Here’s a ranking you don’t hear often on an SEO site. Nick Garofalo, founder of the fee-only planning firm Openhanded Wealth, told Daniel Hill on the Unscripted Small Business Podcast that his top marketing channels are podcasting, blogging, short-form video and local networking. SEO and paid ads? Bottom of the list. “I don’t really get into all that very much.”
Well, the truth is that for a second-year advisory firm, he’s probably right about the order. Here’s why, and where search still earns a seat later.
Short-form video hands distribution to the platform
Nick’s argument for short video is about who does the targeting. With SEO you pick the keywords. With paid ads you pick the demographic. With direct mail you pick the list, and at a networking event you hope you meet the right person. Short-form video takes all of that off your plate.
“Short form video, it’s totally handled for you by Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube. Like all of these platforms are trying to optimize to get Daniel to stare at the, you know, the feed a little bit longer.”
That’s the whole model. The platform’s incentive is attention, so if your video is “educational, it’s funny, it’s informative,” the algorithm finds the audience for you. You don’t need search volume for a topic nobody types into Google yet. You need a video that holds people for thirty seconds.
Diversify the posting, not the video
Nick doesn’t make a different video for every platform. He makes one and posts it everywhere that will take it, and only changes the caption. His reason is pure financial planner:
“I’m a big fan of diversification, right? So don’t put all your eggs in the one basket of Instagram.”
You can apply that straight to your own content. One recording, posted to Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, gives you four chances at an algorithm deciding you’re worth showing. Writing a fresh caption for each one is optional. Nick admits he tries to, and then: “that’s like, bro.”
One idea, stretched across a week
Nick runs a short solo podcast, One Degree, and he used it as a content engine. He recorded about ten minutes on sales as an act of generosity, then reformatted it “into a blog and a LinkedIn post and some shorts” and stayed on that one idea for the whole week.
That’s the same move behind turning one episode into twelve link assets, just at solo-founder scale. And it comes with a built-in quality check. His wife, who sees everything he posts, eventually told him: “everything you’re posting right now is all the same thing.” If the people closest to you are bored, it’s time for the next idea.
Where search fits for a firm like this
Nick isn’t anti-SEO, he’s just honest that a firm built on relationships gets its first clients from people who’ve met him. His best channel is still in person, because “a warm handshake is worth a thousand LinkedIn posts.”
But notice what the short videos and the One Degree blog posts are quietly building: a library of answers to the questions his clients actually ask. That’s the raw material search needs later. When a local service firm is ready to point some of that at Google, the starting point is small (a solid Google Business Profile, a page per service, the questions you already answer on video turned into text) and this owner’s guide from OpenSEO covers it without the jargon. You don’t have to choose between video and search. Video earns the attention now, and the same ideas, written down, keep earning it after the feed has moved on.
So before you build a keyword plan for a brand-new service business, ask a simpler question first. What’s the one idea you could explain on camera this week, and how many places could you post it?
Nick Garofalo is the founder of Openhanded Wealth, a registered investment adviser. This conversation is general education only and is not financial, investment, tax or legal advice. Recorded June 2025.
Listen to the full episode on Castos or read the full recap on Unscripted Small Business.