"Eldar and Adam McChesney: AI Visibility and Building the Agency of Your Dreams"

Eldar pitches an AI-visibility mindset shift, then Adam McChesney shows how he rebuilt a $2.17M agency from zero with client experience as the growth engine.

This Day 2 block pairs two speakers. Eldar, founder of Local Dominator, appears by pre-recorded video (his flight was canceled) to argue that AI has reset the SEO landscape and to introduce his Local Dominator AI Visibility Tracker. Chris (moderator) runs a short Day 1 recap before introducing the keynote. Adam McChesney, founder of Builders of Authority (buildauthority.co), then delivers "Agency of Your Dreams," walking through how he lost his stake in an agency partnership, fought a months-long legal battle, and rebuilt a new agency from zero into a $2.17M business in roughly 20 months, with client experience (CX) as the core thesis.

Main takeaways

1. AI visibility is the new playground; the old SEO playbook is stale. Eldar argues that with ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, and Claude reshaping search, agencies still running 2024 and 2025 tactics are using a losing strategy and should track and improve client visibility inside LLM engines.
2. Client experience is the center of gravity, not a side function. Adam built CX into the literal core of his org chart (a COO, a CX manager, and seven CX specialists) because unhappy clients leave even when results are good, while clients who feel valued keep paying the retainer.
3. Reverse-engineer everything from ROI, not vanity metrics. Adam refuses to sell on keyword rankings, impressions, or clicks. Business owners buy bottom-line ROI, and once the ROI conversation is framed clearly, retention, upsells, and referrals all get easier.
4. Embed the agency into the client's systems so leaving is hard. Adam runs a CRM department and a dedicated integrations specialist who wires call tracking and lead tracking into each client's existing CRM (for example, ServiceTitan via Zapier), so every closed job is attributed to its lead source.
5. CX expands revenue through upsells, cross-sells, and referrals. A happy-client referral flywheel (personal brand plus authority plus exceptional CX) drives roughly 3 inbound leads per day, about 90 percent of which Adam attributes to his Facebook presence.
6. Most agency owners are better technicians than business owners. Chris, citing The E-Myth Revisited (Michael Gerber), notes that about half the room self-identified as better marketers than business people, and frames the owner's real job as increasing enterprise value and EBITDA.

Key points

Eldar (Local Dominator, via video)

• Founder of Local Dominator. Presented by pre-recorded video; could not attend in person because his flight was canceled (he cited the situation in the Middle East).
• Thanked organizers Terry, Elizabeth, and Samuels (spelling appears as both "Samuels" and "Samules" in the transcript; unverified).
• Core message: the SEO landscape has shifted with AI. "If you're still doing the same thing as you've done last year or two years ago, this is not a good strategy."
• Named the LLM engines reshaping search: ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, and Claude. Each "acts different," and agencies must adapt to capture visibility in each.
• Introduced the Local Dominator AI Visibility Tracker: it shows where a website or client is visible across LLM engines, and the data can be fed into an agent or workflow to create content that outranks competitors. (No URL given.)
• Claim: AI tools "are designed to lead us instead of actually give us what we want from them"; understanding that behavior helps agencies serve clients better.
• Offered to share his full prepared presentation on AI visibility on request.
• Sent branded merchandise (T-shirts, notebook, mug) with deliberately varied themes so no two attendees get the same item.
• Organizers noted four speakers could not attend; four future digital one-day events are planned for those who missed, Eldar included.

Adam McChesney (Builders of Authority / buildauthority.co)

Backstory and timeline:

• Background in medical device sales; got into rank and rent in 2018.
• First website built and ranked in 2018: an auto glass company on Weebly, generating 300 to 400 calls per month; still live today.
• Started that auto glass company himself in January 2021; grew it to seven figures in four and a half years; sold it in October 2024; still does its marketing. Says he has "never repaired or replaced auto glass" and had the number one rated auto glass company in St. Louis.
• Prior agency: was a franchisee, Franchise of the Year two years in a row, then partner; built it to $1.75M in 2022; hit seven figures in 15 months.
• February 2024: told the partnership "I'm out." Had roughly 10 coaching clients and about 40 in a personal-brand mastermind at the time.
• Spoke at this event two years ago (son Murphy was six months old; wife Delaney) while mid-exit, expecting a buyout offer that Friday that never came.
• A week after asking out, was fired from his own company while on vacation at Disney World with his six-month-old.
• Is a type 1 diabetic; lost medical insurance after exiting, incurring medical bills.
• Started Builders of Authority on the side in November 2023 while still at the old agency (mastermind plus 1:1 coaching).
• Threw an in-person event in June 2024 (about 100 attendees) with just his executive assistant.
• Lawsuit settled October 2024; non-compete waived; relaunched the agency that month.

The relaunch and the numbers:

• Day he posted the relaunch (October 2024): 30+ business owners reached out (DMs, texts, calls, referrals, emails).
• March 2025: 7 team members. September 2025: about 30 employees.
• Last 3 months of 2024: $500K in revenue.
• Full year 2025: $2.174M revenue, about 26 percent profit.
• 2026 year-to-date: about $980K (almost $1M), a roughly $2.8M run rate.
• All achieved in about 20 months after restarting from zero.
• Today: 44 people. About 30 from Nicaragua, plus Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, and Venezuela. Mostly hired skilled; the training program is new.
• About 100 active clients; about 3 percent churn.
• About 3 inbound leads per day via website, SEO, YouTube, and podcast; about 90 percent traced to Facebook (DMs, group tags, partnerships).

The five questions (dream-agency blueprint):

1. What did I like about what we were doing before?
2. What were we doing wrong, and where were the areas of opportunity?
3. How did I want to manage clients differently?
4. How did I want to deliver ROI?
5. How did I want to transform the space?

TRUST core values (acronym chosen because most business owners "don't trust marketing agencies"):

• T, Take Action ("ask for forgiveness, not permission"; move quickly).
• R, Results Matter ("clients pay us to get ROI, not keyword rankings or vanity metrics").
• U, Utilize Resources ("be efficient, not busy"; leverage AI and technology).
• S, Set Expectations ("under-promise, over-deliver"; promise, deliver, repeat).
• T, Transform Lives ("it's why we do what we do").

Team and org structure:

• COO: Alejandra (started about 6 months ago as a paid ads manager; promoted to COO).
• Client Experience Manager: Laura (started as a CX specialist, built the department, promoted in September; manages and trains the 7 CX specialists, watches their Zoom calls, escalation point before COO and Adam).
• 7 CX specialists, each managing about 20 accounts on average (more or less by seniority).
• Anna (the deck spells it "Ana") manages website projects only (about 30 to 35 projects at any moment).
• Most CX specialists were former SEO or paid-ad specialists with 2 to 3 years of product experience who wanted to be client-facing.
• One team member is a dedicated integrations specialist (does only CRM and system integrations).
• Turned one SEO manager into an AI developer who now builds custom dashboards full time.

Client experience cadence:

• Kickoff (Day 1): onboarding, strategy, expectations; relationship transferred from sales to CX.
• Weekly: automated check-ins, progress updates, quick wins.
• Bi-weekly or monthly meetings: depending on SEO-only versus SEO plus ads.
• Quarterly Business Review (QBR): deep-dive ROI analysis and roadmap.

Revenue-expansion model:

• Upsells: happy clients upgrade packages or increase ad spend, raising management fees. Adam admits he was "so bad at this in the beginning."
• Cross-sells: SEO to Ads to Social to Web.
• Referrals: "the most underrated growth strategy in the agency space."
• Referral flywheel: Personal Brand plus Business Authority plus Exceptional CX, then clients share results loudly, generating about 3 inbound leads per day, more clients, more referrals, repeat.

Embedding and integrations:

• Runs a CRM department; builds CRMs for clients who lack one ("leaky bucket").
• For clients with an existing CRM or field-service tool, the integrations specialist does a custom integration so lead, call, and website tracking lands inside the client's own system.
• Example tool referenced by an attendee: WhatConverts (Adam confirmed the screenshot colors).
• Example: a ServiceTitan client integrated via Zapier plus custom build-out (every ServiceTitan setup is custom).
• Build approach: "We just type it in, Claude, ChatGPT, et cetera."
• Goal: every quote or job is attributed to its source (SEO landing page, Google PPC keyword, direct, organic social, email campaign).

Results and retention thesis:

• "Clients rarely leave agencies that deliver ROI."
• "Clients rarely leave agencies embedded in their systems."
• "Clients will almost never leave agencies that treat them better than anyone else."
• Example client (roofing company, Florida): sold $377K last month, attributed across LSA, SEO, Google Business Profile, and PPC. (The figure appears as $377K in the narrative and as $370K and $336K in the dashboard example; rounded and inconsistent in delivery.)
• Custom dashboard solves the home-services attribution lag: a lead from February that closes in April is credited as revenue across months, not just the month it arrived; can show the last 6 months.
• On lost accounts: usually a sales problem (under-educated client, ignored red flags) or a product problem; "very rarely a client experience problem." Clients can switch CX specialists (happened once or twice).
• Memorable quote (via Chris): "There's not many problems in an agency that more money can't solve."
• Slogan: "Written in pain. Built in public. Two years in the making."

Chris (moderator)

• Ran a Day 1 takeaway recap. One attendee cited Marty Marion's deep positioning chat. Lisa cited Kyle Roof: SEOs still have jobs and will for a long time, but everyone needs to get on board with AI.
• Asked the room to raise a hand if "better marketer than business person"; about half did.
• Cited The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber (referenced by Patrick in a Day 1 breakout): businesses start with a technician who moves to management, then entrepreneur.
• Cited Chris Martinez (Day 1, distinct from this moderator): the business owner's job is to increase enterprise value and EBITDA and be a good steward of employees and customers.

Slides

Slides (32)

Source

Synthesized from the SEO Spring Training Day 2 conference recording and Adam McChesney's deck (adam-mcchesney-agency-of-your-dreams). Eldar had no deck on file. Some names and figures are marked unverified or inconsistent where the source notes flagged them.