Imagine standing in Tomorrowland, missing three rides with your kids while you frantically reboot a client’s website from your phone.
That’s exactly what happened to Paul Letourneau, founder of YEG Digital.
It was the moment he realized something had to change.
🎥 Watch the full interview on YouTube:
From French Teacher to Agency Owner
Paul didn’t start out in tech. He studied to be a French kindergarten teacher, taught English in Taiwan, and learned to build websites in Dreamweaver, long before Facebook existed. His curiosity carried him from education to digital media, to big-agency life, and finally to founding his own agency in Edmonton.
“I’m not big on smoke and mirrors. I like transparency.”
Burnout, Panic, and a Reset
After climbing the corporate ladder, Paul found himself leading marketing for a major automotive group. Then came the panic attack, the kind that sends you to the hospital and makes you question everything.
Within months, he left his executive job to work from home and build a small, remote team. He designed the life he actually wanted.
“We just designed the life that we wanted.”
Back to Kinsta and Back to Balance
The Disneyland server meltdown made him rethink his tech stack too.
He moved 110 sites to Kinsta because he needed reliability, responsive chat support, and a mobile dashboard that actually worked.
“The best part is, I don’t even have to do it anymore.
My project manager reaches out to Kinsta before I do.”
That kind of trust lets him focus on people, not panic.
AI as Enhancement, Not Replacement
Today, Paul’s team uses AI for copy, research, and content audits, always transparently. They paste entire websites into ChatGPT or Perplexity to spot messaging gaps and new opportunities.
“AI isn’t here to replace you. It’s here to enhance you.”
The Takeaway
Paul’s story reminds me that success isn’t just measured in uptime or revenue; it’s in the freedom to be present for the moments that matter.
Reliable systems, supportive teams, and a bit of automation can help us get there.
Full Transcript
Paul Letourneau (00:00)
I was right in Tomorrowland and I was on another platform and one of our major sites went down and I was standing there on my phone trying to reset the server, trying to figure it out. Like I missed like three rides with my kids and I was just choked. Like I was just like I’ve had enough of this and honestly the thing that ticks me off the most was not so much like the server was great like we fixed the server everything was fine. I mean stuff happened.
Roger Williams (00:19)
Yeah.
Paul Letourneau (00:26)
right? It happens with everybody. But I had no support. I was doing it on my own. the thing that frustrated me the most was the platform I was on, their mobile experience was just terrible. And so when I moved to Kinsta,
Roger Williams (00:27)
Sure. Sure.
Paul Letourneau (00:38)
the chat support Kinsta has is amazing. And you know what the best part is? I don’t have to do it. So our project manager gets in there. If she has an issue, she actually reaches out to Kinsta first before I have to, which like as a business owner, that frees me up, right? So it’s been really nice, but their mobile experience, like the site on mobile is just sick. It’s amazing.
Roger Williams (00:50)
Yeah.
Hey everybody, it’s Roger with Kinsta. I’m joined today by a good friend, Paul. Hey Paul, how you doing?
Paul Letourneau (01:04)
Good, how’s everybody doing?
Roger Williams (01:06)
doing really well. It’s been a while since we’ve talked. We ran into each other at WordCamp US last year. And, you know, I know you’re a great partner with Kinsta. We love working with you. But, you know, before we get into anything like that, I’m really curious to learn more about how you got into digital marketing. Like, where did this come from? Did you have like a computer as a kid? Did you go to school for this? How did this happen?
Paul Letourneau (01:30)
Oh man, that’s a loaded question. So, I mean no, I did not start out knowing what I wanted to do. I actually came out of high school, this is a long time ago, 20 years ago now, and wanted to be a French kindergarten teacher, believe it or not. Yeah, I know. mean, Canadian to the core, right? I went to school for it, went to university in French afterwards. Figured it out really quick, yeah, exactly.
Roger Williams (01:37)
Okay.
Yeah.
Whoa. Yeah.
Oui, oui.
Paul Letourneau (01:56)
Figured out really quick that it was just not for me. I just enjoyed more of the lifestyle part of university so I had a hard time getting to class right and then ⁓ You know went through went through your first year and then you know what honestly I jumped around a lot I went to a couple different universities I did a little bit of digital media. I did like a certificate course in that was like that’s kind of cool But I actually I specialize in video
Roger Williams (02:06)
Yeah, buddy. Yeah, buddy.
Paul Letourneau (02:21)
And back then it was like, we were like over the shoulder video cameras with tapes. Like they had just come out with the mini tapes at that point. So, and we were still using flash for web design. So like, that was like the extent I hated flash. So I was just like, couldn’t, I couldn’t do it. And then, you know, I graduated. I had absolutely no job opportunities coming out of that. It just wasn’t the right time in the early 2000s.
Roger Williams (02:26)
Yeah. Yes, yes.
Yep.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Paul Letourneau (02:48)
So I
actually went and taught English overseas. I went to Taiwan and spent six months out there. And that’s where I think I actually, you know, just in, you know, nature and everything like that and being disconnected from my family. I just started trying to figure out how to use Dreamweaver again. And I built my own blog and just started sharing some photos and sharing some things so that I could share it with my friends and family back home. And this is pre-Facebook.
Roger Williams (03:06)
Okay.
Paul Letourneau (03:16)
And then that just kind of took off and everything else was self-taught. YouTube, a lot of that. And then I just came back and started taking jobs where I could get more and more into web until eventually about nine years ago now I left and started this.
Roger Williams (03:21)
Okay?
Beautiful. I’d love this story. So all right kindergarten teacher teaching French Why why how did that like how was that something that was in there?
Paul Letourneau (03:40)
I don’t know, my whole family is teachers. So I just, it was easy, right? And we were like, okay. I love French. My last name’s Le Tonneau, we’re Canadian. It’s just part of our culture. I was like, man, I love teaching. Maybe this will work and I like kids.
Roger Williams (03:42)
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Letourneau (03:56)
did not work out. actually married a teacher though, that’s the funny part. So she teaches anywhere from kindergarten to grade five. And we have three kids as well from kindergarten to grade four. it’s, yeah, it’s all kind of worked its way out.
Roger Williams (03:58)
Yeah, there you go.
Okay.
Beautiful.
Absolutely, Alright, so fast forward a little bit. went and taught English in Taiwan. I have to say there was a moment in my life where I was really close to doing just that. Any quick tip of advice for people who are considering like, hey, I want to go and teach English in another country because I’ve heard some horror stories. What was your take? What was your experience? Okay.
Paul Letourneau (04:30)
it was pretty cool. I mean, I
was 21. I was not prepared. I knew nothing. Like the internet wasn’t the same back in 2002, right? Not like the same as it is now. I I remember we had to get like those plug-in headsets and we used Skype to talk to each other. ⁓ So it wasn’t the same. But nowadays, man, just make sure you do your research on your country. I have some good friends who are in Abu Dhabi and they’re loving it. ⁓
Roger Williams (04:40)
Sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Paul Letourneau (04:57)
Friends that went to South Korea loved it. So I say just do it. I mean, it’s an amazing experience.
Roger Williams (05:01)
Okay.
Sweet, sweet. right. So anything from that experience that you still kind of pull from today when you’re working with clients?
Paul Letourneau (05:11)
Yeah, I think just being open and easy to talk to, when you travel you have to meet random people, right? You just strike up conversations. So I think anytime I jump on a call, it’s just about being a normal human, I guess. I don’t know, it’s, right? Just like you’re traveling and you meet people. You’re traveling, I I go through three four calls a day with potential new clients. You’re meeting them every day, you meet new people. So just treating everybody with respect and being kind and, you know.
Roger Williams (05:27)
Yeah.
Paul Letourneau (05:39)
Moving through it.
Roger Williams (05:40)
Man, I love it. The golden rule, right? ⁓ All right, so Dreamweaver, you built a website, but obviously WordPress is in here. How did WordPress come into your life?
Paul Letourneau (05:42)
Yeah!
So I got back from traveling and I went and I actually worked for our local school board and they managed about 200 Joomla sites and that was hard to do. There was a lot going on. So my job was to figure out if there was another way. so knowing my little bit of digital.
Roger Williams (06:08)
Okay.
Paul Letourneau (06:16)
background and then I had a bit of background in communications and public relations I kind of merged the two together and started just looking into WordPress and Not knowing kind of the levels of how you can do things I just called WordPress VIP right away and I met somebody there that that was super kind was like hey just go to dot org like start there and You know just kind of tailored my expectations a little bit, but and then YouTube
Roger Williams (06:30)
Okay.
Sure.
Paul Letourneau (06:42)
I just started learning. I started playing and learning and eventually we rebuilt our first site, our first school website with WordPress and I trained the IT guys at the school board on how to do it and then we just iterated and went one after the other after the other and then eventually I had a friend who had a blog who I still manage to site to this day who asked me to build him on a blog and I did and I was like, hey, I can maybe do this for other people.
Roger Williams (06:49)
Yep.
What’s the blog?
Paul Letourneau (07:11)
It’s wildsaud.ca, so w-i-l-d-s-a-u.ca. He’s the only Canadian blogger who has journalism status for automotive in Canada. Yeah, so he’s been all over the world. I mean, I haven’t touched the site in a long time, but he does amazing work and he reviews vehicles. yeah.
Roger Williams (07:23)
Whoa, okay, awesome.
Beautiful beautiful. All right.
Well, so so all right, so you start your agency you get that you get the reps in with this school project What was what made you take the final leap to like okay, I’m gonna do this is on my own as an agency ⁓ How did that happen?
Paul Letourneau (07:47)
Yeah.
It wasn’t quite yet. I probably had another six or eight years of learning in there. So I went to a large local agency. I was their lead digital strategist for two or three years where we were doing million dollar projects. It was huge. It’s like, you know, the fancy, you know, mad men type stuff. ⁓ That was an interesting learning experience. I learned that I’m not one.
Roger Williams (07:53)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Paul Letourneau (08:13)
that’s big on smoke and mirrors. love transparency. I don’t like the song and dance that come with a lot of agencies. So that was a really big thing that I still use today in our day to day. And then I went to an online university and worked with them. So started learning a little bit more about conversion optimization, still bringing my WordPress along with me.
Roger Williams (08:16)
Okay.
Yeah.
Paul Letourneau (08:35)
And then we actually went to automotive. so I was the head of marketing for the largest automotive group, one of the largest in Canada. So we had 75 dealers and my job was to just oversee all of their sites and make sure that their sites were converting. We had a team of 25, know, digital marketers, basically, graph designers that all supported those sites. And so I just started getting into the data things and how we can make things better.
Roger Williams (08:55)
Yeah.
Paul Letourneau (09:01)
And then honestly, our second daughter came along and I had my first ever and only ever panic attack. And it was tough and a lot of people struggled with it. I knew nothing about it. And it put me in the hospital and about three months later, I was just like, I’m done being an executive. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was like, I’m done. I want to be at home and started this and it’s been amazing. So now I get to work from home. My team of 10 is remote.
Roger Williams (09:09)
wow.
Paul Letourneau (09:31)
And yeah, I mean, we just designed the life that we wanted.
Roger Williams (09:35)
man, that’s beautiful. I love hearing happy, happy outcomes to really hard situations. And thank you so much for sharing that. know, you know, I find myself getting burnt out on occasion and, you know, making sure to take a deep breath and take care of yourself and make sure that you’re okay is so important. Right. ⁓ But this is a beautiful story. Like, I love the story behind the beginnings of this and how your daughter plays a role and
Paul Letourneau (09:55)
yeah.
Roger Williams (10:02)
So it sounds, you know, the passion has got to be there. Who are the clients that you’re working with now?
Paul Letourneau (10:09)
man, they range everything from small business, home-based, service-based business, know, lot of those local. mean, Y-E-G digital is, yeah, is our airport code. Like I know that’s, when we started the business, it was like, man, that’s awesome. Cause Edmonton’s big on Twitter and I guess X now and you know, we hashtag everything, but it was big for our local. So it just.
Yeah, I mean, we just went with that and everything is focused on companies mostly in Edmonton, Alberta, but we’ve reached out like now we’re down in the States, around the world, like we work with some like multi-country companies. But so everything from small business to, you know, we’ve really gotten into medium sized enterprise lately, ⁓ which has been really cool because, you know, with WordPress, you gotta keep it really simple when you get to that point. And it’s like, gotta, it’s more about the user experience and paring it down.
Roger Williams (10:35)
Okay.
Okay.
Paul Letourneau (10:56)
So yeah, we’re all over the place.
Roger Williams (10:58)
Beautiful. Walk me through some engagements. With a small independent company, one person, maybe 10 or something, when you’re engaged with them, are you going soup to nuts? Are you figuring out marketing message all the way up to launching the website?
Paul Letourneau (11:14)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, we can’t just, I have a hard time, I don’t know, it’s me. My project manager Janelle would agree, I would hope, but she just says like, I get in my own way sometimes. Like I wanna help so much. So it’s my own fault, but I can’t just take on a website that’s just like, hey, we just need a brochure website. If this is what it’s gotta say, like it’s just not in my nature to not be helpful and not to add in that extra value of.
hey, have you thought of this? Because we’ve done this on a hundred other website builds. This could help you, right? Like, I don’t know, we get very involved and you know, that’s why we price where we price and that’s why we like to do the soup to nuts. I don’t like to just get involved and say, yeah, we can just build that rinse and repeat. It’s it’s not as fun.
Roger Williams (12:03)
Sure, no, absolutely. love it. So really bringing your passion again, bringing that passion in and all the experience that you’ve got and also tying into really relating to people and the golden rule that you talked about. At what point did Kinsta become part of your world?
Paul Letourneau (12:18)
So, it’s actually funny. So I moved to Kinsta actually quite a few years ago and then left because I thought the grass was greener. then came back because I was standing in, I mean, so we have three girls, three little girls, and my wife is obsessed with Disneyland. So we go to Disneyland a lot. And I was standing in Disneyland in California.
Roger Williams (12:23)
Yeah.
Okay.
Paul Letourneau (12:41)
and I was right in Tomorrowland and I was on another platform and one of our major sites went down and I was standing there on my phone trying to reset the server, trying to figure it out. Like I missed like three rides with my kids and I was just choked. Like I was just like I’ve had enough of this and honestly the thing that ticks me off the most was not so much like the server was great like we fixed the server everything was fine. I mean stuff happened.
Roger Williams (13:01)
Yeah.
Paul Letourneau (13:08)
right? It happens with everybody. But I had no support. I was doing it on my own. So I had to reach out to a buddy who was local, who knew the platform. And so he’s working on it. And I think it was even a Saturday. Like it just was a mess. But the thing that frustrated me the most was the platform I was on, their mobile experience was just terrible. And so when I moved to Kinsta, and then we just moved like 110 sites to Kinsta.
Roger Williams (13:09)
Sure. Sure.
Ugh.
Paul Letourneau (13:34)
Like we were just like, we’re done, that’s it, we’re done. Like I want the support because of the chat support. Like the chat support Kinsta has is amazing. And it really is. And you know what the best part is? I don’t have to do it. So our project manager gets in there. If she has an issue, she actually reaches out to Kinsta first before I have to, which like as a business owner, that frees me up, right? So it’s been really nice, but their mobile experience, like the site on mobile is just sick. It’s amazing.
Roger Williams (13:55)
Yeah.
Paul Letourneau (14:03)
So I can do anything on it and I know that’s like a little thing but it’s really helpful for me.
Roger Williams (14:10)
awesome. Awesome. That’s great to hear. Yeah. And I use I find myself more often. Like I’m using I’m using WordPress on my phone, right? I’m logging in through the browser because the block editor experience is fantastic on mobile. And so then occasionally, I’ll need to log into my kinsta and I’m on my phone and I’m like, it all works. This is this is amazing. ⁓
Paul Letourneau (14:23)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Roger Williams (14:31)
Big shout out to the support team I have all of my respect goes out to them they do an amazing job so I’m really glad to hear that you guys are getting the same experience as well that we want everybody to have. Are there any features of the Kinsta dashboard or the product that you really are just like wow this is a game changer?
Paul Letourneau (14:52)
There’s been a couple of new ones lately that have been a game changer. So the automatic updates has been really nice Adding into that just because like as an agency you’re plugging in all these different pieces of software to try and automate your life, So that’s really a nice one The changing of PHP actually per site has been a game changer because we have some ecommerce sites that just need more resources So being able to just go in quickly change that one site. That’s been huge
Roger Williams (14:57)
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
Paul Letourneau (15:17)
And then just, I mean, the team in general has just been incredibly open to other feedback, which has been really fun and just sending in like, hey, it’d be really nice if we could have auto login, right? Click on the WordPress icon, automatically logs us in. Man, I could probably save myself a lot of other pieces of software and money every month if I just had that one piece. So it’s cool to, you know, I’m still a user of it, but to at least be able to have a bit of an ear to send that in as a user.
Roger Williams (15:37)
Yeah, yeah.
Paul Letourneau (15:46)
and improve the platform.
Roger Williams (15:47)
awesome. Awesome. And just to kind of recap, you’re talking about the automatic plugin update feature that has visual regression testing. So people are aware of that. PHP memory, we have the ability now for adjusting the threads and the memory amount on a per site basis, which yeah, when we came out with that tool, was like, this is like people are going to eat this up. This is amazing. And then yeah, the feedback, right? We’re very open to receiving feedback, hearing how we can do better. I know that the one click
login thing is definitely on the roadmap, we’re getting there for you. So like, and that’s what’s really fun about building our own dashboard, right? We have that capability because it’s our dashboard. And and we can do kind of whatever we want with it. So man, that’s beautiful. I love hearing all that feedback. And thank you for sharing it. As we’re moving forward, it’s 2025 AI is everywhere. It’s what we’re all talking about. There’s a lot of hype.
But there’s also a lot of practical use. I use it every single day, but it doesn’t do my job for me. How are you guys approaching AI internally and also when you’re talking with your customers?
Paul Letourneau (16:58)
Yeah, I we’re very transparent that we’re using it. First off, mean, it’s in, you know, every client that we talk to knows that we’re using it, knows how we’re using it. You know, we set limits on what we upload, what we don’t upload with them at the very beginning. So, but it’s a tool. I mean, it’s incredibly helpful. I was down at South by Southwest with a good friend of mine from MultiDots and ⁓ he was…
Roger Williams (17:10)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Paul Letourneau (17:21)
We were in this presentation and they were talking about how AI is not meant to replace you, it’s meant to enhance you. And that’s really what we’ve done with our team. And so, you know, our team shares all the new AI stuff that they’re diving into, that they’re using, we fully encourage it. We do use it for everything from copywriting. I mean, you need to really work with it to make sure it doesn’t have a dash in every single sentence. You know, like little stuff that everybody knows about, right?
Roger Williams (17:39)
Sure.
Sure, yeah.
Paul Letourneau (17:45)
But it helps with design and layout and a good practice that we often do is we’re just gonna copy and paste the entire website into a chat, into like perplexity or chat GPT, whatever you want, and just have it give us a really good understanding of what the client is, who the client is, what they’re all about, what’s on their website. We’ll pair that with the notes from our meeting and it’ll actually show us gaps in what the client has on their website and what they don’t. Or you can do that with competitors.
We’ll use it for a ton of different ways.
Roger Williams (18:15)
Sure, sure. No, I love it. And I think, you know, there’s this, this hype cycle, right, that happens with all these technologies. And it, you know, AI is definitely victim of this, but there’s so many practical uses, but you still have to work with it. It’s not just an easy button, click and boom, everything takes off.
Paul, this has been a fantastic discussion. really appreciate your time. I try and keep things short here. What, if people want to get in touch with you, if they want to work with you or just talk with you, what are the best ways for them to reach out?
Paul Letourneau (18:47)
Yeah, best way is just our website, yegdigital.com. I’m also on X, trying to get more active on it, so it’s just Paul Letourneau. But yeah, or LinkedIn, whatever the case is, just look me up.
Roger Williams (18:59)
Wonderful, Paul. I appreciate the time. I look forward to speaking with you again soon, man. Have a great day.
Paul Letourneau (19:05)
Yeah, you too, Roger. Thanks.