An entrepreneur who mastered SEO in 2014 says he doesn't care about Google rankings anymore. Here's how he's using AI to grow his business to 7 figures.

• Kyle Ray's window cleaning business took off around 2014 when he started leveraging SEO.

• In 2025, SEO is irrelevant for his business, and he's focusing on AI instead.

• He uses AI tools like ChatGPT, ServiceMonster, and Chiirp to save time and money.

Kyle Ray spent years waiting tables and bartending to pay his bills while building a window cleaning business on the side.

In 2014, about seven years after landing his first client — a massage parlor in a strip mall in Houston — he started earning enough income from his side gig, which he called Geek Window Cleaning, to quit his service jobs.

The difference-maker was SEO. Around 2013, he started paying attention to search engine optimization and learning how to leverage it to boost traffic to his site. By 2015, "if you were Googling 'window cleaning Houston,' we were showing up in the No. 1 position," the entrepreneur told Business Insider. "Then we started getting really busy."

Nearly a decade later, the strategy that helped transform Ray's business from a side hustle to a full-time gig is essentially irrelevant.

"We fired the SEO company that we used to use. I no longer care about ranking on Google. It doesn't matter because search is going to a zero click so fast," he explained. "If you Google something, Gemini tells you whatever the answer is right there. You don't even scroll down the page to see what's there."

As AI has progressed over the last couple of years, Ray has committed to mastering it, similar to how he tackled SEO in the early 2010s. He's already seeing results: Having generated six figures in revenue in 2024, he's on track to exceed $1 million for the first time in 2025, according to his ServiceMonster dashboard.

"We use software and AI as much as possible when it makes sense," he said. "Our tech stack is kind of wild."

He rattled off a handful of AI and software tools that he uses to save time and money as a small-business owner — Usewhale.io, ChatGPT, Ingage, Canva, Calendly, PriceGuide.ai, Chiirp, Paive, ServiceMonster, ZyraTalk, ClickUp, and MindMeister — and highlighted the ones that he uses the most.

ServiceMonster to manage customers. Ray said that shifting to a CRM (customer relationship management) software has progressed his business more than any other tool, and helped him stay organized as he's expanded to servicing hundreds of clients throughout Houston and Austin.

For years, he used carbon copy paper to keep track of his customer history: "It was in a folder and you're always like, 'What happens if my office catches fire and I lose all this data?'"