Kyle Ray Built His Business on SEO. Now What?

Here's how one entrepreneur is adapting to life after SEO.

Good Morning!

Here are today’s highlights:

• The SBA reports that it backed more loans than ever in FY 2025.

• Alan Pentz warns that with the subscription-pricing model for software dying, you’ll have to pay more attention to your software expenses.

• AI can help you save time and money on legal fees. But the risks are extreme.

• Derek Rose created the pajama version of Savile Row’s bespoke suits.

MARKETING

After building his window-cleaning business on SEO, Kyle Ray is mastering every AI tool he can. “Kyle Ray spent years waiting tables and bartending to pay his bills while building a window-cleaning business on the side. In 2014, about seven years after landing his first client — a massage parlor in a strip mall in Houston — he started earning enough income from his side gig, which he called Geek Window Cleaning, to quit his service jobs. The difference-maker was SEO. Around 2013, he started paying attention to search engine optimization and learning how to leverage it to boost traffic to his site. By 2015, ‘if you were Googling window cleaning Houston, we were showing up in the No. 1 position,’ the entrepreneur told Business Insider. ‘Then we started getting really busy.’”

• “Nearly a decade later, the strategy that helped transform Ray’s business from a side hustle to a full-time gig is essentially irrelevant. ‘We fired the SEO company that we used to use. I no longer care about ranking on Google. It doesn’t matter because search is going to a zero-click so fast,’ he explained. ‘If you Google something, Gemini tells you whatever the answer is right there. You don’t even scroll down the page to see what’s there.’”

• “As AI has progressed over the last couple of years, Ray has committed to mastering it, similar to how he tackled SEO in the early 2010s. He’s already seeing results: Having generated six figures in revenue in 2024, he’s on track to exceed $1 million for the first time in 2025, according to his ServiceMonster dashboard. ‘We use software and AI as much as possible when it makes sense,’ he said. ‘Our tech stack is kind of wild.’”

• “Ray said he uses ChatGPT every day to do anything from feeding it Geek’s P&L and asking how he can expand margins to asking what new AI tools he should be using as a business owner in the home-services industry. Thanks to ChatGPT, he feels as if he has access to a leadership team without having to hire anyone: ‘It’s just me. I don’t have a CFO or a CEO or a COO — I’m wearing all those hats — but I can create ones in ChatGPT.’”

• “Ray wants prospective customers to book window cleanings as seamlessly as possible. To do so, he uses PriceGuide.ai, which helps service-based businesses create pricing estimators to streamline the early-quote process. Once a new client receives their estimate, they can book their initial cleaning through the scheduling platform Calendly, meaning, ‘you can go from start to finish without talking to anybody,’ he said.” READ MORE