How I Built A $20M/Year SEO Agency For Law Firms
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Jason Hennessey, and I’m the Founder and CEO of Hennessey Digital. We provide search engine optimization (SEO) and other digital marketing services for law firms.
I started the company in 2015 with just me and two contractors serving one client. We now have about 120 team members and well over 100 clients.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
After serving in the Air Force, I decided to enroll at UNLV, thinking that a career in law might be in my future. To support myself while in college, I started a DJ company. Little did I know that this side hustle would become the catalyst for my entire career in digital marketing.
As my DJ business grew, I discovered I had a natural talent for entrepreneurship. What started as me doing weddings myself quickly expanded. Soon, I owned 16 sound systems and was sending out other DJs to events. On a good Saturday night, I could make $1,500 from a single wedding plus additional income from the other systems I was renting out. Business was good.
However, I was still considering law as a career. I decided to shadow a district attorney for about 30 days to get a real sense of what it might be like. It was an eye-opening experience, but not in the way I had anticipated. I quickly realized that the day-to-day life of a lawyer, at least in that particular role, wasn't aligned with my entrepreneurial spirit. The idea of being confined to a courtroom every day, representing criminals, didn't appeal to me. In hindsight, I might have had a different perspective if I had shadowed a personal injury attorney or learned about the mass tort space. But at the time, based on what I saw, I decided that law wasn't the right path for me.
Meanwhile, my DJ company was doing well, but I knew I needed to market it effectively to keep growing. It was around the year 2000, and the Internet was becoming increasingly important for businesses. I tried various marketing tactics, including putting an ad in the Yellow Pages and even getting my own radio show. In the Yellow Pages, I cleverly advertised, "Don't just hire any DJ, hire Jason Hennessey from Star 102.7," leveraging my radio presence to boost credibility.
But I knew the internet was where the future lay, and I couldn't quite figure out how to make it work for me. That's when I had an idea that would change the course of my career. I thought, "What if I build a website that's like a directory?” This online directory would be where brides, no matter where they lived, could find their photographer, DJ, limo company, and everything else they need for their Las Vegas wedding.
I hired a developer and paid him $5,000 to build a website called Las Vegas Wedding Mall. He showed me how to upload photos and banners, and I thought I was all set. But two weeks later, I realized a crucial problem -- I wasn't getting any visitors to the site. When I asked the developer what I needed to do, he introduced me to the concept of search engine optimization (SEO).
This was my entry point into the world of digital marketing, and I dove in headfirst. I found a reliable source of information in Aaron Wall, who had a site called SEOBook.com. I paid $40 to download his book and another $100 a month to be in his private forum. This is where I really started to learn SEO, and it's also where I met many people who would later become icons in the SEO industry, including some who are still our partners at Hennessey Digital.
As I applied what I was learning, Las Vegas Wedding Mall started to rank on Google. I'll never forget the day I received a call from the director of banquets at Treasure Island, asking about advertising on my site. It was a lightbulb moment -- I realized I had created something valuable! The director wanted to take over a banner on the banquet facility page, and when I quoted him $250 a month, I thought I had hit the jackpot.
But then I had an even better idea. Instead of charging for banner ads, I offered them for free in exchange for being put on the hotel's recommended vendor list for weddings. This strategy paid off handsomely, as I ended up making much more money from being a recommended DJ than I would have from selling banner ads. It was my first real lesson in leveraging digital assets for real-world business opportunities.
As the website traffic grew, I couldn't keep up with answering calls and selling advertising space. It had turned into a whole new business. I brought in a friend from New York to run it, and we built out a call center with about 30 people. We expanded beyond Las Vegas, creating sites like Los Angeles Wedding Mall. Eventually, we consolidated everything into one site called One Wedding Source.
Running this business taught me a lot about the challenges of scaling. We had a team of people in the call center selling deals for $100 a month, but they sometimes overpromised in their eagerness to close deals and earn spiffs. This led to chargebacks when clients didn't see the results they were promised. We ended up having our merchant account terminated and had to switch to a high-risk merchant account with a company called Humboldt. It was a tough lesson in setting realistic expectations and ensuring your sales team is aligned with what your product can deliver.
Despite these challenges, the success of One Wedding Source caught the attention of Brad Fallon, who owned My Wedding Favors, and Stompernet, an SEO training company. We decided to pursue a partnership, which led me to move to Atlanta. I sold my DJ company and uprooted my life, excited about the possibilities of this new venture.
However, things didn't go as planned. Brad was going through personal and business challenges, including divorces from both his wife and his business partner, Andy Jenkins. The stable, thriving business environment I had expected to step into was instead in turmoil.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
I started my own business through an unexpected opportunity. Brad asked me to speak at an event hosted by a lawyer named William “Bubba” Head. There were 50 non-competitive DUI lawyers in attendance. I prepared a presentation on how I ranked number one on Google for the word "wedding favors." Although it had nothing to do with law, I was transparent about my methods, explaining my strategies to dominate such a competitive keyword.
To my surprise, after the presentation, lawyers started approaching me. They were paying their current SEO providers substantial amounts – $7,500 to $10,000 a month – but weren't seeing the results I had described. They handed me their business cards, eager to work with me. It became clear to me that there was a significant gap in the market for quality SEO services in the legal industry.
This event was the genesis of Everspark Interactive, an SEO agency focused on legal clients. I partnered with Chris Watson, who was about to leave his position as Brad's Director of Sales. We launched with about $30,000 in recurring revenue just from that one presentation. It was a testament to the power of sharing knowledge and being in the right place at the right time.
From there, we built case studies and secured funding. The agency took off, and I spent several years growing it. We developed a reputation for delivering results in the highly competitive legal SEO space. However, in May 2015, I decided it was time for a change and sold my interest in Everspark.
If current trends continue and we continue to execute the plans we have in place, we think we could have a topline of over $30 million and a bottom line of over $10 million a couple of years from now. Many of the plans we laid out over the past few years have come to fruition, so we know these projections are realistic and achievable.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Right after I sold Everspark, I wasn't sure what I was going to do next. I knew I'd get a payout and could take a break, but I also knew I wanted to stay in the industry. During my sabbatical, while the deal was still being finalized, I started planning my next move. The contract I signed with my former partner included a non-compete clause. I couldn't take any of Everspark's clients or staff, but I could compete as long as I didn't work with their existing clients.
To kickstart my new venture, I decided to go old school - I sent out a physical mailer. I created a comprehensive guide and blueprint on SEO and mailed it to around 50 law firms in Atlanta. While it might seem unconventional in today’s digital world, it paid off. I received three phone calls and secured a meeting with a major personal injury firm in Atlanta. That meeting turned into my first client for the agency, bringing in $15,000 per month.
Starting over wasn't easy. At first, it was just me, one developer (John, whom I found on a site called Barefoot Student), and one link builder named Audrey. We were a team of three, with just one client and one call every two weeks. It was a stark contrast to the bustling agency I had left behind, but it was also liberating. I was building something new, on my own terms.
As we entered this new chapter, my family and I made the decision to move to Los Angeles, California, to support my ten-year-old son, Zach, in pursuing his dream of becoming an actor. I kept the Atlanta personal injury law firm as our only client for a while, and I found myself with a lot of free time. I was playing tennis every day, enjoying the California lifestyle. But I knew I wanted to grow the business again.
An opportunity came from an unexpected source. I posted something about SEO on social media, and Alex Valencia reached out from We Do Web Content. Alex had always wanted to work with us when I was at Everspark, but there hadn't been a good fit. Now, things were different. Alex had about 20 lawyers he was writing content for, and he suggested that if we could get on a call with them and pitch our SEO services, we might be able to start working together.
That really helped us grow in the first few years, as Alex’s company focused on writing content, and we provided the other services that are key to a successful SEO campaign. As we grew, we maintained a unique partnership structure, and that arrangement continues to this day.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
By early 2019, we were bringing in about $3 million a year in revenue. I knew that in order to grow, we’d need to build new systems and processes. And we needed more leadership to help make that happen. Up until this point, I was running all of the corporate functions myself, including payroll, accounts payable, and accounts receivable. It was working, but I knew it wouldn’t be sustainable once we were two or three times bigger.
Early that year, I started talking to Scott Shrum, who ran a test preparation company that had a successful exit in late 2018. When he took a look at my business in early 2019, the first thing he said was how similar it looked to his old company, Veritas Prep, when he joined that business in 2008. Scott and I got to know each other better over several months, and in May 2019, he came aboard as our first President & COO.
For the first few weeks, Scott attended every meeting and met with everyone in the company, but 99% of the time, he just listened and took notes. He was already quite knowledgeable about SEO and digital marketing, but he wanted to fully understand our specific business before he started making changes. The question he set out to answer was, “How do we take these systems that work for 25 clients and evolve them so they work for our next 250 clients?”
Over the next few months, Scott started implementing new systems and identifying new roles to help us prepare for our next stage of growth. As these operational changes got underway, he said to me, “We have to get you out of doing payroll and handling invoices. I’m going to call my CFO from Veritas Prep.”
Scott started to “get the band back together,” as he likes to say, and in July 2019, Michele Patrick joined as our first CFO. Within a matter of weeks, she took on a lot of the basic bookkeeping I had been doing, and within months, she had all of our financials so clean and organized that any question could be answered within a minute.
But Michele's impact went far beyond just tidying up our books. She built out a dashboard of financial and product performance metrics that became the backbone of our decision-making process. These metrics not only guided our internal investments but also proved crucial when we started exploring fundraising opportunities. Every potential investor we have met is impressed by the depth and accuracy of our financial data.
She also instituted a system of financial accountability for our department heads, holding them responsible for maintaining their margin targets. This not only improved our overall financial health but also fostered a culture of financial responsibility throughout the company.
Michele has found ways to minimize our tax liability while still keeping us fully compliant with all regulations. It’s like watching a master chess player, always thinking several moves ahead to ensure we were in the best possible financial position as the company grew. Looking back, I'm amazed at how much stronger our company became once we had a true financial expert at the helm.
Before the end of 2019, we hired our first Director of Business Development and Director of Analytics. The Biz Dev leader took on a lot of selling responsibility so that I was no longer a one-man sales team (and could focus on other matters as CEO), and our Analytics leader put in place systems and standards so that our clients had easy access to reliable, insightful data.
Our growth started to accelerate, and that meant solving technical problems that we were encountering for the first time. Scott and Michele dipped back into their old company and hired our first Chief Technology Officer, Blin Kazazi, and one other very talented software developer. To this day, we’ve continued to build our in-house engineering department, which now has over two dozen team members from around the world. Blin has built what I believe is the most capable and professional software engineering team in our industry.
Integrating all of these team members and tracking their progress requires a world-class human resources team, and in late 2020 we added Jill Wenk, who is now our Vice President of People Success. Jill has been instrumental in making sure we’re deploying our team in the best possible way, and she has also done a great job in giving our team members a voice.
Twice a year, we conduct an employee satisfaction survey. We carefully read every single comment that comes through, and we implement at least one new idea to improve our work environment and make our team more effective. As a result, our employee turnover is extremely low, and our average time to fill a new role is just a few weeks.
All of these systems reinforce one another – you can’t have a world-class technical team without a really strong human resources function, and you can’t generate unbeatable SEO results without an amazing technical team. All of these decisions have been smart, but taken together, I believe they make Hennessey Digital the absolute best at what we do.
The beautiful thing about launching an agency is that you can have revenue on day one – the agency starts to exist as soon as you sign your first client.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We expect to end 2024 at $20M annual revenue run rate. We have about 120 team members who are spread out worldwide, including 23 U.S. states and 18 countries.
If current trends continue and we continue to execute the plans we have in place, we think we could have a topline of over $30 million and a bottom line of over $10 million a couple of years from now. Many of the plans we laid out over the past few years have come to fruition, so we know these projections are realistic and achievable.
On the operations side, so much of our day-to-day work now involves custom tools we have built ourselves. Four years ago, if we added a few clients, our first reaction would have been to say, “We need to hire more people.” Now, we first try to identify how we can use software to amplify our current team’s work. If there’s an off-the-shelf solution, we’ll look at that first, and if that doesn’t fit our exact needs then we’ll build our own solution.
We don’t replace people with software; instead, we use software to help our existing team be much more effective. I expect this will continue as we grow.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Reputation is priceless. A lot of the time, our customers find us. I have been so focused on the legal SEO space (even writing a book, Law Firm SEO) and have been in the industry for so long that people frequently reach out to me and ask about working together. It’s not uncommon for me to get a handful of Facebook and LinkedIn messages from potential clients over a weekend.
In terms of marketing efforts, attending industry conferences was our biggest source of new business, although we have dialed that back over the past couple of years and have found that we’re still able to earn lots of new business. That’s an important point: As tempting as it can be to say, “We’ve always done it that way,” and keep spending on certain tactics, never be afraid to critically evaluate each channel and ask if it still generates a strong return on investment.
We prioritize doing things that are unique in our industry. We just recently published our fourth annual study of how quickly law firms respond to online leads, and we find that’s a valuable conversation starter with potential clients. A project like that takes a lot of work, but that’s precisely why no one else does it. Those studies frequently generate buzz at industry conferences and generate valuable inbound links to our site.
Beyond that, we’re now getting more involved in paid search and paid social to drive leads, which are tactics we had barely tried before this year. We’ve started small but have seen promising results so far.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We’re an all-remote company, so most of our internal communication takes place in Slack and on Zoom. For email and productivity software we use Google Workspace.
We also run our own internally built platform that serves as the hub for our project work (along with Asana) and for how our clients work with us. While we don’t feel the need to build our custom solution for everything, we’ve found that creating some proprietary tools has helped us distinguish ourselves from other agencies in our space.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
One of the best decisions I made in growing Hennessey Digital was bringing on Cameron Herold as our executive coach. Each month, Scott and I get on a coaching call with Cameron to talk about our challenges and get his advice. Cameron served as COO for 1-800GOT-JUNK as it grew from $2 million to over $100 million in revenue, and he’s a highly sought-after coach and speaker at industry events.
For most of the issues we face as we grow, Cameron has faced them in some form as he built his business, and he’s great about laying out exactly what he would do in our shoes. And if you give Cameron a BS reason for why you didn’t make a tough decision, he will call you out on it! He’s been a great guide and accountability coach for over four years. Scott also got a lot of value out of being a member of Cameron’s COO Alliance program for a few years.
Whether it’s Cameron or someone else, I strongly recommend finding an executive coach who has already been where you are now. Chances are that they already have many of the answers you’re looking for.
In addition to coaching, I’m also a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and recently completed an executive MBA program at Stanford University, emphasizing how important continuous learning and education are to me.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
The beautiful thing about launching an agency is that you can have revenue on day one – the agency starts to exist as soon as you sign your first client. Even if you dream of ultimately creating a product, starting out as an agency is a great way to generate cash flow and to develop unmatched expertise in your target market.
Also, outsourcing and partnerships are a great way to multiply your efforts. Your business doesn’t need to develop the industry’s best expertise in every single thing you do. Make sure you’re the very best at your particular specialty, and round out your team’s experience with help from partners who are the best at what they do.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I mentioned that we now have some proprietary tools. We’re currently looking for Hennessey Digital’s first product manager who can take complete ownership of our tools. The ideal candidate has significant SaaS experience and is very comfortable working with our software engineers and our business managers.
Where can we go to learn more?
Visit the Hennessey Digital website and find me on LinkedIn. I look forward to connecting!
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