Catalytic Leadership

AI Is Changing SEO Fast; Here's How to Scale Your Agency Anyway

Dr. William Attaway Season 3 Episode 110

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AI is reshaping search before our eyes — and for digital agency owners, the shift is already impacting visibility, attribution, and results. If your SEO playbook hasn’t changed in the last 12 months, it’s likely underperforming.

I sat down with Adam Chronister, founder of Enleaf and a trailblazing digital marketer who’s helped brands scale from startup to 8-figures and beyond. His agency is known for its data-driven SEO strategy — and more importantly, for helping clients scale their agency with clarity, automation, and long-term visibility.

We unpack how AI is swallowing search real estate, why traditional attribution is breaking, and what that means for scaling a high-performance agency in 2025 and beyond. Adam also shares a powerful reframing of leadership, privacy, and lifestyle freedom that every agency owner needs to hear.

If you’ve ever wondered how to keep scaling your agency without burning out, bottlenecking your team, or chasing outdated strategies, this episode delivers exactly that — with wisdom, not noise.


⏱ Chapter Breakdown (Timestamps based on transcript)

00:02 — Meet Adam Chronister of Enleaf
 01:19 — How software development led Adam into digital marketing
 03:40 — What industries Enleaf serves (and how)
 05:17 — Why SEO alone no longer works
 07:33 — How AI is changing search visibility and attribution
 08:30 — Think of SEO as digital real estate
 09:28 — The rise of AI visibility tools and Google’s upcoming changes
 10:42 — Why privacy may be dead (and what that means for brand builders)
 15:23 — The real role Enleaf plays in their clients’ growth and exits
 18:18 — What people don’t see behind agency success
 20:15 — How personal development fueled Adam’s entire journey
 21:30 — Scaling through discomfort, delegation, and trust
 25:51 — Designing a business that supports the life you actually want
 28:19 — Defining your business goals: growth vs. lifestyle


📚 Books Mentioned

  • The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss



Want to connect with Adam? Just Google “Adam Chronister” or visit Enleaf.com — he’s easy to find and active on platforms like Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. You’ll also find free tools, SEO insights, and client results on his site.


Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

Dr. William Attaway:

I am so excited today to have Adam Chronister on the podcast. Adam is a trailblazing digital marketing expert and the founder of Enleaf, a highly successful US-based agency known for its data-driven SEO strategies. With over a decade of experience, adam has propelled major American brands to significant growth, boosting revenues from modest beginnings to millions of dollars monthly. His innovative approach to search engine optimization and marketing automation have earned him recognition in prestigious outlets like MarketWatch, wired and the Wall Street Journal. A sought-after speaker, adam frequently shares his insights on topics ranging from AI in marketing to online privacy and cryptocurrency, blending entrepreneurial vision with a passion for empowering businesses to thrive in the digital age. Adam, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Adam Chronister:

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Dr. William Attaway:

I am as well.

Intro:

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway coach, Dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway:

I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, Adam, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Adam Chronister:

Well, I mean, honestly, a lot of it started right out of college. My background is in software development, at least educationally, that's how I got my started. So I have a background or a degree in computer science, but I got about three-fourths of the way through my degree I don't know if anyone has had this experience and then kind of realized, like I don't know if this is the trajectory for me At least, staring at code in terminals all day Right. And nonetheless I was, you know, I was, I was three feet deep in the midst of it, and so I finished out my degree, luckily landed a job at a software development startup as a project manager, and honestly, it was that opportunity, I think, that really opened my eyes to the idea that I could work in the industry without having to necessarily put all my efforts towards writing code specifically. And I still, to this day, very much love all things web design, development, creativity and then, of course, marketing. Right, it was this same opportunity at kind of a nimble startup where they had no marketing presence.

Adam Chronister:

At the time, you know, platforms like Twitter and now X were very new and I just kind of, you know, naturally gravitated towards this idea of, you know, marketing online and the company at the time I was working for. They were doing some cool stuff in the gaming space, doing some conferences. But you know, I went to the owners, my bosses at the company, and said, hey, I know you guys aren't doing anything in the realm of marketing. I've been dabbling around with this digital marketing stuff and I'd love to maybe try out my hand at some campaigns. And you know, if you've ever been in a startup and you know volunteer usually you know if they're nimble they just say yeah, go for it, have fun. And that was kind of the beginning of the trajectory for me, right? That really kind of compelled my interest to take things even further. Be it, you know, running an agency focusing on digital marketing, all of the, everything within that arena, essentially.

Dr. William Attaway:

So what kind of clients do you work with in Enleaf?

Adam Chronister:

We work with a pretty broad set of clients quite honestly. Honestly, you name the industry. We've probably worked with it right, everything from SAS to SMBs. We do offer a fair amount in the vacation rental industry. So, while we don't specifically niche on any given industry, we have kind of carved out, I think, a name in that particular space Just because you know you do a good project and good work and the word gets out right.

Adam Chronister:

And especially in industries like that, they're pretty tight knit and so, yeah, we've done a lot in that space. But, honestly, just about anything in the realm of search marketing, we've done it and worked with clients. We ended up doing a lot too in the industrial contracting space. Again, that's another one of those case studies where you know word gets out that you did a good job for a company, why Somebody moves to the, you know moves along and brings you into the fold, and so we get a lot of business from you know, both existing clients and then clients that have moved on to other companies and want us to do the same thing. We did, you know, maybe in their prior endeavor.

Dr. William Attaway:

So you know you've been in the agency and the marketing space for a minute and you have. You have seen a lot of fads and trends. Come and go Things, things expand and change. As you look across the field today, or look across the game board, where do you see the pieces moving? What are the trends that you're seeing headed our way?

Adam Chronister:

I mean, I think we've seen a fracture like a fracturing of marketing channels for some time now, right, and I don't see that, I think, in some respects, changing.

Adam Chronister:

We're in an environment where they're, you know, with the things with with things like podcasts and different you know, social media, marketing groups, all of these things a whole market and industry or following you know, onto yourself, right, and then also with technologies like AI and all of this stuff like the, the fracturing of what works, I think, is becoming more diverse, and what I mean by this is there used to be a time early in my career, where it was pretty common for agencies to be focused on one particular discipline, right, and companies could survive just fine by maybe only doing Facebook ads or only doing Google ads or only doing SEO right.

Adam Chronister:

For a long time, that was our big focus was primarily search engine optimization, and we had clients. That that's all they did and it worked great. But it's getting more challenging, and so we're almost to the point where businesses have to really think of their marketing as almost like a whole marketing suite, right, whether that's team members, partners or tool sets that get your message out to the vast, you know, audience that are out there across multiple channels.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's interesting. And thinking SEO. You know that's a world that there's a lot of change presently in Absolutely language. Thinking about it in terms of a suite. Think in SEO, like with the rise of AI, and we're seeing people using AI as a search tool now instead of Googling. And that's only going to become more prevalent. I think what are you seeing? The changes that agencies or in the whole marketing field needs to be thinking about when it comes to SEO.

Adam Chronister:

Yeah, well, it's definitely changing the arena, the environment, so to speak. You know, for those of us in the West that already have AI overviews, for instance, in Google, you'll see that the search results are changing quite a bit. Right Now, one of the very first things you see at the top of the fold is those AI overviews. Right Now, one of the very first things you see at top of the fold is those AI overviews, right, and so everything else gets pushed down, even Google Ads. Google Ads used to be the very top aspect of search, and now most search queries that's position two, right. Position three, if you're doing a local search, is going to be Google Maps, and now position four, a lot of times is, like you know, going to be like sites like Reddit, and then your traditional, organic, organic results are are completely below the fold, right and so. So, yeah, the the environment is changing. The other way I like to look at all of this really, though, is I like to think of it as digital real estate, and our goal as business owners, as marketers, is to really absorb as much digital real estate as we can, whether that's specifically in the search results or taking that further and getting visibility across social media channels or some combination of the two of those. But yeah, we're seeing AI start to swallow up a percentage of click-through rates for a lot of websites. We've seen click-through rates for a lot of sites go essentially in half.

Adam Chronister:

We're seeing challenges with attribution. Right now. A lot of that organic traffic that is being intercepted by AI is now primarily direct, in some cases referral traffic, and then the attribution on that is a little bit more challenging than it used to be. Now, just like any technological change with new problems becomes, you know, new opportunities, Right, and so there are.

Adam Chronister:

There are companies that I think are going to come, you know, come out of the woodwork that are going to help with, you know, bridging the gap on attribution work in the realm of almost more like AI visibility analytics. But yeah, it's a changing tide for sure. Google, for instance, just announced that their Google Search Console tool is soon going to have some kind of AI attribution, but it's not there yet. So we are really in this kind of midterm period where we still have to be doing the activities that get your business, you know, out there and noticed, but we're in a midterm period where I think attribution is going to become even more challenging, but I think in time some of that is going to start to level out as tools and companies come along and start to, you know, resolve this new emerging challenge that we're facing with AI and attributing that back to marketing campaigns.

Dr. William Attaway:

How do you see this intersecting the world of online privacy?

Adam Chronister:

That's challenging. I mean, the thing is like when it comes to privacy and even the way that we do search. Now, with large language models, it's completely different. I mean, before you go to Google and you do, you know, maybe a three or four keyword search, like you know how to find a plumber near me, but with large language models, I mean it's becoming more and more of a norm where I mean I even find myself like looking for advice on things in my personal life, right, and the nuance that I give it in order to get the results I'm looking for back is much more, um, much more in detail than you know, anything I ever put in a search engine. So it is. It is somewhat concerning because, um, I'm you know that is going to become more and more of a topic. I heard about a story just this week about and I forget the specifics, but the general takeaway is that you know, I think it was a court case or something where they were, you know, basically indicating that open AI keeps a record of a lot of the stuff on the backend. So, just like you know, legal agencies have gone in and subpoenaed Google for search results. I imagine it's just a matter of time, if that hasn't already happened. Where you know, law agencies are going to be able to subpoena OpenAI for your search query results and get much more nuanced information about you, right?

Adam Chronister:

One of the things that I like to do almost just for fun, in fact, I just posted something like this here recently on Facebook was asking chat DBT. Things like the following you can ask get a prompt like given everything you know about me, what are some of the shortcomings that you see about me that I don't see about me? What are some of the shortcomings that you, you know, you you see about me that I don't see about myself? And I had a friend I ran through this exercise and he's like, yeah, this is, this seems really accurate. And he's like you know, um.

Adam Chronister:

Another one, too, just for fun, was like um, hey, um, you know, generate an image of what it's like or what is it. Generate an image of what it's what it's like when I use chat GBT, right, and it, you know, just creates this composite image of some of the various elements that you add in there. So, yeah, privacy is privacy, I think is going to become. Well, I don't know, I think privacy in some regards is kind of dead. I hate to say it, but we're in this environment where it's really hard to be private anymore, especially if you're in any kind of environment where you're utilizing these tools. That's difficult.

Dr. William Attaway:

It's difficult because that's something that so many of us hold dear, and giving up that privacy right even for the sake of the conveniences that AI have brought into the conversation yeah, and that's a tough trade for me to think about.

Adam Chronister:

Yeah, I mean, in my line of work, I kind of gave up on it a long time ago, right, and in fact now I'm on the opposite end where not I can't say everything that I do is public.

Adam Chronister:

Obviously, there's a lot of things I do, you know, in my family and my personal life that you know I don't put on the web, but I think it is one of those things that you know. People that want to build a brand, be it personal or business, have to figure out what their comfort level is around privacy, because building a brand, I would say these days I'm almost seeing more of a shift towards the personal brand, even beyond just the business, although in some realm you kind of got to create both. But if you're on board with this idea of building a personal brand, which inevitably is something that's going to help get your name out there, you're going to have to sacrifice some privacy, right. And yeah, I mean, it's one of those things, like you just kind of got to figure out your comfort level and where you're at with it all I get that?

Dr. William Attaway:

Thinking about Enleaf and how you help your clients. Let's shift over to that for a second. You provide such an incredible service with the knowledge base and the expertise that you bring to bear on behalf of your clients. Thinking about Enleaf where do you want it to go from here?

Adam Chronister:

I mean, I think right now, a lot of the core of what we do, like more from the holistic, ethereal level, is going to be the same, in that our objective is to help solve clients, or solve problems, rather for our clients and help them get more visibility. You know, in the larger world of the web right Now, the means in which we do that is going to continue to shift over time. Right, but most business owners, you know they, have core competencies that they, you know, build upon each and every day, and marketing isn't always one of those things. Right, and I could say the same for me. Right, there's a reason I don't change my oil or fix my own engine on my vehicle. Now, could I go to YouTube and learn how to do some of these things? Absolutely, I probably could, but my time is better spent in my craft and my discipline, and so that's kind of the way I think about it is, we like to position ourselves not just as a vendor or a client, but really a partner in the businesses that engage with us.

Adam Chronister:

And I think that's the most rewarding part of what we do at Enleaf is we have the opportunity to help businesses along their journey, and we've seen I mean numerous businesses, some of them literally starting from the ground floor where we're helping them articulate their branding, their web design, their marketing strategy all the way to exits and seeing, you know, seeing the founder, the co-founder, being able to retire. Right, I have one, you know, client Now I call him a friend that we did just that for him, you know, helped him exit a business for, you know, tens of millions of dollars. Now he's, you know, he's moved his family over to the Philippines, which is his dream, and that's just really rewarding right To be a part of that story and there's numerous like that that we've been able to be along for the ride for what a beautiful thing, what a great privilege to be, what a great privilege.

Dr. William Attaway:

Yeah, adam, you know, as, as we're talking about your journey and you know with, with Enleaf and beyond, a lot of people look at you from the outside and they're looking at your highlight reel. Sure, and a lot of the people who are listening today may be thinking, oh yeah, but Adam and his journey has just been up and to the right, like he really hadn't had to struggle, like I do, he really hadn't had to deal with the challenges that I have to deal with. If you were sitting across the table having coffee with somebody saying that, what would be your response?

Adam Chronister:

I think I would say, if you only knew, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's the trap, that's, that's the. I think that's the dark side of of social media. You know and you see the same thing People say the same thing about and, trust me, I'm I'm nowhere close to you know people like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, ork or these. You know these figures, so I don't even want to make that comparison. But people do the same thing with figures of that stature, thinking like, oh, it must be nice, right, but what they don't see is like you know the, the, the road of, of, uh, of treachery that often you know for runs that right, um, and also, on the flip, I don't think that I don't personally, I don't think I'm any anyone special, right?

Adam Chronister:

I think, if anything, the only thing that maybe sets me apart from maybe some of my peers is I I've always had a emphasis on personal development.

Adam Chronister:

I mean, I know I see a ton of books behind you In my office I have a pretty large bookshelf, and so I have always been a constant learner, even though I was in school. You know I was a horrible student and actually that's part of my story. Like all throughout high school I struggled. I was, you know, I was a CD student and then, somewhere along the way, I married a teacher and she's, you know, kind of looking at me, you know, with the stink eye and like, ok, you got to go into software development, like I had, you know, I don't know what, what I was thinking, but hindsight, you know, uh is 2020 and I'm, I'm better for it, you know, and so I think that's the key for anyone's that's like well, well, how do I better myself? Maybe you're there early in their, their trajectory. Uh, I would say the, the, the cliche, but you know that that also also really holds true is like invest in yourself first, right? I?

Adam Chronister:

think if, if that's your life motto, like you're going to get further than you would otherwise, and so that's what I attribute most of my success to is just that willingness to be able to learn and to be hungry to develop myself, regardless of what that looked like. But yeah, there were lots of periods where I didn't know, you know, the trajectory that I'd be on today was even possible for myself.

Dr. William Attaway:

So, thinking about that trajectory and the habits and the rhythms that you have, you know your business I mean Antleaf needs you to lead at a higher level today than it did three years ago, five years ago. The same thing is going to be true five years from now, of course, yeah. So what are the rhythms and habits that you have built into your life, or the things that you have done to continue to level up as a leader, so that you'll be the leader your team and your clients need in the years to come?

Adam Chronister:

Yeah, that I think that's the biggest challenge for a lot of business owners. One part of this journey like in in personal development, has led me to seek out communities and people that you know are doing what I want to be doing next, right, people that are a few steps ahead of me In fact, that's how we met right Through one of these communities. But that has also led me and pushed me to do things outside of my comfort zone. Right, I was at a stage where I was very, you know, kind of one man band for a while and I was very nervous about bringing on other team members to the fold. Right, letting go of the reins. And once I got over that fear and then actually implemented it and realized, like, actually this is an asset, not a deficit, you know, to me and to my business, that's just one of those examples of stepping up that ladder, right, but with that it's required that I step back, I give up a little bit of control, I put trust into other people as opposed to putting all that trust in myself.

Adam Chronister:

Right, as entrepreneurs and business owners, especially in the early stage, it's easy to be comfortable with what you know. It's like, oh, I know this, I know how to do this. I'm good at A, b and C but then to give up that ownership and allow others to make mistakes, to learn to fumble the football, that becomes a whole new challenge, right? And there's so many examples like this, you know, but I think that's the key is always be growing and you know, and figure out what is that next thing that scares you but that you know you need to do right that. I think that's the key to growth in and out of business. I think that's brilliant.

Dr. William Attaway:

I love that you shared that and I really hope our listeners are writing some notes, because there's so much wisdom in what you just said. As you think about your learning and the books that you've read, the things that you have taken in, is there one that stands out that's made a really big difference in your journey that you would say, hey, if you haven't read this, this is one that's worth your time?

Adam Chronister:

I mean there's so many, I don't know that this would be the first book I would recommend, necessarily, although it's definitely a good read, but it is, uh, and it's fairly kind of, I guess, outdated. But it was the book that got me started down this entrepreneurial journey and that's the four hour work week. That was the first book that kind of opened my eyes to like, oh wow, there's a different way to approach life and business outside of you know, the rat race, right. And so, man, I read that book so many times when I was working, you know, working as a typical employee and it was kind of the model and dream that I always wanted, right, and it's funny, like all the way from from the ideas that are in that book, like one of them was, like you know, pushing the envelope inside of a business to to work remote while you're working for another company. You know I pushed that model. So I was one of these guys that, even before I started the agency, um, I pushed the envelope, you know, and said, hey, I'd like to work remote for, you know, one day out of the week, and then that became a week and then eventually I had a job where I worked remotely for a month. Right, and I was the only one, you know, with the cojones, so to speak, to push the envelope all the way to the point now where I run my own agency.

Adam Chronister:

I feel extremely blessed. I'm in a week and a half. I'm taking off for Costa Rica for a month, and a was implanted in my head like that's what I want. Right, and that's not for everybody, but I always wanted to position our agency as a lifestyle business. Right, so that we could enjoy the work we do but also enjoy the life that that work provides us, as well as our clients. Right, and so that's number one, and there's. I mean we could probably talk about books all day. There's a lot other, a lot of others that I think, more from a high level give me a lot of perspective, but that was the one that really got me started.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's fantastic and I love. I love the idea of creating intentionally the life you want to live and then designing your business around that. Yes, I think there's a lot of wisdom there and a lot of people do that exactly backwards. They create a business and then try to fit their life into it.

Adam Chronister:

Right.

Adam Chronister:

A lot of times people, they leave something and then recreate it, if not make something worse, right yeah absolutely I see that a lot, where people, you know, they start a business because maybe they maybe they don't acknowledge it yet, but they want, they want maybe a lifestyle business, but and it ends up being this behemoth and then and then they're back, you know, maybe they take on investors and then they have another boss again, right, like, and I've been through that and there is no perfect path Right, there are some people that that is their life aim is, they want to have a company with hundreds of people and that's where they find their joy in providing. You know, this company that maybe is trying to get, you know, publicly traded. I don't fault anyone for that if that is, if that is your life mission, but I do think it's important for those that are starting into business to really understand what do I want this business to do for me, what are my goals? And that was a, honestly early on, that was one something I challenged. I was challenged with because, um, I got all this like noise about, oh, you have to create, you know, what I now understand as a growth business. Right, it's a bring on lots of employees and have, you know, a huge office space and, you know, get funding.

Adam Chronister:

And that never sat well with me, but I heard one somebody once say like there's two paths. There's the growth business and the lifestyle business, and both of them are okay. You just have to understand what it is you're going after. And that was the first time I was like okay, that's, you know the term I could associate with what I really wanted out of a business, right? So, yeah, it's good to define your terms and understand where you want to be in five or 10 years with a business. Do you want to run it forever? Do you want to retire it and hand it off to your kids, or do you want to sell it off someday and have a nice exit, or, you know, or a handful of any other different options? But having some of that foresight, at least as a trajectory, I think is helpful so that you don't you know you don't get lost in the business and someday look at yourself and be like what am I doing here, right?

Dr. William Attaway:

It's so true, adam. This has been such a fantastic conversation and I could talk to you for another hour just to unpack so much of the wisdom that you have gained so far in your journey and I know your best is still to come. Our listeners are going to want to stay connected to you, I know and learn more about you and Enleaf and everything that you're doing. What is the best way for them to do that?

Adam Chronister:

Honestly, you can find me pretty easily. You know we talked about privacy. There's not a lot of it with me, so, simply, you know, just do a Google search for my name, adam Chronister. It's fairly unique. Or you can look up Endleaf. You know we have a lot of different examples of what we do Facebook and X and LinkedIn and so, however you like to engage with me, just do a search for my name. I'll be there and happy to connect with people there.

Dr. William Attaway:

So I love it. We'll have those links in the show notes, adam. Thank you so much for being here. My pleasure, yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

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