Ey up. Book David Johnson to speak.

Agency owner who went and bought the shop

David is a Yorkshireman who's built a business life out of one rule: bet on your strengths. He started in electrical engineering, took the problem-solving instinct that came with it, and turned it first into a career in search, then into a portfolio of businesses he owns and runs himself.

He's the founder and managing director of LoudCrowd, working on Shopify SEO, Core Web Vitals and answer engine optimisation for ecommerce brands, and local SEO for Yorkshire trades through the sister site loudcrowd.digital. He's named in independent AEO expert roundups and 2026 conference speaker lists, and he's hands-on with the work: the person on the first call is the person running the campaign.

Where most agency owners stay online, David went the other way. Sat across from clients for years, he could see the gap between what a lead costs to generate and what it's worth to the person who owns the till. So he bought one. Then another. He now runs three tanning salons across South Yorkshire, applying agency-grade local SEO, properly tracked paid ads and an engineer's eye for broken systems to a sector where the competition has a Facebook page and a prayer.

That's the story behind An Owner's Life in Business: the ups, the downs, buying businesses, and why the boring stuff is often the best stuff. He hates speakers who tell a room what they should be doing without showing how, so his sessions come with the actual playbook: what he did, what it cost, and what he'd do differently. Strong accent, no filter, usually opens with "Ey up".