GR0 - Founding Team of the Year

Company: GR0, Los Angeles, CA
Company Division/Group:GR0
Company Description: GR0 is a digital marketing agency focused on igniting organic growth for DTC startups and helping brands rank #1 on Google. GR0 empowers clients to build powerful online brands that deliver incredible value and joy to consumers. GR0 was co-founded by SEO experts and friends Jonathan Zacharias, and Kevin Miller who both have a wealth of online marketing experience with top DTC and B2B brands.
Nomination Category: Entrepreneur Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Founding Team of the Year - Business Services Industries

Nomination Title: Jonathan Zacharias and Kevin Miller (GR0)

GR0 began its operations in February 2020 with only two employees: co-founders and long time friends Jonathan Zacharias and Kevin Miller. The company was years in the making, with Jonathan and Kevin working as consultants and freelancers on SEO projects (including on Ritual, which now ranks #1 on Google for key phrase “Vegan Prenatal Vitamins”). Putting everything into the company, Jonathan and Kevin finally launched this year, unknowingly right before the pandemic hit hard in the US.

To test their skills as true SEO experts, Jonathan and Kevin put their product and SEO strategy to the test. They launched a brand new website (thewordcounter.com) to see if they could build up the site’s reputation, clicks, impressions and Google rankings, solely through organic channels. Using the three main pillars that Jonathan and Kevin determined to be the main aspects of their new SEO business, they invested their own funds into creating content and securing white-hat priority backlinks for the grammar website. Through intensive keyword research and exceptional content, the online site now ranks for over 14,000 keywords and brings in 230,000 in traffic each month. For certain key phrases such as different abbreviations, the Word Counter now even ranks above long-time sites such as abbreviations.com among others.

And despite the difficulties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, Jonathan and Kevin still managed to persevere and bring in client after client, and build meaningful relationships with significant referral partners, who trusted us as an organic growth partner after seeing great results for their own brands. Not only did the client roster grow exponentially, but Jonathan and Kevin also sought out the best SEO experts across the country to join the team so that GR0 could meet the ever-growing needs and demands of client list.

Having come from an in-house background, Kevin especially wanted to emphasize the importance of servicing clients to the fullest extent and making sure that SEO campaign managers were not overwhelmed by clients so that they could fully focus their efforts on a small number and show real, meaningful results. Kevin has also emphasized the need to communicate proactively with clients, and to be in constant communication with clients so that they understand the progress of their organic channels and can see where their money is going.

Kevin and Jonathan also recognized from the beginning that the only way to deliver value to clients was to ensure that the employees were happy, healthy and supported. With this in mind, the founders took every opportunity they had to grow the benefits package offered as well as provide higher than average wages, commission rates and even bonuses to the employees. GR0’s benefits now include health, vision and dental coverage, unlimited PTO/sick days, flexibility working hours, company computers, parental leave, time-off to volunteer, and monthly care packages for each individual employee. After partnering with Comparably, a tool used to collect current employee sentiment, Kevin and Jonathan were proud to see that GR0 landed in the Top 5% in Best Companies in Los Angeles and Top 10% in Happiness of employees when compared to other companies of similar size.

Lastly, Jonathan and Kevin make sure to lead by example. They want their employees to be inspired by their leadership and want to encourage ambition and innovation. They do this by setting team meetings weekly, setting 1:1s with each individual team member, being approachable and available to hop on a client call if the account manager needs support, and by helping to brainstorm ideas to troubleshoot any client hiccups. Kevin and Jonathan are always taking SEO courses to further their knowledge and offer the same courses to their employees.

Overall, the GR0 co-founders have managed to prioritize the wellbeing of their employees amidst the immense and swift growth of their company, which is a feat in and of itself.

-Secured clients such as Paris Hilton, The Rolling Stones, Universal Music Group, Advantage Rent a Car, Mutesix, Venus Et Fleur, Pressed Juicery, Ritual, Theragun, and USA Rx among others.
-Grown from 2 to over 40 employees in 12 months
-Secured meaningful referral partnerships including Mutesix, Carter Reum of M13, Nik Sharma and many others.
-Offer all full-time employees a benefits package with competitive wages, health, vision and dental coverage, time-off to volunteer, unlimited PTO/sick days, extensive parental leave, flexible working hours, and pet-friendly workplaces. GR0 also sends employees monthly care packages and offers computers/workplace equipment wherever needed.
-Featured on news sites such as Thrive Global, Legal Zoom, Yahoo Finance among others
-Partnered with Comparably, with results showing Top 5% in Best Companies in Los Angeles, Top 5% in CEO and Leadership, Top 10% in Overall Happiness, Top 10% in Work Culture and Top 10% in Diversity.