Topic A – Tanner Laycock https://tannerlaycock.com I help athletes and young entrepreneurs build powerful personal brands and profitable businesses — from digital marketing mastery to premium golf cart sales across Northeast Ohio and beyond. Thu, 03 Sep 2026 01:50:59 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.2 https://tannerlaycock.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cropped-blitz_logo_square_transparent_bg-32x32.png Topic A – Tanner Laycock https://tannerlaycock.com 32 32 Money Tree https://tannerlaycock.com/money-tree/ https://tannerlaycock.com/money-tree/#respond Mon, 17 Aug 2026 06:48:07 +0000 https://tannerlaycock.com/money-tree/ Paired with the topic wheel. The topic wheel is what Tanner Laycock talks about. This money tree is which URLs collect that talk into money. Every chip on the wheel is a link; the tree is the sitemap of those links. Sibling method: Topic Wheel · Money Tree.

The Tannerlaycock money tree

Every money page and hub on tannerlaycock.com, and the posts that feed each one

Drawn from the live internal links across 19 published posts and 5 pages, crawled 17 August 2026. Nothing is hand-placed: a branch is thick because posts link to it, and bare because none do.

Read it bottom-up.Roots — off-site proofTrunk — the domainHow we do it — the method hubsBare or broken — needs a leafBranch thickness = posts feeding it

Swipe the diagram sideways, or read the same tree as text below it.

The Tannerlaycock money treeA tree diagram of tannerlaycock.com. The trunk is the domain, each branch is a money page or definitive hub, and each leaf is a blog post that links up to it. The full structure is repeated as a text outline directly below this diagram.ON YOUR SITE — what you controlOFF YOUR SITE — what the market says (the roots)2PAGEAboutThin2 posts feed thisbare — no posts link herePAGEGalleryBare0 posts feed thistannerlaycock.com19 posts · 5 pages

The same tree in text — every node is a live link

How we do it — the method hubs

The definitive articles. Each one owns a concept, and every post that demonstrates that concept links up to it.

AboutThin

page · 2 posts link here

GalleryBare

page · 0 posts link here

No posts link here yet.

Method: every published post and page was fetched through the WordPress REST API and its outbound internal links extracted from the rendered body. A leaf counts once per post, only when that post links to the branch URL. Redirects were followed and reported rather than silently merged. Crawled 17 August 2026.

Findings — each defect names a department

Defect Where Routes to
Bare branch Gallery Content — one customer story per bare offer
Shallow roots tannerlaycock.com Entity / authority — Knowledge Panel and sameAs

Action list — 17 August 2026

Run this on your own site

Two doors, one diagnosis

This tree is a scan, and a scan is only worth running if it tells you which department to walk to. Both doors below start from the same diagnosis. Take the skill file and run it yourself, or have us run it and hand you the findings — either way the routing table underneath says where each finding goes.

1 · Do it yourself

Take the skill file and run it

A complete, runnable skill file — the five layers, the seven-step method, the six defects, and the nine-check QA gate. Hand it to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or any agent with read access to your site. Apache-2.0: copy it, fork it, ship it inside your own product.

Download map-your-money-tree.skill.md

2 · Have it run for you

Have an agent run it with you

The scan is only worth running if it tells you which department to walk to. Start at About — we crawl tannerlaycock.com, draw the tree, name the defects with the exact URLs and counts, and route you to whichever of the things below you actually need.

Go to About

What the scan finds, and which department it routes to

What your tree shows What it means Where it goes
A bare branch A live money page with zero posts linking to it. Nothing you have published has ever pointed a visitor at the thing you sell. About
A split URL Two live pages for one offer — usually a page and a post. Internal links divide between them and neither ranks as well as one would. About
Redirect tax Dozens or hundreds of internal links pointing at a URL that 301s somewhere else. It works, so nobody fixes it. About
A broken target Internal links pointing at a 404. Invisible in analytics, because nobody clicks a link they cannot see. Quick Audit
An inverted tree Leaf counts fall as price rises. The cheapest offer carries the most proof and the most expensive carries none. About
A canopy with no branches Hundreds of posts linking to each other and almost nothing structural. Looks productive, converts nothing. Personal Brand Site Builder
Shallow roots No Knowledge Panel, no consistent sameAs, no third-party corroboration. The canopy is fine; the soil is loose. Knowledge Panels
map-your-money-tree.skill.md — the full skill file, verbatim (for agents and for copy-paste) 
---
name: map-your-money-tree
description: Draw any website as a money tree — trunk (domain), limbs (offer groups), branches (money pages and definitive hubs), leaves (posts that link up to them) — measured from the site's real internal links, then diagnose the six defects a sitemap hides and output a dated publishing plan. Use when someone asks "which of my pages actually make money", "why isn't my content converting", "map my site", "audit my internal links", or when a monthly MAA needs a structural section.
author: Dennis Yu — BlitzMetrics / Local Service Spotlight
license: Apache-2.0
version: 1.0 (2026-08-15)
references:
  - https://blitzmetrics.com/money-tree/
  - https://blitzmetrics.com/seo-tree/
  - https://blitzmetrics.com/money-pages-vs-blog-posts/
  - https://blitzmetrics.com/maa/
  - https://blitzmetrics.com/9-triangles-framework-scalable-home-service-businesses/
  - https://localservicespotlight.com/quick-audit/
---

# Map Your Money Tree

**Use this when** you need to know which pages on a site actually earn, and which of the
content already published is feeding them. Not "how much traffic does this page get" —
*what is connected to what, and in which direction.*

This is the structural half of [MAA](https://blitzmetrics.com/maa/). The leaf counts are
the Metrics. The bare and split branches are the Analysis. The publishing list at the end
is the Action. Redraw it monthly and the delta is the report.

## The one idea

**A leaf counts only when it actually links.**

Not when it is topically related. Not when it sits in the right category. Not when someone
meant to link it. The link is the measurement; everything else is a plan. Every number this
skill produces must be reproducible by re-running the crawl.

---

## The five layers

| Layer | What it is | How you know |
|---|---|---|
| **Root** | Off-site proof of the entity: Knowledge Panel, Wikidata, LinkedIn, YouTube, podcast appearances, press, review profiles. | It is not on the domain and you cannot edit it directly. |
| **Trunk** | The domain and its home page — the entity home. | It is the URL you would put on a business card. |
| **Limb** | A group of branches sharing an audience or a job — the offers, the method, a vertical. | It is how the site's own services page already groups things. |
| **Branch** | A money page, or a definitive article that owns a concept. | Someone converts on it, or it is the one canonical page for a topic. |
| **Leaf** | A post that links **up** to a branch. | It is dated, it flows through a feed, and its body contains a link to its branch. |

Roots and trunk are **Why**. Limbs and method branches are **How**. Money branches are
**What**. Leaves are **Proof**. A stranger — or a language model — should be able to read
all four off one page.

---

## Inputs

- The domain.
- Read access to every published URL and its **rendered** body (not raw — page-builder and
  shortcode markup must be expanded so the links inside are visible).
- The site's own services page and main navigation, for the branch list and its grouping.
- Optional: the previous run's tree, for the delta.

---

## Procedure

### 1. Inventory every published URL
Posts and pages both, with id, URL, title, publish date, and rendered body.

On WordPress:
```
GET /wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=100&page=N&status=publish&_fields=id,link,title,content,date
GET /wp-json/wp/v2/pages?per_page=100&page=N&status=publish&_fields=id,link,title,content,date
```
Page until the `X-WP-TotalPages` header runs out. On any other stack, use a crawler that
returns rendered HTML. De-duplicate by (type, id) — retried requests double-count silently.

### 2. Extract internal links from every body
Match `href` values on the site's own host. Normalise: drop the query string and fragment,
force a trailing slash, lower-case the host. **Make the set unique per source page** — a
post linking to the same branch five times is one leaf, because the first link is the one
that carries the value.

```js
const RX = /href="https?:\/\/(?:www\.)?example\.com(\/[^"#?]*)/g;
const outs = [...new Set([...html.matchAll(RX)].map(m => m[1].replace(/\/+$/,'') + '/'))];
```

For a personal brand site, also match the company domains — its money pages usually live
on another host, and they still count as branches.

### 3. Build the inbound index
Invert the map: for every URL, the list of posts and the list of pages that link to it.
Count them **separately**. Theme headers and footers are pages linking to pages; only body
links from posts are leaves.

### 4. Name the branches from the site, not from memory
Take the money pages off the services page and the main navigation, in the grouping those
pages already use. Add the definitive articles — the pages that own a concept. Do not
invent a tidier taxonomy than the one the site presents to a visitor: if your tree
disagrees with the navigation, the tree has just found its first defect.

### 5. Resolve redirects and duplicates before counting
Request each branch URL and follow the chain. Merge redirected URLs into one branch and
**report the merge** rather than hiding it. Two live 200s for one offer is a split branch,
not two branches. This is the step everyone skips and where most findings are.

### 6. Draw it to scale
Branch thickness and foliage density from the leaf count on a **square-root** scale, so a
300-leaf branch does not visually annihilate a 30-leaf one. Bare branches drawn bare.
Nothing placed by hand — if the drawing is prettier than the site, the drawing is lying.

### 7. Publish it on the site it maps
As a live page with every node a real link — never a screenshot. Ship three synchronised
forms on the same URL: the diagram (inline SVG), the identical structure as a **visible**
text outline, and `ItemList` JSON-LD naming each branch, its role, its content type and its
inbound count. The picture is for humans; the other two are for agents.

---

## The six defects — and where each one routes

Diagnosis is worthless without a destination. This is a scan that names the department.

| # | Defect | What it looks like | What it costs | Routes to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | **Bare branch** | A live money page with zero posts linking to it | Nothing on the site has ever pointed a visitor at the thing you sell | Content — one customer story per bare offer |
| 2 | **Split branch** | Two live URLs for one offer (usually a page and a post) | Internal links divide; neither ranks as well as one would | Plumbing — pick one, 301 the other, consolidate |
| 3 | **Redirect tax** | Many internal links pointing at a URL that 301s | Every link takes the slow road; often includes the main nav | Plumbing — rewrite links to the destination |
| 4 | **Broken target** | Internal links pointing at a 404 | Invisible in analytics, because nobody clicks a link they cannot see | Plumbing — restore or repoint |
| 5 | **Inverted tree** | Leaf counts fall as price rises | The cheapest offer carries the most proof; the most expensive carries none | Strategy — decide what you are actually selling |
| 6 | **Canopy with no branches** | Hundreds of posts linking to each other and almost nothing structural | Looks enormously productive, converts nothing | Personal brand — wire the proof to an offer |

Also check the roots. A tree with no off-site proof — no Knowledge Panel, no consistent
`sameAs`, no third-party corroboration — is standing in loose soil no matter how good the
canopy looks. That routes to entity/authority work.

---

## The QA gate — nine checks, all must pass

A wrong tree is worse than no tree, because people act on it.

1. **Every node resolves.** Status recorded for each branch; no 404s; every 301 shown as a redirect rather than silently followed.
2. **Counts are reproducible.** Re-run the crawl; identical numbers. Drift means the extractor is matching something other than links.
3. **Counts are unique per source.** One post linking three times counts once.
4. **Navigation excluded.** Only body links from posts are leaves.
5. **No branch invented.** Every branch appears in the site's own navigation, services page, or definitive-article set.
6. **No money page missing.** Cross-check against the services page and main menu. A money page absent from the tree is the worst error — an invisible bare branch reads as a branch that does not exist.
7. **Duplicates consolidated.** Split URLs appear as one branch, flagged, with both URLs named.
8. **Text outline matches the diagram.** Same nodes, counts and order — that is what agents and screen readers read.
9. **Date and method stated.** A tree without a crawl date is a claim, not a measurement.

---

## Output

1. **The diagram** — inline SVG, every node an anchor, light/dark, no runtime JS.
2. **The text outline** — visible, nested, live links, counts, health flags.
3. **The schema** — `ItemList` JSON-LD, one entry per branch.
4. **The findings** — the defects above, each with the specific URLs and counts.
5. **The action list** — dated, ordered by cost-to-fix, one line per bare branch.
6. **The delta** — versus the previous run. Any branch still bare after a redraw is a branch nobody has decided to sell.

## Definition of done

- Every branch on the services page and main nav appears in the tree.
- Every count is reproducible and every URL resolves or is flagged.
- The page carries diagram + outline + schema on one URL.
- Every defect names a destination, not just a problem.
- The next publishing action is unambiguous to someone who did not run the audit.

## Cadence

Monthly on an active site. The value is in the delta, not the snapshot. A metric you look
at once is a screenshot.

---

*Method: <https://blitzmetrics.com/money-tree/> · Framework: <https://blitzmetrics.com/seo-tree/> ·
Page-versus-post rule: <https://blitzmetrics.com/money-pages-vs-blog-posts/> ·
Want it run for you: <https://localservicespotlight.com/quick-audit/>*

]]> https://tannerlaycock.com/money-tree/feed/ 0 Our Professional Network https://tannerlaycock.com/our-professional-network/ https://tannerlaycock.com/our-professional-network/#respond Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:34:36 +0000 https://tannerlaycock.com/our-professional-network/ We are proud to be part of a vibrant professional network of marketing, technology, and business excellence experts. Below you’ll find links to all 60 member sites in our network, each offering unique expertise and resources for business growth.

Whether you’re looking for SEO strategies, digital marketing guidance, content creation resources, or business development insights, our network has you covered. Feel free to explore these sites and discover how our partners can help accelerate your business success.

Our Professional Network – 60 Member Sites

Our network consists of industry-leading platforms and resources:

Why Our Network Matters

This network represents a collaborative ecosystem of marketing professionals, business strategists, and digital experts dedicated to sharing knowledge and driving business growth. Each member brings unique perspectives and expertise to help businesses navigate the complex landscape of modern marketing.

We encourage you to explore the full network and connect with the resources that align with your business goals and objectives.

]]> https://tannerlaycock.com/our-professional-network/feed/ 0 Tanner Laycock’s Social Media Footprint Across Every Platform https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycocks-social-media-footprint-across-every-platform/ https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycocks-social-media-footprint-across-every-platform/#respond Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:14:39 +0000 https://tannerlaycock.com/?p=5728 Tanner Laycock practices what he preaches about personal branding. His content appears across LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and multiple podcast platforms. Here is a map of where you can find Tanner online and what kind of content lives on each channel.

LinkedIn: 2,000 Followers and Growing

Tanner’s LinkedIn profile lists him as Co-Founder of TurbosAI with over 2,000 followers and 500+ connections. He posts motivational content, marketing insights, and updates about his automotive marketing business. His bio captures his personality well: he describes his career as a relationship with branding that led to automotive marketing giving him a look. That voice — casual, confident, self-aware — runs through all his LinkedIn posts.

Facebook: Travel Photos with Dennis Yu

Facebook holds some of the earliest content from Tanner’s career. Posts from Daniel Wallock show the BlitzMetrics team traveling to San Diego together. Other posts capture Tanner and Dennis at the National Theatre in Poland, at marketing workshops across the United States, and at client sites. Dennis’s shared Google Photos album with 611 items feeds directly into many of these Facebook posts — conference group shots, behind-the-scenes selfies, and short video clips that document the day-to-day reality of building a marketing agency while traveling the world.

YouTube: Podcast Appearances and Interviews

Tanner appears in at least four YouTube interviews that still get views today. The Hustle and Flowchart episode with Joe Fier runs over an hour and covers topic wheels and systemizing a business. Susan Sly’s 31-minute interview focuses on personal branding strategy. Real Andrews discusses the do’s and don’ts of branding. And Elliott Pierre’s short VendastaCon clip captures Tanner’s energy about millennial entrepreneurship. Each video shows a different side of Tanner — strategic thinker, storyteller, and young professional earning his place at the table.

TikTok and Short-Form Video

The Google Photos album includes TikTok clips of Tanner — one shows him with a handle @dennisyu5, suggesting cross-posted content from Dennis’s account. These short clips capture casual moments: selfies, quick takes on marketing topics, and everyday life in Phoenix and on the road. TikTok and Instagram Reels represent the newest frontier for Tanner’s content strategy, extending the same principles he taught at BlitzMetrics to the platforms that dominate attention today.

Connect with Tanner

You can find Tanner on LinkedIn, browse his blog posts, or watch his YouTube appearances linked throughout this site. His story shows what happens when you apply the Content Factory process to your own personal brand over seven years.

]]> https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycocks-social-media-footprint-across-every-platform/feed/ 0 From BlitzMetrics to TurbosAI: Tanner Laycock’s Entrepreneurial Pivot https://tannerlaycock.com/from-blitzmetrics-to-turbosai-tanner-laycocks-entrepreneurial-pivot/ https://tannerlaycock.com/from-blitzmetrics-to-turbosai-tanner-laycocks-entrepreneurial-pivot/#respond Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:13:12 +0000 https://tannerlaycock.com/?p=5726 Tanner Laycock spent five years learning digital marketing under Dennis Yu at BlitzMetrics before co-founding TurbosAI in May 2022. That transition from agency employee to startup co-founder followed a path that Dennis has seen dozens of young adults take — learn the systems, prove you can execute, then go build your own thing. Here is how Tanner made that leap.

Drop Out and Dive In

Tanner enrolled at Saint Vincent College in 2016 to study marketing. Within two years he dropped out to join BlitzMetrics full-time. As Dennis tells it, Tanner was the first student in their program to make that jump. Instead of finishing a four-year degree, Tanner chose to learn by doing — running Facebook ad campaigns, traveling to conferences in 15 cities across the US, and visiting 10 countries to present workshops on personal branding and dollar-a-day advertising.

Master the Content Factory

At BlitzMetrics, Tanner rose to Director of Personal Branding. He managed the four-stage Content Factory process for clients: create one-minute videos with authority figures, cut them into snippets, boost them for a dollar a day, and repurpose winners across every platform. He applied this system to clients like Escape Fitness, local dental practices, and financial planning firms. Each campaign followed the same checklist Dennis built so that anyone on the team could step into any role.

Launch TurbosAI

In 2022, Tanner co-founded TurbosAI in Frisco, Texas. The company builds AI-powered marketing ecosystems for automotive businesses. Tanner took the same systems he learned at BlitzMetrics — checklists, topic wheels, content repurposing — and applied them to auto shops and dealerships. Within a few years, the platform helped hundreds of automotive shops generate six figures in monthly revenue. His LinkedIn profile describes TurbosAI as creating AI-powered ecosystems at scale.

What the Mentorship Built

The 611 photos in Dennis’s Google Photos album document the full arc of this relationship. Early photos show Tanner in matching Facebook t-shirts at the Bellagio. Later photos show him on stage at DigiMarCon and ADworld Experience in Italy. The most recent ones show a confident entrepreneur building his own company. Dennis often says the goal is not to keep young adults at BlitzMetrics forever but to give them the tools to build something of their own. Tanner is proof that system works. Follow his journey on LinkedIn or read more on the blog.

]]> https://tannerlaycock.com/from-blitzmetrics-to-turbosai-tanner-laycocks-entrepreneurial-pivot/feed/ 0 Inside the Google Photos Album: Tanner Laycock Through the Years https://tannerlaycock.com/inside-the-google-photos-album-tanner-laycock-through-the-years/ https://tannerlaycock.com/inside-the-google-photos-album-tanner-laycock-through-the-years/#respond Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:11:52 +0000 https://tannerlaycock.com/?p=5724 Dennis Yu keeps a shared Google Photos album with 611 photos and videos of Tanner Laycock spanning from February 2018 to December 2025. The collection documents seven years of travel, conferences, late-night work sessions, and moments that shaped Tanner’s career in digital marketing. Here is a walk through some of those memories.

Las Vegas Nights at the Bellagio

Several photos in the album show Tanner and the BlitzMetrics team at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. There are shots of the team posing in matching black Facebook t-shirts in the hotel lobby, photos at dinner with colleagues, and Tanner enjoying a cigar near the Bellagio conservatory with its famous flower displays. The Las Vegas trips coincided with marketing conferences where Tanner and Dennis presented on dollar-a-day advertising and the Content Factory process. Between sessions, the team explored the Strip and captured candid moments together.

DigiMarCon and Conference Life

The album includes a group photo from DigiMarCon, the digital marketing conference where Tanner appeared on stage alongside Dennis and fellow BlitzMetrics team members. The group poses on a red carpet with the DigiMarCon banner behind them. These conference appearances gave Tanner exposure to thousands of marketing professionals and helped him build the network that later supported his entrepreneurial ventures. Other conference photos capture hallway conversations, speaker green rooms, and post-event dinners that rarely make it to social media.

The Kaqun Bath Experience

One of the more unique photo sets shows Tanner at a Kaqun water therapy bath with Kerri Kasem in Las Vegas. The oxygen-enriched water therapy sessions became a recurring theme in the album, documenting how Dennis introduced Tanner to wellness practices alongside their marketing work. These photos show the personal side of the mentor-mentee relationship that went beyond spreadsheets and ad campaigns.

Phoenix Life and Everyday Moments

Beyond the conferences and travels, the album captures daily life in Phoenix, Arizona where both Dennis and Tanner spent significant time. Backyard BBQs, working sessions at local coffee shops, visits to Phoenix landmarks, and casual hangouts fill many frames. There is a TikTok video of Tanner with what appears to be a twin or sibling, short selfie clips, and behind-the-scenes footage of content creation sessions. These everyday moments tell the story of a working relationship built on shared meals, road trips, and thousands of hours of conversation about marketing, business, and life.

Browse the Full Album

The full shared Google Photos album is available at photos.app.goo.gl/NcA7pWuMQukdXS8s5. It continues to grow as Dennis and Tanner document new chapters together. For more stories from these travels, check out the blog or visit the About page to learn more about Tanner’s journey.

]]> https://tannerlaycock.com/inside-the-google-photos-album-tanner-laycock-through-the-years/feed/ 0 Tanner Laycock on Branding, Topic Wheels, and Dollar-a-Day Ads https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-on-branding-topic-wheels-and-dollar-a-day-ads/ https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-on-branding-topic-wheels-and-dollar-a-day-ads/#respond Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:10:09 +0000 https://tannerlaycock.com/?p=5718 Tanner Laycock has appeared on multiple podcasts and YouTube interviews sharing what he learned building personal brands at BlitzMetrics alongside Dennis Yu. From the Hustle and Flowchart podcast to Susan Sly’s Raw and Real Entrepreneurship show, Tanner breaks down the systems behind topic wheels, dollar-a-day ads, and the Content Factory process.

Map Your Topic Wheel First

On the Hustle and Flowchart podcast (episode 200), Dennis and Tanner walked through the topic wheel framework step by step. The topic wheel organizes your content around six core subjects you want to be known for. Each subject connects to authority figures, client stories, and proof points that build trust over time. Tanner explained how he used this exact framework with clients like Escape Fitness and local service businesses to generate consistent leads.

Dennis Yu and Tanner Laycock on Hustle and Flowchart — Mapping Out Your Topic Wheel

Build a Winning Brand on Social Media

Susan Sly interviewed Tanner when he served as Director of Personal Branding at BlitzMetrics. In that 31-minute conversation, Tanner shared how young marketers can position themselves by creating short videos with industry leaders. He described the process of cutting one-minute snippets from longer recordings and boosting them for a dollar a day to the audiences of those leaders. That approach put Tanner in rooms with founders of hundred-million-dollar companies before he turned 25.

Tips for Developing a Winning Brand — Interview with Tanner Laycock

The Do’s and Don’ts of Personal Branding

Real Andrews brought Tanner on his show to discuss what works and what fails in personal branding. Tanner walked through his daily routine at BlitzMetrics, explained how the outraged economy pushes creators toward clickbait, and shared his shadow clone strategy for scaling content production. The episode covers practical steps any entrepreneur can take today to start building authority without a big budget.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Branding with Expert Tanner Laycock

VendastaCon and Speaking to Millennials

At VendastaCon, Elliott Pierre captured a short interview with Tanner about the millennial approach to marketing and entrepreneurship. Tanner shared his story of dropping out of Saint Vincent College to join BlitzMetrics full-time — a decision that put him on stage at conferences across 15 cities in the United States and 10 countries internationally. That short clip shows the energy and directness that made Tanner stand out in rooms full of seasoned marketers.

Are You Afraid of Millennials? — Tanner Laycock at VendastaCon

Watch More from Tanner

Tanner also co-presented with Dennis Yu at ADworld Experience in Italy on automating Facebook Ads, and appeared at DigiMarCon and other marketing conferences worldwide. You can find more of his content on the About page or browse the blog for behind-the-scenes stories from these events.

]]> https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-on-branding-topic-wheels-and-dollar-a-day-ads/feed/ 0 Topic A | Tanner Laycock nonadult Tanner Laycock on Stage: Speaking at DigiMarCon and Traffic and Conversion Summit https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-on-stage-speaking-at-digimarcon-and-traffic-and-conversion-summit/ https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-on-stage-speaking-at-digimarcon-and-traffic-and-conversion-summit/#respond Mon, 16 Mar 2026 11:53:29 +0000 https://tannerlaycock.com/?p=5716 Tanner Laycock was barely 20 years old the first time he stood on a digital marketing conference stage. Most people that age are in the audience. Tanner was in the speaker lineup — not because he had a polished keynote or a decade of case studies, but because he had been doing the work alongside Dennis Yu in real time, and the work was real enough to present.

DigiMarCon: The Conference Where Practitioners Gather

DigiMarCon is one of the most widely-attended digital marketing conference series in the world, running events in cities across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, and beyond. Unlike some conferences that book celebrity speakers, DigiMarCon platforms practitioners — people actually running campaigns, building systems, and producing measurable results for clients. That made it a natural fit for Dennis Yu and, by extension, for Tanner.

The DigiMarCon group photo in the Google Photos album captures it perfectly: Tanner standing in a row of young BlitzMetrics team members on a conference stage, dressed professionally, grinning. In the background, the DigiMarCon branding fills the stage. Behind the camera, an audience of hundreds of marketers waited to hear what this team had to say about the Content Factory process, the Topic Wheel, and the Dollar-a-Day strategy.

Traffic and Conversion Summit in San Diego

Traffic and Conversion Summit, produced by DigitalMarketer, was one of the premier events in the direct response and digital marketing world. The San Diego edition drew thousands of attendees and featured some of the most credible practitioners in the industry. Dennis had spoken there multiple times. Getting Tanner into that environment — as part of the team presenting, not just attending — was a deliberate step in his development.

San Diego meant warmer weather, oceanfront hotels, and the kind of networking energy that conference cities take on when the industry descends. It also meant preparation: knowing the material, being able to present it clearly, fielding questions from an audience that included CMOs, agency owners, and brand marketers who had seen every framework and heard every pitch. Tanner had to hold his own. He did.

Social Media Examiner and the Broader Conference Circuit

The Google Photos album also captures a moment at Social Media Examiner in San Diego — Dennis and Tanner together, dressed for a day of conference sessions, with that early-career energy visible in the photo. Social Media Examiner’s annual event was one of the largest in the social media marketing space, and being there as a working team member rather than a student attendee carried a different weight.

What Conference Speaking Taught Tanner

Standing on a stage in front of a room of experienced marketers forces clarity. You can’t be vague. You can’t hide behind jargon. You have to know what you’re saying, why it works, and be ready to defend it. For Tanner, that pressure was exactly what he needed. It turned the frameworks he had learned by doing into frameworks he could explain — which meant he had actually internalized them.

That ability to teach what he knows is now a core part of how Tanner approaches GolfTanner. Every video, every post, every customer conversation is a form of teaching — helping someone understand what makes a premium golf cart worth the investment, what the difference is between a custom build and an off-the-shelf model, why the details matter. The conference stage just happened to be the first classroom where he learned to do that at scale.

]]> https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-on-stage-speaking-at-digimarcon-and-traffic-and-conversion-summit/feed/ 0 Two Years in Phoenix: Life at Dennis Yu’s House with Tanner Laycock https://tannerlaycock.com/two-years-in-phoenix-life-at-dennis-yus-house-with-tanner-laycock/ https://tannerlaycock.com/two-years-in-phoenix-life-at-dennis-yus-house-with-tanner-laycock/#respond Mon, 16 Mar 2026 11:50:38 +0000 https://tannerlaycock.com/?p=5714 From roughly 2018 to 2020, Tanner Laycock lived at Dennis Yu’s home in Phoenix, Arizona. This wasn’t a formal arrangement. It grew out of the mentorship — Tanner was working full-time with BlitzMetrics, and it made more sense for him to be based where Dennis was based than to be anywhere else. What resulted was two years of daily proximity to one of the most productive people in digital marketing, and a rhythm of life that Tanner describes as transformative.

The Daily Routine: Gym, Basketball, and Golf

The days had structure. Morning gym sessions were a constant — Tanner had come from a competitive football background at Saint Vincent College, and the discipline of training carried into his new life. Dennis, despite his demanding travel and work schedule, made fitness a priority too. They went together, often in the early morning before the work day started.

Basketball was a near-daily activity. Phoenix has the weather for it — outdoor courts, long evenings, the kind of competitive casual play that keeps athletes sharp without the formality of organized sport. Tanner, a defensive back who had built his career on speed and discipline, was a natural on the court. Dennis, shorter and scrappier, played with the intensity he brought to everything.

Golf entered the picture as both recreation and business education. Phoenix has some of the best public and private golf courses in the country. Playing golf with Dennis meant playing with clients, partners, and the kind of entrepreneurs who do their best relationship-building on a fairway. Tanner learned the game — and learned that the game was a vehicle for something more. Today he runs GolfTanner, selling premium golf carts. The seeds were planted on those Phoenix courses.

BBQs, Dinners, and the People Who Came Through

Dennis’s home in Phoenix was a gathering place. Entrepreneurs, clients, young marketers, industry speakers — people came through constantly. The backyard BBQs documented in the Google Photos album capture this: Tanner standing in the backyard with tongs, cooking ribs, surrounded by people mid-conversation about marketing, business, and ideas. That’s how it worked. Work and life were not separated. They were the same thing.

Pool days, casual dinners at the ramen spot down the road, late nights working on campaigns — two years of this daily texture is what turned a promising young football player into a marketer, a speaker, and an entrepreneur. It wasn’t a training program. It was a life, lived at full intensity, with someone who was already doing at scale what Tanner wanted to do.

What Those Two Years Built

Ask Tanner what he got from those two years in Phoenix and he doesn’t list skills or credentials. He talks about standards. Seeing how Dennis approached every day — the consistency, the work ethic, the refusal to treat any interaction as unimportant — set a standard that Tanner carries with him. That standard is visible in how he operates GolfTanner now: showing up every day, documenting everything, treating every customer conversation as the most important one of the day.

]]> https://tannerlaycock.com/two-years-in-phoenix-life-at-dennis-yus-house-with-tanner-laycock/feed/ 0 Tanner Laycock in Europe: From Barcelona to Hungary with Dennis Yu https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-in-europe-from-barcelona-to-hungary-with-dennis-yu/ https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-in-europe-from-barcelona-to-hungary-with-dennis-yu/#respond Mon, 16 Mar 2026 11:47:56 +0000 https://tannerlaycock.com/?p=5712 When Dennis Yu decided to take the red-eye to Barcelona, Tanner Laycock was on the flight. No extensive preparation, no detailed itinerary — just two people willing to go wherever the work and the adventure led. That combination of spontaneity and purpose defined the European chapter of Tanner’s education.

Barcelona: The Red-Eye That Changed Perspective

Barcelona is the kind of city that resets your thinking. The architecture is impossible — Gaudí’s work looks like a fever dream made real. The train stations are grand enough to make you feel like you’re in a film. For Tanner, who grew up in Frisco, Texas and had gone to college in rural Pennsylvania, landing in one of the great European capitals was a genuine jolt. He stood at that Spanish train station — a picture that made it into the Google Photos album Dennis keeps — and had one of those moments where you realize how much of the world you haven’t seen yet.

The work was real too. Dennis always structured the travel around conferences, meetings, and client engagements. Barcelona wasn’t just tourism. But being in Barcelona meant the conversations over dinner were different. The perspective shifted. Tanner absorbed all of it.

Hungary: Meeting Dr. Robert Lyons and the Kaqun Source

The Hungary leg of the European trip was more unusual still. Dr. Robert Lyons is the founder of the Cocoon/Kaqun oxygen water technology, and his facility is based in Hungary. Dennis and Tanner traveled there to see it firsthand — not as a publicity exercise, but because Dennis genuinely believed in the technology and wanted Tanner to understand it from the source.

Sitting with Dr. Lyons, hearing him explain the science behind oxygen-saturated water and how he had developed it over decades of research, was another lesson for Tanner in what it looks like to build something from true conviction. Dr. Lyons hadn’t chased a trend. He had followed his own work wherever it led, for as long as it took. That kind of commitment — to an idea, to a process, to a result — was something Tanner filed away.

Matthew Januszek and the European Network

The European trips also brought Tanner into contact with Matthew Januszek, co-founder of Escape Fitness and a prominent figure in the European entrepreneurship world. Dennis and Matthew had built a relationship over years of shared work in digital marketing and business growth. Sitting across from Matthew at a Nando’s Peri-Peri in the UK — a casual dinner, nothing staged — Tanner found himself in a conversation about brand, scale, and what it takes to build something that lasts across continents.

That’s what the European trips gave Tanner: a global frame. Marketing doesn’t look the same in Barcelona as it does in Phoenix. Entrepreneurship in Hungary has its own texture. The connections that Dennis had built over 20 years of international work opened doors that Tanner is still walking through today with GolfTanner.

]]> https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-in-europe-from-barcelona-to-hungary-with-dennis-yu/feed/ 0 Tanner Laycock at Infusionsoft ICON: Inside the World of Marketing Automation https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-at-infusionsoft-icon-inside-the-world-of-marketing-automation/ https://tannerlaycock.com/tanner-laycock-at-infusionsoft-icon-inside-the-world-of-marketing-automation/#respond Mon, 16 Mar 2026 11:43:33 +0000 https://tannerlaycock.com/?p=5710 Chandler, Arizona was home to one of the most influential software companies in the marketing world: Infusionsoft (now Keap). For Tanner Laycock, visiting their headquarters and attending their annual ICON conference wasn’t just a work trip. It was a crash course in what it looks like when marketing technology and entrepreneurship collide at scale.

The ICON Experience

Infusionsoft’s ICON conference drew thousands of small business owners, agencies, and marketing practitioners every year. For a young man still learning the fundamentals of the Content Factory process, walking through the hallways of ICON — listening to speakers talk about automation, CRM, and scaling — was like drinking from a fire hose. The right kind.

The photos tell the story: Tanner wearing the Infusionsoft-branded shirt with that iconic X logo, posing in front of the ICON stage and signage. Later, at the branded photo wall, grinning next to a character in a gold sequined boxing robe. That’s Infusionsoft’s style — over-the-top, celebratory, and unapologetically loud about marketing.

GoDaddy Headquarters

The Arizona leg also included a visit to GoDaddy’s headquarters in Scottsdale. GoDaddy was one of the most recognized brands in domain registration and web hosting, and Dennis Yu had connections there through years of digital marketing work. Walking through GoDaddy’s offices — seeing how a tech company at scale operates, how their marketing and sales teams interact, how their brand permeated every wall and hallway — added another layer to Tanner’s education.

Both visits reinforced the same lesson: the companies that dominate their category aren’t just good at their product. They are obsessively good at their brand. The signage, the shirts, the personalities they put on stage — all of it is intentional. All of it tells a story.

What Tanner Took Away

Tanner was 19 or 20 years old walking through those conference halls. Most kids his age were sitting in college classrooms studying marketing theory. He was shaking hands with the people building the tools those textbooks would one day reference. That gap — between knowing about something and being in the room where it’s happening — is what mentorship under Dennis Yu closed.

He carries that principle into his work with GolfTanner today. Get in rooms where the real decisions are being made. Study the brands that dominate their category. Then apply what you learn to your own corner of the market — even if your corner is selling premium golf carts in Northeast Ohio.

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