I’ve Been Doing This Since Before “SEO” Was a Household Word
I bought my first Google Ads back in 2007 and 2008, when you could still land a click on the word “cancer” for about a quarter. In 2009, I ran my first real client campaign: about $1,000 a month in ad spend generating leads for a company selling free health kits, who paid me around $1,200 a month for the work. It wasn’t much money for the effort, but I was hooked.
Back when PageRank still mattered and stuffing your keyword straight into your domain name could get you ranked overnight, I played that game hard. Register a keyword-rich domain, build out five to ten pages, load each one with three to five Google ads (one up top, one in the middle, one at the bottom, a couple more tucked into the sidebar), and let the arbitrage do the work. It was a different internet, and a fun one. Google eventually caught on and changed the rules, the way it always does, and I moved on to building things that actually last instead of things built to game the system for a season.
I built my first website around 2010 and taught myself WordPress the year after. By 2015 I was doing SEO in earnest. Then 2017 happened. I had a site outranking WebMD, pulling in one to three organic sales a day, and one morning I woke up on page 100. A Google algorithm update wiped it out overnight. It was brutal, and it taught me more about how search actually works than any course could have.
I never got a certification. What I have instead is close to two decades of building, breaking, ranking, losing rankings, and figuring out why, on real websites with real budgets on the line.
Why Growth Engine Network, Why Now
I spent a lot of years dabbling in this work between other things. 2025 is when that changed. I went all in on building Growth Engine Network to bring everything I’ve learned since 2007 to the businesses right here in Monroe and Walton County: better on-page SEO, a Google Business Profile that actually gets optimized instead of ignored, and a local presence that shows up when your customers are searching.
Here’s the part that keeps me honest: I’m not just building your local organic traffic. I’m building mine, at the same time, with the same strategy, on the same search engine. When my own business starts ranking in Monroe, that’s proof the system works, before I ever ask you to trust it with yours. Your success and mine are tied together, and that’s exactly how I want it.
Who’s Behind the Work
Right now, it’s mostly me. I’ve worked with a colleague in Canada on past projects, and I’m not shy about reaching out to some of the bigger names in the SEO world for advice as I build this out; a few have been generous with their time. I’ll be bringing on more help as Growth Engine Network grows. But there’s no call center, no account manager who’s never touched your Google Business Profile, no big office. Just someone who’s genuinely done the work, still does the work, and answers for the results.
Growth Engine Network is also a Christian-owned local business, and that shapes how I operate: straight answers, honest timelines, and a real interest in seeing the small businesses I work with actually hit their goals, not just their invoices.
What This Means for Your Business
If you’re a local business in Monroe or anywhere in Walton County trying to show up on Google, rank higher in the map pack, or turn your website into something that actually brings in calls, I’ve spent almost twenty years learning how to do exactly that, and I’m doing it in my own backyard.