[EO Chicago] Building a Leading Digital Agency Through Niche Mastery

Mark Bealin is the Founder and CEO of SearchLab, an award-winning digital marketing agency specializing in local SEO and PPC. He started his agency as a side project in 2017 while balancing a full-time job and growing a family. Under Mark’s leadership, SearchLab has flourished, being recognized thrice on the Inc. 5000 list. He’s deeply involved with Entrepreneurs’ Organization Chicago, particularly in the Accelerator program, and has a rich history in coaching, which he uses to impact emerging entrepreneurs. Through strategic hires and a carved niche in local SEO, Mark has steered his company to tremendous growth.

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

[03:23] Mark Bealin talks about his passion for coaching and entrepreneurship and why he volunteered as an EO Accelerator coach
[05:11] Effective coaching strategies that transformed Mark’s businesses and career
[08:17] The impact of harnessing peer pressure in business accountability groups
[10:53] The importance of financial reserves for service-based businesses
[16:51] How podcasts can help recruit top talent
[22:41] Mark shares his agency’s niche within a niche that led to explosive growth
[30:25] The philosophy behind creating a conference that counters industry norms
[35:35] How building deeper business relationships can help navigate the transition during acquisitions
[44:16] The influence and impact of mentors and fostering a company culture built on shared values
[49:53] The legacy of Mark Irvine and how it continues to shape SearchLab’s values and mission

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered how some digital agencies rise to the top in a crowded market? What sets them apart and fuels their growth, especially in highly competitive niches?

According to Mark Bealin, a seasoned entrepreneur and digital marketing expert, the key lies in niche mastery and strategic specialization. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on a specific market segment to develop deep expertise and offer unparalleled value. Mark highlights that understanding your niche’s unique needs and language can significantly boost client trust and satisfaction. This targeted approach differentiates an agency from its competitors and drives sustainable growth and long-term success.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Mark Bealin, Founder and CEO of SearchLab, to discuss building a leading digital agency through niche mastery. They explore the role of mentorship in scaling a business, the impact of niche specialization on client relationships, and the strategies for maintaining growth and honoring team legacies.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mentions

Related Episodes

Quotable Moments

“One of my favorite things I ever did was I volunteered to be an EO Accelerator coach.”
“This is a good marketing lesson. It helps to start with a small number anytime you want to triple things, you know.”
“We had seven; now there are 21 by the end of the year. So, it’s been great.”
“We make sure that Google doesn’t just spend all your money.”
“How do I give him a legacy moving forward?… If you’re a new employee to SearchLab, part of your onboarding is to learn about this honor.”

Action Steps

Join a business accountability group to fast-track growth and benefit from peer support: Engaging with like-minded entrepreneurs fosters accountability and encourages actionable steps toward scaling your business.
Focus on cultivating long-term, mutually beneficial relationships in every business interaction: Building meaningful connections can result in a loyal client base and collaborative opportunities that fuel sustainable growth.
Identify and double down on your most profitable and enjoyable niches: Streamlining your offerings allows you to become an expert in your field, which can attract a specific and loyal customer base.
Implement a referral program that rewards and encourages partners to mutually enhance each other’s businesses: A strategically designed referral program can increase your reach and credibility within your network.
Regularly review and optimize PPC campaigns to ensure you’re not wasting resources on irrelevant traffic: Being vigilant about negative keywords and ad placements can significantly increase the ROI and effectiveness of your paid marketing efforts.

Sponsor for this episode…

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We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.

Co-founders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, FreshBooks, and many more.

The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

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 0:13

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Mark Bealin of SearchLab. You can check him out searchlabdigital.com. Mark, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. This is part of kind of the EO series / agency series. I had Anthony Standifer “How To Start a Beauty Brand From Scratch”. That was a really good one. I had Kevin Hundal, “Delegate, Elevate, Transform: Unlocking EOS” that was a good one. You’re smiling because I know you know these guys. We had “Giving to Your Best Business Relationships” with Andrea Herrera and also “Leveraging Local Expertise for Worldwide Business Growth” with Cameron Heffernan. And I want to give a shout out to Bo Patel. Bo Patel’s a good friend, colleague and I know you know Bo really well, Mark. And he said, You must, must, must have Mark on you. I’ve thought about having you on for for a number of years. I just never reached out. So thank you, Bo. He runs xtechenergy.com. They’re an energy efficiency company specializing in LED lighting, EV charger installation, solar installation, and much, much more. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. So Mark, we call ourselves kind of the magic elves that run all over the place to make it happen so the host and the company can develop amazing relationships and create amazing content and do just that and show up for the interview. For me, you know, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I’ve found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people in companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you definitely should mark it as a podcast. We’ll talk about it. And if you have questions, go to rise25.com to learn more, or email support@rise25.com. And I’m excited to introduce Mark Bealin. He’s the Founder and CEO of SearchLab. SearchLab is a digital marketing agency focused on local SEO and PPC. He actually started it back in 2017 as a side gig, right? So picture a full time job, working nights and weekends in addition to all those hours, in addition to a growing young family, and it grew. SearchLab won numerous awards. They’ve been on the Inc 5000 list three times. He’s also active in a few boards, including EO Chicago, where one of his goals is to grow the Accelerator program. So Mark, thanks for joining me.

Mark Bealin 3:07

I’m really happy to be on. Thank you for that kind introduction.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 3:10

So we’ll get to SearchLab and what you do. But EOA has a special place in your heart, and it relates to SearchLab, so talk about that on your journey.

Mark Bealin 3:23

Yeah. So I think what I would say is I was part of this group EO for I started in 2019 and I really loved it. One of my favorite things I ever did was I volunteered to be an EO Accelerator coach. So to give people a sense of I should back up and explain what the program is. So to be a member of EO, you have to have a business that has revenue over a million dollars. And so there are some businesses that that’s that’s more than they have. They they have between, you know. So what we did is we created a program for businesses with 250,000 you have to have some revenue. $250,000 of revenue up to 999,999 with a fierce desire to scale like, that’s, that’s really all we’re looking for. I get questions a lot of people like, is it for service based businesses? Is it for manufacturers, products, businesses, whatever it’s it really doesn’t matter, as long as you have a fierce desire to grow. The whole program is designed to help people like, double and triple their business, because it’s not so if you’re just sort of in a lifestyle business, or you want to incrementally grow, it really wouldn’t. It wouldn’t make sense. Like the whole program would make sense. So I started coaching. I have a background I don’t know, like, if you even know this, but I have a background.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 4:36

I do for many years. Actually, I was surprised when I saw that, yeah, I think it was like, I don’t know if it was 10 years, but it was, it was a long time.

Mark Bealin 4:45

I think in total, it was 10 years, yeah, so eight years at Ignatius, and then one year at U &f D, and then I was back last year a little bit. So, yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 4:54

You did a talk, actually, Mark, you know, I did, I did my research. But how you talked about. Out in the championship. How you discovered if the running back was in a certain position the quarterback, if they were running or passing? So you did your homework when you were later coaching, yeah?

Mark Bealin 5:11

So I always we would do a million tricks like that, yeah? Like, I have stories at the galore. So I have this real passion for coaching that’s like, what I love. And so this just was, like putting two passions together. You have the entrepreneurs who I tell people all the time, I can have a conversation with an entrepreneur all the time. You know, it ruins conversations with my friends and neighbors, because I find entrepreneurs a lot more interesting than, you know, everyone else. And I’m always like the first one who wants to leave the I used to be. I’m super extroverted, but I used to be, you know, I’ll stay and talk to anybody for now. I’m like, let’s get over. Let’s get home, you know, I want to be down talking to the, you know, whatever, the friends and so anyway, I loved it, and I watched these really gutsy early stage growth, stage professionals, you know, languish and struggle, and then they’d get a little momentum going. And I’ve had two, had two people who graduated into EO, and so that was like doing backflips, you know, I was so happy, and I just got so much energy out of this program. And I then got approached to run it. So I was, now I’m on the board, and it is, my job is to grow the accelerator program, and we’ve been able to triple the size of it. So it’s been, it was, it helps anytime. This is a good marketing lesson. It helps to start with a small number anytime you want to triple things, you know.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 6:35

So now we have three.

Mark Bealin 6:40

We had seven, another 21 by the end of the year. So it was, it was great. And I just get so much value out of working with this, this cohort. And the thing that you you realize, you know, a certain point, my business is really pretty established. There’s a decent rainy day fund. There’s the sort of normal business things that you have, operating expenses out certain period of time, access to capital if we need it. These are people who are very much hanging out like they’re doing all the jobs they’re trying to get. And I loved it. I love that phase of the business. Just the grit that they get. The people have, they screw up a lot of things, and you know, you’re pulling for them. And then to see some some success stories out of it has been super, super rewarding for me. And I just, I love, I love being around entrepreneurs. And so if I can help people, you know, for me, the, you know, to make a short story long, I started like I had partners in my first agency in 2009 you know, it was a moonlighting gig, but it was technically, I had a company as well, so, but I was, I started in 2009 I didn’t really cross the million dollar mark till 2018 says nine years. And I just tell people, this is a lot of this is a story of suffering like it just when you’re to blow a million dollars, it’s just like you have no real employees, you’re doing everything. You kind of have to no processes or anything like that. I really could have shortened that considerably had I known about a program like EOA.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 8:13

What would you at the time knowing what you know now back to that first one.

Mark Bealin 8:17

Well, here’s the biggest thing. So they call it an accountability group for a reason, I would say my biggest flaw was that I love the freedom, and I loved, you know, not not having a boss and all that stuff. What I didn’t love, what I wasn’t thriving at, was I could say I was going to do something, and then didn’t do it. Nobody really caught me right? Like it was no there’s no boss. And so when you get into eoA, you get into an accountability group, and you say, you know, the coach is going to encourage you to share what some challenge you have in your business. At the end of the meeting, he’s going to make you make a commitment to the group that you’re going to do in the next month. And that could be as wide as your imagination, right? Read this book. Or hey, you’ve been talking about your director robs for the last three meetings. You got to take a take an action here, either put them on an improvement plan or fire them. There was one time where I told somebody they needed to start paying themselves because they were not paying themselves. You know, you need to put yourself on payroll by the next month. Pay. Have a paycheck. All of it is really rewarding, because what would have happened to me was I would have actually felt peer pressure to do the things that I said, and instead, I could just there were things that I knew the right thing to do, and not a month went by, not a few weeks went by, like years would go by, where I would just, I’m a compulsive people pleaser. I would just like, let I like. I had eight years in a business with business partners. I had three good years. You know, that means there were five knocks of good years. And so I knew what was going to happen. Like, I think they knew it was going to happen, but we liked each other, friends or whatever, and it just, there was no accountability. So.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 9:59

What were some of the lessons you learned at that agency that you then brought to SearchLab digital? Because obviously you grew very quickly at SearchLab digital.

Mark Bealin 10:13

Yeah, a few things. I learned. A lot of really dumb lessons. I learned a lot of things not to do, like, Don’t, finance 101 things. Learn lessons the hard way. Don’t, don’t after you take money in, don’t pull all of it out every month. Like, have you know, I learned a lot about just, like, hard lessons about finances, making sure that you had money, stayed away, stashed away.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 10:41

What do you when the you know, for an agency or for the EOA, what kind of reserves do you recommend someone have in like, as far as months go?

Mark Bealin 10:53

For me, this is what I would recommend as a coach. I think the the call it core capital, I think you should have two months of expenses saved and no debt. And if you have, if you have no debt and two months of expenses, you’re in pretty good shape. And you probably should have access to to a line of credit if you’re if you’re able to and particularly that applies to agencies like mine, I think it’s more valuable advice people who are in different kinds of businesses that that may not work, you know, you I see people who sell products, they they need to juice their their their line of credit all the time. But for people who are in professional services agency, I think two months of expenses and no debt is a good rule of thumb. And, you know, I, I think at that point you can become more opportunistic.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 11:45

You mentioned two mistakes, but I know you did a lot of things for growth. What helped move the needle from a growth standpoint with SearchLab?

Mark Bealin 11:58

So there’s multiple stories here. I think there’s, there’s like three phases. At the beginning stages we were, and this is what I did in my first agency, evolving. So we just kind of continued the same blueprint we I started doing this in 2007 and so there was this thing that was happening where people were leaving print media and finding digital media. And it was such an easy sell, right? You would go spend a third of what you’re spending with the freaking, you know, yellow pages with me, and I’ll give you a much better return. And we could really, there was two and seven. There were few enough people in here where you could really make that kind of a promise, like it was, it was really, it was working very well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 12:43

I knew someone mark that, um, they would take the yellow pages. They’d rip out the page of the person with the full page, direct mail the person totally and and write the offer on there, right?

Mark Bealin 12:56

So that’s, that’s pretty much, pretty much. I mean, that’s a more sophisticated playbook, but we were doing the same thing, right? So we would do, though, my heck was, I would go to the person who was selling for the Yellow Pages, right? And I would say, Look, you got relationships, but you don’t get a product anymore. I’ve got a product. I could use a few more relationships. So we paid a lot of commission to print Yellow Pages in particular, would print media folks to convert them over. So that was really great. That worked. That worked really well. At the same time, I was doing an amazing amount of like, just hustling. I would just go to networking things I would, you know, go to every cocktail hour I could. I tried to make friends. I tried to establish a reputation in Chicago, mainly. And with that allowed me to do I set up like a pretty sophisticated referral program with IT companies and web developers and design folks. And it was a lot of striking out, but then if you hit it was all upside. So it was great. And it was kind of a fun way to grow too. I liked it. You got to, you know, you got to talk to people a lot and and and learn from them. So you kind of got, I kind of got some free advice along the way, while I was also growing my business, which was really cool and helpful. So those were kind of the first two things we did. And I kind of equate it too. If you ever see like a rocket go off, and then they have to jettison the thing at a certain point, like just drops off. Well, at a certain point, we became a real company. We had employees, and we had, you know, rules and stuff like that, and core values and, you know, purpose, cause and passion for doing what we did. And these yellow page sales reps were not like exactly, you know, ideal fits. They weren’t part of the company, right? They were not rubbing elbows with my teammate. We’re in the trenches doing all this stuff. And a certain point, what we realized is we were just we bought this many this this book. Business. And that was it. It was over, you know, so now we’re still paying the commission, but my people kind of own the relationship. There’s a cultural divide between the the rank and file and those people. And so it really became Okay, it’s time to time to pivot and become a real business. At that point, we got scary. We went and really, what I started to do was attend conferences, speak at conferences, and then hire people who were really good at conferences. And so once we did that, it went crazy, like, really, as soon as we hired Greg Gifford.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 15:32

I was gonna say, Greg Gifford’s everywhere.

Mark Bealin 15:34

Yeah, as soon as we hired Greg, and in the December 2019, it went crazy. And then we ran. We were growing really fast. And then, boom, covid hits. There were no conferences. So that’s that stuck. But hired Greg, hired Mark, who was a PPCHero. We hired Mark in 2020. In 2019 he was number one on PPCHero’s list of the most influential people in PPC and Microsoft’s North American Personality of the Year. So there’s one more you could win. He said he was one, one shy of the Triple Crown, or something like that. But he was, he had appeared, he he died in May, but he had been on the PPCHero list every year since 2015 so he was a rock star, too. So we, I just, like, got really lucky with two hires, basically, and then the speaking started to take care of itself, and we’ve grown like, you know, eight, eight times since, since hiring Greg, pretty much.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 16:29

Yeah, I’m so sorry to hear about Mark, and we will touch on that. But talk about recruiting for a second, you know, because you said, Oh, we got lucky, but I just doubting that statement. What did you do to recruit over what both dynamic, really smart individuals over to SearchLab.

Mark Bealin 16:51

It’s funny, there’s a this will be a plug for you at some point. So, Greg truly was a struggle block. Greg’s in one category, and then I’ll tell you why. It’s a plug for you and for the other two. In the middle of the night, I had my third baby, so it’s just one of those times was my turn to get up and feed the crying child. So I was doing that, and I was scrolling through Twitter, and Britney Muller, who’s very well known in SEO said, if anybody’s looking for a local SEO, Greg Gifford’s on the market, here’s his email address. And I was the right amount drowsy and the right amount courageous, and I just said, Hey, you know, we do local SEO. You want to talk? And I knew how, like, I knew how good he was and everything like that. So we talked, and it was sort of a ho hum conversation. And then the only thing that was interesting was, I was speaking at a conference called state of search, and he was keynoting the same conference. So I said, when I’m in town, will you get a, get a get lunch with me? And so we, we got a burger. And legitimately, you know, I don’t know what his exact start date is, it felt like, from that point on, we’ve just been working together ever since, you know, it was like, it just clicked, like, immediately, where what he was really excited about, I was really excited about, he has this like, attention to detail and anal retentiveness, where I’m really, like, whatever the opposite of attention to detail is, and laid backness That gelled well, so it just clicks really, really fast. Mark was interesting. And my director of SEO now it was interesting, both of them I met on my podcast.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 18:30

So you had them on?

Mark Bealin 18:32

Correct. Yeah. So I had them on my podcast, so it it was interesting. I had Mark on and the day he got fired. So WordStream is this huge company in PPC, they got acquired by Gannett. It was a horrible acquisition. Then they ran into covid, did a big layoff, and so I got, like an hour before I was supposed to talk to Mark. And this is like one where you, I can tell you did some you did a lot of research, whatever. I had done a ton of research on Mark, because it was a big interview. He just come off this huge year. I loved how he blogged, too. I thought he was really smart, and he had access to huge data sets, so he had interesting case studies. So about an hour before, Greg messaged me and said, you know, heads up, Mark got laid off, and he may not show, he may not show. So I was like, All right, well, that’s fine. And it was like, five minutes past the time, and I was like, I guess then he came on and we, I thought he was hilariously funny, and it was the same kind of thing. We just gel. And so I’ve had two leaders on my team who I met on my podcast, which is fine, and I love it worked out well. So, I mean, it’s another you think about podcasts for a number of reasons. Name of the game for me is get talented people.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 19:49

We have a number of people. Yeah, use it for, I mean, obviously building amazing relationships, but that can span with partnerships, clients and hiring. Right, totally, you know, in addition to professional, you know, development, but, yeah, I mean, I kind of joke around, but I’m not really joking Mark, when I say, like, every great relationship for me tracks back to a podcast episode. And except for my wife, I did not meet her on a podcast. But like John, my business partner, yeah, through a podcast. You know some of my you know my mentors through a podcast. You know, indirectly or directly, so I’m, I’m with you. I love it. Yeah, you talked about, there’s a couple things you said, I want to unpack. You talked about a referral program that worked really well. I’m curious now, you still have a referral program in place, and how do you run it?

Mark Bealin 20:42

We do. It’s less, less of an emphasis now, and so we’re, my opinion, especially in the early stages, was always, I don’t care if I make any money from, you know, sending you business, and I don’t care, you know. So I was always comfortable with the other person leading the dance, right? If they wanted 10% kickback, or if they wanted, you know, some, some edible range, I don’t care. Like, I was covered with them leading the dance what they wanted. And for me, it was, I was totally fine with, if you sent me business, I was gonna make my license mission to send you something back, right? Like anything. It was an opportunity. So we diligently kept track of it, just like your we had you have, like, a HubSpot or CRM for prospective new sales. We would have a visual where you could see my referral partners and who, yeah, and if they were helping me out, it was, like, my life’s mission to make sure that I I got something back for them and and so it was. It was really this virtuous cycle that worked really well. Ultimately, what we found was just like, there was a lot of work in terms of getting the right kinds of partners right. So we had, we would have people who you have a lot of conversations without a lot of actually it happening. And we fell in love with conferences in the rest of history like it was kind of it became focus is really important. And our focus went to conferences and trade shows.

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Search Interviews:

[EO Chicago] Building a Leading Digital Agency Through Niche Mastery

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

In this episode…

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mentions

Related Episodes

Quotable Moments

Action Steps

Sponsor for this episode…

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