Jacki DeVries Helps Businesses Get Recommended by AI

At Tech Week Grand Rapids, Jacki DeVries listened to multiple CTOs say the same thing: within six to nine months, buying decisions would move off the website and into AI agents. She watched them build software with AI agents handling basic search work, and she knew the shift was real. So she reinvented her company to meet it.

Jacki DeVries is the founder of FireUp AIO, where she helps established businesses become the ones AI recommends when buyers turn to tools like ChatGPT and Google to decide who to trust and hire. After more than 15 years in search, she built the FIREUP Framework to give founders a repeatable system for getting cited in AI-generated answers, not just ranked in a list of links. A member of the Entreprenista League, she works at the intersection of search, authority, and trust.

"I thrive in chaos, I'm a data nerd, and I love to learn," Jacki says.

Here is how 15 years in search marketing became a business built for a moment that most people did not see coming.

A career built on search

Jacki knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur from the age of 7, watching her father build a business from scratch and refuse to quit. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in advertising and a specialization in sales communication, then started out at fast-moving companies like Groupon and Angie's List.

From there she led the SEO, PPC, and CRO department at her family's business for five years, which is where she developed her technical and strategic depth. That work opened the door to a stretch alongside Neil Patel, one of the top names in digital marketing, before she joined a marketing agency in downtown Grand Rapids. Across all of it, search was the thread that kept pulling her back.

The comment that named it

The leap started with something her agency's CEO said. When she described what truly fired Jacki up in the morning, what got her out of bed every day, the answer was search.

"That comment named something I already felt but hadn't said out loud," Jacki says. She had spent over a decade building deep skill in search marketing, and she knew she wanted to put it to work on her own terms. So she launched FireUp SEO and bet on herself.

Seeing the shift before the market did

Jacki started by networking locally, thinking it would be easier than building an online presence. She quickly realized the internet was where her real buyers were, but the local circuit gave her something else: an early signal of where the whole industry was headed.

Six months after she rebuilt her company as FireUp AIO, Google AI Overviews exploded. Buyers started asking ChatGPT and Google's AI for recommendations, and businesses that had done everything right by traditional standards were getting passed over. She had already positioned herself for exactly that moment.

There was a detour along the way. A strategist with a strong track record advised her to focus on teaching people how to do AI search marketing, and Jacki went with it against her gut. Four months in, she pulled the plug. "Almost no one actually wants to learn how to do what I do," she says. "They want the results, and they will pay a premium for someone else to deliver them." She shifted her model to match what her audience actually wanted, and it has worked ever since.

Proof in the numbers

Jacki recently finished a 12-month case study for a small B2B manufacturer whose traffic was being quietly erased by AI Overviews and zero-click search. After rebuilding the site around her FIREUP Framework, organic monthly clicks grew 210 percent, from 2,217 to 6,880. The business went from being cited by 1 AI engine to 5, each now recommending it by name.

Its average Google position climbed roughly 20 spots, from page 3 to page 1. One reference chart she created, now frequently cited in Google AI Overviews, jumped from 1 to 3,895 monthly clicks. The full breakdown is in her case study.

The accomplishment she names alongside it is more personal: building her automated AI Visibility Scorecard. "I had no idea what I was getting into on the technical and backend development side, and I have never been more proud of something I built," she says.

Who she works with

Jacki's clients are established businesses in the United States and Canada, typically three or more years in and past the startup scramble. They are founders, marketers, and service providers who already understand that search matters and are done with DIY guesswork and reports that do not deliver.

They come to her when they realize AI is changing how buyers find and choose businesses, and they want a clear system to stay visible, trusted, and recommended. She often works as the AI search layer that extends what branding partners and fractional CMOs are already doing.

What community taught her

Jacki started out believing she had to figure the business out alone. What surprised her was how much connection mattered. "The conversations, referrals, and shared experiences with other founders have shortened my learning curve in ways going solo never could," she says. She wishes she had leaned into that support sooner.

Her advice for aspiring founders is grounded in the same honesty. She recommends The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster by Darren Hardy, mostly for the encouragement, and she is candid about the timeline. "Whether you keep your day job or go all in, expect it to take about three years to really grow," she says. "You're building something for you and your family, and that long-term investment is SO worth it in the end."

What is next is scaling the system she built and continuing to deliver real growth for her clients. "Seeing others succeed because of what I built for them is what fills my cup," she says.

You can follow Jacki on LinkedIn, connect with FireUp AIO on LinkedIn, and find her services at fireup-aio.com.

If Jacki's approach to AI search visibility resonates, you are encouraged to join the Entreprenista League: a community of women founders who value connection, shared experience, and practical business insight as they grow. Learn more about the Entreprenista League right here.