Corey Kelly

Corey has led more than 600 website builds, SEO programs and paid ad campaigns across 20+ years. That work spans Fortune 500 beverage, automotive, boat and ATV brands — but his focus has always been hometown service businesses.

He started in SEO over 20 years ago, before most people had heard the term, running search and early paid campaigns on Google AdWords and Overture for an ecommerce store he built, grew to millions in annual revenue, and eventually sold.

He was running a local home service company at the same time, watching it spend on radio, TV, print and mailers. None of it performed like search, and none of it could tell him how many customers it actually put through the door. Triton Commerce started to give local businesses the option he had already proven worked.

He designed the tritonIQ stack end to end — the lead scoring model, the Authenticity Vault and Lead Sync — over a lot of early mornings and late nights, so clients get an agency that is genuinely ahead of the curve rather than one that says it is.

His sharpest advice for a contractor shopping for help: AI is a tool, not the answer. An agency selling an all-AI plan is one to walk away from. An agency using AI to sharpen its own process and hand you better work is one to keep. AI does not replace effort, and the recent spam updates proved it.

He changes his mind in public, too. He used to believe an agency should own organic social for contractors. He no longer does — the return is best when the owner posts their own work and their own personality, or at minimum supplies the photos and video, because what an agency has to charge to do it properly rarely pays off for a small service business.

Corey's name should have been Jack — as in “Jack of All Trades.” It's probably better his parents decided against that one though, since JOAT isn't as cool of a nickname as CK.

Appropriately named or not, Corey's multi-talented knack and vision for helping small businesses (and every single member of #TeamTriton) succeed says so much about who he is. A risk taker that's far smarter than he'll ever admit — which could be an admission in itself right there.