The work, decision by decision

The work, one decision at a time

1. Take the call, and test the build on our own sites. Known: we had press and no position, and the agency built sites. Not known: whether their build could carry a plan I wrote. I asked for the flagship first, a new logo and an interactive portfolio site a buyer could walk through and find the projects that looked like theirs, because a static brochure does no conversion work at all. It produced the foundation the rest would point at, and it moved the question from which vendor to which kind of relationship.
2. Own the phrase, not the brand name. Known: a homeowner does not search for a contractor's name, because nobody knows contractor names before they start looking. They search the category and the city. I asked which single phrase captured a buyer before they had a shortlist, and the answer was "design build Los Angeles", with "general construction" behind it. That set the target every site and every piece of content pointed at, and it changed what we wrote about: less about Tellus, more about the category itself: we were early in a channel nobody had priced yet, and we stayed.
3. One site per company, all linked. Known: Tellus was becoming several companies, and in the spring of 2015 we formed three more Tellus entities beside the original. The general rule for winning one hard term says to put everything on one domain. I asked whether that rule was written for us, and it was not. It is written for a single brand chasing one phrase. We were several licensed companies, each of which had to show its own name, license and contact under its own roof, and in the local search of that era a set of real businesses in one city pointing at each other read as businesses vouching for one another. It produced the web in the table in the next section, with Tellus Design and Build as the hub carrying the head term and the others lending it weight.
4. The press habit as a first-class deliverable. Known: being written about had moved business for us before any agency was involved, and the coverage did not track how much we spent generating it. I asked what a vendor could not do on my behalf, and the answer was be quotable. The agency ran the release cadence. I stayed reachable, and two reporters ended up calling me regularly on green building, bathrooms, financing, interest rates, subjects that had nothing to do with whatever release went out that week. That was the key to the whole thing. It changed where my own hours went: less time protecting the mechanical cadence, more time answering the phone fast with something worth printing.
5. Comments on the articles that already ranked. Known: a page that already ranks carries the readers we wanted. I asked how to be present where the buyer already was, and the answer was to comment, under our own name, on the ranking articles in our category, steadily, for years. It produced a presence that accumulated rather than one that ran in campaigns and faded. It changed search from a project with an end date into a habit with none.
6. The seat, and then the trade. Known: the method worked on our own sites and the agency could sell it to other contractors. I asked, again, who had a reason to be right. It produced the advisory seat with equity from 2014 to 2017 and then the equity given up for trade work at the end. It changed three things at once: the agency got an operator's read on its own customers, Tellus got work it could use, and I got out of a position where I was judging my own vendor.

What it produced

The shape of it: the cold call, the seat, the sites, the press, and a client who arrived through search. Tellus Design and Build sat on page one of Google for "design build Los Angeles" for years, at times the first result, and it held after the advisory seat closed. The web of sites and the links among them were the durable asset; the content and the press kept the position fresh on top of that base. In 2017 the LA Clippers reached out to Tellus to redesign their practice facility, and I never asked how they found us. We were number one on Google in those years, so people found us.

The agency's own published case study on the Tellus work puts its numbers on the cover of this report; they are Contractor Gorilla's figures, under its name, and I cite them as theirs. The same case study is listed on casestudies.com. I also reviewed the agency at the time and said that if ours were not a regional business I would not be writing it, because I did not want the local competition getting the same results.

The web itself is the part a reader can check against the state's entity filings, and it looked like this.

Why it worked then is worth saying plainly. Local search in those years rewarded a set of real, licensed businesses in one city that pointed at each other, and the category terms had little competition. Every site carried a real license, a real address and its own pages. Google has since tightened how it treats links between sites under one owner, so a web like this needs more care today: distinct content on every site and a real business behind each name. The shape without the substance is what the search engines learned to punish.

What we kept, replaced and installed

We kept the press habit: it predates the agency, no vendor could run it for me, and it still runs. We kept the paid-search account that had bought the category early; a cheap term you own is not something you give back.

We replaced one thin website with the web of sites, and we replaced an idea along with it: that a marketing vendor is something you hire and judge on deliverables. Every contractor puts that idea in, me included, because it is how you buy a service you cannot evaluate yourself. The fault here was that it assumed the vendor's judgment was the thing being bought, and in this engagement the judgment was mine; the vendor's job was to build. It had to change in 2014 rather than later because the category was filling, and a year lost to a vendor shipping the wrong thing was a year another firm would take the page.

We installed three things: the site web, matched to the companies; the cadence of releases, content, comments on the ranking articles and a quote whenever a reporter called; and a rule about supplier equity that I have used since.

What it cost to hold the line, and what I would watch

It cost hours, for years. The sites, the release cadence, the comments on other people's articles and the reporters, all by hand on top of running a construction company.

It cost independence. An advisor with a piece of his vendor judges that vendor more gently than a client would; I know because I did it. What saved the arrangement was that the result sat in plain view in a search bar, so I could not fool myself for long. Where a result cannot be seen that directly, I would not take the seat.

It cost the equity, which I gave up for trade work. It was a small business. We were very effective, though, and the work was worth more to me than the paper.

What I would watch, on any channel that has to be built before it is priced:

• The phrase, not the brand. Decide which words a buyer types before they know your name; point everything at them.
• The part the vendor cannot do. Find the piece of the plan only the operator can carry and treat it as the deliverable, not a byproduct. For us it was being quotable.
• Alignment is not verification. A piece of your supplier gives you a reason to want the work to be sound, not a way to check that it is. Build the check separately or do not take the piece.
• Presence before competition. The whole position came from showing up steadily in a channel nobody was fighting over yet. It is the same instinct behind how we think about machine discoverability today, aimed at a different set of engines, and the window closes the same way: quietly, then all at once.

The result, in short

Tellus Design and Build held page one of Google for "design build Los Angeles" for years, at times the first result, and the position outlasted the advisory seat. The agency's own case study credits the work with 319 percent organic traffic growth and top positions for 25-plus keywords, under its name, not Jesse's. In 2017 the LA Clippers found Tellus through search and reached out to redesign their practice facility. The equity position was given up for trade work at the end of the seat, in 2017.

A slice of the project list

A few related projects.

• Drive for the Dream: creator, a golf docuseries venture, signed cast and producers before any platform ask (2023 to 2025)
• Ink Games: Seed Advisor, Go-to-Market, and the seed raise through Prince Capital (2019 to 2020)
• Alice Mushrooms: Seed Advisor, Go-to-Market, retail entry into national grocery (2022 to 2026)
• Aycre Capital: fund formation and capital raise process, Managing Director (2022 to 2023)