Starting My Business | A Creative SEO Agency

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Good morning and welcome to this episode of our podcast. And it is your journey from underdog to superhero.

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And it's been a crazy week for me. I've taken some big moves in my business to get it where I want it to be, and it is very uncomfortable.

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And that's all part of the growth is when you start to be able to take risks and do things that are uncomfortable to really get where you want to be. So let me kind of recap where I came from

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and where I'm going. So we'll start in the beginning. So, when I moved here from England when I was

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14 years old, it was a very difficult move. And I've said that it was a socially a difficult move, but it was also academically a very difficult move.

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Just did not understand how school worked or where to go or what to do. I was entering high school at the time, and I had no idea about the rules. We never had

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homework in England. It was really strange that we didn't have homework, but we never had homework up until, like, freshman year. And so everything and everything was

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totally different. The curriculums were different. What they were teaching was different. We were way ahead on some things. We were way behind on other things. They didn't teach american history in Europe because

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they didn't think Americans had history. It was only a couple hundred years, and they're like, that's nonsense, you know? And so there's so many things I didn't know, and I didn't understand how things worked or

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anything. So when I first came to America, I really struggled in school. I didn't understand homework. The teacher would call it assignments, and I thought that was

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super agents, should you choose this mission. I had no idea. I was completely lost. And so it took a good year for me to go from the

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very bottom to where I was actually felt comfortable. I wasn't always lost, and I wasn't overwhelmed by just not knowing what was going on and

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understanding, you know? And even though it's the same language, the language is different enough that I just. It was just so different. But what happened

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was that I realized that I was ahead in other. In certain subjects, I was ahead. And so what they was able to do was to basically test out of some

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classes, and I was able to graduate at the end of my junior year with all the advanced classes, college level classes that they offered at the time, just because the education

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system was so different. And my strongest lanes were art and math. And my sister had gone ahead as

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an artist, and she got a degree in a two year degree in graphic design and she went to work for

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agencies, but I saw she was really struggling and it wasn't that starving artist type thing. And I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. So I'm like, okay, well, I'm really good at math. Or, I mean, I

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understand math. I would not call it good at, but I understood math made sense to me. So I decided to become a math major. And it was really interesting

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because the first, you know, two years of being a math major, the kids around me and the classes we were in were all like,

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engineering, part of their prerequisites. Prerequisites. And then, like, pre med had to have advanced math, and then, like, chemistry majors and you know, other

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like, stem programs had this advanced math, like calc, three differential equations, things like that. And then I started to get into the more advanced classes that were only

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people that were actually taking math. And I looked around me and I'm like, oh, my gosh, these are not my people. I was like really outgoing. My dad was in sales. I

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always thought, well, at some point in time I'm going to be in sales. That just kind of naturally that kind of fit who I was. And so

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I looked around at all the colleges and all the degrees, and I'm like, okay, marketing is my degree. These are my people. It's that nice combination

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between, you know, creativity being, you know, really, you know, my artistic, creative background combined with

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sales, advertising, how to make money, things like that. So it just, it just made a lot of sense for me to be in marketing. And just everything about

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it was like, oh, I like this, I like this, I like this. I can see some point in time having my own business. I can see doing what I'm doing now. And it

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really, the part that really appealed to me was the ability to grow companies, to grow product lines, to grow companies, to grow, provide that level of growth. And

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so that fit me and the personalities of the people in marketing. I'm like, man, these are my people. Switched to marketing

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when I graduated. I couldn't get a job. And when I was in high school, I was working in hotels. And so I ended up getting a job for the first two and a half years

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in a hotel, managing the whole front office of a hotel. I had like 56 employees. And the one thing that I was always a problem solver. My

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whole life I've been a problem solver. That's why I gravitate to this program. And it just makes sense to me is to solve problems. But you know, when I first started in college, working the

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front desk, there was just always chaos, like, absolute chaos as far as rooms being available, people being upset, people being mad. So I

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developed all these systems to minimize the chaos and everything that I would anticipate what things are going to happen, and then I would develop, like, these little programs,

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these little systems to just, you can't always minimize chaos, but you can control it in some way. So I would develop these different ways to deal with large groups coming in that all want to be on the same

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floor and things like that. And I'd start to problem solve and problem solve and problem solve. And I learned really good tactical skills of dealing with upset people, because

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you always have upset people in the hotel business. You know, someone before them left an odor in the room, or, you know, you've got. And then you attract a certain level of crazy

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where people have these expectations that aren't realistic. Back then, people smoked, and even in the non smoking rooms, people smoked. And so. And then you would overbook, and

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you'd have to walk people to other hotels, and there'd just be all this, like, chaos and drama. I would do everything I could to minimize that and be able to, you know, learn how to calm people down

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when they're just really upset. Like, you know, just agree and listen. Don't argue, don't be defensive, things like that. So I garnered some fantastic skills.

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Excuse me, but the. And so I went into the hotel business, and that was just not my scene. I mean, it just really. And it was the first job I ever got fired from. It was like. And

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it was very interesting, and I'm not gonna go into it, but it was a very. It was a very, very strange, strange, strange situation. And

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I basically. It was a completely inappropriate situation now, it would be considered, you know, like, you could probably sue on

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it now, you know? But it was totally inappropriate. It was totally crossed all the lines, and it was just something that

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I did not disclose with my boss, and she just then lost all faith and trust in me because I didn't disclose something to her. That was my personal, private life, had nothing to

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do with my job. And so she ended up firing me. And it was really. It was really an interesting time in my life because then I tried a couple of

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other things that didn't fit. And then finally I found a job where they were looking for a sales admin. And I'm like, I will take the sales admin

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job if I can get that done, that job done in half the time. The other half of the time I can do marketing for you. And because I had to create my own marketing job

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because there were no marketing jobs at the time. So this is back late nineties, no, late eighties, sorry to put in reference, this is back in the late

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eighties, early nineties. I started, so I started there in 1991 and I said, I will develop this job. So quickly they saw what I

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could do with marketing and so then they hired somebody in to do the sales admin job and then I moved to 100% marketing. And for them I did everything. I

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did all types of direct mail ads, you know, you name it. Back in the day, the

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marketing that existed, I did the marketing. And I went back to grad school during this job. And in one of

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the presentations during grad school, someone started talking about the Internet. Like the Internet was coming. It was the first time I'd ever heard about the Internet. And so I convinced my boss, like,

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hey, we need to be on the forefront of this. You know, get me the type of computer that we could develop a website on and help me to,

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let me help you to be the first. So I built the first website and front page and then I built their first ecommerce system. And then I realized that

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then I started doing SEO and I realized that this is it at the time. So this was a b, two b company. And they were, we were in the plastics industry. We were a

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mold shop, so we had a foundry and we had a lot of CNC machines, a lot of equipment. But we were also in the plastics industry and I was very heavily involved in the plastics industry. So I

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would, you know, be on committees, I'd be giving white papers, I'd give me presentations, you know, trade shows, lots of trade shows, things like that. And so,

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and then at the time for manufacturing companies, the only way you found manufacturing companies prior to the Internet was these big books called Thomas Register. And you would go in and you would look in these big

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books and you would massive books. Like each one was like ten pounds. It was ridiculous. You have this whole shelf of books, a to z, and you would go in and you would search, it'd be like the phone book for

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industrial. Anyway, I could see right away that that's going to be completely gone obscure and that people are going to search for what they're

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looking for on the Internet and they're going to find it. So just as the Internet was coming out, just as Google was getting its legs, started figuring out SEO, and then just

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really realized that that's the lane that's where the future's going to be. People are going to search for things and find things. So that's where I positioned myself. And

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I had this amazing boss, absolutely amazing boss. And I, when I talk about those people that have had the greatest impact on my life, this is somebody, and I

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will, I'll tell his story in not this episode. It's a really great story. But he said, you are so good at

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this, you should really go out and do this. And I'm like, yes, I should. So he allowed me to go down to four days a week and then three days a week

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and then two days a week, and then I, you know, resigned. And what I did was I sent letters out to all the small manufacturing companies in the area and I said, look, this is what I can do and

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this is what I've done for this company. This is the future. This is what's coming. And that most small manufacturing companies have strictly had

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salespeople. They've never had marketing people. They didn't need marketing people at the time, but this is coming. And, you know, hire me for 8 hours a day and I will bring this into your company. You don't need a full

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time marketing person, you just need a part time marketing person to get you started. But I will get you into this world and I will, you know, because that's the biggest challenge is nobody knows how to get started

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when you've never had a website before. It's one thing redesigning an existing website, but starting from scratch, how do you. And I'm like, I'm totally, you know, I know rubber, I know plastics, I know

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chemicals, I know manufacturing, I know welding, I know CNC, I know all these really, really things that nobody knows. And I can put together a website for you

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and I can, you know, develop this for you and I can get you into this space that never existed. And it was really successful. I mean, right off the bat, I got four clients. Enough to, you know, somewhere like 4

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hours a week, somewhere like 8 hours a week. But I got four, four clients right off the bat that paid my way to exit my, my full time job and

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then just kept adding clients. And then this became services. So we started with web design and we started with SEO and that was like

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2001. And today I still have some of those clients that we started with. It's amazing. And it turned out that they don't need

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salespeople now. They don't need anything. They just, we keep them at the top of the Internet and they just get the orders that they need. And, you know, what has really

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worked for us over the years is figuring out how the people we can help. So, you know, if it's a super competitive industry, we're not going to be able to get you to number one unless

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you've got millions of dollars to throw at it. And it's just, and it's not the right way for you to build your business in a competitive industry. But if it's not very competitive, you know,

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if there's only four or five players and, you know, and they are not really, they're kind of not playing their A game at SEO, we absolutely can get you there. And the

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wonderful thing is that we are not afraid of manufacturing, we're not afraid of technical, we're not afraid of anything. And I think that's one of my

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superpowers going in was I could look at a company and I know exactly what you do. I know exactly who your customers are. Within 5 seconds, I had

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a full grasp on who you are, what you need to do, how you need to do it, then what the roadmap was for you, where you needed to take your business, how you could possibly grow, what are the

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opportunities for you, and just lay out a strategy and do it. Very cost efficient, very effective. And then what these companies that have been with us for years and years found was

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the ROI on this was ridiculous because it was just a steady flow of inquiries, a steady flow of new customers, a steady flow of new business. And we have some people that, like, especially during

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COVID when things were in short supply and people were going down the list searching for people, you know, they doubled their business during COVID So it really works.

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And so this is kind of the lane I've got into. But some of the things that I've learned along the way is what I'm really leaning into now, which is peace of

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mind. So when I was a freelancer and all of these businesses were hiring me, they would get everything they

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needed. So they'd get a website, they'd get SEO going. But at the time, they didn't understand SEO. And once we got them to the top, they're like, okay, well, we no longer need you,

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because no one else was competing with them at the time. No one else was doing SEO. So it was very easy for them to win. Or they'd look at what I'm doing and they're going, oh, well, we can do this ourselves now, or

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we'd get all their marketing materials and I swear to God, in the, in the industrial manufacturing world, like CNC machining. We still have brochures that were created in 2002 that they're

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still using. They don't see the need for branding, they don't see the need for identity, they don't see the need for any of that. So

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what I discovered was these clients kind of ran their course and I always needed a steady flow of clients to reload. So we did the same thing for ourselves as we did for our

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clients. Where we had, you know, we did SEO for web design. Nobody actually was searching for SEO. They didn't really understand SEO. And the people that got to the top of SEO were really

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scam businesses. So we got a really bad black eye for a long time, you know, especially people with a gaming the Google system and everything. And we were, we're rule followers. We play by the

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rules, but we find what is the bandwidth can we play with within those rules? And we're super creative, but Google's always changing the algorithms. There's always like, oh man,

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what happened? And so then it's quick. As quick as we possibly can recover, we recover. The big difference in Google today though is Google is in the beginning,

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Google wasn't about making money. Google had a very strict policy that they weren't going to run ads and they weren't going to make money. Google has done a complete 180 on that now. And I don't

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know if you've seen the last algorithm update on your phone, but it's ads, ads, ads, ads one, organic ads, ads, ads, ads two, organic ads, ads,

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ads, ads three, organic. And it really is, it's really a tough environment to play with because that number one spot is so precious and it's so easy to get

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knocked out of with an algorithm update. So we try to, you know, it's a lot more volatile now, especially since Google's trying to make money. So we play in all the areas we do, you know, PPC

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ads, even though there's so much fraud in them. And it just like your competitors are going out and clicking on your ads every day, you know, burning through your budget and you know,

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that type of fraud. And Google will, if you're click, click, click, they won't charge you for all the clicks, but, you know, they'll charge you for some of them and, you know, it just is, it's a tough,

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tough space to work in. But back in the day we used to get Google Ads for ten cents a note from our sponsor, advancreative, and our featured client, treetops. Treetops delivers

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And it's really worth the trip. You know, it could be like 35, $25. So it's, it's a tough market to be in, but we still work with SEO and SEO still is. Even with all of these

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obstacles, 75% of the people click skip the ads. So no matter what, because they don't trust it. But there's this natural referral. If

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Google's put you at number one, it's almost like a referral, that this has to be a good, a good site, it has to be a good provider, or they wouldn't be able to stay at number one. So there comes this

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credibility with that and then the ability to deliver what the customers, the end customer coming in is looking for, answering their questions, building

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that credibility and then designing it in a way where it converts. Like, you know, start talking to us. Let us help solve your problems. This is, you know, how we help solve this customer's problems.

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You're looking for this. We're the experts in this. So there's this alignment between what people are searching for and what you're delivering. But everything has to be so fast now. Like, you get like 3 seconds

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and it has to be, the messaging has to be clear, it has to be exactly what they're looking for. So you end up with thousands of pages on a site to really make it work. For every question and

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everything they're searching for, you're making that work. So it's a different market now. But anyway, that's how I started my business.

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So let's pause right there. And what we'll do is we will go into the next episode, which is really where I then started to scale my business.

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We'll go with that. So pause. Have a great day. Or if you're going to go right into the next episode, join me for how I scaled my business.