Skyler Reeves is the Founder and CEO of Ardent Growth out of Murray, Kentucky. They are a company that helps B2B SaaS companies get more value from their content by blending qualitative customer insights with their proprietary content prioritization algorithm. Skyler is on a mission to blend data and creativity to make the web a better place. He holds degrees in both computer science and philosophy (MSU) and is an Iraq War veteran.
In this episode, we talk about Skyler’s journey from war veteran to going to college to study computer science and philosophy to founding an agency focused on SEO and marketing and helping B2B SaaS companies scale their organic traffic with their internal software. He also shares why he’s investing in a coach, in building out a sales operation for Ardent Growth, and his insights on his experiences of hiring the right people for your agency.
This Cast Covers:
- How Skyler’s love for creating solutions to unsolvable problems and philosophy got him into the world of SEO and marketing (02:27)
- His reasons for joining the military right out of high school and what his experience returning to civilian life was like (05:31)
- The genesis of Ardent Growth and his transition from working in logistics to building his own digital firm (09:44)
- The value of investing in a coach, having someone speak into your life and your business, and how to go about finding a good coach (11:43)
- Why his coach told him about bringing the internal technology Ardent had built out to B2B SaaS companies, private equity, VCs, and agencies (15:58)
- The core problem this internal tool has helped solve for a lot of companies looking to invest in content and SEO (17:32)
- How they realized the value of their technology would be a great help for digital marketing agencies (19:25)
- Did Skyler ever desire to go to market with their tech and make it customer-facing or was the motivation always to serve them internally as they serve other people? (20:21)
- How having this internal tool helps their profit margins as an agency (21:40)
- Goals and priorities for the agency as Skyler looks to the future of Ardent aside from investing in building out a sales operation (26:54)
- Skyler’s decision to push working into the VC and private equity industry as well (31:06)
- Why SEO is a challenging endeavor for agencies specifically to get right (33:06)
- Skyler recommends where SDA as an agency should focus when it comes to SEO-related efforts (35:45)
- Areas where Skyler might still be struggling with in the agency and what he’s doing to work on them (37:20)
- One of the largest mistakes Skyler’s done growthwise for the agency is not thinking about people (41:01)
- A pretty interesting rule Joey made up when it comes to hiring the best talent for his agency called the 95-5-90 (42:45)
- Why Skyler likes looking for coachable people (45:48)
- What Joey looks for in people related to mindset (46:45)