” I have a lot of success stories and I have a lot of failure stories. When I tell people all the different things I’ve been through to get to where I am, you’d think you were talking to a 50-year-old businessman.”

Interview by Mike Sullivan

Phil Laboon of Eyeflow Internet Marketing is a successful entrepreneur and businessman. Even with no formal education, he is breaking the traditional mold of internet marketing. He started his company on his own in 2001, and has a wealth of web marketing and business experience.

MO:
What is Eyeflow?

Phil:
Eyeflow is an internet marketing company. We’re based out of Pittsburgh. It’s an umbrella of several different companies. I started as a serial entrepreneur back in 2001, starting different online entities doing everything from Red Bull straight from Thailand to neon signs to real estate to breathalyzer key chains. Eyeflow was always the parent company that was funding these startups. It started growing. As more of our startups became successful people wanted to hire myself and my company to start doing online marketing for them, so we just grew from there. We were one of the first online marketing companies in Pittsburgh. Locally, we just dominate.

MO:
How would you describe your typical client?

Phil:
It really changes. We deal with several Fortune 500s, and we still deal with small mom-and-pop shops that may be small law firms, contracting firms. Some of our flagship clients are EDMC, Giant Eagle. We do work with Hertz Rent-a-Car, Office Depot. Really everything and anything. In travel, we’re really well-known. In education, we’re really well-known. A big part of it is we use the same tactics that their competitors use to steal traffic from them. We help insulate them from getting used and abused essentially by pay-per-click campaigns or people registering their profiles against them. They may register a local in education. There are a lot of resellers out there. So what we will do is kind of protect them from all the little tricks that these resellers of leads try to do and protect the client. Because of that, as soon as we get involved in an industry, we typically blossom pretty quickly in it.

MO:
What are some simple steps any business can take to improve their searchability?

Phil:
One of the biggest things is not utilizing your title tags for your actual site yourself. If you do a search for almost anything, you’ll notice that the title tag on the first page of results, seven to nine of those on the front page are going to use the keyword you’re searching for in the title tag. I don’t think people utilize that enough. Your title tag is so important. Not abusing it and keyword stuffing, but writing good descriptive title tags. That’s something I see often overlooked where people just use their company name or the same title tag on every page. That’s a huge issue I see. Not registering your locals, like Google local, Yahoo local. It’s free. It takes a few minutes and can really help you, at least on your local level, gain traffic. You can basically come up twice with your Google search. You can come up number one on the maps and you can come up number one on the organic. But so many people don’t take the time to register their locals because they see their listing and don’t understand they have to verify it.

MO:
What role does social networking play in search engine ranking?

Phil:
The search engines just announced that is a factor in their rankings now how often you are mentioned in the social networking groups and things like that. We’ve always predicted that, that that was going to happen. But it’s such a tough thing for companies to comprehend, both big and small. We work with small companies and we work with big companies, and all of them think that by just registering a Facebook page or registering a Twitter account that that’s all you need to do. You really need to stay active. You need to build followers. You need to have good educational content. You just can’t send out hype about your company all day. You really have to be an educational resource. I think across the board so many people don’t understand how to utilize a social network in order to help them gain business. They look at success as gaining more followers but they don’t know what that means. What’s the ROI on that? They have no idea. They just know they want more followers. That’s a dangerous thing to assume that because you’re getting followers that you’re going to make more money. What we try to do is steer our clients into, okay, you’re getting more followers. What now? How are you trying to generate business from those followers versus your website? Just try to make the client to think through from start to finish which many times they don’t.

MO:
What is your perspective on branding a business?

Phil:
So many companies have no PR strategies, they have no advertising, they have no plans to really brand themselves. What we try to do is get our personality across in our branding. One thing we did is we got the city of Pittsburgh to rank on the first page on the first page of Google if you type in “the best city in the world.” Of course, locally we got on the front page of our local paper and all this publicity, but it really showed the local people that we’re working to help our city. We’re putting in time and effort to do things that not just gets our name out there but it helps the whole community as a whole. I think a lot of companies just don’t even think about helping local communities or their industry. I like to merge my marketing with also helping my local community because I think it always comes back to help you tenfold. A lot of companies I think overlook and just buy billboards.

MO:
What can you tell us about your first business selling keychain breathalyzers?

Phil:
That was my first legitimate business. I found a company down in Florida that was just starting off. I was importing things from out of the country around that time. I had this little website importing cool things, I thought, from Japan and Korea, and trying to bring new products over, making a little bit of a markup. Then I found this awesome product that was actually saving lives based out of Florida. It was a small company, three-person shop, so basically took equity within the company. They couldn’t afford to hire me. Took equity and then worked on equity. I got a percent, became a master distributor distributing the products online through all different types of channels. It was a great piece because I learned a lot, but probably not the most profitable thing to get into, selling key chains. But I learned a lot and made a lot of good connections. It was fun to do. I felt like I was making a difference. I think I was 21 years old.

MO:
How does it feel to have been nominated for the 2010 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year?

Phil:
Yeah, I was actually not just nominated. I was a finalist last year, which is pretty cool. I was one of the youngest I think that was there. It was really cool. I honestly didn’t think I had a chance at all, and the person I lost to I think his company was something like 30 times the size of mine. But what they gauged you on was basically your entrepreneurial spirit, which I thought was really cool. It wasn’t all about income. It was more about your drive to be an entrepreneur. I have a lot of success stories and I have a lot of failure stories. When I tell people all the different things I’ve been through to get to where I am, you’d think you were talking to a 50-year-old businessman. I’ve been in multi-million dollar lawsuits over several years and several states tracking money outside the country. I’ve been closed on by the government for the keychains for not getting proper paperwork and insurances. I learned a lot by the time I’m 29 years old. I think Ernst & Young really respected that. Most people would have given up or said, “This is not for me.” And I just keep going at it.

MO:
How is it that you managed to become a successful entrepreneur despite the lack of a formal college degree?

Phil:
In high school I was not a good student. I always had my own little hustles going on, whether it was on weekends traveling to different festival and shows and selling food at festivals. During school, I had a whole business selling discounted Hostess pies, where I bought them about a week before they expired. Filled my parents’ garage with crates of pies and was selling them for eight times markup because they were about to expire. College for me, I lasted about two weeks at a four year college and then I went to an associate trade school just to brush up on my web design. Went there, took two years. I graduated in 14 months by taking double classes and then went straight into starting my own company, my own consulting. Took a few little part-time gigs with marketing on the side, but by the time I was 19 years old, I had a full-fledged internet marketing company, one person deep, but it was exciting.

MO:
What traits have helped you in your journey as an entrepreneur?

Phil:
I really think it’s all about just not giving up. So many people I talk to when you ask why aren’t they doing what they were doing or why are you getting out of being an entrepreneur or why are you getting out of your business, they all seem to say because they had this big epic failure. For me, I used it as a learning experience and say, “I’ll never make that mistake again.” And it’s burned in my head. I think stubbornness has something to do with it too. If someone says I can’t do something, I just want to do it, which I think is a trait you definitely need. Optimism is the other thing that I’ve noticed that is different with me versus my employees. I’m always 100% optimistic. I think everything’s going to work. I’m just 100% convinced that anything I do is going to succeed, and if it doesn’t, I sometimes hit that point where maybe I should have cut off a little bit earlier. But I think as an entrepreneur you need to have that excitement because others will feed off of your excitement. You can’t go in thinking anything’s not going to work or it will never work. I think those are some of the traits that I have that have helped me get to where I am.