In this eye-opening episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, host Jeremy Rivera sits down with Drewbie Wilson, the self-proclaimed “Meme Lord” and founder of Call the Damn Leads. What started as a conversation about t-shirts and SEO origin stories quickly turned into a deep dive on the massive disconnect between sales and marketing teams—and why it’s costing businesses millions.
The Guest: Meet Drewbie Wilson
Jeremy Rivera: “So, Drewbie, give yourself an introduction. Tell people what you’re all about.”
Drewbie Wilson: “Thank you so much for having me Jeremy. First and foremost, name is Drew B. Wilson. I am a self proclaimed meme lord so much so that I tattooed across my knuckles, kind of like an idiot, but I am for all intents and purposes, I am in the sales and marketing space. I grew up in the streets selling anything and everything I could get my hands on. As I got older, met a beautiful young lady. She eventually became my wife. We had a son and I realized, Hey, the fast money don’t last. So I should probably get into some more legitimate sales.”
Drewbie’s journey took him through insurance, tobacco, furniture, and retail before he discovered a fundamental problem: businesses were great at generating leads but terrible at following up with them.
The Birth of “Call the Damn Leads”
Drewbie Wilson: “But that’s my game and I own a company named Call the Damn Leads because when I owned my own marketing company I was really great at getting people leads. But they weren’t so great at picking up the phone and calling them. And so I would over and over be having this conversation of hey, just call the damn leads. Just call the damn leads and I remember telling some friends of mine man I’m just gonna put that on a t-shirt someday and sell it to every marketer on the planet because we all have the same conversation with our prospects and our clients.”
Four to five years later, Call the Damn Leads has become a full-blown e-commerce business selling hats, keychains, wristbands, t-shirts, and sales coaching services.
The Lead Follow-Up Crisis: A Shocking Reality
Jeremy shared his own frustrating experience with lead follow-up, which resonates with anyone who’s worked in digital marketing:
Jeremy Rivera: “I have said, ‘call the damn leads,’ after working with an asphalt guy and I knew that I generated X number of leads off of the site. I’m like, what came out of it? Nothing. Did you follow up on that lead? There was even a revenue share partnership. So I’m like, I got a little meat on this. And I referred him to another friend of mine like hey did you get a quote back from Jack? Nothing. Like you’re making me look bad. Can you call the damn leads? I don’t understand.”
The statistics Jeremy uncovered are staggering:
Jeremy Rivera: “I think I saw there was a use case study somebody in the service SEO space did four or five years ago where they took a hundred sites and submitted the contact form on the site. And it was something like only 1% got a callback that day and only 10% got any callback at all.”
Jeremy Rivera: “So it is absolutely ridiculous the amount of money that small businesses, particularly service businesses, I’m going to hit out where it hurts because small business owners seem to be the absolute worst, the most hungry for leads when you talk to them about marketing. They’re, absolutely. I need leads all day. You your SEO program needs to show ROI and needs to turn over. But you actually look at the stats of how long did it take for to get back? How many emails did you send back? What was your process? It’s a disaster.“
A Real-World Example: The Condo Lead Disaster
Drewbie shared a perfect example of this problem in action, involving a real estate client who blamed the leads when the real issue was follow-up:
Drewbie Wilson: “I’m generating leads through the specific form for this condo. And he calls me like two weeks into the month and he’s going, Hey man, this isn’t working. I’m going to need a refund. And I was like, well, Hey man, I’m looking at the stats and I can see we’ve got, you know, I think at the time was like 60, 70 leads, whatever it was. And he’s like, yeah, these leads are shit. And I was like, well, that’s strange. Did you call them, text them, email them? Like, what was the process? I called most of them. didn’t answer. And I was like, well, let me, let me look into this a little bit.”
Drewbie Wilson: “So I go into the lead form and I’m looking at all the leads. I just picked up my phone and started calling… I probably called a dozen people in our area. Not one of them answered the phone, and I think only one of them ever even called back, like a week after we had already sold the house. And I was like, what are you guys doing?”
The Marketing vs Sales Responsibility Split
Jeremy made an important point about shared responsibility:
Jeremy Rivera: “I’m curious from now that you’re in that hybrid position, not just in sales, but in that marketing side too, there is a bit of responsibility on the marketing side of developing the right… the right type of lead or being more effective at reaching the particular audience that’s actually going to be ready to make a purchase. So I see a bifurcation of that responsibility.”
Jeremy Rivera: “Hey, I’m not going to just focus on does this page rank? I’m not going to focus on how many people came to this page. I’m not even going to focus on how many people filled out the form. I’m going to focus in on at the end of the day is the service associated with this page with this site actually growing or declining and that connects through the CRM that connects in the follow through.”
The Importance of Message-Market Fit
Drewbie emphasized the critical connection between marketing promises and sales delivery:
Drewbie Wilson: “That’s so important and coming from the insurance world, I remember we would pay 25 to $50 a lead and we’d call them and they’d be like, well, I filled out a form for a gift card or a whatever. And it was like, so you’re not actually interested in insurance? No, I just want the gift card. And it’s like, okay.”
Drewbie Wilson: “And as I started leaning in on the marketing side, because I know that message that someone sees first, right? That first interaction, that first impression that they have of you. That’s not just important in the real world, that’s also important in your marketing plan. Because if you’re promising something on the front end that has absolutely nothing to do with what the actual conversation or service looks like, you’re setting yourself up for disaster. And so I believe sales and marketing, they have to work in cohesion.”
The 90% Problem: Most Business Owners Can’t Explain Their Process
Here’s the statistic that should make every business owner pause:
Drewbie Wilson: “These days I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way, but before I would even take on a marketing client I’m gonna ask them like exactly what you said. What’s gonna if I bring you a lead today? What’s gonna happen with it and? 90 some percent of business owners can’t give you a distinct answer.”
The 30-Day Follow-Up System That Actually Works
Drewbie outlined his proven approach to lead nurturing:
Drewbie Wilson: “And to me I lean in on well, okay cool If a lead comes in today that first 30 days is like a one priority. So what’s that gonna look like? Well, we’re gonna call them day one. They don’t answer we’re gonna text. We’re going to call them day two. If they don’t answer, we’re going to send them an email. We’re going to call them day three, four, five, day eight, day 10, 15, 21, 28, 31.”
Drewbie Wilson: “There’s all these touch points that are really, really important there because if someone did submit their lead information online on a form, a lot of times that leads being sold to multiple people at a time. So yeah, it’s understandable that if you’re not the first to talk to them, you have a much lower percentage chance of actually converting the deal.”
The Speed-to-Lead Reality
The statistics around timing are crucial:
Drewbie Wilson: “I forget what the stat is but it’s like 80% of people buy from the first person they talk to just simply because they have a need and they’re trying to buy but after that if someone’s like overwhelmed because they’re getting bombarded from all these things then you kind of have to work that slow game and follow up on days eight and 10 and 15 because most sales guys, they quit after two to three calls. They’re like, oh, this is a shit lead. I’m not gonna, know, like obviously they don’t want what I’m selling.”
Drewbie Wilson: “But the truth is people are people and you, the listener have a life and you have things going on in your life. And you probably have at some point submitted your information for a thing that you were interested in. And then immediately got distracted by some other thing going on around you, right? Your kid fell off the chair whatever happens in life like this is all real. So that nurturing process…”
The Modern Attention Challenge
Drewbie Wilson: “I have some extreme ADD and I don’t know. Have you ever seen the stat that it used to be 8 to 12 touch points on average to go from absolute cold audience to someone who’s really interested in working with you? That was a stat I saw a lot a few years ago. It has gone up to like 500 touch points because we’re constantly being advertised to.”
Drewbie Wilson: “We immediately log in. We look at social media, every other I don’t want to say a wall, but that’s the best way to analogize it is like they have this wall against sales. So they’re immediately on the defensive. They immediately kind of put their guard up because they don’t want to be sold something. They want to make a decision to buy.”
Marketing “Unsexy” Industries: The Dark Humor Approach
Jeremy asked about handling less exciting industries, and Drewbie’s answer was brilliant:
Jeremy Rivera: “So when you’re doing creative work trying to connect sales and marketing for different niches. I’ve found that there’s a bigger challenge with like the sexy stuff of like, yeah, like you got a luxury resort, like you can come up with that easy. What’s the thought process of connecting that sales and marketing gap with something that’s not as sexy? Like you’re working for an internet provider or helping promote a CPR class.”
Drewbie Wilson: “I think you just have to lean in on the dark humor. And I know that’s not everybody’s vibe, but honestly, like CPR class, for example, right? It’s like, you can go in the, hey, what happens if your kid starts drowning? Well, you want to protect them, right? Okay, like there’s a scariness to that. And also it’s a skillset that you can learn. So how do you make someone aware of the fact that they genuinely don’t know how to save someone’s life in an emergency?”
Drewbie Wilson: “Well, if something’s scary, you poke fun at it. That’s like what we do as humans naturally is like, I don’t know. This is kind of scary.”
The Reddit Case Study: Toilet Partitions
Jeremy shared a brilliant example of native marketing:
Jeremy Rivera: “But I work with my friend Michael McDougald’s right thing agency and we had to figure out how to talk about toilet partitions on Reddit in a way that wouldn’t get us flagged and spam to oblivion. So we spent like a week coming up with it and like, why are there such wide gaps? I’m like, why are there such wide gaps? And I’m like, it’s poorly installed. It has low quality. That’s like, if you do it right, and you plan it out, there shouldn’t be these huge peaking gaps.”
Jeremy Rivera: “So we did this whole Reddit campaign and three different styles of posts complaining about the massive gaps. And then he could show up and explain, well, that’s because it’s poorly installed. You need quality toilet partitions that aren’t, the measurements are totally wrong and put together by an idiot. So you have to come at it, the marketing problem of participation. Figure out where your people are and how they’re having a conversation there. That way you’re not kicking in the door and like shoving a toilet partition in their face.”
The Power of Problem Awareness
Drewbie Wilson: “And so that awareness, it’s so fun. And that’s why I love memes, because you can say so much with a meme or with a reel or something funny like that that gets people thinking right as you said problem awareness How do they become aware of the specific problem that they’re facing and then once they become aware? What steps do you want them to take next because not everybody needs to worry about the toilet partitions but if you have something that gets enough attention from the public and it falls into your feed because now everybody is laughing at it and all of a sudden you are a small business owner or you own a series of buildings like you’re gonna see that and go wait a second are the partitions in my toilets like too wide like I guess I never would have thought about that because if you’re not problem aware you don’t know what you don’t know until you know and then you have to make a decision.”
Content Strategy Reality: Beyond the Ultimate Guide
Jeremy hit on a major problem in SEO content strategy:
Jeremy Rivera: “I think it’s about that process too about thinking through in the content like, yeah, you can reach out and get as much attention. And even if you get them back to your site, not every article is going to prompt them at that point to do the thing. You need to push them a little bit further and recognize that you can’t put out a 10,000 word essay for everything. And that’s just what you do. You know, like you can’t have the 10,000 word ultimate guide.”
Jeremy Rivera: “Everybody in SEO just wants to publish an ultimate guide and that’s all you gotta do. It’s all just one thing. But that’s not how our brains work. That’s not how we learn. You need to have links within your content to push them to the next step in the stage in the process, step in the funnel. Add the call to action. I don’t know how many blog posts I’ve read that it was just text. And there was no link. I’m like, okay, well you just, thanks for the information, I guess I’ll see ya. I got what I wanted, I’m out.”
Microwave Directions: The Art of Simplicity
Drewbie introduced a brilliant framework for content creation:
Drewbie Wilson: “I really like to lean on what I call microwave directions. it’s an oversimplification, here’s the deal. Humans are at a point where convenience is everything. And all of us have at some point or another made a microwave meal. And what does that look like? Well, we flip it over and we look at the instructions. And usually the first instruction is take the thing out of the box, which sounds ridiculous, but if you didn’t tell them, hey, you got to take the meal out of the box and poke some holes in the plastic, they would skip that part. and then they would burn their damn house down.”
Drewbie Wilson: “Like, okay, what is step one? Take it out of the box, poke holes in it, microwave for two minutes, pull it out of the microwave, wait one minute so that you don’t burn yourself, which again, sounds like a ridiculous thing to do because who just picks up steaming hot food and puts it in their mouth? Very few people who have any sense of sort of common sense. And yet they still have to explain this in microwave directions.”
Drewbie Wilson: “And so for me, when I think about it that way is like hey we’ve all burnt a microwave meal we’ve all looked in the microwave and been like what the heck happened here and then we’re asking ourselves like wait did i follow the directions or like was this just a shitty meal like what happened but if you can follow those microwave directions 95 percent of the time let’s just say you end up with a result that’s predictable.”
The Expert Interview Strategy vs. Keyword Research
This exchange perfectly captures the problem with modern SEO approaches:
Jeremy Rivera: “You know, I’ve had so many marketing conversations with the marketing manager, but the person actually like executing on the thing, they’re not in that conversation. And I’m trying to get information about, well, what’s the next step? Like how do these, how does metal roofing really make a difference versus these shingles that you want to push? Like, oh, well, you know, you can do your keyword research and see, you know, what are the different ways that people describe? No, like, I mean, is it because it sounds like a beautiful symphonic of a simpata of rain and you’d like envision yourself in Georgia like that’s what the owner might say if you talk to him for five minutes like just sit down and actually record a conversation with the expert and turn that into the marketing because that’s going to be resonate so much more than your you know four hours of keyword research not to bash on myself or bash on other SEO professionals but we we have developed this mantra of like hey I do SEO. So I use SEMrush and Ahrefs. I’m like, did you talk to anybody? Did you talk to anybody?“
The Marketing Company Problem
Drewbie Wilson: “Well, and God love all the marketers that are out there. This day and age has made becoming a marketing professional, and I’m using air quotes for those of you who are listening but aren’t actually on watching us.”
Drewbie Wilson: “The fact is, this is a conversation I have with a lot of business owners that I consult. They’re like, well, I’m gonna go hire a marketing company. And I’m like, what does that marketing company know about your business that you know they don’t know? No one is going to be as passionate about the messaging and the conversation as you are because you have 15 years of experience. You’ve talked to thousands of people and had to have that real heart to heart. The marketing company doesn’t have that. They might be super niche down and maybe to a degree they kind of understand it through experience and working with other companies like yours, but like, as you said, man, a lot of marketers, quote, are just going online and they’re being like, all right, well, I can just go and use this search tool to pull up all the queries that people ask questions about. And then I can just keyword stuff a bunch of blog posts and I’m gonna drive traffic and make this guy rich.”
Drewbie Wilson: “But at the end of the day, is it the right message in front of the right person at the right time? And a lot of times it’s not.”
Trust in the Digital Age: Quality Over Credentials
Jeremy Rivera: “there’s kind of a class of queries or searches that are like your money or your life is how Google qualifies it. It’s not learning who was the fifth Megazord in the 13th season of Power Rangers or how many Land Before Time movies did they actually make? Was it you know 20 or 35? You know there are actual searches that are more you know they impact either your life quality or your money quality. So if you’re you know doing something serious like you’re doing recovery for addicts, what are the things that resonate in digital marketing that are hallmarks of trust or trustworthiness that aren’t just putting up a badge that says that I’m a certificate, that I was a 2005 certified something. What is the whole shebang? What is that trust creation process look like in today’s digital age?”
Drewbie Wilson: “I think, and this is where I’m really… I love watching the way Google is shifting the way that you search. like when you search now, it’s not just giving you like the top three ranked pages, like they’re in there, but usually they’re under an AI summary where they’ve gone in and they’ve basically looked over those top ranking pages and they pulled a conglomerate of details to be like, okay, based on our search, here’s like the most important stuff you need to know. And then it will start leaning into, Hey, here’s the link to this page. Here’s a link to this page.”
Drewbie Wilson: “So to me, I think the certificates matter less than the quality of the conversation that’s going on on your marketing. You have to be very clear and distinct about who do we help, why do we help them, what are they actually gonna learn here, and then what’s gonna happen if they actually implement the thing that they’re learning. Because a lot of people, again, they want fast, they want convenient. They don’t wanna have to read through 10,000 words just to get to the end to say, hey, if you wanna sell more stuff, pick up the phone and call the damn leads. Like that should be obvious.”
Drewbie Wilson: “And honestly, bro, certifications and titles and degrees and all of that means so much less now That people just want to know are you a true expert in the subject matter? because there’s a lot of people that you know trusted the degrees from the doctors and trusted the you know, the certificates from x y and z who ended up realizing that they learned more about it by actually going and doing their own research than the doctor was ever privy to right like cancer people are one of those guys like…”
Drewbie Wilson: “You can go down a whole rabbit hole there, but the fact is there are doctors that will stick to a specific box of how they treat and how they handle things. Whereas you can go on and learn like, maybe if you changed your diet or maybe if you started using this supplement or again, there’s a number of different paths you can go down, but every human is different. We all react to certain things in different ways. And so it’s not just about, Hey, I am, you know, you should trust me because I have this doctorate when I barely showed up. half-assed my way through college and I graduated with a D minus but that doesn’t matter that I don’t actually know the information I’ve got my certificate so you should trust me.”
The Closing the Loop Course
Drewbie Wilson: “That’s like the open loop process. One of my courses is called Closing the Loop because a lot of people don’t know how to close that curiosity gap. They can get attention, but they don’t know how to reel it back in and be like, okay, now that I have your attention, here’s where we need to take the next steps on this process.”
Top Action Item: Time Management Above All
When Jeremy asked for the top actionable takeaway:
Jeremy Rivera: “Rounding out the end of the interview, I like to ask for your top action item. Somebody listens to this and they go to X. They listen to this and they go to Y. What’s your top most actionable thing that you drop?”
Drewbie Wilson: “This is very counterintuitive to like all of the marketing conversation, but the number one thing I think people aren’t doing well is managing their time. They don’t know what their time is worth. They don’t know where they’re spending it. They don’t know why they’re spending it on that. And they’re not actually sure of what the ROI of that investment is. Time, energy, and effort are the only resources we cannot get back. So if you’re wasting them on things like 10 hours of keyword research instead of actually having a one hour conversation with the business owner and recording it and then going and using the AI tools to transcribe it and give you the key things that you need to know from that conversation, you’re wasting a lot of time.”
Drewbie Wilson: “And you can’t win it, you can’t buy it from the store, you can’t get it in a poker tournament, you don’t get a box full of it Christmas morning. So I would say the number one thing anyone in any business, especially marketing can do, is: Where are you spending your time? What is your time actually worth? Are you getting a return on that investment for the time you’re spending?“
Connect with Drewbie Wilson
Drewbie Wilson: “Number one thing they could do for me and for you, Jeremy, if they enjoyed this episode, share it on social media. I don’t care which platform, like we all have our preferred platform. I’m typically on Facebook. That’s where I’ve made the most money and met the most people that are in my audience. But whatever platform you’re on, I am also on. We are omnipresent here at Call the Damn Leads.”
Drewbie Wilson: “So share this episode. Tag @CalltheDamnLeads. And that’s going to do two things. One, it’s going to let me and Jeremy know that our time invested today was worth it because if just one person hears this and they get value out of it, that’s why we do this kind of stuff. So it will mean a lot to both of us. And also I’m in sales and follow up. So if you tag us, it’s going to send me a notification. I’m going to reach out. I’m going to ask you, Hey, what made you decide to check out the show and what was your big takeaway? That’s going to be the most valuable thing that you can do.”
Drewbie Wilson: “And then from there, CalltheDamnLeads.com. We have hats, keychains, wristbands, t-shirts, all the sort of fun little sales swag that you would want to either motivate yourself or the team members that you have who are not calling those damn leads.”
Key Takeaways
Immediate Actions:
- Audit your lead response time – Most businesses take 47 hours; aim for under 5 minutes
- Ask the critical question – “What happens when a lead comes in today?” and demand a detailed answer
- Create a 30-day follow-up sequence – Don’t quit after 2-3 calls like most sales teams
- Align sales and marketing metrics – Ensure both teams work toward shared goals
Strategic Changes:
- Interview your experts instead of relying on keyword research – One hour of conversation beats 10 hours of tool usage
- Use “microwave directions” for all content – Simple, sequential, obvious instructions
- Create problem awareness through authentic content – Use appropriate humor to make unsexy topics engaging
- Focus on conversation quality over credentials – Trust comes from demonstrating expertise, not showing certificates
- Measure time ROI ruthlessly – Track what activities actually drive results vs. busy work
The Bottom Line:
99% of people can have all the tools, resources, and ingredients, but they still won’t do what needs to be done. The difference between success and failure isn’t access to information—it’s execution, speed, and alignment.
Listen to the full episode on the Unscripted SEO Podcast and explore more episodes featuring seasoned SEO professionals sharing unscripted insights.
Related Episodes:
- Keith Bresee: The People First Framework
- Jesse McDonald: UX & SEO Merge
- More Unscripted Conversations
For more SEO forecasting tools and insights, visit SEOArcade.com where Jeremy helps businesses understand the true ROI potential of their SEO efforts.
