Cherry Blossom Plumbing

When we first opened Cherry Blossom Plumbing, we did what a lot of new business owners do: we hired a marketing company that wasn't built for us. They weren't a bad company — they just weren't made for a brand-new business right out of the gate. The fees were more than we could sustain, and we learned another hard lesson on the way out the door: we didn't own our own website. We swore we'd never let that happen again.

So we swung the other direction and hired a more affordable agency. And, well — you get what you pay for. When they rebuilt our website, the transition went badly. Our traffic didn't dip; it fell off a cliff. If you saw the chart, you'd wince.

That's when I thought of Jennifer Bagley. I'd seen her speak at several industry events, and something about her approach always stuck with me. I reached out and asked if we could meet, and from that first conversation, I was impressed. Her approach to SEO wasn't guesswork or buzzwords — it was mathematical, analytical, a real formula. And CI Web Group's model matched their philosophy: no contracts, you own your website, and your investment directly determines the work. You choose your budget, you buy your keywords, and you build a strategy together. For a small company just getting on its feet, it was exactly what we needed. We signed up, set a modest budget, and things went well.

Then strange things started happening.

At the time, we had no idea what was going on. We only knew our call volume was dropping, and we couldn't figure out why. What we eventually discovered was that our Google Business Profile had been hacked. Someone had changed our business address — moving us, on paper, a hundred miles away to Fredericksburg, Virginia. It took us far too long to connect the falling phones to the address change, because it's not something you look at every day. And by the time we did, Google wouldn't let us change it back.

The only path forward was a new physical office. So while our phones sat silent, we were finding a space, signing a lease, transferring insurance, updating licenses — anyone who has ever done that knows exactly how long it takes. And after all of that? We got suspended anyway and had to fight through Google's verification process.

We were down for months. And here's what people don't understand until they live it: not being on Google is like not having a business card. It's like not existing. The only work coming in was face-to-face referrals. Our employees left, one by one, until it was just Johnny and me — right back where we started on day one. We were a razor-thin distance from closing. 2024 was supposed to be a growth year. Instead, it was as hard as our first year in business.

We couldn't pay our bills. Including CI Web Group's.

And this is the part of the story I'll never forget. They didn't drop us. They didn't pause our services or send us to collections. They kept doing the work. I got to know their accounting department very well during that stretch — I assured them we wanted to pay, that we would figure it out — and they worked with us, even scaling the services to something we could manage, instead of walking away.

It wasn't until early 2025 that I finally pieced together what had actually happened to us. When I brought it to CI Web Group and sat down with Jasmine and the leadership team, their response floored me. They said, "We are your partner in this, and we want you to succeed." Jasmine told me, "I'm taking care of this for you." They erased the back debt we owed. They had already been doing more work than we were paying for. And then one of the men in the meeting said something I'll never forget: "You don't know me, but I hate to lose. We're going to build you a brand-new website."

And they did. A brand-new site on Webflow, and it's been going great.

So when Jennifer came to us about being part of the new AI tools CI Web Group was building, I'll admit I was apprehensive at first. There's a lot of noise out there — a lot of skeptics, a lot of haters. But I had been watching Jennifer, participating in what she was building, and I realized something: I trust her. This company had earned that trust in the hardest way possible — by standing beside us when we had nothing to offer them. And the tools? They're genuinely impressive. I was excited to dive in.

Here's one more thing that says everything about CI Web Group: we've been with them for three years, and I have worked with the same people the entire time. The only new faces I've ever encountered were in that leadership meeting — people I simply hadn't met yet. In an industry where your account rep changes every quarter, that kind of stability is remarkable.

The story of Cherry Blossom Plumbing and CI Web Group isn't really about SEO, or websites, or even AI. It's about what a real partner looks like. They helped us come back from the worst period we've ever faced. They were there for us when it would have been easier — and more profitable — to walk away. They still are.

And that is priceless.