We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jared Carrizales. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jared below.

Hi Jared, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Our company has always put a premium on values. Things like honesty, transparency, and general ethics. Before starting Heroic Search while working as a freelancer, I discovered that this approach was a big reason that companies would hire me. So I’ve always viewed that as an asset.

A few years ago, we worked with a client that owned an ecommerce store. They sold products of varying designs for thousands of different types of products. One of these products happened to be a confederate flag. That particular design actually sold pretty well. One day, he asked me if that was that would be worth promoting (ads, SEO, etc). I gave him my honest thoughts:

It was probably a good idea from a business standpoint, but that our team wouldn’t be part of that type of campaign. I told him I thought it “perpetuated ignorance” and that I wasn’t a fan.

I reread the entire email, held my breath, and pushed send. Now, at the time this was our biggest client, coming in at ~25% of our entire revenue. Needless to say, I was nervous about the type of response I would get back.

Thankfully, the client was appreciative of my candor and that was the end of the matter. It was certainly a risk, but sticking to my values were more important than making money in that moment. And they still are.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got started in digital marketing like most people did: by accident. I set out to build a great website that was going to make a million bucks and get rich!!! Well, needless to say that didn’t happen, and 18 months later I gave up on that idea. In the process of trying to make that idea work, I basically gave myself a college education. I learned so much about digital marketing, and specifically, SEO. I decided I didn’t want that knowledge to be wasted, so I tried my hand at freelance. It took off quite quickly, and I never looked back. In the almost 15 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve worked on hundreds of campaigns since then.

Generally speaking, our company helps clients earn more revenue by bringing more web traffic to the site. This could be in the form of someone purchasing a product, filling out a form, or making a phone call to our client. On a more granular level, we help promote their sites via SEO (search engine optimization) and content promotion. This is a very PR-centric activity, so it involves making good connections with editors, bloggers, journalists, and webmasters.

Other than working with awesome people and constantly learning about new industries, I’d say that the coolest thing about this job is working with big brands that are pushing products out to the average consumer. I remember one time we were hired by a Fortune 500 brand to promote a new product to small business owners. A couple months later I saw the product in a store while shopping with my son, and I was able to tell him about our role in pushing that product out.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Make less money.

I know that may sound counterintuitive, but as I look back on the best decisions I made that affected our team in a positive way, making less money way ALWAYS an indirect piece of that.

Easy examples of this include giving bonuses, extra vacation time, or company excursions. Those are good examples that are widely accepted as “cool” things to do. But what about deciding not to take on a client because their industry will make some of the employees extremely uncomfortable to work on it? Or knowingly paying for work that wasn’t going to get done, simply because the employee desperately wanted to keep her mind off of a family member’s emergency hospital visit?

Emotional intelligence has been all the buzz for the last few years, for good reason. But it’s often forgotten that your company should be emotionally intelligent as well. This doesn’t equate to bonuses and extra vacation time. It means interacting with your team in a way that lets qualities like dignity, pride, and vulnerability shine through brightly.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

That’s easy: being as awesome as possible.

Rarely are we the cheapest company that’s putting in a bid on a campaign. However, we’ve worked very hard to bring results to companies in various industries, and document those successful results along the way. By using hard data and illustrating how that ties directly into revenue, we make a very strong argument for our company being chosen.

I’ve always been a big proponent of pricing by value, not necessarily what the market says you should. After all, it doesn’t matter if I’m twice as expensive as the other guy if I can make the client 10 times what the other guy can.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://heroicsearch.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaredcarrizales/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredcarrizales/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/JaredCarrizales