’re what they’re doing. Cyrus Shepard is on the SEO community. He’s he’s always influential in terms of his perspective.

There’s probably another ten plus people that I really love and follow and really respect their outlooks. Wil Reynolds absolutely. Again, I already mentioned him, but Seer Interactive is just intentionality. Is value. His the culture he’s been able to establish and his just overall mindset and vibe is is is awesome.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:12

So I have a couple audible credits. Any recommendations? Your favorites?

Tyler Lane: 34:18

Put me on the spot. Yeah, two books right away. I think you probably Dan Martel’s book Buy Back Your Time is an essential read for any entrepreneur. The other one is Die With Zero by Bill Perkins, one of the one of the best books I’ve read in the last couple of years.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:33

I think I actually have the physical version because someone sent it to me, but I do not read, I only listen, so I think I have to get that on audible.

Tyler Lane: 34:41

Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s those those two in particular are awesome.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:49

Tyler, first of all, I wanted people to check out Session Interactive. I typically don’t do this on camera. Okay. But I have a, let’s say a special self proclaimed talent. Okay.

And self proclaimed that I could spot celebrity look alikes. Sometimes it just jumps out at me. Okay. And when I tell people to check out Tyler what he’s doing. And so you’ll show this to your wife and and see if she agrees or not.

But typically I just do this off camera, but I just figured it’d be fun. Yeah, I think Tyler has a doppelganger. It may be, I don’t know, like 85%. Okay, so Whoever’s listening could tell me I’m totally off or I’m not okay with this. But this is.

This is my.

Tyler Lane: 35:48

Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:49

Doppelganger for Tyler. Okay. Yeah. Colin Farrell. So I’m like, oh, you’ll meet Tyler.

He looks like Colin Farrell. So someone could disagree or agree with me. That’s fine. But really, what matters is if. If Tyler’s wife agrees with me or not.

So.

Tyler Lane: 36:05

But buddy buddies will likely joke that I’m more the the penguin. He’s.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:12

I didn’t see that character, so I don’t know, but but no thank you everyone. Check out Session Interactive and more episodes of the podcast and and we’ll see everyone next time. Tyler, thanks so much.

Tyler Lane: 36:24

Thanks, Jeremy. Appreciate your time.

Outro: 36:25

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